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Search Engine Optimization And Why You Should Use It

2009-09-18T08:02:00.000-07:00

E-commerce is a cutthroat business. You have to arm yourself with the
proper know-how and the tools to make your site stand out from the rest. Each
day, more and more sites are clambering to optimize their rankings on the search
engines and if you lose your guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in
the abyss filled with so many failed e-commerce sites.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by
many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so,
Search Engines would be the most widely used Internet tool to find the sites that
they need to go to or the product or information they need.
Most people that use Search Engines use only the ten top search results
in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a
barometer of a sites success in Search Engine optimization. You will get a higher
ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for
your site, the more business you rake in.
But, it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even
better. As I aforementioned, each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to
make them selves rank higher using Search Engine optimization. It is imperative
to make your site better and better everyday.
So just what is Search Engine optimization and do you have to use it? The
answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need Search Engine
optimization to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income
generating. Period.
With Search Engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a
high traffic volume. Let’s just say you get only a turn out of successful sales with
10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a
good turn out of sales already. If you get only ten to twenty hits a day, you only
get one or two if not any at all.

So once again, what is Search Engine optimization? Search Engine
optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site top ranking in
the results of Search Engines. Getting yourself in the first page and better yet
in the top half of the page will ensure that you will generate public awareness of

your site’s existence and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could
lead to potential income and business.
Search Engine optimization does require a lot of work. There are many
aspects you have to change in your site or add as well. These will include getting
lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your
sites niche or theme.
You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the
right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and
informative. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making
your site’s content applicable and conducive to Search Engine optimization.
You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could
get link exchanges and page transfers. The more inbound and outbound traffics
generated by sites among others are one of the components Search Engines
uses to rank sites.
Try to search the Internet for useful help. Tips, guidelines and methods for
Search Engine optimization are plenty to be found. Read many articles that can
help you optimize your site in Search Engine results. The more knowledge and
information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high
rankings. This may require a little time and effort on your part but the benefits will
be astounding.
If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the Internet that
can help you in Search Engine optimization. There are many sites that help in
tracking keyword phrases that can help your site. There are also some content
writers that have lots of experience in writing good keyword rich content for your
sites that are high quality.

robots.txt

2009-09-13T04:34:00.000-07:00

The robots.txt file is a set of instructions for visiting robots (spiders) that index the content of your web site pages. For those spiders that obey the file, it provides a map for what they can, and cannot index. The file must reside in the root directory of your web. The URL path (web address) of your robots.txt file should look like this...

http://www.destination-tech.co.cc/robots.txt

The Robots text file open in Notepad might look like this:

This is a screen shot of an empty (not recommended) robots.txt file

Definition of the above robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
The asterisk (*) or wildcard represents a special value and means any robot.

Disallow:
The Disallow: line without a / (forward slash) tells the robots that they can index the entire site.

Any empty value indicates that all URLs can be retrieved. At least one Disallow field needs to be present in a record without the / (forward slash) as shown above.

The presence of an empty "/robots.txt" file has no explicit associated semantics, it will be treated as if it was not present, i.e. all robots will consider themselves welcome.

The Disallow: line without the trailing slash (/) tells all robots to index everything. If you have a line that looks like this:

Disallow: /private/

It tells the robot that it cannot index the contents of that /private/ directory.

Summarizing the Robots Exclusion Protocol - robots.txt file

To allow all robots complete access:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Important Note: The above format is the common and acceptable standard for allowing all spiders’ access to the site. We've recently learned (2002-06-09), that the practice of having just a User-agent: * and Disallow: without a trailing forward slash (empty robots.txt file) may not be recommended. Some spiders may incorrectly interpret this as blocking all content. You'll notice that we disallow the _private, css, and JavaScript folders in the below example and do not recommend an empty file.

2003-05-13 - Do not disallow your /css/ directory. Recent issues with Google may suggest that disallowing your css directory could be a flag for a manual review to see if you are using css to deceive the indexing robots (spiders).

This is a screen shot of a robots.txt file

To exclude all robots from the server:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

To exclude all robots from parts of a server:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /images-saved/
Disallow: /images-working/

To exclude a single robot from the server:

User-agent: Named Bot
Disallow: /

To exclude a single robot from parts of a server:

User-agent: Named Bot
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /images-saved/
Disallow: /images-working/

Note: The asterisk (*) or wildcard in the User-agent field is a special value meaning "any Robot" and therefore is the only one needed until you fully understand how to set up different User-agents.

If you want to Disallow: a particular file within the directory, your Disallow: line might look like this one:

Disallow: /private/top-secret-stuff.htm

Keep in mind that using the above example excludes that specified page (top-secret-stuff.htm) but will not exclude the entire /private/ directory. If you have files that you do not want indexed, then you should put them in a private folder and Disallow: the entire directory, or put them in a password protected directory, or don't put them on the web at all!

You should validate your robots.txt file. Enter the full URI to the robots.txt file on your server. The robots.txt file always resides at the root level of your web.

SEO Check List 2009-2010

2009-09-13T04:32:00.000-07:00

Metatags and on-page optimization
Are the keywords in the title with a 1-word buffer (Max - 1 keyword phrase)
Are Keywords in META keywords. It’s not necessary for Google, but a good habit. Keep the META keywords short (128 characters max, or 10).
Are Keywords in META description? Keep keyword close to the left but in a full sentence.
Are Keywords in the top portion of the page in first sentence of first full bodied paragraph (plain text: no bold, no italic, no style).
Are Keywords in an H2-H4 heading
Are Keywords in bold – second paragraph if possible and anywhere but the first usage on page.
Are Keywords in italic – anywhere but the first usage?
Are Keywords in subscript/superscript?
Are Keywords in URL (directory name, filename, or domain name). Do not duplicate the keyword in the URL.
Are Keywords in an image filename used on the page?
Are Keywords in ALT tag of that previous image mentioned?
Are Keywords in the title attribute of that image?
Are Keywords in link text to another site?
Are Keywords in an internal link’s text?
Are Keywords in title attribute of all links targeted in and out of page?
Are Keywords in the filename of your external CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) or JavaScript file?
Are Keywords in an inbound link on site (preferably from your home page)
Are Keywords in an inbound link from offsite (if possible).
Are Keywords in a link to a site that has a PageRank of 8 or better (e.g. .gov or .edu
Are Keywords in an html comment tag?

Technical
What is the code-to-text ratio? (Text should be at minimum higher than the code)
How many links are pointing to the full URL (with http ://)
How many links are pointing to the domain?
What is the Domain name visibility? A count of results at Google for a search for the domain, showing URL visibility rather than incoming link count.
Number of internal pages that link to the home page?
Number of Technorati links?
Number of del.icio.us links?
What is the page size?
How long does it take to load the page?
On each page, is the top keyword density on each page between 3-7%?
Are their any redirects?
Is the page W3C Compliant?
Is their any duplicate content out on the web?
Is the site in the top 10 directories?
Is a spider seeing all of the site content?

Other Issues
Is there at least 250 words in the content?
Is the keyword density for each kw on each page between 3-7%?
JavaScript in external files?
Alternative navigation on flash or frames?
Xml and html sitemap?
Are their any broken links?
Is there a robots.txt file?
Browser Compatibility (IE, Netscape, Opera, Firefox, Mosaic and Safari)

Linking
Google backlinks
MSN backlinks
Yahoo backlinks
DMOZ listing?
Does the site have outward rss feeds?
Does the page have rss feeds for fresh on-page content?
Does the site have an SEO optimized 404 page?
PDF optimized docs in root file with a navigation page listing each doc description and link. Also a separate xml sitemap for these and separate submission.
302 redirects? (Change to 301 - Google will penalize you for these if you leave them up too long)

Search Engine Optimization SEO Life Cycle

2009-09-13T04:31:00.001-07:00

The Search Engine Optimization industry is growing day by day all over the world. Different companies use different SEO techniques from spam to ethical Search Engine Optimization. Here we are discussing the general ethical SEO life cycle, and SEO Bank are strictly using these standards and improving all the standards according to the changes of search engines.
As SEO has become an industry itself there has also bee an increase of processes involved in whole SEO from domain name to link building strategies. Here we are discussing the general SEO life cycle and working methodology of SEO Bank.
Review.
If you already have a website, you must know about the current visibility of your website in different search engines. Look at the search terms which are good in search engines for your website. Also keep an eye on your previous stats. If you are going to completely redesign your website, all of this information will be very useful for future work.
Industry Analysis.
No SEO campaign could be successful without proper analysis of industry. For a SEO life cycle it is very important to analysis the industry and your competitors. By industry analysis a SEO will be able to define the link strategy and time frame for SEO life cycle. At SEO Bank all this is done by the professional marketing consultants and SEO experts.
Keyword Analysis.
One of the most important things in a SEO life cycle is Keyword Analysis. You need to establish a set of key words which will drive traffic through your website and also increase the visibility of your website in search engines.
Optimization.
The best way of optimization is the on page optimization. Before starting optimization it is necessary to check the keyword density and frequency. We will be going through all the pages and optimizing each page for specified keywords. With this, also rectifying the title, Meta and navigation of page, which will be more visible for search engine. If necessary also integrate new pages with the website to increase the visibility for search engines for more traffic generation.
Submission.
Once the website has been optimized, you now need to submit your optimized website in different directories and place your link in different websites. This will give great exposure to your website and increase visibility of your website. This entire submission process is done by human hand, instead of automated process. Therefore it is better to submit your website in the directories like Yahoo, DMOZ, and MSN etc.
Link Building Strategies.
All SEO agree that link strategy is the most critical part of a SEO life cycle. First we analysis your website and remove the broken links within the website and improve internal linking of website. Internal linking spreads the PageRank across the website. You also need to concentrate on the external linking. At SEO Bank we are providing the external link strategies for our clients. We submit websites in different websites with PR 4+.

Top 10 SEO Mistakes and What to Do to Correct It

2009-09-13T04:30:00.001-07:00

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings.

This definition of SEO sounds simple, but beware! Search engine optimization is a minefield, even for professionals, and although necessary to a business, should not be undertaken lightly. Below, is a brief look at the top 10 mistakes and how to correct them.

1. Non-Relevant Linkage.

External links to your site play a large part in most of the major search engine algorithms and can be considered an endorsement of your site. But if you are being linked to from sites that have no relevance to your content, then that is now considered a negative endorsement and will not raise your ranking in the search engines. Ensure all links to your pages are from relevant sites. Be wary of link builders who acquire links from gambling, pharmaceutical or adult themed sites, especially if your site is not of the same theme. Link building is as much a science as it is an art, one we take very seriously.

2. Untargeted Keywords.

The people who use search engines are 'normal' people who are not likely to use words used in advertising brochures. Get to know how your customers ask for your services/products and use these in your content. Often times, actual keyword research will surprise you.

3. Excessive Graphics and Flash Content.

This looks good on a web page, but to search engine crawlers it means little. Search engines are looking for content, keywords, and relevancy to the search terms. By all means have some graphics, but don't forget the meat. This doesn't mean Flash designed websites are bad necessarily. In fact, some big businesses do use it. For most webmasters though, Flash sites are best avoided. Unless your Flash designer does high-end websites and knows how to integrate the content and keywords within the Flash, hybrid sites combining Flash headers with HTML content will be a good option.

4. Believing all search engines are the same.

What pleases Yahoo might not necessarily please MSN or Google. Optimize your content, keywords, inbound links, and internal linking structure so that there is something for at least one of the three top search engines.

5. Multiple Search Engine Submissions.

In the very early days of search engines, this technique may have had some success, but now it can lead to slower indexing and rankings. A site with inbound links from other sites will get indexed naturally and search engine submission is not necessary. In fact, multiple submissions may be construed as an attempt to spam the search engines. The top 5 engines account for more than 90% of all activity so it is wise not to ruin your chances of ranking naturally in the search results. (comScore Media Metrix qSearch data, August 2005)

6. Incorrect Use of Title Tags.

Most people consider the title to be for their company name or product. Not so. You must include your most important search phrases within your title tag and if you do want your company name there, keep it for the end. Keep the title tag to less than 65 characters long to avoid the appearance of title tag keyword-stuffing.

7. Use of 'Black Hat' techniques.

Techniques such as doorway pages, hidden text, and overstuffing keywords may have had success in the past but now they will earn you penalties and could even get you banned. Avoid them altogether if you are seeking long term success. Some black hat techniques can work on a short term basis, but in the long run prove very costly.

8. Expecting Immediate Results.

SEO is an ongoing process and should be treated as such by your SEO company. Good optimization will involve building good links with quality sites and this takes time.

9. Use of Unethical SEO Consultants.

Beware the consultant that guarantees rankings with no past clients to back it up with or claims of special relationships with search engines. Many such "consultants" or "experts" will probably take your money and run. Choose a reputable SEO consultant, one who will keep in regular contact with progress reports and updates.

10. Decide to do optimization in-house.

Probably possible in the past, but now with ever increasing sophistication of search engine algorithms, this is an area best left to an expert. Furthermore, the good SEO experts usually have other income streams from their online marketing activities and a regular paycheck to work full-time simply doesn't justify their time invested. We've yet to meet a good SEO who doesn't have virtual real estate bringing in a nice chunk of cash.

SEO Tools

2009-09-13T04:29:00.000-07:00

SEO Tools

with SEO Add-Ons (1) , (2) & (3) (Density, links, code cleaner, W3C Compliance, etc.)
Google Analytics - Provides deep analysis on all traffic, including paid search.
IBP - Several tools for checking rank positions, basic SEO page analysation and link building tools
WebCEO - Site optimization, promotion and analysis.
WeBuildPages - Free software for SEO analysation, back link & Anchor text tool.
Link Building 101 - Basic Link Building Instructions and Tips.
Link Baiting - Good Link Baiting Tutorial
Google Webmaster Central – Statistics, diagnostics and management of Google's crawling and indexing of your website, including Sitemap submission and reporting.

Pay Per Click Tools
WordTracker -Data is based on the
Metacrawler and Overture search engines.
KeywordDiscovery - Data is based on the number of search engines.
Keyword Optimizer - Enter a list of keywords and this tool will remove any duplicate entries and re-order the list alphabetically.
Google Analytics - Provides deep analysis on all traffic, including paid search.
Google Suggest - As you type, Google provides the top 10 most popular keywords that begin with the keyed-in letters, in order of popularity.
SpyFu - Find out what competitors are biding on and estimates for the cost of PPC advertising and others bells and whistles.
Hittail – Finds and easily groups the actual terms being used to find your site into an excel format. Great for finding niches and long keyword strings.
Google Trends - Graphs historical trends of various Google searches.
Google Keyword Tool External -Historical trends in keyword popularity.
BidCenter - A good tool for comparative analysis and easy to use
SEO Sleuth - Find what AOL users search for (AOL produces 2x the retail conversions as any other engine)
ROI Calculator - This calculator measures the ROI (return on investment) of a CPC (cost per click) campaign.

Site Tools
C-Class Checker - Use the Class C Checker if you own several cross-linked sites. If you do, it may be more efficient (for SEO purposes) to host them on different Class C IP ranges.
Code to Text Ratio - This tool will help you discover the percentage of text in a web page (as compared to the combined text and code).
Future PageRank - This tool will query Google's various data centers to check for any changes in PageRank values for a given URL.
Internet Officer - Checks for Redirects
Live PR - The Live PageRank calculator gives you the current PageRank value in the Google index, not just the snapshot that is displayed in the toolbar.
Keyword Cloud - This tool provides a visual representation of keywords used on a website.
Keyword Difficulty Check - Use the Keyword Difficulty Check Tool to see how difficult it would be to rank for specific keywords or keyword phrases.
Page Size - This tool will help you to determine HTML web page size.
Site Link Analyzer - This tool will analyze a given web page and return a table of data containing columns of outbound links and their associated anchor text.
Spider Simulator - This tool simulates a search engine spider by displaying the contents of a web page in exactly the way the spider would see it.
URL Rewriting - This tool converts dynamic URLs to static URLs. You will need to create an .htaccess file to use this tool.
Keyword Misspelling Generator - allows you to generate various misspellings of a keyword or phrase to match common typing errors. Useful for creating keyword lists around your most important keywords to bid on.
Keyword Density Analysis Tool - finds common words and phrases on your site.
Hub Finder - finds topically related pages by looking at link co-citation. post about tool
Page Text Rank Checker - tool allows you to check where your site ranks for each phrase or term occurring on the page.
XML Sitemaps - makes free Google sitemaps for sites up to 500 pages in size. Sells a cheap and useful script to build sitemaps for larger site sizes.
PageRank Toolbar For Mac - A widget to show PageRank for the site you are on.

And Even More SEO Tools

 Getting into DMOZ *Tool

 Meta Tag Generator *Tool
 RoboForm - A MUST-HAVE! *Tool
 Keyword Density *Tool

 Web CEO - SEO Software *Tool

 IBP Pro - SEO Software *Tool

 Robots.txt Generator *Tool

 Link Popularity *Tool

 Domain Age Check *Tool

 Code-to-Text *Tool

 Spider Simulator *Tool

 Who Supplies Who with Search Results*Tool
 Adwords Click Fraud Study *Information

 Abuse IP Checker *Tool

 IP Information *Tool

 IP, City and reverse IP Lookup *Tool

 Ping *Tool

 Traceroute *Tool

 PPC Hijacking *Information
 PPC 101 *Instruction

 PPC 102 *Instruction

 Comprehensive Link Building 101 *Tool

 Link Baiting *Instruction

FaQ's

2009-09-13T04:25:00.000-07:00

Getting Listed with Search Engines

If you want people to visit your page, you must register it on search engines.

This is because about 80% of people, who search the Internet, use search engines. If your site is not registered nobody can find you. The Internet is not your local newspaper or a billboard on the corner of a busy main road. In fact, your website is no different than building a home in the middle of a desert. For people to see it, you must build a road to it. The search engine provides a road enabling people to find you.

What is a search engine?
Why should I submit my web site?
Why should I submit every month?
Which search engines and directories do you submit to?
When will I see my site listed on search engine sites?
What are the best keywords to use?
What is a Meta tag?
Do I need Meta tags?
What Meta tags should I add to my web site?

What is a search engine?

Web visitors generally use search engines to find sites matching their search criteria. The visitor enters words or phrases in the search area, and the search engine produces a list of related sites. The search engine provides this information after conducting a more comprehensive search using indexing software agents, often called "robots" or "spiders".

These robots and spiders are programmed to "crawl" the Internet in search of new or updated web sites. The search engine becomes aware of a new site to visit and index when that site is submitted.

Why should submit my web site I?

Submitting your URL to a number of search engines increases the odds of potential customers finding your site through traditional online searches. You can further increase your chances of being found through a search by adding relevant keywords to your home page title and text.

Search engines are one of the least expensive and most successful forms of online marketing. If you're serious about reaching new visitors, submitting your site to search engines is essential.

Why should I submit every month?

You want to keep your web site registration current. Link Pages move older links to the bottom of the list, and resubmitting puts you back on top. Search engines have a tendency to drop or lose sites from time to time. Resubmitting monthly ensures your site won't get lost. Some web sites offer, "What's New" sections. Each time you submit, your site gets added to these lists.

When will I see my site listed on search engine sites?

After successfully submitting your web site to a search engine or directory, it's up to those organizations to list your site. Most search engines will send a "spider" to your site within a few weeks of submission. The spider will read and index your web site and schedule your site to be listed. It usually takes 6-8 weeks before your site appears on major search engines.

What are the best keywords to use?

The best way to determine your keywords is to step out of your shoes and imagine yourself as one of your customers or prospects. How do you think these people will search for sites like yours? What keywords do you think they will enter into the search engines?

Create a list of all of the words that apply to your business, including your business name, product names (both brand and generic names) and the names of the geographic regions you serve. You may also want to consider variations of these words (such as "dog, dogs, doggie, etc) and common misspellings of important keywords.

When developing your list of keywords, you should consider all of the possible keywords your customers and prospects may use. Sp end a few days thinking it over. Ask a few of your customers what keywords they would use. Build as large of a list as possible, while still keeping the keywords relevant to your business. Once you have a complete list, you can then rank the importance of them keywords to determine which are the most important to your company.

What is a Meta tag?

A Meta tag (or tag) tells the search engine what your site is about. The major search engines will review your site and read your Meta tags to determine categories for your site. Meta tags tell the search engine your site's title, description and keywords. Without these tags, it's difficult for your site to achieve a high ranking on many major search engines.

Do I need Meta tags?

Yes. If your site doesn't have Meta tags, you're missing potential traffic. A web site without Meta tags is tough for a search engine to place correctly.

What Meta tags should I add to my web site?

Title: The title is probably the most important part of your site to evaluate, as it is the most frequently searched component by search engines. It should state exactly what your site is about and include your most important keywords. An example of a good title would be, "Dave's Interior Designs – Decorating the Inside of England's Homes.

Keywords: The Meta Tag Keywords should be those words or phrases that you think people will use when trying to look for a site like yours on search engines. You should incorporate many Meta Tags within your site's first paragraphs (50 words) and repeat them throughout the text.

The right keywords for your web site should be specific enough to describe your web site's focus, yet general enough for potential customers to use as search criteria with search engines. Be sure to include your domain name, company name and product's name in the keywords.

Description: Your web site description should be a 20-word summary of the content of your site. This description should contain some of the keywords and should avoid marketing jargon. An example of a good description would be, "A full service provider of interior design services – decorating, painting, and furniture and color schemes for your home."

Errors and Redirections

2009-09-13T04:23:00.001-07:00

HTTP Errors With Details

10 Status Code Definitions

Each Status-Code is described below, including a description of which method(s) it can follow and any Meta information required in the response.

10.1 Informational 1xx

This class of status code indicates a provisional response, consisting only of the Status-Line and optional headers, and is terminated by an empty line. There are no required headers for this class of status code. Since HTTP/1.0 did not define any 1xx status codes, servers MUST NOT send a 1xx response to an HTTP/1.0 client except under experimental conditions.

A client MUST be prepared to accept one or more 1xx status responses prior to a regular response, even if the client does not expect a 100 (Continue) status message. Unexpected 1xx status responses MAY be ignored by a user agent.

Proxies MUST forward 1xx responses, unless the connection between the proxy and its client has been closed, or unless the proxy itself requested the generation of the 1xx response. (For example, if a

Proxy adds an "Expect: 100-continue" field when it forwards a request, then it need not forward the corresponding 100 (Continue) response(s).)

10.1.1 100 Continue

The client SHOULD continue with its request. This interim response is used to inform the client that the initial part of the request has been received and has not yet been rejected by the server. The client SHOULD continue by sending the remainder of the request or, if the request has already been completed, ignore this response. The server MUST send a final response after the request has been completed.

10.1.2 101 Switching Protocols

The server understands and is willing to comply with the client's request, via the Upgrade message header field, for a change in the application protocol being used on this connection. The server will switch protocols to those defined by the response's Upgrade header field immediately after the empty line which terminates the 101 response.

The protocol SHOULD be switched only when it is advantageous to do so. For example, switching to a newer version of HTTP is advantageous over older versions, and switching to a real-time, synchronous protocol might be advantageous when delivering resources that use such features.

10.2 Successful 2xx

This class of status code indicates that the client's request was successfully received, understood, and accepted.

10.2.1 200 OK

The request has succeeded. The information returned with the response is dependent on the method used in the request, for example:

GET an entity corresponding to the requested resource is sent in the response;

HEAD the entity-header fields corresponding to the requested resource are sent in the response without any message-body;

POST an entity describing or containing the result of the action;

TRACE an entity containing the request message as received by the end server.

10.2.2 201 Created

The request has been fulfilled and resulted in a new resource being created. The newly created resource can be referenced by the URI(s) returned in the entity of the response, with the most specific URI for the resource given by a Location header field. The response SHOULD include an entity containing a list of resource characteristics and location(s) from which the user or user agent can choose the one most appropriate. The entity format is specified by the media type given in the Content-Type header field. The origin server MUST create the resource before returning the 201 status code. If the action cannot be carried out immediately, the server SHOULD respond with 202 (Accepted) responses instead.

A 201 response MAY contain an ETag response header field indicating the current value of the entity tag for the requested variant just created.

10.2.3 202 Accepted

The request has been accepted for processing, but the processing has not been completed. The request might or might not eventually be acted upon, as it might be disallowed when processing actually takes place. There is no facility for re-sending a status code from an asynchronous operation such as this.

The 202 response is intentionally non-committal. Its purpose is to allow a server to accept a request for some other process (perhaps a batch-oriented process that is only run once per day) without requiring that the user agent's connection to the server persist until the process is completed. The entity returned with this response SHOULD include an indication of the request's current status and either a pointer to a status monitor or some estimate of when the user can expect the request to be fulfilled.

10.2.4 203 Non-Authoritative Information

The returned Meta information in the entity-header is not the definitive set as available from the origin server, but is gathered from a local or a third-party copy. The set presented MAY be a subset or superset of the original version. For example, including local annotation information about the resource might result in a superset of the meta information known by the origin server. Use of this response code is not required and is only appropriate when the response would otherwise be 200 (OK).

10.2.5 204 No Content

The server has fulfilled the request but does not need to return an entity-body, and might want to return updated meta information. The response MAY include new or updated meta information in the form of entity-headers, which if present SHOULD be associated with the requested variant.

If the client is a user agent, it SHOULD NOT change its document view from that which caused the request to be sent. This response is primarily intended to allow input for actions to take place without causing a change to the user agent's active document view, although any new or updated Meta information SHOULD be applied to the document currently in the user agent's active view.

The 204 response MUST NOT include a message-body, and thus is always terminated by the first empty line after the header fields.

10.2.6 205 Reset Content

The server has fulfilled the request and the user agent SHOULD reset the document view which caused the request to be sent. This response is primarily intended to allow input for actions to take place via user input, followed by a clearing of the form in which the input is given so that the user can easily initiate another input action. The response MUST NOT include an entity.

10.2.7 206 Partial Content

The server has fulfilled the partial GET request for the resource. The request MUST have included a Range header field indicating the desired range, and MAY have included an If-Range header field to make the request conditional.

The response MUST include the following header fields:

      - Either a Content-Range header field indicating

        the range included with this response, or a multipart/byte ranges

        Content-Type including Content-Range fields for each part. If a

        Content-Length header field is present in the response, its

        Value MUST match the actual number of OCTETs transmitted in the

        Message-body.

      - Date

      - ETag and/or Content-Location, if the header would have been sent

        In a 200 response to the same request

      - Expires, Cache-Control, and/or Vary, if the field-value might

        differ from that sent in any previous response for the same

        variant

If the 206 response is the result of an If-Range request that used a strong cache validator, the response SHOULD NOT include other entity-headers. If the response is the result of an If-Range request that used a weak validator, the response MUST NOT include other entity-headers; this prevents inconsistencies between cached entity-bodies and updated headers. Otherwise, the response MUST include all of the entity-headers that would have been returned with a 200 (OK) response to the same request.

A cache MUST NOT combine a 206 response with other previously cached content if the ETag or Last-Modified headers do not match exactly.

A cache that does not support the Range and Content-Range headers MUST NOT cache 206 (Partial) responses.

10.3 Redirection 3xx

This class of status code indicates that further action needs to be taken by the user agent in order to fulfill the request. The action required MAY be carried out by the user agent without interaction with the user if and only if the method used in the second request is GET or HEAD. A client SHOULD detect infinite redirection loops, since such loops generate network traffic for each redirection.

      Note: previous versions of this specification recommended a

      maximum of five redirections. Content developers should be aware

      that there might be clients that implement such a fixed

      limitation.

10.3.1 300 Multiple Choices

The requested resource corresponds to any one of a set of representations, each with its own specific location, and agent- driven negotiation information is being provided so that the user (or user agent) can select a preferred representation and redirect its request to that location.

Unless it was a HEAD request, the response SHOULD include an entity containing a list of resource characteristics and location(s) from which the user or user agent can choose the one most appropriate. The entity format is specified by the media type given in the Content- Type header field. Depending upon the format and the capabilities of

The user agent, selection of the most appropriate choice MAY be performed automatically. However, this specification does not define any standard for such automatic selection.

If the server has a preferred choice of representation, it SHOULD include the specific URI for that representation in the Location field; user agents MAY use the Location field value for automatic redirection. This response is cacheable unless indicated otherwise.

10.3.2 301 Moved Permanently

The requested resource has been assigned a new permanent URI and any future references to this resource SHOULD use one of the returned URIs. Clients with link editing capabilities ought to automatically re-link references to the Request-URI to one or more of the new references returned by the server, where possible. This response is cacheable unless indicated otherwise.

The new permanent URI SHOULD be given by the Location field in the response. Unless the request method was HEAD, the entity of the response SHOULD contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s).

If the 301 status code is received in response to a request other than GET or HEAD, the user agent MUST NOT automatically redirect the request unless it can be confirmed by the user, since this might change the conditions under which the request was issued.

      Note: When automatically redirecting a POST request after

      receiving a 301 status code, some existing HTTP/1.0 user agents

      will erroneously change it into a GET request.

10.3.3 302 Found

The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection might be altered on occasion, the client SHOULD continue to use the Request-URI for future requests. This response is only cacheable if indicated by a Cache-Control or Expires header field.

The temporary URL SHOULD be given by the Location field in the response. Unless the request method was HEAD, the entity of the response SHOULD contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s).

If the 302 status code is received in response to a request other than GET or HEAD, the user agent MUST NOT automatically redirect the request unless it can be confirmed by the user, since this might change the conditions under which the request was issued.

      Note: RFC 1945 and RFC 2068 specify that the client is not allowed

      to change the method on the redirected request.  However, most

      existing user agent implementations treat 302 as if it were a 303

      response, performing a GET on the Location field-value regardless

      of the original request method. The status codes 303 and 307 have

      been added for servers that wish to make unambiguously clear which

      kind of reaction is expected of the client.

10.3.4 303 See Other

The response to the request can be found under a different URI and SHOULD be retrieved using a GET method on that resource. This method exists primarily to allow the output of a POST-activated script to redirect the user agent to a selected resource. The new URI is not a substitute reference for the originally requested resource. The 303 response MUST NOT be cached, but the response to the second (redirected) request might be cacheable.

The different URI SHOULD be given by the Location field in the response. Unless the request method was HEAD, the entity of the response SHOULD contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s).

      Note: Many pre-HTTP/1.1 user agents do not understand the 303

      status. When interoperability with such clients is a concern, the

      302 status code may be used instead, since most user agents react

      to a 302 response as described here for 303.

10.3.5 304 Not Modified

If the client has performed a conditional GET request and access is allowed, but the document has not been modified, the server SHOULD respond with this status code. The 304 response MUST NOT contain a message-body, and thus is always terminated by the first empty line after the header fields.

The response MUST include the following header fields:

      - Date,

If a clock less origin server obeys these rules, and proxies and clients add their own Date to any response received without one (as already specified by [RFC 2068], caches will operate correctly.

      - ETag and/or Content-Location, if the header would have been sent

        in a 200 response to the same request

      - Expires, Cache-Control, and/or Vary, if the field-value might

        differ from that sent in any previous response for the same

        variant

If the conditional GET used a strong cache validator, the response SHOULD NOT include other entity-headers. Otherwise (i.e., the conditional GET used a weak validator), the response MUST NOT include other entity-headers; this prevents inconsistencies between cached entity-bodies and updated headers.

If a 304 response indicates an entity not currently cached, then the cache MUST disregard the response and repeat the request without the conditional.

If a cache uses a received 304 response to update a cache entry, the cache MUST update the entry to reflect any new field values given in the response.

10.3.6 305 Use Proxy

The requested resource MUST be accessed through the proxy given by the Location field. The Location field gives the URI of the proxy. The recipient is expected to repeat this single request via the proxy. 305 responses MUST only be generated by origin servers.

      Note: RFC 2068 was not clear that 305 was intended to redirect a

      single request, and to be generated by origin servers only.  Not

      observing these limitations has significant security consequences.

10.3.7 306 (Unused)

The 306 status code was used in a previous version of the specification, is no longer used, and the code is reserved.

10.3.8 307 Temporary Redirect

The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection MAY be altered on occasion, the client SHOULD continue to use the Request-URI for future requests. This response is only cacheable if indicated by a Cache-Control or Expires header field.

The temporary URI SHOULD be given by the Location field in the response. Unless the request method was HEAD, the entity of the response SHOULD contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s) , since many pre-HTTP/1.1 user agents do not understand the 307 status. Therefore, the note SHOULD contain the information necessary for a user to repeat the original request on the new URI.

If the 307 status code is received in response to a request other than GET or HEAD, the user agent MUST NOT automatically redirect the request unless it can be confirmed by the user, since this might change the conditions under which the request was issued.

10.4 Client Error 4xx

The 4xx class of status code is intended for cases in which the client seems to have erred. Except when responding to a HEAD request, the server SHOULD include an entity containing an explanation of the error situation, and whether it is a temporary or permanent condition. These status codes are applicable to any request method. User agents SHOULD display any included entity to the user.

If the client is sending data, a server implementation using TCP SHOULD be careful to ensure that the client acknowledges receipt of the packet(s) containing the response, before the server closes the input connection. If the client continues sending data to the server after the close, the server's TCP stack will send a reset packet to the client, which may erase the client's unacknowledged input buffers before they can be read and interpreted by the HTTP application.

10.4.1 400 Bad Request

The request could not be understood by the server due to malformed syntax. The client SHOULD NOT repeat the request without modifications.

10.4.2 401 Unauthorized

The request requires user authentication. The response MUST include a WWW-Authenticate header field containing a challenge applicable to the requested resource. The client MAY repeat the request with a suitable Authorization header field. If the request already included Authorization credentials, then the 401 response indicates that authorization has been refused for those credentials. If the 401 response contains the same challenge as the prior response, and the user agent has already attempted authentication at least once, then the user SHOULD be presented the entity that was given in the response, since that entity might include relevant diagnostic information. HTTP access authentication is explained in "HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication”.

10.4.3 402 Payment Required

This code is reserved for future use.

10.4.4 403 Forbidden

The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it. Authorization will not help and the request SHOULD NOT be repeated. If the request method was not HEAD and the server wishes to make public why the request has not been fulfilled, it SHOULD describe the reason for the refusal in the entity. If the server does not wish to make this information available to the client, the status code 404 (Not Found) can be used instead.

10.4.5 404 Not Found

The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent. The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address. This status code is commonly used when the server does not wish to reveal exactly why the request has been refused, or when no other response is applicable.

10.4.6 405 Method Not Allowed

The method specified in the Request-Line is not allowed for the resource identified by the Request-URI. The response MUST include an Allow header containing a list of valid methods for the requested resource.

10.4.7 406 Not Acceptable

The resource identified by the request is only capable of generating response entities which have content characteristics not acceptable according to the accept headers sent in the request.

Unless it was a HEAD request, the response SHOULD include an entity containing a list of available entity characteristics and location(s) from which the user or user agent can choose the one most appropriate. The entity format is specified by the media type given in the Content-Type header field. Depending upon the format and the capabilities of the user agent, selection of the most appropriate choice MAY be performed automatically. However, this specification does not define any standard for such automatic selection.

      Note: HTTP/1.1 servers are allowed to return responses which are

      not acceptable according to the accept headers sent in the

      request. In some cases, this may even be preferable to sending a

      406 response. User agents are encouraged to inspect the headers of

      an incoming response to determine if it is acceptable.

If the response could be unacceptable, a user agent SHOULD temporarily stop receipt of more data and query the user for a decision on further actions.

10.4.8 407 Proxy Authentication Required

This code is similar to 401 (Unauthorized), but indicates that the client must first authenticate itself with the proxy. The proxy MUST return a Proxy-Authenticate header field containing a challenge applicable to the proxy for the requested resource. The client MAY repeat the request with a suitable Proxy-Authorization header field. HTTP access authentication is explained in "HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication" .

10.4.9 408 Request Timeout

The client did not produce a request within the time that the server was prepared to wait. The client MAY repeat the request without modifications at any later time.

10.4.10 409 Conflict

The request could not be completed due to a conflict with the current state of the resource. This code is only allowed in situations where it is expected that the user might be able to resolve the conflict and resubmit the request. The response body SHOULD include enough

Information for the user to recognize the source of the conflict. Ideally, the response entity would include enough information for the user or user agent to fix the problem; however, that might not be possible and is not required.

Conflicts are most likely to occur in response to a PUT request. For example, if versioning were being used and the entity being PUT included changes to a resource which conflict with those made by an earlier (third-party) request, the server might use the 409 response to indicate that it can't complete the request. In this case, the response entity would likely contain a list of the differences between the two versions in a format defined by the response Content-Type.

10.4.11 410 Gone

The requested resource is no longer available at the server and no forwarding address is known. This condition is expected to be considered permanent. Clients with link editing capabilities SHOULD delete references to the Request-URI after user approval. If the server does not know, or has no facility to determine, whether or not the condition is permanent, the status code 404 (Not Found) SHOULD be used instead. This response is cacheable unless indicated otherwise.

The 410 response is primarily intended to assist the task of web maintenance by notifying the recipient that the resource is intentionally unavailable and that the server owners desire that remote links to that resource be removed. Such an event is common for limited-time, promotional services and for resources belonging to individuals no longer working at the server's site. It is not necessary to mark all permanently unavailable resources as "gone" or to keep the mark for any length of time -- that is left to the discretion of the server owner.

10.4.12 411 Length Required

The server refuses to accept the request without a defined Content- Length. The client MAY repeat the request if it adds a valid Content-Length header field containing the length of the message-body in the request message.

10.4.13 412 Precondition Failed

The precondition given in one or more of the request-header fields evaluated to false when it was tested on the server. This response code allows the client to place preconditions on the current resource Meta information (header field data) and thus prevent the requested method from being applied to a resource other than the one intended.

10.4.14 413 Request Entity Too Large

The server is refusing to process a request because the request entity is larger than the server is willing or able to process. The server MAY close the connection to prevent the client from continuing the request.

If the condition is temporary, the server SHOULD include a Retry- After header field to indicate that it is temporary and after what time the client MAY try again.

10.4.15 414 Request-URI Too Long

The server is refusing to service the request because the Request-URI is longer than the server is willing to interpret. This rare condition is only likely to occur when a client has improperly converted a POST request to a GET request with long query information, when the client has descended into a URI "black hole" of redirection (e.g., a redirected URI prefix that points to a suffix of itself), or when the server is under attack by a client attempting to exploit security holes present in some servers using fixed-length buffers for reading or manipulating the Request-URI.

10.4.16 415 Unsupported Media Type

The server is refusing to service the request because the entity of the request is in a format not supported by the requested resource for the requested method.

10.4.17 416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable

A server SHOULD return a response with this status code if a request included a Range request-header field, and none of the range-specifier values in this field overlap the current extent of the selected resource, and the request did not include an If-Range request-header field. (For byte-ranges, this means that the first- byte-pos of all of the byte-range-spec values were greater than the current length of the selected resource.)

When this status code is returned for a byte-range request, the response SHOULD include a Content-Range entity-header field specifying the current length of the selected resource. This response MUST NOT use the multipart/byte ranges content- type.

10.4.18 417 Expectation Failed

The expectation given in an Expect request-header field could not be met by this server, or, if the server is a proxy, the server has unambiguous evidence that the request could not be met by the next-hop server.

10.5 Server Error 5xx

Response status codes beginning with the digit "5" indicate cases in which the server is aware that it has erred or is incapable of performing the request. Except when responding to a HEAD request, the server SHOULD include an entity containing an explanation of the error situation, and whether it is a temporary or permanent condition. User agents SHOULD display any included entity to the user. These response codes are applicable to any request method.

10.5.1 500 Internal Server Error

The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request.

10.5.2 501 Not Implemented

The server does not support the functionality required to fulfill the request. This is the appropriate response when the server does not recognize the request method and is not capable of supporting it for any resource.

10.5.3 502 Bad Gateway

The server, while acting as a gateway or proxy, received an invalid response from the upstream server it accessed in attempting to fulfill the request.

10.5.4 503 Service Unavailable

The server is currently unable to handle the request due to a temporary overloading or maintenance of the server. The implication is that this is a temporary condition which will be alleviated after some delay. If known, the length of the delay MAY be indicated in a Retry-After header. If no Retry-After is given, the client SHOULD handle the response as it would for a 500 response.

      Note: The existence of the 503 status code does not imply that a

      server must use it when becoming overloaded. Some servers may wish

      to simply refuse the connection.

10.5.5 504 Gateway Timeout

The server, while acting as a gateway or proxy, did not receive a timely response from the upstream server specified by the URI (e.g. HTTP, FTP, LDAP) or some other auxiliary server (e.g. DNS) it needed to access in attempting to complete the request.

      Note: Note to implementers: some deployed proxies are known to

      return 400 or 500 when DNS lookups time out.

10.5.6 505 HTTP Version Not Supported

The server does not support, or refuses to support, the HTTP protocol version that was used in the request message. The server is indicating that it is unable or unwilling to complete the request using the same major version as the client, other than with this error message. The response SHOULD contain an entity describing why that version is not supported and what other protocols are supported by that server.

Top Factors Affecting Positive Search Engine Rankings

2009-09-13T04:21:00.000-07:00

The jury of search engine experts over at has weighed in, and here are the top factors affecting search engine placement, according to them, with my comments.
1. Keyword Use in Title Tag
I have said for many years that if I had a gun to my head, and could do only one thing to a web page to optimize it, my choice would be the title tag. Put your keyphrases in your title tag, and remember to optimize each page individually (i.e. don't overstuff your title tag, and have different title tags for each page that reflect the content of that particular page - otherwise, you may suffer from a duplicative content exclusion and find yourself in the supplemental results).
2. Keyword Use in Body Text
Duh. If your keyword or keyphrase isn't mentioned at least once in the body text of the web page, then it does not seem your page is very relevant to that keyphrase, now does it? But don't get all caught up in the keyphrase density myth - there is no magic number of times it should appear. Make sense to readers, and it will make sense to the search engines.
3. Relationship of Body Text Content to Keywords (Topic Analysis)
Google is smarter than you give them credit for, and just stuffing a keyphrase into a completely unrelated page won't do you much, if any good. Your page should be on a topic which is semantically related to the keyphrase which you are targeting in your title tag.
4. Keyword Use in H1 Tag
Oh, for years the naysayers have been telling me that H1 tag keyphrase use meant nothing and that I was an idiot for thinking otherwise. Well the verdict is in and this is the fourth most important factor according to the SEOMoz article. At this point, therefore, we have learned to put your keyphrase in your title tag, include it in your body text, which body text is topically or semantically related to the keyphrase, and head up the body text with an H1 containing the keyphrase.
5. Keyword Use in Domain Name
This is one that I disagree with. I have seen absolutely no evidence of this at all. Do a simple search on the internet for most any search term, and chances are the top results do not have the search query in the domain name. I believe this may have minor importance, but don't go and change your domain because of it. Seriously, you have much more to lose (such as age of domain, inbound linkage, site reputation, etc.) I regularly see clients at the top of Google with domain names containing nothing near the relevant search terms.
6. Keyword Use in Page URL
This is what I have called "descriptive file naming" for a number of years. I believe it is of some importance, again, however, is more of a factor when setting up a new domain than would be for an existing domain with high pagerank and inbound linkage. Changing your internal url's for the sole purpose of meeting this criterion again is very risky, for the same reasons mentioned above.
7. Keyword Use in H2, H3, H... Tags
Well if it works for H1, why not for H2 et al.?
8. Keyword Use in ALT Attributes and Image Titles
SEOMoz incorrectly calls them an ALT tag, but it is not a tag, the ALT is an attribute of the IMG tag. Semantics aside, I believe this to be highly important, I would have ranked this above the URL and domain name items. Experience has shown me that image optimization (image file name, alt attribute, and title) is a wonderful way to make a page more relevant to a desired search query.
9. Keyword Use in Bold/Strong Tags
I always use this method, as well as keyword use within the EM (italics) tag. I believe this to be a moderately important factor as it helps emphasize to Google what your page is about, and what you consider important. Definitely on my short list of things to do for "on page" search engine optimization.
10. Keyword Use in Meta Description Tag
Again, one of my "big 4" for on page optimization. The "big 4" being: title tag, meta description, h1, and image ALT attributes. (I don't include body text in my big 4 as I believe that is self evident). Definitely important, and again, each page should have custom title and meta description tags.

Earning Customer Trust Online

2009-09-13T04:20:00.000-07:00

Building customer trust online is a combination of good branding, good design, and good content. A website needs all three components to be successful in creating a climate of trust that encourages sales.
Branding is about finding a specific idea that you stand for, finding a way to own that idea in a credible way, and ultimately building a total trust that you will always deliver.
Branding for Success
Maybe you think only big businesses need to be branded, but I'd challenge that thought by telling you this - As soon as you open your doors for business (either physically or metaphorically) you become a brand in the eyes of everyone who sees you or buys from you. The only choice you have is to become either a negative brand, undifferentiated brand, or a powerful, motivating brand.
Good branding on a website immediately lets a visitor know what you can do for them. In other words, don't brand your business by a generic term like "gardening." Instead, brand your business by showing the uniqueness of what you offer with a benefit statement, "Container gardening for unhappy apartment dwellers who want to be surrounded by nature."
With Internet branding, you want to present your brand so customers can interact with your message and interact with your site. On the Internet, your prospects have total control of what they see, read, and hear. That's why traditional advertising doesn't work on the Net.
Design Considerations
Visitors are interacting with your site when they are shopping. The Internet gives you total control over what your prospective customer sees. Their shopping experience needs to be positive or you lose the sale. According to a 2002 survey by the Stanford Credibility Project, 46% of respondents said that design plays a role in websites creditability. Even a reputable brand with a poorly designed website would cause people to leave.
Just like in a crowded store, where you can't find the section you are looking for, a crowded/cluttered website confuses a prospective buyer. Have the website set up with simple graphics and navigation. What you need to do is remove all the obstacles from the selling process. To increase the click-thru rate, your site must offer instant gratification in terms of comprehension and clarity.
Remember, customers are entering your site at different points, so it is important that your brand message is clear on every page of your website. Try to have a consistent look on the site that matches your offline branding. Keep the same colors on your website so that they match your offline marketing materials.
Trustworthy Content
Creating content that gives your customer a sense of safety and security is also a way of building trust with your customer. Fraud and identity theft are big concerns for online shoppers. Sadly, according to Forrester Research, 71% of online shoppers don't believe the retailer can protect them from fraud. So, they are reluctant to give out financial information. Consumers also believe that only 49% of companies will protect their privacy.
Website visitors need to feel that the information they give to a website will be held in confidence. Before asking someone to give you their email address, be sure you have a privacy policy statement. Make sure the privacy statement is near the email sign-up.
To reassure your website visitors of a secure financial transaction, use the security certification seals of Verisign, Hackersafe, and Thawte. Make sure the seals are prominently displayed on the shopping cart and throughout the checkout process. Forrester research found that sites using these certification seals had a 14% increase in conversion rates.
Another technique is to use privacy seals from BBB online and TrustE. These third party logos communicate that your company can be trusted and have met a standard of measurement for reliability. These seals need to be placed throughout the website: near email signups, registration, cart, and checkout.
Communicate to Build Trust
Building trust online comes down to clearly communicating with your customer. Something as simple as failing to communicate the total purchase price upfront, will lead to shopping cart abandonment. Forrester research found that 57% of shoppers will abandon a shopping cart because the shipping charges were more than they expected.
The goal of an online business should be to create an environment of worry free shopping. Create a website that makes a visitor feel safe, clearly expresses the company's brand through good design, and boosts website conversions through trustworthy content

How My Website Became Popular

2009-09-13T04:19:00.000-07:00

Do you have a website that is getting very little or no traffic at all? Well, I can put you on a path to changing that within the time it will take you to read this article. We will review each of the strategies you can use to promote your website, and then we will try to assimilate them into a single, uniform strategy that is both highly effective and affordable.
First of all, TV commercials, radio ads, and print advertising are very expensive. This is undoubtedly the best way to launch a business, but the costs are prohibitive. A full page ad in a prominent magazine or other publication can run as high as $50,000 per ad. TV commercials can run just as high; if the commercial runs during a popular television show or sporting event, the cost will be enormous.
So, if you do not have enough money in the offers for traditional advertising, you need to resort to online marketing. This is not a bad thing. Offline advertising (i.e. radio, TV, print ads) is sometimes not effective. Marketing on the internet is cheaper, and if done correctly, can give you much more bang for your buck.
Obviously, the cornerstone of internet marketing is search engine submission and optimization. There are hundreds of different search engines and directories on the internet where you can submit your web site for a listing. This is fairly easy to do. Simply sign up for a monthly submission plan with a credible search engine submission service. There are literally hundreds of these submission services on the internet; you can find them by performing a search on Google.
However, be wary of submitters that claim to be able to submit your site to 75,000 search engines. Such services are scams, and they will submit your web page to FFA pages and bogus link pages that can actually get you banned from the search engines. You should only do business with submission services that submit to the major search engines and directories.
Now that we have covered submission, we need to talk about search engine optimization (SEO), which is even more important. To optimize a site, you need to maximize keyword density and optimize the positioning for the words or phrases that best characterize the subject matter of your site, and you need to use proper Meta tags so that the search engines can interpret your web pages.
If you do not know how to optimize your web site, you should search for an optimization professional on Google. Steer clear of SEO experts who want to charge $1,000 per month or more. Their goal is to bleed you dry before you figure out that they really can not help you get to the top of the rankings. Stick to providers who will optimize your site for a one-time fee.
More important than SEO is link popularity. Link popularity is the number of web sites that currently link to your site. The more inbound links you acquire, the higher your search engine ranking will be. There are more than a few ways to acquire links, but I have a certain strategy that worked well for me.
My advice to you is to write articles and press releases and submit them to article directories and press release distribution services who will then distribute your articles and press releases to other websites who will publish them and in return link back to you. Also, you can submit your site to bloggers through a popular service called Blogitive (Blogitive will get blogs to post one-way anchor text links to your site in their blog, which will greatly enhance your search engine ranking).
If you are not patient enough to wait for your search engine ranking to improve, you can attract visitors to your web site instantly by using pay-per-click advertising (PPC). With PPC, you pay a certain cost per click to have an ad for your web page run at or near the top of the search engine listings for certain keywords. This can be extremely costly and ineffective. It is not uncommon for webmasters to blow thousands of dollars on PPC advertising and make only a few sales.
The best way to promote your site, if you are actually selling something, is through an affiliate program. You need to provide an affiliate code to other online merchants so that they will place your banner on their site; every time you make a sale that resulted from an affiliate referral, the affiliate gets a commission. Some internet companies have thousands of affiliates, and get all the business they would ever need or want this way; and it costs you nothing.
To recruit affiliates, you should submit your affiliate program to as many directories as possible (there are directories where you can list your affiliate program for free). The best way to find affiliates is by listing your program on forums or message boards visited by webmasters who are looking to generate additional revenue for their online business. You will have to consult with an experienced programmer who can set up the affiliate program so that the codes used to track sales for each affiliate will work properly.
So, to summarize, you should first optimize your website and submit it to search engines. You should then begin submitting articles and press releases to article directories and press release distribution services. You should also submit your site to Blogitive so that bloggers will write a review of your site and link to it, further boosting your link popularity. You might want to join a link exchange, but trading links often proves fruitless. Also, you should set up an affiliate program. And finally, you should budget a small amount of money to spend each week on pay-per-click.
If you are persistent and use all of these methods, you will continually increase your traffic over a period of time. It will probably take approximately 3 years of performing each of the tasks outlined in this article, on a daily basis, to get where you want to be. Just stick with it and your efforts will be rewarded in the long run.

Ten Terrific Tips for On Page Optimisation

2009-09-13T04:18:00.000-07:00

When developing a search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy there are two main factors to consider;
'On page optimisation' and 'off page optimisation'.
We will focus on on page optimisation for this tutorial. The term on page optimisation covers the SEO strategies that are utilised within your specific web page, in your HTML code. Whilst your on page optimisation will not skyrocket your web page into the top of the Google search results, if you have comprehensively covered your off page and on page optimisation you shouldn't have too much trouble getting a good Google ranking. However, it is actually possible to get yourself into the Google results with no off page optimisation if your on page optimisation is done correctly and the keywords you have optimised for are not extremely popular, ie; 'pizza shop Newcastle' instead of 'pizza'. Ok here goes:
1. First and foremost, make sure you are going to optimise your web page for the most appropriate keywords, there is a very handy search term suggestion tool located at: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/.
It is important to choose your keywords wisely, especially keeping in mind how often those specific keywords are searched for, as it will be much easier and beneficial to get your site as a number one search result for a phrase that is searched for 5,000 times a week, and almost impossible to get your page in the first few search result pages for a term that is searched for 500,000 times a week. It is important to note that approximately 90% of web users do not navigate past the first page of Google's search results.
2. Secondly, ensure your keywords appear once (more than once is not necessary) in your meta tags in your HTML code. For example, if the only keywords you are optimising for are 'pizza shop Newcastle' your meta tags should read as follows:
Newcastle...' />
Newcastle take away food..' />
3. Thirdly, ensure your keywords appear in your title tag of your web page, ie; Harry's Pizza's - Pizza Shop Newcastle
4. Fourth, ensure your keywords appear in a heading

tag in the specific page. ie;

Pizza Shop Newcastle

. It is more beneficial if this is your only

tag on the page, and it occurs only once.

5. Another factor that affects your on page optimization is if your keywords appear within bolded or italicized text. It is important not to go overboard with this by having your keywords bolded or italicized everywhere throughout your page because Google will consider this a 'black hat' method of on page optimization and may result in banning your site from their index. But if it occurs once, or maybe twice, it will increase your on page optimization and Google will not frown upon this. Example: Pizza Shop Newcastle
6. It is important to have your keywords occur at least once within the content text on your website, within paragraph < p > tags. And is more beneficial to ensure this occurs closest to the top of your web page, and at the bottom.
7. It also helps to put your keywords within the alt tags of the images that are embedded in your HTML file. A good example would be if you have a logo that occurs at the top of the document, put the keywords in the alt text. Ie;
8. If you have any links within your web site that link back to the page you are optimising, or any external links that link towards your web site it is very important to contain your keywords within the anchor text and the title text. Example: Harry's Pizzas - Pizza Shop Newcastle. The anchor text is the text that occurs within the tags. Hover over the link to view the title text that pops up, or click on view -> source in your web browser if you need to brush up on your HTML skills.
9. Other factors that improve your on page optimisation include having your keywords contained within your domain name and file name of the specific page. For example the following fictional url would help: http://www.harryspizzashopnewcastle.com.au/pizzashopnewcastle.html. However this is not 100% necessary.
10. This point is probably the most important point you should consider when optimising your page- stay away from 'black hat' on page optimisation methods. They may increase your on page optimisation temporarily but Google frowns upon this and could ban you from their index. So if you go over board with keywords that do not relate to the content of the page, have your keywords occurring more than 3 or 4 times in

tags and < b > tags all over your site and repeat your keywords unnecessarily throughout the content text of your web site, you risk having your site banned from the Google index. Google really does keep a close eye on this so be careful.

Knowing HTML Is Not Nearly Enough

2009-09-13T04:17:00.000-07:00

Every web designer is familiar with the HTML programming language, which stands for Hypertext Markup Language. The language has been in use since the advent of cyberspace, and although it will probably always be used, it is already being supplemented by newer, more versatile versions of HTML.
The Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) is a family of current and future document types and modules that reproduce, subset, and extend HTML, reformulated in XML. XHTML family document types are all XML-based, and ultimately are designed to work in conjunction with XML-based user agents.

Unlike HTML, which focuses on describing how data or text is supposed to be displayed, The XML language instead describes what the data is. So, XML is not something that is apparent on a web page, because it does not actually tell your browser how to display the data.
As information and data presented on the world wide web became more complex, XML was invented to effectively structure, store, and send this information.
What makes XML truly unique is that there are no predefined tags as is the case with HTML. All of the tags used in HTML have already been defined, such as the paragraph tag, the header tag, and all the various style tags. XML is not defined. You can make your own tags!
XML, forms the basis for a language called XHTML. XHTML is what is known as a meta-language, which is a language for defining a markup language. To put it simply, SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) is the basis for HTML. XML is a more refined subset of SGML, and forms the basis for XHTML. On the whole, XHTML is more flexible than HTML.
XHTML was developed for two reasons:
(1) to try to create a language that could more effectively convey the meaning of a particular webpage to a computer.
(2) to create a layout for webpages that would be universally understood by browsers running on different platforms or on different types of screens.
This is extremely important, because people are now using a wide variety of gadgets to connect to the internet, as almost every electronic device on the market now comes equipped with email and internet access. Cell phones, palm tops, computers installed in automobiles; they all have built-in web access.
Each of these devices display text and graphics differently, and utilize different platforms and a variety of web browsers. As a result, someone using a cell phone to access a certain web site may not be able to view it properly because the browser running on that cell phone might not be able to display the HTML. The platforms that run on some of these new products and devices are not totally compatible with HTML.
So, it is imperative that most web designers learn to design web pages in XHTML. As almost every electronic device on the market is now equipped with internet access, it is important to use a versatile programming language like XHTML so that your web pages can be viewed and properly formatted across a wide variety of platforms.

Increase PageRank Fast with Quality Backlinks

2009-09-13T04:16:00.000-07:00

The PageRank of a website is determined largely by the importance, or popularity, of the site based on the PageRank of the sites linking back to it. You must take advantage of quality backlinks to increase the PageRank of your site.
What are backlinks?
Plain and simple, backlinks are links that point back to your site. They are links you have exchanged with or received from other sites, as well as links placed strategically by you in forum posts, blog posts and comments, and the resource box of submitted articles. The submission of your site to website directories also provides backlinks that are highly favored by search engines.
Ideally these links, especially those placed in your forum signature and resource box of published articles (see my related article "Your Signature - An Internet Marketing Goldmine"), will contain keywords in the text of the link to create "anchor text." For example, "Online source for anniversary gifts" instead of "Click here for online anniversary gifts". Placing keywords in the text of the link anchors your keyword(s) to your url rather than anchoring "Click here" to your url. Not only do you have a backlink to your site, you have created a link of higher quality that includes the keywords you are targeting in your overall marketing campaign.
Why do I need backlinks?
The number of quality backlinks linking to a site is one of the main criteria used by Google and other search engines to rank and place websites. This statement, written by David Austin in a Feature Column of the Monthly Essays on Mathematical Topics, sums it up: "The fundamental idea put forth by PageRank's creators, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, is this: the importance of a page is judged by the number of pages linking to it as well as their importance."
With this all-powerful statement from the creators of Google, the importance should be clear: you need backlinks to attract the robots that determine the importance of your website. The value of your page, your website, in the eyes of Google's robot lies in the number and quality of the links that it finds from other sites to yours. As the number of other popular, high-ranking sites find your site worth linking to grows; your popularity goes up along with your position in the search results.
In other words, quality backlinks are needed to entice search engines to stand up and take notice.
Backlinks are also helpful in leading visitors to your site. In this regard, backlinks are much like bread crumbs left by Hansel and Gretel to find their way back home. When your site is new, the robot will not place your site at the top of the results list immediately no matter how much time and effort went into the design and SEO of your site. Links from other sites that searchers are likely to find could lead them to your site if they look through the links page to find related products that might be available on your site.
In addition, links placed in posts to forums and blogs and the resource box of published articles have the potential of being seen and followed by thousands of visitors every day. If the forums, blogs, and article directories have high page ranks, you have more than just a link for visitors to follow; you have a quality link that will serve to increase your page rank as well as your traffic.
What are quality backlinks?
Quality backlinks are links from websites that have a higher page rank than your site, links from websites that have content or purpose related to your site (also known as relevance), links that include anchored text, and links that are built naturally over time, not a sudden increase in links just for the sake of having a high number of links.
Google has made it very clear that the importance of a site in the eyes of Googlebot is greatly influenced by the number and importance of the pages linking to it. In order to increase your PageRank, your website's importance in the eyes of search engines, seek out links from higher-ranking sites that have related content, include anchored text in your signature for forum and blog posts as well as your resource box in articles, and let links build naturally over time. These practices will be a valuable part of your overall marketing strategy.

How Google Measures Link Popularity

2009-09-13T04:15:00.000-07:00

Link popularity is by far the most important factor for determining your search engine ranking. You need to know what link popularity is, why it is so important, and how Google measures your link popularity (over 50% of all search engine traffic comes from Google, and if you can rise to the top of Google, you will rise to the top of all the other search engines as well). But, before we talk about how Google measures linking, we need to cover some basics.
Link popularity is defined as the number of sites that are linking to your site. Some websites have thousands or even millions of sites linking to them, while others might have only a few. The search engines use the number of inbound links your site has as a measure of how important your site is, which translates into your search engine ranking.
The actual number of links to your site is not the only variable used to calculate your link popularity. The search engines also examine the relevance of the links to the subject matter of your site. For example, if a website that sells vitamins has 4,000 inbound links, but the source of most of the links are websites that have nothing to do with vitamins, then the algorithm that search engines use to determine link popularity will take that into account, and the link popularity score will not be very good.
It is possible for a website with a relatively small number of quality inbound links to be ranked higher than a site with a bunch of irrelevant or insignificant links. If I have a website that offers quotes for auto insurance, and I have 800 quality inbound links, then I might receive a much higher search engine ranking than another mortgage site that has 3,000 links that stem from link farms or Free For All (FFA) pages.
If you try to acquire inbound by using link farms or FFA pages, not only will it hurt your search engine ranking, but you might get permanently removed from the search engine listings. Links farms are sites where you can instantly exchange links with all the sites listed in that directory. FFA pages are pointless link directories. The search engines usually discount any links that come from either of these sources.
Now that we understand what link popularity is and how it works, we need to look specifically at how Google measures it. Google uses a number of variables in their algorithm to calculate your overall link score. The higher your score, the higher you will be ranked in the search listings.
One factor that Google uses in their algorithm, obviously, is the total number of sites linking to you. The more links you have, the higher your score will be. However, their algorithm is a little more complicated than that, and it is possible for a website with fewer links to be ranked higher than a website that has more links.
The reason for this is because Google also measures the quality of your links. If your website is about vitamins, and the site linking to you is a video game site, then that is not considered a quality link. The link still helps your score, but the link would help your score much more if it were from a website whose subject matter is the same as yours.
Also, Google gives a higher score to a link if it comes from a page that has actual content that relates to your keywords. For example, if your site is about jewelry, and another jewelry website has posted a link to your site on their links page, that link is not as valuable as a link to your site coming from a blog or a message board where a lot of information about jewelry is being written or discussed.
Also, Google gives an even higher score to a link if it contains anchor text that matches one of the keywords that describes your site. For example, if I have a site that sells lawnmowers, and a blog about lawnmowers has posted a link to my site, it helps my score even more if the link text (also known as anchor text) is LAWNMOWERS. To learn more about anchor text, go to a search engine and look up ANCHOR TEXT and you will be able to learn about it.
Another factor used by Google to score your link popularity is the diversity of keywords contained on sites linking to you. For example, if you have a site that sells handbags, and all the links to your site are from other sites that contain nothing but the keyword HANDBAGS, Google considers that to be abnormal. To get a higher score, you need to have links coming from sites that contain a variety of keywords related to handbags, such as BUY HANDBAGS, LEATHER HANDBAGS, etc.
It is difficult to increase your link popularity, but now that you understand how your score is calculated, you can devise a plan to improve your score. You might want to consider posting to forums and blogs that contain information that is related to your site, and when you post, include a link to your site. As long as you are persistent and tailor your strategy towards Google, you will do fine.

Some 'Golden Rules' of logo design

2009-09-13T04:14:00.000-07:00

While the variables are infinite (that's a good thing - it means that every logo can be unique) there are certain benchmarks (I hesitate to call them rules) that if you follow, will pretty well insure that you'll end up with a decent and workable logo. While whether or not a logo is 'good' remains completely subjective, following these pointers will give you a logo that's usable, practical and promising a long shelf life.
1) Uniqueness
Your logo should be able to stand out as completely 'yours'. It's surprising how many times we get asked to 'copy' logos - we've even had clients request a 'version' of my brand. Not a good idea. On top of the potential legal complications nothing screams 'unprofessional' like a logo that's looks even remotely like someone else's. Do not copy. I'll say it again. Do. Not. Copy.
2) Timeless
Every few years there's a trend, or fad, that new logos seems to embrace. A few years ago it was the 'swoosh' - made logos all hi-tech and 'internety'. Trouble is, everybody jumped on that bandwagon and the treatment rapidly became hackneyed and trite. Few years hence, and we've got lots of people stuck with out of date designs. The latest design logo trend is so-called 2.0, a technique that (like a lot of design trends) can be traced back to Apple Computers. Take your logo, add a 'gel' treatment, give it glassy reflection at the bottom and you're all set. (hey - the 3D version of our house could qualify). Web 2.0 is still going strong, but I'll go out on a limb and say it will be yesterday's news by end of summer.
3) Gimmick Free
Special FX and filters are usually applied, by inexperienced designers, to logos that are 'missing something'. Trouble is, what the logo is generally missing is any design integrity, and adding bevels, lens flares and drop shadows is the logo design version of 'putting lipstick on a pig'. While it certainly shows how cool the latest design software is, it doesn't do much for the professionalism of your mark. Such treatments are fine for glamour shots (used as display pieces on brochures and the like) but are only going to cause grief down the road, especially when it comes to application of your new logo on standard business material. Your logo should be as technically simple as possible for adaptability, which just happened to be number 4 on our list...
4) Adaptability
Over the life of your company, you'll want to plaster your logo over everything you send out. That's the point of having a logo in the first place. In order to do this, you'll need a logo that's adaptable to every occasion and while they may look 'pretty' , the design gimmicks we just talked about render your logo impractical for many of these uses. Some of these uses - checks, FAXes, embroidery, newspaper ads, invoices, letterheads, etc. Your new logo has to work on all of them. You'll also need a quality black and white version that can reproduce as a halftone grayscale, or in the cases of low-resolution BW reproduction, a linear version.
5) Scalability
When using your logo, you'll need to be able to use it small. Real small. Postage stamp size. Classic example of this - over the years, I've designed a load of sports event posters that feature logos from dozens of event sponsors. Space only permits the logos to be featured as very small images and it's always the simpler logos that stand out when viewed from a distance. The cluttered logos aren't recognizable to any great degree and the sponsors are probably wasting their money, especially if inclusion on the poster is the only benefit of their sponsorship. When it comes to scalability, the text portion of the logo is the most important, as that's the piece you want people to remember. Scrawny, sickly text doesn't read very well at half an inch high.
6) Color is Secondary
Colors are extremely important. Using consistent corporate colors will become part of your brand - that's understood. However, when it comes to the design of your logo, color must always be secondary. A logo that requires color to 'hold' the design together is fine when reproduction is optimal - websites, 4 color process printing and what have you - but even then only if the size is appropriate as well. Logos that rely too much on color tend to blend together when used small (see above) and unless the contrast between the two colors is pronounced, will be a grey mess if used in black and white. As for low-resolution reproduction (FAXES, checks, etc) you can forget about readability completely - logos that use color as a design cornerstone usually come out as black blotches on a FAX transmission and with all their money, banks still haven't figured out how to print a decent check.
7) Appropriate Aspect Ratio & Footprint
The aspect ratio of a logo is the relationship between a logo's height and it's width. Bottom line, you don't want a logo that's too tall, or too wide. Square'ish' is always best as this allows the maximum adaptability of a logo, especially when it's being used in conjunction with other artwork. The 'footprint' of a logo refers to the amount of physical space that's required to place a logo on any page. If the footprint is 'wonky' - trailing design elements 'poke' outside the footprint - it can greatly affect the size that the design can be used at, as well as the visual impact of same.
Like most 'rules' of design, not all of these will apply in every situation, and in many cases, we'll toss them out completely. However, they should give you a road map that will help you navigate the sometimes frustrating creative process to design your new logo.

Internet Marketing - 5 Simple Ways to Improve Your Site

2009-09-13T04:13:00.001-07:00

Internet marketing involves more than getting traffic to your site. Sometimes the smallest things can have the biggest impact. The following five actions you can take to improve your Internet marketing and Web site are simple and often over looked when creating or marketing a site.
1) Create a unique 404 error page.
What is a 404 error page? It's the page you see when someone clicks on a broken link or a page that has been renamed. When that happens the site visitor will see a standard page that simply tells you the page is no longer available. It has no thrills, no other links, no branding and above all, very little helpful information.
The page usually starts off with these words:
The page cannot be found.
The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.
Your unique 404 error page should look like a regular page of your site. It should include your site's header, footer and navigation bar so that the site visitor can easily click on another area of your site. The content of this unique 404 error page should contain text explaining that the page selected is no longer available along with contact information so the site visitor has the option of emailing or calling your company.
An example of our 404 error page can be found at: http://www.eplusm.com/404.html.
2) We value your privacy.
This simple four word sentence can have a tremendous effect on your email or form conversion ratios. Be sure to have the sentence, or at least the word "privacy" linked to your privacy statement.
Use this sentence next to any email form on your site or on your contact page. Clearly and simply stating your privacy policy assures the site visitor that you will not sell, give or trade their email or personal information to a third party.
While a privacy page is standard practice for most professional site builders, lawyers usually have their hand in writing a company's privacy policy. That results in having the privacy policy looking like a long legal document.
Using the simple sentence with a link to the privacy policy gives the site visitor assurance that you care about their privacy without having a long explanation.
3) We vs You.
Re-read your home page copy and make sure it is customer focused text. Customer focused text is text that focuses on the customer and not YOU. When you re-read your home page content see how often you use the term "we, us, or our" rather than "You". If your text reads something like: "We offer bla, bla, bla," or "Our services includes, bla, bla, bla," then it is focusing on you rather than the customer.
4) Email Signatures.
Create standard email signatures for ALL your employees. Anyone that uses the Internet in your company should have a company standard email signature.
What's an email signature? Did you ever notice that at the end of some emails you will see not only the email creator's name, but their phone number, fax, number, company name, logo, Web site address, etc. It's amazing how easy this is to do and how many companies simply over look it. Or they let everyone do their own thing.
Having the company's contact and Web site information makes it easy for the recipient to contact you or visit your site. Making it standard email signature improves your overall branding strategy.
5) Call to Action.
A call to action is a statement that asks the site visitor to do something. Two of the biggest mistakes made on a Website is not using call to actions or using the wrong call to actions.
You have probably been on sites that do not give you a clue as to what to do next. They have text and links but nothing that tells you to learn more, buy, compare, read, or call now. Look over your site and see what call to actions are on your site. Try to view it as a first time visitor and create a scenario or action you want your site visitor to take.
The most common and most boring call to action is "Click Here". Sometimes it's unavoidable or it's the only phrase that makes sense, but consider using other statements. Instead of "Click here" use words like learn, save, read, compare, etc.
Call to actions are usually linked to another page on your site. This is a great opportunity to use a keyword in a link on your site, which helps with search engine optimization. Use the keyword in the link for your call to action.
These five suggestion are basically simple things to do that can help improve your site overall. They are often over looked but can prove to have a tremendous effect on your site.
For one of our client's Web sites we suggested item number 2, adding "We value your privacy" just above their email form. The sentence was linked to their privacy policy. The link was hardly used, but having that simple statement was all that was needed. The added statement increased their form's conversion ratio by over 250%.

Effective Marketing on a Shoestring Budget

2009-09-13T04:12:00.000-07:00

Many business owners would give their left arm to have the same brand recognition as Oprah, Microsoft, McDonald's, Starbucks or Amazon.com. But you don't need the marketing budgets of these behemoths to promote your company and get your piece of the pie. A creative approach to self-promotion will put you face to face with your prospects and, properly executed, can help you become a well-known name.
The first step is to focus your marketing efforts - otherwise known as target marketing. A topic that has nearly been discussed to death, target marketing is essential for just about every company, no matter how large or small. You don't see advertisements for Oprah's show on ESPN because that's not her target market. And while a household name like McDonald's appeals to almost everyone, their advertising efforts tend to be targeted toward specific marketing trends. Their latest marketing campaign is focused on the youth market that, these days, have much more of their own money to spend than the youth market of yesteryear.
If you are faced with a limited marketing budget, you must be creative and persistent in your efforts. Here are a few ideas that are alternatives to the more traditional, higher-priced marketing approaches that will get your company some exposure and won't break your budget.
Networking:
We're all familiar with print, radio and television advertising. And as the innovations of cable and the Internet have become more prominent in our lives, infomercials, banner ads and other Internet advertising avenues have been added to the mix. However, if you really want to connect with your target market, getting out and meeting them through networking is probably the best way to do it.
Joining professional organizations such as your local chamber of commerce or civic organizations such as your area Rotary club will put you in touch with the movers and shakers of your community. These people are likely to become colleagues that you can learn from as you watch them grow professionally and you watch your company grow as well. And while they may be able to connect you with potential clients and opportunities, you should approach these relationships prepared to give without motive. If you join these organizations with a "what's in it for me?" attitude, you will likely be spotted as such and left out in the cold.
Partnerships and Sponsorships:
Another great way to not only get your name in front of your prospects, but also learn more about them, is through partnerships and sponsorships.
When a community is unfamiliar with your company or organization, one of the easiest ways to build trust is through a partnership with a more established and successful company. But keep in mind you're going to need to be offering a product or service that is so useful to their customer base that your partner is willing to risk their reputation by endorsing you. If you don't partner with a well-established firm, at least partner with a non-competitor that offers services similar to yours. If you sell shoes, and your partner company sells mortgages, that won't make sense to the customer and will raise their suspicion of you.
Supporting community and civic organizations through sponsorship is another way to reach your audience. Your efforts can range from the local little league baseball team to a fundraiser for any sort of worthy cause. From the local chapter of the American Heart Association to an organization that raises money for any needy population in the area - abused women and children, the homeless, the mentally ill, disaster victims, etc. - this is a two-for-one opportunity for your company. A chance for you to satisfy your civic conscience by getting involved with that organization that you've always wanted to volunteer with, and you get exposure for your company at the same time.
A Trade Show on the Cheap:
Trade shows are the ultimate in target and network marketing. But when you begin to calculate the cost of you trade show display, the fees for attending the show, the cost of travel to the show, hotel accommodations and the cost of someone to run the booth, you may be ready to scratch this marketing tool off of your list.
But trade show attendance is crucial to building brand recognition and getting ideas from colleagues and competitors. One area where you can curb your trade show attendance is in the price of the trade show display. But be careful - your exhibit will say a lot about you and your company; you want to save money, but not at the expense of quality. Most companies offer low-cost trade show display options, such as table top displays. They are easily transported and assembled, and typically range between four and eight feet in size. While the more elaborate custom trade show displays can cost several thousands of dollars, you can purchase the table top versions for only a few hundred dollars.
Above and Beyond Customer Service:
Before you roll your eyes, because we've all heard the speech about providing outstanding customer service, keep in mind that these days excellent customer service is an experience that is few and far between. Everyone talks about it, but nobody's doing it. So, why don't you be one of the few who actually walk the talk? Ask for customer feedback - and actually act on the feedback you're given. Do something extra for the customers who do a lot of business with you. Recognize and thank your customers during the holiday season. Look for other opportunities to extend beyond the customer's expectations, because going the extra mile is an investment in your company's future success.
Economical marketing can be easily achieved - it just requires some innovation and concentrated effort. Start with these ideas and others are sure to come forth - and then you can expand your budget to include more traditional marketing if you want.

Generate Ad Revenue with Your Website

2009-09-13T04:11:00.000-07:00

If you have a website that provides free information or a free service, you may be sitting on a potential goldmine. It is possible to generate ad revenue with any website, even if it is just a blog or a message board. For our purposes here, we will review each of the different income streams available to you as a webmaster so that you can formulate a plan to turn your free service into a money making business.
The simplest way to get some ads running on your website is by displaying banners or text links for affiliate programs, strategically placed on your webpage where people will see the advertisements and subsequently click on them.
An affiliate program is a program whereby you, the affiliate, display a banner or text link advertising the products or services of another business. If someone clicks on that ad and then purchases something from that other company, you will be paid a commission on that sale.
There are thousands of affiliate programs available to you. Major corporations such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble have affiliate opportunities, as do smaller online businesses such as insurance quoting websites and internet dating services.
I recommend that you perform a search on Google for affiliate programs and sign up for those that either somehow relate to the topics being discussed on your website or are enticing enough that people will click on the banner ad. You should rotate different banners on to your website each day of the week, and then stick with those that work best. Try several different affiliate programs and see what works.
Another way you can make money with your site is by displaying pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements on your webpage. You need to sign up with companies that deliver PPC ads. Nextag has a pay-per-click program, as do several ad delivery services such as Adrevolver. Google Adsense is probably the most popular pay-per-click advertisement delivery service on the internet, and you should sign up with them as well.
It is also possible to make some significant ad revenue from your site by actually charging companies a fee to advertise on your website. This is easier said than done; your website has to establish itself as receiving a lot of high quality traffic.
If you have a website that gets thousands of hits per day, you need to have statistics that prove it so that you can justify someone paying a fee to advertise on your website. The more popular your site is, the more you can charge. Only if your website receives a ton of traffic will you be able to charge other websites a fee to display their banner on your site.
The best way to make money online is with a dealer program, which is a little different from an affiliate program. With a dealer program, you actually add a webpage to your own site that is tailored to fit the look and feel of your own website, rather than simply displaying an affiliate banner.
With a dealer program, the products or services of the other company are actually sold directly through your own website, so that you are in total control of the sale. Meanwhile, the parent company does all the order processing and shipping, etc. You can just sit back and collect your money.
I hope this information has been helpful. Sometimes, it is easier to make money with a website that provides nothing but free information than it is with an actual business. However, you will need to run ads for products or services that somehow relate to the subject matter of your site.
If your site provides information about obtaining a mortgage, then your site should have affiliate banners or links to mortgage quoting services. There needs to be a relationship between between what kind of information your site provides and what you are advertising. Doing this will enable you to turn your free website into a real business.

Does Pay-Per-Click Work?

2009-09-13T04:10:00.001-07:00

Promoting your internet business can be a tough task. The costs of traditional advertising are prohibitive. It can cost as much as $50,000 to run a print advertisement in a prominent publication. It can cost much more than that to produce and run a TV commercial, especially if the commercial airs during peak viewing hours. Online marketing is a problem too, because it is extremely difficult and takes a long time to climb to the top of the search engine rankings.
So, what should you do? Well, you will need to do rely on the same thing all internet businesses do when they first start out. Of course, we are talking about pay-per-click (PPC). By advertising with pay-per-click, you pay a certain price per click to be listed near the top of the first page of the search engines for your chosen keyword or phrase. Every time someone clicks on your PPC ad, you pay for that click.
If you have never used PPC before or do not know what it is, perform a search on any search engine and you will notice that at the top or to the side of the search results you will see a section called "sponsored links." These are websites that are paying a certain amount per click to be listed there.
PPC can be very expensive depending upon what keyword you want to receive clicks for, but there are ways to budget your money wisely so you can maximize the effectiveness of your PPC marketing campaign without having a ton of money to spend. Some of the companies at the top of the sponsored links section might be bidding up to $20 per click for certain keywords. Insurance companies such as Geico and Progressive often bid up to $25 per click for the keyword "auto insurance."
However, for most keywords, you can bid relatively low and still get a lot of clicks. Each PPC service has a traffic calculator that tells you how many clicks you will receive given a certain bid price and daily budget. So, if you want to spend $0.50 per click, you can put that bid into their traffic calculator and it will tell you how many clicks you can expect to receive at $0.50 per click and how much that will cost per day. The traffic calculator will also tell you what your position will be (the higher your bid price, the higher your position will be within the sponsored links section for that keyword).
There are several PPC programs that you can use to receive traffic. There is Google Adwords (spans several engines, including Jeeves, AOL, and Google), Overture (Yahoo and other engines), Miva, and many others. They are all reliable, and they will all deliver traffic to your website.
The most important part of PPC advertising is knowing what keywords or phrases to bid on. You have to remember that most people using a search engine are only looking for information, and are not seeking to buy a product or service. So, if you are using PPC to get traffic to your website in order to sell something, make sure you bid on a keyword that will bring you customers who are looking to make a purchase and are not there just to glean information.
For example, if you are selling Vitamin A on your website, and you bid on the keyword "Vitamin A," you are going to receive a lot of traffic from people who visit your website merely to read what is there, because they are probably just looking for information about Vitamin A and do not want to buy it. Instead, you should bid on the phrase "Buy Vitamin A." In this manner, you will only receive qualified traffic from people that are looking to buy vitamin A, which will increase your sales and allow you to get more bang for your marketing buck.
PPC advertising is the most effective form of advertising on the internet, so you should use it when launching your new internet business. Just make sure that you bid within your budget and use specific keywords or phrases so that you will receive qualified traffic, and you will do fine.

SEO Basics - Good Link, Bad Link

2009-09-13T04:09:00.002-07:00

Your link profile is potentially the most powerful aspect of your SEO efforts, especially in the eyes of Google. Quality counts over quantity, but it is important to get a good list of well-balanced links pointing to your site. Diversification really is the key. Try not to concentrate all of your efforts on gaining links from one source, and similarly try not to gain them using a single method. A number of tactics should be avoided wherever possible because they either offer you no benefit whatsoever or your page may be penalized.
This article looks at the acquisition of links purely from an SEO standpoint and, aside from the really bad linking methods, if a link will provide good-quality, direct traffic then it is definitely still a good link and well worth considering. You will have to use your judgment on this, to a certain extent.
Good Links
Directory Links: Directories are viewed as being a very positive source of links by a number of search engines. Obviously, some directory listings carry much more weight than others and some directories are hardly worth the effort. Be careful to drip feed your site with directory links at first because it is possible that too many too quickly will see your site penalized until your link profile becomes more natural.
Start with the major Internet directories and consider getting links from free general topic directories as well as niche directories and also look at paying for inclusion in one or two of the seriously large directories like the Yahoo directory and business.com. As your link profile expands you can add more directories to gain extra weight.
Reciprocal Links: You may have read that reciprocal linking is dead. While it is true that Google and possibly other search engines now place much less weight on a profile that is crammed with nothing but reciprocal links they still have a place. Keep the number of reciprocal links you use down to a minimum and certainly don't base your entire link building efforts on this one tactic alone.
Again, balance is a big part of reciprocal linking but also of importance is relevance. Regardless of whether you offer a separate links or resources page, or you choose to include the links throughout your site you are still essentially endorsing the site. You will also gain much more credence from a link that is placed on a page containing information relevant to your own page.
Unique One-Way Inbound Links: These should pretty much be the staple diet of your link portfolio. An inbound link that is one way does not necessitate the inclusion of a link back to that page on your site. This can help to give your own pages the benefit instead of handing it out to your link partners. The more relevant and the more important that search engines deem the linking site to be the more weight they give that particular link.
Site Wide Links: Again, these should be used sparingly. Gaining a site wide link means that a link to your site or your pages is placed on a number of pages in a site. Search engines are known to give less weight to links that are procured on this basis but it does help to give your portfolio a more rounded appearance.
Press Release Links: Writing and submitting a digital press release can provide good links. Many press releases are used by other sites and industries related to your site and they may also be included on some major news websites. There are free press release distribution services available, but it is common to need t pay to make the link clickable and to use anchor text.
Article Links: Writing and submitting articles to article directories can provide a large number of links. Not only can you submit one article to numerous directories but each directory has the potential of generating a number of interested websites. These websites also publish your article (which includes an author bio section with your link). This can be a good way to get authoritative sites to link to you.
Community Links: Join forums and include your link in your signature. Post useful comments on other people's blogs and include your link as your username. You should, under no circumstances, spam blogs or forums and only include links on the sites that allow it.
Presell Advertising Pages: Some websites will allow you to include an entire page on their site. In most cases you will either need to pay to have the page written or you, or write the page yourself. Generally the website will also include other forms of advertising but as long as you choose sites carefully this can generate some excellent links.
Bad Links
FFA Sites: An FFA, or Free-For-All page, is one that allows anybody to post any link they like on the page. Typically they are not only useless to your cause, because the search engines ignore them, but they will not generate any natural traffic but may attract the spammers to your doors.
Link Farms: A link farm is a page that contains an excessively large number of links. Some say a page with 100 links directed out of that page is a link farm, but in all honesty it is unlikely that a page will yield much benefit for SEO or non-SEO with more than fifty or so links.
Off Topic: Off topic links are something of a bone of contention. They may offer very slight weight with some search engines because it is quite possible that natural links from certain websites would point to any number of pages on any topic. This appears in the bad link section because they offer very little positive benefit and your efforts would be best placed gaining on-topic links.
Unindexable: Purely from an SEO standpoint, links that cannot be indexed by search engines are completely useless. A search engine spider must be able to follow the link to find your page and provide you with any benefit for that link. Avoid any page that offers to display your link in a frame, or includes the noindex or nofollow robots.txt tags. However, bear in mind that a site that is currently not being indexed by search engines may be a new site. It could also grow up to be the next Google.com and take your link with it.
Conclusion: Your link profile should appear as natural as possible so vary the good links as much as possible and avoid the bad links. Collect links from as many sources using as many tactics as possible and use keyword variants in your anchor text. By following these guidelines you should be able to improve the appearance of your link profile and, therefore, improve your search engine rankings.

Improve your Search Engine Ranking

2009-09-13T04:09:00.000-07:00

If you are an internet marketing novice, you are probably facing the seemingly impossible and somewhat daunting task of trying to get your site listed on the first page of the search engines. You probably have no idea how to improve your ranking. For the purposes of this discussion, we will outline the procedures you should follow to climb steadily to the top of the search engines, while still making sure that you attract qualified traffic that will actually be receptive to the products or services that your website offers.
The first thing you need to understand is that your search engine ranking will not improve overnight. There are quite a few charlatans in cyberspace who work as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultants. They will charge you an arm and a leg for their services, sometimes as much as $2,000 per month or more. They often make dubious claims that they can get you ranked on the first page of the search engines within a few months, and if not, they will kindly refund your money.
However, there is a catch. Once you pay the initial deposit and the SEO company begins working on your website, they will often optimize your website in such a manner so that you will be able to quickly rise to the top of the rankings for a keyword that is either not significant or will not attract any real traffic to your website.
For example, if your website provides auto insurance quotes, any SEO consultant knows that it will be impossible to expediently get your website ranked on the first page of Google for a highly competitive phrase such as AUTO INSURANCE QUOTES. So, instead, they will pick a variation of that phrase, such as AUTO INSURANCE QUOTES FAST, for which there is no competition, and you will quickly rise to the top. The only problem is no one will ever actually use that precise phrase when searching for auto insurance quotes, so even though the SEO company delivered on its promise to improve your ranking, you will still not get any visitors to your website because you will be ranked high for a keyword that no one will ever use when searching for auto insurance quotes.
So, you need to use a different approach if you want to not only improve your ranking, but also attract qualified traffic to your website. The first thing you need to do is optimize your website for the keywords or phrases that people actually use when searching for products or services related to what you offer. For example, if you sell vitamins, you would want to improve your ranking for the phrases BUY VITAMINS or BUY VITAMINS ONLINE. To optimize your website for your chosen keywords, you should either hire a web designer that has experience optimizing websites, or you should purchase search engine optimization software that will show you how to tweak your website and how to change your HTML code so that your site is properly optimized. You should also try to have a decent amount of free content on your website that relates to the keywords or phrases for which you want to be ranked higher.
The next step is to submit your site to the search engines, if you have not already done so. It seems silly to mention this considering that we are talking about search engines anyway, but some people actually forget to submit their website to the engines, or only submit their site to a couple of search engines and then quit. There are hundreds of legitimate search engines and directories in cyberspace, and you should submit to all them. I recommend that you look for search engine submission companies on Google and pick one that charges a small monthly fee to submit your site to the search engines once per month.
The last step, and probably the most important component of getting ranked higher on the search engines, is increasing your link popularity. The more websites that are linking to your site, the higher your ranking will be. To increase your link popularity, you will need to submit your website to link exchange directories so that you can swap links with other websites (they will link to you if you agree to link to them). Also, you can write articles and submit them to article submission directories. At the bottom of each article you write, you are allowed to include a link to your website. As the articles you write are put into circulation and are published on other websites, your link popularity will increase.
If you employ each of the strategies outlined in this article, you should be able to improve your search engine ranking while at the same time garnering the kind of traffic that you want. No website can improve its ranking overnight, but if you are persistent, your efforts will be rewarded in the long run.

How to Select Keywords - An In-Depth Guide

2009-09-13T04:08:00.001-07:00

When beginning a Search Engine Optimization campaign, there are a few basic steps that every SEO knows to take before they begin. The first is always to build a keyword list of which there are varying methods of doing so. The right methods will aid you in creating and supporting a site-wide SEO strategy. The wrong methods will run you in circles, wondering what went wrong.
It is the intent of this article to teach an effective method of keyword selection that will enable you to land more keywords on the first page with less work.
Getting Started: Know the Site
To create a great keyword list, you will need to know your website backwards and forwards. You should know what the site features, and just as importantly, you should know what it doesn't feature.
The first step is to brainstorm a list of somewhat generic keywords. For example, if you are a shoe store in Poughkeepsie, the temptation will arise to try and rank number 1 for the term "shoes." Well, that's a start, but ranking for the word "shoes" is probably aiming a little too high for a mom and pop shop in Upstate New York, which is why it's very important that you know the site well enough to come up with a good list of pseudo-generic "modifiers" for your keyword:
* Location (Poughkeepsie shoes, shoes upstate New York, shoes 12601)
* Price (cheap shoes, affordable shoes, quality shoes, comfortable shoes etc)
* Types (running shoes, walking shoes, jogging shoes etc)
* Industry specific (anti-pronation shoes)
Lengthening the List
At this point you should have a good list of pseudo-generic keywords. The next step is lengthening that list using your favorite Keyword tool (I will be using Overture in this example).
Each time you plug a keyword into your tool of choice, it will return the number of searches conducted for that term over a given period of time. It will also suggest keywords from the tool's database that are similar to the one you entered.
The basic idea now is to go through the list returned by the keyword tool and copy any and all similar terms as well as their corresponding search values, which relate directly to the site you're optimizing. Then, paste them to a spreadsheet program so that they can be further edited later.
Once you have copied and pasted, just go through the list row by row. Delete keywords that don't have to do with the website you're optimizing (which is why it's important to know what the site doesn't feature) and repeat with the next pseudo-generic keyword on your list. The idea is to identify as many keywords as possible.
Narrowing the List
So you have a long keyword list; it's time to narrow it down. I narrow my lists by deciding if the potential gain for a keyword is relative to the competition. In order to make that decision, I need to know three variables:
1. The number of searches on a particular keyword (already got those from Overture)
2. The Amount of Competition (I'll show you how to find your competition in this section.)
3. Will the keyword lead to conversions (this is up to you)
Below is a method for thoroughly determining competition for various keywords:
1. Do a search for one of your keywords
2. On the first SERP find the last listing with the keyword in the title tag that is either a homepage of any kind or is a sub-page which is not associated with a domain whose Pagerank is greater than 6. (This is the page you will need to beat, if one does not exist, ranking will generally be easier)
3. Find out how many unique links with the keyword in the anchor text whose linking page has a Pagerank of 1 or higher for the competitor (This is how many quality backlinks you'll need to acquire)
The aforementioned is a meticulous method for determining the competition for all of your keywords, and unless you're planning on building a tool that will automate this process, I would suggest taking a more general approach by using advanced search strings in the search engine of your choice.
The technique that I am about to demonstrate uses the following string:
intitle:"Keyword Phrase" inanchor:"Keyword Phrase"
This string will return the total number of pages with, largely, the two greatest factors contributing to ranking for a keyword:
* Having the keyword in the page title
* Having the keyword in anchor text pointing to the page
It's a down and dirty method for assessing competition. This is how it's done:
1. Go to http://www.startlaunch.com/research/
2. Copy your list of keywords into the box, click "submit".
3. Click on each link.
4. Find and copy the number of pages that the search engine returns for this query from the top right of the SERPs to a new column next to the corresponding keyword in your keyword list spreadsheet (this is your competition).
5. In another new column, divide the number of competitors by the number of monthly searches for each keyword.
6. Sort the table from low to high (ascending) using that column.
What you have done is created a ratio of competitors to searches. When determining competition, you generally want the keyword to be searched on more times than there are competitors for that word. So the closer the ratio is to 0, the better the keyword.
These techniques will point out which terms have the most competition, but competition alone should not dictate which words make the final list.
Keyword Layout
Remember when selecting keywords: words on a higher competitive level should be placed on pages that will receive deep links in groups of 2 or 3 where all of the keywords are very similar like:
*Running shoes, Shoes for running and buy running shoes online
*Web design in Atlanta, Atlanta Georgia web design, Atlanta web site design
This way, you won't have to remove highly competitive, but potentially lucrative terms from your list, provided that you make a concerted effort to perform link-building for the pages on which those terms reside.
For smaller terms, in my opinion, the more the merrier. They can be given their own pages or be mentioned on other highly trusted pages of your site.
That's it. You should have all the information you need to select a strategically viable keyword list. Remember, keyword research is the cornerstone of a successful SEO campaign. Knowing the competition for your keywords will aid you in site layout, as well as focusing effort on SEO only where it is necessary. Ultimately, it will make your optimization process more efficient, allowing your sites to rank for more keywords with less work, which is a goal that all SEOs strive to attain.

Looking Beyond SEO

2009-09-13T04:07:00.001-07:00

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is one of the most highly talked about topics between Webmasters and marketers. It is probably also the single topic that more webmasters obsess over than any other (in terms of their website anyway!). However, while SEO can be an excellent resource for targeted traffic, all website owners should concentrate their efforts on more than trying to squeeze one more percent out of keyword density, or beg one more PR5 link from an authoritative site. As well as sapping energy, causing breakdowns in family relationships, and being responsible for the onset of male pattern baldness it also causes us to lose sight of our ultimate goal.
You Mean There's More To Online Life Than SEO?
The ultimate goal for the vast majority of websites is to either make money or promote a service that makes money. How the site goes about it is entirely up to the Webmaster. Whether you choose to make money through affiliate links, PPC advertising, product sales, dropshipping, or any other method the single most important aspect of your website is your visitor. Visitors are those people that you attempt to attract to your site and they are the ones that will essentially make you some cash.
Don't Forget The Real People
The biggest problem with concentrating on SEO is that while the search engine spiders might be difficult to please they are a walk in the park, a piece of cake, and an absolute breeze when compared to real-life, living, breathing, walking, talking visitors. Search engines rely on mathematical algorithms to determine the quality of your site whereas the visitor relies solely on personal opinion. The next time you're attempting to inject 2 or 3 more instances of key phrases like "California Mesothelioma lawyer attorney" into your content try to remember that some poor soul might actually have to try and make sense of what you're writing.
Some Search Engines Are Complying
Fortunately for you and I, of course, some of the mathematical search engines are also coming round to this way of thinking. Google, in particular, want to offer users natural search results. They want to promote natural web pages, with natural content, using natural keywords, gaining natural links. This means that Webmasters are able to start obsessing over a number of other factors now instead:

More pointers for a good search engine listing

2009-09-13T04:06:00.000-07:00

The Title Meta tag:
To start with, let's take a look at your website's Title Meta tag (you can find yours by opening your site, clicking View, and then Source - the Meta tags are placed between the HEAD delineations). The Title is one of the most important tags insofar as search engine listings are concerned. This is the one that appears as the first line of your listing. As such, it should contain the keywords and key phrases that people would key into a search engine in order to find your products and services.
Given this, if you are, say, in the plumbing business, there really is little point in coining a title that says: "Welcome to Sid Smith's website". Why? Because only you’re very dear friends and relatives will key in Sid Smith + Plumber in order to find you; and only then because you have asked them to do so. Unless you have already established yourself as the Sid Smith who is a household name throughout the world for great plumbing expertise, then your site is going to stay where it belongs - in search engine limbo.
Yes, your site may very well appear on Page 1 of Google for the search term Sid Smith + Plumber, and you may be highly delighted, but who the hell is going to key that in to a search when they are looking for a plumber in a hurry? The answer is: nobody. And you will be a plumber who is receiving no Internet business whatsoever.
Look at it this way, your name may be a dear and treasured possession to you, as mine is to me, but if nobody knows your name, they won't come looking. So here's the essence of it. Your Title Meta tag should say in no uncertain terms what you do and how well you do it. It should be unequivocal. Pertinent. Exact. Much better, I feel, to coin a Title that expresses what you do. Like, for instance: Emergency Plumber: The best drain-clearing service in town or your rubbish back!
All of the above applies equally to website operators who use the name of their company in the Title tag and wonder why they are getting no hits. Nobody will search specifically for your company name unless they already know it. And if they already know it, via other publicity you may be running, they will probably have the full URL anyway. So no search is necessary. I never fail to be amazed by the number of people who put their own names and their company names into a Title tag and expect a result. It ain't gonna happen.
Frames, Animated Gifs and Flash:
Let's now talk about a few more bugbears of mine. Websites are still being built with Frames when everybody in the business knows that search engines have difficulty reading Frames. Their algorithms are not capable of properly indexing Frame sites. So a frame-built website instantly throws up an obstacle to the robots that come crawl your site. This also applies to sites that have an abundance of animated gifs. Robots can't read gifs or pics in any form. So they give them a wide berth.
Worse, website designers are still building sites with Flash. Flash is great. Flash is startling. It looks terrific as all those images come cascading in a blizzard of light, shade and color. The only problem is - guess what? - The robots can't figure it out. They are puzzled, bemused, and unable to grasp what is going on. The result is that they go somewhere else, probably to a site where the designer has laid everything out on a simple plate for them.
Until the search engine programmers figure out a way to write algorithms that understand Flash presentations, the simple, no-nonsense, text-based sites will continue to win hands down. And by that I mean they will continue to win good listings. Which is the object of the exercise?
To be fair, however, the great majority of web designers have no abiding interest in search engine optimization. They figure that their job is to build a site that is both attractive and interesting. It is therefore up to the site owner to lay down a few rules when commissioning a build - no Frames, no animated gifs and, above all no Flash.
Is Google really the greatest?
And finally, folks, a word about the search engine themselves.
Everybody wants to get a good listing on Google. To them, Google is the be all and end all and that there really is nowhere else to be. What they tend to overlook is that the so-called lesser engines are equally good at pulling business if they are fed properly.
I have a client who receives 80% of his Internet business (which is substantial) via Yahoo, on which he is No 1 for all four of his search terms. Google does very little for him. Why should that be? It's because, when you get down to it, Yahoo is a consumer-oriented engine and Google is predominantly a commercial or business-to-business engine. And his business is geared to the consumer market.
I know that many seo elitists will take issue with me about the efficacy of this statement. So be it. But I will get my retaliation in first by saying that (a) their argument will have to be damn good to convince me and (b), I don't really care what they say.
It's also worth bearing in mind that MSN, as the third of the big three engines, is a pretty formidable presence. I can assure you; too, that business is good if you are well positioned on MSN. And since this outfit is owned by Microsoft, I can't see Mr Gates playing third-fiddle for very much longer. Search engine-wise, we live in interesting times.
Anyway, if this has been useful, I'd be delighted to hear from you. But if it has seemed to teach you to suck eggs, maybe you'll tell me that also.

Domain Names

2009-09-13T04:05:00.000-07:00

domain name - location of an entity on the Internet.

long domain name - domain names longer than the original 26 characters, up to a theoretical limit of 67 characters (including the extension, such as .com).

whois - a utility that returns ownership information about second-level domains.

The three most popular types of Top Level Domains (TLDs).

.COM: Short for .commercial. Domain names with the .com extension are by far the most popular, and can be purchased by any individual or business. .

.NET: Short for .network, this domain extension was originally designed to be used by technical Web sites. However, domains using this extension can be registered by anyone.

.ORG: Short for .organization. Originally designated for non-profit firms and any other organizations that did not fit under the .com or .net extension, any individual or business may now register a .org domain name.

Use of 301 Redirection:

If you have restructured your site use 301 redirection in your .htaccess file.

Beginners Guide - Questions About SEO

2009-09-13T03:50:00.000-07:00

-Why does my company/organization/website need SEO?

A-The majority of web traffic is driven by the major commercial search engines - Yahoo!, MSN, Google & AskJeeves (although AOL gets nearly 10% of searches, their engine is powered by Google's results). If your site cannot be found by search engines or your content cannot be put into their databases, you miss out on the incredible opportunities available to websites provided via search - people who want what you have visiting your site. Whether your site provides content, services, products or information, search engines are a primary method of navigation for almost all Internet users.
Search queries, the words that users type into the search box which contain terms and phrases best suited to your site carry extraordinary value. Experience has shown that search engine traffic can make (or break) an organization's success. Targeted visitors to a website can provide publicity, revenue and exposure like no other. Investing in SEO, whether through time or finances, can have an exceptional rate of return.

Q-Why can't the search engines figure out my site without SEO help?

A-Search engines are always working towards improving their technology to crawl the web more deeply and return increasingly relevant results to users. However, there is and will always be a limit to how search engines can operate. Whereas the right moves can net you thousands of visitors and attention, the wrong moves can hide or bury your site deep in the search results where visibility is minimal. In addition to making content available to search engines, SEO can also help boost rankings, so that content that has been found will be placed where searchers will more readily see it. The online environment is becoming increasingly competitive and those companies who perform SEO will have a decided advantage in visitors and customers.

Q-How Search Engines Operate

A-Search engines have a short list of critical operations that allows them to provide relevant web results when searchers use their system to find information.

Crawling the Web
Search engines run automated programs, called "bots" or "spiders" that use the hyperlink structure of the web to "crawl" the pages and documents that make up the World Wide Web. Estimates are that of the approximately 20 billion existing pages, search engines have crawled between 8 and 10 billion.
Indexing Documents
Once a page has been crawled, it's contents can be "indexed" - stored in a giant database of documents that makes up a search engine's "index". This index needs to be tightly managed, so that requests which must search and sort billions of documents can be completed in fractions of a second.
Processing Queries
When a request for information comes into the search engine (hundreds of millions do each day), the engine retrieves from its index all the document that match the query. A match is determined if the terms or phrase is found on the page in the manner specified by the user. For example, a search for car and driver magazine at Google returns 8.25 million results, but a search for the same phrase in quotes ("car and driver magazine") returns only 166 thousand results. In the first system, commonly called "Findall" mode, Google returned all documents which had the terms "car" "driver" and "magazine" (they ignore the term "and" because it's not useful to narrowing the results), while in the second search, only those pages with the exact phrase "car and driver magazine" were returned. Other advanced operators (Google has a list of 11) can change which results a search engine will consider a match for a given query.
Ranking Results
Once the search engine has determined which results are a match for the query, the engine's algorithm (a mathematical equation commonly used for sorting) runs calculations on each of the results to determine which is most relevant to the given query. They sort these on the results pages in order from most relevant to least so that users can make a choice about which to select.

Although a search engine's operations are not particularly lengthy, systems like Google, Yahoo!, AskJeeves and MSN are among the most complex, processing-intensive computers in the world, managing millions of calculations each second and funneling demands for information to an enormous group of users

Measuring Relevance and Popularity
Modern commercial search engines rely on the science of information retrieval (IR). That science has existed since the middle of the 20th century, when retrieval systems powered computers in libraries, research facilities and government labs. Early in the development of search systems, IR scientists realized that two critical components made up the majority of search functionality:
Relevance - the degree to which the content of the documents returned in a search matched the user's query intention and terms. The relevance of a document increases if the terms or phrase queried by the user occurs multiple times and shows up in the title of the work or in important headlines or subheaders.
Popularity - the relative importance, measured via citation (the act of one work referencing another, as often occurs in academic and business documents) of a given document that matches the user's query. The popularity of a given document increases with every other document that references it.
These two items were translated to web search 40 years later and manifest themselves in the form of document analysis and link analysis.
In document analysis, search engines look at whether the search terms are found in important areas of the document - the title, the meta data, the heading tags and the body of text content. They also attempt to automatically measure the quality of the document (through complex systems beyond the scope of this guide).
In link analysis, search engines measure not only who is linking to a site or page, but what they are saying about that page/site. They also have a good grasp on who is affiliated with whom (through historical link data, the site's registration records and other sources), who is worthy of being trusted (links from .edu and .gov pages are generally more valuable for this reason) and contextual data about the site the page is hosted on (who links to that site, what they say about the site, etc.).
Link and document analysis combine and overlap hundreds of factors that can be individually measured and filtered through the search engine algorithms (the set of instructions that tell the engines what importance to assign to each factor). The algorithm then determines scoring for the documents and (ideally) lists results in decreasing order of importance (rankings).

Keywords and Queries

Search engines rely on the terms queried by users to determine which results to put through their algorithms, order and return to the user. But, rather than simply recognizing and retrieving exact matches for query terms, search engines use their knowledge of semantics (the science of language) to construct intelligent matching for queries. An example might be a search for loan providers that also returned results that did not contain that specific phrase, but instead had the term lenders.
The engines collect data based on the frequency of use of terms and the co-occurrence of words and phrases throughout the web. If certain terms or phrases are often found together on pages or sites, search engines can construct intelligent theories about their relationships. Mining semantic data through the incredible corpus that is the Internet has given search engines some of the most accurate data about word ontologies and the connections between words ever assembled artificially. This immense knowledge of language and its usage gives them the ability to determine which pages in a site are topically related, what the topic of a page or site is, how the link structure of the web divides into topical communties and much, much more.
Search engines' growing artificial intelligence on the subject of language means that queries will increasingly return more intelligent, evolved results. This heavy investment in the field of natural language processing (NLP) will help to achieve greater understanding of the meaning and intent behind their users' queries. Over the long term, users can expect the results of this work to produce increased relevancy in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and more accurate guesses from the engines as to the intent of a user's queries.

Q-How to Conduct Keyword Research

A-

Keyword research is critical to the process of SEO. Without this component, your efforts to rank well in the major search engines may be mis-directed to the wrong terms and phrases, resulting in rankings that no one will ever see. The process of keyword research involved several phases:

Brainstorming - Thinking of what your customers/potential visitors would be likely to type in to search engines in an attempt to find the information/services your site offers (including alternate spellings, wordings, synonyms, etc).
Surveying Customers - Surveying past or potential customers is a great way to expand your keyword list to include as many terms and phrases as possible. It can also give you a good idea of what's likely to be the biggest traffic drivers and produce the highest conversion rates.
Applying Data from KW Research Tools - Several tools online (including Wordtracker & Overture - both described below) offer information about the number of times users perform specific searches. Using these tools can offer concrete data about trends in kw selection.
Term Selection - The next step is to create a matrix or chart that analyzes the terms you believe are valuable and compares traffic, relevancy and the likelihood of conversions for each. This will allow you to make the best informed decisions about which terms to target. SEOmoz's KW Difficulty Tool can also aid in choosing terms that will be achievable for the site.
Performance Testing and Analytics - After keyword selection and implementation of targeting, analytics programs (like Indextools and ClickTracks) that measure web traffic, activity and conversions can be used to further refine keyword selection.

Wordtracker & Overture

Overture Keyword Selection Tool

Wordtracker Simple Search Utility

Currently, the two most popular sources of keyword data are Wordtracker, whose statistics come primarily from use of the meta-search engine Dogpile (which has ~1% of the share of searches performed online) and Overture (recently re-branded as Yahoo! Search Marketing), which offers data collected from searches performed on Yahoo!'s engine (with a 22-28% share). While neither's data is flawless or entirely accurate, both provide good methods for measuring comparative numbers. For example, while Overture and Wordtracker may disagree on numbers and say that "red bicycles" gets 240 vs. 380 searches per day (across all engines), both will generally indicate that this is a more popular term than "scarlet bicycles", "maroon bicycles" or even "blue bicycles."
In Wordtracker, which provides more detail but has a considerably smaller share of data, terms and phrases are separated by capitalization, plurality and word ordering. In the Overture tool, multiple search phrases are combined. For example, Wordtracker would independently show numbers for "car loans", "Car Loans", "car loan" and "cars Loan", whereas Overture would give a single number that encompasses all of these. The granularity of data can be more useful for analyzing searches that may result in unique results pages (plurals often do and different word orders almost always do), but capitalization is of less consequence as the search engines don't deliver different results based on capitalization.
Remember that Wordtracker and Overture are both useful tools for relative keyword data, but can be highly inaccurate when compared to the actual number of searches performed. In other words, use the tools to select which terms to target, but don't rely on them for predicting the amount of traffic you can achieve. If your goal is estimating traffic numbers, use programs like Google's Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing to test the number of impressions a particular term/phrase gets.

Q-Targeting the Right Terms
A- Targeting the best possible terms is of critical importance. This encompasses more than merely measuring traffic levels and choosing the highest trafficked terms. An intelligent process for keyword selection will measure each of the following:

Conversion Rate - the percent of users searching with the term/phrase that convert (click an ad, buy a product, complete a transaction, etc.)

Predicted Traffic - An estimate of how many users will be searching for the given term/phrase each month

Value per Customer - An average amount of revenue earned per customer using the term or phrase to search - comparing big-ticket search terms vs. smaller ones.

Keyword Competition - A rough measurement of the competitive environment and the level of difficulty for the given term/phrase. This is typically measured by metrics that include the number of competitors, the strength of those competitors' links and the financial motivation to be in the sector. SEOmoz's Keyword Difficulty Tool can assist in this process.

Once you've analyzed each of these elements, you can make effective decisions about the terms and phrases to target. When starting a new site, it's highly recommended to target only one or possibly two unique phrases on a single page. Although it is possible to optimize for more phrases and terms, it's generally best to keep separate terms on separate pages, as you can provide individualized information for each in this manner. As websites grow and mature, gaining links and legitimacy with the engines, targeting multiple terms per page becomes more feasible.

Q-Critical Components of Optimizing a Site

A- Each of the following components are critical pieces to a site's ability to be crawled, indexed and ranked by search engine spiders. When properly used in the construction of a website, these features give a site/page the best chance of ranking well for targeted keywords.
Accessibility
An accessible site is one that ensures delivery of its content successfully as often as possible. The functionality of pages, validity of HTML elements, uptime of the site's server and working status of site coding and components all figure into site accessibility. If these features are ignored or faulty, both search engines and users will select other sites to visit.
The biggest problems in accessibility that most sites encounter fit into the following categories. Addressing these issues satisfactorily will avoid problems getting search engines and visitors to and through your site.

Broken Links - If an HTML link is broken, the contents of the linked-to page may never be found. In addition, some surmise that search engines negatively degrade rankings on sites & pages with many broken links.

Valid HTML & CSS - Although arguments exist about the necessity for full validation of HTML and CSS in accordance with W3C guidelines, it is generally agreed that code must meet minimum requirements of functionality and successful display in order to be spidered and cached properly by the search engines.

Functionality of Forms and Applications - If form submissions, select boxes, javascript or other input-required elements block content from being reached via direct hyperlinks, search engines may never find them. Keep data that you want accessible to search engines on pages that can be directly accessed via a link. In a similar vein, the successful functionality and implementation of any of these pieces is critical to a site's accessibility for visitors. A non-functioning page, form or code element is unlikely to receive much attention from visitors.

File Size - With the exception of a select few documents that search engine consider to be of exceptional importance, web pages greater than 150K in size are typically not fully cached. This is done to reduce index size, bandwidth and load on the servers, and is important to anyone building pages with exceptionally large amounts of content. If it's important that every word and phrase be spidered and indexed, keeping file size under 150K is highly recommended. As with any online endeavor, smaller file size also means faster download speed for users - a worthy metric in its own right.

Downtime & Server Speed - The performance of your site's server may have an adverse impact on search rankings and visitors if downtime and slow transfer speeds are common. Invest in high quality hosting to prevent this issue.

Meta Tag Recommendations:

Meta tags once held the distinction of being the primary realm of SEO specialists. Today, the use of meta tags, particularly the meta keywords tag, has diminished to an extent that search engines no longer use them in their ranking of pages. However, the meta description tag can still be of some import, as several search engines use this tag to display the snippet of text below the clickable title link in the results pages.
In the image to the left, an illustration of a Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page) shows the use of the meta description and title tags. It is on this page that searchers generally make their decision as to which result to click, and thus, while the meta description tag may have little to no impact on where a page ranks, it can significantly impact the # of visitors the page receives from search engine traffic. Note that meta tags are NOT always used on the SERPs, but can be seen (at the discretion of the search engine) if the description is accurate, well-written and relevant to the searcher's query.

Search Friendly Text
Making the visible text on a page "search-friendly" isn't complicated, but it is an issue that many sites struggle with. Text styles that cannot be indexed by search engines include:

Text embedded in a Java Application or Macromedia Flash file
Text in an image file - jpg, gif, png, etc
Text accessible only via a form submit or other on-page action

If the search engines can't see your page's text, they cannot spider and index that content for visitors to find. Thus, making search-friendly text in HTML format is critical to ranking well and getting properly indexed. If you are forced to use a format that hides text from search engines, try to use the right keywords and phrases in headlines, title tags, URLs and image/file names on the page. Don't go overboard with this tactic, and never try to hide text (by making it the same color as the background or using CSS tricks). Even if the search engines can't detect this automatically, a competitor can easily report your site for spamming and have you de-listed entirely.
Along with making text visible, it's important to remember that search engines measure the terms and phrases in a document to extract a great deal of information about the page. Writing well for search engines is both an art and a science (as SEOs are not privy to the exact, technical methodology of how search engines score text for rankings), and one that can be harnessed to achieve better rankings.

Information Architecture
The document and link structure of a website can provide benefits to search rankings when performed properly. The keys to effective architecture are to follow the rules that govern human usability of a site:

Make Use of a Sitemap - It's wise to have the sitemap page linked to from every other page in the site, or at the least from important high-level category pages and the home page. The sitemap should, ideally, offer links to all of the site's internal pages. However, if more than 100-150 pages exist on the site, a wiser system is to create a sitemap that will link to all of the category level pages, so that no page in a site is more than 2 clicks from the home page. For exceptionally large sites, this rule can be expanded to 3 clicks from the home page.

Use a Category Structure that Flows from Broad > Narrow - Start with the broadest topics as hierarchical category pages, then expand to deep pages with specific topics. Using the most on-topic structure tells search engines that your site is highly relevant and covers a topic in-depth.

Building a Traffic-Worthy Site

One of the most important (and often overlooked) subjects in SEO is building a site deserving of top rankings at the search engines. A site that ranks #1 for a set of terms in a competitive industry or market segment must be able to justify its value, or risk losing out to competitors who offer more. Search engines' goals are to rank the best, most usable, functional and informative sites first. By intertwining your site's content and performance with these goals, you can help to ensure its long term prospects in the search engine rankings.
Usability
Usability represents the ease-of-use inherent in your site's design, navigation, architecture and functionality. The idea behind the practice is to make your site intuitive so that visitors will have the best possible experience on the site. A whole host of features figure into usability, including:

Design
The graphical elements and layout of website have a strong influence on how easily usable the site is. Standards like blue, underlined links, top and side menu bars, logos in the top, left-hand corner may seem like rules that can be bent, but adherence to these elements (with which web users are already familiar) will help to make a site usable. Design also encompasses important topics like visibility & contrast, affecting how easy it is for users to interest the text and image elements of the site. Separation of unique sections like navigation, advertising, content, search bars, etc. is also critical as users follow design cues to help them understand a page's content. A final consideration would also take into account the importance of ensuring that critical elements in a site's design (like menus, logos, colors and layout) were used consistently throughout the site.

Information Architecture
The organizational hierarchy of a site can also strongly affect usability. Topics and categorization impact the ease with which a user can find the information they need on your site. While an intuitive, intelligently designed structure will seamlessly guide the user to their goals, a complex, obfuscated hierarchy can make finding information on a site disturbingly frustrating.

Navigation
A navigation system that guides users easily through both top-level and deep pages and makes a high percentage of the site easily accessible is critical to good usability. Since navigation is one of a website's primary functions, provide users with obvious navigation systems: breadcrumbs, alt tags for image links, and well written anchor text that clearly describes what the user will get if they click a link. Navigation standards like these can drastically improve usability performance.

Functionality
To create compelling usability, ensure that tools, scripts, images, links, etc., all function as they are intended and don't provide errors to non-standard browsers, alternative operating systems or uninformed users (who often don't know what/where to click).

Accessibility
Accessibility refers primarily to the technical ability of users to access and move through your site, as well as the ability of the site to serve disabled or impaired users. For SEO purposes, the most important aspects are limiting code errors to a minimum and fixing broken links, making sure that content is accessible and visible in all browsers and without special actions.

Content
The usability of content itself is often overlooked, but its importance cannot be overstated. The descriptive nature of headlines, the accuracy of information and the quality of content all factor highly into a site's likelihood to retain visitors and gain links.

Authoring High Quality Content
Why Should a Search Engine Rank Your Site Above all the Others in its Field?
If you cannot answer this question clearly and precisely, the task of ranking higher will be exponentially more difficult. Search engines attempt to rank the very best sites with the most relevant content first in their results, and until your site's content is the best in its field, you will always struggle against the engines rather than bringing them to your doorstep.
It is in content quality that a site's true potential shows through, and although search engines cannot measure the likelihood that users will enjoy a site, the vote via links system operates as a proxy for identifying the best content in a market. With great content, therefore, come great links and, ultimately, high rankings. Deliver the content that users need, and the search engines will reward your site.
Content quality, however, like professional design, is not always dictated by strict rules and guidelines. What passes for "best of class" in one sector may be below average in another market. The competitiveness and interests of your peers and competitors in a space often determine what kind of content is necessary to rank. Despite these variances, however, several guidelines can be almost universally applied to produce content that is worthy of attention:

Research Your Field
Get out into the forums, blogs and communities where folks in your industry spend their online discussion time. Note the most frequently asked questions, the most up-to-date topics and the posts or headlines that generate the most interest. Apply this knowledge when you create high quality content and directly address your market's needs. If 10,000 people in the botany field are seeking articles that contain more illustrated diagrams instead of just photos, delivering that piece can set your content (and your site) apart from the competition.

Consult and Publish in Partnership with Industry Experts
In any industry, there will be high-level, publically prominent experts as well as a second tier of "well-known in web circles" folks. Targeting either of these groups for collaborative efforts in publishing articles, reviewing your work or contributing (even via a few small quotes) can be immensely valuable. In this manner, you can be assured that your content is both link and visitor-worthy. In addition, when partnering with "experts", exposure methods are built-in, creating natural promotion angles.

Create Documents that Can Serve as One-Stop Resources
If you can provide a single article or resource that provides every aspect of what a potential visitor or searcher might be seeking, your chances for success in SEO go up. An "all-in-one" resource can provide more opportunities than a single subject resource in many cases. Don't be too broad as you attempt to execute this kind of content creation - it's still important to keep a narrow focus when you create your piece. The best balance can be found by putting yourself in the potential users' shoes - if your piece fits their needs and covers every side of their possible interests, while remaining "on-message," you're ready to proceed.

Provide Unique Information
Make sure that when you design your content outline, you include data and information that can be found nowhere else. While collecting and amalgamating information across the web can create good content, it is the unique elements in your work that will be noticed and recommended.

Serve Important Content in a Non-Commercial Format
Creating a document format that is non-commercial is of exceptional importance for attracting links and attention. The communities of web and content builders is particularly attuned to the commercialization of the web and will consciously and sub-consciously link to and recommend resources that don't serve prominent or interfering advertising. If you must post ads, do so as subtlety and unobtrusively as possible.

One Great Page is Worth a Thousand Good Pages
While hundreds or dozens of on-topic pages that cover sections of an industry are valuable to a website's growth, it is actually far better to invest a significant amount of time and energy producing a few articles/resources of truly exceptional quality. To create documents that become "industry standard" on the web and are pointed to time after time as the "source" for further investigations, claims, documents, etc. is to truly succeed in the rankings battle. The value of "owning" this traffic and link source far outweighs a myriad of articles that are rarely read or linked to.

Link Bait
When attempting to create the most link-worthy content, thinking outside the box and creating a document, tool or service that's truly revolutionary can provide a necessary boost. Even on corporate image or branding sites for small companies, a single, exciting piece of content that gets picked up en masse by your web community is worth a small fortune in public relations and exposure. Better still, the links you earn with an exciting release stay with your site for a long time, providing search visibility long after the event itself has been forgotten.
With content that generates links becoming such a valuable commodity, creating solely for the purpose of gaining links has become a popular practice for talented SEOs. In order to capitalize on this phenomenon, it's necessary to brainstorm. Below are some initial ideas that can help you build the content you need to generate great links.

Free Tools
Automated tools that query data sources, combine information or conduct useful calculations are eminently link worthy. Think along the lines of mortgage calculators and site-checking tools, then expand into your particular area of business/operation.
- Web 2.0 Applications
  Although the term Web 2.0 is more of a buzzword than a technicality, applications that fit the feature set described by the do get a fantastic number of links from the web community and followers of this trend. Think mashups, maps, communities, sharing, tagging, RSS and blogs.
- Collaborative Work Documents
  Working in concert with others is a good way to produce content more quickly and with generally higher quality. If you can get high-profile insiders or several known persons in an industry to collaborate, your chances for developing "link-bait" substantially increase.
- Exposes of Nefarious Deeds
  Writing a journalistic-style exposé detailing the misdeeds of others (be they organizations, websites, individuals or companies) can generate a lot of links and traffic if done in a professional manner (and before anyone else). Make sure you're very careful with these types of actions, however, as the backlash can be worse than the benefit if your actions provoke the wrong type of response.
- Top 10 Lists
  Numbered lists (of tips, links, resources, etc.), particularly those that rank items, can be a great way to generate buzz. These lists often promote discussion and thus, referencing.
- Industry-Related Humor
  Even the most serious of industries can use a bit of humor now and again. As with exposés, be cautious not to offend (although that too can merit mentions) - use your knowledge of stereotypes and history inside your market to get topical laughs and the links will be yours.
- Reviews of Events
  Industry gatherings, from pubcrawls to conferences to speeches and seminars, can all garner great links with a well-done review. Write professionally, as a journalist, and attempt to use as many full names as possible. It's also wise to link out to all the folks you mention, as they will see the links in their referral logs and come check you out.
- Interviews with Well-Known Insiders
  Anyone inside an industry whose name frequently appears in that industry's internal press is a great candidate for an interview. Even if it's a few short questions over email, a revealing interview can be a great source of links and esteemed professionals are likely to answer requests even from smaller sources as they can benefit from the attention, too.
- Surveys or Collections of Data
  Offering large collections of industry data culled from polling individuals, an online survey or simply researching and aggregating data can provide a very link-worthy resource.
- Film or Animation
  Particularly in industries where video clips or animations are rare (i.e. Geology, not Movie Reviews), a high quality, entertaining or informative video or animation can get more than a few folks interested.
- Charts, Graphs or Spreadsheets
  These standard business graphics should certainly include analysis and dissection, but can provide a good source of links if promoted and built properly.
- High Profile Criticism
  Similar to the exposé system, well-written critiques of popular products, companies, sites or individuals in a sector have the ability to pull in quite a few links from folks who agree and disagree.
- Contests, Giveaways and Competitions
  Giving away prizes or public awards (even if they're just website graphics) can get a lot of online folks interested and linking.
- Trend-Spotting
  Identifying a story ahead of the crowd is commonly called "scooping" in journalism. Do this online, and all (or many) blog posts on the subject will reference your site as the first to "call it."
- Advice from Multiple Experts
  If you're creating an article that offers advice, pulling opinions from the well-known experts in the industry is a great way to make sure links flow your way. The experts themselves will often be inclined to link.
There are dozens of other great ways to get bloggers, writers and website editors in your field to add links to your site. Imagine yourself as an industry blogger, seeking to cover the most exciting, unique trends and pages in the sector. If this individual stumbled across your content, would they be likely to write about it? If the answer is yes, it qualifies as link-bait.

Growing a Site's Popularity

While developing a great website is half of the SEO equation, the other half is promotion. Search engines are very particular about growing their ability to detect artificial manipulation and link spam, so effective SEOs who want to promote sites to the fullest extent must use natural, organic link building processes in order to have success.
The techniques and approaches described below are all ultimately designed to improve search engine rankings by growing the number and quality of links that point to a website. However, each also offers natural growth of your user base and provides visitors that come through systems other than search engines. Strangely, although the goal of SEO is better search rankings, the best sites in each industry often receive 50% or fewer of their total visitors from search engine. Why? Because if thousands of visitors are anxiously visiting your site via bookmarks, links and direct type-ins at the address bar, you've achieved the content and status necessary to not only be ranked exceptionally well, but have visitors that know your site and want to visit, no matter what the search engines say. This methodology is particularly valuable because a site that doesn't rely entirely on search engines for traffic, ironically, has a far better chance of getting visitors through them.

Community Building

Creating a user base that develops into a full-scale community is no easy task, but it's one of the holy grails of online marketing and promotion. The idea is to develop frequently updated content in the form of a blog, forum, wiki or other muti-user input system that can become a central reference and gathering point for a significant number of individuals in an industry.
Once a community is established, the input of individual members and coverage of events in these systems are natural sources for incoming links from bloggers and writers in the field, be they members or simply browsers. In addition, many members who run sites of their own will point to the community as their gathering place, creating even greater link value. Community building requires finesse and good online relationship skills, but the rewards are tremendous.

Link Building Based on Competitive Analysis
Looking at the links obtained by your top competitors and pursuing methods of your own to get listed on those sites/pages is an excellent way to stay competitive in the link building race. It's also a good way to get natural traffic, as these are the links and sites that send your competitors their traffic, they will also bring visitors to your site. The methodology for investigating a competitor's links is fairly straightforward, although more complex methods can be used by the advanced researcher.
The best source of linkage data is Yahoo!. Google purposely does not report accurate link data with their link: command and MSN's rankings of links can often show less valuable and effective links at the top. Yahoo!, however, currently shows the greatest accuracy in numbers of links, and also sorts well, typically placing more valuable links near the top of the results.

At Yahoo!, the following searches can be used to find pages that link to other sites/pages:

Linkdomain:url.com
This command will show you all the pages that link to any page hosted at the domain url.com.
Link:http://www.url.com/page.html
This command will show only those pages which link directly to the specified page.
Linkdomain:url.com word
This search will show all pagess with the term "word" that link to pages hosted at the URL. You can use this to find topical linking pages that may be providing benefit for specific areas.
Linkdomain:url.com -term
Use the - sign to indicate that pages which include a particular term should be excluded from the search, for example, searching for all links that point to a site that don't contain your company name on the page . Note that searches can contain multiple - signs and terms if you require very specific information (or wish to exclude lots of noisy data).
Linkdomain:url.com -site:url.com
In addition to the - sign as a term remover, you can remove sites from the results as well. This can be especially valuable if one large site links to the target site on every page, and you wish to see the links that don't include that site. It can also be valuable to remove the site itself, so as not to see results from internal pages.
Building Personality & Reputation
The cult of personality on the Internet provides excellent opportunities for charismatic, well-written individuals to make headlines, friends and links through online networking. A variety of social interaction sites operate across industries on the web, delivering ready-made sources for building a reputation and earning links. The keys to this methodology are to provide honest, intelligent contributions to existing discussions while maintaining a connection between yourself and the communities.
Online forums are great places to start, and can frequently lead to additional venues for the engagement of your colleagues. In building a successful reputation in an online forum, honesty, integrity and openness provide the best chances to be taken seriously and seen by others as an expert on your subject matter. Forums typically offer a built-in system for referring folks to your site - the signature link. Although debate exists on whether search engines count these links for ranking purposes, there can be little doubt about their effectiveness in driving forum visitors to your site. One last tip for forums is to use a single link to your site in your signature - ensuring that people identify you with one unique online property, rather than several. Combining these effective techniques of forum posting and signature links with blogging can also be very valuable.
In addition to forums, outlets like blog comments (which frequently use the "nofollow" attribute, and are thus valuable for live visitors but not search engines), ICQ Channels, chatrooms, Google groups and privately hosted boards or chatrooms can all serve a similar purpose. Stay consistent in each format - using the same voice, avatar (the accompanying photo on many forums) and username in order to build reputation and recognition.

Competitive analysis also includes using the top search results themselves as sources for links. If a site or page ranks particularly well for many related searches, a link from that site can send a healthy number of interested surfers to you. Rankings in the SERPs is also an excellent way to determine the value of a link, so if a page ranks highly for the term or phrase you're targeting, a link from that page is sure to provide great assistance in your goal to achieve top placement.

Highly Competitive Terms & Phrases
For some terms and phrases, even the best websites with the most diligent promotional efforts will have a very difficult time penetrating the top 10-20 results. In these instances, it can be tempting to rely on efforts outside of the search engines' guidelines. However strong this temptation may be, be advised that search engines do not tolerate spam or manipulation via automated links, nor do they allow such results to flourish for long. Although these methods, commonly referred to as "black hat SEO", may have some effectiveness in the short term, they have little chance of long-term success in the SERPs and may become permanently banned from search results.
For highly competitive results (from "mortgage" to "car insurance" to "university degree"), targeting the above described "long tail" (the more niche related search terms for which a smaller degree of heavy competition exists) can be the best method. Search engines are also careful to consider the age of a site and its links, and give heavy weight to those sites with long-held, highly trusted links. Thus, while rankings may be sparse at first, over time, an enterprising site owner can achieve some measure of notice, even in the most competitive of searches.

Conclusion: Implementing an SEO Strategy

The process of SEO is not easy to tackle, largely because so many pieces of a site factor into the final results. Promoting a site that writers on the web are unlikely to link to is as deadly as creating a fantastic website no one will see. SEO is also a long-term process, both in application and results - those who expect quick rankings after completing a few suggestions in this guide will be deeply dissapointed. Search engines can often be frustratingly slow to respond to improvements that will eventually garner significant boosts in traffic.
Patience is not the only virtue that should be used for successful SEO. The strategy itself must have a strong foundation in order to succeed. The best site's adhere strictly to these guidelines:

Unique Content - Something that has never before been offered on the web in terms of depth, quality or presentation (i.e. a unique value proposition)
Access to an Adoptive Community - Connections or alliances with people/websites in an existing online community that is ready to accept, visit and promote your offering
Link-Friendly Formatting - Even the best content may be unlikely to be linked to if it displays ads, particularly those that break up the page content or pop-up when a visitor comes to the site. Use discretion in presenting your material and remember that links are one of the most valuable commodities a site/page can get and they'll last far longer than a pop-up ad's revenue.
Monetization Plan - Intelligent systems for monetizing powerful content must exist, or bandwidth, hosting and development costs will eventually overrun your budget.
Market Awareness - If your site is targeting highly competitive terms you should make available, an online marketing budget, including funds for link buying, and hire or consult with someone experienced in bringing newer sites to the top of the SERPs.

If you take these steps and have a robust knowledge of the methods described in this guide, you are ready to begin an SEO campaign.
Quantity vs. Quality
In order to optimize a site to rank well in the search engines, diligent attention to the quality of your website and the effectiveness of your promotional tactics. While creating thousands of pages targeting every conceivable keyword may seem like a viable tactic, in fact, a single, phenomenal article or content source on a single term is far more likely to be profitable and less likely to be flagged for spam by the search engines.
This same rule applies to the sphere of promotion. While thousands of low quality, spammy pages or reciprocal free-for-all links pointing to you may provide some boost in the SERPs, a far greater effect can be achieved with just a few highly valuable, well-placed links from relevant sources that will drive both traffic and rankings. In the age of advanced link spam analysis, search engines will give greater credit to one link from CNN.com, Berkeley.edu or Usability.gov than from 50,000 guestbooks, forum signatures or reciprocal link directories.
Measuring Success: Website and Ranking Metrics to Watch
One of the most valuable sources for data, analysis and refinement in an SEO campaign is in the statistics available via website tracking and measuring programs. A good analytics program can provide an incredible amount of data that can be used to track your visitors and make decisions about who to target in the future and how to do it.
Below is a short list of the most valuable elements in visitor tracking:

Campaign Tracking - The ability to put specific URLs or referrer strings onto ads, emails or links and track their success.
Action Tracking - Adding the ability to track certain actions on a site like form submission, newsletter signups, add to cart buttons, checkout or transaction completions and tying them together with campaigns and keyword tracking so you know what ads, links, terms and campaigns are bringing you the best visitors.
Search Engine Referral Tracking - Seeing which search engines sent which visitors over time and tracking the terms and phrases they used to reach your site. Combined with action tracking, this can help you determine which terms are most valuable to target.
Referring URLs & Domain Tracking - This allows you to see what URLs and domains are responsible for sending you traffic. By tracking these individually, you can see where your most valuable links are coming from.
First-Time vs. Return Visitors - Find out what percentage of your visitors are coming back each day/week/month. This can help you to figure out how "sticky" and consistently interesting your site is.
Entry Pages - Which pages are attracting the most visitors and which are converting them. You can also see pages that have a very high rate of loss - those pages which don't do a good job pulling people into the site.
Visitor Demographics - Where are your visitors coming from, what browsers are they using, what time do they visit? All these questions and many more can be answered with demographics.
Click Path Analysis - What paths do your visitors follow when they get to your site? This data can help you make more logical streams of pages for visitors to use as they navigate your site, attempting to find information or complete a task.
Popular Pages - Which pages get the most visitors and which are neglected? Use this data to help improve low popularity pages and emulate highly trafficked ones.
Page Views per Session - This data can tell you how many pages each visitor to your site is viewing - another metric used to measure "stickiness."

Applying the information you learn from your visitor tracking is a science unto its own. Experience and common sense should help to discover which terms, visitors, referrers and demographics are most valuable to your site, enabling you to make the best possible decisions about how and where to target.
Working with a Pro vs. Do-It-Yourself SEO
As in many other areas of web development, a long-standing argument exists between those who feel that learning and practicing SEO should be done in-house, vs. those who feel it is best left to the professionals. There are advantages to either side, and it's best to weigh these against each other when making a final decision:
Advantages of Working with a Professional SEO

Diverse Experience - Professionals with several years of SEO experience under their belts can tell you what to expect from the search engines as you conduct the optimization process. They can also interpret and understand rankings data and "hiccups" in the results that may indicate certain trends or strategies that should be implemented or avoided.
Pre-Existing Relationships - Many SEOs have contacts inside the SEO industry to folks with experience in certain fields, expertise in unique areas (i.e. press releases, article distribution, directories, etc.) that can have a great impact on the success of your efforts. Several SEOs even have personal relationships with the folks at the search engines, although the use of these contacts is very rare and SE representatives pride themselves on not showing favoritism.
Link Building Knowledge - Professionals will have the ability to quickly identify topical communities and the most popular and relevant sites in them, saving time when link building. SEOs also have considerable experience with link acquisition, and will recognize the requirements of certain sites for paid links, link requests, etc.
Identifying Linkable Content - SEOs are often masters of crafting and launching content. Not only can they identify the content most likely to get links from the specific web community, they're also experienced in how to package and promote it.
Fixing Possible Problems - Professionals are competent at identifying and managing issues that can cause a lack of indexing, low rankings or penalties from the search engines. This is a skill that can be very hard to develop without years of practice and experience. If you have a ranking issue, an SEO can be of great value.
Time Savings - SEO can be an exceptionally time-consuming endeavor. An experienced SEO has the processes and systems of optimization down to a science, and can use that efficiency to provide better service in less time.

Advantages of Do-It-Yourself SEO

Complete Control - With personal responsibility comes complete control for each element of your site's progress. There can be no question as to who or what created a link or modified a document.
Learn from Your Actions - The ebb and flow of the SERPs will quickly teach an amateur SEO what what works and what doesn't. Certain links, timing and on-page changes will be fully visible and recordable, making it a learning process.
Personal Responsibility - Your success or failure will depend entirely on your own efforts, narrowing responsibility and preventing overlaps in work or issues of blame.
Cost Savings - Doing SEO yourself means you don't have to pay someone else. If you find that your time is less expensive than hiring an outsourced provider, do-it-yourself SEO can be a great way to save money.

With these pieces of information in mind, you're prepared to make an informed decision. Remember, too, that many SEOs offer consulting services, which provide you with a strategic plan that can be implemented and a helpful consultant to provide advice as needed on the project. This type of arrangement may offer a good balance if you're torn about which direction to choose. Look for costs between $100-$300 per hour depending on the experience and notoriety of the consultant.
If you choose to outsource to an SEO firm, be well aware of the many pitfalls that await the uninformed. SEO has classically been an industry that has attracted many untrustworthy and dishonorable firms, resulting in an unfortunate perception from many. Pay particular attention to the following:

· Manipulation & Search Spam - Overly aggressive tactics can get you banned from search engines

· Link Exchanges & Free-for-All Links – While the promise of easy link building through link exchanges or link farms is tempting, these tactics often achieve subpar results. Natural, organic inbound links from sites that your competitors can’t get links from are the best way to rank well in the long term

· Optimizing Pages for Search Engines vs. Visitors – Professional SEOs should have specialist copywriters who can craft well-written pages that attract both users and search engines. Repetitive keyword use (as noted above) is largely useless, but compelling, intelligent dialogue is a great way to get both searchers and engines interested in your content.

· Guaranteed Rankings – Guaranteeing rankings is often one of the first indications that you’re dealing with a less-than-reputable firm. No SEO can guarantee rankings, because the search engines are responsible for the results and are constantly changing. Be wary, too, of promised success at “thousands of engines” (remember that the top 4 account for 95%+ of all search traffic), daily submission (completely unnecessary) and other “tricks” or “secrets”. Great rankings come from having great sites with quality links – no tricks or secrets required.

· Investigate – The firm you work with should be able to provide references, preferably from both customers and industry folks that will let you know their skill and ability. Use your best judgment here – if a review or response seems canned or fishy, it probably is.

Finally, if you opt for do-it-yourself-SEO, be aware that are many, many parts of the SEO process not covered by this guide. SEO is a practice that has even the most respected professionals learning and researching every day to keep with trends on the web and algorithmic shifts in the search engines. A business or site owner will certainly want to join several SEO web communities (see the list in the links section) and keep up-to-date with information and best practices from the industry experts.

What is SEO

2009-09-13T03:24:00.000-07:00

Rewritten ArticleSearch Engine Optimization (SEO) is generally advised the added abstruse allotment of Web marketing. This is accurate because SEO does advice in the advance of sites and at the aforementioned time it requires some abstruse ability – at atomic acquaintance with basal HTML. SEO is sometimes aswell alleged SEO copyrighting because a lot of of the techniques that are acclimated to advance sites in seek engines accord with text. Generally, SEO can be authentic as the action of optimizing Web pages or accomplished sites in adjustment to accomplish them added seek engine-friendly, appropriately accepting college positions in seek results.
One of the basal truths in SEO is that even if you do all the things that are all-important to do, this does not automatically agreement you top ratings but if you carelessness basal rules, this absolutely will not go unnoticed. Also, if you set astute goals – i.e to get into the top 30 after-effects in Google for a accurate keyword, rather than be the amount one for 10 keywords in 5 seek engines, you will feel happier and added annoyed with your results.
Although SEO helps to access the cartage to one's site, SEO is not advertising. Of course, you can be included in paid seek after-effects for accustomed keywords but basically the abstraction abaft the SEO techniques is to get top adjustment because your website is accordant to a accurate seek term, not because you pay.
SEO can be a 30-minute job or a abiding activity. Sometimes it is abundant to do some all-encompassing SEO in adjustment to get top in seek engines – for instance, if you are a baton for attenuate keywords, again you do not accept a lot to do in adjustment to get appropriate placement. But in a lot of cases, if you absolutely wish to be at the top, you charge to pay appropriate absorption to SEO and allot cogent amounts of time and accomplishment to it. Even if you plan to do some basal SEO, it is capital that you accept how seek engines plan and which items are a lot of important in SEO

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1. How Seek Engines Work
The aboriginal basal accuracy you charge to apprentice about SEO is that seek engines are not humans. While this ability be accessible for everybody, the differences amid how bodies and seek engines appearance web pages aren't. Unlike humans, seek engines are text-driven. Although technology advances rapidly, seek engines are far from able creatures that can feel the adorableness of a air-conditioned architecture or adore the sounds and movement in movies. Instead, seek engines clamber the Web, searching at accurate website items (mainly text) to get an abstraction what a website is about. This abrupt account is not the a lot of absolute because as we will see next, seek engines accomplish several activities in adjustment to bear seek after-effects – crawling, indexing, processing, artful relevancy, and retrieving.
First, seek engines clamber the Web to see what is there. This assignment is performed by e section of software, alleged a crawler or a spider (or Googlebot, as is the case with Google). Spiders chase links from one page to addition and basis aggregate they acquisition on their way. Having in apperception the amount of pages on the Web (over 20 billion), it is absurd for a spider to appointment a website circadian just to see if a new page has appeared or if an absolute page has been modified. Sometimes crawlers will not appointment your website for a ages or two, so during this time your SEO efforts will not be rewarded. But there is annihilation you can do about it, so just accumulate quiet.
What you can do is to analysis what a crawler sees from your site. As already mentioned, crawlers are not bodies and they do not see images, Flash movies, JavaScript, frames, password-protected pages and directories, so if you accept bags of these on your site, you'd bigger run the Spider Simulator beneath to see if these aliment are arresting by the spider. If they are not viewable, they will not be spidered, not indexed, not processed, etc. - in a chat they will be non-existent for seek engines.

2. Differences Amid the Above Seek Engines
Although the basal assumption of operation of all seek engines is the same, the accessory differences amid them advance to above changes in after-effects relevancy. For altered seek engines altered factors are important. There were times, if SEO experts joked that the algorithms of Yahoo! are anxiously fabricated just the adverse of those of Google. While this ability accept a atom of truth, it is a amount a actuality that the above seek engines like altered being and if you plan to beat added than one of them, you charge to optimize carefully.
There are abounding examples of the differences amid seek engines. For instance, for Yahoo! and MSN, on-page keyword factors are of primary importance, while for Google links are very, actual important. Also, for Google sites are like wine – the older, the better, while Yahoo! about has no bidding alternative appear sites and domains with attitude (i.e. earlier ones). Thus you ability charge added time till your website gets complete to be accepted to the top in Google, than in Yahoo!.