(SEO) Search Engine Optimization Advice

How to make keywords work for you

2007-09-19T22:19:00.000-07:00

Search may be the most powerful tool the Web has to offer, but it doesn't mean much if nobody can find you. Experts and users offer advice on how to make your ad dollars go further and help you rise up the Google ranks
9/19/2007 5:57:00 AM
by Nestor Arellano

It's crowded at the top. The top of online search pages that is.

Building a credible Web presence that brings a company to that much coveted virtual real estate can take months and serious dollars. Thankfully, even cash strapped small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) can compete with the big guys through some judicious purchases of select keywords which can lure search engines to present their ads as primary choices in a surfer's search results.

“Everyone want to be on the top three or five spaces of page one, because numerous survey indicate that surfers easily lose interest and rarely go beyond the second page,” says Tim Richardson, professor of e-commerce, marketing and international business at the Seneca College and University of Toronto.

Organizations can either work their way up, building traffic by constantly working on their site creating search-worthy content, and employing various tactics such as establishing Web-links by joining relevant communities, blogging or responding to popular blogs.

Whether done by an in-house staff or a hired third party marketing firm, such a method could take several months to develop the desired results and considerable capital outlay.

Another option, Richardson said, is to buy your way to the top by signing up with online major search engines such a Google, Yahoo, Ask.com and Microsoft Live Search and bidding for keywords they offer in the market. The advertisers pay the search engines for every click on their ad gets. The pay-per-click (PPC) technique has gained industry prominence since 2004.

The objective is the snap-up keywords -- often priced at around five cents to upwards of $2.00 per click – that are relevant to your product or campaign and are popular enough to land your site on the primary search list.

For FrontierPC.com Computer Inc., an online computer dealer based in Vancouver, the scheme has been very profitable.

The 15-year-old company, which serves the Canada-wide B2B market, was initially signed up with Google AdWords and Overture. But recently decided to enlist Microsoft Live Search as well for want of “better results.”

“Google and Overture definitely provided a larger audience but we were not getting adequate conversion rates from the clicks their engines provided,” said Barry Johnson, general manager for FrontierPC.com.

Conversion rates refer to the number of click on a certain ad that eventually lead to a sale.

Overture and AdWords conversion rates are below one per cent while those provided by the Live Searches adCenter online advertising tool reached 2.2 to four per cent, said Johnson. “Basically, we get the same number of qualified clients from Live Search for about half of what we pay for with Google.”

The company, however, still retains Google and Overture because it wants to “cover all the bases.”

adCentre, which was introduced in the U.S. in 2005, was only made available in Canada on February this year. Microsoft recently incorporated an improved campaign tracking feature to the online advertising tool, according to Melanie Martin, trade marketing manager for adCentre.

She said users now have a better capability to monitor progress of specific accounts, campaigns of ad groups through an onscreen dashboard. “This enables advertisers to change keyword settings, even mid-campaign."

It's a feature that Johnson likes because FrontierPC.com uses search advertising primary for its short term campaigns such as manufacturer sale or promotional events that runs for several days. The company may have several different campaigns going on at any given time.

Typically the company purchases about 100 keywords associated with a campaign, for a total of around $300 to $500. “If we get a three to four per cent conversion rate then we're doing well,” said Johnson.

Search advertising is best suited for such short-term efforts because anything longer could end up “being very expensive and defeat the technique's purpose,” according to Richardson.

He also warned that competitor can use the PPC system to “bleed” a rival by clicking on their ads as many times as possible but not making any purchases.

To make the most of the method, Johnson advices advertisers to “make the most of your budget.”

More popular keywords tend to command higher prices, to avoid getting skinned, Johnson bids on associated phrases. “The word ‘computer' will probably sell for $2.00. Since we sell a lot of custom machines, I bid on five-cent words like ‘green PC', ‘eco-PC' or ‘silent PC.'”

Advertisers must also keep close watch of the keyword market because “hot words” change quickly.

Companies must also make sure their ad links actually bring a surfer to the page featuring their product or campaign. “A dead link or a mere link to a company's main page is a waste of money,” said Johnson.

Above all, Johnson said, companies should practice “truth in advertising.” He said some companies purchase keywords that have nothing to do with their product for the sole purpose of attracting search engines.

Search engines regularly conduct editing processes that weed out such advertisers, Johnson warned.

Comment: edit@itworldcanada.com
http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=45137&cid=9

Traffic, Web Traffic Is The Key

2007-09-01T15:18:00.000-07:00

In the internet business there's a saying that goes something like "traffic is the key." As you know in order to make sales you have to have customers. On the internet the only way to have customers is to have visitors to your web site. And how does this happen? Well it CAN happen in several ways BUT some are worthless. Let's talk about those first...

Perhaps the most worthless is the random chance that a person will type the url to your web site. There really is no chance at all really save an act of God because why would they type something randomly? and why you? So people need to know who you are or what your product is in order to make their way to your site. In other words you need to advertise in order to create web traffic. A slightly better way is to have a link on another of your own, or somebody else's web site. The only Problem is in order to get people to your site there has to be people going to those other websites which again necessitates advertising. So "traffic is the key" but advertising is the key to traffic. So lets talk about advertising now.

Internet advertising is helped, actually driven by the search engines. The higher you rank on the search engine for a give entry the more people will visit your site. This is because people are lazy and don't want to work to find what they want to find. It also makes sense because everyone thinks that the top results are the most applicable to what they want, and this is the idea. So web traffic is the key, advertising is the key to web traffic, and ranking high on the search engine is the key to good advertising. So lets talk about search engine ranking now.

Search engine ranking is somewhat of a mystery and those who have figured out the most secrets are the best at advertising on the internet. Links to other pages is good, keyword relevance is good, and selling something that a lot of people want is good too. The other thing to remember is that it is pointless to get lots of people to see your page if they are not interested in what you are selling. This brings up the concept of targeted web traffic--getting people who want what you've got specifically to your site.

Anyway, these "gurus" who have been at it for years like to give out helpful information (at a price) and tools that make it easier to come up with effective sales sites. This product is one of those tools that helps to bring targeted web traffic to you, making you a more effective internet seller.

Josephine Stungger has been an internet marketer for years and years. Her experience has been invaluable as an advisor for an online search engine optimization service. To find out how to increase web traffic to your sites go to www.cheapwebtraffic.info.

Article Source: http://www.a1-articledirectory.com

SEO Hosting Adds Twelve Free Search Engine Optimization Scripts

2007-09-01T15:09:00.000-07:00

Scripts make Host Gator's SEO Hosting the most comprehensive hosting service for helping customers maximize search engine placement.

Houston, TX (PRWEB) August 30, 2007 -- Host Gator, a leading provider of shared, dedicated and reseller hosting, announced the addition of twelve search engine optimization scripts for its new SEO Hosting service.

The scripts will be available free of charge to all customers and is part of Host Gator's commitment to making the SEO Hosting division the most complete hosting service and resource for businesses that want to optimize search engine placement.

"Host Gator is always looking for ways to help our customers succeed in their online endeavors," said Brent Oxley, founder and president of Host Gator. "Our customers identified search engine optimization as an area where they needed help and we responded by giving them all the technological capabilities they need to achieve these objectives."

Host Gator recently introduced the SEO Hosting division, which gives customers multiple C class hosting capabilities at affordable prices. The new division has its own site and resources at SEOHosting.com and the free downloadable scripts will be available at http://www.seohosting.com/seo-tools.php.

"The scripts are just another example of how we try to do anything we can to meet our customer's needs," said Oxley. "That goes beyond products and services to resources, information and things like scripts that enhance the entire hosting and web site development and marketing process."

About Host Gator

Host Gator is a provider of shared, dedicated and reseller web hosting services focused on the consumer and small business markets. Founded in 2002, Host Gator has become a leader in reseller hosting, helping over 11,000 businesses become Web hosting companies. Host Gator has offices in Houston, Texas and its data center operations are co-located out of The Planet's facility in Dallas, Texas, enabling it to access Tier-1 backbone providers such as UUNet, Sprint, Level 3, Global Crossing, Verio, AT&T and AboveNet.

For more information, please visit www.HostGator.com.

Media Contact: Edward Yang, Firecracker PR, (949) 500-6422

Important Checklist To Get Targeted Search Engine Traffic

2007-08-08T13:22:00.000-07:00

Search Engine traffic is the way you are going to get good amount of visitor to your site. People usually search for business/organizations and relative terms and not precisely what you sell unless you have already advertised it to the particular customer. Having best related keywords in search engine will have very targeted traffic to your site. Also it is important to make sure your website is positioned for the best targeted search engine traffic to increase your rankings. Below are the 5 point checklist that in my opinion you should go over before even planning e-commerce site.

1. Domain Name: Domain name is the most important item to be considered when going for an e-commerce site. The domain name should essentially carry the keywords you will use to target the site. Also while trying to go for targeted keyword domain you should also try to get it as shorter as possible. For example, if you have a directory website, then you should go for having a directory word in your domain. Here the name will be much bigger but if it is easy to spell like directoryalley then you should definitely go with it. Also if the keyword you are trying does not have any good combination domain available try getting similar keywords domain like for directory, index would be perfect so getting indexrated would be perfect for directory.

2. Titles: The second most important part of the checklist is Title of website. It should contain your keyword phrases and should be different and most relative for each page thus increasing the potency of each page and giving it much strength in SERPs. You can also increase your targeted search engine traffic with repeating the keywords for the page as close to top of page as possible. Also make titles of pages attractive and interesting which will allure users into coming to your site. For example, you want to have targeted search engine traffic to your website servicing submission to web directories and have an article of submitting to web directories. In this case, you should name the article with your targeted search engine traffic while making it more attractive, something like, 5 Absolute unwritten laws of Web Directory Submissions.

3. Content: The content of the page also carries importance for getting the targeted search engine traffic and should contain informative and keyword rich data. However you should not go overboard and use all or most of your keywords in a single page. Spread them out throughout the site and use only one keyword or key phrase per page. More the keywords per page more diluted the power of each of your keywords.

4. Keep your site Updated and always current: Search Engines like sites with updated or current data. You should try to keep your site as current as possible and should update it daily and if not possible weekly. More current the data more pages will be cached in the search engines and more traffic. Also people like more current data and fresh content. Irrelevant and out of date content turn your visitors off and thus will lead to decreasing amount of returning visitors.

5. Keep your site Simple: Simplicity goes long way in website design and getting traffic. Try to make as simple and as attractive as possible. Make your site look professional and relevant to the subject. As soon as you try to use out of place style or phrases, you will lose visitors!

This concludes my 5 point checklist for targeted search engine traffic. Hope it serves the goal in getting targeted search engine traffic to your site.

by Amish Mody
promotionworld.com

Search Engine Optimization Secrets Disclosed by Netconcepts President Stephan Spencer at SMX Seattle

2007-08-08T13:19:00.000-07:00

Madison, WI (PRWEB) July 24, 2007 -- www.Netconcepts.com - Netconcepts®, LLC., the premier natural search engine marketing firm enabling a leading tier of the top 200 Internet Retailers to "get found" online, dispatched president Stephan Spencer to SMX Advanced last month to take part in the panel "Give It Up!".

The session, composed of search engine optimization pioneers, was unique in the fact that all experts involved agreed to disclose their most closely guarded secrets to the select group of attendees in the audience.

High level details from the session, organized by Search Engine Land Editor-in-Chief Danny Sullivan, were kept under a tight embargo for no less than thirty days after the event.

"I was thrilled to be able to share some of my favorite search engine optimization (http://www.netconcepts.com/) secrets with such a select gathering of search marketers at SMX Advanced in Seattle," states Spencer. "I'm happier still that thirty days has passed and these tips are available to a wider audience."

The tips Spencer provided were culled from his long history in the field of search engine marketing. They include:

•Understanding Google grouped results. An indented Google listing ranked number two is most likely not actually number two. By adding the right search engine parameters (http://www.netconcepts.com/deconstructing-grouped-google-results/), one can ascertain the indented result's true ranking, and, when trying to gain a competitive advantage, tactically bump a competitor off the front page. This powerful strategy has since been published in Sullivan's Search Engine Land.

•Setting up your Google preferences to display only English language pages only, circumventing the world's most powerful search engine's proclivity to overestimate results.

•Identifying links with sub-optimal anchor text and then influencing friends, colleagues and fellow bloggers to revise these underperforming links.

•Obtaining free Forrester reports, simply by using the super-secret Google query "forrester research grapevine endnotes filetype:pdf".

Recently, blogger Lisa Barone at competing firm Bruce Clay Inc. dubbed Spencer "MVP" of the panel for his innovative views and powerful techniques. This was unexpected, since Barone's CEO, Bruce Clay, was on the panel along with Spencer.

Other experts on the panel included such industry luminaries as Mike Grehan, Mikkel deMib Svendsen, and Jill Whalen.

"It was an honor to be a part of such an illustrious group," states Spencer. "Together, we hope to share more killer tips at future SMX shows."

Stephan Spencer next appearance will be at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, CA on August 23 where he will appear on the panels "SEO Through Blogs & Feeds" and "Wikipedia & SEO".

About Netconcepts, LLC:

Netconcepts® is committed to arming top Internet retailers with online strategies and technology platforms designed to increase online sales. With proprietary technology and processes including GravityStream™ and GravityMarket™, online retailers will "get found" on the search engines. Online retailers succeeding with the aid of Netconcepts, include Discovery Communications, Northern Tool, Home Shopping Network, Kohl's Department Stores, REI, and Cabela's among other brands. Netconcepts is based in Madison Wisconsin with a production facility in Auckland, New Zealand.

Netconcepts

www.Netconcepts.com

Agency Contact

Bill Arnovich

Misukanis & Odden

952.400.0342

Canadian Search Engine Marketing Firm Ranks Among Top 30 North American Companies

2007-08-08T13:17:00.000-07:00

First Page SEO was ranked as number 25 of the top 30 Internet marketing businesses doing organic search engine optimization according to Visibility Magazine in its July 2007 issue.

Minden, Ontario (PRWEB) August 7, 2007 -- Visibility Magazine, in its July 2007 issue, has ranked a Canadian company from Ontario Canada as one of the top Internet marketing companies in North America. First Page SEO (http://www.first-page-seo.com) was ranked as number 25 of the top 30 Internet marketing businesses doing organic search engine optimization. First Page SEO is the only Ontario based marketing organization to break into this elite club of Internet marketers.

Visibility Magazine (http://www.visibilitymagazine.com) refers to itself as a monthly journal featuring "Internet Marketing Strategy Unplugged" and is circulated to business leaders, marketing executives and academics across North America.

North America companies are leading the charge in the multibillion-dollar Internet search industry. Search engine optimization is one marketing segment where American firms have entrenched themselves as market leaders across the world, as measured in evidence by placement results. While many new businesses have been set up in India to outsource some of the search engine marketing work, the real leading-edge marketing guru's continue to conduct their business in house with highly skilled and innovative employees, capable of keeping up with, or staying ahead of, the complex search engine algorithms.

First Page SEO has consistently ranked number one on Google for many years for search terms such as "Ontario search engine marketing" and "Ontario search engine optimization" where competing indexed pages can number almost two million. In its customer base of some 400 clients, First Page SEO has more than its fair share of top ranking Web sites. In a world where search engine listings come and go with each search engine algorithm change, staying on top of the pack is part art and part science. As a result most companies that are good at search engine marketing command fairly high professional fees and have waiting lists. First Page SEO currently has a six-week waiting list for search engine optimization work or Web site design.

What is unusual about the Visibility Magazine published ranking study is that generally few Canadian companies break into the USA Internet marketing scene with any degree of success. USA marketing expenditures in California alone are equivalent to all of Canada. First Page SEO does Internet marketing and Web sites for customers from all over the world and considers Canada as only one of many geographic market opportunities.

Many business sectors are reporting that up to 80% of their business can come from Web search. Increasingly, the Internet is the tool of choice for business and consumers shopping for services or products on a retail or wholesale basis.

"Most businesses have realized for some years now that Internet marketing is pivotal to their business success," says Mark Coles, a principal owner of First Page SEO.

While thousands of Webmasters and marketing types advertise search engine marketing services only few can deliver. Businesses seeking Internet marketing advice should demand customer references and check the keyword placement of those customers on major search engines. They can also check the placement of the company offering the service. Chances are, if a marketing company can't place its own site - they probably can't get your Web site ranking near the top either.

First Page SEO has been offering Internet marketing solutions for over eight years. It serves over 400 clients' worldwide and provides optimization services, site development, opt-in mail programs, and media and link services. For more information, please visit http://www.first-page-seo.com or call Mark Coles at 705-286-3656.

Search Engine Optimization for Online Marketing

2007-08-08T13:12:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Optimization for Online Marketing
by Peter Kwee
promotionworld.com

Ranking your website at the top of every search engine is everybody's wet dream. There are no real secrets on how to achieve a high ranking with the major search engines, because effective search engine optimizations are now available on the internet, but it takes consistency, a solid game plan and a lot of trials and errors to fine tune this cyber art. What is search engine optimization? Before we discuss this, one has to understand first how search engines work.

Search engines provide their users with the most relevant and up-to-date information to match the search term that was used. They are sophisticated pieces of technology which allow users to quickly find relevant websites, by searching for a word or a phrase. Search engine results are useless to users if the information does not relate to the search term, or if the results are old and out dated. People expect the most up-to-date and fresh information that is useful to them.

Updating your website everyday or at lease every week, and adding some new materials will help you get noticed by the search engines, as they use crawlers and internet robots to seek out the latest changes on all the websites on the internet on a real time basis. So, if you are going to sell any type of product or services online, you have to optimize your website for the search engines, in order to boost traffic and sales. If you are marketing online, and just about everybody is these days, the bulk of your business inquiries will likely come directly from search engine results. And for that reason, it is absolutely important to optimize your site for search engines, in order to achieve a high ranking among the various search engines.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process by which webmasters or online business owners utilize strategic procedures to augment their website's status. The internet has grown very quickly over the recent years and the competition for the best search engine position has created an enormous market. Therefore, better understanding of the fundamental elements of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is vital for any online business success.

Making use of effective search engine optimization techniques will improve the page ranking of your website. There are many strategies and tricks that can be used to increase page ranking. The most effective method is to provide high quality content consistently. This seems like a simple concept, but there are many websites that fail to provide content that visitors find interesting. Sites which provide content that are interesting, well-written and regularly updated attract highly engaged visitors who are more likely to return to the website in the future. So, if you can set your website apart from those boring, lifeless sites, then do it. You'll surely be a step closer to achieving high page ranking through search engine optimization.

Another significant factor for an effective search engine optimization is to include keywords and phrases within your content. To make sure that you are properly targeting your market, you have to make sure that the keywords and phrases you have on your site are the keywords and phrases that your site is actually optimized for. The more keywords you use in your content, the more likely it is that online visitors will find your site when they do some researches with those words. You can also bid for clicks from different keywords, using "pay per click" or PPC strategies, like Adwords in goggle.com for example. PPC strategies are an art in itself and sometimes involve fine tuning with many trials and errors, before you will find something that will work consistently for you. But until then, it could become a very costly exercise. If you are unfailing with these techniques, then your overall search engine optimization will increase, boosting your page ranking.

You should also develop a linking strategy as a part of your search engine optimization. Not only does this provide free advertising for your site, but it makes the impression that your site is important and has added value related to other businesses, because of its affiliated links. For each link that you have pointing back to you, that is another chance for your potential customer to find you. The more inbound links that you have pointing to your site, the higher you will be ranked in the search engines.

Another strategy is to develop a content strategy. People who search the internet are looking for information. The more concise information you provide to them and the more helpful it is, the more likely you will attract buying interest and make the sale. Providing numbers and statistics, as well as colorful graphics and photos of people in your business, also enhance readership interest. Arranging your contents so that they flow easily from page to page with appropriate links (make sure all of your links are working properly) from topic to topic, makes for easy reading and arouse interest in your products or services. At the end of the day, you are only one shot and a click away from making a sale or losing a customer. For real time automated SEO, take a look at Promo Black Box at http://pacap.us

Peter Kwee
Intenational Banker & Real Estate Investor with extenisve knowledge in Investment & Mortgage banking and Online marketing.

The Most Important Factors for On-page Optimization

2007-08-08T13:08:00.000-07:00

The Most Important Factors for On-page Optimization
by Karan Singh

On-page optimization is nothing but techniques that you bring in, while designing the web pages, that are helpful in making the pages Search Engine Friendly. Search engines are trying to provide their users with the most relevant sites for any particular query. Maybe your website has a lot of material and is relevant to searches for your product, but it may not have been designed or written in a way that is search engine friendly. The correction of design mistakes and the rewriting of the website’s text and meta tags is what is known as on-page search engine optimization.

Most Important Factors:- Before you kick start the SEO campaign, it is important to keep in mind the following things in order to achieve on page optimization:-

1. Include your keyword in your Domain Name
It is far better to think about search engine optimization at the very beginning of the process. For example, if it is at all possible, choose a domain name that will allow you to include your most important keyword or search term in your URL.

2. Enrich your Pages with Content
Many people want to get a high ranking for various keywords or keyword phrases, but if you look at the text on their web pages you can hardly find these vital words. This is a major misunderstanding. It is true that your main keywords and key phrases should be in your title tag and your description meta tags, and even in the keywords meta tag, but they must also appear on the page itself and they must appear in some strategic places on that page. Search Engines will not recognize that your page is truly about a Product/Service unless these words appear in headlines on the page, in the opening paragraph, in the file or domain name in link text and in the body text of your page.

3. Use different Title Tags for all pages
The most important sentence on any web page is the title tag. The title tag gives the search engine a good indication as to what your page is all about. Incorporate your main keywords or search phrases into your title tag, and keep them at the very front of the sentence. These keywords are more important than your company name.

The title tags of each of the sub-pages of the site should reflect the main content of those pages. Never use the same title tag for all the pages of the site.

4. Description Tag
Just as the title tag is the most important sentence or phrase on any page, the description tag is the most important paragraph on any page. Summarize the gist of your page in two or three pages, again incorporating the keywords and search phrases for which you think people will use when searching for your site.

5. Keyword Research
Here you may need the services of an SEO Professional. Generally people make the mistake by putting lot of keywords and in a hope to attract search engine they do keyword stuffing and ultimately it goes against your seo campaign as search engines treat it as keyword spamming. It is suggested that you find 1 to 3 keywords for your content and concentrate only on these keywords. But if you choose less keywords then you have to research extensively on these keywords to find out which keyword is most crucial. Since there is no point to optimize your website on a keyword that is no one is searching for. So do a extensive research or get a help of some expert to choose the keywords.

6. Anchor Text
So far we have placed the keywords in the strategic places of the web page: the title, the description, the headlines and the body text. Now we have to see that the keywords are included in clickable link text on the page. Whenever you are linking to sub pages or other pages of your site, make sure that your keywords are included in the clickable portions of the links.

7. Webpage Naming
Instead of naming your files as if they didn’t matter, such as page1.html, page2.html, put your keywords and keyword phrases in your file names. If you do a search on Google for any particular item you will see that wherever your search keyword appears it is listed in the Google results in bold text. Usually you will see this bold text in the title that is displayed, and in the descriptive text that Google displays underneath the title.

8. Site Map
Getting all of your pages indexed is so important, that it is also prudent to take another step that will ensure that all of your pages are visited by search engine robots. A site map is a page that has text links to all of the pages of your site. A site map serves two purposes - It helps users to find what they are looking for on the site by providing an outline summary of all of your pages as well helps search engine robots to land on the interior pages. After you build your site map page, be sure to make a link to it from your home page and the other important pages of your website.

In addition to a normal site map page, you can also make an XML site map, upload it to the server and then register it with the Google site map tool. This process is easy to accomplish, and it will supply you with important statistical information from Google as well as help get all of your pages indexed.

Conclusion:-
On-Page optimization is the first step towards getting a high rank in search engines, Off-page campaign's success lies with the On-Page factors. So I suggest before running your SEO Campaign, either work on on-page factors first or include it into your plan. You will get better and fast results if your on-page factors are taken care well.

SEO Is Dead. Again

2007-08-06T14:37:00.000-07:00

By: Jordan McCollum
2007-08-06

Sorry, folks. If you were working in SEO, your career is over. Just ask Tadeusz Szewczyk, who guest posted on Google Blogoscoped earlier this week:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as we know and detest it is obsolete in this day and age. When some while ago Philipp asked me to write an article How do I optimize websites I couldn't do it: The way SEO works in Germany on Google.de can not really work for international websites in English. Moreover nowadays you do not need conventional SEO tactics to have success on the Net or in Google. In order to make a site succeed in these times you have to forget everything you know about on page optimization and link building first.

Now we can start our ten step guide to Google and traffic heaven.

His advice on what to do instead of SEO to promote your website is pretty solid"but man, it sure walks like SEO and quacks like SEO.

1. Discover your niche "Be different, choose a topic or product that not everybody else already covers or sells. Discovering it is not to be confused with keyword research as in conventional SEO. You try to introduce a new niche not just obeying the Google users-- demands.

2. Use Wordpress "Thats WordPress. Instead of on page optimization you can install Wordpress that is search engine friendly out of the box. Well, don't tell the large number of SEO bloggers on WordPress who've done posts, series, vidcasts and more on making WordPress SEO-compliant.

3. Create a killer CSS design and submit it to CSS galleries "Traditional SEO is all about link building or getting links. Sites doing SEO often look crappy. These days people link web sites that look great just for the sake of the design.

4. Allow trackbacks, use dofollow

5. Socialize, write comments and link other blogs
6. Include social media on your site, use social media yourself

7. Write your own content, say something new, express yourself

8. Compile what you know or what others said and publish it "If everything was said and done already in a particular case, compile it and create a list. Top list are the best solutions

9. Contribute to your favorite online publications "Most publishers will link to your site.

10. Add new content at least every second day

On one pass through, its easy to accept this advice as materially different from SEO, especially with the care that Tadeusz has taken to point out the differences between SEO and his advice.

But the more I read this (as it was re blogged), the more I started recognizing some of these techniques as fairly standard SEO practices today. In Tadeuszs defense, perhaps optimizing for Google.de is unlike what is currently required to optimize for Google.com, but heres my take on his tips:

1. If you don't have a niche, are you sure you have a website?
If your website, blog or business doesn't have a niche, thats a more fundamental failing than marketing problem. Its definitely step 1. But why limit yourself by not doing any keyword research? If you want to blog about crane flies (gross), shouldnt you somehow find out that theyre also called mosquito hawks, mosquito eaters (or skeeter eaters), gallinippers, gollywhoppers, and jimmy spinners?

2. Tweak WordPress to make it more SE friendly
Yes, use WordPress if it makes sense for your site. But at the minimum, do something to enhance its search engine optimization"SEO Title Tag and Add Meta Tags plugins enable you to customize various settings. Why pass up the chance to control your snippet on the Google SERP?

3. Over here, CSS is SEO
Okay, this is debatable, but lots of SEOs will tell you that CSS is the preferred SEO design method (specifically external CSS). And most of the time, a crappy-looking site that hires a professional SEO will get a redesign. Usually, a killer design can only increase your likability. Submitting your CSS design to galleries to get more links back to your site is also just another example of link recruitment, which, again, is pretty old school SEO.

4. Get links, give links

5. Promote your site/business and your brand and get links, give links
Pretty much SEO 1.0 to do something to draw attention to your site from other sites. One of the most popular ways: link to a site, get the site owners attention.

6. SMO
SMO isn't perfectly equivalent with SEO, but really, where do you think the idea to heavily promote your site using social media came from? Diggers?

7. Avoid duplicate content/don't plagiarize and create lots of original content
Technically, I usually tell clients something about keyword-rich original content designed to be attractive to visitors and search engines, but if you selected a niche up in #1, at least you have some sort of keywords that you're using (even if you're absolutely not allowed to look at how other people articulate those concepts).
8. One word: link bait.
Of course it works. I linked, didn't I?

9. Become an authority/promote your site on other sites and recruit links

10. Create original content and update regularly

While many of these tips aren't directly on-point as current SEO techniques, I think most people offering holistic SEO services will at least address everything he mentioned.

The bottom line? Why avoid the established principles of search engine friendly and search engine optimized sites? If theres something that can help make your blog, site or business rank better, trying to prove a point by not using the technique is shooting yourself in the foot. I'm not trying to dismiss Tadeuszs sound advice"but I would like people to recognize that SEO inst just keyword research and comment spam.

About the Author:
Jordan McCollum is a staff writer for the popular marketing blog Marketing Pilgrim. She has worked in search engine optimization with clients including 3M, Little Giant Ladders and ADP. After graduating from Brigham Young University, Jordan joined the SEO copy writing team at the Internet marketing firm 10x Marketing. After 10x closed its doors in December 2006, Jordan became a freelance writer and Internet marketing consultant specializing in SEO. She also has extensive experience with web analytics, conversion rate enhancement and e-mail marketing.

http://www.searchnewz.com

Five Ways to Optimize Your Website for Universal Search

2007-08-04T07:14:00.000-07:00

Making Sure Your Whole Site Works for You
by Tony Baker With everything from pictures to videos showing up in the regular search engine results, you need to make sure to optimize more than just your website landing page. Images, videos and articles are all parts of your site that could be working harder, if you just knew what to do with them. Here are five tips to help universal search work for you.

Press releases matter.

Make sure yours are getting into Google and Yahoo News. If you're not doing press releases, you should seriously consider it. Press releases will get your company's name out there, and give you a chance to one up the competition. Even if you think you have no news, you can comment on industry trends or recent studies relating to your business. The more you get your name out there, the more results you will ultimately see.

Don't overlook images.

Images are going to start showing up in search results based on text around them and the description text in the HTML image tags. It's not difficult to get images onto your site: include pictures of past projects, process illustrations, etc. Pay attention to your image ALT tags, captions and surrounding text so your images show up, too. And always be sure to have keyword-rich descriptions with the image.

If you have video content, distribute it.

Presentations, training videos or interviews could all be working harder for your company. Don't let these just sit on the server when they could be showing up in search engine results and providing even more optimization for your site.

Make sure Google can get to your content.

Is your site easily accessible by search engine spiders? If you don't lay down a clear link path, they may never find it. Also, site maps are absolutely essential. Make sure yours is the proper format, and submitted to Google.

Don't ruin your hard work.

While it's important to prepare for the future, don't overlook the basics. Keyword-rich text and title still matter. Quality links to your site are still essential SEO components. Just because you've discovered new Internet toys for SEO doesn't mean that you should turn away from the tried-and-true methods. Use both for maximum results.

By taking the time to ensure every aspect of your Web site is ready for universal search, you maximize your chances of getting your name in front of potential clients and customers. Follow these tips and jump to the front of the search engine multimedia race.

Become An SEO Warrior In The SEO game

2007-08-04T06:51:00.000-07:00

By: Steven Bradley

How knowledgeable are you about search engine optimization? Rand wants to know.

Since hes often disappointed with the level of knowledge of practicing SEOs, Rand decided to post 10 questions you should know before offering paid seo services. You should definitely know nearly all of these if you plan to charge for optimization, though these 10 questions are certainly not the end all and be all of seo. Rand promised to post his answers sometime in the next day or two, but here are mine.
The Questions

1. What four search engines comprise 90%+ of all general (non site-specific) web search traffic?
2. Explain the concept - the long tail of search.
3. Name the three most important elements in the head section of an HTML document that are employed by search engines.
4. How do search engines treat content inside an IFrame?
5. What resource and query can you use to determine which pages link to any page on SEOmoz.org and contain the words monkey and turnip?
6. What action does Google threaten against websites that sell links without the use of nofollow?
7. What is the difference between local link popularity and global link popularity?
8. Why is Alexa an inaccurate way to estimate the traffic to a given website?
9. Name four types of queries for which Google provides instant answers or onebox results ahead of the standard web results.
10. Describe why a flat site architecture is typically more advantageous for search engine rankings than a deep site architecture.

My Answers

Nothing like putting myself to the test. Hopefully my answers will measure up to Rands answers, but well have to wait a day or two to know.

1. What four search engines comprise 90%+ of all general (non site-specific) web search traffic?

Cool, a simple question to start

* Google
* Yahoo!
* MSN (Live Search)
* Ask

2. Explain the concept - the long tail of search.

The long tail of search refers to the idea that most queries are either unique or searched infrequently. Restated the most common searches make up a small percentage of the overall queries typed each month. The long tail impacts search marketing in that long tail phrases will have less competition and are thus comparatively easier to rank for and that long tail phrases tend to be more targeted in nature.

Since I wrote a post about the long tail of search way back when Ill direct you there for more information and a nifty image.

3. Name the three most important elements in the head section of an HTML document that are employed by search engines.

How about four things. I hope Im not overlooking something obvious here.

* Title tag - easily the most important words youll add to a page
* Meta description - perhaps some minor ranking benefit, but mainly important for improving click through when it appears as the snippet below your link in search results
* Meta robots - for those times when you dont want a page to be indexed or the links on that page to be followed
* The absence of css and javascript - These should be moved to external files

4. How do search engines treat content inside an IFrame?

Content in an iframe will get indexed, but on the URL where that content sits. Its not seen as part of the page that contains the iframe. This is one of the reasons frames in general may not be a good idea.

5. What resource and query can you use to determine which pages link to any page on SEOmoz.org and contain the words monkey and turnip?

Yahoo! and the search would be:

monkey turnip linkdomain:www.seomoz.org

At google you cant combine the link: operator with other advanced operators. This should theoretically work at MSN, but doesnt. It works at Ask, but there are not as many results as at Yahoo!

6. What action does Google threaten against websites that sell links without the use of nofollow?

At best the links will simply be ignored, but more likely the site will lose trust and the ability to pass or flow PageRank and anchor text. Adding nofollow would mean only that link would lose the ability to pass PageRank. So if Google decides you are selling links without the nofollow they may decide to assume that all your links are doing the same. Losing that ability would likely affect both internal and external links. I suppose in some cases Google could decide to penalize a site, but I think there would need to be something else going on.

The issue over paid links and Googles reaction isnt popular with many SEOs. Ive had mixed opinions on the matter, though I suspect it would bother me more if I were more involved with link buying and selling.

7. What is the difference between local link popularity and global link popularity?

Local link popularity is link popularity from topical communities (sites/pages that are topically related to yours). Global link popularity is the total link popularity including links from both topically related and non-related sites/pages.

8. Why is Alexa an inaccurate way to estimate the traffic to a given website?

Alexa sampling is not random. It skews heavily toward webmaster and seo related sites since those sites will attract traffic from from the types of people more likely to have the Alexa toolbar installed. Because the sampling is far from random the traffic estimates are usually inaccurate. Accuracy probably improves for more popular sites, but I wouldnt trust any of the numbers.

You can make use of Alexa data by discovering trends in the reported traffic for a given site or by comparing sites in the same industry. Still the numbers should not be trusted and even the comparisons may not be accurate.

9. Name four types of queries for which Google provides instant answers or onebox results ahead of the standard web results.

* News
* Weather
* Local
* Movies

Heres a nice list I found for what triggers OneBox results if you want to see more.

10. Describe why a flat site architecture is typically more advantageous for search engine rankings than a deep site architecture.

A flat site architecture is more easily crawled enabling more pages of a site to be indexed sooner. A flat architecture also reduces click distance (the number of clicks it takes to get to a page from the home page) and the lower the click distance the more importance is given to a page.

* Ranking Search Results by File Type and by Click Distance
* Click Distance Matters
* SEO and Click Distance

11. BONUS (Answer this one and Ill be very impressed): Name twelve unique metrics search engines are suspected to consider when weighting links and how each affects rankings positively or negatively.

1. Authority of the linking site - The greater the authority of the linking site the better the link.
2. Topical relationship between the sites - The more topically related the sites the better the link.
3. Topical relationship between the pages - The more topically related the pages the better the link.
4. Anchor text of the link - Pages will rank better for the anchor text used to link to them unless the same anchor text is used in too large a percentage of links to the page.
5. One way link or reciprocal - Reciprocal links call into question the reason for the links. One way links are generally preferred, but its ok to trade links within reason.
6. Text surrounding the link - similar as anchor text, but probably less important than the actual anchor text.
7. Age of the link - The longer the link has been in place the more weight it gets.
8. Age of the linking page - The older the linking page the better, though this may have more to do with the age of the link itself.
9. Rate of links acquired - Too many links to a page or site too fast could set off warning flags.
10. Number links on the linking page - The less external links on the page the better.
11. Location of link on the page - In context links are best.
12. PageRank of the link page - Lets face it, its in there. PR does seem to affect how deeply and frequently a site gets crawled. It also seems to go into the determination of a page being in the main index or the supplemental index. PR is of course a Google only metric, but the other engines have their own version.

Im not entirely certain if all of the above come into play and some are given much more weight than others. The situation is also different at different search engines. Google for example places the most emphasis on trust and authority than any of the engines. Search engines will likely look at more when determining what is and isnt a quality link.

You can find more search engine ranking factors at SEOmoz. There are a few more about links that I didnt mention above, but I didnt want to look until I had my list.

Those are my answers and hopefully they pass the Rand test. Rands answers should be available in a day or two and Ill update this post with a link to them and a comparison to see how well my answers stand up.

How do you think I did? Did I miss anything or do you have more to add?

Update: Rand posted his answers and it looks like I did quite well with mine. I guess Im ok to charge for seo services after all. Danny Sullivan sent Rand a few more questions, which Rand lists at the bottom of the post. They look a little more challenging and if I get a moment Ill give it a go at answering them.

Apparently the questions were well received, though Lisa Barone wondered are we setting the bar too low for SEOs? Lisa may be right as these 10 questions arent all that hard.

If you want more challenging questions Mozzer Scott is now working on advanced test that will be available in a few weeks. I think it will be an interesting way to gauge your seo knowledge and I wonder if this may be the beginning of an SEOmoz seo certificate in the wings. How about it Rand, any thoughts on SEOmoz certification?

Seo - Can A Blog Based On Personality Be Good Seo?

2007-08-04T06:31:00.000-07:00

There are very few people on earth who can get away with writing a blog that is based solely on their personality. Usually the individuals who can get away with this have some sort of reputation that precedes them such as a famous lobbyist, actor, columnist, author or humorist. Blogs that cover too many subjects or whose posts wander all over the place are not as friendly to the big search engine spiders.

As personality based blogs are not really guaranteed in terms of SEO, unless your own name is already highly ranked in the search engines you need to choose a theme for your business blog. If your name brings up zero references when you Google yourself then you are not likely to be a good candidate to write a blog.

Sticking to one theme for a blog is called niche marketing. Remember that a theme can also include different topics. For instance a blog that has a gardening theme could have articles on fountains, growing tomatoes and lawn furniture. The trick is to choose a theme that is broad enough to encompass what you want to sell but not so large that you attract everyone on the web to your site.

Although attracting large numbers of people to your site sounds like a good idea you have to remember that these visitors are more likely to be just surfers and not what internet marketers call targeted traffic. Targeted traffic refers to individuals who are interested enough in your theme to actually point and click and by. Untargeted window shoppers do nothing but strain the capacity of your domain and may even leave unwanted comments on your blogs. Perhaps the Kings of unwanted responses on are those Nigerian scam artists. Usually they are soiling a blog with their spam within days of anyone mounting a blog anywhere on the Internet.

Christopher Angus is a SEO and Website Marketer. He can be contacted at: Sales (at) Brilliantseo.com http://www.chooseinsurance.co.uk http://www.mobility-direct.co.uk http://www.mdhsasbestosconsultants.com

Using Images For Local SEO

2007-08-04T06:27:00.000-07:00

Google's recent deployment of Universal Search resulted in the inclusion of content drawn in from their other search verticals into the main web search results. As this integration trend continues, and as Google further expands upon the 200+ signals they use for ranking, it becomes increasingly important to diversify a site's presence on the web, and to work on ranking well in each of the various areas of vertical search.

We might reasonably expect that "diversification of signal" could also help with ranking in each of the individual verticals as well. The lines are blurring and beneficial ranking in one area can now leach over to affect another. For these reasons I'm providing some suggestions for using images to achieve better rankings for local businesses and for local search.

Images & Local Search for Google Universal Search

A recent Hitwise report indicates that usage of Google Maps increased significantly as a result of more visibility from Universal Search. Another long-running, high-performing vertical at Google is Image Search—until the acquisition of YouTube, Image Search was Google's second most-visited property. So, leveraging a combination of optimizations for both local search and image search could provide some beneficial synergies.

Most local SEO approaches have focused mainly on yellow pages directory information elements and general search optimizations: using business name and locality in the TITLE/H1/BODY-text; inclusion of business address on all pages of the site; updating of business profile information in the many local directory and info sites; etc. Most of these approaches seem a bit skimpily staid from my viewpoint—I think that local search marketing needs to go further towards the broad enhancement of a business's basic information. Various image optimizations can do this.

A lot of small business websites I see out in the wild are pretty thin on content. As a consumer, I find that unsatisfying. True, when I'm seeking a local business, I may mainly want to see the basic stuff: where are they located; is there a map; what are their hours of operation; and what's their phone number. Though, if they were more detailed in many ways, I wouldn't have to call them, nine times out of ten… a picture is worth a thousand words, so I see both SEO value and benefit to user-experience in beefing up local biz sites' image usage.

So, what are some of the potential search optimization benefits to various image optimizations?

* Pages which are already formed well and which have plenty of text content might benefit from containing images which also sing to the search engine on the page's desired keywords. If users are seeking "widgets in Peoria", having pictures of "widgets in Peoria" increases the signal and page relevancy to the search engines.
* Having content available to appear in image search results may increase chances of links or content appearing in regular web search results under the new Universal Search paradigm.
* Increasing the reasons that users might visit your site and linger on its pages could help drive up incremental traffic, giving the site more credibility in the search engine's eyes.
* Keeping users on your site a little longer once they arrive could help out with beefing up the natural search quality score that Google's undoubtedly using as a ranking factor. Sites/pages where users bail out rapidly would likely generate a negative ranking signal—it must be bad quality if a user leaves quickly, and search engines can see when a user clicks the back button quickly and returns to their search results.
* Providing more information such as images to prospective clients can increase the chances of conversion. Not only does it help them select one provider out of the crowd, but merely having the pictures available makes the business seem more open and inviting. The implicit transparency automatically makes a business appear more honest and trustworthy. So, having pictures in various online directories may help bring more people to the business and to the website.
* Having a company's logo icon associated with their listing in various directories may enhance a user's perception of the quality and trustworthiness of the business.

Ways to use images for local SEO

Here's a handful of image optimizations which can benefit the overall search marketing and online marketing programs for local business sites:

* Provide a photo of your business facility location/building on your site. If there's a particularly beautiful or interesting view looking out from your business, you might consider adding that as well. If you're located near a particular point of interest or other landmark, having the name of it on your site could help in associating your business with that area.
* Provide photos of all your products on your site if you haven't already. Or, if you're a service-based business, provide photos of smiling employees providing that service.
* It's very common to add in a map or link to a map on a local business's website. I think it's beneficial for SEO to have the map image stored on the same domain name as the site, though it's preferable for users to pull in a map dynamically through one of the major providers so that all the zooming and panning controls can be available.
* If your local business has its own blog, add a blog map or FeedMap onto it. This will add a local signal to the blog, and also bring it to the attention of other bloggers in your local area who are also participating in he FeedMaps.
* Always add ALT text into image tags! Describe the images using valuable keywords. Do not over-stuff keywords into ALT text! Make it brief, and naturally-written. Using ALT text is also good for best usability and accessibility as well. For a map image, the ALT text ought to include the business name and location. Ex: "Acme Hotel at 100 Elm St., Springfield, MO 65721"
* Try to also provide similar caption text just below or to the side of images (ideal for the text to be in the same table cell as the image itself, for close contextual association with the image). Visible caption text can be longer than ALT text, but it should still be written in a natural-sounding manner, geared towards consumers.
* Throughout a local site, on all pages the logo image should be linked back to the homepage with relevant ALT text. I suggest using only the business name, business type, and city name. Ex: "Jane's Clip Shop—Hair Salon in Seattle"
* For businesses such as restaurants, it may be beneficial to add photos of celebrities who have visited the establishment. I see this in all the Asian food restaurants in my neighborhood, since the Dallas Cowboys practice facility is nearby—those shops take great pride in snapping photos of the football players and posting them at the checkout counter. This could translate well for online, too—people perform tons of searches on celebrity names all the time, so this could bring traffic to a business site which could convert. The main thing is that it could drive up inbound links, and get users to linger longer on the site, perhaps bolstering the quality scores.
* For larger companies, or companies involved in more stuff that's of interest to the general public, add a press kit on the site, including photos of your business and products, and provide loose enough licensing to allow users to take and use those images for their uses as long as they credit you with text below the photo, linking your business name back to your homepage.
* Lots of online marketers have written articles about engaging with the blogosphere to drive inbound links. I won't go into details, but you could offer free products or services to local bloggers and other reviewers—when you request them to review you, and when you contact them you could provide them with the link to the press kit or to a photo of your business, or to a picture of the specific product or service which they'd be welcome to use in their reviews. Assisting and enabling people to review you can help build inbound links and clickthroughs from the reviews. (You could do this with no requirement that reviewers necessarily provide a positive review or anything—positive or negative, you still win on the SEO front if they hyperlink their posting back to you.) The link should be back to a related info page about the product/service on your site, and having the picture included helps optimize the signal on the blog post as well.
* National chain stores should try to provide a map and a picture of each location on their store locator pages. There's no reason why they couldn't get each of their locations to email them a digital picture.
* Submit your site's images to Google's Image Labeler program, (sign up through your Google Webmaster Tools account). This will enable your site's images to get independently tagged with keywords by the Image Labeler game players. Adding more trustworthy keyword signals may help your images rank above others.
* Enhance your business listings in major directories by adding images into their profiles. A number of the main local directories allow this, though some may charge for it. In other cases, any user could upload their pictures of your business—so I suggest that you might want to manage your reputation by being first in line to upload your best pictures before others do. Some of the images from other directories are getting absorbed into Google Maps and displayed there, even though Google's also now allowing users to upload their own. Here's a few: InfoUSA/DAplus, Superpages, Yahoo, CitySearch, Yellowpages.com, Google Maps and Yelp.
* Various directories such as Superpages and Yelp have reviews widgets which can be added onto your site—adding these graphic elements to your site could further enhance your conversions, if you have sufficiently positive reviews.
* Add Photos of the business facility and/or location into photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Fotki and 23. Include links pointing back to your website in the image's caption text, where possible. When adding pictures of your facility and location into Flickr, be sure to drag the image onto the mapped location for the address. Also, upload a picture of each of your products into these photo sharing sites, and then link them each back to the specific product page. Be sure to use all the available features of the image sharing sites in addition to the caption text—enter in a title for the picture, keyword tags, and associate them with any groups, albums, or sets which have a related theme.
* eBay is chock full of images, and this can be leveraged as a sort of advertising medium. I know that some businesses don't consider eBay to be a worthwhile distribution channel for them, but if you consider them as a promotional vehicle, they can be quite a good value. All eBay auctions should have an image included in them, and you should be able to format your product listing to link back to your site. What's the local flavor with this? eBay's advanced search allows consumers to search for products in their geographic area, so there is a bit of a local association, even though I expect that very few people make use of this feature. Still, for providers of products that are particularly heavy and expensive to transport, the local aspect may be very strong in eBay.
* For reasons similar to eBay, upload listings of products to Google Base, including pictures, so that your images will appear in Google Products (formerly known as "Froogle").
* Include a picture in your email campaigns along with a link back to your site. There's a really great little Mexican food restaurant here in Coppell, Texas, which sometimes emails out weekly special notices, and they will include a photo of the dish that has the special, cheap price. I can tell you—the days they offer those specials they fill up their restaurant! Of course, you should follow other best practices for email marketing—only do opt-in for instance. The restaurant in question has a jar at the front which says something like "Drop your business card in to be notified about our specials."
* Get your suppliers to link back to you! I've seen a great many B2B sites out there which include a page listing their clients/partners logos. Invite any/all of your suppliers to do this—squeeze them into committing to it the next time you place an order or re-sign contracts with them. Provide them with your logo image and ask them to link it back to your company website in order to pass PageRank to you.

Once a site has accomplished basic SEO and basic Local SEO steps, increasing the diversity of online signals will be the key to advanced SEO. These image optimization tips for local SEO can help with promoting the business and ranking of the site through diversity of signal. I've likely only touched the surface here—feel free to submit additional tips in the comments.

Chris "Silver" Smith is Lead Strategist at Netconcepts. The Locals Only column appears on Mondays at Search Engine Land.

VirtuaDOM Virtual Private Domain Introduces Domain Name Virtualization

2007-08-04T06:25:00.000-07:00

ewswireToday - /newswire/ - Nicosia, Cyprus, 07/29/2007 - Domain Name Virtualization™ extends Internet capabilities. It allows our VirtuaDOM Virtual Private Domain™ name system to exist alongside the traditional naming systems currently in use on the Internet.

Domain Name Virtualization™ solution is a new approach to domain management. It extends internet capabilities that enables users to benefit from more descriptive and relevant internet names.

VirtuaDOM Virtual Private Domain™ was developed in response to the growing need of the Internet community, and is designed to create a structured, open and constantly evolving Internet naming architecture which will improve the online experience for people everywhere.

New top-level domains, such as .book, .game, .movie and .shop, reserved for specific types of businesses, increase the value of a web name by instantly telling users about the nature of web content. A memorable VirtuaDOM web address tells the world that you are part of a new generation of online experiences. Whether you are an individual, small or medium sized business, or a large corporation, Virtual Private Domain can be your web address.

VirtuaDOM™ does not fall under the authority of ICANN. VirtuaDOM has developed cutting-edge technology and solutions that allow the Virtual Private Domain name system to exist alongside the traditional naming systems currently in use on the Internet.

But VirtuaDOM is so much more than the provision of a domain name or Internet space, VirtuaDOM is working to deliver innovative Internet based services and creates an environment for new communication channels.

VirtuaDOM.com offers 25 free value-added services and features with every Virtual Private Domain registration, including 18 sub-domains, such as phone.myweb.shop.

VirtuaDOM sub-domains can be used to identify various communication services, such as fax, phone, mobile, voice-mail systems, IP telephony, or GPS coordinates. The use of VirtuaDOM offers multiple opportunities for modern communication scenarios in various areas. VirtuaDOM provides a platform for the development of services that can enhance the scope of this outreach.

Registration of VirtuaDOM domain names is possible for any individual or business, anywhere in the world. Virtual Private Domains are accessible to everyone who enable their browser to view virtual links.

VirtuaDOM names are registered on a first come, first served basis. The party requesting registration of a name is responsible that, to her or his knowledge, the use of a given name does not violate trademark or other statutes.

Copyright friendly.VirtuaDOM Virtual Private Domains are unique and memorable and use the Internet's existing web server infrastructure. VirtuaDOM only employs pages that are on websites. So for copyright holders, policing VirtuaDOM is exactly the same as policing the traditional websites currently in use on the Internet.

Branded Top-Level Domains. VirtuaDOM will create identity for your group, community or company on the Internet and introduce your own sponsored .mybrand top-level domain to the millions of Internet users that have access to VirtuaDOM web space.

Personalised Top-Level Domains. VirtuaDOM afford individuals the opportunity to use their private domains to showcase their personalities, nicknames, brands or sense of humour.

Don't miss out on the VirtuaDOM phenomenon! Under .com, there are no English words still available for registration. Under VirtuaDOM, the sky is still the limit. So be creative and register names that reflect your company's image.

VirtuaDOM.com provides the Cash For Virtual™ reseller solutions to internet service providers, hosting companies, consultants, web developer, designer or SEO consultants and more.

Domain Names Help Companies Build Brand Awarenes

2007-08-04T06:22:00.000-07:00

A memorable and brandable dotcom domain name can have immediate impact on sales and profits according to Internet marketing experts.

Everyone of us remembers our favorite ad jingle even though that jingle may be 30 or more years old.

One good slogan or ad message aka branding can pay huge dividends for a business for years and years to come according to Scott Alliy President of Allied Internet Solutions Inc. and DomainsAvailableNow.com.

In 2002 Scott conceived the concept of centralized search for the training industry. He and his staff built their business around a brandable domain name and today FindaSeminar.com is the worlds largest training search engine.

Domain names says Scott are a fantastic vehicle to use to bring your current business or concept to the market. He suggests that business owners invest in multiple brandable domain names to increase for three reasons.

Scott has learned from experience that in a busy world if you want people to find your business you have to make it easy for them to do so. One of the best ways to do that now and for the forseeable future says Scott is by owning multiple brandable domain names and an attractive and functional Internet website.

First says Scott "not everyone thinks of your product or service in the same way". Some people may think of a training event as training while others see it as a seminar and still others see it as a workshop. By owning all variations of your domain name you are increasing the odds of receiving business by a broader audience that sees your business in their own way.

Second says Scott "There will come a time when you will develop promotional marketing material for new product or service announcements". You will want to add brandable domain names to reinforce your ad message and therefore make it easy for new customers to find your business.

The third and certainly a very import benefit of obtaining multiple brandable domain names adds Scott is that by acquiring valuable Internet domain names relating to your business you are creating a protective shield around your market space and thus preventing competitors from encroaching on your market.

It is not necessary to have one website for each domain name relating to your business says Scott who advises Internet business owners to build one rock solid site and simply redirect the other domain names to their main website.

Scott warns business owners to act fast to secure their marketspace by acquiring key phrase domain names relating to thier business products and services.

Recent industry buzz about the benefits of this new Internet marketing strategy along with growing media coverage of this new marketing strategy has led business owners to increase acquisitions of brandable key phrase domain names. Scott expects that just like the one word domain names the best key phrase domain names will soon be snapped up.

For more information or to shop for premium dotcom domain names by category please visit http://www.domainsavailablenow.com

About Us: Allied Internet Solutions Inc. is a Houston Texas based consulting firm offering Internet marketing SEO and web design and development services. Scott Alliy President of AIS is creator of FindaSeminar.com and DomainsAvailableNow.com and oversees a portfolio of over 800 domain names and websites many of which the company is offering for sale or lease at http://www.DomainsAvailableNow.com

Contact Info:
Helen Alliy
Director
Allied Internet Solutions Inc.
800 349-1935

Additional:

Company: DomainsAvaialbleNow.com

Country: United States

Contact: Helen Alliy

Website: http://www.DomainsAvailableNow.com

Bus E-Mail: info@domainsavailablenow.com

Phone: 800 349 1935

SEO - Selecting A Domain Name

2007-08-04T06:17:00.000-07:00

Written by EditorsChoice

Selecting a good domain name is the key factor for attaining a better page ranking. The most commonly used aspect while choosing a domain name is the usage of keyword in the URL. You can take the idea of selecting a domain name that has low competition but with good demand can ultimately help in Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

There are many factors to keep in mind while naming your domain. A good domain name should be short and easy to spell by the users. By avoiding long domain name will help the searchers to find your website and also to remember the name much easily. The keyword used in your domain name can be descriptive to help the internet users to memorize.

Make sure to include the domain name that is unique and at the same time keyword rich. Usage of more keywords in your domain name will help in a better ranking which in turn may also help the searchers to find your website. The use of more than two keywords can bring a negative impact, as it can make the domain name lengthier and the chance of misspelling is more. So it better to use a maximum of two keywords. Another drawback is that it can also make your email address long. So it is recommended the use of shorter and catchy domain names.

Among a large number of steps while choosing a domain name, the most important and foremost one is whether you are choosing a free or paid domain. In all these, give consideration to the customer so that your potential users can find your website.

Another important factor to be remembered in domain naming is the use of hyphens (-). If you are using two or more keywords, without separators, as your domain name it can be interesting, but at the same time the search engine may consider it as a single keyword. In this case, it is advised to use hyphen to separate the keywords. But for internet users the domain name without hyphen will be easier to remember and the one with hyphens tend to bring confusion for the users. A main solution for this issue is that you may use hyphened domain name during the registration with a search engine and for online advertising. At the same time go for a domain name which uses no hyphen, so that it may help the people who prefer just keywords during the searching.

Taking these tips into consideration will help you in selecting an excellent domain name for your website. You can register multiple variants for your website at the price of a single domain name. Also, make sure to avoid the use of numbers in your domain name as it may prevent confusion. In place of keywords you can also use some unique brand names for your website

Selecting a good business and domain name can draw a good traffic, and makes the entire process of optimization much easier. All you require is a shorter and unique web address that can bring your website among the top listing.

Copyright © 2006 Andreas Obermueller

About the Author:

Andreas Obermueller is webmaster of
Hit4Biz.com - Marketing Related Information
and recommends Marble Host for reliable Web Hosting

Article Source: http://www.answer-site.com

Stumbleupon can get your AdSense Account Banned for Invalid Impressions Fraud

2007-07-30T13:38:00.000-07:00

I know this sounds very hard to believe but it is a real fact and many webmasters that practice Stumbling had felt it. The wost thing about that is that most of them didn’t really realized what they were doing wrong as their visitors did not do any click frauds, and therefore there was no reason for their account to be banned. In reality Click Frauds are one of the many CPC frauds on the Internet.

The similarity in all banned from AdSense webmasters was that they all used massive stumbling as primary traffic source. Also and Google sent them email stating that they ban/terminate their accounts for invalid ad impressions, but didn’t explain what exactly that meant bu that, and actually I didn’t know also until I found one book on per-per-click marketing book where the I stumbled across the term invalid impressions fraud

A large number of impressions, without the accompanying click on your ad - if you notice that there are a lot of impressions (views) of your advertising, this could indicate impression fraud. Impression fraud is artificial inflation of your ad impressions that may cause your ad click-through rates to drop below the Google minimum and your ad will be disabled. Until you realize this, your competitors have free reign to use your keywords, sometimes at bargain prices. As well, your relevancy ratings for search engines may drop as they record numerous impressions, but no interest shown via visits to your website, which could lead to a shutdown of your campaign.

— source: Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing Handbook

Most of the AdSense Publishers know that Stumblers generally don’t click on ads and this somehow generates very low CTR. Depending on the ads generated to your particular page and the number of AD units, you might get stuck in a situation where your CTR goes below the required minimum and therefore you’re unintentionally making impression fraud. In order to protect their publishers (actually to keep their ads active so that they continue to pay) AdSense might send you the “you’re banned” email that can get you in really bad situation.

If you do get this email, I strongly suggest that you contact AdSense and tell them that you will lower the number of your ad units and ask them to give you some test period where you can increase your CTR above the minimum. Actually most publisher are afraid to get banned for high CTR, but in this case having low CTR is also a big problem.

Also I strongly suggest that if you have very low CTR (lower than 1%) you should try to change/optimize your pages in order to show highly relative AdSense ads or lower the ad units so that you CTR can go higher. This is common need for more clicks, but still some type of content don’t really generate too many clickers and in this case we must artificially keep the CTR higher due to this impressions fraud problem.

Please note that I don’t really have that much experience with impressions frauds since all my websites have average CTR between 5%-30% and I never got below the 1% mark. If you know more on that topic, please consider sharing it with us and helping fellow webmasters.

Top Adsense paying keywords - auto niche

2007-07-30T13:28:00.000-07:00

free auto insurance quote  $53.69
auto insurance specialist  $49.63
inexpensive auto insurance  $42.54
safe auto insurance    $40.82
compare auto insurance    $39.09
refinance loan rates    $36.97
auto insurance quote    $36.23
auto insurance quotes    $35.53
auto insurance comparison  $35.02
auto insurence    $34.37
auto insurance    $34.21
nj auto insurance    $34.04
online auto insurance    $31.80
auto insurance california  $31.56
new jersey auto insurance  $31.42
auto insurance specialists  $30.60
auto insurances    $28.08
auto insurace      $27.78
auto quote      $26.38
cheapest auto insurance  $26.32
auto insurance companies  $25.59
refinance car loans    $25.56
auto insurance rates    $25.54
affordable auto insurance  $25.47
bad credit refinance    $24.46
auto ins      $24.45
low cost auto insurance  $24.30
auto insurers      $24.09
auto refinance loans    $23.92
best auto insurance    $23.53
cheap auto insurance    $22.96
auto car insurance    $22.96
auto insurance agencies  $20.77
auto insurance coverage  $20.37
auto insurance agents    $20.21
auto insurance policy    $19.97
commercial auto insurance  $19.30
bad credit auto refinance  $17.55
used car refinance    $17.27
refinancing auto loan    $17.12
refinance my auto loan   $16.89
auto owners insurance    $16.87
car insurance      $16.73
auto refinance rate    $16.43
auto insurance company    $15.88
auto insurance agency    $15.72
auto refinance      $15.27
auto refinancing    $15.18
refinance auto loan    $14.37
auto refinance rates    $14.27
rate auto      $14.26
auto insurance agent    $12.56
hertz car rental    $11.67
new auto      $11.25
car loans      $10.50
auto parts warehouse    $10.36
national car rental    $9.32
car cover      $9.29
auto loans      $9.16
auto insurance claims    $9.04
purchase auto      $8.91
car accident      $8.87
auto rental      $8.26
auto credit      $8.22
national car      $8.12
auto loan      $7.53
financing auto    $7.36
auto finance      $7.04
rent a car      $6.72
rent car      $6.38
auto loan rates    $6.04
car rental      $5.21
new car      $4.73
auto glass      $4.71
price new auto    $4.49
auto transport    $4.21
rental cars      $4.14
car prices      $4.10
car com      $4.02
cheap car rental    $3.72
car talk      $3.66
car rentals      $3.59
buying auto      $3.56
auto        $3.55
auto dealers      $3.40
cheap car rentals    $3.33
auto dealer      $3.29
car search      $3.29
napa auto      $3.27
car lease      $3.27
auto repair shop    $3.24
auto dealerships    $3.16
car crash      $3.12
auto repair      $3.05
car dealerships    $3.02
car dealers      $2.89
used car prices    $2.89
car value      $2.87
napa auto parts    $2.85
buy a car      $2.82
price auto      $2.80
car accidents      $2.76
auto review      $2.68
used car     $2.66
car sales      $2.57
car values      $2.55
auto calculator    $2.53
cheap auto parts    $2.53
search auto      $2.46
used cars      $2.18
used auto      $2.18
used car values    $2.17
car alarms      $2.13
online auto parts    $2.12
cars        $2.05
car trader      $1.99
auto parts      $1.98
ipod car      $1.94
cars for sale      $1.92
auto sales      $1.86
car crashes      $1.86
replacement auto parts    $1.83
car covers      $1.81
car for sale      $1.80
auto parts store    $1.78
aftermarket auto parts   $1.77
car reviews      $1.76
car auctions      $1.76
auto body parts    $1.74
car seats      $1.64
used car parts      $1.64
discount auto parts    $1.60
car battery      $1.57
auto accessories    $1.55
auto auctions      $1.55
car alarm      $1.53
car auction      $1.51
car speakers      $1.49
smart car      $1.45
car stereos      $1.43
import auto parts    $1.41
car soup      $1.41
auto grills      $1.38
auto auction      $1.36
auto trader com    $1.33
ford auto parts    $1.32
2007 auto      $1.29
auto part      $1.27
remote car starters    $1.27
advance auto      $1.26
car seat covers    $1.26
auto paint      $1.26
car stereo      $1.25
performance auto parts    $1.25
car wash      $1.19
kit car      $1.17
advance auto parts    $1.16
auto parts distributor    $1.16
car starters      $1.16
used auto parts    $1.13
2006 auto      $1.13
car audio      $1.10
auto zone      $1.10
advanced auto      $1.10
remote car starter    $1.10
new and used auto parts  $1.08
car starter      $1.08
advanced auto parts    $1.06
auto salvage      $1.06
car parts      $1.03
rebuilt auto parts    $1.01

150 Highest Paying Adsense Keywords Revealed!

2007-07-30T13:21:00.000-07:00

150 Highest Paying Adsense Keywords Revealed!

1 mesothelioma

2 cheap auto insurance

3 consolidate student loan

4 life insurance quote

5 cheap car insurance

6 refinance home

7 car insurance quote

8 refinancing

9 online car insurance

10 online insurance quotes

11 criminal defense lawyer

12 debt consolidation

13 refinance home mortgage

14 medical malpractice lawyer Michigan

15 bad credit home loan

16 loan refinance

17 tax attorney

18 online insurance quote

19 laptop data recovery

20 medical malpractice Michigan

21 car insurance rates

22 equity home loan

23 register domain name

24 data recovery service

25 life insurance rates

26 auto insurance rates

27 cheapest car insurance

28 domain register

29 dui attorney

30 lawyer medical malpractice

31 home loan

32 credit card consolidation

33 car accident lawyer

34 free debt consolidation

35 car insurance

36 term life insurance

37 second mortgage

38 hard drive data recovery

39 dui lawyer

40 refinance leads

41 raid data recovery

42 home loans

43 mortgage loan leads

44 refinance

45 mortgage internet leads

46 domain registration

47 credit card debt consolidation

48 low rate mortgage

49 mortgages

50 fitness franchise

51 debt consolidator

52 california home loan

53 medical malpractice new york

54 credit card machines

55 digital asset management

56 malpractice attorney

57 help desk software

58 criminal defense attorney

59 domain names

60 mortgage loan

61 accept credit cards

62 mortgage broker leads

63 best mortgage rate

64 online credit card processing

65 personal injury lawyer

66 mesothelioma attorney

67 fixed rate mortgage

68 accident attorney

69 conference calling

70 sub prime mortgage leads

71 home improvement loans

72 domain hosting

73 defense attorney

74 credit card 0 apr

75 data recovery

76 credit card merchant account

77 credit card acceptance

78 injury lawyer

79 currency trading

80 mortgage leads

81 merchant credit card

82 business intelligence

83 injury attorney

84 network marketing software

85 sales leads

86 online college degree

87 leads lists

88 mba online degree

89 debt counseling

90 malpractice attorneys

91 debt management

92 domain web hosting

93 crm software

94 edi software

95 credit card service

96 lawyers malpractice

97 cheap web hosting

98 web content management tool

99 Chicago medical malpractice

100 ecommerce web hosting

101 mortgage rate

102 subprime mortgage leads

103 mortgage rates

104 balance transfer credit card

105 safeco insurance

106 annuity leads

107 mortgage leads for sale

108 attorneys medical malpractice

109 debt consolidation leads

110 stock trading online

111 inexpensive web hosting

112 web content management software

113 virtual web hosting

114 credit card processor

115 life insurance

116 medigap insurance

117 web hosting reseller

118 hosting

119 california mortgage

120 orlando medical malpractice

121 online trading

122 crm online

123 special finance leads

124 direct mail lists

125 asbestos lung cancer

126 business sales leads

127 debt free

128 asset management software

129 debt solution

130 low interest credit card

131 card credit debt

132 exclusive mortgage leads

133 whole life insurance

134 mortgage interest rate

135 discount web hosting

136 debt relief

137 lawyer houston

138 online associate degree

139 web site content management

140 lawyers medical malpractice

141 credit card machine

142 orange county search engine optimization

143 wireless credit card

144 adjustable rate mortgage

145 asset management technology

146 debt help

147 online bachelor degree

148 duplication dvd

149 mortgage

150 automotive direct mail

http://www.flixya.com

SEO Epiphanies

2007-07-30T04:21:00.001-07:00

By Shari Thurow, The ClickZ Network, Jul 30, 2007

Have you ever experienced a search engine optimization (SEO) epiphany? Newbies and experienced SEO professionals alike have SEO epiphanies periodically. When one occurs, it fundamentally changes the way you approach the optimization process.

Maybe you might not actually change methodologies, as the fundamental core of SEO hasn't changed in over 10 years. But perhaps the way you phrase paragraphs in a report changes. Maybe the formatting or allocation of screen real estate on a Web site is modified. Maybe you discovered a single word or idea that helps you communicate with clients more effectively.

I love experiencing SEO epiphanies. I've been designing and optimizing Web sites since 1995, and have experienced many, many epiphanies. Three of them completely changed the way I approached the optimization process. Here they are.

Use the Users' Language

The phrase "use the users' language" is a mantra in both the SEO and usability communities. If you want people to find the products, services, or information offered on your Web site, you must describe it and label it with the same or similar terminology that your target audience uses.

Not rocket science, right? This SEO epiphany hardly seems like an epiphany at all – it's actually common sense. Truthfully, though, it might be common knowledge to SEO and usability professionals, but it isn't common knowledge to other professionals, such as brand evangelists, journalists, and others involved in online publicity.

Sometimes, we become so deeply entrenched in our own industry that we forget others do not understand our lingo and our approach to search engine visibility. We understand keyword research as it is often a part of our daily work. Most people have never used a keyword research tool.

I remember experiencing this epiphany in the mid '90s. I also remember slapping my forehead and saying, "Duh!" Little did I know at the time it was also my first Web site usability epiphany.

Search Is Not a Linear, Singular Behavior

I'm still amazed that many intermediate and advanced SEO professionals continue to believe search is a linear process, even though they're presented with search behavior data year after year.

In an ideal world, searchers would: 1. Type keywords in a search engine (querying behavior).
2. Scan and read search engine results pages (SERP) for most desired information.
3. Click a link.
4. Land on a page containing desired information.
5. Purchase.

Web analytics data and usability test results show people view multiple pages before making a final purchase. Site visitors aren't going to hand over personal information (name, address, credit cart numbers, etc.) until they're sure your Web business is credible and secure. One page view won't accomplish that credibility.

Likewise, shoppers compare prices, sizes, and availability. One page view isn't going to accomplish every comparison shoppers make. So why do SEO professionals continue to promote the concept that search is a linear process? The answer may come in an epiphany at a later time.

My epiphany about search behavior was a very specific occurrence. I was in graduate school where an assignment was to read and write an essay about berrypicking. Many SEO experts, including myself, like to believe we're unique in our skills and talents. Reading Bates' article on berrypicking made me realize search behavior research was in existence long before the Web, and that I had a lot of catching up to do. Humility was a large part of that epiphany.

Understanding the Search Experience

I confess that every time I hear an SEO professional (especially a black-hat one) make statements about the "user experience," I wish I could press a mute button and shut them up. The vast majority of SEO professionals don't know jack about user experience for one simple reason: they don't usability test prototypes and final interfaces.

This leads to probably my greatest SEO epiphany to date: people don't think or act like I do.

I'll never forget my first usability test as an observer. I never usability test my own interfaces because I'm not objective about my own designs, but I do usability test others' interfaces. Because it was my first usability test, I worked with an experienced facilitator. Maintaining an objective demeanor is no easy task. It certainly takes practice. You don't want to lead usability test participants to do what you want them to do. You have to observe their actual, unassisted behavior.

It was a good thing usability test participants couldn't see my facial expressions during that first usability test experience. Everything Jared Spool, Jakob Nielsen, and Eric Schaffer have said about usability testing unfolded before my eyes. People expressed how "cool" something was about the interface, yet none made a purchase. Bam! The difference between a focus group and usability testing -- marketing professionals and brand evangelists can preach their focus group results all they want. The bottom line is, site visitors didn't "Add to Cart."

I listened to test participants say they were going to click a link, then watched as they clicked a different link. I saw the results of eye tracking. People may look at something on a Web page, but still not take a desired action.

In other words, usability test participants exhibited completely different behavior than I expected. I was an observer. I wasn't supposed to speak. I couldn't say, "Can't you just read this navigation button? There is a keyword in it." I observed.

That top position in Google became less and less important when I realized positioning doesn't matter if site visitors have a negative experience. Positive brand impact disappeared. The link development opportunity disappeared. SEO professionals can quote usability experts to make their methodologies seem more credible, but until you actually objectively watch people use an interface, you know nothing at all about user experience. People have limited information about their own behavior. What people say and what people do in actual usability tests are so different. People cannot objectively analyze their own behavior.

This SEO epiphany forever changed the way I approached Web design, usability testing, and optimization. Search behavior became a part of my persona/profile development. On the whiteboard over my desk I've written, "Get over yourself." Search engine optimization isn't about optimizing for Google, Yahoo, and other commercial search engines. SEO is about optimizing your site for people.

Conclusion

I've had many SEO epiphanies over the years, but these three that stood out. Have any of you experienced any SEO epiphanies that made you a better search engine marketer? I'd love to hear your experiences.

Earn More by Section Targeting Google Adsense

2007-07-28T12:35:00.000-07:00

Earn More by Section Targeting Google Adsense
By Rodney Goldston
July 26, 2007
(americanchronicle.com)

Ever wonder why the your Google Adsense ads don't make good sense at all. In this article I will teach you about section targeting to insure that your Google Ads match up with the content of your web pages.

What is section targeting?

Section targeting allows you to suggest sections of your text and HTML content that you'd like Google to emphasize or downplay when matching ads to your site's content.

By providing Google with your suggestions, you can assist them in improving your ad targeting. Only those familiar with HTML should attempt to implement section targeting. To implement section targeting, you'll need to add a set of special HTML comment tags to your code. These tags will mark the beginning and end of whichever section(s) you'd like to emphasize or de-emphasize for ad targeting.

The HTML tags to emphasize a page section take the following format:

You can also designate sections you'd like to have ignored by adding a (weight=ignore) to the starting tag:

With these tags added to your HTML code, your final code may look like the following:

This is the text of your webpage. Most of your content resides here.

You can use section targeting to make suggestions about as many sections of a page as you like. However, please be aware that results are not guaranteed, and that it may take up to 2 weeks before website crawlers take into account any changes you've made to your site.

In order to properly implement this feature, you'll need to include a significant amount of content within the section targeting tags. Including insufficient content may result in less relevant ads or PSAs. In addition, please keep in mind that this feature should only be used to emphasize significant sections of your site's relevant content. It is against Google's program policies to manipulate the ad targeting to result in ads that are not relevant to the content of your pages.
Rodney Goldston is an Entrepreneur, and Sales & Marketing expert with more than a decade of experience. Lucent Technologies, Subaru America, Great American Opportunities, and GMAC are just a few of the companies that have benefited from

Rodney's sales & marketing expertise.

He is the owner of the internet marketing website www.AskBigPapa.com which provides support for internet marketing entrepreneurs.

Rodney provides sales and marketing consulting services and can be reached via his websites AskBigPapa.com or RodneyGoldston.com

Keyword Research for Organic SEO

2007-07-27T02:16:00.000-07:00

Keyword Research for Organic SEO
Written by Scott (stepforth.com)
So you have decided to venture out into the world of SEO. The first thing you will need to do is determine the direction of your campaign in relation to the key phrases you are choosing to target. This article will focus on how to find keywords for your organic campaign, as the process is slightly different for PPC.

Many site owners know immediately what phrases they want. If you feel like you know what you want, before you start take a brief step back and assess if this really is the best phrase for your site. Yes, it just may very well be the perfect phrase, but if it isn’t, you could wind up spending a lot of time and money pursuing a ranking that either will never happen, or will provide very little value to your site.

There are a few key areas to look at when choosing a target phrase:

1. Relevance – Is this phrase even relevant to your site and its content?
2. Search Frequency – Are people even searching for this phrase?
3. Competition – How competitive is this field? Is it even a feasible target?

Where to start – Create a List of Phrases
So where do you even start with all this keyword research. Before looking up search frequencies and competition you need to create a list of relevant phrases. Open up an excel sheet and type out all relevant phrases that come to mind, do a little brainstorming as there are no wrong answers at this state.

After you have exhausted your thoughts, move over to your website. Open it up and navigate throughout recording any keyword phrase ideas that spring up checking your title tags and body content. Once this is done, do the same thing with your competition. Visit some sites that you know are in direct competition with you and go through them recording any relevant phrases you see.

By now you should have a long list of potential targets, a list that will grow further as you look into their search frequencies.

Find a Keyword Tool
The next step is to open up your favorite keyword research tool. There are many to choose from, two of the more popular being WordTracker and Keyword Discovery, although many still use the free, Overture tool. It is important to note that no keyword tools give you 100% accurate search figures. In most cases you will get numbers representing a sampling from various search engines. These numbers are best used in comparing one phrase to another to find out which is more popular, rather than determining specifically how much traffic to expect.

Check the Search Frequency
Once you’ve opened up a keyword tool, begin entering your keyword phrases and record their noted search frequency. Be sure to scroll through the results recording any additional phrases that are both relevant and have acceptable search frequencies. The exact number of searches required to make a phrase acceptable depends widely on industry, and even the search tool being used. A phrase with only 100 searches per month may be perfect for a secondary target, but in most cases may not be the best bet for a primary phrase.

Sorting Your List
You now should have a very exhaustive list of potential target phrases and their corresponding search frequencies. Sort this list in descending order based on the number of searches, so that the most popular phrase is at the very top. In many industries, the top few phrases may be completely impractical to target due to the competition, but we’ll determine that a bit later.

Check the Competition
The next step is to get a feel for how competitive these phrases are. In the next column in your spreadsheet, place the number of results returned by Google for each individual phrase. The lower the number of competing pages, in most cases, the easier it may be to achieve rankings. (Note: this is not always the case, but it is an indicator).

At this point, you will have a long list sorted by search frequency, along with the number of competing pages. If you are fortunate, you will see one phrase immediately that jumps out – solid searches with low competition. This just may be the most ideal target phrase.

Does this phrase fit well with the theme of your site? If so, go to Google and take a closer look at the ranking websites. Does your site fit in with the general feel of these results? In some cases it may not, as your phrase could have different meanings (especially true if using acronyms). This phrase may represent a completely different part of the world if geographically targeted, or simply may be littered with mega competitors such as eBay, Amazon, WikiPedia, and others. If you can see your site fitting in with these results, it’s time to assess the general feasibility of this phrase.

Take a look at the number of back links, and indexed pages each site has. Do your numbers compare? If you find that the top 10 ranking sites all have back links well into the tens of thousands, and your site has a dozen or so, you may want to consider a different phrase. If the ranking sites are in the high tens, or low hundreds, and your site has a dozen links, then you have something to work with, if you are willing to work on increasing your link counts. The number of pages indexed is less important than links, but if you have a 6 page site and you are planning on competing with thousand page sites, your chances of success will be much lower.

The real key is to try to find a phrase that offers relevance, decent searches, and competition that is not way out of your league.

Pick a Phrase to Drive Qualified Traffic
For organic SEO it is usually best to focus on one primary phrase that best suits your site, while targeting more specific secondary phrases for relevant sections of your site. With organic SEO, how many phrases you should target is somewhat limited by the size of your site, the larger the site, the more phrases you will have the ability to work towards.

The phrase with the most searches is not always the best fit. This is largely true with the real estate market.

Because everyone has free access, I will use the Overture Keyword Selector Tool for an example. The phrase “real estate” saw 3,057,037 searches in January of 07. On the surface this phrase seems like a dream come true, but you have to consider the geographic issues.

If your office serves the Seattle area, is someone searching in Orlando likely to be a qualified visitor to your site? In most cases no. Targeting the phrase “Seattle real estate” with 12,441 searches, seems like a much better choice as it would deliver more qualified traffic. While this phrase is still quite competitive, it is not nearly as difficult as simply “real estate”. Take a look at the big picture and determine not only how likely it is that you may achieve rankings, but whether the traffic generated from such a ranking would actually have a positive impact on sales.

Conclusion
Doing some research to find the best target phrase is the groundwork for your SEO campaign. Without it you’ll be flying blind with no clear direction on goals. Take the time up front to do a little research and determine whether the dream phrase you have in mind is a worthwhile target or not. If it turns out that it’s not, its better to find out before you invest your time and money on an SEO campaign. Knowing the level of competition and search frequencies for a target phrase beforehand will help you make informed decisions and give you the best chances for success.

Google Algorithm Update Analysis

2007-07-27T02:09:00.000-07:00

Google Algorithm Update Analysis
By Dave Davies
isedb.com
Anybody who monitors their rankings with the same vigor that we in the SEO community do will have noticed some fairly dramatic shifts in the algorithm starting last Thursday (July 5th) and continuing through the weekend. Many sites are rocketing into the top 10 which, of course, means that many sites are being dropped at the same time. We were fortunate not to have any clients on the losing end of that equation however we have called and emailed the clients who saw sudden jumps into the top positions to warn them that further adjustments are coming. After a weekend of analysis there are some curiosities in the results that simply require further tweaks in the ranking system.

This update seems to have revolved around three main areas: domain age, backlinks and PageRank.

Domain Age
It appears that Google is presently giving a lot of weight to the age of a domain and, in this SEO's opinion, disproportionately so. While the age of a domain can definitely be used as a factor in determining how solid a company or site is, there are many newer sites that provide some great information and innovative ideas. Unfortunately a lot of these sites got spanked in the last update.

On this tangent I have to say that Google's use of domain age as a whole is a good filter, allowing them to "sandbox" sites on day one to insure that they aren't just being launched to rank quickly for terms. Recalling back to the "wild west days" of SEO when ranking a site was a matter of cramming keywords into content and using questionable methods to generate links quickly I can honestly say that adding in this delay was an excellent step that insured that the benefits of pumping out domains became extremely limited. So I approve of domain age being used to value a site – to a point.

After a period of time (let's call it a year shall we) the age should and generally has only had a very small influence on a site's ranking with the myriad of other factors overshadowing the site's whois data. This appears to have changed in the recent update with age holding a disproportionate weight. In a number of instances this has resulted in older, less qualified domains to rank higher than newer sites of higher quality.

This change in the ranking algorithm will most certainly be adjusted as Google works to maximize the searchers experience. We'll get into the "when" question below.

Backlinks
The way that backlinks are being calculated and valued has seen some adjustments in the latest update as well. The way this has been done takes me back a couple years to the more easily gamed Google of old. This statement alone reinforces the fact that adjustments are necessary.

The way backlinks are being valued appears to have lost some grasp on relevancy and placed more importance on sheer numbers. Sites with large, unfocused reciprocal link directories are outranking sites with fewer but more relevant link. Non-reciprocal links lost the "advantages" that they held over reciprocal links until recently.

Essentially the environment is currently such that Google has made itself more easily gamed than it was a week ago. In the current environment, building a reasonable sized site with a large recip link directory (even unfocused) should be enough to get you ranking. For obvious reasons this cannot (and should not) stand indefinitely.

PageRank
On the positive side of the equation, PageRank appears to have lost some of it's importance including the importance of PageRank as it pertains to the value of a backlinks. In my opinion this is a very positive step on Google's part and shows a solid understanding of the fact that PageRank means little in terms of a site's importance. That said, while PageRank is a less than perfect calculation subject to much abuse and manipulation from those pesky people in the SEO community it did serve a purpose and while it needed to be replaced it doesn't appear to have been replaced with anything of substantial value.

A fairly common belief has been that PageRank would be or is being replaced by TrustRank and Google would not give us a green bar to gague a site's trust on (good call Google). With this in mind one of two things has happened; either Google has decided the TrustRank is irrelevant and so is PageRank and decided to scrap both (unlikely) or they have shifted the weight from PageRank to TrustRank to some degree and are just now sorting out the issues with their TrustRank calculations (more likely). Issues that may have existed with TrustRank may not have been clear due to it's weight in the overall algorithm and with this shift reducing the importance of PageRank the issues that face the TrustRank calculations may well be becoming more evident

In truth, the question is neither here nor there (as important a question as it may be). We will cover why this is in the ...

Conclusion

So what does all of this mean? First, it means that this Thursday or Friday we can expect yet another update to correct some of the issues we've seen rise out of the most current round. This shouldn't surprise anyone too much, we've been seeing regular updates out of Google quite a bit over the past few months.

But what does this mean regarding the aging of domains? While I truly feel that an aging delay or "sandbox" is a solid filter on Google's part – it needs to have a maximum duration. A site from 2000 is not, by default, more relevant than a site from 2004. After a year-or-so the trust of a domain should hold steady or at most, hold a very slight weight. This is an area we are very likely to see changes in the next update.

As far as backlinks go, we'll see changes in the way they are calculated unless Google is looking to revert back to the issues they had in 2003. Lower PageRank, high relevancy links will once again surpass high quantity, less relevant links. Google is getting extremely good and determining relevancy and so I assume the current algorithm issues has more to do with the weight assigned to different factors than an inability to properly calculate a links relevancy.

And in regards to PageRank, Google will likely shift back slightly to what worked and give more importance to PageRank, at least while they figure out what went awry here.

In short, I would expect that with an update late this week or over the weekend we're going to see a shift back to last week's results (or something very close to it) after which they'll work on the issues they've experienced and launch a new (hopefully improved) algorithm shift the following weekend. And so, if you've enjoyed a sudden jump from page 6 to top 3, don't pop the cork on the champaign too quickly and if you've noticed some drops, don't panic. More adjustments to this algorithm are necessary and, if you've used solid SEO practices and been consistent and varied in your link building tactics – keep at it and your rankings will return.

Tips for winning website traffic

2007-07-27T02:01:00.000-07:00

The website is built. Good! You want the world to see it. Great! But how are you going to achieve that? Even if you do get visitors in the initial period, it is necessary to make sure that they do continue to visit the website on a regular basis. In other words, it is necessary to convert a onetime visitor into a regular guest. Here are some tips for winning the website traffic:

Interactive website - a great way to get new content: It pays to update and put fresh content on your website regularly. This can be done if the site is made an interactive one. The viewers should get something in return for spending time on your website. An interactive website will help in viewers seeing something new every time they pay a visit. What's the use of visiting a website only to find the same old content on a website. Stale content is something that does not go down well with the audience. Updates are like magnet that attracts the visitors. The higher the frequency of updates, the stronger is the force of attraction. A website can be made to look fresh in the following ways:
Virtual communities: Try to build a virtual community. This can be done by having blogs and discussion boards/forums. Providing such kind of platforms helps in keeping the interest of the visitors. It also provides fresh content for your website. Interaction also helps in building a strong bond between members which is ultimately beneficial to your website.

Keep a special column that will contain regular feature updates: Try maintaining a column, which can be regularly updated. Such column can be a message from the chairman' desk informing about the latest trends. Or it can be one of the employees of the company who writes about serious issues pertaining your industry in a humorous vein. It can also be a column where you answer emails received from the common masses that contain queries related to your field. For e.g. if a car manufacturing company maintains a website, it can start a column where experts answer queries of the public. This can be something as small as tips for increasing the mileage of the car.
Hold chat sessions: This is a great way of increasing the traffic to your website. Try to bring in the top shots from your industry for a chat or an interactive session with your visitors. Make sure that it is held for free. This is a sure shot method of attracting web traffic. For e.g., if your website is dealing is based on movies, you can invite a well known critic who can chat on the topic 'Techniques for reviewing a movie' now that is something which will attract the eyeballs.

Create Blogs: Blogs are a great way of bringing traffic to your website. It is an in-thing that is generating a great buzz in the world of Internet. Having a blog may just provide that extra reason for visitors to visit the website. Blogs also provide a platform for the visitors to share their thoughts with like-minded people.
Free stuff works: Everybody loves free stuff. If your website is able to provide visitors with free stuff, it will provide all the more reason for them to keep on visiting your website. The free stuff need not be of great monetary value. It also need not be tangible. For e.g. if your company is involved in manufacturing chocolate cookies, may be you can hold a workshop on how to manufacture a cookie sauce. Alternately you can dole out free t-shirts with your website and company logo printed on it.

Collect Feedback: One can collect feedback by making polls and online surveys a regular of the site. Everybody loves to have a say and polls and surveys are just the right medium for hearing the common man's voice. It also makes the site far more interesting and interactive. It can be also useful for knowing the public's thought on issues pertaining to the industry or the firm itself. For e.g. if a car manufacturing company has recently launched a new car model, it can hold a poll asking the general public its opinion on various aspect of the car.
Eyes and ears of your industry: A website can be made as the announcement system of the entire industry. If a news pertaining to the industry has been leaked or released, it can be made known on the website of the company. This will persuade people to keep on returning to the website because it is offering them latest industry updates. For e.g., many a times financial experts are aware of the amendments that are likely to be made to the taxation law. If the firm is an association of accountants, they can then use their website to make people aware of the likely amendments.

Treasure trove: Make the website a treasure trove of information. This can be done by listing articles, which is relevant to the company's industry. The company can also offer articles that are an information mine for those interested in making a career in the industry of which the company is a part. For e.g. if an advertising agency has a website, it can include articles on how to make a career in the field of advertising world or may be a list of career options available in the field of advertising.
Promote the site: One has to promote the website if one has to have any chance of standing in the competition. There are two ways of promoting a website - online and offline.

ONLINE PROMOTION: A website can be promoted online in the following ways:
Search Engine Optimization: If you have not made your site search engine friendly, then do it now! It plays a very important role in attaining higher rankings in the search result. It is common fact that people do not go beyond the first two pages that are displayed in a search result. Hence SEO is important in attracting traffic to the web.

Add new features: Keep adding features which are suggested by the visitors to the website. For e.g. if there is a constant and an increasing demand for an opinion poll to be added, then try to add it to the website. This not only increases the web traffic but also shows that you care for the readers of your website. This helps in building goodwill for your website. The goodwill in turn will help in the formation of loyal readers. Also make sure that the added site features are publicized through all possible media.
Allow reprints: If people ask for a permission for the reprints of the articles that feature on the website, give them the permission to do so. But a little caveat. Ask them to give a link to your website on their pages. This will not only please the said people but will also help in increasing the traffic to your website.

Post your website on relevant newsgroups: Make sure that the URL of your website is posted on relevant newsgroups. For e.g. if the website belongs to an advertising agency, it should make it a point to post on newsgroups which relevant to the advertising world.
Keep Posted: If there are people who have registered themselves with your website, make sure that they get regular emails telling them about the articles that have been posted or any other relevant material. Showcase the articles in such a way that they are tempted to visit your website for reading the rest of the articles. This will help in increasing website traffic.

OFFLINE PROMOTION: Offline promotion can take place in the following ways:
Include Website address: Try to include the website address in all possible modes of communication. Letterheads, envelopes, bills, cash memos are some of the places where the address can be included.

Include it in your sponsorship deal: If you are sponsoring any event of program make sure that the banners also include your website address. This will make sure that your website address is read by many people.
Redirect members: Many times organizations get phone calls from the general public. Most of the phone calls are queries asking for some or the other information. After providing with basic information they can be asked to visit the website for a detailed information. For e.g. if a bank gets a call from a customer asking for the interest for a one year deposit, they can be given the information and can be asked to visit the website for further information.

Empathy for the visitors: One should empathize with the visitors. It requires a little effort on the part of the webmaster to keep his site in such a manner that it is a visit to your website turns out to be a pleasure-filled experience. This will not only help in attracting new visitors, but it also ensures that the loyal readers do keep visiting the site. Here are some tips for maintaining the website:
No technical problems: Just imagine a visitor clicking on a hyperlink of your website only to find that no the page does not exist any more. Be sure that he will be pissed off and you will lose a visitor forever. Hence it is necessary to make sure that they are no broken links. Similarly make sure that the page is not suffering from any technical glitches.

Tell a Friend: Make sure that articles of your website contain a link that can be used by the visitor to send an interesting article found on your website to a friend. In other words, make your site forward friendly. The ' tell a friend' option is a great method to get new visitors to your website.
Secure the site: It is important to provide the visitors with a feeling of security. People are often wary when it comes to doing online transactions and finance related procedures. A site can be said to be secured if they are having a lock, which appears on the bottom right panel of the monitor screen. Make sure your site features that lock.

Observe the competition: It is necessary to keep a close eye on the competition. If their website is attracting more competition, ponder upon the factors which might be helping them and try to apply them to your website.
Navigation friendly: Make sure that the website is easy for navigation. A difficult site may put off the visitors. It should also not have too many links. Similarly a sitemap should be provided. It makes the site search friendly for the user and wins his approval.

Different Languages:Be sure that your website is available in different languages. This is more important if the website is going to target international audience. Make sure that the website is available in major international languages. You can study other websites before deciding upon which language should be chosen for your website.
These are some of the ways to increase the traffic to your website. Remember the mantra to winning the web traffic is making it informative and user friendly.

Web U: Get More Bang for Your SEO Buck

2007-07-27T00:19:00.000-07:00

OMMA Magazine
High traffic is no longer a satisfactory measure of success

For first few years of my search engine optimization life, I preached the tenet that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. In essence, I saw my job in SEO to be very clearly defined: If you do what I tell you to do, you will enjoy great search engine rankings and lots of great targeted free traffic. What's that, you say? Your conversion rate is terrible? All this new traffic doesn't equal new revenue? Converting the traffic into revenue was the client's responsibility, not mine. If a Web site wasn't conducive to conversion or the user had trouble using the shopping cart, I wasn't responsible. I was just the SEO guy, right?

But now, that particular paradigm is outdated. You can be the world's greatest at SEO, but if your clients aren't getting a decent return on investment from what they spend on you, I almost guarantee they won't renew for year two. Not only are you doing your clients a disservice, but you're tarnishing the reputation of yourself and your agency, not to mention losing future revenue.

I propose that we redefine SEO. Rather than merely driving relevant traffic, I think SEO should be the practice of generating and converting organic search engine traffic, measuring it by raw traffic, ranking numbers, conversion rate, and new revenue year over year.

In other words, we need to lead the horse to water and convince him he's thirsty.

One possibility is to use a multivariate approach in hopes of creating a more fully - optimized shopping experience for natural traffic. If you're not familiar with multivariate testing, think of it as a/b split testing on steroids. With multivariate testing, you can define as many elements on a page as you'd like and rotate as many different creatives in those slots as you like. A good multivariate tool will load up every conceivable combination of those elements, gather the data over a set time period and report back to you on which combination converted the best.

For example, did you ever notice how most brand traffic lands on your home page? Even product terms that contain branded verbiage often get a home page ranking ahead of a product page. Most home pages are pretty generic and usually run creative speaking to a straight brand message or weekly deal. How do you refine that on the fly to positively impact conversion? With a good multivariate tool, it's relatively simple.

Some tools have the ability to recognize a search engine referral and identify the search term to define the creative displayed in the marketing modules on the home page. SEO managers then populate the "hero image" with a product related to the search and then load the complimentary products into the secondary marketing modules. The test also can involve different hero creative.

For example, if a buyer lands on the home page after a search for headphones, the SEO agency can then analyze the effectiveness of three possible hero images: a guy wearing headphones, a girl wearing headphones and some headphones by themselves. All three images are loaded into the tool. After a couple of weeks, we have hard data telling us what combination or technique was most successful in converting natural search traffic into buyers.

As the search world becomes increasingly more complex, SEO agencies can no longer point to large traffic numbers to justify pay checks and consulting fees. We need to address the business of conversion and revenue, and multivariate testing is an excellent way to see how much bang you're getting for your SEO budget. By adapting to this new SEO milieu, our campaigns will be more streamlined than ever. Look into multivariate testing, and start holding your SEO agency or consultant to specific success criteria, beyond just raw natural search referrals.

Todd Friesen is director of search engine optimization, Range Online Media, and a monthly columnist for OMMA magazine. (todd@rangeonlinemedia.com)

Keep Your Website Search Friendly

2007-07-27T00:16:00.000-07:00

Keep Your Website Search Friendly

By Sharon Housley

So you have a fantastic website but no one ever visits. You may ask? Why? Your website should be designed with search engines in mind. Too many web designers are graphic artists that excel at image manipulation, but lack a basic understanding of search engine optimization. Web design and search engine optimization (SEO) should not be mutually exclusive. Webmasters should have a clear understanding of both design techniques and how the search engines work.

Incredible graphics on a website without any traffic, will do little to fill the coffers. Follow these basic guidelines to ensure that your website will be visited and attractive.

1. Navigation

Both humans and crawlers (search engines) need to be able to navigate your website. Avoid using technology that prohibits the search engine's ability to spider web pages. The majority of search engines have the ability to follow the links on a website if you use standard HTML. Observe normal convention and make the links obvious and available to all website visitors.

2. Easy to Read

Fonts should be legible and webmasters should utilize white space judiciously. Text on the web page should be easy to read.

3. Speed

Avoid using overly large graphics that are slow to load. Remember you only have mere seconds to capture the visitors attention, do not waste precious seconds with web pages that are slow to load. Search engines too will become impatient and give up on your website if it takes too long to view the content. As a result you should avoid using free hosting services that might be unreliable or slow to respond if you receive any web traffic surges.

4. Consistency

Your website should maintain a consistent look and feel. In other words, all the pages on the website should have a similar look, color scheme and navigation.

5. Above the Fold

The most important information on the your web page should appear above the "fold". This means that the website visitor should be able to view the most important content without having to use the scroll bar.

6. Contact Information

Include corporate contact information on the website. This lends your company credibility, anyone can pretend to be anyone or anything. Including contact information on a website shows that you are a serious and legitimate business entity.

7. Avoid Javascript /Ajax

Javascript and Ajax are cool, but they are not search friendly. It is best to stick with good old HTML. Search engines at this point are unable to spider the website contents that are displayed using Javascript. This is also true of websites that are dynamically updated with Ajax. Chances are the body of your website will help your website rank well; do not waste the search engine opportunity by using Javascript or Ajax.

8. Meta Data Matters

Each and every web page on the website should contain a unique title and description. Many search engines extract meta data from the website header and use it to classify and categorize the web pages listing. The web page title and description should relate to the webpage contents.

9. Keywords Naturally

Use website keywords and keyword phrases in the web copy in a natural way. Search engines are starting to discern unnatural text, machine generated content and content that is cobbled together by a bot. Write your website's content for humans not search engines.

10. Web Page Focus

Each web page on a website should focus on one or two keywords or keyword phrases, no more no less. The keywords should be incorporated into the meta tags, and web copy.

An optimized website can bring search traffic and visitors who have a natural interest in your product or service. Optimization should be part of the design process. Before hiring a web designer make sure they understand both your design needs and search engine optimization.

About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for RecordForAll http://www.recordforall.com audio recording and editing software.

Duplicate Content: SEO Fact or Fiction?

2007-07-19T02:37:00.000-07:00

The challenges of search engine optimization are increasing thanks to algorithms that detect duplicate content. This means Private Label Rights (PLR) articles used as web content will soon go the way of obsolete. Discover SEO insights in a free PDF report.

Denver, Colorado (PRWEB) July 18, 2007 -- Lisa Ginger, CEO and pioneering internet marketer recently published "PLR Sting", a free PDF report detailing long-term search engine strategies.

This short report pulls back the curtain on duplicate content. It also covers the perils of using Private Label Articles as content seen by the search engines. Learn the following:

* How the search engines index and retrieve web pages -- learning this is crucial if you want to rank high in the search engines.
* Tips for short-cutting your way to online profits without sacrificing your search engine rankings.
* The 2 different types of duplicate content Google can spot -- usually much quicker than webmasters can put it up.
* The many types of Private Label Rights (PLR) content that will continue to remain valuable far into the future.
* The value of proper keyword research and why it must not be overlooked.

Pricing:
This report is a free PDF download. No subscription is necessary. Bonuses include first chance to sign up for a free membership coming in August of 2007.

Lisa Ginger, CEO of an online publishing company since 2002, has written several reports and articles on increasing search engine traffic and internet marketing.

Her latest endeavor is Niche Laboratories, a site dedicated to helping new online business seekers discover niches and conduct market research quickly and easily.

Niche Laboratories is currently poised to go live in August of 2007 with its exclusive free, flagstone membership. The membership will provide in-depth, free market research reports and further paid products to help business owners get off the ground.

News: SEO Informer - Innovative SEO Software for ASP.NET

2007-07-16T14:36:00.000-07:00

(PRWEB) July 10, 2007 -- Quality Cube, LLC. announces the release of SEO Informer, a powerful and innovative Search Engine Optimization Add-in for Visual Studio (Asp.Net).

Have you ever wondered how your competitors manage to achieve top ten listings on sites like Google, Yahoo, and MSN? It's not mere coincidence and it's not because their products or services are any better than the ones that your company offers. The key is precisely-written content that is centered on the terms and phrases that your potential customers might be looking for. Each time a search query is performed, an engine must decide which sites it thinks are relevant for that given inquiry. This is based on the analysis of millions of web pages, analyzing various factors such as keyword density and keyword prominence.

Not familiar with these terms? Most people aren't; instead they must rely on the services of an SEO firm to help them with this process. This can be quite expensive, often costing thousands of dollars per month. To save money, many people are now turning to SEO Software. Not only is this cost-effective, but it allows developers to have full control over their written content. This is often desired as many seo companies tend to create spam-sounding content that portrays a lack of professionalism and marketing sense.

What is SEO Software and how can it help me?
The goal of SEO is simple... to help improve search engine rankings. This in turn generates more traffic and potentially more sales for your company. While manually analyzing web site content can be slow and tedious, a software application is able to perform this task almost instantly. SEO software solutions such as SEO Informer also provide expert advice, allowing you to bypass the need for a hired consultant.

So how does this affect the Asp.Net community?
While most products function as an external desktop application, SEO Informer was created using the Visual Studio Add-in Framework. This allows for complete and seamless integration into the VS IDE. The add-in can be docked like any other toolwindow (such as Solution Explorer), so there is no need to fire up a secondary application or even leave your current development environment.

How does it work?
Each time you update and save new content, you are automatically provided with a fresh analysis and expert advice. Most importantly, you can analyze .ASPX pages, which is a feature lacking from most competing products. Another notable feature is Metadata Management. Items such as page titles, meta descriptions, and meta keywords can be modified without writing code or editing HTML. This solves a key problem area caused by the introduction of Master Pages.

Search engine optimization is a complex subject that requires specialized knowledge and training; luckily SEO software companies such as Quality Cube have made this process much easier. If you're looking to increase the amount of free, targeted traffic to your web site, I suggest you give this product a try.

Advice: Hiring an SEO Consultant

2007-07-16T14:31:00.000-07:00

Don't outsource your search engine optimization without asking these 10 questions.

By Jon Rognerud

Finding and hiring an outside firm or consultant for your SEO can be daunting. In today's marketplace, a professional search optimizer is a combination of copywriter, web designer, product designer, developer, marketer, advertiser, analyst and entrepreneur. It can be hard to find someone with these qualifications, and if you're running a business, you may not have the time.

So how do you determine if a firm is selling search marketing snake oil? To select the best organization, you should first look to yourself. If you feel uneasy about anything they tell you, if they don't call you back, or if all you get is a sales pitch, it may not be a good match.

It's important to know that some firms use questionable tactics to sell their services. They might have purchased a lot of domains, applied scraped content and created link structures solely to showcase their projects. They may charge you for so-called "secrets." Avoid these deceptive companies at all costs. In a worst-case scenario, you could go from a page one ranking today to a complete ban from search engines tomorrow.

To avoid that, here are 10 things to ask a potential SEO consultant or agency.

1. What ranking guarantees do you provide?

If the answer is anything but "none," look elsewhere. You might tell them you heard a page one ranking can't be guaranteed, since nobody owns the search engines, except search companies. A superior search firm may add that while ranking is important, keyword research, relevant traffic and a steady increase in traffic that turns into sales are more important. Don't be dazzled by hype, a known brand or a professional-looking site. Stick to your guns, ask questions and get references.

2. Are you going to make changes to my website?

Changes are crucial for SEO, especially changes to content and structure within your site. If you have a lot of graphics, flash and complex navigation with pull-down menus and hierarchical trees that spiders can't follow, you have a serious problem. Visit some of the sites they have optimized and see what SEO tactics they have applied. Conduct keyword research using the free tools at Overture suggestions and think about content you could write for your website today using popular, searched keywords.

3. What is your approach to linking?

Link programs are key to long-term success using SEO. PageRank, a site voting system from Google, was created to measure importance via link counts (the number of links pointing to you) and link reputation (what the links say about you and your keywords). If you hear about proprietary link programs and custom software, find out if the firm belongs to or uses any FFA (free for all) link exchanges. Honest SEO companies will let you see every step of their approach, including weekly update lists for links. They should provide a detailed link analysis and tell you where your competition stands and what steps they would take to get links from topical sites, directories and social networks. It's difficult to determine the number of links required, but the firm should provide competitive link research and analysis.

4. What reporting and overall communications will I receive?

A professional SEO firm will have a workflow in place for client/vendor deliveries and overall expectations. Depending on the type of project, more work may happen in the earlier months, but it's still very import for you to understand all changes, when they are applied and for what reasons. You should receive ranking and analytics reporting weekly, monthly and quarterly. The most important thing is that you understand the reports and that the strategy is being applied and adjusted. SEO takes time and is a never-ending task.

5. What does your pricing model include and what other services do you offer?

The firm should provide a clear description of deliverables and pricing up front. Many make this an evasive exercise, but it should be clearly explained and not "sold." Professional firms will show you how value and ROI go hand-in-hand. Some firms only provide SEO services; others provide PPC, web analytics, multi-variate testing, e-mail marketing, social media optimization (blogs, videos and podcasts), linking and more. A company that provides more complete search marketing services could help you save money by serving as a one-stop shop.

6. Why is your own PageRank low?

Sometimes SEO websites display a lower PageRank, but appear very well put together with a sound design and relevant, useful information. It could be a new site or a recent domain shift. Or the owners may be busy building client sites rather than optimizing content and working on link strategies. It doesn't necessarily mean you're dealing with people that aren't experts.

7. Who are some of your competitors?

An honest firm will share the competition and provide details. If the pending relationship isn't a match, they might even refer you to another SEO firm. That isn't as common, however, unless a partnership or referral arrangement has already been established.

8. What are your qualifications?

Time in business doesn't necessarily mean better SEO; you'll have to decide for yourself. But learning about the staff and their qualifications and certifications, such as Google Advertising Professional, can help. Some firms specialize in certain market segments, which could benefit you.

9. Can you provide references and successful rankings?

Testimonials from clients are a great way to find out about your potential vendor. Much like when selecting a doctor, plumber or gardener, word of mouth is powerful. Their list of successful rankings should have traffic for relatively common terms. A low search count per keyword doesn't necessarily mean poor traffic, especially if the firm focuses on the long tail strategy.

10. How much will the traffic results cost and when can I expect to see them?

Price alone can't determine quality SEO work. You may see packages for $200 to $300 per month and some that are several thousands of dollars and higher. But you often get what you pay for. Traffic can be generated quickly depending on your niche keyword choices, saturation in the marketplace and competition. Make sure they aren't talking about pay per click.

Now that you know what questions to ask a potential SEO firm, here's a question you should ask yourself:

Will I be a good partner?

As a client, you have responsibilities as well. If you ask for everything up front, are overly cheap, can never make a decision and don't sign contracts on time, you're not being a good partner. If you put a lot of pressure on your SEO vendor for a first page ranking of all your keywords in a short period of time, you may have false expectations.

Experienced firms will educate you about the process and will get you top positions; it just takes time. As the sponsor, you should be ready to commit some of your own time, support the project and help push the recommended changes. This can be done by building a detailed discovery, analysis and SEO strategy document on day one.

Hiring a firm has its advantages, including diverse experience, a network of resources, quicker rankings and time savings. On the other hand, if you keep SEO in house, you can retain control, learn faster and save money. It's a matter of evaluating whether you have the time and knowledge.

Jon Rognerud is a recognized authority on the subject of search engine optimization and has spent more than 15 years developing websites and marketing solutions at companies like Overture and Yahoo!. His website,www.microsaw.com, provides a wealth of informative articles, resources and complimentary e-mail courses on everything you'll ever need to know about SEO and search marketing.
Copyright © 2007 Entrepreneur.com, Inc.

Easy SEO Tips You Can Use Today

2007-07-16T14:25:00.000-07:00

by Ben Euporian
July 16, 2007

Websites are only as effective as the number of visitors who see the content. If the search engines are ignoring your site, it definitely won’t get a lot of hits. Therefore, you need to try these tips for getting your site noticed by the search engines right away...

- Use Google Sitemaps to get your inner pages indexed. Many sites have a problem when it comes to getting their inner pages indexed. Luckily Google has a solution to help webmasters overcome this problem. Google Sitemaps (www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps) is an easy to use tool that allows you to tell Google about every page of your site. Although it won’t help your rankings, it may get more of your pages in the index, which could mean more traffic.

- Make sure your link anchor text is varied. Search engines penalize sites that seem to have used link exchange services. How they spot these sites is by looking at the incoming links. If the anchor text on every link is the same, then there is a good chance that software and not a human generated the links. Instead of using an automated service, take the time to submit link exchanges one at a time and make sure to vary the link text. This gives a more natural look to your incoming links.

- Use terms related to your keyword phrases in your copy. As the search engines become more sophisticated, they are better able to look at all of the content on a page and determine what it is about. What they hope to find is content that is well written for the end user – and not just for the search engines. By using synonyms and words related to your keyword phrases throughout the page, you are showing the search engines that you are writing copy that is truly useable to their searchers. As important as it is to include your keyword phrases in your copy, it’s more important to write naturally so that it makes sense to your human readers!

- Find out what your competitors are doing. Although the information does not come cheap, there are services that provide very detailed reports on your competitors including the traffic they get, what keywords generate that traffic and from which search engines. If you’re in a highly competitive market it might be worth checking out http://www.hitwise.com

- If you use keywords in your file names, don't overdo it. If your keyword phrase includes 5 words you won't be doing yourself any favors to save your homepage file as “here_are_all_my_keywords.html”. This looks like you’re trying to stuff your keywords in anywhere and everywhere! Instead choose a system for naming your files that makes it easy to tell what they are, without worrying about cramming in every keyword the page is optimized for.

The new buzzword among site developers is optimization. And with good reason. Unlike the past when only the appearance of keywords mattered, search engines now rank pages based upon many different factors. As you can see from the information presented above, you can help to get your site seen by the search engines with just a small investment of your time.

Ben Euporian of Omsho.com makes it easy to learn from SEO Experts. For details, visit this site now. Ben provides information on a wide range of topics.

Learn SEO -- SEO Essentials for a Top 10 Search Engine Ranking

2007-07-16T14:17:00.000-07:00

As a kickoff to the release of his new book "SEO Essentials For A Top 10 Search Engine Ranking", Eric Brown is currently in the process of conducting a search engine optimization challenge regarding one of his websites. The SEO challenge Mr. Brown is conducting is to see how long it will take him to achieve a highly visible search engine ranking for a popular keyword phrase related to his new website SEO Tips 4 U, where his new book will be sold exclusively starting August 1st, 2007.

Augusta, GA (PRWEB) July 16, 2007 -- Eric Brown, the author of "SEO Essentials For A Top 10 Search Engine Ranking", which is scheduled for release on August 1st, 2007, has developed a theory and approach to search engine optimization SEO that will eliminate the need for many people to pursue outside help regarding search engine optimization services, training and information. In addition, his new book will significantly change the way many people currently learn and use search engine optimization SEO.

As a kickoff to the release of his new book, Eric Brown is currently in the process of conducting a search engine optimization challenge regarding one of his websites.

The SEO challenge Mr. Brown is conducting is to see how long it will take him to achieve a highly visible search engine ranking for a popular keyword phrase related to his new website SEO Tips 4 U, where his new book "SEO Essentials For A Top 10 Search Engine Ranking" will be sold exclusively starting August 1st, 2007.

Mr. Brown faces an uphill battle during his SEO challenge because his new website domain name is less than one year old, the website has only been in full operation less than 30 days and it resides in one of the most competitive niche markets on the Internet -- search engine optimization.

Moreover, his search engine optimization challenge officially began on July 1st, 2007, so the clock has already started to tick on his SEO challenge.

Eric Brown's goal related to the challenge is to achieve a top 10 search engine ranking in Google, Yahoo and MSN search engines by September 30th, 2007 for the keyword phrase "learn seo".

What makes this SEO challenge so interesting and exciting is that the theory, approach, thoughts and methods used during the search engine optimization challenge, by Eric Brown, all will be taken directly from his new book "SEO Essentials For A Top 10 Search Engine Ranking".

Eric Brown is conducting this SEO challenge to show website owners, website participants and interested followers that top 10 search engine rankings are possible for anyone and can be accomplished by anyone even in highly competitive niche markets such as real estate, travel and search engine optimization.

Regarding Eric Brown, he is neither an SEO professional nor a part of the SEO industry.

Mr. Brown does not own a search engine optimization company or charge people for SEO related services.

To the contrary, Eric Brown is a website owner just like the millions of website owners currently operating websites on the Internet today. He just happens to know a lot about search engine optimization SEO.

He currently owns several website businesses, all of which, have achieved and currently maintain top 10 search engines rankings at major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN for popular keyword phrases in the websites' niche markets.

Eric Brown earned an undergraduate degree in Business Administration from Georgia Southern University and a graduate degree in Computer Information Science from Georgia Southwestern University, which he used to help him start a custom software design and development company 13 years ago that he still owns and operates today along with numerous Internet website businesses where he utilizes his talent for search engine optimization to achieve and maintain many top 10 search engine rankings for his niche market websites.

He wrote his upcoming book "SEO Essentials For A Top 10 Search Engine Ranking" to provide a voice for website owners and website participants.

As a website owner himself, he provides a different viewpoint on search engine optimization SEO, which is fresh, innovative, effective, affordable and sorely needed.

For more information on Eric Brown's theory and approach to search engine optimization along with additional information on his new book "SEO Essentials For A Top 10 Search Engine Ranking", please click the hyperlink shown here: Learn SEO.

Keep track of Eric Brown's day-to-day search engine rankings for the keyword phrase "Learn SEO" regarding his SEO challenge. Please click the hyperlink shown here: SEO Challenge to view his day-to-day search engine rankings and to inform others of his SEO challenge, which is currently ongoing.

SEO for domain names or How to choose a catchy web address

2007-07-12T11:56:00.000-07:00

When building a website the point will come where a domain name (also called web address or URL) has to be chosen. Sound easy at first, but there is more to it. A websites domain name influences your search engines ranking as web crawlers judge a fitting title as a match. The result is a higher ranking.

What do you need to consider?

1) you want to promote your brand, so it would be a good to include the companies' name in the domain name.

2) a reference to the service or product offered on the website is also useful - search engines check if the websites content relates to the domain.

3) make sure that the domain name is not too long, since the "type-in" traffic is likely to drop down - plainly - the web address should be easy to remember!

It is getting more difficult to find the right domain name as so many are already taken. Friends or family can possibly help with brainstorming for names. They can also judge from an outside point of view just as your clients or web visitors.

Last but not least: Before you finally buy a domain name, always check if you do not have any legal or trademark indications in all the countries you wish to trade in.

(Tetridia)

For SEO Beginners: Twelve Definitions You Need To Know

2007-07-11T01:10:00.000-07:00

For SEO Beginners: Twelve Definitions You Need To Know
By Mike Tekula (c) 2007

SEO is a trade that exists solely on the internet, and even then it is comprised almost entirely of the hot air of so-called “expert opinion.” Plenty of it blowing around these days as search maintains position as one of the most important marketplaces in the modern business world. Many DIY webmasters will end up searching for blog entries, articles, informational web sites, etc to help get them up to speed. The problem is that in most cases certain key terms are flung around like household names while the people doing the flinging are way out of touch with the average web browser. What some of us don’t realize is that not everyone knows even the basics of SEO.

This líst of twelve SEO-related definitions in alphabetical order (with notes) serves as a great companion for your initial SEO reading. Read alone it will get you up to speed on some key terminology that you’ll need to know to intelligently engage the ever-changing world of SEO.

• Algorithms.

A search algorithm is, in short, the incredibly complex mathematical formula that a search engine uses to “rank” web sites for keywords. Based on a huge number of variables and calculations, algorithms are among the most closely-guarded secrets on the internet. Why? Imagine if they were leaked - suddenly the less-than-honest would have a very specific guideline to follow in climbing to the top of search results in a less-than-organic way, ruining the quality of Google’s search results and their entire competitive advantage with it.

• Bot or Bots. See “crawlers”

• Crawlers.

Googlebot, for example, is a search engine crawler. Googlebot periodically traverses the web in record time, indexing content, links - everything contained in page source code - and storing it in Google’s search index. Then, when a user visits Google and enters a search phrase, the index, filtered by the algorithm, is what the user gets. Please note: there is some delay in this process since the results you’re getting are from the index and not the live web.

• Directories.

When webmasters realized just how much power inbound links have in determining search rankings they quickly set out to do two things: 1) get inbound links and 2) set up web sites where other webmasters could achieve inbound links (meaning big traffíc revenues for the site). Hence the directory farms you’ll find today. Link building has been a priority on the líst of any SEO-savvy webmaster for years, and as a result “quick fix” directories that allow streamlined listing submissions get a ton of traffíc. However, Google and the other major search engines are on to this tactic, and the word among SEO “experts” is that the benefits of listing your site at directories are diminished if not gone.

• Frames.

Frames are a way of laying out a website with multiple documents in one browser window. Essentially, there is one main document which contains the frameset tag - this document specifies the dimensions/placement of the frames and also the documents that will “populate” those frames. From an SEO standpoint the use of frames for your layout is not recommended. Since frames do not use links in the same way, and since links may point to one frame from another, they may cause serious problems for crawlers. Additionally, there are almost no uses for frames that can’t either be 1) duplicated with other methods or 2) thrown away without much fuss. If your site was built with frames and you’re thinking you don’t want to rebuild - it might be tough luck if you’re interested in optimizing for search. Consider it a learning experience - build yourself a CSS-based layout.

• Gateway Pages.
Also “doorway pages.” Although there isn’t a real consensus about what these pages are, their function is always cited as their definition. In other words, these pages are created to “rank well in search engines” by playing to the algorithms. Often viewed as “spammy,” “gray hat” or even “black hat.” However, any page written with search in mind, and geared towards search, can be construed to be a “gateway page.” The difference between a page well-optimized for search and a “gateway page?” No clear lines there, but quality of content is probably the determining factor.

• HTML.

Okay, most of you probably know this one, but there are probably some of you who don’t. HTML stands for Hyper-Text Mark-up Language, and it is the core building block that has made the web the greatest modern tool for business, social, informational, political and any other causes. Search engines look exclusively at a web page’s HTML code to determine its relevance. Therefore, it’s a good idea to pay attention to HTML and familiarize yourself with proper tagging techniques if you’re hoping to get a good handle on SEO.

• Link Popularity.

Inbound links are probably the most important optimization point for web pages. Number,quality, trust - these are all factors that affect the value of an inbound link. Going back to the HTML root of search, link popularity (in terms of quantity) measures how many pages point to your site using anchor text ( link text ).

• Link Building.

In short, the process of gaining links at other web sites pointing in to pages on your own.

• Link Baiting.

The process of generating high-quality content on your pages that users will appreciate and link to voluntarily.

• Meta Tags.

Meta tags are found at the top of a page’s source code. They are used to specify certain things that might not be found in the page content. They also allow webmasters to put up certain “flags” that search engine crawlers can react to. There are many Meta tags available for use, and many of them can help with SEO to a great extent and for a variety of purposes. However, Meta tags are no longer used in the way they originally were - as a place to stuff keywords to drive your site up in rankings. Some webmasters out there are still doing this, but they are decidedly behind the times and unaware of the impending, or already cast-down, penalties.

• Robots. See "crawlers."

• Search Engines.

If you don’t know what a search engine is congratulations on finally making it out from under that rock. Search engines are essentially programs that scan an existing index of the web based on a query of search terms, or keywords, that a user enters. However, the word more commonly refers to companies as a whole - Google, for example, controls a search engine, while Googlebot is the crawler that gathers content for its index, but most users and webmasters think of a search engine as the whole package.

• Search Engine Marketing.

Most often this refers to Pay-Per-Click marketing in which an advertiser bids on chosen keywords and writes several ads to be displayed should their bid achieve placement. These ads are displayed in the “sponsored” section of search engine result pages (SERPS). However, in some circles this term is used to refer to any action taken to gain rankings both paid and organic.

• Search Engine Optimization.

This one is open to interpretation. It is quite often used to encapsulate a huge amount of different tactics. On-site optimization, off-site optimization (link building, etc) and many other techniques all feasibly fall under the SEO blanket. However, there is an obvious difference between optimizing a page’s code to be clean and search friendly and writing link bait that will be popular and get linked to.

• Search Engine Results Pages

(SERPs). The pages resulting from a search engine query run by a user. Webmasters review these pages to determine where their pages are ranking for certain search terms.

• Sp@mming.

Basically, any unnatural effort to bring a page higher in search results. What constitutes sp@m is open to some interpretation, but the only interpretation you need to worry about is that of the major search engines. If Google, for example, considers a technique “spammy” you’d be wise to cease at once.

• Spiders. "crawlers."

• Submission.

For SEO this has traditionally meant submitting a web site to search engines so they’ll know about and crawl it. SEO firms offered submission services as a big selling point to bring in clients.
However, for a long time now submitting your site to search engines hasn’t done jack. They’re all much smarter now - just focus
on gaining quality inbound links and your site will be indexed in no time. This is just a sample of the core vocabulary associated with SEO. Is this all you need to know? Absolutely not. But in my experience these are the words and phrases that newcomers have the most trouble with. If these definitions help one person have a better understanding of SEO, then I will be satisfied.

About The Author

Mike Tekula handles SEO, SEM, usability and standards-compliance for NewSunGraphics,
a Long Island, New York firm offering Search Engine
Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, W3C-Compliant web design using full CSS
layouts and all things web design/development.
(SiteProNews)

Enterprise SEO Project Pricing: One Size Does Not Fit All

2007-07-06T00:46:00.000-07:00

By Chris Boggs | July 6, 2007

Search Engine Optimization, some will argue, is a standard process of improving a Web site’s ability to rank in search engines for phrases relevant to the site’s theme. It doesn’t matter if the site is for-profit, non-profit, or simply serves as an educational medium – improving the depth of the content and its visibility to search engine spiders and helping to ensure that links exist to the site’s pages from relevant, trustworthy sites will, in most cases, be enough to help the site rank better.

Although the basics are essentially the same, the project-defined specifics of an enterprise-level SEO engagement will never be exactly the same. For that matter, the specifics will often differ quite greatly. SEO is not a one-size-fits-all solution. In our large agency, we provide SEO proposals to offices and clients around the world from our global SEO service handler in Philadelphia.

This week, I will define what happens from the moment our business development (BD) specialists get a request for proposal (RFP) to the moment that proposal is delivered to the prospective SEO client.
The Estimator

Unfortunately, we have yet to create a technology similar to that which exists in the fabled “Bat Cave” that predicts the required course of action for Batman and Robin. Instead, we scope out potential SEO projects on a case-by-case basis. The BD provides the RFP (or often a detailed oral request for an estimate) to the SEO Group Director, who then assigns a Senior Account Manager (SAM) the task of preparing an “estimator” spreadsheet, which will help price the project appropriately. (For a reminder on how the team is structured, please see my third Outsourced column, "An Inside View of the Agency.)

The SAM who prepares the estimator will, 99 percent of the time, be in charge of that project, should the business be won. This is very important because it puts the onus on the SAM to very accurately estimate the resources required for the project. Once the SAM has started the estimator, he or she will assign various sections of the client and competitive site analyses to engineers and analysts on the team, getting their input on the number of hours required for each task.

The estimator is an Excel spreadsheet that accounts for all possible tasks associated with a project. Each month of the project is then mapped out by allocating hours toward each task line item. Some hours (such as reconfiguring redirects or URL structure recommendations) are valued higher than others (such as keyword research or directory link-building). Based on formulas, the total hours required then dictate the cost of the project, once any pass-through costs such as directory submission fees are added.

Naturally, year-long projects will usually cost more than the six-month projects, but in some cases shorter projects can end up costing nearly as much, based on the requirements for the particular project. In another column, we can go into detail as to why some projects may consume more resources over six months than over an entire year. However, in short, some sites need more work in order to be ranked while others need less, perhaps over a longer period of time (read link building or ongoing new content optimization).
The SEO Task Line Items

The following list describes the major elements of the estimator sheet. Of course, we cannot describe every single line item, and should we, some people would undoubtedly say we missed something.

1. Client Communications – Time is usually allotted for the kick-off call and ongoing calls with the client teams.
2. Team Communications – Time is allotted for meetings held weekly or even at a greater frequency, depending on the project and the SAM.
3. Baseline Reporting – At the onset of every engagement, baseline saturation, ranking, and inbound linking reports are prepared for the client.
4. Competitive Analyses – Depending on the industry, these can take significantly more time than one would expect, but they will be very valuable in helping craft SEO strategy, as well as in monitoring future ranking shifts revealing whether the competitors are new or old enemies.
5. Tactical: Engineer-Level – Issues that exist with site structure that can lead to anything from duplicate content problems to the inability to get pages indexed, as well as URL format considerations. Often, time must be specified for communication with engineers and developers working with the client or as separate vendors.
6. Tactical: Content/Analyst-Level – Issues with META, ALT, and on-page content, both text and image or video/audio.
7. Tactical: Linking – Includes time for link analysis beyond information derived from the baseline and competitor analysis reports.
8. Reporting – Ongoing reporting offered at different tiers.
9. Management – The SAM time that does not fall into one of the above categories.

Note that each task is usually accompanied with notes specific to the project for use by the BD when completing the sale. The client does not see the estimator, but instead gets a formal proposal that incorporates many of these notes supporting the projected hours required to “fix the problem.”
A Warning to Marketing Managers Soliciting SEO Project Proposals

Scoping an enterprise SEO project takes time. If you represent a large organization and receive a response to an RFP within hours, or even a couple of days, you may wish to consider how much time the agency or SEM put into scoping your specific project. If you have received a proposal that looks like it went through a cookie-cutter before being baked, you may need to wash down the results with more than milk.

(Search Engine Watch)

Top 30 Organic Optimization firms that are selected for July 2007

2007-07-05T00:08:00.000-07:00

Here’s the list of the top 30 Organic Optimization firms that are selected for July 2007:

1. SEO Image, Inc. – New York
2. Intrapromote LLC – Ohio
3. Bruce Clay, Inc. – California
4. SEO Inc. – California
5. Arteworks SEO – Texas
6. Ionic Media – California
7. YELLOW7 Interactive – Texas
8. Customer Magnetism – Virginia
9. TopRank Online Marketing – Minnesota
10. WebMama.com Inc. – California
11. USWeb.com – California
12. icrossing – New York
13. Service Internet Solutions, LLC – Connecticut
14. iProspect – Massachusetts
15. High Position Limited – United Kingdom
16. Dexterity Media LLC – Texas
17. Neutralize – United Kingdom
18. Submit Express – California
19. 1st on the List Promotion Inc. – Canada
20. Inteliture - Utah
21. Unreal Marketing, Inc. – Pennsylvania
22. Web Targeted – Utah
23. 87 Interactive – Pennsylvania¬¬
24. VKI Studios - Canada
25. First Page SEO – Canada
26. Reprise Media – New York
27. Prime Visibility – New York
28. eTrafficJams.com – Florida
29. Fathom SEO – Ohio
30. Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc. – Colorado

The accuracy of the ranking above is verified by the rigorous selection process that is employed before naming the candidates. Selection of the candidates is based on the following criterions:

• Competitive advantage
• Title optimization
• Keyword research
• Copywriting
• Superior services and pricing
• Link development
• Response to client problems
• Innovations that set it apart from the competition
• Usability and overall efficiency
• A staff with technical and marketing skills
• Overall performance

Firms that specialize in Organic Optimization and wish to be considered for the topseos.com rankings can complete an application by registering as a service vendor and applying for rankings at:

http://www.topseos.com/option,com_register/task,providerRegister/

Want to research and evaluate Internet marketing firms?

Visit them at www.topseos.com

Free Rider Web Hosting Offers SEO Tool

2007-07-05T00:00:00.000-07:00

Scottsdale, AZ, July 03, 2007 --(PR.com)-- Free Rider Web Hosting has introduced a new service that allows customers to optimize their web sites to help get higher rankings in search engine results. Traffic Blazer, which costs from $29.95 per year, looks at several aspects of the web site, including the use of keywords, frame and Flash usage, and whether the web site can be read by search engine spiders.

Traffic Blazer also helps customers to submit their web site to search engines and directories, and then provides reports on where the web site is appearing in search results.

The Deluxe and Premium versions of Traffic Blazer provide additional services, such as the ability to view detailed statistics about the web site, and to send emails to customers.

"It is important for webmasters to get their web sites as high as possible in the search engine results," said Simon Drain, CEO of Free Rider Web Hosting. "Google handles 200 million searches every day. Most people only look at the first few pages of search results, so web sites that are further down in the results are missing out on a lot of traffic."

Simon Drain recommends that customer use Traffic Blazer as part of a larger scheme to increase their search engine ranking. "Other factors are also important," explained Simon. "Google, for example, takes the number of external links to the site in to account. This means that webmasters need to work on several areas, such as asking other webmasters to link to their web site. Traffic Blazer is useful for optimizing a web site and for submitting to search engines; however, it is not a panacea in itself."

For more information about Traffic Blazer, visit http://www.frwh.net

Negative SEO is Possible, Yet Difficult, Says Matt Cutts

2007-07-04T23:55:00.000-07:00

(Seroundtable.com :Tamar Weinberg in Google Optimization at July 4, 2007)

Two posts in DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld post point to a very interesting Forbes article on a lesser known practice of SEO known as "Google bowling" or "negative SEO." In this tactic, search engine optimizers force competitor websites down in the rankings so that the desired client's website has more visibility.

According to Brendon Scott, who sells this service to clients, this is indeed possible.

"I understand the rules of search," Scott says. "And once you understand the rules, you can use them not just constructively, but also destructively."

And Google's Webmaster Guidelines say "There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index," which leaves room for these deceptive practices to occur.

This is confirmed by Matt Cutts in the article:

Matt Cutts, a senior software engineer for Google, says that piling links onto a competitor's site to reduce its search rank isn't impossible, but it's extremely difficult. "We try to be mindful of when a technique can be abused and make our algorithm robust against it," he says. "I won't go out on a limb and say it's impossible. But Google bowling is much more inviting as an idea than it is in practice."

Interesting article, especially in light of our findings that competitors do try to trash rankings. DigitalPoint Forums members believe that it's definitely eye-opening:

Maybe this will put an end to all of the people who keep saying that if you got penalized you must have deserved it, and cut back on someone of the "Google knows everything" groupies.

Barry has written more on Search Engine Land. According to the article, there are 7 ways you can impact your competitors negatively:

1. Google Bowling
2. Tattling
3. Google Insulation
4. Copyright Takedown Notices
5. Copied Content
6. Denial of Service
7. Click Fraud

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

This entry was written on July 2nd and scheduled to be posted on July 4th.

New Software Technology Helps Small Businesses Compete With Large Corporations Online

2007-07-02T02:32:00.000-07:00

Largo, Fla. (PRWEB) June 28, 2007 - After five years of development, Web Tools and Technology has now released Site Search Architect, a next-generations content management software (CMS) program to help small- to medium-sized businesses compete online with large corporations.

Site Search Architect gives its users the ability to create professional web sites without the need to know any HTML coding. But even more impressive, Site Search Architect automatically incorporates proven and reliable search engine optimization (SEO) techniques into every Web page it creates.

Site Search Architect is the only complete search engine marketing tool on the market
Since the vast majority of Internet users rely on search engines to find products and information, a higher search engine ranking gives businesses an edge against the competition. Businesses that usually can't afford high-paid Internet professionals or SEO firms can now use Site Search Architect to effectively increase the rankings of their Web sites in the major search engines, including Google. SEO Content Management System.

"We developed Site Search Architect to make it easier for smaller businesses to launch successful search engine marketing campaigns," said Dave Barry, President and CEO of Web Tools and Technology. "We used the knowledge and expertise of leading SEO practitioners to develop a cost-effective CMS that actually 'thinks' like an SEO expert."

Site Search Architect organizes and optimizes Web content and backend technical features of Web sites for proper presentation to site visitors and the search engines. These are industry-accepted practices and techniques that increase search engine rankings for the long term. Site Search Architect users never have to worry about getting banned from listings or suffering poor rankings for "spamming" search engines.

Site Search Architect also includes superior lead tracking and traffic statistics to provide users with all the data needed to gauge the effectiveness of their search engine marketing.

"Site Search Architect is the only complete search engine marketing tool on the market," said Mr. Barry. "From initial Web design and search engine optimization, to content management and lead tracking, this is the only CMS a business needs."

Contact:
Joe Webb
Web Tools and Technology
1501 Lake Ave. S.
Largo, FL 33771
Phone: (727) 466-4560
Web Site: www.site-search-architect.com

10 Reasons Why You Should Pay for Search Engine Optimization

2007-07-02T02:14:00.000-07:00

by Ant Onaf (Owner & founder of AntOnaf.com)
PromotionWorld.com - June 29, 2007

Most people who are internet savvy probably would assume it is much easier to do search engine optimization themselves without the need to hire any professional search engine optimization assistance. In some cases this may work, but in most cases this is an absolute injustice for your web business. Marketing is an important and viable aspect of any business and without the proper marketing attention a business can easily fail. The following are 10 reasons why you should hire a professional search engine optimization consultant or SEO company.

Search Engine Optimization Takes Time, Effort, & Dedication

It takes an extreme amount of time, effort, and dedication to successfully complete a search engine optimization campaign. Search engine optimization consultants and companies usually have dedicated time to work on your search engine optimization project, thus giving you a controlled and managed search engine optimization campaign. Large companies as well as many small companies can provide your search engine optimization campaign the SEO effort and architecture it needs. Attempting to dedicate your own time can sometimes be overwhelming and without strict self-discipline you can easily get sidetracked. Additionally, progress for your search engine optimization campaign can take time to see any results, this fact can lessen your motivation to complete your own do-it-yourself search engine optimization campaign.

SEO Tools, SEO Strategy, & SEO Experience Goes a Long Way

The available SEO tools are ever-changing, but most skilled SEO's have a suite of SEO tools which they keep up with and use to execute reports and other processes, such as keyword research, keyword density reports, keyword competition reports, traffic reports, etc. Like any profession you need the necessary tools and essentials to get the job done, the experienced use of SEO tools will aid in any SEO campaign. Professional SEO consultants and companies create SEO strategies and roadmaps to successfully market client websites, this strategic roadmap outlines in detail the planned effort to market clients' websites. SEO strategy is essential for any SEO campaign. Having an experienced SEO professional on your side is always ideal. Experienced SEO's stay up to date with the latest SEO trends and news. By having an experienced SEO your website can impressively gain ranking within a short time and much more effectively, providing greater Return on Investment (ROI).

Search Engine Optimization Is Not Easy

Search engine optimization is not simple, it’s not just starting a website and throwing around hundreds or thousands of links. Those days of search engine optimization are gone. It is now more about strategy, method, and architecture. Search engine optimization is a form of engineering these days. True search engine optimization engineers stay up to date with search engine algorithm and search marketing. Knowing the trends is important, but that doesn't necessarily mean following trends, true search engine optimization engineers use experience, skill, historical methods, and best practices to successfully market websites. Researching trends and not just following trends is very important, a good search engine optimization engineer uses good judgment, to know what methods work and what is borderline unethical or useless methods.

SEO Services Do Not Have to be Very Expensive

Most full SEO campaigns are expensive, but relatively affordable compared to other advertising avenues, such as: print advertising, broadcast advertising, etc. Shop around for SEO Services which match your marketing budget and needs. Do not settle for the first bidder, compare the first bidders’ rate against other SEO companies and consultants rates. Contact various SEO consultants and SEO companies to receive a free custom quote. Negotiate the SEO rate and services until it fits your budget and needs. Get yourself a fair and honest deal that you are satisfied with.

Search Engine Optimization Can Take Your Website to New Heights

It's no secret that having your site rank in the top 10 results on search engines is very rewarding and can provide you with herds of traffic, if you rank for the right keywords. Search engine optimization can excel your website through the ranks and land your website in the top search results for virtually any keyword of your choosing. It is important that the search engine optimization company or consultant you choose targets top search results for all 3 major search engines (Google, Yahoo, & MSN). By having top search results in all 3 major search engines for a popular search term you are surely going to increase website sales and exposure.

Professional & Experienced SEO Services Can Be the Difference Between You and Your Competitors

Most online businesses and services invest in professional and experienced SEO services. The top search results for popular keyword terms usually have professional and experienced SEO companies and consultants in their corner, leading their online marketing campaign. By having professional and experienced SEO's working for you, your website will naturally outrank your competitors who use the do-it-yourself method of SEO services. It is always imperative to stay one step ahead of your competition and it’s more likely you will do so with the aid of professional and experienced SEO services.

Search Engine Optimization Gets You the Best Bang for Your Buck

When you compare search engine optimization with other media advertising efforts such as print advertising, television commercial advertising, and radio broadcast advertising then search engine optimization gives the best bang for your buck. While other advertising methods can cost hundreds of thousands for advertising, search engine optimization cost peanuts compared to these other advertising methods. Let's say you spend $25,000 for a full search engine optimization campaign and you spend (let's say) $100,000 for a television commercial ad which runs for 1 full week at prime time (I know that ad is a whole lot more than that, but this is just an example). The search engine optimization campaign is much cheaper and the return on investment is much greater for the search engine optimization campaign. Why? Because the search engine optimization campaign has a broader reach, it can reach anyone across the globe, while the TV commercial ad is specific for local or nation broadcasting within their network. Secondly, the search engine optimization campaign is much more targeted and relevant to the customer needs, because the customer actually initiated the search and was looking for you, while the TV commercial ad is an interruption to the customers viewing program and the customer is more likely to ignore the commercial ad, especially if it does not entice them.

SEO Services Can Help Increase Business Sales Drastically

Increasing business sales have never been easier. If you have a brick & mortar which sales goods, then it is advised that you also have an online store to sale your goods as well. Having an online business while investing in professional and experienced SEO services will help your business expand and grow drastically. Like any sound business decision, as a business owner you are always looking for new ways to monetize, expand, and stay ahead of competition, SEO services for your online business is the perfect solution for getting this done.

Professional Search Engine Optimization Can Increase Your Search Ranking in a Shorter Time Period

Professional search engine optimization services can get your website ranked in a shorter time than trying to do it yourself. With the aid of professional and experienced search engine optimization your website can rank within the search engines within weeks, maybe even days. Finding the right professional with the skill level you need can be quite rewarding.

Treat Your Website Like a Business

If your website is going to be a part of your financial lifeblood then it is sensible to treat your website as a business and recruit professional search engine optimization services. Good business sense is to outsource or employ others to complete day to day task and projects such as search engine optimization and search engine marketing, so you can have more time to concentrate on running a successful business. Many businesses fail due to the do-it-yourself model. Doing things yourself is 'okay' if the task you are performing is your profession or relates directly to your business service, but trying to do things yourself because its your hobby, interest, or saves you money can be damaging to your business, as you need to treat your website like a business and only seek professional and experienced assistance for your business needs.

I highly encourage that any true website owner who is interested in reaching top search results seriously consider professional and experienced SEO services for a full search engine optimization campaign. SEO services may be an expensive advertising avenue, but as we discussed above it is much cheaper than its other advertising counterparts and the reward is much greater. Search engine optimization has long been a mystery to many people and is foreign to some, but with the help and aid of professional and experienced SEO services you will easily increase website sales, traffic, and exposure. If you employ the right search engine optimization company or consultant I can almost guarantee you will have a rewarding experience and will not regret it.

New Search Engine Marketing Techniques on Four New Web Sites

2007-07-02T02:09:00.000-07:00

Austin, TX (PRWEB) July 2, 2007 -- Austin-based Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firm RefreshWeb announces the launch of three web sites for clients incorporating new, advanced search marketing techniques. The clients are Austin Institute of Real Estate, Breedlove & Associates, and Clifford Law Offices.

The Austin Institute of Real Estate just launched a completely re-designed site as it expands its business, www.austininstitute.com, and launched a sister site, www.thetexasinstitute.com, to gain visibility on a wider range of search terms. Clifford Law Offices, in Chicago, is a growing law firm with a specialty in aviation law; www.cliffordaviationlaw.com was a response to the need for greater visibility on search related to that practice area. Breedlove & Associates (www.breedlove-online.com) are Austin-based tax and payroll specialists, who see this as a way to reach customers by providing free information such as a "nanny tax calculator", and free answers and advice regarding the employer payroll taxes.

An increasing number of companies are choosing to incorporate advanced SEM techniques into web site redesigns
Search Engine Marketing (SEM), the use of advanced Internet-based marketing strategy - such as refinement and close coordination with a company's marketing strategies and lead management, comprehensive use of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and extensive link development - is increasingly necessary for the success of a web site.

"An increasing number of companies are choosing to incorporate advanced SEM techniques into web site redesigns", says John Rasco, RefreshWeb CEO, "This includes Search Engine Optimization (SEO), an online marketing strategy that works - and is measurable."

About RefreshWeb
Austin-based RefreshWeb is a business-to-business Internet marketing agency. It applies B2B marketing experience and technical expertise to promote clients' web sites to the top of the results on Google and other search engines.

For more information about RefreshWeb, contact John Rasco at jrasco @ refreshweb.net

(512) 637-5271, 5828 Balcones Dr., Suite 202, Austin, TX 78731. The company's website is www.refreshweb.com

SEO Optimization - What Is It?

2007-06-30T03:10:00.000-07:00

"SEO Optimization" has become a very popular term in the search engine industry.

SEO stands for search engine optimization. Therefore, when using the term "SEO Optimization", the word optimization is obviously unnecessary, but you get that.

SEO (search engine optimization) refers to the process of altering your web site so that it suits a search engine's preferences for a particular keyword, so that the site appears higher in it's listings when someone searches for that keyword.

Each search engine has a different way of deciding how to rank web pages. Some prefer keywords in the TITLE TAG section of your website coding. Others prefer links with keywords in them. Others prefer keywords within certain sections of your website title or body of text. Others prefer pages with a large number of relevant websites linking to them. Other search engines prefer a combination of these and more!

You can quickly see that pleasing each different search engine is a time consuming task. But there's more.

When you alter your website coding to match the requirements of a particular engine, you will do it for a particular keyword only (eg. "gardening equipment"). But if you want to target another keyword (eg. "outdoor landscaping") then you may need to prepare another web page with coding to suit that particular keyword. Then you need to alter it for each search engine again.

You also need to put safeguards in place to make sure that the search engines don't pick up on your several similar pages and consider banning you for "spamdexing".

The list goes on!
(The following was an excerpt from southwestecommerce.com: 30 October 2006)