Blogs can be a very marketable and very profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing any actual salesmen selling. In this article you will learn the 13 most essential steps to successful blogging.
1) Where to start?
You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home. I don't say that because I'm the owner, but a free blog host is very rewarding for a new blog. Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to build an audience and buzz for your blog. It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service, is in the case your blog doesn't become successful you do not lose any money or are you left holding the bill. The great thing about a blog is that they are organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the announcement of your "move". Simply add a last entry stating that your blog has "moved" and type the new blog URL address. Which directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade as you need to...but only when you need to!
2) Niche
A niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular searched topics. It does NOT matter if your topic is popular as long as there is a audience for your topic and the topic is precisely focused then your blog should be successful. Anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how large or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger niche market, if there are people who are interested in hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family, then you have a niche...you can even choose to build your audience for a market which an audience does not exist, but first you must build your blog.
3) Update Daily (nothing less)
This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one day here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. Though, I am seeing a growing trend of successful blogs that are not being updated daily, but they are successful and have a stable audience who continue to visit their blog daily. Regardless, these blogs are still updated weekly with multiple entries. Until you have a steady audience you should try to update your blog everyday with at least 3 or more daily entries. The best way to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to your blog each day. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you don't come to work for days or weeks...you lose money or worse you get fired! Same applies here...if you don't update your blog for days or weeks you'll lose visitors.
4) Traffic
It's no secret. You must have traffic to profit from blogs. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. You should submit your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. You should submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blogdigger. You should confidently share your blog with family, friends, co-workers, associates, and business professionals when it relates. Many blogs can be considered as a collection of articles, for this purpose you should submit your blog entries (those that are valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators like GoArticles.com or ArticleCity.com. Once submitted your articles can be picked up and published by others. The trick is to make sure you include your Blog URL address in the "About the Author" passage. What this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the "About the Author" passage is included with each publication and the link you included is followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 10,000 publications across the web. The search engines is bound to find your blog in no time with that many publications and credit you a authority on the topic, in return increasing your rank on search engines. The small effort of writing a well written article is rewarding. You should try to write at least 1 full length article every week for syndication and submit your article to at least 10 article syndicators.
5) Track Your Blog
How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments doesn't mean your blog isn't growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are returning visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with blogs people are more interested in what "you" have to say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time. Some do not comment at all, but are active daily visitors.
Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com or Active Meter will do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any page counter service you choose.
6) Listen to Your Audience
When using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are being used to find your blog. If constantly your blog is being found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible while keeping the blog legible and interesting.
7) Multiple blogs
Use multiple blogging accounts (free) to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with JournalHome.com and others. The more blog accounts the better (be sure to read and adhere to the Terms of Service for each site). You can copy/paste from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This enables you to attract more visitors and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your focused keywords.
8) Short & Concise
Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if you can help it). Sometimes there are exceptions to the rule and you have no choice but to blog lengthy entries, but try to avoid this as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors like to easily find information and skim through your entries. It is good to be detailed and provide useful information, but do not include useless information or run away sentences that veer away from your topic. Stay keyword-focused.
9) Digital Art
Try to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries. Not too much. Once a week is fine. Graphics can sometimes bring your blog to life. Of course, the content of the blog is the most important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your entry topic. You should add content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.
10) Keep it Personal
A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Do not write any of your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and personal endeavors.
11) Interact With Your Visitors
You now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: "Monday Money Tip" or "Picture of the Week" which entices your readers to look forward to each week.
Give your readers advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review and then talk about later. If the President was scheduled to give a speech then in your blog you should state that you "will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the speech airs. Comments will be appreciated".
Try your best to find exclusive information that not many have. Do not disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop before everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you had a blog entry about "Paris Hilton Getting Married" then it would be interesting to your readers if you had a actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring. Give your best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will possibly come up with something useful. Your readers will appreciate this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others about information they only can find at your blog.
12) Make Money
Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning your traffic into profit. You should use contextual advertising, like Google Adsense or Chitika. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for ever click an ad receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits. In addition to contextual advertising it is good to also use graphical advertising such as: BlogAds.com, Amazon.com, MammaMedia, or General Sponsored Advertising.
13) You're a Professional
You're a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and choose a domain name for your blog then check its availability. Select the blogging software you wish to use, such as: Squarespace.com, WordPress.org, MovableType.org, TypePad, etc. When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your last entry to the blog should be a "move" announcement. The title should be "Moved" and the blog entry should state something like "I have a new home for my blog, please bookmark and follow the link: http://www.YourNewBlogDomainName.com". This way all returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem finding your new blog domain. Plus, search engines can easily index and crawl your new blog, since your old blog should already be popular with the search engines.
At the level of a professional blogger you may want to team up with 1 or more other bloggers. This will create a more interesting and more powerful blog. The old saying "two heads is better than one", more authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will have a vested interest in the blog. The idea of a team blog is to make it profitable and rewarding for all authors, while continuing to target the blog topic and keeping the blog interesting for visitors.
Following these blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. There is no guarantee that your blog will become popular or a household name, but the effort should at least put you one step closer. Making money online is not an overnight experience like many may think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. As well, growing popularity on the web is not an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.
SEO India
August 23, 2010
SEO India : AdSense Tips For Bloggers
If you have joined the blogging revolution that is sweeping the net, and you think you might want to make a little revenue - or a lot of revenue - from your blogging efforts, you need AdSense tips for bloggers. Blogging has opened up an entirely new way of how non-technical people interact with the Internet, and now, anyone can publish anything about any topic - without having a website - and anyone can profit without even having a product!
Adsense for blogs make perfect sense. Google's advertising programs are designed to work with sites related to the keywords for the ads that are being presented. Each time you add content to your blog, the Google spiders gobble it up. The more you update, the more the Google spider visits your page. Ultimately, you move up in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for the topics that you write about. You see where this is going. The higher your search ranking, the more traffic you receive, which ultimately leads to higher revenue from AdSense ads.
The beauty of blogs is their potential for rapid growth. If you become known as an expert in your area of expertise, word of mouth spreads quickly and your blog can become very popular. So it is vital that you always teach something with every blog entry. You want your readers to come back frequently and they will if they know they will learn something. Not only will your readers bookmark your blog and return often, but they will link to your blog enthusiastically as well. People in forums will refer to your blogs and discuss what they learned. Websites will link to you as a valuable resource. In short, an informative blog can grow very quickly if the information it provides is valuable.
It is important to write about specific topics, and sprinkle your blog entries with specific keywords to get the best results - and the highest revenue - with your Google AdSense ads. There is a method to the madness. Start your revenue generating blog by testing the waters.
Decide what area you would like to write about and then do some keyword research. Research is easy if you use Google's keyword tools found at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox. The keyword tools are located in your Google AdWords account. Yes, you need a free AdWords account to be successful but you don't have to fund it to use the keyword tools. Look for keywords related to your subject that are high paying. These are keywords where the bid amounts are high. Make a list of the top paying keywords, and use that list to determine what topics you will write about.
Remember, you want people to visit your blog time and time again, and build up a readership, make sure that your blog is well written and informative. Don't just target keywords for the sake of targeting keywords - the writing needs to make sense! Writing valuable content is the first step to generating traffic to your blog, and traffic is needed to profit from AdSense ads!
You are allowed to use the AdSense ad units in two different places on each page. You can accomplish this in a couple of different ways. First, you can add the AdSense ad code to the template for your blog. This is done through the control panel for your blog, and some knowledge of HTML is needed. The other option is to paste the AdSense code directly in your blog post each time you submit a new post. You can use it once at the top and once at the bottom, or once after a few paragraphs of the post, and again after a few more paragraphs.
Get that code in there however you see fit - but then pay close attention to the results so you can see what is working and what isn't. Tracking is everything if you want to make real money!
Of course, you need to advertise your blog as much as possible as well. Make sure that you provide Trackbacks to other people's blogs as often as possible, and that you visit blogs, leave comments - and leave a link for your blog as well!
SEO India
Adsense for blogs make perfect sense. Google's advertising programs are designed to work with sites related to the keywords for the ads that are being presented. Each time you add content to your blog, the Google spiders gobble it up. The more you update, the more the Google spider visits your page. Ultimately, you move up in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for the topics that you write about. You see where this is going. The higher your search ranking, the more traffic you receive, which ultimately leads to higher revenue from AdSense ads.
The beauty of blogs is their potential for rapid growth. If you become known as an expert in your area of expertise, word of mouth spreads quickly and your blog can become very popular. So it is vital that you always teach something with every blog entry. You want your readers to come back frequently and they will if they know they will learn something. Not only will your readers bookmark your blog and return often, but they will link to your blog enthusiastically as well. People in forums will refer to your blogs and discuss what they learned. Websites will link to you as a valuable resource. In short, an informative blog can grow very quickly if the information it provides is valuable.
It is important to write about specific topics, and sprinkle your blog entries with specific keywords to get the best results - and the highest revenue - with your Google AdSense ads. There is a method to the madness. Start your revenue generating blog by testing the waters.
Decide what area you would like to write about and then do some keyword research. Research is easy if you use Google's keyword tools found at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox. The keyword tools are located in your Google AdWords account. Yes, you need a free AdWords account to be successful but you don't have to fund it to use the keyword tools. Look for keywords related to your subject that are high paying. These are keywords where the bid amounts are high. Make a list of the top paying keywords, and use that list to determine what topics you will write about.
Remember, you want people to visit your blog time and time again, and build up a readership, make sure that your blog is well written and informative. Don't just target keywords for the sake of targeting keywords - the writing needs to make sense! Writing valuable content is the first step to generating traffic to your blog, and traffic is needed to profit from AdSense ads!
You are allowed to use the AdSense ad units in two different places on each page. You can accomplish this in a couple of different ways. First, you can add the AdSense ad code to the template for your blog. This is done through the control panel for your blog, and some knowledge of HTML is needed. The other option is to paste the AdSense code directly in your blog post each time you submit a new post. You can use it once at the top and once at the bottom, or once after a few paragraphs of the post, and again after a few more paragraphs.
Get that code in there however you see fit - but then pay close attention to the results so you can see what is working and what isn't. Tracking is everything if you want to make real money!
Of course, you need to advertise your blog as much as possible as well. Make sure that you provide Trackbacks to other people's blogs as often as possible, and that you visit blogs, leave comments - and leave a link for your blog as well!
SEO India
August 13, 2010
SEO India :55 Quick SEO Tip
Everyone loves a good tip, right? Here are 55 quick tips for search engine optimization that even your mother could use to get cooking. Well, not my mother, but you get my point. Most folks with some web design and beginner SEO knowledge should be able to take these to the bank without any problem.
1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.
2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.
3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don’t want the link.
4. Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.
5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.
6. Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.
7. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.
8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.
9. Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.
10. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.
11. Check for canonicalization issues – www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if http://www.domain.com is your preference, then http://domain.com should redirect to it.
12. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html.
Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.
13. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.
14. Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.
15. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.
16. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.
17. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.
18. Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.
19. Not only should your links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text.
20. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.
21. Be aware that by using services that block domain ownership information when you register a domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer.
22. When optimizing your blog posts, optimize your post title tag independently from your blog title.
23. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.
24. Make sure your site is easy to use. This can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking.
25. Give link love, Get link love. Don’t be stingy with linking out. That will encourage others to link to you.
26. Search engines like unique content that is also quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content is both.
27. If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold.
28. Some of your most valuable links might not appear in web sites at all but be in the form of e-mail communications such as newletters and zines.
29. You get NOTHING from paid links except a few clicks unless the links are embedded in body text and NOT obvious sponsored links.
30. Links from .edu domains are given nice weight by the search engines. Run a search for possible non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors.
31. Give them something to talk about. Linkbaiting is simply good content.
32. Give each page a focus on a single keyword phrase. Don’t try to optimize the page for several keywords at once.
33. SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and present.
34. SEO is not a one-shot process. The search landscape changes daily, so expect to work on your optimization daily.
35. Cater to influential bloggers and authority sites who might link to you, your images, videos, podcasts, etc. or ask to reprint your content.
36. Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. Response from the owner to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket!
37. Optimize the text in your RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages. Use descriptive, keyword rich text in your title and description.
38. Use captions with your images. As with newspaper photos, place keyword rich captions with your images.
39. Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc.
40. You’re better off letting your site pages be found naturally by the crawler. Good global navigation and linking will serve you much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap.
41. There are two ways to NOT see Google’s Personalized Search results:
(1) Log out of Google
(2) Append &pws=0 to the end of your search URL in the search bar
42. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust, so the back links will carry more weight.
43. Use absolute links. Not only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems (like links to and from https pages), but if someone scrapes your content, you’ll get backlink juice out of it.
44. See if your hosting company offers “Sticky” forwarding when moving to a new domain. This allows temporary forwarding to the new domain from the old, retaining the new URL in the address bar so that users can gradually get used to the new URL.
45. Understand social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search.
46. To get the best chance for your videos to be found by the crawlers, create a video sitemap and list it in your Google Webmaster Central account.
47. Videos that show up in Google blended search results don’t just come from YouTube. Be sure to submit your videos to other quality video sites like Metacafe, AOL, MSN and Yahoo to name a few.
48. Surround video content on your pages with keyword rich text. The search engines look at surrounding content to define the usefulness of the video for the query.
49. Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.
50. Enable “Enhanced image search” in your Google Webmaster Central account. Images are a big part of the new blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will help your SEO efforts.
51. Add viral components to your web site or blog – reviews, sharing functions, ratings, visitor comments, etc.
52. Broaden your range of services to include video, podcasts, news, social content and so forth. SEO is not about 10 blue links anymore.
53. When considering a link purchase or exchange, check the cache date of the page where your link will be located in Google. Search for “cache:URL” where you substitute “URL” for the actual page. The newer the cache date the better. If the page isn’t there or the cache date is more than an month old, the page isn’t worth much.
54. If you have pages on your site that are very similar (you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps.
55. Check your server headers. Search for “check server header” to find free online tools for this. You want to be sure your URLs report a “200 OK” status or “301 Moved Permanently ” for redirects. If the status shows anything else, check to be sure your URLs are set up properly and used consistently throughout your site.
1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.
2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.
3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don’t want the link.
4. Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.
5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.
6. Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.
7. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.
8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.
9. Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.
10. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.
11. Check for canonicalization issues – www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if http://www.domain.com is your preference, then http://domain.com should redirect to it.
12. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html.
Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.
13. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.
14. Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.
15. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.
16. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.
17. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.
18. Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.
19. Not only should your links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text.
20. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.
21. Be aware that by using services that block domain ownership information when you register a domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer.
22. When optimizing your blog posts, optimize your post title tag independently from your blog title.
23. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.
24. Make sure your site is easy to use. This can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking.
25. Give link love, Get link love. Don’t be stingy with linking out. That will encourage others to link to you.
26. Search engines like unique content that is also quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content is both.
27. If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold.
28. Some of your most valuable links might not appear in web sites at all but be in the form of e-mail communications such as newletters and zines.
29. You get NOTHING from paid links except a few clicks unless the links are embedded in body text and NOT obvious sponsored links.
30. Links from .edu domains are given nice weight by the search engines. Run a search for possible non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors.
31. Give them something to talk about. Linkbaiting is simply good content.
32. Give each page a focus on a single keyword phrase. Don’t try to optimize the page for several keywords at once.
33. SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and present.
34. SEO is not a one-shot process. The search landscape changes daily, so expect to work on your optimization daily.
35. Cater to influential bloggers and authority sites who might link to you, your images, videos, podcasts, etc. or ask to reprint your content.
36. Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. Response from the owner to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket!
37. Optimize the text in your RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages. Use descriptive, keyword rich text in your title and description.
38. Use captions with your images. As with newspaper photos, place keyword rich captions with your images.
39. Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc.
40. You’re better off letting your site pages be found naturally by the crawler. Good global navigation and linking will serve you much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap.
41. There are two ways to NOT see Google’s Personalized Search results:
(1) Log out of Google
(2) Append &pws=0 to the end of your search URL in the search bar
42. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust, so the back links will carry more weight.
43. Use absolute links. Not only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems (like links to and from https pages), but if someone scrapes your content, you’ll get backlink juice out of it.
44. See if your hosting company offers “Sticky” forwarding when moving to a new domain. This allows temporary forwarding to the new domain from the old, retaining the new URL in the address bar so that users can gradually get used to the new URL.
45. Understand social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search.
46. To get the best chance for your videos to be found by the crawlers, create a video sitemap and list it in your Google Webmaster Central account.
47. Videos that show up in Google blended search results don’t just come from YouTube. Be sure to submit your videos to other quality video sites like Metacafe, AOL, MSN and Yahoo to name a few.
48. Surround video content on your pages with keyword rich text. The search engines look at surrounding content to define the usefulness of the video for the query.
49. Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.
50. Enable “Enhanced image search” in your Google Webmaster Central account. Images are a big part of the new blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will help your SEO efforts.
51. Add viral components to your web site or blog – reviews, sharing functions, ratings, visitor comments, etc.
52. Broaden your range of services to include video, podcasts, news, social content and so forth. SEO is not about 10 blue links anymore.
53. When considering a link purchase or exchange, check the cache date of the page where your link will be located in Google. Search for “cache:URL” where you substitute “URL” for the actual page. The newer the cache date the better. If the page isn’t there or the cache date is more than an month old, the page isn’t worth much.
54. If you have pages on your site that are very similar (you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps.
55. Check your server headers. Search for “check server header” to find free online tools for this. You want to be sure your URLs report a “200 OK” status or “301 Moved Permanently ” for redirects. If the status shows anything else, check to be sure your URLs are set up properly and used consistently throughout your site.
August 12, 2010
SEO India : (Internet Traffic and SEO Techniques)
You might be wandering the reasons your web site is not getting much internet traffic. After all your web site took lots of financial and human resources, but unfortunately like so many web sites, it is quite unknown and as a result it does not get enough internet traffic to make it financially viable.
Did you know that about 80 percent of all web site traffic originates from search engines? Yes, it is true! Listing near the top page of search engines and obtaining the attention of your target audience should be a main priority for any web site internet promotion.
And the good news about this is that improving a web site position in search engine pages may be done for free. How? Using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.
There are many ways to promote a web site. Some promotions are paid and some are free. Among the free ones, the search engine optimization techniques enable web sites to become search engine friendly. In other words, it makes website pages to accept the search engine crawler in a friendly way. These techniques will be some of the steps one will have to use to obtain a better position in search engine's pages, when searching for specific keywords, related to services or products offered by a web site.
Search engine optimization steps for a web page:
Title:
The html Title tag is a very important element and must include the most important keywords or phrases, which best represent the products or services offered by the web page. It should not contain more than 60 characters.
Keywords:
The html meta Keyword tag should have all the keyword phrases which best represents the products or services offered by the web page. Avoid repeating keywords and bad use of capital letters. It should not contain more than 250 characters.
Description:
The html meta Description tag is a description of the web page, which will be displayed by the search engine. Make sure it contains keywords phrases. Avoid repeating keywords and bad use of capital letters. It should not contain more than 200 characters.
Keywords in Headings:
Keywords in Headings tags (h1) will be interpreted by search engines as being an important keyword relevant to the web page, and it should be looked for and indexed by the search engines.
Web page text:
It is a good practice to include informative text one every page, using natural language and appropriate keywords. It should contain more than 200 words. Informative text should be placed in the html Body section of the web page.
Keywords in Alt Tags:
Every html picture "img" tag should contain an ALT tag with an appropriate description. Keywords should always be used when appropriate.
Keywords in Anchor Tags:
Every html hypertext link "a href " should contain a TITLE tag with an appropriate description. Keywords should always be used when appropriate.
Robots.txt file:
Make sure there is a robots.txt file in you web site directory. This is a text file created by the webmaster, which will guide the search engine´s crawler when indexing a web site.
There are some cases in which one might not want to have some web pages indexed. This way thru the use of robots.txt, one will have control over which pages will be indexed and made available to the search engines.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /data/
HTML code validation:
Search engine's crawlers become more efficient when indexing web pages with no html errors. Beware that some html errors can make search engine crawlers to give up indexing web pages. So it is recommended for those web pages to be indexed, there should be no html errors.
Links:
Links are very important to search engines. The quality of links and whether it is reciprocal or not, are important factors in evaluating the importance of a web page. Links from web sites with higher page ranks are a plus.
Registering with Directories and Search Engines:
It is very important the registration of a website with directories and search engine web sites. It is a way of telling the world that your web site exists. Avoid using automatic search engine/directory registration.
Search engine optimization has become a very important set of procedures which helps web sites to become more relevant to search engines. To obtain an increase in internet traffic will take some time. It probably will take some kind of additional promotion too. But anybody in need of higher internet traffic, free search engine optimization might be considered his first option.
Did you know that about 80 percent of all web site traffic originates from search engines? Yes, it is true! Listing near the top page of search engines and obtaining the attention of your target audience should be a main priority for any web site internet promotion.
And the good news about this is that improving a web site position in search engine pages may be done for free. How? Using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.
There are many ways to promote a web site. Some promotions are paid and some are free. Among the free ones, the search engine optimization techniques enable web sites to become search engine friendly. In other words, it makes website pages to accept the search engine crawler in a friendly way. These techniques will be some of the steps one will have to use to obtain a better position in search engine's pages, when searching for specific keywords, related to services or products offered by a web site.
Search engine optimization steps for a web page:
Title:
The html Title tag is a very important element and must include the most important keywords or phrases, which best represent the products or services offered by the web page. It should not contain more than 60 characters.
Keywords:
The html meta Keyword tag should have all the keyword phrases which best represents the products or services offered by the web page. Avoid repeating keywords and bad use of capital letters. It should not contain more than 250 characters.
Description:
The html meta Description tag is a description of the web page, which will be displayed by the search engine. Make sure it contains keywords phrases. Avoid repeating keywords and bad use of capital letters. It should not contain more than 200 characters.
Keywords in Headings:
Keywords in Headings tags (h1) will be interpreted by search engines as being an important keyword relevant to the web page, and it should be looked for and indexed by the search engines.
Web page text:
It is a good practice to include informative text one every page, using natural language and appropriate keywords. It should contain more than 200 words. Informative text should be placed in the html Body section of the web page.
Keywords in Alt Tags:
Every html picture "img" tag should contain an ALT tag with an appropriate description. Keywords should always be used when appropriate.
Keywords in Anchor Tags:
Every html hypertext link "a href " should contain a TITLE tag with an appropriate description. Keywords should always be used when appropriate.
Robots.txt file:
Make sure there is a robots.txt file in you web site directory. This is a text file created by the webmaster, which will guide the search engine´s crawler when indexing a web site.
There are some cases in which one might not want to have some web pages indexed. This way thru the use of robots.txt, one will have control over which pages will be indexed and made available to the search engines.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /data/
HTML code validation:
Search engine's crawlers become more efficient when indexing web pages with no html errors. Beware that some html errors can make search engine crawlers to give up indexing web pages. So it is recommended for those web pages to be indexed, there should be no html errors.
Links:
Links are very important to search engines. The quality of links and whether it is reciprocal or not, are important factors in evaluating the importance of a web page. Links from web sites with higher page ranks are a plus.
Registering with Directories and Search Engines:
It is very important the registration of a website with directories and search engine web sites. It is a way of telling the world that your web site exists. Avoid using automatic search engine/directory registration.
Search engine optimization has become a very important set of procedures which helps web sites to become more relevant to search engines. To obtain an increase in internet traffic will take some time. It probably will take some kind of additional promotion too. But anybody in need of higher internet traffic, free search engine optimization might be considered his first option.
SEO India : Plan for Internet Marketers
How to optimize your site
I don't like doing seo, but its very much needed. Search engine optimization for your website should be one of a webmaster's main goals. Getting traffic from the search engines is not only free but is also constant (depending on what keywords that you are targeting) traffic. Below is a plan that web masters should follow when they decide that they will start optimizing their websites, you should include a combination of onsite and offsite search engine optimization.
Step one: What keywords your going to optimize for
Think of what keywords that you want to target. If you target the wrong keywords then you may never see any results for them, just some common sense. And if you target overly competive keywords then it may take too much time to see results but once you do it will be well worth it. I would recommend targeting in the middle when selecting keywords to optimize your site for when you're starting out.
Here is a free keyword tool that you can use to get an idea of what keywords are popular: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/.
Just a quick tip when selecting keywords, i usually use the plural version for keywords or keyword phrases because the plural version includes the single one. For example if you have a keyword "shoe" try making it "shoes" because the keyword "shoes" include the keyword "shoe" but its not the same in reverse.
Step two: Start onsite optimization
This is one layer of search engine optimization and this process includes manipulating the source code of your website with keywords. The places to put keywords in your website includes the title tags, meta tags, within the text of your website, and within links (anchor text).
Title tags: This is the most important part to place keywords in your website and surprisingly a lot of web masters just leave this area blank. Search engine bots show the most prominence (importance) to keywords within the title tag which is why its critical to include keywords here.
Place keywords here
Text of document
Meta tags: Place keywords here but be careful not to place too many here or else you will be viewed as spamming the search engines "keyword stuffing." These use to be an easy way to score top rankings in the search engines but the search engines have evolved overtime and this is no longer possible to score high rankings with stuffing the meta tags. You will need a proper combination of onsite and off site optimization which i will explain later. Meta tags goes between the head tags in your source code.
Description Meta:
This should be a description of your website and always put important keywords in the beginning of the sentence if applicable."
Meta Keywords:
Some quick tips. Try to use the plural form of your keywords here and to also see if there are common misspellings for popular keywords and lace them here. DO NOT repeat keywords.
Heading tags:
Heading Size 1
Make sure to place your keywords here because this helps tells search engines related content on your website.
Keywords in the anchor text:
This is important, whenever you are linking within your website make sure to place keywords in the links, search engine algorithms like this. For example, if your selling a weight loss product instead of having a link that simply says "click here" have the anchor text say "click here to get the ultimate guide to weight loss." Anchor text code=Keywords go here
Alt tag
If you have a lot of graphics on your site there are a couple of things you want to do. First, you want to make it small as possible without losing none of the quality if possible. Websites that are bombarded with graphics usually take some time to load which can cause visitors to get impatient and leave so this is important to keep in mind. Also, make sure to place keywords in the image alt tags:
Make sure to actually describe the image, just don't use this as an extra means to stuff keywords, and use the keywords here that you have in your title and meta tags. Make sure to spell correctly (unlike what I'm doing) when your working on the on site optimization for your website. NEVER EVER copy and paste text from word into your html text editor, that can cause all types of complications. Write your keywords up in word and the copy and paste your text into a text editor like notepad or wordpad and then paste it into your html editor.
Offsite optimization
Offsite optimization has nothing to do with manipulating the source code of your website and relies heavily on links which brings me to my first tip with optimization, and that is to write articles. The funny thing is by getting links to your site is also a quick way to get indexed in the search engines.
Writing articles:
I like writing articles because the Internet was made for information and when someone is searching for something online they are most likely looking for information that they are searching for, i will assume that you did a good amount of searching today or browsing if your reading this right now. Okay, write and submit articles to website directories. I have tested and founded that a 3% keyword density is usually perfect when writing articles. Always place keywords within the anchor text in the links of your signature.
Classic blog and ping:
Search engines love blogs, and these are an easy way to get backlinks to your sites. Just open up a free blog at blogger and make a post with a link back to your site. You can also try deep linking by linking to other content parts of your site as well in your blog.
Blog comment:
Find the top blogs in your niche and leave a comment, but no spamming... thats just tasteless.
MSN, Google, and Yahoo Homepage:
Make and customize your own personal webpage for each of these search engines and post your articles here with a link back to your website. They also have rss so that you can syndicate your content as well.
Google: pages.google.com
Yahoo! my.yahoo.com/
MSN: my.msn.com
Press release:
Write and syndicate press release, this is a great way to get backlinks as well as also get some media attention about your website.
Extensive list (Link bait)
Take the time to make an extensive list of links to useful resources, this is great ways to make your website ready to get eaten up with links.
Build a 101 list:
These are almost next to impossible to not get linked to and often get dugged often in digg. I wrote an article in a couple of hours titled 101 muscular ways to get more traffic to you website and blogs and this have given me enormous amounts of backlinks and a good amount of traffic from the search engines, blogs it was reposted on, and forums as well.You can also make a separate page on your website for directories. These are great way to link to useful information, but its also a great way to link to pages within your site (if its useful) a process called deep linking.
Sitemap:
Sitemaps are important because not only does it help make your website easier to navigate for a first time user, it also helps spider your site which will help your content get indexed in the search engines. There is no secret, if the pages are not indexed in the search engines then that means they cannot draw any traffic from them. So, this is where sitemaps come in. Sitemaps are written in xml, a language i don't like but a language the search engines love (same languages that blogs are written in). Once you have your sitempap which has to be in .xml format before you submit to Google go here:
www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/
Here are some xml sitemap creators:
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
http://pingoat.com/goat/google_sitemap
http://www.neuroticweb.com/recursos/sitemap/
Yahoo sitemap
To submit go here:
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
MSN sitemap
To my current knowledege, MSN doesn't currently have a particular place to submit sitemaps to, but from my understanding if you submit your sitemap to Google, then MSN will pick it up because it can understand that protocol. Go here for more information if your curious: http://sitemaps.org.
This should work for Yahoo! As well, so thats why its important to always submit your sitemmaps to Google. Also, here is another trick that you can do. You can always ping the search engines so that you will tell them that "hey i updated my content come and visit and spider my website you." Here is the code: http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=http://www.YourSiteMapURL
There you have it, a nice summary of what you need to do in order to start an effective search engine optimization plan so quick reading, print this out, and get started working, all the best.
I don't like doing seo, but its very much needed. Search engine optimization for your website should be one of a webmaster's main goals. Getting traffic from the search engines is not only free but is also constant (depending on what keywords that you are targeting) traffic. Below is a plan that web masters should follow when they decide that they will start optimizing their websites, you should include a combination of onsite and offsite search engine optimization.
Step one: What keywords your going to optimize for
Think of what keywords that you want to target. If you target the wrong keywords then you may never see any results for them, just some common sense. And if you target overly competive keywords then it may take too much time to see results but once you do it will be well worth it. I would recommend targeting in the middle when selecting keywords to optimize your site for when you're starting out.
Here is a free keyword tool that you can use to get an idea of what keywords are popular: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/.
Just a quick tip when selecting keywords, i usually use the plural version for keywords or keyword phrases because the plural version includes the single one. For example if you have a keyword "shoe" try making it "shoes" because the keyword "shoes" include the keyword "shoe" but its not the same in reverse.
Step two: Start onsite optimization
This is one layer of search engine optimization and this process includes manipulating the source code of your website with keywords. The places to put keywords in your website includes the title tags, meta tags, within the text of your website, and within links (anchor text).
Title tags: This is the most important part to place keywords in your website and surprisingly a lot of web masters just leave this area blank. Search engine bots show the most prominence (importance) to keywords within the title tag which is why its critical to include keywords here.
Place keywords here
Text of document
Meta tags: Place keywords here but be careful not to place too many here or else you will be viewed as spamming the search engines "keyword stuffing." These use to be an easy way to score top rankings in the search engines but the search engines have evolved overtime and this is no longer possible to score high rankings with stuffing the meta tags. You will need a proper combination of onsite and off site optimization which i will explain later. Meta tags goes between the head tags in your source code.
Description Meta:
This should be a description of your website and always put important keywords in the beginning of the sentence if applicable."
Meta Keywords:
Some quick tips. Try to use the plural form of your keywords here and to also see if there are common misspellings for popular keywords and lace them here. DO NOT repeat keywords.
Heading tags:
Heading Size 1
Make sure to place your keywords here because this helps tells search engines related content on your website.
Keywords in the anchor text:
This is important, whenever you are linking within your website make sure to place keywords in the links, search engine algorithms like this. For example, if your selling a weight loss product instead of having a link that simply says "click here" have the anchor text say "click here to get the ultimate guide to weight loss." Anchor text code=Keywords go here
Alt tag
If you have a lot of graphics on your site there are a couple of things you want to do. First, you want to make it small as possible without losing none of the quality if possible. Websites that are bombarded with graphics usually take some time to load which can cause visitors to get impatient and leave so this is important to keep in mind. Also, make sure to place keywords in the image alt tags:
Make sure to actually describe the image, just don't use this as an extra means to stuff keywords, and use the keywords here that you have in your title and meta tags. Make sure to spell correctly (unlike what I'm doing) when your working on the on site optimization for your website. NEVER EVER copy and paste text from word into your html text editor, that can cause all types of complications. Write your keywords up in word and the copy and paste your text into a text editor like notepad or wordpad and then paste it into your html editor.
Offsite optimization
Offsite optimization has nothing to do with manipulating the source code of your website and relies heavily on links which brings me to my first tip with optimization, and that is to write articles. The funny thing is by getting links to your site is also a quick way to get indexed in the search engines.
Writing articles:
I like writing articles because the Internet was made for information and when someone is searching for something online they are most likely looking for information that they are searching for, i will assume that you did a good amount of searching today or browsing if your reading this right now. Okay, write and submit articles to website directories. I have tested and founded that a 3% keyword density is usually perfect when writing articles. Always place keywords within the anchor text in the links of your signature.
Classic blog and ping:
Search engines love blogs, and these are an easy way to get backlinks to your sites. Just open up a free blog at blogger and make a post with a link back to your site. You can also try deep linking by linking to other content parts of your site as well in your blog.
Blog comment:
Find the top blogs in your niche and leave a comment, but no spamming... thats just tasteless.
MSN, Google, and Yahoo Homepage:
Make and customize your own personal webpage for each of these search engines and post your articles here with a link back to your website. They also have rss so that you can syndicate your content as well.
Google: pages.google.com
Yahoo! my.yahoo.com/
MSN: my.msn.com
Press release:
Write and syndicate press release, this is a great way to get backlinks as well as also get some media attention about your website.
Extensive list (Link bait)
Take the time to make an extensive list of links to useful resources, this is great ways to make your website ready to get eaten up with links.
Build a 101 list:
These are almost next to impossible to not get linked to and often get dugged often in digg. I wrote an article in a couple of hours titled 101 muscular ways to get more traffic to you website and blogs and this have given me enormous amounts of backlinks and a good amount of traffic from the search engines, blogs it was reposted on, and forums as well.You can also make a separate page on your website for directories. These are great way to link to useful information, but its also a great way to link to pages within your site (if its useful) a process called deep linking.
Sitemap:
Sitemaps are important because not only does it help make your website easier to navigate for a first time user, it also helps spider your site which will help your content get indexed in the search engines. There is no secret, if the pages are not indexed in the search engines then that means they cannot draw any traffic from them. So, this is where sitemaps come in. Sitemaps are written in xml, a language i don't like but a language the search engines love (same languages that blogs are written in). Once you have your sitempap which has to be in .xml format before you submit to Google go here:
www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/
Here are some xml sitemap creators:
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
http://pingoat.com/goat/google_sitemap
http://www.neuroticweb.com/recursos/sitemap/
Yahoo sitemap
To submit go here:
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
MSN sitemap
To my current knowledege, MSN doesn't currently have a particular place to submit sitemaps to, but from my understanding if you submit your sitemap to Google, then MSN will pick it up because it can understand that protocol. Go here for more information if your curious: http://sitemaps.org.
This should work for Yahoo! As well, so thats why its important to always submit your sitemmaps to Google. Also, here is another trick that you can do. You can always ping the search engines so that you will tell them that "hey i updated my content come and visit and spider my website you." Here is the code: http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=http://www.YourSiteMapURL
There you have it, a nice summary of what you need to do in order to start an effective search engine optimization plan so quick reading, print this out, and get started working, all the best.
Search Engine Marketing Optimization Products Reviewed
Most books and software ever sold online have-in one form or another-something to do with Search Engine Optimization. Why is this such a sought after service? Because... getting a good spot on major search engines can be the difference between $0 in profit per day versus $500 to $150,000 in profits per day (depending on the product you are promoting). Now there are many books and programs out there... and trust me, I've tried nearly all of them. Here are my personal recommendations:
1 - The SEO Elite Software is by far the best of the best in software out there. It is a bit pricey to start off with, but it will literally save you thousands of dollars in promotions. The advantage you have is that you can create instant back-links to your site whenever you choose to, and on more sites then you could ever dream of. To have access to tools with a 1/4 of these abilities you would pay about $239 a year somewhere else. In short... you get more than you pay for. I'd rate it 10/10
2 - Search Engine Optimization is another great, great tool. The price is a fraction of what you would pay on the previous software, but you are also more limited as to what you can or cannot do with this system. Still a super program, but remember: You Get What You Pay For.
3 - Links Master is a program different from the previous two in the sense that you get someone else to blast your text ads out onto hundreds of sites. Problem? You have limited control over the kind of sites and the amount of sites linking to your site. Again... a great service, but it does tend to go hard on the wallet of those starting out.
Believe it or not-there is no secret to getting your site listed number 1 on major search engines. You read that right! Search Engine Marketing is always spoken of as though it is hard to do. And gaining a number 1 spot on Google, well, that is just plain impossible. If done right, YOU can prove all those assumptions wrong.
Using software number 1 it is easy and fast as lightning to get top ranking on major search engines and, as previously stated, it takes very little effort on your part. Go to the site, read the testimonials-and if you are serious about getting that number 1 spot... I trust you will purchase the software. The SEO software is to the online marketer today as a machine gun would have been to a warrior in medieval times: It literally blows all Search Engine Marketing competitors to pieces!
Search engines can be an effective method of driving highly targeted visitors to a web site. Our search engine marketing page provides access to the collective wisdom of all the top search engine marketing experts with regularly updated articles, links to resources, and announcements of new tools and services available to the search engine marketing industry.
Do you want your site to rank number 1 on Google?
Then use the number 1 Search Engine Marketing tool, which is currently being used by thousands of search engine marketers around the world. Gain YOUR #1 spot on Google, Yahoo, and MSN in record time!
1 - The SEO Elite Software is by far the best of the best in software out there. It is a bit pricey to start off with, but it will literally save you thousands of dollars in promotions. The advantage you have is that you can create instant back-links to your site whenever you choose to, and on more sites then you could ever dream of. To have access to tools with a 1/4 of these abilities you would pay about $239 a year somewhere else. In short... you get more than you pay for. I'd rate it 10/10
2 - Search Engine Optimization is another great, great tool. The price is a fraction of what you would pay on the previous software, but you are also more limited as to what you can or cannot do with this system. Still a super program, but remember: You Get What You Pay For.
3 - Links Master is a program different from the previous two in the sense that you get someone else to blast your text ads out onto hundreds of sites. Problem? You have limited control over the kind of sites and the amount of sites linking to your site. Again... a great service, but it does tend to go hard on the wallet of those starting out.
Believe it or not-there is no secret to getting your site listed number 1 on major search engines. You read that right! Search Engine Marketing is always spoken of as though it is hard to do. And gaining a number 1 spot on Google, well, that is just plain impossible. If done right, YOU can prove all those assumptions wrong.
Using software number 1 it is easy and fast as lightning to get top ranking on major search engines and, as previously stated, it takes very little effort on your part. Go to the site, read the testimonials-and if you are serious about getting that number 1 spot... I trust you will purchase the software. The SEO software is to the online marketer today as a machine gun would have been to a warrior in medieval times: It literally blows all Search Engine Marketing competitors to pieces!
Search engines can be an effective method of driving highly targeted visitors to a web site. Our search engine marketing page provides access to the collective wisdom of all the top search engine marketing experts with regularly updated articles, links to resources, and announcements of new tools and services available to the search engine marketing industry.
Do you want your site to rank number 1 on Google?
Then use the number 1 Search Engine Marketing tool, which is currently being used by thousands of search engine marketers around the world. Gain YOUR #1 spot on Google, Yahoo, and MSN in record time!
SEO India :10 Costly Search Engine Mistakes to Avoid
If you have a website then you already know the importance of traffic. Traffic is to Internet marketing as location is to real estate. It's the only thing that really matters. If you cannot generate targeted visitors to your site, you will not make any sales.
Usually the owner or designer of the website is the person designated to drive traffic to the site. The chief ingredient in generating traffic is the search engine. Of coarse, you can use advertising, but it's going to cost you. Using the search engines to generate targeted (interested in your product) traffic is the least expensive method known.
Unfortunately, many website owners do not understand the importance of search engine visibility, which leads to traffic. They place more importance on producing a "pretty" website. Not that this is bad, but it is really secondary to search engine placement. Hopefully, the following list of common mistakes, made by many website owners, will help you generate more targeted traffic to your site...after all, isn't that what you want.
1. Not using keywords effectively.
This is probably one of the most critical area of site design. Choose the right keywords and potential customers will find your site. Use the wrong ones and your site will see little, if any, traffic.
2. Repeating the same keywords.
When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking) the search engines may downgrade (or skip) the page or site.
3. Robbing pages from other websites.
How many times have you heard or read that "this is the Internet and it's ok" to steal icons and text from websites to use on your site. Don't do it. Its one thing to learn from others who have been there and another to outright copy their work. The search engines are very smart and usually detect page duplication. They may even prevent you from ever being listed by them.
4. Using keywords that are not related to your website.
Many unethical website owners try to gain search engine visibility by using keywords that have nothing at all to do with their website. They place unrelated keywords in a page (such as "sex", the name of a known celebrity, the hot search topic of the day, etc.) inside a meta tag for a page. The keyword doesn't have anything to do with the page topic. However, since the keyword is popular, they think this will boost their visibility. This technique is considered spam by the search engines and may cause the page (or sometimes the whole site) to be removed from the search engine listing.
5. Keyword stuffing.
Somewhat like keyword stacking listed above, this means to assign multiple keywords to the description of a graphic or layer that appears on your website by using the "alt=" HTML parameter. If the search engines find that this text does not really describe the graphic or layer it will be considered spam.
6. Relying on hidden text.
You might be inclined to think that if you cannot see it, it doesn't hurt. Wrong.... Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them invisible. For example, some unethical designers my set the keywords to the same color as the background of the web page; thereby, making it invisible.
7. Relying on tiny text.
This is another version of the item above (relying on hidden text). Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them tiny. Setting the text size of the keywords so small that it can barely be seen does this.
8. Assuming all search engines are the same.
Many people assume that each search engine plays by the same rules. This is not so. Each has their own rule base and is subject to change anytime they so desire. Make it a point to learn what each major search engine requires for high visibility.
9. Using free web hosting.
Do not use free web hosting if you are really serious about increasing site traffic via search engine visibility. Many times the search engines will eliminate content from these free hosts.
10. Forgetting to check for missing web page elements.
Make sure to check every page in your website for completeness, like missing links, graphics, etc. There are sites on the web that will do this for free.
This is just a few of the methods and techniques that you should avoid. Do not give in to the temptation that these methods will work for you. They will do more harm than good for your website.
Not only will you spend weeks of wasted effort, you may have your site banned from the search engines forever. Invest a little time to learn the proper techniques for increasing search engine visibility and your net traffic will increase.
Usually the owner or designer of the website is the person designated to drive traffic to the site. The chief ingredient in generating traffic is the search engine. Of coarse, you can use advertising, but it's going to cost you. Using the search engines to generate targeted (interested in your product) traffic is the least expensive method known.
Unfortunately, many website owners do not understand the importance of search engine visibility, which leads to traffic. They place more importance on producing a "pretty" website. Not that this is bad, but it is really secondary to search engine placement. Hopefully, the following list of common mistakes, made by many website owners, will help you generate more targeted traffic to your site...after all, isn't that what you want.
1. Not using keywords effectively.
This is probably one of the most critical area of site design. Choose the right keywords and potential customers will find your site. Use the wrong ones and your site will see little, if any, traffic.
2. Repeating the same keywords.
When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking) the search engines may downgrade (or skip) the page or site.
3. Robbing pages from other websites.
How many times have you heard or read that "this is the Internet and it's ok" to steal icons and text from websites to use on your site. Don't do it. Its one thing to learn from others who have been there and another to outright copy their work. The search engines are very smart and usually detect page duplication. They may even prevent you from ever being listed by them.
4. Using keywords that are not related to your website.
Many unethical website owners try to gain search engine visibility by using keywords that have nothing at all to do with their website. They place unrelated keywords in a page (such as "sex", the name of a known celebrity, the hot search topic of the day, etc.) inside a meta tag for a page. The keyword doesn't have anything to do with the page topic. However, since the keyword is popular, they think this will boost their visibility. This technique is considered spam by the search engines and may cause the page (or sometimes the whole site) to be removed from the search engine listing.
5. Keyword stuffing.
Somewhat like keyword stacking listed above, this means to assign multiple keywords to the description of a graphic or layer that appears on your website by using the "alt=" HTML parameter. If the search engines find that this text does not really describe the graphic or layer it will be considered spam.
6. Relying on hidden text.
You might be inclined to think that if you cannot see it, it doesn't hurt. Wrong.... Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them invisible. For example, some unethical designers my set the keywords to the same color as the background of the web page; thereby, making it invisible.
7. Relying on tiny text.
This is another version of the item above (relying on hidden text). Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them tiny. Setting the text size of the keywords so small that it can barely be seen does this.
8. Assuming all search engines are the same.
Many people assume that each search engine plays by the same rules. This is not so. Each has their own rule base and is subject to change anytime they so desire. Make it a point to learn what each major search engine requires for high visibility.
9. Using free web hosting.
Do not use free web hosting if you are really serious about increasing site traffic via search engine visibility. Many times the search engines will eliminate content from these free hosts.
10. Forgetting to check for missing web page elements.
Make sure to check every page in your website for completeness, like missing links, graphics, etc. There are sites on the web that will do this for free.
This is just a few of the methods and techniques that you should avoid. Do not give in to the temptation that these methods will work for you. They will do more harm than good for your website.
Not only will you spend weeks of wasted effort, you may have your site banned from the search engines forever. Invest a little time to learn the proper techniques for increasing search engine visibility and your net traffic will increase.
SEO India :How To Optimize Your Free-reprint Article
I have been around the internet for quite sometime - offering outsourced services and software products. I see a lot of internet marketing techniques on how to get more traffic and attract more paying customers, but only one technique seemed to work for me considering my tight budget.
So what is this technique?
This technique is called free content article marketing or free-reprint article marketing. It is basically writing an article with topics covering your products/services. The main idea of this is to keep your article ratio at 70% quality and useful information/tips to 30% advertisement. The 30% advertisement refers to your bylines or the resource box at the end of each article.
Your bylines or "about the author" content is the key to article marketing. This is the part where you can make yourself as an expert in your field, the part where you can ask readers to visit your site and the part where you can mention what you offer and do.
I already wrote an article, what now?
Is your article optimized?
Optimizing your article is always the first thing to remember. There are lots of ways to optimize an article, but let me share to you mine.
Before writing an article think of a keyword, be sure to include that keyword in your title. Make those search engines love your article by first optimizing your title.
Do not quote your title! Search engines will not like it, for example, "Five Ways to Effectively Market your Product". Get rid of the quotes!
If possible put the keyword first in your title, for example, European Cruise - You Deserve Only the Best.
When your title is ready, try to spread your keyword several times all over your article. Try to keep a decent keyword density and do not try to spam the search engines.
Do not sacrifice your credibility for optimization. Some authors are fond of inserting dots between words that are considered as spam. Just like the word "free". If you are trying to sell a product or service make yourself credible and your articles professional.
Ok I'm set! Now what?
Submit your article to article directories and article announcement lists. There are hundreds, if not thousands of article announcement lists and article directories. Article directories is where you can let your articles reside and Article Announcement lists announce your articles to a variety of targeted audience.
Here are a few article directories you can use:
www.isnare.com
ezinearticles.com
articlecity.com
ideamarketers.com
There are thousands of article announcement list, is there a site to do the submissions for me?
Yes, indeed there are sites that do the submissions for you, but there is a payment for each article you send or if not, a monthly payment.
Try checking these sites for Article Announcement offers:
www.isnare.com/pbenefits.php - Distribute as many articles as you can for $35/month with an option to request for proofreading before distributing your article.
thephantomwriters.com - Amount depends on the number of articles you distribute
www.ezineannouncer.com - I haven't looked at this one yet
www.articlesubmissionsites.com/ - $49.00 introductory six month renewable membership
So what is this technique?
This technique is called free content article marketing or free-reprint article marketing. It is basically writing an article with topics covering your products/services. The main idea of this is to keep your article ratio at 70% quality and useful information/tips to 30% advertisement. The 30% advertisement refers to your bylines or the resource box at the end of each article.
Your bylines or "about the author" content is the key to article marketing. This is the part where you can make yourself as an expert in your field, the part where you can ask readers to visit your site and the part where you can mention what you offer and do.
I already wrote an article, what now?
Is your article optimized?
Optimizing your article is always the first thing to remember. There are lots of ways to optimize an article, but let me share to you mine.
Before writing an article think of a keyword, be sure to include that keyword in your title. Make those search engines love your article by first optimizing your title.
Do not quote your title! Search engines will not like it, for example, "Five Ways to Effectively Market your Product". Get rid of the quotes!
If possible put the keyword first in your title, for example, European Cruise - You Deserve Only the Best.
When your title is ready, try to spread your keyword several times all over your article. Try to keep a decent keyword density and do not try to spam the search engines.
Do not sacrifice your credibility for optimization. Some authors are fond of inserting dots between words that are considered as spam. Just like the word "free". If you are trying to sell a product or service make yourself credible and your articles professional.
Ok I'm set! Now what?
Submit your article to article directories and article announcement lists. There are hundreds, if not thousands of article announcement lists and article directories. Article directories is where you can let your articles reside and Article Announcement lists announce your articles to a variety of targeted audience.
Here are a few article directories you can use:
www.isnare.com
ezinearticles.com
articlecity.com
ideamarketers.com
There are thousands of article announcement list, is there a site to do the submissions for me?
Yes, indeed there are sites that do the submissions for you, but there is a payment for each article you send or if not, a monthly payment.
Try checking these sites for Article Announcement offers:
www.isnare.com/pbenefits.php - Distribute as many articles as you can for $35/month with an option to request for proofreading before distributing your article.
thephantomwriters.com - Amount depends on the number of articles you distribute
www.ezineannouncer.com - I haven't looked at this one yet
www.articlesubmissionsites.com/ - $49.00 introductory six month renewable membership
SEO India :Free Traffic Exchange ?
A free traffic exchange offers webmasters the ability to promote their websites or affiliate marketing campaigns for free, or at very low cost. The idea is to surf around other members websites, and for each viewing, you get so many of your own URLs and banners added into the rotation for other members to view. There are hundreds, if not thousands of free traffic exchanges online today. The trick is to find the ones that work best for you. Not all free traffic exchanges are created equal and the most active ones are not necessarily the best ones for your needs.
Free traffic exchanges are a great marketing tool for a variety of reasons. The most obvious reason is that you get lots of people looking, and hopefully clicking on your website or promotional pages. But there are hidden benefits to free traffic exchanges you may not have even considered.
Search engines love free traffic exchanges because of all the incoming and outgoing links they generate. Plus the rapidly changing content is another reason the search bots love these things. Exchanges that have more content also generate a higher pagerank, and therefore more traffic, and increased memberships. The key is to find exchanges that are very active and have lots of members. The more members they have, the more potential customers you get looking at your offer and your chances for sales conversions are that much better. But bigger isn't always better.
Some free traffic exchanges may convert sales like crazy for one person, and be a complete waste of time for another. If everyone were promoting the same website or affiliate program is the same traffic exchange for example, then chances are you would not make many sales. Even if you were promoting the #1 thing on the internet, if everyone promoted the same program, your chances are much lower that someone will purchase through your website or link to make you any money. Also, when people see the same ad over and over again, they get desensitized to it. Don't fall into this trap. It's one thing to try and sell a very popular product/service/ebook etc, but it's another thing when a million other people are trying to do it too. Competition is a good thing, because it validates your market, but too much competition is tough and it's time to move on to something else.
We all know clicking on ads in a free traffic exchange can be very boring, monotonous and can take a lot of time. That's why you need to make the best of your opportunity or you will just be wasting a lot of your time and effort on something that just isn't working. If you have your own niche website, then you already differentiated yourself from the pack. If you are an affiliate marketer, then you need to find products/services that everyone else isn't promoting, especially within that particular traffic exchange.
One way to use free traffic exchanges to your advantage is to join a few at first, and see if your sales pick up. If your sales aren't doing well, then test out a few more. When you do find a few traffic exchanges that appear to be generating sales for you, then narrow those down until you find the one, or two that are working. Now concentrate your efforts on those because they're the ones you want. At least for now anyway. Things may change, so keep an eye on your campaigns and if sales seem to be falling off, then it might be time to change your offer or find another traffic exchange that could pick your profits up again.
As I mentioned, your individual promotion is everything. If you're trying to promote something everyone else is, I don't care what traffic exchange service you're using, your sales conversions are going to be very low, or nothing at all. You cannot always blame the exchange. Sometimes you have to look at yourself and think if you're doing all you can to make sales.
If you're going to be using multiple free traffic exchanges, and I recommend that you do, your first priority should be to pick up a multi-tab web browser. Many of these browsers are free and run on PCs and MACs. The tabs feature allows you to have one web browser open with multiple tabs each going to a separate website. You could easily put 5 or 6 of your free exchange sites in these tabs, and earn credits for all of them at the same time. So instead of surfing for 1/2 an hour or an hour earning 200 hits for one exchange, you could earn 200 hits for 5 exchanges in the same amount of time. This is a huge time saver and multiplies your earned hits by 5X or 6X.
Getting free traffic to your website is a lot of work. If you don't have the money to spend on full blown PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns like Google AdWords, free traffic exchanges are a great way to get the traffic you need.
Free traffic exchanges are a great marketing tool for a variety of reasons. The most obvious reason is that you get lots of people looking, and hopefully clicking on your website or promotional pages. But there are hidden benefits to free traffic exchanges you may not have even considered.
Search engines love free traffic exchanges because of all the incoming and outgoing links they generate. Plus the rapidly changing content is another reason the search bots love these things. Exchanges that have more content also generate a higher pagerank, and therefore more traffic, and increased memberships. The key is to find exchanges that are very active and have lots of members. The more members they have, the more potential customers you get looking at your offer and your chances for sales conversions are that much better. But bigger isn't always better.
Some free traffic exchanges may convert sales like crazy for one person, and be a complete waste of time for another. If everyone were promoting the same website or affiliate program is the same traffic exchange for example, then chances are you would not make many sales. Even if you were promoting the #1 thing on the internet, if everyone promoted the same program, your chances are much lower that someone will purchase through your website or link to make you any money. Also, when people see the same ad over and over again, they get desensitized to it. Don't fall into this trap. It's one thing to try and sell a very popular product/service/ebook etc, but it's another thing when a million other people are trying to do it too. Competition is a good thing, because it validates your market, but too much competition is tough and it's time to move on to something else.
We all know clicking on ads in a free traffic exchange can be very boring, monotonous and can take a lot of time. That's why you need to make the best of your opportunity or you will just be wasting a lot of your time and effort on something that just isn't working. If you have your own niche website, then you already differentiated yourself from the pack. If you are an affiliate marketer, then you need to find products/services that everyone else isn't promoting, especially within that particular traffic exchange.
One way to use free traffic exchanges to your advantage is to join a few at first, and see if your sales pick up. If your sales aren't doing well, then test out a few more. When you do find a few traffic exchanges that appear to be generating sales for you, then narrow those down until you find the one, or two that are working. Now concentrate your efforts on those because they're the ones you want. At least for now anyway. Things may change, so keep an eye on your campaigns and if sales seem to be falling off, then it might be time to change your offer or find another traffic exchange that could pick your profits up again.
As I mentioned, your individual promotion is everything. If you're trying to promote something everyone else is, I don't care what traffic exchange service you're using, your sales conversions are going to be very low, or nothing at all. You cannot always blame the exchange. Sometimes you have to look at yourself and think if you're doing all you can to make sales.
If you're going to be using multiple free traffic exchanges, and I recommend that you do, your first priority should be to pick up a multi-tab web browser. Many of these browsers are free and run on PCs and MACs. The tabs feature allows you to have one web browser open with multiple tabs each going to a separate website. You could easily put 5 or 6 of your free exchange sites in these tabs, and earn credits for all of them at the same time. So instead of surfing for 1/2 an hour or an hour earning 200 hits for one exchange, you could earn 200 hits for 5 exchanges in the same amount of time. This is a huge time saver and multiplies your earned hits by 5X or 6X.
Getting free traffic to your website is a lot of work. If you don't have the money to spend on full blown PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns like Google AdWords, free traffic exchanges are a great way to get the traffic you need.
SEO India : 4 Tips for article writing
Have you been writing and submitting your free reprint articles for quite sometime now?
If so, how is your reprint rate doing? Is it doing well or is it a bit below 50%? Are webmasters approving your articles?
Here are some tips on how to write effective free reprint articles that would guarantee great interest from ezine publishers and webmasters.
1. Choose a good keyword
A good keyword is your "key" to getting high reprint rates for even just a single article. Try using this tool at http://www.wordtracker.com/ to find the best keywords.
2. Keyword density
Keyword density is the number of "keywords" found in an article or content which is then divided by the total number of words. Try to keep your keyword density at 5% to 7% maximum especially if you choose common keywords for your article. Keyword density is important because this is one of the things search engines look into when they rank the search results.
Do not try to make your article an article for search engines, make them full of quality, informative but still search engine optimized.
3. Shorter word count
Publishers or webmasters often love articles that are less than 1000 words, but it totally depends on the topic and how informative is your article. Try not to go around the bush and result to making your article at 1800+ words. In other words, do not make it like a short story. A good article may only have at least 250 words, but could still capture the reader's attention and have the attributes mentioned in numbers 1 and 2 above.
4. Good content
You wrote a 700-word article with good keywords and keyword density, but does it contain good content? Well, only you can answer that truthfully and if your answer is yes, then great! But for some few inviduals this isn't the fact, many are still writing articles that editors label as an "indirect" advert. If you really want a good reprint rate then make your article body 100% of quality information, tips, how-tos and tricks. Keep the 100% advert in your bylines and keep them short.
If so, how is your reprint rate doing? Is it doing well or is it a bit below 50%? Are webmasters approving your articles?
Here are some tips on how to write effective free reprint articles that would guarantee great interest from ezine publishers and webmasters.
1. Choose a good keyword
A good keyword is your "key" to getting high reprint rates for even just a single article. Try using this tool at http://www.wordtracker.com/ to find the best keywords.
2. Keyword density
Keyword density is the number of "keywords" found in an article or content which is then divided by the total number of words. Try to keep your keyword density at 5% to 7% maximum especially if you choose common keywords for your article. Keyword density is important because this is one of the things search engines look into when they rank the search results.
Do not try to make your article an article for search engines, make them full of quality, informative but still search engine optimized.
3. Shorter word count
Publishers or webmasters often love articles that are less than 1000 words, but it totally depends on the topic and how informative is your article. Try not to go around the bush and result to making your article at 1800+ words. In other words, do not make it like a short story. A good article may only have at least 250 words, but could still capture the reader's attention and have the attributes mentioned in numbers 1 and 2 above.
4. Good content
You wrote a 700-word article with good keywords and keyword density, but does it contain good content? Well, only you can answer that truthfully and if your answer is yes, then great! But for some few inviduals this isn't the fact, many are still writing articles that editors label as an "indirect" advert. If you really want a good reprint rate then make your article body 100% of quality information, tips, how-tos and tricks. Keep the 100% advert in your bylines and keep them short.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)