Google Search Engine Optimization

AdSense Revenue

2008-07-11T11:55:00.000-07:00

Earning a good revenue just from AdSense is a popular subject on the internet as well as a goal hoped to be achieved by thousands if not millions of internet users. So let's talk about it.

The kind of money you can earn from this program is ridiculous. I have been researching and learning how to effectively use Google AdSense. A common misconception in the initial set up of adsense is that you will start earning a good amount of money right away, which is the farthest from the truth. I went a good 5 months earning about 90 cents a day, which obviously was not enough for satisfaction. So I started to really learn exactly how Google itself operates, the algorithm portion of it. How the index ranks pages, websites ect. If you have done your research, you know that it's a bit more complicated than putting out a website, adding the html codes to it and letting the money come in.

The website (s) that you are promoting need to have a pretty good page rank, which we all know by now. But how is that achieved? Well, in experiments I have found that paying other high ranking pages webmasters to put a link on their site will work in ways. A lot of constantly updating content is also a key, again which we all know. So, you have a website all about GPS (example) You put some AdSense on it and hope for the best but you see less than a dollar a day, with some days panning out to absolutely nothing. You start to learn the basics of SEO and work towards getting your website noticed by a large croud, and not only that, you work towards keeping them coming back to your site for more information. You use AdWords ppc as a way to get the targeted traffic you want, but it does not work the way you want to. Then you wonder why? Your paying Google to bring readers to your content but there not really coming. Not Google's fault, its the way your campaign is running. Some people choose to target a broad audience with keywords that can be used for different things. Like the word GPS for example. Of course you could use it as a keyword but the thing is, when people reach your sponsored link through that and in reality they are looking to sell gps systems, your website does them no good. Then you start realizing you need to change some things, you put in some keywords relating to Gps, like Garmin ect.. Change your ad text a bit to revolve around 1 ad group. Target the users specifically so that the only people clicking on your ad are people who literally want to read and learn more about Gps systems, therefore rendering your site the jackpot for their searches.

You have links from Google in the appropriate places, users see ads relating to what their looking for, eh.. might click on 1 or 2- you just got paid for the click. So you see it can happen, and you can get paid for this. It is now your mission to increase the amount of people viewing your pages, obviously increasing your revenue. You work at getting your page noticed by more and more people, the search engines index starts to see that people are going into your site, and NOT going back to the search engine, therefore ranking you a bit higher. The websites you PAID to have your link on, start delivering targeted traffic right to your site. People start clicking, you have a day where you have 10,000 visitors go right to your page, and out of those 10,000, 2 thousand click on your AdSense ads. If the advertisers pay 30 cents per click (just say) than you just made 600 bucks. IN ONE DAY <<<>

Want First Place Google Results For Your Website?

2008-07-09T00:39:00.000-07:00

You want to get the best search engine rankings because you know that is the key to getting tons of targeted traffic to your website, but how? You've got tons of search engine competition in a highly competitive keyword. You may need to focus on these search engine ranking strategies below if you'd like to achieve first place Google search engine results.

Create a website with content that is valuable to your targeted visitor. If you've got great content on your site the search engines will naturally be drawn to it as long as it's unique with proper keyword placement and structure. Some ways you could make your website valuable to visitors is by giving away an informative newsletter, ebook, coupons or just valuable information.

The keyword selection you use on your site is also very important. You should use keyword selection tools to find the most popular keywords for your topic to use on your site. The keywords to use are the ones that bring traffic. You'll find those by entering popular keywords from your niche into keyword search tools to drill down to find less popular words that you can dominate from a particular page of your website.

Once you've done your keyword research you'll have a list of keywords that receive traffic and you can place them strategically through your pages. Use these niche keywords in the right places in your content and use link references to other related pages on your site.

You'll also want to add keywords to your web page title, META tags, Headers and make sure they are not overused and dispersed throughout your page. You should try to place your primary and secondary niche keywords within the beginning of your page. You should use these keywords in the header tags and near the beginning of your first paragraph whenever possible.

Don't use the same keywords too much though. Search engines consider the use of keyword stuffing to be spam. One of the ways to avoid getting penalized is to use your keywords in appropriate places to give you the maximum results.

Search engines love valuable information and by creating pages of quality content you'll naturally attract high search rankings. Another benefit of having great content is that your site will become more popular among visitors. Many people will start recommending your site to their friends which leads to my next point.

Once you've got good content and some traffic then website owners will want to start voluntarily linking to your web pages. It's like internet word of mouth which is a very strong motivator for people to check you out. If your content is influential enough it might generate a buzz that is talked about and shared.

Great quality is worth much more than great quantity and will reward you with more links and a long lasting website that people revisit continually. Getting a high number of incoming links is one of the most beneficial things you can do to increase your search engine results. Each inbound link is determined to be the equivalent of a vote from a website for your website.

If the site linking in is a topic related to your then it receives a larger SEO weight. Helpful incoming links are from sites that are an authority site that is well established, highly trusted, on an old domain, from an .EDU, .GOV domain, or have a high page rank. If this is the case of an incoming link you can be assured that it should help you receive better search engine rankings.

The more high quality incoming links the better and it's important to strive to find relevant link partners to get the best search engine rankings you can for your site. You can approach website that are not in direct competition with yours to do a beneficial link exchange. A link exchange is when you put their link someone on your site for a returning link from them. A lot of websites will agree to this; however you should only approach sites of high quality that will be beneficial to your site.

Many sites that have used bad linking practices in the past may actually harm your site by association. As a general rule of thumb, look for high Google trusted sites with a pr rank as an indication of SEO trust before you approach for a link.

For your websites design structure you should keep it easily to navigate so that your customers can find their way around. The site should have the same navigation throughout and each page should make good use of H1 tags for titles.

Whenever submitting your pages or building your incoming links you'll not only want to concentrate on the home page but on interior pages too. You could hire or outsource someone to do this for you. Just make sure this person uses a manual submission as automated submission services can sometimes result in adverse benefits.

Make sure you monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites in the search engine rankings to see how they have their pages setup. Looking at what your competitors are doing correct in the form of their content, navigation and keywords will give you valuable insight in to why they are ranking high.

Google Power - Explore google

2006-09-29T08:09:00.000-07:00

Google is simply superb - the way they bring in different products suited to the differing needs. I use majority google products regularly. Let's check what I use form google's kitty!

1. Google Mail - mail to revolutionize the whole emailing. Started with 1 GB space - now more than 2.6 GB space, never delete a mail!

2. Google Talk - a voice messenger - initially was not that good but now it is quite good. Moreover, integrating gtalk with gmail was a masterstroke. No need to install separate messenger. I love it!

3. Googlepages - 100 mb free space to create your website and a cool template to choose from.

4. Google analytics - track who is accessing your website and from where. It's very good and free!

5. Google base - Post your advertisements here and you'll find it in google search.

6. Google earth - find your home from the google maps. Amazing product. I could see my locality from google maps. Last month I went to Vizag - I explored Vizag from google maps beforehand and believe me, I was not lost in the city - as I knew every street from google maps.

7. Froogle - You can sell and buy things here. Quite interactive. Surely in near future it will give some competition to amazon and ebay. Not very popular right now but with google you can expect it to crack every competition.

8. Orkut - If you are using internet and still not have a profile in orkut, I really doubt if you socialize. It's one of the most amazing networks, and it's faster than myspace. I have account in myspace, and it takes a hell lot of time to load. But, orkut is very fast and gradually improving, in 2-3 years you can be sure that orkut will rock the world.

9. Google scholar - It's not your normal search, it's the google scholar power - standing on the shoulders of giants! It mainly browses through the research and scholarly articles. It's one of the best gift to research community by google.

10. Picasa - now not only you can arrange your albums in picasa but share it in picasaweb. Great colour interface and takes very little time to load unlike yahoo photos.

11. Google groups - you are not satisfied with orkut - then you have google groups in the line of yahoo groups. I feel google groups is better as it is still virgin and unlike yahoo groups, spamming is less.

12. Google video - watch fantastic videos in google - direct competitor to youtube. Now you can share those videos in your website through embedded codes! What a gadget!

13.Blogger - you can write your daily diary here and it's qutie good.

14. Google notebook - use it as a notepad while searching the web and it will be automatically saved in your google account name.

15. Google spreadsheets - excel files by google. You can cut paste data here and also calculate different formula just like excel.

16. Google news - latest news brought to you by google. Very quick to load and update time is very fast.

17. Google translate - translate not only words but an entire website to any language. Check it - it's quite amazing!

And the star of the show - what started the google revolution...

GOOGLE SEARCH - Anyone using internet must have used google search. It's gaining more popularity every day! The best gift by google to mankind!

Is Your Website Search Engine Friendly? Your Personal Checklist

2006-09-09T03:22:00.000-07:00

When I sit down with new clients and discuss the status of their new or existing site they are often shocked when I am forced to inform them that their site is not search engine friendly. Encountered with a blank but slightly shaken look I then explain that this means their site has a particular problem that is hindering search engine rankings. Often this is represented by an inflexible design, overuse of advanced web technologies, or simply a weak navigation scheme. As a result, if they were to continue with the site as it stands they are unlikely to attain competitive search engine rankings.

The following is checklist designed to help you gauge the search engine friendliness of your website and, if you are in the midst of planning a website this checklist will help you avoid the common pitfalls of unfriendly designs.

Technologies
First consider what technologies your website is using. There are certain technologies that require a little more hand holding than others to ensure search engine compatibility.

1. FRAMES
Lets start with this oldie. Luckily, frames are becoming a way of the past what with the use of DIV layers and the slow onset of incredibly flexible AJAX coding. The long and the short of it is that if you have Frames on your website then you are starting off at a disadvantaged position that cannot be truly search engine friendly no matter what you do. There are, however, some remedial fixes that will tie you over until you can redesign your site; yes I said redesign. The fix that I recommend is to use a noframes tag whereby you place another version of your web page inside of your framed page. This 'backup' page is what the search engines will view; here you can place relevant content and navigational elements so that the search engines can at least navigate portions of your site that are (hopefully) not framed.
More info on the no frames tags.
2. FLASH
There was a big brouhaha that Flash had become search engine indexable and you no longer had to worry about its search engine issues. Frankly, I have not seen the fruits of this 'improvement' to a respectable degree yet so I still consider it a kiss of death for websites designed solely in Flash. If you have a Flash-only website then I recommend one of these two options; one is to design an html version of your website and make the home page of your website html rather than Flash where you can then allow users to choose between html or Flash. The second option is to redesign the site so that it mixes both html and flash together. For example, this might mean implementing Flash amidst content on an HTML page as you would an image. I realize there are certain limitations to this option but if you can create a slick site in this manner then you will have the best of both worlds; clean search engine friendly content along with an interactive, multimedia feel. Just remember that the majority of relevant text should be in HTML format for the search engines to index.

3. Search Engine 'Unfriendly' Dynamic URL's
Unfriendly dynamic URL's are a common side effect of using a Content Management System that is not designed with search engine rankings kept in mind. Here are some examples of some unfriendly URL's:
Sample 1: http://www.mydomain.com/myproducts.php&354=prod333&subproduct
Sample 2: http://www.surfboardsatsea.com/boards/filename.php?
id=F98ZF4&productId=39222§ion=wicked&brand=582&template=532
These URLs are problematic because a search engine may consider these addresses too complex to spider. Why too complex? Suffice it to say that the more complex the URL, the higher the chance that a search engine robot will consider the content too dynamic to read; it changes too often to be valuable to a search engine.
The way around these types of URLs is actually not so difficult; it may only require a small ínvestment of time and monëy. The 'time' will be required when researching which URL fix is right for your system. The monëy may be required to pay a programmer to implement and test the new URLs. Here are how the URLs might look once they are fixed to be search engine friendly:
Sample 1 Fixed:
http://www.mydomain.com/myproducts/354/prod333/subproduct/
Sample 2 Fixed:
http://www.surfboardsatsea.com/boards/wickedboards/39222/board532/
These URLs are better because they do not include the extraneous characters that are so telltale on dynamic websites. In addition, the URLs are designed to appear like normal website directories when in fact they are dynamic URLs.

Important: it is vital that you minimize the length of the URLs that you use. Search engines may stop crawling a website if there appear to be too many subdirectories. The samples above show fixed URLs that have about as many subdirectories as I would allow (4).

Design
This section focuses on the overall layout and usability of your designs from the perspective of a search engine robot. Search engine friendly design is occasionally quite complex so I have provided a list of the most common issues to consider.

1. Menus
Are the menus on your website spiderable? If not you may be hiding major areas of your website from search engine spiders and missing out on additional search engine rankings.
The fact is there are very few menus out there that a search engine will have a problem following, but there are definitely some worth avoiding. For instance do not use a JavaScrípt Jump Menu (example) as the core mode of navigation of your website; search engines cannot index this type of menu. Also be careful of Flash menus, they look slick but they will impede the progress of a search engine spider especially if they are the only means of navigation within your site.
General Menu Rules
The ideal menu would be text based and each text link would include the keywords you are targeting on the destination page. Setting up a menu with this much forethought requires that you determine the layout and content for your site before web design begins. Once you have a clear picture of the content for each page you can then research the keywords that are best to target per webpage. This essential keyword research can be done in house easily enough using systems-like keyword research tools that provide you with a glimpse into how your customers think by showing how many searches there are per month (or year) for a particular term.

Remember, almost every page within your site has a very real opportuníty to gain a top ranking; all you need to do is ensure that the design, content and site structure is optimized. Ensuring that the menu is carefully thought out and designed is a crucial step for top rankings.
Finally, if you are at all uncertain whether your menu is search engine friendly then be certain to back it up with a text menu in the footer of your page using the same keyword targeting principles noted above.
Tech Advice: a simple text menu may be less than desirable for you; in this case I recommend DHTML menus. These menus use text but in a manner that is quite appealing and very search engine friendly.
2. Sitemaps
Sitemaps can dramatically help the visibility of your website by allowing search engine spiders easy access to all of the pages in your site. Place a link to the sitemap on every page within your site to ensure easy access no matter where a search engine or user enters your site.
Sitemap Tips
Just having a sitemap will help but how you build your sitemap will also play a role in how well the search engines catalogue it. For example, if you have a twenty-page website it would be ideal to create a sitemap where each page is represented by a title along with a short description. Ultimately, the page may be a bit long but it will have content that the search engines like to index and it will boost the relevance of the linked pages because the titles will accurately represent the content. So in effect, you will now have more than just a sitemap; you will have a table of contents for your site that has the potential of getting a ranking and provides an extra boost to the ranking worthiness of each page.
Google Sitemap
Google Sitemap is an additional design element that you should consider adding. Here is an article Scott Van Achte wrote on how to implement your own Google Sitemap.
3. Layout
How you layout your page can make a significant difference in how well your site ranks and ultimately how search engine friendly it is.
Tips for Layout
Search engine robots read a webpage from the top of the source code (the programming that made your page – see "view source" in your browser) all the way to the bottom. As a result, it is important to ensure that both of the following elements are found as close to the beginning of code as possible:
A) A short sentence introducing the topic using the keyword targets you have chosen for the page. B) Your text menu and other navigational aids, or if this is not possible it would be even more beneficial to start with a paragraph or two of relevant content followed by the navigation.
By placing this information near to the top of the page, you will promptly present the search engine robot with relevant text that backs up the page title and backlinks. You will also provide an immediate sitemap of sorts for the search engine to spider, which includes keywords relevant to each page.
4. Splash Pages – ACK!
With the odd exception Splash Pages are a kiss of death for a website because the home page (the first page seen when someone visits your domain), your most important page, is often converted into nothing but an excess entry point with little or no relevant content on it. Aside from reducing your chances for ranking, you are also making your visitors take another step to get to content or salës material in your site. Any additional steps you add will lessen the likelihood of a successful sale.
Please Let Me Change Your Mind
If you think you need to use a splash page then you need to talk to someone who will change your mind. No, honestly, give me a call if you want because there is nothing more painful to a SEO or search engine friendly web designer than to see a Splash Page in use. If, in the unlikely scenario your splash page is required, there are ways to make it slightly more search engine friendly.
1. Add a highly relevant and well-worded paragraph to the page so that the search engines have something to index that shows them they are in the right place.
2. Either provide a link to your sitemap or implement a text menu in the footer of the page so the search engines can access the internal workings of your website without having to take an extra step.

Using Blog PR to Promote Your Site

2006-08-02T03:10:00.000-07:00

The recent trend of using the press release to promote an online business has emerged with good reason – good press costs very little and can do more for a business than thousands of dollars of marketing. Most businesses use press distribution services like PR Web or PRFree to get the word out about their news. While distribution services certainly can be effective, they tend to miss out on arguably the most influential group of the press – bloggers.

Bloggers mold and shape the opinions of their readers, who are normally the most important in their particular industry, many of whom are also bloggers. Not long after a post from an influential blogger, your news has been picked up by several other bloggers and within days you are all over the blogsphere. Before you know it your site is getting more attention than it would if a story ran in the local newspaper! So how do you get the influential bloggers in your industry to run a story about your business?

Why Would Anyone Do a Story About Your Business?

Are you a new company? Did you just launch a new product that they could review? Did your business win an award? Are you a group of college kids who started a company on savings from your summer jobs? You get the idea. There needs to be a reason that someone would want to read about you. Bloggers take pride in the content they feed their readers. You don't stand a chance of getting a blogger to write about you if you don't have a story that their readers will be interested in.

Research Bloggers in Your Industry

More is less when it comes to contacting bloggers. Buy a list of 1,000 bloggers and send out a generic email to all of them and you'll likely get no response. But send a small amount of personalized emails to the appropriate bloggers and you'll be shocked at how many positive responses you get.

The first step is to make a list of the bloggers that would be interested in your story. You can generally get a feel for whether or not a blogger would be interested in your story by reading a couple of posts and checking out their bio. If they've done a few similar stories in the past or they are heavily involved in your industry, there is a good chance they'll want to hear your story. If not, leave them off your list and move on.

The single best method that I have found to research blogs is the Technorati Blog Directory http://www.technorati.com/blogs/. You can peruse blogs in your industry in order of “authority” - how important Technorati thinks a blog is. This is extremely useful. For example, if you are in the travel industry, you can view a list of the most influential blogs in the world of travel.

Another great way to find the right bloggers is to search through your competitors press sections on their websites to see what blogs have mentioned them. You can also find out who has mentioned your competitors by looking at the sites that have linked to them (type in “links:www.theirsite.com” on Yahoo!). There's a good chance that if they found your competitors story interesting, they'll find your story interesting as well.

Compose Your Email

The best way to contact bloggers is by email. The good news is that most bloggers make themselves easy to access and provide their email addresses on their blogs. The bad news is that most people don't know what to do with said email address once they get it. Use the following outline for your email and you'll see amazing results:

Have a simple subject. You probably won't get many responses by treating your email like a press release and writing RELEASE in the subject line. Try something simple like “fan of your blog” or “comment about your blog.” You want to make sure they actually read your email and don't mentally mark it as SPAM when they see the subject.

Start by complementing them. Since you've read their blog and learned about them from their bio, you know quite a bit about them. Use it to your advantage. Complement them on your favorite post, or how cool it is that they worked for XYZ company.
Request them to post about you (be direct). In three sentences or less, tell them your story, why you think it would be of interest to them and their readers, and respectfully ask that they write a post about it. Be direct and to the point. They will respect that.
Offer something in return. You have something that could help them. Maybe it's a link back to their blog from your personal blog, or maybe you could provide them with a free product or service that could help them or their business. One way or another, there's something you have to offer them in return for the time spent on a post about you.

Close with something nice. Thank them for their time and wish them luck with their blog and/or business ventures.

Notice that of the five components of the email, only one is about your story. The rest of the email is spent complimenting them and offering them something. Your chances of getting a positive response have just gone through the roof. Every blogger, no matter how large, likes to hear that people are enjoying their posts.

Respond Promptly and Respectfully

Not everyone is going to agree to run your story. Some will say that they don't do that type of thing or that they don't have time. Since you have been so nice as to compliment them, they will still usually reply either way. Regardless of the response, be sure to thank them for their time and wish them luck with their ventures. You never know when they will encounter someone who needs your product or service in the future (remember, they are in your industry) and if they have a positive image of you and your company they will undoubtedly give you a good recommendation.

Sit Back and Watch the Traffic Roll In

Over the course of the next few weeks you will see post after post appear about your business. Be sure to send another thank you email to the blogger after the post and also be sure to promptly provide whatever you offered them in return. At this point you have developed a mutually beneficial relationship with someone important in your industry that can become invaluable over time.

That wasn't that hard was it? With a little research and a carefully crafted email, any business can effectively use blog PR to drive traffic to their site.

12 Free SEO Tools you Must Use

2006-08-01T00:51:00.000-07:00

Effective SEO strategies require a lot of effort and time. Although in the search engines market exist very advanced tools that cost a lot, there are many free SEO tools which can help the novice and advanced SEO marketer to save valuable time.

Here is a list of free and proven for their effectiveness SEO online instruments:

1) Alexa Ranking . It displays multiple domains instead of one. Therefore, you can have instant traffic results from Alexa Rankings instead of typing and search each time separately.

2) XML Sitemaps . Sitemaps are extremely important for websites because they help search engines crawl and index them. This is a free xml sitemap generator.

3) Directory Manager . You can track your submissions to various web directories and you can also visit regularly to see new directories added to the list. You just tick the appropriate submission boxes when you submitted your website. It's very easy to use it.

4) 123 Promotion Keyword Research Tool. This is a very powerful tool. It displays, based on the Overture and Wordtracker keyword search tools, similar data, including search figures from the previous month. It also adds statistics for average searches per hour, day, week, projected figures for the next 12 months and then also a figure to see how searches may look in 3 years from now.

5) Keyword Density Checker . This keyword density tool is useful for helping webmasters/SEO's achieve their optimum keyword density for a set of key terms/keywords. This tool will analyze your chosen URL and return a table of keyword density values for one, two, or three word key terms.

6) McDar Pagerank and Backlink Checker . This is another Excellent Resource. When you enter the appropriate URL and keyword, it will display Pagerank and Back links pages for the Top 10 websites.

7) Robots.txt Generator You can create a free robots.txt file with this resource. So, you will be able to direct the search engines to follow the pages structure of your website and also direct the search engines not to follow and crawl specific web pages of your website you don't want to be crawled.
All you have to do is filling the fields and when the robots.txt file is created you upload it to your root of your web server.

8) Nichebot . This website displays keyword data using Wordtracker and Google search results. You just enter the keyword and press the button.

9) Domain Stats . You Enter the domain and get: domain age, number of pages indexed, and number of backlinks. The statistics include Alexa Taffic Rank, Age of the domains, Yahoo WebRank, Dmoz listings, count of backlinks and number of pages indexed in Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, Msn etc.
It will help you figure out why some of your competitors are ranking better than you.

10) Compare Search Engines . Shows top results from 3 search engines. This tool helps you get all kind of statistics of your competitor's domains.

11) Verify Result . This verification tool checks to see if your site is in the top three pages of a search engine result for a specific keyword. You enter your URL/Keyword and it displays top 30 for 11 Search Engines.

12) Related Keywords. This tool generates a list of possible keyword combinations based on lists of keywords that you provide.
You enter a list of terms, one per line or separated by commas. This is very effective for Google Adwords and Overture.

CSS - Maximum benefits

2006-08-01T00:46:00.000-07:00

What is CSS?

CSS is a simple file which controls the visual appearance of a Web page without compromising its structure. Using CSS we can control our font size, font color, link color and many other attributes on our web page. This will make our HTML code much more readable and the page size will be reduced.

Why to use it and how to use it properly

If you don’t use CSS on your web pages and you have many tables and content on them, chances are that your HTML file size will be quite big. Fact is that we live in a busy world, and people are not will to wait more than 5 seconds web page to load.

From the other side some web developers implement the CSS on wrong way. They write their CSS in HTML code of the page, like this:

<html>
<head>
<title>My Page</title>
<style>
A
{
font-family: Verdana;
font-size:8pt;
color:black;
text-decoration:none
}
</style>

What is wrong with this technique? Well, imagine that you have site with more than 50 pages. One day, you decide that you want to change font color and colors of the links on your site. You will have to edit ALL the pages on your site, and do to that you will need time, because you place your CSS in your web page.

Better way is to save your visual attributes in separate, external CSS file, and to link that file with your page like this:

<html>
<head>
<title>My Page</title>
<link href="myStyle.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

Using this technique, you can change the look of your site within minutes, regardless of the number of pages, because your visual attributes are saved in ONE external CSS file. Edit that file, and you are done.

Benefits

Which are the benefits of using CSS? List is quite long and I will list here only the most important.

• Your web page will load faster
• Web page will become more search engine friendly
• You can change you site appearance within minutes
• You can write separate CSS file for handheld devices which will be called up instead of the regular CSS file
• You can forget about creating printer friendly version of your site using separate CSS file when user chooses to print the web page.

Avoiding standard HTML commands like:

<font color=”#0000ff”><font size=2>Product</font></font></font>

will help us to reduce file size, but that is not the only benefit. Using CSS word product in this example will be moved more close on the top of the document. Search engine will pick up more content and less code.

Imagine that you have 3 columns table on your page. When you see the code, you will notice that first come code for your table, and after that it come your content. Positioning your 3 columns using CSS instead of standard inline elements:

<table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td width="381" height="150" valign="top" bgcolor="FFEDD4">
My Product
</td>
<td height="150" valign="top" bgcolor="FFEDD4">

When CSS is used, your code might look like this:

<div id="leftcontent">
My Product
</div>

Again your code is much more clear, and your content is moved on the top of your document, making your HTML page search engine friendly, and reducing your file size.

Content is one of the most important factors in Search Engine Optimization, and you will benefit with removing the unnecessary code in your HTML and create search engine friendly web page.

Validate it

Browser war is far behind us. Reality is that most of the people today use Internet Explorer, but you should try to be on safe side and ensure that your CSS code is valid. Not all browsers interpret the CSS on same way. You can validate your CSS here:

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Effective Search Engine Use

2006-08-01T00:44:00.000-07:00

The Internet is a wonderful place full of resources that can be really helpful for us.

The best way for finding information is through a virtual search engine. A search engine explores the resources on the Internet and gives results relating to your queries. Search engines allow keyword searches and use crawlers to locate sites or pages that match requests.

However, finding the information that is relevant for you is a challenge. Everyday more sites come into existence. A simple query like "web hosting" on Google returns 15,100,000 results. Now how does the user know which site is useful for them, thus creating an "Information Overload" of sorts. How is the user assured of the quality of the information?

The thing about search engines is that they generally display all the web pages that contain any or both of the words contained in the search query.

So comes the question: how do we find the information we are looking for?

There are various techniques that you can use to make your search query better which will then help to achieve more relevant results.

For instance if you use the "+" operator and restructure your query to "web hosting" + Windows it will show only those sites that offer Windows hosting. You can also use the "AND" Boolean operator, depending on what you are comfortable with.

You can use the "-" operator and key in "web hosting" - Linux thereby telling Google to make sure that it does not display Linux related hosts. This is the same as using the "NOT" Boolean operator.

There are also keywords like ADJ, NEAR etc. that are used by some of the search engines. The NEAR operator looks for keywords specified in the query within certain proximity of each other i.e. it makes sure that both the keywords "web" & "hosting" are present on the same page and are placed nearby to each other in the text.

The ADJ operator is a stricter filter and returns only those pages where the keywords are next to each other i.e. it will only return pages where the keywords "web" and "hosting" are mentioned together.

Another technique to make sure you get better results is to use a sensible query. Make use of words that you think will be contained on the site you are looking for: "web hosting" is better then "I want web hosting".

Also remember that search engines normally ignore certain words like "a', "for", "of", "in", "at" etc.

Another important thing to remember is that most search engines have a 'tips' page that specifically contains information on how to make better searches on the search engine. It is always good to read these tips.

Most search engines have an advanced search option that is really useful if you are not proficient at using operators while searching.

Searching and finding what you are looking for is easy if you are armed with the know-how of how to do it.

How I Increased Website Traffic Ten-Fold with Quality Backlinks

2006-08-01T00:40:00.000-07:00

Having a goodly number of quality backlinks is one of the most important factors in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that result in high Search Engine Results Pages.

It’s not enough to just have a high number of (incoming) backlinks. Rather, it is the quantity and quality of backlinks that allows your site to rank better in the search engines than your competition.

Simply, a backlink could be considered as a quality link if

1. it links to your website with the keyword(s) or keyphrase(s) for which you are trying to optimize,

2. the theme of the backlinking website is the same as (or similar to) your site.

There are a few free tools that will help you in determining the quality of existing and potential backlinks to your website (search on ‘free seo backlink tools’).

But, how do you really know that a link can be considered a quality link before agreeing to exchanging links with a particular web site? After all, the whole point of exchanging a link with another site is to benefit from the ranking of that web site.

It is therefore important that, before the link exchange is affected, that we investigate as to whether exchanging links with another site is to our advantage.

Google’s Index

The first and most important factor to check is if the site is listed in Google’s index. This can be determined by entering “http://www.sitename.com” in the Google search box. If there is no result displayed, then stop there and affect no link exchange.

To save your valuable time, do the same for the URL of the page which the site owner says will display your backlink. No Google index means that the spider will not find your backlink.

View the Home Page

The second step is to examine these three items:

the linking site’s home page,
the site’s HTML and Google sitemaps,
the site’s backlink page.

The home page will determine the suitability of the linking site thematically; that is, does the site’s content match (or closely match) that of your own. With the site’s home page displayed in your browser window, using your mouse, right-click and select “View Source”. Observe the site’s tags. Does the text match your expectations of site relevancy?

Next, open a www.google.com screen in your browser and enter the sitename without the http://www descriptor. For example, without the descriptor, http://www.msn.com would be entered as msn.com.

Press enter and Google will present something akin to

MSN.com Microsoft's newly renamed portal entry. Features personalization, channels of content sites like Carpoint... www.msn.com/

Google can show you the following information for this URL:

* Show Google's cache of msn.com
* Find web pages that are similar to msn.com
* Find web pages that link to msn.com
* Find web pages from the site msn.com
* Find web pages that contain the term "msn.com".

Clicking on the hyperlink in this line

* Show Google's cache of msn.com

will display the Google cache for the site. If there is no cache, stop there, do not affect the link, why link to a site that Google is not visiting?

Clicking on the hyperlink in this line

* Find web pages that are similar to msn.com

will display the Google “related” tag, listing the pages that are similar, the more the better,

Clicking on the hyperlink in this line

* Find web pages that link to msn.com

displays how many backlinks Google report for the site, once again the more the better.

Clicking on the hyperlink in this line

* Find web pages from the site msn.com

and

* Find web pages that contain the term "msn.com".

displays the actual number of pages within the site and the number of pages that contain the website name, the more the better.

HTML Sitemap

If you are satisfied with the results of steps one and two, it is then instructive to view the site’s HTML sitemap as well as the site’s Google sitemap.

The HTML sitemap is simply another web page in the site but is important as it compiles and displays every page in the sites, making it easy for the search engines to “spider” the site (and find your link).

Google Sitemap

The Google sitemap (usually sitemap.xml) is a specialized form of the above and complies with the Google sitemap specifications shown at www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps

While many say that the above is unnecessary, this author argues that since Google has gone to much expense to provide and maintain the function, to ignore such is at one’s own peril.

To view the Google sitemap, enter the site’s home page URL, then append “/sitemap.xml” on the end of the address. Caveat, the address may generate a “file not found” error. The site may have a Google sitemap but store it under a different file name than that suggested by Google.

Google Page Rank

Note that I have made no mention of Google Page Rank. It is the opinion of this author that if you have done most or all of the above that you have qualified the potential effectiveness of the link, just as does Google with it’s Page Rank algorithm.

Redirect Affiliate Program Links for Maximum Effectiveness

2006-08-01T00:37:00.000-07:00

If you promote an affiliate program and are not redirecting your affiliate links, you may be missing out on traffic and commissions opportunities. Redirecting your affiliate program links helps to minimize spam filtering of your email campaigns, increase the acceptance of article submissions, build backlinks to your site, and reduce "click fear".

Minimize Spam Filtering

If you are promoting an affiliate program through email, other (unscrupulous) affiliates of the same company may be indirectly hurting the delivery rate of your messages. Email filters will block messages that contain content or links associated with spam. Even if you send your message only to subscribers who have double opted-in to your list, your messages may still be blocked if it contains a URL used by spammers.

Search Engine Optimization

Most affiliate program URLs look something like http://www.example.com/?id=123. Unfortunately, most search engines have limited or no ability to read these links.

Google(TM) warns, "If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few." Google goes on to tell us "Don't use "&id=" as a parameter in your URLs, as we don't include these pages in our index."

Furthermore, if you are publishing your affiliate link on other sites such as blogs, forums, etc., you are missing out on the opportunity to build valuable backlinks that could increase your search engine rankings.

Article Submissions

Submitting articles to web publishers and article directories is a powerful way to build backlinks to your site. Unfortunately, many publishers and directories do not accept articles that include affiliate links. However, virtually all will accept links to your own site. By replacing your affiliate link with a link to your own site, even one that redirects to your affiliate link, you will increase the number of article submissions accepted by publishers and directories.

Reduce "Click Fear"

Thanks to those few sites on the Web that distribute adware, spyware, viruses, etc., many web users are fearful of clicking on links, especially those that look "suspicious". To the average user who has no special knowledge of the internal workings of the Web, a link that has "unusual" characters such as those in dynamic URLs (e.g. http://www.example.com/?id=123&sub=456) will appear less trustworthy than a static link.

How to Redirect Your Affiliate Program URL

There are several ways to redirect your affiliate program links. The most "search engine friendly" method is the 301 Permanent redirect with the .htaccess file. You can use this method if your site is hosted on an Apache (Linux, Unix) based server.

To create a permanent redirect, open (or create) the .htaccess file. On a single line add the following code to the file:

redirect 301 /example.html http://www.example.com/?id=123&sub=456

This code tells the server to redirect "http://www.yoursite.com/example.html" to your affiliate link "http://www.example.com/?id=123&sub=456".

Other methods of redirecting include using PHP's header() function and HTML's meta refresh.

No matter what affiliate program you're promoting, you will benefit by redirecting your links. Redirecting your affiliate links can improve the delivery rate of your email campaigns as well as increase CTR. Your articles may be more readily accepted by article directories and web publishers. Furthermore, redirecting replaces links to your merchant with valuable backlinks to your own site.

Google Adsense Profits Mixed In With Affiliate Marketing

2006-08-01T00:30:00.000-07:00

Affiliate marketing has become one of the most effective ways to advertise online. It is also one of the easiest ways for anyone with a website to make a profit online. Affiliate Marketing is an agreement between a merchant and a website owner. The website owner, or the affiliate, allows the use of their site for the promotion of the merchant's products by linking to the merchant's website. In exchange, the merchant pays a commission to the affiliate on all sales generated by the affiliate. Every time someone clicks on the link on the affiliate website and proceeds to make a purchase, the affiliate gets a commission. The merchant will pay the affiliate only when a customer clicks on the product link and makes a purchase.

Are you a webmaster who needs funds to keep your website running? Or is your website the only way for you to earn income? Whichever you are, for as long as you are a webmaster or a web publisher and you need cash, affiliate marketing may work well for you. With affiliate marketing, you may get a lot of cash pouring into your bank account easily. And if your website is rich in great contents and you want to earn more profit, why not get into the Google Adsense program as well?

Why Affiliate Marketing?

Well, simply because affiliate marketing is the easiest and probably the best way to earn profits online, unless otherwise you are a businessman and would rather sell your own products online than advertise other businessman’s products on your site. But even online retailers can benefit from affiliate marketing programs, because affiliate marketing actually works for merchants as well as it works for the affiliates.

Affiliate marketing, simply said, is a relationship or agreement made between two websites, with one site being the merchant’s website and the other being the affiliate’s site. In the relationship, the affiliate agrees to let the merchant advertise his products on the affiliate’s site. The merchant, on the other hand, would agree to pay the affiliate in whatever method they have agreed into. This would generally mean easy income for the affiliate, as he would do nothing but place the retailer’s ad on his site. This would also be very beneficial for the merchant, as getting affiliates to advertise their products would be a lot more affordable than hiring an advertising firm to promote their products.

There are a variety of methods on how the merchant would compensate the affiliate for his services, and for the webmaster, these methods simply translates to the method by which he would earn easy cash. Among the more common methods of compensation are the pay-per-click method, the pay-per-lead method, and the pay-per-sale method. The pay-per-click method is the method most preferred by affiliates, for their site’s visitor would only have to visit the advertiser’s site for them to gain money. The other two methods, on the other hand, are better preferred by merchants, as they would only have to compensate you if your visitor becomes one of their registrants or if the visitor would actually buy their products.

Getting much profit on affiliate marketing programs, however, does not depend so much on the compensation method is it does on the traffic generated by your site. A website that can attract more visitors would generally have the greater chance of profiting in affiliate marketing programs.

What about Google Adsense?

Google Adsense is actually some sort of an affiliate marketing program. In Google Adsense, Google act as the intermediary between the affiliates and the merchants. The merchant, or the advertiser, would simply sign up with Google and provide the latter with text ads pertaining to their products. These ads, which is actually a link to the advertiser’s website, would then appear on Google searches as well as on the websites owned by the affiliates, or by those webmasters who have signed up with the Google Adsense program.

While one can find a lot of similarities between Google Adsense and other affiliate marketing programs, you can also see a lot of differences. In Google Adsense, all the webmaster has to do is place a code on his website and Google takes care of the rest. The ads that Google would place on your site would generally be relevant to the content of your site. This would be advantageous both for you and for the advertiser, as the visitors of your site would more or less be actually interested with the products being advertised.

The Google Adsense program compensates the affiliate in a pay-per-click basis. The advertisers would pay Google a certain amount each time their ad on your site is clicked and Google would then forward this amount to you through checks, although only after Google have deducted their share of the amount. Google Adsense checks are usually delivered monthly. Also, the Google Adsense program provides webmasters with a tracking tool that allows you to monitor the earnings you actually get from a certain ad.

So, where do all of these lead us to?

Where else but to profits, profits and even more profits! Affiliate marketing programs and the Google Adsense program simply work, whether you are the merchant or the affiliate. For the merchant’s side, a lot of money can be saved if advertising effort is concentrated on affiliate marketing rather than on dealing with advertising firms. For the webmaster, you can easily gain a lot of profits just by doing what you do best, and that is by creating websites. And if you combine all your profits from both the Google Adsense program and other affiliate marketing programs, it would surely convert to a large amount of cash.

All the same, the best benefit of being an affiliate marketer is the opportunity to increase your income; and you can make a profit even if affiliate marketing is only a sideline business. With your own affiliate business, you can earn easily earn extra income, although you do have to exert effort and use your imagination to maximize your earning potential. Indeed, affiliate marketing is one of the simplest and most effective business opportunities on the web today.

Tips To Choose Good Affiliate Programs

2006-08-01T00:27:00.000-07:00

Affiliate programs have become more popular nowadays, especially for sales people who want to make money easily and quickly. However, before you choose any affiliate program, make sure that you have answered all questions relating to a good affiliate program. Here are some questions you may ask:

1. Does the affiliate program offer high commission rates for products?

I know it is a tough question to answer. How much is high? Normally, commissions of 25%-30% of the product price are expected of a good affiliate program. You can have a look at this site for reference:

http://www.audio4fun.com/affiliate.htm

2. How much traffic does the vendor get to their site?

Before signing up to any affiliate program, remember to do some research on the vendor’s site, especially the site’s traffic. Alexa.com may be helpful in doing this research. If the site is ranked in the top 100,000 the merchant gets good daily traffic to his site. If the site is ranked below 500,000 it is not worth bothering. You should find another one. So remember to do the research before you want to invest anything.

3. Does the merchant use any tracking system?

All good affiliate programs provide excellent tracking systems. This system allows you to track visitors by using cookies, so that you can get accredited with sales that originate from your site. Check out how long the cookies last. The longer they last, the better chances are of getting paid.

4. Is the payment safe?

Be sure that you can get commission payment easily and safely, otherwise you’ll waste a lot of time and effort. A perfect affiliate program has a secure payment system so that you can check your balance any time or be informed shortly when you receive any credit. Moreover, you should ask about the payment time because different affiliate programs have various payment times. Some pay monthly, some quarterly. It is also vital to know the minimum balance you need to earn in order to get paid.

5. Does the affiliate program have any tool to help affiliates sell more?

A standard database with all kind of reports from sales to payment and other tools like ads, banners.. are very vital for affiliate management. Make sure that you can control all the sales, keep track of them and make good decisions. Moreover, the support system must be really good to help you solve some urgent situations you may encounter.

6. Does the affiliate program offer affiliate referral program or two tier affiliate program?

It means that you can get additional commission if you can recruit more affiliates into the affiliate program. The more they sell, the more referral commission you may get. Therefore, recruit as many affiliates for you as possible.

Conclusion:

Finding a good affiliate program is a tough work. The best advice for you is to do your own research, using these abovementioned questions as a guide that will lead you to the right merchant, to reach your financial goal. If you find one, tell me.

The Different Types Of Affiliate Marketing

2006-08-01T00:17:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered if what you know about affiliate is
accurate? Consider the following paragraphs and compare
what you know to the latest info on affiliate.

Affiliate marketing programs has never been as popular
before as it is today. Why? There can be a number of reasons.
The most probable reason, however, could be the fact that the
benefits of affiliate marketing have become clearer to a lot of
people now than they were before.

Today, both the merchants and the affiliates can see clearly
that affiliate marketing can work for both of them. The merchant
sees affiliate marketing today as the chance to advertise their
products at a lower cost. The affiliates, on the other hand, sees
affiliate marketing as an easy way of earning profits online by
doing what they like most, and that is by creating websites.

Just as the popularity of affiliate marketing has shifted into
greater heights, so has the people's outlook about it changed.
No longer is affiliate marketing considered today as an alternative
method for the merchant to advertise his products, or as a
source of additional income for the affiliates. For merchants
and affiliates alike, affiliate marketing is now considered as a
main source of profits and revenues.

So the question now is what type of affiliate marketing will work
best for you? Are all affiliate marketing programs the same?
Are the benefits the same? Or are there affiliate marketing programs
that work better than the others?

There are actually different types or classes of affiliate marketing,
and the number of types will depend on how one will classify them.
The most basic affiliate marketing programs, however, falls under
two categories: pay-per-click (PPC), and pay-per-performance (PPP).

-Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC is the most popular type of affiliate marketing for affiliates
with small websites, and probably the easiest way for them to earn
money. In this affiliate marketing type, the merchant pays his
affiliate whenever a visitor is referred to his site, that is whenever
someone clicks through the merchant's banner or text ads.
The affiliate gets paid a certain amount even if the visitor he
referred does not purchase anything from the merchant's site.
However, typical fees for PPC affiliate programs are small, usually
not exceeding a dollar for every click.

-Pay Per Performance (PPP)

PPP affiliate marketing is the most popular among merchant and is
also the most lucrative type for the affiliates. In this type of
affiliate program, the merchant only pays the affiliate whenever
his referral translates into an action—that is whenever the visitor
he has referred actually buys something from the merchant's site or
when the visitor becomes a lead. This means a lot of savings for
the merchant. On the other hand, it becomes the most lucrative type
for the dedicated affiliate, for commissions in PPP affiliate
marketing usually comes in the range of 15% to 20% of the actual
product sales.

Pay-per-performance affiliate marketing can be further classified
into two popular types: pay-per-sales (PPS) and pay-per-lead (PPL).

-Pay Per Sale (PPS)

In a pay-per-sale type of affiliate marketing, the merchants pay
the affiliate a certain fee whenever the visitor he has referred
to the merchant's site actually buys something from the merchant's
site. Affiliates are often paid on commission basis, although other
merchants would opt to pay a fixed fee. But no matter what the
basis of the fee is, it is generally higher than the fee paid to
affiliates in a pay-per-click affiliate program.

-Pay Per Lead (PPL)

The pay-per-lead type of affiliate marketing is a slight variation
of the PPS type and is often used by insurance and finance companies
and other companies who rely on leads for their company to grow.
In this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate is paid whenever
the visitor he referred to the merchant's site fills up an application
form or any similar form related to the business of the company.
Compensation for this type of affiliate marketing is based on a fixed
fee whose rates approximate that of the fixed fee in the PPS type.

Aside from these three specific types of affiliate marketing, a lot
of other affiliate marketing types exist. If the classification is
based on the depth of the affiliate network, it can be classified as
single-tier, two-tier, and multi-tier affiliate marketing. There is
also another type of affiliate marketing that pays the affiliate each
time the customer he has referred purchases something from the
merchant's site.

-Single-Tier, Two-Tier, and Multi-Tier Affiliate Marketing

These types of affiliate marketing are based on the different levels
or tiers in the affiliate network by which payments are made. In a
single-tier affiliate marketing program, the affiliates are only paid
based on the direct sales or traffic he has referred to the merchant.
All the previously mentioned affiliate marketing types (i.e. PPS< PPL,
and PPC) fall under the single-tier classification.

-In two-tier affiliate marketing programs, the affiliate is not only
paid for the direct traffic or sales that he refers to the merchant's
site, but also on every traffic or sales referred by various other
affiliates who joined the affiliate program through his recommendation.
Multi-tier affiliate marketing works the same way, although the
affiliate gets additional commission for a wider number of affiliates
in different tiers in the affiliate network.

-Residual Income Affiliate Marketing

In residual income affiliate marketing, the affiliate gets paid not
only once for every customer he has referred to the merchant's site.
Rather, the affiliate is also paid whenever the customer he has
referred returns to the site and purchase another product. Compensation
for such type of affiliate marketing is based on either sales
percentage commission or fixed fee basis.

The different affiliate marketing types would virtually work
differently for merchants and affiliates alike, and each would
generally have their own list of benefits. Which type of affiliate
marketing will work best for you? It is not really for me to tell.
Rather, it is for you to choose which type of affiliate marketing
program will suit your needs and characteristics best.

The day will come when you can use something you read about here
to have a beneficial impact. Then you'll be glad you took the
time to learn more about affiliate.

Search Engine List and Directories List

2006-07-31T21:50:00.000-07:00

Search engine list - alphabetical with scores (* - ***** )

AOL Search - search engine ***
is the one place where you can simultaneously search all of AOL and the rest of the Internet. Uses ODP directory data.
Alta Vista - search engine ***
is one of the most comprehensive search engines, featuring blazing speed, results that can be selectively refined, and a search for documents in specific languages.
Worldwide:

Alta Vista Asia
Alta Vista Australia
Alta Vista Austria
Alta Vista Belgium
Alta Vista Brazil
Alta Vista Canada
Alta Vista Denmark
Alta Vista France
Alta Vista Germany
Alta Vista India
Alta Vista Ireland
Alta Vista Italy
Alta Vista Korea
Alta Vista Netherlands
Alta Vista New Zealand
Alta Vista Norway
Alta Vista Portugal
Alta Vista Spain
Alta Vista Sweden
Alta Vista Switzerland
Alta Vista United Kingdom
Alta Vista United States

Direct Hit - search engine *
popularity engine shows you highly relevant results based on the search topics that other people have researched.
Excite - search engine **
Portal, goes beyond keyword search and tries to understand underlying concepts. Results can be sorted by Web site; prompts with keyword list to help refine searches.
FAST - search engine **
claims to have the largest index of any search engine, and aims to eventually have every page on the Web in its database.
GO.com - search engine *
It was perhaps the best at handling plain-language queries. It clusters results from a single site, offering suggestions for related topics - now a part of Disney.
Google - search engine ***** - editors choice!
ranks results both on how many links point to a page (importance) and search phrase matching - absolutely the number one!
Google Web Directory
Worldwide:

Google Brazil
Google Burundi
Google Canada
Google Rep. Dem. du Congo
Google Cocos (Keeling) Islands
Google Germany
Google France
Google Guernsey
Google Israel
Google Italy
Google Japan
Google Jersey
Google Korea
Google Liechtenstein
Google Lietuvos (Litauen)
Google Micronesia
Google Montserrat
Google Nederland
Google New Zealand
Google Norfolk Island
Google Polska
Google Russia
Google Saint Helena
Google Switzerland
Google UK
Google Virgin Islands

GoTo - Overture - search engine - PPC **
search engine ranks results by how much a company is willing to pay for listings - it’s now Overture.
HotBot - search engine **
Lycos affiliate
IWON - search engine *
search engine portal, IWON gives away daily, weekly, and monthly prizes.
LookSmart - PPC *
web directory
Worldwide:

Looksmart Australia
Looksmart Canada
Looksmart Hong Kong
Looksmart Malaysia
Looksmart Netherlands
Looksmart New Zealand
Looksmart Singapore
Looksmart United Kingdom
Looksmart USA
Lycos - search engine ***
offers many features beyond searching the Web.
Worldwide:

Lycos Belgium
Lycos France
Lycos Germany
Lycos Italy
Lycos Japan
Lycos Netherlands
Lycos Spain
Lycos Sweden
Lycos Switzerland
Lycos United Kingdom

MSN - search engine ***
Microsoft's new search engine.
Worldwide:

MSN EUROPE & THE MIDDLE EAST
MSN Arabia
MSN Austria
MSN Belgium (Dutch)
MSN Belgium (French)
MSN Czech Republic
MSN Denmark
MSN Finland
MSN France
MSN Germany
MSN Italy
MSN Israel
MSN Netherlands
MSN Norway
MSN Spain
MSN Sweden
MSN Switzerland (French)
MSN Switzerland (German)
MSN UK
MSN AMERICAS
MSN Brazil
MSN Canada (English)
MSN Canada (French)
MSN Latin America
MSN Mexico
MSN United States (English)
MSN US Spanish

MSN ASIA
MSN Hong Kong S.A.R.
MSN India
MSN Japan
MSN Korea
MSN Malaysia
MSN Singapore
MSN Taiwan

MSN AFRICA
MSN South Africa

MSN PACIFIC
MSN Australia
MSN New Zealand

Netscape Search - search engine *
Results are enhanced by Google
Northern Light - search engine *
Northern Light has built and installed over 200 custom enterprise search applications for leading organizations, and provides business research content solutions
Open Directory Project - Directory ***
links to more than 5,000,000 web sites, collected and organized by more than 69,000 volunteer editors worldwide.
RealNames *
uses Internet Keywords to simply type in the name of a company, brand, or products and go to that Web page.
NBCI - search engine *
formerly snap.com, now a part of the MSNBC Network
Webcrawler - search engine **
useful but by far the smallest of the major search engines
Yahoo! - Yahoo! Webpages - Directory ****
Yahoo Websites - Business Submission ($299)the most popular Web directory. Its directory format makes subject search easy. Also offers specialized searches for timely news, stock quotes, classifieds, etc.
Worldwide:

Yahoo Argentina
Yahoo Asia
Yahoo Australia & NZ
Yahoo Brazil
Yahoo Canada
Yahoo China
Yahoo Chinese
Yahoo Denmark
Yahoo France
Yahoo Germany
Yahoo Hong Kong
Yahoo India
Yahoo Italy
Yahoo Japan
Yahoo Korea
Yahoo Mexico
Yahoo Norway
Yahoo Spain
Yahoo Spanish
Yahoo Sweden
Yahoo Taiwan
Yahoo UK & Ireland

List Of Directories

2006-07-29T04:49:00.000-07:00

This Link Directories list was posted on DN Lodge forums. The Link Directories list includes many directories with their PageRank next to the URL. Please note, that all PageRanks of the directories may not be up to date. Most of the below directories do not require a link back to their site. To find out the benefits of getting listed and submitting to directories, please read through our SEO Guide, using the links to the left of the page. We hope you make use of thise list!

The Directories

http://www.axelis.com 5
http://www.bestbusinessdirectory.com 4
http://www.gloose.com/dir.html 3
http://www.iozoo.com/ 6
http://www.kingbloom.com/ 5
http://www.osy-directory.com 4
http://www.refrozen.com/ 5
http://www.sitelibrary.net/Directory/ 3
http://www.sorve.com/ 4
http://www.searchwiz.org 4
http://www.thewebknot.com/ 4
http://www.webdesigncorp.com/ 4
http://www.aaronsfreebies.com/ 4
http://www.abilogic.com/ 6
http://www.addyourlinks.net/ 0
http://www.addurlhere.com/ 4
http://www.agada.info/ 0
http://www.aindabem.com.br/ 0
http://www.allfreethings.com/ 4
http://www.allthewebsites.org/ 5
http://www.askrobo.com/ 5
http://www.links.atlantaaz.com/ 2
http://www.austrosearch.at/ 5
http://www.alldotnet.com 3
http://www.bhanvad.com 4
http://www.bigall.com/ 6
http://blue.daffodil.uk.com/ 3
http://www.bn23.com/ 4
http://www.businessplexus.com/ 4
http://www.businessseek.biz/ 6
http://www.canlinks.net 6
http://www.checkhouston.com/ 5
http://www.chickendirectory.com/ 4
http://www.consultant-directory.com/ 5
http://www.c2000.com/ 5
http://www.deep-directory.com/ 4
http://demotte411.com/ 2
http://demottedirectory.com/ 2
http://www.deregular.com/ 0
http://www.dhundo.com/ 0
http://www.directorybabe.com/ 2
http://directorybuddy.com/ 3
http://www.directorybytes.com/ 2
http://www.directorychick.com/ 2
http://directorydude.com/ 3
http://www.dirone.com/ 0
http://www.direct-o-ry.com/ 3
http://www.dmole.org/ 4
http://www.dmoz.org/ 9
http://directory.xperts.ro/ 4
http://www.easyeraserpro.com/ 2
http://www.easyfilelock.com/ 2
http://easyfolders.com/ 3
http://www.easyinterneteraser.com/ 2
http://www.easylockit.com/ 2
http://www.easyprivacysoftware.com/ 2
http://www.e-commerce-directory.com/ 0
http://www.findhopper.com/ 3
http://www.findhound.com/ 4
http://www.findrex.com/ 4
http://www.flyingpopups.com/ 2
http://www.foundya.co.uk/ 4
http://freedigitalmarketingreport.com/ 3
http://www.friendly-directory.co.uk/ 4
http://www.forumsearch.tk 4
http://www.geeksonsteroids.com/ 5
http://www.globalgateway.com 6
http://www.greenstalk.com/ 5
http://grizzlyweb.com/ 4
http://hedir.com 5
http://www.hotsitesdirectory.com/ 3
http://htmleasy.com/ 1
http://www.illumirate.com/ 5
http://indianafinder.com/ 2
http://www.infignos.com/ 5
http://www.info-listings.com/ 6
http://www.info-places.com/ 2
http://www.infowebworld.com/ 5
http://www.inneedof.co.uk/ 4
http://www.itzalist.com/ 5
http://jaspercountydirectory.com/ 2
http://jayde.com/ 6
http://www.jimac.co.uk/ 4
http://www.linksmatch.com 5
http://www.linketeria.com/ 5
http://losttraffic.com/ 2
http://lybot.com/ 5
http://www.maxpromo.com/ 5
http://www.megri.com/ 5
http://www.mixcat.com/ 6
http://www.mojoo.com/ 4
http://monkeydirectory.com/ 3
http://directory.nawigator.biz/ 0
http://nwindianadirectory.com/ 2
http://ohgoodysites.com/ 3
http://okaydirectory.com/ 3
http://www.onebigindex.com 5
http://www.onestop-directory.com/ 5
http://www.openhere.com/ 0
http://www.pedsters-planet.co.uk/ 4
http://perfext.com/ 4
http://www.phatlinks.com/ 4
http://www.pharos-search.com/ 4
http://www.pileiton.com/ 3
http://www.pleaseretrieve.com/ 5
http://www.poddys.com/ 5
http://www.pr3.co.uk/ 4
http://www.putmyfinger.co.uk/ 3
http://www.ranked1.net/ 4
http://www.redjuniper.com/ 4
http://www.relevant-links.com/ 4
http://www.resourcehelp.com/ 5
http://www.san24.com/ 0
http://scoop.evansville.net/ 5
http://www.searchave.com/ 3
http://www.search-the-world.com/ 4
http://www.searchtheweb.com/ 5
http://www.searchwarp.com/ 5
http://www.sedsearch.com/ 3
http://www.seekon.com/ 9
http://www.sezza.com/ 5
http://www.shoula.com/ 3
http://www.sitefolders.com/ 1
http://sitesondisplay.com/ 5
http://www.slidingads.com/ 3
http://www.sloogle.com/ 3
http://www.softwaresells.com/ 3
http://www.softzdirectory.com/ 4
http://www.somuch.com/ 5
http://sonicquest.com/ 4
http://www.sootle.com/ 6
http://www.spheri.com/ 5
http://www.sumwd.com/ 4
http://www.synergyslist.com/ 3
http://www.synergy-dti.com/ 5
http://www.cantufind.com/ 0
http://www.topdepo.com 6
http://www.turnpike.net/ 6
http://directory.uquick.com 5
http://www.webgirldirectory.com/ 2
http://www.websmadeeasy.com/ 2
http://www.websavvy.cc 5
http://www.websearches.info/ 4
http://www.webwizguide.com/ 6
http://www.webworldindex.com/ 5
http://www.wholesalepimp.com 5
http://jameshendrix.com/seo/html/ 0
http://www.worldhot.com/ 7
http://www.worldsiteindex.com/ 5
http://www.wowdirectory.com/ 6
http://www.wowyellowpages.com 4
http://www.xeit.com/ 5
http://www.yourwebloghere.com/ 5
http://www.zeezo.com 5
http://www.01webdirectory.com/ 5
http://www.4hitz.com/ 3
http://www.4ispy.com/ 2
http://www.iconcave.com/partners/ 4
http://www.seowise.com/ 3

Google, Yahoo, Msn Big Differences In The Three Super Engines

2006-05-26T04:05:00.000-07:00

The 3 super engines Google, Yahoo and MSN account for over 80% of all online searches done in the US. The search results vary tremendously between these three engines. This is because of their unique ways of selecting search results and the differences in how they treat on-page and off-page elements. On-page elements include everything that occurs within the actual web page.
Google focuses on off-page elements and Yahoo’s is with on-page elements. MSN started with a very strong bias toward on-page, but has been slowly moving toward off-page elements. Today, Yahoo and MSN tend to give more weight to the on-page elements such as keyword density, Title Tags, Meta Tags and HTML code errors. Google on the other hand gives stronger importance to off-page elements such as inbound links and the quality and theme of these inbound links.

On Page Elements

Keyword Density

Keyword Density is the number of times a keyword or a keyword phrase is used in proportion to other words on a Web page. The more times the keyword appears in relation to the total number of on page words, the greater the overall keyword density. MSN and Yahoo place great weight on this. It is possible that a high keyword density may help you on Yahoo and leave your website penalized on Google. A density of 2- 4% seems to work across all 3 engines.

Title and Meta Tags

The title tag is the most important Meta Tag and is used for conveying the theme and topic of your web page and is important to all three engines. Place your primary keyword phrase at the beginning of the title tag to show its importance. The Title Tag should be 80- 90 characters in length.
Google tends to ignore all the other Meta Tags except for possibly the description tag. MSN and Yahoo place importance on Description and Keywords Tags. The Keywords Tag should be kept to less than 1 5 phrases. Only include phrases that are part of the text; this is to avoid spamming penalties by Yahoo and MSN.

Text Tags

Using the text tags such as heading, font, numbering and bullets will signal importance to the search engines. Therefore you should put bold or italics tags around your core keywords while maintaining a natural flow of content. This improves the chances of a search engine spider ranking that page higher for those keywords. Other emphasis methods such as bullets or numbering (ordered list) signal the search engines that these phrases have importance in your site.

W 3C Valid code
Search engine crawlers like valid code. They are able to scan error free code much faster and easier without stumbling over incorrect tags and other errors. MSN and Yahoo are known to give weight to error free code. Valid code is also critical for accessibility for the disabled who use screen readers (e.g. JAWS) and surfers who use PDA’s and cell phones.

Internal linking
Search engines find web pages by crawling links. Internal linking is another way of telling the search engines what your web pages are about. Good internal linking will make sure that every page on your site passes PageRank (PR) back to your home page. This is done thru menu navigation, footer links and a good site map. Internal linking is particularly important to MSN and Yahoo. Use keywords in the navigation links and in the text links.
Other On-Page Elements
Including the keywords in the domain name helps with rankings. The domain extensions .edu and .org do better while .com gets extra scrutiny because of the number of spamming sites. Google likes large websites with more content. Negative on-page elements will either cause a site to be devalued or not listed, these include invisible text, and graphical sites with very little or no text. Sites built in frames are at a distinct disadvantage.

Off-Page Elements

Off page elements are obtained from sources outside of the website. Probably the most important are the quantity of inbound links using anchor text containing your target keywords. Anchor text is the hyperlinked text in a link. Off page SEO is the most time consuming, but if done correctly, gives the best results.
Google places their greatest weight on link popularity because on-page elements can be manipulated quickly and easily. Both Yahoo and MSN also place importance on the anchor text and the quantity of incoming links, but not nearly to the level of Google.
Link building must be done carefully to avoid link spamming. Things you can do include varying the link anchor text to make them look more natural. Links need to be added at an even rate and they must be carefully selected for topic and theme and come from quality websites. Google places emphasis on the age of links and the age of the domain.
How fast can you expect to get results? With MSN new content and inbound links are found quickly. It is possible to get good rankings on MSN the quickest of the super engines. Yahoo is slower to see results. It will usually take 3- 4 months to see significant results. Google is the most important yet the slowest to see results from because of their aging delay.

What’s Next?

A good way to see what is coming is to look at the patents being granted to the search engines. Looking at Google’s patent granted in March 200 5 gives clues to what we should expect. Some are already in effect today.

How long a domain is registered for.
Age of website, web pages, and documents.
Rate of link acquisition. Slow and stable is better.
Age and quality of websites where links appear.
Links from stale pages are devalued.
Site click thru rates monitored for rate of change.
Frequency and magnitude of site updates (stale vs. fresh).
Variation in anchor text for links is best.
Bookmarks and favorites monitored.

Conclusion
All three of the major search engines use a mix of on-page and off-page elements in their algorithms for determining rankings. Google, the largest of the engines, emphasizes off page elements. Yahoo, the second largest engine, emphasizes on page factors more strongly. MSN, the newest of the three, is still evolving and is moving from on-page factors toward off page factors.
It is still possible to obtain top rankings for all three of these super engines by combining on-page and off-page SEO strategies.

The What, Why and How of Business Blogs

2006-05-25T22:08:00.000-07:00

Blog is short for Web Log or Weblog and the Blogosphere is the online blog world, some parts of which are hyperlinked extensively to each other.
This is the Wikipedia definition: Blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal (or newsletter) that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site.
I recommend that you read lots of people's blogs to learn what blogs are. Go to your favorite search engine and type in the word 'blog' and the subject you're interested in. For example, 'web design blog', or 'blog music', or 'sports blog'. You'll find lots of blogs that way.
Blogs have become a way in which regular, non-technical people can post information to the Web as easily as they can access it.

Why Are Blogs So Important?

Well, they're not that important, yet. But they could be soon, and most likely will be. In fact, some would argue that they are already vital in today's Web business world. I am not ready to agree to that yet, but it is becoming more obvious to me over time that blogs can no longer be ignored in business.
Online businesses can benefit from blogging by taking advantage of a vehicle for easily posting new, original, and business-related content on a regular basis.

Here Are Some More Business Benefits Of Blogging:

Blogs help to position you and/or your company as experts and leaders in your industry.
They're interactive in nature. At the end of each blog entry is usually a link that allows anyone to add their own comments to your blog entries. This allows your customers and potential customers to make comments about your products or services or ask you questions to help them in their buying process.
Blogs are marketed easily and quickly by their RSS feeds.
Blogs allow you to stress your choice of products, services, relevant news stories, quotes, pictures and more with your audience, customers and potential customers.
People are generous with adding links to your blog if the content is good, especially within their own blogs. More links means more traffic and better search engine rankings.

Here Are Some Ways In Which You Can Make Revenue From Your Blog:

1. Selling advertisements. Whether you use banners or text links, if your site draws a regular audience interested in your blog topics or theme, try to offer ad space to organizations that are looking to market to your audience. In fact, if your blogs becomes really popular then advertisers will call you.
2. Offering Google's AdSense. Google's website explains, "Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads on their website's content pages and earn money." Learn more about AdSense.
3. Affiliate Programs. Affiliate programs allow Web sites that provide links to your site to receive payments or reciprocal advertising in exchange for promoting your Web site. In the case of blogging, this is reversed, where you post links within your blog, and collect money from the owners of those links when they result in a click-through and sale.

Here Are Some Websites Where You Can Get Your Blog Listed:

How To Blog For Business:

First you need to get blogging software. You can choose to create a blog that is housed on another site such as http://www.blogger.com (which is a blog service) or you can host it on your own Web server. I recommend the latter since the links that are developed by others pointing to your blog won't be counted in the search engines. This is because the links are attributed to domains, so a link to http://MyNewBlog.blogger.com gives a link credit to blogger.com and not your domain.

If your blog is a business blog, you really ought to host your own blog as opposed to using a blog service. You'll need the extra functionality and control.
If you plan on hosting your own blog and if you plan to use a UNIX Web server platform, then you need to go with blogging software such as Movable Type, for example. If you have a Microsoft Web server platform for your site, then you'll need software such as BetaParticle blog. Find a great list of various blog software at: http://www.lights.com/weblogs/tools.html
Next you'll need a database to hook your blog up to. The database is what stores the blog entries, among other things. If you don't know if you have a database on or connected to your website server, or if you don't know how to hook up your blog to your database, contact your host company or Web server administrator for help.

Once you have the blog set up on your domain (for example http://www.MyWebsite.com/blog) and you've hooked it up to a live database, you can start blogging. Generally, each entry is also a day. So you can write a new entry every day, or whenever you want, and that entry will show up on the blog at the top, moving older entries below.
You ought to think of a theme for your blog. In other words, your blog could be about your personal experiences in the industry you're in. It could be about your company's product reviews, or new services. It could be about your thoughts and opinions about issues related to your industry. It could be a place where you regularly find and list new resources to help others in your industry. The list is endless. But be sure to stick to a theme and be original. You want to offer something of value to your website visitors.
Sticking to a theme helps you position yourself for future advertisers and also makes for better reading for your visitors. Furthermore, you want to give a good impression with your blog with each and every entry if you want it to augment your online business. Finally, sticking to a theme helps with the search engines since it's believed that engines determine website themes and use this information for ranking.
Of course your blog could be about personal things too. Many blogs are just that, an online journal. But since we're interested in Web business here, I am discussing business blogs only.
What's great is that blogs get indexed easily and quickly by search engines. Each entry is another "page" that can be potentially listed in Google for example, which will drive more traffic to your site.
Another neat thing about running a blog once it's set up is that you do not need to be technical at all to make regular entries. This is helpful if you want to delegate the writing to someone else, since technical skills won't be a prerequisite. This allows you to have the most qualified person regarding the blog's theme and, hopefully the best writer, actually making the entries.
Be creative. Add images to your blog entries to spice things up a bit. Although blogging can be lonely, keep at it. Sometimes it seems like you're just writing new entries each day for yourself only. It may be a while before someone chooses to add a comment to one of your entries. You may not hear from anyone for a long time. But that doesn't mean people aren't reading it. In fact, check your website statistics to see just how many people are visiting your new blog. As you add more entries, get your blog listed on other sites and market your blog. It will build, and eventually you'll have a nice following of engaged readers.
Most importantly, be sure to pepper your entries with calls to action. For example, if your business blog is attached to your travel website and the blog's theme is traveling and finding great travel deals all over the world, make sure you add a link to an entry that points people to a travel special you're running on your website. What would be even better is a blog entry about the fantastic vacation you took to Hawaii and included at the end was a link to cheap Hawaii vacation deals on your website.

About The Author

Promoting Webs- Developer, Designer and SEO Professional with Promote Your Websites offering website design, search engine optimization and PPC Management.

Optimizing Your Web Design

2006-05-25T21:25:00.000-07:00

It only takes an average of four seconds for each visitor to decide whether to stay on your site or not. This means that it is essential to optimize your website’s main page not only for the search engines but also your average visitor who may buy your products, engage your services or even recommend your website to people they know.

A visitor-friendly design

A web design that carefully considers the browsing needs of your site visitors, compliments the content, and overall theme of your site can give your site visitors a good impression. Not only will they have an excellent motivation to browse through your stuff, they just might also decide to bookmark your site as a resource to come back time and again.

While content plays a vital role to your site’s ranking and popularity, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t provide them with a candy-for-the-eyes user friendly images and design. Would you opt to shop from a site with simple yet elegant layout, appropriate product images and relevant descriptive content that’s easy to navigate and browse through. Some sites may offer just about the same products and services but the way their website is presented and designed may spell the difference between high sales traffic and a trickle.

Basic things to consider

Keep in mind that there are two things you have to take into account in your basic website design layout:

First, you must keep in mind what your visitors would like to see in your site. If you plan to be in authority of a certain topic, you can’t just put on poorly designed graphics. Everybody loves colors, and a little Flash animation here and there wouldn’t hurt but remember that search engine bots won’t be able to see or index them. Your website, especially your main page, should convey something to your customers. It should communicate trust and confidence in what you have to offer them. Bottom line for your consumers, make your site easy and simple with design and with complimented content.

Second, you have to design your site search engine friendly. This could be a tad more difficult but search engine friendly sites have greater chances of topping the SERP’s rather than flashy, graphic intensive sites. Most search engines have what they call “spiders” that crawl into your website particularly your HTML codes and scripts. The easier the spiders can get to your text of your web page, the better. This gives the spiders a better view of your site’s content. On the other hand, spiders frown on a much complicated programming like that of java scripts, cloaking tactics, invisible texts, and too much flash pages.

Basic Design Tips

Here are some tidbits you might want to take note of when optimizing your web design for search engines:

Go easy with images. While you have shouldn’t have to totally omit the use of graphics and images, remember that SE spiders can only read HTML text. You just have to make sure that your images don’t overshadow your text content. Use appropriate ALT text and keyword related filenames for your images.

• Avoid creating webpage frames. Spiders seem to have difficulty crawling into web pages with frames. Same advice is given to tables and layers.

• Though tempting, minimize using Flash images and texts. The thing is search engine spiders will be having a hard time what you ought to convey through your Flash. If you can utilize your Flash designs to be accompanied by HTML, the better.

• Links, nowadays, are often blended with JavaScript which presents similar problems with spiders. It is important to note that links play a major role in getting your site ranked in search engines. If their spiders can’t get through your links and index them, you’ve wasted time and effort harvesting your vast links.

• Make use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to anticipate future changes without affecting your entire site design. CSS can smooth the flow of your website as you add content, images, or whatever future updates you may have.

Bottom line is: create a simple and interesting design for your savvy visitors and, by the by, gain better positioning in major search engines.

Choosing the right keywords

2006-05-25T21:18:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, optimizing you website has become a necessity to compete and strive in the World Wide Web. Search engine optimizing your site whether doing your SEO work in-house or delegating it to seo professionals should be thought about comprehensively just like any other business venture.
It’s important to get the basics right by having a clear idea about your website’s target audience profile and website content. You need to focus on what the major search engines like Google or Yahoo consider search engine friendly and be familiar with the guidelines they provide. One aspect search engine optimization experts do point out that’s important in the start up process is keyword selection.
Since the aim of optimizing a site is to put it on top or as close to the top of the SERPs or Search Engine Results Pages, you need to determine the right keywords to use and concentrate on.

So how do you get the right keywords?

You need to consider two things: the first one is to get a list of ‘in demand’ or popular keywords relevant to your business, service or website. You can start by choosing from at least five to ten keywords which you think may lead visitors to check out your site and there are a number of free internet tools that will help you determine which key terms are being used the most for searches or find out which isn’t being used at all.
One of the most popular tools available is Overture’s keyword selector. By entering at most a three word phrase in its suggestion tool field, you can compile keywords ranked according to popularity with all other terms closely related to keywords being used in the search. Overture constantly updates its searches every month so while your ‘keyword’ may not be as popular next month as it is now, it will give you a general idea of what words or phrases most internet users make use of. Aside from this useful tool, you can also check keyword popularity through Wordtracker, Google AdWord’s Keyword Suggestions, and Guidebeam.

Look out for the competition!

You don’t want to be a little fish in a large ocean full of large predatory sharks. A keyword’s strength is its ability to surpass its competition. So you might want to start from the less competitive ones. How do we determine competition? Since we are now in the Google era, it would be efficient to use the Google search. Enter your search keywords at Google and it will bring you to its SERP’s. On the top right navigational bar, you will find the total number of pages that target your keyword searched. With this figure you can an idea of how many are competing for your searched keyword. It is easier and faster to rank well with a keyword where there are only 100,000 sites to compete against rather than with a keyword that has over half a billion contenders.

Hidden Ways to Get Into Google

2006-05-24T23:17:00.000-07:00

Everyone is concerned about their Google rankings. An algorithm change or an update can often leave many a webmaster in tears.
However, I often like to sneak in through the back door. So today I'm going to reveal to you some of my Google secrets, because Google's Lab is much larger than you think.

Google Video
Google Video allows you to have your very own tv show on one of the largest search engines on the internet. This is a form of multimedia that is certainly gaining popularity online. Right now Google Video is in a growth stage and it's one of the perfect times to get in and be one of the first to brand yourself in a particular market. Videos are also a great selling point if you have a product that can be demonstrated. With Google Video, you can have your very own infomercial indexed in the search engines. Of course, you'll want to provide some great content too. To check out this new technology, go to http://video.google.com.

Google Base
Google Base was launched in November of 2005. Google base describes itself as "a place where you can add all types of information that we'll host and make searchable online". Now, if that isn't a webmaster's dream, I don't know what is.
Your item could be almost anything: your products, research papers, articles, press releases, etc. You can describe all of your items so that you can zone in on your targeted visitor.
Anyone with a Google account can use this service, so why not give it a try. Google base is the perfect way to get an additional audience for your content. To find out more about Google Base, visit http://base.google.com/base/about.html.

Google Local/Maps
Getting your products into Google Local can put your items in front of some serious buyers. People often go to Google Local looking for a specific item or service in a particular geographic area. So, if you own a small business, Google Local is the perfect opportunity to increase your reach without spending lots of advertising dollars.

Froogle
Froogle offers searchers a directory of products by category, a searchable index of online products, and the ability to narrow searches by price range. By putting your products into Froogle, you can get some very targeted, qualified traffic to your website.
So, how do you get into Froogle? Well, Google has already been actively searching the web for online product catalogs. For many online merchants, there's a good chance that Froogle already has some of your products listed.
However, one of the best ways to get into the Froogle directory is by providing them with a data feed that lists your products, descriptions, pricing, and URLs. This allows you to fully optimize your listings.
To get the most out of Froogle, you'll want to make your product description clear and enticing. Create titles that not only have targeted keywords, but also encourage the visitor to click-through to your site.
Once they are at your site, it is important to upsell and cross-sell. Otherwise you will be throwing potential profits down the drain. Make the most out of every Froogle referral by capturing their name and email address.
Now, onto a section of Google that you certainly won't want to miss out on.

Google Blog Search
This is one of the best ways to get some additional listings in Google. If you have a website, why not start a blog. By starting a blog, you can tap into a variety of blog search engines, including Google Blog search. This area of marketing is largely untapped, so it is the perfect time to get your particular niche grounded in these specialty search engines.
To get your blog listed you simply need to ping an updating service such as Weblogs.com. It's as simple as that. If you are using Wordpress, you can set it up to where your blog pings the major services every time you make a post.
You can even have multiple listings in the Google Blog Search because they list specific posts as well as entire blogs.

Google News
Want to get your article and even your picture into Google News? Well, it's really not that hard. The first step is to go to www.americanchronicle.com, scroll down to the very bottom of the page and click on the link that says "submit work". From there you can sign up to be a contributor.
If accepted as a contributor, you will then be able to submit articles along with your picture. Many of their articles are syndicated on Google News and will be available to the millions of searchers who go to Google News each and every day.
If you are looking to get your press release into Google News, that is simple as well. All you have to do is submit your press release to PRLeap.com. Using these techniques, you can get into Google News 100% free, while many other webmasters are paying to do so.
Now that you know about the many faces of Google, you will be able to use many of these tactics to your advantage. You see, there are so many people who just don't put in the extra effort required to get exceptional results. Luckily for you, this puts you at a great advantage over many of the webmasters online today.

About The Author
Promoting Webs- Developer, Designer and SEO Professional with Promote Your Websites offering website design, search engine optimization and PPC Management.

Google Search Engine Optimization Pitfalls

2006-05-24T22:54:00.000-07:00

On Page Factors - Is Your Website Search Engine Friendly?

So you have a website but where is it on Google? Have you fallen foul of a penalty or have you overlooked one of the many common search engine optimization pitfalls when designing your site?
Understanding what works for the search engines and what doesn't when it comes to the content on your website can have a crucial impact on the relevance and/or page rank of your pages from a SEO perspective.
Here we highlight common mistakes that could affect your ranking on Google and other search engines.

Optimizing for the Correct Keywords

Basically 'Get real' about what keywords you feel your website can be ranked for. If you have a ten page website in a highly competitive market then ranking naturally for the major terms will be close to impossible.
Use the Overture keyword tool together with the number of results on Google to find out what keywords are searched for and how many other websites are targeting them. If you are lucky then you might even find a popular keyword that not many other websites are optimized for. Alternatively a good tool for this job is Wordtracker from Rivergold Associates Ltd.

Code Validation

If your html code is not valid, then this could make it very difficult or even impossible for a search engine to separate your page content from your code. If the search engine cannot see your content, then your page will obviously have no relevance.

Frames

Even though most, if not all, major search engines now index frames and even with the use of the NOFRAMES tag, you run the risk of your pages being displayed in the search engine results out of context. As each individual page is indexed separately, it is likely that your website visitors will not see your pages within your frame and will effectively be stuck on the page they arrive at.
On Page Factors - Is Your Website Search Engine Friendly?
So you have a website but where is it on Google? Have you fallen foul of a penalty or have you overlooked one of the many common search engine optimization pitfalls when designing your site?
Understanding what works for the search engines and what doesn't when it comes to the content on your website can have a crucial impact on the relevance and/or page rank of your pages from a SEO perspective.

Here we highlight common mistakes that could affect your ranking on Google and other search engines.
Optimizing for the Correct Keywords
Basically 'Get real' about what keywords you feel your website can be ranked for. If you have a ten page website in a highly competitive market then ranking naturally for the major terms will be close to impossible.
Use the Overture keyword tool together with the number of results on Google to find out what keywords are searched for and how many other websites are targeting them. If you are lucky then you might even find a popular keyword that not many other websites are optimized for. Alternatively a good tool for this job is Wordtracker from Rivergold Associates Ltd.
Code Validation
If your html code is not valid, then this could make it very difficult or even impossible for a search engine to separate your page content from your code. If the search engine cannot see your content, then your page will obviously have no relevance.
Frames
Even though most, if not all, major search engines now index frames and even with the use of the NOFRAMES tag, you run the risk of your pages being displayed in the search engine results out of context. As each individual page is indexed separately, it is likely that your website visitors will not see your pages within your frame and will effectively be stuck on the page they arrive at.
If you must use frames then create a 'Home' link on each of your individual content pages and point the link at your frameset index page.

JavaScript Navigation

If you use JavaScript to control your website navigation, then search engine spiders may have problems crawling your site. If you must use JavaScript, then there are two options available to you:

Use the NOSCRIPT tag to replicate the JavaScript link in standard HTML.
Replicate your JavaScript links as standard HTML links in the footer of your page.

Flash Content Currently only Google can index Macromedia Flash files, how much or how little content they see is open to debate. So until search engine technology is able to handle your .swf as standard it would be advisable to avoid the use of these.

Again if you must use Flash then offer a standard HTML alternative within NOEMBED tags.

Dynamic URLs

Although Google and Yahoo are able to crawl complicated URLs it is still advisable to keep your URLs simple and avoid the use of long query strings. Do not include session IDs in the URL as these can either create a 'spider trap' where the spider indexes the page over and over again or, at worst, your pages will not get indexed at all.

If you do need to include parameters in the URL, then limit them to two and the number of characters per parameter to ten or less.
The best SEO solution for dynamic URLs is to use Mod-rewrite or Multiviews on Apache.

No Sitemap

A sitemap is the search engine optimization tool of choice to ensure every page within your website is indexed by all search engines. You should link to your site map from, at least, your homepage but preferably from every page on your website.

If your website contains hundreds of pages then split the sitemap into several categorized maps and link these all together. Try and keep the number of links per page on a sitemap to less than 100.

Excessive Links

Excessive links on a given page (Google recommends having no more than 100) can lower its relevance and, although it does not result in a ban, this does nothing for your search engine optimization strategy.

Be Careful Who You Link To

As you have no control over who links to your website, incoming links will not harm your rank. However, outbound links from your website to 'bad neighbourhoods' like link farms will harm your ranking.
As a rule ensure as many of your outbound links as possible link to websites that are topical to your field of business.

About The Author

Promoting Webs- Developer, Designer and SEO Professional with Promote Your Websites offering website design, search engine optimization and PPC Management.

Secrets To Increasing Web Traffic

2006-05-24T22:06:00.000-07:00

It is no accident that some web sites have thousand or even millions of hits every day while others seem to be camouflaged with no visitors clicking on their sites. In general, there are 3 major areas of Internet marketing strategies.
Have a product or service that is in demand. The more unique and desirable, the better. If you're trying to sell something that lots of other people are also trying to sell, you're facing competition in two ways. It’s going to be a lot harder to get noticed on search engines, and the competition is going to eat away at the profits.

Have a product or service that is in demand. The more unique and desirable, the better. If you're trying to sell something that lots of other people are also trying to sell, you're facing competition in two ways. It’s going to be a lot harder to get noticed on search engines, and the competition is going to eat away at the profits.
Create a site that sells. A website sells product by design. It presents the product / service, builds trust, and then closes the sale. If people don't trust you, they won't buy from you. It doesn't matter how many people you attract to your website if they get turned off by an unattractive presentation or a half-built website.
Draw a stream of potential buyers to your site. You can obtain first page rankings on search pages without using tricks. If you build highly optimized, search engine friendly web pages, you can score well on several different keywords or keyword phrases. This is called search engine optimization.

Let’s start by looking at what doesn’t work:

Banner Ads: Click thru rates have now dropped to just 0.3%. This is not a cost effective traffic builder for your site. Banner ads that are tied to keyword phrases are more effective.
Exchange Banner Ads or links. The downside is that you work hard to attract a targeted customer to your site and they end up leaving before you can close the sale. The upside is that links pointing back to your site improves your ranking with many search engines. My suggestion is that if you want to add links, do this on a separate links page.
E-mail marketing: This is one of the most disliked forms of internet advertising. It violates one of the basic rules of the Internet…NEVER SPAM. The bottom line is that email marketing doesn’t work.
Classified ad services: “Free for all” classified ad sites have popped up all over the web. This is how they work…first you sign up and receive your own classified ad site. Then you allow visitors to post their ads for free. In exchange, you get to send them your spam. The issue is that you are not dealing with targeted customers and you end up with zero results.

Search Engines

Search engines are a great source for new customers. Existing customers already know you and usually they usually don’t arrive thru searches. Since visitors find you by entering in search terms, they are new customers. These visitors are targeted…they create the search that finds your keywords. Since they found you, they are motivated and much more likely to buy. Properly targeted search engine traffic results in sales that could have gone to your competitors…and this goes to your bottom line.

Keywords and Keyword Phrases

This is a very important part of web page optimization. You need to understand how your customer thinks. People who use a search engine are looking for the product and its features. Remember, 3-4 word keyword phrases attract buyers, 1-2 word keyword phrases attract browsers.
Create a list of keyword based on common names, combining words into compound words, common misspellings, looking at competitor key words. Stay away from company name and brand names as keywords. Select keywords based on recent actual search usages. This information is available from the Internet.
In picking the best traffic building keywords you will want to end-up with 80% specific keywords or keyword phrases and 20% general keywords / phrases. Eliminate words that are unlikely to be used. Choose approximately 16 specific keywords / phrases and 4 general ones. Make sure that the words cover your entire product line.

Spiders on the Web

Search engine spiders are programs that follow links on web sites, gathering data for search engine indexes. The spider, robot or crawler goes to a web site and follows hyperlinks throughout the site. The spider reads the meta tags on the web pages. Meta tags are tags that appear in HTML at the top of each web page; these tags tell the spiders what's on the page in a fashion that is easy for them to index. The robot reads these tags and compares them to the content on the page. The better the tags add up with the actual content of the page the higher the spider will rank the page's TITLE, DESCRIPTION, and KEYWORDS. When the spider finds material in the tags that does not reflect the actual content of the page, it will give the page a low ranking or will not index the page at all.

Design your site to be spider friendly

The Meta Tags are important to getting good rankings, and on many search engines, the page title (often truncated) and the Meta Description tag are what gets displayed.

Constructing your Meta TITLE tag. All your most important key phrases should be in the TITLE tag. Browsers only display the first few words of a title tag (whatever fits into the title bar of the window). So while the first sentence of your title tag should be readable by people the rest can be just a list of key phrases.
The Meta Description tag should contain a short description of the web page. You've already written one for the TITLE tag! So just edit that to make it human readable (and perhaps a little shorter).
Meta Keywords tag. Enter your key phrases in the order you think is most appropriate, separated by commas. Don't repeat a key phrase, and don't repeat any individual word more than 5 times.
The first paragraph of your page should repeat and expand upon everything in your title and description meta tags. You need to have all those key phrases in it. However, since this is going to be read by people, it needs to be written with them in mind.

Don’t put up spam pages

You clearly want to have your important key phrases on your page more than once, because this is what gives the search engines a clue as to what your page is really about. However, you don't want your key phrases to appear too many times. This might make the search engines think your page is a spam page trying to rank highly for a particular phrase and will not list them.

RSACI Rating

Say that someone visits your page... but they can't! Their browser blocks it, saying that it's "not appropriate". This is probably because you haven't installed rating tags on your site. It's pretty simple to do, and it means that a lot more people will be able to access your site. See The Internet Content Rating Association at http://www.icra.org/ for more information.

Paying for hits

Pay-per-click is another way to increase the traffic to your website. Pay-per-click providers are simply a search engine where you can bid for the top positions for various search keywords.
Even if you have done everything right and you have a perfectly optimized web site for search engines and you have traffic flowing to your site, you can quickly lose your potential customer with a poorly designed website.

10 ways to design an annoying site that drives traffic away.

Have useless or just plain bad content.
Make your pages over 50K so the pages load real slow.
Disable the back button so people can’t leave the site.
Place blinking text and moving or spinning graphics to distract the reader from the other really bad stuff on your site.
Don’t proof read what you do and have plenty of spelling and grammar “misteaks”
Put in music…and make it really loud.
Make your text unreadable by putting light blue printing over a medium blue 3D wallpaper or similar background.
Put your entire site on one…long…long…long page.
Clutter up your site and make it confusing so no one can figure out exactly what you are up to.
Have plenty of pointless graphics or clipart for no real reason.

SEO With Google Sitemaps

2006-05-24T22:03:00.000-07:00

What is a Google Sitemap?

A Google Sitemap is a very simple XML document that lists all the pages in your website, but the Google Sitemaps program is actually much more important than that. In fact, the Sitemaps program provides a little peek inside Google's mind - and it can tell you a lot about what Google thinks of your website!

Why Should You Use Google Sitemaps?

Until Google Sitemaps was released in the summer of 2005, optimizing a site for Google was a guessing game at best. A website's page might be deleted from the index, and the Webmaster had no idea why. Alternatively, a site's content could be scanned, but because of the peculiarities of the algorithm, the only pages that would rank well might be the "About Us" page, or the company's press releases.
As webmasters we were at the whim of Googlebot, the seemingly arbitrary algorithmic kingmaker that could make or break a website overnight through shifts in search engine positioning. There was no way to communicate with Google about a website - either to understand what was wrong with it, or to tell Google when something had been updated.
That all changed about a year ago when Google released Sitemaps, but the program really became useful in February of 2006 when Google updated it with a couple new tools.
So, what exactly is the Google Sitemaps program, and how can you use it to improve the position of your website? Well, there are essentially two reasons to use Google Sitemaps:

1. Sitemaps provide you with a way to tell Google valuable information about your website.
2. You can use Sitemaps to learn what Google thinks about your website.

What You Can Tell Google About Your Site

Believe it or not, Google is concerned about making sure webmasters have a way of communicating information that is important about their sites. Although Googlebot does a pretty decent job of finding and cataloging web pages, it has very little ability to rate the relative importance of one page versus another. After all, many important pages on the Internet are not properly "optimized", and many of the people who couldn't care less about spending their time on linking campaigns create some of the best content.
Therefore, Google gives you the ability to tell them on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0 how important a given page is relative to all the others. Using this system, you might tell Google that your home page is a 1.0, each of your product sections is a 0.8, and each of your individual product pages is a 0.5. Pages like your company's address and contact information might only rate a 0.2.
You can also tell Google how often your pages are updated and the date that each page was last modified. For example your home page might be updated every day, while a particular product page might only be updated on an annual basis.

What Google Can Tell You About Your Site

Having the ability to tell Google all this information is important, but you don't even need to create a sitemap file in order to enjoy some of the perks of having a Google Sitemaps account.
That's because even without a Sitemap file, you can still learn about any errors that Googlebot has found on your website. As you probably know, your site doesn't have to be "broken" for a robot to have trouble crawling it's pages. Google Sitemaps will tell you about pages it was unable to crawl and links it was unable to follow. Therefore, you can see where these problems are and fix them before your pages get deleted from the index.
You can also get information on the types of searches people are using to find your website. Of course, most website analytics tools will give this information to you anyway, but if the tool you use doesn't have this feature, then it's always nice to get it for free from Google.
But the best part of the Sitemaps program is the Page analysis section that was added in February of 2006. This page gives you two lists of words. The first list contains the words that Googlebot associates with your website based on content on your site. The second list contains words that Googlebot has found linking to your site!
Unfortunately, Google limits the number of words in each list to 20. As a consequence, the inbound links column is partly wasted by words such as "http", "www", and "com" - terms that apply equally to all websites (hey Google, how about suppressing those terms from the report?). That said, this list does provide you with a way to judge the effectiveness of your offsite optimization efforts.
When you compare these two lists, you can get an understanding of what Google thinks your website is about. If the words on your Site Content column are not really what you want Googlebot to think about your site, then you know you need to tweak your website's copy to make it more focused on your core competency.
If, on the other hand your inbound links don't contain any keywords that you want to rank well for, then perhaps you should focus your efforts in that direction.
Above all else, you really want these two lists to agree. You want your inbound linked words to match up to the site content words. This means that Google has a clear understanding of the focus of your website.

Additional Benefits of the Sitemaps Program

Google has even started notifying Sitemaps-participating Webmasters if they are breaking any of Google's Webmaster Guidelines. This can be very valuable information if your site suddenly becomes de-listed on Google and you don't know why.
Only Sitemaps participants can get this information, and it is only provided at Google's discretion. In fact, Google will NOT notify you if you are creating worthless websites that offer no original content, or if you are creating thousands of doorway pages that are redirecting to other web sites. Google doesn't want to give the sp@ammers any clues as to how to improve their techniques.

How Do You Get Started with Google Site Maps?

The first thing you must do is obtain a Google Account. If you already have a Gmail, Adsense, or Adwords account, then you are all set. If not, you can register an account by visiting the Google Accounts page.
Building your sitemap file is pretty easy to do if you are familiar with XML, and if you aren't you can always use a third-party tool such as the ones that are listed on Google's website. Google also has a "Sitemap Generator" that you can download and install on your server, but unless you are fairly adept at managing Python scripts, you should probably stick to the third-party tools.

At any rate, once you have your Google Account and your Sitemap file built, the rest is very easy. All you have to do is:

1. Log into your account
2. Type your website's URL into the "Add Site" box and click on "OK"
3. Click on the Manage Sites link for the website you are adding, and add your sitemap file to your account.

Google Sitemaps - An Excellent SEO Tool

Google Sitemaps help Googlebot quickly find new content on your website. They allow you to tell Google what's important, what's new, and what changes often. The tools provided to webmasters through the program can play a vital role in helping you understand how the search engines (especially Google) view your website.
Using this information you can dramatically improve the position of your website and quickly clear up any issues Google finds. You can also use the tools provided by Google to gauge the effectiveness of your off-site optimization efforts so you can better focus your time and energy on activities that bring you the most success.

About The Author

SEO-Title and Meta Description Tag Optimization

2006-05-22T23:11:00.000-07:00

Title Tag and Meta Tags are the author-generated source codes that are positioned in the segment of your HTML document. Apart from the Title Tag, other information inserted is not visible to the person surfing your web page, but is visible only to the search engine crawlers. Title and Meta Description Tags are especially important as they can be used to influence the ranking of your site (to a certain extent) and the way it appears in some search results. There are several Meta Tags like Meta Description Tag, Meta Keywords Tag and more, but out of the existing Tags the most important and popular ones are the Title Tag and the Meta Description Tag. Though the Title Tag does not belong to the Meta Tag family (click for more information on Meta Tags), yet from the Search Engine Optimization point of view, the Title Tag is the most significant tag on your web site, followed by the Meta Description Tag. What is a Title Tag? The Title Tag is an HTML code that shows the words that appear in the Title bar at the top of your web browser. These words do not appear anywhere else on your web page. For instance, the Title Tag of this page appears as ‘ Meta Tag Optimization: Title and Meta Description Tag Optimization ' at the top bar of your web browser. This is because these words were entered into the Title Tag of the web site's HTML code. Usually, the Title Tag is the first element in the area of your site, followed by the Meta Description and the Meta Keywords Tags. Before, we discuss the Title Tag in greater detail; lets see how it looks in your web site's HTML code: Why is the Title Tag Important from Search Engine Optimization perspective? Title Tag is an important Tag amongst other SEO related options, as it not only communicates the theme of your web page to the human visitors but is also considered very important by the Search Engine crawlers. Title Tag is not a Meta Tag, but nevertheless it is the most important of all Tags. Almost all crawler based search engines use the Title Tag to gather information about your web site. The search engines use the words or the content of the Title Tag during the ranking process to analyze the relevance of your web page. Major search engines like Google, Yahoo, AOL, AltaVista, and AlltheWeb use your web page's Title Tag to evaluate its relevance. Title Tag is the hyperlinked text title that is displayed in the search engine results page (SERP). The users, in turn, click on this hyperlink to go to your web site. The Title Tag is also used as the text when you 'bookmark' a page or add a certain web page to your 'favorites' list in your browser. A carefully constructed Title Tag is very important for your page's ranking with the search engines. Of late, a large number of articles have been written with differing views and opinions regarding the relevance and benefits of various Meta Tags. Most experts, however, agree that the Title Tag is a significant tool in any search engine optimization campaign. Working with the Title Tag Since the Title Tag plays a vital role in determining your site's ranking in the SERP, you need to pay a lot of attention to the words that appear in the Title Tag and the order in which they appear. You need to develop a crisply worded Title Tag that includes your most relevant keyword phrases and performs the function of announcing the summary of your web page's content. Title Tag and Keywords Amongst all the places you can use your important keyword phrases, the usage of keywords in the Title Tag gives the highest weight. While using your keyword phrases in the Title Tag, it is important to be highly focused. You should use the same keywords not just in your Title Tag, but also in your page content and the Meta Description Tag of your web page. If the keywords you intend using in your Title Tag do not appear anywhere else in your page's content, then avoid using them in your page title as the weight of the keywords in the Title Tag gets diluted. It is essential to sequence your keyword phrases correctly in your Title Tag. The order in which they appear is of great importance. Having your most important keyword phrase towards the beginning of the Title Tag helps display your title in bold in the SERP (search engines result pages).
Other Do's and Don'ts
Consider using both singular and plural forms of the important words in your Title Tag. For instance, you may use both 'loan' and 'loans' while making the Title Tag. Google is still experimenting with Stemming (interchange of singular and plural terms); however, it is fluctuating in its deployment frequently. A word of Caution: Do not overdo it.
Title Tag length : Google usually reads about 90 characters of your Title Tag. Therefore, a Title Tag of about 80-90 characters is good enough.
Do not use keywords repeatedly as the density of your keywords does not matter in your Title Tag.
The sequence in which keywords appear in your Title Tag is important. Try using natural phrases for your Title Tag, which read better and will likely conform to your Keyword Phrases.
Avoid using the same Title Tag throughout your site. Try using a unique Title Tag for each web page and use keyword Phrases that holds theme relevance to that page. You also get to leverage more keyword phrases if you individualize the Title Tag in all pages.
Most search engines are not case sensitive ; therefore, you can write your Title Tag in a way that looks most visually appealing.
Title Tag should ideally read like a phrase that makes some grammatical sense, not just a collection of keywords. This is all the more important as the Title Tag usually appears as the text when you 'bookmark' or add a page to your 'favorites' list. Therefore, it should make sense when a person reads it later. For instance, if you want to include the keywords Home Loans, fast clearance, No credit check in your Title Tag, you can write a Title Tag that reads: Home Loans: fast clearance with no credit check. What to Include in your Title Tag? You could put the product or service you are offering in the Title Tag, instead of your firm or company name. This is because most users when searching for, information search for specific products or services, not company names. Also note that search engines read about 80-90 characters in your Title Tag. This is prime Real Estate for your important keywords. If you strongly feel like putting your company or domain name in your Title Tag, then, do so at the end. Wasting several characters by inserting your site name does you little good. In a nutshell, the basic ingredients of a good Title Tag are :
It should announce the summary of your web page content.
It should read like a crisply worded sales pitch that is enticing enough to make the users click on your entry when it is displayed in SERP.
It should include your most important keyword phrases or search terms.
The sequencing of the keywords should make logical sense.
Each page of your website should have different and customized Title Tag relevant to the context of that page. The Title and Meta Description Tags are very important aspects of your search engine optimization campaign. This exercise begins with carrying out a thorough Keyword Phrase research. Keyword phrase research forms the most essential and important aspect of any SEO initiative. After selecting your most relevant keyword phrases and writing a keyword rich copy for your web page, you can now work these important search terms into your Title and Meta Description Tags. Read our detailed article on Keyword Phrase Research . The Title and Meta Description Tags are very important aspects of your search engine optimization campaign. This exercise begins with carrying out a thorough Keyword.
Phrase research. Keyword phrase research forms the most essential and important aspect of any SEO initiative. After selecting your most relevant keyword phrases and writing a keyword rich copy for your web page, you can now work these important search terms into your Title and Meta Description Tags. Read our detailed article on Keyword Phrase Research.
What is Meta Description Tag? The Meta Description Tag is a part of HTML code that allows you to give a short and concise summary of your web page content. The words placed in this Meta Tag, are often used in the search engines result pages (SERP), just below the Title Tag as a brief description of your page. In the Search Engine Results Pages, after reading the Title, a user usually studies the description of the page and decides whether she wants to visit your site or not. Some Search Engines prefer to ignore your Meta Description Tag and build the description summary on the basis of the search term for the SERP on the fly. They usually pick up parts of the text on your page wherever the search terms appear. The only exceptions are the Flash, Frame or All Image sites that have no content, and some high importance websites, where the search term is not found in the text. In such a case, Google picks up your entire Meta Description Tag and displays it.

Importance of Meta Description Tag All search engines do not give very high prominence to the Meta Description Tag and may generate a description on the fly while listing your web page in SERP. However, in some search engines, a good Meta Description Tag might help a page to rank higher for your targeted search terms. This holds true for Flash, Frame or All Image sites that have no content as well as some high importance websites, where the search term is not found in the text. In such cases, some search engines pick up the exact Meta Description Tag and display it in its SERP, just below the Title Tag. Hence, it is important to write a crisp and enticing Meta Description Tag that includes your important keyword phrases and manages to interest your user, thus making her click on your entry. Working with Meta Description Tag Keyword Phrases and Meta Description Tag: Include your most relevant and important keyword phrases in your page's Meta Description Tag. As in the case of Title Tag, focus on the same keyword phrases as you used in your page's Title Tag and body text. Fewer and highly targeted search phrases can boost your web page's relevance in the search engines results. Hence, stress should be on writing a brief yet informative description for your web page. The Meta Description Tag of your web page should not read like a collection of keywords, but should be written as an informative and interesting summary of your web page. Do's and Don'ts of a good Meta Description Tag:
Excessive keyword repetition should be avoided. Instead, pay attention to the sequence in which your keywords appear. Your most important terms should be placed in the beginning.
Make sure each page on your web site has a different and a unique Meta Description Tag using the keyword phrases that are relevant to that web page.
A Meta Description Tag of 25-30 words should do fine.
The most important keyword phrases should, ideally be placed at the beginning of your Meta Description Tag, which increases your chances of better Search Engine Rankings

About The Author

Not that there is anything fundamentally wrong with doing business with Google. Everyone is profiting from Google, find out how you can too! Click-here: Promote Your Websites © 2006 Promoting Webs