Search Engine Optimization Guide for Webmasters [senior Hs Paper]

By: Joshua Adams

Introduction

Search Engines have developed into the Internet’s most popular and powerful source of information, accounting for an estimated 80% of the Internet’s traffic (Heche, 2007, p. 1). As a result, website owners are realizing the power in such devises and are shifting marketing budgets into the optimization of their sites specifically for search engines. During the toddler years of search engine optimization (SEO), crafty developers took advantage of weak search engine algorithms to display their websites in top results, regardless of their site’s relevance. However, as more advanced Internet search engine technologies emerged to solve such exploits, new SEO methods were pursued (Boykin, 2007, p. 1). With the growth in search engine popularity and accuracy, and with newly emerging techniques used to target such engines, SEO has become a cut-throat competitive industry that is quickly being dominated in its utilization by big-business corporations (Murray, 2007, p. 1). Regardless of a company size and status, however, company webmasters with basic knowledge of HTML and blogging can establish top search engine rankings for websites that target niche markets with great efficiency by employing specific on-page and off-page SEO techniques.

A Search Engine Primer

Search engines did not become popular overnight. In fact, it took half a decade for the general public to catch on to the power of them. Search engines have become a woven part of society only because of their brilliant architecture; systems with frameworks so complex, yet so simple in user utilization that a novice can operate it. Concisely, the modern search engine is an intricate tool formulated to minimize the discovery time of information by minimizing result digression and maximizing result accuracy based on hundreds of relative factors. The basic functionality of a search engine includes content discovery, indexing, querying, and ranking (Fishkin, 2007, p. 4).

Content discovery is often referred to as “Web crawling”. The analogy of the “Web” is an important concept to grasp, since its analogy will act as a backbone to understanding the search engine discovery process and the terminology involved. The internet can be generally referred to as the World Wide Web, or just Web for short, because the structure of the internet most resembles the structure of a spider web (Davis, 2005, p. 1). Each of the billions of pages of content are linked together in some way or another to create an incomprehensibly large network of connections. Consequently, search engines have called their automated programs that crawl this web “bots” or “spiders”. Modern crawlers revisit indexed sites on a regular basis to look for changes or revisions. Sites are normally updated by the crawler between a one or two months time. In estimation, search engines have only crawled about half of the Web’s content pages, accounting for between eight to ten billion pages (Fishkin, 2007, p. 4).

Every page that is crawled on the Web by a search engine is placed into a gigantic database called an index or sometimes a catalogue. Massive organization is applied to the index in a way that requests can sort through billions of pages and find relevant matches within just fractions of a second. Sometimes it can take a considerable amount of time for a search engine to actually index a site after crawling it. During this time, the site will not be available on index to those searching (Fishkin, 2007, p. 4).

Content querying is the provision of an interface or gateway connecting the human user and the results waiting inside the search engine database. The results vary in type from web pages to online published word processor documents, and are returned to the user based on the criteria they indicate. The method a user might use to indicate criterion varies based on the search engine. Search engines normally provide a blank text input field in which the user can type terms or phrases into then press a button to send the query to the search engine for processing. Many modern search engines incorporate exclusive input syntaxes that a user might learn to take full advantage of the search engine’s power. Natural language searches, however, allow a user to input full sentence-structured questions instead of requiring the user to learn query syntaxes (Sullivan, 2007, p. 1). An example of syntax is placing terms in quotations. Google, the most commonly used search engine of today, uses quotations to specify results that return exact matches to all the terms in the order they are listed in quotations. Google includes ten other operators used to better define a query and home in on the target results (Google Cheat Sheet, 2007, p. 1).

Ranking becomes a search engine’s most distinguishing process, as this will determine what and how information is displayed to the user. A commonality all search engines share by nature is the organization of pages by relevancy starting first with most relevant and ending with least. The higher a page’s rank is, the higher the site’s probable relevance will be as perceived by the engine. Every search engine uses its own unique method of determining how pages rank in relation to one another, and these are called algorithms. An algorithm is a mathematical formula that will take into consideration dozens of factors that have positive and negative effects on page rank. Think of it as a set of rules that a judge uses to determine which girl wins in a beauty pageant. The winner will always showcase more than just beauty alone, but instead, indicate a deeper purpose like the reputation, talents, and even life intentions. The many factors involved in judging contestants in a beauty pageant are very much like the factors used to rank a webpage (Sisson, 2006, p. 12).

Brief History of the Search Engine

The earliest breeds of search engines were not actually search engines at all, but rather massive directories of content pages manually submitted by their authors. It was not until spiders and bots came to the scene that people began to see the power behind such tools (Wall, n.d., p. 8). Archie appeared in 1990 as the very first tool used to search pages of the Internet. It was named Archie to resemble the word “archive” without the “v”. Built by Alan Emtage, the program indexed directory listings from public FTP sites. An alternative tool emerged a year later called Gopher, which indexed solely text files instead of all computer files. Two other index systems called Veronica and Jughead searched the Gopher index servers and provided more targeted keyword search (Wall, n.d., p. 2). By 1993, a new generation of search engine emerged from a student at MIT: automated web crawling. Initially used for counting and measuring the size of the Web, the first web crawling bot on the Internet was named the World Wide Web Wanderer by its creator Matthew Gray. ALIWEB (Archie-Like Indexing of the Web) was introduced in the same year with the capability to collect page meta-data and allow page authors to submit their own content. Search engines and crawling technology wasn’t yet seen as having any true significance for society until further university experiments were done (Wall, n.d., p. 1).

As the Internet gained popularity and started appearing as a business opportunity to investors, college students began getting large funding opportunities. This boom in funding caused break-through developments such as relevancy-based indexing to occur. Corporations like Altavista, Ask Jeeves, Lycos, Yahoo, and Google in turn met at the search engine scene, each bringing their own new innovations to the table. Altavista offered a brand new method of searching for the end-user known as natural language inquiry (Wall, n.d., p. 1). Ask Jeeves was quick to mimic this technique, but also focused on building its index from web communities. A few years later, Altervista was bought by Yahoo! for 235 million dollars, which was just one of that many small steps taken toward the multi-billion dollar establishment Yahoo! is today (Olsen, 2003, p. 1). Lycos contained the largest index of any search engine of its time with more than 60 million documents in 1996, but eventually evolved into the fifth most popular web portal in the world (Sherman, 2002, p. 1). Lycos abandoned its own search engine algorithm, and began powering its search feature by Ask in 2006, which is former Ask Jeeves (O’Reilly, 2006, p. 1).

Although Google entered the scene relatively late in 1998, it still managed to ultimately come out on top from its tough search engine competitors (Google Milestones, 2007, p. 1) Through collaboration, Larry Page and Sergey Brin babied their creation until receiving more than 25 million dollars in funding in just a year’s time from its initial launch (Google Milestones, 2007, p. 3). Google partnered with AOL and Yahoo! by early 2000, which also marked the release year of the renowned Google toolbar (Google Milestones, 2007, p. 4). In 2007, Colvin of CNN reported that “Google’s figure is $149 billion and rising fast, pushing the company past most of America’s biggest, most successful, most respected corporations” (Colvin, 2007, p. 1). It is clear that Google has conquered the search engine war, rendering it as the most valuable search engine webmasters can optimize for their websites. Google has practically set the standard for other search engines that have followed the leader’s footsteps. Because of this, Google-specific page ranking factors are currently the most significant for any SEO venture because of competing search engines’ inherent similarities (Ryan, 2006, p. 1).

On-Page Search Engine Optimization

Jumping straight into SEO, it is imperative to understand that success relies heavily on the keywords that are chosen for the optimization venture. Because keyword terms can be found inside content, titles, headers, and images of a webpage, these are all considered on-page objects and therefore contribute to the optimization of the page itself. Keywords can be thought of as the foundation upon which SEO is built on, when if removed from the equation it leaves a broken structure. In relation to SEO, keywords are terms used to define the purpose of a webpage in its entirety (Fishkin, 2007, p. 9).

Commonly, there is confusion between metadata keywords and content keywords. metadata entries, which are code strings placed in the code heading of pages, are no longer used for relevancy because they were taken advantage of by having irrelevant keywords that attracted undeserved attention. For this metadata keywords are no longer used, while metadata descriptions are only used as snapshots for a few rare search engine directory page entries. Because of all this, metadata entries are very insignificant to SEO. In the world of keywords, content is king. When a search query is sent, the search engine will try to return with pages that match best to the inquiry keywords found within a page’s content (Sisson, 2006, p. 8). Since so much relies on keywords, it is common practice to conduct research to seek the right related keywords or keyword combinations that are optimizable for a given scenario. There are several free online tools available for keyword research, such as the tool suite found at http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools (Callen, 2005, p. 32)

Keywords that are too popular will actually have a negative impact on search rankings because of the overcoming competition. Instead of seeking popular solo keywords like “insurance” or “games”, it is much more effective to find a niche (Callen, 2005, p. 12). A niche homes in on the specific product, idea, or service that is attempting to be displayed in search results. When optimizing for a focused target audience, the competition is easier to outsource, and in turn will always promise high rankings when page optimization is established. Instead of seeking a single magic keyword, it is best to seek a keyword combination or a phrase that will best describe a niche specifically. Most people enter 2-5 word phrases into search queries, which ensures security with multi-keyword niches (Sisson, 2006, p. 13).

Some webmasters have tried repeating their keywords excessively on their pages to boost frequency. What these webmasters might not understand is that excessive keywording is like playing with fire, where if they get too close they will get burned. If a search engine notices an unusually excessive repetition of keywords, the engine will demote the site and may even ban it from its index completely. In contrast to this, search engines are now intelligently seeking common relationships between terms on the Web, so when keywords are used throughout a document with fluency and in good context, this can quickly benefit a site’s ranking (Fishkin, 2007, p. 9).

Keywords should be strategically placed on a webpage to maximize keyword frequency without running the risk of being seen as a keyword spammer by the search engine. If more than one keyword combination is being targeted by your site, it is important not to strand keywords together in an attempt to increase keyword relevance. In page content, header code tags will emphasize keywords for users as well as search engine spiders. Placing keywords naturally in the alt tags of content relating images will also boost page relevance, and return your site in image search results. Most importantly, naturally mentioning keywords in body paragraph text will increase keyword frequency. To reiterate however, it is important not to overuse keywords in body paragraphs, since some search engines might suspect a site with that sort of ‘keyword juicing’ as spam (Sisson, 2006, p. 13).

Linking is another imperative factor of page rankings which will be covered in greater detail in off-page techniques, but is also a part of on-page optimization. Internal linking generates a hierarchy of synonymous page rank based upon which pages are linked most. Many webmasters often do not realize they are making a mistake when chain-linking content more than two levels away from the homepage, or mesh linking. Mesh linking occurs when every page contains a link to every other page in the site, giving every page with equal importance. This means a contact or form page will rank just as high as the actual meat of the site. To solve this issue and direct the search engines’ focus towards pages of importance, a hierarchical linking system should be established. To create linking hierarchy, not all pages are cross linked, and important pages are linked to by the largest number of pages on the site (Sisson, 2006, p. 37).

Off Page Search Engine Optimization

While on-page optimization provides a solid basis for a website being recognized by spiders, it is the links from other websites that determine the rank of the recognized page. Off-page search engine optimization is mostly concerned with this establishment of inbound links to the focus website. The process is known as link building, and is by far the most strenuous aspect of SEO. A site’s page rank is determined by both the quantity and quality of its incoming links. The quality of a link is the most weighted factor, which is based upon the page rank of the site making the link. If the linked site has relevance to the site being optimized, then this is a positive detail (Fishkin, 2007, p. 26). Relevancy is determined by comparing keywords in website titles, the anchor text of the link, and even its IP address. The IP address or number value that the domain name refers to may have less weighted effect on page ranking if it shares a common third octet (Sisson, 2006, p. 43). Sites that have very high page ranks are referred to as ‘authoritative’ and will almost automatically boost the page rank of a site it links to. Two forms of linking exist: two-way and one-way.

Two-way linking is also known as reciprocal linking because it is a mutual establishment between site owners. This method is essentially a link swap. Some webmasters carry the misconception that paying for well known link exchange services will guarantee site visits, but this is only true on a temporary degree (Sisson, 2006, p. 54). Also, link exchanges are considered manipulative and have a record of incurring removal of sites from search engine indexes.

One-way link building can sometimes be considered a science and art, since many techniques are nothing short of brilliant. One scheme often used to build massive amounts of inbound links is to produce a gadget or banner that appeals to other site owners, and encourages them to take a code snippet for the gadget or personalized banner and place it on their own site. An example of this method is evident at www.nerdtests.com. This site offers a free and fun online quiz that ranks the user’s nerdiness in percent relation to everyone else who took the quiz and awards an ‘official title’ banner code based on the outcome. These banners can be found floating all around the net in user signatures of online community forum boards or even on personal blogs and provides www.nerdtests.com with an endless link base (Spencer, 2007, p. 1).

The most common and reliable method of getting back-links is submitting articles to informative websites, which usually give authors an opportunity to link to their personal site. Social bookmarking sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and Propeller all have recently become a hit sensation among frequent internet users. These bookmarking sites provide a portal to sites recommended by other users. If the content on a site is valuable or entertaining enough to people, social bookmarking sites may be the most effective approach to off-page optimization since they are based on popularity and massive viral tendencies (Hagen, 2007, p. 5).

Method

As my primary research, I conducted an interview on October 25, 2007, consisting of ten focused questions about SEO with Bill Slawski. Bill is the President of SEO by the Sea and the Director of Internet Marketing for KeyRelevance Inc., and was directly referred to me by Rand Fishkin, one of the world’s most renowned and authoritative SEO experts. Bill is one of the founders and administrators of Cre8asite Forums, is an active correspondent for Search Engine Land, and writes a weekly column for their small business section. Mr. Slawski’s professional credentials substantiate the validity of his interview responses and provide access to exclusive insider industry knowledge. The interview was completed via electronic mail, in which Bill took full advantage of to respond with in-depth and intuitive answers complete with real-world examples.

Results

As the first question of my interview, I asked Bill how he would define SEO to the average Internet user. Bill responded, “In simplest terms, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is applying knowledge of how search engines work to make sites easier to find on the web for the audiences that those pages were intended to attract. In more complicated terms, SEO is a matter of combining an application of marketing ideas and a knowledge of search engines to help bring the right people to a site so that they will change from visitor to consumer.” This description spells out the fundamental concepts of SEO. It is important to understand SEO, in essence, is limitless in ways of targeting consumer markets. While advertising schemes might be limited to the specific targets the advertising company provides based upon the small amount of information shared with them about your product, SEO delves into your niche and allows for much more targeting flexibility.

My second question for Bill was, “In what ways is SEO more effective or efficient than other online marketing methods?” He responded saying, “Search engine optimization means being aware of how search engines might collect information from the pages of a website, and making it easy for the search engines to index the content of those pages. In effect, it means enabling a search engine to become an index for the pages of a site. It can be less expensive than using the paid contextual ads that you see displayed with search results at a search engine, or the banner ads that show up on other websites that may point to the site advertised.” This cost efficiency is an important component of why business professionals are making the leap away from conventional pay per click advertising as their primary marketing strategy and making the switch to search engine optimization.

The third question pointed towards the public view on this experts own industry. My question was, “Do you think the power of SEO is relatively undermined, or in contrast, do you think it is overplayed as an online marketing method in the industry?” He responded with, “Search is one of the commonest activities that people get involved in when the go online, so making a website easy to be found in a search engine for people who might be looking for what that site has to offer is a good idea. It can make sense to include SEO as one part of a multiple part marketing effort, and to build a strong marketing plan that includes both online and offline parts. Unfortunately, there are differing skill sets amongst people who offer SEO services – some are just better than others.” While my question was meant to explore SEO’s public relation solely, Bill brought up an extremely important reiteration of SEO’s unknown power when combined with an ultimate market plan encompassing offline target markets as well as the ones who exist online. This also adds to the concept of ‘limitless’ SEO possibilities.

I asked for my next question, “Can any website benefit from SEO?” Bill explained, “SEO is only really important to sites that want to increase their visibility on the Web. A game clan site, where everyone who needs to know the address of the site already does has no need for SEO. But, if you hope to attract visitors to your pages, it doesn’t hurt to make them as search friendly as possible. And if you want to attract people to those pages who might be interested in the content of the pages, it doesn’t hurt to try to use words on the pages that those people might try to search with on a search engine, and to do it in a manner that makes it more likely that those words will be found earlier on in search results.” Drawn from his answer is a suggestion of widely conventional use for SEO. Unless meant specifically to be concealed from Internet users, any website seeking visitors can benefit largely from any amount of SEO. Since amateur implementation of SEO is key part of this paper, the next question was very distinctive in terms.

I asked, “Is it possible for webmasters to (with fundamental knowledge of HTML and blogging) implement SEO for themselves with relatively successful results for their small websites?” Unsurprisingly, my prediction was reinforced with his answer. Bill said, “Webmasters with a fundamental knowledge of HTML and blogging can achieve some success with being found on the web, but having a good knowledge of how search engines work can help a webmaster make better choices about how their site is set up for success with search engines.” I asked, “In general, what is the timeline of results returned by SEO?” Bill responded saying, “The amount of time that it may take to achieve results may vary by the site involved and how much work it might need, the competitiveness of the market it is within, and the demand for what the site offers. It’s almost impossible to guarantee success generally, and perhaps even harder to do it within a specified timeline.” While other sources have noted results can be seen in a matter of days in some cases, it seems there is no definitive amount of time that promises results to become evident. In that, the SEO marketing solution may not always suite for website owners seeking instant Web traffic.

This question focused on SEO as a long-term asset. I asked Bill, “Do you believe SEO may become obsolete in the future?” He explained, “I don’t see it becoming obsolete as much as I see it evolving. What we considered SEO in 1998 is different than what we consider it to be now. If you look at a set of search results in Google today, you may see videos, images, news, web pages, product searches, and other results that you wouldn’t have seen even a couple of years ago. The web is changing and search engines are changing, and helping people so that they understand some of these changes and how they might impact their web sites will probably continue to be a need to be filled in the future.” This provides a fairly straight answer indicating that SEO will only continue to progress with changes over time, rendering SEO as a very reasonable long-term asset for any website.

My final and most important question asked, “In what ways might SEO be viable for businesses with niches?” Bill responded saying, “Finding a niche where you can be competitive, and where there’s a demand from consumers can increase your likelihood of success. A small business can often take advantage of working within a niche that a larger business might find to be too much work for too little return. If the smaller business has considerably less overhead in terms of cost and time, they may be able to thrive in one of those niches. By focusing upon a specific market or audience that others aren’t, it may be possible to be found easier if people want to find the service or goods or information that you provide within that niche.” This is a fabulous reverberation of how specific keyword combinations and niches interact. Focusing on smaller markets can provide a better means of success on a smaller, yet more attainable scale.

Discussion

Throughout the extent of my research, SEO had been discovered to be one of, if not the, most effective Internet marketing strategies available today. Statistics have shown that the largest magnitude of online users discover information and merchandise through the use of search engines. SEO channels that majority of Internet traffic directly into a marketable solution, idea, or product with the best cost and time efficiency. By employing on-page and off-page techniques, a webmaster with basic knowledge of HTML and blogging can supply a particular niche website with a top search engine result ranking respective to its niche search keywords. Keywords play an imperative role in the SEO venture by providing the base of the optimized structure. The keyword focus of a pre-optimized website is determined through intense research by identifying competition and analyzing keyword query frequencies using particular keyword research tools. After keywords are determined, on-page content structure and coding is the next priority, seeing as off-page link building logically requires a quality page to link to beforehand. Off-page techniques will utilize link building strategies to launch the rankings already established by on-page SEO past competition.

The product produced as a result from my intense research will enable any adventurous amateur with fundamental HTML and blogging familiarity to pursue SEO with relatively guaranteed success. My product, in the form of a website, guides the pursuer with simple and concise instructions. The website splits the SEO mission between on-page and off-page techniques which have been explained in earlier sections of this paper. Instead of discussing these techniques in non-applicable generality however, the website will demonstrate specific examples of each optimization practice with its own optimized features.

To view my final product website, click here.

For references used in this paper, click here.

About the Author

Joshua Adams is an ambitious senior from POLYTECH High School in Woodside, Delaware. Josh is a freelance web developer who enjoys innovation and technology as a whole. Joshua is A+, NETWORK+, and soon to be Microsoft XP certified, and plans to take his knowledge to a whole new level by perfecting and franchising a business model for a high-tech entertainment lounge.

(ArticlesBase SC #266972)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – Search Engine Optimization Guide for Webmasters [senior Hs Paper]

Internet Marketing Tools are Being Utilized By Thousands of Websites

By Alex Wong

Internet marketing tools are being utilized by thousands of websites on hundreds of PPC search enhttp://blog.samyakonline.net/wp-admin/post-new.phpgines. Internet Marketing Tools are essential for building any business, any affiliate or network marketing program, online or offline. Internet marketing tools are very important and can have a major impact on your success with affiliate marketing. Internet marketing tools are used by those who own. Internet marketing tools are the key to search engine optimization.

Marketing

Marketing is the process or act of bringing together buyers and sellers. Marketing Tips, marketing strategies, marketing tools, marketing plans, small business marketing, advertising techniques. Marketing experts suggest doing research before sending out thousands of flyers. Marketing is an ongoing task that must be performed to increase traffic, to get people through your web site and in the long run increase sales. Marketing Tools Internet Marketing tools are one of the key components to make any Website user friendly, make it easier for potential customers to come to the site, attract their attention, leave their contact info, and keep them coming back.

Business

Business owners have still to capitalise on the power that social networking provides. Business professionals are increasingly using social networking sites to connect with their existing colleagues, rather than find new opportunities. Businesses that can make use of social networking should do so, but you can be pretty sure that your new 19 year-old recruit straight out of college is not going to bring in a million pound deal through social networking. Business owners are making efforts to increase their Internet presence. Business online is growing at a very fast pace, and with the help of a bit of marketing, a plan, and tools to set your plan in motion you can get additional traffic to your site. Business Marketing Resource: Marketing and Internet MarketingNeed effective business marketing or internet markeitng.

Tools

Tools to help you reach your Business goals. Make even MORE SALES and guarantee your success online with Internet Marketing Tools. To succeed online, you’ll need a domain name, a website, a product or service, shopping cart software, a merchant account, marketing tools, traffic and training. How to find the best Internet marketing tools. Depending on what type of Internet marketing tools you need, there are several different options:Search Engine Optimization Tools. When you want to be on the first page on Google you buy the best search engine optimization tools to get you those valuable back links. Use the right keyword research tools to find out everyting about your market.

Traffic

Generating traffic to your web site is the single most important factor in Internet marketing success. Getting a high ranking in the search engines is a great way toget tons of free traffic. You want to get a lot of traffic to your website(s). The site may have a professional design, quality product or service, great content and functionality, but if the right Internet marketing strategies are not utilized, your site may not be attracting the key to real success, highly targeted traffic. Most website owners find incredible sense of accomplishment attaining first page rankings of their websites on major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL Search, and Ask as these search engines have massive traffic, and if the website is listed onthe natural side of these search engines, the website owners do not have to pay anything to there.

Any website owner that generates a substantial amount of internet traffic understands how important internet marketing tools are. All of our Internet marketing tools are founded on solid market research and continual client and consumer input. Our Internet marketing tools are designed to assist you in effectively promoting your web site. Our internet marketing tools are the hottest and newest on the net. All the best internet marketing tools are assembled here.

by Alex Wong

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alex_Wong

http://EzineArticles.com/?Internet-Marketing-Tools-are-Being-Utilized-By-Thousands-of-Websites-&id=711150

Using Social Bookmark Sites for SEO

By: Kyle Ware

Importance of Incoming Links

Most of us trying to optimize our sites for search engine traffic know one of the single most important ways to get our sites listed higher on search engines is through obtaining incoming links. For Google, the quality of the website providing the incoming link is also important. It’s very important to get incoming links from high page rank (PR) web pages. Most search engine optimization ( SEO )articles mention this importance. However, many search engine optimization articles do not go into specifics about how to obtain these links.

Avoid Excessive Link Exchanges

A simple way is to have a link exchange whereby websites swap text links from their index or other pages in an attempt to build links. This system used to work very well in the past until Google decided that it didn’t like websites exchanging links simply to perform better in Google’s search algorithm. Google’s position now is that link exchanges are alright as long as they are not excessive. It is unclear how Google defines ‘excessive’.

An alternative approach to building incoming links apart from simple link exchange is to have an A-B-C link exchange. In this scenario site A links to site B. Site C links to site A in exchange for the link to site B. It is widely held that Google’s algorithm is aware of this situation and accounts for it.

Obtaining One-Way Incoming Links

The vastly superior way is to have one-way incoming links. One-way links are links which point to your site without you having to link back to their site or set of sites. This is clearly the superior method for building incoming links. However, this method may take a long period of time as external websites find your web pages useful and link in to them. No matter the quality of your content it takes time to build natural links in. Such natural links may come from web directories or sites related to your topic which find your website useful and link to your site without being asked.

This SEO article is written specifically to address the problem of building one-way links to your website. By taking some short-cuts it’s easy to get high Page Rank websites to provide one-way links to your website. One of the simplest and easiest ways to gain incoming links is by taking advantage of social bookmark sites. These social bookmark sites include high page rank social bookmark sites such as ma.gnolia.com, simpy.com, furl.net, and del.icio.us.

It’s free to signup and start using these various bookmark sites. Most of them will require that you install their icon into your web browser toolbar. Once installed, simply click the bookmark icon when you’re on any web page which you’d like to have bookmarked. Ideally you may wish to bookmark all the web pages of your site. You can use these bookmark sites to create a URL containing all your own website links.

Once you have the URLs containing your websites then submit these URLs to Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines of your choosing. Place links to these URLs on your own websites or on other sites such as within blog comments.

Once these newly created bookmark webpage URLs get indexed and search engines crawl them then your websites will benefit from having quality one-way links.

Importance of Anchor Text

Always remember that the anchor text used to link to your site is extremely important as search engines such as Google attribute the anchor text to your website. The anchor text is simply the hot-linked words that refer to your website. If for example you operate a car dealership then for anchor text you may choose something like “cars for sale” or “buy cars”. It’s good to use adjectives sometimes when choosing anchor text. Continuing with the example above you may choose anchor text such as “autos for sale” or “buy automobiles”. It’s a good idea to vary the anchor text and not use the same anchor text for all incoming links. Keep this in mind when naming your websites as you manage your bookmarks.

About the Author

Kyle Ware recommends the following free software / services to help small businesses compete:
Create Free Html Forms

Free Customer Appointment Software

Webmaster Resource

(ArticlesBase SC #244818)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – Using Social Bookmark Sites for SEO

Using Blogs to Drive Traffic to Your Websites

By Sanjay Johari

Blogs have been around for a few years now and are still growing in popularity. There are several reasons why more and more people are using blogs. It is extremely easy to post anything on a blog as compared to posting similar content on a traditional web page. Therefore anyone who wants to write comments, experience, opinions, and ideas on any subject finds it very convenient to use blogs where you can just insert your postings without bothering about messing with HTML.

The blogs have evolved in way which makes them highly interactive. The owner of the blog can allow the visitors to post their comments. Many blogs allow the use of trackback which make them even more interactive. It is possible to subscribe to RSS feeds of the blogs by which the subscriber gets to know as soon as new posts are made to the blogs.

It does not cost anything to own and host blogs which is another reason for their popularity. The most extensively used blogging service is Blogger which is provided by Google. By using Blogger you can own and host blogs without any cost. If you do have your own website you can use the same hosting service to host your blogs. In case your hosting service provides you with cPanel and Fantastic you can use WordPress blogs. You can get blogs with literally hundreds of designs and templates to choose from.

Advertising your blogs is much simpler than advertising your web pages. It is not necessary to submit your blogs to each search engine as you would do with your web pages. You can use pinging services to ping your blog whenever you make a posting. By pinging you inform several blog directories about your blogs and your new postings. You can also set your blogs to automatically ping whenever a new posting is made. This makes advertising your blogs a simple process. However, you can still go ahead and register with individual blog directories and search engines.

You can normally get visitors to your blogs much faster than to a new web page. The search engines also tend to index blogs faster. All these features and more make blogs very powerful medium for communication. Blogs can be very well used as a marketing tool to promote a website or a business. With your postings you can provide links to your websites along with a short description. The visitors of your blog will be inclined to visit your sites also. Your blog will be dedicated to a particular subject. It will attract visitors who are interested in the subject of your blog. The content of the blog should further arouse their interest and should lead them to click on the link to your website.

With regular posting to your blogs, say once or twice a week, the traffic to your blogs should increase and some of the traffic will be directed to your websites. In case you do not have enough material to write in your blogs, you can always get fresh relevant content from ezines. While taking content from ezines you should be careful about meeting their conditions.

Blogs can be used very effectively to promote your business and to get your message across. They can also be used for generating revenue. You can put up Google Adsense and other contextual ads. You can also put up affiliate links. Another possibility is to put up web forms to invite subscribers for your newsletters. Some knowledge of HTML will be required to install Adsense and web forms etc.

It is so easy to use blogs as a promotional tool without any hassles. The simplest procedure will be to set up a blog which does not cost anything, and keep adding content about two times in a week. And add links to your business. Ensure that pinging is done every time a new post is inserted. Adding good content regularly will gradually increase traffic and promote your business.

Sanjay Johari contributes regularly to various ezines. Success in a business does not come by chance. Success is a habit which can be cultivated. Visit his website network marketing to know more.

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Forums – Effective and Cost-Effective Way of Finding Prospects

An extensive networking, as vital as it is in any business, can be very costly. Conversely, getting good results at a negligible cost is very important. Luckily for this generation, a business reaching as many as possible without expenses is very much possible. This fascinating tactic can be in a form of joining forums.

Participating in forums

To begin with, finding forums is quite simple. You can simply go to a search engine and type in “network marketing forums.” You may also try typing “MLM forums.” You should type it those ways to ensure that the right words come up.

There are numerous numbers of forums you can join and actively participate in. There are forums like home business forums and money forums. You have to do your own testing and distinguish what kind gives you the most resounding response. Internet marketers recommend starters to begin with MLM and network marketing forums. You also have to check if there is much happening in the forum. If there are just few members and the last post was a month ago, don’t dare waste your time.

A pool of prospects to win

Not only are forums easy and commonly free of charge, forums also save a lot of time as they are usually much aimed at. People with common interests are gathered in forums to discuss their concerns. For example, those who are more likely to buy health and wellness products are more probably to be involved in forums about health and wellness. So wherever active forums you join, you can target lots of prospects.

Furthermore, you don’t have to be the one who will begin the discussion in a forum. Your targeted customers will initiate the concern (or business) and you proceed as a practiced and proficient Samaritan to offer them solutions to their queries, at no cost. In this manner, you build respect and liking in the part of the customer. Moreover, because of what you have done, you will earn credibility. You just have to be ingenious enough in finding these forums that are in need of your expertise.

Introducing business

As soon as you have gathered enough liking and reliability, you may start presenting your business. With that, persuading customers would not be as difficult since your prospects would see you as someone who has knowledge of what they are looking for, with your sharing in the prior discussions.

Moreover, you are promoting your company through recall. Including your company logo and/or signature box (one that addresses the type of opportunity or change you are promoting) in your forum posts also make you company as visible as possible to the market. With your post remaining overtime and steadily amplifying exposure, buying your product or getting your service will be an instantaneous affinity whenever the need arises among customers since you have well positioned your company in the subconscious mind of your customers through recall. One very good idea is including links to your email address and website to your company logo/ signature box. In this manner, you can also get future customers who will get to review earlier posts.

Knowing what targets really need

By participating in forums, you happen to know what really your prospects want and need. The participants tell what they want to tell, without watching out against sales talks, as compared to sales meetings. This is the rationale which explains why you don’t have to introduce your business right away in forums without prior lead from the members of the forum. A need has to be brought up first before someone heeds to this need.

Without biases, forums have become effective and cost-effective means in winning prospects.

Good luck out there!

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Top Article Submission Services: Will They Really Help You Boost Site Traffic And Earnings?

By: Article Marketer

Sometimes even top article submission services may not give the desirable results. Why? – Because almost every day Google changes its policy regarding backlinks and pagerank. Therefore you should apply several tactics and tips when it comes to generating traffic and income through article marketing. For this purpose, you should choose the top article submission service which would provide all necessary features to implement proper SEO article marketing.

So below you will discover if you really need to use such article distribution service and how it can help you boost site traffic and profits.

Top Article Submission Services – What You Should Consider While Choosing Online Article Submission Company:

1. Free Trial
2. Human Spinning opportunity
3. Submission Scheduling  feature
4. Full Automation

These 4 features are vital if you want to get top notch service and save a lot of time and money. Otherwise, all your online article submission efforts will be wasted in vain giving no or minimum results.   

 Top Article Submission Service: Which Should I Choose?

After having tried multiple services, I’ve chosen Jetsubmitter which is the number 1 article distribution service coming with top quality features. I myself use this amazing service almost every day. This has helped me not only to save a lot of time and money, but also improve online ranking of my own and my clients’ sites within a shorter time. The best part is that Google love these article links which are built slowly, naturally.

Conclusion:

 If you are looking for top article submission service, don’t lose your time and money on article submission software. Let Jet Submitter 100% automate your all article marketing campaigns every month!

About the Author

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You will lose your time and money unless you try the number 1 Article Submission Service

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(ArticlesBase SC #2089957)

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The Five Golden Rules of Email Marketing

By Joshua L Hall

Within just a few years after the internet boomed, email marketing quickly became one of the cheapest and most effective means of marketing. Almost everyone has an email address, and everyone is a market for a product or two. However, as the use of this marketing became prevalent, so with its abuse. There was a time when our emails would be bombarded by an endless parade of useless emails. Email servers crashed and web performance waned with the blasts of emails sent all over the world.

This brought forth some rules of engagement when getting involved in email marketing. Not following the rules means risking being labeled as spam and blacklisted. This incurs additional costs. Normally, the practice of banned entities is to just get a new domain name, new logo and purchase a new set of IP addresses to be used in sending emails. This cycle can get tedious so might and in the end, it will cost less to do it right.

Here are some golden rules to follow when doing email marketing:

1. Email only those who opt-in to get emails: Never ever send unsolicited emails. This is a sure fire way of getting the attention of current emailing guard dogs. Permissions-based email marketing is a perquisite to long-term benefits from marketing via email.

2.

Keep your email marketer reputation clean: Most everyone use email to market their products and services these days, from National Geographic to reputable banks and everyday food product manufacturers. Of course, there are the sleazier kind of email marketer who pushes Viagra and debt relief on unsuspecting recipients. And between the two, surely we would want to be on the side of good reputation and dependability. Good email marketing reputation starts with who you email and what you email. The people on your email list should have opted into your email campaign first. At the same time, they should belong to your target market, those likely to be interested in your product.

3. The emailing services that you use also matters. Some email services and IP addresses are known spammers. Do not use their services lest you want to align your email with their spam.

4. If you are sending the emails on your own, then make sure to clean up your list. The list should be a qualified list of people who opted to receive emails from you. Too many spam complaints can get you in trouble with your ISP. It is the same thing if you are sending a blast to too many addresses, with some being bad addresses. This may use up too much of your ISPs bandwidth.

5. Always have an opt-out link on your emails: One of the requirements in email marketing today is to always have an opt-out link on your emails. Even when the recipient opted into your emailing campaign, he/ she can always change their mind. By having an opt-out link on the email, you are always giving them a choice whether or not they want to receive emails from you. In the end, it should boil down to that anyway, to choice.

These are a few solid rules to get you started. For complete list of rules and a strategy to build an effective email marketing strategy to bring you loads of cash: the Goldmine List! [http://www.thegoldminelist.com]

Joshua L. Hall

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joshua_L_Hall

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A Beginners Guide To Directory Submission

By: Sammy Gentry

What’s Directory Submission?

Submitting your website to online directories is an off-page optimization method used to gain backlinks ( or incoming, inbound links ) which can help increase natural search rankings and improve your online presence. It fundamentally involves finding an internet index and submitting your information such as domain and a short description to be included in the suitable category.

Three key sorts of directories include vertical market ( industry precise ), general purpose, and local economy directories. Some directories let you submit your information for inclusion free, while others require you pay an annual or regular charge ( known as paid directories or paid inclusion ).

What are some guidelines for choosing quality directories?

It’s worth getting listed in every kind of directories, but it’s's particularly important that you identify where your competitors are and get listed there too. Select a catalog based mostly on importance to your industry and target market.

1. When you have identified a few directories of interest, check them out to make certain they are credible, applicable, have a good PageRank ( a numeric value, between 0-10, that Google uses to represent the importance of a webpage in relation to all the other pages online ), and are recent – all characteristics of a quality catalog.

Two. Take it for a test. Check out the volume, quality, and kind of the listings as well as the functionality of the site. If you don’t recognize any of the businesses in your industry and region, or only find one or two listings in major categories when conducting a search, it is possible that submitting to that index isn’t worth your time.

Three. Also, reference online forms, blogs, and industry sites to find out what people are announcing about the list you are considering.

Four. Be careful of directories that require you to provide them with a backlink. If this doesn’t seem clever to you and you cannot see how your visitors would receive advantages from it, search for a different directory.

It is important to note that many of the good, free directories hand-select their listings and don’t guarantee inclusion – as opposed to automating this process. In cases like these, you may need to wait many months before knowing if you have been included in the directory. Check back with them continually and chase up if you have questions.

What are some tips for finding good industry precise directories?

Find industry express directories by searching online for “name of industry + directory” and research to find the sites your rivals are listed in by going to Yahoo Site Explorer or typing “link : + www + competitor’s website” into a search engine ( Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc ).

How do i get listed in local economy directories?

Get listed in local enterprise listings via GetListed.org. This is a great gizmo for getting listed in local search results of Google, Yahoo, Bing and others, determining listing status and finding general information and resources about local selling. Visit the website and enter your firm name and zip to get started.

Also consider getting listed in others such as CitySearch ( data from this site feeds Ask.com and Bing ) and yap ( info from this site feeds Bing and Yahoo ).

I inspire you to be active and engage in directory submission as it’s a way to kickstart your link building efforts and boost your online presence. This is a continual process that deserves regular attention and will pay off over time, not over night. But, the benefits are easily worth it.

About the Author

After submitting this Marketing Main Event 4 review site, it only took a couple of days to have it solidly placed on the front page of Google. Check it out for more info.

(ArticlesBase SC #1029707)

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Using Facebook For Business

By Paul LP Taylor

One of the most popular searches on Google is ‘Using Facebook For Business’ and with good reason. Facebook is a phenomenon that offers new ways to find customers and develop relationships. It can also help to build and reinforce your brand.

In this article I will outline some of the practical steps that you can take if you wish to use Facebook for Business.

• use your Facebook Profile – a full-detailed page becomes available once people connect to you and it is your opportunity to create an impression and stamp your personality.
• use Facebook Groups – you can set up (or join) a group on any topic. Within groups you have the ability to post text, discussions, photos, videos and links. As the owner of a group you can also send out messages to your members as often as you like. Members of groups can invite others to join and so it possible for a group to grow exponentially in a very short time. With popularity comes spam – so you will have to devote more time to moderating your groups as they grow larger.
• Facebook Pages – a Facebook page can include HTML, Flash and Facebook applications. Fans can sign up to your pages (and pass them on to their friends) and you can again send messages. DonâEUR(TM)t do anything naughty though, pages are monitored closely by Facebook!
• News Feed and Mini Feed – the News Feed is what you everyone sees on their login page. It is a summary of what’s going in your Facebook world – what your friends are doing, which applications they are installing, which groups they are joining – even simply changing their image, you get to know. The feeds are amongst the most powerful aspects in using Facebook for business. Consider this for a moment. In our viral marketing campaign, we connect with others and when they connect, their connections see the connection through their News Feed. Should some of their friends decide to connect, then their friends see the connection. And the chain reaction goes on.
• Groups, Pages and Feeds – the foundation to viral marketing. What many organizations fail to do in trying to use Facebook for business is to apply what Malcolm Gladwell calls ‘The Law of the Few’. There are three types of people who have disproportionate impact on others – connectors (know lots of people), mavens (find new information) and sales people (persuaders). These are the people that you want as fans for your pages and members of your groups. By targeting these people, rather than indiscriminately trying to connect with hundreds of people, your marketing can take on a life of its own. Your marketing will be driven by people who know your target audience and whom your target audience trust. The key principle is that using Facebook for business requires a rifle rather than a shotgun approach. You may be wondering how you get these connectors, mavens and salespeople on your side. The answer is simple – by offering something of value to them. Involve them in pre-launch activities, send them products for testing, ask for their opinions, hold events. You may notice the similarity with classic PR activities. That’s exactly what they are. In the digital, socially-connected world, these people are the new journalists.
• Facebook Events
  download megamind full lenght

  – Facebook Events is an interface for promoting … events. You can create a page and invite friends to events through facebook and receive replies through the system.

• Notes and Photos – you can share photos and blog posts and by ‘tagging’ they can appear in your friends’ News Feed. This is not an opportunity for you to broadcast your stock product photos. You need to be creative in everything you do. It is the unusual and different that gets passed on. Bore them and you will be ‘disconnected’.
• use Facebook marketing applications such as Facebook Video, social RSS to promote your blog, IEndorse for testimonials and the various applications to connect with business networks such as LinkedIn and Xing.
• Marketplace and Networks – in the past heavily spammed and so tread with caution.

Using Facebook For Business – The Key Principles

To summarize, to make the most effective use of Facebook for business you should:

• participate by offering valuable and unique input
• be proactive and create groups, pages and events
• identify and network with ‘the few’
• get involved regularly – this is a hands-on activity

Paul Taylor, MA(Oxon), MBA, member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and creator of the Internet Marketing Program an internet marketing approach for entrepreneurs and small businesses.

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How to Create and Maintain a Proftable Blog

By: Gen Wright

So you went out, got a nice domain name and set it up on your own personal Cpanel account and installed WordPress with a few clicks. That’s how much time it takes to setup a blog. Quick, simple and hassle free. Now the hard work begins.

You then go out and hire and gifted WordPress template designer to design the very best blog template ever. Now that’s a good move because it’s always good to have a unique design to stand out from the crowd. Besides, search engines really hate sites with duplicated designs. It makes the sites too similar. What next?

Once the design is ready, it’s now time to add content for the site. Question is, is it better to create a general blog or a niche blog? Most experienced bloggers would recommend going for the niche blogs. That’s because the audience is definitely more specific, and it’s easier to market the blogs and attract advertisers later on. Online readers hate confusion. They love to scan and have very little patience for confusing blogs, and general blogs have a higher tendency to appear confusing. For these reasons, it makes sense to decide on your niche early so that you can dish out content with depth.

Now that you’ve had your design ready and have decided on your niche, you need to ask yourself how often do you want to update your blog? One of the keys to maintaining a successful blog is to create valuable content on a consistent basis. Why is that so important?

That’s because if you can create useful content on a regular basis, you create a following and people come back repeatedly for your content. It doesn’t really matter if you blog two or five times a week. A few highly successful bloggers I know only post to their blogs one to two times a week. But when they do, it’s almost always killer content.

So if they post only one to two times a week? What do they do with the rest of their time? Well, a lot of time is being spent on researching, coming up with new content for the next blog post, and more importantly, promoting the blogs. It’ll take a book to be comprehensive about blog promotion but here are a few tips.

To ensure that your blog gets a constant stream of traffic, locate as many traffic sources as you can. For example, related forums, the big search engines like MSN, Yahoo and Google, Blog search engines, Blogger communities and so on and so forth. This takes a little bit more time initially but once you get hang of it, it gets easier.

Submit your blog feed to as many search engines as possible and link to other bloggers in your network. Don’t be afraid of visitors leaving your site. If you’ve got killer content, they won’t. In time to come, your blogger friends will return the favor and link back to you. This is one of the most powerful blog promotion strategy because it’s long term, cost very little, and it’s very easy to implement.

Now, that’s how you go about creating and maintaining a highly successful blog. Don’t worry if things tart a little slow in the beginning. Keep writing and promoting your blog, and you’re on your way to blogging success.

About the Author

Darren Chow is a full time web developer. His latest project is a Blog Search Engine where bloggers can promote their own blogs or track other people’s blog.

(ArticlesBase SC #514274)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – How to Create and Maintain a Proftable Blog