:: Which Search Engine to choose for SEO



Studies have shown that you can generate 60% of your traffic alone from
search engines like Google, and rest 40% from Yahoo, and other search
engines. SEO is emerging as a new era
of Online Business science, which helps to generate more traffic, and more
revenues from your existing businesses.

Search engine optimization is further categorized into two categories
organic search, and PPC ( Pay per Click). Organic Search engine optimization
depends on the natural ranking of your web page, whereas PPC is a paid
service offered for companies who want to kick start their business from the
day one without going through the labor of organic search engine
optimization, which can be achieved over a period of time.

Both these search engines follow similar PPC Advertising Strategies, but
a completely different Natural Listing Strategies.

It is up to the company owner to decide which search engine will bring
him maximum traffic. China has tried to block Google from its internet
network, whereas Yahoo search is easily available.

You have to decide search engine as per the consumer behavior of your
clients.

:: SEO Marketing Guide





SEO is a modern age Internet Marketing Science, which is the
success story behind several online portals, and businesses. But the real question is “What is the ultimate SEO marketing
Solution?”
. This is the question which pops up in the mind of
every single business owner who wants to generate a good quality traffic
online.



Before embarking on SEO Marketing, We will take you through different types
of existing marketing techniques.

Some of the well known marketing techniques are as follow: -



1) Marketing Offline – Take the case of a Restaurant where
every single marketing has be done offline, so in this case they will
target newspapers, boards across the road, popular radio channels, and
television ads to promote their restaurant.




2) Marketing Online and Offline
- Suppose you are having a travel
related website, and want to generate traffic & customers. In this case you can choose
both online, as well as offline marketing channel which is mentioned in the
previous example. Online marketing consititutes email marketing, seo
marketing etc etc.


3) SEO Marketing - Some businesses are purely Internet
based, like software development, online games, web
design/development/hosting, and many other businesses. In these
businesses, the probability of finding a customer online is hundred times
as compared to other marketing channels


So, the next question which pops up in your mind is, "What is the
essence of SEO Marketing?" .Below you will find a step by step guide for online seo
marketing


Some of them are as follow: -


Step 1: Log on to


Keyword Selector Tool in google.com,
and do a little research on different keyword. Select the best keyword
which relates to your business. Here you will have to choose some of the
top ranking keywords. Just enter the keywords which are related to your
business, and you will see a list of various keywords along with their
respective traffic/clicks.


Step 2: Once you have decided the right keywords you can choose
any of the marketing strategies listed below:-


(i) PPC/Pay per Click - PPC means that your site will start to
show for this keyword, from the very moment you pay PPC fees to YAHOO, MSN
or GOOGLE. Choose the keyword which is well under your budget, and relates
to your business pretty well. Suppose you choose “bad credit home equity
loan” keyword, which will cost you around 5,655.00$/month. This cost will
be 100% payable to Yahoo, Google, or any other search engine. Further, you
will have to hire a PPC Seo Internet Marketing specialist, who will further cost you
around 1000$-10,000$ depending upon the keyword chosen. If you can handle
PPC yourself, you can surely cut down on your expenditure.


(ii) Organic SEO/ Natural SEO - In natural SEO you are not
supposed to pay any monthly charges to Yahoo, Google, or MSN. In case of
PPC if you don’t pay fixed amount for the next month your website doesn’t
show up. Organic/Natural Seo option is often opted by Businesses which do
not want to pay hefty PPC amounts, or those who have broader vision of
Marketing. In Organic SEO, time frame is a major drawback. If you are
targeting a top level keyword, it can easily take somewhere around 2-6
months, depending upon the keywords.


(iii) PPC + Organic SEO - Some companies are familiar with
the time frame constraint of organic SEO, so they immediately “kick start”
with PPC, and Organic Seo as well. PPC campaigns will start to show results
within 4-5 days, whereas organic SEO can take up to 2-6 months. Once their
website starts showing on natural seo rankings on various search engines
like Google, Yahoo, and Msn, they simply pull back their PPC campaigns, and
will resort to pushing their site up to the top level using natural seo
rankings.



These were some of the techniques used in Search Engine Marketing Promotion. Case 1, 2, and 3 are applicable to a number of different
companies and business set up. It's up to the owner to decide which way to
head in Online Internet Marketing.



Many SEOs quickly learn
why they need a linking strategy. They
know now that links from other web sites pointing at theirs are
improving their page ranking. Let's see how links generate traffic.


Inbound links are an important way to increase the page rank,
to be known in your field, to generate traffic to the website. This is
the most important method to generate traffic, to have more visitors,
potential clients or website services' users.


Without traffic, a website is almost useless. Its role can
be only a name on a business card or a place to find a products or
services list or email addresses.


To bring clients from the Internet, to be alive, to fulfill
its main purpose, a web site must have huge traffic. What can a search
engine optimizer do to get this important traffic? The web content
including the appropriate keywords, the ease navigation, the most
appropriate images, the inspired headlines are improving the traffic.


Do not forget the site's style, sophisticated and simple at
the same time, professional and efficient. But the work isn't over
yet. The inbound links strategy must be used too. It brings
spectacular results and realizes the traffic that will attire the
clients' attention. The search engines will note the web site.


Some will think that without traffic, a web site is useless
as a marketing and selling tool. The web site will not sell products
or services, nor communicate ideas or events, and won't publish
articles about any imaginable subject.


As we have already established, the traffic will be
increased in the most spectacular way by getting links from other
important websites, and having related topics. You will receive direct
traffic from links, but mainly from links that have similar audiences
to the main website.


A client visiting a web site similar to the main one, seeing
the link to the main one, will visit it immediately. He becomes a
potential client, increases the traffic, and improve, finally, the
main site's rank. 21% of the entire traffic is the result of inbound
links. This is not a secret, top ranked web sites are using this
successful strategy and everyone can see the results.


What is the reason why people are clicking the new links?
First of all, this is the human curiosity in action. Maybe the next
site can have more products, best prices, most appropriate services.


Maybe the next site is looking better and it is giving to
its visitors the look and feel they are waiting for, maybe the next
site is more useful, interesting and helpful. The visitors, potential
clients at the same time, are hoping to find something to amaze them,
to make them purchase without regrets and doubts.


Part of your linking strategy is joining a linking
directory. You will need to do a search for these websites with a high
PR. In these directories, you will have great success because they are
where the strong, relevant websites are.


Another part of your linking strategy should be to include
your link in articles that you submit to article directories. This
will help you out a lot because if a reader is interested in your
article, chances are that they will click on your link to learn more.



Are you really worried about how to inform the online visitors that you
have launched something new? Now, you don’t have to take any more
tensions. Search engine optimization is here to solve your problem and
give your online business a perfect direction. SEO has become an
integral part of online marketing because nothing on the web can sell
without proper promotion. Search engine optimization helps not only to
provide a base for enhanced business opportunities, but take your site
on the top of search engine rakings. If you have a lot of SEO workload,
then you can opt for outsourcing SEO that will surely benefit your
online business.



SEO is basically concerned with carrying out methods to increase the
visibility of a particular site on the web. As the visibility of your
site increases, you are bound to get enormous amount of traffic that can
help you in increasing your sales graph. No matter what the problem is,
your online business is surely going to flourish with the assistance of
an SEO firm. Many times it may happen that the SEO firm to whom you have
given work might have overload and outsource some of the work to get it
completed well in time.



SEO has entered the market of online business and acquired a special
place for itself. It is the best means of showing the availability of
your website on the World Wide Web. SEO is the suitable technique of
improving the visibility of a website in search engine linking. It is
quite beneficial for every type of online business, be it in its infancy
or be it a developed one. Outsourcing SEO works efficiently in managing
the task, so that you are able to give proper attention to all
departments of your business. Search engine optimization work given to
outsourcing firm is performed successfully, so as to lessen your
workload.



Outsourcing SEO has been preferred by a variety of people, in fact by
everyone. The main reason behind this is that you can save a lot on the
monetary front. Just imagine that you have kept a fully trained staff
and then giving huge salaries along with perks and other add-ons. It
will increase your total cost and the entire budget can go out of
control. In this case, it is always beneficial for you to opt
outsourcing SEO so that you can cut down on the extra cost and save that
money for other important investments.



Time is a big constraint and you would not like to get it wasted because
time is money. It is quite obvious that your in-house staff may take
longer time to complete the task, as they might have to handle other
things also. In this way, the quality of the work will get affect to a
great extent. Outsourcing SEO professionals are skilled enough to do the
work well on time because they don’t have to handle any other task.
Outsourcing service acts as a life-saver for the companies, because
excess workload can lead to negligence and this can cause losses.





Achieving High SEO Search Engine
Ranking



Very few topics have inspired as many tangents, as much false
information . . . incurred as much abuse as search engine optimization.
With the few shreds of information search engines reveal about their
actual methodologies, optimizers struggle to get that extra edge over
the competition, armed with esoteric theories of keyword density,
precise meta-tag length, optimal internal linking, and just about any
other detail that a search engine might happen to factor into its
rankings. Before you find yourself scrambling to create ten more
content-less pages to avert that worst than death curse of decreased PageRank, try to take a look at the big picture. Barring design factors
that may not be search engine friendly, a strong foundation based on
four factors will give your site good success. These factors are the
holy grail of optimization:



1. Get relevant links to your site anchored to keyword rich text.

2. Write focused body text that targets specific keyphrases or that is
focused on a specific topic (This occurs naturally when someone is
communicating useful information. This can be a problem because a lot of
businesses don’t have anything useful to say. Be detailed. Be helpful.
This can naturally accomplish what automatic text generators try to
accomplish through keyword density and keyword proximity calculations).


3. Write concise titles focused on useful keyphrases.

4. Be patient. You may not be using the best strategies, but you’re
using strategies that work over time. Continue to get links and create
more content.



Find the Words



Before you can write good, keyphrase-focused body text or titles, you
need to find the phrases users search. For good keyword suggestion
tools, search Google with (surprise, surprise) “keyword suggestion
tool.” Digitalpoint.com has an excellent tool that compares Wordtracker
and Overture keyword results. Judge from the search volume how
competitive each word is (not even close to the best method, but it’ll
have to due). Be specific. Pick words with large search volume and
search with geographic terms if you serve only a specific area. From the
list of keyphrases, start thinking about the topics you’ll want to
target. Find a few phrases for each page in your site. Remember to focus
on phrases and not separate words – make sure these phrases appear in
your body text.



Titles



HTML titles go between the title tags in your site’s code. Write short
titles that use one or two keyphrases. Don’t use the name of your
company unless you are trying to brand the name. Include location if you
target certain areas, and make sure your pages repeat this location
information in the text. Your body text should be written to fit the
phrases in your title.



Body Text and Navigation



Be specific about what you are talking about. In your navigation don’t
use generic linking text like “home” or “about us.” Use specific
phrases. Instead of “home” use the name or category of your main
service/product, and make it obvious from the context that this is your
main page. Instead of “about us” use a phrase like “A (main
product/service) Company.” This communicates more information to the
user and includes a keyphrase. Where appropriate, make the same type of
substitutions in the body text. Use variations of nouns and verbs,
including plurals and different conjugations.

If you can, use the heading tags (h1, h2, etc.) to write text titles.
Try to communicate as much as you can in text – search engines don’t see
the text in images, or fancy media like Flash. Alt tags are useful, but
search engines don’t put as much weight on them as visible text. In
general, whatever has a greater chance to be seen by the user is going
to get greater weight from the search engines (Except for those things
produced by JavaScript, or Flash, or written into an image – use common
sense).



Build Links

It is remarkably easy to get your site indexed by the search engines –
just submit to some of the many free directories. To find some of these
directories search for “free directory list” in Google. Be careful to
read submission guidelines, and be very careful about what you submit to
large directories like DMOZ. Generally, titles should not be a list of
keywords. Most directories only want your homepage and the “official
title” (somewhat ambiguous term) of your site with a short description.
Descriptions should be factual, and they should be written in complete
sentences or meaningful phrases. Some optimization companies will rip
you off by charging you money to submit your site to the major search
engines – this is a waste of time. Start building links, and the search
engines will find your site naturally, submitting makes no difference in
your rankings.

It is important to get links from sites that are related to yours. Write
webmasters requesting a link, find niche sites that offer free
submissions, write articles for sites that allow you to put down a
signature link, or post comments in forums that allow you to put down
your signature.

If you exchange links, be careful who you trade with. Get listed
wherever you want without fear of penalty from the search engines, but
be careful who you link to. Your site can get penalized for linking into
bad neighborhoods spamming the search engines.



It Never Ends

Expand your site and continue to tell people about its content. It’s an
ongoing process. The older your site gets, the more credibility it can
gain with the search engines. Keep your content fresh. Check the search
engines to see what they have indexed (search site:www.domain.com). Be
patient and keep up with search engine changes

The first part of this article

Web Page Optimization Techniques

showed you some techniques for creating Website content that will
maximize your chances of getting an appropriate listing and good
position on the major search engines. But content is not all there is to SEO--the way your pages are designed and laid out is important too.
Design and layout considerations are mostly a matter of knowing what to
avoid. Why is this? Certain design techniques may create visually
stunning pages, but they hide content from the search engines. You may
have the best page anywhere on a certain topic but if the content is
hidden from the search engines you won't get many visitors.



Frames



I explained in an earlier chapter why I think frames are best avoided
altogether. If you need another reason to avoid frames, here it is:
frames can seriously hinder or prevent altogether the proper indexing of
a page by the search engines.



Remember, frames are a way to present two or more independent windows on
a single page. The main page--the one that you want listed in the search
engines--usually does not contain any content but just the frame
definitions. Each frame then displays a separate HTML document where the
real content is located. But--and this is crucial--the search engines do
not see this because it is done by the user's browser; the search
engines see only your content-free frames page. This is not good!



Flash Animations



Flash is a popular program that can create truly stunning animations,
complete with sound, navigation buttons, and dynamic content, for
display on your Web page. The problem with Flash is, as you may have
guessed, that it too hides content from the search engines. Anything in
a Flash animation might as well not exist as far as the search engines
are concerned--including the hyperlinks which means that the search
engine cannot follow the links to locate other pages on your site to
index.



Used within reason, Flash is fine. There's no reason not to have an
attractive Flash banner at the top of your page. But the program is
powerful enough to create complete pages, and that's not a good idea
from the SEO standpoint. Google will find a link to your flash file off
your Website, but they will not able to index the contents of it. You
want your page content available where the search engines can find it.




PDF Files



PDF stands for portable document format, a file format developed by
Adobe specifically for distribution and printing of complex formatted
documents. Many Websites use PDF files to allow the user to download and
view or print documents such as product manuals, catalog, and
instruction sheets. When used properly PDF files are a great tool, but
search engines cannot index their content.



Image Maps



An image map is an image that has been divided up into several sections,
with each section serving as a hyperlink to another page. You have
probably seen them used for geographical maps where you click the state
or country of interest to go to the relevant Web page. All very nice,
but links in an image map are not readable by a spider robot so it can
prevent the further indexing of your site. If you must use an image map
you should also include a more traditional set of links using HTML for
the search engines to use.



Javascript Navigation



Links that are within Javascript code cannot be followed by search
engines. If you want to use Javascript for navigation within your site
it's a good idea to also include traditional HTML links for the spiders
to follow.

The following sections describe the technique you will use to optimize
your page content for the search engines. Page layout and design
considerations will be covered later in the chapter.



Your Keyword Strategy



The key to site optimization lies in your selections of keywords. A
keyword is a word or short phrase that describes your site's content
accurately and concisely. Site optimization is largely a matter of
selecting and using keywords carefully. When a search engine examines
your site it looks for keywords. Where does it look? Everywhere! While
you can designate specific words as "official keywords" using a meta tag
(discussed soon) the search engines don't really care about this--they
look at the entire content of the document when deciding the page's
keywords. More than anything else, the frequency with which a word or
phrase occurs on a page determines the weight it is given.



Needless to say, common words such as "the" and "and" are ignored by the
search engines. For this reason it is advisable to avoid common words in
key phrases. For example, "aviation history" is a better key phrase than
"history of aviation."



For each page you should decide on a single key word or phrase and use
it consistently throughout the page. Because of the way keywords work,
each page can have only one primary keyword. A search engine may well
pick up on other keywords for the page but they will unavoidably be
secondary. This is one reason why it is a good idea to place individual
topics each on their own page, as I mentioned earlier. For example,
rather than having a single "programming tips" page that covers both
Visual

Basic and Delphi it would be better to have a separate page for each
language.



Don't Fake It



On learning that the search engines pay attention to the frequency of
keywords, some Web designers have tried various sneaky techniques to
fool them. One example is including HTML comments in the page with the
keyword repeated dozens of times. Another is to include an invisible
paragraph (white text on a white background) with the keyword repeated
over and over. Guess what? The search engines have caught on to these
tactics and if anything you will end up with a lower ranking. Yes, you
want to repeat your keyword frequently, but you need to do so in a valid
manner that is not detected as an attempt to trick the search engine
ranking process.



Page Title



Many people believe that the title tag is the most important part of
your optimization strategy. There are two reasons for this.



First, the title of a page provides--or at least should provide--a
concise description of the page and its contents. Because the title is
displayed in the browser title bar, Web page authors are hesitant to
load it up with extra irrelevant keywords or other junk.



Second, the page title is the first thing displayed in a search engine
listing. Take a look at Google, for example. Each listing in a search
result consists of the page title first, serving as the link to the
page, followed by a brief excerpt and the URL. It's the title that users
see first, and it is the title that will tempt them to click through to
your page--or will make them pass you by for some other page. Your page
title should tie in with your keyword strategy. Ideally the title will
contain your primary keyword or phrase. But a good title by itself is
rarely enough. If your page has a really odd and unusual topic, a good
title by itself may get you a high ranking on the search engines, but
for most of us the title is just part, albeit a very important part, of
your overall SEO strategy.



Your Text



Perhaps the most important part of the page is the text. After all, this
(along with images) is the content of the page and is what visitors will
see, and the search engines take this into account when ranking a page.
You want to write what is called keyword-rich text without having it
come across as stilted or artificial. There's no perfect formula for
doing this, and it can be a challenge, but it's an important part of
your SEO strategy. Let's look at an example. Here's a hypothetical first
paragraph for a page that deals with Visual Basic programming (the key
phrase of course is "Visual Basic").

I have always loved programming in Visual Basic since it was first
released. It is a powerful and intuitive programming tool that lets you
create sophisticated Windows applications quickly. VB is pretty easy to
learn also because it has a simple syntax and no complex rules. I highly
recommend it for people just getting started in programming.



The above paragraph is an example of poor text writing, at least from
the SEO standpoint. Let's see how it would look after an SEO expert got
through editing it.



Visual Basic has been my favorite programming language ever since it was
first released. Visual Basic is a powerful and intuitive programming
tool that lets you create sophisticated Windows applications quickly.
You'll find that Visual Basic is pretty easy to learn because it has a
simple syntax and no complex rules. I highly recommend Visual Basic for
people just getting started in programming.

Why is this second paragraph better? There are two reasons. First, the
key phrase is the very first thing in the paragraph and, since this is
the first paragraph on the page, it is also the first thing on the page.
Search engines pay attention to things like this! Second, the key phrase
occurs four times rather than just once. This was easily accomplished by
not using the abbreviation "VB" or pronouns such as "it" in places where
the full phrase could be spelled out.



Using alt Attributes



The <img> tag used to display images can include an optional alt
attribute that specifies text to be displayed if the image file cannot
be found. Many people omit the alt attribute from image tags because
they are confident that the image file will be available, particularly
if it is on the same Website. However, alt attributes can be part of
your optimization scheme. Spiders may not be able to look at your images
and determine the content, but they can read alt attributes. Each alt
attribute can provide the spider with a bit more information with which
to judge and rank your page. By simply using your keywords or key phrase
in all your alt attributes you can increase the impact of the page on
the search engines.



But is blind repetition of the same keywords a good idea? Maybe not.
Many search engines have caught onto the fact that some Web page authors
repeat the same keywords dozens if not hundreds of times simply hoping
to improve their ranking. By varying things to some degree you are more
likely to make an impression. One way to do this is to repeat your
primary keyword while including a different secondary keyword in each
attribute. For example, a fishing Web page could use "fishing trout" as
the

first alt attribute, "fishing bass" as the second, "fishing perch" as
the third, and so on. Another approach is to include sequential numbers
in the alt attributes so no two are the same: "fishing 1," "fishing 2,"
and so on.



Accessibility and the alt Attribute



Unfortunately, using the tag's alt attribute as an SEO strategy will
conflict with efforts to create a Website that is accessible to visual
impaired people. Such people often use specialized browsers that convert
the text on a Web page to speech, including the alt attribute of images.
To be effective in this context, the alt attribute must contain a good
description of the image that will let those who cannot see the image
understand the Web page. Such descriptions may work with your SEO
strategy, but if they don't then you will have to choose.



Using Meta Tags



You learned in Chapter 2 how meta tags can be used to include various
kinds of information n the head section of an HTML document. There are
two meta tags that have a role in SEO: description and keywords.



The description tag, as you might well expect, provides a brief
description of the page. Descriptions tend to be used by search engines
more when someone searches for your page not by keyword but by your
company name or URL. It's a good idea to include a brief--as in a short
paragraph at most--description for each page. For example:



Acme Sportswear provides a wide selection of men's, woman's, and
children's sportswear at hard to beat prices. Whether it is for skiing,
surfing, hiking, or scuba diving, Acme has just the sportswear you need.
Our convenient online catalog and ordering system makes it easy for you
to find and purchase your sportswear needs without leaving the comfort
of your home.

Note that the keyword--sportswear--was featured prominently in the
description, always a good idea. As a reminder, to create a description
meta tag you would put the following in the head section of the
document:



meta content="Description goes here" name="description"



The second meta tag you need to know about is the keyword tag. Meta
keywords are thought by many people to be the most important part of SEO.
Unfortunately they are wrong. It's true that search engines used to give
a lot of weight to meta keywords, but it soon became apparent that meta
keywords were being heavily abused. The problem is that a Web page
author can include any meta keywords they like even if they have nothing
to do with the actual content of your page. Authors were including
popular meta keywords just to attract traffic. A page that sold vitamins
might include "Elvis Presley," "sex," and "free money" in the meta
keywords just in the hopes of attracting a few people who would stick
around to buy something. As a result, search engines stopped paying much
attention to meta keywords and started concentrating on the page's
actual content.



There's no harm in including meta keywords in your page. After all, a
few search engines still give them some weight, and they do no harm with
engines that ignore them. The syntax is:



meta content="keyword1, keyword2, ..." name="keywords"

Making sure that your websites are fully crawlable is a key component
for any search strategy, especially if you want your sites to rank well
for multiple related keyword phrases or different products.



One of the ways that you can insure that a search engine spider crawls
your site deeply is to provide it a road map of your site. This road
map, called a "site map" is a very simple page (from a design
standpoint) that only serves one purpose from a search engine optimizers
point of view, to get those interior pages into a search engine's index.



A brief history of site maps . . .Before site maps were recognized by
the search engine optimization community as a tool for good search
results, it was used by fortune 1000 companies to help visitors to their
site find out where a particular service or product was located. For
example: If you want to do some sort of business with your bank online,
you might find that their home page doesn't quite get you to the exact
location on their site that you want. After all, a typical bank might
offer car loans, student loans, home loans, credit cards, investment
accounts, mutual funds, etc. If per chance you arrived at this banking
site on a page other than the home page, you might get a little turned
around from a site navigation standpoint.



So, site maps were created. What is a site map? A site map is a page
that contains a basic HTML link to every page on that web site. Every
page, not just your main topics but every page. Site maps do not need to
be fancy (in fact, it's better if they are not), they just need to
contain a logical order and links to all of your pages.



How does this benefit us? Three ways . . .First, a site map gives your
customers an easy navigation system to every page in your web site. Now,
don't confuse the use of a site map as a replacement for logical
navigation on your regular pages. You want to make sure that your site
can be navigated simply and easily from any page on your site. However,
some folks (a very small percentage) prefer to see the entire site's
structure on one page and choose their destination from it. Second, a
site map is a fantastic way to get a search engine spider to see and
crawl every single page in your site. When optimizing different pages in
your web site for different keywords, a Site map is a perfect solution
for ensuring that a spider can get to every one of those optimized
pages. Third, and this is big: A Site Map provides an opportunity to
send link reputation to a particular page.



Now, link reputation is a discussion that's beyond the scope of this
article, but it is perhaps one of the most important factors in off Page
search engine optimization. You want the links on your Site Map Page to
Say the right thing about the pages that they are linking to. It's like
a vote. So, make sure that your site map is voting correctly for all of
your interior pages. Fourth, site maps are also an additional way to
distribute Google Page Rank. If your site map is just one link off of
the first page, it can pass a significant amount of Google page rank
deep into your web site. This helps create a site structure where just
about every internal page has the same chance of ranking as well as your
home page. Finally, site maps allow you to use dynamic linking
strategies to control where page rank does and does not go throughout
your site. For example, a common mistake is to have a normal link to
your privacy policy on every page of your site. In actuality, giving
your privacy policy page the same page rank as every other page of the
site is a big waste of whatever page rank you have available. So use a
good site map and you will reap the rewards.



Search Engine Rankings. Everyone wants to be number one, and there are
millions of web sites out there. So how do you become number one and
stay there consistently?



Consistently is the key word here. Sure, you may apply the newest, best
trick in the book today, but when someone else comes out with a better
one tomorrow, you will be scrambling to get to the top again. One of the
keys is to be well-rounded. There are many books and philosophies about
web rankings that are floating around. Some people say article marketing
is the way to go, others link building, others say you have to maximize
your web pages for the search engines.



You have to get all your keywords right and your titles and description.
But what happens when another web site does you one better in that area?
Now you drop in rank. Therefore, it is more important that you do a good
job in all the areas than to be the very best in one area. And it is OK
to be number 8 or number 3 in rank, also. If you are in the very top
spot and you are clicked simply because the top spot gets more clicks,
are you really going to get more sales just because you are number one?



Your product and site have to be relevant to the consumer, not just the
search engine. Another key is to focus on very specific keywords. You
can do an awesome job in every area of search engine optimization, but
if you go too thin here, you will not make it to number one in any of
your keywords. Focus on one, or at the most, two keywords. Build your
site around those keywords. Be everything you can be to someone who keys
in those keywords. Or better yet, one keyword. Would you rather have one
keyword that has a number one placement, or 8 keywords with a number 40
placement each?. It would be better to have one keyword for which your
site is on the first page of results than twenty that are all over the
place. Build yourself a web site that has a strong keyword density-for
one or two keywords. Put those keywords in your title and description
and keyword lists.



You must have incoming links. You must have quality incoming links. You
must build incoming links one link at a time. Links are very important,
but you cannot cheat in this area. You must build them one by one. Some
of the favorite methods of link building is to write articles, like this
one, and submit them to article directories, and to be included in link
directories. Stay away from link farms, large link exchanges, or
anything of the sort. The major search engines want to see you build a
steady supply of links over time. What do you think a search engine will
do for you when you go from 0 links to 3000 in one day? That won't get
you to number one, and certainly won't keep you there, when you are put
in the sandbox for six months. These keys to search engine optimization
are just a beginning. You need traffic, you need click-thrus in the
search engine results. You need visitors to stay at your site for more
than a few seconds when they click in. How do you get that? Build real
content. Build it for people, not machines--while following the first
three keys. Do that, and I believe that in three to six months you will
have each web site you set up with this strategy, in the top ten for
your keyword.



Now that you understand why search engine rankings are so important you
might wonder how to achieve these rankings. The algorithms used by
search engines can be rather complex and include a number of different
factors. Some of the common factors in the equation include keyword
density, META tags, titles, inbound links, website traffic and content.


Keyword density refers to the number of times a particular keyword is
used in the content of your website. The theory behind this concept is
that websites that use a particular keyword often are likely to be
relevant to that keyword; however, overuse of that keyword may result in
penalties if the search engine thinks the keywords are not being used
appropriately.


META tags are pieces of HTML code which some search engines use in
evaluating the content of a website. Placing keywords in these tags can
be beneficial in some search engines. However, care should be taken to
avoid placing irrelevant keywords in these tags as this may result in
your website being penalized.


Some search engines to rank websites also use inbound links. Inbound
links refers to links on other websites which point to your website. In
evaluating the worth of these inbound links, some search engines
consider the rank of the website providing the link to your website.
This means you should try to gain links from websites with higher
rankings than your own to ensure that you receive the most benefit from
these links.


Finally, the content on your website is extremely important and will
do a great deal to improve your search engine rankings. Try to provide
quality useful information on your site. Try to avoid filling your pages
with flashy graphics; search engines are far more interested in unique
content. This will help to ensure that your website is not only valuable
to your visitors but also considered valuable to search engines.


Click fraud is becoming a major headache for online advertisers.
If you advertise your web site on pay per click search engines such as
Overture or Google AdWords, chances are that you pay way too much for
your clicks.



What is click fraud?



Click fraud is the practice of artificially increasing the number of
clicks in a pay per click online campaign.



Overture defines click fraud as clicks arising for reasons other than
the good-faith intention of an Internet user to visit a web site to
purchase goods or services or to obtain information.



Google defines click fraud, or invalid clicks, as any method used to
artificially and/or maliciously generate clicks or page impressions.



No matter how you define it, click fraud means that someone is cheating
you and that you pay too much for your pay per click campaigns.



Who are these people?



There are three main groups that click on pay per click ads without real
interest in the offered goods:



People who joined Google AdSense or other per click affiliate programs
click on the ads on their own web site to make a little income. Often,
these people cooperate with other webmasters to click on each other's
ads.



Some unethical companies click on the pay per click ads of competitors
to drive up their advertising costs.



Companies hire people who are paid to click on ads.



Is click fraud really a big problem?



No pay per click company denies that pay per click fraud exists.
According to some web analytics companies, as much as
50%
of all click activity is
fraudulent.



This means that your pay per click marketing activities are half
effective as they could be because of click fraud.



What can you do to save money?



The best way to lower your pay per click advertising costs is to
optimize your current ads so that they deliver a better
return-on-investment.



There are many things you can do to improve the effectiveness of your
pay per click ads. The best proven strategy to minimize click
fraud is to optimize your website on natural listing, and use PPC
advertising for less competitive keywords.

By writing headlines that actually appeal to human beings, while also
improving your search engine ranking, you can greatly improve the
quality of visitor that arrives at your website.



If your site attracts more relevant visitors, it stands to reason that
you'll improve your conversion rates. If you have what they want there's
a chance they'll buy it, if you don't then they won't. You first need to
know how to use these tags technically and what to watch out for



The Technical Stuff



Using the HTML heading tag around key phrases puts emphasis on the
keywords. Heading tags include <h1> (the main page heading), <h2> (other
headings on the page), <h3> (sub-headings of the <h2>s) and so on down
as far as <h6>.



For example, <h1>search engine optimization</h1>, denotes the main page
heading (and from the search engines perspective what the page is about)
and works better than simply having the words ‘search engine
optimization’ in an ordinary paragraph.



Why do the search engines look at the headings tags?



Search engines actively seek out the headings in your content. By using
heading tags to denote the main page headings, you give the search
engine something to focus on and are telling them what your page is
about.



Search engines look at the heading tags as a reference so you should
actually use them for headings. Don't try to fool the search engines.
Don't whatever you do put all of your text into heading tags or abuse
the method. The bigger search engines like Google will pick up on misuse
of heading tags and at best ignore everything within them, at worst
they'll blacklist you as a spammer. So stick to a simple rule, put real
heading text in the heading tags and nothing more than that.



Writing headings



You need a main page heading that includes your keyword phrase, but is
also good at getting site visitors to continue reading your content.
What you need to do is target your audience by pinpointing their problem
and tease them into reading the next paragraph. Writing the headline is
the hardest part about web copy writing in my opinion, but getting it
right can dramatically improve results.



Let's assume you want to be found for the keyword phrase ‘loose gem
stones’. The next few steps will show you how to write a headline for an
audience looking for this online.



Loose gem stones



Let's imagine you have hundreds of different types of loose gems for
sale in your e-store. As a keyword phrase, ‘loose gem stones’ is good
because it specifically describes what it is you have to sell. However
on it's own it's a bit flat and not very interesting or inspiring. What
you need to do is apply psychological triggers to your heading text.



Trigger #1 - question vs. statement trigger



When you ask a question you're forcing readers to ask
themselves something. You're not simply making a statement which is
forgotten immediately, you're forcing readers to think. Write 3 or 4
examples of question based headlines for your target audience. In our
loose gem stones example you might get the following:


  1. Are you having difficulty finding loose gem stones?

  2. Do you need high quality loose gem stones?

  3. Are you looking for reasonably priced loose gem stones?


Now you have potentially 3 headlines with your keyword phrase in
them. They're aimed at 3 different target markets:



  1. Those who can't find them

  2. Those looking for good quality

  3. Those looking for good prices


You would have to decide which one was best based on what your
USP was, but
that's a different article. Next, you should apply the second
psychological trigger to each heading.






Trigger #2 - problem vs. solution




When you pose the problem to the target audience rather than give
the solution, you make the headline even more powerful. You also target
the audience far more specifically because you communicate to those who
want to save time, get better quality or a cheaper price - three
completely separate markets. For example:



  1. Are you tired of wasting your time trying to find loose gem
    stones? (Time is the problem)

  2. Is your loose gem stone supplier selling you rocks and sand? (Poor
    quality is the problem)

  3. Do you pay through the nose for your loose gem stones? (Price is
    the problem)


Now you have 3 headlines which are focusing more on the
audience's problem
but still with the keyword phrase as the
most prominent words for the search engines.



Trigger #3 - curious vs. non-curious



By adding a curiosity factor you really get the reader hooked
into reading about your offer. Numbers can be used to
imply more than one reason to read on. You could use, for example, ‘3
reasons’ or ‘5 simple facts that can save you money’.


You could also use secrets to create curiosity, such
as, ‘Do you know the biggest secret?’. So, you might apply this to our
sample headlines like this



  1. Want to know 5 simple ways to save time finding loose gem stones?

  2. Is your loose gem stone supplier pulling these dirty tricks on
    you?

  3. Paying through the nose for your loose gem stones? 3 things to
    look out for...


Summary






Apply these methods to write powerful, targeted headlings that'll
improve your search engine ranking for your target keyword phrases.
You'll also be well on your way to attracting the right kind of visitor
from the search engines too.




As click costs rise, many companies who are already investing in active
pay per click marketing campaigns are looking toward hiring a search
engine optimization company to supplement their marketing portfolio in
order to increase their exposure and reduce their advertising spend. In
some cases, frustrated by click fraud and increasing click costs,
marketers are using search engine optimization to completely replace pay
per click marketing. However, these companies will often try to evaluate
search engine optimization using the same methodology that they had used
for pay per click - by figuring out the cost per click.



In almost every case, a campaign created by a reputable search engine
optimization company will eventually garner lower per-click costs than
pay per click marketing for any industry. Yet using cost per click to
compare the effectiveness of these two separate disciplines is comparing
apples to, well, anything other than apples. The crucial difference
between these two approaches is that pay per click marketing is more of
an advertising investment, while search engine optimization is more
appropriately likened to an investment in infrastructure. While both
have their merits in terms of increasing a company’s online exposure, it
is important to understand the differences in the respective investments
and to determine why cost per click is not a fair indicator of the
performance of a search engine optimization company.



Pay Per Click Marketing



Advertising investments of all kinds, from billboards to print ads to
television spots to pay per click marketing, all share a common trait.
They exist in the public eye for as long as a company is willing to pay
for them. Stop paying, and they disappear. True, a print ad may continue
to exist for a while after it runs (until the newspaper or magazine gets
recycled, at least), and a television spot may get attention if it wins
any awards (or winds up on YouTube). But a pay per click marketing
campaign will simply vanish as soon as the budget is cut. This means
that when a company reduces its advertising spend in this arena, it
loses all of its exposure immediately.



What does this really mean? Well, for one, it means that figuring out
the average per-click costs of a pay per click marketing campaign makes
sense because everything happens in real time. A pay per click campaign
will begin nearly instantly after a company signs up and pays, and it
will vanish just as quickly when the company ceases payment. In other
words, there is a clear delineation of when a campaign begins and when
it ends.



This delineation is important, because it excludes many other potential
factors that muddy the waters when you try to apply this same ROI
analysis to a campaign created by a search engine optimization company.



Search Engine Optimization



As said previously, utilizing a search engine optimization company can
be likened to making an investment in the infrastructure of a business
rather than an investment in advertising. This is because with search
engine optimization, there is no clear delineation of where the benefit
from the campaign ends. If a business stops paying its search engine
optimization company at any point after the campaign has been launched
(presuming they have hired a decent search engine optimization company),
there will continue to be results from that campaign for an extended
period of time - usually many months or even years.



Of course, it is not recommended that any business actually quit an
ongoing SEO campaign because a good search engine optimization company
will always be expanding and honing that campaign over time to make it
more successful over the long term. However, budgets get revisited and
revised. Decision makers can change. And if the budget for SEO does get
cut, a business will continue to see results for long after. How, then,
can you determine value on a per-click basis? The simple answer is that
you can’t.



It should be noted that while maintaining ongoing results after payments
have ceased is a big upside to search engine optimization, the inverse
downside is that an effective campaign put in place by a search engine
optimization company can take some time to implement, and the results
may not appear for weeks or months. A search engine optimization
campaign takes patience, effort, and, most of all, time. If a business
needs its marketing campaign to be up and running immediately, pay per
click marketing is going to be a better short-term choice.



Conclusion



It is important to recognize the innate differences in pay per click
campaigns and search engine optimization when trying to quantify
results. A pay per click marketing campaign can have a definitive
beginning and end, which makes cost per click a good way of determining
ROI. Yet the results gained from hiring a search engine optimization
company, although an SEO campaign can take much longer to implement,
will outlast the results from a pay per click campaign if a business
ever needs to cut spending. And this is where the notion of analyzing
the effectiveness of a search engine optimization campaign on a cost per
click basis breaks down

Achieving High SEO Search Engine Ranking Very few topics have inspired as many tangents, as much false information . . . incurred as much abuse as search engine optimization. With the few shreds of information search engines reveal about their actual methodologies, optimizers struggle to get that extra edge over the competition, armed with esoteric theories of keyword density, precise meta-tag length, optimal internal linking, and just about any other detail that a search engine might happen to factor into its rankings. Before you find yourself scrambling to create ten more content-less pages to avert that worst than death curse of decreased PageRank, try to take a look at the big picture. Barring design factors that may not be search engine friendly, a strong foundation based on four factors will give your site good success. These factors are the holy grail of optimization:

1. Get relevant links to your site anchored to keyword rich text.

2. Write focused body text that targets specific keyphrases or that is focused on a specific topic (This occurs naturally when someone is communicating useful information. This can be a problem because a lot of businesses don’t have anything useful to say. Be detailed. Be helpful. This can naturally accomplish what automatic text generators try to accomplish through keyword density and keyword proximity calculations).

3. Write concise titles focused on useful keyphrases.

4. Be patient. You may not be using the best strategies, but you’re using strategies that work over time. Continue to get links and create more content. Find the Words Before you can write good, keyphrase-focused body text or titles, you need to find the phrases users search. For good keyword suggestion tools, search Google with (surprise, surprise) “keyword suggestion tool.” Digitalpoint.com has an excellent tool that compares Wordtracker and Overture keyword results. Judge from the search volume how competitive each word is (not even close to the best method, but it’ll have to due).

Be specific. Pick words with large search volume and search with geographic terms if you serve only a specific area. From the list of keyphrases, start thinking about the topics you’ll want to target. Find a few phrases for each page in your site. Remember to focus on phrases and not separate words – make sure these phrases appear in your body text. Titles HTML titles go between the title tags in your site’s code. Write short titles that use one or two keyphrases. Don’t use the name of your company unless you are trying to brand the name. Include location if you target certain areas, and make sure your pages repeat this location information in the text. Your body text should be written to fit the phrases in your title. Body Text and Navigation Be specific about what you are talking about. In your navigation don’t use generic linking text like “home” or “about us.” Use specific phrases. Instead of “home” use the name or category of your main service/product, and make it obvious from the context that this is your main page. Instead of “about us” use a phrase like “A (main product/service) Company.” This communicates more information to the user and includes a keyphrase. Where appropriate, make the same type of substitutions in the body text. Use variations of nouns and verbs, including plurals and different conjugations. If you can, use the heading tags (h1, h2, etc.) to write text titles. Try to communicate as much as you can in text – search engines don’t see the text in images, or fancy media like Flash. Alt tags are useful, but search engines don’t put as much weight on them as visible text. In general, whatever has a greater chance to be seen by the user is going to get greater weight from the search engines (Except for those things produced by JavaScript, or Flash, or written into an image – use common sense).

Build Links It is remarkably easy to get your site indexed by the search engines – just submit to some of the many free directories. To find some of these directories search for “free directory list” in Google. Be careful to read submission guidelines, and be very careful about what you submit to large directories like DMOZ. Generally, titles should not be a list of keywords. Most directories only want your homepage and the “official title” (somewhat ambiguous term) of your site with a short description. Descriptions should be factual, and they should be written in complete sentences or meaningful phrases. Some optimization companies will rip you off by charging you money to submit your site to the major search engines – this is a waste of time. Start building links, and the search engines will find your site naturally, submitting makes no difference in your rankings. It is important to get links from sites that are related to yours. Write webmasters requesting a link, find niche sites that offer free submissions, write articles for sites that allow you to put down a signature link, or post comments in forums that allow you to put down your signature.

If you exchange links, be careful who you trade with. Get listed wherever you want without fear of penalty from the search engines, but be careful who you link to. Your site can get penalized for linking into bad neighborhoods spamming the search engines. It Never Ends Expand your site and continue to tell people about its content. It’s an ongoing process. The older your site gets, the more credibility it can gain with the search engines. Keep your content fresh. Check the search engines to see what they have indexed (search site:www.domain.com). Be patient and keep up with search engine changes

Search Engine Optimization is no rocket science. Neither is it exact science, at least not for those on the other side of the firewall. The Basics: Take care that your html has a valid syntax. The pages you intend to be "search engine landing pages", like your front page, need to have natural written content about the subject of that page. Those pages need a clear descriptive title. A front page page with a button "enter here" doesn't work. Place your main subjects at the beginning of pages, paragraphs and sentences if it doesn't affect reading. Bad: "This wonderful page about these lovely, mostly green animals: frogs". Good: "Frogs, lovely green animals are all over this page". (If your site is about frogs) Create as much original content as you can about your subjects. Distribute your content into pages of each about 200 words. Give those pages, if possible, descriptive file names. If your page is about insurance, use insurance-2.htm instead of page2.htm. Use a dash as seperator in file or directory names, and not an underscore. Sample: insurance-food.htm, insurance-maintanance.htm insurance-repair.htm If your content grows, try to structure your site with sub directories. Make sure your site is good "inter linked". Have links to all pages on every page. If there are to many, use sub directories, each inter linked, where every sub directory can be reached from every page. Create a site map for larger sites. Use descriptive text in your internal links. A link that says "Next Page" doesn't work as good as "Insurance Page 2". The title of the link (anchor text) tell the search engines where this page is about. Try to get quality links from other sites, and have those links use a descriptive title (anchor text). Bad: "Green Animals" Good: "Frogs Maintanance and food". Try to cover as many subjects in your titles as possible without making them too long. Don't spam search engines. One day they find out, and you are removed. Be patient. Don't expect next day results. If you create a quality website with a good structure things will come by themselves, in time.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short, what does it mean?. Getting a number one ranking in all search engines some people may say.I think SEO means arranging your content in a way that not only humans understand where you website is about, but the search engines also know.It is important to know how those search engines read and understand your website, so they can index the subject(s) of your website, and deliver relevant search results to their users.SEO is no rocket science, everybody can learn the basic principles pretty soon. There plenty of forums, some with hundreds of visitors a day, discussing search engine rankings, just do a search in google or another search engine for 'SEO forum'. Sometimes it seems to me that the web most popular subject is the web itself...If you are planning a website it is important that from the start phase you already keep the Search Engines in mind, it saves you a lot of trouble afterwards. If you don't want to bother with rankings yourself, just write your content and have a good SEO consultant review it. If you hire a consultant, please note that the good ones are not cheap. Important is that when you hire someone that you do background research on this company or person. There are plenty of optimizers around that give false promises or use dangerous methods of optimizing.If you want to do SEO yourself, I give you here some basic priciples to work with:
Don't use frames, you don't need them and search engines usually don't 'understand' them very well without additional tricks.
Don't use splash pages, in most cases your main page will be the content focus, make use of it.
Use the subjects of your pages in the titles of your pages. This seems an obvious remark, but so many don't do this.
Don't focus on single keywords, most users who search for "special things" use more the a few words to search.
Check your HTML syntax. Allthough a browser may be forgiving, search engine robots may not be.
Use descriptive texts for your links (anchor text). Describe the page with your link, SE's use this anchor text to undertand where the page is about. If you use images for your links, give them a descriptive ALT attribute.
Put the most important subjects of your page at the top of the page.
Make sure that ALL your pages are linked from every page you have. If you have to many pages, divide your site in sub directories which are linked together. Create a sitemap, not only handy for your users, but also for search engine indexing.
Use plenty of original content, and don't be a copycat.
Use descriptive filenames and directory names, seperate words with a dash '-'.
Get your site linked with good anchor text from relavant sites. Beg for links. But don't worry, its the quality and services of your site that finally will get you links automaticly. Search Engines use the number of links to your site as one of factors to determine your ranking for search phrases.
Don't spam the SE's by filling guestbooks, forums, blogs or other places where you can place a link for free to your site. It doesn't work on the long run.
Read the SEO guidelines of every search engine.
Read about the efforts of others in relevant forums.
Be patient, don't expect overnight results. Building a good ranking website is something that takes time, a lot of effort, and original quality content.
Write for humans with search engines in mind, not the other way around. Search engines are getting smarter everyday.