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Googles PR System Explained

2006-10-17T11:29:00.000-07:00

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Googles PR System Explained

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Google Cash. Official Google Cash How to Earn Thousands Writing Google AdWords Part-Time updated w/ 24 videos. $44.36/sale.

Author: Claude Beavers

Article source: http://www.online-internet-home-business-opportunity.com/. Used with author's permission.

The complexities of Google's PR (Page Ranking) System have grown more difficult to understand since the Hilltop Algorithm was introduced. This beginner's guide to the PR system explains the basics of what PR is, what it does, and how it affects your site's rankings. This revolutionary search algorithm has made it to where the most relevant and popular sites with the best content do the best on Google's search page. Keep in mind, this algorithm is kept secret by Google for fear of it being exploited, but the basics have been released for study.

In a nutshell, Google's Page Ranking is a system devised to rank pages based on their content and popularity and place them accordingly within the search results based on their relevance to the general topic. Or, in laymen's terms, it's a system to make sure sites are put where they need to be, both in search results and in rankings. A site dealing with pet care is not going to be listed in the top 10 when searching for "web design," but depending on its content and popularity it could be well towards the top of the list on "pet medicine" or "sick dog."

PR is on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest ranking possible. Of course, only a very few sites have a PR 10 or even a PR 9 for that matter. PR 7 and PR 8 sites are considered very good sites, with lots of original, relevant content and a great deal of inbound links. You will usually find sites with a high PR at the top of the list under Google's search engine, and many others, since relevant content and lots of links is almost a prerequisite for being placed high in any of the major search engines on any of the major keywords.

PR "Spread"

PR is set up to "pass on" from one site to another, or one page to another if it is within your own site. As the PR "spreads" throughout your site, you will get less and less utility from it. A link from a PR 5 site to your main page will give you a PR 4 link to your main page. Since your main page will be linked to other pages within your site, any links on your front page (up to 100 pages) will then receive a PR 3 link from your main page. It continues to trickle down, exponentially losing power until it peters out.

Keep in mind, however, that depending on what page linked to you, and how many links were on that page in the first place, your PR could be significantly lower than expected. If a PR 5 page links to your site, but has 300 other links on that single page, you may get anywhere from 0 to 4 PR. Thus it is beneficial to have a limited number of links on your main pages, due to the smaller amount of PR being passed down with the more links it is being passed to. Overall, a small, concise site with lots of inbound links and few outbound links would be the ideal "PR trap," although relevant, original content is needed as well.

PR's Effect on Rankings

The effects of PR are plainly viewable to anybody with the Google Toolbar. Simply search for a keyword, and look at the PR rating of the top 10 sites. The highest PR will usually be on the top of the list, depending on content. If a PR 8, however, has a keyword that does not match their content, they will most likely be ranked lower than a PR 6 on the same keyword with more relevant content on the subject matter. A site with high, relevant, and original content, along with matching keywords and a multitude of links from related sites, will place extremely high on searches containing their keywords. A site with old content that is not updated often with links from non-related sites and keywords that do not relate directly to their content, on the other hand will probably not show up within the top 100 sites on the same search.

So basically, PR is what drives listings on the Google Search Engine. How to optimize your site to take advantage of this system, however is the real challenge.

Utilizing PR

To make proper use of the PR system, many different things must be done to assure your website is "acceptable" within their guidelines. Basically, making your site more relevant to your topic will have a great effect on your PR ranking, especially if you are "popular" among those sites, or have many links coming from related sites. Each site on the internet has a Page Rank, assigned by Google, based on their content and popularity. To view the page rank of each site, download the Google Toolbar from their site. It will automatically show you the rank of the page you're on with a small counter on your task bar.

Now, obviously a "good" site links to you, it will have a better effect on your website's popularity. Say, for example, a PR 3 website puts a link on their links page to your main page. That link will be considered a PR 2 link to your site (PR - 1), giving you a PR of 2 on your main page. If, however, a PR 0 site adds a link to your site, there is almost no change. A link from a grayed-out site, which means they have a negative PR, will actually be a detriment to your PR, as they have been deemed a site not relevant to anything (or relevant, but banned) by Google. Of course, a link from a PR 7 site to your own will be drastically more effective in boosting your PR than even 20 PR 3 links would.

Getting Good Links

One of the most important things to remember about getting a high PR ranking is to get links from "good" sites. These include sites that are directly related to your own site in some way, and preferably sites with a high PR of their own. Good examples include award pages and directory listings. With relevant links coming from related sites with a high PR, your site will not only gain PR fast, but will gain in real popularity. High PR sites traditionally have high traffic due to their link volume and content. If there is a link to you, it is a sign that you have a good site on a related topic with good content as well, attracting visitors who didn't find exactly what they wanted. More visitors means more PR, which in turn gets you more visitors. You can see how important good links can be.

Try to steer away from sites with unrelated topics, as these will probably not help much, if any with your traffic, and may actually bring a penalty to your PR. Other sites to steer away from when trying to work up your PR would be FFAs, or Free For All link programs. These sites allow browsers to enter their link into a huge list (sometimes of thousands of other sites). Usually you will find that these sites have been "grayed out," or given a negative PR effect by Google, bringing your PR down if you have a link from them.

Doorway pages are another thing to avoid. These are shorter, shallow sites that are created simply for putting as many keywords and links as possible on their pages in order to "farm" PR for higher rankings on Google. These, in general, once they are found are "grayed out," as well as sites they link to. Enough links from these will assure that your site will not show up on Google's search at all.

Getting Good Content

Good, original content is not as hard to obtain as some might think. By writing articles for your site you can provide pages of completely relevant and unique content, as long as the articles are on subject. A few articles will give you plenty of original content to get a fairly good "relevance rating" with Google, which contributes to your PR rating, and it will not trigger the dreaded "duplicate content" tag that will doom your site to obscurity.

In addition, if you can get enough relevant content together, you can eventually become recognized as an "expert" in the field. With that status, you will get enough traffic to boost your PR even more. People are always in need of information, and if you provide good enough information, you will find yourself getting links from all over the internet.

PR in a Nutshell - An Overview

Basically, with enough unique content and relevant links, you can have a high PR site and be ready to take on the internet. Overall, things to keep in mind are to stay consistent with your main topic, both in links and in your content, and stay away from the "no-no" sites mentioned above. If you can do these things, you can gain a high PR and a good ranking with Google in a relatively short period of time.

You can see other articles by Claude Beavers on this topic at: SuperFaster.com - Free Web Promotion Articles and Resources

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Improve Search Engine Rankings - The Real Deal!

2006-10-17T11:07:00.000-07:00

Ok, here's the deal, follow these steps and shoot me if your rankings doesn't improve. I know that there's been so many articles on how to improve your search engine rankings but most of them are either incomplete or untrue. So I've put up a list of what works best to improve your rankings and I'm telling you now this works but it's no walk in the park.

1. Long before you register your domain, start creating pages. You have to write at least 50 pages with real content for your initial website. If you register your domain before creating pages, it would take you at least a month before you could create those 50 content rich pages (well of course that is assuming that you're not an english major grad. or a person with an IQ of 160) and you don't want your new website to be seen bared for that long.

2. For domain names, choose a catchy one word, easy to write, easy to type, easy to spell, easy to remember, easy on everything domain name like yahoo, google or webomania. Keywords domain (like bestoranges.com or workwhilesleeping.com) are way out today. They may still have some effects on rankings but not as much as they were not so long ago. Besides, if you think of it, the best and most popular websites have branded names, like yahoo, google, msn, amazon, nba, nike, and this goes on and on...

3. When designing your webpages always remember the popular verse, simplicity is the best policy! or was that honesty? anyway the point is, the simpler your webpages is the better in many ways.

Firstly, it would be more readable to your audience. Lots of clutters in your pages (like banners and heavy graphics) would defocus the attention of your audience from your content. Sometimes (or maybe all of the time) when a person looks at a webpage and see lots of distraction, he would leave your site immediately without even reading your content.

Secondly, search engines loves webpages with more content than html codes. Speaking of search engines, stay away from javascript as much as possible, SE hates JS so much and it does more harm to your site than good. If you can't help using JS, do it externally.

Thirdly, your webpages should be compatible with any web browsers out there in the entire universe! Seriously, with lots of different web browsers being used in the internet, your pages should be compatible with all of them. Of course, the simpler your webpages is, the more uncomplicated it is. And the more uncomplicated it is, the better for any web browsers however simple or complicated they may be! Are my sentences getting complicated?

Fourthly, a more simple webpage means less graphics, less codes and less kilobytes. This means (if you didn't get it) your webpages would load much faster and in the world of internet, speed isn't everything. It's the ONLY THING! Take Google for example.

Lastly, (this is my favorite) a simpler website is easier to make. So why spend hours on creating a single page that would hurt your audience eyes from reading, be rejected by search engines, be uncompatible with different web browsers and loads forever when you can make it in minutes with much better result?

4. "Content is King" which has been said so many times already (my ears are begginning to bleed on this phrase) couldn't be more true. Search engines loves hard-written, quality content. Build one page of content with at least 200 words per day. Timely and in demand articles are best. Learn to write web style. Use short sentences. Lots of breaks. Something that would be read quickly. People don't really read articles, they scan them. Use humor to not bore your readers. Try not to use complicated words (unless your site is about english major or scientific names), if it exceeds three syllables, its complicated. Remember, not all your audience are good in english and will appreciate your english expertise. If you're not sure about your content's readability ask your seven-year old son, or brother, or neighbor to read your content and ask if he understands.

5. Keyword Positions and Density. Use your keyword once in the title, description tag, headings, url, alt, bold, italic, at the beggining of your content and at the ending of your content. Choose a keyword density of 5-12 percent but never ever compromise grammar. Spelling is equally becoming important today as search engines are gearing towards auto correction.

6. Links. Make sure that you don't have any broken links within your site. All pages should be within reach from the root or at least 2 levels deep. Important pages should be linked from as much pages of your website. Your homepage should be linked on all pages of your website.

For exchange links, link only with websites that are within your topic. It is also quite helpful if you can get exchange links with websites in your niche that has a higher ranking than you. Here's a good idea, search for your niche in DMOZ and mail each websites listed in there for an exchange links.

For outbound links, use your keyword to link to a high ranking site. Make sure that you link to a relevant site with the keyword you use.

7. For hosting, if you have the budget, go for a private hosting with a stand alone ip.

8. Directories. Submit to DMOZ and Yahoo. Getting an inclusion here is weight heavily by SE specially by google. If you have the money pay for a submission to Yahoo for a faster review. Submit to other directories that you can find.

9. Search Engines Submission. Submit your homepage to Google, Yahoo, MSN, Lycos. You can submit to other search engines but it's not worth the effort. These 4 generates more than 90 percent of search results. Submit only once per 3 months. Submitting too much may ban your site. Dont panic if your site isn't indexed in a few months. Some are lucky if they're indexed within six months.

10. When your site do get indexed, make sure it is crawled entirely. If not, check your links.

11. Log and track your visitors. Study your log files. They are valuable. See where visitors are entering, going and exiting your site. If they're not going to important pages, tweak your design. If they're exiting abnormally on one page see why. Know what keywords visitors are using to reach your site. Build specific contents about those keywords.

12. Promoting your website. Use forums to advertise your site. Create articles and pass it around freely (with your url attached ofcourse). If you have the budget, use PPC advertising. $.5 per visitors might hurt you but if you're confident about the quality and content of your website, that person's next visit would be free.

You should also promote your website offline. Print your url on almost anywhere you can. Use your car, ballpens, jackets, t-shirt, freebies and giveaways. If you can, use the media. It might sound trickier but it is equally important. People would find your website more important when they see it on tangible objects.

The Importance of Search Engine Optimization

2006-10-17T10:59:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Optimization is a key to any successful internet marketing strategy. There are numerous definitions and interpretations as to exactly what Search Engine Optimization means. It is the process in which the careful and strategic placing, analysis, and wording of keywords of text on a particular website to enable optimum search engine rankings, this definition comes from www.pixelphoria.com/glossary.php. There are several ways in which this process can benefit internet marketing strategies.

When creating or updating a commercial website, the reason is typically to make the products more attractive to viewers, while at the same time creating the ability to gain more exposure with a broader audience. While most websites have a target audience, it is this ability to gain a larger, broader audience that they are all searching to gain. The Search Engine Optimization process allows for the creation of a higher page ranking when a potential viewer is using a search engine to find specific websites based upon the searchable keywords they will enter. This process identifies those keywords that will benefit a particular website and uses them in such a way that it gets a higher page ranking when those keywords are searched. For example, if "internet marketing" was searched for in Google, the more times the phrase "internet marketing" is included within the website, potentially the closer to the top the page will be displayed.

In this time of maximum Internet usage, many searchers only use first page displayed websites on their searches because this is where the pages with those higher page rankings are displayed, which translates into these pages find the highest relevance to their keyword searches. Please do not make the mistake of thinking that these websites are the only ones out there that will have the relevant search information, it just means that these websites have better marketed themselves to be located when specified keywords are searched, which is the exact benefit of Search Engine Optimization. This makes it even more critical that each website understand the importance of and the knowledge necessary to adapt their websites to benefit from Search Engine Optimization.

As should be understood by this point, it is imperative that an understanding of and taking advantage of Search Engine Optimization will provide the website a higher profile in the world of search engines. By taking advantage of optimization techniques, more searchers will gain faster access to the particular website. If the website has something worthwhile to offer in the world of ecommerce, then is a strategy that should be employed immediately.

Buying Textlinks: The Latest SEO Craze

2006-10-17T10:37:00.000-07:00

With search engine algorithms changing seemingly daily, the quest to rank high in the search engines and stay there is proving to be quite the challenge for most webmasters. One of the more recent popular ways of achieving this is through buying text links on websites that have high PR's (page ranks) on Google and that also rank well in the other major search engines. Is buying text link placement worth it?

Purpose The primary purpose of buying a text link on a website that ranks better in search engines than yours is to receive a backlink to your site, without having to reciprocate a link back (as this dilutes the quality of a link). This backlink counts as a "vote" for your website and especially if coming from a site that is credible to the search engines, helps your site establish credibility as well. For example, a website has been online for three years and currently has a PR of 7. Your site is three months old and has a PR of 2. The 3 year old website places a link to your site from their homepage. As this site has history and is therefore established, this "vote" from a PR 7 website holds a lot of value. Compare this to a site linking to yours that is only a year old and holds a PR of 1 - it makes sense that you would want links coming from older sites that have high PRs. The higher the number and the better the quality of backlinks your website receives, generally the higher your rank on the SERPs (search engine results page).

Not only are text links great for search engine purposes, but if placed well, can actually drive traffic to your site. And whose website nowadays couldn't use more traffic? Enough said.

Those are the benefits behind purchasing text links. But what are the disadvantages?

1) Cost - it's not uncommon to pay $100 monthly for a 3 word textlink on a PR 6 website. If you do choose to go this route, choose your text carefully and budget wisely.

2) Relevancy to search engines - if you're running a homemade toys website and have a popular online pharmacy website linking to yours, this won't be as relevant as say having Mattel® linking to you. Remember that search engines are becoming more and more sophisticated and they can tell whether two sites have complimentary, competitive, or completely unrelated website content.

3) Limited link length - rarely are you given the option of selecting more than three words when purchasing links. You may have difficulty coming up with only three keywords relevant to your website, so this can often prove to be a difficult task.

4) Page is already populated with other text links - online auction sites that have sellers auctioning off website text links are notorious for selling textlinks on websites that already have 50 more on the same page. Look for sites that limit the number of textlinks sold.

5) Search engine spam - your site linked on every single page of a 3000 page website using the same keywords and url can be considered spam to a search engine. If you choose to purchase multiple text links on multiple websites, make sure your linking text varies.

The lesson is to be simply cautious. Using a textlink broker to find relevant and complimentary websites to buy links from can prove to be highly beneficial - just do your research first. Would a $100 monthly textlink investment be better spent on a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, or will the long term benefits of buying a text link outweigh a temporary influx in visitors? Return on investment is key - whichever route will yield you the highest ROI should be your ultimate determining factor.

Affordable Small Business SEO: 5 Common SEO Errors and How to Fix Them

2006-10-17T10:23:00.000-07:00

Don't put the cart before the horse.

You can't do SEO (optimize your web site for search engines) until you've researched keywords. You can't research keywords without a clear view of your target market, your prospect types, and how your offerings fill their needs.

Affordable Small Business SEO

Affordable small business SEO not only uses the same old business and marketing basics, but also leverages the depth of accessible metrics for creating increased online traffic and better web site ROI.

When small business people ask me how their web site could be improved by SEO, I give them some version of the following list of questions. When you know the answers to these questions, you're much less likely to waste money on SEO efforts, and more likely to succeed online. You might even pull off some of this stuff yourself- and that'll save you big in consultant fees!

To find the right keywords to target with SEO and/or PPC, consider the following…

Goals: How much monthly traffic and sales do you get now? Where would you like these numbers to be? What are your most wanted responses- what do you want your ideal prospects to do on your site? (e.g. buy something, sign up for your ezine, etc.)

Market Segmentation: Who's your ideal customer or target market? If there is more than one group, characterize each.

Keywords that work: How do people find your site? What search phrases show up in your web logs?

PPC Metrics: Do you already use pay per click (PPC) advertising? What are your conversion rates? Are your bids profiting, or at least breaking even?

Getting more traffic is pointless if your site isn't an efficient sales machine.

Profit Margin: What is your online profit margin for each offering?

Conversion Rate: What percentage of your offline prospects make the purchase? (to gauge expected conversion rate for your services and find disparity in online results)

Customer Loyalty: How many people are on your ezine list? How often do you email them? What do you send them?

5 Common Critical Website Errors and How to Fix Them

About 75% of the web sites I've seen make all of these mistakes. As a result, their rankings and traffic suffer, and they lose potential sales revenues.

No Sitemap. No matter how well your pages are designed and no matter how nice the graphics are, every site need a good 'sitemap' page for search engines to index it more easily. This is a simple page of links- no frills except perhaps a bulleted outline structure. Even better, you can use the new Google sitemap xml template, and upload it to Google to increase the chances they'll index your whole site.

Insufficient Search Engine and Directory Submission. In the ideal cyberworld, you wouldn't have to submit your site anywhere- it would just get indexed and put where your prospects could find you. The reality is we still have to meet these services halfway. There are only a half dozen super-big sources of traffic (e.g. Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.), but you have a better chance of showing up in them if you've submitted your site to the 100-200 minor directories and search engines. Also, there are niche directories that will help you rank on your best keywords and attract more prospects directly. Submit your site to these places with a free tool like WebCEO.

Mysterious Website Owners. Your visitors want to know, "who are the people behind this website? Can I trust them?" Unless you have a particularly snobby target market, put your picture and brief bio on the very first page of your site (if not every page). Let them know who you are. This might be taboo in offline marketing (not really- look at Ben & Jerry, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump, etc.), but online, genuine personality is a competitive advantage. It fosters trust, creates credibility and emotional bonds, and bridges the cold gap of cyberspace. You can do it appropriately for most target markets. The real question is: are you ready for the prime time?

Confusing Site Structure. Does your site confuse people? Do you know where they want to go, what they're really looking for? Where do you want them to go? Good site structure both guides your various prospect types to the places you want them to go and satisfies their needs. Get some of your target market to sit in front of you and use your website- watch what they do- it'll surprise you. And put a search engine on your website that gives you reports on what people search for- you'll get clues about what else to put online.

Ezine Neglect. The ezine signup form isn't prominent on some sites - make it obvious and 'sell' your visitors on signing up. Tantalize them into ezine subscription with a free bonus. Why? Not everyone will become your customer the first time they reach your site. They may like your offerings but not trust you enough yet or be ready to buy. They may have questions. Once you have them on your list, you can sell them on you and your stuff (by helping them with tips) every week or two until they buy.

Not only do they need a free bonus to stimulate them to sign up, they also need to know what kind of thing you'll be sending them, that you'll keep their email address private, and that they can unsubscribe anytime. And I'd suggest using double opt-in to avoid spam- that means they sign up (you don't add them), and they confirm via email before they ever get an email from you.

The Smart Way To Get Listed On Google!

2006-10-17T10:16:00.000-07:00

So you want to get listed on Google? And you want a GOOD listing on Google? "But my website is not popular and is too new to be noticed by Google," you say?

Well, I have a solution to your problem.

There are couple ways to get listed on Google. First, there's the wrong way. Or should I say the way that takes an extra long time, which also happens to be the way that's not as popular with Google. In other words, it's the way that might get you listed but NOT anywhere large amounts of people will see it. So, I see that method as useless.

Google has a place for you to add your URL for your site to be placed in que for crawling. It's at http://www.google.com/addurl.html.

I haven't known anyone to get great results by using this one method. This is because of the mechanics involved with what follows after. You add your site URL in the cute little box, your site URL is then placed in line for the GoogleBot to crawl. At this point in time, your site will probably be behind millions of other pages. There is much room for things to happen and your site NOT get crawled by the GoogleBot. And even if it gets crawled, it's not for sure that Google will even indexed the site to begin with. And if it does index your site, there's no telling where it will end up. Probably NOT on the first three pages of search results, which is virtually useless.

Let's now talk about the RIGHT way to be indexed by Google.

The best way to get indexed by Google, which is also the preferred way according to their algorithms, is for them to crawl another site first. When The GoogleBot crawls another site and finds your link within that site, it then follows that link to your site.

This is the way you get popular with Google, or work your way up toward the top of the search results. So in order to get good results with Google, you need links at other sites pointing toward you. In order to get even better results with Google, you need to either increase the sites that link back to you to an astronomical amount, or have less links pointing toward you, but from more popular sites.

So if you could somehow get a link pointing to you, say from Amazon.com, that one link would be equivalent to more than a couple dozen links pointing toward you from separate, less popular sites. If you could manage to get a dozen or so larger sites to link toward you, this would be equivalent to perhaps thousands of sites linking to you, that are less popular. Google likes that. Google promotes you up the search ladder for accomplishing that.

So how you get these larger sites to link to you?

I'll tell you right now. You can't email Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates and ask to exchange links. That's insane and practically impossible. But there's an easier way.

First, go to discussion sites and forums and participate in relevant discussions. Simply place a hyperlink pointing back to you in your signature. I must mention here that you should not go to discussion sites and forums and simply add your link and say "Go here!" That won't work and will get the forum moderator angry. It's also a good way to get blacklisted. You need to participate in discussions that are relevant to the board and important to all reading the board. If you do this no one minds if you include your hyperlink within your signature.

Another way to establish links back to you on the Internet is to write quality articles about subjects that are interesting to your target market. Again, you need to try and create quality content within your articles. Readers, and especially editors, can spot writers trying to receive free publicity a mile away.

It doesn't take much extra effort to do a little research, come to your own conclusions, perhaps solve a problem, and record your results on paper. Perhaps you could write down the steps you took to research a subject or solve a problem. When you provide quality content that is interesting and helpful to your readers, you can place your name and a hyperlink to your web site at the end of the article. This is standard procedure.

At this point let's remind ourselves why we're doing all this. It's to solve the problem of how you're going to get bigger and more popular websites to link to your website.

Now, keep writing articles. As you write more and more articles, you will get better. As you get better, more editors will pick up your articles and include them at their sites. As more of your articles are included, you'll establish more links pointing back to you through the resource box. As you establish more links pointing back to your site, you will solve the problem that we established at the beginning of this article.

I've created an e-book special report that goes into more depth of what we've just covered. It's titled "Get Listed On Google Fast - Through The Back Door!" I've provided it for you at my web site for free. This useful e-book includes links and tools you need to begin from square one on how to establish yourself on Google. The e-book also contains relevant links to discussion boards and forums that you can post to and participate within discussions if your web site is business based or home business based.

Organic SEO: Patience For Long Term Ranking Results

2006-10-17T04:38:00.000-07:00

When does long term SEO show ranking results? It takes time for optimization to produce targeted traffic to your website. Organic SEO requires time to take effect, just as it takes time for your web pages to start showing up in the search engine results.

Clients regularly ask me about the timing of a search engine optimization campaign and when those results will be seen in the search engine listings. A long term marketing campaign based on search engine optimization takes time: patience is the name of the game.

Optimization Timeframe

SEO's timeframe depends on a number of factors. Part of this involves the accuracy of keyword phrase choices: is the keyword phrase one your visitors would use to find your product or website? If your keyword phrases are targeted to your audience, you will gain optimum results. Did you use Paid Inclusion and/or PPC services? The best combination for success involves using a combination of SEO, Paid Inclusion and PPC services. If you do not use Paid Inclusion or PPC, using organic SEO only, it takes more time to achieve results.

Paid Results

When you use Paid Inclusion or PPC (Pay-Per-Click) bidding, your results show up sooner than traditional SEO. Paid Inclusion submissions state the time-frame in which your page will be indexed by the search engine robots when you sign up for services. PPC bidding results show up as soon as searchers start clicking on your PPC ads. This type of search engine marketing requires an annual budget to renew Paid Inclusion submissions and payment per month for PPC click-through costs. If you are paying too much for your PPC services, organic SEO combined with PPC often helps to keep the prices down for the paid service. By generating additional targeted traffic on those costly terms you may be able to bring the bidding prices down in your PPC campaign or even eliminate some keyword bidding.

The timeline given for paid submissions means the search engines are generating income through this process. Paying for results also gives you a guarantee the listings will be relatively stable in the database.

Paid Inclusion submissions will always take precedence over free submissions because the company makes money from Paid Inclusion. For this reason most search engines will implement free search engine submissions over a longer period of time than paid submissions. When using SEO without the paid submission choices, the process is the same but the optimized pages take longer to be processed into the search engine databases.

Organic SEO

Organic SEO works differently. The best reason to use organic SEO is that it is a low-cost method to promote your website. It can take up to three to six months to see the full results of optimizing your website, especially if you are only using organic optimization. The plus to an organic approach is that once you optimize your pages, the main part of the work is done. You may tweak your keywords and text here and there, but unless you completely re-design your pages, you have what you need in place to begin drawing in targeted traffic. Continue checking your ranking status and reading your log statistics, especially for new keywords visitors are using to find your website.

When using free submissions, expect a three to six month wait before seeing most of the long term results showing in the search engine listings. If you build on a link popularity program and have links pointing back to your website, the search engine robots will find your website through the links, eliminating the need for free submissions. Look at it this way: you pay once for basic optimization and over time the results improve to optimum level. You don't have to keep paying for this service because, unless search engine databases drops your free submission pages (which is not often these days), you will be visible and present to the search engine users when they search on your targeted keyword phrases. Over time you should see a progression in your ranking, depending on how competitive your keyword phrases are.

Budget SEO

What if you can't afford Paid Inclusion or PPC services? Organic SEO is a great way to increase targeted traffic to your website over time. If you do not have a budget for Paid Inclusion submissions and PPC programs, organic SEO will give you good results if you are willing to wait instead of gaining immediate results. Combine organic SEO with plenty of good content and a solid link building program for optimum results. Remember, the search engine listings may entice visitors to come to your website, but you must give them a reason to stay once they arrive. Build your content to keep your new visitors at your website.

Patience Pays Off

Organic SEO is "common sense" promotion. Not a lot of fancy bells and whistles, and it takes time. The addition of good navigation, good content with your keyword phrases throughout the pages and topical sites pointing links back to your website equals long term success.

Practice patience when going organic for your SEO campaign. It may take time but it will be worth the long term results you reap.

9 Ways to Keep Google Happy

2006-10-17T04:30:00.000-07:00

A recent Google patent application has the SEO community buzzing. At a bare minimum this document reveals the direction Google is taking its future search criteria. Changes in the way Google will be evaluating pages for search rankings are intended to address two major problems:

- Search engine spam, and

- Ensuring that "fresh" documents score higher than "stale" ones

Here is a summary of some of the general principles outlined in the document. Most SEO specialists agree these are reasonable principles, and it is only a matter of time before they are adopted.

1. Anchor text of links is still very important. Focus on your anchor text. It should contain your most important keyword.

2. Google expects that anchor texts will vary. A lot of identical anchor text suggests an "unnatural" linking pattern. Anchor texts should vary, but contain related phrases.

3. Google will record when specific links were first discovered, and watch how they change over time. Links with a long life span are considered more valuable than links with a short life span. This adds support to the link delay theory -- that links do not start "counting" until they have been in place for a few months. So get working on those links right now, but don't expect immediate gratification from Google.

4. If a new website gets a flood of new inbound links, this will be an indicator of possible spam activity. Links should be introduced gradually and according to a consistent pattern.

5. Google acknowledges that there may be link "spikes", and so an influx of new links will be interpreted as legitimate if some of the links are from "authoritative" sites. Go after links from authoritative sites.

6. If a stale webpage continues to receive new incoming links, it will be considered fresh. Keep adding links pointing to important pages.

7. Links from fresh pages will in some cases be more valuable than links from "stale" or old pages that have not been recently updated. Get links from pages that are active. If you have high value links from important sites, develop a strategy for keeping those links fresh.

8. Google places more value on a site where link growth remains constant and slow. Slow and steady wins the race. Keep getting those links.

9. Pages with many inbound links will require proportionately more new links in order to remain fresh. The assumption is that the more links a page has, the more it should be getting in the future. Otherwise it starts slipping into the "stale" category. Focus more attention on your most important pages.

Regardless of whether of not Google implements all of these criteria, the general direction is clear. More importantly, these points make good SEO sense, and provide a very good place to start when planning a link strategy.

The Power of Search Engine Friendly URLs

2006-10-17T04:12:00.000-07:00

I recently invested quite some time into generating search engine friendly URLs for several of my websites to increase my ranking and to have more pages indexed. I can highly recommend to look into this if your own website does not have se-friendly URLs. Especially Google (the most important search engine nowadays) can be very picky in regards to URLs that are not se-friendly.

Example (the 2 URLs below bring you to exactly the same page):

http://www.beefkabobs.com/ShowCategory.php?CategoryID=13 -> this URL is not se-friendly and search engines will eventually ignore any page behind it or rank it much lower in search results. Visitors will have difficulties to remember this URL. These kind of URLs often come from dynamic database driven websites. Each page is dynamically created when requested. Look at the forums URL this moment, too. It is dynamically created and not very friendly to search engines or the visitor. You get the idea.

http://www.beefkabobs.com/kabob-recipe-category-13.html -> this URL is se-friendly and search engines will spider the page behind it easily. It is keyword enriched to increase search engine ranking. Overall - this URL is easy to be spidered and easy to remember by a visitor.

For one of my own sites I was able to increase the number of pages indexed from 36 to over 150 pages - just by making the URLs search engine friendly. The additional pages were ignored by the search engines because they could not read the URLs properly. The domain used in my example went from 20 pages to 80 within 2 weeks and should go to over 120 pages indexed (by Google) with the next Google update.

How do you make your URLs search engine friendly?

Your web host/web server needs to support the Apache Web Server module "mod_rewrite". This module allows to rewrite URLs a certain way. By using a ".htaccess" file you can give the web server the necessary commands to work with se-friendly URLs.

How does this now really works?

In general - you are faking the nice clean looking URLs and fool search engines and visitors to believe that the URLs of your website are se-friendly.

SE-friendly URLs work in 2 steps. 1) Your site needs to display the se-friendly URLs. 2) mod_rewrite and htaccess 'translate' the se-friendly URL and redirect the traffic to the ugly looking se-unfriendly URL in the background (invisible to anyone). You will need to setup the htaccess file with the command how you would like the URL to look like and what does it translate to (a certain ugly looking dynamic URL).

The code that generates the URLs dynamically needs to be adjusted to match the rules from your .htaccess file. You upload the code changes and the htaccess and off you go.

Can every website be modified?

Most websites with dynamic URLs can be modified if the server environment meets the requirements. Each website needs to be looked at separately to get the best results.

The learning curve on creating se-friendly URLs can be quite challenging. Spend the time and resources on creating se-friendly URLs. The results can be overwhelming.

Search Engine Marketing Hype Killing Small Businesses

2006-10-17T03:52:00.000-07:00

Think about the first thing you ever heard about "marketing a website" on the web. 99% of the time the first words anyone ever hears are "search engine marketing." Or some semblance of the phrase.

And from that point on, the hammering of misinformation never lets up. You are led to believe that your business will die a terrible death without the search engines. You are led to believe that only people who can guide you through the mine field of search engine optimization are the SEO "experts."

Also you are told time and again that the only way to market online PERIOD is through the search engines. You are conditioned over time to focus most, if not all, of your efforts on tricking the search engines into liking your site above all your competitors for search terms where "there can be only one."

Well, here's a wake up call: The vast majority of small business startups will never have the resources, time, or know-how to turn an idea into a profitable online business focusing only on search engines.

Just look at the deluge of information there is out there on Google and how to rank well with them. People are picking apart their ranking patent application right now to try an glean a website promotion strategy based upon what Google reveals in their application about their ranking system.

Is this information valuable to a small business wanting to sell its wares to a whole market rather than just the part of that market which uses one of the big search engines?

It is in extreme moderation, yes. In a well balanced marketing campaign that focuses on many ways to bring in targeted traffic, search engine marketing has its place. You do what you can, and you move on to all the other ways there are to promote your business.

Yet, so many people are falling victim to the gleam and glitter of search engine riches being pushed on them by SEO firms and people selling search engine how-to manuals.

It is not long before a new business finds itself wrapped up in a game where the only winners are the geeks and deep pockets.

If you do not fall into either of those categories, your business is doomed from the start if you hop right off the porch to play with those big dogs.

"But I hired a 'big dog' SEO firm to make my business stand out and compete with the geeks in my market niche."

More power to you. In actuality, unfortunately, you probably just hired a teenager from India with an internet connection in his parents' house. Most small business start ups cannot come close to affording a major SEO firm. They charge corporate-level premiums to be able to access their services.

Everyone else in the SEO world is practically working out of their garage in comparison.

Scared yet? You don't have to be as long as you are spreading your marketing around to the non-search engine traffic you should be getting.

Writing articles and syndicating them in your market is a direct traffic strategy that has nothing to do with search engines. Except that search engines find your site through those links as well. But you should be doing it solely for DIRECT TRAFFIC from readers on other sites and taking the search engine traffic boost as mere icing on the cake.

You see, as people spam the search engines, they must adjust how they rank sites in order to compensate. This means a lot of good sites take a hit when Google changes the way it ranks sites.

You could have done everything completely on the up and up and gotten dropped in the engines because they made a new rule that everyone who registers their domains only for one year is a possible spammer. There goes your legit site. Hope you weren't planning on search engine traffic for your SOLE source of traffic.

Can you see how dangerous it is to get bitten by the search engine bug? YES you can propel your business overnight from a profitless dead zone to a glamorous profit machine with one top ranking.

Of course that is possible. It is not likely.

People who are turning their small online businesses into success stories are doing one thing across the board: Conducting a multi-faceted marketing campaign that includes search engines along with a good mix of other non-search engine marketing such as reciprocal and non-reciprocal linking tactics too numerous to mention here.

If you want long-term success online, you must be willing to look past all the sleeze merchants selling you dreams of riches through search engine marketing.

Search engines care about one thing: Their own hides. You should care more about your hide than anything else and use a well-planned, disciplined marketing strategy that puts search engines in their place. Not in the epicenter of your marketing campaign, but just another tool in your toolbox for bringing in targeted traffic.

Do this, and you will escape the fate of thousands of startups this year who will realize too late that they hung their hopes on the wrong marketing strategy as their engine for profits.

Search Engine Optimization - A Beginners Guide

2006-10-17T03:45:00.000-07:00

Getting your site listed in the top search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN is no small job. There is lots of work that needs to be done to guarantee the highest placement possible, and even more work is needed to keep your ranking for any period of time. Here are some simple tips and strategies to keep your site listed, and listed well, without spending any extra cash on pay per clicks.

Optimizing your site for the best search results

Linking and Links to Your Site

Getting links to your site is one of the most important jobs you have when trying to properly optimize your site for search engine listings, regardless of which search engine you are attempting to get listed in. Having links to your site assures that it will be found by the spiders of the major search engines, and the more links coming to your site, the more pages from your site are going to be listed in any given search engine. The more popular the site, the more exposure you get, both from the search engines and the general browser. Link trading, or exchanging links to other sites on your page for links to your own on their site, is an excellent way to get started in getting some links to your site. There are thousands of sites out there with automated link exchange pages, where you simply fill out a form and place their link on a page of your site, and you get a link from theirs. You can easily get 20 to 50 links a day from such pages, although they aren't as high quality as the others you can find.

Any site on the internet with a "Links" or "Resources" page can be a potential link exchange partner. Simply find the sites that relate to yours, even in a general sense, and send them an email requesting a link exchange. Be sure to have a link to their site on your links page and give them a link to the specific page their link is on. It also helps to have your links dispersed into categories, rather than having one long page with 1,000 links on it. This will make people more eager to trade links with you due to it being much easier to find their site on your links page. Keep a list of the sites you have emailed, and mark off which ones have or have not replied and have or have not placed a link to your site. If after two weeks no link is present, or the owner of the other site has not replied, simply delete their listing from your links directory and move on. There are enough sites out there, no matter what topic you relate to, that link exchanges are not difficult to find. These types of sites generally have a higher popularity and higher quality traffic than the instant submissions, although it does take a bit longer to accumulate the amount of links you need.

Another way to get links quickly would be to sign up at one of the various link exchange websites like linkpartners.com. These will usually charge a small subscription fee, but you will get a large amount of links in a relatively short amount of time. Remember when dealing with these type of sites to deal with only links from your particular category, as it will help more in the long run. Also, be careful who you link to within your own category. Try to stick with high-popularity websites that show up high in the rankings on your favorite search engine. Having quality over quantity with links, as well as most other optimizations, is vital if you plan on being ranked highly for any period of time.

Also, try to keep your links coming in. With a massive burst in incoming links that completely dies the next month, the search engines grow suspicious. Either try to spread out that massive burst out over the next few months, or keep the incoming links at or above the number you got last month. With this approach, the major search engines "see" that you are not only gaining in popularity rapidly, but you are continuing to grow in popularity instead of dieing out.

Content

Content is another major factor in how you will be ranking in the major search engines. Having fresh, new content every month, or better, every day, will show that your site is not stagnant. It will also keep your visitors happy. Nobody will come back if your site never changes... they will move on to one that is updated more often. A great way to do this is through goarticles.com or other article sites like it. You can copy an article to your site (leaving the article fully intact, of course... you don't want to break any copyright laws) and have free, original content, every day if you would like. Again, it is best to use content that is directly related to your site, not only for the sake of your rankings (although you will have original content, it will not be related, and so it will be thrown out as "fluff" by the major search engines), but for your visitors as well. Nobody wants information on the newest video game when they visit a flower shop online.

Ever-changing, original content is very important to the search engines, as it shows your website is growing and popular. Even with one new article a day, you will be surprised at the results. If you have the time, you can even write your own articles and content and place them on your site. This content will be completely original, and nobody else on the internet will have a copy (or if they did, you can track them down and exercise your right to copyright as an author). Not only can you get original content by writing your own articles, but you can post them on goarticles.com for free with your name and a link to your site at the bottom. You provide content to the online community and they provide you links back to your homepage. A win-win situation either way you look at it.

Keywords

Keywords are words within your meta tags that you would like the search engines to list you under and pay special attention to. Picking keywords can be tedious and difficult at times, but good keywords can make the difference between lots of traffic or no traffic at all. Search for sites on your favorite search engine that relate to your own and check what keywords they have chosen. You can do this by going to View -> View Source on the menu bar. The keywords will be marked by a "" tag. See which keywords they are using that you may want to use as well. Keep a list of up to 50 of the keywords you think will be the best match for your site and add them in to your meta tag. As always, be sure that these keywords directly relate to your site. This will help your listings in the search engines, as well as help browsers find the site they are actually looking for.

Descriptions

Provide descriptions in your meta tags for each one of your pages. Use descriptions to provide an outline of what each particular page on your site is built for. Keep them clear and concise, and don't load them up with keywords. For example, for your main page, use a description that contains the slogan for your website and a brief outline of what your site is meant for. For SuperFaster.com you would say something along the lines of "Online Marketing Information, Tips, and Strategies - We provide free articles on all you need to know about website promotion." With clear descriptions, the search engines will not consider a particular page a "duplicate listing" just because it has the same title as your other 30 pages, and it will make it easier for browsers to find what they need.

Alt Tags

Alt tags are descriptions of images on your website. These can be seen when you mouse over picture, and can be seen by the spiders of the major search engines. Having a description of a picture makes it easier for a spider to understand what is actually on the site. If, perhaps, you have a tutorial on your site describing how to set up a web hosting account, and this tutorial has screen shots for people to follow instructions easier, you would want to make an alt tag for each screen shot. This will allow the spider to see that not only do you have a tutorial teaching your users how to create an account, but it comes with screen shots instead of random images of your dog or family.

Pictures that are part of the template for your site don't necessarily have to have alt tags, since they are purely for visual effect. For graphical buttons it would be beneficial to have alt tags, to explain to the spider that these are links to other portions of your site. Although these are not really necessary either, it never hurts to have tags explaining where a button will take you once it is pressed.

Search Engines Are Going to Love You for This

2006-10-17T03:38:00.000-07:00

What's the most potent free traffic source on the web?

*** Search Engines! ***

Surprised? Of course not. Why do so many people concern themselves so deeply with search engine optimization, positioning and ranking?

In the United States, the follow FOUR search engines handle (*)94% of all search inquiries each and every day.

Google = 35% Yahoo = 28% AOL (powered by Google) = 16% MSN = 15% * Source: comScore Media Metrix

Given this information and the fact that 100's of millions of searches are performed every day; wouldn't you want to have your website ranked high enough that it was one of the first sites listed by Google or Yahoo or AOL or MSN? Imagine the exposure that you'll receive!

One undisputed fact is that search engines love websites that offer focused content.

If you're publishing a newsletter online, there are a number of things that you can do with the articles and content that you create. This article will discuss search engines and their affinity for focused and relative content.

I want to show you a free tool that will help you take articles that you write or other people's articles (with their permission, of course) and very quickly and easily incorporate it into your website.

STEP 1: Find articles that tie in closely with the theme of your website or any particular page on your site. For testing purposes you can use this newsletter to play around with.

STEP 2: Go Here:

==> http://snipurl.com/texttohtml

STEP 3: About mid-page on the right-hand side you'll see a short paragraph with the title "Free Text to HTML Converter". Click on the title. This is a CGI script that I installed at Internet Marketing Power Tools for your use.

STEP 4: Copy the text that you want to convert to HTML code, and paste it in the open text box that you see when this page opens.

STEP 5: Scroll down the page and choose the options that will give you the output that best suits your needs.

STEP 6: Click the "Convert to HTML" button at the bottom of the page.

STEP 7: Click the "Select All" button to copy and paste the now-HTML-formatted text into your webpage.

That's all there is to it.

By including meaningful content on your website, you should receive more favorable rankings in the major search engines. This is only one aspect of what search engines are looking for, but it's an important component and will put you on the right track to getting ranked higher and increasing traffic to your site.

What You Did Wrong With Your Domain Names!

2006-10-17T02:27:00.000-07:00

Trying to improve search engine rankings is just like a rubics cube. A puzzle that can keep you occupied for hours. How many times have you heard "They keep changing the rules?," and the frustrating part is...they don't even tell you what the rules are in the first place!

It's a proven fact, in trying to improve search engine rankings, that growing your site thru link popularity, by slowly acquiring incoming quality links, adding small amounts of fresh relevant content on a regular basis, using proper keyword density and placement, along with making your site "sticky" so your visitor's stay longer.

But now, there's something else that you have to know about! (and this is a big but!)

Google is starting to weigh in heavy on domain names. Not what your domain is, or how long you've had it. Google wants to know how long you plan on keeping it, as in, how long is it registered for!

They've begun NOT giving as much consideration to domains registered for just a year, thinking they might be spammers, making a quick hit and then they're out of here. If they see you're registered for 5 years, then you must be a serious business that has planned on being around for quite a long time.

I live about a five iron outside of DC and made my living on the radio. Helen Thomas, one of the all-time great White House correspondents, would always be chosen by President Reagan to ask questions at press conferences. Here's why:..She found out that the President had a fondness for the color red. So, Helen started wearing a red blazer to press conferences and he would always pick her out of a press room packed with other reporters.

So, in other words... put a red blazer on your web site, drop 50 bucks registering your domain name for several years and show Google, along with other search engines, you are serious about sticking around and wanting to improve search engine rankings.

Ranked #1

2006-10-13T14:28:00.000-07:00

Do remember that you wil not always get to #1 in Google
and it wil not always be in the top 10 in 2 days. The
longest I have ever had to wait is around a month. Also it
may not even get there. It al depends on the popularity of
the keyword and your skil at using this method. So
without further ado, lets get started.
This method is al about using high popularity sites that
get spidered regularly to our advantage. Please do bare
with me and folow al of these steps and it wil work I wil
explain exactly what is going on a little later. The first of
these that we are going to be looking at is

htp://www.usfreeads.com/

You can advertise anything you want in the folowing
categories:

Automotive
Announcements
Air & Watercraft
Business Opportunities
Colectibles
Computers
Dating
Employment
Health & Fitness
Hobbies & Leisure
Home & Garden
Miscelaneous
Motorcycles
Pets & Animals
Real Estate
Services
Sports
Wanted Ads

There are a number of memberships that you can choose
from however for what they charge you would be crazy not
to go for the Premium membership.

If you pay for the gold Membership then you can get a
year for $9.99 and then you can upgrade to premium for a
reduced price of $6.99 a month, as opposed to $14.95
The main benefit of upgrading to Premium is that you are
alowed to use HTML and add Paypal butons. Therefore if
you are seling a product them you can make it look just
like your own website.

You must make sure that you have selected to become a
featured listing as this is what puts your ad over a network
of highly spidered websites, more than 50, and wil get
you on Google very quickly. It is very important that you
feature them as this is what alows them to get ranked so
quickly. If you wish you can then remove them from the
featured listings, however this is essential at first.

Also remember NOT to choose the re-direct option with
your ads. This wil seriously reduce their efectiveness.

You are probably wondering what is so amazing about this
site and I wil list a few things.

This site gets spidered by Google usualy everyday which
means in most cases so wil your ad. If you have a
website within the ad then al the better as this wil get
spidered as wel.

However it may wel have been spidered but wil not
always be listed instantly. It can and does give you top
10’s within 2 days, but not always. So if you have to wait a
couple of weeks then don’t worry. It wil happen!

If you have a premium membership then, the ads you
make are unlimited as to the size. Its not like Adwords
where you only get a few characters. These can be as
big as you like!
Include pictures and web links in your ads, I’m sure you
can al work out the importance of this.
You get your own page for the ad!

Now this is important. Because although your ad headline
shows up with a number of other headlines, if you do
things wel then you are almost guaranteed to get a good
ranking for your specific ad, and therefore, your specific
page.

There is only one restriction in that you are not alowed to
make more than one ad for the same product, but I am
sure there are those of you that wil find ways of getting
around this!

Also this proves great for affiliate marketing.

Remember its htp://www.usfreeads.com/
Sell.com

There are other great websites similar to this where this
technique can be just as efective.

One such site is Sel.com.

Sel.com is much the same as ebay, except you can
expect to pay anywhere between $1-6 and listings last for
30 days. Also they alow you to advertise a direct link to
your site which is great for us as we are trying to get that
indexed in the process too.

Also unlike USFreeads, you can place as many ads for
the same think as you like. So that way you can target as
many diferent keywords as you wish and keep geting the
Google top spots!

Also you do have to be from the US to use this, however
there may be a way round this if you are wiling to lie on
your signup form, I wouldn’t know though!

Either way you wil do just fine using USFreeads on its
own.
Ebay Shops

You can also use an ebay shop for this method.

By this is mean you have to go to ebay and open a shop.
They wil charge you $0.03 cents for every item you then
list in your shop and we can work it so as that they
become high ranking listings.

Make sure that you choose the option to leave it running
until canceled. This means that until al of the items are
sold or you decide to cancel it, it wil continue running. I
recommend you set-up number of items to 1000 so that it
runs for a long time.

The title that you choose for your listing wil be the
keywords that you wil be optimised to appear for. So if
you are looking to get a #1 spot for “Great proposal ideas”
as an example of the top of my head, then make that
your title.

Generaly by using ebay you wil be listed in under a week.

Making Money with Google

2006-10-13T01:55:00.000-07:00

You've mastered searching with Google, you've gotten your site in Google's index, and you have a healthy PageRank. So how do you pay the bills? Unless your site makes a profit on donations from visitors who just love your wacky sense of humor, consider trying Google's advertising programs: AdWords and AdSense.

AdWords lets you buy spots among the sponsored linksthe ads you see on many Google results pages. AdSense lets you sell advertising space on your own site for other people's ads.

AdWords and AdSense are both easy to get started with, but neither is intuitive.

The Googlebot has found your site, you and Google are becoming fast friends, and your site has just entered the PageRank popularity contest. How do you become a rising search engine star, reaching one of the coveted top spots on the first page of search results?

The secret to pleasing Google turns out to be rather straightforward: please your visitors. Happy visitors lead to inbound links, because when people like a site, they link to it from their own sites. And when there are links, Google rankings follow. That's it.

Give each page, article, or product its own permanent URL. When people want to send their best friend the URL for your page about family eggplant recipes, they really hate adding: "Click on the third link down in the What's New section, below the picture of Barney." They may hate it so much that they stop bothering with your site at all.

There are two ways you can make your site harder for people to use. First, if you put a lot of articles on one page, you force people to say, "It's the fifth story on the page." It also forces you to keep the article in that slot if you want people to find it. Second, using frames for whole pages causes your visitors to see the same URL in their address bar no matter what page of your site they're onwhich means they can't send friends a link without also providing a roadmap to find the page in question. (That's yet another excellent reason to eschew frames.)

So make things simple for your visitors and Google: Every time you create a page on your site, link to it from at least one other pageand, if possible, don't change the page's name.
Let them share. Go a step better and let visitors hang a hat on your site through forums, feedback forms, and customization. Read the feedback channels on a regular basis and become an active participant in discussions of your site.
Plain and simple wins the race. Keep your Web pages as lightweight as possible. Just because you're at the end of a high-speed broadband connection doesn't mean your visitors are. In fact, many Web surfers still poke along at 56 K, not to mention those visiting from their cellphones and PDAswho often have very slow connections.
Don't annoy your visitors. Nothing screams "Go Away" like in-your-face Flash animations, ads strewn all over the place, pages that link to nothing, and dopey gimmicks. It's all right to have a long article span multiple linked pages, but be fair about how much content is on each page, and avoid click-through pages set up solely for advertising impressions. While you're at it, provide a Print view for those who want a story all on one page for a manageable print job, as shown in Figure 8-6.

Keep busy trying to please your visitors, and don't spend time trying to fool Google. The Google folks are smart, and they have set up all manner of checks and balances to make sure the sites they index are on the up-and-up. Indeed, Google considers the following practices unfairso much so that if they discover you engaging in them, the Googlebot may stop visiting and including you in the index. (Google doesn't say how long it'll keep you out in the cold, but anecdotal evidence suggests the icy treatment may be permanent.)

Don't misrepresent your site to Google by feeding different content to the Googlebot than you do your regular human visitors. This trick is known among Webmasters as cloaking. It entails manipulating your site in response to User-Agent identifiers, which are signatures associated with every request from a Web browser or robot to view a site. Some sites use this identifier to show different content to a bot (User-Agent: Googlebot) than to your garden-variety Web browser (User-Agent: Internet Explorer). It's a nasty business, and a good way to draw Google's ire.

Does Google Know You're There?

2006-10-11T02:32:00.000-07:00

You've done everything in your power to get Google's attention. Now, how do you know when the Googlebot (www.google.com/bot.html), Google's Web-crawling robot, has come calling? Of course, if your site starts appearing in Google results, you can rest easy knowing Google is hip to you.

Otherwise, it's not particularly obvious when the Googlebot arrives, investigates, and leaves your site. With a little simple research, however, you can figure out what parts of your site Google is and isn't finding.

The place to look is your Web site's logs, which keep a record of comings and goings from your siterequests and responses in Webmaster vernacular. They make for an entertaining read, in a geeky way, and are worth getting familiar with.

Web server logs are simple text files, and you can read them by using a simple text editor or Unix command-line tools. You can also peruse them through a log-analysis tool, a desktop application, an administrative tool, or a Web-based service.

If you know where your logs are kept and you have access to them (some Web site administrators keep them off-limits), go ahead and take a look. If not, contact your local server administrator or Internet Service Provider and ask them where you can find the logs.

Once you've opened the logs, you can find traces of the Googlebot. A typical visit follows these steps:

First, the Googlebot knocks and sees if it's welcome. When it hits your site, the first thing the Googlebot does is request your site's robots.txt file to see if it even has permission to come in and take a look around. The request looks something like this:

 208.201.239.21 - - [19/Feb/2004:19:16:05 -0800] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.1"
 200 199 "-" "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)"

Here's what you're looking at: The first set of numbers is your site's IP address. The stuff in the brackets is the date and time of the Googlebot's request. The actual request is the /robots.txt part. HTTP/1.1 is the version of HTTP in use (HTTP is the language Web browsers and servers speak); 200 is the status code for that request (200 says the request was successful; 404 means it failed); and 199 is the number of bytes transferred. The dash in quotes tells you there's no login necessary for people (or bots) to access the site. And everything else is the user-agent identification (that is, the Googlebot's cyber-credentials).

If the Googlebot finds a robots.txt file, it reads it and follows any rules that tell it where not to go. If it can't find robots.txt, the Googlebot assumes it has permission to index your site in its entirety.

Next, the Googlebot requests the index pages for your site's directories. As you know, you build Web sites out of pages that you store in folders, called directories. And you nest directories within each other, much the way you store files on your hard drive. Usually, you put an index page (index.html or index.htm, for example) into each directory, which acts as the home page for that directory.

For example, your site may contain the directory www.yoursite.com/products. When a robot asks your server for a directory (/products) rather than a specific Web page (/products/cheddar.html), your server shows it the directory's index. In Web server parlance, this request for the index is /, (say "slash"), and it's simply the Web way of asking for a list of the contents of the directory following the slash. Put another way, the slash is like asking, "What's in this room?" In the server log, the request looks like this:
```
 208.201.239.21 - - [19/Feb/2004:18:46:46 -0800] "GET /products HTTP/1.1" 200
 5719 "-" "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)"
```
and the / after the word GET tells your server to "offer up the index page for this directory." In this case, the Googlebot is asking for the index page for the products directory. If the request specified no directory and looked like this "GET /HTTP/1.1"that would mean the Googlebot was knocking at your site's front door, asking to see the contents of the main directory for the whole place. (By extension, the request GET /products is like asking to look in, say, the cupboard.)
Next, the Googlebot follows all the links and image tags on the index pages. When you hit a Web page, your browser follows HTML image tags to find, download, and display any pictures on that page. The Googlebot does the same thing. Similarly, just as you follow hyperlinks to move between pages on a site or between sites, so does the Googlebot. As it goes, the Googlebot gleans text and underlying HTML from your pages and reports the info back to the Google indexer, which adds it to the master list.
The Googlebot conducts this process throughout your site. It follows working links until it hits something it's seen before or something with no link, like an image. When the bot's done with your site, it heads off to other sites you've linked to.

Don't be too concerned if the Googlebot has come and gone, but your site isn't yet showing up in Google results. It takes some time for Google to index, store, and make available to the search engine everything it's found.

Even so, some material may not make it into the index at all, particularly if the Googlebot found duplicate text or encountered a glitch. For example, a stray robots.txt file in the wrong place could have sent the Googlebot packing. Or some part of your site might not be linked to anything else within your site, rendering it invisible to the Googlebot.

If your logs reveal that the Googlebot has come calling, but after a week or two your site still isn't coming up in search results, recheck your logs, robots.txt files, and your site itself for anything that might have thrown Google off.

Getting Google's Attention

2006-10-11T02:27:00.000-07:00

You can get into Google's index two ways, and both are worth pursuing.

First, you can simply wave your arms and tell Google you want to be part of its index. Second, you can link to other sitesand have them link to yoursso that when Google crawls the Web and follows links from one site to another, it automatically discovers yours.

Introduce Yourself to Google

Virtually speaking, you can just walk over to Google and say, "Hello." Simply visit the "Add your URL to Google" page at www.google.com/addurl.html, type your site's Web address into the URL field, and click Add URL . You only need introduce Google to your home page; it'll use your links to find the rest of the site you've linked to and made available for public consumption. Once Google knows about your site, it sends out the Googlebot for a lookanywhere from one day to a couple of weeks after you sign up.

Google doesn't make any promises about when your site is likely to appear in search results, though it usually takes between 24 hours and a week. Google also doesn't give any guarantee that they'll actually add your site to their index. And, unfortunately, you have no way to tell whether Google has indexed your site or whether it's rejected you without actually performing the crawl. If you submitted a URL a couple of weeks ago and Google doesn't seem to know anything about you, check out the guidelines and rules for Webmasters at www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html, and then resubmit your site.

Link Up I

The other route into Google is via links. When Google's spiders crawl the Web, they check old pages for new text, pictures, and linksand then they follow the new links, looking for new pages to add to Google's index. So a great way to get into Google is to have other sites already in the index link to yours.

If you've got a friend, business associate, neighbor, or peer with a Web site or Weblog already known to Google, see if he's up for linking to yours. If he goes for it, he's essentially introducing your site to Google by association. (You can return the favor by linking back to his site, thereby increasing his PageRank rating.)

Link Up II

Sites on just about every subject are itching for news and events of interest to their readers. And if you have something whiz-bang interesting or Earth-shatteringly important on your site, you can try to catch the eye of a site you think should know youwho might then link to your site.

On sites that you'd like to link to you, look for "Suggest a Link" or "Submit a Story" features. Write up a meaty-though-modest description, fill in the form as directed, and suggest they take a gander at something in particular on your site. If they go for it, you're that much closer to being in the Google database.

Becoming a Search Result

2006-10-11T02:22:00.000-07:00

If it isn't in Google, it probably doesn't exist.

That statement may strike you as an exaggeration, but a lot of people act as if it were true. They run a quick Google search, and if they don't find what they're after right away, they're more likely to adjust their query than move on to another search engine. So if your site is listed on AltaVista, Yahoo, and every other search index on the planet, but Google doesn't know about it, chances are good that millions of people are going to miss it, too.

So if you've got a site and you want people to find it, you gotta get in Google; this chapter tells you how to go about it. And if you want to add a Google search to your own site, you can learn how to do that here, too.

tips on gaming the Google engine, interfering with the proper functioning of its index, or otherwise playing the Google ranking game unfairly. While Google tries its darndest to keep up with such attemptsand does a pretty good job of itpeople have found some dirty tricks that pay off in the short run. If you came to this chapter looking for that sort of edge, you're going to be disappointed.

A sense of fairness ought to keep you playing straight. But if it doesn't, consider this: Google is known for ignoring or even removing from its database sites that try to trick the crawlers or interfere in the proper operation of the Google engine.

Don't become one of those losers.

Make Your Web Site A Traffic Magnet

2006-10-05T05:49:00.000-07:00

Creating a brilliant and flashy looking web site is one thing, but, making it a magnet to drag people back to it is another. It's not just a case of advertising and driving traffic to your site it's about holding people when they get to your site and just as importantly get them coming back again and again. The best business is repeat business. The best visitors are repeat visitors.

Here are just a few ways to keep people coming back and they may buy every time but the more they come back the more sales you will make.

One of the simplest ways is to give visitors free subscription to your e-zine. As almost every man and his dog are publishing an ezine nowadays, it's so important to give something extra with the free subscription. You could offer a free gift, such a free report full of useful and up to date information or advertising when people subscribe.

Provide your visitors with free content. Your content will be more attractive to your visitors if it's up-to-date or original. It's a good idea to offer people the option to reprint the content in their ezine or web site. This is a very powerful tool as the resource box will advertise for new visitors as well as turning them into repeat visitors.

Offer a free online directory. Your directory could be full of interesting e-books, ezines, web sites etc. If people find your directory to be a valuable resource they will visit it over and over. As their trust in you grows they will visit other parts of your site.

This next one is a real magnet attracting tons of traffic; give your visitors a free e-book. In the book include your own and allow other people to give it away. If you don't want to or haven't got the time to write one, you could ask other writers permission to use their articles.

Here's a killer blow you can strike with, hold free online classes or seminars. They could be held in your web site's chat room. The idea of "live" information will definitely entice people to visit your web site. You will become known as an expert on the topic.

Human nature makes us like anything that's a freebie!! So give visitors a free entry into your contest or sweepstakes. The prizes should be something of interest or value to your visitors. Most people who enter will continually revisit your web site to get the results.

Why not let visitors download free software. It could be freeware, shareware, demos etc. Imagine you could even turn part of your site into a free software directory. If you created the software, make sure to include your ad inside and then let other people give it away.

You could offer free online services or utilities from your web site. This can be anything from search engine submitting, copy writing proofreading, etc. You need to make sure that the service or utility will be helpful to your target audience.

Offer free consulting to your visitors. This you can do by offering your knowledge via e-mail or by telephone. As consulting fees can be very expensive this will be considered a huge value by your visitors and keep them coming back time after time.

Finally, consider creating an online club as part of your site. You could offer free membership to those who visit your site. For being a member you could give away a free members only ezine

Any or all of these methods will make your site a traffic magnet, most importantly a REPEAT TRAFFIC MAGNET.

5 Power Tips To Double Your Online Sales

2006-10-05T05:39:00.000-07:00

"How Can I Double My Sales?" - that must be the silent prayer of thousands of webmasters.

There are two ways to do it: you can either double your traffic or you can double your conversion rate.

Let's say you have a conversion rate of 2% (1 sale for every 50 visitors) and you get 100 visitors a day - you're getting 2 sales a day. You could get 4 sales a day by increasing your traffic to 200 visitors a day.

But you can get the same result - with your existing traffic - by doubling your conversion rate (2 sales for every 50 visitors).

Here are 5 ways to double your conversion rate:

(1) Direct Response: Make sure your website is a 'Direct Response Website'. A DRW is a site where the only options are to Buy, Bookmark, or Leave. The more options you give your visitor, the less likely they are to buy.

(2) Free E-Books: Include Free E-Books as bonus gifts with your product. This can easily double your sales - especially if the Free E-Books are genuinely useful. Here are some places you can find Free E-Books:

http://www.free-ebooks.net/ http://www.ebookdirectory.com/ http://www.ebooksnbytes.com/download.html

(3) Testimonials: Make sure you have plenty of testimonials on your website. Preferably, they should be from customers who have achieved results from your product (e.g. more traffic, more sales, saved time etc).

(4) Follow Up: You've probably heard this over and over again but it's worth repeating - people have to see you your message about 7 times before they buy. The biggest mistake you can make is to try and sell your product on the first contact alone.

It just doesn't work, and the statistics bear this out: the 1st contact produces 2% of sales, the 5th to 12th contact produce 80% of sales.

So in your ezine ads and at your website, offer something free in exchange for an email address. And then follow up with sequential (or follow-up) autoresponders.

Here are some sites that offer free follow-up autoresponders:

http://www.auto-responders.net http://www.informationbyemail.com http://www.getresponse.com/orderfree.html http://www.rapidreply.net/free_features.htm

(5) Backend Sales: It's no secret that successful businesses make up to 80% of their sales from previous customers. Why? Because people who have bought from you before are much more likely to buy from you again (they know you, they trust you, they were happy with your product).

The hard work in marketing is getting a customer. Once you have a customer, they'll buy from you over and over again.

Contact your previous customers and let them know about another product that compliments the product or service they bought from you. Experts reckon that the value of 'a lifetime customer' lasts about 3 years - make use if it.

If you follow these 5 tips, you may well find that you can double your online sales with the traffic you already have.

To your success!

How To Generate Loads Of Free Traffic To Your Website

2006-10-05T05:36:00.000-07:00

One of the most popular ways to generate free traffic to your website these days is to use a free traffic exchange service.

A traffic exhange is website service that enables you to view someones website, and others in turn view yours. You earn credits when you view someones site,
and you use those credits to have others view your site.

Internet marketers would like to know how to bring traffic to their
websites quickly, without spending any money. Traffic exchanges can
accomplish this.

The greatest benefit comes in when you sign up others and receive
traffic from their efforts.

The different types of exchanges are start page exchanges,
manual surf, and auto surf.

The key is to join more than one exchange, it could be start page,
manual or auto surf exchange, and promote them to get referrals.

Go to any search engine such as yahoo or excite, and search for traffic
exchanges. There are hundreds, with new ones being established everyday.

With all the traffic exchanges you find from the searh engines,if you
join them,you will increase your traffic greatly.

Link Popularity for a Successful Website

2006-10-04T11:51:00.000-07:00

A classic way of getting seen and noticed on the web is to make sure your site is linked to as many other sites as possible. The strategy of link-exchange has been so overused and abused that search engines are now wary of it and may penalize sites that are linking to "link farms", or to any other sites with non-relevant content.

This is the way it should be. We all want our web browsing experience to be smooth and pleasant. We don't want to get frustrated by stumbling over irrelevant content while following links between sites. On the other hand, webmasters all want more traffic to their sites, and get frustrated when they don't get it. There are two types of benefits from having many links to your website:

- Get improved ranking by the search engines - if you are popular, you are probably worth a visit

- People (not just search bots) actually follow the links and find your site!

If done properly, link popularity improvement is an extremely important strategy to make your website successful. Broadly speaking, you can achieve this in a number of ways:

1. The classic link exchange (link swap) method; two webmasters agree to swap links

2. You pay to get incoming links from high-ranking websites

3. By writing articles and getting them posted on other websites; including a link to your own site

4. By getting your articles published in E-zines, with links back to your site

5. You participate in online forums, where a link to your site may be included with each post

6. You start a blog/RSS feed, and get it spread to many subscribers!

All these methods involve work, in varying amounts. Method #2. costs you money, the rest may be essentially no-cost. Method #4. will probably not contribute to search engine ranking, but may give you droves of targeted visitors.

The problem with method #1. is that it's tedious. But you can get software that may automate it by helping you find link partners and manage your link collection. I am aware of these software tools:

ARELIS I have tested this tool, and it seems very promising. It goes out and searches for link exchange partners according to different search methods which you specify. For me, looking for incoming links at sites similar to my own gave the best results. The program then quickly returned many relevant sites. Next, it helps you contact webmasters and keeps the link collection neatly organized. It also creates the link pages.

Zeus A bit similar to ARELIS, but I find it much clumsier. The only way it can search for link candidate sites is thru a list of 100+ search phrases. In my hands, this method produced very low-quality results. At the time of writing, I am trying to get a refund from the company that sells Zeus. They seem very reluctant to honour their money-back guarantee. Buyer beware!

Links Manager This program does not go out and search for link partner sites; it only handles swap requests and organizes the link collection. I have not tested it myself.

When building a link swap strategy, note that the search engines are getting increasingly sophisticated in judging the quality of your links. Some things to remember:

- Outbound links ONLY to quality sites with content relevant to your site; never "link farm" type sites

- Make sure the sites that you link to have not been penalized. This would affect you also!

- Incoming links that are placed on the same page as 100:s of other links won't help you; their value gets "diluted"

- The anchor text in the incoming links is very important. It should contain relevant keywords; but all links should not have identical text - this looks artificial in the virtual eyes of the search bots

If you follow these guidelines, I believe link swap can still be an important strategy for building a successful web presence.

How to Generate Traffic on a Zero Budget

2006-10-04T11:34:00.000-07:00

One of the most popular ways to generate free traffic to your website these days is to use a free traffic exchange service.

A traffic exchange is website service that enables you to view someone's website, and others in turn view yours. You earn credits when you view someone's site, and you use those credits to have others view your site. Internet marketers would like to know how to bring traffic to their websites quickly, without spending any money.

Traffic exchanges can accomplish this. The greatest benefit comes in when you sign up others and receive traffic from their efforts. The different types of exchanges are start page exchanges, manual surf, and auto surf.

The key is to join more than one exchange, it could be start page, manual or auto surf exchange, and promote them to get referrals.

Go to any search engine such as yahoo or excite, and search for traffic exchanges.

There are hundreds, with new ones being established everyday. With all the traffic exchanges you find from the search engines, if you join them, you will increase your traffic greatly.

How To Get Links Without Asking

2006-10-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

In a link building campaign, you have to find target websites in the first place, review them to decide if asking for a link is worthwhile, identify the contact person and send them a customized link request. If you can do all that in 15 minutes per request, you'll be doing very well. On that timing, you'll be able to send out 160 requests in a 40 hour week and with a success rate of say 10%, you'll get 16 links for your efforts.

Sending out link requests is a time-consuming business. So wouldn't it be wonderful if other sites linked to you without being asked?

Sound impossible? Well, it can be done and here are ten strategies to prove it. Why not start 2005 by making sure you use them?

Perhaps there is a better way to spend those 40 hours.

Sometimes the best way to get links is not to ask for them. That doesn't mean you should sit back, do nothing and wait for links to appear. Spend time creating content and making your site as attractive and easy to link to as possible. There are lots of things you can do to build your link popularity without sending out link requests.

Here are some suggestions:

1. Make it clear on your own website that you want links - ask for them directly and make it easy for people to link by writing the linking code for them (using keyword phrases in linking text of course). Explain why it will help: "If you've found this site useful, please link to us so that others can benefit".

2. Play an active part in online discussion groups and forums. Not only will you learn, but you'll become known and will spot the movers and shakers - and if your people post good opinions and helpful advice, people will link to you.

3. Publish a regular newsletter and republish the content on your website. Encourage people to link by asking, "if you've enjoyed this newsletter, you can link to the permanent version at (insert URL)".

4. Publish articles on other websites - ezines, information sites, media sites, even article banks. This works well. You can find site to submit articles to by doing a Google search, e.g. - intitle:"submit an article" business - this produces over 1,000 results. Spend time looking for niche ezines and newsletters that serve your market, scan the type of content they publish and adapt your writing to their style.

5. Create an interactive tool. My favourite of old was 'The longevity text'. You answered about 20 questions and the tool predicted at what age you would be likely to die. Irresistible - I still remember that my prediction was 83. The test was designed and published by an insurance company - could they have been trying to sell me a pension? A little bit of creativity in thinking about such tools will be time well spent and a good programmer will be able to create a tool in just a few hours.

6. Create great content. (OK, it's an old trick, but it still works) Just keep publishing great stuff. One of the best at this is search engine marketer and prolific writer Jill Whalen. Her weekly newsletter from http://www.high rankings.com is a model of consistency and genuine value to her many thousands of readers.

7. Submit your website to legitimate award sites. Mike Corso's Cool Site of the Day, http://www .coolsiteoftheday.com is a must together with any others you can find. You'd be surprised at how high your chances of success are.

8. Praise and link. When you find genuinely useful resources, write a short, complementary review together with a link. Then publish on your website and click on it just to make sure it ends up in your target's referrer logs. Larry Chase of Web Digest for Marketers publishers a monthly newsletter that reviews about 10 web resources - you'll find it at http://www.wdfm.com . A few days later he writes to each reviewed site and allows them to quote his comments in return for a link.

9. Become a source of quotes. Provide sharp, useful, timely quotes for the media. You can get yourself known and you'll find journalists will seek you out. Sign up for services such as http://www.prleads.c om ($99 per month) or the premium priced http://www.sourc ewire.com (£1,200 per annum).

10. Volunteer to become an editor for several directories. You'll be able to submit reviews of your own sites and you'll have opportunities to get to know your market better - that inevitably leads to more linking opportunities. Go beyond the obvious - as well as http://www.dmoz.org, try http://www.joeant.com, http://www.skaffe.com and http://www.web-beacon.com.

Sometimes we can get too wrapped up in sending out link requests. Steeping back and thinking of some creative ways to get people to link without being asked will be time well spent.

Google adsense the only alternative ?

2006-10-03T09:20:00.000-07:00

Today i discovered one interesting article for those who use adsense..Read next:

When Google launched AdSense for webmasters way back in June 2003, AdWords was still new, people had no clue what contextual advertising meant or how it worked, and most importantly, no one had provided a similar service for the average webmaster (like you and me) for free so far.

Two and half years later, things have changed. AdSense has become massive; more and more people everyday are buying into the possibility of earning money, serious money through Google AdSense. A lot of this has to do with the high competition for keywords on AdWords - as advertisers bid higher and higher, clicks on your site's AdSense ads become more and more valuable.

In addition, a large number of services have sprung up to offer similar advertising services. Other pay-per-click advertising sites have been quick to follow the Google model, offering contextual advertisements just like AdSense. What's more, alternative site advertising models have sprung up, most notable being the contextual algorithms used by Kontera and Vibrant Media, and the product advertising by Chitika, Commission Junction and CBProSense, amongst others.

Google AdSense is still the largest revenue network, and with AdWords being the most popular PPC program available, there's still great potential for AdSense revenue on your website. Still, you may feel like AdSense is not the thing for you. Maybe you don't like Google.

Or maybe, like me, you're looking to maximize the revenues from your website.In other words, you may have a number of reasons for looking at advertising alternatives to Google AdSense. In today's lesson I've picked out three serious alternatives for you to consider in place of AdSense.

These are:

Yahoo
Publisher Network (YPN)

Kontera

Chitika eMiniMalls

Each occupies a different "niche" within the site advertising model - and it's worth noting that all three may work best for one type of site, but not too well for others.

Yahoo
Publishers Network

Yahoo! Publisher Network (or YPN for short) is Yahoo's response to Google AdSense. In effect, YPN works almost exactly like AdSense - insert a piece of JavaScript code into your site pages, and then wait for the YPN bot to crawl your site and pretty soon you have contextually relevant ads being displayed on your site.

YPN is still in beta, and in terms of features, it shows as there are several features available in AdSense that seem to be missing in YPN (lesser ad format options, clunkier code generation, limited color palette options, a limit of 50 ad channels). However, YPN trumps AdSense with one feature that webmasters have been clamoring for ever since Google launched AdSense - the ability to transfer funds from YPN to Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM), provided that
you use the same login/email information on both accounts. This is huge in terms of attracting webmasters, but since YSM is still a few steps behind AdWords in popularity, Yahoo will need to do more to attract AdSense users.

My own tests coincide with what other search marketing experts have said about "Yahoo's AdSense" - results are too varied to determine which service delivers better ads or better CTR/CPM. If you want to switch over to YPN just because you want to increase your site revenues, I'd suggest that you test it out on a small section
of your site first.

Both YPN and AdSense have comparable ad relevancy and average earnings per click. This means that at least for now, your choice between the two might be based on something as simple as a preference for either search engine (or if you are actively involved in PPC advertising using YSM).

Kontera

If you own a high-quality content-rich site and enjoy considerable web traffic, you might want to consider a contextual, keyword-based advertising alternative to the AdSense model. Kontera provides such a non-obtrusive, highly effective solution. Kontera is unique in the sense that while it is provides ad banners similar to AdSense, it also uses keywords within your page text as ads - by underlining them and giving ads in the form of tool tips upon a mouse over of the underlined text (ad).

An example of such ads is on SEO Chat (which actually uses a similar service from a different company, Vibrant Media, mentioned later in this section). Load any article on SEO Chat, and you'll notice that certain keywords in the main article text are underlined. When you bring your mouse pointer over that keyword (don't click), a simple tool tip will appear.

(Kontera's AdLink page - explains how keyword-tagged advertising works)

Kontera's
biggest draw, in my view, is their qualification requirements (150,000 page views per month and 100+ words on a majority of the site pages) which ensure that only content-rich, high quality websites become members of their publishing network. 150,000 page views per month translates into 5,000 page views daily - let's face it, to get to that level of web traffic, you would need to put in some effort.

All in all,

the requirements serve to bring in only the best content sites into the program - sites that are focused on providing quality to the customers. In the end, this quality focus also translates into advertisers that are willing to pay big bucks to generate leads from theses sites, thus earning you high EPC (earnings per click) on average.

If you have a site that meets Kontera's requirements and are interested in seriously exploring unobtrusive, effective contextual advertising, then I would suggest that you snap up a copy of Joel Comm's Kontera Secrets and use it as your guide in implementing Kontera's advertising algorithms on your website. Selling at $47 (as of 18th Nov 2005), the e-book is a quick but extremely informative and invaluable read at just 29 pages.

For more information, visit www.kontera.com. You can also sign up directly through this link.

Another option in contextual, keyword-tagged advertising in Vibrant Media. It offers similar services to Kontera, with one important distinction - its minimum qualification is 500,000 page views per month. Vibrant Media is the company that powers the ads on SEO Chat.

Chitika

Strictly speaking,
Chitika is a product-advertising service that uses both contextual and keyword specific advertising (you can choose one of two) to display product information on your website. Revenue is generated through leads (i.e. clicks), and Chitika pays website owners 60% of their revenue (e.g. if an advertiser bids $1 for an ad for Nike running shoes, and a visitor on your site clicks on that ad, you get $.60).

Chitika ads
are better known as eMiniMalls - a reference to how convenient it becomes for users to browse through the product advertisement while remaining on your site. This is better seen than explained, so make sure you check the "demo" on the front page of www.chitika.com.

eMiniMalls an be configured to run both contextually or by manually specifying keywords. Contextual advertising is great if you have a highly targeted content site but if you are just looking to put up ads in a few product review pages (or if you just want to test out eMiniMalls), you can also manually specify keywords for which to show ads. The keyword option also allows you to run eMiniMalls alongside AdSense and YPN (as both prohibit the use of other contextual advertising running simultaneously with their ads).

A key point to keep in mind when trying out Chitika is that running "product ads" on your website (no matter how informative they might be) is that you have to do your research on which products and keywords have the best paying ads. Otherwise, if the coffeemaker ads on your coffee secrets website only pay you $.05 per click, you might want to switch to something else.

To learn more

about Chitika eMiniMalls, read the Chitika
FAQ, or go to the main Chitika
website and try it out on your website.

Before
You Test

Remember that if you display too many ads on your website, you will lose the trust of your visitors. Also, once it becomes obvious that you're trying to sell to people, it immediately brings up psychological barriers - Just as people are now starting to ignore AdWords listings in search engines, your ads may well be ignored if they get into your visitors' faces.

All
the best,

first blog

2006-10-03T08:11:00.000-07:00

hmm..fireworks ...my blog is on