Search Engine Optimization : Content And Page Ranking

Everyone on the internet trying to explain what makes a good site will say to you, 'Content is King' and 'You need good content'. However, not every website owner understands how content affects their rankings in the natural organic search results of search engines. In fact, if you look around the web you will notice tons of sites with no real content, duplicated content, or that bore you to tears. What most people don't realize, though, is that good content does more than just keep your visitors interested and give you a good site. It will also help you promote your website.

Many search engines ignore the traditional method of reading META tags for keywords and descriptions, as these are often abused by users. Instead, search engines like Google now read the whole web page and use it to generate matches. It stands to reason therefore, that your website needs quality, keyword rich content, not only to keep the interest of visitors but to increase your search rankings as well.

Further, good content will often attract other websites to link to your content and this will bring in even more visitors to your site. Links to your pages will also boost your page ranking on Google. That’s importance because page ranking is one of the criteria by which Google decides where in the natural organic listings your site will appear.
Choose Your Keywords

Choosing keywords is more than picking search terms that receive heavy search traffic. An effective keyword will have relevancy, high search rates and most importantly the people searching will be interested in your product or service. There are a number of free keyword tools that can help you research keywords and phrases more effectively. One such tool is available at http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/ and will query both Wordtracker and Overture.

Both Wordtracker and Overture gather data from the search engines and can tell you how often a particular keyword is searched. An excellent starting point is obviously finding a highly searched phrase. Though, remember numbers alone don’t equate to quality. Your keywords must be targeted towards two audiences. The first is the market you are reaching for while the second is the search engines themselves. That being the case you want to carefully choose keywords that will allow you to rank highly in the search results for phrases that are being used by buyers to find the products and services you offer.

Write Keyword Rich Content

The cheapest way to generate content is to write it yourself. Writing quality content takes a lot of time, and you will need thorough knowledge of your subject to be able to write effectively on it. If you have the skills and time to generate content, though, this is really the best route to take. Alternately, you could save time by having someone else write your content but you would lose a certain amount of control plus may incur high cost. Whichever method you eventually choose the one thing you want to do when writing content is focus on your keywords and phrases.
Search Engine friendly content will directly target a keyword or phrase. You start by using keywords and phrases in the title. In the contents body you will also want to repeat the keywords and phrases you are focusing on. The last thing you should do and something many websites fail at is narrowly targeting your pages content. By that I mean choose one or a few keywords and phrases on a page and build the content around them. By doing this you will see more of your pages index and they will index at a higher rank.

Conclusion

Originality and keyword density in your website’s content will ensure that your website indexes well on the search engines. Good content should also help your website increase its amount of backlinks and conduct other important parts of a successful Search Engine Marketing Campaign. However
good your design or however fast your site, people and increasingly search engines come for content, and that is what you should be giving them.
This free SEO article is brought to you by http://www.articlevista.com
www.firstwebsearch.com

Search Engine Optimization As A Marketing Strategy

SEO or search engine optimization is one of the most commonly used methods to increase the volume and the quality of the traffic to a website. Using relevant content, internal linking, and incoming links from outside the website, potentially any search engine can index a website for terms your company finds important so your website will appear in the natural search results of a search engine results page (SERP) and thus, is an important weapon for Internet marketing.

There are many criteria search engines use to rank websites, and not all search engines put the same weight on each criteria. Generally, the earlier the website’s domain has been active, the more likely that the page rank will be higher. Also, text links within the website using the keyword phrases you find important are also good tools to use. SEO can work in a number of different ways besides just showing up in search engine results. It can also be used to guide the writing and placement of your content, as search engines that find your content useful from their point of view has a better chance of being useful from the visitor’s point of view.

SEO can also stand for search engine optimizers, which refers to the people who work as consultants to perform search engine optimization. Search engine optimizers can work as a sole service provider as well as a part of a whole marketing team. SEO techniques can be a part of the designing and development of the website as sometimes, it may require some changes in the HTML codes of the website. Some of the basic components of SEO are web designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts, because these can be optimized easily.

Top ranking of a website in more than one search engines does not mean more sales for the websites. The technique only works in conjunction with clearly defined goals for what visitors will do when they come to the site. In other words, your website must have a clear call to action. Therefore, a business that is mainly depended on search engine traffic can suffer a lot if there is not an accompanying website designed to engage the visitors upon arrival. As a part of Internet marketing strategy, SEO increases a site's traffic so your message gets out there. Your job is to also makes sure you have a clear message when the visitors find you.
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Mark B. York is the CEO of Vertical Warfare, Inc. an Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization Company located on Long Island, N.Y. More Information - www.verticalwarfare.com www.verticalwarfare.com/seo.html

Search Engines And The Small Business Website

If you're doing any type of business on the internet than search engines like Google and Yahoo! could play a large role in the success or failure of your business. Even though most internet user have experience using search engines, many don't know how the engines work.

For website owners it is important to understand how, at least at a high level, search engines work so they can take advantage of the website traffic that only search engines can deliver.

Search Engines are special sites on the Web that are designed to help people find information stored on other sites. There are differences in the ways various Search Engines work, but they all perform three basic tasks:

- They search the Internet or select pieces of the Internet based on important words,
- They keep an index of the words they find, and where they find them, and
- They allow users to look for words or combinations of words found in that index.

Early Search Engines held an index of a few hundred thousand pages and documents, and received maybe one or two thousand inquiries each day. Today, a top Search Engine will index hundreds of millions of pages, and respond to tens of millions of queries per day.

Before a Search Engine can tell you where a file or document is, it must be found. To find information on the hundreds of millions of Web pages that exist, a Search Engine employs special software robots, called spiders, to build lists of the words found on Web sites.

When a spider is building its lists, the process is called web crawling.

In order to build and maintain a useful list of words, a Search Engine's spiders have to look at a lot of pages. How does any spider start its travels over the Web? The usual starting points are lists of heavily used servers and very popular pages. The spider will begin with a popular site, indexing the words on its pages and following every link found within the site. In this way, the spidering system quickly begins to travel, spreading out across the most widely used portions of the Web.

To increase the likelyhood that the spiders find your website make sure you are listed on high ranked websites like Merchant Circle. You can create a free business page and blog that will not only increase your chances of being found but also be another place for potential visitors to find about about your website.

Once the spiders have completed the task of finding information on Web pages, the Search Engine must store the information in a way that makes it useful. There are two key components involved in making the gathered data accessible to users:

- The information stored with the data, and
- The method by which the information is indexed.

In the simplest case, a Search Engine could just store the word and the URL where it was found. In reality, this would make for an engine of limited use, since there would be no way of telling whether the word was used in an important or a trivial way on the page, whether the word was used once or many times or whether the page contained links to other pages containing the word. In other words, there would be no way of building the ranking list that tries to present the most useful pages at the top of the list of search results.

To make for more useful results, most Search Engines store more than just the word and URL. A Search Engine might store the number of times that the word appears on a page. The engine might assign a weight to each entry, with increasing values assigned to words as they appear near the top of the document, in sub-headings, in links, in the META tags or in the title of the page. Each commercial Search Engine has a different formula for assigning weight to the words in its index. This is one of the reasons that a search for the same word on different Search Engines will produce different lists, with the pages presented in different orders.

You can get a customized Page Critic Analysis Report from Webs 4 Small Business that tells you how YOUR webpages should be set up to make sure give the search engines what they are looking for when they review your page.

An index has a single purpose: it allows information to be found as quickly as possible. There are quite a few ways for an index to be built, but one of the most effective ways is to build a hash table. In hashing, a formula is applied to attach a numerical value to each word.

The formula is designed to evenly distribute the entries across a predetermined number of divisions. This numerical distribution is different from the distribution of words across the alphabet, and that is the key to a hash table's effectiveness.

When a person requests a search on a keyword or phrase, the Search Engine software searches the index for relevant information. The software then provides a report back to the searcher with the most relevant web pages listed first.

Not sure what keywords you should use? Picking the right, or wrong ones, can make or break your chances at online success. Consider getting a customized Key Word Report from Webs 4 Small Business that tells you which keywords you should and should not consider for your site. These keywords are specific to YOUR website not a generic list of keywords.

So, why are search engines important to business website owners? Simple. You need traffic and Search Engines have lots of it. And, their purpose is to drive traffic to sites that they think match their visitors' needs.

The way to get a portion of that traffic, is to optimize your website (you've likely heard of Search Engine Optimization or SEO). That way when a someone searches for a keyword that is relevant to your website, the search engines includes a link to your website in the search results. That puts traffic and potential visitors just a click away from you website.
This free SEO article is brought to you by http://www.articlevista.com
Visit Webs 4 Small Business at www.Webs4SMB.com to learn more about how we can help you optimize your website. You can also 'jump to the first of the line' with Paid Search Engine listings. Find out how you can get Guaranteed Website Traffic from search engines at www.webs4smb.com/guaranteed-traffic/guaranteed-website-traffic.htm - For more tips on how to market a small business website visit internet.marketer.handbook.blogspot.com

A Classified Way to Drive Business to Your Website

There are more than 105 million of them in the United States. Worldwide, there could be at least 250 million of them. Them, according to statistics from the Nielsen/Net Ratings service, is the number of active Web surfers. 250 million in the whole world? The figure is more than the populations of Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and a few non-English speaking countries combined. That's a lot of them!

With so many active surfers around, you would think Webmasters and site owners have an easy time attracting them. Actually, they face an uphill battle to bring visitors and, more importantly, consumers to their Web sites. And a Web site without traffic is like a store built in the middle of the desert. You could have the greatest products and most attractive Web design around, but they're worthless if no one visits them.

There is one way, however, to turn your Web site into an oasis of business, a way to drive as much traffic to your site as your server can handle: a classified ad.

More on that later. First, all Web builders and site owners should know the basic and time-tested ways to attract traffic to their Web site. The key to all of these methods is to attract the right Web surfers. You want what experts call "targeted visitors," or people who are actually interested in what you're selling. To guarantee that this happens, you should follow this checklist of Web traffic golden rules:

Step 1: Optimize your Web pages.
Webmasters in the know take the time to set their meta tags. These tags, or codes, are hidden keywords in the Web page that tell search engines like Google and Yahoo exactly what your site is all about. A meta tag, for instance, could be "designer handbags," "sporting equipment," or whatever else you happen to be selling. These keywords tell the search engine to direct all handbag or sports shoppers to your site.

Step 2: List your site with every search engine out there.
For this step, you simply need to surf over to Google, AltaVista, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines. Click onto their customer service page, where they allow Web builders and site owners to manually submit their site addresses.

Step 3. Spice up your site with interactive features.
With articles, newsletters, offers, promotions, and discounts, you give your targeted visitors a reason to stay at your site once they find it. More importantly, you give them reasons to come back and tell their friends about the site. Word of mouth is one of the best, and cheapest, forms of advertising on the planet.

Step 4. Exchange banner ads with friends and with other companies that you do business with.
Banner ads are those eye-catching designs at the top and bottom of Web pages. They're like the billboards of the Internet superhighway. But with these online billboards, a simple click transports the Web surfer directly to your Web site.

Step 5. Exchange Web links with friends and business associates.
This, Webmasters and site owners, could be the most important way to drive Web traffic to your site. All of the major search engines rank sites by measuring how many links come to and leave from your Web site.

So links are a way to measure how worthwhile and how legitimate your site is. The better this measurement, the better chance your site will have to show up well in Web surfers' searches. In other words, these links could be the difference between your site being listed on page 20 of a Google search results, or on page 1.

Building better Web links and search engine results-that's where classified sites come into play. Some of the most savvy classified sites on the market now offer Web links in their ads. These links lead right to your business' home page.

Not only are these links convenient one-click ways for more customers to reach your site. They also boost your search engine rankings.

Of course, for business owners, classified sites have so many other benefits, too.

· Unparalleled exposure. Classified sites are like online malls. Not only will you get exposure from shoppers coming specifically to find your goods. You get "spill over" attention from shoppers who came for another item but then start browsing through all of the other ads in the classified "mall."
· A new arsenal of Web sites. Having online classified ads is like setting up multiple new Web sites across the Internet. Unlike your own original site, these classified ads come with low-cost IT support, security, and advertising.
· Incredible growth opportunities. Businesses and individuals selling on online classified sites pull in more than $1.95 billion a year, according to the statistics firm Kelsey Group. That figure does not even include money from eBay.
· Money for nothing. As valuable as classified sites are, many of the best ones charge very little or absolutely nothing to set up your ads.

Add up all of these numbers-250 million active Web surfers in the world, $1.95 billion in classified sales, and $0 cost-and your Web business is sure to come out in the positive.

Author Bio
Donald Lee is the public relations manager for Buysellcommunity.com. Buysellcommunity provides free classified listing services for individuals and businesses to market their products and services online. For global and localized classifieds, please visit http://www.buysellcommunity.com - Free Buy & Sell Classifieds
Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com - Free Website Content

Writing Articles that Captivate Your Readers

You've heard it time and time again: if you want to get your name out there, write articles and allow them to be freely reproduced (with a resource box pointing back to you, of course). Largely, that is true. A well-written article can:
· help you build your profile as an expert
· draw traffic to your site, and
· help you to build a database of potential clients through associated e-courses or a newsletter.
So far you probably haven't heard anything you didn't already know. What YOU are likely to be struggling with is the process of actually writing the article. Sure, you can come up with the content - but how do you really grab those readers? How do you keep their attention all the way through? And most importantly, how do you make them want to come back for more?

Let's assume that you understand the basics of constructing and editing an article (it has a beginning, middle, and an end and you know how to check the grammar and spelling.) Most of us can manage that. But if you're not content with simply "getting something out there" - if you want to WIN readers - then you need to start thinking about what they want to know, rather than what you want to tell them.

Put your readers first - every time. Give them what they want, and they'll be queuing up to read anything you produce. Give them something bland (or worse, blatantly self-serving) and they'll blast by you so fast you'll be spinning in the back draft.

The following four steps will give you a blueprint for writing articles that captivate your readers - whatever the topic.

1. Find Out What Your Readers Really Want
Sometimes you'll know what they want because you're an expert in the field, and understand the problems. If you don't know the subject area well, you'll have to do more research. Look for forums on your topic and see what people are discussing. What are the problems that need solving? Can you provide an answer? ("If they have a headache, give them an aspirin.")

2. Start With An Attention-Grabber
Spend time working on your opening. Try to avoid trite questions like "Have you ever wondered why so many people find it difficult to lose weight?" Firstly, it's dull. Secondly, it's not targeting the person reading the article - what do they care about the difficulties "many people" have with losing weight? They only care about THEIR weight problem!

Try to come up with an opening paragraph that gives the reader that warm "Hey, this is about me!" feeling right away. Better still; try to generate a rush of excitement - "This could be the answer I've been looking for..."

Example: "The diet gurus make it all sound so easy: to lose weight, all you have to do is expend more energy than you take in. Huh! If it were that simple, the "Big People" stores would be out of business in a heartbeat. Luckily for those of us who are tired of diets, gyms and dull group meetings, there is a back-to-basics way to tackle this. A way that won't cost you a fortune or leave you feeling deprived."

3. Write As You Speak... Then Edit!
The sample opening above also illustrates the importance of the tone you use in your article. You need 'meat' in each article, of course, to make it worth reading - but make sure it's not indigestible!

You're better off writing your article in a natural, relaxed style that's akin to normal conversation. It doesn't matter if the first draft is a little too informal - you can fix that when you edit. Naturally you don't want to irritate your readers with a too-breezy style, but too-formal is worse. Readers may want facts, tips, and strategies, but they hope to be entertained, too! Let your personality shine through.

4. End On A High
What's one of the biggest problems with most articles? They fizzle out! Writers often don't know how to end on an upbeat note. They either just stop dead or they come up with a trite ending like: "So what are you waiting for? Get started today!"

The beginning and the end of your article are the two parts that make the biggest impression. Start by creating a feeling of anticipation... and leave them feeling satisfied (or excited) when you finish.

If you are offering advice to help them solve a problem (like obesity) gives your readers a reason to feel optimistic and good about them. Don't make rash promises... but do offer hope. If you are giving hints on marketing or business, sum up the benefits of acting on your tips. You can also experiment with using a pithy/humorous quote, or giving readers a specific action to get them started. Be creative - and don't rush it.

Here's a final tip: create an article-writing cheat-sheet for yourself. Divide it into beginnings/middles/ends and add more useful strategies as you think of them. (For example, using the tips in this article, you might write: ENDINGS - end on a high, offer hope, use funny quote, suggest action to get started.)

Do this, and you'll be steadily cranking out articles that everyone wants to publish!

Author Bio
Article by Terry Jackson. Terry is the webmaster of, www.webmarketingpro.biz, a free resource for web site promotion and search engine optimization. Please visit his site for more free tips and tutorials on building traffic and generating income on your site.
Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com - Free Website Content

Free Traffic

If you're an online marketer and own a website, you know what free traffic means. You also know there's really no such thing as free. There are free traffic exchanges that allow you to get free traffic to your website or promotion, but you must spend your time surfing through other websites to earn credits. Free traffic exchanges are a great way to get lots of visitors to your site however, so spending an hour a day surfing, is not a lot to ask if you're making sales from your efforts.

Free traffic exchanges are a great marketing tool for a many reasons. The best reason is that you get lots of people looking, and hopefully clicking on your website or promotional pages. But there are hidden benefits to free traffic exchanges you may not have even considered.

Search engines love free traffic exchanges because of all the incoming and outgoing links they generate. Plus the rapidly changing content is another reason the search engines love traffic exchanges. Exchanges that have more content also generate a higher page rank, and therefore more traffic, and increased memberships. The key is to find exchanges that are very active and have lots of members. The more members they have, the more potential customers you get looking at your offer and your chances for sales conversions are that much better. But bigger isn't always better.

Some free traffic exchanges may convert sales like crazy for one person, and be a complete waste of time for another. If everyone were promoting the same website or affiliate program is the same traffic exchange for example, then chances are you would not make many sales. Even if you were promoting the #1 thing on the internet, if everyone promoted the same program, your chances are much lower that someone will purchase through your website or link to make you any money. Also, when people see the same ad over and over again, they get desensitized to it. Don't fall into this trap. It's one thing to try and sell a very popular product/service/ebook etc, but it's another thing when a million other people are trying to do it too. Competition is a good thing, because it validates your market, but too much competition is tough and it's time to move on to something else.

We all know clicking on ads in a free traffic exchange can be very boring, monotonous and can take a lot of time. That's why you need to make the best of your opportunity or you will just be wasting a lot of your time and effort on something that just isn't working. If you have your own niche website, then you already differentiated yourself from the pack. If you are an affiliate marketer, then you need to find products/services that everyone else isn't promoting, especially within that particular traffic exchange.

One way to use free traffic exchanges to your advantage is to join a few at first, and see if your sales pick up. If your sales aren't doing well, then test out a few more. When you do find a few traffic exchanges that appear to be generating sales for you, then narrow those down until you find the one, or two that are working. Now concentrate your efforts on those because they're the ones you want. At least for now anyway. Things may change, so keep an eye on your campaigns and if sales seem to be falling off, then it might be time to change your offer or find another traffic exchange that could pick your profits up again.

As I mentioned, your individual promotion is everything. If you're trying to promote something everyone else is, I don't care what traffic exchange service you're using, your sales conversions are going to be very low, or nothing at all. You cannot always blame the exchange. Sometimes you have to look at yourself and think if you're doing all you can to make sales.

If you're going to use multiple free traffic exchanges, and I recommend that you do, you should get yourself a multi-tab web browser. Many of these browsers are free and run on PCs and MACs. The tabs feature allows you to have one web browser open with multiple tabs each going to a separate website. You could easily put 5 or 6 of your free exchange sites in these tabs, and earn credits for all of them at the same time. So instead of surfing for 1/2 an hour or an hour earning 200 hits for one exchange, you could earn 200 hits for 5 exchanges in the same amount of time. This is a huge time saver and multiplies your earned hits by 5X or 6X.

Getting free traffic to your website is a lot of work. If you don't have the money to spend on full blown PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns like Google AdWords, free traffic exchanges are a great way to get the traffic you need at a very good price. Free!

Author Bio
Andrew Daigle is owner and creator of TrumpTraffic.com, a Free Traffic Exchange www.trumptraffic.com, DXInOne Free Training Site and Forum www.dxout.com and Google AdWords Training www.adwording.com
Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com - Free Website Content

What is a Free Traffic Exchange ?

A free traffic exchange offers webmasters the ability to promote their websites or affiliate marketing campaigns for free, or at very low cost. The idea is to surf around other members websites, and for each viewing, you get so many of your own URLs and banners added into the rotation for other members to view. There are hundreds, if not thousands of free traffic exchanges online today. The trick is to find the ones that work best for you. Not all free traffic exchanges are created equal and the most active ones are not necessarily the best ones for your needs.

Free traffic exchanges are a great marketing tool for a variety of reasons. The most obvious reason is that you get lots of people looking, and hopefully clicking on your website or promotional pages. But there are hidden benefits to free traffic exchanges you may not have even considered.

Search engines love free traffic exchanges because of all the incoming and outgoing links they generate. Plus the rapidly changing content is another reason the search bots love these things. Exchanges that have more content also generate a higher pagerank, and therefore more traffic, and increased memberships. The key is to find exchanges that are very active and have lots of members. The more members they have, the more potential customers you get looking at your offer and your chances for sales conversions are that much better. But bigger isn't always better.

Some free traffic exchanges may convert sales like crazy for one person, and be a complete waste of time for another. If everyone were promoting the same website or affiliate program is the same traffic exchange for example, then chances are you would not make many sales. Even if you were promoting the #1 thing on the internet, if everyone promoted the same program, your chances are much lower that someone will purchase through your website or link to make you any money. Also, when people see the same ad over and over again, they get desensitized to it. Don't fall into this trap. It's one thing to try and sell a very popular product/service/ebook etc, but it's another thing when a million other people are trying to do it too. Competition is a good thing, because it validates your market, but too much competition is tough and it's time to move on to something else.

We all know clicking on ads in a free traffic exchange can be very boring, monotonous and can take a lot of time. That's why you need to make the best of your opportunity or you will just be wasting a lot of your time and effort on something that just isn't working. If you have your own niche website, then you already differentiated yourself from the pack. If you are an affiliate marketer, then you need to find products/services that everyone else isn't promoting, especially within that particular traffic exchange.

One way to use free traffic exchanges to your advantage is to join a few at first, and see if your sales pick up. If your sales aren't doing well, then test out a few more. When you do find a few traffic exchanges that appear to be generating sales for you, then narrow those down until you find the one, or two that are working. Now concentrate your efforts on those because they're the ones you want. At least for now anyway. Things may change, so keep an eye on your campaigns and if sales seem to be falling off, then it might be time to change your offer or find another traffic exchange that could pick your profits up again.

As I mentioned, your individual promotion is everything. If you're trying to promote something everyone else is, I don't care what traffic exchange service you're using, your sales conversions are going to be very low, or nothing at all. You cannot always blame the exchange. Sometimes you have to look at yourself and think if you're doing all you can to make sales.

If you're going to be using multiple free traffic exchanges, and I recommend that you do, your first priority should be to pick up a multi-tab web browser. Many of these browsers are free and run on PCs and MACs. The tabs feature allows you to have one web browser open with multiple tabs each going to a separate website. You could easily put 5 or 6 of your free exchange sites in these tabs, and earn credits for all of them at the same time. So instead of surfing for 1/2 an hour or an hour earning 200 hits for one exchange, you could earn 200 hits for 5 exchanges in the same amount of time. This is a huge time saver and multiplies your earned hits by 5X or 6X.
Getting free traffic to your website is a lot of work. If you don't have the money to spend on full blown PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns like Google AdWords, free traffic exchanges are a great way to get the traffic you need.

Author Bio
Andrew Daigle is owner and creator of TrumpTraffic.com, a Free Traffic Exchange www.trumptraffic.com , DXInOne Free Training Site and Forum www.dxout.com and Google AdWords Training www.adwording.com
Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com - Free Website Content

Promoting Your Website

6 Proven Strategies to Promoting Your Website
There's a proven way to make money online, you can do this by selling information or knowledge you have.

The great part is you'll be your own boss. You're work from your home, while earning money on line. Isn't this fun?
But to successful, you'll need to promote your website.
Make a comprehensive marketing plan that where you've clearly identified your markets and how to appeal to them. You'll also need to work closely with your web team to optimize your website, so your business connects with both the human audience and content spiders.
But remember - you can only do some much promotions and marketing before you fall flat on your nose. Be sure you have the following elements present in your website.

To promote your website successfully, you need to have great products and services. Otherwise, they will come in to look but won't buy. Your promotional efforts will be a total waste.
Make sure your website is perfectly positioned, to sell and process orders. If your e-commerce aspect is not secure, then no one will buy. No matter how many great products you have. No matter how many links you swap with, promoting your website will just be a waste of time.

Third element - internet marketing, means you need a marketing plan which clearly speaks to your audience. Make sure that it's at a price you can afford. If you spend too much on your promotional efforts, only to have it die down because of lack of funds, you will lose your momentum. So stick to a promotional budget you can afford.
So how do you promote your website?

Website design

Keep your website design basic and user friendly. This means minimizing the use of animation or outlandish colors. Make sure your content has the appropriate keywords in them, so that search engines can read and put you at the upper top of the rankings.

Optimizing your website for search engine rankings

Make it a point to submit your website to two of the most popular and heavily used crawler based search engines - Yahoo and Google. If your promotional budget is small, make sure it's keyword rich. Then submit, wait patiently for a few months before it to appear. Or you can do a sponsored listing if you have a bigger promotional budget.
Submit your website to directories. This is free; and many seo experts say you'll dramatically increase your chances of appearing at the top of the search engine results. Try these directories: MSN, Yahoo, Google, AltaVista and Inktomi, for starters.

Do swap links with other websites. Only after, you've researched their websites to see if you're a fit for each other. Some will refuse to swap links, but don't let it throw you. Just keep trying.
Post authoritative comments about subjects you are knowledgeable about. A majority of these forums give you the freedom to put your URL at the bottom do so.

Lastly - write articles about subjects you are an expert on. Submit these articles to the directories that have big audiences. Include your URL and byline. Soon, you'll get the traffic you need, because of the promotional efforts you've done.

Author Bio
Not long ago, I didn't know ANYTHING about Internet marketing... However, within just 2 weeks, I launched my own website AND learned how to profit from an opt-in list, pull in sales with ezines, make money with Google Adwords and setup my own BLOG!
Here's how: www.PlugInProfitSite.com/main-9583
Here's the website:
www.JennerJohnHomeBusiness.com
Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com - Free Website Content

10 Costly Search Engine Mistakes to Avoid

If you have a website then you already know the importance of traffic. Traffic is to Internet marketing as location is to real estate. It's the only thing that really matters. If you cannot generate targeted visitors to your site, you will not make any sales.

Usually the owner or designer of the website is the person designated to drive traffic to the site. The chief ingredient in generating traffic is the search engine. Of coarse, you can use advertising, but it's going to cost you. Using the search engines to generate targeted (interested in your product) traffic is the least expensive method known.

Unfortunately, many website owners do not understand the importance of search engine visibility, which leads to traffic. They place more importance on producing a "pretty" website. Not that this is bad, but it is really secondary to search engine placement. Hopefully, the following list of common mistakes, made by many website owners, will help you generate more targeted traffic to your site...after all, isn't that what you want.

1. Not using keywords effectively.
This is probably one of the most critical area of site design. Choose the right keywords and potential customers will find your site. Use the wrong ones and your site will see little, if any, traffic.

2. Repeating the same keywords.
When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking) the search engines may downgrade (or skip) the page or site.

3. Robbing pages from other websites.
How many times have you heard or read that "this is the Internet and it's ok" to steal icons and text from websites to use on your site. Don't do it. Its one thing to learn from others who have been there and another to outright copy their work. The search engines are very smart and usually detect page duplication. They may even prevent you from ever being listed by them.

4. Using keywords that are not related to your website.
Many unethical website owners try to gain search engine visibility by using keywords that have nothing at all to do with their website. They place unrelated keywords in a page (such as "sex", the name of a known celebrity, the hot search topic of the day, etc.) inside a meta tag for a page. The keyword doesn't have anything to do with the page topic. However, since the keyword is popular, they think this will boost their visibility. This technique is considered spam by the search engines and may cause the page (or sometimes the whole site) to be removed from the search engine listing.

5. Keyword stuffing.
Somewhat like keyword stacking listed above, this means to assign multiple keywords to the description of a graphic or layer that appears on your website by using the "alt=" HTML parameter. If the search engines find that this text does not really describe the graphic or layer it will be considered spam.

6. Relying on hidden text.
You might be inclined to think that if you cannot see it, it doesn't hurt. Wrong.... Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them invisible. For example, some unethical designers my set the keywords to the same color as the background of the web page; thereby, making it invisible.

7. Relying on tiny text.
This is another version of the item above (relying on hidden text). Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them tiny. Setting the text size of the keywords so small that it can barely be seen does this.

8. Assuming all search engines are the same.
Many people assume that each search engine plays by the same rules. This is not so. Each has their own rule base and is subject to change anytime they so desire. Make it a point to learn what each major search engine requires for high visibility.

9. Using free web hosting.
Do not use free web hosting if you are really serious about increasing site traffic via search engine visibility. Many times the search engines will eliminate content from these free hosts.

10. Forgetting to check for missing web page elements.
Make sure to check every page in your website for completeness, like missing links, graphics, etc. There are sites on the web that will do this for free.

This is just a few of the methods and techniques that you should avoid. Do not give in to the temptation that these methods will work for you. They will do more harm than good for your website.
Not only will you spend weeks of wasted effort, you may have your site banned from the search engines forever. Invest a little time to learn the proper techniques for increasing search engine visibility and your net traffic will increase.

Author Bio
Brad Eden is a Entrepreneurial Sciences expert with 14 years of industry experience in real estate, marketing and technical communication. He currently consults with IBM in CA. Brad owns & operates a free traffic resource for entrepreneurs. americanfreetraffic.com
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7 Steps To Running a Killer Link Exchanging Campaign

It's no secret that one of the best ways to get traffic online is to trade links with other related websites. Not only does this help you get targeted traffic, but it helps with your search engine optimization as well.
Well, there's a right way to link exchange and a wrong way, if you want the most out of your linking, then be sure to follow these 7 steps:

1. Develop a spreadsheet file (in Excel) and create the following columns:
Website URL
E-mail
Contact Name
Website PR (we'll talk about how to figure this out in a minute)
Contact 1
Response to Contact 1
Contact 2
Response to Contact 2
Contact 3
Response to Contact 3

2. Finding a Website's PR.
Go to Google and download the free toolbar. This toolbar has a feature on it that will tell you the PR for any website you visit. If you plan on optimizing your website for search engines, this tool is a MUST.

3. Choosing websites to link to.
Go to any search engine and start typing in keywords for which you'd like to rank highly. Visit each website and add them to your excel file. Once you hit 50 websites, spend some time contacting them. We recommend contacting each website personally and not using any automated software (it's very easy to see when someone uses software).
There are many programs out there that will do a mass link exchange mailing, but we strongly advise you NOT to use them (at least in the beginning). These programs can get you in a lot of trouble with SPAM laws. Also, if each email is personal, you are MUCH more likely to get a link back.

4. Write your contact email.
Make sure to address the email to someone specific. Always insert some details that you enjoyed about the site. It's evidence that you actually visited the site and made a conscious decision to link to it.
Briefly introduce your website, and send them the URL of your link to their site. Finally, ask for a link back to your site.
TIP: Give them specific directions on how to link back to you, what keywords to use, and what URL to link to. It always helps to give them the exact HTML coding that they would need.

5. Respond to replies.
If you get an acceptance of your offer: Thank them, and add them to a separate Excel file. This will become a list of people you will constantly stay in touch with (to submit articles, free viral reports, etc.). Register the reply in your "Reply to Contact 1" section. This way you will know NOT to send a follow-up email.
If the person rejects your offer: Add that note to your Excel file so that you don't contact them again. A good technique is to highlight that entire row with a red highlighter so there's no danger of a mistake.
If you get no reply: Follow step 6.

6. Send follow-up e-mails.
Wait one week to follow-up with those who have not replied. This is the second contact. In this e-mail, state that you wrote to them the prior week. Rephrase the email to keep it fresh.
Wait for replies, then repeat Step 5. Do not contact a "no-reply" website a third time unless you have a very good reason to.

7. Find more web sites.
After finishing your initial batch of 50, repeat the process for another 50. Once you begin getting incoming links, you will slowly start seeing similar "link exchange requests" coming to you. This will decrease your leg work.
There you have it, those are the 7 simple steps to starting an effective link exchanging campaign. Remember, a small percentage actually accept and respond, that's OK. The trick to getting lots of links is to send lots of requests so make this a daily habit.

Author Bio
This article has been authored by Anik Singal, an extremely successful and young internet entrepreneur and affiliate marketing consultant. Anik has developed his own affiliate marketing system that helped him earn over $10,466 in 60 days – Enroll in his FREE course today... www.AffiliateClassroom.com/free-course.html
Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com

The 3 Best Website Traffic Sources

Not a day goes by that any serious website owner doesn't wonder how to get more traffic to their site.

This intense desire to generate more clicks makes virtually any online entrepreneur easy prey to many of the traffic schemes and scams that pervade the Internet like conmen on a carnival midway.
Promises of fast traffic and big bucks often separate even the most savvy business person from their money because they want to believe the promises made by these traffic hucksters.

However, rather than thinking "complicated equals better" in the traffic game, the best website traffic sources rate extremely easy to separate from the useless garbage traffic.
Fact: "Good Traffic" equals "Targeted Traffic!"

That means the visitors come as a result of desire to find out more on a specific, niche topic, not as a result of "exit" traffic or membership in a "safe" list where members simply pitch each other in an incestuous spam fest.

Good traffic comes from people clicking links on topics targeted to their interests and getting directed to a website containing information they want and expect as a result of clicking the link.
Bottom line, when you get right down to it, the best, most dependable sources of targeted traffic come from links that people click.

So, next time you're considering spending money on a traffic source, understand that unless it involves a targeted link that a targeted visitor can click to get to your website, think twice before opening up your wallet.

To my knowledge, only three ways exist to get a link to your site: buy it, "voodoo" it, or grow it.
** Buy Links **
Buying links actually rates the fastest way to get traffic to your website.

You simply sign up for Google AdWords at Google.com or you open an account with Overture.com.
You then run ads with a link on those sites and any time someone clicks the link, you pay for the click through a relatively straightforward bidding process based on the popularity of the keyword.

You can also buy links in ezines, newsletters, and on other people's website either on a per-click basis, for a period of time (a week or month), or in exchange for paying them a commission if a sale gets made as a result of a click on the link.

** Linking "VoodDoo" **
Linking "voodoo" refers to attempting to manipulate the search engines into displaying links to your website.
You can find a large number of automated software programs online at any given time that will claim to help you get more search engine traffic.

Depending on the intensity of competition in a specific market and the fact that search engines change their rules frequently, pursuing search engine links this way can quickly turn into the online equivalent of Alice chasing the rabbit down the hole.

** Grow Links **
I personally prefer this method to get links to my websites: growing them.
The best type of link to get involves one person telling another person, either explicitly or implicitly, they should click the link and visit the site at the other end.
One way to do this is simply to exchange links with another site which targets the same audience as your site.
You can manage this process manually or use one of the many software packages that will mange the process for you.
A search on Google.com for "reciprocal link manager software" yields a good start.

The easiest way to grow a link is through using articles other people post on their websites which link back to your website.
The reason articles work so well for "growing" links involves the numerous ways in which articles get distributed online, each of which can create dozens, hundreds, even thousands of different links back to your website by publishing a single article.

In fact, the following represent only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the places you can grow links by publishing articles online.
~ Blogs - Your articles can not only appear on your own blog, but get posted by others on their blogs with surprising ease.
The links in these articles can point directly back to your website.
~ Article Directories - Article directories such as IdeaMarketers.com abound online.
They not only provide an easy way to display your articles to allow others to pick them up for posting on their websites, but also in and of themselves attract readers searching for content.
~ OPS (Other People's Sites) - Popular websites like WebProNews.com attract repeat visitors by offering targeted content to their readers.

Since they can't produce all the content themselves, they publish articles created by others. Links from these sites can bring a steady stream of targeted visitors by giving you targeted exposure.
~ Ezines - By getting your articles published in other people's ezines, you can get a link on the most valuable real estate online, a targeted prospect's email "inbox."

Many ezine publishers run articles written by others to their targeted readers, and your link in the resource box can bring you a veritable avalanche of targeted site visitors when hundreds, even thousands of people receive your article at the same time.
Whether you choose to buy them, "voodoo" them, or grow them, getting targeted links to your site posted on the Internet represents the absolute best way to get steady traffic to your site.
Though not as fast as buying them or as exciting as trying to manipulate the search engines, growing links with articles gives you a long-term, dependable presence online.

Author Bio
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and co-author of an amazing program that teaches you how to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website, affiliate links, or blogs... without spending a dime on advertising! Click Here
Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com

Golden Rules For the Use of Autoresponders

Autoresponders are a perfect way to increase traffic to your site. They can save many valuable hours by automatically answering emails concerning frequently asked questions about a service or product or by sending a welcome letter to new members of your program. There are many ways that autoresponders can help your business. One of the most important is their ability to track the effectiveness of your promotions. Since autoresponders are one of the most popular marketing tools available today, they are being used by a lot of different kinds of business and websites. Some of these take advantage of the system to use the autoresponders in a negative manner. You should be aware of some of the "Golden Rules" when using autoresponders.

Thou Shalt Not Use an Autoresponder Address When Submitting to
Search Engines.

Since you will most likely submit your site to search engines such as Google or Yahoo!, directories, classifieds, and free for all sites, you should be made aware of the fact that these sites commonly use an autoresponder as well. If you were to use your autoresponder to contact these companies, their autoresponder will reply to yours and so on and so on. Thus creating a cycle of autoresponses that will flood your email box and theirs as well.
Thou Shalt Not Use an Autoresponder to Subscribe to Ezines or
Discussion Forums.

Since most of the time an Ezine will send you updates and new information regularly, your auto responder will send them a message each time. In a discussion forum, every person in the discussion forum will receive your auto response. This can be irritating and most of the time you will be unsubscribed. It is often hard for the administrators of the forum or ezine to determine who is using the autoresponse and therefore it is simply common courtesy to never use an autoresponer in this manner.

Thou Shalt Not Use an Autoresponder to Take Advantage Of Unsuspecting Individuals.

Some very unprofessional companies will use autoresponders to respond to an automated message when this is done the address in the "from" field will be automatically subscribed to their mailing list. This is a extremely un ethical use of autoresponders and those who do it are in jeopardy of creating a very negative image of themselves and their company. Rather than promote their service or business, this usually leads to people becoming very upset and spreading a negative word about your company rather than a good one.
The Internet can be a great place to do business and autoresponders can be an excellent way to save time, however when used in an unprofessional way, they can lead to frustration and aggravation for others. Your company will suffer the loss of much business if you choose to participate in these abusive practices. The appropriate use of auto responders can generate a large amount of business, while inappropriate use can drive away that business.

Author Bio
Morris Clopton can help YOU start your own profitable business on the Internet within the next 24 hours... To learn more, visit: www.AchieveWealth.com/pips.html
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Article Distribution: How Will Your Results Vary?

It's not enough to just sit around and expect that your articles will bring you a good amount of traffic right after you submitted your articles for distribution.

Might as well think of some factors... Is your article worthy to be reprinted? Do the content and title ring a bell to most webmasters and publishers?

Questions like these are just some of the many factors that could greatly affect your article distribution results.

Some basic factors are:

1. Topic of your article...
Submitting your article to article sites and article announcement groups totally depends on the topic of your article, not all of these sites and groups accept general topic articles. Some groups (aprox. 30%) are niche or content-specific, meaning they only accept articles under specific topics, e.g. aainet group - accepts only internet related articles...

2. Your content
Submission sites are just tools, never think of them as an assurance that once your articles are distributed they are sure to bring you back big results. Article announcement groups and sites are just there to display your articles for readers (Who might be interested with your articles) and for publishers to pick your articles and reprint them in their site or ezine. Thus, getting greater results totally depends on your article, how interesting it is to readers and how it gets the publisher's attention/interest to make them publish it.

My advice, do not just write an article for the sake of distributing it and hoping to get traffic out of it. Write an article that will surely give you results after using the article distribution services and sites as tools for distribution.

Author Bio
Glenn invites you to submit your article at www.isnare.com and visit www.isnare.com/distribution.php
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"Leveraged" Information = MORE Website Traffic

If leveraging unique or proprietary information is one of your fundamental strategies to increase unique visitor traffic to your web based business, then it is important to understand seven fundamental information perspectives you can use to give your company the edge it needs to effectively compete in the marketplace.

As the internet continues to evolve and become more competitive, the dependency of the quality of the information you provide via your website becomes more critical to market niches.

As information processors we rarely, consciously think about HOW we absorb all the information we take in via the internet. It is reasonable to assume that two of our six senses, vision and hearing, represent the most significant means used to absorb information on the web. Although seeing copy and hearing sounds coming from information provided, it makes sense from a strategic marketing perspective, to take a moment to evaluate how virtual information can be best absorbed via seven fundamental information perspectives.

Seven Fundamental Information Perspectives

1) Information Exclusivity: * How unique, original or proprietary is your website information? * Infinite choices of common information equates to clutter and boredom. * The "value" of information provided is always unique to every visitor * Emphasizing the uniqueness of your information also gives it more worth

2) Information Quantity: * How much website information is too much? * Detail overload can quickly exceed site visitor's interest levels * Volume of information provided should correlate with the breadth of the information requirements of your targeted market niche

3) Information Distinction: * How unique should your website words and terms be? * Markets and industries have distinct information terms and sayings * Try to "talk the talk" of your targeted market niche on your website * Distinctive information can be the critical purchase decision variable

4) Information Accuracy: * How accurate does your website information have to be? * Information accuracy requirements correlate to the potential liability of negative consequences that result from information incorrectness. * Earning the trust of your website visitors is an on going, consistent process

5) Information Timeliness: * How "current" does your website information have to be? * The speed of information delivery often adds perceived value * Often competitive advantage goes to the source with the "information shortcut" * Out-of-date information is often associated with poor customer service

6) Information Interactivity: * To what degree are website visitor responses critical to intended message absorption rates and communication effectiveness? * Maintaining a dialogue with your visitor equates to increased loyalty * Increasing dependency of visitor responses decreases broadcast effectiveness

7) Information Format: * What is the most effective way to structure your website messages? * Information absorption is best achieved in small increments * Simplifying the visual structure of your website information "invites" readership * User-friendly information navigation maximizes visitor website involvement

Every web based business is vulnerable to new competitors within their targeted virtual market niches. There will inevitably always be someone else who can provide the same or similar product, service or information in a different way or via other creative communication tactics. Although different is not always better, as a virtual customer solution provider you are obligated to always focus, understand and improve your website visitor's perceptions and their ability to "get your message".

Understanding the seven fundamental perspectives of information flow can make a significant difference in your ability to differentiate your virtual messages from the increasing bandwidth of information flow on the internet.

Author Bio
Mark Smock is 30+ year veteran of the sales profession and President of www.business-buyer-directory.com, the FIRST international business buyer directory of its kind. Business Buyer Directory provides a non-traditional means for proactive business buyers to locate businesses for sale worldwide that meet their exact registered purchase criteria.
Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com

10 Reasons To Submit Your Articles To Ezines Directory

Getting your product or service delivered to your targeted audience is one of the most important success factor in internet based business. There are many technique to deliver your content to your targetted audence. Submit good articles to high traffic ezine directory is one of the technique which is relatively simple and affordable for build up your online business. Below are lists the benefits.

1. You'll brand your web site, business and yourself by submitting articles to e-zines. You could include your name, business name, your credentials, web site address and e-mail address in your resource box.

2. You will become known as an expert on the topics you write about. This will give you and your business extra credibility which will help you compete against your competition.

3. Your article might also be placed on the publisher's home page. If they publish each issue on their home page this will give you some extra exposure.

4. You might get extra exposure if the e-zine publisher archives their e-zine on their site. People might want to read the back issues before they make the decision to subscribe.

5. You will get free advertising. This will allow you to spend your profits on other forms of advertising. You could buy advertisements in other e-zines that don't publish your articles.

6. You might get extra income from people wanting to hire you to write other articles, books, or even ask to speak at seminars. This is a great way to multiply your income.

7. You could allow e-zine publishers to publish your articles in their free e-books. Since people give them away, your advertising could multiply all over the internet.

8. You will get your article published all over the web when you submit it to an e-zine publisher that has a free content directory on their web site. They'll allow their visitors to republish your article.

9. You'll gain people's trust. If they read your article and like it, they won't be as hesitant to buy your
product or service. You will then be able to increase your profits.

10. You could get your article guaranteed to run in an e-zine. You could agree to run one of their articles in your e-zine if, in exchange, they run yours in their e-zine. It's a win/win situation.

The above list is a great start if you are thinking of starting a business on internet. It is relatively simple and very affordable

Author Bio
Hendry Chang (the8online team) - team of enthusiast internet entrepreneurs. For more about internet business tips and ideas, please visit us at http://www.the8online.com/index.html
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Internet Traffic and SEO Techniques

You might be wandering the reasons your web site is not getting much internet traffic. After all your web site took lots of financial and human resources, but unfortunately like so many web sites, it is quite unknown and as a result it does not get enough internet traffic to make it financially viable.

Did you know that about 80 percent of all web site traffic originates from search engines? Yes, it is true! Listing near the top page of search engines and obtaining the attention of your target audience should be a main priority for any web site internet promotion.

And the good news about this is that improving a web site position in search engine pages may be done for free. How? Using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.

There are many ways to promote a web site. Some promotions are paid and some are free. Among the free ones, the search engine optimization techniques enable web sites to become search engine friendly. In other words, it makes website pages to accept the search engine crawler in a friendly way. These techniques will be some of the steps one will have to use to obtain a better position in search engine's pages, when searching for specific keywords, related to services or products offered by a web site.

Search engine optimization steps for a web page:

Title:

The html Title tag is a very important element and must include the most important keywords or phrases, which best represent the products or services offered by the web page. It should not contain more than 60 characters.

Keywords:

The html meta Keyword tag should have all the keyword phrases which best represents the products or services offered by the web page. Avoid repeating keywords and bad use of capital letters. It should not contain more than 250 characters.

Description:

The html meta Description tag is a description of the web page, which will be displayed by the search engine. Make sure it contains keywords phrases. Avoid repeating keywords and bad use of capital letters. It should not contain more than 200 characters.

Keywords in Headings:

Keywords in Headings tags (h1) will be interpreted by search engines as being an important keyword relevant to the web page, and it should be looked for and indexed by the search engines.

Web page text:

It is a good practice to include informative text one every page, using natural language and appropriate keywords. It should contain more than 200 words. Informative text should be placed in the html Body section of the web page.

Keywords in Alt Tags:

Every html picture "img" tag should contain an ALT tag with an appropriate description. Keywords should always be used when appropriate.

Keywords in Anchor Tags:

Every html hypertext link "a href " should contain a TITLE tag with an appropriate description. Keywords should always be used when appropriate.

Robots.txt file:

Make sure there is a robots.txt file in you web site directory. This is a text file created by the webmaster, which will guide the search engine´s crawler when indexing a web site.

There are some cases in which one might not want to have some web pages indexed. This way thru the use of robots.txt, one will have control over which pages will be indexed and made available to the search engines.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /data/

HTML code validation:

Search engine's crawlers become more efficient when indexing web pages with no html errors. Beware that some html errors can make search engine crawlers to give up indexing web pages. So it is recommended for those web pages to be indexed, there should be no html errors.

Links:

Links are very important to search engines. The quality of links and whether it is reciprocal or not, are important factors in evaluating the importance of a web page. Links from web sites with higher page ranks are a plus.

Registering with Directories and Search Engines:

It is very important the registration of a website with directories and search engine web sites. It is a way of telling the world that your web site exists. Avoid using automatic search engine/directory registration.

Search engine optimization has become a very important set of procedures which helps web sites to become more relevant to search engines. To obtain an increase in internet traffic will take some time. It probably will take some kind of additional promotion too. But anybody in need of higher internet traffic, free search engine optimization might be considered his first option.

Roberto Sedycias
IT Consultant

This article is under GNU FDL license and can be distributed without any previous authorization from the author. However the author´s name and all the URL´s (links) mentioned in the article and biography must be kept.

Author Bio
This article can also be accessed in portuguese language from the News Article section of page PoloMercantil
Roberto Sedycias works as IT consultant for PoloMercantil.
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Meta tag optimization results in high search engine ranking

I was compelled to publish this article after noticing several SEO specialists writing in reference to meta tags being dead or obsolite. Meta tags are not dead. I will be the first to say, meta tags are utilized by all major search engines and are very much in use and extremely important to search engine ranking. If you need proof of how important meta tags are, try removing your meta tags and watch what happens to your search engine positioning. Your site will plummet to the depths of the unvisited web. Meta tags are frequently an overlooked factor which can improve the ranking of most any website.

This is an example of how vital meta tags are to your webpage and to your search engine ranking. Our website ranks #6 and #7 consistantly on MSN for the keyword submit site. To test the dead meta tag theory, our source code editor changed one word in the meta description tag and we dropped to #15 in the search results. Our rankings on Google and several other search engines suffered even more so. Needless to say we made changes accordingly. All major search engines definitely utilize meta tags for a description of the webpage and for indexing within the search results.

The title tag is one of the most important on page factors to consider. This is because search engine spiders read this tag first and place a high level of importance on the keywords found there. The title tag is also used for the title of your listing in the search results. The contents of your title tag will also appear in the top left corner of the browser bar. Correct title tag optimization is essiential and will result in a dramatic increase in your search engine ranking. The title tag should contain at least one or more keywords to be of any relevance to the webpage.

Search engine spiders read the description meta tag next. This tag is often used as a website description in the search results. The description tag should also contain a few keywords. The keyword meta tag is also vital to search engine ranking giving search engine spiders a sample of relevant text and content within a webpage. Other meta tags include robots, resource, author, copyright etc. These tags are not as important as the title, description and keyword tag, however they should be included if possible. To acheive high search engine ranking optimize your meta data. Proper onpage optimization will greatly improve your search engine placement.

Author Bio
Article written by the CEO of www.submit-site.org
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The World of Duplicate Content - Use of a Filter

The World Wide Web is like a running race or marathon where websites compete to reach the finish line first. In this case the finish line is higher ranking. And in this race for supremacy it is important to avoid duplicate content and its penalties.

To facilitate the efficient functioning of directories search engines have been armed with content filters. This removes or filters duplicate content from pages it's indexing. And the most hurtful penalty is lower rankings.

Unfortunately, these filters not only catch rogues but web pages that are genuine too. What webmasters need to do is understand how filters function and know what action is to be taken to avoid being filtered out.

When a search engine sends out spiders the filters leave out or sieve:

• Websites that feature identical content. And when within a site the webmaster includes many copies or versions of pages to cheat the search engines. Filters are also extremely sensitive to "doorway" pages.

• Content masked by different packaging. Known as "scraped content" this duplication of pages with little or no relevant changes falls prey to filters.

• Product descriptions featured by e-commerce sites. Most e-commerce sites publish alongside a product the manufacturer's description of the product and this content then appears on zillions of e-commerce sites falling victim to filters.

• Articles distributed widely over the net. While some engines are programmed to find the origin of the article there are others who may not be able to source the origins.

• Pages that are not duplicates but contain the same core material written by different people.

To get the better of filters you need to:

• Use a tool like the Similar Page Checker http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php to ensure that the pages in your site are not mirroring content from elsewhere. In case there are other URLS with similar or identical content the tool will reveal them to you and you will be able to make changes in your pages.

• Be vigilant and know who has "helped" themselves to your content. By using www.copyscape.com you can determine which websites have stolen or copied your work.

• Even if you do use distributed content you can add a commentary or make changes to the page focusing on its relevance to your site. By making any content your own you are making it unique and different and this will ensure that the pages are not filtered by search engines.

• Even if you are running an e-commerce site you must include product descriptions that are distinctively yours and not run of the mill.

Lean as much as you can about duplicate content and its dangers. Read the issues that were discussed at the SES 2006 New York Session and other forums. Remember most search engines, Google, Yahoo, or Open Directory Project do not want to be flooded by duplicate content and web pages.

Jake Baillie, President of TrueLocal listed the duplicate content mistakes to be: circular navigation; printer friendly pages; inconsistent linking; product only pages; transparent serving domains; and bad cloaking.

It is important for sites to get high ranking through fair and not foul means.

Author Bio
Aaron Brooks is a freelance writer for http://www.1888seoservices.com, the premier website to find Seo consulting, link buildings and professionals seo training, online marketing tips, seo tools and more. He also freelances for the premier REVENUE SHARING Discussion Forum Site http://www.1888discuss.com
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How Search Engines Work

A search engine operates, in the following order: 1) Crawling; 2) Deep Crawling Depth-first search (DFS); 3) Fresh Crawling Breadth-first search (BFS); 4) Indexing; 5) Searching.

Web search engines work by storing information about a large number of web pages, which they retrieve from the WWW itself. These pages are retrieved by a web crawler (also known as a spider) - an automated web browser which follows every link it sees, exclusions can be made by the use of robots.txt. The contents of each page are then analyzed to determine how it should be indexed. Data about web pages is stored in an index database for use in later queries. Some search engines, such as Google, store all or part of the source page (referred to as a cache) as well as information about the web pages, whereas some store every word of every page it finds, such as AltaVista. This cached page always holds the actual search text since it is the one that was actually indexed, so it can be very useful when the content of the current page has been updated and the search terms are no longer in it. This problem might be considered to be a mild form of linkrot, and Google's handling of it increases usability by satisfying user expectations that the search terms will be on the returned web page. This satisfies the principle of least astonishment since the user normally expects the search terms to be on the returned pages. Increased search relevance makes these cached pages very useful, even beyond the fact that they may contain data that may no longer be available elsewhere.

When a user comes to the search engine and makes a query, typically by giving keywords, the engine looks up the index and provides a listing of best-matching web pages according to its criteria, usually with a short summary containing the document's title and sometimes parts of the text. Most search engines support the use of the boolean terms AND, OR and NOT to further specify the search query. An advanced feature is proximity search, which allows you to define the distance between keywords.

The usefulness of a search engine depends on the relevance of the results it gives back. While there may be millions of Web pages that include a particular word or phrase, some pages may be more relevant, popular, or authoritative than others. Most search engines employ methods to rank the results to provide the "best" results first. How a search engine decides which pages are the best matches, and what order the results should be shown in, varies widely from one engine to another. The methods also change over time as Internet usage changes and new techniques evolve.

Most web search engines are commercial ventures supported by advertising revenue and, as a result, some employ the controversial practice of allowing advertisers to pay money to have their listings ranked higher in search results.

The vast majority of search engines are run by private companies using proprietary algorithms and closed databases, the most popular currently being Google, MSN Search, and Yahoo! Search. However, Open source search engine technology does exist, such as Dig, Nutch, Senas, Egothor, OpenFTS, DataparkSearch and many others.

Author Bio
David is the leader of a software development team, who developed many types of automation software. One of them is www.ArticlePostRobot.com, the software which can post articles to hundreds of article sites and mail lists automatically. Demo is available upon request at help(at)articlepostrobot.com
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Paid Directory Submission Checklist

Every online business needs traffic, which comes with increased visibility on the web. One great way to get noticed is to get listed in the major directories. Links from good directories increases your site's visibility many fold.

There are thousands of web directories on the net and selecting the good ones to submit your site can be a time consuming task. Also there are free directories and paid directories. You need to submit to both types of directories.
The following checklist is for paid directory submission only. This checklist will help you choose the best and worthwhile paid directories on the net.

Submission Check List:

1. Check out if the directory is indexed in major search engines.

2. Check the robots.txt file. Make sure that search engine bots are allowed to crawl the pages where you intend to put your listing. Check the Meta tags to make sure that search engine spiders are not prevented from following links in it. A Meta tag with noindex/nofollow will not be indexed or spidered and links in that page are not followed by bots.

3. Check if the directory is being maintained regularly. Visit the directory from time to time to see if errors are getting corrected, site information is getting updated and the like. In short, look for positive activity on the directory.

4. Check if the listings in category pages match in theme and content or not. Directories with tight focus on relevant grouping of web sites are useful for visitors and tend to show up frequently in SERPs for keyword searches.

5. Check out the age of the directory. Do a whois search (http://www.whois.net) to get this information. Many new directories vanish after a few months due to lack of maintenance and promotion. With older directories you can at least be sure that your listing will remain visible for a reasonable period.

6. Check if the directory consists of too many empty categories - it is not useful for visitors and also does not send a too good signal to the SEs about the directory. Think twice before submitting to such directories.

7. Check if the contact information is available on the site. Proper businesses will provide you with some kind of contact information.

8. Check the Alexa rank of the directory - it is not accurate, yet you can get an idea of traffic the directory receives. Look for directories with decreasing Alexa Rank as it indicates that the directory is getting popular.

9. Check if the directory provides SE friendly urls. No JavaScript link or redirection. Also watch out for dynamic urls. Sometimes search engines find it difficult indexing or recognizing dynamic urls with parameters like http://www.&;lt;examplesite>.com/index.html?cat=1&p=12...
An example of SE friendly URL is http://www.hedir.com/business.html

10. Check whether category pages have too many outgoing links. If your link is one of 100 links on a page, visitors will find it difficult to locate your site.

Author Bio
Lakhya Phukan is the webmaster of Hedir Web Directory. You can submit your site at hedir www.hedir.com
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