Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Theories in SEO Practice

We've all done it at some point in our professional lives. We search a keyword that describes our business only to scratch our head as to how our competitor's website shows up on the top of the list instead of ours. If you've gone one step further and read about Search Engine Optimization, then surely you have come across the conflicting information online.

One article tells you to do one thing while another tells you to do the opposite. Which one should you believe?

This gray area of what you should or should not do is much like the modern day "Bat Cave." If you are lucky enough to stumble upon it, chances are you don't quite know how you got there and if you had to go back one day you would probably just find yourself lost in the woods.

So what should you believe? The general rule is to combine what you read or heard with what you have experienced and somewhere in there lies the truth. To get you started, let's debunk some of the more commonly used myths floating around.

1) Use a Keyword Rich Domain Name:

It is widely believed that if you include your keywords in your domain name like www.professional-website-design-in-nj.com it will greatly increase your rankings. This is not true. It is best to choose a domain name that is short, easy to remember and if possible includes your company name.

2) Google Partnership:

If you are ever approached by a company claiming to have a partnership with Google, run in the opposite direction. There is no such thing as a "preferred" relationship with Google and in fact on Google's website it even states: Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google.

3) Meta Keyword Tag:

It used to be that the Meta Keyword Tag was given a lot of weight in the early days of Search Engine Optimization, but people abused it and now it does very little. You may still want to include your keywords here, but know that it will not do much and in fact most search engines won't even check it.

4) Bold or Italicized Text:

Adding emphasis to certain keywords like using bold or italics can make your text easier to scan for the reader if done properly, but has little to no affect on your search engine ranking.

5) Content Length:

There is no search engine rule stating that your content needs to be a specific number of words in order to get indexed. Any recommended length is more to assist the reader in understanding what you do than to aid the search engines.

6) Duplicate Content:

Posting specific content like an article or blog entry on your site and then on another site will not get you penalized. In the search results, Google will recognize that the content is the same and only choose one of the pages to display, but it will not hurt your overall search engine ranking.

7) Avoid Flash:

Any text that you place in Flash will not be readable by a search engine, but this doesn't mean you have to avoid flash altogether. You can still very successfully incorporate Flash into your site through rotating pictures or a header on the page. Just don't have an all Flash site or use a Flash intro if you are interested in increasing your search engine rankings.

8) Pay-Per-Click:

Some say that using Pay-Per-Click will help your organic listing while others say it will hurt. Both are false. The fact is that Google has gone to great lengths to separate the two departments of organic and paid listings to a point where the two departments don't communicate or even sit at the same table for lunch.

9) Update the Site Frequently:

Updating your site often is a good idea if you have something new to say. Just don't change around a few words to accommodate the search engines as that won't help your listing at all. Regularly adding legitimate content like articles, press releases and blog entries will help though.

10) Doorway Pages:

Many companies will sell this idea of increasing your ranking by creating hundreds of one page sites loaded with keywords that link to you from various domains. This is considered spamming the search engine and is not recommended. If you properly optimize your site and focus on the correct way to get listed, you will increase your ranking much quicker than these doorway pages ever could.

Of course there are many other myths out there confusing the general public about what works and what doesn't work. Some of them are spread by people who don't really know the truth and others are spread by SEO companies in an attempt to make search engine optimization confusing... mission accomplished! Regardless of where the myths come from, if you or the SEO Company you hire use common sense and do things the right way, you will have no trouble finding the proverbial Bat Cave?and when you get there please tell them that I want my utility belt back!

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About the Author: Marc D. Ensign is the CEO and Visionary of Sound-n-Vision, a New Jersey web design and Internet marketing company. Marc actively teaches workshops and seminars on web design and search engine optimization throughout the New York Metropolitan area.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Article Submission Tips

Building your list and adding prospects to your sales funnel with article submissions is the hottest sales lead generation trend on the Web today. However, the article submission process is one of the most boring and tedious tasks around. That's why many authors, experts and businesses choose to outsource their article marketing efforts.

How can you choose the best article submission company to handle this important process for you? Follow these tips to avoid being ripped off from unscrupulous merchants.

Here Are My Top 10 Questions to Ask Any Article Marketing & Submission Service Provider So You Can Reach Your Goals:

   1. Are the sites on your company's article submission list well known across the Web, or are they dummy sites that you set up? Some unscrupulous article submission service providers promise to post your article to hundreds or thousands of sites for a very low fee - like $15! What they don't tell you is that these sites are ones they have created for the sole purpose of posting your articles. No one visits these sites. Search engines don't index these sites. So no one will ever see these articles. Ask for a list of sites they submit to. If they don't seem credible, run fast!
   2. Does Google index the sites you submit to? If Google doesn't, then you are wasting your time. Ask them for a list of success stories. By going to Google and typing the headline in quotes, you can check whether or not Google indexes the articles they submit.
   3. Does Alexa index the sites your company submits articles to? Alexa.com is a website that tracks the traffic of all websites. Go there and type your website URL and you'll see where your site ranks among the millions of websites. It's easy and fun to do. Try it! Now, ask the marketing company to provide the names of 10 sites they will submit your article to. See where they rank on Alexa. Do they even rank on Alexa? If not, watch out!
   4. Is this a targeted campaign, or a scattershot approach? Ask the company how well targeted the article submission process is going to be. Can they target specific audiences, like health, or marketing or C-level executives? If they can't, then you are wasting your money reaching audiences that aren't interested in your message.
   5. Does your article submission company submit articles by hand or by software? Most reputable websites that accept articles will not accept articles delivered by software. They want unique content and they know articles submitted by software will be sent to every site imaginable.
   6. Does your article submission company edit your article? I've written six books on marketing and the Internet that have been translated into six different languages, and I write and submit articles on a weekly basis. Yet, I still hire proofreaders to review my articles. Sure, you think you are a great writer, but there's not a person alive who won't benefit from a copy editor giving the article a second look.
   7. Will your article submission service use sound search engine optimization strategies to make my articles search engine friendly? If your hire a good article marketing company, they will not only edit your articles but they will make your articles search engine friendly as well. This way, your articles can be found on Google.
   8. Will your company handle the day-to-day correspondence with site and ezine editors? You can spend hours answering questions from website and ezine editors. The best firms handle the routine correspondence for you. They bring you in only when you need to answer an important question. You should avoid firms that don't respond to editors because your articles will never be published by highly targeted websites. They can say they submitted the article, but you won't have any pickup.
   9. Does your company submit articles in a way that Google respects, or do you blast articles out there? Google hates when people try to manipulate their rankings and will ding your article campaign if you send out too many articles too quickly. Make sure your article marketing company understands this. Otherwise, Google could blackball your article marketing efforts.
10. What do you charge for article submission? It has been my experience that the article submission process, if performed correctly, can take up to 10 hours or more to submit your article to 100 sites. That doesn't count the proofing, editing, optimizing, consulting and following up. All this work takes time and effort. If the price seems too low, remember the old saying, “You get what you pay for."

You want an article submission service that cares about your success. Many fly-by-night artists just want to take your money and run. Make sure the service you select takes the time to get to know you, your marketing goals and your audience. Follow these tips to ensure you get what you pay for! If not, you could be headed for disaster.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Importance of Keywords Density

Content

It's all about the text.

Remember that optimization is all about the text. Search engines are text
driven but there are still some basic HTML tags to keep in mind (i.e., h1, h2,
meta tags, title tag). SEO helps improve search engine results but does not
guarantee top ratings.

Patience and realistic goals will keep the frustrations low. Search engines
have to crawl a site to determine what a site is about. This takes time, usually
about a month, before crawls and indexing are completed by the various search
engine spiders.

Take time to think (a lot) about the purpose of the website. Write down a lot
of stuff in a word processing program even if it sounds silly at first. Then
edit what you wrote. Edit some more, get some feedback and then start working on
the keywords and keyphrases that identify the unique quality of your
website.

Keywords and Keyphrases

Keywords used to be easy. Those days are gone. Keywords are highly
competitive. Using two-word or three-word, maybe even four-word, phrases makes
optimization less frustrating. A keyword phrase (keyphrase) helps identify the
uniqueness of a website.

The keyword "game" will generate about 1 billion(!) results. The keyphrase
"card game" will generate about 50 million results. That is a difference of
approximately 950 million. The keyphrase "magic card game" will generate about
four-million results. Time will need to be spent finding unique keyphrases but
the benefits of narrowing the results, with multi-word phrases, provides a
better chance of being noticed.

Computation of Keywords Density

Keyword Density

The density formula is D = WC/KC (D = density; WC = word count; KC = keyword count)

For major keywords target 3-7% density
For minor keywords target 1-2% density

Keyword density measures how relevant keywords are in a page. The formula density = word count divided by keyword count will provide a general idea of the density percentage. For major keywords try to keep the density between three and seven percent. For minor keywords keep density between one and two percent. Try to optimize between five to ten keywords per web page.

Avoid the unethical practice of keyword stuffing. You will be penalized and possibly banned from the search engines which is worse than doing no optimization at all. Keyword stuffing uses various techniques but it is basically stuffing a page and/or meta tag with several occurrences of a keyword or keyphrase.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Simple SEO Technique that works

Everybody wants traffic generated to their website, but nobody wants
to pay their hard-earned money for it! Over the past seven years
I’ve been creating websites, I’ve found through trial and
error what makes or breaks a website for it’s visitors.

Just within the last few years however, I’ve been focused more on researching SEO
(Search Engine Optimization) and other techniques to gain website
visitors, and to make them stay. On top of the previous five years
experience, I’ve gained way too much knowledge to keep to myself!
So here are the basics, at least, of gaining and keeping website
traffic.

Find out your current page rank through Alexa.com. It’s not going to be pretty. You can use this tool however to track your progress over the next few months.

1) Optimize your website

If you’re interested in gaining website traffic at all, chances are you’ve heard this term before: SEO. SEO
stands for Search Engine Optimization, or optimizing your website to
rank highly in search engines. This is the absolute first step to
gaining website traffic, as it will help your potential visitors find
your website faster. Even for a complete startup website, that is not
linked with any others, you can gain targeted web traffic through just
search engines.

In order to optimize your website, include meta tags with
useful keywords and description, a site-map, write effective web
content, and have plenty of web content for the search engines to crawl.

There are plenty of meta tag generators if you do a quick search, or
you can research how to make your own. Same goes with the site-map.

Do you’re research and learn how to write quality website
content. Search engines crawl through your web pages, so if you use
your keywords within your content enough, visitors will find your
website faster. You can’t overdo this though, as your text may
start to sound unnatural. Practice and research is the key to writing
good content search engines will find.

2) Submit to search engines

After you’re site is well-enough optimized for search engines to
crawl, submit them to search engines. Submit to Yahoo and Google for sure, and then move onto others like MSN, Ask.com, etc.

Wait a few days and you’re website should be crawled. It
won’t show up on top quite yet, but search for it’s exact
name to see if it’s there at all. (eg. If you submit Webitect.net, search ‘Webitect’ or ‘Webitect.net’ directly to see if it shows up)

After you’re website is submitted and successfully showing up in search engines, check your Alexa rank again, and see how much your web site’s improved.

3) Submit to web directories

A basic rule of SEO
and gaining web traffic is to have websites link back to you. The more
that do, the higher your ranking on web searches. In addition, more
people click on your link if they see it listed somewhere. There are
two kinds of links to your website: back-links and
link-exchanges.Back-links are links that link to you, but you
don’t link back. Link-exchanges are when there is a mutual
agreement between the two web owners where they link to your website,
and you do the same for them. Both are valueable for search engine rank improvement, but back-links are much better.

So web directories are a way to get both of these kinds of links.
For the bigger directories, you may not have to give them a link back.
Don’t if you don’t have to. This will provide you with
aback-link from a well-known site, which will up your rank a lot.
Submit to as many directories that are relative to your website, but
most importantly, submit to DMOZ.org. This is the largest directory on the Internet today.

Wait a few days to be accepted into these web directories. Then, check to see if your Alexa rank has improved.

4) Find Link-Exchanges

So you’ve found the free back-links, now it’s time to move
onto link-exchanges. Most websites that are relevant to yours would be
happy to do a link exchange. Some however, may reject you because your
not high up in the search engines quite yet. Find websites that have
about the same or less visitors than you.

You can find other web owners in web forums, directories, etc. This
requires some direct contact, so be friendly! Be sure to find related
websites to your own.

5) Submit your content

Submit your content to websites like Digg.com, Helium, and AssociatedContent.
There are plenty of other websites that will let you post your content
as well. By doing this, you can provide a link back to your site for
each article you post on each website. If you post just 5 articles on 3
websites like this, that will give you 15 back-links. Furthermore, some
websites like this allow their visitors to put your content on their
website, with a link back to your website. Even more back-links.

6) Make your visitors link back to you

Create your own web directory, make a contest, or offer some other kind
of interactivity that will require your visitors to link back to you if
they participate. Moreback-links/link-exchanges and more traffic for
you.

Once more, check Alexa for your page
rank. I have yet to use all of these steps for my startup website, and
I’ve already increased my page rank by more than 10,000. These
tips should give you a healthy start as well. Use this as a base, and
then keep growing your web traffic by getting more links in to your
site, and adding more useful content that visitors will want to come
back to, and link to! Nobody should ever have to pay for website
traffic!

Monday, December 1, 2008

Some factors affecting page rank

Page rank is dependent upon a number of factors associated with the websites that are linking in:

- Type of websites
- The number of different websites
- Their page rank
- Their IP Address
- Whether the sites that are linking in to yours are rated by Google as a subject authority
- The page titles of the the pages that are linking in
- The anchor text which is used in the links that are pointing to your page
- How many links does your site have pointing to the linking in pages?
- The type of links that are points to the linking in pages
- The number of outbound links on the website that is linking to you
- The number of links on the website page that is linking to yours

Saturday, November 29, 2008

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Friday, November 28, 2008

COST-EFFECTIVE BRANDING TECHNIQUES

COST-EFFECTIVE BRANDING TECHNIQUES THAT YOU CAN START USING TODAY:

1) DEVELOP A STRONG UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION

Imagine yourself sitting across the table from your best Potential
customer. In one sentence -- one very short Sentence -- clearly
communicate how he or she will benefit From doing business with you.

Your message should be clear, the language simple, and it Should be
easy to remember. There's no room for wordy Corporate mumbo jumbo here.

I know this is a
pretty tall order... but your hours of agonizing, writing,
brainstorming, and rewriting will pay Off in the end. This will be the
message that your market Will identify you by and associate you with.

2) TARGET YOUR MARKET

The beauty of running an online business is that you can Reach
literally hundreds of thousands of targeted potential Customers all
over the world -- people who want to buy what You’re selling --
for little or no cost.

It's what has made it possible for small and home-based Business owners
like you to take the Internet by storm and MAKE OUTRAGEOUS PROFITS WITH
VERY LIMITED ADVERTISING BUDGETS.

Why would you turn a blind eye to this CRITICAL ADVANTAGE BY? Spreading
your limited advertising dollars across the entire Web -- trying to
sell your product to everyone -- instead of Focusing on those people
who want to buy from you?

It just doesn't make sense.

So I know I've already mentioned this, but it's worth saying Again.
It's ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL that you target your Market.

3) WHENEVER POSSIBLE, MAKE YOUR MESSAGE INTERACTIVE

If you can compel people to actively engage your marketing Message
rather than passively hear or view it, you'll Dramatically increase the
probability that they're going to Absorb it, remember it, and repeat
it.

One of the
best ways to make your marketing message Interactive is through VIRAL
MARKETING. To read a previous Marketing Tips article that explains
exactly what you can do To make your marketing message viral, visit...
http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter/issue33/page1.html

4) BE CONSISTENT IN VOICE, FORMAT, AND DELIVERY

In order to engrave your brand in the minds of your target Market, you
need to consistently repeat your message to Them...

* DESIGN A SIGNATURE FILE that contains your message and Attach it to
the end of every e-mail you send. It costs You nothing and it's an
easy, effective way to repeat Your message to those people you have
direct contact With -- your best potential and repeat customers!

* Your web site design, logos, and graphics should, if Possible,
VISUALLY EMPHASIZE AND REINFORCE your message. Check out the McDonald's
web site at http://www.mcdonalds.com Does that yellow and red look
familiar? Think about how You can similarly use your web site design to
further Impress your brand in the memory of your visitors.

* Your NEWSLETTER CONTENT AND YOUR WEB SITE CONTENT should All
ultimately contribute to your marketing message. There is no room for
distractions like articles or links That don't move you towards your
main goal (to sell your Product, remember?).

5) NURTURE EXISTING RELATIONSHIPS WITH CUSTOMERS AND SUBSCRIBERS

If they already know you, if they're already familiar with Who you are
and what you do, if they've already bought Something from you, then you
should be building on these Existing relationships.

MAINTAIN REGULAR CONTACT VIA E-MAIL (it's free!), and Consistently
remind them who you are, what you do, and most Importantly, how they
stand to benefit from continuing to do Business with you.

If you play your cards right, not only will you PROFIT FROM THEIR
REPEAT BUSINESS, you may also persuade them to "spread The good word"
to others with similar interests.

6) BE VISIBLE TO YOUR BEST POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS

A big part of branding is obviously about getting your name In front of
your best potential customers, so that when the Time comes for them to
buy, THEY'LL CHOOSE YOU OVER THE COMPETITION!

Here are a few powerful ways that you can do this...

* WRITE ARTICLES that contain information that will be of Interest to
your target market and then offer them to Industry newsletters and web
sites free of charge. Web Masters and editors will appreciate the free,
quality Content and you'll get your name and URL in front of Your
target market.

*
PARTICIPATE IN NEWSGROUPS AND DISCUSSION FORUMS where Your target
market hangs out. This is an easy, no-cost Way to develop your
reputation as an industry expert. Simply make yourself available to
answer questions and Provide participants with information that they
will value.

*
SUBMIT YOUR WEB SITE TO THE SEARCH ENGINES AND DIRECTORIES. Also be
sure to search for directories that Are geared towards your industry
and request a listing.

* REQUEST LINKS FROM SITES WHERE YOU’RE TARGET MARKET MEETS. This
is not only a great way to increase your visibility, It’s also an
extremely powerful way to attract large Volumes of highly targeted
traffic -- yet it's frequently Dismissed or overlooked!

* USE BANNER ADVERTISING - IN MODERATION! With well- Designed banners
and a targeted ad campaign, you CAN Make money with banner advertising.
Just be sure to Educate yourself on the latest, most cutting-edge
banner Techniques before getting started.

To read an article on designing effective banners that Really work,
visit... http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter/issue35/page1.html

* START YOUR OWN AFFILIATE PROGRAM. With your own Affiliate Program,
you can enlist an army of affiliates Who will spread your name and your
marketing message? Across the web -- and you don't pay them a cent
until They make a sale.

To read an article on how you can start and profit from Your very own
Affiliate Program, visit...
http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter/issue19/index.html

DON'T LOSE SIGHT OF YOUR ULTIMATE GOAL:

With branding being hyped as one of *the* marketing Strategies to
pursue right now, I worry that some of you May be steered off-track.

While it's a good idea to be aware of and actively direct How your
e-business is being branded, remember that there is A key difference
between creating awareness and actually Closing sales.

Given the innumerable marketing strategies that you can use To
simultaneously create brand awareness AND draw targeted Traffic to your
web site, there is no reason for you to be Spending your limited
advertising dollars on branding Techniques that don't return a
significant profit.

Avoid being sucked in by the myth that the entire web needs To know who
you are. Focus on your target market and Realize that most forms of
traffic generation ultimately Enhance awareness of your brand.

You are spelling out your brand message, directly and Indirectly, with
everything that you do, say, and sell. About the Author Corey Rudi is
the owner of four highly Successful online businesses that attract more
than 6,000,000 visitors and generate over $5.2 million each year. To
check out his site that's JAM-PACKED WITH THE EXACT INFORMATION YOU
NEED to start, build, and grow your very Own, profitable Internet
business, I highly recommend Visiting

Loyalty marketing

The daily news for loyalty marketers...

Here's what's happening right now:

	The 30 major factors in the success of customer loyalty
	The 22 key factors shaping the future of customer loyalty
	Strategies for channel loyalty & reward schemes
	Retailers to react to consumers' value demands
	Extra rewards set to drive 2008 holiday sales
	Customer loyalty best practices detailed in global report
	Key consumer trends for an uncertain 2009
	Loyalty concepts designed to succeed in 2009
	Five brand-building strategies for 2009
	Is behavioural science a key to luxury loyalty?
	The six key factors that influence customer loyalty
	Few companies acting on customer feedback

Sunday, November 23, 2008

CPM Advertising

Traditional Advertising Metrics: Why They Don’t Work for Recruiting

Dave Lefkow

Aug 28, 2003

It
seems like all we hear about these days are metrics. Advances in ad hoc
reporting have given us applicant tracking systems that can now tell us
how many candidates in our database are Hispanic, left-handed, or even
chew spearmint gum. But there’s something really, really
important that we’re missing: reliable, relevant return on
investment data on our advertising. The unique challenges presented by
recruiting are beyond what traditional advertising metrics can ever
hope to measure. Traditional Advertising Metrics in Consumer Advertising
In consumer advertising, metrics play a very important part of the
media buying process. Due to the nature of consumer advertising, these
metrics seek to measure much different things than recruiting metrics
would. For instance, a traditional consumer or B-to-B marketer usually
seeks to measure:

Impressions: The number of individuals who were exposed to your advertisement.

Frequency: The number of times you reached each individual who saw your ad.
Clickthroughs: The number of individuals who clicked on the banner or sponsorship.
Post-impression visitors: The number of individuals who saw your banner and visited your website at a later time, often as much as 90 days later.
Website traffic in unique visitors: Increases in word-of-mouth usually occur after a campaign launches, which drives up traffic.
Sales: Such as number of purchases, amounts of these purchases, and the amount of money generated tied to each media.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Blogging for SEO

If you write a blog and you write more than 300 words in your
blog posts then you might want some tips on how to make your blog post
better from a search engine optimization perspective. Coincidentally,
these tips will also help your blog post in other ways as well. Here
are some ways you can improve those long posts:

Break up your paragraphs with subheadings - If you
write for more than three paragraphs, add a subhead. It should be short
and contain your keyword. Make the subhead an h2 or use the
font=”+2″ tag.
Add a graphic or two - Graphics break up text real
well. You can align left or right or place the graphics between
paragraphs. Whatever looks good, man. Plus, add an alt tag to each
graphic to give it some SEO juice.
Don’t stuff keywords - Many bloggers are
tempted to stuff keywords into their content. It isn’t necessary.
If you write good content and include enough SEO elements, managing
your keywords and links well, then you don’t have to stuff
keywords.
Add tags - The latest edition of WordPress gives
you a Tags field below your content box. Use it. Add three to five tags
that correspond to the content of your blog post.
Chose more than one category - Put your blog post into as many categories as is relevant, not just one.

When it comes to SEO, long posts have a better chance of ranking
well if they are optimized. Short posts can rank too, but optimization
is the same. You don’t have to stuff keywords. Add the proper
tags and you’ll do well in the optimization game.

Article Marketing Tips

Article marketing is a good way to drive traffic and build links
as part of your search engine optimization efforts to any website or
property online. But what is the most effective way to use article
marketing to promote your affiliate products and services? If you
promote your affiliate companies directly then you are building links
for them, not for you. And you miss all future marketing opportunities
because you have no private information capture.

While you may make more sales by sending buyers directly to
companies whose products and services you want to promote, you’ll
probably make more money by capturing e-mail addresses for marketing to
those buyers directly in the future. That’s why I recommend
setting up a landing page for each product or service you want to
promote and using articles to drive traffic to that landing page. On
that landing you page you can capture e-mail information for future
marketing purposes AND close the sale. In fact, you should ask for the
e-mail address at the point of sale before sending the lead to the
company with the product for purchase.

Of course, your landing page should be highly optimized, as should
your articles. But this is the best way to promote your affiliate
programs with articles.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Basic Internet Traffic Generation - SEM and SEO Strategies

10 Ways To More Website Traffic
Every website needs more traffic. This traffic needs to be as targeted as possible to the site you are promoting, whether it is your own web site or an affiliate program. This is the lifeblood of the business. No traffic - No business, More traffic - More sales

The question is - How do you get this highly targeted web site traffic.

I will list some of the most popular methods.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Of all the pay per click search engines, Google Adwords is the largest and most popular.

This method, when done correctly, will increase your exposure, and give fast results. You must keep up to date with Google's rules, so be sure to read them. You pay a one off fee when you register and set up your campaign. You can have your campaign up and running in minutes. There is a minimum bid, but of course you will have to pay more than this. But the beauty of Adwords is you can set a daily budget of how much you are willing to spend.

You can create as many campaigns as you want, and then test your ads (changing the headline for example).

Google provide tools to help you with your campaigns, and have exellent tutorials that walk you through everything from signing up to creating your Adwords campaigns.

Link popularity

This is achieved when other sites have links to your site. If a high traffic site has links, the search engines perceive both sites must be popular. The important thing is to have quality web sites linking back to your site.

Why should anyone want to link to your site? If you have quality content, this adds perceived value and makes your site popular, so others will want to link to you.The type of content could be:

Free downloads
Free reports, articles, ezine or newsletter
Video
Links to other good sites

Reciprocal Links

This is where you exchange links with other quality sites. You can create a links page on your site. This create a resource that visitors will want to return to. Find quality (there's that word again) web sites related to your subject and contact the webmaster about exchanging links.

Ezine advertising

Most ezines accept advertising. Ezines are online or email newsletters. They are used to build a relationship between a webmaster and a web site visitor, with news, updates, special offers etc. But as always they should have quality content. You place an ad in ezines that are highly targeted towards your niche. Prices depend on the ezine, and also the position of the ad. The most expensive is the solo ad, where yours is the only ad.

Article Submissions

Submitting articles is a great way to build back links and web site visitors. Your articles can become 'viral' when others want to re-publish them on their sites, or use them in their newsletters and ezines. You include links to your site in the author resource box offering more free information. The resource box is your chance to convince the reader to visit your web site.

Two of the most popular places to post your articles are http://www.goarticles.com/ and http://www.EzineArticles.com.

Forum Posting

In order to be successful using forums there are some things that are required. Do Your Homework: Prior to joining any forum, you must do some research. Join relevant forums that are in some way related to the promotion's primary sales market. Choose popular forums. There is no point in wasting your time and energy on forums that few members and few posts. Page raking and the amount of active members are two good ways to check for this. Choose forums that allow sig tags. Read the rules before joining and pay attention to them.

You've Joined: now what?

Keep your sig tag short and update it regularly. The ideal thing is to limit yourself to one link, preferably to your main website. Never create posts that are nothing more than an advertisement. This is a universal rule. At best this kind of post will be deleted by the monitors, at worst, you will be banned. Be an active member on the forum. Plan to spend at least an hour each day there. Get to know the users. Iintroduce yourself with intelligent questions depending upon the forum's topic.

Use Your Sig file to the best advantage and within the rules. Some Forums have places where you can advertise and give special deals to members.

Social Bookmarking

In a social bookmarking system, users store lists of Internet resources that they find useful. These lists are both accessible to the public or a specific network, and other people with similar interests can view the links by category, tags, or even randomly. Some allow for privacy on a per-bookmark basis.

Social Bookmarking can bring immediate traffic to your website, as web 2.0 community websites such as Technorati, Digg, Reddit and Tailrank provide almost immediate information on various topics. These type of Bookmarking sites index and categorize content usually faster than the major search engines. People looking for the latest information on certain topics usually refer to these types of services.

Bookmarking Accounts to check out:

http://digg.com/
http://technorati.com/

You can increase your Bookmarking using the free submission site http://www.OnlyWire.com to bookmark many accounts at once. When you signup to OnlyWire.com you can use many bookmark accounts and with one simple procedure bookmark your blog post to all your accounts at once.

OnlyWire.com interfaces with:

Backflip
Bibsonomy
Blinklist
Blogmemes
Blue Dot
de.lirio.us
del.icio.us
Diigo
Furl
Jots
Linkroll
Looklater
ma.gnolia
Markaboo
Rawsugar
Shadows
Simpy
Spurl
Wink

If you don't have a Bookmark Account for the ones listed go and sign up.

Viral Traffic using free reports - ebooks etc.

Directory Submissions

Submit your website url's to the search engines Google, Yahoo, MSN.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization, (SEO), is making web pages attractive to the search engines. The better optimized your web page is, the higher a ranking it will achieve in the search engines. Most people searching the internet only look at the first couple of search results.

So optimizing for the search engines focuses on techniques such as making sure that each web page is using the appropriate title tags and meta tags, and that the keyword or key phrases for the particular pages are distributed throughout the content. Search engines find and catalog web pages using spidering software.

These are just a few ways to get more web site traffic.

Thing you should know about SEO

Categories List

    * Analytics
    * Article Marketing
    * Blogging
    * Branding
    * Brick Marketing
    * Content Development
    * Conversion Tracking
    * Directories
    * Domain Names
    * Error Pages
    * Forums
    * Image Optimization
    * Inbound Links
    * Internal Linking
    * Internet Marketing
    * Keyword Research
    * Landing Page Optimization
    * Link Building
    * Link Selling
    * Local Search Engine Marketing
    * Meta Tags
    * Metrics
    * Net Neutrality
    * Online Backup
    * Online Publicity
    * Online Reputation Management
    * PageRank
    * Photo Optimization
    * Public Relations
    * Robots
    * Search Engine Advertising
    * Search Engine Positioning
    * Search Engines
    * Search Marketing
    * Security
    * SEO
    * SEO Books
    * SEO Events
    * SEO for Affiliates
    * SEO Hosting
    * SEO Jobs
    * SEO Myths
    * SEO Research
    * SEO Tools
    * SEO Training
    * SEO Videos
    * SEO Webinars
    * SEO Website Copywriting
    * Social & Viral Marketing
    * Top SEO List
    * Video SEO
    * Web Design
    * Webmaster Tools

Philippine Web Analytics Advise

When it comes to analytics, do you know which stats you should
be looking at? There are several that you should pay attention to, but
do you know the most important stat to keep an eye on? Most webmasters
don’t know.

A good analytics package should inform you of at least the following statistics:

Total visitor count for a given period
Unique visitors for the same period
Sources of traffic
Bounce rate
Most popular pages on your site
Visitor time spent on your website
Visitor time spent on each page of your website
Links clicked through most often
Top entrance pages
Top exit pages
Number of conversions

Percentage conversions per visitor

This is the minimum. And the most important stat is not on this
list, but your analytics package should inform you of that statistic as
well. It’s keywords used to find your site.

Your keyword list is the most important stat because these are the
keywords that you should use for further optimization and to attract
more visitors to your site. If you can narrow down which keywords lead
to the most conversions then that would be even better. And, even
better than that, which keywords lead to the greatest ROI.

When looking at analytics packages, don’t even consider one that doesn’t meet the minimum requirements.

Categories of SEO Services

1. Search Engine Optimization Strategy – A thorough evaluation of your site and an outline of the SEO strategies that will benefit your company the most.

2. SEO Keyword Research
– Extensive research of your industry and recommendations on
which keywords and phrases will be most beneficial to optimize. Or, if
you prefer, you can tell us which keywords and phrases you would like
to rank well for.

3. Meta Tags Copywriting – Rewriting and optimization of the Title Tag, Meta Tag Description, H1 Tags and Image Tags for each page of your site.

4. SEO Copywriting Recommendations
– A thorough review of the existing content of your site and
recommendations on how to optimize the keywords and phrases that you
have chosen. If needed, we have an in house staff of writers that can
create newly optimized content for your website.

5. Sitemap & Other Search Engine Optimization Changes – If needed, creation of or revision to your existing Sitemap, No Follow Tags, Robots.txt files, etc.

6. Implementation of SEO Changes –
We can work with your website designer to install all of the search
engine optimization recommendations or let our expert web developers
implement the changes directly to your website.

7. Development of a Link Building Strategy – An explanation of how we will optimize the internal and external links of your site to increase site optimization.

8. Execution of Ongoing SEO Link Building –
We take a “quality over quantity” and blended link building
approach to relevant 1 way link building for our clients.

9. Search Engine Optimization Reporting –
In addition to monitoring the keyword rankings in the 3 major search
engines we will also look at the visitors and sales generated from our
SEO efforts.

10. Follow-Up Communication –
Timely communication when the phases of your SEO project are completed.
You will always know what we are working on for you and you will have
direct access to your own dedicated search engine optimization expert.

Search Definition

What Is Organic Search?

When you go to any search engine (Google, Yahoo!, MSN Live, Ask.com, or
another) and type in a word or phrase then click “Search”,
you are performing an organic search. This is what millions of people
do every day. Every time someone searches Google, Yahoo!, MSN Live, or
one of thousands of other search engines, they are performing an
organic search.

Organic search results are those results that return information for
specific searches. Companies achieve those rankings either by accident
or because they understand how search works well enough to put together
a strategy that gives them an edge in the ranking wars. This is called
SEO - search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization is the process of testing different
elements of web design and copywriting - on page and off page - to
determine what works best for giving a web page high page rankings in
the search engines. By knowing which factors search engines give more
weight to, webmasters can influence their own search rankings just by
adding or taking away certain elements from their web pages. If you can
tweak your pages well enough to land on the first page of any of the
search engines then you have successfully optimized a web page. Get
that page in the top 3 positions and you have done very well. That is
organic search. If you do it yourself it costs you nothing but time.

What Is Paid Search?

Paid search is the act of paying a search engine for a listing. The
listing can either be at the top of the page, above the organic
listings, or on the side - usually the right side of the search results
page. You will see the phrase “Sponsored Links” or
something similar. Those are paid search results and companies do pay
to have their listings there. But how much?

That depends. Everyone who has a paid search results bids on
keywords. You’ve noticed that the ads appear when you type in a
word or phrase in the search box. Those words and phrases are the words
and phrases that paid search advertisers bid on. The top listing is
owned by the company who has the highest bid or the lowest quality
score. When you strive to achieve higher paid search listings you
should pay attention to your landing page’s optimization quality
as well as your ad’s copywriting quality and relevance to the
landing page.

Well, that’s about it in a nutshell. You pay per click for paid search listings and get organic search listings free.

7 basic SEO Categories

1. Submit your individual pages to social bookmarking site.

2. Create an article and submit to online article site with embedded link/s.

3. Find a link exchange related to your site.

4. Added link widget like the one being used in blog.

5. Find and join forum.

6. Find directory

7. Find online classified ads that accept announcement with links.

You will have a PR2 after a 2 months

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Using negative keywords

Use 'negative keywords' and your PPC profits can increase dramatically. This valuable technique tells Google which phrases your ad should not be displayed for. For example, if you're selling brand new 'apple laptops', you don't want your ad to appear when someone searches for 'refurbished apple laptops', so 'refurbished' should be a negative keyword for your campaign.

Wordtracker’s PPC expert, Ian Howie, will be running a PPC Masterclass for Profitable PPC Campaigns on 13th November in London.

Negative keywords are an integral part of any successful PPC campaign, stopping your adverts from appearing when a search query includes a term that is not relevant to your ad.

By adding negative keywords to your campaigns, you are filtering out unwanted traffic, helping you reach the most appropriate prospects whilst lowering your costs.

To find, prepare and add negative keywords to your Google Adwords account, go through the following steps:

Find your negative keywords
Prepare your list of negative keywords
Go to ‘Negative Keywords’ in your Google Adwords account
Enter your negative keywords

Let’s look at each of those steps…

Step 1. Find your negative keywords

There are 3 ways to compile your negative keyword list and they are:

Wordtracker Keyword Tool
Search Query Report in your AdWords account
Use your market knowledge and common sense

Let’s look at each of those:

Wordtracker Keyword Tool

Make a search in Wordtracker’s Keyword Research Tool and instead of looking for keywords you want to target, look for keywords you don’t want to target, ie negative keywords. For example, see the following screen grab of the results of a search with ‘apple laptops’—the possible negative keywords are highlighted:

Search Query Report in your AdWords account

This will tell you what people are searching for. What search queries are triggering your ads? If your ads are being shown for searches using terms that are unrelated to you, add them to your negative keyword list.

Use your market knowledge and common sense

You might already have an idea of the search queries that you don’t want to trigger your ads. This may include terms like cheap or free.

Step 2. Prepare your list of keywords

Prepare your list of negative keywords for Google by wrapping each in [square brackets] and preceding with a ‘-‘. Like the following list for our ‘apple laptops’ example:

-[apple laptops discount] -[reconditioned apple mac laptops] -[colored apple laptops] -[pink apple mac laptops] -[used apple laptops] -[linux laptops apple] -[mini laptops from apple] -[refurbished apple laptops] -[orange apple laptops]

Step 3. Go to ‘Negative Keywords’ in your Google Adwords account

Step 4. Enter your negative keywords

Copy and paste your negative keywords into the ‘Enter words manually…’ box and click on the ‘Add Keywords’ button, see grab below:

You can apply negative keywords at both ad group level and campaign level

At ad group level, all the ads in that group will not show for search queries containing that negative term. At campaign level, all the ads in the campaign will not show for search queries containing that negative term.

Different types of negative keywords

As with normal positive keywords, there are different matching options that each define how your keywords will match (or not) with search queries. So we’ll look at each one…

Standard negative keywords

Adding standard negative keywords to your ad groups and campaigns is the same process as adding any other keyword, but you put a minus sign (-) in front of the term.

If you added '-free trial' to your negative keyword list, your ad would not be shown if a user searched using the words 'free' and 'trial'. But, it wouldn’t stop your ad from being shown if they searched on just one of those words. So 'free sample' or '3-month trial' would both trigger your ad, whereas 'free 3-month trial' wouldn’t.

Negative phrase-matched keywords

Create a negative phrase-matched keyword by surrounding the term with quotation marks.

For example, if you added '-“free trial”' to your account, your ad would not appear if the search query contained the phrase 'free trial'. But don’t forget, the rules of phrase match still apply so your ads could still show if the search query is 'trial' or 'free 3-month trial'.

Negative exact-matched keywords

A negative exact-matched keyword looks like this '–[term]', like our apple laptops examples above.

For example, if you added '–[free trial]' to your negative keywords, your ad would only be prevented from showing on the search query 'free trial'. Variations of this search query, such as 'free trials', 'free' and '3-month free trial' could still trigger your ads.

In all cases it’s a good idea to add relevant variations of your negative keywords, including singular and plural forms.

Summary of the benefits of building a negative keyword list?

Your ad will not be shown for keyword phrases that are not relevant to your target market.
There will be fewer click-throughs that do not convert to sales.
Your overall clickthrough rate (CTR) will be higher, ie more people who see your ad will click on it.
A higher CTR will result in your ad being positioned higher on the page without having to pay a higher Cost per Click (CPC).
You will save money by reducing your CPC.
You will gain better knowledge of the keywords that you should weave into your website’s content.
You will increase your campaign’s Return on Investment (ROI).

A word of caution…

Start with the obvious negative keywords but don’t overdo it. Make sure you know which campaign you're affecting-some negative keywords will work for one campaign, but not for another. You could find yourself cancelling out profitable keywords which you should be trying to bid for.

If you don’t use negative keywords in your campaigns, your ads will be shown to users who aren’t interested in your business. Untargeted traffic can lower your Quality Score and your ROI will suffer. But make sure you don’t over-use negative keywords. Consider your potential negative keywords carefully and add to your list over time.

What is negative keywords?

Hey guys. As per usual we had a great response to our articles from our readers. Just to refresh your memories, Wordtracker featured the 7 Steps of a Pay Per Click campaign thanks to our PPC expert, Ian Howie.

We have noticed with these types of articles that we attract a lot of additional points of interest from our readership. We thought we would include them in our round-up article.

Ken Dickens wrote, “One more basic thing is to duplicate each ad group and have separate campaigns for the search network and content network.

“This will ultimately pay off in Google Analytics by giving you separate and more detailed information which will improve your conversion rate quickly.”

In our article, Ian Howie touched upon the merits of using Wordtracker to find negative keywords – these words are added to make a PPC campaign more streamlined. In Lia Barrad's comment, she demonstrated how 'negative keywords' work in practice.

“The importance of using Wordtracker to help research great keywords is essential but the point about finding the negative keywords is that it will stop useless PPC clicks.

“For example, I have a client that does advertising sales training, not real estate sales training or insurance sales training etc. When we formatted her Google PPC campaign to eliminate various types of training that she did not do - there were more real leads for her and less bounce rate.”

Penelope said that she would spend more time on negative keywords after reading the article.

She said, “I usually write a few ads at most for PPC campaigns, but have never considered anything like 50, as time is an important consideration for me. Negative words are something I don't spend much time on either, but will from now on.”

Of course as is with lots of these kinds of articles no one can tell you what is absolutely the right or wrong way to go about a PPC campaign, we can merely guide.

E-blueprint managed to put this into perspective with their comment, “There is nothing better than putting the work in and understanding exactly where you stand. It'll save you a lot of money in the long run.”

You will recall that our last case study brought some glamor to the newsletter, with Hayden Allen Vercoe talking to Rachelle Money about his online personal stylist website, iStylista.com, and how corporate blogging brought increased revenue to the site.

Vercoe was excellent at describing how he used Wordtracker for keyword research in his blogs.

Jeff Glucker was among the first to comment on the article. He said, “...we are trying the same approach and letting our blog build steam through keyword usage rather than strong direct promotion.”

We were particularly excited to hear from Irfan who told us, “Excellent article, we have been thinking since last few months to do something like this..i guess your article has helped us make up our mind to launch a blog...”

Glad to be of service Irfan, and good luck with your blog. Let us know how it's working out for you.

Vercoe said he wrote his blog posts after doing some keyword research. Spotty Boxes gave some sound advice on how to do this with any content.

“I usually choose two [keywords]. First a high traffic keyword which we are targeting long term - even if it is competitive - and then secondly a less competitive keyword which has a lower amount of traffic. This helps to give us some almost instant results.

“An example is our Christmas Hyacinth article which you can see if you go to the Spotty Boxes website, Children's Gardening and scroll to the bottom of the page.

"We probably won't get any results from the Garden Gifts for Christmas until next year but are already picking up traffic from Christmas Hyacinth Bulbs. Next stop for us - a blog!”

Thanks for that Spotty Boxes, and like Irfan, we would love to hear how your blog goes.

Next stop for the round-up is our SEO expert, Mark Nunney, who wrote a fab article on how to successfully optimize a page for over 10,000 keywords.

A few of you were clearly in awe of Mark's comments. There were a few "oohs", "ahs" and "wows" in response to his article.

Blake Ratcliff captures a lot of what our readers thought about Mark's article.

“This is an excellent article that illuminates the issue of keywords beyond simple discussion capacity to accomplish. We will be working to create ways to expand our keyword substantially based on this.”

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Things to learn about google crawling behavior

There is a lot to learn when it comes to online or internet marketing and search engine optimization. That is why a lot of people hire SEO consultants to worry about their internet marketing for them.

However, if you do not want to have to pay SEO experts to help you with the marketing of your website, then you may want to think about doing it yourself! It's not that hard, it just takes some reading on the internet from trusted sources. Really, most of the SEO services that are provided online are built around one thing, and that is search engine crawlers.

Today we are going to talk more about search engine crawlers, and what they do. Soon you will find out that pretty much everything that you do, as far as search engine optimization goes, is to make these little crawlers happy. It is no longer as easy as a quick search engine submission and your website becomes popular.

As you may be able to guess by the name, these search engine crawlers are little bots that roam around the internet looking for new websites and ranking them based on an algorithm. When they come across a new website, they rank it in different ways, taking many things in to consideration. These ranks help to determine where the site is going to end up in a search done on a search engine.

The first thing that you have to do for these crawlers is to get noticed by them, and that is the hardest part of SEO, or at least that is what SEO consultants want you to think! The truth of the matter is, you can get your website noticed by simply visiting different popular search engines and adding your URL to their submission forms.

You also must get links from other web sites pointing to your web site to obtain link popularity and credibility with the search engines. This way the crawlers will know where your site is at, and find it a lot quicker. They will also consider it a relevant source of information if other sites link to you.

After that, it's all about marketing your web site on the internet through search engine optimization techniques. These little crawlers are programmed to look for certain things on your web site, these are things that SEO experts study and have an understanding for.

Using the services of SEO Consultants to help in your marketing, however they can be very costly, so you should hire a service provider that is talented and can provide a portfolio to ensure you get quality work.

Before hiring someone to work on your web site you should make sure they use ethical search optimization and marketing tactics and also make sure that they can provide results.

Entireweb Newsletter * November 11, 2008 * ISSUE #491
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Search Engine Optimization And Search Engine Crawlers
There is a lot to learn when it comes to online or internet marketing and search engine optimization. That is why a lot of people hire SEO consultants to worry about their internet marketing for them.

However, if you do not want to have to pay SEO experts to help you with the marketing of your website, then you may want to think about doing it yourself! It's not that hard, it just takes some reading on the internet from trusted sources. Really, most of the SEO services that are provided online are built around one thing, and that is search engine crawlers.

Today we are going to talk more about search engine crawlers, and what they do. Soon you will find out that pretty much everything that you do, as far as search engine optimization goes, is to make these little crawlers happy. It is no longer as easy as a quick search engine submission and your website becomes popular.

As you may be able to guess by the name, these search engine crawlers are little bots that roam around the internet looking for new websites and ranking them based on an algorithm. When they come across a new website, they rank it in different ways, taking many things in to consideration. These ranks help to determine where the site is going to end up in a search done on a search engine.

The first thing that you have to do for these crawlers is to get noticed by them, and that is the hardest part of SEO, or at least that is what SEO consultants want you to think! The truth of the matter is, you can get your website noticed by simply visiting different popular search engines and adding your URL to their submission forms.

You also must get links from other web sites pointing to your web site to obtain link popularity and credibility with the search engines. This way the crawlers will know where your site is at, and find it a lot quicker. They will also consider it a relevant source of information if other sites link to you.

After that, it's all about marketing your web site on the internet through search engine optimization techniques. These little crawlers are programmed to look for certain things on your web site, these are things that SEO experts study and have an understanding for.

Using the services of SEO Consultants to help in your marketing, however they can be very costly, so you should hire a service provider that is talented and can provide a portfolio to ensure you get quality work.

Before hiring someone to work on your web site you should make sure they use ethical search optimization and marketing tactics and also make sure that they can provide results.

The first thing that crawlers look for is, of course, keywords.

Keywords in your web sites content and keywords in the links pointing to your site. When it comes to search engine optimization, use keywords wisely. Don't over-saturate your web site with keywords because you can get docked as a spammer. These keywords have to be worked into the web page and not just listed there. You should integrate them in to your content, page titles, meta tags and URL. Also, it will help the marketing of your web site if you work them into the titles of your web page as well.

Also make sure that your main page headings are bigger than that of your normal font so the crawlers can easily pick out what the main focus of your page is.

SEO consultants also worry about how many links there are out there that point back to your website. The more links, the better. However they must also be quality links from popular sites that are credible with the search engines. That is why SEO experts are always looking for different places where they can post links to your website. While crawlers are looking around, if they come across links to your website, then that helps to boost your ranking online.

As you can see, SEO services are very helpful, but if you can learn how to do online marketing by yourself, you don't need to hire anyone.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

How to beat your competitor's SEO

You have optimized your website for winning keywords, are mid-way with your link building campaign, and have been going absolutely crazy creating fresh SEO friendly content that pleases the users and search engines.

You are obviously very serious about your online business, and yet you cannot seem to cross the Rank # 12, Page 2 barrier of Google search listing for your primary keywords.

A series of questions arise from the imaginary situation above:

1. Why is my ranking for the particular keyword not going up?
2. Am I missing out on any SEO strategies?
3. Maybe I am not building enough links? How much will be enough?
4. Do I have to improve my content quality?
5. The search engine has changed their algorithm (?again)
6. Others are using illegal SEO techniques

Now while one could go over the questions in your head, read up on latest search engine algorithms, contact a SEO expert, or blindly start buying links out of desperation, there is an easier way to find your answers.

Simply ask why are the other 10 websites ranking before your website?

Now that does not mean that the above questions 1 to 6 are not relevant, but simply put, one of the easiest ways to boost your search rankings is to study the top 5 to ten websites for your keyword and then apply what working for them into your own strategies.

Now I am not asking you to copy the competition or have a strategy that just involves beating the competition at the ranking game. It never works. What is needed is a better balance between your company's SEO strategies and of those of your competitors.

Like in any business strategy, you have to know your competitors, study what strategies they are using, and then apply the best of those strategies to your own game plan.

In the same way, in defining the SEO path ahead for your website you must analyze your competition. What are they doing to rank in the top 10 that you are not doing? After all those websites are listed on the top for a reason, and they are applying SEO strategies that the search engine in particular seems to like.

Now while finding the answers to those questions in the real business world may be difficult, in the online world all you have to do is to right-click and view the source of the page.

The below simple steps will open up a world of information to you.

1. Does the domain name contain the keyword? If the link is a sub domain then does the sub domain contain the keyword?

2. In what Meta tags, title, etc has the competition placed their keywords?

3. Does the link name contain the keyword? eg. www.seo-optimization-experts.com/mumbai-seo-expert.html

4. How many keywords are listed in the keyword tag i.e. is the page focused around one or two keywords, or is it a jumble of keywords listed out.

5. Is the title and description captivating enough? How has the keyword/s been placed in the title and description and at what position?

6. Is the page graphic intensive? Is the site using a lot flash or active server pages? Search engines cannot understand graphics, only the text it can read on the page. Make sure there is a good balance between the graphics and content.

7. How long is the body text? Writing 400 to 600 words is normally fine.

8. Has the keyword (keyword weight) been used appropriately in the body content? Ideally the first 25 words of content should be keyword rich, and the keyword should appear after every 100 words in remaining content.

9. Is the content interesting to you as the reader? Does the content follow a theme? Is the content relevant to what keyword the page has been optimized for?

10. What is the page rank of the page (You can check page rank of any website by downloading the Google Toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com.

11. Which is the first place in the source code the keyword appears?

12. Has the keyword been used appropriately in headline tags and link text?

13. Does the site use java script, tables, frames, dynamic content, CMS etc?

14. Is the page focused around a theme?

15. How many inbound links are there to the page? You can check the link popularity of the page on www.marketleap.com? Visit the sites that have given the link. What is their page rank? What is the link text that describes the link to the website? Has the keyword been used in the link text?

16. How many pages does the site have?

17. Does the site have a good site map that lists all the content pages, videos on the site that search engine spiders can crawly easily?

18. Are there any 404 errors on the website?

19. What is the domain name extension e.g. .com,. net, .edu, .co.in

20. How long has that domain name been in existence? Search engines rank those sites better that have been around for a while, or those that plan to be around for a while?

21. How many directories has that page/website been submitted to?

22. Has the site used any spamming or illegal SEO techniques like keyword stuffing, cloaking, hidden text, duplicate content and other such spam techniques? If yes you can inform the search engine of the same but do so with caution. For Google: http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

How to beat your competitor's SEO program

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Product/Marketing Manager

Requirements:PURSPOSE OF THE JOB
• Provide Customer Service and Support to all companies
• Provide detail Customer and Support budgets for all companies
• Provide Detail Internet campaign marketing analysis for all companies
• Monitor all Campaigns
• Review all Customer & Support Capital Expenditures
• Review all Customer Service personnel hires and salary increases.

RESPONSIBILITIES:
• Prepare detail Scripts for all customer service personal.
• Prepare monthly Customer Service operation review for each company
• Prepare monthly Internet marketing campaign review for each company
• Support all company executives
• Prepare a Customer Support Personnel manual.
• Establish a positive, family orientated environment
• Review and monitor the cost and effectiveness of all marketing campaigns.
• Monitor the Customer Service Process and allocation of cost
• Recommend changes to all processes that can be automated
• Control interface with all Marketing companies

OTHER RESPONSIBILITIES
• Will supervise the Customer Support personnel.
• Will report directly to company President and CEO

PREFERRED SKILLS
• At least 5 years as a manager
• Internet Marketing, SEO.
• Knowledge of Customer Service process
• Prepared detail month to month budgets
• Knowledge of how to control and minimize operations expenses
• Participate in operation reviews
• Be Tough but have Compassionate people skills
• At least 3 year(s) of working experience in the related field is required for this position.

DESIRABLE SKILLS
• Worked with Internet marketing process
• Worked with engineering and product development
• Management of Internet marketing functions
• Affiliate Networking, Web Development

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITIES
• Prepare customer service budgets of all companies
• Prepare Actual monthly results and compare to budget
• Approve all expenditures over $1,000
• Approve all new hires
• Approve all Capital Expenditures

Online Sales And Marketing Associate

Responsibilities:

Prepare reports, proposals and presentations.

Conduct web market research.

Phone work (set-up or follow up appointments, verify information, receive and screen calls and voice mails, etc)

Send and receive e-mails and e-fax

Perform Database building on occasion.

Internet marketing i.e., Google Adwords, SEO, etc.

Requirements:

Candidate must possess at least a Bachelor's/College Degree in Business Studies/Administration/Management, Marketing or equivalent.

Required skill(s): Internet Marketing, Telemarketing.

Required language(s): Excellent English verbal skills

Fresh graduates/Entry level applicants are encouraged to apply.

Full-Time positions available.

Applicants should be Filipino citizens or hold relevant residence status.