You’ve spent many hours trying to increase your online traffic with your linking campaign. You’ve sent out 200 e-mails pleading with other web sites to trade links with your site. Many of your e-mails bounce back.The requests that find thier targets get rejected for numerous reasons. For example, your Google pagerank is too low or your links pages are dynamic and not static, etc., blah, blah, etc., ad nauseum. Out of those 200 requests, you wind up getting 25 reciprocal links, if you are lucky.
So, you say to yourself, “Great, now i have 25 more links!”. But are these links really worth it? Do they generate any traffic?
There are many reasons why your links won’t even get counted or indexed by the search engines. If your link is on a page among 100 other links, or the page is irrelevant to your subject matter, the page probably won’t hold much weight with most search engines. It’s also rumored that Google is changing it’s algorithm to discount reciprocal links altogether.
So, what can you do to get your links indexed and noticed? Write your own content, distribute it to article directories or trade it with other related websites!
Here are 8 tips on increasing your online traffic with distributed content.
Try to write about popular content. The more popular it is, the more people will download it and want to include it on their websites and the more links you’ll have pointing back to your site.
Try not to use any promotional jargon or sales pitches in your articles. If you do, many webmasters will not want to include your article on thier site.
Use plain English. Don’t try to get too technical. Read it back to yourself and make sure you don’t get tongue-tied while reading it.
If possible, work in your site’s main keyword phrases into your articles. If your site is about online marketing, write articles about online marketing.
Make sure you include an “About the Author” section at the bottom. Make it somewhat short and always include a link back to your site in an anchor tag. And once again, include your keywords in the link text.
Proofread your article carefully. I see so many articles out there with misspellings. It just makes you look bad. After you spell check, have a friend or co-worker read it to double check for errors.
When you’re finished with your article, submit it to popular article directories like goarticles.com, articlefactory.com, amazines.com and imparticles.com. For a fee, there are even services out there that will submit your articles to the top directories for you.
Make sure you publish your articles on your own website too, more content equals more traffic. Don’t worry about getting penalized by search engines for having duplicate content. You only get penalized if the content is duplicated on your own domain, not if it’s duplicated on other websites.
So there you have it. Distributed content allows you to make every link count, by creating targeted links that directly contribute to your search engine rankings, and by delivering targeted traffic on its own. And besides, it might even make you famous!
About the Author
Robert Raught is the lead SEO expert at Technet, a search engine optimization firm based in Washington state. He also publishes daily SEO news and articles in an online RSS enabled blog titled “The Optimizer”.
Written by SEO Tipster on November 13th, 2006 with no comments.
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Hey Webmasters, ever wondered which sites have links to your competitors website that aren’t linking to you via the search engines (Yahoo and MSN) ?
If the answer is yes, you can try Linkhounds backlink harvester, the script uses the Yahoo search API to generate results that shows you . This script allows you to set the number of links you would like to analyze from 250 to 2000 links. It not only shows you sites linking to you but their network class c address that they are hosted on. They even split the results into .edu domains, .com domains and .org domains (Although I only saw .com and .edu)
Best of all the script is provided FREE for use. Not bad eh a great tool for checking backlinks
Written by SEO Tipster on November 11th, 2006 with no comments.
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If you have questions about whether or not the Over-Optimization Penalty (OOP) exists or not, then you obviously haven’t pushed the limits enough with your own website optimization or organic SEO efforts to have experienced the joys of running into the OOP (Over-Optimization Penalty).I’m sure you’re probably thinking: “prove it”. If that’s what you’re thinking, let me tell you about a specific example of what I call the Over-Optimization Penalty, or OOP:
Over-Optimization penalty because of too much anchor text. You decide that your site is not ranking well. So, you change the navigation on your site so that all the home page links say “keyword keyword home” instead of “home”. A few days later you lose your rankings, which is a serious blow to your traffic. Since that was the only thing you changed on your site you change those links to your home page back so it says, “home” instead of “keyword keyword home”. BINGO! All of your lost rankings and your lost traffic comes back a few days later.
If that’s not proof of an over-optimization penalty then I don’t know what is–I would call that an OOP: you do something to try to boost your rankings by over optimizing some element of your website, something that backfires and causes a loss of rankings.
I personally can name tons of other examples just like this that prove that there’s an OOP.
One more thing–I think that you can over-optimize a web page or site without going as far as actually spamming. In the example above, I truly believe that having too much of the same anchor text isn’t spamming, it’s just over-optimization. Spamming, in my book, would be something like keyword stuffing or something like repeating a keyword over and over again. Over optimization is different than spamming.
White Hat, Gray Hat, and Black Hat Whether or not you think the OOP (an over-optimization penalty) exists depends on what type of “hat” you wear.
If you’re a true “white hat” SEO that won’t dare test the limits then you’re going to believe that the OOP doesn’t exist. After all, you’ll never experience any over-optimization penalties because you won’t dare do anything that would possibly have a negative effect on search engine rankings.
If you’re a true “grey hat” SEO then you’ve definitely experienced the OOP, just like I’ve described in a previous post. For example, you’ve gone a little too heavy on your anchor text so you have to “back off” on using your keywords in the anchor text. Or, you realize that your keyword density on a page is too high–OOPS! you’ve just experienced the over-optimization penalty (OOP).
If you’re a true “black hat” SEO then you definitely know that there’s a difference between an over-optimization penalty and being a spammer. If you’ve never had a site banned in a search engine then you’re not a true “black hat” SEO. And if you’ve experienced rankings that have suddenly vanished because of too much over-optimization then yes, you probably believe in the OOP, just like I do.
There is a very big difference between over-optimization and spamming. Spamming will get your site banned. Over-optimization will not. The “penalty”, if you will, is a loss of search engine rankings due to over-optimization. Thus, that’s what gray hat and black hat Search Engine Optimization Specialists call the OOP.
Bill Hartzer is a successful writer and search engine marketing expert who has personally created hundreds of websites over the years. Bill created his first website back in 1996 to help promote his former database software business. It was then when he learned about the power of the search engines and web search, which helped potential customers find his business online.
Bill Hartzer has over 15 years of professional writing experience. He has survived stints as a writer for television, as well as a technical writer for several computer software companies in Florida and in Texas. Mr. Hartzer combines his writing and online skills to create compelling and useful websites for corporations worldwide. Mr. Hartzer focuses on the optimization in the business to business arena, but applies these optimization skills to business to consumer websites, as well. He currently is the one of the Administrators at the Search Engine Forums website.
Written by SEO Tipster on November 11th, 2006 with no comments.
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In my few months tinkering with SEO, I have heard of 3 mainstream SEOs - the White SEO, the Black Hat SEO and the Gray Hat SEO. But recently I read a nice article about the types of colored hats SEOs can have, which is funny. Take a look at the SEO hat ranges here at TimConverse.com
Taken From TimConverse.com
Here’s my attempt to give SEO’s more than just two or three colors.
Background: A naive (non-SEO) webmaster or content producer simply makes a site, without a thought or a care to the world of search engines. Or if there’s a thought it’s a thought of hopeful trust: if I make a useful interesting site on topic X, then the search engine will figure that out and deliver users who care about X to my site. SEOs and SEO-aware content creators construct sites instead with an eye to how search engines work, and make content that is designed to be retrieved. The white-hat/black-hat continuum is about the extent to which SEOs are working with search engines or against them. Black-hat SEOs are also known as search-engine spammers.
Dark inky black: The SEO’s (or in this case the spammer’s) interests are totally divergent from both the engines and the users…
Charcoal: The SEO tries to trick the engine into showing the user something totally unrelated to the query, and possibly offensive…
Luminescent pearly white: This would be a case where the SEO designs a site to show up for relevant queries and not to show up for irrelevant queries…
And Many more colors Read More
Have fun 
Written by SEO Tipster on November 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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It’s interesting how potential clients have preconceived notions about which aspects of search engine marketing have the most value. In fact, they tend to fall into two camps that are 180?apart. The first camp believes completely in the value of pay-per-click marketing (PPC). It’s easy to understand why. PPC provides immediate and measurable benefits. The ROI of PPC marketing is obvious. This group doesn’t understand why it’s necessary “to bother” doing SEO. The second camp believes the only way to go is SEO. Clicks are free and the branding benefits of high rankings have been well documented.The right answer is that they are both valuable. Each has its benefits and when you can afford to, you should implement both.
Pay-per-Click
PPC makes sense if you want immediate benefits and like the idea of paying for performance. SEO provides branding benefits and longer-term will provide an ROI that is compelling. But unlike PPC, SEO revenue results aren’t as directly measurable and manageable.
Pay per click (PPC) gives you the ability to have complete control over your search traffic. With PPC programs you select the keywords and write the listings. You control where you’re listed and what the listing says. You decide what your budget is and can adjust your spend rate based on results or events (e.g. announcements, promotions).
By tracking results from a PPC campaign, you can build up a knowledge base with respect to your business, including which messages perform the best, which search terms have the best conversion rates, and what destination URL is best for specific users to land on. Over time, this knowledge can help you to improve and define your business.
One of the greatest attractions of PPC is the ability to easily track clicks and costs allowing you to understand your ROI from a specific marketing initiative. This gives you confidence to spend money and drive volume. You may have thought that spending $5,000 a month on a PPC campaign is way outside your budget, but once you measure the ROI, you may realize that it’s well worth the investment.
Search Engine Optimization
So, if PPC is so great why bother with SEO? Basically, because you will be missing out on a large number of potential clicks. How large? A number of recent studies have demonstrated that there are still a lot of users that do not click on the “paid” listings but rather will search through the regular editorial search results. The accompanying chart shows that 60% of the search users prefer (some exclusively) organic over paid listings. The only way to get optimized (high) rankings in these regular editorial results is through an effective SEO program. In most cases, once you have good positioning in the regular search results, you will continue to receive “free” traffic. Again, based on data from a number of marketers the increase in traffic due to SEO averaged 73%. Consider search engine optimization the same as you would word of mouth advertising or public relations. It’s exposure that comes with a very high degree of credibility and trust. Traffic coming from traditional search listings tends to have high conversion rates.
There’s another advantage to traditional search listings. They are considered unbiased and non-commercial. Traditional search performs very well at certain points in the buying process. When consumers are gathering information about a purchase, they show a marked preference for traditional search listings. When they are ready to buy online, they seem to have less bias against paid placement listings and their likelihood to click on one of these listings increases.
The Dollars and Cents of SEO
Perhaps the most compelling reason not to exclude SEO from your online marketing strategy comes down to dollars and cents. In an attempt to quantify the business case for SEO I have gone back and done some analysis on three recent SEO engagements and the results they achieved. I chose ecommerce clients that we had optimized and reviewed their average sales before and after SEO was implemented. In two of the situations the only change made was the optimization of the site. In another the optimization occurred at the same time we implemented a PPC campaign. In the first two cases the store sales rose 64% and 75% after the SEO was implemented. In the third case the store revenue actually went up a staggering 169%, but if you back out the sales that were a result of the PPC campaign, the store revenue that could be attributed to SEO improved by 49%. In other words, the average improvement in store revenue that was apparently due to SEO was 62%.
Can we be sure that all of this was a result of SEO? No. There could have been product, seasonal and other effects that contributed. But I think it’s safe to say that there was a significant increase that resulted directly from the SEO. The bottom line: search optimization has a real and measurable impact on traffic, conversions and revenue (or lead generation) improvement. Given that these clicks begin to approach “free” after amortizing the cost of SEO over time, the ROI for SEO is compelling. Added to the branding benefits no marketer or business owner should doubt the value of search engine optimization.
About the Author
Scott Smigler has been an evangelist for a serious, ROI-based focus on the online channel since he founded Exclusive Concepts (http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com) in 1997. Exclusive Concepts provides integrated online marketing strategies, Internet brand consulting, search engine marketing campaigns and results-oriented web sites for hundreds of clients that range in size from small ecommerce firms to public companies.<
Written by SEO Tipster on November 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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I hear this all the time. “I can get you listed on 100,000 websites for $29.95″ and…”I can get you 100,000 hits on your website for the same price”. Avoid these like the plague.First off you don’t need a 100,000 visitors to your site. What you need is 100,000 CUSTOMERS on your site searching for your product or service. Very simply you’re not going to find many people doing this for you. DocMurdock? will do this. Our mission is to find people looking for your product or service and bring them to your website so that you can sell them. While we don’t guarantee more sales, we’ll get you people who want your product to come and look-see. If your sales message is clear, you’ll sell them. We help with this as well.
How do we do this? We evaluate your site for things that pull people in. Things that are magnets for people and attract them to stay on your site vs. things that repel them and send them to your competition. We also scour the web for those people and lead them to your site so they’ll buy your product or service.
If you have an auto parts site and people show up looking to buy flowers…you’re sales will not increase. If you have flowers and they show up to buy flowers…you’re in the money. This is our objective. More sales for your company. More revenue. This is why we term what we do “Revenue Optimization” not Website Optimization. Kids optimize websites, and there are a lot of kids out there doing it. But…all the hits in the world are not going to increase your revenue, if they’re not from people searching for your product.
With us, your hit counter may actually go down. It’s not a bad thing, it just means that the people who are actually looking for your product or service are finally coming to your site. Another of our objectives is to increase the stay time of visitors. If they’re there for less than a minute…sales will dwindle. If we put things in the right places, give them a call to action, ask them to do something, we keep them there. The longer a potential client is on your site, the more apt they are to purchase something.
Give them a reason to stay there. Offer them something free, ask them to subscribe to a newsletter, buy something, see something, get something for free…there are many ways to keep a customer on your site. Use attractive colors. Go out and see what the hottest websites are using for color schemes. Do those fit your business or your brand? Who are you using for branding and marketing? Check out www.howstudios.com for the best in the business. Howard Lim. Give him a call and tell him I referred you. He’s great, and what he will create for you will help your business convey an image of greatness, one that will sell your product quickly.
100,000 websites…MYTH. There are really only 5 to be concerned with. One of them is listed to the right; GOOGLE the others vary from time to time, but keep in mind MSN, YAHOO, ALEXA, DOGPILE as some primary candidates to submit your site to.
Good luck and may your website rise higher every day.
Michael Murdock
Michael Murdock former Macintosh Systems Engineer for PIXAR, and Systems Engineer at SUN Microsystems brings his expertise of the web to SEO. He’s been doing this for more than 8 years and helped many companies gain prominence on the Internet Search Engines. He can be found at http://www.docmurdock.com
Written by SEO Tipster on November 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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It’s difficult to dispute the rational behind the rant since Google continues to outpace its rivals in popularity with an 89% “strongly positive experience” rating from an opinion poll of U.S. Adult Internet Users conducted by eMarketer in early 2005. Google certainly achieves mass exposure and logically it’s fair to attribute a first position ranking to gaining access to the masses.However, your success in search engine marketing should not be reliant on a single source of visitors. Although the convenience of focusing on Google is comforting in the whirlwind of new search and Internet technology, the outcome from it could be disastrous to the growth of your business.
An effective search engine marketing strategy leverages the advantages of all of the major search engines and their advertising channels including natural and paid.
Why?
Here are three essential reasons why you should expand your search engine marketing strategy beyond just Google, paid search or any other singular search engine marketing strategy to encompass the broader opportunities available for your business.
(1) Paid versus Natural Search: Relevancy and Conversion
A common strategy of search engine marketing companies and Internet marketers is to bid for the top paid search listing in Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) or Google Adwords as a way to acquire the perceived “bread and butter” position in the search results page. The concept is that a search result appearing at the top of the list is the most relevant to the search users’ keyword query and therefore will receive the most click-throughs and conversions.
However, research from Enquiro as well as many other research firms, found a “significant amount of confusion over sponsored links.” In the research conducted, over 77% of participants when performing a product research search choose a natural listing over a paid listing. Even during an actual purchase scenario, 67% of participants still choose a natural listing over a paid one.
And what about Google specifically? The Enquiro study showed that 85% of Google users choose a natural listing while 14% clicked on a paid “sponsored” link. The study stated that, “Google users also had the lowest level of confusion about what was a sponsored link on the search results page.” Compare these numbers to 42% of search users on non-Google search engines like Yahoo and MSN choose a sponsored link over a natural listing.
Also, the conversion rate whether sales or leads may be affected by the source of a website visitor’s click-through. A study conducted by MarketingSherpa called “Search Marketing Metrics Survey” in July 2004, showed that “conversions from (natural) search engine results are 25%+ higher than paid search ad conversions.” Relevancy from search result listing to website is critical however you also need to consider the relevancy associated with the ad type ? paid versus natural.
So you know the insight ? what’s the solution?
Easy ? don’t get caught up in an “either/or” decision, as a search engine marketer you must focus on both natural search through search engine optimization and paid search.
As the Enquiro study stated, “Unless a company is willing to forfeit either 70% (in the case of natural) or 30% (in the case of paid) of their potential market to the competition they have to seriously consider both search channels.”
(2) Cross-Search Engine Builds Brand Credibility
Tempting as it may be to put all of your eggs in one basket for convenience sake, Google is not the only major source of quality website visitors. In the most recent search engine rankings issued by Nielsen/NetRatings in March 2005, Google was first with 47% of searches (among work and home users in U.S.); Yahoo second with 20.9% and MSN third with 13.6%. If you only focus on Google, you are missing access to over 53% of the marketplace.
In addition, another separate study conducted by Nielsen/NetRatings determined that “the majority of Internet searchers use mutliple search engines.” As a ClickZ article written by Rob McGann on February 28, 2005 stated, “The (Nielsen/NetRatings) study found that 58% of Google searchers also visited at least one of the other top two search engines, Yahoo and MSN Search.”
So what happens when a potential customer finds your search listing on Google yet you are no where to be found on MSN or Yahoo? What if they only see a sponsor listing on Google which they immediately view as less than relevant? How about a major slam against your credibility?
Yes ? that’s right. Because of the wide-spread utility of the internet for research and consideration during a buying cycle, if you are not found across search engines for a particular keyword search, you don’t exist in the eye of the searcher as a potential option to fulfill their needs. On the other hand, if you are found across multiple search engines, you instantly receive a relevancy and credibility boost.
So you know the insight ? what’s the solution?
Focus on generating search result listings for at least the top three search engines ? Google, Yahoo and MSN. Because these three feed a number of other search engines like AOL and AskJeeves (for paid listings) you will gain cross-search engine exposure.
In the worse case, work on generating natural search listings in Google and perform paid search in Yahoo and MSN using Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) to achieve the broad search exposure.
If search users are adopting multiple search engines to conduct their keyword searches then build your credibility with them by appearing across the major search engines especially for your top brand-oriented keywords.
(3) Search Engine User Demographics
Depending on the type of product or service you are selling, focusing on just Google or any other single search engine marketing strategy may be placing you in the entirely wrong marketplace. Although absolute demographic figures are difficult to gather, a 2004 Enquiro study titled, “Search Engine Usage in North America” provided some interesting demographic characteristics for the top three search engines:
? Males are more likely to remain loyal with one search engines (primarily Google) while females are more likely to use more than one search engine (Google, MSN and Yahoo).
? Males prefer Google while females had a strong preference for MSN.
? For both males and females, a trusted site that offers unbiased information with the natural search results was the strongest preference.
? As educational levels increased, an affinity towards Google increased as well. This may imply that Google uses are more sophisticated.
? Google users were more Internet savvy than non Google users therefore, for technology-related products Google may be a better source of qualified visitors while MSN and Yahoo may be better for non technology-related products.
So you know the insight ? what’s the solution?
Visitor behaviors are dynamic ? they have a tendency to change as frequently as the weather. Therefore, do not assume that your potential customers are sophisticated and therefore reside in the Google pool. Instead, use paid search engines to test all three major search engines to generate a sense of where your potential customers hang-out. Once you find a populated pool of qualified visitors work on building your natural search listings to support and ultimately replace your paid search engine strategy.
Although it is easy to want to simplify search engine marketing by focusing all of your efforts on the biggest and most popular search engine, Google ? it is business smart to avoid the temptation. Yahoo and MSN are prominent players in the search engine market and may possess hidden gems that could explode your business growth. Even more so, moving beyond the top three search engines is also important to extend your brand exposure on an international level.
By focusing your efforts across the top three search engines whether using natural or paid listings, you are placing yourself in the best position to build credibility, relevance and conversion ? the main variables that lead to significant search engine marketing success for your business.
Kevin Gold is a writer, speaker and co-founder of Enhanced Concepts, Inc. Enhanced Concepts specializes in turning website visitors into leads or sales through web conversion strategies and ROI-driven search engine marketing. If you want to increase your leads or sales and get a free copy of “Understanding Your Conversion Rate” and “12 Surefire Ways to Increase Your Website Conversion” visit http://www.enhancedconcepts.com
Written by SEO Tipster on November 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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So you want to get listed on Google? And you want a GOOD listing on Google? “But my website is not popular and is too new to be noticed by Google,” you say?Well, I have a solution to your problem.
There are couple ways to get listed on Google. First, there’s the wrong way. Or should I say the way that takes an extra long time, which also happens to be the way that’s not as popular with Google. In other words, it’s the way that might get you listed but NOT anywhere large amounts of people will see it. So, I see that method as useless.
Google has a place for you to add your URL for your site to be placed in que for crawling. It’s at http://www.google.com/addurl.html.
I haven’t known anyone to get great results by using this one method. This is because of the mechanics involved with what follows after. You add your site URL in the cute little box, your site URL is then placed in line for the GoogleBot to crawl. At this point in time, your site will probably be behind millions of other pages. There is much room for things to happen and your site NOT get crawled by the GoogleBot. And even if it gets crawled, it’s not for sure that Google will even indexed the site to begin with. And if it does index your site, there’s no telling where it will end up. Probably NOT on the first three pages of search results, which is virtually useless.
Let’s now talk about the RIGHT way to be indexed by Google.
The best way to get indexed by Google, which is also the preferred way according to their algorithms, is for them to crawl another site first. When The GoogleBot crawls another site and finds your link within that site, it then follows that link to your site.
This is the way you get popular with Google, or work your way up toward the top of the search results. So in order to get good results with Google, you need links at other sites pointing toward you. In order to get even better results with Google, you need to either increase the sites that link back to you to an astronomical amount, or have less links pointing toward you, but from more popular sites.
So if you could somehow get a link pointing to you, say from Amazon.com, that one link would be equivalent to more than a couple dozen links pointing toward you from separate, less popular sites. If you could manage to get a dozen or so larger sites to link toward you, this would be equivalent to perhaps thousands of sites linking to you, that are less popular. Google likes that. Google promotes you up the search ladder for accomplishing that.
So how you get these larger sites to link to you?
I’ll tell you right now. You can’t email Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates and ask to exchange links. That’s insane and practically impossible. But there’s an easier way.
First, go to discussion sites and forums and participate in relevant discussions. Simply place a hyperlink pointing back to you in your signature. I must mention here that you should not go to discussion sites and forums and simply add your link and say “Go here!” That won’t work and will get the forum moderator angry. It’s also a good way to get blacklisted. You need to participate in discussions that are relevant to the board and important to all reading the board. If you do this no one minds if you include your hyperlink within your signature.
Another way to establish links back to you on the Internet is to write quality articles about subjects that are interesting to your target market. Again, you need to try and create quality content within your articles. Readers, and especially editors, can spot writers trying to receive free publicity a mile away.
It doesn’t take much extra effort to do a little research, come to your own conclusions, perhaps solve a problem, and record your results on paper. Perhaps you could write down the steps you took to research a subject or solve a problem. When you provide quality content that is interesting and helpful to your readers, you can place your name and a hyperlink to your web site at the end of the article. This is standard procedure.
At this point let’s remind ourselves why we’re doing all this. It’s to solve the problem of how you’re going to get bigger and more popular websites to link to your website.
Now, keep writing articles. As you write more and more articles, you will get better. As you get better, more editors will pick up your articles and include them at their sites. As more of your articles are included, you’ll establish more links pointing back to you through the resource box. As you establish more links pointing back to your site, you will solve the problem that we established at the beginning of this article.
I’ve created an e-book special report that goes into more depth of what we’ve just covered. It’s titled “Get Listed On Google Fast - Through The Back Door!” I’ve provided it for you at my web site for free. This useful e-book includes links and tools you need to begin from square one on how to establish yourself on Google. The e-book also contains relevant links to discussion boards and forums that you can post to and participate within discussions if your web site is business based or home business based.
About The Author:
William Riopelle is an online computer consultant. His popular eBook “Get Listed On Google Fast!” provides more information on Google tips. It can be downloaded FREE at: http://www.freesoftwarecenter.com
Written by SEO Tipster on November 6th, 2006 with no comments.
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What’s the most potent free traffic source on the web?*** Search Engines! ***
Surprised? Of course not. Why do so many people concern themselves so deeply with search engine optimization, positioning and ranking?
In the United States, the follow FOUR search engines handle (*)94% of all search inquiries each and every day.
Google = 35%
Yahoo = 28%
AOL (powered by Google) = 16%
MSN = 15%
* Source: comScore Media Metrix
Given this information and the fact that 100’s of millions of searches are performed every day; wouldn’t you want to have your website ranked high enough that it was one of the first sites listed by Google or Yahoo or AOL or MSN? Imagine the exposure that you’ll receive!
One undisputed fact is that search engines love websites that offer focused content.
If you’re publishing a newsletter online, there are a number of things that you can do with the articles and content that you create. This article will discuss search engines and their affinity for focused and relative content.
I want to show you a free tool that will help you take articles that you write or other people’s articles (with their permission, of course) and very quickly and easily incorporate it into your website.
STEP 1: Find articles that tie in closely with the theme of your website or any particular page on your site. For testing purposes you can use this newsletter to play around with.
STEP 2: Go Here:
==> http://snipurl.com/texttohtml
STEP 3: About mid-page on the right-hand side you’ll see a short paragraph with the title “Free Text to HTML Converter”. Click on the title. This is a CGI script that I installed at Internet Marketing Power Tools for your use.
STEP 4: Copy the text that you want to convert to HTML code, and paste it in the open text box that you see when this page opens.
STEP 5: Scroll down the page and choose the options that will give you the output that best suits your needs.
STEP 6: Click the “Convert to HTML” button at the bottom of the page.
STEP 7: Click the “Select All” button to copy and paste the now-HTML-formatted text into your webpage.
That’s all there is to it.
By including meaningful content on your website, you should receive more favorable rankings in the major search engines. This is only one aspect of what search engines are looking for, but it’s an important component and will put you on the right track to getting ranked higher and increasing traffic to your site.
Copyright 2005 Ron Hutton
Ron Hutton is a 20 year sales and marketing veteran with a passion for coaching and training. Subscribe to “GoThrive Online”, for big juicy marketing tips in small, easy-to-chew, bite size servings. 17 Free Cool Tools… http://www.gothrive.com
Written by SEO Tipster on November 5th, 2006 with no comments.
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Think about the first thing you ever heard about “marketing a website” on the web. 99% of the time the first words anyone ever hears are “search engine marketing.” Or some semblance of the phrase.And from that point on, the hammering of misinformation never lets up. You are led to believe that your business will die a terrible death without the search engines. You are led to believe that only people who can guide you through the mine field of search engine optimization are the SEO “experts.”
Also you are told time and again that the only way to market online PERIOD is through the search engines. You are conditioned over time to focus most, if not all, of your efforts on tricking the search engines into liking your site above all your competitors for search terms where “there can be only one.”
Well, here’s a wake up call: The vast majority of small business startups will never have the resources, time, or know-how to turn an idea into a profitable online business focusing only on search engines.
Just look at the deluge of information there is out there on Google and how to rank well with them. People are picking apart their ranking patent application right now to try an glean a website promotion strategy based upon what Google reveals in their application about their ranking system.
Is this information valuable to a small business wanting to sell its wares to a whole market rather than just the part of that market which uses one of the big search engines?
It is in extreme moderation, yes. In a well balanced marketing campaign that focuses on many ways to bring in targeted traffic, search engine marketing has its place. You do what you can, and you move on to all the other ways there are to promote your business.
Yet, so many people are falling victim to the gleam and glitter of search engine riches being pushed on them by SEO firms and people selling search engine how-to manuals.
It is not long before a new business finds itself wrapped up in a game where the only winners are the geeks and deep pockets.
If you do not fall into either of those categories, your business is doomed from the start if you hop right off the porch to play with those big dogs.
“But I hired a ‘big dog’ SEO firm to make my business stand out and compete with the geeks in my market niche.”
More power to you. In actuality, unfortunately, you probably just hired a teenager from India with an internet connection in his parents’ house. Most small business start ups cannot come close to affording a major SEO firm. They charge corporate-level premiums to be able to access their services.
Everyone else in the SEO world is practically working out of their garage in comparison.
Scared yet? You don’t have to be as long as you are spreading your marketing around to the non-search engine traffic you should be getting.
Writing articles and syndicating them in your market is a direct traffic strategy that has nothing to do with search engines. Except that search engines find your site through those links as well. But you should be doing it solely for DIRECT TRAFFIC from readers on other sites and taking the search engine traffic boost as mere icing on the cake.
You see, as people spam the search engines, they must adjust how they rank sites in order to compensate. This means a lot of good sites take a hit when Google changes the way it ranks sites.
You could have done everything completely on the up and up and gotten dropped in the engines because they made a new rule that everyone who registers their domains only for one year is a possible spammer. There goes your legit site. Hope you weren’t planning on search engine traffic for your SOLE source of traffic.
Can you see how dangerous it is to get bitten by the search engine bug? YES you can propel your business overnight from a profitless dead zone to a glamorous profit machine with one top ranking.
Of course that is possible. It is not likely.
People who are turning their small online businesses into success stories are doing one thing across the board: Conducting a multi-faceted marketing campaign that includes search engines along with a good mix of other non-search engine marketing such as reciprocal and non-reciprocal linking tactics too numerous to mention here.
If you want long-term success online, you must be willing to look past all the sleeze merchants selling you dreams of riches through search engine marketing.
Search engines care about one thing: Their own hides. You should care more about your hide than anything else and use a well-planned, disciplined marketing strategy that puts search engines in their place. Not in the epicenter of your marketing campaign, but just another tool in your toolbox for bringing in targeted traffic.
Do this, and you will escape the fate of thousands of startups this year who will realize too late that they hung their hopes on the wrong marketing strategy as their engine for profits.
Copyright 2005 Jack Humphrey
Jack Humphrey explains his proven marketing strategies in the all new Power Linking 2005 at http://power-linking-profits.com Jack is proudly NOT a “search engine expert.”
Written by SEO Tipster on November 5th, 2006 with no comments.
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