We all know that the search engines can’t “see” or “read” the graphics on our pages. We also know that we need to provide text on a page, so the spiders will have something to crawl and index.After all, we have to prove to the search engines without a shadow of a doubt that our pages are about what we say or claim they’re about if we want to achieve top rankings. That’s why I believe so strongly in focusing each page on one single keyword phrase only. As soon as a spider hits a page, I want the spider to know exactly what that page is about.
But, many sites out there are graphic intense, often by virtue of their very nature. The sites may sell prints, wallpaper, pictures, graphics, or posters. Or, the sites may sell hats, for example, so that each page is full of pictures of a particular type of hat.
Many Web site owners don’t want to add text to those pages, because they want to highlight exactly what they’re selling. They’ve created the site with their audience in mind, which is as it should be. After all, when visitors stop by a wallpaper site, they want to see loads of pictures of the different wallpaper samples. They don’t want to read about them!
So, being careful to adhere to Google’s Guidelines that prohibit hiding text, what options do we have with our graphic-intense site?
Let’s look at some possible solutions.
1. Can you put visible text above or below the graphics on the page? If so, this is your best solution, because you’re giving the engines some content to crawl.
Simply add a paragraph of content above the graphics, and then a paragraph or two of content below the graphics. Make sure the content focuses on your keyword phrase and that it describes the page accurately.
If you don’t want to add a full paragraph of content above the graphics, try adding a heading tag containing your keyword phrase. Then, add content beneath the graphics.
The bottom line is: you want to start the page with text if at all possible, not graphics.
2. Be creative! Can you add descriptive text about each graphic under or beside the graphic? Can you add little “Tips” or “More Info” boxes on the page that contain valuable information for your users and keyword-containing text for the engines? Can you include testimonials from happy customers that will add valuable keyword-containing content to your page?
3. Leave your existing graphic-intense pages the way they are, and create some new text-based interior pages that are full of valuable content related to your graphics. Pull in traffic through those pages, and provide text links to your pages full of graphics. Be sure to use your important keyword phrase in the link text that links to the pages of graphics.
Keep in mind that these new pages are interior pages, which means that they should provide a link to other pages on your site, and your site should provide a link back to those pages. If you’ve done your homework right, these new pages are providing value to your users, therefore providing value to the search engines, so there’s no reason why you wouldn’t want to link to these new interior pages.
Can you use redirects from the text-based pages to the pages of graphics? I highly recommend not doing so. The engines have never been fond of redirects for one thing. But, even if your redirects aren’t “sneaky” (as Google says in their Guidelines), if you don’t use text links with the keyword phrase in the link text, you’re missing out on one of the most valuable search engine optimization strategies available to you: using your keyword phrase in link text pointing to your pages.
4. You can leave your existing graphic-intense pages as they are, and instead concentrate on “off page” factors such as building link popularity to those pages and making sure that the pages linking to the graphics pages use link text that contains your important keyword phrase. In other words, you can work on your “link reputation.”
After all, you can compete with the big boys using almost any strategy that is detrimental to search engine rankings if your link popularity and link reputation is strong enough, and if the sites linking to you describe your site using your important keyword phrase.
By “strong” enough, I mean that the links should be from popular, authoritative sites in your topic area. Sheer numbers aren’t what we’re after here. We’re after links from popular and authoritative sites in our topic area. We’re also after links that use our important keyword phrase in the link text describing our pages.
In Conclusion
Though the best solution is to add text to your pages of graphics, sometimes you (or your client) won’t want to go that route. They may want to keep the existing pages just as they are.
In those situations, it’s important to have some “Google friendly” solutions that will give you the best chance at achieving top rankings for your pages, while making sure that you’re following the guidelines as stated by Google.
About The Author
Robin Nobles is the Co-Director of Training of Search Engine Workshops with John Alexander. They teach 2-day beginner, 3-day advanced, and 5-day all-inclusive “hands on” search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe. She also teaches online search engine marketing courses through http://www.onlinewebtraining.com, and she’s a member of Wordtracker’s official question support team. With partner John Alexander, she’s co-authored a series of e-books called, “The Totally Non-Technical Guides to Having a Successful Web Site.” And, they opened a networking community for search engine marketers called The World Resource Center for Search Engine Marketers.
robin@searchengineworkshops.com
Written by SEO Tipster on December 11th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on SEO Articles.
A few months ago I was watching a stream meandering back and forth across a flat plain in a high mountain valley. The stream reached it’s destination - a small lake - but only after dozens of loops and curves. It occurred to me that Water and clever Web Marketing have something in common - they both follow the path of least resistance.Let me explain.
Your first contact with a future customer usually starts with an email. It could be an Ad in an Ezine, it could be your Resource Box at the end of one of your Articles, or it could be your Signature File in your correspondence.
But in the chain of events that leads to a web sale, an email is the point of greatest resistance.
Why is that?
Firstly, your future customer is reading your message offline. She or he has to fire up their modem before they can buy your product. And that requires effort (and expense).
Secondly, if your message is in an Ezine, it’s probably one of a dozen other messages all clamoring for attention.
Thirdly, whether your message is an Ezine Ad, a Resource Box, or a Signature File, you’ve probably had only a few lines to explain why your widgets are so good.
So if an email is the point of greatest resistance, what is the solution?
The ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism (pronounced ‘Dowism’) - also known as ‘The Watercourse Way’ - gives us the answer. Taoism tells us to be like Water and follow the path of least resistance. Water flows. It is soft and moves easily around obstacles in its path, instead of attempting to go through them.
Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it.
The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice. (Tao Te Ching, ch. 78)
“What is the path of least resistance in an email?”, I hear you ask. Offer something free!
Successful web marketers know this already. I recently did a survey of the Resource Boxes of fifty well known Ezine Writers. Over 90% of them were not trying to sell anything from their Resource Box. In fact, an overwhelming majority were not even trying to get a click-thru to their website - they were simply offering a free subscription to their Newsletter. In other words, they were more interested in building a long-term relationship than they were in making a quick sale.
When I started out on the Internet, I was pretty impatient. I certainly didn’t want to the follow the path of least resistance. The path I had in mind was more like the flight of an arrow - straight to it’s target.
But the statistics suggest that most web sales are not made like that; on average your customer will have to see your message seven times before he or she buys your product.
So next time you plan your marketing strategy, why not take a lesson from Water and follow the path of least resistance?
————————————————————
Michael Southon has been writing for the Internet for over 3
years. He has shown hundreds of webmasters how to use this
simple technique to build a successful online business. Click
here to find out more: http://ezine-writer.com/
Written by SEO Tipster on December 11th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on SEO Articles.
What follows is a condensed version of a conversation that happens all too frequently when I am approached by a prospect interested in search engine optimization (SEO):Prospect: We need our website optimized, because we aren’t showing up for any searches.
Me: What searches have you tried?
Prospect: We don’t show up for ANYTHING.
Me: Why do you want to show up in searches?
Prospect: Well, it seems like we should. Our competitors do, and our website is WAY better than theirs.
Me: But, really, what would you stand to gain from showing up prominently in search engine results?
Prospect: Well, we could get more people who are looking for our products or services to find out about us.
Me: So, what you are saying is that increasing your search engine results could help you to increase sales and awareness?
Prospect: Yes.
Me: Now we’re on the right track. Since your goals are to increase sales and awareness, have you thought about not only improving your search engine rankings, but also getting more people to take an action on your site that leads to a sale, getting more people to read your press releases or whitepapers so that they can consistently associate your company with your offering, or sending your prospects a regular newsletter to reinforce your name and expertise?
Prospect: Didn’t you hear me? Our website is great. We just don’t show up for searches.
And so it goes.
A consistent problem with the “ranking-centric” mindset demonstrated above is that it doesn’t reflect a powerful rationale for getting involved in SEO. Where is the true business case? What tangible results are desired? In general, if a prospect can’t explain what he or she hopes to achieve beyond “higher rankings” or “more traffic,” we’ll first try to educate, and, if that person can’t move beyond these base subjects, we’ll kindly refer them elsewhere.
More and more frequently, people are getting into SEO for the wrong reasons (and sometimes for no real reason at all). Achieving high rankings for targeted keyphrases, while an admirable and worthwhile goal, is really only a small piece of the entire online marketing puzzle. In this article, we’ll discuss a few additional, but equally vital, pieces.
Website Conversion
Website conversion is the art and science of getting more of the people who come to your website to take the action that you want them to take ? fill out your contact form, read your whitepapers, sign up for your newsletter, or (in the case of e-commerce) buy something. For a company that is trying to build offline business, this action is typically something that gets prospects into the sales pipeline through some form of online registration. For a company or organization that is trying to build awareness, this action can be a number of things ? getting visitors to a certain page of the site, getting them to stay longer at the site, or getting them to tell a friend about the site.
The critical point that is commonly overlooked in a ranking-centric mindset is that no number of high search engine positions will address the real problem if your website is not serving as an effective marketing and sales tool. And, as I have said many times before, the overall net effect of raising your conversion rate from one to two percent is the same net effect as doubling your traffic, and it is almost always easier. Increasing the number of visitors to a site that does not convert them effectively is like pumping high performance gasoline into a car with engine trouble ? it might help the car to run a little bit better, but if you’d done repairs before adding the premium fuel, it really would have hummed.
Online PR
Your website is only one potential online destination where people can find out about your company, and a typical user will regard your site as an advertisement since you have complete control over the content. With optimized press releases and expert articles, however, you can have your company name mentioned on popular news sites and industry portals, where credibility is more inherent. Optimized Press Releases
Press releases that are optimized to appear when certain terms are typed into news search engines are an excellent way to build name recognition and credibility. If someone is taking the time to look for news related to your industry, he or she is probably either in your business, learning about your market, or writing a piece about your industry. The last category is especially significant since a recent study* indicates that 98% of journalists go online daily, 92% use the Internet for article research, and 73% use it to find press releases. Whatever motivation a person has when he or she searches for news related to your industry, you want your company represented in the results. Expert Articles
Another great way to promote your expertise and business is to write expert articles and submit them to the leading online publications in your field. At least one person in your company is almost certainly an expert in your field ? why not let everyone know that? A person that reads an expert article published on an industry portal, and who subsequently clicks through to the website (from the link in the expert’s bio) is extremely targeted and already has a favorable impression of your company. Moreover, the same study cited above found that 76% of journalists go online to seek news sources or experts. When your company has demonstrated that you have experts on staff by publishing articles in credible, non-biased forums, the phone invariably starts to ring. Your experts will be asked to provide their opinions, quotes, or experiences for feature articles, often in prestigious industry publications. The benefits of this, of course, do not need explanation.
A side benefit to both of the strategies above is that they increase the number of inbound links to your website and, therefore, can help greatly enhance your search engine rankings ? which might be the primary reason you looked into SEO in the first place.
Newsletters
Direct mail was once considered a marketer’s dream ? but email newsletters can be much more effective. Imagine a direct mail list with a low delivery cost, where every single person on the list has shown an interest in receiving such mailings. Such is the nature of opt-in email newsletters. People have shown enough interest in your company, or, at least, in what your company has to say, to invite you to communicate with them on a regular basis. They are essentially giving you permission to keep yourself “first in mind” whenever they are considering your products or services. Such opportunities are rare in the marketing world. By combining the conversion principles you have applied to your website to your email newsletters, you can also get people to take an action that puts them into your sales pipeline without worrying about getting them to your website itself.
Conclusion
These are only a few of the additional ways to expand an online initiative beyond a misdirected ranking-centric approach. Weblogs (or blogs) are often considered another new frontier in online marketing, and we haven’t even touched on paid media opportunities such as banner ads or pay-per-click marketing. However, the three components mentioned above are important elements of a complete and successful online marketing initiative. An SEO campaign launched without considering them is like driving a four-cylinder car with only one cylinder firing ? it will move, but you’d definitely reach your destination more quickly ? and more smoothly ? with all four.
*Middleberg-Ross Survey and Pew Internet and American Life Project
Scott Buresh is managing partner of Medium Blue Search Engine Marketing. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including ZDNet, WebProNews, MarketingProfs, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, SEO Today, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to the recently released Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004).
Medium Blue is an Atlanta search engine optimization company with local and national clients, including Georgia Pacific, DuPont, and Boston Scientific.
Written by SEO Tipster on December 10th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on SEO Articles.
Designing a Better System for Search Engines and Information Distribution, information and knowledge are power. Having run out of things to study today, I thought about Researching and Research. Here are some observations on R and R. If you owned a body shop that would be remove and replace. For many Americans it is rest and relaxation, but for Wash Guys it is now researching Research (ing) and/or (ers). I believe that Search engines are getting better as that business model continues to perform before, during and after the Internet Bubble. However I believe they can do better.Having used many search engines and multi-engines like Copernic.com and Alexa and Dog Pile for research I see some great benefits. Also knowing the similar search words without having to type them into the engine is benefit. I am impressed with the work of this group. They are improving the ability to retrieve information on the Internet will be the key to online learning and research. For instance here is one idea to be looked into, this is a good idea;
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/courses/final-projects/knowman/
It is essential that search engines do well for those looking to find things, like a library catalog system like Dewey Decimal of the past. We need a good system for kids learning, scientists doing research and people like me who just like to do personal research or business research to better serve the customer and common good. I wanted to highlight the benefits of these new studies and possibilities to increase information flow and assist the worldly knowledge. Ongoing education is important, otherwise that muscle we call the brain will go flat.
With fuzzy logic and algorithms and tons of terabytes to search thru with all the data collection of the NSA and all the new technologies like 3G cell phones, video phones, etc. Searching thru the data and getting to the small pieces to solve the puzzle to catch international terrorists or for research needed to propel the human race we need to be thinking here. Especially since Search Engines are mostly for profit and with Google now a public company with shareholders they will want returns and that means profits and shareholders equity come before optimum searches.
With Microsoft integrating their Longhorn and Browser in the latest Windows with an upgraded searching feature and allowing the surfer greater waves and a better board search engine technologies probably rank way up there with a cure for AIDS, Cancer and Auto Safety. Because with increased collaboration we will get to all those others much faster, it has been proven, we are in the middle of a time warp where humankind will in fact hyperspace our evolution and the possibilities for life expectancy, curing diseases and what have you may in fact become reality within our generation, are you ready? Absolutely, but we do need some more tools to make it so, a search engine which can match our needs would sure be a wonderful gift to our species at this point within this present period.
“Lance Winslow” - If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs
Written by SEO Tipster on December 10th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on SEO Articles.
If you are a webmaster and you review your logs, often you will see a bunch of really strange hits. They aren’t humans, you can’t tell their operating system or their browser! Who are these pesky little creatures who rummage around the internet all the time?Not quite sure what I am talking about? Here is a few examples of various bots searching my website:
207.68.146.40 (msnbot.msn.com)
msnbot/1.0 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
This is the MSN Search bot.
207.68.146.40 (lj2070.inktomisearch.com)
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp;
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)
This is Yahoos Search Bot.
66.249.65.147 (crawl-66-249-65-147.googlebot.com)
Mediapartners-Google/2.1
This is Googles bot, that searches your webpages for AdSense.
What is a Bot, Crawler, Spider?
These terms are all the same, they all refer to an automated program that goes from website to website caching and processing the pages for search engines. As you know, “WWW” means World Wide Web, thus “Spider” seemed like an appropriate term. Crawler is another term that just describes what it does, crawling from site to site and page to page endlessly. Bot, is actually short for “robot” and again is just an automated program to index websites.
What is the purpose of a Spider?
A spider looks at all the pages of your website, and uses that information to rank you in search engines (how high you will list in a search result), and cache a copy of your page on their server for quick reference, and if your site ever goes down. Spiders jump from link to link on the Internet and run endlessly, even if you never submit your website to a search engine, odds are your site will still be spidered.
Can I stop bots and spiders from searching my website?
Yes and no. Legitimate spiders are run by reputable organizations that follow certain rules. For instance, most companies have a policy that their robot will search for a file called “robots.txt” in the root of your website. This text file is filled with information telling the bots what and what not is allowed to be viewed. Unfortunately, there are also bad bots out there, they search the internet harvesting e-mail addresses for spam and other bad things, these bots often don’t comply with the “robots.txt” standard.
How many bots are there?
It’s impossible to guess how many bots are out there searching websites. On any given day I will get roughly 10 different ones check my website. Some of them only search one or two pages, others go over my entire website. Not all of them give you a good description of what they do, or who owns them. If you cut and paste their name and IP address in to Google, quite often you can find more information about what they do.
How can I get my site spidered?
As I mentioned before, if your website is up long enough, it “will” get spidered eventually. However, if you want to ensure that it gets done within a few months, go to the various search engine websites and look for the “Add URL” or “Suggest a Link” pages. DMOZ is one of the big directories which you should submit your site. When you sign up for these search engines, your website is automatically queued up to be spidered. It may take several weeks or months to actually start showing up on the search engine, even after you see the robot spidering your website.
What about pay search engines?
There are a bunch of different search engines that make you pay to have your website listed. I personally don’t support these search engines, I find that most people use the big free search engines anyway. However, if you do wish to get included in some search engines faster, many have payment options which will get your site listed within a couple of days.
Ken Dennis
http://KenDennis-RSS.homeip.net/
Written by SEO Tipster on December 7th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on SEO Articles.
While there are many ethical SEO firms serving Internet users today, a few notorious practitioners also exist. One of them called me just the other day.”We can get your site to be number one in the search engines for the top 20 search terms you choose,” promised the telemarketer. I don’t usually give telemarketers the time of day, but somehow found this fellow to be intriguing. It was a cold and snowy day in Michigan right at the moment, and somehow I felt warmer just hearing him glow about the sunshine beaming through his own office windows.
“Show me results,” I requested. So we cruised the web together, and he showed me some client sites that really did have top rankings. At first glance the sales spiel sounded rather inviting, but after taking some time to consider and evaluate his company, I determined that what this friendly young salesman offered was nothing more than a scam.
As I did my homework, several red flags jumped out at me. By researching his company on the Internet, I learned that they employed no less than 250 telemarketers soliciting SEO clients on a continual basis. With all due respect to the size of this company, I found it hard to believe that they could service the numerous SEO clients they were recruiting in a very meaningful way.
I asked the salesman about this the next time he called. He informed me that their SEO service was highly automated, built on proprietary technology that was so ahead of its time that no other firm could compete. In case you didn’t catch it, the previous sentence contained red flag #2. In the words of the old adage, “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably it.”
The above was only the tip of the iceberg, however. Upon further questioning of my enthusiastic sales contact, I learned that it wasn’t really my url that they wanted to promote. Their plan was much more beneficial–for themselves, that is. They would set-up urls to be doorway pages to my website. Their urls, not mine, would be optimized to get high in the search engines. They would maintain control of and ownership of the urls, so if I ever went out of business, they could sell all that traffic-and value I had paid so dearly for-to one of my competitors. Pretty nice deal for them. I pay them big bucks on an annual basis to drive traffic to a url which they-not me–own. Of course, I would benefit from whatever sales came through their url as long as I continued to ante up cash.
I had a good friend who fell prey to this scheme a few years back. An unscrupulous SEO “specialist” talked her into paying big bucks for a website with a url which the SEO firm owned and controlled. The SEO firm then billed my friend much more than they had originally contracted for. When she balked at the bill, they threatened to shut down traffic to the site.
While this firm also promised hordes of traffic and top search engine listings, the only significant traffic my friend ever got was garnered through pay-per-click. To make matters worse, the SEO firm hid links to their sites throughout the html of her website.
Another fault I found with the SEO firm mentioned first in this article was the search terms they crowed about taking first place for. To say the least, they were rather obscure. It’s a pretty impressive accomplishment to come up first on the web for the search term “furniture” or even “log furniture”. But if you design a page that brings up your company first on Google for a search of “Birmingham Tuscaloosa Avenue Dry Cleaners”, big deal. And that’s what this SEO firm was doing.
Although I never seriously considered dropping $3000 or whatever it was for their services, the final clincher came when I asked what type of traffic I could expect for digging into my pockets.
“I can get you an average of 100 hits per day,” he told me. Then he showed me stats on some of their clients sites that had, over the course of a year, built up to 100 hits per day. I don’t know about you, but I want a lot more than 100 unique hits per day on my website. I’ve achieved those kinds of numbers-and better-by myself. Why should I pay them for what I consider to be mediocre results?
Don’t get me wrong. I do believe in SEO firms, and because of the success I’ve been having on some of my top search terms, may engage in that business myself someday. But after researching the issues carefully, I would warn fellow webmasters to beware of any SEO firm that:
? employs a boiler room full of telemarketers
? automates most or all of their services
? insists on gaining and retaining control of the url to be promoted
? focuses on lengthy and obscure search strings
? touts sites that are garnering a mere 100 hits per day as examples of their success.
Of all the bad practices mentioned above, the one I found most offensive was the idea that the SEO firm should own or control my url. While owning the url would seem like a good idea for the SEO firm (they could always collect their fees by threatening to shut down the site), it isn’t so nifty for the client. If I pay a firm to build my business, I want them to do just that-build my business. To pay a firm to build traffic to a url they own is really like paying them to build their business-and that, in my opinion, is the biggest SEO scam of all.
Copyright 2005 Log Cabin Rustics
Cari Haus has been successfully selling rustic log furniture and beds on the Internet since 1997. Copyright 2005 by Cari Haus, website http://www.logcabinrustics.com/. Permission is granted to reprint this article, either online or in written publications, as long as the copyright information, this paragraph, and a link address or a link to the Log Cabin Rustics website is attached at the end of the article.
Written by SEO Tipster on December 7th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on SEO Articles.
I can’t tell you how many times people have asked me, “How to do I get my site to come up in the top ten of the search engines so I can get hits and sell my product?”What they really want to know is, “How can I get people to show up to my website without spending any money on advertising my site!”
People usually don’t like my answer because accomplishing a “top ten ranking” on any search engine always requires careful thought along with a significant amount of work.
Three types of “Search engines” abound on the Internet. They include true search engines, directories, and links pages.
At last count approximately 10,000 sites referred to themselves as search engines, though only about a dozen sites rate your attention since they drive 97% of the Internet’s search traffic.
These sites include Google, Yahoo!, Overture, MSN, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, Lycos, DMOZ, and a few others.
When a visitor logs onto a search engine looking for information, they enter “keywords” about the subject in hopes of obtaining a list of relevant websites.
Each search engine or directory operates with its own rules about judging a site’s relevancy to a keyword search.
They look at text on the web page (body text) as well as words you can’t see which reside in the actual code of the web pages.
This code includes such things as alt tags, title tags, and others.
Depending on the search engine, what you can’t see may represent a far more important part of ranking well than the words appearing on the page.
Search engines look at how many times a keyword shows up in the various parts of your website as well as actual location on the page.
Assuming that an important subject for your pages would appear at the beginning of a page, those web pages starting with the keyword should rank better than those that don’t.
Also, in many cases, the more websites linking to your site will drastically impact your rankings.
Entire books and websites exist to teach eager website owners how to pump up their rankings on all the various search engines, however these promotion tips will serve you well in your quest for the “Top Ten!”
** See what others have done for maximum exposure!
Go to the various search engines and perform a search under which you would like to appear.
Dissect those pages to find the common elements that make them show up.
~ How often and where do the keywords appear on the page?
~ How many words on the page in total?
~ Do they put keywords in their hypertext links?
~ How many other sites link to them and could you easily get a link from those sites too?
** Beware of registration vs. promotion
Plenty of companies will “register” your website with thousands of search engines for about $50-$100.
But simply submitting to the search engines won’t do much for you. Without the proper structure in your website, only sheer luck will cause your site to pop up in the top ten!
(c) Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved http://www.thenetreporter.com
About The Author:
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr-e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links…
Simple “Traffic Machine” brings Thousands of NEW visitors to your website for weeks, even months… without spending a dime on advertising! ==> “Turn Words Into Traffic”
Written by SEO Tipster on December 5th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on SEO Articles.
There are millions of web sites trying to get listed in the top 20 to 30 spots on the major search engines. That’s a lot of competition! So if you’re having a hard time getting those spots, maybe you should try some little used but effective seo strategies to get those prized listings.One way to do that would be to do a search on Google, Yahoo or MSN using the keywords that someone would use to find your website. The key then would be to advertise on the top web sites. Now advertising on these top spots would probably be very expensive.
If you don’t want to spend any money, you could use the ten seo strategies listed below. Remember though, some of these strategies may not apply to every web site.
1. Ask the web site owner if they would like a free ebook to give away to their visitors. You could have them link to your web site to download the ebook or include your links in the free ebook.
2. Write an excellent article review of their web site, products or services. Then publish the review on your web site. Email the web site owner and tell him or her about it. They may link to your web site so their visitors can read it.
3. Submit content to their web site. Write articles and include your links in the resource box. If they are published, you’ll get a link back to your website which will help your search engine ranking.
4. If these top sites have discussion boards or forums then participate. Post questions, answer other peoples questions, and join in on conversations. Just make sure that you include your signature file and link at the end of your messages.
5. Ask the owner of the web site about trading advertising. If you don’t get as much traffic as they do, you could throw in some extra incentives or put their ad on more of your web pages.
6. Give the web site a testimonial for their product or service. Include a text link for your web site within the testimonial. They just might include it in their ad copy.
7. Post your text link on their free-for-all links page, if they have one. You may want to go back and post your link regularly so it stays towards the top.
8. If they have a free classified ad section then post your ads there. Make sure that you have a killer headline so their visitors will click on your ad.
9. If they have a guest book, sign it. Leave a short but sincere compliment about their web site. Be sure to include your signature file and link at the end of your message.
10. Propose a cross promotion deal with the web site. You could promote each others products or services in a package deal. You get your site mentioned and links back to your web site.
============================================
Lewis Leake, Jr. is the webmaster of GrowNetProfits.com - subscribe to his GrowNetProfits Newsletter and get Work From Home Tools, Articles, Tips and Resources delivered to you twice a month. http://www.grownetprofits.com — Also get access to his new Subscriber’s Membership Site.
===========================================
Written by SEO Tipster on December 5th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on SEO Articles.
In the Global Internet era the industry presence is undoubtedly related to the company online presence. Where is the scope of the online presence limitations and does it refer only to the search engine optimization aspect or it broadens into many related components.Following the user experience line, it is easy to describe what the most important levels of access Internet popularity are and how it can be achieved.
Site organization
Well, the site organization is always the first after choosing a domain name that comes up as a decision in the design process. Organizing of the structure is a basic of the level of importance web promotion means. It requires following of simple and comprehensive rules that have proven results.
Home page is communication center of your site and it presumes availability of the basic structure and content implications. Good example of site navigation is PromotionWorld.com http://www.promotionworld.com/ site with well defined link structure and intersection navigation accessibility. List properly your basic content units, keeping the topic and title structure clear. Golden rule:” Simple is best” is totally applicable here and as you will see in the design. To keep simple means not to overload the home page with unuseful information and links. Structure inner index pages, where you can develop the structure and content and which will allow better search engine optimization and indexing.
The navigation should be clear and to be applied to all the pages. Generally users before going to your site have Internet experience and their expectations will follow the impression from their previous visits to other web sites. A good example of site structure is the Microsoft’s http://www.microsoft.com/ design decision with areas clearly defined and structured by families and content destinations. To find out what your industry competitors do, you can perform a research by your main keywords in the search engines. The site organization for a specific industry is generally kept in well defined frames.
Design
Following the best examples will allow your site to perform better. If you are trying to change the design, you can set a survey question about the user experience within your site. Use the feedback to learn how your users feel the change and ask specific questions to reach to weak points of the new implementation. The design should keep the industry line and to be a step ahead with following the best examples. Do your search here again to find out how the best industry sites are designed. Developing of your own design concept is very important for your site success. Concept elements are: the small design elements in the headers, table formatting, and link and title styles.
The images can be kept simple and used only where appropriate. The buttons can be replaced with table structure and links where over effect can be presented through style. This will allow you to achieve a double effect: site better indexing and positioning in the search engines and fast loading of the site pages.
Keep the colors easy to perceive without teasing the eyes. The colors should follow one line and to be corresponding in saturation and color schemes. One of the best examples is the Sun’s site design http://sun.com/ where the colors are used only to frame the content areas. The color choice should correspond to your industry sphere and keep the general site concept clear. Using too many effects can cause your users to abandon the site. The styling is also applicable to links and titles. The link font colors should be readable and corresponding to the basic methods of the successful internet marketing.
Generally the best design structure is a step ahead to improving your web presence. Using this powerful means you can achieve better web visibility and user retention.
About The Author
Milena Sotirova is Editor of DevStart, Inc. She has publications on web promotion, search engine optimization and web hosting industry news coverage and analyses. PromotionWorld.com is one of the most popular sites for web promotion and contains tutorials, tools, articles and search engine news. Subscribe for DevStart Channel http://www.promotionworld.com/informer/
Send your feedback to editor@devstart.com
You can reproduce this article on your website, or in your Newsletter provided that you include the resource box.
Written by SEO Tipster on December 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on SEO Articles.
No older articles
Newer articles »