SEO Costa Rica

5 Basic SEO Tips

2007-01-15T19:43:00.000-06:00

By Joshua Spaulding

The simple solution to this problem is to implement the following basic SEO tips and spend the rest of your time building links and content. These tips may be fairly common to the more experienced Webmaster but if you are not using them, you are losing traffic.

1. Implement unique META titles and descriptions for all of your pages. Many Webmasters begin their first web site without META description and title tags at all. Once they learn that, SEO wise, it is very important to do so, they add them but they are not unique. Each title and description should be unique to each individual page.

2. Add an HTML sitemap to your site. This is a single page that includes links to the main pages of your websites. If your site is small you may want to include every page while larger sites should just have links to the most important pages. Sitemaps are an import part of SEO optimization because they give the search engines a 'hub' where their spiders can find all of your pages through one single page.

3. Target 'long tail' keywords in your sub pages. Long tail keywords are those that are not as highly competitive as your main keyword. Target a fairly competitive keyword for your index page and less competitive keywords for all sub pages. Many Webmasters have a bad habit of targeting the same few keywords throughout their entire site; because of this they are losing valuable traffic to inner pages.

4. Use underline, bold, strong and italics tags on each pages keywords. This SEO tip is one that has proven to be very valuable. Search Engines give more weight to words that are using these tags. Do not over do it, implementing these tags at least two or three times would cut it.

5. Use H1 and H2 tags with your main and secondary keywords. Most SE's give a lot of weight to words that are wrapped in these tags. Each page on your web site should have one or two targeted keywords at the beginning of the page. Just add <>keyword< /h1 > to the main keyword and the same for your secondary keyword replacing h1 with h2 and deleting the spaces.

If you have not been using the above tips in your SEO strategy then you have been missing out on quality targeted traffic. Implement these tips as soon as possible and you will start to notice an increase in visitors.

Joshua Spaulding is an Author and Webmaster providing Proven SEO Optimization Tips. Joshua would like to invite you to his website at EZ-OnlineMoney.com where he shows anyone willing to learn, how to Make Money Online.

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Improve Search Engine Ranking

2006-09-06T17:31:00.000-06:00

By Josh Riverside

A great Web site is only as profitable as the exposure it gets. Your products and services - no matter how superior - will not be noticed if your site does not improve its search engine ranking. There are over 1 billion pages on the Internet today. How do you make yours stand out? Here are some basic guidelines.

What you need to work on to make your site rank high

Studies show that a whopping 90 percent of Internet users depend on search engines for information, and that 93 percent of them only look at the three top search result pages. If your site does not rank high for relevant keywords and search strings, your customer will never find you.

Fortunately, improving search engine ranking is not rocket science - there are basic tactics which, when followed closely, can significantly boost your site's standing. Here are some of them:

Content. Its one thing to lure a user into your site, and it's another thing to keep him or her coming back (and maybe even get him or her to refer you). Prioritize your content - make it relevant, informative, and easy to read. Remember that most of the fundamentals of search engine algorithms use page content to rank Web sites. Also, popular directories only list sites with sensible content.

Links. The more Web sites that link to you, the better you rank. Use your networking skills to talk to the Webmasters of related sites so that they could link you back. Most search engines 'count' the number of links to your site (your internal page links don't count), while some use more complicated programs to determine the relevancy of the links, compute for your popularity score, and rank you accordingly. So do not just link to any site - be sure that the site is valid and respected.

General optimization techniques. Of course, good old fashioned title tags, meta tags, and optimized keyword density are also considered by search engines when they score pages. You don not need a master programmer to do this for you - just have automated tools made, and you yourself can already tweak your site.

Search Engine Ranking provides detailed information on Search Engine Ranking, Improve Search Engine Ranking, Search Engine Ranking Optimization, Search Engine Ranking Companies and more. Search Engine Ranking is affiliated with Web Ranking Reports.

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Top Rankings Guarantees Debunked

2006-08-10T11:59:00.000-06:00

By Stoney DeGeyter

I recently had a former client request my opinion on the services his new SEO company was providing him. He felt they had not met their stated guarantee, while they claimed they did and asked if I would look over everything to see if I could confirm his suspicions.

After looking over his website and information provided, I found that the contract was relatively vague as to what services the SEO firm was actually providing. Outside of the guarantee, the only real specifics were meta tags and "optimization" of text for 15 pages. The guarantee, on the other hand, was considerably more specific, stating they would achieve 15 top 10 rankings counted over 15 search engines, from a the 25 plus keyword phrases selected.

After analyzing the site I had to tell him that, by all appearances, their services portion of the contract had been fulfilled. If they did even minor editing of the meta tags and page text (and it certainly did appear to be minor) they did what they were contractually obligated to do. As for the guarantee, if you throw enough crap (keywords) against the wall, something's gonna stick. In this case, just one of the 25 targeted keywords achieving a top 10 ranking on each of 15 engines would sufficiently fulfill the guarantee. Not a particularly high, nor difficult benchmark to attain.

Each week I get calls from prospective clients looking for some kind of guarantee for our services. Sure, we can provide a guarantee that gives us enough wiggle room to be useless, such as the one mentioned above, but personally, I would rather work with a company that is a bit more forthright in their business practices.

Doctors don't guarantee that any surgery will be successful (though they do provide the odds), and accountants don't guarantee that if they do your books that you won't be audited by the IRS. SEO is not the same as a doctor or accountant, but these analogies will be useful. Why don't they provide guarantees? Because they do not have total absolute control the body or mind of the "client". Aside from the fact that there can always be unknown complications during surgery (as with SEO), the doctor has no control over what the patient will do once he is outside of his care. Anything from rejecting the doctor's advice to not taking prescribed medications will help determine if the surgery is a total success or not.

Similarly, if the accountant is not given full control over your finances, he is unaware if the client has participated in any shady activities. And, even more simply, the IRS decides who they audit, not the accountant, much in the same way search engines decide how to rank sites in the search results.

But a good doctor, however, can substantially improve chances of a successful recovery and a good accountant can decrease chances of an IRS audit, but there is no way to provide an ironclad guarantee, nor do I think either would even if they were substantially sure of success. In any thing, success takes a long time to achieve, but it only takes minute to undo.

To continue with our analogies, would you prefer a doctor that told you they'll make some incisions in your stomach, perform the operations, sew you back up, and guarantee that the stitches will not get infected? Or would you prefer a doctor that simply told you what operations will be performed giving you the chances of recovery? While the first offers a guarantee of sorts, that guarantee is only a small part of the whole operation. What good is it if the stitches heal properly if the surgery is a disaster?

Again, would you prefer an accountant that tells you they'll import all your financial information into their accounting software, Calculate the results and guarantee that some of the numbers will be accurate? Or would you prefer an accountant that tells you that they will make sure that your information will be inputted and calculated correctly based on the information provided and will provide you additional assistance if you should get audited? Audit assistance is a better path than assuring only some numbers will be accurate.

When I get callers asking me for a guarantee I am always tempted to appease them, to tell them what they want to hear. But, as with many companies that provide such guarantees, I might then be tempted to do no more than the fulfillment of guarantee requires. Guarantees sound good, but most are not worth the paper they are printed on.

Stoney deGeyter is president of Pole Position Marketing (http://www.PolePositionMarketing.com), a search optimization marketing firm providing SEO and website marketing services since 1998. Stoney is also a part-time instructor at Truckee Meadows Community College, as well as a moderator in the Small Business Ideas Forum. He is the author of his E-Marketing Performance eBook and contributes daily to the E-Marketing Performance marketing blog.

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Why You Should Avoid the Top 10 Guarantee in SEO

2006-07-20T15:30:00.000-06:00

By Karri Flatla

If you are a small business owner shopping for an SEO expert to optimize your website, no doubt you've been tempted by the ominous "Top 10 Guarantee." While top ten rankings are a worthy goal, shelling out money to an SEO that makes such pie-in-sky claims will leave you frustrated and probably wishing you had spent your cash on something more useful, like snake oil.

Experienced SEO experts know that top ten rankings (or even top twenty for that matter) do not happen over night. There can be a period of tweaking required depending on the requirements of your site, the complexity of its content, and you and your SEO's willingness to partner over the long run.

Moreover, it takes about three to six months for applied SEO to begin impacting your rankings in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). And even this three to six month window is itself a gray area. No SEO should guarantee when a web page will begin to start seeing improved rankings for specific key phrases. As if this is not enough to try the patience of a monk, new domains (and the pages that inhabit them) must endure Google's much dreaded "aging delay" which can last up to a year. During that time, Google does not care one iota what you or your SEO do to your site or its code. The Google algorithms simply won't permit your pages to compete in organic search until they are deemed to have aged like a fine wine, arguably demonstrating an intention or purpose that goes beyond spam, your brother-in-law's homework assignment, or just a whim on a dull Friday night.

When your pages do get released from Google's holding pattern and SEO efforts being to pay off, it's tempting to get complacent about the maintenance of other important online marketing efforts. (Why does fame do this to people?) Anyone who has lived through the last couple of rounds of algo updates over at Google can attest to the monolith's rather ticklish disposition. "Here one day, gone the next" has happened to the most savvy marketers on the Internet. That's life in SEO. (That's also why you should have a well-stocked marketing tool kit working for your site at all times.)

While many of the best things for sale do in fact come with a guarantee, the only thing your SEO should "guarantee" is to work with your firm to uncover key business goals and implement a strategy to help your site move closer to achieving them. Esoteric? Perhaps. But SEO is not an exact science-neither is business in general, despite what the academics and Wall Street cronies would have you believe. Attempting to quantify and guarantee results is simply a gamble not worth taking.

A top notch SEO consultant will be the behind the scenes partner that works to drive more qualified traffic to your site than what it is currently seeing. And therein lies the catch: qualified traffic. It's relatively easy to achieve top ten rankings for key phrases that no one is searching on and that none of your competitors is optimizing for either. But that won't help your bottom line, will it?

SEO is about alerting the search engines to content, content your target market is likely to be searching for when seeking information regarding the products or services you have to offer. There are numerous ways to do this, but a good SEO will work in an ethical fashion with no intent to "trick" the search engines into thinking your pages are something other than what they really are.

Search engines may just be mega computers in a warehouse, but they are programmed to act like humans do on the web. Humans want to see SERPs that relate as closely as possible to the search terms they just typed in. Search engines thus strive to provide relevant results to their audience. In doing so, they can also offer a better ROI for paid advertising, ultimately protecting their revenue streams. An SEO who doesn't understand these basic economic principles is an SEO that probably doesn't have your best interests in mind.

Search engine optimization does not have to be an exercise in frustration or budget busting. However, a savvy entrepreneur will ignore whatever sounds too good to be true. Instead, he will seek out an SEO practitioner who will focus on the wins that could bring long term success rather than short term goal scoring.

Karri Flatla is a business graduate of the University of Lethbridge and principal of snap! virtual assistance inc., a small business consulting firm providing business communications and online marketing services to solo professionals. Karri also produces Outsmart, the email newsletter for small business with big purpose. Visit http://www.snap-va.com for more information.

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Real Estate SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Making a Smart Choice

2006-06-14T11:36:00.000-06:00

By Jason LeisterAs a real estate professional, you qualify as a prime prospect for most companies offering real estate SEO (search engine optimization) services.

You want more sales and more listings and they want you to believe that they can give that to you.

If you haven't already gotten calls, emails or letters from a few real estate SEO companies telling you that they can get your real estate website into the top ten of this or that search engine... get ready, because they're coming... A lot of real estate professionals struggle with whether or not to make an investment in a company to manage their SEO campaign.

Will it be worth your investment? Will you get burned?

There is no right decision, but there are smart ones and dumb ones.

Here are a few things to think about as you make your decision about real estate SEO:

1. SEO is just one piece of the internet marketing puzzle.

Hiring a company to optimize your real estate website for the search engines is not necessarily a bad thing, just understand that it is only one part of your internet marketing plan. Focusing too much on SEO leaves a lot of money on the table. Having good rankings makes it seem like your website will be a successful generator or real estate leads. Not so.

In the past, search engine optimization WAS pretty much synonymous with internet marketing. SEO WAS marketing on the internet - that was all you needed to do to get noticed and get leads. Times are different now.

Understand that your marketing has to be right FIRST, before you even set foot onto the internet and spend time and money bringing prospects to your real estate website.

That means you need to identify your market, create a message suited perfectly for them and deliver that message with the media that they are known to respond to. That must be done before you even think about SEO.

2. There are no SEO guarantees.

Many SEO companies that are out there cold-calling realtor lists often guarantee results or give the impression that there is some guarantee of results. There are no guarantees. Results-based guarantees from a Search Engine. Optimization company are a good sign for you to run the other way.

Don't even waste your time talking to them.

3. Listen to exactly what the company you are speaking with is offering.

Most SEO companies that call you will make bold promises about improving the rankings of your website. Many of them are very good at what they do. Sounds simple enough, right?

But what exactly is your goal - Good rankings or more real estate business? Don't get caught up in the myth that better rankings = more sales or more leads or listings. Better rankings equals better rankings. That's it.

In a nutshell, know that SEO is important and good search engine rankings are important... but SEO is not a silver-bullet for your real estate business. It will not fix your marketing and although a well optimized real estate website might bring a flood of prospects to your door, what good is it if they never knock and ask to come in?

4. Marketing is marketing is marketing...

Always has been, always will be. The internet hasn't changed anything about that. What the internet does do is give you a very efficient delivery system to use for your marketing message.

Whether or not you seek outside help for your internet marketing campaign, the important thing to remember is that you don't abdicate responsibility for your own marketing by "outsourcing" it. Outsourcing your own marketing, even on the internet, is not a smart decision. After all, marketing is by far the most leveraged activity you can possible engage in.

Marketing IS the business you are in.

You are the mastermind. You come up with the plan... THEN you hire someone to do the implementation.

Jason Leister, the Real Estate Technology Guru (tm), is owner of Computer Super Guy, LLC, a Chicago-based technology firm that helps real estate professionals profit with technology.

Visit the Real Estate Technology Guru to subscribe to our free monthly eZine, ProfIT, and receive a FREE copy of our special report "The Truth About Real Estate Websites and Search Engine Optimization."

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MSN Optimization at a Glance

2006-05-26T12:26:00.000-06:00

By Mostafa Soleimanzadeh

If you want to be successful at the web, you shouldn't ignore optimization for MSN search engine.

MSN is the third search engine now and has emphasis on using on page optimization techniques, instead Google and Yahoo pay close attention to your incoming link anchor text, so MSN indexes more pages than other search engines, and in result you can rank your pages higher and faster in MSN search engine.

Microsoft has published guidelines for site owners. It is important for MSN that you use well-formed HTML code and don't have broken links in your pages.

They suggest to:

Use a robots.txt file to control how MSNBot indexes your site, using a robots.txt file is important for other crawlers, too.

Place descriptive content near the top of each web page and make sure each web page has a clear topic and purpose.

Add a website description into a Description meta tag. If you change your content, update your website description.

Contents are king for MSN, limit all pages to a reasonable size, whit out picture fewer than 150 KB. Add a site map; this enables MSNBot to find all of your pages easily. Choose one topic for each page.

Avoid loading pages with irrelevant words to increase a page's keyword density and don't use hidden text or links, this means you spam the MSN and they may remove you from their index.

Don't forget that MSN is a very content and keyword sensitive search engine. If you pay close attention to your keywords and content, MSN Search will reward your website with strong search engine rankings.

You can learn more about the MSN Search beta product by reading their blog located here: http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch and their site owner suggestion guidelines are located at http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx.

On page optimization is important for other search engines too, with optimization your page for MSN your ranking will improve in other search engines.

For more information about other search engines refer to my WebSite.

Mostafa Soleimanzadeh is the owner of http://www.netmarketingway.com/ where you'll find articles and Free content about Search Engine Optimization strategies and Website Promotion ways. Learn How to Optimize Your Website for Higher Search Engine Rankings.

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SEO General Guidelines

2006-05-08T14:56:00.000-06:00

By Andreas Obermueller

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimizing and refers to a set of good practices that teach you how to improve your website so that it would be easily tracked, indexed and ranked by search engines. Getting your site indexed by Google and other major search engines will help you attract visitors and increase traffic.

SEO is an exciting and ongoing process that involves not only an initial optimized website, but also permanent maintenance and evaluating search results on a regular basis. With the ever-changing Internet technology, SEO experts sometimes have contrasting opinions on what makes a good website. However, there are some general guidelines most of them agree on.

Design & Content

You should build your web pages for human beings and not for search engines. A clean design and a trong content will ultimately drive search engine spiders to your site.

Make a clear hierarchy and provide text links to each page.

Don't put to many links on a single page (maximum 100).

You should include a site map to help users navigate easily through your website.

Make sure you have clear TITLE tags, no HTML errors and all the links work.

You should use text instead of images to display important elements, as search engine crawlers may not recognize a text inside an image.

While keeping your content useful and clear, do use keywords that you know users would type to get to your page.

Technical Issues

Most search engine crawlers see your website similar to the way a text browser sees it. Consequently, you should use a text browser, such as Lynx, to check your website. If you can't see the whole page because of JavaScript, session IDs, DHTML or Flash features, search engine spiders will probably have trouble with crawling your website.

Check with your web host to see if the server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This header tells Google whether the website content has changed since its last visit.

While it is advised session IDs to track visitors' path through the website, you shouldn't do this for search bots.

The robots.txt file on your web server tells spiders which directories can be crawled and which cannot. Make sure it's updated and it doesn't somehow block search engine crawlers.

Website Promotion

After you've built your website and put it online, try to get high PageRank sites link to it.

Submit your website to major search engines (Google, Yahoo/Altavista, MSN) to get it indexed, along with a site map that will tell them the site structure.

Submit your website to relevant directories, such as Yahoo and Open Directory Project.

Get involved in community based websites, blogs and forums and build a strong reputation.

Whether you choose to implement these techniques yourself or go to a SEO expert, no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google and other search engines. Search engines change their crawling algorithms often and competitor websites appear all the time. However, following these basic SEO guidelines will improve your chances of increasing your website traffic and is a better practice than looking for a way to cheat on search engines in order to get your pages indexed.

Copyright 2006 Andreas Obermueller

About the Author:

Andreas Obermueller is webmaster of Hit4Biz.com - Marketing Related Information and recommends Marble Host as reliable Web Host.

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How To Place Your Site On The Front Page Of Google Without Buying Ads

2006-04-02T18:47:00.000-06:00

By Matt Bacak

Yes, without paying for click through from ads you can get customers to buy your merchandise and increase online sales. And by following the advice of an SEO expert like Fallon, you can get your website on the front page of Google.

In his new book Stomping the Search Engines Fallon tells you how a little business can take on the giants. You can get better search engine recognition for your small home business than some of the huge national chains that aren't on the front page of Google. It is amazing how you can increase online sales once you learn how SEO works.

When you read Stomping the Search Engines, you'll discover the power of SEO research and free search. You'll learn how to use the terms used by shoppers versus researchers, to increase online sales. According to Fallon, people who are just looking for information online use one or two words. However, shoppers trying to find a particular item, will likely use three or more words to find exactly what they want.

The author of Stomping the Search Engines knows that for an online business to be successful, your site needs to be there "when they're looking". If Internet users are searching terms that you aren't using, guess what, you can't increase online sales? They won't be pulling up your site. They'll be landing on the ones who did the SEO research and found out how they search.

The right word choices and the right links can steer your site to the front page of Google. And, then be prepared for your business to take an unexpected leap. As Fallon says, "get ready to get a warehouse".

According to Stomping the Search Engines, placing in the top 10 rankings on the front page of Google can increase online sales and turn a start-up home business such as weddingfavors.com into a big business, big enough to have a warehouse and 40 fulltime employees. Now Fallon has had to add CEO to his title of SEO.

A business that can lead in its search category by getting on the front page of Google and Yahoo is going to increase online sales. And, if that niche is a strong one, such as wedding favors, the sales volume can rocket from zero in January 2004 to over $1 million in business in less than a year. And this from a business selling items that cost an average of $2 each.

That's just what happened to weddingfavors.com. Fallon used his SEO skills - the same ones he'll teach you in Stomping the Search Engines - to position his wife's small start-up business as the top wedding favors destination on the top search engines. And weddingfavors.com is not just on the front page of Google; it is number one on Google, Yahoo and MSN.

For today's Internet business, search engine optimization or SEO is the rocket science to increase online sales. It's the behind the scenes nuts and bolts that makes it possible for your business to leave the basement it starts in and zoom into national view on the front page of Google, Yahoo or MSN where shoppers can easily find you for free.

How do you increase online sales and get your store to pull up on the front page of Google? It's all about SEO. You read Fallon's book, Stomping the Search Engines. And you do competitive research. You go to the # 10 ranked site on Google and Yahoo (in your search category) and check their content, titles, bold copy and links. In short, analyze what they're doing. In order to take their place, you'll have to do better.

Matt Bacak became "#1 Best Selling Author" in just a few short hours.

Recent Entrepreneur Magazine's e-Biz radio show host is turning Authors, Speakers, and Experts into Overnight Success Stories.

Discover The Secrets To Unleash The Powerful Promoter In You! Sign up for Matt Bacak's Promoting Tips Ezine ($100 value) just visit his website at http://www.powerfulpromoter.com or http://promotingtips.com

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Google Duplicate Content Penalties Revisited

2006-03-21T17:05:00.000-06:00

By Miles Evans

A few Google updates ago one of my review websites went from top placement in Google and friends to 50th over night. Yahoo, MSN and the rest were unchanged. As it turns out one of the test domains I own was pointing to the server with the review site and tripping up Google's duplicate content filter. A year of hard work SEO'ing seemed flushed down the toilet. Now the problem has since corrected itself but I have never achieved that top ranking on Google again from this rookie mistake.

TIP: In apache the first container you make in httpd.conf will be the default website shown. For that reason I now make this initial entry a 'COMING SOON' type of page with links to some of my other projects.

Google's duplicate content filter is one of the most speculated and pondered about black hole's in SEO discussion today. One of the biggest anomalies is why the other big search boys do not employ similar tactics. Does Google have it wrong?

Yesterday as I was plowing through the days feeds I came across a really interesting experiment conducted by Jennifer Sullivan Cassidy at SEOChat that looked into this further. Here is a blurb:

"Initially, there were 14 sites that featured the article, including my own. Within a few weeks, that number grew to approximately 19,000 or so sites, which also contained my website, which was the actual origin of the content. Then after about 5 or 6 weeks, the number of sites featuring the article fell to 46 sites. What's aggravating is that my site, which was the source of the original content, was not included anywhere in the search results for this article title."

So the content filter works by eliminating from its rankings content which it deems is not original. But as Jennifer and SEO'ers across the web point out is this is clearly not always an accurate process. In fact if you are submitting articles on a regular basis and testing your results, you must have noticed this by now. Often if your article is plagerized not only are you penalized for dupe content but the perpetrator is rewarded with a steller ranking. Your ranking! Sadly if you are the original writer of stolen copy and Google decides otherwise, there isn't a whole lot you can do. Any by a whole lot I mean nothing.

So as it stands in 2006 tripping up Google’s duplicate content filter is a guaranteed way to kill your rankings - but for how long? For me it took 7 months to get back on the top page of Google at position number #9. A helluva long tumble from #1 for my very competitive keywords. Many domains never recover.

So how do you avoid this happening to you aside from always writing your own content? The bad news is you can't. The good news is that it is no secret Google works very closely with copyscape.com, the same people who handle their Google Alerts service.

From my research Copyscape seems to trigger when strings of 8-10 words are being repeated. It seems amazing but the service is actually performing a dupe check 'net wide'. Judging from its results, it would appear that the search is not being conducted or calculated in real time but rather may be cached during Google's sandboxing, or once every 1-2 months. The bottom line is that if you suspect a dupe is killing your rankings, and searching for your string of text receives no results on Google AND Copyscape, you can likely rule it out as a cause.

In closing I guess the obvious question is how can Google tackle a problem like plagerism effectively with billions of indexed pages. With so much stock cash at thier disposal you would think they would look at human editors (see the Google Peoplerank Memo Leak) being deployed when duplicate content is detected. I mean if they can throw dollars at insuring their top results pages are not affiliate spam, surely they can do the same against article bandits...

Until then one has to hope that a solution is 'in the lab'

Miles Evans provides indepth reviews on every SEO/marketing or killer app he can get his paws on. His reviews, essays, and tools on SEO, OLM, reporting, and other equally fascinating subjects are normally carried out at ProfitPapers.com - Stop by and check out my free backlinks page.

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SEO 1,2,3 for Dummies

2006-03-16T17:35:00.000-06:00

By Christopher Jon Luke Dowgin

Seo is Search Engine Optimization. A magician's bag of tricks to get your web page on high SERP (Search Engine Rank Placement ) and High PR (Page Rank). SERP is when you search on Google for a keyword (word you are studying) like cats, you get a page of twenty web sites on cats back out of a hundred or thousand pages. SEO is the art of getting your web page to be listed for as many keywords pertaining to your site on the first page of hundreds. Since people have short attention spans, they tend not to search ten pages of returns to find your page.

That is the short skinny on the subject. If that answered enough quit reading. Still curious? Below is a more in depth but only basic description. It still is a basic description even if it lacks MTV brevity.

To get high SERP you can bid on keywords, through Google and other search engines you can bid on certain keywords. Every time someone clicks on my add in blue at the top and sides of Google pages (These are the auction listings, I will pay anywhere from .5 to $5 every time someone clicks on my site for the keywords I bid on. The one who bids the most gets to be on the first page for cats. The rest of Google is suppose to be based on scholarly research qualifications).

So you need to find a keyword that people actually look for but not too many people are bidding on. You got to niche your keyword. To find appropriate keywords you check your web logs to see what words people used in search engines to bring you to your site. Also their are online tools to use that suggest keywords and give a thesaurus of options along with how many times people searched for that keyword last month.

Then we get Page Rank which is based on how many people link to you. The higher page rank used to me higher SERP. But search engines update and change to keep ahead of SEO people. Google's Jager update screwed me up. The Higher PR the higher you can charge someone to advertise on your page also. 10 is the highest. Now to get links you want people to link to you in the middle of a paragraph near the top of their page with reference to you desired keyword. By the way have you seen the updates to my Life Coaching site (http://www.docspond.org , but since html is outlawed in this article I display it this way without conventional a href tags)? This would be a better link, Natural linking, instead of a directory of 200 people to a page called mile high links. Natural linking is someone considering you more an expert than just linking by subject as in Mile High. Sometimes the first ten can get points from robots to get high SERP on mile highs but these pages in general start out with lower wealth. So sites charge you a premium to be listed on a home page or the top of a directory. But you will never get anyone to click on these links, the only importance you get from them is robots.

Robots are programs that scour the web following all the links on your page to each other and all the ones you list to other sites. They check to see you have good code and list your words for their directory so people can find any phrase you placed on your site. Now links to other sites within three pages of your home page toward the top of each page get better points than any deep in your site or toward the bottom of the page. Also they down score links if their is too many on a page.

To get your site index by robots you go to search engines and go to the bottom of the page and find a link called submit your URL. there you put your address in and hit return. Anywhere from 3 weeks to four months it could take a robot to find you for the first time. Then it will index you once a month unless in your pages code in meta tags you tell it to visit every day if you like. Also it is good to submit URL on search engines every time you change your home page. More times you change your home page the better for points.

Some engines charge you to be listed. But in time they will index you because people on their engine have links to your site that their robots will follow to you. Then you are indexed for free. Yahoo charges to be listed in their business directory some think like $300 a year.

Now to get links is a tedious process of sending out hundreds of emails with a friendly greeting, Your site title with appropriate keyword placement in it, and site description. For their listing you, you give them a reciprocal link with their title and description on your link page. You can get people to link to you as an expert through natural linking. You can do the same for them. But if you get a link without giving one, it equals you higher points. Which in turn give you higher SERP. Other way to get natural links is to create something buzz worthy or give free tools. If you have a cool video of someone winning a Darwin Award, some one might say " Check this Dumb Fuck out!" and link to your site. If it is a popular page you get more points for the link. or if you have a free tool like these; Whois (I can find out your IP address from you computer from my web log and see which state and country you come from and your Internet provider to bitch too), Keyword finder , or Favicon creators (Little icons that appear at the top of the browser to the left of the URL).

Last but not least are RSS, Blogs, Newsletters, and Article submission. RSS is real Simple Syndication. It is a poor mans AP wire service. People have attachments to their browsers called aggregators that read this peculiar code. It can also have placement on your web page. Say you can have a feed from the latest news updated daily by the New York Times which helps keep fresh content on your site to get points. Or you can have people list your articles on their site giving you links back to your site. Then we have Blogs. If you blog you will put a link back to your other page. When this gets higher PR so does your other site. Also it is something else to attract clients to you in another arena. Also every time you comment on a board or blog, make sure you link back to your site in your signature. All post tend to be indexed by robots. If they find your link they come back to your page and give you points. Then newsletters you create will do the same. Links from emails count too. If you click on the links above, you will give points to that web site. But mostly newsletters are marketing to gather sales and inform the public on your product. Then we have article submission. By submitting articles to directories, they get published by other web sites and provide links back to your site.

That is the basic of SEO. Image the expert article. Hmmm...

Christopher Jon Luke Dowgin is propietor of Docspond Life Coach Services providing Individual Counseling, Group facilitation, and key note addresses that speak to the heart of the mission while delivering the bottom line finacial growth. Helping millions find their bliss and return meaning to success! Guaranteed 20% improvement in your quality of life after the first meeting!

Also is the propietor and designer at Norgeforge Illumination Studios that will SEO illuminated design giving Aesthetics to traffic driven sales.So get out of the cold and get Norgeforged!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_Jon_Luke_Dowgin

SEO What?

2006-02-28T13:30:00.000-06:00

By Andrew Rowe

SEO, What?? It's amazing to us that so many companies are still missing the mark when it comes to search engine optimization as a vehicle for generating leads. This is the most important guerilla marketing technique that any company can be using in today's day and age in order to generate more business for itself, yet most business owners are still skeptical about the value of good online marketing. FACT: 85% of business buyers go to a search engine to look for a vendor when they don't already have one in mind. They either used Google, Yahoo, or MSN to type in key words and find potential vendors for products and service.

If 85% of all business buyers are doing this, yet your company is still engaged in traditional advertising through yellow pages or tradeshows or direct mail or other types of vehicles like this, how is it that you can expect to grow your sales when you're not present where actual people are searching for your product and service? The great news about search engine optimization too, is that your company doesn't have to be big in order to gain a high level online presence, where organic search brings your company name up. Likewise, it doesn't have to be the biggest company in order to get to the top of the search engines, given today's pay per click campaign opportunities. So, if your company is still not doing anything to optimize its web presence by getting it optimized for search engines and indexing your website into the major search engines, and doing link building and textual optimization, you're really missing the mark.

Doing this kind of foundation work to provide for better search engine visibility for your website is not even expensive and there are plenty of search engine optimization companies out there or search engine marketers, SEOs and SEMs that are capable of doing this work. Think about how search engine optimization can help your business. Even if your company is not doing ecommerce and selling online, most companies still routinely go first to the internet to look online for vendors and they go first to your website to see what sort of a vendor you are.

So, it stands to reason, that even if you're not selling your products online, from the standpoint of an ecommerce engine, you still should be marketing your products online to generate leads and awareness for your company. So, if your company is still in the dark ages and hasn't done any work to optimize its web presence, or if your company's name is the only thing that comes up when people actively search for your company by name but they can't find you when they search for your product or service, then you've got some work to do. Now is a great time for you to think about investing a modest amount of your marketing budget into search engine optimization in order to boost your online success and lead generation.

About Cube Management: Cube Management provides sales acceleration services to emerging growth and mid-market companies in the technology, manufacturing, healthcare and business service sectors. The experts at Cube Management work across the entire spectrum of marketing, sales and business development to provide customized solutions that drive revenue and profit growth. Cube Management combines Strategy, Process & People to produce winning results.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Rowe

Is Content Important For Search Engines?

2006-02-20T12:48:00.000-06:00

By Vladimir Ghetau

As we all know, information is what attracts visitors. A friend of mine told me something interesting and I would like to share it with you: "Content, Vladimir, is the KING!"- Right you are, mate!

Reality, go and check! Type something in a search engine like Google, Yahoo, or whatever. Search on a specific topic. Search engines count on content when displaying results. Again... "Content is the King!".

That's why, the next thing you should do is to start thinking of the topic of your website when you want a new one. Let's concentrate on the topic, by asking you a simple question... "What's the main topic which BEST describes your website?"

Here's the John example: John is selling gardening tools. Well ...for John, the main topic of his website is "gardening". The reason I'm asking you to find a word which best describes your website is because search engines nead a reason to read the content, index it, and display it in their search results.

We'll try together to provide a good reason for each search engine, like John did. When people search for the "gardening" topic, they find John's website. Isn't that clever?

The content will directly relate to your topic. That's why the search engines will need a main keyword to show your website in search results. Let's give 'em a good reason to list your website on their first page of search results!

Our John, has chosen his main keyword: gardening. You should think of a good one, too, which best resembles your website's content. Let me give you an example...

Google declared last year that they had over 250-300 million searches per day. Well, don't belive them, other experts suspect the number is much higher.

If you come up with a good keyword for your website, you'll get a lot more visitors considering those big numbers from statistics. So, now you have the topic. John had one too - "gardening".

Let's say someone wants to find some articles about gardening. Because John was smart, he put some articles about gardening too. He wanted to share his knowledge with his visitors. It's a powerfull marketing strategy which attracts visitors. Now John promotes his gardening tools inside his articles.

But, in the same time, search engines consider that John's web site is about gardening, and because of those articles, they give more importance to this particular website and display it higher in search results.

The importance of your website for any search engine will increase if you put a little bit more information about your chosen topic.

Simply put, it's important to find a keyword which describes your business.I'll give you a bonus before the ending of this article... you'll thank me later.

Yahoo, a respectful search engine provides us a tool to see how many searches were made last month, here is the link: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion

By using this tool you can find a list with the number of searches during last month on a particular topic.

Google, the most "en-vogue" search engine these days, also has a unique keyword study and research tool, you can find it here: http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

This is a "real time" application which displays keyword suggestions and the number of web pages regarding the topic you're interested in.

Before closing: today's homework is thinking about few important keywords for your web site. When you're completely satisfied with your choices, write them down. It will be a lot easier to choose the best one from your list.

All the best...

Vladimir Ghetau

Vladimir Ghetau is specialized in professional Web Designing. He wrote the book "How To Advertise Your Business Like A PRO" which helps improving your web site traffic up to 378%. You can see work results on his web design and development website at http://www.PixelTomorrow.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Vladimir_Ghetau

SEO Advice

2006-02-15T12:09:00.000-06:00

By Richard Pettinger

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This means trying to get more visitors to see your website. Working on sites such as Poetseers and Write Spirit I have learnt a few tips through trial and error. I am not a professional SEO but I have no products to sell these are my suggestions on things that have worked for me.

1. Choose titles words carefully. E.g a page "love" is unlikely to get any traffic from Google, there is too much competition. Creating a page called "Rumi love poems" has a much better chance of getting traffic because it is more specific

2. Getting External Links from other sites. This is very helpful for the website. It boosts its page rank. However Google is clever; it rates the quality of links. 100 links from sites who only have listings of link pages (a link farm) is pretty much useless. Getting a link in the middle of text from a good quality website with high PR is the most useful.

3. The link should be generally from related sites. A poetry site needs links from other sites. A link from Bob's Bingo is not much use.

4. Links should be natural it is not good to get 100 LINKS at once. Google thinks you've cheated. It should be a gradual process of e.g 1 a week or 1 a month. Generally buying links is not recommended, Google hates things that look like cheating. At worst your site may begin to attract penalties.

5. Links to the home page is best, but links within the site are still good.

6. Add unique content on a regular basis. This is very important and valuable to a website. It is also useful to add fresh material to the home page. There's no short cut to getting good rankings, at the end of the day you do need to have good material

7. Pages benefit from having relevant external links. E.g. A page about the poetry of Sri Chinmoy would benefit from having links to other sites about Sri Chinmoy. It is best to link to established sites with high PR (Page Rank). Linking to sites with PR = 0 is not good.

There are many rules and suggestion but the most important thing is that if your site has good unique content then it will do well, because people will be inspired to link to it without you asking. It is hard to get high rankings artificially and impossible to get high rankings overnight, it is a gradual process.

Richard is an economics teacher in Oxford and works on various websites such as Sri Chinmoy Poetry hosted by Vasudevaserva Service for Plone

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Richard_Pettinger

Overview of SEO

2006-02-06T08:48:00.000-06:00

By Bobbie Grennier

Search Engine Ranking - Optimization Strategy

Think of the Internet as the biggest library-like source of information in human history, with one major difference from a actual library. The Internet is not organized, nor is all the information out there credible. This is where search engines come into play and why SEO services, SEO ranking and SEO optimization strategies are so important to real businesses who provide real information, services and products.

Why You Need Good Search Engine Ranking and Optimization Strategy

We call it being in the Top 10 of a search engine. It means your web site is listed on the front page, in the first 10 results, of any given search engine listing for your keywords ... and that's referred to as a Natural Listing or Natural Results.

In reality, your web site coming up in the top 10 of any search engine is anything but natural. Appearing in the top 10 for your business's keywords will bring in potential customers to your web site just as effectively as the businesses that pay for the Google Ads and Yahoo Ads, but it's more cost effective to you because you didn't have to pay $3-$20 per click like they did ... and remember, clicks don't mean sales, it just means someone clicked onto their web site. Also, I'm not inflating those prices ... if you want to compete with the big boys at the top of the keyword list on Google, that's what it's going to cost you. Suddenly optimizing your web site has much more importance to you doesn't it?!

Search engine ranking and optimization is a highly specialized field of Internet study combined with the ability to write decently. Search engine users are what we call a targeted audience because they come looking for your business and usually want to buy what you sell. You don't need to do anything, but provide them a clean web site that nicely displays your products, and close the sale (but that's another article).

Internet Users and Search Engine Search Listings

Every web business needs a web site marketing plan with a solid search engine ranking and optimization strategy. The Georgia Institute of Technology says more than 85% of all Internet users find new web sites through search engine search listings. Data shows that search engine listings are the number one way to generate traffic to a web site.

Search Engine Ranking and Optimization Services

Think about it ... when you got your very first computer, hooked it up and wanted to go out onto the world wide web ... didn't you ask yourself, How do I find web sites? Then you discovered what a search engine was and from there, you relied on the search engines to give you keyword results and that's where you played on the Internet.

That's what millions of users do everyday. These are people who are not tech savvy like you and me. They use search engines as a way of sifting through the myriad of web sites out there, narrowing their search and focusing them on the top 10 results. The goal of any SEO company is to get your web site to rank in the top 10 for your set of keywords, bringing you the people who are searching for the goods and services you provide.

Good Search Engine Ranking and Optimization Strategy

SEO services involve knowledge of SEO optimization, web site planning, SEO experience and having the right SEO tools, but most of all it requires patience because getting your web site into one of those top positions on the search engine results pages (SERP) takes an average of 1-3 months. Any SEO company will need to tweak your web site and it's content, and then wait for the search engines to make their changes. The goal is to achieve and maintain true search engine optimization and placement for your web site.

By hiring an SEO company like us, to handle your search engine optimization you will see results. A good SEO company will bring you good search engine placement, and any business that can get the targeted traffic should also get the conversion necessary to drive profits up if the web site is able to close the sale.

Your web site content should both drive SEO optimized traffic to your web site and help close the sale. A good SEO Copywriter can help with both!

Search Engine Ranking and Optimization for Good ROI

ROI is the return on investment. You need to compare your ROI for the costs of placing pay per click ads (PPC) with Google and Yahoo vs. the cost of optimizing your web site to get a natural ranking.

How competitive is your market? If it's highly competitive, like the Finance market is, then you're most likely going to need to do both to make it in that business online. This is where where our SEO experience can be invaluable to you and the success of your online business.

Forrester Research reported that Over 80 percent of all Internet users reach sites through search engines. Translated, that means if your web site isn't attracting 80 percent of its visitors from search engines, you're losing out on a lot of free traffic.

A study from the NPD Group found that search engine listings are far more effective than standard banner or button advertisements when it comes to brand recall, favorable opinion rating, and conversion of traffic to sales.

In unaided recall, search listings outperformed banners and buttons by three to one. More than twice as many people gave a more favorable opinion of companies in the top three search positions than those featured in ads.

The study also found that 55 percent of online purchases were made on sites found through search listings, while a mere 9 percent were on sites found through banner ads. You do the math! Search Engine Optimization is clearly linked to a better ROI for your business.

Based on our own internal calculations, the current cost of getting customers through a good SEO optimization strategy is less than half of the cost of pay-per-click services such as Yahoo's Overture or Google's AdWords.

We also know that organic or natural traffic, that comes to your web site from natural search engine ranking, converts better than traffic delivered via pay-per-click search... because the traffic is better targeted! Not all, but most people don't want to click on the Ads and prefer to click on the organic links instead.

Search Engine Ranking and Optimization

Search engine ranking and SEO optimization is cost effective and should be a high priority. While the search engine ranking and SEO optimization process is complex and time consuming, it is very do-able if you know what you're doing. That's why you may want to hire an SEO writer.

SEO optimization is not only about working your web pages to match the ever changing search engine algorithms of all the major search engines, but it's also about trying to out-rank your competitors.

If you are new to SEO optimization and want to learn more, Wild Wolf SEO Copywriters and Wild Wolf Webmasters both have a lot of tutorials and articles regarding SEO.

About the Author: Bobbie Grennier is an SEO copywriter and web site copywriter. She publishes Webmaster Blog. Visit her web sites wild-wolf.com or http://www.wildwolf.ws.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bobbie_Grennier

SEO Copywriting is a Waste of Time for Blogs

2006-01-26T11:35:00.000-06:00

By Brian Clark

Good copywriting skills can help you sell with your blog. But if you think by "copywriting" I mean "SEO copywriting," you'd be wrong.

In fact, you're probably wasting your time even worrying about traditional SEO techniques when it comes to blogs. Here's why.

Writing for Search Engines

Search engine optimization ("SEO") copywriting means writing web page copy that is optimized to rank well in the search engines. This includes inserting targeted key words in certain places (like titles), and in frequencies and densities designed to satisfy a particular search engine algorithm.

Why isn't this as important anymore? Essentially, SEO experts think traditional SEO for blogs is a big waste of time.

Humans Matter More

The gist of the argument is that when it comes to search rankings, what's written on a web page is less important than what other people say about that web page, and how many times.

It all comes down to links.

First of all, referral traffic (links from other bloggers) is of higher quality for the things that matter most - subscriptions and sales.

It's like the difference between a prospect who is sent your way from a happy former client, measured against someone who finds you in the Yellow Pages.

But this also impacts your search engine rankings. The algorithms favor sites and pages with incoming, non-reciprocal links from body text - in other words, express recommendations from other people. And much more weight is placed on the words used in those links (anchor text) than the words on the page linked to.

Just ask George W. Bush.

You won't find the words "miserable failure" anywhere on the biography page of the current U.S. President, and yet that page ranks number one for the search term in Google. That's because a whole bunch of other people (mostly bloggers) decided to link to W’s bio with the anchor text "miserable failure," and obtained top ranking.

The trend of search engine's favoring what others say is intensifying. Just like offline, word of mouth matters most.

As mentioned above, search engines like Google already incorporate user feedback (links + anchor text) in their algorithms. When people link to and tag the posts of other bloggers on social book marking sites, and tagging is more fully integrated into the current version of search, rankings will rely on recommendations even more.

The end result will be better search, and the end of traditional SEO techniques.

Content Matters Most

This is why traditonal (not SEO) copywriting skills that catch and hold reader attention are important for bloggers. I would argue that great copywriting is the new SEO for bloggers, if it gets you positive links from others. And since blogging is a new form of public relations, and PR depends on great copywriting...

Well, you get my point.

So, maybe you should quit worrying about SEO and start producing incredible content and networking in your niche. Copywriting techniques will help you excel in both.

Don't be Search Engine Ugly

Now, for that grain of salt. There's no reason to completely ignore things like keywords in your writing. For one thing, it can influence the anchor text that is used to link to you, which is a good thing.

For example, take this article. It's got the keyword phrase "seo copywriting" right up front in the post title, and yet the headline still manages to be provocative. There's no reason why you shouldn't strive for human titillation and keyword relevancy.

But... if you have to choose between the two, go for the human factor first and foremost.

So, optimize your post URLs and include your keywords, but beyond that, let it go.

Search engine algorithms come and go, but human nature remains the same.

Learn how to sell with blog copywriting and RSS marketing at Copyblogger. You can subscribe for free via RSS or email.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brian_Clark

The Benefits of SEO Training

2006-01-22T15:50:00.000-06:00

By Victoria Slotover

With high search engine rankings becoming increasingly important for business success online, search engine optimisation (SEO) is an important part of the marketing mix. However, hiring a professional SEO to run a campaign for you can be expensive. That's where SEO training comes in.

The Importance of SEO

With 90% of internet users using search engines to find websites and the majority of those people only looking at the top two results pages, having a high search engine ranking really can make the difference between business success and failure.

By optimising your website for a particular search term you are able to attract traffic to it from people who are actively looking for your products and services.

This helps your business to generate what are effectively, qualified leads which are likely to produce sales.

The Benefits of SEO Training

The primary advantage of SEO Training is that it gives you access the SEO techniques you can apply yourself to achieve for a fraction of the cost of using an SEO consultant. As such, SEO Training is an effective and affordable way to achieve high search engine rankings.

SEO Training helps small businesses learn basic SEO skills to enhance the visibility of their websites in the search engines. There are a number of benefits offered by SEO Training. For example:

SEO trainingprovides your company and its staff with an understanding of the issues involved with, and the techniques required for, successful SEO. This means that SEO training will allow you and your company to optimise your website internally rather than paying a consultant to do it for you.
SEO training also allows you to modify your website in accordance with company developments, whilst still maintaining its search engine ranking.
SEO training gives you the necessary information to brief your web designers effectively to ensure that their design proposals do not harm your ranking potential.

SEMS Consultancy offers SEO training courses throughout the UK.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Victoria_Slotover

RSS Can Feed Your SEO Efforts

2006-01-04T10:17:00.000-06:00

By Todd Mintz

Buried within U.S. Patent Application # 20050071741 (aka The Google Patent) is the following paragraph:

"Documents for which there is an increase in the rate of change might be scored higher than those documents for which there is a steady rate of change, even if that rate of change is relatively high. The amount of change may also be a factor in this scoring. For example, documents for which there is an increase in the rate of change when that amount of change is greater than some threshold might be scored higher than those documents for which there is a steady rate of change or an amount of change is less than the threshold."

When search engine optimization experts read this, it merely confirmed something they already knew... that even well-optimized content needs to be periodically refreshed in order to maintain top search engine rankings. However, if you are an SEO working on a contract, you might not have perpetual access to a client's website. Optimum rankings will likely not hold up if the site stays static. RSS (an acronym for "Really Simple Syndication") feeds are an excellent way to continually freshen website content without having to make periodic content updates.

"RSS is used to provide items containing short descriptions of web content together with a link to the full version of the content." (from Wikipedia)

Most people reading this article understand the concept behind RSS and have seen examples of feeds on different websites and blogs. Easy-to-implement RSS feeds are available for any imaginable topic and having one or more feeds on your website will certainly enhance your visitor experience. However, RSS can also enhance your search engine rankings as well.

Savvy SEO's know that they can boost site optimization efforts by creating RSS feeds containing top search engine results for the keyword / keywords they are targeting and adding them to the client website MSN, Yahoo News, and Gigablast all offer easy to use RSS feeds of their search results. Many of the blog search engines also offer RSS feeds of their results. Before placing a search engine feed on a website, be sure to check whether use of the feed on a website is restricted in any way...some of the feeds can only be placed on "non-commercial" websites.

My experience is that placing a "keyword-targeted" feed on your webpage will greatly enhance your ability to achieve optimum keyword density for your targeted term(s). What's more, assuming relevant content is available, a news feed is preferable to a search engine feed for SEO because news feeds are updated more frequently. Another valuable tool that I recently discovered is a service called RSSMix (http://www.rssmix.com) that can seamlessly blend together multiple feeds into one. That means if you are targeting several terms in your optimization effort, you can create one seamless feed featuring each term instead of using different feeds.

In some situations, it might be undesirable to show feeds over which you can not control the content. Fortunately, the remedy is simple. You can restrict the domain of the feed so that you are only showing results from an authoritative site (e.g. a government site). Or, you can only show results from your own site if appropriate. Restricting the domain thusly should not affect the SEO value of displaying the feed since the keyword densities should remain constant.

If you are adding RSS to your website for SEO, there is one important rule that must be followed: DON'T USE JAVASCRIPT! Javascript solutions are common and easy to implement. However, the javascript content won't be indexed by the search engines and your page will not get SEO benefits from the feeds. ASP, PHP, and HTML alternatives for RSS are readily available.

RSS is one of the hottest phenomenons in the webmaster community today. RSS that benefits SEO is a topic that's been very much overlooked. Implementing RSS into websites has become much easier so that even non-programmer hacks can do it with ease. RSS should be viewed as an SEO Best Practice for any website that will remain very static and should be strongly considered as a part of all SEO projects.

Cube Management provides sales acceleration services to emerging growth and mid-market companies in the technology, manufacturing, healthcare and business service sectors. The experts at Cube Management work across the entire spectrum of marketing, sales and business development to provide customized solutions that drive revenue and profit growth. Cube Management combines Strategy, Process & People to produce winning results.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Todd_Mintz

SEO - Search Engine Optimization

2005-12-30T09:18:00.000-06:00

By Gary Bolton

Without a doubt one of the biggest things to hit the Internet today is the amount of SEO "Search Engine Optimization" sites popping up all over the place. Even "Web Hosts" are now advertising to SEO your site for a fixed fee who you might be hosted with. It really does seem to be the hottest internet craze and many people cashing in on the rush to create new forms of SEO software to sell!!!

So why is SEO so important?

Let's say you running a site about CARS and your trying to get new members to come and join. Your faced with a big problem, there are also hundreds if not thousands of other CAR sites out as well - all fighting to get new members. So any tool you can use to point new users to your site first by ranking it high in search engines like Google etc is a big plus factor for your sites future growth (even more so if your selling a product).

So what does SEO do to help me?

What SEO does in a nutshell is convert all your web or forum pages into much more user friendly links, which in turn can then be indexed by search engines much easier and faster. Which means they will get ranked higher along with many more pages listed.

The benefits of this are quite obvious: The more pages you have indexed in search engines, along with a higher rank. Means your going to bring many more users to your site. Which in turn can be converted into more members joining your site faster than if you didn't use SEO. Simple case of mathermatics.

Will it cost me money to SEO my site?

Well the short answer to this is: Yes and No.

There are many guides out there on the internet which can be found quite easy using Google as a search tool to find them, that will explain how you can SEO your site yourself "DIY". There are also paid products out there that can make this easy for you (designed for certain forum boards like "vBSEO" is for use with vBulletin forum boards).

Which route you take depends on your knowledge of being able to understand how it all works and make the code changes yourself accordingly. If your a novice, off course you can always just buy a product and make things easy for yourself.

Are there any disadvantages of using SEO?

The only thing you need to remember is that nothing last forever - other sites are also choosing to SEO there sites also just like you. And over time this will effect your ranking as more and more sites go the same SEO way. So while in the short term you might be impressed with the results. Over time as more sites get SEO'd, this will have an adverse effect on your site in general as there sites begin to take advantage of a higher rank with more pages listed in search engines.

GB Chat

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gary_Bolton

Some Very Easy To Follow SEO Tips

2005-12-26T10:43:00.000-06:00

By Chris Taylor
Search engine optimization seems difficult to many but with a little patience and work it's really not that hard to pick up. In doing so you can save hundreds of dollars, and get the same results as the professionals do. You will probably get better results from highly qualified professionals, but you should definitely perform these do-it-yourself actions first. Once you've done some of this kind of work it will be easier to determine if a professional is worth his/her salt.

Basic SEO is very simple and easy - all it takes is the willingness to put in the work. Once you know the ropes, it's not that difficult though it can be time consuming. The content of your website the focus of what SEO is all about. Here are the top points to think about when you're doing it yourself.

1. You will start by registering a domain name, which should reflect what your site about. Keep it short, as long as it's somehow related to your site. Being more specific can help. You could choose to name the page after one of your products or services, for example. Another method is to get a sub domain of a popular domain. This will generally help you get indexed more quickly though it will not appear quite as professional to your visitors. There is a trade of here, sub domains are quicker (and generally cheaper), but domain names are more memorable, and, in the long run, better for your indexing.

2. The next thing you should look at is your page's title (i.e. the HTML title tag), which is critical in letting search engines see what the page is about, and is the first item looked at by search engines to determine your relevance. You should put your most important keywords in your title tags - you don't need to worry about singular or plural forms as search engines account for these changes in most cases. Whatever you do, don't call your home page "Home" - make the title a mini-description of the page.

3. The two primary meta tags aren't as important as they used to be, but the description tag is still used by some search engines to display information about your website to users and help them decide whether they've found what they are looking for. Not all search engines bother with this, though most will put some bearing on it (even if it is minuscule).

For very short descriptions the alt tag can be used. Alt tags let you describe an image or graphic file - they're the pop-up descriptions that appear when you hover your mouse over a graphic, or when the graphic can't be downloaded for whatever reason.

Text within comment tags is never displayed on the page - it is used by coders and designers to remind them of what that part of the page is for. Some coders used to put lots of keywords in the comment tags, so that they would be seen by search engines but not users, but search engines have now stopped paying attention to any text that isn't seen by the user. Keep this in mind when trying to post invisible text (i.e. white text on a white background). This kind of behavior can get you banned from a search engine.

4. Having keyword density in all of your content is good, but keep in mind that each search engine has its own requirements when it comes to how many times that a keyword or phrase should be in the content for the page to be relevant. Somewhere between 5 and 8 percent is a roughly optimal level - but this isn't always possible, and you shouldn't force it. Don't overdo it, or the search engines might mark you down.

5. Many search engines judge web page importance on the number and quality of incoming links from other sites. You should link to some related sites, but not too many. Don't overdo incoming links either, and keep them related your site's content. It's also good to get sites to use your keywords as the text of these links.

Using the above advice will see you gaining some very good first page rankings, it just takes a little effort and work!

Chris Taylor - CEO Catdynamics, author, marketing & SEO Specialist.

Search Engine Optimization Training - How To Sky Rocket Your Search Engine Rankings In Less Than 60 Days!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chris_Taylor

SEO: Best Practices

2005-12-15T08:37:00.000-06:00

By John Sylvester

A few nights ago I was asked by a regular in a bar I frequent: 'what is this pub doing with a website? Somewhat bemused, I replied that it receives substantial hits to its website and that it is listed on all the Bangkok portals. More importantly, they have consistently remained at #1 on Google, Yahoo!, MSN and the other major search engines for well over a year. Visitors the site, although not verifiable, must convert into a lot of money.' He looked slightly bemused, shrugged his shoulders and muttered something about not knowing much about search engines.

That is where we stand on building websites: our philosophy is based on making the web work for our clients; in providing them with a new revenue source. We don't just deliver tastefully designed websites, we also provide detailed research which we convert into accurately anticipated keywords likely to be used by potential visitors when searching for a source of information.

With this knowledge, we optimise our clients' web pages and register it with sites we know will boost its rankings. This strategy has been successfully employed on sites based in Thailand, the UK, Germany, Australia, France, Austria and France.

But there is another option to be seriously considered: commercial search. It is by far the most dynamic and fast-growing industry segment now, estimated to extend beyond $5billion by 2006. Pioneered by Overture (now Yahoo!), pay-per-click was created in response to three fundamental issues concerning internet search: poor quality results; random ordering of listings; and a weak advertising revenue model. It solved these problems by creating a real-time market for keyword bidding.

Recently, however, it has spawned a series of bidding wars among a growing number of marketers wanting their ads displayed alongside the top search results, and the demand for placement now seems to have reached an almost critical level. Highly popular search terms can easily get you involved in a cost escalation dynamic: extend your bid to the top spot and there's a good chance that, within hours, #2 will outbid you. This process can go on indefinitely until the actual 'market space' for these search terms is inflated beyond reach, which can take several weeks to stabilise and return to some kind of equilibrium.

Also, whilst pay-per-click can be the best marketing tool on the web if 'conversion rates' are high, there are four fundamental objectives to be recognised:

1. The content of your site must exactly match the keywords you intend to bid on;

2. All of your keywords stand no chance whatsoever of being listed in the top ten positions on the major search engines;

3. The cost of bidding will be more than recovered, as visits to your web pages will convert into quality leads or actual sales;

4. The more popular the search term, the more expensive.

If you think it's worth the investment, then take the plunge.

In the main, robots index websites, and few people look beyond the first 20 results. This has driven Google, Yahoo! and now MSN to devise a more specific search trend: e-marketing driven by localised search advertising, personalisation and increased specialisation. When fully operative, these initiatives will narrow the scope of the problems inherent in generic search results.

In the meantime, V9 will continue to provide our clients with optimum results: we have the expertise and proven credentials in providing Thai- and foreign-based businesses the opportunity of profitable expansion.

Media Director of V9 Design & Build, providing both local and outsourcing web and SEO services: we provide both brochureware and custom-designed websites, with tasteful design and branding, professional design and build, proven and successful SEO and e-marketing, e-commerce-driven database integration and content management systems.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Sylvester

The Advantages of SEO Training

2005-12-12T10:07:00.000-06:00

By Jay Moncliff

It is estimated that at least 340 million people use search engines to find products and services every day. That's a lot of people. The top search engines use link popularity to decide which sights come up first when you do a search. Wouldn't it be nice if your website came up at the top of the list? It is a possibility with search engine optimization, or SEO. With the right SEO training, you can be on your way to a more successful business and much higher web traffic.

Before you start SEO training, you should first understand what SEO is. SEO basically means optimizing the results of a persons search on the web to lead to your website. When someone does a search, say on google.com, they type in a keyword and start the search. The search results then list several websites that fit the category of the search. The top websites are always listed first. Hence, the person doing the search is more likely to use the websites listed first. With the proper SEO training, you can learn how to make your website be listed at the top of the search engine lists.

SEO training can be provided through many different means. A great deal of people receive their SEO training at special seminars. These seminars can last several days and vary in price. Some are as low as $300 and some are as high as $1500. These seminars usually have limited seating available so sign up as soon as you can. There is also SEO training courses offered online with downloadable SEO training material. Most online SEO Training courses are self paced, so you can learn it at your own pace for a set price. There are even some free courses offered online as well.

Most of these courses teach the basics of SEO. This includes: learning how to use link popularity, keyword usage, and marketing techniques that can work best with SEO. Some courses even teach you how to start your very own SEO business, which has become quite popular in the recent years. Many of these SEO training courses offer certification in SEO so that you may officially start an SEO business.

All SEO training courses guarantee that with completion of the course, you will have a dramatic increase in your website traffic. Some say as much as a 500% increase. For business owners, this means a lot more money. If you are interested in SEO training, get on a search engine and see what results you get. The top websites listed are sure to be the ones that used search engine optimization. If it works for them, maybe you should give it a try.

Jay Moncliff is the founder of http://www.altaenbuscadoresonline.com a website specialized on Alta En Buscadores, resources and articles. This site provides updated information on Alta En Buscadores. For more info visit his site: Alta En Buscadores

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jay_Moncliff

How Blogging Can Help You with SEO - A Beginner's Guide

2005-11-28T11:36:00.001-06:00

By Jason DeVelvis

Blogging is fun and easy to do, and you may be interested in learning how blogging can help you with SEO. You don't have to be a programming genius to set up and maintain a blog. You don't even need to know HTML. If you are new to blogs, websites, and online business in general, start by taking the easy road to learning how blogging can help you with SEO.

First, sign up with a free blogging service, such as Blogger at http://www.blogger.com or Blogit at http://www.blogit.com. Setting up an account is very easy, and takes about five minutes. This is the easiest way to get started blogging, and you can increase your website popularity in the search engines a bit while doing it. Simply use your website URL in each of your blog posts. In other words, every time you write your blog, make sure that you refer to your website. This provides you with inbound links.

Once you get the hang of blogging, your next step in learning how blogging can help you with SEO is to set up a blog on your website. Many webhosting accounts now include blogs. If you can't figure out how to set one up on your website, contact your webhosting company. They will either do it for you, or tell you how to do it. Some webhosting companies charge for the setup, some do not.

Once your blog is set up on your website, continue doing what you've already learned how to do, but add another step. Each time you post, you can still refer to specific pages on your website, but also use your keywords throughout each of the posts. For a post that is three or four hundred words long, use your keywords and key word phrases five or six times. This will optimize those posts for the search engines.

As you continue to blog, you will continually be adding new content to your website. As you add new content, your ranking will go up in the search engines. Each time you finish posting to your blog, you need to let the rest of the world know that you've done so by pinging it. This is done through Ping-O-Matic at http://www.pingomatic.com. This will send a ping to several blog directories.

You should put a link to your blog on your website - whether it is hosted remotely or through your webhosting account. This will help increase traffic to your blog, and help you develop a readership. As people become more and more interested in your blog, two things will happen. First, your search engine ranking will go up simply based on the amount of traffic your blog is getting.

Second, other bloggers will start sending Trackbacks to your blog on their blogs so that their readers can see what you have to say on certain topics. This helps build your readership as well. It is a never ending circle that just keeps getting bigger if you know what you are doing!

You should also send Trackbacks to other people's blogs as well. When they see the Trackback, they will usually visit your blog to see what you had to say about theirs. Again, this increases your traffic, and potentially increases your readership as well.

Make it a habit to post to your blog regularly. You can post daily, weekly, or even monthly - but posting daily or weekly will get you the best results if you are trying to learn how blogging can help you with SEO. Blog posts can be long or short. If you have a lot of time to write, make them long. If you only have a few minutes to spare each day, write one or two paragraphs - just be sure to use your keywords and key phrases!

Jason frequently gives tips like this to the subscribers to his newsletter. Visit his blog at Adventures In Internet Marketing and subscribe to his newsletter today!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jason_DeVelvis

SEO 101

2005-11-20T16:32:00.000-06:00

By Bobby Eubank

SEO (search engine optimization) is a booming businees these days. Everyone wants to obtain top rankings in Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The problem most SEO companies face is the fact that they forget the basics.

Spiders (robots) love the basics. Spiders will crawl through the web looking for sites that are rich in text. When a spider finds a site rich in text, it will sit down and go to work. Who knows sometimes they even invite other spiders. When you are trying to get listed high in the Search Engines, make sure that you have lots of text. After all Content is KING!

The next thing that you need to worry about is how the spider crawls your site. Make sure that you remove all javascript and css. Put your CSS and javascript in external files. Then make sure that you have quality Meta Tags. Many Search Engines still use Meta tags, Google still uses the description and title meta tag for its results.

After your meta tags, then check your links. Make sure that you have plenty of internal links so that the search engines can find all of your pages. If you are having a links page you may want to use the "NO FOLLOW" meta tag to prevent loss of PageRank.

Bobby Eubank is a SEO expert. His webssite RankTips Free SEO is the source for everything about SEO.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

SEO Services Costa Rica

2005-10-23T08:59:00.000-06:00

Christian Gomez Nunez

Mailing Adress: P.O.Box 1023-2070
Sabanilla de Montes de Oca
San Jose, Costa Rica
AMERICA CENTRAL
Tel:(506)848-9584
Email:tiantico@gmail.com

* SEO Internet Marketing Expert and Web Developer
Phone: (506) 848-9584
Email: tiantico@gmail.com
Instant Messenger: tiantico@hotmail.com (don't email me here please)
P.O.Box: 1023-2070 Sabanilla de Montes de Oca, San Jose, Costa Rica.

Abstract: I am an experienced Search Engine Optimization specialist, and have successfully indexed domains into Yahoo!, Google, AltaVista, AOL, HotBot, Lycos, MSN, Netscape, Overture, Teoma, All The Web, resulting in increased traffic.
I have obtained Google Page Rank of up to 5/10 and top ten listings for targeted keywords such as "sportsbook", "sports betting", "betting", "poker cruise", "bathing suits", "costa rica", "costa rica travel", etc.

* SEO Work Experience:

2-Heritage Sports: heritagesports.com
Jan 2006- Feb 2006
SEO Manager for heritagesports.com sportsbook

1- Sotheby's International Realty: sothebysrealtycr.com
SEO and content manager for the real estate website

3- Aladata: therx.com , theprescription.com , slots.com , mainstreetvegas.com , sunpalacecasino.com , vegascasinoonline.com, festivebingo.com
Set 2005- Jan 2006
SEO Content Editor for therx.com and theprescription.com sportsbook and sports forum

4- M.I.S: thepokerweb.com , worldpokershowdown.com
Nov 2004- Feb 2005
SEO services for Thepokerweb.com, worldpokershowdown.com, 5thstreetmag.com

5- Rio International Group: skybook.com
May 2004- October 2004
SEO Search Engine Optimization for Skybook sportsbook network

6- Offshore Web Designers: offshore-web-designers.com , hamptoncasino.com , portofino.com
Dec 2003-April 2004
SEO Search Engine Optimization for Hampton and Portofino Casino.

7- Wed Design International: islavenado.com
SEO services and internet marketing.
Jan 2003-Nov 2003
Search Engine Optimization for Tourist Hotel in Isla Venado.

* Areas of Expertise:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
- Initial ranking reports to find out where the site ranks today.
- Customized keyword analysis to define the best suited key phrases for businesses.
- Keyword optimized page creation and implementation.
- Website functionality and design consultation session to make sure the site meets listing criteria and Search Engines filters.
- Creation of a search engine friendly site map and links menu.
- Creation of targeted, optimized title and META tags including keywords and description.
- Addition of robots tags and robots.txt files so the search engine spiders are able to crawl the site with ease.
- Submissions to the major search engines including manual search engine submissions to: Google, AltaVista, AOL Search, HotBot, Lycos, MSN Search, Yahoo, Netscape Search, Open Directory (DMOZ)
- Reciprocal linking to build the link popularity.
- E-marketing consultation and recommendations of other methods for promoting your website.
- Creation and development of corporate portals.
- Creation and implementation of link portal networks with the Google filter requirements.
- Creation and implementation of Web Logs (Blogs) and XML RSS Feeds.
- Internet Marketing trends Technical Consulting.
- Affiliates programs and internet marketing representative.
- Design of Pay per Click campaigns based on Return on Investment.
- Experience in ASP, .net, Java, XML.
- Performed detailed site analysis and document tactics to enhance presence in natural search results.
- Optimize the various site components including copy, page title/descriptions, site architecture, and filenames.
- Responsible for setting up and reporting on overall SEO program success with regard to URL ranking changes, traffic changes, etc.
- Responsible for reviewing the data regularly and optimizing poor performing listings.
- Information Arquitecture layout and development.
- Creation and development of the XML RSS feeds and SEO Web Logs (Blogs).

* Languages:
English: Intermediate
Spanish: Excellent

* Computer Experience:
Search Engine Optimization, SEO tools, Meta Tag Analyzer, Web CEO keywords, traffic and ranking analysis, HTML, XML, PhotoShop, Dreamweaver, Word Tracker, Overture search terms suggestions, Web Position, Google keyword suggestion tool, Submit Wolf v.6.0, Trellian toolbar, Web Trends, Linksmanager, RSS Channel Editor, DNS Server, Brain.phpbeast.com, and Microsoft Office resources.

Selected SEO Work Samples

www.therx.com PR 5/10
www.theprescription.com PR 5/10
www.skybook.com PR 5/10
www.betrio.co.cr PR 5/10
www.islavenado.com PR 5/10
www.weddings-and-honeymoons.net PR 4/10

And over a thousand SEO marketing oriented corporate web portals.

The Power of Search Engine Friendly URLs

2005-06-26T16:08:00.000-06:00

By Christoph Puetz

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

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

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

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

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

How do you make your URLs search engine friendly?

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

How does this now really works?

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

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

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

Can every website be modified?

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

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

About The Author

Christoph Puetz is a successful small business owner (Net Services USA LLC) and international author.

The website used as an example can be found at http://www.beefkabobs.com. A second example can be found at http://www.vitaminsinstock.com

This article can be reprinted as long as the author information and resource box stays intact. All URLs/Links must be clickable and active.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/