A Back Road Loophole For Getting a Top Google Ranking

While everybody wants their site to receive a top 10 ranking in Google, it's just not possible for everyone.

And this is especially true if you've got a brand new site. New sites that have been crawled by the Googlebot are sometimes given a decent ranking in Google for a few days before they plunge to the depths of Neverworld.

What a TEASE that Google is!

The unknowing webmaster thinks they've hit paydirt with an almost instantaneous top 20-30 listing. Then one day - POOF - their site is gone as fast as it arrived.

Now the webmaster has to prove that the site has staying power by getting links from other sites within its niche. Not just any links. Links from sites with a decent PageRank would really do the trick. Getting listed in the infamous Yahoo! or Open Directory would be even better.

That's what the experts constantly tell us. And in fact, it's all 100% true.


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However as the old saying goes... There's more than one way to skin a cat.

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One of the things I teach my readers is that your site doesn't necessarily need a top 10 position in Google in order for you to be successful.

You can get your marketing message listed in Google's top 10 results for your targeted keyword, and still get a ton of traffic to your web site.

Let me explain how it works...

1) You advertise on a specific site. (I'll tell you about this site in a few moments.) This advertisement will promote your web site;

2) Your advertisement get's spidered by the Googlebot.

3) Your advertisement receives a top Google ranking for your targeted keyword.

4) People see your advertisement in Google, and click on to your actual web site.

5) And this has NOTHING to do with placing an AdWords advertisement.

It's a fantastic little loophole that most people don't know about. And I've seen it work consistently for many different niches.


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This loophole works because--

1) Google LOVES itself.

2) Google trusts that expert researchers are going to lead searchers to the
right tools.

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You see Google has an interesting service called Google Answers (http://answers.google.com/answers/).

Users submit specific questions to Google Answers, and specify how much they're willing to pay for the answer. They accept questions on all types of topics ranging from arts and entertainment, business, health, science, and so on.

Google has an arsenal of 500 researchers who answer these questions.

While Google isn't accepting any more researchers, anybody with a Google account can post comments answering questions. People who post comments don't get paid like researchers, but that's not the important part.



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Now here's where it gets juicy--

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I've noticed that Google loves to list questions and answers from Google Answers within their top 10 search results.

For example, somebody posted a query saying that they needed a list of brokers who buy and sell used LED boards. You can view the query here: (http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=458689)

I ran a search on Google for the keyphrase "LED boards" and sure enough, this exact query from Google Answers showed up in the #2 position.

Any LED board broker could get a ton a free publicity here.

All they'd have to do is post a comment to this query listing their company as broker of LED boards. You can even list URL's in the comment.

And VOILA your job is done.

Your marketing message is listed in the #2 position under an extremely targeted keyphrase.

It's free, and you didn't have to break a sweat to do it. You simply added some information about your site, and got instant rank.


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Making this technique work for you.

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Google Answers receives many new queries every day.

Your job is to keep an eagle eye out for queries that you can post comments to, referring people back to your site.

But it's important to do a quick check several times a week.

It took less than 2 weeks from the time the LED board question was posted, till it reached the #2 position in Google's main search.

You want to make sure you get prime advertising space before the query get's a top 10 ranking. This way you maximize how much traffic you receive.

10 Minutes to Your Google Sitemap...

Google's calling your name...

Hi, Google here. We want to index your website...

Is anyone there?

This article has a free corresponding online video tutorial that shows you how to summons the magic Googlebot to spider and index every page on your website, and it will only take about 10 minutes of your time.

Go here now to watch exactly what to do, step-by-easy-step...

http://www.gothrive.com/google-sitemap-video.htm

What you have access to with the new Google Sitemaps program is truly a gift from the Google gods. They've offering you a tool that you can use to keep your site constantly indexed and updated in the search engine database. With Google Sitemaps, webmasters can now take charge and make sure that their entire site is crawled and indexed.

One important note to make is that the Google Sitemaps program will not necessarily improve the ranking of your site's pages. It only ensures that Google knows what you've got online for them to look at.

Before reading the following statement, promise yourself that you won't stop reading if you see a term that seems a little scary. OK? Promise? Good. Go ahead and keep reading then.

The format specified by Google for "their" sitemap is XML (extensible markup language). Did I loose you yet? No? Good again.

You do not need to understand how to code XML to participate in the Google Sitemap program. There are plenty of free online tools that will create your XML sitemap for you with no XML knowledge required on your part. More on this in a second.

What information is including in this XML sitemap?

1) The URL for every file on your website.

2) A relative priority rank that you can assign telling Google which pages on your site are most important for them to look at.

3) The date last modified for each page.

4) Anticipated change frequency per URL. This again is a variable that you control.

According to Google, your XML sitemap can include up to 50,000 URL's. If your site is a real monster and has in excess of 50,000 URL's, then you'll need to create a hierarchy of sitemaps with one leading to the next. This way you'll be able to lead Google to all of your pages.

The options for generating and maintaining your Google Sitemap range from complex systems that are highly automated to very simple systems using online sitemap generators that require nothing more than clicking a few buttons.

Google now keeps a list of these 'third party suppliers' of generators on their site. Find them here: http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html

The program that's demonstrated in our free video tutorial (http://www.gothrive.com/google-sitemap-video.htm) is found here: http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp

In a nutshell, here are the steps involved with using online generators:

1) Start the program.
2) Enter your site's URL
3) Click the "Start Crawling" button
4) Customize URL priorities and change frequencies
5) Save the site map to your local hard drive
6) Upload your new Google XML sitemap to your website in the root directory (where your home page resides)
7) Validate your new sitemap
(can be done here: http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/internet/google/submit-validate-sitemap/)
8) Submit your XML sitemap to Google.

You can access the pages for the Google Sitemap program here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

8 steps in about 10 minutes. That's all there is to it.

One question that you might ask is whether or not you still need an HTML sitemap, and the answer is "Yes, you still need your conventional sitemap". XML sitemaps are not intended for human visitors. To see what I mean, take a look at the two following sitemaps:

HTML sitemap: http://www.gothrive.com/sitemap.html

XML sitemap: http://www.gothrive.com/sitemap.xml

Which version do you prefer? Your visitors will like the HTML and Google prefers XML.

When you add pages or new content to your site and you want Google to go back to have a fresh look, just log in to your Google Sitemaps control panel, select the sitemap to revisit, and click "Resubmit". It's never been easier to get Google to spider and index a website. Don't miss your opportunity to use this tool to your advantage.

5 Ways Google Will Help You With Your Traffic

If you’ve ever had a severe drop in your Google rankings in search results, you may think of Google more of an enemy than an ally.

But if you knew what I do, you’d realize that there are tools provided by the search engine that help you learn more about your traffic, and may even help drive visitors to your site.

Here are five ways that Google provides free traffic assistance.

#1 - Google will Help Your Pages Get Discovered with Google Sitemaps
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

Google Sitemaps is a program that gives you the opportunity to present your site’s pages to Google in XML or text. Google will then come by and spider the pages, getting you indexed faster.

Take note that this doesn’t necessarily mean that your pages will be listed for your favorite keywords, only that discovery will take place a lot faster than with manual submission. Google Sitemaps will also give you some basic site stats if you verify your site, such as the top keywords for discovery, errors it found when crawling, and the types of documents at your site.

If you find compiling your sitemap for Google in the correct format difficult, try the SOFTplus GSiteCrawler Google Sitemap generator. It’s my favorite Sitemap generator, free and easy to use.

#2 - Google Will Talk To You and Your Webmaster In His or Her Native Tongue or Plain English with the Webmaster Section
http://www.google.com/webmasters/

The Google Information Page for Webmasters should be your first stop when you want to know more about anything that has to do with your site and its relationship to Google and any of its many flavors of search such as Froogle. Particularly for new site owners or operators, checking this page first has saved many from needless anxiety.

Most of the basic information is in straightforward language, with links to details for geeks like me.

#3 - Google will Tell You What It Knows with Web Page Information

If you type info:yoursite.com into Google, Google will tell show you a page that has your link at the top of the page, with a short description, and the following phrase “Google can show you the following information for this URL”.

This special page compiles several queries about your site including pages that contain your URL (all the pages Google knows of that are linked to you).

#4 - Google will Help You Analyze Your Traffic with Google Analytics
http://www.google.com/analytics/

After a recent purchase of Urchin Stats, a free online version has been made available, and re-branded as Google Analytics. This cookie-based invisible visitor tracker can give you information that go a bit beyond standard stats such as bounce rates, visitor loyalty, keyword discovery results for a single day, click paths through your site, and page views per visit.

With the ability to analyze your traffic, you can help learn where the holes in your site are, and how to keep them on your site for longer periods of time, as well as better ways to steer a visit towards a specific action, such as a subscription. Results come in flavors for the executive and the search marketer alike.

There’s currently a waiting list to use Google Analytics due to popular demand.

#5 - Google Will Advise On Getting the Most from Your Traffic with Conversion University
http://www.google.com/analytics/conversionuniversity.html

Google Analytics also has two content sections that are available to all, called Conversion University. While the articles are decidedly slanted towards AdWords users, a prudent read yields many clues that can be applied to preparing for visitors who arrive through organic search discovery. One reference area is called “Driving Traffic”, the other “Converting Visitors.”

At the end of the day, the process by which your site gets ranked in Google search engine results is a computation of a complex algorithm, which means Google - the search engine - really isn’t capable of being your best friend or your worst enemy.

Meanwhile, Google - the company - also provides access to resources that will help give your site a fighting chance.

Sitemaps - Uncover the Only Quick and Easy Site Submission Strategy

What is the easiest and quickest way to get your site spidered and listed by Google and Yahoo?

This is an enternal question, one that many frustrated SEO specialists and online business owners are still trying to figure out. The trick to answering this question is to find out exactly what Google and Yahoo want you to do to get listed; not what you THINK they want you to do. That being said, the tried and true methods to get your pages indexed and listed by Google and Yahoo have been the following:

1. Blogging and Pinging

2. Submit your website through the standard submission form provided by Yahoo and Google

3. Pay a search engine submission service to do it for you

4. Figure out how to create a Sitemap for each of the engines to get the spiders to come to your site (you still have to manually submit)

These are all decent methods. However, the problems with 3 of these methods are many, and here are just a few:

1. Blog and Ping and submission forms are all slow ways to get listed. Who has that kind of time?

2. Search Engine Submission services can be expensive

3. Using an automated search engine submission service can get you banned, if the search engines think that you are "spamming"

Of all the methods listed above, both Google and Yahoo prefer that you create a sitemap and then submit your site to them. You create a database file that contains information about ALL of your web pages. You then load that file onto your website and then let Google know where that file is. Google is extremely specific about how the database should be submitted, which is in XML format.

By submitting your website in this way, you are cutting down on their overhead by a huge amount. You see, when you submit the old-fashioned way, using the standard submission form we talked about earlier, Google and Yahoo have to convert your information to the database XML format themselves. As you can imagine, this takes time, especially with the zillions of webpages that are submitted daily. So, those sites that are submitted in the manner and format that Google and Yahoo are already using will get their pages spidered faster...do you see the logic here? Using this process, you are enabling them to visit many MORE of your web pages quickly and easy. This is exactly what Google and Yahoo want you to do.

By submitting your sitemap in the preferred format, you will accomplish the following:

1. Save enormous amounts of your valuable time and money.

2. You don't risk getting banned

3. You will get Google and Yahoo to spider the pages of your site faster.

So, if you want to get your site spidered, and therefore listed, faster, you must create and submit the sitemap. In theory, the search engines can list your pages whenever they want. In reality, until you get them to spider your webpages, you will never get them listed!

Joe Borges makes it easy to get your website optimized and listed in all the major search engines. Learn how to build and submit your sitemap quickly and easily by visiting:
http://www.tekretail.com/secretspid.html

The Ten Commandments of Search Engine Optimization

Most of the time when we pitch to a new client we are asked for SEO guarantees. “Your competition has guaranteed top results and submission to 100,000 Search Engines and Directories”. We go all out educating clients that Search Engine Optimization is all about smart work and not just adding random keywords and submitting to every directory possible. I’m writing this article to reach out to the SEO buyers and help them distinguish the crooks from the genuine SEO. I’ve compiled my Search marketing experience over the years in this article. I hope this helps you in selecting your Search Marketing initiative.

Commandment 1: There are no Rank Guarantees. (Period)

Search Engines alone control their indexing and ranking algorithm. Do not try to trick Search Engines. The only way to improve your Search Engine Ranks is by playing by the rules. And the rule is very simple: make it logical. Web content is primarily for the site visitor and not crawlers.

If your Search Engine Optimizer sold you magic “Top rank on google in 10 days flat”. Forget it. There are no short cuts. Top ranking in Search Engines Natural Results will take time. Hard work is imperative especially for the content on your website and the links to your site.


Commandment 2: Ranking is not the end, it’s the means.

Ask yourself what will Top Search Engine Ranks get you? Most businesses are interested in increasing sales on the website or in the least driving qualified traffic. Ranking for the right keywords (keywords used by your target audience) is important. There are SEOs who would try to show case results for keywords that occur only on your website. Beware such gimmicks.


Commandment 3: Know your competition.

“Rank” is relative position and more so in the Search Engine’s natural results. How well you do in the Search Engine Results is a function of how much hard work you have put over competition. Analyze competition’s keywords, links, keyword density and spread. But be sure to never copy your competition.

Commandment 4: Use Search Engine Friendly design.

A search and visitor friendly design is must for any successful website. Your website should be compelling enough for repeat visits by search engines and potential customers. Make sure you have Search Engine friendly urls and avoid those long URLs with query strings (http://mywebsite.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=5&a=z&f=g). You should also make sure that your web designer follows global coding standards like w3c (http://www.w3.org).

Commandment 5: Select Keywords that are worth.

You must research the keywords before targeting. There are tools that give you good idea of keyword’s search potential for example (http://www.wordtracker.com/, http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/, https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox ). It is important to know the number of searches for a keyword in the last month, last 6 months and last year. You should also find out the number of web pages that are targeting the keyword. It is advisable to start a campaign with keywords with moderate competition and high number of search.



Commandment 6: Write Great content.

Even if your website site is technically perfect for search engine robots, it won’t do you any good unless you also fill it with Great content. Great is contextual and has editorial value. Great content brings repeat visits and increases the chance of conversion. Great content is factual and appeals to the target audience. The web page should have desired action embedded in the content.
You must ensure that the content is fresh. Keep adding and editing the content regularly.

Commandment 7: Use good hyper linking strategy.

Hyperlinks make the content accessible and contextual. You must hyperlink in the right context within the website and to the other websites. Good links are appreciated by the Search Engines and by the visitors. No one likes to be taken to a mall selling “Macintosh” when shopping for “apples”.


Commandment 8: Write relevant and original Meta content.

Meta content is like business cards. Just as your business card tells who you are and what you do Meta content tells the Search Engines the relevance and context of a web page. Resist the temptation to include everything in the Meta content, but make it detailed. Confused? The idea is to include only what is relevant to the page in the Meta Content but include everything that is relevant.

Commandment 9: Acquire Relevant Links.

The Links you acquire are the roads to your web page for Search Engine Bots and visitors. Good links increase your webpage’s equity on the World Wide Web and bad link make a dent to the equity and credibility. Be selective in reciprocal linking. Both reciprocal and one way links work, if you are prudent in selecting the links. Submit your website to the relevant sections in relevant directories.

Commandment 10: Consult experts, if you need to.

If you have the competence there are two ways to learn. Learning from one’s own mistakes and learning form other’s experience. You could choose either. If you have the time and can wait for the online dollars do it yourself. If you want to get started now it may be useful to consult the experts.

Search Engine Metrics… Organic Search vs. Paid Placement

Let me preface this report by citing advertisers in 2004 have spent 4 Billion dollars on search engine marketing according to (SEMPO) the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization.

Website marketers cited Search engine positioning was the top method to drive traffic to their sites (66%), followed by email marketing (54%). Source: Direct Marketing Association. Accordingly, the most cost effective way to market your web site online is to obtain several top 10-search engine rankings in the major search engines for your keywords.

According to a recent Jupiter Research Survey, searching on the search engines is one of the main uses of the Internet among 79% of users. Source: September 2002 Jupiter Research Survey. So that being the case, whatever your promoting you’ll want to make sure it can be found on the first page of the search engines results page.

The reason is numerically simple. An Iprospect Survey in 2002 reported that 78% of web users abandon their search if the first 3 pages don't provide an answer to their question, and 28% don’t scroll past the 2nd page of results. Source: Media Post article reporting results of Spring 2002 IProspect survey.

Combine those facts with the Internets explosive growth rate of 1.8 Million people worldwide going online every week for the very first time, Source: Official Guide To Internet Promotion and you can soon appreciate what a top 10 ranking can mean to you.
Google receives approximately 39.4% of all search engine traffic. Yahoo receives approximately 30.4%. They’re simply the largest search engines being utilized online today.

Bringing up the rear is MSN at 29.6%, and AOL 15.5% then Ask Jeeves with 8.5%. Source: Nielsen//NetRatings January 2004

How much traffic is that? Well, Google and its partner sites were reporting a whopping 250 million searches a day in February 2003.

Overture and its partners were reporting over 167 million searches per day. Inktomi reported 80 million followed by LookSmart with 45 million per day.

FindWhat reported 33 million while Ask Jeeves reported 20 million, Alta Vista reported 18 million and finally Fast reported 12 Million searches per day. Source: Searchenginewatch.com 2004.

With all said, you can easily see how your search engine rankings are directly proportional to the traffic your web site receives, and your site traffic is directly related to your potential to profit online.

Oh, and in case your wondering how much money is spent online; a recent Forrester Research Report indicated that online spending reached $95,700,000,000 million in 2003!
That's a cool 95.7 billion dollars. Projected online spending is estimated to grow to $229 billion in 2008! A whopping 139% increase in online spending! Source: Forrester Research

Now with these facts in mind I’m confident you can clearly see what a top 10-search engine ranking can mean for your bottom line. Although it does leave a question unanswered in my mind, what has a higher ROI… organic search engine optimization or paid search?

According to SEMPO’s key analysis, the U.S. & Canadian SEM Industry Size Estimate by tactic in 2004, organic SEO accounted for 12% of the market share or $492,057,200 while Paid Placement accounted for $3,341,878,176 or 81.8%.

Interestingly, 9 out of 10 respondents are actively engaged in organic SEM marketing programs accounting for 89% of the respondent advertisers. This trend can be contributed to the average cost of popular keywords continuing to escalate.

If the escalation continues to rise it could make paid search engine advertising exponentially cost prohibitive for all but the largest advertisers… the 900lb gorillas!

Simply put, ROI is outpacing inflation: SEMPO’s key analysis indicates advertisers could afford to pay on average 33% more for their keywords and remain profitable, while they say prices have gone up 26% on average in the last 12 months. That’s leaves a 7% advertising margin to maintain current profits for 2006!

SEMPO’s data also noted that advertisers will get smarter about managing their paid placement programs before they cut back on spending.

This is also consistent with a report released by Nielsen/NetRatings indicating that the growing demand for search engine advertising is outstripping the supply of currently available advertising space.

These findings seem to indicate the inventory of keywords is approaching a critical demand problem however; most advertisers felt they still have some degree of price flexibility in their paid placement programs before they will reach the threshold of diminishing returns.

Is there any wonder why organic search engine positioning has gained popularity for online marketers in 2004? Could it be higher (ROI) return on investments?

SEMPO also cites that 43% of advertiser respondents have shifted their budgets away from other marketing programs for Organic SEO.

So what does it all mean? Let the numbers speak for themselves.

Organic SEO is undeniably gaining favor over the lower ROI paid advertising. This is evidenced by virtue of the fact that paid advertising is becoming less profitable.

Although paid advertising will continue to hold a large portion of the market share, as paid advertising returns diminish and keyword costs soar my early 2006 forecast is for the materialization of a progressive organic SEO market trend to facilitate the need for advertising space.

What is Pay Per Call? How does it work?

Pay Per Call is the next wave of advertising on the Internet. Similar to a Pay – Per –Click advertising. Pay Per Call has a lot more to offer and a wider audience in mind. The Pay-Per Call (PP-Call) is geared towards small businesses that do not have a web presence on the internet. However, this form of advertising can be used by all types of business or services offered on the net.

Advertisers create an ad similar to a Pay-Per-Click (PP-Click) ad. Advertisers choose key terms in which they would like to appear under. They also choose their geographical location (local, regional or national) Pricing starts at $2 and can exceed $20. The ad itself consists of a headline and 2 additional lines of text, (including a URL if the company has one). Surfers then call the toll free number shown in the ad. After the surfer calls the number, the call is forwarded to the actual business phone. Seems pretty basic doesn’t it? But, I had a few questions I needed answered so I contacted Ingenio and spoke to them about their service.

My first question regarded calls placed after business hours. If my business phones are manned Monday – Friday, 9 to 5, will calls still come in after 5pm on Friday? The answer is that currently there is no automated scheduling that will turn your ads on or off at a specified time. However, you can go in manually and pause your account so that your ads are not shown during non-business hours. The automated scheduling is in the process of being implemented but there is currently no set date for this to take effect. Of course, you can place your business hours in the ad as well but this may take up valuable space that could be better utilized describing products or services. Businesses that have a call center for after hours calls are effectively 24 hour businesses, so this should not be an issue for them.

My next question concerned wrong numbers and short calls. We have all done it. We see one number and dial another. Or, we see something and on impulse we reach for the phone, and then change our mind ten seconds after dialing. So, does the advertiser pay for these types of calls? Is there a time limit a person needs to be on the phone for? There answer is yes. The calls need to last at least ten seconds. This should be more than enough time to establish that a wrong number as been dialed. I also wondered about people trying to beat the system. The trouble with PP-Click is that people may dial and occupy a salesperson with no intent other than to try and boost their revenue off the ads placed on their site. Ingenio has taken this into account. They can track calls that come in through their system. Any numbers seen abusing it can be blocked. Hopefully, this will discourage any type of scam to boost profits on sites that sponsors these ads.

I was also interested to know about ads that did provide a URL. Was there an additional charge levied when someone clicked on the ad? Fortunately, there is not. If a business sells over the net as well, they could certainly use this to their advantage. Of course, one of the main advantages to this type of advertising is that it caters to potential customers that do not, for whatever reason, like to make purchases online. Overall PP-Call may be worth its weight in gold. At least the potential is there. Will it surpass PP-Click as far as the preferred method of advertising? Probably, not. It does however give advertises who couldn’t advertise on the net before a reason to start. Maybe then they will see the importance of having a web presence on the Internet.

What is the Google Dance?

As with any good web developer, the ability to time the changes Google will update your website and refresh the content for better SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is in your favor. Welcome to the world of “Google Dance”. The Google Dance is simply that the predetermination of when the actual update will commence.

What really happens is Google sends out spiders to crawl the Internet, usually done to DNS (Domain Name Servers), upon spidering all of the available tables it begins to go through each individual site and updates the content on to Google.com. Thus if you watch your rank on the Google Toolbar, you can tell when your overall page rank has changed.

Understanding SEO and what is necessary to improve your overall ranking. Webmasters have been looking for ways to increase the odds of guessing when the next spidering would commence. There are various versions and servers that go out and crawl thousands of servers at a time, it takes time to relay and decipher this information back to the web server that Google.com pulls its information from.

Some vendors have created programs that actually go out to the data centers themselves to find out approximately when the last index was kicked off. Depending on the information returned from the trace the exact time and date are pinpointed. Is there really that much of an advantage to doing it this way? It depends, if you have a vital update that you want to optimize your site, you may want to know when the last time Google visited your site for content to keep information fresh and relevant.

There are many data centers that Google uses to spider across the world. Each center has a specific region it covers and all the information is gathered in aggregate and returned back to populate Google.com. With this many data centers the chances for continuous indexing is good, but not guaranteed.

Do It Yourself Search Engine Optimization: How to Generate Free, High Pagerank Links Quickly and Easily

Here's a quick and easy search engine optimization (SEO) technique that anyone can use to generate free, high Google pagerank links to their site.

SEO in a nutshell: get quality links to your site; the higher the pagerank, the better.

The problem is that if you submit your site to a high pagerank directory or search engine, it can take months for your site to appear. Moreover, many high PR directories and search engines charge big bucks for the privilege of getting listed with them. For example, the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) directory takes several months or more to list a site. And Yahoo charges $299 per year for a commercial site to be listed in their directory.

While it's great to be listed in these directories and search engines, many will automatically find and list your site free if you have good quality links to your site. High pagerank links to your site indicate to many search engines that other sites that they rate highly link to you. Therefore, they conclude, your site will probably be useful to their users. So you deserve a higher pagerank, according to Google. And the higher your pagerank, the better your search engine visibility. It's part of the SEO game and you can learn how to play.

Now here's my secret to getting some high pagerank sites to link to you immediately and at no charge.

First you need to create a web page on your site with a list of links. You will be adding links to other sites on your links page in exchange for these sites adding your link to their link pages. So let's call this page a reciprocal links page. You don't just add any site to your reciprocal links page, however. You will be looking for high pagerank links to add to your links page. It's better if you include links to sites that are related to your products or services. To make search engines happy, limit each of your reciprocal links pages to about 50 links.

Many sites maintain their reciprocal link pages using the free LinkMan script from PHPJunkYard. If you wish, you could do the same, but it is not necessary. You can download this php script from http://phpjunkyard.com

The LinkMan script allows a site's visitors to add their links immediately after they add links to the site on their pages. So all you have to do is to find sites using this LinkMan script, add their link to your reciprocal links page, and you can immediately add your link to theirs.

Because the LinkMan script is free, the developer requires the following notice on the links page: "Powered by Link manager LinkMan 1.02 from PHPJunkYard - free php scripts."

You can find sites using LinkMan then by searching for the exact phrase "Powered by Link manager LinkMan 1.02 from PHPJunkYard" on Google, for example. Note that there are other scripts named Linkman, so you should not just search for "LinkMan". Play around with your search phrase to find also sites using earlier versions of LinkMan.

Visit some PHPJunkYard LinkMan link pages with a browser showing the Google pagerank. You will very soon come across a site using LinkMan that has a high Google pagerank. Bingo! Add their link to your reciprocal links page and then add your link to theirs. You immediately have a free link on a high pagerank site. Free instant SEO!

And that's a quick and easy search engine optimization technique you can use to generate free, high pagerank links.

The What, How, And Why Of Keyword Densities

Keyword density is an important concept for website owners to understand. Keyword density, in today's Internet, is what will ultimately improve your search engine optimization (SEO) ranking. The importance of having a high SEO rating is absolutely critical if you wish to have high volumes of traffic to your website.

Let's talk first about SEO and what it does. If you type a search into google, yahoo, MSN, or any other major search engine there are likely to be thousands to hundreds of thousands of results come up on the search engine. So let us imagine that you sell ceramic dolls on your website. Now someone types "ceramic dolls" into a search engine, where in those thousands of website results does your website fall? Does your website rank on the first page? If you are like most websites, your ranking is probably somewhere in the depths of the results ranking well over number 1,000. Imagine a customer seeking what you sell, but not being able to find your business. Do you really think that someone is going to sift through the first 1,000 results to find yours?

Search engine optimization (SEO) simply means that you are going to employ methods that will move your website up in the search engines results for "ceramic dolls" or your own personal keywords. Research and common sense tells us that if a potential website visitor/customer does not find your website within the first 20 results, he or she will move on and try a new search or simply use one of the first 20 websites that he or she has found. This is where keyword density comes into play.

In years past I can remember finding web pages that had hundreds of words listed at the bottom of the page, this was a common practice. The reason for this was so that the search engines would place this website on the results page if a web surfer typed in any of those hundreds of words. Times have changed and so have search engines. Today the search engines are much more sophisticated in how they locate websites to list in their results.

Keyword articles (adhering to certain keyword densities) dramatically improve a websites SEO ranking. Going back to our ceramic dolls example, this site would want a keyword article written with the keywords "ceramic dolls" inside the article. This way when a web surfer types in "ceramic dolls," the site will come up much higher in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP's).

The search engines use certain algorithms that "read" these keywords for the surfer. If you go and type in any phrase into a search engine you will notice that the results show those keywords highlighted in bold. They show you how the keywords are listed in those web pages. Placing articles on your website that contain the keywords your customers are looking for will help your search engine ranking for these specific keywords.

Now, you cannot simply type the "ceramic dolls" over and over again on the same web page. With the sophistication of today's search engines, doing that would actually harm your search engine ranking. You need to provide articles that not only contain the keywords, but articles that also contain some relevant information as well.

There is great debate over what density to use in a keyword article. Suppose you want a 500-word article written on ceramic dolls. What percentage of the time (density) should the phrase "ceramic dolls" be used? Should it be in there 4% (20 times) of the time, 7%, or 12%? You must be careful because using the keywords too often hurts your rankings, while using too little doesn't improve your ranking enough. So what is the answer? The answer is that only those that develop the algorithms for the search engine companies actually know.........and they aren't talking. Most people use anywhere from 3%- 15% keyword densities. Some people believe that having the keyword phrase in the title and as the first word of every paragraph helps. Some believe that using "dolls that are ceramic" 18 times and "ceramic dolls" 2 times in a 500-word article with 4% density will work.

Here is what everyone does know, if you are not utilizing keyword rich articles on your website (regardless of the density you choose) you will not be very highly ranked in any of the search engines. Keyword rich articles are one of the best ways to advertise your site. If you want more visitors to your website, who translate into more customers, you must utilize keyword articles to improve your search engine rankings so that people can find your website.

Search Engine Optimization - Site map Optimization Technique

Site Maps can be a great tool for making search engines crawl through your web site in a much more effective manner, thereby helping you get more pages indexed, and ultimately getting you more visitors. Most people know what site maps are, as they can be seen on many of the major websites, although for those who don¡¦t, ¡§a site map is a page which contains a list of all the links within a website, under different categories and headings, just like a table of contents of a book¡¨. Now when a search engine hits the site map page, it gets to see all the links within that website and this enables it to crawl through those pages. It¡¦s just like guiding search engines with the help of a map, in this large universe of internet.

Site maps also help visitors to get an overview of the entire web site, and hence act as a great navigational tool. It helps visitors find specific pages through a single page, for which they might have had to follow several links to reach the desired page. Here are some examples of well designed site maps.

http://www.google.com/sitemap.html
http://www.lycos.com/sitemap.asp

This leads us to the next question, i.e. how should site maps be designed. Designing a site map can be as simple as designing any other static pages without any pictures, graphics, etc. But all effort should be made to keep the structure logical and simple. Its best to browse through the web, and check out a variety of site maps before you decide on what kind of structure you want to follow.

Here are some things you should keep in mind, before designing a site map.

Homepage Link: It is important to give a prominent link from the homepage to the sitemap page, so that visitors and search bots can easily hit the site map page. In fact, preferably there should be a link to the site map page from every page of your website.

Text Links: Plain text links should be used for all the links, as some search bots can have problems crawling through ¡§JavaScript¡¨.

Categories: It is important to organise the contents into well defined categories, and even sub-categories for easy navigation of the user. Although this doesn¡¦t have direct SEO implications, it makes more sense to the user.

Descriptive Content: It is ideal to add some content describing the links, as search engines tend to ignore pages, full of links. It is also important to use your targeted keywords in your descriptive content as well as in your anchor text.

Anchor Text Link: It is important to use page titles as your anchor text, so that you can increase your anchor text back links. This is helpful for search engine optimization as it increases your link popularity.

How to promote your site and also make it sticky

If you have just designed your own site, then you have probably already realised how hard it is to get visitors to it. You are probably also finding that once you get visitors to your site, you are then having problems in making them return back to your site.

Well there are many ways of promoting your site and also making it sticky so that you can receive returning visitors.

To promote your site you can:

5. Write your own reprint articles that are on the same subject/topic as your sites content.

Writing your own articles with your website links contained within your authors bio line is probably one of the best ways to promote your website online. This is because you can add them to some of the article directories where others then can search these article directories and then add your articles to their site, which will then give you credit in return.

Some article submission directories include:
http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/articledir.php
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.articlecentral.com
http://www.articlefinders.com/submit.html
http://www.articlecity.com
http://www.businessnation.com/cgi-bin/library/articles/add.cgi
http://www.freesticky.com/stickyweb/submitarticle.asp

6. Exchange links with other sites

Exchanging links with other sites take up a lot of work but can give you some positive results. This is because exchanging links with other sites will mean that your site will get more exposure across the Web plus your link popularity will increase, which is then most likely to give your website better search engine rankings within some, if not, most of the major search engines.

7. Add your site to some of the free to submit general and specialty web directories

Adding your website to some of the free to submit general and specialty web directories is a good thing as you don’t have to provide a link back to their directory. Submitting your website to free to submit web directories is better than doing link exchanges as your link is more likely to be given higher priority than what it would on a site that has two way linking. A lot of web directories do rather well in some of the major search engines and also has a good Google PR, which means your site should benefit from this.

8. Do SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a very important factor to consider when designing your website. This is because in past research it shows that over about 85% of people use search engines first before using anything else to find what they are looking for online. So if your site has poor SEO then you will not do all that well within the major search engines. If you do well with your sites SEO then you are likely to see some good results from the major search engines. Some sites even receive most of their traffic from the major search engines.

To make your site stickier you can:

4. Add games to your website

Adding games to your website is a very good way of making your site stickier. This is because a lot of people like to play games when they are either bored or have nothing much to do. http://games.simplysearch4it.com is an example of a site that has got games added to it just so that it can increase its stickiness.

5. Add free reprint articles to your website
If you find it hard to find content to add to your site to make it bigger or stickier then a good thing to consider is reprint articles. This is because these reprint articles can be added to your site for free and it makes your sites content larger, which can then increase the stickiness of your website. You can find some free reprint articles at the following categorized article directories:

http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/articledir.php
http://www.goarticles.com

6. Add features to your site that many others do not offer

You could look through a large amount of other sites to see what they have to offer. Once you have done that, you can then see what would be a good thing to add to your site in, which many of these other sites don’t offer. For example, http://products.simplysearch4it.com offers a product price comparison directory, which is a feature that many other sites across the web do not offer.

Doing something like this where many other sites don’t offer it means that more people are likely to come to your site just to use it.

On-Site SEO and Link Building

A discussion between 2 SEO´s, Mr. Ethical and Mr. Links, about link building.

Mr. Ethical: There is no need for link building if you know how to optimize a website properly. It’s all on-site work and some basic submissions to some directories.

Mr. Links: Yeah that’s what it starts with, but you have to admit that once you’re done with on-site optimization and the results are not there yet, you need to do link building in order to increase the rankings.

Mr. Ethical: Nothing of the sort, Mr. Links. Links will come by them selves if you have enough content that will attract links naturally.

Mr. Links: So how are these people going to find your website if links are what you need to be found in the first place? Those couple of basic submissions won’t give you high enough rankings, if at all, to be found by people that want to link to your content. It’s a chicken and the egg problem.

Mr. Ethical: Most websites already have a bunch of back links so that’s not really an issue. All you have to do is optimize the site and eventually enough people will find the site to get even higher rankings.

Mr. Links: But what about a site that is in a very competitive market and most top sites have many back links already? Wouldn’t you want to get some more links?

Mr. Ethical: Link schemes are unethical.

Mr. Links: Unethical link schemes are unethical.

.
.
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Mr. Ethical: Natural links are ethical.

Mr. Links: And links obtained through other types of ethical marketing?

Mr. Ethical: Other types of ethical marketing?

Mr. Links: Yes, advertising for example. Isn’t advertising a very natural business?

Mr. Ethical: Bought links are unethical because links need to be relevant.

Mr. Links: What about relevant bought links?

Mr. Ethical: Natural links don’t cost anything.

Mr. Links: And how much time does it take for links to naturally occur?

Mr. Ethical: Doesn’t matter. You have to do everything ethically. And obviously you don’t know how to optimize a website because you think you need links to get high rankings.

Mr. Links: But you do too. You just said that most sites already have a bunch of back links. In fact, you said that natural links will help you get higher rankings. So you actually agree that for high rankings you do need links.

Mr. Ethical: Everything needs to be done ethical.

Mr. Links: Does that include selecting clients that are in not the most competitive markets?

Mr. Links: Never mind answering that.

What is the Google Sandbox Theory?

Ok, so over the past month or so I've been collecting various search engine optimization questions from all of you. Today, I'm going to answer what was the most frequently asked question over the past month.

You guessed it... What is the Google Sandbox Theory and how do I escape it? When you finish reading this lesson, you'll be an expert on the good 'ole Google Sandbox Theory and you'll know how to combat its effects. So, pay close attention. This is some very important stuff.

Before I start explaining what the Google Sandbox theory is, let me make a few things clear:

The Google Sandbox theory is just that, a theory, and is without official confirmations from Google or the benefit of years of observation.

The Google Sandbox theory has been floating around since summer 2004, and has only really gained steam after February 4, 2006 , after a major Google index update (something known as the old Google dance).

Without being able to verify the existence of a Sandbox, much less its features, it becomes very hard to devise strategies to combat its effects.

Almost everything that you will read on the Internet on the Google Sandbox theory is conjecture, pieced together from individual experiences and not from a widescale objective controlled experiment with hundreds of websites (something that would obviously help in determining the nature of the Sandbox, but is inherently impractical given the demand on resources).

Thus, as I'll be discussing towards the end, it's important that you focus on ·good' search engine optimization techniques and not place too much emphasis on quick ·get-out-ofjail' schemes which are, after all, only going to last until the next big Google update.

What is the Google Sandbox Theory?

There are several theories that attempt explain the Google Sandbox effect. Essentially, the problem is simple. Webmasters around the world began to notice that their new websites, optimized and chock full of inbound links, were not ranking well for their selected keywords.

In fact, the most common scenario to be reported was that after being listed in the SERPS (search engine results pages) for a couple of weeks, pages were either dropped from the index or ranked extremely low for their most important keywords.

This pattern was tracked down to websites that were created (by created I mean that their domain name was purchased and the website was registered) around March 2004. All websites created around or after March 2004 were said to be suffering from the Sandbox effect.

Some outliers escaped it completely, but webmasters on a broad scale had to deal with their websites ranking poorly even for terms for which they had optimized their websites to death.

Conspiracy theories grew exponentially after the February 2006 update, codenamed ·Allegra' (how these updates are named I have no clue), when webmasters began seeing vastly fluctuating results and fortunes. Well-ranked websites were loosing their high SERPS positions, while previously low-ranking websites had gained ground to rank near the top for their keywords.

This was a major update to Google's search engine algorithm, but what was interesting was the apparent ·exodus' of websites from the Google Sandbox. This event gave the strongest evidence yet of the existence of a Google Sandbox, and allowed SEO experts to better understand what the Sandbox effect was about.

Possible explanations for the Google Sandbox Effect

A common explanation offered for the Google Sandbox effect is the ·Time Delay' factor. Essentially, this theory suggests that Google releases websites from the Sandbox after a set period of time. Since many webmasters started feeling the effects of the Sandbox around March-April 2004 and a lot of those websites were ·released' in the ·Allegra' update, this ·website aging' theory has gained a lot of ground.

However, I don't find much truth in the ·Time Delay' factor because by itself, it's just an artificially imposed penalty on websites and does not improve relevancy (the Holy Grail for search engines). Since Google is the de facto leader of the search engine industry and is continuously making strides to improve relevancy in search results, tactics such as this do not fit in with what we know about Google.

Contrasting evidence from many websites has shown that some websites created before March 2004 were still not released from the Google Sandbox, whereas some websites created as late as July 2004 managed to escape the Google Sandbox effect during the ·Allegra' update. Along with shattering the ·Time Delay' theory, this also raises some interesting questions. This evidence has led some webmasters to suggest a ·link threshold' theory; once a website has accumulated a certain amount of quantity/quality inbound links, it is released from the Sandbox.

While this might be closer to the truth, this cannot be all there is to it. There has been evidence of websites who have escaped the Google Sandbox effect without massive linkbuilding campaigns. In my opinion, link-popularity is definitely a factor in determining when a website is released from the Sandbox but there is one more caveat attached to it.

This concept is known as ·link-aging'. Basically, this theory states that websites are released from the Sandbox based on the ·age' of their inbound links. While we only have limited data to analyze, this seems to be the most likely explanation for the Google Sandbox effect.

The link-ageing concept is something that confuses people, who usually consider that it is the website that has to age. While conceptually, a link to a website can only be as old as the website itself, yet if you have don't have enough inbound links after one year, common experience has it that you will not be able to escape from the Google Sandbox. A quick hop around popular SEO forums (you do visit SEO forums, don't you?) will lead you to hundreds of threads discussing various results · some websites were launched in July 2004 and escaped by December 2004. Others were stuck in the Sandbox even after the ·Allegra' update.

How to find out if your website is sandboxed

Finding out if your website is ·Sandboxed' is quite simple. If your website does not appear in any SERPS for your target list of keywords, or if your results are highly depressing (ranked somewhere on the 40 th page) even if you have lots of inbound links and almostperfect on-page optimization, then your website has been Sandboxed.

Issues such as the Google Sandbox theory tend to distract webmasters from the core ·good' SEO practices and inadvertently push them towards black-hat or quick-fix techniques to exploit the search engine's weaknesses. The problem with this approach is its short-sightedness. To explain what I'm talking about, let's take a small detour and discuss search engine theory.

Understanding search engines

If you're looking to do some SEO, it would help if you tried to understand what search engines are trying to do. Search engines want to present the most relevant information to their users. There are two problems in this · the inaccurate search terms that people use and the information glut that is the Internet. To counteract, search engines have developed increasingly complex algorithms to deduce relevancy of content for different search terms.

How does this help us?

Well, as long as you keep producing highly-targeted, quality content that is relevant to the subject of your website (and acquire natural inbound links from related websites), you will stand a good chance for ranking high in SERPS. It sounds ridiculously simple, and in this case, it is. As search engine algorithms evolve, they will continue to do their jobs better, thus becoming better at filtering out trash and presenting the most relevant content to their users.

While each search engine will have different methods of determining search engine placement (Google values inbound links quite a lot, while Yahoo has recently placed additional value on Title tags and domain names), in the end all search engines aim to achieve the same goal, and by aiming to fulfill that goal you will always be able to ensure that your website can achieve a good ranking.

Escaping the sandbox...

Now, from our discussion about the Sandbox theory above, you know that at best, the Google Sandbox is a filter on the search engine's algorithm that has a dampening influence on websites. While most SEO experts will tell you that this effect decreases after a certain period of time, they mistakenly accord it to website aging, or basically, when the website is first spidered by Googlebot. Actually, the Sandbox does ·holds back' new websites but more importantly, the effects reduce over time not on the basis of website aging, but on link aging.

This means that the time that you spend in the Google Sandbox is directly linked to when you start acquiring quality links for your website. Thus, if you do nothing, your website may not be released from the Google Sandbox.

However, if you keep your head down and keep up with a low-intensity, long-term link building plan and keep adding inbound links to your website, you will be released from the Google Sandbox after an indeterminate period of time (but within a year, probably six months). In other words, the filter will stop having such a massive effect on your website. As the ·Allegra' update showed, websites that were constantly being optimized during the time that they were in the Sandbox began to rank quite high for targeted keywords after
the Sandbox effect ended.

This and other observations of the Sandbox phenomenon · combined with an understanding of search engine philosophy · have lead me to pinpoint the following strategies for minimizing your website's ·Sandboxed' time.

SEO strategies to minimize your website's "sandboxed" time

Despite what some SEO experts might tell you, you don't need do anything different to escape from the Google Sandbox. In fact, if you follow the ·white hat' rules of search engine optimization and work on the principles I've mentioned many times in this course, you'll not only minimize your website's Sandboxed time but you will also ensure that your website ranks in the top 10 for your target keywords. Here's a list of SEO strategies you should make sure you use when starting out a new website:

Start promoting your website the moment you create your website, not when your
website is ·ready'. Don't make the mistake of waiting for your website to be ·perfect'.
The motto is to get your product out on the market, as quickly as possible, and then
worry about improving it. Otherwise, how will you ever start to make money?

Establish a low-intensity, long-term link building plan and follow it religiously. For
example, you can set yourself a target of acquiring 20 links per week, or maybe
even a target of contacting 10 link partners a day (of course, with SEO Elite, link
building is a snap). This will ensure that as you build your website, you also start
acquiring inbound links and those links will age properly · so that by the time your
website exits the Sandbox you would have both a high quantity of inbound links
and a thriving website.

Avoid black-hat techniques such as keyword stuffing or ·cloaking'. Google's search
algorithm evolves almost daily, and penalties for breaking the rules may keep you
stuck in the Sandbox longer than usual.

Save your time by remembering the 20/80 rule: 80 percent of your optimization can
be accomplished by just 20 percent of effort. After that, any tweaking left to be done
is specific to current search engine tendencies and liable to become ineffective
once a search engine updates its algorithm. Therefore don't waste your time in
optimizing for each and every search engine · just get the basics right and move on
to the next page.

Remember, you should always optimize with the end-user in mind, not the search engines.

Like I mentioned earlier, search engines are continuously optimizing their algorithms in order to improve on the key criteria: relevancy. By ensuring that your website content is targeted on a particular keyword, and is judged as ·good' content based on both on-page optimization (keyword density) and off-page factors (lots of quality inbound links), you will also guarantee that your website will keep ranking highly for your search terms no matter what changes are brought into a search engine's algorithm, whether it's a dampening factor a la Sandbox or any other quirk the search engine industry throws up in the future.

Have you taken a look at SEO Elite yet? If not...
What's stopping you?

Now, get out there and start smoking the search engines!

SEO Success: Step Three is Creating Long-Term Popularity

Finally, after the hard-core efforts that are directly related to generating traffic to your website, you next step is to develop a strategy that creates follow-on, long-term traffic. Several methods exist for this Tier III strategy:

- Taking the large list of ancillary keywords that relate directly or indirectly to your website, begin purchasing keyword related domain names that will be used to create traffic driving websites that point to your money site.

- Setup satellite pages using the keyword domain names with the idea of capturing traffic geared toward those specific keywords, developing niche market traffic. As you develop niche markets for those new customers, you are going to be able to capitalize on those customers for the other products and/or services that your company offers when these sites link back to your money site as a result of informing and attracting these new customers through the niche sites.

- Create links, backlinks and cross-links between the satellite pages and your money site, improving your link popularity for all websites, especially your money site.

- Display articles or e-books related to your industry and place these articles on your websites being aware of the best location based on keyword dominance.

- For long-term, viral marketing results, create articles or e-books that you will either sell on your website or offer to public domain websites where your link information must be retained for use by anyone else on the internet; these articles will create links that go back to your money site or your niche sites.

- Follow the same steps in Tier I and II for all the niche sites as you did for your original money site; that is, design a SEO-optimized website and follow Tier II strategy to create the necessary link popularity to drive traffic to these sites.

Monitoring
In order to determine if the SEO efforts are successful, you must monitor results of for number and quality of backlinks, PR and web trend statistics. There are many sources for generating this data as well as programs that will assist in these analyses. Whatever method you choose, whether it is using specific programs or setting up a spreadsheet for entry of data, be consistent in tracking the data. There will be fluctuations from day-to-day that you should expect. You are looking for general, overall upward trends, not short-term blips. Upward progress followed by maintenance of a strong position with slow, steady growth would indicate a successful SEO campaign.

This 3-Tiered approach to SEO Strategy is very effective when implemented with the patience it takes for long-term results. Short-term "fixes" and "tricks" may have an effect in the short-run, but as the search engines change and adapt their algorithms -- as they doing almost monthly -- what worked today for quick results may actually get you banned tomorrow. This strategy is based on search engine directives: Well-designed websites, free of bad code, offering information, services or products of interest to the internet community will create their own base of popularity -- for which you will be rewarded by strong, growing traffic. When you are in it for the long haul, your strategy must utilize long-term efforts.

eMergent Marketing- Website Conversion, Usability & SEO

eMergent Marketing of Cleveland, Ohio is a bright, young search engine optimization company emerging in an industry surrounded by hype and cynicism. eMergent Marketing has expanded its SEO arsenal by offering Web site usability testing and conversion services to its clients, in order to improve the likelihood that their Internet marketing efforts have the greatest impact on consumers.

eMergent Marketing represents a whole new way of thinking about Internet marketing and eCommerce strategy. It's no longer good enough to just focus on driving Web site traffic. With growing competition and increasingly savvy online consumers, it has become critically important to attract the right site visitors in the most cost-effective manner. By offering a more complete service than most traditional search engine optimization (SEO) firms, eMergent Marketing delivers more value to its clients by leveraging the in-house usability expertise as part of the search engine optimization and search engine marketing processes.

The eMarketing experts at eMergent Marketing have been studying and practicing search engine optimization since the late 1990’s. Their proven optimization methodology has helped countless companies improve their search engine visibility in the natural search engine listings and attract potential customers to their sites.

While eMergent Marketing continues to experience rapid growth, they remain focused on providing the highest levels of customer service and communications. According to Paul Elliott, President of eMergent Marketing, “The search engine optimization industry has historically been plagued by unethical providers and those who simply do not understand the complexities of search marketing. At eMergent Marketing, we go the extra mile to ensure our optimization clients know exactly what we are doing, when we are doing it, and the results our services will produce. While no ethical search engine optimization firm can guarantee first place rankings, eMergent Marketing has achieved outstanding results for all of our organic optimization clients – a fact our clients will be happy to share with you.”

If you are currently looking for an SEO company that provides leading edge results and customer service, eMergent Marketing is the logical choice. Their combination of experienced Internet marketing professionals with Web site usability and conversion experts creates the new standard for the Web marketing industry. Contact eMergent Marketing today to learn more about the Search and Conversion Methodology for improving the return on investment (ROI) from your site.

The One Most Overlooked SEO SecretThe One Most Overlooked SEO Secret

Most internet business owners know the basics when it comes to getting ranked well in search engines. Put the keyword in the title. Put the keyword in your headline, the text, etc...

Some get even more "slick" and they insert the keyword many times in the text. Then others get even more technical and begin an active linking strategy. By the way, an active linking strategy can be one of the best ways to get your search engine rankings high - but that's not what we're talking about today.

Today I want to talk about a little secret that MOST sites don't use - even some of the most active websites that PAY for their search engine optimization. The best part is that you can use this trick in just minutes - you could do it 5 minutes after reading this!

Ok, ok...here it is...

----------------------------------------------------
Insert the keyword in the text of a link
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You want to have about 2 to 5 out-going links with the keyword in the text of the link.

Ok, it's time for example:

Let's say you're optimizing your site for the keyword "big screen tv" - besides all the other great SEO techniques - you want to have at-least 2-5 links on that page with the keyword "big screen tv" in the text of the link.

The link can be any of the following:

1. A link to another page in your own site.
2. An affiliate link to another website.
3. A link to a completely different website.

In other words, don't stress too much on what site you're linking to (obviously, you want to make sure you link to a relevant page - not something completely un-related).

Including this strategy on your website will take just minutes.

All you have to do is change the text of some of your out-going links to include your main keyword.

NOTE: This trick won't do anything for you if you aren't using the other SEO techniques along with it. BUT, if you ARE using other SEO techniques, this little trick just MAY be what you need to finally bring up your rankings!

So, hurry now and change your link's text, you better do it before your competition does!

The Importance of Web Analytics :: Using Your Analytics Properly

Analytics are very important to your web marketing campaign. If you do not use analytics properly you may not understand how effective your search engine marketing is.

In this article I look at some practical examples of when to use analytics and some things you need to identify in order to get the most out of your analytics.



I came across a situation today that I thought I’d share. It has to do with a client’s analytics.

Many times, as a search engine marketer, it is up to us to tell the client what they should be looking for in their analytics. Right away this seems odd to me. It’s like me telling my client what their business model is, or how they should be selling their product online.

But this does seem to be a common thread among some site owners. They had an idea for a product or service and they wanted to promote it online. So they had a website built, and may have initially had it optimized. But that is as far as their experience goes.

They have no idea on how to track progress or improvements. All to often the numbers they do look at are not the best results to view.

two perspectives on analytics – SEO and client

With my client today, we were trying to nail down what should have been important numbers. And it was a very similar case – they had invested in this super-duper analytics package that was collecting and displaying data upteen different ways, yet they had no idea how to interpret the numbers.

They thought their traffic was increasing, but they had on idea why, really, nor did they have any idea what their customers were doing once they hit the website.

And, as sometimes happens, we fell into the trap of telling them what they should be looking for.

“You want to see search engine referrals going up. That means it’s working” or “increased page views is a good thing.”

But this really isn’t solving their problem is it?

Sometimes as search marketers, we need to step back and say “I know what I need for numbers, but what does my client need to see.”

So this was the approach we took today – let’s have a discussion with the client and focus on what they want to see, not what we need to show them to prove our value as search engine marketers.

When we were done, we had not only shortened their monthly analytics report to a few key metrics (down from pages and pages of statistical analysis) but we had also decreased the time required to complete this analysis.

Sure we still will do some of the analysis for our own purposes, but does the client really care how many backlinks or pages indexed they have? Not likely.

Nope, more often than not, the client wants to know that they are making money. Pure and simple.

So, if you can show them that they are making money, that’s all they really care about. You can add value as a search engine marketer by showing areas of improvement (“did you know that your Google referrals went up by 15% this month? That proves the value of our services, yada yada yada...”)

As long as you can illustrate the bottom line to the client in terms they understand, at that it is improving, then you as a search marketer have done your job.

Keep the pages indexed, backlinks, referrals by keyword and other non-client related data to yourself and present a concise simple report that even the CEO (who has 25 hours per day of work) can look at and understand that the SEO program is paying for itself.

Now let’s look at analytics from the client’s perspective.

If you are a client of an SEO firm, or just want to get a better idea of just how your site is doing online, first you must decide what it is you want to see. Do you want to see sales figures? Or would you rather just look at the aggregate numbers like total visitors and search engine referrals?

What has more value to you – reams and reams of data, or a simple, one page summary of overall performance?

As a recommendation, I’d say you only need enough data to make your business decisions.

In other words, if your website is e-commerce based, all you really need initially are the sales numbers over time. You should also understand how the sales cycle works, and perhaps look at your conversion funnel to see where people are dropping off. Most good analytics packages offer some sort of funnel analysis.

Understanding your sales funnel can also help you improve your sales. Sometimes an analysis of the sales funnel can help you determine where the drop offs occur. By modifying the funnel you can improve your drop off rate, increasing your sales. And really, this has less to do with SEO and more to do with traditional business marketing.

For example, let’s say your site gets 2000 visitors per month. Let’s also assume your site has a 3 step sales process, and your average sale is $11 per item.

If half of your site’s visitors start down the sales path, that means 1000 start (a 50% drop off rate at the first step – this could be due by a requirement to sign up to browse your site). If 40% of that total drop off at the second step, and 30% of that group complete the sale, that equates to $495 in sales, about a 2.25% conversion rate as only 45 of the original 2000 people purchased.

Now let’s experiment with the sales funnel:

If you can improve the final step of the sale by just 10% - that equates to an additional $165 in sales, a 3% conversion rate. However if you can improve the first step of the conversion, reducing that 50% bounce rate to 25%, you can increase your sales by $247.50 – a 3.38% conversion rate.

Further, if you shorten the conversion funnel by 1 step – making a 2 step sale, rather than a 3 step sale, you can increase your sales by over $330 – a 3.75% conversion rate. That’s still assuming the same number of monthly visitors start down the conversion path.

However, if you don’t or can’t find this data in your analytics package you wouldn’t be able to perform such analysis.

And this is where, if you are dealing with an SEO firm, you must get the data you need.

Simply knowing how many referrals you got from Google or Yahoo! won’t help you make the business decisions you need to make.

So whether you are an SEO firm or professional, or employ one, be sure that the metrics you see are the ones you need to make your decisions.

As a client, don’t be afraid to ask – what does this do for me? Because unless you’ve discussed your needs with your SEO, they will likely provide you with the numbers they deem as the best. That is, the ones that illustrate their value to you.

That’s not to say that those numbers are invalid, its just that they don’t do you as much good as those you need to make your business decisions.

Similarly, as an SEO, if you don’t know what your client needs to see, in terms of numbers, how can you justify your income from them. If search engine referrals have gone up, but conversion haven’t then there is no immediate value to the client.

Sure you can say “but we got you all these top rankings” but unless they are turning into sales, your contract with that client won’t last that long.

So be sure as you work with your SEO firm or client that you nail those metrics early, so there is no misunderstanding, and everyone knows what successes are measured by.

Search Engine Copywriting Explained

Copywriting in the world of marketing has always been an expensive process and the main aim of the copy is to attract the reader attention and lure him into buying a product or using a particular service. Copywriting in the online world has pretty much the same meaning, but I believe it is slightly difficult, as here the main aim is to not only grab the readers attention but in order to make it more effective, it is also important to make the copy rank well in the search engines, so that the targeted audience actually get to read it.

Search engine copywriting refers to the process, where a copy is written in a way, where it not only reads well to the reader, but also repeats specific target “keywords?within the text, in order for that copy (webpage) to rank well in search engines for those keywords.

Copywriting experts believe it is ideal to have around 300 words on a page with one or two targeted search terms cleverly placed within the text a few times. Along with the text, it is also important to optimize other elements on the page such as the title text, headings, description and keyword tags, and alt text.

Advantages and Disadvantages of SEO Copywriting

Advantages
Long term Rankings: It is believed that this method helps in maintaining SEO rankings for much longer as compared to other optimization techniques, even when search engines change their algorithms. Although many search engine optimization experts believe that this is a myth.


Quality Content: It not only helps in the optimization process, but also helps to have quality and well written content on your website, which is likely to get you returned visitors or referrals.

Disadvantages
Works for Less Competitive Search Terms: It is believed that this technique works best for less competitive search terms. Competitive search terms refer to highly searched keywords such as sex, insurance, credit cards, cars, etc. Although this can aid the optimization process for highly competitive search terms too, but to be competitive other more robust optimization techniques will also be needed.

Does not work for all Sites: Many sites cannot accommodate enough text on them, for e.g. it can be difficult to optimize certain pages/sites which have too many graphics, flash, etc. and little space for content. Many webmasters are not willing to alter the text, as it may affect the aesthetic appeal of the site.

Expensive Process: Search engine copywriters are expensive people, and hence this whole process can be very expensive. They usually charge on per page basis, and the total expense largely depends on how many pages are to be optimized and the number of keywords being targeted. Another reason why it can be expensive is that you have to depend on the copywriter for all further changes to that page, and hence it can become a permanent expense. Making alterations to that page yourself, unless you know exactly what you are doing, can ruin the optimization of that particular page.

Spider ANY Website And Find Out The Rank Of Each Page On That Site... In MERE Seconds!

Now you can quickly and easily get the number of pages on the server, the number of pages indexed by Google, Link Popularity, and Alexa Rank, PLUS a Summary Report with page rank statistics!

It's crazy...

You've got all this "background" work to do and SO little time to do it.

You KNOW what I'm talking about. Getting the rank and rank statistics of your own web pages is key to operating at peak search engine and marketing efficiency. And it certainly doesn't hurt to know the rank of your competitors' sites as well.

The trouble is... gathering this type of crucial information can eat up hours and hours of your valuable time. And I'm certain we can both agree that time is one of (if not THE) most important assets we webmasters have.

So how do you keep up with page ranks -- yours AND the competition -- without having to invest even more hours of your precious time? NO problem!

I'm amazed that Jeff can keep coming up with great products like SEO Spider. I already own two other wonderful products Jeff created - Ad Word Analyzer and Traffic Equalizer.

With the click of a button, not only can I find out how my own sites rank on Google, but I can also find out how my competition ranks.

Plus I can see all of their page info instantly, which gives me inside knowledge of their sites. And now I know exactly what I must do to beat them.

I only hope my competitors don't find out about this tremendous piece of software!

Jeff, you are a lifesaver! I've tried keeping track of all my site's rankings manually and it literally would take me hours.

Thanks to SEO spider, I've been able to spend more time on building traffic and less on measuring results.

Not only that, SEO spider helps me to analyze my competition without tipping them off or getting me in trouble. It's paying off big time...

As of today, RudlReport.com is #6 on Google!

I've been sitting at my computer for several hours, gathering the rank and rank statistics of hundreds of pages on dozens of websites. It's 2:30 in the morning and I'm not even close to being finished.

I'm tired... I'm frustrated... and I'm thinking there's GOT to be a better way. I mean, I can't be the ONLY person who needs a program to do this kind of work for me. So...

Like every other occasion when I'm hoping for a time-saving, work-reducing solution, I start searching the 'net. And as usual, I come up empty-handed.

Oh sure, there are various programs and services out there, but nothing that does the exact job I want and NEED it to. So yet again, there's only one thing left for me to do... I'll have to create my OWN software program!

And you know what? That's precisely what I did! And the name of this little fellow? SEO Spider. But don't think he's just some insignificant "bug". This guy is WAY powerful.

Incredible! Just when I thought Jeff couldn't possibly outdo himself, he goes and does it with SEO Spider!

As if Ad Word Analyzer and Traffic Equalizer weren't enough, we've now got the perfect "complimentary" program.

Leave it to Jeff to come up with the best solution for gathering page rank information. What used to take hours can now be accomplished in only minutes.

I'm telling you, I'm starting to think Jeff really IS the great and powerful SEO wizard!

When I used SEO Spider for the first time, I had thought it will show me the search engine spider view of a web site, for which there are umpteen tools available already.

But, I was amazed at the amount of information it revealed about a site.

These are all key information about the site that we need to monitor regularly and to get all of them at one place is pure joy!

You have a cool software, Jeff. I'll recommend this to many people.

The whole point of creating SEO Spider was to reduce the time and work involved in yet another important webmaster task. That's why I'm not about to waste your time now rambling on and on about how great this software program is.

Instead, I'll cut right to the features and let you decide for yourself...

spider ANY website and build a list of URL's -- along with the titles -- for each page on that server

quickly and easily query Google to find out how many pages are indexed and what the rank is for each of those listed pages

powerful phrase matching search option gives you the most targeted rank results for every page indexed by Google

check individual pages or use the convenient "Check All" features to analyze the entire list

if you don't wish to use the default page title during the query, it allows you to make changes just by clicking on the title

discover how well your website performs over time and know at-a-glance if you're improving your results

easily analyze any and all competitors' websites and discover all of their TOP performing pages

"smart" technology ensures that disallowed pages such as robots.txt files won't get indexed/listed

features 100% customizable search engine and website courtesy levels for maximum safety

searches whois records uncovering contact and domain registration information for any webmaster

compare any two websites to find out which has more indexed pages, better link popularity and a lower Alexa rank

reports the number of pages on the server, the number of pages indexed by Google, link popularity, and Alexa rank

delivers a concise Summary Report with page rank statistics -- you can view the report, save, or even email it

gives you the option of saving all the results, saving only the selected results, printing, and/or exporting to CSV

know whether or not Google is updating their index with our handy Google Dance Tool

Internet Marketing Without a Big-Picture Strategy Dances in Circles

Stop Tracking the Illusive "Magic Bullet"

It seems like everyone is beating the drum for one Internet
marketing method or another. And in the process they create
plenty of hype and conflicting messages.

Website owners are left to wonder whom to believe when it
comes to impressing the search engines. Which approach can
deliver the "magic bullet" they've been promised? Is it time
to jump to the next "sure thing," that will entice both
search spiders and web surfers?

The primary methods promoted to attract search engines and
Web traffic aren't new:
- Links and reciprocal links
- Pay-per-click (PPC)
- Search engine optimization (SEO) in all its variations
- Blogs and forums
- Writing and posting articles or press releases
- Paid placement with ads and banners

But each of them shares a common limitation. At its best,
each is only part of the answer. An answer that won't hold
still long enough to get nailed down - before the next "must
have" appears.

The Internet is Maturing, and so are Search Engines

In recent years, the capabilities and sophistication of the
search engines have exploded. Public use and expectations
have grown to match it. The public's reliance on the
Internet as a reliable source expands ever faster. Recent
studies found the Web to be the most trusted source of
information for making major purchase decisions, second only
to spouses for finding referrals.

A Harris Interactive consumer survey (2004) reports that 73%
of adults are now online - 156 million users. That's up from
69% eight months before. Most Internet users (80%) expect
that they'll find reliable, detailed facts online (Pew
Internet and American Life Project). So they go online first
when they need information. And they have confidence in what
they're able to find.

Now more than ever, access to that gigantic pool of
information-hungry Internet users depends on a website's
relationship to the search engines. Is it possible for
people to find it? The stakes are high.


Integration of Methods is the "Next Big Thing"

Refined keyword and page optimization are the standard
anymore. SEO has morphed into Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
The key difference is integration. SEO method aren't seen as
separate solutions, but as parts of a multi-pronged
endeavor. Success now depends on how well they all dovetail.

That's a fundamental shift from the lurching "do this...,
now that..., now that... approaches, which have
characterized the on-line norm. And anyone who's still
playing by that game plan will be left behind.

Be suspicious of any SEO strategy that's wedded to a single
method - no matter what impressive statistics they cite. And
when the search engines "burp," (as they surely will now and
then) a site's visibility can be lost. A diversified
approach to links and search engines reduces vulnerability.
Achieving that requires shifting focus to a bigger, more
inclusive picture.

My Experience with Reciprocal Linking

As a person who has been in SEM for years (and fine-tuned
hundreds of websites) I've gotten good at spotting trends as
they develop. And I've seen too many "can't lose" methods
fade.

No question that linking is important for search engine
placement. There are effective and targeted ways to acquire
incoming links that don't require a link exchange. However,
I saw some problems with the way many reciprocal links are
pursued. My concerns led me to write an article, Reciprocal
Linking is Dead,
http://www.etafficjams.com/reciprocal-linking-is-dead.htm
back when most insiders were proclaiming it to be the way to
go. (Fresh articles about why you should develop reciprocal
links appear daily.)

An integrated search engine marketing strategy is vital for
your website's visibility and survival. Resist the
shortsightedness of putting too much reliance on what
everyone is recommending.

Beat the Pack by a Country Mile

If you're ready for the "Next Big Thing," stop chasing the
flavor of the month. The trend is toward building an
integrated strategy where all the options mesh. Achieve all
the added benefits that come with integrating every method
your website employs. Now that's a next thing with staying
power.

PPC Advertising – The First Step In A SEO Marketing Campaign

Often, sites view seo and PPC marketing as exclusive marketing techniques. Each marketing method has its advocates. In reality, both have a place in the Internet marketing process. If you intend to pursue a major seo effort, a PPC campaign is a critical early step.

PPC For Testing

Let’s say you have a site offering a service or product in the travel market. You’ve put together a healthy budget and decided to go for broke. Yep, you’re optimizing and trading links in an effort to go after keyword phrases with major traffic and competition. For instance, you’ve decided to have a go at “Europe travel”, which has roughly 400,000 searches each month and major competition for high rankings. You spend two years trading links, adding content and so on. Miracle of miracles, you pop on to the first page of search results. You start shopping for your private jet only to realize a very disturbing thing. You are getting thousands of visits, but few sales. After running calculations, you find the site is converting at 1 in 10,000.

Houston, we have a problem.

A PPC campaign should be used to test your site against keyword phrases before you spend the time and money on an seo campaign. The best platforms to use for your campaign are Google Adwords and Overture. Yes, click fraud is a problem, but less so on these platforms.

After opening accounts and laying a credit card down at the PPC alter, you need to give some thought at to how you will test your keywords. Here’s a hint. The campaign should be designed to test the keyword phrases, not maximize sales. This may sound like a strange statement, but keep in mind the purpose of the campaign. You are determining whether you have picked appropriate keyword phrases for the seo campaign. So, how does it all go wrong?

With both Overture and Adwords, you have the ability to designate the reach of your keyword phrases. Most pick the “broad match” option, which is terrible for testing. With broad match, your advertisements are going to appear for your keyword phrase AND variations of the phrase. Since the ad is appearing on a variety of keyword phrases, the results can give you a false impression of the value of the primary keyword phrase.

Going back to our example, we start a Google Adwords campaign for “Europe travel” and use the default broad match option. After a month, we are happy to find the ads converting at 1 in 70. Having validated the keyword phrase, we set off on the long seo campaign. But are we really sure about the validity of the keyword phrase. Since Google has been known to seriously expand keyword phrases under the broad match option, how do we know that the true keyword phrase isn’t “European travel”? We don’t unless we take a few additional steps.

The first step is to limit the PPC advertisements by bypassing the broad match option. Instead, you want to limit the appearance of the ad only to searches for the exact keyword phrase. In Adwords, this is known as the “exact phrase” match. To designate it, you simply place brackets “[]” around the keyword phrase. Second, you need to track traffic originating from the ads. This can be done using tracking tools on your server or through the tracking options offered by each PPC platform. Regardless of your choice, the resulting data will give a much truer picture of the value of the particular keyword phrases.

Nothing is more aggravating then getting top rankings, but miserable conversions. The only way to beat this problem is to test, test, test. Using PPC campaigns at the outset of an Internet marketing efforts can save you a lot of headaches later on.

There Should Be More to your SEO Consultant Than Rankings

Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions in SEO is that ranking at Google and Yahoo is all that counts in search engine optimization. Potential clients come to me with a single goal: "Get me a top-ten ranking at Google." Some will also mention MSN, and a few will rhyme off a list of search engines and want to rank well at the top 200 of them.

It is time to separate fact from fiction.

Yes, your SEO consultant can get you a top-ten placement at Google. But...

1. If the placement is for "dirty brown shoes", it probably won't help your shoe store one bit, even if I get you the first place ranking. Few people are actually searching for that term.

2. Being number ten might not help much either, depending on the term. People searching for "Essential Nectar liquid vitamins", will probably click on the first result they see, or at least on one of the "above-the-fold" results that do not require scrolling. On the other hand, someone searching for "liquid vitamins" might check through two pages of results to familiarize herself with the options available.

3. If your title tag reads like a cheap list of search terms, it will not be enticing. For instance, if it reads: "vitamins, liquid vitamins, multivitamins, multi-vitamins", you might skip over it in favor of the next result that reads "Liquid vitamins from the Liquid Vitamin Supplements Store".

4. If your description tag is a mess, people will more likely skip over your listing, even if it does rank number one, in favor of one that sounds like what they are looking for. Google and others use the description tag usually when the term searched for is found in it, so make sure to include your key search terms in a description tag that actually reads well.

I recently responded to a forum question, which went something like this: My site ranks number one for this term at this engine. The term is searched this many times per day, and the engine has this percentage marketshare. Can I expect this many visitors?

That's not an SEO challenge; that's a math problem: searches x marketshare = visitors

I responded with a few factors that override mathematics in the SEO game, including the site's title tag and description tag, as well as whether the term lends itself to scrolling. I also pointed out that it depends on the title tags and description tags of the competition, too.

Another factor that makes predicting traffic difficult is the abandonment factor – how many people click on none of the results because they get interrupted or confused, or abandon the search for a new one because they find themselves off-topic or searching too broadly.

It also depends on how many sponsored links there are and how they are marked. Often at Yahoo and Lycos, for example, there are so many ads that the average searcher might never scroll a screen or two to see the organic (natural) results.

And, of course, it also depends on the color of the walls in the room the searcher is clicking from, the weather outside and how well they slept last night. But there is little you can do about that.

What you can do is to work with your SEO consultant to choose the most effective search terms for your business and make sure he develops a title tag and description tag that sell to both humans and the search engines. Then make sure he is monitoring not just the rankings for your key search terms, but also the description used by each of the search engines.

A good ranking at Google and Yahoo is just one measure of your SEO consultant's success. A more complete evaluation is that he is your partner in building long-term, targeted traffic.