Longshot Method of Obtaining Inbound Links Without Exchanges

By David Hay

Meeko--In addition to JohnnyEnglish's sound advice:

1. Original articles concerning your site's topic that you write or pay someone else to write and place in online periodicals in exchange for a link at the end of the article. Go REAL EASY on the selling and make the article as unique as possible. Try to address a common problem or need in your marketplace. Also--make sure it's placed in a non-subscription area so that search robots can access it. No use in getting an article in The Economist when can't Google get to it.

2. Press releases will cost you money but are a superb way to garner lots of inbound links and they are cheaper than paying some mook to get you a bunch of dodgy links. If your release includes mention of a publicly held company, try to get them to approve inclusion of their ticker symbol. That will get you placed in a whole slew of financial sites that almost invariably pick up ANY release with a ticker symbol.

3. Viral marketing is the do-all-end-all of link building and it's free but very tough to pull off. Generally it relies upon much sought after content that cannot be found elsewhere. Got a vid of you and Paris (not the city) or a clip of Mother Thersesa kicking a beggar? Those are worth a couple thousand links.

4. Choose a good web host. Click here to review top 5 web hosting: http://www.hostcube.co.uk/top-5-hosting-providers.php

Press Release: http://www.media-press-release.com

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

Learn How To Get Your Articles In the Directories Without Being A Spammer

By Mary Hanna

Submitting articles to Article directories on the internet is an effective way to get more traffic to your websites. There are a few problems with this system that I will point out so that you can become more proficient in this strategy.

The weakness of the article submitting techniques is that it is very time consuming. I have submitted articles in three different ways: by Hand, and with Article Submitter and Article Submitter Pro software. Many directories require a login (ID and password) so each directory must be visited and a login established before submissions are accepted.

When submitting by hand, you have to cut and paste each section of the article into the individual directories. There are a lot of sections; first the Title, then the Category (very important – I’ll get into this later), Author, Author email, Website Address, Keywords, Article Summary, Article Body, and About Author box. That is nine cut and pastes to submit to ONE article directory. If you wish to submit to 150-200 directories, a good part of your time is spent doing grunt work which does not allow you to pursue other avenues of traffic generation.

Now we come to the “semi-automated” submission software programs. Yes, they are easier, some more than others, but you still must go to each directory individually. It is crucial that you select a Category for your article. If this is not done the article directories will know you are using automatic submitting software and will treat your article as SPAM. Many directories especially frown on the “Automated Article Distribution Services” like iSnare, and Article Automater, for just that reason. Therefore you will not be published and not only have you wasted your time writing your article but you may be classified as a spammer.

Within the “Article Submitter” Software, they have 138 auto fill and 25 manual fill directories listed. A visit to a majority of the directories must be done first in order to establish a login. You have the option of adding other article directories on your own, which is a nice touch.

The software will open to a page that is a form for “User Information”. Typical information requirements you would find in any sign up sheet like, name, company, email, website, etc. Then hit the tab for “Articles” where you will place the article for submission. You will fill in the Title Section, Article Body (including About Author), Summary and Keywords. Then choose the “Websites” tab. You can “select all” or pick and choose. Click on “Auto Fill” and it will take you to your first directory. A flaw here is that you can only have one article posted in the article section at a time.

Sounds easy, right? Well with “Article Submitter” you must be very careful. Once you have chosen your Category check each section. This software does not always put the right information in the right box and leaves some boxes blank. Again, if the directories feel you are using software carelessly they will delete your article. The manual sites are just that, manual top to bottom. It took me a full day for each article so it is still a time consuming process.

Then my partner found “Article Submitter Pro” which I just finished testing yesterday. It is by far the easiest and quickest available at this time. Set up is still a bit tedious, once again you have to establish your logins, but only once. And I found them much more accurate in filling in the necessary submission forms. Yes, you still must choose your Category but there is no getting away from that.

They have 780 Article Directories listed but there is a tab where you can mark your “Favorites”. At first I was a little intimated but it is easy to follow and saves you a lot of time. I submitted to over 150 directories in about 4 hours and that was my first time using the software so I was on the learning curve.

A plus on this program is that they have a pop up window that warns you if you have already submitted that particular article to a directory. The directories consider multiple submissions SPAM and you will be deleted. Be careful not to hit the “Next Site Button” until after you have the confirmation that your article has been acknowledged. If you accidentally push the “Next Site Button” the program will record that site as having received your article.

So that has been my experience with these three systems for submitting articles to the Article Directories. I do not recommend hand posting – it is much too difficult. I also don’t recommend the “Automated Article Distribution Services”. A lot of directories refuse their articles.

For me the most convenient and least cumbersome was Article Submitter Pro for getting my articles out there to many Article Directories in the least amount of time.

Copyright © 2006 Mary Hanna All Rights Reserved.

This article may be distributed freely on your website and in your ezines, as long as this entire article, copyright notice, links and the resource box are unchanged.

About the Author
Mary Hanna writes eBooks, Software Reviews (for people who are technically challenged like her) and Practical Articles on Internet Marketing, Cruising, Gardening and Cooking. Visit her websites at: WebMarketingReviews, CruiseTravelDirectory, or contact her at mary@webmarketingreviews.com
For more information on Article Submitter Pro go to FastArticleSubmit

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

Content, Links, Relevance and Page Rank

By David Andrew Smith

SEO experts are constantly telling us about the importance of good quality content and good quality back links from web sites with relevant content. They also tell us that reciprocal links and page rank are of decreasing importance. They then instruct us as to how to go about getting good links by personally contacting other web sites and proposing a reciprocal link! Confusing! As is much of the advice given to prospective site designers.

Personal experience with our own web site has shown that the following is correct and works;

· Content is the key. Lots of it, with constant up dates to it, and it should be well written and informative not just a sales pitch.

· The more pages you can create the better. Upwards of 100 pages will highlight your site as an important one. Sites with only a few pages rarely appear on the first page of search engine results.

· As the site ages its importance will increase. Those who got in early generally outperform the later sites. Google also have an ageing process for links. As these links approach six months old they become of more importance.

· Reciprocal links once gone through the ageing process are still being counted, even with Google’s updated algorithm.

· Article writing and publishing will produce huge numbers of backlinks. You should be looking to produce upwards of 30 articles and aim for around 250.

· Attaching a weblog to your site which is updated daily will increase the rate at which the search engines visit your site and at the same time adds valuable content and links.

· Page Rank has still some importance in determining your position in the rankings because it is based on the links and the content of your site. However the page rank as given by the Google Toolbar is not necessarily accurate. A more accurate page rank can be gauged from using the detail supplied by the Google Sitemap statistics. Consequently generate a sitemap and submit it to Google.

The most important piece of advice is to design your site for the visitor and not the search engines. Have as much information within the content as possible and keep the graphics to a minimum.

David Andrew Smith is the owner of http://www.wesparkle.co.uk a cleaning services company which operates throughout the UK

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

Does PageRank really matter?

By Partha Bhattacharya

This is an eternal question. Search engine optimizers would remain glued to their computer screen to take in the first hint of any PageRank update as and when that occurs. And when it occurs, it will be an anxious wait till the dust settles, before scurrying off to rework ways to claw back in ranking in case the new PR reduces.

Why so much bother? Does PageRank really matter? The short answer is yes, PageRank does matter, but not as much as it is made out to be. Let us talk things over.

What we know
The first lesson on PageRank will be an unquestionable reference to what Google says. According to Google [http://www.google.com/technology/], “PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value.”

Elaborating, Google says 2 things. One, more the number of incoming links to a webpage, more is the ‘number of votes’ for that page. But then comes the second rider. Google also analyzes the page that sends links and attempts to figure out how ‘important’ or ‘relevant’ this page (rather its content) is vis-à-vis the page which it links to.

Broadly speaking, links between 2 travel-related webpages make much sense in the eyes of Google than that between a travel-related webpage and another concerning, say a watch manufacturing company.

A succinct yet clear explanation of PageRank Technology is provided by Google here [http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html]. The underlying idea is to provide surfers as accurate search results as possible. The ‘life of a Google query’ though lasting barely a second, is a mind-boggling go-between through several stages before an answer is delivered.

What we do not know
Howsoever revealing may Google’s explanations be, the bottom-line remains that for most of us, calculation of PR continues to be an enigma. Does any one know for sure how PR works? Ian Rogers of IPR Computing has in this essay [http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/] explained fairly well as to how PageRank is calculated by Google.

However, even if the mathematical equation to calculate PR is known, what is not known is which set of its data Google uses from its databank for finding out the PageRank of your webpage. This essentially translates to no more than second-guessing as to what the next PR would be. It would therefore be not wrong to say that most of the users (and indeed the so-called SEO experts) do not know what their PageRank would be next time. (Having said that, I must not consciously deny readers of this article to know what their supposedly Future PageRank [http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/future-pagerank/] will be.)

Why the hype
And herein lies a superb marketing strategy. Ever wondered why Google thought it pertinent to let PageRank displayed in its toolbar? On the face of it, there is no need really, except to ‘stoke’ the fire of chasing a mirage. You see a mirage as much as you know how PR is calculated. But try as best as you would, you cannot decide your PR.

In the process Google gains. An enormous volume of writings (like this one) centers around Google. Whatever Google does is news in an instant. There is a whole lot of ‘pure’ Google-watchers out there whose job it is to only report on the giant search company. Publicity sans cost, not bad that.

The link companies
Google’s wish notwithstanding, there is no denying that PageRank mystery has given birth to thousands of link-related business. Since Google is explicit in explaining at how it looks at links, it has been easy for link-making companies to work out their preliminary business strategy. Beyond that it’s purely rat race of garnering share of link-hungry websites. All the time, Google remains unfazed, except occasionally churning it topsy-turvy to keep PR mystery alive.

What would you do
You need not overly bother about PageRank. Do not get me wrong! PageRank is very real. What is not is your ability to alter it any sooner. There should not be any express-effort to ‘acquire’ links. Instead, maintain focus on adding and enriching your web content, for that and that only would create a permanence of interest among your viewers over a period of time.

Emphasis must be on creating value to your viewers’ time, so that there is always something new to learn, something more to know. Along the way if you pick up a good link or two every now and then, that will be more than welcome.

What, if you are in hurry
Not everyone is destined to wait for a hike in PageRank. Then again, even a high PR may not instantly lead to bigger traffic. So pretty soon, you may ponder how long it will be to profit from your web venture. Profit may be to earn publicity (blogs for example), to make your readers giving consent to your paid newsletter, to sell your products or services (or even selling others’ products or services), or suchlike.

If indeed you want to cut short your long wait so as to profit from your web venture, Google has a ready solution. It is about targeted keyword advertising program, called Google AdWords. In sharp contrast with PageRank, Google lets AdWords users to actually control their accounts in order to attain more visibility. But that is another story for another day.

A freelance web designer and content writer, and an avid web watcher, Partha Bhattacharya owns and operates WebInfo, a free hot internet web marketing and webmaster resources. Ideal for both start-ups and regulars alike. Dealing mostly on current topics, Partha's blog is a good primer to understand tricky issues on search engine marketing.

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

Link Exchanges - Friend or Foe

By Michael Lawrence

The world of search engine optimization is filled with websites and services that provide incomplete information and flat out lies about what their services can do for you and your search engine rankings.

Link exchanges are a controversial topic in search engine optimization that produces a lot of discussion in SEO forums mostly from newbie webmasters wondering whether a particular exchange has any value to provide their website.

As webmaster's begin to learn about search engine optimization the importance of acquiring backlinks to their website becomes apparent fairly quickly.

Building links to a website can become a time consuming affair and once a link building campaign is started the urge to acquire backlinks faster and more easily soon follows.

Websites advertising "thousands of backlinks instantly" or "let us automate your link building tasks" are plentiful on the internet.

What needs to be understood is that these websites are set up to attract newbie webmasters who are inexperienced with link building by feeding on the human instinct to make work that is not fun easier.

They claim that they can make your link building tasks hassle free or automated which sounds great on the surface but in actuality there a number of pitfalls and misrepresentations rampant on these websites that can actually hurt your site's rankings if you are not careful when using these services to exchange links.

Link Exchange Advantages

• link exchanges are hub sites where other webmasters who are actively interested in exchanging links can meet and broker an exchange



• link exchanges are categorized allowing you to access a targeted list of potential link exchange partners from your industry or related industries



• link exchanges make the process of exchanging links fairly easy and automatically verifies the existence of your link on the exchange partners site prior to issuing you an exchange request

Link Exchange Disadvantages

• the use of automated software to acquire links or automated links pages created for the purposes of inflating your rankings is against Google's Webmaster Guidelines (if a link exchange requires you to install code or files on your website, steer clear. These files and codes leave a footprint which the search engines are good at picking up on and penalizing you for once this type of exchange is discovered by them. These types of link exchanges are a form of link farm)



• Websites in an exchange are generally lower quality websites. Established websites do not need to perform exchanges to acquire backlinks and you will not find many authority sites involved (if any)



• Links pages for sites in the exchange are nothing more than search engine SPAM (uncategorized, stuffed with hundreds of links, links are not related). Often these pages are only created to provide a dumping ground for link exchanges. The pages have no user value and hence no value to you in an exchange.



• Link Exchanges will generally accept any site that applies which removes their editorial credibility



• You will receive hundreds of exchange requests from novice webmasters who will trade links with any website instead of seeking out partnerships with sites that provide complimentary, relevant information



• Link exchange sites provide misleading information about the value of their service to your SEO campaigns in order to lure you into signing up with them.



• Your email inbox will be filled with link exchange request SPAM from the link exchange site (emailing exchange requests to you can be disabled on some exchanges)

In the end, are Link Exchanges worth it?

If you are prepared to wade through a lot of junk you can find golden nuggets hidden in with all of the low quality websites.

It may make sense if you have a newly registered domain to sign up for one of these services and send out some link exchange requests of your own to sites you judge to be high quality and relevant to your site.

After sending out your initial link exchange requests I would not remain actively involved with the link exchange.

Only use it when your website is brand new in combination with a directory submission campaign to get those first few free links to your website. For an established business, steer clear of link exchanges as they will not be worth your time.

--
About the Author:

Michael Lawrence is the webmaster for SEO Web Guide providing Search Engine Optimization Services, news and tools

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

Buying Traffic

By Jamsi Martin

“Buying Traffic” is a fairly new term to me. In fact it wasn’t until I came across the Awio Web services (thanks Jackofallblogs !) that got me thinking. How do they do it? How does one buy traffic?

After much research *cough* I stumbled across this.

When a website owner loses interest in their site and decides not to renew their domain name, it becomes available to the public again. We buy these domains which still receive traffic from search engines, links and marketing done by the previous owner, and direct this traffic to you.

Ah ha. These guys are those pricks that hijack domain names and fill them with useless information. Kind of like when you misspell google. Bastards.

Anyhow back to buying traffic, to me it seems like it can’t fail. Lets look at the pros and cons of targetedvisitors.info.

Pros

• Extremely cheap to purchase traffic, starting from $1.99 for 1000 visitors.



• The ability to choose untargeted or targeted customers. Just want American traffic? Sure thing, there are packages available for you to choose.



• Easy payment method, via credit card or paypal.



• My application took 15 minutes to be approved.. that’s fast. (Site says maximum 1-2 business days)



• Want another 1000 visitors? Simply recharge your account from the easy to use control panel.



• Feel like spreading your incoming visitors over a certain period? Via the account manager you can set a daily cap. Default is 50 visitors per day.

Cons

• You can’t be 100% sure that they will send exactly 1000 customers. Sure web stats will help track a rough idea of hits but it can never be 100% accurate.



• Does your site have illegal content, popups, background music or sound? If so you won’t be able to sign up. (just the rules I’m afraid .. illegal content .. who would have thought !)



• Visitors sent by the system may not be the visitors you’re after. If your website is focused on a small niche, this traffic generating scheme is probably not for you.

I’ve signed up and purchased my first 1000 visitors. If the 1000 visitors I receive generate more than $1.99 in advertising revenue, then I see it as being worthwhile.

Only time will tell.

By James Martin
http://www.jamsi.com

Author of: WorkBoxers
We are able to work in our boxers because the web has been very kind to us. Let it be kind to you.

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

Forming Relationships with other Webmasters

By Jamsi Martin

I’ve decided there hasn’t been enough talk on WorkBoxers about money making methods because lets face it, we all want to make money. I’m going to briefly talk about a method I used recently to find advertising, link exchanges and to form networking relationships with other webmasters.

As an example, let’s say I have a website which has a huge archive of funny jokes. My main focused keyword is “funny jokes” to which I am already ranked well in Google.

What I can do is grab keywords of similar context, throw them into Google and generate a list of relevant websites. In this example I threw in the keyword “funny videos”. People who are browsing funny videos would also like funny jokes right? Right! The next step is to contact the webmasters of those sites and offer them advertising space on your website!

Now when you are sending out emails, try and make sure the email sounds legit. Otherwise they will see the email and instantly assume its spam (or spam filters may tag it as spam). Try to be casual but also professional in your words, tell them that you think visitors of your site would also be interested in their “funny videos” website.

If they aren’t interested in the advertising part, hint a link exchange instead. In doing so, both sites will benefit.

Using this simple method you can achieve the following;

* Sell advertising space on your website

* Form networking relationships with other webmasters

* Form Link exchanges.

Because the sites we targeted have similar content to our own, Google will gobble up the Link exchange with glee!

By James Martin
http://www.jamsi.com

Author of: WorkBoxers
We are able to work in our boxers because the web has been very kind to us. Let it be kind to you.

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

Boost Your Business With Free Web Promotion

By Aurel Radulescu

Whether you are starting a new business or operating on a budget, you cannot go wrong with free web promotion. The truth is that not everyone has an expense account to justify an aggressive advertising campaign. Many businesses, especially web-based, outline marketing as their largest expense. However, free web promotion has changed the way that everyone looks at advertising.

The best way to gain free web promotion is through the use of press releases, which highlight upcoming news, events and headlines regarding your company. In order to write an effective press release, your business must be involved in something noteworthy. Whether it be a contest, a grand opening, a special sale or other event, a press release is the perfect way to advertise your business happenings for free. There are a number of press release submission websites, which allow business owners to submit their news for free. In addition, submitting your press release to newspaper and magazine editors may increase your chances of being published both online and in print. Before sending a press release, which should be no more than one page in length, make sure that your name, mailing address and telephone number is included at the top of the page. Many editors require that contact information be present before they will even consider publishing a press release. The reasoning behind this is to confirm the identity of the person submitting the news.

Web promotion can perhaps best be utilized through successful positioning on internet search engines. By making sure that your website content is rich with information, links and updated information, search engines will be more likely to position your site among the top ranks. In addition, a descriptive website will also find it’s way to the top. For example, if your business deals with collectibles, make sure that your content is rich in keywords dealing with collectibles and the product line that you offer. Avoid stuffing keywords, but make sure that your website clearly indicates it’s subject matter.

One of the best avenues for web promotion is through article marketing. While many website owners are still somewhat unfamiliar with this approach, others are cashing in on a surge of traffic generated from properly marketing their articles. The key to successful web promotion via article marketing is to write an informative article that everyone will want to read. At the bottom of the article, include a brief paragraph featuring your name, the name of your business and a website address. The next step is to submit your article to as many article directories as possible. The more exposure, the better. As other webmasters log on to article directories in search of content for their website, they may select your article to be featured on their site. The more webmasters that feature your work, the more free web promotion your business will receive.

There are a number of ways to acquire paid marketing opportunities and an equal, or greater, number of ways to get free web promotion. If done correctly, web promotion doesn’t have to empty the entire expense account. In some cases, it won’t even cost you a cent.

For better search engines ranking and permanent back links you can also submit your web sites to AgoraFind.com web directory, AllFinancialSites.com finance directory and AllLawSites.com law directory.

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

Latest Website Promotion Ideas

By Steve Hill

I have written articles about website promotion in the past, however things on the internet are always changing and my opinions have now changed. This article is all about my new website promotion ideas, ideas which I use on my all of websites.

A good linking campaign is the main priority. Attempting to increase the number of backward links you have pointing to your website is essential. However you have to be careful. Here is a list of do's and do not's.

Do:

Increase the number of backward links pointing to your website slowly

Obtain backward links from within the same industry/market as your own

Build up the number of one-way links your website has pointing to it

Write articles and submit them to article directories

Add your website domain on all of your adverts, documentation and e-mails

Offer the visitors to your site the chance to sign up to a monthly newsletter

Offer the visitors to your site a free e-book

Write press releases

Do not:

Join a link building website to automate your linking requirements. These are tempting to join however are frowned upon by the search engines. Always remember hard work pays off.

Increase the number of backward links to quickly

Purchase too many link text ads

Just leave your website without any promotion, it will not grow on its own

Build hidden pages

In my opinion one-way links are vital. These are the most powerful form of backward link and the search engines love them. I can see no way in which they can penalise a site that is only acquiring these type of links.

The best and easiest way of obtaining these one-way links is by writing articles like the one you are reading. Once you have written the article, you then need to submit it to a number of article directories. You are able to add a link to your website on the bottom of the article and the hope is that other webmasters will want to include your article on their website, thus giving you a one-way link.

I have been writing articles for around a year and I must say it has done wonders for my businesses. The number of visitors to my sites have rocketed and the page rank have also steadily increased.

I hope you have found this article interesting to read and beneficial to you.

Good luck with your website promotion campaign

Stephen Hill has a number of websites including:

manual article submission service

anti aging website

debt reduction information

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

Beginner's Guide To Site Promotion

By Matt Colyer

Promoting a web site is no real easy task for anyone, including the Internet promotion experts. It's even harder for those of you with little or no experience with web site promotion. In an effort to help those of you that need help in this area I have wrote this article or guide (Call it whatever you like!). Although this is by no means a complete guide, this will show you the basics of promoting a web site.

Search engine optimization - When a Internet user searches for something that is somehow related to your web site, you want your web site to come up as near to the top of the search results in the search engines as possible, right? Of course, you do. But how do you get to the top of the search results? Well, it's easier said then done, but can be done if you follow the few simple tips below.

You need to take a close look at your site and decide which search terms people will use to find it. Example, your site is about dogs, you'll want to come up under keywords such as dog information, dog facts, etc. You need to pick your most important keyword and try to get a keyword density between 5 and 15%, this depends on which search engine you are targeting though. Important keywords should also appear in bold and be one of the first words on the web page

The most important thing is to get is backlinks. But not just from any web site, but from ones that are related to yours and those that look clean, or otherwise the ones that don't use Spam techniques. You also want the backlinks you get to look like they are natural to the search engines, so one-way links are best and increase your backlinks slowly and not get them all at once. Your anchor text should vary, using the same one too many times won't look natural to the search engines.

The web site's structure will decide how the spiders read your web site. You want there to be more text content then HTML content. Stay away from using Java or Flash heavily on your web site, the less you use on the site the better. Spiders (Also known as robots) cannot read Java or Flash. You should avoid programs such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver, they often add coding errors.

After that you may want to submit your web site to the search engines, this isn't important if you get links from web sites that already appear in the search engines and by submitting will not help your ranking or speed up the time it takes for your web site appear in the search results. Some suggest that submitting to the search engines instead of letting them find you can hurt your ranking, but this is highly unlikely.

Links - As you now know getting links can help you in the search engines, but they can also bring in tons of traffic and not just any traffic, but some of the best traffic you can get. You should submit to directories such as Yahoo! and the ODP (Open Directory Project). Even better, try topic related directories, they send VERY targeted traffic compared to most other sources. Contact web sites that are related to yours and ask if they'll exchange links.

Award Programs - Although this can be a waste of time if you bother with all those web sites (Most won't send any traffic) that offer awards, but if you pick the right ones and have a web site that offers something useful, this could send you great deal of traffic for many years to come. Most of these award programs will link back to your web site if you are one of the award winners.

Paid Advertisement - Of course, you can pay another web site to display your advertisement. The cost depends on a number of things, such as amount of traffic they get and where your advertisement is placed at. PPC (Pay per click) search engines such as Google AdWords and Yahoo! Overture is an another posable option. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad and often the traffic they send is highly targeted. This may be the best option out there right now.

Offline Marketing - Most people don't even look into this and many think it's a waste of time, but they are very wrong. Use word of mouth by telling your friends and colleagues about your site, you can hand out cards and flyers to generate good word of mouth. Take your flyers and put them up at local stores, collages and Laundromats, but make sure they are OK with you adding your flyer first though.

Look into placing an ad in the local newspaper, this is often cheap, so you can't lose much money here, but then again you may not be able to lose much. Although Radio has died out because of CDs, Internet and paid radio, it's still one of the best places to advertise offline because it's cheap and can reach a number of people. You may have to look into AM radio depending on your web site's subject.

Don't even try it! - Of course, no promotion guide would be complete without pointing out things you shouldn't use to promote your web site. Do not send email Spam, unsolicited e-mail is not acceptable, it's likely the most hated part of the web. Spamming will make more people hate your web site than like it, thereby making you lose could have been customers.

Don't try to Spam the search engine, most web sites get caught right away, while some may not get caught right away, they will get caught sometime down the road. Remember that the search engines are always changing the ways they ranks web sites and are getting smarter (Although at times that seems hard to believe), so you will get caught if you try to Spam them.

Don't open your web site to the pubic before you have tested (Links, coding errors, etc.) it completely and know it's working correctly. Make sure every section of the web site is completed. Most Internet users will never return to a web site where they find a section of a web site that isn't completed or see an under construction sign.

Matt Colyer is the owner of the Superior Webmaster. He also is a php, CGI and ASP developer.

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

Is Your Website Invisible? The Google Sandbox Solution

What is the Google Sandbox?

It's the mysterious, possibly non-existent web purgatory where
millions of sites languish without rankings, visibility, or
traffic.

How Do You Know if You're Stuck in the Sandbox?

Here's a rough set of criteria for you.

§ Your site is indexed and appears with the proper title,
snippet, and url (www, or no www whichever you picked) - type
site:www.yoursite.com into Google to check this.' § Your site
has PageRank (use the google toolbar, or nichebot.com to find
this) § It is regularly crawled, displaying cache dates not more
than 10 days old § On your keyword, you rank in the top 20 for
allinanchor, allintext, and allintitle. To check this, type,
e.g. allinanchor: and see if you're in the top 20.
§ You do not rank within the first 1000 places for the keyword
the site was designed for

Does the Sandbox Really Exist, or is it Just the Google
Algorithm?

This is a big controversy. Everyone has a different opinions.

Don't listen to guys who handle bluechip companies - they
optimize older, high PR sites. It's your everyday
mainly-new-sites webmaster who knows this problem intimately. In
fact, all the big sites need to do is place the keyword in the
title and they're on the first page. This gives them an unfair
advantage not unlike what the "media elite" has enjoyed for
decades.

Regardless of whether the sandbox is a separate phenomenon from
the algorithm, the degree of prejudice against new sites has
hurt quality of Google's search results. This is especially true
with products and topics both new and urgent. The bigger sites
may not be covering it, but searchers end up there without high
quality answers.

The common wisdom now is that if you're looking for new
websites, go to MSN or Yahoo instead. Neither of these sites is
using this kind of filter. Many websites rank in the top 10 (for
their targeted keywords) on these two search engines, yet are
nowhere to be found in Google.

Why Would Google Do This?

Google frowns upon SEOs who try to overly influence ranking, so
they needed to find a way around SEO factors to deliver quality
results. So they'd look for signs of SEO in websites, e.g. how
consistent the addition of backlinks is, and how repetitive (vs.
natural) the anchor text of backlinks is, and they consider the
age of the site and its backlinks.

Redesign Penalties

Similarly, websites that have made the mistake of too
comprehensively redesigning their look, content, or navigation
have been shocked to find that they get penalized for this
updating. Google seems to prefer a "frozen in time" or "moving
like molasses" kind of internet. But to be fair, this is
something that had to be included to beat spammers who were
buying old websites and refueling them with keyword spam.

Why Do You Get Sandboxed?

Some sites have gotten out of the sandbox in a week, while
others can take up to a year or more. No one knows if any one
contributing factor gets you out sooner rather than later. Some
point to the age of inbound links, or the frequency with which
your site acquires them. Some say that getting too many inbound
links too quickly appears artificial, and is flagged as spam.
But others argue that Google can't know how fast a site should
acquire links. A website that received national news coverage,
for example, could acquire hundreds or thousands of links in a
day. It's likely that no one outside of Google fully understands
how the sandbox works. The problem has been noticed and
discussed for nearly 2 years, and no one has given a
satisfactory answer. What's crystal clear is that Google has
made it so complex that it cannot be reverse engineered.

How Long Will You Be Making Sand Castles?

The delay seems to vary anywhere from four to 11 months. Since
we don't know exactly upon what and to what degree the filter
depends, it's likely a different magic combination for every
site- and this fits with webmasters' experience. So keep your
head down, develop content, get inbound links, and eventually
you'll get out.

Some suggest that when you come out of the sandbox, you are not
fully free. They notice a "rationing" or gradual increase in
traffic from Google. In the meantime, older sites may rank
better than you, regardless of the quality of their look, feel,
and content. Deal with it. Keep your head down and keep working.

Another wrinkle: some webmasters suggest that sandboxing can
occur at the page level, not simply at the site level, and that
it is the bigger money/traffic keywords that get sandboxed.
Again, this could simply be due to the level of competition on
that keyword, as the entire site is not sandboxed if you're
getting rankings and traffic from other keywords.

Is There a Way to Trick the Sandbox Filter?

Some webmasters have talked about finding cracks in the
algorithm... and they mainly involve backlinks. For a while,
there was a lot of linkspam on blogs, but everyone - Google,
bloggers, and blog providers - have cracked down on that exploit.

The real sandbox solution is not a trick - unless you define
everything done by the SEO-aware as "tricky". The answer is to
grow your content and backlinks naturally over time. Don't look
for the quick buck, the quick ranking, or the easy way out. Go
back to basics and build websites that people can use and enjoy.
Exchange links with quality websites.

To avoid frustration, I'd suggest, if web building is what you
do full time, that you begin a new site every month or two -
eventually, if you've worked consistently on all of them, you'll
have one after another emerging from purgatory and flourishing
in the rankings.

About the author:
Since 1999, San Diego SEO Consultant Brian B. Carter, MS, has
reached more than 2 million readers online. His most popular
site ranks in the top 1% of all major websites. Brian's second
book, "How I Made $78,024.44 in Six Months Using the Newest
Secrets of AdSense and Overlooked Keywords" will be available in
October, 2005. For more, see
ranking-high-on-search-engines.com

Professional SEO in Your Marketing Mix - Convincing Your Company

While professional SEO (search engine optimization) is becoming
increasingly recognized as an extremely effective component of
an overall marketing mix, the SEO industry itself is still very
much in its infancy. Because SEO is a relatively new industry,
many key decision makers are not even aware that professional
SEO exists, or they simply believe that it could not work in
their industries or with the existing marketing mix. This is not
because these decision makers are ineffective or backward
thinking, but rather because, in most companies, marketing
efforts are focused upon activities that have already been
proven effective as a part of the marketing mix (direct mail,
print advertising, trade shows).

Very often, the people who first recognize the potential
benefits of professional SEO are not the key decision makers.
They are the people on the front lines of the organization - the
ones who deal with prospects and customers every day. However,
proposing professional SEO as a new marketing initiative to the
people higher in the chain of command can be a frustrating
process - very often leading to disenchantment and a general
sense that the marketing decision maker doesn't "get it".
Usually, however, the approach was more flawed than the decision
maker.

Reality

Before getting into some ideas for approaching your marketing
decision maker, it should be mentioned that if your company does
not have a history of trying anything new, you may be better off
spending your energies elsewhere. Professional SEO as an
addition to your marketing mix can be a hard sell to a company
that is still relying on computers that were cutting edge during
the Reagan administration, no matter how convincing the
argument. If your experience with your company tells you that
your efforts will be in vain before you begin, you obviously
don't want to waste your time.

Speak on Their Terms

As previously mentioned, your motivation for suggesting
professional SEO may not necessarily inspire your marketing
decision maker to immediately add it to your company's marketing
mix. What will? Most marketing execs have a hot button issue,
and they are rarely shy about sharing it. Is he or she concerned
with increasing overall revenue? Is he or she always discussing
cutting marketing costs? Does he or she talk about reducing the
cost per lead? Does he or she always espouse the value of
improving your brand recognition? For each of these scenarios
(and virtually any other), there are specific studies on SEO
that will support your recommendation. If you approach your
marketing decision maker without keeping the issues most
important to him or her in mind, you will diminish your chances
for success.

Use the Competition

While different marketing decision makers can have different
hot button issues, few things seem to motivate companies as much
as the action (or sometimes the inaction) of the competition.
With professional SEO, there are two potential scenarios -
either some of your competitors have added it to the marketing
mix effectively, or none of them have. If they have, it is
fairly easy to demonstrate this fact by taking your marketing
manager through a few keyphrase searches on any major search
engine and showing him or her that your hated enemy figures
prominently in the results while your company does not. This, of
course, makes a compelling argument. On the other hand, if your
known competitors have clearly not embraced the channel, it is
just as easy to show a few searches on keyphrases demonstrating
that you can have (for now) a competitive advantage. Such
keyphrase searches can also turn up additional competitors -
lean, forward-thinking companies that are embracing new
marketing tactics. This eye-opening experience can also
encourage a decision maker to act.

Use Your Potential Vendors

Talk to some established professional SEO firms before
approaching your company with the suggestion that they consider
adding SEO to the marketing mix. A good SEO firm has encountered
all of the objections that you are likely to face and should be
able to help you with your approach by compiling relevant stats
and offering compelling case studies. Your time is valuable, and
you needn't spend it reinventing the wheel when you can get
professional assistance for free. If a firm is unwilling, or
unable, to help you to present to your marketing decision maker
in a manner that will speak directly to them, perhaps you should
look elsewhere. An inexperienced SEO firm might not be able to
help you in this specific manner, and an overburdened firm will
likely be unwilling to spend the extra time to help you
customize your approach. The good news is that asking for this
type of assistance can not only help you to sell to your
company, it can also help you in the early stages of the
all-important vendor selection process.

Offer a Plan

Piquing interest from the decision maker is only the first
step. You should be prepared to offer a clear project
description, including the price ranges of your proposed
professional SEO vendors, how long it will take to see results,
and, most importantly, how success will be measured. This is
another area where your potential vendors should be more than
willing to help - good firms will collect extensive data at the
outset to measure success, and will be able to clearly define
what "success" will look like.

As many companies are discovering, professional SEO is an
incredibly powerful and cost-effective addition to the existing
marketing mix. It is a sure bet, however, that the marketing
decision makers of many of the companies currently embracing
professional SEO did not come up with the idea independently.
Some underpaid visionary in their organizations brought it to
their attention first!

About the author:
Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue Search Engine Marketing. He has contributed content to many publications
including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley,
2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, SEO Today, WebProNews, DarwinMag,
SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue, an
Atlanta search engine

How to get listed with google in less than 24 hours

Firstly the truth, you do not need some miracle to get listed
in google in less than 24 hours. Getting listed in google in
under a day can actually be quite easy and in this article I'll
show you exactly how to do it.

Firstly what we mean by your site getting indexed is when it
shows up on the google search engine. To find out if you website
is listed enter www.yourdomain.com into the search box. You will
see "no results" appear, which means our website is new and its
not in google's index. Google doesn't know your site exists,
therefore it cannot be ranked.

So we must first get into their index, when we do, you should
see your website title, description and url appear. Then your
website is indexed by google. So how do we do this?

Firstly do not use google's submission form. This method takes
about 5 weeks to be indexed.

What you need to do is enter a few keywords related to the
website you want to index. You should see a whole list of
websites related to your own. What you need to do next is
download a google toolbar; this will show you the page rank of
each page in the search engine. You can download the toolbar at
http://toolbar.google.com

You need to look down through these related websites, paying
particular attention to the page ranks. Try and find a webpage
with a rank of 5 or higher. Enter their website and look for
links on their homepage, if you find a links page , you can then
contact them and ask if they will do a link swap, write them a
convincing letter and 50% will agree although the higher the
page rank ,the tougher they are to convince.

If you can convince 1 page rank 5 to link with you, your website
will be listed in roughly 3 to 4 days. To get your site listed
in less than 24 hours, get 1 website with a page ranking of 6 to
link with you. That's it, no miracles. It works!

Now there is actually an easier way than writing to these
people. Visit a link purchasing website. Here is a great free
link exchange website where you can swap links with different
websites, The link is http://www.LinkMetro.com.

Now that you're in google's index, you can start to concentrate
on increasing your page rank.

About the author:
David Hennebery is the owner and creator of a very successful
ebook called ebookprofitmaker. He is regarded as an expert in
eBook marketing and selling. To contact him email
support@ebookprofitmaker.com or
http://www.ebookprofitmaker.com/articleoffer.html receive 35%
discount on my ebook by clicking the link above

Top 10 Search Engine Positioning Mistakes

When it comes to search engine optimization, there are certain
common mistakes that I see people making over and over again.
Here's a list of the 10 most common mistakes that I see people
making. By avoiding these mistakes, you can avoid a lot of
anguish and frustration in the long run.

1) Optimizing your site for the wrong keywords

The first step in any search engine optimization campaign is to
choose the keywords for which you should optimize your site.

If you initially choose the wrong keywords, all the time and
effort that you devote in trying to get your site a high ranking
will go down the drain.

If you choose keywords which no one search for, or if you choose
keywords which won't bring in targeted traffic to your site,
what good will the top rankings do?

In order to learn how you can choose the correct keywords for
which you should optimize your site, see my article on this
topic.



2) Putting too many keywords in the Meta Keywords tag

I often see sites which have hundreds of keywords listed in the
Meta Keywords tag, in the hope that by listing the keywords in
the Meta Keywords tag, they will be able to get a high ranking
for those keywords.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Contrary to popular
opinion, the Meta Keywords tag has almost completely lost its
importance as far as search engine positioning is concerned.

Hence, just by listing keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, you
will never be able to get a high ranking. To get a high ranking
for those keywords, you need to put the keywords in the actual
body content of your site.



3) Repeating the same keyword too many times

Another common mistake that people make is to endlessly repeat
their target keywords in the body of their pages and in their
Meta Keywords tags.

Because so many people have used this tactic in the past (and
continue to use it), the search engines keep a sharp lookout for
this, and may penalize a site which repeats keywords in this
fashion. Sure, you do need to repeat the keywords a number of
times.

But, the way you place the keywords in your pages needs to make
grammatical sense. Simply repeating the keywords endlessly no
longer works. Furthermore, a particular keyword should ideally
not be present more than thrice in your Meta Keywords tag.



4) Creating lots of similar doorway pages

Another myth prevalent among people is that since the algorithm
of each search engine is different, they need to create
different pages for different search engines. While this is
great in theory, it is counter-productive in practice.

If you use this tactic, you will soon end up with hundreds of
pages, which can quickly become an administrative nightmare.
Also, just imagine the amount of time you will need to spend
constantly updating the pages in response to the changes that
the search engines make to their algorithms.

Furthermore, although the pages are meant for different engines,
they will actually end up being pretty similar to each other.
The search engines are often able to detect when a site has
created such similar pages, and may penalize or even ban this
site from their index.

Hence, instead of creating different pages for different search
engines, create one page which is optimized for one keyword for
all the search engines. In order to learn how to create such
pages, see my article on this topic.



5) Using Hidden Text

Hidden text is text with the same color as the background color
of your page. For example, if the background color of your page
is white and you have added some white text to that page, that
is considered as hidden text.

Many webmasters, in order to get high rankings in the search
engines, try to make their pages as keyword rich as possible.
However, there is a limit to the number of keywords you can
repeat in a page without making it sound odd to your human
visitors. Thus, in order to ensure that the human visitors to a
page don't perceive the text to be odd, but that the page is
still keyword rich, many webmasters add text (containing the
keywords) with the same color as the background color.

This ensures that while the search engines can see the keywords,
the human visitors cannot. The search engines have long since
caught up with this technique, and ignore or penalize the pages
which contain such text. They may also penalize the entire site
if even one of the pages in that site contain such hidden text.

However, the problem with this is that the search engines may
often end up penalizing sites which did not intend to use hidden
text. For instance, suppose you have a page with a white
background and a table in that page with a black background.

Further suppose that you have added some white text in that
table. This text will, in fact, be visible to your human
visitors, i.e. this shouldn't be called hidden text. However,
the search engines can interpret this to be hidden text because
they may often ignore the fact that the background of the table
is black.

Hence, in order to ensure that your site is not penalized
because of this, you should go through all the pages in your
site and see whether you have inadvertently made any such
mistake.



6) Creating Pages Containing Only Graphics

The search engines only understand text - they don't understand
graphics. Hence, if your site contains lots of graphics but
little text, it is unlikely to get a high ranking in the search
engines. For improving your rankings, you need to replace the
graphics by keyword rich text for the search engine spiders to
feed on.



7) Not using the NOFRAMES tag in case your site uses frames

Many search engines don't understand frames. For sites which
have used frames, these search engines only consider what is
present in the NOFRAMES tag. Yet, many webmasters make the
mistake of adding something like this to the NOFRAMES tag: "This
site uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them".

For the search engines which don't understand frames, this is
all the text that they ever get to see in this site, which means
that the chances of this site getting a good ranking in these
search engines are non-existent. Hence, if your site uses
frames, you need to add a lot of keyword rich text to the
NOFRAMES tag. For more information on the different issues that
arise when you use frames in your site, see my article on this
topic.



8) Using Page Cloaking

Page cloaking is a technique used to deliver different web pages
under different circumstances. People generally use page
cloaking for two reasons:

In order to hide the source code of their search engine
optimized pages from their competitors and ii) in order to
prevent human visitors from having to see a page which looks
good to the search engines but does not necessarily look good to
humans.

The problem with this is that when a site uses cloaking, it
prevents the search engines from being able to spider the same
page that their users are going to see. And if the search
engines can't do this, they can no longer be confident of
providing relevant results to their users.

Thus, if a search engine discovers that a site has used
cloaking, it will probably ban the site forever from their
index. Hence, my advice is that you should not even think about
using cloaking in your site. For more information on what page
cloaking is, how it is implemented, and why you should not use
cloaking, see my article on this topic.



9) Using Automatic Submission Tools

In order to save time, many people use an automatic submission
software or service to submit their sites to the major search
engines. It is true that submitting your site manually to the
search engines takes a lot of time and that an automatic
submission tool can help you save a lot of time.

However, the search engines don't like automatic submission
tools and may ignore your pages if you use them. In my opinion,
the major search engines are simply too important for you not to
spend the time to submit your site manually to them.

In order to speed up the process of submitting your site, you
can use our free submission tool which allows you to submit your
site manually to all the search engines, without having to go to
the "ADD URL" pages of the individual engines. It is available
here.



10) Submitting too many pages per day

People often make the mistake of submitting too many pages per
day to the search engines. This often results in the search
engines simply ignoring many of the pages which have been
submitted from that site.

Ideally, you should submit no more than 1 page per day to the
search engines. While many search engines accept more than 1
page per day from a particular domain, there are some which only
accept 1 page per day. Hence, by limiting yourself to a maximum
of one page per day, you ensure that you stay within the limits
of all the search engines.



11) Devoting too much time to search engine positioning

Yes - I lied. There's another common mistake that people make
when it comes to search engine optimization - they spend too
much time over it.

Sure, search engine placement is the most cost effective way of
driving traffic to your site and you do need to spend some time
every day learning how the search engines work and in optimizing
your site for the search engines.

However, you must remember that search engine optimization is a
means to an end for you - it's not the end in itself. The end is
to increase the sales of your products and services. Hence,
apart from trying to improve your site's position in the search
engines, you also need to spend time on all the other factors
which determine the success or the failure of your web site -
the quality of the products and services that you are selling,
the quality of your customer service, and so on. You may have
excellent rankings in the search engines, but if the quality of
your products and services are poor, or if your customer service
leaves a lot to be desired, those high rankings aren't going to
do much good.





About the author:
Article by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one of the most respected
and recognized search engine positioning specialists on the
Internet. For more articles on search engine placement,
subscribe to his 1st Search Ranking Newsletter to
http://www.the-easy-way.com/main.html

Increasing Your Search Engine Ranking

The methods employed to increase your search engine rankings may
seem like rocket science to you, so you have probably avoided
dealing with this issue. I am here to tell you - the time has
come to face your website! A high search engine ranking for your
website is so essential that if you have the slightest desire to
actually succeed in your business, there is no way you can
continue to avoid this issue.

At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the
Internet find websites through search engines such as Google,
Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages for high
search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your
site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The higher
your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the
traffic that is directed to your website. That's what search
engine optimization is about.

You can immerse yourself in all the technical information
available online to figure out how to optimize your web pages to
achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a few simple items
on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see
improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should
examine is the title bar on your homepage.

The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at
the words that appear there when you access your home page. To
increase search engine rankings, the words on your homepage's
title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases,
one of which would include your company name.

Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the
pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your
site should contain the most important keywords and phrases
taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of
keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating
keywords more than once in the title bars, and make sure that
identical words are not next to each other.

The next item to put under your microscope is your website
content. Search engines generally list sites that contain
quality content rather than scintillating graphics. The text on
your site must contain the most important keywords - the words
that potential customers will be typing into search engines to
find your site.

Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not
desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully
chosen words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search
engines, this text is essential. However, the search engines
must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in
HTML and not graphic format.

To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and
try to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the
text is HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in
graphic form. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the
text into HTML format in order to increase your search engine
rankings.

Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this sounds
like something out of science fiction, but it is really just
simple code. Many people believe that meta tags are the key to
high search engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a
limited effect. Still, it's worth adding them in the event that
a search engine will use meta tags in their ranking formula.

To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must
access the code. To do this, click the "view" button on the
browser menu bar, and select "source." This will pull up a
window revealing the underlying code that created the page. If
there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top of the
window. For example, a meta tag would read: meta name="keywords"
content=. If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your
webmaster to put them in. This may not do much for your search
engine rankings, but any little boost helps.

Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a
factor that is extremely important in terms of search engine
rankings. Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank
your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the
sites you have linked to from your links page.

If you type in "free link popularity check" in a popular search
engine, the search engine will then show you what sites are
linked to your site. In the case that there aren't many sites
linked up to yours, or that the sites that are linked up have
low search engine rankings, consider launching a link popularity
campaign. Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and
requesting that they exchange links with your site. Of course,
this requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want
to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only
boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more
quality traffic to your website.

Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful
Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search
engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps
listed above, and see if you can't boost your rankings yourself.
Don't ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet
marketing. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the
more quality customers will be directed your way.

About the author:
Internet Income
Training: Make Extra money

Increasing Link Popularity

Search engines are the gateway to the Internet; they are the
first tool that potential customers use to find the products and
services they need. This is why link popularity is so
imperative. If the customers do not find your website, you have
no possibilities of making any sales.

You're probably wondering what the blazes is popular about a
link! Well, in a word - plenty! Link popularity refers to the
ranking assigned to your website by the search engines, and it
determines the ranking your page gets when keywords are entered
into a search engine. So, you're probably wondering, how do I
make my link popular?

Search engines are discretionary, giving status and ranking to
sites that have links to their pages from related, quality
sites. It's a simple formula, but a very important one. Google
created the system, and now virtually all the most popular
search engines employ it to rank your web pages in their indexes.

The more commonly used your keyword is, the harder it will be to
achieve link popularity, but without achieving this step, it is
almost certain your site will never rank highly on any search
engine. But don't be discouraged; there are tried and true ways
of achieving link popularity using the most competitive keywords.

There are a few things you should be aware of. The first is that
just linking up with a large number of other websites will not
achieve link popularity. In fact, it may have quite the opposite
effect. This is particularly true when pertaining to websites
that are nothing more than "link farms" - pages containing line
after line of indiscriminate links. Search engines may
aggressively discriminate against your website if you are
associated with a link farm, so steer clear of them!

The next thing to bear in mind is the quality of the site you
are linking to. Never link to a page you have reservations about
your visitors seeing. The last thing you want your website to
appear as is indiscriminate and cheap. Linking to sites of poor
quality will only lessen your link popularity, if not completely
destroy it.

So let's get to what you need to do to achieve supreme link
popularity and improve your rankings to stellar status on all
the popular search engines.

The first step, and the fastest way to get your foot in the
door, is to get a listing in a popular directory, such as Open
Directory Project and Yahoo. If your site is business-related,
you will want to be listed on Yahoo, and despite the fact that
it will cost you around $300 a year, it will be money well
spent. If your site is non-commercial, the listing will be free,
but it will take time and follow-up to actually get it listed.
Open Directory is gives you a free listing whether you are
business-related or non-commercial, but be prepared to make a
lot of follow-up inquiries before you see your site listed.

You are aiming to get listed in the highest level of appropriate
category, and this just takes some common sense. For example, if
your company ships Alpaca wool from an Alpaca farm located in
the middle of Nowhere, Tiny State, do NOT submit your listing to
"Retailers from Nowhere, Tiny State." BIG MISTAKE! All you have
to do is look a little deeper - and submit your listing to the
"Fine Alpaca Wool" category. You will not only associate
yourself with culture and quality, but you will be listed in a
national category.

The next step after you have attained directory listings is to
locate other quality sites that will increase your link
popularity. Try to find sites that are in some way related to
yours, so not only will your link popularity increase, but your
customer base may also be expanded. You want to avoid your
competitors and look for sites that are useful to your site's
visitors. Let's look at the Alpaca Wool site example. Linking up
to a site that sells knitting supplies would be helpful to your
visitors, and the chances of the knitting supply site wanting to
link up to your site are also greater. By linking to a related
site that will be relevant to your website's traffic, you are
increasing both of your site's business prospects - and both of
your sites' link popularity.

Not all sites want to link to other sites, so you will have to
do some research when you are looking for possible linking
partners. Google is an excellent starting place for your search.
Make sure you enter keywords that you think quality customers
will also enter to find your own site. Remember, your criteria
are quality, highly ranked, non-competing websites that have a
links or resources page. Go to these sites and objectively
assess them. Look at the quality of the product, the graphics,
and the ease of use. Then check out the other sites they are
linked to, and determine if your own site would fit in with the
crowd.

When you decide you have found a good prospect, you must set out
to woo them. The first thing to do is to add a link on your own
links page to their site. This is an essential first step; it
shows good faith, and ups your chances significantly of their
reciprocity. After you have added their link, you must contact
the webmaster of their site. Since this is almost always done by
email, you want to make sure it is immediately clear that your
message is not junk mail. This requires that you tell them right
off the bat that you have added a link to their page on your
site. A hook like this almost always insures the reader will
read on.

Next, be sure to be flattering and let them know how much you
appreciate their website. Make sure you emphasize that you have
actually visited their site, and that their site is not just a
random pick. Give them the address of your links page, and ask
them to check out the link for themselves. It's a good idea to
mention that they will not only benefit from the increased
traffic your website will direct their way, but you will also
increase their link popularity. Briefly, explain why link
popularity is so essential, but do this in a sentence or two so
you don't sound like a professor! Finally, tell them you would
greatly appreciate if they would reciprocally add a link on
their own links page to your website.

Go through this process with as many appropriate sites as you
can find, bearing in mind the criteria of quality and
non-competitiveness. After you have emailed all relevant sites,
be sure to check these website frequently to see if they have
added a link to your page. Give it about a month, and if no link
appears, try another charming email. Then give it another month,
and if your site is still absent from their links page, it's
time to remove their link from your own links page. The only
time you want to pursue a link further than this is if you
believe a site is crucial to your link popularity and your
business needs. Just remember to keep all your communications
complimentary and cordial.

Then set up a schedule to check your ranking in search engines
frequently to see if your link popularity has improved. This is
not achievable in the blink of an eye. It will take some time
and a good deal of work. There is no way around the
labor-intensive quality of improving your link popularity, which
is why search engines regard it with such importance.

By the way - make sure you have a beautiful, streamlined site or
you will never persuade anyone to link up to you. Be prepared to
keep plugging away at this process, as long as it takes, until
you achieve link popularity stardom!

About the author:
Internet Income
Training: Make Extra Money

1 Billion Monthly Local Searches -- How to Tap into This

Search Engines Becomes the Preferred Way to Find Local
Businesses! by Kamau Austin

Do you have a website that fails to generate decent traffic?
Have you failed to make search engine marketing a part of your
promotion of your business because you have a local business, or
feel the Internet is not where your customer's will find you?

Recent reports in Emarketer daily, one of the top Internet
business resources, reveal over 50% of the country are now
online. More importantly twice as many people search online for
local businesses than use their Yellow Pages to find businesses
in their area.

You could be losing at least 20 - 50% of your potential market
and customers by not having an Internet marketing plan with a
strong search engine component.

- Local Search Becoming More Important!

For those business owners who once felt that the Internet wasn't
necessary for their local business, you should especially take
note.

Now is the time to learn to tap into the promotional power of
the Internet for your local business.

Since consumers increasingly are searching online for local
businesses, how will your businesses take advantage of this
fundamental shift in customer behavior? The Internet has
affected almost every facet of business and has driven the
creation of new business models while forcing the evolution of
others, writes Click4Talk's Dave Landa.

Landa goes on to state traditional printed yellow pages and
local commerce are being drawn headlong into the Internet
vortex. The surge in online local searches by consumers relative
to traditional printed phone book searches has prompted
tremendous business focus in this space.

Local search has become such a strong business Google has even
gotten into the act.

- Google Outsourced the Selling of Local Search

It is a very important development that Google has outsourced
the selling of local search PPC programs to Bell South last
year. Bell South has a large sales force that can sell search
advertising face-2-face to local businesspeople and merchants.

In other words Internet search will become a significant
marketing strategy for local business. This is significant
because 20% of searches online are for local information. This
is a huge amount of monthly searches.

- 20% of Internet Searches are for local Information means
approximately close to One Billion Searches a Month are being
queried via the Top Search Engines -- for local searches. This
One Billion local searches will create new local business models
and propel visionary tech savvy local businesses.

In other words, if you once thought your local business didn't
need to be on the Internet, it is time to get a new reality
check.

To bring home the importance of this grand Internet marketing
shift on how it will impact your local sales, consider a recent
experience with me and my wife. We listed a real estate property
in two of our major local papers (The New York Times and The
Star Ledger of NY and NJ respectively). The response was slow.

Later we ran a targeted local Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign with
Google and received more than 10 times the amount of leads from
both The New York Times and the Star Ledger!!!

Local focused and targeted PPC advertising with Google had out
performed Two major northeastern newspapers with established
real estate sections by an amazing margin. By the way, the
collective circulation of the New York Times and NJ Star Ledger
was 5.5 million people for the Sunday Editions.

This rise in the search engines and major portal to find local
business has come at a price to local newspapers, major
newspapers, and the local yellow pages. With twice as many
people preferring to use the search engines to find local
business than the yellow pages, this obviously has shaken-up
print media.

To further illustrate this point recently the parent company of
the New York Times purchased About.com the popular Internet
portal!

Your competitors will soon be introduced to the importance of
local search via sales consultants from Bell South and other
advertising rep firms. Don't get caught sleeping -- on move to
local search!

My business has grown 3-fold in the last year because I made a
focused decision to grow my business in my local area using the
search engines. I know of some business associates that have
created lucrative local directory type web businesses rather
than putting their emphasis on general Internet Traffic.

If you are looking to increase your sales and profits maybe
looking at the short view and local niches in your are is the
quickest way to get there.

About the author:
Kamau Austin is publisher of http://www.eInfoNEWS.com and runs
http://www.SearchEnginePlan.com. He is author of Always On Top
"How to Get the Highest Search Engine ranking for your website."
See more about his eBiz strategies at
http://www.AlwaysOnToptheBook.com

Are Reciprocal Links Dead?

If the current indications are correct we may be looking at the
end of reciprocal linking as a method of building rank and link
popularity, at least as far as Google is concerned.

The latest 'Google Dance', nicknamed 'Jagger', has caused major
concern by those suffering loss of position on the top ranks of
the search engine's listings. So we decided to take a close look
at what is happening and see what we could learn.

We have a few small websites that have a limited number of
links. These sites are used mostly for research and testing of
our primary business in Web Analytics. By analyzing these sites,
we were able to quickly get an idea of what is happening in
Google's Jagger Update, which is still in progress at the time
of this writing.

By using our web analytics tools, we were able to look at the
history of visits by the bots and the links to these small
sites. We had to go back as far as January in order to build a
picture of Google's actions. Our software also allows us to look
at all links from the SEs, not just those shown by using the
browser's 'link:' command. G only reports some of the links to
your site, not all.

Here is what we have seen:

Like many other sites, we noticed a sharp drop in rank in our
test sites around the first of July. They lost about 40% of
their previous link popularity and moved down sharply in rank.
Also, duplicate links on a single site disappeared. We now only
showed one link from each linking site.

As Jagger started, unlike many others we have seen complain
about G's actions and timing, our sites stayed rather stable.
Evidently they had already suffered their major losses. However,
there was a small increase in the number of links. This caught
our attention. We had expected that, like many others, we would
experience further disruptions to our link structure.

But when we examined these links, we were surprised to see that
not one of them had been listed with Google a few weeks earlier.
Not one. Our research showed that these links had been live in
G's archive, but none had shown up publicly before now. It
appeared that there was some sort of 'aging' process taking
place, but this may just be coincidental. It is more likely that
older links disappeared because the host site was lost in the
shuffle and our links no longer appeared 'relevant'.

The other thing we noticed was that not one of these new links
was listed on our reciprocal links pages. In other words, all
reciprocal links had vanished. We think that this is because G
is down-grading or eliminating reciprocal links as a measure of
popularity. This does make sense, actually. Reciprocal links are
a method of falsifying popularity. Sort of a cheap method of
buying a link, if you want to think of it that way.

If your web sites have suffered from the latest 'dance', you may
want to take a look at the type and source of your links. If
they are mostly from link exchanges, you are probably looking at
the reason for your move down the list on the search engines.

During the second week of the Jagger Update, a few of our
reciprocal links did come back up. However, we also noticed that
these were from places where we had highly relevant content.
They came from articles where we discussed our area of
expertise: Web Analytics, or from forums where we had relevant
threads. So we feel that these links came back because of
content, not linking.

The other group that came back up was one-way inbound text
links, regardless of the originating web site. These links also
had strong relevance to our web analytics business. In other
words, they contained keywords and/or phrases related to our
site and its business.

This research has us now re-evaluating our linking strategy. We
urge others to do the same.

We are now concentrating only on building strong one-way inbound
links. We are focusing on publicity, articles, directories, and
other direct methods of building our image and consumer
awareness.

In addition, we are also looking for associated but non
competing firms like web developers, Search Engine Marketers,
SEOs, web site owners and designers to partner with us to build
direct business relationships and the resulting inbound links.
This strategy may not be the fastest method of building links,
but we feel it is rock solid and within the spirit of good
business practices. The best thing is that it is search engine
independent.

We will no longer worry about chasing (or beating) the search
engines and their ever changing algorithms. That is a fool's
game we are sure to lose.

Instead, we will focus on building rock solid links and
popularity with the group that counts: our customers. By
focusing on beating our competition and providing a top quality
product, plenty of educational information and relevant content,
we are sure to move up and stay at the top of the search engine
rankings.

It's something to think about.

-0-

Copyright 2005 by WG Moore

Permission is granted for this article to forward, reprint,
distribute, use for in ezines, newsletters, websites, to offer
as free bonus or part of a product for sale as long as no
changes are made and the byline, copyright, and this resource
box is included.

About the author:
Will Moore is a web analytics specialist with over 20 years of
hardware, software and web development experience. He has sat on
the ANSII and ISO standards committees, been a speaker at major
technical conferences in the US, Europe, China and Singapore and
has written numerous articles on various technical subjects.
Visit Web Stats Gold at Web Stats Gold for more
articles and information.

Balancing Paid and Organic Listings

Balancing Paid and Organic Search Listings

Does your company's website really need to be listed in both the
organic or "natural" search results as well as the paid
"sponsored" results? According to panel of search engine experts
at a recent Search Engine Strategies conference, the answer is
yes. Most search engine marketing experts agree that a combined
approach--one that relies on both organic search engine rankings
and paid listings works best.

Higher click-thru ratios According to recent research, websites
that are listed at the top of the organic search results and the
paid listings will triple their click-thru ratio. Three times
more people will visit your website if it is listed in both
places because there is a "second opinion effect". Searchers see
both listings and are encouraged by the fact that a website is
listed in both the organic listings and the paid listings.

Greater penetration of search results By optimizing your
website's content to rank well in the organic search results,
your website can be found for many keyword phrases and
combinations of keywords. Good organic search engine rankings
typically take months to achieve, and are fairly easy to
maintain on an ongoing basis. Pay per click (PPC) can be
implemented quickly--it can also be turned on and off as needed,
depending on your company's budget and current promotions.

More keyword research Keyword research tells you how many people
per day search for what keyword terms. There are many tools
available that allow you to perform keyword research even before
you achieve organic search engine rankings or start a PPC
campaign. Once organic search engine rankings are achieved,
keyword research using existing website statistic data allows
you to enhance your listing of keywords--you can combine your
organic keyword list with your PPC keyword list to focus on the
keyword phrases that bring you the best ROI.

Build credibility Organic search engine rankings provide very
high levels of credibility and broad coverage on potentially
every search engine worldwide. When a website is listed well in
the organic search results, the website usually is found for not
only their chosen keywords but many combinations of keyword
phrases related to those chosen keywords. It's those other
combinations of related keywords that bring a website a lot of
more visibility in the search results, frequently causing a
website appear to be found "for everything" related to a certain
industry. The results can be staggering--a properly optimized
website can appear in the search results more often and for more
related keywords than a company who has not done any organic
search optimization.

Appearing the paid results also helps to build credibility--just
because a searcher doesn't click on a paid ad and visits the
website doesn't mean they haven't seen the company's sponsored
listing. Paid listings also can provide some visibility and
credibility for certain keywords that aren't usually obtainable
through organic search engine optimization.

About the author:
Bill Hartzer manages the Dallas Search Engine
Marketing division of MarketNet, Inc., a leading
full-service interactive design and development firm in Dallas,
Texas.

Using Free Reprint Articles - Some Questions Answered

Recently I wrote an article discussing the merits of target="_blank">using free reprint articles on your website
to increase your search engine ranking. (The article explained
how Google loves lots of content on your site, how it loves that
content to be regularly updated, and how you can get lots of
keyword rich content for your site, absolutely free.)

A few days after publishing, I received a 'please help' email
from Loren, a small business owner. Her href="http://www.headchangearts.com" target="_blank">website is
all about glass art, and she wanted some clarification on
some of the points I made in my previous article. Loren's
questions were good ones, and the answers important, so I
thought I'd publish them.

Q: We have a site for glass art. From your article, I
gather that if I create an articles page with free reprint
articles (written by other people) containing 'glass art' type
keywords, I'll get higher search rankings for those keywords? Is
that correct? If so, what page comes up in the rankings? The
article itself or my Home page? Also, if the article is being
used by other webmasters, won't the search results also include
their version of the article?

A: In answer to your first question, yes, having an
articles page with keyword rich free reprint articles generally
has the effect of increasing your ranking. Google thinks highly
of sites with a lot of helpful content, but it all comes down to
whether other webmasters do as well. If your site contains heaps
of helpful content about glass art, other webmasters in the
glass art field (be they suppliers, distributors, or
competitors) will be inclined to link to you simply because that
link implies (to their customers) an association with you. That
association boosts their credibility because you're obviously an
authority in the field. It also may help their own search engine
ranking a little as Google will then see them as part of an
expert, credible community of sites (although the benefits of
this for the linking site are minimal and arguable). So, in a
roundabout way, I'm saying that yes, article-based content can
help your ranking, but only if it increases the likelihood that
other related sites will link to yours.

As to the question of which page (the article itself or your
home page) displays in search results, that really depends on
which page has the most links to it*. If you have an article
which is just THE BEST source of info in the industry, and
everyone's linking to it, that page will display in the search
results. This is good because people who click on this result
are interested specifically in the content of the article. So
when your website displays, they get the information they want,
and they'll be pleased. And assuming your navigation is clear
and easy to use, it is likely they'll at least visit your home
page.

And finally, yes, if other sites have published the same
article, they may display in the results alongside you. The same
is true of the original author's website. But it's important to
remember that, generally, the site with the highest PR will rank
highest in the results, and it's this site that most users will
visit. You just need to work hard to make sure that's you! For
an example of how this works, do a search for a very specific
term related to the article of mine which you've obviously read.
Search Google worldwide for "Google's love affair with content"
(including the quotes). You'll notice that the no.1 result is
actually a page on EzineArticles.com which contains my article.
The page on my site (DivineWrite.com) containing the article
only ranks no.2. This is because EzineArticles.com has a higher
PR than DivineWrite.com, and overall, the keywords are
considered more relevant to the rest of the content on their
site than they are to mine. Obviously, this means that a good
article can display several times in the same search results,
but that's ok - it simply adds to the perceived authority of the
article and the sites containing it.

* Above I say that the page that displays in the results will be
the one with the most links to it. There are some complicating
factors here. For instance, the text in a link plays a big part
in how effective that link is. A link to your site that says
"Click here" or "check this site out", won't do you as much good
as a link which says "Glass Art sales" or "glass art creator".
So if lots of people are linking to the page containing the
article, but the text in their links is generic, then that page
may not rank as highly as a page with fewer - more keyword rich
- links pointing to it. Of course, this assumes that both pages
are equally well optimized for search engines and for the same
keyword phrases.

I know that the above is a very specific question and the answer
is full of ifs and buts, but hopefully this exchange will answer
a few questions for a few people.

Happy reprinting!

About the author:
* Glenn Murray is an target="_blank">SEO copywriter and href="http://www.ArticlePR.com" target="_blank">article
submission specialist. He is a director of article PR
company target="_blank">Article PR and also of href="http://www.divinewrite.com">copywriting studio Divine
Write.