Search Engines The Masters Of The Internet Universe ? Part 3
This is part three of the article series and deals with the paid inclusion and organic search results from search engines.
Add comment July 24th, 2006
Archive for July 24th, 2006
Create Buzz for Your Business via a Contest!
Create Buzz for Your Business via a Contest!
by: Anthony Jewell
A very easy way to get more people to your site and also more interested in what you offer is to start your own online contest. It is something that is very easy to do. You probably can even get other companies to become sponsors in return for posting their logo and link to their website on your contest page. This will also help you bring in more viewers but if you get sponsors you will now have a wider selection of prizes to offer. Also see if the sponsor will post the contest link on their site as well.
It is actually an interesting thing that many other sites don’t do it. Not only is it a good way to increase the amount of visitors to your website but it also rewards people for coming to your website. Running multiple contests every so often will keep visitors interested and coming back to visit your website to see if there are any new contests going on. It can help build your whole site up or specific part like your forum.
Not only will people come back to your site but after they enter into the contest they will tell other people about it so that they can enter as well. Then those people tell their friends and then they tell their friends and so on. So you can see how it can spread out. Also while visiting your website to enter the contest they will browse around to see what you are offering. This can lead to increased sales as well as an increase in the number of people who sign up on your forum and newsletter.
Prizes can range from cash prizes or to virtual products such as software, web design packages or web hosting packages. When you start your contest be sure to set a cut off date for entries, limit number of entries allowed and when the draw date will help. Have them either email you with a certain line in the subject header or enter via web form online. Then take all of the names and set them up so you can draw randomly(such as putting them in a hat). Then choose what prize you are drawing for and pull out a name.
So as you can see the benefits of a contest are not only for your site but for your visitors too. They will love you for it and will keep coming back for more. Plus it is easy and fun to do, so why not!
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About The Author
Anthony Jewell has over 6 Years experience in the Web & Graphics World. You can visit my business at http://www.logo2d.com ©Copyright 2005 Logo2D.com : Feel free to use this article freely but please keep in the copyright
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Add comment July 24th, 2006
How To Choose Good Search Engine Optimisers
How To Choose Good Search Engine Optimisers
by: Bernard Peh
SEO usually stands for “Search Engine Optimiser” or “Search Engine Optimisation”. Search Engine Optimisation is important to anyone who wants their website to rank well in major search engines. SEO is a complex process. Outsourcing your site to a SEO specialist or firm can be a good solution if you are busy and do not want to pay the penalty of being blacklisted by search engines in case you have done something “unethical” unknowingly. This article outlines some important criteria to look for in a good SEO specialist or firm.
Do Not Pretend That You Know Everything
Learning Search Engine Optimisation can be easy because there are alot of articles in the web. Many people, after reading a few SEO articles claim that they are experts and know what is going on. I heard of stories of clients telling their specialist “What you are proposing is wrong. It should be done this way…”. Such statement can put off your SEO specialist easily because what is the point of asking for help if you think you already know everything. The first step in seeking help is not to pretend that you know everything. SEO is a complex science and there is much more than what it appears to be.
Nobody Can Guarantee No.1 Ranking Within A Short Time
The main benefit of getting good ranks in search engines is that you need not spend huge amount of money in advertising. It is a good long term investment. If someone can guarantee No.1 Ranking in Google, you have to be skeptical about it. However, it is possible if the keyword is not competitive. I am saying that it can be done. For example, it is much easier to improve the ranking of a website if the keyword of the site is “Train Design” as compared to the keyword “Web Design” because the later is much more competitive. It is also easier to improve your ranking in MSN and Yahoo as compared to Google especially if your website is new. Therefore, becoming no.1 in Google within a week is highly unlikely. A typical Search Engine Optimisation work takes at least a few months to see real results.
Good Keyword Research Strategies
The first step in the SEO process is always keyword research. The specialist will recommend that you optimise your site for certain keyword(s) that will bring in good traffic. From the previous “Train Design” example, even though it is possible to be say no. 1 in google for that search term, does it really matter? How many people are searching for that term? This is the first and most important step in the whole SEO process. A good SEO will do a thorough analysis of the keywords to optimise for your website.
Ask For Opinions
If you have decided to use the service of certain SEO Specialist, ask around in forums or look for reviews of the specialist or firm. Many people who had experience with the specialist can tell you if he is good and whether the charges are reasonable. Do not believe in testimonials unless it is from someone that you can verify. Testimonials are everywhere and anyone can fake them easily.
The Search Engine Optimiser’s Homepage
Visit the homepage of your specialist and check its Google Page Rank. You can do so easily by installing the Google Toolbar. Alot of people argue that the homepage of the SEO specialist is not important but I choose to differ. I reckon that the Google PR for the homepage of a good SEO should be 6 and above. If the Homepage Google PR of your specialist is 1 or 2, then you need to think twice about using his service. Google PR is not everything but it is a good gauge of the capabilities of your Search Engine Sepcialist.
Conclusion
Search Engine Optimisation techniques are easily available in the internet. Doing it yourself can be fun and interesting. However, the downside is that you might accidentally do something wrong and pay a huge penalty. Being blacklisted by Google is almost irrecoverable. A good Seach Engine Optimiser or firm can save you alot of headache and time which will help you reap good rewards in a long run. There are many other ways to choose a good Search Engine Optimiser other than those listed in this article. For example, the linking strategies..etc. I found the most reliable way is still through the words of mouth.
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About The Author
Bernard Peh is a great passioner of web technologies and one of the co-founders of Sitecritic.net Internet Articles. He works with experienced web designers and developers for more than 5 years, developing and designing commercial and non-commercial websites. During his free time, he does website reviews,freelance SEO and PHP work.
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Add comment July 24th, 2006
My Dumbest Marketing Blunder And How You Can Avoid It
When I started submitting Ezine articles, I never realized their true power. I was just happy to see the articles being published.
I expected to get some traffic and hopefully some sales. I would have laughed if you told me those early words would still be floating around the web over five years later.
Add comment July 24th, 2006
Search Engine Indexing - 3 Strategies Guaranteed to Skyrocket Your Success
In order to design a website that performs well with the search engines, it is very important to give the search engines what they want. You’ll want to find out what search engines index and what they do not in order to have your pages returned as a result. Consider the following strategies to get your web page noticed as frequently as possible.
Strategy #1 - Keywords
Add comment July 24th, 2006
Search Engine Secrets
Search Engine Secrets
by: Syd Johnson
1. Search engines read your pages from the top down.
So, you want to use your critical keywords at least once in the first paragraph on each web page. Then you can use it once in each paragraph after that and in the last line. Use the search engine keywords in your page title and in the name of your page if possible. All of this coordination will result in a much higher placement on Google, Yahoo and many other search engines.
2. Write shorter articles
The top search engines experts believe that google gives much more weight to relatively smaller pages. The theory behind this is that web surfers have such a short attention span that thesis length pages will be ignored; therefore, they are not useful in search engine results.
A good guide for online articles is 300 to 600 words. Typically, you don’t want to go under 200 because the information would probably be discarded as too short to adequately explain any topic in detail.
3. Original content works best
If you are going to submit an article to an ezine or other article directories, make a few changes before you do so. Overall, the search engines prefer fresh original content. While duplicate content gets your name out on the web and lots of incoming links, after a while, your site will start to suffer if you post the same article on your website.
The search engines will see it as duplicate content and only the highest ranking pages will get credit for the articles. If your site is not the highest ranking, your article can help another website get more traffic than you do. So, make a few changes, or better yet, create two separate articles on the same topic.
Place one on your site, and submit the other one to the search engines. You get the incoming links and other websites will have to deal with the consequences of an article that is distributed over 600 times online.
4. Follow the links
The purpose of links is not only to get a high google rank, but also as a way to bring in traffic. Seek out links from sites with a high page rank and exchange links with some of your competitors.
It helps the search engines to quantify your field of expertise since a site about web hosting wouldn’t naturally link to a cooking site. You outbound links are just as important as your inbound links. It’s the friends’ theory show me where you link and I’ll tell you what type of website you are.
Ok, so it’s my theory, but you get the idea.
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About The Author
This article may be distributed freely as long as there is an active link back to http://www.rapidlingo.com. Syd Johnson Editor
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Add comment July 24th, 2006
Submit All Of Your Pages And Watch Your Traffic Grow
Everyone is looking for “secrets” about how to get more qualified traffic to their web sites. What I’m going to share with you is no secret, however it is not practiced by very many companies or individuals. Many companies and individuals only submit their home page to search engines and directories. You can easily quadruple your traffic in 90 - 120 days by implementing the following procedures.
Add comment July 24th, 2006
The Number One Tried and Tested Method For Exploding Your Ezine Subscriptions
The Number One Tried and Tested Method For Exploding Your Ezine Subscriptions
by: Tracey Meagher
We all know how cagey and stubborn prospects can be and we know that only a tiny percentage will buy our products the first time they see them. We all know that the only way to convince savvy prospects to buy is by building trust with them and that the single most effective way of building trust is by getting our visitors to subscribe to our newsletters.
So, if signing up prospects to our newsletter is so vital to making sales why do most of us keep our subscription invitations tucked away in the margins of our websites where they can very easily be overlooked or ignored. And if signing up prospects is so vital to our sales why do we place our invitations to sign in those annoying pop-ups that prospects want to close before they’ve even read the fantastic deal we’re trying to offer them!
If you’re serious about exploding your newsletter subscriptions and I’m mean increasing them by up to 400%, read on. The method I’m about to tell you is so simple and easy to implement you’ll be amazed that you hadn’t thought of it yourself before.
To achieve the kind of subscriptions that Internet business people dream of, you’ll need to take two simple steps. First, you need to increase the amount of real estate on your site dedicated to capturing visitors and no, I don’t mean creating bigger, in-your-face subscription boxes. The second thing you need to do is entice visitors to sign up by harnessing the power of audio. I can already hear the gasps but with so many easy to use tools available right now, adding audio to your site is nothing to get uptight about!
I’ll explain what I mean! Tucking your subscription box away in the corner of you sites forces your single most effective sales tools to compete for your visitor’s attention with all the other information you have on your site, links, banners, ads and content! Unfortunately, the competition can prove stiff and you don’t always succeed in grabbing the attention you require. Visitors get ready to click away from your site without having even noticed the invitation to subscribe. When this happens, you might implement your back-up plan, the exit pop-up. In a last bid effort you try to entice users to subscribe before they leave by throwing a pop-up at them. Did you know that 80% of Internet users find pop-up’s annoying and that last thing you want is a visitor leaving your site experiencing a negative emotion!
What you need to do is dedicate your landing page to subscription signups. It may sound a little crazy but if you place a subscription invitation on your homepage and combine this with a compelling audio message describing to your visitors all the great stuff they will receive when they sign up to your newsletter, you’ll find people warming to you quicker than you ever thought possible.
Recently, I came across an example of this technique done to perfection on Paul Colgan’s website. Paul is the Affiliate Marketing Guy. When landing on the homepage of Paul’s website, you are greeted with a personal audio message from Pual explaining the two types of newsletters he offers and the benefits of signing up to each. His message is not at all pushy. It’s informative and very compelling. Using an audio message on the homepage personalises Paul’s site in a way that can’t be with any other technique. Without the audio, Paul’s invitation on the homepage to sign up to his newsletters would seem empty and many would click away before entering the site. With the audio Paul has transformed his landing page into a subscription magnet.
Go on … give it a try for yourself!
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About The Author
Tracey Meagher is the founder of QuickandEasy Audio, a website that reviews all the latest resources and tools available for adding audio to your website. Visit www.quickandeasyaudio.com to receive free audio resources that will help you add audio to your website in less than 60 minutes! This article may be reproduced in its entirety only if unaltered and the resource box is included.
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Add comment July 24th, 2006
How To Create Gold With Email Promotions - Part 2
Don’t forget people are so busy now they will only give your email a limited amount of their concentration. Therefore you should summarize your offer in the first paragraph.
If it’s compelling enough it should grab the readers attention and make them want to read further.
Put your reader in the picture!
How do you do this?
Explain how your product will help them to solve a problem.
Don’t focus too much on how it’s helped you, they don’t care about you.
Add comment July 24th, 2006
Selling to Sellers - Utterly Stupid Idea or Not Quite?
The list of promotional tools and resources available to online marketer today is very impressing, and new ones appear almost every day, each fancier and more sophisticated than ever. Almost all of them however are touched (some will even say “cursed”) by a sort of the original sin. After all, after SPAM became criminal offence and as the result direct email marketing became all-but-impossible, the only people who see your offer are those who are also trying to sell something.
Add comment July 24th, 2006