Tip 1 - Hide And Seek
Do not use hidden text on your website. This means having words and phrases in your pages somewhere that can’t be seen to the naked eye. The tactic of having text on your page that is the same colour as the background, and is therefore ‘hidden’, will almost certainly result in your wanted poster being pinned up by most search engines.
Tip 2 - Your Website Is Not A Turkey
Add comment July 26th, 2006
Increase Your Traffic For Free
by: Joseph Pratt
Okay, you have your website and now you want more visitors. Don’t think you’re the only one, bub, but you can learn from the experience of others. Subscribing to web directories is one solution that the ICMediaDirect.com Consulting Division both recommends and executes for clients in order to increase traffic. Like any SEO task, its effort - and smart effort always works best.
1) Traffic. Close to 20% of all traffic comes from web directories. That’s either quite a heap to tap into or a massive chunk to disregard. Simply put, the choice is up to you - there are fishes in the water, do you want to cast out your lines or not? If so, let’s hit the web directories.
2) Get Linked. Search engines include link popularity in their rankings. Using web directories enmeshes your website into linkage, which increases visitors. This creates better rankings - hence more traffic to your web property.
3) Hyperlinked Keywords. Link popularity develops by incorporating keywords into the hyperlinks. Submissions to web directories should include relevant keywords. It makes your site easier to find and boosts the visibility of said links across the spectrum of search engines. More free traffic.
4) Keyword Optimization. It’s doubly important to mention keyword research as it can help you in more ways than one, so choose carefully. The links created within web directories essentially act as recommendations to search engine algorithms and the search engine will attempt to match your hyperlink keywords with search phrases entered by users. So, by harmonizing your keywords to themes related to your website, you will boost visibility.
5) Diversify. Submit to different web directories and find them through search engines. The reason being is that they already have decent standing by virtue of you finding them from the search sites. Play around, get creative, and use key words in combination with topics relevant to your site to find the best web directories. Increase your visibility by hitching on to existing and working directories - if you found it, others will too.
6) Monkey see, monkey do. Mimic your hyperlinks to appear like those seen in Google Adwords. Whatever wordings helps make those ads rank well for Adwords will only help your viability through search, and in turn, web directory ranking. Success begets success.
7) Mind your web directory manners. Treating it like a doormat (by ignoring simple rules to follow, like don’t use too much promotional nomenclature, no foul language, etc) is no good. Play by the rules, or don’t play at all.
8) Web Directory 2.0. Oh yeah! Webmasters are privy to vastly improved web directories with uniform scripts and the functionality of web directories is beginning to improve drastically. A directory can do more with your listing, like displaying logos and basic contact info. The web directory itself has become more pleasing to the eye - and, I should add, for its own good!
Web directories are there for the taking. There is little harm in trying them and with some effort, big rewards may be reaped through increased traffic. What’s more is that web directories (just like this advice column and ICMediaDirect.com’s consulting services for clients) are free. You can’t beat that.
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About The Author
Joseph Pratt Media Analyst
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Add comment July 26th, 2006
Website Traffic Needs A Driver
by: Mike Burke
First of all, let me dispel the myth that a website can gain huge success and continue to remain productive simply by using an ‘auto-pilot’ program.
You know what an ‘auto-pilot’ program is, right? You see them splashed all over the web. Basically, they’re website marketing schemes designed to provide a constant flow of targeted traffic to your website simply by picking a general category, paying some money and away you go.
The problem is, more often then not, ‘auto-pilot’ programs are only designed to sell ‘auto-pilot’ programs.
This isn’t to say that that some of the ideas being offered by these programs don’t have any value.
Every idea, tried and true or unconventional, has a place in your marketing plan and the most important part of a marketing plan is to actually have one.
Website Traffic Needs A Driver
If you want your website to be successful, you need to take control of the marketing - you need to be the ‘driver’ of your website traffic marketing machine.
There are many different roads you can take with your marketing machine and each of them needs to be understood and explored. One isn’t better than the other but rather they have to all work together if you want to draw some serious traffic to your website.
Simply throwing money at the problem isn’t the answer. A wildly successful marketing plan doesn’t have to cost much money - if any money at all.
Consider this:
Big name companies often throw thousands and thousands of unfocused dollars into their ‘generic looking template’ websites and get far less traffic than the little guys that have no advertising budget but have great marketing plans.
Something as simple as signing your emails with your name, a short teaser for your website and your website URL could easily bring you some traffic. Combine this with other simple but effective website promotion ideas and your ‘marketing machine’ will really start to roll.
How about this one:
Create an email with a joke that relates to the theme of your website but ‘leave out the punch line’. Next, create a page on your website with the punch line of the joke.
Put a link in your email to the page on your website with the punch line of the joke and say something like:
“Please forward this email to your friends - it will make their day! This joke is so funny they’ll be crying with laughter!
Then Click Here ==> (the link to the page on your website with the rest of the joke) for the rest of this hilarious joke.”
Now, send this email to everyone you can think of.
Congratulations! You’ve just created a viral email (not spam)
Your friends will forward your email to their friends. Their friends will forward your email to their friends and so on. That simple email could bring your website a ton of traffic very quickly.
The scope of this article isn’t to go into the details of the various ways to drive traffic to your website (we’ll save them for other articles) but rather to get you to understand that you are the ‘driver’ of your marketing machine and it’s up to you to steer it in the right direction.
Keep your eyes and ears open. Pay attention to how websites are being promoted to you and soon you’ll be coming up with great ideas of your own to skyrocket targeted traffic to your own website.
For more website traffic ideas visit http://www.starttheprofits.com.
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About The Author
Mike Burke is the author of numerous articles and has an affection for website marketing. Learn how to drive tons of targeted traffic to your site without spending a dime on advertising. Visit us at http://www.starttheprofits.com.
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Add comment July 26th, 2006
Jagger, Google Analytics, and the Future of Search & SEO
by: Glenn Murray
Two big things have just happened in Google-land: Jagger and Google Analytics. Together, these two events may have changed the face of search forever.
Jagger
First, let’s discuss Jagger… Just like hurricanes, Google updates have names. (A Google update is a change to the way Google determines its rankings. Google makes these changes periodically, and they’re universally feared because they can impact dramatically on a website’s ranking.) The latest update is called Jagger, and it has search engine optimizers (SEOs) all around the world in a state of panic.
Why was Jagger such a fearful update? Simple… With Jagger, Google once again outsmarted huge numbers of SEOs. You see, many/most SEOs spend their time (and their clients’ money) trying to trick Google into thinking that their websites are more relevant and important than they really are. They do this mostly by swapping links, buying cheap links, and placing links on free directories. While there’s nothing wrong with these sorts of links (i.e. they’re not considered ‘black-hat’), they don’t really show that the site is relevant or important. All they really show is that the site owner has made a deal with another site owner. In these deals, the incentive for the linking site owner is a reciprocal link, money, or increased link volume. Google much prefers it when the linking site adds the link simply to enhance the value of their content or to increase their own credibility and authority.
In other words, Google wants its search results to contain relevant, important sites, not sites that merely appear to be relevant and important. To this end, Google invests millions of dollars and employs the world’s smartest mathematicians to create algorithms which identify sites that are trying to trick them. And that’s exactly what Jagger did; and when it found those sites, it simply adjusted their ranking to more accurately reflect their true importance. (Unfortunately, it also demoted some sites which actually deserve a high ranking. It is hoped that these mistakes will be ironed out with future minor updates, but that’s a topic for another article…)
From a technical standpoint, Jagger was well described by Ken Webster in his article, ‘Google’s Jagger Update - Dust Begins To Settle?’ - http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/Jagger . To summarize, Jagger:
1) Increased importance placed on IBL (Inbound Links) Relevancy?
2) Increased importance placed on OBL (Outbound Links) Relevancy?
3) Promotion of relevant Niche Directories (related to #1 & #2)?
4) More weight thrown back to PR @ top domain?
5) Increased importance on AdSense placement relevancy?
6) Possible introduction of CSS Spam filtering?
7) Overall Blog demotions?
8) New and unresolved “canonical” issues?
Some more interesting effects were reported by WG Moore (http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2005/nov/9.html) who runs a number of test sites for SEO purposes. By monitoring the links to his test sites as reported by Google, he established that:
“all reciprocal links had vanished. We think that this is because Google 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… 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.”
In short, Jagger undid the hard work of thousands - if not millions - of people! As a result, hard-won high rankings and revenues plummeted.
Interestingly, article PR (article submission) came through Jagger seemingly unscathed. My SEO copywriting website http://www.divinewrite.com, for example, went from no.4 to no.1 worldwide for “copywriter”, and I’ve employed article PR almost exclusively. Whether it was promoted or the sites around it were demoted, one thing is clear: article PR is one of the best ways to obtain a high ranking.
Google Analytics
The second monumental event to occur recently was Google Analytics - http://www.google.com/analytics/index.html . Google Analytics is a free web-stats solution which not only reports all the regular site stats, but also integrates directly with Google AdWords giving webmasters and insight into the ROI of their pay-per-click ads. According to Google, ” Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site.”
Why is this such a landmark move? Because for the first time ever, Google will have access to your real web stats. And these stats will be far more accurate than those provided by Alexa - http://www.alexa.com. Furthermore, Google’s privacy statement says: ” We may also use personal information for auditing, research and analysis to operate and improve Google technologies and services.” - http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy.html . Now let’s put two and two together:
1) Google is ‘giving’ every webmaster in the world free access to quality web-stats.
2) Millions of webmasters will accept this ‘gift’, if only because it integrates directly with their Google AdWords campaigns.
3) Google will then have full access to the actual web stats of millions of commercial websites.
4) Google will have the right to use these stats to develop new technologies.
5) What’s the next logical step? Google will use these statistics to help determine its rankings, of course!
It should come as no surprise. It’s been on the cards - and frequently discussed - for a long time. For example, Jayde Online CEO, Mel Strocen, recently published an article on this very topic, ‘ The Future of WebSite Ranking’ - http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Search-Engines/The-Future-of-WebSite-Ranking.html . She quite rightly asserts that:
“Google’s “democratic” vision of the Web will never be achieved by manipulating algorithm criteria based on content. It will only be achieved by factoring in what is important to people, and people will always remain the best judge of what that is. The true challenge for search engines in the future is how to incorporate web searcher input and preferences into their ranking algorithms.”
In fact, the Jayde Online network already owns and operates a search engine, ExactSeek (http://www.ExactSeek.com) which incorporates user popularity statistics in its rankings.
The Future of Search & SEO
To date, ExactSeek is the only search engine which uses visitor stats as criteria for its rankings. But Google isn’t far behind. We all know that Google specializes in taking a good idea and implementing and adapting it brilliantly. This is exactly what we’ll see in this case. By combining link popularity and user popularity statistics, Google will be the only major search engine to consider both what other sites think of your website and what your visitors think of your website. And because they have the most advanced algorithms for assessing link popularity, and will soon have access to the farthest reaching, most accurate web stats to assess user popularity, its competitors will be a long time catching up.
So if that’s the future of search, what’s the future of SEO? The future of SEO is undoubtedly one where:
one-way text links from relevant pages continue to be the most valuable links
reciprocal linking continue to decline
the ’shotgun’ approach to link buying declines
mass email link requests decline
free directory submission declines
niche directory submission increases
article PR (article submission) increases
article submission sites (e.g. EzineArticles, GoArticles, and ArticleBlast) play a much bigger and more important role in helping online publishers locate quality articles (due to the increasing article volume)
user popularity is just as important as link popularity, which means:
o the quality of article PR improves in order to increase site traffic, credibility, and loyalty
o the quality of website content improves in order to convert traffic and encourage repeat visits
Clearly, the choices for SEOs will be pretty much limited to paying for links at niche sites and/or engaging in article PR. Being an SEO copywriter, I may be a little biased, but for mine, article PR is the hands-down winner in this comparison:
It satisfies Google’s criteria for relevance and importance. Linking site owners include your article and link because, in doing so, their site becomes more useful to visitors, and their business gains credibility and authority.
It generates hundreds of free links quickly enough to make it worth your while, but not so quickly as to raise red flags at Google (in the form of link dampening).
Links are permanent and you don’t have to pay to keep them there.
You get a lot of qualified referred traffic who already trust you and your expertise. This satisfies Google’s visitor popularity criteria, while at the same time bringing you a lot of extra customers.
(For more information on article PR, read ‘ How to Top Google with Article PR’ - http://www.articlepr.com/SEO_Article_Submission.shtml .)
Conclusion
The lesson from Jagger is, don’t try and trick Google! They’ve got more money and more brains than virtually any company in the world. It’ll only end in tears! Don’t spend time and money trying to make your site look important and relevant. Instead, spend that time and money actually making it important and relevant! Content - the real content behind the optimization - is the answer. After all, whether it’s an article or a web page, it’s the content that keeps ‘eyes on paper’, and that’s what it’s all about.
Happy optimizing!
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About The Author
Glenn Murray is a website copywriter, SEO copywriter, and article submission and article PR specialist. He owns article submission service Article PR and copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit http://www.DivineWrite.com or http://www.ArticlePR.com for further details, more FREE articles, or to download his FREE SEO e-book.
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Add comment July 26th, 2006
We’ve received many emails from customers over the past several years asking how high we recommend setting AdWords’ max cost per click. Generally, we recommend that our customers set the price somewhere moderately high, between the “base” rate and the max rate suggested by Google. For this entry though, I’ve decided to discuss a few options that may help you decide where to set your max cost per click to get a maximum return.
What kind of competition do you have?
Add comment July 26th, 2006
To be successful in the search engines it’s important to design your web site with the spiders in mind. Using the latest in web page design is not generally the best way to go. Spiders don’t view web pages like humans do, they must read the HTML in the page to see what it’s about. Below you will find tips on how to best design your web site with search engines in mind.
Add comment July 26th, 2006
If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. Getting a company’s name and products, or services, onto the first page of a genuine Google search isn’t a trivial piece of work. In fact, there are four distinct skills that a search engine optimiser needs to possess. Most people possess one or maybe two of these skills, very rarely do people posses all four. In truth, to get to all four, people who are good at two of these need to actively develop the other skills. Now, if you are running your own business, do you really have the time to do this? Is this the best use of your time?
Add comment July 26th, 2006
In Google’s recent battle towards becoming an international news center, I’ve come to notice that the results delivered from Google News seems like nothing more than the articles we publish everyday. So I ask, doesn’t it seem like Google News resembles an article directory of some sorts?
Google News World: http://news.google.com
Google News Canada: http://news.google.ca
Google News UK: http://news.google.co.uk
Add comment July 26th, 2006
Good Landing Page Design Tips
by: Gerrick W
What is a landing page
It’s the page your website visitor arrived at after clicking a link. The link could be on any page on your website or pay per click advertising or banner ads or keyword search.
The goal of landing page is to cause your visitors to take definite action. You don’t want your visitors to leave until you get them to do what you want them to do. To click on the buy button, to sign up for an affiliate program, to download a free ebook or software, to sign up for a course, or to subscribe to your free newsletter.
The landing page is a direct marketing copy. Your visitors landed here through a link on your webpage, an ad, a keyword search, pay per click advertising, banner ads, and now you want to convert them.
Here are some tips to design a good landing page…
1. Content Relevance
Your landing page content must be relevant to what people were looking for when they applied the click through. The closer the match is the higher the chances of conversion.
2. Be Concise
Net writing is different than offline writing. Generally, when people surf the Internet they give short attention span to what they are reading. So be concise. When visitors arrive at your landing page they are already predisposed to buy, or they want to get more information of your product or service. By all means give them information but be concise. Don’t use more than three sentences to communicate a point. Think through and concise what you want to say. Use bulleted list to communicate the benefits of your product or service.
3. Get straight to the point
The landing page is a highly customized marketing copy for your product or service or affiliate product or service. Don’t distract your visitors with advertisements, links to other web pages. Don’t let your visitors wade through a whole bunch of hosh posh before they get to want they want.
4. Focus
Dedicate one landing page to only one product or service. Don’t try to promote multiple products (unless they are of the same product group)or services on one page. Create separate landing pages and campaigns if you have multiple products or services to promote. Focus on one product or one product group on each landing page.
5. Be Factual
Use facts and figures instead of generalities.
General: Prices Reduced
Factual: Prices Reduced by 20 percent
6. Clear Call to Action
Tell your visitors what you want them to do. Buy now, click here to download, fill in name and email address to subscribe or whatever. Keep all call to action text in bold.
7. Readable Text
Sure, there’s nothing much to look at a page with white background and black fonts. But it’s definitely easier to read the text than a red background with black fonts. Remember, it’s the words that sell. Your website visitors must be able to read your text with ease.
8. Navigation Links
Not at all, if you could help it. The only link you want your website visitors to click on your landing page is the call to action link.
9. Graphics and Images
Keep visual effects to a minimum unless you are running an online audio or video business, real estate business, or selling holiday destinations. Keep in mind that for direct marketing it’s the words that sell. Graphics and images serve only to enhance your text communication, not cloud it.
10. Grammatical and Spelling Errors
Check through your text and correct all grammatical and spelling errors. Otherwise it gives your website visitors a negative impression of you and the company you represent. Once visitors have a negative impression, it becomes difficult to convince them of the product or service that you are promoting. First impression counts a lot.
11. Make it personal
Make it personal to connect with your visitors. Use a lot of You and Your in your text.
12. Make your text clear and simple to understand
Avoid colloquialism or jargons. Use terms and phrases that people readily understood. Use short sentences, and phrase them in the active voice.
A good landing page will always sport good conversion rate as compared to a poor one. Take the time to think and rethink, work and rework your landing pages. Don’t make the mistake of just optimizing for the search engines. You need to optimize your landing pages for humans too. Ultimately, it is humans that give you the sales.
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About The Author
Gerrick W - mailto:gw@1stinternetmarketingsolution.com Information and Software Tools You Need to Effectively Promote Your Online Business. Visit: http://www.1stinternetmarketingsolution.com
You may freely distribute this article or post it on your website. We only ask that the author’s resource box be kept intact and no changes to content be made.
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Add comment July 26th, 2006
How To Get All the Traffic You’ll Ever Need
by: Steve Pike
Why won’t anybody listen to me???” That one line tells the story
of ALL of my previous attempts to advertise online.
Adsense, Adwords, Search Engine Optimization— you name it, I
tried it.
All that time and money….. and nothing worked.
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know how internet users learn of the sites that interest them.
There are quite a few ways how one learns of websites of
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print ads, spot ads, referrals from friends, and others. But the
most important and widely used avenue is the proper Optimization
of search engine’s.
Search engines like Google, Yahoo search, and MSN search all rely
on a simple procedure. They have special ’spiders’ that crawl all
over the web visiting sites to index them and collect data about
them.
The spiders then use this data in generating results of any number
of search queries.
To rank highly in the results page a normal site will have to wait
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About The Author
Steve Pike has been helping people succeed online for over 2 years and has dedicated his life to Internet Marketing. Find out The Web’s Best Kept Traffic Secerts by requesting our free 4 Day report “The Web’s Best Kept Traffic Secerts Exposed”. Click Below http://www.my-business-and-economy.com/TrafficSecrets.html
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Add comment July 26th, 2006
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