Archive for August 21st, 2006
To market successfully you must incorporate the Internet into your business plan, but be sure to follow these 9 tips for success on the net:
1 Get Sticky
Your site is sticky if it keeps visitors looking and returning to your site. A good way to do this is to have up to date relevant information or "heroin content."
(419 words, estimated reading time: 1:41 ) read the full post...
August 21st, 2006
The Google patent application submitted in March, 2005 has generated a good deal of debate among search engine optimization experts. The patent document contains many general suggestions about the direction Google wants to move their search criteria and ranking techniques in the near future.
The document points out two areas in particular in which “there remains a need to improve the quality of results generated by search engines.” (0009) These two areas are
(a) artificially inflated rank due to spamming techniques, and
(764 words, estimated reading time: 3:03 ) read the full post...
August 21st, 2006
Ways To Increase Traffic by Writing Articles
by: Chet Holcomb
Writing articles is the fastest and easiest way to get a stampede of people to your website who recognize your name by your signature and adhere to what you recommend.
Most people reason that finding information in articles, forums, and discussion groups is a primary method of getting good information, and odds are that they were somewhat of an expert on that subject, and if they were experts then products and services they sold or recommended were likely to be good.
You should always include a signature with your article, a few lines about your business, your website URL and/or email address. You will be amazed at the targeted traffic it will generate for you.
If you are having trouble getting started I understand, and can tell you that writing is hard work. But once you write the first article it seems to get much easier. In fact, you may discover that you have a hard time stopping!
6 Ways to get started writing articles:
1. Get a notepad and pen, or use a word processor or computer, and just brainstorm ideas for articles. The best source for an article is usually from experience, or knowledge you have acquired in the past. If you are at a total loss, go and read some articles in other’s e-zines or websites. Once you get started you will come up with many ideas. Write each one down. If you think of a good title that includes a keyword about the article, write that down too, and include the keyword in the first sentence, or paragraph.
2. There are several ways writers work, depending on their personalities. You may like to order and organize your points first by making an outline of the information you plan to include or the points you intend to make. Then all you have to do is go back and “flesh out” the points, adding useful facts or links to more information.
Or, you may be a natural teacher, and write just as though you are explaining the subject to the reader in person. Either method is fine, just do what is comfortable for you. One method may work best for one kind of article and the other for another kind.
3. Add “personality” to your writing. Share some of yourself with your readers, make your writing uniquely your own. It’s fine to read e-zines and others’ articles to see what people may be interested in and spark your own ideas, but don’t pattern yourself after someone else. People want to feel that they know You - Your knowledge and personality. This is what builds loyalty.
If it fits with your subject, don’t be afraid to mention your product or service and give the URL or email address, but DON’T write a “glorified ad” and call it an article! That can offend a publisher so that they won’t even consider articles from you in the future.
4. After you’ve finished writing your article, read it through aloud, preferably to someone else who will ask questions if they don’t understand some point.
5. Run a spell checker! If you own Microsoft Word or something similar, run the grammar checker also. Have someone else proofread it for you. Even professional proofreaders will tell you that they try to have someone else proofread their own writing, because it is next to impossible to catch your own mistakes.
6. When you have finished your article and make the necessary changes, you will need to submit it to as many article directories as you can. Search the web for article directories to submit your article for free. There are also, paid services and software that will do the submissions for you, but you may want to wait until you have successfully written a few articles before you choose to pay.
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About The Author
Chet Holcomb of http://www.internetpromotions.biz is a successful marketing expert providing advice for web marketers and webmasters on how to promote your website, or product using marketing tools that work. His numerous articles provide a wonderfully researched resource of interesting and relevant information.
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Permanent link to this post (692 words, estimated 2:46 reading time)
August 21st, 2006
A reciprocal link is when a web site links to you and you link back to them.
If you own a website, I’m sure you’ve received emails asking for link exchanges. This article’s purpose is to help you decide who you should be linking to and why.
Look before you link!
Indiscriminate linking can be harmful to your search engine rankings and your reputation. When considering another website for a link exchange, always check out the potential link partner’s web site and the page that your link is going to be placed on.
(375 words, estimated reading time: 1:30 ) read the full post...
August 21st, 2006
Sometimes questions will arise around the subject of gateway information pages or doorway pages. People have heard that “doorway pages” are BAD and some have stated that search engines “hate doorway pages”.
For clarification on these type of issues, let’s start by explaining some simple ground rules looking beyond the jargon and terminology.
Do Search Engines Hate Doorway/Gateway Pages?
To answer this we’ll examine it in two steps.
Let’s understand:
1. What it is that the Search Engines “HATE”?
(1459 words, estimated reading time: 5:50 ) read the full post...
August 21st, 2006
Recent developments on the Google front have web marketers and SEO specialists talking even more than usual. What they’re talking about is the changing Search Engine Optimization landscape. Some of the traditional assumptions about what gets good Google ranking have been challenged by things Google has said over the last few months — especially by the filing of their most recent patent application.
A number of sensible suggestions have emerged about good SEO practice. Here is one of the most important:
(617 words, estimated reading time: 2:28 ) read the full post...
August 21st, 2006
Getting Links To Your Site Free and Easy
by: Andre Best
If you’re the least bit serious about promoting your website(s) online then you have probably heard the recent cry that one’s website needs links coming into it. Lot’s of links. And without these many, many links one is the proverbial billboard in the desert waiting to be seen by those thirsty for sustenance.
Well after these several years that I’ve been on the internet I too heard the call and have followed the many internet bandwagons that have rolled into e-town touting the next ‘latest and greatest’ snakeoil software to get one traffic that they won’t believe.
You know the cry… ‘The traffic explosion your favorite web guru gets - and it’ll only cost you $795 to attend this three-day conference to learn how to play with the big boys (and girls) online.’
Sound familiar? To most owning one or several websites it will.
But after being dragged around the reciprocal linking millstone over the last several months in a valiant attempt to obtain many reciprocal link exchanges and closely monitoring all completed link requests I can truthfully say that that job in itself is a bugger to track and stay on top of.
Why?
Because for the most part one has to rely on one common denominator in that equation… people.
I finally realized that this tactic of getting traffic ‘for free’ and having it prove itself as viable was indeed true. Link-exchanges do work. But they ARE work too.
But with me being the type of person who writes with my eyes closed (literally), I was told by a couple of e-friends that I should pursue ‘articles’ more vehemently. I didn’t know what they meant so what I did was find out about a couple of the bigger article directories on the Net and I submitted a couple of my writings to them. And then I promptly forgot about this process because it was extremely labor intensive.
And with me being a relatively lazy fellow at times I ‘moved on’ to other tasks that seemed more to my liking. And ease of use.
But after getting relatively burned out with this link-exchange stuff and dogging real live people to honor link exchange requests after I had ‘nicely’ place an unexpected link to their site on my site, I was tired of this whole process.
~~~~COMMENT~~~~
Yes, I know there are automated processes and software out there that will do this linking stuff for one, but again, I’ve also read how the SE’s are ‘onto’ these tactics and reciprocal links aren’t as effective as they used to be.
But they are still effective, that’s why I still honor the odd link exchange request I get. I just don’t spend all my time doing this anymore.
But getting back on track to the actual subject of this article…
~~END COMMENT~~
Back a couple of months ago, I somehow received an email about a new software program that would do ‘article submissions’ almost automatically.
But let me first digress somewhat and tell you what ‘article submitting’ is.
Article submitting may sound kind of formal and only for ‘writers’, but it isn’t.
Essentially, anytime one writes something of extended length, even a longer webpage, they’ve written an ‘article’.
Think about it. If you have a website that you’ve personally written, then you have written articles related to the subject of your website.
So, if your website is all about the best way to burp babies, then you have a whole bunch of ‘articles’ that you’ve written about parenting, specifically, burping babies.
What you can then do is submit these articles throughout the WWW and get yourself known as a baby burping expert.
But even more importantly, you can take each of the webpages you’ve written on your website and turn it into an ‘article’ - add a link BACK to your site in the footer of the article - and voila! you have written an article and ALSO obtained a link back to your site whenever someone else uses that article.
And all this without having to hassle with e-chasing that non-compliant link partner to honor their link exchange with you.
Sound cool? It is.
Now, like everything else, there is a downside to all this article writing.
It takes time to do.
First you have to have written YOUR OWN articles/webpages. And then you have to personally submit them to any of several hundred article directories floating around in cyberspace.
And of course there is the whole idea of you having the motivation to do this submission stuff too, so let me share a little bit of motivating statistics with you.
Remember how I mentioned earlier about having piddled with submitting a couple of stories/webpages I had written to several of the major article directories? Well, that was about 14 months ago. And remember how I told you that I did this and then promptly forgot about all this article submission stuff?
Well, over those 14 months since I did this, which by the way only took about one hour to do, I now have about 300 STATIC, incoming links to my site from those two articles being posted around the Internet. Yes, 300 incoming, NOT reciprocal, links.
And so what I did was after I received that email from someone touting this article submission software was to do some research on this whole article submission automation software process.
What I came out of this research with was that as of now there are two main article submission software programs that allow one to automate most of the process of doing this sometimes laborious task.
And since it is so repetitive and sometimes painstaking to do manual article submissions I thought that this would be one way to get me back into this process that I think is well suited for the way I like to promote my business online. With words, that is.
After much mental deliberation, and financial detailing, I opted to go for an article submission software that was released during the summer of 2005. Besides it being almost one-third the price of the other main player in this article submittal software e-competition going on, it also appeared to have a lot going for it with a money-back guarantee and a manual and good developer-support.
So I bought it several weeks ago and have been using it everyday to promote several of my websites by submitting ‘articles’ I’ve written to the several hundred article directories included in the automatic submissions this software does for the user.
And to say the least, the results, so far, are extremely impressive.
One little statistic. Remember those two articles I submitted 14 months ago and obtained over 300 incoming links from doing so? Well, I’ve used this software to continue submitting them to other article directories included in the software program.
And now that 300 incoming links number now numbers almost 700. Yes, 700 incoming links from just those two articles. An increase of approximately 400 incoming links, in just five weeks.
To me, those are some GOOD results. Especially without having to chase other humans to reciprocal link with me, building link webpages, tracking linking emails, checking links, buying tracking software, and all that stuff that goes along with the reciprocal linking process.
So, if you’re tired of buying links and chasing other website owners for reciprocal link exchanges, do consider using content you’ve written as a way to get links, and eventually traffic, into your site.
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About The Author
Written by Andre Best
President, Ultimate Results, Inc.
http://www.ArticlesandAuthors.com - THE Premier Site for Articles AND Authors
Authors permission is granted to share this full article with others. Just leave the signature line intact, please.
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August 21st, 2006
Google Pagerank Update - First In 2006
by: Otilia Otlacan
With much enthusiasm and equally much concern, there are clear signs that a new Google PageRank update is happening right now as we speak.
Most of you, web site owners, publishers and SEO consultants, are probably dreading these updates just as much as I do: after a period of working hard into acquiring new valuable links, the inevitable question is “Will I be rewarded? And if so, just how much?”
Let’s take a glimpse into what the new PageRank update is bringing:
First, let’s see what will your page’s new PageRank be?
If you haven’t done this yet, check the page(s) that interest you using a Future PageRank tool (available from http://www.teawithedge.com/google_pr_update.html ).
This simple tool sends queries to known Google data centers in order to retrieve the PageRank of the given URL. It should normally show the same PageRank for all centers, however, if you run the tool during an actual PageRank update, you can see variations from one data center to another thus previewing what your page’s future PageRank will be.
Caught any changes?
Whatever the answer, there are some logical explanations for it.
After studying the performance of several web sites, these are the conclusions I have come upon:
1. The trend to reward links from content-related web sites continues.
Web sites that have focused on gathering quality links, both reciprocal and non-reciprocal, from web sites with related content, shall expect to see their efforts to be successful: a relatively small amount of related links, even if reciprocal, proves to be much more beneficial than thousands of totally unrelated links.
However, one must not forget that climbing on the PageRank ladder becomes increasingly difficult as you ascend. If your web site already had a good PageRank before this update (i.e. 4 and above) it is possible not to see an improvement on the 0 to 10 scale. The true PageRank scale is exponential: the distance from 3 to 4 is much smaller than the distance from 4 to 5, and the distance from 4 to 5 is tiny compared to the distance from 5 to 6!
If you know you have planned and executed your SEO plan correctly in terms of building link popularity (and that means focusing on gathering links from related sites, work towards getting non-reciprocal links, and paid attention to various way PageRank can leak out of your pages), keep on the good works and if possible intensify them: you’ll be rewarded by the next update, depending on how high is your current PageRank.
2. Newly created web sites are able to achieve a nice PageRank from their first PageRank update, providing they played fair in the link building game: little but quality links, and care for not leaking PageRank when not necessary can easily get a PR of 3 to a new site!
The issue of PageRank leaking has been probably overly-discussed within the SEO media, yet it might still be useful to mention that there is “good” leaking and “bad” leaking and it’s only up to the site’s publisher to make a choice:
- “good leaking” is when a site links to external resources that are of benefit for its readers, thus giving a vote of trust and approval to the linked site;
- similarly, “bad leaking” is when a site associates itself with a resource search engines (Google, in this case) dislike, such as link farms, sites employing gray or black SEO techniques, or sites with totally unrelated content (this usually happens when, in an attempt to monetize a site, ads and links to unrelated resources are published).
3. Sites that acquired no new linkbacks since the previous update seem not to be penalized (unlike a while ago!), and stay constant with their older PageRank.
The current PageRank scale seems to be stabile and it might take a while until it is brought down a level, in order to keep some proportions to it.
If this is the case for your sites, it might be a good idea that you start a link building campaign in order to make sure your site is not in danger of being brought down at a further update. Depending on the intensity and quality of your campaign, you can even go up the ladder - with all the benefits this can bring.
To sum up, Google’s new PageRank update shows clear signs of continuing the existing trend of rewarding those who employ clean, honest techniques against the less innocent ones. This is nothing but good news for the SEO community and serious publishers, however, there’s no guarantee we will live to see the end of the war between the “good” guys and the “bad” guys of the SEO world.
Permanent link to this post (820 words, estimated 3:17 reading time)
August 21st, 2006
At first glance, Pay Per Click advertising seems to be the fastest way to send targeted website traffic to your websites online. You choose some keywords and add your website’s url and you are done. However, with most things online the competitive search terms are often very expensive and you spend lots of money to win the Pay Per Click wars. This article will list five reasons why article marketing may be better than Pay Per Click Advertising.
Permanent links
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August 21st, 2006
Time is a factor
To obtain positive results is not very fast to achieve. It always takes time to reach a good ranking on search engines since there are millions of web pages to be indexed in their databases. So it takes approximately between six months & one year to see ranking results according to new strategies set by search engines specifically Google, taking into consideration of doing the least effort to reach so. At frequent basis you will need to add new fresh text content & resubmit every time a significant change is done to your website. Always make sure that the submission process is done manually otherwise the automated system could lead your site to become penalized since spiders have the capability to identify them.
(409 words, estimated reading time: 1:38 ) read the full post...
August 21st, 2006
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