Archive for August, 2006
Is your website listed on search engines? When people search for you, does your site show up on page 1 or page 20 of the search engine results?
Optimizing your site to get it ranked highly on the search engines can be a complicated subject. To simplify things, it’s helpful to first understand how search engines add sites to their database. Then we’ll cover some tips that you can put on your own website that will help you to get listed on search engines and get a higher ranking.
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August 30th, 2006
Trying to improve search engine rankings is just like a rubics cube. A puzzle that can keep you occupied for hours. How many times have you heard “They keep changing the rules?," and the frustrating part is…they don’t even tell you what the rules are in the first place!
It’s a proven fact, in trying to improve search engine rankings, that growing your site thru link popularity, by slowly acquiring incoming quality links, adding small amounts of fresh relevant content on a regular basis, using proper keyword density and placement, along with making your site “sticky” so your visitor’s stay longer.
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August 30th, 2006
Why Hire SEO Professionals
by: Avneet Sethi
Why hire SEO professionals
Hiring an SEO firm for optimizing the website has its advantages. The article talks about what these advantages are and how you can select a good SEO firm for carrying out SEO of your online properties.
What you must know about SEO
If well understood, you can perform SEO for your own website. Every piece of information required to carry out SEO is present online. What needs done is research on what works and what doesn’t, what’s ok with search engines and what isn’t.
You also need to keep yourself up to date with search engine news, regular algorithm updates, user search pattern, competition check and also monitor the link building partners in order to ensure that your links have not been dropped, update your on-page optimization regularly to ensure your pages are informative and in tune with the search pattern. These are just few of the things that you need to keep an eye on.
What SEO professionals bring
The problem is that even if you have the time, you probably don’t have the resources to research the algorithm to know if it’s changed, which parameters are still important and which have become redundant, what you need to do to stay in the top ten.
In all probability, you would know about the algorithm change only after it has affected your rankings. You would then either research on your own to find what happened, or visit forums where the SEO professionals are discussing what probably went wrong (which again are individual views of SEO experts) and get confused by the different answers. Since you don’t have the resources to validate all the theories, you’ll pick the one that seems logical to you (or the one which is given by one of the more known professionals), implement it and wait to see if the rankings reappear. This would take 5-8 weeks anyways. Then, if the results don’t show up, you’ll try another thing, probably losing another 5-8 weeks of business.
Its been about 16- 20 weeks already, another search engine changes the algorithm and search pattern changes - you’ve probably missed the boom sale period and since you were so involved in getting your rankings back, you didn’t even utilize the PPC program affectively.
That’s why you need professionals
SEO companies have the resources and are doing this day in day out. Since they are working with more than one industry, they know the search pattern, are pre-warned in case of algorithm changes because of the research and can affectively implement the changes - and test it in quarter of the time you’ll take while consulting you on the alternatives so that you don’t stop making money!
How to choose the right SEO firm:
Here is list of questions you must get a YES for from the SEO firm before you consider it to be your Internet Marketing service provider.
1. Do you have a website?
2. Do you have a phone line where I can contact you?
3. Do you have case studies that I can review?
4. Do you have a list of clients I can call for reference if required?
5. Can you send me a copy of your SEO/PPC/LB process?
6. Can you send me a copy of the contract?
7. Can you send me a document listing the SEO practices you consider unethical and would not be carried out on my website?
8. Can the above list of “SEO Practices - not followed” be made a part of the contract?
9. Can you send me a copy of the SEO Guarantees that you give and don’t give?
10. Can the SEO Guarantees document be made part of the contract?
11. Would I have a Project Responsible assigned from your end?
Once you have the documents, review them and compare the SEO firms for the process details, contract details, unethical practices document and their Guarantees document.
NOTE: Any firm giving ranking guarantees needs to be approached very cautiously. No one can guarantee organic rankings.
Please read more about SEO Guarantees at http://www.cueblocks.com/articles/seo/seo-guarantees-1.php.
Once you have received all answers to your questions, compare the costs. Don’t compromise on the service and the quality - it can cost you your online business.
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About The Author
Avneet Sethi is working with CueBlocks - an Internet Marketing Firm that helps companies develop and implement successful online marketing strategies.
http://www.cueblocks.com
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Permanent link to this post (741 words, estimated 2:58 reading time)
August 30th, 2006
What Is Black Hat Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
by: Dana Goldberg
Seo has been very useful and famous in internet marketing. There are many techniques that make boosting your site a success through different seo strategies. But despite the success of seo, there are some black practitioners who tend to see the field of search engine optimization as war, and the search engines are doing anything to beat the competition whether it is fair or foul. Those white hatters market with the other search engines as associates or partners who can help them drive links and business to their client’s sites.
Cloaking happens when a website or a web page displays different content for a certain search engine spider in opposition to a human user. Cloaking is the one that delivers a version of a page to an Internet user and a different description to a search engine. You will notice a cloaked page is filled with keywords and phrases that the site wants to make them rank high.
This is done by cloaking the programs that weigh the IP address of the other party to a database of the known IP address which comes from a definite search engine spider. If there is a match in the IP address on the list, it serves a page which is particularly written for the search engines.
Cloaking has several good reasons which include increasing advertising and promotion. If you are trying to control your rankings in the different search engines, it might result to penalize your site or it might be banned.
Spamming or the keyword stuffing is a long list of keywords placed in the content and also the code on the page which makes it unreadable. Have you seen a page that repeatedly displays an ad with certain words? It is obvious that the site is trying to rank its page. This is known as keyword spamming but it is just one tip that most SEO companies are trying to do to increase page rank.
You might not notice the page may have invisible text, title tags, meta tags and comment tags. If a page repeats a certain keyword repeatedly, google might place a filter to lessen the ranking or much worse, ban the site. Keyword density can be quite tricky but following the general rule, 3% t0 12 % is the percentage to which a site can use the targeted keywords.
You will notice there are some hidden texts in SEO strategies. This happens when a text or link is invisible to the website visitor but can still be seen by the search engines. If this happens it is considered hidden. Before, people used small fonts to hide the text or they would even use the same color for the background.
This makes them able to put some links which are unseen, but has long been noticed by the search engines that is why they have come up with another strategy this time. Spammers are using the cascading style sheets in order to hide the text. Some are also using tags which are set to hide the text on the page. These strategies are considered hidden if they are left unseen but search engines have their own technique of spotting invisible links so better not do it at all.
The doorway pages are those that exclusively exist to rank well in the different search engines. You may notice some of the pages being ugly and some contain paragraphs which do not have any relation to the topic. Most of the time these doorway pages are not part of the regular navigation of the site which are called orphaned pages.
A black hat SEO can use very good software to filter or generate the doorway pages. This happens when they plug a few keywords and search the page.
You may notice some sites linking to other sites which are have no relation at all. Some sites just link to other sites which is part of their strategy. Now, you will find this truly spamming.
If you are going to put up your own website, make sure that you will avoid these things and keep SEO marketing fair and do not think of competition. Think of how you can increase your site ranking fairly.
Permanent link to this post (734 words, estimated 2:56 reading time)
August 30th, 2006
There’s tons of money to be made from the Google Adsense program for web masters and blog owners. That’s why "the vultures are circling" and folks are getting sucked in with all sorts of offers that promise instant high Adsense revenue. One of the top-selling products these days are those lists with the highest-paying Google Adsense keywords. Many people are desperately searching out for these lists and many will not hesitate to pay for them, especially because there are some keywords that are reputed to be capable of earning $100 per click.
(785 words, estimated reading time: 3:08 ) read the full post...
August 30th, 2006
Google’s calling your name…
Hi, Google here. We want to index your website…
Is anyone there?
This article has a free corresponding online video tutorial that shows you how to summons the magic Googlebot to spider and index every page on your website, and it will only take about 10 minutes of your time.
Go here now to watch exactly what to do, step-by-easy-step…
http://www.gothrive.com/google-sitemap-video.htm
(722 words, estimated reading time: 2:53 ) read the full post...
August 30th, 2006
Are You Really Measuring for Return on Investment (ROI) with Search Engine Optimization?
Puzzling studies and reports suggest that businesses are missing out when it comes to ROI, including a whole host of metrics that should confirm or shape search engine marketing strategies.
(626 words, estimated reading time: 2:30 ) read the full post...
August 30th, 2006
Writing and Submitting Articles. Why Is It Important?
by: Gunnar Berglund
The importance of writing and submitting articles is the fact that you won’t get the word out about what you believe in strongly enough to put on paper, unless someone is there to read it. If you write salesletters but you don’t write and submit articles, there is almost no point to it. Of course it’s always nice to read your own writing after you write an article. But wouldn’t it feel better to know that you have touched someone else’s life by writing and submitting articles for other people to read? In all shapes sizes and fashions, people love to read.
Take a look at every magazine, newspaper and website in production today. Writer’s filled those pages with content. The importance of it is that you would be looking at nothing if someone didn’t write and submit articles to the publication. Every single writer contributes to this content or there would be no books, papers, or billboards.
Most of the time, the content that fills these pages are very well written pieces, things people saw potential in so they would write and submit the articles. You can find potential in almost every aspect of genres, so to write and submit articles on a subject you love would not be hard to do. The importance of writing and submitting articles ultimately ends with you and your beliefs. If you don’t believe your written article is good enough for publication, you may find that you don’t feel it is important to write and submit this article. You may feel that your work just isn’t that great. You may not feel the need to re write it, but instead to destroy it. It’s not uncommon that there are tons of articles on a daily basis that are never going to be submitted let alone published.
If we took the time to write and submit at least one article per week, we would be able to contribute our individual point of view to the world. That is probably the most important reason to write and submit articles. You can submit articles online, or you can submit articles on hard copy. It’s up to the writer, and the importance each person puts on their own work will determine it’s potential to be published. You can write and submit an article to a website, or write an article to a magazine. Whichever you prefer, you can’t give up writing articles. Even when you don’t succeed at first, you can find a publication where you’re article will fit.
Think about it. If you don’t credit your own work with any importance, how do you expect anyone else to? It is important to hold yourself to your own high standards, write an article, submit the article, and see what happens. Before you know it you can contribute to the content you see everyday, everywhere. Now that’s important.
Permanent link to this post (520 words, estimated 2:05 reading time)
August 30th, 2006
How many times have you heard that posting on FFA sites are a complete waste of time?
Are FFA sites really a complete waste of time? …Yes they are!
Then why do millions of people still post on FFA pages every single day of the year.
It sure beats me!
The ONLY people gaining from FFA sites are the people that ‘HOST’ them.
“WHY?”… I hear you ask. Well listen very carefully.
(390 words, estimated reading time: 1:34 ) read the full post...
August 30th, 2006
You and I know that whenever you have a business, whether it’s On-line or Off-line you would have to take some time and money to market that business right?
What you may not know is that you can still create success without spending too much money. It’s not the amount of money that you have to spend on advertising, it’s the clever strategies that you have to use to try to get tons of traffic to your business.
(1883 words, estimated reading time: 7:32 ) read the full post...
August 30th, 2006
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