Using Meta Tags Wisely to Attract Search Engines and Visitors


There are certain tricks and techniques in SEO industry, which can fetch you real quick and top ranking in short run and get banned for ever, which I am discussing in this article. Before optimizing any site, always follow code of ethics and never spam.

In this article, I will be discussing about meta tags. How to use the them effectively without spamming. Its not just another article about meta tags. Read on to find out more..

Meta Tags are very important for your website's visibility. Many search engines read them from your site when you submit it to them.

META tags were developed and made a HTML standard for the purpose of addressing specific information about your web page that does not affect the way your page actually looks.

1. Overstuffing Metatags : Believe me or not , there are still many people and web masters around who think that meta tags are magic bullet. Its not anymore.

Mistake No. 1: Stuffing keywords in Title


Mistake No. 2: Stuffing keywords in Description


Mistake No. 3: The keyword tag.

Mistake No. 1 : Stuffing keywords in Title

I agree that its very important to include your main keywords in title tag. But there are certain things, which you should remember, as title tag is the most important tag.

    * Title tag length should be within 70 characters or 8 words

    * Title tag should be meaning full and attract visitors

    * Use one to two keywords in title tag

    * Use plurals & concentrate on keyword phrases rather than just keyword.

    * Make sure that title tag is grammatically correct

Syntax of Title Tag :

Your site title goes here

Now, lets me show you live demo on Title tag. Please search for "Office furniture uk" in Google, without double quotes. See the results. This is the first site listed under Google.

Office Furniture Home UK, Home Office Furniture London, Home ...


Office Furniture UK Online Home Office and Small Office Shopping England,

London, UK. Furniture, Office, Seat, Seating, Desk, Desks ...


Description: Uses full screen flash with exit button. Offering bespoke office furniture solutions for businesses....

Welcome to furniture123 - Bedroom furniture, Office furniture, ...


.. desk uk, child bed, home office furniture, child furniture, dining furniture, coffee table, office chair, furniture retailer, upholstery uk, bathroom furniture ...

Welcome to - Blueline Furniture - Ergonomic furniture, Custom ...


.. has pioneered the manufacture of office furniture using timber ... FIRA GOLD Quality Award as its furniture hire, minimum ... dealer network across the UK and Channel ...

MFI.co.uk


UK's leading furniture retailer offering an extensive range of quality furniture, including home office furniture, bedroom furniture, dining furniture, beds ...

These are the above first 4 results arrived for the term "Office furniture UK" in google. Now have a look over title and description. The first title does not make any sense and its stuffed with keywords, though its ranking no.1 it would have less click thorough as compared to no 2 and no 3.

A fair and attractive title would be something like :

Offers quality office furniture at discount price in UK ( Short title )

UK's leading furniture retailer offering office furniture at discount ( Perfect one )

Look at the above two titles. It conveys some message with a perfect sense. The best possible keywords have been used and its catchy too. Just by crafting a good title you can increase your click through, even though you are not listed in top 1 or 2 positions. I hope now you must have got some idea about crafting good title. Now lets jump to next step. Yeah. Description Tag.

Description Tag :

Description tag is still important as most of the search engines still give importance to it. Sometimes even google picks up description tag. An ideal description should be somewhere within 150 to 200 characters, which correctly describes the content of the page. Make sure to place 2 to 3 important keyword phrases within first 100 characters.

Tip 1 : Make sure that description tag comes immediately after title tag.

Tip 2. Make sure that the first paragraph or the heading of the page contains 2 to 3 important keyword phrase.

Tip 3. If possible you the targeted keyword phrase in text links to get boost.

Things to avoid :

# Do not stuff the description tag with keywords.

# Do not use generic keywords, use keyword phrases

# Do not repeat the title in description

Keyword Tag :

The keyword tag is almost dead. Most of the web masters try to flood the key word tag with all sorts of keywords. Hardly couple of search engines gives a bit of importance to it.

Please note that, directories like Yahoo, Dmoz & About does not consider keyword tag or meta tags. I do not recommend using keyword tag. If you use the keyword tag, do not include more than 8 keyword phrases.

Do's

# Include only important long keyword phrases.

# Don't use generic / general terms. Be specific

# Use Word tracker to find good keyword phrases

Don'ts

# Do not spam by stuffing all the possible keywords.

# Do not include the keywords, which are not related to your website

# Do not repeat any tag ( title, description, keyword tag ) you might get boost by repeating, but never know when you will be banned.

Other important things to remember :

# Meta tags ( Title & Description ) should reflect the content the page. Do not put your company name in title.

# Do not try to target more than 2 to 3 keyword phrases per page

# Try to include your important keyword phrases in h1 to h6 tag.

# Include your important keyword phrases in tag, bold tag.

# You will get boost if you include your important keyword phrases in anchor tag.

# Do not forget to Include your important keyword phrases in first paragraph of your web page.

# Try to put your important keyword phrases in alt text. ( for images )

# Make sure that title and description is crafted neatly and attracts both visitors and search engines.

Robots (Recommended)

See the workshop report at W3 for the full text.

default = empty = "ALL"

"NONE" = "NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"

The filler is a comma separated list of terms:

ALL, NONE, INDEX, NOINDEX, FOLLOW, NOFOLLOW.

Discussion: This tag is meant to provide users who cannot control the robots.txt file at their sites. It provides a last chance to keep their content out of search services. It was decided not to add syntax to allow robot specific permissions within the meta-tag.

INDEX means that robots are welcome to include this page in search services.

FOLLOW means that robots are welcome to follow links from this page to find other pages.

So a value of "NOINDEX" allows the subsidiary links to be explored, even though the page is not indexed. A value of "NOFOLLOW" allows the page to be indexed, but no links from the page are explored (this may be useful if the page is a free entry point into pay-per-view content, for example. A value of "NONE" tells the robot to ignore the page.

Conclusion

There are other meta tags like, Author, language, Copyright, Re-visit, classification etc. which are ignored by most of the search engines. Experience says, use the three tags wisely ( title, description & keywords ). You will be attracting both visitors and search engines. You can also use our free meta tag generator at http://www.website-promotion-ranking-services.com/meta_tag_generator.htm

For more information or any comments / suggestion on this article please EMail me. I will be glad to clarify the doubts / queries with live examples.

About The Author

Author: Rajesh V. Tavakari is SEO Specialist of Website Promotion & Ranking Services, an Internet Marketing firm specializing in

Website promotion & Website optimization.

URL: http://www.website-promotion-ranking-services.com

[email protected]

You may freely reprint this article on your website or in your newsletter provided this courtesy notice and the author name and URL remain intact.

The (Not So) Shocking Truth About Getting A High Search Engine Ranking


I have seen my site hit #3 at Google, and some of my fellow entrepreneurs are wondering how I did it. Well, it's no big secret, and it won't cost you anything but your time. Here's what I did:

# I searched online for information about the title and description tags to get a better idea of what they should say. http://www.selfpromotion.com is a great site for this kind of information. It's all about search engine positioning, and it's free to sign up. However, your account only stays active for 4 weeks, after which the webmaster asks that you donate money to his site to keep your account active.

# I used Overture's free keyword tool at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. Just enter keywords that are relevant to your site, and Overture will generate the most popular search terms that people are using. I picked the most popular terms (making sure they were relevant), and made a list of keywords for each page of my site in Notepad.

# Next, I visited http://www.scrubtheweb.com/abs/meta-check.html. This handy tool will check your meta tags and tell you if there are too many characters in your title, keyword and description. The above site is just one of many meta tag analyzers available on the net, so beware - every analyzer says something different when it comes to how many characters your meta tags should have. My advice? Pick one and stick with it, at least for a while. Otherwise, you will just get frustrated.

# As soon as I uploaded my pages with their new meta tags, I resubmitted to the search engines using (the former) World Submitter - http://www.worldwidepromoter.com/?strategy. Note: there are some search engines that require you to submit your site manually in order to get listed. Selfpromotion.com has great information and articles about how to properly submit to these engines. I wouldn't suggest submitting to the search engines more than once or twice per month, unless you want to run the risk of being accused of spamming them.

# If I see the opportunity to add my link on a relevant site, I go for it. The more links your site has to other sites, the higher you will rank in the search engines. However, you will want to avoid linking with sites that are your direct competition.

You may just find that selfpromotion.com is the only place you need to go for information about search engine positioning. I did quite a bit of research and found several sites with great information, so I just tried to combine them all. Am I a glutton for punishment? Probably But even though it took hours to redo all of my meta tags from scratch, it was well worth it to see my site in Google's Top 10!

Elizabeth Piotrowski

About The Author

Powerful ad copy is the key to producing the visits and sales you want. Drop by http://www.strategyadservice.com for low-cost, effective solutions!

Search Warrant


So, you've just paid £300 - £10,000 for a new web site to be designed 'registered your URL' and now it's sitting on the World Wide Web. All your new stationery and Business Cards give the Web Site address quite clearly. The designer assures you that it has been 'submitted' to all the 'Search Engines' and, when you type in the address, there it is.

You've told your customers all about it and they visit it occasionally ... No-one else seems to find it. No new enquiries and the visitor counter is moving slowly nowhere. Sound familiar?

What could have gone wrong? Was it all a waste of valuable marketing resources? Is the Web a wasteland and has the 'dot.com' bubble really burst?

The simple answer is that nothing has gone wrong, all that remains to be done is to 'market your site' effectively and the enquiries should come flooding in.

So let's go back to good, old fashioned, Sales and Marketing basics - AIDA - Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

Unless you get the customers attention they won't even know your Web Site exists and, if they don't know it exists, how can they find it among the 2.6 billion other Sites on the Web!!

Entrusting the 'selling' of your site to a Web Page designer is a little like expecting a printer to distribute your brochures to your prospective customers and waiting for the orders. The responsibility, therefore, is yours and you, or a member of your marketing team, have to grit your teeth and get on with it.

Interest, Desire and Action should emanate from the design and content of your Web Page, however the first step, Getting Attention, has to be done successfully before any of this can take place. This article focuses on this vital first step

How to get Attention on the Net

To get attention on the World Wide Web you have to get your site listed on the major search engines, and that means within the top 20 places, otherwise your prospective customers will find a similar product, or service, long before they reach you.

Imagine the Internet is like a giant Yellow Pages, with no index, wherever it falls open is where your prospective customer starts to look. It is therefore essential that your site is right at the top of the first page they see.

80% of all traffic to a Web Site is through the major search engines and 'off-line' marketing activity currently accounts for only 2% of 'hits'. This will probably continue into the future, so no amount of advertising will bring the response that a search engine 'listing' will bring, particularly if you are using the Internet to reach the International Market.

To achieve a high listing you, or someone in your team, have to understand how search engines work and then adapt the web site to get their attention. Alternatively you could pay a consultancy to achieve the same results - however no-one will understand your customers the way you do therefore the time and effort invested in developing net skills in house would be worth it. In addition it would be more beneficial if the person selected were from a Sales and Marketing background, who knows the products, with a smattering of IT know how, than a 'techie' - After all, this is marketing.

However, a mistake often arises from a simple misconception. The customer you are targeting with the web site is not the end user - your product, or service, and the design of the site, once they get there is supposed to do this.

The customer for the web site itself is the search engine and its 'buyers'

The 'buyers' fall into 2 categories Search Engine 'spiders' or 'robots' who are totally logical, electronic and not very clever and Human reviewers who are not so logical, know what they do, and don't, like and may be influenced by a snappy description. Let's take each in turn

Search Engine Spiders

Spiders are computer programs that roam the World Wide Web ceaselessly, travelling from page to page of every web site they visit remembering every word on every page. They like pages that change and ignore pages that haven't changed since the last time they were there.

They can only reach a Web site by one of two methods

1 By being told about it - this you can do by registering your site with the search Engine and, eventually, it will send a spider out to visit it.

2 By visiting a Web Site from a link that has been established from another Web Site that it knows about and regularly visits.

The First Rule, therefore, is to register your Web Site with all the major search engines and to begin to develop reciprocal links with other complimentary web sites. The more links you have coming in to your site the more important it must be in the eyes of the spider!

What do the Spiders look for when they visit a site?

Contrary to popular belief, they do not all look for 'keywords' - for instance the Excite, Lycos and Google spiders ignore keywords almost altogether - no amount of conjuring with keywords will get your site to the top 20 in these search engines. What will get your site higher in the ratings is the of the site and the of the site. You can check out what the and of the site are by selecting View, Source in the menu bar of your Web Browser - this shows you what the spider, not the visitor, sees.

The Second Rule, therefore, is not to call your site by the name of the company ( as most businesses do) unless your company name is so well known that everyone will search for it, or the name of your company says what you do quite clearly and unambiguously. No-one cares who you are, it's what you do for them, that counts. If this sounds a little like 'selling the benefits, not the features' it's meant to.

For example - imagine your company is called ABC Electronics and that you manufacture electric vehicles in the UK. Then the of your site could be 'Electric Cars and Vehicles UK, ABC Electronics'

Anyone searching for electric cars and vehicles would find your site at the top of the list, or very close. Whereas if the site were called 'ABC Electronics Limited' it would come much lower in the Search Engine listings, if at all, unless someone searched for 'ABC Electronics Limited' and, bear in mind, the intention of the Internet is to reach a wider audience - if they knew who you were, wouldn't they have already contacted you by other means?

Therefore the single most important part of marketing your site is getting the right. However the preceding sentence is written in invisible ink and most businesses will continue to ignore this simple fact.

The Third Rule is to beware of 'frames' within your web site, particularly the first page, since some of the spiders can only index what is inside the top frame and not the links you would like it to in the main frame.

If you need to use frames as a navigation tool then consider using a 'portal' , or 'doorway', page, or one without a frame, as the first, or entry, page of your site. This, at least, should be identified by all the relevant search engines. You would then link this page to the framed pages on your main site. This may result in some of the Search engines only listing one of the pages on your site, however that is a price you may have to pay.

The Fourth Rule is to ensure that the of the site, in particular the first paragraph of text on the page, contains some of the keywords and / or phrases that your prospective customer will be searching for.

There are some technicalities to observe, such as repeating the keywords within the between 3 and 7 times is optimum. Any more than that and the spiders will penalise you and possibly ignore your site altogether, any less than that and you are not taking full advantage of the spiders totally logical process.

Avoid having repetitive text the same colour as the background in the hope of fooling the spider - this is a myth and will result in the spider banning you from the search engine!

So, for the Electronics Company example above. If the text was to the effect 'Formed in 1985 ABC Electronics is based in Andover, Hampshire, close to the M5, etc. etc.' the spider will not find the words Electric Cars and Vehicles in the and therefore reduce your rating.

However if the said

'Electric Cars and Vehicles (as a headline) - Formed in 1985 ABC Electronics is a world leader in the design and development of Electric Cars and Vehicles for the Armed Forces, Electric Vehicles for the Ambulance Service, etc, etc' the spider would find a high 'density' of keywords in the and improve your sites' rating.

The Fifth Rule is to understand and develop the sites Tags.

Tags are not as important, to some search engines, as the and keyword density of the , but they do include a variety of different items that some search engines and all human reviewers may see which include , , etc. If you employ a range of tactics it will increase your overall success.

This is now the place for on the site - these would be the words that your prospective customers would search for through the search engine. In doing this try to think the way the customer would think - in other words sell benefits, solve problems, anticipate the questions they would be asking. AltaVista and Mirago operate almost exclusively on and tend to ignore .

List all your keywords on a word processing page then prioritise them. What do you think will be the order that people will type in keywords to search for your service or product? Remember, try to think like your customers think, so, for instance, if you produce massage oil is it possible that they will type in sports injury (or injuries)? What does your product do, or solve, not just what is it.

The next step is to pluralise your key words, as in the example above if someone typed in sports injury and your keyword was injuries they would miss you. If you make orange, oranges then searching on either word will find you.

Consider putting in mis-spelt keywords if those words are commonly mis-spelt or mistyped for instance 'servcie'. This is to ensure that people who mis spell or mis type can also find you.

However, a word of warning, the market leader in a particular product range is very low in the ratings on most search engines because their designer mis-spelt a keyword in the design of the web site. If you're not sure whether or not this is true go to www.google.com and search for 'veleting' or the word Barnaley (for Barnsley) - It's amazing what some people do

Also, it may be useful to include a ridiculous such as 'agriptanch', why? Because when you need to find out if your site is registered with a based search engine you simply search on 'agriptanch' and if your site is registered up it comes. If not you may have to re-register it.

The next step is to take a calculated gamble and opt for one of the following methods of using the keywords:

Target vs. Blanket

This is deciding whether or not to use a series of keywords that will cover everything anyone could possibly type in when looking for your product or service, or taking the gamble and knowing what he or she will type in and just put that as a keyword or phrase.

So, for example, if you dealt with a specific subject such as Sea Fishing then you may use just that phrase knowing that the majority of people who were searching for you would type that in as their query.

Target will bring you higher on a search engine listing but you have to be certain that people will search for exactly that word, or phrase.

Blanket covers a larger list of key words you will therefore be listed in more categories but lower on the listings for each, since the density is lower.

You are allowed approximately 200 per page, of course, if you choose to target the prospective customer you may only use 2 or 3 of these. Nevertheless the correct format for is word, comma, space e.g. "cleaning, upholstery, upholstery cleaning, etc"

The Sixth rule is possibly the most misunderstood rule of all : Spiders cannot follow graphically embedded links. This means that when your web page designer has put all those buttons and GIFS and animations on the page, if there are no text links to other pages then the search engine will only see one page. This means that if you have a 100 page web site, as far as the search engines are concerned you have given them a book with all the pages stuck together, unless they are linked in a way that the spiders can follow. There are very simple bits of coding that can be placed in the source code of each page to ensure the spiders access all pages.

There are other, more sophisticated ways to attract the attention of the spiders, such as the development and publishing of separate 'portal' pages, each directed back to your index page. However, by adapting the information above and applying it to your companies web site you will start to see a rapid increase in visitors and a promotion to the upper echelons of the 'Spider' based Search engines.

Human Reviewers

These are people who are either employed by the search engine company or are volunteer editors. They control what appears where in the King of all search engines, Yahoo, and in the human edited directory known as Open Directory. In order to attract their attention you need to develop snappy, factual, compulsive sales copy for the and the element of the web site.

Although these appear in the tags and are therefore unseen by the normal viewer, they are also the words that are used when registering with the Human edited Search Engines. they are the words that will entice them to review and, hopefully, categorise your site.

Restrict the to 150 characters, including spaces, it does not require keywords, but make it appealing to a human being since they probably see hundreds of sites per day. avoid phrases like 'simply the best', 'the only web site to visit'. Just like the editor of a newspaper, or magazine they are looking for interesting, quality, information for their clients who are the end users, the people who are ceaselessly searching the Internet for exactly the type of service, or product, you provide.

Finally

Whatever you invest in web site development is wasted money unless you are willing to 'market the site' to the Internet 'buyers'. With 2.605 Billion Web Sites out there (yes it has increased by 5,000,000 since you started to read this article) it's a little like throwing a pin on the floor, in a house, in London, and expecting someone to find it - without giving them the address.

Go back to basics in sales and marketing - identify the buyer, study the buyer, understand buyer behaviour and then make it easy for them to buy. And remember, if you have a 10 page web site that's 10 opportunities they have to 'buy' since each can have it's own , , and .

Ensure that you get the Attention of the Search Engine Buyers, work with your marketing department on developing a Site that Interests the end user, builds their Desire to buy your service, or product, and deliver a compelling call to Action that produces e - success for your on-line business.

About The Author

John Saxon is a Companion of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management and a Director of Fastlink Solutions Limited and Site-Pro Limited. He has had a number of articles published in different mediums including the internet and the ISMM Magazine. His web sites may be visited at http://www.fastlinksolutions.co.uk and http://www.site-pro.co.uk

You Have More Web Sites Than You Think You Have: The Importance of Deep Submission


If I ask you how many web sites do you have? You may say "One, yes it is www.mycompany.com " or "two" in case you have a second organization or company. When I first began promoting my web sites I was, like most people, only thinking in terms of one web address, the url of my main page. And I thought that this main page was a difficult one to promote because it was the index page of a magazine that covered a wide variety of fields (environment, arts, science, politics, spirituality, etc). How could I optimize a page for so many keywords, which market could I focus on?

It was only after discussing the subject with another web master, who had a similar site, that I learned that the diversity of all the inner pages of my site was a huge asset. Each of these pages was like a mini-website, and capable of attracting a multitude of visitors using a variety of keywords. Part of my ignorance at that point was due to a lack of accurate tracking data. I had a simple tracker on the main page that told how many visits that page was getting, but I had no idea of what was happening deeper inside the site. Then I was able to get access to the raw access logs of the site and using a log analysis tool I began to see the real picture of what was happening.

I saw that the main page was getting one third of the total traffic of the site. I found out that one article, "The Causes of Tropical Deforestation" was a big hit and consistently getting a lot of traffic. Other articles were also quite popular, but covering completely different subjects. It was then that I realized that I had not one web site, but more than 100 web sites.

What does all this mean in terms of design, optimization and submission? It means that one has to realize that people may well enter your site through the "side door" or the "back door" and you have to prepare accordingly.

For design, it means that the structure of your pages and navigation system should invite the people who enter from the inner pages, to make it to your important pages (about us, main page, or your order page!). For optimization it means that you should take more care about the placing of keywords, description and title tags on all the pages. Have you ever seen websites where the blue line at the top of the browser is showing the title of the page to be "New Page"? Even very good designers become a little bit sloppy on the inner pages, and though they do usually manage to put a proper page title on those pages, they seldom take the trouble to write separate meta tags for the keywords and descriptions. But as I learned, these pages are an asset and can be optimized and promoted to gain more traffic.

The first thing that I did was to redesign my navigation system to take advantage of this traffic and make sure that those who entered through the back door would visit the important departments of the magazine. I also put a newsletter sign-up form on all the inner pages, and to this day these pages are bringing in a steady stream of subscribers to the magazine's e-mail bulletin. The next thing I did was to make sure that the inner pages had proper meta tags, and finally I did a deep submission of the whole site.

What is a deep submission and why is it necessary? When you submit the main page of your site to a search engine, the search engine sends a "spider" to look at your page and put the data on that page in the search engines index. Sometimes the spider will follow the links on your main page and also pick up some of the inner pages (Google, for example is very good at this) but sometimes they don't go deep enough into the site and only one or two of your pages are indexed. To get the other pages indexed you have to submit them all separately, just as if they were other web sites. However, if you have 100 pages you can't submit them on the same day to one search engine. That would be regarded as spamming. If you submit one url per day per search engine you will not get into any problems.

So, think about your site more deeply. Your inner pages are mini-websites and if prepared and promoted properly they could increase your traffic and your sales dramatically.

About The Author

Donald Nelson is a web developer, editor and social worker. Hehas been working on the Internet since 1995, and is currently the director of A1-Optimization (http://www.a1-optimization.com), a firm providing low cost search engine optimization, submission and web promotion services.

[email protected]

Emerging Methods for Effective Search Engine Ranking


Search Engine traffic has always been and continues to be one of the best ways to drive qualified traffic to a web site - it presents information about goods and services when the interest level is high and it can be acted on immediately. Up till now opt-in e-mail marketing has been an effective complement to search engine ranking campaigns; but the never-ending deluge of Spam is rapidly ruining the effectiveness of opt-in e-mail and helping to add luster to the value and cost-effectiveness of search engine traffic.

Unfortunately, the increasing popularity of search engine ranking methodologies is helping to raise the barriers to entry - as more businesses, ad agencies and SEO firms concentrate their efforts on creating highly optimized web sites, the competition for keyword rankings and qualified traffic is increasing significantly. The rules are changing rapidly and if you expect to succeed you must deploy a sophisticated methodology that blends technology and processes. Here is a list of five bottom line requirements that must be adhered to if you expect to generate qualified traffic:

Link Strategy: The web is maturing and search engines are putting more and more emphasis on link popularity or page rank or "PR" in Google's vernacular; i.e. the number of web sites pointing back to your own. If you are to be successful you must develop and deploy a systematic process to establish links to your web site with others that are in your market segment and setup an outbound "link to" resources page via your own site. This takes an investment of time and resources - typically you need between 400-800 links back to your web site to achieve a good "page ranking." Here is a link to an excellent detailed article on setting up an effective link popularity strategy:


http://www.website101.com/arch/archive143.html

Keyword Fundamentals: Keywords are the fundamental building blocks of any search engine ranking campaign - many/many companies waste significant resources optimizing for keywords that are either wrong; i.e. not targeted for their market or there is too much competition and rankings will never be achieved. You must utilize keywords that are targeted for your market and find those that can effectively drive page 1-3 rankings - WordTracker www.wordtracker.com has rapidly emerged as the defacto industry standard technology tool for researching keywords - we've used it for years and highly recommend this cost-effective and comprehensive service to our clients and business partners.

Keyword Saturation: Search engine "spiders" or "bots" are automated software applications that constantly roam the web to assess what is called "keyword saturation" via web site content (pages) to identify how a site should be listed in a search engine database. They typically look for 3-7% usage of keywords versus the text on a specific page - you must adhere to their standards if you want to achieve keyword rankings for your selected keywords. And, to further complicate matters, top tier search engines all have different rules for keyword saturation - we highly recommend and use this software application to help us ascertain and setup the correct keyword saturation for our client's web sites:

http://www.se-optimizer.com/

Optimized Content: Highly optimized content is still very important as far as search engines are considered - the more search engine optimized content on a web site the better. Search engines prefer content that is thematically grouped, loads fast, is textual with minimal graphics, is highly optimized for keywords (keyword saturation fundamentals are addressed) and incorporates one or two of your primary keywords for a specific page in the page title.

Site Maps Essential: Site maps are frequently overlooked when search engine ranking processes are deployed. A site map not only serves as a quick reference and/or navigation guide for anyone visiting your web site but it's also used by search engines to "crawl" (the action a spider or bot takes to review your web site) your web site to find pages and links. Make sure you include a basic site map in your optimization plans, it's very important to help search engines navigate through your site.

About The Author

Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of marketing experience - he is the founder of Intelective Communications, Inc. http://www.intelective.com, a marketing services company which provides strategic and tactical marketing services exclusively to small to medium sized companies. [email protected].

Reprinted with permission from Intelective Communications - this article may be reprinted freely, provided this attribution box remains intact. (c) 2002-2003 by Intelective Communications, Inc.

[email protected]

Submitting Your Site To The Open Web Directory: Some Dos And Don?ts


One of the most important steps in any site's publicity campaign is the submission to the Open Web Directory (http://www.dmoz.org) as this directory provides search results for many of the most important search engines and online portals. This directory is not a robot driven spider, but a human edited directory and you must observe a few important points if your submission is to be successful.

Google Ranking WITHOUT Ever Submitting To Google!


A while back, I read an article that explained how to get a good google rating without ever submitting your site to their submission forms. Like you, I was kind of shocked by this statement so I decided to give it a try.

In the beginning, I used to submit my site all the time to Google but soon realized the magnitude of my failure. Of course, it's a known fact that Google relies solely on your link popularity and content.

Link Popularity?

What that means is the amount of links (yousite.com) listed on other sites that are related to yours! The more sites that link to you, the greater your popularity!

So again, Google depends on your link popularity! If you don't have a google rating (In other words, is your link found on google?) some sites WILL NOT link to yours. There are many sites that have a great google rating and have specific regulations to whom they will accept within their resource sections. They will specify that your site must be listed within Google and if they type in your site in the google search bar, your site should be listed within the top 5 sites.

Here's The Theory:

Of course you want all sites to link to you, especially the ones who already have a great google rating because that means that your site will be picked up by google. Some people only try to get links from those sites but just remember, we all had to start somewhere.

My suggestion is to do as many link exchanges as possible and especially make sure that each site is specifically categorized by their content. You will get penalized for having one page full of links to sites that do not relate to each other.

Another little "Timbit", try to keep your pages to 1-20 links within each page. Once you have 20 links, add a button to a (PAGE 2) and continue your resources that way.

Here's an example of our "Resource Section"
http://www.smartads.info/resources

You'll notice how each category has specific sites that get listed within them.

Ok, so I went a little off topic with respect to this article but you'll see how everything is connected together. Once google starts ranking your site, you don't want to leave any stone left un-turned.

So back to getting a google rank without submitting your site. Once you start performing link exchanges with other sites, just keep on going and going and I promise that eventually, Google will start picking up some of your links on other sites. Once this starts to happen you're google rank will rise.

So just keep doing what you're doing and let Google do it's own thing.

When your ready and you're link popularity grows, then you can submit your site to Google and reap the rewards.

So many companies do this process backwards and wonder why they don't get listed in Google. Or like what happened to me, Google lists your site right away but then in a couple of weeks, presto, your site is gone from their listing and your left confused as to why!

In this article I talked about Link Exchanges & popularity, feel free to learn more about this in my 2 part series:

Link Exchanges, what they can do for your business, part 1
http://www.smartads.info/articles/le/10.html

Link Exchanges, what they can do for your business, part 2
http://www.smartads.info/articles/le/11.html

About The Author

Martin Lemieux
President
Smartads Information Centre
Advertising, Marketing Resources & Web Design
http://www.smartads.info

Want To Use This Article???

GO AHEAD! Just keep it in it's entirety!

. . : : SmartAds Information Centre : : . .

"Helping you expose your business to the world!"

[email protected]

How To Boost Your Keyword Density On Your Web Site To Gain Top Positions At The Search Engines


Let's talk about what keyword density is and how to improve your keyword density on your web site. To improve your keyword density ratio there are three parts that we will need address.

Part 1: Content

When it comes to the Search Engines content is king! Yes king! Search Engines want web sites that are rich in content. Content is words that are embedded in text on your web site. Your keyword density ratio is one of the most important ingredients of getting good Search Engine rankings and influences the Search Engines on how to rank your web site accordingly.

For those of you who are not sure what keyword density is and how the Search Engines use it to configure their ranking structure, let me explain. Keyword density is the total number of times your keywords appear within the content of your web page, including text, hyper links, and the ALT tag of your images. I will explain each of them so you will have a clear understanding of the principles. Your keyword density is measured by a simple mathematical formula that is used to configure your keyword density ratio.

To configure your keyword density ratio you must take the number of times a keyword appears in the content of your web site, divide it by the total number of words and that's your keyword density ratio. I will give you a quick example of keyword "Marketing":

Example:

The keyword "Marketing appears 47 times in text on your web page and if you have 315 words on your web page, your keyword density ratio would then be 15%.

Obviously the higher your keyword density is, the greater influence you'll have getting the Search Engines to give you a better ranking. Becareful though, you don't want to over repeat the same combination of words and/or sentences just to increase your keyword density. Your website could end up looking like a broken record.

Part 2: Hyper Links

How many times have you seen links that say "Click Here"? A lot huh! If you are currently using this type of linking or going to be linking, then you want to pay attention, because this is really important to your keyword density ratio. I am going to use my web site for these examples so that you can understand clearly.

Example #1

Click Here For The Absolute Truth To Internet Marketing & The Secrets To Online Wealth

If you were to use this type of linking in Example #1. The Search Engines would pick all the "Click Here" hyper links and would think that the words "click here" are keywords that describe the content of your web site.

So remove all the "Click Here's" and replace them with keywords that describe your web site. That is the only way to increase your keyword density when you are using links. You should end up with something like this in Example #2:

Example #2

Inside Internet Marketing The Absolute Truth To Internet Marketing & The Secrets To Online Wealth.

Part 3: Images

First of all if you have images on your web site, the images don't mean squat to the Search Engines. When the Search Engines robots crawl your web site, those images are nothing more than blank spots. The same blank spots are shown to the surfers that have arrived on your web site with the images turned off. You'll find that many surfers surf the web with images turned off.

This is where the alternate tag (ALT Tag) comes into play. The ALT tag is used to describe your image to the surfers that surf the web with images off and most importantly, improves your keyword density. Here is an example of how to install the ALT tag in your images:

When describing the image you want to be very descriptive and use keywords. Most people don't install their ALT Tag properly, for instance, on their logo image they'll use "My Logo" in the ALT Tag. Which is the wrong way to effectively use the ALT Tag, there are no keywords in "My Logo".

About The Author

Rich Hamilton, Jr

Author Of: "Inside Internet Marketing"

http://www.InsideNetMarketing.com

Site Maps: Let Search Engines Find Your Pages


With 40 million websites in existence, and more than 3 billion web pages indexed by Google at the time of this writing (July 2003), it's no wonder that more and more people are relying on search engines to find their way through the unruly world that the web has become.

Nowadays, it is crucial to get your pages indexed by the most important search engines. To maximize traffic to your site, you must make sure that all your internal pages are indexed, not just your main page (homepage).

Fortunately, you don't need to submit each of your pages manually. The most efficient way is to create a Site Map (a list of links to all the pages in your site) and link to it directly from your homepage.

How Will A Site Map Help Me?

Search engines find pages by "crawling" the web. They go through the code of all the pages in their database (also called index), following links to other pages and adding them to the database (in fact, more pages are added this way than by manual submission).

However, search engines have trouble following links from pages buried too deep within the directory structure of a site. A Site Map solves this problem by giving the engines access to the links to all your pages once they follow the Site Map link in your homepage. For more effectiveness, place your Site Map in your root directory (where your index page is).

Site Maps: Not Just for Search Engines

While some web users will find their way through your site by following navigation links or by using the search box, others will turn to your Site Map. If you design your Site Map carefully, it will not only be useful to the search engines, but to your human visitors as well.

Here are some pointers:

    * The Site Map should act pretty much like the table of contents of a book.

    * The Site Map must clearly show all the sections of your site, and the information contained in each of those sections.

    * Every item in your Site Map must be hyperlinked to its URL.

    * If it's not too long or cumbersome, use each page's TITLE as the link text, since this tends to increase the relevance of your site. Otherwise, use the word or the short phrase that best describes the content of the page.

    * Make sure that you place the link to your Site Map at a visible location in your homepage (users shouldn't need a map to find your Site Map!).

    * Don't get creative: simply call the link "Site Map".

    * Make your Site Map a simple text link. If you use javascript the search engines will ignore it.

How can I check if my pages have been indexed?

Once you have created and uploaded your Site Map and placed a link to it in your homepage, submit both your homepage and your Site Map page to the search engines. You will then have to wait until the search engines do a web crawl. In the case of Google, the largest search engine, this happens approximately once a month.

To check if a page on your site has been picked-up and indexed by Google's, go to www.google.com and use the "allinurl" command in the search box:

allinurl:yourdomain.com/yourpage.html

Where "yourdomain.com/yourpage.html" is the URL of the page you want to check.

To get a list of all the pages in your domain that have been indexed by Google, you'll have to use the "site" command, followed by your domain name plus a word (or group of words) that you know appear in all your pages (for example, a copyright statement or some footer text):

site:yourdomain.com commonword

If after typing this command you get a list of all your pages (or at least a significant number of pages that weren't in the index before), this will be a strong indication that your Site Map has been successful.

-----

You can freely reprint this article. Just include the following resource box at the end:

About The Author

Mario Sanchez publishes The Internet Digest ( http://www.theinternetdigest.net ), an online collection of web design and Internet marketing articles and resources. You can freely reprint his weekly articles in your website, ezine, newsletter or ebook.

Search Engine Optimization - A Must


As you surf the web take a look around at many of the sites you see. Do you notice anything that seems strange? Well, let me point it out to you. There are hundreds of thousands of web sites that just don't get much traffic. Some of these sites house hundreds of articles, reviews, tutorials, tools, products, forums to mention a few things, yet still they do not receive large amounts of traffic. What is their problem? They have the content. What is left?

The problem is these sites aren't optimized for the search engines. SEO, Search Engine Optimization, SE Friendliness, however you refer to it doesn't matter, the fact is it works and I'm going to tell you what's involved.

Before we continue let me familiarize you with some relevant terminology in my own words.

**Search Engine Optimization**

Search engine optimization can be referred to as the addition and modification of all variables and extended variables of a web site in hopes of achieving a better position in the search engines. By variables I mean components of a website such as META tags and content. By extended variable I mean things such as links from other sites.

Different SEOs, search engine optimizers, may have different opinions on this but alas this is only my own.

**What is a Search Engine Optimization Company? **

A search engine optimization company is a company that offers the service of creating and adjusting all the variables involved in search engine optimization in order to get your web site the best ranking they can achieve, during the designated project period, for all the major search engines.

**Search Engine Optimization Hurdles**

Back to the question of why these sites rich with content aren't bringing in the numbers. There are several reasons why sites small and large aren't optimized for the search engines, fortunately these can be remedied.

1. Many webmasters/site owners believe in "If You Build It They Will Come". This attitude will get your web site no where fast. Sure if you build it you will get users maybe even a decent amount of users but you will not be unleashing the real potential of your web site.

2. Not feeling that your site can do better than it is. Websites can always be further optimized. Search engines change their algorithms all the time so what worked 2 months ago may not work as well or at all in present times. For any of you that fee you can get your site optimized better, think of the story of the Little Engine and don't think you can, KNOW YOU CAN.

3. Laziness is also a major contributing factor. Many webmasters feel it is just too hard or too time consuming to do search engine optimization.

This is partially true. Search engine optimization is not easy but then again, anyone can do it. It does take time though and time is a precious commodity. In situations where you just can't devote the time to search engine optimize your site I would recommend seeking the services of a professional search engine optimization company. You can choose one here http://www.lilengine.com/seo-companies.php

4. Time + cost = a deterrent. For a situation like this I would recommend optimizing little by little on your own. Eventually you will become better and better at it and be able to accomplish more in less time.

5. Another problem is many people think "Well my site is only a small site, there is no way I will be able to compete with the larger sites that have top spots in the search engines". If you think like this I'd like to say this to you. It is possible that that if you optimize your web site you may not be able to compete with the larger sites and may not be able to get a page 1 or 2 ranking in any of the search engines, BUT, what if you did. Always shoot for the stars so if you fall short you will at least hit the sky.

Now for those of you who plan to better your websites via Search Engine Optimization here are the stages you need to follow in order to have an efficient and effective SEO campaign.

**Planning Your Search Engine Optimization Campaign**

Planning is an essential factor in your SEO campaign. Knowing exactly what steps you are going to make and in what order and how you are going to go about achieving each of those steps will save you not only time but it will save you frustration as well. Planning is essential.

**Researching the Most Effective SEO Strategies**

What works and what does not. You will need to learn as many optimization strategies as you can that are currently effective with the search engines. This will be one of the most time consuming steps in your SEO campaign as you will have to sift through information as well as participate in SEO related forums to get additional information from professional. You can take this process in stages and apply your newly gained knowledge as you get it. There is also some useful software available both free and paid that will greatly help with this effort. WebPosition Gold is one of the more popular ones.

**Search Engine Optimize Your Site**

This should be done in stages so you can see the effectiveness of the applied strategies you are using. Don't change your entire site all at once, instead, change a few areas at a time and see what results they produce. If you are satisfied with this then move on and optimize another section.

Search engine optimization does not only deal with your site it also deals with the relationship other sites have with yours and yours with theirs. Keep this in mind when utilizing your link building strategies.

**Monitor Your SEO Progress**

There are many ways to do this you will have to find the best method for you. You will need to monitor your search engine ranking for the keywords you are targeting after each update. Changes should be recorded and used as references to monitor progress and for strategy adjustments. There are many tools for this process as well. I recommend SEOCount.com for monitoring your progress on the Google search engine as it is very easy to use and you can monitor several domains and keywords all from within the same account. It also gives you the option of viewing the number of backlinks.

These steps follow the Plan Do Review methodology which is a proven strategy for engaging in any task. It is again unfortunate that there are so many webmasters who overlook this entire process; hopefully this article will stop you from making this same mistake. For more information on search engine optimization visit http://www.lilengine.com

Copyright © LilEngine.com 2003

About The Author

Alec Duncan is the founder of Li'l Engine a search engine optimization site. Get more great SEO tips at http://www.lilengine.com and visit their new Web Hosting Resource at http://webhosting.lilengine.com as well as http://www.grindinggears.com for Open Source Development information.

[email protected]

How to Use Keywords to Improve Your Ranking in Search Engines


The importance of keywords

Keywords or key phrases you choose will determine how your site is positioned in the search engines. It is always better to have lots of pages each focusing on a small group of keywords. This will give them more relevance to each individual page.

For example if your site is about shoes you may have lots of different types of shoes.

Your index page should have a menu leading into each of the different categories of shoes.

You might have a page for sandals, one for platform shoes as well as stilettos, court shoes and flat heel shoes.

Choosing keywords

First you have to think like your customer. What would they type into a search engine if they wanted to find the products you are selling.

Use phrases as well as single words. Often someone looking for a product or service will type in several words. For example a customer may want to buy a shoe with stiletto heels. They may type in "stiletto heel shoe", "black stiletto" "stiletto heel","stiletto high heel" or "high heel shoe"

brainstorming keywords.

Start by thinking of as many keywords associated with your site as you can. To make it easier there is a free tool for this which can be found at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

It will give you the number of times this word has been searched for in the last month. This will also give you a guide to the popularity of the keyword.

Try looking for similar sites to your own and viewing the source code. This will give you ideas for keywords that your competitors are using. Viewing the source code is easy, just right click the mouse somewhere on the page and click on view source.

A good idea is to open a file in wordpad or other text editor and call it "keywords" then if you find words or phrases relevant to your site copy and paste them into your file. You can then view them offline and even print the page out to study it. This can give you ideas for keywords you may not have thought of.

When you have made a list of keywords relevant to each page you will then need to check the supply and demand if you want an edge over your competitor.

You will already know the demand of each keyword the next thing you need to do is to take a sheet of paper or use a spreadsheet on the computer and make 3 columns naming them keyword, supply, and demand.

In the first column list the keywords that have the highest demand. Then in the supply column type how many times it has been searched for.

Lastly in http://www.Altavista.com or http://www.Google.com type in your keyword surrounded by quotation marks like this "stiletto shoes" and see how many sites come up. They will list the number of sites with that keyword in it.

Go through your list, and see how many have a large demand and lower supply. Of course the idea is to have as many large demand and low supply keywords as possible.

Optimise your site by creating theme based,keyword focused pages for each category of shoes or whatever it is that you are selling.

This will greatly increase your chances of getting a higher ranking in the search engines.

Just concentrate on a couple of keywords in each page.

The title meta tag

The title tag is THE most important part of your webpage. It must appeal to the search engines and also the visitor to your site. The title of your page is used as the link to your site by the search engines and is visible to the reader.

Use your most important keywords in the title. Make the title between 15-20 words in length.

The title must be compelling for people to want to click through to your site.

Don't ever make the mistake of leaving the title tag blank.

Not a good idea if you want an edge over your competition!!

Every page on your site must have a keyword focused title.

The description meta tag

The description tag is also very important and some search engines display it as a summary of your site. Use some important keywords here but don't repeat them more than 3 or 4 times as it could be seen as spamming.

Keyword tag.

This tag is not as important to search engines as it once was, but you should still use it to list your keywords.

The alt tag

This tag is used to describe images and is useful to the visually impaired.

If an image takes a long time to load the alt tag will appear first.

Add keywords to this tag as part of the description.

The main body of text

Place emphasis on your keywords in the first paragraph of the main text, and repeat them several times in the rest of the page. As each page is theme based the keywords will be relevant,and will appear naturally in the body of the text.

You will greatly increase your chances of getting your site in the top positions of search engines if you follow these ideas.

You must however regularly register all your pages with each of the main search engines to make sure the pages are still there as they can suddenly disappear, or drop down from a number 1 position to number 201!!

Normally about once a month is enough.

You can use a site submitter to make this a lot easier.

A good one that I use is http://selfpromotion.com or another one is http://www.submit-it.com

About The Author

Kathy is an artist and webdesigner for small businesses. She has designed sites for other artists to showcase their work, and has her own online business. Kathy has written several articles on promoting an online business. Visit her site at http://www.healthandbeautytowealth.co.uk.

[email protected]

Build Link Popularity The Smart Way


A Brief Introduction To Link Popularity

As webmasters research various ways to get more traffic to their site one method that is gaining more and more publicity is Link Popularity. Link Popularity is the number of links that point to your website as measured by the search engines. In theory if your site has many sites linking to it then it is considered to be a valuable resource on the particular topic so the search engines will give it a higher ranking.

The Problem

As with many rules/laws eventually people found a way to manipulate it. Sites were created solely to build the link popularity of other sites. These sites are called 'Link Farms' and contributed to the pollution of search engine results. They increased the search engine rankings of many sites that did not deserve the position they received.

Eventually the search engines caught on to this deception and some such as Google adjusted their algorithms accordingly. Google now penalizes websites associated with Link Farms imposing penalties they deem appropriate based on the site and the scenario. Many people that felt the effects of this penalization were fairly innocent, well that is if you consider ignorance to be an alibi. They simply did not know that what they were doing was wrong; some even paid for SEO services and were victims of bad services.

As the search engines change their algorithms aiming to reduce fraudulent activities by webmasters, more and more ways are conceived to manipulate them, and so the battle continues.

An Honest Link Building Strategy

Getting quality links to your site from related resources is not always as easy as some make it sound. The key word here is 'quality'. It is a very time consuming process and involves the following steps:

    * Search for quality sites that are related to yours.

    * Contact the Webmaster of the related site.

    * Wait for a response from them.

    * Swap links if the response is positive.

There are also some automated methods of doing this that speed up the process, however, I would not recommend any of them and hence won't list them in this article.

So you have started your link building campaign and are hopefully seeing the results. Now you say this is great but how can I make this process more efficient and effective without risking your good standings with the search engines.

Here is the solution.

The Smart Way To Build Link Popularity.

One thing webmasters are always looking for, and find hard to refuse, is good quality content. If you are knowledgeable on a particular topic that is related to your site, writing informative articles is a great way to gain your website additional link popularity. If you are reading this article and are not reading it on http://www.lilengine.com then there is your proof.

If you don't consider yourself a writer don't worry, you don't have to be. Get your article in the best shape you possibly can and then have others, who you consider to be better at writing than you are, look it over. Make your edits and there you go.

How is writing articles efficient and effective?

Well-written articles do take time to produce but as you write more you will get better and will find that it starts to take less and less time. This method offers several more benefits than the linking method listed above. These are as follows:

    * Articles are, in most cases, permanent additions to sites.

    * Writing Articles demonstrates your knowledge of various industry related topics and this helps to build credibility.

    * If users are interested enough to read your entire article then there's a very good chance that they will click on your link to visit your site in hopes of learning more or even just out of curiosity.

    * You are able to include several links with articles. You can have several links in the resource box also known as the bylines as well as in any 'appropriate' spots in the article.

    * You have the 'option' of including your affiliate links in the article if it includes information on that resource.

    * You also get to add this content to your own website.

    * If you include reprint information in the bylines then others that read the article, and feel it would be a valuable addition to their site, will add it and then it becomes almost viral. It spreads even though you are not doing a thing.

Summary

Building link popularity is a vital part to your search engine ranking and should be approached in either of the two methods listed above that you feel is more appropriate for your individual situation. The benefits from writing, however, far outweigh those of requesting reciprocal links in most situations. Hopefully this article has helped to shed some light on this and will encourage more knowledgeable people to start sharing their knowledge with others. For more information on Link Popularity visit http://www.lilengine.com

About The Author

Alec Duncan is the founder of http://www.lilengine.com, a search engine optimization resource site. Visit http://www.lilengine.com and also visit their new Web Hosting resource section at http://webhosting.lilengine.com.

Marketing Articles: Getting A Better Search Engine Rank For All Of Your Pages!


In one of my articles, I discussed how to market your web site link twice. It detailed out how to promote not only www.yoursite.com but how you should also promote your site without the www., like this: http://yoursite.com.

This article is to talk about promoting ALL of your pages within your marketing campaign. See, most of us typically only promote the main page on our sites. Ex. www.yoursite.com. The truth is, your site is much more than just the 1st page right? Well, let's condition ourselves to promote everything available within your site...

Search Engine Marketing is crutial for all companies who want to succeed online. I'm sure at one point or another, you will hear how "Optimizing your site for search engines is crutial". Of course, they aren't fooling you, it is a crutial marketing tactic but, what is also crutial is learning how to use different tools to boost your search engine placements once you've optimized your site for the web.

So let's talk about the marketing tactics available to you and implement strategies on how to promote all your pages within them.

LINK EXCHANGES:

Link popularity has become a norm for most small companies to implement in their daily promoting activities. Here's the problem, most companies that perform link exchanges daily fail to utilize it to their advantage. For ex. Let's say you perform approximately 10 link exchanges daily. For each one, you submitted your link "www.yoursite.com". What you'll want to start implementing is submitting 10 different links within your site.

Ex Link Exchanges:

    * Link #1: http://yoursite.com

    * Link #2: http://yoursite.com/resources

    * Link #3: http://www.yoursite.com/services

    * And so on...

A good strategy would be to open up "Note Pad" and create all the links you want to promote.

# Add each link

# Assign an appropriate title to each link

# Create an appropriate description for each link

Now all you have to do is to copy and paste each link when performing your daily link exchanges.

WRITING ARTICLES:

Do you write articles to promote your site??? If you do, then you probably have created a "Resource Box" at the end of each article right??? Good, let's change the resource box a little.

My site is host to 100's of Marketing Articles and the 1 thing I notice time & time again is that each author (no disrespect to any of the wonderful authors) Typically only add the main page of their web site within their "resource box".

Ok, let's say you write articles about "Search Engine Marketing". At the end of the article, add a link to a page on your site that talks about "Search Engine Marketing" or something similar.

Ex. http://www.yoursite.com/search_engine_marketing.html

So with that in mind, try revising all your articles to point to specific pages on your web site.

DIRECTORY SUBMSSIONS:

Submitting your site to directories will give your site long lasting traffic. Not all directories will accept any link from your site besides the main page. This is ok though, there are literally 100's of other directories that will allow you to submit any page you want.

Experiment with this and try to change up all your links when your submitting to directories.

I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND : Using anything other than your main page for directories like: OPD Open Project Directory or Yahoo.

So now you have 3 proven marketing strategies on how to improve your search engine placements for all of your pages instead of only your main page. Be creative with this and look for more strategies you can implement this tactic with.

About The Author

Martin Lemieux
Smartads - President
http://smartads.info/top-10/download

Instantly download any Marketing Article created by Martin Lemieux for use within your web site and/or newsletter: http://smartads.info

Affordable Web Design & Web Site Marketing

[email protected]

High Google Rankings: Frequency vs. Positioning


There's an assumption that the higher a ranking or positioning you have with major search engines; the more people will beat a path to your web doorstep. But based on my experience, that's simply not true! There's another factor that is just as important and may actually drive more traffic to your site.

This big secret is frequency: The number of times your name appears when someone enters a key word in a search engine. I believe that the more times you appear in a search, the greater the likelihood of someone actually clicking through to your site.

How do you get frequent listings in search engines? Write quality content articles.

I'm an investment advisor and a while ago I started a second web site (www.successful-investment.com) to promote my weekly mutual fund newsletter, capture potential prospect names and house a library of my published articles.

To get people to the site, I naturally wanted to move up in the search engine food chain. I did the usual meta tag things, but that didn't cause my rise in the rankings. What did cause it surprised me.

One of my first articles ("Do lifestyle funds provide greater security?") was submitted to some 30 article banks and web sites. Many of them reprinted it, which increased the number of appearances of my name associated with the topic. Since many of these sites were already ranked high on the search engines, I rode on their success.

Searching Google for "Lifestyle funds" produces over 3 million results. On the first page of results my article is listed four times, on the second page three times and on page three it's listed three times, and so on. If you were searching this term, with that much presence you would not likely overlook me.

In addition to generating hits on my web site from potential clients, my frequent listing in search engines yielded another benefit: I was invited to CNNfn's Hollywood studio to discuss my article "How to evaluate load vs. no load mutual funds." They found me by searching Google for "load vs. no load." That produced almost 5 million results and on the first page my article appears three times, on the second three times and on the third three time as well-and some included my company listing. I was an authority!

In the past six months I have written and published 17 articles with the key search terms being part of the title. I pretty much get similar results with all of them. Why? I believe quality content is a key.

My core business is "personal investment management." If you search that on Google you will get about 11 million results. I currently rank number 8. And that's among the 'who's who' in investment management, companies that invest big bucks to manipulate getting high rankings on search engines.

Can I improve on that? Probably not by trying to manipulate positioning, but definitely with frequency. And that comes from writing articles.

Now, maybe you like this idea but think you can't write quality articles. I'm not a writer, but my articles get picked up by e-zines and article banks all the time. How does that happen? It's actually simpler than you think.

There are two aspects to writing; 1. the actual content and 2. the writing style. If you've been in business for any length of time you have a wealth of information that you take for granted but others would love to know about. You should be able to write a 300 to 800 word article about your product or service area. Don't worry about the style; just write quality content that will be helpful to your potential customers.

Although my writing skills are pretty sharp because I do a lot of writing, I would not consider them to be on the same level as a professional writer. So I have a second secret to success.

One of my clients is an award winning Hollywood writer and he "enhances" my articles. It's usually not a lot of work, but at times I need a better transition from point A to point B. Since the content is clear and basically organized, he doesn't have to spend any time researching or "doing the heavy lifting." He can devote his attention to enhancing the quality of the presentation, and that doesn't take long or cost much.

[If you need help with writing you may contact Laren Bright ([email protected]) and tell him I sent you.]

I think you will find that writing articles becomes a lot easier once you have that kind of assistance. It certainly became stress-free for me when I didn't have to worry about form and could concentrate on my long suit: content.

It's hard to beat the results that my articles have produced for me in terms of exposure, Google rankings and new clients. Given these facts I propose that frequency beats positioning anytime. Try it and see if it boosts your rankings and your business.

About The Author

Ulli Niemann is an investment advisor and has written about methodical approaches to investing for over 10 years. He is stepping out of his comfort zone to write about different areas in which he has gained experience that can assist others. You can reach him at: www.successful-investment.com

[email protected]