Search Engine Optimization Strategies

How to Improve Your Search Engine Rankings?

by Kit Elliott

When people think of search engine optimization, they immediately think of time consuming very tedious tasks that are way beyond their capabilities. That might be true if they put no time and effort into it. I do agree that improving search engine rankings in competitive niche markets require a good deal of knowledge and expertise. It's TIME to learn the basics of how to improve your search engine rankings. There is huge need for search engine optimization experts, but most websites don't find themselves in a very competitive niche market. Many websites can achieve top rankings by applying my optimization basics. All you have to do is put in the time learning and applying them.

Let me lay out the basics of search engine optimization. You can find a professional to do it but some professionals charge thousands to even get your foot in the door. Others have you fill out lengthy quote requests and tell you they'll be back in about three days with a quote. Then you wait for three days, and no email shows up. It might be worthwhile trying these basics out before paying an expert.

Please Note: If you feel you haven't achieved the results that you want, then try some affordable SEO experts who have more knowledge and expertise in their field.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimization is the process of coding a website to achieve top rankings in the search engines. You must concentrate on the website's most relevant keywords. These relevant keywords are the key phrases that people are most likely to type into the search engine to look for websites. These websites must present their products and services within a twenty second period to ensure that the visitor locks into their site. Let me give you a scenario that happens far too many times. Let's say you are looking for a great hosting company. You type in your favorite search engine and enter a few keywords: cheap hosting. You get thousands upon thousands of websites. What the search engine displays to you makes you decide whether or not to click on it. When you finally decide to click on it, how many times have you seen Google adwords throughout the whole left side in no particular format? How many times have you seen affiliate product advertising on the whole right side in no particular format? Goodbye! What could have been an easy sell turned out to be an easy click out of your website. This is not what you are trying to achieve.

The first step for search engine optimization is to choose the most suitable keywords for your site. Make a list of the most suitable keywords for your site and then split one or two of them to each suitable page within the site. One keyword per page is preferable, but two per page is not so bad. Sometimes it is useful to split a large page into two smaller pages so that a different keyword can be targeted on each page.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Matching keywords to a page's content is essential. A search engine robot and spider has caught on to all the tricks. Don't try to outsmart it.

Basic Search Engine Optimization Structure is vital to your success.

An obvious and overlooked aspect of search engine optimization is to make sure that search engine spiders can actually crawl to all of your website's pages. If the spiders and robots can't find them, then they won't get indexed, and we've wasted a lot of time on search engine optimization. Make sure that your navigation structure of your website is strong. Would you build a mansion on a one inch foundation? Probably not! Then why build your website mansion on a weak foundation. This means that all of your pages are linked together on every page. When the spider crawls throughout your website, it will crawl to all of the pages and back again. If there is one broken link, this could affect your search engine rankings!

Don't forget the not so obvious:

Robots and Spiders can't see links embedded in Java and most times Flash. When a spider and a robot crawls over your website, it only reads the text, and those embedded links are invisible to the spiders and robots far as search engines are concerned, they don't exist. Let's make a promise not to use them.

How many times have you clicked on a link and looked at the URL, and it contained about 32 extra letters and numbers in it? Google won't spider any URL that looks like this. Avoid using dynamic URLs.

Make sure all pages link to at least one other page. Links to pages that don't link out are called "dangling links". Google founders, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, once wrote about Dangling links

"Dangling links are simply links that point to any page with no outgoing links. They affect the model because it is not clear where their weight should be distributed, and there are a large number of them. Often these dangling links are simply pages that we have not downloaded yet..........Because dangling links do not affect the ranking of any other page directly, we simply remove them from the system until all the PageRanks are calculated. After all the PageRanks are calculated they can be added back in without affecting things significantly." -

extract from the original PageRank paper by Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page.

It is good to structure the internal links so that targeted keywords are reinforced. For example, organize the links so that a topic's sub-topic pages link to the topic page with the right link text (see below), and vice-versa.

Off-page elements

Link-text ahref="url">Type in your link text

This is one of the two most important elements for good rankings. The link text can be on pages within your website or on other websites. Either way, it is essential. Your main keyword should be the text link or included in the text link. When possible, include the target page's main keywords in the link text, but don't use the exact same link text for every link that links to a page.

I always use Google as the example since they are the number one search engine today. Google attributes link text to the target page and attributes it as actually being on the target page. It treats its presence as being an important element of the target page. Links carry more weight if the text around them is concerned with the target page's topic and keywords.

On-page elements

The Title tag title>Type in your title words here

This is the second of the two most important elements for good rankings. Make sure that the page's keywords are contained in this tag, and place it near the front. I like taking the actual main keyword and placing it by itself with a period behind it and then explain the Title Tag. For example, let's say I own Google and I've reached the Adwords page. I would title it like this:

Adwords. Google's Adwords offers a pay per click solution for all your advertising needs.

The target keyword is "Adwords". Each page's Title tag should be different to the Title tags on the site's other pages.

The Description tag meta name="description" content="a nice description"

Most search engines display the description of your website so it's important you write an appealing description for your page and fill it full of the keywords that are contained within your actual site. Remember that list of keywords that you should have listed for your website. A search engine spider should see every one of those keywords in your actual page. Your Description tag should have most of those words. Google doesn't display the Description like they used to do but that's what I love about Google. They always keep the SEO's guessing what's next? Just when you think the robots and spiders don't care for the description, Google displays it.

The Keywords tag
meta name="keywords" content="some keywords"

I was just reading a popular keyword site that delivers the best possible keywords for your website. Then, they say enter each keyword and separate them with a comma. Do not separate these words with a comma. There is no need to separate them because the search engines ignore the commas. The words in the Keywords tag were never treated as keywords by the search engines; they were treated as text on the page. I keep hearing that the keyword tag is not as effective as it used to be, and then I'll click a link and it says it's an absolute. My advice to you is to put plenty of relevant keywords into the tag and include the keyword once at the front, and a second time further along the line. Do me a favor and do yourself a favor? Do not repeat a word more than 5 times. If you do, the search engines will think you are spamming them and they will drop you quick.

The H tag

Hn>Insert your headings or your titles of your text here

Notice the . The H stands for headings throughout your text and the "n" stands for the text size from 1 to 6. The smallest is 6 and the biggest heading size is 1. H tags are given more weight than ordinary text and, the bigger the H size, the more weight it receives. So include the target keyword in H tags at least once on the page, and two or three times if possible. Also, place the first H tag as near to the top of the page as possible.

Bold text

Bold text is given more weight than ordinary text but not as much as H tags. As much as is reasonable, enclose the keyword in bold tags when it appears on the page.

Text

The body should be easy to read with a very clean layout. Remember when I visited the hosting sites, and they have Adwords on the left, and they have the affiliate products on the right, and their actual text or body is 10 inches below. Let's cut out all the extra stuff. Treat your website as an entity. When you do that, buyers will remain on your website. Perfect! You have achieved your goal of getting traffic to stay.

In your text, use the main keywords as often as you can on the page without messing with this clean user-friendly layout.. Use the term once or twice very early in the page's body text and as often as possible throughout. Reword small parts and even add sentences to make sure that the keyword is well represented in the text.

In all probability, each word in the keyword will be found on the page separate from the keyword itself. This is good. In fact, if they are not there on their own, add a few of them through the page.

Alt text
img src="url" alt="Type in text that will show up on images on mouse over"

Alt-text is simple. Blind people have speech synthesizers that read pictures. The only way the blind person will be able to hear the picture is if you included the Alt-text. This is the text you see on pictures when you mouse over it. Guess what? Include the keywords in the alt text of all images on the page. Not to mention that this could definitely help your search engine rankings.

Summary

Make a list of keywords for your site. Rank the popularity of the keywords because that's what your visitor will type in the Search Engines.

Make sure each page of your website has at least one major keyword and split some pages if necessary

Make sure the links and link text contain your target keywords If possible, organize links from other sites to suit the target keywords and their pages.

Organize all the on-page elements to suit each page's target keyword.

Relax and shoot for number one rankings.

Kit Elliott is the author of The Traffic Toolchest. His ethical approach to marketing makes him one of the top experts in his field. His highly anticipated book Super Affiliates Guide to Riches is expected to launch by mid-August 2005 at http://www.superaffiliate.com . Check out The Traffic Toolchest at http://www.thetraffictoolchest.com to get over 70 valuable marketing tools.

Search Engine Optimization - A Complete Idiot's Guide

by Chris van der Walt

Most of us know by now that having a website doesn't mean much if nobody knows about it. There are many ways to market your website online, including pay-per-click advertising and banner ads on other websites. But by far the most effective and comparatively speaking cheapest way of getting your website "out there" is to optimize the content so that search engines enjoy "crawling" your website and therefore rank your website highly compared to your competitors.

A very quick crash-course in search engines: Search engines like to show their users the most relevant content for a specific keyword. They make use of so-called "spiders" to automatically visit your website to see what your site is about. Only in rare circumstances will a human user from a search engine company actually visit your website. You can imagine that for human users it would be impossible to physically go through millions and millions of websites on a regular basis to check what they're about.

Therefore, the search engine spider will see which words are repeated frequently throughout the content of your website. If your website is about vacuum cleaners, but you often refer to the term "lawnmowers" in your website's content (more than "vacuum cleaners"), the spider will incorrectly assume that your website is about lawnmowers.

But wait, there's much more to it than just that. It's also about how you use the keyword. If you use the keyword "vacuum cleaner" six times on your page, but you are using "lawnmower" in a header to a page or in italics or bold text, the search engine might still think that your site is about lawnmowers instead. The proper use of keywords in the title of your website, as alternative text on images (that pops up when you move your mouse over it), the distribution of your keyword throughout your page (top, middle and bottom), the use of your keyword in text-links to other pages on your website as well as the use of your keyword in headers, are all important factors that search engines look for.

No, that's not it, yet! This covers probably only around ten percent of search engine optimization. The next item would be keyword popularity. By keyword popularity I mean to say you should investigate how popular your targeted keyword is among search engine users. For example, I might be very impressed with myself for optimizing a site for the term "blue socks" so that my site shows up as number one in each and every search engine when you type in the term "blue socks" and hit Search. But if on average only two people worldwide searches monthly for the term "blue socks", will I get the necessary traffic from search engines? The answer is a very clear "NO". If I instead see that 2500 people worldwide are searching for the term "sock suppliers" monthly, I would be much better off optimizing my site for this term, right? Correct, but also bear in mind that more popular search phrases normally brings with them more competition. In other words, it might take more of a constant effort to optimize a website for the term "property" than for the term "cape town property", because you are competing with others who are also trying to be number one for that keyword.

What we've learned so far: We need to make a website more than just user-friendly, but also search engine-friendly by using keywords properly throughout our site, and thorough keyword research is very important.

And now for the most important bit, namely link popularity. A search engine such as Google (the biggest and therefore most important search engine in the world) places an incredible amount of importance on how many sites link to yours (reciprocal linking), the quality of those sites as well as the way in which they link to your site. In other words, it is very important to exchange links with other sites with similar content to yours. That is, you put a clickable link to their site on your site, and they do the same for you. It is also important that they link to your site with the correct phrase in the link text (the text that you click on to follow the link). If you want to optimize your site for the keyword "clothes hangers" but others link to you with the keyword "baby diapers" in the link text, the search engines will once again incorrectly assume that your site is about baby diapers instead. As far as the quality of the other sites linking to yours (your link partners) is concerned, this is a vast and complicated topic that we'll have to cover on its own.

There are actually many other factors that also determine your website's rankings in search engines, but these are the basic ones. I hope this helps you somewhat (yes, I know it's complicated and daunting), but if I only succeeded in confusing you more, then don't worry - there are many search engine optimization specialists out there. And yes, you'll find that the best ones are normally at the top of the search engine results pages! And if they are worth the money you pay them, you should see an exponential return on investment within the first year. It might also be advisable to have them monitor your web site's search engine rankings on an ongoing basis so that the goose doesn't suddenly for some reason stop laying those golden eggs!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategy Navigating the Dark Waters of Website Promotion

By Chesa Keane

Creating a well-designed website is the first step in your internet marketing strategy that must be backed up with techniques designed to drive traffic to the website for successful, long-term results. You wouldn't consider opening a retail store in a major shopping mall without signage and you shouldn't consider having a nice looking website designed without expanding your web presence in order to be found on the internet. The following strategy overview is designed to bring about these results:

• An attractive website that is complementary to your company image and provides your targeted audience with information about you, your company and your products and/or services
• A website that creates a call-to-action in the form of purchase, contact, subscription or other commitment from your viewer
• Create a successful marketing arm for your overall business promotion and marketing campaign to promote your business, products and/or services
• Become competitive in your industry and marketplace by meeting or exceeding the industry marketing standards and attracting a qualified audience for your products and/or services via the internet
• Generate and maintain or grow internet traffic to your website resulting in a conversion of traffic into sales of your products and/or services

Tier I

Website design is the foundation and beginning of a successful internet marketing strategy. It is true that several websites exist on the internet that are unattractive but seem to work. If there are aspects of these websites that work, imagine how well they could do if they simply followed basic design implementation tactics that resulted in a good image as well as simply pushed information out to the viewer. These basics are essential for Tier 1 success:

• Good web design that complements the company image and offline marketing campaign products
• Easy, logical navigation that leads the viewer deeper and deeper into the web of information provided by the website
• Attractive but quick-loading graphics that are pleasing to the eye and meaningful to the website.
  • Keyword usage that is search engine-friendly:
  • Utilization
  • Placement
  • Frequency
  • Relevance
• Coding that is lean, clean and without errors
• Relevance of content to the theme of the site
• Changing content that changes frequently
• Content is king -- it's all about content, content, content

Once the website has been created and published, many new website owners think that the project is finished. But in reality, the real work is just beginning. In order to create a money-making site, traffic must be generated and driven to the website. There are several effective methods that can be implemented in Tier II for this to occur. While all methods may not be required to see successful traffic generation, some combination of most if not all will probably be needed to create traffic, maintain traffic and finally, grow traffic to our website with long-term results. Consider implementing these strategies:

• Dynamic content is necessary and by updating the website frequently the search engines see your website as active, not stagnate. How often should changes be made? At the very least, monthly. But the more frequent the changes, the better. There are some tried and true methods you may want to employ:
  • Monthly newsletter (or weekly)
  • Tip of the day that rotates to the page using a script from an existing database of information at your site
  • RSS feed to public news feeds that update hourly or daily at the least
  • Changes to contact information, staffing, clients, etc.
  • Checking the links frequently to make sure that they are active and valid
  • Simple modification of content from time to time should be done in between these regular maintenance tasks which will update the website
• Good links management results in a positive weight given by the search engines for search positioning. The algorithms used for weighting one page over another require link popularity assessment for successful traffic to your website. Link popularity is also one of the main contributions to Google and Alexa Page Rank. How do you achieve link popularity? It can be tedious and requires careful attention to the selection of the links, but there are several means that can be employed:
  • Reciprocal Links - Search for relevant and desired web pages with which to trade links
  • Purchase Page Rank-based links to boost your relevance and weight in the eyes of search engines
  • List with directories, paid or unpaid that will give your website additional exposure
  • Create the links with link text in mind, designed to utilize relevant keywords
  • Link only with websites that have decent PageRank (PR); i.e., PR of 3 at a minimum, PR of 4 would be the ideal minimum
  • Blogs - web logs linked to your site or posting to popular blogs with your links included to point traffic back to your site; a good strategy is to employ pinging with the blog posting
• Forums -- forum participation that allows you to leave your link with the intent of attracting traffic back to your site
• Listing with the few free search engines and directories is essential although you won't see any results for months
• Develop an email list subscription function on your site with the intent of sending e-newsletters and announcements on a regular basis. This subscription list can be used for several other campaigns, including the sale of advertising space on your newsletter.
• Purchase sponsorship on other email lists where you can promote your product and/or services as well as get your website promoted in the process.
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns with Google and Yahoo Search Marketing where you purchase advertising space for keywords that are popular for your industry if you are not in a saturated market. If your business operates in a saturated internet market, seek niche keywords for your PPC advertising. Determine your budget first and from there, you will know how much you can afford for the positioning your desire. It's all mathematical:
  • Price Per Click = monthly budget/number of clicks or
  • Number of clicks = monthly budget/price per click
• Some combination of price and number of clicks will result from a well-designed and constantly monitored campaign. The important result to watch is the conversion rate. How many paid clicks convert into the desired result; i.e., new contract, sale of product, sign up for e-newsletter, etc.

Finally, after the hard-core efforts that are directly related to generating traffic to your website, you will want to create follow-on, additional traffic that is under your control. Several methods exist for this strategy:

• Taking the large list of ancillary keywords that relate directly or indirectly to your website, begin purchasing keyword related domain names that will be used to create traffic driving websites that point to your money site.
• Setup satellite pages using the keyword domain names that are heavily populated and geared toward keyword designed to develop niche market traffic. As you develop niche markets that create new customers, you are going to be able to capitalize on those customers for the other products and/or services that your company offers by focusing on information sites that link back to your money site while informing and attracting these new customers.
• Create links, backlinks and cross-links between the satellite pages and your money site, improving your link popularity for all websites, especially your money site.
• Display articles or e-books related to your industry and place these articles on your websites being aware of the best location based on keyword dominance.
• For long-term, viral marketing results, create articles or e-books that you will either sell on your website or offer to public domain websites where your link information must be retained for use by anyone else on the internet.

In order to determine if the SEO efforts are successful, you must monitor results of backlinks, PR and web trend statistics. There are many sources for generating this data as well as programs that will assist in these analyses. Whatever method you choose, whether it is using specific programs or setting up a spreadsheet for entry of data, be consistent in tracking the data. There will be fluctuations from day-to- day. You are looking for general, overall upward trends. Upward progress followed by maintenance of a strong position with slow, steady growth would indicate a successful SEO campaign.

Article written and copyrighted by Chesa Keane, TAO Consultants, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Website: http://www.computergoddess.com.
Email: tao@computergoddess.com

4 Surefire Methods Of Free Promotion

by John Colanzi

How many times do you hear marketers say,"I'd love to promote my opportunity, but I don't have the money."

Well I'm taking away that excuse. There are 4 surefire methods of building any business that won't cost you a red cent.

All work and all have a proven track record.

If you've followed my writings for any length of time, you know my favorite is writing and submitting articles. That's the date I came to the dance with and I'd never leave her.

The second method of fr^ee promotion is brandable books and reports. It doesn't matter if they're free or fee, plenty of marketers will help promote your links, if you give them enough of an incentive.

Get a few heavy traffic sites or high circulation ezines giving away your books and your link will spread like wildfire.

The third method of free promotion is extremely powerful and can build any business fast. It's our old friend the Joint venture. I don't care who you are or how big your advertising budget is, you can't reach even a percentage of your market by your own efforts.

That's where the Joint Venture comes in. By helping other marketers profit from promoting your offers, your links will spread fast and you'll reach prospects who would never see your offer any other way.

Combine your Joint Venture offer with your brandable books and your articles and you've got a powerful promotional campaign that money couldn't buy.

The fourth method of fr^ee promotion is creating your own affiliate program. Having hundred or thousands of marketers promoting your products is an extremely powerful marketing method.

The first three methods of free promotion are 100% free, but in order to run an affiliate program there is usually a one time fee. Depending on the merchant account you use, you can usually set up an affiliate program for as little as $50.

Pay your $50 once and your program can be working for free for years to come.

So the next time you hear someone say they can't afford to promote their offer, what they are really saying is they haven't learned how to harness the power of free promotion.