Building Valuable Backlinks

Search engine optimization mainly includes on-page and off- page optimization. Building valuable backlinks is a part of off page optimization strategy. High quality backlinks have the potential to increase a websites ranking in the SERPs.

Backlinks are considered valuable when they:

• are do follow
• contain the appropriate anchor text,
• are deep linked to the relevant inner pages,
• are linked from high PR niche websites

How to Build Valuable Backlinks:

1. Perform A Competitive Analysis - Competitive analysis allows you to scrutinize the competitors' backlinks and their link profiles. Run a Google search for your target keyword and list the top 20 competitors. Capitalize on the Yahoo! Search Explorer tool to determine the backlinks for each of the top competing websites. Use an Excel spreadsheet to make a list of all the backlinks providing websites. The next step is to shortlist the do follow websites from the list. Arrange them in the descending order of their PR. At the end of this procedure, you will have a list of highly valuable do follow websites to link from.
2. Submit URLs to Search Directories - Search directories are of two types: general and niche directories. Backlinks from niche directories are normally considered more valuable than the backlinks from general directories. Most of the search directories take months to process your linking request. There are some directories which link back within a few days. Websites which build a high number of backlinks in a few days are looked upon suspiciously by Google. The best way to build backlinks is over a period of time to avoid getting tagged as a link spammer. Submittíng a website's URL to directories is a time consuming task but provides great results at the end.
3. Submit Articles to Article Directories - Submitting articles to article directories is a very popular approach to link building. Most of the article directories allow you to include a link in the article. You can also add a link to the author description of the article with appropriate anchor text. Article directories are known to rank well in the search engine ranking pages. An added benefit of submittíng to article directories is the traffic it drives to your website. There are a large number of high quality article directories which accept free article submission. Simply sign up, verify your account and start submitting articles.
4. Post in Forums - Forums initially served as a means of conversing and solving queries. Today forums are also used to obtain valuable backlinks to your website. A majority of forums allow a signature link at the bottom of every post. This signature link is a do-follow link. You can select the desired anchor text and link to any important inner page of your website. There are a few forums which allow you to enter more than one signature link. Just remember to participate in the conversation, ask questions and answer those of others.
5. Create Link Bait - Link bait involves creating compelling content on the website which makes others link to it. You should write frequently and consistently to develop a following. Keep tab on the latest happenings and news in your niche; be among the first few to break the news online. To create that perfect link bait, your articles should contain news, updates, a controversial topic or even some great resources. Keep the information quotient of your articles high and watch the link baits pouring in.

If you want other websites and blogs to link to you, double check who you are linking too. Don't be in a rush to get backlinks. A handful of good quality and authoritative backlinks are worth more than a hundred low quality, low PR backlinks.

Web Optimization - Four Common Problems That Stop Your Success

Anyone interested in online marketing knows that web optimization is critical to a successful business. Web optimization comprises a number of different ideas, including search engine optimization, website analytics, and design factors, among many others.

However, optimization is more than just a standard set of practices. As every good interactive marketing agency knows, it is different for each business, and within each industry.

Those differences are one of the primary aspects that make 'do-it-yourself' optimization without an interactive marketing agency such a risky prospect. An interactive marketing agency keeps abreast of the ever-changing landscape in order to implement best practices to achieve good positioning and visibility for a website -- they are also able to conduct in-depth research to understand what your competition is doing as well.

If you are learning from scratch and implementing as you go, you can be put at a disadvantage compared to competitors who hire professionals.

In this article, we'll walk through some of the most common misconceptions about optimization. We'll also look at what your company can do to see real optimization success.

Problem 1: Seeing Optimization as a Project With An "End Date"

Optimization, and online marketing in general, isn't a destination. Rather, it's a road, one that must be constantly traveled for optimal levels of success. There is no time when your optimization is "complete", in fact, even once your initial online marketing plan sees success, there will be other ways that you can improve your online presence. The process can always be improved.

Problem 2: Not Planning For Optimization In The Long Run

Because online marketing is a process, wise companies will plan for optimization in the long run. Don't think of it as a short-term investment, and don't divert resources you are only comfortable diverting for a few weeks. Think about it more broadly, and give your optimization plan the time and support it needs to be successful. Like any company initiative, if the program is understaffed or underfunded, it won't be able to thrive as it ought to.

Problem 3: Not Monitoring Progress

In the old days, it was next to impossible to know if your agency's plan was doing the job. But now, tracking online marketing results are easy. Think of it like cooking: you have to test the food every so often to see how it's going. If you need to make a change, you learn about it early on, and if the food is great, you know more about how to make it the next time around.

Web optimization is exactly the same way. Keeping track of what policies bring success and which don't will help you in the short term and in the long term. You will have more to work with when you start additional campaigns, and you'll have real results that you can point to. So much depends on customer preference, and only when you start to get a feel for that preference will you see the best outcomes.

Problem 4: Working Alone

It is the rare person who can successfully design and implement an online marketing optimization strategy without the help of an interactive marketing agency. Optimization is a very particular process, with a number of techniques and strategies to learn. Articles like this one can help, but it takes years of experience to become a real optimization expert.

Does it really make sense for you to spend your time learning, rather than hiring the expertise of an interactive marketing agency? In almost every case, focusing on what you do best - running your business - is the best idea.

Putting it All Together

Now you know some of the most common pitfalls that make optimization programs fail. Do any of them sound familiar? If so, then you're now equipped with the knowledge to change the problem. You can start fresh, and get the optimization results you're looking for. You might not see them overnight, but with time the effect will be noticeable.

Search Engine Optimization At a Glance

There is one important factor to remember whenever you are involved in improving the organic rankings of a website, and that factor is time. One of the most common questions in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is How long till I start to see results? This article is dedicated to anyone who has ever asked that question.

It doesn't matter what industry you are involved in, or what techniques you follow, in all cases you will be a prisoner of time. In the vast majority of cases search engine rankings don't come over night.

Regardless of the scope of the SEO campaign you are undertaking, you will have to wait for results. It doesn't matter if you are undertaking a massive link building & social media campaign combined with extreme content development - you will still have to wait for those results. Just how long you need to wait however, will depend on a large number of factors.

In this article I will discuss some of these factors and give a few scenarios to help you gauge how long you may need to wait to start seeing results.

Factors to Consider
How long it will take for rankings starts with a few key factors:

• How optimized is your site before SEO?
  If your established site has no optimization in place at all, and has navigation that is blocking search engine spiders, sometimes opening the site up can result in a rather quick turn-around for results.


• How many inbound links does your site have?
  If you have an old site with no links, this will add to the time you need to wait. If you have a number of links already, Google will probably be in to check out things within a week or so of updating.


• How new is your website?
  A brand new site with no links has to wait. Google may find you, but probably not. If you do nothing, your site may not ever be indexed - you must get a few links, and an XML sitemap if you want to stand a chance with a new site. Go here for info on how to install and set up an XML site map.


• How flexible is your site?
  If your site utilizes a content management system, how flexible is this system for customization? If your current back end will not allow for SEO based changes, this will drastically slow down your ranking progress.


• How competitive is your target phrase?
  This is huge. The more competitive a target phrase is, the longer you will likely have to wait, and the more links, pages, and fresh content you will probably need. Picking a target phrase that has searches, but modest competition is your best bet to get started. As long as your "dream phrase" is relevant, you can go after the bigger fish once your site has some links, content, and has started to find its place on the map.


• Is your site positioned to be able to compete?
  Take a look at the top 10 sites for your target phrase. If on average the ranking sites have 10,000 inbound links and 1,000 plus pages, and your site has 7 links and 12 pages, you're likely doomed. You don't need to match the numbers of the top 10, but you do need to be in the ball park. If the top 10 is littered with all the big guys like Amazon, eBay, and the dreaded Wikipedia, you might just want to consider reevaluating your goals. If your site is not in a comparable position with the rest of the top 10, then you need to either step up your efforts in order to compete, or plan on waiting a very long time.

Get Google to Visit Your Site

How long it takes to start seeing results starts with Google. Once Google spiders your site you will still have to wait for the updated cache to appear in Google's index, and in most cases, you will have to wait longer still to see any impact in the search rankings.

In most cases getting Google to your site is relatively easy, but it can sometimes take a month or longer. Even a site with some inbound links and an XML sitemap, may have to wait a while.
Typically an established active website will seldom have to wait more than a month to get Google's eyes; however, if your site has been sitting stagnant for several years, it may take longer.

How Long Will it Take For Rankings?

You now know some of the determining factors, but how long will it take for your site to see an improvement in its organic rankings? I really wish there was a solid answer to this question, but with such a vast array of variables there is no way to know for sure. I can say however, that from experience, the timelines below are fairly accurate.

• Niche Industry
  A niche industry is represented by phrases that are relatively specific, such as "widgets Bellingham". While they don't require a geographic modifier, phrases focused on a very specific area often are considered niche. Phrases used for a niche site will also often return less than 100,000 results in a Google search. The top 10 ranking sites will also often have less than 100 inbound links each.



• Timeline:
  
  
  
  • Brand New Site: Possibly as little as a few months
  
  
  • Established Site: Potentially it could literally be over night, but most likely around 6 weeks.
  
  



• Medium Industry
  Medium Industry terms are slightly more general, but still include some kind of modifier, such as a state or color; "Washington Widgets" or "Blue Widgets". These phrases often represent no more than a few million results in a typical Google search with the top 10 ranking sites having between 100-1,000 inbound links.



• Timeline:
  
  
  
  • Brand New Site: 6 months to a year
  
  
  • Established Site: 2-4 months
  
  



• Highly Competitive Industry
  These pages are those with phrases that are rather broad and seldom have any modifiers, such as simply "widgets". You will often find tens or even hundreds of millions of competing pages in Google for your target phrase. Often the links required for the top 10 will be in the thousands, or tens of thousands (sometimes even in the millions).



• Timeline:
  
  
  
  • Brand New Site: Anywhere from 1 to 5 years
  
  
  • Established Site: Could be as long as a year or more
  
  

For a brand new site, starting with nothing, in most cases you will be looking at around a year before you start to see significant ranking changes. You may get the odd ranking here and there, and start to see some traffic, but for any phrases that are remotely competitive, it can take quite a while. Unless you have a very tight niche, expect to wait at least 6 months before you see any movement at all. This is not to say that you can't get quick results, but in the majority of cases it is quite rare.

For more established sites, rankings tend to come much more quickly. One significant factor in determining time is links. If your established site has lots, but the site itself is simply lacking fundamental SEO or proper navigation, then you can sometimes see results rather quickly. If you have no links and need to build them, it significantly increases the wait time. Even for an established site, achieving links in a competitive industry can still take some time.

Rankings Are Taking Forever

There are a number of reasons why your site may not achieve results. If you find that your campaign has been going on for a long time and you have seen no movement what-so-ever, it is possible that one of the following is hindering your efforts.

• Spamming & Penalties
  In some cases your site may take forever to achieve rankings, or the rankings may not come at all. If your site has been previously penalized for spamming, you absolutely must clean up all traces of the past dirtiness.
  
  Once the site is entirely cleaned up, then you can apply for re-inclusion. This is certainly no assurance that Google will ever pay your site any attention again, but it's the first step to the land of maybe.



• Duplicate Content
  If your site has utilized mass amounts of duplicate content, chances are you will not ever see rankings until you replace it all with something original and meaningful. There is no "duplicate content" penalty per-se, but you are essentially penalizing yourself if you copy content. Google tends to look at the first instance it finds online for a piece of content as the official source (not always the case).
  
  If you copy content that is already out there and indexed by Google, they will discount your content as it is already indexed somewhere else, and your site or page will simply not get any rankings for it - and rightfully so.



• Links (or lack thereof)
  If your site has no links, you probably will not get any rankings, even after you are fully indexed. This is not always the case, I have seen sites rank well for various phrases with zero inbound links - but it is rare, and should not be relied on. Build up your links – period.
  
  On the flip side of this, let's say your site has thousands of links, but they are from free for all sites, link farms, or "bad neighborhoods", and so on - they won't help you. These links won't necessarily hurt you, but will be essentially ignored. You need quality, relevant links.



• Competition
  You just may be out of your league. If you have a small operation, and are competing for a major ultra competitive term, chances are you won't ever see the light of day. Not to say it is not possible, but if you are competing in a well established industry where literally 10's of thousands of links are required, and your target phrase is experiencing millions of searches a month, you need to weigh your targets. Chances are your keywords need to be re-evaluated as your chances of success are slim.



• Not Listening
  If your SEO gives you actionable recommendations, follow them. Recommendations are given for a reason, to help you achieve rankings. If you are not willing to implement what is suggested, then your campaign may go nowhere. I have seen websites fail to rank simply because clients ignored recommendations. Your SEO will not be able to help you if you refuse to implement their advice.

A Little Success Story

I have seen rankings come literally within hours. It is very rare but it happens. In one specific example a blog post was put up on a very specific niche topic that had almost no coverage online.

Google coincidently spidered the blog within an hour or so of posting, and within an hour from that, the blog post was #1 in the organic results for the most relevant phrase. The site saw a giant spike in traffic for the next couple days while the phrase was a hot topic. (The search phrase was very specific and localized: "election results"). This shows that for a site with an established link base, and a good reputation in Google, rankings can sometimes come extremely quickly.

Regardless of industry and target phrases, you will have to wait for your search results. Just how long you will wait varies on far too many factors to give a solid number, but expect to wait for results anywhere from a few days to several years. It's the best time frame I can give without knowing specific details of your site and project.

Basic SEO Strategies for Newbies

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process getting your website ready to be found in organic web searches. Organic searches, refers to web searches that appear naturally as the result of a search for a particular keyword or phrase, rather than appearing in the sponsored links (pay-per-click advertising) section of a search page.

Here are the 11 strategies that you can regularly implement on your sites for better SEO positioning:

1.Page title tags: This refers to the page information that you see in the blue bar of your browser in the upper left-hand corner when you visit a website. For best SEO, use your top 2 keywords in your title tag. The best way to do that is separated with a bar, as illustrated in this example: Internet Marketing | Web Marketing.

2. Domain name: as much as possible, use one primary keyword in your domain name. You will have a slight edge over your competition by doing so. If you already have a domain that you have used for some time, include a keyword in the name of files for your website pages. Example: http://www.yoursite.com/internet-marketing.htm if your keyword is Internet marketing.

3. Meta tags: These are descriptions on a web page that are not seen by most visitors except when looking at the page source code in their browser. While the keyword and description metatags used to be the primary way that search engines indexed sites, that is no longer the case. However, you shouldn't ignore them entirely, as it is still worthwhile to include them as a part of your page description. For optimal SEO, your meta description and keyword tags should be no more than 150 characters each.

4. Header tags: Header tags are the HTML code that indicate a headline, like H1, H2 and H3 and show up as bolded headlines in your page content. The first 3 header tags are the only ones you need to be concerned about, and the primary header tag, H1, is the most important. Use your primary keyword once in the H1 tag, 2-3 times in your H2 tags, and multiple times in your H3 tags.

5.Alt image tag: The alt tag typically describes an image in a floating text window when you put your mouse over the image if the image isn't able to be displayed. The best use of any tag is to use your keywords in your image descriptions.

6. Content formatting: Search engines pay attention to formatted content, as in when text is bolded, italicized, and underlined. Make sure that you are bolding your keywords in the content of your website.

7. Keyword density: Keyword density refers to the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase appears on a web page. Rather than trying to focus on the number of times a keyword appears in the content of your page, aim for a more natural density by keeping your keyword phrases in mind as you write the copy for your page. Optimally, keyword density should be between 2% - 7%. There are a number of keyword density checkers available online to assist you with determining the keyword density of a page.

8. Anchor text: Anchor text refer to links on a page that connect your visitor to other pages. So, rather than telling someone to "click here" in the content of your page, include a keyword in your anchor text, as in "click here for dog training tips."

9. Inbound links: Reciprocal link exchange (you link to my site and I'll link to yours) used to be a great way to attract the attention of search engines to your site. Now, search engines pay attention only to the quality and popularity of the site providing you with an inbound link that is not a reciprocal link. One of the best ways to get quality inbound links back to your site is to submít articles to high traffic article directoríes and submit press releases to paid press release services.

A second way to gain high quality inbound links is by listíng your site in search engine-friendly directoríes in which humans review the listings. Google and other search engines place more credibility in the directories in which the listings are reviewed by real people than they do other kinds of directories. Consequently, these links are weighted more heavily and favorably in the inbound link evaluation process.

10. New content: Content is still king, so one way to improve your page rank for a search term is to write high quality articles containing one or two of your keywords in the title and posting those regularly (weekly is best) to your site. Search engines are always seeking good, fresh, content, so your goal should be to make your site into an information-rich resource for your industry.

11. Site maps: There are sitemaps that help a visitor navigate a site, and sitemaps that are expressly designed for the search engines. The two are not the same. To enhance your site, submit an xml sitemap to Google Webmaster Central and Yahoo Site Explorer. Use XML Sitemaps to build search engine-friendly sitemaps on your sites. You can refer to my previous post on how to make an XML sitemap.

Search engine optimization strategy is not as difficult as it appears. Take some time to do some keyword research for your site, and then spend another 15 minutes a day employing a few of these strategies until you have a well-optimized site. Why pay for visitors through pay-per-click advertising if you don't have to?

Proper Website Submission To Search Engines

If you have a business website then the best advertising and marketing is done by submitting your website to a search engines.

It is still the best option for promotion.No amount of press releases, newspaper or radio ads, banner ads, spam emails or newsletters will achieve the same results, although it may be effective in a small proportion.

Automatic submission of your website to hundreds of search engines are a bad thing to do so beware of SEO companies providing such services. The best way to submit your website for search engine ranking and inclusion is to do it yourself or to hire an expert to do it manually, by contacting the search engine companies and directories.

Researching or referrals from other companies that have had great success with an SEO company is always the safest way to ensure that your website is going to be in genuinely good hands. There are so many SEO services on the internet trying to make a quick buck by any means necessary.

Business dealings with the wrong types of people can be very hard if you're not careful in considering and researching where you decide to go in finding your marketing partners for life.

Before website submission to search engines, it is best to ensure that your websites are thoroughly designed, having professional quality using the right keywords, good graphics and pictures and appropriate, relevant content. Don't submit websites that are incomplete.

While submitting to search engine, make sure to provide information about your website, keywords and any other information that may be pertinent, including the name and contact information of your business.

New and fresh website in the early stages are always going to come with many great challenges. But once you have overcome those challenges and beaten the odds, you will most likely be able to repeat this pattern over and over if you wanted to do so.

You could also decide to become a consultant and help others to become better with their dealings online. They could learn from your mistakes and discoveries just as you had with your wonderful guide.

Mere submissions alone to search engines will not guarantee that your site would be immediately listed and the ranking will be at the very top. Because there are thousands of new websites coming up every day and it may take quite some time before they take up your site for review by human editors.

One important factor to remember while submitting your website is to include a site map of your website which makes the crawling easy for the web robots. Search engines like Google hardly consider submissions without sitemaps.

You will need to do everything that you can think of to make the robot's job in crawling your website as easy as it can possibly be from your end. It can also be referred to as optimizing your website to just flow very smoothly without hardly any interruption at all from the search engine programs that hit all kinds of dead ends and errors as people place businesses online.

You will hear from many users online that you should stay as far away as you can get from these automatic submission companies. This is very much the case in most of what you may stumble onto online.

There are a few good, solid and dependable SEO companies that you can find by knowing the right people and being associated with a good network of business minded people.

Building A Better Business Website

A look of a website can make or break your business. First impressions always count. Here are ten tips to building a better business website.

1. Colour - A black background is not recommended. It's hard on the eyes. I don't know how many people have problems reading white or coloured text on a black background and with that said, don't go neon pink or glaring orange either. Generally black text on white background is best. Ideally you can choose two colours, but make sure they match and use it consistently on all your pages to maintain fluidity and continuity.

For example: Reds and oranges which stimulates appetite works well on a food site while warm pastel colours matches a baby site.

2. Layout - Don't cram everything into one page. Cluttered websites overwhelms the visitors. Keep it clean, crisp and concise. I had a CMS style website before and although it looked organized because there were three columns, there were also a lot of text. Navigation wasn't as plain as day and it overloaded the senses. Take these three words to heart, less is more.

3. Navigation - The more user-friendly the better and your visitors are bound to stay longer. You don't want your visitors to be jumping through hoops to find what they are looking for. Make shopping carts or payment buttons visible and easily accessible. Everything should be just a click away. Make sure all your links are working. Finding broken links becomes frustrating and annoying.

4. Proper spelling and grammar - There's nothing good about visiting a website to find loads of misspelled words and poor grammar. It's unprofessional and you can bet your visitors will leave.

5. Speed - When it comes to website loading, no one likes to be kept waiting. They will definitely leave a site if it won't load properly. People's time is precious; don't make them wait.

6. Graphics - Be careful of using big flashy graphics or banners. Too many animated and too many big banners take away a site's credibility. It also slows down the loading time of your site considerably. Not everyone uses high speed Internet. Remember people don't wait around for slow loading sites.

7. Audio - If you like it and want it, change the default setting to give the visitor control if they want to hear audio or not. Make sure it's visibly accessible to the visitor. The last time I landed on a site, I couldn't find the button to disable the audio so I immediately X'ed out.

8. Pop-up anything - Although many people now have pop-up blockers, it may not be so much of a nuisance, but a pop-up of anything is intrusive, unwanted and annoying. Adding a form to your page in a highly visible spot is much more effective and non-intrusive.

9. Content - Informative, resourceful content will keep a visitor coming back. No one wants to visit a site that hasn't been updated in a long time. You can add a small graphic or a simple text in red with the word "NEW" or a "What's New?" page to inform your visitors you have made updates.

10. AdSense ads - Too many AdSense ads on any page looks scammy and it downgrades the quality of your site. If you can handle honest opinions, have someone critique your website. It really all comes down to personal preference and you will never be able to please everyone and that's okay.

The main goal is building a functioning, well laid out website that is successful and prosperous to you for many years to come.

SEO Crash Course

SEO stands for search engine optimization. You probably already know this, but it pays to be safe so let’s take a quick look at what this acronym is really all about. SEO is the art and science of identifying the right markets to promote via Web search, and then helping the search engines rank your sites highly within their results.

Good and effective SEO involves creating pages and sites that are easily indexed and reviewed by the special software used by Google and other search engines.

These special software programs are referred to as spiders or robots, and they
literally crawl the entire Web (thousands of links per second) in a never-ending
effort to index and rank all files within the search results listings.

SEO also includes generating a large number of quality back links to your
website and individual pages, as doing so will increase the number of “votes”
the search engines see when they index your sites.

These two areas of SEO are called on-site and off-site SEO respectively. This
article is about offsite SEO, or link generation.

Keyword Selection

Choosing the right keywords for your site is important. Obviously your keywords and keyword phrases need to be targeted and descriptive, but you also want to select a number of phrases that are not being used by all the competition.

Online, as elsewhere, most people go for the low hanging fruit. Most of your
competitors will be trying hard to get traffic using the simplest, most obvious
keywords that come to mind.

The trouble is, this usually means thousands of people are optimizing for the
same search terms. What you need to do is find good keywords that are being
ignored by most webmasters.

For instance, the key term “Web Design” is wildly competitive. On the other hand “affordable we design” and “cheap web design” are much less competitive, while still being queried by many people every month.

Keyword Usage On-site

You’ve probably heard that your site, in order to be search engine friendly, needs
to have a solid keyword density and properly optimized tags. This is true, but
none of these elements are as important as the back linking strategies and
tactics you’ll learn in this article.

Making your sites search engine happy:

Good Title Tag - Your HTML Title tag for every page needs to be your top keyword phrase(s). It’s ok to use two or three keyword phrases and separate these with the | pipe character.

Keep your title short and to the point. If your site is about Web Design your title needs to be simply < TITLE >Web Design | Affordable Web Design Service< /TITLE >

Correct Use Of Heading Tags - Most of us use < H1 > tags to create big, bold headlines for our sales pages. This is great, but you also need to understand that search engine spiders read anything between < H1 >. < H2 >, etc. as important keyword content; it’s a good idea to add one or more of your top keyword
phrases here.

Smart Keyword Density - Be sure your main keywords are used often but naturally within your content. Should you use a 2% keyword density, 5%, or what? I have no idea and this has never stopped me from nailing top search engine rankings virtually at will.

If you want to study keyword density that’s great, but for now the least you should
know is to be sure and include your keywords within your page content. Be sure
not to “stuff” your pages with ridiculous, unnatural use of any terms as doing so
could get you penalized by Google and other engines.

Take good care of these basics and you can literally spend the rest of your
time building the right kinds of back links.

Watch out for the next part of our SEO Crash Course.

SEO and Link Building

Not All Links Are Created Equal:

Every website or blog owners want their site to rank high in search engines and a very popular way of doing this is by building links. But you need to know that not all links are created equal.

Many links are more valuable for your site rankings than others, and certain types of links can even pull your website’s rankings down. So to make sure we are getting those valuable links we need to know more about the links we are getting.

Inbound | Outbound Links

When it comes to links there are a few different types, some which you may be aware of and others to which you probably have not given a lot of consideration. So, before we start talking about the types of links you want and the ones you don’t, let's dig deeper into our links.

Outbound links

Outbound links are links that you have on your site which lead to other sites. For example, if you were writing about directories and you linked to the directory site so your readers can access the directory or get more detailed information about it, that would be an outbound link from your site.

Inbound links

An inbound link is a link to your site from another site. To give you an idea, if you have a friend who has a site of their own, and they find a useful article or page on your site and link to it, this is an inbound link.

General links
A general link is a link to your main home page or your site's index page.

Specific links

This is generally a link to a specific section or posting on your site. For example, if you run a blog and someone links to the URL of a specific blog posting, in order to use your site as an example, reference or to provide information, then they have given you a specific link to your site. It should be noted, of course, that both general and specific links can be either inbound or outbound.

Low ranking versus high ranking sites

It is important to know that not all sites worry about the places where your inbound links come from, but some do. Just to be fair.

*Low ranking sites - This are sites that has linked to you but does not have a high traffic flow. This will be the bulk of sites.
*High ranking sites - These are sites with generally high traffic flow, and high rankings in search engines. These sites are usually also very well known.

Each of the search engines has an algorithm that determines how a site will be ranked. It is important to know that there are two main types of algorithms: those that count your inbound links and those that do not.

The theory behind the ones that do count your inbound links is that these links shows your popularity, and therefore your relevance to readers. The non-inbound links counters have the philosophy that, as a site administrator, you have no control over who, if anyone, can link to your site, and you should not be penalized for that.

Link Building No NO!

*Hire a link building service. At first, this seems like it would be a great idea; after all, you are guaranteed links to your site. But you should know that most search engines have a method in place to recognize when a site is link spamming, which is what these services are actually offering you. When you turn the work over to a third party, you lose control of the situation, and that is a problem because you are unable to control the quality and relevance of the links to your site.

*Doing it Yourself. Build links with every site you can get to agree or make a comment on. Well, this idea is great. You have the ability to exercise control, but you just aren’t doing it. Before you go off half-cocked you should think about why we practice SEO in the first place. We do it because higher rankings draw in readers, which brings in advertisers and revenue. Linking to or from an irrelevant site will not help you in the long run, and may even cause search engines to mark you off as surely as if you had paid a service.

Doing It the Right Way

Build your links wisely; worry about the long term and not immediate results. The path to doing this is surprisingly straightforward.

First make two lists. The first list should be of sites that you can build links to by yourself. The first list will include blogs in which you can post comments (and links), and the second will be sites with which you want to build a linking relationship in the content that the site publishes. Now choose your top 10 from each list.

On your self link building list, be sure that your comments or postings are not spam-like in nature; be relevant and thoughtful. For your second list, get the contact information and send polite and professional emails suggesting a shared linking arrangement. You have to be able to give as well as take here.

Build your self posted links slowly, focusing on one or two comments a day over a few weeks or months. For the second list, once you have sent out the emails, all you can do is wait. After a few weeks have gone by you can move on down your list to the next 10. Just be sure to honor your prior agreements or you may find yourself with angry link partners on your hands.

Search Engine Crawlers and SEO

When it comes to online or internet marketing and search engine optimization, there’s a lot to learn. That is the reason why a lot of people hire SEO consultants to worry about their internet marketing for them.

Nevertheless, if you do not want to pay SEO experts to help you with your website marketing, then you may want to think about doing it yourself! It's not that hard, it just takes some reading on the internet from trusted sources. Most of the SEO services that are provided online are built around one thing, and that is search engine crawlers.

We are going to discuss today more about search engine crawlers, and what they do. Soon you will find out that pretty much everything that you do, as far as search engine optimization goes, is to make these little crawlers happy. It is no longer as easy as a quick search engine submission and your website becomes popular.

These search engine crawlers are little bots that travel around the internet looking for new websites and ranking them based on an algorithm. When they come across a new website, they rank it in different ways, taking many things in to consideration. These ranks help to determine where the site is going to end up in a search result done by a search engine query.

The first thing that you have to do for these crawlers is to get noticed by them, and that is the hardest part of SEO, or at least that is what SEO consultants want you to think! The fact is, you can get your website noticed by simply visiting different popular search engines and adding your URL to their submission forms.

You also must get links from other web sites pointing to your web site to obtain link popularity and credibility with the search engines. This way the crawlers will know where your site is at, and find it a lot quicker. They will also consider it a relevant source of information if other sites link to you.

Next thing is all about marketing your web site on the internet through search engine optimization techniques. These little crawlers are programmed to look for certain things on your web site, these are things that SEO experts study and have an understanding for.

Using the services of SEO Consultants to help in your marketing, however they can be very costly, so you should hire a service provider that is talented and can provide a portfolio to ensure you get quality work.

Before hiring an SEO consultant to work on your web site you should make sure they use ethical search optimization and marketing tactics and also make sure that they can provide results.

The first thing that crawlers look for is, of course, keywords.

Keywords in your web sites content and keywords in the links pointing to your site. When it comes to search engine optimization, use your keywords wisely. Don't over-saturate your web site with keywords because you can get docked as a spammer. These keywords have to be worked into the web page and not just listed there. You should integrate them in to your content, page titles, meta tags and URL. Also, it will help the marketing of your web site if you work them into the titles of your web page as well.

Also make sure that your main page headings are bigger than that of your normal font so the crawlers can easily pick out what the main focus of your page is.

SEO consultants also worry about how many links there are out there that point back to your website. The more links, the better. However they must also be quality links from popular sites that are credible with the search engines. That is why SEO experts are always looking for different places where they can post links to your website. While crawlers are looking around, if they come across links to your website, then that helps to boost your ranking online.

As you can see, SEO services are very helpful, but if you can learn how to do online marketing by yourself, you don't need to hire anyone.

Good SEO Will Create Traffic to Your Website

To get the most out of your web site, it needs to get good web traffic, which means simply that a lot of people are coming to your web site. By checking your web stats, you can quickly observe how many visitors your web site is getting and even how many people stay long enough to browse the website.

Programs like Awstats, a web-analyzing program found on most Linux based servers will show you how those web visitors came to you. Did they click through from a search engine? If so, what keyword brought them to you? Or, did they come from a particular website that links to yours? Your stats will reveal all.

Are the keywords used by visitors who find your site through the search engines. In the past few years a new science called "Search Engine Optimization" (SEO) has evolved into a business model that specializes in making sure your web site gets a strong flow of business from people looking for your niche of goods and services using Google, Yahoo or one of the other big search engines.

The key on getting traffic from search engines is your "search engine ranking". That all sounds very complicated but it isn't. When you search for something on the Internet, Google (or your favorite search engine) provides you with lots of web sites for you to consider. The search result that comes first are called the first page. And usually there are dozens of pages of web sites that the search engine shows you.

Well, experts tell us that the majority of web shoppers use a web site shown on that first page of links that the search engine returns. So if your web site is among that first one or two pages, you have a good search engine ranking and you will see more customers than a business that is way down on page 54 where customers never go. One of the primary ways to get on that first page is by using good SEO.

SEO is the science of effective research and implementation with search engines so your web site gets a good ranking. SEO is also a fairly complicated science because it involves how your web site is programmed, the kind of text you have on each page and a good SEO expert has specialized tools and software to monitor your SEO on a daily basis to see how you are doing.

So how can we improve our web site's SEO? If you go talk to your web programmers, they will be aware of the terms we learned here today but they may not be equipped to do a professional job of improving your SEO. That is why most businesses that do well at improving SEO for their web sites do so using a professional outsourcing company that specializes in this kind of thing. There are good reasons for you to outsource this function as well.

An SEO company will have those specialized tools and software resources to do the job right. They understand how search engines work and they can prepare specific suggestions to your web team to improve your search engine ranking. And they can employ internet traffic specialists who have that expertise to take your web site from where it is and turn it into a successful money maker for you.

By learning the terminology and what SEO is as we have started to talk about today, you are on your way to finding a good SEO contractor who can help your web site find success and get lots of profitable traffic. Use good common sense in finding an SEO company and check references and employ someone who can really do the job. It will cost you a bit to get the best expertise there is to improve your SEO. But when you see the flood of business and sales that come from the effort, you will know you made a wise investment in using them.

You will also want to make sure the articles you purchase from private label sites or ghostwriter services are optimized for your site's keywords as well. If you purchase a set of private label articles, for example, on the subject of weight loss it will be a good idea to re-write them using your own site's keywords.

If, on the other hand, you are outsourcing custom articles to a ghostwriter you can specify the articles be "SEO" ready for your chosen keywords upon delivery. This will ensure your articles will rank well in the search engines. These are just a few ways that using good SEO will create traffic to your website.

On-Page Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something you should be preparing for before creating a site. Make sure you've made extensive researches on the best keywords to use. Using the wrong keywords would eliminate your site from search engines forever!

This keyword-tweaking process for a site is often referred to as On-Page Optimization. In order to rank high in search engines, make sure you execute these tasks:

1. Include your keywords in the domain name
2. Include them also in the page title
3. Use "h1" and "h2" header tags
4. Type some keywords in bold, italic and underline
5. Put your keywords at the beginning and end of your webpage
6. Named all the images or graphics after your keywords

A wrong thing to do is performing unnecessary keyword-filling! This could result to your site getting banned by search engines. An example of unnecessary keyword-filling is by putting hidden texts all over your web page. Also don't fill your meta tag, alt image tag, or title tag with keywords. You will get caught and your site will be banned for this!

Besides, there is another important factor that has a huge impact on your site's ranking in search engines. It is often referred to as Off-Page Optimization. You will find a lot of articles about it from my previous posts.

SEO Secrets Part 1

This is the first part which serves as the foundation of all our SEO discussions. You must understand the concepts and perform the task even if you feel that you know them or they are very basic. We will be focusing first how Google works. But before going deeper into SEO secrets, you should know some common terms used in SEO. These are the terms which are most commonly misunderstood by beginners.

Rank, ranking : a websites actual position in the free(unpaid) section of a search engine results page for a specified keyword/term. When someone claims that his site is number one in Google, you need to know for which search term/keyword.

PageRank : Commonly know as PR. Google’s patented system for specifying a web page’s importance. PageRank(PR) is a single important factor that influences ranking. Many people confuse a page’s rank ( what position are they on a search results page ) with a page’s PageRank(PR) value. They are totally different.

Page Title: The title of a web page is contained inside the < title > < /title > tags at the beginning of an HTML file. It is displayed at the top corner of every browser.




Keywords: are words and phrases that defines what a web page is all about. When someone searched a particular term or phrase into google, it tries to find those web pages that matches the search word or phrase best.



On-Page Factors : SEO factors that affects the rank that is associated with elements on your website, such as content, code, navigational links and title tags.

Off-Page Factors : SEO factors that influence the rank associated with the elements on other websites, primarily links that points to your site.

Googles Importance and How it Works

Google is the most used, most prominent and most important search engine of all. It provides results to other partner search engines and directories. This means getting the top rank in Google will most likely rank you #1 in its partner sites as well. This is not a guarantee though because they tend to blend their results a little bit so the results across its partners may not be the same.

With its partners included, Google is responsible for powering 70% of all search engine traffic to websites. This is the reason why you should focus your promotion first on Google.

Google, like any other search engines uses automated software to read, analyze, compare and rank your web pages. So it is necessary to know which elements or factors Google cares about, and how important this factors are in relation to each other.

Quality Links – A Link Building Strategy

Getting quality inbound links pointing to your website can get you high rankings. It is one of the most important search engine optimization steps that you should consider. Although it is important to have an optimized content to your website, without quality links, search engines will not consider your content that much.
It is very important to get the right links to your website. Spamming doesn't work. You must make sure that you get high quality links pointing to your site. Below are some steps you should consider in getting backlinks to your site.



Making your website linkworthy

Don’t expect other website to link to your site if you don’t have anything worth linking for. Try to put relevant content to your website. Write some articles about the services that you are offering to your website. Add some tutorials or how-to articles or provides some useful links that others can benefit from.

Get Links from High PR’d blogs or sites.

Getting links from blogs with high PR is a very good way to get backlinks. Make sure to get links from related niche. There are millions of blogs on the internet and they all need some support form webmasters posting some comments to their articles.

To find blogs with high PR, you can use google to search for them. For example if you are looking for “art gallery”, you can type “high PR art gallery blogs” and so on.

Submit to Internet Directories

Submitting your website to Internet directories is also a good way to show Google that you have a reputable website. Low quality websites usually don't invest the time and money that is needed to be listed in Internet directories.
Inbound links are very important if you want to get high rankings on search engines. You should optimize your web page content first to make sure that search engines find your website relevant to your targeted keywords.
If more than one website has been optimized for the same keywords (and that's usually the case) then the website with the best links will get the best rankings.

I have compiled some of high PR directory listings where you can submit your site in my article SEO for Newbies. You can check that out to start with.

Check Competitors Website

The best way to start link building is to duplicate the links that your competitors have. Find all websites that link to your competitors and then try to convince them to link to your website.
You can do that by simply checking it from yahoo. Just type “ links: http://theirsite.com (competitors url)”
You can then check the websites one after the other and convince them to link to your website.

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Removing No-Follow Attributes To Your Blog

Wordpress, new and od Blogger templates have a default ‘NOFOLLOW’ attribute on their comments. This is done to stop spammers from abusing your blog. Having a ‘NOFOLLOW’ attribute on your comment means that search engines will not follow any links created on your comments.Since links are important in Search Engine Optimization, many bloggers spend a lot of time visiting other blogs to leave comments on them and create a link back to their own blog. If however, a blog has a NOFOLLOW attribute to the link on its comment, the links that are created will be useless to those who have created it.

If you are new to blogging and you would like to encourage more participation from your reader and build a community of your own, you can disable your NOFOLLOW attribute to give an incentive to your readers to react and leave comments on your post. This is also a good way to increase traffic and attract more visitors to your blog. Here are some more reasons why removing the NOFOLLOW attribute is worthwhile:

• Increase the number of comments on your posts.
  
• Encourage repeat visits and comments (increase in traffic).
  
• A DoFollow link is a way to thank people who take the time to comment on your blog. (Link Love and Increase in Technorati Blog Reaction)
  
• Being generous can give you alot of benefits - more friends, more readers etc.
  

Wordpress Blog

For wordpress users you can download a plugin to automate the process. It will disable the automatic rel="nofollow" attributes added to external links. You may want to do this if you have good spam filtering for your comments, or if your blog is moderated.

Optionally you can also set a comment age limit for adding the attributes, or have them removed differently from comments left by registered users and other visitors.

Pingbacks and trackbacks are just different types of comments in WordPress. This plugin will take care of all of them. You can also choose not to remove rel="nofollow" from some types of comments.

Download the Plugin Now.

Installation Instruction:

Download Do-Follow Plugin and save it in the wp-content/plugins directory of your WordPress installation. Activate the DoFollow plugin in the Plugins admin page.

Once activated, the plugin provides a DoFollow subpage in the Options page. It will show you the current operating mode in addition to the configuration options.

Blogger Blogs

For Blogger users, here’s the simple instruction on how to disable your NOFOLLOW attribute on your comments.

• Go to your ‘TEMPLATE’ Tab.
  
• Click on ‘EDIT HTML’.
  
• Tick on ‘EXPAND WIDGET TEMPLATE’.
  
• Scroll down until you find this code:

Remove the code in red and you’re good to go.

Lets spread the love!Cheers


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Embedding RSS To Your Websites

As I have promised on my previous article , generating backlinks to your site , here's a way to embed RSS feeds to your site .But before we can do that, let us first talk about RSS feeds. What they are and how they help for our site promotion.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) is a format based on XML, created to easily share web content, and is particularly suitable for news items. You can use it to display headlines on another site or you can use a program called a “news aggregator” to read the news. These programs allow you to subscribe to various RSS feeds from different news sites. The programs automatically go to the web sites to check for updates, so the stories come to you, without you having to check the sites for new stories.

It is a file format that is incorporated by Internet users in their websites or blogs to allow for 'web syndication', making their content available in a format that can be universally understood by other people.
In essence, RSS is a 'mini database' that contains headlines of your web content, including hyperlinks that enable users to link back to the article of their choice.
RSS websites - that is, websites that contain RSS 'feeds' (articles or postings) - typically have colorful graphics to indicate to users that the specific web content is available through RSS feeds. These graphics are usually depicted by orange rectangles that are usually marked with 'RSS' or 'XML'.

What You Need

Depending on your needs, you can embed RSS feeds to your site in different ways. You can use RSS2Javascript if you prefer javascript for embedding. You can also use RSS2HTML or RSS Feed Reader to embed RSS in HTML format. But in this article we will be using MagpieRSS to embed RSS feeds to your site. It comes handy especially when you don't have access to your apache server(.htaccess) via cPanel or locally.

Embedding RSS Through MagpieRSS

First of all, you should have a copy of MagpieRSS files. If you don't, then you can download it here . After that extract it and upload the folder MagpieRSS to your hosting server. Now open the file or web page where you want to put the RSS feeds. This file will need to have a (.php) extension. Wherever you want the feeds to appear, put this code there.

==========================

<?php

define('MAGPIE_DIR', ' yourfolder /magpie/');
require_once(MAGPIE_DIR.'rss_fetch.inc');

$rss = fetch_rss( ' http://www.yoursite.com/yourfolder /atom.xml' );

//display latest blog content:

$item = $rss->items[0];

$content = $item['atom_content'];

echo "<p>Latest Blog Entry:<br>$content</p>\n";

?>

You will need to edit the parts in Red to match the directory structure on your web host. You can also edit the echo line to fit your needs, (add a style in there, or just remove the phrase "Latest Blog Entry" for instance.)

Also notice that by changing the 0 in the line:

$item = $rss->items[ 0 ];

you will display an entry other than the most recent. For example, to show the third most recent post, put:

$item = $rss->items[ 2 ];

Creating a List of All The Articles Present on the Feed Link

==========================

<?php

define('MAGPIE_DIR', ' yourfolder /magpie/');
require_once(MAGPIE_DIR.'rss_fetch.inc');

$rss = fetch_rss( ' http://www.yoursite.com/yourfolder /atom.xml' );

//display links recent blog entries:

echo "<ul><em>Latest blog additions:</em>\n";

foreach ($rss->items as $item) { <-- loop starts here

$href = $item['link'];

$title = $item['title'];

$created = $item['created'];

echo "<li><a href=$href>$title</a> $created</li>\n";

}

echo "</ul>";

?>

You should notice in the above that we are actually getting a little more information about the feeds, and then displaying it to the screen. We are using a loop to go through an array of feeds one by one, getting the link to that feed, the title and the date of publishing . Using an echo command to print to the web page . This gets repeated to make a list, with an opening and closing before and after the loop .

Displaying A Single Post Rather Than Getting All Of It.

==========================


$rss = fetch_rss( ' http://www.yoursite.com/yourfolder /atom.xml' );

to add two extra lines as below:

$num_items = 5 ;

$rss = fetch_rss( ' http://www.yoursite.com/yourfolder /atom.xml' );
$items = array_slice($rss->items, 0, $num_items);

The 5 above says you want to get 5 posts from the feed. You also need to make one last change from this line:

foreach ($rss->items as $item) {

to be like this, which is now going through the new, smaller array you sliced from the full array:

foreach ( $items as $item) {



That's it. I hope you have enjoyed our tutorial for today.
Did you like the article? Feel free to comment and subscribe to my feed.

Generating Backlinks To Your Site

One of the best ways to generate backlinks to your site is through RSS feeds. It provides deep links to the inner pages of your site which is a valuable source for backlinks. But before you do that, you will need an online syndication service that will display RSS feeds as a web page.

The primary requirement for this technique is to have an RSS feed on your website. This is special file written in a variant of XML, which describes the most recent pages from your website. Each entry should have a title, date, URL and a description.

The best RSS feed to have is one while is updated automatically whenever you add something to your website. Blogs usually provide this functionality, so all you need to do is find them or create your own.

Fresh Content Makes A Difference

• Syndicated page is updated automatically, each time the owner makes an update , so the content is always fresh
• Page title will match the title of the feed, and therefore contain the same keywords
• Sometimes the URL will also include keywords from the feed title
• RSS feeds contain snippets of text, which get displayed on the syndicated page
• This means that the majority of the content on the page comes directly from the RSS feed
• Each link within the RSS feed will be displayed using the title of the item as the anchor text
• All links are one-way, i.e. better than reciprocal links

How to Syndicate Content.

Here is a list of syndication services that will display an RSS Feed as an ordinary web page.

• MagpieRSS.net (My Personal Favorite)
  A XML-based RSS parser in PHP. Supports most RSS versions including Userland RSS and RSS 1.0. Supports modules, and namespaces.
• FeedBurner.com
  Requires Registration. Provides many advance features (e.g. stats, link splicing), and automatic support any reader.
• HubPages.com
  This is a revenue sharing website similar to Squidoo.
  All you need to do is create a page with an RSS module.
• JordoMedia.com
  No registration required. Really high quality feeds may get picked as the Editor's Pick of the Day.
• FeedBomb.com
  No registration, just submit your feed details for instant inclusion. Once the FeedBomb page is created, it can't be modified, and there's no additional features.
• Feeds2Read.net
  Doesn't require registration
• FeedCat.net
  No registration, just submit to Catalog.
  Feed will automatically appear on www.topindex.cz too.
• FeedBoy.com
  No registration required - very quick and easy.
• RSSMad.com
  Easy submission.
• FeedDirectory.us
  Basic syndicated RSS directory - easy submissions.
• TheRSSNetwork.com
  Requires you to create a login, but then you can add all of your feeds.
• Blog-Directory-Submit.com
  A straight forward directory of RSS feeds with syndication of each.
  Backlink required before feed can be accepted.
• syndic8.com
  Requires registration. Theoretically, none of the feed pages should be parsed by search engines, but I have seen Google count them as backlinks.
• RSS-Spider.com
  This doesn't give you a dedicated page for your feed, but it will link to every item within your feed. It only crawls homepages, so make sure yours has auto-discovery tags.
• DayTimeNews.com
  No registration required, just an email address.
• RSSMix.com
  This one is a bit different - you specify multiple RSS feeds, and it collects the items into a single HTML page. The page you create will be blank to start with, but it will build up over time. No registration required.
• FeedJumbler.com
  Another service that merges RSS feeds. Provides multiple formats, including Javascript for embedding in other pages. No Registration.
• Feedest.com
  Requires registration. Once you've submitted your feeds, remember to tag them!

My next article will be on how to Embed RSS feeds to your site.

Did you like this post? Feel free to make a comment.

Search Engine Optimization: The Next Approach

Having a page rank is extremely beneficial simply because there are a lot things people will do for a simple link on a high PR website. Since a page rank update occurs every two to three months, it gives everyone plenty of time to increase your traffic. Here is one of the many ways you can increase your rank and a possible way to get high PR on the next update.

Search for Do-Follow Blogs

A simple google search for “do-follow blogs’ will provide you with enough results to guarantee you with lots and incoming links. Try to choose highest rank blogs and make sure they are a do-follow and make a comment. But make sure you make a clear and meaningful comment and not just do it for a link. Making meaningful comments will earn their trust and you can always go back and post for new items on that blog.Make a listing of all the blogs you have joined for future reference.

You can find some do-follow blogs from this site.. I hope this will help you in your search for links.Goodluck.

SEO for Newbies

Website owners as well as bloggers today wants their site to be number one. Who doesn’t? But most of them failed to do so because of wrong SEO practices and worst they simple don’t know how to do it. Some will hire a company providing affordable web design service hoping that their works are SEO friendly and it will be easy for them to get high traffic. This article will focus on people who has zero knowledge on search engine optimization and also for those doing it the wrong way.

What is SEO

It is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results for targeted keywords.It is the active practice of optimizing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines. Companies that practice SEO can vary; some have a highly specialized focus, while others take a more broad and general approach. Website optimization for search engines can require looking at so many unique elements that many practitioners of SEO (SEOs) consider themselves to be in the broad field of website optimization.

Why SEO is Important?

Well think of your site as having lots of information that you wanted to share the world and the only people that knows about it are your friends. If your site cannot be found by search engines or your content cannot be put into their databases, you miss out on the incredible opportunities available to websites provided via search - people you wanted visiting your site. Whether your site provides content, services, products, or information, search engines are a primary method of navigation for almost all Internet users.

SEO will get your site listed in major search engines, putting your site on their databases. That way people that are not intimately acquainted with who you are and what you sell will find you. The world will know about your site, what you are sharing them or what you want to sell them.

Not only that - you are also trying to get your site listed at the top of the index for a particular subject. There are millions of sites out there on every conceivable subject wanting their sites sitting on top of every major search engines. If you sell products, then it won't do you very much good if your site is on the 50^th page. It would be like having a Yellow page advertisement where your business is listed in very small print at the back of the book!

Improving Page Rank

There are many ways in improving your page rank. Below are list of ways in improving your page rank.

• Create high quality and useful content that users want and will share with others.
• Submit your site to web directories and reference sites. Post your site’s URL to popular web directories including Open Directory Project, Yahoo, LookSmart.
• Publicize your site to the world. Add your site’s URL to every post or communication that you participate.
• Join forums, blogs and write newsletters informing people about your site services and offers. It will remind people about your site and encourage them to visit and find interesting content.
• Ask other high quality websites to link to your site. Getting other good websites linking to your site provides better rankings to Google.
• Write articles and submit them to article sites for publication.

Google periodically changes how it calculates a page’s importance, thereby resulting in shifts in rankings, known as a Google Dance. Google Guide’s placement in Google’s search results sometimes changes when Google modifies or enhances their indexing algorithms.

Don’t try to keep up with the latest search engine optimization tricks. Instead, strive to make searching easier by educating users about Google services, capabilities, and features.

Here are links to a few high page rank directories for you to submit your site. Directory submission is the free and very good way of link building. If you submit your site to many high quality and SEO friendly directories you will get lot backlinks and high position in google. So here is list of high quality directories with PR4:

1. The Free Directory - submit
2. Homehost Directory - submit
3. YVIR Directory - submit
4. Directory Worm - submit
5. Oxxu Directory - submit
6. ESG Site Directory - submit
7. OPA Network - submit
8. Environmentpage Web Directory - submit
9. Micro Bicides - submit
10. XDSTL Directory - submit

Goodluck!

Search Engine Optimization, Starting Guidelines

After finishing your designs, you are now ready to submit your site to directories, and then optimization starts. You would want to see your site listed in major search engines and be on top if possible. But this can only happen if you follow proper guidelines before you submit your site for inclusion.

Is My Site Ready for Submission?

Before submitting your site, you should pay close attention to the quality guidelines which outlines some of the illicit practices that may lead to site being removed entirely on major search engines otherwise penalized. You would not want that, would you?

Basic Guidelines

• Make your site clear in hierarchy and text links. Meaning, every page of your site must be reachable from at least one text link.
• Make a sitemap page for your users with links that points to the important pages of your site.
• Make a useful, content-rich site. Provide your visitors fresh and meaningful content, something that will make them come back or link to your site.
• Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site includes those words within it.
• Use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. Search engine crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images.
• Check your site with broken links and correct html. You can try navigating your own site by clicking every link you have to make sure everything is working perfectly.
• Make sure that your TITLE tags and ALT attributes on your images are descriptive and accurate.
• Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).
• Make pages intended for users and not for search engines.

When you think you have followed these guidelines, you can now submit your site to major search engines and directories. After that, optimization starts. And that’s what we are going to discuss in my next article.

Google Sitemap Submission – A Simple Guide

I recently submitted my site to google and it really takes time to be crawled and listed in the google directory. Then at last my site was finally listed, but it doesn't last that long since the next day, I was out of the list. So what I did was log into my google account and see what happened. Google says that my sitemap was of this type “ http://mysite.com/sitemap.htm ” and the urls inside my map says “http:// www.mysite.com/sitemap.htm ” and it produces error on all my pages crawled which results to not being on the list anymore. So for those web designers and owners who are submitting their sites to google the first time, here's a simple guide for you in creating your sitemap.

What is a Sitemap file and why should I have one?

In general, there are two types of sitemaps. The first type of sitemap is a HTML page listing the pages of your site - often by section - and is meant to help users find the information they need.

XML Sitemaps - usually called Sitemaps, with a capital S - are a way for you to give Google information about your site.

We will be discussing on the second type which is the XML Sitemaps.

In its simplest terms, a Sitemap is a list of the pages on your website. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google's normal crawling process. Sitemaps are particularly helpful if:

• Your site has dynamic content.


• Your site has pages that aren't easily discovered by Googlebot during the crawl process - for example, pages featuring rich AJAX or Flash.


• Your site is new and has few links to it. (Googlebot crawls the web by following links from one page to another, so if your site isn't well linked, it may be hard for us to discover it.)


• Your site has a large archive of content pages that are not well linked to each other, or are not linked at all.

You can also use a Sitemap to provide Google with additional information about your pages, including:

• How often the pages on your site change. For example, you might update your product page daily, but update your About Me page only once every few months.


• The date each page was last modified.


• The relative importance of pages on your site. For example, your home page might have a relative importance of 1.0, category pages have an importance of 0.8, and individual blog entries or product pages have an importance of 0.5. This priority only indicates the importance of a particular URL relative to other URLs on your site, and doesn't impact the ranking of your pages in search results.

Sitemaps provide additional information about your site to Google, complementing their normal methods of crawling the web. They expect it will help them crawl more of your site and in a more timely fashion, but we there's no guarantee that URLs from your Sitemap will be added to the Google index. Sites are never penalized for submitting Sitemaps.

Here's an example of an XML Sitemap that you can use to submit to google.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">

<url>

<loc>http://yoursite.com/index.htm</loc>

<lastmod>2008-07-18</lastmod>

<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>

<priority>0.8</priority>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http:// yoursite.com/other.htm</loc>

<lastmod>2008-07-18</lastmod>

<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>

<priority>0.8</priority>

</url>

</urlset>

Change “yoursite” to whatever your site name is and do the same on your other pages enclosing them with <url></url>. Then submit that using the google webmaster tool.

Posted By: AxedbyDax - web and graphic artist