Contemporary Online Marketing Today

Contemporary Online Advertising and Web 2.0

Online Advertising nowadays consists of a long list of undertakings going from SEO over PPC to SMM. Find out where you’ll get the most moneymaking ways to spend your online marketing budget.

Search Engine Optimization/SEO/Search Marketing

By optimising your internet site for Google/Bing/Yahoo your traffic will develop with all the fresh traffic from the search engines. Search Engine Optimization/SEO/Search Marketing is a long time endeavour which includes tasks like link building, keyword analysis and html code optimisation. Most SEO Offices nowadays engage specialists/experts in each area.

Today the most essential and most time intense SEO job is link establishing. Correctly done link building will make wonders for your search engine results, so if link analysis reveals lack of inbound links, then link building is the starting priority. Content still weighs and sufficient premium content/copy is essential too. Site coding in styles that either blur search engines or misguides them are frequent, especially for CMS, so arrest for indexing barriers on your web site before you begin. We can help you get more dealings from search engines via our SEO expertness .

PPC/Google Adwords/Paid Search

In most states it’s adequate to campaign on the major PPC networks like Google Adwords or Microsoft Advertising. Some countries demand localised knowledge of wide utilized local PPC networks. We can help you find the right PPC/Paid search selections for your business enterprise. Paid Advertising is as well possible on social media places like Facebook, and MySpace displays Google Adwords.

Social Marketing

SMM on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube is a must in any winning online marketing campaign. The great power of today’s media has shifted the symmetry and today it’s the buyers who are in charge. Anybody can create a blog, a Facebook or Twitter profile and begin remarking on you, your company or your products, so presence on social media is essential both to mind and to answer. We can help you construct a social marketing to strengthen your business and branding in social media.

Submitting to the Search Engines and WebCrawlers

When you want your brand new site to be indexed into major search engines, you usually go to their free submit page and submit your website, correct? Seems like the right thing to do, right?

Well, many people fail to realize that not submitting your site is usually better than actually submitting it.

Let, me explain.

All the search engines, or the MAJOR ones, for our discussion here have what are called webcrawlers. Now, webcrawlers are little programs that go out onto the web and search or “crawl” around looking for websites that are not already indexed into their databases.

Google search engine is a well-known engine that does this, its webcrawler “GOOGLEBOT” crawls the web looking for “non-existent” sites that are not in their index(database). To see evidence of this, look at your stats for your website and see if Googlebot has crawled your site lately, chances are it has.

– Start SideNote –
My personal experience indicates that Google actually prefers this method, crawling and indexing, rather than using their Free Submit page.
– End SideNote –

Basically if you wanna get your site indexed into Google and the Major search engines, simply post it and wait,… I realize this seems like a weird or bad idea, but take my word for it,… IT WORKS.

Another idea is that, if you already have a site that is indexed already in Google, simply put a small link to your new site toward the top of the page thats already indexed and when Google crawls your already indexed site it will automatically index your new site, since it has yet to be indexed. Easy huh?

A site map can do the same thing. In order to get all your webpages for your new site indexed simply link your sitemap of your new site as above, and when it crawls your existing site, it will index all the pages of your new site, via your sitemap.

Two points to always note: Link all your important pages into a sitemap, important pages first, and link to another already existent site, and let the major engines find your pages on their own, via webcrawling.

NOTE: The above works for FREE search engines that have crawlers, Google for example. See my previous article I wrote last week on PPC and PPI.

This article was written by Burke Ferguson of
The ACE! ezine. Burke
olds both a BSc. degree in Computer Science as well being Certified in Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Strategies. He also regularly publishes The ACE! newsletter, in which he shares his experience, methods, and knowledge with others. He can be contacted by his main website
AltaCanWeb.com or
The ACE! ezine

Search Engines: Tips and Strategies on Getting Listed and Ranking High for Newbies

You’ve got a website. You’ve put countless hours into it, tweaking the look and feel and making sure all the links work. The bad news is there are a gazillion other websites out there. The good news is there are many things you can control to make sure your site isn’t lost in the morass of dot coms.

One of the most important is showing up in the search engines, and getting listed in the top 20 for your subject. This article covers the steps you can take within your site.

First things first: Just like there’s no “get rich quick”, there’s also no “get listed quick” (unless you pay for it).

Getting top listings in the search engines is an accomplishment. It gets you traffic and it gets you credibility. You can buy sponsored listings - you can’t buy credibility.

Always Remember: Search engines base their usefulness on the quality of the results they give. You want people who are searching for your product to find your site; they want people who are searching for your product to find relevant sites. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is all about making sure you both get what you want.

SEO requires many steps. They pay off, but not immediately. Once you’re “spidered” you’ll see the effects of changes you make pretty quickly, but getting “spidered” (sorry to all the arachnophobes) can take awhile.

Spidered: Search engines search sites throughout the entire World Wide Web (if that sounds a lot like Sally searching for seashells by the seashore, it’s intentional). But, to search for your site, they have to know you’re there. So, these benevolent spiders send their hairy arms searching through the Web and whatever sticks to their spindly legs they keep.

If you create a web these spiders might want to visit, this process gets you a more desirable string on their web. You want to create a spa for spiders.

Keywords, Keywords, Keywords

Think about it: how do you search for something on the Internet? You put in a few words that say succinctly what you’re searching for, i.e. downtown Chicago restaurants.

So, when you design or revamp your site, consider the keywords anyone would use to find what you offer.

The beauty of the Internet is the ability to target niche markets. You don’t need a gazillion hits a month. You need people who are searching for YOUR product to find YOUR site. To illustrate the above example: if you search for “downtown Chicago restaurants” in Google, TheLocalTourist.com is the first listing. If you look for “Chicago Restaurants” it’s aways down the list. But that’s perfect. Because The Local Tourist only lists restaurants in downtown Chicago.

If The Local Tourist had a high listing for Chicago Restaurants, then someone looking for a place to eat in one of the outlying neighborhoods would be disappointed, and we don’t want that.

By focusing on your niche keywords, on your target market’s desires, you’re forced to evaluate what you have to offer and the best way to present it. When you designed your product or service, you (hopefully) had the end-user in mind. So you know what they want.

As you’re starting out, don’t use the most popular keywords; use ones that don’t get as many searches because there won’t be as much competition. You’re just trying to establish a presence. A good resource to find the popularity of keywords is http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. Type in the keywords you think people would use to find your work and this tool will show you how many people have searched for it in the previous month through Overture. Google searches are approximately 12x that number.

Scope Out Your Competition

Go to your favorite search engines and type in your chosen keywords. Now visit the top three for each set of keywords from each search engine. Try to figure out how they got such high listings.

An easy way to keep track of this reconnaissance work is to create a simple spreadsheet and use a different worksheet for each search term. You’ll want to have a row for each of the following:

1. Search term

2. Search engine

3. Your ranking:

a. If I’m not in the top 50, I simply write that.

b. Add a date next to the ranking so you can track your movement up the listings

4. Overture traffic (number of times term was searched for last month)

5. Repeat the following 3 times, for the top 3 listings:

a. Listing URL

b. Title

c. Description

d. Keywords

When you visit each of your competitor’s sites, you’re going to use a wonderful tool called Source Code. Copy and paste their URL into your spreadsheet, then in your browser click on View…Source. A new window opens with their HTML. (I always feel a little dirty when I do this, like I’m a voyeur or a spy, which I guess I am. That being said, it’s completely legit.)

Now that you’re seeing all their dirty laundry, you’re going to look for their Meta Tags, which will be at the top of the code.

Meta Tags are the code in the HTML that visitors don’t see but search engines do. They used to be the main way to get listed, but search engines have gotten smarter since abusers were loading up their tags with irrelevant keywords. They aren’t nearly as important as they used to be, but the Title and Description tags are still vital. Many search engines use the title for the listing and the description for, well, the description. If your tags are relevant to your content, they don’t hurt and do help with some.

Find the tags for Title, Description, and Keywords. Simply look for “title”, “description” and “keyword” at the top of the source code.

1. The title uses the main keywords potential customers use to find sites. For example, TheLocalTourist’s home page title is “Downtown Chicago Restaurants, Bars and Nightclubs, Shopping, Events, Things To Do”. This title highlights the areas of the site where I want to receive search engine rankings based on the number of searches on those terms.

2. The description is where sites give their metaphorical “sound-byte”. The trick is to pick keywords and write a compelling, succinct description without sounding like you’re trying to use all your keywords. Gee, it sounds so easy.

3. The keyword meta tag is simply a listing, separated by commas, of all the keywords people would use to find a site. They should be different for each page because the content is different. ONLY use keywords that represent your content. Don’t go crazy and don’t use the same ones too many times.

Copy their tags and place them in the appropriate rows in your spreadsheet.

Now go back to the page itself and read through it. Take note of how they use their keywords in their content. It’s a good idea to print each one.

Finally, gather your spreadsheets and your competitor’s site print-outs and pull the keywords and descriptions that reflect your site’s content. Analyze how they present their information.

This process is time consuming, but it forces you to take a look at your competition. It also, of course, makes sure your site is search engine friendly and therefore potential-visitor friendly.

Step By Step Optimization

Now it’s time to really get down to business.

Change your file names to include the most relevant keywords for each page. You can’t do that with the home page since it has to be something like “index”, but you can name the other pages on the site with the relevant keyword for each page. Believe it or not, it does make a difference. Pick one or two so the file name isn’t too long.

Write a title (not a meta tag, a real title) for each page as close to the top of the page as possible using the best keywords to describe the content. Format it as Header 1. (Most HTML editors have an easy way to format text without going into the code if you’re unfamiliar with HTML.) You’re putting it at the top of the page because search engines read like we do: left to right, top to bottom. This placement and the header formatting is a flag stating that “This is what the page is about”.

Within the content of each page, include a blurb that uses as many keywords as possible without being annoying or redundant. Make your keywords bold, but only once. A good, brief example is the Things to Do page http://www.thelocaltourist.com/ThingsToDo.htm. This is one of the most frequently visited pages on The Local Tourist from search engines.

Make sure every picture has an “alt tag” (alternate). That’s the text that shows up while the picture is loading. Search engines can’t “read” pictures, so the alt tags show them what the picture is about. On most HTML editors you add the alt tag in picture properties.

Use your hard-earned knowledge from spying to create your own meta tags. Tailor your competitors’ usage for your own site. (Learning how to implement meta tags is beyond the scope of this article, but you can do a web search for “meta tag tutorial” to find plenty of help.)

Ta da! You now have a website that’s ready to be submitted to the search engines. It’s a good idea to check your rankings on a regular basis and track them with your spreadsheets. Remember, this is not an instant process. The absolute best way to get impressive rankings is to have a content-rich quality site that addresses your target market’s needs.

Theresa Carter is the creator, publisher, and search engine optimizer of The Local Tourist, a free online guide to downtown Chicago. Find restaurants, bars, spas, salons, events, attractions, shopping, media, transportation, articles about Chicago and more. http://www.thelocaltourist.com

Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website - Step 1: Keyword Selection

This is part one of ten in this search engine positioning series. In part one we will outline how to choose the keyword phrases most likely to produce a high ROI for your search engine positioning efforts. Over this ten part series we will go through ten essential elements and steps to optimizing a site. Some steps take a few hours, some may take months depending on the competition, but in the end and if done correctly you will have a well optimized site that will place well and hold it’s positioning.

Of course all website’s fluctuate up and down however well optimized sites will spend more time on the upper end of the rankings than poorly optimized or spammy sites which may see high rankings but which will lose those rankings over time.

The Ten Steps We Will Go Through Are:

Keyword Selection

Content

Site Structure

Optimization

Internal Linking

Human Testing

Submissions

Link Building

Monitoring

The Extras

Step One - Keyword Selection

Arguably, keyword selection is the single most important stage in the entire optimization process. If you do not choose the correct keyword phrases you will not maximize your ROI on this campaign. I mention ROI and use it as a reminder that keyword selection is not necessarily about looking for the most searched phrases. A profitable optimization is one which produces the greatest return on investment for the time and money that are available to put towards it.

Bigger Is Not Always Better

If you are a web designer in Seattle who has just started your own business, you could make “web design” the targeted keyword phrase for your site as it certainly has the highest number of searches with 707,962 in September 2004 according to the “Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool”. If you have thousands of dollars and many months to dedicated just to attaining those rankings it could be done however, would that be the best use of your time? Alternatively you could target “seattle web site design” with 5,070 searches in September. A Google link check shows the number of links for the top three competitors for the Seattle search had 132, 21, and 47 respectively whereas for “web design” the top three had 18,700, 5,420, and 1,310 incoming links each.

With a good site you would get more work than you could handle with 5,070 searches on Overture alone if you were ranking well on the major search engines. This would clearly provide the highest return on investment for the small business owner who most certainly does not have the time and money available to target “web design” and who wouldn’t have the manpower to take advantage of the rankings even if they were attained.

This is an extreme example however it clearly illustrates that sometimes the phrase with the highest number of searches is not necessarily the best target for your business.

Phrases That Sell

Another consideration you will want to make when choosing your keyword phrases is whether or not they are “buy phrases”. Phrases with a high number of searches that are not “buy phrases” will tend to bring a lot of traffic, however the conversion ratio will be far lower. Should you choose to target “buy phrases” you may not get the same number of visitors however your ratio of visitors to sales will be much higher.

In this example let’s assume you are the marketing director for a well-known accounting company. There will be many choices you can make for your targeted keyword phrase. The top searched phrases in September 2004 that were accounting-related are:

“accounting” with 156,095 searches

“accounting software” with 54,621 searches

“accounting job” with 32,015 searches

“accounting services” with 19,260 searches

“accounting firm” with 13,089 searches

Many might go with their gut instinct and attempt to target “accounting”. The problem with this phrase (other than the competition for it) is that the people doing that search are not necessarily even looking for an accounting firm. They may be accounting students, small business owners not interested in hiring an accountant but just looking for tax information, etc. “Accounting software” and “accounting job” are irrelevant, which leaves us with “accounting services” and “accounting firm” as the two main options.

From this point an evaluation of competition should be performed and the pros and cons of making each the primary target should be weighed based on the amount of work it will take to attain the phrase vs. how many searches there are for that phrase.

Often promotions that target multiple “buy phrases” will end up far more successful that those targeting phrases based solely on the number of searches due to the increased conversions and generally decreased competition.

Tools To Use

Armed now with knowledge on how to recognize and choose between different phrases there remains only one question, how do you know which phrases are even searched? Fortunately there are a couple great resources out there to help you find out how many searches are performed for specific phrases. They Are:

The Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool

A decent tool for researching keyword phrases. It indicates which phrases had the highest numbers of searches on Overture during the previous month. The biggest weakness it has, as far as applying it to the natural search engines, is that Overture counts singular and plural as the same and also corrects misspelling so the totals are all lumped together in this tool whereas on the natural engines they are considered differently.

WordTracker

WordTracker is very similar to Overture’s Search Term Suggestion Tool except that this tool differentiates between plural and singular searches, does not correct spelling (i.e. it gives the number of searches for misspellings rather than correcting them and giving a total for correct and misspelled words) and gives the results in predicted numbers of searches over all the engines per day rather than just one engine over a month.

They have a great free trial that doesn’t give you as many results but which can be very useful.

When using these tools I recommend beginning with the Overture Search term Suggestion Tool and once you’ve narrowed down your choices, switch to WordTracker to insure that you’re getting the right information in regards to tense (singular vs. plural) and also that the numbers match. Sometimes you will find that the numbers are completely different from each tool. In this event you will have to use your best judgment.

Don’t forget to check misspellings when using WordTracker!

Tips & Tricks

There are no real “tricks” to uncovering the keywords you should target however there are a few tips. A few pointers that will help you maximize your keyword selection:

Think like a layman. Just because you know your industry terms doesn’t mean that everyone does. Don’t just think of the words you use to describe your products/services, think of the words you would use if you knew nothing about it other than the fact that you needed it. You may want to recruit a friend and have them run some searches for you.

Think like an expert. On the other side of the coin, there may be phrases used specifically in your industry that people “in the know” would use to search for your products and/or services. Be sure to look into these phrases. You just may find some hidden gems that no one else has thought to target.

Don’t target too many phrases. Some SEOs and webmasters target dozens and sometimes even hundreds of phrases. The end result, they often miss the ones they most wanted to attain. Keeping yourself and your keyword list focused will keep your site focused. If your site is focused you’ll rank higher for the phrases that will produce the highest return on investment.

Testing

Test your phrases. If there is any debate about whether a search phrase is worth targeting it’s often a good idea to test the conversions through pay-per-click engines. Set up an account with a PPC engine and bid on the phrases that you would like to target.

You have to remember that the PPC engines do not provide for the same amount of traffic as the natural engines. Test the initial phrases, test alternative phrases, and see which produce the best results. Something else to keep in mind is that PPC are not natural engines. If your ROI is not as high on more costly phrases that doesn’t mean they won’t produce the higher return on the natural engines where a top ranking does not cost money per click.

In the end you will have confirmed a solid list of keyword phrases and if the PPC campaign is providing a good return on investment you might as well keep it running and enjoy the “bonus” traffic that it provides.

Next Week

Next week in part two of our “Ten Steps To an Optimized Website” series we will be covering content. This will cover everything from the optimization of existing content to the creation of new content for your website.

About The Author

Dave Davies is the owner of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/). He has been optimizing and ranking websites for over three years and has a solid history of success. Dave is available to answer any questions that you may have about your website and how to get it into the top positions on the major search engines.

info@beanstalk-inc.com

SEO Success: Step One is Good Web Design

Creating a well-designed website is the first step in your internet marketing strategy. Once the website has been created and optimized, there are further techniques to employ that will drive traffic to your 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. But unless the website is designed correctly to begin with, follow-on SEO efforts will have limited results at best. The following strategy overview is designed to bring about productive SEO results:

- Create 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.

- Design a website that has a call-to-action in the form of a purchase or providing you a contact, subscription or other commitment from your visitor.

- Create a successful marketing arm for your overall business promotion and marketing campaign to promote your business, products and/or services with the many follow-on strategies that drive traffic to your website.

- 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 based on a strong reputation.

- Generate and maintain or grow internet traffic to your website resulting in a conversion of traffic into sales of your products and/or services by evolving as your market demands.

This search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is composed of several processes in three stages: 1) Good web design, 2) Attracting attention from search engines and directories, and 3) Creating long-term popularity on the internet. However, it all starts with good web design. Website design is the foundation and beginning of a successful internet marketing strategy. It is true that there are websites on the internet that are unattractive but somehow 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 will complement and enhance the company image and offline marketing campaign products creating a corporate branding if done well.

- Easy, logical navigation that leads the viewer deeper and deeper into the web of information provided by the website will keep the visitor on your site longer and give you more time to sell your products or services.

- Attractive but quick-loading graphics that are pleasing to the eye and meaningful to the website will guide the viewer along the route you decide is important for explaining what you offer.

- Keyword usage that is search engine-friendly depends on how the keywords are utilized, the placement of the keywords, the frequency of the most important keywords and their relevance to the website.

- Website coding that is lean, clean and without errors will keep the search engines happy and your viewer seeing exactly what you intended to offer.

- Relevance of content to the theme of the site is essential. Be concise, to the point and focus on your goals. If you have multiple themes and offerings, consider multiple websites to address the different markets, then tie each website back to the others by linking.

- Changing content that changes frequently and stays fresh keeps your viewer returning and prevents the search engines from treating your website as if it were stale news. A stale site will be ranked lower by the search engines.

Content is king — it’s all about content, content, content. But how that content is presented is what makes the difference.

(c)2005 TAO Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved.

Chesa Keane of TAO Consultants has been involved with the internet for 10 years
through internet consulting, web development and search engine optimization. Go to
http://www.computergoddess.com for a free Search Engine Optimization Checklist.

Search Engines The Masters Of The Internet Universe - Part 2

“This is a continuation of the pervious part, split into multiple parts for keeping the article size manageable.”

When we thought we are just boxed in by the same set of search engine perspectives, there it comes, “help” flapping its wide wings in the form of meta-search engines. These search engines gets results from multiple search engines and give an ordered list of highly relevant results. This is in a sense better as the search engines have become more targeted and live than when they were a few Internet years ago. For the uninitiated, an Internet year equates to 100 days in calendar days. This is because this is the time it typically takes an Internet concept or idea to get fully developed and accepted widely in the Internet world. Before we get into how the Mets search engines work and help a little section on the how the search engines work.

Search engines regularly go out and query multiple “known websites” using their search bots, this is dubbed as spidering. The term known websites is critical to understand. The first and foremost is direct submissions by website owners to the search engines. These submissions are mostly added into the queue to spidered. The schedule for when this happens differs from search engine to search engine. The websites that are in the list to be spidered are simply dubbed the “Hang Outs”. There are two types of hang outs one is the websites that are submitted to the search engines for inclusion and are yet to be spidered and the new websites that are quoted in established websites. The second concept is very interesting. Every master of a web perspective (web site) understands that you are either in the search engines index or never get a chance in the world. Oh No, you are wrong you are not slaves to the search engines. There are many other techniques, to be known outside of the search engines and when you are known to others who are known to the search engines then the search engines quickly know about you within one Internet year mostly. It is just the friend’s friend is your friend concept.

The Hang outs are then indexed by the search engines based on the content and the level of optimization in the pages. It is highly important to understand that the search bots are just programmed online ghosts that need some handholding to understand your web perspective. This is termed search engine optimization and is a good topic to read and acquire knowledge about the vast number of techniques available for you. The indexed pages are now dubbed “Cartographed web Sites”. These sites are now in the Known World. Meaning there is a possibility that a human sole may stumble on the web site. This cartography we are talking about is organic search recognition and not the paid inclusions and listings. There is more for you to understand and this is the crux of the topic dealt in the next part. Now let us get back to the topic of the hang outs. As I mentioned earlier other way to get spidered is to be suggested by other websites. This is popularly called by the term linking. We won’t touch much into the topic but there are two types of links in each web perspective, one is a good suggestive link the other is a “Kibitzer link”. Suggestive links are good links that will provide more information if you visit them. The “Kibitzer links” are links that are placed for money and are completely irrelevant to the topic on the web page even remotely. Paid inclusion is a great in many ways but “Kibitzing” is what is killing the Internet.

In the next part you will see more about the paid search engines and listings along with the organic search inclusion.

Author suggests a dosage of atleast two searches before sleep each day for the following Meta search engine:
http://www.Exoode.com - A metasearch engine with page preview. Results from more than
10 top search engines are combined here. Search the web for MP3s, books,
images, news and products.

If you forgot to take the directed dosage you have the liberty to take twice the number of dosage when you get to remember the same.
Author is a freelance writer for the webs many great websites and can be contacted at indyan at gmail dot com. Permission is granted to reprint this article with all portions of this article intact including this resource box in its entire form.

PageRank and How It Gets Assigned

We know that each and every website page is assigned a Google Page rank, based upon a mathematical algorithm. Pages rank on a scale of 0 (zero) the lowest, and 10 (ten) the highest. Linking between websites both internally and externally pass a value or Page Rank.

If site A links to site B, a percentage of Site A’s Page Rank is passed or credited to site B. Nothing is lost from site A in terms of Page Rank unless the link is to a banned area, or bad neighborhood.

The amount of Page Rank Site A passes is determined by the amount of Outbound links of site A’s page. The more Outbound links, the smaller percentage of Page Rank is passed. Pages with large amounts of outgoing links pass very little Page Rank and in some cases may cause more harm than good. Try to avoid linking to pages that have large amount of outgoing links, Like Link Farms etc.

A real life true example. Site A had a Page Rank of 4, there were only 2 outbound links on Site A. One of those outbound Links was to brand new Site B. Brand new Site B had 3 out going links, and NO other Incoming Links, besides the one from Site A. Google awarded Site B a new Page Rank of 4.

From this real life example, we see that the fewer outbound links per page, the more Page Rank is passed.

If Site A in the example above had a large number of outbound links on the page, then a smaller percentage of Page Rank would have been passed and New Site B would have received a lower rank then the equal rank that was passed.

Higher Page rank sites linking to your site to pass PR is consider valuable, but normally the higher Page Rank sites have a tremendous amount of existing outbound links so the true Page Rank Passes is normally minimal. It is also hard at times to get a quality higher Page Rank page to link to your site. Lower Page Rank sites are very important in Passing Page Ranks and link exchanges. Their Page Rank usually grows with age and has more inbound links than outbound links, creating a higher Page Rank, which in turn passes to your site via it’s outbound link.

In general terms, an individual page’s Page Rank is determined by the amount of links going out of that page (outbound) and the amount of links coming to that page (Inbound). A general rule of thumb: you want to have more inbound links than outbound links.

Definite things to avoid.

When doing reciprocal linking, make sure you check the amount of outbound links that not only the page has but the overall site as well. Search engines such as Google doesn’t like Link Farms ( 1000’s of links on the site), gambling sites and pornography. Unless that is your business, don’t link to any of those types of sites.

You can lose Page Rank and Search Engine Results by Linking to sites that are considered Banned, or Bad Neighborhoods. Be aware and check before linking. Even if you aren’t “punished”, you will gain no benefit and the PR leached away from your site is not worth it.

Be aware to whom your site is linking to via outbound links. Periodically check your outbound links making sure that they are:

1) Still an active website

2) Still a resource for the reason you linked to them in the first place

3) They have not changed theme formats and are still a quality site.

Page Rank grows over time. Google updates visible Page Rank infrequently, like every 4-8 months or so. The best SEO strategy is to link to and link exchange with like themed sites or quality sites.

Article by Ed Charkow - Ed is the webmaster at http://www.seoengine.info and http://www.nichesitespecial.com . Reprint rights are granted with live hyperlinks and resource box intact.

Google Patent Application - Linking

The recent patent application filed by Google details numerous items the search engine uses to rank web pages. The specific application is summarized as:

“A method for scoring a document, comprising: identifying a document; obtaining one or more types of history data associated with the document; and generating a score for the document based on the one or more types of history data.”

The patent application sheds significant light for those pursuing search engine optimization with Google. Patent applications can be difficult to understand, so following are highlights for those that don’t speak lawyer.

Google’s Link Evaluation

It is well known that Google uses links as a significant ranking element. Although the patent application doesn’t dispute the value of linking, it does highlight the best method for pursuing a linking strategy. Simply put, consistently adding links will have a much better effect than adding links in bunches.

Google notes in the patent application that it looks at links from a historical perspective. The search engine notes the discovery date of links, the life span of the link and the speed at which a new web site obtains links. This approach reveals that Google is discounting quick link exchange strategies such as buying bulk links for your site. Instead, Google appears to consider a natural linking evolution as a sign that a site is “legitimate.”

The specifics of a good linking strategy are a bit difficult to nail down. In the patent application, Google tries to hide the evaluation method by listing factors that “might” go into evaluating links to a site. Factors that “might” be considered include:

1. The anchor text of the link.

2. The discovery date of the link.

3. The growth rate of links to your site.

4. The rate at which links to a page appear and disappear.

5. The age of links with older links carrying more value.

6. Numerous links to a new site will be looked at as spam, unless some of the links are from highly valued sites.

7. Link growth that is constant is optimal.

8. Sudden bunches of new links will be devalued as spam.

A general theme becomes clear as one reads the Google patent application. Google values sites that are in it for the long term, update regularly and consistently grow in link popularity. Taking this theme into account, it is easy to understand why the Google sandbox exists.

A steady approach is the key if you intention is to gain top rankings in Google. While the delay can be aggravating, the results are certainly worth it.

Halstatt Pires is with http://www.marketingtitan.com - an Internet marketing and advertising company comprised of a search engine optimization specialist providing meta tag optimization services and Internet marketing consultant providing internet marketing solutions through integrated design and programming services.

SEO: When Being Optimized Can Hurt

It’s a marketing dream come true: A potential customer, looking for what you have to offer, types a few words into her favorite search engine and voila! She is led directly to your website where she can go from “prospect” to “customer.”

The best part is, it didn’t cost you anything (except time and elbow grease) to get to the top of her results. Unless, of course you paid for someone else’s time and elbow grease. Even so, you’ve got a sale and your customer got what she was looking for. Sounds like the classic win-win situation.

So, what’s not to love about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Plenty - if your efforts stop there. Because getting your site to the top of the search result heap is only half the battle. Leave the other half un-fought, and you’re actually doing yourself more harm than good.

Lets not forget that the ultimate goal of this whole exercise is to eventually make sales. And last I checked, search engine spiders weren’t spending a whole lot of money.

When an actual human being gets to your site and sees a page designed for a robot she feels a bit used. Kind of like being pitched to by the used car salesman in the polyester suit. She reads copy that, rather than telling her how she might benefit from what you have to offer, repeats variations of her search term over and over. This tells her you don’t care about her, you only want her money. She clicks away and searches some more.

This hurts you in at least three ways:

1. You lose the sale. So you don’t make any money.

2. She still visited, as did everyone else sucked in by your high placement. Depending on your hosting arrangement, you could be paying for more traffic. So you may actually lose money.

3. Most importantly, your prospect now has a negative impression of you. Even if you clean up your act she’s less likely to ever click on your link again. It’s called negative branding and, you guessed it: It causes you to lose money.

It also has the potential of hurting you even more in the future, as search engine spiders are getting smarter every day. Not only do they eventually catch on if you mindlessly repeat phrases to trick them, they also notice if searchers are always coming back to the results in a hurry because you weren’t what they were looking for. If that is the case, they won’t continue to recommend you so highly.

It takes more time and more effort to develop content that is both human and spider friendly. But not doing so can actually do you more harm than good.

Does your marketing forge an emotional connection with your prospects? It can. Lisa Packer delivers persuasive, targeted copywriting that dramatically increases your business. Unleash the power of words on behalf of your business by visiting http://www.dramatic-copy.com today.

The Marketing Business

In many businesses you have a product and a consumer. In the marketing business your more like the person who brings the two together. Marketing is a service but it incorporates many other services to bring about a network of advertising vehicles. The internet online marketing advertising business is about efficient and powerful advertising vehicles that bring powerful results without high expenditures from the company who uses them to market their product, site, or service. Nowhere else have I ever seen a system so powerful and yet so cost effective. The internet is becoming more and more powerful as more people start to use it more.

I find it incredibly mind boggling how much we can do with the internet these days. In just the internet online marketing advertising business alone a single person can reach millions of people in literally seconds. I wonder how we ever got along without the internet. I do however understand how were able to do so many things so much faster than ever before. Internet marketing is alot like a model for the potential of currents in social networking as well as the most brilliant way to market your site, product, service or even yourself! In the marketing business online their is a network of people, services, infrastructures, and components in place that a person can utilize very easily.