Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimization’ Category

  • Why Cant I Get Indexed By The Search Engines?

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

    Unfortunately, this is an all too common question. If it makes you feel any better, you’re not the only one frustrated about the length of time it takes to be indexed, or the many pitfalls involved. It often takes anywhere from two days to as much as six months to be listed on a search engine. For example, last month Excite finally updated its index for the first time since last August! Luckily, Excite is the most extreme case lately, but waiting several weeks to a month can also be extremely frustrating especially when your livelihood depends partly on these search engines.

    The Web Position Submitter report will give you current time estimates for each engine so you’ll know what to expect. However, an engine at any time could choose to delay their indexing beyond the “norm” for maintenance or other reasons. On the flip side, you could get lucky and submit just a couple days before an engine does a complete refresh of their database. Therefore, submission times can never be an exact science since we’re all ultimately at the mercy of the engine.

    If you’ve submitted your site and have waited the estimated time to be indexed and there’s still no listing, what do you do now?

    Here are 16 tips that should help you solve this problem:

    1. First, be sure you’re not already indexed but just don’t know it. Unfortunately, none of the major engines are kind enough to e-mail or notify you as to if and when you’ve been indexed.

    The method to determine if a page or domain has been indexed varies from one engine to another, and in many cases, it’s difficult to tell for sure. Never assume that you’re not indexed just because you searched for a bunch of keywords and you never came up in the first few pages of results. You could be in there but buried near the bottom.

    In addition, it’s not very practical to check the status of a number of pages on each major engine each week. Fortunately, Web Position has a URL verification feature in the Reporter that makes this process much easier. Each time you run a mission, it will report which URLs exist and do not exist in each engine. If you’re using Web Position and are not finding your URLs after submitting, be sure to see this page for common pitfalls to watch out for:

    http://www.webposition.com/urlnotfoundhelp.htm

    2. Make sure you have uploaded the pages to your site before submitting them. This one seems obvious, but submitting a page that does not exist or submitting with a subtle typo in the URL is a goof we might all make at one time or another. If you’re using Web Position’s Submitter, there’s a checkbox on tab 2 that forces Web Position to verify that all your URLs are valid before submitting them.

    3. If you have information inside frames, that can cause problems with submissions. It’s best if you can create non-framed versions of your pages. You should then submit the non-frames versions of your pages which can of course point to your framed Web site. Alternatively, you can enter your relevant text within the NOFRAMES area of a framed page which most search engine spiders will read.

    4. Search engine spiders cannot index sites that require any kind of registration or password. A spider cannot fill out a form of any kind. The same rule applies regarding indexing of content from a searchable database, because the spider cannot fill out a form to query that database. The solution is to create static pages that the engines will be able to find.

    5. Dynamic pages often block spiders. In fact, any URL containing special symbols like a question mark (?) or an ampersand (&) will be ignored by many engines.

    6. Most engines cannot index text that is embedded in graphics. Text that appears in multimedia files (audio and video) cannot be indexed by most engines. Information that is generated by Java applets or in XML coding cannot be indexed by most engines.

    7. If your site has a slow connection or the pages are very complex and take a long time to load, it might time out before the spider can index all the text. For the benefit of your visitors and the search engines, limit your page size to less than 60K. In fact, most Webmasters recommend that your page size plus the size of all your graphics should not exceed 50K-70K. If it does, many people on dial up connections will leave before the page fully loads.

    8. If you submit just your home page, don’t expect a search engine to travel more than one or two links away from the home page or the page that you submitted. Over time they may venture deeper into your site, but don’t count on it. You’ll often need to submit pages individually that appear further down into your site or have no link from the home page.

    9. If your Web site fails to respond when the search engine spider pays a visit, you will not be indexed. Even worse, if you are indexed and they pay a visit when your site is down, you’ll often be removed from their database! Therefore, it pays to have a reliable hosting service that is up 99.5% of the time. However, at some point a spider is going to hit that other 0.5% and end up yanking your pages by mistake. Therefore, it pays to keep a close eye on your listings.

    10. If you have ever used any questionable techniques that might be considered an overt attempt at spamming (i.e., excessive repetition of keywords, same color text as background, or other things that the Web Position Page Critic warns you about), an engine may ignore or reject your submissions. If you’re having trouble getting indexed in the expected amount of time, make sure your site is spam-free.

    11. If your site contains redirects or meta refresh tags these things can sometimes cause the engines to have trouble indexing your site. Generally they will index the page that it is redirecting TO, but if it thinks you are trying to “trick” the engine by using “cloaking” or IP redirection technology, there’s a chance that it may not index the site at all.

    12. If you’re submitting to a directory site like Yahoo, Open Directory, NBCI.com, LookSmart, or others, then a human being will review your site. They must decide the site is of sufficient “quality” before they will list it. I recommend you read the submission guide on the directory tab of the WebPosition Submitter. It contains tips to improve your chances of obtaining a good listing on these directories.

    13. A number of engines no longer index pages residing on many common free web hosting services. The common complaint from the engines is that they get too many “junk” or low-quality submissions from free web site domains. Therefore, they often choose not to index anyone from those domains or they limit submissions from them. It’s always best to buy your own domain name (very important) and place it on a respected, paid hosting service to avoid being discriminated against.

    14. Some engines have been known to drop pages that cannot be traveled to from the home page. HotBot has been rumored to do this. You may want to consider submitting your home page that links either directly or indirectly to your doorway pages.

    15. Make sure you’re submitting within the recommended limits. Some engines do not like more than a certain number of submissions per day for the same domain. If you exceed the limit, you may find that all your submissions are ignored. Fortunately, WebPosition’s submitter will warn you regarding current limits and recommend you stay within them. Some submission consultants feel it is dangerous to submit more than ONE page a day to a engine for a given Web site. For those who wish to be ultra-conservative in their approach, the Web Position Submitter includes a checkbox to limit submissions to one URL per day per engine.

    16. Last but not least, sometimes the engines just lose submissions at random through technical errors and bugs. Therefore, some people like to resubmit once or twice a month for good merit in case they do lose a submission. Certainly if you’ve followed all the “rules” and are still not listed, re-submit! Sometimes a little persistence is all that’s needed.

    If any of the above scenarios apply to your submission, you should make the necessary adjustments and re-submit. If that still does not work, you should consider e-mailing or calling the search engine and asking them politely why you have not been indexed yet. Sometimes they will reply back with “Sorry, there was a problem with our system and I’ve now made sure you’ll be indexed within the next couple days.” Or, sometimes they’ll tell you why you were not indexed. In other cases, they will ignore your e-mail and you’ll have to keep e-mailing or calling them until they respond. Still, it’s definitely worth the effort to get your site listed with the major engines assuming you also take the time to optimize your pages so you’ll achieve top rankings.

    Article written by Lee

  • Using TITLE Tags effectively

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Search Engine Optimization, WebDesign | Response: 0

    Microsoft Internet Explorer has supported the TITLE attribute for links since version 4.0. Netscape began supporting it in version 6.0

    The TITLE attribute allows you to enter descriptive text about a link that’s displayed when the mouse moves over the link. For an example, move your mouse over the link below:

    European Webmasters

    The HTML source code for this link is shown below:

    <a href="http://www.europeanwebmasters.com"
      title="Click Here To Learn Foreign Adult Marketing">European Webmasters</a>

    If your browser supports the TITLE attribute you should see a small popup box appear, similar to the way alternate text for images is displayed when you move your mouse over the image.

    This attribute is similar to the ALT attribute for the IMG tag, both in its appearance and its limitations. The value of the attribute must be inside quotation marks, and it can only contain plain text (no HTML tags). You can include carriage returns in the title, and these will be displayed in the text. The maximum length of the TITLE text for Internet Explorer is very large; we’ve tested it with over 500 characters. Try to keep your descriptions below 25 words, though; any more than this can be hard to read and, because the search engine spiders can read this text you may be considered as spamming the engines.

    The TITLE attribute is useful in places where your HTML design limits the length of your link text. That’s often the case for links in a navigation bar, especially if your page has a multi-column layout. Try using the TITLE attribute to give your visitors extra navigation information.

    In addition you can also use the TITLE tag on standard text for extra information where you just don’t have the space to be as affluent as you would like. An example of this is shown below:

    Use of the TITLE tag on plain text

    The HTML code for this is also shown below:

    <font size=”2″ face=”Verdana” color=”#000080″ title=”Use Of The TITLE Tag On Plain Text”>Use of the TITLE tag on plain text</font>

    This attribute is part of the HTML 4.0 standard. Internet Explorer, Netscape 6.x and Opera (Version 3.0 or higher) support it. However, the attribute degrades gracefully, visitors with non-supporting browsers (like Netscape 4.x) would see the link as if you hadn’t used the attribute.

    As you can see from the above examples by using the TITLE tags effectively you can double, if not treble your use of keywords however, caution should be paid when using these features of the tag so that you don’t inadvertently spam the search engines.

    Article Written By Lee

  • SEO Pyramid Scheme

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

    I thought i would spend a little time to let you guys in on a little something i like to call the SEO Pyramid Scheme

    Basically, we all know the importance of targeting specific keywords and phrases however, this isn’t necessarily the easiest of things to do until now…

    Lets take a simple free site as our example, We know we have to have Meta Tags, Descriptions, Alt Texts and Body text on our site but how do we keep this all in within the theme of our site and, more importantly, how do we make sure we target as much of our niche traffic as needed? Actually the process itself is a simple one that has been around for many years however, very few people make good use of it.

    So we have our free site all ready and waiting to be optimized for the search engines the first thing we need to do is take a look at our sites content (read as images) and make a short mental description of them so for example, if we have a teen site the pictures may be of a ‘blonde sexy teen model wearing stockings’.

    That description is the basis for our keyword pyramid.

    We now have to construct our pyramid based on that brief description so we start o break it down word by word for example:

    Blonde
    Sexy
    Teen
    Model
    Stockings

    That is our primary layer in the pyramid already completed, not so hard really was it

    Now comes our second level in our SEO pyramid:

    Blonde Sexy
    Sexy Teen
    Teen Model
    Model Stockings

    As you can see from this we now have our secondary layer of the pyramid all worked out onto our tertiary layer:

    Blonde Sexy Teen
    Sexy Teen Model
    Teen Model Stockings

    Now we have our tertiary layer for our pyramid we can continue this for further layer like this:

    Blonde Sexy Teen Model
    Sexy Teen Model Stockings

    Again, we can break this down one more level like this:

    Blonde Sexy Teen Model Stockings

    We now have 5 layers to our pyramid.

    The next stage is to incorporate these layers into both your Meta Tags and, more importantly you body text.

    Take each layer in turn and, where possible include one line from each later into each portion of our HTML code from the Meta Tags, Alt Tags, Main Body Text, Hyperlink Text and, Image File Names.

    By working through each layer of this SEO pyramid at a time you will not only discover keyword rich phrases that you could otherwise be missing out on in the search engines but, you will give your sites a theme making your chances of being listed for the correct search terms even better.

    Article written by Le

  • Straight From The Horses Mouth – Get Googlized

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

    Many webmasters wonder how to ensure their sites will be included in Google’s index of web sites. Although Google crawls more than a billion pages, it’s inevitable some sites will be missed. When Google does miss a site, it’s frequently for one of these reasons:

    * The site is not well connected through multiple links to others on the web.
    * The site launched after Google’s last crawl was completed.
    * The design of the site makes it difficult for Google to effectively crawl its content (excessive frames, tables, etc).

    Google’s intent is to represent the content of the Internet fairly and accurately. To help make that goal a reality, we offer this guide to building a “crawler-friendly” site. There are no guarantees a site will be found by our crawler, but following these guidelines should increase the probability that your site will show up in Google search results.

    Do…
    Provide high-quality content on your page – especially your home page.
    If you follow only one tip from this page, this should be it. Our crawler indexes web pages by analyzing the content of the pages themselves. Google will index your site better if your pages contain useful information. Plus, your site has a better chance of becoming a favorite among web surfers and being linked to by others if the information it contains is relevant and useful.

    Submit your site to the appropriate category in a web directory.
    Listing your site in the Open Directory Project http://www.dmoz.org/ or Yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com/ increases the likelihood it will be seen by robot crawlers and web surfers.

    Pay attention to HTML conventions.

    Make sure that your <TITLE> and <ALT> tags are accurate and descriptive. Also, check your <A HREF> tags for errors since broken or improperly formatted links can prevent Google from indexing your page.

    Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server.
    This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it’s current for your site so that you don’t accidentally block our crawler. Visit: http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html for a FAQ answering questions regarding robots and how to control them once they visit your site.

    Ensure that your site is accessible through HTML hyperlinks.
    Generally, your site is crawlable if the pages are connected to each other with ordinary HTML links. If certain areas are not linked, you may be excluding older browsers, differently-abled users, and Google. Google can crawl content from a database or other dynamically generated content as long as it can be found by following links. If you have many unlinked pages, you may want to create a jump page from which the crawler can find all of your pages.

    Build your site with a logical link structure.
    A hierarchical link structure is not only beneficial to you, but also to Google. More of your site can be crawled if it is laid out in with a clear architecture.

    Don’t…
    Fill your page with lists of keywords, attempt to “cloak” pages, or put up “crawler only” pages.
    If your site contains pages, links or text that you do not intend visitors to see, Google considers them deceptive and may ignore your site.

    Feel obligated to purchase a search optimization service.
    Some companies “guarantee” your site a place near the top of a results page. While legitimate consulting firms can improve your site’s flow and content, others employ deceptive tactics to try and fool search engines. Be careful – if your domain is affiliated with one of these services, it could be permanently banned from our index, we have found search engine optimization software like Web Position Gold works best but, again use it in moderation.

    Use images to display important names, content or links.
    Our crawler does not recognize text contained in graphics.
    Use ALT tags if the main content and key words on your page cannot be formatted in regular HTML.

    Provide multiple copies of a page under different URLs
    Many sites offer text-only or printer-friendly versions of pages that contain the same content as the graphic-enriched version of the page. While Google crawls these pages, duplicates are removed from our index. In order to ensure that we have the desired version of your page, place the other versions in separate directories and use the robots.txt file to block our crawler.

    Article written by a Google employee

  • Search Engine Themes!

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

    It’s safe to say that the ‘pay-per-inclusion’ model is rapidly catching on with today’s search engines and directories as they are forced to become profitable in a hurry. But there’s also another trend that’s come to the fore.

    ‘Theme indexing’ is a process used by search engines to determine an entire site’s primary theme. In other words, your complete set of Web pages is indexed as one, and defined as one.

    This is why sites with multiple product lines and subject content often get poor rankings today. To learn how to combat this, let’s first look at the theme indexing process from the search engine’s point of view.

    According to Search Engine World, the theme indexing search engine follows this basic 5-step progression as it ‘weighs’ what a particular site is about:

    1. Page Titles
    2. Meta Tags
    3. Page Headings
    4. Page Content
    5. Links

    This is a general overview of the approach – each search engine is unique, and no one has the ultimate read on every search site. But to date this has proven to be true of AltaVista, Google, Excite, Lycos and WebCrawler.

    All of these belong on the ‘Who’s Who’ list of major search sites today. If it’s important that your Web business be found among them, today you must write your site with theme indexing in mind. Here’s how:

    The concept itself is simple. Focus your entire site like a laser beam on a single, potent theme.

    The process is ruthless. Get rid of the deadwood. Set up additional sites as needed for each individual product and service ‘family’.

    In the same way that you must now invest to get indexed on Yahoo, LookSmart, Inktomi and other top directories, you need to invest in separating your activities by theme into multiple Web sites. Kick out unrelated content, links and affiliate programs that don’t relate to your market niche. Build new sites as needed, with each focusing on its own unique selling proposition. This is the first step to take in the optimization copywriting process.

    Having done this, here’s how to write each site to get the best possible positioning on theme indexing search engines.

    Focus Your Key Phrase.

    Determine what key phrase your entire site is about – a key phrase people use often on the search engines. To pick heavily searched, popular key phrases, try Word Tracker: http://www.wordtracker.com/.

    Write Your Copy. Throughout your site play variations on your key phrase theme. Every element counts: page titles, meta tags, page headings, page content, links. Remember to write for people first. Search engines are robotic, but people always want to know what’s in your site for them. Tell them what qualifies you to help, and what you have to offer. Balance using your key phrase with the benefits you deliver.

    Once you’ve written your copy, search your text for generic phrases like ‘our product’ and substitute your key phrase. Use long copy where you can. Not only does it outsell shorter copy – it also makes it easier for you to write keyword-rich text.

    Format Your Text.

    Use key phrase bullets. They break up text copy and serve you as mini headlines with an entirely different look and feel.

    Use multiple headlines to create immediate context when a visitor explores your site. Make these headlines specific by using your key phrase. Tag headlines in your source code – <H1>, <H2> or <H3> – to highlight your theme.

    Write your links as mini-headlines. Often people scan pages by jumping from one link to another. Link words look very much like headlines, or highlighted words, and should deliver your primary message and key phrase.

    Measure and Test.

    Conventional wisdom tells us that the ideal keyword density is somewhere between 3-7%. To check this before you submit, try the free Keyword Density Analyzer: http://www.keyworddensity.com/. For a more accurate read on individual search engines, do a search under your key phrase, then take the top 3 returns, enter their URLs and try to match their percentages before you submit. Track your placement and adjust accordingly.

    This is the initial approach to optimization copywriting for theme indexing search engines. Keep it simple: start here.

    Article written by Lee

  • Search Engine Optimization, Is It Worth It?

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

    One of the trendiest takes on Internet marketing these days seems to be the notion that securing top search engine rankings “no longer works.” Where it started, I have no idea.

    But rarely does a week go by when I don’t see one or more Internet marketing “experts” claiming that search engine positioning is largely a waste of time and should not be a primary focus of Website owners.

    Well, as the saying goes, “there are two sides to every story.”

    But let’s not make this article about my side, or your side, or anyone else’s side. Let’s forget about my opinion and other “expert’s” opinions and stick to the indisputable facts, as reported by highly credible third party sources:

    According to a Forrester Research Media Field Study, getting a loyal audience in the first place is best done by Search Engine Placement.

    According to a GVU Users Survey, 84.8% of Internet users use Search Engines to find Websites.

    In a study released by ActivMedia Research in September 1999, Search Engine Positioning was ranked as the #1 Website promotional method used by eCommerce sites.

    And look what I just found in the April 2000 issue of Target Marketing Magazine.
    “Top Ways Websites are Discovered”

    Banner ads: 1%

    Targeted email: 1.2%

    TV spots: 1.4%

    “By accident”: 2.1%

    Magazine ads: 4.4%

    Word-of-mouth: 20%

    Random Surfing: 20%

    Search Engines: 46%

    You’ve now seen the numbers and know that search engine promotion is very much alive and kicking. But let’s take this a step further. Let’s talk about the *quality* of prospects coming to your Website through search engines as opposed to other advertising mediums.

    Every time your potential customers use the search engines, they qualify themselves as *hot prospects* by conducting searches on keywords that are directly related to your product or service. Their choice of keywords is proof that they have a genuine interest in what you offer. These people spend their valuable time exploring the search engines for your type of product or service.

    Think About That.

    They didn’t stumble upon one of your ads, or wander past a hyperlink to your site. And they didn’t get a banner ad thrown in their face. They made the *decision* to actively search the keywords that brought them to YOUR Website. And when they get there, they are ready and willing to do business with you. At the very least, they’re seriously considering it and, that’s the most powerful sales tool you can have!

    But merely getting your Website “indexed” or listed in the search engines is not enough. In order to get any significant traffic from the search engines, your Website must be listed within the top 30 search results (preferably the top 20).

    Very rarely will anyone look beyond the first 30 results returned from a search. This makes perfect sense because the most relevant sites are always listed at the top. So if your prospect doesn’t find what they want within the first 20 to 30 listings, they’ll simply do a new search.

    If your site falls anywhere below the 30th listing, you don’t stand a chance against anyone in the TOP-20. Hence, it should be your goal to achieve Top 20 positions.

    How Do You Get Your Website Listed In The Top 20?

    1) You can attempt to gain these Top 20 rankings yourself. However, this can easily become a full time job. (I think this is why so many marketers advise against focusing on search engine positioning.)

    2) You can hire a reputable company who can achieve AND maintain your Top 20 rankings for you (be sure they guarantee their service and have several verifiable clients that currently have multiple Top 20 rankings).

    3) You can do nothing at all. But as you’ve seen from the third party statistics referenced above, search engine positioning is something you can’t afford to ignore.

    Whatever choice you make, I hope that your eyes have been opened to the tremendous profit potential that exists with top search engine placement.

    Article written by Lee

  • Robots.txt – Control The Robots That Crawl Your Sites

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Search Engine Optimization, WebDesign | Response: 0

    By writing a structured text file you can indicate to robots that certain parts of your server are off-limits to some or all robots. It is best explained with an example:

    # robots.txt file for general use on web servers.

    User-agent: webcrawler
    Disallow:

    User-agent: googlebot
    Disallow: /

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /cgi-bin
    Disallow: /logs
    The first line, starting with ‘#’, specifies a comment.

    The first paragraph specifies that the robot called ‘webcrawler’ has nothing disallowed: it may go anywhere.

    The second paragraph indicates that the robot called ‘googlebot’ has all relative URLs starting with ‘/’ disallowed. Because all relative URL’s on a server start with ‘/’, this means the entire site is closed off.

    The third paragraph indicates that all other robots should not visit URLs starting with /cgi-bin or /log. Note the ‘*’ is a special token, meaning “any other User-agent”; you cannot use wildcard patterns or regular expressions in either User-agent or Disallow lines.

    Two common errors:

    Wildcards are not supported: instead of ‘Disallow: /tmp/*’ just say ‘Disallow: /tmp’.
    You shouldn’t put more than one path on a Disallow line (this may change in a future version of the spec)
    Ultimately, without the use of robots.txt files on your servers/domains, you are risking a variety of potential problems including, unauthorized access to your cgi directory, unauthorized viewing of your site stats, possible spamming of the search engines by accidental crawling of doorway pages.

    One distinct advantage however of having a robots.txt file on your server is that, quite simply, you will be able to tell when and where your site has been indexed or potentially indexed as, all robots will automatically call for the robots.txt file BEFORE any other page on your server so, as long as you keep an eye open for any calls of this file, you can see who is knocking at your site for indexing purposes.

    Below is a robots.txt example that you can copy and paste into a text document to use on your own server:

    <!–Start Copy Below This Line–>

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /cgi-bin
    Disallow: /logs

    <!–End Copy Above This Line–>

    The above will allow all spiders to crawl all of your site except the subdirectory’s ‘cgi-bin’ and ‘logs’ which, may be altered to suit any subdirectory’s you do not wish the spiders to crawl on your server.

    Article written by Lee

  • Pay Per Click Or Search Engine Optimization

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Paid Traffic, Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

    What would you choose to run your business? Well each has their own benefits and drawbacks over one another.

    PPC or SEO The Breakdown.

    Pay Per Click or, PPC as it is most often referred to looks to the novice to be the better option for ‘immediate’ traffic results, you enter your desired keywords, place your minimum / maximum bid amount and you are set for top PPC engine listings for as long as you can maintain the balance in your engine account.

    Search Engine Optimization or, SEO on the other hand, is the more traditional way of attaining high ranking search engine pages. Either you or an SEO expert optimizes your websites pages and random other elements of your website and hopefully within a month or two, you achieve high rankings in the major search engines.

    So Which One? PPC or SEO?

    Generally speaking, SEO work is most commonly more cost effective to your business than utilizing PPC results to gain your traffic, you could pay an SEO expert anywhere from $500 plus to optimize your site and get high rankings indefinitely or, you could put that $500 into a PPC engine account and get high rankings until such time as your account balance runs dry.

    But lets look at this in terms of actual traffic…

    Say you get 1000 visitors to your SEO based website which you paid $500 for, each visitor has cost you $0.50c now lets say your site remains at the top of the engines for a few months perhaps even years each month you receive another 1000 visitors to your site, you have basically cut the cost of each surfer hitting your site down to less than a penny per hit (not taking into account bandwidth costs obviously).

    Now, on the other hand, you want to attract 1000 visitors from your chosen keywords via the PPC engines, most Pay Per Click search engines have a minimum bid amount of $0.05c per hit so right away in your first month, you could receive a potential 10k hits however, as most of you who have already tried your hand at the PPC engines will know, getting 10k hits for one or more keyword at a cost of $0.05 is hard to do, in fact, some would say almost impossible. Non the less let us keep going with this minimum bid amount for the time being.

    Immediately, you can see that you are already restricted to the actual amount of traffic you can receive from the PPC results to 10k hits however, this isn’t the case with the SEO traffic, you could potentially hit your top chosen keyword and stay there until another site out-optimizes you or, your site needs to be optimized again.

    Ultimately, the reasons you will choose over one or the other will be for either ease of traffic generation, PPC will allow you to gain almost instantaneous targeted traffic form the second you open your PPC account up until the point when your account funds empty whilst, SEO work will give you long term targeted traffic over time and, in most instances, this SEO traffic can last for years making the cost of the initial SEO work minimal.

    In Closing..

    Search Engine Optimization can last you years and years whilst Pay Per Click results can diminish in a relatively short amount of time depending on the amount of bid needed to achieve top listings.

    However lets look at a third option, using both PPC results and SEO results in conjunction with each other to minimize the traffic you lose from your SEO work and, to minimize the traffic you lose from your PPC results this will afford you the time to see what works with your Search Engine Optimized sites whilst being able to play with the targeting of keywords on your PPC traffic, once you have both types of search engine figured out, you can put them both together and use them to increase the traffic to your site for years to come.

    Article written by Lee

  • Google – Manipulate Your Listings For More Traffic

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

    Google seems to be the Search Engine that everyone talks about almost on a daily basis however, far from being about search engine optimization and specifically about Google related SEO i wanted to touch on something new that, perhaps you would not have already thought about.

    Manipulating Google Traffic.

    So your site is already listed in Google but you want to increase the amount of traffic you receive, one way that we as a company have been successfully using for the last 18 months is that of manipulating the display of our clickable links in Google, how are we doing this? Simple, using ASCII character codes in your meta tags.

    ASCII In Your Meta Tags.

    ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) it has been proven, when used in your HTML page Meta Tags will actually display not only letters and numbers but, symbols as well, as a webmaster this can give you a great advantage over how much traffic you can pull from your Google listings and, not only Google, a few of the other search engines also read ASCII code when it is found in your Meta Tags.

    Putting This To Use Practically.

    A good method of putting this to use would be utilizing in your Meta Tags as follows.

    <title>Site Name <ascii code here> page title</title>
    <meta name=”Description” content=”normal page description”>
    <meta name=”Keywords” content=”normal keywords”>

    This will display a search engine listing that not only has your site name on it as well as a description but, in the position where the ASCII code will appear you will also have an attention grabbing symbol enuring that your site stands out from all the others listed on the same search engine results page as yours.

    ASCII Meta Tags – An Overview.

    Hopefully you have seen how adapting your current HTML page Meta Tags by placing an ASCII character code within them can benefit you for gleeming further search engine traffic to your sites and, with this new found knowledge you may well place both your sites traffic and your bottom line profits ahead of other webmasters.

    Article written by Lee

  • Guaranteed Marketing – Power Words

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Search Engine Optimization, Writing | Response: 0

    How many webmasters do you think actually pay attention to what they are writing so far as their sales copy go? Furthermore, if you actually think about it, how much time do you put into choosing the words in which you use on your websites? With the help of this brief article hopefully, you will start to choose the words in which you use a little more carefully, let me explain.

    Power Words – What Are They?

    Power words are a set of roughly 10 words that can invoke interest in a person, object or, in our case, a product which we would like to sell however, they are also much more than that. When used in the correct manner power words can become a webmasters greatest selling tool. However, everyone has their own unique set of power words that will appeal to them over everybody else, the good thing is, for the most part there are at least 25 words which almost everybody will look positively towards.

    Power Words – The List.

    The following list is compiled from research at Yale University consisting of the most popular power words amongst a demographic of 1000 individuals of mixed sex. The words are, Discover, Easy, Guaranteed, Health, Love, Money, New, Proven, Results, Safety, Save and, You. By using these words in a variety of ways when writing our sales text we can almost be certain that we will keep the surfers attention and enable us to put the power of our marketing to good use.

    Power Words – Uses.

    As already mentioned, the best use for the most common power words on our sites is to use them within our text links either at the start of the sentence or, the absolute end. Take a look at the following example to see what i mean.

    1) High Converting Affiliate Program.
    2) Guaranteed To Convert Your Traffic.
    3) Turn Your Traffic In To Cash – Guaranteed.

    You can see from the three examples above the the first example doesn’t really catch your attention whilst examples number 2 and 3 somehow seem to pull you into the ‘spirit’ of the site itself without even knowing what affiliate program it is.

    By using this power word marketing technique as often as possible on your text links you can not only give your site visitor information but, compel them to click on your link.

    Power Words – An Overview.

    Hopefully you have seen from this brief article the ways in which power words can improve not only your text links pulling power but also how with the right marketing combination you can also use them to increase your sales.

    Article written by Lee

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