Internet Marketing - SEO Techniques, PPC Tips, Make Money Via Blog

What is your Google Page Rank

2008-10-30T20:52:00.000-07:00

We often hear of Google Page Rank and this topic is imminent in most Internet Marketing forums. We know higher Page Rank means that the website or blog is of some quality but what is Page Rank? and How is it determined?

Page Rank(PR) is a tool that Google uses to determine a sites quality and effectiveness. It is determined by the number of quality backlinks a site has. What is determined as a quality backlink?

Link building is the most trickiest part of SEO. Most website and blog owners go about link building by the reciprocal link method. It simply means both sites links to one another, so a fair and win-win situation for both parties. Each of these links carries a different weight which is determined by their Page Rank.

If your site is of PR 3 and you link to a site of PR 5 and this site links back to you, then the weight of the link from the PR 5 site to your site is higher than the weight of the link from your site. This is because the link which is pointing to your site is from a PR 5 site which Google have already determine to be a quality and important site to them. The weight of that link can be higher if the PR 5 site that linked to your site is of the same content as your site. Google rates link of the same content to be more higher and important than from a link of a different content.

The limitation to reciprocal linking method is that when a site has too many links that points to other sites. This effects the weight of the link. When you link to a site of this type, even when the PR are the same and your site has only two links pointing out from your site, then the weight of the link you receive is lower.

The best is still a one way link and this carries much more weight than reciprocal links. If you inject real quality content and very useful resources to your site, then eventually your site will achieve this. This site '30 Minutes Backlinks' offers tutorial on how to obtain backlinks.

To get started, this tool below might be of help for you to check your sites Page Rank and get you on the way to obtain a higher PR, now that you know how to.

Check Your Page Rank Instantly:

This page rank checking tool is powered by Page Rank Checker service

How To Drive Traffic Via Forums

2008-10-17T22:07:00.000-07:00

One of the best ways to drive quality traffic to your website or blog is undoubtly via forum postings. In addition. it's also one of the proven and effective way to increase your subscriber base, if you be a little creative!

As easy as it may sound, there are of course certain rules of forum postings that you should adhere to obtain these traffic. Merely posting on forums will get you nowhere as many would have found out by now. These guidelines will definate make you stand out from the rest.

1. Finding Your Niche Forum

The ultimate rule is finding your niche forum to post in. If your site is about 'web design' then google to locate popular forums about it. This step gets you to your targeted audience, people who are already interested to know or share their thoughts about this topic.

2. Set Up Your Signature

Once you've selected and joined the forum, you MUST set up your forum signature! Remember to include your website or blog address in it. Signatures will appear at the end of every posts and is vital in driving traffic to your site.

3. Post in Topic

When you decide to post on a topic in forums, ensure that you are knowledgeable enough to contribute on that topic in the first place. DO NOT post for the sake of posting or to try to get these forum members to your affiliate pages or such. You will lose your credibility in that forum! Select and post on your topic or expertise only!

4. Steal The Attention

If you have recently written an interesting article, you could request for feedback from the forum members. Provide a brief introduction on your article and ask a question to these members. You will be surprised with the replies you receive!

5. Be A Problem-Solver

Yes, everyone will love solutions for their problems. Provide a detailed explanation when there is a question raised on your topic of expertise! Give out handy tips, any secrets that you may know or useful links to them. You will arrest the attention of the forum readers and maybe it will make them want to visit your site to investigate more.

You might not see an overnight burst of traffic to your site but when you feature prominently on forums with these guidelines, traffic to your site will gradually increase.

Banned From Google Adsense - Make Sense!

2008-10-09T03:54:00.000-07:00

There are topics arising around most forums i visit about website owners who laments of getting banned from Google Adsense's program. Most say without any valid reason, Google banned their account - Make sense?

This surely prompted me to write this article which might just make some sense on why Google will ban an Adsense account. Of course there are reasons! some known to many and some never knew of it at all. Below are some of the reasons (never knew) why Google will ban an Adsense account.

Encouraging users to click the Google ads by using phrases such as 'click the ads', 'support us', 'visit these links' or any similar jargon.

Directing user's attention to the ad's via arrows or any graphical gimmicks.
Placing misleading labels above the Google ad units. For instance, ads may be labeled as 'Sponsored Links' but not 'Favorite Sites'.

Sites displaying Google ads that contain 'pop-ups' or 'pop-unders' which interfere's with the site's navigation.

Driving traffic via online advertising to pages that displays Google ads are deceptive to users.

Placing Google ads on pop-ups, pop-unders or in an email.

Elements on a page that obscure any portion of the Google ads.
Google ads placed on pages that are published specifically for showing ads whether or not the page content is relevant.

On your lucky day Google might give you a second chance should you get banned but if they dont, it's not the end of the road. There are abundant of Adsense Alternatives and two of my favorites are Bidvertiser and Adbrite.

Top 5 Most Valuable Google Marketing Tools

2008-10-03T08:03:00.001-07:00

Google has become the most dominant search engine that almost every webmaster or web owners devote all their attention to with the ultimate aim to get their website to rank on the #1 page in an organic search. Seems a tough task but did you know Google offers help along the way?

Yes, help in sense of their FREE marketing tools available at your disposal but more often than not is looked over or ignored by many since it's been offered free! These useful marketing tools can make your website or blog promotions easier and more profitable. Lets snap up this marketing tools now as I run through the top 5 most valuable marketing tools Google has to offer.

1. Google Analytics

Perhaps the premier marketing tool offered, Google Analytics gives you a daily snapshot of your website. Google Analytics analyzes your traffic, where it comes from and how it interacts with your site. This vital information allows you to create targeted ROI driven marketing campaigns which in-turn can increase your site's conversion rate.

2. Google Sitemaps

A Sitemap is a list of pages on your website. Google Sitemaps lets you furnish Google additional information of your web pages and URL's that might not be discovered by Google's normal crawling process. Information such as how often pages on your site changes, last modified date of each pages and relative importance of each pages on your site are very useful information to Google that can help them crawl your site better.

3. Google Alerts

Get email notifications on topics or stories that you are monitoring with Google Alerts. It also helps you in keeping current on a competitor or industry.

4. Google Groups

As social networking fast becoming an important aspect of website or blog promotion, Google Groups offers these platform. You can manage your contact lists efficiently to make your marketing activity easy and precise!

5. Google Docs

Google Docs is a full featured online writing editor which allows you to create and share your work online. Your files are stored securely online so you can edit your work anytime and from anywhere. It also lets your publish your content directly to your blog.

All the best in exploring these very useful tools and be sure to use it to your advantage!

Search Engine Optimization Secrets Revealed

2008-09-23T22:01:00.000-07:00

"Are you certain that your web site is optimized for high visibility in search engines?", Do you know the answer if i were to ask you "What position in the major search engines does your site appear in for your target search terms?" Or "Does each page of your site have tailored Title and META Tags?" If you would answer "No" or "I don't know" to any of these questions, you would be amongst the 60% of web site owners whose web sites are missing out on traffic because they are not designed for search engine compatibility.

But what exactly is search engine optimization? Simply explained, it is the technique of attaining a high ranking in search engines and directories via changes to your site code to make it more search engine compatible. In my experience, web designers keep a lot of secrets. One of the biggest ones is that they have no clue about what makes a web site compatible with search engines. Another is that they like to build expensive, flashy sites and so convince their clients that an attractive web site never uses a lot of text. So your web designer may have included target keywords and phrases in your Title tag and META tags (in the HTML code of your site). They may even have explained to you that these are very important references that search engines use when ranking web sites for search relevancy.

I've met many a web designer who claimed that this was all it took to optimize a web site. But did you know that you need to tailor your Title and META tags for each page of your site? Did you know that optimizing your site meta tags is only a tiny fraction of the job? Did you know that search engines actually need to find target keywords within the visible body text on your site pages in order to find it a relevant match for related search queries? Did you know that they also need to find those same keywords and phrases used within the text links that help people navigate your pages? It's true. For search engines to rank your site highly for particular words or phrases that you would expect potential visitors to type in, each individual page of your site MUST be built with those words and phrases in mind. Better still, build and optimize a page for each product or service that you offer. That way, if anyone types in those phrases in a search engine, your site is more likely to appear higher in the search results. Can you honestly say your web designer has built your site with your target search terms in mind?

So why wasn't your site optimized for search engines when it was built? Depending on who developed your site and how it was built, you'll find a million different reasons for this. Most don't bother checking that your site is found in the important search engines, assuming you or your marketing department will do it. Or perhaps it wasn't discussed in your original development budget. Not many web design firms know how or have time to optimize a site successfully, no matter what they tell you. They might feel it is outside their core business, or they might believe it is not part of the "design process". Consequently, your site can be launched for many months without the search engines having any idea it exists. Some web development firms don't include even the most basic META tags in your site code when building it. Or those that do include META tags without close consultation with you, resulting in the wrong search terms used and poor performance. This is quite typical!

Remember that search engine optimization requires both client interaction and constant monitoring to be successful. The bottom line? If your designer can't show you substantial search engine traffic they've achieved for other clients, chances are they won't be able to optimize your site properly. Search engine optimization (SEO) specialists have sprung up to fill the need for these services. My suggestion is to pay a little more for a specialist with a good track record and reap the rewards. Remember, search engine users generally only explore the first 10 or 20 search results. If you site isn't in the top 20, you won't be found, it's as simple as that. Always include search engine optimization into your marketing budget or your site could be as effective as a billboard at the end of a dead end street.

Affiliate Marketing - Does It Work

2008-09-06T06:45:00.000-07:00

Affiliate marketing is safe to be said as one of the most easiest way to make money via the Internet. Most website owners will somehow sign up with at least one if not two programs to run on their site since it actually takes only minutes to join and it's completely FREE!

Well, what exactly is Affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is where you sell a third party's product or services on your site for a commission. The commission varies depending on the product or service that you choose to promote via your website or blog.

Which site should you join?

Affiliate marketing has become increasingly popular of the years and there are plenty of sites that offer such services. Below are just some sites that you can started with:

1. Clickbank - They have been around for couple of years now and offers a wide range of products and services for you to promote. Probably the most reliable site in terms of paying out commissions. Get started : Click Here!

2. PayDotCom - Another famous site offering some good products to be promoted. Also reliable in paying out commissions.

3. Amazon.com - A great site with wide array of products for you to market and sell on your site. Very realiable in paying out commissions.

4. Affliatebot - An up and coming affiliate marketing site with some interesting products in their marketplace for you to select. Get Started :

5. Commission Junction - Another popular affiliate marketing site which offers products and services from top notch organization (hp, dell, yahoo) to be promoted.

There are many other sites out there at your disposal, the key to be successful in affiliate marketing is to carefully select the appropriate product or services to be promoted on your site or blog which is relevant and useful to your site's visitors!

Another proven way is to actually write about the product or service which you are promoting on your site. This will further arrest the attention of your visitors and for you to make that sale.

The Ultimate 10 Tips To Write Your Best Ever Post

2008-09-02T09:35:00.000-07:00

One popular post can bring you more traffic and links than a month’s worth of your usual content.

Make the next post you write your most popular post ever.

The following ten tips form my key advice for tackling this task. There’s no blueprint you can follow to write an incredibly popular post, but you won’t have a chance unless you try. I’m confident these tips will give you a good shot at success.

1. Time is more important than talent

Work on something for eight hours and you can bet it will be good. You don’t need to spend that long actually. More time means you can refine, format and fill your post with plenty of value. Take the time to really craft your content. It will show in the finished product. It's the quality that matters.

2. Use your best idea

A post will never become wildly popular unless it fulfills a need, and does so emphatically. What’s something your niche wants but hasn’t got yet? Can you assemble a whole lot of really awesome (targeted) resources in one place? The more your posts helps people, the better it will do.

3. Use formatting to your advantage

These days, social media is key when it comes to launching your posts into the stratosphere. Social media users are notoriously spoiled for choice, however. Use formatting to emphasize the best aspects of your post. Hone in on your funniest lines, your most profound bits of advice, your best resources. Make them stand out.

4. Steal the headlines

There are probably one or two bloggers who’ve completely mastered the art of writing headlines for social media. The rest of us haven’t been blessed with such skills. When you see a great headline, chances are it’s option #12 of a dozen choices. Few of us can think of a great headline straight away. Spend ten minutes brainstorming and you’re bound to stumble across something that works. A weak headline will cripple your post’s chances of success. It’s essential that you put a lot of work into getting it right.

5. Invest plenty of value in your post

Ever bookmarked or voted for something without completely reading it? We’ve all done it. It’s because of the ‘Wow’ factor — the presence of enough promised value in one place gets the reader enthusiastic about the post straight away. Instead of 5 tips, why not share 50? Instead of 9 resources, why not 40 or more? This will make a visitor to bookmark your blog and head right back for more!

6. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

If your post looks good, it will draw readers in. Take the time to add images, thumbnails and formatting to what you create. Make your post a visual feast. With so much web content presented in a bland way, your post is guaranteed to stand out.

7. Let them know what to expect

Readers will skip your waffly introduction. You can say the same in less words, particularly when you’re writing for an impatient reader: someone who wants to get straight into your tips/resources/opinions. Use your introduction to highlight why the reader should stick with your post.

8. Send messages with links

The best way to get a blogger to investigate your blog is by linking to them. We’ve got a natural desire to know what’s being said about us. If your post becomes really popular, each link inside it should send enough traffic outwards to be worth investigating. Be generous with your outbound links when writing your most popular post. It gives other bloggers an incentive to link to you, because it’s ultimately more promotion for them.

9. Utilize your network

If you want people to Digg, Stumble or Reddit your post, there’s no reason why you need to sit back with fingers crossed and hope it happens. Ask them. Your loyal readers like you. You entertain them, or teach them, or help them. If voting is a simple matter of clicking a link they’ll be more than happy to do so. Ask for votes in your post and email readers and social media influencers. In most cases you will need to get the snowball rolling. After that, others will do most of the work for you.

10. Review previous posts

It's good to review your previous popular posts to analyze what worked before. Explore what was remarkable with it. It's always good to learn from example. You can transfer these qualities into what you write.

This might be of help:

How To Write Your Own EBook(R) In 7 Days! Click Here!

Google Adwords Vs Yahoo Search Marketing

2008-08-29T21:45:00.000-07:00

When it comes to Pay Per Click Advertising, Goolge Adwords is definitely the most participated program simply because of Google being the #1 search engine used. Nevertheless, Yahoo Search Marketing is also worth the time and money to be considered.

Lets just run through the basics. Pay Per Click Advertising sends targeted visitors directly to your website. It works this way - you create a text ad campaign, select appropriate keywords related to your ad campaign, you place a bid on these keywords and when people search for information related to your keyword, your ad will appear!

Lets dive in and take an in depth look at these two Pay Per Click Advertising Programs:

Google Adwords

1. Activation Fee : $5.00

2. Payment Currency : Accepts all major currencies

3. Form of Payment : Postpay - American Express, JCB, MasterCard, Visa, Bank account payments (US bank accounts only), and debit cards with a MasterCard or Visa logo. Prepay - American Express, JCB, MasterCard, Visa, and debit cards with a MasterCard or Visa logo

4. Advertising Network : AOL, Ask.com, Earthlink and nytimes.com

5. Key Features :

Daily Budget Setting : You able to set a daily budget for your ad campaign. When your budget is used up for the day, you ad will cease from appearing.

Keyword Matching Options : Broad Match - Your ad will appear even when your Keyword + Other Words are used in the query and a similar word to your keyword is used. "Phrase Match" : Triggers your ad only when the query includes your keyword in the exact sequence that you specify. [Exact Match] : Triggers your ad only when the query contains the keyword exactly selected in your keyword list.

Yahoo Search Marketing

1. Payment Currency : USD

2. Form of Payment : Major Credit Card or PayPal

3. Key Features :

Daily Spending Limit - Lets you set a daily spending limit for your ad. Your ad ceases to appear when your limit is met.
Maximum Bid - Lets you select a maximum amount that you're willing to pay when you ad is clicked.

Currently, Google Adwords has many advertisers hence the keyword bids are getting very competitive and many advertisers are complaining of Adwords being a very expensive means of Pay Per Click Advertising. Yahoo Search Marketing offers a worthy alternative to Google Adwords.

You may also want to try Bidvertiser or ExactSeek.

Hot Offer : Place your ad on thousands of sites with BidVertiser. Get $20 in FREE clicks.

This might be of help:
Get Google Ads Free! New Secret!! Newbie Affiliate Made $109,620. Click Here!
Google Snatch - The Free Click Formula. Click Here!

List of Ping Service

2008-08-28T11:49:00.000-07:00

The process of pinging is a simple and effective way of electronically verifying the presence of an IP address on the internet. However, pinging has no real threat. It is merely a method for programs and computers to identify each other and verify each others existence on the World Wide Web.

Search engines are the most widely used of pinging applications. When new content has been placed on an already indexed website they receive a ping so that search engines and index bots can crawl to that site and index the new page of information. This type of pinging is an important part of building website traffic. Therefore, many pings are usually sent to all necessary internet indexing services. This creates the optimum experience both for web publisher and their readers. If the website owner is using a webhost for their site, pinging services are usually included, and those who have custom built pages, or who use web hosts rather that website hosts usually have to purchase a pinging service application. Below is the list of ping service that you can consider using:

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://modpubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com/
http://ping.myblog.jp/
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

Monetize Your Site or Blog

2008-08-27T10:27:00.000-07:00

I'm sure many website owners and bloggers are consistently trying out various ways to monetize their site or blog and some have found great success in doing so. It's true that some site owners and bloggers are already raking in 5 figure incomes.

Well there isn't any real shortcuts in earning this success even though more often than not you've either came across sites that 'guarantees' you will make money easily on the Internet within days or hours or minutes. Dont fall for it...

Here are some ways to monetize your site or blog:

1. Google Adsense

Adsense displays targeted ads on your site and you will make money everytime someone clicks

on these ads. This is still the #1 and widely used program in generating income from your site
or blog and many have found success in this.

Tips: Choose the right ad format and place it at the most strategic part on your site or blog

which is proven to be at the top of your page.

There are also many alternatives to Adsense which you could try out! The list below:

AdBrite

Ads-Click

AdSmart

Amazon

AzoogleAds

Bidvertiser

BannerSpace

ClickBank

ClickBooth

Clicksor

Commison Junction

EasyAd

eBay AdContext

eClickz

exoClick

LinkWorth

PayDotCom

Traffic Marketplace

2. Pay Per Post

If you're a blogger, then Pay Per Post can earn you some decent money. You write about websites, products and services and get paid for your feedback and opinion.

3. Sponsored Reviews

Similar to Pay Per Post, Sponsored Reviews offers bloggers to earn cash by writing reviews on advertisers products and services.

This might be of help:
Blogging For Profits - Make Money With Blogs - Click Here!

6 Most Important Internal Linking Tactics

2008-08-22T20:31:00.000-07:00

If you own or run a website and are not following these six tactics for properly linking your website together then you're losing Google traffic as you read this. First some definitions. Internal linking is the links on your website that point to other pages within your same website. External linking is when you link to another website. Tactics are specific things to do to achieve desired results, or any mode of procedure for gaining advantage or success.

There are things you can do when developing or refining your internal linking structure. If you carry out the following tactics, you're going to achieve two things. One, you'll make your website better from a user's perspective. Two, you'll rank better in Google. And it's no coincidence that Google rewards you for doing things that make the website user's experience easier and better. In fact, the most important thing I can recommend is that you create, design and link your website together in a way that benefits the visitor first. Your visitors are most important, not Google rankings.

One last thing before I get to the tactics. Have you heard that links from other websites that point back to your website are essential in getting top search engine rankings, especially with Google? It's true. These links vary in their effectiveness and value depending on the website from which they're coming. But did you also know that internal links often can have similar effectiveness and value as external links? So bear this in mind as you read on.

1) Add links in your navigation or footer as text links to all your important pages and main sections.

This is a very easy and an extremely effective tactic that not all sites do, and even fewer do for maximum results. This is the first thing I look for when reviewing a website for a client. Unfortunately, sometimes artsy Web designers add cool buttons, which are images, to all the main sections of the site, but neglect to include text links as well. Or a programmer decides to make the website's navigation a dynamic drop down menu in DHTML or JavaScript but forgets to include text links to the same pages represented in the menus. Search engines cannot follow image links or links created in JavaScript, they can only follow simple text links, so be sure you add them to your site as well.So if you want search engines to visit and index (or record) ALL your website's pages, be sure there are text links pointing to all the main sections of your site and to all your important pages.

2) Make use of the rel="nofollow" HTML tag.

This is fairly simple. Google created this tag which tells them NOT to count the link in their search engine ranking algorithm when used on a link. There's debate that maybe Google does count them a little, or will some day in the future. But for now, this tag does greatly decrease a link's value in Google's eyes.Therefore, consider using this tag on some of your links within your site. For example, let's say you have a homepage and then create two inner pages, and that's the extent of the site. Let's further say that you add a link to both pages on your homepage. If your homepage has some external links pointing to it, then it has some value in regards to Google's ranking system. When you link to each of your two new pages within your site from your homepage, each page gets only 50% of the value the homepage has. (This is all measured in Page Rank). Let's then say that your first inner page is the one you want to rank well in Google, but you don't care if your second inner page even gets found by Google or ranked. You could add the nofollow tag to the second link on your homepage, thereby giving the first inner page 100% of the homepage's value. Think of the implications. Imagine if you had a website with hundreds or thousands of pages and used the nofollow tag throughout. To understand how to implement this tag, see the two links in HTML below, one without it and one with it correctly included.

href="http://www.yourwebsite.com" rel="nofollow">

Finally, if you have pages such as a privacy page, terms page, checkout pages or contact pages that you don't care if they rank well in Google, be sure to use the nofollow tag when creating internal links to these pages.

3) Use descriptive & different phrases to point to the same inner page.

The words that are in the text of a link (also known as the anchor text) affect your search engine rankings. For example, the anchor text in the two links above is "Your Website". If enough of these links that were on quality and valuable sites, including your website's inner pages, pointed to the same page, it would eventually rank well in Google when someone searches for the phrase "your website".Therefore, be sure to make the anchor text in all your internal links the phrases you want the pages to be found for in Google. If you have a page that sells "blue widgets", make the anchor text in links on other pages within your website that point to this page "blue widgets". Do it like this:

Blue Widgets

Going back to the number 1 tactic above, you would be far better off making the anchor text in all your footer links as descriptive as possible. If you want to rank well in Google for "affordable blue widgets" then use this in your links that point to this page:

Afordable Blue Widgets

Finally, vary your anchor text when pointing to the same page within your website. For instance, on some of your pages you could link to your Blue Widgets page with the anchor text of "blue widgets", then on other pages link to it using "affordable blue widgets" and then maybe use "widgets that are blue". This allows you to get the page ranked for multiple terms and helps the user since you're being descriptive and making your anchor text better match the content of the page it's on.

4) Make links in your content.

If you have text on your site, make some of the words within the text, links that point to other pages within your website. For instance, if you have an article about blue widgets, or a page that describes how great your blue widgets are, make the first or second occurrence of the phrase "blue widgets" in the text a link that points to your Blue Widgets page.

5) The Home link solution.

If your website is typical, you'll probably have a link on every page that points back to your homepage. And you should because this helps users. By doing this, you're supplying a lot of link value to the homepage since it is getting all these internal links pointing back to it. Since in the number three tactic I recommended that you make your anchor text the same as what you want to rank for, the word "home" does you no good. I'll assume that you're not trying to get your homepage ranked for the word "home", so make the anchor text what you do want it to get ranked for.The other option is to add the nofollow tag to all your 'Home' links, thereby canceling out the word "home" altogether.

6) Make important pages at most 2 folders deep with your site and at most two clicks away from your homepage.

The farther away a page is, the worse it ranks. So if you put a page in a folder that is five folders deep within your website folder structure, Google will likely consider that page not as important as a page only one folder deep. Also, make the pages in your website that are most important to get ranked two or less clicks away from the homepage. This is good for users and allows Google to index these pages more quickly.

By following these top six internal linking tactics, you'll be far ahead of the competition, you'll rank better in Google and you'll be making your website visitors' lives easier.

The Internet - Own It Now

2008-08-11T13:42:00.000-07:00

The Internet is like a pie, and anyone who has put any content on the Internet owns a piece of it. Some companies own the majority of the Internet because their services are in such high demand. Most people own such a small fraction of the pie that their share is not even worth a penny. Where do you stand?

Whether you own a big chunk, or just a sliver, the truth does not change. The more high quality content you put out into the Internet equates to more ownership of the Internet. If you want more exposure and more people to know what you or your company is all about then you need to create a ton of fresh quality content. If you are pumping out content like a factory pumps out products you will start collecting visitors, and ultimately the more income you will make.

What are some ways you can create content and visitors to that content? Let’s dive right in.

1) Start your own website

Again, the more web pages you have on the Internet translates into owning more of the Internet. So the more web pages the better. Instead of trying to get your search engine optimization perfect with keywords and tags, try creating multiple pages with different variations. The websites that dominate the Internet have a mind boggling amount of pages. For example Social Networks like MySpace the users create the pages, all Myspace does is provides the service. If you can find a way for users to add content to your site for you then more power to you, otherwise always try to keep adding more content packed pages onto the Internet.

2)Start a blog

This is one of the easiest ways to start adding content to the Internet. One free blogging service is Blogger. Write on a regular basis to keep your content and site fresh. If your blog does not already do this automatically for you, make sure to use a service like Ping-o-matic to ping the search engines so that they know you have updated your site.

3)Dive into Social Media

Social Media sites are huge and can help you create and distribute content easily. Start using social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, and many others to bookmark and share your content with others. Use Twitter and Social Networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to create pages and connect with other marketers. Use Squidoo, HubPages, and others that help you create pages that get indexed into the search engines really well already.

4)Write Articles, E-books

Like I’ve said many times, no matter who you are you are capable of writing content that other people will find valuable. Manually submit articles to article directories or get a service to do it for you. If you write an e-book or free report you can have people download it and that will attract more people to you.

An important note I’d like to make is this. Just creating a bunch of useless content will do you no good. It doesn’t matter how much content you have if people don’t care for it, want it, or need it. However, if you focus on helping spread knowledge and quality content onto the Internet then you will be a contributor, and contributors are rewarded.

It's time to have you share of the pie!

30 Most Important SEO Tips

2008-08-08T05:18:00.001-07:00

Try this simple tips that will definitely boost your traffic and search engine rankings.

1. Make sure your site is not under construction, incomplete, with little or no unique content.

2. When your site is ready, submit it to Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com. Consider also submitting to other search engine but most of them are powered by these four leading search engines. Submit also your site to reputable high PR web directories, open directories, yellow pages and social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, furl, etc.

3. Submit your sitemap to Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com (sitemap for search engines usually in XML format)

4. Offer sitemap to your site visitors for easy page navigation. (sitemap for visitors in HTML format)

5. Create unique and rich content sites. Avoid duplicate content. Do not create multiple pages, sub-domains, domains, mirror sites or sites with different domain names but same content.

6. Check your keywords and make sure they are relevant and actually are contained in your site. Avoid keywords stuffing.

7. Use text instead of images in your content, links and important subjects.

8. Make your TITLE and ALT tags descriptive, simple and keyword rich. Avoid irrelevant and repeated keywords.

9. Title tag should be 60-80 characters maximum length.

10. Meta tag description should be 160-180 characters including spaces. (about 25-30 words)

11. Meta Tag keywords must be 15-20 words maximum.

12. If your site contains dynamic pages(i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), make sure you use SEO friendly URLs. Search engines' spiders having difficulty indexing dynamic pages.

13. Maximum links per page must be fewer than 100. Avoid the risk of being flagged as link farm by search engines.

14. Use Lynx as text browser to check your site. (http://lynx.isc.org/)

15. Allow search bots (good ones) to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site.

16. Check your web server/host if it supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. It tells search engines whether your content has changed since last crawled your site. It will save you bandwidth, resources and avoid server overload.

17. Use Robots.txt file to manage and control search engine spiders in indexing your site. You can allow and disallow spiders and choose directories you want to be crawled and indexed. But with bad bots or spam bots you need to modify your HTACCESS file to properly and effectively manage bots or spiders. Visit http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html to learn more about Robots.txt file.

18. Do not attempt to present different content to search engines than what you show to your site visitors.

19. Avoid dirty tricks and exploiting loop holes to improve search engines ranking.

20. Avoid links to bad neighborhood such as web spammers, link farms, phishing, hacker, crack, gambling, porn and scam sites. Linking to them will greatly affects your search engine rankings.

21. Do not attempt to join in link schemes, excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging and link exchange web rings.

22. Do not use unauthorized programs or online tools to submit your site, check page rankings and other automated queries. Avoid the risk of being flagged as spam.

23. Do not use hidden text and links. Show to search engines what you show to your vistors. It will greatly affect your site's reputation.

24. Do not attempt to create pages that contains phishing, scam, viruses, trojans, backdoors, spyware, adware and other malicious programs.

25. Make your site useful and informative.

26. Improve your link building. Link to high PR websites. Quality of relevant links are far more important than quantity. Links will greatly improve your site's visibility, popularity and rankings. Search engines consider links as votes to your site.

27. Check your page link structure. Every page should be reachable by a single static text link.

28. Be extra careful in purchasing SEO services. Some uses illegal and questionable ways to improve rankings.

29. Do not buy or sell links.

30. Do not create sites that contains purely affiliate links and no valuable content that are useful to the users.

Hope this tips will be handy, all the best!

SEO PROGRAM COMPONENTS

2008-07-26T19:57:00.000-07:00

How do you know if your SEO Program will work through the changes of search engine algorithm? It involves having a well-rounded SEO Program.

Those who put too much emphasis on a single element of SEO are more vulnerable to changes in the search engine algorithm. Back in the day, webmasters relied heavily on keyword tags to drive visibility and ranking. But the search engine demoted the importance of the keyword tag and many websites suffered as a result!

Link exchange networks are a more recent version of this scenario. Search engines are now devaluing links that are part of link farms and obvious reciprocation schemes. And once again, some websites are suffering from it.

But how is it that some websites coast right along without largely being affected by search engine updates? What's the difference between these unaffected websites with those that are negatively impacted?

Of course, the age of the domain plays a part, but another key difference is the well-rounded nature of a website's SEO program. Instead of focusing on the hottest 'trend', websites with long-term SEO success focus on a variety of strategies with equal emphasis.

The 7 components of a well-rounded SEO program:
1. Create quality content
2. Create web-based resources or tools
3. Start a blog
4. Publish press releases online
5. Publish articles online
6. Add your site to quality directories
7. Acquire links from relevant websites

1. Create Quality Content

Original content helps your SEO efforts in three ways. First, quality content will make your link-building efforts much easier. Quality content will also increase the number of page views you get per visitor. When you conduct a google search and click through one of the listings on the result pages, Google can track your immediate actions upon reaching the site. Did you immediately back out or did you stay a while? "Sticky" websites make your readers happy, increase your sales and improve your search engine performance.

The third way content helps is by telling the search engine what's your website about. The more content you have, the more you can use titles, links and page copy to educate readers and search engine alike.

2. Create Web-Based Resources or Tools

Web-based resources and tools are an extention of the last point, quality content. But now we're taking the content idea to a higher level. The goal here is three-fold. We want to give our visitors useful information, we want to increase our website's 'buzz' factor and we want to pave way for our linking campaign.

Look at the variety of useful tools located at webuildpages.com and see what i mean. The key here is to create content and resources that are trully useful.

3. Start a blog

A blog is not a magical SEO device that many seem to think. Blogs are chronological content-management tools that convert normal text into HTML.

Having said that, blogs can play a major role in search engine optimization because they make web publishing quick and easy. They're so easy to use, site owners are more likely to create new content on a regular basis. Blogs also add an element of freshness to a website -- always a good thing for SEO.

4. Publish Press Releases Online

If you have news about your business, publish it online through a site like PRWeb.com. A good news release will go far online, often being picked up by respectable news sites, RSS feeds, blogs and more. If you upgrade your release, you'll be able to hyperlink some of your key phrases. Suddenly, all those sites and blogs are pointing toward you with key phrase hyperlinks!

5. Publish Articles Online

By publishing articles over the web, you extend your communication reach and increase your search engine ranking (by way of relevant backlinks). Using websites link EzineArticles.com and SearchWarp.com, you can tap into a large distribution network. You can also find dozens of niche websites that are hungry for quality content and would gladly publish your articles.

6. Add Your Site to Quality Directories

I've always recomended adding sites to one or two general directories (Best of the Web, Yahoo Directory) and as many niche directories that you can find. Such directories strengthen your link popularity and make you less susceptible to wild ranking fluctuations caused by search engine updates.

7. Acquire Links from Relevant Websites

I saved link-building for the last for a couple of reasons. First, you want to make sure your website is worth linking to in the first place. That's why quality content, resources and blogs were Step 1, 2 and 3. Having a "link-worthy" website will make your link-building efforts much easier.

Secondly, I put link-building last because I want you to think bigger than just going out and harvesting links. By illustrating the benefits of press release, articles and directories (all key components of a link-building campaign), I hope to open your eyes to the broader benefits of web publishing in general.

Remember, it's not just about people finding your site, It's about how they find it and what they find when they get there.

COMMON PAY PER CLICK (PPC) MISTAKES

2008-06-06T22:13:00.000-07:00

Mistakes when creating a PPC Ad, click fraud detection and lack of testing are just few of them. Fixing each of these mistakes mean an extra 70% of revenue and savings of thousands of dollars every month!

Below is the list of the most common mistakes marketers make with their PPC advertising campaigns.

1. Bidding Broad – Every industry has their giant keyword that brings the most traffic but there are many more variation of keywords that are also being searched. The more you focus on these keywords, the less you’re going to pay per click. Furthermore, your ads will be ranked higher if the keyword is closer matched. Look at your own website statistics for exact keyword variations people use when searching for your product or service.

2. The # 1 Spot – Being the #1 ad in paid search results is not necessarily the best place to be. Furthermore, you would be paying a lot per click. The best ranks in paid search is being #3 (top left side for Google). Being #1 would mean you’ll attract a lot of visitors but remember people do research before they buy online. Hence, you might be remembered last when they are ready to buy.

3. Geo-Targeting – Even if what you sell works all over the world, people are more keen on using a local provider or at least a company that recognizes ‘their state’. It’s just a psychological thing. Google and other search engines allow you to geo-target your PPC ads by state. Create 50 ads and drop in the state name inside your ad. You will definitely get a higher click through rate (CTR) and thus a lower CPC.

4. Losing Relevance on Landing Page – Whatever you say in your PPC ad repeat it on the landing page where you’re taking your visitors. If your advertising a whopping 60% discount in your ad, you can be sure people are looking for it when they land on your landing page. If they don’t see it they leave!

5. Getting Rid of Fraud Network – Every paid search engine, be it Google, Yahoo, MSN has a network to which they distribute your ads. Unfortunately, many of these networks are fraudulent and often do not refer quality traffic. Look into your website statistics and find domain names that brings you traffic with high bounce rate. Usually it will be around 90%. Google allows you to drop these domain names into a ‘negative excluded sites’ folder. Doing this will save you from paying for garbage traffic.

6. Paying for Negative Keywords – Google and other search engines allow your to report keywords for which your ads should not be shown. If you’re paying for ‘broad match’ keywords, you’ll see a lot of visit s from a lot of people who’ve typed your keyword with a word ‘free’, ‘jobs’, ‘stock’. You wouldn’t want to be paying for visitors who are not going to pay you a penny for what you sell or offer! Use the ‘negative keyword folder’ to eliminate these worthless clicks.

7. Not Using Keywords in Ad Copy – A simple one. Put keywords into your ad copy. Not only will your ad be more relevant but the keywords in it are going to be bold.

Achieving Higher Ranking In Search Engines

2008-05-15T14:03:00.000-07:00

The perennial problems faced my many website owners is how to achieve higher rankings in search engines. First and foremost, to get listed on the search engine naturally would take some time depending on many factors such as your content of your website, links pointing to your website (backlink) and most of all your website conforms to the search engine requirements.

Here are some imporant techniques to obtain higher ranking on search engines:

Title Tag - This tag is the most important tag. Determine what your website is about and write them in your title tag. This will appear on the blue bar when you launch your Internet browser.

Meta Tag, Description - This tag is used to briefly describe your website. Put in some imporant keywords in your description.

Meta Tag, Keyword - This tag is used to determine the keywords related to your website. Keywords are terms that possibly a person searches on when they look for information on the Internet. You need to carefully select your keywords based on your content of your website.

Website Content - 'Content is King'. The search engines spiders your content of your website to determine how well to rank your website. Hence, make sure your content is informative as possible and when your write your contents do include your keywords which you have already determined. Flash content is pretty but search engine spiders only read text!

Website Navigation - Ensure your website has an easy navigation scheme. This is to ensure the search engine spiders could easily find other pages on your website. Make sure links to your other pages are working. Broken links dont fare well on seach engines.

Link Strategy - It's one of the most important aspect that could speed up your website's popularity. You need to obtain backlinks (links pointing to your website) from other websites. You may submit your website to directories such as Dmoz, Jayde and find programs that offers link exchanges.

Keyword Density - Using your carefully selected keywords in your content is a must. Keyword Density simply means the number of times these keywords are used in your contents.

Well, adding fresh contents to your website often will make the search engine spiders to come back to visit your site for updates.

Make these changes and watch your website climb up the search engine rankings!