Search engine optimization blog.

Google Sitemaps Explained - How to Get Your Site Indexed

2006-09-23T06:04:00.000-07:00

Three Ways To Index Your Site With Google Sitemaps [Difficult, Hard, And Easy]

Google has recently implemented a program where any webmaster can create a Sitemap of their Site and submit it for indexing by Google. It is a quick and easy way for you to keep your site constantly indexed and updated in Google.

The program is appropriately called Google Sitemaps.

In order for you to best use Sitemaps, you must have an XML generated file on your site that will transmit or send any updates, changes, and data to Google. XML (Extensible Markup Language)is everywhere these days, you have probably seen the orange XML logo on many web sites and it's often associated with Blogging because Blogs use XML/RSS feeds to syndicate their content.

Today RSS is known mostly as 'Really Simple Syndication' but its original acronym stood for 'Rich Site Summary'. XML is only simple code like HTML and it is used to syndicate your content to all interested parties.

And the interested party in this case is Google. By creating Sitemaps, Google is really asking webmasters to take charge of the indexing and updating of their sites. Basically, doing the Googlebot's job!

This is a 'Good' thing! With the steady influx of new web sites growing rapidly, indexing all this material will become a challenge, even with the resources of Google. With Sitemaps, websmasters can take charge and make sure their site is crawled and indexed.

Please note, indexing your site with Sitemaps won't improve your rankings in Google. You will still be competing with the other sites in Google for top positions. But with Sitemaps you can make sure all your pages are crawled and indexed quickly by Google.

There are some other big advantages of using Google's Sitemaps - mainly you have control over a few key variables, attributes or tags. To explain this as simply as possible, your XML powered sitemap file will have this simple code for each page of your site:

http://www.yoursite.com/
1.0
2005-07-03T16:18:09+00:00
daily

Along with 'urlset' tags at the beginning and end of your code, and an XML version indication - that's basically your XML file! File size will depend on the number of webpages you have.

Taking a closer look at this XML file:

location - http://www.yoursite.com - name of your webpage

priority - you set the priority you want Google to place on that page in your site. You can prioritize your pages: 0.0 being the least, 1.0 being the highest, 0.5 is in the middle. This is only relative to your site. It will not affect your rankings. Why is this important? You have certain pages on your site that are more important than others, (home page, high prof�t page, opt-�n page, etc.) by placing high priority on these pages, you will increase their importance in Google.

last modified - when you last modified that page, this timestamp allows crawlers to avoid recrawling pages that haven't changed.

change frequency - you can tell Google how often you change that particular page. Nev�r, weekly, daily, hourly, and so on - if you frequently update your page this could be extremely important.

Why do I need a XML Generator?

In order for this XML sitemap file on your site to be constantly updated, you need a Generator that will spider your site, list all the urls and automatically feed them to Google. Thus constantly updating your site in Google's massive index or database. Keep in mind, Google also gives you the option of submitting a simple text file with all your URLs.

There is already a flood of these generators popping up! Different ways of generating your XML powered sitemap file. More are probably appearing as you read this. But lets look at Three ways to generate your XML file.

Difficult - Google's Python Generator

That's a relative term, if you know your server like the back of your hand and installing scripts doesn't scare the bejesus out of you, you're probably smiling at the word difficult. Google supplies a link to a generator (Google XML Generator) which you can download and set up on your server. It will cough up your sitemap XML file and automatically feed it to Google.

In order for this Generator to work, Python version 2.2 must be installed on your web server - many servers don't have this. If you know what you're doing, this will probably be a good choice.

You don't need a Google Account to use Sitemaps, but it's encouraged because you can track your sitemap's progress and view diagnostic information. If you already have another Google Account, gmail, Google Alerts, etc. just use that one to sign in and follow directions from there.

To submit your Sitemap using an HTTP request, issue your request to the following URL:

www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=sitemap_url

Hard - A PHP Code Generator

This is a PHP Generator that you can place on your server. This generator will spider your site, and produce a XML sitemap file. Download the phpSitemapNG and upload it your server. Run the generator to get your XML sitemap file and send it to Google.

Again, this is only hard to do if you don't know your way around PHP files or scripts.

Easy - Free Online Generator

These Generators are popping up everywhere, and Google keeps a list of these 'third party suppliers' of generators on their site. Find them at: Google's List of Third Party Generators

One of the easiest to use is www.xm-sitemaps.com, and you can index up to 500 pages with this online Generator very quickly and it will give you the sitemap XML file Google needs to index your site. It will go into your site, spider it and index all your pages into an XML sitemap of your site. You can download this file, Compressed or Non- compressed and make minor changes such as setting the priority, changing frequency, etc.

Then upload this file to your site as sitemap.xml to the root directory of your server i.e. where you have your homepage. Then notify Google Sitemaps of your XML file and you're in business.

Of course, the only drawback, if you constantly add pages to your site, you will need to also add these pages to your XML sitemap file. This won't be much of a problem unless you're daily adding pages to your site - then you will need something like the PHP or Python generator to do all this for you automatically.

Google is still the major search engine on the web so getting your pages indexed and updated quickly is the major reason to use Google Sitemaps. If you want your site to remain competitive it's probably the wisest route to take.

About the Author:
To learn more about the different Services and Programs offered by Google click-here: Google Adsense & Google Adwords Copyright (c) 2005 Titus Hoskins of bizwaremagic.com . This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

SEO contests a new effective way of internet marketing

2006-09-23T06:03:00.000-07:00

First, let me explain you what a SEOcontest is. A SEOcontest is a contest where every webmaster can build a website or page about a special keyword. There must be no results in the targeted search engine for that keyword or keyphrase. So most contests have not existing words in them or have the site name of the sponsor in the keyphrase. Like the ambatchdotcom seocontest. Where you need to rank number 1 in Google for the keyphrase ambatchdotcom seocontest. And when you become number one in Google or another search engine and you stay at that spot until the end of the contest you win the main price. Normally thousands of dollars.

But how can a simple seocontest sponsor make profits from such a contest if it costs that much? That will be explained in this article.

The most big contests dure a couple of months or even half a year. So it can attract a lot of webmasters/SEO's because they can jump in any time, even if the contest is already going on for a month. And big prices attract big amounts of media and participants. So you're brand gets big attention for a long time.

Also, most contests contain the main keywords or the site name or the sponsor of the contest. Like the ambatchdotcom seocontest. The sponsor is ambatch.com. The contest is already going for a month and there are allready over 500,000 participants who promote the name ambatch.com. So when you start a SEOcontest you will be known in the whole webmaster world. Also a lot of contests like the Cpayscom2 Online Casino contest have they're main keywords in them. In the Cpayscom2 Online Casino contest the keyphrase is Cpayscom2 Online Casino to rank in msn at the first spot. But cpays.com is an affiliate program for online casinos, so the participants are not only promoting the main sponsor but also the main keyphrase of that sponsor.

In most contests there are rules. A common used rule is that you have to place a link back to the sponsor of the contest. So in the Cpayscom2 Online Casino you have to place a link back to cpays.com with the text online casino. But every participant has been optimizing their website for the keyphrase Cpayscom2 Online Casino. That keyphrase contains the words online casino. So every backlink from a participating page is a high value backlink! And if there are 500,000 participating websites, it makes the sponsor a huge jump in the serps and lots of traffic and....MONEY!

Web directory submission

2005-12-10T01:50:00.000-08:00

Web directory are source of good backlinks. generally web directories are 'Human edited', so you must take care while you submit your site to these directories.
In the world of website promotion directory submission is very very important due to following reasons.
[1] they will provide you strong back links
[2] improve your popularity
[3] generally they are permanent linking.so you will not see your URL dancing in SEs
There are some common rules for directory submission
[1] They never accept mirror sites.
[2] Sites with overlapping and repetitive content will not accepted.
[3] They generally don't accept sites that redirects on other link.
[4] Sites with 'Under construction' status will not accepted
[5] Affiliate/referral links generally not accepted.
[6] Don't use promotional language.
[7] Don't write your title with all words in CAPITAL
[8] submit your site in appropriate categories
Some of Top Directories
[1] http://www.dmoz.org
We can say dmoz is father of all other directories.your site will include in about 1200 other web directories including google.you will see in boost in your PR once your site accepted in dmoz.These ODP links are treated like gold by Pagerank?. It doesn't even matter what the individual PR of the category page is. I have seen sites gain a large PR boost on the toolbar as soon as Google updates it's directory with the latest one from dmoz.org
[2] http://zeal.com/
If you site is non commercial type than you can submit your site to Zeal.com. which is actually a Looksmart directory.just like Google obtains results from ODP, Looksmart obtains it's non-commercial listings from the Zeal web directory other wise you have to submit your site in looksmart directory which is paid option
[3] http://dir.yahoo.com/
like zeal if your site is non commercial type than only you can submit your site here other wise there is paid option available.
[4] http://joeant.com
Become an editor to add your site.paid inclusion option also available click here to know more>>http://www.joeant.com/suggest.html
[5] http://www.gimpsy.com/gimpsy/searcher/suggest.php
Only paid option is available to submit your site
[6] http://www.goguides.org/info/addurl.htm
Only paid option is available to submit your site
[7]http://www.skaffe.com/info/addurl.htm
Become an editor to submit your site in Skaffe or paid inclusion option is available.

Consider Manual Directory Submission Service to 450 quality directories with quality reports by Inetzeal Directory Submission Services

The Open Directory Project (ODP) Guide

2005-11-07T07:59:00.000-08:00

The Open Directory Project (ODP) based at http://www.dmoz.org is perhaps the most important directory any webmaster can submit a site to these days. Even more important than Yahoo? You might ask. Well yes in my opinion anyway, you see the ODP, formally known as NewHoo not only operates its directory from its headquarters at dmoz.org but also supplies its directory data to such big player engines as Google, AOL search, Netscape Search, Lycos and Hotbot to name just a few. In addition to these 'mainstream' engines hundreds of other sites also use ODP's data.
This means that a listing in the ODP directory will enable your site to show up for searches done on any engines or sites which use the Open Directory Projects data, provided of course your title and description are optimized for the searched terms. The fact that lots of third party search engines and sites use ODP data is the main attraction of applying for a listing with them. The main attraction is not as one might think to be found at searches done at dmoz.org. Dmoz.org itself receives only a tiny percentage of the traffic that sites such as Google and Lycos receive.

In particular, a listing in the ODP directory can be very advantageous for sites wishing to rank high in the Google search engine. Google not only uses the Open Directory Projects data for the Google Directory located at http://directory.google.com but it also 'mixes' the data with its own to determine where sites should be ranked in the search results. A listing in the ODP will help boost Googles view of how important your site is (ie. boost your Pagerank) and hence help to increase your ranking for your chosen keywords and key phrases.

Presumably you now know that getting listed in the ODP is very important. Getting a listing is not hard, it does sometime take a little time but it's not hard and what's more it's completely free. This article is your guide to submitting to the Open Directory Project.

A few pre requirements
Before I continue on and tell you how to submit your site I'm first going to tell you not to bother.. IF your site doesn't meet a few pre-requirements that is. I believe these pre-requirements to be very important to the ODP and almost all other directories.

Firstly your site must be finished. That means no fancy 'under-construction' graphics with smiling builders waving their hammers back and forth on them, ODP editors don't care if you know how to use a free animated GIF's directory, either do I for that fact. That means no broken links, how do you expect an editor to review your site if he or she can't first view it. That means fast or average page loading times, editors are busy editing their chosen category, they don't have the time or the patience to wait for an eternity to see your site load.

Secondly your site should be unique and contain useful content. This means that your site should not be a mirror site with the exact same content as another site listed already within the directory. This means that your site should not be simply an affiliate farm designed specifically to promote products of other companies.

Thirdly and finally, your site should not be an illegal underground type site, ODP editors will simply move on to the next submission if they come across a site like this. Remember the ODP is a directory just like Yahoo and Looksmart so real people will visit your site, these people are experts in their chosen fields and can spot quality sites when they see them. If your site is of poor quality then I'm sorry but your rejected - "Next!!!"

Which category?
The Open Directory Projects data is organized into 16 top level categories each with many many subcategories, however only 15 are visible from dmoz.org as the adult category can only be accessed direct from its URL, this is of course for the protection of minors.
ODP description tips
Writing a description for your submittal to ODP is much more tricky than writing your title. Descriptions are regularly changed by editors often with many of your important keywords and keyphrases removed and since it's next to impossible to have an original description changed it's vital that you write your description correctly the first time. Correctly in this case means that you follow the guidelines exactly but in such a way that your important keywords and keyphrases are included by the editor.

The important thing is to follow the guidelines that ODP themselves publish.

"Descriptions of sites should describe the content of the site concisely and accurately. They should not be promotional in nature. Submitting a promotional description rather than an objective, well written description may significantly delay your site from being listed or prevent your site from being listed at all."

"Good descriptions ....
Are concise, informative, and objective, to let end-users know what they will find when they visit a web site."

These two quotes taken from http://dmoz.org/add.html and http://dmoz.org/guidelines/describing.html respectively provide a great insight into what the ODP wants. Based on these guidelines your description should be clear, concise and should accurately describe your website on an objective basis. If you describe your site and or products as being 'the best', 'the greatest', 'the cheapest' you're not being objective at all, in fact you're being subjective meaning that your using your opinion which is obviously biased because you own the business/website and all the profits are going to you. ODP editors don't want biased descriptions, they want hard facts about the services and products your website offers so leave all the promotional advertisement like sentences to your sales copy as you'll stand a much better chance of getting in if you do.

Include your services and primary functions of your products and website as your keywords but make sure your description sounds natural, also include your state or province your business operates from, if you are in fact a regional specific operation. Remember that the Open Directory Project will not search the content of your site for keywords so including them in your description is vital. Never include pricing details in your description, that is the function of your site not the directory.

Don't repeat your title in the description, remember the title is for identifying a site and the description field is for describing a site, the two are different and shouldn't overlap. As with the title, don't include any phrases like 'Welcome to', 'Homepage of' as these provide no benefit to end-users who determine relevancy by looking for specific terms, not meaningless phrases like the ones above.

Try to keep your description brief and to the point as although ODP claims on its submission page to allow descriptions of 25-30 words, in practice a description of this length would nearly always get edited with many of your important keywords omitted. Check all your grammar and spelling is right.

Email address?
The ODP submittal form also has an optional email address field. Although optional according to the ODP you should always, always include an email address in my opinion anyhow. The reason for this is that even though editors are usually really busy, many of them will contact you letting you know your accepted. What's more useful however is the information they could send you if your site gets rejected, this could include reasons why your site was rejected which you could immediately act upon and then resubmit. If you don't leave an email address an editor doesn't even have the capability of emailing you, never mind the time.

Finally press submit and there you have it, you have just applied to the ODP. Note and store the date, as you may need this for reference purposes if you have to write to an editor in the future.

Wait and if needed respond
After submitting wait a few days and then check regularly if your site becomes listed over the next few weeks from the ODP search box. Do this by typing in your company or website name (the title you submitted) and viewing the results. I suggest searching rather than browsing to your chosen category as often editors will locate your site in a category different to the one you asked to be listed in as this was an inappropriate category considering your sites content, searching will enable you to determine if your listed in the directory as a whole.

If after a month your site is still not present in the ODP and you're sure your site meets all the pre-requirements outlined above it's time to submit your information again. After this resubmittal wait another month, when this time relapses you should write to the editor of the category you are trying to submit to, sometimes a category will have no editor in this case you should write to the editor of your chosen categories parent category. Links to editor profiles are found beneath a categories listings.

Write the editor an email detailing your plight, tell him or her the date you submitted on and also include the details of your submittal such as URL, title and description. Ask for the reasons your site was rejected, do this in a polite way stating that you'd like to bring your site up to standard and then resubmit to the directory. Tell him or her you appreciate their time and hope to hear from them soon.

You will hear from some editors soon, but the simple fact is that many will never write back and your aim to be listed might appear to be stuck in limbo, however this is not the case, I would suggest you simply find the next most appropriate category for your site and submit there. Make sure however that this category is not edited by the same editor that edits the category you originally submitted to as he or she will most likely reject you again.

Multiple listings?
Multiple listings, deep-linking whatever the editors are calling it these days doesn't matter. What matters is that multiple listings are very valuable to webmasters. A listing of one or more of your websites sub pages as well as your homepage could do wonders for your Pagerank and hence your Google ranking for your chosen keywords and keyphrases.

The important thing to remember when applying for another listing is that the page your submitting must be of very high quality, it must be unique and fit into your chosen category very well. If this describes your page well then you should try to get an additional listing for it. Keep in mind however that the ODP will in most cases list only one page per site, so don't hold your breath waiting for this extra listing to appear.

If you can try to submit to a category which has a different editor than the category your home page is listed from. Try also to find a category in which multiple listings of sites are present, do this by searching for the titles of sites listed within a category from the main dmoz search box, if more than one result comes up then obviously the editor of the category does in some cases give multiple listings. This is important an many editors simply refuse to give additional listings straight out.

Follow the title and description tips given above, however since you will be submitting internal pages you do not need to use your official company or website name as the title, this allows you to include related keywords instead. I read elsewhere that putting the page your submitting into a different sub directory on your server will lend more credibility to the idea that the page contains material different than the rest of your site and hence merits its own listing, this is an interesting approach and I suggest you give it a try. Translating your site into a different language will give you the opportunity to list your site in both the English directory and the directory of the language of your translation.

If after a while you notice that you haven't got your additional listing move on to something else, don't resubmit or contact editors regarding a second or subsequent listing as this may be pursued as spamming the directory.

There you have it, a complete and very comprehensive guide to submitting to the Open Directory Project. Hopefully you can now get your site listed and if your lucky get a couple of sub pages listed too.

It's imperative that you submit to the most appropriate category for two main reasons. These being the fact that if you submit to an inappropriate category the editor will most likely reject your site and move on and if you don't submit to the most appropriate category you may have lost some valuable keywords from your category name. This last point is important as the Google directory and indeed dmoz.org themselves not only search titles and descriptions for keywords but they also search within category names and paths, so having your keywords in your category name will help you be found.

Deciding on which category to submit to isn't that hard, what I suggest would be to visit dmoz.org and enter in your primary keywords and or keyphrases and see what results come up. Categories which contain returned websites will be listed at the top of the page, one of these categories will be the one you should submit to. Start by eliminating those categories which you know are not right for your site, for example foreign language categories and other categories which although they contain websites returned from your search do not fit your sites theme and hence keywords very appropriately.

Imagine why don't we that there are three categories which seem really right for your website and your submission, how do you decide which one to submit to? Well when I'm submitting any site and come across the same problem there's a couple of things I do to help me out.

I always check if there's an FAQ and description page associated with a particular category, within these pages are specific category guidelines concerning what sites the editor deems highly fit for his or her category among other things. If you submit to the right category your much more likely to get accepted and this information will help you decide on the 'right' category. Not all categories have FAQ and description pages however.

I always check if there is in fact an editor for any categories I'm considering submitting to as editors of parent categories are often too busy to deal with subcategories of theirs without their own editors. I also scroll to the bottom of the category page and check out the 'Last update' date, if the date is fairly recent obviously there's an active editor for this category as opposed to an editor that rarely updates and looks after his or her category. I do both of the above as I'm a businessman and time is money, if these checks return unsatisfactory results chances are I'm going to be waiting months at least for a listing in that particular category so I might as well submit to another one.

Often I use the handy 'little green ball' feature on dmoz.org to help me decide on my category. Let me explain, the 'little green ball' feature as I like to term it is simply a graphic (the graphic is of a little green ball) hyperlink from a dmoz.org category to the equivalent category in the Google directory. ODP does this as it provides users with the chance to see a categories sites listed in order of decreasing Pagerank instead of dmoz.org's standard alphabetical ordering. I use this to see what the competition in a category is like, Pagerank wise that is. Googles directory displays listings in order of decreasing Pagerank by default, so sites with high Pagerank will be displayed at the top and hence get considerable more traffic than sites listed near the bottom. Taking this into consideration I would always try to submit to an ODP category which hasn't got too many high Pagerankers as I would most likely be buried in the listings and hence receive very few visitors from Googles version of the directory. Remember the Google directory does get used an awful lot too, even though Google search is very accurate and powerful. The green ball link is located at the bottom right of each category page.

Now for a note regarding regional operations and category Pagerank. If your business is region specific you should always submit to a category dedicated to that region as this will help you get very targeted visitors from dmoz.org, Google and the other sites which use ODP data. As for category Pagerank that refers to the actual Pagerank of the ODP category in dmoz.org which your considering submitting to, remember a link from within a category with a Pagerank of seven, is more valuable than a link from within a category with a Pagerank of five, in Googles eyes anyhow.

When you've decided on your category the submittal form is found through the 'add URL' link located in the top right corner of each applicable category page. Now I will discuss each aspect of this form.

URL
In the URL field type the full address of your website. This may seem obvious but always spell check your address, this means not just the domain name part but also the http:// and the TLD. Numerous sites have been rejected by the ODP for not bothering to fix mistakes like using http:/// instead of http:// and similar mistakes. This is downright unprofessional and in my opinion editors are right to reject sites based on URL field mistakes.

ODP title tips
During your submittal the ODP will ask you to enter a title and description for your websites listing, these are the most important elements of your submittal, do them right and you could be in for some good traffic courtesy of the Pagerank boost Google usually assigns sites listed within ODP, however do it wrong and you could be rejected immediately.

Regarding the title you submit ODP stats you should "Always opt for the official name of the site". This backups another ODP quote from its official editor guidelines page located at http://dmoz.org/guidelines/describing.html "The title should identify the site, not describe it. It should be both informative and concise."

Using your official business name or website name will indeed identify the site and hence it'll be informative and concise. Always do use your official business or website name (often the two are the same) instead of including some keyword filled promotional hype with a junk of alphabetically high characters located at the start in a bid to get near the top of the listings as if you do this the editor reviewing your submission will reject your site.

Don't forget that the primary benefit of a listing with the ODP is not traffic from dmoz.org itself but from third party sites which use ODP data. One of the most prominent sites using this data is the Google Directory and by default Google directory displays listings arranged by Pagerank so there really isn't much point to including characters like AAA at the beginning of your title anyway.

Having included your official business or website name in your title, you may be tempted to add something like 'Welcome to', 'Homepage of', 'Website of' and other similar phrases, however don't do this as editors are advised to remove phrases like these so it's just a waste of time.

Nearly all titles I have looked at in the ODP have all the first letters of all noun words capitalized, this is obviously the way Open Directory Project editors like it so if your title is a couple of words long I would suggest you do this. Be careful here not to capitalize everything, but just the beginning of noun words, don't capitalize words like 'and', 'at', 'of', 'on' and the like. This tactic will make life easier for the reviewing editor which helps greatly towards a final acceptance of your site. I'm about to move onto discussing the description but first here's a page I recommend http://dmoz.org/erz/sites/title.html it gives examples of good and bad titles and explains why they are so.

[Article By David Callan-webmster of AKAmarketing ]

Directory submission service

Optimize your product in froogle!!

2005-11-07T05:18:00.000-08:00

Maximize Your “Froogling” for the Holidays
Are you familiar with Froogle? If you are an online merchant, you certainly should be. Froogle is Google’s product search engine and was launched as a “beta product” in December 2002. Froogle’s significance is in its ability to generate free “qualified” visitor traffic for online merchant products, assuming they gain “maximum exposure”.
What can “maximum exposure” in Froogle produce for online merchants? Merchants who have pursued Froogle maximization for their products have reported significant traffic and associated sales increases. One merchant generated over $19,000 in less than 20 days. Examples like this suggest that Froogle maximization is a worth-while strategy.
There are multiple ways to access Froogle, both voluntarily and involuntarily. Involuntarily methods include Google spidering your product web pages and adding them to their Froogle product index, or if you have a Yahoo or eBay store, your products may be automatically indexed. However, the most effective way to access Froogle comes through voluntarily actions on your part through submitting a data feed (txt file) directly to Froogle.
Yet rather than going into details about Froogle data feed submission techniques and requirements, the focus of this article is on highlighting the most important strategies for gaining “maximum exposure.”
Froogle maximization involves focusing your efforts on two, interdependent parts: (1) your Froogle data feed and (2) your product web page (i.e. Froogle landing page).
Maximizing Your Data Feed
The first part of Froogle maximization focuses on setting up your data feed. Unfortunately, many data feed submission programs including shopping carts build feeds that are not maximized for Froogle. Therefore, always review your data feed and implement these maximization strategies:
Include all relevant product information in your data feed. If you have information for optional data fields like brand or ISBN, include it. Keep in mind that the information in your data feed must match the information on your product web page.
Write a product name that uses a general product name, the brand name, model name, manufacturer and product type. Think about how potential buyers will search for your product and use these identifiers.
Keep the description around 40 – 60 characters. Recent research studies are showing that a shorter description leads to a better position – possibly a factor of a keyword relevancy factor.
Enter the product category path for YOUR website into the data feed; not the Froogle category. Unfortunately, Google states that many merchants enter the Froogle categories where they believe their product should be listed.
Use the Froogle merchant center for identifying any errors with your data feed. Although the Froogle merchant center is simple – it does provide excellent information to assist in correcting data feed issues.
Be careful, Google has reported problems with merchant’s website image files having a robots.txt file. The result is a Froogle listing with a missing image – a situation that can decrease visitor click-through.
When naming your image files, the name you give it is very important. Similar to alt tags for conventional search engine optimization, the image should use the primary product keyword such as mp3player.gif or plasmatv.gif in its naming convention.
Froogle does not accept images that are 90x90 or smaller. So if you do not have a larger image, then simply do not submit one. The best thing to do is send Froogle the same full-size image on your web page and they will re-size it to fit their interface.
The second part of Froogle maximization involves your product web page. This is the most overlooked aspect to Froogle maximization and potentially the most important. Although Froogle requires a data feed, it works very similar to a traditional search engine by crawling a web page for relevant factors. So your product web page plays an essential role in gaining maximum exposure in Froogle.
In general, your product web page should be laid out in a manner that can be easily crawled by Froogle which means using HTML.
If you are using tables on your product web page, put your product image, title, description and price into one cell or as few cells as possible.
Include your “add to cart” button (or other purchase indicator) within the same table as your price and product image.
The “$” sign (dollar sign) should appear and may be of greater value if it is BOLD and of a larger font.
Keep the title and description listed on your product web page identical to the one listed in your Froogle data feed.
Add an uninterrupted 25 – 28 word sentence for your description that includes your keyword and is meaningful to visitors.
Place the product description directly underneath the product title and, if possible, within the same cell as the title, price, and image.
Froogle pays attention to the product title tag on your web page. Add a unique title tag for each product web page.
Research has shown that a higher PageRank does not guarantee a higher position in Froogle. In addition, a product listing in Froogle will not transfer any PageRank to your website.
Taking Advantage of Froogle’s New Customer Satisfaction Rankings
Recently Froogle introduced a “customer satisfaction ranking” feature for their merchants’ product listings. The rankings are actually pulled from shopping comparison websites like BizRate.com, Shopping.com and others. As a merchant and if you have not done so already, it is highly recommended to setup your products on at least one of the shopping comparison websites to gain a customer satisfaction ranking on Froogle.
Froogle users searching for a product will connect greater credibility with a merchant sporting the rankings versus ones without. If you are competing against a category-killer or large retailer like Target, Staples, Amazon or others, this may be essential since all of these merchants will certainly have customer satisfaction rankings.
As an added bonus, shopping comparison websites have shown to generate a higher sales conversion rate than other marketing channels. Therefore, not only will you help maximize your Froogle strategy; you may also drastically improve your sales conversion rate by adding your products to a shopping comparison website.
By following, these data feed AND product web page strategies, you will gain tremendous advantage over your competition and strive towards generating “maximum exposure” for your Froogle product listings during the Holidays.

About The Author
Kevin Gold is co-owner and principal of Enhanced Concepts, Inc., specializing in turning your website visitors into sales or lead with proven traffic generation and conversion enhancement strategies. Kevin is the author of FroogleMaximizerT, the first, comprehensive Quick Start Guide to maximizing FroogleT. Now accepting new clients - to learn more visit EnhancedConcepts.com.

Inetzeal Network

Checklist

2005-11-06T22:23:00.000-08:00

Are you doing enough to keep your site properly indexed with external search engines? To prepare you for the next level of optimization, review the following checklist:

1. Are you creating Web pages with content your target audience is genuinely interested in reading?
2. Does your content contain highly focused keyword phrases rather than phrases that are too general and competitive?
3. Are you optimizing your Web pages for at least three to five keywords at a time?
4. Are you using regionally specific keywords, when applicable?
5. Are you using the most commonly used variations of your keywords, based on your keyword research?
6. Does each optimized page contain a unique title?
7. Are you using multiple keywords in your title tags when appropriate?
8. Are your most important keywords appearing above the fold and throughout each optimized page?
9. Are you using keywords in hypertext links, whenever possible?
10. Does each optimized page have at least one call to action?
11. Does each optimized page contain a unique meta-tag description?
12. Do your meta-tag descriptions contain both targeted keyword phrases and a call to action?
13. Does each optimized page contain a unique meta-tag keyword list?
14. Does each set of meta-tag keywords contain words and phrases that you actually use within the visible body text?
15. Do you place common misspellings of your keywords within your meta-tag keywords?
16. Do your graphic images contain descriptive keywords within the alternative text attribute, when appropriate?
17. Do you provide at least two means of navigating your site: one for your visitors, and one for search engines?
18. Does your site have a site map, to assist both your visitors and the search engine spiders?
19. If your site uses frames, is your site navigable with and without the framesets?
20. If you are using JavaScript on your site, did you place the JavaScript in an external .js file and place the Robots Exclusion Protocol on that file?
21. If you are using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) on your site, did you place the style sheets in an external.css file?
22. Do you have any redirects on your site? If so, have you placed the Robot Exclusion Protocol on pages that use redirects?
23. Are your optimized pages placed in the root directory (along with your home page) on your Web server?
24. Is your robots.txt file placed in the root directory on your Web server? Did you remember to transfer your robots.txt file before you transferred any other Web pages to your server?
25. Are you using subdomains instead of subdirectories if you find that your subdomains contain unique and substantial content?
26. If you are submitting pages to non-U.S. search engines, are you writing your pages in the appropriate language?
27. If it is within your budget, did you submit your optimized pages to pay-for-inclusion programs?
28. If you use Pay-For-Placement advertising, are your purchases based on detailed keyword research and selection?
29. If you use Pay-For-Placement advertising, do you carefully monitor your bids to get the best search engine visibility at the most reasonable cost?
30. Did you name your Web pages something that your target audience can remember and spell easily, using keywords whenever possible?
31. Did you design or select a series of landing pages for your Pay-For-Placement advertising? If the landing pages do not contain substantially unique content, did you place the Robots Exclusion Protocol on those pages?
32. Do the search engines and your site visitors view the same page? (The only exception to this rule is sites that participate in XML-feed programs).
33. Do you submit the maximum allowable number of pages per day for each of the major search engines?
34. Do you avoid submitting the same pages twice within a 24-hour period?
35. Do you resubmit to a search engine only if a page has dropped from the index or if a page's content has changed significantly?

77% of internet users employ search engines first to find a new web site

80% of internet users don't go beyond the first three pages of search engine results

this check list found from a popular board

Promote your stote promote your Blog

Directory List (no backlinks required!)

2005-11-06T22:18:00.000-08:00

Here are SOME!!! directories for you too submit your site.. (nomber after Each Url tells PR in google).
http://www.axelis.com/ 4
http://www.bestbusinessdirectory.com/ 0
http://www.gloose.com/dir.html 3
http://www.iozoo.com/ 6
http://www.kingbloom.com/ 4
http://www.osy-directory.com 3
http://www.refrozen.com/ 2
http://www.sitelibrary.net/Directory/ 5
http://www.sorve.com/ 0
http://www.searchwiz.org 0
http://www.thewebknot.com/ 3
http://www.webdesigncorp.com/ 3
http://www.aaronsfreebies.com/ 4
http://www.abilogic.com/ 5
http://www.addyourlinks.net/ 4
http://www.addurlhere.com/ 5
http://www.agada.info/ 5
http://www.aindabem.com.br/ 3
http://www.allfreethings.com/ 5
http://www.allthewebsites.org/ 5
http://www.askrobo.com/ 4
http://www.links.atlantaaz.com/ 3
http://www.austrosearch.at/ 5
http://www.alldotnet.com 0
http://www.bhanvad.com 5
http://www.bigall.com/ 6
http://blue.daffodil.uk.com/ 3
http://www.bn23.com/ 5
http://www.businessplexus.com/ 3
http://www.businessseek.biz/ 5
http://www.canlinks.net/ 6
http://www.checkhouston.com/ 5
http://www.chickendirectory.com/ 0
http://www.consultant-directory.com/ 5
http://www.c2000.com/ 4
http://www.deep-directory.com/ 2
http://demotte411.com/ 3
http://demottedirectory.com/ 3
http://www.deregular.com/ 3
http://www.dhundo.com/ 4
http://www.directorybabe.com/ 0
http://directorybuddy.com/ 4
http://www.directorybytes.com/ 0
http://www.directorychick.com/ 0
http://directorydude.com/ 1
http://www.dirone.com/ 6
http://www.direct-o-ry.com/ 4
http://www.dmole.org/ 4
http://www.dmoz.org/ 9
http://directory.xperts.ro/ 3
http://www.easyeraserpro.com/ 4
http://www.easyfilelock.com/ 4
http://easyfolders.com/ 3
http://www.easyinterneteraser.com/ 1
http://www.easylockit.com/ 0
http://www.easyprivacysoftware.com/ 4
http://www.e-commerce-directory.com/ 0
http://www.findhopper.com/ 3
http://www.findhound.com/ 5
http://www.findrex.com/ 3
http://www.flyingpopups.com/ 4
http://www.foundya.co.uk/ 4
http://freedigitalmarketingreport.com/ 0
http://www.friendly-directory.co.uk/ 0
http://www.forumsearch.tk 4
http://www.geeksonsteroids.com/ 6
http://www.globalgateway.com 6
http://www.greenstalk.com/ 5
http://grizzlyweb.com/ 4
http://hedir.com 4
http://www.hotsitesdirectory.com/ 0
http://htmleasy.com/ 3
http://www.illumirate.com/ 6
http://indianafinder.com/ 3
http://www.infignos.com/ 5
http://www.info-listings.com/ 6
http://www.info-places.com/ 3
http://www.infowebworld.com/ 5
http://www.inneedof.co.uk/ 3
http://www.itzalist.com/ 5
http://jaspercountydirectory.com/ 3
http://jayde.com/ 7
http://www.jimac.co.uk/ 3
http://jaspercountydirectory.com/ 3
http://jayde.com/ 7
http://www.jimac.co.uk/ 3
http://www.linksmatch.com 4
http://www.linketeria.com/ 4
http://losttraffic.com/ 3
http://lybot.com/ 5
http://www.maxpromo.com/ 3
http://www.megri.com/ 4
http://www.mixcat.com/ 5
http://www.mojoo.com/ 2
http://monkeydirectory.com/ 3
http://directory.nawigator.biz/ 4
http://nwindianadirectory.com/ 3
http://ohgoodysites.com/ 3
http://okaydirectory.com/ 3
http://www.onebigindex.com 0
http://www.onestop-directory.com/ 3
http://www.openhere.com/ 4
http://www.pedsters-planet.co.uk/ 5
http://perfext.com/ 4
http://www.phatlinks.com/ 4
http://www.pharos-search.com/ 5
http://www.pileiton.com/ 4
http://www.pleaseretrieve.com/ 4
http://www.poddys.com/ 5
http://www.pr3.co.uk/ 3
http://www.putmyfinger.co.uk/ 3
http://www.ranked1.net/ 5
http://www.redjuniper.com/ 3
http://www.relevant-links.com/ 0
http://www.resourcehelp.com/ 5
http://www.san24.com/ 6
http://scoop.evansville.net/ 4
http://www.searchave.com/ 3
http://www.search-the-world.com/ 4
http://www.searchtheweb.com/ 5
http://www.searchwarp.com/ 4
http://www.sedsearch.com/ 4
http://www.seekon.com/ 2
http://www.sezza.com/ 4
http://www.shoula.com/ 4
http://www.sitefolders.com/ 3
http://sitesondisplay.com/ 4
http://www.slidingads.com/ 4
http://www.sloogle.com/ 4
http://www.softwaresells.com/ 4
http://www.softzdirectory.com/ 4
http://www.somuch.com/ 6
http://sonicquest.com/ 3
http://www.sootle.com/ 5
http://www.spheri.com/ 5
http://www.sumwd.com/ 2
http://www.synergyslist.com/ 0
http://www.synergy-dti.com/ 5
http://www.cantufind.com/ 5
http://www.topdepo.com 6
http://www.turnpike.net/ 6
http://directory.uquick.com 4
http://www.webgirldirectory.com/ 0
http://www.websmadeeasy.com/ 4
http://www.websavvy.cc 5
http://www.websearches.info/ 2
http://www.webwizguide.com/ 6
http://www.webworldindex.com/ 6
http://www.wholesalepimp.com 5
http://jameshendrix.com/seo/html/ 0
http://www.worldhot.com/ 7
http://www.worldsiteindex.com/ 4
http://www.wowdirectory.com/ 6
http://www.wowyellowpages.com 4
http://www.xeit.com/ 5
http://www.yourwebloghere.com/ 5
http://www.zeezo.com 5
http://www.01webdirectory.com/ 5
http://www.4hitz.com/ 4
http://www.4ispy.com/ 0
http://www.iconcave.com/partners/ 4
http://www.seowise.com/ 0

Promote your storePromote your blog

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Boost Your Website Traffic

2005-11-06T22:07:00.000-08:00

Search engines bring more than 80 percent of the traffic for small to medium websites. This tells exactly how important it is for small and medium websites to optimize their web structure and pages for search engines. Optimization of your website for search engine includes many aspects: website content, keywords, URL, meta-tag, back links, etc. Let's explain it one by one.
Select the right keywords. You can pay a visit to your competitors' websites (only those with top-ranked search engine placements). Through analyzing their web contents and meta tags, you can easily find out the keywords they are using. Overture keywords selection tool can also provide you valuable information. Open your favorite browser, enter http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/, type in the search box your keywords or phrases and see how many times they were searched last month. Select those with high search frequency. Google also has a similar keyword selection tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox. You can have a try of both of them and balance the search results.
Target your web site content at selected keywords. After finalizing the keywords, you can now build up your web pages with them. But, be careful, don't overuse any keywords on your web pages. Overuse of keywords may make search engine spiders think you are spamming and get your website banned. How can I judge overuse or not? Go to http://www.gorank.com/seotools/ to have a check of your keywords density, make sure it is within a reasonable range.
Make search engine friendly URLs. Although some of the search engines can follow all dynamic URLs, like http://www.scriptmenu.com/detail.php?id=25257, some of them still prefer static URLs ended with html, htm, etc. To make search engine friendly URLs, you can create real static pages, but you don't have to. The web server URL rewrite engine can make this job much easier by reinterpreting the URLs before getting actual pages. If you need more help or tips on how to implement URL rewrite model, follow the link http://www.scriptmenu.com/detail_24379.html and get a tutorial.
Get quality backward links to your page. Although keywords optimization of your web pages can improve significantly your search engine placement, it is still far from sufficient to get your pages top ranked. You have to get some quality backward links to your websites. You need at least 35 quality back links to make google going to your web site and take a look at you. You can get these quality links by submitting your site to high-ranked web site directories or by writing some quality articles and then submitting them to the high-ranked online article archives. Many other ways exist, but remember, only backward links from quality web sites count. Websites poorly indexed or with very low search engine ranking have no value to you.
Keep on improving your website. By keyword optimization, URL optimization and quality backward URLs, your website should have gotten remarkable search engine placement. However, the placement is not static, you competitors are optimizing their websites and trying to kick you out of your current position. To maintain a good search engine ranking, you have to keep on improving your website. Keep on optimizing your website navigation, content and structure. Keep on getting more quality links from top-rated sites.... The battle for top search engine positions will never end. Good luck, :-)

About The Author
Rory Canyon is the founder of ScriptMenu.com, the free web directory for PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, PERL, XML, Java, JavaScript, Flash, CFML, Python and other web programming resources.
For more information, visit http://www.scriptmenu.com/

Linking Your Way to #1 in Google

2005-11-06T22:01:00.000-08:00

Four years ago with very little experience and a lot of time on my hands I was able to put four baby sites and two gift sites on page one of the SERP's for their main keywords. And you know what? It wasn't all that hard, after some very basic on page optimization I started getting link's, mostly reciprocal links and all I had to do to get in the top three of my category was put my main keyword phrase in the link text.
That was it, it was so simple!
Then things changed a little the competition figured it out too, everybody knew just put your keyword in your links and presto good rankings. The reciprocal link exchange boom was on. Services sprung up to help get more links faster with less work, automated link software was released etc etc. I needed another edge so I started buying links, mostly run of site links. I would have the same exact link on 500 or more pages. I would do this with one or two sites and presto I would be right back in the top three. It was great! I could put almost any site I wanted in a top position on Google for a paltry investment of $50 - $100 a month, life was good, especially when you consider that a lot of my competitors were spending that much per day with AdWords for a fraction of the traffic I was getting.
And again the masses found out and the rush was on, site owners would look at their competitors back links and then buy enough run of site links to outdo them. It is inevitable that when that many people find out about something so powerful there's going to be abuse, which attracts attention, especially that of the search engines and when that happens the party is usually over.
So I looked at top ranking site's for terms like shoes, clothes, gifts etc. And I found they all had one thing in common, non-reciprocal link's from content pages. Now I am really excited because all I have to do is get one way links to my site's from relevant content pages. But how am I going to get lots of people to give me a one-way link from a relevant content page?
Then it hit me, create a triangle of sites linking to each other, A would link to B, B would link to C and C would link to A, of course this will solve all my problems. How hard could it be?
VERY HARD!
What a joke. First problem after sending hundreds of e-mails and finally lining up two other relevant sites they wanted to put my link on an overcrowded links page four levels deep. Second problem site owners who insisted that two of their site's be in the triangle but both sites have same IP, what's the point it's just going to look reciprocal to the engines. And then there are the webmasters who have their main domain and a second domain that they have set up just for the purpose of triangle linking, usually the second domain is a "junk domain" meaning they have given it just enough links to show some page rank so that you think your getting a quality exchange.
Man what a headache just trying to get one link for one site no way I could do this for all my site's. Just shoot me now and put me out of misery. After feeling sorry for myself I started looking for either software or a service that could help. After a lot of searching forums, Googling and talking to SEO's I have found there are a handful of services out there involved in one way or three way linking, some good, some bad and some very bad. If your going use a service to help you build one way inbound links use the check list below to weed out the bad ones
It should be able to
* Bring relevant sites together for a 3-way link exchange
* Make sure all sites are on different IP's and that each page linking to you is unique
* Check daily to make sure everyone's links are still up and working
* Check all links regularly for trickery like Java, css or nofollow tags and ban any offenders
* Make sure everyone has 10 or less outbound links per page
* Make the links pages look like content pages
* Not leave any footprints, complete stealth is a must
* Do all this for a fair and reasonable price
Follow these guidelines and you should be able to find a service that can help you get quality inbound links that will boost your search engine rankings.

About the Author
Mark dietzel is founder of Natural Linking at http://www.naturallinking.com/ a service that helps get one way links

Top 10 Search Engine Positioning Mistakes

2005-11-06T21:56:00.000-08:00

When it comes to search engine optimization, there are certain common mistakes that I see people making over and over again. Here's a list of the 10 most common mistakes that I see people making. By avoiding these mistakes, you can avoid a lot of anguish and frustration in the long run.
1) Optimizing your site for the wrong keywords
The first step in any search engine optimization campaign is to choose the keywords for which you should optimize your site.
If you initially choose the wrong keywords, all the time and effort that you devote in trying to get your site a high ranking will go down the drain.
If you choose keywords which no one search for, or if you choose keywords which won't bring in targeted traffic to your site, what good will the top rankings do?
In order to learn how you can choose the correct keywords for which you should optimize your site, see my article on this topic.
2) Putting too many keywords in the Meta Keywords tag
I often see sites which have hundreds of keywords listed in the Meta Keywords tag, in the hope that by listing the keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, they will be able to get a high ranking for those keywords.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Contrary to popular opinion, the Meta Keywords tag has almost completely lost its importance as far as search engine positioning is concerned.
Hence, just by listing keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, you will never be able to get a high ranking. To get a high ranking for those keywords, you need to put the keywords in the actual body content of your site.
3) Repeating the same keyword too many times
Another common mistake that people make is to endlessly repeat their target keywords in the body of their pages and in their Meta Keywords tags.
Because so many people have used this tactic in the past (and continue to use it), the search engines keep a sharp lookout for this, and may penalize a site which repeats keywords in this fashion. Sure, you do need to repeat the keywords a number of times.
But, the way you place the keywords in your pages needs to make grammatical sense. Simply repeating the keywords endlessly no longer works. Furthermore, a particular keyword should ideally not be present more than thrice in your Meta Keywords tag.
4) Creating lots of similar doorway pages
Another myth prevalent among people is that since the algorithm of each search engine is different, they need to create different pages for different search engines. While this is great in theory, it is counter-productive in practice.
If you use this tactic, you will soon end up with hundreds of pages, which can quickly become an administrative nightmare. Also, just imagine the amount of time you will need to spend constantly updating the pages in response to the changes that the search engines make to their algorithms.
Furthermore, although the pages are meant for different engines, they will actually end up being pretty similar to each other. The search engines are often able to detect when a site has created such similar pages, and may penalize or even ban this site from their index.
Hence, instead of creating different pages for different search engines, create one page which is optimized for one keyword for all the search engines. In order to learn how to create such pages, see my article on this topic.
5) Using Hidden Text
Hidden text is text with the same color as the background color of your page. For example, if the background color of your page is white and you have added some white text to that page, that is considered as hidden text.
Many webmasters, in order to get high rankings in the search engines, try to make their pages as keyword rich as possible. However, there is a limit to the number of keywords you can repeat in a page without making it sound odd to your human visitors. Thus, in order to ensure that the human visitors to a page don't perceive the text to be odd, but that the page is still keyword rich, many webmasters add text (containing the keywords) with the same color as the background color.
This ensures that while the search engines can see the keywords, the human visitors cannot. The search engines have long since caught up with this technique, and ignore or penalize the pages which contain such text. They may also penalize the entire site if even one of the pages in that site contain such hidden text.
However, the problem with this is that the search engines may often end up penalizing sites which did not intend to use hidden text. For instance, suppose you have a page with a white background and a table in that page with a black background.
Further suppose that you have added some white text in that table. This text will, in fact, be visible to your human visitors, i.e. this shouldn't be called hidden text. However, the search engines can interpret this to be hidden text because they may often ignore the fact that the background of the table is black.
Hence, in order to ensure that your site is not penalized because of this, you should go through all the pages in your site and see whether you have inadvertently made any such mistake.
6) Creating Pages Containing Only Graphics
The search engines only understand text - they don't understand graphics. Hence, if your site contains lots of graphics but little text, it is unlikely to get a high ranking in the search engines. For improving your rankings, you need to replace the graphics by keyword rich text for the search engine spiders to feed on.
7) Not using the NOFRAMES tag in case your site uses frames
Many search engines don't understand frames. For sites which have used frames, these search engines only consider what is present in the NOFRAMES tag. Yet, many webmasters make the mistake of adding something like this to the NOFRAMES tag: "This site uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them".
For the search engines which don't understand frames, this is all the text that they ever get to see in this site, which means that the chances of this site getting a good ranking in these search engines are non-existent. Hence, if your site uses frames, you need to add a lot of keyword rich text to the NOFRAMES tag. For more information on the different issues that arise when you use frames in your site, see my article on this topic.
8) Using Page Cloaking
Page cloaking is a technique used to deliver different web pages under different circumstances. People generally use page cloaking for two reasons:
In order to hide the source code of their search engine optimized pages from their competitors and ii) in order to prevent human visitors from having to see a page which looks good to the search engines but does not necessarily look good to humans.
The problem with this is that when a site uses cloaking, it prevents the search engines from being able to spider the same page that their users are going to see. And if the search engines can't do this, they can no longer be confident of providing relevant results to their users.
Thus, if a search engine discovers that a site has used cloaking, it will probably ban the site forever from their index. Hence, my advice is that you should not even think about using cloaking in your site. For more information on what page cloaking is, how it is implemented, and why you should not use cloaking, see my article on this topic.
9) Using Automatic Submission Tools
In order to save time, many people use an automatic submission software or service to submit their sites to the major search engines. It is true that submitting your site manually to the search engines takes a lot of time and that an automatic submission tool can help you save a lot of time.
However, the search engines don't like automatic submission tools and may ignore your pages if you use them. In my opinion, the major search engines are simply too important for you not to spend the time to submit your site manually to them.
In order to speed up the process of submitting your site, you can use our free submission tool which allows you to submit your site manually to all the search engines, without having to go to the "ADD URL" pages of the individual engines. It is available here.
10) Submitting too many pages per day
People often make the mistake of submitting too many pages per day to the search engines. This often results in the search engines simply ignoring many of the pages which have been submitted from that site.
Ideally, you should submit no more than 1 page per day to the search engines. While many search engines accept more than 1 page per day from a particular domain, there are some which only accept 1 page per day. Hence, by limiting yourself to a maximum of one page per day, you ensure that you stay within the limits of all the search engines.
11) Devoting too much time to search engine positioning
Yes - I lied. There's another common mistake that people make when it comes to search engine optimization - they spend too much time over it.
Sure, search engine placement is the most cost effective way of driving traffic to your site and you do need to spend some time every day learning how the search engines work and in optimizing your site for the search engines.
However, you must remember that search engine optimization is a means to an end for you - it's not the end in itself. The end is to increase the sales of your products and services. Hence, apart from trying to improve your site's position in the search engines, you also need to spend time on all the other factors which determine the success or the failure of your web site - the quality of the products and services that you are selling, the quality of your customer service, and so on. You may have excellent rankings in the search engines, but if the quality of your products and services are poor, or if your customer service leaves a lot to be desired, those high rankings aren't going to do much good.

About the Author
Article by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one of the most respected and recognized search engine positioning specialists on the Internet. For more articles on search engine placement, subscribe to his 1st Search Ranking Newsletter at: http://www.the-easy-way.com/main.html

Search engine optimization guide

2005-11-06T21:54:00.000-08:00

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a foreign field to a lot of people. Rarely does a day go by when I don't get asked a few questions on the subject. So I've decided to post this FAQ article in the hopes that it will help people understand the basics, and make them a little more comfortable with the whole domain.

Q: Why are search engines important to me?

A: 85% of all website traffic is driven by search engines. The only online activity more popular than search is email. 79.2% of US users don't go to page 2 of search results. 42% of users click on the no.1 result. For the under-40 age-group, the Internet will become the most used media in the next 2-3 years.

Q: How do search engines decide on their rankings?

A: IMPORTANT: You cannot pay a search engine in return for a high ranking in the natural results. You can only get a high ranking if your content is seen as relevant by the search engines. Search engines identify relevant content for their search results by sending out 'spiders' or 'robots' which 'crawl' (analyze) your site and 'index' (record) its details. Complex algorithms are then employed to determine whether your site is useful and should be included in the search engine's search results.

Q: Can't I just pay for a high ranking?

A: No. The biggest concern for search engine companies like Google and Yahoo is finding content that will bring them more traffic (and thus more advertising revenue). In other words, their results must be relevant. Relevant results makes for a good search engine; irrelevant results makes for a short-lived search engine.

Most search engines these days return two types of results whenever you click Search:

* Natural/Organic - The 'real' search results. The results that most users are looking for and which take up most of the window. For most searches, the search engine displays a long list of links to sites with content which is related to the word you searched for. These results are ranked according to how relevant and important they are.
* Paid - Pure advertising. This is how the search engines make their money. Advertisers pay the search engines to display their ad whenever someone searches for a word which is related to their product or service. These ads look similar to the natural search results, but are normally labeled "Sponsored Links", and normally take up a smaller portion of the window.

Q: How do I get a high ranking?

A: There are four main steps:

Step 1 - Use the right words on your website
Step 2 - Get lots of relevant sites to link to yours
Step 3 - Use the right words in those links
Step 4 - Have lots of content on your site & add more regularly

Q: What is search engine optimization (SEO)?

A: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art of creating a website which is search engine-friendly. This means:

* using the right words in your copy
* using the right words in your HTML code
* structuring your site properly
* designing your site properly

For more information on these 4 elements, download our free 'SEO Secrets' eBook.

Many people use SEO to also describe the other ingredient in a high ranking, 'Link Popularity'.

Q: What is link popularity?

A: Think of the search engines as a big election. All the websites in the world are candidates. The links to your website are votes. The more votes (links) a candidate (website) has, the more important it is, and the higher its ranking. Link popularity is all about how many links you have, and how you can get more.

Links to your site tell the search engines how important your site is. They assume that if it's important enough for a lot of other sites to link to, it's important enough for them to display at the top of the rankings. Links are the single most important factor in ranking. Generally speaking, the more links you have to your site from other sites, the better your ranking.

Q: Are some links better than others?

A: Yes! The ideal kind of links are those that:

* come from relevant sites (sites which use the same keywords);
* come from important sites (have a high ranking);
* include your keyword as part of the visible link text;
* include varying link text (not the same link text each time); and
* come from a page that links to few other sites.

When a search engine sees a link which satisfies most or all of these conditions, it says, "Hey, this site must be credible and important, because others in the same industry are pointing to it."

Q: How do I get lots of links back to my site?

A: There are many possible ways to generate links. Some are dubious (like auto-generation software, and sites set up by webmasters simply to host links to their other sites) and I won't be discussing them here. Others, like those discussed below, are legitimate.

* Add your site to DMOZ & Yahoo Directories (and other free directories)
* Check where your competitors' links are coming from
* Article PR - Write and submit articles for Internet publication
* Swap links
* Partner websites
* Pay for links

For more information on these methods, download our free 'SEO Secrets' eBook.

Q: What do you think is the best way to get lots of links?

A: Article PR. Write helpful articles and let other webmasters publish them for free in exchange for a link in the byline. With article PR, you don't have to pay for the link, you determine the content of the page containing the link, you determine the link text, and the link is more or less permanent. A single article can be reprinted hundreds of times, and each time is another link back to your site!

For more information, read How to Top Google with Article PR or visit www.ArticlePR.com.

Q: How do I write a good article PR piece?

A: See How to Top Google with Article PR

Q: How do I get a high ranking using free reprint content?

A: See Get a top 10 ranking without paying a cent.

Q: How long does it take to get a high search engine ranking?

A: A long time! It's impossible to say how much time you'll need to spend generating links, but you can be sure it'll be a while no matter which method of link generation you use. You just have to keep at it until you have achieved a high ranking. Even then, you'll still need to dedicate some ongoing time to the task, otherwise your ranking will drop.

Q: What is the Google Sandbox, and is it real?

A: The Google Sandbox theory suggest that whenever Google detects a new website, it withholds its rightful ranking for a period while it determines whether your site is a genuine, credible, long term site. It does this to discourage the creation of SPAM websites (sites which serve no useful purpose other than to boost the ranking of some other site).

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting the theory, but there is also a lot discounting it. No one has categorically proven its existence.

Q: What is the Google Dampening Link Filter, and is it real?

A: The Google Dampening Link Filter theory suggests that if Google detects a sudden increase (i.e. many hundreds or thousands) in the number of links back to your site, it may sandbox them for a period (or in fact penalize you by lowering your ranking or blacklisting your site altogether).

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting the theory, but there is also a lot discounting it. No one has categorically proven its existence.

Q: What SEO companies should I be wary of?

A: Be wary of SEO companies that promise or guarantee results in a given timeframe, especially if they won't expand on their methods for generating links back to your site.

Q: What tools can you recommend?

A: There are many very useful tools to help with your SEO. The following are just selection. All tools are free unless otherwise indicated.

* Backlink checker
* Backlinks by IP address
* Link Popularity Tool
* Number of links required to rank
* Google Alert
* Google Sitemaps
* Google Sitemap Generator
* Google Toolbar
* Indexed Pages
* Keyword Analysis (Nichebot)
* Keyword Analysis (Overture)
* Keyword Analysis (WordTracker - Paid)
* Keyword Difficulty
* Keyword Identifier
* Keyword Density Measurement (Simple)
* Keyword Density Measurement (Complex)
* Plagiarized Copy Search
* Traffic Rank
* Search Engine Rank
* SEO Report
* Top 10 sites for a keyword by no of backlinks and age
* Top 10 sites for a keyword
* Spider Simulator

Q: I'm confused about all the terms used in SEO, can you help?

A: See our SEO Glossary.

Q: What is keyword analysis?

A: The first thing you need to do when you begin chasing a good search engine ranking is decide which words you want to rank well for. This is called performing a keyword analysis. Keyword analysis involves a bit of research and a good knowledge of your business and the benefits you offer your customers.

For more information, download our free 'SEO Secrets' eBook.

Q: Do I need to submit my site to the search engines?

A: Theoretically, no. But I wouldn't risk not doing it - especially as it's free. As soon as you register your domain name, submit it to Google! Even if you haven't built your site, or thought about your content, submit your domain name to Google. In fact, even if you haven't fully articulated your business plan and marketing plan, submit your domain name to Google.

For more information, download our free 'SEO Secrets' eBook.

Q: Should I submit my site to the search engines more than once?

A: No need. Although some of the search engines allow you to do this, there's really no need.

Q: What are directories and should I submit my site to them?

A: Directories are websites (or web pages) which simply list lots of website and give a quick description of the website. Some are free and some require you to pay for a listing. Free directories are useful because you get a free link. However, the links aren't worth that much. Paid directories can be good if they're relevant, but they can cost a lot in the long term, so choose wisely.

* Glenn Murray is an SEO copywriter and article submission specialist. He is a director of article PR company Article PR and also of copywriting studio Divine Write.

Google Ranking tips

2005-11-06T21:33:00.000-08:00

Google is by far the most popular search engine available today for both ordinary surfers and webmasters alike.

Surfers like it because of the highly relevant results it gives and the speed at which it delivers them. This is due to its complex text matching algorithm and of course the Pagerank™ system that this engine uses. More on the Pagerank™ system later.

Google is popular with webmasters and Internet marketing companies due to the highly workable ranking system it uses.

Unlike other engines where information about how the results are obtained are sketchy at best, Google actually publishes information on its site about the results it produces. Hence webmasters have things they can do to produce higher rankings.

What also makes Google popular with webmasters is the speed at which they will spider and list your site. If you're not listed in Google and submit your URL you're usually indexed within two weeks. If however your site is already listed in the index Google should reindex once every month, but more frequently if you've a high Pagerank™.

This indexing and reindexing time is much quicker than most other search engines. This allows webmasters to edit their pages properties such as title, first few lines of text, headings, keyword distribution and of course the number of incoming links to their site. They can then discover quickly if the changes they made were successful or not.

It's because of this popularity that you need to know the workings of the Google search engine. Without knowledge of it you'll be ranked lower than all other sites that are only slightly familiar with the Google algorithm and hence could lose lots of potential customers.

Google ranking algorithm

Let's now continue onto the main part of this Google rankings report by indulging ourselves in the Google ranking algorithm. Well there are two main parts to the algorithm Google uses, the first is its text matching system whereby Google tries to find pages relevant to what the searcher has entered in the search box. The second and equally important part of the algorithm is of course the Google patented Pagerank™ system.

I'll first go through how to make your pages relevant by discussing the text matching part of the algorithm.

Google gives a lot of "weight" to the title tag when searching for keywords. It is therefore vital to make sure your most important keywords or keyphrases appear within this tag. It seems to work best if you've other words in your title tag too after your keywords, but try to remain under 35-40 characters.

I imagine many of you know this already but Google does not use meta tags such as the keywords meta tag or the description meta tag. This is because the text within these tags can't be seen by visitors to a website. Therefore Google feels these tags will be abused by webmasters placing lots of unrelated words in them in order to get more visitors.

This lack of support for meta tags means that Google creates your description from the first few lines of text on your page. This in turn means that you've to have your keywords and phrases right at the top of your webpage, if Google finds them your page becomes more relevant, if however it doesn't find them the rest of your page has to work harder to become relevant. To see an example of what I mean scroll back to the top of this page and you'll notice keyword rich wording similar to:

Google submitting tips, ranking high at google.com, Google ranking tips, pagerank algorithm, Google algorithm guide.

The above text includes keywords and keyphrases related to the theme of this page. Now when people search for any of those keywords or keyphrases this page is much more likely to be near the top of the results than a page that doesn't imply this technique.

Google considers keyword density in the body of a page for determining relevancy too, so make sure your keywords and phrases appear a couple of times throughout the whole page. Don't go overboard though, a density of 6-10% seems to work best.

Google has recently been noticed to give a substantial amount of "weight" to words appearing between the various header tags. These are tags designed to help you split up sections of your page, so this approach by Google seems to make sense. The header tags go from <h6> the smallest to <h1> the biggest, the bigger the heading tag the more relevent your page will become for the words within it. It is for this reason that you should always try to have your most important words within these tags as often as possible throughout your page.

Other advice about making your page relevant would be to make as many keywords appear within bold <b> tags as you can. In the past Google has been known to index text in alt image tags, whether they still do or not I don't know but it couldn't hurt to include keywords in these tags anyway

One final tip on page relevancy is the point on having your keywords and phrases in links which point to your site. It's a good idea to have the linking text contain your keywords as Google even says itself in its description of its Pagerank technology that it analyzes pages that links come from.

How much keyword laden links matter is anyone's guess. I have however noticed a lot of sites which give the HTML code to visitors who want to exchange links do include keywords in the actual linking area. You should do this too on your links page, say something like "if you want to link to this site, please use the following code". The code would of course have your most important words in the actual link text and your less important words in the accompanying description of your site.

Google Pagerank

In the above section of the article you've learned what areas Google uses and looks at when looking for a relevant site, but what method does Google use to determine which site is better, the answer is the Pagerank system.

Pagerank is as the name suggests a ranking system of pages. It works on the basis that if a website ABC.COM has been linked from a website XYZ.COM, abc.com must have some good content and therefore Google will count the link from XYZ.COM as a vote for ABC.COM. You can check your Pagerank on Google by downloading the Google toolbar from http://toolbar.google.com

The Pagerank™ scale goes from 1 to 10 on the Google toolbar and from 1 to 7 beside listings in the Google directory. A less important site is of course a site with a PR of 1 and a very very important site is a site with a PR of 7 or 10, in the directory or toolbar respectively.

The more links or votes a site has the more important it must be and therefore the higher it will rank for search words which it is relevant to, right?, WRONG!.

Google does not simply count the number of incoming links a page has, if that was the case every webmaster from Iceland to Vietnam would try and exchange links to every Tom, Dick and Harry website that would let them. In Googles own words:

"Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Hopefully your beginning to get the idea. The idea is to have your page linked to by as many high quality and high pageranked sites as possible. Right? RIGHT and WRONG.

WRONG BECAUSE, you see the Google Pagerank system also takes into account the number of links the page that has linked to you has. The reasoning for this is that a page X has a certain amount of voting PR, if your site Y is the only link from that page X, then Google feels confident that page X thinks your page Y is the best link it has and will give you more PR. If however page X has 50 links, page X could think your only the 50th best link. Hence the more links a page has the less of a PR boost your site will get.

RIGHT BECAUSE, linking to a site with a 6+ PR will provide a significant boost to your PR in most cases, but in cases where the site also links with 100 other sites the boost will be almost zero. Likewise if a site has a PR of just 2 but you and only one other site are linked from it, then the PR boost would be more than the site with 100 links and a PR of 6.

Google Pagerank formula

It's beginning to come complex isn't it, just wait till you see this formula. It looks scary for non math's people.

First let me explain what the damping factor is. The damping factor is the amount of your PR which you can actually pass on when you vote / link to another site. The damping factor is widely known to be .85, this is a little less then the linking pages own PR.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))

in layman's terms PR(A) is the Pagerank boost your page A will get after being linked from someone else's site (t1). PR(t1) is the pagerank of the page which links to you and C(t1) is the amount of total links that (t1) has. It is important to know that a pages voting power is only .85 of that pages actual PR and this voting power gets spread out evenly between all sites it links to.

Imagine http://www.akamarketing.com was linked by XYZ.COM's link page which had a PR of 4 and 9 other links, here's how the formula should look like:

PR(AKA) = (1-.85) + .85*(4/10)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .85*(.4)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .34
PR(AKA) = .49

To sum up my site would get an injection of .49 PR after being linked from a page with a PR of four and 9 other links.

Let's say I was linked from a site with a PR of 8, double the previous example's amount, which had 15 other links, a total of 16 outbound links, my boost would be:

PR(AKA) = (1-.85) +.85*(8/16)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .85(.5)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .425
PR(AKA) = .575

The above two worked examples show that not only is the PR of the linking page important but what is also important is how many other sites are also linked to from that page.

I think we've had enough maths stuff for now, just remember that the name of the game is to get as many links from pages with high PR and few other links. The more of these links you get the more your PR will grow and the more your rankings will improve for your relevant keywords.

Google Pagerank™ and web directories

The best thing you can do for your PR seems at the moment seems to be getting listed in Dmoz.org. Dmoz.org is home to the Open Directory Project which is a human compiled directory of websites.

Pagerank™ is widely known to be biased towards big name directories such as Dmoz.org, Yahoo and Looksmart.

This is true, especially in the case of Dmoz.org. These ODP links are treated like gold by the Pagerank™ system. It doesn't even matter what the individual PR of the category page is. I have seen sites gain a large PR boost on the toolbar as soon as Google updates its directory with the latest one from Dmoz.org. This is because Google uses its own version of the ODP for the Google web directory.

Don't believe ODP links are very important to Pagerank™?
Don't believe a listing in the ODP will boost your ranking?

Well they are and it will. Perform a search for almost anything on Google and you'll discover that 75-80% of the top 10 results are also indexed in the Google directory and therefore also listed on Dmoz.org. The fact of the matter seems to me to be if your not listed with the ODP, you shouldn't expect much traffic from Google.

Getting a listing is not difficult, it does sometimes take time but it's not difficult. Just make sure your site has good content and follow the guidelines for adding a URL. Try to get your index page listed at least. I say at least because although ODP claims only to list your index page, there are plenty of sites with 5 - 10 pages listed.

Therefore if your site has very distinctive sections you can submit each section, beware though that this must be done slowly, otherwise you may be banned from the directory altogether for spamming. Once Google updates its directory these listings could do wonders for your sites Pagerank™. My article entitled Open Directory Project guide is a complete guide to getting into the ODP, I highly recommend you read it.

Regarding Yahoo and Looksmart, Pagerank™ will usually allocate a more than normal amount of PR boost for any sites listed. Tips on getting listed in Yahoo can be read in Yahoo submitting tips.

If you're a non-commercial site or have a site that's almost completely non-commercial you can get into the Looksmart directory through zeal.com I really love this site, just like Google obtains its directory results from ODP, Looksmart obtains its non-commercial listings from the Zeal web directory. Without Zeal I would have to fork out hard earned cash and all my site does is provide free information in the form of articles and tutorials.

To continue, I submitted AKA Marketing.com on a Tuesday and was listed in Zeal by Thursday morning. On Monday I checked my logs and found lots of referrals from Looksmart, I was in Looksmart already. I looked at my logs later only to find MSN had updated its database from the Looksmart database and was sending me loads of visitors because of the good listing I got. My site was listed in Zeal, Looksmart and MSN within six days. Needless to say I highly recommend you get over to Zeal.com and submit your site.

Before you can submit a site however you must pass a member quiz, the quiz is a fairly simple straightforward one, you might however learn a thing or two while doing it.

If you happen to be a webmaster that has a listing in all three of Dmoz.org, Yahoo and Looksmart then I'm guessing your site has good to very good PR and rankings.

Google ranking tips - Conclusion

in closing I would like to recap on some of the main points you have just read. Be sure to have your main keywords and keyphrases in your title tag and well spread throughout your page, use header tags wherever possible. Get as many links from as many high PR low number of outbound links pages as you can. Get listed with Dmoz.org, Yahoo and Looksmart.

Well that's it. I hope you have enjoyed reading this Google Ranking tips article as much as I have enjoyed researching and writing it. I also hope that you can put this advice into use and help get yourself some real traffic

Article written by:David Callan,David Callan is webmaster of http://www.akamarketing.com/

Keyword Suggestion Tools And Other Important Tools.

2005-10-21T04:25:00.000-07:00

It is very important for search engine marketer to know that using which keywords peoples are comoing on your site.how popular any keyword is and so on...

O-zone marketing services pleased to show you some best tools for keyword research

1. WordTracker & Overture Suggestions:- This is the best one of the three
3. Overture Suggestion :- Tools By yahoo overture.
4. Link Analyzer :- Analyze the ratio of internal liinks vs. external links. This is a good tool when determining page rank leakage.
6. Link City: -This place has EVERY tool under the sun for everything you could ever possibly want
7. Link Reputation :- (Reveals baclinks pointing to the target URL along with a link survey for eack backlink.)
8. Google PR Tools :-This guy has tons of fantastic tools. He is not as popular as some of the rest but the tools are great
9. Niche bot:-tool that will find relative keywords for any keyword search.
11. SEO-Toys :-These are some things that I had in my favorites. Some of them are okay.
12. Multiple SEO Tools :-This website has a variety of misc. tools on it that you can use to better your search engine rankings.
13. Bot Spotter :-This is a phenomenal script that will track what bots hit your website at what times. (Runs on PHP enabled websites)
15. Statcounter :-This will track your clients throughout the dynamically created pages of your website. This is a free service. (of course I don't have to mention this to you guys)
16. Page Rank Calculation: -Calculate google PR

Tips for improve page relevancy.

2005-10-11T01:29:00.000-07:00

[1]. Your Web pages with content should be interested in reading.
As content is king for search engines content in your site should be both unique and interesting.this can improve your impression.
[2]. Content should be highly focused with keyword phrases. rather than phrases that are too general and competitive
Specially when there is more competition.
[3]. Optimize your Web pages for at least three to five keywords at a time.
You should optimize your page for minimum three keywords-for three keywords your page should be highly relevant.for that you need to choose better keywords,choosing keywords is not a game of guessing.it is one science.Write your site's content using the keywords for which users search, and you'll literally be speaking the same language as your visitors.
Useful sites:-Nichebot.com and Wordtracker.com
[4]. Use regionally specific keywords, when applicable.
If your target is regional than try to choose keywords that are regional.
Example:-you can choose 'loans in new york' rather than just 'loan in USA' that's why you will get highly targeted visitors and improve your visitor to sales ratio
[5]. Use the most commonly used variations of your keywords, with keyword research
Don't choose keywords that are highly competitive(specially when your page rank is low.) You can choose their synonyms etc.as per i said you need to do some research work for that.also consider some variation that can occur due to typing mistake etc..
[6]. Each optimized page should contain a unique title.
It will some time meaningless if you will choose same title pages more than one.title tags are very important and perhaps you know that searcg engine give lots of weight to title if title of your page will different. than you can get more traffic for more keywords.this is important.
[7].Use multiple keywords in your title tags when appropriate.
Choose better title for every page using synonyms etc..so that you will probably also get traffic for that keywords too.but don't go overboard.
[8].Most important keywords appearing above the fold and throughout each optimized page.
First few lines are very important for search engine page relevancy.so write that with special care and using your all main keywords.also include your keywords in other part of page too.
[9]. Using keywords in hypertext links, whenever possible.
If you will use keywords in hypertext links than your page which you link will improve its page relevancy automatically
[10]. Each optimized page contain a unique meta-tag description.
Some search engines still give more weight to meta tags so like title meta tag should be different for each page if possible.
[11]. Each optimized page contain a unique meta-tag keyword list.
Like meta tags you should also change meta tags wherever possible.and that keywords should also include in page body.
[12]. Place common misspellings of your keywords within your meta-tag keywords.
Many people using this system to get traffic you can use misspellings in youe meta details and can drive traffic. due to typing mistakes of searchers
[13].your graphic images should contain descriptive keywords within the alternative text attribute, when appropriate.
Google also decide relevancy through name of icons,images etc..so try to include your keywords in it.
[14]. If you are submitting pages to non-U.S. search engines. write your pages in the appropriate language
if you will not do it.it may possible that in international search engines your rank will down.

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Website promorion services,Directory submission