What is Organic SEO ?

                          All this talk about planning for SEO is great, but what about organic SEO. You don’t have to put any efforts into that, do you?
             Don’t go foolin’ yourself. Organic SEO is just as much work as any other type of SEO. It’s just a little different method of creating a site optimized for search ranking, without having to implement any new technologies or spend a lot of time submitting your site to different primary and secondary search engines. And really, the distinction here is a very general one. Only SEO purists
consider “real SEO” as being strictly organic — meaning you use no fee-based services whatever. Most people are happy with “just plain SEO,” which usually means a combination of organic and
fee-based. It’s best if you just think of SEO as just SEO; then you don’t have to worry about distinctions that aren’t really important in optimizing your web site.
          The definitions of organic SEO vary a little, depending on whom you talk to. Some SEO experts think it’s all about optimizing the content of your web site to catch the attention of the crawlers and spiders that index sites. Others think it’s the number of quality links you can generate on your site. But in truth, organic SEO is a combination of those and other elements, such as site tagging, that will naturally place your web site in search engine rankings. How high in those rankings depends on how well you design your site.
 
                      But before you go thinking that organic SEO is just the solution you’ve been looking for, take a step back. What organic SEO is not is an easy way to land in a search engine. Basically, if you put a website online and spend a little time getting it ready for the world to see, you will have probably achieved some measure of organic SEO without really trying.
            That’s because your site will probably end up listed in some search engine somewhere, without too much time and effort from you. Elements that naturally occur on a web site — like the title of
the site, the URL, included web links, and even some of the content — will probably land you in  a search engine (unless those elements are black-hat SEO efforts, in which case the engine could
permanently exclude you). The question is where in the results will you land? Without attention from you, that might not be as high in the rankings as you would like.
             Organic SEO maximizes those naturally occurring elements, building upon each element to create a site that will naturally fall near the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). One of the most attractive features of organic SEO is that the methods used to achieve high SERPs rankings are of no cost — other than the time it takes to implement these ideas.

                    However, there is a trade-off. Achieving organic SEO can take anywhere from three to six months. For web site owners impatient to see results from their SEO efforts, this can seem like an eternity. But it’s worth the extra time if the budget is an issue.

Let Search Engines to Work for You

All this information about search engines has one purpose — to show you how they work, so that you can put them to work for you. Throughout this book, you’ll find various strategies for optimizing your web site so it appears high in search engine rankings when relevant searches are performed.
But this requires that you know how to put search engines to work for you.
Search engine optimization is essentially the science of designing your web site to maximize your search engine rankings. This means that all of the elements of your web site are created with the goal of obtaining high search engine rankings. Those elements include:

• Entry and exit pages
• Page titles
• Site content
• Graphics
• Web site structure

                             In addition to these elements, however, you also have to consider things like keywords, links, HTML, and meta-tagging. Even after you have all the elements of your page optimized for search-engine friendliness, there are other things to consider. For example, you can have all the right design elements included in your web pages and still have a relatively low search engine ranking. Factors such as advertising campaigns and update frequencies also affect your SEO efforts.
                            All of this means that you should understand that the concept of search engine optimization is not based on any single element. Instead, search engine optimization is based on a vast number of elements and strategies. And it’s an ongoing process that doesn’t end once your web site is live.  SEO is a living, breathing concept of maximizing the traffic that your web site generates, and because it is, that means that it’s a constantly moving target. If you’ve ever played a game of Whack-a-Mole, you can understand how difficult search engine optimization is to nail. In the game, a little mole pops up out of a hole. Your job is to whack the mole on the top of the head before it disappears back down the hole and appears in another.Search engine optimization is much the same concept. Search engines are constantly changing, so the methods and strategies used to achieve high search engine rankings must also change. As soon as that little mole pops up in one hole, he disappears and then reappears in another. It’s a frustrating game, but given enough time and concentration, you can become very good at it.

How to Manipulate Search Engines

There’s one more topic to touch on before this chapter is finished. SEO is about manipulating search
engines — to an extent. Beyond that, the manipulation becomes something more sinister and you run the risk of having your web site removed from the search engine rankings completely. It’s true. It happens. So what exactly can and can’t you do? There’s a list. Here is part of it.
You can:
            

• Create a web site that contains meta tags, content, graphics, and keywords that help improve your site ranking.
• Use keywords liberally on your site, so long as they are used in the correct context of your site topic and content.
• Include reciprocal links to your site from others as long as those links are legitimate and relevant.
• Encourage web site traffic through many venues, including keyword advertising, reciprocal links, and marketing campaigns.
• Submit your web site to search engines manually, rather than waiting for them to pick up your site in the natural course of cataloging web sites.

You can’t:

• Trick search engines by imbedding hidden keywords in your web site. This is a practice hat will very likely get you banned by most search engines.
• Artificially generate links to your site from unrelated sites for the purpose of increasingyour ranking based on link analysis. Most search engines have a built-in mechanism that will detect this type of deceptive practice.
• Artificially generate traffic to your web site so that it appears more popular than it is. Again,there are safeguards in place to prevent this from happening, and if you trip those safeguards, you could end up on the banned list for many search engines.
• Force your web site to appear in search engine rankings by submitting the site repeatedly for inclusion in the rankings. A good general rule of thumb is that you should submit your site once and then wait at least six weeks before submitting it again. Submitting it repeatedly will, again, only lead to something nasty like being banned from the search engine.
• Expect search engines to automatically rank you at the top of your topic, category, or keyword as soon as the site is picked up. It could take a little time to build the “status” that you need to reach a high search engine ranking. Remember, SEO is a process.
                           

These are just basic rules for putting search engines to work for you. There are many more, which you will discover in the coming chapters. As you get started, however, keep these in mind, because you’ll see them over and over again throughout the course of this book and any other research that you might be doing on search engine optimization.

Creating Your SEO Plan

                      Once you have a goal or set of goals in mind for your web site, it’s time to create your SEO plan. The SEO plan is the document that you’ll use to stay on track as you try to implement SEO strategies on your site.
                        For many people, the thought of implementing SEO on a web site that includes dozens or even hundreds of pages is overwhelming. It doesn’t have to be, though.

Prioritizing pages
                        Look at SEO in small, bite-size pieces. For example, instead of looking at your site as a whole, look at each page on the site. Prioritize those pages, and then plan your SEO around each page’s priority. Taking a single page into consideration helps to eliminate the “everything has to happen right now” issue and makes it possible for you to create an SEO plan that will maximize your web site’s potential in the minimum amount of time.
Top priority pages should be the ones that your visitors will most naturally gravitate to, such as your home page, or pages that will generate the most in terms of traffic or revenue. When prioritiz-
ing pages, you’re also creating a roadmap for your marketing efforts. If three of the pages on your site are your top priority, those three will have the lion’s share of time, capital, and effort when it comes to SEO and marketing.

Site assessment
                         After you have prioritized your site, you should assess where you stand and where you need to be with your current SEO efforts. Again, assess each page individually, rather than the site as a whole. In SEO, individual pages are equally important (if not more so) than the entire site. All of your efforts are designed to rank one page above all others in search results. Which page is the most important should be determined by your business needs.

Your SEO assessment should be a document that outlines the current standing of the main SEO elements of each page. It should contain columns for the element of the site you’re assessing, the
current status of that element, what needs to be improved in that element, and the deadline for improvement. It’s also helpful if you have a check box next to each item that can be marked when
improvements are completed and a column for follow-up, because SEO is a never-ending process. The elements that should be considered during an assessment include:

Site/page tagging: The meta tags that are included in the coding of your web site areessential to having that site listed properly in a search engine. Tags to which you should pay specific attention are the title tags and description tags, because these are the most
important to a search engine.

Page content: How fresh is your content? How relevant is it? How often is it updated? Andhow much content is there? Content is still important when it comes to search results. After
all, most people are looking for a specific piece of content, whether it’s information or a product. If your content is stale, search engines could eventually begin to ignore your site in
favor of a site that has fresher content. There are exceptions to this generalization, however. And one exception is if your content is, by nature, very rich but not very dynamic. Because
of the usefulness of the content, your site will probably continue to rank well. But it’s a difficult case to determine. In most cases, fresh content is better.
Site links: Site links are essential in SEO. Crawlers and spiders look for the links into and out of your site in order to traverse your site and collect data on each URL. However, they also look for those links to be in-context, meaning the link must come from or lead to a site that is relevant to the page that is being indexed. Broken links tend to be a large problem when it comes to search engine ranking, so be sure to check that links are still
working during the assessment process.

Site map: Believe it or not, a site map will help your web site be more accurately linked. But this is not the ordinary site map that you include to help users quickly navigate through your site. This site map is an XML-based document, at the root of your HTML, that contains information (URL, last updated, relevance to surrounding pages, and so on) about each  of the pages within a site. Using this XML site map will help to ensure that even the deep
pages within your site are indexed by search engines. If you don’t have a site map, you should create one. If you do have one, make sure it’s accurate and up to date.
Finishing the plan
                         With the site assessment out of the way, you should have a good idea of what areas need work and what areas are in good shape. Don’t assume the areas that don’t currently need work will always be perfect, however. That’s not how it works. At the least, changes to the pages will require changes to the SEO efforts that you’re putting forth; at most they may require that you begin SEO efforts for that page all over again.
           You can now take the time to put together all of the information that you’ve gathered into a cohesive picture of the SEO efforts you should be making. Your SEO plan is more than just a picture of what’s there and what’s not, however. This is the document that you use to tie everything together:
current standing, marketing efforts, capital expenditures, time frames — all of it.
             The document should look much like any other plan that you’ll create, for instance your business plan. In this plan, you should have an area for background information, marketing information, plans for growing the business, and plans for managing problems that may arise.
               An SEO plan is very similar. You’ll have your current standings, the goals that you plan to hit, and the marketing efforts that you plan to make for each page (or for the site as a whole). You’ll even have the capital expenditures that you plan to encounter as you implement your SEO plan.
             You’ll also want to include the strategies you plan to use. Those strategies can be efforts such as submitting your site or pages from your site to directories manually and planning the content you’ll useto draw search crawlers, or they can be keyword marketing plans or pay-per-click programs you
plan to use. Also be sure to include a time line for the testing and implementation of those efforts as
well as for regular follow-ups.
Follow-up
                       Follow-up is also an essential part of your SEO plan. Many people believe they can develop and implement an SEO plan and then just walk away from it. The truth is, however, that SEO is not just a one-time event. It’s an ongoing process that requires testing, monitoring, and often re-building.
               A good plan for conducting follow-ups is to plan for them quarterly. Some companies will choose to follow up and reassess their SEO bi-annually, but to be truly effective quarterly is much better. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that following up on your SEO efforts too soon is non-productive. In many cases, it takes at least three months to get a clear picture of how successful your efforts are. Conducting an evaluation before that three-month mark could have you chasing after an elusive SEO goal that doesn’t really exist. Or worse, it could lead you away from a successful strategy.
                        Give your plan at least three months but no more than six between checkups. Once you create the
habit of re-evaluating your SEO efforts on that time schedule, it will be much less time consuming than you assume.

Why You Need SEO ?

                     Before you can understand the reasons for using SEO, it might be good to have a definition of what SEO — search engine optimization — is. It’s probably a safe assumption that if you’ve picked up this book, you have some understanding of SEO, so I’ll keep it simple. SEO is the science of customizing elements of your web site to achieve the best possible search engine ranking. That’s really all there is to search engine optimization. But as simple as it sounds, don’t let it fool you. Both internal and external elements of the site affect the way it’s ranked in any given search engine, so all of these elements should be taken into consideration.
                  Good SEO can be very difficult to achieve, and great SEO seems pretty well impossible at times. But why is search engine optimization so important? Think of it this way. If you’re standing in a crowd of a few thousand people and someone is looking for you, how will they find you? In a crowd that size, everyone blends together.
                      Now suppose there is some system that separates groups of people. Maybe if you’re a woman you’re wearing red and if you’re a man you’re wearing blue. Now anyone looking for you will have to look through only half of the people in the crowd.
You can further narrow the group of people to be searched by adding additional differentiators until you have a small enough group that a search query can be executed and the desired person can be easily found.
                  Your web site is much like that one person in the huge crowd. In the larger picture your site is
nearly invisible, even to the search engines that send crawlers out to catalog the Web. To get your site noticed, even by the crawlers, certain elements must stand out. And that’s why you need search engine optimization. By accident your site will surely land in a search engine. And it’s likely to rank within the first few thousand results. That’s just not good enough. Being ranked on the ninth or tenth page of search results is tantamount to being invisible. To be noticed, your site should be ranked much higher.  Ideally you want your site to be displayed somewhere on the first three pages of results. Most people won’t look beyond the third page, if they get even that far. The fact is, it’s the sites that fall on the
first page of results that get the most traffic, and traffic is translated into revenue, which is the ultimate goal of search engine optimization.
                   To achieve a high position in search results, your site must be more than simply recognizable by a search engine crawler. It must satisfy a set of criteria that not only gets the site cataloged, but can also get it cataloged above most (if not all) of the other sites that fall into that category or topic. Some of the criteria by which a search engine crawler determines the rank your site should have in a set of results include:

• Anchor text
• Site popularity
• Link context
• Topical links
• Title tags
• Keywords
• Site language
• Content
• Site maturity

                    There are estimated to be at least several hundred other criteria that could also be examined before your site is ranked by a search engine. Some of the criteria listed also have multiple points of view. For example, when looking at link context, a crawler might take into consideration where the link is located on the page, what text surrounds it, and where it leads to or from.  These criteria are also different in importance. For some search engines, links are more important than site maturity, and for others, links have little importance. These weights and measures are constantly changing, so even trying to guess what is most important at any given time is a pointless exercise. Just as you figure it out, the criteria will shift or change completely. 
                 By nature, many of the elements are likely to have some impact on your site ranking, even when you do nothing to improve them. However, without your attention, you’re leaving the search ranking of your site to chance. That’s like opening a business without putting out a sign. You’re sure to get some traffic, but because people don’t know you’re there, it won’t be anything more than the curiosity of passersby.

The following tips and techniques can help you to improve the ranking of your web site

:


1. Don't use frames



If at all possible, avoid frames. Many search engines have difficulty with frames and it is very difficult to get high search engine rankings for web sites that use frames.

Google says about frames: "Reasons your site may not be included: Your page uses frames.

Google supports frames to the extent that it can. Frames tend to cause problems with search

engines, bookmarks, emailing links and so on, because frames don't fit the conceptual model of the web (every page corresponds to a single URL). If a user's query matches the site as a whole,

Google returns the frame set. If a user's query matches an individual page on the site, Google

returns that page. That individual page is not displayed in a frame -- because there may be no frame set corresponding to that page."

Yahoo has a similar statement: "Yahoo! Slurp follows HREF links. It does not follow SRC links. This means that Yahoo! Slurp does not retrieve or index individual frames referred to by SRC links." Don't use frames on your web site if you want to have high search engine rankings!





2.Avoid Flash and other multimedia elements



Most search engines cannot index Flash pages. The normal text content on your web pages matters most to search engines. If you must use Flash on your web site, make sure that you also offer normal text for the search engines.



3. Don't use welcome pages



Some web pages use a "Welcome to our web site" image with a link to the actual site as the index page for the web site. Don't do this. Some search engines might not follow the link on the welcome page. In addition, most web surfers don't like these welcome pages.





4. Avoid dynamically created web pages



Databases and dynamically generated pages are great tools to manage the contents of big web

sites. Imagine having to manage the Web site contents of the New York Times without databases. Unfortunately, dynamically generated Web pages can be a nightmare for search engine spiders because the pages don't actually exist until they are requested. A search engine spider is not going to be able to select all necessary variables on the submit page.

Some search engines can index dynamically pages to a point, but even Google states that they have problems with dynamically created pages: "Reasons your site may not be included in Google: Your pages are dynamically generated. We are able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because our web crawler can easily overwhelm and crash sites serving dynamic content, we limit the amount of dynamic pages we index."





5. Make sure that search engine spiders can access your web site



Search engine spiders don't have the functionality of full-fledged Web browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox or Netscape Navigator. In fact, search engine robot programs look at your Web pages like a text browser does. They like text, text, and more text. They ignore information contained in graphic images but they can read text descriptions. This means that search engine spider programs are not able to use Web browser technology to access your site. If your Web pages require Flash, DHTML, cookies, JavaScript, Java or passwords to access the page, then search engine spiders might not be able to index your Web site.



6. Avoid special characters in your URL



Most search engines have problems indexing web pages when their URLs contain special

characters. The following special characters are known to be "search-engine-spider-stoppers":

* ampersand (&)

* dollar sign ($)

* equals sign (=)

* percent sign (%)

* question mark (?)



These characters are often found in dynamically generated Web pages. They signal the search

engine crawler program that there could be an infinite loop of possibilities for that page. That's whysome search engines ignore web page URLs with the above characters.





7. Choose a reliable and fast hosting service



Your web page should be hosted by a reliable hosting service. Otherwise, it could happen that your web server is down when a search engine spider tries to index it. If your web site fails to respond when the search engine's index software program visits your site, your site will not be indexed. Even worse, if your web site is already indexed and the search engine spider finds that your site is down,you'll possibly be removed from the search engine database. It's essential to host your web site on servers that are very seldom down.





Search engine crawler programs that index Web pages don't have much time. There are approximately 4-6 billion Web pages all over the world and search engines want to index all of them.So if the host server of your Web site has a slow connection to the Internet, you may experience that your Web site will not be indexed by the major search engines at all.

You may also want to limit the size of your homepage to less than 60K. It'd also benefit the still

numerous users that connect to the Internet with a slow modem. For even the casual Internet user,the performance of a Web site can make the difference between pleasure and frustration.

Cheap Methods To Drive Site Traffic

It is quite simple bringing traffic to your website when you understand the appropriate strategies. The two most popular and cheap inter-net marketing strategies are pay-per-click (PPC) search engines and Affiliate Programs. These strategies can bring hordes of traffic interested in buying products or services with minimum risk.

Pay-Per-Click Search Engines
PPC search engines are fairly simple. The website owner develops a set of keywords that people use to find you in the search engines and pay a premium to the search engine each time a visitor clicks on the link. It is important to the web site owner that their site obtains the top search engine rank to appear as the first slot. Obtaining the highest rank is fairly simple in the PPC search engine mode. Find out how much the person who currently occupies the number one slot is paying per click, and outbid them by paying a penny more. The website owner pays as little as .001 per click for site traffic and earns their position in the search engine through bidding.

PPC possesses several benefits as a marketing strategy. Besides supplying customers with effective marketing, it is also cost-effective because you pay only when someone actually accesses your site. Moreover, with this method your listing gets posted quickly anywhere within a few hours or at the most, a few days.

The website owner using the PPC method needs to pick the keywords cautiously. Use specific keywords. Avoid being general or it may attract a lot of traffic uninterested in the website’s products or services. This would push the costs of a PPC campaign too high.
Most importantly, calculate how much to bid on keywords. The website must still turn a profit after such expenses.

Affiliate Programs
An Affiliate Program is a no-risk partnership with a company, promoting that company’s products on a website. In return, the affiliate earns a percentage of their sales. After signing up for an affiliate program, the affiliate is assigned a special “affiliate URL” that tracks all the visitors the affiliate sends to a company’s web site and all the sales the affiliate generates. The affiliate earns a commission each time someone the affiliate referred makes a purchase.

The best way to motivate affiliates to promote a company’s product or service is to pay those affiliates well for their efforts. Offer attractive commissions and additional incentives such as bonuses for a certain number of sales to push the affiliates to actively promote the website.

Combine both the strategies mentioned above to develop an integrated marketing strategy. This yields even bigger profits. An easy way to start an integrated marketing campaign is by encouraging affiliates to bid on keywords.

What is unethical search engine optimization?

Some search engine optimization companies and software developers use unethical techniques and

tricks to artificially boost the search engine rankings of a web site. This dilutes the quality of search

results and calls into question the accuracy of search results.

For this reason, the search engines are continuously trying to counter the spam techniques which

webmasters might be using and penalize or ban them.

They continue to reconstruct their algorithms to prevent spammers from flooding the results page with

irrelevant or low quality content.

If you use a web site promotion tool that uses these unethical techniques, you'll put your web business

at severe risk.

Search engines consider the following search engine optimization techniques as SPAM.



· automatically generated doorway pages

· cloaking and false redirects

· keyword stuffing

· hidden text or hidden links

· pages loaded with irrelevant words

· duplicated content on multiple pages

· misspelling of well-known web sites

· unrelated and centralized link farms

· other methods that try to trick search engines



You might get short term results with these techniques but it's very likely that your site will be banned

from search engines if you do. You'll put your web business at severe risk if you use one of these

methods.

Ethical search engine optimization is about everyone winning

Ethical search engine optimization leads to a symbiotic relationship:

· Search engines: They win as they are provided with pages that are easy to understand and that

contain the quality information that their visitors search for.

· Searchers: They win as they are getting what they ask for from the search engines. They search for

"green widgets" and get a page about green widgets.

· Web site owners: They win as they are getting quality visitors who are interested in what their web

site has to offer.

Search algorithms

            All of the parts of the search engine are important, but the search algorithm is the cog that makes everything work. It might be more accurate to say that the search algorithm is the foundation on which everything else is built. How a search engine works is based on the search algorithm, or the way that data is discovered by the user. In very general terms, a search algorithm is a problem-solving procedure that takes a problem, evaluates a number of possible answers, and then returns the solution to that problem. A search algorithm for a search engine takes the problem (the word or phrase being searched for), sifts through a data-base that contains cataloged keywords and the URLs those words are related to, and then returns pages that contain the word or phrase that was searched for, either in the body of the page or in a URL that points to the page. This neat little trick is accomplished differently according to the algorithm that’s being used. There are
several classifications of search algorithms, and each search engine uses algorithms that are slightly different. That’s why a search for one word or phrase will yield different results from different search engines. Some of the most common types of search algorithms include the following:

List search: A list search algorithm searches through specified data looking for a single key. The data is searched in a very linear, list-style method. The result of a list search is usually a single element, which means that searching through billions of web sites could be very time-consuming, but would yield a smaller search result. Tree search: Envision a tree in your mind. Now, examine that tree either from the roots out or from the leaves in. This is how a tree search algorithm works. The algorithm searches a data set from the broadest to the most narrow, or from the most narrow to the broadest. Data sets are like trees; a single piece of data can branch to many other pieces of data, and this is very much how the Web is set up. Tree searches, then, are more useful when conducting searches on the Web, although they are not the only searches that can be successful.

SQL search: One of the difficulties with a tree search is that it’s conducted in a hierarchical manner, meaning it’s conducted from one point to another, according to the ranking of the data being searched. A SQL (pronounced See-Quel) search allows data
to be searched in a non-hierarchical manner, which means that data can be searched from any subset of data.

Informed search: An informed search algorithm looks for a specific answer to a specificproblem in a tree-like data set. The informed search, despite its name, is not always the best choice for web searches because of the general nature of the answers being sought. Instead, informed search is better used for specific queries in specific data sets.

Adversarial search: An adversarial search algorithm looks for all possible solutions to a problem, much like finding all the possible solutions in a game. This algorithm is difficult
to use with web searches, because the number of possible solutions to a word or phrase search is nearly infinite on the Web. Constraint satisfaction search: When you think of searching the Web for a word or phrase, the constraint satisfaction search algorithm is most likely to satisfy your desire to find something. In this type of search algorithm, the solution is discovered by meeting a set of constraints, and the data set can be searched in a variety of different ways that do not have to be linear. Constraint satisfaction searches can be very useful for searching the Web These are only a few of the various types of search algorithms that are used when creating search engines. And very often, more than one type of search algorithm is used, or as happens in most
cases, some proprietary search algorithm is created. The key to maximizing your search engine results is to understand a little about how each search engine you’re targeting works. Only when
you understand this can you know how to maximize your exposure to meet the search requirements for that search engine.

Retrieval and ranking - SEO

           For a web search engine, the retrieval of data is a combination activity of the crawler (or spider or robot), the database, and the search algorithm. Those three elements work in concert to retrieve the word or phrase that a user enters into the search engine’s user interface. And as noted earlier, how
that works can be a proprietary combination of technologies, theories, and coding whizbangery. The really tricky part comes in the results ranking. Ranking is also what you’ll spend the most time and effort trying to affect. Your ranking in a search engine determines how often people see your page, which affects everything from revenue to your advertising budget. Unfortunately, how a search engine ranks your page or pages is a tough science to pin down. The most that you can hope for, in most cases, is to make an educated guess as to how a search
engine ranks its results, and then try to tailor your page to meet those results. But keep in mind that, although retrieval and ranking are listed as separate subjects here, they’re actually part of the search algorithm. The separation is to help you better understand how search engines work.
       Ranking plays such a large part in search engine optimization that you’ll see it frequently in this book. You’ll look at ranking from every possible facet before you reach the last page. But for now, let’s look at just what affects ranking. Keep in mind, however, that different search engines use different rank-
ing criteria, so the importance each of these elements plays will vary.

Location:Location doesn’t refer here to the location (as in the URL) of a web page. Instead, it refers to the location of key words and phrases on a web page. So, for example, if a user searches for “puppies,” some search engines will rank the results according to where on the page the word “puppies” appears. Obviously, the higher the word appears on the page, the higher the rank might be. So a web site that contains the word “puppies” in the title tag will likely appear higher than a web site that is about puppies but does not contain the word in the title tag. What this means is that a web site that’s not designed with SEO in mind will likely not rank where you would expect it to rank. The site  www.puppies.com is a good example of this. In a Google search, it appears ranked fifth rather than first, potentially because it does not contain the key word in the title tag.

Frequency: The frequency with which the search term appears on the page may also affect how a page is ranked in search results. So, for example, on a page about puppies, one that uses the word five times might be ranked higher than one that uses the word only two or three times. When word frequency became a factor, some web site designers began using hidden words hundreds of times on pages, trying to artificially boost their page rankings.
Most search engines now recognize this as keyword spammingand ignore or even refuse to list pages that use this technique.
Links: One of the more recent ranking factors is the type and number of links on a web page. Links that come into the site, links that lead out of the site, and links within the site are all taken into consideration. It would follow, then, that the more links you have on your page or leading to your page the higher your rank would be, right? Again, it doesn’t necessarily work that way. More accurately, the number of relevant links coming into your page,
versus the number of relevant links within the page, versus the number of relevant links leading off the page will have a bearing on the rank that your page gets in the search results.

Click-throughs: One last element that might determine how your site ranks against others in a search is the number of click-throughs your site has versus click-throughs for other
pages that are shown in page rankings. Because the search engine cannot monitor site traffic for every site on the Web, some monitor the number of clicks each search result receives. The rankings may then be repositioned in a future search, based on this interaction with the users.  Page ranking is a very precise science. And it differs from search engine to search engine. To create the best possible SEO for your site, it’s necessary to understand how these page rankings are made for the search engines you plan to target. Those factors can then be taken into consideration and used to your advantage when it’s time to create, change, or update the web site that you want to optimize.
            Page ranking is a very precise science. And it differs from search engine to search engine. To create the best possible SEO for your site, it’s necessary to understand how these page rankings are made for the search engines you plan to target. Those factors can then be taken into consideration and used to your advantage when it’s time to create, change, or update the web site that you want to optimize.

Classifications of Search Engines

         With a decent understanding of how search engines work and how people use those search engines, you can now concentrate on some more detailed information about these engines. For example, you know that all search engines aren’t created equal, right? But did you know that there are different types, or classifications, of search engines? There are. Search engines can be broken down into three different types (in the broadest of terms): primary, secondary, and targeted. 

Primary search engines
A primary search engineis the type you think of most often when search engines come to mind. Some index most or all sites on the Web. For example, Yahoo! Google, and MSN are primary (also called major) search engines. Primary search engines will generate the majority of the traffic to your web site, and as such will be the primary focus of your SEO efforts. Each primary search engine differs slightly from the others.
For example, Lycos has been around much longer than Google, yet Google is the most popular search engine on the Web. Why is that? Most likely because people find that, when searching the
Web, Google provides better search results. The difference in those search results is all in the search algorithm used to create the search engine. Most primary search engines are also more than just search. Additional features such as e-mail, map-
ping, news, and different types of entertainment applications are also available from most of the primary search engine companies. These elements were added long after the search was established, as a way to draw more and more people to the search engine. Although those features don’t change the way people search, they might affect which search engine people choose.

Overview of Google
Each of the major search engines differs in some small way. Google is the king of search engines, in
part because of the accuracy with which it can pull the results from a search query. Sure, Google
offers all kinds of extras like e-mail, a personalized home page, and even productivity applications,
but those value-added services are not what made Google popular. What turned Google into a household word is the accuracy with which the search engine can return search results. This accuracy was developed when the Google designers combined keyword searches with link popularity. The combination of the keywords and the popularity of links to those pages yields a higher accuracy rank than just keywords alone.
However, it’s important to understand that link popularity and keywords are just two of hundreds of different criteria that search engines can use in ranking the relevancy of web pages.

Overview of Yahoo!
Most people assume that Yahoo! is a search engine, and it is. But it’s also a web directory, which basically means that it’s a list of the different web pages available on the Internet, divided by cate-
gory and subcategory. In fact, what few people know is that Yahoo! started as the favorites list of the two young men who founded it. Through the acquisition of companies like Inktomi, All the Web, AltaVista, and Overture, Yahoo! gradually gained market share as a search engine.  Yahoo!, which at one time used Google to search its directory of links, now ranks pages through a
combination of the technologies that it acquired over time. However, Yahoo!’s link-ranking capability is not as accurate as Google’s. In addition, Yahoo! also has a paid inclusion program, which some think tends to skew search results in favor of the highest payer.

Overview of MSN
MSN’s search capabilities aren’t quite as mature as those of Google or Yahoo! As a result of this immaturity, MSN has not yet developed the in-depth link analysis capabilities of these other primary search engines. Instead, MSN relies heavily on web-site content for ranking purposes. However, this may have a beneficial effect for new web sites that are trying to get listed in search engines. The link-ranking capabilities of Google and Yahoo! can preclude new web sites from being listed for a period of time after they have been created. This is because (especially where Google is concerned)the quality of the link may be considered during ranking. New links are often ignored until theyhave been in place for a time. Because MSN relies heavily on page content, a web site that is tagged properly and contains a good ratio of keywords will be more likely to be listed — and listed sooner — by the MSN search engine. So, though it’s not the most popular of search engines, it is one of the primaries, and being listed theresooner rather than later will help increase your site traffic.

Secondary search engines
Secondary search enginesare targeted at smaller, more specific audiences, although the search engine’s
content itself is still general. They don’t generate as much traffic as the primary search engines, but
they’re useful for regional and more narrowly focused searches. Examples of secondary search engines
include Lycos, LookSmart, Miva, Ask.com, and Espotting.
Secondary search engines, just like the primary ones, will vary in the way they rank search results.
Some will rely more heavily upon keywords, whereas others will rely on reciprocal links. Still others
might rely on criteria such as meta tags or some proprietary criteria.
Secondary search engines should be included in any SEO plan. Though these search engines might
not generate as much traffic as the primary search engines, they will still generate valuable traffic
that should not be overlooked. Many users of secondary search engines are users because they have
some loyalty to that specific search engine. For example, many past AOL users who have moved on
to broadband Internet service providers still use the AOL search engine whenever possible, because
it’s comfortable for them.
Targeted search engines

The Best Place To Advertise Online

I have pondered the question aCan I know the best place to advertise online?a for quite some time know. Both my husband and I are trying to find a place where we can get some free website traffic. The need for this is because we are trying to start our own business online.
We have noticed that there are many companies that offer some website traffic or increased website traffic. The one thing that we have also discovered is that these companies only place your ad in places that they think are the right demographical location for your product. The truth of the matter is though is that they donat even know our product enough to know that it does not need to be limited to what they determine is the correct demographical location. This will cause us to loose advertising which in turn causes us to loose potential revenue.
What we need is a company that will take the chance of selling us advertising package without any apprehension. After all if we trust them enough to invest our money then in turn they should also believe in our business enough to advertise without the limitations of demographical locations.
We want to find a company that is like the well known insurance company that says aIf we canat save you money, weall find someone that can!a Finding a company that has different specialties in what products they advertise for is very important to us.
Once all parties have a good understanding on what is wanting to be advertised, I would like to be offered a free trial of sorts as a good faith gesture in that the company we are doing business with believes that they can produce increased website traffic.
Starting and managing our own business has many risks of it’s own already, but taking on the risk of choosing a company out of the phone book is not a risk that I want to take with my new business.
We do realize that the risk of advertising with a company that handles the ad is just as scary as dealing with a company that canat provide the traffic that we want. This is especially when they do not have a good understanding of exactly who this type of business is geared to.
So I am back to the same question again, \”What’s the best place to advertise online?\”. The only answers I have been able to come up with is listen to what the other businesses around me are saying and take a chance on their word of mouth.

Free Domination over The Search Engines

Site owners started to recognize the value of having their sites highly ranked and visible in search engine results some time ago.They also recognised that the higher their sites page ranking the more people would click on their websites. Whilst organic traffic generation does take time and effort to accomplish it is still the most cost effective means to grow your traffic and business .In addition many of the best resources for organic site promotion are either free or very inexpensive.
Paid traffic generation can be very expensive for the website owner, and the results may be decidedly variable over time. Ill show you how to totally get around that problem in no time What better way to get heard than by social media Sites that appear on the front of sites such as Digg can get as much as 2000 visitors per day just from that So how do you achieve this
Organic traffic is all natural, therefore, website visitors actually want to come to your sales page, not just because they are being paid to do so. Organic traffic as the name implies is traffic that comes to your website naturally and without being driven there by any specific paid marketing campaign. With organic traffic website surfers are there because they found the site when they clicked on your resource box in your article.Or Web site visitors are there because they found the site on a social bookmark site,or the search engines and thought it had something they wanted.
Organic traffic comes when someone performs a search on one of the search engines for a subject that theyre interested in. When the free listings come up the surfer then clicks on one of the site listings to visit the appropriate webpage. Organic traffic is any traffic that doesnt need to be paid for, such as social bookmarking or search engine traffic. By building a web of backlinks your site will increase in visibility in search engines as well as brand recognition if the web is large enough.
Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are popular and if there are any apparent trends, such as one specific page being viewed mostly by people in a particular country. There are many ways to monitor this traffic and the gathered data is used to help structure sites, highlight security problems or indicate a potential lack of bandwidth .
Search engine optimization is designed to get you to that front page. However just remember, there are thousands of others trying to get there too. Search engines have become the way people are looking for information online. Therefore, search engine optimization or SEO specialists has become a popular technique all website owners are doing to drive more search engine traffic to their website. Search engine rankings can certainly come without traffic. If the SEO does a poor job targeting the appropriate keywords, then it doesnt matter if you are ranked number one or not.
Search engines rank sites through a variety of factors called an algorithm. You can think of this as a recipe for a really good dish; a dash of that, a pinch of this and cooked for just the right time gives a great result. Search engines seek relevance,that means each page will be relevant for a particular set of keywords.
Article Submission will increase traffic to your website or product by auto generating leads. Article Marketing can be one of the single most effective ways to build traffic through website promotion. It helps in not only giving your readers interesting news and information about your specific niche, but it also has many search engine marketing benefits as well. Article marketing is about building links, traffic, and reputation. If you do those three things well then youve got it down pretty good.
However always remember that content is KING on the internet and duplicate content is poor seo practice. I hope this helps.Also remember there is traffic, good traffic and really good traffic

Keywords That Will Boost Your PPC Campaign

It all comes down to choosing the right of keywords and phrases. By researching what works best you should come up with quality keywords and phrases that give results. Make a list to start with and consider what will work for you. Start with one of the very popular keywords, “credit”. This word gets typed into search engines every day- maybe even every minute. But if everyone else is using it how can you make it work, too? The best method is to include some related terms that are specific to your business.
Think about how searchers might be interpreting the keyword in question. Someone looking for the word “credit” may be trying to find out how to get a credit report, how to improve their credit, what lenders will offer loans to someone with poor credit, or how to consolidate credit card bills. Once you’ve got a list of concepts that the word might be related to, it’s time to condense them down.
These longer concepts become a series of terms that people search for, all related to your basic keyword. “Credit” becomes “free credit report”, “get better credit”, “bad credit loan” and “consolidate credit cards”. There are lots of other options, and these words are just a little different from the original keyword. You can keep expanding from there.
Stick to the basic concept, but expand your horizons. There are plenty of credit related search terms, like the names of the individual bureaus, consolidation companies and more. Mix them in as part of your first list, and you’ll have created a number of different keyword groups from just one starting term. Go on to create ad groups made up entirely of consolidation companies, for instance.
Add an extension like .org, .net, or .com to the search term, or consider a country you’re trying to target. The domain doesn’t have to exist, it’s just a specific term the search engine will consider. Some people still use the country index and you’ll be able to target them with your ads and increase your chances of a sale.
Remember to avoid very general keywords. There’s too much competition for these. Instead, expand on related terms, and rephrase existing keyword phrases. It’s easy to turn “free credit report” around to get “credit report free”. While the concept is the same, this phrase will reach a different set of viewers. Just ask yourself what your target audience is going to search for, and use the answers to that question to choose your keyword groups. Remember that search terms can be in an unusual order.
PPC campaigns are often trial and error, but you can hit the ground running if you have the right combination when you first start out. Careful thought and a lot of brainstorming can result in the perfect ad for your product, you just need to do some work at the start.

Video Marketing: Things to remember

If you are an online business, an important factor you must consider is video marketing. This type of investment can help your business grow and reach your targeted market successfully. The many reasons you should consider a video marketing investment for your business include cost effective, time saving benefits, site rank, and much more.
Video marketing is the best solution for any business suffering online today. Here are six reasons why you should invest in a video marketing solution for your online business.
1. Businesses often fail today because their company doesn’t come up under search engine result pages. A solution to listing on the search engines so you can be found by the customers is video ad marketing.
2. When your online business ranks higher in the search engine results it gives you an advantage over the competition. Taking advantage of using video ad marketing will help you achieve the highest ranking with the search engines as possible.
3. Managing your search engine marketing can be very time consuming. Investing in video marketing is an excellent solution to free needed time for other endeavors with your online business.
4. The credibility of a business through the customer’s eyes is much better for a company with a high website ranking than a business with no page rank. If you want to achieve the highest page rank you can, video marketing will achieve this by driving tons of traffic to your site.
5. A video marketing investment is the most cost effective thing you can do for your online business because of the value. Once you see the success factors associated with video marketing you will realize it is money well spent.
6. Many businesses are removed from search engines due to not properly following the guidelines set forth for their online marketing efforts. The right video marketing requires following search engine guidelines with the use of the right tools and resources so you will not be blacklisted.
If your business is currently suffering with your online endeavors you might think about the many factors associated with video marketing and the many ways this type of marketing can improve your business. You should not think twice about the money well spent if you are currently suffering with your online endeavors. The many success factors associated with video marketing include higher ranking with search engine listings, increase website traffic, time saving benefits, excellent value, and much more.

Errors in Search Engine Optimization

Although Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the key to good ranking in Search Engine results, sometimes a few things are overlooked and this results in either lowering your rankings or maybe even that your site could be blocked. Take a look at the top ten mistakes in website optimization.

1. Keyword Spamming: Just increasing the number of appearances of the Keywords in your text doesn’t guarantee a good ranking. This is also known as Keyword Spamming. Hence the keyword density which is the ratio of the number of occurrences of the keyword to the total number of words in the text should be optimal without giving it an unnatural appeal.
2. Not all search engines are same: Popular search engines like Yahoo!, MSN and Google, never use the same algorithm for search engine techniques. If you are having more hits from MSN, then it is better to SEO your site according to MSN. Though sometimes a few things could be common.
3. Poor Titles: When a search engine lists the results usually the top 10 in order, ensure an enticing title, related to your keywords, to catch the attention of the reader.
4. Not getting good links: Backlinking your site or getting a site directing to your webpage helps a lot. Links from better quality sites is considered to have greater value than links from ordinary sites.
5. Relying on Meta tags: The text within the Meta tags is not visible to the reader when the page is viewed through a browser but read only by the search engine. This is no longer entirely used for SEO. It was found be misused by website owners, insert misleading words about their pages or use excessive repetition of words in hopes of getting higher ranks. So also with “h tags”.
6. No Marketing Plan: If you are unaware of who your prospects are and what they want, mere rankings will not help you.
7. Not Thinking Beyond SEO: After getting a visitor to your site, ensure that you serve their needs, so that your SEO effort and expense has been worthwhile.
8. Just submitting is enough: No. Mere submission of your site to a Search Engine doesn’t ensure you rankings and regular hits.
9. Need to submit my site to 1000 search engines: This is a myth.
10. Time consuming and expensive: If you are innovative and think differently keeping in mind what your customers want, you can design your own site freely. Further, submission to search engines is always free and doesn’t cost anything, contrary to the claims of certain marketing companies.

Mistakes in search engine optimization can be decisive and fatal, so take a comprehensive look before getting into the thick of optimizing your website.

SEO and Internet Marketing

The Importance of SEO in Internet Marketing
If you are already running an Internet marketing campaign or are about to embark on an Internet marketing campaign, one concept you cannot afford to skimp on is search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is one of the most popular buzz words in Internet marketing but unfortunately most Internet marketers simply do not know enough about SEO to make this strategy work for them. Even those who are knowledgeable about SEO may have difficulty executing their SEO strategies to produce the desired affect.
Advertising is a very important part of running any type of business. You need to advertise to reach new customers and market your products or services. Whether you run your business online or not you probably already realize how important it is to advertise but if you are running your business online you should understand there is a great deal of free advertising available in the form of optimal search engine rankings.
Well known search engines such as Google rank websites according to complex algorithms which are designed to determine which websites are most relevant for particular search terms. Therefore taking the time and effort to optimize your website for relevant search terms may result in you being rewarded with high search engine rankings for these terms. This is important because most Internet users rely heavily on these rankings. It is not uncommon for Internet users to only review the first few results when they search for a particular term. This means if your website ranks high enough to appear on the first page of the search results you will likely enjoy increased website traffic. However, if your website doesn’t make it to the first page or even the second page, it is unlikely you will receive a great deal of website traffic from visitors who use search engines.
Now that you understand why search engine rankings are so important you might wonder how to achieve these rankings. The easiest way to optimize your website is to hire a SEO specialist to do the work for you. The world of SEO is complex and continually evolving making it difficult for most business owners who do not specialize in SEO to keep up with the changes in the industry. Therefore, business owners who attempt to optimize their website by themselves may have difficulty keeping up with competitors who hire a SEO consultant to optimize their website.
The algorithms used by search engines can be rather complex and include a number of different factors. Some of the common factors in the equation include keyword density, META tags, titles, inbound links, website traffic and content.
Keyword density refers to the number of times a particular keyword is used in the content of your website. The theory behind this concept is that website which use a keyword often are likely extremely relevant to that keyword, however, overuse of that keyword may result in penalties to the website if the search engine deemed the keywords are not being used appropriately.
META tags are pieces of HTML code which some search engines use in evaluating the content of a website. Placing keywords in these tags can be beneficial in some search engines. However, care should be taken to avoid placing irrelevant keywords in these tags as this may result in your website being penalized.
Inbound links are also used by some search engines to rank websites. Inbound links refer to links on other websites which point to your website. In evaluating the worth of these inbound links, some search engines consider the rank of the website providing the link to your website. This means you should ensure the website providing inbound links to your website are high ranking websites to receive the most benefit from these links.
Finally, the content on your website can do a great deal to bolster your search engine rankings. Most SEO firms retain a staff of writers who are skilled at providing quality content which is also optimized for relevant keywords. If you hire a SEO firm who does not providing copywriting services you should invest in hiring a professional writer yourself. This will help to ensure the copy on your website is not only valuable to your visitors but also considered valuable to search engines.

Generate Leads using SEO

When you utilise search engine optimisation, you do so to rank well in search engines like Google, MSN, and Yahoo. In Australia, Google dominates the search market, with over 80% of the market share. Tests have also shown that Google searches almost always turn into either sales or inquiries much more often than searches done on other major search engines. In other words, this means that Google generates much more high quality search traffic. That’s a pretty good reason to focus mostly on Google for your search engine strategy.

With Google, you’ll find that you rank quite well as compared to the others. For this, there’s a three-step process by which you can perform search engine optimisation. This topic is fairly complex and companies spend a lot of money getting this done for them. However, you can do this with three relatively simple steps.

Step 1: Keyword Research You need to establish which keywords and phrases are relevant to your product or services so you can focus your SEO efforts accordingly. For many businesses that serve a local area, keyword research is normally straight forward. The most profitable keywords or phrases are likely to be in the form Your Industry Your Location. For example: “Plumbers Melbourne”, “IT Support Sydney”, “Accountants Perth”. There are also a range of keywords and search tools, including a free tool; inventory.overture.com and also more sophisticated pay tools such as wordtracker.com and keyworddiscovery.com.

Step two: Optimising on page You need to optimise your website content, too. For high search engine rankings, make sure the right keywords show up on your webpages. This is part of the story, too, but it’s also an important part of the puzzle we call “optimisation.” Here are some important tips on optimising webpages.

1. Your Page Title Should Be Keyword-Rich. The title that appears in your browser in the blue bar at the very top should have keywords in it; this is because it’s also the title in Google’s search results. Make your title concise, short, and rich in keywords. It should have the most important keywords at the front of the title. As an example, if your carpet installation business is located in Sydney, you can say, “Carpet Installation Sydney - Install Carpet Surry Hills Sydney.” And put the most important keywords at the front of the sentence. You can see that it’s a bit of repetition, but it’s pretty keyword rich and it doesn’t sound too strange, which should get you more exposure.

2. Your Description Should Be Keyword Rich. The description is also called the “meta description tag.” This is part of your website code and describes the page’s content. Write descriptions in complete sentences and make them keyword rich. For the carpet installation service in Sydney, for example, it could read something to the effect of, “Surry Hills, Sidney Carpet Installation. Installing Carpet at a Reasonable Price.”

3. What Do Your Headings Say? Search engines look at your headings because they seem to include important page content. If your headings and sub headings are rich in keywords, you’ve given yourself a good start. For example, you can say, “Carpet Cleaning Services in Sydney.”

4. Make Sure You’re Page Content Is Suitable. At least one paragraph of each textual page on your website should be rich in keywords. You can also repeat the keywords you use in your headings in your content. Using a mix of related key phrases is also good. For example, saying, “Carpet Cleaning, Cleaning Carpets, Clean Your Carpets,” is more suitable than using the same phrases over and over again.

5. Links Are Important. Yes, links, too, are important for page content. Instead of using generic phrases like, “Click here to find out more,” use those that are keyword rich and indicate what your business is. “Take a look at our carpet installation services” is one good example.

Step-3: Off Page Optimisation Off-page optimisation, or linking strategies, is the third and final stage. Every incoming link to your website is considered by Google as a vote for your website content by other websites. The reason why many businesses SEO efforts fail is that they focus exclusively on using keywords on web pages but they lack a linking strategy. Here are a few tips to start pushing your site up the ranks through linking strategies:

1. Encourage Keywords inside Your Incoming Link. For example, if you arrange for a client or supplier to link to your website, you want to ask them to use keywords such as: “cheap digital printing services” in a link rather than your company name, or “Click here”.

2. Consider Using Authority Directories. When you list your site on website directories that are well regarded by search engines, this can improve your rankings. These are so-called “authority” directories and sometimes charge a fee to list there. This keeps out lower quality websites. Three of the most well-respected are botw.org, Yahoo.com.au, and business.com. It should be noted that this is different than using e-mail scams that offer to submit your site are uniformly directors for a fee. Rather, you’ll want to submit your website to directories that search engines regard highly.