Increasing Your Search Engine Ranking by: Brian Collins
The methods employed to increase your search engine rankings may seem like rocket science to you, so you have probably avoided dealing with this issue. I am here to tell you - the time has come to face your website! A high search engine ranking for your website is so essential that if you have the slightest desire to actually succeed in your business, there is no way you can continue to avoid this issue.
At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That's what search engine optimization is about.
You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your web pages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a few simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title bar on your homepage.
The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on your homepage's title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your company name.
Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the title bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other.
The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search engines generally list sites that contain quality content rather than scintillating graphics. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords - the words that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site.
Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However, the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.
To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format in order to increase your search engine rankings.
Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. Many people believe that meta tags are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still, it's worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags in their ranking formula.
To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must access the code. To do this, click the "view" button on the browser menu bar, and select "source." This will pull up a window revealing the underlying code that created the page. If there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top of the window. For example, a meta tag would read: meta name="keywords" content=. If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This may not do much for your search engine rankings, but any little boost helps.
Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a factor that is extremely important in terms of search engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.
If you type in "free link popularity check" in a popular search engine, the search engine will then show you what sites are linked to your site. In the case that there aren't many sites linked up to yours, or that the sites that are linked up have low search engine rankings, consider launching a link popularity campaign. Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.
Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can't boost your rankings yourself. Don't ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed your way.
About The Author
Brian Collins
I Supply Info provides articles for publication on websites to help increase your search engine ranking http://www.isupply.info.
1. Choose Keywords Carefully Research and select your keywords carefully, using such tools as Google's and Yahoo's Keyword Tools. Google Trends is a new development tool that lets you compare general keyword search popularity visually on a graph- they don't reveal the actual number of searches, however. You can also do manual research, by simply going to each of your competitors' websites, analyzing their keywords, and trying to notice any consistent patterns in their keywords and how they rank for those keyword searches. Further, if you do cost-per-click (CPC) advertising through Yahoo! Or Google, its interface gives you another means for calculating the popularity of keyword phrases- it will tell you how many people search for the keywords you add. Tools such as Good Keywords (http://www.goodkeywords.com/products/gkw/ ) consolidate some of these useful tools and is completely free. If you have a search engine on your site, you should use the search logs as a benchmark before choosing your keywords. If you do not have a search function on your website, you can get one free with FreeFind. When activated, they can automatically email you a report of the top searched words on your site. Researching keywords is like doing police detective work- there are several tools, but they each only give you small pieces of the puzzle. It can be a time-consuming effort to sort through the data, but worthwhile.
2. Keep it Simple, but Specific For best results in the search engines, it is important to keep your keywords consistent and simple. Use only 1 keyword phrase per page, and don't be too general. For example, if you were selling cell phones, it would probably be a wasted effort to target the word "cell phones" as there are too many competitors, but the phrase "cheap camera cellular phone" is more likely to help you to rank high in search engines. This phrase was searched for 807 times last month, according to Yahoo!.
3. Maintain Consistency Use the exact same keyword phrase in all of the following page elements:
Use your keyword phrase within: a. Page title b. Meta title c. Meta keywords d. Meta description e. Header tags: h1 to h4 f. <strong></strong> tags and/or tags g. <em></em> tags and/or tags h. Four times in the body copy i. At least once in a URL link j. Make a folder with the keyword phrase as its name; use hyphens - between multiple words.
4. Use Tools to Monitor Your Progress Various tools exist to check where you stand in search rankings, links, and more. Instead of continually checking manually, try some of the many tools available. One helpful tool which happens to be free is: http://www.webuildpages.com/cool-seo-tool/ Other pay-based tools exist, such as: Microsoft Submit It and WebTrends' WebPosition. If your pages are not getting indexed by Google, you may consider making a Google site map. You can generate an XML based site map for free here: http://www.freesitemapgenerator.com. Also, make sure you have web statistics programs installed on your host server, such as AWstats, Webalizer or other free tools. Google Analytics is an in-depth stats program and is free. Because of the demand, you have to get on a waiting list, but it is worth it: http://www.google.com/analytics/
5. Learn From Successfully Optimized Sites
The following is a short list of websites that appear to be successful in their search engine optimization efforts.
Though not always as aesthetically pleasing, viewing the winners of Google optimization contests can be a learning experience. Links and information can found on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEO_contest
About the Author
About the Author: Trent Mueller is a Webmaster at Timbercon, Inc. www.timbercon.com in Portland, Oregon, USA.
Keyword Advice by: Steve Gillman
Online "experts" are always offering conflicting keyword advice. This is because different keywords are good for different reasons. Once you know the factors involved, you can decide which ones are best for your web site.
I have a page of my backpacking site optimized for the term "dirtbagging." I think I get half the world traffic for that keyword, but that only means ten visitors a month. I was new to online marketing when I put up that page. Obviously you need decent keyword demand to get much traffic, but demand is just one factor.
My Keyword Advice
1. Make sure there is enough total demand for a keyword. This will vary according to the nature of your site. If you are making a few cents per visitor an average, you need more traffic than sites that average a dollar per visitor. I won't optimize for a keyword that is searched less than a few hundred times per month.
2. Look at keyword demand/supply ratios. Last month there were 289,000 searches for "fishing," but with 35 million results showing up on a Google search for the term, can you compete? Probably not. A Keyword term like "bass fishing tips," with 3,700 searches, and 31,000 results is a more likely winner.
3. Consider total supply. Google shows 300 results for "dirtbagging," 15 times the 20 monthly searches for the term. Still, it is easy to get on the first page of results for the term. A keyword with a demand of a million, and a million search results has a better ratio, but can you really get on the first page of search results? Whatever the ratio, you have to be able to compete against the total supply. Nobody will find you on the tenth page of results.
4. Consider the type of keyword. Good search engine placement is one thing, but what type of visitor are you getting? Who's more likely to buy something or click on your affiliate links, a searcher for "fishing stories," or "fishing poles?" You'd probably make more money with the second term, even if it had half the traffic.
5. Look for keyword variations. My site www.IncreaseBrainpower.com was optimized for "brain power." I later found there was even more traffic for "brainpower." I have since optimized for both. By the way, both spellings are in the dictionary. Look for odd search phrases too, but be careful about optimizing for misspellings and bad-grammar keywords, if it might hurt the reputation of your site.
5. Consider the value of keyword ads. If you rely partly on pay-per click advertising, like Google's Adsense program, for revenue, you may want to consider the ads that will be diplayed for a given keyword. Ads for "surveilance cameras," pay four times as much per click as those for "hidden cameras."
6. Consider your interest and expertise in the topic represented by the keyword. Do you want to write a page on that topic? Can you deliver what a searcher of that term is looking for? Giving real value while doing something you enjoy - that's my final keyword advice.
About The Author
Steve Gillman didn't even know what HTML was when he registered his first domain name. Soon afterwards, he was making a good living online. To learn how you can do the same, visit http://www.TenMoney.com.
How To Kick Start Your Business With SEO & SEM by: Sebastian Schneider
Who is this for?
If you are a webmaster who is about to start his/her first online business or web site, you probably know that it is not that easy to get high traffic to your site. In fact, nowadays it takes a lot more work to be successful online, than it had been some years ago. The main factor that influences your success is that most business or web site owner do not know anything (useful) about search engine optimization (SEO) and/or search engine marketing (SEM). These terms are wide-spread, however, a lot of people just know of it as a way to get ranked high in the search engines.
There are tons of webmasters and web site owners who would like to know more about SEO strategies in order to kick start their business. If you have enough funds to hire a SEO company to do the promotional work for you, you would probably not sift through the internet and find out more about SEO, unless you are eager to learn more and more. So this article is mainly for those who start out with SEO and want to know more about the strategies to not only rank high in the search engines, but also prosper and do well in satisfying visitors or prospects.
Why do I need SEO & SEM to rank high?
The question is why businesses and web sites do need to promote their web sites well these days, unlike some years ago, when everyone was about to submit to a few of the established directories and was seeing an increase in traffic through spreading the word. The answer is: A few things have changed. The search engines have developed very complex algorithms in order to find relevant web sites and separate them from the non-relevant web sites. These algorithms are quite complicated and not revealed to anybody outside of the search engines.
The problem is that, in order to reach high ranking and traffic, you need to prove your web site to be trustworthy and relevant for the world. Relevance can be reached through search engine optimization, whereas trustworthiness is reached through the marketing and promotion of your web site to other relevant and related web sites. There are theories about a so-called sandbox or trustbox that is used by Google, however, they have never been confirmed to be existing to 100%. This sandbox theory claims that every new web site is put in a box for a specified probation period. While in the box the site is not ranked well and does not receive a PageRank. The trustbox theory claims that the probation period is more likely to be defined by trusted and relevant back links.
Whether one of these theories is real or not, fact is that you need to optimize your business for the search engines and then promote it. The main thought is that you should try to gain as many one-way links as possible. One-way links, also referred to as inbound links, are link that are directed to your site without your site to be linking back to that site. In past the so-called reciprocal links have been wide-spread in order to build your linking and prove your trustworthiness and/or relevance. However, these days, one-way links are more than appreciated and worth it!
How to approach? How to gain one-way links and kick start my business now?
This is a very complex topic and it is impossible to tell you about any existing and proved strategy at once. Nevertheless there are some easy but time consuming ways to kick start your business or web site. Before everything can begin, however, you should first optimize your website. There are some resources on the internet that tell you about optimization etc.
After you are done with it, promote your web site to (free) web directories first. Web directories provide you with one-way links without the need to link back to them. Well, in fact there are a lot of directories that require reciprocal links back, but these are not the ones you should submit to. Submit to SEO friendly free web directories first, apart from the Open Directory Project/DMOZ. Then after you have done this exhausting work, write quality articles and spread them. Be active in forums. Publish a blog relating to your area and regularly write in it to attract readers and prospects. These are one of the main sources for getting your first traffic and back links, which raise your PageRank.
Now go on and find out about the variety of mistakes you can do while optimizing and promoting: Over Optimization.
Ever wonder what the biggest SEO myths are? I have taken the most prevalent myths that seem to be constantly resurfacing and examined them for you. This is a must read for anyone looking to hire an SEO firm or someone looking to do SEO for themselves.
Myth # 1: All Meta Tags Are Of Equal Importance
Some Meta tags are useful while others are not. I have stated this many times. Search engines are relying more and more about what is on the website than what the tags are telling them. The description tag is used by some (but not all) search engines. The same goes for the keyword tag. Keyword tags are used more by spammers and people using software to find you as a link partner than the search engines. In my opinion, the only tags you should concentrate your efforts on are the robot tag and the description tags.
Myth # 2: You Should Submit Your Site to Search Engines Weekly or Monthly
Honestly, I nevër submit any site more than 1 time and sometimes I don't even do that. If you submit your site once, you're good. The engines will come back on their own. You can sometimes speed up the process of getting your site indexed by linking it to a high traffïc or high PR site. The search engines will find the URL to your site and index it automatically.
Myth # 3: SEO is Too Expensive
Actually, SEO is probably the most cost effective förm of online marketing. Organic SEO is cheaper to set up and maintain than a PPC campaign or banner advertising. With PPC and banner advertising, you pay for clicks or impressions. With SEO, all clicks are Frëe. You simply pay for the set up and monitoring of your site's pages.
Myth # 4: PPC Is More Effective Than Natural SEO
In the short term...true. In the long term...false. Why, you ask? Organic SEO is preferred by searchers over 5 to 1 to PPC. People trust organic searches to return relevant results. People also know that the ads to the right of the page are sponsored ads. They have long ago figured out that anyone can bid on any term they want, as many often do, without even a hint of relevance. So, long term SEO structuring can indeed be more effective than PPC, especially when considering the preferences of search traffïc. A top 5 ranking may take some time to get, but once you are there (and provided you can maintain it), you will get better results than from a PPC ad.
Myth # 5: Hiring an SEO Specialist "In House" is Cheaper
The problem with hiring someone in house is that they are paid hourly or by salary. Most SEO firms charge per item or project. It doesn't matter how long it takes us, you pay a one tíme charge. When you hire a firm, it's like having a team of SEO experts on your payroll. Paying a flat rate saves you monëy and speeds up the time it takes to complete a job. Additionally, most SEO firms have specialists who write, submit, redesign sites, post pages, etc... Hiring one person who can do all these things competently is highly unlikely.
Myth # 6: I Can Only Optimize My Homepage for Key Terms
You can and should optimize every page on your site. Each page should have its own key terms, with no more than three phrases per page (preferably one).
Myth # 7: All I Need to do is Write Content with the correct Keyword Density and My Site Will Rank Well
Wrong...especially if you want to rank on Google. You will need off-site SEO as well as on-site SEO. Keyword density may work on MSN (for now), but it will take more than that to rank well for all search engines.
Myth # 8: I Shouldn't Aim for the Most Competitive Keywords and Phrases
If the keywords you are competing for are very competitive, should you optimize your site for them? Of Course! I would optimize for some high, medium and low competitive key terms. Cover all your bases. The worst case is that you won't rank well for the high competitive key terms and that's ok. You can always work to improve them. Don't shy away from top key terms just because they are competitive. You may nevër know how close you could rank for them unless you try.
Myth # 9: Only Work With Companies That Give You A Guarantee
Guarantees would be nice if they were worth the paper they are printed on. In fact, most guarantees from SEO firms have the same stipulation in them. This stipulation usually states that as long as they get one of your key phrases to the top of any major search engines, they have fulfilled their end of the agreement. This is irrelevant to the competition of the term. In other words...it's easy to be number one for terms no one is competing for. Don't be deceived by high rankings listed on SEO sites as they can be misleading.
Myth # 10: SEO Requires a 1 Year Commitment on My Part
It certainly shouldn't. Don't lock yourself into a year contract with any company unless you already have an established, favourable business relationship. SEO, in most cases, should be performed on a month to month basis with a mutual understanding of the objectives and relative timetable. Often, both the long and short term maintenance contracts that many firms insist on including with each job are unnecessary. As an example...If you have a new site optimized, especially right after an update, you may not see results for three months. Why pay for maintenance in the interim time?
Additionally, you may not be happy with the results of an SEO firm or even the level of service. A long term contract may only ensure that you receive a full year of bad service. So, don't lock yourself in with a year contract, at least until you are comfortable with whom you are dealing with.
Hopefully, I put a few common SEO myths to rest. Feel frëe to contact me with questíons you may have regarding these or other SEO myths you want more information on.
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How do I optimize my website for the search engines?
The most important thing I can tell you here is be honest. Don't try all the Black Hat tricks you will read about on other websites. You will probably get high in the rankings for a week or two but in the long run, you will lose everything you worked so hard to achieve. Once you get black listed for cheating, you will have a very hard time ever redeeming yourself. It's not hard to do it right. It actually requires just about the same amount of work. The difference is, do it right and you will be making money for years. Do it wrong and, well.... see ya!
Ethical Search Engine Optimization is KEY to website longevity!
By the way, those people out there that are trying to convince you that unethical search engine optimization tactics are OK and you will never get caught? They have one of two motives in mind. They either want you to give them your money while they deliver their promise to get you ranked high or they are trying to sabotage your website so they have less competition. Either way, it won't work for long. They can easily get you ranked high long enough to cash your check. After that you are gone for good.
OK, enough about that. Let's get on with the ethical SEO.
It might be easier to print this page so you don't have to keep jumping back and forth.
The first thing you want to do is open up a page on your editor. Read the page to see what words are used most often. These are your KEYWORDS. Make a list of 5 - 10 keywords. Note: These are not your keywords for your entire website. You will have to do this same process for every page you want indexed in the search engines.
Once you have it downloaded, open it up and select Keyword Suggestions. Type on of the words from your list into the base keyword spot and hit GO. Wait about 30 seconds and you will see a list of related keywords and phrases. Don't pick the first word or phrase that is on the list this word has too much competition and you aren't ready for that yet.
Go about half way down the list and pick two keywords or phrases that will match several of your keywords for that page. Write them down. (At this point, you can do this same process for the rest of your pages or work on one at a time. It's all going to get done eventually, you do it the way you feel is most efficient.)
Sometimes you will find several of the same keywords will work for many pages. You will want to find independent words or phrases for each page. This will take longer but it will pay off in the end.
(Here is another free program to help with your keyword search. Keyword Spider comes with it's own learning video. In about 5 minutes you will know everything there is to know about it's use. Watch the video available on the download page.)
If your website is about computers and your keyword phrases for your main page are computer parts and computer services, you will have no choice but to duplicate these phrases on your parts or services page. This is fine but you will want each pages keywords to be as unique to the page as possible. Your phrases for the service page, for example, might then be online computer services and internet computer services.
Note: If you are wanting to use the keywords that are on the top of the list, consider this. Do a search on Google for my top keyword "computer". How many pages show up? This is my competition. Now try "computer services". How many pages? It is easier to compete with these smaller numbers.
If you have a real refined topic to begin with, your competition may not be as overwhelming as the general topic "computers". Do the Google test on your choices to see what you come up with.
Once you have your keywords and/or phrases picked out for your page, what do you do with them? The first thing you will want to do is put them in your meta tags.
Just copy and paste the following code into your code in between <HEAD> and </HEAD>
Your two main keywords or phrases will be your title. <TITLE>They go here:</TITLE> In my example I would use Computer Parts | Computer Services Like this: <TITLE>Computer Parts | Computer Services</TITLE>
Brad Callen suggests using the | rather than the word and in the above title. This looks more professional and the word "and" would never be a searched word anyway. This character is located on the keyboard directly above the "enter key".
Remember, step by step.
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More Web Site Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization continued:
As I may have already told you, there was a time when all you had to do to get high search engine rankings was to fill your keyword meta tags with any words you thought would get searched. You could put sex and guns in your keywords for your website about flowers and you would get lots of hits.
This caused two problems. One, the people looking for sex and guns were not interested in flowers. The other is, everyone put sex and guns in their keyword tags.
The search engines don't take a whole lot of stock in keyword meta tags anymore. Many of the big search engines totally ignore these tags. We are going to fill this tag just on the off chance that it may help a little. See below for what to put in your keyword meta tag.
Your two main keywords or phrases will be your keywords. <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="PUT THEM HERE"> In my example I would use computer parts, computer services. Separate each keyword with a comma Like this: <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="computer parts, computer services">
Later, when you are looking at other peoples meta tags, you will probably notice some people will load this tag down with 50 words or more. Don't do this. Fill this tag exactly like I tell you here. Over stuffing this tag is a waste of time and could cause a penalty on some search engines. It will never be a benefit.
That tactic is very old school and it will never help your rankings.
The last tag we are going to fill here is the description tag. Write a nice description about the page you are working on. Use your keywords here without making it sound stupid. This is what most people will see when they find this listing in the search engines.
You want:
Online computer parts and services.
Not:
Computer parts computer service Computer parts computer service Computer parts computer service Computer parts computer service Computer parts computer service Computer parts computer service
If you were doing a search for computer parts, which website would you be more incline to visit? Your description is like a mini ad on the search engines. This little description is how you convince people to click on your link. Make it as interesting as possible but no more than 3 - 5 sentences.
Your description will go in the description tag. <META NAME="description" CONTENT="PUT IT HERE"> In my example my tag would look like this: <META NAME="description" CONTENT="Online computer parts and services. Find all your computer needs here. From virus protection to hard drives, we have it all. We will even tell you how to install all your new computer parts and software.">
Remember, this has to be done for each page. Each one has to be unique to the page. Make sure you do a new search for the most relevant keywords for each page using your Good Keywords program. This is time consuming and pretty boring but it is very important.
Do it right and you are well on your way to getting lots of relevant traffic. Do it wrong and you are wasting your time. Remember the example above? You don't want the wrong people visiting your site. They aren't interested in what you have to offer so they will leave as soon as they get there.
Draw in the right crowd and you will get the sales.
This is the most time consuming part of, on page, search engine optimization. We will be moving on to the easier stuff right here. Please make sure you have all your pages optimized before you move on.
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More Search Engine Optimization
This section is all the little things that you will need to do to get your pages ready. You are getting close to going live. Just a couple more steps and you will be ready to show the world what you have done.
Here we are going to deal with alt tags and title tags. This is kind of tedious but it will be well worth the effort.
This might be a little confusing at first but once you do it a couple times, it will be much easier. Some HTML editors will be very helpful with this process. I am sure Dreamweaver has simplified this process and I know FrontPage has. You will have to check your editor to see what you have available.
OK, On with the work.
Title Tag
A title tag is something you add to your hyperlinks. It gives the hyperlink a title. Blind people use this title when their computer is reading the page to them.
The added benefit of this title tag is that it gives you another chance to add more relevant keywords to your page. Hover over the link to hyperlinks above. See the little box pop up that says "Read more about hyperlinks here". This is the title of that hyperlink.
Make sure everyone of your hyperlinks has a title. Make the title relevant to the hyperlink. Take advantage of using keywords whenever possible but don't annoy your visitors. If you write a book here rather than a small description of the link, it will block all the other info on your page. I'm sure you have seen this on other websites. Example below.
If your HTML editor has a way for you to add these titles, you are in luck. On FrontPage, all you have to do is right click on the hyperlink and select "Screen Tip". A little window opens for you to type your title. You will have to check your own editor to see if it has this option. If you have to manually insert titles, don't worry, it's easy.
Here is the above hyperlink without the title tag:
<a href="hyperlinks.htm">hyperlinks</a>
Here it is with the title tag:
<a title="Read more about hyperlinks here." href="hyperlinks.htm">hyperlinks</a>
Notice where the title is and the quotes around it. (title="Read more about hyperlinks here.") Just copy this example on all your hyperlinks if your editor won't do it for you.
Remember the example I promised you? Hover over this link. This would also be extremely confusing to a blind person. They would not know it is a link if it sounds like a whole page.
Use these title tags to plug in keywords that are relevant to the link and the page whenever possible.
Alt Tag
An alt tag is very similar to a title tag. It is used to add a description to your graphics. You shouldn't have more than 2 or 3 graphics on any one page, (Unless your site requires it, like a product page.) Add alt tags to every picture.
Many people with slow computers or slow connections will turn pictures off on their browser. You picture will just be a little red X in the area where the picture would be. When you add this alt tag, you are describing the picture to the viewer. Try to make it keyword rich but don't make it look stupid.
Use a different keyword for each picture so you don't spam the search engines. Or you can use the same keyword if you add .jpg or .gif to the alt. i.e. alt="computer parts.jpg" This looks kind of funny to your visitors so don't over do it.
Applying the alt tag is the same as the title tag above if you are doing it manually. Just use alt instead of title. If your editor has a shortcut, it will be in your picture properties.
In FrontPage it is under the 'general' tab then alternative representations. Sorry I don't have information for all editors. That is what help files are for. I am sure almost all editors have this function. You will just have to find it.
Make sure you add title tags to all your hyperlinks and alt tags to all your images. Remember, if a picture links to another page, you can add an alt tag and a title tag to this picture. Take advantage of every opportunity to add more keywords to your pages.
NOTE: Watch your spelling with these tags. Your spell checker won't catch misspelled words in tags but your customers will. Double check for spelling and typos.
One more item to go and you will be done with, on page, search. Keep it up, you are almost there.
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More help with your Search Engine Optimization
Remember what I said earlier about effective and ethical search engine optimization? These little tips will help your ranking a great deal. They are totally ethical and very effective. Some may seem minor but do them all. A whole lot of minor things will add up to a major difference.
Take a look around this page. Notice how many times you see the phrase "Effective Search Engine Optimization". These are my keywords for this page. Each page has these same positions available for that page's keywords. Check some other pages out. You probably didn't even notice this until I pointed it out to you. It doesn't look out of place but helps a lot with SEO.
You can always add a colored bar as a design that you can use for your keyword phrases. If you used one of my sample pages to get started, you have this in place already. If you didn't use a sample page, you can always add this bar to the very top of each page or the bottom (see orange bar below) or just find inconspicuous places like I have here. These words are not here to benefit your visitors so you don't have to worry that they can't see them.
IMPORTANT NOTE: You do have to make these words visible. If you make them the exact same color as the background, you will get penalized from the search engines. Use a color that is very close but not the same if you are using a decorative bar.
Next, notice the space box above that says 'Affiliates'. This is just what I call a Keyword Box. Use it as a page title. Put your most important keyword for the page in that box. This is just an extra "freebie". It looks normal to your viewers and helps a lot with the search engines. I have a jpg image here but you can use text. Make this an H1 heading.
Under that is where you information actually starts. Use an H2 heading here. this will make this information more important to the search engines.
Your HTML editor will have a way to add heading tags. If it doesn't, it will look like this in your code: <h2>More help with your Search Engine Optimization</h2>
Also, add your page title to the bottom of your page. Remember your page title? It looks like this: <TITLE>Computer Parts | Computer Services</TITLE> Remove the <title> tags and just add the words. Try to put it where it will look like it belongs.
Some people will add this to their copyright like this:
Copyright 2005 - KnowItAllAffiliates . com - Computer Parts | Computer Services - All Rights Reserved
Or you can put it directly above or below your copyright. Like this:
Copyright 2005 - KnowItAllAffiliates . com - All Rights Reserved Computer Parts | Computer Services
Computer Parts | Computer Services Copyright 2005 - KnowItAllAffiliates . com - All Rights Reserved
One last thing and you can move on. Remember when you were creating your pages and I said you can name them anything? Well you are going to change the names now. You are going to make them into keyword names. You will have to leave your index page alone. You need this page to call up the rest of your website.
The rest of the page names can be optimized. If your have a page named http://www.computers.com/parts1.html change it to http://www.computers.com/computerharddrives.html Make the name of the page one or more of your main keywords or a keyword phrase. Do this to every page. Give the page name meaning to the content. Search engines love this.
That is the end of this section. I know it took forever but it will be easier the next time, if you build a second website. Learning new things always takes time. Do all of this optimization and you will have a huge jump on your competitors.
Brad Callen created an excellent program, SEO Elite, that will make your search engine optimization job super simple. You can buy his program if you can afford it. The good news is, he also has a free guide that will go into much more detail about tips and tricks for getting top search engine rankings. The guide is called "7 Days To Massive Website Traffic" You have to sign up for the guide with your name and email address and he will send you the link to this guide. Thru out the guide he tells you about his program, SEO Elite, but he also tells you how to achieve all the same optimizations without his program. He will tell you that you can achieve these results easier with his program, and I'm sure you can, but he also points out that it is not necessary to buy the program. Get the free report, read it and use the information. Some of what he will tell you we have already covered here. Read it again anyway, you can't have too much information. You don't have to buy the program to get the information. The guide is totally free. Click Here! then scroll about half way down the page to the form.
You will only have to read and do the first 3 lessons before you return here. Don't try to go any further right now. We will get back to Brad later in our off page optimization steps.
Ken Evoy at SiteSell has a great, free, Affiliate Masters course. Remember, anything free is going to be loaded with advertisements. Just read the information. It is very valuable stuff. If you didn't get this free guide in step one, here's your second chance Netwriting Masters Course . If you want to look over the Complete Site Build It! Reference Center Click Here. Lots of great, free material for you there. Ken has been helping people build successful websites since 1997. He knows what he's talking about. Read what he has to offer.
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More Search Engine Optimization
Yes, there is always more to do.
While you are waiting for your domain name to resolve, you can start working on more search engine optimization.
Make sure each of your pages has a link to your main page, home page.
Make sure each of your pages has a way to contact you. You can add a contact form or a simple email link will do. If someone need more information about a subject and can't reach you, they will go somewhere else. If you don't have the answer to a question, look it up. The internet is a good place for this. :)
To add an email link, use the following format: <a href="mailto:help@computers.com">Email Me</a> It will look like this Email Me
Be sure to use your domain name, not computers.com
Questions you get from your visitors are a great way to find out what people are looking for. Once you look up the information to help the immediate surfer, go on to build a page about that information. If one person is asking about it, it's very likely more people want that info too. Don't forget to optimize the new page.
You can use questions that are simple to answer to build a FAQs page.
Create a privacy statement page. You can copy mine and change it to work for you or create you own from scratch. Make sure every page links to it.
Make your pages link to each other when ever it is relevant. (Search Engines really like these types of links.) If you are writing about computer hard drives and you make a reference in the content to computer games, make that phrase (computer games) link to your computer games page. You could also add a reference to bigger hard drives on your computer games page and link back to the hard drive page. Use the keyword(s) for the page you are linking to in your link title.
Go through your entire site now and see where you can link pages and add the links. Don't forget to add your title tags to these new links.
A webmaster's work is never done.
Here's some more stuff for you to get started on:
You will want to start your own article directory. This will just be a simple directory, nothing fancy. You will use this to build more traffic to your site. Exceptional traffic, this is important, do it.
It's pretty easy to start. Make a new folder in your website called "articles". In that folder create two pages. One will be "Today's Article" the other will be "Article Archives". Use your page template that you created earlier.
On the Today's Article page, make a table to hold your article. Use the following example or create your own:
Today's Article
Article Name
Authored by: Author's name
Article body
Author's Bio
Re-print Rights
You won't want to leave the table borders showing, this will look dumb. I left them here for you to see what I did. You will be able to get other people's articles on your topic to use here. You can also write your own. You will want a mix of yours and other peoples to get a good range of viewpoints.
Each day, put up a new article and list the old one on the archives page. When this day is over, you will rename this page by using "save as" to match the article name and put a link to that page on your archives page. That will leave your Today's Article page and also give you a new page with the old article. Then re-open the Today's Article page and put a new article there. Save it.
You will be using these articles to build your RSS feed. This will bring huge amounts of traffic to your site.
Make sure you have the following information on your Today's Article page:
A link to your archives.
An offer for other people to submit their articles to you. You can use a form or an email link for this.
A link to your RSS feed.
Reprint Rights.
Your article archives page only has to be a simple list of past articles linking to those articles. Remember, each old article will have it's own page.
Your reprint rights should say something to the effect that anyone may take any articles from your site to use on their site as long as the article is left intact. The authors bio must be included and a clickable link back to your site must also be included. Give an example of the link back that you want them to use:
This article courtesy of Computers.com. <-- not a real link.
Many people will just copy and paste this link to their site so make sure you add your title tag to it.
Lets start working on your RSS feed.
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Let's build an RSS Feed:
What the heck is an RSS Feed?
RSS is a family of XML file formats for web syndication used by news websites and weblogs. They are used to provide items containing short descriptions of web content together with a link to the full version of the content. This information is delivered as an XML file called RSS feed, webfeed, RSS stream, or RSS channel.
Yikes, that sound complicated. Don't worry, it's not.
Setting up an RSS feed is super simple. Maintaining it everyday is very easy too.
The following format is what you will use for your RSS feed:
Open a new blank page. Name it feed.xml and save it. Now add this format:
<?xml version="1.0"?> <rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>Your Website Title</title> <description>Your Website Description</description> <link>Your home page URL</link>
<item> <title>Your Article Title</title> <description>Article description</description> <link>URL to your article page</link> </item>
<item> <title>Article from the day before</title> <description>Article description</description> <link>URL to that article</link> </item>
(You can add up to 15 separate links on this list.)
</channel> </rss>
That's all there is to it. Name it feed.xml. Actually you can name it anything you want as long as the extension is xml. I only suggest feed.xml because it is easy to remember and easy for your visitors to find.
Now add these images to your website:
RSSXML Right click and Save Picture As...
And link each one to your feed.xml file.
As you update your feed, always leave your website linking info on top. Move everything else down and add the new article to the top <item> Now when people grab your RSS feed and put it on their site, they will be linking back to you. Anyone who wants to read the articles will have to come to your site to read it.
Can you see how this is going to build traffic?
Make sure you only add quality articles to your feed. You don't want people removing your feed once they have it installed.
I only update my feeds Monday thru Friday and I have that information listed on my site. I want to have to work on the weekends.
You will have to have at least three articles before you can offer the feed. If you have a web page that reads like an article, use that to get started. You don't have to create a separate page for the article, just link the feed to the existing page.
Let's put a Tell-A-Friend form on your site.
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Tell a Friend Code
After you copy and paste the code, make sure you change the URL and website name so you aren't sending your customers to me. Not that I would mind the business but chances you are promoting something other than affiliate marketing and the traffic would be useless here. Not to mention you would be missing out on the traffic intended for your site.
Read these easy instructions:
To collect this form, highlight the entire area. Hit ctrl-c to copy the code. Go to the place on your webpage code that you want to place the code and hit ctrl-v. Next change the values to your website URL, etc. You can also change the heading and the information after "Send URL"><br>. That's it.
Here is the code:
<!-- ********** NOTE - This is submittal form ******* --> <!-- ********** That you paste into your web page ******* --> <!-- ********** Then you 'configure' the values shown ******* -->
<h4 align=center>Tell a Friend about our website:</h4> <form method="POST" action="sendurl.php">
<!-- ************* Configure Section - ************** --> <!-- ********** You must set these 'values' ********* -->
<!-- Change 'value' to site name - appears in the message to friend --> <input type=hidden name="sitename" value="Know It All Affiliates">
<!-- Change 'value' to site URL you want to be sent to the friend --> <input type=hidden name="urlis" value="http://www.knowitallaffiliates.com/">
<!-- Change 'value' to link you want on the Thank You page - generated by sendurl.php (BTW: you could just use the url (file name) of the page with the form, in which case , the full path is not required if the sendurl.php is in the same folder. --> <input type=hidden name="redirectlink" value="http://www.knowitallaffiliates/tellafriend.htm/">
<!-- ************* End of Configure Section ************ -->
<!-- ************ Do Not Change This Section ********** -->
<input type=submit VALUE="Send URL"><br> Email addresses are not collected, sold, rented or used in any way.<br> Feel free to use this option as often as you like. <br> <b>We will never contact you or your friend.</b><br> Thanks for helping us, help you and your friend.<br> </form> </td></tr></table>
<p><font size="1">I got this code FREE from </font><a href="http://www.knowitallaffiliates.com/tellafriend.htm"> <font size="1">Know It All</font></a>
<!-- ****************** End of form submittal section ************* -->
You will have to add a second page and name it sendurl.php
Copy this code to your template and make all the changes you want to make before you save it as php rather than html. Once it is saved as php you will only see the code. If you want to make any additional changes, you will have to know how to read the code.
Make sure you change the links to your URL.
<!-- ************* This is the 'sendurl.php' Script ********** --> <!-- ************* Warning: Paste this code into ********** --> <!-- ************* a simple HTML thank you page ********** --> <!-- ************* that must then be saved as ********** --> <!-- ************* 'text file' named 'sendurl.php' ********** -->
<?php $myemail = "($visitormail)"; ?>
Thank You <?php echo $visitor ?> <br> For sending information about <strong> <a href="index.htm"> knowitallaffiliates</a></strong><br> To <?php echo $friend ?> <br>
</b> <br> <HR width="80%"> <br> <p align="center">Press the back button on your browser or <a href="http://www.Your Site Name.com/tellafriend.htm"> Click Here</a> to tell another friend.</p> <br> <HR width="80%"> <?php $ip = getenv("REMOTE_ADDR"); if (!isset($visitormail) || !isset($friendmail)) echo "<font size=6>You Goofed</font> $ip" ; $todayis = date("l, F j, Y, g:i a") ; $notes = stripcslashes($notes); $messageis = " $todayis [EST] \n Your Friend: $visitor \n Sent this URL: $sitename ($urlis) \n To: $friend $friendmail \n With These Comments: $notes \n ";
$messageme = $ip . " " . $messageis;
$from = "From: $myemail\r\n";
if ($myemail != "") mail($myemail, $sitename, $messageme, $from); if ($friendmail != "") mail($friendmail, $sitename, $messageis, $from); if ($visitormail != "") mail($visitormail, $sitename, $messageis, $from); ?>
<!-- ********** End of php script *********** -->
Article Underground Keyword Density Analyzer Tool
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