Guaranteed Directory Submission

Google Base happens to be the only shopping search engine which allows merchants to define their own attributes (optional fields).
It is also formerly known as Froogle, and if you have any product that can be sold online, you have no excuse to not use this service. It’s free, and Google is trying to promote it’s usage.

If you want better results on the shopping engines, try optimizing your feed – it?s no longer good enough to just post all your products and expect your listings to be found.

There is a new opportunity that can be had for online retailers, and it’s known as the “Onebox” result. To learn more about this great way to drive targeted traffic, visit OneBoxer, a fantastic blog that covers all angles better than I can.

Recently, Google made more requirements on a generic level, but there may be more if you are within a specific product category:

• brand
• condition
• description
• expiration_date
• id
• image_link
• link
• price
• product_type
• title

Understandibly, some merchants are upset at this since they have thousands of products that now need more information, and some products may not have all of the required fields (expiration date, for example).

So how can you take advantage of this?

Some people will search by color, some by material and others by style. All of these are fantastic opportunities to get your product in front of a consumer who is ready to buy. It will take some time to create and get all the tweaks worked out, but it is well worth it.

source: seoforgoogle.com

SEO

In case you haven’t been on the Internet for the past year or so, there has been a tremendous amount of attention being captured by socially-powered sites such as digg.

So, what does this have to with the world of Search Engine Marketing?

There is something called the Digg effect, which essentially brings a ton of traffic to your site in a small amount of time. (Usually within minutes of a posting).

While digg readers despise seo-planted stories, if you do have something topical or free to use or even something that’s just “cool”, you won’t feel the wrath of the digg community, and end up with your post getting buried.

So how can you leverage this site?

One of the key elements of getting a story on the home page is to have either a ton of people who have “dugg” your posting, or if you happen to know some of the top users on digg to vote for your story, you’ll have no time reaching the front.

For the rest of us, we need to work harder. While there are sites that sell services to “digg” stories for you, at some point in time, digg will wise up and stop that.

There is another site that allows you to alert any of your friends when you have posted on digg, called Digg Alerts.

But despite all the “gaming” that goes on, at the end of the day, you need to have a compelling story to have the readers interact with what you’re saying.

As for the SEO coding and copy writing element of digg, you need to have a great title and summary to get any reader to even bother checking out your site. Another course of action you need to take is to review all of digg’s categories – if your story would not fit on the site, don’t waste your time.

The expectation set forth when using digg in as part of your marketing strategy should be to create buzz, build brand name and drive traffic to your site. To expect digg users to click on your Adsense ads is non-sensical – digg readers are tech-savvy and can smell that technique a mile away. Be patient, post often and become part of the digg community by also submitting great stories you find – often times it will already be posted, but every once in a while you can beat them to the punch, and you gain a little bit of credibility on the site.

source: seoforgoogle.com

SEO

There have been soo many discussions about DMOZ in both positive and negative lights on forums that if I had a penny for each one, I could put Bill Gates out of business.

Point is, Google still uses DMOZ as it’s back-up directory source and until that changes, it will always be important to have your site listed in it’s index. Now, despite some other seo urban legends, you can get top rankings in Google without being listed in DMOZ – but it’s a quality link if you can get it.

So, how much time should you dedicate to getting a DMOZ link?

All you need is about 15 minutes in total, and you’ll be set.

There are two ways you can submit your site to get listed. The harder way is to find the category your site resides in and enter your site there.

The easier way is to drill down regionally to where your business location is. Then look for the category you want within that region and submit there. It may not be an exact match, but it is a DMOZ link.

So how powerful is that link?

I have a former employer who is in the home security business. For 2 years they’ve gathering quality links from relevant sites, creating excellent topics relating to home security, getting directory submissions and doing press releases on a regular schedule. All of those efforts went un-rewarded in Google for their most sought after phrase, “home security”.

Then, 8 months ago, I submitted their site regionally, under security companies, and 6 months later they were listed in DMOZ for that category. In 3 days from that listing, they now appear on the first page of Google for the term “home security”. Furthermore, their snippet is not from their meta tag, but the DMOZ listing.

One last tip when submitting to DMOZ: Always try to submit to a category that has an editor. They are extremely busy and most are noble in trying to submit only quality sites. So be kind and patient and enjoy the results of your getting listed in DMOZ.

source: seoforgoogle.com

SEO

There has been an ever increasing awareness to the value of Google’s “TrustRank” algorithm. While there are many factors that are “Off-page”, there are a number of simple actions you can take to make sure your site earns the trust from Google by employing these easy techniques.

The best way to think about Trustrank is to compare it to if you were to purchase a product or service in the real world. There are many built-in factors that we use to pre-qualify a business to see if we are willing to part with our cash for their goods or services. This is the same approach Google takes in order to measure the quality of a site, and doing this will get you out of the so-called “Sandbox” much faster than the typical 4-6 months.

While in no particular order, some are most costly than others, but all are worth doing.

• Register your domain for 10 years. If you can’t afford the $70 it costs at GoDaddy then are you really serious about your site?
• Buy a SSL certificate – this tells Google that you are a legit business since they know you have to have a verified checking account to get a SSL cert. (And buy it for as many years as you can at a time, at the very least for 2 years)
• Have a privacy policy that tells in exact detail what happens to the information about the visitor that is collected from the site.
• List a mailing address (no P.O. Boxes) – Just as in real life, you feel better purchasing a service or product from a place that has a physical location.
• List your contact information – telephone, fax (if needed), email & name.
• If you have a bigger budget, use any of the “Hacker Safe” services and place those icons on your site. Again, this tells Google that you are seriously committed to protecting your visitor’s experience on the site.

Those are simple techniques that you can directly apply to your site, and are signals to Google that you take your online presence seriously.

As far as the “Off-page” factors, it’s really about linking to quality sites that are relevant and sometimes considered ”authority sites” by Google. Also, getting links from those trusted sites will help re-enforce the quality of your site in the eyes of the Google spiders.

source: seoforgoogle.com

SEO

Imagine creating your website without the search engines in mind.

But you already do that, right?

You don’t name pages that are keyword rich and hyphenated to make the search engines recognize what that page is about, correct?

You don’t write articles about topics that search engines would reward you for by placing your site at the top of the search result pages, right?

And I know that you don’t choose keywords based on what sources such as WordTracker and KeyWordDiscovery tell you, true?

See a pattern here?

There is soo much focus on creating a site that is built to be “search engine friendly” that sometimes it’s forgotten that while search engines may bring traffic, it’s still a human who is reading and consuming the content that lives on your site.

While this may seem obvious to a web designer or marketer, not all of us possess that level of focus when making changes to websites. Instead of trying to create original and unique content, more thought is given to the impact that content can have in the search engines.

Content delivery through RSS feeds, Podcasts, PDF’s, Articles, Blogs and Video are all thought up and created with strategic placement in mind – Get your Podcast on iTunes, be sure to have your video on YouTube, and make certain that Technorati knows about your blog.

All the while it’s the human reader who decides if your website is worth visiting, bookmarking, tagging or coming back again to see what’s new.

If you satisfy the simple need of educating or entertaining the reader, they will reciprocate your effort either by linking to your site, or even better, telling their friends about your site. Even though it occurs on the web, social networking is still a key factor to having your website become successful.

So, always build your site with the reader in mind, because they can make you wealthy – a machine can’t.

source: seoforgoogle.com

SEO

Yes, another Long Tail article.

While the commonly referred to Long Tail is about the smaller but passionate buyer, another thought must be given to getting those items found.

This is the essence of Long Tail Optimization.

It is also known as “ecommerce optimization” or “catalog seo”. This term simply means to ensure the proper naming structure, meta-tagging and labeling of every product found within the ecommerce site.

Since most ecommerce sites are dynamically produced, it’s much easier to implement the required code changes needed in order to effectively code each product on a granular level.

Amazingly, there are many sites that aren’t taking advantage of this. Some of the reasons are:

• The site is static
• The Content Management System (CMS) doesn’t allow for meta tag coding
• The SiteMaster isn’t aware that they can impact all the products
• Red Tape
• Ignorance

If the web administrator knows the simple basics of seo, they can easily apply the values to all the pages any CMS system creates.

So why bother?

While it’s true that 20% of all product/service/entertainers deliver 80% of the revenue, the remaining 20% of the Long Tail over time, can easily justify the effort needed to gain and maintain the rankings needed that lead to conversions.

source: seoforgoogle.com

SEO

When you break down the actual components of Internet marketing, it all comes down to variants of coding a website to meet the requirements of the search engines.

While there are many ways to grow your presence online, one of the truest ways to make sure your efforts will continue to work for you years from now, is to be sure your efforts are properly optimized.

From press releases to blogs to articles to whitepapers, anything that appears online should be optimized, since you never know how someone will first come to learn of your product or service.

Videos uploaded to YouTube or Google video should be optimized. Podcasts can be optimized. Your RSS feed can be optimized.

Getting the point?

Since the engines are always looking for the most relevant content, if your content is properly optimized, it has a better chance of staying ranked for long periods of time.

Anything that appears online or exists in digital format on the web can be optimized. It only takes a little bit of extra effort, but the payoff is well worth it.

source: seoforgoogle.com

SEO

One of the methods used in Search Engine Marketing is the technique of buying links.

While some frown on this method entirely, or may not need to partake in this action, there are those of us who do and reap the benefits.

Paid directory links are better for sem purposes (as opposed to text link advertising) – because good fee-based directories place your link in the appropriate category of which the site’s main topic is about.

Why does this matter?

For one moment, let’s take a look at how a search engine spider spends its life. It endlessly crawls the Internet, looking to not only discover new content, but to also find related topics, fresh information and to also somehow apply all of that knowledge together in order to algorithimically produce the most relevent result.

So, as the search spider continues to find your site listed in the same category through-out the web, (for this example we’ll use “Software”) it makes it easier for the spider to categorize your site. This partially explains why you may see some sites that appear in listings that are not 100% on target.

When the search spider repeatedly finds a website within the “Software” category on many directories, and the site in question is about software, it makes the ranking easier to compute for the search engine when delivering results from a user query.

Another factor that is added to the computation is the link weight – basically, of all the links that the search spider found linking to your site, how many of them were any or all of the following:

• Relevant
• Lead the search spider to a topical page
• Are from a “Trusted” or “Authority” site

All of these are great reasons to order our great service HERE - take advantage of this great opportunity!

source: seoforgoogle.com

Directories, SEO, Search Engines

It is said that in the internet marketing world, content is king. While there is no doubt that strong copy and valuable information is what will ultimately determine whether your site will be a profit machine or a money pit.

But, in order to get that buyer ready to part ways with their hard earned cash they must find your site.

There are traditional methods that include text link advertising, banner ads, “sponsorships”, and directory listings. While that is only the tip of the iceberg of the potential internet methods available, they are all meant to do one thing:

Send a reader to your site.

Now, the world’s current number one search engine, Google, has a system in place that favors these links. To see this in action, go to google.com and enter the following word: miserable failure

For those not inclined to test it yourself, the number one search result is for the biography page of the current President of the United State, George W. Bush.

Obvioulsy, the White House has not engaged in a SEM campaign to target that phrase to lead to that page. But what it does clearly demonstrate is how Google works.

It’s all about links.

Simply put, there are more links of the known Internet that have the word “miserable failure” as the clickable text that point to that page. Don’t get the notion that SEO/SEM is as simple as that, but in a case where there is a phrase that no one wants to rank on, it’s very easy to manipulate the rankings of Google.

Keeping that demonstration in mind, the goal of every webmaster should be to get text links that point to their site with whatever keyphrase they are actively pursuing.

While it will take more than just “out-linking” your online competition, it is a decided advantage to get your site as many links as possible – and take your money to the bank.

source: seoforgoogle.com

SEO

There are many discussions about acquiring links from the Internet. While all links matter, some have much more value than others.

Earned links are thought to have much more viral value, as they are links that people place on their sites linking to yours by their own accord. Often, your site provided some value, whether it was in entertainment, information or an offering of a great product or service.

Depending on where the link is placed, the search engines will place a certain amount of value or “weight” on the link found on the site. While this same technique can be falsely accomplished, over time, these earned links will continue to accumulate, with little effort on the web owner.

Bought links offer up a way for your site to get some “web cred” almost immediately. One of the most expensive ways to get this is to purchase a “channel” sponsorship on the website, HowStuffWorks.org. That site is highly ranked by Google, so getting your link placed on that site will not only enhance your site in the search engine’s eys, but also from a traffic standpoint, you should expect a boost from that advertisement.

There are also text link brokers who offer up sites that allow you to rent some text link time to get your site a Google PageRank Boost. The problem with most of these sites is that it’s a monthly service, not permanent. If you are going to invest your time in paid for links, the best resource are fee based directories. After that, if you can find sites that offer permanent links, you should grab as many of those as you can.

Remember, all links count as a vote to your site, and every link you get is only going to help.

source: seoforgoogle.com

Directories, SEO, Search Engines

Many times when webmaster embark on a link campaign, they obsess on the vaunted Google PageRank that the linking page has.

What a waste of time.

Today’s site with a PageRank of 0 could have a PageRank of 6 tomorrow. I’ve seen this myself on 2 separate sites – as they come out of the gate, they are graced with a PageRank of 6. Now, prior to that, any webmaster who was obsessed with PageRank would never link to that site.

While the above mentioned scenario is probably not very common, the point is that while a site may be ranking low today, unless you know the webmaster personally, you don’t know what other efforts that person is putting in to get that site ranked.

Furthermore, a site may have little or no PageRank but still receive tons of traffic. So, would you pass up a page that was getting 11k visitors a day just because it has a Google PageRank of 0?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Another key element in consideration is that every unique link you get from a site counts. Whether it’s from Joe’s Pizza shop, or Pizza hut directly, to the search engine, they still count as two “votes” for your site.

Now, each link would carry different levels of weight in regards to relevancy, but if you can’t get a link from Pizza Hut, you could get about 1,200 links from the various Joe’s Pizza Shops located on the web to make up for it.

There is a current backlash of directory bashing. True, there are many directories that exist for the sole purpose of making money off of Google AdSense, and those directories should be punished accordingly.

But, there are many directory owners who are dedicated to having highly targeted and specific category related listings to provide for their visitors. These directories are a great resource for search engines as they help categorize the Internet – that’s why directories will always be important on the Web.

So, always get a link from any relevant site whenever you can – regardless of Google PageRank or any other factor. Even Google was an unknown when they first appeared on the Internet.

source: seoforgoogle.com

SEO

The halo effect is a cognitive bias that occurs when a person’s positive or negative traits seem to “spill over” from one area of their personality to another in others’ perceptions of them. (as defined by Wikipedia)

So, how does this apply in the world of Search Engine Marketing?

It’s no secret that it takes more time to get a top ranking in Google than in MSN and Yahoo. Yahoo and MSN tend to allow newer sites top rankings within weeks, while Google will make a new site wait – this is done to prevent spammers from hogging up the top rankings through massive link campaigns.

So, the SEO halo effect takes place when your site gets it’s first top ranking. It seems that when your site achieves the much sought after #1 ranking for a popular keyword or phrase, to get the next ones are easier.

Case and point:

For my site, SEO for Google, that was the exact phrase I was optimizing for when the site was first launched in January 2005. I spent four months submitting to directories, writing and posting articles every two weeks, and I made sure I posted to my blog at least 5 times a week.

I knew I had to do all of this to overcome the “sandbox” that Google would place the site into. And in April of 2005, the site finally came “out of the box” and the phrase “SEO for Google” had the site somewhere around the 30’s. It took another month’s worth of focused effort to get phrase to the top spot.

Finally! after five months of continual effort, about 1,200 directory submissions, and article postings, all based on the key phrase “SEO for Google”, the efforts paid off.

But, now the challenge was to expand on other phrases that people would enter to find out information on search engine optimization for Google. So, after using Wordtracker, I found nine more phrases to pursue:

• Google SEO
• Google Search Engine Optimization
• Search Engine Optimization for Google
• Google Search Marketing
• SEO Techniques
• SEO and Google
• Google Search Optimization
• Google Search Engine Marketing
• Google SEO Optimization

Now, to put things in perspective, the competition for the phrase “SEO for Google” was not very much when I started – about 5 million results. The new phrases, averaged around 30 million results to compete against. So, would my effort to get these new phrases need to be even more?

No – thanks to the SEO Halo Effect.

Since Google and the other search engines had already recognized the site as being the most relevant to the phrase “SEO for Google”, other similar phrases could take advantage of the relationship to the original phrase. In effect, I could leverage the top ranking for the original phrase to pull the new phrases up through the rankings without having to exhort the same amount of effort.

Today, those nine phrases are within the top 15 in Google and climbing. I continue to get directory submissions for the new phrases, while every tenth listing I will still use the original phrase.

So, take advantage of the trust you have created with the search engines for your top phrases, and be sure to always look for similar keyphrases that can help get you ranked.

source: seoforgoogle.com

SEO

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve answered this question in forums, so I figured since so many are asking, it would make for a great article.

First off, let’s describe what we are talking about. A “bot” is a piece of software from a search engine that is built to go through every page of your site, categorize it, and place it into a database.

Google has three well known bots: The Adsense bot, the Freshbot and the DeepCrawl.

The Adsense bot, as you could probably guess, is used for publishers who have Adsense on their sites. As soon as a new page is created, the JavaScript within the Adsense code sends a message to the Adsense bot, and it will come within 15 minutes to index the page so that it can serve up the most relevant ads.

But, for this conversation we are only concerned about the DeepCrawl and the Freshbot.

The Freshbot crawls the most popular pages on your website. It doesn’t matter if that is one page or thousands. Sites like Amazon.com and CNN.com have pages that are crawled every ten minutes, since Google has learned that those pages have that amount of frequent changes. A typical site should expect to have a freshbot visit every 1 to 14 days, depending on how popular those pages are.

What happens to your site on a Freshbot visit is that it finds all of the deeper links in your site. It places those links into a database so that when the DeepCrawl occurs, it has a reference.

Once a month, the DeepCrawl bot visits your site and goes over all the links found by the Freshbot. This is the reason why it can take up to a month for your entire site to be indexed in Google – even with the addition of a Google Sitemap.

So, be patient and keep on adding content to your site, and work on getting valuable in-bound links to your site – Google will reward you for it.

source: seoforgoogle.com

SEO

While there are many reasons to blog, there are two primary uses that are becoming more widespread with blogging: To game Google Adsense, and to also game the search engines for better rankings.

Since Blogs are known to the search engines as daily snippets of information that are updated on a frequent basis, they get a lot of preference in the search results.

So from this, how do you optimize your blog?

Depending on the service you utilize, there are still some basics that you can apply. The two biggest blogging sites are WordPress and Blogger. If you are looking for an advantage with SEO, you should use Blogger since they are owned by Google, and you’ll be indexed quicker.

Blogs aren’t all that much different than a site. The power of a blog is from the frequency of the posting. If the search engines see a pattern of 3 postings per day, they will be very active on spidering that site. Depending on the topic of the blog, you may be able to boost your blog in the rankings if it’s related to a hot topic on the Internet.

Now, to the actual optimization.

Since blogs are typically a few pages long, you only need to establish a few rules that will be applied sitewide:

• Use an interesting title – Also known as linkbaiting – your title should captivate the user to read more
• Try to use your blog keywords in the title – while it may be hard to always do this, by keeping the title related to the topic, your blog will always be relevant
• Use the H1 tags – All blog editors allow for custom templates, so be sure to stylize your blog title in the H1 tags
• Link to other blogs – Find other related blogs that your readers might find interesting, and ask for a link in return
• Don’t forget about your archives – You may post a topic that isn’t hot at the moment, but comes up later – make sure your readers can find that posting

As stated above, the key to a successful blog is frequent postings. You don’t need to write up an article everytime, two paragraphs and maybe some resource links is what a typical posting should be comprised of.

source: seoforgoogle.com

SEO

With the recent Jagger update settling, many people find their sites no longer have the high rankings they had for so long enjoyed prior to the latest Google update.

So, the sites that lost these rankings are scrambling to find some answers as to why their site dropped. While it’s my business to know the intricacies of how this particular update impacted the search algorithm, there are some common ground starting points that if you apply these to all of your sites, you should be able to survive any update intact.

• Proper naming structure
• Name your page titles with your keywords if possible
• Always have a sitemap
• Always include a robots.txt file
• If you must use a re-direct, be sure it’s server side, not with a meta refresh tag
• Don’t use hidden text
• Make sure your keyword phrase is included in your H1 tags
• Don’t optimize for more than 2 keywords per page
• Use text links where possible
• In any product image, be sure to use the alt tag
• Use hyphens, not underscores when you name a page file
• Make sure your site has an error handling page
• Create a Google Sitemap and submit it to them (This is in addition to a typical sitemap)
• Offload all your js and css code
• Don’t forget about meta tags

Be sure to follow these simple guidelines and you won’t need to worry too much anytime Google has an update – your site will not be impacted by any filters that are checking for spamming, hidden text, or anything that resembles cloaking.

source: seoforgoogle.com

SEO

You heard it here first.

Within 3 years, almost anyone will be able to perform search engine optimization (seo) to their site.

It will all be done through a back-end content management system (CMS) – and it will be easy and fast working.

But, it doesn’t mean it’t the end of the world for Optimization services.

While a properly optimizd site is nice to have, if no one finds it, that won’t matter. Expect to see more companies offer Search Engine Marketing as the premiere service, as that is more time intense anyways.

How can this be? Let’s take a trip back to 1995.

You remember: blinking text, huge jpeg graphics, dial-up and AOL was all the rage. Back then, it was believed that all you needed was a website, and you could become an Internet millionaire. While that was true for a few lucky people, for the rest of us it was still the same old grind. But the, the emergence of template editors arrived. MicroSoft Frontpage, Macromedia Dreamweaver and others appeared making the creation of a website fairly easy.

Once the online world realized they could create their own sites, they next wanted the ability to edit their sites. Thus, the birth of CMS became a reality and many web design shops found themselves scrambling to offer thses back-end modules or services to their clients.

Today, people expect to have a website that they can edit, which brings us to SEO. There are many properties within a site that can be generated with a CMS system. For example:

• Meta Tags
• Page Titles
• Page Names
• Site Maps
• CSS Stylization

If the web administrator knows the simple basics of seo, they can easily apply those values to all the pages any CMS system creates.

I know this is coming because I’ve built these exact systems for clients. Once a client learns the importance of proper naming stuctures, and the best way to naturally place their keyphrases into all parts of their website, they are already two steps ahead of their competition.

Search Engine Optimization is still a valuable way to earn money, but as more people integrate the Internet with their lives, they will become knowlegeable enough to perform those tasks on their own.

The next step will be the automation of SEM, which I still think is only about 5 years away…

Grab the money while you can!

source: seoforgoogle.com

SEO

Good copy equals conversions.

This is probably the hardest selling point to get across to a client when seo speak begins. Sure people know they need to get ranked in Google, and they know you need to build an online presence, and of course, they all know that they need to get traffic to their site.

But site copy? Anytime that topic is brought up, most clients proudly boast that they have already posted their brochure’s information on their site and that works just fine.

Well, it doesn’t. Content optimization is a skill that few people possess. Words sell, images don’t. You need to get the user to take action! So, in that spirit, here is a list of things to do and ones to avoid:

Things to do:

• Use the main keyphrase you are targeting on every page, except for the home page.
• Use keyphrases in your hyperlinks.
• Create a page title that is intriguing and eye catching. Remember words sell, graphics don’t.
• Limit your keyword usage to 2 or 3 keywords per page. Otherwise, you may get tagged for keyword spamming.
• Create supplemental content like FAQ pages, how-to pages, industry glossary and related articles about the product.
• Use the description meta tag. Google refers to this when it can’t find content or a listing in DMOZ.
• Always keep an eye on competitors and how they rank for the same keywords.
• Focus on the the pages that have your best conversion rates.
• Think like a reporter, asking the five W questions (who, what, when, where, why).
• Display your location. Studies indicate that people look for local vendors, even when online.

Things to avoid:

• Inserting keywords into copyrighted material.
• Forgetting what your audience is looking for.
• Leaving the title of your page as “Untitled”.
• Using too many graphics.
• Waiting to implement copy changes for expected seasonal sales. You need 6-months when optimizing seasonal content to give the engines time to adjust to your alterations.

Content optimization is a continual process of monitoring and updating. By staying true to this course, you’ll see the results in your sales.

source: seoforgoogle.com

SEO

There are many reasons for engaging in a link campaign. In Google, links are one of the most important factors in determining a sites rank in the search engine results page (SERPs).

Since this is such a crucial factor in Google’s algorithm (as well as the other search engines), a link campaign should be part of your search engine marketing efforts.

First, let’s define the different types of links that a site can have:

Reciprocal link – this is where two sites exchange links to each other’s sites.

One-way (In-Bound) link - where one site links to another site without receiving a link back.

Reciprocal linking is a very time consuming task when done correctly. During this process, a webmaster will scour the Internet looking for relevant sites that he or she can trade links with.

Once they have obtained a list of suitable sites, a personalized email is sent to the respective webmasters and a request for an exchange takes place. A typical letter would read as follows:

Dear Webmaster:

Your name
your email
www

If and when you receive some repsonses, you should add their sites as soon as you can, and send them an email telling them that their link has been added, and include the url where they can see their site.

You will have to routinely check your partners to make sure they are still linking to your site in order to continue the partnership. Most webmasters are honest and will keep you linked, but there are a few rotten apples out there.

In-Bound (One-way) Links are the best type of links if you can get them. It’s not all that difficult to do so, but as in anything worth while, there will be an amount of effort involved.

The easiest way to get In bound links to your site is to do directory submissions. There are many great free directories to submit to, and it’s worth the time and effort to get listed in as many as you possibly can.

There are also fee-based directories which you submit to, and as your budget allows, you should try to get listed in all directories that are relevant to your site’s topic.

The next way to get one-way links to your site is to do a press release. With sites such as prwire, you can submit a press release to them for free, and that will not only get your site exposure, but it will also get you some in-bound links.

If you have the ability to compose articles or columns, there are many sites that can get your site exposure by you allowing them to re-print your content. While some may argue that this procedure may penalize you in the search engines for duplicate content, as long as you have posted your article to your site first, you shouldn’t get hit by a duplicate content penalty.

Depending on how many sites you allow for your information to be published wil also create in-bound links to your site. So the question you have to consider is control of your content versus web exposure.

If you have an online business, you should always include your site’s url in your email signature. Many people use either Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail which are all web-based systems, so they read the urls contained in the email and thus add to your back-link totals.

One piece of consideration: When you submit your site information to be linked from, make sure your anchor text (the clickable part) is one of the keywords you are trying to get your site ranked for. What you are telling the search engines is that the destination of the url is about whatever the text link was. So, if your text link says “eggs”, the search engine would expect that page to be about eggs.

source: seoforgoogle.com

SEO

Impossible, right? Not really worth the time, right? Wrong on both accounts.

Many times while entering phrases into Google, I find a lot of somewhat related sites, but hardly ever anything exact. So why bother on getting these supposedly un-searched terms?

Because there is a perception that having your site in the #1 spot in Google means that your site is an authority on that particular subject. As any experienced user knows, this is most often not the case, but perception is reality.

Granted, some of the phrases that you can get ranked on may not be very popular, but you never know what a user is going to enter into the search box, or do we ever know at what point of information gathering they are at.

One of the most common traits of searching is that when a user firsts begins a search, they use a broad term, but as they get further along into their search, the phrases become more precise as they themselves filter out the un-related sites.

This is the same concept of which a successful PPC campaign can be run. While it may be great to get tons of traffic for the keyword “shoes”, if a user is really looking for “Nike running shoes”, the site has wasted money on that search.

Another curious stat that web analytics reveal is that a consumer that comes to a site through PPC is not a life-time customer. They are usually interested in the quick fix, or easy solution. Compared to a user who arrives through organic search engine optimization, they are more likely to be lifetime consumers since they tend to trust a company that has “earned” it’s way to the top of the rankings.

By the time a user has a four to five keyword phrase entered in for their search query, chances are that they have already eliminated the “noise” and are focused on the “signal” i.e. the product or service that your site is offering.

One final item to remember is that if you have an exact phrase that is not common to a search engine query, once it gets indexed, it will most like appear in the number one position since the search engines always try to find an exact match when other factors aren’t available.

As an example, here are some articles I’ve written that have a #1 ranking in Google (as of March 14, 2007):

The SEO Halo Effect
All Links Matter
The Benefits of Black Hat Techniques
It’s All About Me Advertising
Automatic SEO
Clinically Proven SEO
Why You Need Outbound Links

source: seoforgoogle.com

SEO

It’s the new American dream. Your website appears in a top spot on Google for your chosen keyword. Next thing you know, orders start coming in faster than you can handle, and you are rolling in the money. If only it were so easy, right?

Well,

It can be done. I’ve done it many times in many different industries. There is no secret, but rather, it’s just knowing what to do. I’ve made just about every mistake one can make with a website, but I learned from every setback. If you were only allowed to do one thing to get ranked for your site in Google, without a doubt, all you’d need to do is get links for your site.

Yes, there are many other factors involved in getting your site to a top position. But this is the most powerful way as of this writing to get a top spot in Google. It’s not just enough to have links pointing to your site, but you need to have your keyword “anchor linked” to your site. Anchor linking is when you use your keyword phrase as the click-able text for a link. So, instead of saying “Click Here”, you would use “Widgets” as the link text.

Now, another point of consideration is determining what keyword/phrase you want to use to get your site found. Most times, people impulsively choose a one word phrase. While this would be a great way to bring traffic to your site, would it bring targeted traffic, with people looking specifically for your product or service? Most times when people type in a one letter keyphrase, they are in the beginning of their search.

They may type in “Shoes”, but are really looking for “Running Shoes”. So, if you have a top ranking for shoes, do you serve that user’s needs? Maybe, but they may also be looking for dress, casual, Women’s, Men’s, Children’s, athletic, girl’s, boy’s, etc. This is why when you begin to optimize your site, you should focus on more targeted keyword phrases.

Suppose you sell a certain brand name of dress shoes. For this example, we’ll call the famous brand XYZ. So, by getting anchor links as “XYZ Dress Shoes”, you are already eliminating those users who are looking for another brand or line of shoe. Next, you need to make sure that the page that gets linked contains the on the page content with “XYZ Dress Shoes”. If you would link to a page without relevant content, Google would view this link as possible spam, or more appropriately, irrelevant content.

Now, once you have compiled your list of keywords, you need to see which one are searched on the most. The best tool for this is WordTracker, and it is worth the tiny fee you need to pay to have access for one day. There are also free tools online that you can use, but WordTracker will give you the most accurate results.

Once you have run through your list of all your keywords, the obvious choice is to pick the ones with the highest amount of searches (and content relevant to your site!). The next step is to then begin the process of a link campaign. Now, I can already hear you complaining about doing a link exchange. This is only 1/3 of your campaign. The ideal method is to not only engage in a reciprocal link exchange, but to also engage in strategic linking.

Strategic linking is when you get a link to your site without having to return the favor. What’s the best way to do this? Write an article just like this one. If I get one website to use this article and have it point to my site, I’ve just created another link to my site. Pretty easy, eh?

Since you have now engaged in a linking campaign, you should expect to see results in Google in as little as 4 days, and as far as 6 months. All of this is determined by where your links are coming from, and the popularity of the site from which the link came. Next, you need to get as many links as you can pointing to your site with your popular keyword phrase anchor linked to your site.

As I mentioned before, there many other factors that will only enhance your rankings in Google, but the implementation of a link campaign is the strongest method to get your site to a top ranking!

source: seoforgoogle.com

SEO