SEO Book

Is it OK to buy links?

2005-08-09T04:54:00.000-07:00

The subject of buying one-way links is a controversial subject at best. A lot has been said about it in the past, especially now after Google’s Florida and Austin updates. Depending to whom you talk to, you are likely to get opinions that range from “don’t do it” to “it’s now OK to do it”. So what’s the average site owner or small business to do?

Look at it from a business perspective point of view. If some search engines look at it from an advertiser’s point of view, then maybe that’s how you should look at it too. In the last two months, we have had (and continue to have) an increasingly higher number of clients and people that contact us to buy one-way links from other sites.

So the question is:
Should you do it? Is it ‘safe’ to do it in this conjecture?

Back to the basics of linking
Before I answer that question, let’s go back to basics. Why do we need links in the first place? Can’t we just have a site with no outside links that will still rank high? Here’s how Google ranks Web pages: Google ranks websites on their value of merit. One of Google’s algorithms that does just that is the Page Rank™ algorithm, named after one of Google co-founders, Larry Page. In its most basic form, Page Rank™ calculates the number and quality of incoming links to any given website.

As far as Google is concerned, a link from site A to site B is viewed as a ‘vote’, which means that if 300 sites link to site B, that site must be more important than if it only had 5 or 10 inbound links.

As a result, the more links you would have pointing to a given website, usually the better that site would be perceived in terms of quality of content. Since the past 3 or 4 years, a great number of webmasters and site owners have participated in what is called reciprocal link exchanges, which, as the name implies, does just that: “I will put a link from my site to your site, if you do the same”.

In essence, there is nothing wrong with that. However, since Google’s two major last updates, in November and January (Florida and Austin), reciprocal links don’t seem to have the same impact as they once had, at least not from a ranking point of view.

Since then, it would appear that one-way links (from A to B and not B to A also) are receiving better rankings. Which reopens the debate on “are buying links ethical?”

Look at this analogy: if a website or portal carries a number of advertisers with links on its homepage, all pointing directly to those sites, isn’t this link buying? It sure looks like it to me. Viewed in this manner, then I think its safe to say that buying links is now an acceptable practice in the Internet age.

So how do we go about doing it?You should approach the subject of buying links the same way you would approach any other business proposal or transaction: with careful planning and attention to the small details. You should sit down and carefully plan the way you will do this. You probably have some sites in mind you would like to contact in an effort to see if they will ‘lease’ you some links.

I prefer the term link leasing instead of buying since, in these uncertain economic times, nothing lasts forever. A few years ago, what would have happened if you purchased a ‘lifetime link’ from a site like Enron? It’s pretty clear today that this would have been a bad idea.

In the last few weeks, I have been approached by a number of companies with websites that said they might be interested in leasing some links. Some of them have a PR (Page Rank™) value of between 4 to 6, with a few of PR 7. I personally believe that this trend will most likely increase.

How much should you be expected to pay?This is obviously a tricky question. All I can say is a PR with a value of 4 is worth less than a site with a value of PR 5, and even less then a site with a value of 6. That said, the asking ‘monthly leasing’ quotes I received from some of these companies range between a low of about $ 5 a month to a high of about $ 15 for a PR 4.

In the PR 5 category, costs ranged between $ 10 at the low end to about $ 25 at the highest. In the PR 6 and 7 categories, they were ‘all over the map’, with ranges between $ 30 to $ 45 for a PR 6, all the way up to $ 350 for a PR 7. PR 8's are usually hard to find at a decent price, ie less than $ 650 a month.

Note that these figures are in US currency and that prices are based monthly and can vary widely. I’ve even heard (but I don’t believe it) that some sites with PR of 4 are almost giving them away. Again, it is buyer beware. You should obviously do your due diligence on any of this before you decide to go with one company or another.

Also, links are not created equal. A link from a site dealing in real estate pointing to another site in real estate will be given higher ranking privileges, not just by Google but also by some of the other search engines. If your business is involved in home renovations and improvements, try leasing links from sites that will help your users, such as home decorators, lumber yards and building contractors.

ConclusionLeasing monthly links should be viewed as any other business function. You do it to increase traffic at your site and to help your users, not just to increase your rankings with the search engines. Having targeted traffic is not all. You also need a site that converts well.

Converting well means that visitors become buyers and eventually repeat customers that come back to your website time and time again. If leasing links from high-ranking sites in your industry does it for you, you have accomplished one of your goals: to increase the size of your business, at the same time making it become more successful, independently of how search engines will rank your site.

Since we know that the number and the quality of inbound links to a site helps it in its rankings, leasing links thus accomplishes two main functions for businesses that engage in it. One good link leasing broker I have been doing business with and that offers reasonable pricing is Link Rent. They have been providing quality links since December 2002 and can offer turnkey links, usually within a business day.

What you need to know about Pay for Placement

2005-08-09T03:35:00.000-07:00

In the never-ending race to online supremacy, if you wish to outbid some of your competitors in obtaining higher keyword positions, you should have a good look at Pay for Placement (PFP) ad programs.

In contrast with other online marketing programs, PFP is more like an ongoing auction, where your competing advertisers, not the search engines, fix the going keyword bid rate.

The nice thing about Pay for Placement is that it’s fairly easy to manage and it is usually affordable for many small online businesses. In a matter of a few days, you can get targeted prospects at your site.

However, if you are considering PFP for your site, there are a few critical details you should know. One of them is the importance of managing your campaigns effectively.
Let’s look at the advantages and the drawbacks of PFP online ad programs, and how you can steer your way around them.

Advantages of Pay for PlacementOne of the strongest advantages of Pay for Placement programs is that they are one of the fastest and easiest ways for online ad agencies and advertisers to obtain a Number One position on many of the biggest search engines in use today.

Your site listings can appear within days on the PFP search engine you purchased clicks from. The same is true for their distribution partner sites.

You could summarize the main benefit of PFP to one sentence: Pay for Performance search engines can almost guarantee the best deliverable: targeted traffic.

Here are Pay for Placement’s six most important advantages:

1. Ease in optimizing your ad copy and text
2. Hassle-free campaign launch and management
3. Ability to launch new campaigns at a click of the mouse
4. Generally inexpensive overall costs of your PFP programs
5. Contextual advertising enables better, more flexible visibility
6. Convenience of reaching a far greater and more affluent audience

Disadvantages and drawbacks of Pay for PlacementWith the added features and benefits of PFP, you also need to know some of their basic limitations. Pay for Placement is getting very popular, so a lot of companies are now using them, which, depending on your specific industry, might prove somewhat challenging. The biggest disadvantage to PFP is the potential of online advertisers bidding on non-relevant terms, since it’s relatively easy for them to bid on hundreds of prime-time keyword positions.

If Internet users suddenly see a large amount of irrelevant search results pages that have nothing to do with their search, they might leave that search engine for another. This is exactly what PFP search engines are trying to avoid at all costs.

Since all Pay for Performance search engines are only interested in quality and relevant search results, many of them refuse to implement ad listings and submissions that will irritate their users.

For instance, Overture rejects close to 30% of keyword applications or ad listings that are submitted to them over a period of time.

To prevent wasting your time or money when you submit your listings, you should keep the above point in mind.

There are also five more disadvantages or drawbacks of using PFP:

1. Little or no control over search distribution partners
2. Permanent monitoring and management required at all times
3. Close scrutiny and detection needed in avoiding bid gaps
4. Unpopular ad listings could be removed or deleted
5. Competitors might adjust their ads or their bids every hour

ConclusionMake no mistake—PFP needs to be managed closely at all times, if you want to get the best and the highest ROI from all your campaigns. However, some of the advantages of PFP could far outweigh some of its disadvantages. You should carefully evaluate each option separately.

Another strong point for Pay for Performance is that if your site isn’t optimized for its organic (or generic) keywords, this will be less of an issue with PFP.

Through PFP and paid placement, you can literally obtain a Number One position, usually within days, for the keywords or key phrases you have chosen.

Pay for Placement should be one of the first tools that search engine marketing professionals and online advertisers should consider, since it is usually easy and fast to implement.

Once you get used to this, you might even wished you had started a PFP program a long time before, and in all your search engine marketing programs.

Creating Pay Per Click Accounts

2005-08-03T07:21:00.000-07:00

There are several steps to effectively creating a pay per click search engine account. Each step is very important and the value of each should not be overlooked.

Keyword Research
This is the foundation of any pay per click account. Research keywords specific to your website. The more specific the keyword, the higher chance it has of converting.

Titles and Descriptions
The amount of characters you are allowed to use throughout the different pay per click search engines varies. The way they are displayed throughout their network of search engines differs. Creating tightly written creative ads can be a challenge.

Keyword Landing Page
Not all pages are created equal. The more targeted your page is to the particular keyword, the higher a chance of converting that visitor into a paying customer. The ease in which a visitor can go from your landing page to buying a product is a key element.

Bidding on Pay Per Click Keywords
It is easy to get overwhelmed by the number of bidding strategies and all the rules that apply.
Bidding Positions
● Premium
● Middle
● Low

The various bidding strategies - From Gap bidding, minimum prices, maximum bids, and position bidding. Learn how to set a rules based pay per click bidding system.

Dealing with over bidders - Techniques to handle people who overbid in their pay per click accounts.

Value of Lifetime Customers
The value of a lifetime customer is often overlooked in pay per click advertising. If your average visitor buys a product from your site three times a year, and you only pay for their initial visit, your pay per click advertising might be paying off much more than your conversion rates suggest. This article contains information about Lifetime Customers.

Pay Per Click Tracking Problems
Not all conversions are properly tracked. Orders placed through 800 numbers and other means might not be credited to your pay per click ROI. Learn why your pay per click marketing endeavors might be making more money than you thought in our Conversion Tracking Problems article.

Tracking Conversions
Are your pay per click endeavors converting into sales? Learn about various conversion tracking techniques and how they can affect your bidding process.
Tracking Conversion Techniques
● Cookie Tracking
● Java Tracking
● Image Tracking
● Pay Per Click Tracking Software

Return on Investment Tracking
The bottom line of any advertising campaign is: Are you making money? Learn about return on investment tracking techniques and how to implement and understand your own tracking system. It is recommended to read Tracking Conversions (above) before continuing to this article.

Expanding your Pay Per Click Advertising
Location. Location. Location. This is a common term associated with real estate. Buying pay per click ads is buying internet exposure. Learn how to determine which pay per click search engines are right for you.

Hansons PPC Services

Value of a Lifetime Customer

2005-08-03T07:16:00.000-07:00

The goal of many websites is not to make just one sale to an individual, but to make several over the course of each year. There are many techniques to improve customer communication and loyalty, but the first goal is to get the customer to your website in the first place.

This is where pay per click marketing can help you. As your website is seen when the user conducts a search, you are targeting potential customers at the search level when they are looking for products. One of the most overlooked values in determining pay per click ROI is the value of a lifetime customer.

If you measure your pay per click ROI based only on the purchases directly from a search engine, your pay per click accounts will not get credit with these repeat customers.
If your average customer makes three purchases a year, and spends $x amount for each purchase, then to properly calculate your pay per click ROI you need to include the repeat customer values.

It is often profitable, if you have many repeat customers, to run a slightly negative or break even pay per click campaign as only the first time a customer buys from you will you be charged. If they bookmark your site and return directly to you without going through a pay per click search engine, then the initial advertising has earned you additional revenue while not being the direct referrer and being credited with the sale. By running such campaigns, you can also afford higher bids, which in turns gives you a higher pay per click position, which then leads to more overall customers. The more customers, the higher internet visibility you will also achieve. Some customers will tell their friends about your site, and they will go directly to your site without having gone through a pay per click search engine. Again, the initial advertising helped you recruit this customer without being the direct referrer.

Lifetime customers can dramatically increase the profitability of a website. Do not overlook recruiting lifetime customers, or getting them from a search engine to your website.

Pay Per Click Bid Management Strategies Part II

2005-07-25T03:37:00.000-07:00

Maximizing your PPC marketing campaign by Richard Ball

About the Author:
Richard Ball founded Apogee Web Consulting LLC, a full service search engine marketing firm, to help businesses succeed on the Internet. Prior to starting the company, Richard was a software developer for America Online. Apogee Web Consulting LLC provides strategic internet marketing services including pay per click advertising, search engine optimization and shopping search engine submission. All search engine marketing services begin with a foundation of keyword research and web log analysis.

Overture PPC bid management strategy example
Looking at a search for "nike shoes" on search.yahoo.com, note that there are three full ads across the top and two at the bottom. Down the right hand side are eight brief ads. Look carefully and notice that spots No. 1-3 are at the top, No. 4-5 at the bottom and spots 4-11 down the right side. If you can afford the 34 cents to be in spot 3, do so. Being at the top of the page is very valuable. However, it's likely not worth crossing the bid gap to be in spots 1 or 2. If you cannot afford spot 3, notice that being in spots 4 or 5 is twice the bang for your buck. These ads show at the bottom of the page in full form and at the top right of the page in brief form. This is very valuable real estate. This would cost 34 and 33 cents, respectively. Since there is no bid gap, pay for spot 4.

If that is still above your max CPC, note the remaining bid gaps. For 17 cents, you'd be in spot 6 and still above the fold, albeit in a brief ad on the right hand side of the page. Spot 8 can be had for 12 cents, spot 10 for 11 cents and bidding the current minimum, 10 cents, earns spot 15. Clearly, bidding 2 cents above the minimum achieves a ranking jump, from spot 15 to spot 8. It is rarely worth bidding the minimum. At the top end of the bidding range, you'll find bid gaps. At the bottom end, you'll find minor increases in bids often result in major ranking jumps.

Google PPC bid management strategy thoughts
Whether you're bidding solely on Google or also on Overture, use the Overture bids for your keyword phrases as the "market value" for the bids. This market value could be the top bid itself or an average of the top N bids where you choose N. Choosing N in the range 3-8 is useful. If you can afford the market value you derive, use it. Otherwise, use your max CPC. That max CPC could be set for an entire ad group or for a specific keyword phrase. Track the ad carefully for a few days. Assuming the bid is high enough and generates sufficient traffic, you should have a good idea of the CTR within a few days. If the CTR is good (at least 2\%), lower the CPC and see where your ad falls in the search results. If the CTR is sufficient, lowering the CPC should not result in your ad dropping many positions.

Run a query you've seen in the web server logs and note the position of your ad. Drop the CPC by 10\%, wait a few minutes, and run the search query again. Repeat until you remain in the top P positions where P is your goal, perhaps in the 3-5 range. Recognize that keyword bidding is a fluid situation and that Google updates that usually take seconds can sometimes take minutes. Be patient. Some would argue that continually running the same query will penalize you as your CTR will be lowered due to more views but no clicks. For queries with reasonable volume, a handful of searches is inconsequential. Plus, unless you're clicking on your competitors' ads, the denominator in the CTR calculation is increasing across all ads. If your ad's CTR is very good (better than 7\%) you will likely be able to drop your CPC in half without a noticeable drop in ranking.

If your ad group has many keyword phrases and there's a divergence in CTR, consider creating multiple ad groups. The more tightly focused your ad group is, the lower your CPC will ultimately become as you weed out poorly performing keyword phrases. Adding negative keywords to each Google ad group will also help increase the CTR and thereby allow you to reduce your CPC.

Conclusion
Before embarking on a PPC advertising campaign, determine the maximum CPC you're willing to pay for a given keyword phrase. Recognize that this value will change over time depending on your ad conversion rate, profit margins, advertising budget and other factors. Adopt different bidding strategies for Google and Overture. On either search engine, don't waste money bidding for the top spot. Examine the paid traffic coming to your site and tailor your bids to the search engines bringing the bulk of the traffic. In doing so, take advantage of bid gaps to save money.

Directories and Your SEO Campaign

2005-07-25T01:27:00.000-07:00

Love 'Em or Hate 'Em by David Wallace

About the Author: David Wallace is CEO and founder of SearchRank, an original search engine optimization and marketing firm founded in 1997 and based in Phoenix, Arizona. They provide a full spectrum of search engine marketing services including keyword analysis, organic search engine optimization, link popularity enhancement, pay per click management, search engine friendly web design and ongoing campaign maintenance.

Web directories have been with us since the early 90’s when the Internet really began to take off with the birth of the World Wide Web (the graphical portion of the Internet). Yahoo! was one of the original directories and although they have now evolved into a full blown search engine, they still have their directory in place. In the last year we have seen what seems to be an invasion of new directories popping up all over the place. This leads one to question whether directories are still useful. Do people still use them to search? Can they provide any marketing benefit to your web site? These are some of the questions we will explore in this article.

Web Directory vs. Search Engine
First, a quick refresher on the difference between directories and search engines. Directories differ from standard search engines in that a search engine will query a database of indexed websites before it produces results, and a directory is a database of websites that has been arranged by subject or category. Most directories have search functionality but the websites are still listed in specific categories.
As far as inclusion of your web site, typically a search engine will find your site on its own, whereas with a directory you have to submit your site for inclusion. Sometimes the process of getting into a search engine's index results from their crawler finding your site listed in a directory.

Do People Search By Directories Anymore?
Should we worry about making sure our sites are listed in directories? Do people still use directories or go straight to a search engine such as Google to find what they are looking for? To answer this question, I went to my server logs, which track all activity on my sites. As I expected, the majority of traffic coming to my web sites was from search engines, but to my surprise I did see some directory referrals as well. They were not in great numbers, but all the same they were still there.

Therefore I would say directory inclusion, at least in the free directories, is important because they may send you some traffic. It may not be in great quantities but with the ever-increasing competition on the web, I'll take traffic from wherever I can get it. Besides, if it is free, why not take a few moments to submit your site?

The Disappearance of Free Directories
Free directories are becoming scarcer all the time. Most are now requiring some kind of fee for inclusion; whether that is a one-time fee or some kind of recurring fee. We have to ask ourselves then if it is worthwhile to pay these fees or should we just forget about paid directories altogether?
For the little bit of traffic they may bring you I would say no. However, there are additional benefits a good directory can provide. The first benefit would be to brand new sites that are trying to gain inclusion into the indices of the top search engines and the second is that they will contribute to your site's overall link popularity score.

Directories Help New Sites
It is often asked if one should submit their site to Google, Yahoo! and MSN, all of which have pages where you can submit your URL. However this is not the most effective way to get a brand new site into these top engines. In fact, I personally believe that the only reason these three engines have an “Add URL” page at all is simply so they will not get bombarded with email requests for inclusion. Ask Jeeves doesn't even have an “Add URL” page. Neither does the smaller search engine WiseNut.

What is one of the most effective ways then to get listed in the top search engines? Get listed in one of the top directories. All the major engines I mentioned beforehand crawl directories and when they crawl them, then find new web sites to add to their index. This is their preferred way of finding new sites.

So if you have a brand new web site, submit it to some of the top directories, both free and paid and you will find that your site will soon afterwards be included in the top search engines as well.

Directories Help Build Link Popularity.
What is this "link popularity" anyway, and why do you need it? Link popularity is a score that is accessed to a web site based on how many external and internal links are pointing or linking to any particular page. External links would include those that come from any other web site other than your own whereas internal links would be those that come from within the same domain name. Link popularity is also based not only on the "quantity" of links but the "quality" of those links as well. Therefore to have a good link popularity score, it is not necessarily required to have a large number of links pointing to your site but rather a good number of quality links.

This is where directories can help. Many of the top directories that I will mention shortly have good link popularity that can be passed on to your site. They also have specific category pages that are related to the nature of your site. In a day and age where link popularity is becoming more important in order to be found in a search engine, directories are a fairly inexpensive way to increase your own link popularity.

"Can't I just ask other web site owners to link to my site or exchange links with me?" Sure you can but this can be a very tedious and cumbersome task. First there is the time-consuming task of finding other quality and relevant sites to seek links from. Then there is the reality that most link requests go unanswered. I get tons every month that are simply deleted. "But if I build a great site, won't others naturally link to it?" Maybe they will but how does one get to the point where they have a great site and to where it is "out there" so people can find it? A lot of hard work!

Therefore I firmly believe that directories can be foundational for building link popularity and a very important reason why a web site owner should make sure they are included in them. It is a step in your marketing that you can easily control. It is a task that can be completed quickly and then you can move on to other things.

Yahoo Directory Review

2005-07-22T05:04:00.000-07:00

In the old days, the Yahoo directory was the key place to be to get noticed on the internet. A listing in the Yahoo directory influenced your rankings in Yahoo's search results. When Yahoo started using Google's search results, this stopped. Currently, the Yahoo directory is just another directory link like any other large portal might offer.
Is it worth $299 per year? That depends upon your business' need for branding recognition and prestige. It is a bit expensive purely for the traffic and link popularity that it offers.

However, Yahoo bought out several major search engine companies and is now driving its own search results. Yahoo now displays titles and descriptions from the Yahoo directory for search results featuring home pages of sites listed in the directory. Whether or not this is an improvement over the title and description of the page itself is debatable. Should Yahoo ever decide to include directory listings in its search engine ranking algorithms again, the value of a listing will be justifiable for just about any business.

References:

Internet marketing plans for Google, Yahoo Placement.
Better search engine optimization service can give your site a boost in SEs.

Google Adword Review

2005-07-22T03:45:00.000-07:00

Google AdWords is quickly becoming the dominant PPC channel for the internet. There are several reasons for this:

Syndication - Google, AOL, Ask Jeeves, Netscape and others. Google Adwords has an impressive reach. Google does not syndicate ads to scumware providers.
Syndication Options - Google offers you the option to exclude syndication of your ads to its syndication partners if you prefer to list your ads only on Google.
Control - The AdWords system allows you a lot of flexibility in specifying what keywords and keyphrases you wish to bid on. You may add negative keywords to exclude terms as well. You have a lot of control to ensure that your ads are only displayed to highly targeted traffic.
Reporting - Google offers excellent reporting capabilities to help track your PPC campaign(s).
Fraud Filters - Google does a good job of preventing click fraud from draining your monthly advertising budget.

Getting started with AdWords is pretty straightforward, but there are some "rookie mistakes" that can cost you a lot of money. Most advertisers don't need to go after the #1 listing position for the most expensive keyphrase. This can be an expensive lesson to learn. AdWords is capable of driving a ton of traffic very quickly. If you are considering advertising with Google AdWords, Andrew Goodman's 21 Ways to Maximize ROI on Google AdWords offers excellent and recommended advice.

Measuring Up also offers a free AdWords Keyword Permutation Generator. It generates bounded keyword permutations for pasting into AdWords keyword lists.

More on Internet Marketing Plans and Search Engine Optimization techniques.

Canadian SEOs

2005-05-24T02:16:00.000-07:00

SilverLion mainly offers search engine optimization, internet marketing and web development services in Canada, UK and USA. We specialise in helping businesses to utilise internet based technologies to grow their businesses.

Silver Lion

Search Engine Optimization Canada

Internet Marketing Services Canada

Web Development Services Canada

Link Popularity And Google

2005-04-12T02:02:00.000-07:00

Link popularity has become a buzzword in the SEO industry lately. Everyone is desperate to exchange links and increase their link popularity especially after Google announced it was one of the single most important factor that affected rankings.

So does it work? I decided to try it out a few months back, and I must say... it did wonders. This site was an e-commerce site and hence had hardly any spider friendly static pages with lots of spiderfood and text. I was given some space to add optimized text to but that’s about it. This is what I did - created around 10 static pages and a links page.

After optimization and an initial round of submissions to the directories and search engines, I surfed around looking for suitable link partners. My criteria : Their links page should be indexed by Google and their website should have a decent pagerank.

I got around 50 links and then I waited... I needed Google to pick up these links. And luckily it did. Next months refresh I had them incoming and I had the site in the top 10 for all but one of the 12 keywords I was aiming for, the 12th keyword was #11 on Google. So 2 months after the site was first added to Google, 1 month after optimization and link exchange, the site was right up there.

So what are the steps you need to follow to get most out of your link exchange programs? Look for the site with a good pagerank. Make sure their links page is indexed by Google Use text links and no banners. Make sure your link text consists of your keyword. Optimize your website. Link popularity without optimization does not make sense. Be patient - Link popularity sometimes takes more than 1 refresh to show results.

A basket of keywords? The Importance of Analysis...

2005-04-12T01:56:00.000-07:00

A search engine optimization campaign is often said to be successful if a website ranks for a perticular number of keywords - SEO consultants like to give a 10 keyword or a 20 keyword guarentee. But is it enough to just get top 10 rankings for a client when you know there is a vast sea of keywords left untapped out there?

I believe it is not. Why target just a few keywords when an indepth analysis would show that there are atleast 100 relevant keywords which generate traffic, most of which would be relatively easy to optimize for.

In my personal opinion a good search engine optimization campaign revolves around selecting varied but relevant keywords and phrases and analyzing them for traffic and competition. Once that has been done, a good SEO campaign would include a plan to steadily but surely rank as many keywords as possible in the search engines over time. Thus helping the client benefit the most out of his search engine optimization campaign.

Keyword analysis has to be a combination of client interaction, study of optimized competitor sites and estimates offered by independant keyword selection tools and PPC engines.

Another very important part that is forgotten or just not paid to much attention to is analysis once the keywords are ranked. Analysis does'nt just include a monthly traffic report or a ranking report, but includes analysis of the percentage of conversions, sales made or leads generated, for the traffic that has been directed to the website.

A conversion report over time should be the benchmark which helps seperate the good keywords from the rest of the pack... keyword that inspite of getting traffic don't seem to convert into leads or sales.

Finally it is this tweaking and enhancement of keywords derived from good and indepth stats and analysis, which is the difference between a seemingly good search engine optimization campaign and a really successful one.

Canadian Blogs @ blogscanada.ca

2005-04-11T03:39:00.000-07:00

alt="Listed on BlogsCanada"
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BRITBLOG .COM

2005-04-11T03:23:00.000-07:00

LS Blogs

2005-04-11T03:06:00.000-07:00

Yahoos' Overture Site Match Inclusion Program

2005-04-09T07:46:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back Yahoo switched over from Google to Inktomi. The current results on Yahoo are being served from the Inktomi database. However they are not exactly similar to the MSN results, which are also from the same Inktomi dbase. This is because Yahoo seems to be applying their own algorithm in order to generate what they think are better quality results.

Not many are aware that along with Inktomi and Overture, Yahoo also bought over Altavista and Alltheweb.

Yahoo buying over Inktomi and others has meant changes in the way paid submissions will now work.

Subscribers who have previously paid Inktomi for express inclusion (incusion in 48 hours + crawling every 48 hours) will continue to get traffic from the old Inktomi network plus the Yahoo.com network at the moment. However with the launching of a parallel paid program (called Overture site match) Yahoo has announced that after April 15th, subscribers would have to pay an additional fee to enjoy staying in the Yahoo index.

What this means is that the money paid till not to Inktomi would only get subscribers traffic from Hotbot and at present, MSN. However to get traffic from Yahoo, Alltheweb & Altavista, users would have to use Overture site match.

The Overture sitemap website (http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/ays/sm.jhtml) lists the cost of inclusion as follows -

URL Submission (non-refundable annual fee, per domain)
First URL: $49
Next 2-10 URLs: $29 each
11th URL and beyond: $10 each

As with Inktomi, Participation in Yahoo!'s paid inclusion program does not guarantee rank in the search results. URLs are ranked in search results in the same way as all other URLs from the free crawl. The key drivers of ranking are keyword-specific relevance and site quality, as assessed by their regular search relevance algorithms with input from the quality review process.

However there is a catch -
There will be a cost per click associated with each listing.

What Yahoo has done is added the looksmart model which make the website owner pay a certain fixed amount for every click that they receive. The cost, according to the Yahoo sitesearch web page (http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/ays/sm_pricing.jhtml) has been fixed in 2 levels. $0.15 for websites belonging to the fields of Adult Automotive Books Computers & Software Dating Education & Career Jewelry & Watches Music & Video Office Other Reference Sports & Outdoors Toys & Baby Equipment & $0.15 for websites in the foll fields - Apparel Electronics Financial Services Flowers, Gifts & Registry Health, Beauty & Personal Care Home & Garden Professional Services Real Estate Telecom & Web Services Travel.

It has also been mentioned, that sites currently performing well and not submitted via the Inktomi paid submission do not need to worry about their ranking. These sites would not be required to use the new service and would continue to rank at their current positions.

Internet marketing and search engine ranking services in Canada, UK and USA

Google AdWords - A Powerful tool for higher visibility on Google!

2005-04-09T07:41:00.000-07:00

Since the inception of Google we have been used to hearing them yell that the bidding model of Overture may lead to inaccurate results. However Google has followed suit by adopting a AdWords policy. However hats off to Google, for keeping their normal search results INTACT & following their principle of delivering results which are free from any bids.

So what is the AdWords program? Well, go to Google & search for something you want to buy or a service you require. See a few boxes on the right hand side? This is the AdWords Program.

How does it work??? Well, for the first step, identify your keywords & potential buyers. Then go to Google & create one or more advert's for every keyword that you have selected. Give a specific limit to spending on that keyword.

Every time a surfer searches using your keyword, your ad is displayed on the right side. Pricing for AdWords is based on the position in which they're shown. Google positions your ad based on how many users click on it over time. Current rates are $15, $12, $10 (per thousand ads shown) for positions 1, 2, and 3 respectively, and $8 per thousand for positions 4 and beyond.

Now for those of you who think that the Cost Per Click (CPC) program of Overture is a better option... DON'T FRET!!! Check out Google's new AdWords Select. With cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, you pay only when a customer clicks on your ad, regardless of how many times it's shown. As Overture, the minimum you pay here is 5 cents. However the difference here is that Google ensures that the gap between your bid & the nearest competitors is not more than 1cent for higher exposures. You simply set the same maximum cost-per-click for all your keywords, and the AdWords discounter will charge you the lowest cost-per-click necessary to maintain your position for each keyword.

Google seems to have filtered out Overture's drawbacks, the most significant being closing the gap between 2 bids, thus ensuring the most efficient use of your money. Other features of AdWords Select include, complete clickthrough rate reports, Scheduling start & end dates for a campaign, specifying maximum limit per day, editing text in the ads, etc.

So which one to go for... Overture or Google??? Your call!!! I'd say both are BIG & both are important. So whichever engine you decide to concentrate on remember the golden rule, "Choose SPECIFIC TARGETTED keywords" & not general terms, which will ensure that you get quality traffic & help you turn visitors into clients.

Hope you enjoyed reading this article... Look forward to hearing from you (for your comments as well as submission projects). So until next time... Happy Submitting!!!

Canadian company of Search Engine Placement

feedmap - Blogs

2005-04-08T02:29:00.000-07:00

1000 SEARCH ENGINES FOR $5!!!

2005-04-04T02:05:00.000-07:00

How many times have you got an email saying that your website will be listed in 1000 search engines for $50? Have you ever subscribed to it? And if you have actually subscribed for it, please let me know if it ever worked... cause it has never worked for me. I have spent endless hours searching for 1 service that actually gives results for $5, but alas found none.

The other advert that used to fascinate me is "Automatic programs for search engine submissions". Most of them appear quite cheap and promise listing in around 1000-2000 engines. After you buy them you will realize most of these engines are ones you haven't even heard of and probably get lesser hits than your web site.

So why do these people promise a listing? Well, what they promise most of the time is a listing in engines and not a top listing. Also what they guarantee is a top listing in unknown engines... which for all you know don't even get visitors. Listings in top engines like google, AltaVista, etc require much more than an auto submission done by using the programs available or by using these run of the mill $5 services. Most search engine specialists will tell you subscribing to these services wont show you an improvement of even 10%.

So what do you do to get your site a good listing on a search engine? After all according to statistics more than 85% of the traffic an average site generates comes from search engines. Below I have listed 10 basic methods which will help you get listed, or improve your listing in most major search engines.

1. Concentrate on the top 20 engines. The rest don't matter.

2. Optimize your meta tags & meta description. Identify the most important words or search quotes used by your potential clients and add them to your meta tags & description. Don't add general unrelated terms in your tags. It is considered spamming. Your description should also include the important key words.

3. Manually go to each engine, read policies & submit your URL. Most engines require only your main page to be submitted, however for better listing, some engines like AltaVista allow multiple pages to be submitted. However most engines have a limit for the number of pages to be submitted. Don't submit more than the limit allows you to... it is considered SPAM.

4. Use select doorway pages. Doorway pages are pages, which are not a part of the primary site but are later added primarily to improve listings in search engines. These are useful especially if your primary site contains a lot of Flash pages, which cannot be rendered by search engine spiders. Be selective in using doorway pages, and please see to it that the doorway pages have useful not just a garble of keywords and a link taking the surfer away. If found such pages are blacklisted by most searchengines.

5. Take time out to study your competition. Make a note of various search terms which result in their site popping up. Make sure to include these in your pages which optimizing them for engines.

6. Have a robots.txt file in the root directory. This is the first file most search engine spiders look for. This file specifies which robots are unwelcome and which directories, if any, are out of bounds for robots.

7. While putting in invisible text at the end of pages or stuffing a page with keywords and providing auto redirect to other pages helped in the PAST it is NOT true anymore. While some important search engines can detect invisible text by matching the page background colour with the text colour and they tend to blacklist the page, nearly ALL engines can recognize aut redirect tags & trust me having them will NOT improve your rankings.

8. Some search engine specialists suggest cloaking as a good option for improving engine rankings. Yes if done CAREFULLY & skillfully it will help boost rankings; personally I am against it on the grounds of it not only being unethical but also very dangerous. Search engines DISLIKE cloaking.

9. Exchange links with other sites. Having more sites linking to you will definitely boost your rankings as many of the new generation algorithms which engines use count the number of incoming links to the site.

10. Review & carefully follow ALL the rules before submitting to web directories, especially YAHOO & DMOZ. Yahoo is arguably the single most important directory to be listed in and certainly one of the toughest. Yahoo charges an annual fee for a listing in most commercial categories and that too doesn't guarantee a listing. Hence, READ & CAREFULLY FOLLOW every rule that is mentioned on the yahoo submission page before you submit to Yahoo.

So these are my 10 golden guidelines for search engine submissions. Follow them before you submit to engines and be sure to drop me a mail or visit our website http://www.convonix.com if you would like us to optimize your site for you.

Web future in Pakistan

2005-04-01T02:07:00.000-08:00

Read about future of web development and search engine marketing in Pakistan. Where the Pakistani companies are going in the field of Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization.

Search engine optimization & submission strategies - a beginners guide

2005-03-28T05:08:00.000-08:00

Way back in 2000, the thought of paying to have sites ranked on a search engine or included in a directory was laughable; very few companies were asking for payment. But as rampant commercialism of the World Wide Web has taken hold, more and more search engines now require payment for listing or ranking - and it's not just the big boys of the search engine world; many of the less popular engines also use PFI (pay for inclusion).

Many engines require that you bid for top position on an ongoing pay-per-view or pay-per-click basis. Other companies now require payments of as much as US$299 to to have them review your site for inclusion, and then pay an annual fee if your site is accepted. Others will require payment to index your pages, and usually there's a fee per page that you want included - and then you still need to compete for rankings.

In some cases, there is no guarantee that you will be listed once you have paid initial fees, or how much traffic you will receive as you'll be in competition with other sites.

Search engine optimization strategies, techniques and principles become even more important with some paid listings, otherwise you'll be simply burning good money. Maintaining paid rankings can be a time consuming and expensive process.

These rankings/listings models present a number of challenges to those web site owners on a limited budget as the costs are out of reach for many and the competition for free listings grows more fierce each day.

It's well known that you need to be listed in the first 3 pages of results, otherwise it's a waste of time. If paid listings are taking up the first 5 or 10 results, the competition for the residual prime placements is huge.

Optimize your rankings while you can
Some web masters may tell you that as the search engine landscape is rapidly changing, optimization is a waste of time. Nothing could be further from the truth!

The majority of our new visitors come from free listings on search engines, but given the fact that the industry is changing, we have been experimenting with paid listings with some excellent results as well. In the evolving world of search engines, spreading your risk is a very good idea. To depend on any one source of traffic is a very risky strategy.

In relation to our free listings, we spend a great deal of time and effort to boost rankings and compete with the "big guys". This work also assists with our paid listings where we still need to compete in terms of rankings.

The effort has paid off and we receive many thousands of visitors a week. There's nothing more satisfying than achieving higher rankings on important keyphrases over a company with a multi-million dollar advertising budget ;0)

It's of crucial importance to improve search engine free listings while you can. More and more companies will turn to the paid model, and at times to the total exclusion of everyone else. In these situations, as has been the case with the Yahoo directory, listings already included in their own database may be "grandfathered". This means that current listings stay (for a while), all new business pays.

Even if you are considering utilizing PFI strategies from the outset, it's important that you ensure your site is completely finished and optimized before shelling out your cash - remember that in many instances, payment only gets you into the index and you'll still have to battle it out for rankings.

Optimization is a legitimate promotion strategy
Search engine optimization is a buzz phrase that has been around for a long time, but it's surprising how many people still do not properly understand the concept. In my home town of Adelaide, which is the capital city of South Australia, mentioning the term often draws blank looks from web masters and site owners. Many think it's some sort of scam.

Search engine optimization is not about scamming or fooling search engine "spiders" (the software used by the companies to crawl through your site and index it). It's about making the best of what you have and making what you have the best.

Solid content is still king, forget the pretty pictures and Flash animations - the more valuable information you have, presented correctly, the more that other sites will link to you. These links, known as backlinks, are given great importance in ranking calculations as is the search engine's own "opinion" of your content.

Search Engine Optimization Professional (SEOP)
URL submission fever and competition for high search engine rankings has given birth to a new industry - that of the SEOP (Search Engine Optimization Professional). Many of these "professionals" charge around US$150 per hour for their skills. Few are worth this kind of money. If you choose to utilize the consultancy services of an SEOP, make sure you carry out exhaustive background checks on the person/company first.

Anyone can arrange to have tens of thousands of visitors sent to you (for a fee), it's not that hard to achieve, but in most cases, this will be garbage traffic - people not interested in what you are offering. If someone approached me today wanting 50,000 visitors directed to their site by tomorrow, I could do so - it would only cost them a few hundred dollars, but it would be a waste of their advertising budget.

There are a number of automated URL submission software programs available which promise to increase your traffic. Few do and many will cause damage to your listings. Many so-called "bleeding-edge" strategies and optimization techniques are bandied about in forums - be very wary as some of these strategies will not only damage your listings, but may get you kicked out - forever.

Tried and True Optimization Techniques
The following is a list of 8 tried and true strategies for increasing your profile in search engine rankings - stick by these to begin with before trying the more exotic strategies, and remember - don't gamble what you can't afford to lose. These techniques apply to most paid and free listings.

Content is King - Provide information, lots of it, ensure that is relevant to your subject and that it contains popular keywords and phrases in relation to your topic or industry

Meta Tags - Meta tags are the sections of your HTML that provide direction and information for search engine robots. To get the best rankings possible in some search engines, be sure to use keywords, description and title tags every web page. Meta tags are not viewable to Internet users unless they examine the source code of your pages.

Even search engine spiders such as Googlebot will use the description tag if there is a problem with spidering body content.

Try to use different description tags for each page. This is a point I ignored as I thought I didn't have the time to create a set of tags for each page. It was a big mistake that I'm now slowly rectifying. While our search engine referral stats are nothing to be sneezed at, there is always room for improvement. For further information on these aspects of optimization, read our articles on meta tags and title tags.

Inbound links - The more sites you can have linking to you, the higher you will be ranked in some of the major engines. But not all links are created equal.

Many links coming into your site from very low quality sites may damage your rankings. So will buying & hosting a hundred domain names and publishing up a brief page with links to your site. Worse still, links coming in from FFA sites may destroy your rankings altogether. Aim to be linked from popular sites.

It's also becoming increasingly important that the anchor text of incoming links is relevant as this relevancy will also effect your rankings on some engines. For further details on this aspect, read our tutorial on anchor text.

"Alt" text - Search engines can't read images, so ensure that descriptive "alt" text is added to your coding. Some sample coding:

Transparency - I received an email yesterday from a major engine stating that they wouldn't include a site I had submitted because there wasn't an email address on the home page. While this was a glitch on the engine's part as there was an email address, it was a good reminder that some companies demand that your site contain proper contact points, privacy statements etc. - and that they do enforce their policies

Study submission guidelines - Take the the time before hitting the submit button to study the URL submission guidelines of each site - they will vary. To ignore even one small point can prevent your site from being listed.

Target - Just as your site's content should be focused, so should your search engine optimization strategies initially. Submit to all engines, but focus on gaining high rankings on one or two before moving on to others. If you try and optimize for all, you may only achieve mediocre rankings across the board. The difference between No.1 position and No.30 position can literally translate into thousands of dollars of income a year. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Frames are evil - Framed sites can be optimized for search engines, but it is very, very time consuming. If your reason for using frames is to make the editing of common elements such as menus a simpler task, consider implementing server side includes (SSI) or FrontPage Includes as an alternative. You can learn more about these elements, plus other search engine friendly elements that can also save you time in our article about web site upgrades.

Current search engine URL submission overview
The following is a brief rundown on the major engines/indexes and their paid/free listings policies (current December 2004). NOTE: If you run a community/non-profit based site, in many instances the company can be approached directly and you can have your web site listed for free.

Google:
Still by far the best free URL submission search engine, but also runs paid listings for top "sponsored links" and side boxes. If you aren't ranked well in Google as yet, make the effort to be as soon as possible. Google supplies secondary data to a number of other search engines/indices and sites.

http://www.google.com/addurl.html

Yahoo:
US$299.00 non-refundable, recurring annual fee for commercial sites in their directory. Adult sites will be charged US$600. Community, non-profit sites can still get a free listing.

http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/

Note: Yahoo has two separate aspects to their search, the Directory and Web Search. Sites included in their web directory will also show up in Yahoo Web Search.

To submit your site for free:

http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request

MSN:
Up until early November 2004, MSN results were powered by Inktomi - which is owned by Yahoo. As you can imagine, this would have made Microsoft rather uncomfortable, so they are now using their own home-grown search technology.

Free submission form:

http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

Another option for listing on MSN Search is as a "sponsored listing" via Overture (Pay Per Click). Overture are currently offering $10 credit on each account signup.

AltaVista:
Up until early April 2004, Alta Vista, which was acquired by Yahoo!, operated as a separate entity in terms of search results.

The era has ended, and now to be listed in Alta Vista, you only need to submit to Yahoo!; either through their free URL submission service or the SiteMatch service via Overture. Overture are also currently offering $10 credit on each account signup.

Ask Jeeves & Teoma:
US$30.00 for the first page then US$18 per web page (pages 2-1000).

http://ask.ineedhits.com/

DMOZ:
Still a strong community of independent editors, free listings, but you are only listed once in most cases and having your listing updated can take a long time. Considering that DMOZ supplies data to hundreds of search engines/indices and sites, it's absolutely essential to be listed here. Be sure to read the submission guidelines.

http://www.dmoz.org

Lycos/Hotbot:
Now powered by FAST/Inktomi. They offer a special deal for regular site spidering. As with Inktomi, paying for inclusion via FAST will get you listed on other search engines as well.

You can submit to Inktomi and FAST for free, but this means irregular spidering with no guarantee of inclusion:

http://insite.lycos.com/lite_step1.asp

You can also get listed on Lycos via Overture (Pay Per Click). Overture are currently offering $10 credit on each account signup.

AllTheWeb (FAST):
As with Alta Vista; AllTheWeb is now using Yahoo! results. In order to be listed, you can choose from Yahoo!'s free URL submission service or the premium SiteMatch service via Overture.

Overture:
Owned by Yahoo. The heavyweights of the pay per click industry. This model requires that you bid on keywords for ranking and at times the competition can become quite insane - some advertisers go overboard. As an example, I recently reported that on the word "computer", the no.1 advertiser had bid US$10 for the privilege. The number 2 position was held by an advertiser prepared to pay US$.77 per click. It's a huge difference.

Coupled with the fact that not everyone who clicks on the link will purchase, it can become an extraordinarily expensive marketing exercise.

The COA (Cost of Acquisition) tied in with each sale may not viable for the majority of small online businesses, unless you are selling high profit items. The minimum bid starts at 10 cents per click.

Visit Overture.

www.silverlion.biz - Canadian SEO

Web site optimization and submission software

2005-03-25T04:58:00.000-08:00

Over the last few years, I haven't had much interest in all-in-one web site submission and optimization packages. It's been my belief, that has been validated on a number of occasions, that these packages can do more harm than good. From what I have seen in the past, they have their uses, but in the hands of the unwary, they are like a complex piece of machinery liable to chew you up and spit you out the other end.

Optimization/submission software dangers
One of the problems with many software applications has been that automated means of optimization tends to go into overkill mode, crossing the lines of ethical optimization into spamming.

Another issue has been that there's only a few search engines really worthwhile submitting to and many submission/optimization packages simply spam engines and the submissions are rejected.

Finally, and most importantly, search engine companies have been known to ban the IP's of users of these software packages for sending too many automated queries. In a couple of instances, the company selling the software has been blacklisted as well and there is some evidence to suggest that some sites that have used certain packages were also banned/penalized.

It's really been a matter, in my mind anyway, of "humans do it better"

but..

A couple of years ago, I very briefly reviewed a package called WebCEO. It wasn't much at that time, so I passed it by. A few days ago, Web CEO invited me to take another look at their optimization/submission software and boy, things have changed. Web CEO comes in a number of flavors, from a free edition to 2 very reasonably priced intermediate versions, to a full blown enterprise suite.

Web CEO has evolved into huge suite of useful, easy to use applications to assist in many aspects of submission, optimization, marketing and monitoring. Here's a list of the main features that I've taken a look at so far:
General
Each time you launch Web CEO, the application checks for updates to ensure that you have the most current database. Even though I've been using it for under a week, I've received 3 live updates already - it's nice to see a company keeping their products current; especially important in the world of search engine optimization.

One of the very positive things about WebCEO is that it's not just for experienced marketers or optimizers. The help files are, well, helpful - light on the jargon and technobabble. Where there is jargon, it is explained. The interface is clean, clear and easy to use.

Project management
You can create separate projects for each of your sites, with custom settings, reporting and backups. Web CEO is a multi-tasking application that allows you to perform analysis on multiple projects simultaneously. For those providing SEO and SEM services to others, you are able to brand reports with your own company details.

Keyword analysis
Drawing from a database consisting of close to 200 million keywords and phrases, Web CEO generates the most popular results related to your query. Not only that, it will also estimate how many competitor sites are using those terms in order that you can identify niches where competition is light. Identification of these terms is made even simpler by Web CEO's Keyword Effectiveness Index, which is calculated by the popularity of terms with searchers in comparison to competition with other sites.

The keywords tools also includes a feature where you can check the bid rates at Overture.

Optimization tools
This set of tools will examine your pages and identify weaknesses and potentially nasty situations such as keyword density that's too high, hidden text etc. Web CEO will generate advice in plain English in relation to optimizing for certain engines. This is where the value of the live updates come into play as search engines are constantly changing their rules.

There is also a feature in Web CEO to compare your site to other sites and receive advice based on the comparison; e.g. "Site A has a higher X keyword density than your site." Web CEO will also tell you how many sites link to yours.

Web Page Editor
This is a great addition; the ability to edit your pages from within the application, either using a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface, or the HTML editor. The editor feature also has separate features for inserting important SEO data such as Title tags, keyword and description statements. The page editors can also perform search and replace on multiple pages, very handy for on-the-fly tweaking - you can even get keyword density statistics from within this section. Included is an FTP application for publishing files.

Search engine submission
I'm still a big believer in manual submissions to major engines, and these days, engines such as Google and Yahoo will find you if you have a link from another listed site. Even a manual submission to the big 3 only takes a few minutes. What I don't recommend is manually submitting your site to minor engines, especially if you'll only receive a few visitors a week from them. Still, traffic is traffic and Web CEO allows you to submit to over 150 smaller engines by filling in a bit of information (some of it is already completed for you based on your site) and clicking the button - very handy. WebCEO keeps it's database up to date of the guidelines for various engines to assist you in getting listed. Unlike other submission tools, there's less hit and miss - you'll get a result if your submission was successful, and if it wasn't, why.

Ranking checking
There's many rank checkers around, but none I've seen quite like this one. It performs all the usual tasks for checking engines for your rank based on key terms specified, and provides comparative analysis with other sites, but it will also do so in relative safety. Constant rank checking is an issue that has seen many webmasters have their IP blocked by search engines, and deservedly so. While Web CEO gets around this problem by using proxies, I still *strongly* advise "all things in moderation" - play it fair by the search engines, after all, they are what brings us all business. Web CEO's rank checking reports can be refined with filters, geo-targeting and the results can be archived.

Link popularity tool
A fairly standard tool in optimization packages; nothing special in Web CEO's version, but it is nicely presented. It will tell you how many and who are linking to your site. Filters help make this a very useful application.

Traffic reporting
Quite a comprehensive set of reports; including:

- Unique Visitors
- Page Views
- Repeat Visitors
- Total Downloads
- Downloads by Files
- Entry/Exit pages
- Repeat visits
- Clickstreams
- Referring sites
- Keywords used (traffic via search engines)
- User info (browser type, monitor resolution etc.)
- Country of original

Web CEO's traffic analyis also includes some very useful reports related to eCommerce; such as the relation between countries and transactions, average order size, visits before first order.

You can even track your ad campaigns with Web CEO - discover what ads are working best for you in terms of clickthroughs, clickthroughs resulting in sales and more - very important data for calculating ROI.

Site auditing
Another very useful set of tools. Detects broken links, missing images, slow pages, orphaned files, old pages redirects . WebCEO also includes HTML validation. All these tools generate results in well laid out reports.

Web site monitoring
You can have the most optimized site in the world, but it's not going to do you any good if your site is down. Web CEO will monitor HTTP, POP3, SMTP, FTP, IMAP, SSH, SNPP, Telnet and HTTPS, plus 2 custom ports. You can specify to be alerted via a variety of services. Even saving a few minutes of downtime can mean an increase in profits

Summary
Phew, time to take a breath. As you can see, Web CEO is a very comprehensive package and I've only just started using it! I'm sure there's a plethora of other features I haven't yet discovered.

As I mentioned, there's a Free version of Web CEO software available - I highly recommend downloading a copy. While the free version doesn't include all the features mentioned above, it will give you a good feel of this very useful application.

.. and remember, all things in moderation; there is such a thing as over-optimization. While WebCEO is probably the best optimization/submission software I've come across to date; it is just a software application, use it with common sense and fair play close to mind.

Low Cost Web Site Promotion For Small Businesses

2005-03-07T04:40:00.000-08:00

Promoting your small business website in the search engines can be a daunting task. Use of free submissions and link popularity is a good starting point for your website promotion campaign.
Start with the basis of good search engine and directory listings. Make sure you read and follow each search engine and directory's rules for submissions. Before making submissions, always verify that all your website links and pages work, with no pages "under construction".

Search Engines and Directories.

Begin with the Open Directory Project (ODP http://www.dmoz.org). ODP is free and provides secondary search results to many other search engines. (Secondary search results are search results that come up after the primary search results of a search engine are shown.) Google uses the ODP directory results in their search engine results.

It is preferable to secure a listing in ODP before submitting your website to Yahoo!, but it often takes time to become listed in ODP and may not be possible. If you can afford a yearly $299.00 subscription to submit to Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com), do so. If you are a non-commercial website, you may be able to submit your website for free. You will find the rules about free submissions when you click on the "suggest a site" link at the bottom of your chosen category page.

Google is the top search engine and one you want to be listed in. Google provides secondary search results to other search engines and directories. If you do B2B (business-to-business) with other companies, Business.com (http://www.business.com) is a reasonable $99.00 subscription per year and gives you the opportunity to list not only your home page, but four other pages from your website. The Business.com search results are used by many other business sites for search results.

Inktomi is a good choice for a reasonably priced link (yearly fee of $39.00 for first page, $25.00 per page 2-1000 for additional pages) and will get you into secondary search results for the MSN search engine. Position Technologies has a good submission program available for Inktomi (http://www.positiontech.com/). Zeal.com (http://www.zeal.com) listings are part of the LookSmart directory, which provides primary search listings for MSN. You must sign-up to become a Zeal editor and pass a test before being able to add your non-commercial submissions to Zeal. Articles and tutorials are good choices to use when submitting non-commercial information from your website to Zeal.com.

Many of the major search engines still include a free submission section for their listings. Paid Inclusion and PPC (pay-per-click) are always the faster choices, but if your budget is limited you may want to consider submitting and waiting the 6-8 weeks (or more) it often takes to see your listings show up.

Major search engines providing free submissions include: Google (http://www.google.com), AltaVista (http://www.altavista.com), and AlltheWeb (http://www.alltheweb.com).
Secondary search engines you can submit to for free include Gigablast (http://www.gigablast.com) and ScrubtheWeb (http://www.scrubtheweb.com). One smaller directory is JoeAnt (http://www.joeant.com).

Link Popularity Methods

If you are a small business, seek out business directories to submit to, especially those directly related to your business.

Looking in Yahoo! and ODP categories for business directories can be very helpful in getting a start on your search for links.

For link popularity, searching in Google is a quick way to find suitable websites to request links from or submit to.

Search for specialty search engines. If your business is in the medical field, search for medical search engines.

When looking for link partners, select sites that reflect your website's topic or subject. Links from sites that are not related to your site are not weighted as heavily by the search engines in deciding how to rank your site.

Visit your competition's websites. See how they are ranking in the search engines and find out which keywords they are found under.

Link popularity is a very time-consuming activity, be prepared to spend a minimum of 10-20 hours in order to start building your link popularity. This may be a daunting enough task you might want to consider working with a search engine marketing professional.

How Do Search Engine Robots Work?

2005-03-07T04:36:00.000-08:00

Think of search engine robots as automated data retrieval programs, traveling the web to find information and links.

When you submit a web page to a search engine at the "Submit a URL" page, the new URL is added to the robot's queue of websites to visit on its next foray out onto the web. Even if you don't directly submit a page, many robots will find your site because of links from other sites that point back to yours. This is one of the reasons why it is important to build your link popularity and to get links from other topical sites back to yours.

When arriving at your website, the automated robots first check to see if you have a robots.txt file. This file is used to tell robots which areas of your site are off-limits to them. Typically these may be directories containing only binaries or other files the robot doesn't need to concern itself with.

Robots collect links from each page they visit, and later follow those links through to other pages. In this way, they essentially follow the links from one page to another. The entire World Wide Web is made up of links, the original idea being that you could follow links from one place to another. This is how robots get around.

The "smarts" about indexing pages online comes from the search engine engineers, who devise the methods used to evaluate the information the search engine robots retrieve. When introduced into the search engine database, the information is available for searchers querying the search engine. When a search engine user enters their query into the search engine, there are a number of quick calculations done to make sure that the search engine presents just the right set of results to give their visitor the most relevant response to their query.

You can see which pages on your site the search engine robots have visited by looking at your server logs or the results from your log statistics program. Identifying the robots will show you when they visited your website, which pages they visited and how often they visit. Some robots are readily identifiable by their user agent names, like Google's "Googlebot"; others are bit more obscure, like Inktomi's "Slurp". Still other robots may be listed in your logs that you cannot readily identify; some of them may even appear to be human-powered browsers.

Along with identifying individual robots and counting the number of their visits, the statistics can also show you aggressive bandwidth-grabbing robots or robots you may not want visiting your website. In the resources section of the end of this article, you will find sites that list names and IP addresses of search engine robots to help you identify them.

How Do They Read The Pages On Your Website?

When the search engine robot visits your page, it looks at the visible text on the page, the content of the various tags in your page's source code (title tag, meta tags, etc.), and the hyperlinks on your page. From the words and the links that the robot finds, the search engine decides what your page is about. There are many factors used to figure out what "matters" and each search engine has its own algorithm in order to evaluate and process the information. Depending on how the robot is set up through the search engine, the information is indexed and then delivered to the search engine's database.

The information delivered to the databases then becomes part of the search engine and directory ranking process. When the search engine visitor submits their query, the search engine digs through its database to give the final listing that is displayed on the results page.

The search engine databases update at varying times. Once you are in the search engine databases, the robots keep visiting you periodically, to pick up any changes to your pages, and to make sure they have the latest info. The number of times you are visited depends on how the search engine sets up its visits, which can vary per search engine.

Sometimes visiting robots are unable to access the website they are visiting. If your site is down, or you are experiencing huge amounts of traffic, the robot may not be able to access your site. When this happens, the website may not be re-indexed, depending on the frequency of the robot visits to your website. In most cases, robots that cannot access your pages will try again later, hoping that your site will be accessible then.

Hiring a Search Engine Optimization Professional

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In this article, we will take a look at some points to consider before hiring an SEOP (Search Engine Optimization Professional) or SEM (Search Engine Marketing) company.

SEOP and SEM - the difference

Briefly, a Search Engine Optimization Professional focuses on optimizing your website to attract the attention of search engines and improving your rankings. Their specialty area are "organic" search engine listings - i.e. free. A Search Engine Marketing company also markets a website via search engines, but usually through purchasing paid listings. The terms are somewhat interchangeable and many companies cover both areas.

Good and bad SEOP's

A good SEOP can achieve great things for your site, a bad one may cause you to be banned from some engines through spamming or other unethical "quick fix" strategies. Some of these unethical strategies include: Hidden text or hidden links. Creation of pages pages with irrelevant words. Creating multiple pages, domains and sub domains with identical content. Doorway pages specifically designed for search engines i.e. the user never sees them.

If you have ever been banned for intentional or unintentional spamming of a search engine, you'll understand just how hard it is to crawl back to the top. Being banned or penalized from a search engine happens to most webmasters at some stage of their career. If it's a mistake on the search engine's part, it will *usually* be rectified the next time their spider crawls your pages. An intentional ban is a completely different story. I have known webmasters that have had to redesign their entire site, change their domain name and hosting service and then have to climb up the rankings from scratch - not a pleasant thought at all... A ban issued by the powers that be at the Googleplex have ended a number of online businesses who have been caught for spamming. It's just not worth the risk.

The Search Engine Optimization Professional

The title of SEOP is now being brandished by many individuals and companies, all competing for your attention and dollars. Competition is great, but it can also encourage wild claims and other sharp marketing strategies in order to capture your business.

One of the most risky purchase decisions is to hire the first SEOP who guarantees you a top 10 search engine ranking. Believe it or not, getting a top 10 ranking is pretty easy. Securing a top 10 ranking that will actually bring you viable quantities of targeted traffic is quite another.

Confused? Here's an example:

Optimizing a Flombles website

Let's say you sell Flombles in a competitive market. Your competitors are dominating the search engine rankings so you engage the services of an SEOP who guarantees you a number 1 search engine ranking related to your products. The SEOP optimizes your site and lo and behold, the next month you are ranking in position number 1 for the term "fuzzy flombles". You sit back and wait for the sales to come in - and there are none. The reason for this is that fuzzy flombles are a dud product, nobody wants them, so nobody searches for them. Your competitors have optimized their pages for frizzy flombles, which are a best seller..

Another example would be a number 1 ranking on the search term "buy frizzy flombles now". Frizzy flombles may be a best seller, but that term happens to be one that nobody actually uses as a search query. Before hiring a Search Engine Optimization Professional, make sure that you make them aware of your market and previous marketing attempts. Don't expect them to be an expert on your product range, there's just too many products and services out there. A good SEOP will ask a lot of questions before you sign the dotted line, so they'll know the terms they should be focusing on and the marketing challenge that awaits them. So if someone guarantees you a top 10 ranking, be very wary - what kind of top 10 ranking? It's the quality that counts.

Ask questions, get references...

Also be wary of SEOP's that offer to submit your site to 128,564 search engines and directories - many of these directories will be FFA sites, and that's not a good thing at all. For more information about FFA sites, view the related article that is available from our search engine marketing resources section. If an SEOP offers to do this as part of their services, it's a good indicator from the outset to look elsewhere. Good SEOP's wouldn't waste their time on this sort of coverage. Another point that SEOP's are well aware of is that when it comes to search engines such as Google, nothing is guaranteed - that's what makes Google such a great search engine. Google constantly refine their ranking algorithm, otherwise the only sites to rank at the top will be the ones that can afford the services of an optimization professional. The changing algorithm, while frustrating at times, does provide a more level playing field.

Hiring and SEM's - other issues for consideration

As mentioned earlier, an SEM company tends to focus on paid listings; especially PPC (pay per click) listings. PPC can bring great rewards, but it can also be a huge hole into which you pour your money - with no results. In order for an SEM company to be of benefit; they *must* have a very good understanding of your target market. For example; it's well known that people who use certain keywords are more likely to purchase. Using a very basic example, I would rather spend 50c per click on the term "buy frizzy flombles" than 5c per click on "flombles" as the first example is very targeted and the person searching has expressed a desire to purchase.
A good SEM company won't just focus on the search term, but also on the landing page on your site that the click will take people to.

Search Engine Optimization FAQs

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What is search engine optimization?

Search engine optimization can be defined as the art of placing a webpage in the top few pages of a search engine for a basket of strategically defined keywords. In simple language, if your website sells computers in UK, it should come up on the first page of Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc when a surfer keys in terms related to computers in UK.

Is search engine optimization worth it?

Lots of people that we speak to wonder about the importance of search engine optimization and internet marketing as a whole. They wonder if there is a need to market their already well designed and good looking website. Our answer - What use is a website if it does'nt get targeted traffic. Statistics prove that traffic sent to a website from search engines is the most economical and offers a best return on investment if the right keywords are targeted.

PPC offers me results overnight? Why search engine optimization then?

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) works out expensive for competitive keywords and terms. In the long run your SEO company will help you attain natural rankings for the same keywords. So why pay per click, when SEO can get you the same traffic for far less money over a period of time.

Is PPC not effective?

No, not at all. A good web marketing strategy involves use of various methods like SEO, PPC, etc for getting good quality targeted traffic. However you need to research and experiment till you find the combination that gets you the best return on your investment.

1000 engines - Should I submit to all?

Absolutely not. There are about 20 major engines which account for 99% of the total search engine traffic. Out of these, the major engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL account for over 85% of the search engine traffic. There are a few other directories and engines like Altavista and Alltheweb which are worth optimizing for and submitting to.

The World Of Search Engines - Past... Present... Future

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The world of search engines is changing at a fast rate... what we saw in the past few months was consolidation of several search engines... major players like Yahoo acquiring the smaller ones with a view to improve their own search engine technology and capture more of the market share.

A year back we had Yahoo using Google's results, while Inktomi was the provider for MSN. Google also had AOL using its results. Search engines like Overture used Inktomi as their free results provider. Lycos used results provided by FAST (Alltheweb.com), and Altavista had its own engine.

The first phase of consolidation started with Altavista and Alltheweb being bought over by Overture. At this point Overture seemed to be in a very dominant position, being the market leader in Pay per click advertising and just having bought over 2 major natural search engine technology providers.

The scenario suddenly changed again, when Overture itself was bought over by Yahoo. With Overture, what Yahoo got was not only the worlds leading Pay per click engine but also the search technology of Altavista and Alltheweb. And to add icing to the cake, Yahoo went ahead and acquired Inktomi.

This complicated the picture from Microsoft's perspective. With Microsoft's own search engine technology still in the development phase and not yet ready for rollout, it was still completely dependant on Inktomi to provide results on MSN... and Inktomi now belonged to MSN's major rival Yahoo. To top it all... even Overture, MSN's partner for sponsored results was now owned by Yahoo.

So at present what is the scenario? We have Google providing results on google.com and AOL. Yahoo using its own search technology, which seems to be a mixture of Inktomi, FAST and Altavista and MSN still using Inktomi's database. With the search market share split nearly equally among MSN, Yahoo and Google, 2/3rd of the searches are directly of indirectly affected by the Yahoo/ Inktomi database, with only around 1/3rd affected by Google.
This is in sharp contrast to the recent past when Google served about 2/3rd of the market (being the search engine technology provider to Yahoo) and Inktomi had only 1/3rd (MSN's share) of the search engine market.

So what is the future going to look like? Well, its an open secret that Microsoft is pushing really hard to roll out its search engine quickly, and knowing them I believe its going to give a really good fight to the existing Yahoo and Google search technologies.

With MSN shifting to the Microsoft search engine, Yahoo consolidating its Alltheweb and Altavista brands into 1 flagship yahoo brand (again a personal opinion) and Google using its own highly innovative and ever improving technology, we are going to be left with a very mature search engine market with 3 HUGE players with nearly equal share of the market.

The result? A high level of competition ensuring that we the users are going to have ever improving search results with each company trying to outpace and outperform the other two.
An interesting time indeed.

Traditional Mediums versus Search Engine Positioning

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A webmaster looking for some quality traffic to the website, is many a times confronted with a lot of varied and sometimes confusing options. There is banner advertising, Pay per click, conventional media campaigns and finally search engine submission campaigns.
So what is the best method? In this article I will try to being forth the merits & demerits of each form of marketing strategy.

Banner Advertising:

Paying $15 for a 1000 impressions on a high traffic website. Sounds like good exposure for a low price? It is! After all you will have a 1000 unique people view your banner. But how many actually end up clicking on it, and how many more actually end up buying stuff from you? According to most industry sources the average click through rate of a banner campaign is 0.38%. So you get 3.8 people to click on your banner for $15. And the rate of conversion is typically 1 to 5%. So how much do you actually spend before a person buys from you? You do the math. It appears quite a lot to me.

What about those popup ads? Or the ones that keep popping up and refuse to close? Wouldn’t that give you more exposure? Some banner sellers would love to make you believe that. Well its not the case. Ever had one very stubborn popup refusing to close? How irritating is that? I would never even buy anything from that kind of banner advertiser. Its downright irritating to have banner popup in the face when you are in the middle of surfing for some useful information.

Pay Per Click Search Engines:

The internet boom may be over, but for search engines the boom may have just begun. Many engines, the most famous being Overture and now Looksmart have turned to this model. Pay per click model makes you pay for the amount of actual clicks your site link receives and not for the number of exposures. Sounds good? It sometimes is very effective too. For starters, you get quality traffic, cause the people who click on your link would have searched for a term relevant to you. However it can be pretty expensive. Overture makes you bid on the term you want to rank high on, and trust me sometimes the bids get pretty high. Looksmart on the other hand charges you $0.15 for each click through you get. Pretty expensive, if you have a small budget.
However, if this scheme appeals to you, you are better off asking a SEO to implement it for you, instead of trying it yourself, since it can get pretty expensive for competitive terms.

Conventional Media Campaigns:

News paper advertisements, Posters, Television and Radio adverts, all come under traditional forms of advertising. However for most medium sized websites Television and Radio ad’s are way beyond budgets. And for an internet firm, it is of paramount importance that the newspaper or magazine reader who views his ad, remembers the website name. And as most experiences marketing guys will tell you, for that to happen you need to advertise regularly for a period of time. You add up the cost for an effective campaign and it will work out to be quite a sum.

Search Engine Submissions:

Search engine submissions include keyword analysis, study of competition, optimizing your website for the chosen keywords, submitting to search engines and directories and repeating the entire process and submissions over the period of time. Sounds quite a lot? It is. But is it expensive? Well, it varies for the kind of optimization you require, but trust me, at the end of the day, it is cheaper than most of the methods we discussed above.

Can you do it yourself? Yes you can, if you have the time. Should you train somebody inhouse? No, I don’t think so. You will end up paying him a monthly salary which will definitely work out to be more than what you will pay a qualified SEO, and more often than not, he wont know all the tricks and methods a professional SEO would use.

What about those quite cheap off the shelf softwares that promise so much? Well, they don’t choose your keywords, they don’t optimize the website, they don’t study your traffic trends over the period of time, and finally they don’t change with the rapidly changing algorithms and guidelines of search engines.

How about the traffic quality? Is it inferior to the traffic generated by banner ads or newspaper adverts? On the contrary. People had to have searched for a keyword relevant to your website before clicking on the link. Hence the traffic generated, contrary to the myth, is highly targeted.
And lastly, Are Search engine optimizers expensive? Not at all, especially in comparison to the other forms of marketing. And a good SEO, will help you drive much more quality and sustained traffic to your site than any of the other mediums would be able to...

Hope you enjoyed reading this article... Look forward to hearing from you. So until next time... Happy Surfing!!!

SEO Facts

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The internet is the largest market place on earth. It offers unparalleled access to an international base of consumers – and referrers. However, the internet is also an extremely overcrowded place. With such an opportunity to make a business presentation to the world, many companies seek to take advantage of this unique chance for global exposure by creating a website. Yet simply having a website is not enough. A website alone will be lost in the crowd – a crowd of over 4 billion webpages indexed on the Google search engine alone. A website needs to be visible, and in a highly targeted manner, so that a company can connect specifically with potential customers. If any company is serious about generating sales within the largest marketplace on earth, investment is required in one form or other of internet marketing. Probably the most desirable internet marketing options are Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-click (PPC) campaigns. According to BBC research, 70% of internet users will turn to a Google search engine to locate web sites covering any particular subject. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of ensuring that these internet users, who search for keywords and phrases directly associated with your business market, find your website ranked among the top search results. The process of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) thus creates visibility, and can clearly mark out a site from the crowds.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves the building highly targeted internet links to key site pages on your website. At the heart of this process is the building of an Independent Back-Linking Network (IBLN), an artificially created network of sites that imitates the wider linkage patterns of the wider internet. Dozens of websites and tens of thousands of pages can be involved in an IBLN, whose sole aim is to promote a particular client’s website(s). Because of the variability of the Search Engine industry it is impossible to make any estimates as to what positions may be ultimately achieved on these search engines. However, an IBLN takes into account the algorithms and patents owned by Search Engines, and thus is able to account for future changes in the industry, and can create solid sustainable results. It’s a laborious and time consuming process and also takes time to take effect. Add to that the fact that even Google can take up to 8 weeks to locate any particular link, means that a properly conducted SEO campaign should be expected to take place over a six-month period, to ensure proper results. The primary aim of the SEO campaign would be to achieve targets agreed between ourselves and the client. The secondary aim would be to then exceed these results to ensure wider high rankings across Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Welcome to SEO Book

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Check back later for SEO articles, news and other readings !!!