Choosing An SEO Consultant

While the most important thing in creating a webpage is the designer a consultant knowledgeable in SEO is even more important if you want to have it show up well in search engine rankings. An SEO consultant can mean the difference between a cool page that nobody sees and a cool page that everyone not only visits but talk about.

A good SEO consultant will not only know the tricks of the trade but also how to use them best. An SEO consultant is as much an artist as the web designer. Whereas the web designer knows all of the tricks of the trade in creating a masterpiece of the internet the SEO consultant is the promoter that makes sure people travel to see it.

When choosing an SEO consultant make sure to find one that is willing to not only work with your website designer, or you if you are doing your own website, but also understands your needs. Am SEO consultant is not there to diminish your website or interfere with its look. They are there to be sure that it is designed from the ground up to utilize as efficiently as possible all of their SEO tricks. An SEO consultant will blend their techniques invisibly with your website. In fact that is how they have to work. The best SEO consultant will not even leave a visible footprint. They must be like the wind. A divine wind to protect your website and breathe inspiration into it.

The most important factor is to make sure that your SEO consultant can work together with your website designer as to not impede their efforts. Do what you did when you chose your web designer. Tell the SEO consultant what you need. Give them a time frame on when you need their services to work. Let them know what your future goals are and find out what they can do for you.

Keeping Your Text Links Natural

After the latest Google Search Engine Ranking Position (SERP) update, many websites that focused too heavily on one keyword lost ground in the SERPs. When it comes to Google’s latest search engine algorithm, if you are buying or trading text links it is becoming more important than ever to mix up your preferred anchor text.

I have always recommended focusing on 4 or 5 “money” keyword phrases you would like to target. Now, to take things a step further, I recommend you consider breaking down each of those keyword phrases into an additional 3 or 4 semantically similar keyword phrases. If you have a Pay-Per-Click account, an excellent way to determine what keywords are your most potent is to study ROI patterns within your account.

The main rule of thumb is to keep your anchor text as natural as possible. This means a wide variety of links to your site from sites in your general category, with a scattering of links from unrelated sites. Run-of-Site (ROS) links are fine as long as they are not overused. After all, one or two ROS links could be something that could occur naturally if you have a great site with valuable content.

Most importantly, increase the incoming links to your site gradually – don’t go from 5 inbound links to 50,000 links overnight. Use common sense and don’t do anything that could raise a red flag with the search engines. For new sites, we recommend that you increase your total backlink count by no more than 25% to 50% each month.

As it stands now, MSN and Yahoo lag behind Google in their ability to identify natural linking patterns. So if you are focusing on non-Google search engines, the more links with the same exact anchor text the better. In fact, many webmasters have actually set up a second site to sell their product through MSN and Yahoo searches while keeping their Google centric site running at the same time.

Oh No, The SEO Company I Hired Didn't Do A Thing! What Do I Do?

As a new age of web marketers filter through the trials & tribulations of success online, it brings us to an important question, who do I believe? If you've paid attention as to how to optimize your site for online performance, you'll eventually come across what we call, bad SEO practices.

In the event that you are looking into hiring an SEO company, you are left with many decisions and concerns. I don't blame you for worrying. Many of the so called “SEO” companies are just out to get your money. Please don't take this article as an attack against SEO consultants but take it as a warning to do your due-diligence and investigate each company you contact.

Here is a small check list to ask:

- Could you show me some of your clients placements?
- What did you have to do to get them there?
- Could you give me something to read about your methods?
- Do you guarantee your placements? (oh oh look out)

If the response comes back something like this:

We don't disclose our secrets or, we cloned their information and placed it on our site to get a good ranking right away or, we simply went out to got 1000’s of incoming links for them. Here's the kicker, stay away from this; we guarantee you top placements and/or placements on the 1st page etc.

These are considered tell tale signs that the SEO Company you contacted is just in it for the money and they don't truly care about your business in the future. All these practices in question may sometimes work but are breaking ethical search engine optimization rules.

Here is what an "unethical SEO "would sound like:
(created for the purposes of this illustration).

1) “we don't disclose our secrets” - There are no secrets to disclose
2) “We cloned their information” - We will get better results than you will
3) “We went out and got 1000’s of links” - Good thing they weren't related to anything you do because we would actually have to spend a lot of time targeting your market instead of bringing in false traffic.
4) “We guarantee everything” - There is no such thing on the internet.

Here is what an "ethical SEO" would sound like:
(created for the purposes of this illustration).

What we plan to do is to strategically target your market by optimizing your site internally to target the right key words that your potential buyers are searching for online. Also, we would like to strategically place your website link on other related websites to gain more exposure to your business with the right people in mind.”

We don't care if other people are “cloning”,”hiding their text”,”linking to everyone in the world”, we are here to build the right foundation, to make sure that your tree will grow for years to come.”

Although we cannot guarantee anything in this business, our track record is strong and our clients are truly happy with their results, here are some references.”

There is a big difference in good practices and bad ones. You can spot them right away as soon as they divert your questions elsewhere. Good SEO companies aren't afraid to answer your questions, in fact, we love to talk about search marketing & positioning and we have the proof to back up our statements.

Some would say SEO Companies are like “lawyers”, they will do whatever it takes to win the battle but many of us SEO’s would strongly disagree. Granted, in every working field in the world, there are bad apples out there. Unfortunately concerning web marketing, we see them world wide but our industry is about helping people grow their business. We genuinely care about your success. The more successful you are, the more success we will attract for our own business.

This information can also be used for everyone trying to perform their own SEO plans. Don't believe every practice you hear out there, in fact, try asking the professionals at “www.webproworld.com” one of the internet's most resourceful informational forums to date. Simply ask one of the professionals about the ethical/unethical methods of promoting your business, and you will get the answer you were looking for.

I hope this information helps your journey!

PPC vs Natural Search – A Cost Comparison Case Study

The attraction of Pay Per Click (PPC) online advertising is undeniable. Each click costs virtually nothing, you only pay for the clicks you get, and you set your own daily budget so you know exactly how much you’re going to spend. Most importantly, your listing appears instantly.

On the other hand, a high ranking in the natural search results seems unobtainable. There’s a perception that hundreds of thousands of other businesses are competing for your keywords, and that makes it seem like a real rat-race. And it also seems like such a big mountain to climb; it’s true that it can take months to reach the first page for your target keywords. To make matters worse, thousands of opportunistic (and some very dodgy) ‘SEO companies’ have emerged, looking to make a quick and big buck out of market naivety. So to CEOs, BDMs, marketing managers, webmasters, and business owners, the road to natural search ranking seems expensive, risky, and beset with traffic.

But does this mean you should forget natural search?

Definitely not!

Firstly, most user studies to date have found that people pay more attention to natural search results because they’re more relevant. That’s the foundation of the success of companies like Google and Yahoo (and the reason they keep their indexing rules a secret).

What’s more, it’s important to put things in perspective. Hundreds of thousands of other businesses may be competing for your keywords, but in most cases, they’re at least as confused and disheartened as you. So the sooner you figure out the real story, the sooner you’ll have the jump on them.

And yes, it can take a while to reach the top, but because your competition is – for the most part – traveling blind, your early progress will normally be quite quick. In fact, for most businesses, it’s not until you reach the top few pages that your progress will slow.

And again yes, there ARE some dodgy SEO companies out there. But there are also some very good ones. (Go to WebProNews.com and sign up to a forum if you want to find out who they are.) So long as you know the basics of SEO you won’t be taken for a ride. (See SEO for CEOs for a rundown of SEO basics in layperson’s terms.)

But let’s talk bottom line…

Is it more expensive to obtain a high ranking?

Certainly not! In comparison with other forms of advertising – even PPC in the long run – reaching the top of the rankings is NOT expensive. The following case study explains why.

CASE STUDY

For the past year, I’ve been working hard on the natural search results for my copywriting business, Divine Write. For my primary keyword, I’m now on page 1 of Google.com (out of approximately 900,000 search results). I’ve done this simply by writing helpful articles and submitting them for publication on the Internet. Luckily for me, I’m an SEO copywriter, so writing articles is all in a day’s work. But had I paid an SEO copywriter to write my articles for me, I’d have spent approximately USD$5,000.

Over the same period, I spent approximately USD$3,000 on Google AdWords (my ads appeared towards the top of the paid listings).

Now I hear what you’re saying; my natural search campaign definitely cost more in the first year than my AdWords campaign. But now that I’ve reached the top of Google.com, I’ve paused all my AdWords ads, so I’m not paying anything. If I hadn’t chased the natural search results, I’d have continued paying for AdWords, spending at least another USD$3,000 next year on AdWords, and another USD$3,000 the year after that, and so on.

Of course, I have to retain my high ranking. If I was paying someone to write my articles, that would involve an investment of approximately USD$1,000 per year (a saving of 67% each year).

So it breaks down like this:

Google AdWords investment: 2 yrs = $6,000, 3 yrs = $9,000, 4 yrs = $12,000, 5 yrs = $15,000

Natural search investment: 2 yrs = $6,000, 3 yrs = $7,000, 4 yrs = $8,000, 5 yrs = $9,000

Conclusion

Obviously the competition for keywords in the copywriting field isn’t as fierce as in a lot of other industries, so the actual dollar investment discussed in this case study may not apply directly to your business. The important thing to understand is that – over time – a high ranking in the natural search results can actually cost less than a high position in the (arguably less effective) paid listings.

Also, these figures are based on me submitting articles to various article banks on the Internet myself. (This is a routine task requiring little skill. You should be able to purchase a list of 50 or more article submit sites from your SEO copywriter or consultant for as little as USD$99.)

Beat Google’s Dampening Link Filter with SEO Articles

Most Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts agree that links back to your site have a great impact on your ranking in the major search engines. Think of it like an election; your site is a candidate and every link to your site is a vote. Of course, it was never quite that simple (high ranking, relevant sites have more voting power) but now it may have gotten even more complicated.

The Dampening Link Filter

It seems that Google may have introduced something called a “Dampening Link Filter” into its indexing algorithm. I’ll give you a layperson’s overview of this filter, but for more intimate details, check out http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/searchinsider/wpn-49-20050407GooglesNewLinkFilter.html#google.

More and more people are realising the importance of links back to your site (or “backlinks”). For some time, companies have been engaging in all sorts of link campaigns designed to generate thousands of backlinks. Many of these campaigns haven’t really paid too much attention to the context or lifespan of these links. And Google knows it. Because these campaigns are designed to artificially generate the perception of a site’s importance – to trick the search engines into thinking they’re important – it’s been suggested that Google has decided to put an end to it. Apparently, there’s evidence to suggest that Google has introduced a new link filter to dampen the effect of new backlinks. So if your link generation campaign has just created 500 links in a day from seemingly irrelevant sites, Google will suspect it of being artificial, and refuse to pass on the full effect of those links – at least for a while. Well, that’s how the theory goes, anyway.

It has been argued that you can avoid being penalized by this filter by generating links:

• more slowly;
• from relevant sites; and
• which have a long lifespan.

The wisdom of relevance and lifespan is already well established; the dampening filter is simply one more reason why people should start to heed it. Writing and submitting SEO articles for online publication is one way to do so.

This article explains how SEO articles satisfy each of these three conditions. (For the basics of SEO article writing, take a look at http://www.divinewrite.com/seoarticles.htm.)

Build Backlinks Slowly

Writing quality articles takes time. It’s as simple as that. Even an SEO copywriter can’t just bang an article together in a morning – it has to be well considered. It must be accurate, informative, interesting, well written, and topical. And once you’ve written the article, the real work begins. You then have to submit it to your favourite article submit sites. And as they all have different requirements and idiosyncrasies, submitting your article to 50 submit sites can take you all day!

Once submitted, even the best articles will only be published gradually. A good article can be published 2 or 3 times a day for a week or two, then interest tapers off. But still, over the course of 6 months a single good article can be published hundreds of times! And remember, each time is a link.

Build Backlinks From Relevant Sites

As soon as you choose the topic of your article, you define the type of site that will publish it. All online publishers have an agenda; they want to generate traffic. Whether for commercial or benevolent reasons, they want particular kinds of articles for very specific audiences. Your article won’t be published on irrelevant sites simply because the publishers of those sites get nothing out of it.

Of course, your article may be published on sites that are only marginally relevant. For instance, this article may be published on general copywriting websites, advertising websites, web design websites, home business websites, etc. But the beauty of a well written SEO article is that you get to optimize it for the keywords that you want to rank for. So even if the keywords on the publishing site don’t quite match your own target keywords, the page containing your link (i.e. your article) does.

What’s more, you even have the power to optimize the links themselves. For instance, as an SEO copywriter, I can distribute backlinks throughout my article that use my target keywords as the link text (e.g. copywriter, SEO copywriter, advertising copywriter, and website copywriter ;-). Some submit sites don’t let you do this, but most will – at least in the byline.

And one other thing – other people link to good articles. This can increase the Page Rank of the site containing your article, which, in turn, can increase the page rank of your own site. It’s a win-win situation!

Build Backlinks With a Long Lifespan

The quality of your SEO article determines the lifespan of your backlink. Write a very helpful article, make it easy to read, and choose a topic which isn’t going to go away in a hurry, and your article will stay online for years.

In any event, most publishers tend not to clear out their article libraries simply because it’s better for them to have lots of content available to both readers and search engines.

Conclusion

While it’s no new phenomenon to SEO veterans and SEO copywriters, the writing of SEO articles to generate backlinks is a tactic which offers much in the way of ranking. The possibility of a Google dampening link filter simply increases the value of that offering.

Happy writing!

Google Is Taking Descriptions From Alexa

If you take your top key word search engine placement within Google and look at your website's description, you will notice something similar with other websites, the descriptions match those taken from Alexa.com!!!

Take a peek for yourself.

1 - Search for your top key word in Google (usually the first key phrase within your title tag).

2 - Now copy & paste this description in a note pad or word doc.

3 - Once you have this, go to: www.alexa.com

4 - Type in your "url" in the address bar

5 - Look at the description from Google and the description from Alexa, they should be an exact match.

NOTE: If you do not have a description in Alexa, Google will come up with its own version but in reality, wouldn't you want to be in control of your website's description within the SERP's?

Not having a description in Alexa - Could it directly affect your Google search engine results?

ABSOLUTELY ! ! !

I would suggest looking at your description in Alexa to make sure that it directly targets your top key phrase that you want performing well within Google.

Your Alexa description could very well determine better SERPS within Google! Google feeds results into Alexa which in turn updates information on website ranking. They are partnered up, why wouldn't they use each others results?!

Alexa's Description is the "text book" definition:

I don't blame Google for wanting to use these descriptions. Most descriptions in Alexa are the "text book version" of your company's description and are usually well written, and well thought out. This would give Google an advantage so that they can spend less time on delivering quality descriptions and more time delivering better results within their searches.

I really like this idea because if this were true across the board, Google would be giving the individual website owner more freedom to write a proper description for their SERPS without using it to spam or create false information. Again, it would have to be approved by Alexa's team anyways, they probably wouldn't allow key word stuffing for their site as it is.

Is Google having a tough time with their website limit?

If you are one to pay attention to what happens within the Google realm, you might find yourself thrown for a loop these days. As Google updates their results, it seems like they are having some issues dealing with so many new websites popping up.

Indexing 8 billion websites is quite an accomplishment for Google. As they are reluctant to increase this number, they are faced with many challenges in trying to keep some sites within these 8 billion pages while losing some others, after each update they do to their database.

So how do you determine which listings to lose?

We've all heard of the "sandbox theory"! (New sites are added to a group of other new sites until a certain amount of time has passed and you've proven your worth. Once you've proven your site is valuable, Google releases it within its regular search results).

It seems to me that if you don't own a large network of websites that can easily increase the websites link popularity overnight, your newly created website won't get hit as hard and is added to the sandbox for only a certain period of time.

On the other hand, if you do own a large network of websites and increase the amount of websites you have, your newly built website(s) will get hit harder and may take a lot more time and promotional effort to get good search rankings results within Google.

Let's take a look at why this may be true:

1st) It has been long speculated that Google searches through the "WHOIS" data base regularly ("WHOIS" - Contact record of who owns a specific domain name). By doing this Google can now see who owns what and how many domain names they own. By doing this Google can now determine that "Company A" owns 25 websites. This collection of 25 websites can now all be crawled to look for content copying, ghost pages, mimic pages, irrelevant link directories, etc. By knowing that you own 25 websites, Google can quickly determine their worth and rank them accordingly.

2nd) With this knowledge provided by the "WHOIS" data base, Google can also see how many years you've registered each domain name for. For instance, if you register all your domain names for only 1 year, there is a possibility that you don't plan on using these domain names for the long term. Instead, you may be using these new domain
names simply to keep up with new changes on the internet and new standards in search engine optimization.

On the other hand, if you register all of your new domain names for the next 5 years, it is more likely that you are going to use these domain names in the future. This now gives more relevance to each domain name you register for more than 1 year.

I am now recommending to all my clients not only to make sure to register a domain name related to their country (i.e. Canada = .ca), but to also make sure that they register their domain name for 5 years. If you are truly serious about increasing your business online, why would you risk missing your domain name renewals every year and possibly loose your domain name?

Google may also look at how long you've owned this website for!

It may be true that by adding your new website to the "sandbox", Google may also add your website to a "history report". This history report can give their database detailed information about how old your website is. These days, I believe that it takes about 6-8 months before Google updates your "history report". By updating, I mean possibly releasing your website further within search results.

See, this combination of "who owns the domain", "how long will you own the domain name", and "how old is the website", can provide a more accurate report to Google as to whether or not this website will survive, stay the course, or provide great content. Through this "history report" and "sandbox report", your website will go through an "exam" after 6-8 months in order to determine whether or not you are ready to play with the big boys online or whether or not your website has what it takes to succeed online.

Until Google increases the amount of websites it will index within its results, we are all going to have to battle to stay on top. Internet marketing in general is becoming increasingly tougher with every month that passes. It has finally caught up to us and we are now starting to fight a hard battle.

One more thing you may notice:

Google's cache (Snapshot image of your website when it crawls through) is becoming a little wonky lately. One day Google will have an updated cache, the next day it won't have a cache at all, and the following day it will have a cache of your website from 2 weeks ago.

What does this all mean?

When Google crawls a certain page, it looks at everything. Let’s take one specific internal page in your website. This specific page may be ranked 10 different times within the search results for 10 different key searches depending on the content within that certain page.

As Google increasingly fights to keep certain pages, its cache may be having a tough time keeping up and delivering the most relevant cache to date. More times than not, the front page of a website doesn't have a cache at all anymore! This is very interesting. It may mean that your front page may not be the "key" anymore since more and more people are trying to cram everything under the sun within their front page.

It is possible that your "Main Sub-Categories" are weighing higher in Google's eyes for the quality and relevance of your internal content.

What you want to do is to provide a clean map to all your internal pages. Your front page was the best solution for providing a map to all of your pages. Maybe these days, your front page should be used only to link to your main "sub-categories" and also to show your most recent posted content!

I will leave you with this. If you are new online or even an experienced marketer online, buying many new domain names may not be the key to increase your success right now. Buying new domains should be a long term investment. Try increasing the popularity of your already established websites in order to gain more exposure for your business. Owning more domains increases the amount of time and effort you need to promote each one. Like I've mentioned many times before, owning a network of websites is not enough! You need to expand your horizons online, increase your content and create more business partnerships every chance you have.

For more of Martins articles, go here: http://www.smartads.info/newsletter

Google Page Rank Is Dead - Part II

In part I - Google Page Rank Is Dead - Or Ist It?

I discussed how Google's Page Ranking System has become obsolete, but at the same time, many business savvy entrepreneurs still give it credit and could possibly discredit or credit your website accordingly to it's rank.

"Let's really go in depth to take our 1st steps towards leaving Google's page ranking behind!"

If you're like 1000's of people online, you've been following page ranking so close for so long, it can be really though for you to break the habit. "No habit can be completely broken, it must be replaced with another".

1st Step: Remove Page Rank From Your Google ToolBar

Google probably won't like me for this one but I recommend clicking on "Options" within your google toolbar, take off "Page Rank".

Congratulations, you've done it. Marketing your website has taken a new turn, a bright road is ahead!!

We can now go back and search online. Before we do, try NOT to think about how a website's importance was measured by Google's page rank, instead take a good look at each site that you visit.

Pay special attention to the content, layout, usability, and friendliness. Do you like it? Why do you like it? Right down things, images, layouts, anything that you like from websites that you pass by.

Create a "Favorites Folder" within your browser, call it "Opportunities". Within this "opportunities" folder, add websites that interest you, or that would interest your visitors.

Combine all these favorite things that you like to form new ventures for your business. Keep GOING BACK to these web resources that you liked and take a look to see if there are any good opportunities for both companies to prosper together.

Web Marketing is never done alone, successful marketing online needs you to create your own "web" to catch visitors with. What better way to do so then by connecting with websites that you like.

Why should we do this?

In order to stay away from Google's Page Ranking all together, we need to replace it with our own "web measurement system" to determine whether or not our company should recommend, swap ads, or do business with the other.

In the end, we won't be selecting websites just because they rank well, we will finally be selecting only websites that we all personally like.

Personal resources create a better world for your visitors. Just remember, many of your visitors have no idea about the world of Google Page Ranking and how you may of been addicted to it.

Building A Personal Ranking System:

In order to personally rank websites, there are a few measurements you can take... Ask yourself these questions when browsing...

* What is their alexa ranking? or Rank from Ranking.com?
Does the site seem to be getting matching traffic with yours?

Does the site you are looking at have incoming links from Google in the same industry as yours? Pay close attention to who links to the websites your research.

* Most Important: Do you get a good feeling when you visit their site?

If you don't, 8 times out of 10, other visitors won't either. I never recommend a website that doesn't feel right. 1st impressions mean a lot more than people think. At times, the internet is a sub-conscious activity and many things that we see make us react to it without even knowing it. You want people to like you and trust you enough to do with business with you.

* Last but not least: Will you be happy knowing that the websites you recommend have a personal touch and your visitors will be better off because of it?

Once we all get in a good groove online and start adding complete personal resources on our websites, the internet will be a better place for all our visitors.

Try and let the larger resource directories within your field to list everything possible, the best course of action for your business is to create something with your own personal touch.

I hope you've enjoyed this II part series!

Google Love - Five Top Tips To Make Google Love Your Site

Trying to fight Google or be cleverer somehow is pointless, destructive and the wrong attitude.

Learn to LOVE Google and work WITH IT instead - and it will send you streams upon streams of people. It's as easy as pie if you follow these straightforward instructions.


1. Google Love ...

Google and all its programming is not some form of enemy - unless you are a piece of web scum, that is.

Google is based on the idea that it should help people FIND WHAT THEY ARE LOOKING FOR.

That's all.

Sit with the statement above. Meditate upon it if necessary. Use EFT.

But UNDERSTAND that a pointless site that has no unique content will NEVER get ANYWHERE with Googly or any other outfit that is using their techniques and methods.

You can buy books and ebooks until your wallet bleeds on "how to trick Google" this and that - just forget it.

Unless you have SOME THING that SOME PEOPLE will HONESTLY WANT and be grateful for when they find it, there is no hope and there is no point in reading any further.

Also, trying to fight Google or be cleverer somehow is pointless, destructive and the wrong attitude.

Learn to LOVE Google and work WITH IT.

If you have the contents, and you follow the most simplest common spider robot courtesy protocols, then it will come and it will index you.

It will be that mystical bridge between YOUR (customers, people, communities, friends) and your site.

That's what it does, that's what it is, that's it's nature and if you know that, then all is well.

You will get good results following the rest of this.


2. Dressing For Google ...

So now, let's have a DECENT website with DECENT content.

A decent website means:

- All the pages and directories have links that work properly and allow Google to slide with immense ease from one place to the other, without ever hitting an annoying dead end;

- All the pages are cleaned up so that you have the absolute MINIMUM of html instructions and nothing that doesn't need to be there, such as vast and pointless java scripts or the truly appalling "mso" instructions;

- All the pages have the right meta tags which ACCURATELY REFLECT what's on them, and including title, content, description, keywords at the very minimum;

- All your pages have proper headings and descriptions and content WHICH MATCHES your meta tags to a T;

- All your images are title and alt tagged CORRECTLY and resident on your own site.


Decent content means:

- Whatever you've got, it is USEFUL. If it is UNIQUE, so much the better, and that's not hard. All you need to is to be yourself and use your own words, even if you are affiliate - write your own reviews, put your own dog's picture on it, be unique, be YOURSELF.

- Whatever you've got, I'm sure there's some people who want to look at it, read it, do something with it. There's billions of people out there. Just make sure YOU KNOW WHO YOUR PEOPLE ARE and write to THEM.

- Decent content also means that what you've got is presented so that both Google and a human being get it what that is all about.

When your website is up and running, test, test and test again. Try every single hyperlink on your own computer, on someone else's and on all manner of different browsers.

Only when you are happy that it all works as it should, we go to Step 3.


3. Let Google SEE You

You need a minimum of 35 decent links going to your site for Google to take any notice of you and start paying attention.

Please be aware that "one link" is just that - http://www.snark.net is NOT the same as http://www.snark.net, which is not the same as http://snark.net, nor even remotely similar to any variation including http://snark.net/index.php

All, each and every ONE is viewed as a single separate link - when you need 35 ALL GOING TO ONE SINGLE ADDRESS to do the magic.

So now, to the "decent links" part.

A site that isn't indexed much by Google or doesn't turn up until page 1,993,990 on a Google search for its kind is WORTHLESS to you.

Find HIGH RANKED directory listings for your site and list your site THERE. This goes for any of the many variations on getting a link from another site, be it a guestbook signed or an article placed. Don't waste your time with anything that itself doesn't turn up on Google's own top ten.

Now, you've got a date with Google.

What we need to do next is to BUILD A RELATIONSHIP - prove our value and worth over time, in other words.

That's the next of our Google top tips - seniority and reliability.


4. Be THERE When Google Calls!

Make sure you've got a decent ISP with 99% uptime or better - that's of course elementary.

Don't ever take your site down for whatever reason and make any changes gradually.

Most importantly, get the best tracking software you can afford and find out who is already coming, and what they are coming for.

That's the key to long term success - to find what you're doing well and then expanding on it. For example, if one person came from Google (or any other search engine) for the term "snark", then build on that. Write more articles about snarks, what to do with them and without them, how to avoid them, collect snark images - in other words, become the first port of call for any snark enquiry.

Build on your speciality some more with a web directory, guest articles, reviews and then we're more than 3/4 the way to a real web presence and Google responding to changes in your site near instantly, which is what we want.


5. Keep Improving ALL THE TIME.

The final success tip is to keep improving ALL THE TIME.

Pull up the html or php you wrote a year ago - I bet you can do better now.

Review your meta tags and your site copy and improve on both.

Name your pages, images and directories better. Improve the content, structure, navigation of your site.

Keep at it with directory listings and submissions - directories come and go, you need to be always there with the "state of the art".

Keep doing useful link exchanges with matching high ranked sites too and keep adding VALUE and UNIQUE CONTENT to your clean and well presented pages.

That's the most important thing of all - to keep at it with continuous improvement.

Follow these steps EXACTLY with a well named new site with decent content - and you WILL see immediate improvement in your Google rankings.

Good Luck and Good Spirits always,

Silvia :-)

Revising Your Site, What Happened To My Search Engine Placement?

As of September, Smartads went through what so many have done before. I changed the entire site. I knew what it meant. It means that your search engine placements your probably so proud of are probably going to be lost in the process.

Sad but true. See, search engines are getting smarter, not only are they getting smarter but they do what you do. When you change a design, se's change your listings!

Typically you change it for a couple of reasons.

1) You don't like the design anymore

2) You've learned knew tips on how to optimize your site better for search engine placements.

3) Your revising your services

Whatever it may be, you're changing something. Now it won't happen right away but eventually, if your site already has a good search engine ranking, then search engines will find out what you've done and follow a process.

But "se's" aren't human? That's correct but they were built by humans. Most se programmers realize that eventually something changes and since they want their search engine to be the best, they try to recognize your changes right away but there's only one problem.

What do they do with the listings you have right now? Well, let's say for instance you are attempting to change everything for the better.

Now let's also say that you HAD a page title called "good rank".

Search engine's previously knew and still think that your page is all about "good rank". Moving along, your new page information is about "Getting a better rank". Your old placements are now wrong in the eye's of search engines. They now realize that something has changed. So what are they going to do?

Dump your old listings and start over! Ouch is right. So why would you ever want to change your site if that's the case?

Well here's some food for thought: Yes, you may loose your existing rankings but your roots are growing. Your new pages are growing bigger and better than before, it just takes a small transitional period to take effect.

For instance, within Google, Smartads had over 580 pages found when looking at all the links listed in Google. Since we changed the entire site, there was a 2 day period where none of our links were listed anymore. Normally, this would have scared me right away if I didn't know that my site had changed.

Not 4 days later, not only where my pages back but the old rotten pages that weren't being used anymore got dumped and the many new pages got listed. Around 680 pages now. That was a jump of around 100 pages that got added. < Cause and effect. >

Here's another example for you. Most of us know about link popularity within Google. You've put all your effort into promoting your main page. All of the links that you've had placed on other sites have a link title of: "Great Ranking Services". Once google saw your link, it started looking to see whether your information on your site is relevant to "Great Ranking Services" and awarded you appropriately.

Moving along a little, you've not only changed your site but you've also changed your link title to better fit the new content. The new link you now add on other sites reads something like this: "Boost Your Search Engine Rankings".

Before you changed your site, you got a GREAT rank for "Great Ranking Services" when people did a search online.

Here's the catch. Now that your promoting a new site, a new page, new content within your page, the old content relavance goes straight down the drain. Search engines have recognized that everything has changed and are not paying any attention to your old links anymore. Yes, they still help your link popularity, but they don't help your content relevance.

See, search engines are consistently trying to improve their content relevance. That's what people want. If they search "gidgets & widgets", they expect to get the best results for "gidgets & widgets".

In Conclusion:

If you plan on changing your site, be prepared to suffer for a small amount of time. Prepare yourself for the worst because the best is yet to arise and prevail.

I understand that we all want better search engine rankings and just be ready to do what ever it takes, even if it means loosing your old se placements for some newer, fresher ones.

I hope you enjoyed my article, for more of my articles, simply follow the link below!

4 Tips For Raising Your Search Engine Rankings

Search engine rankings are an important factor to consider when you have a web site that needs more traffic. If your web site doesn’t have a good position in the rankings then it will be hard to find.

Since most searchers click on the first few results, you need to make sure that your web site is ranked highly enough so that people can easily find it on the first page of search engine results. Although no search engine optimization company can guarantee a high rankings for your site permanently, often times hiring a web marketing company will pay off many times over. For those of you doing it yourself or those of you that want to ensure your marketing company is doing a good job, here are some tips for raising the search engine rankings of your web site.

1. Content

Content is an important factor in high search engine rankings. Make sure that you have plenty of content throughout your site with your target keywords in the articles. It’s also worth doing a search for web sites similar to yours and taking a look at their articles for ideas. Keywords are an important factor and they should be used throughout the content of your website.

2. Web Site URL

Your web site’s URL can help you rank higher with the search engines if it contains your keywords. However, don’t think that naming your site after your keywords will always help your rankings – you need to do more than just that. But still, it is one of the factors in improving a search engine ranking.

3. Search Terms

Search terms should be written out in text, instead of graphics. If you use pictures, be sure to give them alt tags. If you want a good rank in search engines then these things that may seem small should be considered, as search engines can read the text but not the graphics.

4. Page Title

The title of your page is very important, and if you choose the title properly then it can surely make a big difference in search engine ranking. Terms such ‘free article on safe children's toys’, or ‘contact the children's toy expert today’ are good to use as titles on pages containing such content. The titles themselves are very specific to the page and also may not have much competition being as specific as they are. The title area is the most important place to include your keyword phrases, so make sure that you utilize it.

Master these four tips and you’ll be on your way to getting free traffic. Look for other tips to keep your site moving up.

Landing Page Optimization

Search Engine Optimization or (SEO) doesn’t rank entire pages but elements of them. Each page is a team working together to produce an overall effect. While each page can produce high rankings and spread to each other is one of the best strategies another is to use a landing page strategy. In this case you can use various techniques to bring traffic to one particular page, usually the home page, and from there direct that pages high ranking to your website’s other pages. When a page points to another page is does not diminish its page ranking. It may not be able to give as high a boost if it points to too many pages but this can be compensated for by a good navigation structure.

For the landing page to have its best effect use whatever techniques you can to drive traffic it. Seeking out sites that will provide links to your landing page is a strong strategy. If you can drive enough quality traffic to your landing page, and I stress quality, you can maximize that pages ranking. A landing page with a high enough page ranking can nearly endow the rest of your website with increasing rankings.

This is where a strong navigation structure is vital. You want the landing pages strong ranking to filter around your website and enhance your pages as much as possible. By keeping the in sight navigation links to a minimum you will ensure maximum ranking increases throughout your site.

By using a combination of affiliates, links from other sites, possibly pay-per-click and awesome SEO skills you can drive your landing page’s rank sky high. Get your site up with good content first and then put forth all of your efforts into the landing page. The landing page will be your ambassador and it will seek out visitors and persuade them to come to your site.

How To Trick The Search Engines

How to Trick the Search Engines
In a Zen sort of Way

Everybody is looking for the magic formula that will get their site listed on the first page of Google. Because of this, the internet is full of search engine optimization experts that are willing to take your money once they sell you on their new theory of Google’s algorithm. You have your choice of SEO Consultant to full fledged SEO Corporations all willing to take your money and optimize your site. None of them will promise specific results.

That’s because Google is a very sophisticated search engine and their algorithm changes constantly. Google’s algorithm has one primary goal and that is to deliver relevant content. All of this effort is to identify good websites with quality content and to weed out the sites that are "optimized" to trick the algorithm. Therefore… if you have a good website with quality content then “optimizing” your site may be counter-productive if there's even a slight chance that Google would think you’re using tricks.

That’s right, let Google’s algorithm smell your website optimization techniques and your status as a good website with quality content may be in jeopardy. Google is looking for websites whose webmasters are putting their time and energy in to building and maintaining a good website with quality content not spending their time and energy trying to trick the algorithm. So, the best thing you can do is to put your time and energy in to the reason you built your website in the first place. Whatever that reason may be, it probably was not to learn and practice SEO techniques.

Be organic. Be yourself, even be one with your website. Google likes sites that are organic and built by people with a clear purpose. Understand and embrace the algorithm. Do not fear it and try to trick it. It is there to do good.

As I’ve said before, don’t lose sleep over search engine optimization, lose sleep over conversion rate. Spend your time maximizing your site for your visitors. A good site with quality content will get top rankings naturally.

So, the trick to tricking the search engines is to have no trick at all. How much easier can that be?

If search engine optimization was a major player in your marketing plan, here’s a great site to learn about other website marketing methods: http://www.wilsonweb.com/a/go.to/Ogre

- JD

Creative Search Engine Optimization – A Case Study

Search engine optimization this and search engine optimization that. You read and hear about it all day, but what about your site? While there are plenty of articles providing useful information, this article shows you how a real world example met with success. The point of this article is to emphasize creativity when approaching tough optimization situations.

Problems for BusinessTaxRecovery.com

In November of 2004, our firm took on the seo marketing for BusinessTaxRecovery.com. The site was being promoted through offline activities and pay-per-click campaigns. No effort had been made to achieve high rankings in Google, Yahoo or MSN.

Keyword analysis revealed that combinations of the root keywords, “business” and “tax” were going to be difficult to attack. The primary problem concerned government agencies with web sites. The IRS site, for instance, had roughly 9,680 inbound links and an absolute ton of content. State agencies weren’t far behind. The California tax agency site had roughly 7,000 inbound links and, again, tons of content.

For a final nail in the coffin, the client informed us the business was cyclical with the busiest months being January through April when people focused on taxes. The site absolutely had to rank highly during this period. We had two months to achieve results.

Gulp!

The Solution for BusinessTaxRecovery.com – 140,000 Hits

After staring at a Salvador Dali painting for a few hours, we came up with a solution. It involved a combination of internal site page focus, meta tag optimization, link exchange and massive article promotion. The results produced 145,828 hits from January through April, with only 5,000 coming from the pay-per-click program.

The first step was to change the focus of the site from the home page to the article page. Jumping the tax agency sites on keywords such as business tax and taxes was impossible in two months, so we didn’t even try. Instead, we decided to focus on the keyword phrase “business tax articles” and bring people into the site through the article page. Meta tags were optimized and a link exchange program undertaken. The key to campaign, however, was a strong article promotion campaign.

Since taxes are confusing, it seemed obvious that an article campaign focusing on tax information would meet with success. Boy, did it. Approximately 35 articles were written, published and submitted to article directories. Since the articles were timely, they were snapped up and published. The articles produced direct traffic to the site as well as numerous inbound links because of the link created in the article byline.

As for the search engines, we focused on everything but Google. We expected nothing from Google because the major content and meta tag changes would take six to eight months to show results per the usual practices of Google. In reality, it didn’t matter. The Yahoo and MSN search engines produced big time.

In mid-January, the site went to number 1 on MSN under “business tax articles.” By the end of January, Yahoo was also listing it as number 1. MSN started listing it at number 1 for “tax articles” in February. The combination of these listings produced a significant amount of traffic, conversions and a very happy client.

Can we go on cruise control now? No! With the end of the tax season, the traffic to the articles page of the site has dropped by 75%. Nobody is looking for tax information after April 15th, so this is hardly surprising. The promotion of the article page was simply a short-term solution to a difficult situation. While it should produce traffic during the first quarter of each subsequent year, it is not a year-around solution.

Over the next six months, we will focus on the long-term goal of jumping over the tax agency sites for keywords such as “business taxes”, etc. It is going to take a lot of patience, but will eventually produce a significant amount of business for the client.

Creativity is often the key to conquering seo situations. Blindly slapping up new meta tags and links isn’t always the best answer. Sometimes, a little pre-emptive consideration can yield amazing results. It did in this case.

Affiliate Programs And SEO

While good SEO skills will get your page noticed by search engines by themselves there other tricks to help increase their effectiveness. Affiliate programs can be a good way to increase your website’s own SEO attributes. There are different types of affiliate programs. An older one would be the old banner concept which predates pay-per-click. Google’s Adwords is a modern incarnation of this where by people can profit from Google’s pay-per-click business. Let’s look at some of these.

Not all affiliate programs have to be for profit. There are many people who are just looking to get traffic to their sites by cooperating with other sites. Just as a strong page on your website can help increase the rankings of your other pages rankings on affiliates’ sites can do the same. Don’t confuse affiliates with guest books or link pages. An affiliate is working with some kind of service or business to make a profit so it is a function of commerce. This will help with the search engines’ rankings. Search engines look for link pages and don’t give them a very high ranking so they wouldn’t help you very much. However since affiliate pages are used for commerce they are going to have a much stronger ranking. Affiliates can act as a team just like the pages on your site.

Another point to consider is that pages that are involved with affiliate programs are going to be set up well in order to profit from them. So this is analogous to strong members of a team making a colossal team effort. Enough strong pages driving traffic to your site is lie diverting a river to a drought stricken town.

Fortunately affiliate programs are easy to find so just keep in mind what kind you would be willing to do for your site. Don’t give yourself more work than you need to.

Google’s New Update - Is Google Bombing You?

As the world turns, the internet is getting stirred up by these new Google updates showing up all over the web. For the past few weeks people have been recording two GoogleBots showing up on their site stats.

While updates may be good for some, it also means “welcome to the real world” for others. If you are one to watch closely those high rankings that your website has been getting, you may want to revisit them again. Don’t be shocked to see that your site has dropped off the face of the earth.

Is Google Killing Over-Optimization?

The more we take a look at what is happening out there, the more we discover that Google seems to be penalizing websites that “over optimize” their sites. If you try and insert keywords whenever you can, you are over doing it. If you add “anchor text” to all your links, you are over doing it. Anchor text is a new practice but as I’ve stated before, it won't last long. Most people never get to read or even see the anchor text implemented in a website. Anchor text is the “explanation” that pops-up when you put your cursor over a link.

I tested the “anchor text” theory with my site last week. I only tested one main page that I knew that Google would re-index within 48 hours. The results were very negative. As soon as the new information was indexed, the search engine results from that page dropped down dramatically. Again, I removed the anchor text from the page and the results seem to gain momentum once again.

It's not hard to come to the conclusion that with so many of us out there seeking for “google answers”, we tend to implement anything we read in articles, newsletters, forums, etc... within our websites. With this in mind, it's no wonder the new update may be attacking those who try too hard to raise their positions in engines.

Is Page Ranking Dead?

As we where all trying finally to veer away from Google Page Ranking, we now see another change in our ranks, another update has hit our doorway and with it has brought new PageRank updates. Is it really an increase/decrease of pagerank? or is it just the result of the new updates taking a small affect to the pagerank technology from Google.

It actually seems as though pageranking is still in affect. Many of the newer pages built these days have been neglected from pageranking altogether. Now, we can see a small increase to newer pages and a possible increase to older ones as well. Lately before the commotion started, 99% of newer pages barely gave any signs that Google had indexed them and rewarded inbound links to them.

What Does The Future Hold?

Many of you might be thinking, where do we go from here? In reality there are literally 1000’s of you out there that have never gone through a Google update of this magnitude. You may feel confused, unsure, and alone. Don’t worry, you are not the 1st to get hit hard. We've all felt the wrath of Google sometime or another. The best thing to do is to NOT wait until the storm settles down. No, get out there promoting your site more than you’ve ever done. I’ve always considered a hit to my websites a blessing in disguise.

Is Google's IPO Affecting Change?

Some seriously believe that since the introduction to Google's new IPO, they have had a new found reason to working harder at delivering better results and trully proving to the world that they have what it takes to be the best out there.

How is it that so many of us out there now depend on Google to perform well? What has happened to promoting online where so many of us depend solely of Google to create success for our business? Does this not seem strange to you? In our efforts to increase rank, get better placements, increase our traffic, we have let Google become our parent figure guiding us online and holding our hands.

As we move into the future, are we going to allow only a certain amount of companies to hold the keys to our future? We need to break free and look towards making new partnerships and help smaller but also deserving search engines to plow the way.

Before this update, you may have felt comfortable with your high rankings but now they are gone. It has happened to the best of us. Take this opportunity to get back up and start promoting your site like you’ve never done before. Don’t just sit there and wonder what happened, take advantage of this “ego buster” and increase your own rank.

As for Google’s future, let Google figure that out and keep your focus on your own future. Go further than you’ve ever gone before.

Until next update, keep it up!

Google manipulates search results: A boost for small business?

As more and more businesses strive for a top ten Google ranking, it's becoming harder and harder to achieve. This is especially true for smaller businesses that simply don't have the budget for a big link popularity campaign. But hope may be just around the corner. If a top ten ranking for your primary keywords has been eluding you, then read on!

Google manipulates the results

Google is trialing an 'enhancement' to the way it displays its results. Instead of showing the top ten results for the exact words you enter, in the trial Google suggests three related results that you might want to check out. Where does it display these suggestions? It shunts (or replaces) results 6, 7 and 8 !!!

In this article, I refer to these results as 'intruders'.

To see some 'intruder' results in action, search for "piggy bank". Results 6, 7 and 8 are actually 'intruder' results; they're the top three results for the more specific, less popular search, "piggy bank lyrics". Google assumes that people searching for "piggy bank" will probably be interested in results of a search for "piggy bank lyrics".

On first impressions, it's tempting to think that this makes it harder to get into the top ten (because now it's really the top seven, and the last two results may be easily overlooked). But it may actually make it easier - especially for smaller businesses. Let me explain why...

The advantage for smaller businesses

It all comes down to who can rank in the top ten for the most popular searches - like "computers", "cars", "doctor", "pets", etc. For anyone in these industries, a top ten ranking for these keywords is the holy grail. Unfortunately, these sorts of searches are presently dominated by big corporations with hefty search budgets. Most smaller businesses don't even try to compete. Instead of focusing on these hotly contested keywords, small businesses tend to focus on much more specific keyword phrases - like "computers boston", "second hand cars ohio", "female doctor new england", "discount pets for children", etc.

But Google's trial may change that. Remember, it's replacing results 6, 7 and 8 of a popular, broad search with results 1, 2 and 3 of a less popular, more specific search. If the trial becomes a standard feature, a search for "computers" might well include three 'intruder' results from a search such as "computers boston". As discussed above, results 6, 7 and 8 are likely to belong to big companies, whereas results 1, 2 and 3 of the more specific search are more likely to belong to smaller businesses. Therefore, when the switch occurs, it's out with the big and in with the small!

In principle the enhancement appears to work in favor of small businesses:

1. Big business dominates popular / general search results
2. Smaller businesses have a greater chance of dominating less popular / more specific search results
3. General search results are replaced by specific search results
4. Big businesses are shunted out of the top ten by smaller businesses

Now I hear what you're saying: "Why wouldn't the big companies simply start optimizing for the more specific searches?" Granted, this is a possibility; but for most big companies, it would be a monumental task. Big companies tend to service a large geographic region, and they typically offer numerous products and services. Even a hefty search budget would be stretched to the limit if it was required to bankroll optimization for every single product, every single service, and every single location. And this is what would be required to dominate all of the more specific results, thereby gaining back their number 6, 7 or 8 position. It's far more likely that they'll simply try harder for a position in the top 5 of the popular/general search. This approach would be less complex and probably more rewarding.

The fine print

Of course, where Google is involved, nothing is ever that simple. I've oversimplified things above to make the trial a little easier to understand. In reality, the situation is a bit more complex because of the way Google chooses which search the three 'intruder' results come from. Take the "piggy bank" search for example. Google assumes that most users who search for "piggy bank" will also be interested in results from a search for "piggy bank lyrics". This assumption is based on the fact that thousands of other people are searching specifically for "piggy bank lyrics" - in fact, it's one of the most popular searches containing the original term "piggy bank". And that's why it gets the nod.

In other words, the intruder results come from popular searches (less popular than the original, but still popular). This means you'd already have to rank highly in a very popular search before you'd become an intruder. So, in reality, the above "computer" example is a little simplistic; the intruder results for "computer" are more likely to be from a search for something like "computers ibm". In reality, the top three results for "computer peripherals boston" are more likely to appear as intruders in a "computer peripherals" search.

Conclusion

The important thing to remember is that if this trial becomes a standard feature, it will be implemented on all searches. And the more specific the original search, the easier it would be to become an intruder in that search. In theory, it has great potential to help smaller businesses reach the next rung of the search engine ladder.

Other Examples

Here are some further examples if you're interested:

* Search for "add url"
* Search for "on demand"

Happy shunting!

Google Ranking WITHOUT submitting to Google

A while back, I read an article that explained how to get a good google rating without ever submitting your site to their submission forms. Like you, I was kind of shocked by this statement so I decided to give it a try.

In the beginning, I used to submit my site all the time to Google but soon realized the magnitude of my failure. Of course, it's a known fact that Google relies solely on your link popularity and content.

Link Popularity?

What that means is the amount of links (yousite.com) listed on other sites that are related to yours! The more sites that link to you, the greater your popularity!

So again, Google depends on your link popularity! If you don't have a google rating (In other words, is your link found on google?) some sites WILL NOT link to yours. There are many sites that have a great google rating and have specific regulations to whom they will accept within their resource sections. They will specify that your site must be listed within Google and if they type in your site in the google search bar, your site should be listed within the top 5 sites.

Here's The Theory:

Of course you want all sites to link to you, especially the ones who already have a great google rating because that means that your site will be picked up by google. Some people only try to get links from those sites but just remember, we all had to start somewhere.

My suggestion is to do as many link exchanges as possible and especially make sure that each site is specifically categorized by their content. You will get penalized for having one page full of links to sites that do not relate to each other.

Another little "Timbit", try to keep your pages to 1-20 links within each page. Once you have 20 links, add a button to a (PAGE 2) and continue your resources that way.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's an example of our "Resource Section"
http://www.smartads.info/resources

You'll notice how each category has specific sites that get listed within them.

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Ok, so I went a little off topic with respect to this article but you'll see how everything is connected together. Once google starts ranking your site, you don't want to leave any stone left un-turned.

So back to getting a google rank without submitting your site. Once you start performing link exchanges with other sites, just keep on going and going and I promise that eventually, Google will start picking up some of your links on other sites. Once this starts to happen you're google rank will rise.

So just keep doing what you're doing and let Google do it's own thing. When your ready and you're link popularity grows, then you can submit your site to Google and reap the rewards.

So many companies do this process backwards and wonder why they don't get listed in Google. Or like what happened to me, Google lists your site right away but then in a couple of weeks, presto, your site is gone from their listing and your left confused as to why!

Google is quickly changing

With the big buzz of Novembers fall within Google comes a newly indexed data-base...

Did Google do something bad to our great placements? No I don't think so and here's why.

While people are screaming for help and wondering what went wrong, I've noticed a MASSIVE shift in page ranking.

If you look at top placements at the moment, according to Scroogle, most of the ecommerce search terms got hit really hard. A lot of the top 100 placements were vanishing and quickly.

Now on the other hand, less impressive and especially smaller ranking sites have been bumped up top. I firmly believe this is all because of Google's "refreshing" their memory and possibly starting to take on web site ID's with 5 characters plus.

What I mean by that is the ability for Google to index more than 3.2 Billion web sites. Adding another character to the already large 4Id's dedicated to each site indexed will allow Google to add a whole other list of sites within their data-base.

Now I could be wrong on that one but here's another phenomenon going on. I've been talking to other ecommerce web sites and helping them gain better rankings. It's been a while since they've had their Page Rank change within their site. Working real hard as I instructed, they have followed all the rules and attempted to boost their page ranks.

Up until now, nothing has changed and people are loosing their ranks within Google since Novembers algorithm change.

Around a week ago I've been getting calls left right and center about page ranks boosting like I’ve never seen.

The previous scare before this November change went something like this. Google stopped indexing more than 3 levels within your site. Ex. www.yoursite.com/level1/level2/level3

I affirm to you this: its pure baloney, more sites now have better PR ratings within their entire site than ever before. I believe that Google is rewarding most great resources online before taking on more listings within their index.

As towards se placements, I also took a major hit for my better search engine placements but a couple of days ago that started to all change. It almost seems as though Google wanted to take out the top placement companies in order to thoroughly crawl through all their information before letting them get back in the game.

I say this because one of my top placements was sitting at #1 for a long time. Since this November change, it immediately dropped to #181 and didn't move one single number for over 3 weeks. To my knowledge, that's a little strange. All of a sudden, my site stats recorded Google browsing through all my 600+ pages and presto, my site is back in the game, just like that.

In Conclusion:

It seems to me that we're all just lined up to sign an application for better search engine placements. The question isn't if your site will get back in shape, it's a question of when your number will be called.

Have a little faith and a little patience and you too will rise again! Just keep doing what you've been doing all along and don't worry about falling down. The ones who get back up are always the ones on top in the end.

Best of luck to you!

Read more of Martins articles online here:
http://www.smartads.info/newsletter

How and when should I submit my website to Google?

As soon as you register your domain name, submit it to Google!

Even if you haven’t built your site, or written an copy, or even thought about your content, submit your domain name to Google. In fact, even if you haven’t fully articulated your business plan and marketing plan, submit your domain name to Google.

Don’t wait!

There are two reasons for this. Firstly, getting on the search engines has always taken a long time for a new site. Even assuming you do everything right, it takes months before your site is even indexed, and more months before it starts to rank well. As a rule of thumb, never expect to rank highly within 6 months of submitting your site to Google.

The second reason is a recent phenomenon called ‘Google Sandbox’. Many SEO experts believe that Google ‘sandboxes’ new websites. Whenever it detects a new website, it withholds its rightful ranking for a period while it determines whether your site is a genuine, credible, long term site. It does this to discourage the creation of SPAM websites (sites which serve no useful purpose other than to boost the ranking of some other site).

By submitting your domain name to Google as soon as you register it, you’re establishing a site history even if the site has no content. By the time you’ve built your site, written your copy, and developed the rest of your content (and written your business and marketing plans), Google will probably see no need to sandbox you.

If you wait until launch day to submit your site, you’ll spend a month or two (maybe more) sitting in the sandbox watching potential customers spend their money elsewhere.

How to submit your site to Google

Don’t waste money by paying someone else to submit your site to Google. It’s easy!

Simply go to http://www.google.com.au/addurl.html, enter your URL (domain name) and a few comments or keywords to describe your site. Then click ‘Submit’. That’s all there is to it. You only have to do it once, and only for your top level page (i.e. Home page).

Google’s robots will then crawl your website the next time they’re out and about. Of course, they don’t guarantee that you’ll be included in their results.

IMPORTANT: As mentioned above, it takes quite a while for your site to appear in the search engines. This is partly because the search engines are big and slow – especially when it comes to new sites. It will take a minimum of 6-8 weeks before your site is indexed.

How to submit your site to other search engines

There are hundreds of search engines on the Internet. It’s a lucrative business, after all! But don’t panic; studies suggest that the top 11 search engines account for about 90% of web traffic. In other words, if you have the top 11 covered, there’s no need to submit to the rest.

What’s more, at the time of writing, most of the top 11 don’t actually accept submissions. The only ones that do are Google (described above), Yahoo, and MSN. Here’s a list of the available submit pages.

• Yahoo – http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html (offers free submission)
• MSN – http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2 (offers free submission)
• Alta Vista – covered by Yahoo submission
• Netscape – covered by Google submission
• Fast / All the Web – covered by Yahoo submission
• Ask Jeeves / Teoma – at date of writing was not accepting new submissions
• Hotbot – at date of writing was not accepting new submissions
• Lycos – at date of writing was not accepting new submissions
• AOL – at date of writing was not accepting new submissions
• Looksmart – at date of writing was not accepting new submissions

TIP: My SEO copywriting and advertising copywriting website http://www.divinewrite.com reached page 1 of Google.com for my primary keyword, “copywriter”, without a dollar being spent on search engine submission. I only ever submitted my site to the engines that offer free submission.

Do I need to submit my site to other search engines?

As a rule, no.

With an estimated 8.8 billion pages indexed (approximately 76% of the Internet), Google is number 1 when it comes to search engines. It’s argued that once Google has indexed your site, the other search engines will follow. Theoretically, you don’t actually need to submit your site to Google either because it’s always on the lookout for new content and will eventually find your site of its own accord. Google actually states, “Given the large number of sites submitting URLs, it's likely your pages will be found in an automatic crawl before they make it into our index through the URL submission form.” (“Google Information for Webmasters” - http://www.google.com.au/webmasters/1.html#A1) Personally, I wouldn’t like to take the risk.)

Having said that, it certainly doesn’t hurt to submit your site to other search engines (especially if you haven’t developed any content for it yet).

Conclusion

You don’t need to be an SEO expert or an SEO copywriter to submit your site to Google and the other search engines. And you don’t need to pay anything to do it. You just need to do it. And if your domain name is new, you need to do it NOW!

Happy submitting!

Google Page Rank Is Dead - Part III

Is it really dead?

In an online forum post from WebProWorld.com (A discussion on Google), people from all over are speculating about what is going on. In fact, one member was quick to point out that the last big shift Google had, we saw the PR system go down as well. This begs the question...

Are we on the verge of a BIG PR shift? or,
Are we seeing a Google marketing scheme just to shake people up?

In many ways, Google needs to be improved upon their "broken down PR system". There are so many areas if they payed attention to forums and blogs all around the world, they would have more than enough feedback about their PR system to fix this growing PR issue.

Page ranking is a potentially a great system. It CAN be a great system if it directly ranks websites properly by content, relevance, and not simply by the number of links pointing to an individual website.

These days, you see a website with 15 "medium relevant" links pointing to it while its front page holds a PR of 7-8 out of 10. How do you justify that?

What will it mean if Google's PR systems stays down?

I believe it will mean a big shift to online marketing. Many newbies out there that are barely legal when it comes to SEO have an opportunity to measure everything they do. In turn, the newbies may even sound professional to their clients. Take away these tools and you are left with true marketing gurus that have stood the test of time and can deliver results for themselves and their clients.

The internet is vastly growing into a pool of professional fakes and scammers. This is really giving the internet marketing community a bad name. Without the Google PR, many people won't be able to prove their results nor will they have that "fake respect" that you get from having a website with PR 7/10.

What about MSN & Yahoo?

In growing efforts to keep up with MSN & Yahoo's strong and growing marketing campaign, Google may be feeling left out these days. Many people think that their PR system is simply a gimmick; a gimmick that attracts a lot of attention. By disabeling this system, you create mass fear and confusion. Bad publicity is still publicity neverless?

So, is Google trying to create a buzz?

This could be possible and it could be possible that everything will be back to normal within a couple of days. We won't know until time catches up with us.

Until then, take this "dark saga" moment and find other ways to build your business online. Don't worry about what Google is doing, worry about what you are doing to improve your internet marketing campaign.

Did Google Bomb New Directories Online? Look's That Way!

A few weeks have gone by now and the results from Google’s new update are in. As we take a closer look we see a pattern emerging. It seems as though, older more established directories are being rewarded once again. Many newer directories / Resource Links seem to rank much lower. As we take a closer look at this, we start to notice some rhyme and reason behind all the chaos.

Is This Google’s Way of Getting Rid Of “I link to everything directories”?

What is meant by that is this: As more and more people practice and utilize linking strategies online to build their SE placements, the more and more things start to get out of hand. I mean, is reciprocal linking the next “Link Farm” to get wiped out from Google?

I can’t really see that happening but it’s starting to show signs of this. When you search online these days for listings, companies, resources, etc., we seem to be getting older, more popular “Yellow Directories” than anything showing up on top of specific “service based” searches. I mean let’s face it, yellow directories have been around since “Local Telephone Books” were first invented.

Is Google Implementing A Trust Factor?

I only mention this because since the boom of resource links comes the growth of doorway pages, unethical SEO practices, and especially key stuffed resource pages. There are certain resource directories out there that have stood the test of time and still continue to use sound practices and quality content for their readers.

Don’t Forget Our Loss Of Faith In “DMOZ”!

Lately people seem to be losing faith in DMOZ, the open project directory where human beings get to judge whether or not one company should get a listing above the rest. The problem with this seems to be with the “editors” discretion of not adding the competition to their section of DMOZ. Many individuals who are “editors” at DMOZ are your competitors.

Is Google Also Losing Faith In “DMOZ”?

You may get some interesting answers when you ask yourself the above question since more and more we are seeing a drop in DMOZ activity in searches within Google. It seems as though, Google might also see this negative side to DMOZ. It may not be extremely apparent just yet but I would watch for this and possible changes to the DMOZ operation and editing freedom.

Is Google Bombing Directories Online?

Due to the new shift in resource directories online and people who exchange links, search engine results continuously bring up large useless directories of websites claiming to be relevant to your search. The problem with this is some people use “spam” tactics to stuff their directories with relevant key words in order to get better rankings for their resources. In doing so, it delivers poor quality to visitors who are actually browsing through these resources online.

What Is Google Doing About This?

Like I mentioned above, it seems that Google is taking a profound interest in older, more established directories in order to weave out newer, more content rich directories built to drive more traffic. By doing this, Google can deliver better “local searches” for company listings instead of the growing directory websites popping up at a terminal near you.

How Can You Prosper From This Change?

Go back to your directory listings online. If you don’t have any, this would be a good time to implement a directory listing strategy. Take a good look at your listing and make sure that your listing not only appeals to your visitors but also has atleast your website link for search engines to crawl through and rank accordingly.

How Will This Help You?

As a norm, a good practice to follow is search for your “desired search engine searches” geared towards your business. Find any related directory that comes up in those searches and list your business. By listing your business in these directories, you will help your company get targeted visitors to your site that are actually looking for your product/service.

I hope this article helps you out!

Google Page Rank Is Dead - Or Is It? Part I

For a long time now, marketing gurus all over the world have been talking about google page ranking. Page ranking is simply Google's way of measuring your pages accordingly.

But there is a problem...

More and more we tend to see NO consistency with page ranking at all. Please don't confuse the difference between "page ranking" & "search engine ranking". The two are completely different.

With this method of measurement, we could quickly see how much or how little a person has put into promoting their website. A high rank of 6,7,8,9,10 is sometimes held as something honerable to have for your site but does it really matter?

In some aspects it does and in some it doesn't.

As I mentioned above, page ranking has nothing to do with your search engine success. It (did) have everthing to do with "importance". The only problem is (like so many marketing ventures online), this measurement method is dying off with the rest of them. People online are very intuitive about these sort of things and tend to over saturate ways to beat them and/or improve on them quickly.

People all over the world are even still wondering how to increase their page rank. Now why would they do this???

Simple, it's all about prestige. Eventhough marketing experts like myself weigh absolutely no importance on page ranking anymore, there are still literally 1000's of business people out there that consider a high rank a good thing.

So how do you benefit from increasing your rank?

- You will attract better quality websites to yours
- People will think your website has lasting power
- People will want to mimic what you do
- People will even think highly of you

Even now, many browsing people look for high ranking websites to exchange links with.

So does trying to increase your website page ranking help you? Not really. What you ultimately want to do is promote your website as much as you can in as many "RELATED _ RELATED" places that you can and let search engines do their own thing.

Playing into search engines hands won't help your company. Building a great web marketing foundation will attract exactly what you've been after..... MORE EXPOSURE!

Please take this seriously and always be on the look-out for other ways to promote your business, let Google's page rank go and look at the future beyond PR ratings.

Hope this article helps you out!

Read more of Martin's articles online here:
http://www.smartads.info/newsletter

Google Page Ranking And The Value Of Links.

In today’s incarnation of the Internet search engine optimization or SEO is more important than webpage design skills. The best designed webpage has limited usefulness if no one visits it. A website is a product and a product that people don’t know about doesn’t sell. With the many search engines that are available it is important to know which are the most useful and how they are useful. Let’s look at Google.

Google uses a particular search algorithm that assigns a value to websites called PageRank that is one part of how it ranks pages. The PageRank value is determined by several things but the most important are the values derived from the ingoing and outgoing links in your page. Let’s look at that first.

The links in your website allow Google to navigate the pages on your site and index more of the content. Keep in mind that it is your pages that are ranked and not your site. You could conceivably have one page ranked higher than all of your others put together. This is the biggest reason to make sure that all of your pages have links into and out of them and that you never have dangling links or pages that can be linked to but not out of. This is why the navigation structure of your site is vitally important.

With that covered let’s look at the main factors used for PageRank. First of all a page on your site has to be indexed by Google to even have a PageRank. At that point the page has an intrinsic PageRank value. That page has links to your other pages. When one page links to another page it increases that page’s PageRank value without deceasing its own. It is almost like one page voting for another without penalizing itself. This is why you want to avoid any dangling links because although that page would have an increase in PegeRank it could not do the same for another page. With this in mind it is prudent to direct more links to your most important pages to increase its value. Then from that page the visitors to your site can link to the other pages.

The best strategy for increasing PageRank is to link pages to each other with a single link. By doing this you avoid splitting the value between multiple pages. However you want to make sure that all of your pages are linked together so that you can navigate your entire site from a single starting point.

Remember that in SEO you must learn as many aspects of it as possible as they are ever evolving.

LinkAdage’s Take On Google's New Search Engine Patent

Has Google thrown the cyber world a curveball? Let's fill in some blanks and connect a few dots regarding the recently-filed patent application for Google's latest Search Engine algorithm - Search Engine 125. For those unfamiliar with the inner workings of search engines, each Search Engine uses its own unique formula for determining that all-important ranking for each web site. Remember, users who query a Search Engine rarely look beyond the first page, so if you want to increase visitor traffic, step one is to develop your website in a way that matches the major search engine's ranking algorithms. You need to find out what the search engines like and make sure you feed it to them.

Now, over the years, the formulae used by search engines to rank a site have grown more complex. Pre-2000, search engines didn't do much more than count keywords on a site. The more times the words 'limburger cheese' appeared on the site, the higher the site's limburger cheese search engine ranking position (SERP). Of course, the key then became to develop SEO text with limburger cheese mentioned in every header, twice in subheads and at least once in every paragraph. Hardly compelling reading, except for the most avid of limburger cheese fans.

So, the Google, Yahoo, and MSN search engines moved to improve the quality of their SERPs, to provide users with helpful, expert information. Changes were made to the keyword algorithms (the weighing formulae), awarding more points for things like the quality of inbound and outbound links to and from a site. This meant that quality links from a relevant 'authority' site - a highly-prized designation, will move your site up in the SERPs.

Well, on March 31, 2005, Google applied for a patent on its latest search algorithm. For those who have no fear of their brains exploding from buzzword overload do a search on “Patent Application 0050071741” to read the entire patent. The patent application describes "a method for scoring a document comprising: identifying the document; obtaining one or more types of history (sic) data associated with the document; and generating a score for the document based on the one or more types of historical data."

Apparently (or not), Google has determined that historical data associated with each site is an essential ingredient in developing the highest quality search results for users who query. And just what kind of historical data are we talking about here? Well, things like:

* the site's inception date (more likely the date the Search Engine noticed you)
* how frequently documents are added and removed from the site
* how often sites change over time
* number of visitors over time
* number of repeat visitors
* number of times your site is bookmarked
* how often keyword density is changed
* the rate at which the site's anchor text is revised
* inbound/outbound links - how long in place and high trust (quality) links

The list goes on and on. Factors associated with your domain include: how long your site has been registered, has the domain expired (ghost sites), is the domain stable - as in not moving from one physical address to another.

Links remain a key component of Search Engine 125. Links have to be relevant to your site. Links to your site increase in "SERP Power" as they age. Link growth should be slow and steady. A sudden influx of inbound links - especially links that have no relationship to the content of your site - is a surefire way to drop in the SERPs. Google gives such sites a much lower score.

How about data on your visitor traffic? How will Search Engine 125 weigh that? Number of visitors, growth in visitor rates, spikes in visitor rates, the length of each visitor's stay, number of bookmarks to and favorite rankings of your site - all enter into Google's new Search Engine algo according to the patent application.

Another weighing factor is search results. The number of searches using a given query word or phrase, a sudden increase or decrease in click through rates, an exceedingly large number of quick click throughs (which might indicate 'stale' content), again all factors that Google believes will increase the quality of its search results.

Other factors are also listed as part of the patent application. A site with frequent ups and downs in traffic will lose points for untrustworthiness (even if your site sells only seasonal items!). Keyword volatility, focus change and other variables will also be employed in Google's never-ending quest to quantify the quality of each site its Search Engine delivers to users based on their queries.

So, okay, where's the mystery? The intrigue? The disinformation? The e-commerce community is abuzz with speculation - speculation that Google's well-publicized patent is nothing more than a plant to throw off the competition, disinformation intended to keep the competition and SEOs off balance. So why the speculation? Well, even a quick scan of the patent application reveals large areas of gray, vagaries and downright inconsistencies within Google's proposed ranking criteria. For example, sites are penalized for changing content often (untrustworthy) and rewarded for the frequent addition of new content (freshness). A paradox, you say? Or all part of Google's master plan to feint right while going left.

The object, in the end, is quality search results. That's what Google, Yahoo and the other popular search engines want - that perfect equation, the ideal formula that will provide high quality search results. And for site owners and designers who, in fact, do keep their sites fresh, who have quality links useful to visitors, who deliver the information the user is looking for - there's no reason for concern. However, the owners of links farms, keyword dense sites and cyber garbage dumps should sit up and take notice. In the end, quality search engines will inevitably improve the quality of content available on the Internet.

Can Google Really Deliver Country Specific Searching?

This is a serious matter, can Google really deliver top quality search results for other countries? The answer so far is "sort of". In this article I will use Canada as an example of the quality or lack of thereof, that is delivered by Google's search results.

Let's take a look at Canadian search results by Google.ca:

When you highlight "Canada" through Google search results and then start searching, you may be surprised at the amount of companies that aren't really Canadian. All of this also applies for the UK and other major markets as well...

In fact, many of the "paid results" come from American companies. Now some would argue that this is to be expected, coming from American companies with large budgets but I would disagree because a lot of the bulk of the "Canadian specific" results are also American companies.

It is quite evident that this is a growing concern with business owners residing in different countries.

As an owner not from the US, I would rather compete with companies that are more local than not, simply because the results would then be relevant. Irrelevant results equal to poor results and less people take the search results seriously when they keep sifting through poor quality results online.

For example; If you highlight "search in Canada" and search for "web design", the top 2 results seem not to be from Canada. This is a serious issue. What if people click on "I'm feeling lucky", they are redirected to a company outside of Canada. The average person won't know what to think about that and may disregard searching through Canadian results any further.

The more content specific the results are, the more people will search through those results. The more people will tell their friends & peers to search through those results. See, as web marketers, we do have the power to create a search term that people get familiar with. Just look at "Blogging". A couple of years ago, if you asked people to search online for "blogging" sites, you would have had a lot of confused faces staring at you. Nowadays, if you search for blogging, there are more than 900,000 results found in Google and to top that off, there is more than enough paid advertisers as well.

What do we see changing in Google?

The #1 thing we are now seeing more and more is search results listing websites with country specific domain name extensions. Here's what I mean by that....

If you were Google and you wanted to deliver better search results for Canada, how would you go about doing that?

I would look at 2 things:

1) Does the domain name end with .ca? (Ex. www.smartads.ca)
2) Does the "contact" information about the company match the country - Street, City, Province/State, Country. Are all of these factors listed within the contact page?

These are very important factors, evidenced to the fact that, I see Google weighing your "contact" page higher than anything else within your website other than your front page. So the moral is, make sure to list EXACTLY where it is that you do business within your contact page. Your website will rank higher for local searching when this technique is utilized.

Second, make sure to buy a domain name(s) that is country specific. If you live in Canada, buy a domain with the extension (.ca). If you live in the United Kingdom, make sure to buy a domain name with the extension (.uk). If you live in the US, make sure to buy a domain name with the extension (.us).

You may be asking, what if I don't want to concentrate on just local searching? Create a separate website to target different areas. There is nothing with .com, in fact most people automatically type in .com but, if you truly want to target locally, you have to play locally.

The future of search engines is local searching! We are seeing an increasing amount of evidence to sustain this claim. Targeting locally is a great start and will ultimately help you to target internationally later on!

I hope this article helps you out!