Build A Website to Search Engine Optimization

I have seen and heard crazy things...ah! But how to build a website! In my endeavor and quest for success I have heard people ask weird questions and I have seen those professing to be internet gurus give astounding answers.

I know of a fellow who posted a question on yahoo answers. This particular question kept me staring at my monitor screen lost of words. This fellow had bought a domain name and registered it with one of the leading domain name registrar. His question was simple yet to those familiar with the art of online business, the question leaves a lot to be desired.

My friend was seeking advice on what to do with his domain name. He had no plans or ideas on what to do with it! Think of lack of planning and we don' t need to go further than this example.

To avoid being on the same predicament, here are 5 factors to consider as you ponder on your next move. Before you build a website, think about the following:

Type of web site.

Identify the type of web site you will be building. Are you going to build a website whose primary purpose is to sell hard good or e-goods? Would your site be composed of affiliate links or are you going to sell your own service or product? Is your web site going to be primarily informative in nature with google ad sense and other form of advertisement or is it going to be purely visual with little or no content.

Identifying the type of web site you are going to create will make the next step easy to identify.

Niche based.

Gone are the days when all a web master needed to do was to stuff their web site with links leading to all type of product and services. In the current internet world you can not succeed in building a web site designed in the form of a shopping mall with all kinds of goods and services.

The internet is increasingly and exponentially becoming a specialized super highway. Only those web sites that are able to distinguish them selves as authorities in a given area are poised to reap the benefits of online business.

Start out by identifying a profitable niche that you will enjoy writing about, identify an area that you already have experience on, have passion or will be comfortable learning about.

Only build a website in an area or niche that you believe in.

Research you market.

It's not just enough to develop and build a website based on your strength and weakness. Care should be taken to do a little bit more research about the potential and profitability of that given field.

There are great tools out there on the net that would enable you to come up with a profitable niche, those tools will also enhance your research by shading light as to the exact phrases that your potential visitors would under normal circumstances type into the search engines in their quest for information.

Domain name and hosting.

Care should be taken while choosing the domain name and hosting company for your online business. A search in any of the leading search engines for the phrase "how to choose a domain name" or "web hosting" would return tones of articles that have been written advising us on the do and don' t do as far as choosing a domain name or host provider is concerned.

Quality Content.

Have you ever typed the exact phrase of a given keyword while searching for information on any of the leading search engines only to end up frustrated with the displayed results after trying several times? Search engines and human traffic thirst for information, great quality information.

One sure ways to win the search engines wars and in the process please your targeted customers is to create quality content. A site owner who remains focused and persistent in doing just start will in the long run reap the benefit of having their pages rank up high if not at the top of the search query results.

And there are many more things to consider, but why not start with this 5 first!

Joseph Nyamache is an Author and Webmaster specializing on web hosting and site builders That work. His site is devoted on providing information, tips and ideas on how to build a web business by providing great content that search engines love and humans thirst for. Visit www.your-inforcom.com to get your Free Special Report Now!

Search Engine Optimization is a method used by webmasters to achieve a better ranking in the search engine's listings for a particular website and its content pages. These methods are aimed particularly at benefiting from organic or crawler search engines. Organic searches are natural searches that don't involve pay-per-click advertising. Crawler search engines follow the links on a page from one web page to another, taking note of all the connections.

Unfortunately, SEO (search engine optimization) methods are often misunderstood and misused (even abused) by many Internet marketers. As a result, various SEO methods have come to be classified as either "white hat" (meaning that they are proper and legitimate approaches within the eyes of the search engines) or "black hat" (meaning that they are either deceptive or unethical or frowned upon by the search engines).

There are two primary arenas for search engine optimization: on page SEO and off page SEO. On page SEO generally includes providing good content for visitors, and the proper use of page titles, meta tags, header tags, text bolding, alt tags, keyword emphasis, and outbound links. Off page SEO generally includes such tactics as anchor text, article directories, link exchanges, and back links from site submissions, forum comments, and blog comments.

Let's take a quick look at some of these terms:

Page Titles: these are the words that appear in the upper left-hand corner of your browsers, in the blue bar at the top, that identify the website page you're currently on.

Meta Tags: these are tags inserted in your HTML header code that describe the subject matter of your webpage. There are two common meta tags, one for your keywords and one for a short description of the page. While Google tends to ignore these tags, other search engines will often give them added attention and use them in their descriptions of your webpages.

Header Tags: these are used to emphasize the importance of specific text within your content. They are generally used to highlight your keywords much in the same fashion as a newspaper highlights an article with a bold headline.

Text Bolding: once or twice in your content, if you use bold texting around your keyword, it's believed the search engines will give extra attention to those words.

Alt Tags: these are short descriptive words that are associated with an image on your page. For instance, if you have a web page about water skiing and there's a picture of a little girl water skiing behind a boat, you'll want to tag that photograph with a descriptive statement such as "Water Skiing Girl" that emphasizes your keyword "water skiing."

Anchor Text: these are the words that are emphasized in linking back to your web page. For instance, you could link back to your water skiing page with anchor text that simply states the URL of the page (let's say, http://yoursite.com/waterskiing.html) or you can push your keyword for that page and use "water skiing" as your anchor text.

All of these are legitimate approaches to search engine optimization, standard white hat approaches. At the end of the day, by using search engine optimization to help those visitors who come to your web page to quickly understand and interpret your content, you not only serve them better, you also make it easier for the search engines to send them your way. Relevance is the key to assuring the traffic that comes to your page is the right traffic that for that page.

Keyword Optimization: Why It Is Important To Online Marketers

by: Vanessa Doctor

Online marketers know that in order to be able to succeed in the vastness of cyberspace, they must be able to learn how to optimize their website’s online exposure by being able to optimize the use of certain keywords and phrases that can help with their site’s search engine ranking by improving their position in search engine results.

Since online businesses are starting to discover the complexity of marketing online, employing certain means can ensure the success of your attempts to market a certain product or Web content online, one of which is by keyword optimization.

Keyword Optimization In Online Marketing

Strategically placing keywords and phrases within your site’s content can help boost your site’s traffic immensely, thereby improving your site’s ranking in search engine results. The choice of keywords that you use, and how you optimize them, can play a role in how well you will be able to promote your website in your online marketing campaign.

Also, the places where you may situate these keywords can also affect how your site will be able to rank high on search engine results since search engines give higher relevance to keywords that are in the correct places within the web page.

Keyword optimization is such an important part of online marketing due to the fact that using the appropriate keyword in describing your site’s content helps inform online users, and potential clients, about your Web content. People will have an idea of what your site is offering them even before they actually access your site by merely reading the keywords used to describe it.

Your keywords should be relevant to the product or Web content that your site is offering, and these keywords should be prominently featured on the web page to give focus and importance to these keywords, in order to improve your search engine ranking since this will help your site receive consistent web searches over time, thereby increasing your site’s traffic.

Another reason as to why keyword optimization is such an important part of online marketing is so that you will be able to find your target potential customers online without having to exert that much effort. If you can improve your site’s ranking position in search engines, then prospective clients will be able to find your site much faster and in a more efficient manner, thereby increasing your chances of closing a sale with them.

By using appropriate keywords to improve your site’s search engine result, you can expose your site on the Internet better since your site is able to achieve omnipresence. Also, by making sure that your site is able to hit the top keywords that you aim to optimize, you can help make it easier for online users to find your site in almost all types of browsers.

Optimizing keywords will also help provide relevant information to some of your potential clients, giving them a clear idea as to what product you are selling, and making it easier for search engines to pinpoint what your site is all about. This helps avoid the problem of confusion, especially if you want to target a specific market to your site, by making sure that your site offers them with only the appropriate information and relevant links that can help them understand more about your site’s Web content.

Is Your Website Being Read? Why People Don’t Read Your Web Page

by: Sherman Cheong

As the world virtually shrinks into the window on your computer screen, the web site is the best and a must-have tool for any business. Not only can it reach a global audience, it will boost your local exposure exponentially—at a minimal cost.

However, your business web site isn’t, and shouldn’t be, just an electronic version of your product/service brochure. It could also be another potential revenue-generating source.

Just like a printed brochure, your web site doesn’t get read by your visitors from top to bottom. At least not initially—and not until you get them interested in what you have to offer.

First Impression

As the saying goes,

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”

And nowhere is this truer than on the Web. Your prospects form an instant impression of you and your company the moment your home page displays onto their computer screens.”

In a mouse click, your prospects determine who you are, how they feel about you, and decide if they want to do business with you. Is your web site creating the impression you want? Your business web site acts as a silent salesman for your business. Knowing this, wouldn’t you want to “dress” it to WOW your customers?

Web Design vs Web Creation

Being able to draw doesn’t make one an artist. Just as having written an essay doesn’t make one a novelist. At least not without years of practice and training. Similarly, and with the widespread availability of professional software, you as a small business owner may choose to design-it-yourself (DIY). You may think you could create your own artwork, “design” a promotion flyer, build a web site.

However, to design something to visually communicate effectively and compellingly, you have to consider its clarity, font usage, readability.

Other things to consider are:

* Your business communications
* Branding and marketing mix

These are business communication problems to be addressed. You also need to consider its consistency, identity, colour, professionalism, integration, innovation and emotional impression.

Usability

Have you ever gone for a drive with a map someone else made and it is poorly drawn or just wrong? We all hate the frustration of getting lost. A difficult or inefficient navigation would break your web site as quickly and easily as it was created (by yourself). We evaluate the consistency, innovation, linkage, usability and presentation of the design.

We also evaluate the resolution requirements, complexity, consistency, usability to test the effectiveness of the web site layout.

How We Really Use the Web

In his book, Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, web usability guru, Steve Krug, writes:

“When we’re creating sites, we act as though people are going to pore over each page, reading our finely crafted text, figuring out how we’ve organized things, and weighing their options before deciding which link to click.

What they actually do most of the time (if we’re lucky) is glance at each new page, scan some of the text, and click on the first link that catches their interest or vaguely resembles the thing they’re looking for. There are usually large parts of the page that they don’t even look at.”

How we really use the web site

Krug adds that if one wants to design effective Web pages, there are three facts about real-world Web use to consider:

1) We don’t read pages. We scan them.

Why? Because:

* We’re usually in a hurry.
* We know we don’t need to read everything.
* We’re good at it.

2) We don’t make optimal choices. We satisfice.

Why? Because:

* We’re usually in a hurry.
* There’s not much of a penalty for guessing wrong.
* Weighing options may not improve our chances.
* Guessing is more fun.

3) We don’t figure out how things work. We muddle through.

Why? Because:

* It’s not important to us.
* If we find something that works, we stick to it.

Wise Words: Analyse Keywords For Better Website Positioning

by: Paul Coupe

Good analysis and research is the main criteria when it comes to sorting out your keywords. Easier said than done though in the great majority of cases. Engaging an expert is possibly one of the best moves you'll make, as they'll run rings around any amount of work you'll do on your own. The difference between the best keyword analysis software and the freebees can be colossal. The best tools will unearth some real eye openers you'll never have thought about.

One elementary yet very common mistake is to gather together a bunch of keywords and to copy them across an entire website. This will drastically reduce the effectiveness of pages. If instead you focus and carryout research upon 2 to 5 words per page the results are likely to be much better.

It's worth remembering that keyword spellings can obviously vary from country to country. If we consider some of the most outstanding differences between English speaking nations such as England, the US and Australia, a whole new batch of keywords may be worth further analysis. Not only are spellings possibly different but also entire words will have their alternatives (eg pavement and sidewalk). Complete phrases may also be regularly used and understood in one country but not in another. Particular phrases can even vary greatly on a much more local level, especially if we consider popular sayings and slang. That said one of the best policies you can adopt is to check your keywords regularly. All things web related tend to change fairly quickly. What works today could be desperately out of line tomorrow. Once you feel you have a good set of keywords together, you'd be best advised to carryout some basic search engine tests. Testing will illustrate:

* If keywords are correct for the niche of the page concerned.
* Competitiveness of keywords and the strength of the competition.
* If sites ranked for particular keyword searches are really competitors or have any relationship to the area in which you compete.

OK, now's the time to hit you with a big one – Latent Semantic Indexing otherwise referred to as Latent Semantic Analysis. Gosh where did that one suddenly come from? Well it's possibly too much to adequately detail in this brief article, but worth mentioning nevertheless. If you want to get serious about your keywords and SEO in general, then some additional research around LSI will do you the world of good. Wikipedia lists LSI as a "technique in natural language processing, in particular in vectorial semantics, of analysing relationships between a set of documents and the terms they contain by producing a set of concepts related to the documents and terms". Well no one ever said it was simple, but basically from a search engine performance point of view we are interested in the relationship, grouping, positioning and variation of terms. Occasionally the right mix can just be stumbled across but most web designers wouldn't really be aware they'd got it right or wrong. First understanding and then using this mix intelligently can set your pages leagues ahead of the competition.

As pointed out at the start it's perhaps best leaving the whole business of SEO and keywords to the experts. This is assuming you can find someone who's competent and has your best interests in mind. If your budget is only small or you site performs so badly that anything is an improvement, then the best advice is to keep it simple. Sorting out your keywords for a site that has previously coped reasonably well without will make a big difference. Don't expect overnight success. The top search engines move at their own pace, so it's not uncommon for site modifications to take several weeks to filter through to an improvement in search positioning.

This article is free to republish provided the resource information remains intact

Choosing An Effective Web Design Company

by: Phill Bernier

Here's the scenario...

..You're a business person, you know all there is to know about your industry and your products. You felt the time was right to expand your business by harnessing the power of the internet. You know that with the tools available today, just about anyone can throw together a website, however, you also know that there are many issues and pitfalls that can turn a good idea into a complete disaster... time to call in the professionals.

Good plan!

But here's the problem...

There are hundreds of them!!! Prices range from £50 to £5000 for seemingly the same product, there are big companies, small companies and freelancers all selling web design services. Your friends grandson who just left kindergarten can do you a good deal if you're prepared to pay in cash.

In my opinion, if you are going to buy something...anything...you need to have a basic understanding of the issues surrounding it: The good points, the bad points. Acceptable and unacceptable concessions. Consequences and benefits. In this article, we are going to attempt to show you how to avoid getting ripped off by providing you with the necessary understanding required when choosing a web designer. Once you have read and inwardly digested the contents of this article, you should be confident that the web design company you choose will build you a web site that will fulfil the vision that you have for it.

Step 1: Choose a Few Reputable Web Design Firms

The first step when choosing a web design company is to shortlist a number of prospects. The best method possible is to choose a selection of companies based on personal recommendation. Many business people know other business people who can supply referrals. Given the benefit a well developed web site can have on your business, it is well worth taking the time to tap into your network of contacts to get the name of 3 or 4 satisfactory web design companies to choose from.

In the event that this doesn't work for you, use a local directory, the internet or a newspaper to make a list of potential web designers. (Remember that anyone can pay an internet marketing firm to get them at the top of a search engine such as Google so a company's ranking does not mean that they are capable of delivering a good solution.)

Step 2: Check Out the Web Design Companies Own Web Site

It stands to reason that if a company is capable of creating workable web sites or solutions then its own site should be beyond reproach, so take a look at their own web site as well as a couple of sites from their portfolio, if portfolio items are not available, simply e-mail them and ask.

The Design of the Web Site

The following are a number of things to look for when choosing a web design company from your shortlist:-

Are there apparent errors (spelling errors, missing pictures, broken links etc.)?

Attention to detail is vital in web design. What you see on a web page is the result of a great deal of complex interaction beneath the surface. If that which is visible is full of errors, it stands to reason that the same level of care has been taken over the code which makes the site function. Spelling and grammatical errors will harm your credibility and a dysfunctional web site will frustrate your audience.

Can You Easily Find the Information You Are Looking For?

This is critical. If you find yourself on a web site, the chances are you were looking for something in particular. Ensure that the elements of the designer's web site are easy to find. Check that you are able to quickly and easily spot the contents of the pages and move freely between pages.

Other design considerations are as follows:-

- Is the text clear and easy to read?

- Are the pages uncluttered and easy on the eye?

- Are there elements such as excessive animation distracting the user from the main text?

- Does the site appear quickly?

- Does the colour scheme and design fit in with the brand of the company (take the logo as a benchmark)?

The Technical Bits

Now this is important! Why?

First, because there is legislation in both the UK, the US and a variety of European countries that requires your site be accessible to disabled users. Failure to adhere to this will result in your having to hire a third party company to re-code and possibly redesign your entire web site.

Secondly, if your web site is not coded using standards (set by the www council) it may not function correctly when viewed by different people using different equipment.

Finally, it is a well known time-proven fact that if your visitor is kept waiting more than 10 seconds for a web page to appear, they will move on.

SO HOW DO I TELL ?!

I hear you cry in desperation! Well, you don't need to be a geek or even know the first thing about web design, html or programming. All you need are the addresses of a couple of useful websites and an explanation of how to use the tools found there. A web page has been created for your convenience that contains links to these sites and detailed instructions on how to use the tools provided and evaluate the results. The link appears at the foot of this page.

It should be noted that evaluating these elements will give you some idea of the technical ability of your chosen web site design companies. There are many many more issues that a web site designer should be aware of, and in fact should take care of without you even knowing about it. The points listed here are, in our opinion, those that will have the greatest impact on your business and are so often ignored by less scrupulous web design companies.

Step 3: Contact the Web Design Firms

Now you should have pretty much narrowed down the possibilities you can go ahead and get in touch. Most companies will jump at the chance to talk to you and convince you of their product offerings. However, what you are interested in are the facts, not the sales pitch.

You have already established their design and technical capabilities, now you are interested in their ability to fulfil your needs and provide you with efficient service. Ask for some references from their most recent projects. Ask for the web addresses, contact names, details and completion dates. In approaching them in this way you ensure that you're not getting the one or two satisfied clients that they have serviced in the past, you are getting up to date clients and up to date projects.

Once you have their details, call the referees. The following are some idea's of the kind of information you might want to extract from these people:-

Verify the details you have been given in respect to project completion dates.

Find out about the quality of service the client received

Ask how able the web design company was in establishing and anticipating the needs of their client.

Discuss deadlines and timely delivery

Try to establish how effective the site has been in achieving the original goals of the client

Ask if the client has any complaints

Don't be afraid to speak frankly, whether satisfied with the service or not, most people are happy to be given the opportunity to sing praises or vent frustrations.

Step 4: The End

Well, having done all of this you should have a pretty good idea which company is going to provide a solution that's going to work for you. It may seem like a lot of work, but not only are you about to part with a substantial sum of money, but if the web site you receive doesn't do its job properly, you could well be missing out on new business or worse still convincing potential clients to go elsewhere.

Good Design Practices and Important Rules in Website Design

by: Kanicen Nichathavan

When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that -- pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means "abandon ship"!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work fine.

Your website is where your business resides it's like the headquarter of an offline company. Hence, it is important to practise good design principles to make sure your site reaches out to the maximum number of visitors and sells to as many people as possible.

Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion.

Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.

Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into seperate paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too big. This is important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.

Make sure your website complies to web standards at www.w3.org and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors.

Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless it is absolutely necessary. Use scripting languages to handle or manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information because of that.

Use CSS to style your page content because they save alot of work by styling all elements on your website in one go.

What You Need To Know About SEO: Basic Facts

by: Vanessa Doctor

Exposure could mean a lot for different firms, organizations or groups seeking a wider venue to make their views heard, accepted, and patronized. The main term used for this web-positioning method is the seo, or the Search Engine Optimization.

----

What exactly is Search Engine Optimization?

The Internet age has spawned a phenomenon of new terms, new jobs, and new career paths. The growth of the Worldwide Web is creating a new realm, where new types of internet-savvy folks engage in careers that require the skills of an intrepid explorer, searching for new worlds to discover. Among these new tasks are those that require the faster, more strategic placement or positioning of company adverts, documents, products or issues, in order for these entities to have the most maximum level of exposure in the web.

Exposure could mean a lot for different firms, organizations or groups seeking a wider venue to make their views heard, accepted, and patronized. The main term used for this web-positioning method is the seo, or the Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization is the terminology used to define, or describe the action of gaining a better position within a search engine or internet directory system based upon a selected key word or a group of key words. With well over 4 billion documents already on the internet, the prominent search engines are all flaunting that they can locate most of them and show you a link from within their systems, and each of the search engines or directory providers have different guidelines by which a listing within their system is accomplished.

* Achieving Maximum exposure

As web-updated consumers, we are constantly on the lookout for sites that address our specific interests, goals, or products at a specified time and day. Most of us do not always know the URL (Universal Resource Locator) for all the types of businesses that can fulfill that interest, so we use a search engine or directory service to find them for us.

For example, I plan to go out and take my girlfriend with me to a bar, but I haven’t got an idea of which place to go to that I haven’t already been to yet. The next most probable step for me would be to go to a search engine and type in something like: “bars and restaurants pasadena ca"; I put in the quotation marks to make the search more specific, to get me closer to what I am looking for. The phrase I wrote, "bars and restaurants pasadena ca" will be used represent my main key word phrase.

Once I write those key words, I am, hopefully, going to get back a list of the restaurants within the greater Pasadena area, and I indeed got well over 500 or so choices too. What makes it more helpful is that I could find those assorted choices in the local phonebook listings. However, if I wish to make my list of choices much shorter, I would type in, or enter a new search maybe like: "jazz bar pasadena ca”.

Once the search engine has done its job, then I probably will get a shorter list with these new, more precise characteristics. However, the list created will be made in an order that is determined by the search engine. The first one may or may not be starting with the letter A or a number like the one on the phone directory.

From the bar and restaurant viewpoint, if they could be in the top 10 or 20 and get a lot of “hits” or visits by web users, they will have a chance of being seen by the searcher. This is what Search Engine Optimization is all about: gaining a position as close to #1 as possible and then staying there on top, and to achieve maximum exposure.

* It’s all about location

For those who own businesses, then the primary name of the game is profits. Revenue of course, comes from people who spend their incomes with you. The more people spend their money with you, the richer and more successful you become.

In today’s business environment, it is all about LOCATION, and the next important word that comes is “ADVERTISE”.

The way the worldwide web works is the same as in the world of advertising or the directories: It’s about location in the search engines and directory systems, and advertising. If your listing is something less than the top 100, you stand an excellent chance of never being seen, or viewed. Most people are notoriously impatient, and they do not wish to wade through tons of listings. This simply means that you really need to be near, or on the top of the lists for the key words that you feel your prospective customers are, or will be using to find you.

* How Search Engine Optimizers Do This

Improving your position on the web could be done through a wide variety of methods. An easy way for this is to hire a professional Search Engine Optimization firm that can do the job for you. You could check their fees and price ranges on the web or the phone book. The process is definitely a labor-intensive one, and definitely doesn’t come cheap.

But anyway, you too can do it yourself. All you need to do is to get the rules for listing within each of the engines and directory systems where you wish to be listed, the register with them. If they allow you to point to secondary pages that also discuss specific topics, then be sure to do that by pointing to the pages within your site that cover that topic. You may also need to check on your position every month within each of the engines and directories to see how you are stacking up, and sometimes you may need to modify your site to improve your position, as well as your exposure.

Improved Page Engine Rank and SEO for Beginners and the More Experienced

by: Peter Nisbet

Improved page engine rank is a term used by those with a confusion with SEO and page optimization and Google Page Rank – properly PageRank by the way. It is a trade marked term registered by Google, although the patent for the PageRank system of calculating and assigning it is assigned to Stanford University where Page developed the system, not Google.

What most people do not know is that the term PageRank originates from the name of one of the developers, Larry Page. Hence Page Rank. He later teamed up with Sergey Brin to form Google in 1998.

Enough of history: that is in the past! The present is that Google PageRank that I will henceforth refer to as Page Rank for fear of breaking copyright law, has been publicly stated by Google as being one of the predominant means of determining the listing of a website for a particular search term. This might not last for a lot longer, since there are whispers that Google are considering reducing the importance of Page Rank in view of the increasing relevance of social bookmarking and other social sites such as Del.icio.us and Digg.

Now there is Twitter run by Google, and more and more Twitter results are turning up in Google search results. Twitter is what is called a micro-blogging service that uses SMS and instant messaging, or the blog posts on the Twitter website. Facebook is also being used by more and more people, but a lot are college students and others trying to spy on and stalk ex lovers for what can only be assumed to be pretty nefarious reasons.

However, these uses of so called social networking sites are immaterial. It their existence that matters, and the association many of them have with major search engines that are producing so many search results somewhat less than useful when they should properly have been filtered out. The question is: Should Google and Yahoo be allowed to be associated with these sites and give them preference in search engine results by use of what can only be manipulation of the algorithms?

Perhaps Page Rank and Link Density will become less important than your registration and participation in these sites. That is why I have joined most of them. They are fun to participate in, but much of the content is very juvenile and amateurish and not what I would to find in a serious search. Blog postings are generally not useful content.

However, back to link density and Page Rank. It is highly unlikely that link density will ever be dropped by Google, but they might introduce some aspects of social bookmarking in to their algorithm. What this means is that if you want to improve your listing, you will have to be involved in Google related social sites, Twitter being the main one at the moment.

If you understand Twitter you will know what I mean when I state that Google might include, in addition to page rank and traditional SEO, the number of friends and comments, number of Twitter followers, photo uploads and frequency of updates. Keep an eye on Google activity and their acquisitions, since the more acquisitions of social sites Google make, and the more of their own they produce, then you can be pretty sure that at some time they will introduce elements of that into their algorithms.

So, get ahead of the race and get acquainted with Twitter. Google have made no changes yet, but the buzz is there, so don’t bet your boots that no changes will be made in that direction sometime in the future. My belief is that article submission will remain the one major means of attracting traffic and obtaining one-way links back to your selected web pages for the foreseeable future, but that elements of social bookmarking and other social networking sites will gradually creep into the algorithms.

There is nothing to lose by being ahead in the game, and you have just been given a clue as to how to do that. It might be a year away, perhaps less and perhaps more, but when the day comes, if it does, I at least will be prepared for it.

Take the Wheel - Drive Customers to your Website

by: Lori Quaranta

So you own a small business and you have made the decision to build a simple website to gain internet exposure. Or maybe you already have a website that no one visits? You can be the proud owner of the slickest website you have ever seen, but if you aren’t getting any traffic because it’s not properly optimized you have wasted a good chunk of change and a lot of your valuable time. Weather you are building a site from scratch or tweaking one that already exists, consider these web hosting and marketing tips to help drive traffic to your website:

For Web Hosting:

1) Start with keywords - Think about terms potential customers would use to find you in a search engine. What would you type in if you were looking for your business?

2) Use a keyword selector tool - Type your keywords into a keyword selector tool to see how many people have searched on the term in the last 30 days. Look for terms in the 2k-10k range that are relevant to your site.

3) Use domain names which match your keywords – My client advertises products that are geared toward leadership skills development. In addition to leadingonedge.com he also has leadership-skills.info and a handful of others.

4) Use keywords throughout your web pages - Put your keywords in the title, description, keywords, graphics, and written text.

5) Use a keyword density analyzer - Check your website against a keyword density analyzer to see how frequently a specific keyword is used. Shoot for 3-15% density.

6) Slick and sexy doesn't get you traffic - Don't waste your money on slick graphics or things that fly across your screen. Most visitors find them annoying and search engines don't care for them.

7) Use Google AdSense on your website - Whenever someone clicks on a Google ad in your website, you get revenue. And the ads are relevant to your content. My websites now pay for themselves with ad revenue alone.

8) Advertise Amazon books and products on your website - Set up an Amazon Associates account and put relevant books and products on your website. When someone buys a product you get referral revenue.

9) Consider using a website starter package - If going it on your own, think about using a website starter package which can have you up and running quickly.

10) Decide where you want to spend your time - In any business, time is money! Small business web hosting is very doable, but it does take time. Decide if you want to do it yourself or have a professional help you.

For Marketing:

1) Get an automated eCommerce system - These can be really good, very comprehensive and very inexpensive. The good ones can do everything from customer base management to product management to shopping cart to newsletter broadcasts.

2) Get a cheap and reliable merchant account provider - You can get merchant account providers that do both the merchant account and internet gateway for you.

3) Put a link back to your website in your email autosignature - This doesn't need to be obnoxious, just a simple link that email recipients can click on to reference your website.

4) Do selective link trading - Link trade, but make sure the content on the other websites is similar to your own. Don't touch "link farms" with a ten-foot pole; search engines hate them.

5) Write articles and include your website address – Every business owner has something to say that someone would love to read about! There are a number of article databases out there that are researched for website content. Find some article databases which house content similar to yours and write a few articles. You'd be amazed at where your articles show up!

6) Write newsletters - Allow for customers and visitors to subscribe to a newsletter to get regular visibility to you and your company. This is also a great way to compile a customer email data base for your business.

7) Consider using a search engine submission services - These services submit your site to multiple search engines & directories. This can be helpful particularly if your website is new.

8) Set up an affiliates program - Allow for others to promote your products on a commission basis. Again a good eCommerce system should already have this built in.

9) Download the Google Toolbar – I am a Google toolbar fanatic! The Google Toolbar has a nifty feature which shows you the page rank (0-10 scale) of every site you visit; the higher your page ranking the higher your placement in search engines.

10) Set up multiple websites - Got three services you perform? Set up three different websites with domain names that match your keywords. Super cheap to do and can be very effective.

Hosting Geeklog Sites----Leading To a Booming Online Community

The weblogs are increasingly viewed as a cheaper alternative of expensive content management system. It makes no difference whether you are an entrepreneur or a man with opinions to share, the weblog system offers you the least complicated mode of reaching out to maximum number of audiences.

Today variety of Weblog-publishing systems are around, but only a few stands out in the crowd for their easy to set up and maintenance features and Geeklog is probably the most popular among them.

Today’s user friendly weblog systems don’t require that much of technical skill to operate them; you can acquire your personal Web space to publish your files, or you can also set up Weblog software on a server run by your ISP.

But availing the hosting service from a service provider like Frontier Power has its unique advantage:

* The Geeklog web hosting literally allows you to get up and running.
* Letting other host your Geeklog site saves your hassles with software, because a web host company has all the necessary software on its own server to host the files that make up a weblog.

Unique advantage of Geeklog websites

Although many are of the opinion that any kind of editing kills the very spirit of weblog, you some time need to regulate some aspects of contents of the site and for that multiple access to the content is required. The Geeklog application makes the multiple author entry possible by setting fine-grained permission levels for each individual user. This enables you to decide for your site whether an individual user can be allowed to take up such functions as posting, editing contents, uploading files or including more users to the site.

It is the interactive features of Geeklog like comments thread, reader polls, shared image galleries or mailing lists that can help you to build up a community of users with matching wave length.

Geeklog also boasts of an efficient calendar system; the system allows administrators and users alike to post information about upcoming activities.

Finally, Geeklog allows you to set up polls -- a great way to know what your audience is actually thinking. Geeklog also has the built in feature of offering your own RSS feed, as well as integrating another site's RSS headlines into your own page.


It is common to feel the need for more advanced features as you progress through your web community build up process. So it is always advisable to start with some advanced package as offered by the Geeklog, so that you do not need to make a mess in the midway by migrating from one system to another.

Among the feature packed weblog systems, Geeklog definitely stands out with its many unique features. True that it is easy to operate, but you can skip the technical hurdles altogether by assigning a web hosting company to do the job for you. The best web hosting service and Geeklog weblog---together they can make wonder for clicking it off with your online community.