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How to Optimize for Google – Part 1 of 3 Posted: 30 Apr 2009 09:25 AM PDT In today’s online world search engine rankings can make your business succeed, and while rankings in Yahoo and MSN are very valuable, their combined market value is still less than that of Google. This makes achieving top rankings in Google that much more important. In this three-part series on How to Optimize for Google we will touch on a number of important aspects for top Google rankings including website optimization, links, Google Webmaster tools, and a number of other considerations. The focus of Part 1 will be with on page website optimization. THE RIGHT KEYWORDS This article is not about keyword research so I will not spend too much time on this topic, however, I felt it was important to at least brush on this slightly. Make sure that your targets are achievable. If you select the wrong keywords it can make your entire optimization experience essentially a waste. Choose keywords that are attainable but yet still offer a reasonable search frequency for your industry. Your phrase selection should also be targeted to bring qualified traffic to your site. Using the hotel industry as an example, targeting the word “hotel” would make very little sense but by narrowing it down to “Victoria BC hotel” you now have less competition, and a more qualified audience. Keep your targets in perspective and go after the obtainable rankings. WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION There are many on-site factors that play a role in your search engine rankings. Here are a number of those factors and what you can do to increase your chances of success. Title Tag The title tag plays one of the most important roles in search results at Google, and is almost always the heading Google chooses for each of its listings. Placement of your target phrase is best used near the start of the tag and repeated again in the middle or near the end. Three uses of your target phrase may be helpful in some instances, as long as it is not too overwhelming. For best results each page on your site should have a totally unique title tag. It is also important to remember that because Google will use this title as the main heading for your listing, you will want to keep it attractive to potential searchers. Try to also add a call to action, or other wording to help make your listing appear attractive to searchers. To help illustrate the fact Google takes this tag into consideration, simply do a search for your target phrase and take a look at the titles of the top 10. I tried a search for a rather broad term “hotel” and saw that all 10/10 listings had it in the title tag, and 6/10 had it as the very first word. A quick scan showed that the entire top 30 either had the word hotel, or hotels in their title tags. If you do only one thing to your website, make sure that all your title tags are relevant, unique, and contain your target phrase for each page. Meta Description Tag The Meta Description tag is still occasionally used by Google as the description which appears in the search results themselves. While this used to be a more common practice Google tends to use it most often on sites with very limited content, or those which are flash based. I have seen it still used for content rich sites, however this is less common. The Meta Description tag still has an impact on search rankings. Your best bet when using this tag is to keep it short and sweet with your target phrase close to the start and never repeated more than 3 times. Like the title tag, each page on you site should have its own unique description tag. Meta Keyword Tag When it comes to Google this tag is useless, and won’t influence your rankings. There is some speculation as to whether a spammy keyword tag can however, have a negative effect on Google rankings. As a result, if you do utilize a keyword Meta tag for the smaller engines, it is best to keep it clean and play it safe. Density Keyword density plays a role in overall rankings; however, it is not as cut and dry as it once was. Once upon a time there was a magic number that when used could almost guarantee top rankings. This is no longer the case. Today the ideal density varies from industry to industry, phrase to phrase. To find out what density you should aim for, take the top 10 or 20 search results and see what percentage those sites are using. In most cases you will find that the majority of these sites have a very similar density to one another, and this average density is a good estimation of what you should aim for. Body Text and Keyword Placement The location of relevant text on your site will help establish the overall importance of your target phrase. While you do not want to overwhelm the engines and site visitors with a bombardment of target phrases at the top of the page, try to sprinkle in some instances as close to the top of the page as possible. Synonyms Be sure to include various synonyms for your target phrases within your body text on your site. Google will use these synonyms to tie in the overall relevance of the page for your main target phrases, which in turn can improve your odds. To find possible synonyms you can use a thesaurus, but the best way is to search Google itself and see exactly what they consider to be similar. Simply search in Google for your target phrase preceded with a tilde, such as “~hotels”. Next scan through the search results for any text Google has bolded. These are all words that Google considers to be related. Using the “~hotels” example Google brings up phrases such as ‘travel’, ‘tourism’, ‘accommodation’, as well as various hotel chain names such as ‘Hilton Hotels’. Keywords in Domain There is still some speculation if having a target phrase as part of your top level domain (TLD) is of use to search rankings. From my experience, yes, there is value here, although, nothing like it was several years ago. If you are starting off in the online world and are contemplating which domain to go for, consider one that uses your target phrase, assuming that it is both relevant to your business name, and uses no more than a single hyphen. While multiple hyphens in a domain can be successful, they are very common with highly spammy websites, so it is best to not take that route if possible. While having a keyword located within your domain can offer some ranking juice, I would not suggest heading out and doing a domain swap. In most cases you would be better off working on your existing site than starting from scratch with a new domain. Keywords in page specific URL Using keywords for specific page URL’s can also help add a little bit of value to your site, providing you use them responsibly. Consider using a keyword as a directory name and as part of a file name where it naturally makes sense to do so. If you have a website that focuses on tourism and includes local hotel listings, you may want to consider the following structure for your page on the Hilton: MyTourismSite.com/Victoria/Accommodations/Hotels/Hilton.html Heading Tags Placement of target phrases within heading tags helps to establish the importance of those given phrases. That said do not over do it, or abuse it. Only place target phrases within a heading tag if it makes sense to do so, and don’t flood a page with numerous tags. Heading tags are not as critical as they once were, but still a good contribution to a well optimized page. Link Anchor text This is the actual text you click on as part of a link. When full or partial target phrases are used within your text links they help pass on some value to the linked page for those phrases. This is also true when considering surrounding text. When the content around the link is also relevant, the link holds slightly more value. While a link that simply states “click here” or “www.domainname.com” does have its place, they provide considerably less value than a link that would use “discount hotels” as its anchor. Image Alt Text While image alt text still plays a minor role, its biggest part is within the use of image based navigation. If you have an image linked to another page, the alt text will be attributed much the same way as standard link anchor text is. Image Alt text should always be short and to the point and should accurately describe either the image itself, or the page the image is linking to. Do not use alt tags as a place to stuff keywords. Inline Links These are links that are found mid sentence or mid paragraph as opposed to a simple listing of links as found in a menu or possibly on a sitemap. Links found mid paragraph tend to pass on a little more value from the surrounding text and can offer more relevance to the linked page. Site Navigation It is absolutely imperative that your website be fully spiderable by the search engines. This may seem obvious, but often webmasters overlook Google’s ability to crawl a website. Google has become very advanced in what links it can follow and how it can spider a website, but there are still some things that can cause significant roadblocks. - Flash: One of the most commonly made mistakes is the use of flash. If flash is used as a sole means of site navigation then you can count on Google not viewing your internal pages, and having a significant disadvantage in terms of site rankings. - Java Script / DHTML: These days most Java Script and even DHTML menus can be spidered by Google, however, this is not always the case. If your site utilizes any kind of fancy navigation and you are wondering why Google has not indexed your internal pages, check out Google’s Cached Text version of your page. If you do not see any text links, then your navigation may be invisible to Google. - Images: Image based navigation has been safe for many years now, but if your site uses this form of navigation it is essential to have brief, relevant alt text on all your buttons. This alt text will act much like standard anchor text for text based links. This is not only for the purpose of search ranking value, but take a look at Google’s cached text version of your page. If you have image based links that do not have alt text, those links do not appear. This doesn’t mean Google won’t follow them, but for anyone viewing your site on a text based browser, your links will be invisible to them. URL Structure Avoid long elaborate URL’s with extraneous characters. While Google has reached a point where they can index massive URL strings, it is best to avoid them if at all possible. For dynamic sites consider utilizing mod rewrites to significantly clean up the URL to not only make it more search engine friendly, but more user friendly as well. MyTourismSite.com/?locid=”victoria”&catid=”accommodations” &type=”hotel”&comp=”hilton” stands a better chance if cleaned up to read: MyTourismSite.com/victoria/accommodations/hotels/hilton.htm SUMMARY Basic website optimization is a critical component for successful placement in Google but is only part of the overall picture. Scott Van Achte is the Senior SEO at StepForth Web Marketing Inc.; based in Victoria, BC, Canada and founded in 1997. You can read more of Scott's articles and those of the veteran StepForth team at http://news.stepforth.com or contact us at http://www.stepforth.com Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources How to Optimize for Google – Part 1 of 3

Tips On Generating Traffic With Squidoo Posted: 30 Apr 2009 07:49 AM PDT A good way to market any business is though a Squidoo lens. This site is a social networking site like many others around but this one for me is unique in a way. You can advertise on this site without the worry of getting penalized for it. Most social networking sites won’t let you advertise your products that is a big NO with other social websites. The Lens A lens is basically a portal to advertise on it is a unique template that allows you to put pictures on there video’s and products. You can make as many lenses as you want out of as many categories as you like. Use the lenses to drive traffic to your main business site and create more and more sales for yourself. How To Use Squidoo Keywords are most important when using a lens. Lenses are WebPages and therefore get ranked in the search engines, just like your internet business gets ranked. When you choose a url for your lens make sure that you include your primary keyword in this url, this url is going to be used to link you to other pages. Long tail keywords are being used like crazy these days because they are so popular, use the Squidoo wizard to setup your lens. One of the things I really like about the lens pages when your filling out the wizard is it gives you the opportunity to put your RSS Feed into the lens page, and search engines loves fresh daily content. Update your lens three times a week at least modify it in some way but the RSS Feeds will help you do this as well. Keep adding new content to your lens. Squidoo recommends that you make many lenses, but what there actually saying is use your long tail keywords for your lenses that you make based on your particular niche. Start domination your niche by making yours unique, lets say your niche is about affiliate marketing, and you wrote about affiliate marketing handbooks, this would make your niche stand out from the rest because your writing about not just affiliate marketing but affiliate marketing handbooks which would be different from your competitors. When you make your lenses and you have few up your sleeve link them together this is very powerful when it comes to search engine optimizing having all your pages linked together will bring more visitors to your business site. The way you have to look at your lens is just pretend its your blog and link to your legitimate home business sites with it. If you get high ranking lenses on Squidoo then you will receive all that traffic to your main business site. This technique is so powerful yet so easy to accomplish. You have to remember that Squidoo is a social network site for adults so get involved with other peoples lenses and comment on what you see, ,make your comment truthful and to the point, this will give you more one way links to your website. Charles Goldie 2009 Charlie is currently living in Vallejo, CA, and he is attending college studying for his associates degree. In his spare time he writes artilces. Charlis also maintains a blog on a regular basis. To See More Articles From Charles Click Here Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources Tips On Generating Traffic With Squidoo

Internet Shopping Cart: Make More Money With Reports and Bundles Posted: 30 Apr 2009 07:45 AM PDT Most internet shopping cart software packages come with a host of features. Make sure you familiarize yourself with the potential of your shopping cart. This article examines how to use reports and bundle offers so you don’t run the risk of leaving money on the table with each customer who engages the shopping cart process. First off, let’s see how internet shopping cart reports can save you money and make you money. Here are three examples: Filter Sales By Customer If your shopping cart software allows you to filter the database according to client, you will be able to see where most of your sales are coming from. You need to extract from the report the volume of sales for each client so you can target this group of customers with special discounts for bulk orders or something similiar. Filter Sales By Date Use this feature to see if there are specific times in the year when sales volume dramatically increases. You may have a general idea and know which month(s) are the peak sales months. However, by using a Sales By Date feature you can pinpoint specific times in the year you may not be aware of where sales volume is higher than normal, especially if those times are spread over just one or two weeks. Increase advertising dollars and promotions accordingly at those times and bring in even more sales. Filter Sales By Credit Card Do you know which credit cards most of your customers are using? Probably Visa or Mastercard. What about other credit cards such as Discover, American Express, Diner’s Club, Delta? What are your merchant account charges for those other cards? By checking on Sales By Credit Card you will see whether it is economically viable to continue offering those cards as an option relative to the number of sales you get. If it’s not, drop the uneconomical ones and save money. Surely this underscores the importance of getting internet shopping cart software that provides a robust reporting feature. Now we will turn our attention to another way you can increase sales and make more money from your internet shopping cart. It involves bundle offers. An internet shopping cart setup can learn much from the bricks and mortar world. The Happy Meal by McDonalds is an example. Travel agents do it with their package deals. What are we talking about? Bundle offers or the upsell - an amazingly simple way to increase sales value and revenue yet so under-developed in many internet shopping carts. Once a customer has already committed themselves to buying you simply add on related items and increase the value. If for example you are selling exercise equipment, exercise clothing, or body care products could be put together with the original purchase at a discount price to make a Bundle Offer. Good internet shopping cart software packages should have this feature included with simple setup instructions. Once the client gets to the page that reviews the contents of the shopping cart, the Bundle Offer can appear. The client can then add the bonus items with just one mouse click. Push Without Being Pushy Carefully choose the wording when describing the Bundle Offer to avoid coming over too pushy which may turn clients off. Don’t just make a slashed price offer. Be sure to emphasise the benefits to the user as well. For example, “Enjoy a refreshing, invigorating shower after your workout with our exercise equipment, with the all natural, herbal shower gel (brand name). For an additional $x you can have a pack of 5 sent with your order.” When choosing an internet shopping cart, make sure you have this facility so you don’t leave money on the table. The beauty of this is that bundle offers don’t really require much extra effort yet they can produce substantial sales over the months. The customer is already in the buy mode, having committed to the first purchase. The second purchase is much easier! See an actual demonstration of an online shopping cart optimized for good sales by visiting Michael’s site here: http://www.net-vault.com/online-shopping-cart Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources Internet Shopping Cart: Make More Money With Reports and Bundles

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8 Easy Steps to Get Higher Rankings Posted: 30 Apr 2009 09:16 AM PDT Want to have higher rankings by the end of next month? Here are 8 steps you can put into action to improve your rankings in the next 30 to 45 days. These are simple actionable actions that will increase your site's traffic by improving your current rankings. Everyone can pull these off and increase their traffic in a month. No tricks, just do these for each of your sites. Keyword Rich Titles – Every page on your site that is getting indexed needs to be targeting a keyword. Use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to find a keyword to target and include it in your page. (People still get this wrong) Target Every Page – Read my post about how you can target keywords in 7 simple steps. Perform these steps on every page you want to rank. This may require some rewriting. (People get this wrong all the time too, but this is KEY in long tail niches) Improve Current Rankings – I recommend starting with the keywords you're ranking for already. Pull up your analytics and take a look at which keywords are sending traffic to your homepage, then look at the keywords sending traffic to each of your important subpages. Make a list of all of these keywords in notepad, then grab a rank checker (SEO Toolbar has one) and check your ranks. Write down any keyword that is on page 3 or up (rank value is less than 30). Google is already ranking you for these keywords, so focus on them and get them all to the top 5! Seriously, these keywords are already sending you traffic and you're already ranking for them! If you improve their rank, you improve your traffic. It is that simple. Submit Articles – I recommend submitting articles for your site. You can do this by hand, but I recommend using UAW or Article Marketer to submit your articles (UAW cost more, but has more options; but AM does just fine). Use the keywords you identified in the previous step and anchor those in your resource box. If you use UAW or AM, submit at least 1 article push for each page on your site that you want to rank. If you use UAW, I recommend staggering the start dates and throttling so the links come in over time. Article marketing is good for improving rankings for long tail phrases. Create Supporting Sites – This doesn't always mean "make a farm", but basically set up a blog on free hosting services about your topic. It can be on the exact topic or niche focused. Use these sites and point anchored links at your site using the keywords from step 3. Create Squidoo and Hubpages and point links with keywords from step 3. Build Up Your Linkers – If you use UAW or AM, use them to send backlinks to your "supporting sites". Get those link sources indexed and juiced. If your site has any legit links from real sites, make a list of those link sources and use your article marketing service to send them links. I recommend anchoring them with keywords related to your keywords. I've talked about this before here. Give Your Money Pages Site Wide Links – If you've identified a few important pages that you really want to rank and need more power, then give them site-wide links on your site! If you reduce their depth on your site, they will get more internal juice (and higher rankings). Send Out Link Requests – Send out a link request to all the sites ranked in the top 50 for all of your major keywords. Don't spam them or use a crappy form letter. Real letters have better success rates. Look for in post exchanges, content swaps, site-wide blogrolls exchanges (a few DO help, I don't care what people say), or 3-way linking. If your content is REALLY good than be ballsy and go for the one-way link! If you have the best stuff in your niche, you can earn links by simply informing other bloggers about your content. If you do each of these steps thoroughly, you will get more traffic and help you get higher rankings in the search engines.

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Articles Important for More than Backlinks Posted: 29 Apr 2009 12:32 PM PDT The benefits of article marketing have been espoused for years and the trend shows no sign of abating anytime soon.  Now a national study by Opinion Research Corporation and sponsored by Adfusion has indicated that consumers are much more likely to read and act upon ads embedded in articles than on other types of ads such as banner ads, pop-up ads, email offers or sponsored links. Just one more benefit to be touted by article marketing gurus. Of those surveyed, the breakdown of their likely favorable response to various types of advertising was as follows: Articles that include brand information - 51%   -  Email offers - 47%  -  Sponsored search engine links - 39%  -  Banner ads - 25%  -  Pop-up ads - 13% A more detailed summary of the study can be found at: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=102592 Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources Articles Important for More than Backlinks

88% of Marketers Now Using Social Media Posted: 29 Apr 2009 11:56 AM PDT It’s not just hype anymore - marketers are migrating in greater numbers to social media venues although 72% have only been at it for a few months or less. Currently, Twitter is the favorite social media site for marketers but blogs, Facebook and Linkedin are running a close second. 64% of marketers use social media for five or more hours per week and 39% for 10 or more hours. The majority of marketers using social media fall in the 20 - 39 age range. Stats were compiled in a social media study done by Michael Stelzner for the Social Media Success Summit 2009. For a full copy of the study, visit: http://www.whitepapersource.com/socialmediamarketing/report/ Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources 88% of Marketers Now Using Social Media

Advanced Twitter Use - Setup Your Twitter & Automate Your Message  Posted: 29 Apr 2009 09:54 AM PDT Currently in twitter you can post tweets and respond to tweets with the goal of developing a dialogue. The point is to be able to introduce yourself and make your services and products known to your target audience. The chances that your message will actually be read by your followers is pretty slim because active users are looking for the same exposure and are not paying attention to all the 100’s of tweets posted on an hourly basis. Because of this, you need a way to connect with your new followers and actually get them interested in your message.  Your window of opportunity is short and you only have one chance to do this. Before you can even get them to follow you and present this opportunity, you need to lay the groundwork to ensure that you have all of your details in place: Twitter.com Account If you are new to the twitter experience then the first thing to do is create an account. Be sure that you read this full article before creating a twitter account. You might find some useful tips. Setting Up Your Twitter Profile "Creatively." Creating an account on Twitter is very simple. Before you start make sure you register using a Gmail account or something that you can check but it not connected to your main emails that you use daily. This will help you filter out your twitter message more easily. Once you have created an account and are logged in, make sure to take the time to edit your profile and give your viewers your bio so they know who you are and what you are about. Log In to your account, then click on “settings” and the first option you have there is “Account“. Here you have the following options: Name - put your name or something creative there to capture your audience's attention. If you are looking to brand your name, then this will be your opportunity. If you are not interested in branding your name, then use something that relates to your industry. For example, you might use a nickname like “Social Guru” or another catchy phrase. Username - this was set when you first created your account, I suggest you leave it. If you are just now creating a twitter account you might want to use a keyword or phrase. You might want to use a nick name or even your real name; it really depends on your target audience. Email - I highly suggest that you create a gmail account specifically for your twitter.com account. Once you start becoming popular you will receive a lot of emails.  This will prevent you from having to filter emails from your primary email account. Time Zone - Choose the time zone you are in. More Info URL: Here you can put your main web site or blog that you want people to find. This should be the site that you want to expose people to the most. If you have more than one site, then you may need to create multiple twitter accounts. One Line Bio (or micro bio) - this is a 160 character bio that you can create to get everyone's attention and encourage them to follow you. You may be tempted to put a marketing message to try to sell something here, but this is not advised because you want people to follow you not look at other profiles. Try to be fun and unique.  You can disclose a little bit about what you do, but be sure to talk about other things like your favorite food or animal etc. Location - There are people who search for specific cities or states. I prefer to use a state that offers the most coverage area possibilities. Language - find your language option and select it. Protect My Updates - this is if you want your messages to remain private. By doing this you are possibly losing out on opportunities to get people to read your tweets, and this means losing possible followers.  I do not recommend using this option here. Once all of your details are entered, you can save your data. There are some other settings that you may want to use like Devices and Notices. You can connect your mobile phone for updates and you can even set your preference on when you want to be notified. If you don’t want to be notified, you can select this as well. Picture - This option is a great because Twitter will put an image in automatically.  If you want to make your profile stand out then add a photo of yourself or something related to your industry.  A funny picture will work well here too. Again, the point is that you will want to get people to notice you. Design - Here is where you can really get creative. The recommended size for twitter design is 1800 x 1100. You want to place your primary message into the design itself.  Place this on the left side and make it about 230 - 250 wide and about 400 high. You can use photoshop or another design program to make it as fun or professional as you like. There are some services out there as well that will do a custom design for about $50.00 - $150.00 on average. You can find tools and resources out there like: http://theclosetentrepreneur.com/create-a-twitter-background-using-powerpoint that will help you design your own custom background as well.  Don’t get stuck on this point or let it stop you from you moving forward to the next steps. You can always come back to this later. Once you have a design ready to go, then go to “Design” in your settings on Twitter and use the “change background image” option to upload your design. This is a great way to get people to want to follow you and another chance to get your URL noticed. Ready to Automate Your Message? Are you ready to Automate your message? Well, before you do this, make sure that you show your twitter account to your friends and peers. Get their feedback and make sure you have no mistakes in your content or any other issues. Once you are certain your account looks good, then you will need to come up with a marketing message that will grab the attention of anyone who follows you on twitter. Think carefully here as you want to make sure that your message is heard and that it actually compels people to follow you.  Your message is limited to 160 characters and it must include enough space to place the URL you are trying to promote.  At this point, your followers will receive a onetime message from you and a link to the URL you are promoting. There are a few tricks here you can use to help turn your standard URL into a "Tiny" URL. There are some free services available like http://www.tiny.cc/ and http://bit.ly. I recommend http://bit.ly because you can create an account.  They also give you a username and API which will be needed to create your automated message. STEP 1 - Create your Bit.ly account Go to Bit.ly and create an account there. Follow all the details they give you and once you create an account then login and click on “account” in the upper right hand.  After you do this, you can see your API Login and API Key. Save this information somewhere as you will need this later STEP 2 - Make a Tiny URL Still being logged into bit.ly you will click on the home button and enter the URL you are directing people to. It can be an affiliate URL or just a link to your site or blog, etc. After this, click “shorten” and copy your new tiny URL and save that for later use. NOTE: Now add your tiny url to your 160 character auto responder message and make sure the total character count is 160. Save this message as you will be using it very soon here. STEP 3 - Create an OpenID Account You will now need to create an OpenID account. There are many options out there, I would recommend using http://openid.net or http://myopenid.com. Create an account and when you are finished you will be given an openid URL. Save this URL for the final step. STEP 4 - Open an Account on TweetLater.com Tweet Later is a great tool created by Dewald Pretorius who has given a lot of his time and care into the  development of this program. He has personal contact with the people at twitter and he keeps everyone updated via his blog. This service has both a free and a paid option. I recommend the paid option as you get more use of his tools and it is a very reasonable price considering the quality of the program created by Dewald. In addition to this, his site also offers tutorials that explain everything I have been talking about in this article and more. Now you are ready. Go to: tweetlater.com and create your account. You will see during your registration process that you will need to include your Bit.ly login name and API key, plus your OpenID as well. Once you have created your account you will be ready to login. Once you are logged in, click on “Accounts” and then a sub group of options appear. Select “Add Account“. Choose The Twitter for “select type” and then click continue. You will then be asked to enter your twitter user Id and password (Do not worry.  This is a secure site)… Once you enter the information, you will need to read through each option that is provided and decide which of these works best for you. There is a place to put in your automated message and tiny URL along with your message. When you are finished, click “save.” Now your goal will be to get as many followers as possible.  This is something that I will cover on our next lesson series. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and stay tuned in for our next lesson “Don’t Waste Your Twitter Account and Make Some Friends Today! Darren Dunner - Editor for SiteProNews, the leading webmaster news resource online. Follow us on twitter and our twitter clone. If you have any questions or are in need of services to have a site or blog setup properly feel free to contact me editor@sitepronews.com Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources Advanced Twitter Use - Setup Your Twitter & Automate Your Message

How To Write An Article With A Powerful Title So You Get A Flood Of Traffic To Your Website Posted: 29 Apr 2009 08:42 AM PDT If you want an effective method of getting targeted traffic to your website, then writing articles and publishing them is the way to do it. This method is also very cost effective way to driving traffic to your web site. Article marketing is a great way of letting people know more about you as well as a powerful branding method as well. However, publishing your articles to all corners of the Internet isn’t enough; you have to write an article enticing enough to get people to actually read your article and go to your web site. The main purpose of the title is to draw people into reading your article. What draws people into reading your article are titles that are catchy, stand out, and indicate what the reader will get out of reading the article. Take this article for instance. The title tells you exactly what you will get by reading this article. If that is of interest to anyone (and if you are reading this sentence, it is of interest to you as well), then they will read this article. A powerful title that draws the reader in answers some very specific questions right in the title. These answers will create a headline that “hooks” the reader into reading your article. The first thing your article title must answer for the reader is the benefit they receive by reading your article?” This alone is worth reading the article. I have seen many article titles that really detract from the power of the article because the title did not draw me in. For example, let us take an article that talks about some of the things that real estate investors overlook when they are considering investing in a property. You can have 2 different titles to that article. One could say: “Real estate investors overlook some things when investing in property” or “The 5 things that real estate investors overlook in property investment that can cost them thousands of dollars per deal” Both titles can be on top of the same article but which one draws you in more? If you are interested in not losing thousands of dollars when you are investing in property, then you will be more likely to read the article with the 2nd title. The 2nd title lists a clear benefit of reading the article and that is how to save thousands of dollars. The first title tells you what the article is about, but it doesn’t tell you what you will walk away with other than knowing some things that you need to remember. Some practice may be required and writing powerful titles that draw the reader in and are also within a specific number of characters because some article directory sites limit the number of characters of your article title. When writing an article, it is important to create a title that “draws” the reader into reading your article. It is very important that your article actually be about what is in the title or you will quickly lose credibility with your reader. The whole goal is to get them to click on your links at the end of your article. This is just one tip that will increase the number of visitors to your website, and there are three other tips that will help you create powerful article titles as well. If you want to know the other tips that will help you create an article that drives traffic to your web site, join this how to write articles membership site that teaches you how to write articles that bring traffic to your web site. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources How To Write An Article With A Powerful Title So You Get A Flood Of Traffic To Your Website

Keyword Strategies: Increase Your Keyword Rankings Posted: 29 Apr 2009 08:39 AM PDT Keywords are ground zero. They are essential to your online success. You must get your keywords right or it’s game over before you even get started. Mainly because keywords are the most important element of your online marketing. It can’t be emphasized enough, especially to beginning online webmasters or marketers, choosing the right profitable keywords will largely determine whether or not you succeed with your online endeavors. You simply must get this element right or your marketing will be in big trouble. What Are Keywords? Lets start at the very beginning, keywords are the exact words someone types into a search engine to find what they’re looking for on the web. Some keywords are valuable/profitable, while others are virtually worthless. Profitable keywords are the ones that convert into a sale, a lead or potential client/customer for your company or product. These are the words someone is searching in order to buy a product or hire a service. Someone searching for “honeymoon vacation packages” is probably in the market to book a honeymoon vacation and could turn out to be very profitable for the right website or business. Profitable keywords are the ones where the searcher is in the right “mind-set” or frame of mind to buy what they’re searching for on the web. Tailor your online marketing to target these profitable keywords and it can spell success. So what’s the whole process for finding or choosing profitable keywords to use in your marketing? Lets look at some ways to proceed… Number of Keyword Searches Made? You need to find out how many searches are made for your chosen keywords each month. Simply use WordTracker or a site like SEOBook. These will give you a preliminary number of searches made each month for your keyword. Highly popular, well-searched keywords with hundreds of thousands of searches each month will be extremely hard to rank for because you will have stiff competition from major companies with limitless resources. I like to pick less popular keywords that get only a couple of hundred of searches each day because my chances of getting on the first page greatly increases. But don’t get fixated on the number of searches, some keyword phrases that only get four or five searches daily, can still be very profitable. For serious keyword research in a particular niche market I like to use Brad Callen’s Keyword Elite which is professionally designed software that makes all your keyword research so much easier. But there are plenty of free keyword tools you can use. One handy keyword tool is Google Adwords external suggestion tool which will help you find valuable keywords. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal Commercial Intent of Keywords? But how do you know if a keyword is profitable? Well, one convenient tool is from MSN which helps you with “Detecting Online Commercial Intention” of keywords. Just type in a keyword and it will give you a percentage or probability your keyword query has commercial benefit or intent. http://adlab.msn.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/Default.aspx Conversion Rate of Keywords? Once you have your chosen keywords in place, next you want to have a landing page that converts those keywords or traffic from those keywords into buyers or leads for your online business. This is another crucial element of your online marketing - you must have a landing page or content/site that converts into a sale or you obviously won’t make any revenue. Keep in mind, if you’re into affiliate marketing, you main goal is not to sell but to “pre-sell” your products or services. One effective way I have found to do this is to give potential customers/clients valuable information they can use in making their final purchasing choice. Comparison sites do well, as do review sites, top ten sites… potential customers use the Internet and keywords to not only find products but more so, to find information on those products. Your goal should be to provide this valuable information to make their task a little bit easier for them and they will reward you with a sale. What are Long-Tail Keywords? Long-Tail keywords are simply that: long three or four word phrases that searchers use to find what they’re looking for on the web. Because they are highly specific, long-tail keywords have proven to have better conversion rates than general keywords. This is also just common sense, someone searching for a “2005 ford mustang convertible” may just be in the right mind-set to buy such a vehicle; as compared to someone searching for a more general keyword phrase such as “sports cars.” Study your website traffic logs religiously to find long-tail keywords that turn into a sale. Target these long-tail keywords in your marketing. Even buy PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising in the three major search engines - Google Adwords, Yahoo! Marketing and MicroSoft AdCenter - for these valuable/profitable keywords. And build higher rankings in organic search for these long-tail keyword phrases. It’s really not that difficult for long phrases, especially if they’re related to your site; many times you can reach the top spot in a matter of days, especially in Google. How To Rank High For Your Chosen Profitable Keywords? Of course, the million dollar question is: HOW do you rank in the top spot for your chosen keywords? I believe the key to ranking high in the search engines (especially Google) is to be persistent in building your rankings for your keywords. Take a long-term view or approach, sometimes it may take months, even years, to rank in the top Five for your highly competitive keywords. The best strategy is to “stick to it” and keep building relevant links to your keyword landing page. Create related blogs with valuable content linking back to your keywords. Write keyword related articles and distribute them all over the web. Create Google Alerts for your keywords and them place comments/links in the newly formed pages on the web that Google is indexing. Be pro-active, download the SEOQuake toolbar and find your main keyword competitors. Check out their links and then go out and get the same links. Write better higher quality content than your main competitors because Google always rewards great content. Plus, use the free http://www.Addthis.com button and let your visitors bookmark your great content in all the social bookmark sites and build your keyword links for you. Do keyworded Press Releases with your embedded links and spread them all over the web. Get these Press Releases into Google news and other important places on the web. http://www.PRWeb.com is really a great place for your press releases since you can embed your keywords in your links. If you can try to get your most important keywords in your domain name. Many SEO experts argue the merits of this but from my own experience and marketing - it is much easier to rank high for your keywords if you have them in the domain name. Again, it is just common sense, if you have your main keyword in the domain, this keyword is obviously telling the search engines this is what your site is all about. I have even bought domains and created sites specifically around certain keywords just to rank high. Always remember, you have to be persistent, I have been fighting some keyword battles for over four or five years! For really profitable keywords, it can be a constant struggle to remain on the first page, but the trick is not to give up, just keep fighting away at your competitors. Persistence usually pays off in the end and those profitable keywords will have your links in the top spot. Make ranking high for those profitable keywords your number one marketing strategy. Concentrate all your marketing efforts towards getting plenty of quality traffic for those keywords and you will succeed online. About The Author: Titus Hoskins - The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: Marketing Tools. If you liked the article above, why not try this Free 7-Day Marketing Course here: Internet Marketing Tools Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources Keyword Strategies: Increase Your Keyword Rankings

SEO Dependency - Do Your Rankings Rely Too Much on The Home Page? Posted: 28 Apr 2009 06:52 PM PDT Are your search engine rankings depending too much on one page (like your homepage) or one sub folder of your website? If so, here are a few tips to spread the link flow around to hedge your SEO efforts. Chances are, unless you are employing a tiered SEO strategy that you are overly dependent on your websites home page or similar pages in your website. Link flow pools into different pages of a website and learning how to harness this ebb and flow is crucial for long term and short term ranking objectives. The most common cause of this is excessive linking to a page without using a “nofollow” tag within the structure of the link. For example, each time you link to a page you are creating a type of reference /citation that is essentially voting to escalate the keywords in the anchor text (the text in the link) for the page that it links to. Each link indexed in a search engine is impacting your link profile either intentionally or inadvertently. The premise of links as a metric for relevance is nothing new; in fact it predates search engines and is one reason why they built many of their algorithmic calculations around the value of citation. By understanding this metric, the bottom line is, any link that you can control (either internal or external links to your website) is a strategic advantage when coupled with optimal site architecture and topical content. If you inadvertently link to your contact page for example and do not link from any other area in the body text of your documents the page with the highest percentage of anchor text will start to take on the ranking factors from the linked page to the destination page. The pages with the strongest desired rankings should have a high percentage of internal links for those keywords from relevant pages within the site. If there are not enough supporting pages, then that should be the first priority to cross the tipping point for the keyword in question. Although this is an aspect of internal linking, you should combine this strategy with a high percentage of deep links (links to specific pages rather than just linking to the homepage) to spread the ranking factors to the most suitable page. The real premise behind SEO is to (a) cultivate the ideal page to link from and (b) increase topical relevance for the page being linked to so that they create a dynamic synergy. In an ideal scenario, the website providing the link for off page factors should have (1) the use of a relevant title featuring the keyword or a synonym of the keyword to match the keyword /anchor text in the link (2) relevant meta tags that incorporate the phrase, so search engines determine the page providing the link is relevant to the search term and the target page. One of the most fundamental tactics for search engine optimization is to anchor multiple landing pages or categories in a website to funnel a specific type of consumer to each page. For example, pricing queries go to the pricing page, product queries go to a specific product page based on make, model, etc. (not a general catch all page). By creating each type of page with a specific ranking objective and then holistically funneling the ranking factors from secondary pages, sitemaps and other websites, you can essentially provide an optimized profile for the given website. Based on the content, internal linking, age and chronology of the topical content and inbound links from other websites contribute to how much authority each page or segment gains. Here are a few tactics you can use to accomplish this feat: Control the amount of links leaving or linking to a page from within your website Implement static pages as hub pages to tie together important themed pages of your website Use sitemaps to blend ranking factors The proper use of deep links Aside from the methods suggested above, the final ingredient for any SEO campaign is time (giving the results time to rise to the top by building authority). Even though you can implement 80% of the techniques, each website has its own rate of assimilation though osmosis and mitosis before it goes through the chrysalis state and emerges as a true SEO champion. The real value is (a) understanding the dynamic and being able to reproduce the effect and (b) knowing that it is better to start with a range of objectives to use as a blueprint vs. working after the fact to produce tangible results. Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources SEO Dependency - Do Your Rankings Rely Too Much on The Home Page?

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