10 Ways To More Website Traffic

10 Ways To More Website Traffic

Every website needs more traffic. This traffic needs to be as targeted as possible to the site you are promoting, whether it is your own web site or an affiliate program. This is the lifeblood of the business. No traffic - No business, More traffic - More sales

The question is - How do you get this highly targeted web site traffic.

I will list some of the most popular methods.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization, (SEO), is making web pages attractive to the search engines. The better optimized your web page is, the higher a ranking it will achieve in the search engines. Most people searching the internet only look at the first couple of search results.

So optimizing for the search engines focuses on techniques such as making sure that each web page is using the appropriate title tags and meta tags, and that the keyword or key phrases for the particular pages are distributed throughout the content. Search engines find and catalog web pages using spidering software.

These are just a few ways to get more web site traffic.


Link popularity

This is achieved when other sites have links to your site. If a high traffic site has links, the search engines perceive both sites must be popular. The important thing is to have quality web sites linking back to your site.

Why should anyone want to link to your site? If you have quality content, this adds perceived value and makes your site popular, so others will want to link to you.The type of content could be:

Free downloads
Free reports, articles, ezine or newsletter
Video
Links to other good sites

Reciprocal Links

This is where you exchange links with other quality sites. You can create a links page on your site. This create a resource that visitors will want to return to. Find quality (there's that word again) web sites related to your subject and contact the webmaster about exchanging links.


Article Submissions

Submitting articles is a great way to build back links and web site visitors. Your articles can become 'viral' when others want to re-publish them on their sites, or use them in their newsletters and ezines. You include links to your site in the author resource box offering more free information. The resource box is your chance to convince the reader to visit your web site.
Two of the most popular places to post your articles are http://www.goarticles.com and http://www.EzineArticles.com.


Forum Posting

In order to be successful using forums there are some things that are required. Do Your Homework: Prior to joining any forum, you must do some research. Join relevant forums that are in some way related to the promotion's primary sales market. Choose popular forums. There is no point in wasting your time and energy on forums that few members and few posts. Page raking and the amount of active members are two good ways to check for this. Choose forums that allow sig tags. Read the rules before joining and pay attention to them.

You've Joined: now what?

Keep your sig tag short and update it regularly. The ideal thing is to limit yourself to one link, preferably to your main website. Never create posts that are nothing more than an advertisement. This is a universal rule. At best this kind of post will be deleted by the monitors, at worst, you will be banned. Be an active member on the forum. Plan to spend at least an hour each day there. Get to know the users. Iintroduce yourself with intelligent questions depending upon the forum's topic.

Use Your Sig file to the best advantage and within the rules. Some Forums have places where you can advertise and give special deals to members.


Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Of all the pay per click search engines, Google Adwords is the largest and most popular.
This method, when done correctly, will increase your exposure, and give fast results. You must keep up to date with Google's rules, so be sure to read them. You pay a one off fee when you register and set up your campaign. You can have your campaign up and running in minutes. There is a minimum bid, but of course you will have to pay more than this. But the beauty of Adwords is you can set a daily budget of how much you are willing to spend.

You can create as many campaigns as you want, and then test your ads (changing the headline for example).

Google provide tools to help you with your campaigns, and have exellent tutorials that walk you through everything from signing up to creating your Adwords campaigns.


Directory Submissions

Submit your website url's to the search engines Google, Yahoo, MSN.


Ezine advertising

Most ezines accept advertising. Ezines are online or email newsletters. They are used to build a relationship between a webmaster and a web site visitor, with news, updates, special offers etc. But as always they should have quality content. You place an ad in ezines that are highly targeted towards your niche. Prices depend on the ezine, and also the position of the ad. The most expensive is the solo ad, where yours is the only ad.


Social Bookmarking

In a social bookmarking system, users store lists of Internet resources that they find useful. These lists are both accessible to the public or a specific network, and other people with similar interests can view the links by category, tags, or even randomly. Some allow for privacy on a per-bookmark basis.

Social Bookmarking can bring immediate traffic to your website, as web 2.0 community websites such as Technorati, Digg, Reddit and Tailrank provide almost immediate information on various topics. These type of Bookmarking sites index and categorize content usually faster than the major search engines. People looking for the latest information on certain topics usually refer to these types of services.

Bookmarking Accounts to check out:
http://digg.com
http://technorati.com

You can increase your Bookmarking using the free submission site http://www.OnlyWire.com to bookmark many accounts at once. When you signup to OnlyWire.com you can use many bookmark accounts and with one simple procedure bookmark your blog post to all your accounts at once.

OnlyWire.com interfaces with:

Backflip
Bibsonomy
Blinklist
Blogmemes
Blue Dot
de.lirio.us
del.icio.us
Diigo
Furl
Jots
Linkroll
Looklater
ma.gnolia
Markaboo
Rawsugar
Shadows
Simpy
Spurl
Wink


If you don't have a Bookmark Account for the ones listed go and sign up.
Viral Traffic using free reports - ebooks etc.




Thanks

Ritu

Branding V/S Search Engine Optimization

How To Select Keywords For Search Engine Optimization

One of the most important decisions while beginning search engine optimization is the selection of the correct keywords. It can make or break your website. Potential customers search the web for desired sites using he keywords. The right methods of selecting a keyword will aid in creating and supporting a site-wide SEO strategy. The wrong methods will run you in circles, wondering what went wrong.

Determining keywords is an art. To create a list of keywords you need to know your website backwards and forwards including what the site features, and what it doesn’t’ feature. It’s best way is to put yourself in the customer’s shoe. While writing the content you should remember to use words that are not only related to the content, but are popular search words as well. This is called keyword optimization, or choosing the most searched keywords related to your content.


Follow the following for keyword optimization:

Create a great keyword list: To begin with, spend some time listing all of the words and phrases related to your website content, taking ideas from everyone you can think of and list them all. Once the list is prepared visit competitors' sites to find the meta tags used.

Lengthen the List: Once a good list of pseudo-generic keywords is found, the next step is lengthening that list by using a Keyword tool like Overture. The moment a keyword is plugged in the tool, it will return the number of searches conducted for that term over a given period of time as well as suggest similar keywords from the tool’s database. Now go through the list given by the keyword tool and compare with yours. Copy any and all similar terms as well as their corresponding search values, which relate directly to the site you’re optimizing. Then, paste them to a spreadsheet program so that they can be further edited later.

Narrowing the List: In order to narrow the list three variables should be considered:

1. The number of searches on a particular keyword
2. The Amount of Competition
3. Will the keyword lead to conversions

Branding V/S Search Engine Optimization

Branding Versus Search Engine Optimization

A brand is a collection of images and ideas representing an economic producer; more specifically, it refers to the concrete symbols such as a name, logo, slogan, and design scheme. A marketing process used to appeal machine algorithms and increase search engine relevance and ultimately web traffic is termed as Search engine optimization (SEO).

Companies are put into a dilemma of deciding upon their keywords as to whether to promote their own brand name as their main keyword phrase or optimize for a more generic keyword phrase.

Trademark infringement is another issue intellectual property act says branded name used by one company cannot be used by some other company. Though large companies have the right to protect themselves from others stealing traffic, however they cannot protect a generic term. In this case company needs to optimize their websites for all possible keywords including their own brand names, generic, high-traffic keywords and keyword phrases relevant to their sites to create the largest return on investment.

The highest conversion rate is provided by branded search terms, suggests a new research. But when used properly, non-branded terms can significantly affect the outcome of a paid SEM (define) campaign. Searchers tend to click generic, non-brand terms earlier in the search process and more on brand terms when they're closer to making a purchase. This suggests search marketers can leverage non-brand search terms to drive searchers toward brand terms later in the search and purchase consideration process.

Brand keywords are those with the name of the marketer or marketer-owned site or having a trademark. Non-brand keywords are those that don't include any reference to the marketer, site, trademarks, or proprietary brands.

Basic Web Design Guidelines

The most important thing for the success of your website is its look. The services and the products that you offer are judged by the appearance of your website. Many business failure occurred due to poor web designing. We sometimes don’t pay attention towards the appearance of your website which may lead to closing of website. Web designing is an art and there is a need to follow basic steps to become a good web designer.

Designing a Template

As we know that “First Impression Is the Last Impression”, so the template you design for your website should be consistent so that each web page should look as a part of one website. The most important thing for website designing is – designing a template. The template you make can be use to create each page of your web site. This will give entire site the same look and feel.

A template can be considered as a simple web page or shell of your entire web site. However, it won’t contain any content but it must contain the logos, images, links etc. but every time you create a template, you’ll save it with different page name.

Formatting Your Pages

It is highly recommend designing your entire page content within HTML tables. Tables will enable you to have complete control over your content and how it will be displayed. Tables also give structured look to your website.

For example, you can create three tables, stacked on top of each other, for each section of content. You can use cellpadding, cellspacing and border attributes give a right flow to your data. The top table would contain your page header content, the middle table would contain your content and the bottom table would contain your footer content.

As placing your entire page content within a single table will significantly increase your site's load time, stacking your tables will enable you to benefit from the powerful formatting capabilities of tables, while at the same time, keep your site's load time down.

Tables will enable you to display your content in sections like a newspaper, set up a specific number of rows and columns, and even place additional tables within your main content table to create special content sections with colored backgrounds.


Storefront of Your Page

The main page of your sit is the storefront for your business and it should be specifically designed in such a way that your visitors know exactly what you're offering. If your prospective customer can't find your product or service, they definitely won't waste a lot of time looking for it. They'll go on to the next site and probably never return. They are visiting your site for specific purpose so provide them what they want. If you do so than it will give benefits to you and your site.

Branding will play a major role in your success. Make sure you place your company logo and slogan on your home page as well as other pages also. This will not only provide publicity to your site but also give the same look and feel.

Instead of trying to cram all your content into your main page, consider creating sections. These sections can contain highlights of your information with a link to further information. You can set your sections up in tables with colored heading sections for information such as articles, products or whatever you'd like.

Last but not the least use the golden rule “less is more”. In other words, keep your main page content concise and impressive which includes all the important elements.

Navigation

When you start designing your pages, keep in mind, your visitor visit each and every page of your website. Provide good navigational links on each and every page. Place your navigational links to any corner of your page where you find is the suitable place for it. Use tables for the uniform appearance throughout.

Fonts

One of the most significant parts of a web page is text. The way in which you present the text on your web page will have a great impact on your success. It can make your page look very professional or very unprofessional.

When placing text within your web page, always be consistent with your fonts. In other words, don't use different fonts throughout your pages. Headlines are written in larger font size and are a bit different.

Background and Text Colors

Use caution when selecting your background and text colors. Busy backgrounds make text difficult to read and draw the attention away from the text. In addition, always be consistent with your background theme on each page of your site.

Select your colors very carefully, as colors affect your mood and will have an affect on your visitors as well.

Bright colors can be used to show cheerful or happy emotions. Colors such as blue and purple have a calming effect. While dark colors, such as brown and black, have a depressing effect.

The Things that are avoided If you really want to design a good website than avoid the use of frames, flashes, complex URL, scrolling texts and high animations, outdated information etc. If you follow these steps than sooner your website will become famous and will be on top of the search engines.

Link Popularity Services

Link popularity measures popularity of a site in terms of number of sites or web pages the site is linked to. Link popularity is a measure of both the quantity and quality of sites that link to your site. Link Popularity is the number of on the On-topic quality hyperlinks pointed to your web site or Webpage.

It is important for top search engine ranking that website should have theme based quality links from sites which are related to it so that even the user who is searching for the required information can come to the right place. Link popularity of the site can be found by typing in your domain name in the box and hitting the 'search' button. Link popularity can increase your traffic to the site in many ways. Links bring visitors in from other sites and link analysis is an important part of the ranking algorithm used by all the major search engines.

There are 5 main ways to get inbound links to your Web site. a) Links based on content, b) Web directories, c) reciprocal links, d) link rentals, e) syndicated articles. When you have quality content and lots of it, other Web sites will naturally link to your Web site. Directory links are placed on pages with other links that are related. Reciprocal links are link trades and are two way links. Link rentals are links that are placed in the footer or one of the side columns of the Web page the link is placed on. You pay a monthly rental fee for these links. Syndicated articles are articles you write and offer to other Web sites which publish them on the site. The Web sites that publish the articles give a link the author's Web site for the right to publish the article.

For maximum link popularity the key is to select a provider who will offer the following:

1. A vastly distributed network that is not interlinked and doesn't share any C-Block IP addresses
2. Linking pages that contain some relevant content that has been well-linked through a sitemap system
3. Pages that are as close to naturally-designed and built as possible
4. Pages that link not only to your site(s) but to other relevant, related sites as well.

Sophisticated Ranking Algorithms

Development Of More Sophisticated Ranking Algorithms

The Internet was reaching a vast population of non-technical users who were often unable to use advanced querying techniques to reach the information they were seeking and the sheer volume and complexity of the indexed data was vastly different from that of the early days. Combined with increases in processing power, search engines have begun to develop different sortys of algorithms.

A complex mathematical formula used by a search engine to rank the webpages that it finds by crawling the Web is termed as ranking algorithms. Google was the first of its kind started by two PhD students at Stanford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

Every search engine (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.com) has its own relevancy algorithm (rules for ranking), which is continuously developing as search engines are learning from their experience. The search engines' algorithms are very top secret. There are many people working outside the search engine industry to attempt to reverse engineer the code in order to understand their working in an attempt to help people to rank higher in the results. No search engine reveals exactly how its own algorithm works to protect itself from competitors and those who wish to spam the search engine.

As a search engine may use hundreds of factors in ranking the listings on its SERPs; the factors themselves and the weight each carries can change continually, and algorithms can differ widely, with a web page that ranks #1 in a particular search engine possibly ranking #200 in another search engine, or even on the same search engine a few days later.

Some sites focus on exchanging, buying, and selling links, often on a massive scale. This has spawned an online industry, that survives to this day, focused upon selling links designed to improve PageRank and link popularity, and not to drive human site visitors, with links from higher PageRank pages selling for the most money.

Signals influencing a page's rankings include:

1.Keywords in the title tag.
2.Keywords in links pointing to the page.
3.Keywords appearing in visible text.
4. Link popularity (PageRank for Google) of the page.

Organic "Natural" SEO V/S PPC Advertising

Organic "Natural" Search Engine Optimization Versus Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Advertising

The following are the main points of difference where Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Advertising differs from Organic "Natural" Search Engine Optimization. When visitors or “clicks” are purchase from a search engine, it is called “pay-per-click” (PPC) search engine advertising (or PPCSE). “Organic” or “Natural” search engine optimization (SEO) is accomplished by optimizing web pages and increasing “link popularity” by acquiring or paying for links that point to the web site.

Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Advertising allows to quickly get top search engine placement by “bidding” (paying) for keywords related to the product or service. “Organic” or “Natural” search engine optimization (SEO) gives high rankings at the Search Engines for the chosen search terms. New website visitors delivered to company sites by the organic search results are far more valuable than visitors being delivered from search engine advertisements. Site traffic from the organic search engine referrals tend to be more qualified and in-market, and thereby much more likely to convert, versus the often fickle, skeptical, cost conscious and expensive Pay Per Click search marketing website traffic.

Pay per click advertising gives short term results. Optimizing web pages for natural search engine results involves a lot more work but in the long term, a much better return on investment can be received with natural search engine optimization. Companies or individuals with smaller marketing budgets can complete with larger organizations as the natural results are based on relevancy to the search term rather than the amount one is willing or able to pay for each click through to web site.

Pay Per-Click advertising is needed when immediate results are required. A basic Pay Per Click campaign can be up and running and driving visitors to web site in a matter of hours. Significant improvement in organic rankings may take several months to achieve.

Search Engine Marketing Professional

Meaning Of A Search Engine Marketing Professional

A professional is the one who applies his theoretical knowledge, skills and training to practical. So an SEOP is also expected to do the same ethically.

A search engine optimization professional focuses on optimizing website to attract the attention of search engines and improve rankings. Their specialty areas are "organic" search engine listings - i.e. free. Decision related to the hiring of a SEOP is the most risky one. There are many who can guarantee a top 10 search engine ranking. Believe it or not securing a top 10 ranking is easy but getting viable quantities of targeted traffic is something different.

A search engine optimizer is assumed to know what is good for the client better than the client. It is easy to do what is asked to any one can make money by just doing what the client wants. If a client requests only for changing the Meta tags, and a SEOP doing so is not said to be ethical. He knows that it would not help their site found in the search engines.

A client is not the one who knows the profession how it works. They may read somewhere “zebra (doorway) pages can bring in more traffic. They may put in a proposal to create 10 zebra pages, not wanting the SEOP to touch the actual pages of their site, they just want pages that live on the "fringes" of the site. SEOP should not give the client a quote for this. SEOP knows, zebra pages are found only by the search engines, Once the user arrives at one of the pages from the search engines, they're basically forced to click an extra time to finally arrive at the real site that they wanted to begin with.

When a current site already has tons of great content pages, SEOP should suggest not to add any zebra pages, instead tweak their current content a bit to make sure they're using words that real people use when searching. Or perhaps ensure that the search engines can easily spider through the site and find all that great content.

The bottom line is that SEOP’s job as a professional to do what is ethical. If it means losing a job, then let it be so. One can obviously find a client who can appreciate SEOP’s looking out for their site's long-term well-being.

PPC Advertising and Search Engine Optimization

Pay per click (PPC) advertising is the most dynamic way to advertise on the Internet. It enables you to choose the keywords for which you would like your site to appear on search engines when a search is performed. Pay per click advertising on search engines allows a website to appear in the search results right up there with the market leaders.

In PPC, rankings are calculated for keyword phrases based primarily on the price that is being paid. The advertiser decides how much they are willing to pay each time a person clicks on the search results. The more they are willing to pay per click and the more popular the advert, the higher the site will appear in the results for the chosen keywords. Advertisers only pay for people who actually visit their site, visitors who are actively searching for their product and are therefore already potential customers.

There are numerous pay per click search engines, two of them worth serious consideration are, Google (Google Adwords) and Yahoo Search Marketing.

All major search engines now use some form of pay-per-click listings, enabling businesses to take advantage of a unique online marketing opportunity.

The reason why pay per click ads are becoming such an attractive option to businesses of all sizes, is that campaign options can be tailored to suit any budget. From large multi-national corporations down to small city-specific vendors – online advertising using PPC can deliver targeted, high quality traffic to your website.

Search Engine Optimization is definitely a slow way to get your website traffic if you plan on not using PPC traffic. It could be a long, expensive road before you even begin selling your product. Search engines can take months, even years to start pulling up high with the search engines. But, natural search engine traffic is definitely the best long term way to get the majority of your traffic.

When getting your site to start pulling up in SEO natural listings there are 2 main things that need to be done:

1. Add Content
2. Add Backlinks

Search engine traffic requires you to submit your site to many different search engines and wait, maybe even months for them to spider your website.

When starting out, using PPC advertising for testing products and keywords is important, after that spend time optimizing site for search engine traffic.

Working Of Search Engine Robots

Search Engine Robots also called a web crawler (Web spider or Web robot) is a program or automated script which browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. Other less frequently used names for Web crawlers are ants, automatic indexers, bots, and worms (Kobayashi and Takeda, 2000). They are the seekers of the web pages.
Many legitimate sites, in particular search engines, use spidering as a means of providing up-to-date data. Robots are mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine, that will index the downloaded pages to provide fast searches. Robots can be used to gather specific types of information from Web pages, such as harvesting e-mail addresses (usually for spam).

Search engine robots have only basic functionality they just can't do certain things. Robots don't understand frames, Flash movies, images or JavaScript. They can't enter password protected areas and they can't click all those buttons you have on your website. They can be stopped cold while indexing a dynamically generated URL and slowed to a stop with JavaScript navigation.

The automated robots first check the availability of a robots.txt file while arriving at a website. This file is used to tell robots which areas of the site are off-limits to them. Robots collect links from each page visited, and later follow those links through to other pages. In this way, they essentially follow the links from one page to another. The entire World Wide Web is made up of links, the original idea being that you could follow links from one place to another. This is how robots get around.

When a search engine robot visits a page, it looks at the visible text on the page, the content of the various tags in the page's source code (title tag, meta tags, etc.), and the hyperlinks on the page. From the words and the links that the robot finds, the search engine decides what the page is about. Depending on how the robot is set up through the search engine, the information is indexed and then delivered to the search engine's database.



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

One can see the pages visited by the search engine robots on the site, by looking at the server logs or the results from the log statistics program. Some robots are readily identifiable by their user agent names, like Google's "Googlebot"; others are bit more obscure, like Inktomi's "Slurp".

Site Maps and Hypertext Links

Site Maps And Hypertext Links: "Food" For Search Engine Robots:

Text links have a lot of value for optimal spidering, and site map has importance to help search engine robots reach website's deeper pages.

Search engine robots cannot click a button, submit a form, pull down a menu, or perform any other type of online ‘user interaction’ that might be used by a human visitor. They are able to index the text on a page and click through hypertext links. A navigational text link is added to web pages (often located at the bottom of the page) to enable the search engine robots with another means to click through the links of web pages when it cannot access these other types of navigation.

Search engine robots can't use a JavaScript menu. As robots' mobility on site is vital for the successful indexing of content, one wants to make it as easy as possible for the robots to visit all of the pages. Use of text links at the bottom of the pages, while hardly cutting-edge, is one of the best ways to make sure that the search engine robots can move around on your site. Links to the site's principal pages and a link to the site map page on all the pages in of the site should be included.

A supercharged version of the bottom-of-the-page hypertext links is said to be a site map. The site map provides ‘food’ for a hungry search engine robot. A site map page will at very least have links to all of the major pages on your site. Depending on the size of the site, it may actually link to all of the pages. This means that once the robot gets to the site map page, it can visit every page on the entire site. Having all the site content included in the search engine database is a good thing: One is more likely to come-up in the search engine results when somebody is performing a search related to your topic.

A site map should be added as it helps the visitors and search engine robots as follows:

1. Depending on the size of the site, it may have links to every page. It provides text links to at least the most important pages on the site.
2. Gives a short explanation of each site page, to inform visitors about the website.
3. Gives visitors the information needed when lost in the website, and shows how to reach the page they are looking for
4. Provides a pathway for the search engine robots to follow in order to reach the most important pages
5. Provides important keyword phrases in the site map text and hypertext links that help the automated search engine robot understand what the page is about
6. Helps search engine robots find static landing pages that then link to dynamically generated pages they may not otherwise find.

Site map can be made most attractive to the search engine robots and human visitors by including descriptive text along with the page URLs and links. Maximum use of keywords should be made in the text, including appropriate content for each of the pages to which you link.

When you make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site, they'll find what they are looking for. When you make it easy to search engine robots to move around on your site, you increase your chances of being favourably listed in their search results. This is possible only through hyperlinks and site maps and so, they are rightly said to be the food for Search engine robots.

Database Search vs. Text Search

Databases store their information neatly organized into fields, such as product name, category, description, price and so on. While databases can set up complex queries to find the search words in all applicable fields, this makes them slower to respond, requires more memory, and is more difficult to program. Text search engines store this information in a single index and can find words in any field for a record. Many high-end search engines can also store field information, so searches can be limited to a specific field as well.

Users are required to type in complex Boolean or SQL (Structured Query Language) commands for searching. Some databases, such as MySQL, are limited to "Or" searches, will return all records which match any of the search terms. Others default to exact phrase matching, so a search for fuzzy slippers would not find slippers, fuzzy. Search logs show clearly that most people will not do anything complicated while searching, they will give up if the search is too hard to use. Full-text search engines offer simple and flexible search options, with most providing an Advanced Search feature for power users.

Database search functions tend to look for exact matches in capitalization and characters. If someone searches for Safire, they won't find records with Safire in them. Many text search engines will automatically match lowercase searches with any text, and will adjust for extended and diacritical characters. Some also allow search administrators to set up synonyms for searching (doctor and physician), and automatically perform stemming (find octopi when searching for octopus).

Many databases are not designed for easy searching. For example in a wine database, it may be difficult to find wines from a certain region, such as the Napa valley of California, because the location is stored in a table far away from the wine names. Some text search engines, such as dtSearch, FAST Data Search, Ultraseek, and Verity K2, provide a rich data set for searching. Databases are optimized to search for exact words and phrases, and they tend to respond very slowly otherwise. So if a searcher wants to find sheepskin or shearling in the same search, databases will tend to do two searches and then merge the results. Full text search engines are designed to store these words in a single index, so they can perform these kinds of searches efficiently and return quickly.

Many database search engines will happily display all results on the same page, whether there are 8 or 8,000 records. Text search engines have a mechanism for dividing up the results and providing navigation from the first page to following pages (and back).

Database search functions sort by size, or price, or date, or the order in which the items were entered in the database. Text search engines sort by relevance, as determined by the number and location of matched words in the result page or record.

‘Organic’ or ‘Natural’ Search Engine Optimization

Organic or Natural search engine offers advertisers the ability for their website to be listed within the top search results of organic search engine listings without having to pay for placement. In organic search engine optimization, a professional search marketing and custom website design company like DDA starts by establishing specific keywords that relate to an advertiser's product.



Once the most effective keywords are chosen, content is developed in relation to those keywords. This makes the pages that are listed on the first page of organic search results the most relevant information a consumer can find on that particular keyword. Consumers recognize the relevancy of the page and then trust the advertiser and are more likely to purchase their product or service.

The following are the benefits of organic SEO:

1. 70% of search engine users report that they visit organic sites on a daily basis.
2. 50% of search engine users choose a search result by scanning the top organic results, according to an eye tracking study.
3. 80% of search engine users report they never click on PPC results.
4. 72.3% of search engine users feel Google’s organic listings are more relevant than their paid results.
5. The overall conversion rate of online advertising paid sites is 3 times less than that of unpaid sites.

The biggest weakness of natural search engine optimisation is the time required to generate links and 'tweak' your web pages and keywords to get those prized high rankings you so desire. For the more competitive keywords, it can literally take 3 months or more to start realizing the benefits of your search engine optimisation campaign. For less competitive keywords, you can see the benefits in just a couple weeks.

As the statistics show, more search engine users are visiting natural search engine listings, it has become more crucial for advertiser's to optimize their website to be listed within the top search results of the major search engines.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising & Search Engine Optimization

A marketing process used to appeal search engine algorithms and increase search engine relevance and ultimately web traffic is termed as Search engine optimization (SEO). This optimization relates to a variety of elements, like title tags, meta tags, alt tags, link structure, link popularity and the content of the site itself. Once the web site is properly optimized, the goal then is to make sure that each of the top crawler based search engines find your site and add as many pages as possible in their indices.




Search engine optimization involves the following:

1. Making sure the sub pages or at least the main areas of the site are accessible from the home page. It can be assumed that more number of optimized pages for different keywords will bring more traffic.
2. Making sure your site is listed in the major directories such as Yahoo and Open Directory to name a few.
3. Monitoring position of the site in the search engines.
4. Making necessary changes to the site to stay in top position.
5. Submitting to new engines or directories that come along as well.


When visitors or “clicks” are purchase from a search engine, it is called “pay-per-click” (PPC) search engine advertising (or PPCSE). In PPC, rankings are calculated for keyword phrases based primarily on the price that is being paid. The more you agree to pay per click (or bid) for a specific keyword and the more effective your ad, the higher your site will rank in the paid search results.

PPC advertising has many great benefits, first of all, you get your traffic going quickly. It serves to be the most useful when starting a new business or product. With PPC advertising, one can quickly and efficiently find out which keywords are needed to target and which products are the most popular. Once the experiment is done Search Engine Optimization comes into picture. PPC advertising can be very expensive, costing hundreds, even thousands a month in advertising costs. Search engine optimization requires a lengthy amount of time to get site rank high with the keywords.

PPC will neither help improve the positioning in the regular editorial search results nor optimize site to reflect identity. When one stops paying for PPC, it disappears and so does the traffic it brings. Oppositely a well executed SEO plan covers all these downfalls of PPC.

Hiring A Search Engine Optimization Professional

A professional is required to possess a large knowledge derived from extensive academic and practical training. Typically a professional provides a service in exchange for payment in accordance with established protocols for licensing, ethics, procedures, standards of service and training/certification.

A search engine optimization professional focuses on optimizing website to attract the attention of search engines and improve rankings. Their specialty areas are "organic" search engine listings - i.e. free. Decision related to the hiring of a SEOP is the most risky one. There are many who can guarantee a top 10 search engine ranking. Believe it or not securing a top 10 ranking is easy but getting viable quantities of targeted traffic is something different.

Following points should be considered while working with a SEOP:

• A Search Engine Optimization Professional should be informed about the company/product market and previous marketing attempts. A good SEOP will ask a lot of questions before signing the dotted line, to know the terms they should be focusing on and the marketing challenge that awaits them.
• Search engine professionals prepare and submit listing request to the major web directories as well as industry-specific portals. This is an important service - a well written description as well as a carefully chosen directory category can hike chances of getting listed quickly and accurately. Directory listings are valuable links that add to your link popularity and can send traffic in their own right. Many web directories are still free but several have paid options that can speed your review.
• Directories such as Yahoo! and Business.com are paid listings only. Directory submission specialists can let you know what options and fees are available. One should be alert of a SEOP offering site submission to 128,564 search engines and directories - many of these directories will be FFA sites, not a good thing.
• Nothing is guaranteed when it comes to search engines such as Google. Google constantly refine their ranking algorithm, otherwise the only sites to rank at the top will be the ones that can afford the services of an optimization professional.
• A good SEOP can achieve great things for the site whereas a bad one may cause you to be banned from some engines through spamming or other unethical "quick fix" strategies. Some of these unethical strategies include: Keeping hidden text or hidden links; creating pages with irrelevant words; creating multiple pages, domains and sub domains with identical content as well as making doorway pages specifically designed for search engines i.e. the user never sees them. Once a firm is banned it is too difficult to crawl back to the top.
• Being banned or penalized from a search engine happens to most webmasters at some stage of their career. If it's a mistake on the search engine's part, it will *usually* be rectified the next time their spider crawls your pages. An intentional ban is a completely different story.
• The bottom line is that a SEOP should be selected, so that the results are obtained ethically. Though it takes time to go by ethical means, it gives long term results.

Hiring A Search Engine Optimization Company

One should be educated in order to select the best positioning service. One should know what to expect, and what the minimum requirements are for successful search engine optimization. Satisfying search engine criteria for higher rankings is only part of the equation. Having a content rich and useful site that visitors would like to come back to could be even more important.


The following variables should be considered to understand the cost:


1. Highly competitive keyword phrases,
2. Number of keyphrases optimized,
3. The number of pages to be optimized,
4. Building new pages or sites,
5. Difficult technology can present obstacles,
6. Inclusion of pay for inclusion or pay per click,
7. Link building efforts,
8. Level of continued management,

The guarantee given by the SEO firm should be studied carefully. Guarantee to increase the traffic to site and an increase in rankings is fine. But, guarantee to get a top 10 ranking should be considered more carefully. Depending on the keyword phrase itself, one can certainly get two-word phrases ranked high, and even certain single keywords. So, if one goes with that firm, it will have to choose less popular keywords.

Some SEO firms expertise in working for one client in a given industry. For example, they will only work for one printer, one tooling manufacturer, or one bank, etc. One should inquire how the SEO firm handles competing clients.

Ask for a list of references from any SEO considered. Look closely at the list to see if the sites appear to be legitimate and trustworthy. Then, contact those references.

Black Hat vs. White Hat Search Spam Debat

White hat method is seen as the more legal and acceptable way to improve the website. Black hat method is seen as an unethical way.

The black hats write software, to manipulate data and information on the web able to generate tons of grammatically correct but meaningless information full of keywords bringing in a lot of traffic. White hat is the opposite of that — basically ethical SEO, which is using established SEO practices to increase a site's ranking. White hat is a more long-term strategy, and black hat can be more immediate.

While the so-called good people crack their minds to write assuring information that is more useful to the human mind, the black hats write software that is able to generate tons of grammatically correct but meaningless information full of keywords that brings in a lump sum of traffic.

Black hat SEO uses the content on a page and links both on and to a page for search engines to see. Humans aren't supposed to see them at all, and various black hat techniques can be used to hide them. White hat techniques, use content and links designed for both humans and search engines to see.

Black hat SEO techniques may quickly deliver results. However, due to the disposable nature of the domains, the results are often short term - although they can be long term. White hat SEO techniques can take some time to implement (although not necessarily) but their results tend to last for a long time (although, again, not necessarily).

Significance of Search Engine Optimization

Search engines are the market makers of the Internet. They connect consumers with providers at the very moment of consumer interest and enable all to find exactly what is required, when we want it. They bring great efficiency to the Internet and our lives.

If you are not positioned to be where your customer is when your customer is ready to buy, you lose. Your competitor who is in that place at that time wins. The first purpose of search engine optimization is to be positioned in the places where your customer is. The second purpose is to be positioned higher than your competitors in these places. For this SEO is most important as it helps in qualified traffic generating from search engines, to ensure their Web sites are correctly optimized for good positioning in search results.

Compared with traditional media advertising or paid online advertising, Search Engine Optimisation provides tremendous increase in traffic for the small cost of web developer's Search Engine Optimisation services. It is estimated that 90% of all online traffic is achieved through the various search engines.

If you're not listed within the first 20 or 30 search engine rankings, you lose traffic, no matter how many engines you submitted your site to. The secret is to use search engine positioning techniques that will rank you higher than your competitors.

White Hat Method and Black Hat Method

White hat method is seen as the more legal and acceptable way to improve the website. The content of the site is easily available to their spiders. Simple white hat methods generally accepted by search engines are:

1. Naming each page with unique titles,
2. Increase the amount of quality content of the site,
3. Using accurate HTML Header tags, and is descriptive to the page,
4. Using precise meta tags of sound sizes, without excessive keywords or off topic terms,
5. Allowing search engine spiders without the need to accept cookies of session ids,
6. Allow your site to have good web ring participation,

The black hats write software, to manipulate data and information on the web able to generate tons of grammatically correct but meaningless information full of keywords bringing in a lot of traffic. Two of the most common black hat tricks are spamdexing and cloaking. Spamdexing can again be separated into content spam, linking spam and others. Cloaking on the other hand, is more to mislead a search engine regarding the content of the webpage.

These techniques usually include one or more of the following characteristics:

• breaks search engine rules and regulations,
• creates a poor user experience directly because of the black hat SEO techniques utilized on the Web site,
• unethically presents content in a different visual or non-visual way to search engine spiders and search engine users.

Customization Of Web Templates To Create Websites That Work

Raw materials requiring refurnishing/editing for online publication are called web templates. Content insertion, graphic insertion/modification, inserting company logo, changing styles, changing links, changing flash images etc are included in editing web-templates. Instead of editing templates, customization services are available at affordable costs can be used.

The following are the handy tips for content editing:

1. Change the title of all pages.

2. Change alt text of images and keep the alter text as a keyword.

3. Add proper anchor text to all the links.

4. Give proper headings to all the pages.

5. Check for spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, broken links and misspellings before loading the site.

6. Provide contact information.

The following are the handy tips for images and graphics editing:

1. Change the color of images to suite and enhance your text visibility.

2. Replace images used in the templates and add your own professional images if needed.

3. Editing the styles of a template.

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Ritu

Benefits of Black Hat Techniques

The "black hat" techniques are used to manipulate rankings in the search engines.
The black hatters "churn-and-burn" websites, and in three months of that website's existence, can easily make over 100k from each site.
The black hatters keep the search engines on their toes by constantly pushing the boundaries of manipulating data and information on the web. It forces the search engines to continually re-think their approach on ranking the content found on the Internet.
While the black hatter relies on automation to obtain goals, the rest of us have to do it with effort.
The elite black hatters are smart enough to know when they have been beaten in a specific area, and will simply turn their focus to another topic.


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Ritu

Free Listing V Paid Inclusion

Free listing refers to submission of a site into the directory for absolutely no charge. Paid inclusion means paying an amount for inclusion in the directory. Paid inclusion is now the norm when submitting commercial web sites, and all businesses should regard the costs associated with inclusion as an essential part of their yearly web site budget. Although many where critical of paid inclusion when the free submission model was, abandoned for being unsustainable. The contract that paid inclusion schemes offer (usually refereed to as 'Express Submissions') ensure all parties are clear about their responsibilities and commitments. This helps to reduce the abuse of search engines and directories as businesses are less willing to risk their site being barred or face legal prosecution as they attempt to abuse the submission process.

Free listings continue to be available to non-commercial sites and it is clear that in the future submissions will eventually fall into either the paid commercial or free non-commercial category.

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Ritu

Relationship between SEO and Search Engines

Due to the high value and targeting of search results, there is potential for an adversarial relationship between search engines and SEOs. Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry, and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences and seminars. In fact, with the advent of paid inclusion, some search engines now have a vested interest in the health of the optimization community. All of the main search engines like Google's, Yahoo!'s, MSN's and Ask.com's provide information/guidelines to help with site optimization.

Google has a Sitemaps program to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website. Yahoo! has Site Explorer that provides a way to submit your URLs for free (like MSN/Google), determine how many pages are in the Yahoo! index and drill down on inlinks to deep pages. Yahoo! has an Ambassador Program and Google has a program for qualifying Google Advertising Professionals.

Those who operate search engines recognize quickly that some web masters (specifically search engine optimizers) are making bold efforts to rank well in their search engines, even by manipulating the page rankings in search results. For Infoseek and some other search engines, optimizers were grabbing the source code of the top-ranking pages and placing it in their pages.

Search engines have always frowned upon those aggressive SEO practices; going to the extent of banning the pages in the search listings. The more aggressive site owners' generating automated sites for better ranking, suffered much search engine wrath; their domains were banned from the search engines.

Today, many search engine optimization companies employ long-term, low-risk strategies. Some SEO firms that do employ high-risk strategies for their own affiliate, lead-generation, or content sites, instead of taking the risk on client's web sites.


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Ritu

What is Search Engine Optimization?

A marketing process used to appeal search engine algorithms and increase search engine relevance and ultimately web traffic is termed as Search engine optimization (SEO). It is not rewriting the site or changing the look and feel, but creating a Web site with users in mind to fare well with the software "spiders". SEO can also refer to "search engine optimizers", an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients.

Search engines display different kinds of listings on a search engine results page (SERP), including paid advertising in the form of pay per click advertisements and paid inclusion listings, as well as unpaid organic search results and keywords specific listings, such as news stories, definitions, map locations, and images. The first step for SEO is to build a user-focused site by putting keyword rich content, links which can be easily traversed by spiders and humans and external links from reputable sites. Focus should be on all pages of the site in turn on keywords relevant to the business and relevant to people searching for that business for SEO. A range of strategies and techniques are employed in SEO, including "on page factors" and "off page factors", which are again classified as "white hat SEO", or "black hat SEO".

Search engines failure to understand Java, Flash and images results in their inefficiency to index a Web site. If the site isn't indexed then no one will find the site by searching for it in Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. Again search engines do not guarantee success, either in the short or long term and so are often compared to traditional Public Relations, with PPC advertising closer to traditional advertising.

Choosing a SEO company wisely is very important or else all the efforts and money go waste. While selecting a SEO company, check out their results - see where their site is in the search engine rankings. SEO site in the top 10 for its target keyword should be selected. If a SEO company can put their website at the top when all of their competitors are experts at search engine placement, think what they can do for your site.

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Ritu

How To Get My Articles

SEO LEARNING CENTER

Added on: 6 Nov 08

What is Search Engine Optimization?
Relationship between SEO and Search Engines
Free Listing V Paid Inclusion
Benefits of Black Hat Techniques
Customizing Templates

Added on: 10 Nov 08

White Hat Method & Black Hat Method
Significance of Search Engine Optimization
Black Hat and White Hat Search Spam debate
Hiring a Search Engine Optimization Company
Hiring a Search Engine Optimization Professional

Added on: 11 Nov 08

Pay-Per-Click Advertising & Search Engine Optimization
‘Organic’ or ‘Natural’ Search Engine Optimization
Database Search vs. Text Search
Site Maps and Hypertext Links
Working Of Search Engine Robots

Added on: 14 Nov 08

PPC Advertising & Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Marketing Professional
Organic "Natural" SEO V/S PPC Advertising
Sophisticated Ranking Algorithms
Link Popularity Services
Basic Web Design Guidelines
Branding V/S Search Engine Optimization




More Articles Coming Soon...

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Ritu