FocalDirect Info

Good keywords are frequently searched for (high demand) but not being targeted by many other websites (low competition). There are a number of tools out there that can help you find them.

Wordtracker

The best tool out there, Wordtracker is one of the most essential SEO tools. To use Wordtracker:

- Go to the Wordtracker website (http://www.wordtracker.com)and pay $7 for 24 hours’ access

- Enter a keyword phrase you’re thinking about targeting

- Wordtracker will suggest hundreds of related phrases - click on the ones you like

- Once you’ve clicked on all the phrases you like, run them through the program

- Wordtracker will compile a score for each phrase, based on the number of users searching for it and the number of websites targeting it

- The higher the score, the better the keyword phrase!

Wordtracker also offers a free service which works in the same way but only uses results generated from MSN.

Overture

Also useful, Overture’s search term suggestion tool (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/), is free and much quicker to use than Wordtracker. It works in much the same way as Wordtracker but doesn’t tell you how many websites are targeting each keyword phrase.

Google

Google AdWords Keyword Suggestions (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox) tell you which keyword phrases are being targeted by other websites.

Guidebeam

Guidebeam (http://www.guidebeam.com) is an interesting resource. Type in a phrase and it will suggest a large number of related searches. The numbers provided for each phrase are Guidebeam’s estimation of how relevant that phrase is.

This article was written by Trenton Moss. He’s crazy about web usability and accessibility - so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy ( Webcredible - http://www.webcredible.co.uk ) to help make the Internet a better place for everyone. They offer fantastic accessibility & CSS support packages, which you can read all about at http://www.webcredible.co.uk/support .

It is a well known fact that writing, distributing and posting articles to various location on the web is an extremely effective way to generate targeted traffic and establish yourself as an experienced marketer in your field. Unique articles that help solve the reader’s problems, assists the reader in advancing their marketing acumen, or otherwise generally inform tend to stay posted on many web sites throughout the Internet and usually generate targeted traffic for the writer.

In order to further maximize the benefits of writing and posting unique articles, it makes good business sense to optimize the articles so the search engines list the URL’s associated with those articles on search engine results pages (SERP’s). Ideally, you’d like to see your article URL on the 1st page of the SERP’s so you can capitalize on the free and targeted traffic from these listings.

So, what type of strategy can be utilized to optimize your articles for the search engines?

There’s quite a few different ways but here are some tactics that you may want to use:

Article optimization tactic 1: Choose keywords that complement your USP and name your article page accordingly.

When choosing keywords that will be the central theme of your article, it is necessary to define what your article will be about, who the information in the article will benefit, and how it will tie into your USP before choosing your keywords. After you’ve thought through this, then come up with a list of keywords that will be suitable as the central them of the article.

Next, decide which keywords you will center your article around based on the number of searches that keyword gets per day and by assessing how much competition there is for that keyword phrase. Once you have chosen your keyword phrase for the article, name your page.

Example: If ‘green widgets’ is the keyword you wish to base your article on, you may want to name your web page ‘greenwdgets.htm’ or ‘greenwdgets.html’ or ‘greenwdgets.shtml’.

Article optimization tactic 2: Utilize keyword in the title tag. Utilize your keywords that you’ve chosen for your article in the title tag of the web page.

Example: Green Widgets | The best green widgets available

Article optimization tactic 3: Utilize keyword in headline tags. Using keywords in headline tags will increase rankings of your web pages.

Ideally you would use the keywords as the headline, but usually this doesn’t look natural.

Keep the h tags before and after the entire headline.

Example:Green widgets: We have the most affordable and powerful green widget available anywhere, guaranteed!

Article optimization tactic 4: Utilize keywords in the 1st sentence of the initial paragraph.

This an easily be accomplished and still make the paragraph read well and in a natural sounding tone if read back. Remember that you want your reader to feel like they are being talked with not “at” and you want your reader to not realize that your placement of your keyword phrases might be planned.

Article optimization tactic 5: Utilize keywords in text with appropriate keyword density. After you write your article, you can easily edit to try to obtain the best keyword density for the search engines you’d like to target.

Google’s optimum keyword density is between 1.5% to 2.5% keyword density at the time of this writing.

Once you have the article written you can use GoRank’s keyword optimization tool (http://www.gorank.com/seotools/) to check what the keyword density is of the text of the article so you can edit accordingly.

Remember, you don’t want to ’stuff’ the page with your chosen and targeted keyword phrase but you do want to make sure that you utilize your keywords when you can up to the required amount for the desired keyword density.

Article optimization tactic 6: Bold or italicize keywords in text. When bolding and italicizing your keywords in your articles, it isn’t necessary to bold and/or italicize every keyword phrase. When the reader comes across bolded and italicized words they add emphasis to the text at the time they read those words. So you should use your best judgment as to what looks right and ‘reads’ right when you edit your article.

One key item to remember to write naturally so you get your message across in a human manner.

You want the reader to click to your link at the end or in the body of the article and the more human and conversational your article comes across, the more likely that the reader will travel to the URL you’d like them to see. Some marketers write their articles without search engine optimization in mind and then go back and edit them for the search engines.

After your article is optimized, do all you can to get it posted to other web sites so the number of relevant links pointing to that article is heightened. If you get your article posted to some of the heavier web sites that post articles and have the correct categories where your article will fit, the faster your article URL will get indexed by the search engines.

Karl Augustine
SEO Enthusiast

Starting An Online BusinessFREE e-series, “Traffic Tips”

FREE traffic tips

Sometimes, the search engines act really strange. And this story will prove how I’ve got top positions (80% on no.1) into the major search engines - such Google, Yahoo!, MSN - without lifting a finger! What is REALLY strange? I did not optimize my page!

But first allow me to give you some backgrounds. Couple of time ago I buy a domain name and hosted into a very reliable server. At that time I intended to build a mini-site around a very powerful service which was released at that period.

I can’t remember why at that time I was very busy. So I just write a simple page, insert a few links to the program I promote and upload it. Everything it don’t takes me more than 1/2 hours.

That was the beginning. The page stays there for around a month. I remember I post 3-4 messages into some forums and link them to my newest mini-site. That was ALL I can do at that time. But one day I decided to make a little change.

I login to my hosting account and take a look at the stats. Surprise! I saw traffic from Google and Yahoo! What??? I didn’t submit my website to the search engines!

What the hell is going on?

I open my WebPosition Gold 2 software and check my website. Geez, my site was there, on no.1 for 3 keyphrases in Google, Yahoo!, and MSN, and take no.1 through no.5 spots on other 2-3 major search engines.

I couldn’t belive that was happening to my website, but the evidence was there. It was very hard to believe that I’ve got no.1 places into the search engine without doing a little optimization. Because my friend, THAT page was NOT optimize for the search engines!

So I said to myself: “That won’t last forever. I give one week and I’ll saw my website going down because it has no support for all those positions!”. Well, it didn’t last a week. After only 5 days, my website was vanish. Not a single position into the top 10, not even found on search engines!

OK, what it was it was. For only couple of days (perhaps hours) I was on no.1 spots. It means that I can do it again IF I’ll do everything by the book. Despite of general opinion, search engine optimization it’s not so hard. If you know what to do, if you take your time to study the right stuff and have patience, there’s impossible not to rich the position you desire.

That was fine, but I also plan to go into vacation with my family. It was on July, the weather was great, and we plan this vacation from a long time. My son dream about this vacation, so I said, “Why not? Let’s do it!” You know the rest: spend a lot of time for making reservations, baggage, prepare the car for the trip, etcetera. Less time for me to build my website.

So I left my mini-site and going to vacation. Two weeks later when I come back, after settle down the things into the house, I first check my emails. Oh no! - up to 300 emails waiting for me. Check couple of them, get VERRY angry (you must read below website hosting story!) and then take a ride to see my stats.

Total SURPRISE! My website was AGAIN on the no.1 for Google, Yahoo!, MSN… plus positions between no.1 and no.4 on others!

This is my real story. If you spent some time on search engines like I do it, you know this is weird. Not because I was again on top, it’s weird I’ll get to the top WITHOUT optimization.

Now let me tell you more about this page:

- total words: 864

- links to the affiliate program I promote: 4 (position them from middle to the bottom of the page)

- use the keyphrase mainly from middle to the bottom of the page

- use only a “.gif” picture for my signature (no keywords for “ALT” tag)

- headers at the top of page: 3 (first use font size no.3, the next use H1, and the last H4 tag). NO keywords or keyphrases inside!

- first appear of the keyphrase is on “word” no.100, the next on no.283 (from 864!)

- number of times my keyphrase appear on the body of page: 5

- number of times my keyphrase appear on the links: 3

- my keyphrase is build on 3 words and a number

- no use of META tags

- layout: use 2 tables to design my page, one in other

- couple of short Java scripts at the bottom of page

- use six bullets on the middle of page, two P.S., and a line of copyright, address, and contact info at the bottom of page

- it was uploaded as a home/ index page, NO keywords into my domain name

- I DID NOT announce this page/ website to the search engines!

If I’m right, THIS is not an optimized page. And remember: depending on HOW people will search and what keywords/ keyphrases will use, my competition is between 32 and 2,750,000 and continue to grow!

I hope not a single SEO webmaster will read this issue. Because, in a way, it’s outrageous! I didn’t do anything to deserve this position. I know people try harder to get top positions. They work a lot to optimize pages, to get relevant links, build content to become search engine friendly, and many other things.

This time it’s not my case. But there is a hard lesson here and I want to shear it with you. These days Netpreneurs likes a lot to build one page mini-sites. Those things works and I prove it to you. Beyond the SEO problems and the no.1 spots on major engines, there is something which only a few people will ask you: “So what if you have a no.1 position(’s)?”

Most people will aspect a hoard of targeted visitors ready to use their credit cards to buy something they offer, probably their own product/ services or something from an affiliate program or joint venture. Sometimes this is completely wrong! If your keywords are not “hot”, chances are that your no.1 spots will drive only couple of visitors. Not to mention sales…

The real Netpreneurs knows that. So if you want to build a mini-site in the next days, think about how many people will come and BUY what you promote. To help you, here’s a 6 step plan to build a profitable mini-site:

–> Step no.1: find a “dream” product or service with an affiliate program (or joint venture partner) which pay well.

–> Step no.2: determine if you can use “hot” keywords to promote the program. Use a tool like WordTracker (http://www.internetmarketingprofitscenter.com/wordtracker/), the best service on the Internet for such a job.

Find keywords/ keyphrases with low supply (little competition) but have a higher demand (appear on many searches around the ‘Net).

–> Step no.3: get a relevant domain name and host it into a reliable server (try to insert keyword into the name of domain, or think at something close to the product).

–> Step no.4: start building 3-5 pages (build a theme around the product), do SEO and announce your site to the major search engines.

–> Step no.5: concentrate your efforts on getting links from top related websites.

–> Step no.6: once you rich on top and get back your initial investment and something more, determine your ROI and start using pay-per-clicks search engines to boots your profits.

If you follow EXACTLY these steps, chances are that your mini-site will jump on top of search engines and will REALLY drive that particular targeted visitor eager to buy what you promote! Otherwise, you will lamentably fail.

Final thoughts on my search engine story:

By all odds I regret my page is not what I first intend to do. Because, I have to tell you this, my page was just throw away into the cyber-space! The idea was to have something on my index/ home page until I build my website. Has NOTHING to do with my theme idea. That’s why I NEVER think at optimization.

But I don’t regret too much that I’ll have to delete it soon. I learn something very useful: no matter how many top positions you have on the search engines, unless you write a very compelling web page, chances are that you’ll have poor visitors. And poor visitors means no sales, no ROI.

(Chances are that, at the moment you read this article, my “magic” web page simply dropped from no.1 positions or I delete it. So don’t bother to spend time on find it. You have to believe me! And if you don’t, I’ll have to PROOF on my computer, as a “.gif” picture.)

Attention Ezine Publishers/ Site Owners
Feel free to reprint this article is its entirety in your newsletter/ ezine or website as long as you leave all links in place, do not alterate the content and include our resource box as listed above. If you do use the material please send us a note so we can take a look. Thanks!

Valeriu S. Popescu is the editor of the “Internet Marketing Profits Newsletter”, a gazette dedicated to help new marketers to drive thousands of targeted visitors to their websites or affiliate links. Proven tips, tricks, techniques and strategies revealed every single month! http://www.internetmarketingprofitscenter.com/archive

So has Google found your site yet?

Over the last 12 months Google has undergone many changes to the way it looks at and lists your site.

This week sees another upgrade in Google.

As any search engine or member of the public will tell you, Google or any other search engine MUST provide the most relevant listings for a search query.

One of the major changes that Google is implementing is that it will not display more than one AdWords listings for the same company Domain Name. At present they also try to have only one listing (with a secondary) per website domain displayed in the top search results.

This affects mainly affiliated member sites.

This also affects companies that provide a member program. Say if you were using Google AdWords and there are 5 members from your company paying to use AdWords only one listing will be displayed and this will be the highest bid for that keyword.

In another words the average Joe Marketer will have to pay a high price to have his AdWord listing displayed.

For Google and for the Google search user this provides a more defined search. There will not be 5 AdWords placed for the same company or merchant as has been the case in the past.

With 3 or 4 AdWords for the same company displayed, allowed a person who paid a bid of 50 cents to be displayed at the bottom of the list while someone who could afford to pay five dollars for the same keyword to have his link at the top of the page. You stood a chance when your AdWord was displayed, now you have to have the highest bid at that particular time.

BUT, this is not an insurmountable problem. This is where owning your own Domain name and web site is a must.

At present many search engines only allow one plus a secondary listing for any one domain to be displayed in their top page or two of their search results.

NOTE:
There is no easy way around not owning your own domain.

Getting your affiliated member site listed in a search engine is becoming almost impossible, especially when you consider that there are tens and even hundreds of thousands of other members belonging to the same company, promoting their member site too.

This can and will affect many companies as they rely on their members to promote the companies site though pay per click - AdWords and standard search engine listing.

With odds of one hundred thousand to one you have better odds of winning the lotteries.

Once marketers understand the concept of creating their own website, one of the next hurdles they face is the content for their site. What so often happens is that they do not consider themselves as copy writers, so they copy the content from their member site. I have seen this many times where marketers websites are almost exact copies of their companies site.

The definition of a search engine is to provide the most relevant search results for a specific search.

Google are only trying to live up to this definition. So as they are only allowing one AdWord display listing for any one company or domain, Google are also only allowing one page with the exact same content to be displayed.

If your web page is a duplicate of your companies page, then your page is very likely to receive a duplicate content penalty with Google.

In other words if your site has been indexed by Google and they find your page to be an exact copy of another page, it is highly likely your page will receive the penalty and not the company site.

Remember that the Google Bot’s are checking and indexing around eight billion pages each month. It takes a very powerful computer system to keep track of all those pages and the content on those pages to return relevant searches. It doesn’t take to much brain power to realize that as Google indexes a page it can also compare your page with the thousands that fit into your product, service or information category.

It is generally thought that for a 1st offense your page will be removed from their index for 30 days then for the 2nd offense for 60 days then for a 3rd offense your page will be removed for 90 days. After the 3rd offence you can forget about Google.

But it gets worse, if your page contains duplicate content and Google spots it, for the time your page is cooling off for 30 days it affects the rest of your site as you will no doubt have many links in the site map etc, to the banned page so this can and does affect your whole sites ranking.

The news is not all bad as anyone who has the ability to consider marketing any product and is prepared to attempt creating a web site, also has the ability to reword and rewrite the content from their company site.

Most other pay per click search engines or ones that accept paid inclusion like Overture already use similar policies that Google is now implementing.

There are exceptions to the duplicate rule like RSS News feeds, Directories, ezine article Directories and sites like Ebay and Yahoo stores where these individual stores use the Yahoo or eBay domain name.

Using good common sense, you should never have any problems with Google or other search engines as you are promoting your website as your own unique sales display.

Don’t get me wrong Google is my first choice in Search Engines.

Google offers many f`ree tools for web masters. You can find some of tools listed here.

http://www.google.com/help/features.html

If you to Google.com search, you can check the links to your Website. (incoming links). Where I have www.internet-income-index in the search box, you would type in your website domain.

“+www.internet-income-index.+com

Now if I can get 151 links back to my site without submitting it to search engines, think what you can do…

Most Internet Marketers average between 20 and 50 links using the Google links tool.

My point is if you add one link to your website in a single Internet directory, Google and other search engines will find you and your site just by following the link you placed in that one directory.

If you check issue 103 of this ezine dated May 26 - 2004 Google only had 2 links to my ezine site listed.

I have placed a link on my other personally owned sites and have added ezine articles I have written in a couple of Ezine Article Directories. You will find EzineArticles.com will be listed above my site in a search for my ezine site as they are a very high profile site.

The higher the profile or page rank Google gives any site that you have your site link in, the higher Google is likely to rate your site providing you have played by Googles rules.

Did you know that many search engines consider you have 2 sites one with http;//www. in front of your domain and one with just the http;//yourdomain.com plus if you have a sub-domain name like http://www.search.yourdomain.com they treat this generally as a different domain or website. The word search is the sub-domain in this instance.

But it is far easier to promote just the one domain as opposed to promoting 3 variations of the one domain name. I know that from past experience after I listed it in the Dmoz.org Directory without “www.”

http://VoipConference.info

“+www.voipconference.+info with 21 incoming links

compared to 320 incoming links (without the www.) “+voipconference.+info

TIP,
Domain Name Branding your website using a one off name like Google or eBay is still best when it comes to search engine marketing and for domain name recognition if you are prepared to invest the time and money, but if your budget is limited then using a domain name that describes your business or includes keywords relating to your product or service is equally good.

May Google be kind to your site.

PETER GREEN.

Editor of ~ The INDEX ~ ezine.

Editor@Internet-income-index.com

http://www.Internet-Income-Index.com

Your Free Weekly Internet Marketing News, Ideas, Resources and Sources Ezine.

With search engines like Google currently indexing over 8 billion pages, it is becoming more and more difficult to get a top search engine ranking. Type in a popular search phrase such as “Internet Marketing” into Yahoo or Google and you will be returned over 8 million results!

Unless your website is in the first two or three pages, it is unlikely that you will receive many visitors from search engines.

So what should a webmaster do to give their website the best chance of ranking high in the search engines?

All search engines work slightly differently and have ever changing algorithms for ranking web pages, but these tips can be applied when planning, developing or marketing a website to help you reach that top page of search engine results.

(1) Choose your keywords carefully

It’s extremely important to set aside time to research your keywords. It’s best to do this in the planning stages, before developing your website, but many of us start a website without knowing a thing about how the search engines work, so you may find yourself doing this weeks or months later.

Try to choose phrases that are searched on frequently and if possible have a low number of competing websites.

To get an idea of the number of times a keyword is searched for per month, type a keyword into the box at

Overture Search Suggestion Tool

This will tell you how many times your keyword was searched on in the previous month (based on Overture’s partner search engines) and give you a list of similar keywords.

Another useful tool to help you choose your keywords is Word Tracker. This tool will help you choose your keywords and give you a “KEI” for each set of keywords based on the popularity of the keyword (number of searches) and the amount of competition.

You can try this out for free on Wordtracker

If you manage to pick your keywords in the planning stages you may even be lucky enough to find a domain name that contains your keywords.

(2) Optimise your pages

Once you have decided on your keywords you will need to optimise your pages for those keywords. Here are a few tips.

- Ensure that the Title of your page contains your keywords.

- Mention your keywords inside the meta tags. Most search engines no longer use meta tags, but some make use of them so it is still worthwhile using these.

- Try to make sure that the first occurance of readable text on your page contains your keywords

- Ensure that your keywords are mentioned in the initial paragraph of your page

- Use your keywords throughout the text of your page - but be careful not to overdo this. Your page should still be readable by humans!

- Use your keywords between the headline tags on your page (”H1″ tags or H2/H3 if H1 is too big)

- Occasionally bold or italicise your keywords

- Make sure that links pointing back to each page on your site contain the keywords for each page

- Give all your images an “ALT” tag and put your keywords in here too - again, don’t overdo this

- Try to put some of your keywords in your outbound links

(3) Start Linking

One of the most important criteria in getting a good search engine ranking is the number of backlinks you have to your website from related websites.

Type in your chosen keywords to Yahoo or Google and take note of the top 3 sites returned to you.

Now go to Link Popularity Checker and put the URLs of the top three sites into the linking tool, along the URL of your own site.

Have a look at the difference between your site and the top 3 sites and this will give you an idea of how many links you need in order to get a top search engine ranking for these keywords.

The best ways to get links back to your site are:

- By writing articles related to the subject of your website and getting them published on the internet

- Reciprocal Linking with other related websites

- Posting on newsgroups and forums that allow you to have a signature attached to your posting (with your uRL in it)

- Submitting your site to directories.

Try to make sure that the anchor text (clickable text) that links back to your site contains your keywords.

(4) Add Content Regularly

Another thing you may have noticed is that top ranking websites have lots of content.

Regularly updating your website and adding fresh content will also help your site to rank more highly in the search engines.

If you don’t have time to create your own unique content there are plenty free articles available Just type “Free website content” into Google and you’ll have your pick of the 18 million results that it returns to you!

To improve your ranking, follow steps 1 and 2 above and repeat steps 3 and 4 regularly.

Suzanne Morrison is the webmaster and owner of http://www.homebiz-direct.com To learn more about how to promote your website visit her Beginner’s Guide to Internet Marketing

Yahoo has fairly recently updated its guidelines. You can read the full list at:

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/basics-18.html

I thought that a few points were of great interest to you because we have discussed these issue in the past when describing the best way to future-proof your site against search engine algorithm changes.

Here are some of the new guidelines:

Pages Yahoo! Wants Included in Its Index
________________________________________

1. Original and unique content of genuine value

2. Pages designed primarily for humans, with search engine considerations secondary

3. Hyperlinks intended to help people find interesting, related content, when applicable

4. Metadata (including title and description) that accurately describes the contents of a web page

5. Good web design in general

It seems content is now King for Yahoo, and unique content at that. As I have always told you, develop webpages with unique content and your sites will do well.

Here is a summary of some of the guidelines Yahoo makes on what not to do. I have added my own comments in brackets afterwards:

1. redirects (targeting smart pages and similar cloaking techniques).

2.Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages (pages generated by page generators that substitute one keyword for another).

3. Pages in great quantity, automatically generated or of little value (data feed sites that are built in a day by someone wanting to put out thousands of pages quickly).

4. Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site’s apparent popularity (webmasters who cross link all their sites in an effort to rank better).

5. Pages built primarily for the search engines (highly optimized pages).

Read the full set of guidelines for yourself as they offer a great insight as to why your site may have been dropped by Yahoo.

*********************************************************
Andy Williams is author of the free, ezSEO internet marketing newsletter,
offering subscribers up-to-date information on all aspects of internet
marketing. His search engine optimization website offers unique, no
BS information, for free.
*********************************************************

Uniquely built web sites can create unique issues when being promoted on the search engines. From a basic 3 page brochure site to a corporate site with hundreds of dynamically generated pages, every web site needs to have certain design aspects in order to achieve the full effects of an SEO campaign. Below are a few points to take into consideration when building or updating your web site.

1. Size Matters.

The size of a web site can have a huge impact on search engine rankings. Search engines love content, so if you have only a few pages to your site and your competitors have dozens, it’s difficult to see a top page ranking for your site. In some cases it may be difficult to present several pages of information about your business or products, so you may need to think about adding free resources for visitors. It will help in broadening the scope of your web site (which search engines like) as well as keep visitors on your site longer, possibly resulting in more sales.

2. Graphics-Based Web Sites.

While web sites that offer the visitor a more esthetically-pleasing experience may seem like the best choice for someone searching for your product, they are the most difficult to optimize. Since search engine robots cannot read text within graphics or animation, what they see may be just a small amount of text. And if we learned anything from point #1, small amounts of content will not result in top rankings. If you really must offer the visitor a graphics-heavy or Flash web site, consider creating an html-based side of your site that is also available to visitors. This site will be much easier to promote on the search engines and your new found visitors will also have the option to jump over to the nicer looking part of your site.

3. Dynamic Web Pages.

If most of your web site is generated by a large database (such as a large book dealer with stock that is changing by the minute) you may find that some of your pages do not get indexed by major search engines. If you look at the URL of these pages they can be extremely long and have characters such as ?, #, &, %, or = along with huge amounts of seemingly random numbers or letters. Since these pages are automatically generated by the database as needed, the search engines have a tough time keeping them up to date and relevant for search engine users.

One way to combat this problem is to offer a search engine friendly site map listing all your static pages just to let them know that you do have permanent content on your site. If search engines see links going to and from these dynamic pages within a good internal linking system, this may also lead to the pages getting indexed. The link popularity of your site may carry more weight in this case as well, so if you can’t offer as much static content as your competition, make sure you have an aggressive link campaign on the go.

4. Proper Use of HTML.

There is quite a bit of sub-par web design software out there. Word processors usually have a way to create HTML documents which can be easily uploaded to a site via ftp. However, in many cases the code that the search engine robots see is mostly lines and lines of font and position formatting, not relevant content. The more efficiently written web sites usually achieve higher rankings. Our choice for web design software is Macromedia Dreamweaver, as it is an industry standard. It also makes using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) a breeze, which can drastically cut down on the amount of text formatting in HTML code. Hand-coding HTML to design sites is also a good method if you are proficient enough.

There are some no brainers too: Web sites with abnormal amounts of hyperlinks, bold or italicized text, improper use of heading, alt, or comment tags can also expect to see low rankings.

5. Choosing a Domain Name.

The golden rule to web development of any kind is to keep your visitors in mind above all else - even search engine optimization. When choosing a domain name, one should pick either your business name (if you have a high-profile business name such as Chapters or Coca-Cola) or a brief description of your products. Domain names can always help with search engine optimization, as it is another area of your web site that important keywords can appear. Forget about long- winded domains such as www.number-one-best-books-on-earth.com as no one will ever remember it and it will be hard to print on business cards or in ads.

If you need to change your domain name for any reason you obviously don’t want to lose existing rankings. An easy way to do this, and one that is currently supported by most search engines, is the 301 redirect. It allows you to keep your existing rankings for your old domain name, while forwarding visitors to your new web site instantly.

6. Using Frames.

Don’t use frames. Frames are a thing of the 90’s (and in the Internet world that is eons ago) and are not even supported by some search engines. The search engines that are able to index your site through frames will most likely frown upon them. Whatever you are trying to accomplish by using frames can usually be done with the help of PHP includes or CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Some browsers are not frames-compatible, so there is the danger of some visitors not being able to see your site at all. Bookmarking of individual pages within a frame becomes difficult without lengthly scripts being written.

7. Update Your Information.

Not only does information printed two or three years ago look badly on your organization when it is read by a visitor, it is also looked down upon by search engines. Web sites that continuously update and grow their web sites usually experience higher rankings than stagnant sites. When the trick to SEO is offering visitors the most relevant information, you can bet that the age of web pages is taken into consideration by search engines. Consider creating a section of your site devoted to news within your organization, or have a constantly updated resources area.

Many shortfalls of web sites can easily be attributed to designers who just don’t keep the user or search engines in mind. Search engine algorithms are quickly improving to try and list the most user-friendly sites higher, given that the content and link popularity are there to back it up. So first and foremost, know your target market and make your web site work for them before focusing on search engine optimization. If you build it (properly), they will come.

Copyright John Metzler of Abalone Designs, November 2004. This article may be freely distributed if credit is given to the author. Abalone Designs is a family-run Search Engine Optimization firm in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Visit http://www.abalone.ca for a free personalized analysis of your web site.

If you own or manage a business Website, chances are you are at least somewhat familiar with the concept of search engine optimization (SEO). You may have read any number of books and articles on the subject and possibly given it a try yourself. Or perhaps, after exhaustive research, you decided that your time is better spent in your area of expertise. If that’s the case, I have some good news for you. There is such a thing as affordable search engine optimization. In fact, when you know what to look for, it can be a real bargain.

Step One ? 3 Simple Questions:

The first step is estimating some target market information. Just ask a few simple questions and write down the answers that you come up with. You’ll need this information later:

1. How many people do you think are looking for what you offer?
2. What keywords are they using in search engine searches?
3. Which keywords are the most popular to meet your needs?

Step Two - Verify:

Now that you have your initial estimates, let’s validate the information. Visit Overture.com’s Advertiser Center and try their Search Term Suggestion Tool located at: http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/ac/index.jhtml

Type in any term that you think is close to what your potential visitors are looking for. You will see how many searches were performed, on the Overture search system, for the previous month. TIP ? Use a general search term to start with.

Now you have the single most important advantage when dealing with any trained business professional ? you are informed!

Step Three ? Make it Happen:

Now that you have this great information, you want to see it implemented. This is the best part. I recommend a visit to SEO Partner. SEO Partner (www.SEOPartner.com) really lives up to its slogan “search engine optimization on your terms”.

They have assembled an enormous talent pool of SEO developers, who actually compete to work on your project. It does not cost you anything to post your optimization projects. To operate the service, they accept a small commission from the SEO developers (which is only a fraction of what developers would normally spend on marketing efforts alone).

Finally, there’s one of my favorite features. SEO Partner protects you from those less scrupulous SEO ‘experts’ you read about more and more with their protective escrow payment system.

Step Four ? Track Your Progress:

Finally, once you have your campaign underway, you really need to track your progress. There are some great tools available for that purpose. Here are links to some of the better products that I have worked with:

www.webposition.com
www.axandra.com
www.searchenginecommando.com

There are a lot of products out there - all at varying costs. I recommend you visit your favorite search engine and look for ’seo tools’ and see what you get for a response. Then I would definitely test each one’s demo version thoroughly before investing in any one of them. A good tool is worth the investment but there are so many great options out there that it’s best to shop around and try before you buy.

I wish you the best of luck in your campaign!

Scott Jason is a search engine optimization project manager with SEOpm.com. With five years in the industry he specializes in assisting small to medium sized companies attain their SEO goals. Feel free to contact Scott, or his associates, at www.SEOpm.com.

There are many websites that fail to target their required traffic, even if they’ve had some search engine optimisation work done. One of the main causes for this is simply because the website isn’t search engine friendly. This is a basic essential that needs to be incorporated into the design of all websites at the outset ? think of it as the foundation to establishing your search engine optimisation strategy.

This article aims to highlight the areas a web designer should think about and incorporate into their design for maximum search engine effectiveness:

1. Search Engine Friendly Pages

It is important that when you design your website you not only bear in mind what your website requirements are, but also what the requirements are for search engines. Best way to approach this is to remember that search engines don’t really care about how nice or complicated your graphics or flash movies are, or how snazzy your javascript is. Instead search engines look at the code behind your page. Therefore if you want to impress a search engine, then your code needs to be nice and easy to read. Now from this I don’t mean adding ‘comment’ tags and breaking the lines of code up with spaces, but to ensure that the elements the search engine is interested in, i.e. Title tag, Description tag, Keyword tag (these days only some search engines really use the keyword tag), Alt tag, are readable near the beginning of the code. Search Engines don’t like wadding through lines and lines of javascript to get to the core areas that can help you page’s ranking. Therefore careful planning and positioning of your page elements is required.

TIPS:
- If you’re using table for laying out your page then make them simple and not too complex.
- Avoid using frames.
- If you need javascripts for navigation purposes, then use smaller scripts to call up the bulk of the javascript from a different file.
- Think twice on how to use graphics ? make them relevant to your content and use the Alt tag for all images.
- Position the main content of the page before the images, or at least with the images nested between the text.

2. Keywords

Having good keywords is one of the most important areas to consider when designing a website/webpage.

One of the best tools for this is Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com), which allows you to identify good competitive keywords for your pages.

In general the range of keywords associated to your pages can be very extensive therefore for good concentration and prominence of keywords it is advisable to carefully select the top 10-15 keywords. You can always export the results to Excel and try out other competitive keywords if the ones you selected initially do not produce any noticeable benefits.

TOP TIP:
Wordtracker offer a one day subscription to their service from which you can squeeze nearly 2 ? days worth of use! Here’s how ? Sign-up for the service on the evening of Day 1 (the service will be available almost immediately so you can start searching for your competitive keywords straight away). You will also be able to use the service for the whole of Day 2 and strangely for the whole of Day 3! Enough time to get some good keywords for a lot of pages!

3. Content

Many search engines look at the main body of the page and identify keywords and phrases that are used within the text.

TIP:
Use competitive keywords relevant to the purpose of the page within the main body of the page. Always try and ensure that the keywords are prominent within the text body, i.e. they appear near the beginning of the page, they are defined using the ‘heading’ tag, they are typefaced in bold, or they are used as hyperlinks.

4. Page Title

This is arguably one of the most important areas of a page and needs special attention to ensure that a good title is selected. Similar to many other areas of designing a search engine friendly page, the Page Title should also have a good keyword which describes the page content. To keep within the limits of many search engines the number of words for the Title shouldn’t exceed nine.

5. Page Description

Another important area to work on for good ranking is the Page Description. This is the text found under the META Description tag and is displayed to users in the search results. Again, it is a good idea to pay attention to the use of good keywords when writing the description, which should be short (not more than 20-25 words) and sells your page before the user has even opened it!

6. Graphics

We’ve covered the use of graphics briefly above, emphasising the importance of using an Alt tag containing the relevant keyword(s). Although the use of images can be nice and very appealing to a website, it is also important to bear in mind that they shouldn’t overpower the textual content of your page. As a general rule of thumb it is best to stick to a 70/30 ratio (70 text/30 images).

7. Site Map

A Site Map is a fantastic way for search engines to find all your juicy pages on your website. There are many free Site Map tools available on the web that’ll create your site map instantly.

8. Navigation Links

Navigation links to other pages on your website should be nice and easy. There are some engines which find it difficult to navigate through to the other pages on your website if the nav bar is too complicated, e.g. complicated pop-ups, use of flash, etc. Therefore if your site does have complicated navigation then it’s always a good idea to implement simple text based hyperlinks to your common pages at the bottom of every page on your website.

Following the basic suggestions above will help lay the foundation to apply further good search engine optimisation advice which will make the difference in your overall search engine ranking.

This finer area of SEO is beyond the realm of this document and will require further investment based on individual needs.

Arif Hanid
Internet Marketing Manager for Ambleton Computing.
Professionals in bespoke Internet Developement and Marketing.

arif_hanid@ambleton.com
www.ambleton.co.uk

Gartner estimates that half of the 5.5 trillion emails sent in 2001 was business related.

Email has already taken over as the businesses’ main communication channel. What most people have failed to learn is, manners online is more important than basic social manners. In front of the monitor, your audience would not be able to judge you on your new Hugo Boss suit, your body scent, tone of your voice, nor the little gestures. Good language skills and proper email guidelines are important to ensure that your message gets across.

When drafting an email, take note of the few S:

• Speed
• Succinct
• Sell
• Suitable
• Subject, Salutations & Sincerely

Speed

Emails are delivered in matters of seconds. Where business communications are concerned, not checking your email at least once a day is to be frowned upon. The wide acceptance in email usage is contributed partly by it speed; do not get bogged down by heaps of emails. Surveys have shown that user do not expect an email to be replied after three working days.

Succinct

Omit needless words. Some people receive hundreds of emails a day. Chances are the recipient would skip the email after 2 seconds. Keeping the body of the email simple also avoid the chances of miscommunication by recipient second guessing the message.

Sell

Sell yourself, your idea, your product. Attempt to cross-sell, up-sell. Whatever the nature of your email, you will be able to slot in a witty sentence to sell. Businesses have been developed from a simple query like “I heard your company’s in charge of a new project.”

Suitable

Know the audience. Don’t send irrelevant message across. Using email, you are not able to receive instant response from the other party that you are able to talking face to face. You wouldn’t know if your ideas are well received till much later. Stay away from sensitive topics; you might never have the chance to explain the mistake you have made.

Subject, Salutations & Sincerely

The subject of the email should be meaningful. It helps prepare the reader for the content, and also makes it easier for the reader to search for the email later on. Open the email with “Dear xxx” if you do not know the recipient personally. You may prefer to go with “Hi xxx” if you want to sound friendly to a close contact. Closing emails with a simple “Regards, XXX” is nice, but not good enough. A good email should preferably close with your business card information. Include your full name, organization that you represent, and other contact methods if possible. Major companies spend millions of dollars on building a brand name, flash it.

——

Dear Reader,

Thanks for reading. I hope you like the article so far.

Besides the few main ‘S’ I have highlighted, good grammar is important too. Do not type using only caps or use exclamation marks excessively. Avoid Abbreviations unless they are commonly known.

With practice, recipients of your emails will have better impressions of you.

Watch out for the next issue of j-hunter newsletter!

Regards,

Dennis Lim
j-hunter.com Ltd
DID: (852) 2111 1129

About The Author

More articles at www.j-hunter.com

dlim@j-hunter.com