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SEO Expert | SEO Podcast

Joe Beccalori

August 1, 2007 at 10:07 pm · Filed under SEO Expert

Joe Beccalori is a well established Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultant, who utilizes a broad spectrum of SEO strategies and SEO tactics to establish high rankings on popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo. A computer enthusiast from a very young age, Joe was first exposed to computers at age 9, was programming by age 11, and into modem telecommunication by age 13. He was the president of his high school computer club in Rockland County New York, and used the internet throughout college for email, browsing (on the text based lynx browser) and research.

Shortly after graduating from SUNY Albany in 1996 with an MBA in marketing, Joe started his own internet marketing and design firm called Capital Marketing Consulting, serving a range of clients from Albany to New York City with web design, Search Engine Marketing Strategies, and database driven web application development. Inacom International, Microsoft, General Electric Information Systems, and St. Jude Medical were among the client roster. In 1997, Joseph joined forces with Integrated Office solutions, a small but fast growing web development firm on Wall Street, and soon found himself writing both Windows and Web based software products for New York’s top five financial firms.

In 1998, IOS was purchased by Cohesive Network systems, and Joseph became a Senior Developer, managing others on the team. Work expanded to included a wider geography as the firm went national, and further exposure to search engines, and the growing SEO tactics in use were picked up and deployed by Joe and his team. Specifically, Joe worked on several projects that combined dynamic pages with SEO, such that Title Tags and Meta Tags could be independently rendered on a dynamic page. In 1999 Cohesive Network systems was purchased by Exodus Communications, one of Wall Street’s fastest growing internet technology and web hosting firms. While broadening into IP networking and infrastructure, as well as site design and development, Joseph had the opportunity to work with the latest ecommerce engines, and web marketing tools. Joseph was an early adopter and user of the Google search engine, and began developing a strong interest in Internet Marketing, specifically E-Mail marketing, and Search Engine Marketing. Joseph began to work in a broad level consulting capacity, and became engaged in Senior Account Management for consumer retail clientele. He managed CTO Level relationships with VitaminShoppe, Martha Stewart Omnimedia, and Anne Taylor.

In 1999, Joseph was a seed investor in an internet marketing startup called AdClip networks, founded by Albany school mate Michael Ferranti, which later renamed as Endai Worldwide and is still a well established direct response interactive agency in New York City.

Between 1999 and 2001 Joe was exposed to a tremendous amount of emerging internet marketing tools in use by his clients - systems such as Linkshare Affiliate Marketing, Bulk Email tools through Exodus E-Mail product (later spun off), and Google Adwords. He also learned the latest best practices strategies, tactics, and techniques for Search Engine Marketing (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM or PPC) paid ads, and both on-site and off-site content and link building strategies. In 2001, Joseph founded a NY based company that had early visions on Web 2.0, including the vision of internet mashups, rapid growth in direct response and online media, and of course Search Engine Marketing. Joe’s company built several small incubator businesses, including a video rental concept called Video Convenience, a competitor to the fast growing Netflix video rental service, which relied heavily on Natural Search Engine Optimization for driving leads and clicks. In addition, After taking on several consulting clients, providing technology and internet marketing services to Dynaco Partners, LLC, several large NYC Law Firms, Endai Worldwide became a client of Joe’s.

In 2003, the majority of work for Joe’s firm was coming from fast-growing Endai Worldwide, whose focus was on their email marketing product QuadraMail, and a media buying team with increasing efficiency. Joe Beccalori was offered a full time position with the firm in 2002, initially to service several of Endai’s clients in the emerging field of marketing technology and services as a Senior Application Developer. Over the next four years, Joe helped to grow the Agency Services group by providing services and then staffing a strong team of internet consultants in the fields of design, development, media, and search engine marketing. Through the years, Search Engines became a larger and larger part of overall marketing spend, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) became an increasingly valuable skill. While Joe had a great amount of experience as an SEO consultant, his lack of specialization within the SEO field prevented him from attaining true expert level. Through smart staffing and independent research, Joe and the team at Endai rose to the top of New York’s internet marketing community through their algorithmic approach to Search Optimisation and PPC campaign management.

Joe was promoted nearly every year at Endai, running the entire Agency Services and Search Engine Optimization as Division Vice President, including multiple SEO team members, and big brand SEO accounts such as iRobot, Ruth’s Chris Steak House, Provident Bank, and Nutrisytem. When Endai co-founder and CTO David Hassell left the business in 2006, Joseph again moved up in rank, ending his nearly five year stay as CTO in April of 2007. In 2007, Joseph has continued his specialization into Search Engine Marketing, and has performed both PPC Campaign Management and SEO consulting for a national provider of Health Care Nutritionals, a major Continuing Education provider, and several local professionals including New York based Eye Doctors, Psychologists, and Divorce Attorneys. On September 1, 2007 Joseph will be releasing a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) blog and newsletter, sharing the best tactics, strategies, and practices of advanced SEO and PPC Campaign Management from an Industry Insider’s perspective. Joe Beccalori also has plans to release a regular podcast on SEO strategies later this year.

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Web Site Copy is about More Than Keywords

December 9, 2004 at 12:49 am · Filed under SEO Knowledge, SEO Articles

Let’s say you are writing a web site to sell beach homes on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada.You look for some good keywords and come up with ‘Vancouver Island waterfront property’. So you use that term in your title, headline and here and there in the text.So far, so good. The phrase will help you with your rankings. And the use of the phrase on the first screen of your home page will let your visitors know they are in the right place.

But for writers who focus too intently on keywords and phrases, there is a danger.

A danger in optimizing your pages for good keywords? Yes, I think so.

There is a significant difference between the keywords that pop into visitors’ minds, and the hopes and ambitions they carry in their hearts.

Let’s look at the real estate example again.

As a potential buyer I might type the phrase ‘Vancouver Island waterfront property’ into the Google search box, because that’s what I’m looking for. But that term doesn’t reflect what I’m feeling.

Having a home on the coast may have been a lifelong dream. It may be something I feel very strongly about. So when I come to your site, I am looking for two things.

- First, the rational part of my mind is looking for confirmation that your site can help me find what I want. And this is where the use of keywords and phrases makes perfect sense.

- Second, there is a strong, emotional element at play. As a potential buyer, I am looking for someone who can help me fulfill my dream. And this is where a writer who focuses too intently on keywords and phrases can end up with poorly performing copy.

By all means, optimize your pages for Google and for the rational part of a searcher’s mind. But be sure to understand and address the emotional needs of the visitor as well.

That means using keywords as the starting point. Beyond the keywords, you need to use language that addresses the deeper needs of the reader.

Yes, understand what Google wants. And understand what your visitor is looking for. But if you want results, you also need to understand and address what the visitor is feeling and hoping for.

Nick Usborne is a copywriter, author, speaker and advocate of good writing.

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How To Design A Search Engine Friendly Website

October 27, 2004 at 7:59 pm · Filed under SEO Knowledge, SEO Articles

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

http://www.ambleton.co.uk

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

October 27, 2004 at 7:58 pm · Filed under SEO Knowledge, SEO Articles

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

But there is a problem…

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

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

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

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

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

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

So how do you benefit from increasing your rank?

- You will attract better quality websites to yours

- People will think your website has lasting power

- People will want to mimic what you do

- People will even think highly of you

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

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

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

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

Hope this article helps you out!

Read more of Martin’s articles online here:

http://www.smartads.info/newsletter

About The Author:

Martin Lemieux

Smartads - President

Affordable Web Design & Web Advertising

http://www.smartads.info

http://www.smartads.ca

Eye Catching Print Design

http://www.3dimentionaldesign.com

Marketing Tools

http://www.smartads.info/newsletter

http://www.thewebclinic.com

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Analyzing Google’s Backlinks Is Close To Worthless

October 27, 2004 at 7:57 pm · Filed under SEO Knowledge, SEO Articles

Because of the delay with it’s backlink’s update period Google have managed to control the link broker’s pagerank eventure.

Many would say that analyzing Google’s backlinks is close to worthless, but still you need to know if your partners have your backlink with your keyword hostet on a good PR page.

Pagerank still have some importants and link’s poiting to your homepage is a part of the algoritme and relevant to some extend. You will never know the exact number of backlink, and they would be different from search ingine to search ingine.

Link building campaigns can be time consuming, and you will never be able to guess the effect on the pagerank result. The best link would be thoose coming out of the blue, from peoble who decided your content is important and give you a link.

In the end I think it’s thoose kind of link that make the difference between PR 5 and PR 6,7,8,9,10 and off cause traffic. Content is king and SEO is the throne.

http://home6.inet.tele.dk/anton/seo-elite.htm

 

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Google Slavery…Old Habits Die Hard

October 26, 2004 at 7:56 pm · Filed under SEO Knowledge, SEO Articles

For the first few months after Yahoo decided to go their own way with natural search (and MSN decided to get serious about the search business), the search results provided by those two could only be described as bizarre. Enough time has now passed that the dust has somewhat settled and there are three main (from a traffic standpoint) sites for quality natural searches.

The term “natural search” is to distinguish true searches, as opposed to paid advertisements which appear in the search results for many search engines these days. I guess you can’t really fault the search engine companies from wanting to make some money (actually, BIG money) selling ad space, but the debate over the virtues of natural search versus paid advertising search is something that could take up a very large book and still have no clear resolution…much like arguments revolving around religion or politics.

Like most people that have been working as online home business entrepreneurs for a few years, I was strongly conditioned to the need to “feed the 800 pound gorilla” of the search engine world. Basically, “if Google didn’t love you”, it was very difficult to get any meaningful natural search traffic to your website. Since Google was actually the search engine that was serving up the results for most of the popular search portals, if Google didn’t look kindly upon your site and rank you well, you would not be ranked well for most of the high traffic search sites on the Internet.

However, the search landscape changed dramatically early in 2004 and things have been very fluid and interesting since that time. Its not that Google has stumbled, or become ineffective as a search vehicle, its just that major players like Yahoo and Microsoft (via MSN) have decided to make a major thrust into the search business.

Having been firmly conditioned (since shortly after 1998) that Google was the “supreme deity of search engines”, I took the highly publicized search entries of Yahoo and MSN with more than the proverbial “grain of salt”.

Throughout a very recent two month period, one of my websites occupied the #5 position on Google, Yahoo, and MSN for a very popular and important (at least in my line of business) three word search term. This situation provided an opportunity to measure the current popularity of each of these three search providers.

If asked “before the fact”, I would have guessed that Google would still be the overwhelming #1 search choice and that Yahoo and MSN would be distant #2 and #3 choices. Therefore, I was somewhat surprised by the results that were tabulated during this recent 60 day period.

For the period in question, the search popularity results were as follows:

Google: 34%

Yahoo: 31%

MSN: 20%

All others: 15%

Granted, the above results are for a single search term over a particular 60 day time period, but the results clearly show that Yahoo and MSN are already important players in the search business.

Webmasters that stick to the old ways and focus entirely on Google are missing out on a lot of search traffic these days if they are not also well ranked by Yahoo and MSN.

Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and coaches others seeking to start their own home based business. Visit his website at Legitimate Home Based Business for more details.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kirk_Bannerman

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Search Engine Optimization Strategies To Drive More Targeted Traffic To Your Website

October 14, 2004 at 11:14 am · Filed under SEO Knowledge, SEO Articles

Want to drive more targeted traffic to your web site?

Want to do it for free?

If you answered “yes” you’re in for a treat. Use the search engine optimization and ranking techniques in this article and you will be well on your way to a front page listing in the major search engines.

Up until now, you’ve been led to believe that search engine optimization and search engine ranking strategies were something better left to an expert. But that’s not true. Any serious marketer can and should learn the simple search engine optimization and ranking techniques that can get his site listed on the first page of the search engines.

Before I begin I want to point out that search engine optimization and ranking strategies fall into two catagories. On page factors and off page factors.

On page factors you have a lot of control over. Things like content, good keywords, and the proper use of anchor text.

Off page factors, like page rank, you’ll have less control over. But it’s important that you exercise as much control as you can over the off page factors as well. These will be discussed in another article.

To get your search engine optimization and ranking strategies right you will need some tools. Some free, some payed. But regardless, if you want your site listed in the top ten results you need these tools.

Search Engine Optimization and Ranking - Tools of the Trade

To begin with, I’m not a big believer in throwing money after unnecessary tools or ebooks. After all, if you bought all the tools some gurus recommend it could easily run into hundreds and even thousands of dollars. So rest assurred, what I recommend are the bare essentials of what you will need to get it right.

The first tool you need is free. At least for now. It’s the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool. You can find it at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

You will use this tool for your keyword research. Let’s say you plan to build a site on dog grooming. Type dog grooming in the suggestion box, click the arrow, and a list of related keywords come up. It also tells you how many searches were conducted on Overture and it’s related sites for the past month. This is valuable information as it tells you which keywords are worth persuing and which don’t get enough searches to be worthwhile. You will want to print out or create a file to store these keywords on your computer because you’re not finished with them yet.

The next tool you need is Wordtracker. Although it’s not free, it is one of the most valuable tools in your arsenal. This tool is not expensive as you can order it for short time frames. Twenty four hours usually runs about $7.00 U.S.

Wordtracker takes your keyword research to the next level. For instance:

find all keywords that bear any relation to your business

tells you how popular the keywords really are in multiple search engines

shows you your chance of making the top ten

shows you the number of times the keyword or phrase has appeared in the data base

shows mispellings on searches that you can capitalize on

shows the number of competing sites

prints out a complete list of selected keywords with KEI analysis, count, hits in 24 hours, and number of competing sites.

This valuable tool will save you countless hours of trial and error trying to find the best keywords and phrases to land you in the top ten.

I once built a site based solely on results from the Overture suggestion tool. To my dismay I had few visitors. When I checked the keywords and phrases with Wordtracker, I found a completly differnt story. Wordtracker showed much lower figures for the keywords I was using from Overture. When I revamped the site using Wordtrackers results I found the search results to be much more accurate.

So use the Overture suggestion tool to get a preliminary set of keywords, then, check them with Wordtracker to identify the best keywords and phrases to build your site around.

Build Your Site Around Search Engine Optimization and Ranking Techniques

When I built my first site I used a cheap software program I purchased from my local office supply store. Needless to say, it was never listed in the search engines. I had little control over the appearance and more than likely it did what it wanted, not what I wanted. So if you intend to build a serious web site to get traffic and make money, stay away from them. I currently use NoteTab Pro. it’s relatively easy to use and gives you a lot of flexibility. Plus it’s relatively inexpensive.

If you are looking for a less expensive way to go I recommend Notetab light. Download a free copy here http://www.notetab.com. Although not as flexible and easy to use as NoteTab Pro, it will get the job done.

Search Engine Optimization and Ranking Power Points

You’ve researched and selected your keywords and phrases. Where do you use them for the best search engine optimization and ranking?

Power Point #1.This is one of the best secrets I can give you. Consider each page of your site to be a doorway into your site. Therefore optimize one keyword or keyword phrase for each page of your site. Many people try to cram multiple keywords into a page. This only confuses the search engines and hurts your rankings.

Power Point#2. Keep your site keywords and pages focused on a common theme. For example: If you have a site about dog grooming, Every page on the site should relate to dog grooming. If you were to ad a page about training your pet snake it wouldn’t fit the theme. So keep all your pages tightly focused on the overall theme of your site. Getting off theme will hurt your rankings.

Power Point #3.Content is king. Give the searh engines what they want and they will give you what you want. A good listing. What they want are highly relevant sites for their search customers with good, valuable content. Methods to trick the search engines are abundant. But when they catch up with you, you’ll be penalized or worse, possibly banned. You don’t want that.

Power point #4. Sprinkle your secondary keywords and phrases throughout your content. When you researched your keywords you came up with a list of primary words and phrases to optimize your pages. You should also have an additional 50 - 100 keywords and phrases that I will call secondary keywords. If you sprinkle these throughout your page it will give you a big boost in the search engines. You’ll be amazed at how many visitors you will recieve from these secondary keyword searches.

Where To Use Your Primary Keywords To Get The Most Impact For Your Search Engine Optimization and Ranking Efforts

Keyword placement, density and proximity are the most important factors when it comes to on page search engine optimization and ranking strategies.

Domain name: Although unproven, some search engine optimization experts recommend your site domain name be your primary keyword or phrase. If I can get a domain with my primary keyword fine. If not, i just try to get a good related name. If you do get a domain with your primary phrase, be sure to seperate the individual words with hyphens. Some search engine optimization experts are now saying that Google can read the keywords even if they are not seperated. I prefer to play it safe and use hyphens. For example: doggrooming.com would be dog-grooming.com. Done this way the search engines can read the individual words.

Page title. It’s best to use your keyword or phrase once in the title of your page. Try to keep it short. Google uses a weighting factor based on the number of words in the title. The more words you use, the less weight each word has. A word of caution here. Don’t just use your keyword phrase. Google will likely consider this spamming and penalize you. Using the same keyword more than once is worth testing, but many experts believe it can hurt your rankings. Try to come up with a good title as this is what your prospects will see on the search engines.

The discription: Again, don’t over use your keyword in your discription. Once or twice is enough. Some search engines will use your discription in their listings so try to develop one that will make the searcher want to click on it.

Heading tags: Header tags are the HTML tags used to make text bigger. Typically they are used for headlines and sub heads. Some search engines use them to determine what a page is about. So try to use your keyword or phrase in your header tags.

Anchor text: This is the text used in a link. When you are linking from one page on your site to another make sure you use your keywords in the link. A good example is your home page. Most people simply put the link as “home.” Instead use website promotion strategies home. Get the idea.

Body copy: Try to use your keyword as often as you can in your body copy without sounding repetitive or being obvious. If it doesn’t sound right, it’s probably to much. Work it in wherever it fits. There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to keyword density. Most experts agree that around 7% density is a good figure to shoot for. Avoid continuously repeating the keyword every two or three words. This is considered spamming.

Alt text: This is text used in place of images for those with text only browsers. It also pops up when you hold your mouse over an image. Because search engine spiders can’t read graphics, the alt text tells the spiders what the graphic is. So discribe the graphic but include your keyword.

URL’s: When using URL’s to link your pages together be sure to use your keywords in the link. Just as in the case of domain names, use hyphens to seperate the words so the spiders can read them.

We’ve covered a lot in this article. I’ve given you information that cost me a small fortune to acquire. We covered the tools and editors you will need to do the job right. I gave you power points that most search engine optimization experts don’t want you to know. Then we looked at the on page factors you can control to maximize your search engine optimization and ranking efforts. Keep in mind, this is only half of the equation. There are still off page factors that have a major impact on your search engine optimization strategies.

Guy Ray is a copywriter and certified search engine optimization specialist who specializes in website promotion and online marketing strategies. Are you getting all the traffic you need? Click here now! http://www.website-promotion-strategies.com

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Link Building: To Link, or Not to Link, That is the Question

October 13, 2004 at 7:51 pm · Filed under SEO Knowledge, SEO Articles

ately, there have been a lot of heated discussions regarding link building. Is it ethical to create a link building campaign? Does Google or any other search engine penalize for “link farms” (a bunch of non-related links created for the SOLE purpose of increasing search engine ratings)? Is the “link building era” over?Link Farms

Many webmasters claim that Google penalizes websites for link farms. If this is so, why are a link farm sites that have a page rank of 5 on their link farm page? Let me give you an example, go to Google.com, type in any popular keyword(s) and append the word “links” to it. For example, “ABCD Links.” Notice you’ll get tones of websites that are linking to unrelated sites, but still have a great PR. I do not encourage link farming in any way or form, but building valuable partnerships is something I do encourage. If you’re a jewelry site and you’re exchanging links with an antiques site, I think this is a great thing. It’s very possible that someone searching for jewelry may have an interest in antiques. I own a few sites and the hits I receive from partially related sites are phenomenal. Most of my websites are targeted towards webmasters so I receive hits from all sorts of sites. Remember, many webmasters claim to know the truth regarding search engine algorithms, but no one knows the EXACT TRUTH except the programmers at the search engines. Webmasters may have been penalized in the past for link farms and doorway pages (pages created around certain keywords for the sole purpose of redirecting surfers to the main page), but who’s to say why some HAVEN’T been penalized.

Who Should I Create Link Partnerships With?

1. Create link partnerships with sites related to your site.

2. Create link partnerships with sites that have an audience that may be interested in your products

3. Exchange homepage links with websites that fit in your genre. You’ll receive a link on a page with a good ranking and you’ll get quality, targeted hits.

How Do You Find Link Partners?

1. Signup with an automated links management provider that organizes your links and helps find link partners. Automated tools are the best because they help you save time. Uploading and downloading your pages for every link exchange can be a huge pain and very time consuming. Automated tools are NOT link farms because they give you complete control of who you exchange links with. If a member exchanges links with every website, he/she might be abusing the tool. If a member uses the tool responsibly, it can be very effective.

2. This is a great little exercise I would recommend to anyone.

a. Write down 20 search terms pertaining to your website

b. Go to http://www.google.com and type in a search term written in step A

c. Contact as many websites as possible listed under that search term and ask them to exchange inner page or homepage links with you. If they’re NOT interested, ask whether they would be interested in selling advertising space. If your website is fairly new, you may want to ask sites for advertising prices. Free hits are the best hits but sometimes you might have to go the extra lap and pay for service. I wouldn’t recommend spending over $100 / month for advertising UNLESS it’s a high traffic site with your site audience. The best deals are the ones that offer $10-25 / month. There are sites out there that will sell SUPER cheap advertising, and others that charge an arm and a leg.

EVERYONE gets rejected sometime or another so keep your head up and keep moving along! The internet is comprised of Billions of websites. If you’re rejected 500 times, you still have MANY business opportunities left! This is a continuous job so set aside time every week to do this. If you don’t have time for this, then you don’t have time to make money.

3. Hire a link building firm (this can be quite expensive but if you have money, its minimal work for you)

PageRank

Pagerank is a great tool but don’t use it as your ONLY measurement for success. I can’t explain everything about pagerank but a good explanation is given at http://www.google-watch.org/pagerank.html.

Conclusion

In conclusion, link building is not only for increasing link partners and search engine rankings, it’s also used to create partnerships and establish profitable relationships with other webmasters. Link building is a tedious process, but one of the best for getting free (sometimes not), targeted hits from other websites.

Vik Tailor is the owner of http://www.linkexchanged.com and http://www.buyadvertisingonline.com. He has been in the online advertising industry for over 4-5 years and has extensive online marketing knowledge.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Vik_Tailor

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It’s The Same Deal For Both Search Engines And Real Estate

October 13, 2004 at 11:13 am · Filed under SEO Knowledge, SEO Articles

t’s all about location, location, location!In the past…back in the days when Google was IT when it came to natural search results…everyone was very focused (or shall we say obsessed?) on Google page rank.

Now that Google is a public company and the search business has become competitive (most notably due to the serious search capabilities now being offered by Yahoo and Microsoft, via MSN), Google has become much more “private” or secretive about things like page rank, backlinks, etc.

As a matter of fact, many are of the opinion that Google is now intentionally displaying outdated page rank and backlink information on the Google Toolbar in an effort to mask the true workings of Google and to frustrate the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) community, which had become fairly skillful at “playing the Google game”. If this is the case, then Google page rank fixation is now pure folly.

Another factor that is closely watched by webmasters is the Alexa traffic rank. This traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users.

However, the Alexa user base is only a sample of the Internet population, and sites with relatively low traffic will not be accurately ranked by Alexa due to the statistical limitations of the sample.

Alexa’s data come from a large sample of several million Alexa Toolbar users; however, this is not large enough to accurately determine the rankings of sites with fewer than roughly 1,000 total monthly visitors.

Generally speaking, traffic rankings of over 100,000 should be regarded as not reliable because the amount of data that Alexa has available is not statistically significant.

Who said the emperor is wearing no clothes?

With the questionable current accuracy of two of the hallowed benchmarks of search popularity, where does that leave us? It leaves us exactly where we should have been in the first place, not obsessing over Google Page Rank or Alexa Traffic Rank, but instead focusing on the most important thing of all…and that is, what is your position in the listings when a person searches for your key words.

For both search engines and real estate, it’s all about location, location, location!

Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and coaches others seeking to start their own home based business. Visit his website at Legitimate Home Based Business for more details.

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Linking for Fun and Profit

September 28, 2004 at 12:10 am · Filed under SEO Knowledge, SEO Articles

Well actually, linking isn’t fun at all. In fact, it’s quite tedious. Seeking, responding to requests and adding links takes time and effort. But, if you’re not actively building links the RIGHT way you are going to be left behind. In other words, your site will be “Lost in Cyberspace”. The plain fact is Google, and to a lesser extent, other important search engines, reward sites with links from relevant and important pages.

If you want your site to deliver lots of targeted search engine traffic (and who doesn’t?) there are two equally important factors:

1) lots of keyword-rich, search engine friendly content

2) lots of relevant, incoming links from the RIGHT sources

For real success you need to cover BOTH of these strategies. Don’t concentrate on one and not the other.

So, how do you go about building your links? It’s not rocket science, but as I said, it does take time and effort. From my own experiences, here’s what you should do:

1) Download and install the Google Toolbar:

http://toolbar.google.com/

This will show you the PageRank of the page you are viewing. PageRank is a measure, rated from 1 to 10, of the “importance” that Google gives to that page. There has been a lot written about PageRank. You don’t need to become obsessed with it but it IS an important consideration when determining WHO to link to. A link from a PR-5 page is worth FAR more than a PR-0 page.

2) Establish a resource or links directory for your site. This lets potential link partners see that you are willing to exchange links. You should make it clear on your links pages what your linking policy is i.e. under what conditions you will agree to exchange links.

3) Your aim should be to build a resource directory that is relevent to your business. Don’t try to build a mini Yahoo with umpteen different categories. Keep your directory focussed on your site theme. When you first start out you will be inclined to link to anybody in exchange for a link FROM anybody. This is a mistake. Be patient and choose your link partners carefully.

4) Before requesting a link from another site, add that site to your directory. Contact the webmaster and tell them you added their link because you believe their site would be of interest to your visitors (and so it should). Give the url where your link is located and ask for a return link, along with instructions on how you would like your link worded. NEVER demand by saying things like “if you do not link to us we will remove your link”.

5) If you have not received a reply after 2 - 3 weeks send a polite follow up. Again, don’t demand. No one is under any obligation to link to you. If you do not receive a reply to your second request it means that the webmaster does not want to link to you, or they are simply too busy to respond. In that case, leave it and move on. I receive dozens of link requests a day. Sometimes it takes me many weeks to get around to responding. You’ll go mad worrying about links that have not been reciprocated. Your time is better spent.

6) When you receive a link request visit the site and check that it meets with your requirements as set down on your link pages. Is it a quality site with good content or just a “link farm”? If it doesn’t meet your requirements don’t link to it.

The webmaster SHOULD have already linked to your site but be prepared to overlook that breech of linking protocol if it’s from a good quality, high PR site.

7) Beware of webmasters who add your site to their “directory” which turns out to nothing but a link farm i.e. has no useful content, just a bunch of links, and asks you to link to an entirely different site, one that HAS good content. These webmasters are playing you for a sucker. The benefit is all theirs.

8) As I said in point #1, links from high PR pages are worth more than links from low or no PR pages. Seek out high PR linking partners but keep in mind it is the PR of the actual page your link is on that matters, NOT the PR of the home page. In other words if the home page PR is 5, but the page your link is on is several layers deep in the directory, it will probably have a PR of 0 and be of little benefit to you. Check the PR of the actual page your link is on, or is going to be on, before agreeing to exchange links.

Each page on your links directory should be no more than one click away from your home page, and your linking partner’s site should be the same. If your link is placed on a page which looks something like this - directory/category/subcategory/subcategory with your link - you will derive NO value from that link.

9) Be prepared to negotiate your links. Savvy webmasters understand the value of links from high PR pages. If you add a link to a PR-0 page on your site don’t expect your link partner to put your link on a PR-6 page, and your link partner shouldn’t expect the same from you. Exchange value for like value.

When you first start out your site may not have any PR due to a lack of incoming links. This reduces your bargaining power. However, you can overcome this by getting your site listed in as many large business directories as possible. Some of these you will have to pay, such as Yahoo and Microsoft’s Business Directory, but many others are free. You’ll find a good list here:

http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php

10) Be specific about how you want your link partner to link to you. It is MOST important that the link to you contain your targeted keywords in the anchor (linked) text. When I ask for a link to my site I don’t want the link title to be:

Steve Pronger Web Business Solutions

Instead, I ask for:

Website Designer Australia

or whichever keywords I am targeting at the time.

11) And finally, here is an excellent resource to help you find quality link partners. It’s called Value Exchange, and will put you in contact with like-minded webmasters:

http://www.stevepronger.com/value_exchange.htm

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