How To Write Effective And Unique Articles That Ar

How To Write Effective And Unique Articles That Are Optimized for the Search Engines

by: Karl Augustine

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 readerกs 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 URLกs associated with those articles on search engine results pages (SERPกs). Ideally, youกd like to see your article URL on the 1st page of the SERPกs 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?
Thereกs 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 youกve 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 กgreen widgetsก is the keyword you wish to base your article on, you may want to name your web page กgreenwdgets.htmก or กgreenwdgets.htmlก or กgreenwdgets.shtmlก.
Article optimization tactic 2: Utilize keyword in the title tag. Utilize your keywords that youกve 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 กatก 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 youกd like to target.
Googleกs 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 GoRankกs 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 กstuffก 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 ‘readsก 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 youกd 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.
Be humble, work hard, work smart.

About The Author

Karl Augustine Author, ก9 Deadly Mistakes To Avoid…ก. http://www.9mistakesonline.com ก65 Answers To SEO Questionsก http://www.seoexpertinterview.com

This article was posted on June 16, 2004

by Karl Augustine

Is your Website Doomed for Failure Before youกve B

Is your Website Doomed for Failure Before youกve Built it?

by: Suzanne Morrison

One of the things that many people overlook when building a new website is keywords. I have to admit, I did exactly the same thing myself when I started out. You can build the flashiest, most professional looking website, with lots of great content, but if you don’t think about keywords first your website is most likely to be doomed for failure at least as far as search engines are concerned.

Visitors from search engines are the most targeted types of visitor that you could hope for. What you need to do is find out which keywords these people are using when they search in Google, Yahoo or MSN and ensure that your web page(s) are optimized for these keywords.

When researching your keywords you need to make sure that you

1. Choose keywords that people are actually searching for. Don’t optimize your site for keywords that people rarely search on.

2. Choose keywords that are not too highly competitive unless you’re an SEO whiz that is

If you keep these two goals in mind when choosing keywords you will have the best chance possible of rising to the lofty heights of the search engine results pages.

So, whatกs the best way to do keyword research? Iกve tried many different tools, but my favorite by is Wordtracker. You can sign up for a free trial of Wordtracker at http://www.homebizdirect.com/wordtracker.html but if you’re serious about your keyword research consider using the full version as it allows you to select unlimited keywords and includes results from 8 different search engines, 3 different directories and 4 different pay per click engines, compared to 1 search engine and 30 keywords in the trial version.

Once you’re logged into Wordtracker I recommend using the กKeyword Universeก to brainstorm for keywords. You just need to type in any keywords related to your area of interest and then use the built in thesaurus to find related keywords and synonyms. For example if I enter the keywords กinternet marketingก Wordtracker returns 300 related keywords including กweb site marketingก, กpromotionก and กonline marketingก.

Wordtracker then allows me to view a list of all the keyword searches that have included my keyword phrase. If I click on กweb site marketingก Wordtracker returns 118 rows of keywords that include that phrase, for example กweb site marketingก, กweb site marketing strategyก, กweb site online marketingก and more.

If I like the look of these keywords I can just add them to my basket and continue choosing keywords until I have 100s of keywords. For this example Iกll just add the 118 results to my basket and continue on to Wordtracker’s กCompetition Analysisก.

At the competition analysis phase I have a number of search engines, directories and pay per click engines to choose from. I can choose a maximum of two search engines, but for speed I normally tend to just go for Google, since it represents 35% of all searches. I can always go back later and look at other search engines if I have a good set of keywords.

Now the interesting part begins…

Wordtracker returns me a table with the first 100 keywords from my earlier keyword selection. The keywords are displayed in order of กKEIก, which means กKeyword Effectiveness Indexก. This is a measure to allow you to quickly identify which keywords are likely to give you the best results. Keywords with high KEIs are the best targets as these represent keywords with a combination of a high number of searches and a low amount of competing websites.

Other important statistics provided by Wordtracker are:

24 Hours – The predicted amount of traffic for a single day, for this search engine only (Google in this case)

Competing The number of competing websites for this keyword phrase.

Hereกs an example of two of the results returned from my กmarketing web siteก search:

Example 1

กmarketing web site designก

KEI 54.256

Count 46

24Hrs 17

Competing 39

Example 2

กweb site marketingก

KEI 0.256

Count 505

24Hrs 171

Competing 998000

You can see from these examples that the most popular keyword phrase here is กweb site marketingก, with approximately 171 searches in Google every 24 hours. However, this keyword phrase has almost a million competing websites, so if you decided to target this you would have a long hard slog to get on the first page of the search results.

In this example, my preference would be to choose the กMarketing web site designก phrase. Although there are 10 times less searches on Google per day for this keyword phrase, there are only 39 competing websites. So the chances are that I can get onto the first page of search results very quickly. I could also combine this keyword phrase with a few others from my research to build up the number of visitors to my site.

Once you have finished researching and have a good keyword list, ensure that add your keywords to

the page title

the h1 and h2 tags

the image alt tags

the keyword meta tags

the copy itself

Also make sure that you include the keywords in the anchor text when you are linking to your site from another site.

Going through this exercise of choosing keywords each time you set up a new website or create a new webpage will ensure that you have the best chance of getting targeted search engine visitors.

About The Author

Suzanne Morrison is the webmaster of http://www.homebizdirect.com. Visit her site to learn about more ways to promote your website.

This article was posted on August 27

by Suzanne Morrison

Finding The Cheap Clicks

Finding The Cheap Clicks

by: Henry EldridgeDoyle

As anyone who uses Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising in their marketing campaign knows, getting your ad copy on the front page of a search results listing is becoming more expensive by the day. It’s a new phenomenon known as ‘keyword fatigue’, and itกs down to the overwhelming success of programs like Googleกs AdWords. As more and more advertisers realise the benefits of this form of traffic generation, so the number of people bidding for the same keywords increases, and the bid prices climb accordingly. Great news if you are a publisher taking a cut of the revenue, but not so welcome for those doing the bidding.

So are the days of 5 cents a click now just a distant memory? Not at all, there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of keyword phrases out there for minimum cost, all it takes is a little more effort to use them. To understand how this can be done, with Google AdWords in particular, it is first necessary to understand how ad positions are determined.

Googleกs PPC program, like their core search engine, places a great deal of emphasis on advertisment relevance. When a web surfer types keywords into the search box, Google wants the ad that most closely matches that phrase to be shown nearest the top of the list not just the ad bidding the highest amount of money. It mutiplies bid price by keyword relevance, and that means that by careful selection of your keywords, it is possible to be placed above competitors and pay only 1 cent more than they are (Google doesn’t necessarily charge the maxium amount you bid, only enough to put you ahead).

There are three simple ways you can trump your competitors with your keyword selection:

1. Longer phrases. There are huge numbers of people bidding on a loose term like กmortgage brokerก, but fewer people bidding on a tighter phrase like กmortgage broker in texasก. If a searcher types กmortgage broker in texasก into Google, and you have that phrase in your keyword list, your ad will be deemed more relevant than anyone just using กmortgage brokerก in their own list which means a cheaper click for you! Of course, there are fewer searches for mortgage brokers specifically in Texas than for mortgage brokers in general, so itกs necessary to build a large list of similar keyphrases targetting many locations.

2. Closer matching. Just because you might type กin car satellite radioก into Google, doesn’t mean every surfer will do the same. Somebody else searching for the same thing may well enter กsatellite radio in carก, or กradio in car satelliteก, and so on. If your ad contains every variation, it may trump a competing ad which lists only the first example. In other words, having just the keywords in your list isn’t necessarily enough having them in the same order a searcher enters them will give your ad a better relevance score.

3. The final (Google specific) method is to ensure that you wrap every keyword or keyphrase in both quotes and brackets. Again, this means that if someone enters an exact term you have listed, your ad will beat a competing ad that has the same term but without the brackets or quotes.

Clearly, building keyword lists in this way can be more time consuming than simply selecting a few generic words that describe your product or service, but free tools such as those at http://www.keywordlinker.com can make the process much quicker than doing it manually.

Cheap keyphrases are still there for the taking, the winners in PPC now will be those who put in the effort to catch them.

About The Author

Henry EldridgeDoyle is an internet marketeer, and site developer at http://www.keywordtoolkit.com.

This article was posted on September 29, 2004

by Henry EldridgeDoyle

10 Great Search Engine Optimization Tools for Your

10 Great Search Engine Optimization Tools for Your Online Success

by: Milena Sotirova

The Internet promotion of every company is related to the search engine positioning of the site. The positioning is important for your books, products and services to be easily found online.

Search engine position is the place which a site takes in the search results for every search engine after performing search. The searches often are results of one or more words entered in the search bar. It seems simple to find where your site is by searching with the related keywords. For the search engine optimization being effective you need these keywords in your meta tags. If you want to check how it works, type for example กpromotionก in Google and Yahoo to find that http://www.promotionworld.com/ is on 2. and 1. position respectively (this may change at the time you read this).

Meta Tags How to create your meta tags

Meta tags are specific HTML tags that exceed their กwhat you see is what you getก functions to display content and serve as a mediator between the site page and the search engines, performed by their crawling robots.

The Title Tag is, as it can be assumed by its name, the site or page title that best describes the site content and purpose and contains of short phrase that can include the site name. It can be separated or not by colons but must include the words that describe the main functions of your site. When you write it, you can consider that the search engines will select your site in the search results more successfully if the metas contain the keywords you are going after in the search engine optimization.

MySite: MySite functions

Meta tags are easy to create with the PromotionWorldกs Meta tag generator that makes this task an easy one step effort to get the entire code the way it should be in the siteกs HTML code immediately after the tag.

To be sure that your meta tags contain the appropriate keywords that will lead you to the top of the search list you can try a little research using the Keyword suggestion tool. Here you can find what are the most searchable keywords related to your content and to include them in your meta tags. You can go back again and again to check and update your keyword list according to the search trends.

Search Engines How to submit your site

After your site is dressed with the meta tags, you are ready to go and submit it to the search engines. The Free Search Engine Submission tool http://www.promotionworld.com/seotools/index.php?rdt=submit will automatically submit your site to more than 60 search engines, including the best known. Just follow the easy steps and you will get your site submitted and a detailed report about the submission process results displayed and send to you.

Search Position Where You Are

The positions of your site is easy to find using the Keyword Ranking Monitor http://www.promotionworld.com/seotools/index.php?rdt=kwrank. This handy tool will quickly tell you the site ranking on Google. You can check the competitorsก sites as well to see where you are. To find out where your competitorกs sites are located you can look at the WebSite Location Tool.

The effective optimization is based on statistics and you can check up how your results change thru the time using the secure help of PromotionWorldกs Keyword Ranking Monitor. Your keywords and URLs are stored easily accessible with your user name and you can check the trends of any keyword search results displayed in well designed graphics. You can even select a keyword from the keyword suggestion list and import it into your keyword result table just by one click.

The most advanced search at all Google Datacenters can provide you with information about how your ranking is moving depending to which server the search inquiry is sent. This Google DataCenter Watch tool http://www.promotionworld.com/seotools/index.php?rdt=dance can allow you to predict your keyword optimization efforts.

Links The secret of traffic

The links that are going to your site by other sites are important for your Traffic and Google PageRank. You can permanently check up your link status with this Backlink Tracker Tool http://www.promotionworld.com/seotools/index.php?rdt=bklinks. Your link history will be stored and here you can find how effective your link exchanges with other sites are a technique of vital importance for your site online success. To check your Google PR now just go to the Google PR Tool http://www.promotionworld.com/seotools/index.php?rdt=grank enter the URL and get the result.

Extras Convert your site traffic into money

There is a good advertising program that gains more and more popularity and becomes a materialized developer dream of earning just from the user traffic to the site. Google AdSense is designed to provide you the opportunity to provide to your users fresh related to your content links and to make you benefit from it without any effort. Using Google AdSense Tool you can see from here how the Google Adsense ads will appear on your site. Try this simple and attractive free tool to see the Google AdSense program diversity designed for your content.

If you already have a Google AdSense account you can easily monitor your AdSense data http://www.promotionworld.com/seotools/index.php?rdt=adsense_charts displayed in graphics and charts to get you an easy visual access to your campaign.

WebSite Gifts Count your visitors and make them happy

Your site content will be more accessible if you provide the users an option to search free thru your site pages. You can get this Free search for your site.

A good gift for your site is the Free Counter displaying the number of visits for your pages. Get this tool and set it on your site. If you have an idea of some different image you can send that or if you feel, you can prepare an image and send this to be included in the tool set. Be creative and make the other users appreciate your talent.

I hope that you enjoyed our touring thru the amazing tool land and you get even more ideas about how can you promote your site.

About The Author

Milena Sotirova is Editor of DevStart, Inc. She has publications on web promotion, search engine optimization and web hosting industry news coverage and analyses. PromotionWorld.com is one of the most popular sites for web promotion and contains tutorials, tools, articles and search engine news. Subscribe for DevStart Channel http://www.promotionworld.com/informer/

Send your feedback to [email protected]

You can reproduce this article on your website, or in your Newsletter provided that you include the resource box.

This article was posted on November 26, 2004

by Milena Sotirova

7 Steps To A Powerful, Useful Reciprocal Links Dir

7 Steps To A Powerful, Useful Reciprocal Links Directory

by: Charles Kangethe

The Problem

No matter how good your product or service is, if you are not receiving targeted visitors to your site or if your web site is not well ranked by the Search engines you will not sell much.

A solid, reciprocal linking strategy, properly executed will deliver both targeted visitors and improve your web site rank for your chosen keywords and all for กno money down.ก

Step #1 Specific Keyword Search

It is important that your chosen keyword phrases are as specific as possible.

Scott Buresh of http://www.mediumblue.com/ says this about keywords and using กgeographicก, กadjectiveก and กnounก modifiers to make them specific.

กModifiers are used for two main reasons: to increase the percentage of ideal prospects in the traffic the phrase attracts, and to find terms that are easier to target on search engines. Adding the right type of modifiers to your search engine key phrases will increase your chances of success.ก

This step involves effort and a capacity to brainstorm because you need a minimum of 100 keyword phrases for good results. Good search engine optimisers build lists of 300 specific or more keyword phrases.

The following resources will be of use as you build your keyword phrase list

* Overture Suggestion Tool http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

* Good Keywords by Softnik Technologies http://www.goodkeywords.com

* Use a search engine to research กKeyword Phrasesก and learn more practical details on this critical task.

Step #2 Suitable Link Partners

Your ideal link partners are web sites based on

* High quality content Ideally the material (articles, reviews, reports, ebooks etc) should be original, fresh and informative to visitors.

* Tight web site themes The content addresses a specific business, product or service type.

* Tight directory themes A link to the link directory should be prominently shown on main pages and the directory must be tightly themed and not just a กlink farmก of general, nonrelated web sites.

* Complimentary themes While you may not want direct competitors to feature in your directory, complimentary sites that fulfil the above features will provide great value to your visitors.

Step # 3 Find and Review Link Partners

Now, find web sites who may be กgoodก link partners.

Using a search engine or directory, go through each keyword phrase in your list and visit as many of the web sites that are returned as you can.

Evaluate each site on the basis of the criteria set in step #2.

Decide on the categories you want in your directory.

For an Internet marketing business these would typically be กAffiliate Programsก, กBusiness Promotionก, กIncome Opportunitiesก an so on.

Qualifying web sites, may of course fall into more than one category depending on their business, product or service offerings.

With this information you can now make another list of :

* Qualifying web sites for inclusion. * Relevant email address to which link requests must be addressed.

* Web site URL and a short description of the web site and what it offers.

* Make a note of กspecialก features on the web site which you can usefully put in your email to *prove* you have actually visited the site. This goes a long way to countering SPAM problems.

Step # 4 Build Your Partner Link Directory.

Build your Partner Linkกs directory using a separate HTML page for each distinct category.

Add the URL link and comment for each qualified site into the relevant category page(s).

Make your directory pleasurable to visit, where visitors find information quickly and easily.

Ensure ithe directory is easily found and reached from your main web pages.

Step 5 eMail The Webmaster

Using the email addresses, write to each Webmaster you have linked to.

Tell them :

* The URL address of the page where their link can be found

* Your own web site link information (URL and descriptive comments)

Finish by asking for a reciprocal link in their directory.

Make the email personal and you might like to use the *special* feature note you made to help your request achieve success.

Step #6 Maintain Your Directory

A partner directory is a work in constant progress.

It must change quickly to reflect obsolete, dead, new, and modified links and web sites.

This maintains itกs usefulness to your visitors.

Depending on size, verifying the links may be more than you can achieve easily by your own efforts. Offer prizes to visitors who find and inform you of links that are no longer useful.

Maintenance also means giving added prominence to entries for other webmasters who respond to your mail and tell you that they have added your link and web site information to their own directories.

You can add a small graphic next to each Partner link making it stand out from the other web sites that have not provided a reciprocal links.

Remember your directory exists to provide useful content to your visitors. Do not immediately remove a non reciprocating web site, if it adds value to your visitors.

Step #7 Repeat

Go through the six steps above regularly and over a period of 3 to 6 months you should notice a significant and sustained rise in targeted traffic from complimentary sites as well as a rise in search engine rankings for your specific keyword phrases.

Conclusion

Building a useful, tightly themed, Partner Link directory is a กNo costก traffic and ranking builder.

Will you devote 15 minutes to this today, and into the future ?

(c) 2004 Charles Kangethe

About The Author

Charles Kangethe of http://www.simplyeasier.com is a leading new wave Netpreneur and a published author from England. The กSimply Easierก brand name is your guarantee of high value, quality Marketing Products, Services and Resources.

[email protected]

This article was posted on April 02, 2004

by Charles Kangethe

Making Informed Keyword Choices

Making Informed Keyword Choices

by: John Calder

Marketers stake much of their livelihood on keywords, whether for proper search engine optimization or targeted payperclick advertising. One challenge faced by inexperienced marketers involves knowing which phrases to target out of hundreds of combinations.

Often, one will find terms which look good, but later testing reveals the terms simply don’t convert visitors to sales. If you performed your due diligence by testing and tracking all elements of the sales page (copy, graphics, price, etc), this scenario may leave you baffled and wondering ขWhy didn’t this phrase produce sales? It really looked like a winner!ข

Every search term presents us with the challenge of reading intent. What was the visitor really looking for when they typed in the phrase? While it’s impossible to know this with certainty, you can improve your ability to read intent from keywords, and improve the accuracy of your targeting.

The First Guideline: Pay Attention to Qualifying Terms

Are multiterm (3 or more keyword) search phrases more targeted? Not always. A narrow search indicates only that searcher intends to find a specific piece of information. It does not necessarily indicate intent to purchase.

For example, the search phrase ขbig blue widgetข points to a narrowly defined interest, but does not reveal whether the searcher intends to research prices, look at photographs of big, blue widgets, or merely discovered a passing curiosity after hearing about them someplace else. The phrase appears promising at first, but still presents us with a high likelihood of nonconverting traffic. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t test such a phrase, only that you are more likely to see a good deal of untargeted spillover traffic.

What you really want to look for during your keyword research is qualification. Specificity is not enough. So, how do you spot the qualifying terms that indicate the searcher is in buying mode?

You spot them by applying a formula to your keyword list. If you have your list in front of you now, take a look at it and see if you can apply the following parameters to any of the phrases:

Contextual/Situational

Urgent

Preferential

Relevant terms for contextual/situational searching might include:

Bad credit/good credit

Student

Divorced

Retired

Self Employed

When you apply contextual/situational parameters to your keywords, you should think in terms of ขfilling in the blanksข of the situation: ขIf I have bad credit, where can I get a loan?ข ขWhile I’m a student, what deals can I get on travel?ข

Searches qualified in this way indicate an active interest in finding solutions. Visitors generated from these terms may view themselves as still in ขresearch modeข, but the fact is that they are as ripe as they’ll ever be for a convincing sales pitch.

What about urgency? The most obvious terms to look for include: fast, quick, speedy, immediate, and so on. However, you may also find terms which imply urgency, such as : easy (the easier it is, the faster it is), hasslefree, preapproved, automatic and instant, to name a few.

Lastly, preference can reveal much about where the visitor is in the buying process. Qualifying terms pertaining to the sales process, to delivery (e.g., ขinstant downloadข or ขfree shippingข) and customer service all indicate a proactive search for solutions.

The Second Guideline: Know Your Industry

Inexperienced marketers often miss out on keyword goldmines because they make the mistake of focusing only on the data their keyword tools give them for broad terms. The tools and tactics one picks up in his or her marketing education are valuable, but they’re no substitute for intimate knowledge of the market. When you ขdabbleข in an industry you often choose only the most obvious keywords, and this leaves you in competition with all the other dabblers scrounging for top placement on those terms.

A much better option (especially if your field is affiliate marketing) is to educate yourself deeply on the vocabulary of one market at a time. Learn everything you can about this one market, its sub or spinoff markets, and anything else that helps you live and breathe the mindset of your potential customer.

When you do this, you will find a wealth of new keywords – words with which only an ขinsiderข would be familiar. These terms are not only more targeted, but they invoke a measure of instant credibility as well. The customer knows you couldn’t reach him if you did not ขspeak his language’.

The Third Guideline: Choose Terms Which Hold Synergy with Your Sales Copy

In the fight to squeeze out as much traffic as possible, it is tempting to bid on as many keywords as possible and funnel them all to one or two sales pages. A better tactic is to slice down your keyword list into subsets which closely match the tone evoked by your sales copy. Next, separate out the terms which you feel are viable but ขdon’t quite fitข, and create new sales copy to support them.

Why do all of this extra work? Well, there’s a little secret you should know about. It comes from a surprising place: the world of personal ads. Personal ads provide the ultimate study in ขshort copyข. Have you ever placed an ad on a dating site and found that most of your respondents focused on only one or two words in your profile and then wrote to you despite their obvious incompatibility?

People are often lazy and they are often hurried. Your customer’s eyes zero in on only a few words – those most important to him at that very moment, and the rest of your copy gets filtered away.

This is why it’s crucial that your keywords hold synergy with your sales copy – and by synergy I mean that if you intend your prospect to zero in on, for example, ขeasy web site creationข, then your copy should speak only to ease, speed and instantaneous gratification of your product, and not make mention of any additional, complicated features. Save those features for your copy when you target people on terms like ขadvanced web site creationข. Even if your solution offers both ease of use and advanced results, split them off.

Making informed keyword choices boosts your bottom line. Remember that quality always trumps quantity. Even though you can’t read your customers mind, the guidelines presented here will get you one step closer to dissecting it!

Copyright 2004 John Calder

About The Author

John Calder is the owner/editor of The Ezine Dot Net. Visit today and read more of his articles held online at: http://www.TheEzine.Net. RSS feeds are available

This article was posted on September 06, 2004

by John Calder

The Road to Better Results

The Road to Better Results

by: Shawn Campbell

A lot has changed in the way sites are optimized for search engines since last year. For one thing, Google is not the only search engine worth looking into anymore; Yahoo has definitely managed to take away some of Google’s oomph over the past twelve months. Another important change is that the intelligence of the search engine spiders and algorithms has increased dramatically. So without further ado, I will present you with a standard search engine optimizing process.
Keyword Research
Nothing can be done until you know what your target phrases are. Keyword research must be done to find out what people are actually typing into the search engines. For example, do they type in ขmedical insuranceข or ขhealth insuranceข more often? Is it worth targeting the keyword ขdental insuranceข? What do your competitors think its clients type?
Keyword research usually begins by asking the client what they think are good keywords and by looking at your competitor’s Meta tags and text. You then have to brainstorm to find new and related keywords that were not previously thought of. The use of Wordtracker, Overture, and Google AdWords’ estimates is indispensable. If you use the ขKEIข offered at Wordtracker, don’t fall into the trap of giving it too much worth. It is a good tool to help discover keywords that have not been exploited by the competition, but the really important number is the amount of traffic each keyword generates. Finally, create a chart to determine the relationship between keywords used. For example, there is no point promoting dental insurance if your site does not offer it.
Texts
The next step is to write the text. Hire a specialized writer to put the text together. Ideally someone who has been trained in Internet writing, Internet marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO), or get advice from professional SEOs, marketing experts, and usability experts. Work with the client to get a feel for what is needed for the site. Then use all these skill to put together the delicate balance needed between selling to people, selling to search engines, and making the text interesting/useful to read.
Domain Selection
Once the text is written, come up with a catchy domain name for the site. Try to include part of the keyword in the domain, and to think ahead so that the domain can be expanded into the title. Our site www.gloriousbahamas.com is a good example of a domain with a keyword in it that is catchy and clearly stated. The keyword for that site is ขBahamas real estateข, so having part of the keyword in the domain will help in the long run.
Title and Meta Tags
From the domain name, you can then create a title with the full main keyword in it (such as Glorious Bahamas Real Estate). The title is the most important text on the site. The Meta tags include the description tag, and the keyword tag. The description is what the searchers will see in many search engine results, so it must have the keywords in it and, more importantly, it must sell the site. Write a description that is objective, not subjective. Zeal has some good advice for titles and especially description writing at http://zeal.com/guidelines/style/site_titledesc/. The keyword tag is done just in case some engines still use it (though very few still do), so don’t pull your hair out over it. Just list 1015 keyphrases and try not to repeat any single word more than three times.
New Content
Now we come to the meat of today’s search engine optimization. So far, we have not discussed anything new or original. It is the same strategies that have been used since I first got into the business of SEO in 1998. Today, with smarter engines, a site needs to be something that is cared about. A site has to grow, develop, and expand as if it were someone’s baby. Gone are the days when you could build a site, get good listings, and then forget about it as it brought in the traffic and the dough. Take care of your site by adding useful content to it on a regular basis, and then the site will gradually grow from a few pages to dozens of pages. Not only will this make the site seem more alive radiating with the healthy glow of a developing child but it has the added benefit of increasing the amount of content the site contains, and thus increasing the amount of keywords found within it. For example with www.canadahealthinsurance.com we add pages with more details about dental coverage or pages with details about government coverage for each province. Every month there are new pages, so that every time the spider comes back to visit, it spends more time at the site reading new content. This is one half of the key to getting good listings in the search engine results pages (SERP).
Link Campaigns
The second half of the key is getting good sites to link to your site. Going after web sites with related content, sites with good authority in your web site’s field, and sites that are ขpopularข are the priority. Getting only reciprocal links is not the goal, getting the aforementioned sites to link to you because you have good, valuable content is the goal. Sites that do reciprocal linking usually have hundreds of links on their link pages and these will add very little value to your site. Don’t waste your time with reciprocal linking. Only link to a site if doing so will increase the value of your site in the eyes of your clients.
A link campaign is a lot of work, and it involves a lot of frustration and rejection. You have to approach bigger sites and sell the value that linking to your site will bring them. For every 20 sites you approach, you will be lucky to get one to link to you. You have to be persistent, consistent, and determined.
Conclusions
Optimizing a site is no longer something you can do and then forget about. For a site to succeed in the search engines today, it has to constantly be changing and growing either in content or in links, and ideally in both. It has to appear that the site is the life and soul of its creator, and that somebody cares enough about it to pay attention to it. Because after all, if the creator doesn’t care, why should the search engines?

About The Author

Shawn Campbell is an enthusiastic player in the ecommerce marketplace, and cofounded Red Carpet Web Promotion, Inc. (http://www.redcarpetweb.com/). He has been researching and developing marketing strategies to achieve more prominent listings in search engine results since 1998. Shawn is one of the earliest pioneers in the search engine optimization field. Contact: [email protected]

[email protected]

This article was posted on July 12, 2004

by Shawn Campbell

Increase Traffic to Your Blog from Search Engines

Increase Traffic to Your Blog from Search Engines The Top 5 Tips

by: Tinu AbayomiPaul

Your favorite thing about having a blog may soon be this they naturally attract search engine traffic.

Blogs already have optimized site architecture. Most are set up with a clear navigation, where every page is set up to link back to the other main pages.

They also have the inherent potential to be welllinked.

If you haven’t already submitted to blog directories, you are missing out on some great oneway links. Many of the top directories can be found on Robin Good’s Top 55 list at MasterNewMedia.org.

But before you head over there and start submitting, you should know a little about how to optimize your blog. Then your new listings can help your site get the best keyword placement in the major search engines.

These are my top five tips for lucrative blog search engine optimization.

Lucrative Blog SEO Tip #1: Lucrative Keyword Choices

You have a choice. You can target a general high traffic keyword you have little chance of ranking well for and get barely any traffic.

Or you can shoot for a keyword that gets a moderate level of targeted traffic resulting in more subscribers and sales. I like to call this a ขlucrative keywordข.

Whatever you call them, here’s the most important thing: They may not get you the most traffic, but they often bring the most profit.

You may be surprised to learn that there isn’t always a correlation between high traffic and high sales. Many of the most profitable sites in the world get moderate traffic because their lucrative keywords result in a much higher ratio of visitors to buyers.

A recent article in Information Week stated that the highest conversion rates from search engine traffic comes from people who do four word queries.

The great thing about your blog is that it can get so wellindexed that you have the potential to show up for any number of four word phrases that are relevant to your industry.

It isn’t just the four word phrases that get converting traffic there are two and three word phrases that can bring you traffic and sales.

Targeting your blog discussion to a two or three word phrase that has a high yield of traffic, and yet has little competition, is not a dream of past Internet days. Another recent study revealed that surprisingly high percentages of search engine queries debuted as late as 2004.

As long as there are new developments, new products, services and trends, you’ll never have a shortage of these terms if you learn how to discover them.

Lucrative Blog SEO Tip #2: Keyword Placement

Your blog can be set up to repeat the keywords that you want to target just enough times to establish a theme.

You can take full advantage of this in your post titles, your category names, the pages URL names, or even a combination of Technorati tags and the text of your permanent links that appear after each post.

Lucrative Blog SEO Tip #3: Timely Posting

Instead of pinging at 15 minute intervals when your site hasn’t been updated, or even pinging after every single post, you can actually get better results if you update or ping just once during one of three sweet spots in the day. Here’s one that you can use today.

Check your web site statistics. If you’re getting spidered every two weeks or even monthly, you can increase your number of spider visits by blogging on the anniversary of the period that the spider comes to your site. It takes a bit of monitoring, but you can often predict when the date of your last spider visit was.

An even faster way is to ping at a time when the spider is reading a page that carries your update. (This is a little harder to explain, as I’ve mentioned, but I have a resource that explains this process indepth at my site.)

Lucrative Blog SEO Tip #4: Get Linked

Turn on your site feed(s) and use them to promote your blog. Robin Good’s guide can get you some great one way links.

If you sparingly include the lucrative keyword you selected in tip two in your title and description, all those link backs will contain the keyword term you most want attention for, which is often noted by the spiders as they follow the link through to your site.

Once there, if you use these and other tips to skew your blog a little more to the searchenginefriendly side, the synergistic effect is better, more profitable traffic.

Lucrative Blog SEO Tip #4: Frequent Updates

The more you post, the more food for the spider, which can cause the spider to react by splitting up its job into several visits, whereupon you have even more content, and so on, until the spider just adds you to a more frequent schedule of returns.

For example, my main site gets spidered several times daily by Google, and yet I can go a week without an update with no change in spider visits. This means my pages get indexed more often and my new pages show up faster.

Think of what that could do for the launch of your next product.

You’ll be happy to know that you don’t have to slave over long blog posts several times a day, all day long to get similar results from your blog. In fact, some blog software will let you set up your posts in advance, so that you can have posts show up daily even though you technically only blog once a month.

Bottom line: A few small changes to your blog can draw more search engine traffic without turning off your blog visitors. Done properly, this gives your audience more of what they were searching for in the first place.

Copyright 2005 Tinu AbayomiPaul

About The Author

Tinu is a web site promotion specialist and the author of several books on search engines, blogging, and RSS. You can read more tips in her blog at http://www.FreeTrafficTip.com.

This article was posted on March 04

by Tinu AbayomiPaul

Team Up With Your Competitors

Team Up With Your Competitors

by: Terence Tan

Pay per click search engines are a great way to get targeted traffic quickly. The only problem is that as the search terms get more popular, the price of each click through rises. It is very sad to watch your top ranking fall off the first page into obscurity as the cost per click rises out of your budget.

One way to get around this is to team up with a few of the กcompetitorsก you find bidding on the same term. The idea is that if 10 people agree to cooperate to create a new page listing their ten web sites prominently, sort of like another search results page (which you can call a directory of top 10 sites in your topic), you can pool your resources and pay to get this page listed as the top search result for your desired keyword.

This will price the top ranking spot out of the budget of other bidders for the keyword and ensure a top ranking for this page. Provided you make the description of the new page interesting, most surfers will definitely click on the top ranked listings in each search and see all ten of your links.

So while you have to share the top ranking with 9 other webmasters, you are assured that you won’t be squeezed of the top search results page by the thousands of other people trying to bid for the same keyword.

Cooperate with some competitors for an unfair advantage over the rest.

About The Author

Terence Tan is the founder of HugeAffiliates.com, a website dedicated towards the development of Multi Level Affiliate Programs as an alternative system of business. Visit http://hugeaffiliates.com to learn how MLAPs can multiply your affiliate referral commissions.

(Please feel free to to freely reproduce and distribute this article, so long as it is reproduced in full, including the hyperlinks, and no modification is made).

[email protected]

This article was posted on October 12, 2003

by Terence Tan

AutoPilot Link Building Strategy for ContentSite

AutoPilot Link Building Strategy for ContentSites

by: Iszuddin Ismail

OK, this is what I consider a very effective method to get people to link to you without you having to ask them to do so. The best part is that, people will link to you for your most targeted keyword.

I happen to discover this method after seeing the results that I get on one of my website. I don’t have any particular reason for doing it that way on my website, but it seems to work like magic.

Sometimes, I search for people who are linking to me by looking at my referrers. You can also do that by checking your website statistics.

Sometimes, I do a link popularity check at MarketLeap.com.

And to my surprise, I realized that when I visited those websites, they are linking to me using my most targeted keywords.

My Keyword

That is how people are linking to me. And the result, I am ranked number 1 against 2 million websites on Yahoo and MSN. And this is for a keyword that has about 2000 searches per month.

But just how do you go about doing this?

You are about to know the littleknownsecretsteps to getting more link partners with your most targeted keyword.

But before I go into that, I just would like to make some statements about this method.

Some people may like this method and some might not. There are pros and cons. I don’t really know if this will suit well for business or corporate websites. All these while, I have only used them for contentsites promoting affiliate programs and Adsense, which is I think is most suitable.

If you are thinking about building a passive income with Adsense and affiliate programs, then you should read this.

First, you should do a keyword analysis. You can use WordTracker or Overture Keyword Selector Tool.

http://www.wordtracker.com/

http://inventory.overture.com/

After having your list of keywords, you can compare that to the number of competitions that you against with on Google.

By comparing the numbers, you know which is easier to optimize for. And you can also try checking the popular keywords at Search Guild Search Term Difficult Checker.

http://www.searchguild.com/cgibin/difficulty.pl

Another tool that you can use is NicheBot.com.

http://www.nichebot.com

Don’t get trapped into the analysisparalysis zone. Just follow the indicators and look for the most popular and the easiest keyword that you can rank for.

I know that you want to rank for more than one keyword, but just follow me on this and select one keyword that has high in traffic and easy to optimize for.

Now, hereกs the secret number one. You are going to name your website with that keyword. If your best keyword is กGrowing Orchidsก, then thatกs is going to be your websiteกs name.

Hereกs secret number two. Get a domain that has that keyword in it. If you can’t get กgrowingorchids.comก or กgrowingorchids.comก, you can try the dotnet (.net). And if you still can’t get the dotnet, you can add some numbers in front of the keyword like ก1growingorhids.comก. You should be able to get either one of those.

Hereกs secret number three. In every page of you website, use the keyword in your . For your main page, you should have something like this.

Growing Orchids Definitive Guide To Orchid Growing and Care

And on other pages, you can have something like this.

Growing Orchids Dendrium Orchids

Growing Orchids Ochid Diseases

Growing Orchids Watering Ochids

Growing Orchids Lighting for Orchids

The examples above is where you combine the first keyword with another keyword that you are targeting specifically for that page.

Secret number four is optional. Sometimes it still works without the next step. But implementing secret number four will put your website on steroid in your link building effort.

Hereกs secret number four. You should install a reciprocal link script. This is a script where people can submit their link to you after linking to your website. The link will take care of checking the link from the other personกs website and putting a link back to your new link partner.

And now, this is secret number five. You should have a link that says กAdd URLก or กAdd Linkก to your link script. There times when people will search the web for something like this.

growing orchids กadd linkก

growing orchids กadd urlก

These people are looking for your website. By putting the link กAdd Linkก or กAdd URLก, you are telling the search engine that you have a link page. This way, link partners can find you more easily.

Of course, you can always do this manually. But that will beats the purpose of trying to make everything autopilot. And once in a while, you can check and see where you website links to. If you want to remove any, just do so.

Now, what is the result of all these? Well, by naming your website with the targeted keyword and having a domain name using that keyword, link partners have no options but to link to your website using that keyword.

And since the keyword is your websiteกs name, thereกs nothing wrong with having the name of your website on all pages.

Some people might just link to you without you even asking. And most of the times, they would link to you using the text you use in the . When that happens, you are still linked with your most targeted keyword.

If you rank well later in the search engines, you can aslo expect to get links from websites built using Traffic Equalizer or Traffic Hurricane.

http://www.trafficequalizer.com

http://www.traffichurricane.com

No matter which page they link to, they will always link to you using your most targeted keyword กGrowing Orchidsก. And at the same time, you are still targeting your secondary keywords like กorchid diseasesก, กorchid careก or กorchid greenhouseก because you have that in the as well.

I have been using this method and it works pretty well for me. I am sure people will have their opinion on this whether this is good or this is bad. Some people don’t like it not having control over who links to them. But I guess, it boils down to you. Itกs your choice.

For me, this is great for contentsites working with Adsense and affiliate progams. This is the method that I use on my computer case website, airsoft website and my paintball website.

You can give this a try and see how thing goes.

About The Author

Iszuddin Ismail aka Kidino publishes the MoneyClicking Newsletter where he shares tips and strategies to website building for internet marketing. Get a free ebook, ContentSite for Affiliate Marketing for subscription. http://www.moneyclicking.net.

This article was posted on November 03, 2004

by Iszuddin Ismail

How to reach #1 in Yahoo! Part 2

How to reach #1 in Yahoo! Part 2

by: Michael Rock

KEI Keyword Effectiveness Index. The value of a keyword or keyword phrase that helps a web site reach the #1 position in search engines by comparing how often the keyword or keyword phrase is used and comparing it to how many web sites are using that keyword or keyword phrase to market their site.

In part one of this article I discussed how you can thoroughly research and pick the right keywords for your web site. You can read part one of this web design SEO advice here. (http://www.theinternetpresence.com/businessarticle26.htm) Part two of this article will show you how to take your list of keywords created from part one and narrow it down to the most effective keywords to use. Letกs start with the KEI rating of the keywords.

You can find many free KEI tools on the internet. I personally use one that was part of a $500 software package, but you can find many tools on the internet for free. My advice for this is to try a few of them out and stick with the tools that show generally the same results and toss the ones that don’t. Even with the software package I bought I still use wordtracker and overture to compare my results.

List your keywords in the first column of a table. (I use Microsoft Excel, but you can use anything that works.) In the second, third or more columns list the number of times that keyword was used per day or month. (I use one column for wordtracker, one column for overture, and one column for my software package.) Be suspicious of the keywords that don’t show the same results on all three and consider tossing them out. For example if one column says it searched 300 times per day, but the other two do not even show it being searched at all I would toss that keyword out. In the next column type in the KEI rating of that keyword. And in the next column, if you have a tool that allows it, enter how often the competition uses that keyword in a กcompetitionก column. Enter in the numbers for this data for all of the keywords listed in your table. Now we can start to narrow down the list.

Look at your keyword KEI ratings and compare them to each other. Toss out the keywords that have a low KEI rating. Next look over the list of keywords again and think to yourself, กWill someone that types that in want to visit my site?ก. If not, toss out the keywords. Ask yourself, กWill someone who types in that keyword be likely to be profitable for me?ก. If not, toss out those keywords as well. Look at how often your competition uses a keyword in your กcompetitionก column. If it has a good KEI rating and over 17,000,000 web sites are using it then it will be hard to get to #1. Consider tossing these keywords out also.

For example I concentrated on the search term, (web development contractor) which had a great KEI rating and was hardly used by competition. I tweaked my site for this keyword and now if you type in web development contractor into MSN youกll find out that I hold the number one position. And have held it for over a month now. In addition if you type in (business presence on the web), or (Internet Presence) youกll see me floating around the top 5 along with some other search terms. (Perhaps I should rename this article How I reached #1 in MSN) The search term (web design) had a good KEI rating, but the competition was over 17,000,000 web sites using that search term. Perhaps Iกll feel lucky and try for that one next.

I keep narrowing down my list until I have five of the best keywords to use for my web site. I take those 5 keywords and type them into the top 3 search engines and list the top 10 sites that show up with each keyword. So you will have a list of 50 sites per each search engine you used. To get a good general ranking in all of the search engines, I combine the 3 lists of 50 sites into one big list of 150 web sites for comparison. Alphabetize the list. Did you notice something? Some sites are listed three or more times! Toss out the sites that only show up once and this will narrow down your list of 150 considerably. Take the top five web sites that show up with the keyword you want and list them in another page. It is now time to pick apart there sites and discover why they are there!

Research the five sites using your keyword and compare them to each other. You have to research the siteกs page that landed on the search engine for these factors:

Is the keyword in the tag? If so, where is it placed, and how often.

Is the keyword in the description tag? If so, where is it placed, and how often.

Is the keyword in the keywords tag? If so, where is it placed, and how often.

Is the keyword in the content of the site? If so, where is it placed, and how often.

Is the keyword in the headings (H1H6) of the page? If so, where is it placed, and how often.

Is the keyword in the links of the page? If so, where is it placed, and how often.

Is the keyword in the alt image attributes? If so, where is it placed, and how often.

(alt image attributes are the words that pop up when you move a cursor over a picture)

If you want I can do this analysis for you. Just send me up to 3 keyword phrases and 2 web sites for comparison and for $25 youกll get a much more detailed report on both sites. This will save you a lot of time! Keyword research usually runs about $240 to $360 if you have me do it.

Examine the five sites next to each other and concentrate on building your site on things that they have in common and do one number better than them. Ignore building your site in the areas that are not consistent between the five. You then should be getting good results when your site is indexed next. There are other ways to help increase the ranking of your web site like linking. Linking plays a very important role with Google, but there are a number of rules for linking to make it effective. That is a whole new article in itself.

This may seem to be a lot of work, but is well worth it. Some companies charge $1000 to $1500 per month for doing this service and what I typed into these two articles is 75% of what they do. I have my system tweaked now so that it takes me roughly 8 hours to do the keyword research and 2 or 3 days to optimize my site for it. You can do this too!

Be looking for more articles soon!

Copyright © Michael Rock

Web development contractor (Web Design and Hosting)

Internet Presence

www.TheInternetPresence.com

About The Author

The owner of this registered company has over twenty years experience with DOS, windows business applications, numerous programming languages, artistic development, and web design. Other areas of interest include web marketing, web promoting, and business marketing and development. After the persuasion of those praising his work, he decided to go into business himself and highly suggests everyone else to do the same.

Internet Presence was founded in 2003 from a desire to become independent. Less than 1 year later Internet Presence has had accounts in three different states ranging from a locally owned auto collision repair shop to a glass packaging industry that sells its product worldwide.

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 10

by Michael Rock

Types of Keywords

Types of Keywords

by: Vikas Malhotra

Keyword can be classified into three categories :

Single word Keyword

Multiple word Keyword

Keywords based on Theme

Keyword(s) are basic raw material used in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Keyword selection must be done using Keyword Research where we use special tools to find out a list of Keywords (search terms) searched by targeted audience, recently. Keyword can be single word, two or three words, multiple words and theme based.

Lets detail each of these one by one . Understanding these categories of keywords would also help one to decide as to their targeting on specific pages.

Keyword of Single word

Keyword of Single word is used to target a large traffic but leads to highly competition category of sites. Keyword of Single word are known as generic Keyword(s) where we target general audience. Keyword of Single word does not help to target a specific page for a specific audience.

Although, Keyword of Single word helps in bringing huge traffic but these terms are mostly not relevant these days, as, searchers mostly use two or three keyword to find out their required information.

Instead single word keywords are good theme keywords.

We can use these primary keyword 5 to 7 times in a web page for good theming according of a site. The inside pages of the site can qualify these themes into product or service categories by adding qualifiers to these theming keywords.

Example:

Keyword ขServicesข will produce result of all the web sites related to Services which can be United States Department of Health and Human Services, The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services, direct Services, online Services, offline Services, Indian Services, American Services, food Services, agricultural Services, business Services, free Services, paid Services, etc.

Keyword of Multiple words

Keyword of Multiple words is used to target a specific traffic, which leads to high sale, top position in search result listing as well as improves page rank competition. Keyword of Multiple words are known as Specific Keyword(s) where we target a specific audience & not general searcher. Keyword of Multiple words helps to target a specific page for a specific audience.

Keyword of Multiple words, more often than not are location specific and related to geographic area of your intended services or products.

Keywords based on Theme

Keyword based on Theme are used to target a highly targeted audience, which leads to quick high sale, top position in search result listing as well as boosts page rank. Keywords based on Theme are known as Conceptual Keyword(s).

Keywords based on Theme consists all possible primary Keywords related to the web site therefore attracts high traffic of targeted audience. Keywords based on Theme add quality by providing Keyword Rich Text to search engines, which improve results and provide targeted search result listings.

Keywords based on Theme are used in each page of web site to focus on a specific topic correlated to a targeted topic or idea (theme). Keywords based on Theme effectively contribute in growth of informative pages for its site focusing on different related topics.

Keywords Targeting Strategy

Keywords Targeting Strategy is a tactic, which guides in placing primary keywords like Keyword of Single word, Keyword of Multiple words and Keyword based on Theme according to their importance for successful optimizations of the site.

Vikas Malhotra.

This article can be reprinted as long as the resource box stays intact.

About The Author

Vikas Malhotra

Iกm the owner of an SEO Company Mosaic Services and I regularly write and submit articles on various SE specific topics.

To know more about my company and its services and find more articles, please visit my website http://sem.mosaicservice.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 25

by Vikas Malhotra