A Winning Domain Name

A Winning Domain Name

by: Debra Gravelle

The domain name is one of the most important decisions you will make when trying to win over the search engine dilemma. Try using at least one of your best keywords within your domain name.

The search engine and the directories give higher preference when your domain name is relevant to your site content or theme.

Let me give you an example of three different ways you could look at your domain name and how the major search engines will view them for indexing.

www.trafficnmore.com

www.trafficNmore.com

www.trafficNmore.com

Which one would you have chosen?

www.trafficNmore.com, Right!

The search engines may not necessarily see it that way.

Even though trafficNmore.com is easily understood by the eye of the visitor, the search engine will not see the difference between trafficnmore.com and trafficNmore.com.

Both are good ranking for a site dealing with traffic issues.Even though you have the approval of your visitor looking for your information, you could get a higher ranking with the search engines by using www.trafficNmore.com and still keep the eye appeal for your visitor.

Here is why.

The hyphen breaks up a longer domain name to reveal the major keywords that describe your website content or theme. This makes it easier for the visitor to understand and most importantly allows the search engine to detect your keyword for indexing right off the bat. Cool, huh?

Moral of the story, give your visitor a break, be nice to the search engines and theyกll be nice to you and give you lots of reoccurring traffic for free.

Debra Gravelle

Free Traffic. Free Download.

http://www.trafficnmore.com/toolbox.htm

[email protected]

About The Author

Debra Gravelle has been a business consultant and planner for 22 years.

This article was posted on March 21, 2004

by Debra Gravelle

Targeted Traffic is More Important than Ever!

Targeted Traffic is More Important than Ever!

by: John Alexander

In the early days of web development, business owners had learned the very expensive lesson that a Web site with no visitors is of little value. Once the business owner learned that methods could be utilized to increase their visibility through search engine optimization, it then became apparent that the traffic that really benefited them, was ‘targeted traffic.ก It only made sense that if you were selling a solution, the person who will buy the solution are the ones experiencing a problem or challenge. It also became obvious that the best products and services to sell online were niche or specialized markets. Large volumes of กgeneral visitorsก (general volume traffic) may have looked nice on a statistics report but only the truly ‘targeted visitorsก (target traffic) were usually the visitors making purchases or doing business at the Web site.
While some search engine marketers were simply offering placement for keywords chosen by their client, other SEOกs realized the value of researching keyword phrases and built strategies that were focused on attracting a specific target market. This is why you would sometimes hear conflicting stories about the effectiveness of search engine marketing. People often had their sites optimized for the wrong phrases. These might be keyword phrases that attracted no traffic all or perhaps even keywords that attracted high traffic but the wrong audience. If targeted traffic was important for success back then, it is absolutely essential that we optimize for targeted traffic now. The reason is that as the web continues to age, peoples behaviour appears to be shifting again.
Plan for the current shift in online visitor behavior
The early online consumer compared to todayกs average user was thriving on search engine use most of the time. Theyกd search out one site then search out another site and literally travel all over the place half of the time, unsure what they were even looking for. Back then people กsurfed the netก but todays online consumer is not surfing as much. Todayกs online consumer is becoming educated much more quickly and a whole new trend of online branding is becoming more increasingly important according to a recent survey.
Volume traffic of any importance is decreasing.
A Californiabased research company (Websidestory) that measures Internet audiences, recently stated on Feb. 6 that กnearly 52 percent of Web surfers arrived at sites by direct navigation and bookmarks, compared with about 46 percent during the same period last year.ก Even compared to just last year, clearly more people KNOW where they want to go and are directly entering the web address into the browser.
What does this mean ? To me, it is a great indicator that people who have been online for a while, are developing business relationships. People just donกr need to กsurfก as much because once customers start doing business online and they like the service, why should they change? If they are happy buying a product from www.barnesandnoble.com, are they not likely to go back and just type in the web address or use a bookmark? As the web continues to mature, watch and see if a whole new wave of branding does not become of major importance on the Web of the future. Businesses who have chosen domain names that are easy to remember and have some branding built in, may see some significant increase.
Advantages for Search Engine Optimizers
The latest trends in Web behavior spell opportunity for some search engine marketers. These will be those SEOกs who realize that targeted traffic are now (and really have always been) the only way to go. Someone recently asked me if I thought a decline in the use of search engines was bad news for the search engine optimization industry. I believe there will always be a need for good search engines. More and more, people will remember their favorite URL but this means that top placement and accurate relevancy will also be needed more than ever before. People searching the net don’t care so much for paid ads, they want relevant search results. This is not to say that bid for placement search engines don’t have some advantages, because they do.
SEOs who are going only after old fashioned, nontargeted general กvolume trafficก (just big numbers with no target audience), things are about to become much quieter, as more online consumers KNOW where they want to go.
However, for those SEO professionals who really know their craft, the ‘targeted traffic strategyก can still render pure gold to the Web site owner and these are the times when top relevancy mixed with a targeted strategy should place those search engine marketers in the know, in even higher demand. High and accurate search engine relevancy for any online business Web site, counts more than it ever has before.

About The Author

John Alexander is the CoDirector of Training of Search Engine Workshops with Robin Nobles. Together, they teach 2day beginner, 3day advanced, and 5day allinclusive กhands onก search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe. John also teaches online search engine marketing courses through http://www.onlinewebtraining.com, and he’s a member of Wordtracker’s official question support team.

[email protected]

This article was posted on July 29, 2004

by John Alexander

Five and a Half Ways to Amp Up Your Search EngineO

Five and a Half Ways to Amp Up Your Search EngineOptimization

by: Dave Carlson

Statistics show that 85% of pages visited on the Internet come from people who have gotten there from a search engine. Statistically, people look first at the top of the first page of the regular search results, then the bottom, and then they go to the sponsored listings.

There is an art and science to being ranked highly on the search engines. The science is formatting the pages with the right meta tags and submitting them in the right way to the search engines. The art is to make the site look and read normal in spite of filling it with key words.

Here are five and a half ways to get a higher ranking and more visitors:

1. Pick the right Key Words and Phrases

These are the words and phrases that people will put into search engines to try to find your product, business or organization. Having good key words and phrases is foundational to have good optimization. This takes research using such tools at Wordtracker and Overture’s Keyword Suggestion Tool. They give you a good idea of what people are searching for and what you should focus on.

2. Use Good Header Tags

Header tags are hidden in the code within your Web page. The most important one is the ‘titleก tag, which isn’t considered a META tag. It tells what’s within your page and it’s important to have your keyphrases in it. It is also good to have keyphrases in your กdescriptionก META tag, though it doesn’t rank nearly as high as the ‘titleก tag.

3. Use Keyphrases in Your Visible Page Title

Provide a unique title to each page on your site that is chock full of key words and phrases. Search engines like this because it means that there is a higher probability that your site is a good match for what people are looking for. This is should be placed within the H1 tag (top heading) of your page and is visible to the visitor. It also pays to have your keyphrases in subtitles on the page.

4. Provide Plenty of Content on Your Site

Shoot to have at least 450 characters on your page. Concentrate on putting key words and phrases in the first paragraph and last paragraphs.

5. Secure a Lot of Related Incoming Links

The more sites linked to your site, the higher you will be ranked by the search engines. These links can be from strategic partners, vendors, directories or other types of sites with whom you exchange links.

If you are a web site developer, put in your contract that you are going to put a developer’s link at the bottom of the site, such as, กWeb site design by Green Chair Marketing Group,ก with an active link to your site. This will help your site grow in its link popularity.

5.5 Keep Optimizing Your Site

The more content on your site, the better. I suggest adding a couple pages a month, whether it’s case studies, more product information, testimonials, articles, press releases, etc. If you add just five new pages a month, you will have 60 new pages by the end of the year, and over 100 pages by the end of the second year.

You are bound to catch some people you would have missed because there is more content to choose from. And your site will be more highly ranked by Google, because they highly weigh sites that have more content.

While you’re at it, continue to get relevant links coming into your site. Google loves incoming links. And you might have people click through to your site from these other places.

If you don’t have time to work on the optimization or would feel more comfortable having someone else do it, consider strongly hiring a professional to do your search engine optimization. That way you can focus your energies on sales or creating more and better product.

One caveat, I would stay away from companies that initiate contact with you through emails or phone calls. They often use techniques that can get your severely penalized by the search engines. Ask people you know who have been successful in their search engine positioning who they use.

About The Author

Dave Carlson owns Green Chair Marketing Group, an Internet marketing firm specializing in driving visitors to web sites by search engine optimization, pay per click, and web design/redesign. 7204275660 Visit his site at http//:www.GreenChair.net.

[email protected]

This article was posted on September 15, 2004

by Dave Carlson

3 Deadly Search Engine Marketing Sins

3 Deadly Search Engine Marketing Sins

by: John Gergye

My inbox this week provided glaring examples of three all too common rookie search engine marketing mistakes. What you could call three deadly search engine marketing sins. Starting with

===> Inadequate Keyword Research

Hey! If you’re going to spend hours developing a web site, isn’t it smart to invest some time to insure you’re focusing on the most traffic laden keywords?

Especially when typically the plural form of a keyword phrase generates way more traffic than the singular form. For example กdog dishesก rather than กdog dishก.

Yet just this week I was asked to look at a site that had focused on the singular form. Evidently the owner hadn’t bothered to do any digging to make sure that was their best keyword move.

Look, you’ll never know for sure unless you research it. Besides, you can access Wordtracker, the tool of choice for what? a measly $7 a day.

Even better here’s a quick and dirty way to get the most out of that day.

Search for your target keyword in Google.

Visit the top ranking sites. Use the กView Sourceก feature of Internet Explorer to check out the keyword meta tag of each site. You’re looking for a site listing lots of keywords there. Do this with each of the top listings or until you find one stuffed to the gills with keywords. Ahha! There’s your starting point for your list of likely keyword phrases.

Repeat with a couple of other sites and you’ll soon have a long list of candidates to check out in Wordtracker.

Enhance your list further using this tool:

http://www.promoteindia.com/keywordtoolbeta.htm.

It will give you more keyword ideas from Google and Overture.

Now you’re ready for Wordtracker.

Once you’ve compiled your Wordtracker results, you could simply sort by KEI and then by searches per day.

That gives you the strongest keywords with the most searches. (And yes, I realize KEI assumes all search engine listings are of equal value. But I did say this was กquick and dirtyก didn’t I? However if you want another approach that improves on KEI there’s a spreadsheet available at http://www.seoworks.com/seoresources/keywordeffectivenessrank.html)

Anyway, once you’re sorted your keywords in some way to highlight the most profitable, simply take the top 25 on the list and create content for those first. No, not every one will be a natural born traffic magnet. But enough of them will be to get the ball rolling.

Repeat with the next 25. Don’t stop until you have at least 100 pages of hot content.

Remember, two or three word keyword phrases are usually your best bets. And I really like keyword phrases that are actually several keyword phrases in one. For example กirish setter dog dishesก gives กirish setterก, กirish setter dogก, กdogก, กdog dishesก, กsetter dog dishesก.

===> Site Bloat

Twice this week I was asked to look at sites that would have let me read War and Peace while waiting for them to come up. And no visitor is going to have a copy of that handy.

To avoid losing any precious visitors lose the huge graphics. One of the sites had a graphic 501K in size! No wonder it took nearly two minutes to load up on a 56K modem.

Then too lose the Flash unless you have a very good reason for using it. Even then lose the Flash.

If you’re wondering how your siteกs download time measures up test it here: http://www.netmechanic.com/toolbox/htmlcode.htm

It won’t cost anything to find out. But a slow loading site can cost you plenty. Because as the Net Mechanics follow up reports says, itกs a good idea to keep your page load times under about 12 seconds on a 28.8 modem. Otherwise your visitors will be wearing out the back button trying to escape.

===> Too Few Links

Did you know links can account for up to 80% of your success with Google? Yet someone else complained to me about how much work it took to get them.

Well doh! Ever think that maybe that’s why (in part) Google assigns so much value to links? Because you can’t quite as easily game links as you can on page content? Meaning you actually have to work to get links. Both by having link worthy content and by actively seeking them out on a regular basis.

It’s a given that most niches require you have a healthy collection of links to be competitive. Yet if you’re lucky enough to be in a niche that doesn’t, but you do, then you can easily dominate those rankings.

Anyway in a nutshell you can easily avoid these three search engine sins. Do your keyword homework. Keep your pages on a strict diet. And don’t forget link up with as many other quality sites as you can.

Do all that and you’re well on your way to search engine success. Ignore this advice and you’re, well you know, your Google goose is probably cooked. Leaving you perpetually stuck in Google purgatory.

Copyright 2004 John Gergye

About The Author

John Gergye shares more ideas like this in his just updated eBook ‘traffic From Google in 35 Daysก. Find out more here:

http://www.traffictesttube.com/j/tfg35cl.shtml

Or test your search engine IQ by taking his seo quiz

http://www.traffictesttube.com/searchenginequiz.shtml

and get the free special report กComing Out On Topก.

This article was posted on September 25, 2004

by John Gergye

The Meta Search Engines: A Web Searcherกs Best Fri

The Meta Search Engines: A Web Searcherกs Best Friends

by: Daniel Bazac

I know what you’re thinking: Google gives you such accurate results that you don’t need any other search tool. Well, letกs see about that.

You might or might not know that no major search engine indexes ALL the existing Web pages. OpenFind states that it indexes 3.5 billion Web pages, Google claims 2.4 billion, AlltheWeb 2.1 billion, Inktomi a little more than 2 billion, WiseNut 1.5 billion and AltaVista 1 billion Web pages.

The truth is, nobody knows how wide the Web is. Some say 5 billion pages, some 8 billion, some even more. Anyway, whatกs definite is that the major search engines (SEs) index only a fraction of the กpublicly indexable Webก. Moreover, every SE indexes different Web pages, which means if you use only one SE you will miss relevant results that can be found in other search engines.

One way to more effectively search the Web is to use a meta search engine.

What Is A Meta Search Engine?

A meta search engine (also know as multithreaded engine) is a search tool that sends your query simultaneously to several search engines (SEs), Web directories (WDs) and sometimes to the socalled Invisible (Deep) Web, a collection of online information not indexed by traditional search engines.

After collecting the results, the meta search engine (MSE) will remove the duplicate links and, according to its algorithm, combine/rank the results into a single merged list.

An important note:

Unlike the individual search engines and directories, the meta search engines

Do not have their own databases and

Do not accept URL submissions.

Pros and Cons of Meta Search Engines

Pros: MSEs save searchers a considerable amount of time by sparing them the trouble of running a query in each search engine. The results most of the time are extremely relevant. MSEs can be used by Webmasters to find their siteกs presence, rankings and link popularity in the major SEs.

Cons: Because some SEs or WDs do not support advanced searching techniques such as quotation marks to enclose phrases or Boolean operators, no (or irrelevant) results from those SEs will appear in the MSEs results list when those techniques are used.

MSEs Come In Four Flavors:

‘realก MSEs which aggregate/rank the results in one page

กPseudoก MSEs type I which exclusively group the results by search engine

กPseudoก MSEs type II which open a separate browser window for each search engine used and

Search Utilities, software search tools.

The following provides detailed information on each of the four MSE types, along with my ranking:

1. ‘realก MSEs

These real MSEs simultaneously search the major search engines, aggregate the results, eliminate the duplicates and return the most relevant matches, according to the engineกs algorithm.

Following is a list of a few meta search engines that you might find useful. Itกs by no means complete, but it might help you find what you need.

(The criteria I used to determine the best MSEs were:

the amount and the relevance of the results,

the capability to handle advanced searches,

the ability to enable users to customize searches,

the speed of their searches and others.)

ez2www [ http://ez2www.com ]

Searches the best SEs AlltheWeb, Google, AltaVista, Teoma, Wisenut and directories Yahoo! and Open Directory. Through its กAdvanced Searchก function it also searches a small part of the Invisible (Deep) Web. It also searches news, newsgroups, MP3, images and many, many more. Provides excellent results in a very neat interface. Created in September 2000 by the French search engine developer Holomedia. THE best!

Vivísimo [ http://vivisimo.com ]

Uses the clustering technology, meaning matches are organized in folders. Don’t like the frames? Just modify the size of both the upper and the left frames. This MSE was created by researchers at CarnegieMellon University. Advanced searching options available: exact phrase, Boolean operators, fields searching (domain, host, title, URL, etc.) and more. A jewel for the serious searcher.

Query Server [ http://www.queryserver.com/web.htm ]

Searches an impressive list of 11 SEs everything important except Google. But don’t worry: Query Server searches Yahoo!, Netscape and AOL, all partially powered by Google. This is another example of the clustering technology. Highly customizable metasearch tool. You can modify the appearance of the results page, selecting the search engines, the amount of results, their timeout, etc. It supports quotation marks to enclose phrases, the Boolean syntax and parentheses. Very professional.

Infonetware [ http://www.infonetware.com ]

Searches the Web and provides relevant results, organized in topics, in a very clean interface. This MSE is based in Edinburgh, Scotland and is a very good tool.

Metaseek [http://www.pcdigest.net/metasearch/en/main.shtml]

Excellent MSE from Ukraine. Searches major international and local search engines. Besides the Web you can search images, MP3, FTP files, news and more. You can use กPhraseก (กก), กnatural languageก processing, Boolean logic and field searching (by URL, title, site/domain or link). Very nice.

IBoogie [ http://iboogie.com ]

Uses a minimalist design. This MSE กperforms intelligent clustering of resultsก. It searches the Web, the Invisible (Deep) Web, images, video and audio files.

Vinden.NL [ http://www.vinden.nl ]

Searches ‘the best,ก providing very good results in a clean interface. This MSE comes from the Netherlands.

Search Online [ http://www.searchonline.info ]

Uses an excellent selection of search engines and directories. This MSE provides relevant results in a relatively crowded interface. For each result you can see the search engine where the hit was found, and its ranking.

Meta Bear [ www.metabear.com ]

Provides relevant results from both international and Russian sites. Be sure you type the query in the กSearch The Worldก box.

Web Scout [ http://www.webscout.com ]

Searches the Web, news, newsgroups, auctions, MP3 files and jobs. This Australian MSE utilizes the major SEs except Google and provides relevant matches in a clean results list.

argosa:de [ http://www.argosa.de ]

Searches 17 international and local SEs. I suggest you avoid checking the boxes of Acoon, Abacho, GoClick and ah_ha.com search engines, because they give many irrelevant hits. This is Germanyกs first MSE, and provides excellent results organized by relevance, source (quelle) or title.

Experts Avenue [ http://www.expertsavenue.com ]

Searches different search engines simultaneously for Web pages, auctions, jobs and forums and provides very relevant results in a neat interface. Enables online language translation of Web pages. Click on ‘translateก and you will be brought to AltaVistaกs Babelfish translation service, powered by SYSTRAN.

InfoGrid [ http://www.infogrid.com ]

Provides excellent results in an easy to read layout, despite a very confusing Home Page crowded and with frames. This MSE searches the กbig onesก including Google, AlltheWeb, Yahoo! and Open Directory. It also searches newswires, auctions, discussion forums, MP3, FTP files and more. To avoid the frames in the results list select the option กOpen in the Current Windowก.

Suchspider.de [http://www.suchspider.de/metasuchmaschinen]

Searches a whopping 100 (!) international SEs and WDs. Google, AlltheWeb, Open Directory, you name it. You can sort the results by relevance, source or much better grouped by domain name. This กMetaSuchmachineก is based in Germany.

EmailPinoy [ http://www.emailpinoy.com ]

Sends your query to 15 search engines. Don’t use Kanoodle, ah_ha.com and GoClick payperclick search engines, because youกll get irrelevant results. For better results enclose phrases in quotation marks. This MSE is from the Philippines.

1 SECOND [ http://1second.com ]

Searches a good selection of 14 major SEs and WDs, throws out the duplicates and summarizes the results in a neat listings page. Use the Advanced Search if you want to customize the search, especially the timeout of the search engines.

My Prowler [ http://myprowler.com ]

Searches over a dozen search engines, news, images, audio/MP3, music videos, auctions and various other sites. Compiles the results, weeds out irrelevant matches and provides a summarized report. It accepts กnatural languageก query.

Gimenei [ http://www.gimenei.com ]

Use of the กAdvanced Searchก option is strongly recommended. You can customize the results page, including my favorite option, กAll Resultsก in one page. This is a comprehensive and fast MSE based in Manhattan, New York.

Dug Dugi [ http://www.dugdugi.com ]

Queries the major search engines, collates the results, eliminates information and aggregates the results in an ultraclean layout. For each match youกll get the search engine and the ranking of the page.

Search 66 [ http://search66.com ]

Groups together pages from the same domain. Beautiful. To avoid SEs timeouts, select the กSpeedก: กComprehensiveก. Obviously, youกll get more results from this excellent Australian MSE.

Besides the very good MSEs listed above, there are also some others that are worth a try:

Internav [ http://internav.com ],

NetXplorer [ http://www.netxplorer.de ] (Germany),

Aaise [ http://www.aaise.com/meta ],

Metengine [ http://www.metengine.com ] (Antigua),

One2Seek [ http://www.one2seek.com ],

Ithaki [ http://www.ithaki.net ],

Fossick [ http://www.fossick.com/Search.htm ] (Australia),

Pandia [ http://www.pandia.com/powersearch/index.html ] (Norway),

meta EUREKA [ http://www.metaeureka.com ] (Netherlands),

Widow [ http://www.widow.com ],

VROOSH! [ http://www.vroosh.com ] (Canada),

Meta 360 [ http://meta360.com ],

7 Meta Search [ http://7metasearch.com ],

Metor [ http://www.metor.com ] (Germany) and

Ixquick [ http://www.ixquick.com ].

The following is a list of some unimpressive meta search engines. These MSEs do not provide the breadth of coverage offered by the sites recommended above. Each of these has its own flawed characteristics, but generally they are old and have not kept up with the latest capabilities or they suffer from too many functional problems.

Metacrawler [ http://www.metacrawler.com ],

Dogpile [ http://www.dogpile.com ],

C4 (formerly Cyber 411) [ http://www.c4.com ],

Mamma [ http://www.mamma.com ] (Canada),

Pro Fusion [ http://www.profusion.com ],

moonmist [ http://www.moonmist.info ] (UK),

Bytedog [ http://www.bytedog.com ] (Canada),

il motore [ http://www.ilmotore.com ] (Italy),

METASEEK.NL [ http://www.metaseek.nl ] (Netherlands) and

ApocalX [ http://search.apocalx.com ] (France).

2. กPseudoก MSEs Type I

The type I กPseudoก MSE sends the query to the search engines, and then presents the results grouped by search engine in one long, easy to read scrollable list. Be careful. Based on how many SEs you select, the waiting time can be very long. Some people might find these MSEs useful, however.

The best MSEs in this category are:

Mall Agent [ http://www.mallagent.com/web.html ], which provides results from 38 SEs and WDs,

qb Search [ http://www.qbsearch.com/ ] (from 17),

Better Brain [ http://www.betterbrain.com/ ] (12),

My Net Crawler [ http://www.mynetcrawler.com/ ] (12),

NBCi [ http://nbci.msnbc.com ] (11),

Planet Search (Sherlock Hound) [ http://www.planetsearch.com/ ] (10),

Rede Search [ http://www.redesearch.com/ ] (8),

1 BLINK [ http://www.1blink.com/ ] (7),

Search Wiz [ http://www.searchwiz.com ] (6) and

Search Fido [ http://www.searchfido.com ] from 4 SEs and WDs.

3) กPseudoก MSEs Type II

There are two types of Type II กPseudoก MSEs:

a) You type your query one time and then select the search engines. One browser window will open for each SE selected. The best are:

MultiSearchEngine.com [http://www.multisearchengine.com] which opens 36 windows,

GoGettem [ http://www.gogettem.com ] (30),

Search Bridge [ http://www.searchbridge.com ] (24),

The Info [ http://www.theinfo.com ] (15) and

Net Depot [ http://www.netdepot.org ] (15).

b) You choose the SE, type the query in the SEก form and a new window will open. Every search engine has its own query form. Many users will find these windowopening MSEs annoying. The best of this type are:

Alpha Seek [ http://www.alfaseek.com ],

Westlaser [ http://www.westlaser.com/ ],

Danกs No Overhead Search Thingy [ http://www.danielc.com/thingy.html ],

Express Find [ http://www.expressfind.com ] and

Freeality [ http://www.freeality.com/meta.htm ] .

4) Search Utilities (also called Desktop Search Applications)

These are downloadable meta search tools that search multiple search engines. Results are collated and ranked for relevancy with redundancies removed. They are not free but most of them have a free trial version available. The price? A few dozen dollars. The most popular are:

BullsEye [ http://www.intelliseek.com/ ],

Copernic [ http://www.copernic.com/ ],

LexiBot (formerly know as Mata Hari) [ http://lexibot.com ],

WebFerret [ http://www.zdnet.com/ferret/index.html ] and

WolfBot [ http://www.wolfbot.com/ ].

Conclusions:

Now, you might ask yourself: If MSEs are so good, do we still need the search engines?

Well, it depends. I use a search engine yup, Google when I search for general information. I use a meta search engine when Iกm looking for a unique or obscure search term or if I want to make an indepth analysis of whatกs out there on a specific subject.

My suggestion is to find some time and give a test drive to the MSEs; you might fall in love with these lesserknown search tools. And next time you use your search engine of choice, remember that there are search tools that can provide you many more relevant results.

Good luck with your searches!

About The Author

© Copyright 2002 by Daniel Bazac

Daniel Bazac is Search Engine Marketer for Web Design in New York, a site design, Search Engine Optimization and promotion company ( http://www.webdesigninnewyork.com ). Heกs been online since 1995 and heกs also a seasoned Internet Information Researcher. He can be reached at mailto:[email protected] .

This article was posted on September 24, 2002

by Daniel Bazac

Do You Have More Time Than Money

Do You Have More Time Than Money

by: Laurie Meade

Do You Have More Free Time Than Money? Are You Determined to Make a Living from Home Working Online?

Many of you are looking for free information.You want easy ways to learn how to begin an online business.

You love searching online and are amazed by all the incredible free information out there. If other people claim to be doing so well, working from home, why can’t I?

This is the question many of you are asking yourselves?

Did you know it is possible to master the techniques and get an online business up and going without having to spend a huge amount of money?

Did you know that one simple little trick, when searching from a search engine, can narrow your results in an amazing incredible way.

Did you know that you have the power, the tool, to master and uncover the shocking simple secrets that the guruกs use to profit so well.

Several years ago, I worked in a sewing factory. I listened to a walkman while I worked. I checked out success motivation tapes from the library and listened to them. This motivated me to go back to college at the age of 35. I graduated with my two year associates degree with the 4th highest gpa of the graduating class. I did this despite the obstacles of being a single parent and having major surgery on my head only two weeks before starting school.

All of the success tapes followed the same basic theme. They just had different ways of getting this message accross. That message is กIf you can believe it, you can achieve it.ก You first have to have a belief in your head as if you have already accomplished what you are setting for your goals.

The same holds true with the principles of online marketing. Everybody is basically promoting the same information. They are taking there own unique approach. The difference of the experts and those not succeeding are the advertising skills they use to get these messages sold.

It is possible to put extra cash in your pockets. The money is being made online. And all the information being sold follows a basic theme. There are free ways to ultimately discover these secrets.

But, it isn’t simple, and it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, committment and determination. You also have to learn how to weed out the scams.

YOu need to figure out where to spend the little bit of money you will have set aside to reinvest into your growing business. A good place to start are private forums where all the big time moneymakers share there secrets and help out beginners.

You also need your own domain name. This is a must if you want people to take you seriously. You need it for credibil ity and trust.

Giving information away freely is a first step as well. What goes around comes around. I truely believe this.

Okay, that simple little trick mentioned above for narrowing a search, is to put quotations around your phrase. Now some of you already do this, Iกm sure. There are even instructions telling you not to do this. Many of you will have never uncovered this little discovery. You can also check a box for exact words, instead of any word.

My favorite tool for searching is WebFerret. I get results on the free version and I am always pleased with the list. Depending on my search I can get a tightly targeted keyword list of as few as 19. A popular widely used keyword brings up 500. I have the option to save the list. This list does not contain web page ads and items I don’t want cluttering up my hard drive.

Now the real key in searching is to know what terms to use as keywords in your search. You can find these hidden jewels, listed on a website at the push of a button.

There is nothing really scientific about what you need to do to guarantee success as a work from home online business.

Letกs say you find an ad for a product you are really enticed to buy. But you tell yourself, you really can’t afford to part with your cash, your hard earned money.

Take the authorกs name, put it in the WebFerret search box, with quotes around it and see what comes up. I learned this while reading an ad. The ad copy suggested it. He said, Go to Google, type in my name and see what you find.ก

I found tonกs of free articles this guy had wrote to promote his business. Do you realize how much of the content in those articles are probably the same content as what is in the ebook he promotes.

This is where the more time than money comes in to play. If you have the time, determination and committment, you can make money selling information online.

Here are more ways:

Subscribe to free ezines.

Find article banks and file info in a folder.

Start collecting links of good free resource sites.

Compare the competition.

Read free ebooks, think on how to improve on that topic.

There are many little secrets I have mastered to discover the tricks of the trade for making money online.

All rights reserved. Copyright Laurie Meade 2002

Would you like to learn more of the shocking secrets and uncover how you can master the hidden, proven successful ways to make a living online? Subscribe to my free ezine, THE NoBrainer Way You 2 Can Sell Online Free Ezine. When you subscribe, I will send you a link, where you can download, several free ebooks to get you started. Send a blank email to [email protected]

About The Author

Laurie Meade has experience has an Online Ezine Editor. She was Editor in Journalism in college, with an Associate of Arts Degree. Currently she is a WAHM and editor of A No Brainer Way youcansellonline.com Free Ezine. Send a blank email to: [email protected]

This article was posted on March 10, 2002

by Laurie Meade

The Other Side Of The Search Gods’ Abracadabra!

The Other Side Of The Search Gods’ Abracadabra!

by: Liji Elizabeth Thomas

Thousands of servers …billions of web pages…. the possibility of individually sifting through the WWW is null. The search engine gods cull the information you need from the Internet…from tracking down an elusive expert for communication to presenting the most unconventional views on the planet. Name it and click it. Beyond all the hype created about the web heavens they rule, let’s attempt to keep the argument balanced. From Google to Voice of the Shuttle (for humanities research) these ubiquitous gods that enrich the net, can be unfair …and do wear pitfalls. And considering the rate at which the Internet continues to grow, the problems of these gods are only exacerbated further.

Primarily, what you need to digest is the fact that search engines fall short of Mandrake’s magic mechanism! They simply don’t create URLs out of thin air but instead send their spiders crawling across those sites that have rendered prayers (and expensive offerings!) to them for consideration. Even when sites like Google claim to have a massive 3 billion web pages in its database, a large portion of the web nation is invisible to these spiders. To think they are simply ignorant of the Invisible Web. This invisible web holds that content, normal search engines can’t index because the information on many web sites is in databases that are only searchable within that site. Sites like www.imdb.com The Internet Movie Database , www.incywincy.com IncyWincy, the invisible web search engine and www.completeplanet.com The Complete Planet that cover this area are perhaps the only way you can access content from that portion of the Internet, invisible to the search gods. Here, you don’t perform a direct content search but search for the resources that may access the content. (Meaning be sure to set aside considerable time for digging.)

None of the search engines indexes everything on the Web (I mean none). Tried research literature on popular search engines? AltaVista to Yahoo, will list thousands of sources on education, human resource development, etc. etc. but mostly from magazines, newspapers, and various organizationsก own Web pages, rather than from research journals and dissertations the main sources of research literature. That’s because most of the journals and dissertations are not yet available publicly on the Web. Thought they’ll get you all that’s hosted on the web? Think again.

The Web is huge and growing exponentially. Simple searches, using a single word or phrase, will often yield thousands of กhitsก, most of which will be irrelevant. A layman going in for a piece of info to the internet has to deal with a more severe issue too much information! And if you don’t learn how to control the information overload from these websites, returned by a search result, roll out the red carpet for some frustration. A very common problem results from sites that have a lot of pages with similar content. For e.g., if a discussion thread (in a forum) goes on for a hundred posts there will be a hundred pages all with similar titles, each containing a wee bit of information. Now instead of just one link, all hundred of those darn pages will crop up your search result, crowding out other relevant site.

Regardless of all the sophistication technology has brought in, many well thoughtout search phrases produce list after list of irrelevant web pages. The typical search still requires sifting through dirt to find the gold. If you are not specific enough, you may get too many irrelevant hits.

As said, these search engines do not actually search the web directly but their centralized server instead. And unless this database is updated continually to index modified, moved, deleted or renamed documents, you will land yourself amidst broken links and stale copies of web pages. So if they inadequately handle dynamic web pages whose content changes frequently, chances are for the information they reference to quickly go outofdate. After they wage their never ending war with overzealous promoters (spamdexers rather), where do they have time to keep their databases current and their search algorithms tuned? No surprise if a perfectly worthwhile site may go unlisted!

Similarly, many of the Web search engines are undergoing rapid development and are not well documented. You will have only an approximate idea of how they are working, and unknown shortcomings may cause them to miss desired information. Not to mention, amongst the first class information, the web also houses false, misleading, deceptive and dressed up information actually produced by charlatans. The Web itself is unstable and tomorrow they may not find you the site they found you today. Well if you could predict them, they would not be god!…would they?! The syntax (word order and punctuation) for various types of complex searches varies some from search engine to search engine, and small errors in the syntax can seriously compromise the search. For instance, try the same phrase search on different search engines and you’ll know what I mean. Novices… read this line using search engines does involve a learning curve. Many beginning Internet users, because of these disadvantages, become discouraged and frustrated.

Like a journalist put it, ขNot showing favoritism to its business clients is certainly a rare virtue in these times.ข Search engines have increasingly turned to two significant revenue streams. Paid placement: In addition to the main editorialdriven search results, the search engines display a second — and sometimes third — listing thatกs usually commercial in nature. The more you pay, the higher youกll appear in the search results. Paid inclusion: An advertiser or content partner pays the search engine to crawl its site and include the results in the main editorial listing. So?…more likely to be in the hit list but then again no guarantees. Of course those refusing to favor certain devotees are industry leaders like Google that publishes paid listings, but clearly marks them as กSponsored Links.ก

The possibility of these ‘forprofit’ search gods (which haven’t yet made much profit) for taking fees to skew their searches, can’t be ruled out. But as a searcher, the hit list you are provided with by the engine should obviously rank in the order of relevancy and interest. Search command languages can often be complex and confusing and the ranking algorithm is unique to each god based on the number of occurrences of the search phrase in a page, if it appears in the page title, or in a heading, or the URL itself, or the meta tag etc. or on a weighted average of a number of these relevance scores. E.g. Google (www.google.com) uses its patented PageRank TM and ranks the importance of search results by examining the links that lead to a specific site. The more links that lead to a site, the higher the site is ranked. Pop on popularity!

Alta Vista, HotBot, Lycos, Infoseek and MSN Search use keyword indexes – fast access to millions of documents. The lack of an index structure and poor accuracy of the size of the WWW, will not make searching any easier. Large number of sites indexed. Keyword searching can be difficult to get right.

In reality, however, the prevalence of a certain keyword is not always in proportion to the relevance of a page. Take this example. A search on sari the national costume of India –in a popular search engine, returned among it’s top sites, the following links:

www.scri.sari.ac.uk/ of the Scottish Crop research Institute

www.ubudsari.com/ a health resort in Indonesia

www.sarienergy.org/ The South Asia Regional Initiative for Energy Cooperation and Development

Pretty useful sites for someone very much interested in knowing how to drape or the tradition of the sari?! (Well, no prayer goes unanswered…whether you like the answer or not!) By using keywords to determine how each page will be ranked in search results and not simply counting the number of instances of a word on a page, search engines are attempting to make the rankings better by assigning more weight to things like titles, subheadings, and so on.

Now, unless you have a clear idea of what youกre looking for, it may be difficult or impossible to use a keyword search, especially if the vocabulary of the subject is unfamiliar. Similarly, the concept based search of Excite (instead of individual words, the words that you enter into a search are grouped and attempted to determine the meaning) is a difficult task and yields inconsistent results.

Besides who reviews or evaluates these sites for quality or authority? They are simply compiled by a computer program. These active search engines rely on computerized retrieval mechanisms called กspidersก, กcrawlersก, or กrobotsก, to visit Web sites, on a regular basis and retrieve relevant keywords to index and store in a searchable database. And from this huge database yields often unmanageable and comprehensive results….results whose relevance is determined by their computers. The irrelevant sites (high percentage of noise, as it’s called), questionable ranking mechanisms and poor quality control may be the result of less human involvement to weed out junk. Thought human intervention would solve all probes….read on.

>From the very first search engine – Yahoo to about.com, Snap.com, Magellan, NetGuide, Go Network, LookSmart, NBCi and Starting Point, all subject directories index and review documents under categories – making them more manageable. Unlike active search engines, these passive or humanselected search engines like don’t roam the web directly and are human controlled, relying on individual submissions. Perhaps the easiest to use in town, but the indexing structure these search engines cover only a small portion of the actual number of WWW sites and thus is certainly not your bet if you intend specific, narrow or complex topics.

Subject designations may be arbitrary, confusing or wrong. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted. Never contains full text of the web they link to you can only search what you see titles, descriptions, subject categories, etc. Humanlabor intensive process limits database currency, size, rate of growth and timeliness. You may have to branch through the categories repeatedly before arriving at the right page. They may be several months behind the times because of the need for human organization. Try looking for some obscure topic….chances for the people that maintain the directory to have excluded those pages. Obviously, machines can blindly count keywords but they can’t make commonsense judgement as humans can. But then why does humanedited directories respond with all this junk?!

And here’s about those meta search engines. A comprehensive search on the entire WWW using The Big Hub, Dogpile, Highway61, Internet Sleuth or Savvysearch , covering as many documents as possible may sound as good an idea as a one stop shopping. Meta search engines do not create their own databases. They rely on existing active and passive search engine indexes to retrieve search results. And the very fact that they access multiple keyword indexes reduces their response time. It sure does save your time by searching several search engines at once but at the expense of redundant, unwanted and overwhelming results….much more – important misses. The default search mode differs from search site to search site, so the same search is not always appropriate in different search engine software. The quality and size of the databases vary widely.

Weighted Search Engines like Ask Jeeves and RagingSearch allows the user to type queries in plain English without advanced searching knowledge, again at the expense of inaccurate and undetailed searching. Review or Ranking Sources like Argus Clearinghouse (www.clearinghouse.net), eBlast (eblast.com) and Librarianกs Index to the Internet (lii.org). They evaluate website quality from sources they find or accept submissions from but cover a minimal number of sites.

As a webmaster, your site registration with the biggest billboards in Times Square can get you closer to bingo! for the searcher. Those who didn’t even know you existed before are in your living room in New York time!

Your URL registration is a nobrainer, considering the generation of flocking traffic to your site. Certainly a quick and inexpensive method, yet is only a component of the overall marketing strategy that in itself offers no guarantees, no instant results and demands continued effort for the webmaster. Commerce rules the web. Like how a notable Internet caveman put it, ขWeb publishers also find dealing with search engines to be a frustrating pursuit. Everybody wants their pages to be easy for the world to find, but getting your site listed can be tough. Search sites may take a long time to list your site, may never list it at all, and may drop it after a few months for no reason. If you resubmit often, as it is very tempting to do, you may even be branded a spamdexer and barred from a search site. And as for trying to get a good ranking, forget it! You have to keep up with all the arcane and everchanging rules of a dozen different search engines, and adjust the keywords on your pages just so…all the while fighting against the very plausible theory that in fact none of this stuff matters, and the search sites assign rankings at random or by whim. ข

To make the best use of Web search enginesto find what you need and avoid an avalanche of irrelevant hits pick search engines that are well suited to your needs. And lest you’d want to cry ขYe immortal gods! where in the world are we?ข, spend a few hours becoming moderately proficient with each. Each works somewhat differently, most importantly in respect to how you broaden or narrow a search.

Finding the appropriate search engine for your particular information need, can be frustrating. To effectively use these search engines, it is important to understand what they are, how they work, and how they differ. For e.g. while using a meta search engine, remember that each engine has its own methods of displaying and ranking results. Remember, search strategies affect the results. If the user is unaware of basic search strategies, results may be spotty.

Quoting Charlie Morris (the former editor of The Web developer’s journal) ขSearch engines and directories survive, and indeed flourish, because theyกre all weกve got. If you want to use the wealth of information that is the Web, youกve got to be able to find what you want, and search engines and directories are the only way to do that. Getting good search results is a matter of chance. Depending on what youกre searching for, you may get a meaty list of good resources, or you may get page after page of irrelevant drivel. By laboriously refining your search, and using several different search engines and directories (and especially by using appropriate specialty directories), you can usually find what you need in the end.ข

Search engines are very useful, no doubt. Right from getting a quick view of a topic to finding expert contact info…verily certain issues lie in their lap. Now the very reason we bother about these search engines so much is because they’re all we’ve got! Though there sure is a lot of room for improvement, the hour’s need is to not get caught in the middle of the road. By simply understanding what, how and where to seek, you’d spare yourself the fate of chanting that old Jewish proverb ขIf God lived on earth, people would break his windows.ข

Happy searching!

About The Author

Liji is a PostGraduate in Software Science, with a flair for writing on anything under the sun. She puts her dexterity to work, writing technical articles in her areas of interest which include Internet programming, web design and development, ecommerce and other related issues.

letก[email protected]

This article was posted on August 16, 2004

by Liji Elizabeth Thomas