How To Find Good Keywords

How To Find Good Keywords

by: Trenton Moss

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

Wordtracker

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

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

Enter a keyword phrase you’re thinking about targeting

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

Once youกve clicked on all the phrases you like, run them through the program

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

The higher the score, the better the keyword phrase!

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

Overture

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

Google

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

Guidebeam

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

About The Author

This article was written by Trenton Moss. Heกs crazy about web usability and accessibility so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy (Webcredible http://www.webcredible.co.uk) to help make the Internet a better place for everyone.

This article was posted on September 01, 2004

by Trenton Moss

What is Google AdSense?

What is Google AdSense?

by: Jakob Jelling

In the mid 1990’s websites used to earn income by receiving money from advertisers by publishing or allowing companies to deploy a banner ad campaign on your website. Usually these banners would be brilliantly designed to catch the eye of the consumer along with a short message. The website in turn would receive a tiny profit from a clickthrough, which was when a customer actually clicked on the banner and went into the website and purchased the product. This was considered trafficdriven income. It was the industry standard until Google came along.

Google has since revolutionized the clickthrough market by using an innovative approach to advertising, Google AdSense. The beauty behind getting involved with Google now more than any other search engine is due to Google’s straightforward approach to a banner/contentfree home page. You would sign up your website for affiliation with Google and upon approval your site would be given special code to place the targeted ads on your website. Basically saving Google the space and inconvenience of having to deal with banner ads.

You still may be wondering what Google AdSense actually does. AdSense is a program in which you get paid for targeting your readers to another websites product or service.

A click through is measured when someone actually clicks on the hyperlink. Many web sites now have Google AdSense ads employed. Google AdSense uses Google Adwords content and services in a display box that you place strategically on your website. Google Adword customers pay Google a determined amount of money which will be paid to the website from Google. Since the popularity of Google has risen to such prominence, AdSense affiliates can make a nice amount of money should they be able to deploy the Google AdSense box properly on their website.

Other sites like Earthlink and Ask.com also employ the same technologies through click through methodologies. The more people that visit popular sites and see your name or hyperlink associated with a product the better chance your site will be seen. Remember, you will be paid a small amount per click for some websites and much more for others. What determines the amount is how much the Adwords advertiser places on each click.

Advertisers can pay as little as .50 per click in upwards of $5 (even more). Often campaigns are budgeted for a period of time. The amount budgeted will be rationed over a period of days, the less days involved or the higher price per click the higher the ranking. The more traffic you receive will increase the possibility of a sale and a click through fee in your account.

In short, Google’s idea to market itself from the inside out has changed the way websites are doing business. Starting as an AdSense affiliate is a practical approach to making money using one of the hottest tools on the Internet today.

About The Author

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

This article was posted on August 23, 2004

by Jakob Jelling

How To Get Number 1 Spot In Google, Every Time, Gu

How To Get Number 1 Spot In Google, Every Time, Guaranteed

by: Mike Cheney

Woaah! Wait a minute. Before I exclusively reveal these insider secrets can I ask you question? Well, actually, I want to ask you a series of questions.
Why do you want to get Number 1 in Google?
กBecause itกs good to be there isn’t it? It means my website is the best out there.ก
Well, no, it doesn’t. Why do you really want to be Number 1 in Google?
กWell, everyone wants to be Number 1 don’t they? If Iกm right at the top everyone will see my business and customers will come flooding to my website in their thousands.ก
They might. But it depends what you’re top for. Have you thought what you would like to be top for in Google?
กMy company, ABC Widgets Limited, comes top in Google when you type in กABC Widgets Limitedก. Thatกs pretty impressive isn’t it?ก
No, frankly, it is not. How many other websites do you think are competing for the phrase กABC Widgets Limitedก? There won’t be very many unless there are others out there who share your company name. Why is being top for your company name any use?
กBecause people looking for us on Google will find our websiteก.
Big deal. You need to be found by the thousands of people already out there looking for what you provide that don’t know your company name. They don’t know what you look like. They don’t know where you’re based. They don’t even know you exist! What sorts of search phrases do you think they will be typing in on Google?
กPhrases like กwidget suppliersก, กwidget sales onlineก and things like that?ก
Yes youกve got it! But are you listed Number 1 on Google for phrases like that?
กNo. We’re nowhere to be seen Mike. I think Iกve been patient enough with you though now answering your questions. Please will you reveal the secrets of getting Number 1 on Google?ก
No, I won’t.
กWhy not?!ก
3 Reasons Iกm Not Going To Reveal How To Get Number 1 Spot In Google, Every Time, Guaranteed
Reason 1 There Are No Insider Secrets
Getting a high listing on Google, or any other search engine, is a combination of hard work, having the right phrases on your website, having lots of great content on your website, having lots of other highlyranked websites linking to you and having your website built in the right way. There are no shortcuts, no magic bullets and no insidersecrets.
Reason 2 Getting Number 1 on Google Is The Tip Of The WebsiteMarketingIceberg
If you focus on getting Number 1 on Google and nothing else it will never happen. You need to focus on all the other elements I mentioned above and especially on developing reciprocal links with other relevant websites. Remember the top website marketing experts in the world (who do nothing else but market websites dayin, dayout) only attract around 15% of their website visitors from search engines. This is not because their websites don’t have a high ranking in the search engines (because they do and many of them will have that elusive Number 1 spot!) itกs because they attract so much more traffic from other places such as directories, associatesก websites, reciprocal links etc.
Reason 3 Itกs Too Dangerous
When you were a child how many times did you hear the following phrase?
กDon’t put all your eggs in one basketก
And yet day after day I hear people asking how they can get top on Google. There are websites dedicated to ‘the artก. People become obsessive about it and many derive their entire livelihood from visitors they get from Google searches. The result? When Google makes a big change to how they rank the websites in their index (which they did in November last year and to a lesser extent in January this year) many of these Googledependent businesses actually WENT UNDER. Thatกs right bankrupted because of an overnight change made by the powers that be at Google Towers.
So yes search engines, and Google in particular, should be an important part of your online marketing mix. But nothing more than that just one small part of the bigger whole. Especially with recent rumblings from the likes of Yahoo! and Microsoft, who are queuing up to topple Googleกs throne, you would be wise to set your sights on achieving a medium profile on hundreds of websites rather than a high profile on just one.
Mike Cheney

www.magnet4web.com

About The Author

You can get free access to lots more of my articles plus a FREE Special Report กHow To Turn Your Website Into A Customer Magnetก worth a value of £47 ($85) here: http://www.magnet4web.com/website_services/?page=freeguide

This article was posted on May 31, 2004

by Mike Cheney

A Successful Link Exchange

A Successful Link Exchange

by: Michael McLaughlin

Interested in boosting your link popularity, raising your Google PR, and improving the amount and quality of your traffic? Then discover the ancient secrets of a successful link exchange!

The practice of effective link exchanges has nearly been extinguished by the extensive amount of spam email. I plan to help webmasters who are interested in real effective and professional link exchanges reach there goal.

What is going to make you the most amount of sales if you are trying to sell fishing equipment? A link from an outdoor hobby website or a link from a bubble gum corporation? I think the answer is straightforward, the outdoor hobby website. The trick is to know your market and understand your customer. What age group would your customers be, and what other type of website would they look at if they were interested in your product?

Now, put yourself in your customer’s feet, what would you search for if you were interested in your product? Type that search phrase into a search engine now and look at what results come up. Disregard the competition and look at the other websites.

I suggest you rate these websites in your head on the following criteria: relevance, design, content, and navigation. I ordered them by how heavily you should consider them. I already discussed relevancy; because of course you want to bring customers to your website instead of clickhappy people.

You may be asking yourself what a website’s design has to do with a link exchange. Well over the years I have noticed one trend, which is that websites with a very nice design tend to prevail faster than others. Know one wants to visit a website and have to wince to read the text. Content on the other hand is what brings the readers. Content can substantially improve the quality of your website because the internet is about information and if you have what people are looking for they will find you! Not the other way around.

Content is king, how many times has that been said? And it still holds true, content is what get websites links back to them, which in turn raise a websites presence on the internet. So why not have a link from a content website, in opposition to just another website trying to sell something?

And of course a websites navigation must be search engine friendly, because you will prefer to have the location of your link to be indexed by search engines.

Basically you should try to pick your link partners by first eliminating the irrelevant links, and then choose a website that is search engine friendly and has the potential to grow! And remember look for quality websites not high PR websites.

One of the first signs of maturity in a person’s life is to be able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. For example you hit a car in the parking lot and don’t leave insurance information, you later feel bad because you know if that was your car that got hit you would be angry about it. Get the point? Good now apply that to writing emails; put yourself in your reader’s shoes.

Do you want to open another email that is titled ขlink exchangeข or would you perhaps prefer to read something a bit more refreshing and alluring entitled ขour partnershipข or ขlink opportunityข be creative but don’t stick with the old link exchange title that is highly overused.

The content of this email, however you entitled it should be very professional and businesslike. Use proper punctuation and complete sentences, also remember to compliment part of there website that is distinguishable so they identify that you actually visited it instead of simply finding there email address in cyberspace.

Don’t trust what mom says ขit’s what’s on the inside that counts.ข True content does help a website grow, but rarely do I trust a websites content if its design is pitiful. Remember be picky when choosing a link partner, personalize your letter, and be professional. As a final point do not partake in spam email!

About The Author

Written by: Michael McLaughlin at http://www.webmastershed.com – webmaster forum, for more articles by this author please visit: http://www.webmastershed.com/articles

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 27

by Michael McLaughlin

Search Engine Optimization For Google

Search Engine Optimization For Google

by: SEO Expert

A group of Google employees have recently filed a patent application (#20050071741) with the United States Patent and Trademark Office which gives insight into how to optimize one’s website to do well in the Google rankings. The filing of the patent gives verification that Google uses or intends to use historical data in its ranking algorithm. This patent also gives credence to the Google Sandbox Theory for new websites.

Under the Google Sandbox Theory, new websites are placed in a sort of holding tank for observation for a period of time (6 – 9 months at present) until the website has proved that it’s not a flybynight operation. Once the Sandbox period is over, then new websites will climb rapidly in the rankings. The Google Sandbox Theory is an unofficial theory based on observation and anecdotal evidence from those within the search engine optimization industry.

Based on the new Google patent here are the top 5 suggestions to better optimize a website for Google:

Build links slowly to your website. Websites that put up a bunch links quickly send up a red flag that links are being added in order to boost rankings. According to Google, natural links happen slowly over time, so one’s linkbuilding strategy also needs to include linkbuilding slowly over time.

The anchor text in the back links to a website also need to be natural as well. If a website has lots of great content of interest to visitors, other Webmasters will naturally link to the website. Content is still king when it comes to building natural links. In fact, having great content is the best natural linking strategy.

If content is king, then fresh content is prince. Google thrives on websites that are constantly adding fresh content. Websites with stale content erode in value over time.

When adding fresh content, make sure it is substantial. According to the patent, Google measures substantial versus insubstantial content that is being added to a website. Don’t try to trick the search engines with lots of minor content updates.

Outbound links to trusted, authority sites help in the rankings. As a reputable online business, it makes good business sense to refer customers to other reputable businesses as well. Referring customers to disreputable websites only hurt a business’s reputation and credibility and Google takes this into account when deciding how to rank websites.

There are more insights to be gained from the patent application, but these are the highlights that will help Webmasters and SEO’s focusing on Google to achieve higher rankings. Many of these ideas have been stated before as theory and now the patent application verifies these theories. Historical data has always been thought to play a significant role in the Google rankings. So now that it has been confirmed, taking action seems to be the next logical step.

About The Author

Copyright © 2005 SEO Expert

http://www.seoexpert.ws

SEO Expert is a search engine optimization company geared to achieve high rankings for customer websites.

This article was posted on April 09

by SEO Expert

Simple Website Design for High Rankings : A Legiti

Simple Website Design for High Rankings : A Legitimate Home Business Idea

by: Alexandra DeBoer

I began my adventure as an at home web designer almost three years ago, and today feel very pleased with the outcome. I started out wanting a website created for my home craft business, and had my husband Ben, a network administrator, show me some simple HTML. I gradually fell in love with the detailed world of web design, creating content, and figuring out what the search engines looked for in a high ranking web site.

Today, I have created several successful websites, many high ranking pages, written several articles, been interviewed, paid for my work, and taught many people how to create high ranking websites. I began without any formal training, and do believe that this field is wide open for anyone truly passionate about learning. It is a wonderful, and legitimate home business opportunity for anyone who has the desire to learn.

I really want to get the word out that a series of small, simple steps can successfully optimize a website, and that ANYONE can learn how to do this, and even charge others a good rate to do so!

I would recommend that anyone interested in this career should be:

Entrepreneurial in nature

Patient

Computer friendly and willing to learn some basic HTML

A good writer

A person who enjoys teaching others and communicating

The first step would be to create some websites in the computer for yourself, and practice, practice, practice. I would also recommend subscribing to some free web design newsletters in order to really keep up with what is going on with search engine and programming trends. Once you feel confident in your ability to design even a simple optimized website in a few hours, get a business license and start hitting the streets in your area. Talk to small business owners and find out which ones don’t have a website. Explain to them why they do need one, what your abilities are, and how much it will cost.

Don’t lie about your limitations or feel bad about charging an hourly rate for your work. Remember that a website you design will usually be less money than a large firm would charge, and that you probably know far more about web design than that business owner does! It may not hurt to locate a graphic designer who would like to do the artwork for the website, as search engine optimized websites are mostly about text, but look nice with some small business logos that match the ขthemeข of the businesses’ other advertising.

About The Author

Copyright 2005 by Alexandra DeBoer. For more information about the author or a career in web design, please visit her website at: www.webdesignfromhome.com.

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 09

by Alexandra DeBoer

Generating Website Traffic with Subdomains

Generating Website Traffic with Subdomains

by: Sarah Coles

Subdomains are websites that are located within a directory of your main site and have their own domain name. Because they use the same resources as the main website, they are normally much cheaper than getting another hosting account. Their low cost and flexibility make subdomains a great device for directing traffic to your site without breaking the bank.

*Subdomains as Portal Sites*

One of the best uses of subdomains is portal websites. Portal websites are sites that link to your main website and have a similar theme. Basically, they provide another portal, or doorway, for visitors and search engines to get to your main website.

Since creating content for a website takes time, often webmasters simply modify the existing text of the main site and reuse it on the portal site. It is important that the content is not exactly the same and the portals do not just redirect to the main site. Otherwise, search engines may not index them.

*More Portals, More Visitors*

Portal websites can be submitted to the search engines just like your main site. If your website is doing alright in the search engines, then imagine having five more websites out there for the spiders to find. Five more listings means that Web surfers have five times as many ways to find your network of websites.

*Search Engines and Links*

More and more search engine algorithms take into consideration the number and ranking of sites that link to you. By linking your subdomains to your main site and to each other, the ranking of all of your sites is improved.

*Banner Exchange Programs*

Banner exchange programs allow members to share advertising space on each other’s websites. They are a great way to generate traffic to your website, but you may not want to clutter your main site with ads. Portal websites provide a good place to test different programs and direct the resulting traffic to your main site.

*Alternative Markets*

Search engine spiders will pick up on content variations among your websites. Subtle differences could place a site in a category that you had not thought of and open up an entirely new base of visitors and/or customers.

*Product and Service Specialization*

Your main website may have dozens of different products and services. This is great for your business, but generality can hurt your ranking in the search engines. Using subdomains to create sites that specialize in one product or service increases your keyword density and improves your ranking. Plus, many consumers would prefer to work with a specialized business than a onestop shop. (You can still link to your main site with all of your products.)

About The Author

Sarah Coles is a webmaster and content developer for Jumpline.com Web Hosting, a budget host offering 6 websites for as low as $14.95/mo.

This article was posted on June 27, 2003

by Sarah Coles

5 Reasons Why Link Swapping Is Killing Your Websit

5 Reasons Why Link Swapping Is Killing Your Website

by: Michael Cheney

I created my first website in 1995 it was so long ago I built it out of rock and wood, not HTML.

Shortly after it went live I realised that nobody apart from me could see it and it started to dawn on me what this กInternet thingก is all about. It is not about having a standalone website plonked somewhere that nobody will ever see it is about being part of an INTERconnected NETwork of other websites. INTERNET. The penny dropped I needed to start getting connected to other websites.

Much has changed since then (my hair got longer, shorter and has since started to recede further up my head for one thing) but it seems the desire and pressure you face as a website owner to exchange links shows no signs of fading. But link swapping is killing your website! Hereกs 5 Reasons why…

Reason No. 1 Itกs Addictive!

Itกs true. You might not be that far down the linkswapping path yet but I promise you it will happen sooner or later. One day youกll find yourself laughing like a maniac as you run a report to see how many inbound links you have and start rubbing your hands gleefully as you reach that magic milestone you set yourself six months ago. Youกll start mainlining reciprocal links:

กJust one more link. Please all I need is one more link!ก

Take a deep breath, step back from the precipice and think for a moment. Why do you want all these links pointing to your website? No, honestly why do you REALLY want all these links pointing to your website? To improve link popularity? You’re falling into the trap. Do you want it to boost that little green bar that Google assigns to your page? (see toolbar.google.com) Wise up!

Reason No. 2 It Is Eating Away At Your Time Like A Hungry Hippo!

Just take a look at the last time you went out looking for a link and got it. How long did it take you? Not long? Well, let me put this another way how long did it take you to find the right type of websites, look through those and find ones that even have a links page, find the contact information for the websites you wanted to contact, create the email, send the email, respond to the email, place their link on your website, check that they reciprocated with you, email back and forth a few times more and so on…?

If you add up all the minutes that each of these elements takes you could be looking at half an hour per reciprocal link established maybe even longer!

And don’t think you’re cutting corners if you’re using software. It might be quicker to find possible linking partners using software but itกs a false economy as, to my knowledge, people are still cleverer than machines.

What I mean by this is I can tell if you email me using software rather than using your own fingers. If you go looking for reciprocal links using software you are FAR less likely to get a response so the whole process will probably take you as long in terms of time spent per link established.

Reason No. 3 You Are Spending More Time On Other Peopleกs Websites Than Your Own

If you spend a lot of your time researching and creating reciprocal links youกd better make sure that your website is perfect. Remember all that time you’re spending developing reciprocal links could be spent adding new content to your website, sending out an up to date newsletter to your mailing list or even sitting down and writing out goals for your website.

If you spend all the time on improving your website, adding great content, providing excellent service, keeping it up to date, testing different headlines and homepage layouts INSTEAD of spending the time building links guess what? You will magically find that more people link to you anyway!

In fact your website will become such a great resource because of all the time you’re dedicating to it that people will go OUT OF THEIR WAY to link to you! How ironic is that?!

You go hunting for links and your site suffers and therefore hardly anybody links to you. You spend time on making your website THE BEST IT CAN BE and everyone starts linking to you as, shock horror, you have a brilliant website that is worth referring to..

Reason No. 4 You Don’t Have A MultiMillion Dollar Budget To Beat The Boffins

Those whitecloaked geeks over at Google towers and the like have millions of dollars at their disposal to create the latest technology that can sniff out the merest whiff of dodginess when it comes to link swapping.

If they think something is suspect you might get penalised. First you started to see sites that used the same phrase for their inbound links get penalised. Then it was sites that engaged with link farms. Who knows whatกs next?

Ultimately you can bet your bottom dollar that the search engines will change their tack with reciprocal links and their importance some of them are already starting to look at the words that appear before and after each link to make sure it is on a relevant page and not just created as part of a reciprocal linking deal.

Itกs a risky game we’re all playing and my moneyกs on the guys with the white coats and millions of dollars..

Reason No. 5 You Are The Weakest Link, Goodbye!

When push comes to shove this whole กgameก of website marketing is about balance.

Imagine you are a tightrope walker. Fifty metres beneath you is a huge vat of boiling hot lava. To help you across the rope from the podium of กwebsite launchก to the podium of กwebsite successก you get a balancing rod.

Spending too much time and effort on reciprocal link building is like having a large sack on one end of the rod. This sack has an elephant in it. The elephant is wearing boots. Made from concrete. Get the picture?

About The Author

Michael Cheney

Author of The Website Marketing BibleTM

http://www.websitemarketingbible.com Download your free Sampler of The Website Marketing BibleTM now and get free bonuses worth £159 ($288)

This article was posted on November 17, 2004

by Michael Cheney

web page building for beginners 3

web page building for beginners 3

by: Ted Dupuie

An inexperienced website builder must understand that free web hosting is a great way to get more than one site up and running quickly, and that www.articlecity.com is the fastest and easiest way to fill those sites with relevant material. For instance, my site at www.saquoyah.com has one hundred and sixty pages that were written by various authors and posted at ArticleCity by the writers. This arrangement fulfills five purposes to the satisfaction of everyone involved. First the writers of the articles get to help the readers and themselves by having links back to their websites. Second, ArticleCity gets many links to their index page and that in turn keeps their site in a top placement with search engines. Third, the little website owner saves an enormous amount of writing, yet gets his or her website full of pages that link back to their index page, so the search engines will place their site a little higher in placement. Fourth, the person doing a search gets to find a lot of points of view by various writers on the one subject they are poring over. Fifth, the search engines have more pages in their database for the searchers to look through.

While free web hosting has it’s shortcomings for a large corporation like General Motors, it is a Godsend to the little merchant or any webmaster that would like searchers to find their pages in a web search. The more sites a webmaster has to bring more links back to the initial or main site, the better. While most of the free sites may never get ranked with Google, the sites can still serve the purpose of adding backlinks to a site and increasing the main site’s rank. And since the small merchant, especially one working at home, has a limited amount of capital to invest, the free sites can be used to their full potential.

Each site that is linked to the main site should have the same type of articles written on them, so that the relevancy sought by search engine robots can help to increase the ranking of the main site. If one site is about potato chips while another is an adult site while a third is written on auto racing, the linking will be of little value. Keep in mind also that some of those sites may be viewed by searchers from smaller engines or directories, and you may get potential customers through those links to your main site.

Keep all links in working order, so check your sites often enough to know when one of the host’s servers may go down and lose all your pages. This just happened to me, and even though I keep a copy of all my pages on my harddrive, the server was down for many weeks while Googlebot and Slurp were checking my links every few days. As a small businessman, I cannot afford to upset the robots, so I do not link TO the free websites, but only FROM the free websites. In this way, the robots never get upset. All of the links lead to the index pages of sites I own as a safeguard from server and hosting problems.

This article can be copied and reprinted anywhere as long as it is intact and includes the author’s bio

About The Author

Ted Dupuie owns a home based publishing company that only publishes his work, which includes diets, an investment strategy, and 8 websites, plus a family newsletter. He is also a writing critic with top ten placement on Google and Yahoo!

www.saquoyah.com www.homewriters.com www.freediet.biz

This article can be copied and reprinted anywhere as long as it is intact with the author’s bio.

This article was posted on August 21, 2004

by Ted Dupuie

5 Free Ways to Increase Traffic to your Online Sto

5 Free Ways to Increase Traffic to your Online Store

by: Scott Patterson

So you’ve finally created a website for your small online store! Now you think, ขHow do I get people to visit my site?ข If you’re like most new website owners, you wonder how to bring potential customers to your site without spending lots of money on expensive advertising. In order to help you, I’ve compiled a small list of five methods that I have used to drastically increase traffic to my own site. I’ve also listed two websites under each tip that will help you get started implementing these suggestions.

1. Offer a freebie or a contest for your items: One of main reasons that people use the Internet is to find free (or cheaper) stuff. If you offer a freebie or contest for one of your items, then you are likely to attract potential customers. To get maximum exposure for your freebie or contest, you should register with as many ขfree stuff sitesข as possible. Here are a couple of sites which would be a good starting point: http://www.thefreesitecom and http://www.realfreesite.com.

2. Link to similar websites: A popular method used by webmasters to increase web traffic is to swap links with comparable websites. However, the trick to maximizing the effectiveness of linking is to find sites with a minimum Google PageRank, which is a system which Google uses to judge the importance of each webpage, of 3 or 4. To find out more information about PageRank, click here: http://toolbar.google.com/ . To find good linking partners, check out these two link partner directories: http://www.linkspal.com/ and http://www.gotop.com/.

3. Join an internet discussion group: People also frequently use the Internet to find places where they share common interests with other individuals, which has led to the creation of Internet discussion groups. You can use discussion groups to introduce yourself and your product. Find a group that is related to your store or personal interest, and make sure any topic that you post is tied into a current discussion. Don’t SPAM any discussion group with an obvious sales pitch. Simply write comments applicable to both the group and your product; people will naturally want to know more about you! Two great listings of potential starting points for discussion groups are: http://groups.yahoo.com/ and http://topica.com/.

4. Post your product or service on a free classified ad page: Although many websites only have paid inclusion into their classified ads, many offer a free place where you are allowed to advertise your merchandise. If you spend time developing an interesting headline or ad, you can bring in a steady amount of traffic from these sites. To get started on free classifieds, you can use my own free service http://www.mizambar.com/classified.html . In addition, the following link has a directory of tons of free classified services: http://www.ecki.com/links/.

5. Write an article related to your website and submit it to ezines: By writing an article about your service or a topic related to your website, you instantly become an authority on your issue. Although you might have some apprehension about writing, if you have a website, then you probably have something to talk about. Two great directories on ezines are: http://freezineweb.com/ and http://www.ezinelocater.com .

By following these steps, you should see a dramatic increase in your web traffic. The key is to always think about website promotionif you spend a little time each day following one of these steps, you will be rewarded with more visitors and hopefully more customers. Good luck, and happy advertising!

P.S. Stay tuned for more free ways to increase traffic to your website!

About The Author

Scott Patterson is the owner and webmaster of http://www.mizambar.com, a retail site of Evil Eye Jewelry, and http://www.onlinestoreexchange.com, a directory of tips and advice to help you with website design and website promotion for your online store. For more information, email him at [email protected].

This article was posted on January 28, 2004

by Scott Patterson

The Road to Damascus Linking Strategies to Skyro

The Road to Damascus Linking Strategies to Skyrocket to the Top of Google

by: Greg Furey

If you don’t know already, one of the key success factors to getting loads of free Google traffic to your website is increasing page rank. So just how do you increase your page rank? Well, it’s all in the linking.

To be honest I never could quite figure this Google thing out, how it ranks good sites from bad sites. One day it all clicked for me and its so simple when you look at it from Google’s point of view. Google keeps its customers by providing relevant sites to your search queries. How does it choose the best sites for what you are looking for? Well, first of all it needs to be relevant (key words) and secondly it needs to be useful and of high quality. One way Google knows to measure quality is by the amount of links referring to your site. It stands to reason a site referred to by 100 websites may be more useful than a site referred by just a few right?

So how can we increase our sites chances of shooting up the search engine rankings with incoming links?

The quality of the links you receive is very important. Choose websites that firstly are related and preferably with a higher page rank than your site. The higher the quality link the higher page rank you will receive. In other words getting a link from Amazon.com is going to be worth more than a link on your daughters home page.

Basically there are 3 types of links, Outbound links which are easily added to your site, Reciprocal links where site A links to site B and site B links back to site A, and finally inbound links. These inbound links are the most important of all.

Let me describe how to get links in order of their importance.

How to get incoming links

Write articles like this one. Choose a topic you know and write up a short 500 word articles with a link back to your website and post it to article directories. Not only are these oneway links but other websites will pick it up and post one way links on their websites. Google gives you a big tick for each one way link!

Viral marketing. Ask other website owners directly if they would like to post your article either on their website or include it as part of their newsletter. If it’s a good article chances are readers will in turn pass this on to other readers providing advertising for both you and the other Webmaster. Like a virus, it spreads to more and more readers who may post the article, providing more oneway links.

Post to forums related to your area and include a link in your signature file. It is critical to join in the discussion and not blatantly advertise, as this can look unprofessional and selfgratifying. Add value to the discussion and simply provide a link in your signature. Visit some forums and see who you would link to in the discussion and try and copy what they did right.

How to get reciprocal links

Ask Webmasters directly. These are a little easier to ask for as its clear you are providing them also with a link. Best to first link to their website, then personalize the contact commenting about something on their website specifically. I have found personally calling them if you have the contact phone number the best method.

My friend David Newton at www.simplysolo.com has found this an invaluable way to gain in excess of 1,000 inbound links for his site.

Simplified it should go like this:

Find a relevant site as a potential link partner. Tip – Try entering this into google ขyour keyword or phraseข + ขadd urlข. This will then list the most popular sites that will allow you to link back to them.

Firstly create a link to their website

Contact them directly showing them your link to them with url of their site and something you liked about their site, something unique. Compliments can only help here.

Schedule to follow them up in one months time and try again if necessary. Best to keep a spreadsheet

Of course not all will link to you and it’s a bit of a numbers game but you can get results. Its better to personalize your contact than mass emailing a general group of websites.

Don’t forget to always be polite and keep up a schedule where you will aim to get say ten or twenty links out there per week. You will then have quite a collection after a few months and traffic should start flowing to your site.

About The Author

Greg Furey is the owner of The Affiliate Program Centre – Resources and helpful tools for businesses and website owners to increase sale through affiliate marketing.

www.affiliateprogramcentre.com

This article was posted on March 13

by Greg Furey

What Are My Chances To Get The First Place In Sear

What Are My Chances To Get The First Place In Search Engine Listings?

by: Oleg Lazarenko

You must have heard the stories how people became rich and famous with their websites. How could they achieve this? Their websites took a first position in search engine listings targeting popular keywords. Sounds easy, right? Wrong! To be honest, chances for a regular small business website to get to the top of the search engine listings are close to zero and each day they become smaller and smaller as a number of new and old websites grows.

Letกs examine the situation from the beginning. Search engines just need your content to deliver it to searchers. If a searcher is happy with the search result from the particular search engine, he will come back and use this search engine again. Do not think that search engines serve to send customers to your website. They DO NOT CARE about your website or your business. All they need is content.

When the search engines first appear in the Internet they needed help to determine what your site is about and how relevant is your website to search queries. People used กKeywordsก metatag in those days. Keywords gave too many opportunities to cheat with search engines results so searchers were not happy with their search queries results. Same thing was with the search engines. Manipulation with a website position in the search engines listings became known as Search Engine Optimization. That was the time when you could actually wake up a rich man after the search engine came to your website, included it into its database and started sending you thousands of customers.

Then came the time of big G (Google) with its concept of website popularity based on two factors: content and links. They introduced the new factor which was called Google PageRank. Now it becomes more and more complicated to get to the top of Google results. You need to bother about your website content, incoming links and outgoing links, IP of your website, number of visitors coming to your website and many other things that are being counted to determine your page position in the Google index. Linking fever came to the webmasters community. New websites (no matter how original their content is) have to wait before they will get enough links to be displayed in search engine results. The more complicated the search engines have become, the more ways of cheating people could think of: invisible text and links, doorway pages, cloaking pages etc.

Surely, you can try one of these methods called กBlack SEOก (search engine optimization) and you may even succeed for a month or two. When a Search Engine catches you, the punishment will be immediate: your website will be banned and no visitors will ever be sent to your website again.

Letกs be honest for small websites and home based businesses starting from scratch chances to get to the top position in search engine are minimal. The WWW is so rich that you probably will not find any competitive areas in search engine listings. Let me give you several suggestions, however, on how you can get started. I would recommend concentrating on one or two main keywords and trying to get the highest position in search engine and not waste efforts trying to cover the whole market. The right keyword can bring you several thousands visitors/customers in a day. Webmasters should concentrate their efforts on developing unique and original content. Search engines like new content and analyze if it is unique. Write articles, reviews, online publications etc. As an example, I can say that as soon as search engines index my recently written article for http://www.metamorphozis.com we get several hundreds visitors to that article from different engines. Exchange links with other websites related to your website. Put your keyword in the link title when you exchanging links.

Example: <a href=http://www.metamorphozis.com title=กWebsite Templatesก>Website Templates</a>

We use this link to get the better listings for กwebsite templatesก keyword. Just copy it and replace your website domain name with your own and link title to the keyword you would like. Exchange this link with related, popular websites. I would recommend you to create a special page for link exchanges and place links to other websites there.

I hope some my pieces of advice will be helpful to internet business starters.

This article may be reprinted and distributed with no charge until the credit line below remains without changes.

Thanks for reading.

Article source: http://www.metamorphozis.com/tutorials/what_my_chances_to_get_first_place_in_search_engine.shtml

About The Author

Oleg Lazarenko

Production Manager of Metamorphosis Web Design Studio –

Flash templates and Web Templates

http://www.metamorphozis.com

This article was posted on August 17

by Oleg Lazarenko