Search Engine Optimization - A Novice's Guide

Even if you are a novice to the world of online marketing, you can still do a few simple Search Engine Optimization techniques on your site to help increase your search engine exposure. The golden rule to successful SEO is to make your site friendly to your human visitors in addition to the search spiders and robots on the web. If the visitors are not happy with your site, they will not return to it, even if you have top rankings on the search engines. It does not take a genius to make your site efficient.

Landing Page

Make sure that your landing page gives the answer the visitor was looking for. Generally there are two reasons for anyone to search on a search engine - to find information on a product/service or to find a product/service. Even though there are people who do not know how to use proper keywords for their search or frame their question correctly, it is also utterly frustrating to go through pages and pages of a website to seek the answers only to be lead to old or non-relevant information. Search Engine Optimization professionals see to it that a user does not have to click more than twice, after reaching the site, to get the desired information.

Loading Time

Loading time is important because statistics say that if your page takes more than thirty seconds to load, then there are good chances of the searchers moving onto a different site to seek the information, even before your page opens up. If your page is very graphic with videos and images and has unnecessary popping smiley faces, then it is bound to take a long time to open. This will not help yoru SEO efforts. Sites that use animation can hold the attention for some time, but it does not add any value to the information provided on the site. Not to mention potentially increasing the download time significantly.

Link Right

Keep a tab on your websites link-ability. Each link should send the visitors exactly where they want to go. Internal links should be in order and should have a smooth process of navigation; ultimately navigating a casual surfer in to a dedicated customer. Always check for dead and dangling links, both for internal as well as external links. If the links don't work then your Search Engine Optimization could suffer.

Content

Another way to increase your natural listings and rankings is by keeping the content as interesting and fresh as possible. You can achieve that by posting original, crisp and interesting articles worth reading. They should be updated regularly and be rich in keywords that are placed strategically in the content.

Conclusion

These simple but effective things if kept in mind can bring forth a positive change in the traffic on your site. Search Engine Optimization involves a lot more things but the above points are just the basics, which anyone can master. Make your site human, robot and spider friendly and watch them return again and again for the latest information.

Tom Dwyer is a former senior executive at one of the largest interactive marketing agencies and now spends his time consulting with businesses and organizations on all aspects of business life. Visit Tom at Talkin' With TommyD or Grab Your Life Back

Lucrative Article Marketing - Discover 4 New Secrets to Excel with Article Marketing

Article marketing offers a lot of benefits to marketers who care to do the process right. Aside from the fact that it can boost your website's traffic and sales, it can also help you establish your expertise online to promote rapport and trust among your target market. This can lead to bigger and more responsive email marketing list and more fruitful relationship with your potential audience.

Here are the 4 new secrets to excel with article marketing:

1. Submit your articles to leading publishing sites. When posting your articles online, pick the sites that have great page ranking and steady traffic as these sites are frequented by marketers who are most likely to read and republish your articles should they find them useful and well-written. Don't waste your time and effort to sites that are not even indexed by major search engines as these cannot help you realize your marketing goals.

2. Optimize. Make it easier for search engines to index your articles and for online users to find your content by incorporating relevant keywords on your articles. Strike a good balance between your article word count and the number of your keywords to avoid being tagged as keyword spammer.

3. Use article submission software. Submitting your articles to publishing sites can be tedious, time-consuming, and downright exhausting. Save some time and energy by using software that can automatically distribute your articles to your chosen publishing sites.

4. Write more. To get more quality inbound links for your website, strive to multiply the number of your output. You can easily increase the number of your articles by picking topics that are quick to write like "how-to's" and "10 tips" types of articles. You can also hire ghostwriters who can provide you great content for a minimal fee.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.

Article Marketing - How I Discovered a Gold Mine

Article Marketing for me is like a gold mine. A gold mine because when I write articles and submit them to the right article directory, I make money. Very predictable, and consistent.

Here is how I did it:

When I first got started online, I read something about writing and submitting articles to multiple article directories for the purpose of generating backlinks to my web site.

But through some form of beginners luck or something, I had the good fortune of tracking my links and I found that the bulk of my traffic was coming from the articles that I submitted to the big three article directories. Wow, I thought what if I just submit to the big three and I can focus on writing instead of submitting everywhere? And so that is what I did and my traffic from articles is pretty awesome. And the traffic is direct, from the article directories, rather than from the search engines.

I think the real key for me was realizing that the way to go was with the few article directories that get the most hits, and just work on getting the hits, rather than the search engine rankings. And it has worked out quite nicely for me. I continually rake in thousands of hits per month, directly from the article directories.

Heres what to do:

1) Write keyword optimized articles.

2) Write a good bio, including your link

3) Submit these articles to the top 1-3 article directories online, based on traffic.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 800 articles in print and 9 published ebooks.

Five Top Tips For Successful Article Submission

Articles can be used for many things including products, services or yourself. It is a very effective way of getting a message out to the public especially as more and more people use the Internet. That is their right way to do this? Yes there is, you get it wrong that could cost you can search engine rankings.

One. The aim of the game is to create fresh content that is not duplicated on hundreds of different sites. Using automated article submission tools is a surefire way of your article not displaying in search engines. The way around this is to create a number of different articles or promoting the same thing but written entirely differently.

Two. Make sure that you select the correct directories to submit your articles to. Although there are many large article directories on the Internet which can benefit your cause it is worth remembering that your article may get lost amongst the others. Try and find new article sites that are up and coming in order to get your article closer to the viewer's eyes.

Three. Always write about something you know about. Your article is worthless if your content is wishy-washy. Do not just write articles for writing articles sake, make sure you are contributing towards the web community.

Four. Do not plagiarise someone else's article. As search engines get ever more sophisticated, their algorithm is now able to pickup plagiarised content in the slightest form. If you do use a source for your article always credit it.

Five. When beginning to write articles it is very easy to put quantity over quality. All the time you will find that your most thought out articles are the ones that generate the most traffic sales whilst the articles that do with less thought should disappointing results.

Ezinearticles is a great place to submit your articles for recognition whilst some younger sites such as http://www.lailapages.com offer less competition and could help your work get noticed quicker.

Andy Stocks is a web designer for http://www.wheresyourbusiness.co.uk a website design company specialising in web development, search engine optimisation, hosting and corporate identity. You can email Andy direct at andy@wheresyourbusiness.co.uk

Google's Good-Writing Filter

I was recently struck by the fact that the top-ranking web pages on Google are consistently much better written than the vast majority of what one reads on the web. Yet traditional SEO wisdom has little to say about good writing. Does Google, the world's wealthiest media company, really rank web pages based primarily on arcane technical criteria such as keyword density, link text, or even PageRank?

Apparently not.

Most Common Website Content Success Factors

I took a close look at the top five pages for the five most searched-on keywords, as identified by WordTracker on June 27, 2005. Here's what I found.

The web pages that contained written content (a small but significant portion were image galleries) all shared the following features:

• Updating: frequent updating of content, at least once every few weeks, and more often, once a week or more.
• Spelling and grammar: few or no errors. No page had more than three misspelled words or four grammatical errors. Note: spelling and grammar errors were identified by using Microsoft Word's check feature, and then ruling out words marked as misspellings that are either proper names or new words that are simply not in the dictionary. Google almost certainly has better access to new words than the dictionary, with its database of billions of web pages. Supposed grammatical errors that did not in fact violate style rules were also ignored. Google would certainly be less conservative than a grammar checker in evaluating popular stylistic devices such as sentence fragments.
• Paragraphs: primarily brief (1-4 sentences). Few or no long blocks of text.
• Lists: both bulleted and numbered, form a large part of the text.
• Sentence length: mostly brief (10 words or fewer). Medium-length and long sentences are sprinkled throughout the text rather than clumped together.
• Contextual relevance: text contains numerous terms related to the keyword, as well as stem variations of the keyword. The page may contain the keyword itself few times or not at all.

SEO "Do's" and "Don'ts" that Don't Really Matter

A hard look at the results slaughters a number of SEO bugbears and sacred cows.

PageRank. The median PageRank was 4. One page had a PageRank of 0. (Note that the low PageRank would seem to discount the idea that these pages owe their ranking completely to numerous incoming links.)

Frames. The top two web pages listed for the most searched-on keyword employ frames.

JavaScript-formatted internal links. Most of the websites use JavaScript for their internal page links.

Keyword optimization. Except for two pages, keyword optimization was conspicuous by its absence. In more than half the web pages, the keyword did not appear more than three times, meaning a very low density. Many of the pages did not contain the keyword at all.

Sub-headings. On most pages, sub-headings were either absent or in the form of images rather than text.

Links: Most of the web pages contained ten or more links; many contain over 30, in defiance of the SEO bugbears about "link popularity bleeding." Moreover, nearly all the pages contained a significant number of non-relevant links. On many pages, non-relevant links outnumbered relevant ones.

Text content: a significant number of pages contained little or no text. These pages were almost all image galleries (there was one Flash movie), with the images being photographs of the subject covered by the keyword.

Originality: a significant number of pages contained content copied from other websites. In all cases, the content was professionally written content apparently distributed on a free-reprint basis. Note: the reprint content did not consist of content feeds. However, no website consisted solely of free-reprint content. There was always at least a significant portion of original content, usually the majority of the page.

Recommendations

• Make sure a professional writer, or at least someone who can tell good writing from bad, is creating your site's content, particularly in the case of a search-engine optimization campaign. If you are an SEO, make sure you get a pro to do the content. A shocking number of SEOs write incredibly badly. I've even had clients whose websites got fewer conversions or page views after their SEOs got through with them, even when they got a sharp uptick in unique visitors. Most visitors simply hit the "back" button when confronted with the unpalatable text, so the increased traffic is just wasted bandwidth.
• If you write your own content, make sure that it passes through the hands of a skilled copyeditor or writer before going online.
• Update your content often. It's important both to add new pages and update existing pages. If you can't afford original content, use free-reprint content.
• Distribute your content to other websites on a free-reprint basis. This will help your website get links in exchange for the right to publish the content. It will also help spread your message and enhance your visibility. Fears of a "duplicate content penalty" for free-reprint content (as opposed to duplication of content within a single website) are unjustified.
• In short, make sure the bulk of your investment in your website is devoted to its content, rather than graphic design, old-school search-engine optimization, or linking campaigns.

Joel Walsh is the owner, founder and head-writer of UpMarket Content. To read more about website content best practices, get a consultation with Mr. Walsh, or get a sample page for your site at no charge, check out this web site content specialist information: http://www.upmarketcontent.com/web-site-content/#seo.

Targeted Article Marketing - Announcing 3 Secrets to Energize Your Article Marketing

Are you currently using article marketing to augment your traffic and profit but can't seem to achieve your desired numbers? Do you often wonder if you are doing something wrong that is why your strategy is not yielding favorable results? Have you tried numerous techniques but they simply don't work? Well, fret no more. This article will teach you the 3 secrets to energize your article marketing campaign. These are:

1. Make sure your articles are posted online. After you submit your articles, make sure that they are posted by checking your account on article submission sites at least 3 days after you have submitted them. Too often, articles are declined due to broken link, inappropriate content, and blatant advertising.

2. Make sure that the articles submission site where you post your articles allows HTML codes. While majority of article submission sites allow you to use HTML codes on your resource box, there are some that does not allow outgoing links. Avoid these sites as they will not do well on your article marketing campaign.

3. Analyze the performance of your articles. By logging to your accounts on various article submission sites, you will get an idea on how often your articles are clicked by online users. If your articles are not being clicked at all, I'd say improve your titles. Make them bolder and more intriguing. It would also help if you can incorporate relevant keywords on your titles so they can easily be found by your potential audience. If however, your articles are frequently viewed but no traffic is directed to your site, consider revising your content or your resource box. It's either that your contents are not useful to your target market or your resource box is very lame.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, 'Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide'

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1574 articles in print and 11 published ebooks.