By: Ron Porter

I can’t remember the last time I surfed the net, keyed in a specific search term, and got only one page of results. Now I get dozens of pages and hundreds, even thousands of hits. Ok, so what am I supposed to do with all these hits? One of the reasons I shop on line is to save time. And what with a gazillion sites entering the online universe every millisecond I’m gonna get beat up with all those hits! The fact is I seldom go beyond the first page and rarely dig deeper than 2 or 3 pages. So what about all those great nuggets buried deeper than the first or second page?

Research indicates that 62% of users “…click on a search result within the first page of results.” An amazing 90% of users click on result within the first 3 pages. Let’s see, about 10 results per page = 30 results for 3 pages. Hmmm, that’s a problem for the other 970 businesses that want your money. So, how do those other 970 sites get eyeballs? Enter the magic and science of Search Engine Optimization.

Getting your website to rise through all the clutter and appear at the top, or near the top, of a search requires is a combination of sponsored and organic search. To be truly effective and cost efficient for either technique, your site needs to be optimized.

A whopping $643 million was spent on search-engine optimization in the U.S. and Canada in 2005, according to Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, an industry group with more than 600 members. Sound like a lot of money? That’s because it is. But it represents only about 11 percent of the $5.75 billion spent on all forms of search-engine marketing. By 2010, total search-engine marketing is estimated to be an $11.1 billion industry! This stuff is real.

Search-engine optimization is complex and it requires staying up-to-date on all the changes within the various search-engine algorithms. If you’ve got time to do that, cool. If not, go hire an expert to get it right for you. Your expert will likely focus on three key areas to ensure your site is search engine friendly; Architecture, Links, and Content.

Architecture refers to the way a site is structured. In any given Internet search, a site that is built search engine friendly will invariably appear above a site that is not.

Links are defined as websites linking to other website. The more relevant sites that link to it, the more search engines will consider it to be a trusted and valuable site, putting it higher on the list.

Content is comprised of all the text, keywords, headlines, image names, and etc on a given site. The over all theme of the site must be relevant and consistent from a content point of view in order for the search engines to make the most of it. The best rule of thumb here is: if the content helps your users get where and what they want, it will have the same effect for search engines. What I’m saying here is don’t sacrifice your users experience for the search engine. You can have your web cake and eat it too!

Article Source: http://www.ArticleJoe.com

About The Author

Writing about the importance of Search Engine optimization, Ron E. Porter says here about the key factors to focus on while going for the Search Engine Marketing techniques. Ron E. Porter has 24 years of rich experience in the high tech industry with various companies. For more information on Search Engine Optimization, Software Engineering Outsource, Web Traffic Monetization, Web Content Creation, Link Building services, please visit www.castlewave.com.

By: Luat Tran Van

You have two choices to consider when trying get your site ranked higher in search engines. You can hire a Search Engine Optimization Company that is an expert in the field or if you have some time, you can do it yourself.

Research your Keywords

Ask yourself what keywords you think someone might type in when searching for products you sell or services you provide. Though a keyword may be only one word it is usually a phrase made up of keywords. Phrases are more specific and will more than likely be what potential customers use when searching for products or services online.

After a quick brainstorming session write down all that you were able to come up with. Make sure to consider geographical phrases if they are important to your customers and don’t forget of alternative words that could be used (an example could be “new car Littleton”). Make sure to surf the websites of your competition to get more ideas until you can come up with a list in the neighborhood of 20 to 30.

Now you should take two keywords from your list that you feel potential customers will use most frequently. Take into consideration that popular keywords are also competitive keywords and harder to achieve higher ranking with. If your goal is to obtain a high ranking for the term “auto insurance”, the path to achieving it may be long. Try to make your keywords the ones that are most related to your business and not riddled with vagueness or extremely competitive. Make each phrase about two or three words in length like the previous example.

Now that we have your keywords we will move on to the next step.

Site Text

Your site text is made up of the wording that is on your web page. There is a phrase for search engines and it is content is king. Search engines love unique content and your keywords should be placed in key locations within the content so Google understands the relevance your site has to them. Also make sure that your copy reads well around them as it needs to make sense for your visitors who are most important.

Keywords can be placed in headings, at the top of pages, in bold or italics, used as link text for other pages of your site and in your title tag.

Add additional content after you are finished tuning up your webpage. Give more detailed descriptions of the products and services you offer. Provide a frequently asked questions page and pages of articles that pertain to your products or services.

With your design you should keep in mind that search engines cannot read images nearly as well as text. Sites that are made up with excessive flash or pictures really impede how well they can read the content of your site.

Link Building

A common way of thinking about links is that every link from another site that leads to yours is a vote for the popularity of your site. Every quality link you receive can improve your search rankings.

The quality of your inbound links is more vital than the quantity. The preferred and more valuable link is from sites that are relevant to your niche and with authority (highly regarded in the niche). A quality directory with relevant categories is another example. Just a few quality links with authority can have more value for your site than hundreds of lesser quality. Think of it like you do your personal business network. Both can have a strong effect on the success or failure of your business.

Take time to consider all the other relevant websites in your niche such as organizations, industry affiliates and non-competing companies. Send them a email introducing yourself, your products and services and explain how your website could benefit their visitors. Then politely suggest that they create a link to your website from theirs.

Record the Results

Over time you should watch and record your search engine rankings by doing a Google search for your chosen keywords to see where you rank. You can also monitor where your visitors are coming from by watching your hosting reports. Do this for each significant page of your website.

Continue to add to your websites content and increase the links to your website over time. This needs to be an ongoing effort for as long as you want visitors to your website.

As you continue to record the results of your efforts you should see the traffic increase and with that your sales. Know where your visitors are coming from so you can continually monitor your marketing efforts successes. Only by measuring it do you know where and how to improve it.

About The Author

Visit the Authority Web Directory to increase your websites online marketing presence. Plus, you can read more industry information at the Authority Blog.

Article Source: http://greatarticlesformoms.com

By: Jim Pretin

Google is by far the most important search engine on the net. To rise to the top of their search engine, you need to improve your link popularity and you need to understand how they measure your link popularity (over 50% of all search engine traffic comes from Google, and if you can rise to the top, you will likely rise to the top of all the other search engines as well).

Link popularity is defined as the number of sites that are linking to your site. Some websites have thousands or even millions of sites linking to them, while others might have only a few. The search engines use the number of inbound links your site has as a measure of how important your site is, which translates into your search engine ranking.

The actual number of links to your site is not the only variable used to calculate your link popularity. The search engines also examine the relevance of the links to the subject matter of your site. For example, if a website that sells vitamins has 4,000 inbound links, but the source of most of the links are websites that have nothing to do with vitamins, then the algorithm that search engines use to determine link popularity will take that into account, and the link popularity score will not be very good.

It is possible for a website with a relatively small number of quality inbound links to be ranked higher than a site with a bunch of irrelevant or insignificant links. If I have a website that offers quotes for auto insurance, and I have 800 quality inbound links, then I might receive a much higher search engine ranking than another mortgage site that has 3,000 links that stem from link farms or Free For All (FFA) pages.

If you try to acquire inbound by using link farms or FFA pages, not only will it hurt your search engine ranking, but you might get permanently removed from the search engine listings. Links farms are sites where you can instantly exchange links with all the sites listed in that directory. FFA pages are pointless link directories. The search engines usually discount any links that come from either of these sources.

Now that we understand what link popularity is and how it works, we need to look specifically at how Google measures it. They use a number of variables in their algorithm to calculate your overall link score. The higher your score, the higher you will be ranked in the search listings.

One factor that Google uses in their algorithm, obviously, is the total number of sites linking to you. The more links you have, the higher your score will be. However, their algorithm is a little more complicated than that, and it is possible for a website with fewer links to be ranked higher than a website that has more links.

The reason for this is because Google also measures the quality of your links. If your website is about vitamins, and the site linking to you is a video game site, then that is not considered a quality link. The link still helps your score, but the link would help your score much more if it were from a website whose subject matter is the same as yours.

Also, Google gives a higher score to a link if it comes from a page that has actual content that relates to your keywords. For example, if your site is about jewelry, and another jewelry website has posted a link to your site on their links page, that link is not as valuable as a link to your site coming from a blog or a message board where a lot of information about jewelry is being written or discussed.

Also, they give an even higher score to a link if it contains anchor text that matches one of the keywords that describes your site. For example, if I have a site that sells lawnmowers, and a blog about lawnmowers has posted a link to my site, it helps my score even more if the link text (also known as anchor text) is LAWNMOWERS. To learn more about anchor text, go to a search engine and look up ANCHOR TEXT and you will be able to learn about it.

Another factor used by Google to score your link popularity is the diversity of keywords contained on sites linking to you. For example, if you have a site that sells handbags, and all the links to your site are from other sites that contain nothing but the keyword HANDBAGS, Google considers that to be abnormal. To get a higher score, you need to have links coming from sites that contain a variety of keywords related to handbags, such as BUY HANDBAGS, LEATHER HANDBAGS, etc.

It is difficult to increase your link popularity, but now that you understand how your score is calculated, you can devise a plan to improve your score. You might want to consider posting to forums and blogs that contain information that is related to your site, and when you post, include a link to your site.

Article Source: http://www.article-buzz.com

Information about the Author:

Jim Pretin is the owner of www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make an HTML form.

By: Rajeev Guglani

SEO is divided into on page optimization and off page optimization. On page is which can be done to website itself and off page is which is done away from the website. Creation of right title for a webpage is classified as on page optimization. On the other hand creation of inbound links and their anchor text is termed as off page optimization.

On page optimization is one of the forms of search engine optimization. This acts as the vital requirement which is necessary to improve website rankings in major search engines like Google, yahoo and msn. In this process the elements of website are designed in this way that website is able to qualify for high search engine ranking on the basis of certain specific keywords. These are the basics which are often ignored by webmaster. They try to spend most of their time getting links to their site. If you want to make a successful online web presence, on page optimization is must. In on page optimization you need to have keyword in title tag and should also appear few times on the page.

Your website is focused on a theme, service or product. You need to select a unique keyword for it and this is the keyword on the main index page. Rest is secondary keywords associated with the main keyword. So there should be separate pages for secondary and associating keywords.

Your web page title tag must contain the keyword. It should be that word which you are targeting on a specific page. Do not use irrelevant words or website name in your keywords.

Make two sitemaps for your website. One site map is for a visitor that is in html format and other is for search engine which is in xml form.

Put quality content in all the pages of website and interlink on those pages on the basis of keywords used in the content.

Put emphasis on the keyword density. Keyword need to be there related with the product, services or the theme of the web page. Only on the basis of these the users are able to search for it in the search engines. Make sure keyword should used for a selected number of times so that keyword stuffing does not occur. So recommended keyword density is 5%.

Ensure your target keywords are used in h1 tag and displayed as strong italic and bold text wherever required. Make a practice to use the keyword in your opening paragraph at least once or twice and near to the bottom of page.

Every page of the website must have two Meta tags in the head section and other for your web page description and other for your web page main and secondary keywords.

Do not build a website with many pages in a short time, the search engines see the steady growth of website with the content and the number of pages they search for. Focus on providing the visitors the relevant information which they require.

Every image on the website must have an associated alt tag that must describe the image and include the content part.

Put emphasis on the inbound links.

Thus on page optimization factors are the base for search engine optimization for a website and which can not be ignored.

Article Source: http://www.ArticleJoe.com

Rajeev Guglani writes articles for SEO. He has vast exposure in writing for Search Engine marketing. He is working for NDDW. For on page optimization, Google optimization and www.nddw.com/search-engine-marketing-services.htm Search Engine Marketing visit www.nddw.com/

By: Ben Anton

The use of appropriate key words is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization. Selecting and targeting pertinent key words and phrases is crucial for building web traffic and getting the audience you want for your web pages. Like any other type of advertisement, your key words must be carefully chosen to ensure that you achieve both high page rankings and relevant traffic. Achieving high page ranks is useless if the traffic it brings you is not the right audience. For this reason, many experts believe that the target key word list used for a site can mean either success or failure for a web site or online business.

It is no longer enough to simply choose a relevant domain name for an online business or web site. Choosing the right key words for the site is now equally if not more important. The majority of people who visit a site get there by using a search engine. They will type in two or three words that describe what they’re looking for, scan the resulting list generated and pick one that seems relevant until they get the answer or product they need. This is where target key words are utilized. Key words are what enable people to find your site; choosing the right key words for your site will ensure the right people find you.

With this in mind, identifying your target audience is the first step in creating relevant key words and phrases. Again, this is not dissimilar to targeting television advertisements. Consider location when you are developing your target market. For example, if you own a used car dealership in Hayward, California, any traffic you get from outside a very specific area is virtually useless to you. Similarly, if you operate an online business that does not ship outside the USA, generating traffic from other countries will not help you make sales. By adding key words that are specific to your location as well as your product, you will better hone into your target audience, improve your rankings, and achieve a better conversion rate, which will help increase your site’s page ranking, in turn.

Keyword competition should also be taken into consideration when developing a site’s key word list. Going back to the used car dealership example, let’s say a potential customer types in the word “cars” into a search engine. They’ll never find what they need, because it’s far too general—generating around 500,000,000 different sites to choose from. Typing in “used cars” generates almost 70,000,000. That’s still too many to deal with effectively. Using “used cars Hayward” generates almost 900,000 hits, and narrowing the focus even further by using the zip code rather than the city name reduces it to less than 25,000.

Choosing key words for your web site works the same way. If your key words are too general, your target audience will never find your site, because the search terms generate so many web sites that it is impossible to look through them all. However, if you go too far in the opposite direction and use too many key words, or key words which are too specific, you risk losing business as well. The best key word phrases are no more than three words in length.

So how do you choose the right key words? The first step is brainstorming with colleagues, friends or an SEO professional, to come up with a list of 20 or more appropriate key words. The Google Keyword Tool is an excellent place to research key words. By entering key words into this tool it will give you an idea of the popularity of certain words and offers you alternative key words and phrases.

Once you have a good list of terms, you may want to refine it to call out the strongest terms that have the best potential for sales or traffic conversion. There are several good online research tools available, which can help you decide which words will be most effective for you. Some good examples are WordTracker and Keyword Discovery. These sites may charge a fee for using their database. After reviewing the terms, eliminate the key words that rank poorly or are very unpopular, then prioritize the remaining terms according to search popularity. These terms will become the keywords you will want to focus your initial SEO campaign on.

Always remember that when it comes to key words, you are focusing on optimizing your traffic rather than maximizing it. Setting up the right keyword list for optimization is the cornerstone to a successful web site.

~Ben Anton, 2007

Article Source: http://www.article-buzz.com

Information about the Author:

Ben Anton is a writer for Mad Fish Info, a search engines optimization consulting firm in Portland, OR. Mad Fish Info conducts extensive keyword research, SEO content creation and search engine strategy development for any sized company.