Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Tips, Search Engine News

The emergence of “Google” as the search engine behemoth and the increased utilization of the Web by an ever-increasing percentage of the consuming public has put increased pressure on Web marketers to improve their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies and executions. The most creative and innovative Web sites, many costing tens of thousands of dollars, are of secondary importance if the objective of the Web strategy is to create awareness and generate “hits.” The Web “crawlers” or “spiders” are very powerful but very stupid when it comes to reading Web sites. They are looking for WORDS and not pictures. The most creative FLASH design means nothing to those spider/crawlers because all they are looking for is the words for which the search is focused. Crawler-based search engines, like Google, “crawl” or “spider” their way through the Web looking for the key word or words the Internet user has entered into the search engine. What is produced is a universe of Web sites usually nu

The most important aspect of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the links pointing to your site. Here, as with most things, quality is more important than quality. If you have a single link to your site from a high-traffic, popular site, it will be worth many times more than hundreds of links from “Free For All” (FFA) sites. Trust me when I say this: DON'T waste your time with FFA submission. The people who market FFA submission make it sound really tempting I know. Who wouldn't want hundreds of links pointing to their site? In my early days, I went on a campaign to get as many FFA links to my site as possible. The only thing it achieved was the vast quantity of utterly useless emails I got each day. In fact, it was so bad that I had to close down that email account. I have found out subsequently from some of the masters of SEO (like say John Reese or Brad Fallon) that it may even be likely that some of the major search engines actually penalise a site that has many FFA in

So often when people encounter seo and want to start optimizing their sites they are lost as to where to begin. Filled with a few helpful and a few not so helpful comments from a forum or article they set out looking for the magic formula that will take their site to the top of the search engines only to get lost in a tangle of misinformation that can often do as much harm as good. To help you get started on your seo journey I have decided to write this tutorial on the basics of seo. The subject of seo is not one that can be covered in a single post so I will continue this tutorial over several posts for the rest of this week and into the next. Even a few posts can’t hope to cover everything there is to know about seo, but a few posts can give you a solid foundation on which to build and add to your seo knowledge. What Is Search Engine Optimization? Ask 10 search engine optimization consultants what seo is and you might get 10 different responses. Different consultants define seo di

If you want to be successful at the Internet Game you need to use these Internet Applications effectively. If you are missing even one of the applications in your marketing portfolio, you are loosing business. * Website * Opt In * Key Word Selection * Email Marketing * Ezines * Banner Advertisements * Affiliate programs * Notifying Internet Portals and Directories * Search Engine Optimization (SEO) * Pay per click * Blogs * Chat Rooms * Message Boards * Opt In * Ebay To give you a better understanding of why these applications are important, let’s briefly discuss each application. Website Your website content is one of the single most important aspects of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It must be well thought out and structured well throughout your site. You will want to be sure you focus on how your product or service solves a problem or pain for the customer. This almost sounds too simple to work, but focusing on what you have to offer and how it solves the customers problem w

Google’s Internet search brand is so strong that we forget how big a player it’s becoming in the world’s advertising markets. Even when we read the latest forecasts about its growing success, we tend to think exclusively about Google’s online brand image. That powerful brand image tends to hold back what Google is becoming and that means they will need to consider changing their brand identity, a common problem for companies today who must navigate changes in business direction amid turbulent market changes. Google is so versatile itself now, that it offers a huge range of services and advertising opportunities. Advertisers can almost take it for granted that their advertising will hit the right target market and the right up-to-the-minute brand impression will take place. Google is Everywhere According to one Sash’s analyst, Google is poised to serve 6.1 billion dollars worth of advertising in the coming year. This makes it fourth among American media companies in total ad sales af

A search engine optimization company can create a campaign to bring you new, targeted leads, and raise your companys online profile, all while keeping in line with your branding strategy. However, you will find that in order to get quality results that last, significant changes will need to be made to your website, from the addition of copy to changes to the code to alterations to the sites design. If your internal resources are already strained to the breaking point, you are probably considering outsourcing your SEO efforts. The search engine optimization company that you select should have the capability to handle all aspects of the project with minimal involvement from your company to save you time and keep your branding strategy intact. Protecting Your Time Your search engine optimization company needs to be respectful of your time by making resources available to handle copywriting, implementation, and keyphrase recommendations, some of the most time-consuming parts of an SEO ca

The business plan is sound enough to get backing from a bank. The administration and management processes are established and the business owners are firmly convinced that, after months or even years of exhaustive study, there is a ready market for the goods, products or services offered by the business. There's even a cute mascot as part of the business logo. By this point, someone in the business has thought about designing a website or to marketing a freshly built site. As an SEO, working with a brand new business is, on some levels much easier than working with an established operation and on others, an extremely challenging experience. While it is simpler to deal with smaller organizations, guiding the owners of a fledgling business through the intricacies of search marketing is complicated by the million and one minor details every new business owner needs to attend to in the weeks preceding their launch date. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of working with a brand new bu

Brian Smith, an independent analyst for the shopping comparison engine industry known for his work at Comparison Engines , has just launched a new service for businesses wishing to simplify the product submittals to shopping search engines. SingleFeed (currently in Beta) simplifies the data feed management and data feed submission process by allowing merchants to create a single feed which covers all the requirements and most important optional fields for Google Base, Shopzilla, Shopping.com, Yahoo! Shopping, PriceGrabber, NexTag, Become, and Smarter.com. SingleFeed checks the feed for errors, walks the merchant through how to fix any errors, manually categorizes the products in the feed, and then submits and automatically re-submits the data feed to the selected shopping comparison engines. Each shopping comparison engine has a unique specification that merchants have to strictly follow in order to submit their products. Filling out a data feed for any one shopping comparison engine

SEO and SEA talk, but IYPs do the walking Search is one of the industry's most discussed subjects these days, and for good reason. It's impossible to deny its power and growth potential. But for all that search does to build brands in the online marketplace, consumers still overwhelmingly choose to shop and spend locally: in stores, offline. According to comScore Networks, only 6 percent of consumer retail spending last year happened online. So how does search fit into the picture? If search-engine optimization (SEO) brings users relevant search results that educate them about brands, and search-engine advertising (SEA) influences and informs shoppers about retailers and service providers, then what actually brings customers into stores to buy? Internet Yellow Pages, or IYPS, don't seem an obvious part of the search process. But IYPS can seal the deal. They serve as highly visible, cost-efficient, relevant, and targeted online fixtures in the final phase of the buying cycl

Recently I've seen some predictions that with the direction search engines are taking, search engine optimzation is going to become obsolete in 5 or more years. That's not too risky of a prediction, since 5 years is literally the half-life of the entire search engine optimization industry. Five years is a lifetime in internet time. Do I think SEO will die a slow death? I think a slowdown in the impact of current SEO methods is a more accurate assessment. That's not much of a prediction either, is it? The rules for effective SEO change more often than the rules for just about any other industry I know. The need to optimize content to be relevant and fixing all the bass ackward web designs and HTML that continues to be pushed out to the web by agencies will never really discontinue. Links are always good for traffic, so link building isn't going away either. If you're a search engine optimization firm, you've got to love all those award-coveting, Flash-obsessing

One of the most popular questions I get when I speak about online marketing is how to drive more traffic to a web site. Eight different techniques for doing just that are outlined below. Save this article, and refer to it for additional ideas whenever you try to expand your online marketing campaigns: - Business Blogging. Start a blog for your business and update it on a regular basis. A business blog is an excellent tool to toot your own horn, let the world know about your new products, and tell your target customers why they should do business with you, rather than your competitor. A business blog is also a great tool for attracting potential customers to your blog and your web site. - Search Engine Optimization (or SEO). SEO is the process of modifying web page content and meta-information to improve the search engine ranking of the page. Successful search engine optimization will greatly increase the number of visitors that come to your web site since over 70% of people who are l

Every year for the past five, MarketingSherpa has conducted a research study into the state of the search engine optimization (SEO) industry -- the hundreds of firms and consultants who help marketers optimize Web sites to gain more search traffic. SEO-driven traffic is the most desirable you can get from search engines. Why? Well, unlike PPC search advertising, there's no cost per click. That's because the traffic comes from so-called "organic" listings, the search results the engine shows naturally without being paid to run your ad. Plus, clicks from these organic listings on average can convert as well -- or even better -- than the clicks from paid ads. The big marketing debate over search engine optimization was not whether to do it -- it's self-evident you'd want to appear at the top of free rankings for keywords important to your brand. No, the big debate has been instead about whether you should do it in-house versus hiring an external expert to help yo

Just like people, search engines have their likes and dislikes too. Knowing this fact, you should do everything you can to appease the search engines. Listed below are 10 search engine optimization techniques that have proven to be very effective with the search engines. 1. Static URL's. Don't use long query strings in your URL's that look like this: http://www.yourdomain.com/seoarticles.phpcategory=17&marketingarticleid=9&page=3 Instead use static URL's that look like this: http://www.yourdomain.com/marketingarticles/9/3/Marketing-Secrets. See the difference? Static URL's are easier for both people and search engines to read, and will increase your search engine rankings dramatically. 2. Keyword Rich URL's. Include the title of the page in the URL. This will increase your pages relevance to the keywords in the pages title. 3. Keyword Rich Titles. The title of a HTML page is rated highly for relevance with search terms by the search engines - especially

Since Google doesn't like to announce what they're doing with their patented search technology, they don't tell us when they change the chief metric for figuring out how to rank your pages in search results. They call it PageRank, and it's incredibly important to rank high in it, as the higher the number, the higher you rank in search results. Google's very hush-hush about when they change the PageRank, but alert people recognize when it's going on. New sites that have a PageRank of 0 will get a huge bump in searches, and pages that have too high a PageRank lose a lot of search engine hits. The most important thing about ranking high is that this also affects your ability to command higher prices in your advertising. Because many websites' entire budget it based on advertising, PageRank can make or break you. To get those search engine clicks, Search Engine Optimization has become a legitimate form of employment. People are making a living off getting your

Most people will quickly run away or surrender without even trying in getting to the top of search engine. For them, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is really not for them. But did you know that once you have conquered the search engine, you have no problem whatsoever to make money online? In fact, your online business will keep on growing without you don't have to do anything. So what if it takes a long time to do, is that mean you just want to throw away your potential income that really can change your life? If you have the desire to make money online more than anyone, you should consider doing this. One method to increase your ranking in the search engine is by using community forums to build one-way links to your site. Create accounts on community forums that are specifically related to your given niche. Once you have contributed significantly to the forum by posting useful information and helping newbies, you can then consider adding a signature that links to your site. T

Many people do anything and everything to get traffic to their website. But what are actually the best ways to get traffic to your website? Well, I decided to narrow it down to two strategies: SEO and PPC. People tend to use one or the other, but throughout this article I want to discuss the benefits of both and why you should use both methods to your advantage. Lets kick things off with SEO... When building the pages of your website, you must choose targeted keywords that represents your website’s theme (remember to make sure your keyword appears high on the page, preferably within the first 100 characters—the spiders love it). Search engine optimization is the way you present those keywords to all the search engines. With seo, you are basically optimizing your pages to make sure that all the search engines know what your pages are about (optimizing your pages also ensures that you will be listed as high as possible on the search results pages for your keywords). Since we want to opt