How To Choose the Right Domain Name

Having the right domain name can be the difference between success or failure for your business. You may wonder how something so small and slight could have an impact on your business, but the best way to compare this is to think about how important location is to an off line business? If you do not have a good location, you are likely not going to get many visitors. The same holds true for a good domain name as well.

Here, you will discover the six qualities that a good domain name must have to ensure maximum success.

1) Memorable

A good domain name must be memorable. Yes, we have the option of bookmarking a site that we enjoy; however, the hard truth is that many people do not take advantage of bookmarking. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that your domain name is one that is easy to remember and makes an impact. It should be easy, memorable, and straight forward.

Avoid complexity and it is usually a good idea to avoid initials in most cases. The only exception to this rule would be if the letters represented the website name or business and was still easy to remember.

2) Short and Sweet

Twenty characters is the maximum that you should use for a good domain name, ten is even better. A long and complicated domain name is not going to help you. Your best bet is to keep it short and sweet. A great domain name is less than ten characters; a good domain name is less than twenty characters. A bad domain name goes over twenty characters.

3) Be Choosy On Your Extension

There are several domain extensions available to you such as .com, .net, .org, .tv, .info, .gov and so on. However, some of these work better than others and are more memorable at the same time. It is important to understand that some extensions also have restrictions such as .gov is reserved specifically for government websites. The .com domain name extension is the best by far, because it is the most widely used.

The .net extension is the second best, but be prepared most people will type .com before they will .net if they cannot remember which extension you use. The type of extension you use might also have a bearing on the type of website. Some people have come to expect certain things when a particular extension. For example, .org is typically used by not-for-profit organization and educational websites. The .info extensions are generally used for informational websites.

4) Spelling Means Everything

Having a difficult to spell domain name could cause you some trouble. Again, many do not even make use of bookmarks; therefore, if your domain name is hard to spell, they may end up at a competitor's website.

A good domain name contains only words that are easy to pronounce, have a good combination of words or letters that are used in every day language, and does not contain foreign words that may be difficult to non-native speakers.

5) Tells a Story

A good domain name should be descriptive and tell a story. In other words, when your visitors, customers, or potential customers see your domain name they should instantly be able to tell what they are going to find. For instance, if it is your business, a business name is good.

6) Avoid Fancy Symbols

It is never a good idea to use numbers or hyphens within your domain name. Even if your domain name is memorable, many people will not pay attention to the symbols, which could lead them to someone else's website.

No matter what type of online business you run or plan on launching, choosing the right domain name is one of the most important things you can do. Follow the suggestions here and you'll be sure to come out on top.

About the Author: Joseph Nyamache has the worst domain name. Learn not to make the same mistakes at expired domain names blog.

What You Should Know About Google Trends

Google Trends has recently expanded to include traffic analysis for websites. However, the expansion, has the added dimension of users being very upset about a perceived breach of confidence, because users assume (and have no reason not to) that Google Analytics data is one of the varied sources of input from which traffic estimates are calculated.

While Google Trends has been showing trends in keyword demand since 2006, the ability to view estimated site traffic is its biggest update so far.

At first, some people jumped the gun and believed that the data came straight from Google Analytics. This is incorrect, as Google Trends shows traffic estimates even for sites that don't use Google Analytics.

The rationale for being a little disturbed about such a tool is still understandable, especially with the growing number of sites that utilize Google Analytics. After all, signing in to your Google Analytics account requires a password, from which one can infer that preventing the "wrong" user from accessing the data is important to Google. The sudden release of information that is similar to Google Analytics data has users wondering whether that privacy really is important to Google.

On the other hand, many people have pointed out that services like Alexa, Hitwise, and comScore already offer similar traffic estimates with little or no objection from the masses. Of course, the counter to that argument is that Web sites typically provide no information directly to these third parties in the way that many of them offer analytics data to Google.

Reality

Love it or hate it, right now there's little you can do to hide your site's statistics, short of taking your site offline. Even excluding your site via robots.txt would probably do little good because Google uses "a variety of sources" to estimate traffic.

To make the tool valuable to you, the first thing you should do is contrast what Google Trends says about your site's traffic with your site's actual traffic. (If your site doesn't show up yet in Google Trends, it's because a site needs to achieve a certain, undefined threshold of visits before it will show up on the Trends radar. I hope this threshold will become lower over time.) Don't be concerned with actual numbers matching up. Instead, watch to see whether the peaks, valleys, and flat periods in Google Trends correspond to your own site's data.

If the two data sources have lines that look similar when you overlay one to another, then it becomes more likely that the data is fairly reliable. Google is very "vertically" oriented (as proven by their close monitoring of sites "related" to the sites in a Trends report), so it's likely that other sites in your vertical will have Google Trends traffic reporting that are roughly as accurate (or inaccurate) as reports for your own site.

Start watching your competitors' sites closely, including their AdWords campaigns, any on-site SEO efforts, or third-party advertising. Compare those initiatives with their Google Trends traffic reporting to see how worthwhile those efforts were for them. In addition, look closely at the "Also Searched For" list of terms, and make sure that you're integrating those into your keyword strategies, if the terms are at all applicable.

You might be unhappy about Google showing traffic data for sites, or you might not care. Regardless, it's probably not going away soon, so settle back and learn how you can make it work for your site.

Erik Dafforn is the executive vice president of Intrapromote LLC, an SEO firm headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. Erik manages SEO campaigns for clients ranging from tiny to enormous and edits Intrapromote's blog, SEO Speedwagon. Prior to joining Intrapromote in 1999, Erik worked as a freelance writer and editor. He also worked in-house as a development editor for Macmillan and IDG Books. Erik has a Bachelor's degree in English from Wabash College

Acquiring Links Through Link Directory Submission

Building high quality links to your website is one of the most important things that you can do to improve your search engine rankings. Each link serves as a vote in favor of your website (this is the way the search engines see it). Acquiring high quality links for your site can be very time consuming; however, it is a very important thing to do if you want to get great search engine rankings.

Link Directories Can Help

Using link directories is one of the best ways to get quality links to your site. Just so you know, a link directory is a web site that has a large aggregation of links which are organized by topic. People who are searching for a particular type of web site will use link directories as an alternative to doing a search engine query.

There are thousands upon thousands of link directories out there to choose from. I recently typed the keywords 'link directories' in to Google and received 1,120,000 hits.

When you submít your site to a link directory, it is edited by a human. Your submission will either be accepted or rejected, depending on the quality of your site and whether it is relevant to the directory you are submitting to. If your site gets accepted, the users of the link directory will consider your site to be credible. Also, the search engines love links that point to your website from quality link directories.

You will want to have your link placed on as many link directories as you can. There are three reasons for doing this. First, you will get targeted traffíc to your site when people search the directory for your type of site. Second, you will improve your search engine rankings as your link popularity increases. Third, having links from link directories will help your web site pages to get indexed quickly.

Some Features Of Link Directories

When you submít to a link directory, you are usually given 3 choices that look something like this:

• Featured Links
• Regular Links

Regular Links With Reciprocal

The featured links will normally keep your listing towards the top of the list. There is always a charge for featured links (this is one of the ways that link exchanges make their money). The trouble here is that if a lot of people are buying featured links for a particular category, you may still be pushed quite a way down the list.

With a lot of link directories, the regular links and the regular links with reciprocal are offered for free. When I submit to directories, I always choose regular links and I only choose free ones. Listen, there is such an overwhelming number of link directories out there, that if you start paying for your submissions, you will quickly empty your bank account. There are plenty of free ones to choose from (just type free link directories into Google, and you will be surprised at the numbers).

A final note here is always choose the regular link (one way) as opposed to the reciprocal option. These days, search engines consider one way links to be more valuable than reciprocal links (reciprocal links are still OK, but they are not as good as one way links).

Link directories are ranked by Google just like any other web site. The range in page rank will be between 0 and 8. You will want to spread your submissions between all of the page rank values. This will make your links look more natural in the eyes of the search engines.

The Submission Process

There are basically three ways that you can carry out the submission process.

1. Sign in to your favorite search engine and type in "free link directories". You will get enough hits here to keep you busy with submitting for the rest of your days.

2. Purchase one of the many link directory submission software packages out there. These packages are normally semi-automated and will save you a huge amount of time.

3. You can pay someone to do the submitting for you. There are plenty of web sites that will offer to do your submissions for a fee, but be careful, as some of them are quite spammy. Make sure to do your due diligence first.

Remember the importance of using link directories as a key strategy for gaining targeted traffíc to your website.

About The Author
John Baril lives in Delta, British Columbia, Canada. Check out his affiliate marketing website: www.wealth-dynamo.com

Improve Web Page Conversion Through Effective Testing

Generating traffic to your website can be expensive. Therefore, you need to make the most of the traffic you receive. Testing your website pages, especially landing pages, squeeze pages and sales pages is one of the most profitable things you can do to tweak your pages and gain higher conversions. On top of that, you can learn more about copywriting though split tests and other means of testing your web pages than any other way.

Back in the days of mail order marketing, testing sales letters and catalogs gathered more real information about new concepts and ideas than through most other methods of research at that time. In these days of the internet, the bell even rings louder.

You can test whole concepts of your pages to find out what emotional triggers and core desires your market truly respond to. Simply test two or three versions of your sales page that each focus on a separate theme or slant on the product or service. The page that pulls the most conversions will give you the answers you are looking for.

In this day of fierce online competition, testing is something you should, no must do to gain the highest conversions from your website and pages. If you're not actively testing your pages, your competition will soon pass you by.

What Exactly Should You Be Testing?

The simple answer is: Everything! Everything on your pages and in your sales message is a contributing factor to your conversion rate. This includes your headline, opening paragraphs, body copy, your offer, post scripts, background color, font, font colors, images and every imaginable component of your page in between.

Volumes of information have been written about what to test and how to test your web pages. This work is extensive, so when you begin to test, I suggest you concentrate your first efforts on the three areas that have been shown to have the most impact on your sales page, the headline, the first three (or four) opening paragraphs, and your offer.

In this article, I will focus on Headlines as they are the critical element of your page.

Testing Headlines

Headline changes can have the most impact on your conversion rate and response of these three components. 75 - 80% of your visitors will never read past the headline. It doesn't matter how wonderful you have written your sales page, if the headline doesn't work correctly and do its job of getting people to read on, your page will be a failure.

In order for your headline to be effective, you have to discover the biggest core desires within your market to feed. The best headline test are based around the different core desires and motivating reasons why people would be interested in your product or service.

Testing different headlines around different concepts will tell you which one is more appealing to your market audience. Once you have the key concepts and desires tested and you have discovered which one works best, you then go to work tweaking your headline in more alluring and persuasive ways.

Split testing is generally used to test headlines. In the beginning, you will probably want to use simple A/B split testing but if you are dealing with high volume traffic and high price sales, you may want to consider speeding up the process with multi-variate testing.

What Type of Headline Format Do You Test?

There are some classic headline formats that have been shown to be effective over time that you can begin with. There's the "If/Then" headline, "Amazing Secrets of ..." headline, the "Who Else Wants to ..." headline, and of course the classic "How to ..." headline.

Test as many headlines as you can think up for your web page. In fact, you should never stop testing different headlines on your page. A simple 10% increase in your conversions could result in hundreds to tens of thousands of dollar or more. Testing your headlines could bring an increase of 50%, 100%, or even 200% or more in the response your web page brings.

Focus your energy on increasing conversions and making the most of your traffic. Doing so can reduce costs and increase profitability.

About the Author: Jim Bruce is a SEO Web Consultant and writes frequently about search engine optimization techniques and search marketing. You can find out more about these topics by going to Ristvin Marketing.

Improve Rankings With Link Building: Old vs. New

Link building is an essential part of any SEO campaign. The question I most often get is, "who should I be getting links from?" I've always believed that you need to prioritize based on Google PR. Others believe differently. Here is a great post on the subject from Justilien Gaspard of Search Engine Watch.

We've all heard it -- people don't want links from new Web sites. Why? It's assumed that new sites don't have enough quality backlinks, and haven't earned "trust" in Google to pass real value. However, if you flatly skip over links from new sites, you're losing out on immense opportunities. It's time to rethink the matter.

I admit to having encouraged this line of thinking by telling people to go after links from old, trusted sites. Going after high-value targets is just one strategy. Even with that strategy, you cannot skip over new sites without any analysis.

That would be like a stockbroker refusing to consider a stock that hasn't been around for at least 20 years, or an employer refusing to look at resumes from people who haven't been in the workforce at least 15 years.

Today's new site could be tomorrow's rock star. Most successful companies start small. Cisco Systems was started in a garage by a married couple. GE was started in a barn. Starbucks started as a single coffee store in a public market. The same holds true of Web sites. Most sites, just as traditional businesses, start small unless a large corporation develops it.

If a large corporation is developing the new site, go after the link because the site has a greater likelihood of success. Usually such sites will have a superb promotional budget -- not to mention links from the corporation's site(s) to jumpstart it.

What to look for?

Usually, you can easily sift through sites by learning how they're handling promotions. Look for those sites with marketing budgets, as those will be the safest bet. Be careful of sites that think they're the "best" and expect the world to magically discover them. We all know the type and have heard the pitch.

Advertising Campaigns

Find out what type of advertising the site is doing. It might just surprise you to find out they have a targeted advertising program going after specific demographics. Most will gladly share with you what magazines, journals, newspapers, television and other media outlets they're advertising with. Also, find out if they're running a PPC campaign.

The Real PR (Public Relations)

Find out what type of PR campaigns they're running. This might be in-house, or through an agency. Discover where they're trying to get publicity. They may already have several mentions in mainstream media.

Quality of Backlinks

Examining the site's backlinks can tell you a great deal about the quality of the promotions. If it looks like they're gaining links from quality sites, then they're on the right track and worth your time. Are there links from the media or industry sites? Go for it! If all their links are from blog comments, template links in blog themes, or low-value link trades, move on.

Serial Entrepreneur?

Is the site being developed by a company that has a record of successful Web sites? There are many large and small publishers who have a solid history of developing and promoting Internet properties. They've learned from their previous successes and failures. These types of sites generally will provide much more value over time than the new Webmasters that still operate under the fallacy, "build it and they will come."

The point is not to skip over link opportunities just because a site is new. Instead, find out if they're doing a notable job of promotions. The more they promote their site, the more valuable links from it will become over time. Think of it as investing in the stock market. Look for undervalued, or unnoticed, sites that have a high likelihood of rising in popularity.

Reaching the Top of Google and Other Major Search Engines

How are some websites getting #1 Google rankings? It is a little industry term called "SEO" and it stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO basically consists of the customization of your website, its content and its internal and external links to assist in the overall indexing and ranking of your website in popular search engines. There are many contributing factors that are used in determining a website's ranking and every search engine is different. This makes trying to optimize your site for Google, Yahoo, Live and the many others quite a pain staking task.

As most of us are aware, Google is currently the most popular search engine for the majority of Internet users. As such, it is only normal that we'd want to focus our sights on achieving a higher ranking within Google first with a hope that the rest will follow. To do this, we must start a journey that could potentially take months before we start seeing any real change, however we have to start somewhere.

Our journey begins by defining some of the key contributing factors that Google uses to determine a website and web page's ranking within its results. These factors range from keyword use to manipulating internal and external links and the list goes on. To get you started, we have listed the top twenty factors that you should focus on in order to help get your website that little bit closer to the top of the search engine results listing.

Keyword Use Factors

The following components relate to the use of the user's search query terms in determining the rank of a particular page.

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag - Placing the targeted search term or phrase in the title tag of the web page's HTML header.

2. Keyword Use in Body Text - Using the targeted search term in the visible, HTML text of the page.

3. Relationship of Body Text Content to Keywords - Topical relevance of text on the page compared to targeted keywords.

4. Keyword Use in H1 Tag - Creating an H1 tag with the targeted search term/phrase.

5. Keyword Use in Domain Name & Page URL - Including the targeted term/phrase in the registered domain name, i.e. keyword.com plus target terms in the webpage URL, i.e. seomoz.org/keyword-phrase.

Page Attributes

The following elements comprise how the Google interprets specific data about a webpage independent of keywords.

6. Link Popularity within the Site's Internal Link Structure - Refers to the number and importance of internal links pointing to the target page 7. Quality/Relevance of Links to External Sites/Pages - Do links on the page point to high quality, topically-related pages? 8. Age of Document - Older pages may be perceived as more authoritative while newer pages may be more temporally relevant 9. Amount of Indexable Text Content - Refers to the literal quantity of visible HTML text on a page 10. Quality of the Document Content (as measured algorithmically) - Assuming search engines can use text, visual or other analysis methods to determine the validity and value of content, this metric would provide some level of rating.

Site/Domain Attributes

The factors below contribute to Google's rankings based on the site/domain on which a page resides.

7. Global Link Popularity of Site - The overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web (both link quality and quantity) 12. Age of Site - Not the date of original registration of the domain, but rather the launch of indexable content seen by the search engines (note that this can change if a domain switches ownership) 13. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site - The subject-specific relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword 14. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world 15. Rate of New Inbound Links to Site - The frequency and timing of external sites linking in to the given domain.

Inbound Link Attribute

These pieces affect Google's weighting of links from external websites pointing to a page and ultimately will assist in the ranking of that page.

8. Anchor Text of Inbound Link.

Negative Crawling/Ranking Attributes

There are also some points we should make before you start getting your hands dirty. With any type of SEO marketing, there are some things that can actually have a negative impact on your ranking. These following components may negatively affect a spider's ability to crawl a page or its rankings at Google.

* Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots.

* Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content in the Index.

* External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites.

* Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages.

* Overuse of Targeted Keywords (Stuffing/Spamming).

It's now time to get busy! Start prioritizing your tasks, modifying your content and building your internal and external links to meet some of the above guidelines. Keep in mind that improving indexing is mostly a technical task, improving ranking is mostly a business/marketing strategy, what might work now may not work in the future and finally, it takes time. Loads of time. Still, with a bit of trial and error and a good dose of persistence, you can achieve the search engine ranking you're after.
About the Author:
Jon Bergan is the owner of Bergan Blue, an Australian based creative design firm focused on bridging the gap between the online world of the Internet with the offline world of Marketing. Please visit http://www.berganblue.com.au for more information.

Marketing With Video

Video marketing is taking hold. With the ease of developing video and adding it to your website or emails, taking advantage of this marketing medium is essential for marketing professionals and businesses the world over.

Technology has created video marketing opportunities - cable TV, email marketing, websites and video - for small businesses to be on an even playing field with large companies. From extremely inexpensive video streaming in an email to the full-production TV ad with hired actors, even small companies and home-based businesses can include video advertising in their budget.

You might be asking why you should consider it at all when your current advertising is working just fine. Aside from the fact that adding another strategy to your marketing plan is a good idea, videos are very personal. Who better to discuss your service or product than you? It brings a familiarity to you and your company, which allows the prospect to feel like they already know you. If the message is directed to your current customer base, seeing and hearing you gives the feeling that you are presenting your message directly to them.

There are professional videos and way too often, not so professional videos. Most of us cringe when we hear a car salesman screaming about a wonderful deal waiting for you if you'll come down RIGHT NOW! Or the windows and siding guy who squawks about the fantastic savings if you call within the next 30 minutes (but the ad runs all day long). These are stereotypes of TV advertising available for the small business owner. But it doesn't have to be that way!

Cable TV ads can be very cost effective because you can be specific where your ad dollars will be spent. The cable company has demographic statistics so you can learn what programs are viewed most frequently by your target market then select where (as specific as the zip codes) and when you want your ads to run. The variety of shows cable companies have in their lineup provides a fantastic choice for the advertiser. In addition, they can also slot your ad in during the Big 3 networks' shows as well.

Videos aren't only just for cable TV. There are many companies that create videos which can be linked to websites, newsletters, social networking sites and email signature lines. They serve many purposes from advertising to introducing a new product or service to just send a keeping-in-touch message to current clients. These videos are also used for on-line training and even instructions to learn how to use a new networking website (http://www.OneDegreeConnected.com). Some are scripted, while others are produced to simulate a talk show format. Compare cost as well as professionalism. This form of advertising can be extremely high-quality or can be an embarrassment to your company's image. Get referrals! View some of the finished productions of each company you are considering before signing any contract.

You can even create your own video while sitting in your office. Do you have a video camera or a video cam connected to your computer? You're all set to create your own video stream to be placed in emails or on your website. A word of caution is to make sure it's not too long. Keep it less than 90 seconds and you'll usually keep the viewer's interest.

Video has created the opportunity for business owners to star in their own commercials. Consider the scenarios mentioned earlier of what video advertising could - but shouldn't - be. Luckily, these are the exception and not the rule; most ads are professional from writing the ad copy to the production. Of course, it's important to remember that the familiar saying "junk in, junk out" holds true for video more than any other media. You're dealing with three methods of presenting the message: content, visual and audio.

Therefore, if you choose to take part in your videos, it's best to receive some coaching prior to production. Accent On Business (http://www.accentonbusiness.net), known throughout the United States, will help you with voice and presentation skills. Public speakers, politicians, sports figures, CEOs and others consult with a professional voice and speech coach; so should you. You will have total control over what needs to be said, but they will help you say it with the professionalism that will provide the image you want to present.

New technology has made video marketing very affordable even for the smallest budget. There are a variety of opportunities and one will certainly fit your budget. Consider video in your next marketing plan. You'll find a new media that will present your company with a fresh message and make it personal.

About the Author: Cindy Hartman invites you to view her marketing video at http://www.HartmanInventory.com to discover why you need a personal property inventory.

Today's Top 10 Tips for Search Engine OptimizationToday's Top 10 Tips for Search Engine Optimization

Looking for ways to improve your search engine rankings? Some of the best advice is to think outside the box. Here are a few tips that made it onto a list of more than 50 of the best SEO tips of all time!

Be bold. Use the tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.

Deep linking. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site.

Become a foreigner. Canada and the UK have many directories for websites of companies based in those countries. Can you get a business address in one of those countries?

Newsletters. Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.

First come, first served. If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won't follow additional links to the same page. You can see this in action at the link to the home page on this web site monitoring page

Multiple domains. If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Why not a site dedicated to gumbo pudding pops?

Article exchanges. You've heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else's article on the history of pudding pops with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in Viet Nam, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links. (More on high quality links in other tips.)

Titles for links. Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.

Not anchor text. Don't overdo the anchor text. You don't want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation - something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, "Gumbo Pudding Pop" occasionally, "Get gumbo pudding pops" as well, "Gumbo-flavored pudding pops" some other times, etc.

Site map. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It's called the navigation bar. See how the second navigation bar at the bottom of Last Minute Villas is like a mini-site map?

SEO is your friend... but try to stay in front of the curve - doing more than just the basic search engine optimization required by most leading engines.

How Search Engine Spiders View Your Website and What To Do About It

Everyone looking to improve search engine rankings for their website starts by looking at Web pages with the eye of a search engine spider. Once you start down that path, the journey of SEO becomes a lot easier.

The first thing to remember is that the search engines rank "pages", not "sites". What this means is that you will not achieve a high ranking for your site by attempting to optimize your main page for twenty different keyword phrases. However, different pages of your site will appear up the list for different key phrases if you optimize each page for just one of them.

If you can't use your keyword in the domain name, no problem - use it in the URL of some page within your site, e.g. in the file name of the page. This page will rise in relevance for the given keyword. All search engines show you URLs of specific PAGES when you search - not just the root domain names like www.marketingscoop.com but the paths like www.marketingscoop.com/products.html

Second, understand that the search engines do not see the graphics and JavaScript dynamics your page uses to captivate visitors. You can use a graphic image of written text that says you sell 20 red roses at $47. But it does not tell the search engine that your website is related to the sale of red roses' unless you use an ALT attribute where you write about it.

Therefore you could easily have a wonderful graphic with a picture of roses followed by the text "20 beautiful red roses at only $47", but the search engine will only see the following:

..img_src=".../images/sale_red_roses.png" width="250" height="100" class="image"...

As you see there's nothing in the code which could tell the search robots that the content relates to "Red Roses", "Sale", or "Beautiful". The situation will change if we rewrite the code like this:

...img_src="/images/sale_red_roses.png" width="250" height="100" alt="Sale of Beautiful Red Roses" class="image" ...

As you can see we've added the ALT attribute with the value that corresponds to what the image tells your visitors. Initially, the "alt" attribute was meant to provide alternative text for an image that for some reason could not be shown by the visitor's browser. Nowadays it has acquired one more function - to bring the same message to the search engines that the image itself brings to human Web surfers.

The same concerns the usage of JavaScript. Look at these two examples:

Visit our page about discounted floral arrangements!

script_language="JavaScript"
type="text/javascript">

The first example is what visitors see, the second is the source code script that produces the output. Assume the search engine spider is intelligent enough to read the script (however, actually not all the spiders do); is there anything in the code that can tell it about the discounted floral arrangements? Absolutely none!

As a rule, search engine spiders have a limit on loading page content. For instance, the Googlebot will not read more than 100 KB of your page, even though it is instructed to look whether there are keywords at the end of your page. So if you use keywords somewhere beyond this limit, this is invisible to spiders. Therefore, you may want to acquire the good habit of not overloading the HEAD section of your page with scripts and styles. Better link them from outside files, because otherwise they just push away your important textual content.

There are many more examples of relevancy indicators a spider considers when visiting your page, such as the proximity of important words to the beginning of the page. Here, as well, the spider does not necessarily see the same things a human visitor would see. For instance, a left-hand menu pane on your Web page. People visiting your site will generally not first pay attention to this, focusing instead on the main section. The spider, however, will read your menu before passing to the main content - simply because it is closer to the beginning of the code.

Remember: during the first visit, the spider does not yet know which words your page relates to! Keep in mind this simple truth. By reading your HTML code, the spider (which is just a computer program) must be able guess the exact words that make up the theme of your site.

Then, the spider will compress your page and create the index associated with it. To keep things simple, you can think of this index as an enumeration of all words found on your page, with

several important parameters associated with each word: their proximity, frequency, etc.

Certainly, no one really knows what the real indices look like, but the principals are as they have been outlined here. The words that are high in the list according to the main criteria will be considered your keywords by the spider. In reality, the parameters are quite numerous and include off-the-page factors as well, because the spider is able to detect the words every other page out there uses when linking to your page, and thus calculate your relevance to those terms also.

When a Web surfer queries the search engine, it pulls out all pages in its database that contain the user's query. And here the ranking begins: each page has a number of "on-the-page" indicators associated with it, as well as certain page-independent indicators (like PageRank). A combination of these indicators determines how well the page ranks.

It's important to keep this in mind: after you have made your page attractive for visitors, ask yourself whether you have also made it readable for the search engine spiders. In the lessons that follow, we will provide for you detailed insight into the optimization procedure; however, try to keep in mind the basics you've learned here, no matter how advanced you become.

About The Author
Chris Wainwright is the owner of the website Marketing-ScamFree.com, a website dedicated to Online Marketing Tips and Techniques. Chris is a qualified internet marketer with a professional background in Search Engine Optimization.

Google Adwords Now Considering Page Load Times

Google will start incorporating landing page load time as a factor in its quality score for AdWords in mid-June, the search giant said in a blog post this month.

Google's quality score influences an ad's position on Google and the Google network. It is also used to calculate a keyword's minimum bid.

Google first announced in March that it would consider landing page load time when determining quality score and said implementation would be “in about a month.”

Advertisers with AdWords accounts can go to Google's keyword analysis page to review their load time evaluations.

When building landing pages for PPC specific campaigns, take page load times into consideration. Many online marketers who have been developing complex landing pages will need to reevaluate their strategies.

Try to minimize your use of java script, video, and so on in an effort to minimize page load times. This will result in a higher quality score, lower PPC, costs and better overall performance.

Improve Rankings With These SEO Tips

This week's post by Mike Small will help you improve search engine rankings quickly. Search engine optimization has changed a lot since over the past decade but that doesn't mean you can't be successful.

Even just a few years ago you could simply load keywords to the point of overflowing and fill META tags with anything even close to what you had on your page to do great on Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista; all the biggies. Not anymore. But while it's become harder for most people, its easier than ever for people who follow these two simple steps...

Today SEO is about a 75% / 25% split between links and content, with inbound links being the most important thing. Especially on Google. When all is said and done, you can get to the top of Google in just two simple steps. Seriously. I've done it hundreds of times and it's easier than you'd imagine.

Step 1: Develop Great Content
Writing great SEO content is a snap if you follow this simple 5 step formula...

1.) Write naturally as if speaking with a friend. Record yourself actually speaking to a friend about the topic of your Web page and it will all come together automatically.

2.) Limit each page to 2 to 3 keywords or keyword phrases.

3.) Mention each keyword no more than 4 times per page and split the usage somewhat equally between paragraphs. Two mentions of your most important keyword in the first paragraph is the only real exception. And be sure you mention each toward the end of the page to show overall consistency and topic authenticity.

4.) Try to incorporate the first mention of each keyword into hyper link anchor text. The link should lead to another page of your own site. (Note: The keyword would then be the clickable text leading to your other page.)

5.) Have between 150 and 250 words of text per keyword. So if you have 3 keywords on one page, you will have about 600 words on that page, in total.

That's the quick and dirty SEO content writers course. And believe me, it works!

Step 2: Link Like the Pros

Linking is a bit more involved. The main thing to remember is that you want as many high quality, topic relevant links as you can get. And you want them all using the same exact URL since Google sees URLs that begin with "http://www" differently than links that begin with just "www". In other words, even if you have 200 links to your page, if they are split between URL formats, you are not getting full credit for the links.

And forget all that stuff about links to the homepage being "a must." Of course, getting inbound links to your homepage is great but Google has smartened up. They figure your site overall is probably not that great if nobody bothers linking to your actual content pages. While it's true that Google ranks pages rather than sites, they do still base each of your page's worth on its supporting pages.

I won't bore you with a bunch of techno babble. In short, if you keep this in mind, you'll always be ahead of the game:

1.) Inbound links should be from pages containing relevant content of a similar nature.

2.) Links to your web pages from outside pages with high Google PageRank (GPR) are most desirable. (Note: GPR is NOT the page's position on Google. It is a value, from 1 to 10, that Google assigns to all Webpages.)

3.) Links from (not to) a homepage are typically most valuable, unless they have a higher GPR page to link from. Focus on the GPR. If you use software like that mentioned below, it will do all this automatically. If you do it all manually, get the free Google Toolbar from http://toolbar.google.com. GPR is shown for every page (that has any) on the Internet.

4.) Inbound links to your pages should feature your keyword as the anchor text triggering the hyper link (keyword is the clickable part leading to your page.)

5.) Do NOT use generic text for your link's surrounding content. Make the sentence as relevant as possible.

6.) Use as many well written versions of your link's surrounding content as possible so Google doesn't view your inbound links as duplicate content.
Step 2: Link Like the Pros (Part 2; Do It)As far as actually getting great links, avoid the automated script based reciprocal link services. A lot of these services link your pages to "gray barred" pages, which means your site can get kicked off Google as well. And to be honest, reciprocal links are not nearly as valuable to Google as they once were, especially the junk link pages most of these services create.

If you want to "set it and forget it" without the problems mentioned above, you might want to try a service like 3-WayLinks.com (http://www.3-WayLinks.com). Although I'm not a fan of any linking service, this one is the best I've come across so far. They set it up so your page links to another, which links to a third, which links to you. There is no direct link type reciprocal beeline leading back to your page and each link is credited as a 1 way inbound link by Google, which is the most valuable type of link.

Of course, natural linking is the way to go whenever possible. Google LOVES links that are part of page content (see the anchor text notes above.) And getting great links like this is easier than ever with the right software so don't sweat the time or effort. Both are minimal.

The product a lot of SEO pros use (myself included) is SEO Elite, available at http://www.SEOeliteWeb.com. It works great as both a full function link building tool and ranking checker for all major search engines. Even if you don't need the app, take advantage of the free videos on the site. They explain special linking considerations, like special reserved commands such as "allinanchor" and how to find Google "Authority sites." You can still benefit from the information, even without the tool.

Tip: When approaching other sites for links, try to get your link as anchor text in the actual page content, or a margin. Also do their link that way and explain the benefits and how much Google loves this type of natural content linking.

So there you have it; everything you need to get your pages on top of Google in record time. Best of luck. You'll do great.

About the author
10 year veteran SEO specialist Mike Small is the founder and president of SEOpartner.com (http://www.SEOpartner.com ) as well as the author of 7 SEO books ranging from SEO tips to software selection.