Improve Rankings With Less Clutter

Did you know that almost 30% of online adults will immediately leave a website if they perceive it to be cluttered with ads, and more than 75% of those who remain on cluttered sites pay less attention to the ads there, according to a survey from Burst Media.

The survey of 4,000 web users found that cluttered sites not only annoy the audience, they diminish ad effectiveness and ultimately do a disservice to the publisher, the advertiser and the visitor.

Although respondents accept that advertising will appear on websites, the majority, say they have low tolerance for any more than two advertising units per page. Another 25 percent say they will tolerate only a single ad per web page, and slightly more than one-quarter will tolerate just two ads per page.

The online web site survey also found that advertising clutter has a negative impact on consumers perceptions of products and services:

• One out of two (52.4%) respondents has a less favorable opinion of an advertiser when their advertising appears on a web page they perceive as cluttered.

• One-half (56.4%) of women claim clutter negatively impacts their opinion of an advertiser, versus 48.3% of men.

• Women also are more likely than men to abandon a site that appears cluttered (32.1% vs 27.5% of men).

Ad clutter's negative impact on respondents' opinions increases with age. Less than half (46.8%) of respondents 18-24 years were impacted negatively by clutter, but nearly two-thirds (63.2%) of respondents age 55 and older were unfavorably impacted.

Advertising clutter can be defined as as the overcrowding of a web page with advertising units to the point of degrading the web users' experience. This is common among many of today's websites. If you want to improve your advertising revenue, remember this, "less is more."

SEO: Staying on Top of It All

These day's its more difficult than ever to stay on top of what all the "experts" are saying about search engine optimization. It seems that the search engines are changing their algorithms daily, giving you points for this and not that. So how do you stay on top of it all?

That's a good question and one that can be addressed in a variety of ways. If you're into Google, you can always visit Matt Cutts blog at www.mattcutts.com/blog/ . Matt is the guy everybody listens to for changes in how Google produces their search results. It may take some time for the changes to be implemented, but Matt usual reveals what's "new and improved."

Sign up for RSS feeds and blogs. The improve search engine rankings blog for instance and others, can provide helpful information, tools, and strategies related to changes in search engine algorithms.

Lastly, keep an eye on your own search engine rankings. As things change, dig a little deeper, pose your questions in online forums and collaborate with others to see if their site is experiencing the same thing. Collaboration is key.

Writing For Search Engines: Made Simple

To achieve maximum search engine visibility, you need to think a bit like a search engine when writing the copy for your website. Search engines look at the HTML code that makes up your web page and attempts to parse out the textual copy on the page, eliminating the HTML markup used for layout. The textual copy goes into the search engine’s “index," which is a very large database.

When a user conducts a search on the search engine, the database is queried to identify all the pages in the index that include those words on the page and/or in the links pointing to that page. So if your page does not include the words the user was searching for, it is unlikely your page will rank well, if at all. The same holds true when none of the links to that page include the words that the user searched for in the link text (the clickable text that forms the link).

Once pages have been identified, search engines order the results according to relevance. Relevance can be determined based on dozens and dozens of criteria, such as keyword prominence (how often your keywords appear on a page, and where they appear).

Developing Your Page

As you begin to start thinking the way a search engine does, most copywriters will realize that they are being too verbose in the first few paragraphs. It also occurs to them as they are writing that the title tag for the page they are working on doesn’t have the most important keywords listed first, but rather last. Moving the most important keywords for that page to the beginning of the title tag, as well as moving those keywords to the top of the page copy, can really help to boost your page ranking.

It is also important that you do not go overboard with what is called “keyword density.” This refers to the number of times your keywords appear on a page. Too many occurrences of your keywords and the page will trip the spam penalty algorithm, which will damage your page’s rank. Also, if you are going after a particular keyword phrase, your web page will appear more relevant if the individuals words in that phrase appear together in your page copy.

In addition to placing your selected keywords at the beginning of your title tag and also in the first paragraph or two of page copy, it also helps to emphasize your keywords by enclosing them in heading tags (i.e. h1). Think through how you can best structure the information on your page so that your keywords appear inside heading tags, body copy and other tags while still writing something interesting and compelling.

Once you have thought about each of these points, it is time to start writing. Try to write at least a couple of hundred words of page copy. This is not a rule, but a good guideline to follow. When you are creating links from text, be mindful to include good keyword-rich text in your link text. Avoid using phrases such as “click here” and “more information” in your links, and instead choose words that are relevant to the page the link will go to.

At this point, you presumably now have well-written, interesting and useful page copy that includes your most important targeted keywords in all the right places. However, don’t just assume that you have gotten it right, especially if you are new at this. Run your copy past a human being or two to ensure that it is interesting, engaging and communicates your message effectively. If it doesn’t, it’s time to start again and rethink your copy.

Once you have human approval, it’s time to run the draft page through a search engine spider simulator such as the one at searchengineworld.com/cgibin/sim_spider.cgi. This tool, and others like it, will tell you how many times you used each keyword. It will parse the text just like a search engine would, and occasionally you will see that another keyword comes through more strongly than you had intended and a more important keyword is dwarfed in comparison. Don’t worry, now is the time to fix this, and with a little practice you will have a good gut feeling for what will rank well.

The final test, of course, is linking your new page to the rest of your website and seeing how it performs with the real search engines. If the results are lower than expected, you can make some adjustments by moving text around, adding and subtracting copy and so forth. Pay particular attention to your title META tag, as this is given the most importance by the search engines out of everything on your page.

Another way to help convince visitors to click through to your website is to write a descriptive summary of your page to be included in your description META tag. Make sure that your description contains the targeted keywords that you have chosen for this page, and be brief. While this does not help with your search engine ranking, having a compelling description is just good form and worth doing.

Grow Your Business With Free Traffic

I just read a great article about traffic generation. As you may already know, there is a significant number of sites that promise you traffic and are even willing to sell you thousands of visits. Are these sites legitimate? How do you know what type of traffic they're sending?

Enter TrafficSwarm, one of today's most popular traffic exchanges. There are others like HitGusher and TrafficG, but do not have as many participating members. After reading the article, I signed up and began surfing. The way that the traffic exchange works is simple. You decide the types of sites you're willing to surf and at the same time, place text ads linking to your site that other members surf.

Each time you visit a site within the network you earn credits. Those credits can be redeemed to have your ads appear, resulting in click throughs to your site. Yes, it truly is FREE traffic. You do have to spend some time (I'm spending about 15 - 20 minutes per day) surfing the interface, but it's ridiculously simple to do.

Give it a try and you'll be surprise by the amount of free traffic you generate!

Optimize Your Landing Page for Online Marketing Success

Focusing on improving conversions is essential for any online marketing effort. In this article , Brett describes his work with a client to test the effectiveness of targeted landing pages. I think the results speak for themselves.

Search marketing is generally broken down into three major categories: phrase, positioning and price. Phrase refers to the keywords or phrases for which your ad will show among the results. Positioning is where visitors will see your ad when it is displayed. Price is how much you are willing to spend each time a visitor clicks on an ad. But consider one more factor — page, where visitors land on your Web site once they click on your ad.

Companies spend a great deal of time determining the right keyword phrases for their campaigns. They monitor, add and prune keywords over time. At the end of the day, however, they are sending all of their search visitors to one landing page, or even worse, to their home page.

What is wrong with this approach? Search users often look for specific items such as “good running shoes” or “iPod Nano trans­fer cable.” These users want to be taken directly to the content they are looking for.

In a well-rounded search campaign, different keywords should be tailored when the search user is in the sales path. “Buy an iPod” is much differ­ent than “iPod information,” and the pages these visitors see first can mean the difference between turning a visitor into a conversion and that visitor leaving your site.

We recently did landing page testing for one of our search clients. Their method of con­version, we found, was to send a visitor to their Web site to fill out an e-mail form asking for more information. We also realized that the bulk of their visitors from search results were being sent to the home page.

Due to technical and legal limitations, we approached our rec­ommended changes very conservatively. First, we implemented simple changes to the home page to lessen the number of clicks from search query to conversion. These small changes ultimately yielded a 186% increase in their conversion rate.

A new, conversion-optimized landing page — designed specifi­cally for search — brought the conversion event to the front of the process, while still allowing visitors to see other areas of the site to gather more information. The new landing page increased conversion 350% over the optimized home page.

This quick testing process yielded a more than 550% increase in the total conversion rate. This allowed us to bid the bulk of our terms higher, which resulted not only in a lower cost conver­sion, but in more conversions overall.

I'm not suggesting spending less time on your keyword mainte­nance or bid management — but, rather, spending extra time on that forgotten fourth piece of the search pie: the landing page.

Brett Charney is director of strategic services at Merkle.

Choosing An Online Shopping Cart

Is your online business or home-based business stalling because you are drowning in administration details? You're not the only one!

Many small businesses are one step away from phenomenal success, if only they could increase their productivity AND reduce repetitive tasks and paperwork. After all, any time spent dealing with writing down orders or sending out emails one-by-one is time that you can't spend selling to your prospects. I've found that having a full-features shopping cart can save me as much as two hours a day!

Here's How to Choose an Online Shopping Cart That Will Increase Productivity & Save Time and Money Guaranteed.

1. Make sure your online shopping cart has an easy-to-follow ordering system. For example, people can order my products and services directly from the shopping cart. They don't have to call me on the phone to take down the details. Don't get me wrong, I love taking orders, but it is time consuming and it takes me away from other tasks. And if a prospect calls when I'm on the phone, or away from my desk, then they get an answering machine and we begin that long task of phone tag. If you have an easy way for people to order online, you can take orders at any time of the day or night. Who staffs theirs phones at 2 a.m.?

2. A good shopping cart will automate such functions as sending receipts. Don't you hate it when clients ask for a receipt? You can't blame them. They need a receipt for their taxes and their accountants. But making a receipt by hand will take you at least 5-10 minutes even if you have a template and a system in place. Everything takes time! But a good shopping cart will automatically send a receipt to the new client - and to you, so you have one for your files.

3. If you send personalize messages to new clients, such as greetings, or training materials, you can automate this process with a good shopping cart. Thanks to the wonders of mail-merge, each message can print the person's first name. If you want to get fancy, you can even automate other variables such as city, state and product purchased. It's a great time saver and people will think your messages are truly personal.

4. A good shopping cart can create sales reports by any variable you can think of, such as total sales, daily sales, weekly sales, sales in a given period, as well as sales by product. You don't have to depend on your part-time bookkeeper to create these reports for you any longer! You can get reports when you need them, not when the part-timer shows up for work.

5. A good shopping cart does NOT just take orders. It can send newsletters and other types of information you'd like to broadcast - such as invitations to teleseminars or special events. A good shopping cart can manage most client communications, so you save time and money by dealing with one vendor instead of two or three. Plus you will be working off of one database and not have to update two other databases hosted by a company that sends out newsletters or autoresponders. Why duplicate your efforts?

6. Make sure your shopping cart offers clients control of some aspect of their accounts. For example, if a client doesn't want to get your newsletter any longer, they can unsubscribe by themselves without having to contact you by email. This way you don't have to do the work yourself. Good shopping carts have information on how to unsubscribe contained in each message for your convenience. If you use a good shopping cart, you can save yourself time and money if you know the hidden truth behind automating your business online.

Dan Janal has built multiple six-figure income businesses using MyEasyOnlineStore.com. Now, for the first time ever, he's revealing the hidden truth behind automating your business, making more money online & enjoying the entrepreneur's lifestyle. Get his free special report, "How to Choose an Online Shopping Cart" now at: http://www.prleads.com/meos

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

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.

The Power of Web Directories

Submitting your web site to web directories is still a key strategy for search engine optimization and improving rankings. Web directories have been pervasive on the Web for a long time.

With recent reports from Google about penalizing sites for listing in paid directories, many webmasters have avoided integrating them into their seo campaigns. However, the right directories can provide benefit. There are two main types of directories found on the Internet.

1. General Directories – these directories do not feature any particular theme/market and are open to most websites for inclusion. Many will place restrictions on adult and gambling websites.

2. Vertical Directories – A vertical directory is dedicated to a theme/market, such as shopping websites, health websites etc

Why Submit to Web Directories?

Most web directories will publish your website with a direct text link and a short blurb about your site.

The advantage is that search engines can crawl the link and read the text being used to describe your website, from another source.

The key is to make sure that you use well optimized copy within this description as it can help with your natural search results – where possible include popular search terms.

Submitting your website to web directories is beneficial when aiming to increase your backward link count and helping page rank.

Being included in these directories can be as simple as making a submission via the “Suggest URL” form.

The time it takes for your website to be included in the directory will vary - some directories will list your site within a matter of hours, others, such as DMOZ can take longer. Inclusion is often dictated by how the web directory is maintained – many of these are maintained by hand, so the time for inclusion can vary (weeks, possibly months).

Note: Directory inclusion time does not directly reflect the quality of the directory i.e. DMOZ is the most popular Internet directory inclusion time can take months.

Other popular Web directories such as Yahoo! charge for inclusion. The majority of Internet directories that charge for inclusion base this on a 12 month subscription.

Tips for a Web Directory Submission Campaign

As with any other element of search engine optimization, directory submissions should be on going.

When starting out try and dedicate at least half a day a month minimum, to doing directory submission.

By putting in the time, over the space of 4 – 8 weeks you should see a noticeable improvement in the volume of back links pointing to your website.

Before rolling out your campaign it pays to do some research and preparation:

• Write at least 4 – 6 alternate descriptions of your website
• Using a spread sheet, compile a list of the directories you wish to submit to
• Prepare your keywords, description (both long and short)
• Using a version of Firefox or Internet Explorer that supports tabbed browsing can also help speed up the submission process

If possible, create a separate email account for the campaign. You will receive a high volume of emails when doing such submissions, most of these are confirmation emails however you are also opening yourself up to spam. You need to check these emails and confirm your submissions, although you don’t want this cluttering your personal inbox every day.

To speed up the process and make life easier, directory submission software is available:

Directory Submission Software
Article and Website Directory Submission Software

Finally, try to avoid doing too many directory submission all in one hit, this can raise a red flag within the search engines, resulting in possible penalizing.

The Power of Search Clouds and SEO

There are many ways to improve your search engine rankings. There are off page factors (basically link building), which can include techniques like article submission, blog commenting, forum posting, directory submission and more.

And there are on-page factors- like keywords, markup, etc. Both are important, and if you wish to do rank highly on the search engines you need to focus on building links, and improving on page factors. If you're looking for an extra boost, you may like to consider search clouds- An on-page factor that is often overlooked by many people.

A search cloud appears on your website (often on the side), and is a large list of words. Each word is a link, and they are all different sizes. Each word is something that someone searched for when they came to your website. If a lot of people search for a certain word, then that word will appear bigger in the cloud.

One of the best benefits of a search cloud is that it gives you more internal links to the pages that are important on your site. And it uses the "right" anchor text, because it uses the anchor text that people are already searching for. This will help with search engine rankings, because it adds more links to your pages, with the correct anchor text. These links may not be as useful as links from other domains- but they still help!

This can be shown with an example... Suppose you have a widget website, and you rank on the first page for "green widget". When people search for "green widget", and click the link to your site, the search cloud will add "green widget" to the cloud, and link to the "green widget" page on your website. You now have more links to the green widget page, which will help you to rank higher for "green widget".

That's not the only reason to have a search cloud though! Another great benefit is that they encourage people to explore your site. When people see a search cloud, they can't help but glance through the list. Because of the wide variety of search terms, it is quite likely they will find something that interests them, and click the link. This means you will have lower bounce rates, as well as higher average page views per visitor. This will correspond to more page views- which will lead to more people buying your products, or making more money from your advertising.

You can usually add a search cloud quite easily to your website. Google "Install Search Cloud" and find a corresponding listing. Many individuals have already done so and have shared their technique.

Today's Marketing Tip: Repeat Traffic

Repeat website traffic that comes at no cost has to be the second most important priority for any E-Commerce site. Number one being the initial generation of traffic. Take the time to get your site consumer friendly. Spend time visiting sites you frequent and write down all the items that attract you about that site and duplicate them. You don't have to re-invent the wheel to have a successful website.

10 Ways to Attract Free Repeat Traffic

1. Offer as much additional value on your website as possible without shooting yourself in the foot. For affiliates and partners you can place links to their sites and ask them to reciprocate the favor. Another great way to benefit both of you is to advertise their products and ask them to do the same. This provides free traffic and advertising for both of you. Obviously you don't want to advertise any product or service that you are in competition with.

2. You can allow customers to 'opt in' and provide them with a 10% discount on their first order, and allow them to be the first to see any new promotions you are offering. This also allows you to stay in constant contact with your customers and potential customers. Coupons are another very effective way of keeping your 'opt in' list returning to your site.

3. Create a schedule to update the pages on your website on a regular basis. In time, stagnant websites are dropped by some of the search engines. I would suggest you put a date counter on the page to show when it was last updated. This also tells all your visitors very quickly how attentive and diligent you are in bringing them the latest information.

4. Make it simple for a visitor to become a customer by adding a link to your primary page with a script 'Book Mark or Add this site to your Favorites'. Most internet users are repeatedly referencing their favorite's folder, I know I do.

5. Like item 4, make it simple for your visitors to attract potential customers for you by adding a link 'Recommend this site to a Friend' so that the visitor can email your website link, with a pre-written title, "Thought you might be interested in this", that with the click of a button a visitor in recommending your site to.

6. Create an 'Our Policies' page that clearly defines your philosophy and principles in dealing with your customers. Also post your privacy policy as well so that clients know they are secure when they visit your site. This is a great opportunity to reveal to your potential customers who and what your principles and morals are all about.

7. Brand your website. This will create a presence and feel for your customers and visitors that they are at your site. Use consistent colors, page design, logos and slogans on every page and always provide a 'Contact Us' link and 'Home' link on each page. Spend some time to create a "favicon" to forever identify and brand your site. I know from my own surfing experiences that there have been sites I was visiting with no way to return to their home page without clicking the back button. Very annoying. You need your sites pages to flow.

8. Create a FAQ page which addresses most of the doubts, questions, and clarifications about your product or your company that are likely to be asked. Sit down and picture yourself arriving at your site for the very first time. Get a pen and paper and write down what you would like to know as a potential purchaser from this site. This will help to resolve most of the customers doubts in their first visit to your site.

9. Never spam a client, who has opted for newsletters, with unsolicited emails! Also if they decide they want to 'opt out' of the mailings, always be sure you honor their request and take them off the mailing list. They may still come back if they like your products. But they will certainly not come back if you continue to flood their email box with mails they no longer wish to receive.

10. Make sure each page on your website has the appropriate title and keywords so that your customer can find their way back to your site if they lose the bookmark. Remember your page title appears in the web browser. Anyone like me who has multiple tabs and pages open at the same time, the title allows for a quick return.

SUMMARY

Here are 10 ways to free repeat website traffic. Copy and post this beside your computer for the next time you update your web pages. They are the basics of great websites and will certainly pave a path to free repeat website traffic.

By Mike Davey

The use of cascading style sheets can provide a tremendous benefit to your website. Learn the value of CSS in this helpful post.

CSS style sheets have made it easier to handle web pages during web development. CSS or Cascading Style Sheets as the name suggests is a style sheet that allows you to easily link to other documents in your website. It allows you to retain control over the various elements in different web pages of your website.

CSS only defines the structure and content presentation of a website it has nothing to do with the design of a website. A single CSS sheet can control the font, positioning, colour and style information of an entire website.

9 advantages of using CSS

* Web pages are easier to load and uses less bandwidth

CSS style sheets are preferred by web developers for website development because they are lighter than table layouts, which consumes lots of bandwidth. The style sheet is downloaded only once and stored in the cache memory, so subsequent pages load faster.

* A CSS style sheet compliments well with HTML

HTML is insufficient when used independently in website development, but when combined with CSS they can result in technically stronger web pages.

* CSS allows you to position your element anywhere in the webpage

Web developers love to use CSS because it allows them to position their element where ever they want in the web page. If during any phase of web development the developer feels that particular links or columns are not going well with the situation then it becomes easier for them to position them easily using CSS. CSS reduces the risks associated with maintenance of the website.

* CSS is compatible with all web browsers

CSS is combined with HTML or XHTML by web developers for web application development because it is compatible with all web browsers. The sites that use CSS appear similar in all the web browsers.

* CSS can be used to create print friendly web pages

Most of the web developers love to use CSS for building their HTML based web applications because they allow them to create print friendly web pages. These web pages can be easily printed. The colours, images and other things which are difficult to be printed can be eliminated and printed easily.

* CSS style sheets allows the user to customize the webpage

Now days many websites allow the user to change the layout of the website without affecting the content. The CSS style sheets which are stored externally allow the user to make requisite changes by themselves. Most of the modern browsers give user the liberty to define their own style sheets like changing some font properties etc.

* CSS style sheets makes it easier for your website to feature in search engines

The CSS style sheets are favoured by web developers because they allow them to position their elements as per their wish anywhere in web application. Positioning helps to project the main contents first, so that it is easily captured by web spiders. CSS also gives cleaner HTML codes thus cutting down the job of web spider to search the real content from junk code.

* CSS allows the web pages to have absolute consistency

One of the reasons for using CSS during web development is that they allow consistency to all web pages. All the expressions and texts will get their characteristics from external style sheet. Web developers need not to worry about the change in characteristics of the elements because they can be easily altered at any stage of web development by using CSS.

* CSS lends portability to content

By using CSS you can make separate style sheets for different media. This provides you the great flexibility in presenting your content. CSS allows you to redefine the characteristics of elements in a website to suit the need of the situation. For e.g.: A separate style sheet will allow you to redefine the characteristics of certain elements so that they are easier to be printed. Also the user will never come to know that you had restructured the characteristics for their benefit.

CSS is created to make the things easier for your website and also to give you control over different elements in your website. Utilising benefits of CSS will give you popular user friendly web pages.

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About the Author: Sigma InfoTech is an Australian based Website Design firm, specialising in Website Development, Web Developer, Website design, Application Development Australia. Write editor to webmastergrace@gmail.com your comments and suggestions will be highly appreciated.