SEO Tips

1. Write and submit articles. It is a classic, but it works. This will be indefinite traffic stuck in the search engines for you.

2. Write quality unique articles, not articles that are rehashed or provide no insight to readers, which is a huge problem these days. ..

3. Write and submit press releases, think prweb after you do one.

4. Write and ping blog entries. Always make sure to link back to your website with your blog posts. Try making multiple blogs and have them all link back to one main site.

5. Make sure your website is listed in DMOZ: http://dmoz.org/. .

6. Advertise your website in the appropriate categories at Craigslist. Try posting your ads in the most populated cities in the world.

7. If a niche related forum that you frequently visit allows signatures, then make sure to add your website url in there.

8. Make sure to view related products on Amazon.com. You can try and take some customers from your competitors here by providing your own url if the product is similar. Review websites in your niche on Alexa to try to take some of their traffic by including a reference back to your site.

9. Review some related products on epinion.

10. If you purchase a product that you actually like, then feel free to give an individual respect when respect is due and leave a testimonial. You should be able to get some traffic from that website if your testimonial is left with a url.

11. Whenever you send an email to someone, always add your website url as a signature.

12. Keep updating content on your websites/blogs… try at least once per week.

13. Tag blog posts at social bookmarking sites, especially at http://del.icio.us/. .

14. Add photos to your blog with appropriate keywords.

15. Tag blog photos at Flickr.

16. Politely ask your readers to subscribe to your rss feeds.

17. Try coining your own term. Might want to trademark it if you smell that it will become popular.

18. Encourage readers to comment on your blogs.

19. Include translation for your websites/blogs, especially in Chinese.

20. Do not be boring; write about something that a wide select of people would want to know about.

21. Make sure to edit your writing (unlike what I m doing).

22. Comment on other related blogs.

23. Make a custom 404-error page for your website. You can provide a link back to your main website or even try to monetize it by offering a related affiliate program within your niche.

24. Sponsor a charity, most charities will link back to your website, and you are also doing a good deed.

25. Sell an item on eBay as a charity auction. Most charities will link back to both your auction and your main website.

26. Start a publicity campaign, do something that individuals in your niche will take note of.

27. Brand your website with a logo and a slogan/catch phrase. Think IBM.

28. Hold a crazy contest that people in your niche will talk about. This will equal more links and traffic to your website.

29. Build a tool that individuals in your niche will love and enjoy. Then give it away for free. If the tool is helpful, then you will get quality one-way links to your website.

30. Contact small newsletters sources offline and submit articles to them.

31. Become friends with editors of an offline publication.

32. Give speeches offline. Start small and local. Also, do not forget to participate in toastmasters meetings in your area.

33. Have a GREAT product. All of the marketing/advertising in the world will do you NO good if your product is sub par.

34. Make something innovative. If you are selling information, what makes your content something you cannot get from the local bookstore, Barnes and noble or even eBay for that matter?

35. Is your product groundbreaking? Will you leave individuals with no choice but to talk about your product or service?

36. Are you selling something that wide groups of people want to know about but there is limited/scarce knowledge?

37. Write good content, if your writing is good then people will share it with their friends. In addition, webmasters will use it as content on their website with a reference back to your article, or at least they should.

38. Spark emotions. If you get people emotional about something then they will most likely talk about it.

39. Get a custom t-shirt made with your website url on it, and wear it often.

40. Build a list of subscribers. Your list is like a golden asset to you if utilized correctly.

41. Write tip articles, such as “Ten easy tips to blank-blank-blank.”

42. Buy traffic from the search engines by utilizing one of their PPC campaigns.

43. Open up a myspace account and find targeted friends so that you can promote your services to them. Do not spam people, myspace is cracking down on spammers and are starting to sue people.

44. Solicit a link from your local chamber of commerce.

45. Have an easy to remember domain name. If your domain name is too long or not memorable then people may forget your site.

46. Add a bookmark option to your website/blogs.

47. Purchase the misspelled versions of your domain name and have it redirect to your main one.

48. Use keywords in your image alt tags. For example,

49. Make sure to include appropriate keywords in your title tag, search engines show more prominence or importance to keywords here.

50. Place appropriate keywords in your anchor text when linking.

51. If you have a profile anywhere online, always include appropriate keywords and link back to your website.

52. Try to get links from websites within your niche with a high pr (pagerank). Some The more one-way links (inbound links/backlinks) you have to your website, the higher your pr will become. Pagerank is important because websites with higher prs tend to have a higher search results in Google. It is a no brainier that if you can get number one for a competitive keyword then you will have enough traffic that you can handle… oh by the way its all free targeted traffic to remind you. ..

53. Outsource grunt work. Time is in essence money…. you can hire individuals at freelance services to send emails, request JV proposals, or to answer questions from prospective or current customers.

54. Offer something for FREE. Abracadabra is not the magic word, FREE is. It is like a worm on a pole for a fish in the water…. its bait! Offer a free mini course or free ebook to help collect more subscribers. You can always offer a backend to monetize on this opportunity, such as an affiliate product for example. .

55. After someone orders from you offer a one-time offer that compliments your product. For example, if I offered a traffic ebook, then after the individual purchase it would make sense for me to offer a traffic conversion bonus for a limited time only.

56. Become the virus within your niche. Make yourself the bug and have people talking about your product. When people talk about your product then you can induce the viral effect. However, you must give people a reason to talk about you, and being like everyone else is not one. ..

57. Do your research and find expensive niches to tap into. A good way to do this is to find how expensive someone is paying for a keyword on a PPC search engine. If you can sell items that are more expensive more often then it is a quicker way to get rich.

58. Become an active respected member of niche related forums. You can do this by offering quality posts. Hint, it is not the number of posts you make, it is the quality. Remember, quality or quantity. Many useless or negative posts will have people looking at you funny. .

59. Test, test, test. Your flushing money down the toilet if your not testing to see what campaigns are bringing you in the most money compared to which ones are costing you money. When you test, you can eliminate the campaigns that are costing you dollars so that you can properly maximize your marketing efforts. Without proper testing, you are pretty much lost and can’t improve. You can only guess to what has or what is working. With proper testing, you do not guess, you know.

60. Stay up to date on what is going on in the world, you can monetize off hot topic trends.

61. Network, when you know more people you can find people that can help you get what you need.

62. Offer an affiliate program for your product or service. Make sure to let your satisfied customers know that you have one, if they like your product then they will be even more delighted to know that they will get money for referring you.

63. Write and give away a free ebook or report. It does not have to be long as long as its quality information neatly formatted and put together. You can also make a brand able ebook or report and allow affiliates the opportunity to brand their affiliate links in there to pass on to the next individual. You can then send this ebook to your subscribers or submit it to ebook directories. ..

64. Add viral components to your blog such as social book marking options, and a refer a friend option.

65. Be funny, people like something that will make them laugh and they will spread it for you if it is a genius idea.

66. Syndicate your content by using an RSS feeds on your website.

67. Answer people’s questions on Yahoo! answers with a link to your website in the sources area.

68. Put a link in the “about me” section of your eBay profile.

69. Make and upload a viral video to you tube. Use appropriate keywords in the video description for your target audience.

70. Record an informative podcast and submit them to poplar podcast directories.

71. Provide helpful answers for Google adsense on their help forum with a link back to your website. Go here to check it out: http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help

72. Get people to comment and add content to your site. When they do this, they will provide you unique content, no need to pay for ghostwritten articles.

73. If you cannot get JVs, then try to bribe webmasters for sponsored advertising space on their newsletters.

74. Include a media section on your website so that you will give the media an easy way to stay up to date on what your company is doing.

75. Try to teach a class at your local community college or university. The more exposure you get in the public, the more credibility you will receive.

76. Make a screensaver and make it easy for individuals in your niche to download it. Have eye candy graphics combined with your company logo to brand yourself.

77. Write something controversial and spread it freely to your target market. It can be something as idiotic as the Da Vinci code, but as long people talk about it, its a successful campaign. A few hints, something controversial is something that goes against established beliefs in your market.

78. Write and publish a book. Having your own book is a quick way to gain credibility.

79. Take a guru in your niche out to lunch, and pay for it.

80. Start an organization or club about something. This can be done online through Yahoo! or Google groups.

81. Volunteer. Donate your time to a good clause…you can always network with people and form connections at the same time.

82. Get involved in your community and try to run some type of outreach program.

83. Offer good customer service, you may be surprised on how many referrals you get just be having a reliable one.

84. Consider adding a direct mail marketing campaign to your marketing ****nal.

85. Put an ad in your local yellow pages to get some local customers. Yellow pages tend to be more successful then newspaper ads because individuals are looking for a particular service when they are browsing through the yellow pages as opposed to newspapers.

86. Post bulletins in your local supermarket. However, since not everyone may carry a pen or pencil, place your contact information and url on strips on the bottom so that individuals can rip it off and take it with them.

87. Host your own commercial so you can put “as seen on TV” on your products.

88. Conduct surveys and publish them. These make you appear as an expert in your field of study.

89. Break a record or shoot to be in the Guinness world records for something.

90. Make a sitemap for your website.

91. Use a favicon for your site.

92. Make your visitors more involved in your website. You can help accomplish this by adding CGI scripts to your site.

93. Make sure you have no broken links on your site, and make sure that your website shows clearly in all browsers.

94. Find domain names that get traffic, purchase them, and have them redirect to your website.

95. Spell correctly whenever using keywords in writing.

96. Look at sites related to your niche to try to figure out how they get their traffic.

97. Properly optimize your website for the right keywords.

98. Try to avoid java scripts on your website as much as possible.

99. Do not use frames on your website.

100. If your website becomes popular and starts getting lots of traffic, try switching to a dedicated server. The longer you site is down equals the more lost visitors you will have

How do RSS feeds work

What is RSS?

Short for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, this handy service is revolutionizing the way we search for content.In addition, us web searchers don’t necessarily have to keep checking back to any particular site to see if it’s been updated - all we need to do is subscribe to the RSS feed, much like you would subscribe to a newspaper, and then read the updates from the site, delivered via RSS feeds, in what’s called a “feed reader.” (We’ll get to feed readers in just a minute!)

RSS feeds benefit those who actually own or publish a website as well, since site owners can get their updated content to subscribers fast by submitting feeds to various XML and RSS directories.

How do RSS feeds work?

RSS feeds really couldn’t be simpler. They’re basically simple text files that, once submitted to feed directories, will allow subscribers to see content within a very short time after it’s updated (sometimes as short as 30 minutes or less; it’s getting faster all the time).This content can be aggregated to be viewed even more easily by using a feed reader. I’ve written up an article on the best feed readers out there. A feed reader, or feed aggregator, is just a really simple way to view all your feeds at one time via one interface.

For instance, I have a Bloglines feed. I have all sorts of good stuff in there. Can you imagine how much time it saves me to have all these topics sent to me in one place rather than me searching it out?

In addition, all these people who have their sites syndicated on my Bloglines roll are enabling their content to be seen by me and other people who wouldn’t necessarily find them in the search engines or directories. RSS feeds are a wonderful resource, and the uses for RSS are only just beginning to be realized; not only for search engines and searching, but in how we optimize our sites.

Anyone who wants to get their site noticed, get some Web buzz a-buzzin’, needs an RSS feed on their site. Here are some more resources that will help you figure this all out:

• Synic8.com.Seriously any and all information you ever needed to know about RSS feeds. If you can’t find it here, it’s not out yet.
• Stephan Spencer has written a fantastic (and it’s in Power Point, even!) presentation on how RSS and search engine optimization can and should work together.
• Wikipedia, itself a great experiment in social bookmarking, has a good informational article on RSS.
• Jennifer Kyrnin’s RSS article is a solid resource that takes you through the actual design process, as well as things to look out for when creating the XML file.

RSS Learning Center

How RSS Can Help You Save Time and Money

What is RSS?

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is an XML-based format for content distribution on the Internet. It’s an excellent way for Internet users to get updated news content and online articles — the stuff you want — without having to search for it.

How Does RSS Work?
Basically, when a new article is posted or a change made to a webpage, RSS keeps track of the changes and delivers them to you. RSS feeds are most often attached to text, images, podcasts and video, but they can be used with any document (word processing and spreadsheets) that has content that changes.

Who Benefits From RSS?
Anyone who has been frustrated at the time it takes to find what you want on the Internet can appreciate the time-saving feature of RSS. If there are web pages you visit daily or regularly – let’s say you always read the front page of The New York Times and your best friend’s weblog – RSS eliminate the need to check for updates. Every time something changes on the page, it comes to you. RSS always shows the most-recent changes.

How Do I Use RSS?
To view RSS feeds, you need an RSS reader (also called an aggregator), which trolls RSS feeds across the Web to regularly update content. All are pretty easy to use, offering users the chance to read, e-mail, save or clip content with a click of the mouse. There are many free, web-based readers, all which compile and update feeds, all which allow anonymous access to their feeds from any computer with Internet access. For heavier users, there are desktop, application-based readers that offer more features.

What Can RSS Help Me Do?
One of the original uses for RSS is the ability to create a personal newspaper with new content updated every morning. Beyond that, on the short list of things RSS can do is make it easy to search for and organize information about a particular topic, keep up with your kid’s homework, track packages, find cheap airfares or follow e-Bay auctions and sales. You can get your horoscope, search for jobs, read your favorite comics, get software updates, keep up with other people’s schedules and follow calendar listings for your favorite clubs and venues. You can see what others are saying about your favorite sports teams or keep up with what others are saying about your favorite (or least-favorite) celebrity. All without surfing through pop-up ads, slow downloads and poorly navigated sites. RSS saves time. It’s as simple as that.

Can I Access RSS Only Through a Computer?
You can access RSS feeds on mobiles device and many cell phones or via e-mail as well as on a computer.

What is a Feed?
A feed is similar to a bookmark in a web browser. If you subscribe to the feed of the New York Times home page, for instance, you will always see the latest content from that page in your reader. You can create special search feeds for specific words or phrases, which can be extremely useful for research, or clip content you find for later use or sharing with others. Put another way, a feed is a website that changes.

What is a Post?
In your web reader, each feed shows new articles, or posts, in a list. The reader allows you to read the article on its original page, mark the article as read, rate it, e-mail or IM it to friends or clip it for future reference in a folder.

Who Publishes Content in RSS?
Most online news and information sites publish RSS feeds, and more are being added every day. Part of the popularity of weblogs, or blogs, is that the software that creates them have RSS capability, which allows friends and other people to subscribe and share content.

How Do I “Subscribe” to a Feed?
There are various ways. You may see the big orange symbol on web pages, which is a link to the RSS feed or a page of feeds. Copy the url (the web address) of the feed you want and paste it in your reader to subscribe. Many pages offer one-click subscription to well-known aggregators like NewsGator, Bloglines, Rojo and Google Reader. The latest versions of the popular web browsers Internet Explorer and Firefox and Apple’s Safari now incorporate RSS feeds into their bookmark programs. If your bookmarks are showing updated content, you are subscribed to RSS feeds and you don’t even know it.

Is RSS a Substitute For E-mail?
No. E-mail is a two-way communication channel. RSS merely keeps content current. However, they both work together, and you can receive RSS content through e-mail.

What Are Podcasts?
Podcasts are digital files recorded for downloading through RSS feeds for playback. RSS allows users to download podcasts to computers or mobile devices for playback at any time.

SEO Techniques

SEO techniques are classified by some into two broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design, and those techniques that search engines do not approve of and attempt to minimize the effect of, referred to as spamdexing. Professional SEO consultants do not offer spamming and spamdexing techniques amongst the services that they provide to clients. Some industry commentators classify these methods, and the practitioners who utilize them, as either “white hat SEO”, or “black hat SEO”. Many SEO consultants reject the black and white hat dichotomy as a convenient but unfortunate and misleading over-simplification that makes the industry look bad as a whole.

“White hat”

An SEO tactic, technique or method is considered “White hat” if it conforms to the search engines’ guidelines and/or involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White Hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see.

White Hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then make that content easily accessible to their spiders, rather than game the system. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility although the two are not identical.

Spamdexing / “Black hat”

“Black hat” SEO are methods to try to improve rankings that are disapproved of by the search engines and/or involve deception. This can range from text that is “hidden”, either as text colored similar to the background or in an invisible or left of visible div, or by redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more human friendly. A method that sends a user to a page that was different from the page the search engined ranked is Black hat as a rule. One well known example is Cloaking, the practice of serving one version of a page to search engine spiders/bots and another version to human visitors.

Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines’ algorithms or by a manual review of a site.

Results from Black Hat and White Hat SEO Techniques

Black hat SEO techniques may quickly deliver results. However, due to the disposable nature of the domains, the results are often short term - although they can be long term.

White hat SEO techniques can take some time to implement (although not necessarily) but their results tend to last for a long time (although, again, not necessarily).

It’s true to say, then, that both black hat techniques and white hat techniques can generate both short term and long term results for clients, whether results are measured in terms of rankings, traffic, conversion or profit. However, do the ends always justify the means? I don’t think so. I believe that by continuing to condone black hat techniques the SEO industry is setting itself up for failure and sleepwalking into oblivion. The following two articles, Ethical Search Engine Optimization Explained and Search Engine Optimization and The Law, will expand upon this belief.

What Is Blue Hat SEO?

At the moment, BlueHatSEO.com is the only website on the Internet that is completely dedicated to the art of Advanced SEO. Blue Hat SEO is essentially the study of advanced Internet marketing and search engine optimization techniques. Blue Hat SEO covers the advanced knowledge of both Black Hat and White Hat SEO. Everything on BlueHatSEO.com will assume that the audience knows and understands the basics of SEO and Internet marketing. If it helps, think of BlueHatSEO as the creative aspect of SEO.

Blue Hatters use their knowledge of the search engines and other marketing practices to twist and manipulate them in a creative and original way to best benefit their sites.

The concept of Blue Hat SEO rose out frustration in the lack of advanced SEO knowledge made available to webmasters. The motive behind this site is to inspire other webmasters to copy and mimic it in hopes of creating more resources for the advanced search engine marketer. We want to create a venue where knowledgable webmasters can share and present their ideas and techniques. This, in hope, will lead to other sites dedicated to the art of advanced SEO tactics. Until this goal is reached enjoy the content!

Search Engine Optimization Tips

Search Engine Optimization Tips

• Title - Many search engines weigh the data in your title more heavily than other data in your page. Make sure that your title has keywords that represent your site effectively. For the most part the title should be short but always include your keyword(s).

• Meta tags - Use the meta-tag description and meta-tag keywords attribute on every page of your site that you want the search engines to index. If you don’t want a page indexed, then try the robots exclusion tag. The robots.txt exclusion protocol has more support with spiders.

• Content - Write great content using your most important keywords prominently throughout your web site. Visitors who read great content will link to your web site and recommend it to others.

• Keyword planning - Always do keyword planning on both the search engines and directories to determine the best set of keywords and keyword phrases your target audience is using. Look for “related searches” in search results for ideas.

• Alternative text - Put alternative text in your graphic images that clearly describe the graphic image and using your keywords whenever possible. Do not put text in a graphic image that has nothing to do with your web page.

• Frame Pages - Most search engines simply can not index a frames page. They get to your site and can’t go anywhere. Consider frames like a big ‘GO AWAY’ sign. If your site does use frames, doorway pages are ideal for better rankings.

• Don’t try to fool the search engines. This is probably the biggest trap people fall into. People come up with ways to ‘fool’ search engines, and they work for a little while…sometimes. But then the search engines catch on and write routines that penalize sites that use this practice. Examples of this include, but are not limited to: repeating keywords over and over; using invisible text (white text on white background); using very small text to jam the keywords in a small area.

• keep the important content near the top of your pages. The actual text on your website is very important. Search engines (spiders) read this to determine rankings. Some engines will place a higher rating of importance based on where they find the text in your page. Closer to the top is usually better. But having keywords throughout your page develops a “theme” and that too is important.

• Don’t stuff the top of your pages with data the engines can’t read. As with the last example, something higher up in your page can be more important that something further down. Therefore, HTML formatting, images, scripts, etc. toward the top of your page can result in lower ratings.

• Website Content should be your #1 priority. Your quest for high placement must start with a good website. It is important to have a lot of text describing what you do. Use your keywords in the content, but don’t repeat them over and over. Many search engines rate sites based on ‘keyword density’. This is usually a formula that looks at META Keywords, words in your TITLE, words in paragraph text, words in links to other pages, and even words in the ‘ALT’ text on your images. They will even look at different forms of your keywords. For example, if an important keyword for you is ‘CLOTH’, the word ‘CLOTHING’ in the body of your document will raise the confidence in the word ‘CLOTH’ on some engines

• Keep your site updated. Make sure that your site is up to date. No one likes to go to a page that never changes or that is very out of date. Make sure that the data in your page portrays the message that you want to send. Check the links on your site every now and again. Make sure the links are still active. Dead links are not only an inconvenience for the visitor, but can also negatively influence your rankings.

• Don’t go image crazy. We have all seen pages that are almost all images. Usually they are the most beautiful sites. After all, your artist can make beautiful screens that display your content in the most eye-pleasing way. However, the search engines don’t have eyes. They don’t see the beautifully formatted text in your image. All they see is ‘yourimage.jpg’, and ‘yourimage.jpg’ doesn’t go far in terms of content and relevancy.

• Links to Other Pages. We can’t emphasize enough the importance of links. Both from your page to other pages, and from other pages to yours.

• First consider links on your pages. When many search engines see them, they consider your site more ‘real’. It also give the search engine spiders a place to go. Make your links meaningful. Make sure they relate to what you do (and keywords that are important to you). You can’t have too many links on your pages.

• Links from others websites. Some search engines place a very heavy rating of importance on how many other sites in their index have links to your website. Think of it for a second. If you knew that a company was only linked to by one website, versus a company that was linked to by a thousand websites, which one would you consider more important? If you were a search engine, you would surely try to link the more important ones first.

• This is where patience comes in again. It can take some time to get a ton of links to your website. We help quite a bit here, the fact that we submit to so many sites will help you get a great head start in this area!

• Consider Banner Ads. These are a very popular method of promoting your Web site. They are the little rectangular graphics that you see near the top or bottom of some popular Web pages. If you click on them, they transport you to another Web site. You can make your own banners using one of the many “banner creating” websites. Most offer free banner making.

Things NOT to Do !!

• Spamdexing - Generally, you should NOT submit every single page of your website to search engines. In most cases, you should submit only your home page and perhaps a couple of other very important pages at most. The rest of your website will be indexed by the search engine’s spider naturally after the first page is submitted. Over-submitting your website can get you blocked from being listed!

• Invisible/Tiny Text and Keyword Stuffing - Once a very popular form of inserting tons of key words and phrases into your pages, this is now considered a BIG no-no even though you’ll still see it from time to time! This is achieved by placing very small text at the bottom of a page and/or text the same color as the page’s background. This, too, can get your website blocked from search engine listings. Let your website’s content speak for itself!

• Use of non-compliant HTML to manipulate relevancy - Multiple titles and other techniques which aren’t HTML standards compliant, used specifically to raise relevancy. The first 2 in the grey area would be real candidates for this area as well. An example of non-compliant HTML would be using a title that does not reflect the content of the page. The links lead to information on proper implementation of elements.

• Use of CSS (cascading style sheets) to manipulate relevancy - Using hidden elements (layer or span elements etc) that can’t be seen by executing code to reveal them. This activity has not been addressed in SE content guidelines.

• Comments - Comments help maintain the code in an HTML document. Comments should not be used to raise relevancy or manipulate SE descriptions. Previously *on site* in Excite content Guidelines.

• Invisible form elements - Used to hold keyword values, not a well known technique, however they can be used this way. Not known to be mentioned specifically in any SE content guidelines or “unwritten policy”.

6 Easy Ways to Increase your Adsense Revenue

How much revenue do you generate from Google Adsense? Recently there has been a lot of discussion about people who earn over $10,000 a month just from Adsense. Furthermore, there are rumors of a few individuals who earn over $1 million a year just from using the power of Google advertisements.

So what is Google Adsense and how can you use this program to earn a six-figure income?

About 3-4 years ago, Google created this program to help websites to monetize their web-traffic.

Here’s how it works:

Webmasters obtain a special code from Google which then displays targeted ads on their website. Whenever a visitor clicks on one of these ads, the webmaster earns a commission. Unlike other online businesses, there is no selling involved. All you need to do is get people to click on the ads.

Although this is an excellent way to generate an income, many websites are not effectively maximizing their Adsense potential. As a result, they are leaving a lot of cash on the table.

The question is how can you increase your Adsense revenue without increasing the number of web visitors?

The key to earning an income with Google Adsense is to have your ads match the rest of the site, making them look like part of your content. Your focus is to avoid having the Adsense blocks look like blatant advertisements.

The following are six ways that you can do this and increase your revenue at the same time:

1) Find the right place - Most website visitors read content that is in the middle of a webpage. As a result, the best place to put your Adsense block is in the top part of the page, at the beginning of your web content. You want to weave the Google Ads into your web content to give the appearance that they are extra links which expand on the information of the page.

2) Use the Large Rectangle -With Google Adsense, you have the option of picking different ad formats. Most of the time people opt to use the Leaderboard (728×90) or Wide Skyscraper (160×600) style ads. Unfortunately, this is the wrong choice, because both look like blatant advertisements. Instead smart webmasters have found that using the Large Rectangle (336×280) yields the best amount of click-thrus.

3) Ditch the border - Many people experience a sharp increase in Adsense revenue when they changing their border. What they change is very simple…they get rid of the border on their Adsense blocks. This is another way to make the advertisements look like useful web content.

4) Adapt the font - Whenever you write content, it should be the same font size and style as your Google Adsense block. This will help make it appear that the advertisements are a natural part of your website.

5) Match the colors - In addition to changing the fonts, you also should match the colors of your website. For instance, if your content is written in black, and your hyperlinks are blue, then the Adsense blocks should also be the same color. Again, this helps the advertisements appear to be normal web content.

6) Don’t have too many distractions - On a webpage, it is important to give web visitor a limited number of options. By having too many links and graphics, the web visitor might go to a section that doesn’t help increase your profits. While it is important to inform and entertain your web visitor, it is also vital that you monetize your site. So if the main focus of your site is to earn an income through Google Adsense, then get rid of all non-essential links and graphics.

By taking the time to implement these six simple steps, you’ll see a dramatic increase in the click-thru ratio of your ads. If added to all of the content of your site, your Adsense income will skyrocket!

20 Awesome Images Found In Google Maps

The introduction of satellite images into map search interfaces has excited both virtual sightseers and local app developers. Further innovations like Google’s Street View have caused consternation from privacy advocates while further pumping up the buzz about online mapping. In 2008, we can expect further innovations that stretch the envelope while dynamic map interfaces solidify as basic table-stakes for all local sites. In gearing up for this year in local search, I thought I’d give you a pure entertainment piece—here’s a guide to the top coolest things to see in Google Maps.Yum! Brands, Inc.’s subsidiary, KFC, built this brilliant ad back in 2006, geared to be viewable by space aliens. It was purposefully built just off Extraterrestrial Highway, near Area 51:

I pointed out the swastika-shaped building below back in 2006, along with a few other map enthusiasts. In September of 2007, the U.S. Navy bowed to pressure from radio commentators and the Anti-Defamation League and agreed to change the building’s profile at a cost of $600k. In the media feeding-frenzy, I got accused of “costing the taxpayers $600k” on a few blogs and forums, and one or two flamewars broke out in the comments on my Flickr page.

Giant thumbprint in a park in Great Britain. This thumbprint is actually a large maze designed by Chris Drury.

Evidence of drunken parking? This building in the Netherlands sports a Morris Mini parked on its side. The lights on the car turn on at night.

Yet more Minis parked on a building—this time the Minis are parked on top of a pub in Great Britain.

When all the satellite pics are stitched together to allow users to pan continuously in mapping programs, there are frequently some funky effects which can happen at transition edges. One common phenomenon is when two pics taken at different angles are spliced together, causing tall buildings and other structures to appear to be leaning sharply. This is called the “Escher Effect,” and this sample comes from downtown Dallas:

This is purportedly the largest Coca-Cola logo in the world, created near Arica, Chile, out of something like 70,000 coke bottles to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the company:

Back in January of 2007, Google publicly announced they were planning to send a plane over locations in Australia to update Google Maps images. Quite a few people attempted to communicate messages by displaying large text on the ground for the “Australia Day Flyover” as it was called, but very few actually accomplished it due to a miscommunication over the date of the flight. However, the Tourism Australia ministry managed it by paying a sand sculptor to form the letters of their domain name on Bondi Beach near Sydney:

“Giant pink bunny,” killed in a drive-by in Italy.

People are increasingly trying to get their messages seen in Google Maps satellite view, but most aerial messages already appearing in the pics were originally intended for people viewing from airplanes. For instance, this message written in a field adjacent to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska:

Some of the best-documented messages found in Google Maps have been marriage proposals like this one:

Another patriotic-themed image is this American flag found on a river bank in Pennsylvania:

Street View has raised all sorts of privacy concerns and people have taken great glee at pointing out people captured going into strip clubs, peeing in public, or doing various private activities. In this example, one of the traditionally photo-shy superheroes, the Green Lantern, is the one caught by the roving camera eye, looking out a shop window in Boston:

There are quite a few pictorial mazes that show up in Google Maps, particularly corn mazes and such in the US. This UK maze was built to celebrate the 200th birthday of Brunel, a famous British engineer:

There’s a whole subgenre of art called “Crop Art” that’s rendered in growing plants in patterns to form pictures when viewed from above. This example is a rendering of Da Vinci’s famous Vitruvian Man, located in Italy:

Similar to Crop Art, “Earth Art” or “Land Art” is created by moving or scraping soil and rocks to create images. This huge image from a hillside in Mongolia celebrates Ghenghis Khan:

When the early Greek inventor Daedalus’s son, Icarus, plummeted from the sky after his wax-and-feathers wings experiment failed, his body’s impact left this deep indentation crater which subsequently filled with water, leaving this man-shaped lake in Brazil:

A man with the surname of “Luecke” in Texas decided to write his name big by leaving these trees when he was clear-cutting the land. According to reports, astronauts are able to see these letters from space:

Quite a few companies promote themselves by painting their logos onto their building rooftops. This example is particularly clever, since the Salvation Army apparently realized they could leverage their building’s close proximity to the Seattle Seahawks Stadium and they’ll forever after enjoy free promotion whenever news organizations fly over when covering sporting events.

One thing that some people spend a whole lot of time doing is looking for UFOs and Crop Circles. Here’s a really great crop circle of the Mozilla Firefox logo - a brilliant piece of promotion and linkbait if there ever was one:

Source : http://searchengineland.com/080114-124703.php

Submit Your Articles: Guidelines for getting the most out of article syndication

The prevailing, generic internet marketing advice in vogue right now is that you need to syndicate your content. In other words, submit your articles to content directories and syndication hubs in order to win new traffic and links to your website. The problem is that most new online business owners looking for solid step-by-step advice on how this is practically accomplished are turning up little more than the advice above.

People in the know have been there and done that. In fact, although article syndication is all the rage these days, expert internet marketers have been doing this for years. The system of getting the most out of syndication is a bit more advanced than simply paying someone to syndicate your content for you, to say the least.

Something to consider is that article dispersal hubs (article directories) come in all shapes and sizes. And some are far more advanced than most.

Consider the fact, which you might not have been aware of until now, that just getting your articles posted on a bunch of directories doesn’t necessarily mean you are getting your articles read in great numbers by your target market.

Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Think about the old link farms. It was awhile before anyone realized that no one in their target market was actually seeing their links! Certainly no one from their target market. Yet it was all the rage in its short-lived days as a top-notch marketing tactic!

The same can be said of most of the article directories on the web today. The two main visitors of such directories are website owners looking for content for their sites and authors looking for places to get published.

If neither of these groups are your target market, you are in big trouble if your articles only get syndicated to directories and no further.

The real point of syndication is consumption of your information by your target audience. Followed by a click on your link in the byline of your articles. A side benefit is any resulting search engine boost you might get for your site, but it is far less than most experts are telling you.

You see, when you submit your articles to the average directory they simply sit there and go no further. The average directories get little or no traffic and they do not in turn promote themselves properly through RSS feeds to bring your articles any real exposure.

The directories that give you the most bang for your buck are the directories that further syndicate your content through RSS and newsletters for each topic for which they accept articles.

What you want to look for are directories that are promoting your content actively and promoting themselves professionally. Look for directories with pagerank and high traffic stats and you can easily forget about any others.

In fact, just one submission to one high traffic, RSS feed-enabled directory can net you more traffic and backlinks than most of the rest of the content directories out there, since most of the others are small sites with article scripts put up by amateur marketers.

So when choosing places to spend time hand-submitting your content for the widest distribution possible, make sure you check to make sure submission is even worth that valuable effort. Check each directory’s pagerank and traffic stats before you waste time submitting your content to a black hole.

If you are going to use a service, carefully go through their stated list of submission sites before paying them a dime. Like the useless “search engine submission” companies that say they will submit your site to 7 zillion search engines (when there are really only a handful of real search engines on the web) many syndication companies pad their submission list with sites where no one will ever see your article or click your link.

Also, any syndication or PR specialist worth their fee should syndicate your article content through their own RSS feeds and have a popular site themselves. If not, don’t think they are going to do any better for you if their own site lacks significant traffic and pagerank.

You only have so much time each day to spend getting the most out of your efforts. Simply submitting articles to a huge list of directories expecting large amounts of links and traffic to come your way in the coming weeks is a loser’s bet.

Most people are doing this now, but you should have enough information here to avoid making that mistake yourself. Hit the big directories and don’t waste your time with the small fry. You can save yourself more time to write more content and syndicate it as well by skipping the ineffective article directories that are nothing more than content ghost towns.

5 Tasks you should do every day

1. You need to start off by managing your links. This involves making sure that none of your current links are dead, and you should also check if there are any sites linking to you that you don’t know about. If your site consists of a large number of links you should make sure that they aren’t getting out of control and get rid of anything that is no longer relevant. Also make sure that your links are sufficiently labelled to reflect the page that they link to.

2. Re-order your links, putting the best ones first. And putting them into categories if you have a high number of links. If you have a links page with 25+ links it is a good idea to turn it into a directory of some sort. This can even help you in getting more links to your site in exchange for back links on the directory that you have created. Also check the sites that you link to and make sure that any back links that are due to you are still there as you don’t have much reason to keep a link if you aren’t getting the backlink that you deserve (if the back link was, indeed, negotiated when you placed the link onto your site).

3. Process link request emails. Whenever you receive requests for a link exchange, respond quickly. Not every mail you receive will be a good one, and you should make sure to check any site that wants you to link to it. If you are declining a link request let the web master know why. Perhaps you have an incite that they do not have. They may be able to fix a few things and then become excellent link partners in the future. It is common curtesy to inform the web master as to whether or not you are willing to exchange links within two or three days of receiving a request. Web masters will be even more impressed if you send them a personalized message regarding your approval or disapproval of the link exchange.

4. Check link exchange forums. This is a similar aspect to the above except that in this case it is more difficult to keep track of all of the people who can potentially request links from your site. There is a lot of spam on these sorts of things as well as many really terrible and useless sites. If you encounter such a site or forum member, inform them of your problem with what they are doing and report them to a moderator/administrator if they do not correct their behavior in a suitable manor. It is important that these kinds of forums be kept clean or a search engine may consider it a link farm more than an exchange service.

5. Finally, you should check each feature of your website, to make sure it’s still working properly. The dynamic content that you will probably include at some point must be delivered properly. Any messages that are generated on the fly must not be generated at misopportune times. The difference between a quality dynamic site and a subpar dynamic site is that in a quality dynamic site all content is delivered at the right time and everything seems static and planned out.

Take your time with your website and make sure that you do everything you can for it each day. Keep adding anything new that you find, because updating regularly will keep search engines coming back to spider more often. Updates are crucial and if you can follow the patterns here of insuring quality and precision, you will probably be able to come up with other ways that you can insure your visitors satisfaction and your increased traffic, link count, and search engine listings.

Never agree to link to someone’s site without asking for a link in exchange, unless they offer to pay you – even then, you should think twice. All your incoming and outgoing links need to be related to your site’s content for you to be ranked high in the search engines.

Basic Link Checks.

Some sites use robots.txt to stop search engines from indexing their links pages, in the mistaken belief that outbound links will count against them. To check, just retype their URL with robots.txt on the end (for example, http://www.website.com/robots.txt). If you see a page that says ‘Disallow’ and has the URL of their links page, then they’re not letting spiders index that page. Don’t exchange links with that site.

You should also check to see if the website is being ‘cloaked’, and report it to the search engines if it is. You don’t want to get involved with these people – better to have them banned and out of the way.

Does the site offering you a link have PageRank? Even if they do, you should look at how it drops between the front page and the links page. Be aware that new pages take a while to get ranked, so PR0 doesn’t necessarily mean a site that will never have any PageRank.

Take a look at how many links are on the page already. There shouldn’t be more than 20 links – if the site breaks this rule, don’t even consider it. Plenty of webmasters collect links, thinking they’re helping their rankings, but it just has the effect of making them look like link farms. Many of them don’t even involve linking to the big spam industries, like casinos and adult content. There’s no point in having a link from a site that takes links from just anyone.

301 Redirects & Their SEO Advantage

So what exactly is 301 redirect ?

301 redirect means that your web page / web site has moved to a new location. 301 redirect is the most efficient and Search Engine Friendly method for webpage redirection. It’s not that hard to implement and it should preserve your search engine rankings for that particular page. If you have to change file names or move pages around, it’s the safest option. The code “301″ is interpreted as “moved permanently”.

Take for example, you were having a page www.abc.com/alpha.asp, but webmaster of this website decides to replace this page ( with another page) due to their own technical/business preference.

What are some reasons you might want to move a Web page/ url permanently?

a) Website owner decides to change the technology and is moving website to an ASP.NET server, rather than an existing ASP/Windows server.

b) A new updated page ( in different location ) has to replace the old existing one.

c) If you have canonical issues and would like to resolve misplaced inbound links to different versions of your domain name then you will want to use a 301 redirect.

What would happen, if you remove/replace page directly ?

If you directly remove this page from your website you will face following difficulties :-

a) You will loose SEO rankings ( on Google/Yahoo) associated with that particular page.

b) You will also end up loosing online relationship with other website where you might have submitted your page in the page. Other website owners will delete your web page if your page is throwing a 404 error ( file not found error ).

301 redirect gives you an opportunity to inform both Visitors , and Search Engines about the new location of your page. Whenever somebody types in www.abc.com/alpha.asp, it will automatically move them to new page www.abc.com/beta.asp. Moreover Search Engines will transfer ranking power from old page to this new page.

How can you implement 301 redirect to replace old pages with new one ?

Below are a Couple of methods to implement URL Redirection

IIS Redirect

• In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect

• Select the radio titled “a redirection to a URL”.

• Enter the redirection page

• Check “The exact url entered above” and the “A permanent redirection for this resource”

• Click on ‘Apply’

ColdFusion Redirect

<.cfheader statuscode=”301″ statustext=”Moved permanently”>
<.cfheader name=”Location” value=”http://www.new-url.com”>

PHP Redirect
Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
Header( “Location: http://www.new-url.com” );
?>

ASP Redirect
<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status= “301 Moved Permanently”
Response.AddHeader”Location”,”http://www.new-url.com/”
%>

ASP .NET Redirect

JSP (Java) Redirect
<%
response.setStatus(301);
response.setHeader( “Location”, “http://www.new-url.com/” );
response.setHeader( “Connection”, “close” );
%>

CGI PERL Redirect
$q = new CGI;
print $q->redirect(”http://www.new-url.com/”);

Is there any other functionality/usability of 301 redirect ?

Yes, it can even help you redirect your old domain to a new domain.

You need to create a .htaccess file ( This .htaccess method of redirection works only on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.) with the below code, it will ensure that all your directories and pages of your old domain will get correctly redirected to your new domain.

The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newwebsite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Please REPLACE www.newwebsite.com in the above code with your new domain name.

Moreover, you should try to contact existing backlink websites to modify their backlink and point to your new website. Once 301 domain redirect is detected by search engines, they will transfer ranking power from your old domain towards redirected new domain ( * search ranking results can variate depending upon various factors)

Google’s Tag To Remove Content Spamming

Content spamming, in its simplest firm, is the taking of content from other sites that rank well on the search engines, and then either using it as-it-is or using a utility software like Articlebot to scramble the content to the point that it can’t be detected with plagiarism software. In either case, your good, search-engine- friendly content is stolen and used, often as part of a doorway page, to draw the attention of the search engines away from you.

Everyone has seen examples of this: the page that looks promising but contains lists of terms (like term term paper term papers term limits) that link to other similar lists, each carrying Google advertising. Or the site that contains nothing but content licensed from Wikipedia. Or the site that plays well in a search but contains nothing more than SEO gibberish, often ripped off from the site of an expert and minced into word slaw.

These sites are created en masse to provide a fertile ground to draw eyeballs. It seems a waste of time when you receive a penny a view for even the best-paying ads but when you put up five hundred sites at a time, and you’ve figured out how to get all of them to show up on the first page or two of a lucrative Google search term, it can be surprisingly profitable.

The losers are the people who click on these pages, thinking that there is content of worth on these sites and you. Your places are stolen from the top ten by these spammers. Google is working hard to lock them out, but there is more that you can do to help Google.

Using The Antispam Tag

But there is another loser. One of the strengths of the Internet is that it allows for two-way public communication on a scale never seen before. You post a blog, or set up a wiki; your audience comments on your blog, or adds and changes your wiki.

The problem? While you have complete control over a website and its contents in the normal way of things, sites that allow for user communication remove this complete control from you and give it to your readers. There is no way to prevent readers of an open blog from posting unwanted links, except for manually removing them. Even then, links can be hidden in commas or periods, making it nearly impossible to catch everything.

This leaves you open to the accusation of link sp@m for links you never put out there to begin with. And while you may police the most recent several blogs you’ve posted, no one polices the ones from several years ago. Yet Google still looks at them and indexes them. By 2002, bloggers everywhere were begging Google for an ignore tag of some sort to prevent its spiders from indexing comment areas.

Not only, they said, would bloggers be grateful; everyone with two-way uncontrolled communication wikis, forums, guest books needed this service from Google. Each of these types of sites has been inundated with sp@m at some point, forcing some to shut down completely. And Google itself needed it to help prevent the rampant sp@m in the industry.

In 2005, Google finally responded to these concerns. Though their solution is not everything the online community wanted (for instance, it leads to potentially good content being ignored as well as sp@m), it does at least allow you to section out the parts of your blog that are public. It is the “nofollow” attribute.

“Nofollow” allows you to mark a portion of your web page, whether you’re running a blog or you want to section out paid advertising, as an area that Google spiders should ignore. The great thing about it is that not only does it keep your rankings from suffering from sp@m, it also discourages spammers from wasting your valuable comments section with their junk text.

The most basic part of this attribute involves embedding it into a hyperlink. This allows you to manually flag links, such as those embedded in paid advertising, as links Google spiders should ignore. But what if the content is user-generated? It’s still a problem because you certainly don’t have time to go through and mark all those links up.

Fortunately, blogging systems have been sensitive to this new development. Whether you use Wordpress or another blogging system, most have implemented either automated “nofollow” links in their comment sections, or have issued plugins you can implement yourself to prevent this sort of spamming.

This does not solve every problem. But it’s a great start. Be certain you know how your user-generated content system provides this service to you. In most cases, a software update will implement this change for you.

Is This Spamming And Will Google Block Me?

There’s another problem with the spamming crowd. When you’re fighting search engine sp@m and start seeing the different forms it can take and, disturbingly, realizing that some of your techniques for your legitimate site are similar you have to wonder: Will Google block me for my search engine optimization techniques?

This happened recently to BMW’s corporate site. Their webmaster, dissatisfied with the dealership’s position when web users searched for several terms (such as “new car”), created and posted a gateway page a page optimized with text that then redirects searchers to an often graphics-heavy page.

Google found it and, rightly or wrongly, promptly dropped their page rank manually to zero. For weeks, searches for their site turned up plenty of sp@m and dozens of news storiesbut to find their actual site, it was necessary to drop to the bottom of the search, not easy to do in Googleworld.

This is why you really need to understand what Google counts as search engine sp@m, and adhere to their restrictions even if everyone else doesn’t. Never create a gateway page, particularly one with spammish data. Instead, use legittmate techniques like image alternate text and actual text in your page. Look for ways to get other pages to point to your site t article submission, for instance, or directory submission. And keep your content fresh, always.

While duplicated text is often a sign of serious spammage, the Google engineers realize two things: first, the original text is probably still out there somewhere, and it’s unfair to drop that person’s rankings along with those who stole it from them; and second, certain types of duplicated text, like articles or blog entries, are to be expected.

Their answer to the first issue is to credtt the site first catalogued with a particular text as the creator, and to drop sites obviously spammed from that one down a rank. The other issue is addressed by looking at other data around the questionable data; if the entire site appears to be spammed, it, too, is dropped. Provided you are not duplicating text on many websites to fraudulently increase your ranking, you’re safe. Ask yourself: are you using the same content on several sites registered to you in order to maximize your chances of being read? If the answer is yes, this is a bad idea and will be classified as spamdexing. If your content would not be useful to the average Internet surfer, it is also likely to be classed as spamdexing.

There is a very thin line between search engine optimization and spamdexing. You should become very familiar with it. Start with understanding hidden/invisible text, keyword stuffing, metatag stuffing, gateway pages, and scraper sites.

Improve your Search Engine Ranking

If you are an internet marketing novice, you are probably facing the seemingly impossible and somewhat daunting task of trying to get your site listed on the first page of the search engines. You probably have no idea how to improve your ranking. For the purposes of this discussion, we will outline the procedures you should follow to climb steadily to the top of the search engines, while still making sure that you attract qualified traffic that will actually be receptive to the products or services that your website offers.

The first thing you need to understand is that your search engine ranking will not improve overnight. There are quite a few charlatans in cyberspace who work as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultants. They will charge you an arm and a leg for their services, sometimes as much as $2,000 per month or more. They often make dubious claims that they can get you ranked on the first page of the search engines within a few months, and if not, they will kindly refund your money.

However, there is a catch. Once you pay the initial deposit and the SEO company begins working on your website, they will often optimize your website in such a manner so that you will be able to quickly rise to the top of the rankings for a keyword that is either not significant or will not attract any real traffic to your website.

For example, if your website provides auto insurance quotes, any SEO consultant knows that it will be impossible to expediently get your website ranked on the first page of Google for a highly competitive phrase such as AUTO INSURANCE QUOTES. So, instead, they will pick a variation of that phrase, such as AUTO INSURANCE QUOTES FAST, for which there is no competition, and you will quickly rise to the top. The only problem is no one will ever actually use that precise phrase when searching for auto insurance quotes, so even though the SEO company delivered on its promise to improve your ranking, you will still not get any visitors to your website because you will be ranked high for a keyword that no one will ever use when searching for auto insurance quotes.

So, you need to use a different approach if you want to not only improve your ranking, but also attract qualified traffic to your website. The first thing you need to do is optimize your website for the keywords or phrases that people actually use when searching for products or services related to what you offer. For example, if you sell vitamins, you would want to improve your ranking for the phrases BUY VITAMINS or BUY VITAMINS ONLINE. To optimize your website for your chosen keywords, you should either hire a web designer that has experience optimizing websites, or you should purchase search engine optimization software that will show you how to tweak your website and how to change your HTML code so that your site is properly optimized. You should also try to have a decent amount of free content on your website that relates to the keywords or phrases for which you want to be ranked higher.

The next step is to submit your site to the search engines, if you have not already done so. It seems silly to mention this considering that we are talking about search engines anyway, but some people actually forget to submit their website to the engines, or only submit their site to a couple of search engines and then quit. There are hundreds of legitimate search engines and directories in cyberspace, and you should submit to all them. I recommend that you look for search engine submission companies on Google and pick one that charges a small monthly fee to submit your site to the search engines once per month.

The last step, and probably the most important component of getting ranked higher on the search engines, is increasing your link popularity. The more websites that are linking to your site, the higher your ranking will be. To increase your link popularity, you will need to submit your website to link exchange directories so that you can swap links with other websites (they will link to you if you agree to link to them). Also, you can write articles and submit them to article submission directories. At the bottom of each article you write, you are allowed to include a link to your website. As the articles you write are put into circulation and are published on other websites, your link popularity will increase.

If you employ each of the strategies outlined in this article, you should be able to improve your search engine ranking while at the same time garnering the kind of traffic that you want. No website can improve its ranking overnight, but if you are persistent, your efforts will be rewarded in the long run.

5 Tips For Improving Link Popularity

1. Directory Listings: Ensure your site is listed in ODP (free) and also include Yahoo! Business Express ($299 yearly) and LookSmart Express Submit ($299) or Basic Submit ($149). Directory listings boost link popularity because they rely on human editors, known to result in relevant content. There are many lesser-known directories that might be advantageous to be listed in. You can find many industry-specific and smaller directories in Search Engine Guide’s Search Engines Directory.
   
   
   
2. Request Links: When looking for possible link candidates, start by visiting a search engine and typing in your most important strategic keywords. You’ll see a lot of competitors, but look for non-competing, complimentary sites. Screen those sites, selecting only the ones that might be receptive to your link request. Give them a compelling reason to link to your site and be sure to suggest where a link might be appropriate. A good strategy is to link to them first and point this out, which might help get a link back.Another way to do this is to identify a well-established site with good content that targets the same audience you want to reach (non-competitive, of course). Then perform a link analysis from that site, noting the incoming links and soliciting those sites.
   
   
   
3. Promote Linkability Within Your Site: There are many ways to do this. Basically, you want to provide quality resources and outgoing links as appropriate. This can include links to search engines, news hubs, weather reports, industry resources, industry professional groups and so forth. Outgoing links can be important in two ways: they provide incentive for other quality sites to link to you when you’re already linked to them, and if internal linkage is done properly, it can improve your PR score. For technical information on PR see the white paper by Chris Ridings “PageRank Explained.”
4. Publish Articles: Get the experts in your company to write informative articles your audience is interested in, then submit these articles to appropriate online publications in your industry. Provide a brief bio containing your Web site URL and make it a condition for publication that the article must appear with a bio containing your company URL. This can generate a lot of links, but it takes time and editorial skills.
5. Testimonials: It can be worthwhile to start a testimonial page of products and services you find useful. Say you admire certain marketing sites or publishing sites. Contact the company, telling them why you value their services or find their products effective. Be earnest and concise. The company may respond asking for permission to display your comments on their Web site. Grant them permission provided they agree to link to your site. Sometimes it helps if you post the testimonial on your site first and refer them to that page.

Tips for Building SEO Content

While it’s great to have a web site optimized and performing well in the engines, you need to build out content on a consistent basis. Managing growth without upsetting your existing SEO efforts can often be a challenge. With these challenges in mind, here are my top ten tips for building site content while focusing on SEO opportunities.Tip 1 — Identify New Keyword Markets

If you are pleased with how your existing content is performing, you need to tap popular databases and see what other markets exist. Using tools like Google adwords keyword tool, overture, WordTracker and Keyword Discovery, you can quickly locate new areas relative to your industry or niche that also have a search history associated with them.

Tip 2 — Exploring Analytics

SEO is as much about delivering targeted traffic as it is about rankings, right? If you’re with me on that, start checking your analytics. In particular, explore site paths and conversions relative to referring search phrases. Many times you will find that what you think are your money terms, are actually just pushing in unproductive traffic.
The information available in your analytics package can make or break everything for you. Building new content is always a great idea; When you go about it blindly, your efforts are often un-concentrated. If you take the time to identify visitor trends and habits on a keyword level though — you can then focus on building new content that puts more visitors to work for your business goals.

Tip 3 — Maintain Your Approach

Have you ever been browsing a company’s web site reading up on various services, when suddenly you’re slapped in the face by content that just doesn’t “fit”?
As more content is written, it becomes critical for the tone and approach of your writing to be consistent. Managing this in groups can be difficult at best, so if your content is scaled in this manner — consider having one consistent editor.

Tip 4 — Write for People, not Engines

I hate that this tip sounds like something out of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines… But, it’s true. Imagine if I decided to write this article of Quick Tips for Building SEO Content methods in such a manner that you were repeatedly hit by keyword saturation levels that were through the roof.

Content Rich Creativity

We have all heard the term content-rich, but what does content rich really mean?

Content rich means different things for different individuals, because what one person finds useful, another may not. Content rich is all about providing information that is considered valuable to your target audience. Information that visitors might find useful could consist of product or industry facts, statistics, reviews, tutorials, or educational information related to a specific industry.

How to Make Your Website Content Rich

When creating a content rich website, do not be afraid to think outside of the box. Unique ideas will generally garner more attention than the mundane and more common content concepts. Over the years the unique content that has garnered the most attention, the Subservient Chicken and JibJab, may not be appropriate for a business website, there are still lots of “out of the box” things that you can do.

Here are some ideas on how you can build content for your website that will attract website visitors.

Calendar of Events

If you website appeals to a specific audience manage and maintain a calendar of events the events should relate to a specific region or topic.

Ex. Hawaii Local Events - http://calendar.gohawaii.com/ (regional) or ex. Librarian Events - http://www.infotoday.com/calendar.shtml (topic specific events)

Sponsorships and Contests

Conducting a contest is a great way to generate interest and incoming links, everyone wants to win and in order to garner votes many competitors will tell their audience about contests and voting options.

Example: Software Marketing Resource targets software developers and software marketers. They recently held ‘Software Vendor Awards’. Software developers and marketers were invited to nominate the companies they felt were worthy. The same audience was then given the opportunity to vote on the top nominees, and finally, winners were announced. Each stage of the contest resulted in buzz and increased web traffic.

Ex. - Software Marketing Resource - http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/winners.htm

Product Reviews and Testimonials

Consumers will often refer to product reviews to discern what product they should purchase. A number of websites have capitalized on this by providing independent product reviews and or independent consumer reviews.

Manufacturers can provide product reviews for related or complimentary products. Product reviews with candid the reviews are most credible if both the product negatives and positives are illustrated.

Ex. - epinions - http://www.epinions.com

Forums / Newsgroups

User generated content is a great way to capture the keyword long tail. There is no easier way to facilitate user generated content than through the use of forums and newsgroups.

Ex. - NotePage - http://www.notepage.net/forum

Blogs

Blogs are search engine spider food. Why? Because they can provide relevant related content that is updated regularly. Use blogs to communicate with your audience.

Ex. - Security Blog - http://www.security-port.com/blog.htm

Maps

If your website is regional or local, provide tie ins to Mapquest or Google to show visitors a visual representation or directions to surrounding communities or local events.

Ex. Marriott - http://marriott.com/property/mapandnearbyairports/default.mi?marshaCode=dentc

Photo Contests / Art Contests

Everyone loves to win. If your website targets a consumer audience, contests can be a great way to interact with your audience. Contests also make a website sticky, because contestants will frequently revisit the website to check their standing, or determine if they are an actual contender. Many contestants will link to the content from blogs encouraging their readers to vote. All in all, contests can result in extra attention.

Ex. - Dog Photo Contest - http://www.pamperedpuppy.com/contest/index.php Videos ex. - Dog Breed Videos - http://www.dog-pound.net/videos.htm

Stump the Expert / Knowledgebase / Q&As

Frequently asked questions have been dropped for a more modern approach to question and answers. Post “stump the expert questions” or construct a comprehensive knowledgebase of related information.

Writing Articles / How to Guides

When writing your articles, think about what your website visitors want to know, not what you want to tell them. In other words write for your audience not for yourself. Not only does an article archive gradually expand a site, it gives webmasters the opportunity to optimize for a variety of phrases and to educate their audience. How to articles are always a great website addition.

Ex. - Small Business - http://www.small-business-software.net/free-website-content.htm

Niche Directories / Lists

Topical portals have long been a popular on the web. Authority sites that focus on niche markets generate interest. Niche sites can be comprised of lists of helpful tools, the best niche blogs, popular news stories, industry specific terminology, and industry resources.

Ex. - Podcasting Tools - http://www.podcasting-tools.com

Copying or replicating a service or information on another website, while possibly still of value, will not usually generate as much interest as a new concept. Do not be afraid to reach outside the boundaries of your website to provide quality content.