Double SEO Tips Blogger Blog

Google's Disavow Tool: A Blessing for Webmasters?

noreply@blogger.com (Pham The Quyet) — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 07:05:00 -0700

The recent updates to Google's algorithm have affected many sites all over the world especially exact match domain sites like carinsurance.com. This has led to webmasters and SEO companies frantically relooking the link profiles of their sites and trying to delete what they think are spammy links. Well now Google has made that process much easier with the introduction of the link disavow tool. The much anticipated launch of this tool comes several months after Bing launched their own version of the tool. So what is this tool and why have webmasters been so anxious to use it?

Any webmaster will tell you how difficult it is to get rid of bad links as it involves contacting the corresponding webmaster with a link removal request. There are many obstacles in this process, for instance; a lack of contact details on the website, ignored requests and old sites that are not actively managed anymore. Some directory webmasters have resorted to charging a fee to remove a link to the site due to the volume of link removal requests.

What makes this process even more frustrating is that it is not easy to identify exactly which are the "bad links" and which links Google gives a site credit for. Rookie webmasters have sometimes caused more damage by removing good links which has left sites dropping in the rankings anyway. This is one of the downsides of the tool as good sites could end up being flagged as a source of bad links along with the "link farms" and paid directory sites.

In the last year companies in competitive industries have been using negative SEO tactics by linking competition, or "enemy", sites to spammy paid directories which causes the sites to get penalised by Google's algorithm. Google denied that negative SEO was occurring in the past, but by launching this tool it is clear that they knew that this was becoming a problem. Although it would be easier now to remove the bad links it opens up the possibility of sabotage from disgruntled employees, for e.g., who have access to the webmaster tools logins as they could remove the valuable links that a website has built over time.

If we disregard some of the dangers of the disavow tool for a second, it is clear to see that the majority of webmasters and SEO companies will find this tool indispensable. As the competition for rankings becomes more and more competitive we can expect to see many new tactics to try and thwart Google's algorithm. All I know is that it's good to know that Google is investing time and money in tools that will help webmasters clean up their sites.

2 New Ways to Advertise Using Google Maps

noreply@blogger.com (Pham The Quyet) — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 07:04:00 -0700

Google Maps is the most popular online mapping destination. Seventy-one percent of the 91.7 million people in the US who visited maps online in February 2012 used Google Maps, according to comScore. This puts them far ahead of Bing's online map, or MapQuest. People use Google Maps to locate businesses and other landmarks, but there are two new ways that your business can use Google Maps to attract customers.

Blue Pin

If your business is a subscriber to Google's AdWords Express, which is primarily for small-to-medium sized, local businesses, then your business will have a "blue pin" on Google Maps. That way, when someone puts your keywords or business name into Google, you will have a blue pin that stands out from the rest of the pins on the map. When a user clicks on the pin, he or she will go to your business's location on Google Maps. The blue pin will also appear next to your listing in the Google search, making it easier for the user to connect to your location.

Google Offers

Managing a local business is enough work as is; not to mention finding time to advertise to potential customers. Online advertising is a great way to reach a plethora of potential leads. You might think you already have enough on your plate, or are already spending enough advertising dollars on your online marketing campaign.

Through your site analytics, you already know what your customers are searching for on Google to find the products and services you offer. Google Offers makes online marketing for local businesses easy by use of their current AdWords campaign. By jumping in the online coupon business as a competitor to Groupon and LivingSocial, Google is now a competitor with a new program called Google Offers. These offers can be directly linked with your listing on Google Maps and Google Places. This means that if a customer's Google search brings up your business' listing, the customer will see that you are offering an online deal. This is a great way to convert a web user doing a simple search, to a new customer for your business.

When using Google offers, there is certain guidelines that you must follow to be able to place an offer on Google. If these guidelines are not followed, Google will send you a notice advising you that your offer has been suspended due to requirement violations. Don't worry, this doesn't mean that you are unable to put your offer on Google. If you think that your offer is walking on that fine line, you can go to Google offer policies or the Google Business Help Center to better inform you on the requirements.

By Tom M Calvin

Getting Started With Bing Webmaster Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 1 Aug 2012 18:07:00 -0700

When it comes to search engine optimization of a Website, we should make sure we optimize our site for all the search engines and not just one. Google is most popular search engine at the moment followed by Bing and others, and from last few months traffic coming from Bing search is increasing. Seems like Google algo changes which created lots of negative buzz, made Microsoft worked hard on their search engine and they have been integrating many things in their search engine like Social signals and deep Facebook integration.
Now, this post is not about bing search but it’s about Bing Webmaster tools which will help Websites owners and Bloggers to get their site on Bing search index and get more traffic from it.
I will keep this guide simple and up to the point to get your site indexed in Bing Search and in upcoming tutorials, I will explain other things that you can do with this free Webmaster tool.

How to Submit your site to Bing Webmaster tools:

If you are complete new to this, Bing webmaster tool is a free service by Microsoft for webmasters to submit their site and get a complete SEO report and information related to their site. In-fact, there are many features which are not even available on Google Webmaster tools and there is no reasons you should not submit your Website to Bing Webmaster tool.
Like any other Webmaster tools, you need to create a Free account or you can use your existing Windows live ID to login to your Webmaster account. Here is the link to get started. Once you are signed up and created your account, first step is to add your Website and verify.

Once you have submitted your Website, you need to add details related to site and ownership like sitemap link, Website owner details and so on. If you have not created your blog sitemap yet, you can easily create using Google XML sitemap plugin and add your sitemap link in the Site info page. Providing your sitemap link will help Bing bots to deep crawl and index more pages on your site.

Another interesting thing is, you can set Email communication preference and how often you would like to receive email for your site health issues. Since my Website is my full-time business too, I set it as daily alert so that I get notified regarding any site issues.

Once you have filled out all the details, click on Save and you will be redirected to Bing Webmaster tool dashboard, where you will see a message next to your site saying ” Site ownership has not been verified, Verify now“. Click on Verify now and use any of the method to verify your site. I find the adding meta tag to be easiest one, but you can pick any of the three verification process:

File upload
Adding Meta tag in Header
CNAME record to DNS

If you are using Thesis WordPress theme (Why use Thesis), simply go to Thesis site options and under Additional scripts copy paste the meta tag, clear your cache and click on Verify and within minutes your site will be verified. If you are using WordPress SEO by yoast, you can quickly add content part from meta tag verification and add it into WordPress SEO dashboard settings.

Site Verified on Bing and What next?

So far, we have submitted our site to bing Webmaster tools and done with the verification. Next step is to configure few settings which will help up to get an extra edge.

Submit more sitemaps to Bing:

I have created separate sitemap for Images and videos and I must admit Bing bots are smart enough to pick all sitemaps from an existing site. You can generate your Image and video sitemap using Image sitemap and video sitemap plugins and under Dashboard > Configure my site> Sitemap you can add new sitemap to Bing.

Submit individual URL:

If you have submitted a complete new site and it may take time for bing bots to crawl and index your site completely, you can manually add few links in here. Bing have put a limit of 50 URL’s submission per month and daily cap is 10. You should also check our earlier guide on how to make bots to crawl your site faster.

Ignore URL parameters:

If your site pages are indexed with URL parameters like replytocom in Bing search, you can simply add this Parameter here and ask bing to ignore all such links. I hope if Bing populates few URL parameter by default like Google Webmaster tools does. When I checked my indexed pages in Bing search, I realized I have few pages with attachment_id parameter indexed, now you all know what I did to get rid of such links from Bing.

Crawl Control:

This is another interesting feature by BWT, as they allow you to control when Bing bots should crawl your site more. So, you can set the most busy time of your blog and bing bots will select the time to crawl your site more when your site is less busy. This is useful for high traffic sites and sites with limited hosting bandwidth.

Block URL’s and directory in Bing search:

So somehow, bots started indexing your wp-content, tags or categories folder. Or you decided to remove all tags and categories or any other directory from Bing search, this section will help you to do the same. You can stop indexing of any page or directory on your site using Block URL section. This manual URL removal applies for 90 days and you will get an Email notification 8 days prior to completion of 90 days, and you can decide to keep the out of index or let it index in Bing.

Grant Access to your Webmaster tool to other users:

This is useful for many people like me who offers Free WordPress setup, as I can quickly add my client site using my Bing webmaster tools account and give him admin access later. Also, if you manage your blog with a team or with a partner, you can quickly give access to your site webmaster tool using users section. There are three roles which you can given:

Read only
Read and modification
Administrator access

There are many more things which we can do with Bing tool to improve our search engine visibility in Bing search, but to keep this tutorial short and informative, I will end it now and will cover next part in upcoming post. For now, if you have not yet explored bing webmaster tools or submitted site to Bing, it’s the right time to go ahead and do the submission. If you are stuck anywhere or have any questions, feel free to ask via comments.
Copyright of shoutmeloud.com

How to Make Money with WidgetBucks

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 21:44:00 -0700

Recently, an advertising network known as WidgetBucks launched and began their quest to revolutionize the world of online marketing. In providing their pay-per-click shopping widget programs, WidgetBucks seeks to make advertising a much easier process for just about everyone involved. Traditional advertising is effective in some cases, but often times, it fails to meet the needs of companies. It just doesn’t reach customers in the right way. WidgetBucks is a different kind of online advertising, though.

Depending upon your role in the entire operation, WidgetBucks provides a different experience for various webmasters. The advertisements seem to reach customers in a different way. The latest marketing research has indicated that, on the whole, internet browsers are extremely fickle and they’re able to pick up on the tricks that marketing professionals bring. With WidgetBucks, the advertisements read more like content. Internet browsers see the WidgetBucks advertisements just like they do the articles on a webmaster’s site.

Webmasters have found that WidgetBucks can be very profitable when compared to other forms of affiliate marketing. Most website owners report a very high click through rate and from that, a solid CPM. What is the primary reason why this is happening? WidgetBucks serves the hot niches in the website industry. Among the popular niches are video games, sports, jewelry, health topics, and plenty of other things that are currently hot in the industry.

If you are a webmaster and you plan on making the big bucks using this advertising program, you better have a website in one of the popular niches. Otherwise, their advertising seems to fall short of the mark. Their advertisements are well written and are designed to make people really want to explore the product being advertised, but some webmasters find that their site is not one that benefits from such marketing.

The referral program is also very popular and is a good way to make some income using the program. At last check, WidgetBucks had an offer of $25 for any person who registers their high traffic site. From there, webmasters aren’t finished making money through WidgetBucks. You can earn 10% of the total lifetime earnings of all of the people you refer through your personal referral link. Depending upon who clicks on your site, this could end up being a very profitable aspect of the entire operation.

As far as payments go, there is a little bit of a waiting period. This can be frustrating at first, but after a while, the cycle begins to catch up to itself and you’ll be receiving regular payments. Just 45 days after the end of the month, WidgetBucks will send payment through either the Paypal system or through a personal check.

On the whole, WidgetBucks is a pretty good new system and they stand to revolutionize the market some. The advertisements are well written, which is the main difference between these ads and some of the other ones that you might see online.

Join WidgetBucks and earn more per click.

How To Make Money Using a Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 21:40:00 -0700

Many friends have asked me whether we can make money online from blogs or not. I told them you can make money even by selling lemonade at the corner of your school but the main problem is that you must have passion and time for what you will be blogging. Many people fail because they are starting blogs just to make money , they are writing 2 or 3 articles and they are using different affiliate links and other advertisement programs to catch any cents.
You must know that in order to make some money , at least you should know what you are talking about and not post just crap in order to increase number of posts in your blog.
Many newbies on the internet doesn't even know how to get a free blog online so in this article I will explain step by step what you have to do in order to make some cash from your blog
There are 2 big blog providers online which are

WordPress.com
Blogger.com

- WordPress has a lot of templates and widgets so you can use for your blog , you can create categories and you can even purchase more space and other cool features if you upgrade
- Blogger was purchased by Google so the best part is that you can get accepted to Adsense through Blogger. The bad part is that you cannot create categories but you can give Labels to your posts as they were categories (Im doing it)

You must know that creating a blog is really simple but updating it everyday with new and unique content is really a hard work (its not so hard if you speak about your favorite niche like I'm doing) So content will be the judger whether you will be a successful blogger or not, if you will update it once a week chances will be very low but if you will post good and unique content every day then you will be in the right road

So ok so far , you have created the blog , you chose your template and you are posting some articles. You will ask how will you get the traffic ?
There are tons of ways to drive traffic to a blog , I will explain some of the techniques I'm also using

Register at FeedBurner.com
Register at TechnoRati.com
If you are a member of DigitalPoint Forum add your RSS Feed to your profile (it will be shown under your username everytime you post a new reply or thread)
Write some unique articles and upload them at Article Directories (See this post for more explanations)
Register at MyBlogLog.com
Add your blog url to your signatures in every forum you are (if possible add also an avatar with your blog's address)
Add your blog url to high pr directories

So with 7 easy and free ways you can start seeing some increases in your traffic (Note that if you dont post regularly your traffic may decrease again)
Now I know that all of you are thinking , how will we be making money from our blogs ? Its really simple but I would strongly recommend use just 2 or maximum 3 advertisments and do not put the advertisements from the beginning (wait until you have some traffic then you may add them) Make sure your advertisements and other widgets are like your template so you wont have a lot of contrast.
Here I'm listing the ways how you can make money from your blog once you have some decent traffic and some readers

Adsense (CPM & PPC which pays differently for each niche)
Text-Link-Ads (Get Money if someone buys a link to your site from TLA)
ReviewMe (Get paid for different reviews you make , more traffic you have more you will earn)
PayPerPost (same as ReviewMe but it has more advertisers in their network)
Money4Banners (Doesn't matter if you have a small or big blog , you get 10$ when you sign up and 5$ every month just to display their advertisment
WidgetBucks (this seems to be most promising program which pays very high rates but nobody has received any payment so far as its a new company)

So I'm listing just these 6 ways but if you would be interested on others feel free to contact me and I will share my experience with you.

Make sure you use proper keywords for each article and make sure your blog structure is like :

http://yourblog.com/this-is-how-you...rl-must-be.html
and not like :
http://yourblog.com/2007/2425.html (SEO Purposes)

Share your comments for this article if you found anything special !
This article was created for some friends who asked me how can we make money from blogs and I believe that an advanced webmaster knows almost everything explained here
By Paul - moneymakerinfo

30 Days to More Productivity and Traffic

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 21:33:00 -0700

Every month I set a 30 day challenge for myself. The idea is to form new habits, create more free traffic, advance my knowledge on marketing and to solidify an already unstoppable mindset. The process is very powerful. It has been responsible for my continuing growth in this industry, and will continue to do so as long as keep setting these goals. Today I want to run through this month's challenge I set for myself. My hope is that you see the power in this simple process and start to implement it into your own daily, weekly and monthly schedule. It's very easy to get distracted in this business, to stay focused, we must have some sort of plan.

At the end of this Month's challenge I will have the following list completed...
Personal:
1) I will have meditated consistently for 20 minutes every day this month.
2) I will have completed a 30 day exercise program.
3) I will have drank 150 pints of water.
4) I will have listened to 5 inspirational and motivational audiobooks.
5) I will have contemplated my future for 10 hours in a quiet room.
6) I would have taken 30 walks around the local park to clear my head every morning.
Professional:
1) I will have written 5 guest posts on high traffic blogs.
2) I will have created 5 videos about my business and uploaded them to the top 10 video sharing websites.
3) I will have written 5 press releases and submitted them to top 10 sites.
4) I will have commented on 300 hundred blog posts within my niche with a link back to my website.
5) I will have added 450 valuable comments to forums within my niche.
6) I will have written 30 blog posts for my own website.
7) I will submit all articles to top 5 directories for syndication.
8) I will convert 30 posts into PDF and submit to top 10 sharing websites.
9) I will have read 5 marketing eBooks related to my business.
At first glance the above 30 day goals may seem like a lot, but actually, this process is very simple to do. After the first 20 days have passed I will be on the way to forming a few new habits, plus, I will begin to see consistent traffic coming to my website.
Let me break down how I implement this strategy each day.
· I get up out of bed at 6am.
· Drink a pint of water and eat healthy breakfast.
· I take a 15 minute walk around the local park.
· I then meditate for 20 minutes.
· I exercise for 20 minutes.
· I write blog post for website.
· I comment on 10 blog posts within my niche.
· I leave 5 comments on 3 different forums.
· I then read 10 to 20 pages of a business eBook.
· I contemplate how the information in the book can help my business (20 minutes)
Everything above brings me up to about 12 o clock. It's time for a break at this stage and I usually get out of the house for an hour or two. When I come back, I'll most likely implement a few more traffic generating strategies like social bookmarking, interaction on Facebook and twitter etc. My goal is always complete my daily (30 day challenge) tasks before I move onto anything else.

On alternative days I will also include writing a press release, a guest post, or create a video. Once I produce 5 of each within the 30 days I'm good to go. Everything is chartered on my whiteboard which is in front of me at all times. If I fail to do even one task on my list, the 30 days start all over again. This takes a little bit of discipline but once you persevere through the 20 day mark, it gets very easy to continue. I have formed some fantastic new habits just from this daily, weekly and monthly challenges I set for myself.

I also have an end goal for what I want to have achieved by the end of the 30 days. For example, with the traffic generating goals I set for myself, I would be aiming to get a consistent "20 leads" a day into my business. Sometimes I'll set a goal to have 40 leads coming into my business on a daily basis once the 30 days have been completed.

By Declan O Flaherty

7 Proven Steps To Generate Traffic To Your Website

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 21:31:00 -0700

Generating traffic to your website is imperative if you intend to make money online. This is usually the main challenge for a new web business. In this article I will cover 7 simple steps to get started in generating targeted traffic to your website:

1. Ensure that you have high quality content:
The first thing that you need to do is to have good quality content. In the World Wide Web, content is king!!!
The only way to have a flow of targeted traffic visiting you website daily is by having relevant content. Search engines love good strong content.
Commit the time and effort to create strong engaging content. Make this a high priority; this is important to your successful website.

2. Social Network Marketing:
This is by far the best way in my opinion to generate targeted traffic to your website, if done right of course. Social Networks are growing like wild fire and have a thriving market for every niche. There are many social networks and more still to come, get involved immediately.

3. Go for affiliates:
Affiliate programs mean that you will hire individuals to promote your website or products. In exchange, you will have to pay them a certain percentage of your profits, their commissions. There are many ways to pay your affiliates and you can choose any way that suits you. This is great way to delegate and leverage the marketing of your website.

4. Submitting to directories:
In order to make your website more visible, submit it to popular directories like Open Directory Project, Zeal and others. You can also submit to directories which have themes so that their topics are relevant to your website. You can also go for small directories which can get hold of a lot of in bound links for you.

5. Go for a bit of video marketing:
Make a video promoting your website and then post it on any of the popular video websites. Post it on YouTube, Break.com or even on various social networking sites. Try to make an interesting video which will be appreciated by your target audience. If they like your video, they will circulate it and that would be a great kind of publicity for your website. Make it a point to include the URL of your website in that video.

6. Create free reports, articles and blog post:
Create enticing reports, blog posts and articles with relevant content to your business. A great way to promote your website is to add a link of your website frequently to these. Once you write the report, give it away for free to different website owners, article directories, blog sites, etc. Once these go viral you can ensure that you will get a great deal of traffic.

7. Posting free ads:
Post advertisements in places where you are sure to get traffic. Craigslist is a great place to post a free ad; forums are also great for this. Be creative let your ads stand out, use images, colors, etc.

By Dwayne C Campbell

Why Add Guest Blogging to Your SEO Campaign?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 21:26:00 -0700

There are a lot of SEO professionals who are saying that guest blogging is one of the most effective ways to improve the rankings of your website. However, there are still a lot of people who are not using it, thinking that they will only provide another website with a content that they worked hard for. Guest blogging is a process wherein you will be submitting a blog post to another blog and have it posted there. The owner of the blog will then review your post and will have it published on his website, together with a link pointing to your blog or website.

If you think that SEO now only revolves around the content that you have on your website, then you're optimizing your website the wrong way. You still need to build links around it, but it should have the quality and consistency of a credible informant. Since you will only be submitting your blog post to an authority site, you will be able to enjoy link juice that is coming from a website that has better position than yours. Aside from this, the readers of the blog where you published your post will also find your site, and if you give them all the information that they are looking for, chances are, they will be your subscribers.

The fact that you will be able to enjoy link juice coming from authority sites is already enough for you to start considering guest blogging. Imagine if you can get at least a post with a link every day from different websites. Where do you think your website will be? Below or above the websites of your competitors? This is something that you need to think of, especially now that it is not that hard for one to create a blog post that is referring to a particular topic. Just make sure that you are going to submitting a post that is unique, and will never be submitted to another website; else you will only be wasting your time and will probably ruin your website and your reputation as a blogger at the same.

If you still think that you are not capable of creating blog posts on a regular basis, then it would be better if you are going to look for a company that can provide you with such service. This will be a lot easier because these companies are also optimizing their own websites for it to appear higher in the search results. All you have to do is to compare them with each other and choose the one that has the best services, reputation, and of course, pricing structure. There are a lot of SEO companies that are promising to be the best, but the truth is that they cannot even deliver half of what they are claiming. Be very careful with it, because a wrong company could not only waste your money, but also ruin the rankings of your website, together with the performance of your business.

By Jomer Gregorio

How to Write a 400 Word Article Quickly

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 21:05:00 -0700

One of the real keys to article marketing is to be able to write articles quickly. This means being able to crank out 400 word articles fast, so fast that in one hour you can write 3-5 articles. This means that in one year, you could write 1000 or more articles, writing just one hour per day. That's right - 3 articles a day = 1000 articles a year, give or take. And 5 per day = about 1500 per year. Imagine if one year ago you had started writing 5 articles per day, and you had 1000 or 1500 articles online right now, what would that really mean for you? What would it mean for you if you had that many articles right now?

How much more traffic would you be getting to your website? Would it be worth it? If you think it would be worth it, then the next step is to ask "what can I do to get to where I can do it"? So if it is important, then you take the next step - just do it. And in this article, I will show you how.

First, you are limited by your typing speed. If you type at 20 words per minute, you can type 400 words in 20 minutes. If you type less than 20 words per minute, it will take you longer. If you type at LESS than 20 words per minute, I suggest finding a way to type faster. That might mean practice. That might mean taking a typing class. Would it be worth taking one month and learning to type faster to be able to type 2 times as fast for the rest of your life? You would double your productivity! Imagine that. One month investment in typing. And a doubling of personal productivity for the rest of your life!
So just do it. Learn to type faster.

Second: Learn to organize your articles faster. The way I do it is think of a topic. Then in the first paragraph I explain why it is important that I share what I am going to write about. Notice how I do this in this article. Go read my last 5 articles as more examples.
3rd: Now just write the article. Don't worry about structure of the article. Just write what you know. It's only 400 words. You can speak 400 words in about 3 minutes. Just write what comes to your mind. Edit later. You might not need to make any edits except for spelling. Just write.
By Sean R Mize

The Best 15 WordPress Plugins The Newbie Blogger Needs

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 6 Mar 2012 01:54:00 -0800

WordPress is an awesome website building platform that is relatively easy to learn, within days even the most timid internet user can have a professional looking blog and website up and running. With WordPress there is no need for HTML or JavaScript coding skills. Everything is created with an easy to use 'plug n play' style system. I guess that is why they call the add-ons 'plugins'.
Once you have WordPress installed onto your server a default theme will be visible, this is usually the 'Twenty Eleven' theme, if you do not like this theme all you need to do is change it. We will talk about how to change themes in another post. For now, the default theme is good enough to start your newbie blog.
WordPress functionality may seem a bit basic at first and it is, but even the basic theme can look great if you use it well, once you start to add the plugins then the magic can really start. Plugins can turn your blog from just a one or two video posts to a complete video style website or it can become a photo gallery. You can add podcasts, sales pages, and ecommerce stores. The possibilities are endless. Anyway, I better not get you either too excited or frazzle your brain with 'too much to learn syndrome'.
I will take it easy and start small. I am going to give you a list of plugins that I think every new blog owner should know about and install before you go into the seriously good plugins. Some are essential and some are, well you guessed it, not. These are in no particular order
1. Akismet- Great plugin that stops spamming comments and deletes automatically saving you the time and annoyance of having to go through the comments left by people pushing porn or Viagra! Akismet is usually pre-loaded into WordPress and should be found in the plugin section. This will need a key for it to be enabled and you will need to register with Akismet to get a key. It used to be available from WordPress.org but unfortunately they have stopped doing that. [Essential]
2. Contact Form 7 - Great plugin this, adds a contact form (if you hadn't already guessed) to your site. You simply add in your email address that you want emails sent to, and any other info you require then copy and paste the simple code it gives you into a page. Give the page a name like hmmm 'Contact Me' hit publish and you are done. [Essential]
3. EzineArticles - This is a cool plugin, when you write a blog post, before you put links or pictures into it you can hit a couple of buttons and send your fresh article straight to EzineArticles for distribution. Now article marketing used to be big but since Google have taken a bit of a dislike to article sites I am not sure how powerful article marketing is; however, it can still be good for you if other websites and newsletters to take your article with a link to your site and use it.
4. Google Privacy Policy - This is a must if you want to monetize your site with Google AdSense. They will not add any adverts to a site that doesn't comply with their terms and a site must have a Privacy Policy. This sorts it all out, similar to Contact Form 7, you copy a bit of code and post it into a page and hit publish. Job done. [Essential]
5. Google XML Sitemaps - The best way to describe this is by using the plugin description itself 'This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog' I couldn't have put it better myself.
6. CKEditor for WordPress- This is great for copying and pasting from Word etc, keeping the text and font formatting. Better than the standard default text editor in WordPress. It gives you more choice and control when writing your blog posts or importing pictures. This is not an essential plugin really, more a preference.
7. cbnet Ping Optimizer - This stops the over excessive 'pinging' of your website to search engines. WordPress by default will 'ping' your blog posts to help them get index by the search engines. If you are like me, you will create blog posts by adding bits, publishing it, taking a look, editing it, updating it etc. etc. This can go on time after time after time. Every time you hit 'Update' WordPress will send a new 'ping'. You may think this is good, it is not. Too much 'pinging' can in fact go against you. Google may think you are spamming and trying to get index really fast for naughty reasons. So you could in fact be punished for excessive pinging. Installing this plugin is a must. [Essential]
8. Share and Follow - This is a social share plugging that adds all those lovely Social Media and bookmarking buttons at the top/bottom of posts allowing people who like your posts to share and bookmark them (obviously) There is also a 'Follow Us' bar where you can add your Twitter and Facebook links so your site visitors can easily join up and follow you on the popular Social Media networks.
9. Yoast SEO - Search Engine optimization is a must for websites to help them get higher rankings in the search engines, this great plugin checks your posts before you publish them to see if they are written as best as they can be with your chosen keyword for them to have a better ranking in places like Google. Alternately you can use All in One SEO Pack plugin. I prefer the Yoast personally. [Essential]
10. Digg Digg - Another Social Media plugin that allows your site visitors to ReTweet or Share your posts. Digg Digg has a great funky floating bar that runs up the side of your posts. I run this alongside share and follow.
11. Statpress Reloaded - This is great little plugin for showing you how many visitors you have had to your site, where they came from, what page they looked at, what search terms they used etc. Once you have activated it, it is up and running unlike Google Analyticator plugin which requires you to set up a Google Analytics account and get an ID password before you can use the plugin. Statpress Reloaded is straightforward and fast working. [Essential]
12. WPtouch - Awesome plugin that automatically turns your site into a smart phone friendly version. Most smart phones these days can view normal websites well and the new version of WordPress seems to adapt automatically when viewed in phones, however saying that. WP Touch makes your site look a lot better and arranges your posts into an easier to read list. Install, give it a try, if you do not like it deactivate it and delete. Not a problem
13. Related Posts Thumbnails - This cool plugin allows related posts to be seen on the side bar and at the bottom of your posts with the featured image, giving your reader something else to see, possibly capture their attention and have them clicking through to your other posts keeping them where you want them, on your site!
14. WP Photo Album - Another excellent plugin that gives a greater visual dimension to your blog. This plugin allows you to upload loads of photos, create albums and galleries. You copy some code into a page, give it a title and hit publish to create picture galleries within your site. It has several widgets that can be placed into the sidebar creating a picture of the day/hour, a slide show of pictures and a top ten pictures section giving your site an incredible visual experience.
15. FeedWordPress - This is for the lazy people who don't like creating their own content. Plugin this baby and it will pull content via RSS from the websites that you choose and place them onto your blog as posts. As long as they have an RSS feed of course. Great for news type of blogs. Use this alongside your own content then you have a winning combination. Regular posting of content is good in the eyes of search engines, they don't normally like duplicate content but if you use it wisely it can do you good. The only drawback is that you must choose the websites that you pull your feed from wisely otherwise your site could get populated with rubbish.

By Tim M Lowe

SEO Ranking: Coping With Constant Changes!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 6 Mar 2012 01:50:00 -0800

Any website owner would be distressed to see their ranking on the search engines drop overnight. A first reaction might be an urgent call to ask the designer what went wrong. The revolution in business development, internet marketing strategy, new clients and keeping with time constraints are some of the challenges that SEO copes with as well as constant change. So it is indeed important to know about some of the ongoing activities happening on the internet that directly affects SEO ranking.
Google Preview
On November 11, 2010 Google launched a new feature in online search, the Google instant preview. This is the ability to have a glimpse of the web page design on the Google SERP's. Located next to the title in any search result is a "magnifying glass" icon that can be clicked on and a preview of the website pops up.
In terms of SEO, Google preview means there is now a visual representation of individual web design that can impress users through any search results preview. A poorly designed index web page perceived by a user will most likely not be clicked on to be viewed. Changes such as this to a leading search engine becomes a continuous challenge to web designers to catch the user's attention with a simple lay-out scheme.
Best Trends
With differing opinions regarding users searching capability and the best web design SEO practices, it still is possible to ensure that a website ranks high on SERP's. Following are the three best trends that can be applied to increase SEO rankings in these changing times.

Social Media Optimization (SMO) - SMO is an internet marketing strategy using social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and many others. Using various SMO to communicate products to social media users can greatly help achieved goals to optimize a business website. SMO offers added features like: RSS feeds; sharing buttons; polling tools; functionality for incorporating videos, presentations and images; user ratings and other promotional activities like blogging; comments; ability to participate in discussion groups; and posting personal status updates, all of which can be advantageous for any business internet presence.
Real Time Search - This is one of the innovative features added to Google search that began in December 2009. Through this feature, finding the most relevant result is easier since dynamic results are being delivered from many different sources including real-time information. This changed algorithms and Google's gained power over its competitors to offer SEO benefits by: utilizing the latest topical and breaking news to improve SEO; getting feedback to improve business performance; and scan for great ideas on trending topics to start business marketing campaigns.

Load Time - As had been predicted, one of the changes that leading search engines implemented and rapidly affected website SEO rankings was the page load time. If any page on a website takes too long to load, a decline in ranking should be expected. Note what Google recommends: that pages should load within 3 seconds or less; it accomplished, high-ranking can be continually enjoyed on this leading search engine.

By Chris M Hunter

SEO Tips for Website Images

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 6 Mar 2012 01:43:00 -0800

Several SEO methods can be used in tandem with your image to attract as many visitors to your site as possible.

The File Name should contain Keywords
The first, and an often overlooked step, is to ensure that you have used the keyword for the image inside what you have named the file. This is similar to having made sure that the keyword is in your URL; as having the keywords in the names of these files assists search engines in determining relevancy to searches. Use this method with all images, especially those that are more than just simple decoration. It will help your image appear more often in the results by content search, and in a higher place on the results list. Google suggests that website hosts gather the images into a single folder on the website as opposed to having them strewn about the pages.

Select Relevant Images
The most important thing about your image is that it be relevant to the content of your page. Whether explaining something specific, or serving as a layout enhancement; relevancy to your content is the most important aspect of an image. When an image has been optimized for a search engine, cohesiveness is the key factor that produces results. Having an image on the page that does not tie in with the site is something to consciously avoid. Presenting attractive and relevant images can critically impact your potential customer base via the content. Images attract, and maintain the attention of your visitors, and should serve as an enhancement to the content provided to keep a person engaged. As tempting as it is to have large flashy images, avoid this pitfall. Avoid having a large quantity of images on the site. This can clog the load time of the site, and some visitors will click out of a web-page that doesn't load quickly.

Use Alt Text or Text Tags
Images on the page need to have a title as well as an alternative text tag, ALT Text, to describe it. While the qualities of the image should be able to be extracted from the content of the page, having these two pieces of information can serve a reverse purpose. Studies show casual surfers are drawn to the images of a page when first reaching it. Having an informative title coupled with quality descriptive text can make those who are just surfing interested enough to read the rest of the page. If the image is a navigational tool that connects to another page, it is important to have the descriptive text reflect the content of the other page ensuring browsers that the link will lead to the content they want to view.

Anchor Text
Having the complete information of an image attached to the image, known as anchor text, helps with the automation aspect of a search engine as it allows for a quicker indexing of the image in their database. Having a SEO image is beneficial as the image will show up in a search engine when only the only search criterion is the keyword.
By Eric T Callahan

The Top 8 SEO Basics You Need to Know

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:38:00 -0800

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important component of any successful website, but do you know your SEO basics as well as you should? Here are top 8 fundamentals that you absolutely need to know about search engine optimization:

Basic #1 - Content is King
Search engine optimization for beginners always begins with good content. This basically boils down to making good on what you promise with your website. Provide the information you claim to provide, supply the goods or services you advertise, and any good relevant information you believe will be useful to your website visitors.

Basic #2 - Selecting Relevant Keywords/Phrases
Keywords are phrases that a target web visitor is most likely to type into a search engine when looking for specific products, services, or information. This means the content provided in your web pages needs to be seeded with the right keywords. The right balance between relevance and words with less competition needs to be achieved. The most relevant keywords may be too competitive with other sites, while less competitive keywords may not get a large enough number of searches.

Basic #3 - URL Links Need to Be Relevant
The Uniform Resource Locator (URL), or website address link of a website and its subsequent web pages must be as relevant to the content as possible. For example, a URL of www.feldonsflashlights.com/types/LEDflashlights will be more effective SEO-wise than www.feldonsflashlights.com/folder3/00034.htm because the former web address spells out what is in the page content, "LED flashlights." Not only will the former URL be more attractive to search engines, but may also be easier for users to read and remember.

Basic #4 - Page <Title> Tag Must Match the Content
One of the most important and yet overlooked SEO basics is selecting a relevant title for the title tag of "each" page. It is imperative that the title be brief enough to fit in a small space but broad enough to effectively communicate the content of the web page. The title tag is very important because it tells the search engines what a page is all about. The title tag information shows up in the most upper-left hand corner of the computer screen for each page in a web browser.

Basic #5 - Use of the Description Meta Tags
Description meta tags go hand-in-hand with effective page titles because the description can be used to catch the attention of a web visitor. A good description meta tag and a call to action can convince a web visitor to actually click the link and enter the site. While some SEO experts have minimized the importance of this tag (because they say it is no longer important to search engines), the fact is that it is the text your web visitors see when they read your listing on the search engine results page and could be the one factor that gets a potential visitor to click or not based on what he reads.

Basic #6 - Use of Heading Tags (<H1><H2><H3>)
Once a web user lands on a page, he should see a relevant headline with keywords included that let him know he's in the right place! This is another one of those SEO basics that many website owners overlook. Heading tags count towards the visibility of a website on search engines because the keywords included in these tags tells the search engines what the page is all about.

Basic #7 - Importance of Image File Names and the Alt Text Value
Using keyword phrases when naming image files to match the content of a web page, as well as, using keyword phrases in the "alt" value of an image tag, adds significant SEO value to a web page when search engines filter through images on a web page. Rather than naming a file something like, "picture2.jpg"-a much better file name for a search engine may be something like, "LED-flashlights-small.jpg" and including the same phrase as the image tag "alt" value.
This would look something like: alt="Small LED Flashlights"

Basic #8 - Keep Learning...SEO is Always Changing!
Just like everything else in technology, the Internet is always changing-so is search engine optimization. This makes it important for anyone with a business web presence to continue to learn about changes in SEO and keep their website updated accordingly.
Keeping all these SEO basics in mind should arm you with the basic foundational knowledge needed to get you started in search engine optimization for your business website.

Angeline Plesek is the owner of WebPageMarketingBasics.com...as a web developer and freelance copywriter, she realizes the importance of web page optimization and how it relates to the bottom line for all business owners that have an online presence. It isn't just about how a website looks--there is more to improving conversion rates online.

By Angeline Plesek

Optimizing With Google Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:34:00 -0800

In your journey to become an internet business master, one of the most important things to learn is how to use web analytics. Analytics data is useful for optimizing your content, specifically in keyword ranking, landing page development, visitor retention, social engagement, and more. But in order to use analytics data, you must first understand analytics data. Each week I will add a way to use Analytics to benefit your websites; this week is keyword ranking. Here is a rundown of what metrics to use for keyword ranking and search engine optimization using Google Analytics.
Keyword Ranking Part I
Google Analytics is extremely helpful for this type of work and has not only provided traffic source data but also information specifically tailored to search engine optimization. In the traffic sources menu, you can see the number of visits that came from the organic traffic medium, which means that visitors used a search engine which displayed organic (non-ad impression) search results that included a page on your website. If you have a lot of visits using the organic search medium, it could indicate that your website's pages are ranking for some search query (usually in the top 3 pages). You can view the keywords that were being searched to identify exactly which terms you may be ranked for or should be optimizing to rank for.
Once you are ranking for some keywords, Google Analytics can also display information for the number of impressions that your site has within search results. An impression, in this situation, is simply the presence of your site's url within any search result display. For some keywords your site may be ranking multiple times (but with different pages at each ranking position) and more than one keyword can be ranked to the same page(s). Analytics also shows the number of clicks on those impressions, the average position within search rankings (numeric value), and the click through rate (CTR), which is the percentage of clicks out of all impressions. Low CTR's could indicate that you should improve the quality of the meta description of your site's pages. The meta description is the short trail of information that appears directly below the title of your listing in search results.
To sum up, these are the specific metrics that you should be looking at when performing an analysis for keyword ranking:

Medium - the means through which visitors were sent to your site; this is not the technology used with the internet browser. Examples include organic, referral, and email.

Keyword - what keyword phrase were searched when traffic was sent organically Queries - what search query was entered when your site appeared in search results

Impressions - the number of times a page from your site appeared in search results

Average Position - the average search position that a page from your site is ranking for a given keyword; this is a numeric value which is created by averaging the ranking of your site over the course of the time period you are viewing data for.

CTR - this is the click-through-rate of your impressions; it is given as a percentage, and is calculated by this equation: (Clicks/Impressions) 100

By Hana Omori

The Secret Behind SEO Link Building Services

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:32:00 -0800

When the concept of computers was first introduced to the market, they were mainly used for office functions. Today, the internet is widely used to run businesses. For anyone running an online business, it is essential to make the most of SEO link building services. There are many companies that offer these services but the question is what is secret behind these services? There are two major benefits of SEO link building services and they include:
- They allow for increased web visibility or top ranking in search engine systems.
- They also help to generate quality traffic to a site hence, increased productivity and profitability.
When running a business online exploring these services is one of the best decisions that you can ever make. This is because different search engines identify a site by the type of links it has. As a matter of fact, a site that has quality back links gets top ranking than a site with poor back links. Therefore, getting the services makes your website more visible, for top ranking and a cutting edge against relevant competitors.
Additionally, the services play a crucial role in determining how long you are going to be in business online. A site that has poor back links is at risk of getting loses. In some instances, low ranking can mean permanent expulsion from top engines. Therefore, take time to find the best services and prolong the life of your business online.
What's more, the services help you to trade profitably. SEO campaign is very important in that, it helps a business to get the best traffic. It makes your website highly functional and more appealing to target prospects. For this reason, they will often visit the site to discover the kind of products and services that you provide. In addition, clients always love pages that load faster. Quality back links direct clients instantly to the kind of information or service they are looking for. Therefore, the services help you to make the most of SEO and link building campaign, so as to run a business successfully.
The cost of getting these high quality SEO services can be relatively high depending on the needs of your website. Even so, there are many companies that offer cheap link building services online. Explore them and make your site more visible. Most importantly, settle for quality cheap link building services for effective solutions and better results.

By Ali Raza

How to Write a Better Business Blog Post

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 6 Dec 2011 02:17:00 -0800

Are you covering all the bases with your business blog's content? Or are you sitting back thinking that blogging doesn't work for your business?
If you want to make your business blog work better for you then read on.

Is your blog post title interesting enough to make people want to click through and read more?
Are there keywords/keyphrases in the title?
Are there keywords/keyphrases in the body of the post?
Is the first paragraph interesting enough with a good hook?
Is your business blog post well-written and not a bunch of fluff and nonsense?
Is there a strong call to action in your bio.

Your title has to "talk" to your ideal reader, if your title is generic or bland it will not talk to anyone. Drill down your title and tailor it to your ideal reader. Women: Do the way men drive annoy you? will work far better than Things than other drivers do that annoy you.
Keywords and keyphrases are how you get found in the search engines, you should mention a keyword in your title to stand a chance of being found for that search term. But you can't stop with a keyword in the just the title, for a business blog post to get found you need to mention the keywords or keyphrases a few times in the content itself, as well as tagging the images with that phrase.
Is the first paragraph of your content hook the reader and luring them down the post, is it driving the urge to read more? If it's not then you need to tweak it and adjust it until it does, and that's the great thing about business blogging - it's not set in tone. You can tweak it until it does what it is supposed to do - hook your reader in.
The danger with all types of business post and not just a business blog post is that it's all fluff and no substance. Be ruthless in your editing, if a sentence is there just so you can say you have written a 500 word blog post - delete it. Delete superflous words, sentences and paragraphs. Get rid of the fluff and leave behind strong, useful content. 300 words of great content will perform better than 600 words of great content diluted with fluff.
Is there a strong call to action in your bio? First off check you are adding a bio to each of your blog posts - don't assume the reader will click the about page, give them reason to. Each blog post must have a call to action:

If you like this post share it on Twitter
If you found this article useful please share it on Facebook
If you want more great advice subscribe to my newsletter

If you don't feel comfortable asking your reader to get in touch ask them to share the article on Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus. Remember, one call to action per post or you will confuse your reader.
It's just not enough to write a business blog post and forget about it. For your business blog post to work you need to include the above elements every time you create a post. after you have written the post, you then have to promote it!

By Sarah Arrow

Five Great Tips for Small Business SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 6 Dec 2011 02:13:00 -0800

Search engine optimization is a huge industry in today's digital age. Small businesses are a huge percentage of overall businesses in the world. An SEO might ask oneself...what steps should I take on behalf of my small business SEO client in order to maximize internet success? For many, answering this question can be troubling because small businesses need to maximize user experience and still maintain a competitive edge in search engines. However, with these five tips, you can make this project much easier on yourself and more successful for your client.
1.) Content is Still the Reigning King
What does this mean for you? It means as an SEO who is working with small business clients, a lot of your budget must go towards content creation. Every piece of information this company has on hand, and could possibly be valuable to consumers, needs to be out on the web. There is no better way to increase brand awareness, and rankings than writing valuable content. With social media being a huge component of internet marketing, write this content in a concise, and easy to read manner. Keep in the back of your head though, all of the content conventions for search engine optimization; maintain proper keyword density, headings, etc. All of this content should be directed towards user experience, while maximizing its affect on ranking through proper content creation techniques.
2.) Make it Relatable
Consumers love reading content that they can relate to. Whenever someone views a small business website, or searches for that matter, there is always a reason; these reasons should not be difficult to analyze. If your client runs a restaurant, the reason for humans visiting their site is to find information about their food, location, etc. Make the content on the website relatable to these key aspects. Show your visitors your expertise, and give them something meaningful to ponder. Like I previously said, in today's age of social media, it only takes one reader to make your website go viral. Write content in a way that you can convert your website's visitors into your own marketing tools.
3.) Target Local Search
Most queries on search engines include some sort of geographic modifier, as an SEO, you need to make sure that your client's website ranks well for all relevant geographic locations. If your client is located in the heart of Los Angeles, you must obviously target their keywords with a Los Angeles modifier; but don't neglect to target other similar districts as well. Spend some time targeting Santa Monica, Burbank, and other nearby cities. Smaller geographic locations tend to be much less competitive, but can still increase traffic dramatically.
4.) Optimize Internal Link Structure
This is an obvious reason for search engine optimization, but it also goes hand-in-hand with user experience. How many times have you been on a small business website when you simply cannot find what you are looking for? All valuable information should be easy to find, and the navigation should be structured properly. In blogs, reference old posts or relevant pages, this will help users find what they are looking for, and it will also create a web for search engine crawlers to get stuck in. Regardless, refining this link structure will really increase the value of your webpage to both humans, and computers.
5.) Linkbuilding for Small Business Sake
The number of back links a website has, and their respective anchor texts, are a huge proportion in the current ranking algorithms. As an SEO, you need to build links, but they must be built properly for your client to reap the benefits. Look for relevant websites that meet the criteria of having great, relatable content that is linked properly, and targets money keywords. Simply put, target relevant websites that are doing a good job at marketing their website. I cannot stress this enough, quality over quantity. It baffles me as to why some SEOs still automate the link building process. Not only is this dangerous, but it creates an incredibly inefficient link profile that can come back to hurt you. Spend time building these links with care, and do it efficiently.
All in all, SEO for small business revolves around the following: local keywords, user experience, and structure. Through great content you can really traverse up the ranking ladder, and by targeting local keywords and providing a great user experience you can target consumers that are looking for small businesses in your location. Additionally, a great user experience will really help you convert a visitor, into a customer. Small business SEO is a smaller discipline of search engine marketing, but many businesses can really benefit from this process. Proceed with diligence, care, and functionality.

By Mike Nicklas

Top 10 Things You Need to Know to Be Found on Google

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 6 Dec 2011 02:00:00 -0800

1. Age. Search engines care how old your site is. The age of the site is an indication of how established your business is. If you have been around awhile, the search engines see you as a more viable business than one that just started up a couple of weeks ago. It's a trust issue. Unfortunately, there's not much you can do about how old your site is. However, if you're thinking of scrapping your old domain and building a new site on a new domain, you might reconsider. There are valid reasons for scrapping an old domain in favor of a new one, but if you have a decent domain name and history, be sure you re-direct the pages of the old site to the new URL to keep some of the age history.

2. URL structure. If your URLs make sense to a person reading them, they'll make sense to a search engine's spider and will help your rankings. Use readable keywords of value in your URL and skip all the random characters that don't make sense to anybody. For example, MyBusiness.com/shoes makes more sense and will help your search rankings more than MyBusiness.com/1047/WTF/1234

3. Content is King. Search engine spiders index web pages for the text that's contained within them. The more relevant content on your site, the more opportunity it has to be indexed.

To be returned as a result to a particular search, the content on your pages must contain the text that was used in the search. DON'T, however write content trying to please the search engines without consideration for the humans that will read it. It would do you no good to have the first position on the Search Engine Results Page if everyone who comes to your site immediately leaves because the content doesn't make sense. And you wouldn't stay #1 long anyway.

Search engine spiders can also tell if you have been "stuffing" your content with your keywords to try to influence them to index you higher. Double-stuffed Oreos might be a nice treat, but not on a web page. You can optimize any given page for one or two keyword phrases. Don't try to get every keyword on every page. It won't make sense to your visitors and it won't help you with the search engines.

Make sure your keyword phrases are included in the most important parts of your site like headings and internal links. Have logical meta data that makes sense to users who will read your titles and descriptions. Also be sure to have Alternate Text with your keywords for your images. Search Engine spiders can't "read" images, but they can read captions and "alt text" and these will add strength to your keywords.

Don't include a lot of content that the search engines can't index. The worst offender of this is Flash. Flash can create beautiful, engaging content that moves and is just, well cool. However, the search engines can't read and index it so it doesn't help you from a search engine optimization standpoint. Use Flash sparingly as long as it's delivering a relevant, engaging experience for your visitors. Entire sites built in Flash may look cool, but they won't be indexed by the search engines so you won't get organic traffic.

4. Content Age. While Google likes to see a site that's been around a while (see #1 above) it doesn't want to see the exact same content on those pages for all that time. From a search engine's perspective, a site that hasn't been updated in a while likely has outdated information or may even be out of business. These are not good things for a search engine to return in a search engine result to visitors. Updating content on a regular basis is critical to keeping your site on the radar with the search engines.

5. Site performance. Google is indexing what people do when they're on your site. If they leave immediately, known as a "Bounce", Google will understand that your site is not relevant for that keyword phrase and will not return the page as a result. Your site performance is telling Google that you're not relevant for those keywords. Remember, Google has to return the most relevant results or they'll become the MySpace of search (no offense MySpace). This is why (#3) above is so important. Your content has to engage your visitor. Write for the visitor and include items that will get, and keep, them engaged with your site. When a visitor finds your site, you need to engage them with your content and move them along a path that answers their questions to get them to the goal of your website, which can be to purchase a product, visit your store or contact you in some way.

6. Internal Links. Pages on your site need to be linked to each other in a relevant way. The goal is to lead your visitors on a journey to a specific goal you have defined. Your link structure should reflect that. Links from your keyword phrases of value to more information on that subject are indications to the search engines that those keywords are important. You don't want a whole lot of "click here" links or you'll be indexed for "click here" instead of "great shoes". Besides, you don't want to compete with Adobe (just for fun, type "click here" in Google and see who's site is optimized for that term).

7. External Links. The search engines see links to your site from other sites as an indication of your popularity or relevance. In general, the more links to your site, the better. But there are a couple of important considerations. The site linking to you should have a reason to link to you. If you sell women's shoes and your brother-in-law is a contractor, there's no real reason for his site to link to yours. More importantly, consider the value that the search engine places on the site that links to you. If Google doesn't think very highly of the site that links to you, it's not going to give you many "points" for that link. Alternatively, if Google ranks the site that links to you very highly, it will pass on some of that authority, or "link juice" to your site. You want to have as many links to your site from sites that the search engines value as you can possibly get. Think of it as a popularity contest. Just like in high school, the more of the popular people that say they like you, the more popular you become.

8. Trust. It all comes down to trust. Do visitors trust you and do the search engines trust you. Unfortunately, over the years there have been many attempts to "game" the search engines. Now they're wary. The search engines are looking for reasons to trust you. And your human visitors are the same way. They've been fooled before and they want to know they can trust you. Anything that you can put on your site to inspire confidence and trust is likely a good thing. Simple things like your address and phone number inspire trust. Testimonials from satisfied clients inspire trust. Third party emblems from trusted brands inspire trust. Consider who your target audience trusts and how you can incorporate that into your site.

9. Speed. Google loves speed. They love it so much that they include the speed with which they return their results to you right at the top of the page next to the number of results they have delivered. If your site loads slowly, not only are you going to disappoint visitors to your site, you're going to rank lower than another site with a faster page load time (all other things being equal of course). Simplify your site and get those speed hogging elements off it or downsized to load faster.

10. Local Search. In the past year, Google has tried to increase the relevancy of its search results by giving the local guy a shot. Of course, big brands with millions of dollars in their marketing war chest have had an advantage in the search game. Think of it like television advertising. The brands with the big bucks can advertise on national network television during the Superbowl while the mom-and-pops have trouble even affording basic cable advertising. In the interest of searchers, Google has tried to level the playing field by placing a much bigger emphasis on local search. This gives the local business a chance to compete with his larger national competitor.

Geo-Targeting. So what does this mean to you? Optimize your site and all your web properties with geo-targeted search terms. If the service area for your business is Long Island and people would search for your business with the term Long Island (for example, "Best Long Island NY Shoe Store") make sure that search term is in the content on your page.

Places and Local. Also, make sure you "claim" all your local pages and directory listings. You've likely seen the first listings on a local search engine results page that that shows the business name, their Google Places page, their website and a map listing. Make sure you "claim" this page and optimize it for your keywords of value. Add photos and videos to it. Google's version is called Google Places, but Bing and Yahoo have their own local pages.

Local Web Properties. And then there are the directories. Search for your business name in any search engine. You'll hopefully find there are a number of results that are not your website. Go to these sites, verify the information is correct and claim these listings. If the information is not correct, correct it.

Accuracy is Critical. Ensure that all of your "web properties" have your name, address and phone number EXACTLY the same, down to the format of your address. "St." in one listing and "Street" in another is going to confuse the search engines and not give you the credibility you deserve.

Well, I promised I was only going to give you 10 so I'll stop here. There are a number of other things you can do to help your search engine rankings, but these are the top 10 most common to all businesses, as I see it. Now you're likely asking so what does that mean to me? What can I do about it?

By James F Ruppel

Top SEO Tips Today

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 02:40:00 -0800

Many small business owners struggle with getting their website ranked - you are not alone. Small business owners needs quality websites, and often they are not sure what it takes to get it noticed by customers. The SEO tips below should help you with these problems.
Tip 1:
Never design your website without SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your reasoning for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash website after it is built won't do it. Spiders can crawl text but not Flash or images.
Tip 2:
Got a new website you want spidered? Submitting your website to Google's search engines take weeks. The quickest way to get your website spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.
Tip 3:
When defining the keywords for your page, try to only target a maximum of three per page and make sure that the keywords you are using actually exist in your web page at the beginning paragraph, middle of the body and ending paragraph of the page.
Tip 4:
It's very important to get listed in other online business directories? Listings of your business in directories such as Local.com, Yellowpages.com, your local city's chamber of commerce, or directories affiliated with your business can help boost your page's ranking.
Tip 5:
There many of plugins for WordPress, a handful of favorites that can make a huge difference when it comes to optimizing your site. These SEO plugins take the work out of optimization and allow you to focus on other strategies, like content! WordPress's All-in-One SEO Pack or HeadSpace2 SEO.
Tip 6:
Try different strategies: The goals of an SEO campaign is to convert a lead. A successful campaign can be attained when integrated with other campaigns. Think about attracting visitors that are at an early stage of buying. Think about strategies to get them to sign up for your newsletter.
Tip 7:
Optimizing your pages, such as keywords, heading tags, and internal links can help search engines better recognize the content of these pages and how they're structured. Many of these optimizations aid users' navigation and usability of the site. You have total control over page optimization, it greatly depends on you to make it happen
Tip 8:
Use bold text. Use the tags around some of your keywords throughout your page. Don't use them everywhere
Tip 9:
Have several articles related to your website's Keywords. Make sure you use a different keyword search term for them. For instance, one article might use the keywords "Healthy foods for Babies," while another might use the term "Babies Healthy Foods."
By Scott Bueller

Link Building For SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 02:39:00 -0800

There are a plethora of articles and advice about link building, but the ones I have read don't really tell you how to do it. Or rather they tell you how you need to get backlinks from other sites to your own, and say that you need to scatter your URL around the Internet on sites that are relevant to your niche, and so eventually climb the Search Engine Rankings Pages (SERPS). What these article and advice don't tell you is how you actually make a link, and neither do they suggest that cross-referencing (building links to your different articles and posts all with their individual address) within your site is also good for your site's Search Engine Optimization (SEO), so that the site climbs the search engine's (e.g. Google's) index pages.
When you are typing your article in the box provided or have copy-pasted it into your site, you will see two links in a chain. You click on this icon and will be given a box which may have the "http:// " part of the address already given, but may not, in which case you have to type this in along with the "www. and address and identity" of the article you want to link to. This information can be found in the long, elongated box at the top of your screen, but be careful, if you are typing the address manually that you have copied all of it. To ensure that you have done so, click on this box and it will turn blue, then click again and run through the box to the end of the address. Believe it or not, some people only type in the address part that they can see and so do not have a link that works in their post. Always test the link to make sure that it works.
When you cross-reference in this way you are ensuring that traffic stays longer on your site. People will click on the links to find the extra information on stand-alone posts or articles, and in theory at least, the longer someone stays in you site, the more chances there are of your making a sale. The bounce rate (the length of time your visitors spend on your site) will be low as they stay rather than just look at one article or product and exit rapidly.
Of course, to cross-reference and have links to other parts of your site, you need to have plenty of original, engaging content. This means that you have to work at building up your site to take advantages of the opportunities having a domain affords you. This is why you cannot expect a site to climb in the SERPS immediately, it takes time and effort. If you are really new to online marketing some advice from a reputable SEO professional would be of immense value to you and your new site.
Every time you add content to your site, make sure that there are references that can be made into links with other pages in your site and go back to the post you are referring traffic to and add a link to your new post. If you leave this part of the work until later, you may have a huge amount of work to update in three months, and if you leave it longer, you will be faced with a daunting task, so do it when you add new posts with backlinks to others.

By Lynne Evans

Getting Started The Right Way With Search Engine Optimization

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 02:38:00 -0800

It's Still About Text
With sites like Flickr, Facebook and YouTube it's easy to assume that video and images are overtaking the humble written word. It's important to realize that the Internet is still very much driven by text. Video, photos and social media are important yes, however text is the backbone, it's how the Internet works. Therefore it makes sense when getting started with search engine optimization to focus on text, which.
Starting With Research
A "Keyword" is the name given to the words and phrases that people type into search engines. The first thing new SEO practitioners need to think about is what keywords would people use to find your products and services?
Let's assume you sell widgets. What keywords would you like your site to appear for? Would you like your site to appear in the search results for "Blue widgets", "Widgets in Australia" or what about "How to use widgets".
It's one thing to understand the keywords, it's another to understand the traffic volumes for those keywords. If no one is search for "Blue widgets" there is little point in optimising your site for that keyword. So how do you know the traffic for any given keywords? Lucky, Google have the solution. Do a search for "Google keyword tool" and spend some time getting familiar with this tool.
Here's a pro tip: See what results you get when you use the "Exact Match" setting.
Are You Competitive?
How powerful is your site based on the competition? How would you know?
When you search for the keywords look at the first 5 spots? Are they big sites, with lots of content? Do they have hundreds or thousands of pages of content?
An indicator of a strong or important site is the number links that point to the site from other sites on the Internet. How can you tell? This is where you need to look at using some more tools. Do a search for "backlink analysis" and you see a number of free and paid tools that will help you understand the competition.
Choose a tool and find out how many links your competitors have. Next, break use a spreadsheet to track your site's authority, linking root domains, and pages indexed and see how your website stacks up against your competition.
Start With On-Page SEO
While links are important getting your website sorted out and optimised is the most critical thing you can do to boost your rank in search engines. Every page of your website is unique. This means the title tag (title of you page) should be written specifically for every page of your website. Here's an example title tag: Widgets | How To Use Blue Widgets. Make sure your page is relevant for the "How to use blue widgets". Make sure all your images are tagged and that your page contains links to sources relevant for the content.

By Justin S Mountford

Google Places Cannot Be Neglected Anymore In SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 02:34:00 -0800

Google Places is a great listing for local businesses and getting to the first indexed page is of huge benefit to any business as it will bring in more customers and clients. When you apply for a page in these Google Places, you should make sure that you provide as much information as possible about your business, which means filling in all the optional text fields. You should also upload pictures and videos of your business as the more information you have on your pages, it would appear that the higher you will be ranked in the Place index.

Google Places is rather like a Yellow Pages directory where people look to find products and services that they need and which are specific to a local area. Because of the growth of mobile marketing, the number of mobile devices and an ever-increasing desire on the part of the consumer for a more personalized customer interaction with a business and advertiser, the more important Google Places becomes for a local business owner.

A growing number of searches now concentrate on finding local businesses and services, so your business needs to be in those Google Places so that you have as much Internet exposure to your potential client or customer-base as possible. Because Places listings are increasingly finding their way onto the first pages of a Google search, your business needs to be prominent in order for it to beat the competition.

Looking at businesses that have been highly ranked on Places pages, you can't help but notice that they have been reviewed by customers. The more and better the reviews, it appears that the higher the business is ranked. This has not been stated by Google, but is simply the information for which there is clear evidence in the Places rankings.

As a local business owner you have a client/customer base and you need to ask these people to review your products, business or services. You could have flyers made and give these out at the cash register, requesting satisfied customers to write a review for you.

However the business of getting a review can be problematic, as by their very nature, not all reviews are positive. This then brings online reputation management into play and gives small businesses a need to hire a good SEO company to see that the business has a good online reputation. Any unfounded negative reviews can be negated, refuted or removed from the Net eventually by a professional SEO person who knows how to do these things.

In 2010 local businesses could choose to ignore Google places, but it would be folly to neglect to use them now. As more searches online are to find local providers of whatever the customer/client wants, it is important for local businesses to have a profile on the Places pages so that prospective customers know where to find what they are looking for. A profile which includes visual images be they photos or videos, will have a higher place on the index pages for that category of service or sales. More than ever before a small local business needs help and advice on how to rise in the index rankings and so achieve a high visibility in the Places pages and by extension in Google's Search Engine Rankings Pages (SERPS). God SEO companies are also waking up to this new business opportunity for them and now have a good idea of what is required to get highly places on the Places index. However because Google does not say explicitly what makes for a top position on these index pages, SEO companies can only make recommendations based on their own research and that of others. No company can promise you a first page position. Bear this in mind when you see ads for Places SEO. You don't want to be a victim of a fly-by-night SEO company.
By Lynne Evans

Ideas on Quick Ways to Make Your Own Website

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 23:37:00 -0800

With the web being the area most moving forward and progressing in the area of marketing and design, having a website for your company or even for yourself is an essential. For this reason, learning what it takes to make one easily and efficiently is an essential. Here we will lay out the basics to any web site creation from the home base and what it takes to start yourself off as a web designer.
The first thing you need to grasp is what a web page consists of. A web page is just a set of files of code, typically HTML and CSS. These are the basic blocks of a web site. A web site is simple a bunch of these pages linked together in a set order. Where do these pages live? These pages live on what is called a server computer and they are assigned a particular "domain name" (example.com).

Once you have this domain name and place where to store these files you are ready to start the building process. There are two essential languages to building a site unless you are willing to go with a visual builder such as Wix. These flash based sites have their many disadvantages, but if time is that scarce to you then it may be to your advantage to not step into the world of web design and got past the part where you learn to make your own website to just having the site up. These sites like Wix are pretty straight forward and give you a direct way to build not a top quality personally designed site, but something that will work until you have the time to invest in getting a real quality one up.

The essential languages to any site creation are HTML, CSS, and basic PHP. With these three you can learn to use a quick fix and create a site. This obviously does not take into account the design part of the web creation process as this is primarily about the building process of the web developer.
There are several quick fixes or shortcuts if you are willing to learn these basic languages. WordPress is the first among these and is a major advantage to any budding web designer. It allows you to have a site that is fully content manageable (in other words you can have changing and updated content, like a blog for example) and can hook you up with many features that would take you lots of time to learn how to create like preset contact forms, automated email relays, members areas, and so many other pluses.

The second of these is Joomla. Joomla is much like WordPress though WordPress is considered its superior in many respects. They share the manageable content on the site with Joomla being much more about pages and less about making things like blogs or other features.
With a little basic HTML, CSS, and PHP you can build amazing sites. You may find that you like the work so much that you change from the field that you are currently in to working in that sphere as a rule. Learning to make your own website can be amazingly fun and a great way to exercise your creativity.
By Elijah James

Make Money From Google Ads - How to Work With AdSense

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 23:35:00 -0800

Most people know that you can make money from Google ads and that in order to do so, you need to display Google ads on your site, but many don't know how to work with AdSense to maximise revenue.
Here are some tips on how to make money from Google ads and how to work with AdSense.

Tip #1 Before you apply for your AdSense account make sure that you have at least one blog or website with some interesting and informative content on it. As a minimum, you should have three or four posts and/or pages. If you submit a site which is obviously under construction and has no real content then Google may reject your application and once rejected, it's very hard to be considered again, so get it right first time.

Tip #2 Play it safe with the type of website you submit. Google do not permit the display of AdSense adverts on sites with adult content, sites with copyrighted content which do not have the legal right to display such content, gambling sites, sites related to drugs, alcohol or tobacco, violence, weapons, hacking, other illegal activities, compensation programmes and "hate" content. Financial and foreign exchange related sites are also having difficulty gaining approval.

Tip #3 Once approved, create your AdSense for content blocks and make sure to create Custom Channels. Custom Channels will enable you to track the success or otherwise of your ad blocks. Name your Custom Channels so that you will recognise which ad block is being referred to. For example, for my text links which run across the top of my site about cats I use the Channel "catstop" and for the block which appears in the middle of each blog post, I use "catsmidpost".

Tip #4 Google allows the display of up to three ad units and three link units per page. However, use your common sense when choosing how many ads to show. If your page has little content, then six ads will just look like one big advertisement. I usually use a link unit across the top, a large square or rectangle mid-post and another link unit at the end of the post. I also use a skyscraper in either the left or right sidebar. Check out Google's advice on hot spots which will show you the best positions to make money from Google Ads
By Liz Canham

5 Tips To Increase Your AdSense Income

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 23:32:00 -0800

Google AdSense is without a doubt the simplest way to make money online, without selling any product. AdSense has enable relatively small sites and blogs to earn income from their sites every day, when someone clicks on the AdSense ads displayed on the sites. All someone has to do is to setup blogs with good content, and the money will come in. It sounds rather simple. But, in practice, there are a number of things to take care of, such as optimizing your sites to generate more clicks. Many top bloggers earn more than $100 a day from AdSense, but the majority are earning pittance from their content sites. You should be able to increase your AdSense income, if you implement the following tips.

Keyword research is the most important task you should carry out before you get your domain name. Look for a keyphrase with a high search volume, but with a low search count in Google. You can use the Google keyword tool or other keyword tools for keyword research. Also ensure that the average cost-per-click is above one dollar for the selected keyphrase, as we want to get higher payout for each click.

Once you have your keyphrase, the next step is to get a dot com domain name matching the keyphrase. By following these steps, you will have a better chance of getting better rankling in search engines and benefit from free organic search results.

Use self-hosted WordPress blog to create your content blogs. If you want good search engine ranking, using WordPress will give your blog the added advantage as Google loves WordPress. A WordPress blog is one of the most effective ways to increase your website rankings on Google. The better the Google ranking, the more organic visitors you will get which will result in more clicks for your AdSense ads. Post unique, quality keyword targeted content on a regularly basis and you will see your AdSense income increase overtime, as more pages are indexed in Google.

Another important factor to double your AdSense income is the placement and appearance of the AdSense ads. The color scheme of the AdSense ads should be the same as the blog's theme so that the ads will blend nicely with the content. This will increase the click-through rate as the AdSense links will look similar to the sites' links. The AdSense ads should be placed above the fold of the page to maximize the effectiveness of the ads. The best size for the AdSense ads is the Large Rectangle (336x280), which have the tendency to result in higher click-through rates.

By Edwin A