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Casual Articles - 10 Steps To Higher Search Engine Positioning
Pay per click marketing is one of the simplest and fastest ways of sending targeted traffic to any website. Whether you are trying to send visitors to your own website, sell a product online, or build an opt in email list, pay per click marketing has been a guaranteed way to see instant traffic results.But there is one major problem with pay per click marketing that many individuals have. This problem has been a recurring problem for the past 5 years and it’s getting worse every minute of the day. This problem involves the over excessive cost and non-profitability that occurs when marketing through pay per click search engines. Many marketers deplete their income extremely fast when marketing online through pay per click engines. They set up a pay per click campaign, and within 24 hours , all of their money is drained with no sales, and no leads gained at all. After having this occur, the marketer ends up giving up on pay per click marketing and establishes in his heart that pay per click advertising is the most unprofitable form of advertising on the web today.This scenario occurs every single day and many marketers give up on marketing their websites because of these tragic results. I was one of these individuals. I spent countless dollars on paid advertising solutions like pay per click search engines and I
There are two main ways to insure that your site gets well spidered AND that the relevancy is added. The first is to place text links on the bottom of your homepage to your main internal pages (not EVERY page, that just looks odd). The second is to create a sitemap to all your internal pages and link to i
“Try not to become a man of success, but rather a man of value.” -- Albert EinsteinAllow me to emphasize again that in any business endeavor, it is of the utmost importance that you take the time necessary to prepare yourself first. Then, take action. Success in business is achievable through preparation, action and persistence in offering real value to your customer. By preparing and educating yourself first, you will already be well on your way to becoming successful in affiliate marketing.The Desire to become the best at what you do in your chosen business endeavor, is but one of the keys to real success. There are many. But, you should know that achieving true success in any business, requires that you consistently bring something of value to your customer.Mr. Einstein summed it up very well when he commented on becoming a man of success. Success in affiliate marketing, equals consistent value. Period, paragraph, end of story.In one of my previous articles, I discussed the importance of building a powerful brand name. Powerful brand name recognition is dependent upon the amount of value you consistently bring to the most people.Think again for a moment about the people you value most in life. Aren’t they people who deli
While there are many methods out there for building a profitable website, from banner ads to email campaigns, by far the most cost effective over time has proven repeatedly to be search engine positioning. That major advantage search engine positioning has over other methods of producing revenue online is that once high rankings are attained and provided that the tactics used were ethical and that continued efforts are made to keep them, they can essentially hold and provide targeted traffic indefinitely. Your site will rise and your site may sometimes fall in the rankings but a solid and complete optimization of your site will insure that through algorithm changes you may fluctuate but you will not disappear.
I have been ranking websites highly on the Internet for quite a few years now and there are some essential rules that, if followed, will insure that over time your website does well and holds solid and profitable positions on the major search engines.
Here are the 10 steps to higher search engine positioning:
Step One - Choosing Keywords
You first must choose your keywords. This is perhaps the most important step of the process as incorrectly targeting phrases can result in traffic that is not interested in your product. There are three tools that I use virtually every day to help pick the most appropriate keywords:
Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/)
WordTracker (http://www.wordtracker.com/)
A Brain
The last in the list is the most important. Look through the potential keyword phrases and think, "Who would be searching using that phrase?" If the answer is, "a student looking for information" then chances are it won't result in a sale. If the answer is "Someone who is looking specifically for a product I offer," then obviously this is a prime candidate as a targeted keyword phrase.
Step Two - Site Content
Even before I optimize websites I like to get a good deal of new content down in order to insure that I know exactly where I'm going and exactly what I need to do to get there. Creating some of the new content before starting the optimization process can be doubly helpful in that it can reveal potential additions to your website that you may not have considered (a forum or blog for example). If you already have a site, perhaps simply sit on your back deck, sip on a coffee and image what you would do if your whole site was lost and you had to start again (other than launch into a very colorful discussion with your hosting company).
Step Three - Site Structure
A solid site structure is very important. Creating a site that is easily spidered by the search engines yet attractive to visitors can be a daunting and yet entirely rewarding endeavor. To adequately structure your website you must "think like a spider" which is not as difficult as it may sound. A search engine spider reads your web page like you would read a book. It starts at the top left, reads across, and then moves down.
Priority must be given then, to what you place near the top of your page.
Step Four - Optimization
Once you have your keyword targets, your content created and your site structure established you must now move on to the most obvious step, the optimization of your content.
As noted above, a spider places importance on what it reads highest on the page and so beginning with a sentence that includes your targeted phrase only makes sense. That said, stuffing in keywords in hopes that it will add weight to your page generally doesn't work. The term "keyword density" refers to the percentage of your content that is made up of your targeted keywords. There are optimum densities according to many reputable SEO's though exactly what they are is debata ble. Estimates seem to range anywhere from 4 or 5% to 10 to 12% (quite a gap isn't it).
Personally, when it comes to keyword density I prescribe to one rule: put your keywords in the content as much as you can while keeping it comfortably readable to a human visitor.
Some do it first, I do it last, regardless of when you do it you must choose your heading. At the beginning of your content you have the opportunity to use the tag to specify the heading of your content. This tag is given extra weight and is also an indicator to the search engine of where your actual content starts. Make sure to use your keywords in the heading but don't shy away from also adding additional words (though not too many).
Step Five - Internal Linking
To insure that your website gets fully indexed you have to make sure that the spiders have an easy path through your website. Text links make the best choice as the anchor text (the actual words used to link to a specific page) add relevancy to that page for the words used to link to it. For example, if I ran a website on acne and had a treatments page I could link to it with an image, with text reading "Click for more information on how to treat this skin condition" or simply "Acne Treatments". When a search engine spider hits an image it has no idea what the image is and, while it will follow the link, it will not give any weight to the page it hits. If you use text that does not contain the keywords you are targeting you are essentially supplying the engine with the same lack of relevancy as with an image, but if you use the phrase "Acne Treatments" to link to your acne treatments page you are attaching relevancy to that page for those keywords.
There are two main ways to insure that your site gets well spidered AND that the relevancy is added. The first is to place text links on the bottom of your homepage to your main internal pages (not EVERY page, that just looks odd). The second is to create a sitemap to all your internal pages and link to it
Mattress Cleaning? When was the Last Time You Cleaned Your Mattress? Clean a mattress…what the heck are you talkin’ about? Mattress cleaning is a newly developing and untapped business opportunity. Mattress cleaning is an absolute necessity, proven and evidenced over the last decade by the steadily decreasing $billions spent by Europeans annually, on respiratory and allergy medications. Nearly 4,000 mattress cleaning businesses have sprouted up throughout Europe in the past twelve years and continue to sprout up there and in other places such as Australia, the Far East, and the Pacific Rim. Now, North America has become virgin territory for the up and coming, mattress cleaning professional.Actually, Mattress Cleaning is Far, Far, from being a New PracticeFor thousands of years, mattress cleaning had been a routine task typically done each spring and if the weather permitted, again in the fall. Mattresses were toted outdoors, propped up against a pine tree, and then had the crap (literally) beaten out them with big tree limbs. Certainly, I suppose around the 1900’s, the use of tree limbs may have been replaced with baseball bats, 2x4’s, hockey sticks, tennis rackets, 9-irons, or whatever else might have been handy and still including the ever present tree limb.Grand
Here are the 10 steps to higher search engine positioning:
Step One - Choosing Keywords
You first must choose your keywords. This is perhaps the most important step of the process as incorrectly targeting phrases can result in traffic that is not interested in your product. There are three tools that I use virtually every day to help pick the most appropriate keywords:
Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/)
WordTracker (http://www.wordtracker.com/)
A Brain
The last in the list is the most important. Look through the potential keyword phrases and think, "Who would be searching using that phrase?" If the answer is, "a student looking for information" then chances are it won't result in a sale. If the answer is "Someone who is looking specifically for a product I offer," then obviously this is a prime candidate as a targeted keyword phrase.
Step Two - Site Content
Even before I optimize websites I like to get a good deal of new content down in order to insure that I know exactly where I'm going and exactly what I need to do to get there. Creating some of the new content before starting the optimization process can be doubly helpful in that it can reveal potential additions to your website that you may not have considered (a forum or blog for example). If you already have a site, perhaps simply sit on your back deck, sip on a coffee and image what you would do if your whole site was lost and you had to start again (other than launch into a very colorful discussion with your hosting company).
Step Three - Site Structure
A solid site structure is very important. Creating a site that is easily spidered by the search engines yet attractive to visitors can be a daunting and yet entirely rewarding endeavor. To adequately structure your website you must "think like a spider" which is not as difficult as it may sound. A search engine spider reads your web page like you would read a book. It starts at the top left, reads across, and then moves down.
Priority must be given then, to what you place near the top of your page.
Step Four - Optimization
Once you have your keyword targets, your content created and your site structure established you must now move on to the most obvious step, the optimization of your content.
As noted above, a spider places importance on what it reads highest on the page and so beginning with a sentence that includes your targeted phrase only makes sense. That said, stuffing in keywords in hopes that it will add weight to your page generally doesn't work. The term "keyword density" refers to the percentage of your content that is made up of your targeted keywords. There are optimum densities according to many reputable SEO's though exactly what they are is debata ble. Estimates seem to range anywhere from 4 or 5% to 10 to 12% (quite a gap isn't it).
Personally, when it comes to keyword density I prescribe to one rule: put your keywords in the content as much as you can while keeping it comfortably readable to a human visitor.
Some do it first, I do it last, regardless of when you do it you must choose your heading. At the beginning of your content you have the opportunity to use the tag to specify the heading of your content. This tag is given extra weight and is also an indicator to the search engine of where your actual content starts. Make sure to use your keywords in the heading but don't shy away from also adding additional words (though not too many).
Step Five - Internal Linking
To insure that your website gets fully indexed you have to make sure that the spiders have an easy path through your website. Text links make the best choice as the anchor text (the actual words used to link to a specific page) add relevancy to that page for the words used to link to it. For example, if I ran a website on acne and had a treatments page I could link to it with an image, with text reading "Click for more information on how to treat this skin condition" or simply "Acne Treatments". When a search engine spider hits an image it has no idea what the image is and, while it will follow the link, it will not give any weight to the page it hits. If you use text that does not contain the keywords you are targeting you are essentially supplying the engine with the same lack of relevancy as with an image, but if you use the phrase "Acne Treatments" to link to your acne treatments page you are attaching relevancy to that page for those keywords.
There are two main ways to insure that your site gets well spidered AND that the relevancy is added. The first is to place text links on the bottom of your homepage to your main internal pages (not EVERY page, that just looks odd). The second is to create a sitemap to all your internal pages and link to i
While reading up on the subject of search engine optimization you may have come across an advertisement or two about link exchange programs. These are mostly subscription based membership sites with many members who are searching for other sites to exchange links with. People are doing this to improve their Google Page rank so that their website will rank higher in the search engine results.Google ranks a page's importance by a number of factors including how many web sites link to it. A page with a higher page rank can pass on a "vote" to a page that it is linked to. Remember that the fewer outgoing links on a page the more the vote counts. This means that exchanging links with a site that has a links page with over 50 links will probably not help you.What will help you is exchanging links with related sites that have a high page rank already. These sites are hard to convince unless you yourself have a high page rank site. Try to swap links with sites with a page rank of 1 or 2 at first. As your page rank increases, start trying to get the better links from higher ranking sites.Be sure to stay away from link farms and free for all link exchanges. These are websites set up for the sole purpose of generating links. Many of the major search engines will penalize a site for participating in such ac
Step Three - Site Structure
A solid site structure is very important. Creating a site that is easily spidered by the search engines yet attractive to visitors can be a daunting and yet entirely rewarding endeavor. To adequately structure your website you must "think like a spider" which is not as difficult as it may sound. A search engine spider reads your web page like you would read a book. It starts at the top left, reads across, and then moves down.
Priority must be given then, to what you place near the top of your page.
Step Four - Optimization
Once you have your keyword targets, your content created and your site structure established you must now move on to the most obvious step, the optimization of your content.
As noted above, a spider places importance on what it reads highest on the page and so beginning with a sentence that includes your targeted phrase only makes sense. That said, stuffing in keywords in hopes that it will add weight to your page generally doesn't work. The term "keyword density" refers to the percentage of your content that is made up of your targeted keywords. There are optimum densities according to many reputable SEO's though exactly what they are is debata ble. Estimates seem to range anywhere from 4 or 5% to 10 to 12% (quite a gap isn't it).
Personally, when it comes to keyword density I prescribe to one rule: put your keywords in the content as much as you can while keeping it comfortably readable to a human visitor.
Some do it first, I do it last, regardless of when you do it you must choose your heading. At the beginning of your content you have the opportunity to use the tag to specify the heading of your content. This tag is given extra weight and is also an indicator to the search engine of where your actual content starts. Make sure to use your keywords in the heading but don't shy away from also adding additional words (though not too many).
Step Five - Internal Linking
To insure that your website gets fully indexed you have to make sure that the spiders have an easy path through your website. Text links make the best choice as the anchor text (the actual words used to link to a specific page) add relevancy to that page for the words used to link to it. For example, if I ran a website on acne and had a treatments page I could link to it with an image, with text reading "Click for more information on how to treat this skin condition" or simply "Acne Treatments". When a search engine spider hits an image it has no idea what the image is and, while it will follow the link, it will not give any weight to the page it hits. If you use text that does not contain the keywords you are targeting you are essentially supplying the engine with the same lack of relevancy as with an image, but if you use the phrase "Acne Treatments" to link to your acne treatments page you are attaching relevancy to that page for those keywords.
There are two main ways to insure that your site gets well spidered AND that the relevancy is added. The first is to place text links on the bottom of your homepage to your main internal pages (not EVERY page, that just looks odd). The second is to create a sitemap to all your internal pages and link to i
There are so many ways to monetize your traffic. All it takes is a little work, a little knowhow, and the desire to successfully launch a profit-earning site. The internet is a huge source of information, with tips and guides available that will show how to monetize your traffic and make your site a good profit earner.For instance, when purchases are made from a merchant by customers that you send to their sales page, you can get a percentage of that sale by joining the merchant's affiliate program. That enables you to monetize your traffic without needing to carry a product or process the transaction. The merchant attends to such matters.It is generally understood that without traffic we have no business. Like any business, without any customers you don’t get sales. By focusing on traffic building techniques and promotions you develop a flow of prospective customers. Then it becomes a matter of offering opportunities to your visitors to convert that traffic into some form of financial return.With a consistent flow of traffic, you at least have a fighting chance to achieve that end. Monetizing your traffic will optimize your chances of building revenue and making a profit.The internet has proven to be a very reliable source for the information, product or service that meets your need. It has made
As noted above, a spider places importance on what it reads highest on the page and so beginning with a sentence that includes your targeted phrase only makes sense. That said, stuffing in keywords in hopes that it will add weight to your page generally doesn't work. The term "keyword density" refers to the percentage of your content that is made up of your targeted keywords. There are optimum densities according to many reputable SEO's though exactly what they are is debata ble. Estimates seem to range anywhere from 4 or 5% to 10 to 12% (quite a gap isn't it).
Personally, when it comes to keyword density I prescribe to one rule: put your keywords in the content as much as you can while keeping it comfortably readable to a human visitor.
Some do it first, I do it last, regardless of when you do it you must choose your heading. At the beginning of your content you have the opportunity to use the tag to specify the heading of your content. This tag is given extra weight and is also an indicator to the search engine of where your actual content starts. Make sure to use your keywords in the heading but don't shy away from also adding additional words (though not too many).
Step Five - Internal Linking
To insure that your website gets fully indexed you have to make sure that the spiders have an easy path through your website. Text links make the best choice as the anchor text (the actual words used to link to a specific page) add relevancy to that page for the words used to link to it. For example, if I ran a website on acne and had a treatments page I could link to it with an image, with text reading "Click for more information on how to treat this skin condition" or simply "Acne Treatments". When a search engine spider hits an image it has no idea what the image is and, while it will follow the link, it will not give any weight to the page it hits. If you use text that does not contain the keywords you are targeting you are essentially supplying the engine with the same lack of relevancy as with an image, but if you use the phrase "Acne Treatments" to link to your acne treatments page you are attaching relevancy to that page for those keywords.
There are two main ways to insure that your site gets well spidered AND that the relevancy is added. The first is to place text links on the bottom of your homepage to your main internal pages (not EVERY page, that just looks odd). The second is to create a sitemap to all your internal pages and link to i
Winning Customer ExperiencesMuch research has been done on what the makes a winning customer experience. What is it that makes customers come back to your business instead of going to someone else's? If your repeat business is low, what is it that you are doing to drive your customers away? There is a consistent theme that emerges across the research - winning customer experiences are built on consistency. Michael Gerber in his book "The E-Myth Revisited" calls this orchestration. "Orchestration is the glue that holds you fast to your customers' perceptions".This may seem a glib response to a complex issue, but take a moment to consider it from the customer's viewpoint. When dealing with a business for the first time, the customer probably has no set expectations on what the experience will be like. With your first interaction, you set the standard in the customer's mind. If you set a positive standard, the customer will likely return. The next time they do, the customer will expect the same from you. Fail to deliver, and ultimately you will lose that customer.So if consistency is the key, how should a business go about ensuring the consistent experience for the customer?First, start with the end state that you want to create. What experience do you want your custo
There are two main ways to insure that your site gets well spidered AND that the relevancy is added. The first is to place text links on the bottom of your homepage to your main internal pages (not EVERY page, that just looks odd). The second is to create a sitemap to all your internal pages and link to it from your homepage. Both methods have advantages and disadvantages but that's a whole article unto itself.
Step Six - Human Testing
So now you have your site, it's optimized and you have your navigation in place. The next step is to put it past someone who has never seen your site (and preferably who won't know how much work you've put in and tell you it's great even if it's not).
Ask them to find specific information and see how long it takes. Ask someone else to just surf your site and watch which links they click and ask them why they chose those ones.
Most importantly, find out how the content reads to them. You've spent hours working through the content at this point and are probably not the least biased on its readers. Find out how it reads to someone who has no invested interest in the site and correct any issues they may bring up.
Step Seven - Submissions
I take a different philosophy than most when it cones to search engine submissions. I submit to directories (both general and topic-specific) and to a few topical search engines but for the most part I've found submitting to Google, Yahoo, MSN and the other major engines has proven to be a bit of a waste of time. The major search engines are spidering search engines which means they will follow links to wherever they go. Simply having sites that are spidered by the major search engines linking to you will get your site found.
When I have spent time submitting my sites I have found they get picked up in about a week. When I have simply skipped this step and sought out reputable directories and other sites to get links from I have found that at least the homepage of the site gets indexed in as little as two days.
Neither will hurt your rankings but simply to make the best use of your time, seek our directories and other websites to get links from and leave the spiders to find you on their own.
Step Eight - Link Building
All of the major search engines give credit to sites that have quality links pointing to them. How many is enough depends on your industry and targeted phrases. Running a search on Google the reads "link:www.yourcompetition.com" will reveal approximately how many links a competitor has.
The first place to seek links is with general and topic-specific directories. After that you may want to move into reciprocal link building. Reciprocal link building is the exchange of links between two websites. Some webmasters will simply link to any website that links back to them. I highly recommend being more particular than that.
Find websites that you believe your site visitors would genuinely be interested in and you've probably found a good link partner. You want to find links from sites that are related to yours.
There are obviously many more methods to building links than directories and reciprocal link building. Again though, this is a whole article (or more) in itself.
Step Nine - Monitoring
Whether you use WebPosition Gold (http://www.webposition.com/) or just run searches manually by hand you will have to monitor the major search engines for your targeted phrases. Also, you will need to review your stats to see where your traffic is coming from and what search terms are being used to find you.
If a month passes and you don't see any changes then more work needs to be done. I'm certainly not stating that you should take a month off, a solid search engine positioning strategy involves constantly adding content, building links, and insuring that your visitors are getting the information they want to have and finding it as easily as possible.
Step Ten - Reward Yourself
So you've done it. It's taken many many hours of work but you're rankings are doing well. What you've created is a solid position that will stand the tests of time provided that you continually revisit the above noted steps and insure that your website is always one step ahead of your competition (who have noticed you climbing and succeeding as you would notice others climbing up around your ranking).
Now it's time to turn off your computer, take your partner out (you haven't had much time for them lately) and have a great week(end). You've got a lot of work to do to maintain and build on these rankings but the hardest part is over. Congratulations!
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