SEO DESKTOP HELP

Launching music search from Google

2009-10-21T22:54:00.000-07:00

A good news for music lovers from Google is they are launching a new feature in their search engine for search, sample and shopping songs. Great ! Google will take supports from startups iLike and LaLa that enable songs ro streamed on the Google page including a “buy” button. When users push that button, Google will direct to a variety of different sites like Amazon.com and iTunes Music Store, where users can buy that music.

According to Reuters Google’s new feature will begins on October 28. This feature will get involve most of the major music labels including Vivendi's Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI Music. The record music industry has been struggling with plunging sales and fewer media outlets to break new acts. This has a high hopes on Google to increase the sales of the music.

The labels are beating by making it easier to search for music so that they can increase the size of digital market dominated by iTunes, with about 70 percent of download sales. Also, Universal Music and Sony Music are partnering with YouTube to create a new music video service called Vevo, which is expected to launch in December.

Google new project “Sandbox”

2009-09-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

Google has now announced that they will be launching a new project, which will be the new version of Google Search engine. This is been announced when Bing and Yahoo got merged. This will be the new updated edition of Google Search engine replace the old one. Google maybe feels threatened with the new competition. As all knows Bing and Yahoo recently partnered up with Facebook and they are doing extremely well with the click share.

Do you know why Google are working so hard on this project? So they can improve their search engine indexing speed giving more relevant search results speedily, better accuracy and comprehensiveness. Most people won’t even notice a difference in their new project. Do you need to make a test in their new search engines go to http://www2.sandbox.google.com

Another plan that’s going to be put into place is Google AJAX. AJAX technology is basically an application framework which uses advanced JavaScript to make pages of search results load faster. Google sees this as an advantage and will use AJAX to reconfigure the speed of there search engine.

Microsoft's search engine in new look to Bing

2009-09-18T06:34:00.000-07:00

Microsoft released their third online serach plateform. Their plateform begins from MSN Search then to Live Search and here they rebranded as “Bing”

Bing’s is really cool with pictures as their homepage background of the search box. Also the search is so easy for us even they get all the information that we needed.

Bing's Search Sections:

Find what you're looking for and a whole lot more with enhanced Silverlight Search History. It will save your searches locally and also give you a short information of the site when we pointing over the links woh isn’t it cool. Here we save our time without entrying the sites.

Bing's Images Search

The new feature shows you pretty Silverlight-powered fly-in thumbnail images. It will expand your search images later. You can select images by size,layout,color,style and even for people.

Bing's Videos Search

Watch your favorite shows and videos. You can select by length, screen size, resolution, source (MSN, AOL, MTV, Hulu, ESPN, YouTube, MySpace, Dailymotion, Metacafe),TV, music and most watched.

This is what we need from a search engines really cool Bing a very quick search engine, and the interface is clean. I know those who are using Google search may be accepting bing right now as they all are familiar in google. But the fact is that Bing is really better than Google.

However congrats and thanks to Microsoft teams for realeasing Bing.

Total links for Link page

2009-08-20T01:03:00.000-07:00

Link building plays a great role in page ranking of the sites. I know you are thinking of how ? Well, for determining the page value, search engines will counts your outbound links, inbound links and reciprocal link.

However, from my experience in BreezeGo India, I do a lot of research on selecting links for our clients. I pay attention to all types of links. Most of the search engines will give more attention to the sites having 100 links within in a page. Here I (explain to you a clear picture about 100 links in a page) clearing out for you about the 100 links in a page. I will do this with an example.
Stepping to the example www.breezegoindia.com
Count the links in the homepage. I think you got 27 links from the homepage, right? Below I have spotted the links in red circle.

So this will make it easy for search engines while crawling try to link within 50 links for accurate crawling.
What we have to care most in the link page of a site is the total count of links in that page Adding more links means the count of links increases. So keep an eye on the total links in the link page. Here I am showing another example of link page. Getting to www.breezegoindia.com/Links.aspx which is www.breezegoindia.com
‘s link page. Again count total links in www.breezegoindia.com/Links.aspx . As you can see 38 links (this will be changing by adding links) I have marked the links in red circle for your reference.

Here I recommend limiting the total links to 75 so it will be more effective for us and link partners, for crawling. If its more than 75 links try to make another link page and the navigating link of new link page should be shown in the homepage, as you know search spiders don’t like hidden pages.

Overall just keep your eyes to the total links in each and every page of your site.

If you like my post please add your comments and suggestions over here.

Internet Explorer Security Issue Warning

2009-07-28T04:39:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Corp. has taken the rare step of warning about a serious computer security vulnerability it hasn’t fixed yet.

The vulnerability disclosed Monday affects Internet Explorer users whose computers run the Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 operating software.

It can allow hackers to remotely take control of victims’ machines. The victims don’t need to do anything to get infected except visit a Web site that’s been hacked.

Security experts say criminals have been attacking the vulnerability for nearly a week. Thousands of sites have been hacked to serve up malicious software that exploits the vulnerability. People are drawn to these sites by clicking a link in spam e-mail.

The so-called “zero day” vulnerability disclosed by Microsoft affects a part of its software used to play video. The problem arises from the way the software interacts with Internet Explorer, which opens a hole for hackers to tunnel into.

Microsoft urged vulnerable users to disable the problematic part of its software, which can be done from Microsoft’s Web site, while the company works on a “patch” - or software fix - for the problem.

Microsoft rarely departs from its practice of issuing security updates the second Tuesday of each month. When the Redmond, Wash.-based company does issue security reminders at other times, it’s because the vulnerabilities are very serious.

Read More Here and Find A Fix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972890#FixItForMe

Social Network Identity Theft

2009-07-28T04:35:00.000-07:00

Social Network Username Search & Protection

KnowEm checks the availability of your brand name, user name or vanity URL on 120 popular Social Media websites. This service is a neat Reputation Management Tool that all reputation conscious individuals should consider using.

A lot of people and business are at risk of becoming a victim of internet identity theft. This is where someone can pose as you on social networks and other username based websites like forums. Imagine if someone found “you” on MySpace or a similar social network and started chatting with “you” about private details, only to find out it really was not you. There are many risks when it comes to internet ID theft, most of the time the biggest risk is your online reputation. If someone was posing as you on a social network and started saying all types of damaging things on their account, people will think these are your words.

Protecting your online reputation is very important in today’s WWW.

The service that KnowEm offers lets you see who else is using your username on over 100 popular social networks. They also offer to protect your name by registering accounts on these networks for you.

Another great service is the social network search engine optimized profile creation service that iPorfileMaker.com offers. They create full profiles with your custom content. This service is geared toward reputation repair and includes the identity protection as well.

List Of Free Press Release Sites

2009-07-28T04:28:00.000-07:00

Free Press Release Sites

Here is a list of Free Press Release sites I have used with good success. A free press release site is great for SEO and Reputation Management. Enjoy the list and if you have any to share please post a comment and let us all know!

24-7PressRelease.com - Free release distribution

1888PressRelease.com - Free distribution, paid services gets you better placement and eternal archiving.

ClickPress.com - Distributes to sites like Google News and Topix.net.

EcommWire.com - Focuses on ecommerce and requires you include an image, 3 keywords and links.

Express-Press-Release.com - Free Distribution Company with (Purportedly) offices in 12 states.

Free-Press-Release.com - Easy press release distribution for free, more features for paid accounts.

Free-Press-Release-Center.info - Distributes your release, offers a web page with one keyword link to your site. Pro upgrade will give you three links, permanent archiving and more.

I-Newswire.com - Allows for free distribution to sites and search engines, premium membership differs only slightly in adding in graphics.

NewswireToday.com - All the usual free distribution tools, premium service includes logo, product picture and more.

PR.com - Not only will they distribute your press releases, but you can also set up a full company profile.

PR9.net - Ad supported press distribution site.

PR-Inside.com - A European-based free press release distribution site.

PRBuzz.com - Completely free distribution to search engines, news sites, and blogs.

PRCompass.com - Distribute your press release with a free or paid version, others can vote it up.

PRUrgent.com - Not only distributes your release, but teaches you how to write one, and even offers downloadable samples for you to work with.

Press-Base.com - Submit your release for free and get on their front page and the category of your choice.

PressAbout.com - A Free blog formatted PR service.

PressMethod.com - Free press release distribution no matter what, but extra services based on the size of your contribution.

PRLeap.com - Free distribution to search engines, newswires, and RSS feeds. Paying will get you better placement.

PRLog.org - Free distribution to Google News and other search engines.

TheOpenPress.com - Gives free distribution for plain formatted releases, fees for HTML-coded releases.

Enjoy the list and if you have any to share or have something to say please post a comment and let us all know!

Search Engine Optimization for Dynamic Websites

2009-07-23T04:21:00.000-07:00

One of the major issues which have always raised questions among the search engine optimization fraternity is" Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Dynamic Websites". In this whitepaper, we will show you how to optimize dynamic websites for top search engine rankings. But, first the basics.

What are "Dynamic Websites"?

Dynamic websites are websites whose pages are generated on the fly. Unlike static pages (primarily .htm/.html pages), dynamic pages are generated when an user triggers an action through that particular page. Here is a sample dynamic URL- http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?q=%22dynamic+websites%22&tab=news &go=homepage
As per the above example of www.bbc.co.uk, the dynamic part (i.e. the part) of the URL which changes as per surfer request is the part after the question mark (?)

What are the problems that search engines face in indexing Dynamic URLs?

1. Search engines often consider a dynamic URL as an infinite set of links.

2. Since dynamic URLs find maximum application in online shopping carts, there is a possibility of incorporating a session id to a particular page. As session ids of that particular page change, the search engine spider needs to index an infinite number of copies of the same page, which is a Herculean task for them.

3. Proceeding with the same logic presented in point #2, indexing the same dynamic page might overload the servers of the search engines and therefore prevent the search engines to present with the most relevant information in the fastest possible time.
Here is what Google says about indexing of dynamic websites-
Reasons your site may not be included: Your pages are dynamically generated. We are able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because our web crawler can easily overwhelm and crash sites serving dynamic content, we limit the amount of dynamic pages we index. (Source - http://www.google.com/webmasters/)

What are the options that you have in order to make a search engine spider index your Dynamic URLs?

1. Use of softwares - Exception Digital Enterprise Solutions (http://www.xde.net ) offers a software which can change the dynamic URLs to static ones. Named XQASP, it will remove the "?" in the Query String and replace it with "/", thereby allowing the search engine spiders to index the dynamic content.

Example -
http://www.my-online-store.com/books.asp?id=1190 will change to
http://www.my-online-store.com/books/1190.

The latter being a static URL, it can easily be indexed by the search engine spiders.

2. Use of CGI/Perl scripts - One of the easiest ways to get your dynamic sites indexed by search engines is using CGI/Perl scripts. Path_Info or Script_Name is a variable in a dynamic application that contains the complete URL address (including the query string information). In order to fix this problem, you'll need to write a script that will pull all the information before the query string and set the rest of the information equal to a variable. You can then use this variable in your URL address.

Example - http://www.my-online-store.com/books.asp?id=1190

When you are using CGI/Perl scripts, the query part of the dynamic URL is assigned a variable. So, in the above example "?id=1190" is assigned a variable, say "A". The dynamic URL http://www.my-online-store.com/coolpage.asp?id=1190 will change to http://www.my-online-store.com/books/A through CGI/Perl scripts which can easily be indexed by the search engines.

3. Re-configuring your web servers-

Apache Server - Apache has a rewrite module (mod_rewrite) that enables you to turn URLs containing query strings into URLs that search engines can index. This module however, isn't installed with Apache software by default, so you need to check with your web hosting company for installation.

ColdFusion - You'll need to reconfigure ColdFusion on your server so that the "?" in a query string is replaced with a '/' and pass the value to the URL.

4. Creation of a Static Page linked to an array of dynamic Pages - This approach is very effective, especially if you are the owner of a small online store selling a few products online. Just create a static page linking to all your dynamic pages. Optimize this static page for search engine rankings. Include a link title for all the product categories, place appropriate "alt" tag for the product images along with product description containing highly popular keywords relevant to your business (you can conduct keyword research for your site through http://www.wordtracker.com). Submit this static page along with all the dynamic pages in various search engines, conforming to the search engine submission guidelines.
How Amazon.com, Earth's Biggest Bookstore, coped with the issue of indexing of dynamic URLs?

A search in Google for internet marketing books, yielded a result that takes you directly to the appropriate dynamic page at Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0395683297/103-0475212-8205437.
Since the above URL does not contain any query strings, all search engines can index Amazon.com's products. Amazon.com uses this method to get its product selections indexed by search engines. This is very important for Amazon, because being an online bookstore, it is very natural for them to adopt dynamic URLs yet it was equally important for them to make their dynamic URLs search engine index friendly.

Conclusion
Even a few years back, most of the major search engines did not index dynamic URLs, thereby often preventing top search engine rankings for the online stores. With Google starting to index dynamic URLs a few months ago, the picture is going to change in the coming days. This is more so because Google's numero uno position is currently being threatened by Microsoft's MSN (developing its own search engine) and Yahoo! who recently acquired Overture, the biggest player in the PPC Search Engine industry.

How to Optimize a dynamic website?

2009-07-23T03:37:00.000-07:00

This is very crucial as it helps you to get it indexed by the major search engines available. If like many other people you do not know how to optimize your dynamic website, here is a set of instructions that you can use.

1. Use a URL Rewriting Tool or Software

There’re a lot of URL Rewriting Tools and software that you can get through the internet. They can help you to turn your website’s dynamic URL into Static URL. When you change your dynamic URL to a static one, it will be easily indexed by the search engines.

2. Use the Perl or CGI Scripts

One of the easiest ways to optimize your dynamic website for indexing is to use the Perl/CGI scripts is one of the easiest ways to get your dynamic sites indexed by search engines. These scripts pull up all the information before the actual query string. The scripts then proceed to set the rest of the information in a way that it equals a variable.

3. Manage Web Servers

You have to manage certain web servers that are fit enough to turn the URLs with query strings into those URLs that can be indexed by search engines. There is just one problem this module is not a default application it has to be installed with the help of your web hosting company.

4. Link your dynamic pages with a Static Page

You will have to create a static page that you will have to link up to your dynamic Pages. This will be especially helpful to you if you have a small online store. Initially you will have to create a single static page and link it to all the dynamic pages of your website. After that you will have to just optimize this static page to achieve higher search engine rankings.

Using the above mentioned tips you can easily optimize a dynamic website. This way you will be able to achieve the indexing of your dynamic website on some of the major search engines. Soon your website will successfully be ranked among the topmost search results on these major search engines.

An Introduction to FBML

2009-06-08T23:42:00.000-07:00

On May 24^th, 2007 Facebook released the Facebook platform. This is the complement to their previous API, based around the Facebook Query Language (FQL). Where FQL allows you do create applications from Facebook data, the Facebook platform, via Facebook Markup Langage (FBML), allows you to embed your application in the Facebook. Finally, Facebook has entered the world of widgets.

Lucky for us Facebook actually has a “widget strategy.” MySpace’s “widget strategy” isn’t really a strategy at all; rather, it’s a consequence of the fact that they basically allow people to enter anything they want into their profiles. A “MySpace widget” works just as well on MySpace as it does anywhere else. The Facebook platform, however, gives you access to the jewel of the Facebook universe: the social graph.

On the one hand this means that a Facebook widget really only works on the Facebook (at least until some other website supports FBML). On the other hand this means that you can create much richer applications by exploiting information about your users’ relationships. Since the mini-feed informs your friends whenever you install an application you also get an excellent viral way to spread your application and your brand. But to do that you need to understand FBML.

Your Data as FBML

One of the most important concepts associated with Web 2.0 is the independence of data and presentation. You see this in things like XML/XSLT and HTML/CSS. Let’s say you have a database-backed web application. Most of the time you’re going to be surfacing this data as HTML. You have other options, of course. Maybe your reader wants his data in an RSS feed. The underlying data is the same but the format in which it is presented is different.

For those still in a SAT mindset we get the following analogy: HTML is to a browser as RSS is to a feed reader, and RSS is to a feed reader as FBML is to Facebook. Graphically the relationship is this:



                            HTML
User <------>   Browser   <------> Server

                            RSS
User <------> Feed reader <------> Server

                            FBML
User <------>  Facebook   <------> Server

The Nuts and Bolts of FBML

FBML isn’t quite HTML and isn’t quite proprietary. The closest analog I can think of is ColdFusion, ironically the language in which MySpace is written. FBML consists of a subset of HTML (no script tags, for example) and a set of proprietary extensions.

These extensions act like HTML tags and can be divided into two broad classes: markup tags and procedural tags. Markup tags include UI elements and are generally directly translated into HTML. The fb:header tag, for example, produces the HTML for a Facebook-style header.

Other tags like fb:if-can-see have a programmatic component. In this case the content between the tags is rendered only if the current user has permission to do whatever is specified in the tag’s attributed. For example

<fb:if-can-see uid="12345" what="profile">

You’re allowed to see 12345’s profile, chum!

<fb:else>

No profile for you!

</fb:else>

</fb:if-can-see>

This would display “You’re allowed to see my profile, chum!” if the current user could see user 12345’s profile and display “No profile for you!” otherwise.

Some tags are more complicated, like fb:switch. fb:switch evaluates each of the fb: tags inside and returns the first one which does not evaluate to an empty string, e.g.,

<fb:switch>

<fb:photo pid="12345" />

<fb:profile-pic uid="54321" />

<fb:default>You can’t see either the photo or the profile pic</fb:default>

</fb:switch>

This would display the photo with pid 12345 if it could, otherwise it would try to display the profile picture of user 54321. If neither of these can be displayed (e.g., the privacy settings are such that you’re not allowed to see them) then it will display the content in fb:default.

If you want to play around with FBML without installing and configuring your own application you can use Facebook’s FBML test console.

Integrating With Facebook

FBML itself isn’t so complicated, but integrating your existing application with the Facebook Platform can be a pain, especially since the whole process isn’t very well documented. The first thing you need to do is install the Developer Application, which allows you to manage the applications you create.

Each application has a unique API key which doesn’t ever change. When you create an application you also get a secret which you should never share — it’s the only way the Facebook knows that an application is the application it claims to be.

So, to create a new application go to the Developer application, click on My Applications and then Apply for another key. Here you enter the name of your application. After agreeing to the Terms of Service click submit and you’ll be redirected back to the My Application page. Once there click on “Edit settings” for your new application.

I’ll wait until you get to the “Edit Settings” page. The key part here is to understand the Callback (URL) field. If you enter as the callback URL http://mydomain.com/myapp/ then all requests directed to http://facebook.com/myapp will go to http://mydomain.com/myapp. The callback URL serves as the base URL from which all requests are made. If you ask Facebook for foo.php it will try to fetch the FBML from http://mydomain.com/myapp/foo.php, interpret it, and display the results.

The Library

One could write an application which consists solely of static FBML pages if they wanted, but it would be pretty boring. To aide integration Facebook provides both Java and PHP client libraries. We’ll focus on the PHP5 library.

The client library includes an example application called “Footprints” which is very instructive. The library provides a Facebook object, initialized with your API key and secret, which helps control the flow of the application.

$api_key = ‘YOUR API KEY’;

$secret = ‘YOUR SECRET’;

$facebook = new Facebook($api_key, $secret);

Facebook allows several points of integration and the $facebook object is the glue which allows you to push data to each of those integration points.

An important fact to note is that the Facebook platform contains both push and pull APIs. All user-specific data follows a push model. That is, if you want to publish data on a users profile, send a message, make a request, publish an item on a user’s mini-feed, etc., you must push the request. All other data is fetched from your server by the Facebook when users access URLs like http://apps.facebook.com/myapp/do_something.php.

Here is the procedure by which users install an application, giving that application permission to push data to their profile, mini-feed, etc.

User visits http://apps.facebook.com/myapp/ and Facebook requests http://mydomain.com/myapp/

The application requests the user install the application by invoking $facebook->require_login() if the application plans to push user-specific data.

The user/application go through the authentication process. After the end of the authentication process (presuming the user follows through) the application is given the user’s Facebook uid and a session key via a POST request. These are required to push user-specific data.

The application can now push data to a user’s profile or mini-feed, make application-related requests on their behalf, etc.

The Nuts and Bolts of the Facebook Object

The Facebook object contains all the methods you’ll need to interact with the Facebook platform. After a user has authenticated you’ll probably be interested in the following:

$facebook->redirect($url): Redirects to the given URL. This is required because the the headers have already been sent by the time the Facebook requests data from your application.
$facebook->require_login() and $facebook->require_add(): Requires the user to login to your application or install it, respectively.
$facebook->get_login_url() and $facebook->get_add_url(): Returns the URL for your application’s login or install page, respectively.
$facebook->api_client->feed_publishStoryToUser($title, $body, …): Publishes a feed item for the currently authenticated user.
$facebook->api_client->friends_get(): Returns the friends of the currently authenticated user.
$facebook->api_client->friends_getAppUsers(): Returns the friends of the currently authenticated user who also have the application installed.
$facebook->api_client->groups_get($uid=null,$gids=null): Returns the specified groups (all by default) for the specified user (the current user by default).
$facebook->api_client->profile_setFBML($markup, $uid=null): Sets the profile box FBML for the specified users (defaults to the current user).

This list is by no means comprehensive, but these are the highlights. There are also functions which deal with photos, notifications, and events. There’s no real documentation for these functions outside of the library source, although there is a one-to-one correspondence with methods in the api_client and the methods listed in the sidebar of the developer documentation. This is definitely the least document part of the Facebook platform.

AJAX and other miscellany

No Web 2.0 application would be complete without AJAX. Of course the whole point of the Facebook platform is to give developers access to the Facebook without compromising security, so unadorned Javascript and script tags are out of the question.

To solve this Facebook provides a very basic mock AJAX system. You create a dummy form which contains the various values you’re interested in and point it at an element which activates the AJAX request. It’s a little hackish but the alternative (no Javascript at all) is probably worse. The examples in the above documentation are as clear as I could write it, so just read those.

In addition Facebook supports Flash and iframes on canvas pages. This means you could, in theory, embed your page directly into the Facebook.

Resources

From the above you should understand the basics of how Facebook interacts with an application. The Facebook expects your application to output FBML which it then transforms into a page for your user. In addition you can use the Facebook object to get information about the current user, such as their friends, groups, photos, and notifications.

But the above only touches the important parts. A lot of the platform remains undocumented and the best way to learn more is to just dive in. Here are some helpful resources.

Developers Documentation

Anatomy of a Facebook Application

Step-by-step Guide to Creating an Application

Developer FAQ

Platform Wiki

PHP5 Client Library, including a sample Facebook application.

Speculation

There are some totally undocumented aspects of FBML. One that sticks out, using my ColdFusion analogy above, is the fb:query tag. You can see the stub on the FBML documentation at the wiki.

One oddity with the current platform is the way it integrates FBML and FQL. You can issue FQL queries directly via the Facebook object. This effectively doubles the latency of your application since the Facebook first issues a request to your application which then in turn might issue several FQL queries back to the Facebook before returning the finalized FBML. My suspicion is that FBML either at point contained or will contain the ability to execute FQL directly on the Facebook and iterate through the resultset.

Cheers, and happy coding!

Using Analytics on Your Site

2009-05-21T22:16:00.000-07:00

If you’re investing time or money in SEO/PPC, you need to know what you’re getting in return. The best measure is your bank account and ROI, but with careful analysis of your visitors and their behaviors, you can increase your bottom line, help redirect efforts to the most profitable website segments, and get more out of each landing page. In this article we discuss web analytics and its usage for your website.

Analytics Products

There are many tools on the web for free and others for reasonable prices. Take your pick.

* Google Analytics - Google has a lot of built-in advanced features comparable to expensive analytics tools. The down side is, when you use Google Analytics, you're sharing all your data with Google, and they can do anything with it. For instance, if a certain keyword converts well for you, logically it should convert just as well for other companies, so Google may raise minimum bids for that keyword to make more money.

* Sitemeter

* Omniture

* Efficient Frontier

* Yahoo Web Analytics (free, expected to be out soon at the time of this writing).

* Mint

* Clicky

* Clicktracks

* Microsoft adCenter Analytics

* WebTrends

* Piwik

Once you set up your tool, it's time to analyze your traffic!

Using Analytics on Your Site - Basic Analytics Measurements

Here we discuss basic web analytics measurements universal to all analytics software programs.

* Visits - total number of visits to the website.

* Page views - number of all page views in total.

* Pages Per Visits - average number of pages users sees per visit.

* Bounce Rate - percentage of visitors who come to your website and leave without clicking on anything.

* Average Time On Site - how long people stay on your website

These are the core metrics in all analytics programs. They give you an overall look, but to find real value you have to dig a lot deeper into statistics such as monthly comparisons, trends and segmenting, which can sometimes answer the "why" question.

Traffic Sources

Understanding traffic sources is straightforward. There are search engines, PPC search ads, contextual networks, direct traffic, RSS readers, email, and affiliate/link referrals. Each traffic source can hint at intention, and measuring sources is essential to finding out your strong and weak spots.

For instance, if most of your traffic is from search engines, with a small percentage of direct visitors, chances are you have a weak brand. Focusing on brand building can thus increase direct traffic. Let's take a deeper look at traffic sources:

* Search Engines - Google, Yahoo, Live, MSN, AOL, Ask, Altavista, AlltheWeb, Netscape, etc.

* Referring Sites - These include directories, links from other websites, blogs and banner ads. By exploring referring URLs you can sometimes learn why users clicked on the link. If particular links send you a lot of qualified traffic that converts, you might want to establish a commercial relationship with that site owner.

* Direct Traffic - Those are visitors who directly type in your address or land on your pages through a bookmark. This is a sign you have a strong brand. Direct traffic is free and usually converts well.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate shows how many visitors land on your website (PPC, search, direct, etc), and then click the back button or close the window. Basically they leave without doing anything. The down side of this measurement is that the bounce rate on a site-wide level does not tell you much. You have to drill into each page, measure its bounce rate and only then make conclusions.

Page Level Bounce Rate

Why is measuring bounce rate on the site wide level wrong? You may change the wrong stuff. The site wide bounce rate is an average sum of the bounce rate from all of your pages. One page can be doing well, while another one is not. How do you know which one is doing well and where you need improvement if you only look at your site wide bounce rate?

By exploring each page one by one and by studying bounce rates, you can spot pages that are doing well in terms of this measurement and ones that need changes.

Using Analytics on Your Site - Measuring Conversion Rate

This is one of my favorite measurements, as it tracks the entire performance of the website. All investments in SEO, PPC, design, copy writing, content, and conversion optimization come down to this statistic. How many visitors do what you want them to do? How many subscribe, buy and become customers?

In this section we'll focus on goal tracking (conversion tracking) with Google Analytics.

"A goal is a website page which a visitor reaches once they have made a purchase or completed another desired action, such as a registration or download." - Google Help

Setting Up Goals in Google

To set up goals in Google Analytics you must meet a few requirements:

* There must be a clear URL for the goal page, such as a thank you page. Basically it's a page that users see after they do what you want them to do. This page should be only available upon completion of your goal. If it can be accessed otherwise (through search results, links, etc), then conversion results will be inflated.

* You must make up a name for your goals. For example, "registration" or "sale."

* You can specify a funnel to the goal page. The funnel represents the page flow before your visitors become customers. In e-commerce, this is the checkout process. In lead generation, this is the application process. Once you specify the funnel, Google will track goal completion. By analyzing goal completion you can learn the exact step in the conversion process that hurts your bottom line.

* Assign a value to your goal. A goal's value helps you estimate the ROI delivered with each conversion.

Google says that a good way to value a goal is to evaluate how often the visitors who reach the goal become customers. If, for example, your sales team can close 10% of people who request to be contacted, and your average transaction is $500, you might assign $50 (i.e. 10% of $500) to your "Contact Me" goal. In contrast, if only 1% of mailing list sign-ups result in a sale, you might only assign $5 to your "email sign-up" goal.

I personally think this is too much information to share with Google, since it can easily estimate how much you make with your website. As it measures goal values on other competing sites in your industry, it can create ROI benchmarks and use that data to price fix their AdWord bids with the excuse of quality scores.

Setting up your goals is easy. Keep in mind that it's essential to redirect users to the goal page once they have completed your action. Without a goal page, Google cannot measure your conversion rate. To set up goals, go to Analytics Setting and click on "edit" in the Actions tab (far right).Click on "edit" next to the goal and enter the required URLs along with the appropriate information.

Using Analytics on Your Site - Segmentation

Segmentation is a huge and complex topic. We'll introduce you to the overall concept and provide further direction where you can learn more, from people who understand it better. Segmentation is powerful and can help you answer the "why" question when it comes to online marketing efforts.

What is segmentation?

Website statistics is a mix of visitor intentions, visitor sources, behaviors and questions. By looking at overall website statistics you cannot find out how many visitors who were looking for "X" found it, and if they didn't, why not. You cannot answer why visitors did not get to "page Y" and what you can do to help them get there. With segmentation, however, you can break down analytics into small chunks of information that can help you market better.

For instance, if you've invested in branding, naturally you want to find out how many people search for your brand, and how many end up on your site and take action. To do this you can create a custom segment, and set a filter for "my brand keyword" (including related). You can go further and only count second time visitors, who spend X amount of time on the site, complete some sort of action or make X number of clicks. By setting advanced filters you can see how your campaign efforts affect visitor flow, engagement and ultimately conversion rate.

Here is a big point to keep in mind: you must know what it is you're trying to find out from segmentation before you segment. At the moment, Google has around 100 segmentation options, so you can waste hours just playing around with those. Know what you're trying to measure.

Here are some Google segmentation options: hours of the day, page depth, visitor type, count of visits, city, language, region, ad group, keyword, search engine, ad slot, referral path, medium, page title, host name, refined keyword, landing page, exit page, affiliate, city, product, product category, browser, connection speed, flash, entrances, bounces, purchases and a LOT more.

5 Top Ways To Generate Low Cost Website Traffic

2009-05-20T01:46:00.000-07:00

There is one hard and fast rule in generating income for your website: A steady flow of website traffic. If no one goes to your site, it hardly bares a chance of generating an income. Many sites have tried and failed in doing so, and these results to the sites demise. It takes money to maintain an income-generating site; it also takes money to make money.

BUT, it doesn't take a whole caboodle of cash to generate website traffic for your site.

Ever wonder how does big hit sites drive traffic top their site? Most of them are spending tons of money to drive the traffic to their sites, investing in many advertising campaigns and different forms of marketing schemes and gimmickries. This is all worthwhile because, well, they are what they are now, high earning, and big hitting websites.

You don't have to do this if you don't really have their resources. There are many ways to generate low cost website traffic without having to spend what you don't have or can't afford. Many people have banked on high cost methods and have ended up losing their shirt over it.

Here I present to you the Five Top ways to generate low cost website traffic that could help your site a whole lot. Even if you only get a small percentage of successful visitors in to client ratio it still works especially if you get a high number of website traffic.

1. Exchange Links

This is a sure and proven method. Rarely would you see a site where there is no link to another site. Many webmasters are willing to exchange links with one another so that they could produce more public awareness about their sites. You'll soon see and feel the sudden upsurge of the traffic coming in to your site from other sites.

A major prerequisite in exchanging links with other sites is having the same niche or content as the other site. They should share a common subject so that there is continuity in the providing of service and information to what interests your target traffic.

Exchanging links also boosts your chances of getting a high ranking in search engine results. It is common knowledge that search engines ranks high sites that have inbound and outbound theme-related links. With a good ranking position in the search engines, you will generate more traffic in your website without the high costs.

2. Traffic Exchange

This is like exchanging links but on a different higher level. This may cost a bit more than exchanging or trading links but could be made cheaper because you get to earn credits. You can use those credits when viewing others traffic, while you earn credits when someone views yours.

Traffic exchange services are the viewing of another's site or page. This is done vice versa where a site can use your sites contents and so can you to his or her site. You both benefit from each other's efforts to generate traffic. The other sites visitors can go to your pages and know more about your site as well as theirs. Once again the public awareness of your sites existence is boosted.

3. Write and Submit Articles

There are many ezines and online encyclopaedias in the Internet, which provides free space for articles to be submitted. If you want to save costs, you can do the articles yourself. There are many freelance writers who are willing to write for you for a small fee, but to save money; it is wise to do those articles yourself.

Write articles that are themed along with the niche of your site. Write something that you have expertise on so that when they read it, they can feel your knowledge about the subject and will be eager to go to your site. Write articles that produce tips and guidelines to the subject or niche your site has.

Include a resource box at the end of your article that can link them to your site. Write a little about yourself and your site. If you provide a light, information-laden and interesting article, they will go to your site for more.

4. Make a Newsletter.

This may sound like hard work because of all the articles you may need to use to build a newsletter but on the contrary, this is not so. There are many writers and sites that are willing to provide free articles as long as they can get their name in on your newsletter. This will also provide free advertising for them as well.

As your newsletter gets pass around, you can widen your public awareness and build an opt-in list that can regularly visit your site.

5. Join Online Communities and Forums

This only requires your time and nothing else. You can share your knowledge and expertise with many online communities as well as your website. You can get free advertising when you go to forums that have the same subject or niche with your site.

Share your two cents and let them see how knowledgeable you are with the subject. As you build your reputation, you also build the reputation of your site, making it a reputable and honest business that could be frequented and trusted by many people.

By: Andromachi Polychroniou

Finding High Quality Web Directories to Submit your Site to

2009-05-20T01:43:00.000-07:00

while such marketing methods as

Submitting to Web Directories is still a cornerstone of many website promotion campaigns.
Although they are not quite as important as they used to be, they still serve some important functions.
The major engines such as Yahoo and MSN send out their robots to search the web for new resources that come up. Being listed in established web directories
ensures that your website will be among those resources which are indexed quickly.
You can also build up your backlinks with directory listings. The top engines like Yahoo give a lot of weight to
the number of backlinks to your website when ranking it for a specific keyword or keyword phrase and one-way links are considered by many SEO experts to have more relevence than the two way, traded links.
This is also why writing articles and forum signatures can help boost your site in the rankings.
So what makes for a good directory to be listed on?
I look for something unique, hopefully something with a custom design, different categories and of course a high pagerank, such as

The RA Directory for example. I prefer to see it differentiated as much as possible from the many standard PHP directories out there. I do not mind paying a small charge to get listed as I know that this will allow the directory to have a smaller index and therefore send more traffic and PR
to my site.
The majority of web directories that are out there allow you to provide anchor text (link title text) with keywords describing your site. This very important because It is not
that easy to get links to your site with the keywords you want and web directories are one of the best ways to do this.
To get started finding directories to list your site, I recommend starting with directoryarchives.com and going from there

By: Aaron Wilmont

Real Audio and Real Video, streaming media for your web site

2009-05-20T01:39:00.000-07:00

Anybody interested in creating RealAudio and RealVideo content
on their sites will find it's a great deal easier than they
might have initially imagined.

The instructions given below are for RealAudio on a Windows
95/98 computer, but the process is almost identical for
RealVideo and other platforms. I tentatively suggest you print
out this tutorial for easier reading, by copying the text and
pasting it into Wordpad or Word then printing it out. Or if, you
prefer, you can download the text as a zipped document from
here. Netscape users please press shift as you click to save the
file to disc.

Before you start, be sure you:

1: have an audio or video file in one of the following formats:
AVI, MOV, WAV, or AU format. If your file is not in one of those
formats, you will need to convert it before starting this
tutorial.

2: check with your internet service provider or the people who
provide your web space that they support streaming media. This
is the one sure thing that will guarantee that you'll never get
this technique to work on your site. Save your self a lot of
time and effort by finding out before you start this tutorial.

3: are not violating any copyright laws by placing copyrighted
material on your web site. It goes without saying that the best
files to put on your web site are files you've created yourself.
A snippet of the Spice Girls may titillate a few but it won't
encourage people to stick around or even come back to see how
your site develops and it may make you vulnerable to prosecution.

Step 1: Download RealProducer encoder The current version is
RealProducer 7.0. To get the encoder, click here, fill out the
form and download the encoder. I've been through this process
myself a few times and I can guarantee that Real won't send you
annoying bumf. After you finish downloading, you will need to
execute the file you downloaded and install RealProducer.

Step 2: Preparations to encode your music file Double click the
icon on your desktop or from the start menu called "
RealProducer." In the dialogue box which pops up choose 'record
from file'

Now you need to enter the name of the file that you want to
encode. Click "Browse" and browse for the file. Once you have
found the file, click "Open" then "Next".

In the next screen, enter the title, author, copyright and a
brief description of the track to inform your listeners of the
kind of thing they can expect to hear when they play it. Then
click "Next". Now you need to select the target audience. Select
"Multi-rate SureStream for Real Server G2" and click "Next".
Then choose 56k Modem as a target Audience stream format. Most
PCs, browsers and modems should be able to handle this.

The current screen asks for the audio format. Select the
appropriate type based on the type of file you are encoding and
click "Next".

Now you will be asked to enter the output file. You can choose
to enter it anywhere on your hard drive but you should be able
to remember exactly where you placed it. Then you should click
"Next". Please ensure at this stage that you avoid any spaces in
a file's name. Most servers are still susceptible to file names
which aren't continuous so a file like 'wake free zone.rm' would
be more easily recognised as 'wakefreezone.rm'.

Finally, RealProducer allows you to confirm your choices. If
there is nothing wrong with your choices, click "Start". If you
wish to change something, hit 'back' and change what you need to
in the appropriate dialogue boxes.

Step 3: Encode the file In the "RealEncoder" screen, click the
"Start" button in the lower left corner of the RealEncoder
window. It may take a few minutes to encode the file, depending
on the length of the original file. The blue bar in the lower
right corner of the RealEncoder shows your progress. When
encoding is finished, a "Recording Complete" box will pop up.
Here you are given the choice to upload the destination of your
file to Real Server Janus where, if you're lucky, someone may
stumble across your musical offering via their web site. You
simply connect to the internet and fill out the form at Janus to
inform them where they might find your music. Then you should
close RealProducer .

Step 4: Upload the file To upload the file to your Web site, you
will need to use an FTP program or Site Manager. You can upload
to any directory, just be sure you remember the address of the
file. If your program asks, this file should be uploaded in
"Binary" mode.

Step 5: Make a text file linking to the Real (*.rm) file Click
your Start Menu and go to "Run." Type "Notepad" and click "OK".
In Notepad, type only this line of text:
http://www.server#/username/directory/file.rm. # is the server
that you are on, username is your domain username, directory is
where you've uploaded the rm file to and file.rm is the actual
file that you uploaded. For instance the file wakefreezone is
at: 'http://www.eidosnet.co.uk/donkit racks/wakefreezone.rm'

Here's the rub. There should only be one line of text in the
Notepad window. When you are finished, click "File" and go to
"Save As." In the "Save as Type" selector, select "All Files
(*.*)". Select a directory you can remember, and in the "File
name:" box type a name with an ending of .ram. (For example,
sound.ram.) Click "Save." This is extremely important. What
you've done here is to create a kind of sign post to the .rm
file which then, when your visitor clicks on to the link, points
their copy of RealPlayer to the .rm file which the application
will then play.

Step 6: Upload the text file Use an FTP program or Site Manager
to upload the text file to your web site. You can upload to any
directory, just be sure you remember the address of the file. If
your program asks, this file should be uploaded in "Text" or
"ASCII" mode, however most FTP programmes worth their salt will
know what type of file you're uploading and change the mode
automatically.

Step 7: Link to the text file on your web site You will need to
edit one of your HTML files on your Web site and place a link to
the *.ram file. This link should be to your web site, not to the
file on your hard drive. Then you will need to re-upload the
HTML file.

Step 8: Test your RealAudio file Go to your web site and click
on the link to the RealFile (the *.ram file). Your browser
should quickly download a file, and RealPlayer should open and
play the RealAudio file. If anything does not work correctly
check the addresses you used and make sure they are accurate. If
your file refuses to play but no other error messages pop up,
you should check that you uploaded the files with the proper
file type.

RealVideo To make RealVideo, use the same method but be prepared
to wait while the file encodes as video is far more memory
hungry than audio.

Have fun!

By: Dominic Arnold

Discover How to Increase Web Site Traffic Through Search Engine Optimization

2009-05-20T01:36:00.000-07:00

There are many different methods you can use to increase web site traffic. But the majority of traffic to your web site will probably come from one of the major search engines with estimations that range from 67% to 90%. The power of search engines can indeed drive free, capable online visitors to your web site.

To increase web site traffic, you need be knowledgeable enough with search engine optimization. Search engine optimization refers to the clever manipulation of the frequency and location of keywords in your web pages to increase web traffic to your site.

In using search engine optimization to increase web site traffic, there are a number of things to be considered. Firstly,you need to have distinctive and fitting keyword phrases. Usually, individual keywords are too cutthroat to rank favorably, except if they are exceptional to the business you're in. When you describe your business, make sure you come up with two or three word phrases that are precise enough.

The location and frequency of your keywords are also critical to increase web traffic to your site. The keywords should be placed in the page title and also high up in the page text. The keywords that you select will be used all throughout the optimization method so it is important that you choose the keywords well. The placement of keywords is also crucial. Your keywords should likewise appear in the alt tags, meta keywords, meta description, headers and link addresses.

Another way that you can increase web traffic to your site is by using meta tags to guarantee a precise description of the page and to utilize variations of the keywords that were not placed in the page text. Meta tags were initially made to aid search engines in finding out vital data about your page that otherwise they might have had trouble verifying. You should repeat the most essential keyword phrases in the keyword and description meta tags. But be aware if you're overdoing the repetition. This may not increase web site traffic since this can be misinterpreted as spamming, which may lead to your site not being listed.

Be aware that your links may become hidden due to frames and image maps. When this happens, you may not be able to increase web traffic to your site. There are search engines that are not frame compatible and may conceal your links and stop them from going further into your site. These search engines include Excite, Alta Vista, WebCrawler and HotBot. The search engines that do not support image maps are Lycos, HotBot, Excite, and WebCrawler.

You should also increase the number of links that lead to your page to increase web site traffic. It is advisable to trade links with complimentary web sites or with associates. The more links, and preferably one way, non-reciprocal links from other web sites to your web pages, the higher it will be positioned by several of the search engines.

You might also want to regularly update your web pages to increase web traffic in your site. Several major search engines arrange re-crawls on web pages to see the frequency of their updates. This in turn will lead to a higher position in search results. It is recommended that you change the page enough so the date in your file is recent.

By: Neil Day

Google Fun Facts

2009-05-10T22:30:00.000-07:00

Google sorts billions of bits of information for its users. Here are some little-known bits of information about Google:

The basis of Google's search technology is called PageRank™, and assigns an "importance" value to each page on the web and gives it a rank to determine how useful it is. However, that's not why it's called PageRank. It's actually named after Google co-founder Larry Page.

Google's name is a play on the word googol, which refers to the number 1 followed by one hundred zeroes. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, "Mathematics and the Imagination" by Kasner and James Newman. Google's play on the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web.

Google started as a research project at Stanford University, created by Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were 24 years old and 23 years old respectively (a combined 47 years old).

Google's index of web pages is the largest in the world, comprising of billions of web pages. Google searches this immense collection of web pages often in less than half a second.

Google receives daily search requests from all over the world, including Antarctica.

Users can restrict their searches for content in 35 non-English languages, including Chinese, Greek, Icelandic, Hebrew, Hungarian and Estonian. To date, no requests have been received from beyond the earth's orbit, but Google has a Klingon interface just in case.

Google has a world-class staff of more than 2,668 employees known as Googlers. The company headquarters is called the Googleplex.

Google translates billions of HTML web pages into a display format for WAP and i-mode phones and wireless handheld devices, and has made it possible to enter a search using only one phone pad keystroke per letter, instead of multiple keystrokes.

Google Groups comprises more than 845 million Usenet messages, which is the world's largest collection of messages or the equivalent of more than a terabyte of human conversation.

Googlers are multifaceted. One operations manager, who keeps the Google network in good health is a former neurosurgeon. One software engineer is a former rocket scientist. And the company's chef formerly prepared meals for members of The Grateful Dead and funkmeister George Clinton.

Official Gmail Blog: A picture is worth a thousand words

2009-05-05T01:49:00.000-07:00

Official Gmail Blog: A picture is worth a thousand words

Video Optimization Tips From Ad:Tech San Francisco

2009-04-23T22:19:00.000-07:00

Making a good video can be difficult enough; you shouldn’t have to struggle to get it in front of individuals and search engines afterwards. So at Ad:Tech San Francisco, The Search Agency’s Drew Hubbard gave some tips on how to optimize video for search.

One key point is that “it’s all about the content on the page.” For now, content producers should still assume that videos are invisible to search engines. Be sure to come up with good titles, good tags, and good keywords.

Otherwise, if you’re trying to decide between hosting a video yourself or turning to a site like YouTube or Vimeo, there are a couple of things to take into consideration. Going the DIY route will grant you a great deal of control over the clip. At the same time, letting YouTube handle things may save you money, and it can put also the video in front of a larger audience.

Hubbard pointed out that, according to some statistics-tracking firms, YouTube is actually competing with Yahoo for the title of number two search engine.

How to Get Backlinks to Boost Your Page Rank

2009-04-23T22:12:00.000-07:00

Backlinks are links that are directed towards your website. Backlinks are important for search engine optimization because some search engines, especially Google, will give more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks, and consider those websites more relevant than others in their results pages for a search query. Backlinks are also called inward links, in links, inbound links or incoming links. Backlinks are the building block of good SEO.

Web designers and firms have been practicing this for years, outside of blogging. Website marketing is more dependent upon backlinks. Building backlinks however, can be a slow and tedious process every site owner and blogger has to face. When you are building a quality web-page, it’s important to build quality backlinks that are relevant to the theme of your site. Having your website, blog or Hub rank high with search engines is a key part to any online success, and backlinks are a crucial part of that success.

We constantly find information on the web telling you to “write quality content”, “get involved with social networking”, “and establish relationships with readers and other bloggers”. If you actively wish to increase the backlinks to your site and keep on the right side of Google, Yahoo and the other search engines, make sure you seek out the websites and blogs that complement your own website.

One of the very best methods of gaining backlinks is via the blogging community – when you read someone’s blog, you usually have the option to leave a comment. This is where you can leave a link to your website or blog for other people to check out – to really maximize this type of traffic, have your comment offer some kind of tip or advice on the preceding blog post. Article marketing is known as the white-hat way to create these relevant, inbound links. Among the acceptable ways of building quality backlinks are getting listed in directories, posting in forums, blogs and article directories. Common ways to get backlinks include exchanging links with other sites (reciprocal links) and by placing articles you write in article directories and on other sites. Another excellent way to get links to your site is by writing articles for newsletters, which are then published on other people's sites.

To increase your knowledge on search engine optimization and backlinks, you can easily click on any SEO site which will explain the process, in detail, and how you can increase traffic to your website. In the search engine optimization (SEO) world, the number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page (though other measures, such as PageRank, are likely to be more important).

Building quality backlinks is extremely important to Search Engine Optimization, and because of their importance, it should be very high on your priority list in your SEO efforts. Many pages concerned with search engine optimization have mechanisms to discover how many backlinks the web page or website has, so that the site owner can not only know the exact number of times that it has been backlinked, but where these backlinks are coming from, and if they are from related sources or not.

Backlinks are the backbone of good SEO, right up there with content and your TITLE and META tags. They are a great way to build your web presence and, are actually rated by the various search engines by keywords and the content of the backlinked sites. Using backlinks is a great search engine optimization technique though, as long as the backlinks are genuine and are not an attempt to fool the search engine algorithms. Ideally backlinks are web pages with high PageRank, with content like yours and that already link to other web pages.

Author: Kerry M Johnson

Submitting your URL to Directories

2009-04-23T22:08:00.000-07:00

When optimizing your website you want to spend as little money as possible, and it is entirely possible to submit your link to enough free URL directories to get the attention of search engines. It's time consuming, and some people choose to hire SEO service providers to manually submit their site for them to hundreds or thousands of directories. But it is something you can do yourself if you're looking to keep your costs down.

When submitting your URL to directories, here are some SEO concepts to keep in mind:

1. Choose quality over quantity.

2. Prioritize directories that have high rankings in search engines. These websites get crawled more often and therefore their linking to you gets your website crawled more often.

3. Directories that have more members and listings are better than those that just have a few. These directories will get more traffic, providing more opportunities for someone to see your link and click on it. They are also updated more often and attract search engines to crawl them more often to find your website.

4. If the directory asks for a title and or description for your listing, for best results use the title and description you have published for the page you are submitting. First, these should already be keyword optimized. In addition, having the text in the referring link page match your webpage's text makes it easier for search engines to assess its relevancy and spider your website more quickly.

5. Directories that have a relevant category to your website are better than those that don't. A referring link with a word such as "miscellaneous" in it's address and title doesn't say "relevant" to the search engine like a referral from a webpage that has your main keyword in the name and address. At all times possible, make sure that you categorize your listing accurately and be as specific as possible, drilling down into the subcategories, down to your webpage's main keyword.

6. Submit as many internal pages of your website to each directory as they allow. A lot of directories only allow you to submit one link from each URL, some insist that you list your top level home page only, however some of them allow you to list subpages as well. When you come across one that does, take advantage of backlinks for your sub pages. Links and referrals to internal pages on your site show search engines that you have internal content that is relavant to visitors, that they don't just look at your home page and leave.

7. Make sure you follow the rules and instructions for submitting your URL on each directory. Not following instructions will in most cases get your submission delayed or even deleted. Submitting your website URL as instructed will in all cases get your website seen by visitors and crawled by search engines.

Author: SEO 4 One

How Can I Boost My Google Rankings?

2009-04-23T21:45:00.000-07:00

This is a question we are asked frequently, and unfortunately it's not one with a single, simple answer. The area of website marketing and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a large and complex one with many variables, but there are a few easy-to-follow tips we can provide to assist you in your quest to become Google Number One.

Things That Web design specialists Can Do For You...

As web design specialists, they have the experience to construct, or re-design your site to meet the latest industry standards, which will give your website the best fighting chance amongst your competitors' pages. The following tips are all tried-and-tested methods to increase rankings, and if used correctly, can help boost your website to that coveted top spot in the search engines.

Valid Website Markup : to Improve Google Rankings

Markup is the code which describes your website. It is the hidden structure behind all webpages which the casual user never sees, but which search engines like Google and Yahoo will index on a regular basis. By indexing, we mean that the search engines create a vast, searchable index of all websites available online. Each of these websites is ranked based on a set of criteria, such as the "usefulness" of the page, how well it is constructed and how relevant the content is to a particular field.

The quality of a website's structure is important to the search engines because they read your website code like a book. Write your "book" badly, with poor grammar and broken sentences, and the search engines may hold that against you. However, a well formatted book, or website, will gain bonus marks in the search engines eyes, simply because they know that valid HTML code, or markup, will allow the site to be presented to the widest possible number of users - this includes people browsing your site on their mobile phone, iPhone or even TV screen.

There are many different rules to take into consideration when constructing a website, but the main set of restrictions can be found at the home of The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This is a group of people highly experienced in the field of web construction who have drawn together a list of rules which should be followed, as a "best practice" for website design. Websites which adhere to these rules (you can run tests for these rules at http://validator.w3.org) are considered to be more syntactically valid than those which fail.

Whether or not your site has to be 100% accurate to get the best rankings is debatable, but having code which is neat and well formatted is a goal that all web developers should aim for. Even if you get no SEO benefits from it, it's a good practice to get into, and will provide you with neat, easily maintainable code for the future.

Keywords : to Define The Content of your Pages

The content of your website is another extremely important factor to consider when aiming for high ranking on search engines. By writing about your subject matter, and including text and information on your site, you give the search engines food for thought. They will come along and digest the text on your site, analysing it for specific words and phrases.

By this process, they manage to identify, of their own accord, the purpose and overall subject matter of your website. For example - say you had a website about lawnmowers. It wouldn't do much good to talk at length about teapots, as the search engines would get completely the wrong idea and index you for the wrong words (in that case, a search for "Teapots" on Google may well bring up your, completely irrelevant site. That visitor will just skip past your page)

The density of keywords is important for SEO too, as well as where you use them. It's important to include your keywords in your page title, as this is usually the most prominent feature of a page, as seen by the search engines. Also, maintain a list of a few "secondary keywords" which you can use in sub-headings, and other prominent areas around your site, beneath the level of the main heading.

For the actual content of your site, make sure you use these keywords in the text, but not too often. It's usually recommended that around 2% to 7% of the words on any page are related to your chosen keywords. This shows the search engines that the content is relevant to the subject matter, and will earn you bonus points in the search engine rankings. Any higher than around 7% to 10% and you run the risk of search engines penalising you for "Keyword stuffing", e.g. filling your page with keywords in the hope that you'll be boosted in the rankings. Word of warning: Search engines are clever, and pick up on this sort of thing!

All search engines work slightly differently though, and no combination of keywords and content is guaranteed to give you number one spot, but it gives you a large advantage over the competition if you can tailor your content to that specification

Meta Tags : To Give Your Pages Meaning

It's debatable how effective meta tags are at influencing the decisions of search engines when indexing your site. Meta tags are the elements found near the top of HTML source code which provide information to browsers visiting the page. The main ones in the realm of SEO are the title, keywords and description tags. The keywords tag is simply a list of relevant keywords for your site, but this is of arguable usefulness, since engines like Google will index the full content of your page to determine which keywords are most valuable anyway.

The description meta tag is used for a similar purpose, but is much more useful with regards to search engines - not for the indexing programs which visit your site, but for the human visitors who are searching for information. By using the description tag, you can give a brief introduction to any page on your site which will be displayed - sometimes, not always - underneath your page title in search results. By using this wisely, you can prepare a short, snappy "advert" for your site which will lure people in.

And this brings us to the title tag. Possibly the most important of the meta tags (although it's not technically a "meta" tag, it still counts towards the information a search engine uses to index your site). The title tag is the headline for your pages, and is what people will see highlighted in blue when they search through Google, if your page comes up in a page of results. You should be able to see why it's important you get this tag right. With a properly formatted title tag, you are well on your way to grabbing the attention on someone scanning a page of results, and making them click through to your page.

Things That You Can Do...

Start a Blog about your Favourite Subject

A blog is an ideal way to attract visitors to a website. It fulfils several of the points mentioned above to generate good content to rank highly in search engines. By choosing the right subject, you can include a good density of keywords in your text and you can create varied, interesting content to appeal to readers and, thanks to the proliferation of well-written open source blogging software available these days, you can have a well formatted, SEO-friendly website up and running in no time.

Your blog can be about anything. If you're running a business and are looking to attract visitors, it makes sense to write about your business niche, but don't feel that your blog has to be full of lifeless articles about pipes, widgets or photocopier manufacturing (I don't know anyone in the business of manufacturing photocopiers, but it doesn't sound fun) - if you add personality and a touch of your own, then you'll gain regular readers, who come back for more and may even add to the content of your site by leaving comments on your entries.

Start another Blog : Concentrate on Niche Areas

Yes, you heard us right. If you're the dedicated sort, and feel that you have time to spare writing up articles about subjects that appeal to you, then starting extra blogs can be a real draw for your visitors. By focussing on a different niche area (something not directly related to your main blog, but in the same ballpark), you can attract a different audience and, if you wish, funnel them through to your main blog. This way, you won't need to rely on one single source of visitors and, if you're feeling pro-active, multiple blogs in this fashion can increase the effect greatly.

Choosing a good blog niche is an artform all to itself though, and plenty of thought and consideration should be given before jumping into writing a blog. The most important thing though, is : Choose something that appeals to you. If you write about something you find utterly mundane and dull (Stamp collection, for instance : Apologies to any stamp collectors reading this) then you're going to struggle to find the motivation to come back regularly to update your blog.

Look on this not as an attempt to make money, or to attract visitors, but as a chance for self-improvement. You can write about anything you wish, from history, to science, to art. Music or technology. Do your research, write about your subject and, if you're dedicated, you will see results.

Links from other Websites back to Yours

Search engines - like Google - crawl the entire web, and in doing so they will eventually locate all the other sites and locations which link back to your site. These links, on other sites, are called "backlinks" and are very important for search engine rankings.

The quality of the backlinks is important too though. You may come across web-pages devoted just to linking other sites. Pages and pages will be filled with link after link to unrelated sites. I cannot emphasise enough - stay away from these. They are called "link farms" and will do no good for your search engine rankings, in fact, they may harm your rankings. Google sees these sites as an attempt to boost rankings artificially and will punish anyone with links found on them.

The best way to get quality links is by investing some time and effort into a quality link-share program. Find other websites which share your particular niche or content area, and contact the webmaster to ask if they'd like to exchange links. In return for placing your link on their site, you should do the same and place their link on yours.

For this to be of most benefit, try and find popular sites, that get a reasonable amount of traffic. You may not get many visitors through these links, but the search engines will pick up on the fact that you seem to be part of a "net" of related sites and award you appropriately. This may not give you much of a boost though, but it should make a noticeable difference if you can get, say, 75 related links on your site (and vice-versa, from related sites). Don't go overboard though, more than 75-100 links and the effect of your own "links page" will be diminished (after all, who would want to be placed 100th on a list of websites, where you would barely get noticed)

Write Articles and post them Online

This falls into the same area as writing a blog, but has the aim of producing more useful content, and information which can be used to educate others within your field of knowledge. By creating an informative article and placing it online, not only are you helping to spread your expertise, but you will also recieve visitors who are interested in learning more, and if your article is good enough, links to it will be placed on other sites, giving you useful "backlinks" (see top section) which will help drive up your search rankings.

Post On Other Blogs in your Subject Area

An alternative to swapping links is simply to post on blogs and forums related to your website. In some cases you may be able to place a link back to your site, but some blogs and forums disallow that, perhaps until you've become a more respected member. This practice isn't always about getting links though, by participating in communication amongst your business peers, you can gather interest in your site in a more personal way, and find out more about your own specific niche subject area.

Update Often, Update Regularly

Although Google and the other search engines reward relevant content, they will rank a site lower if they detect it hasn't been updated in a while. We find that the best approach to developing a good relationship with the search engines is to maintain relevant content on your site and update it often. Even if it's just a paragraph or two on a blog every week or so, the search engines will detect that something has changed on your site and promote you slightly, because of the new content.

This is where dedication comes in to play. It may seem like a chore updating content on a regular basis, but look at it as more of a hobby, rather than a chore. Think of it as that book you've always meant to get around to writing!

A word of advice here too - scattered around the internet are repositories of articles, available for use for personal or commercial sites. These articles are free to use, and can be added to websites to increase the content volume. Bear in mind though, that these articles will also be appearing elsewhere on the internet, on other sites and as such you will effectively have duplicate content on your site. A couple of these won't hurt your rankings, and may even help, as long as you continue to provide your own, fresh and relevant content.

A Final Word

Search engine optimisation is a tricky thing to get right, and can take a bit of practice, but don't despair if you don't get it right the first time: It's all about trial and error. Try things one way, if they don't seem to be working, try them another and see what the effect is on your visitor numbers. But one thing is for sure, dedication in this field pays off, and once the visitors start to arrive, you'll reap the benefits.

Published in Tutorialized

To know how many web sites have keyword in title USE

2009-04-23T04:42:00.000-07:00

--------------------------
allintitle:"your keyphrase" for Google
intitle:"your keyphrase" for MSN
intitle:"your keyphrase" for Yahoo
--------------------------

This will show how much sites are using exactly this phrase in page
title. As page title is one of the factors that search engines are
using to give their results - this is also important.

So, using these two factors you will see hidden treasures - I
guarantee you. I cannot disclose keywords that I and some of my
clients found, but in any niche you can find really golden
keywords/keyphrases that get nice traffic and are not grabbed by link
builders.

Knowing the REAL level of competition, you will know how much links to
build.

To know how many web sites are linked with your anchor USE

2009-04-23T04:41:00.000-07:00

--------------------------
allinanchor:"your keyphrase" for Google
inanchor:"your keyphrase" for MSN
--------------------------

If you submit this line into search field, search engines will show
you the sites that are linked with exactly the same phrase is anchor.
What is the difference? Huge!

For example, submit "automatic link exchange" (without quotes) to
Google search - you will see around 6,070,000 results. Do you need to
beat 6,070,000 sites in link building if you pick this phrase? No,
because Google showed you all sites that have "automatic link
exchange", "link exchange", "automatic exchange" and all other
possible combinations of these words on their pages. And for you to
get top position you need to beat only the sites that are linked with
"automatic link exchange" in the anchor.

And when you submit to Google allinanchor:"automatic link exchange" -
you get only 283,000 results - 20 times less competitors. Surely it's
not a very easy keyword, but when you dig in your niche, you will see
that some keywords have very nice traffic, but they are not often used
in anchor text - this is what you are looking for.

PICKING RIGHT KEYWORDS

2009-04-23T04:40:00.000-07:00

Choosing right keywords for link building is a big part of your link
building success. On the surface, everything is simple: you pick
keywords or keyphrases that have less competition and bigger traffic.
You look for this golden balance and then focus your link exchange on
these keywords.

Only after you found the keywords, you will know what phrase to put as
anchor text of your links (don't forget that my tool allows you to
have unlimited number of anchors and squeeze traffic from them with
one link building). You will also need keywords to know how to better
name your link exchange categories, what keywords to submit into
fields for automatic news search, what keywords to use as Category
Text to diversify content on link pages, what keywords to use as meta
data for each category - the list is huge. I tried to pack Auto Link
Exchanger with all possible SEO advantages, that is why if you put
proper keywords my tool will build links on pages that soak with
relevant keywords - and this will be part of success in the eyes of
search engines.

Ok, you need to find keywords.

Don't cheat yourself saying it's easy. If you have found keywords that
get nice traffic - this is only part of the job. Now you know to learn
how much web sites use these keywords for link building. This is where
you need some specific knowledge.

SEO Tools

2009-04-23T03:52:00.000-07:00

Here are the SEO Tools that is more helpful for SEO works. Click the below link this will direct to download the tool.

•SEO Administrator
•SEO Suite
•Web CEO

Shortest Tutorial Ever on SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

2009-04-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

"What is the shortest thing I can read that will get me started on search engine optimization?". Here is response for how to optimize one page of your website very quickly. Repeat for other pages as desired. I have also included links to a bunch of other materials after the article if you want to learn more.

1) Find keywords. Pick a list of words relevant to your business. Think about which words are most likely to get people to do what you want them to do (convert into leads) and focus on those words. Then pick one word (or phrase) to use on one page of your site. For more detailed info, read: Detailed Internet Marketing Keyword Tips
2) Put keywords in Page Title. The Page Title is one of the most important things that Google and other search engines evaluate to determine what is on a web page. Put your keyword or phrase in the title, keep it short. For more detailed info, read Why a Web Page By Any Other Title Would Not Rank As Well.

3) Put keywords in Page URL. Google and other search engines also use the text of the URL of the page to determine the content of the web page. You should use your keyword or phrase in the URL of the web page - either the folder/directory structure or the HTML file / page name itself.

4) Put keywords in Meta Data. While the page metadata (Page Description and Keywords) are not nearly as important as they used to be, they still count. Take advantage of them by putting your keyword or phrase there. The description should be readable by a person and make sense and the keyword metadata should focus on your keyword or phrase - do not make it long, less is more. For more detailed info, read Understanding the Magic of Meta-Data.

5) Put keywords in your H1 text. The H1 text is usually the title of an article or some larger bold text at the top of your page. Google and the smaller search engines can see this and they put extra importance on the words in the H1 text. Make sure your keyword or phrase is there.

6) Use keywords in the page content. Putting the keyword in your page content also signals to search engines that the page is actually about the keyword and should show up in search results. I have heard from "experts" that you should use your keyword anywhere from 4-6 times to 10-12 times. My advice is to just write naturally.

7) Monitor your rank. Give the search engines some time to do their thing (couple days) and then keep checking your rank to see what happened and track your progress.

More advanced, here are some other suggestions and resources.

• Build links to your website. The number and quality of links to your website are quite important to Google and other search engines for your rank on different terms. Read this article to understand the importance of links to your website: Link Building for SEO / Internet Marketing and read this article for more details on why to link to others: No Website is an Island - How and Why to Link to Others

• Read our "How To" guide. We published this article a while back about Improving your Organic Position on Google, it is still relevant and worth reading for more detailed info.

• Know (and increase) your Page Rank. Google uses your Page Rank as a measure of how "important" your website is on the Internet. Having a higher Page Rank means you have a better shot at being one of the top results for search terms. For more details, read this article about The Importance of Google Page Rank.

• Avoid common pitfalls. Sometimes you're just doing something wrong. There are a number of practices on the web that can actually limit your success with search engines dramatically. Here are some of the reasons Why You're Not Getting Enough Respect from Search Engines.

• Grade your website. Use Website Grader (free tool) to evaluate the marketing effectiveness of your website. It gives tips on what you can change on your site to improve your website's marketing effectiveness.

What is SEO?

2009-04-22T02:40:00.000-07:00

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.