SEO Success: Attracting Search Engine Attention

Source: By Chesa Keane

Once a website has been created and published, many new website owners think that the web development project is finished. But in reality, the real work is just beginning. In order to create a money-making site, traffic must be generated and driven to the website. There are several effective methods that can be implemented in Tier II of the SEO strategy to create this web traffic. While all methods may not be required to realize successful traffic generation, some combination of most, if not all, will probably be needed to create traffic, maintain traffic and finally, grow traffic to your website with long-term, lasting results. Consider implementing these strategies:

- Dynamic content is necessary for search engine recognition, and by updating the website frequently, the search engines see your website as an active, not stagnant, website. How often should changes be made? At the very least, monthly. But the more frequent the changes, the better. There are some tried and true methods you may want to employ:

-Monthly newsletter (or weekly)

-Tip of the day that rotates to the page using a script from an existing database of information at your site.

-RSS feed to public news feeds that update hourly or daily at the least.
Changes to contact information, staffing, clients, etc.

-Checking links frequently to make sure that they are active and valid, and changing the link text from time to time will register as a change to the page.

-Simple modification of content from time to time should be done in between these regular maintenance tasks which will update the website.

Good links management will result in a stronger weight given by the search engines for search positioning. The algorithms used for weighting one page over another require link popularity assessment for successful traffic to your website. Link popularity is also one of the main considerations for Google and Alexa Page Rank. How do you achieve link popularity? It can be tedious and requires careful attention to the selection of the links, but there are several means that can be employed:


Reciprocal Links: Search for relevant and desired web pages with which to trade links.

Purchase PageRank-based links: boost your relevance and weight in the eyes of search engines by purchasing links for a period of time, three to six months until you have achieved a better ranking.

List with directories: paid or unpaid directory listings that are relevant to your website will give your website additional exposure.

Anchor text: create the links with link text in mind, utilizing relevant keywords where possible.

PageRank consideration: link only with websites that have decent PageRank (PR); i.e., PR of 3 could be a minimum but a PR of 4 would be a better minimum requirement from those pages who want to exchange links with you.

Blogs: Web logs linked to your site or posting to popular blogs with your links included to point traffic back to your site; a good strategy is to employ pinging with blog posting.

Forums: Forum participation that allows you to leave your link with the intent of attracting traffic back to your site can get traffic back to your website, however, take care that you actually offer something of value in your posting so you are not accused of spamming.

Search Engine Listings: Listing with free search engines and directories is an essential step, although you won't see any results for months.

Gather Opt-in Email Addresses: Utilize an email list subscription function on your website with the intent of sending e-newsletters and announcements on a regular basis. This subscription list can be used for several other campaigns, including the sale of advertising space in your newsletter.

Advertise on Ezines: Purchase sponsorship on other email lists where you can promote your product and/or services as well as links to your website in the process.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns with Google and Yahoo Search Marketing where you purchase advertising space based on keywords that are popular for your website if you are not in a saturated market. If your business operates in a saturated internet market, seek niche keywords for your PPC advertising. Determine your budget first and from there, you will know how much you can afford for the positioning you desire. It's all mathematical:

Price-Per-Click = monthly budget/number of clicks (or) Number of clicks = monthly budget/price per-click.

Some suitable combination of price and number of clicks based on your own budget will result in a campaign you can monitor and adjust as necessary. The important result to watch for is the conversion rate. How many paid clicks convert into the desired result; i.e., new contract, sale of product, sign up for e-newsletter, etc.

Remember, creating a website is only the first step. Driving traffic to your site is the next important task. Layout a plan of action and follow-through. You are not going to realize success until you spend the time and energy - or pay someone else for their time and energy - to get the job done.

(c)2005. TAO Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved.

Online Ad Market Grows 26 Percent

Source: AP News

NEW YORK (AP) - Search-based keyword ads largely propelled the 26 percent growth -- to a record $5.8 billion -- in U.S. Internet advertising revenues for the first half of the year.

That compares to $4.6 billion for the same period last year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

The IAB did not release the full study, which PricewaterhouseCoopers conducted on its behalf. Although the report was not yet finished, the bureau said it wanted to release numbers during a marketing conference that opened Monday.

Internet-based advertising remains a small portion of the total U.S. advertising market, which was $71 billion during the first half of 2005, according to research firm TNS Media Intelligence.

Search ads made up 40 percent of the online ad revenues, the same share as the first half of 2004. But revenue totals for search jumped 27 percent to $2.3 billion, from $1.8 billion. Display ads made up 20 percent and classifieds 18 percent.

Click for Full Article Here

The 3 Best Website Traffic Sources

Source: By Jim Edwards (c) 2005

Not a day goes by that any serious website owner doesn't wonder how to get more traffic to their site. This intense desire to generate more clicks makes virtually any online entrepreneur easy prey to many of the traffic schemes and scams that pervade the Internet like conmen on a carnival midway.

Promises of fast traffic and big bucks often separate even the most savvy business person from their money because they want to believe the promises made by these traffic hucksters.

However, rather than thinking "complicated equals better" in the traffic game, the best website traffic sources are extremely easy to separate from the useless garbage traffic.

Fact: "Good Traffic" equals "Targeted Traffic!"

That means the visitors come as a result of desire to find out more on a specific, niche topic, not as a result of "exit" traffic or membership in a "safe" list where members simply pitch each other in an incestuous sp@m fest.

Good traffic comes from people clicking links on topics targeted to their interests and getting directed to a website containing information they want and expect as a result of clicking the link.

Bottom line, when you get right down to it, the best, most dependable sources of targeted traffic come from links that people click.

So, next time you're considering spending money on a traffic source, understand that unless it involves a targeted link that a targeted visitor can click to get to your website, think twice before opening up your wallet.

To my knowledge, only three ways exist to get a link to your site: buy it, "voodoo" it, or grow it.

** Buy Links**

Buying links actually rates the fastest way to get traffic to your website.

You simply sign up for Google AdWords at Google.com or you open an account with Overture.com.

You then run ads with a link on those sites and any time someone clicks the link, you pay for the click through a relatively straightforward bidding process based on the popularity of the keyword.

You can also buy links in ezines, newsletters, and on other peoples' websites either on a per-click basis, for a period of time (a week or month), or in exchange for paying them a commission if a sale gets made as a result of a click on the link.

** Linking "VoodDoo" **

Linking "voodoo" refers to attempting to manipulate the search engines into displaying links to your website.

You can find a large number of automated software programs online at any given time that will claim to help you get more search engine traffic.

Depending on the intensity of competition in a specific market and the fact that search engines change their rules frequently, pursuing search engine links this way can quickly turn into the online equivalent of Alice chasing the rabbit down the hole.

** Grow Links **

I personally prefer this method to get links to my websites: growing them.

The best type of link to get involves one person telling another person, either explicitly or implicitly, they should click the link and visit the site at the other end.

One way to do this is simply to exchange links with another site which targets the same audience as your site.

You can manage this process manually or use one of the many software packages that will mange the process for you.

A search on Google.com for "reciprocal link manager software" yields a good start.

The easiest way to grow a link is through using articles other people post on their websites which link back to your website.

The reason articles work so well for "growing" links involves the numerous ways in which articles get distributed online, each of which can create dozens, hundreds, even thousands of different links back to your website by publishing a single article.

In fact, the following represent only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the places you can grow links by publishing articles online.

~ Blogs - Your articles can not only appear on your own blog, but get posted by others on their blogs with surprising ease.

The links in these articles can point directly back to your website.

~ Article Directories - Article directories such as IdeaMarketers.com abound online.

They not only provide an easy way to display your articles to allow others to pick them up for posting on their websites, but also in and of themselves attract readers searching for content.

~ OPS (Other People's Sites) - Popular websites like WebProNews.com attract repeat visitors by offering targeted content to their readers.

Since they can't produce all the content themselves, they publish articles created by others. Links from these sites can bring a steady stream of targeted visitors by giving you targeted exposure.

~ Ezines - By getting your articles published in other people's ezines, you can get a link on the most valuable real estate online, a targeted prospect's email "inbox."

Many ezine publishers run articles written by others to their targeted readers, and your link in the resource box can bring you a veritable avalanche of targeted site visitors when hundreds, even thousands of people receive your article at the same time.

Whether you choose to buy them, "voodoo" them, or grow them, getting targeted links to your site posted on the Internet represents the absolute best way to get steady traffic to your site.

Though not as fast as buying them or as exciting as trying to manipulate the search engines, growing links with articles gives you a long-term, dependable presence online.

The Blog and the Nature of Natural Linking

Source: By Bill Platt (c) 2005 the Phantom Writers

Alot of people are talking, and few of them know, the soul of a search engine was created in the blog. ;-)
There has been a lot of talk about Natural Linking. From Oakland (Ask Jeeves), Sunnyvale (Yahoo!) and Mountain View (Google), California, all of the search engine companies are talking more publicly about natural linking.


Why Is Linking Important?

The whole concept of linking in the eyes of the search engine companies is that when Site A links to Site B, then Site A is making a personal recommendation of Site B. Because Site A is willing to put their reputation on the line to share the story of Site B, the search engines have determined that Site B MUST be of higher value than Site C.

Google established their PageRank system a few years back based on this conceptual idea. Over the past few years, the other search engine companies have begun to adopt the linking model in their attempt to catch up with Google's lead in the marketplace.

Because the search engine companies want to provide the best possible results to their users for a particular search, they have all climbed on the concept of link counting to determine the value of the sites that they are recommending to their users.

What Is Natural Linking?

The idea behind "Natural Linking" is that you can have for example five people linking to the same site giving the site a recommendation via the hyperlinked text.

The hyperlinked text is any text that appears between the [a href=] and the [/a] tags. When used in a HTML document, the hyperlinked text in the viewable webpage becomes a live clickable link like this: Blogger.com. When viewing this link from within the HTML coding, it will look like this:
[a href=http://Blogger.Com>http://Blogger.Com[/a].

Each webmaster who decides to link to an invidual website has a different idea and reasoning as to why his or her visitors should look at the site they are recommending. As a result, each webmaster will outline their reasoning within their links to your website.

Each webmaster in this example has shown their users why they should visit Blogger.com. In doing so, each of them has shown their link using their own descriptive text. It is this "descriptive text" that the search engines view as "natural links".

So, "Natural Links" are links that are created by individual webmasters and not by Site B's owner. In the eyes of the search engine programmers, these links will likely have a more accurate representation of the content that appears on a website. And the search engine masters understand that a stranger is always more honest in his representations than the webmaster trying to promote his own website.

What Does Natural Linking Have To Do With Blogs?

Over the last few years, you have read many an article from people pitching the importance of the blog in the search engine optimization game. But, do you know why blogs have become so important to the search engine companies?

Natural Linking

When all is said and done, the text within a link has been given more weight in the search engines than the real content on a webpage.

I heard the guffaws in the audience. I can see the look of utter disbelief on your faces as you sit in front of your computer staring incredulously at my comments. ;-)

But, wait. I can actually prove this to you.

Come back when you are done, but do click this link to view the search results for the Worst President: http://google.com/search?q=worst+president

Did you notice the results in search result Number 1? Did you go to the webpage to see if you could find the word "worst" in the text? I did too. And guess what. I could not see the word "worst" in the text either.

The same search with a slight variation, searching for the Worst President in History puts the same page in search result #4.
http://google.com/search?q=worst+president+in+history

This Is The True Power Of Blogs

The search engine companies put far more value in the natural link text than they put in the terms that show up within a webpage! The bloggers are the ones who have said that George W. Bush is the worst president in history. And, I will bet that they get a great chuckle every time someone like me points out their accomplishments.

The reason why the blogs are the best new resource of the search engines is because blogs use natural linking far more often than regular website pages.

The Challenges Facing Us Now

As we move forward to promote our website in the here and now and tomorrow, we must keep in mind the need for natural linking. The challenge for us is how to communicate our sales messages in such a way that links to our websites are perceived by the search engines as natural links.

As we face this challenge, we should consider giving other people more leeway in how they post a link to our websites. If you are using reciprocal links or paid advertising, you should by all means give the person showing your ad several choices for your advertisement. If you are using reprint articles to promote your online business, you should find a way to offer publishers and webmasters mutliple article resource boxes, or you should just give them more free reign in developing another natural link to your website.

Good luck in your linking endeavors.

Top 10 Tips for Killer Website Design

Source: By Jan Peterson (c) 2005

Does website design make a difference in how long people will visit your website or if they'll stay and shop? You bet. You've seen the websites that scream "bad idea" and you know those folks are losing potential customers to their ineffective website design. Whether you are an internet newbie or an experienced marketer, you should understand that good website design is part of the success equation.
So here are my 10 tips on how to create killer website design that will invite potential customers in instead of scare them away.

1. Easy Navigation- The Road To Success

When people come to your website they are usually searching for something in particular. It might be recipes for a healthy low fat diet that takes less than 30 minutes to prepare or what is the best business to start online. Whatever they want, you need to have the answer. So ask yourself, why do people come to my website? When you know that then you know you should make it easy for them to find it.

I have been on countless websites that make it difficult for me to do business with them. And you know what my first response is? "Next!"

I am onto the next website to see if they can answer my question. People don't want to waste their time hunting for things that should be easy to find.

So, if people come to your website to find widgets, have a button easy to see and locate that says "Widgets". People have been trained to look to the left of the website for the navigation bar.

2. Flashing Gizmos - The Exit Ramp To A Dead End Street

You've seen those sites where the elephants are dancing and the poker chips are running across the screen asking you to click on them; the only thing they have ever done for me is give me a headache and to reach the "let me get out of here as fast as I can" button on my computer.

If you are a running a professional site, please don't use flashing graphics. Guaranteed you are encouraging people to leave your site. People have come to you for information. Not to click on an ad or have their brain scrambled.

Make your website a pleasant environment for the customer to be in. Just like a store. Think about when you go to the mall. You want to go in a store that is clean, well laid out, has good customer service and the products you are looking for. Your website should reflect this. If it is what you expect in your shopping experience, then isn't it reasonable that your customers are looking for this in your website.

What about music? Well, it depends. On most business sites I would suggest not. But let's say you have a realtor by the ocean who rents out homes for summer vacations. They have music that sounds like the ocean is lapping at the foot of your desk. I think music is appropriate in this venue, but I would definitely have it "off" as people log onto your site and give them an option to turn it on. Don't forget many people are surfing in their office environment and don't want the boss to find out. If your music is loud or on as people log onto your site and can't find a quick way to turn it off, they will leave your site faster than a cat that just saw the jaws of a Doberman!

3. Color - Enhancing The Highway Scenery

Color is an individual preference, but studies show that colors have an affect on people's emotions. Look at the top sites like Amazon; their layout is simple and so is their color scheme.

My recommendation would be to go with the flow. If you have a financial investment site, then conservative colors seem to follow. If you sell beach items, then lots of fun colors apply. If you have a bridal showër website, I would say soft pastels. Think about your audience and you will know the color scheme.

4. Page Links - I-95 To Your Destination

This is a no brainer but make sure all of your buttons are hyperlinked to a page and the right destination page. No one including Google likes broken link pages. It can be tedious but do it anyway. As you hover over the button and look down in the left-hand part of your screen, you will see the hyperlinked page. Just verify that yours are correct.

5. About Us - Is Your Map Reliable?

People usually want to know basic things before they do business with you. Who are you, how do I get a hold of you, what is your product or service guarantee, will you resell my email address, what is your privacy policy, when will I get the product, etc. You need to answer these questions to create trust between you and your potential customer.

6. Sitemap - How Do I Find My Way Around This Big City?

Let's say you have a lot of products or pages and resources. A sitemap helps people to find what they are looking for quickly without have to rummage through your whole site like a lost soul. They are not hard to create but are useful for large sites. It also helps the search engines to know what you are about very quickly.


7. Fast Loading Pages - All Lanes Are Go!

There is nothing worse than slow loading pages. You can optimize your graphics for your website. People hate to wait. You can check your page load time and page rank on Alexa.com. Slow pages equal death to an online business.

8. Shopping Cart - Need To Buy Some Souvenirs

If you are selling items or services, you need a reliable and well organized shopping cart. I have seen some websites that have a zillion products listed and to email them for orders. What a nightmare! Yes, the shopping carts will charge you a fee, but it is worth it for them to handle the transaction. There are many good shopping carts available and I would research them based on your business' needs.

9. Templates or Original Design- Chevrolet or Porsche

People often think that to have a website designed is going to cost thousands. So they opt for the templates and throw together sites. There is nothing wrong with this approach except I can tell the difference between what I call a "canned" site and one that was created from scratch. While I don't think a website that uses templates will turn off a customer, I just think it may not be as appealing.

Have fun with your online business. You can go to any number of photography sites and download professional photos from cows to race cars. This will make your site look more customized.

Again, I recommend that you shop for a good web designer. I paid around $400 for a basic site to go up. I know others would have charged me $1000 or more. That's why you need to shop and see examples of their work.

10. Customer Service - The Finish Line!

Okay so how is customer service a website design? Well, customer service should be written all over your site. From tips, to free reports, to guarantees, to fast and reliable shopping. People want to know you know what you are talking about and can deliver the goods they want. Give a little and I guarantee you'll get in back tenfold.