Four Important Ways to Track Your AdSense Success Through Channels

By Alan Lim

In marketing, tracking is critical to your overall success. The same is true if you're looking for AdSense success. You have to know which ads are performing well and which ones are not. And that's where channels come into the picture.

Understanding Channels

Channels are Google's method of letting you track your AdSense success. Obviously, you need to know how well your pages are performing in order to know if you are earning money and to determine if changes need to be made. However, what many beginning users of AdSense don't know is that there are two types of channels and understanding them can improve your ability to improve the performance of your site and of the ads.
Two Types of Channels

One of the channels available is the URL channel. This channel is helpful for looking at the big picture. Let's say you want to know how your site is doing overall in terms of AdSense success. Well, these channels are going to provide you with an answer. You can use them to track the ads for your entire site and even for sub-domains. However, you may also want to know how well each individual AdSense ad is performing. In that case, you want to use the custom channel. With the custom channel, you have to define what you want to track which may seem a bit more complicated. However, you will find this information valuable so you can make the necessary individual adjustments to improve overall performance.

Use the Information

Of course, knowing your level of AdSense success is only half the picture. You also need to put that information to work. For example, determine the top 20% of your performing pages and the bottom 20%. Look at what you've done right on those top pages and try to re-work the ones at the bottom. With some basic tweaking, you'll be able to dramatically increase your overall numbers.

The information might also let you know that the keywords you've selected aren't working well with audiences. This might particularly be true if you are not getting much traffic to the sites and this is interfering with your overall AdSense success. Consider choosing new words and re-optimizing some of the pages then test the results.

Keep Your Eyes Open

The whole purpose of channels is so that you can monitor your AdSense success. That means, however, you don't want to rest on your laurels if you see that you're doing well. Maybe you had a certain goal for your site and you've reached it. Does that mean you should stop paying attention to the performance of your pages? If you do, chances are good that your earnings will plummet. Just because you've reached a certain plateau doesn't mean you'll be staying there forever. As soon as you get too comfortable, a rockslide is likely to take you back down to the bottom.

Instead, you should take a moment to think about what you've done right to reach that point then look at the results from the channels to decide which types of improvements you can continue to make so you can keep climbing higher and higher. Now once you start see increasing movement you don't need to watch the channels as closely but your AdSense success depends on not forgetting they are there.

To discover the secrets to AdSense Success, you don't have to look any further than http://www.goodinternetmoney.com/Make-Money-Online-At-Home-FREE-Report.php. Here, you can learn the tips and tricks and see how I make my first $1000 online.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alan_Lim

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AdSense Pay Per Click - What is It?

By Brenda Ondatje

Google created the system called AdSense Pay Per Click. This system allows you to display advertisements on your websites. Advertisers then display their ads on your site, and when somebody clicks on your ad, you get paid. The amount you get per click varies on the popularity of your site, and on the keywords you use. The average hits you get to your site per month and the popularity of the keywords can determine which ads are displayed, and how much a click is worth.

One of the great things about AdSense Pay Per Click is that the content of your website determines what types of ads will display. If you have a photography website, then you might have ads displayed that are by companies who sell digital cameras.

There are a lot of people who use AdSense as a way to bring in some extra income from their site. If you have a popular website that gets a lot of traffic, you should at least be able to make enough to pay for your hosting. Having multiple websites that are content rich and unique will increase your chances of earning more money with AdSense. The more websites you have the more money you can make.

A system called HyperVRE can help you create better AdSense friendly websites. It has proven to be a great income booster for a lot of people. Creating fresh, unique content is the best way to make any web page. You cannot copy and paste content from other websites and hope for the best. This is not only illegal, but it will get your site banned from search engines. Content rich websites and placing ads on them once they get enough daily traffic will soon help you bring in a good income.

Brenda Ondatje is an expert on online wealth creation, a marketing whiz, and a contributor of popular blog WebBriefCase.Com.Au. She provides meaty tips on topics like adsense pay and more. Check out the website for more info!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brenda_Ondatje

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Google AdSense Top Paying Keyword - How Do I Find the Highest Paying Keywords?

By Tim Whorley

You realize that Google AdSense has the ability to make you some decent extra income. And, actually you might begin to think like some others who have done it, that you can make a living off of AdSense revenue.

Some do make a full time income from AdSense. However, I would point out that they are in the minority. Regardless, you can make extra money by adding AdSense to your websites and blogs.

Many folks start their businesses with their passion or interests in mind and then just add AdSense to it which helps subsidize what they're making online otherwise. This is what the majority of people do.
Now, there are others who wish to aim higher and earn a living from AdSense. This is possible but you have to think smart and look for hot niches and markets. You also have to work harder or smarter to get the necessary traffic to your sites and blogs.

Google AdSense Top Paying Keyword

For those that are looking to maximize their income from AdSense without guessing as to what might profitable there is often a question around how to find the highest paying AdSense keywords.

How do you find them? Well interestingly enough their are other websites devoted to providing lists of top paying Google AdSense keywords. So you can check those out and see if they can help. Some may have outdated lists and other sites will have a product to sell you. This might be the best way to go and that will be up to you to choose.

If you don't have much cash to begin with or you just like to go on your own, then you create sites and blogs that have high paying keywords anyway. You just need to use head and look around and see what is popular and what sells. You'll be able to think of things almost instantly. A couple of examples are credit cards and cellphones. You know both are always in demand and with that said, advertisers will pay a lot to get a their ads out there.

I hope this has been helpful and good luck in your search.

For more in-depth analysis including more tips and tricks visit my site. You can grab a free copy of a 79 page AdSense guide from one of the masters in this field - http://www.timwhorley.com/adsense.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tim_Whorley

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PPC Publishing and Knowing What Customers Are Looking For

By Mark A. Abrahams

PPC publishing is on your mind and what you know at this very moment is that there is a lot of competition. How can you stand out and get more return for your investment? One way to do so is to simply use the right campaign by targeting the areas where your customers are lurking. Luckily, unlike the off line world, it is easy to learn what your customers are looking for.
To do so, you just need to look at which keywords they are plugging in when they are searching for topics like your own. The importance of PPC publishing here is that you know what phrases and keywords the most likely customers you have will be using when they use their search engine. If you do not invest in knowing what these keywords and phrases are, it will be nearly impossible to get the right type of traffic to your websites. The right traffic is traffic that is most likely to buy from you.

One way to do this is to look towards those websites that are your competition and that are highly profitable. You want to be sure that the website is profitable first. Then, look at what keywords they are using to get the results they are getting. You may also want to consider purchasing keywords that are targets.

Whatever you do to get the right keywords, the point is to get them and to incorporate them as a foundational element in your PPC publishing. Otherwise, your investment time (and money) offers limited returns.

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Mark Abrahams is a full time internet marketer who has helped others to earn a living online.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mark_A._Abrahams

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AdSense Marketing - Can it Increase Your Income?

By Amanda Isbitt

AdSense is a list profit system that could not be easier to use, but which will bring you instant profit. The best part is, of course, that it can be installed anywhere.

It will turn an undersized affiliate-based online company into a profit-turning enterprise and retire those small percentages of the sale that most people make and instead will build a colossal list so that your income snowballs.
What most people do with affiliate-based online businesses is to send their hard-earned customers to their competition. And for what? For the minimal profits that come back to them!

AdSense, on the other hand, puts an end to the small percentage of the sale theory that makes you lose your customer base forever. You are asking yourself now, how does AdSense manage to do that?

The answer is relatively uncomplicated. If for example you are currently getting 100 hits a month - instead of handing your customers over to another company you alternatively ask your visitors to join your list, and thus they become your customers. You no longer need to just get a percentage of that first sale. Instead you can continue to construct and grow that list along with your profits every solitary month.

In this manner you are no longer trading hard-earned customers for those tiny profits. You will be well on your way to building a business that will continue to grow robustly every day!

How does this work, you want to know? You will be able to accomplish this with free, superb-quality professional marketing material that everyone is clamoring for.

Once you have this turnkey solution you will finally be on your way to the top with an online business that will keep working for you while you only work a few hours a week! And that's not even the best part. The best part is that visitors to your site will not be turning to the competitor any more; they become your life-long customers.

Via AdSense you'll receive the rights to a website that contains a comprehensive 5 day audio course. This is what you'll be offering your customers for FREE.

The AdSense revenue though its tremendous payout and exceptional click-through ratio will bring you your start-up revenue. Remember that list you've been compiling? It's filled now with happy and ultimately highly satisfied customers who received a very high-quality course from you. You have now gained their trust and respect, not to mention credibility.

With this programme your customers will receive the simplest and most productive software available for them to upload to their site, complete with and excellent installation guide video. They will have to perform NO programming or coding to do; it will all be done for them, including fantastic professional graphics.

The amazing combination of AdSense is it can't miss because of the high quality products that the customer receives. When there's high quality involved, customers are happy and refer others to the company. I just wonder where the idea has been since it works so well?

For all of the latest products, news, and case studies please visit Adsense Marketing Info.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Amanda_Isbitt

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How You Can Start Making Easy Money With Google AdSense

By Ewen D Chia

Google AdSense is one of the most profitable and popular programs website publishers use today. Today it is difficult to find many websites that don't use Google AdSense. If used properly Google AdSense can be extremely profitable for even small-scale websites. However improper use of the AdSense program will be a major waste of time. In some cases it could lead to disqualification from the program, which would leave a lot of money on the table for publishers.

Beginning with Google AdSense is easy and unlike most online money making programs, will generate income immediately, without an initial investment. Registering with Google AdSense is simple and quick.

The first thing you'll need of course is a website or Blog. This can be about anything you would like, but it will need to have original content. How-to articles and product reviews are two examples of historically successful sites. The main idea to keep in mind is to publish something that people want to read and that has relatively little competition in the search engines.

Now its time to place your Google AdSense ads on your site. The ads are very small and extremely simple to use. The positioning of your ads must be kept in mind. Studies have shown that when someone visits a website their attention usually goes to the top left of the screen. This is probably because when using a search engine we typically look at the top ranking sites first, which are always on the top, reading left to right. This top-left area is probably the best place to put your AdSense ads in your site.

Publishes make money when visitors of the website or Blog click on the sponsored ads. The payment amount for these clicks varies greatly depending on the keywords and general niche of the topic.

Making money with Google AdSense is very simple to do, but like any trade, is hard to master. The top AdSense earners are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, utilizing hundreds or thousands of different sites or Blogs. The road to these riches is long and often difficult. But with a little hard work you too can be making a great living with Google AdSense.

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ewen_D_Chia

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Learning More About AdSense and PPC

By Chris Reyes

AdSense is a program from Google to help webmasters earn money online. It is widely used and fairly popular. Other search engines such as yahoo have tried to duplicate Google's success, but Google remains number one with PPC (Pay Per Click). There are hundreds of success stories of people who use AdSense. The first step to earning with AdSense is understanding it.

There are 4 types of AdSense ads:

- Pubs via conventional AdSense ads (CPC = cost per click on ads): These are banners advertising "texts" on the right of this website (nb: AdSense displays images, but it's rare) . It is the largest source of income via AdSense, as well ads are often targeted and not too intrusive with a powerful customization (color, size ...). Note that more ads are placed (on top of the site, in the field of view ...), the more you earn!

- Click on the links via the search engine Google (CPC) is a window with a customizable internal engine to the site and that also allows research on the Internet. You are paid if the user clicks on an ad in this dedicated search engine. It is a great way to make money and to render service to your users. Currently on ConseilsMarketing.fr revenues search engine of more than 10% of AdSense income in total (since the establishment of this small piece of code, we found a 15% increase in advertising revenues, because they are additional income of non-competing AdSense ads).

- Click on the button to download the free Google Pack (sponsorship). Sales through this system are very low (even zero!), Because very few people are interested in the Google Pack (are they already have, are they do not know what is!).

- AdSense ads with payment to CPA (sponsorship) is the novelty of July 2007. Google adopts a system similar to the classical membership, you pay at the result! In fact you do not touch money to click, but only if the user is buying / registering for a newsletter ... The advantage is the compensation is more important, and you can choose from a list of advertisements Display ... A disadvantage is that even if you click, if the sale is done you do not win! More for the moment there are very few advertisers, and therefore not really relevant ads unlike AdSense classic where there is crowd of advertisers ... (nb: this system is being tested on ConseilsMarketing.fr from 2 weeks, and for now there was no income to report, despite an announcement very relevant!).

Check out http://AdsenseTechniques.com for more info on AdSense and AdSense Techniques.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chris_Reyes

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Does Google AdSense Really Work?

By Chris Sandberg

One of a beginner's question is "can someone really make money with Google?" The answer is a resounding yes. However, it depends on what blog you are putting up, and how much effort you are putting in. Take a look on the two real cases below, to understand what I mean.

Case #1
There's a blog about investing that has just about five visitors a day, with almost the same number of page views. It rarely earns from Google AdSense but if it gets a click, it's worth about $2.


Case #2
Another is a foreign lyrics site with about 2000 visitors, and 6000 page views a day. Search engine optimization is not a problem since most of its visitors naturally come from Google. If you see the numbers above, you'll surely think that "hey, that should earn a lot in AdSense!" However, it just earns about $5 a day, merely $0.05 per click.Well, $5 still sounds good. It can cover up the monthly web hosting payment at least. But come to think of it, if the investing blog in case #1 has just the same number of visitors and page views a day, with an average of 100 clicks per day in AdSense, how much do you think it will earn?

Google AdSense is a program from Google that allow its members to display relevant ads in their websites or blogs. Relevant means that these ads are related to the content of the website the ads are in. Since it is just one piece of code pasted in the site's html document, different types of ads appear in every page of the site unless the site just cover a single topic. So, if you are writing about investing like the site in Case #1, ads that will appear in the site could be: Earn Money at Home, Forex Chart, or Mutual Fund Investing. With these relevant ads, your visitors will likely to click on them. More visitors clicking on the ads, more payment from Google.

So in setting up a site or blog, and you want to earn money from AdSense, it is smart to look over the keywords in your topic, the competition in your niche, and if the number of visitors you are expecting is achievable. The reason you have to take note of these is because these are the factors that will determine how much you will earn from AdSense. So, it is really a combination of smart writing and internet marketing.

Chris is the editor of http://gfanatic.com, a Google fan blog that features updates on different Google products, and tips like how to make money with Google

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chris_Sandberg

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7 Powerful Ways To Make Money From Adsense Using Only Free Tools

By Christopher Kyalo

here is really no doubting that there are amazing incomes currently being made on Google Adsense and the really interesting thing is that even relatively small sites and blogs are finding new ways to make money from their Adsense sites every day.

Actually there are a lot of increasingly creative ways to make money and maximize on Adsense earnings that are being discovered and also being put to use every day. And what’s even more fascinating is the fact that most of these tools being used don’t cost anything. They are actually free. Here are 7 of the most effective currently being used.


a) Ways to make money from Adsense by Distributing articles through ezine and article announcement lists

Some of the most effective methods ways to make money from Adsense clicks involve the simple step of just increasing the volume of targeted traffic to a site. One of the ways of doing this is by distributing interesting content to ezine lists and article announcement lists. It is not too difficult to quickly build a list that reaches a million or so email boxes and can thus give a lot of visibility and drive tons of highly targetd traffic to your Adsense site or sites. Probably the most popular place for doing this is at Yahoo groups, but there are a few others that you can find easily by using your favorite search engine.

Success here depends on three main factors. Firstly you should be careful to join article announcement lists and ezine lists that are as relevant as possible to your subject matter and offering. Secondly your headline has to be a killer headline that will grab readers by the scruffs of their necks and force them to open your email message amongst the dozens or even hundreds of others they receive daily. It goes without saying that the content must meet the promise of your sensational headline. Anything less will cause annoyance and leave all those potential visitors to your Adsense site feeling cheated. And believe me, you don’t want to cause this sort of reaction because it is definitely not one of the ways o make money from Adsense or any other program for that matter. Thirdly, you will need the sort of resource box in all your articles that will leave most of your readers with no option but to visit your Adsense site.

Within a very short of consistently applying this technique, my daily Adsense earnings increased seven-fold.

b) Ways to make money from Adsense by Distributing free articles to high traffic article sites
Some people find the recent trends that have seen an increase in article sites surprising. I don’t. The net is primarily an information-seeking tool. Anything that will help improve the search and quality of information will greatly benefit the people making that effort.

Some of the older article directories receive very high traffic, mainly from web masters and site owners seeking quality free content for their sites. So apart from the immediate exposure these sites also guarantee plenty of future targeted traffic to your site, when folks find your articles useful enough to re-post at their sites.

The more new articles you release to these sites every week, the more targeted traffic your Adsense sites will receive. This is in fact one of the most effective ways of making money consistently from Adsense clicks. One of the reasons for this is that targeted traffic will tend to spend more time at your site or sites, and the more time they spend, the higher the chances that they will click one one of the Adsense ads posted there.

c) Ways to make money from Adsense by Using Articles And A Viral Marketing Website

Any online marketing technique that involves the use of referral marketing or viral marketing automatically has a huge chance of being a success. The net is ideal for viral marketing and in fact gives any viral marketer huge leverage. Viral marketing or referral marketing is one of the most effective ways to make money online. Just ask Bill Gates.

When Gates was trying to play catch up on the Internet after an earlier mistake of underestimating the future importance of the net, he launched his Hotmail free email service when rivals like Yahoo already had millions of users. He decided to use a simple referral marketing technique. Every Hotmail message that went out had a brief signature at the end requesting the recipient to sign up for their free Hotmail account. Within a few short months, Hotmail had millions of users. And there are many other amazing stories which viral marketing boasts of on the net.

There is one of the very simple ways to make money from Adsense by going viral. Sign up at a leading viral marketing site. You will automatically get your own viral site. You can then use some of your articles to point people to your viral site. The way these sites work is that anybody who signs up at your site will have to visit your Adsense site if you register it at the site. So within a very short time you will be driving thousands of visitors to your Adsense site.

Find more details on this at my blog whose address you'll find in the resource box below.

Admittedly this traffic is less targeted. Still the huge potential and possible numbers you are able to receive using this free tool more than makes up for this.

d) Ways to make money from Adsense With Your Email signature

People greatly underestimate the power and potential effectiveness of a simple email signature as one of the ways to make money online. Actually this is a viral marketing method because emails get forwarded all the time and are even copied to several other people sometimes.

Do not waste another minute. Go to all your email accounts right now and create a signature that points to your Adsense site or sites.

Writing effective email signatures is a skill that you will have to develop, but I have found that using famous quotes is more effective than a straight advertising message. Always remember that people hate to be advertised to online.

e) Ways to make money from Adsense By Asking Questions At Discussion groups

I recently had an interesting conversation with a young Internet and computer techie. He asked me whether there were quick ways to make money online by answering technical questions and helping people to solve their computer and web-related problems. My answer was that there were many discussion groups where participants would get these answers for free. I advised him that he had a better chance of making money by making use of this free advice available online rather than by trying to sell his own advice.

There are tons of online discussion groups where leading world experts will answer your questions and give you valuable insight for free. It is amazing why most people do not think of using these online forums to learn as much as they can about the most effective ways of making money from Adsense.

These forums can easily be found through you favorite search engine.

f) Ways to make money from Adsense By Bartering your online skills for valuable Adsense keywords

In the old days, before the invention of money, if somebody needed something, the first question they asked themselves was; “What is it that I already have that I can exchange for what I need? Barter trade seems to have been forgotten but it is a very powerful method of trading. More so online where people have plenty of skills but are slow to trust others enough to send them money for an item they need.

You can barter whatever it is you have, your skills, products or services, and exchange them for genuine valuable Adsense keywords. Valuable Adsense keywords are the most effective way for a small site with low traffic to earn big cash from Adsense. And you can do this barter trade on an ongoing basis so that you always have a constant supply of valuable Adsense keywords which you can use at your site or blog as one of the ways to make more money from Adsense.

g) Ways to make money from Adsense By Sending Teaser Emails

To Everybody In Your Inbox And Also To Your Opt-in Email List
Most of us receive tons of email in our inbox every day. You’ll be surprised at the huge number of people you know by simply going through your email inbox. No matter how good your spam filters are, you are also bound to be receiving more than your fare share of SPAM or unsolicited email. All this is “gold” lying in your email inbox and there are ways to make money using these emails. All you need to do to process the emails into pure gold is to send out “teaser emails about the most interesting aspects of content at your site. The whole objective of teaser emails is to get people to visit your site. For instance if I were to send out teaser email on this content here is how I would construct it;

Subject: Free Tools Currently Being Used To Increase Adsense Earnings

Hello,

Just thought you might be interested in this subject, since so many folks online use Adsense these days. If not please accept my sincere apologies. Details are at my site.

www. your site's address .com

Regards,
Chris.

I am sure you can write an even more effective teaser email. It would be a better idea to have a different message for your close friends, a different one for your business contacts and yet another one for those nasty guys SPAMMING you.

These are just some of the many creative ways to make money from Adsense.

Christopher Kyalo is a successful online writer and entrepreneur. Visit his blog to read the rest of this article; http://webcontentprovider.blogspot.com/2005/10/7-powerful-ways-to-make-money-from.html He can be reached at strongwallafrica at yahoo.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_Kyalo

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Google hijackers from crackers; check your HTACCESS

When’s the last time you looked inside your website’s HTACCESS file? It really should become a part of your monthly (ack, weekly? daily?) audit routines. There could be gremlins at play you see…

Ok, here’s the gig, one day a mate comes along as asks me, “You mind Googling Twitter?” and I told him to mind his manners as I didn’t go for that kind of thing. Anyway, obliging him, the mighty Google was consulted and from what I could see, the oracle of the ‘Plex was behaving as normal.

Upon pressing for details as to what exactly he is seeing he sends me this;
As you can see the top results are for an Anti-virus website… NOT for Twitter

Being the curious type, I inquired with a few other folks to see what they were seeing. Sure enough, we were all seeing the proper set of results. Fair enough, it sounds like the hull has been compromised and he’s taking on water.

As we backtracked it seems there was a search result that had a peculiar behavior earlier that day. Upon clicking the top result in Google his AV software had done the jig, (although it may have been the Trojan mimicking to gain access). I went over to the website in question – and nothing.

I then searched the website in Google and clicked on the listing – voila! Sure enough you we’re redirected and a pop-up prompted to do a ‘security scan’ cough cough. This behavior ONLY happened when accessing the site via Google.


The HTACCESS Gremlins

What could this be one wondered. Certainly the mighty Goog’ has not fallen pray to wrong doers have they? After all they say they’ve done it before;


Naw, that couldn’t be it.

Initial suspicions leaned towards the site being hacked, but the site administrator was as confused as a link baiter on truth serum, no hacks could be found. To be on the safe side, a few of those in the know, information retrievers, were consulted and one specializing in rarefied AIR (adversarial information retrieval) had the answer. Check the HTACCESS file; which was an enlightening journey.

You see kind reader, they had gone in and were redirecting ONLY the traffic from Google which then prompted and had caused the computer to be infected. Then, on subsequent searches they were intercepting it and sending back their own (modified) Google results. The sneaky little buggars.


Make it a part of your site audits

You can just imagine the reputation problems that could come from this not to mention its potential for sabotage. While this may not seem like the domain of the SEO, having low search engagement and possibly infecting visitors is sure to have negative effects ultimately. No matter how you look at it, from hacking to put nasty (outbound links) on competitor sites to redirecting incoming SERP requests, this is something SEOs need be aware of.

In the modern world of SEO, close ties with the security and system administrators is key. Everyone needs to be aware of the potential for such attacks and be vigilant. A lot of time and money (into search campaigns) could easily be washed away and replaced with a reputation management problem.

What to watch for - This type of attack is often found when you are using a CMS or WordPress type installation that requires the htaccess to be writable (such as SEF URL creation). To guard against it, be sure to chmod your hataccess so the at it’s not writable until you need to publish something new - then make it writable, create pages and then set it back again.



…. Something to consider…

source : http://seo.site-reference.com

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The Best in SEO

I had always wanted to be ble to search just the best SEO blogs and websites from the web so I could cut through all the garbage that is out there. What’s a guy to do though? Well, thanks to Google I can create my own Custom Search Engine and pick and choose which sites I want in my search engine as well as assigning refinements and even weighting of the sites. How friggen cool is that huh?

It is loaded with the top SEO blogs/websites and is great for research and learning. If you are looking for SEO information and want to get right to the best stuff from the pros… check it outIf this works out I am going to put up some others I have that search Social Media Marketing, Buzz Monitoring set up and more… let me know what you think

At the moment, it searches the following sites;

the LinkSpiel, Sebastians Pamphlets, Hamlet Batista, TopRank, Search Engine Journal, Sphinn, HuoMah (duh), SEO Book Blog, SEO by the Sea, SEO-Theory, the MadHat, Search Engine Land, VanGogh, Search Engine People, Cornwall SEO, Search Engine Watch, Marketing Pilgrim, Bruce Clay Blog, SEOmoz Blog, SEO Scoop, 10e20, Jennifer Slegg, John Andrews, Wolf Howl, Small Business SEM, Hobo SEO, Joost DeValk, SEO Scientist

the SEO Search Engine

source :http://seo.site-reference.com

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“SEO” Trademarked?

Could SEO companies soon lose the right to call themselves SEO companies? If a man named Jason Gambert has his way, the answer is yes.

Mr. Gambert claims in his application (which was rejected several times before finally being accepted for publication) that SEO is defined as a “process”, and not a service. Thus, he is claiming that he has the right to trademark it as a service. SEO as a “process” would remain free for general use, not that it would matter.

The only problem he faces is that SEO has indeed been a service for over ten years, and thousands of companies can demonstrate prior use of the mark as a service (including my own). The chances of him actually getting the trademark are close to nil.On his blog, Mr. Gambert claims that he is trademarking the term for the good of the industry, and that he will enforce certain standards that companies will have to meet in order to use the term “SEO”. To which the industry replied “Who the hell is Jason Gambert, and what are his qualifications?” The answer to this question has yet to be answered, but many doubt his claimed altruism and believe that ultimately, it’s about the money that can be made by licensing the term.

Even if his stated plans are true, good intentions have no bearing on whether or not a trademark is granted. It’s my understanding that many opposing documents have already been filed, and it will then be up to Mr. Gambert to answer to people that have a much more legitimate claim to the term than he does.

For a detailed history of this saga, please visit http://www.seomoz.org/blog/pulling-a-fast-one-a-clever-internet-marketer-is-trying-to-trademark-seo

source :http://seo.site-reference.com

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How to learn SEO in 2008

The beginners guide to the art of search optimization

It goes without saying that those that write/read books sing their praises and those that blog know that their way is best and forum hounds know that is the way. Each format has it’s evangelists.

You should consider exploring each of these avenues and more to truly get the most out of your path to understanding search engine optimization. Some methods are more appropriate for enthusiasts and others for those looking to become SEO professionals some day…. Obviously experience is the best teacher, but what other ways are there these days?We all learn in our own way….

While there is no end to the SEO advice that permeates the web marketing world, it can often be very difficult to sort out exactly how one should research and where one should turn to learn about SEO. In a follow up to a post I made a year ago, I thought an updated look might be a good idea.

Now let us count the ways
SEO Books

One of the great things about books, real or eBook, is that you can not only take them with you and read on-the-go, but they are often easier to reference later should you be looking for a nugget to deal with a given situation.

The downside of SEO books, as with many technology books, is freshness.

The world of search engines is constantly changing and thus any related information must also be updated. Be sure to cross reference information found in books relating to search to ensure freshness and reliability of the information.

* Professional Link builder’s guide - SEOmoz ($29)
* SEO Fast Start – from Dan Theis (FREE)
* Small Business guide to Search Engine Marketing – by Jennifer Laycock ($79)
* the SEO Handbook – by yours truly ($10)

Considering the recent decline in SEO book publication one has to imagine the popularity of this form is on the decline. I myself prefer a good read in hard copy or portable digital form… but potentially in the minority on that one.
Online Guides

Once more, like books… the main consideration is how up to date the information is. Here are some guides that are great for those looking for great information online;

* Beginners guide to SEO - SEOmoz
* Local small business SEO basics – by Sugarrae
* Bloggers guide to SEO - by Aaron & Giovanna Wall
* 11 Experts on Link building – From Sugarrae
* SEO Theory guides - SEO Theory
* SEO guide to information architecture - Audette Media
* 5 Easy SEO tips for your website (video) - Search Marketing Gurus
* FireHorse guide to Google personalized search - Firehorse Trail

There are many more out there but these are some that are truly worthy for anyone getting around the waves of the search marketing ocean. If you know of others, feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll add them to the list.
Online Training

Unfortunately I haven’t had the pleasure of reviewing any of these services, but there are some fairly respected resources out there for those looking for a more structured system of learning. For me, this type of learning does well as there are generally instructors on hand to help guide the student.

* SEO Book Training – from Aaron Wall
* Link Ninjas - Jim Boykin (and others)
* Link Bait Coaching - Lyndon Antcliff
* SEOmoz Pro membership - SEOmoz
* Learn SEO Live - Garrett Pierson
* Search Engine College - SEC
* SEOmoz Video training series
* the Joomla SEO Book Club

Classes, Seminars and Conferences

Again, while I am a big believer in these types of mre hands-on interactive approaches to learning SEO – I have not had the chance to really participate in many of these. If you want to get out and play with some industry thought leaders, there is no better way than one of these offerings;

* SMX (conference)
* SES (conference)
* PubCon (conference)
* SEO ToolSet – from Bruce Clay
* Elite Retreat
* SEMPO Training
* SEO Class (We Build Pages)
* SEM Canada (conference)

Blogs

In some cases, blogs are not the greatest place for learning; at least for the noobs. Many times there are advanced theories, rants and personal perspectives more than structured reading for a person looking to learn SEO. That being said, they are a great wealth of information for beginner, intermediate and advanced SEOs alike. Some of the best include;
SEO by the Sea

SEO Theory Blog

Bruce Clay Blog

Top Rank Blog

Search Engine PeopleSEO Scoop

Snydey Sense

SEO Smarty

the FireHorse Trail (guess who?)
Pole Position

Local SEO Guide

10e20 Blog

SEM Scholar

the Link SpielAimClear Blog

SEO Book Blog
Blog Storm

Wiep Knoll Link building blog

SEOptimize

Brian Chappell

Fuel Interactive

Hamlet BatistaJordan Kasteler

SEM Portland

SEOpscenter Jennifer Slegg

Search Rank

SEM Insights

SEO Design Solutions

SEOmoz Blog

Audette Media
Cornwall SEO

..and there are plenty more in Lee’s Big List…
Media Outlets

Much like the blogs, these sites are more for those looking for the latest industry happenings and musings. While they may not always offering teachings for the noob, in any industry, staying abreast of the times is an essential element in the process. Here are the more popular websites;

* Search Engine Land
* Search Engine Journal
* Search Engine Watch
* Search Engine Guide
* Marketing Pilgrim
* Search Marketing Gurus

I like these collective publications and advise having them in your reader. They may not be all about the teaching, but can give a strong ongoing grounding in the industry.
SEO Forums

While many times forums can be filled with contradictions and more noise than signal, there is often a dialogue around real-world situations in forums. As with anything, take nothing as gospel and be sure to cross reference information with other sources. Here are some of the more popular forums out there;

* Site Reference
* Digital Point
* SEO Chat
* SEO Roundtable
* Web WorkShop
* WebmasterWorld Forum
* Internet Business.co.uk
* Google WebMaster Help
* WebPro World
* SEO Guy
* SEO Refugee
* Cre8aSite Forum
* HighRankings Forum
* IHelpYou Forum
* Search Engine Watch Forums

With a grain of salt

One thing is for certain; on hands experience is ultimately the best way to learn SEO. By taking a cross section of different methods and principles one has the power to go forth and create/test the theories.

This will be the most essential tool in the learning experience. To me there is no best way to go about it… what is important is to remain objective and open to new concepts.

If you want to know what some of the SEO pros felt… read the sister post; Learn SEO – the experts share insights.

(and join the discussion in the forums)

source :http://seo.site-reference.com

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When’s the next Google PR update?

No seriously… stop laughing… get the hell back up from the floor…. This isn’t funny.

Ok, so we all know that it’s oft updated, mere representation of the floating point internal and lives a love-hate relationship with link sellers (and builders) the world over. We know the direct correlation of ToolBar PR (TBPR) and rankings is minimal at best. So yer a genius.. pleasure to meet you.
You see I get alerts on a ton of things each day in the ‘ol inbox;

1. Google Alerts for Buzz tracking
2. G-Alerts for Google Dorks
3. Forum thread replies
4. Social Median news
5. New goodies on social media sites
6. Google Webmaster Help

And it was that last one that had me going this morning. One gets used to seeing it on many SEO boards out there….usually noobs – or link merchants. But this fine morning I noticed it (asking about PR updates) twice on the Google boards…ha ha ha ha a ha… and why is that so funny? Because Google surely understands there are few reasons to get excited about TBPR beyond links. It’s like yelling “Hey I am a link fixated search manipulator – Look at me!!”

Yes, I understand some peeps still just get an emotional response to new (higher) TBPR… but not nearly as many these days as there are those wanting to somehow capitalize on the little green bar (LGB). I dearly hope none of these peeps are putting URLs in their profiles if ya know what I mean…

In one of the FAQ’s on the Webmaster Help boards has this;

“I have a lot of new links pointing to my site, but my site’s Toolbar PageRank has not changed in months.

Don’t worry :). We actually recalculate PageRank quite frequently, but only push Toolbar PageRank updates occasionally. This is our respectful hint for you to worry less about PageRank, which is but one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed and ranked. ”

And while that is a great answer, anyone asking about links and TBPR on a Google Board should be drawn and quartered. I don’t care if it is an innocent question… it’s akin to asking the cops where the best fields are to grow your pot. Sure, they would know… but uh…
It’s everywhere sadly

You merely have to step inside the front door at forums such as Digital Point(less) to find a slew of “When’s the next update” or other related and equally useless TBPR discussions… which usually incorrectly talk about PR… when most don’t grasp the difference.

So to all you nutters that simply can’t stop talking about TBPR… do yourself a favour and don’t go asking Google… That’s a lifetime subscription to DUH magazine

source :http://seo.site-reference.com

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Leave a Comment & We’ll Donate $1 To Fight Poverty

Wednesday October 15th is “Blog Action Day: Poverty” and so far 11,211 blogs/websites have participated in this massive awareness campaign, including your friends here at Site-Reference. We hope you can join us! Simply post a comment below and Site-Reference will donate $1 (per comment) to Kiva.org.
What is Kiva and why are we supporting it?

Well, a lot of us here are self-starters and while we’ve worked hard, we were given opportunities the majority of the world’s population simply don’t have.
You know, little things like quality education, the proper infrastructure (access to the computers, internet, etc), and most importantly financing. No matter what, it takes $$$ to make $$$. Whether its a few bucks to keep you fed while you get going, or a few million to create the next great piece of software, all entrepreneurs need some money to start with.
With Kiva, fortunate entrepreneurs such as us are able to make small loans to those in the developing world that can then turn them into profitable businesses and sustain themselves, their families and in some cases their communities over the long run. And the best part- once these loans are repaid they go to help the next guy/girl.

For more on Kiva checkout their page here: http://www.kiva.org So if you’re reading this- leave a comment- it’s the least you can do and we’ll donate $1 to Kiva.

Or if you have more than the 2 seconds it takes to leave a comment, get involved yourself at Kiva.org or go help out that charity you’ve always told yourself you’d get involved with.

On Monday Ocotber 20th, we’ll tally up all the comments and we will make our donation at that time.

Many thanks for your continued support, Nic, Dave and the Site-Reference crew



source : http://seo.site-reference.com

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Vodafone to Sell Second HTC Google Phone

by : Dan Nystedt, IDG News Service

High Tech Computer (HTC) unveiled its second Google Android-based smartphone, the HTC Magic, with mobile service provider Vodafone on Tuesday.

The new smartphone will soon battle its predecessor, the T-Mobile G1 (also called the HTC Dream) in Europe. Vodafone plans to launch the HTC Magic in the U.K., Spain, Germany, France and Italy and several other Vodafone markets over the next few months, the company said in a statement. T-Mobile has said it would roll out the G1 in continental Europe in the first quarter of this year.
Vodafone did not provide pricing information, nor nail down a specific launch date.

HTC isn't the first company to show off an Android phone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona so far this week. Chinese handset maker Huawei revealed its first Android-based smartphone on Monday. The device, which resembles an iPhone, will be available in the third quarter of this year.

The HTC Magic will launch much sooner than Huawei's device. HTC has a jump on most other smartphone developers when it comes to Android because the company worked closely with Google to make the first smartphone based on the new OS and software, the G1.

The new Android smartphone shares several similarities with the G1, judging by the specifications.

The two handsets sport 3.2-inch touchscreens with 320x480 resolution. They both have 3.2-megapixel digital cameras and both handle many of the same wireless technologies, including Wi-Fi, GPS (Global Positioning System) and 3G (third-generation) signals via WCDMA (Wideband CDMA) as well as high speed data via HSPA (High Speed Packet Access). The also both use track balls and enter buttons as means of navigation.

The HTC Magic differs mainly in its sleeker design and lack of a QWERTY keypad.

The device is smaller and lighter than the G1 despite the same size screen, at 113 millimeters by 55mm, compared to the G1's 117.7mm by 55.7mm. The HTC Magic is thinner at 13.65mm versus 17.1mm thick for the G1, likely due to the lack of the keypad. The Magic is also lighter at 118.5 grams (4.18 ounces) with the battery, compared to 158 grams (5.6 ounces) for the G1.

The HTC Magic will be available in white in the U.K., Spain and France, black in Germany and both colors in Italy, Vodafone said.

source : pcworld.com

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2 New sites for your SEO bookmarks

YouTube for web marketers

First up is a new multimedia site for internet marketers called – IM Broadcast

This site was created by Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal and a few of my pals, Dave Snyder and Jordan Kasteler from the firm Search and Social. For the launch last Friday they live streamed their conference – Scary SEO.
Follow me ;

User; theGypsy (of course)
MyVid Favs; Gypsy’s videos
My Group; SEO Geeks

I was lucky enough to be an early beta-tester and have signed on to be a moderator for the next while. If you want to give reading a rest and watch SEO goodiness, be sure to join up.


The SEO Search Engine

Another new treasure I wanted to pass along is a vertical search engine for the SEO community named; Search SEO Pros.

This website is simply a collection of Google Custom Search Engines that were put together by yours truly. We thought a dedicated search engine for search optimizers and enthusiasts was needed and set about loading some up.

Jam packed with some of the best resources on the web today; Search SEO Pros is your first stop when researching your search needs. It is actually 4 search engines in one covering expert blogs, video and even the search engines themselves (Google Blog, Yahoo and more).

So be sure to bookmark Search SEO Pros – you’ll be glad you did ;0)

source : http://seo.site-reference.com

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How to check if a website has been serving up malware

A new resource in the link builders toolbox

In SEO links are the golden commodity that make or break a campaign. Not only are inbound links critical in ranking, but who you LINK TO can also be a serious consideration. Google has said many times that you really can’t be hurt by who links to you, but you can be damaged for linking to bad neighbourhoods.

One area that can certainly get a website flagged is by serving up malware or other nastiness. Most often this is done by hackers/crackers that have accessed the site and installed malicious scripting on the server. But how does one know if a potential link target has had issues in the past?
Enter the Google diagnostic tool

There is a handy little too at Google for checking the recent history on domains which is well worth using when link building (link exchanges, link drops) as well as checking websites you may be linking out to within your content or blog posts. It is a simple query; http://google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=site-reference.com (replace the end part with the domain you’re investigating)

What does an infected website look like? Here’s one example; http://google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=news.com.au

It can happen to anyone

And yes, I mean anyone… look at a search for Google.com - or eBay - and Joomla (as recent as yesterday) - you get the idea. While these sites seem to be good at catching it, there have been attempts.

How reliable is the application? It’s hard to say at this point as it’s only reporting problems that Google has seen; they don’t seem to be testing entire websites. What is important is that you remember that malicious actions can have an affect on your site’s presence in search engines. Be vigilant.

This only takes a few moments and can be invaluable to the search optimizer. Add this little toy to your toolbox and take the time to check out those sites you’re considering linking to from now on…. Better safe than sorry. I’d also suggest checking your own site every month as well to ensure you haven’t been compromised. All in all.. and groovy new tool in the box.

L8TR

(thanks to Jim Stewart for the tip )

source : http://seo.site-reference.com/

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Are you looking for a Job in SEO?

After putting together the ‘How to learn SEO’ post, I got to thinking that many folks that learn SEO ultimately want to do it for a living. As such I rounded up a bunch of websites for finding work in the world of Search optimization (and search marketing) – on the flip side, if you’re looking to hire SEO staffers or freelancers, the list will work out as well. This post started life some 6 months back and since then the economy has done little but head earthard bound - the time seemed right to polish and publish… (If you know of any great resources I have left off the list, let me know and I shall add them in. ).
Loking for work in Search engine optimization;

The usual suspects; To get us rolling some of the better known websites in the search marketing world have their own job boards – so let’s look at those;

SEOmoz Marketplace – they have a few more recent postings than some of the others. Worth checking out

Top SEOs Jobs – a fairly active board with jobs in the UK and USA, defnately worth watching

Marketing Pilgrim Jobs – another active job board with international listings

Search Engine Watch Boards – not a whole lot of active jobs, but considering the location the employers are likely above the average level of knowledge.

SEO Book Jobs – a few jobs here, nothing major but worth having in the list


Search Specific Resources

Jobs in search – this site had a smaller offering of positions but seem like a pretty good site, so we’ll include it on the list.

SEO Vacancies – another nice looking and well put together site that is mostly tailored to the European market.

SEO Consultants - has a job board, but it doesn’t seem all that active… a secondary locale at this point, (Dave ducks Edward’s wrath).

SEM Recruitment – this site has a small offering of jobs and is primarily the UK market from what I noticed. A secondary stop fer sure…


Full time Gigs

There are far more gigs online for in-house and agency SEO jobs than freelance by a long shot. So we’ll look at some of the more well known sites and some niche ones geared to the search world.

Monster Jobs – I did a quick search from a few locales and there are certainly some leads here for those looking for leads. They have jobs from around the world; probably worth keeping in the loop.

Craig’s List – I searched a few major Canadian, US and European countries and found a reasonable supply of jobs to look at. When trying some less popular locales though, it gets spotty as you might imagine.

Career builder – a good selection of jobs, mostly from the US though. If your looking for a job state-side, a good place to look.

It Jobs Online – has leads for jobs in the UK market. Looks like mostly full time gigs.


Freelance Projects

All in all, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of work out there for the freelancers out there (don’t wait for your ship to come in, swim out and get it). And what I did find seemed to have some less than palatable budgets and client knowledge levels. Now, this may not be as big a problem for SEOs that are just breaking into the business as a low paying gig is better than pro-bono, when establishing a client portfolio. And if your company has a competitive price point, U might find something… tread lightly.

Elance – does seem to have a fresh slew of projects for the freelancer and the knowledge level and (starting?) budgets seem more reasonable than some other freelance sites.

oDesk – there are a steady stream of potential projects, but once again the budgets seem a little low. An interesting element is tests they have for providers which buyers can use to qualify peeps (took it and I’m top 10% he he) - I like that part ;0)

iFreelance – not a lot of jobs, but a nice site that you could keep and eye on. With so few good ones out there, might as well make the list.

Digital Point – while the services area of DP is active, it might be a tad dicey as far as quality leads. Seems like a bit of a friggen free-for-all in there… enter at yer own risk ;0)

Get a Freelancer – from the looks of things the jobs are 3rd world priced and buyers don’t seem all that knowledgeable with choice snippets such as; “I need long term seo solutions to bring up my page rank in google”. – for a guy with a $250 budget.
If suppose if yer starting out it’s better than pro-bono (maybe), but it does seems dicey around here.

Guru – look like a reasonable selection of projects with mid range budgets. Probably good for those starting out in SEO… (and you can search full time gigs as well)

Also check out the Site Point marketplace and All Freelance if yer still on the hunt.


Using Social Spaces

Track down as many SEO and search marketing types as you can and add them to your network. Some of the most known locales are;

Sphinn – one of the few internet marketing centric social media websites, get in there and mine the profiles for Twitter, FaceBook and other connection points. A great place to start

Twitter – I have seen a few people use Twitter as a tool for finding work. Don’t jump in and start spamming, but do try and leverage what contacts you have made. You can check my profile for peeps to add (almost exclusively marketing types in mine); SEO Jobs – Canada SEO Jobs – UK SEO Jobs

Mixx – while not as popular a stomping ground as Sphinn, there are a few groups you can join to start networking more, namely the Learning SEO and SEO 2.0 groups; SEO 2.0 – Learning SEO Basics

LinkedIn - is another great locale for networking and watching for jobs that come up (quite often actually). First off I’d be sure to get hooked up with the Marketing Jobs group
Also join some of the other search related groups on LinkedIn; Internet Marketing - Marketing and communications network - Pro Marketers - Search Marketing Salon - Digital Marketing

There are likely more, I shall consult with some social media mystics and report back with more here… (it’s bloody 2am my friend)



More reading to help find a job in SEO;

Jobs in SEO; seekers retrain now - Search Engine People

The 5 Web Resources You Need to Find a Job in Search - Search Engine Watch

Where the SEO jobs are - Eposure Online

Search expert forced to live under house - SEM Portland

ToddMintz talks resumes - SEO Factor

Searching for Jobs in search - Bruce Cay Blog

This week in search marketing staffing - Onward Search

SEO salaries; in-house survey - Reality SEO

SEO Job Search - Reality SEO

Jill Whalen Q&A on Whether Companies Should Take SEO In-House - Reality SEO

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz PayScale.com Video on SEO Salaries - Reality SEO



There we have… shall add some more as I get the time… best of luck to all!!

source : http://seo.site-reference.com

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The Magic Google ranking machine

a.k.a - Do your ears hang low

I received and email this morning that is just too good to pass up – pass up talking about that is. I don’t know about you, but I am forever getting emails offering to ‘rank my site in Google’; which is funny because they come in on my SEO Blog and SEO Company email addresses, ( instant DUH Magazine subscription there) … One has to imagine they are blind spamming since who in their right minds would try and sell ME search optimization services, right?

But for the sake of ensuring that you, my fine readers, are educated… I figured we’d have a look. Here’s the email;
“Is your Site Optimized with the Google latest methodology called LSI to Rank High???
Does your Site Rank Low??? Do you have less traffic on your site???

An end to all these question. We provide a complete solution for your Online Business need.

We bring Traffic to Your Site and rank You Top with our LSI based Google’s Algorithm at affordable rates

Our Steps and the Activities to Rank You Smart

Keywords Research - Competition Analysis - LSI Check - Optimized Content Creation - Keywords Optimization - Back Link Creation/Link Building - Submission to Search Engines and Directories - Submission to Article Directories

Please reply for the best quote for your website link and we will guarantee to Rank You 1st to 10th position in Google ranking.”

Beyond the horrid grammar and sales copy, the thing that jumped out madly at me was the bit about “Google latest methodology called LSI”. My friends, if you EVER get emails from SEOs using this little catch phrase… you know you’re in the wrong place. Actually if you’re considering hiring an SEO, ask them about LSI…. If they in any way infer that it is part of the Google process…. BAM… file them away.

You see, this is what I call the LSI Bandwagon effect (read that post for more). While search engine obviously use semantic technologies, there is no evidence Google is using that one and SEOs that state otherwise are doing nothing more than mythology regurgitation.

For more - Dr. E. Garcia - SVD and LSI Tutorial 5: LSI Keyword Research and Co-Occurrence Theory - SEO’s and their exhaustive search myths
Submit this!!

Another golden turd that I hate seeing offered by any search optimizer service “Submission to Search Engines and Directories” – while I am still mildly partial to using directory submissions, (quality over quantity, right?) the whole submit to search engines is bad ju ju.

Sure, it’s great for noob webmasters when they first come on the scene, but considering that indexation is greatly reliant on links, the link building portion of the program will naturally take care of this. While it cannot hurt to submit to search engines, it will not ensure any meaningful rankings.. so professional SEOs should not be offering this service.

All of this made me think of a tune…

(Sung to; Do your ears hang low…you know “Do your ears hang low? Do they wobble to and fro? Can you tie them in a knot? Can you tie them in a bow?”)

Oh Does your Site Rank Low??? Got no traffic on your site???
Do you want it right now? We can get it over-night….

We can make the magic happen with our latest Google weapon
Oh does your site… does your site…rank…low
Look before you leap

And so my friends please do be careful out there. What if they had a slick presentation, more polished and refined? How would one know? You ultimately need to learn the essentials of SEO to even hire one. Back in the 80’s there were far more complaints about home renovators than there is today. Why is that? In no small measure the explosion of home renovation television shows and home videos quickly delivered a higher level of education to home owners than ever before.

This is turn help to weed out the less than reputable contractors as they had a hard time even finding work.

In this way, business owners need to learn at least the fundamentals of SEO before trying to hire one. While there are many articles out there on what to ask and how to go about hiring an SEO, knowledge building is perhaps the best place to start.

Until next time… play safe….

source :http://seo.site-reference.com

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Personalized Search and Your SEO Firm

by Randy Zlobec

When looking at Google, one is struck by the somewhat Orwellian nature of entering a search term and being watched by Big Brother in a dispassionate, detached yet interested manner. When looking at the patterns people use in searching, it does come close to that totalitarian character from the George Orwell novel, 1984, but that is the truth of our times. Google is neither good nor evil. It just IS, and with that realization, people should adapt to the new SEO frontiers and how to not only deal with but capitalize on the wealth of information that search engines collect.

Let's drop the Big Brother analogy, because when we started looking for things on the Internet, that became just another part of our paradigm shift towards the belief that anything we searched for on the Net was just out of our reach in the search results. Collecting data and disseminating it is a fact of life. As a business, one should rapidly get used to the idea and seek constructive, professional ways to harness this power. Because, in this case knowledge is truly power, and if you or a company that you hire can get a handle on the niche you want to control and dominate to deliver your sales message or well-placed, online advertising, then you're ready to watch your sales double, quadruple and more.

The true value an SEO expert on staff or a firm that understands the value of search engine optimization can transform your company. The concept is really very simple: put your company, product or service in the traffic or search results of people who are looking for your product or service. That's it. Success on the Internet.

When you look at it that way, it doesn't appear to be so hard to conquer. What you may fail to realize is that there are millions of companies and businesses out there that have already realized this fact and have gone on to seek their fortune in that realm. You will need an edge, something that most of your competitors lack.

This is where the basic principle of personalized search comes into play. You see, whether you're a millionaire or Joe-Nobody surfing the Net, every time you query Google or any other search engine for information, that query data is stored in a database. It is then tabulated, and cross-tabulated with other things you and others have searched for. On a personal level, the search engines build a profile of your search habits over time. Like artificial intelligence, the search engines long to understand you, your interests and habits. As you search and surf, you will begin to see an eerie thing happen - more and more relevant search results will begin to pop up as you type.

Before you run screaming back into the dark ages, this is a good thing. For example, if you've shown an interest in fishing while our neighbor searches for musical instruments. When you search for "bass", the search engine will begin to return fishing results, while your neighbor who searches for the exact same term, "bass" will get back musical instruments that are relevant to him - bass fiddles, bass drums, etc. This is personalized search results.

Now that you understand the concept, let's talk about how you can use it in your business in order increase sales in your business. These personalized search results, you need to either learn or hire an SEO firm that is familiar with this major shift in how search engine optimization is going. Google is currently testing the waters with this form of personalization, and you need to be signed up with one of their services in order to get this kind of personalization. Theses services include: Adwords, Google Toolbar, Gmail and the like. Through these various forums, Google is learning about you and your preferences.

When you search through Google, it places a cookie which is a unique identifier on your machine. It doesn't do anything, but identify you as a user of their service. No biggie, right? It will be just as easy for them to use this technology to collect user data in order to personalize your search. Right now, they're waiting to see if there's screaming in the streets from users who abhor any kind of data collection. More than likely, it will go by unnoticed by most. As a business, you need to be on the cutting edge of this new technology and have either an expert or a firm working towards utilizing this major upgrade in order to take you to the next level of the Internet.

Truly good search engine optimization firms are already preparing for this major shift, using things like "clean" machines for data collection and in how they report on Google's ranking of data to their clients. Clean machines are one's that have had no Google programs or cookies dropped on it. This will be a baseline machine with results for the client that are delivered as a snapshot of what they user would see if their machine was Google-less.

First, the good news. Account holders with the search engine giant will probably not be deluged with certain products based on their profiles, but their entire surfing and querying history will be reviewed and results will be skewed toward the user's industry.

Then, there's the bad news. Search engine optimization firms will have a rough time trying to demonstrate these results because the client will more than likely be using a Google program on personal machines, so the results won't match with the SEO firm.


What all this means is that the company needs to establish a level of trust in the professional skills of the firm they choose. In return, the SEO firm needs to take the time to explain in detail how the new search engine results work showing how these results can appear totally different from machine to machine and why this happens. As well, the firm needs to have the technical skill to be able to delve into the client's machine, look at the current cookies onboard and explain how this is affecting what results they're getting.

When setting up a campaign, companies will have to take more into account when starting out. Having a good SEO firm onboard will simplify this latest level of complexity quite a bit. Being able to utilize personal search results and consumer profiles is just a step away, and it takes a high-level of skill to deal with it effectively.

source : www.site-reference.com

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Best Search Marketing Blogs

by S. Housley

Attempting to stay current on the latest search engine algorithm changes or search optimization tactics can be overwhelming for webmasters attempting to juggle it all. With this in mind, we've put together a list of the industry's best Search Marketing blogs. These blogs are current and discuss important issues related to search engine optimization and search marketing. Subscribe to the search marketing blog's RSS feeds, or visit their website regularly to stay current regarding the latest search news.


White Hat Search Marketing Blogs...

Search Engine Land

Search Engine Land is a hub for news and information about search engine marketing and optimization. It regularly details how search engines such as Google and Yahoo rank websites in their organic search listings. The site is led by the famed search engine journalist and guru Danny Sullivan, who has been covering the search industry for the past 11 years. Search Engine Land is published by Third Door Media, which also produces the Search Marketing Expo conference series, and the Search Marketing Now webcast events.
http://searchengineland.com/

Search Engine Watch

Search Engine Watch is an authoritative guide to search engine marketing and search engine optimization, offering the latest news about searching the web, analysis of the search engine industry, and help for website owners trying to improve their ability to be found in search engines.
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/

SEOmoz

SEOmoz is a hub for search marketers worldwide, providing education, tools, and resources. The SEOmoz community includes more than 60,000 registered users interested in the search marketing field.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/

Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts is probably the best known Google employee. He works on the Google "webspam" team, and frequently blogs about Google and their views on various SEO techniques.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

SEO Book

SEO Book is a leading SEO blog by Aaron Wall, covering the search space. It offers marketing tips and search analysis. SEO Book is used to answer customer questions and to offer online marketing strategy tips. In 2008, much of SEO Book was transitioned to a membership site, offering over 100 online training modules, tutorial videos, custom SEO spreadsheets, exclusive tools, and a community support forum.
http://www.seobook.com/blog/

Wolf Howl

SEO consultant Michael Gray discusses search engine optimization, Social Media, the Internet in general, and new media opportunities.
http://www.wolf-howl.com/

Black Hat Search Marketing Blogs...

Like in Harry Potter, Black Hat is similar the Dark Arts. They work, but they're not necessarily a good thing... in the end. Regardless of whether you are a white hat marketer or a black hat marketer, reading the black hat blogs can bring insight and introspection about the tactics used by those search marketers considered as having crossed the line. The following are the popular black hat marketing blogs:

SEOBlackHat SEO

Black Hat Blog offers articles on Blackhat SEO, Linkbait, and Link Spamming. There is also a private SEOBlackHat forum, which is a fee-based search marketing forum that contains more information.
http://www.seoblackhat.com/

BlueHat SEO

BlueHatSEO is dedicated to the art of Advanced SEO. Blue Hat SEO is essentially the study of advanced Internet marketing and search engine optimization techniques. Blue Hat SEO covers the advanced knowledge of both Black Hat and White Hat SEO tactics. Blue Hatters use their knowledge of the search engines and other marketing practices to twist and manipulate them in creative and original ways to best benefit their sites. The BlueHat SEO website claims that the concept of Blue Hat SEO arose out of frustration in the lack of advanced SEO knowledge made available to webmasters.
http://www.bluehatseo.com/

SEOcracy


SEOcracy answers questions about how to do things like conquer new niches, design websites, choose affiliates offerings, develop arbitrage websites, etc. Many of the ideas introduced fall into BlackHat or BlueHat SEO.
http://www.seocracy.com/

Additionally there is a big List of Search Marketing Blogs - http://www.toprankblog.com/search-marketing-blogs/


source : www.site-reference.com

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These 10 SEO Tactics Bring Me Over 2000 Visitors Daily

by Titus Hoskins

No matter how hard some people try to mystify SEO, it is not as complicated as many would lead you to believe. Despite all the techno jargon that many in the field will throw at you: SERPs, SEM, PageRank, Keyword Density, Vertical Search, Algorithms... SEO is really simple to do if you understand some basic concepts and follow some easy steps.

Search Engine Optimization is getting your content listed in all the top positions in Google, Yahoo and MSN for your targeted keywords. When someone does a keyword search in a search engine for your particular subject or niche - you want your site or content to be at the top of the list.

Here are 10 SEO tactics that have worked and are working for me at this moment in time.

1. Quality Content is and always will be your number one factor for getting high rankings and keeping them. You must understand search engines are simply businesses who supply a product like any other company. That product is information. They must offer quality results to anyone using their service to solve a problem, answer a question or to buy a product. The more relevant, the more targeted the search solution they return, the higher the overall quality of their product and the more popular their search engine will become. Providing quality content is vital for SEO success.

2. Keywords are your number one tools for achieving high rankings. You must understand keywords and how they work on the web. You must know how many searches are made each day for your chosen keywords. Sites like Wordtracker and Seobook will give you a rudimentary number of searches. Design your pages around your targeted keywords and don't forget to do some deep-linking to these pages on your site. Find and build backlinks to these interior keyword pages and not just to your home page or domain URL. Picking keywords with medium to low competition has worked out well for me. So too has using the more targeted and higher converting "long-tail" keywords been very beneficial for me.

3. Onpage Factors and site design will play a major role in the spidering and indexing of your site/content. Make sure all your pages are SEO friendly, made sure all your pages can be reached from your homepage and no pages should be no more than three levels away from it - keeping a sitemap listing all your major pages makes the search engines happy. Make sure you have all your meta tags such as title, description, keywords... are all optimized. (Title = around 65 characters, Description = around 160 characters) Remember, your title and description should not only be keyword targeted but these are the first contact/impression anyone will see of your site - make sure you use them to draw and entice interested visitors to your site and content. Also make sure your title and URL are keyword matched for maximum effect. Having your major keyword in your Domain Name also helps, using a pike | to separate different elements of your title has helped my rankings, so too does having your keyword in the first and last 25 words on your pages.

4. Google will send you the most qualified traffic so concentrate the majority of your SEO efforts on Google. Don't ignore Yahoo! or MSN but Google is king of search so give it the respect it deserves. With its new browser, Google's influence will only grow stronger so you must optimize your pages for Google. Use Google's Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to fine-tune your pages/content for Google. I also use Google Alerts to keep up on my niche keywords and for comment link-building on the newly created pages Google is indexing.

5. Link Building is still the most effective way to boost your search rankings. Make sure you get backlinks from relevant sites related to your niche market and make sure the 'anchor text' is related to your keywords but don't ignore the text and overall quality of the content linking to you. The anchor text is the underlined/clickable portion of a link. Don't forget linking is a two-way street, make sure you link out to high quality, high ranked relevant sites in your niche.

6. Article Marketing is a well established method of getting quality backlinks and it still works. Writing short 500 - 700 word informative helpful articles with your backlinks in the resource box is still very effective for getting targeted traffic and backlinks. Longer articles have also worked for me and I use an extensive network of distribution including SubmitYourArticle, Isnare, Thephantomwriters... plus other major online sites. Don't forget the whole element of blogging and RSS feeds in your article distribution. And always remember you're also using these articles to pre-sale your content or products. Don't forget to leverage sites like Squidoo, Hubpages... to increase your rankings and traffic.

7. Onsite Traffic Hubs have worked extremely well for me. These traffic hubs are whole sections of your site devoted to one sub-division of your major theme. For example, if you have a site on Gifts, then wedding gifts could be a separate section. This would be fully fleshed out with extensive pages covering everything dealing with wedding gifts - a self-contained keyword rich portion of your site on wedding gifts. Works similar as a sub-domain but I prefer using a directory to divide it up, such as yourdomain/wedding_gifts. (Most experts suggest always using a hyphen in your urls but underscores have worked fine for me.) Search engines love these keyword/content rich hubs but keep in mind you're creating content to first satisfy your visitors.

8. WordPress blog software is extremely effective for SEO purposes. WordPress software is easy to install on your site even if you have no experience with installing server-side scripts. Besides search engines love these highly SEO friendly blogs with their well structured content and keyword tagging. I have at least one of these on all my sites to draw in the search engines and get my content indexed and ranked. I also use Blogger (owned by Google), Bloglines and other free blogs to help distribute my content.

9. Social Bookmark/Media Sites are becoming very important on the web. These include a whole range of social sites like MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter... media news sites like Digg, SlashDot, Technorati... you must get your content into this whole mix if you want to take full SEO advantage of Web 2.0 sites. You should be joining these sites and using them. It's time consuming but it will keep you in the swing of things. One simple thing you must do is to put social bookmark buttons on all your pages so that your visitors can easily bookmark your content for you. You can use a WordPress plug-in or I like using a simple free site/service from Addthis.com which gives me a simple button to put on all my content.

10. Masterplan! Many webmasters and site owners forget to develop or have an overall masterplan/strategy when it comes to SEO. You must have an understanding of what SEO is and what it can do for you and your site. More importantly, you just don't want SEO - you want effective SEO. In order to achieve effective SEO you must have three things: Relevance, Authority and Conversions.

First, your content/site must be relevant to the topic or niche area you're pursuing - your content must fit in and be related to all the other sites in your niche. That's why closely themed sites do so well in the search engines, they give only relevant content to what's been searched for or discussed.

Second, your content/site must be perceived as an authority site on your subject or niche. Establish this authority position and the search engines will love you and your content. One way is to develop this authority, besides offering superior content, is to form links/partnerships with other perceived authority sites in your field. Always strive to make your site an authority site - tops in your niche - the one site everyone has to check before drawing or forming a conclusion.


Third, conversions should be your main goal of any SEO efforts because you want to convert your targeted traffic into site members, subscribers, buyers or just repeat visitors. If you're into online marketing, conversions will be the most important element of the whole SEO process because you want buyers, not just visitors coming to your site.

Most of all, you must convince yourself Search Engine Optimization is not difficult, nor is it the equivalent of the online bogeyman as many would like you to believe. Used effectively, SEO can give you the targeted traffic you're seeking, just follow some of the outlined steps/tactics listed above and you will have SEO working for you and your site in no time at all.

source :www.site-reference.com

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Using Internal Linking To Get Better Search Engine Exposure

by Randy Zlobec

Anyone who runs a website should be aware of a few basic search engine linking tactics. Used properly you can interlink your website so that Google, Yahoo and the other major search engines will rate you higher in both page rank and search engine results for your keyword/key phrase niche terms. If you're unaware of what internal linking means, here's a basic overview.

Internal linking involves the links on your website that point to other pages on your website. Internal linking is very important because it allows the search engine spiders, those automated bots that scour the Internet looking for information, to find all of the pages on your website. In comparison, external linking are links that are on your website which link out to other websites, and there are specific tactics for those as well. In this article, however, we're going to cover a few simple tactics and strategies to get your internal linking up to speed.

When you're developing your website, you will tend to put a whole lot of pages of similar information tailored to a specific niche or subject that you want to convey to your visitors. You probably will have information, news, how-to articles, tips and sales pages, where informed visitors can buy your products or services. Your internal linking structure will not only benefit your visitors, but it will help you rank better with the search engines as well.

Having a good navigation system makes Google and Yahoo happy, and in turn, they will reward because you are doing things to improve the visitors' website experience. So, for example, if you have an internal linking structure that is seamless, intuitive and allows your visitors to quickly find what they're looking for, search engines will give you more page rank, index more of your web pages and and return higher search results for user queries.

Why? You have taken the time to help your website visitors have an excellent customer experience. As result, your tactics and strategies should be geared towards giving arriving visitors not only the information that they seek, but have it presented in a way that they will and search engine bots will love.

So how do you accomplish this? There are a few basic tactics, you can use that will increase your internal linking structure right off the bat.

Number 1 - use the rel="nofollow HTML tag for pages that you don't want to pass rank to Google. For example, let's say you had a three-page site. Now, we all know that most people have more than three pages for an entire website; however, this will make it easier to follow.

The first page is your home page which gets 100% of the search engine ranking and love. The second pages are an information or information/sales page, with the third is a checkout page. If you don't use the nofollow tag on one of the pages, both pages will be passed half of 50% each for the link from the home page. So, they'll each get 25% of the ranking and love passed through from the spiders. The search engine spiders will naturally give your home page the best page rank and index it first. Say, you want to link to the information/sales page and make sure that a lot of people find it, because the information page is what will sell your product or service. For ranking and indexing purposes, you consider the checkout page as useless, so you don't care if the search engines find it or not. In fact, you'd prefer it if they didn't index it all. What do you do?

When you link from your home page, you can do one of two things:

Link to the information page only from the home page. Link to both pages but use the no follow tag to the check out page. In that way, if someone arrives who is already sold on your product, they can go directly to your checkout page and buy the product. However, if it is an uninformed visitor, they can clickthrough to your information/sales page or they click on the indexed Google or Yahoo link that's been picked up by the spider

Two things happen with scenario #2. You give the customer/visitor the option. Because, the search engine is applying SEO love to one page and not two, the page rank passed will not be 25% and 25% for each page, but 0% for the check out page and 50% for the information page which needs it. You maintain the search engine indexing and page rank for those pages that are important. This is just one thing to consider when setting up your website.

This is just one thing that needs to be considered when setting up your website. Professional SEO firms use this algorithm in order to get specific pages on your website to rank hire and return results in the search engine results pages that are much higher than a other pages like your checkout pages which you don't care about.


Number 2 - Add extra links in your navigation area or footer area that link to important pages and main sections on your website. This extremely easy tactic is often overlooked by many websites, but it does return very good results for deep linking, and most SEO firms will review your footer links when they you on as a candidate in order to utilize that other form of deep linking. The reason for this is that so many people forget to do it, and many Web designers add really cool buttons, images and all kinds of funky image stuff that do nothing to increase your page rank or your results in a search engines. You should remember that search engines can't follow image links or links created in JavaScript. So, you want to add simple text links that the robots can follow the indexing your website more fully.

These are only two of the tactics that are covered when you hire a professional, savvy SEO firm to optimize your web layout and linking structure.


RZ Concepts a search engine marketing company specializing in website promotion and internet marketing. http://www.rzconcepts.com

source : www.site-reference.com

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Protecting Your Search Engine Rankings

by Filomena Serraino

Your website's ranking on search engines is a vital element of your overall marketing campaign, and there are ways to improve your link popularity through legitimate methods. Unfortunately, the Internet is populated by bands of dishonest webmasters seeking to improve their link popularity by faking out search engines.

The good news is that search engines have figured this out, and are now on guard for "spam" pages and sites that have increased their rankings by artificial methods. When a search engines tracks down such a site, that site is demoted in ranking or completely removed from the search engine's index.
The bad news is that some high quality, completely above-board sites are being mistaken for these web page criminals. Your page may be in danger of being caught up in the "spam" net and tossed from a search engine's index, even though you have done nothing to deserve such harsh treatment. But there are things you can do - and things you should be sure NOT to do - which will prevent this kind of misperception.

Link popularity is mostly based on the quality of sites you are linked to. Google pioneered this criteria for assigning website ranking, and virtually all search engines on the Internet now use it. There are legitimate ways to go about increasing your link popularity, but at the same time, you must be scrupulously careful about which sites you choose to link to. Google frequently imposes penalties on sites that have linked to other sites solely for the purpose of artificially boosting their link popularity. They have actually labeled these links "bad neighborhoods."

You can raise a toast to the fact that you cannot be penalized when a bad neighborhood links to your site; penalty happens only when you are the one sending out the link to a bad neighborhood. But you must check, and double-check, all the links that are active on your links page to make sure you haven't linked to a bad neighborhood.

The first thing to check out is whether or not the pages you have linked to have been penalized. The most direct way to do this is to download the Google toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com. You will then see that most pages are given a "Pagerank" which is represented by a sliding green scale on the Google toolbar.

Do not link to any site that shows no green at all on the scale. This is especially important when the scale is completely gray. It is more than likely that these pages have been penalized. If you are linked to these pages, you may catch their penalty, and like the flu, it may be difficult to recover from the infection.

There is no need to be afraid of linking to sites whose scale shows only a tiny sliver of green on their scale. These sites have not been penalized, and their links may grow in value and popularity. However, do make sure that you closely monitor these kind of links to ascertain that at some point they do not sustain a penalty once you have linked up to them from your links page.

Another evil trick that illicit webmasters use to artificially boost their link popularity is the use of hidden text. Search engines usually use the words on web pages as a factor in forming their rankings, which means that if the text on your page contains your keywords, you have more of an opportunity to increase your search engine ranking than a page that does not contain text inclusive of keywords.

Some webmasters have gotten around this formula by hiding their keywords in such a way so that they are invisible to any visitors to their site. For example, they have used the keywords but made them the same color as the background color of the page, such as a plethora of white keywords on a white background. You cannot see these words with the human eye - but the eye of search engine spider can spot them easily! A spider is the program search engines use to index web pages, and when it sees these invisible words, it goes back and boosts that page's link ranking.

Webmasters may be brilliant and sometimes devious, but search engines have figured these tricks out. As soon as a search engine perceive the use of hidden text - splat! the page is penalized.

The downside of this is that sometimes the spider is a bit overzealous and will penalize a page by mistake. For example, if the background color of your page is gray, and you have placed gray text inside a black box, the spider will only take note of the gray text and assume you are employing hidden text. To avoid any risk of false penalty, simply direct your webmaster not to assign the same color to text as the background color of the page - ever!

Another potential problem that can result in a penalty is called "keyword stuffing." It is important to have your keywords appear in the text on your page, but sometimes you can go a little overboard in your enthusiasm to please those spiders. A search engine uses what is called "Keyphrase Density" to determine if a site is trying to artificially boost their ranking. This is the ratio of keywords to the rest of the words on the page. Search engines assign a limit to the number of times you can use a keyword before it decides you have overdone it and penalizes your site.

This ratio is quite high, so it is difficult to surpass without sounding as if you are stuttering - unless your keyword is part of your company name. If this is the case, it is easy for keyword density to soar. So, if your keyword is "renters insurance," be sure you don't use this phrase in every sentence. Carefully edit the text on your site so that the copy flows naturally and the keyword is not repeated incessantly. A good rule of thumb is your keyword should never appear in more than half the sentences on the page.

The final potential risk factor is known as "cloaking." To those of you who are diligent Trekkies, this concept should be easy to understand. For the rest of you?cloaking is when the server directs a visitor to one page and a search engine spider to a different page. The page the spider sees is "cloaked" because it is invisible to regular traffic, and deliberately set-up to raise the site's search engine ranking. A cloaked page tries to feed the spider everything it needs to rocket that page's ranking to the top of the list.

It is natural that search engines have responded to this act of deception with extreme enmity, imposing steep penalties on these sites. The problem on your end is that sometimes pages are cloaked for legitimate reasons, such as prevention against the theft of code, often referred to as "pagejacking." This kind of shielding is unnecessary these days due to the use of "off page" elements, such as link popularity, that cannot be stolen.


To be on the safe side, be sure that your webmaster is aware that absolutely no cloaking is acceptable. Make sure the webmaster understands that cloaking of any kind will put your website at great risk.

Just as you must be diligent in increasing your link popularity and your ranking, you must be equally diligent to avoid being unfairly penalized. So be sure to monitor your site closely and avoid any appearance of artificially boosting your rankings.


Using one way links for your Web Promotion gets results. WHY? Link popularity is one of the most important factors in search engine performance. Increasing the number of links to your Website will get your site listed higher in search engine results, generating more Website Traffic, increasing your Google PR and improving your site's overall strength. http://www.seolinkmart.com

source : http://www.site-reference.com

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