Why Even A Single Unethical SEO Strategy Can Spell Disaster To An Internet Marketer
November 17, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Search Engines play a vital role in the success and failure of Internet Marketers and others who use the Internet for various businesses. Though a few search engines stand out above the rest, Google is by far the most popular and most sought after by about 50 % of the Internet community worldwide.
As an Online marketer it is prudent to remain in the good books of the search engines especially Google and implement the SEO Strategy Google loves and appreciates if you want to succeed in your business. Let us then identify the strategies Google dislikes or detests and avoid being penalized or blacklisted knowingly or unknowingly.
1. Avoid Keyword Stuffing:
Optimizing your content to the relevant keywords or phrases of your website is a SEO Strategy always appreciated by the search engines but do not use your keywords too often in the text to improve search engine ranking because this is considered unethical. Google frowns on this practice to obtain better search engine rank. Use your keywords judiciously.
2. Avoid Bad Neighborhoods:
Inbound links especially from theme related quality websites increase your link popularity and Improve Search Engine Ranking. The more such links the better. If on the other hand you have outbound links linking to other sites with a bad reputation, you will soon be penalized by the search engines and especially by Google. Your site will be removed from the index if detected to be linking excessively to a bad neighborhood to improve search engine ranking.
3. Avoid Link Farms:
These are pages in websites that contain a huge number of assorted links irrespective of theme or category built for the sole purpose of increasing the number of incoming links to a web site, a SEO strategy implemented by some. If there are more than one hundred links in a page, it is it is considered a link farm. Reciprocal links from these pages are of no value to you. It is better to avoid these rather than getting penalized by the major search engines. Moreover anything more than thirty links to a page will not be of much benefit to you.
4. Avoid Duplicate Content:
Search Engines love good unique content and fresh content.
Do not duplicate the same content in multiple pages. It has been observed that Google bans sites that duplicate a lot of content. Also do not violate copyright by copying content from other sites.
5. Avoid Irrelevant Meta Keywords:
Meta Keywords are what you use to inform the search engines the true Keywords that are in your content. Some webmasters use popular irrelevant keywords to trick the search engines. Do not list Keywords irrelevant to your site in your Meta Keywords. You will be found out and penalized for this unethical SEO strategy.
6. Avoid Doorway Pages:
Doorway pages are really Gateway pages optimized for a particular keyword but are gateways to a different page and content. These doorway pages have very little original content but redirect the visitor to the planned targeted website. Never trick the search engines by this strategy.
7. Avoid Hidden Text and Links:
This is done by inserting hidden texts and links that cannot be seen by the human eye but readable by the search engines. This SEO strategy is considered to be spam and your site will be penalized once discovered by the search engines.
Conclusion:
Adopting spamming techniques to Improve Search Engine Ranking might work for a short period but you are bound to be found out before long. The consequences of indulging in unethical SEO strategies and practices can be drastic and painful. Your site could even be banned, so play it straight if you want to succeed in the long term as an Internet Marketer.
Driving Traffic to Your Site
November 13, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Driving traffic to your website doesn’t mean forking out big bucks on advertising. We show you how to publicize your site without spending a dime.
The Internet. A vast electronic window of opportunity, offering you the chance to expose yourself to millions of people around the world for the cost of a modem and a giant phone bill. The trouble is there are so many sites vying for attention that most just sit quietly on servers, unloved and unnoticed. You may have the greatest site in the world but if the world doesn’t know about it, you might as well have left it on your hard drive. Fortunately, there are lots of ways to promote your site for zero outlay, from humble reciprocal links to vast organized banner schemes. Better get started then.
First Things First
Let’s assume that you’ve already submitted the details of your website to the big search engines. If you haven’t, don’t read any further until you’ve at least submitted your details to Google. It’s the single most important free thing you can do which will significantly boost your traffic – particularly if your site covers a minority interest.
Submit your site to another 10 major search engines. Do a search on Google to find out who they are. Lecture over. Time to face some unpleasant facts.
The top 10 websites receive around 90% of Internet traffic, which means the remaining billions either have to shout very loudly or get together and help each other. And in website promotion, ‘love thy neighbor’ should be your maxim.
Start by finding sites that cover a similar subject to yours and email the owner suggesting it would be mutually beneficial if you swapped links. Make it easy by including the HTML to link to your site, and point out the location of the link’s page on your site where you have already linked back to them.
A good way to keep track of how many sites have linked to you is to use Yahoo’s link search service. Type in ‘link: usacomputers.rr.nu’ for example to see how many sites are linking to usacomputers.rr.nu. An added benefit of regularly perusing other sites is that you can check out what they’re doing to promote themselves and learn from it. Chances are you’ll come across the Web ring or the banner exchange on your travels. Both are essentially an extension of humble link swapping, only on a larger and more organized scale.
Exchange and Market
Banner exchange programs involve signing up with an organization to display ad banners on your site and in return the organization places ads for your website on other member sites. Typically you will receive one advertising ‘exposure’ (or one view of your banner) for every two you display. The organization makes its money by selling the remaining 50% of ad views to paying advertisers. Most schemes provide click-through data, which tells you the number of people who clicked on your ad. Be warned, though – click- through rates are pitiful.
A good banner can expect to generate a rate of around 5%, a poor one, less than 1%. That said, if your ad is displayed enough times, joining an exchange scheme can pay dividends. There are dozens of banner swap programs.
Web Rings
Web rings work by sites covering the same subject setting up an organized online group to promote each other’s wares. Each site links to the next one, or you can jump randomly to any other member site until you finished where you started. Ring members usually display a graphic on their front page saying something like ‘Member of the Computer Hardware Web Ring’. These graphics encourage people to look at other members of the ring.
Web rings are a splendid idea. Not only are they free to join, but they are usually devoted solely to increasing awareness of sites like yours. Surfers who have stumbled across one Computer Hardware website are likely to want to look at another one, so chances are your traffic will increase more than through a banner exchange scheme, where advertising can be less specific. If a ring doesn’t exist for your subject, don’t despair. You can start your own one.
You can also join a traffic exchange. There are basically two types. Manual and Auto.
You join for free and for every site you surf you earn surfing credits. For example, if you surf 100 sites, you may earn 50 credits and your site is displayed 50 times to other members surfing in the same exchange. In a manual exchange you have to physically click a link every time the site changes, but in an auto exchange the sites are rotated automatically. The difference being that in auto exchanges fewer people actually watch their screens and in a manual exchange you are forced to pay attention to the sites.
Article Marketing
You could also resolve to writing articles based on the subject of your website and post them to various free article directories. You include a small author profile about yourself at the end of the article. People reading your articles may be curious to click on your link and visit your site. Another important aspect of writing articles is that if people decide to use your article in their newsletter, website, or elsewhere, they are required to include a link to your site. This may help you increase the number of incoming links to your site, giving you greater exposure and a better search engine ranking.
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See website for details http://usacomputers.rr.nu and http://sacomputers.rr.nu.
Short summary of SEO strategies and secrets – Part 2
November 11, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Does a domain name (URL) play any role in SEO and how to choose a good domain name?
1.Google does not appear to give any weight to keywords in URLs. The keywords in URLsappear (are highlighted) after the calculations for ranking have been completed. They are not counted in the algorithm; they won’t help you get better rankings by trying to manipulate them for search engines. 2.Yahoo gives a little weight to keywords in URLs. 3.MSN gives a lot of weight to URL names. 4.It’s better to use hyphens than underscores. Hyphens tend to split the keyword phrase whereas underscores are treated as one keyword. 5.Google announced that they treat hyphens and underscores the same way, however it’s not the case with Yahoo and others. Stick to hyphens, it’s safer.
How to build Back links (or inbound links)
1.Submit your website to search directories under related categories. It’s recommended to use those directories where no back links from your site are required. 2.Submit your articles in Articles Directories. It’s free. 3.Don’t forget to use good anchor text with your main keywords. (Anchor text is the text that contains a hyperlink to your website.) 4.Use forums and communities to promote your website there. 5.Don’t put links to your site on the websites whose Page Rank is lower than yours. 6.Simple reciprocal links (from site A to site B and back from B to A) are not efficient any more since Google “learned” to recognize and ignore this kind of “artificial” optimization technique. 7.Checking back links to your site, do not rely on the Google “link” command (link:mysite.com), it is flawed. Instead search Google for the string: “mysite.com” –site:mysite.com . This will show you all the pages indexed by Google, which are not part of your site. The “minus” sign in the string tells Google NOT to show the site itself, but only external links to the site.
How to optimize a blog?
1.Find operators of other websites that are willing to swap links between the pages where your blog is and their pages. Swap links with these pages. 2.Make your subject matter topical, such your opinion of the news of the day or of issues that are of concern to a majority of people. This will result in other pages linking to yours. 3.Give the title of your page a unique name, but one that is easily searchable. The easier it is for the search engines to find your blog or website. 4.Search engines tend to ignore blogs that are less than 250 words, so use that length as a minimum. 5.Set up meta tags including a description and several keywords, which should be there in your blog. Search engines will use these to find your blog or website. 6.Use headlines and subheads in your blog. Search engines tend to rank these fairly high when they examine your website, and they should increase your ranking.
Is it Ok for SEO to use Flash sites?
1.Quite recently Google has announced that they have been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Recently, they’ve improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe’s Flash Player technology. However, this technology is not yet as effective as html crawler and it’s still preferable follow the below rules. 2.Use Flash effectively: i.e. a few banners on site, some short animated text, etc. 3.Google can “read”, although not very effectively, text and content of a flash file. 4.Other search engines can’t do it. 5.Avoid using Flash to display content. 6.Google, Yahoo and Microsoft can’t “read” links in a Flash file. Never build a site with Flash-only navigation. You should at least create a parallel html navigation (NOT in javascript). 7.Remember that robots do NOT run javascript and can’t “see” whether graphics are coming from flash or pictures. If you want your site to be easily and effectively indexed by robots and spiders: o Make sure that all the content is in full text. Of course it prevents you to use fancy and smart fonts, and might look less nice, but by getting these pages indexed you give surfers an occasion to find your pages. o If you use fancy navigation (Flash, javascript, or picture maps), be sure to put in parallel some html-coded navigation. o You may also consider building an html map of all your pages, where visitors, as well as search engines, will be able to see links to all of your pages with one-paragraph descriptions of each page. o The html-coded text on each and every page should have at least a link to the home page and to the page of the map. How to avoid Google penalization to your site or blog? 1.Google can penalize a website that has: o Bad link structure; o Hidden text; o Small fonts; o Paid links; o Duplicate content; o Excessive link exchanges; o Back links from online casinos, adult and drug related sites. 2.How can you know if Google penalized your site or not o Using Google Webmaster Tools , go to “tools”. If your site has been banned, you should see a link to “resubmit your site. 3.What to do if Google penalized your site? o First of all, eliminate all the possible causes of the penalization (see # 1). o Resubmit to Google, explaining what exactly you have changed. o Do not try to justify why this happened. o Remove all the links to any sites unrelated to your content. o Submit your site only to quality directories that do not require a return link.
Alla Babin is the owner of Bizi Marketing Solutions – Marketing, Advertising, Web Design and SEO agency.
Reciprocal Links – Good for SEO & Google Ranking?
November 10, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Introduction – The link phenomenon
One of the important factors in ranking well on search engines such as Google is ensuring that you have a number of links pointing from other websites to your website. Website links can be a confusing thing, there are many terms used to describe them including one way links, reciprocal links, backlinks, inbound links but to explain what I’m talking about here – lets say you own ACME Shoe Sales, and you are on another website say www.great-aussie-footwear.com and you see a link that says “Visit ACME Shoe Sales” and you click on it – and it takes you to the ACME Shoe Sales, then this helps the ranking of ACME Footwear.
This type of link is called an “inbound link” to ACME, or confusingly, is sometimes referred to as a Backlink for the ACME website. These backlinks or inbound links tell Google that someone else thinks that your website is worth linking to. If lots of people think your website is important enough to create a link to, then this tells the search engines that your website must be important.
So how do you get these links to your website?
Well, there are many ways to do this including posting messages to forums with links to your website, listing your business in online directory websites, getting business partners to link to you, paying people for links (a risky practice these days), and “Reciprocal Links” where you agree to link to someone if they link to you. Many people still exchange links with others hoping that they will rocket to the top of the search results because “their cousin who’s an IT guy told them that was how to get ranked on Google”.
Reciprocal links – will they help?
The answer is yes and no. A few years ago, reciprocal linking alone would get you ranked well on the search engines. The problem was that everyone figured this out and so many professional SEO companies abused the practice and setup massive reciprocal linking programmes – have you ever got one of those spammy emails from people asking you to link to them if they link to you? The practice is still alive and well.Give the disproportionate number of links that various websites ended up obtaining by the practice, the search engine companies caught on that most of this was an artificial practice, and they started to discount the value of links pointing to websites where that website linked back to the linking partner.
So they wont help?
The answer is yes, and no. There are two benefits you get from a link from someone else’s website that points to your website.
* a) Referral benefit
* b) Ranking benefit
Referral Benefit
By this we’re talking about the fact that if someone is on the other website, and they come across your link and they click on it – well they arrive at your website. If the place they found your link was on a site that is somehow related to your business (if you sell shoes, they may have been on an othopaedics website, or an price comparison website showing differnt footwear available for purchase in your country) then they may well be interested in shoes and so this could be a valuable website visitor. If they found your link on an online gambling website and clicked on it by mistake – well clearly there is limited benefit you receive from their visit.So typically speaking, referral benefit is strong when the link comes from a related website that is not competetive in your field (if you sell pillows, think bedding websites, if you sell tyres, think car websites etc)
Ranking Benefit
Ranking benefit is what we discussed earlier where the search engines will recognise this link as a vote of your websites importance and give you weighting / ranking for this.
So back to Reciprocal Links – will they help?
The answer is yes and no….but this time, we’ll try to answer the question I promise! If a website owner approaches you who has a website that is related to your industry but not competetive to your business, and you think that people on their website may be the right sort of target audience who you’d like to have come to your website, then by all means exchange links with them. Forget about the search engine ranking issues – if this business attracts people who are the sort of people who would buy or deal with your organisation (ie same area, same interests, same product category) then having a link from their site to yours has enough inherent value to exchange links. Same applies to whether a link should go on your website. Are your visitors going to find it interesting? Will it add value to their experience of your website? If so – go for it.
If a website from an overseas website approaches you but you don’t sell to overseas customers, or if a website from an unrelated industry approaches you, then don’t exchange links in the hope they will deliver strong rankings. On the issue of ranking, there is still much debate in the SEO industry about whether any rank is achieved from exchanging links. My personal view based on our SEO experience is that a small number of link exchanges with high quality “authorititive” websites in your industry will help to some extent. Be careful though, as linking out to a range of useless link partners who have sites filled with thousands of spammy links could actually hurt your rankings. If the person asking you to exchange links fits this category don’t do it.
This article, was written by Phil Baddock, Salsa Internet’s Search Marketing Director. If any of this didn’t make sense, or if you need help with building high quality links to your website, Phil can be contacted on phil@salsainternet.com.au This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , or read the Free Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) eBook .
SEO Tips- How to Write a Press Release for Optimal Web Marketing
November 4, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
What is a Press Release?
Press releases are among the most effective ways – if not the most effective way – to get one-way links from high traffic news sites, but you must follow a certain set of guidelines or it will be nothing more than wasted time and your press release will never be published. A press release is a statement of announcement used for publishing and distributing company information or business news throughout the Internet via web media distribution channels. General news releases, event announcements, business news, new product release announcements, and social media news all qualify as valid content for a press release.
How Press Releases can help your SEO and Web Marketing
Press releases play a very important role in SEO and web site marketing. Currently, one-way links are more valuable to your search e rankings than ever before. This is due to the fact that two-way links – most often referred to as “reciprocal links” – have decreased in value with regard to Google’s “Page rank” system, with most others soon to follow if they have not already. With that in mind, playing an active role in generating news for PR web can serve as your best resource for getting one-way links and generating new traffic to your site without paying a dime. Be aware however, that credible PR web sites have strict criteria for the content that they publish. For example, it absolutely must be newsworthy, grammatically correct, without spelling errors, it must sound professional, and it must give the impression that a decent amount of time was put into it.
The benefit to you is that you may publish your company details including the services you offer, your web address and contact details along with your press release. Be careful not to make your press release sound like an advertisement though, or it will not be considered for publishing. The key here is to go into it with the objective of creating something valuable and informative for the reader.
There are a lot of news websites available that provide free services for publishing your news releases. The real advantage though, is that these websites provide services for distributing that news to subscribers of their news feeds. What this means, is that while you may publish your release to five PR web sites, it will likely end up on twenty or thirty different sites if it follows the criteria stated above. The important thing to remember is that the more valuable and informative that you make your content, the more it will be picked up by additional web sites. Here are some tips to keep in mind when writing your press release:
Tips for writing an effective press release:
1) The press release headline should be short, clear and to the point. Treat press release headlines and sub-heads as the ultra-compact version of your entire press release content.
2) Your press release summary should be informative. Try to avoid the use long sentences and lengthy paragraphs.
3) Start your press release with the “5 Ws” – who, what, when, where, why, and sometimes how. This will make your press release more enlightening and attractive to the editors of the sites you are publishing to.
4) Don’t forget to include your company information below the press release content. Prepare a brief summary of your company services with the contact details, your website name, and email id for communicating. Most PR sites offer a “company bio” section, which appears under the published release.
Vision Media Corporation is a Phoenix & Las Vegas based website design and Search Engine Optimization, software, and ecommerce development firm specializing in new approaches to information technology and its relationship to marketing strategies and business models.

