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Search Engine Optimization Services This is the first search engine optimization course I purchased back in 1997!
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3.5 Reasons You Need To Forget About Search Engines
Have you ever stopped to think how much time is taken up over the course of a year just by that niggling thought at the back of your mind;
"Am I on the first page?"
I bet it if you counted up all the times you did it you would be looking at hours, maybe even days! But are search engines really that important to the success of your website? No, they're not - here's why..
1. They waste your time.
Admit it - you spend hours just seeing where in the rankings you appear when you could be spending that time improving your business, adding more great content to your website or following up on those sales leads.
2. They owe you nothing.
There is nothing more dangerous than your website's traffic and hence your business' revenue being dependent on one type of resource (i.e. search engine) or worse still one particular search engine. They can change the way they list and rank sites over night - they are not indebted to provide you with consistent traffic. Just look at the latest sweeping changes made by Google - businesses literally went under as a result of being solely dependent on one primary source of visitors.
3. They sap your soul.
There can be nothing more disheartening than seeing your ranking in the search engines either fall from page 1 to page 99 or disappear completely. People can get caught up in a mesmerising dance with the search engines constantly changing their site to pander to the needs of the search engines. Remember this - high ranking in the search engines does not equal profit.
What brings you profit is a good product or service, an excellent website with valuable content and a great conversion rate of visitor into customer. 99% of website owners think their problem is lack of visitors - it's not, it's lack of understanding of what it takes to convert the current visitors into customers. Only worry about your search engine ranking if you've got all other elements of your business and your website as close to perfection as they can be.
3.5 They're not the be all and end all.
There are much better ways to attract visitors via the web than search engines. Website owners who really know their stuff and have invested 100s of hours marketing their website (or got experts like magnet4web to do it for them!) attract over 80% of their visitors via sources other than search engines - directories, links etc.
If a search engine goes bust or changes the way it ranks you and you rely on it too heavily you can suffer in a big way. If the vast majority of your traffic comes from many, many links then you can still continue to thrive.
Remember - traffic from search engines should be treated as an additional source of visitors to your website - not the only source.
Michael Cheney is Author of The Website Marketing BibleTM. Take the Free 7-Part Course "Internet Marketing Made Easy" and get your free sampler of 'The Bible' here: http://www.websitemarketingbible.com/marketing/
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Submitting Your Site to Search Engines and Directories
Regardless of which type of business you currently have, you will definately want to have a website and begin marketing it on the world wide web. After you have designed your website, the next step is to ensure it is properly "optimized", meaning that it's body text(the text you see), title and meta tags(the text that you don't) all have the words you are trying to be found for on the search engine results.
Search Engine Optimisation - Getting Targeted Traffic
Getting SEO right is an art and it's based on theory and best practice. The search engines don't publish their algorithms so getting it right is like finding the exact formula for Coca Cola.
How MSN and Yahoo Sells Your Traffic
Yes, it really happens. Now you might find it hard to believe but you will understand after I explain.
Five FAQ About Google PageRank
Five FAQ about Google PageRank
Dont Focus Too Much on Your Internet Business Website Ranking
No doubt, having a high search engine ranking is very important to a home business owner as it will increase their business revenue. Much money have been spend on search engine optimization software, books, ebook and SEO services in order to obtain a high ranking website.
Five Simple Steps to Getting Links to Your Site
Today if you want your site to survive in the search engines your going to need backlinks. Almost all the major search engines rank sites based on the number and the quality of backlinks. Besides getting a good search engine ranking with links, it also one of the most effective ways to increase a site's traffic. So, how do you build your link popularity? In this article I'll show you 5 simple steps that will help you build your site's link popularity.
Youve Got The Power, Why Arent You Promoting It?
Like all things, theft is theft, misery loves company, negative people are everywhere, business is sometimes bad, things go up and others go down.
Google Contest - Nigritude Ultramarine
Search engine optimization experts are having fun with Google. Experts, with DarkBlue.com at the helm, are holding a contest to determine how Google really works. Experts are competing, with the goal of optimizing a webpage for a non-sensical phrase: 'nigritude ultramarine'.
Pay Per Click Versus ?Organic? Search Engine Listings - The Pros and Cons and Best Uses for Each
What's the difference?
7 Simple Steps to Spy on Your Online Competition and Acheive a High Page Rank
My Grandfather ran a small Grocery Store and when you would ask him a Question about his Business he would laugh and reply does Macy's Tell Gimbel's. (At the Time Gimbel's was a major Competitor of Macy's in the New York Department Store Market.) Well if Macy's were on the Internet back then they could be telling Gimbel's a lot. If Gimbel's knew which tool's to use and what steps to take to 'spy' on Macy's.
Keywords, Choose Them Wisely
By now you have likely heard that keywords and keyword phrases, are extremely important in having search engines display your website. So how do you choose them? Guess? Ask a friend? Check successful competitors sites? There is a better way!
How to Avoid the Google Duplicate Content Filter?
More and more webmasters are building websites with publicly available content (data feeds, news feeds, articles). This results in websites with duplicate content on the Internet. In cases of websites build on news feeds or data feeds you can even find websites that match each other 100% (except for the design). Several copies of the same content in a search engine does not really do any good and so Google apparently decided to weed out some of this duplicate content to be able to deliver cleaner and better search results.
SEO Blues
SEO, not again!, you may groan. The webmaster world is inundated by articles and "how to's" with regard to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). If you are a rookie webmaster, chances are, like me, you may have embarked on a merry-go-round on the SEO circuit, depending on which article and opinion you were first exposed to.
When to Hire a Professional SEO Firm?
In efforts to increase sales and profitability, more and more companies are turning to online marketing initiatives ? specifically, search engine optimization. Search Engine Optimization or (SEO) is the art and science of blending technical and marketing skills together into a finely tuned website that is both search engine-friendly, ranks well for specific keywords and phrases, and is tailored to your audience from a buyer and seller perspective.
Cracking the Google Code: Under the GoogleScope
Google's sweeping changes confirm the search giant has launched a full out assault against artificial link inflation & declared war against search engine spam in a continuing effort to provide the best search service in the world? and if you thought you cracked the Google Code and had Google all figured out ? guess again.
How to Build Massive Keyword Lists
As keyword marketing becomes more and more expensive and competitive, it has become essential when building your lists to focus on the maximum number of phrases and their variations that a surfer might enter into the search engines.
A Way for Search Engines to Improve
Wouldn't it be nice if the search engines could comprehend our impressions of search results and adjust their databases accordingly? Properly optimized web pages would show up well in contextual searches and be rewarded with favorable reviews and listings. Pages which were spam or which had content that did not properly match the query would get negative responses and be pushed down in the search results.
Website Submission - What You May Not Know About Search Engine Indexing
Getting your website listed in the search engines is relatively easy if you submit it, but even if you don't you can still get your website indexed by the larger search engines by following a few simple tips. The reason for this is the search engines spiders search the web on a daily basis looking for new websites to index, old ones that are no longer valid, and the like. So, if you follow these simple steps, the search engines spiders will pick up your website and index it without you even having to submit it. As a matter of fact, you will generally see your website appear in the search engines faster by simply using other methods to get listed instead of submitting your URL. Follow these suggestions and the spiders will pick up your site when they are out making their rounds.
Google PageRank Explained
PageRank - an exclusive technology developed by Google which can have a major impact on the success of your website. This article will attempt to explain the concept of PageRank and how your ranking can be improved without spending any money at all.How is PageRank beneficial?Google refers to the technology as a way of evaluating the usefulness, importance, and quality of a website. The PR of a webpage can mean different things for different people.For a webmaster, a high PR is a sign of accomplishment. It shows that your website is moving in the right direction and has the potential to become successful. PageRank also directly effects your Google search engine listings. Acquiring a higher PR than your competition could mean more traffic for you, and less traffic for your competitors.Visitors to your website probably won't care about the page's rank (most surfers have no idea what PageRank is). However, visitors who understand PageRank may use your PR as a sign of how credible your content is. Would you rather use the information from a website with 0 PR or a website with 5 PR and hundreds of other websites linking to it?How is PageRank determined?PageRank is basically determined by backlinks. A backlink is when another page links to your page. For every page that links to you, that page is "voting" for you. The more votes you get, the better your PageRank will be. However, it gets more complicated than that because some votes weigh more heavily than others. The weight of the vote is determined by the PageRank of the page linking to you. This means that a couple links from pages with high PR could be more beneficial than hundreds of links from pages with low PR. But it gets even more complicated - each page can only transfer so much PageRank. The set amount of PR that the page can transfer must be split up between each "vote" that the page gives out. This means that a PR 7 page could actually give out as much weight per vote as a PR 3 page if it had too many outgoing links.How can I improve my PageRank?There are many different methods to obtain quality backlinks to your website. You will find that some methods work better than others depending on the subject and popularity of your site.DirectoriesSubmitting your website to directories is one of the best ways to increase your PageRank and even get some traffic at the same time. But submitting your site to just a few directories won't be good enough. You need to sit down and spend the necessary time to submit your site to a large amount of directories. This may seem like a painstakingly long process, but you'll be glad you did it when you notice results. I have taken the time to make a large list of free directories with high PageRank which you visit here. Although directories with low PR may seem like a waste of time, you should submit your site to them too because it still helps and they could eventually become a high PR site which charges money to submit to.Link ExchangesA very common practice to improve your PageRank is a link exchange. This is simply where two people link to the other person's website. It's best that you only link exchange with someone who has at least as much PR as you and the subject of the two websites are similar. If you receive a link from a website with a subject which has nothing to do with yours, you'll find that very little if any PR will actually be transferred to you.Forum SignaturesIf you are an active user on a forum or message board, it would be wise to put a link to your website in your signature. This could help improve your PageRank if the forum has a high PR, it could help improve your traffic from the forum members seeing your signature, and your site could get spidered more often because it is linking to a forum (forums generally have a lot of new content every day and search engines love new content).Buy AdvertisingAlthough it isn't the best of choices, many webmasters will buy text link ads on websites with high PR. Although this can be effective, it can be very expensive and only a temporary thing. If you purchase text links for just a couple months, after the months are over you won't have the backlinks which were giving you the "votes" you needed to keep your PageRank. So you have now spent a large amount of money on text links, but in the end you're right back where you started.ArticlesThis is a method which not many people know about. Basically, you write articles about the subjects you know a lot about. You then let other people use these articles as long as they provide a link back to your site. If you wrote a quality article, you'll find many websites will want to use it, thus giving you plenty of backlinks. This method can work well with anything which you develope and give away for free such as scripts, web design, etc.Stay On Google's Good SideThe most important thing to remember when trying to increase your PageRank is to not cheat and to always follow the rules. The people which run Google aren't fools and they have many ways of catching cheaters. Don't even think about using any of the "link farms" or trying to hide keywords on your pages. If caught, you may not get unbanned for many months.Make A Quality WebsiteIf you have a quality website which your visitors enjoy going to, then you will receive backlinks without having to do anything. Websites will link to you with the intention of informing people of a helpful resource, or showing off a cool new website they found, or any other reason other than trying to increase your PageRank. If you build it, backlinks will come...
An Easy Way Not to Get Banned by Google
Strategic search engine optimization involves far more than keyword research, META tags and content.