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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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Its Not Just All About Google Anymore
Those webmasters that stick to the old ways and focus entirely on Google are missing out on a lot of search traffic these days if they are not also well ranked by Yahoo and MSN.
For the first few months after Yahoo decided to go their own way with natural search (and MSN decided to get serious about the search business), the search results provided by those two could only be described as bizarre. Enough time has now passed that the dust has somewhat settled and there are three main (from a traffic standpoint) sites for quality natural searches.
The term "natural search" is to distinguish true searches, as opposed to paid advertisements which appear in the search results for many search engines these days. I guess you can't really fault the search engine companies from wanting to make some money (actually, BIG money) selling ad space, but the debate over the virtues of natural search versus paid advertising search is something that could make up a very thick book and still have no clear resolution...much like debates revolving around religion or politics.
Like most people that have been working as online home business entrepreneurs for a few years, I was strongly conditioned to the need to "feed the 800 pound gorilla" of the search engine world. Basically, "if Google didn't love you", it was very difficult to get any meaningful natural search traffic to your website. Since Google was actually the search engine that was serving up the results for most of the popular search portals, if Google didn't look kindly upon your site and rank you well, you would not be ranked well for most of the high traffic search sites on the Internet.
However, the search landscape changed dramatically early in 2004 and things have been very fluid and interesting since that time. Its not that Google has stumbled, or become ineffective as a search vehicle, its just that major players like Yahoo and Microsoft (via MSN) have decided to make a major thrust into the search business.
Having been firmly conditioned (since shortly after 1998) that Google was the "supreme deity of search engines", I took the highly publicized search entries of Yahoo and MSN with more than the proverbial "grain of salt".
Throughout a recent three month period, one of my websites occupied the #5 position on Google, Yahoo, and MSN for a very popular and important (at least in my line of business) three word search term. This situation provided an opportunity to measure the current popularity of each of these three search providers.
If asked "before the fact", I would have guessed that Google would still be the overwhelming #1 search choice and that Yahoo and MSN would be distant #2 and #3 choices. Therefore, I was somewhat surprised by the results that were tabulated during this recent 90 day period.
For the period in question, the search popularity results were as follows:
Google: 33%
Yahoo: 31%
MSN: 23%
All others: 13%
Granted, the above results are for a single search term over a particular 90 day time period, but the results clearly show that Yahoo and MSN are already important players in the search business.
Kirk Bannerman operates his own successful home based business and also coaches others seeking to start their own home based business. For more information visit his website at Proven Work At Home Business
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Search Engine Position Report
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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...
Five FAQ About Google PageRank
Five FAQ about Google PageRank
How Do I Submit My Site To Search Engines?
You've built up a good site, put in a lot of content, but none of the search engines lists your site? If you'd like to know how to go ahead with Search Engine Submission the right way, read on.
Google Rankings -- Achieve Top 10 Rankings with Free Tools
In order to get a top 10 google ranking it is imperative to not only know how to use the resources that are available to us, but to also know what to do with them. The key is always to find out what tools are the ones to use. In my experience, there are two tools I use almost daily to help my sites achieve top 10 rankings.
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