Basics of Search Engine Optimization

Basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Author: Biana Babinsky

Have you heard stories about legendary online entrepreneurs who hit it big after getting a #1 rank in several popular search engines? You probably wondered what it would take for you to achieve that elusive #1 spot in the search engine result pages (SERPs). Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a vital role in ensuring that your business gets the best possible search engine ranking, which can lead to increased sales for your online company.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Search engine optimization is the process of modifying web page content and meta-information to improve the search engine ranking of the page. Meta-information includes certain HTML tags (title, heading, emphasized text, keyword and description meta-tags), as well as the internal (links between pages on the same site) and external (links between pages on different sites) link structure of a web site.

Impact of High Search Engine Rank on Sales

Internet market research estimates that between 70% and 90% of online shoppers use search engines to find a specific product or service. Let's examine factors that influence sales to see how effective search engine optimization can boost your revenues.

Three metrics are required to forecast online sales: the average ticket, the conversion rate, and the amount of web site traffic:

* The average ticket is the amount of money spent by a customer on a typical transaction. Computer and electronics stores have high average tickets (hundreds or thousands of dollars), while bookstores have low average tickets (tens of dollars).

* Web Site traffic is measured by the number of site visitors, typically expressed as the number of page views per month.

* Conversion rate is the number of sales divided by the number of page views per month, expressed as a percentage.

Let's look at an example. The Ultimate Taupe Widget (UTW) store has an average ticket of $25, a conversion rate of 2%, and gets 5,000 page views per month. The estimated monthly sales are $2,500 ($25 average ticket * 0.02 conversion rate expressed as a decimal * 5,000 page views per month). Achieving a high search engine rank will increase the number of page views, and therefore increase sales. In this example, if traffic doubles to 10,000 page views a month, UTW's monthly sales should (approximately) double as well (to $5,000).

Keep in mind that a high search engine rank will produce a measurable increase in traffic only if there is significant marketplace interest in taupe widgets and your web site appears in the first thirty search engine results.

However, search engine optimization is not going to produce measurable results if there is very little demand for taupe widgets. The #1 spot in search engine result pages is not particularly impressive if only two people search for "taupe widgets" each month. Role of Keywords in Search Engine Optimization

Keywords are words or phrases users provide to search engines to locate information. Search engines examine page content to determine whether a specific page is relevant for a particular search word or phrase. Thus, effective keyword selection is one of the cornerstones of search engine optimization.

Each keyword is characterized by supply (number of search engine result pages) and demand (number of searches). The easiest way to improve search engine rank is to select keywords that have favorable supply-demand characteristics; that is, ones with a relatively high demand and a relatively low supply. It is much more difficult to improve the search engine position of a page on a high supply, competitive keyword.

Good keywords must be relevant to your product line, as well as your line of business. A #1 rank for "navy widgets" is worthless if you sell taupe widgets exclusively. A potential customer will find your page, quickly discover that you don't sell any navy widgets, and promptly go elsewhere. In effect, the conversion rate for irrelevant search engine hits is very close to zero.

Using Keywords Effectively

Choosing a set of target keywords is the first step in search engine optimization. The second step is using them in the body, title, headings, and meta-tags of a page.

Include the target keywords in the text of the page. Don't overdo it, though --- the keywords should fit smoothly into the surrounding text. Search engines use several techniques to detect excessive keyword density, or too many keywords stuffed into very little supporting text, and will reduce the rank accordingly. A page has too many keywords if they interfere with the general flow of the text on a page and appear to be glaringly out of place

The title tag should contain information that describes the page. Unless you operate a multi-national conglomerate that is already a household name, your company's name is not a descriptive title. Most search engines use the title tag as the first line of your listing in the search engine result pages. Strive to make your title tag say "click me" to a prospective customer. "Superior taupe widgets - 50% off every day" is a good page title, while "Ultimate Taupe Widgets, Inc." is not.

Incorporate keywords into the headings on the page, as well as into emphasized sections (bold or large text). Even though search engines are de-emphasizing descriptive meta-tags, include keywords in them nevertheless. The description meta-tag should have an accurate description of your page, and the keywords meta-tag should contain a set of keywords (separated by commas) that list key concepts mentioned on the page.

Understanding the basics of search engine optimization is an important first step in creating an optimized, well-positioned web site.

Biana Babinsky shows you how to drive thousands of targeted visitors to your web site in her Step by Step Search Engine Optimization Special Report. Learn more about the report at http://avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zseo

Telford Council pension scheme

Telford Council Pension

Author: Adrian Lawrence

Telford Council Pension

It is quite a welcome sight to see a government unit that really aims to do what it can to help or aid its constituents. We are assured that our taxes are really going to the right channels and is not being misused, misallocated or left idle. But what happens if despite well-meaning or noble intentions something still happens that is not entirely positive and could even jeopardise the money that you have contributed?

This is the dilemma that is actually being faced by the Telford & Wrekin Council.

Telford & Wrekin is a borough located in the West Midlands. The Telford & Wrekin Council is the unitary authority that has been tasked to oversee all of the local government services in the area. This includes education, libraries, social services, health and sanitation, as well as the distribution of certain social services.

The Telford & Wrekin Council has instituted a final salary scheme for its constitutents. A final salary scheme, otherwise known as a defined benefit scheme, is a very generous pension type. It basically pays you a guaranteed and set percentage of your final salary depending on your length of service.

The scheme, on paper, is quite beneficial and a great way of allocating money towards your retirement. But because of recent events, this final salary scheme has created a number of problems for the citizens of Telford & Wrekin.

The problem is centered around the deficit the Council has to contend with. As of March 2005, that deficit already stands at £91 million. There are a lot of factors that has caused this problem. One factor is that staff are living longer and their respective salaries are rising faster than inflation. This puts a burden on the scheme because it now has to pay ever larger amounts of pension to new retirees, and they have to do this for a longer amount of time than previously anticipated.

Secondly, the level of contributions are not rising quickly enough to bridge the growing deficit. Even if the amount of contributions are rising, it is still not enough to try to catch up with the deficit which is progressively ballooning.

Faced with these problems, the Telford & Wrekin Council still has to contend with the after effects of this problem. First, the government has taken away its tax credits, making it doubly harder for them because the council now has to deal with rising taxes that they are obligated to pay.

These compounding problems have not been ignored by the borough’s employees’ union, which is now threatening to carry out mass actions in order to bring attention to the problem of the final salary scheme. These employees are afraid that their contributions are now just being used to pay off retirees and that when it comes time for them to retire, there won’t be any money left for their pensions.

Clearly, drastic action is needed in order to solve this problem. The national government could possibly give assistance to the council in order to resolve the deficit and alleviate the worries of the staff, whose collective futures are being threatened by this grave problem.

Adrian Lawrence is a councillor on the Telford & Wrekin Council This article can be freely republished provided a working hyperlink remains.

Best of the Web

http://botw.org/top/Arts/Writers_Resources/Self_Publishing/ We have Article Alley listed here but its been 12 months and Google hasn't picked it up. I guess its because there are no other links to it.

Probably the pagination issue we have seen on other directories.

SEO Content Distribution

Organic SEO Through Content Distribution

Author: Gerrick W
Organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) seems to be the buzzword these days. What is organic SEO? In its simplest explanation, organic SEO is publicity through content distribution. All your incoming links originate from content you created for your website or blog. And boy, search engines love this kind of linking structure.

Marketing through articles is organic Search Engine Optimization. Your article and the link in your author's resource box generate incoming links from other niche websites related to yours. Good quality original content will generate incoming links and drive targeted web traffic to your website fast. This is the kind of activity search engines love, and would in turn lead to higher web page ranking and increase in web traffic. Writing Articles

This is an effective way of gaining publicity for yourself and your site. Write about your experiences, expertise, hobbies or passion. As a rule of thumb, keep your articles at about 400 to 700 words in length. The issue is not the length of the article. It is the quality of it. But for a start, it is good to adhere to the rule of thumb. Tips on effective use of articlesBefore you start to write, do a research on keyword phrases related to your topic of interest. There are a few free online webmasters' tools you could utilize (nichebot.com, wordtracker trial). Normally, the top ranked keyword phrases are highly competitively. A top ranked keyword with little or zero competition is a rare find these days.

Go for the middle ranked keyword phrase. After all, your goal is to be found on the first page of SERP for your selected keyword phrase. Include your keyword phrase in your article title and repeat your keyword phrase at least once or twice in the body of your article. You may also want to use sparingly and strategically a variation of your keyword phrase or terms related to it. You may notice in this article I use SEO and Search Engine Optimization, which are interchangeable terms but to the search engines they are variations.

I also use search engines and webmasters which are terms related to SEO. Using a variation of your keyword phrase and terms related to it makes your article more relevant to your topic. With such an arrangement, chances are you may score well at the search engines for more than one keyword phrase. Post your articles on your site, blog and article directories. Spreading your content all over the web is a fast way to get website visitors. I submit my articles to ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com and articlealley.com.

These article directories work well for me. Their high rankings at the search engines give me good publicity. Other webmasters related to your niche will pick up your high quality articles and link to your web page through your author's resource box. This is an organic way of growing incoming links. Major search engines like Google look favorably on organically grown one-way links, and reward you.Most webmasters archived articles for 1 or 2 years because this is a quick way to increase content and the size of their websites. So you can be assured of incoming links for at least 1 or 2 years. It would be worth your time and effort to write or to hire someone to write keyword rich articles and distribute them over the web. The results can be astounding at times.Gerrick W
mailto:gw@1stinternetmarketingsolution.comInformation and Software Tools You Need to Effectively Promote Your Online Business.Visit: http://www.1stinternetmarketingsolution.com

Back in SEO time

Back in Time to the Advent of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)


Author: Wendy Suto

As long as the Internet has been around, it has remained a mystery to the mainstream public how Web sites are listed at the top of search engine results. There are many theories of how search engines and search engine optimization (SEO) initially began.The 1990sAlan Emtage, a student at the University of McGill, created the first “search” program in 1990 called Archie (still in use today), to archive Web documents.

The following year, Gopher started at the University of Minnesota, and this is when the concept of search engines began. In 1993, Matthew Gray created the World Wide Web Wanderer, the earliest known search engine robot that assists with ranking Web sites. But search engines as we use them today were born in 1994. In that same year, Galaxy, Lycos and Yahoo! were all started, two of which are still widely popular search engines today.Yahoo! was among the first to implement SEO techniques, even though at the time they were unaware of the potential growth the industry would soon have at the turn of the century. Yahoo! Founders David Filo and Jerry Yang were trying to get their site seen by others on the Internet by giving it more exposure. Some excellent structure and tricky hand-coding, their site became more available for new visitors.

They were not questioned about ethical business practices because nobody was sure what was considered ethical or unethical – there were simply no standards in place yet.As the initial search engines were cataloging the early Internet, many business owners soon learned to appreciate the value of their Web site being listed in the search engines, as they first saw increases in visitors to their Web sites. They began submitting their URLs on a continuous basis, and changed their sites to support the needs of search engine robots. SEO companies started showing up, when they began experimenting with the concept of search engine optimization, with the emphasis initially on the submission process alone. Soon afterwards, the first automatic submission software was released, and it was then the notion of Spam came into existence.

The 2000sSEO professionals have been seen in a negative light over the last five years, due in part because in early 2001, enthusiastic webmasters quickly realized they could overwhelm search engine result pages by over submitting Web sites.

Unfortunately, as the Internet industry developed, search engines quickly became cautious of new SEO companies attempting to generate visitors for their clients at any cost, however unfair or unethical. Tactics such as keyword spamming, doorway pages, cloaking, and hidden white text placed on white backgrounds proved too much for the search engines to tolerate. As a result, the search engines replied with numerous countermeasures, created to filter out any techniques considered spam.

That is good news, although it forced ethical SEO companies to start using more subtle techniques to assist their clients Web sites with obtaining rankings in the engines. The “big 3” search engines, Google, MSN and Yahoo!, have recently come to the realization that SEO as an industry is here to stay, and to maintain effective results, they needed to accept the industry, even embrace it, and engines eventually partnered with successful, ethical SEO companies to establish typical standards for fair and ethical optimization. This is important to help keep information relevant and beneficial to visitors while still being unbiased to people who create the content on their Web sites.

The Current State of SEOToday, there are major differences in how search engines work and how to get ranked in them. With the assistance of proper search engine optimization, Web sites can now have a equal fighting chance of obtaining high rankings. Because SEO is a highly specialized trade that requires both technical skills and business marketing knowledge, it is only through the combination of these two skills that one can properly implement SEO techniques to obtain high search engine rankings. Many SEO specialists have since now realized it is “search engines or bust.”

Vertical Creep

Vertical Creep in Search Results :: Should Organic Optimizers be Concerned?

Author: Rob Sullivan

I thought for this week I’d give a summary of some of the more interesting Search Engine Strategies sessions which are currently going on in New York City. I was at SES as a speaker last year in New York and I have to say, there is a wealth of information there even if some of it is contradictory. Not only that ,but you get to meet some amazing people and can even have one on one access with some of the search engine reps. Overall, I found it to be a worthwhile experience. This year, like many people, I wasn’t able to attend. However, I wanted to keep up with the news, so I found a great source of reports and updates. I will summarize the most important sessions to the best of my ability. In my opinion, one of the most crucial topics is Vertical Creep. Vertical creep is when non-organic and non-paid results start occupying top spots in search results.

Verticals started showing up in search results back when Altavista was popular, and since then have grown into a much more sophisticated part of the overall search engine results page. Greg Jarboe was the first to speak of vertical creep and introduced everyone to verticals. All the engines have verticals in some form or another nowadays. Google has its famous “OneBox” which is generally the place immediately below the top sponsored ads but immediately above the organic results. This is where you will find news, Froogle, and image results which may match a query. For example, I wrote a few weeks ago about how, when you searched for Olympics on Google, you were presented with video results at the top of the page. But it doesn’t stop there. Do a search for New Orleans, for example, and in Google you are presented with not only news results but also map results, pushing the organic results down so that only the top 2 or 3 results are showing.

Much less than the typical 4 or 5 we are used to seeing. One of the biggest impacts of Verticals is the “stretching” of the search results page. It is becoming ever clearer that everything but the top 1 or 2 organic is worth less because it could be pushed below the fold, whereas sponsored’s value is increasing because there are less organic results visible. According to Gord Hotchkiss, however, the impact on verticals, at least on Yahoo! And MSN, isn’t as great. His firm has recently completed research on how users interact with search engines. The Yahoo! MSN research performed by Hotchkiss’ firm is a follow up to Google research the firm completed last year at this time. According to Hotchkiss, Google does a better job of incorporating Verticals into results. Google users are more accepting of them while Yahoo! and MSN users tend to scan more of the results on a page, thereby negating the impact verticals have on organic results.

This could mean a couple of things. First, as Hotchkiss suggests, Google may have “trained” its users. We are used to seeing the verticals (and hit bolding and inconsistently displayed sponsored results) and are therefore more accepting to the varying page changes, while Yahoo! and MSN users are less forgiving, perhaps because they feel the results displayed are less relevant. This isn’t too hard to believe considering he gave an example of searching for New York Pizza on MSN and NOT getting pizza places but getting news about pizza in New York. Personally, I too have experienced this, especially with MSN. It seems to have more of a problem determining what types of verticals are relevant to the searcher. Bob Carilli was up next and presented a case study on how effective verticals have been for one of his clients.

Through some analysis they found that Froogle shopping results were showing up a lot for his clients’ competitive keyword terms, yet the Froogle listings were unoptimized. They responded by creating a data feed for Froogle which was optimized to target these great phrases which had poor Froogle listings. As a result, his client’s site quickly moved to the top of the Froogle listings for those phrases. While it is unclear, I would assume this would have translated into similar top rankings in the Google area where Froogle is displayed. This also shows that, as search marketers, we shouldn’t rely solely on SEO or PPC.

There are dozens of verticals out there we could tap into if we had an open mind. If you look at Google alone, there are opportunities in Google News (with properly optimized press releases), Froogle, as mentioned above, Google Local, Google Base, Google Video and more. Similarly, with Yahoo! and MSN there are verticals to research. Both engines also have a shopping portal, as well as news, video and local results. In the end, verticals could become the “poor man’s” SEO tactic. If you can’t compete organically and can’t pay for top sponsored, perhaps you can optimize your product feed to appear ahead of all your competitors? Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com. Textlinkbrokers is the trusted leader in building long term rankings through safe and effective link building. Please provide a link directly to Textlinkbrokers when syndicating this article.

Improve your King Content

Some ways to improve your king content


Author: Mike Pham

There are thousands of articles, books and forum posts which showed that content is king in search engine optimization (SEO). In this article, you can find some ways that can help you improve this king content for your web site.* Content for people first, not for search engines - Some webmasters make a common mistake that they optimize everything for search engines but forget about web visitors. The goal of our website is not only to get high search rankings, but also to sell our service.

So you should give your web visitors what they are really looking for. Make sure your content flows naturally and you're not just trying to stuff more keywords in the interest of search engines. If users don't find your content convincing they won't buy from you.* Studying popular search terms - High search engine ranking is meaningless if your website only ranks high on terms nobody searches for. You need to ask your colleagues, vendors, competitors, clients, ... or use online tools (e.g.: wordtracker.com) to identify what keywords which potential customers would use to search your web site, then try to use them often, in titles, and throughout the body.* Building article directory - How can you optimize the content if your web site only offers a simple service? It means there are just several pages in your whole website. So, to increase the content in quality you should write some articles, reviews which are related to your service.

A site with more web pages means there are more chances of different terms that will become findable in search engines. You may consider adding free articles to your article directory. On the Internet today, one can find a lot of websites which provide articles free for republishing. Of course you must accept the policy of these web sites and authors before using these articles.* Making a clear website organization - Build a site which is simple to navigate with a well linking structure.

Every page should be accessible from at least one text link. It's better to be sparing with image links, Flash, JavaScript drop-down menus, or other codes that are not HTML based... because the search engine crawlers cannot recognize text contained in these kinds of display. In case using them is required, then make sure a text based menu or a sitemap is also included in the Web site. Last but not least, you should use meaningful words in your URLs, use as simple a web page layout and design as possible.In conclusion, it is undeniable that content is king in the kingdom of search engines.

The quality of your content is the main factor which decides the success in Internet marketing. So improving your content is very necessary.About the authorArticle by Mike Pham of http://www.TopTrafficWholesaler.com. Increase your site sales with our targeted website traffic and Free search engine submission.(Please feel free to republish this article together with working hyperlinks in my bio)