Internet and Businesses Articles

Business recognises the importance of SEO like never before. The growth in the search engine marketing field has been incredible, far exceeding most other industries. In the past achieving listings in search engines has been very much taken for granted by many businesses, being treated as less important as the standard marketing methods such as newspaper, television and radio advertising. With more internet consumers utilising search as their first options for finding a business of choice, search engine marketing has come to the forefront of marketing.

A few main advantages of search engine marketing over other marketing methods are:

1. The cost by comparison is quite low to perform search engine marketing over other forms of marketing. 2. Internet users are often much more qualified by the time they find your site as they have been searching for your specific service or product. 3. Your advertising is running seven days a week, twenty four hours a day. To attain this kind of exposure through any other form of marketing would blow any businesses marketing budget out the window.

The fact that SEO is a much cheaper form of advertising (and an extremely effective one) has not gone
unnoticed for many savvy businesses. Realisation that cost of acquisition is markedly cheaper means that many companies are directing increased resources from their marketing budgets towards search engine marketing campaigns.

In the search engine marketing game, Google is clearly the leader. Estimates vary as to how much of the market Google actually has, but most estimates are around 75%. This being the case; while it is important to focus on Google, Yahoo and MSN when optimising your site, the majority of focus should be spent on Google.

If you don't have a proper SEM strategy in place, or part of your marketing budget set aside for search engine marketing, I suggest that you seriously rethink your marketing strategy and look at the benefits that your company or business can achieve through having a strong presence in the search engines. You can be fairly certain that your competitors are either utilising search engine marketing, or seriously considering it.

Do you really want them having a competitive advantage over you with your business being left behind?

Andrew Seidel - SEO Specialist and Search Engine Marketing Consultant in Sydney, Australia: http://www.quantumwebsolutions.com.au/

Search Engine Marketing is possibly the most credible form of advertising!

In the majority of cases, for a search engine user to find your website they need to go into their favourite search engine and type in keywords for what they are looking for. Due to the accuracy of results provided by search engines these days, there is a very good chance that an internet searcher will find the type of business they are looking for within the first two pages of their favourite search engine, especially if they are using Google, Yahoo or MSN.

When a business uses television advertising, newspaper advertising, or any other type of form of advertising,
they are targeting a very broad range of consumers, and many viewers of these mediums have no interest in the product they are viewing. There are advantages to this; after all if an advertisement is well designed, it may create a need (or want) in consumers which will entice them to go out and buy that product or service. Television advertising is the best medium for creating needs that weren't previously there as television stimulates the consumer through both visual and sound to capture the consumers' attention; a main reason why television advertising is so expensive as a marketing option.

Unlike most forms of marketing, the internet gives you the opportunity to provide considerable information to the consumer.

If your website is well organised and laid out, with out overwhelming the consumer with too much information, it can provide the information needed to sell your product or service.

The information on your website should cater both for the people looking for a brief overview of what you offer, as well as a more detailed overview for those people that like to drill down into detail. Unless your website is purely an information website where people want to spend considerable time reading through everything, then you should avoid going into lengthy detail. If you have too much information, people will often lose interest altogether and will likely close your website and start looking at your competitors.

I strongly recommend that if your website is not bringing in the business that you would like, you make it a priority to have a professional company like Quantum Web Solutions analyse your website and give you advice on how to improve it, and start generating more business for you.

Why is this so important? Because in today's ever evolving internet market, more and more consumers trust the internet and search engine results before other advertising mediums to bring them the product or service they desire. If you are not positioned well, then you are missing out on valuable business.

Andrew Seidel - SEO Specialist and Search Engine Marketing Consultant in Sydney, Australia. http://www.quantumwebsolutions.com.au/

You've seen it action for as long as you can remember. Sometimes your in awe in what you see other times your simply bored with it and decide to focus on something else .

You've been getting marketing lessons even before you decided to start your own business.

But because you expect it to be there regardless and it's as common now as the air you breathe you may or may not have picked up on some of these valuable lessons .

Be warned...this style of marketing , credibility building , online link building and branding may not be for every one at this time but do add it to your long term to do list for your business plans .

I promise you it will be well worth it and it will do wonders for your bottom line .

So just what is this over looked gold mine ?

It's called reporting , the box I'm talking about is your television and you know where to go when you want the latest news .

Quick brand test...

When you want to watch the news what channel do you turn to?

Yup , they've done a good job at branding and earning the amount of trust you've given them.

Think about it , do you have the time to go all the places and get this news first hand for yourself?

Do have the money to spend to go to far away places to get the cross country and over seas news you receive?

Guess what , your not the only one.

In your niche market are their offline events that others want to go to but can't afford to go or simply dont have the time?

How many of those people do you think would love to hear your report...to hear what all they had to miss this time ?

Some of these same people will buy from you, link to you, tell others about you.

This is a great way to enhance your natural search engine marketing efforts and boost your over all credibility level.

So...when ever you get the chance start going to offline events and be the trusted reporter your target market turn to with out having to think twice where to go to when they want their fill.

Your content will start showing up all over the net therefore increasing your link popularity , dont forget ezine owners who will email your content to there list and word of mouth buzz spreading through out different forums.

When you go to these events dont forget to take some pictures with some of the main keynote speakers . This will do wonders for your credibility as well.

Jermaine Tabor an SEO Specialist provide advanced Seo Training via his newsletter that you can apply to your site/s right now to boost your rankings in major search engines . http://www.seotradesecrets.com/

While Search Engine Optimization and Advertising are specific tasks to engage, Search Engine Marketing is the key component that actually determines hXow you will optimize and advertise on the web. It is the research, analysis, strategy planning that will determine the execution methods.

There is a distinct difference between SEM and SEO.

* SEO is the process of making changes to the HTML code of your web pages to be content rich in your specific niche and key phrase. This would include such tasks like modifications to your keywords, description, title tags, comment tags, alt descriptions, and title descriptions of anchors and the actual text of your web page.


* SEM on the other had is the process of integrating a variety of methods to insure the SEO work is successful. These methods will include research for your business, competitor analysis, link exchanges, articles, news, newsletters, audience analysis, and ultimately the method employed to generate traffic to your website.

It is the same distinction between the words "marketing" and "advertising".

* Marketing is the process or technique of promotion, selling and distributing a product or service.


* Advertising is to make your product or service publicly known; an announcement to call public attention by emphasizing qualities to arouse a desire to purchase.

There are two words that are feared in the SEM world: Patience and Change!

You will need ongoing commitment to making search-engine ranking a long-term investment in your website. You will need to give it time and energy - it isn't a quick fix.

Considerations with search engine patience:

* Search engines often change their ranking formula.


* Each search engine has its own algorithm (formula) to determine site ranking.


* META tag keywords are not a magic bullet to improve your ranking.


* Search engines can take many months to index new information, so patience...patience.

Search engine spiders can be extremely slow to index new information, so be patient! It may take months to see your changes affect your search engine ranking. Remember, a website is a dynamic marketing tool that you are building over time. Treat it well, give it a little love and attention, and your long-term rewards will be well worth your efforts!

If you thought nowadays search engine marketing can still be done by acquiring (and using) an auto-submission software, drop this thought immediately. This brings us to the other feared word, "change"! It is inevitable for technological changes to take effect with search engine algorithms. Websites drop rankings from 8 to zero over night. Because things keep changing, search engine marketers need to devote a good deal of time staying on top of the SEO industry and its trends. Watch your page ranking, your website statistics, your Alexa traffic ranking. All of these tools will allow you to find out if there are any significant changes occurring on the web.

Melih Oztalay is the CEO of SmartFinds Internet Marketing providing businesses with turn key marketing solutions on the web. Please visit SmartFinds at http://www.hsfideas.com

Search engines have become wiser and have put more scrutiny upon deciding page ranking and which websites are really important. Spending time on traditional on-page optimization and link building strategies will not get you that top ranking in Google. Don't get me wrong, you cannot stop doing these tasks, however, the marketing of your website will need to include a variety of other methods if you want to get top rankings. Search engines are looking for clean quality content to provide to their users and we will see the search engine market become more competitive.

Traditional search engine optimization will continue to be part of your efforts excepting for our methodology will change. You will continue to work on link exchanges, keywords, descriptions, titles, headlines, image alt descriptions, comments, and content. Now you will focus your keywords to be very specific and watch you density. Your descriptions will not be as long, but concentrate on more concise descriptions. You will want to watch your HTML coding to make the process easier for the search engine spiders. Try using fewer tables and consider Cascading Style Sheets. The link exchanges will have to be more specific to your industry and with websites that are authoritative in nature.

Authoritative websites is the direction to consider for 2006. Not only making your website an authority for your target market, but to exchange links with other websites that are authoritative for that same target market. What are authoritative websites to link with? Basically there are is a relatively small set of websites that can be trusted as authority, or expert websites. Government sites, university websites, well-recognized news sources, and recognized industry news sources are all examples of sites that can be considered as “expert” websites. These sites, unlike the average website on the Internet, can be trusted to “link honestly”.

Take the following example. I recently went to Google, MSN and Yahoo and searched on the term "internet marketing consultants" and the result on the first page for all three search engines were somewhat surprising. Instead of finding a page full of businesses that provide internet marketing services over 75% of the results were websites that were resources for internet marketing. A careful review of each of these websites revealed all of them to be content rich in their field of internet marketing. They did not provide any services other than information for others to use about internet marketing. For the purpose of this writing these results indicate (1) that making your site an authority for your field and industry is very important to achieve top ranking, and (2) you want to seek out these types of websites to create inbound links if possible and feasible. Otherwise engage a reciprocal link exchange.

Getting noticed by authority websites can be difficult, but with some creativity it can be done. If you make your business newsworthy, news outlets within your industry and without will pickup your news story and hopefully link over to your website. Traditional marketing and public relations requires you to make your company known as an authority within your industry. You should want your clients to know that you are the best source for whatever it is you sell, and that they should trust you. You gain this trust by being visible, not just through your website, but through the websites of other trusted sources such as news outlets. These types of marketing methods would include engaging in public relations, networking, attending trade shows, and talking to news sources both within your industry and outside of your industry.

Your website is a business. No different than a retail brick-and-mortar store you will spend as much time working your website as a regular any regular business. Do not believe that the comfort of your home or that you are working with computers and technology you are able to run your business any easier. The only thing that has changed is the venue, everything else is the same. You have to provide quality content, engage in activities that make your website known, and make your website the absolute best in your target market.

Melih Oztalay is the CEO of SmartFinds Internet Marketing. Internet marketing is not only about knowledge and experience, but also about imagination. Visit SmartFinds here. http://www.hsfideas.com/

1997 – 1999 were the early years of search engine era. Internet Marketing and more specifically search engine marketing mainly consisted of submitting your sites to the search engines. These "voices from the past" are still heard today when this or that Search Engine Optimization company and / or automatic submitting software will claim to do search engine promotion for you by submitting your site to hundreds and thousands engines and directories. The search engines' indexing programs, called "robots" or "spiders", looked through all of the HTML code of a page and used some page ranking algorithms that they kept in secret.

Those days were spammers' Heaven: it was rather easy to get your site ranked high. You could just use your keywords lots of times on the page, in the META tags, HTML comments etc. and hide it from the human visitors by making the text tiny or completely invisible with the help of HTML tricks. The search engines didn't have any sophisticated technique to recognize this kind of spam, and such sites usually got high rankings very easily. Today, you still can find some samples of this primitive optimization (however you will have to give it a hard try, because nowadays most of such Web projects have been banned by the search engines for excessive keyword usage).

The only exception was Yahoo which has always been indexed by humans who could in most cases identify and ban spamming pages.
Gradually, search engines started recognizing spam and applying corresponding penalties to Web pages using spam methods. However, search engine optimizers were always one step behind the search engines in finding new ways of cheating the indexing algorithms. Hence each search engine is committed to delivering only relevant results to its visitors, the engines needed to take control away from the spammers and auto-submitters. Many began to try different ways of indexing.

The Rise of Google

If someone is asked today about the first search engine to remember, the answer will be Google in 100% cases. Google has started its way to be the King of search engines in 2000 and in 2002 its right for this title has been firmly established, with around 70% of searches done on the Internet. While other search engines were focusing on transforming to universal portals, Google kept a simple and – which has become its distinctive feature – fast interface that solely targeted delivering relevant search results.

Google also developed advanced features such as indexing and searching PDF (portable document format) and SWF (shockwave flash) files. Additionally, Google's sophisticated techniques to use the "off-the-page" factors made it extremely spam-resistant. Google's dominance has become steady in 2000 with Yahoo having switched from Inktomi to Google as secondary search result provider. Now, Yahoo uses the combination of Overture's and own search software and index repository, thus being fully independent on Google, however, without any slightest impact on the dominance of the latter.

Global Consolidation

By 2001, the results of all major engines were produced from a number of mixed / hybrid sources. Yahoo search results combined Yahoo-directory listings, Overture (PPC) results, and Google results. MSN provided results from Overture (PPC), LookSmart , and Inktomi.

The years 2002 and 2003 brought major reshuffles among search engines: in this period, Google purchased Blogger.com, Yahoo bought Inktomi, and AltaVista and AllTheWeb became a part of Overture. Also, there were many shifts caused by emerging search engine partnerships. Further in this course we will give you a complete and actual chart of relationships between the contemporary search engines.

Search Engine Marketing Today

If you thought nowadays search engine marketing can still be done by acquiring (and using) an auto-submission software, drop this idea since now on. Search engine marketing requires an integrated approach to improving site content, quality and popularity. For a Web site to reach its top potential, it must incorporate target audience analysis, competitive analysis, cost per click optimization, and - last but not least - copywriting and copyediting. And, because things keep changing, search engine marketers need to devote a good deal of time staying on top of the SEO industry and its trends.

Today very few (and mostly inexperienced) optimizers / marketers would use spam methods to achieve high ranking. In many cases, spamming and the so-called "black-hat" SEO is recognized by automatic spiders, for these become more and more intelligent. Even though we describe major spamming methods in the end of this course, we do it only in the sake of your awareness. We do NOT recommend using them, as there's no guarantee at all they can help, whereas it's very possible that your Web visibility can be seriously damaged as a result.

The Future of Search Engine Marketing

Search engines have already developed into sophisticated systems, and no doubt they will continue to enhance their technical aspect, with improved capabilities to index pages that are located deeply within the site (many links away from the initial page). Also, their abilities to handle dynamically generated pages (e.g. shopping carts) can be expected to grow. Among other perspective trends are advanced non-HTML content indexing (such as PDF and graphics), improved ability to rapidly integrate new content such as news using XML feeds or other technology, organization of search results into logical categories (sometimes referred to as clustering), and other advanced features. For insights into the future of search, you could visit Google Labs ( http://labs.google.com). This is the beta area where Google showcases some of its upcoming technologies.

However, the traditional "highest-bidder" approach makes SEM feel more and more like traditional print advertising. The Integrated Approach to SEM anticipates that in future, best marketing efforts will aim to leverage the three components: paid advertising and analytics, all-sided site and content optimization and qualitative off-the-page factors enhancement. That is why we prefer to call the functions provided by Web CEO "Search Engine Marketing" rather than "Search Engine Optimization". When all is said and done, it is the traffic you get and the way this traffic converts that matters – not even your site rank on a search engine. You can rank worse than your competitor, yet the percentage of your visitors that turn into buyers will be so high that you actually outperform your competitor several times.

About the Author

Carmen is the VP Client Relations of Ms. SEO Inc., a Calgary based Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing Company. Ms. Seo Inc. works with their sister company Ms. Hype Inc., a Calgary Website Design Company, and their parent company Cre8 Hype Solutions Inc., a Calgary based Internet Marketing Company, to offer their clients a powerful online presence.
http://www.msseo.com/search_engine_marketing.htm
http://www.mshype.com/website_design.htm
http://www.cre8hype.com/

As part of your overall Internet marketing strategy, it is important to devote resources to search engine marketing. This component of your marketing mix has become increasingly critical due to the importance that search engines and directories play in how prospects access information. Search engines have the advantage of driving highly qualified traffic due to the self-selection process initiated by the searcher in choosing their search query.

Research shows that there are more than 8 hundred million people in the world have the habit to access Internet. 86% of them tend to locate information via search engines. In addition, research shows that most people will only look at 2 to 3 pages of search results, so your ranking among the results is becoming increasingly important.

When developing your search engine strategy you need to understand how search engines work, how they are different from directories, and how to maximize their effectiveness in making sure that your business gets as much exposure as your budget allows.

Search Engines populate their databases for search results through robotic software programs that crawl the web looking for content to index. This crawling requires that the software find text-based machine-readable content to index and categorize a site. The content accessed is from the meta tags (title, description, keywords, alt image tags), filenames and content on pages throughout your site. Spiders tend to look at the root directory, 1st level files and occasionally will spider your site to 2nd level content. To determine a site’s meta tags, right click your mouse and select View Source.

If your site has not been developed with search engines in mind, you could have difficulty in having your content properly indexed. Search engines also determine relative rankings of results based on certain algorithms that include factors like link popularity, site traffic, site content, etc.

When search engines first evolved, they were based on a “free” business model, where conceptually all sites had an equal chance of being indexed and displayed in search results if their developers optimized with some basic steps. While the basic steps are still an important part of your search engine marketing strategy, they no longer are enough. This is due to the fact that many search engines (and dot bombs) found that it wasn’t just about capturing eyeballs, but was also about making money. This has led search engines to modify their business models to capitalize on all possible sources of revenue generated by their traffic and/or technology. Traffic was seen as a logical source for advertising revenues and technology was felt to be transferable for use at other sites requiring robust search engines.

To date, most search engines have not elected to go towards a subscription-based model where searchers get charged for accessing information. These new business models require that site developers work even more closely with marketing strategists to ensure that the most effective business decisions are made.

Phillipe Wu is the marketing manager of a SEO company hosting B2B portals - B2BChinaSources.com & B2BManufactures.com. Find information of LED Manufacturers, Machine Tools, O Rings and other products and manufacturers from Taiwan & China.

If we take a look at traditional export process for a new company and its products you may start by defining the niche market, and then finding the customers.

The usual method is contacting Commerce Departments on the embassies or consulates of diverse countries, find the most relevant companies that can be interested on importing, and get valid contact information.

Other used method is to travel to the desired countries and present your products to local importers or distributors and hopefully get a deal.

I cannot say those methods are inefficient, however they can be certainly risky, time consuming and very expensive.

Now let’s analyze the SEM choice for international commerce:
Using the power of the internet, a professional SEM company can develop for you a web marketing strategy to recognize your niche market(s), find out what your competitors and possible buyers are doing in order to be updated of the current market behavior, and then elaborate a marketing plan to get your potential buyers to contact you when searching for the products you promote.

If your idea is to have an aggressive campaign, an SEM strategy can include contacting potential clients (online and offline), letting them receive information about your offered merchandise and your possible advantages in your field (reliability, price, technology, special delivery, guarantee, client support, etc.).

Besides these points, the most important reasons why to choose Search Engine Marketing for your export planning still are:

It is faster and more accurate to find active potential customers.

Possibility to create a direct bridge to retailers and final consumers instead of selling to intermediaries, which will raise your margins and lower the final costs: a win-win deal.

The cost of an SEM strategy can be much lower than traditional marketing and –if professionally managed- will generate a fast ROI and will increase your sales volume, eliminating unnecessary risks.

If you have questions of how SEM can work for your business please click here.

Mr. Daniel Katz is the Business Development Manager at Compucall Web Marketing Ltd - http://www.compucall-uk.co.uk - experts in International Web Marketing and Marketing Strategies.

A few years ago, search engine placement was arranged by your average Web designer and/or Webmaster. The Webmaster would simply submit a site to search engines manually or use rudimentary software that was widely available.

Keyword relevance was largely a matter of link popularity and the Webmaster assigning a simple keyword meta-tag to each page of your site. The system used to work reasonably well, or so it seemed. That is no longer the case.

Today, submission to the major search engines like Google is largely irrelevant, although there is a complex mix of PFI (pay for inclusion) and PFP (pay for performance, sponsored links, PPC ads) that require complex submission of details.

Today's Methodology

In today's Internet economy, sophisticated and complex programs - called spiders - surf the Web looking at the source code of Web pages. They sort through the complex web of formatting tags, programming script, multi-media, page titles, and content that the user may or may not see, to ascertain how to rank each page of your site for each and every word and word combination that it finds.

These spiders index the words of each page found and add it to the engine's database, making them available as keywords for search engine searchers. In this new environment, sophisticated software programs that analyze the various search engine algorithms and how they rank selected pages have moved to the forefront of search engine placement.

This has spawned a large industry of SEO (search engine optimisation and marketing) experts and specialist SEM firms.

What Does Keyword Based Marketing Offer?

If implemented correctly, SEO can offer a higher return on investment than nearly any other marketing strategy (online or offline). Placing high in the search engine ranking positions (SERPs) is a great way to attract first time visitors. Placement in the search engines can largely determine the "reach" of your online marketing strategy.

The stakes in this battle are being raised all the time as the number of users going online increases - which in the U.S. alone approaches 100 million - with over 60% of those users spending some 48 BILLION dollars per year for online shopping (Greenspan, 2002, cyberatlas.com).

With broadband prices in Australia falling rapidly and the rate of Internet takeup extraordinarily high, the Australian consumer is showing similar enthusiasm for online sales. Unfortunately, many potential buyers - some say as many as 70% - give up because they cannot find the good sites to shop at, because they are poorly keyword indexed or the actual site has poor navigation and design.

When any business is making plans to improve their Search Engine positions, they need to understand that optimisation of your site for the Search Engines is not a one-shot job. It requires ongoing monitoring and tweaking in order to keep ahead of both the competition AND the changes the Search Engines make to how they rank sites.

Any comprehensive Web marketing plan should:

(1) Promote your web site based on the (optimised) content of your site and knowledge of the relevant marketplace;

(2) Utilise data of how the average search engine user actually looks for information on your site - including alternative terms, synonyms, common phrasing, etc;

(3) Include internal and external link building with relevant sites and relevant keywords;

(4) Regular reporting of search engine positioning, general Internet visibility and actual visitor statistics/analytics and recommendation for improvements.

Every serious Web site owner should be on a Web marketing plan that is definitely more than just a submission or reporting service. Set a monthly budget and take action.

We've seen many of our clients benefit from the ongoing relationship we have developed with them through our web marketing plans. Plenty of page 1 rankings on Google, Yahoo, MSN are not uncommon over time, as we monitor and tweak their sites for the Search Engines.

However, in almost all cases, those clients would have never achieved and then maintained those high rankings if they had not had someone in the know keeping track of how their site is ranking, and making changes where ever needed.

It's like advertising in the Yellow Pages really. If you don't pay to have your ad included, you don't get an entry in the book, and eventually the calls to your business start to drop off as people update to the newest edition.

Search Engine Optimisation / Marketing is the same. The Internet is NOT static - it's always changing and evolving, and in order for your site to get and maintain good rankings around the keywords that are important to you, you have to keep someone on the job on a regular basis who knows how to react to the changes happening.

The Return On Investment (ROI) for good SEO/SEM services is very high, compared to traditional advertising and marketing. According to Google's statistics, Search advertising is up to 20 times CHEAPER per lead, compared to (for example) Direct Mail. For any company spending money on advertising, this statistic should be of EXTREME interest! After all, what company doesn't want to reduce their cost of customer acquisition?

That's what SEO/SEM companies are supposed to be about! Well, at least at our company, we are - I can't speak for our competitors. Before you hire an SEO/SEM company, ask what their plan is for the ongoing optimisation of your site. If they don't have a plan, run, don't walk, to the nearest exit and hang onto your money.

Charles Ryder is the CEO of WCR Internet Marketing, a specialist Australian Search Engine Optimisation company. For a free site analysis, visit http://www.wcr-internet-marketing.com.au

What costs less than a penny an impression, drives qualified traffic to your web site, positions your company as an authority, helps boost search engine rankings, generates buzz, and may even result in traditional media coverage? Three words: optimized press releases.

An average optimized release will:

* Be read by well over 100,000 people (journalists, industry analysts and prospective customers).
* Be published on more than 850 other web sites.
* Have an average cost per read of less than 1 cent (or a CPM of about $8 for you media folks).

Want to try it? Here are four basic steps to successfully optimize an existing press release.

* Decide which search terms to target with your press release. Search terms are the words and phrases your target audience might type into a search engine in order to find your web site. There's a definite art to selecting search terms, but you can get a lot of good information from http://www.wordtracker.com/.
* Use the search terms in the headline, subhead, and copy of the press release. Don't overdo it - it still needs to read well and present your news item accurately and succinctly. Still, it's usually fairly simple to swap out wording that no one is searching for (such as "enterprise systems") for more precise, product-oriented language that your target audience is searching for (such as "enterprise resource planning software"). Another example: Instead of writing about "our products," write about "our fiber-optic transceiver products."
* Build links into the release that point to related pages on your web site. Search engines consider the number and quality of links pointing to a site when determining rankings. To further impact rankings, include your search terms in the text of the links themselves.
* Distribute the release via http://www.prweb.com/, an electronic distribution system built just for the Internet. Pony up for paid distribution - while PRWeb has an option to distribute your release at no charge, you won't get nearly as many benefits by using that option.

What happens next?

* The release shows up nearly instantly in both Google News and Yahoo News. These news engines have over 27 million unique visitors a month in total. Often, it'll show up in regular search results too.
* The release is fed across the Internet and picked up by other sites that publish syndicated content. Your release shows up on numerous other sites -- again, building awareness and site visitors.
* It's emailed to appropriate segments of an opt-in email database of over 100,000 journalists. So, in addition to the online marketing benefits, you may get traditional media coverage out of this!
* A web page is created for your release on PRWeb's site. If you've built links pointing to your site into the release, every time your release is posted somewhere on the web, it creates more links pointing to your site.

Consider extending your traditional PR efforts to the online world. Optimizing press releases is a cost-effective, measurable tactic for increasing your position in search engine rankings and building traffic to your site. We've been doing it for over a year and a half - let us know if we can help you reap the benefits of this powerful marketing medium.

Stacy Williams, a search engine marketing specialist, is founder and Managing Partner of Atlanta search engine placement company(http://www.prominentplacement.com/?campaign=111205/) Prominent Placement, Inc. Williams has a combined 16 years of experience and education in marketing, having overseen web site development projects and traffic generation campaigns since 1995, and has been doing search engine marketing since 1998.

A member of the Technology Alliance of Georgia and the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association, Stacy Williams is a frequent lecturer on search engine marketing. She has written articles for Digitrends, SEO Today, Competitive Edge and iMarketing News. She also presents regularly at each of the U.S.-based Search Engine Strategies Conferences.

Miva Merchant 5 is the latest version of Miva and offers a revised look and feel and several new backend features than previous versions but the path to successful Miva search engine optimization is almost still the same.

Here's what stays the same!

*Good, revelant content

*Meta tags that don't overuse keywords

*Descriptive product titles with keywords

*Rich product descriptions with relevant content using keywords effectively

*Text links using keywords when applicable

*Sitemaps - for use on site and Google

*Good, relevant links pointing to your site

These basic search engine optimization steps will give you the foundation to have success in the search engines.

Here's what changes.

*No SEO modules currently available

*No ability to control meta tags thru OpenUI code

Since Miva 5 is the first major version release after the company was taken over by FindWhat all of the modules that have been available to previous Miva versions are not available for Miva 5 yet. This includes the SEO oriented modules but read nothing into that, it is not uncommon when a revised software version comes out that not all external pieces which were available for previous versions are available or compatible with the latest version.

This being said, we have already launched several stores using the Miva 5 platform and by using the steps above (and of course our 8 years of SEO experience) we have already had numerous front page rankings in all of the major engines with these stores. Does that mean the basic Miva 5 store is search engine friendly? Not anymore so than previous versions, what it does mean is that engines now can spider dynamic sites much easier and if the optimization on those sites is done correctly than high rankings can be achieved.

Miva Merchant 5 is an exciting product so much so that we are banking on it as it will be the cart we focus on for all of our ecommerce clients. The Miva SEO modules will come and they will offer easier and more efficient ways to optimize your store but if you don't follow the basic steps listed earlier in this post... the module won't matter.

Mark Stone is a SEO Expert with more than 8 years of experience placing websites on the front page of major search engines. His company is http://www.theinfogroup.com. People interested in Miva search engine marketing or web design should visit, http://miva.theinfogroup.com.

Many website owners get frustrated with search engine marketing due to poor results. The biggest search engine marketing mistake is made right from the start. That optimization mistake: implementation of search engine marketing optimization of the wrong keywords.

You have to crawl before you can walk. The crawling stage of search engine marketing is just that slow, boring and overwhelming. This stage of optimization provides very little short term results. In the long run though, it is the single most important step. If you target the wrong terms you will get traffic without conversions. If you target terms that have high competition you will get very little traffic due to high competition. Both are equally a waste of your search engine marketing resources.

So how do you get the right search terms? There are many keyword bidding tools and websites that show the top paying keyword. Some are free keyword services and others are paid comprehensive keyword research services that you can use.

So this is easy? I just search for a comprehensive keyword research tool and pick one. There are several problems with this approach to comprehensive keyword research.
# It costs money to enlist these keyword services

# There is a learning curve to all new keyword research tools

# It takes practice to target your audience and think laterally to get the best business keywords for your search engine marketing campaign

# How do you know who your competitors are?

# It takes a week to produce top paying keywords that drive target traffic.

Why does it take a week? When the keyword research process is performed at its best the following steps are taken.

# Identify your top business products and services

# Identify your top Internet competitors keywords across the top ten search engines

# Use your keywords to stem new keywords and phrases

# In the 100 or so keywords and phrases into keyword tracking service to find another 500 hundred keywords

# Use powers of research, reasoning and deduction to capture the top 200 keywords

# Take a day off - yes, take a break and come back and look at the whole process from different angles to ensure that you are on track and that you have every possible niche term.

# Use analytic software to compare the keyword effectiveness index (KEI)

# Select best terms from the above keyword research process.

So what do I do about my search engine marketing keyword research? Enlist a professional that has experience in comprehensive keyword research, which identify your business keywords. http://www.jasontchandler.com/

Web Marketing and Design by JASE
412 Olive Avenue Suite 280
Huntington Beach 92648
Orange County SEO Expert

Search-Optimization is an industrial strength search engine marketing optimization company providing thematic optimization using comprehensive keyword research, competition intelligence and 11 years experience.

Jason Chandler is a search engine optimization specialist writing for http://www.search-Optimization.com, founded in 1994.

Did you know you could probably improve the return on your search engine marketing spend by as much as 50% by focusing your efforts on communicating more effectively with customers that arrive on your site via the major search engines.

Not only would this improve the effectiveness of your pay per click advertising but would also reduce your cost per acquisition fees and increase the profitability of each customer acquired through search engine marketing.

How? Read on.

Running a search engine marketing campaign without clear communication goals in mind is a foolish strategy to adopt in today’s highly competitive search marketplace. Without a clear online communication strategy in place profits and potential customer relationships are in danger of slipping through your sales funnel. Under pressure to continue moving and growing, you keep flooding your funnel with more traffic. But traffic, is about quality not quantity and the search engines just keep on drinking your marketing spend. They’re the ones that end up making a lot of cash from your frequent fill-ups. Did you know that Google charges you each time a user clicks on your PPC advert during the same search session? This often happens when users bounce back and forward from the search engine results page to the advertiser’s websites desperately trying to find the information and help they crave. So that single visitor could be costing you more than you think.

It takes a little time and money to fix the problem. You need to think about how you handle customers who find your products and services via a search engine. You also need to think about where they are in the purchase decision making process and if they are just researching products or are actually ready to buy. The complexity of the decision making process is often down to how many people are involved, is it a high cost / high risk purchase and so on. By taking a closer look at the key phrases you are bidding for in your search engine marketing campaign, you can identify how far down that decision making cycle visitors are.

To help move visitors through the different stages of the buying cycle, you could perhaps create a specific landing page for a keyword and publish some content that reads something like:

“Welcome to our company – We're glad you found us. Here's the product you've been searching for. We have a wide range of products to fit your unique needs. If you'd like to learn more about these products or are unsure what product might best suit your own specific needs, please do not hesitate to complete our short enquiry form and we will be happy to help you.”

Maybe they don’t want to sleep with you on their first date?
You need to understand that when a visitor comes on to your site that they may not be ready to buy. Therefore, your goal is not to ‘sell’ to the visitor but to begin an online dialogue. No-one likes being ‘sold-to’, but prospects do like helpful staff that are interested in helping them make the best decision on what to buy and want not to buy. You need to build trust and prove that you want to genuinely help them fulfil their online goal and so one of your main objectives is to get more information on your targeted customer. What do you have to lose? If you really want to go to get the sale you need to demonstrate to your visitors all the value-added services and support they'll receive from you as customers.

Maybe they don’t want to sleep with you on their first date?

Once you have an email, you have the basis to build a relationship. You've convinced the searcher to interact and trust you with their email address. Now, you need to use the information you extracted from them during this first contact to thank them and probe them for more information that will help you recommend suitable products, service or solutions.

Understand the various stages of the purchase decision process.

Getting leads from search engines is just one part of the game, not the entire game. It provides an opportunity to fix the customer communication problem. Done properly, search engine marketing can deliver new customers to your doorstep, cost effectively and efficiently. Otherwise, you'll keep returning to the fill up the leaky sales funnel with more traffic. Like I said earlier, search engine marketing is not about increasing the quantity of visitors to your site it’s about improving the quality of communication you have with those targeted prospects so that you can turn them into repeat and profitable customers.

Damon Lightley is a search engine marketing consultant at Site Visibility Ltd. Site Visibility is a UK based search engine marketing company that helps clients increase online customer acquisition and retention using search engine optimisation, pay per click and online marketing campaign measurement techniques.

http://www.sitevisibility.co.uk

With research suggesting that around 90% of all e-commerce purchases coming as a result of a search engine enquiry, the potential selling power that having a significant presence on the main search engines can confer is slowly beginning to dawn on those responsible for marketing and selling everything from Alphabet soup to Zebra floor mats.

Search Engine Marketers have in recent times set up their tents in one of two different camps.

One would have clients believe that the only value to be gained from search engine marketing is the long term value that organic search engine listings can achieve.

The camp on the opposite side of the river would have their clients sold on the belief that Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) from companies such as Google, Overture and Miva offered the swiftest returns on investment and the quickest routes into the lands of honey and gold.

The reality of the situation is that a truly successful Search Engine Marketing campaign lies somewhere in-between.

The advent of the fabled Google “Sandbox” now means that for the majority of new and redesigned websites an artificial time delay of at least six months is now being imposed on their sites making onto the pages returned for a relevant keyword search.

This is a consequence of Google’s attempts to rid its index of sites designed to manipulate the listings rather than to provide real and valuable content.

The consequence of this action is that whilst new sites can still (at the time of writing) quickly gain organic listings on MSN and Yahoo through the optimisation of their websites, those seeking to place their products or services in front of the massive Goggle audience need to invest time and money in establishing a brand presence on Google through the usage of PPC advertising.

Recent research has shown that PPC click adverts are only perceived to have been paid for by fewer than 40% of those using search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Additionally having PPC adverts that mention a brand name on page listings relating to a particular subject or product actually increases brand awareness in subsequent recall tests by over 25%, whether the advert was clicked upon or not.

No-one can argue that over time organic listings represent the greatest potential for Return On Investment (ROI).

However the fact that organic listings are increasingly becoming harder to achieve, particularly for new websites, means that integrated Search Engine Marketing solutions that take account of organic and PPC listings represent the true and only means of establishing a strong and profitable position on the main search engines.

Ivor Conway is the Managing Director of Neuchi, UK Search Engine Marketing and UK Search Engine Optimisation company that promotes the matching of UK client’s products to interested and ready to buy online customers.

Please vistit us at http://www.neuchi.co.uk to learn how we can help your UK based company increase sales and turnover.

Please feel free to reproduce this article but please publish in its entirety and with the resource box and all live links included.

At our office, I talk with dealers all day. It is amazing how many dealers me tell that they aren’t ready to use search engine marketing. They all seem to know the buzz about it. ( I like to think we helped create that buzz.) They all agree that it is on their radar screen and going to pull the trigger on it soon. But it still begs the question –“Are you ready?”

I want to say that we are now going to enter into an age of next generation websites. These next generation Internet sites aren’t going to look or feel different but the accountability is going to change. Dealers are going to look at how they spend their Internet money, how they can improve conversion on their site, and how they can get a Return on Investment that they are putting into their site. Dealers are catching on to the press that shows that Search Marketing provides the highest returns of any media out there.

You can drive traffic to your site all day long but if your site and the way you handle your leads isn’t ready for it, then it is like advertising a car that isn’t going to hit your lot for another five month. You can have a lot of interest but you don’t sell anything. Along the same lines of trying to sell that car that hasn’t arrived yet, you get people in the door and you sign them up for more information. Then when the car arrives you do nothing with the names and waste a whole lot of money. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

There are three key elements to getting ready for traffic besides making them search engine friendly. The first is to make the front page inviting. Make sure you menus are easy and simple. Make sure your phone number, address, and hours are easy to find. More than three clicks can get everyone confused and aggravated. Make sure that you can find anything that you need at your dealership in less than three clicks. It is amazing that it has been seven years since I have been working with dealer websites and I still find this missing on some of them.

The second key element is making sure that you can handle the incoming information. Make sure that you have a dedicated phone number and that some one answers it. Don’t let everything go to voicemail or worse just let go to the front desk. Make sure that some one is checking the emails everyday. Make sure they respond. Make sure they don’t type in all capital letters. (Yes, you need capital letters to work on your DMS system but not to type an email.) Mystery shop your own website every once in a while. Have a friend call the phone and see how long it takes sales to get back with them. Drop an email with a question about a car and financing. You will be absolutely amazed at some of the results you will get.

The third key element is that you have to understand what is happening on your website. You need to keep track of what is happening. What vehicles seem to very popular and maybe you should offer specials on them or stock some more. Do you know what price point that people inquire most of vehicles on your site? If you don’t know - then learn.

Keep track of the phone calls off your site. The dealers that I have dealt with are amazed at the amount of phone traffic that there website generates. Our feedback is that for every one electronic contact that you get off your site (email, contact us, inventory request, finance requests, etc.); they are receiving three phone calls. Yes, I said three phone calls. If you aren’t tracking your calls and counting them as traffic on your site then you are tracking the results from your website.

So ask your self the question if you are ready to for search engine marketing. I have turned down numerous dealers as clients because they wouldn’t realize the benefits of search engine marketing on their site. The best way I can describe it in car terms is if you had a sale that was a great give away. Everyone comes to the show room and nobody buys any cars. So before you open the flood gates of people to your website make sure you know how to surf the waves.

Todd Swickard, Chief Executive Officer

Todd Swickard founded Auto Supplier Marketing, LLC in February 2002. Drawing on his vast experience from Compaq, AutoTrader.com, and Dealer.com, he was able to compile a multi-media company that targets niche markets across the country. In less then 6 months a site was launched and over 200 dealers from across the country had been formed into a network. All this with very little venture capital invested.

A veteran of the dot com industry, Todd has seen it all. It has been his personal goal to create a marketing company that drives results with ROI and accountability. His methodology keeps campaigns within budget producing infinite results and return on investment. Todd’s true measure of success is in the success of our clients.

Search Engine Marketing, or simply SEM, has been one of the most used and discussed subjects the last years by web marketing pros. Suggestions, theories, complaints and success stories are constantly on the scene.

The field of SEM started just a few years ago and it has become impressively important for those who intend to succeed doing internet businesses.

Having a successful web site involves many aspects; each one of them closely related to the other in what will be the denominated a Web Marketing Strategy - the essential part of a marketing campaign.

To build the proper strategy is necessary to prepare an exhaustive market research, understand which our niche market is, and create a plan to reach our audience the best possible way, avoiding unnecessary risks and expensive costs, expecting a secure and profitable ROI.

Once the SEM strategy is ready, we may start working on the selected optimization tools as SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PPC (Pay Per Click - paid advertising), Link Development, Press Releases, Affiliate Marketing programs, email marketing, and many other ways of boosting traffic and sales, as long as it's required and fits the project's budget.

A smart web marketing strategy should perform different tools on each stage, in order to gain particular success parameters according to its real possibilities.

SEO uses to be the base of Search Engine Marketing campaigns as it involves the web site's organic traffic generation and in-site performance, while other techniques assist and support the SE optimization work; nevertheless I want to remark that as each campaign is a world apart and unique Marketing objectives should be taken into consideration to decide the correct tools to implement.

After the web marketing campaign starts, a regular evaluation process is a mandatory stage to review and correct whatever needs to be improved, as well as to know how profitable each single campaign/ad/keyword is. After reviewing the web analytics results and understanding our audience's behavior, we are ready to proceed to a new phase into the recurring web marketing process.

Answering the core question, what makes us go over Search Engine Marketing once and again?

Simple, the world is always changing and so we must do to keep having a competitive web sites and attractive content to offer.

Mr. Daniel Katz is the Business Development Manager at http://www.compucall-uk.co.uk/ - experts in International Web Marketing and Marketing Strategies.

The Search Engine Marketing (SEM) industry is going through phenomenal changes as number of search engines increase alongside rapidly evolving techniques and technologies. Today, your web presence is incomplete without strategic online promotion and one is forced to take a serious look at search engine marketing because that is where your customers are. As a result, SEM techniques such as
http://www.orientinfosolutions.com/web-marketing/seo-services.php, http://www.orientinfosolutions.com/web-marketing/pay-per-click.php,link popularity and Adwords campaigns in Google are becoming much sought after components of any advertising campaigns and internet marketing strategies.

A professional and specialized search engine optimization company should provide with you with customized and well-targeted internet marketing strategy, services and solutions. The SEM strategy should help you achieve maximum awareness about your website, products and services. It should deliver targeted traffic to your website. It should achieve higher level of sales through your website, help you keep your costs low and create brand loyalty among your target audience.

For instance, web development and internet marketing solutions provider Orient InfoSolutions provides strategic internet marketing solutions for companies wishing to market their business online. Over the years, they have earned ourselves a high reputation as a search engine marketing specialist, specializing in internet marketing strategy and internet marketing solution.

An effective search engine optimization strategy should help you achieve top 10 ranking for your chosen and targeted key phrases in premier search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo. In a study conducted in July 2005, Nielson/Netratings reported that the search engine market share was highest for Google at 48%. Yahoo and MSN had the market shares of 22% and 12% respectively.

A well-designed SEO process should involve indepth research for high quality search engine optimization keywords research that are relevant to your website; writing and incorporating high quality, timely and targeted, search engine optimization keywords rich articles that are of interest to your target audience; defining and incorporating Directory Structure in the website so that directories and file names hit the top keywords you wish to optimize; programming that ensures that text content out weighs the html content and the web pages are visible in all types of browsers, i.e. IE, Netscape, and Opera; meta tag Optimization and submitting your web site to the major search engines and directories. Also researching search engines and directories catering to your target audience and submitting to them is important.

Besides, your SEO solutions provider should build up your link popularity through link exchanges with complimentary non-competing sites. You can also opt for a well-devised Pay Per Click Campaign in Overture, Google Adwords and other smaller PPC search engines.

Orient InfoSolutions is a leading IT solutions provider that specializes in creating strategically positioned and targeted SEM campaigns for you including SEO, PPC campaigns, Link Popularity and online promotion. You can visit OrientInfoSolutions.com for some indepth information on the various kinds of search engine marketing strategies needed to make your website or internet marketing campaign highly effective.

Ben Stewart

Online security is one of the top catch phrases these days, but hardly anybody knows what it means and worse, most home computer users think security only applies to corporations and online businesses.

Most people think online security means simply protecting your credit card data from fraud and theft, but it actually goes way beyond that.

The potential for mayhem and just plain disruption of your life doesn't just mean credit card fraud - it can mean having your identity stolen, your life disrupted and spending hours cleaning up after an online 'vandalism' attack.

You must protect yourself from everyone from the teenage computer hacker to the organized crime syndicate using computer worms and keystroke logging viruses.

The great news is that a number of simple techniques should protect you against the vast majority of threats, since the evil doers will simply move on to easier pastures.

Update your anti-virus files

The widespread 'Bad Trans' worm logged keystrokes and transmitted potentially sensitive data such as credit card and social security numbers to the 'bad guys'.

Though this virus contained a high level of criminal intent, it was easily blocked by anyone with up-to-date anti-virus files.

If you don't have anti-virus software with current virus definitions installed, you leave the door wide open for security problems.

Install a 'Firewall'

A firewall helps prevent unauthorized access to your computer by 'hackers'.

It closes off the entry points (called open 'ports') carried by virtually every computer connected to the Internet.

A common misconception is that firewalls are only for people with cable or other high-speed connections.

Even if you use a dial up connection to get online, a firewall can help you detect and prevent people from logging on to your computer, stealing files or even using your computer to break into others!

You can take a free test of your computer's security by logging on to http://www.symantec.com/securitycheck/ and clicking 'Find out today if you are safe'. The results may surprise you.

Use secure sites

Only give sensitive data such as credit cards, social security numbers and important passwords over a secure connection.

This means the little yellow lock appears in the lower part of your browser and nobody but the website you are connected to should be able to read the data you send.

Change passwords often

An easy way for you to protect your sensitive data and email is to change your passwords on a monthly basis, or even more often depending on how frequently you use computers away from home.

If you log on to your email at the library, in 'cyber cafes' or any other remote computer then the possibility exists that computer could have a key-stroking virus present.

This means everything you type into the computer (passwords, birthdays, social security numbers, credit cards) could be logged and used by someone else.

** Change your passwords at lease once a month.

Though not fool-proof, these security tips should help reduce your vulnerability and keep you safer online.

(c) Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links...

Simple "Traffic Machine" brings Thousands of NEW visitors to your website for weeks, even months... without spending a dime on advertising! ==> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com

The world of search engine marketing (SEM) is in constant evolution. With increased numbers of search engines, and evolution in the techniques and technologies used, SEM is becoming a tool industries cannot afford to do without. Trends all over the world show that the pressure for SEM services is starting to come from their customers. Indeed, SEM is quickly evolving as the buzzword in a new, technology-driven advertising and on line marketing space. As a result, companies that are serious about their internet presence are making search engine marketing a key component in their advertising campaign.

Google, Yahoo and MSN own the majority of the search engine market share, with Google being the strongest. AOL, Ask Jeeves and Altavista capture smaller shares in the market, while a number of other geographically-specific and market-specific search engines compete in their own niches. In a study conducted in July 2005, Nielson/Netratings reported that the search engine market share was highest for Google at 48%. Yahoo and MSN had the market shares of 22% and 12% respectively.

MSN and Google were also the top destinations for most online purchases, reported a study conducted by comScore Networks (June 2005). The study highlighted that iMSN searchers were 48% more likely to buy online than the average Internet user. Google users were 42% more likely to buy online than the average Internet user. It also came to notice that while Google searches looked for more sophisticated search terms, simple broad term searches occurred for AOL, Yahoo and MSN.

One thing is becoming clearer today: Search engine advertising is not another Internet bubble, it is driven by users and the fact that people, everywhere, need to go somewhere to search and find information. Take China for example - who's heard of Baidu.com? Not too many people. It's a Chinese search engine that has been around for 5 years and is the World's 6th most-visited Internet site, thanks to China's fast growing internet market, currently with more just over 100 million Web surfers. Baidu is recently went through an initial public offering where is share price when from $27 to $150 in the period of a day. And what about Google? It recently reported quarterly revenues of $1.4 billion. Google's revenues excluding its payments for other Web sites in its advertising network jumped to $890 million, an increase of 110% from a year before and above the expected $842 million.

US Online Marketing Forecast: 2005 to 2010 by Forrester Research (May 2005) revealed that the arena for search engine marketing is all set to rise and will show growth of 33% in 2005. Forecasts reveal that the figures will reach $11.6 billion by 2010. Display advertising, which includes traditional banners and sponsorships, will grow at the average rate of 11% the next five years to $8 billion by 2010. US online advertising and marketing spending will reach $14.7 billion in 2005, a 23% increase over 2004. Trends also showed that while SEM is set to become more effective than traditional marketing channels, barriers include a lack of online advertising experience. However, search engine marketing firms are embracing this new branch of advertising and their customers are reaping the extremely lucrative rewards.

About the Author

Carmen is the VP Client Relations of Ms. SEO Inc., a Calgary based http://www.msseo.com/. Ms. Seo Inc. works with their sister company Ms. Hype Inc., http://www.mshype.com/ and their parent company Cre8 Hype Solutions Inc., http://www.cre8hype.com/ to offer their clients a powerful online presence.

Do you depend on free search engine traffic for your livelihood?

I admit it. I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), keyword density, keyword relevance, KEI, incoming links and link text, and where my web site and web pages rank in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) for my targeted keyword phrases.

This afternoon I had a shock. I discovered my main web site was dropped from Yahoo! Not one page could be found in Yahoo, out of hundreds! This was after months of working to completely revamp the site, rebuilding it with a nice content management system and lots of pertinent on-topic content, building links, writing and publishing articles, creating RSS news feeds and publicizing them...

I thought I was going to have a heart attack. It's a clean site - no black-hat SEO techniques, nothing that should get me banned, just good information, the heart and soul of the Web.

I checked my logs, and thought, "Oh my God, it doesn't look like Yahoo has crawled my web site in over a month." This was after getting used to Yahoo's spider crawling my web site daily because of all of the new, pertinent information (and especially because of the RSS news feeds and pinging). But I hadn't noticed because traffic was still high, even increasing.

Frantically I searched the Web for information about Yahoo making changes. Sure enough, I discovered that Yahoo apparently changed their search algorithm around the time Yahoo stopped crawling my web site. What could I do? What if the other Search Engines dropped my web site, after all those months of long nights and long weekends really working to create a quality web site?

In the midst of this chaos, my wife looked me in the eyes and said, "Don't worry about it, you still have traffic. The web site is doing well!"

I replied, "Well, yeah! In fact the web site traffic has doubled since Yahoo apparently dropped the site a month ago!"

Then it struck me. Traffic really had doubled, despite the fact that none of the traffic was coming from Yahoo any more. And I wasn't doing any pay-per-click advertising or any sort of advertising. All of the work I was doing really was paying off - in ways I hadn't really imagined. I just lost all incoming traffic from one of the two or three biggest search engines and yet my traffic doubled!

Have you ever heard the expression, "Don't build your house on sand?"

Or how about, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket?"

There are only about three important search engines at any one time. As I write this, I would say those three are currently Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. The more dependent you are on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and placing high on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) in these few search engines, the more you have built your house on sand or put all of your eggs in one basket. You know that search engines regularly change their algorithms, right? One big change and your web site can disappear or all but disappear from a major search engine. And you won't know if it's temporary or permanent. If you're in this position, you are at the mercy of the search engines.

So what can you do to change this, to ensure that one single algorithm change won't wipe out your business?

One way, perhaps the best way, is to build alternate traffic streams to your web site.

1. First things first: Make sure you have a web site that people would want to visit. Ever visit a web site that was so bad you wondered how they make any money? Guess what, I'll bet they don't. Unless your web site is just a sales page and you direct traffic to it from other web sites or from affiliates, now is a good time to start building some quality content - lots of it, if you don't already have it.

2. Get lots of incoming links... but change the way you look at links. It used to be that links drove the Web. That was how people found your web site - by surfing in from other people's pages. Then something strange happened: search engines. But as the search engines evolved, they started measuring the quality of web sites - and determining your site's position in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) - by how many incoming links you have, and what keywords are in the link text. Then people began to link just for Search Engine Optimization, not for actual traffic from those links. Do you really think people are going to find your web site and surf in from a page of 200 uncategorized links hidden behind a link at the bottom of a page and called "Partners" - in an 8 point font? If you want to get traffic from links again, regardless of what the search engines do, you have to change your links pages and you have to change the type of link partners you link to. There's a very nice free service, Honest Links, that is a grassroots effort by Webmasters to get back to linking for traffic, not SEO. You can learn more at: http://www.honestlinks.net/

3. Write and publish articles related to the theme of your web site. Publish them in the many article directories on the Web, as well as the many mailing lists for authors and publishers. Webmasters and Ezine publishers will pick them up and publish them if they are good. You can get hundreds, even thousands of links into your web site by just including a little "Resource Box" at the end of your article with a link to your web site. (Look at the end of this article for an example of a Resource Box.)

4. Publish a newsletter and start building a list of subscribers. It's one of the best ways to get people returning to your web site, along with the next one...

5. Start a blog on your web site. Post interesting and useful information related to your web site's theme and ping the various blog and news directories after each post. You'll get links from these directories AND you'll build up readers syndicating your posts on their web sites and reading them in news feed readers. Recently people have been gaming this, too. People post and ping just to get noticed by the search engines and get spidered more often. It will do that, but if you don't have quality posts, you will still be at the mercy of the search engines. Create quality content and you will build loyal subscribers as well.

I can't say it doesn't bother me that my web site was dropped from Yahoo. It feels like I must have done something wrong. But I know I have a good site, with great, useful content that is on topic. I know that my site could be back in Yahoo tomorrow, or it could take months. In the meantime, I'll keep building a quality site that people want to visit and doing everything I know I should. Traffic has doubled every month for the last two months. I'll bet it will again next month - with or without Yahoo!

Here's another old saying for you, "Dig your well before you are thirsty." If you're too dependent on search engine traffic now, maybe it's time to start digging that well. The five steps above should get you started.

Copyright 2005 Mike Adams

Mike Adams has been building web sites and playing with Internet marketing since 1996. Looking for an Internet marketing solution? Visit http://www.timberway.com/