SEO ARTICLES - CHECKLIST ETC

1. The Essential 2007 Code Optimization Tutorial for SEO By James Kinsley (c) 2007 Do you want to get the traffic you deserve flooding into your website? Code optimization is an essential component of the search engine optimization process and if you aren't technically minded then it can be difficult to get your head round. This guide is meant for beginners and more advanced webmasters alike. A shallow knowledge of HTML coding is useful, however, it is not necessary. Optimizing your code can be done by simply opening your html document in a text editor and changing different parts as shown below. Follow these steps carefully and your code will become 100% search engine optimized and ready for promotion and link-building campaigns. The steps below assume you have chosen the keywords which you want to optimize the page code for. If you have not done that, go and do that now and return to this guide later. HTML Code Optimization The optimization of your HTML code for search engines is vital. It is the base of your SEO campaign. It must be optimized in a number of ways in order to improve the relevance of a chosen keyword. Follow the advice below as closely as possible. The closer the better and the higher your rank will be. Remember: Keywords are the words people will use in search engines. Including a keyword in your site content (and optimizing your site) will cause your site to be returned as a search result. You can choose to optimize your page for a keyword or a keyphrase (a number of related words, eg: 'free red hats'). Using a keyphrase is more advantageous (as discussed later) but for simplicity, I will refer to keywords AND keyphrases as just keywords. TIP: Try to optimize each page for just one keyword. This will stop each keyword competing against each other for weightings and you will rank higher for the chosen keyword. The TITLE Tag Location: just below the <head> tag '<title>Web Promotion, Affiliate Marketing, SEO' for example 1. The title tag should not contain any of the words Google disregards. These are words like 'and', 'not', 'a', 'the', 'about' etc which are too common for Google to take any notice of. Using these words will dilute the importance that your keyword is given in your title (if you put it in your title). These words are known as 'stop' words.

2. 2. Include your keyword in the title of your page. Including other words in your title that are not your chosen keyword/s will be detrimental to your ranking. This is because it makes your keyword seem less relevant to the title of the page. This relevance is known as 'weight'. The more weight your keyword has in a certain criteria the better. 3. Don't include the name of your website in the title of your page: for example 'Share The Wealth – affiliate marketing'. This is because it will dilute the prominence of your keyword (in this example 'affiliate marketing'). It is tempting to include your site's name as it may look better, however it is not that important as people don't pay much attention to the title. The Meta tags Location: just below the title tag. Meta data appears as follows: <meta name="Description" content="Free articles and guides on affiliate marketing and SEO"> <meta name="Keywords" content="Affiliate Marketing,SEO"> 1. This is where you specify your keywords: <meta name="Keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2, keyword3"> Also, weight is given to how near your keyword is to the beginning of your keywords list. So you should try to have your most important keyword in the place of 'keyword1' in the above example. <meta name="Description" content="Free articles and guides on affiliate marketing and SEO"> 1. The above line is where the description, shown in google results, is written. It goes after content=". Do not worry about keyword weighting in here as search engines do not take this into consideration anymore. The BODY of your HTML Once you have written the content of your page, you can begin SEO on it. Complete the page ready for publishing and then apply the following rules to it to ensure its optimized 100% for the top search engines. 1. Your keyword should appear in bold at least once on your page. This will show the search engines that the word, your keyword, is important to the subject of your page and so must be relevant to the keyword search performed by the search engine user. 2. Your keyword should have a weight of 2% on your page. This is

3. the ideal percentage as if it is too high a search engine may penalize your page for spamming. Spamming is a term used to describe the action of webmasters that trick search engine page ranking systems (SEPRS) into thinking they are relevant in order to get a high ranking. These pages will not usually be relevant at all and simply "cash in" selling advertising space with the high traffic they receive. Spamming is increasingly becoming a thing of the past as the search engine page ranking algorithms become more sophisticated. To work out the percentage weight your keyword has, visit www.live-keyword-analysis.com . 3. Use heading tags ( <h1>heading</h1> etc) and put your keyword into the heading. Again the usual weighting rules exist. Have your keyword as close to the beginning of the heading and have as few other words in the heading as possible. Position this heading as close to the top of your page as you can for increased relevance. 4. Put your keyword in up to three of the alt attributes for images and include it in one of the first three alt image attributes in your code. Alt image attributes are the alt tags given to images in your code which can be seen if the image fails to load. These are great for hosting your keyword as users cannot usually see them. Don't spam though, stick to three alt tags. Alt tags are used as follows: <img src="imagename.gif" alt="alt-text-here" width="image-width" height="image-height"> 5. Keep your page content between 100 and 1400 words. This is for a number of reasons, including the size of Google's page cache (amount of data from a page Google stores). If you have too much content, you could try splitting the page into two separate pages and perhaps having a 'page 2' link at the bottom of the content. 6. Your keyword should appear at the beginning of your content and at the end (The first and last 50 words) Code Optimization Checklist * No stop words in your title tag * Keyword included in title * Website name not included in title * Keyword in meta keywords list * Keyword placed as close to the beginning of the meta keywords list as possible * Keyword appears in bold at least once in the content * Keyword has a 2% weight

4. * Keyword is in the first heading tag and is at the top of the page content * Keyword is in the first 50 words and last 50 words of the page * Page content is between 100 and 1400 words * Keyword is in one of the first three alt image attributes and is in three of them in total Tips and Advice • Try to optimize each page for just one keyword. This will stop each keyword competing against each other for weightings and prominence and you will rank higher for the chosen keyword. • Not every page of your site will be able to be optimized for every criterion. Don't worry; just try to hit each criteria as best you can. Sometimes you won't be able to achieve a content size of above 100 words: on a contacts page for example. Issues like this are of little importance as not every page will have a particular need for perfect optimization, because surfers will find contact information from a link shown on the home page. • Constantly check your competition. You may not feel it is possible to get onto the first page on Google for a certain keyword/phrase. Choose a less contested keyword. ============================================================ ==== Page Rank The search engine world never rests. As online marketing professionals discover new ways to obtain top rankings the algorithms evolve right along side. There are two primary reasons behind the updating of ranking algorithms. To increase the quality and relevancy of the results, and to decrease the many pages of online spam. As the algorithms are updated, new ways to affect the results are discovered, and the algorithm must then be again adjusted. This is a cycle that has been around since the early days of search, and one that won't be going away any time soon. A lot has changed over the years, and the future is sure to also deliver its plethora of surprises, but there are three main factors that will always have some level of impact on your search results. SEO, Content and Links Some people say that the world of search engine optimization is over and that the entire basis behind successful rankings lies

5. in the power of incoming links. While incoming links do play a significant role, and in most cases are a necessity, they are far from the only determining factor. There are many determining factors behind what will affect the ranking of a site. The three largest contributing factors are SEO, links, and site content. To compete in highly competitive industries a site needs numerous on-topic pages of content, relevant incoming links from a variety of sources, and, solid site optimization. While search is always changing, these three factors will remain constant. Each may change in the level of impact they have, but they will always contribute to the top listings. Site content and SEO go hand in hand. Content is very important, but without the SEO to add focus, it can go unnoticed. Proper keyword densities, link paths and keyword placement will always play a role in having the content discovered and ranked by the search engines. If the fundamental SEO aspects are not in place, there is a strong chance that the content may never see the light of day. Incoming links add focus and relevance for the site overall, but if the content is not relevant to the desired phrases the odds of obtaining a top ranking are very bleak. Links play, and will continue to play a strong role in the future of search rankings as they add that important vote of confidence. When site A links to site B, that tells the search engines site B is worth considering. Value is passed, based on relevance and the overall authority of site A. As more and more webmasters develop new linking schemes, the algorithms responsible for displaying top sites have to continually evolve to weed out the ever increasing amounts of spam. While Google's current algorithm relies heavily on incoming links, especially for sites in highly competitive markets, this algorithm will have to change and mutate over time as the internet continues to evolve. If rankings were determined 100% by inbound links where would this leave us? Thousands, if not millions, of valuable websites would go completely unnoticed. We would also see many sites ranking that are not relevant to the actual search term due to issues related to Google bombing. Political opinions aside, the single word "failure" does not accurately represent the George Bush bio page; however, it continues to rank #1 in Google. This was made possible by the anchor text used in links posted by thousands of bloggers and webmasters. If links were solely responsible for rankings, we would see a lot more examples of Google Bombing as the actual number of links required to 'bomb' would decline. Where is Search Going? For us to know the exact future of search we will have to wait and see what happens, but some things are certain to grow in popularity.

6. The future will undoubtedly see more advances in localized search, serving results relevant to the locality of the searcher. Is this the best way? Only time will tell, but even if this is the future, we will still see SEO, links & content dictating the results. The SEO and content will have to be in part geared towards local information such as zip codes, city names, etc, but they still will be important contributors. Links will undoubtedly contribute to rankings long into the future, but quite possibly will have a reduced role with more SEO fundamentals making a comeback. One example is to take a look at MSN Live Search. As reported by Ross Dunn in the SEO BLOG (http://news.stepforth.com/blog/2006/11/ msn-algorithm-update-nov-3rd-2006.php) just this past weekend an algorithm update has shown increased value on fundamentals such as title tags and domain names. These two areas were once an incredibly powerful tool in obtaining rankings, and had reduced in value. Now, at least in MSN, they are gaining ground once again. Still in its infant stages, Mobile Search is growing as more and more people turn to their cell phones and other mobile devices for search. Mobile search will likely have the most benefit for localized type searching. People looking for an address, weather report, local business, entertainment information, etc. As time goes on the number of users using Mobile Search will continue to grow, and optimized sites will be the ones found by these searchers. A whole new level of optimizing mobile websites will likely emerge. In 10 years time search will certainly look very different. While it has become a staple in the lives of millions, in the big scheme of things the internet is still very young and search even younger. Why SEO will always be important SEO will always play an important role in having sites found in the search engines. Regardless of how search algorithms evolve they will always require a level of on site content in order to correctly rank websites. As long as this content is considered, proper keyword placement and frequencies will play a role. SEO in itself will continue to change. The proper frequencies of keyword placement, linking techniques and URL structure may alter, but will always have an impact. As we move into the future and as the search engine algorithms continue to evolve SEO will always play an important role in having your websites obtain top rankings. While the small things will always change it is important to have the basic fundamentals in place and doing so will help sustain consistent rankings into the future. ============================================================

7. ==== SEO CHECKLIST When it comes to SEO not all of us have the time to be experts. At some point the real "gurus" of SEO and other topics are the people with a whole lot of time on their hands. This list, put together with the everyday webmaster in mind, drives home some absolutely crucial points that you should keep in mind when optimizing your pages for valuable search rankings. 1. Check Search Engine Crawl Error Pages It's important to monitor search engine crawl error reports to keep on top of how your site and its pages are performing. Monitoring error reports can help you determine when and where Googlebot or another crawler is having trouble indexing your content - which can help you find a solution to the problem. 2. Create/update robots.txt and sitemap files These files are supported by major search engines and are incredibly useful tools for ensuring that crawlers index your important site content while avoiding those sections/files that you deem to be either unimportant or cause problems in the crawl process. In many cases we've seen the proper use of these files make all the difference between a total crawl failure for a site and a full index of content pages which makes them crucial from an SEO standpoint. 3. Check Googlebot activity reports These reports allow you to monitor how long it's taking Googlebot to access your pages. This information can be very important if you are worried that you may be on a slow network or experiencing web server problems. If it is taking search engine crawlers a long time to index your pages it may be the case that there are times when they "time out" and stop trying. Additionally, if the crawlers are unable to call your pages up quickly there is a good chance users are experiencing the same lag in load times, and we all know how impatient internet users can be. 4. Check how your site looks to browsers without image and JavaScript support One of the best ways to determine just what your site looks like to a search engine crawler is to view your pages in a browser with image and JavaScript support disabled. Mozilla's Firefox browser has a plug-in available called the "Web Developer Toolbar" that adds this functionality and a lot more to the popular standards-compliant browser. If after turning off image and JavaScript support you aren't able to make sense of your pages at all, it is a good sign that your site is not well-optimized for search. While images and JavaScript can add a

8. lot to the user experience they should always be viewed as a "luxury" - or simply an improvement upon an already-solid textual content base. 5. Ensure that all navigation is in HTML, not images One of the most common mistakes in web design is to use images for site navigation. While for some companies and webmasters SEO is not a concern and therefore they can get away with this, for anyone worried about having well-optimized pages this should be the first thing to go. Not only will it render your site navigation basically valueless for search engine crawlers, but within reason very similar effects can usually be achieved with CSS roll-overs that maintain the aesthetic impact while still providing valuable and relevant link text to search engines. 6. Check that all images include ALT text Failing to include descriptive ALT text with images is to miss out on another place to optimize your pages. Not only is this important for accessibility for vision-impaired users, but search engines simply can't "take a look" at your images and decipher the content there. They can only see your ALT text, if you've provided it, and the association they'll make with the image and your relevant content will be based exclusively on this attribute. 7. Use Flash content sparingly Several years ago Flash hit the scene and spread like wild fire. It was neat looking, quick to download and brought interactivity and animation on the web to a new height. However, from an SEO standpoint, Flash files might as well be spacer GIFs - they're empty. Search engines are not able to index text/content within a Flash file. For this reason, while Flash can do a lot for presentation, from an accessibility and SEO standpoint it should be used very sparingly and only on non-crucial content. 8. Ensure that each page has a unique <title> and meta description tag Optimization of <title> tags is one of the most important on-page SEO points. Many webmasters are apparently unaware and use either duplicate <title> tags for multiple pages or do not target search traffic at all within this valuable tag. Run a search on a competitive keyword of your choice on Google - click on the first few links that show up and see what text appears in the title bar for the window. You should see right away that this is a key place to include target keywords for your pages. 9. Make sure that important page elements are HTML The simple fact to keep in mind when optimizing a page is that the crawlers are basically only looking at your source code. Anything you've put together in a Flash movie, an image or any

9. other multimedia component is likely to be invisible to search engines. With that in mind it should be clear that the most important elements of your page, where the heart of your content will lie, should be presented in clean, standards-compliant and optimized HTML source code. 10. Be sure to target keywords in your page content Some webmasters publish their pages in hopes that they will rank well for competitive keywords within their topic or niche. However, this will simply never happen unless you include your target keywords in the page content. This means creating well-optimized content that mentions these keywords frequently without triggering spam filters. Any way you cut it you're going to need to do some writing - if you don't like doing it yourself it's a good idea to hire a professional copy writer. Simply put: without relevant content that mentions your target keywords you will not rank well. 11. Don't use frames There is still some debate as to whether frames are absolutely horrible for SEO or whether they are simply just not the best choice. Is there really a difference? Either way, you probably don't want to use frames. Crawlers can have trouble getting through to your content and effectively indexing individual pages, for one thing. For another, most functionality that the use of frames allows is easily duplicated using proper CSS coding. There is still some use for a frames-based layout, but it is still better to avoid it if at all possible. 12. Make sure that your server is returning a 404 error code for unfound pages We've all seen it. We're browsing around at a new or familiar site, clicking links and reading content, when we get the infamous blank screen that reads "404 page not found" error. While broken links that point to these pages should definitely be avoided you also don't want to create a "custom error page" to replace this page. Why? Well, it's simple: if you generate a custom error page, crawlers can spend time following broken links that they won't know are broken. A 404 error page is easily recognizable, and search engine crawlers are programmed to stop following links that generate this page. If crawlers end up in a section of your site that is down through an old link that you missed, they might not spend the time to index the rest of your site. 13. Ensure that crawlers will not fall into infinite loops Many webmasters see fit to include scripting languages, such as PERL, PHP and ASP to add interactive functionality to their web pages. Whether for a calendar system, a forum, eCommerce functionality for an online store, etc. scripting is used quite frequently on the internet. However, what some webmasters don't

10. realize is that unless they use robots.txt files or take other preventative measures search engine crawlers can fall into what are called "infinite loops" in their pages. Imagine, if you will, a script that allows a webmaster to add a calendar to one of his pages. Now, any programmer worth his salt would base this script on calculations - it would auto-generate each page based on the previous month and a formula to determine how the days and dates would fall. That script, depending on sophistication, could plausibly extend infinitely into the past or future. Now think of the way a crawler works - it follows links, indexes what it finds, and follows more links. What's to stop a crawler from clicking "next month" in a calendar script an infinite number of times? Nothing - well, almost nothing. Crawlers are well-built programs that need to run efficiently. As such they are built to recognize when they've run into an "infinite loop" situation like this, and they will simply stop indexing pages at a site that is flagged for this error. ============================================================ ==== Writing Effective Meta Tags for Search Engine Optimization by Donald Nelson ©Copyright 2002-2003 As with many other things which are unseen, there is a lot of unnecessary mystery surrounding the use of meta-tags on web pages. The meta tags are information slots in the "head" portion of a web page. Though there are several possible meta tags that may be included in the head of a web page, the ones which are most important for search engine optimization are the Title Tag, the Description tag and the Keywords tag. TITLE TAG The title tag is really one of the most important single things you can work on for improving your website’s search engine results. Go to Google and make a search for any particular keyword. If you look at the top ten entries in that search you will see that all of them have this key word in the title, sometimes more than once. So when writing your title tag, it is helpful to have your keywords included in the title tag, and not only in the tag, near the beginning of the title. Suppose that your company is the Acme Manufacturing Company and you are selling electric widgets and you are located in California. What should your title tag be? Most people would opt for the name of their company as the first word of the title. It makes sense, in that it looks good in the blue strip at the top of the browser, but it doesn’t necessarily help you to get a good ranking in search results for your keywords "electric widgets, California". The first few words of your title tag are very important.

11. People may not be searching for Acme Manufacturing, unless it is a very important brand, but they are searching for electric widgets, and they may not want to purchase it from someone in New York, especially if it is not a mail-order type item. In addition, if there are tons of widget companies, it will be difficult to get to the top of the heap in a search simply for the term "widgets". But if it is "widgets, California", then you will have a good chance of getting a high ranking if you put the keyword California prominently in the title. So, if you are in a very competitive category and your customers don’t already know about you, then you might consider a title tag like this "Electric widgets from Acme Manufacturing of California" or even better "Electric Widgets in California produced by Acme Manufacturing." Some guidelines for the title tag suggest that this tag be limited to 70-80 characters including spaces. (I confess to have used more on several occasions.) META DESCRIPTION TAG The next tag that has to be done is the Description tag. Many search engines use the description tag as a way to tell the searchers what the page is about. On MSN, for example, the description of the site shown underneath the title is the description that has been placed in the description tag. The description tag is thus important in two respects: the search engine robot searches it for keywords to "get an idea" of what the page is about, and this tag will be seen by the surfers as they scroll down through the search results. If it is an interesting and well-written description then they may click through to visit the site. So this tag should be well written but also contain the important keywords that you wish to highlight. Going back to our example of Acme Manufacturing. We could make a description tag that reads as follows: "Acme Manufacturing is the largest producer of electric widgets in California, providing round the clock service and warranties on all products." This description contains the keywords again and also says something about the company. Some guidelines for description length recommend a maximum length of 250 characters. Once again there is no precision about this, but it is good to be cautious until you are already entered into a search engine’s index. META KEYWORDS TAG The last of the important meta tags relevant to search engine optimization is the keywords tag. In this tag you have a chance to list your important keywords, but this time they do not have

12. to be in a coherent phrase as in the Title and Description. Put your important keywords near the beginning. Make sure that all the keywords used in the title and the description tags are again listed. On top of that, add prominent keywords, especially those that appear in the actual text of the page you are optimizing. For the Acme Manufacturing company we could have these keywords: "widgets, widget, electric widgets, California, widgets in California, Acme Manufacturing, service, warrantee, warranties" Many pundits advise against excessive repetition of any single keyword even if they appear in different phrases separated by commas. Once again the guidelines vary and are not precise but it would be better to be conservative at first. How big should the keywords section be? 800-1000 characters is the estimate provided by some search engines and commentators alike. The thing to remember about meta tags is that they are just one part of search engine optimization. If your text is keyword rich and your page structure allows the search engines to get to this text easily and if, on top of this, you have crafted your meta tags well, then you have an excellent chance of getting the search engine positioning results that you are aiming for. ============================================================ ==== GaryTheScubaGuy's SEO Checklist I've been trying to come up with a sort of SEO Checklist for our n008ies here at Stickyeyes to use and have come up with this list so far. I know I'm missing several things. How about a little help here in identifying some other key elements. Big or small, doesn't matter. Metatags and on-page optimisation Are the keywords in the title with a 1-word buffer (Max - 1 keyword phrase) Are Keywords in META keywords. It’s not necessary for Google, but a good habit. Keep the META keywords short (128 characters max, or 10). Are Keywords in META description. Keep keyword close to the left but in a full sentence. Are Keywords in the top portion of the page in first sentence of first full bodied paragraph (plain text: no bold, no italic, no style). Are Keywords in an H2-H4 heading Are Keywords in bold – second paragraph if possible and anywhere but the first usage on page. Are Keywords in italic – anywhere but the first usage. Are Keywords in subscript/superscript. Are Keywords in URL (directory name, filename, or domain name). Do not duplicate the keyword in the URL. Are Keywords in an image filename used on the page. Are Keywords in ALT tag of that previous image mentioned. Are Keywords in the title attribute of that image. Are Keywords in link text to another site. Are Keywords in an internal link’s text. Are Keywords in title attribute of all links targeted in and out of page.

13. Are Keywords in the filename of your external CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) or JavaScript file. Are Keywords in an inbound link on site (preferably from your home page). Are Keywords in an inbound link from offsite (if possible). Are Keywords in a link to a site that has a PageRank of 8 or better (e.g. .gov or .edu Are Keywords in an html comment tag? Technical What is the code-to-text ratio? (text should be at minimum higher than the code) How many links are pointing to the full url (with http://) How many links are pointing to the domain? What is the Domain name visibility? A count of results at Google for a search for the domain, showing URL visibility rather than incoming link count. Number of internal pages that link to the home page? Number of Technorati links? Number of del.icio.us links? What is the page size? How long does it take to load the page? On each page, is the top keyword density on each page between 3-7%? Are their any redirects? Is the page W3C Compliant? Is their any duplicate content out on the web? Is the site in the top 10 directories? Is a spider seeing all of the site content? Other Issues Is there at least 250 words in the content? Is the keyword density for each kw on each page between 3-7%? Javascript in external files? Alternative navigation on flash or frames? Xml and html sitemap? Are their any broken links? Is there a robots.txt file? Browser Compatibility (IE, Netscape, Opera, Firefox, Mosaic and Safari) Linking Google backlinks MSN backlinks Yahoo backlinks DMOZ listing? Does the site have outward rss feeds? Does the page have rss feeds for fresh on-page content? Does the site have an SEO optimised 404 page? PDF optimised docs in root file with a navigation page listing each doc description and link. Also a separate xml sitemap for these and separate submission. 302 redirects? (Change to 301 - Google will penalise you for these if you leave them up too long) In my list I have links to specific tools that will do many of these checks for you. If you are interested in the excel spreadsheet with the links and an actual page report shoot me an pm or an email and I'll trade you for a link somewhere. BTW, I'm almost finished with the next Top 12 SEO Tips for 2007...Volume 2 (for those interested - I slacked off for awhile trying to find some really good stuff and I think it will be worth the wait)

14. ============================================================ ==== Optimizing Content for Google's Universal Search By Claudia Bruemmer (c) 2007 By now, you've all heard about Google's new Universal Search concept, which combines all the information within its vertical databases into one index to serve a single set of Web search results. As you can imagine, this will require some adjustments to standard search engine optimization techniques. If you have been following the Bruce Clay methodology, then you should already be on the right track to optimizing every aspect of your Web site that is under your control. With the arrival of universal search, it's not just a good idea; it's a necessity. Google Vice President of Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer said the company's goal for universal search is to create "a seamless, integrated experience to get users the best answers." Mayer stated on the official Google blog that the universal search vision would be "one of the biggest architectural, ranking, and interface challenges" the search engine would face. Mayer first suggested this concept to Google back in 2001. Since then, the company has been building the infrastructure, algorithms and presentation mechanisms needed to blend the different content from Images, Video, News, Maps, Blogs et al into its Web results. This is Google's first step toward removing the partition that separates its numerous search silos, integrating these vast repositories of information into a universal set of search results. The object is to make queries more relevant for users, but what are the ramifications for SEO? Google Relevancy Challenge Based on industry research, Google has a relevancy problem because the database is too vast. Back in 2005, Jupiter Research touched on this, stating it identified an opportunity for vertical search engines. The study inferred that general search engines were good at classifying vast amounts of information, but not very good at serving results that helped users make decisions. A year later, Outsell came out with "Vertical Search Delivers What Big Search Engines Miss," a study that also mentioned the opportunity for vertical search due to dissatisfaction with general search engines. This report published the oft-quoted fact stating that the average Internet search failure rate is 31.9 percent. The study identified two market trends contributing to the growth of vertical search – failed general searches and rising keyword prices in paid search.

15. Another noteworthy study was conducted by Convera. Over 1,000 online business users were asked about their search practices, successes, and failures. Only 21 percent of the respondents thought that search queries on general search engines were understood, a mere 10 percent found critical information on the first try in general search engines. This study concluded, "To date, professionals have not been adequately served by consumer search engines." The results of these studies show that Google and other general search engines are challenged to produce relevant results, suggesting vertical and niche search engines could eliminate such problems because the niche databases contain topic-specific information, serving targeted, more relevant answers to user queries. Google's Solution to Relevancy Since Google's move toward universal search, one can only assume it has considered the above problems and decided that pulling all its databases together, comparing and ranking them accurately at warp speed, could be the solution to relevancy. Doing this requires new technical infrastructure, including new algorithms, software and hardware, which Google has been working on since 2001 and is now in the process of implementing. Universal search has implications for search marketers because it is a departure from the uniformity that characterized search marketing in the past, requiring adjustments in SEO methodology. Since the modifications will be implemented in steps, immediate changes in the SERPS won't be obvious, and there is time to develop new optimization strategies. Search Personalization In addition to universal search, Google is also focusing on personalization in the SERPs. This means users will be seeing different SERPS based on their previous queries, if signed into their Google accounts. Users may or may not notice many changes in the SERPs due to universal search and personalization, depending on their level of sophistication and/or powers of observation. However, marketers will be scrambling. Marketers will need to get their clients listed into as many niche databases as possible to increase the breadth of coverage for universal search. Social media optimization techniques can be used to enhance both universal and personalized search results. Universal Search Optimization Strategies The focus on personalization and universal search requires more emphasis on social media SEO strategies because of user interest in creating content and the vast amounts of new multimedia content created daily on the Web. Marketers are beginning to drive traffic via social networking sites, and these efforts are known to enhance search engine optimization campaigns. Strategies include creating multimedia content such as blogs,

16. videos and podcasts, and then getting them listed on social search sites like Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon, as well as niche search engines like Technorati, Podzinger and Blinx. When creating multimedia content, you must ensure that it is tagged and cataloged correctly. Multimedia content is optimized through established fundamental SEO techniques, such as creating keyword-rich, user-friendly content, unique Meta tags, good site navigation and structure, and implementing a successful linking strategy. Below are a few suggestions for creating and submitting multimedia content for several of Google's vertical databases to gain extended reach through universal search. Google Image Search: It has always been a good idea to use images on your site for illustrating your products and services. Now, this becomes a way for your customers to find your site via Google Image Search. Optimize your images with descriptive, keyword-rich file names and ALT tags. Use accurate descriptions of your image files for the benefit of the vision impaired and others who might need to view the site with text only. Google Video (beta): As with optimizing images, use descriptive, keyword-rich file names for your video files. Also create a keyword-rich title tag, description tag, and video site map. Create a Web page to launch your video, optimizing content for SEO and using anchor text wherever possible. Besides submitting to Google Video, also include Blinkx and other social networking and search sites like YouTube and Podzinger (audio and video search engine). Google News: Here's where you can submit your press releases for display as "news" and subsequent indexing. Issue press releases containing current information about new products and events your site is involved with and Google News will likely pick it up. Google Maps: This is also known as Google Local, a vertical that has been included in Google search results for a while. Give your site a local presence through the Google Maps Local Business Center where local businesses can get a free basic listing to extend their reach in the SERPs. Google Blog Search (beta): You all have a corporate blog, right? This is how modern companies communicate with their customers and stakeholders. Tag it (digg, del.icio.us, stumbleupon, etc.), submit to Google Blog search, and extend your reach for Web searches on Google. In closing, there are many ways social and multimedia content can enhance your SEO efforts. Experiment and learn how to use social media to extend your SEO rankings. As you become aware of the many niche databases for submitting multimedia content, this can go a long way toward gaining visibility through Google's personalized and universal search.

17. ============================================================ ==== Creating Widgets for Your Websites and Blogs By Doran Roggio (c) 2007 With a widget you can place the current information from your blogs and or/websites on other webpages, and your personal pages on social networks like myspace, ning.com and your private clubs. This is not only fun and informative, but an excellent promotional tool. What is a widget? According to Wikipedia a "web widget is anything that can be embedded within a page of HTML, i.e. a web page. A widget adds some content to that page that is not static. Generally widgets are third party originated... Widgets are also known as modules, snippets, and plug-ins. Widgets can be written in HTML, but also in JavaScript, flash and other scripting languages... Applications can be integrated within a third party website by the placement of a small snippet of code. This is becoming a distribution or marketing channel for many companies. The code brings in 'live' content - advertisements, links, images - from a third party site without the web site owner having to update." You have probably seen widgets on web sites you have visited. When clicked on the widget will take you to the source of the information. Although widgets have been around since the late nineties, they are becoming increasing more popular especially with the rise of social networking. I first started playing around with widgets as a way to promote my own AC published content. While widgets are not that difficult, they can be a little tricky at first if unfamiliar to you. It took me several tries to perfect my own widgets and place them on my blog and social networking sites. They now work perfectly without any problems. As I add content to my AC page for example, the widget automatically updates to show the most current article titles. If you have not had the opportunity to work with widgets or have attempted to do so without success, this article is for you. With little effort you will be able to make the widgets and place them on the web pages that you choose. Once mastered the widgets are really cool and worth the effort. Making A Widget At widgetbox.com you can make a widget to place on your pages. You can customize the widget with size, details, title and colors and even list it in their blidget directory which gives more exposure to your blog and AC page (every little bit of promotion helps). You can make as many widgets as you want, I

18. have one for my blog at Women-sense.com and another for my AC content producer page so far. Go to widgetbox.com, on the left sidebar click on the button that says 'Make a blidget'. This will open up a box that asks for the url where the information is being gathered. For my blog I just entered the blog url, (http://women-sense.com). Widgetbox.com automatically draws from the rss feed for that URL. Don't ask me how, I have no idea but it works. For my Associated Content I added the actual RSS link which I found by clicking on the RSS symbol and copying the url address from the browser address bar. Once you add the link to the blidget box it will open to a page that will give you customizing options. You will see your widget on the right hand side with your information from the RSS feed. You can opt to list article titles or titles with article summaries. Different colors as well as sizing and/or images are other options available. Fool with the options until you get it the way you want it to look. When you finish setting the options and you are happy with the way it looks, click on one of the article titles to assure it is working correctly. When clicked it should click thru to the site your are promoting. Registering and Getting The Code If working correctly, the next step is to get the code. Now you will need the code in order to place the widget on your myspace page or other website of your choice. Before getting the code the next step in the creation of your widget offers you the chance to list your widget in the blidget gallery. I opted for this and you will probably want to do so as well. It can only add to your exposure. Add keyword tags and click 'publish blidget'. You will then be asked to register if you do not already have an account. Don't worry, the service is absolutely free. By registering you will be able to come back and make as many widgets as you want and add them to your account for editing. Once you have registered you will now be taken to a another page with several options. Near the top you will see the title of the widget (example: AC Media) on the far right of the title click the green button that says 'get widget'. Placing The Widget On Websites A drop down list opens up for you to choose where to place the widget. You will see there are many choices. If you are placing your widget on myspace, for example, choose that selection. You will be asked for your myspace email and password, along with what section you want the widget to be placed. Widgetbox.com

19. will automatically place the widget on your myspace page in the section you desire. Perhaps you want to place the widget on a site that is not listed. In this case you would choose the section that says, 'get code'. There will be two choices to choose from, a Javascript and a Flash script. At this point you may have to experiment to see which code will work on the site you are attempting to place the widget. Many sites do not allow Javascript. If you are working on your own webpages you can probably use the Javascript code. Copy and paste the code in your website's html, save and upload your page as usual. The widget should work fine. For other sites like ning.com you want the flash script. Select all and copy the code for the flash script. Paste the code into a block where you are able to add information by clicking on edit/add in the box and paste the code. You are almost done. Before saving you will need to add opening and closing div tags to the code in order for it to show up. At the beginning of the code place the <div> and at the end of the code include </div>. Click save and close the opened text box and your widget should be displayed. If correctly done, your widget will automatically update every time you add new content to the site your widget is promoting. ============================================================ ==== Making Your Site Search Engine Friendly - Spiderability By John Buchanan (c) 2007 One of the keys to obtaining top rankings, or ANY rankings for that matter is making sure that the search engines can properly spider and index your site. This means doing whatever you can to make sure the search engines are able to reach each page of your site as easily as possible. When I talk to my clients about spiderability, I'm generally referring to two things... 1) Are all the links in the site true hyperlinks that can be picked up properly by the search engines. 2) Are all the pages within the site reachable within 2-3 clicks from the homepage. So let's go over the above two areas of concern. 1) Hyperlinks. This may seem almost silly, but you would be amazed at the number of sites I run into when doing consultations and website analyses that have non-standard hyperlinks. By "non-standard", I'm referring to javascript

20. generated hyperlinks or hyperlinks embedded within flash files. There is nothing inherently wrong with javascript or flash when used properly, but the simple fact is that javascript and flash are NOT search engine friendly. Google is pretty much the only engine that is able to pick up links within javascript or flash code. At this time, I have seen no evidence that either Yahoo or MSN have this ability. While Google may be able to pick up links, it is unclear as to whether or not Google places any VALUE on the links it finds in this manner. Remember, much of a page's ranking in Google is determined by links, so you want to be absolutely sure that each and every link is valued. So, be absolutely sure that your links are true hyperlinks (by "true" hyperlinks, I'm talking about hyperlinks coded with the normal href tags) if you want to make sure they are found, followed, and counted by all the engines. 2) Distance from Homepage. Ideally, you want your visitors and the search engines to be able to reach any page within your site within a maximum of three (3) clicks and preferably two clicks. The more clicks it takes to reach a page, the less chance there is that the search engines will index that page. It is for this reason, that site maps have become so popular. By utilizing a sitemap, you are able to link from your homepage to a page that lists all or most of the links to the various pages of your site. The search engines (and visitors) are then able to get to virtually any page of your site within just a couple of clicks. You'll notice I've mentioned not only the search engines but the visitors as well in the above paragraphs. By reducing the number of clicks it takes to get from your homepage to any page on your site, you will find that you also increase the overall usability of your site. While site maps can definitely help to increase the spiderability of a site, it is important to remember that they are not a total fix for bad navigational structure within a site. As mentioned, all of the search engines utilize page link popularity in one way or another in their algorithms. In general, the homepage of a site will have the highest link popularity of any page within the site. This is because most inbound links to a site are pointing to the homepage. It's from the homepage that all the internal pages derive their link popularity from a sort of "trickle down" affect. A site map will only derive a certain amount of link popularity that it can pass on to the pages it links to. To understand this best, think of the homepage as a large river with each link on the homepage a smaller river branching off from the main river.

21. Each river will be fed a similar amount of water by the main river. Alone one branch of the river will never be able to deliver as much water to the various areas as all the branches of the river can combined. The site map is one branch of your sites link popularity river and it has value, but it will never have the same impact as a well thought out and implemented links structure that makes use of all the rivers of link popularity within your site. To make the most use of the link popularity of your site, you should try and setup your sites navigational structure so that even without a site map, the search engines and visitors are STILL able to reach any page on your site within 2-3 clicks. So...to make a long story short...Always be sure to utilize true, standard hyperlinks throughout your site and be sure that your sites navigational structure allows any page of your site to be reached within no more than 3 clicks. See you at the top! ============================================================ == 8 Tips To Create A Landing Page By Ayat Shukairy (c) 2007 Introduction You need copy for your landing page but you're not sure where to start. First let's clarify what we mean by a landing page. A landing page can be a page that visitors come to after clicking on a promotional banner or link. Ultimately, the landing page must convince the visitor that they should stay on your site. You may also have a goal that you want accomplished, such as: • Signing up for a newsletter or filling out a form • Buying a product • Reading informational pieces What's going to keep them there? The structure, the language, and the visual appeal all play a part of it. Check out these tips to create a great landing page, or reinvent the one you already have. The Structure People arrive at your site looking for answers. They scan to see if they're in the right place and assess whether it's going to be a quick and easy visit or a long grinding one. Your landing page is the welcome wagon inviting them in and feeding them the information they need. The structure of the page will either pull them in and encourage them to fulfill your goal, or distract and cause them to cut out of there before getting the whole picture.

22. The structure of the landing page in general should be matching that of the banner, ad or link they clicked on to get them there. So for example, if your PPC Ad is targeting SEO articles, your landing page should discuss exactly that. If a Victoria Secret's Ad for lingerie shows up and you click on it, you will be transferred to a landing page with the exact image and structure of the ad. The Visuals • Copy placement – Strategic use of copy and graphics will catch the visitor's attention. Don't muck up the page with large, distracting graphics. Use plenty of whitespace and place your message in the central portion of the page rather than placing information down the sides, where the focus can be lost quickly. Keep the copy short. The visitor expects a precise message, so don't choke it up with tons of mindless prose. • Beauty is in the eye – Use a consistent color palette. If you have advertising or banners that link visitors to your website, make sure the concept and color scheme match across the board. It's also a great visual indicator for the visitor because they can easily identify that they're still in the right place. • Simplify – Remove any distracting elements like advertising banners, links, or additional blocks of information from the page and get down to the specific message. The Goal Before you design the landing page, decide what the goal of the page will be. If you're looking for newsletter subscribers, the goal will be to have the visitor enter their information and become a member of your mailing list. Be a Sleuth Do your research. Keep your visitors in mind when building your landing page and tailor it to suit their needs. By narrowing your options and focusing on your visitor, you'll stay on target. Keep Your Focus Keep the focus on you. You've dangled a large poster board over their head and pulled them in. Now that you've got them, don't give your visitors a reason to wander. Use a Call to Action A call to action, such as 'subscribe now' or 'get this offer' reminds the visitor why they are on your website. Place them toward the top of your page. For users that want to click, it allows them to find it easily. For those who are still deciding, it's a great reminder.

23. Many sites place the consultation form or contact form directly on the landing page, which may not be such a bad idea. Again, you need glaring calls to action. Don't add several useless links on the page that will take the visitor back to your main site; rather include the links that will get them to actually purchase your product/service. Write Like a Pro No, you don't have to hire one to look like one. What's the best way to come off like a professional? Create landing pages with no grammatical or spelling errors. I recently hit a website offering 'discount holideys.' As I clicked out of there, I pictured the four-star flea-bag motel by the swampland I might have booked if I stayed. Reassure People get leery when they're asked for their personal data. If you're asking for personal information, make sure you have a credible privacy policy to back you up. ============================================================ ==== Knowing Your Visitors Through Website Traffic Analysis By Don Resh (c) 2007 Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for a number of different reasons. But before you can make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to interpret the data. Most web hosting companies will provide you with basic web traffic information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use of. However, the data you receive from your host company can be overwhelming if you don't understand how to apply it to your particular business and website. Let's start by examining the most basic data - the average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. These figures are the most accurate measure of your website's activity. It would appear on the surface that the more traffic you see recorded, the better you can assume your website is doing, but this is an inaccurate perception. You must also look at the behavior of your visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge the effectiveness of your site. Traffic Analysis There is often a great misconception about what is commonly known as "hits" and what is really effective, quality traffic to your site. Hits simply means the number of information requests received by the server. If you think about the fact that a hit can simply equate to the number of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how overblown the concept of hits can

24. be. For example, if your homepage has 15 graphics on it, the server records this as 15 hits, when in reality we are talking about a single visitor checking out a single page on your site. As you can see, hits are not useful in analyzing your website traffic. The more visitors that come to your website, the more accurate your interpretation will become. The greater the traffic is to your website, the more precise your analysis will be of overall trends in visitor behavior. The smaller the number of visitors, the more a few anomalous visitors can distort the analysis. The aim is to use the web traffic statistics to figure out how well or how poorly your site is working for your visitors. One way to determine this is to find out how long on average your visitors spend on your site. If the time spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an underlying problem. Then the challenge is to figure out what that problem is. It could be that your keywords are directing the wrong type of visitors to your website, or that your graphics are confusing or intimidating, causing the visitor to exit rapidly. Use the knowledge of how much time visitors are spending on your site to pinpoint specific problems, and after you fix those problems, continue to use time spent as a gauge of how effective your fix has been. Additionally, web traffic stats can help you determine effective and ineffective areas of your website. If you have a page that you believe is important, but visitors are exiting it rapidly, that page needs attention. You could, for example, consider improving the link to this page by making the link more noticeable and enticing, or you could improve the look of the page or the ease that your visitors can access the necessary information on that page. If, on the other hand, you notice that visitors are spending a lot of time on pages that you think are less important, you might consider moving some of your sales copy and marketing focus to that particular page. As you can see, these statistics will reveal vital information about the effectiveness of individual pages, and visitor habits and motivation. This is essential information to any successful Internet marketing campaign. Your website undoubtedly has exit pages, such as a final order or contact form. This is a page you can expect your visitor to exit rapidly. However, not every visitor to your site is going to find exactly what he or she is looking for, so statistics may show you a number of different exit pages. This is normal unless you notice an exit trend on a particular page that is not intended as an exit page. In the case that a significant percentage of visitors are exiting your website on a page not designed for that purpose, you must closely examine that

25. particular page to discern what the problem is. Once you pinpoint potential weaknesses on that page, minor modifications in content or graphics may have a significant impact on the keeping visitors moving through your site instead of exiting at the wrong page. After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, it's time to turn to your keywords and phrases. Notice if particular keywords are directing a specific type of visitor to your site. The more targeted the visitor - meaning that they find what they are looking for on your site, and even better, fill out your contact form or make a purchase - the more valuable that keyword is. However, if you find a large number of visitors are being directed - or should I say misdirected - to your site by a particular keyword or phrase, that keyword demands adjustment. Keywords are vital to bringing quality visitors to your site who are ready to do business with you. Close analysis of the keywords your visitors are using to find your site will give you a vital understanding of your visitor's needs and motivations. Finally, if you notice that users are finding your website by typing in your company name, break open the champagne! It means you have achieved a significant level of brand recognition, and this is a sure sign of burgeoning success. ============================================================ ==== The Lucky Thirteen: The Critical SEO Checklist By Mike Tekula (c) 2007 When it comes to SEO not all of us have the time to be experts. At some point the real "gurus" of SEO and other topics are the people with a whole lot of time on their hands. This list, put together with the everyday webmaster in mind, drives home some absolutely crucial points that you should keep in mind when optimizing your pages for valuable search rankings. 1. Check Search Engine Crawl Error Pages It's important to monitor search engine crawl error reports to keep on top of how your site and its pages are performing. Monitoring error reports can help you determine when and where Googlebot or another crawler is having trouble indexing your content - which can help you find a solution to the problem. 2. Create/update robots.txt and sitemap files These files are supported by major search engines and are incredibly useful tools for ensuring that crawlers index your important site content while avoiding those sections/files that you deem to be either unimportant or cause problems in the crawl process. In many cases we've seen the proper use of these files make all the difference between a total crawl failure for a site and a full index of content pages which makes them crucial from an SEO standpoint.

26. 3. Check Googlebot activity reports These reports allow you to monitor how long it's taking Googlebot to access your pages. This information can be very important if you are worried that you may be on a slow network or experiencing web server problems. If it is taking search engine crawlers a long time to index your pages it may be the case that there are times when they "time out" and stop trying. Additionally, if the crawlers are unable to call your pages up quickly there is a good chance users are experiencing the same lag in load times, and we all know how impatient internet users can be. 4. Check how your site looks to browsers without image and JavaScript support One of the best ways to determine just what your site looks like to a search engine crawler is to view your pages in a browser with image and JavaScript support disabled. Mozilla's Firefox browser has a plug-in available called the "Web Developer Toolbar" that adds this functionality and a lot more to the popular standards-compliant browser. If after turning off image and JavaScript support you aren't able to make sense of your pages at all, it is a good sign that your site is not well-optimized for search. While images and JavaScript can add a lot to the user experience they should always be viewed as a "luxury" - or simply an improvement upon an already-solid textual content base. 5. Ensure that all navigation is in HTML, not images One of the most common mistakes in web design is to use images for site navigation. While for some companies and webmasters SEO is not a concern and therefore they can get away with this, for anyone worried about having well-optimized pages this should be the first thing to go. Not only will it render your site navigation basically valueless for search engine crawlers, but within reason very similar effects can usually be achieved with CSS roll-overs that maintain the aesthetic impact while still providing valuable and relevant link text to search engines. 6. Check that all images include ALT text Failing to include descriptive ALT text with images is to miss out on another place to optimize your pages. Not only is this important for accessibility for vision-impaired users, but search engines simply can't "take a look" at your images and decipher the content there. They can only see your ALT text, if you've provided it, and the association they'll make with the image and your relevant content will be based exclusively on this attribute. 7. Use Flash content sparingly

27. Several years ago Flash hit the scene and spread like wild fire. It was neat looking, quick to download and brought interactivity and animation on the web to a new height. However, from an SEO standpoint, Flash files might as well be spacer GIFs - they're empty. Search engines are not able to index text/content within a Flash file. For this reason, while Flash can do a lot for presentation, from an accessibility and SEO standpoint it should be used very sparingly and only on non-crucial content. 8. Ensure that each page has a unique <title> and meta description tag Optimization of <title> tags is one of the most important on-page SEO points. Many webmasters are apparently unaware and use either duplicate <title> tags for multiple pages or do not target search traffic at all within this valuable tag. Run a search on a competitive keyword of your choice on Google - click on the first few links that show up and see what text appears in the title bar for the window. You should see right away that this is a key place to include target keywords for your pages. 9. Make sure that important page elements are HTML The simple fact to keep in mind when optimizing a page is that the crawlers are basically only looking at your source code. Anything you've put together in a Flash movie, an image or any other multimedia component is likely to be invisible to search engines. With that in mind it should be clear that the most important elements of your page, where the heart of your content will lie, should be presented in clean, standards-compliant and optimized HTML source code. 10. Be sure to target keywords in your page content Some webmasters publish their pages in hopes that they will rank well for competitive keywords within their topic or niche. However, this will simply never happen unless you include your target keywords in the page content. This means creating well-optimized content that mentions these keywords frequently without triggering spam filters. Any way you cut it you're going to need to do some writing - if you don't like doing it yourself it's a good idea to hire a professional copy writer. Simply put: without relevant content that mentions your target keywords you will not rank well. 11. Don't use frames There is still some debate as to whether frames are absolutely horrible for SEO or whether they are simply just not the best choice. Is there really a difference? Either way, you probably don't want to use frames. Crawlers can have trouble getting through to your content and effectively indexing individual pages, for one thing. For another, most functionality that the use of frames allows is easily duplicated using proper CSS coding. There is still some use for a frames-based layout, but

28. it is still better to avoid it if at all possible. 12. Make sure that your server is returning a 404 error code for unfound pages We've all seen it. We're browsing around at a new or familiar site, clicking links and reading content, when we get the infamous blank screen that reads "404 page not found" error. While broken links that point to these pages should definitely be avoided you also don't want to create a "custom error page" to replace this page. Why? Well, it's simple: if you generate a custom error page, crawlers can spend time following broken links that they won't know are broken. A 404 error page is easily recognizable, and search engine crawlers are programmed to stop following links that generate this page. If crawlers end up in a section of your site that is down through an old link that you missed, they might not spend the time to index the rest of your site. 13. Ensure that crawlers will not fall into infinite loops Many webmasters see fit to include scripting languages, such as PERL, PHP and ASP to add interactive functionality to their web pages. Whether for a calendar system, a forum, eCommerce functionality for an online store, etc. scripting is used quite frequently on the internet. However, what some webmasters don't realize is that unless they use robots.txt files or take other preventative measures search engine crawlers can fall into what are called "infinite loops" in their pages. Imagine, if you will, a script that allows a webmaster to add a calendar to one of his pages. Now, any programmer worth his salt would base this script on calculations - it would auto-generate each page based on the previous month and a formula to determine how the days and dates would fall. That script, depending on sophistication, could plausibly extend infinitely into the past or future. Now think of the way a crawler works - it follows links, indexes what it finds, and follows more links. What's to stop a crawler from clicking "next month" in a calendar script an infinite number of times? Nothing - well, almost nothing. Crawlers are well-built programs that need to run efficiently. As such they are built to recognize when they've run into an "infinite loop" situation like this, and they will simply stop indexing pages at a site that is flagged for this error. ============================================================ ==== The Hard Line Keyword Sales Pitch (Page 1 of 4 ) Have you ever tried to be nice to one of those kids making money for college by allowing them to "clean your carpet" for free? Then, after they sucked all that dirt out of one little spot, you remembered they couldn't leave until their "supervisor" came to pick them up? You knew that you would have to suffer through one of those tenacious hard-line salesmen before you could get rid of the two of them.

29. Here is a technique that makes your web page do the job of that supervisor. It's for use when your main objective is to sell, or otherwise convert the visitor, and you have a good product, for which there is a ready market. With this technique, the goal is to take our share of those customers who are already looking every day for the product that we want to sell. It is a hard line approach from the search engine robot's point of view. To the human reader, your web site will feel organized, authoritative and give a sense of credibility to your business, encouraging the "buy" or sign-up from those who are serious, ready-to-buy customers. Start with the Domain Let's say we want to sell bat houses. If we were real people looking for a place to buy a bat house, we would start with our favorite search engine and do a search for "bat houses." Because this is the first phrase that comes to mind when thinking of our product, we know that the most efficient and aggressive domain for this product from a keyword standpoint would be bathouse.com. It should be a dot com domain because most people are still conditioned to automatically associate it with the domain name, even after being told the top level domain is .net or .org. After our potential customer finds our web site the first time, we want them to be able to remember it and return -- especially if they didn't buy the first time, or once they need three more bat houses after they see how well this one works. If our first choice of domain name is taken already, we will try variations until we come up with something that is similar. For very popular keywords, we may have to work a bit to get what we want. Other variations of bat house could be: Bat-house.com Bat_house.com Bathouses.com Bat-houses.com Bat_houses.com For very popular keywords, even these will be taken, so we get more creative with domains like: Batshouse.com Bats-house.com Bats_house.com Batshouses.com Bats-houses.com Bats_houses.com Most domain providers will offer suggestions for variations as well. We want to stay as close to the original keyword as we can. The Domain IS Our Keyword

30. Because our domain is our keyword, every internal link we create and every page in our domain reinforces our relevance. Keyword optimizing is easy. Make title, meta tags, descriptions, etc, begin with the domain name, in this case "bat house." We will use every optimization technique for links and images that follow on the remainder of the page, by filling all the tags with our keywords, and using names for links and images that relate to the keyword. Be certain that all of your images are named for the keyword. bathouse-tall.gif bathouse-large.gif bathouse-fancy.gif Use at least three images that have high visual relevance to the domain name / keyword. We would not use pictures of bats flying in the wild. We want images of the house(s) we have to sell, or if we have just one, we'll show the house in different views, sizes or uses. The Hard Line Keyword Sales Pitch - The Ask for the Sale Keyword Link (Page 2 of 4 ) You will often see images used as order links on web pages. While they are pretty, we want to create an ORDER link that is populated by our keywords. We are opting to use text over an image because we want the words to draw the human eye, as well as the search engine robot's eye. In addition, many of the sites returned in top search engine results may be bat related sites and not have bat houses for sale at all. Because of the placement and wording of this order link, the keywords it contains will most likely show up in the short description of the site. For the surfer who already knows they want to buy a bat house, this is a way to encourage that customer to select our site from among the other ten listed on the result page. In the example shown below, we may also get delivery information and the guarantee wording listed in the description. For our bat house, we can use: Bat House Orders Here Below you will see what the link will look like to the search engine's robot. Notice the keywords highlighted in brown.

31. <a title="Bat house orders click here. Delivery in 7 days. 30 day Money Back Guarantee." style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; text-underline: single" href="http://www.bathouse.com/order.html"> Bat House Orders Here</a> Place this link in at least the following spaces on the web page: Side navigation links Top navigation links Footer navigation links In the first paragraph of text After the final paragraph - Sample Page Top - - Sample Page Bottom -

32. Text and Keyword for Aggressive Sales We are not going to talk about psychological sales techniques and using certain triggers to get customers to buy. If we did not have a strong product, with a market already defined, we may have had to use those methods. As it is, our product's market is set, so our job is to convince the customer that our web is the best place to buy, not to convince them they need the product. To do that, we are going to take the high road and use a writing style that funnels our visitor through the information they want to see and then to the sale. Instead of relying on sales method, we'll rely on our information, and the strategic placement and use of keywords to close our sale. The text will be specific, using five keyword strong paragraphs. Paragraph one will introduce the product briefly. The first sentence will start with Bat house and describe the use. Sentence two will tell the product's rating from good to best, and cite the source of the rating if there is one. The third sentence states your delivery policy and guarantee. The fourth sentence tells why your company is worthy of buying from. The last sentence covers the order procedure. These are sentences that introduce, not give detail. We want to allow the person who already knows they want to buy to get on with it and not make them wade through a sales pitch. There is no sense in wasting their time. For the customer who wants to make sure this is the right place to buy, or that we have the product they are looking for, we are going to outline what we have and what we can do in this paragraph.

33. In the remainder of the text that comes after paragraph one, take the time to expound on what is said in the introduction. In fact, the other paragraphs on this page are defined by the sentences in the first. Paragraph one is the introduction Paragraph two will tell about the product's rating Paragraph three tells the delivery policy and guarantee Paragraph four tells a bit about our company and why we are the best source for supply of bat houses. Paragraph five gives details about how to order, and is followed by the text order link as discussed above. Each paragraph states the keyword as the first words of the first sentence. We aren't forced to use the keyword in the body of each paragraph after the first sentence, but probably will, simply because it is most descriptive of the product. In each paragraph, create contextual links to pages that give more detail, or to our order page. We won't link to anything that is not directly related to the sale. Not to other products we have to offer, or to other interesting pages about bats on our website.

34. If we also sell bat house cleaner, we are going to avoid the temptation to tack on a sales pitch for bat house cleaner on our bat house sales page. It is more aggressive to create a home page with links to our various products, or to create a thank you page after the sale with reference to the bat house cleaner and other products. If using the thank you page, we also want to tell the customer to save the page for verification of the sale. That way, they will see the add-on, keyword rich sales pitches any time they check the information for the guarantee period, or if they want to buy another bat house. To increase keyword prevalence on our page, we will include links to bat sites. For this area we can afford to be altruistic. We can use links to bat societies; bat farms, an article on Wikipedia, to Ask.com, anywhere that relates to bats as a whole. We do not want to include links to our competition anywhere on this page. If a sale is going to be made, we want that sale made on our web. Remember to make links open in a new window. The website footer is a perfect place to reinforce our keyword rich links to important parts of the web, like the product page and the order page, or a coupon page. A link to the guarantee is also good here. Don't forget a link to reload the page or to go to the top. Again, all of these links should be named to reflect the keyword and have tags filled with the keyword phrase. The Hard Line Keyword Sales Pitch - Pulling Our Keyword Sales Page Together (Page 4 of 4 )

35. Using one keyword phrase, we have developed a keyword rich page that focuses on sales for one product. Every element, from header to footer and text in between courts the search engine robot, while satisfying the human visitor. We have eliminated any tendency to send the customer away from our page and into the arms of another bat house salesman, while offering useful information in the form of articles and sources for bat info to our customer. At the same time we satisfy link hungry search algorithms with links to stories, articles or groups directly related to our keyword. Most important, we have used the text on our page to give the consumer what they really want - information about the product, our company, how to order and information about the guarantee (an important secondary keyword). When we're on the Internet to sell, we want to make that sale as easy as possible for the serious customer. Serious customers are those who want to buy now. Their time is precious. They already know what they want or need, and are simply looking for the best and most convenient place to get that item. For this customer, our to-the-point, keyword focused web, will not only deliver what they want, but will alleviate their frustration in finding that special product. Remember that the true goal of search optimization and marketing is to match a searcher with a web site that features the item for which they are searching. How better to realize this goal than to take the hard-line approach to keyword optimizing your sales web sites? Help your business by helping your customer with a keyword aggressive web site. June 19, 2007 The Secret To Getting More Links For Boring Sites: The Importance of the Secondary Audience By Scott Goodyear You have a web site. You are looking for better rankings in the search engines, but your site is pretty boring. Perhaps not boring by your own standards, maybe not boring even by the standards of your target audience, but what about the secondary audience for your site? Can you hope to obtain links, essentially search engine recommendations, from some one outside of your core audience? Many first time web masters will say, "But I'm not trying to get links from sites outside of my customers." I ask why not? For many "boring" sites, they have little chance of being linked to by their core, primary audience. Let's say that you were selling large vending machines. The vending machines that you sell are the type that you'd pop a few quarters into in order to buy a can of Coke or Pepsi. Outside the grocery store, in a break room, you would see these machines dispensing small bags of chips,

36. candy, gum, etc. Pretty straight forward right? Not too technical nor too exciting. Your target audience would be grocery stores, convenience stores, businesses small and large, and many others. Although not many people search on "vending machine sales" or similar keyword phrases, when they do search, you want to show up. You may have all of the content on your site that describes your vending machines to the smallest detail, like how many 12 packs of soda you can load into the machine at once, but why would your latest client link to you? Sure you had the best price, lowest cost shipping, etc. but their company does not link to the company that they buy donuts from on Fridays, nor will they link to you. And if they did, would a link from XYZ Business Machines and Copiers really help you to improve your rankings for vending machines when most search engines see vending machine keywords often found with pages and sites about drinks, snacks, and so on? Links are an integral part of a high ranking. So, who WILL link to your site? Remember Brainstorming and Creating a Mental Map? There may be a secondary audience that you need to consider in your plan to gain more links and improve your rankings. In order to create some content that might appeal to the secondary audience, you'll have to explore a few directions that you might take to interest them. Remember brainstorming ideas for a report in school? Remember creating an outline or mental map? There is not a wrong or right way to brainstorm but it is essential that you do it. It can help you to pull out some ideas that normally might not hit you right away. Here is a quick example of some ideas related to the phrase "vending machines": Pulling Ideas Out of The Mental Map The picture above shows just a few trains of thought that I had with the phrase "vending machines". I could go on and on and the mental map might never be completed. Lets pull a few ideas out of this exploration of ideas. • Vending machines dispense snack food, juices, sport and soft drinks. There are various recipes that call for candy or soda as an ingredient. Create an area for recipes on you site. Seed the area with a few recipes that you find or create (get permission if needed), allow users to submit their own recipes, go to various food related web forums and ask for user submitted recipes. Buy a cook book or two each month, follow some recipes online, and

37. place a review of the resulting dish on your site with a few pictures. Better yet, hire some one to "blog" their discoveries on your site. There are bound to be some "foodies" that would be more than happy to get paid to do this for you. • The food industry has history. Some companies like Coke, Hershey, and others are proud of their history and have mini- museums in some states, company stores, and factory tours. Provide a guide or review to getting to or around the towns where these attractions take place. When people go online to plan their vacations and find your resource, they may link to your guide. • Products in vending machines often have promotional packaging. Odds are good that some of the products that are sold from vending machines have "promotional" cans, bags, additional "standees" that are normally meant for grocery stores or mini-markets, or other materials that candy memorabilia collectors, blogs, and others might find interesting. There are collectors out there, fans of various promotions, etc. and many like to browse web sites about their hobby and link to related sites and product pictures. These are just a couple of ideas that I was able to quickly come up with, but maybe you see where I'm going with this?You want your site to rank on phrases like "coke vending machines"? Search engines not only need to see optimized pages on your site that talk about the phrase in order to give it a high ranking, they also need to see that other web pages from other sites also link to your pages about the same subject. Think about who WOULD come back to your site over and over. Think about visitors who might not be your direct competitors but who do have related web sites. Encourage them to book mark your site and make the extra effort to link to your site by providing content that is appealing to them and you improve your chances of being found by your primary audience as well, an audience that may not really care about recipes that include ingredients from vending machines, and who will probably not link to you or write reviews about your site or products. The Graphic Re-design Process. Little to No Budget? No Problem. By Scott Goodyear In life, as in web sites, first impressions can make or break sales, long or short term business relationships, and more. What does your web site say about your business? If you've been wanting to update your site but don't really have deep pockets, you'll find the following post helpful for graphically re-designing or just sprucing up your web even if you have little to no budget to work with. First, like my last post, and for better or worst, most site owners or designers have fallen in love with their web site. Some times you may need a few comparisons in order to understand if your web site even needs a graphical update. Check out Web Pages That Suck and especially it's "daily sucker" page. While the WPTS site uses Google AdWords in an obnoxious perhaps even "sucky"

38. way itself, the "daily sucker" section has links to anonymously nominated "sucky" web pages that were nominated for their design, user interface, or other shortcomings. When you visit some of these sites, does your own site seem similar? Find a Pro or Amateur Artist. There are many, many pro and amateur web designers that would be happy to assist you and work within a budget. There are plenty of places where you can place a free or low cost advertisement for a designer such as Guru.com and of course you've probably heard of Monster right?. You can always post to the online version of your local news paper but it may be casting your net too wide. Why not go where the more internet savvy hang out? Try checking the jobs, gigs, or services areas of Craigslist. You can also find artists via art associations such as AIGA. If you want to give a talented amateur their big break, consider some of the "hidden" talent markets. Post your needs on the job boards and art departments of your local community colleges and universities. You can also peruse the art and contact amateur and pro graphic designers via Deviantart. Deviantart has been around for years and I would argue that it is the "myspace" for graphic designers. A Few Tools You Might Try... If you have a bit of time and talent, you may want to create and add graphics on your own. Even if you find that you do not have the talent required to make great graphics or designs for your site, don't write off trying. Often times creating at least a mock up of what you are shooting for can be extremely helpful to a designer. Your plans may be modest or even too grand, but a good web designer / graphic artist can often work to hone your ideas to a more manageable form. No cost: Paint.Net Fauxto Gimp ImageMagick Low cost: Paint Shop Pro LView High Cost/Pro Tools: From Adobe: Photo Shop, Fireworks From Corel: CorelDRAW, Painter Download a Tutorial. While the ease of use and learning curve will differ with each of these programs, there are many free tutorials that can guide you through creating some some amazing special effects for graphics. If you can't find a tutorial for your specific graphics program, understand that many programs utilize different names for the same software features. As you begin to understand more about your selected software program you can then go through and follow many of the tutorials for other programs in order to create roughly the same results. A few tutorial sites that I've found useful: Web Design Library CBT Cafe

39. SitePoint PhotoShop Tips & Tricks Add Some Interesting Photos and Graphics. Some time's you have to go cheap with your graphics. If you don't have the talent for creating graphics through a free or inexpensive program, you may turn to buying clip art or using a program to modify clip art. Years ago, I was buying clip art CDs in order to quickly create graphics for web sites. Most of the inexpensive clip art CDs that I've found today, still include those same clip art files from years ago. Do you really want your site to look like it was made 10 years ago or like something newer? Forget outdated clip art CDs! Consider using the "find" option at Creative Commons to find art, photos, or other items that you can use on your site. The licensing terms will vary but often a quick email to the license holder will clear up any questions that you might have about usage. And quite often, the CC photo authors will let you use their photos for free, as long as you reference them on your about page, copy right/privacy page, or similar. On the other hand there are tons of online image banks that can be used. These image banks are much like the clip art CDs of years past except there are always new photos and graphics being added to the mix and you can preview the art before plunking $30-$200 into a CD collection where you might only use 1 graphic. There are sites with large selections like the well known Gettyimages, but for the license price you might also check out smaller competitors like iStockphoto. If you think stock photos can't help or look too generic, think a bit more creatively about what can be done with them. Although Kathy Sierra pretty much froze her web blog a few months ago, I'm still inspired by many of the posts on her "Creating Passionate Users" blog. With just a little bit of creativity, a post can be spiced up by a great graphic in a very positive way. Now Go Make Something Beautiful... Need a Little More Inspiration First? At this point you've probably picked up a few resources that you can use. Whether you are a do- it-yourselfer or you are hiring some one to help, it is great to have some inspiration and a game plan. Like many, I find that looking at what others are doing can really help. Often you can can pick out the things that you like/don't like from other sites and work some of those ideas. Into your own design plan. If you are looking mainly for color schemes, check out Geoff Peters' "Instant Color Schemes". His tool pulls photos in from a Yahoo image search in order to create a common color palette. Some times it works really well, at other times, the results are odd. But as Yahoo's image search is constantly changing, it is always a bit different from the last time you had used the same search. Also check out one of my all time favorites Design Meltdown. DM brings together examples of various web site designs, then slices and dices common site features into categories. You can gain some inspiration from ideas like "clean" design, "orange" sites, and others. DM also runs The Daily Slurp where users submit their own suggestions for great site design. When your site starts shining after a re-design, you may want to submit it. Before I close, understand that visually good design does not necessarily mean a well optimized or search engine friendly design. The reverse is also true, a well optimized site does not necessarily mean a visually good looking site. However a good mix of engine friendly and visually appealing techniques can be quite beneficial. There are also arguments for and against a well designed web site or an ugly design that I haven't mentioned, and I encourage you to explore those issues. And while I encourage you to review what others sites do and form your own game plan based on bits and pieces that you find and like, I don't recommend that you clone some one else's web site. Large companies may be able to get away with it, but you may or may not be able to, why take

40. the chance? In a nut shell, whether your budget is large or small, there are lots of inexpensive ways to make your site look more professional and graphically appealing with out breaking the bank. Defining Web Analytics and How It Relates To The Bottom Line By Curtis Friedl Website developers and those who manage website content need to understand the multitude of information that can be gathered through the Web Analytics process. A good web analytics tool can help you to understand the numbers that affect the bottom line. • How are visitors finding my site? • When they get there, what do they do? • Are they taking the desired action that I want them to take? • At what points are they falling off from the intended process? • What geographical regions are these visitors located in? • What is the most popular content on my site? • Do certain visitor segments respond differently to campaigns or to my site than others? • Which of my online marketing campaigns are the most effective at drawing visitors to the site and converting them into customers? • Are customers that are coming to my site for support finding their answers? • How effective am I at reaching and engaging target demographics in my audience? The first target of understanding those who visit your site is where are they coming from, a search engine, an associated website, etc. Which one of the marketing channels that you employ are most effective, and what is the returned derived from that ad spend. Is the ROI sufficient, should I increase the ad spend, or should I evaluate other channels? Once I have captured the visitor, did they leave right away, or did they browse through my site. What was the path that they took, was it the one that was envisioned to lead to the proper conversion which was desired, or did the potential client abandon? Geographically where are the visitors from? Were they from my targeted market, or have you uncovered a new avenue to direct sales efforts towards. If you are advertising to a diverse market, does one segment behave differently then another one? Did one of your campaigns lead to a better conversion rate from a targeted audience, and was that conversions with in the demographic that I expected it to come from, and did it meet our target benchmarks from that demographic. All of this and more can be answered by looking at the audience that is reviewing the content on your site. A review of those who traffic your site, and an analyses of the path and locations that your visitor viewed, can lead you to make decisions on how to design a site, how to construct the landing/offer pages for a targeted audience. These site usability studies do more then aid in future site designs, they permit a deeper understanding of your target audience. In addition these efforts will lead to a much greater understanding of your visitors. These analytic results can also lead you to a better understand of how to target the advertising toward your client audience. Are ads on the search engines more effective then banners on associated websites/portals, or is the old fashion targeted mailing the best avenue to cover, and meet your audience. In simple means analysis of your visitors, and content that they review can lead to:

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