Search Engine Optimization SEO

1. Use the most important, meaningful keywords in your site's title tag (such as your product name) as opposed to "Welcome to company.com.

2. Search engines love text, so make sure your site includes text - preferably 250 words of text on each page.

3. Make sure you understand your audience's keyword query behavior. Dig deep and spend the time necessary to understand the words your audience is using to search.

4. Don't try to trick the search engines by loading your site with irrelevant keywords that have nothing to do with the content on your site.

5. Do not allow the most important keywords to be contained in the graphics (substitute formatted HTML text for graphics.

6. Know that links are king! All search engines consider citation mapping (the number of links that point at your web site) as critical to your ability to obtain a top 10 ranking.

7. To ensure that search engine spiders properly index your site, be as descriptive as possible in your product copy.

8. Regardless of your website's objective, be sure your site reads well in the eyes of your customer.

9. Track traffic to our site and conversions, then use that information to tweak your SEO strategy as needed.

10. View SEO as a long term strategy that is integrated with your overall advertising mission, rather then as a quick fix to your web site challenges.

Website optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website in the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Website optimization, better known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), adheres to the basic principle of giving content-based relevance to a website among the pool of websites.

Optimizing a website involves a series of processes by which the website acquires proper indexing in the database of the search engines, and thus gets ranked to the topmost position in the SERP.

Meta Tags are one of the methods used in optimizing the web page. Though not common nowadays in many of the search engines, Meta Tags still are used in the search process by certain search engines. Meta Tags are mainly used to display the brief description of a web page after the search result. Proper use of Meta Tags, thus will improve the optimization of the website.

The keyword as well as the content of the website is of prime importance to the optimization of the website. Each page should have at least 200 words with at least 4-5 repetitions of the keywords in it in proper logical order. The keyword density (number of keywords/word count) has to be in compliance with the search engine criteria. Illogical repetitions of the keywords, thus, will have a negative impact on the optimization. It is better to include one keyword in one paragraph, following the logical sequence of the matter.

Hyperlinks can improve the performance of the website. Having more relevant text links in a website enables the search engines to tag them according to the text contained in the links. It is therefore important to include the text links that have used the keywords in the link title and the related description.

Connected links enhance the page ranking. There are various partner programs available to direct other website to yours. If your website is identified as the best redirected website, it improves the page ranking of your website. If the directing websites are popular, there are more chances to improve your page ranking. However, make sure that you adhere to the search engine criteria for the same. For example, if all links from a number of websites are directing to a single page of your website, irrespective of the inappropriate content in the page, it will be assumed as ’spam’ and ignored by the search engine.

There are certain contents that are hostile to the search engine crawlers. These include the JavaScript navigators, Flash images, Forms, and Dynamic URLs. The search engines do not identify JavaScript and Flash navigations. Therefore pages that contain these features should not be given for optimization. However, in inevitable situations, you may use them by adding appropriate Meta Tags and text contents.

Pages containing Dynamic URLs and Forms face the same problems. A form page or a dynamic page, is therefore, not recommended for website optimization. However, the problem with the frames can be solved to an extent by including a ‘no-frame’ section in the frameset. Try to include the Meta Tags and maximum number of hyperlinks that will help the page to get indexed even in the presence of a form in it.

Though it is difficult to get an excellent rank in the Search Engines, you may achieve a decent result by following these thumb rules.

Overture or as it is now known "Yahoo" was the original inventor of the P4P or Pay for Performance principle. Overture noticed that the internet was quickly becoming the easiest and most suitable method to shop and advertising would be at an all time high because of the numerous businesses in the field attracting website visitors.

To get a visitor to visit your website rather than other websites, it must be very noticeable. Placing ads that will direct possible customers to your site will assist in an increase in hits to your site as well as improving your sales. Yahoo offers a service that places a company's ad or sites in their sites that will be shown when accurate keywords are entered.

Yahoo's offer helps to increase traffic by making more people aware by allowing them to view your site and your products. So even with a minimal percentage of successful sales, this could lead to substantial increase in your sales figures for your company.

Receiving a considerable and consistent flow of website hits is every company's objective. Website visitors are potentially the life line of your internet based business.

Yahoo/Overture use the same standards as Google's Adwords. They are alike in that they use keywords or keyword phrases to establish which ads to show per search. The search engine will provide the results in a page. On the right hand side of the page, you'll notice selected ads that have paid for their ads to be seen when certain keywords or keyword phrases are used.

Let's say for example you run a car parts retailer wholesale website. You would need to select keywords like Honda Accord that will trigger or prompt your ads to be viewed in the page when the keyword is entered.

You will be expected to pay for using this service. There are various ways Yahoo/Overture can charge you. It could be per the number of Keywords or Keyword phrases your ad uses or how many times your ad is clicked on. Other offers could be having your ad viewed in other third party websites.

It's a marketing tactic that will boost your website visitors, increasing sales and resulting in profit, which inturn makes your investment to advertise a wise one.

Bob Cotto has over 35 years experience in Senior Sales and Marketing Management positions with a variety of companies, such as We The People (largest legal document preparation franchise in US), IRM (retirement planning company for educators), Live Marketing (leading international trade show marketing company), Cigna Securities (broker dealer arm for insurance giant) and many others. For each of these companies, he's led the sales and marketing teams to triple digit record breaking growth year after year. If there's one thing he understands, its business. And that's why he KNOWS that the Ultimate Business In A Box has everything you'll need to succeed.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bob_Cotto

If you want your business to succeed, you employ a number of ways to make sure that you meet and exceed your target revenues. You hire people, you come up with great promotions, and you spend money to make money. But have you considered search engine optimization? It will surely help your business if you know how to go around this great marketing tool that does not cost a lot and only takes some time and effort to conduct. Here are four useful considerations for better search engine optimization:

1. Find out the most searched keyword that is related to the product or service that you offer. You will also need several other back up yet equally in demand keywords. In order to do this, you will need to use a keyword analyzer program - it will only cost you a couple of bucks, and it will be worth it. Better yet, borrow one from a fellow business owner.

2. When it comes to writing your content, remember to stick to the topic. Sprinkle relevant keywords but make sure that you maintain a smooth flow of words. If you have irrelevant content or badly written content, search engines are likely to boot you to the end of the rankings line.

3. Utilize error marketing to make your web site spic and span. Articles that are well written will click with audiences, impressing them with your polished writing skills and convincing them to try out you product without seeming like a hard sell. If your articles are unedited and lack smooth transition, people will think you are unprofessional.

4. Your most searched keywords must be present within the first two or three sentences of your content. The first part of your text will be displayed in search ranking page, and you need to make sure that the information people want can already be reflected on it.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, 'Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide'

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1574 articles in print and 11 published ebooks.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sean_R_Mize

Generating mlm blog traffic depends first and foremost on what you have to say. If it is boring, lame, or focused on blatant advertising of products and services, you will get very poor results. this article discusses ten proven ways to generate mlm blog traffic. Very good content will dominate your niche. The platform you use for your mlm blog will determine how well it dominates. And how often and consistently yo post to your blog, ping and buzz your posts and link to other bloggers will dictate how long you dominate.

Here are ten excellent ways new bloggers generate mlm blog traffic and find new readers.

Top Ten MLM Blog Traffic Tips

10. Write at least five major "pillar" articles. A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are at least 500 words but less than 600 and have plenty of very practical tips or advice. The more pillars you have on your mlm blog the better you will generate mlm blog traffic.

9. Write at least one new blog post per day.. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should get those those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. it is important to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time.

8. Use a proper domain name.

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. This is like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger's article you can do a trackback to their entry. This leaves an abbreviated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - much like your blog telling someone else's blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. They often appear like comments.

A trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, It also gets the attention of another blogger.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. Always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog . This will help you generate mlm blog traffic as you will get one to ten subscribers a day with this method.

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com.

1. Write more pillar articles. Without strong pillar articles you may bring in readers but they will not bother to come back. Shoot for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over fifty strong feature articles that will work hard for you to generate mlm blog traffic and more readers.

Jon Roussel is a successful internet marketer in Beverly, MA He helps people succeed with a home based business that will generate a long term reliable leveraged residual income.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at http://blogcarnival.com

Learn more at Jon Roussel's Website

You finally have your very own website. Now, the question is, how do you generate a substantial amount of visitors each day? More importantly, how do you get this number to grow on a daily basis? In this article, we will discuss some tactics that will allow you to do just this. First, we need to discuss some do’s and don’ts of building the traffic flow of your website. Read on to find out some crucial concepts every webmaster should know.

The first thing you should know is that you cannot magically generate thousands of visitors overnight. It simply is not possible. It could take weeks or even months to achieve this. This amount of time depends on how efficiently you exercise the methods that you have implemented. Do not give up and lose patience too quickly. Too many people expect results immediately and are then let down when it does not play out as planned. This mentality can be fatal to webmasters.

Nearly every online marketing tactic out there needs time to cultivate. Think of your website as a magnificent tree. Before growing and prospering, the tree needs to be seeded. The seeds need time to strengthen and grow before the tree can sprout. You cannot skip over or rush this process. It needs to take its course. Every step in building your website should be treated with care and attention. Once you grasp this concept, you can then go on to be successful in this industry. Only once you realize, understand and accept the fact that you need time and patience to generate traffic, then you can proceed in determining which techniques you should employ. Keep reading and you will learn some tactics which were specially designed to attract unique visitors.

Article marketing has the power of creating back links to your website, which in turn will transform people into unique visitors for your website. All you need to do is write an informative article and you will be viewed as an expert. They will trust and believe in the information you have provided and value what you tell them. Before long, they will be seeking out what you have to say. This method has huge branding capabilities.

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. PPC advertising is probably the fastest, most effective way of generating high quality traffic to your website. However, you need to have some funds available for spending. The reason for the success of PPC advertising is that with PPC programs, your link can appear anywhere on the results page of every relevant search. This eliminates the need to compete with thousands of other websites. All you need to do is to enroll in a program such as Google AdWords and pay the same amount as an amount of a corresponding bid you would have made. Every time a user clicks on your link, you will be charged.

Viral Marketing is the most effective and powerful way of producing unique visitors at a consistent pace. Viral marketing can be considered the online equivalent of word-of-mouth advertising. This method can easily turn five visitors into five thousand visitors and continue to grow in numbers. There are many viral marketing tools that may be distributed for free, each of them should include a link to your website. Since it is free, users will pass it on without even realizing it and the link to your website will extend to people out of your reach.

Of course, we can go on and on with online marketing tactics but for the purposes of this article, we are concentrating on grabbing the attention of unique visitors. By implementing the tactics you have read in this article, you are sure to be on the road to success with your website. Your tree will grow and prosper.

This article is written by Lo Benedict. Lo shares free tips, articles and downloads about Internet Marketing. You can visit his blog and read his latest posts here: www.instant-turnkey-reseller-package.com/blog

Blogs have become one of the most effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies. The number of blog sites spawning on a day-to-day basis is a clear indication of their relevance in the present Internet communication.

A blog can play an important role in optimizing the website. Contrary to the earlier concepts, the new-generation blogs have got a lot of varied functions. Earlier, blogs were considered as a means of expressing one’s opinion or exchange ideas, most often done in a causal way. But the recent changes that happened in the online communication have redefined the blogs as an effective tool of communication among a varied group of customers, businesses, and every individual under the earth.

If effective blogs are created in a website, it can be identified by the search engines for their content value, and thus can be optimized for its contents. Thus blogs complement the contents of the website. The advantage of creating a blog is that even if the website pages do not qualify the search engine requirements in terms of the content quality, it can get better optimization with the help of blogs that have rich contents in them. This is mostly applicable to e-commerce websites, dealer websites, or the similar ones. In such websites, the visitors to the website will find the blogs useful to them as they share many aspects of the products or services and thus gain better idea of the products or services.

To create SEO-friendly blogs, one has to take care of the following aspects.
• Relevant content
• Appropriate title
• Proper links

Content
Blogs have got two functions to perform – firstly, it should improve the optimization, and secondly, it should attract prospective visitors to the website. Both these functions can be achieved only if it is provided with appropriate contents. The search engine identifies the website mainly through the keywords used in it. This rule is applicable to blogs too. The blog, therefore, should contain appropriate number of keywords per total word count (keyword density). It is appropriate to have an optimal keyword density, say around 20%. If the keyword density is less than 5%, the blog will not be identified for the particular keyword indexing; on the other hand, if the keyword density is more than 20%, the website will be ignored for being ’spam’.

The relevance of the content is another important factor, not only for the SEO purposes, but also for the business purpose. The information that you convey through the blogs should be effective and useful to the customers. It should not merely aim at SEO and thus focus only on the keywords.

Title
The title is the identification code of the blog. Therefore, the title of the blog has to be named on the primary keyword/phrase. It would enable the search engines to trap them easily.

Links
To reach to a blog, there should be proper links to it. The website should have outbound links to the blog; in return, the blog sites should contain links that direct them to the relevant website. This link exchange is another important method of improving the traffic of the website.

SEO-friendly blogs improve the traffic to the website, and it also attracts the viewers to it. The role of blogs in website marketing will continue to remain relevant for a very long time

On-page optimization refers to the optimization techniques that are applied on the website pages, while off-page optimization refers to those methods applied outside it. Both techniques have their own relevance in the search engine results.

On-Page Optimization (On-page SEO)

On-page SEO main aspects/methods.

• Hyperlink Title Tags
• Meta Tags
• Header (H1) Tags
• Formating Tags
• Keywords
• Content
• URLs
• Outgoing Links
• ALT images

Dos and Don’ts for On-Page Optimization

• Use the keywords only once in the hyperlink and alt-image tags
• Overall key density in the text content should be between 10 and 20%, with primary keyword density about 5-6% and secondary key word density about 2-3%.
• H1 tags should contain the primary keywords. The priority of the keyword should be according to the sequence of the heading.
• Bold all the keywords in their first appearance, and apply repeat bolding only for the primary keyword in its last occurrence.
• Position the primary keywords in the first and the last paragraphs, if possible, in the first line of the paras.
• Use single-word keywords. They perform better than split keywords.
• Do not use duplicate contents or hidden contents (texts or links with the same color as that of the background)
• Avoid cloaking (a process by which a user is redirected to a different page from an original page directed by the search engine)
• Avoid intensive use of flash and javascript to convey important content as spiders will not be able to decipher these content.
• Avoid pages that require authentication as this would make the page not crawlable by Search Engine’s spiders.
Search engines will penalize the websites that are involved in unethical practices such as cloaking and duplicating either by reducing their ranking or by eliminating the website from their index. It is therefore necessary to follow the guidelines set by the search engines strictly.

Off-Page Optimization

Off-page optimization refers to the process of improving the performance of the website by off-page practices such as

• Keyword research
• Encouraging in-bound links from high ranking sites
• Use of different keywords in the referred links
• Tracking the traffic

Dos and Don’ts for Off-Page Optimization

• Encourage the incoming links by partnering with websites with better page ranking.
• Avoid link farming. Link farming is a method of including hundreds of outbound links in a website. This practice of link exchanges has been developed into an unhealthy SEO method, and so the search engines identify this process as non-ethical and reduces your page ranking.
• Do not direct the incoming links to pages that have no relevant data for the link.
• Do not direct multiple incoming links to a single page.
• Do not duplicate keywords in the inbound links.
• Do not use hidden inbound links.
• Conduct a survey on the success of the keyword/phrase.
• Make a list of new keywords and test their effectiveness with the similar websites.
• Make necessary changes in the keyword if the old keyword does not find better effects

On-page and off-page optimization finds much relevance in the context of SEO. Off-line SEO, however, involves a tedious process of maintaining a smooth traffic to your website. A regular research has to be carried out on the performance of your website. Always remember that a wrong SEO method will have a negative impact on your website

Social bookmarking is one of the modern approaches to improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The social bookmarking sites help to gain one-way links to a website and thus improve the optimization of the websites.

Incoming links offer a lot of scope for website optimization. As opposed to the reciprocal linking method, one-way linking benefits the websites a lot. In fact, Google penalizes the websites if they contain more reciprocal links by calling it link farm. This may be applicable to popular websites that have got link exchanges with other popular websites. In short, too much link exchange invites risk for the websites.

The social bookmarking is a boon to websites as it helps the websites to gain one-way links free of cost and without exchanging anything in return to the websites. It is an organic method of website optimization, and it does not have any threats from any search engines.

Let us analyze how the social bookmarking sites work. There are a number of social bookmarking sites, the most popular among them are the del.icio.us, ma.gnolia.com, simpy.com, etc. The first step to join them is to sign up and install their bookmarking icons on your browser. After installing them, bookmark the webpages of your website that you need to get bookmarked. Ideally, webmasters include links to all the pages of their websites in the bookmarking sites. Thus you will be able to create URLs in the bookmarking sites that contain the links to all your website pages.

Once the URLs are created in the bookmarking sites, submit them to major search engines including Google, Yahoo, and MSN. You may place then place links to those URLs from your website or from other websites such as the blog sites. You may use the article directory service in which you will submit hundreds of articles where you will add these links.

When the search engines index these URLs from the social bookmarking sites, naturally, the page ranking of your website will get increased. Additionally, the incoming links from the other sites such as the blog sites or article directories will accelerate the process of page ranking of your website.

It is not easy to define the exact process how the search engines rank the websites. Different search engines have different algorithm, and the method acceptable to one may not be relevant to the other. However, it has been found that the effect produced by the social bookmarking of a webpage, doe not, in any way decelerate the traffic to the website.

Social bookmarking thus allows the websites to create one-way links to it. The one-way links, as opposed to the reciprocal links, are acceptable to all search engines. Reciprocal links that were once acceptable by Google has now been discarded as the mere gimmicks to attract the search engine spiders.

The social bookmarking sites are becoming popular because of their enriched contents. Thus the websites that have got links to these sites will benefit from their popularity.

If you have ever believed that blog is all about pouring out all your bad emotions which otherwise would not be heard, you are wrong. The word ‘blog’ is the new mantra for the Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the most talked-about three letters among the web community. The single word ‘blog’ has encircled the whole globe and now the Internet has got a new name ‘blogosphere’.

Why are blogs so important in SEO? Everyone now is aware of the fact that SEO techniques value contents more than anything else. What is the relevance of blogs in such a context? Why cannot we include the contents in the main page itself, rather than providing it an additional space under the pseudo tag ‘blogs’?

Search engine algorithms have specific criteria in ranking a website. There comes the importance of keyword density. If a website has sparingly distributed keywords, it will not be identified for SEO. On the other hand, if it contains more than a specific number of keywords in it, it would be ignored as being spam. Thus it is difficult to maintain a website meeting both the criteria always.

The solution to this problem was to renew the contents of the website on a regular basis, by analyzing the trends of the search engines and the hits on the website. Modifying the content could bring some results, as the search engines started identifying them for varied and rich contents. However, the cumbersome task of getting more and more pages added and replacing the old pages with the new became a head-ache for the web professionals. Another issue associated with this solution was that the content-rich pages failed to appeal the users. The most popular websites, such as the product description sites and the e-commerce sites, failed to attract their viewers because of the elaborate contents in them.

This problem has been identified by the webmasters, and blogs have been chosen as the solution for it. Blogs provide the necessary contents for the search engines, and at the same time, it maintains the attractiveness of the website without crowding it with too much contents. Thus the purpose of SEO as well as the fruitful user hits is met.

Blogs have become an imperative marketing strategy for online communication. Its importance in website functioning cannot be ruled out. Therefore, while creating a blog, the following aspects have to be addressed properly.
• Proper use of keywords
• Use of RSS and feed buttons
• Adding the blog title as the permalink
• Adding the blog to directories
• Link building
• Comments
• Offsite tracking

The blog title should contain the keyword/phrase in it. Also the blog URL should contain the same keyword/phrase. There should be proper links to and from the blog to the website.

There is a lot of difference between an article and blog. An article is a descriptive content on a product, whereas a blog is ideally an analytical content. Therefore, it is better to avoid the practice of adding an article in the blog space. Rather, one should create a blog that is brief, conversational, and interesting. It should contain the opinion from the customers rather than the details of the products or services.

Duplicate contents always bring harm to the websites. The sad side of the story is that even if you wish to avoid duplicate contents in your website, you can’t. This is because someone else might have copied or incorporated the same contents that you have, and the search engine spiders fail to recognize which website is ‘original’,

The search engines penalize the duplicated websites in many ways. It can push the duplicated contents to the supplementary level in the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) by maintaining one website at the main level. The search engines choose the website that was registered the earliest. Sometimes the search engines may dump all the websites that contain the duplicate contents. It is also possible that the duplicate website’s index is completely removed from the search engine database.

Search engines ignore the duplicate contents mainly because of two reasons. Firstly, it does not want to spend its effort in displaying many websites that have the similar contents. Secondly, search engines think that duplication is a non-ethical practice adopted by the webmasters in order to gain popularity to their websites.

The search engines do not have any specific rules in deciding the exact quantity of the content that can be called as duplicate. It may be one line, 10 lines or one paragraph. There are different ways in which duplicate contents appear in a website.

• Description of a product : A manufacturer gives the description of a particular product in the same manner to all the websites that sell the same.

• Different URLs for the same webpage: Search engines index the pages by the name of the URLs; therefore, if they find different URLs for the same website, they will label it as duplicate. For example, a link http://www.essay.com; https://www.essay.com; http://www.essay.com/index.htm, etc., may lead to same webpage. However, the search engine crawlers do not recognize them as a single URL, and so they will be considered as duplicate webpages.

• Sites with session IDs : Session IDs are used by certain websites to track the visitors to it. As in the previous case, such URLs with different session IDs will be considered as duplicate links.

• Pages with similar structure : The layout and contents of many similar sites may look similar. For example, many e-commerce websites may have similar structure for them. These may be identified by the search engine crawlers as duplicate.

The damage caused by duplicate contents is enormous. It is the duty of every website owner to make sure that their content is not duplicated. There are various techniques available in the Internet to verify whether the content is duplicated or not. Also the search engines have set up certain guidelines to make the website owners aware of various SEO procedures that will avoid duplication. They insist that the webpages that contain the duplicate texts, such as marketing materials or URLs with session IDs, should not be given for search engine indexing.

Considering the damage that duplicate contents cause to a website, the issue needs to be addressed appropriately.

Link building and Link popularity are interrelated. If your website has to be popular, there should be sufficient number of inbound and outbound links that make your content ‘rich’. Not to forget, these links should have valuable content in them.

Link popularity is decided by the number of inbound links to your website. However, it is not just the number of links that makes your website appealing. Rather, it is the quality of your content that makes the links as well as your website popular. Try to follow the guidelines given below before linking your website with others.

• Try to get inbound links from the sites that are related to your website. It is not only important from the business perspective of the link that is directed to your site, but also important on the perspective of the search engine optimization of your website. Anyone who wishes to get connected to a particular link will ensure that the linked website has quality content in it. From the perspective of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), if a website has got irrelevant inbound links, it will be assumed as a spam website, and will be penalized by the search engines either by reducing the indexing of the concerned website or by removing it permanently from the search engine database.

• Try to get valuable links. Links from popular websites, though less in number, will improve the traffic to your website. Remember it is not the number that matters; rather it is the quality and flow of the traffic. Having more inbound links will again reduce the optimization value of the website. Thus it is better to have four or five links from the popular sites rather than having 20-30 links from other common websites.

Link exchange is another strategic move in bringing link popularity. You may exchange your website’s link in return to the inbound link you are receiving. Thus it would bring mutual benefits to each website. It is, therefore, important to develop your website in a particular manner that suits the requirements of the linked website. It may be a very difficult task to develop contents in the websites according to the diversified contents of the linked website. But it is important to remember that the purpose of doing so is to ensure the smooth traffic for the websites involved, and so you cannot ignore the value of the contents.

There are some systematic ways to select the appropriate links for a website. One easy way to do is to take the help of the search engines. Type in your keywords and search the page for the website links that have similar contents that you already have. Try to associate with these websites. It may be difficult as most of them are your competitors. You may try to sort out certain areas of activity that doesn’t affect both of your business and make a link related to that. Or else, you may try to link with other such websites who do not get affected by linking with you.

As every website gets mutual benefits by linking with each other, getting a right partner for website linking is not very difficult.

Keyword research has become an important feature of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Keywords/phrases function as the leads to the websites. The keywords are generally the most common words that a prospective user will type in the search engine column in order to get directed to the relevant website.

For example, if a user wishes to get details about the painter Michael Angelo, the name ‘Michael Angelo’ alone is the best keyword. However, if he wishes to get the details of the ‘last known work of Michael Angelo’, he may type either ‘last known work of Michael Angelo’, or ‘Michael Angelo last work’ or any modified version of this phrase. Thus there are infinite choices for the keyword for particular information. It is therefore very difficult for a beginner to understand the appropriate keywords that will suit his website. Keyword research thus becomes a vital component for effecting better SEO. The following are the different methods employed in devising better keywords.

* Conduct a survey on different groups of people randomly on the possible keyword options that they might come up with for describing the product or information that is highlighted in your website. Record these findings on a regular basis. After getting a satisfactory result from them, say four or five groups with consistent keywords/phrases, you may proceed with the selected ones.

* Find out the alternate words or synonyms that match the chosen keyword/phrase. Find their suitability in your website. For example, in the earlier example about the ‘last known work of Michael Angelo’, an alternative can be the ‘latest work’ or ‘final work’. Prepare a list of these related words and phrases. You may use them as secondary keywords.

* Check the traffic of other similar websites (if there exists any website similar to that of yours), with the selected keywords. This will give you an idea of the positioning of these websites on the basis of these keywords. If your selected keywords give satisfactory response with the intended contents, like that of yours, you may proceed applying them. However, remember that there is a tough competition ahead, and prepare your website by improving other SEO components so that it will surpass the competitors in page ranking.

* Get the help from the online tools. There are many tools provided by the prominent search engines such as Google and many web solution companies that help the website owners decide the effectiveness of their keyword/phrase. The website owner needs to simply key-in the different keywords and check their efficiency using these tools.

* Get data about user habits. There are websites that provide the statistics of the user habits while searching for a particular content. By studying these, you get the knowledge on the user habits and their preferences of the keyword. In some cases, the keywords will change according to the local preferences of the people in different parts of the world. For example, ‘mortgage’ is a common word used in the USA/UK while ‘home loan’ is the common term used in some other countries for the same service.

Keyword research thus plays an important role in improving the SEO of a website.

A Search Engine Optimization Company can be an invaluable
asset in your Internet marketing campaign. They specialize
in knowing how to raise your search engine positions,
monitoring those positions on the regular basis, and
adjusting their strategies to account for undesirable
results in any given month. Since this takes a lot of time,
effort, and specialized knowledge, it can be in your best
interest to go to an outside source rather than try to
maintain high search engine positions on your own.

However, like every business, there are good companies and
there are lemons. Knowing the right questions to ask and
the criteria to look for will help you in choosing an
affordable, effective search engine optimization company.

When looking at different companies, begin by considering
the approach they employ to raise your search engine
positions. Steer clear of companies that use cloaked,
doorway, or bridge pages to raise your positions. These
techniques violate most search engine policy, and in the
worst case scenario, will only get your website severely
penalized, if not removed entirely from a search engine's
index.

A cloaked page is a page that is created which is invisible
to the regular visitor to your website. The cloaked page is
coded to detect a search engine spider and divert them to
this special page, which is set-up to artificially boost
your search engine position. Doorway or bridge pages
utilize the same concept, but often reside on an entirely
different server. Google, one of the largest and most
important search engine on the Internet, will remove your
website from their index if they detect you have cloaked
pages. Never, never employ any company that uses this
technique!

Another important element is to get a guarantee that the
company you hire will not work with your competitors while
they are working for you. Obviously, this would seriously
compromise the effectiveness of the search engine
optimization campaign. Be aware that some companies will
use the success they achieve for your website to sell their
services to your competitors. So get your guarantee in
writing, and make sure it is legally binding.

Of course, one of the most important factors you want to
check out is the company's track record of results.
However, don't take the company's word for it. They will
undoubtedly be slanting their results in order to sell
their services to you. To go beyond their simple statement
of success, ask them a few pertinent questions, and verify
their answers.

Ask them which engines they have achieved the best results
on. The ones that are important are the most popular
engines, and these are the ones you want to see good
results on. Since the popularity of search engines can
change with the landscape of the overall Internet, check
out the Nielsen Netratings page at Search Engine Watch. You
can access this at
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/article.php/2156451.

Next, find out what keywords and phrases they are claiming
great results with. It's easy to get high rankings with
unpopular words. For instance, the keyword "cat leashes"
will get high popularity ranking because no one else would
think of using it. What you are looking for is good results
using popular keywords. Check out the software Wordtracker,
available at www.wordtracker.com. You can order a free
trial, or a subscription ranging from 1 day to 1 year. This
software rates the popularity of keywords and phrases based
on actual search engine use.

Next, look for good results over an entire site that the
company claims to have successfully worked for. You want to
see a wide range of positions over a number of different
search engines using different keywords or phrases for the
entire site. Request a report for any client the company
claims to have done well for. This report should show good
positions on a number of the most popular search engines
for a variety of different, popular keywords and phrases.

When you are checking out search engine optimization
companies, make sure they have actually done the work they
are claiming to have done. Some companies will use other
company's results in order to get you to sign on with them.
If you are in doubt, call the company they are showing you
results for, and ask for the name of their search engine
optimization company.

It's important to keep in mind that a successful search
engine optimization campaign will result in maximum
exposure across a wide range of popular search engines
using a variety of keywords and phrases. This is the
formula for a successful campaign, and you should keep it
always in the forefront of your marketing strategy.

Ask the search engine optimization company you are
considering for a report that shows you rankings across a
number of popular search engines for a period of at least
six months. Remember: search engine marketing is a process
that is continual, and you need a company that not only
understands this, but keeps constant tabs on your search
engine positions. That company must also be able to adjust
its strategy in the event that search engine rankings drop.

Since search engine marketing is an on-going process, your
positions must be constantly monitored. If you want your
search engine optimization company to do this for you,
request a sample of a monthly report. It is essential that
this report should show rankings for the most popular
search engines. Don't be impressed by a report that only
shows great results for a limited number of small search
engines. These are fairly easy results to acquire. Also
confirm that the popular search engine results they are
showing you are indeed the popular search engines
currently.

Be sure the sample report the company shows you is in a
format that you can easily understand. For example, it
could be in the form of a chart that covers a period of at
least six months and presents data such as the top 50
positions broken down on a monthly basis or the top 5 pages
each month. Then, ascertain that the company you are
considering actually monitors these positions or pages
every month, and that the sample report they show you
includes findings and recommendations for the specific
site. This insures that the company will actively monitor
and make adjustments to their strategy on a continual basis
rather than simply gather statistics on your positions. You
need a company that is actively participant in your search
engine marketing campaign, not just an information
gatherer.

Obviously, your finances have to figure into your choice of
company, but bear in mind that a search engine optimization
company is crucial the success of your marketing campaign.
It is not just a casual accessory. If you cannot afford a
company that will do a thorough and reliable job for your
website, you might consider waiting until you do have the
finances in place.

If you have to find a company and can't wait for your
finances to catch up, you may be able to find an affordable
company that will also be able to supply quality, reliable
work, such as a fairly new company. Just remember that
there are risks involved with using a company without a
proven track record - and that risk is your money! Don't
take that leap unless the company can supply you with a
least a few references.

References are the most reliable indicator of a good
company. Don't use a company that won't show your
references because of any reason, confidentiality included.
Remember - even doctors will provide references! The firm
you choose should provide you with a minimum of two
references, one that is from the past, and one that is
current.

When you contact these references, be prepared to ask
precise, specific questions so that neither of your time is
wasted. Ask them what their experience was like with the
company, such as their availability to answer questions and
deal with problems and their ability to meet deadlines. Ask
the reference to rate the overall performance of the
company.

Find out if the company requested that the reference make
significant changes to their web pages that affected the
visitors coming to their site. You are looking for a search
engine optimization company that can balance the needs of
both search engines and site visitors without compromising
either.

The most essential question to ask is whether the work of
the search engine optimization company resulted in higher
profits for the reference. Without profits, it doesn't
matter whether your positions are at the top of the list or
not.