Benefits of Using the Right Web Directories

In a similar fashion to normal directories, such as the Yellow Pages, a web directory is able to feature listings of websites split into different categories for ease in locating the relevant information. If you are searching for something online then using one of the better quality web directories is just as effective as using a physical of hard copy. A web directory can offer online businesses a wide range of benefits, which might relate to search engine ranking, web traffic and increased profitability.
Here are some of the benefits that you might realize from submitting your website to a web directory.
Increased traffic
In most cases, the main directories attract a high volume of traffic to their sites on a daily basis. Site visitors have access to easily search the different categories, which allows them to connect direct to all-types of websites. This increased traffic for the webmaster is the most significant benefit to adding a link to the web directory. To ensure you get the most from submitting your site to the directories, you should always look for the best quality directories that attract a considerable number of daily visitors.
Search engines
By submitting your site to the directories, you are also making it easier for the search engines to detect your website and increase its natural ranking in the search results. Due to the size of the directories and the almost constant updating of information, the spiders sent by the search engines are highly likely to detect your site and have that link indexed.
Higher Rankings
If your website is placed on the directories then you might be able to optimize certain keywords that you wish to have ranked in the search engines. Use descriptive text for the anchor text link that connects to your website. Use a phrase that clearly identifies the function offered by your web site. If you go to the effort of providing a well written description then this should also help in attracting a higher click-through rate, which means you get a lot more visitors to your website.
Increase Site Credibility
If you are able to get a site listed on the top web directories then that can increase the credibility of your web site. In most cases, the better quality websites vet and review the submissions to determine the quality of a site. Human edited directories are a lot more valued and this also means that visitors will trust the information that they read on directory and be more willing to click-through to a particular web site.

Get more information on a comprehensive List of Directories Ready which are created to accept all-types of websites.

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

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The Best Practices for Content Marketing and Its Effect on SEO

A lot has been said about content marketing and its impact on overall SEO efforts. In most of these articles, people talk about writing two types of contents, writing for human readers and writing for Google and other search engines. It is time that we change this old idea and realize the need of the hour. Trust me, a lot has changed after recent Google updates and web content is one thing which has received the major share of Google's attention.
Google recently changed algorithm, like I pointed out earlier, which helps them to find out the most useful content for a given search query. How they achieved that is another topic altogether. And with a closely guarded algorithm, we can't do anything but guess. Leaving the technicality behind, lets talk about the effect.
Write for the human readers: The first thing to consider is that, according to Google itself, do not write for Google. Do not write even keeping Google in mind. Just write some great content which the human readers will like and your duty is 90% done. Google wants to present to the searcher with the most relevant, most informative and most useful article or webpage and so they will of course place articles displaying those traits at the top.
Think of 'WHY' before writing any content: Nobody likes to read useless information, no matter how well or creatively you have written them. The same is applicable for Google. Google doesn't want to present these pages to the readers as well. So, before you create any online content, have a very clear purpose behind creating the page. Once you have a definite purpose and you know what are you going to share with the world by creating this page, obviously your content will be pithy, useful and relevant. These contents are for sure to get a good ranking in Google.
Socially shared content: This is the latest point which I would include as the last point in this article. In this social age, the more people like your content using Google +1 or Facebook 'Like' and other social media, the better it is in the eyes of Google. Also, if your content is getting shared, referred to in the prominent social media, Google will consider this as a sign of a great content. On a technical note, never miss to have those Facebook, Google+, Twitter buttons on your webpage. Display them prominently so people can actually click on them easily if they like your content.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz writes on a few subjects including content development and general SEO practices. He works for the leading SEO solution provider, Search Eccentric and more of his thoughts can be found on the blog.

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

Link Building - Edu Backlinks

Of all the SEO strategies, building backlinks has been identified as a very effective way that will greatly aid in your endeavor of topping the website rankings. Backlinks can be said to be links that are considered inward bound and which connect to a web page or website. As a matter of fact, even before search engines came into the picture, backlinks were the primary tool of web navigation. In the current setup, backlinks are used to enhance the rankings of a site in the major search engines which include MSN, Google and Yahoo. Edu backlinks have presented a very formidable means of utilizing backlinks. Edu sites are linked to edu backlinks.
Perhaps you have been plagued by low rankings that have affected your website. If this is the case then you might only have very limited options. These include identifying another way to get to your target audience or better still identifying a working SEO strategy. Edu domain websites are a top notch tool that can significantly increase traffic to your website if used properly. They are capable of generating thousands of edu backlinks that are credible to your struggling site and therefore boost it. This is because edu domains have been known to be a lot more credible than other domains e.g. .com, .net, .org etc. Building backlinks affiliated to edu domains is not without requirements and conditions and therefore not everyone can secure an .edu domain. Only institutions of learning that are affiliated to the U.S Department of Education and that are properly accredited to the same are eligible for a .edu domain since early 2001.
Edu backlinks in .edu domains are mainly of two types. These include 'dofollows' and 'nofollows'. This is how the two type of links work, 'Dofollows' links come up with a jump in all major search engine standings while 'Nofollows' links have absolutely no effect on the standings of a website. The trick that most professionals involved in building backlinks advocate for that will guarantee you of easing up the search engine optimization business is to try and locate links considered as 'DoFollows'. This is however easily said than done as the top notch search engines regularly change the algorithms which make it a tad difficult for these professionals to get hold of these top rankings.
Your solace should however lay in the fact that edu backlinks and all strategies that are involved in building backlinks with an .edu domain will always be greatly rewarded. 'NoFollow' links do not adversely affect your website rankings among the search engines and as a result, you will not be penalized. Building backlinks using edu websites increases your website's credibility beyond your wildest imagination. This is because edu backlinks ensure that you generate the required traffic as most people tend to trust information that they find in .edu sites. It is a closely held view that information in a .edu site is thoroughly crosschecked before being availed to the general public for consumption. Edu backlinks are the way to go in case you crave for those top page rankings.

If you need an SEO backlink service, contact a professional at: http://seoarticlewritingservice.net/seo-backlink-service/ or call / text John at (716) 579-5984.

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

Want to Build a New Search Engine Optimized Website?

Before spending any time or money on a website, there are some major factors that will directly impact your Search Engine Optimization strategy that must be considered. This list includes the six most important items to be considered prior to developing of contracting to develop a new website if you will be interested in SEO for that website. Here are the top six questions that must be answered during the planning phase:

1) Who is the real target audience for the website? SEO is useless if you do not have a clear plan on who you want to bring to your site. Thinking you site is for EVERYONE would be pretty outlandish, unless you are looking to replace Wikipedia or Google. You must really drill down and figure out details on the niche of your target audience before moving any further. There are plenty of general "marketing resources" to help with this, please use them. Most people fail in this very simple task because they genuinely feel the target audience is much bigger (or much smaller) than it really is.

2) What content will your target audience find useful to READ? SEO is about helping other find the information THEY want on YOUR site. It is not a bunch of tricks trying to get visitors to your site. So, the MOST IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION in the planning phase is establishing a plan to develop all of the content that will meet your target audiences need and a plan to continue to develop new and fresh content over time.

3) How will you incorporate the content to meet your target audience's needs? Developing the content is not the same as the layout of the site, but once someone is at the site, it is very important to make sure they can easily find the other information they need. This means it should be easy to get from some content to some other content, products, etc. A plan on how to "move" a site visitor from some content to other content, allowing the user to "interact" with the site is essential. This strategy should include a degree of flexibility as not all visitors will land on the home page (especially true of a site with good SEO) and not all visitors will want to go from page 1 to page 2 to page 3, they will want to find their own path to the content most important to them. The strategy of getting visitors from some content, through some other content, to a particular product will have a great impact on SEO. Assuming a potential new customer will land on a page and proceed directly to a purchase within the first 30 seconds would be quite inaccurate. Most potential customers will "browse" through a site in some depth prior to making a purchase or deciding to fill out a contact form, so providing an easy way for visitors to access the content they are looking for is essential -- which points back to the question number two, is there ENOUGH content to fill the potential customers need for information to result in a buying decision?

4) How will you update content over time? You can pay a full time webmaster, have a team of developers, have a part time independent contractor or do it yourself (using a CMS perhaps), but regular updates are a very critical component to long term SEO. Waiting to figure out that strategy until AFTER the site is created could be a DISASTER. If a single developer hand coded each page, it could be a very big undertaking to update that site, while a Content Management System (CMS) could be much easier for an individual to add new content. (Note: while not directly related to SEO, it could be a solid marketing strategy to capture willful visitors email addresses on the website then email them when updated information is posted on the site. If you intend to employ this strategy it could have a significant impact on the method used to develop the site as it will need a component to handle this.)

5) How will you ensure the site structure and code will be "clean" and easily indexed by the search engines? Again, this is not about fancy tricks, but it could be about avoiding unnecessary items on the site that do not help SEO (such as flash, etc). It is VERY IMPORTANT to make sure your site developer understands proper SEO design techniques and if not, hire a consultant to ensure these are "built in" to the site. Many people build a site first thinking optimization can happen later, but this could involve "redesigning the site" because much of the fixes could be simple cleaning up of code. The number of people that can build a SEO website from scratch if far less than the number of people that can just give you a pretty website.

6) How will the site obtain incoming links? Since Link Building will eventually be a necessary component of your SEO strategy, you must also consider who might want to link to your site and how the site can be built in a way that would help facilitate this process. Consider who you would freely link to from your brand new website. What type of content would they need to provide for you to deem it useful to link to them? Again, more than likely people will not be lining up to link to your site unless you give them a compelling reason to do so... unless you want to make the compelling reason a dollar value by PAYING for every link, making useful content for others is the best way. This generally means USEFUL INFORMATION in general, not just USEFUL INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR PRODUCTS.

There are of course other Search Engine Optimization considerations, but plan for these first, than you can start the "fine tuning" process of an overall SEO Strategy.

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

Organic SEO Tactics - The Best Way to Build Backlinks and Traffic

If you have a website online, chances are you have mastered everything except for one. That is generating traffic to your website at will. If you find yourself saying, damn... this guy is right! Then you are reading the right article. I am about to reveal to you how to build traffic on a growing and consistent basis.

Make sure you brace yourself because I am about to knock your freaking sox off. Before I pull back the curtains I want you to understand that it would be impossible for me to explain everything there is to know about organic seo in once article. I can however teach you how to get started which will benefit you greatly and you can thank me for the traffic later;-)

One of the easiest methods of generating traffic to your blog at will is article writing. Whoa... Before you start complaining that you already knew that, zip your lips and keep reading. If your articles aren't currently getting at least a twenty percent click through ration then you don't know as much as you think you do. I am going to show you how to change all of that, and I will even go as far as to guarantee you that the next article that you right will be the best that you have ever written.

When writing an article your article should always be based on a keyword phrase. You should never blindly write articles. For example the keyword phrase for this article is, "Organic SEO". I have done my research and I know that this search term receives around a thousand searches a day, and four hundred clicks a day if I take the number one position in Google. I know that I have three hundred thousand competitors that are fighting it out for the same keyword phrase. I know exactly what I have to do to take this market and this article is the first step.

Once I have written my article based on my keyword phrase I begin my assault on the article directories (do to limitations of various article directories I am not allowed to place the actual links in this article. Please visit that actual post on my blog for full details). This process helps me build high quality backlinks as well as generate immediate traffic to my site. This is what I consider the grass roots of organic SEO and it starts with targeting your article around your keyword phrase.

Before you go bonkers submitting your articles to directories you want to make sure that you first place it on your blog. The blog version should have a little more details and also include links to any resources that you have mentioned. This is a tactic that has my article click through ration at around twenty-five percent on a consistent basis.

I am sure that you can clearly see the value in what I have shown you, and I hope that you will begin applying this strategy immediately. I have been using this method to create organic SEO traffic to my websites and blogs for years. Give people great content and they will come back again and again.

I have showed you a proven method of using article writing that has worked for me consistently for years, and each year it appears to get better and better. The big secret here is to create high quality content based around your keyword phrase and to keep blasting the article directories. Superstar Internet Marketers have said since the beginning that content is King. Let me give you one more tip, be for I wrap up. You want to make sure that you make your resource box information at the end of your articles compelling. Give the reader a call to action. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO USE SNEAKY METHODS. Be honest tell them exactly what you want from them. If you want them to purchase something say that. If you want them to join your newsletter say it.

Go read the full version of this article including links to resources mentioned in this organic SEO article.

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

Basic Principles of Link Building

Link building is the most significant way to improve search engine rankings for a given web page. When web pages make a sudden rise from obscurity to prominence, link building is almost certainly the cause, although perhaps not of the kind that a respectable business should engage in.

Web search engines tend to count links in order to determine page relevance for certain key phrases. In the early days of the internet, search engines placed a significant amount of importance on the number of times a certain key phrase was repeated within a web page - however, they quickly learned that this system was easy to abuse. Counting links proved to be a far better way to determine relevance, although the potential for abuse remains.

Counting links allowed search engines to see how many users with a web presence considered the content at the end of the link to be worth reading. Placing a link on your web site was not too different from 'voting' for the page at the end of the link. The uniform application of this system gave web site owners an incentive not to link to substandard sites. Not only could this damage the reputation of the linking site, it would also pass value and relevance to the site at the other end of the link, creating a chain that made outbound links important too.

When web sites become large, they accrue links naturally in a snowball effect. In the increasingly competitive environment of the internet, however, reaching that stage can be difficult. This is where link building comes in. Link building is the process of producing links that lead to a particular web page for the purposes of improving its SERP performance. Although every business would like to accrue its links naturally, the unfortunate fact is that if nobody can find your content to read it, nobody can link to it, feeding a vicious cycle in which the obscure remain obscure and the prominent, prominent. Link building is a way for businesses to break this cycle and begin to accrue links, prominence and authority.

There are many different approaches to link building, ranging from strategies that mimic natural link building very closely (i.e. those that rely on building relationships with other relevant web sites, offering to provide 'guest post' content and requesting a backlink in exchange) to those that are deeply unnatural (such as using software to automatically leave comments indiscriminately on blogs that are set to auto-approve).

Ethical link building is by far the more rewarding of these two approaches, despite the additional time and resources needed to maintain this type of campaign. Through ethical link building, a web site can establish itself as a legitimate part of the online community related to its subject matter - in much the same way as relationships between people contribute to the authority those people are seen to have, relationships between web sites contribute to the authority (and thus SERP rankings) those sites are seen to have.

Kingpin-SEO is a leading UK provider of ethical link building and other search engine optimisation services. A well-respected digital agency with high-profile clients in a range of industries, Kingpin-SEO has the expertise you need to get noticed on the web.

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

Organic SEO Placement Guarantees: Good Value, Or Warning Sign?

As business owners, it's natural to want guarantees covering work. After all, most projects can have a guaranteed beneficial outcome. That's why it's natural to think well of SEO companies that offer guaranteed results: it's a promise that you'll have a good result, right? When you're talking about organic SEO, the answer is a definite no.

Can SEO Companies Guarantee Ranking?

At the most fundamental level, it's just not possible to make any kind of certain declaration about where your company will end up in the results. The reason is simple: no one has control over Google's results, other than the Google algorithm. The same is true for Yahoo!, Bing - every major search provider uses a specific algorithm to determine how they organize what their users see. It isn't possible for anyone to artificially insert your company into that list. What's shown there is designed to be unbiased by definition; any search provider that did anything else would immediately lose credibility.

What SEO companies do instead is make your website as friendly to the known requirements for high ranking as it can be. This means adding keywords, adding content, optimizing code, and much more. But even with all these changes, it's still not an exact science. The exact details of how a particular engine gets its results are not public. It's not as simple as matching a checklist and achieving the desired result. Plus, there may be a lot of competition - other websites targeting the same people you're after, which makes it harder for yours to succeed. In addition, those other websites could have a significant advantage if they've been focused on organic SEO for longer, or are pursuing a more aggressive strategy than you. The bottom line is simple: unless SEO companies do research into specific keywords you're interested in, it's hard to even provide a guess of how successful you might be. Even if that research is performed, it's impossible to really provide a guarantee.

Ways That Companies Can Seem To Offer Guarantees

It isn't possible for any search marketing firm to offer a firm promise of a place in the top results. So how can any of those offering such promises make them come true? Well, some of them just don't. They attract customers based on promises, and then fail to deliver. So many people are looking to the internet for promotion that there is nearly an endless string of potential victims for this kind of scam. That is perhaps the best reason to be wary of guarantees: they may well indicate a company that is dishonest and actually unskilled at organic SEO.

If they actually provide some kind of delivery on their promises, there's a couple of ways to follow the letter of their statement without following the spirit. The most common is to achieve great results on search engines that no one has ever heard of. These may very well be paid engines that no one uses; they could even be maintained by the company itself. Another way is to simply target the least competitive keywords. This is the least dishonest, because it provides at least some possible benefit to you. However, focusing on very non-competitive keywords means they're probably neglecting some of the more competitive ones, which could well be the strongest ones for your individual strategy.

The best SEO companies won't offer you a promise of results. Instead, they'll pledge to do their best for you. They will promise strong tracking, analytics, and quantifiable progress.

Author writes about a variety of topics. If you would like to learn more about organic SEO, visit http://www.customermagnetism.com.

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Search Engine Submission and Optimization Services

Search engine submission and optimization services - can you do it yourself or do you need a service to do it for you?

What if you knew that the bulk of the search engine submission and optimization services out there simply take your web site information and your web address, make 5 simple changes to your web pages, and submit your web site address to 100 web directories, write 1 article and submit it to 100 article directories, and link your web site to 10 other specially picked web pages with whom they have a relationship?

What if you knew that the entire process takes about 5 hours to do, all together, but they space it out over 2 months, so that your newly found rankings come slowly, and it looks like they are working very hard on your web site, and of course you are getting results?

What are they charging for this service? $500? $1000? What if you just decided to do it your self? Now, it will take you longer than 5 hours to do it the first time, because you have to figure out how to do it, and the most efficient ways to submit web pages, and you even have to figure out exactly where to submit the articles and the web page addresses.

What if I told you I have the list of top article directories - all 100 of them? What if I told you I have the list of top web directories - all 100 of them?

What if you could learn how to do search search engine submission and optimization services yourself and you could start doing it for other web sites at a discount - perhaps $400 for 5 hours work?

Does it scare you to think you could make $80 per hour?

By the way, do you want to learn more about using articles like this to drive traffic to your website and increase online conversions?

If so, I suggest you check this out: article marketing traffic.

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

A Quick Guide On Directory Submission Service

If you are looking for an effective online business referral system, then think of directory submission service! Yes, you can trust on directory submission, as it has been the most tried and tested way of gaining maximum browsing frequency. The method involves submitting your business website to different popular directories so that visitors find it while browsing through these directories and yellow pages. There are around 1400 quality web directories that offer you the facility of manual directory submission. In order to get noticed online, all you need to do is to meet all the directory guidelines and submit your website under a most suitable and relevant heading. To be able to do this, you will have to hire professional SEO Company that can offer you effective directory submission services at very affordable prices.

Recommended by Google, Directory Submission Service has the maximum acceptance rate on internet. It helps you get more clicks and ultimately more sales leads. Considered as the most effective online marketing tool, manual submission saves your time, energy and money and reaches to a wider audience in a very short time. Driving relevant traffic to your website, its objective is the fast indexing of your business website on various search engines including Google, Yahoo, MSN and others. It includes placing one-way links to your website on these directories in order to make browsers click on it when they visit any of these directories. Having a great cause and effect relationship, directory submission services are the best tools used by SEO experts.

In order to gain proper advantage of this wonderful tool and in order to promote your business online, all you need to do is hire a trusted and well known SEO agency that can offer you excellent directory submission services at very affordable prices, meeting all your unique needs and specifications. Doing online research is worth it, as your online business entirely depends on their services. Find out all you can about SEO companies online and visit their websites to have a fair idea of their services and prices. Also, don't forget to check their client list. Their clientele suggests how popular and reputed they are in the industry. Choose the one that offers excellent services at very reasonable prices. Once you finish the process of selecting an SEO company, it is better to discuss your requirements in advance so they understand exactly what you are looking for. You can also ask them to prepare a blueprint of the process that they would follow in order to reach to a wider audience as quickly as possible. Discuss the financials in advance to avoid any confusion later on.

Professional directory submission services offer you a great deal of advantages. It helps in fast indexing of your website and tries to bag the highest rank in all the major search engine results. Having the primary objective of getting traffic that is more relevant to your website, professional directory submission services make sure that your website links get more and more clicks from internet browsers. In addition to this, there are many directory submission packages available with SEO companies. You can choose the best among them and take advantage of this wonderful SEO tool.

WL Marketing is a premier name in the industry when it comes to professional SEO services. They offer a wide range of services including article submission, press release distribution, social bookmarking, local business listings and directory submission service.

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

SEO Services for Growing Your Business

If your business is online then it is possible that you have come across the initials SEO, which means Search Engine Optimization. Search engine optimization is the process to get your website ranked higher in the search engines. It can be done by the natural or unpaid search results, rather than the Pay-Per-Click results that are shown on the outside columns of the results list. SEO is an essential service because the internet changing at a fast rate and there is increased competition for the market share in order to achieve to the top positions in the different search engines. For online businesses it is very easy to have the best chance of succeeding the aim of your company through SEO services. By the help SEO services your website may positioned in the top ten listing on the main search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing etc. Through research it has been shown that majority of the people prefer top ten search results when they browse the lists on search engines and rarely go for next results.

While providing SEO services, a major responsibility of SEO consultants is to work out keywords and phrases that will match user's search pattern. Following this the SEO consultant should utilize the keywords and phrases to generate articles and further content to be added to the website. In doing do, they always promote the natural progression of website ranking and provide different strategies to help the client to develop the popularity of the website. Though the process appears to be straightforward and easy, search engine optimization process does not happen overnight. The fact is SEO is a rolling process that can take months or more before we get results. Therefore once your website gets desired ranking SEO remains an ongoing process. One reason for doing this is that in the world of internet search algorithms alter regularly.

Basic SEO services will put in place procedure that will help to make website more attractive. Whatever content is there on a website should be relevant and unique in order to attract visitors towards your website. SEO service providers always give necessary information to their client to implement their search engine optimization strategies.

Another option is outsourcing website optimization to an SEO consultant or SEO service provider can be extremely beneficial to business and often provides many hidden advantages. It can be in cost effective way due to the reduction in staffing and the need for specialist training. It also provides companies to keep their focus on the core objective of their business and allowing more options to achieve corporate goals. There are many types of SEO services and you can choose from them to help you to increase your website rankings. Most of the consultants often specialized in different areas of optimization and different types of website.

SEO service is the most fundamental concept to the internet marketing and essential for every online business or website to go through it. Put this concept into practice and your website will rank top in search engines.

The best Crystal Reports course & manuals to learn SAP. Also get knowledge about Corporate IT Training by customising our training manuals.

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

Search Engine Optimization - A Practical Guide to Link Building

Search engine optimization is critically important for any company, big or small. The most common method of finding websites is done via the major search engines and the higher your site shows up, the more visitors you will get. A key factor in determining how high your site will rank is link popularity, primarily determined by the number of sites that link to you. The process of increasing this number, link building, is arguably one of the most difficult SEO tasks. Nonetheless, an extensive set of back links is essential to outranking your competitors.

While the process of building links may seem daunting, especially at first glance, it can be surprisingly exciting. Much like the field of SEO in general, there has yet to be a proven best strategy on how to build links. The art of link building is constantly evolving and everyone approaches the job a little differently. Below are in-depth looks at three link building techniques that every company should be pursuing.

1. Learn From Your Competitors

One of the best ways to begin or refocus your link building campaign is to analyze what your competitors are doing. The objective is to find, analyze, and reach out to the sites that are linking to your biggest competitors. There are tons of ways to go about this, the cheapest being free online resources. There are many back link providers online that supply the URL and anchor text of hundreds of back links from any competitor. On any such provider it may take a while to weed through the list and find the quality sites, but going through it will give you a general sense of the sites linking to your competitors. The trick is to reach out to said sites and convince them that your own site is worth linking to as well. And the games begin...

Some more great tools to track your competitors can be found at SEOmoz.org, the leader in SEO resources. A useful free tool from SEOmoz, Open Site Explorer, allows you to explore and compare competitors' back links using metrics to judge for quality. You can find some other powerful link building tools on SEOmoz that require a pro membership (check out their free blog to learn more about SEO resources and strategies). Learning from your competitors is an excellent way to build up back links, but in order to pass your competitors you have to pursue other methods as well.

2. Utilize Directories

Directories provide a relatively quick way of obtaining back links and can generate rapid results in search engines. Submitting websites to directories has always been a bit of a controversial issue in the world of SEO as it has been shows that misuse of search directories can result in penalization from search engines. Nonetheless, an educated method of utilizing directories for link building can produce valuable SEO results. In many cases, all you have to do is enter some general company information and you will get rewarded with an instantaneous link.

There are countless lists online of high volume free directories to submit to and many include page ranks and other helpful attributes. To avoid penalization, is imperative to only submit to directories that have categories relevant to your site. Once you locate the best category, be sure to check the guidelines to see if you can link to deep pages within your site. The deeper the links you submit to the directories the more pages of your site the search engines will crawl, enhancing the effect of each back link. While the high success rate of getting listed in directories (especially compared to that of emailing sites that link to your competitors) can be captivating, don't forget the importance of implementing multiple strategies.

3. Write Articles

Article and blog posts are the best way to get the exact back links you want with the most optimized anchor text. However, great links come at a great cost. And naturally this type of link building strategy takes a lot of time and effort. The primary goal is to write articles with applicable information that include links back to your site. You can then publish the articles on either relevant sites or in article directories. Not unlike search directories, article directories can be a relatively efficient strategy to get back links. Once again, you can do a quick search on Google to find a list of high trust article directories to submit to.

Many article directories have various posting rules (no links in the first paragraph, no more than three links, etc.) but in every case you should be able to find at least one way to get links pointing back to you. This may come in the author's bio section or in a profile page but the opportunity will be there. Another location to post articles is on blogs or relevant websites. Try doing some research of suitable blogs or sites and reach out to them with your article. Many webmasters will jump at the opportunity to include your article as a guest post especially if you are providing rich content.

Conclusion

All of the aforementioned strategies offer great opportunities to significantly boost your company's online presence, but an essential component to any successful link building campaign is variety. Try to create a balance of your different link building efforts. Email some websites that link to your competitors, submit your site to a couple of directories, and publish a couple articles that link back to your site. Definitely make sure to document your efforts and keep track of your link building results.

While these link building strategies only scratch the surface of SEO tactics, they are a great place to focus your efforts. Welcome to the game that is Search Engine Optimization.

I am a search engine optimization specialist at SeniorHomes.com, a free resource for people looking for senior housing or senior care for a loved one or themselves. Check out our Seattle Assisted Living page for an example. Or just Google it.

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

Basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips for Better Traffic!

Need more traffic to your website? Some simple search engine optimization (SEO) techniques could bring you considerably more traffic with very little effort. You have to work smart and hard when it comes to the marketing platform techniques you use for your home-based business.

First of all, make sure Google and the search engines can figure out what your site is about. You do this in a number of ways. Primarily, make sure your site content is coded in a format that Google can actually read and will index: HTML. Google cannot reliably read text rendered in graphics such as Flash. Use alternate text to describe the photos or images on your site.

Make sure your most important keywords appear in your title tags

And, when you're writing content for your site, cover your topic completely without "stuffing" keywords into it. Getting human visitors to your website is your goal, so make sure they find the information they are looking for, and deliver it to them in a readable manner.

See that your keyword appears a few times in your content, especially in your headings. You can use bold and italic fonts to emphasize important words and phrases.

Focus on writing good content. When you focus on the reader and not a search engine, you will naturally use synonyms and related terms in addition to your keywords. Google will reward you for this with higher rankings in the search results, which means more traffic for you.

Cover your topic completely. Write as much about it as you can, as longer content is usually preferred. However, don't drone on or repeat yourself if you've run out of things to say. Remember that human visitors are the ones you want to keep - don't drive them away with poor quality or repetitive content.

But Wait, There's More

Make sure to link your content to other related content on your site, and when you do, make your keywords and variations the anchor text of your links. Review your site to see that it is easily navigable by both humans and search engine spiders. Creating and submitting to the search engines a file called a "sitemap" is an excellent way to show all your pages to Google and the other engines so they won't overlook any of your content.

Once you have created a site rich with content that search engines can read easily and that delivers value to your site visitors, it's time to start promoting your site by building links to it from other sites.

A few easy ways to get quality links to your site are to create blogs, write press releases, submit articles to directories, and write comments on forums and blogs.

These are but a few basic SEO tips to help you get free web traffic to your website. We want you to Learn to Earn and of course, learn to Play Your Best Game, too.

Alex Singletary has seen that money can be the greatest obstacle in people's path to an abundant life and is driven to help others overcome their circumstances. His knowledge and passion pertaining to this subject was ignited by attending his first financial wealth conference at the age of 14. Alex knows first-hand that great things happen when the intention is in the right place and the desire is great enough. Let Alex show you how to play your best game, visit: http://play-your-best-game.blogspot.com/

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3 Reasons Why Tagging Your Website Is Important

Internet Marketing, there are two types of tags that are extremely important to the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) of your website: Meta Tags and HTML Tags. Website owners often ask, "What's so important about tagging my website?" There's only one good answer: Everything. Your ranking will depend in large part on the tagging that controls your web site behind the scenes.

Technically speaking, meta tags are HTML tags, they appear in specific places located within the header tags (for example, ). You can find your meta tags by viewing the source file of your website (for example on a Mac, in Firefox, press Command + U. On a PC, in Firefox, press Control + U). The three important meta tags are the title, keyword and the description tags.

The keyword tags appear at the point where you list the keywords that apply to your website, web page to be exact. Your keyword tag on a search engine optimization page should look something like this:

Hint: It is not wise to fill the keyword tags with words that aren't part of your web page. Actually, the major search engines (Google, for example) aren't using this tag anymore. However, the smaller search engines continue to use this tag in their search engine rankings; in other words, the keyword tag can determine where your website is placed in comparison to your competitors for a particular keyword or keyword phrase.

The description tag gives a short description of your web page with 165 characters. Use two exciting sentences filled with keywords and a call to action. It may be tough but do yourself a favor and don't go over 165 characters (including spaces). Your description tag for the search engine optimization page should look this:

SEO Services by "Your Company" - Affordable SEO Service Company. Florida's top marketing firm providing Web Design, Graphics, Print, and Logos.

Contrary to belief, not all search engines take meta tags into consideration. For this very reason, you should use both meta tags and other HTML tags because there is no way to know each and every search engine guideline. Some of the other HTML tags that you should include throughout your web site are the title tags, the top heading tags (or H1, H2, AND H3) and the anchor tags.

The title tag is the tag that is used in the title of your website. This tag will appear like this:

Once you have your title tag completed, when a user pulls the site up, the title that you entered will appear at the very top of the webpage if the user is using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc... Keep in mind that this tag should only be 50-65 characters. To be on the safe side try not to go over 60.

Wondering why? The search engines will cut off the title tag where ever they see fit, and you'll have no control over what visitors will see when your company is listed within the search engine results.

Tip: Place a "call to action" and main keyword in title tag area. It's important to catch your visitor's attention, not to mention the robot spiders that will crawl your site.

High-level headings (H1's) are also important when the crawler examines your website. Your keywords should appear in your H1 headings and in the HTML tags you use to create those short attention-grabbing headings. Make sure that these keywords that are in your title, description and heading tags are in the content of that particular web page. An H1 tag might look like what I've placed at the example below; notice that we place a keyword phrase and our business name in the H1 tag.

Example:
SEO Services by "Your Company"

Anchor tags (aka hyperlinks) are used to create links to other web pages such as a file on the Web, an image or sound file. You're probably most familiar with the anchor tags used to create links to those annoying advertisements.

Tip: Test the link you've just created as soon as possible. I wouldn't assume that it's a perfectly created link, because one typo with one of the characters in the anchor text will cause the link to break. As a result, the people who followed your broken link will think twice about trusting your site's information, links and your reputation as an authority on the given subject and/or industry. Broken links can also lower your search engine ranking, which goes back to what was mentioned earlier- go over your links.

In conclusion, we hope that this article was helpful with your SEO foundation for your website. Every website consists of multiple web pages (for the most part) and you need to create customized titles, descriptions and keywords for every page. Please, remember (just in case you forgot, already) that the keyword phrases that you used in your title tag should be used in the description, keyword, h1 tags and content of each web page.

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Web Directory Basics, Submissions, And The Free Directory Submitter

Search engine optimization (otherwise known as seo) is the most known way to promote your website. A free directory submitter assists in this hugely and we'll talk more about that later in this article. It's a known fact; most webmasters give to more time optimizing their site than they give to actually building the website itself. Why? Well, let's think about it, what is the purpose of constructing and maintaining a site if your website has little or no traffic? Isnt the entire purpose of constructing your site to attract traffic and expose them to your web sites message? Absolutely! This is the why seo is a crucial element to a successful website.

There are a variety of different forms of seo. Often times, certain types of seo become extremely well known throughout the internet community and then they fade into the background as other fads surface. One of the first popular types of seo is a process called internet directory submission.

Internet directory submission is not a complicated process; in fact, it is based upon a simple rule of thumb. People who surf the web have permission to an enormous amount of wisdom nonetheless, if the information on the net were not organized in a few way or another, it would be literally impossible to find what their searching for. This is why directories are so important. Web directories, such as DMOZ (aka The Open Directory Project) are massive, categorized directories of internetsites. DMOZ is one of the oldest types of these internet directories around and is operated by by a group of commited volunteers who manually view and approve each page before it is added to the directory.

Here's a question you may have. With Google and other query based search engines, how does internet directory submission play such an substantial role in the overall picture of website optimization? Well, there are two distinguishable benefits to submitting your site to web directories. Well, to start with, huge search engines such as Google use web directories to search for query results. When the user enters their query or search, Googles search then identifies the results by scanning through the thousands of pages located in net directories. If your website is listed in the web directories, whalla, the search engine is more likely to recognize the relevancy because the site pages have already been indexed and categorized by the website directory.

The second benefit of submitting your site to a website directory is a bit more complex than the first. seo experts will tell you that one of the most effective ways to increase exposure on the web is through receiving inbound links to your website by other sites of similar content. When you list your site in a directory, either manually or coupled with a free web directory submitter, you are linking your website to the web directory itself as well as any search engine who spiders the website directory (this includes Google). This can boost your placement in search engine results hugely.

Now that you understand the importance of directory submission, directory submission how the process actually works. There are literally hundreds, perhaps even thousands of web directories on the web. Here are net directories (such as DMOZ) offer free internet directory submissions. This simply means you do not have to fork over any money in order to list your website in their web directory. Other online directories charge lots for listing your website in their directory. Obviously, if your website is listed in a larger number of online directories, the more impact this will have on your sites placement in search engines.

To submit your site to each website directory, you must first choose which online directories you would like to use and then visit them, filling out a form by your site url and other information relating to your website. A variety of webmasters do this frequently in order to be sure their sites are showing up in as a variety of internet directories as possible. An obvious downer is this can become a very time-consuming task.

In order to automate the process and make it much more convenient for netmasters, programmers have created free website directory submitter software that can complete the internet directory submission process for you and reduce or eliminate the hassle of searching the internet for and submitting your website to the non-paid internet directories.

A free website directory submitter will offer you the benefit to enjoy the advantages associated by having your website listed in directories without the cost. This is a super seo technique that is easy to maintain and a free directory submitter program doesn't cost you a thing, so it's easy on the wallet too. This allows you to easily optimize your new and existing sites as frequently as you would like. Thanks for perusing this article, have a super day!

The above information concerning free directory submitter and free search engine submission sent to us by Chad McDonald from: http://www.TonOFebooks.com/Free_Directory_Submitter.html

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

Social Bookmarking SEO - Does It Really Have Benefit?

Does Social Bookmarking for SEO serve any real purpose?

If you've been in the SEO game for any amount of time than you know all about dofollow vs. nofollow. High PR links vs. crappy links and the list goes on. Visit any internet marketing forum and you'll be greeted by a deluge of comments from everyone claiming to know this or that about one such thing or another and how much more they know about that than another person does! (You might have to read that twice haha!).

One of the most common arguments I've read lately is the value of social bookmarks and how they don't carry any weight in the search engines. Many are nofollow etc... I'm not here to debate the nofollow vs dofollow argument. I still believe that a link is a link and it's not going to look very natural to any search engine if your linking profile consists solely of 200 backlinks from high PR splogs. I've tried to do that and honestly it just doesn't work.

What does work however is if you have a nice diversity of links, INCLUDING nofollow links.

Time and time again Google has proved to me that if i spend the time to grab some supposedly "crappy" links to go along with my hard earned high-pr blog posts and such that then I will really see the ranking increase and stability that I'm looking for.

What is one of the easiest ways to build up some link diversity and nofollow links?

Social Bookmarking!

With the plethora of services available right now it's simply too easy and too cheap not to have a good batch of social bookmarking links pointed at the pages you're trying to rank for. What is the easiest way to do this? Well you can always go and signup for a bunch of social bookmarking accounts yourself and submit your own links. However this is not a very effective method as you're only getting your links into one account.

The best services available are the ones that allow you to submit your bookmarks to the server and then hundreds of other members take you bookmarks and add them to their accounts. Giving the appearance that there are lots of users across the internet who are interested in your site. If it doesn't give you a direct boost in the SERPs there can be no doubt that Google will take more notice of sites using this method.

There are lots of paid services out there that will do this for you and if you click the link at the end of this article in my signature I will show you one of the best services I've found that is absolutely free to get started. And I mean free as in, no monthly fee's, and no startup costs (save for a little time to signup etc...). Check it out and I guarantee if you're searching for social bookmarking links you won't be disappointed!

Cheers,

Rob

Rob Reid is a graduate from the Dalhousie University Classical Guitar Program and a full time writer/marketer. He maintains RealInternetReviews.com - A site dedicated to provide real reviews and unbiased information on internet marketing products which was started out of sheer frustration when trying to find real information on these products himself. Check out his review on this great social bookmarking service by clicking the link. Leave him a comment so he'll know you stopped by!

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Organic SEO: Learn the Basics

The web 3.0 and semantic web has given web geeks a brand new search concept- organic SEO!

Organic SEO is a kind of site optimization strategy that offers natural results from search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask.com and etc. When an online user goes to any of them and types in a keyword or phrase, there are two types of results that will pop up namely organic SEO and sponsored listings.

Sponsored listings can be found at the bottom, top or right hand corner of the result pages. These can be business or company names that pay search engines to place their names on the front page for certain keyword or key phrases. Organic SEO on the other hand, focuses on promoting sites on the natural search engine results. It is a more cost effective approach to online marketing and is more manageable compared to sponsored listings.

Technical Loopholes versus Content

High quality content is king when it comes to search engine optimization. Search engines are constantly seeking for valuable information and data. They are not concerned about fancy flash applications not a virtual art piece.

The Value of Link Building

Links play a crucial role in organic SEO. The more links a certain website has from high quality, authority sites, the more valuable it becomes to the eyes of search engines. Search engines like Yahoo, Google and Bing trust the appreciation from other authority sites, especially for those who have already ranked high enough. Link building from other sites needs strategic planning for you to successfully execute it.

Keyword Density

Online consumers typically type in a key phrase when they are looking for products or services online. If you are not on the first page of search engine results, then it may be hard for users to find you. Select the best keywords and key phrases that is relevant to your website. Keywords should also be used efficiently and in the right places to attract web spiders. Keyword stuffing will only hurt your ranking so make sure you don't overuse it.

Directory Listings

A good way for you to jump start an organic SEO company is to get listed in as many online directories as possible. Register your site with Yahoo, Open Directory, Business.Com, LookSmart and etc. Some of these directories may have fees but it is definitely worth it. Don't forget to include the most important details in the listing such as company name, company description (with keywords in it), contact information, address and office hours.

Organic SEO can help boost your site's rank in major search engines. Organic SEO can be achieved through the creation of high quality content, submissions to directory listings, achieving backlinks from reputable sites and through the implementation of the right keyword density. A cost effective SEO Company is the best bet while going in for such a plan.

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

How to Make Sure Your Site Gets Properly Crawled and Indexed by Robots

Search engines have robots that come to your site and grab everything there is to grab. But because competition is so fierce, there is no way to get in the search engines, unless you pay for ads or hire a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) consultant, right? Wrong!

Even if you pay big money, if your site is not properly seen by the robots used by search engines for indexing, chances are many of your pages will never make it.

In this article I will discuss the importance of having your website structured properly, the importance of using the old fashioned hyperlinks versus the modern Flash menus, scripts and extensions and provide you with a very simple and free tool that will allow you to see your site in a similar fashion most indexing robots do. But first, let's define some of the concepts.

What is a www robot?

A robot is a computer program that automatically reads web pages and goes through every link that it finds.

The first robot was developed by MIT and launched in 1993. It was named the World Wide Web Wander and its initial purpose was of a purely scientific nature, its mission was to measure the growth of the web. The index generated from the experiment's results proved to be an awesome tool and effectively became the first search engine. Most of the online stuff we can't live without today was born as a side effect of some scientific experiment.

What is a search engine?

Generically, a search engine is a program that searches through a database. In the popular sense, as referred to the web, a search engine is considered to be a system that has a user search form, which can search through a repository of web pages gathered by a robot.

What is a bot? What is a spider? What is a crawler?

Bot is just a shorter, cooler (for some) version of the word robot. Spiders and crawlers are robots, only the names sound more interesting in the press and within metro-geek circles. For reasons of consistency, I will use the term robot throughout this article, when referring to spiders, crawlers and bots.

Are there other... things that crawl out there?

Oh yeah, but these things are way beyond the scope of this article. Well, for the conspiracy theory aficionados, let's see... we have worms - self-replicating programs, webants (or ants) - distributed cooperating robots, autonomous agents, intelligent agents and many other bots and beasties.

How do robots work?

As with all other things technical, I believe that the only way you will utilize a technology to its full potential and to your best advantage is if and when you understand how that technology works. When I say how it works, I don't mean intricate technical details, but fundamental processes, big picture stuff.

Generally, robots are nothing but stripped down versions of web browsers, programmed to automatically browse and record information about web pages. There are some very specialized robots out there, some that look only for blogs, some that index nothing but images. Many (such as Google's GoogleBot) are based on one of the first popular browsers, called Lynx. Lynx was initially a pure text browser, therefore, in today's internet Lynx would be extremely robust and fast. Basically, if you can program, you can take Lynx, modify it and make a robot.

So how do these things actually work? They get a list of websites, and literally start "browsing" them. They come to your site and then start reading the pages and following every link, while storing different information, such as page titles, the actual text of the page, etc.

Based on the above, what would happen if instead of your beloved Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera or whatever browser you are attached to, you go dig on the internet and download a version of the venerable Lynx browser?

I'll tell you what would happen, and some will probably accuse me of giving away one of the secrets the SEO corporate community does not want you to know:

You will be able to see your site very close to the way a robot sees it. You will be able to look for errors in your pages and track down navigation errors that might block a robot from seeing portions of your site.

In plain English, let's say you built a great looking site. There is an index page, the first page one sees when entering your site. On that page you have the most incredible Flash navigation system, with a huge button pointing to your products and services and the rest of the site. If Lynx goes to your index page and will not see a standard link, it will not be able to see the rest of your site. There are extremely high chances that a lot of indexing robots will not see your site either.

You will then understand why your very large site, that has one of the most intricate and functional Flash based navigation systems on the planet never makes it high into the search engines, even after all your efforts of manually submitting it everywhere. It's simply because you forgot to add basic hyperlinks. It's because when you submit a site - even manually - all that really happens is you telling the search engine "hey, Mr. Search Engine, whenever you think you can find some time, please send your trusty robot to my site".

Folks, robots can't usually use a navigation menu made in Flash, Java script, PHP, etc. and will not be able to get to your pages, it's as simple as that.

How do I get Lynx?

Lynx first started life as a UNIX application, written by the University of Kansas as part of their campus-wide information system. It then became a gopher application (a pre-web search tool), then a web browser. The official page for Lynx is http://lynx.isc.org, however, if you are not a Linux geek, used to play with binary distribution files and used to compiling your own apps (don't worry about what I just said), you might want to find a version that someone else already made usable for your computer. For example, if you are a PC user running Windows, you might want to check links to "Win32 compiled versions". At the time of writing, one such site is http://csant.info/lynx.htm (called a distribution site) where you can download a version that will install onto Windows machines in a fashion that will be familiar to non-geeks. After you install the browser, you might want to read the documentation. To get you going and to alleviate your beginner frustrations, I'll tell you that you must press the G key (as in "go"), then type the complete URL of the site you want to browse (starting with "http://"), then hit Enter. Use the arrows to navigate.

Bottom line, use Lynx to verify that every page of site is accessible and let the robots do all the work for you. You'll save yourself a lot of aggravation and maybe some money that you would waste on advertising your otherwise non-indexable site.

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Andrei co-owns Bsleek - a company that specializes in web design, hosting, promotional items, printing, tradeshow displays, logos, CD presentations, SEO and more. Andrei has amassed an extensive technical knowledge and experience through his career as the CIO for a major travel management company and through his past careers in military research, data acquisition and airspace engineering. He also consults for Trinity Investigations, a New York based PI firm.

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Bsleek - Redefining cheap web hosting [http://www.bsleek.com/hosting/]

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Optimizing Your Site For Better Search Engine Ranking

SEO is the active practice of optimizing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines.

Search engine optimization is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results for targeted keywords. As a marketing strategy for increasing a site's relevance, SEO considers how search algorithms work and what people search for. Another class of techniques, known as black hat or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that tend to harm search engine user experience. Some search engines have also reached out to the industry, and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences and seminars.

Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, from writing copy to giving advice on site architecture and helping to find relevant directories to which a site can be submitted. You should never have to link to an searche engine. Avoid marketers that talk about the power of "free-for-all" links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. Some marketers may try to sell you the ability to type keywords directly into the browser address bar.

The objective of Search Engine Optimization is to increase web visitor counts by ranking very high in the organic results of searches using the most appropriate keywords describing the content of your site.

Search engine can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. They look for sites that employ these techniques and may remove them from their indexes.

Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) involves a combination of free website submissions and paid search engine listings, to ensure your website reaches customers using search engines to research purchase decisions. Search engines work for you non-stop 24/7. The answer is entirely dependent upon your web site's visibility amongst the search engines. The goal of web optimization is to create consistent and targeted traffic through search engines and directories to your web site. Search engine optimization is not just to rank in search engines but mainly to achieve a good click through rate from the targeted visitors. This means that your web site should come up in the search results of the search-engines with targeted keywords that are related to your content or theme of your site. If your web pages are dynamically created from the database, it's likely that many search engines have difficulty to crawl and index them. Disadvantage of dynamically created pages are that many search engines like Google for example don't like dynamically created pages because the crawlers might get in an infinite loop on your server if they follow dynamically created web pages with a query string in it.

SEO [http://www.domainhostinfo.com] helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine.

Milan Stapar

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What is Alexa Ranking, How Does It Affect You & How Do You Improve Your Ranking?

Alexa.com defines themselves as "the web information company," but to webmasters and bloggers, they are so much more. Essentially, Alexa is a company that measures web traffic on almost every website on the internet through their increasingly popular toolbar plugin. This becomes an important element in leveraging your blog's ranking as a sell point to advertisers, sponsors, buyers, readers and whoever else wants a piece of your material.

Why is this important? Alexa rankings can make or break your business.

Before you freak out, let me explain how this plays out. Essentially, the way Alexa.com is measuring your website's traffic is one of the most unfair surveys around. Why? Well they only record hits on your blog if it passes through their systems... meaning that your visitors need either the Alexa.com toolbar installed or you need to have a widget displayed on your website.

Advantage internet/technology bloggers. As a whole, the tech readership crew is much more likely to have an Alexa toolbar installed than your typical user. What this means for non-tech focused websites is that they are going to be seen as having less traffic than others.

So I have less traffic according to some company... who cares!?

You need to start caring about your Alexa.com ranking if you aren't already. As much as it pains me to say this, they have a monopoly over the sector. As advertisers move away from the unreliable "Google Pagerank" service, Alexa Ranking is the next logical sell point to move towards (and eventually destroy :D ).

Your Alexa ranking is used as a big factor in valuing the advertising space on your website by, I would say, about 85% of advertisers. A higher positioning means more money in your pocket. Alexa rankings are being used increasingly to leverage blogs, despite the fact that the numbers can be horrendously manipulated. More high paying reviews, better advertising offers, more press coverage, it is a must have.

What can you do to improve your ranking?

So you have a less-than-stellar rating, don't worry... you can improve and manipulate this pretty easily. Here are the top three things you should be doing, anything else is water under the bridge... so when you read a post "the top x ways to improve your Alexa ranking," they are making most of it up out of thin air.

1. Place an Alexa.com widget/plugin or chart on your website
2. Install the Alexa toolbar on your own computer and encourage your readers to do the same on their computers
3. Write popular content and get SEO optimized for traffic

Pretty self-explanatory, throw an Alexa widget up on your website. Why? This logs your visitors even if they don't have a toolbar. Essentially, this can make up for visitors not having toolbars of their own (though not entirely). I have heard reports of HUGE gains after installing an Alexa chart or widget. They offer them to you on the website for free, so you should be taking advantage of their offer.

Other than that, you need to have the traffic to push your ranking up, so keep writing interesting content that is dense with information so you get the search engine positioning and page views that you need. Your ranking is based on your last three months of traffic average traffic, so while my weekly average is currently under 100,000, I am registering a 273,000 Alexa ranking. This will take some time, so be patient and keep writing.

Alexa.com ranking is important, so you definitely shouldn't underestimate its influence on your earnings. Don't get freaked out if your rating isn't so hot, because there is more to life on the web than statistics alone. But if you simply don't care, you need to start caring because you are missing out on potential income by having a poor rank.

-The Net Fool

The author of this article is Jim "The Net Fool".

He is owner of theNetFool.com If you'd like to learn more about blogging, you can visit http://www.thenetfool.com You'll find all the information you need!

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SEO for Mobile Websites

Mobile websites are the new trend of the future. There are now so many cell phones in use that you would be missing out on a lot of traffic if you did not utilize these types of websites. These sites have their own search engines and need their own form of SEO or search engine optimization. Search engines for these sites are still quite new so this means that you must take a few steps to fully optimize your mobile website.

The first thing to do is to make sure that your site loads quickly and the content comes up correctly on a mobile phone. In order to do this you will need to make sure your content is optimized and be sure the files are as small as possible. Use all the usual SEO white hat tactics that you would use with a regular site. Be sure to insert the right HTML tags.

It is wise to make a mobile site map. You can do this at Google Webmaster Central. Here you will find some XML code to insert into your mobile websites which will help you to set this site map up. A key point to remember is to insert the HTML tag into the XML code. This will ensure that your site will get crawled by the mobile search engines. Read through Google's instructions carefully to get this right. Submit your site map to Google Webmasters.

Your domain name should be short and relevant. This will ensure that your site is remembered by visitors and indexed better. Try to use your main keyword for the domain name. Remember to submit your blogs to the mobile directories. This will help you to get noticed. Submit your mobile websites to the Google mobile site index. This is a little slow and will take about 2 weeks to be indexed. In the meantime try to submit blogs to the directories. It is important to do social networking SEO with your Mobile SEO as these two techniques go together and form a very powerful marketing tool.

There are many benefits of SEO for these sites. As mentioned with all the mobile phones and apps out there you will be drawing on a huge market. Mobile SEO ensures that you attract targeted people to your website. It is a little work at first but the extra traffic will be well worth it and once you have optimized your mobile websites you will not have to do it again. You should be on the lookout for new trends and techniques as this is a fairly new form of marketing.

John Ferrughelli is a founder and president of Potenture, a professional SEO company located in Roseland, New Jersey which specializes in search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click management, search engine marketing (SEM) website design and social media.

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