Seo Guide | Seo Articles | Seo Blog

<![CDATA[With more and more people turning to the Internet for purchasing items and comparing products and prices, the development of comparison search engines is a natural phenomenon. Based on the idea of having a large database of information that users can access instantly, most comparison search engines are now based on a directory type structure. Getting to your area of interest and comparing two or more services or products is now just a few clicks away in most cases. Let’s have a look at how a comparison search engine is structured. Comparison search engine structure There are three main categories or fields that most comparison search engines use. The directory is a categorized list of topics that the search engine covers. Some comparison search engines use general categories such as “Business”, “Entertainment”, “Shopping” or “Travel” while others focus on more specific subcategories, such as different types of digital cameras, for example. The search bar is a common feature of any search engine. If you do not wish to spend time browsing through the product directory, you can simply type in a keyword or key phrase in the search bar and the most relevant results will be returned to you instantly. Top rated products or companies

<![CDATA[Over the last few years, advertising on the internet has changed in many ways. One innovation that's hanging on is the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) method used by search engines.

The basic premise is that you, the advertiser, purchase a keyword or keyphrase in the search engine. For example, if I was running a site about dieting and losing weight, I might purchase the keyword "weight loss". Naturally, this is a pretty popular search term, and many other sites will also be purchasing the term. So I set the amount I'm prepared to pay for each click, and my site will be displayed above or below other advertisers, depending on whether I've paid more or less than them.

The search engine doesn't charge me for every time my ad is displayed, only for when a searcher clicks on my ad. So I have to calculate the cost per click, versus what my expected conversion rate is (the number of times I can expect to make a sale for every time my ad is clicked) and work out my return on investment (ROI). Here's an example:
I bid $1 dollar on the search phrase "weight loss"
I can expect to make a sale to one in 10 searchers - a 10% conversion rate
So I'll be spending and average of $10 to make one sale. My product sells for $25, so I'm getting a 250% ROI - not bad.

All sounds good - apart from the spectre of click fraud. Click fraud is where you receive hits on your ad which are not down to interested searchers and potential clients - draining your advertising budget for nothing.

There are two common types of click fraud. The first is where rival websites deliberately set out to drain your budget by repeatedly clicking your ads, either through manually surfing or using software to generate thousands of hits to your ads. Because most search engines allow you to set a capped budget, once you've hit your cap, your ad will cease to display - giving your rival websites a clear shot at your market.

The second type of fraud is relevant to the PTR world. This is the nasty known as "forced search", and it is sadly quite common, probably due to many people not understanding the implications.

This type of fraud arises from search engines running affiliate programs whereby they pay people to advertise their search engine, and reward them for every "valid search" made through their engine. A valid search would be where the interested party has searched on a phrase and visited one of the websites shown in the results - thus earning the search engine its revenue from the advertiser.

It's easy to see where the problem lies: the affiliates have no real interest in drawing quality traffic to the engine, they simply want people to make valid searches, so that the affiliate gets paid. This is fine as far as it goes - but when they find a PTR program which caters specifically to this urge, we get the forced search program. This is where the program owners specifically require the members to make "valid searches" on the ads - or they don't send them mails. These programs tend to be the ones offering high amounts of cash per mail - they can afford to offer up to 5c per mail, because the advertisers will pay well for valid searches. As long as the program owner can offer a pretty good guarantee of the number of searches, the advertisers will keep coming back.

You'll be able to spot a forced search PTR program quite quickly - after a few days of joining the program, you'll start to receive mails saying things like "We're sending you this because we don't think you know how to make a valid search" or "Please remember to do a valid search if you want to remain in our active searchers group!" When I get a mail like this, I resign from a program immediately.

There are two reasons for you to steer clear of these programs - the first is altruistic and takes the long view, the second self-motivated. Firstly, you know you're assisting people to commit fraud. The advertisers paying the search engines are the ones getting their wallets drained, and you're just the bottom feeder in a chain stretching from the search engine, to the affiliate, to the PTR program owner, to you. Secondly, the search engines are getting much more aware of click fraud and are developing tools and software to stop it. People can and have been taken to court for click fraud. What do you think's going to happen when the PTR program owner is implicated? You're not going to get paid any time soon... and all that clicking and searching you did will have been a big fat waste - for everyone.

Karen Barr is the owner and webmaster of the digital art site, Forgotten Worlds.]]>

<![CDATA[Google is hands down the top search engine with an estimated 50% of the search traffic. Thus the SEO (search engine optimization) actions that you do should be geared firstly to Google. This is a key point in developing an Internet marketing strategy. You must entice the search engine to find you using these tips. If the search engine can't find you or you don't rank in the top few listings, you are losing most of your potential customers. A beautiful site that is not search engine friendly is a waste of your money. Organic listings -- prime real estate "Savvy marketers know the best links are organic. Known as natural or algorithmic listings, these links are the non-sponsored, free listings that appear in the major search engines upon keyword queries. Organic listings are derived from databases built by search engine spiders and ranked by proprietary search algorithms generally based on relevant content, proper HTML coding and quality inbound links." "Research shows that search engine users prefer organic links to sponsored links in the search engine results pages (SERPs). *comScore and others have reported that 70 to 80 percent of users click organic rather than sponsored listings (pay-per-click). *Jupiter research found that six out of seven sales resulting from search engines originated in the organic search listings. "Based on the clickability of organic listings, it's safe to assume that well-optimized websites will achieve their business goals. Industry research has documented this in both case studies and research studies". - iMedia Connection Keep in mind these facts: *88% of economically active Americans go online everyday. *A recent study showed that 85% of users research products and services on the Internet before they purchase. *77% get their news online through Google or Yahoo news. *80% of all business on the Internet goes to the first three on the first page of a search result. The design, content and programming of your site all influence your search rankings. *Over 90% of B2B buyers use search engines during the buying process. While the Google algorithm is of course top secret there are know actions that get results: 1. Have an Internet marketing strategy. You need a plan of action that is based on solid key word research and what your competition is doing. Getting onto page one for your relevant key words is like getting onto the bestseller list for an author. You are competing against the other guys who are using an array of tools to get listed on the first page of search results. Your strategy should be based on "long tail" terms. *Although you should use the keywords that get high search numbers, as with any other online marketing or public relations activity, most of the ROI in your web traffic comes from what is called "the long tail." *You will get more traffic and more conversion across a variety of more specific niche phrases with a lower number of searches. Combined, these searches bring more traffic and more ROI. *With correct optimization, there are several terms which you take advantage of that have high searches, but relatively low competition. 2. Google in particular gives high marks for in bound links to your site. That means other web sites linking back to your site. A great tool to achieve this is an optimized press releases. They get: *Your message out across the web where your future customers are reading their news. *By including links into your press release, the press release when picked up by the news engines such as Yahoo News, Google New and thousands of other sites will link back to your site. That creates back links which are huge for Google. 3. Programming. There are several technical issues that need to be done correctly including titles with correct page optimization. *For an architect, the search engines will not rank well a page with a title "Welcome to Our Site" but will rank the same page with the title "Building Design Services". *Also your Meta tags need to be correct and consistent with your strategy. Meta tags are information placed in a web page not intended for users to see but provide information to search engine browser software. 4. Add RSS feeds. RSS is really simple syndication--it is a very effective tool to get your content syndicated across the web. Every Internet marketing strategy should include RSS. Think like a publisher and you will have the right viewpoint. You want to be continually adding content under RSS feeds. Search engines search for words so you need lots of optimized content (embedded with long tail key words) to 'feed' the search engine. Search engines like big sites with lots of new content. Add press releases, newsletters, product updates, articles, etc to your site and of course make sure that they are optimized against your strategy under a RSS feed. See www.press-feed.com for more info on an inexpensive service. 5. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but search engines can't read a picture. You can, of course, have lots of pictures and a great design on your site but you also need text as search engines only read text. If you have a Flash intro your site it will be basically invisible to the search engines without text. It is a two step dance: Secondly, your site must interest the prospect to come into the site and convert i.e. do what you want them to do. E.g. sell a product, sign up for a newsletter, request more info, etc. Your website is a vital tool in your marketing and PR campaign--your online face to the world. But even the most perfect website is no use at all if it is never found and seen by the right audience. Your brand awareness and value increases with top search page result placement. The bottom line is that your customers can't buy what they can't find. Make it easy for them by optimizing your web site and using these Internet marketing strategy tips.

Sally Falkow is President of Expansion Plus, Inc., and author of Website Marketing Strategy Ebook. She is an authority on Internet Marketing and search engine optimization strategies. For more information, visit www.expansionplus.com.]]>

<![CDATA[Basic Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization or "SEO" is the process of optimizing a website for high search engine rankings for a particular search term or set of search terms. OK, now that we have the dictionary definition, what does that really mean?

When you go to Google and do a search you expect to find something relevant to the "search term" you entered, right? If you look for apples you want to find something about either those red shiny fruits or perhaps a computer. So how does Google know where to look? Its spiders (computer programs that scour the internet) look for pages that are relevant to the term you entered. Actually, this has been done beforehand so google can get your results likity-split. These pages are "indexed". Your mission as an astute webmaster is to construct you pages so the search engines index you pages quickly and accurately. This way, the search engine is happy because they deliver a relevant page to its "customer", the searcher. the searcher is happy because they found what they were looking for. As a webmaster, you are happy because the search engine delivered a targeted searcher to your site. Win, win, win.

It boils down to one word. Relevance. You see, search engine optimization is no longer about "tricking" search engines into thinking that your site is relevant. If you are familiar with the changes at the various search engines you may have heard about the horror stories of sites that were ranked high one day and then not at all the next. These sites usually relied on underhanded methods to get indexed. If your site is truly relevant and delivers what is "expected" you will most likely climb in the rankings.

Search Engine Optimization is more than just creating a few meta tags and submitting your URL to a few search engines. in fact, SEO goes even beyond the definition we started with above. There are a number of strategies that currently work to provide a better chance at getting listed higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). Besides having the page optimized with relevant words and terms, outside factors can actually play a large part. Sometimes these factors are the MOST important.

Among the other factors that play a vital part in your sites rankings are: incoming links and the rank of the sites that provide the links, listings by relevant directories, and of course the quality of the content of your own site.Let's face it: Search Engine Optimization is vital to a successful site. While it may not be simple, it doesn't have to be overly complicated either. There are plenty of resources on the internet that will help you optimize your site for optimization.

We have listed a few of those here.

http://www.seo2020.com
http://www.seochat.com
http://www.seotoday.com
http://www.seroundtable.com
http://www.searchengineforums.com

Step-by-step internet marketing methods revealed. Russell Portwood provides the tools to make any site a blazing success.
http://www.interntmarketingtoolz.com]]>

<![CDATA[You know that paying for advertisment online nowadays, has become a huge expense. Especially if you are advertising with the big guys, where a lot of competitions exists.

What if i told you that PPC above, gives 50% real clicks and the rest are fake (Because some people manipulate these services to make money).

e.g. Say that mike is a property developer in Cyprus and paying for the keyword "Cyprus developers" $1.00 per click just to be on position 5 or 6. John on the other side has a website that refers to Cyprus developers. John can choose to display these ads on his website and get a share of the profit when someone clicks. Well, it is expected that John will notify all his friends to click on his ads, so he will get some money. Mike now has paid $50.00 for 50 clicks of which 25 where johns friends.

Now on the other side, i've found that the so called ISEDN created a product that is cost effective and performance effective. ISEDN stands for Individual Search Engines and Directory Network. they gathered 300+ search engines and directories, which are scattered around the world, Uk, Germany, Usa, Australia e.t.c., and created a network, and a common product. they took the advantages of PPC with keyword targeting, and the advantages of paid inclusion and created the perfect product. Now you can get those expensive keyword based ads, for a small fixed fee per year. So you realise that click fraud has no longer a purpose to be performed, because they don't charge by clicks. It doesn't matter if you get 100 clicks or 100000 clicks, the price is still 36.00 usd per year per keyword.
for example: http://www.exevior.com Is a Search Engine, as well as exactseek.com, burf.com and many others. (about 225+) members of the ISEDN, You may review the common product at this page http://store.exactseek.com/exevior.html .

Just to review all the above stated, what they are offering is a choice. You can pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for a 50% real outcome or $36.00 usd per keyword for a whole year, for 95% real outcome, and appear not only in one, but 225+ search engines and directories, members of the ISEDN, for the keyword or keywords you choose.

personally, i found that this might be the solution to click fraud, eventhough i don't think the big guys will ever join such think as they will simply loose their monopoly.

Check it out.

http://www.exevior.com
http://store.exactseek.com/exevior.html]]>

<![CDATA[Good keyword research is the basis of achieving a successful search engine listing.
It is using those ‘key’ words in your marketing which helps the Search Engines to find you and if they find you, then you are on your way to having a successful campaign. In short, your Search Engine marketing of ‘key’ words is the best way of getting seen by the people who can get you, the most visitors/buyers to your site.

It stands to reason that if most people on the web look for ideas and products by typing into their browser specific words to get the information, they are looking for; then by having a list of words applicable to your products(s) in your marketing campaign, you will be targeting your type of audience with what they are looking for!

Simple really.

Find what the customer is searching for and give it to them…
How you go about establishing your keyword research has to be a very important part of search engine marketing strategy. It really does not matter how good your product is, if you are not using the key words that your prospect is searching for then you will not get the type of person, you are looking for.

There are a number of web sites you can use to find out what people are looking for and I suggest you familiarise yourself with them as they will help you in establishing your presence on the Internet.
www.goodkeywords.com A great free download for you!
http://www.pixelfast.com/overture
www.google.com/press/zeitgeist2006.html
www.wordtracker.com
www.geeyo.com/docs/market_research.html

There are of course others, but any of the above will be of help to you.
Using the Good Key word free down load site and keying in a word specific to your site, you will get a list of words that people have been searching for. This is what you need so that you can incorporate them into your marketing. For instance:

Keying in the phrase “marketing” would bring the following along with the number of requests made for that phrase or similar words.
search engine marketing 1,123,521
marketing 200,090
email marketing 149,571
internet marketing 114,446

This website Good Keywords actually lists the top 100 for you but I have only shown the top 5 to give you a guide.
Bear in mind that these figures are for one month only!
So if your site was about Internet Marketing, that keyword should be incorporated either in your web site address or your main web site heading. (That is the first page on your site any visitor would see).

The more key words that you can used in your text then the greater chance that the search engines will find you and that is what the simple strategy is all about. If the search engines can find you, then there’s a good chance that visitors/buyers will also.
There are of course other ways of optimization your web site such as using ‘meta tags’, linking to other sites, writing articles etc and to find out more about these, just type into your web browser your ‘key’ word and enjoy the journey.

Keith Richardson
http://choices123.bryxen1.hop.clickbank.net
for top notch details in Search Engine Optimization
keyword research is the basis of achieving a successful search engine listing

Slowly but surely coming to grips with Internet Marketing]]>

<![CDATA[If you are just starting out with your own website or you have had it for a while and have been scared to touch your source code, perhaps you will gain some inspiration from my experience.

I was so excited when I got my own domain and I knew that in order for my web site to appear on the first page of the search results in the major search engines I would have to optimize my site.

I had no knowledge of html or Search Engine Optimization strategies, yet in three months I managed to get my site to a Google Page Rank of 4 as well as achieve top positions in the search results for a number of my keywords.

When I first looked at my source code it was like trying to read a foreign language. You can view your source code by opening your site in your browser, right click on the actual web site and from the menu that appears click on View Source. A Notepad window will open showing you the source code that miraculously transforms into your website when viewed in IE (Internet Explorer) or other browser.

This fascinated me and to try and figure out how all this worked I would have my site open in my browser and the source code open in Notepad and select to study, for example, the first paragraph, then I would locate that paragraph in the source code to find out how this was written. Then I would do the same for an image to see how that was written. Gradually I was able to translate the source code into an understandable language.

Obviously to make actual changes to your site, you do need to access your web space in your hosting account and I would strongly advise you to make a backup of your site before you make any changes, as this will allow you to go back to your original site if you make a mistake. Believe me when I say it is extremely easy to make a mistake with html, just leave out an inverted comma or a greater than sign and your site can go haywire or a link will simply just not work!! I would also advise you not to work on your html if you are tired, as it does require concentration.

I spent some time viewing videos that taught me basic html and I then felt I knew enough to be able to start making changes to my site as well as optimizing it for the search engines. As long as you have a backup of your site prior to making any changes, you will not break out in a cold sweat when your site opens up looking like somebody has scrambled the source code! This has happened to me and it only takes a couple of very minor errors to throw the site into total disarray.

The way I was working of course was not the ideal route to take and it was incredibly time consuming, but being a newbie I knew no better but I was determined to learn. This all changed when I came across an incredible e-book entitled Search Engine Optimization Made Easy. I followed this easy step-by-step guide and I put literally everything in the e-book into practice and at the next Google PR update my site was rewarded with a PR4. Optimizing my site is now ongoing as I am continually fine tuning and adding more content to my site to increase my rank in the search engine results and by doing this my knowledge and confidence grow and the errors decrease!

I certainly am no html expert and tend to work with the copy and paste method. I do not use an html editor I work with the html in Notebook. So my next step is to learn how to use an editor as I am sure it will speed things up even further and make it much easier to correct errors.

Being able to optimize your site does not require that you be a SEO expert, I have proven that newbies can do it too! I think a lot of people tend to avoid it due to fear of messing up their site, but as long as you have a backup there is nothing to fear.

There are great advantages to optimizing your web site as you will hugely increase your presence on the internet, attract organic traffic, which is targeted and free, and ultimately generate more web income.

Cynthia Minnaar works from home online and invites you to visit http://www.cyns-home-biz.com for web income generating ideas and opportunities, articles and marketing tools.
To get your free copy of Search Engine Optimization Made Easy visit http://www.cyns-home-biz.com/optin.html
]]>