Improving the link popularity of your website

February 19th, 2010

Link popularity, i.e. the number of sites which are linking to your site, is an important factor as far as search engine placement is concerned. Other things remaining the same, more the number of links to your site, higher will be its ranking.

What is important is not only the number of links to your site, but also the types of sites which are linking to you. A link from a site which is related to yours is more valuable than a link from an unrelated site.

In this article, I explore different methods by which you can improve the link popularity of your site. I start with the methods that you shouldn’t bother using, then go on to the moderately effective methods, and then end with the most effective methods you can use to boost the link popularity of your site.

1) Submitting your site to Free For All (FFA) pages

A common misconception among many Internet marketers is that while FFA pages may not directly bring in traffic to your site, it will help to improve the link popularity of your site, and hence, will indirectly bring in traffic through the search engines.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Most FFA pages contain only a certain number of links at a time. This means that when you submit your site to a FFA page, your site will be placed at the top of the page. However, as more and more people submit their sites to the FFA page, your site will be pushed down, and finally, when it reaches the bottom of the page, it will be removed.

Hence, in order to ensure that the search engines see your site if and when they come to spider the FFA page, you will need to ensure that you submit your site to these FFA pages on a regular basis – at least once a week.

Even if you used an automatic submission program to do it, can you imagine a worse way to spend your time and/or money? Furthermore, many search engines recognize these pages which only contains links to other sites as FFA pages and may completely ignore them. And while I haven’t yet seen any evidence that submitting to the FFA pages will actually penalize your site, there is every possibility that this might happen in the future.

Hence, when it comes to FFA pages, my advice is simple: don’t even think about them.

2) Joining Reciprocal Link Services

Some people have recommended that in order to increase the link popularity of your site, you can join some reciprocal link services. The basic idea behind these services is that you add some pages to your site which contain links to other sites which are members of that service, and in exchange, these members will also add pages to their sites which will contain a link to your site. Theoretically, more the members of that service, more your link popularity.

However, I have plenty of reservations about using this method to boost the link popularity of your site:

1. Most of these services require that you add a visible graphical or text link from your home page to the pages containing the links. If they require a graphical link, it can completely destroy the general look and feel of your site. Even if they require a text link, how would you feel if a visitor to your site clicked on such a link and found one of your competitors (who is also a member of this service) right at the top of a page?

Also, while most of these services disallow adult oriented sites, I have seen situations in which some adult sites have been able to become members. How would you feel if an adult site found its way to the top of one of these pages?

2. Most of these services give the same pages containing the links to each of its members, i.e. the pages that you are required to upload to your site are exactly the same as the pages which all the other members of that service are required to upload to their servers. Even the file names of the pages tend to be the same for all the members. Most search engines are now able to detect such duplicate pages in different domains and may either ignore the pages or may even penalize all these domains for spamming.

3. Instead of linking only related sites with each other, most of these services link all the members with each other. This means that lots of unrelated sites will be linking to your site. As I mentioned before, links from unrelated sites are simply not as valuable as links from related sites.

Hence, I don’t recommend that you join any reciprocal link programs.

3) Exchanging links with other webmasters

Another way of improving the link popularity of your site is to exchange links with other webmasters who have sites which are related to yours, but are not direct competitors. Here’s how you can do it:

First, open a database program like Microsoft Access and create a new table containing fields like FirstName, LastName, Email Address, URL etc. Then, make a list of the sites belonging to your competitors. Then, go to Google, and type in the following in the search box:

link:somesite.com -url:somesite.com

where somesite.com is the domain name of one of your competitors. This will give you a list of all the sites which are linking to that competitor. Then, find out in what context a particular site has linked to your competitor. If this site is an affiliate of your competitor, then your chance of getting a link from this site is limited, unless you offer an even better affiliate program.

However, if you find that this site has a Links page which contains links to other sites, one of which is a link to your competitor, then it is an excellent prospect for exchanging links. Find out the name and email address of the webmaster of the site and add them to your database. In this way, go through all the sites which are linking to your competitors, locate those sites which you think may want to exchange links with you, and build up your database.

Once you have done that, create a Links page in your site, and add the URLs of these sites to the Links page. Then, send an email to these webmasters, introduce yourself and your site, congratulate them on building an excellent web site, tell them that you have already added a link to their sites from yours, and then ask them whether they would be kind enough to add a link to your site. In your email, emphasize the fact that exchanging links in this way will be mutually beneficial for both of you because it will help both of you drive traffic to your sites.

Wait for a month or so to see the response. Some webmasters will agree to link to you. Others will simply not respond. After a month, remove the links to those sites who are not interested in exchanging links and using the methods outlined above, try to locate more sites with which to exchange links.

When you send the email to the webmasters, make sure that you personalize each email. Don’t begin every email with “Hello Webmaster”, begin with “Hello Mike”. If you want, you can use email merge programs to automatically personalize each email. You can check out some email merge programs by going to http://download.cnet.com and searching for “email merge” (without the quotes).

The main problem with this method of improving the link popularity of your site is that it takes a lot of time. You may find that the number of links you manage to get just does not justify the time that you spend over it.

Another thing that you can do is to mention in your Links page that you are willing to exchange links with other web sites. This allows other webmasters who come to your web site to propose a link exchange.

4) Starting an Awards Program

A moderately effective method of improving the link popularity of your site is to start an awards program. You can have web sites which are related to yours apply for an award from your site. The sites which win the award get the chance to display the logo for your award. This logo is linked to your site, preferably to a page which contains more information on the award.

If you publish a newsletter, consider declaring the winners in your newsletter. You can also perform a review of the winners’ sites in your newsletter. This adds useful content to your newsletter and also gives more webmasters the incentive to apply for your award, since you may review their sites in your newsletter. This also gives them the incentive to subscribe to your newsletter to see if they win the award.

Make sure that you give awards to only those sites which deserve to win. If you give your award to sites which don’t deserve it, your award will have little credibility, which will, in turn, hurt the credibility of your company. Furthermore, make sure that the logo you design for the award looks professional. If it doesn’t, not many webmasters will want to display it in their sites.

5) Giving testimonials

This may sound a bit unusual, but giving testimonials for products or services which you find useful can be another moderately effective way of improving the link popularity of your site. If you really like a product, simply write to the company and tell them why you liked the product so much and how it has helped you.

Chances are, the company will write back to you to thank you for your comments and will ask you for permission to display your comments in their web site. Tell the company that you have no problems if they publish your comments, but request them to add a link to your site along with the testimonial. There is every possibility that the company will agree since publishing the URL of your web site gives more credibility to the testimonial.

Of course, please don’t go about giving testimonials to every company you can locate just because it will improve your link popularity :-)

6) Posting to Message Boards and Discussion Lists

Another moderately effective method of increasing the link popularity of your site is to post to online message boards. At the end of every message that you post, you can sign off by mentioning your name and the URL of your web site. If the message board allows it, you can even include a short promotional blurb about your site at the end of your posts. However, make sure that the individual messages that are posted to that message board are archived in static HTML pages (i.e. the URLs for the individual messages should not contain a “?”). Otherwise, the search engines will consider these pages to be dynamic pages and may not spider these pages and hence, will not be able to find your link.

Email based discussion lists which are archived on the web in static HTML pages can also be used to boost the link popularity of your site in a similar manner. In this case, the signature file that you use with your email program should contain the URL for your web site.

7) Setting up new web sites

Yet another moderately effective method of improving the link popularity of your site is to set up new web sites and have these new sites link to your main site. If you are Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon.com), you can afford to purchase hundreds of new domains and have these new domains link to your main site. If you are not Jeff Bezos, you can simply set up new sites with some of the free web hosts. (Of course, your primary web site should always be hosted in a separate domain of its own). Simply add a few pages of unique content to each of your new sites, and have each of the pages in your new sites link to your main site.

If you use this technique, make sure that you do not duplicate content across multiple sites. If you do, the search engines might penalize your sites for spamming. You need to ensure that all the pages that you create for these new sites contain unique content.

The disadvantage of this method is that some search engines refuse to spider sites which are present in the free web hosts. Still, there are many search engines which will spider these sites, and hence, the link popularity of your main site will improve in these search engines.

8) Starting a Link Contest

A good method of improving the link popularity of your site is to give away prizes to other webmasters if they link to you. The prizes that you give out should ideally be something which other webmasters will find valuable enough to want to link to you, but which do not cost you too much. For instance, if you publish a newsletter, and have unsold ad inventory, you can give away some free advertisements in your newsletter to the winners. If you sell a software (or an ebook), you can give away a free copy of your software or ebook to the winners, since it doesn’t cost you anything to produce an additional copy of digital goods like software and ebooks.

Link contests work best if you run the contest on a continuous basis and if you declare new winners frequently. If you run the contest for a few months, and then stop it, the webmasters who had linked to you will all remove their links. However, if you run it on a continuous basis, and declare new winners every month or so, the webmasters will have the incentive to keep their links to your site.

Also, make sure that you require all participants to have a link to your site either in their home page, or in an internal page of their site which is linked to their home page. Also ensure that the page which contains the link is no more than two levels deep from their home page (i.e. it should not take more than two clicks to go from the home page to the page containing the link). If they don’t do this, the search engine spiders may not index the page which contains the link to your site, and hence, may not find your link.

9) Writing articles and allowing them to be re-published

This is by far one of the best ways of improving the link popularity of your site, and one of my favorites. Whenever I write an article on search engine placement, I first publish it in my newsletter and then I publish the article in my site as a separate web page. I also submit it to the following article submission sites:

http://www.ezinearticles.com/add_url.html
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.marketing-seek.com/articles/submit.shtml
http://certificate.net/wwio/ideas.shtml
http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm

Many webmasters and ezine publishers frequent these article directories in search of articles. Submitting my articles to these directories gives them the opportunity of re-publishing my articles. While I have had some success with each of the above directories, by far the best among them is the ezinearticles.com directory.

Now, at the end of each article, I mention that people are free to re-publish the article as long as they include my resource box (i.e. my bio) at the end of the article. I always include the URL of my site in the resource box. This means that whenever someone publishes one of my articles in his/her web site, I have another site linking to my site. Also, many ezine publishers archive their ezines in their web sites. If they have re-published my article in a particular issue, I again get a link.

Writing articles is also an excellent viral marketing tool. As some webmasters and ezine publishers publish my articles, other webmasters and ezine publishers will read my article. Some of them, in turn, will publish my article, which will again be read by other webmasters and ezine publishers, some of whom will publish it… and so on.

Also, since only web sites related to mine would be interested in publishing my articles, all these links tend to come from related sites, which, as I mentioned earlier, are more valuable than links from unrelated sites.

Writing articles, of course, has another very important benefit – if you write good articles, it makes you known as an expert in your field. This helps to improve your credibility, which makes people more comfortable about buying your products or services.

Some notes about writing articles:

* I have learnt through experience that some webmasters will publish other people’s articles and will display the complete resource box but will not link to the URL mentioned in the resource box. In order to prevent this, you need to explicitly state that the article can be published only if the URL mentioned in the resource box is linked to your site.
* Your resource box should not be too long – it should be no more than 6 lines long, formatted at 65 characters per line. Otherwise, other webmasters and ezine publishers will hesitate to publish your article.

10) Starting your own affiliate program

This is another excellent way by which you can improve the link popularity of your site. When you have your own affiliate program, you give other webmasters the incentive to link to you. In this case too, since most of these web sites will be related to the industry in which you are operating, these links will be more valuable than links from unrelated sites.

When you start your affiliate program, you need to decide whether you want to run the program yourself, or whether you want to outsource it from a third party. While outsourcing your affiliate program has a number of benefits, doing so will not help you improve the link popularity of your site, because affiliates are going to link to the third party’s site. In order to improve the link popularity of your site, you need to ensure that the affiliate links are pointing to your domain.

The affiliate program software that I highly recommend and have used for the affiliate program of our search engine positioning services is eClickZ. Although this software is hosted on a domain owned by eClickZ, they give you the option of having the affiliate links pointing to your own domain.

11) Submitting to the directories

This is by far the most important step as far as improving the link popularity of your site is concerned. As I mentioned before, what is important is not only the number of links to your site, but also the quality of the links to your site. No links are as important as links from some of the major directories like Yahoo!, the Open Directory etc. Hence, it is vitally important that you get your site registered by these directories.

Also, you should submit your site to as many of the smaller directories as possible. You can get a list of such directories at Yahoo!

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Posted in Search Engine Optimization | 3 Comments »

How to create keyword-rich webpages

February 19th, 2010

4) Try to ensure that the page contains links to other pages with the keyword being present in the text under the link. This can often lead to a higher ranking for your page.

5) If possible, link to other pages which have the keyword in the file names. This can again lead to a higher ranking for your page.

6) There is no hard and fast rule regarding the total number of words that should be present in the KRPs. As a rule of thumb, try to ensure that there are between 500-600 words. However, if the number of words falls a bit short of or exceeds this limit, don’t worry too much.

Once you have created the page, ensure that the name of the file in which it is saved contains the keyword and that the individual words of the keyword are separated by hyphens. In this case, the name of the file would be travel-to-bahamas.html. This will get you a higher ranking in the few search engines which give a lot of emphasis on the keyword being present in the file name.

Now that you have created the KRP, you cannot simply upload it to your site and submit it to the search engines. This is because the search engines take a rather dim view of pages which only contain outgoing links to other pages but do not contain any incoming links from other pages. The search engines may penalize sites which have such pages.

What you should do is to provide a link to these KRPs from the home page of your site. Now, you don’t want people who are seeing the home page to actually follow these links to the KRPs – you only want the search engines to follow these links. However, you can’t create links with hidden text (i.e. text with the same color as the background color) in your page since the search engines will almost certainly penalize or even ban you for doing this.

What you should do is to create a small transparent gif image. Then, name this image with the same file name as the name of the KRP you have created. Hence, in this case, you should name the image travel-to-bahamas.gif. Then, add this image to the end of the home page and have it link to the KRP. Also, you should explicitly set the border of the image to 0 (add border = “0″ to the img tag of the image). Otherwise, when you get the image to link to the KRP, a border may be visible.

That’s it! When you want to target another keyword, create another KRP for it, make a copy of the image that you created for the first keyword, rename it to the file name of the new KRP, add the image to the home page and then link it to the new KRP.

Repeat this process for every keyword that you are targeting. Once you have created all the KRPs and once you have got the home page to link to each of them, upload all the KRPs and the gif images to your site, and submit your home page and each of the KRPs to the search engines. When you are submitting these pages, to be on the safe side, make sure that you submit no more than 1 page per day to any search engine – otherwise, you run the risk of some search engines ignoring some of the pages you have submitted.

Follow all the rules that I have outlined in this article and watch your search engine rankings skyrocket!

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How to choose your domain name

February 19th, 2010

The importance of having your own domain name cannot be emphasized enough. If you are running an online business, and don’t yet have a domain name, you are probably losing thousands of dollars worth of business because of this. Why? Simply because, unless you have a domain name, your customers will simply not feel comfortable buying from you.

In order to sell on the web, you need to build up your credibility. Having your own domain name is the first step in that process.

So, now that you are convinced that you need your own domain, how should you name your domain?

Here are a few do’s and dont’s regarding this. While the availability of domains which follow all of these rules may have become limited, try to follow as many of these rules as possible.

1. Consider naming your company and registering a domain name starting with the digit 1. Better still, choose a name starting with “1st”. Why? When people create directories of web sites, they have to decide how they are going to classify those web sites. One way to classify web sites is to list them on the basis of how “good” they are. Another way is to simply list them in chronological order (and sometimes in reverse chronological order) based on the dates the sites were submitted.

The other, and far more popular classification system is alphabetic. Now, the first character in the ASCII chart which can be used as the first character in a domain name is the digit 0. The next character is the digit 1.

Normally, you wouldn’t want to start a domain name with the digit 0 since it might send all the wrong signals to your customers. For instance, if we had named our domain 0SearchRanking.com, it would be telling our customers that we cannot get them any search engine rankings at all! Hence, unless you really have a good reason for doing so, you should avoid using domain names starting with the digit 0.

Instead name your domains starting with the digit 1. More specifically, name your domains starting with “1st”. This will ensure that you get a high alphabetical placement in those directories which classify sites alphabetically. Furthermore, depending on the industry in which your company operates, it may also send the right message across to your customers – it indicates that you are the first company to consider in your industry.

And guess what – the mother of all directories – Yahoo! – lists web sites alphabetically based on the Title that had been submitted. Yahoo! wants the Title to be the official name of the site. This implies that sites which start with the digit 1 will be placed at or near the top of a category. Assuming that you can get your site listed in Yahoo!, just look at what a top ranking in one of the categories in Yahoo!’s directory can do for the popularity of your site!

Furthermore, a small caveat here. If you are going to name a domain starting with “1st”, also register the domain which starts with “ist”. Then, have the domain containing the vowel “i” redirect visitors to the domain containing the digit 1. This is because people will often type in ‘ist’ when they mean ‘1st’ and vice-versa. Also, for every email alias that you create for the domain containing “1st ” (like sales@1stcompany.com), you should create the corresponding email alias for the domain containing “ist” (like sales@istcompany.com).

Also, this strategy of registering domains starting with ‘1st’ is mainly applicable if yours is a somewhat new company. If you own a well established concern with a well known domain, you simply cannot change your company name and your domain in a hurry because you will confuse your existing customers.
2. Don’t want to start your domain name with “1st”? Consider starting it with “A”, “B” or “C”. Although domains starting with A, B or C will be listed after those starting with the 10 digits, you can still get a pretty high alphabetical placement with A, B or C.
3. Try to register a domain which contains a popular keyword applicable for your industry. This will help your customers remember your domain name better. Furthermore, for searches conducted in Yahoo!, a higher ranking will be given to those web sites which contain the keywords in the title.

And according to Yahoo!’s instructions, the Title should always be the official name of the site. Thus, if the domain name contains a keyword, you will be able to include the keyword in the Title which will improve your ranking in Yahoo!. As a minor side-benefit, this can also help to increase the ranking of your web site in some search engines. Hence, in an ideal case, you should register a domain of the form 1st[keyword].com (without the brackets of course).
4. Don’t register a domain containing the digit 0 in it, unless it is going to be part of a recognizable word (like 1000 or 2000). This is because the digit 0 is often confused with the vowel O. If you feel that you must register a domain with the digit 0, make sure that you also register the corresponding domain containing the vowel O.
5. Try to avoid using domains that contain ‘2′ for “To’, ‘4′ for ‘For’, ‘u’ for ‘You’ and so on even if they seem to make your domain sound ‘cool’. Your customers will easily get confused if you do so. However, if you must register such a domain, register the expanded form of the domain as well, i.e. if you are registering greatthings2do.com, also register greatthingstodo.com.
6. Should you or should you not use hyphens in your domain? Well, the jury is out on the question. While some Internet marketers will tell you that domains containing hyphens are difficult to remember, spell and pronounce, others will state that domains containing hyphens are, in fact, easy to remember, spell and pronounce. Go figure.

Personally, I would feel that whether or not hyphens are helpful has to be determined on a case by case basis. However, if you register a domain containing hyphens, make sure that you also register the corresponding domain without the hyphens. Once you do that, you can simply redirect visitors from the domain without the hyphens to the domain with the hyphens.
7. Don’t make your primary domain too long. Even though 67 character domains are a reality, exactly how many of your users will want to type a domain name like thisisanexampleofaverylargedomainname.com?
8. Always use “.com”. If yours is a serious business site, avoid using domains ending in “nu” or “to”. Your business will have little credibility if you do so. You can consider registering a “.net” domain, but since most people are familiar with “.com”, it is better to stick to convention.

While it is unlikely that you will be able to register a domain which satisfies all the rules that I outlined above, try to follow as many of the above rules as you can.

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The importance of having your own unique domain name

February 19th, 2010

A question that I frequently hear is “Do I really need to have my own domain name?” The one word answer is “YES.”. If you put up your site with some of the free web hosting services, the only company who benefits is the web hosting company. The last person who benefits is you.

There are a number of reasons why having your own domain name is a must:

1) When you have your own domain name, the address of your web site will be of the form http://www.yourcompany.com. On the other hand, if you put up your site on one of the free servers, the address of your web site will be something like http://www.somefreewebsite.com/yoursite/.

Which of these two sounds more professional? Which of these two is smaller and is hence easier to remember? I leave you to make the judgment.

2) The only way to make money online is to build up credibility among your customers. Having your own domain name is the first step in doing that. Your customers will feel more comfortable buying whatever it is that you are selling if you have your own domain name. It makes your customers feel that they are dealing with a large, established company, rather than with some fly by night operator.

3) When you have your domain name, you can have multiple email aliases of the form alias@yourcompany.com. This allows you to assign different email aliases to different functions, all of them pointing to your actual email address. Hence, for example, for questions related to the products and services that you sell, you can have an email address like sales@yourcompany.com. For questions related to the newsletter that you publish, you can have an email address like editor@yourcompany.com. For comments/suggestions about your web site, you can direct your customers to feedback@yourcompany.com or webmaster@yourcompany.com.

Having different email addresses for different functions not only makes it easier for you to filter your email using your email client program (Eudora Pro, Pegasus Mail, Outlook Express etc.), but also gives your customers the impression that yours is a large, established company with whom it is safe to do business.

4) Many search engines give a lot of emphasis to the home page of a particular domain, i.e. other things remaining the same, a home page of a domain will often rank higher for a particular keyword than any other page.

When you use some of the free hosting services, your index.html page is the home page of your site, but not of that domain. Hence in these search engines, your site will find it very difficult to make it to the top 20 or top 30, let alone the top 10 for some of the really competitive keywords. Just think of the amount of traffic that you will lose if this happens.

5) Some search engines are now refusing to spider the web sites which are hosted by the free web hosts. For instance, if you have a site hosted by the free web hosts, you would, until recently, have got the infamous error message saying that too many pages have been submitted from your site if you tried to submit your site to AltaVista. While Altavista now says that “your URL has been submitted for processing” if you try to submit your site, rest assured that it will not spider any site belonging to many of the free web hosts even though it says that your site has been accepted. Can you afford that?

6) When your site is hosted by some of the free web hosts, you will find it very difficult to get it listed in a major directory like Yahoo!. Although Yahoo! will never admit that it won’t add a commercial site which is hosted by one of the free web hosts, in practice, it will be a miracle if you can get your site listed by Yahoo!. Listing your site with Yahoo! is difficult enough even when you have your own domain. Don’t make your task more difficult than what it needs to be.

If you do not currently have a domain name, are you convinced that you need one right now? The small fee that you pay per year for your own domain name is peanuts compared to the benefits that you get. Now it’s up to you to decide the outcome, here is hoping you make the smarter choice.

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Posted in Domain Names, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | 7 Comments »

Top 10 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Mistakes

February 18th, 2010

Top 10 search engine positioning mistakes

When it comes to search engine optimization, there are certain common mistakes that I see people making over and over again. Here’s a list of the 10 most common mistakes. By avoiding these mistakes, you can avoid a lot of anguish and frustration in the long run.

1. Optimizing your site for the wrong keywords

The first step in any search engine optimization campaign is to choose the keywords for which you should optimize your site. If you initially choose the wrong keywords, all the time and effort that you devote in trying to get your site a high ranking will go down the drain. If you choose keywords which no one search for, or if you choose keywords which won’t bring in targeted traffic to your site, what good will the top rankings do?

2. Putting too many keywords in the Meta Keywords tag

I often see sites which have hundreds of keywords listed in the Meta Keywords tag, in the hope that by listing the keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, they will be able to get a high ranking for those keywords.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Contrary to popular opinion, the Meta Keywords tag has almost completely lost its importance as far as search engine positioning is concerned. Hence, just by listing keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, you will never be able to get a high ranking. To get a high ranking for those keywords, you need to put the keywords in the actual body content of your site.

3. Repeating the same keyword too many times

Another common mistake that people make is to endlessly repeat their target keywords in the body of their pages and in their Meta Keywords tags.

Because so many people have used this tactic in the past (and continue to use it), the search engines keep a sharp lookout for this, and may penalize a site which repeats keywords in this fashion.

Sure, you do need to repeat the keywords a number of times. But, the way you place the keywords in your pages needs to make grammatical sense. Simply repeating the keywords endlessly no longer works. Furthermore, a particular keyword should ideally not be present more than thrice in your Meta Keywords tag.

4. Creating lots of similar doorway pages

Another myth prevalent among people is that since the algorithm of each search engine is different, they need to create different pages for different search engines. While this is great in theory, it is counter-productive in practice.

If you use this tactic, you will soon end up with hundreds of pages, which can quickly become an administrative nightmare. Also, just imagine the amount of time you will need to spend constantly updating the pages in response to the changes that the search engines make to their algorithms.

Furthermore, although the pages are meant for different engines, they will actually end up being pretty similar to each other. The search engines are often able to detect when a site has created such similar pages, and may penalize or even ban this site from their index. Hence, instead of creating different pages for different search engines, create one page which is optimized for one keyword for all the search engines.

5. Using Hidden Text

Hidden text is text with the same color as the background color of your page. For example, if the background color of your page is white and you have added some white text to that page, that is considered as hidden text.

Many webmasters, in order to get high rankings in the search engines, try to make their pages as keyword rich as possible. However, there is a limit to the number of keywords you can repeat in a page without making it sound odd to your human visitors. Thus, in order to ensure that the human visitors to a page don’t perceive the text to be odd, but that the page is still keyword rich, many webmasters add text (containing the keywords) with the same color as the background color. This ensures that while the search engines can see the keywords, the human visitors cannot.

The search engines have long since caught up with this technique, and ignore or penalize the pages which contain such text. They may also penalize the entire site if even one of the pages in that site contain such hidden text.

However, the problem with this is that the search engines may often end up penalizing sites which did not intend to use hidden text. For instance, suppose you have a page with a white background and a table in that page with a black background. Further suppose that you have added some white text in that table. This text will, in fact, be visible to your human visitors, i.e. this shouldn’t be called hidden text. However, the search engines can interpret this to be hidden text because they may often ignore the fact that the background of the table is black. Hence, in order to ensure that your site is not penalized because of this, you should go through all the pages in your site and see whether you have inadvertently made any such mistake.

6. Creating Pages Containing Only Graphics

The search engines only understand text – they don’t understand graphics. Hence, if your site contains lots of graphics but little text, it is unlikely to get a high ranking in the search engines. For improving your rankings, you need to replace the graphics by keyword rich text for the search engine spiders to feed on.

7. Not using the NOFRAMES tag in case your site uses frames

Many search engines don’t understand frames. For sites which have used frames, these search engines only consider what is present in the NOFRAMES tag. Yet, many webmasters make the mistake of adding something like this to the NOFRAMES tag: “This site uses frames, but your browser doesn’t support them”.

For the search engines which don’t understand frames, this is all the text that they ever get to see in this site, which means that the chances of this site getting a good ranking in these search engines are non-existent. Hence, if your site uses frames, you need to add a lot of keyword rich text to the NOFRAMES tag.

8. Using Page Cloaking

Page cloaking is a technique used to deliver different web pages under different circumstances. People generally use page cloaking for two reasons:

i) in order to hide the source code of their search engine optimized pages from their competitors, and
ii) in order to prevent human visitors from having to see a page which looks good to the search engines but does not necessarily look good to humans.

The problem with this is that when a site uses cloaking, it prevents the search engines from being able to spider the same page that their users are going to see. And if the search engines can’t do this, they can no longer be confident of providing relevant results to their users. Thus, if a search engine discovers that a site has used cloaking, it will probably ban the site forever from their index.

Hence, my advice is that you should not even think about using cloaking in your site.

9. Using Automatic Submission Tools

In order to save time, many people use an automatic submission software or service to submit their sites to the major search engines. It is true that submitting your site manually to the search engines takes a lot of time and that an automatic submission tool can help you save a lot of time.

However, the search engines don’t like automatic submission tools and may ignore your pages if you use them. In my opinion, the major search engines are simply too important for you not to spend the time to submit your site manually to them.

10. Submitting too many pages per day

People often make the mistake of submitting too many pages per day to the search engines. This often results in the search engines simply ignoring many of the pages which have been submitted from that site. Ideally, you should submit no more than 1 page per day to the search engines. While many search engines accept more than 1 page per day from a particular domain, there are some which only accept 1 page per day. Hence, by limiting yourself to a maximum of one page per day, you ensure that you stay within the limits of all the search engines.

11. Devoting too much time to search engine positioning

Yes – I lied. There’s another common mistake that people make when it comes to search engine optimization – they spend too much time over it.

Sure, search engine placement is the most cost effective way of driving traffic to your site and you do need to spend some time every day learning how the search engines work and in optimizing your site for the search engines.

However, you must remember that search engine optimization is a means to an end for you – it’s not the end in itself. The end is to increase the sales of your products and services. Hence, apart from trying to improve your site’s position in the search engines, you also need to spend time on all the other factors which determine the success or the failure of your web site – the quality of the products and services that you are selling, the quality of your customer service, and so on.

You may have excellent rankings in the search engines, but if the quality of your products and services are poor, or if your customer service leaves a lot to be desired, those high rankings aren’t going to do much good.

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How to determine your Max Bid Price in PPC advertising

February 4th, 2010

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How to improve your pay-per-click advertising click-through rates

February 4th, 2010

Are you trying to profit from a pay per click program? If you are then you definitely to familiarize yourself with the concept of click-through rate (CTR). It’s an important part of pay per click advertising.

If you are unfamiliar with pay per click program, you will also be unfamiliar with CTR. In a pay per click program, pay per click ads will be displayed on a web site owned by a collaborating pay per click program affiliate. Though advertisers hope that their ads can be clicked on continuously, the reality is that they aren’t.

There are a number of users who visit a webpage and never click on any advertisements. How usually an ads is being clicked on is vital to a As a pay per click program. That’s where CTR comes from.

If you are a ppc affiliate who has agreed to show ppc ads in your website, you wish to aim for a high CTR. Advertisers only have to pay when one amongst their % advertisements has been clicked. So the number of click-through that you just receive is extraordinarily vital because it can impact how abundant you make.

As a pay per click program affiliate, you truly have a large say in your CTR. Although you can not management how several of them click on your advertisements, you can create it easier for them to try to to so.

It has been said that to be successful all advertisements need to be displayed above the fold. You would like them to be in a position to work out them immediately while not scrolling and hopefully click on them.

As p.c advertisers, you also have management over your CTR. When signing up for a p.c campaigns, you get to choose the keywords that you would like associated along with your pay per click net advertising

These keywords would like to be carefully chosen, as they can ultimately impact on the success of your advertisements and their CTR. For the best success, you may want to settle on keywords that are used.

If users are looking for crib bedding and you sell nursery supplies, you may need to use “crib bedding” in concert of your keywords. When it comes to nursery provides, crib bedding is one of the foremost searched phrases. If you provide users what they are trying for, they can without doubt click your ads.

In short, CTR is a vital part of pay-per-click advertising. You should keep an eye fixed on your CTR, track it and improve it as they ultimately will decide your profitability.

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Posted in Pay Per Click Advertising, Pay Per Click Affiliate Programs | 4 Comments »

Happy Holiday Season and New Years Wishes!

December 18th, 2009
newyear2010

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PPC Marketing

November 29th, 2009

Starting a new business is a whirlwind of responsibility. It all starts with an idea, but balloons quickly into so many other things, especially after you’ve got it all together and you’re waiting for that first customer to walk through the door or onto your website. So how do you get the word out about your new business? The answer lies in pay per click marketing.

Pay per click Marketing is the business start-up’s dream for advertising. It requires just a small investment up front, and after that you only pay for the ads which go to people who want to know about your business. These are people who’ve searched for something online and clicked on your ad next to search results or content they located in their search for information. Pay per click marketing is the perfect way to spread the word to the people who are the most likely to actually spend money with you.

Pay per click marketing may sound like a big, fancy job you need someone with credentials to fill. However, you can run your own pay per click marketing campaign easily from your own home or office without much training before hand. You can get started with a small initial deposit of $100.00 into your advertising account at eClickZ.

Where to Start

To begin your pay per click marketing campaign, start by analyzing your market. Who is your target customer? Who is most likely to use your product or service? After you figure out who your customer will be, then you can start deciding which keywords you want to target. The keywords should be words your target audience would type into a search window whenever they’re looking for information related to your business.

Start by thinking about what words most people say when they’re describing your business. You don’t want to get too fancy or exact when choosing keywords, or your ads won’t show up in online searches. You also don’t want to stay too general with your keywords, or you’ll have ads showing up in places where there’s no value for you to have them.

Setting Up Your Ads

The final step in your pay per click marketing campaign is to set up your ads. It’s important to choose a pay per click system that works best for you and your business. Most pay per click services allow you to organize your marketing campaign around geographic locations. This is one of the most important aspects of any pay per click marketing campaign because about half of all online searches are people looking for local results.

After you’ve got your ads set up, take some time to think about all the extras. For example, how does your website look? Do people glance at it and then click off it immediately? How long does the average visitor spend on your website?

One interesting feature eClickZ has available to its pay per click marketers is the search box feature. These days most websites have a search box which allows visitors to look for specific things on that website. There’s so much information on the internet these days that those search boxes have become almost necessary for some websites. Instead of building your own search box into your website, why not let your Pay Per Click service like eClickZ place one on your website? By doing it this way you also let them pay you by becoming an affiliate, in addition to being an advertiser.

Staying On Top of Things

Finally, it’s always important to stay on top of your pay per click marketing campaign. Monitor how well your keywords do in internet searches and be prepared to make changes. Watch the numbers and track them constantly through your pay per click service. Before you sign up for any pay per click service, make sure the reports those services use are easy to understand. Those reports will be full of numbers and graphs, but if you don’t understand what they say, you can’t run a successful pay per click marketing campaign.

The numbers from your pay per click service show you exactly how many people use the keywords you’re targeting, and how many of those people actually click on your ads. All pay per click marketing systems will give you a click-through rate at the end of the day, and this click-through rate shows how well customers are receiving your ads.

Lower click-through rates mean people see your ads but aren’t clicking on them. It’s always a good idea to research the click-through rates of any pay per click marketing services you consider. eClickZ, for one, has a very high click-through rate, which means the system they use to locate the best places for your ads works better than some other pay per click marketing systems.

You can sign up for eClickZ by following this link: http://advertiser.eclickz.com/signup

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Posted in Pay Per Click Marketing | 5 Comments »

Pay Per Click Affiliate Program

November 29th, 2009

Looking for ways to make some extra cash through your website? The easiest way to do this is to pick up a Pay Per Click affiliate program. Becoming an affiliate on a pay per click service is simple, but the process of choosing one can be difficult. You don’t just want to pick up any pay per click affiliate program. Each one has different features which make it perfect for different kinds of businesses. You’ll have to do your research on many pay per click affiliate programs before you can choose the right one for your website.

Content Matching

Before you sign up for any pay per click affiliate program, it’s important to examine how the program determines which ads will appear on your page. After all, you don’t want the ads which appear on your website to be entirely random. That wouldn’t make you any money at all because it would only be a coincidence if someone visiting your site happened to see an ad for something that interested them. Random ads also appear much more contrived and are less likely to be clicked on, even by people who are interested in the product or service the ad offers.

Let’s use the eClickZ affiliate program as an example for how good pay per click affiliate programs set up ad-matches. eClickZ offers content match pay per click text ads. What this means is that eClickZ will match ads with your website, based on your site’s keywords. Content matching basically allows you to provide an additional service to additional customers. It’s like you’re making a recommendation on a product which matches your service without spending the time to actually do it. Studies show more people are likely to click on an ad that’s matched with other content than any other kind of online ad. More clicks on your website mean more money for you!

Pay Per Click Affiliate Program: Aim for a High Click-Through Rate

As an affiliate, it’s very important the pay per click program you choose has a high click-through rate. The only way you make money through any pay per click affiliate program is when someone clicks on an ad on your page. Higher click-through rates mean the affiliate program you signed up for is exceptional at pairing ads with websites, and it also means you’ll get paid more just for being enrolled in that particular pay per click affiliate program.

Other Ways to Make Cash Online

Another great way to make some extra cash off your site is by letting your pay per click affiliate program place a search box on your site. Not all affiliate programs offer this service, but eClickZ is one which does. Just having a search box on your website makes it look like the site is big-time, even if you just started it up. Having an eClickZ search box on your site also generates additional clicks for you on ads that might not have anything to do with your website.

Whenever you’re choosing a pay per click affiliate program, you also want to make sure you choose one with high payouts. Not all pay per click affiliate programs are created equally! The better agreements your pay per click affiliate program has with its advertisers, the more money you’ll make as an affiliate. It’s that simple.

Better Ways to make it Work for You!

Some pay per click affiliate programs offer a variety of new ways to make pay per click work for you. Always check out the advances in technology offered by the affiliate programs you’re considering. One pay per click affiliate program that’s ahead of the curve in this aspect is eClickZ. The program’s new XML feed is available for placement on your site if you become a search distribution partner. This new XML feed means the ads on your website are constant changing, offering visitors to your site an even wider option of products and services to click on. The more different products your site is able to show to its visitors, the more likely people will find one that interests them enough to click on it. The eClickZ pay per click XML feed not only matches ads to the content to your site, but also boasts one of the highest cost per clicks in the industry.

Signing up for a pay per click affiliate program is one of the simplest and most cost-effective ways to bring in some extra cash on your website. Can you really afford not to sign up for eClickZ?

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