Thursday, December 14, 2006

How Google Video Search Engine can Solve 2 Major Website Owner's Problems

How Google Video Search Engine can Solve 2 Major Website Owner's Problems
by: Jeff Davis

What is the solution to #1. Getting your site indexed in Google, and #2. Generating quality traffic to your website?

Answer: Use the awesome power of video.

When Google bought out YouTube for 1.67 Billion dollars, it was the shot heard round the world. Now I don't know if you realize it or not %70 of the USA has broad band access, and that is just the US, not to mention the rest of the world.

I have been researching this heavily, and burning alot of midnight oil, and what I found out, is that when Google bought YouTube, YouTube was forced to dump half of it's content, due to liscening issues. I was dumbfounded. They paid out 1.67 million for half the content. Why would they do this? Simple. They knew the speed at which it would automaticaly regenerate itself. The beautiful thing is, they don't have to lift a finger, the public will regenerate that content and more, now that it is a part of the mighty Google.

This is revolutionary, in the fact that video has morphed, or combined with social bookmarking sites, and YouTube and Google Video beta, get tremendous loads of traffic. The third site is Revver, which although not as famous as the other two, still is very poplular and recieves a large amount of traffic.

What does this mean for you, the aspiring marketer?

This means, that if YOU create your own infomercials, right now, and get them loaded to these high traffic sites, loaded with the right keywords in the title and description box, there is a good chance that you will be indexed very quickly.

Google is like a Content Dracula, they love quality, people generated content. Google Video, is a search engine that does nothing but search for videos, 24 hours a day.

This is a quantum leap forward for webprenuers that are just starting out.

Why? It solves two huge problems that we face everyday as business owners. #1. How do you get your site indexed in the major search engines? and #2. How do you drive targeted traffic to your website?

The great thing is, that you can create power point presentations, or screen capture videos, narrate them in your own voice, and viola! You've just made an infomercial, and you didn't even have to own a webcam.

This solves 2 other problems, Fear of video "freezeup" and lack of equipment, such as a video camera, or a Sony camera capable of mp4 video capture, or a webcam.

My favorite tool for this job is Camtasia. It has a feature that I just love, and that is when you use .swf as your medium, you can re-direct the viewer to your sales page, automaticaly. This is fantastic, because it empowers you to "steer" the viewer instantaneously to the sales page, while they are still in the "mindframe" to buy.

So, fellow marketers who are struggling to generate traffic, and get your site indexed, so you can make some money to support your family, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is give Google what they want, be sincere, be yourself, and simply recommend your site to the viewer.

About The Author
Jeff Davis has "expert status" at ezinearticles.com and is featured on articlecity.com.

Jeff Davis CEO How to make money with your website

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Tuesday, December 12, 2006

How to Optimize your Blog for Search Engines

How to Optimize your Blog for Search Engines
by: Rose DesRochers

Blogs are naturally search engine friendly and optimizing your blog for search engines is really no different than optimizing your website.

Here are some suggestions to get you started.

Back Links: Backlinks play a very big role in Google's pagerank algorithm. Backlinks are extremely important to your blog's rankings, so make sure you have a large number of backlinks.

Here is a list of places to submit your feed or blog.

Blogger Talk (close new window/tab to return to this page).

Make use of the alt description tag: Spider bots cannot read images, so when adding images to your blog it's important to place information within the alt and anchor text of pictures.

Make good use of anchor text: Don't use "click here" or other non-descriptive link text. Always use keywords as your anchor text. Google loves anchor text.

Use relevant keywords: Did you know that in a 48 hour period there was 6138 searches done for game cheats? Wow! It looks like a majority of gamers are cheaters.When creating titles for your blog posts think about the words that web surfers will be typing to find your blog.

'Inventory Overture Keyword Selector Tool' is one of the best-known services for helping you choose the right keywords. Use ‘Inventory Overture Keyword Selector Tool’ to find what people are actually typing in to the search engines. I also suggest subscribing to Word Tracker. Their report of the most popular searches is published each Tuesday and distributed to over 30,000 subscribers.

Technorati.com , is a blog search engine that also lists the top searched for words. The more targeted your keywords are, the greater your return in search engines will be. Use keywords in the body of your post as well as in blog header tags and the title of your posts.

Update frequently: Remember that content is king and search engines love it, so update your blog regularly.

Be sure to read my articles "Link Popularity in the Blogosphere, Major Search Engine Submission: How to get listed in Google, Yahoo and Msn and Blogging- Developing a Readership."

Remember to optimize your blog for both search engines and people. Search engine optimization is hard work and an ongoing process. Invest a little time and learn the proper techniques and not only will your traffic come, but you'll increase your page rank too.


About The Author
Rose DesRochers is the founder of Blogger Talk Blog Community Blogger Talk (close new window to return ot this page), a friendly fast growing blogging portal, offering bloggers support, advice, tools, tips and information about blogs and blogging

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25 Simple Blog SEO and Traffic Tips

25 Simple Blog SEO and Traffic Tips
by: Jeremy Steele

This is a nice concise list of 25 ways to greatly increase your blog's traffic and search rankings.

1) Content is king!

2) Submit your site to as many search engines as possible. After the initial indexing I would recommend resubmitting every 6 months.

3) Comment on as many blogs as possible. Make your comments thoughtful and not spammy.

4) Link up with popular blogs - trackbacks can be good for SEO as well as your traffic.

5) Write a good article and post it on a site like http://www.digg.com, although this won't help as far as traffic goes (you will get a HUGE boost for a few hours, then it will tone back down, you probably won't get any permanent readers from Digg) and it sure doesn't help with your relationship with your web host, it can create some new inbound links.

6) Use http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ . Instead of the GoogleBot searching for your pages you can tell it where your pages are. This is a great way to get your whole site indexed.

7) Content is king!

8) Get listed on web directories like http://www.dmoz.com/. Although many SEO "experts" think it is overrated no one disagrees that it can help boost your site's rankings.

9) Add some links for feed readers and blog aggregators like http://www.bloglines.com/, http://www.google.com/reader/, and http://myweb.yahoo.com/.

10) Add some social bookmarking links at the bottom of each post

11) Make it easy for your users to find your RSS feed

12) Add a "E-mail This!" link either on the header or the footer of each post

13) Content is king! (see a pattern?)

14) If you write a really good post try e-mailing the URL to some big-name bloggers with a short personalized message. You never know, they might like it and link to it.

15) Try asking some big sites who are in your niche if they would like to trade links. More often than not they will say "no", but at least give it a try.

16) Don't obsess over "get rich quick" schemes.

17) Don't obsess over "get lots of traffic really quick" schemes.

18) Submit your RSS feed to a bunch of RSS directories, http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-directory.htm has a large list of popular directories.

19) Use http://pingomatic.com/ to notify a ton of aggregators that your site has been updated.

20) Don't obsess over the numbers - it takes time to build up a good reader base.

21) Make your posts as keyword rich as possible. Whenever you can use a word that has to do with your niche, use it!

22) Use lists, especially if your site is targeted towards more tech-savvy users

23) If you have a MySpace page or a home page on a similar service put up a link to your blog.

24) Tag important keywords, using this site ( http://www.richardrodger.com/tags.htm ) you can tag keywords.

25) Last but not least, offer free stuff. Everyone loves free stuff!

The really important thing you have to remember is, just have fun. If your blog is causing you to become stressed out then it probably is not a good idea to continue blogging.

If your readers can tell you are having fun while providing good content they will become permanent readers.


About The Author
Jeremy Steele started his Nusuni website in mid-2002. Since then he has joined the blogging community and runs four successful blogs. This article is copyrighted so please obtain permission before republishing or altering it.

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Sunday, December 10, 2006

Exchanging Links – Get The Right Sites To Link To Your Website

Exchanging Links – Get The Right Sites To Link To Your Website
by: Francois du Toit

Most people are aware of the fact that Google™ is by far the most important search engine in the world today. Many webmasters have also heard that having other websites post links to your website should improve your rankings in the search engines, especially in Google™. This is certainly true. The problem is that many webmasters do not know the correct way of soliciting links from other sites.

Why is it important that other sites link to yours? It can be seen as a sort of confirmation that one site values the content of another site. When you find a site on the net that is useful because it has good content that you are interested in you normally save it as a favorite. The same principle applies to website links. The more sites link to your site the higher the perceived value of your site on the net and that has a direct impact on your site’s ranking.

There are many sites on the internet that exist for only one reason and that is to show webmasters how they can improve their search engine rankings by using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques. I do not want to comment too much on SEO sites except to say that although there are some very good SEO sites on the net I have found most of them to have no value at all. However, one thing that most SEO sites agree upon is the importance of having incoming links to your site in order to improve your site’s rankings in the search engines.

I am often surprised at how many people follow the advice of SEO sites on how they can improve their site’s ranking in Google™ without even considering what Google™ has to say on this topic. Nevertheless, Google™ is very clear on the importance of incoming links.

Take the time to read the “Webmaster Guidelines” issued by Google™. You can find these valuable guidelines at www.google.com/support/webmasters and then click on “Webmaster Guidelines”. They are very clear.

In principle, links should come from sites with content that is relevant to your own site. It can be similar or complementary. These sites should link to your site because they find your site’s content valuable and consider it to be useful for their own visitors

There are mainly two ways of soliciting links from other webmasters:

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-9408074091704638";
google_ad_width = 336;
google_ad_height = 280;
google_ad_format = "336x280_as";
google_ad_type = "text_image";
//2006-12-10: site promotion tip mid-post
google_ad_channel = "1605946473";
google_color_border = "FFFFFF";
google_color_bg = "FFFFFF";
google_color_link = "5588AA";
google_color_text = "000000";
google_color_url = "0099CC";
//--></script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

The one is by looking for sites with content that is relevant to your own site and requesting these webmasters to post a link to your site. You normally need to give them your site’s title, website address and a short description of what your site is all about in order for them to consider adding your link on their site. It is normal that they often request you to first post a link on your site linking back to their site (and provide them with the link address to verify you have placed the link) before considering linking to yours. Many of these sites will invite other webmasters on their home page to link to their site or inform other webmasters that they are open to exchange links (called reciprocal links) with suitable sites.

The above method is the correct method of getting other webmasters to link to your site. I like to refer to is as the straight and narrow road – Not always easy and certainly time-consuming but the best method.

The second method that webmasters often use to get other sites to link to them is to visit so-called “link farms”. These sites normally place adverts like: “Get thousands of other sites to link to your site for the low price of only $ 10”, or “Exchange links now with thousands of other sites”, etc. Sounds good? Sure it does. It is the easy way. However, it is not the correct way. The intention of these sites is to mislead the search engines by creating the impression that your site is very popular. Companies like Google™ are fully aware of these “tricks”. They will know if you get your incoming links from link farms and these type of links will certainly not help your site’s credibility as far as search engines are concerned. Avoid link farms at all cost!

Please note that not all webmasters are prepared to exchange links. Some of the very popular sites receive so many requests to exchange reciprocal links that they either refuse to post any new links or insist that your site must have a certain Google™ page rank before they will consider exchanging links. Some of these sites will even charge you a monthly fee for having your link on their site. Do not get discouraged. There are many good websites that will gladly exchange links with your site at no cost.

In case you are wondering, Google™ ranks website pages from 1 up to 10, where a page rank of 10 is an indication that Google™ considers it as very important. Most website pages on the internet do not have a page rank at all. It takes time to get a page rank. It can take years to get a high page rank. There are many sites that offer a free page rank checker. I can recommend www.prchecker.info. Try to exchange links with sites that have a high page rank, at least higher than your own website’s home page. Having incoming links from “important” sites are always an advantage.

Lastly, it is easy to check how many sites are linking to your site. Once again there are many sites that offer this service for free. I can recommend www.webmaster-toolkit.com.

Do not try to convince too many sites to exchange links with your site. Take your time and do not force anything. Remember that having excellent content on your own site is the best incentive for any webmaster to link to your site. Do not make the mistake of chasing after links while neglecting the content of your site.


About The Author
Francois du Toit is the owner of Money Maker Advice (close new window to get back to this page), a website designed to help new entrepreneurs succeed by evaluating various online and offline business opportunities, affiliate programs and network marketing options. The website also offers free articles and tools that will assist webmasters in building profitable websites.

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Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Keys to Increasing Website Traffic

Keys to Increasing Website Traffic
by: Mark Taylor

The life and blood of any online business is one simple word “traffic”. It’s your life and blood. Let’s face it, it’s quite simple these days to build a website, even without any HTML knowledge. It’s easy to purchase a domain. It’s easy to set up a website. It’s even easy to build an online store. It’s easy to place content on a website. However, all this can be absolutely useless if you don’t have any traffic and qualified traffic. Whether you are a website selling products, services, or acting as an affiliate for a program, you will need traffic.

Your form of business may be selling products. Or it may be promoting products. Or even giving away free content and selling advertising space on your website. Either way, in order to cash in, you need traffic.

I have been doing extensive research over the years to find out what is it that brings in traffic. For starters, you have to realize it requires hard work and dedication. It’s not an easy fix. You will have to be dedicated. With that mind-set you are bound to succeed, as long as you do your research correctly.

The first question you need to ask yourself is what are you looking to achieve? If you are looking to sell products, such as digital products (Ebooks, Software) or actual physical products, such as consumer electronics or clothes, then PPC (Pay Per Click) traffic may be a good and easy option. You will have to set a budget and make sure you know what your ROI (Return on Investment) is. I highly recommend using Google Adword. This is the king of PPC engines. You will get the most qualified visitors. My second option would be to use Yahoo’s Overture as well. However, Google is the quickest. You can start receiving traffic within 15 minutes. Yahoo takes more time and is more difficult to get your ads approved. I would spend my time browsing the internet and searching forums on Google Adwords. There are quite a few with very good tips. Also a few free ebooks you can get on the subject. Get yourself familiar.

If you are not actually selling something, but are looking to get traffic because you are giving away free content and are selling advertising space, then perhaps PPC advertising is not going to be your best option. It may not be profitable for you. You will then want to get a high ranking in the Search Engines. The best way to achieve that is to submit to all the search engines, the top 40. You can easily do a search online. Obviously the top ones are your priority (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.). However, bear in mind it may take several months to be listed on these search engines. You will have to be a bit patient.

Also you will want to have as many links to your website as possible. The best way to achieve this, is to contribute to forum discussions, you can place your link to the website on the signature section. However, make sure you don’t spam. Make a meaningful post that contributes to the discussion, otherwise don’t make a post.

You can also post free classified ads. This could be helpful. Also you can create blogs for your website. In fact, create a couple. Make sure you fill them with relevant content and link them to your website.

The key here is consistency. You have to be dedicated and be prepared to put in the work. Once you put in the work, you will be posed to succeed.


About The Author
Mark Taylor offers expert advice on debt management and financial advice. He is also a market researcher. You can visit his webiste at Mydebt Management where you will find a great deal of free information on debt management and financial advice.

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Saturday, October 14, 2006

Social Bookmarking - Link Building And Search Engine Optimization

Social Bookmarking - Link Building And Search Engine Optimization
by: Steve Szasz

Social Bookmarking could be the next big thing in web site marketing since the development of the personal blogs.

Social Bookmarking web sites like http://Del.icio.us, Digg, Stumble Upon and Furl allow their users to create a set of web site content bookmarks. Submitted book marks are organized by content tags, which are arbitrary phrases or words a user can assign to the content they wish to bookmark. This gives the user a way to classify, rank and organize web site content using tags.

The most popular Social Bookmarking web site is Digg. Digg is a relatively new social bookmarking web site and has in it's short time attracted millions of members who daily add bookmarks to all sorts of web site content. Over search engines and other bots, social bookmarking web sites have an intrinsic advantage. Users will choose what content they will bookmark, unlike relying on a program to categorize and qualify content. There is an implied quality in something that someone has taken the time to select.

Users of a social bookmarking web site will read other posters bookmarks and then add them to their own bookmarks if they liked them.. You can even view RSS feeds to see what others are tagging, which is a very cool feature and is a textbook example of a very powerful viral marketing technique.

My own experience and testing shows that 3.2% of all my web site traffic come from social bookmarking web sites, off those 50% come from http://Digg.com, 20% from http://Del.icio.us and the remaining 30% come from various bookmarking sites I am a member of. These sites include Furl and Stumble Upon.

As a search engine optimizer, social bookmarking is another tool I use to promote my web sites. An example would be, introducing a new developed web site. I could wait until Google, Yahoo and MSN found my web site naturally, but that would takes weeks if not months. I could join a link exchange network and exchange links with other web site and have the search engines find me that way. But, then again I would be relying on the indexabilty of the linking web site for the search engine to find me. Or I could add a couple of bookmarks on 3 of the most popular social bookmarking web sites. These large bookmarking web sites are indexed many times a day and the search bots are only looking for new content. Have a bookmark on a social bookmarking web site and could expect to be crawled by the big 3 within hours or at the most, within days.

To successful bookmarker, you need to supply good quality original content. Content that is going to be searched for and will solve a problem the searcher has. There is no point bookmarking content that no one wants. Spamming has become a major problem, but social bookmarking is controlled by it's users. If the content you plan to bookmark is plain spam, the users of the bookmarking web site will just ignore it and move on. Your content will wither away and eventually be dropped out of the social bookmarking web site index.

If you social bookmark properly and supply good quality content, you can expect to gain dozens of quality back links as other bookmarkers, bookmark your content. This technique is a popular tool for successful search engine optimization and the best feature of social bookmarking is that it is free to use. I have not come across any social bookmarking web site that charges the user to use their facility.

Social bookmarking web sites are growing in popularity everyday. Find the ones that best fit the theme of your web site and bookmark with them. But remember, you will only succeed with bookmarking if you have content that is worth bookmarking.

About The Author
Steve Szasz
Webseo+Plus offers visitors tried and tested techniques to gain profitable exposure in the search engines. If you want the latest and greatest information about bookmarking, subscribe to our information packed newsletter by clicking WebSEO

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Thursday, September 14, 2006

How To Analyze Your Search Engine Competition

How To Analyze Your Search Engine Competition
by: Chris Taylor

Analyzing a competitor’s web site may seem like a big job. You should have the mindset that you are going to do this as a learning experience though. This will help you along your way when you may feel like giving up.

Before you even begin to analyze a competitor’s web site you should make sure that you are equipped to do the job. If you do this job properly you can gain a lot of information that will help you to increase your site’s traffic and popularity. These sites can also help you to analyze your own market. After all, if a web site is getting a lot of hits then it must be doing something right. If you take time to see where it is ranked, what key words are being used, how the site is formatted, and what you can do to make your site better while not violating any copyright laws then you will be well on your way to success.

The first thing that you need to do is identify who your major competitors are. The best place to do this is to look in Yahoo’s directory for large companies, innovative approaches and new products. While looking through this directory you should also try to identify any niche markets that your major competitors have not yet identified and exploited. When you find these new niches you will be set for traffic. Another thing that you should do while here is try to get your site listed. Little associations like this are important if you want to start to build up your traffic so that you can conquer a niche or category. Some other associations that you can build occur when you figure out where the big sites’ webmasters are hanging out and you start hanging out there too. Believe it or not, knowing the right people is going to make your business bigger and better.

If you visit Media Metrix 500 you will be able to see what companies are getting the most traffic. Alexa will also teach you about relative traffic. They offer a free browser add-on that shows you how much traffic a site is getting. This will help you to see where your competitors fall in the pecking order.

Once you have found your closest 5 or 10 competitors it is time to closely study them. You really can learn a lot by looking at and analyzing your competitors’ website. The main things that you should be looking for include:

1. Take a minute to see what products or services that they are offering. Make notes of anything that is different from what you are offering. If you see any gaps in what they have to offer think about whether or not you could possibly fill these gaps.
2. Think about how their website looks, feels and functions.
3. Look at the various advertisements they are offering.
4. Act as a client for a moment and think of where their strengths and weaknesses lie.
5. Spend some time trying to figure out their strategy.

If one of your major competitors is s a publicly traded company then you can get detailed information from their SEC filings. Take a moment to jot down who their key players are so that you can read their interviews and speeches. These may also give you some insight into their website.

Once you have gathered all of this information together you need to spend some time summarizing the information for each competitor. Make sure that you highlight their strengths, weaknesses and strategies. This will be useful as you become resourceful in countering and exploiting these sites’ weaknesses.

You can also use this research in order to create a marketing plan. This should include what steps you intend to take in order to deal with this competition in such a way that your website comes out on top. Of course, you are also going to decide whether it is even worth competing with these sites or if you should try to find a market that is less saturated.

Before you even get started with trying to analyze what your competitors do you should know that it might feel overwhelming when you see what the big companies online do. This should not intimidate you though. Instead it should encourage you to concentrate on customer satisfaction.

About The Author
Chris Taylor - author, internet marketer and SEO specialist - Catdynamics.
Catdynamics

For fast, higher rankings of your website visit learn seo basics or search engine placement package today.

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