Tuesday 1 April 2008

Do Search Engines Hate You?

Quite a few clients have told me that marketing is difficult for them. It is difficult to get started with marketing; it is difficult to figure out how to market, and it is difficult to understand how to market effectively. Even if you are already using marketing techniques to promote your business, there is no guarantee that your marketing efforts will bring the results you are looking for.
I have put together a simple plan for you to take charge of your marketing and to simplify at least some of the process. Here are five marketing steps:
- Define What Needs To Be Done. What are you marketing? Is it a product or a service? What are the results you are looking for? Would you like to generate more sales, more leads, more partners? Which online marketing techniques are you planning to use? Search engine optimization, article marketing, newsletter publishing? The better you define these points, the easier it will be for you to put your marketing plan into motion.
- Break Your Plan Into Bite-Size Pieces. Divide-and-conquer is a proven, time-tested technique for managing complicated tasks. If your goal is to optimize your web site for search engines, your bite-size pieces will include learning about search engine optimization, performing keyword research, optimizing your pages, optimizing your copy, etc. It is much easier to follow along when you map out the steps.
- Understand The Marketing Process. It is really difficult to apply a marketing technique if you do not have a good understanding of the process. For example, if you do not know how to use article marketing to promote your business, you will not be able to use it to market. Learning about marketing is essential. It will help you market now, and you can use your newly acquired marketing knowledge to continue marketing your business for years to come.
- Don’t Try to Do Everything At Once. Don’t start using five marketing techniques at the same time. You will simply end up jumping from one method to another, without spending a proper amount of time on any one of them. If you do not devote sufficient time to applying a marketing technique, you will not get results. Take some time to learn and apply a new marketing technique. Then, once you are seeing results, move on to the next one.
- Track Your Results. Tracking your results (or lack thereof) helps you understand what has produced results and what hasn’t. It also helps you compare different marketing methods and to determine which one(s) produce better results for your business.
Use this five point plan to better market your business and get results from marketing your business online.
Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com - By: Biana Babinsky

Sunday 30 March 2008

Here’s Why Paying For Your Traffic Is A Smart Move

There are so many success stories you will hear about businesses making it good in the internet. The troubling thing is, there are maybe a tenfold or even a hundredfold of stories contradictory to theirs. Many have unsuccessfully launched a business enterprise that is internet based but only a handful shall succeed.
Is this through luck? That is even more remote. It takes good business sense and a lot of help and team effort. Most importantly, it is the eagerness to succeed and the determination to learn and the willingness to invest in a lot of hard work and some money.
The Very Basic
Like Neo, traffic is The One. Without traffic, all your effort would just go to waste. Every business needs customers, without them you wouldnt have anyone to sell your products to. In the internet world traffic is the walk in customer. The more traffic you have the more people would be able to sell your products to.
But like any business thats in every corner building or in the mall, not everyone that goes in will buy, but the greater of number that do come in to browse your merchandise, the greater number of people that will buy your products. It is a simple and known fact.
But, how do you get traffic, traffic large enough that could make a small percentage of eventual buyers enough to make a good profit. Many big companies generate traffic of tens of thousands a day and a measly ten to fifteen percent actually buys, but that small percentage is enough to provide them with good business.
Many of these success stories get their traffic from paying others. Yes thats right; you have to spend money to make money. Advertising is the key. The more people that knows that your site exists; the more people would of course go to your site, thats common sense.
While there are many ways that can get you advertising for free, this do not generate the same high volume as those methods that are getting paid. These paid advertisements include advertising schemes by Google and Yahoo.
The Value of Searches
The search and will be the easiest and fastest medium in finding what a person needs in the internet. Search engines have been very popular because they provide a vital service to many people. They are free and easy to use. With this popularity, they get many visitors and clicks that they are the most common sites that people go to. It is easy to understand why so many companies would pay to advertise with these search engines.
Search engines provide information to the millions of users that they have each day. They provide links to many sites that a user may be looking for. If your sites link pop up in the high ranks of the search results page, you get a great chance that they will go to your site. While search engine optimization is a cheaper and low cost way to get your site a high rank, paying for advertisements will ensure that you will be on the top ranks.
When you pay for your advertisements, it is like paying for your traffic. This may sound like not such a good idea, but the payoffs would tell a different story. When you pay for your traffic, you are guaranteed of a consistent traffic flow to your site. You will never go with an empty sales day.
Paying for your Traffic
Usually, you will be charged with the number of hits a link gets when your ads is clicked, this is called pay per click. For some search engines, you will be charged with the number of times your ad shows up when a certain keyword or keyword phrase is searched. It is imperative that you have good keyword content in your ad. There are many tools that aid you in using the right keyword for the right moment.
All the money you spend in paying for your traffic will not be for naught. You will get an impressive boost in traffic which will also result to a great boost in your sales figures. Paying for your traffic would be a really good idea and you will get all the benefits it has to offer.
Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com - By: John Pawlett

Wednesday 26 March 2008

Article Marketing Improve Sales and Website Traffic

If there is one thing a customer loves, aside from a wonderful product at an affordable price, it is somebody who is an expert on that product. Especially where online shopping is concerned, it is necessary for people not only to be crack salespeople, but also to be a virtual encyclopedia on the inventory for sale. Whether you are selling books, music, apparel, toys, or anything at all, you have to be quick with the answers when questions come.
Yes, they do come, and often! The major factor that separates online shopping from going to the mall is instant accessibility. At a brick and mortar store, a customer can closely inspect a product, read labels, or, if it is a book, sample a few pages before buying. While it is true a customer may call upon the assistance of a sales clerk to verify a few things, the likelihood of somebody making a physical purchase can be higher than that of an online purchase because everything a person needs to know is right there.
When you sell your product online, you basically sell yourself, and the way to attract customers and keep them on your site through the entire purchasing process is to provide the content they need and want to finish the sale.
Nobody knows your book, your CD, your product like you do. It stands to reason, too, that your expertise extends to various topics related to what you market. Article marketing can not only inform your customers of the finer points of your inventory, but aid to bring them to your site.
Simply put, article marketing is the act of writing articles on topics related to your product and posting them on your website or blog, as well as third-party content sites for the promotional purposes. Look around the Internet and you may find websites that solely exist to distribute content to websites. "Expert" authors compose short articles ranging from two hundred to a thousand words on a multitude of topics: health, religions, sports, travel, marketing, and reviews. Marked with their own business or personal URL, these articles are made available to site owners looking for timely material. One provision for using such articles is the mention of the author’s URL, so article distribution may allow for good link building if enough reputable websites use the content.
Having written the content for your website, coming up with supplemental information for articles should prove to be simple. However, if you feel you need inspiration to get the words down, look no further than the items on your website. Each is certain to tell a specific story, or offer some kind of information a customer will want to know. Consider what you sell, and what other people would like to know about it, how to use it, or how it works.
Books: If you are an author of non-fiction, write articles about the topic at hand, and expand upon certain points in your books. If you write fiction, perhaps you could write more about the settings used in your novel, or motivational articles that explain how you wrote the book. Write reviews of similar books, or about movies and items related to your work.
Music: If you are a musician selling your CDs, try some factual articles about the styles of music you enjoy, reviews of similar artists, or tutorials on playing instruments. As a professional musician, you can advise visitors what to look when buying a guitar or piano, how to choose a recording studio, or how to record music for Internet use.
Products: Whether you sell jewelry or toys, health products or sports equipment, there is certain to be a story behind every item. Write about subject affected by or that affect what you sell. Offer recipes for the food items you market, or the history behind the antiques in your inventory. When you look at your store from every angle, there are words to be found and shared.
When you sign up to distribute your articles, make sure each piece you write is accompanied by a thoughtful advertisement for your goods or services. Include your URL in every biography, and mind the terms of service on every third party database you join. Some will not allow you to put URLs in the actual article, but in the bio you have the opportunity of increasing visibility for your site. The more articles you write for some databases, the sooner you will be elevated in status, and acceptance for articles enjoys a faster turnaround time.
When customers come to your site looking for information, let the articles you write be their guide. Distribute them elsewhere, that new customers may come to you already informed and ready to buy.
Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com - By: Kathryn Lively

Monday 24 March 2008

How To Get Traffic To Your Website!

Today, the biggest problem that new website owners have is: How they can get traffic to their website? Significant amount of time and energy is spent today on this single task. You or your webmaster needs to commonly focus on:
- Get ranked well on the most important search engines (Google, Yahoo, Msn, Ask.com, etc.)
- Pay Per Click (PPC) programs
- Cost Per Click (CPC) programs
- Link Exchanges
- Directory Submissions
- And more

All of these methods are valuable for getting traffic to your website. If you are not competent enough to rank well your keywords, you can obviously hire a SEO (Search Engine Optimizer) for this work. From search engines you can get a very large portion of traffic to your website.

Today, everyone wants to know the big secret to driving traffic to their website. Every day I see an article or an ad talking about driving people to your website; driving traffic to a website has become the holy grail on the Internet. People are realizing that if you build it, they won’t come... unless you give them a reason. Website traffic just doesn’t happen by itself. Your website is just one of many millions on the web and people rarely just stumble upon your site by accident.
There are many ways to drive traffic to your website.

You can buy traffic from vendors that will pummel your website with hits from automated programs. This will increase your hits but will it increase your bottom line? Probably not. You can set up blogs that spider (connect to) your website increasing your traffic count. Does this drive users to your website? Only if your blog is so interesting that people are reading it. There are thousands of blogs posted on the internet and your blog is just a needle in the internet haystack.

Another trick is to create RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds for your website and subscribe to other RSS feeds. This again will increase your hit count but will do very little to drive potential customers to your website unless you’re providing valuable information. Tricks will increase your hit count but do very little todrive potential customers to your website.

People often turn to traffic exchanges. Quite simply, a traffic exchange is a program where you sign up and agree to surf sites in exchange for some credits. These credits are then used when other members of the exchange surf to your site. This traffic is not highly targeted traffic. In fact, if this were your only method of advertising your website, you’d probably fail. BUT it is a great method of getting traffic to your site in addition to the other methods listed above.

So, why do people use traffic exchanges? Here are a few of the benefits:
- Increase your Alexa rating! Did you know that some search engines factor your Alexa rating into their algorithms? More traffic means higher search engine placement!
- Increase your branding awareness. Any marketing expert worth his salt will tell you that branding is extremely important to stand out amongst the billions of websites out there. More traffic equals more sales. A percentage of people surfing will be enticed by your ads and click on them to find out more information. Another source of revenue. Many traffic exchanges will actually pay you money to surf. More importantly, as you refer other people to the network, you’ll earn a percentage of the money that they earn! It may be small amounts but if you work the system it could amount to a lot of money.

Now, before you head over to Google and search for Traffic Exchange, I’d recommend knowing a few facts:
- Some traffic exchanges are simply out to get money from you and will refer very little traffic to you.
- Some traffic exchanges have poor systems in place to stop cheaters from running programs to increase their credits faster.

Finally, some traffic exchanges will allow popup, active x controls, site rotators, etc. in their network. Any of these can stop your auto surfing from working, or even worse, allow your computer to be infected with a virus.
The best part about Traffic Exchanges is that you really have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The worst thing that could happen to you is you get a little bit of traffic which increases your Alexa rankings and you don’t get any money.

Of course, for the system to work, you’ve got to make sure that you do some surfing yourself. The makers of the exchange programs realize this and some of them even have an auto surf feature where you get a reduced number of credits while your browser happily loads page after page every 10 seconds or so.

Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com - By: John Pawlett

Sunday 23 March 2008

Seo - Submitting Pages With Links Is Good Seo

Many search engines are now ranking web pages that contain a lot of links to other sites higher than those that contain fewer links. This is why it is such a good idea to submit your pages to the search engines with as many links to other sites contained in them as possible. However, don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can just submit any old pages mistakes. You must make sure these links are related to the content of your pages or you could even end up blacklisted by the search engines.

Whenever you find a web site that has content similar to yours, email the webmaster and ask for a link, pointing out why it would be appropriate. If he has content on his site useful to your visitors, link to him without even offering to trade links. Link to him, then email him and ask for a link back. Make sure that you include a big description in your letter of why a reciprocal link will be of great benefit to his or her traffic. If you can’t offer traffic (the most common conundrum of newbies to SEO) then offer great credibility and expert material. If the big site says yes then the search engine will add the credibility of that link to your own and boost your ranking in the search engine pages.

The search engine that values link popularity the most is Google, For many people, the true value of the $299 a year cost of a Yahoo listing isn’t the benefit of receiving click through from Yahoo, but the boost a Yahoo listing provides for their rankings on Google.

Open Directory doesn’t cost anything, but getting a listing in this respected index can be time consuming, as everything is hand edited by humans on the other end.

Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com - By: Chris Angus

Saturday 22 March 2008

Facts & Myths About Search Engine Optimization

When considering utilizing search engine optimization methods to help improve your website’s overall ranking in search engines, here are some "facts" and "myths" about SEO:

Fact: Google, Yahoo and MSN are considered the "Big 3" when it comes to search engines.

Yes, it’s true. In fact, just over 95% of all Internet searches are conducted using either Google, Yahoo and MSN. This leaves less than 5% percent for all of the other search engines combined.

Myth: There are 1,000 search engines on the Internet.

Nope. Not true. If you see an advertisement saying "we’ll submit your site to 1,000 search engines", then they probably also want to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn. Actually, there are only 40 or so true search engines. The rest of them are actually using search engine results from Google, Yahoo, MSN or a combination of all three.

Fact: Search Engine Optimization is not a "one-and-done" process.

Good SEO is an on-going progress. You have to do so many things - and do them right - to get ranked at the top of search engines. Then, once you have earned those high rankings, you have to work twice as hard to keep your site there. Afterall, when you moved into the top spots, you’ve bumped someone. Rest assured, they are going to start working harder to regain that spot.

Myth: You can trick search engines.

Go ahead and try. And, when you get caught, your website will be banned from search engines. There are all kinds of tricks search engine optimization consultants try and, yes, you might get ranked No. 1 in Google for your "black hat" efforts. But, when you get caught - and you will - your site will be doomed for a long time.

Fact: Search engines love fresh content.

Definitely. Just like people, search engine spiders (also called "robots") will come back to your site often when you write and publish fresh content.

Myth: Search engines don’t look at Meta Tags anymore.

Wrong. Search engines do look at Meta Tags. Typically, they don’t put much faith in what you’ve written there as the gospel, but they’ll come back and look more at your site content to verify what keywords you’re concentrating on.

Fact: Links will help get your site ranked higher.

True. However, create "backlinks" with sites that have a Google Page Rank of 5 or better. Avoid link farms. Don’t pay for links and, if you can help it, don’t trade links with everyone on the web.

Myth: The more links you have the better.

Wrong. Be selective. Get good quality sites to publish a link to your site. Don’t pay to be listed in directories (with the exception being in Yahoo Directory). Avoid link farms (these are sites that are just a bunch of links).

Fact: A Sitemap is a good thing to have.

True. While a Sitemap, especially a Google Sitemap, will not guarantee a higher ranking in Google, it will help you make sure that all of the pages in your site are being crawled by Google.

Myth: Pay-Per-Click is not worth it.

False. If your website is not listed high in organic search engine results, then you should consider a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. Yes, some click fraud does exist, but if you opened a retail store, you’ll probably be a victim of shoplifting at some point. Instead, create a smart campaign and stick to a budget. Then, perhaps as your organic rankings improve, you may consider backing off the PPC campaign. Or, perhaps not!

Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com - By: Steve Phillips

Thursday 20 March 2008

SEO Strategies and Tips

Additionally, a common mistake of individuals optimizing their web page is to believe it all has to do with specific keyword densities and the placement of the keywords within the page. There is much more to effectively optimizing a web site for search engines than keyword density, and this article will describe a few strategies and tips to help increase the number of visitors to your site.

Your first step to effective search engine optimization strategy is to understand exactly who your target market is. If you don’t understand the people who would buy from your website or want the information you provide on your site, you can’t optimize a page to increase your revenue. You should know whether your site targets other businesses, or whether you are targeting consumers as this will determine the tone of the site.

To effectively optimize a web site with your target market in mind, start by creating an extremely detailed list of who your target consumer would be. Provide their age range, gender, income range, and any other specifics that make up your potential customers. You should even consider writing down overly specific attributes to help you get a picture of your target market. For instance, a web site selling upscale baby clothes could describe their target consumer as: working mothers with an income of $60,000 or more annually, who drive a mini-van and have a live-in nanny.

Once you have a clear image of the people who are most likely to want the items you sell or the service you provide, you can then select keywords and phrases that these people might type into Google and other search engines in order to find your web site.

Make a list of related words and phrases, something you know your site is about. In the example above, you could say "baby clothes". You might want to use a keyword-picking tool such as Yahoo’s to help you, or Google’s Adwords Tool.

Once you’ve developed a list of keywords and key phrases that your target market might use when searching for information on the internet, use a service like Wordtracker or an SEO firm to check popularity and competitive factors for your phrases.

Armed with your target market information and a list of useable keywords, you can write (or re-write) the content for your web site in order to optimize it both for search engines and for the site audience. A good rule of thumb is to use pages that are between 400 and 500 words in length, and have 2 or 3 keywords in the text. Use each keyword one or two times throughout the text and you should have a decent keyword density. Make sure the pages read normally, however, there is nothing more sure to lose potential customers than having site visitors show up only to close your site when the information presented doesn’t make any sense!

After your pages are written, you can use the meta tags of your page’s source code to further optimize for search engines:

Meta Description Tag: Should provide a brief description of what the page is about, and ideally be under 150 words. Use one or two of your keywords if possible.

Meta Keywords Tag: This tag is actually rarely used by the largest search engines, but if you can gain visitors from any of the smaller search engines that do make use of this particular tag, you may as well make use of it. List the keywords your site is optimized for here, separated by a comma.

Title Tag: Likely the most important aspect of optimizing the source code of your page is the Title Tag. This is the phrase that is displayed in the search engine results as the link people can click to come to your site. See what your competitors are using, and try to make your title tag more compelling than theirs! Whenever possible, place your keyword at the end of your title. Google will make it bold and since most everyone else uses their keyword at the front of the title, yours will stand out in the search engine results!

Using these tips and strategies for search engine optimization will increase the number of targeted web site visitors you have, therefore increasing your web site revenue.

Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com - By: Phoebe Tiangson

Wednesday 19 March 2008

Introduction To Search Engine SEO

White Hat SEO is the method that is generally approved by almost all search engines. These include adding more content with targeted keywords and improving website quality. While Black Hat SEO includes tricks such as cloaking and spamdexing. Black hatters usually counter the methods used by the search engine optimizers as irrelevant.

SEO is mainly concerned with the improvement of the number and position of its search results for a number of relevant keywords. It is also used to increase the number of visitors to a website. Search engine optimization is often provided as a stand alone service or as part of a larger marketing effort, incorporating it into the initial development and design of a website. Pay per click (PPC) advertising is significantly high for competitive and high volume search terms. Hence SEO is essential for the high volume search terms. A significant savings can be done by ranking well in the organic search results. Usually the website owners go for search engine optimization of their sites only when the cost of optimization is less than the cost of advertising.

The goal for search engine optimization differs for various sites. Broad search optimization strategy is ideal for websites having wide interest such as a periodical or a directory. Most of the website owners optimize their sites for a variety of highly specific keywords. An excessive broad search optimization results in the prevention of the progress of marketing strategy. It is due to the generation of a large volume of low quality inquiries. This problem can be reduced considerably by focusing more on the desirable traffic. Search engine optimization is very effective when it is used as a part of smart niche marketing, which is a focused and target-able portion of the market. Organic SEO is the search engine optimization that is done manually without using any Black Hat methods, underhanded methods, and automated scripting. This is the purest form of search engine optimization.

It is very important to understand the search engines and their general concept for the use of effective SEO methods. Each page of the search result is usually ranked according to relevancy, popularity and several other factors. Theoretically, the web pages are more likely to appear at the top of the listings as the relevancy of the page increases. Search engines usually use automated software for the judgment of the relevancy of the page.

The basic components of SEO mainly come under two categories such as on page and off page optimization techniques. The on page SEO includes several factors such as keyword inclusion, content optimization, and page structure. In off page optimization, inbound links are the main factor. Usually different search engine optimizers provide the varying information on which factors are most appropriate to gain the higher rankings. This wide difference in opinion is due to the fact that nobody is certain about the algorithm criteria.

In SEO, high search engine ranking is achieved by performing keyword research and by modifying the HTML code to reflect such keyword categories. Anyone having knowledge of basic HTML or the ability to learn can perform SEO. The ranking of a website is usually done in SEO by using a complex mathematical equation called an algorithm and hence drawing a solid conclusion is not relevant.

SEO is one of the most beneficial ways by which one can promote his/her website on the internet. Search engine optimization is found to be very cost effective when compared with other methods and it produces long term results.

Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com - By: Phoebe Tiangson

Tuesday 18 March 2008

Understanding the Role Publishing Articles Plays in Search Engine Optimization

Every webmaster dreams of getting so much traffic from the search engines that it overwhelms the capabilities of their web hosting provider’s network. Getting your site listed on page one for several relevant keyword phrases on the major search engines is the key to approaching this level of traffic. Getting there requires some hard work and a little knowledge about search engine optimization. gostars05

Content is King: - If you have done any research on search engine optimization, you realize the importance of the content of your web pages. Your content must be optimized for the search engines and have optimal usage of your most important relevant keywords and keyword phrases. As you write user friendly content bear in mind you should be optimizing your pages with phrases that best match your overall theme. Search engines prefer this. You can then focus on link popularity and link quality to help drive traffic. More on those two strategies in a moment.

Key phrase Optimization - By optimizing your pages with the phrases that best match the overall theme of your site, it will improve the likelihood that users will find your site when searching for content like yours. You should hone in on short multi-word phrases unless your keywords are unique. First, find your optimum keywords and determine their popularity. Second, ensure your title and other meta tags use relevant and keyword-rich phrases.

Link Popularity - To increase your traffic, you must increase your link popularity. Link popularity essentially means the number of links on the internet that refer to your website. If you do not have an advertising budget, link popularity can generally be increased primarily in two ways. The first method is by exchanging links with other web sites with similar content. The second method is publishing articles online that relate to your site, including a link to your site in the article and then publishing the article on as many article directory sites as possible. Employing both approaches is the most effective; however, the latter is extremely effective because it creates multiple one-way links back to your site.

Article Publishing - Many webmasters search feverously for good site content - remember content is king. They either lack the writing skills or lack the ambition or initiative to write the content themselves. Webmasters with financial resources available often hire ghost writers. Those without money look to article repositories to obtain some of their content. This demand for content by other webmasters creates an opportunity for you to advance your site. Writing articles that relate to your content and publishing those articles within article directories ultimately pushes your link onto other webmaster’s sites. Think of the potential here. You are getting a one-way link from every site that posts your article. This free method of advertising your web site is one of the best kept secrets of search engine optimization

Link Quality - Keep in mind, link popularity is important, but the quality of those links is equally important. There are two parts to link quality. First, sites that are pointing to your website should have related content. Search engines will give links from sites with related content more credibility. The second component to link quality is the actual words the other webmaster uses in your link. The focus is to ensure the links pointing back to your website include your most relevant keywords in the link title.

Search engine optimization requires a combination of these five elements. Highly optimizing your website content and obtaining high link popularity from quality links will absolutely upgrade your search engine rankings over time. Of course, as with many things, your level of effort at utilizing these elements is directly proportional with the results you can expect to get out.

Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com - By: Marcus Pore

Monday 17 March 2008

Seo - Why Submitting To The Big Indexes Is Good Seo

The big indexes such as Yahoo, Open Directory and About.com are the best places for people to find you. However applying to be listed in them can be a bit of a federal case. Still despite all the red tape, proper submission to these indexes is crucial because there is a pronounced trend towards using "human-edited" indexes in search results. In particular, many of the major search engines are starting to use Open Directory index listings in their search results, making it the second most important place to list your site, right behind Yahoo’s directory.

Another thing to consider is that more and more search engines are using link-popularity as a ranking method (Google is the originator of this technique). Under this system the ranking of your site depends on how many other pages link to yours, and how essential the search engine thinks these links are. That means that a secondary benefit of getting a link on major indexes is that it can improve your ranking on some really big search engines. For example, getting your site listed in Yahoo! And in the Open Directory can seriously boost your page ranking on Google.

Before you go to submit to one of the major indexes, please take the time to find and read their submission guidelines, advice and limitations. It sounds so simple but actually it is harder to get listed on the big indexes then one would think. This is because neither Yahoo nor the Open Directory Project is very concerned with accepting just any old crap in their index. Also decisions about what is allowed to be listed in their pages are often made by humans who can tell even better than an algorithm if a web master is trying to pull the wool over their eyes with some crafty black hat SEO.

Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com - By: Chris Angus

Sunday 16 March 2008

Seo - Application Tips For Yahoo

So you want to apply to Yahoo. Assuming you are not already listed in the index your first step is to find the category page that best suits your site. At the very bottom of this category page will be a small "Suggest a Site" link. Click on it to get to the site submission page. If there is no "Suggest a Site" link, then the page you are on does not allow listings to be added to it, most likely because it is a very general top-level page. Keep searching until you find your right niche category! When searching for your niche category, try to find one that reduces your chances of being buried alive by other site listings. This usually means a very specific category and the more specific you are, the more kindly Yahoo will be when it comes to listing your site.

Follow Yahoo’s instructions or else! If you try to sneak around their rules they will ban you. Don’t try to break the rules by doing things like using numbers, too much gratuitous promotional language or brand names in your descriptions. This is one situation where too much SEO in your copy can really hurt you.
This might seem odd, especially in a business that seems to be all about promoting yourself but Yahoo will frown on any title and description that reads like promotional ad copy. What Yahoo wants is a descriptive title and description without any hype (and this includes phrases such as ’the best real estate agent in town" and "unrivalled service"

Also you improve your chances of acceptance if you can keep your meta tag description to about 15-20 words. You might as well edit it down now before Yahoo does it for you!

As Yahoo lists its sites alphabetically, it might also benefit you to choose a name that is among the first five or six letters in the alphabet. If you can come up with a suitable title for your site that starts with A, B or C then make sure you use it as it will rank you higher in the Yahoo search engine pages!

Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com - By: Chris Angus

Friday 14 March 2008

Article Submission Does It Really Work?

Article submission or the posting of articles to online directories and news groups has been around for quite some time but does it work? The answer is a resounding YES! If you are looking for a surefire way to drive traffic to your online business then article publication and submission is the way to go. But like most things in life there is a hard way and an easy way to achieve your goal. Writing interesting articles and submitting them to the hundreds of directories out there can be a very time consuming process to say the least.

Writing and submitting articles online has several benefits for your internet business whatever type of website you operate. First off though it may be worth once again going over why you would need to submit articles in the first place and more to the point just what you should expect to achieve by doing so. Chances are that you are reading this article because you have a web site that needs traffic. In fact a web site without traffic is like a car without gas , its going nowhere fast. You may have the flashiest high tech all singing all dancing web site on the net selling the best products or services but unless you can get people to see it the site may as well not exist.

So the main reason for submitting articles should be to drive that much needed traffic to your site. But there is more to it than that. One of the benefits of submitting articles is that it causes a link back to your site, not just from the directories that you post to but from the sites and blogs also use your article as content. The great thing about all these links back to your site (apart from all the free traffic) is that the major search engines will index your pages faster because they love to see incoming links. It gets better still though because more links equals higher page rank which puts your pages higher up the search engine results pages or "serps" as they are technically known.

On top of all this by submitting these articles you will gain credibility as an expert in your field, which in turn will make those articles even more popular with web masters and bloggers who are searching for quality content for their own readers but don’t want to write content themselves. The other great thing is that once published or "set lose" on the net your articles will take on a life all of their own as more and more people use them. This is commonly known as viral marketing because of it’s pervasive nature and the way it continues to spread across cyber space.

Like I said first off though, all this submitting business can physically take a great deal of time and effort to accomplish. The great news is that there are now several software programs available which will virtually automate the whole process. Now instead of spending hours submitting you articles to just a handful of directories you can send them to literally hundreds at the press of a button! That means more traffic, more back links to your site and higher page rank for a lot less effort.

Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com - By: kevinor

Thursday 13 March 2008

Seo - How To Avoid Being Blacklisted By Yahoo

A listing in Yahoo can boost your site’s page rankings exponentially but unfortunately it is one of the most finicky and difficult sites to get into. For one thing they don’t allow you to piggyback by using well-known keywords or brand names. It is all original, you and manually arranged.

First of all make sure your site is done completely before you submit. Your site will be blacklisted before it is listed if it is not 100% up and running. That "under construction." Page turns Yahoo right off. A site with a clean basic design and lots of good content (is more likely to get inside the Yahoo club than a site full of bells and whistles.

Another caveat: Yahoo requires that the site list the physical address of the business somewhere on the site. This address must be a physical one, they do not accept post office box type addresses. This is one way they keep scam artists out of their search engines. The idea is that only people who are planning to rip off others have hotmail addresses and post office boxes.

Whatever you do, do NOT bombard Yahoo with submissions. If you apply more than once a month, they’ll ignore you and your children and your children’s children. Another good way to get snubbed by Yahoo is to submit a site to a regional index that has nothing to do with that region, or isn’t really a regionally limited site. This is a form of misinformation that is on par with fraud for them.

Whatever you do don’t try to sneak multiple listing into Yahoo. By this I mean, don’t try to make a free application into a paid category. If they catch you, Yahoo will ban you for life! Follow Yahoo’s instructions or else! If you try to sneak around their rules they will get you.

Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com - By: Chris Angus

Wednesday 12 March 2008

Seo - How To Get Into The Yahoo Directory

It costs $300 a year for directory listing in Yahoo. Here is another eye-roller for you. It typically takes six to eight weeks for Yahoo to process your site.
There are three types of Yahoo; the main (original) Yahoo; the international Yahoo sites; and the regional (city) Yahoo sites. The original site is by far the toughest to get into, so if your site is in, or relates to, a country or region served by one of the other Yahoo indexes, you should first try to get listed in them first. Once you are accepted by one Yahoo index usually it is contagious, and you eventually end up getting into them all.
Whatever you do don’t try to sneak multiple listing into Yahoo. Don’t try to make a free application into a paid category. If they catch you, Yahoo will ban you for life!
If you wish a listing in the Shopping & Services or Business to Business sections (either main or regional) of Yahoo, you now must use Yahoo’s "Business Express" submission option. You pay $299 ($600 for adult sites) and get a quick yes or no to your application. Once you are accepted keep in mind that you have to come up with the same amount of money every year to remain in the directory. Also to make this more crazy-making, paying money does not guarantee a listing! That is why it is so important that you craft a good submission. Also, don’t even think about submitting to cranky old Yahoo if your site is not 100% up and running. That "under construction."
Note that you can still submit non-commercial sites to Yahoo for free as long as you don’t submit them to the Business to their Business or Shopping & Services sections of Yahoo!
Chris Angus is a SEO and website promoter, he can be contacted at sales(at)brilliantseo.com
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Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com - By: Chris Angus

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