If you want to rank high, you should optimize the long tail keywords. This is a myth that has been spread far and wide over the past few years. This is false because long tail keywords don’t have much competition due to the fact that there aren’t many searches for them, so there is no need to worry about optimizing them. That’s why it’s simple to rank for long tail keywords. As long as you put these keywords into your content, you can rank for them, though this is not optimization.

There’s nothing more to it than that. You don’t have to do heavy duty optimization for these keywords, which makes it obvious that you should target them. Another SEO fallacy that many people believe without question is that it is vital they have a Google Sitemap. Google has an array of tools in its arsenal that you can use and the Sitemap is one of many. If you build your site the right way and make it search engine friendly, there’s absolutely no need for you to have a Google Sitemap. Of course, it won’t hurt your site if you have it and it might lead to your site getting indexed a little faster but that’s about the limit. You need to be aware of the fact that simply having it will do nothing for your SEO or to improve your rankings.

Many people also believe another SEO myth, the idea that your HTML code can’t have tables. This is another false idea. HTML tables can be found by search engine spiders, and this was always the case. The table code has never been a hurdle for the search engines when crawling. Still, the idea that you can rank better with designs without tables persists among web developers, even though it isn’t true. Generally speaking, no matter how much effort you need to put into SEO, which requires quite a bit of work, it’s worth every moment. The most effective way to learn it is through your own experience and you are better off doing it this way than falling for all these myths that don’t have one kernel of truth to them.

About the Author

Dario Montes de Oca is an Internet entrepreneur who has studied and implemented countless marketing strategies online. Don’t make mistakes that will KILL your business, go to http://www.PowerfulOnlineProfits.com/backlinks to claim 125 FREE backlinks for *unbelievable* website ranking with SEO!

When you decide to open your online business, you obviously need to have traffic to your site, if you have no customers, you make no sales. Of course, advertising is expensive, but there are ways you can attract traffic to your site for free. There are 3 popular website traffic avenues you can use, these include:

1. SEO. One of the best ways to get targeted traffic to your site is the use of Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. The idea behind SEO is using popular keywords that users search in top search engines such as Google and create content around those keywords. Let’s say in your research you find that the keyword "Rolls Royce Cars" are getting massive amounts of searches. Your online business sells car parts for various autos.

Perfect, you can create a blog off of your main page and create short articles around the keyword "Rolls Royce Cars" make the content rich and interesting and update it regularly. Make sure the keyword density is about 2 to 5 percent. Next, as Google and other search engines crawls the web, they find your site due to the keywords you have used and your page gets a higher ranking on the search engines.

2. Social Networking. Use social networking avenues such as Facebook and Twitter. With Facebook, you can set up a fan page and update the page daily, include information about your business and of course, the link.

3. Keyword Title: Use a title for your site or blog that is keyword rich. In other words, if you blog is on dogs, you will want to research monthly searches for "dog" and create a title according to the keyword. For instance, you could create, "Dog Training for All Dog Breeds" this is using the word "Dog" twice which is the highest ranked keyword in that category and "dog training" is the highest ranked keyword phrase.

In conclusion, you have several free tools available to you that you can use to drum up traffic to your site so that you can realize more sales.

About the Author

Click here to know how you can use viral traffic bar to Explode Your Website.

1. Use keyword optimization. – This is NOT keyword stuffing, no matter what anyone tells you, keep your keywords down to around 1-2% of the content. Keywords should not be repeated more than 10-12 times on the page in total and try to keep page keywords to 3 or less main keywords.
2. Use unique page titles and descriptions. – Every page of your site should have its very own unique title that includes one or two of your main keywords for that page. Keep your title under 65 words and use real language and use the <Title> tag. Keep your page descriptions as concise as possible, but keep them below 150 characters if possible.
3. Write unique content based around your keywords. – Do not repeat content on your pages, you will do much better with fewer pages and better more unique content. Base each pages keywords and stick to them, do not ramble outside that range, but make another unique page and keyword if you find yourself going outside your original parameters.
4. Use the <bold> or <strong> tag on your keywords. – This does not mean everywhere on your page, but using a bold tag a couple of times, or even italicizing your keywords is a good idea.
5. Be sure your website addresses are consistent. – If any pages can be accessed by either www. or http:// without the www ask your developer to change these canonical issues & keep all URL’s the same by giving them a 301 redirect which is known as Permanent redirect. This will help search engine spiders & web browsers know that a page is moved to other URL and prevent duplicate content penalties.
6. Use tags wherever called for. -  You should use <h1> <h2> and other relative tags on your site, many crawlers use these tags to differentiate important content. Use alt image tags on all images so the search engines see them as well.
7. Do an internal linking map and structure your site accordingly. – Every page of your site should be accessable in two clicks or less to your visitors.
8. Validate your HTML & CSS. – Make sure you are using valid CSS and HTML that is cross-browser. There is not just one browser type out there and you want your site to be visible on all browser types. There are a lot of online tools that will help check this for you. A couple of good ones are the W3C CSS Validator and thier W3C HTML Validator.
9. Create a sitemap. – A sitemap gives crawlers a single page to look at for all of your pages. http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ will help you create a sitemap in XML to submit to the search engines.
10. Have a privacy policy. – Search engines are now looking for privacy policies as an anti-spam tool. Its not hard to create a privacy policy using The DMA Privacy Policy Generator.
11. Use no follow wisely. – The <nofollow> attribute should be used when appropriate as this helps the search engine not dilute your pagerank as it goes through your site.
12. Fresh, relevant content is king. – Some things should not have to be said, but it bears repeating here that fresh content is search engine bait. Search engines love fresh content, so update regularly and be sure the content is relevant to the site. Remember your keyword density when writing so as to keep the keywords down to one in 50 words at the very most. The ideal seems to be between 45 and 60 words to every one keyword.

Remember these 12 tips in your web building and you will not need to use any SEO companies or other “Black Hat” techniques to get your search engine rankings where they belong.

Getting your website to rank high on Google organic search result listings is like getting free advertising for your website. The organic listings cannot be bought and your website can only appear on it through proper optimization (SEO).  SEO is the bed rock for online marketing and all webmasters should optimize their websites right from the beginning.

By getting high Google rankings, it will bring you more visitors and probably new customers too. In this article, let me share with you 5 ways to get high Google rankings:

1. Develop the right keyword list. Targeting the right keyword is the key to SEO success. If you optimize the wrong keyword, there will be no conversion.

2. Use unique Title and Meta Description for every page of your website. The keywords that you place in your Title and Meta tags should be relevant to the content of the page. The Title tag is like a book title; it tells the search engines what the page is about. Therefore, it is extremely important for you to use relevant titles for every page of your website. 3. Write good content and place it on your website. Content is king in SEO. Good content can be in the form of words, videos, audio, widgets, etc. Your objective is to provide value to your visitors and turn your website into a link bait. With good content, other webmasters will start linking to you and this will increase your website link popularity. Link popularity is one of the key factors for SEO success, so do not overlook it.

4. Good SEO copywriting. Adding keywords in the right place will help increase the visibility of the keywords. But, you need to be careful with this approach. Stuffing too many keywords within the content will make Google thinks that you are spamming them. So no matter what, always consider the human element. Write for human to read instead of Google.

5. Build more back links. Link building increases your website link popularity which will help it to get higher rankings on Google. You can build links through article marketing, press release submission, link exchange with other webmasters, directory submission and social book marking.

These are some of the things that you should do to get high Google rankings. SEO takes time, especially link building. You need to work on it consistently to see results. Develop your link building strategy plan and work on it religiously. Good luck!

About the Author:

Cheow Yu Yuan is the co-founder of OOm, an online marketing agency providing SEO Singapore services. Find out more about SEO Singapore at www.optimalonlinemarketing.com

 

And the list of questions goes on and on…

 

Perhaps, the most annoying aspect for the struggling webmaster, has been Google’s secrecy in how it actually ranks links and pages. Even though many will tell you that they have the secret, in actuality Google’s whole PageRank and Ranking Algorithm is so complex that no one can fully boast they understand how the whole system works.

Google’s ranking secrecy and complexity has probably been well-planned mainly because there are millions of webmasters who would like to “game” the Google Algorithm and achieve high keyword rankings through manipulation with so-called “black-hat” SEO techniques and reverse engineering.

 

Wouldn’t it be ironic if this whole secrecy and complexity is more of a smokescreen rather than an actual deception on Google’s part. What if the keys to the kingdom are actually yours for the taking? What if the solution is hiding in plain sight for everyone to see? What if the secret to high rankings in Google is not a secret at all? Wouldn’t that be a hoot!

 

Actually, that’s not a far-fetched assumption to make, mainly because many of Google’s linking policies and recommendations are freely given by Google. Whether you can believe Google is actually giving you the goods is another issue that will be put on the back-burner for another day; but for now, Google’s advice on link building is rather generous and informative.

 

As a part of Links Week held recently, Google’s Maile Ohye gave some pointers on what Google is looking for and how it does its index ranking. No big surprise that content and inbound links are the two most important factors. This is what most SEO experts have been saying for years.

 

A site’s content is one of the main factors. Therefore, you should have a compelling site with interesting information and/or offer quality products, entertainment, opinions…

(Quoting Maile Ohye)

 

“One of the strongest ranking factors is my site’s content. Additionally, perhaps my site is also linked from three sources — however, one inbound link is from a spammy site. As far as Google is concerned, we want only the two quality inbound links to contribute to the PageRank signal in our ranking.”

“Given the user’s query, over 200 signals (including the analysis of the site’s content and inbound links as mentioned above) are applied to return the most relevant results to the user.”

“As many of you know, relevant, quality inbound links can affect your PageRank (one of many factors in our ranking algorithm). And quality links often come naturally to sites with compelling content or offering a unique service.”

(End Quote)

 

Then Maile Ohye explained further how to create unique and compelling content for your site:

 

(Quoting Maile Ohye)

 

– Start a blog: make videos, do original research, and post interesting stuff on a regular basis. If you’re passionate about your site’s topic, there are lots of great avenues to engage more users.

– Teach readers new things, uncover new news, be entertaining or insightful, show your expertise, interview different personalities in your industry and highlight their interesting side. Make your site worthwhile.

– Participate thoughtfully in blogs and user reviews related to your topic of interest. Offer your knowledgeable perspective to the community.

– Provide a useful product or service. If visitors to your site get value from what you provide, they’re more likely to link to you.

(End Quote)

 

SEO experts have been telling webmasters for years that creating valuable, unique, relevant useful content is one of the best ways to get your site and pages highly ranked in Google. If you create valuable content then other sites will want to link to you naturally.

 

Linking out to other sites should be done in a “common sense” manner and it’s a way of offering value to your visitor’s experience. We expect helpful relevant links when we visit other sites since it’s a natural way a good quality site should work; so be careful of linking out to spammy sites that only offer pages of links with very little or no unique content.

 

There are several things every prudent webmaster should be checking like making sure your site hasn’t been hacked and hidden links placed on your site without your knowledge; those with WordPress blogs should be installing the latest security measures and updates. Make sure you keep checking all your outbound links regularly since you may initially link out to a valuable resource, but over time this page may be closed or replaced with one of those spammy-links-holding pages. It can happen to the best of us.

 

What has confused things lately is all the “link buying” which Google greatly discourages and has shown its displeasure by de-ranking many paid directories. The size of your “wallet” shouldn’t be the determining factor in how pages and content are ranked. If you’re selling a link, it should have the “no-follow” tag so that it doesn’t pass PageRank along and confuse the system. Policing or deciding what is or what is not a “paid link” has become a major problem for the search engines, including Google.

 

You should not have more than “100 links on a page” as this can overload the search engine robots that regularly crawl the web, indexing pages. Likewise, your site’s “linking architecture” should be natural and easy for both your visitors and the robots to follow. Make sure your important pages are no more than a few clicks away from your homepage.

 

As to interior linking, the two main points being: Intuitive Navigation for your visitors and Crawlable Text Links for the search engine robots. Use descriptive anchor text links that explain your content to your visitors. The anchor text is the underlined clickable part of the link and many SEO experts suggest you place your keywords or variations of them in your anchor text.

 

Make sure your site is transparent. Do not use “link cloaking” on your site. Make sure what your visitor sees is what the robots are indexing. Use a 301 Redirect if you have permanently moved any webpages. Again, there is stressed the need for a sitemap as this can be very helpful for both your visitors and robots to see and find all your valuable content. Make sure you have a sitemap and all your important pages are listed on it.

 

One final note, many professional webmasters and marketers don’t worry about PageRank as much as they are concerned with SERPs.

 

Getting those top rankings for their sites in the search engine results is what really matters. Again, quality content and building quality links play an important role in achieving those top spots and maybe Google has already given you the formula for getting them.

 

Maybe, maybe not.

 

———————————————————–

About the Author: The author is a full-time online marketer who runs numerous web sites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools Discover more about linking and ranking directly from Google here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/

Copyright © 2008 Titus Hoskins

 

So many Internet marketers like to throw around the term “Viral Marketing” to sound smart, savvy and cool. But the truth is, very few really “get it”. Just because you WANT something to be “VIRAL” doesn’t mean that it will be, or even if it will work!

 

“Viral Marketing” simply put, is where you are giving away something of value so the recipient will WANT to pass it on to others…right? Yes, but not quite. “Viral Marketing” describes ANY strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth through the exposure and influence of the message.

 

So it spreads like a VIRUS.

 

Do you or have you ever had a Hotmail address? This was one of the Internet’s first highly successful Viral-Marketing campaigns. Think about what the smart minds at Hotmail pulled off. They gave away email addresses AND service. And they attached a tagline at the bottom of every email message sent. Get your private email account. (Or, something to that effect.) Then, they simply stood back as people emailed their network of friends, family and business contacts all over the globe.

 

A simple, BRILLIANT strategy.

 

Soon it becomes, WOW! All my friends are using Hotmail. I want to use it too!

 

BINGO.

 

An effective Viral Marketing strategy should incorporate some sort of giveaway OR natural viral element that begs to be passed on and does NOT scream “sales-pitch”.

 

It could be a controversial or newsworthy video or a humorous email or a special report that deals with a unique solution to a problem affecting certain individuals.

 

Make sense?

 

You also need to make it brain-dead simple for people to pass your message on to others.

 

Make it exciting!
Make it interesting!
Make it newsworthy!
Make it scalable.
Remember – Controversy sells!
Solve a common problem for your marketplace!

 

Most importantly, begin with an end in mind because ultimately you’re promoting YOUR products and services.

 

WHY should anyone feel the urgency to pass on your message to others? Do you ask them to do so? Do you provide simple instructions? Your marketing “virus” will die a quick death if you don’t incorporate these critical elements.

 

Remember this point, the quickest way to KILL any Viral Marketing message is to be BORING!

 

Dress up your PDF files with cute graphics and cartoon style characters to add more personality and pizzazz to your e-books and special reports. By doing this you will deliver more impact, increase readability, boost profits, create a viral effect (if executed properly), and most important of all you will stand out from the hundreds of boring sites out there!

—————————————————

Adapted by an article from JD Reilly.

About JD: JD Reilly is committed to helping others succeed at internet marketing with tested and proven products and strategies. The success is built upon-A focused target market, A product people are hungry for, A marketing strategy and Automation. His latest program, social traffic explosion, provides everything you need to know about driving a lot of traffic into your website and may be found at: http://JDReilly.biz

But if you’re trying to make money online – particularly if you’re running a blog – repeat traffic doesn’t necessarily make economic sense.

To start with, since regular visitors are constantly exposed to your advertising, its appeal will quickly start to diminish. And the more they visit, the less effective it’s likely to become.

What’s more, repeat visitors know exactly what they’re coming back for – your content. As they focus more intently on what you’ve got to say, the efficiency of any ads around them is likely to dip even further.

Not the best situation for you, despite your hoards of happy users.

Of course, one way to offset this effect is via referrals within your content, and while it’s a strategy that works for many, in truth it’s a difficult thing to do well.

There’s a very fine line between informative copy and what amounts to a bare-faced, hard sell; your recommendations will need to provide real value or risk being seen as a money-grabbing sham. And hunting down worthwhile products takes time and effort, meaning more hard work in addition to maintaining your blog.

So what’s the solution?

The answer is to take a smarter approach to the advertising you already use. A simple yet radical change that employs basic smargeting techniques to recapture your audience’s flagging interest.

Before going further, it should be pointed out that while conventional online strategy relies heavily on blending – ‘camouflaging’ ads by making them similar in appearance to the page itself – smart targeting focuses instead on ‘psycho-blending’, or formats aimed at a particular audience. This may even involve regular ad changes on the basis that novelty generally provokes curiosity.

But let’s look at just how smart targeting can successfully target repeat traffic.

A blank canvas

The first thing to do – and you may need to take a deep breath here – is drop your ads altogether.

Yes, that’s correct – get rid of them, or at least reduce their quantity substantially … although before you stop reading entirely I’ll point out that you’re only going to do this for new entries, and only for short periods of time.

If this seems crazy, remember that new updates are precisely the ones recurrent readers are likely to see very quickly. Your advertising has far less impact on this audience in any case, but what you will do is place ads on your pages a week or so after publication.

That way, they’ll be seen by any casual traffic arriving via search engines or other links to your site.

It’s a simple change to make, but an effective one with real benefits.

To start with, it’s likely that regular users will quickly come to appreciate their custom ‘ad-lo’ environment, but as well as making loyal readers happier, there’s another advantage in it for you.

Because by creating a blank canvas, you’ll be in a position to employ the most subtle smart targeting trick of all; which is to now run intermittent campaigns.

Think about it – a regular visitor opens your blog to discover a couple of banners. They haven’t seen ads on your site for a while, so this sudden appearance not only attracts attention, but hopefully, also prompts them to investigate further.

And because these campaigns will be brief and sporadic, even visitors irked by an apparent return to the b(ad) old days will quickly realize they’ve nothing to fear.

In other words, it’s a win-win situation – for your most devoted visitors, and hopefully, you and your finances.

Smart Targeting formats

Making ads work harder is what smargeting is all about, and once you’ve created a blank canvas environment you’ll want to smarget your ad formats, too.

For each one-off ad blast, experiment with a different advertising vehicle. Peelback ads; mini-malls; inline text – you’ll find plenty to choose from right here at clickspiration.com. And with each new mini-campaign, you should aim for contrast to maintain a sense of surprise and click-curiosity.

What’s more, by keeping a close eye on stats every time you use a different format, you’ll get some idea how psycho-blending relates to your own segment of users. Was inline text a surprise success? Then perhaps it’s a format that particularly appeals to your specific audience profile.

Of course, the element of novelty will always have a strong influence on such findings, and whatever is being advertised is clearly another major factor.

But despite these variables, any higher than average ad popularity is certainly worth testing further. Which is something you can do very easily by running these formats in your back-dated, ad-rich pages aimed at casual traffic.

So there you have it – a simple yet effective smargeting technique for optimizing potentially problematic traffic. Enjoy its success!

Adapted from an original article by Mike Brennan

Looking for affiliate marketing opportunities? SEE what’s available!

Affiliate marketing links directory:

http://www.clickspiration.com

Casino and gaming affiliate marketing links directory:
http://www.clickspirationcasino.com

http://www.simplersteps.com

- a growing resource of easy-to-follow information

However, sometimes the tried and true ways work just as well as the new-fangled tactics. If nothing else, start your site off right with the basic search engine optimization before moving on to using Web 2.0 resources. While the use of meta tags and keyword density may seem old-fashioned, these methods are the perfect foundation to getting more search engine traffic to your web site.

To help you get started building a strong foundation for your web presence, use these five tips:

1. Always do thorough keyword research and target phrases with good search numbers and low competition for the best results. Take advantage of on-page meta tags, paying special attention to the title and description.

2. Build one-way links to your site. One-way links may not directly increase your number of visitors, but they will help increase your search engine rankings. Use directory submissions and blog comments for a simple way to get more non-reciprocal links.

3. Participate in online forums. Search out communities that fit your site’s niche. By commenting regularly and intelligently, you’ll soon establish yourself as an expert in your field. Provide real value to the message boards and you’ll be rewarded with more targeted traffic to your site.

4. Write and submit articles. Refer to your keyword list for article ideas and write an informational article that suits your site’s content. Not only will you benefit from a one-way link, but internet users will find your article and visit your site to learn more.

5. Write and submit a press release. Submitting your site to the wire services is an excellent way to build quality links and let the world know about your site. Have your press release professionally written for the best success.

If any of these tasks appear too daunting, consider outsourcing the projects to skilled professionals. Make sure the company you work with does manual submissions; the results will build more naturally and you’ll see better success from article and directory sites.

Use our Search Engine Marketing Services to increase your search engine traffic organically. We provide SEO services to fit any budget.

What’s an expired domain name? It’s a domain name that never got renewed by its owner so that it’s out there, ready for use by someone else. This can be true for a variety of reasons, such as that there was no interest in the original website, that the owner ran out of money, or even that the owner him- or herself died. Whatever the reason for the expiration, when a renewal fee is not paid to continue using that name, it still functions just like any other domain name. There’s one difference, though, and that is that an expired domain name doesn’t have a website anymore. Instead, searchers trying to find this page get something to the effect of “404 error” when they come to the site itself.

This is a waste of traffic when this happens; when an expired domain name points to a “not found” webpage, basically, the person searching for the information has gotten nowhere. Many domain name companies have realized this, so many sell expired domain names either through an upfront and direct sale or by utilizing an auction. With either of these methods, sometimes a domain name can fetch anywhere between under $100 to over $1 million. In some cases, these sales also include the original website.

How do you as a webmaster know if an expired domain name is worth buying for your own use? First, check to see the Google page rank of a domain name that has expired. To do this, download Google’s toolbar and type in the website name of the expired domain name. If the page indicator is grayed out, the name itself is worthless because Google has banned it. The rank itself will tell you how popular the page is, although most not banned would be all right. What you really want to look for as a webmaster is for a page rank number between 6 and 10. This means that the website, in its first incarnation, was very popular.

You also need to find out what’s called the “Alexa” rating of a domain name that has expired. This determines how much traffic has actually gone to a particular domain name. If a website has not received a significant quantity of traffic, there will be no Alexa rating. To tell what the Alexa rating for an expired domain name is, go to Alexa.

Finally, you need to see how many websites link to the expired domain name. To do this, go to Google (usually the best search engine to do this) and type in the command “link:” (with no quotes) followed by the URL of the expired domain name (with no spaces between the colon and the URL). If many links are returned, this means that traffic coming to the expired domain name was legitimate and not somehow simply falsely “generated” to give an artificially high page rank.

Discover Kevin Sinclair’s system for making profits regardless of whether anyone joins your network marketing business.

Here are 5 proven ways to bring not just traffic, but highly targeted traffic to your website that can convert to revenue for your business.

Post To Forums- Forums deliver highly targeted traffic because the people that are on forums have already but their hand up and said they are interested in whatever the subject that is being discussed in the forum.

Link Exchanging- This works when you and someone else that has a business similar to yours exchange links to each other’s websites. This way you can share traffic and it also helps with your ranking for search engine optimization as well.

Video Advertising- the statistics are showing that video use on the web is on a rise and a steady rate. People are spending more time on sites like youtube and other video sharing sites. This is a great way to advertise your business and you can also do so with little cost.

Pay Per Click Marketing- Pay Per Click marketing allows your ads to show up on the right side of search results with major search engines. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad, this can be an effective way of advertising because you can decide to have your ad show up only when your “target keywords” are typed into the search engines.

Article Marketing- This is another very effective method of advertising online where you write short articles about your subject matter and distribute it to the major article directories online.

This method works so well because search engines love relevant unique information, they spider these article directories often and you will find that if you submit your article to the right directories, your article can appear very quickly on the first page for your optimized keywords. Your articles can also be syndicated all over the Internet as well. Article marketing is also free!

I wasted 17months trying to drive profitable traffic to my website, but you should not do the same. Instead click here to get a copy of my “Quality Traffic Report”. In it I will show you my results after testing article marketing vs. google pay per click, you can use the results to start driving profitable traffic to your website. You can also visit http://www.qualitytrafficbuilder.com/trafficbuilding