Six Ways Into Yahoo

By Kim Roach

In this article, we will discuss 6 ways that you can market your content within the Yahoo portal.

• Mobile Site Submission
• Podcast Submission
• Product Submission
• Yahoo Directory Submission
• Media RSS Feeds
• Yahoo Answers

Yahoo Mobile Site Submission

Yahoo, Google, and MSN nöw provide many options for the mobile browser. With cell-phones far out numbering computers, this user-base is one that is far too lucrative to pass up. It's time we developed our sites for the communication revolution that we are living in and this means preparing our web sites to be easily viewable on very small screens.

Mobile web sites come in three flavors: xHTML, WML, or cHTML. To submit your mobile site for inclusion in Yahoo's mobile search index, simply enter the URL on their submission page. Only the top-level page is needed, the Yahoo Crawler will explore the rest of your site from there.

Podcast Submission

In 2005, the term "podcast" was declared Word of the Year by the New Oxford American Dictionary. According to Information Week podcast users are expected to reach 60 million by the year 2010. With these kind of numbers, it just makes sense to start implementing podcasting into your own marketing strategy.

Yahoo released their podcast directory in 2005 and it is nöw one of the best places to submit your podcast and start picking up some extra subscribers. Simply go to https://webmailcluster.perfora.net/xml/deref?link=http%3A%2F%2Fpodcasts.yahoo.com%2Fpublish to get started.

Product Submission

If you sell products, then they should definitely be in the Yahoo shopping index. Yahoo's merchants range from Dell to Amazon.com. This network puts you in front of millíons of potential buyers.

You pay only when a shopper clicks on a listing that takes them to your site. Your cost-per-click will vary depending on which category you are in. You can review their pricing on the Product Submit page.

Media RSS

The Internet is no longer a world of text. With broadband becoming rapidly available at affordable prices, audio, video and other visual content is becoming increasingly popular.
As the variety of content has increased online, Yahoo has been continually adapting. They nöw allow you to search specifically for audio and video within their search engine.

If you are looking to increase your web site's traffïc, creating audio and video content for your web site could be the answer. The competition among these new forms of media is still in its infancy.

To get your audio, video, and other visual content into Yahoo, you can submit it via a media RSS feed. Yes, I know, it sounds very technical, but it's really not all that bad.

Yahoo Directory

The benefits of being listed in the Yahoo directory have been strongly debated among online marketers.

However, submitting your site to directories does provide you with a number of benefits. One of the most important benefits is that they grow the number of quality one-way links coming to your site, which is one of the most important ranking factors in many search engines.

Unlike Yahoo's search engine, their directory is maintained by human eiditors. When submitting to the Yahoo directory, preparation is the key. Be sure to read their guidelines before you get started.

So, what's the catch? Yahoo! Directory Submit charges a recurring annual fee of US$299 for each directory listing that is submitted, so you will have to decide for yourself whether or not the hefty price tag is worth it.

Yahoo Answers

Yahoo! Answers was launched on December 8, 2005. It is a community where anybody can ask and answer questíons on a variety of topics. However, it is also an online community and social networking service. Questíons range from the trivial, such as "When was kleenex invented?" to more serious ones like "Where can I submit press releases on the web?". Last month, Yahoo Answers reached 10 million answers posted.

Because this is such a large community, it is also one of the perfect mediums for delivering your marketing message. As a webmaster, you can establish yourself as an expert in almost any field by providing good answers to questíons asked about topics related to your product or service.

Not only that, but you can also add more information about yourself or your company in your profile section. However, it is even more effective if you simply include a URL to your site in a resource box below your answers.

The key to using Yahoo Answers as a successful marketing medium is to deliver quality content. If you do this, then people will certainly take notice.

Now that you know 6 additional ways into Yahoo, you should be able to start using these techniques to gain an advantage over your competitors. There are so many people who simply don't put in the extra effort required to get exceptional results.

However, for those who are constantly looking to improve, now is the time to latch onto some of the most popular developments in internet marketing. Podcasting, blogging, mobile search, and video have yet to see their peaks.

About The Author Kim Roach is a staff writer and editor for the SiteProNews and SEO-News newsletters. You can contact Kim at: https://webmailcluster.perfora.net/xml/deref?link=mailto%3Akim%40seo-news.com.

25 Ways to Add QualityContent to Your Web Site (Part 1)

1. A calendar of events.

This is ideal for sites like real estate sites to show upcoming open houses; book stores to promote upcoming book signings or writers' meetings; collectors' sites to show meetings across the country, etc. Be sure to allow visitors to send in their own event to be posted to the calendar.

2. Maps.

Consider real estate sites, hunting or fishing sites, camping sites, hotels, or any outdoor recreational sites for maps. Be sure to add content at the bottom of the map that describes the map and outlines its purpose as it relates to your site.

3. Before/after experiences.

This is perfect for products or services you're selling where customers can write in and discuss how this particular product or service helped them. These could turn out to be mini articles, or use them as testimonials.

4. Pictures from your customers.

You could set up a special place where past customers could post their pictures and journal entries on your site. This is ideal for vacation sites, recreational sites, wedding sites, baby sites, photography studios, etc. How could you use this idea on a Halloween site? On a flower site?

5. Online coloring sheets.

Use your imagination here. If you set up some coloring sheets about your vacation property, kids could color those sheets and post them online before their trip in their own special online area. After the trip, their parents could post pictures and a journal of their trip.

This is their "Web site" about their trip, all hosted on your site as a perk for booking through your vacation site. What are they going to do with this information? They're going to tell their friends, Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Edna, etc. They're going to link to it. You can use this perk as part of your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) when differentiating yourself from your competition. You'll be building one-way links from your past customers, plus visibility for future customers. Win/win situation.

You'll think of many ways of adding coloring sheets (or similar creative activities for kids) to your site, if your site is the type that would work for kids.

6. Blogs or forums

These are great and certainly add fresh content to a site.

7. Articles or new pages of interest to your target audience.

Write new content on a regular basis – once or twice a week should be your goal.

8. An expert Q&A on the main page of your site.

Get an expert to answer questions, and post one question/answer a week (or a day – whatever you can handle) on the main page of your site. Have past Q&A's in a searchable archive on your site.

9. Product reviews.

If your industry has products or software to review, consider writing candid reviews of those products. Publish the reviews on your Web site as well as publish them in a few of the online publications. Readers are always interested in totally candid reviews, where the writer lists the positive as well as the negative aspects of a product.

If you have a landscaping business, how could you use this idea? What products do you, as an expert, prefer to use, and why?

10. Short tips.

If your product or service lends itself to short tips, write up a series and publish them on your Web site. Send them out in your newsletter. Get your readers to send in tips as they use the product. Offer a discount off additional products if they submit tips.

11. FAQ's.

FAQ's are content – content that your target audience wants to know. As you get questions from your readers, add additional Q&A's to your FAQ's to keep them current.

12. How-to guides.

People love "how to" guides. If you sell online plumbing parts, why not have a "how to" guide on installing a new toilet? Make it easy on your customers, and they'll come back to you again and again. Create a series of "how to" guides. Be The Toilet Guy on the Net. May not sound too glamorous, but if you're highly visible on the Net and are converting traffic to sales, you can afford to be glamorous OFF the Net!

25 Ways to Add QualityContent to Your Web Site (Part 2)

13. Content that solves a problem.

Why do people visit the Web? To look for information or to comparison shop. If you can solve problems for your visitors, you're giving them just what they're looking for online. For example, let's say that you sell Oriental rugs. Your potential customer might be looking for decorating ideas for her office.

Her office is very small, and she's trying to think of a way to add color. Most of the wall space is taken up with windows and metal bookcases. You've created a series of content that shows pictures of problems/solutions that your oriental rugs have solved, including one with an Oriental runner.

Not only does the content have pictures, it also has text describing each problem and the corresponding solution. Your potential customer found your page in the search engine results.

14. Historical data.

Let's say that you sell steel pipes. What's the history of steel pipes? Creating a page outlining its history is quite appropriate. In fact, taking it a step further, creating pages that compare steel to copper and other types of piping; what causes rust; how strong is steel; how valuable steel piping really is (how steel piping is used in almost every building, etc.); how long will steel last; and on and on and on will create a whole section of extremely valuable content to a Web site.

Here's the catch. Is this valuable to the target audience of the steel pipe company? Think of one target audience: vocational education classes all over the US. This would be a great resource for them. If they linked to this site, all of them being .edu's, wouldn't this be a great link popularity builder for the site? Think about that for a minute. We're talking about quality content and quality link building.

Another example of historical data would be a hotel on St. Simons Island. The hotel could certainly provide historical data about the island on its Web site as well as tour information, etc.

How could a site that sells mustang parts use this strategy? A site that sells wedding dresses?

15. Interviews – the easiest way of building content yet!

Interview an expert in your industry. Send the expert a list of questions and let the expert answer in his/her own words. Don't change any of the expert's answers, except to correct misspellings or grammatical errors. Always be upfront with the expert, and always maintain the integrity of the article and yourself. Write a series of interview articles, and highlight them on the main page of your site.

16. Seasonal articles.

Is your industry "seasonal" in any respect? If so, seasonal articles are always extremely popular.

17. Statistics.

Offering stats on your site is also another way of adding content to a Web site. If the stats aren't your own, always indicate where you're getting them. Quote the source! How could financial or mortgage sites use this strategy?

18. An advice column.

This can be used for a dating site, or it can be used for other sites as well. How could an SEO site use this strategy? How could a decorating site? What about a plastic surgery site?

19. Winners of the month.

Let's say you have a site where you sell cut flowers. Get your Web audience to send in pictures of bouquets and arrangements they've made with your flowers. Post the pictures online. Pick a winner of the month, and have that winner's picture posted on the main page of your site. Give the winner a $25 gift certificate.

20. Using the flower example, create video tutorials for creating flower arrangements.

Make sure you sell all of the materials they'll need to create the flower arrangements they can make if they follow the video tutorials.

21. Again with the flower example, have customers send in an outline of how they created their flower arrangement, the materials they used, as well as the picture.

Provide this information on your Web site. Link to all of those materials in your online store. Be creative. Can you do something similar with your own Web site in your own industry? What if you had a costume site? An art site? Give it a few twists and use it on a hunting or fishing site.

22. Send out a monthly newsletter offering your own tips, tips from customers, sale items, holiday ideas, the winner of the month, etc.

Encourage readers to post their ideas to the blog. Post past newsletters on your site for more content. 23. A biography about someone's life, if it relates to your industry. You can see how this would work well if you have a Civil War site or a used book store. 24. News events pertaining to your particular industry.

25. Community-related page, if this is a local Web site.

For example, you could discuss local restaurants, little league baseball, school openings, etc., on community-related pages or a blog.

We've only just begun with ideas. It all depends on the industry you're in and the products or services you sell. Put your creativity hat on and brainstorm.

In Conclusion . . .

Remember to think "quality" when it comes to creating content. These ideas should help get you started.

And think about this point as well. If you start creating quality content, what is certain to follow? Quality links. Sites will begin linking to your content, because you're doing what you should be doing: giving your customers what they want to see when they visit your Web site. They want to see new and exciting "quality" information that's updated on a constant basis. You become the trusted source of that information.

Don't try to take the easy way out. Success isn't dished out in soup lines. Success comes with hard work.

Top Ten SEO Myths

By Andy MacDonald

Myth # 1: All Meta Tags Are Of Equal Importance
Some Meta tags are useful while others are not. I have stated this many times. Search engines are relying more and more about what is on the website than what the tags are telling them. The description tag is used by some (but not all) search engines. The same goes for the keyword tag. Keyword tags are used more by spammers and people using software to find you as a link partner than the search engines. In my opinion, the only tags you should concentrate your efforts on are the robot tag and the description tags.

Myth # 2: You Should Submit Your Site to Search Engines Weekly or Monthly
Honestly, I nevër submit any site more than 1 time and sometimes I don't even do that. If you submit your site once, you're good. The engines will come back on their own. You can sometimes speed up the process of getting your site indexed by linking it to a high traffïc or high PR site. The search engines will find the URL to your site and index it automatically.

Myth # 3: SEO is Too Expensive
Actually, SEO is probably the most cost effective förm of online marketing. Organic SEO is cheaper to set up and maintain than a PPC campaign or banner advertising. With PPC and banner advertising, you pay for clicks or impressions. With SEO, all clicks are Frëe. You simply pay for the set up and monitoring of your site's pages.

Myth # 4: PPC Is More Effective Than Natural SEO
In the short term...true. In the long term...false. Why, you ask? Organic SEO is preferred by searchers over 5 to 1 to PPC. People trust organic searches to return relevant results. People also know that the ads to the right of the page are sponsored ads. They have long ago figured out that anyone can bid on any term they want, as many often do, without even a hint of relevance. So, long term SEO structuring can indeed be more effective than PPC, especially when considering the preferences of search traffïc. A top 5 ranking may take some time to get, but once you are there (and provided you can maintain it), you will get better results than from a PPC ad.

Myth # 5: Hiring an SEO Specialist "In House" is Cheaper
The problem with hiring someone in house is that they are paid hourly or by salary. Most SEO firms charge per item or project. It doesn't matter how long it takes us, you pay a one tíme charge. When you hire a firm, it's like having a team of SEO experts on your payroll. Paying a flat rate saves you monëy and speeds up the time it takes to complete a job. Additionally, most SEO firms have specialists who write, submit, redesign sites, post pages, etc... Hiring one person who can do all these things competently is highly unlikely.

Myth # 6: I Can Only Optimize My Homepage for Key Terms
You can and should optimize every page on your site. Each page should have its own key terms, with no more than three phrases per page (preferably one).

Myth # 7: All I Need to do is Write Content with the correct Keyword Density and My Site Will Rank Well
Wrong...especially if you want to rank on Google. You will need off-site SEO as well as on-site SEO. Keyword density may work on MSN (for now), but it will take more than that to rank well for all search engines.

Myth # 8: I Shouldn't Aim for the Most Competitive Keywords and Phrases
If the keywords you are competing for are very competitive, should you optimize your site for them? Of Course! I would optimize for some high, medium and low competitive key terms. Cover all your bases. The worst case is that you won't rank well for the high competitive key terms and that's ok. You can always work to improve them. Don't shy away from top key terms just because they are competitive. You may nevër know how close you could rank for them unless you try.

Myth # 9: Only Work With Companies That Give You A Guarantee
Guarantees would be nice if they were worth the paper they are printed on. In fact, most guarantees from SEO firms have the same stipulation in them. This stipulation usually states that as long as they get one of your key phrases to the top of any major search engines, they have fulfilled their end of the agreement. This is irrelevant to the competition of the term. In other words...it's easy to be number one for terms no one is competing for. Don't be deceived by high rankings listed on SEO sites as they can be misleading.

Myth # 10: SEO Requires a 1 Year Commitment on My Part
It certainly shouldn't. Don't lock yourself into a year contract with any company unless you already have an established, favourable business relationship. SEO, in most cases, should be performed on a month to month basis with a mutual understanding of the objectives and relative timetable. Often, both the long and short term maintenance contracts that many firms insist on including with each job are unnecessary. As an example...If you have a new site optimized, especially right after an update, you may not see results for three months. Why pay for maintenance in the interim time?

Additionally, you may not be happy with the results of an SEO firm or even the level of service. A long term contract may only ensure that you receive a full year of bad service. So, don't lock yourself in with a year contract, at least until you are comfortable with whom you are dealing with.

Hopefully, I put a few common SEO myths to rest. Feel frëe to contact me with questíons you may have regarding these or other SEO myths you want more information on.

SEO Tips and secrets for higher search engine placement

"If you build it, they will come." In this day and age of high technological advances, this is no longer true, especially on the Internet. Gone are the days where just putting up a website is good enough. Not only do you have to build your site, you additionally should submit it and let search engines know that your site exists. In addition, you will have to optimize and maximize your page to conform to each search engine's rules and regulations.

The reason for optimizing and maximizing a keyword is so that your web page will be placed higher than your competitor's when a user performs a particular search. SEO tips and secrets research show that most users will never get to your page if your placement is below 30. Having a search engine placement of 31 is almost equivalent to that of a placement of 100 or even 1,000!

Search engines now use highly sophisticated software and algorithyms to measure and rank all yor pages in its databse. There are many SEO tips and secrets to each individual search engine and how they rank and perform placements of web sites. Each search engine will have it's own secrets in yielding high ranking pages for certain keyword seaches. It is very time comsuming to visit each search engine to find out what their particular sets of rules are. Of course, placement rules change regularly.

So this is why we have simplified seach engine placement rules and tips. Click on the following to get the latest rules on ranking and placement for the major search engines.

AltaVista
AOL
Direct Hit
Excite
Google
HotBot
Looksmart
Lycos
Open Directory

With our simplified SEO tips and secrets, you are now ready to submit your pages to the major search engines and get high ranking placements. Good luck with higher search engine placement and success on the Internet!

Winning at Pay Per Click Campaigns

To be successful at running pay per click campaigns, it is essential to obtain proper metrics. Without clear statistics such as impressions, click through rates and conversion rates, you might as well use dollar bills to start the BBQ fire this summer.

Pay per click advertisement offered by major players such as Google Adwords and Overture will show impressions and click throughs rates of your ads, if set up properly. This is only the first step. When you pay for a click or an eyeball to come to your website, you also need to quantify if this eyeball earned you any revenues. You can setup click throughs on the provider's end or on your own website. The easiest is to use URL tracking within Overture or your Adwords account.

Now that you know the impression and click throughs, you can measure the click through rate using this formula:

Click Throughs
x 100 = click through rate in percent
Impressions

The second step is to determine how to measure and quantify the conversion. A conversion does not always have to be a sale of a product or service. It can be an action (filling in a survey or watching a video etc...) or it can simply be viewing of your web page. For simplicity's sake, we will use a sale as a conversion for the purpose of this article.
Once you know the click through rate, you can measure the conversion rate by using the following formula:

Sales
x 100 = conversion rate in percent
Click Throughs

Now, armed with the above formulas, you can begin your pay per click campaigns. It is important that you measure statistics down to the level of your key phrases / keywords. It's great to purchase $100 worth of clicks and know that you made $150 but with fine tuning and really digging into each term, you will know which phrases actually brought in the sale (revenue generating) and which phrases only yielded clicks (non revenue or low revenue generating).

If you are not tracking your keyword phrases when running pay per click campaigns, you either have lots of money to burn (as mentioned in my opening BBQ comment) or you are already making more than you are spending and am not looking to increase your bottom line profit. :)

As for specific technical details on how to track impressions --> click throughs --> conversions, now that is a topic for another article.

Ian LeeInternet Marketing Strategist / Affiliate Manager

25 Ways to Add QualityContent to Your Web Site (Part 1)

Using ideas that cover at least 25 differentindustries! By Robin Nobles

We've known for a long time that quality matters to Google. In a post Senior Google Engineer Matt Cutts made to his blog, "quality" was mentioned several times as being important to Google. Quality matters when it comes to content, and it matters when it comes to links.
However, building content and links doesn't have to be painful. Web site owners tend to think of content in a very limited way.

So, let's open up our creative minds and think of all sorts of ways of adding quality content to a Web site.

A few things to remember:

• You're only confined by the boundaries you set for yourself and your Web site. Allow yourself to think in a totally different way than you've thought before. Your Web site content should be written for your buying customers . . . not for you.
• Your Web site content should not be written for the search engines. The search engines are not your target audience.
• Think of the overall picture of your site, as if it were a living, breathing entity. After all, Web sites should continue to grow on a constant basis and nevër be stale or stagnant.

Let's Get into the Fun Stuff: Quality Content for YourTarget Audience

1. A calendar of events. This is ideal for sites like real estate sites to show upcoming open houses; book stores to promote upcoming book signings or writers' meetings; collectors' sites to show meetings across the country, etc. Be sure to allow visitors to send in their own event to be posted to the calendar.

2. Maps. Consider real estate sites, hunting or fishing sites, camping sites, hotels, or any outdoor recreational sites for maps. Be sure to add content at the bottom of the map that describes the map and outlines its purpose as it relates to your site.

3. Before/after experiences. This is perfect for products or services you're selling where customers can write in and discuss how this particular product or service helped them. These could turn out to be mini articles, or use them as testimonials.

4. Pictures from your customers. You could set up a special place where past customers could post their pictures and journal entries on your site. This is ideal for vacation sites, recreational sites, wedding sites, baby sites, photography studios, etc. How could you use this idea on a Halloween site? On a flower site?

5. Online coloring sheets. Use your imagination here. If you set up some coloring sheets about your vacation property, kids could color those sheets and post them online before their trip in their own special online area. After the trip, their parents could post pictures and a journal of their trip. This is their "Web site" about their trip, all hosted on your site as a perk for booking through your vacation site. What are they going to do with this information? They're going to tell their friends, Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Edna, etc. They're going to link to it. You can use this perk as part of your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) when differentiating yourself from your competition. You'll be building one-way links from your past customers, plus visibility for future customers. Win/win situation. You'll think of many ways of adding coloring sheets (or similar creative activities for kids) to your site, if your site is the type that would work for kids.

6. Blogs or forums certainly add fresh content to a site.

7. Articles or new pages of interest to your target audience. Write new content on a regular basis – once or twice a week should be your goal.

8. An expert Q&A on the main page of your site. Get an expert to answer questíons, and post one question/answer a week (or a day – whatever you can handle) on the main page of your site. Have past Q&A's in a searchable archive on your site.

9. Product reviews. If your industry has products or software to review, consider writing candid reviews of those products. Publish the reviews on your Web site as well as publish them in a few of the online publications. Readers are always interested in totally candid reviews, where the writer lists the positive as well as the negative aspects of a product. If you have a landscaping business, how could you use this idea? What products do you, as an expert, prefer to use, and why?

10. Short tips. If your product or service lends itself to short tips, write up a series and publish them on your Web site. Send them out in your newsletter. Get your readers to send in tips as they use the product. Offer a discount off additional products if they submit tips.

11. FAQ's. FAQ's are content – content that your target audience wants to know. As you get questíons from your readers, add additional Q&A's to your FAQ's to keep them current.

12. How-to guides. People love "how to" guides. If you sell online plumbing parts, why not have a "how to" guide on installing a new toilet? Make it easy on your customers, and they'll come back to you again and again. Create a series of "how to" guides. Be The Toilet Guy on the Net. May not sound too glamorous, but if you're highly visible on the Net and are converting traffïc to sales, you can afford to be glamorous OFF the Net!

Simple SEO Truths
By Kim Roach

The following guidelines will help you to start seeing results in the search engines. Your first step is simply choosing the right keywords.

Choosing the Right Keywords

Often times, people make the mistake of optimizing for very general keywords like used cars or online marketing. Although these terms get lots of traffic, it is very unlikely that you will be able to rank highly for them. Then, even if you do, this type of traffic produces very low conversion rates because they are not targeted prospects.

For example, if you are selling hiking backpacks, it would be much more beneficial for you to target the phrase 'hiking backpacks' rather than the extremely competitive keyword 'backpacks'. It would be even better to target the phrase 'camelbak commander'. This is a specific type of backpack and therefore will attract more buyers than searchers.
In fact, according to Jupiter Media Metrix, 28 percent of searchers will type a product name into a search engine. Nine percent type in a brand name and 5 percent type in company names.
The more targeted your keyword phrase, the more likely they are to buy. A person who types in 'backpacks' may be looking for school backpacks or snowboard backpacks. This lends to useless, un-targeted traffic.

However, a person that searches for a specific brand of backpacks knows exactly what they want and they are much further along in the buying process.

Once you have determined the best possible keyword phrases to target, you must now optimize your page for those specific keywords.

Optimize Your Page for Targeted Keywords

There are many factors that will determine how your web pages rank. However, one of the most important ones is that of a good title. The title tag appears at the very top of the head section. The words in the title tag will appear in the clickable link on the search engine results page (SERP).

Your title tag should contain targeted keyword phrases that reflect the copy on the page. The most important keywords should appear near the beginning of the title tag, You must also keep in mind that this should be a compelling title that would attract searchers to want to know more.
Your title tag should focus on your primary keyword, but it should also deliver a message. Use your title to mention benefits, make an attention-grabbing statement, ask a compelling question, or anything else that would set you apart from all of the other pages competing against you. Your title should include the main keyword you are targeting on that page as well as entice visitors to click on your link.

Following the title tag are your Meta description and Meta keyword tags.
You have probably heard that meta tags are dead and for the most part that is true. However, you should still include them in your web site because they allow you to control the description of your listing in some of the search engines.

Your meta description can make the difference in someone clicking on your link or choosing your competitor.

The meta description tag should be used for marketing purposes, enticing people to click on your link as opposed to one of the other 9 search results. Meta keywords tags are a different story. Google pays absolutely no attention to this tag: a result of spammers. As for the rest of the search engines, meta keywords may be taken into account, but they are still of very little importance.

I would advise that you use this tag for misspellings, technical acronyms and synonyms. Using this technique, you may be able to bring in some additional traffic for people looking for related, but less popular keywords.

Creating Quality Content

Next, you will want to focus on the visible content of your page. Many people online today are creating content that is written specifically for the search engines. However, I would advise you to optimize your content for your readers. Your readers are the most important.

To rank for your targeted keyword phrases, you must include them within your copy, but you must first ensure that your content is appealing to your visitors. After you do this, you can then weave your keywords into your copy.

You'll especially want to have your targeted keyword phrase in the very first paragraph of your text. Some other places you will want to include your keywords are in the image alt attributes and within your heading tags. Place all of your subtitles into header tags with your targeted keyword phrases.

Internal Linking

Creating quality content for your visitors is crucial. However, proper navigation and site structure can be just as important.

The search engines cannot fully index your site if it is not properly linked together.
Every single page on your web site should be no more than 2 clicks away from the homepage.
Before you create your site, decide on which internal pages are the most important in terms of ranking. Once you have gathered 15-20 of your most important pages, you will need to place them at the side and bottom navigation of each one of your web pages. This will ensure that the most possible pagerank is transferred to those pages.

Each of these links should contain descriptive anchor text, preferably targeted keyword phrases that you are wanting to rank highly for. You should never make your web site visitors guess what's on the other end with a link that says, 'click here'. Be as descriptive as possible and your visitors will thank-you.

One of the best ways to structure your site is through the use of hub pages. This is very similar to hubs on a spoke. At the center is your homepage. On the homepage, you have a link to each of the hub pages. The hub pages are basically small site maps that are built into the navigation. Each hub includes a set of information on a particular keyword or phrase. This is often referred to as content layering. You can layer your site through the use of sub-folders.

Inbound Links

Once you have finished optimizing all of the on-page factors, you must focus on some crucial off-page factors. To have a truly successful search engine optimization campaign, you have to go beyond on-page factors. Your overall link popularity is a crucial ranking factor.

Some of the best techniques for getting quality in-bound links are syndicating articles, exchanging RSS feeds, submitting your web site to directories, syndicating your podcast, sending out press releases, and simply having a link-worthy site.

When you have a site that is full of wonderful, useful information, other sites will start naturally linking to you. You have probably heard that content is king on the internet. However, this is simply not true. QUALITY content is the true king.

In review, keep in mind that the most important places to use your researched keyword phrases are in your title tags, the visible body of your text, and in onsite and offsite links.
Successful SEO takes time. If you continually put all of these strategies into action, you will begin to see the benefits in due time.

10 Essential Blogging Tools
By John Jantsch

Feed Reader

The best way to learn about blogs and blogging is to read, or at least scan, lots of blogs. One of the wonders of blogs is that you can have every new post from every blog you want to read delivered to your desktop or to online location via RSS, so you can easily read and scan the posts of many blogs in a very short time. Newsgator is a good online choice for feed reading and also has a version that integrates with Outlook. I use a frëe online service known as Bloglines.

Subscriber Center

You need to make it easy for your blog visitors to subscribe to your blog's RSS feed – so they can read your blog in their favorite feed reader. The best way to do this is to go to FeedBurner and burn your own RSS feed there and use the tools they provide to set up automatic subscriber links so people who want to use Bloglines, Google Reader, MyYahoo or Pluck, for instance, can clíck on one button to subscribe. Tech types can figure this out without the buttons but why not make it easy for anyone to figure out.
Side note: Subscribe to each of these yourself and you will force some blog spiders to visit your site.

Email Subscription Option

A lot of people will nevër get the whole feed thing, but everyone gets email. Create an option for people to subscribe by giving you their email address – they will simply receive your blog posts like an email message. FeedBurner offers this service for frëe. FeedBlitz is another option or, if you already have an autoresponder email list service they may offer this service. AWeber offers this and helps me integrate these blog email subscribers into my other mailing lists.

Blog and RSS directories

There are hundreds of blog and RSS directories and getting listed in many can be a good thing. I use a piece of software called RSS Submit , but you can also visit Robin Goode's frequently updated list and submit your blog and feed by hand.
Hint: Subscribe to the RSS feed he offers and you will be notified when new directories are added.

Ping Service

Pinging is a term used for letting the various blog and RSS directories know when you have posted new content. Again, FeedBurner offers this as an automatic option called PingShot and you should activate it. PingGoat and Ping O Matic are other options but they require that you visit and update your record each time you post new content. Bookmark Manager
As you surf around the web or hop from blog to blog you may find sites that you want to point out to your readers. Online bookmark managers allow you to bookmark and categorize web and blog pages as you collect them and are a great tool for managing all of the stuff you find on the web. I use del.icio.us but BlinkList does a fine job as well.

Blog Stats

I like to track a few key stats in real time because it shows what other blogs might be linking to you or posting about your blog. A lot of people just like to track this kind of thing for fun and frequently visit sites like Technorati. I like to track it for networking opportunities. I use a tool called MyBlogLog because it allows me to see where traffïc is coming from but also tracks what links on my blog visitors are clicking on. It's amazing how this data can help you write more effectively. (MyBlogLog also ranks your links so visitors can see which links on your site are the most popular.)

Desktop Posting

With most blog software you must go online and post using a set of tools provided by the blog software. Many bloggers like to use a desktop application to create and submit their posts as it gives them some extra tools and allows them to more easily integrate content and files on their computer.
I use w.blogger but also like Performancing, Qumana and ecto (apple folks) (w.blogger also doubles as a really simple HTML editor.)
Tell A Friend Script
My blog software (pMachine) has a feature that allows a reader to clíck a link and send the post to a friend. This tactic brings me lots of readers. You might try looking here for some simple scripts that do that same: https://webmailcluster.perfora.net/xml/deref?link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.javascriptkit.com%2Fscript%2Fscript2%2Ftellafriend.shtmlhttps://webmailcluster.perfora.net/xml/deref?link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stadtaus.com%2Fen%2Fphp_scripts%2Ftell_a_friend_script%2F
Republish Your Feed Headlines

The ability to republish your blog posts on other web pages, sites you own or sites of strategic partners is a great way to expose folks to your blog content. One more time we turn to FeedBurner for a painless way to republish your blog post to any web page you choose with something they call BuzzBoost.

Guide toTop Search Engine Rankings

By Trent Brownrigg

1. Web Site Content

Content on your site is one of the most important factors for successful search engine optimization. Your web site should provide valuable information on specific subjects relevant to your web site. Furthermore, your content should be updated regularly. It's not enough to just put up a few content pages full of information on your site and then nevër add to it. This is a continuous process that will help your search engine rankings if done correctly.

It's also important that you don't try to trick the search engines by flooding them with multiple versions of the same page, repeating the same content over and over. Doing that will not help your rankings and will eventually lead to your site getting banned from the search engines.

2. Link Popularity

Inbound links are very important for achieving high search engine rankings. Most of the search engines today regard link popularity as one of the most significant determinants of your website's rankings.

Here are some of the best ways to get inbound links:

• Articles - Writing and submitting articles to websites and article directories is a very good way to get inbound links.
• Content - Not only will adding quality content help in your rankings by itself, it will also help you with your link popularity. Other webmaster's will want to link to your site because it is valuable to them and their own visitors.
• Directories - Submitting your site to online directories will help you gain inbound links.
• Blogs - Start a blog that you update frequently with information related to your website's niche. Then, link to your site from the blog. You can also submit your blog to various blog directories to get even more inbound links.
• Link Exchanges - Simply find other quality sites related to yours and ask them to link to you in exchange for a link back to them. This is not as effective as it used to be but it is still a pretty good way to get inbound links.

3. Title Tag and Meta Tags

Meta tags help describe the page where they are placed. Though today the Meta tags are not nearly as important as they once were and are definitely not the only things the search engines look for when indexing your site, they are still somewhat important in deciding the relevancy of the page for a keyword search.

Search engines focus on three primary tags to help them determine the relevance of a website for a particular search phrase. The Title Tag, Meta Keywords and the Meta Description...

Editorial Note: Most experts agree that the Title tag is very important to a website's ranking and that the Meta Description tag is still useful to most search engines in the SERPs (search engine result pages) as a concise outline of a site's content. The Meta Keywords tag is, however, generally believed to be irrelevant to all the major engines in determining site ranking.

Ideally the title tags should contain less than 64 characters with your most important keywords in them and should definitely be relevant to the content on the page. Do not stuff keywords in to the title tag!

The Meta description tag is a summary of the page and its contents. This Meta tag should be 200 characters or less and should contain keywords and phrases you hope to be found for, but it should also read like an introductory lead-in for the page and be appealing to the reader. The description you provide for your page has to convince the visitor that they have found exactly what they were looking for.

Probably the least important Meta tag to search engines is the keyword tag. However, it shouldn't be ignored. Keyword tags should be less than 1000 characters. This tag should include important keywords and phrases consistent with the body text, title, and content of the page. Be specific and accurate with the keywords and key phrases in this tag. Again, do not stuff keywords here... they should only be those that are actually on the page and do not repeat any word more than 3 times.

4. Heading Tags

The heading tags are given more weíght than the ordinary text. The higher the H tag the more weíght it carries. You should make use of the heading tags to highlight the important keywords and headings of your page as well as the paragraph headers.

5. Bold Text

Bold text is given a little more weíght than ordinary text but not as much as heading tags. Make sure to enclose some of your keywords in bold tags when they appear on the page.

6. Alt Text

The alt tag provides alternative text when images cannot be displayed... This might happen if the users have set the browsers only to download the text and not the graphics, or if the images are too heavy to download for the user’s internet connection. Only include important keywords relevant to your site and the image and do not stuff keywords in them.

7. Link Text

This is a very important factor in search engine optimization to gain higher rankings. The link text can be on pages within your site or what other web sites use to link to you. Either way, it is important. If possible the target page's main search term should be included in the link text instead of just the URL. Do not use identical link text for every link, but do include the target page's main keywords in the link text. Links carry more weíght when the text around them is relevant to the target page's keywords and phrases.

Following the above SEO information will help tremendously in your search engine rankings. Remember that the search engines are advancing all the time. Don't try to trick them because they will eventually catch on and that could mean the end of your web site. Stick to the basic techniques above and you will increase your search engine rankings without fear of being banned or dropped.

Low AdSense Revenues

This is the bottom line of adsense advertising and if your revenues are low then it couldn't be clearer that you're doing something wrong.

If your revenues are much lower than you'd like, there are a number of different possible reasons and you need to check each of the following in turn:

• Your Traffic Levels. If you don't have the traffic, you won't get the renevues. A low level of traffic could be one reason why you're only making a low level of income.
• Your CTR. Increasing your traffic might not raise your income as much as you want if your clickthrough rate isn't all it should be. Once you've checked your traffic levels, take a look at howw much of that traffic you're converting into clicks.
• Your Click Price. When the ads change all the time it's not always easy to figure out how much each click is worth but if you divide your daily income by your daily clicks you can get an idea of how much you're earning per click. If that figure is hovering around five cents, you're not making much - and you need to be making more.

You won't be able to make a move until you've figured out which of these potential problems is yours, and it's likely that your problem will be a mixture of more than one of them.

AdSense With Sart Pricing

Protect yourself if one of your sites has a low ROI, it can affect all the sites in your adsense account. If a page has a low ROI than remove the adsense code from that page, wait a week and see if there was a change in your ad prices.

This is what google has offcially told us about Smart Pricing:

• The price of an ad is influenced by a number of different factors. Those factors can include: the bid price; the quality of the ad; competition from other ads in the same field; the location of the ad as part of a marketing campaign; etc.
• The ad price is not affected by the click-through rate. Sending advertisers large numbers of clicks will not increase the bid price. (That doesn't mean the CTR isn't important at all for your revenue; it's just not important in determining the amount you receive for the click.)
• "Content Is King." Google makes it pretty clear that sites that will benefit most from adsense are those that "create compelling content for interested users." They also emphasize the importance of bringing targeted traffic to look at that content. Those are two different factors which together create a site with loyal, appreciative users... Just the sort of thing that every serious webmaster wants.

Niche websites are the best for higher CTR and fewer false clicks with adsense.

• Smart Pricing is calculated across an Adsense account. So if you have a number of different sites covering a range of different topics and one of them delivers a low ROI, all your ad prices may be lowered.
• Smart Pricing is evaluated weekly. If you believe that an ad is delivering a low ROI, you can remove it from your site and you should see higher ad prices within a week.
• Smart Pricing is tracked with a 30-day cookie. Users don't have to convert immediately into a sale (or whatever will count as a conversation) for you to benefit. They can think about it for a month and you'll still get the benefit.
• Prices may be reduced even below an advertiser's minimum bid. So looking up the bid price for targeted keywords won't help you very much; if your ROI is low, your rates could be lower than minimum quoted.

Optimizing CTR In AdSense

Much of your success will depend on lifting your CTR as high possible. Obviously, the more people who click on your ads the more money you should make, but it's not always easy to know when you're inviting as many people as possible to get clicking. I've gone from less than 1% CTR to over 8% on some sites but I know of some sites that are getting over 30% CTR!

Your CTR will depend on a number of different factors, including:

• Site Content - Some types of content get more clicks than others (but don't necessarily make more money per click...)
• Site Design - I will talk more on this blog about the importance of ad placement and how they look.
• Number Of Links - Why give your ads competition? If people want to click away from the page, you should get paid for it.
• Ad Relevancy - If you're not getting served ads that are relevant to your content, you're going to have a low CTR.

AdSense QuickStart Guide #2: Building A Site From Scratch

Creating a blog is the easiest way to get started with adsense but it's not for everyone. Create a complete website from scratch is going to take a little longer... but not a lot longer.

Step 1: Pick Up A Name

The first thing you'll need is a domain. You grab one of those at either GoDaddy.com or NetworkSolution.com

Step 2: Build Your Site

You can build your site yourself or hire someone to do it for you. Or you can take a pre-built template and pack it with your own content. One site called http://www.freesitetemplates.com is packed with a good range of templates that you can use and play with but you'll have to upload the finished site onto their servers. If you're in a rush, it's a great way to get online and earning fast.

Step 3: Create Your Content

Keep it simple! You don't have to pack your site with Flash images or anything fancy. Write about what you like! If you're into fun at the beach, create pages with reviews of your local sand spots. Into skiing? Discuss your favorite ski equipment. Everyone's got something interesting that people will enjoy reading... and gets you the sort of following that wins clicks.

Step 4: Apply For AdSense

Once your first pages are up and built (and none of this should take you more than a few hours) you're ready to apply to Adsense. Fill in the form and wait for the approval.

Step 5: Bring In The Traffic

While you're waiting for the first ads, you can start submitting your site to the search engines and building up the traffic.

Step 6: Play With Yours Ads

When the ads come in, don't forget to optimize them on your site. It's very simple and will have a massive effect on your CTR, even at this early stage.

AdSense QuickStart Guide #1: Building A Blog

Blogging is probably the easiest way to get online with adsense fast. The sites are already online, you don't have to worry about graphics and the domains all set up.

All you have to do is sign up, write and earn!

Step 1: Surf to www.blogger.com

Complete the registration page, choose a name for your blog and pick a template.

Step 2: Apply For AdSense Through Blogger

Another form, another two minutes. It will take a day or two before your application is approved. In the meantime, you can play with blogger's adsense preview tool, and...

Step 3: Write Your First Blog Entry

Not sure what to write? Start with your family, spout off about a story in the news, put up pictures for your friends to see... it doesn't matter. Everyone has something that occupies their mind, that interests them or that they're good at. Put up anything. You can change it later but for now just get ib the habit of writing to the web. Once you've done it once you'll see how easy it can be - and how addictive.

Step 4: Play With Your Ads

Once adsense has approved your application, you'll be able to start playing with your ads. You can change the colors, fix the font size, remove the border and move them into the sidebar if you wish. You can get everything geared up and ready for...

Step 5: Bring In The Traffic

It's taken you minutes to get your site up. Now you have to let people know you're online. Futher discussion will be on this blog on swapping links, blogging, and search engine optimization (SEO).

Before signing up to adsense though, it's important to understand what you're signing up to. Many of the principles and strategies that I describe in this book make the most of the way that adsense works. If you can understand where adsense are getting their ads, how they assign those ads to web pages and how they fix the prices for clicks on those ads or for ad appearances on those pages, you'll be in great position to manipulate adsense in a way that gives you maximum revenues.

At the most most basic level adsense is a service run by google that places ads on websites. When you sign up to adsense, you agree to take the ads that google gives you and recieve a free each time a user clicks on that ad (or for each thousand ad appearances that ad receives on your site, depending on the type of ad google give you).

If you understand adsense, you will need to understand adwords.

Advertisers submit their ads to google using the adwords program. They write a headline and a short piece of text - and here's where it gets interesting - they choose how much they want to pay.

Advertisers decide on the size of their advertising budgets and the amount they're prepared to pay for each click they receive. Google then decides where to put those ads.

That makes adwords different to more traditional form of advertising. When an advertiser signs up to adwords, he has no idea where his ads are going to turn up. When you sign up to adsense, you've got no idea how much you're going to be paid for the ad space on your page.

Google says that it always assigns ads in such a way that publishers receive maximum revenues and advertisers get the best value for their money.

In theory then, you could just leave it to google to decide which ads to give you and at which price.

In experience though, that just cuts you out of a giant opportunity. You can influence the choice of ads that you get on your page, both in terms of content and in terms of price. You can certainly influence the number of clicks you receive on those ads. Google leaves it entirely up to you - and it's crucial part of difference between earnings that pay for candy bars and earnings that pay for cars.

Don't cut yourself short and make adsense as successful as possible.

The bottom line is that there are three ways to increase your adsense revenue.

1. By Tweaking the Ads

To Make them more appealing to your visitors.

2. By Optimizing your Website

For better adsense targeting (or what the Google folks call 'content relevance') And the only sure-fire way to get 1 and 2 right is by

3. Tracking Visitors Response

If you don't know what works (and what doesn't work) in trying to increase your adsense revenue... you're shooting arrows in the dark!

The right tracking tools can reveal a great deal about your visitors and answer fundamental questions such as what they're looking for and what makes them 'click'. Once you've figured that out, bingo! You're on your way to big adsense bucks!

But it isn't as straight-forward as it seems. If it were, there wouldn't be so many grumpy people on adsense forums, complaining about their low adsense earnings. It's not that they aren't doing anything about it. They simply aren't doing the right things.

Biggest Adsense Mistakes

Big Mistake #1: Not Being Familiar With Google's TOS

On the one hand, this is an easy mistake to make. The terms of service change all the time and what's legal one day could be illegal the nest - and you could know nothing about the change.

On the other hand though, if something you've been doing is suddenly made illegal you probably shouldn't be doing it anyway. The bottom line is to check the TOS regularly and to make a habit of browsing the adsense forums. Even if you miss a change, it's unlikely that other people will too.

It's a mistake not to stay informed.

Big Mistake #2: Inviting Others To Click Ads

That clicking your own ads is a mistake is pretty clear. There's no reason to do it and no excuse for doing it.

That also includes asking other people to click on the ads for you.

For site owners used to asking their users to support their sponsors, this can take some getting used to. Once the ads are up and optimize, there's nothing more that you can do to persuade people to click.

If you've got a line on your website that asks people to support your sponsors or if you've been asking people to click on your ads in any sort of way, you're making a gaint mistake.

That's the sort of mistake that can get you banned.

Big Mistake #3: Using Wrong Ad Blocks

Those first two mistakes will get you banned. The remaining mistakes will "only" cost you money.

Choosing the wrong ad blocks is one of the easiest mistakes to make. Almost any block can fit in almost any space but only one block will give you the highest revenues possible.

Sitting on your laurels with the wrong ad block is certainly a mistake.

Big Mistake #4: Using The Wrong Colors

Exactly the same is true of your choice of colors. Forget about looking for some nice contrast or coming up with some snazzy design, you want the colors in your ads to match the colors of your site.

The background color should be the same as the background of your site and the font colors should match too.

Any other color is usually a mistake.

Big Mistake #5: Poor Page Placement

Some places on your page are much more powerful that others. You want to put your ads where your users are going to be looking, not where they'll make the page look good.

That might be at the beginning of an article, in the side bar, at the top of the page, next to an image or any one of several dozen other spots.

Don't be shy about putting your ads front and forward. As long as they're blended into the site, they won't be anything like as obtrusive as you think. They'll be right in front of your users and attractive enough to click.

Big Mistake #6: Not Using Adlink Units

A common mistake that people make when they first start using adsense is to assume that only the ad units are worth taking.

That's a big mistake.

Clicks on adlink units make up serious part of my adsense earning. When used properly, they should be a serious part of your adsense earings too. Don't overlook adlink units just because they're small. Put them in the right place and you'll find that they can be very, very powerful.

Big Mistake #7: Not Checking And Analyzing Stats

One of the biggest differences between adsense publishers who get the big checks and adsense publishers who earn pennies is that the big earners are addicted to reading their stats - and they understand what they're reading.

It's very tempting once you've set up your site and put on your ads to just kick back and look at the bottom line. But the other lines tell you what's working and what you should be doing.

Read your stats carefully and regularly.

Big Mistake #8: Ignoring Channels

If you're not sure how to use channels, don't let it ride. For some people channels can look a little scary. You have to build them from scratch, you might not be too sure which channels you should create or what you should do with the data the channels should give you.

None of those is a good excuse. Channels are easy to build and they give you heaps of information about the way each of your web pages is operating that you just couldn't get anywhere else.

If you're not using channels, you need to start.

Big Mistake #9: Not Keeping An Adsense Journal

When you were at school and your English teacher told you to keep a journal, you probably groaned, ignored her...and made up a month's worth of entries the day before you were supposed to bring it in to class.

When you're trying to make a lot of money with adsense, keeping a journal is vital. It's the only way to keep track of your changes and what happened when you implemented those changes.

Every time you use a different ad block, push a different keyword or try a new location on the page, write it down, wait a week and write down the effects. If you're doing the same thing time and time again because you forgot what happened when you did it last time, you're wasting your time and your money.

Big Mistake #10: Building Huge Sites Overnight

It's possible to go from no site to adsense site in just a few minutes (plus the time it takes to get the confirmation letter). But it will take a little while longer to build the sort of massive site that keeps users coming back and builds a loyal base.

Sure, you can use free books to fill dozens of pages and you can use already prepared content, but neither of these methods are as good as creating a huge site filled with original material.

That takes time.

Rush it and it's more likely you'll end up with a lot of trash that kills your clicks and ruins your Smart Pricing that a quality site that makes you money. It's better to be small and good than big and bad.

Big Mistake #11: Building Throwaway Sites

And if it's a bad idea to build large trashy sites, it's a terrible idea to build small, trashy sites. Check out the adsense forums long enough and there's a good chance that you'll come across plenty of publishers who believe not in creating good quality sites bit in building small garbage-y ones and trying to squeeze as much revenue out of them as possible.

The advantage is that you can throw up a lot of them in a small amount of time and for little cost. The disadvantage is that the returns are small too - and most important, they're just no fun to do.

I thoroughly enjoy managing every one of the sites I've created. It's because I enjoy them that my users enjoy them. That keeps them coming back and it keeps them clicking. And it keeps me coming back too. If you're building throwaway sites just to make a quick buck, you're working too hard...and that's a giant mistake.

Big Mistake #12: Doing Adsense Halfway

And finally, this was the big mistake that I made for a long time. It's also the big mistake that about 95 percent of adsense publishers are making. They create their site, put up an adsense, maybe they''ll optimize it a little (and maybe not), and then they'll wait for the checks to come in.

Making a lot of money with adsense will take a lot of work. It can make you more money than most people will make in most full-time jobs but it's not the sort of thing you can throw up in the morning and then spend the afternoon shopping of your beach house in Cancun.