INFO ABOUT WEB MARKETING

Internet marketing can attract more people to your website, increase customers for your business, and enhance branding of your company and products. If you are just beginning your online marketing strategy the top 10 list below will get you started on a plan that has worked for many.
Start with a web promotion plan and an effective web design and development strategy.
Get ranked at the top in major search engines, and practice good Search Optimization Techniques.
Learn to use Email Marketing Effectively.
Dominate your marketing niche with affiliate, reseller, and associate programs.
Request an analysis from an Internet marketing coach or Internet marketing consultant.
Build a responsive opt-in email list.
Publish articles or get listed in news stories.
Write and publish online press releases.
Facilitate and run contests and giveaways via your web site.
Blog and interact with your visitors.
By following the above tips you'll be on your way to creating a concrete internet marketing strategy that could boost your business substantially

ETHICS IN COMPUTER BUSINESS

The ethics of free software

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.
When you turn on your computer, you’re making a political statement.

If, like most people, your computer boots Microsoft Windows, the statement you’re making is that transnational corporations should control access to the most powerful public media that ever existed. You’re passively accepting, too, that non-industrial nations should be kept from developing, and helping to preserve a monoculture that threatens the existence of minority languages. At a personal level, you’re accepting that these same corporations should control your access to educational and government services and have a right to install lock-down technologies on your computer without your permission – to say nothing of controlling what other software you can use and how you use it.

Most people, of course, never think of these implications. When confronted, some will claim that none of this matters. Most, even social activists, accept the situation because they don’t know of any alternative.

Yet an alternative does exist, and it’s becoming more viable by the day.

It’s called Free Software. It has already built and still runs most of the internet. Now, increasingly, Free Software is finding its way on to the desktops of those who want their ethics to extend to their computers.

From the city of Munich and the Extremadura region of Spain, to Brazil and the Indian state of Kerala, the possibilities of Free Software are being explored and, in many cases, implemented. Adaptation is slower in North America, where Microsoft’s influence is strongest, but even there many universities, corporations and government departments are at least considering the possibilities.

Where it all comes from
Free Software began in 1984 when Richard M Stallman started the GNU project to build a free operating system. Stallman had become concerned about a major shift in the culture of programming. With the increased popularity of computers, software was being treated as a commodity and the old academic tradition of sharing programs in the name of exchanging ideas was dead.

As an alternative to the new proprietary programs, Stallman created the Free Software Foundation as a home for his project and wrote a software licence called the GNU General Public Licence. ‘The GNU General Public Licence is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software,’ the Preamble to the licence says, ‘to make sure the software is free for all its users.’ The licence then goes on to grant users the right to copy, install and change any software that uses it in any way that they please, so long as a few basic conditions are met, including preserving the original programmers’ credit and using the same licence for any modified version.

These were radical ideas in the 1980s and they were largely ignored by the general public. Free Software’s real boost came in the early 1990s, when the internet – that it had largely created – in turn allowed groups of programmers to co-operate remotely. In a few years they had built a whole operating system called GNU/Linux – or Linux, as it is often shortened to.

Soon, thousands of people were collaborating worldwide to fill in the gaps. At first their efforts were focused on GNU/Linux. However, enthusiasm quickly led to similar efforts on Windows and the Mac, as well as several other lesser-known operating systems. An offshoot and ally, the Open Source Movement, uses the same licences and co-operative work methods, but its main concerns are software quality and working with business. Today, some gaps remain – notably games and some drivers for the very latest software. But it is now possible, without much effort, to perform routine office functions entirely in free software that is usually as good as, and often superior to, the proprietary tools it replaces.

Need to replace MS Office? Try OpenOffice.org. Internet Explorer? Try Mozilla Firefox. PhotoShop? The GIMP. And, in many cases, you’ll find not just one alternative, but dozens, especially if you drop Windows or OS X in favour of GNU/Linux.

The free software world view
If you’re not a programmer or a lawyer, all this might sound as exciting as washing the dishes. So why should you care? Because, in ensuring their own power to tinker with software, free software programmers have also empowered users.

With free software, access to programs becomes a matter of accessibility to the internet or contact with a project rather than the size of your bank balance. Instead of going to the store, users can download the type of program they need from the internet – and have it automatically installed in minutes. Upgrades are the same. If organizations or users need some functionality that isn’t there, they can add it themselves, or become involved with the project that develops it and lobby for changes. Moreover, organizations no longer need to be worried about licence audits or getting activation codes.

The fact that it comes without a price tag doesn’t hurt, either. Although the Free Software Foundation prefers to emphasize philosophical freedoms, its cost-free nature remains one of the main attractions for cash-strapped governments and educational institutions. Even allowing for training, free software has been found consistently cheaper to run than proprietary software in every neutral study ever conducted.

If you are socially active, you’ll probably find the values associated with free software even more attractive. For one thing, projects are usually communal organizations, where authority and respect are based largely on contributions. Many of the members, too, are volunteers, working only for credit, although a growing number are paid for their efforts by companies like Google or IBM that see benefits in both software results and public relations by offering assistance.

In some companies, too, the co-operative ethos spills over into their interactions with competitors, evolving a less capitalistic, more humane way of doing business. The same clashes of ego occur as anywhere else, but, even so, the thousands of projects around the world are living proof of how efficient collaborative methods can be.

One more reason to support free software is that it helps to put the entire world on an equal footing. Free Software Foundation supporters believe that it is a basic necessity of free speech. Today this requires that everyone who wants it has internet access. Yet, given the price of proprietary software, many people – especially in impoverished nations, but also in the inner city and remote rural regions in the industrialized world – can’t afford legal access. Nor can some governments afford to build the technological infrastructure to improve their countries. Free software removes many of these barriers.

Admittedly, hardware can also be a problem. That’s one reason why One Laptop Per Child, an initiative whose goal is to build a $100 computer and see copies distributed as widely as possible, finds many of its most enthusiastic supporters in the free software community. The computer will be distributed to millions of schoolchildren in the developing world and free software will be installed (see http://laptop.org).

Some people question the priorities of the project, arguing that it matters less than ensuring food or shelter. Yet, by the same arguments, efforts to improve education in developing nations should also be ignored. The issue is less about priorities than about people helping in the areas where they can make a personal difference.

Similarly, personal computers and the internet threaten to produce a monoculture. Fortunately for the British, North Americans and Australasians, the language of the monoculture is English. Those in less dominant states or in minority regions aren’t so lucky. Often they have trouble finding programs written in their own language, because proprietary software vendors have judged the market too small to be worth developing a product for it. However, armed with enthusiasm and a perception of need, volunteers can often bridge the gaps that economic realities leave. OpenOffice.org, for example – the alternative to MS Office – has been the first office suite in many languages, including Welsh, Scots, Gaelic and Slovenian. With free software tools, minority language users can keep their language alive and growing. In fact, Free Software projects have frequently been the originators of dozens of computer terms in such languages.

Free Software even plays a role in recycling. Because operating systems like GNU/Linux are more efficiently written than Windows, they can extend the life of older hardware. Instead of upgrading all your hardware to Vista for the same functionality, you can step away from the mindless consumerism of planned obsolescence and install Free Software. That way, you can keep your existing equipment from filling up landfills or being dumped on developing nations as toxic waste.

Ethical computers and civil society
It’s all very simple: supporting free software is good for you and even better for the global community. Yet fewer than 10 per cent of computer users have any free software installed.

A large part of the reason is probably the tactics used by Microsoft to encourage the use of its products. However, Peter Brown, Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation and a former New Internationalist co-operative member, suggests some additional reasons. For one thing, he suggests, the implications of Free Software are so large that mainstream journalists have trouble covering the issue. When Brown tried to interest a friend at the BBC in covering free software, his friend was overwhelmed. ‘He was like: “This is a big topic we’re talking about,”’ Brown recalls.‘“It covers disks, it covers downloads, it covers television, it covers iPods. How on earth am I going to wrap up this story?”’

Another reason, Brown suggests, is that until recently the free software community has not managed to contact potential supporters who lack a strong interest in technology. The philosophy and organization of the movement have close affinities with those of social activists, charities and religious groups, yet such people know little about them. Many people in such groups have a minimal knowledge of technology, and tend to accept the dominant media portrayal of technologists as smart but anti-social people whose concerns are irrelevant to the average person.

Supporting free software is good for you and even better for the global community. Yet fewer than 10 per cent of computer users have any free software installed

Yet, slowly, the connections are being made. For example, as the Free Software Foundation explains in its Defective by Design campaign, the increasing spread of ‘lock-down’ technologies that can limit users’ control of their own hardware and obtain information about their habits without their consent raises issues about consumer rights, privacy, anti-trust and industry standards. In such cases, the technical aspects become secondary to the social implications.

‘When you’re talking about recycling, you don’t say that you’ll take waste to this location and heat it to so many degrees. No-one needs to know that,’ Brown says. ‘You don’t need to know the architecture of GNU/Linux in order to make a judgment call about the ethics of free software.’

In the end, he says, ‘Free software should be an obvious civil-society issue. It should be as obvious as recycling cans. It should be something that every parent should be asking when they go into a parent-teacher meeting: is the school using free software? Is my child being taught to use free software? Having control over your computer and knowing that your devices aren’t spying on you, that you have an ethical computer – [these] are all issues for civil society.’

Support begins with personal involvement. Instead of trying to grapple all at once with the complications, start simply. Look up the subject at Wikipedia and Google (two organizations with strong connections to the free software communities) and choose a program or two to try. Two good choices are the OpenOffice.org office suite (http://www.openoffice.org) and the Mozilla Firefox web browser (http://www.mozilla.com).

PPC/PPL/PPS

Understanding Affiliate Marketing
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Affiliate Marketing is a good way to earn extra revenue from your website. Many programs have a high payout and take very little time to set up. The following article on affiliate programs is a summary of the detailed information you can find at Affiliate Marketing Guide.
By Sharon Housley

Affiliate programs are commonly misunderstood, in order to understand affiliate programs lets start with terminology. For clarification purposes, an affiliate is defined as any "referrer" or website that promotes a product in an effort to earn revenue. A merchant is defined as someone who owns a product and is sharing revenues with an affiliate based on the affiliate's performance. Affiliate programs can drive targeted traffic to your website.

There are 3 basic affiliate programs, though only the first two are commonly used.

Pay Per Click - this is when an affiliate is compensated for sending traffic to the merchant. (AdSense is an example of PPC affiliate program)

Pay Per Sale - this is when the affiliate is compensated by the merchant if the referral generates a sale or purchase.

Pay Per Lead - this is when the merchant agrees to pay for a qualified (or sometimes unqualified lead), which is very uncommon because it is subjective and up to the merchant.

Affiliate websites tend to provide information, entertainment, and content services to their customers. The online merchants sell products, goods and services online. These are programs permitting affiliates to earn money based on the visitors to your site who click through to another's website. Some pay a token amount for the click through and others provide a percentage of sales when a visitor "clicks through" to your site and buys a product or service on the other party's site. This could represent a value added service to your visitors.

Affiliate programs allow you to pay and track incentives from other websites that send web surfers, leads or paying customers to your website. Commissions based on purchases made by traffic sent from the referring website can be paid. Besides a commission, an affiliate can receive a flat fee, or other incentives for all valid transactions it refers that generate a sale or lead.

Be careful that the affiliate's web page is not cluttered with banner ads that may crowd out your link, or that be annoying to customers. Affiliate programs enable affiliates to leverage their traffic and customer base in order to profit from e-commerce while merchants benefit from increased exposure and sales.

Commonly traffic to merchant sites is measured and affiliates can clearly see conversion rates. Meaning, they track the percentage of people they are referring, and how much of it results in earned revenue. If the affiliate finds a very low conversion, they will find a better way to monetize that traffic, quite possibly with a competing merchant product.

In order to be a successful affiliate, the affiliate site needs to either have tons of traffic or target a specific audience, frequently one untapped by the merchant. It has been my experience, the closer the affiliate site content resembles the merchant products, the higher the likelihood of a good conversion rate.

IMPORTANCE OF DOMAIN NAMES

Selecting a Quality Domain Name
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When you're ready to launch your web site and you're trying to select a good domain name, there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration.

Select a Domain Name that Reflects Your Web Site
Above all else, your domain name should reflect what your web site is all about. For example, if your web site is about grooming a dog, you certainly wouldn't want to select a domain name like 'mybusinessname.com,' as this would have nothing to do with your web site's focus. You would want to select a domain name that tells the world what your web site is all about -- something like 'doggrooming.com.'

Select a Domain Name that Contains Your Web Site's Keywords
Another consideration of great importance are your keywords. Try to select a domain name that contains your most relevant keyword phrase, as some Search Engines place relevancy on them. A keyword phrase is two or more words that best describe your web page. If your web page is focusing on grooming a dog, your best keyword phrase will be "dog grooming."

Select a Domain Name that will be Easily Remembered
With millions of web sites accessible on the Internet, it is also very important to select a domain name that will be easily remembered. As in the 'doggrooming.com' example above, 'doggrooming.com' is very easily remembered, contains the most relevant keyword phrase and describes the web site in explicit detail. It is the 'perfect' domain name for this particular web site.

Select the Best Domain Extension
Another consideration of importance is the domain name extension. Although there are many new domain extensions available, dotcom is still the best choice. When typing in a web address, Internet users automatically want to type in a .com extension, as this is the extension that has been embedded into our brains from the start.

Avoid Using Numbers in Your Domain Name
Although you may be tempted to do so, avoid using numbers within your domain name. Including a number within your domain name can cause problems, as when you tell someone your web address, you will continually have to tell them it's a number and not the word. For example, if you selected a domain name like number1host.com, if you were to tell someone your web address, they may try to type it as 'numberonehost.com' instead of 'number1host.com.' This type of domain name would cause confusion.

Avoid using Dashes and Underscores in Your Domain Name
Although many people do it, don't make the same mistake I made when I first started out. Avoid using dashes, underscores or any other characters within your domain name that may cause confusion. When I registered my domain name, Web-Source.net, I actually wanted websource.com; however, it had already been registered. So, I settled for Web-Source.net. Now, when I tell someone my domain name, I have to say it like this: web dash source dot net.

Don't get me wrong, www.Web-Source.net is now a high traffic web site, but I can only imagine how much traffic I've lost over the years due to my domain name. I have received many emails over the years from visitors who had a hard time finding my site. They said they couldn't remember the domain name and kept wanting to type in websource.com.

Avoid using Abbreviations within Your Domain Name
Although well-known companies, such as IBM, can get away with using abbreviations within their domain name, most companies can't. As a rule, try to avoid using abbreviations or anything that will be difficult for your visitors to remember. Not only will this cause confusion, but it can also cause your potential visitors to make spelling mistakes when trying to type in your web address.

Avoid using Long Domain Names
Although you may now register long domain names, it's really not a good idea. I learned this lesson the hard way. I registered 'www.workfromhomebusinessguide.com' and the sad thing is ... I can't remember the domain name half the time. How can I expect my potential visitors to remember it? Try to keep your domain name as short as possible. The longer the domain name the harder it is to remember and the more apt your potential visitors are to make a typo when typing it into their browser.




Ensure Your Domain Name is Not a Trademark Infringement
Prior to registering a domain name, you may want to consider searching the Trademark Electronic Search System, http://www.uspto.gov/main/trademarks.htm to ensure your potential domain name isn't infringing on any trademarks.

Please don't take this point lightly, as trademark infringement could cost you your entire business. It is your responsibility to ensure that your potential domain name doesn't infringe on any registered trademarks, as the trademark laws that apply in the hard copy world also apply on the Internet. Any company that registers a trademark has the right to protect their trademark and has the right to notify you that your domain name is infringing upon their trademark.

When you're ready to begin, create a list of a dozen or more potential domain names, as chances are, your first choice will already be taken. With any luck, one of the domain names on your list will be available.

Take your time and select a quality domain name that will grow with your business. It will be well-worth your time and effort in the long run

WEBSITES & SEO

Web Site SEO Check List
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There are a number of steps that should be taken when putting any website on the Internet. Failure to consider these steps will usually mean that your site will either rank very poorly in the search engine results or not at all, which pretty much defeats the purpose of creating a website. Collectively these steps are called SEO or Search Engine Optimization.

This list will help you remember all of the most essential SEO steps. Once these are completed you can move on to “Fine Tuning” your SEO by applying some of the more advanced Optimization methods found on this site. Looking for a professional web design agency? Check out Teknicks, the leading website design and search engine optimization SEO agency.


Search engines change their methods of ranking website periodically, so we will be updating this page as often as needed. Bookmark us, and stop by regularly for additional tips.

Editor……….
Onsite SEO
Research Good keywords
Sufficient page text – Too little text on a web page will cause Google to turn it into a supplemental page.
Original Page Text – Pages that are too similar to other pages on your site may be filtered out by the search engines.
Unique Page Title – Each page on your site should have a unique title based on the pages content and your most important keywords.
Unique Meta Description – Each page on your site should have a unique meta description based on the pages content and your most important keywords.
Unique Meta Keywords (doesn’t do much good, but it doesn’t hurt either) – Each page on your site should have a unique meta keywords based on the pages content and your most important keywords.
Keyword repetition in page text. Keywords and keyword variations should be used frequently on the page. Don’t get carried away, make sure the page is still comfortable for your visitors to read.
Keyword emphasis in page text – Use heading html tags and bold to tell the search engines what you think are the most important words on your page.
Keyword placement in page text – Be sure the first and last paragraphs on your page include your major keywords.
Alt tags – Search engines cannot read an image. Tell them what the picture is about. Don’t repeat the some keywords over and over, if you put the image there than it must relate to your content, tell the search engine about that relation.
Offsite SEO
Incoming links
Directories - General directories have some value; however, try to find as many niche directories that are devoted to your industry as you can. We suggest though that you do not get too wrapped up in this form of link acquisition. We recommend a slow, steady rate in adding these links. Don't spam Google
Article Submission – This is a good way to establish yourself as an “Authority” in your field, as well as create a steady stream of new relevant links (and Traffic) to your site.
Press Releases – Find “News Worthy” events to write about your company and your website. This can give you a large burst of new visitors, although these will normally reduce over time. Some of the sites that use your release may keep it on their site, which will give you a good quality link back to your site. Most of the links that you get will be short term, which will not provide link value. It’s the traffic that makes this worth while
Link Trades – The search engines are reducing the values of these trades. Be picky; only add trades from quality related sites. These trades often will send you regular visitors. If one of your visitors are going to leave your site (you don’t always have what they want!), why not send them to one of your “friends”.
One-way links – These come in many forms. You may pay for some, often sites will give you a link if you just ask and your site would be valuable to their clients.
Look for opportunities, some additional sources are:
Forums
Blog Comments
Review sites
Classified sites
Don’t spam these sites, if they give you the opportunity to write something and add your link, be sure to give them something back. Follow their rules and give quality thoughtful comments, reviews etc.
Link Bait – This is a pretty new term. It means to add high quality content to your site that someone may want to link to.
Outgoing links - It has been suggested that Google uses the sites you link to in determining the subject of your site. Link to a few authority sites.
Statistics – Watch your Web Site statistics for trends. This will show you what is working in your SEO efforts and what is not. Statistics can also be used to see where people go when they visit your site. If people are leaving without visiting other pages, then you may have a problem with that page.
Web Master tools – There are many tools you can use to check the health of your web site.
Google provided tools – Google provides a number of webmaster tools to help you to see if there are errors in your site, what the most common words are in your site (ie what your site is about), what words are most frequently used in link text pointing to your site (once again, what your site is about)
Additional reading
Good SEO means keeping up with the latest trends and changes in the search engines. This requires spending some time on a regular basis reading industry related blogs, newsletters and forums. Although the basic SEO steps listed on this page never change, the way you do some of them will, as well as many other details on now to improve the ranking of your sites in the search engines.

LINKS FOR WEBSITES

Are Reciprocal Links WORTH?
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If the current indications are correct we may be looking at the end of reciprocal linking as a method of building rank and link popularity, at least as far as Google is concerned.

The latest ‘Google Dance’, nicknamed ‘Jagger’, has caused major concern by those suffering loss of position on the top ranks of the search engine’s listings. So we decided to take a close look at what is happening and see what we could learn.

We have a few small websites that have a limited number of links. These sites are used mostly for research and testing of our primary business in Web Analytics. By analyzing these sites, we were able to quickly get an idea of what is happening in Google’s Jagger Update, which is still in progress at the time of this writing.

By using our web analytics tools, we were able to look at the history of visits by the bots and the links to these small sites. We had to go back as far as January in order to build a picture of Google’s actions. Our software also allows us to look at all links from the SEs, not just those shown by using the browser’s ‘link:’ command. G only reports some of the links to your site, not all.

Here is what we have seen:

Like many other sites, we noticed a sharp drop in rank in our test sites around the first of July. They lost about 40% of their previous link popularity and moved down sharply in rank. Also, duplicate links on a single site disappeared. We now only showed one link from each linking site.

As Jagger started, unlike many others we have seen complain about G’s actions and timing, our sites stayed rather stable. Evidently they had already suffered their major losses. However, there was a small increase in the number of links. This caught our attention. We had expected that, like many others, we would experience further disruptions to our link structure.

But when we examined these links, we were surprised to see that not one of them had been listed with Google a few weeks earlier. Not one. Our research showed that these links had been live in G’s archive, but none had shown up publicly before now. It appeared that there was some sort of ‘aging’ process taking place, but this may just be coincidental. It is more likely that older links disappeared because the host site was lost in the shuffle and our links no longer appeared ‘relevant’.

The other thing we noticed was that not one of these new links was listed on our reciprocal links pages. In other words, all reciprocal links had vanished. We think that this is because G is down-grading or eliminating reciprocal links as a measure of popularity. This does make sense, actually. Reciprocal links are a method of falsifying popularity. Sort of a cheap method of buying a link, if you want to think of it that way.

If your web sites have suffered from the latest ‘dance’, you may want to take a look at the type and source of your links. If they are mostly from link exchanges, you are probably looking at the reason for your move down the list on the search engines.

During the second week of the Jagger Update, a few of our reciprocal links did come back up. However, we also noticed that these were from places where we had highly relevant content. They came from articles where we discussed our area of expertise: Web Analytics, or from forums where we had relevant threads. So we feel that these links came back because of content, not linking.

The other group that came back up was one-way inbound text links, regardless of the originating web site. These links also had strong relevance to our web analytics business. In other words, they contained keywords and/or phrases related to our site and its business.

This research has us now re-evaluating our linking strategy. We urge others to do the same.

We are now concentrating only on building strong one-way inbound links. We are focusing on publicity, articles, directories, and other direct methods of building our image and consumer awareness.

In addition, we are also looking for associated but non competing firms like web developers, Search Engine Marketers, SEOs, web site owners and designers to partner with us to build direct business relationships and the resulting inbound links. This strategy may not be the fastest method of building links, but we feel it is rock solid and within the spirit of good business practices. The best thing is that it is search engine independent.

We will no longer worry about chasing (or beating) the search engines and their ever changing algorithms. That is a fool’s game we are sure to lose.

Instead, we will focus on building rock solid links and popularity with the group that counts: our customers. By focusing on beating our competition and providing a top quality product, plenty of educational information and relevant content, we are sure to move up and stay at the top of the search engine rankings.

It’s something to think about.

IMAGES FOR WEBSITES

Stock Images
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A great site needs great images. Finding good ones can take up a lot of time and resources. This is a list of some of the better stock image sites out there, that have images for free or at a low cost.

When choosing the resolution that you will buy, remember that high resolution is not always better, but it does mean higher download times.

Pick the lowest resolution image that fits your needs. If you are not planning on heavily cropping or blowing up the picture often the lowest resolution will work fine. If you plan on using the image for the print medium or allowing people to print the image from your website, than a higher resolution image may be necessary.

Description
I Stock Photo Low cost stock photos
SXU Highly recomended
YotoPhoto Has Search by color
Morgue File
Stockvault
Stockxpert
Dreams Time
Stock Photography at Foto Search 2 million images from 140 quality stock photography publishers

FREE WEB HOSTING

Free Website Hosting Sites
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Free hosting… Is it worth it? In many cases yes. There are a several main drawbacks to using free hosting.
Lack of credibility
Most place banners on your page – usually in prime real estate like the top of the page.
Most give you a subdomain location or a directory with in their site (mysite.theirsite.com or theirsite.com/mysite/)
Even with these limitations there are some advantages though
It’s free – if you have a lot of domains this can make a difference.
Most come with site builders. If you are hosting a lot of little domains it can take a lot of time to set them up manually. Site builders help.
Separate IPs
So why would you want to use them? Here are some common scenarios.
You have a lot of domains you want to eventually build on or sell.
If your domain does not have a site attached to it, it does not age. By putting up a page or a few pages of text and getting the site indexed you start an aging process. Google does not put much weight on a brand new site. Start the aging process while your domain is waiting for you to get around to putting up the content you planned for it when you bought it.
Aged domains that have some PR also have far more value than unused domains.
Mini Sites. Mini sites are sites that are built on a very specific topic. You can then either place some adsence on the site or link to your main site from these mini sites or both. Mini sites provide highly related links back to your main site.


The advantage of hosting on many of these free hosting sites instead of just one, is that each hosting site will have a different class C IP. This gives the links a less manipulated look to them.

For more information on how your choide of a webhost affects the SEO on your site check out our article on SEO Webhosting

Free Hosting Site List
Free Servers 12 Mb. Banner ad on each page.
Fortune City 1Gb with 3Gb monthly bandwidth.
Tripod 20 Mb.
Angel Fire 20Mb.
Tripod UK 1Gb.
Free Webs 100Mb with 500Mb monthly bandwidth.
Fateback 60Mb with unlimited bandwidth.
Webspawner For beginners.
Biz 50Mb with unlimited bandwidth.
Pro Hosting 100Mb with 1Gb monthly bandwidth.
eSmart 250Mb.
Free Web Space 100 Mb.
Free Homepage 50Mb.
Site Palace 10Mb with unlimited bandwidth.
Top Cities 150Mb.
Domain DLX 100Mb with unlimited bandwidth.
1 ASP Host 100 Mb with unlimited bandwidth.
7 Host 50Mb. Banner ad on each page.
Planet D Unlimited space. Browser uploads.
Eccentrix 50 Mb with 900Mb monthly bandwidth.
2 Global Mart 12Mb. FTP uploads. Web-based email.
Central Pets For pet and animal related websites.
Global Web 50Mb space with 1Gb monthly bandwidth.
100 Megs Free 100Mb.
Anzers Unlimited space and bandwidth.
20 Megs Free 20Mb. Browser or FTP uploads.
T 35 Unlimited space with unlimited bandwidth.
Proper Comfy 50Mb with unlimited bandwidth.
Host Ultra No image galleries allowed.
Oam Web 5 Mb. Banner ad on each page.
Graffiti 20Mb. Button link required.
Storm Pages 50Mb with unlimited bandwidth.
00 Server 20Mb.
Free Web Page 150Mb with 600Mb monthly bandwidth.
Prime Tap 12Mb.
P Send 12Mb. Banner ad on each page.
Web Samba 30Mb with unlimited bandwidth.
Fortune City 25Mb with 0.5Gb monthly bandwidth. .
BZ 12 MB.
MSG Server 20Mb.
Free Web Town
World Break 50Mb.
SNN 50Mb. Banner ad on each page.
Community Architect 12Mb with 512Mb monthly bandwidth.
Comvision 2000 50 Mb.
Xaper 20Mb. Banner ad on each page.
Free Cyberzone 12Mb. Banner ad on each page.
WebHosting Pal 50Mb with 5000Mb monthly bandwidth.
Pci Free Host 12Mb with 512Mb monthly bandwidth.
Ababa 15Mb with 1Gb monthly bandwidth.

FORUM SITES FOR SEO

Free Forums List
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Forums can provide several benefits to a Webmaster. Quality forums are frequently spidered by the Search engines, sometimes even a couple times a day. This provides a quick way to add links to your website. Adding a link to your website from a signature in a forum is a quick way to get your website recognized by Google.

The search engines seem to only count a few links from each domain when counting links to your website, so normally only the first few posts to a forum will help you in your link count. However this is not the only way that a forum can help.

Forums provide valuable services for a Webmaster.
Increased Site Visitors. If you are posting to threads that are popular in the forum and you provide a valuable contribution, you will often receive visitors to your site from the links in your signature.
Web SEO forums also provide a large amount of insight and information on how you can improve on the quality and popularity of your web site.
Forums can also be social gathering places, in any business it is important to "network" or make friends with others sharing similar business interests. Forums are a great place to do this.
Forums are also very useful in keeping up with industry trends. The Internet changes vary rapidly with new marketing ideas being added almost daily. Forums are one of the best ways to keep up to date.
Posting to a forum can often provide an immediate increase in the visitors to your website. Be sure to create a signature for each forum you participate in which includes a link to your website.

There are many good SEO forums on the internet, but these are some of the ones I have found most useful. In addition, you should try to find forums that are specific to your industry. Industry specific forums will help you learn what it takes to market your product or web site.


Forum
Digital Point
Frog Engine Forum
hedir - Human Edited Directory
High Rankings
Site Point
Site Reference
Web Pro World
Webmaster World
wrox

PRESS RELEASE SITES

Free Press Release List
***********************

Press releases are another great way to add back links to your web site. These normally require a specific format, so be sure to read the instructions for each site.

Press releases are not only posted on the web site you submit to, but are also picked up by other related web sites. This can make each press release give you a large number of new back links for your web site and improve your page rank.

However submitting to Press Release sites does take some time, once you have created the release an easy way to get it out to a large number is by using software. When choosing a good program it’s vital that it submits to the sites properly, and makes sure your release gets to the right category.

One program I use that works well is Press Equalizer. It still takes a while to set up before each release, but it gets to the sites and enters the data automatically, saving you a lot of time. Press Equalizer is not free, you do have to buy the software, but the price is not too bad for the time it saves you.

Often, software does not hit all the sites you want and at times it’s worthwhile to pay some of the Press Release sites so that you will be more prominently displayed, for those sites it’s best to submit by hand, otherwise I recommend getting something to help you get the job done faster.

If possible, get the press release written by a professional press release writer. The basic advantage of press release writing service is the specialized content one gets. Professionals bring a unique perspective of their own, which hits the mark rightly. A professional provides with flawless press releases that goes right to the press without any changes. Dzesire.net & Pro Business Writer are some of the players in this field.

Professional press release writers know the basic requirement and as a result, they can work on various angles and get the perfect draft for publication. In contrast, you may not get the desired result if you do not have any experience in this field, which sabotages the purpose of the press release. Therefore, why take a chance! Hire a professional press release writing service right away.

For help on how to write a press release see the article How to Write Press Releases.

Of the many press release sites available I have only included those that have given me the best results. The more you have time to send to the better, but at least do these.




URL
24-7 Press Release
Big News
Express Press Release
Free News Release
Free Press Release
Free Press Release Blog
Free Press Release Center
MB Publishing
PR Free
PR Leap
PR Web
Press Base
Press Box

ARTICLES SUBMISSION

Free Article Submission List
******************************




Another great way to get back links for your web site is to write articles and submit them to web sites that will promote your articles. Write an article on something that you know and put your web site in the signature of the article.

Hundreds of new links
Each time someone adds your article to their web site it adds a new link to your site. This is a great way to add hundreds of new back links to your site to improve your page rank and show yourself to be an expert in your field.

For some ideas on how to write articles to be used for SEO see the article SEO Article Writing 101.

When writing articles for SEO purposes it is important to have your keywords in mind before writing the article, for help in choosing keywords see the article Keywords Choose Them Wisely.

We've compiled a list of some of the top websites for you to submit your articles to. We recomend that you first submit to the sites in our "Top Picks" section, we have found these to be some of the most effective sites on our list. After submitting to the top sites continue through the list submitting your article to each one.

Submission Time Saver
Our list contains the sites that we manually submit to while promoting our own websites, however there are hundreds of additional sites available. Submitting to each one of these Article Directory sites can take a huge amount of time. However there are cost effective tools that can help you submit to these sites quickly and efficiently.

One of the most popular softwares available is Article Submitter! For a onetime purchase, this tool can shave hours off the time it takes you to submit your article, and will give the additional bonus of doing it to hundreds of article submission sites. With each site you get a link back to your site as well as increase the chance of other sites seeing and publishing your article and links.

Article Writing Help
If you don't like to write you will find forums on our "Forum Sites" page where you can find authors to write the articles for you, often for less than $5 - $10 per article. Likely one of the first places you will want to try is the "Digital Point" forum. There are hundreds of writers willing to take on any subject that interests you.

Some authors will submit the article they write for you to a number of article submission sites. It's is often cheaper to buy the software to do it yourself. The other adventage of doing your own submissions (using software) is that you will be able to edit the articles and more importantly the links in the articles if you need to later, this is not available if you have someone else do the submissions.



Top Picks
Articles Base
Ezine Articles
iSnare




Add Me
Amazines
Article 99
Article Alley
Article City
Article Codex
Article Hub
Article Word
ArticleMark
Articles Base
Articles House
Articleware House
Author Connection
Business Know How
Business Publicationss
Business Tool Chest
Buzzle
Connection Team
Content Tycoon
Cumuli
digital-women
Dime-co
Ezine Articles
Ezine Trendz
Ezine-Writer
Free Article Exchange
Free Sticky
Free Zine Site
free-articles-zone
Freebie Articles

DIRECTORIES INCLUSION

Web Directory Inclusion
*************************


Back links are a vital part of raising your score with the search engines. Buying links can be very expensive and finding sites willing to link to your site can be very time consuming. Still link building should play an important part of your web site promotion strategy.

Submitting your web site to relevant free inclusion web directories is an easy way to gain back links to your web site. There are hundreds of inclusion web directories on the Internet willing to link to you web site for free.

The purpose of this list of web directories is to make it easier to add your web site to a large number of online directories. Choose the Google Page Rank (PR)

below that you would like to start with, the list can be filtered to remove specialty web directories by checking the “View General Directories only” checkbox. Click on the link directory you would like to add your web site to. Click on the add site or the link suggest/add url and follow the instructions of the directory. Often you will be asked to work your way to the most relevant category before you suggest your link for inclusion. When you are finished adding your web site, close the window and choose the next directory.

To see what the PR of these directories as well as you own site you can download the toolbar for Internet Explorer of install Firefox with the Google toolbar.



Directory Submission Services
An option for those that don’t have the time to add their websites to hundreds of directories is to use a directory submission service. The price varies considerable for these services depending on the features offered. Some of the things that can affect the price are:

Do they check to see if your website is already in the directory before submitting? If not then the service may only be suitable for new websites that have not been submitted before.
Do they vary the link text? It’s best not to have the text used for the links all the same. If the directory allows, try to switch between several choices of text.
How many web directories do they submit to?
Will they give you a list of all the web directories they submit to?
Over what period of time do they submit to directories? Some will submit to several hundred directories, it might be best to stagger this over a few months.
What is the mixture of PRs for the directories? You would not want to pay a lot to be submitted to only PR0 directories, while it’s fine to submit to them too, you would want to be sure there are many PR5, PR6 and PR7 directories submitted to also.
Don’t expect 100% acceptance in free submit web directories. If the service does a good job most of the web directories should accept your site, but often not all will.

One service I've used in the past that has produced very good results is

Best Web Directories' Manual Submission Service.
They provide prompt service at what I feel to be a fair price, and you should be happy using this directory submission service. For the price you pay, this service will give you a nice boost of links that you can continue to add to later.

Other Promotional Strategies

While web directory submission should not be the only link building strategy you use, it can be very effective in adding back links to your site. Don’t forget to check out our “Article submission”, “Press release”, and "SEO Forum" pages for more tips on link building.

If you need more information on how to submit your web site to a link directory you will find this article to be useful.

Tips on Quickly adding Web Sites to Directories.
How To Manage Directory Submissions.
Don't Spam Google!

GOOGLE PAGE RATING

Google PageRank - Definition
****************************



Written by Guest Writer The basic idea of the algorithm PageRank is that incoming links on a website should be considered a recommendation. The more links to a page has the more important the page is considered. The scale of PageRank ranges from 0 to 10, with the value of 10 represents the upper end, and very few Web pages have a PageRank of 10. It receives a page with many incoming links on a higher PageRank, and the higher the PageRank of link page, the higher the value of the receiving end's link page. The idea is that a link (recommendation) from an important page (higher PageRank) is worth more than a page which itself has a low PageRank.

The concept of PageRank was developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University and that design led to the founding of Google by both. They were the first to display results almost exclusively due to the PageRank of sorted pages. That represented a revolution, since up to this time, the Internet search pages were only then evaluated by how often the keywords in the text and in the meta tags occurred.

PageRank was an innovation where the webmaster could no longer easily manipulate the positions in the search results pages of thier web pages just by repeating certain keywords. This novel method of valuation also attributed to the great success of the search engine Google, because much more relevant search results were delivered. But it turns out that this method of evaluation of a web page could not remain as the sole criterion, because link exchange, link buying and blog entries also affects PageRank.

GOOGLE VS YAHOO

Google Adsense vrs. Yahoo Publisher
***************************************



As more and more people are hosting their own webpage or pages, advertisers have learned how to make contact with the audiences who visit the pages. And not just randomly either; there are now advertising programs that target ads specifically to the site that the person is viewing. They are called contextual advertising programs because they search through the context and content of a page and identify keywords. They return ads to that page that the program believes would be relevant and interesting to the viewer. For example, if you are visiting a website on low fat recipes, you might find ads about low fat products or weight loss products.

Website owners aren’t the only ones using this form of advertising to generate revenue. You’ll see these ads on search engine pages themselves. For example, on Google, the ads appear in a column on the right hand side of the results page. The keywords you enter in the search box are used to target ads to you. Advertisers are hoping that the short ad they supply will lure you to their site, where hopefully you’ll either order their product or use their service.

Website owners can now earn money by allowing contextual advertisers to place ads on their webpages. The more people visit and click the ads, the more money the advertisers will pay to the website owner. Many website owners make a considerable stream of income from these programs. But the ads have to be well targeted in order to get people to click. Which is why right now there is so much excitement about a new contextual advertising program being tested and prepared for the market. Everyone out there making money on contextual advertising is waiting to see if the Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) product will return better results than the leading Google Adsense product.

At the moment, YPN is still in beta testing. A group of users were invited to trial the product and the reviews on blogs and postings all over the web are somewhat consistent on one aspect. As of now, it seems that YPN is not returning ads that are as relevant as the ones that Adsense users are finding. For example, one blogger reported that on a website on PHP programming, YPN returned ads for a florist and for a phone service provider. The blogger couldn’t understand what words the YPN program picked up for the florist. But it was the word ‘hello’ that apparently signaled the ads regarding the phone service.

Additionally, some users have complained that YPN doesn’t seem to update earnings and visitor information as often as Adsense. So website owners have to wait to learn if changes they have made have actually impacted the visitors that they get. However, although neither program will release payment schemes until you register as a user, it seems that YPN is paying more per click than Adsense. But the feeling is that payments will be made more appealing long enough to get website owners to switch from Adsense to YPN, but then prices will even out. Some argue that in the long run it won’t matter if YPN pays more if they can’t improve their ad relevancy because they won’t get the number of clicks from visitors to see a real difference in their earnings.

As YPN is being tested, they are getting opinions and feedback from the participants. So in time, the service may be improved. However, competition for Adsense is a healthy thing. It will force both companies to continually strive to improve their service and offerings so that webmasters can continue to benefit from a healthy stream of income in the future.

SEO & DIRECTORIES

Tips on adding your web site to directories quickly.
****************************************************

Hand typing directory information takes way to much time and is too prone to errors, One way to speed the process up is to create a text file, add all your site information to the file and cut and paste to each directory.
A better way uses FireFox and an add-on extension you can add to the FireFox browser. First you need to , install the InFormEnter extension, then open Free Link Directories and select which PR you want to work with. Open several directories, find the category you want to add your site to and go to the Add URL page.

Use InFormEnter to quickly add the information to each Add URL form click enter and go to the next. Close the page once you are finished adding the directory and open up the next. By having multiple directories open all the time you will spend far less time waiting as your site gets entered.

You can find InFormEnter at InFormEnter.mozdev.org. Install by opening FireFox, go to InFormEnter Install, click on informenter.xpi, if you have your popups disabled you will need to enable them for this site.

When the install is finished, close your browser and restart. On the bottom of your browser you will see a blue outlined box with an arrow in it click on that and go to InFormEnter options. Create a profile with the name of your site, add the information you will use to register you site and save. Be sure you have included several ways to have the text name of your site listed, put each text name on a new line. You can turn on the feature to show haw many characters is on each entry line, It is helpful to have different length descriptions, some directories like larger or small descriptions.

To use InFormEnter to fill text fields, choose your new profile by clicking the InFormEnter Icon on the bottom of your FireFox browser window. Now when you have a form displayed by the directory you wish to enter a site, right click on the textbox you want to enter data into, choose InFormEnter and then choose the information you want to enter.

Directory submission has never been easier.

SEO COMEDY

Top Ten SEO Strategies or Tactics Worthy of Paddlings *UPDATED*

10. Read SEOs invest the 20 bucks for a unique domain and real emails. Using gmail accounts as primary methods of correspondence is worthy of a paddling. Using subdomains of wordpress or blogspot are worthy of double paddlings.

9. Ever offer a 'TOP TEN PLACEMENT GARAUNTEED [sic] OR YOUR MONEY BACK'? If so, you deserve a substantial paddling. In fact, SEO's who offer 'flat rates' or pdf documents depicting the steps of their services should be paddled. My approach and experience suggest there is no 'one-size fits all' solution for clients. Why? They're all unique.

8. If you 'nofollow' all outgoing links from your web site then get ready for a paddling. (I think I should paddle myself sometime... that's a different story).

7. If the loss of Overture's keyword tool put you in a panic cause your primary keyword research source was gone--that's definitley a paddling. If all you use is Nichebot, then fine, but if you do'nt use long tail keyword data in some way shape or form paddle yourself--hard.

6. Ever cold call (or cold email) prospective clients before? Ooo, that's a paddling. Ever cold call a SEO firm (it's happened to us)? Hahaha, I paddle you over the phone!

5. If your answer to a client's poor ranking is, "it must be the sandbox," your client should give you a paddling.

4. If your primary method of acquiring backlinks includes free ezines, free directories, and forum signatures--you best believe this is a whopper of a paddling. (Although you'll be out of a job soon so maybe the paddle will spare you.)

3. If your primary method of creating content involves changing tense of existing content, removing quotes from press releases, going to the library and plagiarizing, buying a book and plagiarizing, visiting WIKI and plagiarizing, or just plain plagiarizing--ohhh, you setting yourself up for a major paddling.

2. Buying text-links without the 'nofollow' attribute IS NOT worth a paddling.

1. Buying text-links without the 'nofollow' attribute, and then somehow Matt Cutts finds out, this will earn a special Google paddling administered by one of the Google employees. (Although some may happily accept paddlings from the certain Google faces....)

But there's more!

Top Ten Newbie SEO Forum Posts Worthy of mega-Paddlings
10. Proclamations like, "my site is 2 weeks old and it still won't rank for my major keyword phrase," deserve a paddling.

9. If you say, "I've done everything and still no changes! What should I do, and please don't say more links!" You need to be paddled with the 'more links paddle'.

8. Are you a new user who never used the 'forum search' function before posting your topics? Stand in line for a paddling.

7. OMG! Datacenter XX.XXX.XXX.XX is showing totally awesome results! Should be a paddling but it's your time wasted that could be better spent writing content....

6. Have you ever asked, "when is the next PR update?" YOU better BELIEVE that's a paddling.

5. If you continually ask, "why can't I see all my backlinks?" (even after Google updated their tools to reflect YOUR BACKLINKS)--wow--that's a paddling.

4. Is this familiar? "Yesterday I was #3 for my keyword, and now I'm on page 54! What gives?!" Please paddle Google (or get more back links ).

TWITTER VS FACE BOOK

Twitter has exploded in the US, and like most innovative things, Canadians are slow to the punch. The networking tool that permits no more than 160 characters per update has only ONE thing going for it--mobile.

Twitter can be updated, and updates may be sent, by your mobile device. That means your cell phone is the cornerstone of Twitter, not the web. In fact, Twitter is pretty lame when it's just the web leveraging its reach.

Sure, I am aware that you have a different 'relationship' with Twitter followers than Facebook ones (people tend to accept broad 'followers' but only permit 'friends' into their Facebook profile.) However, if you have to log online all the time to update and view updates, then what's the point? Stick with Facebook.

In Canada, Twitter removed mobile updates a long time ago. You can still technically update via your phone, but you can't receive anything. Furthermore, the last two updates I sent to twitter showed up 15 days later....

Facebook on the other hand permits mobile uploads and you can receive updates. So technically I can accomplish the same thing, yet do it all via SMS, but the only catch is it's only to my friends.

So when you think about it, Facebook's value doesn't exactly increase because your network remains your tight friends (unless you love attention from 800 so called 'friends'). Twitter comes into play here, but it remains useless in canada because it can only be updated via the web.

Sure, many people have the web on their mobile's, however, the immense popularity of Twitter in the US is driven by SMS capabilities. until that comes to Canada there is no massive marketable appeal for Canadians to pick up on the Tweets.

However, if they do figure it out (I'm told Bell subscribers can receive now), they'll explode in this market (likely forcing the Canadians providers who are the MOST expensive providers in the entire world to reduce their price of SMS, we hope).

Or, they'll go slow and continue to have 'the system is overloaded' messages, and Facebook can innovate fast enough to capture more market share and expand in different areas--like improving mobile and perhaps a different way to have 'friends of friends' in your network.

SEO VS PPC

A number of people have caught wind of the developments that have been coming from the pay per click (PPC) industry for some time now. Basically the story goes you can make $1000's a day by doing nothing. Of course, with everything that has making money for nothing there are throngs of people waiting to buy in.

This holds true for PPC arbitrage, the process by which advertisers purchase traffic via the pay-per-click network (i.e. Google Adwords or Yahoo! YPN) for the purpose of reselling it through similar content advertising at a higher cost. Although Google is constantly trying to devalue and shut down web sites that offer nothing but content advertising, the industry of PPC arbitrage is huge, and worth millions.

No wonder people clamour for new ideas and methods of getting ahead of the game. Still not familiar with what I'm talking about? Let me walk you through how a 'newbie' would try to enter the foray of PPC arbitrage.

Firstly, they'd head on over to the their keyword vendor (usually requires a subscription) and enter a keyword with competitive and high value content ads. There are many tools to determine some 'hot and high paying' industries. (Spyfu, simple Google Adwords results, etc.) They'd call the keyword tool to return say, 1000 results. The results are then pasted into Adwords (we'll use the Google example) and given a low CPC (cost per click) value, something around .03.

The thought is, if I can get loads of traffic to a semi-decent landing page with semi-decent content, (but also has a few content ads as well,) I could turn around and make money for those visitors looking for 'real' content. Simple enough right? Wrong.

Firstly, there are problems, namely the niche market. High paying niche markets mean you need more than 3 cents to even be listed. Uh oh, that raises the stakes on your investment. Do you really want to let loose 1000 keywords at $1/click? Some have tried, and have lost quickly but at least efficiently .

Secondly, everybody else is going to kewyord discovery or wherever to find their money keywords to throw into Adwords. Quite frankly, you need a better list than what everyone else has. Create a competitive advantage with your arbitrage endeavors!

Here are some suggestions to begin a PPC arbitrage campaign. Understand, these are legitimate suggestions that are likely best suited for webmasters looking to drive more legitimate traffic cheaper. If you're looking to do nothing but upload keywords and turn a profit then this tutorial may be of little use.

Suggestion #1 - Take a look at Gary's PPC marketing and Long Tail Analysis. Here you will learn how to implement Long Tail analysis on your website for the purpose of tracking keywords nobody else has. Long Tail analysis is offered for free by Hitwise.com and essentially gives you a real time result of all keywords people use to reach your web site. You get all the obscure keywords that may not have very many searches, however, multiply that by 10 000 and you have a good keyword set.

Suggestion #2: Take your Longtail or keyword data (advanced web analytics tools will yield the same results, albeit Hittail gives you keywords in excel format; fast and easy,) and take your data and repeat some processes. Analytics will capture the same data set as Hittail by the way.

Suggestion #3: Because some of your keywords will be obscure, the competition should be low, however, generally on topic. Expand you existing keyword set but searching for alternatives/suggestions that many keyword programs offer. You should also enlist 'drilldown' searches to find related fields that you may have overlooked.

By the way, Google has gone to great lengths to innovate their Adwords system. So not only are they canceling accounts for thin affiliates, they are also improving the bid system. Before you could bid low for keywords, now it seems they' increase six-fold the lowest entry level of bidding.

Accomplishing these tasks will yield a unique keyword data set for you to start mining and gleaning. Of course, there are other methods, other steps, and more tools that can be used to really exploit PPC arbitrage, but hey, these tips are to help the legitimate business

SEO DETAILS

IMPORTANCE OF SEO
*****************
Social media optimisation was the big topic of the last year in the industry, and at the moment agencies are trying to build a business model around it. Most of them are going down the consultancy path plus offering specific services in the way of building widgets or Facebook applications to boost viral campaigns. Most of them are struggling to give value out of it and most companies marketing departments are still reticent to invest money on not so tangible services.

The erroneous way to approach Social Media services, advocated by some other agencies, it is the pay per profile, pay per automatic tools to be present in social networks or per tweets/Facebook friends/Linkedin contacts, etc. This approach is the equivalent of blog comment spam or automated link requests and goes against the intrinsic nature of social media which is based in engaging in the conversation.
International Social Media Optimisation

Link Analysis : Multilingual Link Building Tags: baidu, information retrieval techniques, international search engines, link search engines, Multilingual Link Building, Multilingual SEO Link analysis is one of the most important areas of search engines ranking algorithms. Although some international search engines are less sophisticated in the way they assess link relevance, there is no reason to believe that these engines, such as Baidu or Yandex, will apply similar more advanced link quality indicators as part or the usual improvement on information retrieval techniques, in a similar way that more developed search companies have evolved, mainly Google.

Relying on link quality indicators has the advantage for search engines to avoid the “noise” and improve results relevancy for specific queries. This is due to the complexity of manipulating a link profile, which can be done, but it is much more onerous and time consuming.

HOW TO SUCCEDE IN SEO

Website Optimisation


We will optimise your website in a way that is going to get you the most targeted traffic. We have a good understanding of how search engines crawl websites and we can use this to your advantage.


What's Involved?


This may involve us working with you on any of the following:

Meta-tagging
Re-writing your URLs
Image optimisation
PageRank sculpting
Copywriting
Web usability
Branding
In some cases we have had to restructure an entire website or in others we have had to add hundreds of pages of extra content.



The Rewards?


Good website optimisation will dramatically improve your chances of getting targeted traffic and business from the search engines. For most websites it is essential for SEO success.

ROBOTS IN SEO

Robots META Tag
****************





The content="robots-terms" is a comma separated list used in the Robots META Tag that may contain one or more of the following keywords without regard to case: noindex, nofollow, all, index and follow.

noindex


name="robots" content="noind

Admin Note: The robots directives of index, follow or all are not required as it is the default behavior of indexing spiders.




index
Robots are welcome to include this page in search services.



follow
Robots are welcome to follow links from this page to find other pages.



If this meta tag is missing, or if there is no content, or the robot terms are not specified, then the robot terms will be assumed to be "index, follow" (e.g. "all"). If the keyword all is found in the robots terms list it overrides all other values. That is, a robots terms that is "nofollow, all, noindex, nofollow", would effectively be "all".

If the robots terms contains contradictory information (e.g. "follow, nofollow, follow") then the robot is free to do whatever it wishes with regard to the behavior being addressed (in this case the follow behavior).

Back to Previous

MARKETING SEO

Marketing Strategy
******************



Eye tracking studies have shown that searchers scan a search results page from top to bottom and left to right (for left to right languages), looking for a relevant result. Placement at or near the top of the rankings therefore increases the number of searchers who will visit a site.[37] However, more search engine referrals does not guarantee more sales. SEO is not necessarily an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be much more effective, depending on the site operator's goals.[38] A successful Internet marketing campaign may drive organic traffic to web pages, but it also may involve the use of paid advertising on search engines and other pages, building high quality web pages to engage and persuade, addressing technical issues that may keep search engines from crawling and indexing those sites, setting up analytics programs to enable site owners to measure their successes, and improving a site's conversion rate.[39]

SEO may generate a return on investment. However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees of continued referrals. Due to this lack of guarantees and certainty, a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic can suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending visitors.[40] It is considered wise business practice for website operators to liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic.[41] A top-ranked SEO blog Seomoz.org[42] has suggested, "Search marketers, in a twist of irony, receive a very small share of their traffic from search engines." Instead, their main sources of traffic are links from other websites.[43]

SEO BLACK /WHITE

White hat versus black hat
*************************

SEO techniques can be classified into two broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design, and those techniques of which search engines do not approve. The search engines attempt to minimize the effect of the latter, among them spamdexing. Some industry commentators have classified these methods, and the practitioners who employ them, as either white hat SEO, or black hat SEO.[29] White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanently once the search engines discover what they are doing.[30]

An SEO technique is considered white hat if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines[17][18][19][31] are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see. White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility,[32] although the two are not identical.

Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking.

Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms, or by a manual site review. Infamous examples are the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany for use of deceptive practices.[33] and the April 2006 removal of the PPC Agency BigMouthMedia.[34] All three companies, however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's list.[35]

Many Web applications employ back-end systems that dynamically modify page content (both visible and meta-data) and are designed to increase page relevance to search engines based upon how past visitors reached the original page. This dynamic search engine optimization and tuning process can be (and has been) abused by criminals in the past. Exploitation of Web applications that dynamically alter themselves can be poisoned[36]

HISTORY OF SEO

Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit the address of a page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a spider to "crawl" that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed.[1] The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own server, where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various information about the page, such as the words it contains and where these are located, as well as any weight for specific words, and all links the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date.

Site owners started to recognize the value of having their sites highly ranked and visible in search engine results, creating an opportunity for both white hat and black hat SEO practitioners. According to industry analyst Danny Sullivan, the phrase search engine optimization probably came into use in 1997.[2]

Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta tag, or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta tags provide a guide to each page's content. But using meta data to index pages was found to be less than reliable because the webmaster's choice of keywords in the meta tag could potentially be an inaccurate representation of the site's actual content. Inaccurate, incomplete, and inconsistent data in meta tags could and did cause pages to rank for irrelevant searches.[3] Web content providers also manipulated a number of attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines.[4]

By relying so much on factors such as keyword density which were exclusively within a webmaster's control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation. To provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their results pages showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters. Since the success and popularity of a search engine is determined by its ability to produce the most relevant results to any given search, allowing those results to be false would turn users to find other search sources. Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate.

Graduate students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed "backrub," a search engine that relied on a mathematical algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages. The number calculated by the algorithm, PageRank, is a function of the quantity and strength of inbound links.[5] PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly surfs the web, and follows links from one page to another. In effect, this means that some links are stronger than others, as a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random surfer.

Page and Brin founded Google in 1998. Google attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.[6] Off-page factors (such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis) were considered as well as on-page factors (such as keyword frequency, meta tags[citation needed], headings, links and site structure) to enable Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines that only considered on-page factors for their rankings. Although PageRank was more difficult to game, webmasters had already developed link building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine, and these methods proved similarly applicable to gaming PageRank. Many sites focused on exchanging, buying, and selling links, often on a massive scale. Some of these schemes, or link farms, involved the creation of thousands of sites for the sole purpose of link spamming.[7] In recent years major search engines have begun to rely more heavily on off-web factors such as the age, sex, location, and search history of people conducting searches in order to further refine results.[citation needed]

By 2007, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms to reduce the impact of link manipulation. Google says it ranks sites using more than 200 different signals.[8] The three leading search engines, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Live Search, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Notable SEOs, such as Rand Fishkin, Barry Schwartz, Aaron Wall and Jill Whalen, have studied different approaches to search engine optimization, and have published their opinions in online forums and blogs.[9][10] SEO practitioners may also study patents held by various search engines to gain insight into the algorithms.[11].

WHAT IS SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

The acronym "SEO" can also refer to "search engine optimizers," a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.

Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or Spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.

SEO DEFINATION

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a mechanism to provide the high rank on major search engine and in other word SEO, as a
marketing strategy, can often generate a good return. A successful Internet marketing campaign may drive by organic SEO and may involve the use of paid web advertising on major search engine and top level of website.

The success of your website will not be measured by how good it looks but on how is fast it loads. The success of your website will be measured by: How much money it makes and how many customers are made. Only the first 20 sites will attract visitor. Only those 20 sites have a chance to convert a site visitor into a new customer.

WHAT IS SEM

Search Engine Marketing
SEM, Adwords & Pay Per Click services
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) displays ads only to people who are actively looking for a particular product or service. The placement and creative is triggered by the search phrase entered into the search engine and, as a result, click through and conversion rates are very high. Payment is typically on a cost per click basis (CPC).




Use SEM for
Revenue or Lead Generation
Brand Building
Short or Long Term Campaigns
Fill in SEO gaps
Test the Market

ETHICS IN SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to the process of designing the content of your website in such a manner that it ranks higher in results of leading search engines like google. Various companies offering web design in Sydney also offer SEO services. However quite a few of the SEO in Australia use unethical or spamming methods to rank it higher in search results. These unethical methods are sure to provide immediate and short term results, but in the longer run these methods will prove to be detrimental to your website. Therefore, companies offering services of search engine marketing in Sydney should be differentiated on the basis of the ethical or unethical methods they follow.

The different methods used to optimize websites by companies offering services of SEO in Australia can be categorized into two parts: Black hat and white hat.

As the name suggests, black hat refers to the unethical or spamming methods used by these so called SEO experts in Australia. The websites designed through this method have little or no relevant information in them; rather they create excessive links in the website, thus trying to guide the visitors to the product sale page of the company. This type of search engine marketing in Sydney is very common, and most often it results in the website getting banned from the search engine. One of the ways to recognize an unethical SEO is to keep a lookout for the number and quality of links being created on the website. If you suspect that the links are not relevant, then you should question the practices of that company, and if needed then you should consider changing the company.

On the other hand, white hat method or the organic method of web design in Sydney refers to creating quality content in the website, which is aimed at creating content for people and not for search engines. These high quality SEO in Australia extensively study the ranking methodology followed by various search engines, and design the content in accordance with those methodology. Thus the chances of websites created using the white hat method have no chance of getting banned from search engines. These ethical SEOs generally document the entire process that they have followed in optimizing the page and also provide these documents to their clients when needed.

It is generally not advisable for websites to undertake unethical methods for search engine marketing in Sydney, because even though the short term benefits are easily visible, yet the long term losses for the website far outweighs the long term benefits.
The author is a business writer Visit at www.omweda.com.au to know more about SEO Australia , Search Engine Marketing in Sydney and Web Design Sydney.

SEO & WEB DESIGNER

As an SEO we get two kinds of sites; those that were designed in the past and where the designer is no longer involved, and the sites where the design is either ongoing or we are working with the web designers from the start. Both of these have their pros and cons as an SEO but there is a clear advantage of one over the other for the client.

First, let's discuss the pros and cons to the SEO. If we are coming in after the design is completed there are more than likely (and by that I mean 99.9% likely) some structural and or major design issues that will need to be addressed. Unless the web designer is skilled in SE-friendly design we are going to have our work cut out for us just dealing with structural issues. On the positive side of this scenario, we're left to just work on the site with no designer taking it personally when we tell them we need to make changes (and that can lead to some issues).

Now let's look at the other scenario. Working with a designer has it's cons which is generally – we're going to have a designer taking it personally when we need changes made to the structure of a site or challenging us when we're arguing that while an all-Flash site is visually appealing, it leaves something to be desired from and SEO standpoint. This conversation generally goes something like this (and all you SEO's out there can sing along):

SEO – Flash cannot be properly read in the same way as HTML and we need to have easily spidered content for the search engines to see.

Designer – Flash can be read by Google.

SEO – But not in the same way. We need multiple pages of optimized content and Flash just isn't going to provide that.

Designer – Well I disagree (probably read in some forum somewhere that a misc. guy had no problem ranking for “bob wyverniuschuck artist” with a Flash site) but even if that's true – it's the conversion that counts and this Flash site is going to convert.

SEO – Yes we understand that conversions are important but so is traffic. If we can't get traffic to the site then a 100% conversion ratio is irrelevant.

Designer – There are other ways to get traffic.

SEO - Yes I understand that but this is what the client has hired us to do and has asked that we work together to build an attractive site that ranks well.

So this is the down side and an extreme example of it (for humor as much as illustration). But there's a big upside and that comes when you have the opportunity to work with web designers who know how important SEO is (as an SEO who knows how important a good design is). Working to balance the two can be a daunting task and having the skills of the SEO matched with the skills of the web designer can be a true blessing. For example, I may have a great idea to make a site more easily navigated by search engines but an ugly solution to implement it whereas the designer may have a more attractive solution in mind if they know the problem and the technical solution.

Such a scenario has recently come about in our dealings with Moonrise Design. Moonrise contacted us in advance of their starting work for a client, had us sit in on conference calls to understand the client's needs and has since had us helping structure the site properly from the ground up. There is no resistance and we don't tell them what to do, we indicate the functions required – provide any technical background as necessary – and they implement it in a way that leaves the site FAR more attractive than if we had had to do it ourselves. Expert designers doing what they do best and understanding that what we do is SEO and the client wants to rank highly. Ah, it's a beautiful thing.

It is this experience and reflecting back on other web designers we've worked smoothly with in the past that inspired me to write this article. The article is more for potential clients of designers than for the designers themselves. So for those looking for a designer – if you want your site to rank highly and/or you'll be hiring an SEO – here's what to look for.

Picking A Web Designer

There are two main considerations that you'll need to make when you're picking your web designer. The first is, can they build an attractive site and the second is can they build a search engine friendly site?

Building an attractive site:

I am probably the last person to ask about what's attractive and what's not. When the Beanstalk site was up for a redesign a couple years ago I hired a professional web design company to build it. I can't create pretty things but I know how to test and I know how to monitor statistics to see if the traffic is behaving as I would hope.

Here's what to look at:

When you're choosing a designer take a look at their portfolio – put some of their designs past people in your target demographic and see what they think. It's also wise to view the sites of the leaders in your industry to see what they're doing (and maybe even who designed their sites). Just because you like something doesn't mean it's effective to your target market.

You also need to know if your designer is skilled at conversion optimization. Have they read such works as Enquiro's eye tracking studies. Have they done their research (or have you) regarding which colors make people act in which ways? These are extremely important issues to be aware of. If you look at the eye tracking studies - the Beanstalk site places our logo, the Hacker Safe logo and main title in the key zones. We also went with green giving a natural (easy on the eyes) feel that implies wealth and is strongly associated with money. When we changed to our current design the effects were immediately detectable in how our visitors behaved visiting more pages for longer periods of time and, most importantly, increasing our communication with us significantly.

If your designer is not aware of these things do not despair, they may be a fine designer indeed and may have this understanding intuitively (though a little research to back up any intuition is always a sound policy). That said, be aware of the information that is out there and ask questions when you're asked to approve designs.

Building a search engine friendly site:

This is crucially important but probably one of the areas we have to address most frequently. I can't possibly get into all the various areas of search engine friendly design so I'll simply list off a couple of the most common issue we encounter and then provide references to other reading.

Enormous amounts of code on the page. For some reason, even some new designs are coming to us as though they were out of 1998 as far as the page code is concerned. All skilled web designers should have a solid grasp of CSS and should be putting all the main formatting into this file(s). Way too often we're getting sites with dozens of font tags, color tags, size tags, etc. etc. etc. This just gives the search engines a lot more to dig through to find what they want – the content. I'm not even going to get into tables as that opens a whole other can of worms. If your site is table-based (your designer or SEO will be able to tell you this if you don't know) there are some basic practices to insure that the code these tables add is minimized. Unfortunately I can't get into the myriad of different situations this can entail and will have to save it for a future article (so be sure to bookmark our SEO blog to keep up-to-date on that and other developments in the industry).

Bad internal links. You want your internal pages to rank. Most sites will generally target the highest priority phrases on the homepage of the site but the internal pages are the ones that will rank for specific products, services and long tail phrases. To maximize the rankability of the internal pages you need them to be easily found by the spiders and you need to associate these pages with the keywords you're targeting. In short, you need to link to them with text and you need that text to include the keywords. This isn't some deep, dark mystery of SEO and has been well documented and commented on but we've seen tons of instances where internal links are image only or worse, an unspiderable script-based navigation system.

Important Search Engines

Search Engine Breakdown
***********************
Ever notice that performing the same search on the major engines gives you different results? Yes, some of it is because of the algorithms and how the engines use different factors in their rankings, but pay attention to the results and a pattern has emerged.

For the sake of being fair, Ask has been included since they do serve up results in a slightly different manner. So here's how the engines shake out:


Google:

Information Engine
Loves Wikipedia and the results show it
Relies heavily on trust factors (see Google Trustrank)


Yahoo:

Social Engine
Many results have ebay listings (a Yahoo partner), del.icio.us (Owned by Yahoo) and Flickr results (Owned by Yahoo)
Tries to incorporate Yahoo Answers into many results


MSN:

Product Engine
Almost always has results for product based searches not found in the other engines
Starting to use more Wikipedia results as their algorithm matures


Ask:

Clustering Engine
Their results try to give you all the surrounding information around your search term
Trying to get into the mindshare of America

So, as you can see, each engine does provide a different slice of information depending on your search need. Keep this in mind when you are not only looking for something, but when selecting the keyphrase you want to be ranked for.

-To your online success!

WHAT IS SEO?

SEO - An Explanation of Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or Search Engine Optimization as the Americans call it, is the practice of modifying a website so that it is considered to be Search Engine Friendly. If a website can be properly read by the search engine spiders, there is an increased probability of achieving desirable results in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

The primary task for a Search Engine Optimisation company is to understand what the search engines are looking for and which techniques they give greater credibility to. This is the Holy Grail of search engine optimisation and even though some companies employ "Black Hat" techniques to deceive each search engine, natural and ethical Internet marketing techniques that are approved in the Search Engine Optimisation industry prevail for search engine listing longevity.