Three Key Site Usability Tips

This week, six of us attended the OMS ( Online Marketing Summit) in Denver, Colorado. We packed up the Honda and set forth in hopes of getting a fix on the ever-elusive “best practices” currently espoused by the Internet Marketing illuminati. This year’s summit had speakers covering all topics regarding internet marketing strategies and subjects. A few highlights:

1. 80% of usability lies in a website’s information architecture – Before redesigning your site or starting from scratch on design, spend some time optimizing your site map. A tip: write out the name of each of your pages and a one sentence description of that page on index cards. Then have three people (one from outside your business) organize the cards in the manner most intuitive for them. Furthermore, allow them to suggest other names on the cards if they have something simpler or something that better encompasses the information underneath. Also have them put a star on what they think is the single most important page other than home. Take the feedback from this little card trick and reorganize your information...

source: http://www.bluetentmarketing.com/blog/

Read Your Prospect's Mind with KeywordESP

Are you struggling to turn a profit with your Adwords or PPC campaigns?

The truth is that it doesn't matter if you're a newbie or a pro…sometimes Adwords can be a royal pain in the behind.

Not anymore thanks to a new tool that helps you dominate Adwords. You can literally triple your targeted traffic overnight.

Here's the deal. Chuck Mullaney, an eBay pro and self-proclaimed computer geek figured out how the big guys get tons of traffic from Google and all their PPC campaigns.....

source: http://internetmarketingebooks.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html

Google Analytics - Blogger's Blog

Just like other sites, Google analytics for blogger blog is similar. Just sign up into the Google analytics account, then click create new account button. You will see the details to add your blog there. Add the details as mentioned there and click the continue button further. You will be directed to the user authority page.

source: http://seodiscussions.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-analytics-bloggers-blog.html

Penalties For Duplicate Content Issues

A phenomenal truth for ranking good in the SE's is feeding them with unique and quality content. Search Engines are always in search of good content related to your business or domain. "Content is the King" has been a well known proverbial phrase in the SEO community.

Search Engines dislike duplicated content and penalize them mainly due to two reasons: First, they don’t want to show the same pages in their search results. And secondly, they don’t want to spend the resources in indexing pages that are substantially similar.

Duplicate Content : Chances of making the mistake

i) Multiple Domains Supplying Same Content :: Resolve by a permanent 301 redirect to the best suited domain.

ii) Site Redesign :: A change in URL architecture (URL structure change -- converting .html to .asp or .php etc.) :: Repair by a permanent 301 redirect or drop the old versions by setting a proper 404.

iii) CMS sites (e-Commerce and PPC campaign sites) -- Result in same product pages with different dynamic URL's :: Repair by a permanent 301 redirect or using the robots exclusion protocol.

iv) Landing pages having same content -- Dynamically generated landing pages resulting in Dupe Content :: Resolve by a permanent 301 redirect or using the robots exclusion protocol.

v) Content syndication and scraping spam issues result in dupe content penalty.

Can Bing.com be Microsoft's Answer to Google ?

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent an email to the employees confirming the launch of Bing.com and it clearly portrayed their seriousness towards the business. Ballmer in his email mentioned that Bing.com, the new search engine from Microsoft is an extremely crucial step forward for MS in redefining search and expanding their share of the online advertising market.

In fact Microsoft is positioning Bing.com top be more than a search engine. They are calling it the decision engine. To quote Ballmer on this..

"With Bing, our goal is to do more than just make it easier for people to find information. Today, we’re delivering a powerful set of tools that will enable people to make faster, more informed decisions.

In short, Bing is a decision engine that goes beyond what people have come to think of as search—and what our competitors offer today."

At present this search engine is available only to the Microsoft employees and from next week on it would be made public at Bing.com, till then you might like watching this video that shows Bing in action.

As with most major search engine launch a buzz has again started on the question if Bing is going to be the Google killer ? I think it is too early to comment or speculate on this because we haven't yet seen the new engine in action.

With Google's personalized search catching up and their extensive coverage of local search I think one of the main challenges that Bing would face ( if they plan to be a Google replacement) is in regards to local and personalized searches.

Natural Link Building Process Methodology - Obtaining One-Way Inbound Links

The overwhelming consensus of most seo consultants today is that one-way, authoritative inbound links appear to be the way to go on Google in terms of increasing one’s page rank and search engine rankings for specific keywords.

Here are some Ideas for generating one-way inbound links.

1. Writing and submitting articles on relevant subject matter to content/article directories

2. Writing testimonials for industry specific products/services in exchange for a link back to home page

3. Writing an information ebook on relevant subject matter and offering free distribution (viral marketing technique)

4. Writing and publishing a press release of the company

5. Submitting website to targeted directories (Yahoo, Dmoz, Industry Specific)

6. Participating in online forums/discussion boards that allow a signature that links back to home page

Non-suggested link building ideas

1. Reciprocal links exchange (a thing of the past, no longer weighted heavily by Google)

2. Paid text links/ paid text link ads thru a text ads broker (Risky, not natural and Google may penalize sites for doing this in the future. As an alternative, you may want to locate relevant sites with a high PageRank (PR) of say 4 and up and that have very few outbound links. Contact these sites directly or you could have an SEO firm handle this for you, you may have to pay for a permanent link on their site or you could convince them to link to you for offering them something of value in return.)

3. Link Farms - a group of sites that are setup to link to one another (Google could ban a site for participating in this)

4. Other non-ethical seo, spamming methods that could potentially have one’s site banned from Google or other search engines

HTML-Special-character

Here are some HTML Special character that you may want use on your web page or in other word here are special character for web page that you want use on your own website just like mathematics symbol, currency marks . But when you may be sad because a plenty Special-character are not on your computer keyboard , don't worry HTML entities is for you.

You can use HTML entities in two ways.

• with code
  syntax : &"name of entities";
  example : "Thanks for Coöperation"
  



• with Number
  syntax : &#Number of entities;
  example : "Thanks for Coöperation"

When you put your Copyright information in footer then you can display the © symbol by using
©or ©

Undo Gmail Mistakes in Seconds

Undo Gmail Mistakes in Seconds because you realize that you ahve send mail to a wrong person in your Email Address Book .Thankfully, technology allows you to do Undo Gmail .
you can do this by 2 Method

1. If keyboard shortcuts are enabled in your Gmail account, a better option than clicking on "undo" is to press "z."


2. Go to Gmail Labs and find feature, called "Undo Send," is yet another experimental feature.


3. After enabling the feature, Gmail shows an "undo" link whenever you send a message. Now, when you undo the sending of a mail, Gmail saves it as a draft and you can continue editing the message or discard it.

Step to activate Undo Gmail feature

1. Go to Gmail Labs


2. Find for "Undo Send"


3. Enable the feature

"Goggles" is another Gmail Labs feature that helps you to not send messages when you're sleep-befuddled (at night). It does so by making you solve math problems before your message can be sent.

(SEO) terms

Xenu
A software tool to check broken links.


XML
XML stands for Extensible Markup Language (filename.xml) - a scripting language that allows the programmer to define the properties of the document.

search engine optimization (SEO) terms

Impression
The number of times your search ad is served to users by search engines.

Inbound links (IBL)
Links that point to your site from sites other than your own. Inbound links are an important asset that will improve your site's PageRank (PR).

Index
A search engine's database in which it stores textual content from every web page that its spider visits.

Inktomi
First introduced in September 1995, Inktomi Corporation from California was a key player in the search engine market where it pioneered online search technologies. It initially provided software to ISPs (Internet Service Providers) but then went onto power other well-known web search tools such as HotBot, Looksmart, MSN, regional search engines and others.

It ultimately displaced Alta Vista when Inktomi started using a distributed network technology (instead of operating everything on one machine) that enabled them to index more than 1.3 million documents on the web at that time.

Inktomi was the first to launch a paid inclusion service that meant websites would receive regular and frequent re-indexing for a fee. It also invented a proxy cache for ISP web traffic called “Traffic Server”.

During its short life, Inktomi acquired many businesses including Webspective, Infoseek, eScene Networks and FastForward Networks. Once the Internet bubble had burst in 2000, many of its acquisitions were sold off due to the financial collapse of most of its customer base.

Yahoo! purchased Inktomi in 2003 which remains central to its search engine database today.

Inlinks
A synonym for back links. Popularized by Yahoo!

Insertion Order (I/O)
A contract that specifies the details of your search advertising campaign, including placements options, keywords, ad creative, landing page, pricing, geo-targeting, and language options.

Internal Links
An Internal Link is a hypertext link that points to another page within the same website. Internal links can be used as a form of navigation for people, directing them to pages within the website. Links assist with creating good information architecture within the site.

Search engines also use internal text links to crawl pages within a website. The way internal links are structured will impact the way in which search engine bots spider and subsequently index pages.

Internet
Sometimes called "The Net", the Internet is a publicly accessible worldwide system of computer networks that enable people to send and receive information from other computers. The Internet uses the TCP/IP network protocols to facilitate data transmission.

There are three levels of hierarchy including backbone networks, mid-level networks and stub networks. These include commercial (.com or .co), university (.ac or .edu) and other research networks (.org, .net).

The origins of the Internet began in 1962 where a government agency called RAND was commissioned by the US Air Force to develop a military research network that could survive a nuclear attack. Packet Switching was invented as a way of sending data.

The first email program was created in 1972. The TCP/IP Protocol was developed in 1973 and by 1983 it became the core Internet protocol.

The same year of 1983 saw the development of the Domain Name System (DNS) by the University of Wisconsin. The domain name system made it easier for people to access other servers rather than having to remember the corresponding long IP numbers.

In 1992 the World Wide Web was released by CERN and the Internet Society was chartered who controls the Internet. The first graphical user interface to the WWW called “Mosaic for X” was released.

By 1996, most Internet traffic was carried by independent ISPs. The Internet Society is building a new TCP/IP that will allow billions of addresses rather than the limited supply that we have today.

Internet Explorer
Introduced in 1995, Internet Explorer is a web browser produced by Microsoft. It is also known as Explorer, IE, Microsoft Internet Explorer or MSIE. Internet Explorer is the most widely used browser in the world to view information on the World Wide Web (WWW).

This browser didn’t get popular until version 3 was released in 1996 which supported CSS, ActiveX controls, Java applets, inline multimedia and the PICS system for content metadata.

Version 8 is currently in development where further improvements will be made to the security of the browser. There will also be more support for CSS 2.1 specifications.

Over the years (particularly in the early releases) Internet Explorer has been subject to harsh criticisms including its security architecture and its lack of support of open standards.

Interstitial Ad
An ad page that appears for a short period of time before the user-requested page is displayed. Also known as a transition ad, splash page, or Flash page.

Inventory
Advertising space available for purchase on a website. Based on projections, inventory may be specified as number of impressions or as a share of voice. Also known as ad avail.

Invisible Web
a term that refers to the vast amount of information on the web that is not indexed by the search engines. Coined in 1994 by Dr. Jill Ellsworth.

IP Address
IP Address stands for “Internet Protocol Address” and is sometimes referred to as “IP” or “Internet Address”. It is expressed as a four-part series of numbers separated by periods that identifies every sender and receiver of network data. The numbers represent the domain, the network, the subnetwork and the host computer. For example: 127.0.0.10 with each number ranging from 0 through to 255.

Each server or device connected to the Internet is assigned a unique permanent (static) or temporary (dynamic) IP address. The IP Address sometimes translates into a specific domain name.

ISP - Internet Service Provider
ISP is an abbreviation for Internet Service Provider. An ISP provides a range of Internet related services to customers including Internet connectivity, email, website hosting, domain name registration and hosting.

Usually provided for a monthly fee, an ISP can be a commercial business, a university, a government organization, a school or any other entity that provides access to the Internet to members or subscribers.

10 SEO Tips to be Number 1 on Search Engines

Being number 1 on search engines isn't the easiest thing to achieve. Depending on the niche you're trying to rank #1 on Google and Yahoo, competition will vary. Here are 10 SEO tips to make sure you achieve your ranking goals.

Target keyword phrases with 2 or more words

When choosing the keywords to target in your yahoo and google SEO campaign, instead of targeting words like "shoes", target keyword phrases such as "sport shoes for men". Doing so, you will target the following keyword phrases:

• sport shoes
• shoes for men
• sport shoes for men
• shoes

This will attract much more traffic than targeting single words that you have almost no chance to even be on the first page of search results.

Create inbound links with relevant anchor text

When you want to create an inbound link from your homepage to your "sport shoes for men" page, create the link with a text anchor that is relevant to the linked page.

This will tell search engines what the page is about the they will rank it higher because it assures them they will not link to non relevant content. Make full use of this is your whole website to have a better SEO approach.

Your title is the most important tag for search engines

Be careful to what you put in your [title] tag. Include the main keywords you want to target in your page. If you have a page called that targets the "sport shoes for men" keyword, make sure to insert the keyword as-is in your title.For now, this is the most important SEO technique to use with the main search engines. If the rest of the page is relevant to the title, you have a very good chance at ranking high on google.

Don't waste much time with META tags

While they once were the most important thing to do in SEO, META tags are now less than useless for google. Yahoo still accords some importance to them so you still should insert them. Just don't overdo it and waste precious hours trying to tweak them to perfection. Instead of doing that, create other quality keyword rich articles or tweak the actual content of your existing articles.

Don't stuff keywords in your META tags that arent used in the actual content. Some sites have been penalized doing so. According to many SEO experts, google totally ignores the tag but other search engines could see it as spam and penalize you.

Don't assume you know what keywords people search for

When determining what keywords you will target on your new page, don't assume you know what keywords the users will search for when looking for info related to your page.

To make sure you target the right keywords, use keyword tools provided by Google and Yahoo. You can also use Wordtracker but it ain't free. Enter a couple keywords and the tools will give you hundreds more that you havn't though of. They will also give you relative numbers to know how much times the keyword(s) was search for in the last month/year.

After seleting a few keywords that interest you, go on google and type "selected keyword". This will give you all the pages in the index which contain that exact keyword in their page. This gives you a good idea of the competition for that particular term. Try to find keyword phrases with high demand and low competition. This is called finding "niche" keywords.

Submit articles to get quality backlinks

By creating quality articles and publishing them to article submission websites, you will gain very good backlinks. Publishers go on article websites and get content to publish to their website with a link to your website as a credit for the free article he just grabbed.

When creating your articles, be sure to include 2-3 links to different parts of your website to gain even more from the exchange.

Google values backlinks as much as the actual content of your website. They think that if other publishers link to your website, it indicated that your content is quality content.

Be sure to vary the anchor text of the links pointing to your website. Google will see them as more natural links and you will gain ranks doing so.

Just like links inside your website, make sure the links you receive from other website have an anchor relevant to the linked page.

If you do this regularly and have quality articles, you will gain a huge amount of backlinks and this will give you the chance to target more competitive keywords on google and yahoo.

Submit to many directories

Even if it's true that directory backlinks are no longer as important as they were before, submit to as much as possible. It's easy, fast and cannot harm you.

Some quality directories like DMOZ and Yahoo are sure to help you ranking high, especially at Yahoo and MSN.

When submitting to the directories, try varying the anchor (often the title of your directory listing) pointing to your website. Some directories will only let you use your company name but some less popular ones will let you put what you want. Keep the anchors relevant but varying them will seem more natural to search engines, especially Google. Don't spam too much keywords in your page

Keyword density is not as important as most webmasters think. Don't overuse keywords in a context where it seems unnatural to your visitors. As long as the keywords appear in strategic places such as your title and headers (see tip bellow), include them wisely in your paragraphs. As long as the phrase appears at least 1 time in your content, search engines will know you targeted it. Don't repeat the same keywords 2-3 times per paragraph, your content will be of lesser quality to your readers and you will gain less natural backlinks doing so.

One more thing to not do is stuff keywords at the end of your page hoping that search engines will think the page is relevant to them. The search engines will penalize such "blackhat" techniques and your pages will be dropped from the index. Too much blackhat tricks will get your entire site banned from the search engines forever.

Use header tags wisely

Instead of bolding text to create headers in your pages, use the header tags. They vary from [h1] to [h6], h1 being the biggest and h6 being the smallest. I suggest you use only one h1 tag to put a title at the beginning of your page and then use h2, h3, h4, etc. to create sub divisions. Search engines give allot of credit to headers. Try using keywords that you will target in the following paragraph so search engines trust the header even more and give it more credit.

Be very patient

Search engines take allot of time to master. When changing the content of your page to have a better SEO approach, don't expect engines to pick up your pages instantly and rank them. It can take several days to several weeks for Google, Yahoo and MSN to update your rankings.

Put up any SEO changes and just forget about them. If you want to know if the search engines updated the content of your page, search for your site by searching for site:yoururl.com and find the page in question. Click on "cached page" and look at it. The cached page is the page they are using to give you your rankings

I hope this small guide will help you have a better SEO approach and give you all the success you are hoping for your business. Good luck and don't forget to not overdo any SEO techniques. Create pages for viewers and adapt them to search engines, not vice versa.

10 SEO Tips to be Number 1 on Search Engines

Top 20 Google Ranking Factors

Websites are quickly becoming one of the most popular ways of advertising. Whether it be a business, its product or service or something completely different, everyone of all ages are turning to the web as a method of getting their message out there. With the popularity of this marketing medium increasing and the number of websites always growing, it is obvious that everyone wants to appear at the top of Google's search engine rankings. Achieving such a task is never an easy feat, however with a bit of perseverance, one can definitely increase their chances of reaching that glorious first page result.

Given that there are a heap of websites out there who are on the first page, what is their secret? It is a little industry term called "SEO" and it stands for Search Engine Optimisation. SEO basically consists of the customisation of your website, its content and its internal and external links to assist in the overall indexing and ranking of your website in popular search engines. There are many contributing factors that are used in determining a website's ranking and every search engine is different. This makes trying to optimise your site for Google, Yahoo, Live and the many others quite a pain staking task.

As most of us are aware, Google is currently the most popular search engine for the majority of Internet users. As such, it is only normal that we'd want to focus our sights on achieving a higher ranking within Google first with a hope that the rest will follow. To do this, we must start a journey that could potentially take months before we start seeing any real change, however we have to start somewhere.

Our journey begins by defining some of the key contributing factors that Google uses to determine a website and webpage's ranking within its results. These factors range from keyword use to manipulating internal and external links and the list goes on. To get you started, we have listed the top twenty factors that you should focus on in order to help get your website that little bit closer to the top of the search engine results listing.

The following components relate to the use of the user's search query terms in determining the rank of a particular page.

Top 20 Factors

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag - Placing the targeted search term or phrase in the title tag of the web page's HTML header.
2. Keyword Use in Body Text - Using the targeted search term in the visible, HTML text of the page.
3. Relationship of Body Text Content to Keywords - Topical relevance of text on the page compared to targeted keywords.
4. Keyword Use in H1 Tag - Creating an H1 tag with the targeted search term/phrase.
5. Keyword Use in Domain Name & Page URL - Including the targeted term/phrase in the registered domain name, i.e. keyword.com plus target terms in the webpage URL, i.e. seomoz.org/keyword-phrase.
6. Link Popularity within the Site's Internal Link Structure - Refers to the number and importance of internal links pointing to the target page
7. Quality/Relevance of Links to External Sites/Pages - Do links on the page point to high quality, topically-related pages?
8. Age of Document - Older pages may be perceived as more authoritative while newer pages may be more temporally relevant.
9. Amount of Indexable Text Content - Refers to the literal quantity of visible HTML text on a page.
10. Quality of the Document Content (as measured algorithmically) - Assuming search engines can use text, visual or other analysis methods to determine the validity and value of content, this metric would provide some level of rating.
11. Global Link Popularity of Site - The overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web (both link quality and quantity).
12. Age of Site - Not the date of original registration of the domain, but rather the launch of indexable content seen by the search engines (note that this can change if a domain switches ownership).
13. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site - The subject-specific relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword.
14. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world.
15. Rate of New Inbound Links to Site - The frequency and timing of external sites linking in to the given domain.
16. Anchor Text of Inbound Link.
17. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site.
18. Topical Relationship of Linking Page.
19. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world.
20. Age of Link

Negative Crawling/Ranking Factors

There are also some points we should make before you start getting your hands dirty. With any type of SEO marketing, there are some things that can actually have a negative impact on your ranking. These following components may negatively affect a spider's ability to crawl a page or its rankings at Google.

• Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots
• Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content in the Index
• External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites
• Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages
• Overuse of Targeted Keywords (Stuffing/Spamming)

It's now time to get busy! Start prioritising your tasks, modifying your content and building your internal and external links to meet some of the above guidelines. Keep in mind that improving indexing is mostly a technical task, improving ranking is mostly a business/marketing strategy, what might work now may not work in the future and finally, it takes time. Loads of time. Still, with a bit of trial and error and a good dose of persistence, you can achieve the search engine ranking you're after.

Top 20 Google Ranking Factors

Earning from PPC Search Engine Affiliate Programs

PPC Search Engines are search engines that allow advertisers to list their site within their search results on a pay per click basis. Advertisers bid against other advertisers for the same keywords or phrases. The highest bidder will then have their site ranked #1 in the PPC Search Engine results for a certain keyword followed by the second highest bidder for the same keyword followed by the third highest bidder for the same keyword, etc.

When a visitor then does a search in the PPC Search Engine and clicks on an advertisers bided link, the advertisers account will then get deducted for that click. This only happens once per unique visitor. So if that same visitor clicked on the same advertisers bided link twice, then the advertisers account will only get deducted for the first click.

Why is it easier to earn from PPC Search Engines than other affiliate programs?

PPC Search Engine affiliate programs are a good and easy way to earn some quick cash online. It is a lot easier to earn from PPC Search Engines than most other affiliate programs because you earn from your visitors click-thru’s to an advertisers site and not per action or sale.

Where can I find PPC Search Engines that offer affiliate programs?

There are only a few good resources on the Internet that lists a large amount of PPC Search Engines. Most of these are either outdated where they have a lot of PPC Search Engines that don’t exist anymore or only mainly gives information about a PPC Search Engines advertising offers.

If you were looking to join some PPC Search Engines that offer affiliate programs so that you can earn some quick and easy cash, then a useful resource to use would be http://www.affiliateseeking.com/ppcaff.php.

This is because it lists over 450 PPC Search Engines where you can easily compare what each PPC Search Engines affiliate program has to offer and you can even organize the PPC Search Engines results by Date Added, Minimum Payout, Earnings, etc.

I have joined a PPC Search Engine. How do I go about advertising it so that I can earn from it?

Once you have joined a PPC Search Engine, you can then easily get promotional links/ material from the affiliate section of the PPC Search Engine account where you can then use them to advertise the PPC Search Engine that you have joined.

Most PPC Search Engines allow you to advertise them by using search boxes, an xml feed, text links, referral links, banners, a portal page, and more.

About the Author:

Jonathan White has been doing affiliate marketing, advertising and promotion on the Web for over three years now and is the Webmaster of http://www.affiliateseeking.com/ - a categorized affiliate programs directory that lists over 1000 programs and is still growing.

Writing a SEO-friendly Title

Picture thousands of tiny Google Robots scouring the web for relevant content to match up with millions of searches. When Googlebot finds your website, the most important information it collects, are the Page Titles.

Title Tags are one of the Most Important Factor in SEO

Place the title for each page between the two tags in your HTML code.

Page Titles are Displayed:

• In the top bar of your web browser for the page you are currently viewing.
• On the top line for each entry in the Search Results.
• As the default text used for bookmarking a web page in your browser.

Start with a Great Headline, then SEO

When your site shows up in the search results, the Title is the first chance you have to get noticed and make an impression. A Title that promises a benefit to your potential customers increases the chances of being selected. Without a title that encourages a click-through, all your SEO efforts to boost your site in the search results will have been wasted.

Powerful SEO Device

Before you can optimize your title tags, you'll need to research your most valuable SEO keywords. Strategically incorporating your keywords into your title tags is a powerful SEO tactic. Be sure to use the same keywords in the title throughout the content of the page.

Top Title Tag Tips for SEO

• Place the most important keywords at the beginning.
• Write titles using capitals, like the title of a book.
• Keep titles down to 65 characters long.

Avoid these SEO Title Tag Mistakes

• No Title at all. There are over 35 million web pages called: 'Untitled Document.' They have absolutely no SEO value.
• All Page Titles the same. Misses a huge SEO opportunity. Optimize each page with its own unique title tag.
• Wasting space with filler words. Use concise phrases. | Make every word count. | Use the 'vertical bar' character to separate phrases.
• Keyword stuffing. No one will click on a title in the search results that just consists of a bunch of keywords. Google doesn't like it either.
• Sales pitches. You'll turn off potential customers before they even get to your website.

Optimizing your title tags is an essential step for strategic SEO. A title that stands out in the search results will be noticed by your potential customers and bring in more business to your website.

5 Competitive Research Tools to Boost your SEO

It's a commonly-held misconception that gaining a top ranking in Google is next to impossible unless you're a huge site with lots of cash to splash around. It's very true that competition of the top spot in Google is extremely fierce and, if you read the SEO forums then it looks like there's another marketing 'must have' that's discovered each and every week.

In a sense all this is true, for the extremely competitive and hotly-contested markets at least. These include markets such as food supplements, health and beauty, weight loss, real estate, financial services and general medical supplies where many large sites and manufacturers are competing with one another for top positions. If, instead, you're in a niche market where there's much less competition then you (even as a single individual) have the opportunity to rank very highly for a given search term.

It's been well established that the difference between a #1 and #2 spot on Google can mean a five-fold difference in traffic. As a result, rather than being an exercise in futility top listings can dramatically improve your on-line success. There are a whole range of things you can do to improve your website's rankings. But the one thing that many internet marketers and website owners ignore is the potential value of competitive intelligence... The fact that your competitors can help you to improve your rankings.

Using competitive intellignece, you are attempting to discover:

• What methods are your competition using to improve their rankings: things like, are they using social media (social bookmarking and video); how many links they have.
• How entrenched is your competitor in the market... This gives an indication of how hard it will be to unseat them.
• Examining your competitors' web pages (particularly the underlying HTML) will tell you their overall level of SEO skills.
• Find out how many potential link prospects there are in your market. Also, how easy is it to write and submit articles or reviews in your market. Each of these brings you much-needed back-links.

Things you should do include:

1. Determine Link Popularity
   Using primary (tier 1 in web parlance) keywords (the main keywords that you are targeting your site against) pick three top-ranked Google sites in your niche. Using this information you can now check the link popularity using marketleap.com.
2. Perform your Keyword Research
   I know this is tedious, but the importance of keyword research really can't be stressed enough. Pick the top keywords that you are targeting your site/pages against then use a search term suggestion tool such as inventory.overture.com to analyze these keywords and their permutations. You will now see what the actual search volume of these terms is and how much competition you have against those keywords. This will allow you to spot those keywords which you have an opportunity to target. You're looking for keywords with decent numbers of searches but low competition. Also use other tools such as Google keyword tools (free) and keyworddiscovery .com/?id=303238" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">keyworddiscovery.com (paid). Once you've selected a bunch of keywords you can now add pages to your site that target these keywords (a common and 'must do' SEO technique.
3. Find Sites to Target
   This is the way that you find the sites to request links from. To do this you can use the Google search page. Al you need to do is to type "allinanchor:tier 1 keyword" into the search box and then click on the 'Google Search' button. Remember that the 'tier 1 keyword' is the primary keyword you're targetting, as described above. For example, if your 'tier 1 keyword' is 'african recipes' then you would type allinanchor: african recipes into the Google search box. This will give you all the links that point to a site using that particular phrase. You can combine this search with allintitle: which show the keywords used in pages' [title] tags.
4. Analyze Digg It's interesting how social bookmarking sites have exploded onto the internet scene and they now play a key role in many websites' internet marketing strategies. Because of this social bookmarking sites can actually offer you a wealth of information about your competitors and about your target market. Obvious things are checking the current top stories in your target market (and if you can produce a new slant on these then that's additional content for your site). Also check if your competitors have and diggs. This will tell you the type of stories or content that gets you noticed so that you can add similar content to your own site. Just remember that though Digg is the social bookmarking site with the largest content and user base there are a number of others out there.
5. Visit your Competitors' Sites
   This may seem obvious, but you should visit your competitors' sites to see what they're doing. What kind of content are they adding, how are they expanding their site. What does their site look like... All this should affect the design and content decisions for your own site. But don't stop there. Sign-up to your competitors' newsletters and email announcements. Find out how they are marketing their site and products. Could you do it better than they are? Have they missed something that you could do? This can also tell you what kind of marketing your competitors are focussing on. Are they trying to grab the main slice of the market by targeting the most popular keywords, or are they taking more of a 'long tail' approach by targeting a small portion of a chiche (eg 'african recipes from benin').

If you're serious about your internet business then competitive intelligence must be an integral part of your marketing efforts. After all, your competitors are using this technique. It's amazing what you can learn with competitive intelligence... about your market, your competitors, the developing trends in that market and where you stand. You also maintain a comprehensive view of your competition and how you are performing in comparison with them.

Admittedly this is hard work, but if you use competitive intelligence correctly and apply what you have learnt to your marketing efforts then you will see a quite impressive increase in your bottom line. Just remember that five-fold difference in traffic between the #1 and #2 positions in Google rankings.

Hidden Content Sources for Your Website

As I travel through the Google search engine, there is one element that defines almost all of the top-ranking websites. It's great content. People come online for information and those that offer the best content reap the greatest rewards.

Unfortunately, this type of content is hard to come by. In most cases, you either have to spend hours in front of the keyboard or outsource the job to others. Both of these options are very costly. One requires your valuable time and the other requires an investment of around $10 - $20 per article.

That's why I have scoured the net in search of valuable free content sources. I'm still not quite sure why I'm revealing my treasured piles of free content, but I certainly hope you enjoy them.

One of my favorite sources of content is public domain. This comprises the body of knowledge without a copyright. Anyone can use this material for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Below are some excellent sources for public domain material.

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is a library of 18,000 free ebooks whose copyright has expired. "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", "Pride and Prejudice", "The Time Machine", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and "The Canterbury Tales" have all passed into the public domain.

This means that you can put these on your website or even sell them in electronic or book format.

Explore a wealth of free content at Gutenberg.org.

Archive.org

At Archive.org you can find thousands of works that are currently in the public domain. Want to put some cartoons on your web site? Check out the "Film Chest Vintage Cartoons", which is full of classic animated cartoons from the 1930's and 1940's. The collection includes Popeye, Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, The Three Stooges and Betty Boop. They also provide tons of other reproducable content including:

Brick Films: Commonly called "LEGO Movies". Brick films are dedicated to the art of stop motion animation.

SabuCat Movie Trailers: The world's largest collection of theatrical trailers.

Feature Films: A large number of classic feature films and shorts.

Universal Newsreels: Newsreels were shown before every feature film in the pre-tv era.

Computer Chronicles: Was the world's most popular television program on personal technology during the height of the computer revolution.

Net Cafe: Television series covering the revolution during the height of the dot com boom.

All of these content sources are available for you to put on your website. check them out at Archive.org.

Another popular public domain destination is Wikipedia.org. Here you will find over 1 million articles ranging from Greek mythology and Egyptian history to business, health, and technology.

Go to Wikipedia.org for a huge collection of articles you can reprint on your own website.

Creative Commons

Every creative work receives copyright protetion as soon as you put pen to paper, hit save, or press record. Because of this, no one can use that work without express permission from the author.

Creative Commons provides a new content license that allows you to share your work with others. If you want, you can even allow other people to expand upon your existing work. This allows for creative co-authorship.

The Creative Commons license has made piles of content available for use on your web site. Whether you are looking for audio, images, video, or text, you can find an abundance of reusable information within the creative commons.

To search for content to put on your own web site, go to CreativeCommons.org.

Government Web Sites

Works produced by the U.S. Federal government are not copyrighted. If you obtain a government document from the net, you are free to copy and distribute the document. I have found plenty of great content about finance, retirement, health, business, and traveling on government websites.

To search for content offered by the United States government, go to http://www.google.com/unclesam.

Article Directories

There are thousands of writers on the internet and many of them would love for you to reprint their articles on your website. You can find thousands of free web articles at the following article directories.

GoArticles.com
EzineArticles.com
ArticleCity.com

Interviews

I consider interviews to be one of the best sources of quality content for your site. Simply interview industry professionals and post the recording and transcript on your website. This allows you to create original content very quickly.

Don't be afraid to ask for an interview, most experts would be delighted to speak with you. Remember, this is probably one of their greatest passions. If you ask them politely, your chances for landing an interview are good.

You can conduct an interview in person, over the phone, or even through an e-mailed questionaire.

RSS Feeds

RSS is changing the way we consume information online. In addition, it has also provided thousands of new content sources for the online publisher. RSS is simply a file format similar to XML that is used by publishers to make their content available to others in a format that can be easily understood by web publishing software and content aggregators.

By using RSS feeds, you can enhance the content on your site without ever writing a single word. And remember, on the Internet, content is King.

Want to put Amazon products on your site, updated news from the New York Times, financial advice from Motley Fool, or press releases from PRWeb?

This is all possible with RSS. No matter what type of information you are looking for, RSS can provide you with a constant stream of updated content for your web site.

To search for an RSS feed to enhance your own website, go to Syndic8.com. You can even mix and match a variety of rss feeds at RSSMix.com.

Facts & Statistics

Looking for facts or figures to put on your website? Take a look at some of the sources below. You'll likely be surprised how many facts, figures, and definitions are available in the public domain.

The CIA World Factbook provides a number of statistics on countries, territories, and dependencies. Each profile tracks such demographics as population, ethnicity, and literacy rates, as well as political, geographical and economic data.

http://www.census.gov/: One of the largest repositories for data and statistics related to the U.S.

http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Main_Page: One of the best encyclopedia's ever written was published over 90 years ago. Search over 40,000 articles, all of which are available for publication on your own site.

http://www.bibliomania.com/2/3/257/frameset.html: A searchable interface of the 1913 public domain Webster's dictionary.

Private Label Articles

Private label articles can be bought for pennies per article. This is possible because they are sold in bulk.

Many people criticize these articles and have declared them as worthless. However, I am here to tell you that private label articles can be very powerful when used appropriately.

Unless you have hours of free time every day, it is unlikely that you are going to be able to create the amount of quality content that your web site deserves. This is where private label content enters the picture.

You can use private label articles to:

• Add content to your web site.
• Acquire hundreds of inbound links by syndicating the articles to article directories.
• Create a free report for your visitors and other website publishers.
• Create an information-packed RSS feed.

However, the key to using private label articles effectively is to optimize them. Straight out of the box, these articles are near worthless. To give them value, you must add your own touch.

Inject your personality into the article. Combine multiple articles and do some additional touch-ups to ensure that the article is in top shape for your readers.

Once you are finished you can add your resource box and send it off to article directories and website publishers.

If you are looking for one of the top private label article providers, go to InfoGoRound.com.

Images

Quality images can make your content much more inviting and keep people at your site for longer periods of time. Fortunately, there is a site that offers thousands of pictures completely free of charge. Find it at Stock.XCHNG.

Quotes

Quotes can give your website a special touch. Quotes provide interesting content in addition to an element of credibility. I often like to add related quotes to my web site simply to engage the reader's attention.

To find some quotes for your website, go to QuoteLand.com.

In the end, you always want your content to be unique. Not for the search engines, but for your visitors. With quality content comes quality links. Once you have built up a reputation for delivering unique content, you will never have to worry about having an audience eager to visit your website.