Free Traffic Exchanges Are King

If you’re a serious online marketer with your own website or websites, or you promote affiliate marketing programs, you know how expensive PPC (pay-per-click) advertising can be. If you’re in a very competitive market, you know first hand how very expensive this can be. Your $1 and $5 clicks add up very quickly, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, you will lose a lot of money to your competition, and to the PPC companies you’re advertising through, like Google AdWords.
There are other online advertising options open to you other than just PPC. There are traffic exchange websites that allow marketers to earn credits to have their websites advertised to a whole community of many thousands of users within the exchange. Webmasters earn credits to have their websites and promotions added into the rotation while surfing through other websites within the traffic exchange system. Also, most of the newer click exchange websites allow you to purchase hundreds or thousand of hits for fractions of a penny, so you don’t have to spend a lot of time surfing. Some also have games to keep you occupied and amused while earning credits. Some allow you to sell or trade your credits for cash. Many of the newer traffic exchange sites are truly a huge benefit for online marketers today.
Another huge benefit for website owners from traffic exchange systems is the number of back links they receive for their websites. The more popular these click exchange sites become, the higher their page rank becomes in popular search engines. When your website URLs are in the website rotation, your click count increases, and search engines start to rank your website higher on the free search engine chain. You not only attract new visitors to your website each and every day from the exchange, but you have the ability to get your website higher in the free search engine listings.
One of the absolute best ways to get free, or very cheap, targeted traffic today is by using traffic exchange website. Having a large community of users, clicking through websites and advertisements to earn credits is a powerful way to get targeted traffic to your website. Having the ability to generate more free traffic, and options to purchase clicks for fractions of a penny, or cash in credits for cash, are just some of the benefits why these traffic exchange sites are so popular today and their popularity is growing by the day. All website traffic is not created equally. Traffic is one thing, but targeted traffic is king! These traffic exchange website deliver targeted traffic by visitors who are interested in what you have to offer.
Nothing will replace good old PPC advertising, but when you compliment PPC with click exchanges, just watch your visitors increase by the hundreds, if not thousands each and every month, and watch your sales increase as well. And isn’t this what it’s all about? So do all you can to increase your targeted traffic, and you will increase your odds of converting your visitors into paying customers. And that’s the name of the game my friend.

Keyword Research 101

By Michael Pedone

As a search engine optimization company, eTrafficJams.com has a responsibility to help our clients find the right keyword phrases that will help them improve sales. Unfortunately, there is a widespread misconception that you need highly competitive keyword phrases that get the most traffic to do this. This could not be farther from the truth!

More often than not, and understandably so, clients who hire us for search engine optimization will request very general, non-specific keyword phrases because tools like Overture’s keyword finder tells them that keyword phrase “XYZ” gets the most searches. However, there is a major pitfall with using only this data.

Now you may be thinking, “Oh you’re just another search engine optimization company trying to avoid having to target the hard-to-get keyword phrases," but that is not the case. It is possible to get first-page rankings in the free listing area of the major search engines for competitive keyword phrases, and we have done so numerous times for ourselves and clients.

But although you may have been sold on the idea that top website positioning is the goal, what you really want is for your web site to generate more qualified leads or, better yet, sales.

Quantity vs. quality
Simply trying to get top search engine placement based upon “quantity” (in other words, those keyword phrases being searched on most) may totally miss the mark of your ultimate goal: more sales. Getting targeted website traffic, meaning people who are literally using the search engines as an online yellow pages phone book to find a product or service that will solve their need / pain, is what SEO is really all about. Because only targeted traffic will spend money on what you’re selling.

Take a moment and think about your own search habits for a moment. Let’s say you live in Connecticut and you need a limo. Do you use Google to search for “limo” or “Connecticut limo”?

Sure, the keyword “limo” gets a ton more searches than does the phrase “Connecticut limo," but the fact is even if your SEO company was able to get your site ranked on the first page of Google for the keyword “limo," what are the chances that people using that search term are customers looking for a limo in your area? What are the chances they are your target audience? Do you really want to get Internet leads from people all over the map who you can’t serve, or would you rather be found under a keyword phrase that pre-qualifies your prospects?

This does not mean you shouldn’t go after competitive keyword phrases ever. I believe that if a keyword phrase accurately describes your product or service and would bring you targeted website traffic (buyers, not just shoppers) then by all means optimize for it! But make sure your expectations are realistic and don’t put all your keywords into one basket.

Instead, let’s say you choose an SEO package that includes 20 to 30 keyword phrases. Have a good mix of five or 10 really relevant keyword phrases that are highly competitive, and then make sure the rest of your keyword phrases are ones that will bring targeted website traffic, even if the numbers are low. The payoff will be higher search engine placement across the board, plus your quality and quantity of leads will skyrocket, bringing increased sales along for the ride.

The art of finding the right keyword phrase
OK, so now that you are on board with finding the right phrases and not just the ones that get the most searches, you need to know how to find them.

Simply using a tool like Overture’s word suggestion tool is just not going to cut it. You need to have a clear goal before you even start the hunt for keyword phrases.

There are several fundamentals at play here that even most search engine optimization companies overlook:

One: You need to get in touch with your real market, those who pay your bills. Ask yourself who your customers are and what problems do they have that your product or service solves.

Two: You need to think like your customers and not assume you know what keyword phrases they use to find you. All too often the clients who hire us to handle their optimization are too close to their own situation and they need a little eye-opening Q and A session to get them thinking more like their clients. This goes a long way toward uncovering the right type of phrases...but it is not the end of the road.

One last note before we move on. Depending on your own server logs or stats package to tell you where your customers are coming from is not the right way to determine the keyword phrases to use in your search engine optimization campaign. Why? Because if you were satisfied with the results those keyword phrases were currently bringing you, you wouldn’t be looking to hire or do your own SEO. You need to find the “money phrases” that buyers are using everyday to search for and find companies just like yours. Let’s look at one way of doing just that.

Finding the 'money keyword phrases'
Once the suggestions above are in progress and your juices are flowing, the following method works very well in uncovering keyword phrases that will bring traffic to your site and put money in your pocket.

First, decide what your categories are.

Look at your site and note all the different page groupings and subjects you have in your navigation. Start with general subject headings and move deeper into your site. Here’s an example:

At eTrafficJams.com, we offer “Search Engine Optimization” so our main category would be:

• Search Engine Optimization

And we have sub categories such as:

• SEO Services
• Free Search Engine Optimization Analysis
• Free SEO Price Quote
• SEO Articles

Just to name a few. But if you go deeper into the site you see second-level sub categories. For instance, our search engine optimization services page reveals that we offer:

• Keyword Research
• Web Site Optimization
• Search Engine Copywriting
• Search Engine Registration
• Link Popularity
• Web Site Traffic Analysis

So the end result of our category research would look like this:

Main Category:

• Search Engine Optimization

Sub Categories:

• SEO Services
• Free Search Engine Optimization Analysis
• Free Price Quote
• SEO Articles

2nd level Sub Categories (Hint: this is where you can really score some homerun traffic)

• Keyword Research
• Web Page Optimization
• Search Engine Copywriting
• Search Engine Registration
• Link Popularity
• Web Site Traffic Analysis

The actual names of these categories and sub categories are what you would use to start your keyword phrase research.

Now you need a good keyword tracking tool so you can enter the title of each category into it and start honing your list of keyword phrases. I use and recommend Wordtracker. I have found that there’s an art to using Wordtracker and we have developed our own methodology for using it in a way that will produce the best keyword phrases for your optimization venture.

Believe it or not, the hardest part is already done. Now that you’ve brainstormed on what your target market is, what problems your product / service solves for them, and determined your website’s categories, you are ready for Wordtracker.

The finish line is not far away at this point and the rewards could be great but you must finish what you started and not cut any corners here. The next section will guide you on how to use Wordtracker like a pro to get the best phrases for your search engine optimization.

Selecting the RIGHT keyword phrases
As with any powerful tool, there is a right way and a few wrong ways to use Wordtracker. We’ll try to prevent the most common mistakes in this section. But first, a few words about how Wordtracker works.

It allows you to enter a keyword phrase (such as one of your category names) and then:

• It automatically supplies other keyword phrases related to your original phrase. So if I type in “search engine optimization” it will provide me with other related terms being searched for. Check out the example below:

Click here to add all keywords to your basket

Keyword Count Predict Dig
search engine optimization 1045 1067
economical search engine optimization 176 180
search engine optimization company 28 29

• The other thing Wordtracker does is it tells me how many searches are being done on a particular keyword phrase.

Beware: This is where a crucial mistake is usually made! It’s still too early to choose keyword phrases based on their “search count” (the popularity of a keyword phrase based upon the amount of searches it’s getting).

Why you ask? Because there is still one crucial element missing: the amount of competition for each keyword phrase.

Wordtracker can help you with this, too. If you type in your main keyword category and some of the other additional phrases related to it, Wordtracker will give you a good indication of:

a) How many searches are expected to be done on those phrases on a given search engine like Google, and...

b) The number of competing web pages for a specific keyword phrase already in the database of a given search engine.

This information will become indispensable as you settle on your final list of keyword phrases.

At this stage of the game, many fall into a trap that can completely derail their optimization efforts. That trap is selecting keyword phrases based simply on the number of searches their primary keyword categories are getting.

Chances are most if not all of your category and sub category keyword phrases will be among the most competitive in their class. And yes, I did mention earlier that it’s okay to optimize for highly competitive keyword phrases if your page is all about a specific product or service and those keyword phrases bring the exact type of traffic suited for that page.

But there are probably several primary keyword phrases on your list that may prove to be quite difficult to get first or second page ranking results with.

So to help you make an educated decision on what terms to optimize for, I recommend you enter your category keyword phrases and related phrases one at a time into Wordtracker, regardless of their reported popularity. (All the keyword phrases you select are added to a master “basket” for you to review when you are done).

Once you have this master list, review it without looking at the stats. If you include the stats at this stage, it will probably skew your thinking.

If it helps, move the keyword phrases only to an Excel sheet and organize them alphabetically.

Then simply go through the list and ask yourself, “If a customer found our site with this keyword phrase, would he / she be a buyer?”

Deep six the ones that immediately say “no” to you.

With your new, scaled-down list, go back to Wordtracker and this time examine the words and stats together. (This is where a professional search engine optimization consultant can truly come in handy.)

Now you are faced with the biggie: “Which keyword phrases do I choose for the final cut?”

Fortunately, you now have all the data on the three most important considerations in your hands:

What are the most relevant keyword phrases for this page in order of importance?
What is the popularity of each of these keyword phrases?
How much competition does each of these keyword phrases have?

So, to review...

You have determined that the following keyword phrases would bring targeted web site traffic to your site:

• ABC
• ABCD
• ABCDE

Keyword phrase “ABC” gets 200 searches a day and has five million web pages already competing with you in this category.

“ABCD” gets 85 searches a day but only has 600,000 competing web pages.

“ABCDE” has 25 searches a day and only 250,000 competing web pages.

So, that’s the complete picture! Now that you’ve completed this tutorial, you’re better equipped to select the right keyword phrases that will sky rocket not only your search engine placement but your sales, too.

Search Marketing Predictions for 2008

Last week, we shared some New Years Resolutions from several search marketers and social media marketers. I asked many of those same marketers what they thought 2008 had in store for search. Again, I'll be sharing their responses in two parts.

If you want to share your own predictions, or discuss any of the ones shared here, feel free to join the conversation in the SEW Forums.
Q: What do you predict will be the three most significant happenings in search for 2008? General themes, specific events to watch for, or even straight-out predictions would work.


Amanda Watlington, owner of Searching for Profit

Top theme for me is a bit gloomy. If the pundits are right we may be lurching into a recession. Again if they are right, it will last throughout the year; hence it is not a short term blip in the purchasing radar. Other than the dot-com bust, which did not uniformly impact the broad economy as a whole, we have no data on how search performs during a time of reduced employment and lowered consumer spending – typical hallmarks of recession.

Search is a pull medium, with the consumer doing the pulling via the keyword. In the past decade consumers have continued to elevate their level of engagement with search and have increasingly integrated it into their daily lives. We have enjoyed huge growth as a result.

I am curious and a bit anxious to see: What happens to search when the searcher's daily life changes – loss of job, loss of home, loss of health insurance – all part of the ugliness of recession. Do laid off consumers reduce their searching as they no longer have the fast broadband connections they once enjoyed in the workplace? Should we be looking at differing times of activity? For many of my client sites, the busiest times are at the end of the workday. Will this shift? Will we see changes in traffic and basic site visitation metrics?

Clients have enough experience by now with search to have developed expectations as to what they believe it will deliver, but those expectations have been framed during a time of continuous growth in the online sector and for the economy as a whole. During recession, I expect that we may see lots more lookers and less buyers. The malls were very busy at Xmas, but the buying was slow and the discounts and early sales were used extensively to draw in the purchaser. Huge sales reduce margins and increase business risks.

What will this mean for search? In my opinion unless the site owner has a firm grip on the metrics of search as it relates to the cost of selling the goods, they may falter, particularly if the recession extends through multiple seasons. Last year would not have been too soon to focus attention on improving conversion of paid search. Every marketing dollar is more precious during recession and must be spent ever more carefully. So that being said, improved bang for the buck is a must-have.

As search marketers we are the insiders. We are supposed to know and understand search in all of its dimensions. We are moving into uncharted territory. It is not territory that I am excited to explore, but I will go there nonetheless.
Andrew Goodman, principal at Page Zero Media

1. Justified or not, there will be renewed calls for investigations into forms of "bias" in how Google serves up content, how it downgrades the performance of its direct competitors in both paid and organic listings, etc. For the time being, these claims and charges will remain toothless, as it is an election year and no one is actually going to do anything about anything.

2. Rich Skrenta's search engine startup, Blekko, will be acquired by Yahoo even before it comes out of beta.

3. Jason Calacanis will discover that he doesn't have "unlimited access to capital."

4. Google will release the GPhone. It will be one of the most embarrassing flops in Google history.

OR, Google will begin giving away free mobile devices of some sort, intended to create loyalty to the Google brand and software. This too will add fuel to the fire of "antitrust" and "unfair competition" charges being bandied about, and again, nothing will happen soon because it's an election year.

5. Several prominent Googlers will be accused of bias in their support for presidential candidates, especially Barack Obama. Their responses will refer to such basic Constitutional rights as the First Amendment.

6. In Myanmar, Internet usage will continue to be restricted or banned. A blogger will be executed publicly. It will lead to external military intervention. Pro-am journalists will bravely enter the country and images of repression will be posted on NowPublic, YouTube, etc.
Anne Kennedy, managing partner of Beyond Ink

In 2008, we need to keep an eye on Wall Street. Here's why: as our market expands to include many more businesses, which is good, many potential customers will be publicly held, and sensitive to economic factors such as stock prices, prime rates and quarterly earnings reports, always dodgy for marketing budgets. That search marketing provides measurably superior ROI to other media is good. The challenge remains to convince marketing folks inside such companies of this, when search is strangely foreign and often in conflict with traditional marketing principles.

We need to watch our backs for competitive undermining from Madison Avenue agencies, who are already worried about their own budget allocations for 2008, given the anxious U.S. economy. The last time a recession reared its ugly head, they were the first our established media partners jettisoned from new business as they drew up the gangplanks to save their own revenues. Search marketers worked smarter and more nimbly and prospered then, but are we solid enough to do it again?

Marketing budgets will be cut. Our task is to increase the search proportion regardless of this, which means dedicated effort to befriending and convincing traditional marketers that search is their best strategy.

The shape of 2008 will be set by the efforts of folks at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and the resulting effect on the economy. The race for the White House will prove distracting and even divisive to our customers, and raise the noise-to-signal ratio considerably by competing for space in the search stream.

With the search engines, dwindling transparency is of concern, both in PPC pricing and organic results.
Dana Todd, executive VP at SiteLab International

1. We should see a leveling-out of the search market share pie this year, although I think it's going to be end-of-year before we see it hit a ceiling. Google will continue to take share-of-queries from the others, but will cap out at 85% or less. The others will focus on leveraging their non-search ad programs to make up the revenue losses.

2. The Google/DoubleClick merger will prove a strain for Google, as they find themselves in the same boat as Yahoo after its Overture acquisition. Selling both performance advertising and display advertising is a challenge, and creating synergies between the sales/customer support teams of both organizations will take years. However, the behavioral targeting potential upside is huge if they can get it integrated.

3. Google's stock price will take a tumble, but probably not as bad as some folks might think – it's not going to collapse the way many internet stocks did in the last bubble. Wall Street is fickle, and many are looking for reasons to doubt Google's valuation. I see it taking a wallop at the end of the year, Q4, losing about 2/3 its stock price.

4. Ad exchanges will NOT prove to be a significant evolution in the display ad world, as advertisers test the model and find that remnant inventory is still remnant inventory, even if it's in a bargain bin. With a few exceptions, most of the insta-networks will die this year. Even behavioral will not drive significantly higher CPMs for display. What WILL drive up pricing is scarcity, as the premium spaces fill up their inventory. Expect to see a growing gap between premium and non-premium ad space.

5. Yahoo will separate its publishing properties (e.g. Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance) from its advertising networks (display, search, mobile), which will give it more flexibility in providing a larger suite of offerings to advertisers. Alternately, AT&T will buy Yahoo to help bulk up its mobile and local/directory products.

6. Google News will take on Yahoo News head to head for users – this is one area where Yahoo has dominated easily, and it's an under-monetized asset. If Google can beat Yahoo News in uniques, they can easily leverage the DoubleClick display business into the property.
Danielle Leitch, EVP of client strategy at MoreVisibility

I feel that Yahoo will be someone to watch in 2008 as it relates to its market share and where it could shift to another player. I'd expect a possible acquisition or partnership to do rev share with someone else's search results, versus trying to compete with their own.

Also, I see adaption of the industry as a whole shifting from just acronyms (SEO, CPC, SEM) to "interactive marketing." As a result, I believe agencies will become more full service then they had been – which could lead to mergers or partnerships in that area too.

Education and training will be important. Although I don't know I could say that the focus will be to try and bring it in house, I do expect that companies will be requiring their own staff to be better educated on the areas that their interactive marketing agency manages for them. So training and education (online and offline) should be an important area (and opportunity) to get addressed to advertisers this year. Agencies will become more accountable than ever before, as clients push for harder-to-obtain metrics and results.
David Berkowitz, director of emerging media & client strategy at 360i

1. Consumers gain the most control yet over their privacy. Ask.com is already trying to turn privacy protection into a differentiator, but we're going to see this spread. It's going to be much easier for consumers to turn on and off features that will associate their searches and online behavior with personally identifiable information.

2. At least one of the major engines will test adding in display elements such as logos and other images in search ads.

3. While Wikia's search engine won't pose a major threat to the existing order, its presence and activist community will cause the major engines to discuss transparency much more openly.
David Wallace, CEO of SearchRank

I think more people are going to be watching Google closely in how they treat the information they have. In other words, what their policy continues to be regarding privacy issues.

I hope (crossing fingers) that Google will lose some of their market share, allowing the other three (Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask) to pick up some of that share, especially Ask.
Deborah Richman, SVP of marketing & business development at Collarity

If I'm looking at the top search engines:

1. That Google's going to game-change the contextual ad business with banners next year
2. That DoubleClick and Google will figure out new sales deals to draw in big publishers
3. That Google's not going to make much progress in search algorithm, and still include Page Rank
4. That Microsoft will make money from its publisher deals, and not from increased consumer market share
5. That Yahoo continues to milk its traffic (unless that well-known Microsoft deal prediction happens)
6. That Ask.com will try to cash out somehow, with some Diller financial engineering

If I'm looking at other search engines:

1. That human-powered Mahalo and Cha-Cha won't make it big
2. That some vertical searches will have shake-ups, maybe health
3. That other print publishers try to buy smaller vertical engines
4. That some of the shopping engines will keep dropping away
5. That metasearch will not be the answer to better search

If I'm looking at social sites:

1. That social search will finally be useful, not just for friends
2. That Digg will get acquired by Microsoft
3. That Facebook will open up and allow friends-data sharing
4. That MySpace will figure out how to get in the mobile game better

If I'm thinking about widgets:

1. That widgets become another online presence just like a website, a blog, or social page
2. That we all get smarter about how to distribute them, not just on Facebook or Google gadgets
3. That we start testing what belongs best in them, either links, search or content
4. That publishers start to really get comfortable with controlling content off their domains

Debra Mastaler, link building specialist at Alliance-Link

1. Reputation management is going to be the hot service this year. With more sites adding and encouraging customer reviews, it's going to be very important to monitor what's being said about your company and provide counter-spin measures to affect rankings if needed.

2. I think you'll see a lot of the smaller SEO single shops/agencies merging and/or partnering with larger companies. SEO is no longer textbook, its success relies on custom link building, reputation management, usability and content generation tactics rather than Titles and tags. Single person shops won't be able to offer the broad and specialized services and will either need to partner out or merge.

3. More private forums are going to blossom as people become hesitant to talk openly about what works and what doesn't.
Eric Enge, president of Stone Temple Consulting

1. Google will continue to implement changes to make paid links less and less interesting. They have opened the door to overt action, and they will not turn back. The other search engines will simply bask in the glow of the results of this. This allows them to reap the benefits without taking the heat.

2. Awareness that search (SEO and SEM) is just one of many marketing-related activities will increase. As a result, SEOs will be forced to work more closely with marketing, development, and design.

3. People-driven search engines (such as Mahalo) will struggle to succeed, and fail. Groups of people do not have the capacity to be objective, and extensive human review of each search result cannot be made scalable. Ultimately, a machine algorithm will be shown to be fundamentally better.
Fionn Downhill, president of Elixir Systems

1. The Search engine marketing industry will continue to mature and there will be more consolidations of traditional SEO companies

2. Rather than the predictions from previous years that traditional ad agencies will acquire SEO companies to implement search, I see more agencies implementing their own search departments with consulting and poaching from traditional SEO firms.

3. Traditional old-style SEOs who have not adopted more of an agency model will fold, or they owners will move on to other things. ( I am working hard not to be one of them!!!)

4. Kevin Ryan will get drunk at SES New York on St. Patrick's Day
Frank Watson, director of SEM and co-founder of Kangamurra Media

1. Wikia will get some groundswell. Although it will not threaten the majors, it will grab a decent amount of market share.

2. Facebook and MySpace will be pushed aside by some new social media/networking program. The shelf life is not a long one.

3. Second Life will fall away, and possibly close, unless they develop niched "worlds" that are more easily accessed and developed.

4. China's percentage of global search share will increase dramatically, be it through Baidu or even Google and Yahoo China.

5. Bill Gross will roll out something this year that will eventually be seen as another "GoTo" type innovation.
Greg Meyers, SEM consultant at SEMGeek

1. I believe you will see the birth of "political PPC" due to the upcoming 2008 election. I think PPC will play a major part with regard to the ads/creatives messaging as well as the keyword selections. Every tactic that is being used on older media channels such as TV, radio and print will be mimicked in PPC. Not only will they be bidding on all of the candidates names and negative campaigning, but more importantly the issues for which they stand for (abortion, taxes, environment, etc..)

2. I see the search engines spending more of their R&D money on contextual advertising. As PPC continues to get more expensive, advertisers will have to find alternate ways to generate cheaper, relevant traffic.

3. I also think there will be more companies and corporations bringing search marketing "in-house," as more and more people get exposed to this industry. This is a result of the future economy and the knowledge of blogs and search engines making it easier to execute.
Gregg Stewart, senior VP at TMP Directional Marketing

Local starts to make and impact. First it will be national brands going local via their distribution channels (e.g., dealer, franchisee, etc), then local businesses beginning to embrace search.

How to Get the Best Deal on Your SEO Project

If you own or manage a business Website, chances are you are at least somewhat familiar with the concept of search engine optimization (SEO). You may have read any number of books and articles on the subject and possibly given it a try yourself. Or perhaps, after exhaustive research, you decided that your time is better spent in your area of expertise. If that’s the case, I have some good news for you. There is such a thing as affordable search engine optimization. In fact, when you know what to look for, it can be a real bargain.

Step One – 3 Simple Questions:

The first step is estimating some target market information. Just ask a few simple questions and write down the answers that you come up with. You’ll need this information later:

1. How many people do you think are looking for what you offer?
2. What keywords are they using in search engine searches?
3. Which keywords are the most popular to meet your needs?

Step Two - Verify:

Now that you have your initial estimates, let’s validate the information. Visit Overture.com’s Advertiser Center and try their Search Term Suggestion Tool located at: http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/ac/index.jhtml

Type in any term that you think is close to what your potential visitors are looking for. You will see how many searches were performed, on the Overture search system, for the previous month. TIP – Use a general search term to start with.

Now you have the single most important advantage when dealing with any trained business professional – you are informed!

Step Three – Make it Happen:

Now that you have this great information, you want to see it implemented. This is the best part. I recommend a visit to SEO Partner. SEO Partner (www.SEOPartner.com) really lives up to its slogan “search engine optimization on your terms”.

They have assembled an enormous talent pool of SEO developers, who actually compete to work on your project. It does not cost you anything to post your optimization projects. To operate the service, they accept a small commission from the SEO developers (which is only a fraction of what developers would normally spend on marketing efforts alone).

Finally, there’s one of my favorite features. SEO Partner protects you from those less scrupulous SEO ‘experts’ you read about more and more with their protective escrow payment system.

Step Four – Track Your Progress:

Finally, once you have your campaign underway, you really need to track your progress. There are some great tools available for that purpose. Here are links to some of the better products that I have worked with

If Content is King, then Surely Relevance is Queen!

There has been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in the search engine world of late and there are lots of conspiracy theories as to why these things happen.

It is easy as a webmaster to get caught up in these webs of intrigue.

You get email notes about them, you view so-called experts' thoughts on bulletin Boards - hey you probably even read things in newsletter articles!

Well I hope so anyway....

The big driver for webmasters currently appears to be content and link building.

While link building is important I don't believe it makes Queen. Maybe a Prince. Content and links DO go hand in hand but, without relevance, the Kingdom is doomed. Sorry I will stop the analogy now! :-)

If your site is about finance, then finance content is best supported by finance link exchanges. Relevance!

If your site is about finance, then finance content supported by casino link exchanges from a PR8 site while in the short term may help,…but all the signs are saying this is not a long term strategy.

Okay,so what is the best strategy?

Keep EVERYTHING relevant. It is that simple.

Make sure that you only swap or link to sites that are relevant to the content on your pages. Yes I am suggesting link exchanging on pages of your site not a links page.

Links pages seem to be being abused. There are rumours that pages called links, resources or partners are not passing page rank. You could be wasting your time building links that are not giving you any benefits!

Delivering relevant links from relevant content is the future.

Look at sites such as www.bbc.co.uk or www.independent.co.uk. News sites have the right idea. They have 2 or 3 relevant internal links to other articles on the same topic or links to internal tools that are related. These usually can be found at the right hand side of the article.

They also then have weblinks or external links to sites of interest that are related to the topic. These are relevant!

Another benefit of this is that with a content rich site you can add hundreds of links quite legitimately and really add some value both to your Rankings and your users.

With a content-poor site it is difficult, you have to add link pages or create a links directory. A five page site will need to add 10 or 12 good link pages to compete and even then with algorithm changes, this may not be prudent.

Having a site with 400 pages means you can easily add 3 links per page, so you have 1200 link options straight away.

Hopefully this explains that relevance runs a close second to content.

Always bear in mind when writing content that relevant links will not only boost your search engine rankings, but you will also add a service to your visitors.

Combining PPC and SEO to Completely Dominate a Niche

Alright. So recently I was examining a niche that I previously succeeded in, and decided “Why not? I’ll throw up an adwords campaign in the same niche”. Well people, that solidified the belief that PPC and SEO need to be done together, as I’ll explain in this entry. It’s pretty amazing to me how many companies will do only PPC, or ONLY seo, and not both.

How Much Traffic Really gets Driven to the Search Engine Results?
Right now CTR hovers around 20-35% on an ad I’m running in niche X that I’m also ranking for. My position is 1.5. So given that, we can assume that the upper position (#1) probably drives 30-35% of searches for that keyword to my landing page. #2 probably drives 20-25% of searches. Assuming 10% for the other placements, we’re sitting at only 20% of the actual searches for that keyword ever have people click the search results(assuming they only click one result). As a result, it seems like getting high search engine placement for that keyword is not very profitable. However, this is not the case….

So Why is That Ranking Worth it?
If we control 1 top ranked PPC ad, and 1 top ranked search engine position, we can control the entire mood of the niche. We can give people their first impression of the products, and use both things to control their thought process.

What are you Getting at XMCP?

Example 1: The Scam Approach
Let’s say we have an anti-snoring medication site. On it, we have review pages for 10 different products. We rank highly for each product name. Let’s say amongst these are My Snoring Solution(a real product with Advaliant), Snore-Be-Gone, and Nasal Noise Stopper. We also rank for the term cure snoring. Ok. Now let’s say those products have a fair amount of search traffic(My Snoring Solution is one of those “As Seen on TV” offers, so it for instance would get a lot).
We set our adwords campaign around those keywords, and promote ourselves as a “Review” site, preventing against scams. This type of ad(in my somewhat limited adwords experience, and the experiences of others who have been doing it longer) seems to get a very high CTR on it’s own. Hopefully they’re not set as copyrighted terms.
With properly phrased creatives, it should begin our goal. Casting doubt on the niche competitors. Our goal is to be seen as the authoritative source, while the others appear to be potential scammers/less trustworthy.
Note: Directly calling other products a scam is generally against the advertisers TOS, so be sure to either promote just as a review site, or include a question mark in anything involving the word scam, so it’s not a declaration.
Ok, so now that our AdWords campaign has cast a layer of initial doubt, it’s time to use the rankings to drive the point home. For our page that ranks for “cure snoring”, let’s try a title of Which Snoring Cure Works? and a meta description that says “A Lot of Products to Cure Snoring are Scams. Read our reviews and figure out which cures work”
For the product names we rank for(so long as you’re within the TOS for the advertiser) try the basic title “Is _PRODUCT_ a Scam?” or (if that’s already your adwords title) “Reviews of _PRODUCT_”.
What is Achieved Here?
With those being the first 2 things the user sees when they search for the niche, suddenly a haze of distrust is put over the entire niche.
We have effectively changed the entire way the niche is perceived by the consumer. So long as nobody else picks up on it, we are established as the authority. The light in the dark.
While the traffic may not convert as well if they decide your landing page/reviews are not trustworthy(which should be your goal), it should make your competitors appear even less trustworthy. Following the declaration that there is apparently a lot of scamming going on within the niche, the readers are going to definitely want to read a review or two of any product before they buy. Ideally, everyone else’s adwords CTR tanks, and your clicks get cheaper. Plus you get more traffic to your ranked reviewsite of the product.
Example 2: The Brand-Trust Approach


For this example, let’s say we rank for “cheap web hosts”, and own a hosting company. Since we cannot even infer our competitors are scams or inferior without fear of repercussion, we’re going to instead try and make ourselves seem trustworthy via nicer methods.
If you want to play nice with this method, conduct a survey on your current customers. Get a list of commonly used hosts in your niche, and ask them which of the list(with your own brand included, of course) provided the best value for them. They’re your customers, so in theory you should come out on top.
Set the AdWords campaign to go to a landing page with quotes from this survey. Title may just be your company name or “Cheap Web Hosts”(yay for adwords bolding), and creative may be “98% of customers say _company_ Provides the Best Value“.
Use your ranking description to point out something else that’s a big seller. A coupon, how cheap the server prices are, etc. The title should obviously contain the company name, since you’re using the adwords ad to pump up it’s credibility.
Since the 2 statements appear to come from different sources, they seem more trustworthy. Where the ad itself gets rid of the fear that they may get a crap server, the search engine page is left in a position where it can say what the people w/ that search are truly going after. “Cheap” web hosting. All angles are covered, and seemingly corroborated.
There’s a lot of expansion someone can do on these ideas (getting the PPC ad to compliment the SEO ranking). I shared a few basic examples, because I’m still formulating thoughts on some more complicated ones, and want them to still be useful when I finish these thoughts.
Don’t take my ad copy and think it will work as-is I’m still grasping the ropes of adwords, and this is just a trick I picked up on that worked. I’m sure you guys can think of better copy than what I mentioned.

Done properly, this should increase both adwords and search engine traffic to your site.

101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website

By Andy Hagans and Aaron Wall.

Link Building... Time-intensive. Frustrating. Sometimes confusing. Yet Unavoidable. Because ultimately, it's still the trump card for higher rankings.

Many of us have been hoping that it would go away. In Brett Tabke's 5/18 Robots.txt entry, he echoed a sentiment that many, many webmasters hold on to as a hope:

What happens to all those Wavers that think [i]Getting Links = SEO[/i] when that majority of the Google algo is devalued in various ways? Wavers built their fortunes on "links=seo". When that goes away, the Wavers have zero to hold on to.

The pertinent questions:

1. Will link building still be very important for rankings in the medium term?
2. When will link popularity be devalued in favor of other algo elements (that are less tedious, from a webmaster's point of view)?

The answers:

1. Sorry, but link building is still going to be the SEO trump card for the foreseeable future.
2. I wouldn't hold your breath for search engine algorithms to place less importance on link popularity until the Semantic Web arrives, or maybe when HTTP gets replaced by a new protocol. Because links are still the basic connector, the basic relationship, on the Web. And for the forseeable future they're going to be the easiest way for a computer program to judge the importance and trustworthiness of a Web page.

What will happen to the way search algorithms score links is already happening. The Google algo has become much more elegant and advanced, devaluing staggering amount of links that shouldn't count, and placing more emphasis on trusted links. And the trust and juice given by those links is then verified by elements like user data, domain age, and other relatively hard-to-spoof factors.

But please, don't fool yourself. Links that should count are still the key to rankings (in Google, at least — and MSN and Yahoo! are only a few short years behind). In that spirit, Aaron and I have created our 101 Ways to Build (and Not Build) Links in 2006. (Yeah, it just so happened that there were exactly 101!)

Oh, and mad props to our inspiration, 131 Legitimate Link Building Strategies, one of the original authority documents on link building. It was just getting a bit rusty, that's all ("Host your own Web Ring"?). Anyway, enjoy the update. It's guaranteed to be accurate until January 1, 2007. ;-)

Link Building

Getting more traffic from search engines is a common goal for every webmaster and web enabled business. Natural traffic from search engines is not only free of cost, but also can be highly converting. But it’s not as easy as it seems. To get considerable amount of traffic from major search engines like Yahoo, MSN and Google in particular, your site should rank very well for some specific keywords and phrases related to your niche.

Link building campaigns is one of the proven off-site SEO activities by which you can rank well in your niche. If you rank higher in SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) for popular and frequently searched keywords in your niche, you enjoy good and free stream of steady traffic; targeted to your business and website theme.

Achieving top placements in SERPS for your keywords on search engines like Google isn’t easy. Your website can only rank well if it has good rankings. Backlink count and link value of those backlinks is one of the most important aspects which decide if you’d rank well for particular keywords. If your site is established and offers good information, products or services, many other sites will naturally link to you; but not in a way as you’d need for better rankings. Natural link backs to your site builds up slowly, only after your webpages are indexed in search engines and rank well enough so that people can find and link to them from their websites out of their own discretion; hence the need for professional link building and SEO services.

Anchor texts and link titles of the backlinks are very important in terms of off-site SEO. Link building and off-site website optimization services from trusted individuals and SEO firms are a great option to build quality backlinks with optimized anchor texts and link titles from trusted and related websites to your niche. Such services and packages ensure you get linked from pages highly related to your niche and with good link value.

The link value of pages linking to you is determined by various factors like domain age, page content quality, number of outgoing links, credibility and so on. Backlinks from authority and high page rank sites are highly rewarding but difficult to get. Similarly, one should be careful not to submit for FFA (Free For All) sites and directories and unrelated niches or “bad neighborhoods” as it may seriously hurt your search engine rankings, SERPS position and credibility.

There are several ways to build backlinks with great link value to your website:

* Blog Review Posting
* Directory Submission
* Text Link Advertising
* Press Release Submission

Professional and ethical link building activities always have a positive result on your SE rankings and increase your link popularity substantially; bringing you more free, natural or organic traffic. I’d suggest you not to involve in shady link building practices like spamming and Black Hat SEO activities which may bring good results for a few months, but can get your sites banned from search engines indefinitely.

How to submit blogger blog to google

I have been asked this question many a times and still keep on receiving the question in my emails and as comment to my post elsewhere that how do you submit a blog to Google. Especially how to submit a Blogger's blog to google.

Now firstly let me star right from beginning so everyone could easily understand. Follow these steps for verification of website or Blogs.

1) Go to Google Webmaster Central. They might ask you for logging in. If you have google account well and good if not , create one on gmail its fairly easy. Now once you have logged in to Google Webmaster account. Then it will ask you to enter the web URL. Enter the Blog or Email address.

2) Now it will prompt you for verifying the website if its not already verified. Once you hit the verify tab. Then it will give you two methods of verification. One would be to upload a file at the rood of your hosting domain and the other one is to edit a code inside your home or front page.

3) Now if you are going to verify a website then its easy. However, verifying the blog could be tricky. As the Blogger blog doesn't give you any option to upload anything. But most of new guys what they don't know is that they still have an option to verify their blogger blog through the 2nd process " Entering HTML code inside the meta of the blog "

4) Now copy the code from the webmaster central page, assuming that you are already logged in to the blogger. Go to the customer layout option and there you will find a tab for EDIT HTML. Hit that and then paste the code from Google Webmaster Central right under " head " tag which would be at about 8 or 9th line inside the script.

Make sure that you don't change anything else. Cause that might ruin the script. And that's all there is to it. Once you have saved the HTML page after pasting go back to the Google Webmaster Central and hit verify and it will verify you blog.

So that's how easy it is to verify your blogger's blog in Google.

Hope this helps.

In case of any confusion you can still put your comments and I'll make sure to answer your query asap. For more quality article and daily basic and effective SEO TIPS, bookmark the blog so you won't miss a thing.

Till Next Time.

Mark

SEO requires surfer friendly content

At times I have come across websites whose content is too complicated or is not easy to comprehend for an ordinary person. One thing to keep in mind while reading or posting any content on your website is to make sure that you remember the “Rule” you are not going to visit your website yourself, the website is created for people or readers so keep this thing in your mind to optimize the text for them.

Easier the content of your website, easier for the user to get the information and if they find it useful they would like to come back to it again.

Therefore, in order to create a good impression and retain the traffic to your website you need to create the content keeping in mind the targeted traffic.

The readability of your web pages influences your sales

Many webmasters and bloggers use long sentences or use technical jargons in order to create an impression of a professional in the field and what they end up creating is a bad impression instead. The average web surfer is not all that equipped with technical jargons so try to simplify things as much as you can.

Now apart for creating easy to understand content your layout of the website should also be easy to navigate. If you are hosting a website for sales or pay per click campaign then special attention is required to ensure where you place the ads and what layout would be best for the work.

SEO is again not only a practice for the search engines it is a practice to make the readers or web surfers experience on your website more productive. Thus need to pay special attention to each and every detail.

However, in my next article I would highlight how to tweak the layout of the website from Search Engine Optimization or SEO point of view.

SEO for a New Website or Blog

You have launched a new website or a blog now you are looking for getting traffic on to your website. The biggest source of traffic is the Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, Msn, AltaVista etc.

These Search Engines have become quite smart for the last several years and now it’s not all that easy to fool the technology by link stuffing or similar Techniques. However, if you are serious about this then over a period of time which could be from 5 to 6 months you could bring your website up at a competitive position in these search engines.

However, the question arises for the newbie’s where to begin. Well once you have acquired a website or created a website or blog follow these steps;

1) Submit your website or Blog:

After creating the website your next target should be to submit that website to all the major search engines and web directories. The must submit websites include Google, Yahoo, Msn, Technorati, Alltheweb etc. The process is fairly easy, similar to filling any from. If you can create an email then surely you can very easily submit your websites and blogs.

2) Verify your websites:

Verification and submission of the website or blog are two different things for some search engines. Like if you are going to verify your blog or website to Google then what is required is for you to have a Gmail Mail Account and then you have to login to “Google Webmaster Central” and there you will find the tools and instruction required to submit the website. Similarly follow the easy instructions on the Technorati and Yahoo to complete the procedure.

3) Quality and Frequency of Content:

Now the next step that is required is to keep the content of your website fresh. Keep updating your website as much as you can. In such a competitive age you need to update your website twice or three times a day at times. The more fresh content you will feed the more trust you’ll gain from Search Engine’s point of view.

The Second step in this was to provide quality content. Search Engine Optimization or SEO not only refers to the doing things for the Search Engine. On the contrary you need to provide quality content to your visitors too so that they could keep coming back to your websites or Blog.

4) Building Links:

On frequent basis you have to build links with other websites who are dealing with the same topic as yours. This Back links process actually is a sort of voting system by other websites that this website is worthy enough to link to as it contains useful information.

Now these are the first few beginners’ steps you need to start doing as frequently as you can if you want to optimize your website for the Search Engines. In this article I have highlighted a few broader points which are the decisive factors for a website to rank well in a website.

In my next article I would be writing more about each and every factor in detail so that all the beginners should start focusing on all the steps same as the SEO PRO are doing. More quality articles could also be traced back at http://www.212articles.com/.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to get traffic:

Without any doubts Traffic is the life blood for any site. You can create a very dynamic or very good looking website. But what good is that website if you do not have traffic coming in. Now there could be a number of ways you could choose from for the achievement of this task.

Some methods are way to much expensive some methods of driving traffic back to you website are relatively cheaper and then there are some tweaks that you could do to your website for free to get organic ranking in search engines.

To get on top of the search page ranking you would have to rely on SEO or Search Engine Optimization. Search Engines are the best places to give you traffice and lots of it.

I know that their are many forums or blogs out there dedicated to provide quality information. Well this is just an effor to provide 1 practical tip every single day 24/7 which could prove pivotal in terms of bringing the search page ranking up on almost all the Search Engine page ranking namely (Google, Yahoo, Msn, Ask, Altavista etc.)

Google is the main driving force and if you have done all the things correctly taken care of all the aspects then you can easily end up on the first page.

But one thing all the beginers should know when they start there venture of SEO that its not going to happen over night, and if it does by any mean that would be suspecious activity and could result in banning of your websites on all search engines.

Thus there are ethical or right ways of SEO and then there are some bad or wrong methods of SEO.

In this blog I will be explaning all the details of every single factor that requires our attention. From Link Building, Back Links, Keywords Research, Meta Tag etc.

So if you are looking to bring your website up in serach engines like Google, Yahoo, Msn, Ask, Find Fast, Alta Vista etc. then this could also be a good place to find information.

Till Next time.....

Mark.