How to Use Forums to Drive Laser Targeted Traffíc to Your Site in 7 Steps

There is no doubt about the fact that Forum posting works when it comes to driving traffic to a site. On many occasions, I have successfully used posting to forums to gain exposure to my affiliate landing page, squeeze page, sales page, etc.

I tell you, if you’re really smart, the goal of every forum post you make is to get as many people to subscribe to your líst! Posting to forums is a very fast and powerful way to build your base of subscribers in as little as 30 minutes. Below is a step-by-step guide:

Step 1 – Find Forums About Your Niche Very Easily

Just Google the following:

+”your niche” +forum
or
+”your niche” +”discussion board”

For instance, if I am looking for Forums in the Internet Marketing field, I type +”Internet Marketing” +forum. The results show the top Internet marketing Forums such as:

www.im4newbies.com/forum
www.warriorforum.com
www.forums.digitalpoint.com

Step 2 – Join the Forums and Set Up Your Signature

Remember to include your website address in your signature. Signature is another name for your resource box. Your resource box is just like an ‘about the author info’. This appears at the end of every post you make and drives traffic to your website.

Step 3 – Read the Rules and Regulations of the Forum Before Posting

This ensures that your posts are not deleted by the Administrators of the Forum. Now, don’t go about spamming all members of the Forum with your website advert. In fact, I will advise you not to post an obvious ad. It’s a pure waste of time because it will be deleted.

So, what’s next?

Step 4 – Ask for Input

Approach from a weak man’s position. Assuming you’ve written an article on your site entitled “13 Ways to Drive Traffic to a New Site.” You could make a post asking folks to check out the article and see if you missed anything. Or you can ask for additional points to add to your article. Of course you’ll have your opt ín box at the end of the article with a compelling offering.

Let’s say you’ve written an article on meeting the right partner. You could post a message like this: “If you had a chance to learn how to meet your right partner now, what would you do?”

It’s a great way to get the attention of forum members to your article. You also get them engaged in the article by asking for their input. And who knows, you may also get other publishers who would use your content in their ezines, thereby getting more exposure for your site.

Step 5 – Ask for a Critical Assessment

If you are the type that is not easily hurt by honest feedback even when it hurts, you can go to a forum and ask for a honest critique. You may think this will not make people sign up for your líst, but I tell you, many people will end up subscribing to it. It’s a more indirect and acceptable way to ask people to check out your site without blatant advertising.

Plus, the feedback they give you may help to make your squeeze page even more compelling. Ask them if it would persuade them to give it a try, assuming they were in your target market (of course, you already know they are by the forum you selected). And, if they say no, ask them why. You can get valuable information on what they want (and don’t want) this way.

There are two types of forums where you should ask for critiques: the niche forum itself and a marketing forum. You’ll likely get more sign-ups from the niche forum and good advice to test out from the marketing forum (although you’ll get some opt-ins there as well).

Step 6 – Ask Your Target Market What They Want

Unknown to most people, this is one of the best ways to develop products and services. And most times, Forum members are ready to tell you what they’ll buy and give you ideas for articles, auto-responder content, your blog posts, whatever you need. People guess the products their target market will want and create them only to discover no one is interested in the product, but with this approach, you have real people telling you what product they want, how they want it and how much they are prepared to pay for it.

The way you would use this technique to get them to subscribe is to post something like, “what’s your biggest question about loosing weight?” Or “what’s the single most important thing you’d like to know about building a business?”

Don’t forget to ask if they’re willing to pay for solutions to their problems and have them give you an indication of how much they would be willing to pay. Powerful stuff!

Let them know you’ve already answered 10 questions (your 10 step mini-course loaded in your auto-responder), for example. Then they’ll be more likely to sign-up. Make sure you point out that you’ll add to your mini-course with the answers to the questions they’ve provided, and that they’ll get answers to the existing questions in your mini-course PLUS the new ones when they subscribe. Everybody wins!

Step 7 – Provide a Step-By-Step Guide or Video Tutorial

If someone asks how to create an ebook, give them a progression of steps they can take. Or, make a Camtasia tutorial video showing them how. Now that you’ve got them to your site, you’ll want to “make them a proposal they can’t refuse.”

Provide a Líst of Resources and Websites

In addition to checklists, resource lists with website URLs make a great site for them to bookmark! Make sure you supply more than just links. Make it a huge info-page of information. A collection of resources, links to everything you have – articles, video, audio, your blog, other useful sites, tools, you name it.

Solve a Problem for People

If someone asks for help or asks a question, provide your experience and try to help them. But to maximize your odds of getting both the asker of the question and everyone else who reads the post to subscribe to your líst, try to phrase your answer in one of the following two ways:

1. Give them tips, techniques, shortcuts, secrets, or anything that offers both the promise of exclusive information and fast results. A shortcut to success.

2. Whenever possible, supply them with specific results. Think about it. When you want to learn how to make income online, you go to someone who is making revenue online to guide you. This quickly establishes you as an authority in that area.

And by helping them, maybe – just maybe – they’ll click on the link in your signature to check out your website. If you direct them to a blog post or article you wrote to answer their question, they’ll be even more likely to investigate.

That’s all there is to it but at the end of the day, it’s a failure-proof way to drive serious traffic to your website using Forum Posts. Apply it and see your traffic soar through the roof. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

About The Author
Iyabo Oyawale is an established Internet Entrepreneur. Discover The Top 10 Ways to Make 100 Dollars Daily from the Internet from her FREE ebook! Visit http://askiyabooyawale.com for instant download!

Google Analytics ia very powerful piece of free software !

Google Analytics is a very powerful piece of free software — the trick is figuring out how best to use it. Luckily Justin Cutroni knows all the tricks and his article is filled with information on ad link tags, goals and how to analyze the data they create.

Google Analytics is a free web analytics application that is quickly becoming one of the most widely used web analytics tools around. A common misconception that many people have is that GA can only be used to track Google AdWords. That’s simply not true. GA can be used to track any online marketing activity. And not only will Google Analytics track online marketing, it will also identify the conversion events that your online marketing creates.

There are two distinct steps to configure Google Analytics to successfully track online marketing activities:

1. Tag your advertising links
2. Create goals in Google Analytics

Before we can really get into how to track online marketing we must understand what we can track. With Google Analytics we can track 5 attributes of our online marketing campaigns. Each of these attributes provides insight into what is, and what is not, working, and are the foundation for making good decisions when adjusting your online marketing activities.

5 Aspects of Online Marketing

• The Campaign: The campaign is the high level marketing activity that you’re conducting. Think of it as a bucket that holds other activities. For example, you may conduct a big “back to school” marketing campaign. This campaign might involve an email blast to your newsletter subscribers, a special paid search campaign, and some banner ads. All of these activities are part of the “fall-sale” marketing campaign.
• The Medium: The medium is the mechanism that is used to push the message to the customer. Continuing the fall sale example, the campaign has multiple mediums because we’re using multiple mechanisms to reach the consumer. We’re using email, banner ads and paid search. All are different mechanisms for pushing the message out.
• The Source: The source identifies who is delivering the message to the customer and helps us better understand the medium. For example, there might be three sources for the paid search component of our campaign: “Google” for Google AdWords, “Yahoo!” for Yahoo! Search Marketing and “MSN” for Microsoft AdCenter.
• Term: The term is only used for paid search tracking and identifies the keyword that the visitor used in their search. It should be noted that you do not need to use a term. Every search engine will, by default, pass a keyword to your site and Google Analytics will capture and store that keyword. However, not every search engine will pass along the exact term that the visitor entered.
• Content: The content attribute is optional and stores information about the ad that the visitor clicked on. For example, we may want to send out two versions of our email newsletter during the back to school campaign. The emails will be sent at the same time, but will contain different formatting. We say these emails have different content. Using Google Analytics we can identify which ad performed better for us.

So now that we know what attributes of our online marketing we can track, how do we actually do it? We use a process called link tagging. Link tagging involves adding query string parameters to the destination URLs used in online ads. It doesn’t matter where the URL is used, it could be in an email, a banner ad or a paid search ad. If the URL has the appropriate query string parameters then Google Analytics can identify which ad the visitor clicked on. Once Google Analytics knows which ad the visitor responded to it stores the information in a cookie on the visitor’s machine. From that point forward, as long as the cookie exists, Google Analytics can connect the visitor’s actions with the originating ad.

We have one query string parameter for each campaign attribute.

Campaign Attribute	Query String Parameter
Campaign	utm_campaign
Medium	utm_medium
Source	utm_source
Term	utm_term
Content	utm_content

All you need to do is assign a value to each parameter and attach it to the URL used in your online ad. What should you use for values? It doesn’t matter! Whatever you place in your parameters will be extracted by Google Analytics and appear in your reports. With that said, there are some best practices that will make your data easier to use.

1. Avoid white spaces. Separate words with a dash or an underscore.
2. Make sure that whoever is going to use the reports can understand the meaning of each value. For example, a value of ‘back-to-school-2007’ is easier to understand than ‘BTS07’.
3. Be consistent. Create a naming convention for each parameter and stick to it. Don’t use CPC for some paid search mediums and PPC for others.
4. Be aware that case matters. ‘CPC’ is different from ‘cpc’.
5. Track your values from one campaign to another. I suggest using a spreadsheet to keep track of all the parameters you create. I like to use a Google Spreadsheet because it is easy to share with co-workers and clients. Add a column for each of the campaign parameters, a date column and a note column. If you’re savvy with a spreadsheet then use the CONCATENATE function to automatically create tagged URLs. You can find an example on my blog, Anyalytics Talk.

How about some examples? Let’s look at a few links that will be used in our fictional back to school campaign.

Tagged Link	What It Means
http://www.mysite.com/index.php? utm_campaign=back-to-school-2007 &utm_medium=email&utm_source=fall-newsletter	This link was part of the 2007 back to school campaign. It appeared in the fall newsletter email blast.
http://www.mysite.com/index.php? utm_campaign=back-to-school-2007 &utm_medium=banner&utm_source=facebook &utm_content=800×100	This ad was part of the 2007 back to school campaign. It was an 800×100 pixel banner ad that appeared on Facebook.
http://www.mysite.com/index.php? utm_campaign=back-to-school-2007 &utm_medium=banner&utm_source=facebook &utm_content=60×300	This ad was part of the 2007 back to school campaign. It was a 60×300 pixel banner ad on the Facebook site.
http://www.mysite.com/index.php? utm_campaign=back-to-school-2007 &utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=yahoo	This ad was part of the 2007 back to school campaign. It was a CPC ad on Yahoo!. The keyword was whatever Yahoo! passed to the browser.
http://www.mysite.com/index.php? gclid=CLTrqPOc2o4CFSBMGgod7ljIAg	This ad was part of the 2007 back to school campaign. It was a CPC ad on Google AdWords.

The great thing about link tagging is that Google Analytics creates a report based on each parameter. For example, there is a Campaign report that identifies all the values in your utm_campaign parameter. You can then drill into the campaign to see which sources, identified by the utm_source variable, were better at driving traffic. I’ll discuss how to use these reports below.

Here’s another tip. If you’re unsure about your tagged links, run a small test. Send an email to 10 co-workers that includes a tagged link. Ask them all to click on the link. Wait a few hours and then log into Google Analytics. You should see data from the link in the email.

Once the tagged links are published Google Analytics will start collecting data.

I can’t stress how important it is to tag your links. It is the single most important step to tracking your online marketing. If your links are not tagged you won’t be able to track the traffic from your online marketing activities. Un-tagged links is one of the most common problems I see when working with clients.

A Note About Google AdWords

I just spent all that time explaining link tagging and now I’m going to tell you that you do not need to do it … sort of. Google Analytics is integrated with Google AdWords and one of the benefits is a feature called auto-tagging. Auto-tagging automatically adds a unique parameter to all of the destination URLs in your AdWords campaigns. There’s no need to go through the link tagging process, the unique parameter is used by Google to identify the ad that the visitor clicked on. Here’s an example of what an auto-tagged link looks like:

http://www.google.com.com/analytics/?gclid=CLTrqPOc2o4CFSBMGgod7ljIAg

Google Analytics decodes the unique parameter (named gclid) and creates the appropriate values for campaign, medium, source, term and content. The campaign will be the name of the campaign as defined in AdWords. The medium will be ‘cpc’ and the source will be ‘google’. Auto-tagging has a number of implications that you should take into consideration when tagging your non-AdWords links:

1. As I mentioned above, Google will automatically apply a medium of ‘cpc’ to your AdWords campaigns. If you want all of your paid search data to appear together (which you do) then your non-AdWords paid search links must also have a medium of ’cpc’’. This will cause GA to group all paid search traffic together.
2. The value for the content variable will be the name of the ad that you’ve created in AdWords. An ad with the title ‘Buy Widgets Now!’ will have a content value of ‘Buy Widgets Now!’.
3. The campaign value will be the campaign name that you define in AdWords. If this campaign has multiple source or mediums you want to make sure that your manually tagged links have the same value for campaign.

Remember, auto-tagging only works for AdWords. You still need to tag other paid search URLs.

Goals

Another extremely important step in tracking the success of your online marketing is creating goals. Goals are outcomes that we want our site visitors to achieve. Every website has a purpose, it could be to sell a product, provide information to the visitor or generate a sales lead. Measuring these outcomes is vital to web analytics and evaluating the performance of online marketing. To measure an outcome we need to configure goals in Google Analytics.

Goals in Google Analytics are simply pageviews. To set up a goal you need to identify the page on your website that indicates that a visitor has reached the desired outcome. To create a goal simply navigate to the goal setting for a specific profile and paste the URL in the Goal URL field for a profile.

There is more to setting up a goal. You could create a funnel to show the visitor’s path to the goal. But I’m not going to discuss advanced goal configuration here as I’m already pushing my word count limit. You can read more about goals and how they are configured in the Google Analytics help section or on my blog Analytics Talk.

Once you create goals, and once you tag your links, Google Analytics will automatically identify which marketing activities are generating goals. There’s no special configuration necessary to connect goals to marketing activities. GA will do that for you.

Analyzing the Data

You’ve tagged all your advertising links. You’ve created your goals. Now what? It’s time to evaluate your online marketing campaigns. This is the fun part. As I mentioned above Google Analytics creates a report for each of the query parameters that we attach to the URLs in our ads. Each report provides valuable information about the traffic and conversions that the markting generated.

Let’s start with the campaign report. It provides a high level view of how the campaign is performing. Google Analytics provides some standard metrics indicating how much traffic the campaign is generating (visits), how engaged that traffic is (pageviews per visit and average time on site) and how good the campaign is at attracting new visitors (% new visits). Campaigns are usually focused on attracting new customers to the website (which should yield a high % of new visits) or getting existing customers to come back (which should yield a low % of new visits).

Remember, these numbers just tell us about the traffic. We also want to understand if the ad generated any conversions. To view these metrics we use the Goal Conversions tab.

You’ll notice that the columns of the table have changed. We now see conversion rates for the various goals that were configured. But let’s go a bit deeper. Each tagged advertising link has a campaign, a medium and a source. We can drill into each campaign and evaluate how well the various sources and mediums are working. First, click on a campaign in the Campaign column.

We’re now looking at summary information for this campaign. I can use the Segment drop down box to view the sources and mediums associated with the campaign.

You can see how I’m evaluating what drove the success of my campaign. Was it a particular partner (i.e source) or a particular medium (i.e mechanism of communicating with the customer)? Again, I can use the Site Usage tab to measure how well a source or medium does at generating traffic and the Goal Conversion tab to measure the conversions for each ad.

The analysis does not end here. There are other reports that help us compare the effectiveness of our marketing in other ways. One of my favorate reports is the All Traffic Sources reports. This report creates a master list of all of the sources and mediums that drove traffic to the site. This report is great for comparing ongoing marketing activities.

We can dig into each campaign even further using the Segmentation feature in Google Analytics. Let’s say we want to know where, geographically, our campaign visitors are located. I can select a campaign from the Campaigns reports and then use the segment dropdown box located at the top of he report.

If I choose ‘city’ Google Analytics will show me which cities generated the traffic for the campaign. This is particularly useful if you’re doing any geo-targeted advertising.

So there you have it. Remember, you must tag your links and create goals to accurately measure the performance of your online campaigns. If you do you’ll have really valuable data to when evaluating your online marketing activities.

Google Cash 3 process

1. Look for products/services sold online – Google Cash 3 shows you where!

2. Sign up for free as a reseller – Google Cash 3 shows you how!

3. Advertise these products/services on Google – Google Cash 3 shows you the most profitable ways!

4. Receive commission checks, cash them, and start living the easy life!

Google Cash 3 shows you exactly how to do it, step by step, guaranteed. But it gets even better. For some offers, all that is required is that the user sign up (for information, a free ecourse, etc.) and you STILL get paid–he doesn’t even have to buy anything! Isn’t that AWESOME?

Like AdWords Guru Perry Marshall said, the Google Cash method is quite simply the fastest and easiest way to get an online business up and running—without the normal hassles and without shelling out your life savings. You can literally be making money in just minutes, because with the Google Cash method..

· You DON’T need a product: Let other people hassle with production, storage, and shipping issues—not you. All you have to do is collect checks.

· You DON’T need a website: NO HTML…no expensive web building programs…and no urges to throw your monitor out the window because you can’t get a table to center. With my innovative money-making techniques, you’ll earn more from the Internet than 99% of Web site owners – WITHOUT a site!

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Inside Google Cash 3, You’ll Find a Virtual Treasure Trove Of Tips, Techniques, And Tactics To Get Your Online Business Going Full Speed From Day One, Including…

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* The “Secret Weapon” That Can Make Or Break Your Campaigns: Crucial to your success—this one tidbit of information is worth 10 times the price of the book!

* How To Choose Moneymaking Keywords: There’s a definite art to this…and I’m going to show you the ropes.

* How to Create Profitable AdWords Ads: Your ad is the key to getting clicks, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll be sunk. I’ll show you how to do it right the first time—and every time!

* The Secret To Weeding Out Expensive Keywords: Critical to staying in your budget, yet so simple, even a child could do it.

* Why You Should NOT Be In The #1 Position In Google: The top spot is not the best in this case…but I’ll show you exactly where you need to be.

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And If All That Wasn’t Enough, There’s Still MORE…

* 5 Steps For Choosing The Best Affiliate Program: No more searching—I’ll walk you through the same process I use to pick and choose the most profitable affiliate programs.

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* Keyword Research The Easy Way: Bogged down looking for the right keywords? These shortcuts will get you everything you need in record time!

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* The Most Common AdWords Mistakes…And How To Avoid Them: Knowledge is power, and with this little tidbit, you’ll save a bundle!

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20 Simple Ways To Get Massive Traffic To Your Web Site

By Penny Sansevieri (c) 2008

Embarking on an Internet marketing campaign doesn’t have to be difficult, tricky, or complicated. Here are a few simple ways (twenty in fact) that you can easily implement to get tons of traffic to your site right now!

1) Write articles: believe it or not this is an incredible tool for driving traffic. Well-written, relevant articles can net quite a bit of activity to your web site. Don’t forget to add your URL in your byline. Articles should be 500 to 2,000 words in length. You can send articles to sites like: Article City, GoArticles, Submit Your Articles and Ezine Articles.

2) Social bookmark *everything* – and I do mean everything – you can bookmark each page of your site and each blog entry you post. While this might seem tedious, it’s worth it. You’ll see a strong increase in traffic if you social bookmark each page on your site and each of your blog entries.

3) List yourself in the best directories – you’ll have to pay for this but since most people don’t do this (since everyone’s looking for a freebie) you could really enhance your traffic by getting a listing: dir dot yahoo dot com, business dot org, botw dot org.

4) Get yourself listed at: DMOZ dot org – it’s not easy to get listed there, but worth the effort.

5) Review: if you can review hot new products or books within your market, head on over to Amazon and start positioning yourself as an expert. In order to do this effectively you’ll want to create an Amazon profile and make sure and sign each review with a reference to your URL (your web site). You can also go to Epinions and Revoo to review products as well.

6) Offer a freebie on Craig’s List: you’ll be amazed at how much traffic you get from a single Craig’s List ad. The key here is to send people to a page on your site and make sure they have to sign up for something (like your email newsletter) before they can grab their freebie. That way you’re not just getting traffic, you’re also building your list.

7) Create a “recommended by” list on your Delicious page – you can do this by logging on and creating an account and there and then tagging articles, blogs and other content you think is important to your readership. Then offer this page as a resource site. You can add a link to this page in your email signature line or on your web site.

And speaking of your email signature line… do you have one? If you don’t, create one. Believe it or not, people do follow these links. You’ll be amazed how many folks read email signature lines. I have one and change it several times a year, depending on what we’re doing or promoting or what books I have coming out.

9) Lend a helping hand: you can be an answer person at Yahoo Answers – you don’t have to spend hours on there, but maybe a few minutes a week. Make sure and include a link back to your site following your answers.

10) Set up a social networking site using Facebook, LinkedIn, or Squidoo. It’s free and easy to do, just don’t forget the all-important link back to your site!

11) Make sure your blog has an RSS feed so if you capture a reader you don’t lose them if they forget to bookmark your site or blog.

12) Join relevant groups at Yahoo groups. You’ll find everything from groups on growing your small business, writing books, finding your passion, even underwater basket weaving. I dare you to find one that isn’t right for what you’re promoting. When you do find the right group, join and participate as you can!

13) Podcasting is another great way to drive traffic. Start a podcast by going to Audio Acrobat. There are other programs you can use, but I love Audio Acrobat. You can record the podcast over the phone quickly and easily and then hit the “send” button on your computer once it’s recorded and the system will syndicate it to 27 podcast directories including iTunes. It’s a great way to let people know about you and your web site!

14) Start a blog and then once you do, start commenting on other people’s blogs, linking to them from your site or adding them to your blogroll.

15) Inbound links: don’t squander your time (or a perfectly good link) on smaller low-traffic sites. Instead spend your time going after high traffic, high quality sites. Good sites should have a PR (page ranking) of 4-6 depending on the market. You can find out what a site’s page ranking is by downloading the Google toolbar which comes with a PR feature built in.

16) Start an email newsletter: while it may not seem like a newsletter that you email can drive traffic to your site you’d be surprised at the effectiveness of this type of promotion. If your newsletter (like your articles) is interesting and relevant to your audience, you’ll find that it has a huge pass-through factor, meaning that it is passed from one email subscriber to another. Also, if you have an email newsletter you should never, ever go to a single event without your handy signup sheet. Yes, you can even use offline events to drive traffic to your web site.

17) And speaking of offline efforts: if you’re ever quoted in a magazine or other publication, make sure and mention your URL as it’s appropriate to the topic. Don’t be too pushy about this, but do not forget to tell folks you have a web site that may be a great resource for the topic of your interview.

18) If you have products to sell, why not get a store on eBay? This site gets a tremendous amount of traffic and on your sales page you’re allowed to list your URL. It’s another great way to get an inbound link and a way for people to find you.

19) Load a video on YouTube and 57 other video sites (the rest listed on my Red Hot Internet Publicity blog).

20) While this isn’t a tip per se, it’s still important. If you’re going to go through all the trouble of getting traffic to your site, make sure your site is converting this traffic into something. Get folks to sign up for something, your newsletter, the RSS feed on your blog. Whatever it is, getting their email address will help you remarket to them when the time is right. Studies show that visitors landing on a site often don’t buy the first time. That’s ok! You want to get them into your marketing funnel so you can market to them again and again – not in a way that’s obtrusive, offensive or downright annoying, but in a way that is helping them with their own mission.

An example of this might be an email newsletter. A helpful, informative newsletter is a fantastic funnel. A blog is another great way to keep people in your marketing loop without bombarding them with “please buy my stuff” email messages. Also, make sure you know what your traffic numbers are before you launch into any Internet marketing campaign. By traffic numbers I mean how many people are visiting your site. You want to know this so you can gauge a before and after view of your marketing efforts.

About The Author
Penny C. Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a book marketing and media relations expert whose company has developed some of the most cutting-edge book marketing campaigns. Visit AMarketingExpert.com

The top 10 internet marketing tips for 2008

Internet Marketing has grown phenomenally over the last few years but the shift has quite clearly moved to a market that is driven by the consumer and that is no longer dictated by journalists and corporates. Online consumers are responding more favourably to non-intrusive, relevant and socially attractive campaigns and have quite frankly had enough of intrusive, forced online advertising campaigns.

The top 10 internet marketing tips for 2008 are:

1. Optimize your website’s content
2. Create a content development strategy for your website
3. Invest in a paid search (pay-per-click) campaign
4. Publicize your website through article marketing
5. Develop a social media marketing strategy
6. Create a Company Blog
7. Experiment with video marketing
8. Engage your audiences with web widget marketing
9. Discover the benefits of mobile marketing
10. Create an effective email marketíng strategy

Let’s look at each of these in more detail:-

1. Optimize Your Website’s Content:

First and foremost, get your website content right. Make sure it is easily read by both humans and search engines. An essential variable applied by Search Engines in the way in which they rank websites is based on the relevancy of the content that the search engine is indexing.

2. Create a Content Development Strategy for Your Website:

In addition to optimizing the existing content on your website, it is essential that you develop a strategy to continuously grow your website’s content on an ongoing basis. All new content should be written specifically with the web reader in mind and should also be optimized for the search engines.

3. Invest in a Paid Search (Pay-Per-Click) Campaign:

When you pay for traffic (visitors) that click on your advertisements that are being advertised on search engines, this is called pay-per-click or search engine advertising. Paid search allows you to quickly leverage search engine traffic by bidding for keywords that are related to the products or services that you promote and sell on your website. Paid search advertising is particularly beneficial to companies who are not yet well ranked on search engines through natural search.

Brick Marketing – Offers Affordable Website Marketing

CALL Brick Marketing at 877-295-0620 to get a custom quote for the following website marketing services: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC), Social Marketing, Business Blog Services, Affiliate Marketing, Online Publicity, Email Marketíng and much more.

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4. Publicize Your Website Through Article Marketing:

Article marketing is regarded by Internet marketing experts as one of the most effective promotional methods to publicize your website and to grow the number of back links (incoming links) to your website content. To ensure ongoing awareness, articles should be submitted to suitable article directories, content publishers, article announcement lists and content syndication (RSS feeds). Each article should be published on your website first and should include a bookmark button to encourage social bookmarking.

5. Develop a Social Media Marketing Strategy:

Studies show that by the end of 2007 more than 60% of top global companies will have had some form of social media marketing strategy in place. Corporates and small business owners should create a clear social media marketing strategy as part of an integrated communications and marketing strategy. Social Media has become an essential component of online marketíng and search engines are adjusting their rankings to include search personalisation. One of the effects of the social media revolution is an exponential growth in the amount of content online.

6. Create a Company Blog:

In the past, corporates have focused marketing and communications efforts on becoming faceless. This has changed significantly. Where the online consumer has become very much in control, companies will no longer be able to connect with their customers in a meaningful and emotional way without having a personality. More and more companies are starting to realize the significance of establishing a company personality and we are starting to see more Corporate Blogs coming alive. Business Blogging will continue to become more lucrative as more and more people look to new media such as Blogs and social websites for insight.

7. Experiment With Video Marketing:

There is tremendous power and revenue-generating potential in Video Marketing. With the rapid ongoing growth of YouTube’s traffic in addition to the emergence of Internet Television websites, streaming video is dominating the international web and marketers are quickly scrambling to capitalize on this exciting channel. As companies seek to simplify video sharing, video marketing will become more interactive which could have huge implications for Affiliate marketing.

 

8. Engage Your Audiences With Web Widget Marketing:

Widgets have made significant strides as an accepted marketing technique in recent months. Many new Blog oriented services are launching Widgets providing businesses with the opportunity to quickly introduce their services and new products to audiences.

Web Widgets are small applets that live in HTML and provide miniature versions of a specific piece of content outside of the primary web site. Web Widget Marketing is not only an exciting new marketing technique; it is fast becoming one of the leading brand-building marketing strategies for businesses advertising online.

9. Discover the Benefits of Mobile Media Marketing:

Mobile media marketing has continued to grow at a meteoric pace as many web companies recognize the huge potential in mobile marketing. As new technologies emerge and standard websites are converted to ones that can easily be accessed by mobile devices, companies will need to ensure that their websites are mobile-friendly. This leads the way for new and innovative opportunities to provide the consumer with improved brand and marketing experiences.

10. Create an Effective Email Marketing Strategy:

Introduce an effective Email communications strategy as part of your marketing strategy to grow your existing customer base and to expand your client base significantly through permission marketing and regular targeted communications. Engaging your customers with relevant, targeted information when, where, and how they want it is crucial to marketing success. By combining technological advances with tried-and-tested best practices, the future still looks bright for email marketers.

To conquer commercial combat, a significantly powerful Internet presence, supported by a brilliant E-Marketing Strategy, is paramount to ensuring that you remain competitive, grow revenue and magnetise your customers!

About The Author
Blue Magnet is an Internet Marketing Training & Consulting company in South Africa. Visit http://www.bluemagnet.co.za for more information.

Google Ranking Factors – SEO Checklist

Google Ranking Factors – SEO ChecklistThere are “over 200 SEO factors” that Google uses to rank pages in the Google search results (SERPs). What are the search engine optimization rules?
Here is the speculation – educated guesses by SEO webmasters on top webmaster forums. Should you wish to achieve a high ranking, the various confirmed and suspected Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Rules are listed below.

Google Ranking Factor Checklist   1. Positive ON-Page SEO Factors. 2. Negative ON-Page SEO Factors. 3. Positive OFF-Page SEO Factors. 4. Negative OFF-Page SEO Factors. Brief Google Update List The Sand Box

The SEO Rules listed below are NOT listed by weight, and not by any presumed relevance – THAT exercise is left up to the reader!

1. Alleged POSITIVE ON-Page SEO Google Ranking Factors (38) (Keeping in mind the converse, of course, that when violated, some of these factors immediately jump into the NEGATIVE On-Page Ranking Factors domain.) The term “Keyword” below refers to the “Keyword Phrase”, which can be one word or more. Green rows confirmed by Google patent - updated 08-10-06

Note - Patent Claim #	Factor #	POSITIVE ON-Page SEO Factors	Brief Note
		Keywords – Header
		Keywords – Body
		Keywords – Other
		NAVIGATION – INTERNAL LINKS
54		NAVIGATION – OUTGOING LINKS
		OTHER ON-Page Factors
		OTHER ON-SITE Factors

2. Alleged Negative ON-Page SEO Google Ranking Factors (24)

Note

Factor #

NEGATIVE ON-Page SEO Factors

Brief Note

3. Alleged POSITIVE OFF-Page SEO Google Ranking Factors (43)

Note	Factor #	POSITIVE OFF-Page SEO Factors	Brief Note
		INCOMING LINKS :
		FOR EACH INCOMING LINK :
		DIRECTORIES :
		PAGE METRICS – USER BEHAVIOR:	Currently implemented through the Google tool bar?
		SITE METRICS – USER BEHAVIOR :	Currently implemented through the Google tool bar?
38		DOMAIN OWNER BEHAVIOR :

4. Alleged NEGATIVE OFF-Page SEO Google Ranking Factors (13)

Note

Factor #

NEGATIVE OFF-Page SEO Factors

Brief Note

Recent Updates - 2007 Daily ranking. -30 penalty noticed, -350 penalty noticed, -950 penalty noticed 2006 Nov. Unnatural links are anathema to Google SEO – minus 30 SERP positions penalty Aug. Everflux is the rule of the day – many small updates. Sandbox (aging delay) alive and well July 27th update Big Daddy 2005 - Novem. 5 – Jagger 3 Update Nov.10 all done – settling out. October 26 – Jagger 2 Update More SERPs churning – OLD is highly valued. October 17 – Jagger 1 Update Recent Links, Recent Sites = SERP Turmoil Google has declared war on phony (low-grade) links Devaluation of reciprocal from unrelated-subject pages Devaluation of links from “link houses” Devaluation of purchased links Big allinanchor changes Large companies thrust to the top of the SERPs Sandbox update Lowering of sandbox threshold – re-sandboxing Too fast link accumulation – links acquired too quickly Deeper sandbox (longer – over 6 months) Some suggest that one’s site really had to be online before January 2004, in order to avoid all ramifications of the sandbox. Brief Google Algorithm Update List - 2006 – July – July 27 update, plus quality landing page update 2006 – Feb. – Big Daddy update 2005 – Sept. – the “False” Update (Sep.22 – Big update, many changes) 2005 – May – Bourbon Update 2005 – Febr.- Allegra Update – Feb.17, 2005, Some sites released from the sandbox, but many remain. 2004 – Feb.- Brandy Update 2004 – Jan.- Austin Update 2003 – Nov.- Florida Update 2003 – June – Esmeralda Update 2003 – May – Dominic Update 2003 – Apr. – Cassandra Update 2003 – Mar. – Boston Update Top of page

The Google Sandbox – The Single-Biggest SEO Ranking Factor for New Sites Google is clearly fighting spam by sacrificing SERP newness for higher SERP quality.
March 2004 Edited August 2006 THE GOOGLE SANDBOX The sandbox is alive and well. In March 2004, Google implemented a new filter, now referred to as “The Sandbox”. This new “effect” took months to notice and quantify. The sandbox is also referred to as an “aging delay”. Two aging delays have been suggested – one for link weight, and one for competitive term ranking. The sand box only applies to highly COMPETITIVE terms, revolving around money, such as the words attorney, loans, viagra, real estate, etc. The more lucrative the keyword, the longer the wait. Yahoo has a sandbox, as well. Opinion seems to indicate that the Yahoo aging delay is not quite as long as the Google Aging Delay. Yahoo does seem to provide an initial boost, that will disappear after about 4 weeks. MSN appears to have no sandbox. New sites with new pages, targeting competitive terms, can rank well very quickly (weeks) for those terms.	HOW IT WORKS If you subscribe to the spam reduction theory, Google’s thinking was, NO NEW SITES get good ranking, until they prove themselves. Spammers generate thousands of new pages daily, along with millions of new links to go with them. This penalty is new-site based. Long-standing sites have no trouble ranking new pages. Link Weight Aging Delay Google WITHHOLDS “link juice” on new sites, by deprecating the new links, for 2-8 months. If the domain and backlinks have existed for a certain length of time (6 months?), then maybe you are OK, and escape from the sandbox. Over time, the newly generated links are given weight, and eventually the sandbox effect is lifted. Competitive Term Aging Delay Google WITHHOLDS high ranking ability on new sites, for highly commercial keywords, such as loans, real estate, viagra, etc. Eventually, the new site will rank well for the competitive keywords, and the sandbox effect is lifted. Six months is mentioned most frequently.	SOLUTIONS Two methods are currently being used to get around the Sandbox penalty for new sites. One method is to join the Google Ad Words or Adsense program, in which case your pages get spidered in MINUTES. Your site will be checked initially with an algo or human “smell test”. If you smell good, you’re in. Good rankings will follow (provided of course, that you have good on-page SEO, and a few good backlinks). I speculate that if you are a Google partner (“approved”), then you are not going to be penalized, unless you subsequently “go bad”. The second method is to buy an old domain, just for it’s longevity, and old backlinks. Many have bought up old domain names for this purpose. This may work right now, but the rules will soon change again. They always do. Good luck!

Notes to the Above 120 Google Ranking Factors :

Sources “These optimization opinions are too strong - Too much speculation – I wanna see your SEO data! “. . . OK. Here it is - Google Search Engine Optimization Forums

Disclaimer
1.	NOT A Google, Inc. Site
2.	In no way, did this data come directly from Google, Inc.
3.	This page consists of a compilation of public information, commonly available on the internet, at multiple sites, as well as public webmaster forums, and simple manual tests.
4.	The opinions stated above are merely the often misguided personal opinions of the author.
5.	I am not privy to any inside information.
7.	Although the author makes every effort to verify the information on this page, no information on this page is guaranteed to be correct, and any data contained herein may be erroneous.

Google-Related Webmaster Information
Google Tool
	ON SITE
Google Page Index	Google information pages on this website
Data Centers	Google Data Centers List – All clickable
Ranking Factors	Google Ranking Factors – SEO List - 120 factors Google uses to rank websites
Stop Words	Google Adsense Stop Words – Avoid these words to avoid PSAs.
	OFF SITE
SEO Info	Seomoz.com – Rand Fishkin, guru and perpetual student
SEO Tools	136 Free SEO Tools – seocompany
Datacenter Watch Tool	Google Datacenter Watch Tool – mcdar
Forums	My Favorite DP Google Forum - Hosted by developers, not politicians - digitalpoint.com My Favorite SEOChat Google Forum - Hosted by developers, not politicians - seochat.com
Keyword Checker	Google Keyword AND Backlinks Checker Tool - digitalpoint Track daily for FREE (Google approved – get your own Google API key)
Page Rank Checker	Google Page Rank Tool – Find your PR, no PC needed - prchecker.info
Search Engine Land	Search Engine Land – Danny Sullivan – Complete SE Info - SEL
Site Map	Google Site Map – (somewhat hidden) – An excellent source - sitemap.html

top of page Vaughn’s Summaries (One-Pagers) ©2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 – Vaughns-1-Pagers.com Google search engine optimization (SEO) information This is Vaughns Google search engine SERP Ranking Factors SEO Checklist. Portions of this page were last updated on 2007-12-28. _uacct = “UA-286297-1″; urchinTracker();

The Lucky Thirteen: The Critical SEO Checklist

The Lucky Thirteen:
The Critical SEO Checklist
By Mike Tekula (c) 2007
When it comes to SEO not all of us have the time to be experts. At some point the real “gurus” of SEO and other topics are the people with a whole lot of time on their hands. This list, put together with the everyday webmaster in mind, drives home some absolutely crucial points that you should keep in mind when optimizing your pages for valuable search rankings. 1. Check Search Engine Crawl Error Pages

It’s important to monitor search engine crawl error reports to keep on top of how your site and its pages are performing. Monitoring error reports can help you determine when and where Googlebot or another crawler is having trouble indexing your content – which can help you find a solution to the problem.

2. Create/update robots.txt and sitemap files

These files are supported by major search engines and are incredibly useful tools for ensuring that crawlers index your important site content while avoiding those sections/files that you deem to be either unimportant or cause problems in the crawl process. In many cases we’ve seen the proper use of these files make all the difference between a total crawl failure for a site and a full index of content pages which makes them crucial from an SEO standpoint.

3. Check Googlebot activity reports

These reports allow you to monitor how long it’s taking Googlebot to access your pages. This information can be very important if you are worried that you may be on a slow network or experiencing web server problems. If it is taking search engine crawlers a long time to index your pages it may be the case that there are times when they “time out” and stop trying. Additionally, if the crawlers are unable to call your pages up quickly there is a good chance users are experiencing the same lag in load times, and we all know how impatient internet users can be.

4. Check how your site looks to browsers without image and JavaScript support

One of the best ways to determine just what your site looks like to a search engine crawler is to view your pages in a browser with image and JavaScript support disabled. Mozilla’s Firefox browser has a plug-in available called the “Web Developer Toolbar” that adds this functionality and a lot more to the popular standards-compliant browser. If after turning off image and JavaScript support you aren’t able to make sense of your pages at all, it is a good sign that your site is not well-optimized for search. While images and JavaScript can add a lot to the user experience they should always be viewed as a “luxury” – or simply an improvement upon an already-solid textual content base.

5. Ensure that all navigation is in HTML, not images

One of the most common mistakes in web design is to use images for site navigation. While for some companies and webmasters SEO is not a concern and therefore they can get away with this, for anyone worried about having well-optimized pages this should be the first thing to go. Not only will it render your site navigation basically valueless for search engine crawlers, but within reason very similar effects can usually be achieved with CSS roll-overs that maintain the aesthetic impact while still providing valuable and relevant link text to search engines.

6. Check that all images include ALT text

Failing to include descriptive ALT text with images is to miss out on another place to optimize your pages. Not only is this important for accessibility for vision-impaired users, but search engines simply can’t “take a look” at your images and decipher the content there. They can only see your ALT text, if you’ve provided it, and the association they’ll make with the image and your relevant content will be based exclusively on this attribute.

7. Use Flash content sparingly

Several years ago Flash hit the scene and spread like wild fire. It was neat looking, quick to download and brought interactivity and animation on the web to a new height. However, from an SEO standpoint, Flash files might as well be spacer GIFs – they’re empty. Search engines are not able to index text/content within a Flash file. For this reason, while Flash can do a lot for presentation, from an accessibility and SEO standpoint it should be used very sparingly and only on non-crucial content.

8. Ensure that each page has a unique <title> and meta description tag

Optimization of <title> tags is one of the most important on-page SEO points. Many webmasters are apparently unaware and use either duplicate <title> tags for multiple pages or do not target search traffic at all within this valuable tag. Run a search on a competitive keyword of your choice on Google – click on the first few links that show up and see what text appears in the title bar for the window. You should see right away that this is a key place to include target keywords for your pages.

9. Make sure that important page elements are HTML

The simple fact to keep in mind when optimizing a page is that the crawlers are basically only looking at your source code. Anything you’ve put together in a Flash movie, an image or any other multimedia component is likely to be invisible to search engines. With that in mind it should be clear that the most important elements of your page, where the heart of your content will lie, should be presented in clean, standards-compliant and optimized HTML source code.

10. Be sure to target keywords in your page content

Some webmasters publish their pages in hopes that they will rank well for competitive keywords within their topic or niche. However, this will simply never happen unless you include your target keywords in the page content. This means creating well-optimized content that mentions these keywords frequently without triggering spam filters. Any way you cut it you’re going to need to do some writing – if you don’t like doing it yourself it’s a good idea to hire a professional copy writer. Simply put: without relevant content that mentions your target keywords you will not rank well.

11. Don’t use frames

There is still some debate as to whether frames are absolutely horrible for SEO or whether they are simply just not the best choice. Is there really a difference? Either way, you probably don’t want to use frames. Crawlers can have trouble getting through to your content and effectively indexing individual pages, for one thing. For another, most functionality that the use of frames allows is easily duplicated using proper CSS coding. There is still some use for a frames-based layout, but it is still better to avoid it if at all possible.

12. Make sure that your server is returning a 404 error code for unfound pages

We’ve all seen it. We’re browsing around at a new or familiar site, clicking links and reading content, when we get the infamous blank screen that reads “404 page not found” error. While broken links that point to these pages should definitely be avoided you also don’t want to create a “custom error page” to replace this page. Why? Well, it’s simple: if you generate a custom error page, crawlers can spend time following broken links that they won’t know are broken. A 404 error page is easily recognizable, and search engine crawlers are programmed to stop following links that generate this page. If crawlers end up in a section of your site that is down through an old link that you missed, they might not spend the time to index the rest of your site.

13. Ensure that crawlers will not fall into infinite loops

Many webmasters see fit to include scripting languages, such as Perl, Php and Asp to add interactive functionality to their web pages. Whether for a calendar system, a forum, eCommerce functionality for an online store, etc. scripting is used quite frequently on the internet. However, what some webmasters don’t realize is that unless they use robots.txt files or take other preventative measures search engine crawlers can fall into what are called “infinite loops” in their pages. Imagine, if you will, a script that allows a webmaster to add a calendar to one of his pages. Now, any programmer worth his salt would base this script on calculations – it would auto-generate each page based on the previous month and a formula to determine how the days and dates would fall. That script, depending on sophistication, could plausibly extend infinitely into the past or future. Now think of the way a crawler works – it follows links, indexes what it finds, and follows more links. What’s to stop a crawler from clicking “next month” in a calendar script an infinite number of times? Nothing – well, almost nothing. Crawlers are well-built programs that need to run efficiently. As such they are built to recognize when they’ve run into an “infinite loop” situation like this, and they will simply stop indexing pages at a site that is flagged for this error.

About The Author
Mike Tekula handles SEO, SEM, usability and standards-compliance for NewSunGraphics, a Long Island, New York firm offering Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, W3C-Compliant web design using full CSS layouts and all things web design/development.

The Ultimate SEO Checklist

By Shirley Kaiser

July 26th 2006

Reader Rating: 7.9

Optimizing your web site for search engines should be an integral part of your web site project, from the very beginning to the very end. Search engine optimization (SEO) should be considered, and if possible, implemented, throughout the planning, design, development, and maintenance stages of your web site.

The checklists in this chapter of Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists can be used as a guide to optimize your web site for search engines. You can download this checklist, along with others that cover content management and site testing, for use in your own projects. However, it will definitely pay you to subscribe to some helpful SEO newsletters, visit web sites that cover the latest on SEO, and consider purchasing books by highly regarded SEO/SEM experts, such as The Search Engine Marketing Kit, by Dan Thies (Melbourne: SitePoint Pty. Ltd., 2005).

You will see the results of your work first-hand if you consider SEO right from the start. For example, at the time of this book’s publication, my own site is the number one listing on Google for its keywords, and has consistently remained within the top three (unsponsored) listings on the first page of Google and other search engines for several years. Yes, SEO is important, but more than that, it’s rewarding! Let’s get started.

Successful SEO in a Nutshell

Plan your web site’s SEO before you create the site.

It’s important to create your web site with SEO in mind. Changing a web site, or potentially even redesigning your web site, to optimize it for search engines can end up being an expensive proposition. Plan to create a search engine-friendly web site from the start.

Ensure that every page includes text, links and popularity components that will help boost your search engine rankings. (Shari Thurow, “Before You Build” in Search Engine Visibility (Indianapolis: New Riders Publishing, 2002), 20.)

Employ other means to market your web site.

In addition to SEO, consider paid submission programs, PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, reciprocal links campaigns, and advertising your site on others. Depending on your budget, you might consider advertising through traditional media, such as newspapers, magazines, radio, and television.

Working with Keywords and Keyphrases

Research keywords and keyphrases (multi-word phrases) before you create your web site.

It’s important to create your web site with keywords and keyphrases in mind and to put them in place as you develop the pages and content.

Target keyphrases rather than single keywords.

Single keywords are much more commonly entered by web users, which makes them more difficult to target effectively than multi-word keyphrases. Unless the single keywords are highly unique, your best results will be achieved using keyphrases.

Use longer words and plurals.

If you target plural versions of your keywords or phrases, you’ll get hits from people searching for the singular and plural versions of those words.

Use that Thesaurus!
As part of your brainstorming for appropriate keywords and keyphrases, try using a thesaurus to find similar words. There are helpful thesauri online (you might start at Thesaurus.com), but see also the Search Term Suggestion Tool, and Wordtracker.

Focus on a few specific keyphrases for each web page.

Pages that rank well in search engines tend to focus on specific keyphrases that usually appear in the HTML <title> element, <heading> elements, breadcrumb navigation links, product names and descriptions, and cross-links. (Shari Thurow, Top Five SEO Design Mistakes, ClickZ (September 27, 2004).)

Create keyphrase-rich text content, especially for your homepage.

Identify the top two or three keyword phrases that potential visitors would use to find your web site, then write 200–250 words of homepage text that utilizes those keyword phrases—not the other way around. Follow this approach as you create content for other web pages, too. As noted above, keep in mind that titles and headings are considered more important than other content by some search engines, so consider this as you optimize your content. We’ll discuss the topic of optimizing your markup for search engines in just a moment.

Include keyword and keyphrase research in your ongoing web site SEO maintenance plan.

Using Keywords and Keyphrases in your Markup

Search engines use a page’s structural markup as a guide to rank the relative importance of its content. It’s important to include keywords and keyphrases within your web pages—especially your homepage—and to place them within certain markup elements. Providing content that is relevant to your target audience will, naturally, help your search engine rankings, especially if you intentionally make strategic use of appropriate keywords and keyphrases. Use the checklist below to help.

Include keywords and keyphrases in your site’s information architecture.

Keyword and keyphrase research results can play an important role in the words and phrases you use within your web site’s information architecture. For instance, you might use keywords and keyphrases in your global and local navigation, your category labels, page <title> element text, <heading> element text, and internal links.

Using these terms in conjunction with the checklists from Chapter 5, Web Site Usability: Focusing on the User and Chapter 7, Information Architecture not only helps your web site visitors find information more readily-it helps your site achieve good search engine ranking, too!

Use focused keyphrases within each web page’s <title> element.

Currently, creating keyphrase-rich text for your web page <title> element is critically important, because nearly all search engines give the <title> element’s text a lot of weight. Create each page’s <title> element text to reflect the specific content of that page, using keyphrases that people might type into search engines to find your web site.

Use your keyphrases within each web page’s <meta description> element.

Note that many search engines, including Google, Yahoo!, Inktomi, and others, index and use the text within the <meta description> element; for instance, some use it as description text for display in search results. However, they don’t use the text for search engine rankings at this point. Also, they largely ignore other <meta> elements, including the <meta keyword> element. While there’s no guarantee that it will help improve your rankings, it’s still worthwhile to include the <meta description> element in your web pages as shown below. (Jill Whalen, The Meta Description Tag, High Rankings (updated October, 2004).)

<head>
<meta name="Description" content="Add your descriptive sentence or two here." />
</head>

Use your focused keyphrases within the page’s <heading> elements, beginning with the <h1> element.

Keep <h1> Close to <body>
The closer that you can locate your keyphrase-loaded <h1> element content to the opening <body> element tag, the better. Some search engines will give a close proximity between the two a higher rating—it appears to the search bot that the content is important enough to earn itself a high-level heading, and that content appears early in the document. In addition, content that’s placed closer to the top of the page is also considered more important by many search engines, so make sure your top 200–250 words are packed with keyphrase-rich content.

Use your focused keyphrases within link URLs and corresponding title attributes.

Here’s an example:

<a href="/design/checklists/" title="Essential web site
Checklists: Best Practices Made Easy">Essential web site
Checklists</a>

Keywords and Domain Names
Although some Search Engine Marketers believe that placing keywords in domain names can provide a significant boost to sites, others feel it doesn’t really do much. According to SEO expert Jill Whalen, keywords in domain names might be afforded a small amount of weight by the search engines, but only when other site owners link to the web site using its domain name, rather than the web site title. The result is similar to having keyword- or keyphrase-rich links, which is indeed helpful. Another SEO expert, Shari Thurow, also feels that other factors have much more impact than the inclusion of keywords in a domain name, such as keyphrase-rich content, links, and the site’s popularity. (Jill Whalen, Search Engine Marketing Q&A, High Rankings Advisor, Issue 091 (March 24, 2004); Shari Thurow, Search Engine Visibility (Indianapolis: New Riders Publishers, 2002), 20.)

Use relevant keyphrases within your img element alt attributes.

Here’s an example:

<img src="/images/checklists.jpg" alt="Essential web site
Checklists: Best Practices Made Easy, my kit with essential,
helpful checklists for web site designers and web site
owners" />

seo checklist

I made this list from information that can be found on http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm and a lot of helpfull members on www.forums.digitalpoint.com that have helped me in my quest for SEO knowledge. Hopefully this can or could be usefull to you in future times when you are reviewing a site you are working on for improving the SEO value or if you are in the stage of developing a new website. Good Luck, Edz, DigitalPoint Keyword in description meta tag – Shows theme ,less than 200 characters and no more

25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog

Posted by Lee Odden on Jun 15th, 2006 in Blog Optimization, Blogging, SEO, Blog Marketing, Online Marketing |

submit_url = “http://www.toprankblog.com/2006/06/25-tips-for-marketing-your-blog/”; With so many blogs being created every day, it’s a mystery to many bloggers how to make their blog stand out. There are many types of blogs or purposes for blogs and a certain number of tactics are applicable to just about all of them.

Some companies choose to hire a blog consultant, but others like to try things internally. For those “DIY” companies and individuals interested in practical tips for marketing and optimizing a business blog, try out the following list of blog marketing and optimization tips:

1. Decide on a stand alone domain name www.myblog.com or directory of existing site www.mysite.com/blog. Sub domain is also an option blog.mysite.com. Avoid hosted services that do not allow you to use your own domain name!
2. Obtain and install customizable blog software – WordPress and Moveable Type are my favorites.
3. Customize blog look and feel templates – aka design.
4. Research keywords and develop a glossary – Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, SitePoint, SEOBook Keyword Research.
5. Optimize the blog:
   • Template optimization – RSS subscription options, social bookmark links, HTML code, Unique title tags, URLs, Sitemap
   • Add helper plugins specific to WordPress or MT
   • Create keyword rich categories (reference your keyword glossary)
6. Enable automatic trackback and ping functionality.
7. Create Feedburner Pro account and enable feed tracking.
8. Setup a Google account for Sitemap, validate and prep for future submission.
9. Identify authoritative blogs, web sites and hubs for outbound resource links and blogroll.
10. Format archived posts, related posts.
11. Enable statistics for tracking – Google Analytics, ClickTracks.
12. Submit RSS feed and Blog URL to prominent RSS and Blog directories / search engines.
13. Engage in an ongoing link building campaign.
14. If podcast or video content are available, submit to Podcast and Vlog directories.
15. Submit blog url to paid directories with categories for blogs – Yahoo, BOTW, bCentral, WOW, JoeAnt.
16. Optimize and distribute a press release announcing blog.
17. Request feedback or reviews of your blog in relevant forums, discussion threads. If you have a resourceful post that will help others, point to it.
18. Research and comment on relevant industry related blogs and blogs with significant centers of influence.
19. Post regularly. If it’s a news oriented blog, 3-5 times per day. If it’s an authoritative blog, 3-5 times per week, but each post must be unique and high value.
20. Monitor inbound links, traffic, comments and mentions of your blog – Google Alerts, Technorati, Blogpulse, Yahoo News, Ask Blogs and Feeds.
21. Always respond to comments on your blog and when you detect a mention of your blog on another blog, thank that blogger in the comments of the post.
22. Make contact with related bloggers on AND offline if possible.
23. When making blog posts always cite the source with a link and don’t be afraid to mention popular bloggers by name. Use keywords in the blog post title, in the body of the post and use anchor text when you link to previous posts you’ve made.
24. Use social networking services, forums and discussion threads to connect with other bloggers. If they like your stuff, they will link to you.
25. Remember when web sites were a new concept and the sage advice to print your web address everywhere you print your phone number? The same advice applies for your blog.
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26. If your blog’s goal is to promote you as an authority, interview other prominent bloggers in your industry. Your own credibility will improve by association.
27. Build out your online networks through services such as MyBlogLog, Twitter and Facebook and leverage them to promote particularly useful content on your blog.
28. Once your blog has 1000 or more subscribers, show your Feedburner badge
29. Host images with Flickr making sure to include an anchor text link in the image description back to the post where the image is used.
30. Use your blog to gain press/media credentials at relevant industry conferences and use the event to create content, connections and increase your knowledge.

This post was originally published on June 15, 2006 and has continued to receive many inbound links. As time changes, so do some tactics, so we’ve added a few tactics (after original 25) that have emerged in their usefulness. What would you add to this list?