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As competition among websites increase, close attention is being paid to rankings in major search engines. Since a high ranking in a keyword can “make or break” a business, webmasters are looking to find any method to increase their ranking. By examining the algorithms of Google and other search engines, it is easy to see that a high value is being placed on the number of links (and quality) pointing to a website. As a result, most webmasters have realized the importance of finding partners to link to their Internet business.

Although link exchanges are vital to any marketing plan, there are some myths that are perpetuated by many so-called “experts”. To run a smart link exchange campaign, it is important to understand these myths and make sure that you do not fall for them.

Myth 1 - Link to every site

When I first started my link exchange campaign, I would link to every site possible. As a result, my rankings suffered. As I learned more, I discovered that I could improve my listings by linking to sites that complemented my own. In order run a smart link exchange program, it is important to focus on linking to sites that are closely related to your product or service without being a direct competitor.

For instance, my original site sells Ethnic Jewelry. So, I look for link partners among other jewelry stores that do not sell the same type of jewelry that is listed in my store.

Myth 2 - All people will add my site if I add theirs first

To receive a link from an Internet business, most people will usually add the site’s link first. Unfortunately, not every potential partner will add your link even if you have already added theirs. Sometimes a website is just not interested in linking with your site. The problem is many webmasters will not let you know that they are not going to link to your site. So, you might be linking to a website that is not returning the favor.

A great way to ensure that you are only linking to reciprocal sites is to put each link into a “temporary position” until you receive validation that the site is listing your business.

Myth 3 - The name of my website should be in the title of the link

Another mistake I made when I first started out, was to have the name of my website in the links that were pointing to my business. Eventually I learned that many search engines, especially Google, pay attention to the title of the link pointing towards your site. So, if you are looking for top placement for specific keywords, then they should be used in the title of the link instead of your website name.

Taking the Ethnic Jewelry example from above, your link title would look like this:

Ethnic Jewelry Store: Here we sell evil eye jewelry and Turkish jewelry.

Myth 4 - Only link to sites with a high Google Page Rank

In my opinion, the biggest “Catch-22” for webmasters is that many sites will not link to an Internet business unless it has a certain “Google Page Rank”. But at some point, every site has started out with a low page ranking. So how did they get a high ranking if no one would link to them in the first place?

Instead of focusing on a page rank, many successful websites look instead at the quality of the Internet business. If it is evident that the webmaster has taken the time to create a quality site, then you can assured that a high ranking will eventually happen! By linking to a well designed website, you can be ensured that the value of your link will increase as the website gains a high ranking.

Myth 5: Put all the links on one page in no particular order

When the Internet first gained popularity, webmasters used links as a way to help their visitors. Initially, they placed links as way to complement the content of the website. As the important of links increased, the focus shifted from helping the visitor to helping the webmaster.

Instead of dumping your links onto a single page, you can help both your partners and visitors by creating a directory. Here, you place each link partner into a specific category. This will help visitors (and search engines) navigate your site with ease.

Myth 6: I should avoid all types of “automatic” link programs

Many Internet marketers recommend avoiding automatic link exchange software. They feel that using these programs will actually hurt your rankings rather then help. But, there are a lot of great link exchange websites that automate the process of finding links hurting your search engine rankings.

For instance, http://www.linkmarket.net and http://www.gotop.com are two excellent sites that allow you to shop for link partners. When you find sites that are complementary, you add them to your “basket” and the link exchange websites sends out an automatic email requesting the link. These two sites allow you to save time, while avoiding the “black hat” techniques that are prevalent among many automatic-linking services.

While exchanging links can be a time-consuming process, it is well worth the effort. By taking time to properly link to complementary websites, you will find that your rankings in important keywords will improve.

Scott Patterson brought his online store: http://www.mizambar.com to the top of the Google search engine by exchanging links. To find out how he did this and other techniques with NO computer experience, check out his site: http://www.buildingastore.com

There is a lot going on at the Googleplex these days. For three different reasons, each of which is important to search marketing, Google has been in the SEO spotlight this week. For the technology wonks, Google engineers are said to be developing a Google web browser to challenge Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. For those of us interested in the business end of search, the SEC imposed a 40-day “quiet period” which has expired and speculation on their limited revenue streams has heated up again. Lastly, for SEOs and web masters trying to figure out what Google is up to this month, multiple versions of Googlebot have been observed super-spidering the web. To say there is a lot going on in Mountain View is likely an understatement. Google is retooling its shed and though there may be some bumps in store for organic SEOs, this might actually be the beginning of the end of Google’s technical glitches.

Google is being driven by two important forces. The first is the intellectual and competitive quest to develop the best possible product. Google faces obvious challenges from Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves, and less obvious challenges from smaller companies developing search related products. The second driving force is the need to find as many viable revenue sources as possible. For a company like Google, the path to success is found on Advertising Avenue but most recently, the company came into a staggering amount of money through its IPO.

Google Browser - Playing Ruthless with Redmond

Google is most likely developing an web browser of its own to compete with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. This will allow Google to “brand” a user’s experience, much like Microsoft does today. (Look at the top of your browser. About 90% of you will see the words “Microsoft Internet Explorer”) Google has recently introduced its own Email system known Gmail and offers a host of other features that could be incorporated into a browser. The development of a Google web browser is much like Microsoft developing its own search engine. It is a direct challenge to a major rival and a smart move leading up to the next major phase of the search engine war, expected next spring. Here’s the background on the browser story.

Google has a great deal invested in its engineering staff. Their resum? filtering process for engineers is the stuff of legends and is designed to allow only the brightest to solve their way through a series of mathematical puzzles. Joining those who solved the puzzles are a number of notable new staff members personally headhunted and recruited from other tech firms. According to a report in Digital Media Europe, Google has hired Java pioneer Joshua Block away from Sun Microsystems, Adam Bosworth and four others from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer development team, and in a major coup, one of Microsoft’s lead developers on the Longhorn OS, Joe Beda. This sudden grouping of famous IT engineers, combined with Google’s April 2004 registration of the domain name “gbrowser.com” gives a great deal of credibility to the rumour. Google has also dedicated a substantial amount of time, attention and money to the Mozilla community. Mozilla is an open-source browser. Open-source software allows developers to work with the software-code to improve or change the product. By offering resources to Mozilla developers, Google may be micro-funding the creation of what becomes the backbone of a Google-branded browser. Google users would likely accept and use a Google browser, especially if it is based on the current tech favourite, Mozilla. Once they have converted from IE to Google’s product, directing their interest will be as easy as tracking their movements, two important components in making the bottom line.

Money as a Necessary Evil - Expanding Revenue Sources

Making money is an important part of running a successful business. One might think that becoming the world’s most referenced information source would be enough to make money. Apparently it’s not. Moving the most advertising on the web… now that’s a ticket to making good money. Google pushes product like nobody’s business. With over ? of all searches conducted through Google’s system in one way or another, and the largest contextual advertising distribution network on the planet, Google’s only major competition is Yahoo/Overture. Unlike Yahoo/Overture however, Google is in a somewhat precarious position regarding revenues. Over 90% of Google’s quarterly revenues is said to come from contextual advertising. That’s a lot of eggs to put in one basket, no matter how large that basket may be. The contextual advertising market is changing and this is a cause for concern for all search tools dependent on advertising revenues. Google is betting the server-farm on advertising so it has to develop as many ways as possible to deliver that advertising to viewers and do it in such a way that advertisers benefit more than they would working with Yahoo. Google has thus far been successful in competing with Yahoo’s Overture. They have developed a better distribution system, have more advertisers, and have better semantic contextualization abilities than Yahoo. What they don’t have is other major revenue sources.

One of the goals of all search engines is to deliver the most relevant results possible to each individual user. Concepts such as personalization and localization of search results are based on this goal. One of the effects of localization and personalization will be the adoption of Google as a replacement for daily-use items such as the phone book and yellow pages. This is an obvious goal for Google and other search tools however it also represents an extraordinary and recurring revenue generator, especially as the Pay-per-Call model layers over the current Pay-per-Click model. As Google engineers find new ways of presenting search to the public, perhaps we’ll see new kitchen appliances referencing Google for recipes or even Froogle for the lowest prices on local produce. Eventually, digital radio and television will become the standard. Wouldn’t it be cool to look for a specific song or show currently playing somewhere? That may sound far-fetched today but, if they can do it with the news, they’ll soon do it with other digitalized signals. The bottom line to this section is the bottom line. Google knows it needs to diversify its revenue streams if only to continue to satisfy investors.

Googlebot, meet GOOGLEBOT.

Lastly, Googlebot has a doppelganger and both have been running rampant across the Net the last few weeks. Posts in several SEO forums have speculated widely and wildly about what Google is doing and why it is doing whatever it is it’s doing. Nobody can claim to know what Google is doing from moment to moment with the exception of a few dozen people working at Google. The best the rest of us can do is offer educated guesses and many have been doing just that. There are definitely two unique Googlebots out there. One appears to be performing a deep-scan of a website and its links while another seems to be doing a surface scan of pages in the site’s directory. This leads credence to our first theory…

Over at WebmasterWorld, moderator Brett Tabke speculated that Google was in the midst of rebuilding their entire database from the ground up. There have been a few times in the past when Google has served up month-old results due to errors in their main index. This may be one of those times and Google is trying to cover much ground in as short a time as possible. Given the unprecedented levels of R&D at the Googleplex, I am a bit bearish on much of this theory except a basic assumption that Google is somewhat broken and needs patching up.

“Would you like some links with that website sir?”

The Google is sort-of-broken theory appears in other postings, both at Webmaster World and at the IHelpYouServices forums. Google has been sort-of-broken for a while now. Actually, Google is working just fine but as search marketing has become so important, marketers have learned how to absolutely manipulate it. As almost everyone knows, Google is highly effected by the number and relevance of incoming links. Strong keyword enriched titles and text along with a good number of highly relevant links should get your site front page prominence. It’s relatively easy. So easy in fact that the search engine result pages are often clogged with irrelevant results and references to direct-marketing products. Google often makes minor moves to fix this problem, more often than not relating to the way Google measures the validity of incoming links. These algo shifts often clean up results for a short time but have not yet prevented the masses of marketers from figuring out new tricks and “magic bullet” strategies to shoot at the SERPs. This type of algorithm tinkering was what was behind last November’s Florida Update.

Another theory states that when Google was originally programmed, the number 4Billion was considered really, really big. Today, Google has over 4Billion websites in it’s database but, due to its original programming it may be limited in growth past that requiring the compilation of a new database. As I am not a programmer and start to lose focus when words such as “point-integer” are thrown around, here is a link to a very lively discussion on this theory.

Whatever the cause for two versions of Google bot, there is no question that an update is underway as this column is being written. Page ranks and backlink counts have been fluctuating over the past few days and several web masters report seeing their rankings bounce widely from page to page in the SERPs. By next week we’ll have a better idea of what Google’s been doing by analyzing the outcome of this update.

The world of search is changing very rapidly. Google is one of the most innovative companies working the web and it too is changing. Based on the past week, much of this change may be for the better. Google seems to be focusing on technologies as well as monetization, which is a huge step forward now that the IPO hurdle has been crossed. When compared to rival firms such as Ask Jeeves, Yahoo and Microsoft, much of the recent speculation around Google looks very positive. Investors seem to think so too with Google shares continuing to rise in value though this may be driven by IPO euphoria as well as educated investing. With a new browser appearing to be in the works, the development of new revenue streams, and the refocusing of their core algorithm, Google is getting ready to be cool again.

Jim Hedger is a senior editor for ISEDB.com. Also he is a writer, speaker and search engine marketing expert working for StepForth Search Engine Placement in Victoria BC. He has worked as an SEO for over 5 years and welcomes the opportunity to share his experience through interviews, articles and speaking engagements. Hedger can be reached at jimhedger@stepforth.com

If you are reading this article online, you may belong to the group of people who are fanatically enthusiastic about online activities. You shop online as much as possible, purchase digital products, email friends and family rather than pick up the phone, and consider requests to meet with you in person unnecessary and peculiar.

Understand, however, that you belong to a minority. The vast majority of people, even those you encounter online, keep Internet contacts in perspective. They prefer to personally select the vegetables they buy, they read paperback books and they attend face-to-face seminars.

I’ve been thinking about this because nearly a year ago, I launched an online mentorship program designed to deliver support, guidance and resources in technologically advanced ways like a password-protected discussion board, member-only teleclasses and searchable online articles. I designed it for the convenience of busy people who won’t need to travel, I thought.

Almost as an afterthought, I announced an in-person seminar with the same focus as the online mentorship program. To my surprise, the total number of participants in this seminar (repeated every couple of months with a different group of participants since then) is running slightly ahead of the number of members in my online program.

Why do people like seminars? Here’s what I’ve learned so that you won’t overlook these powerful wants and needs.

1)Concentrated learning. Some people like to experience education in a focused, intensive time frame rather than interspersed with all their other activities. This can be especially powerful for those who are reevaluating something they’ve been doing for a long time, searching for fresh perspectives or facing challenges that they cannot get a handle on.

2)Social interaction. Seminars are fun because they enable people to get to know a bunch of others in a setting that makes it easy to get to know one another. Sometimes people living in separate regions of the country sign up for the same seminar to see each other and learn at the same time. Often people make friends and find clients amidst the socializing at a seminar. Very often the career-changing suggestion or insight comes not from an official leader or presenter at the program but from another participant.

3)Getting away. For women with children, going out of town to a seminar and letting the spouse take care of the home front is a delicious treat. For others, a seminar in an appealing location offers the prospect of tax-deductible travel and relaxation.

4)Learning preferences. Some people know that they get breakthroughs and galvanizing perspectives not from books or the Internet or recordings, but from real, live people in a face-to-face setting. An online program has little or no appeal for them.

5)Synergy. In a well-run, well-selected seminar, all of the above factors work together to produce surprising experiences, valuable insights and worthwhile new relationships. Somehow the whole proves more beneficial than the component parts.

So if you believe that face-to-face seminars are old-fashioned, impractical and rather useless for today’s Internet Age, think again!

Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity and 10 other books. She runs an online mentorship site, MarketingforMore.com, which supportsbusiness owners who are growing their businesses. Download her free report, “Charge More & Get It,” at http://www.marketingformore.com/survey.htm. Or find out about her upcoming Marketing for More seminars at http://www.marketingformore.com/seminars.htm.

In this age of speed dialing, T1 lines and other forms of high-tech instant gratification, many webmasters find themselves tempted to engage in pay-per-click advertising. After all, if you’ve just designed a state-of-the-art website, there’s nothing quite as gratifying as a steady stream of traffic right from the start. Webmasters with open wallets have found that pay-per-click can provide traffic within hours or even minutes of a website’s launch. Pay-per-click Pros

Before considering the perils and pitfalls of pay-per-click, it’s worthwhile to remember that in some instances, pay-per-click is a good market strategy. A number of reputable SEO firms combine pay-per-click management with search engine optimization as a method of getting their clients the clicks they need. Pay-per-click can be an especially effective strategy for:

• companies trying to beat a competitor to market with a new product who want to garner substantial traffic while waiting for their SEO efforts to kick in
• webmasters with deep pockets who are more concerned about establishing a quick presence than long-term return on investment
• webmasters who are reaping a return on investment high enough to justify expenditures on pay-per-click

Significant Drawbacks

Although there are valid reasons to engage in pay-per-click advertising campaigns, there are also enough drawbacks to give any webmaster pause.

Companies considering pay-per-click need to determine the primary purpose of their marketing campaign—whether it be immediate sales, building website value, or a combination of the two. If immediate sales is the goal and a worthwhile return on investment is being achieved, pay-per-click may be the strategy of choice—at least until good search engine positioning can be obtained.

Webmasters seeking to build a valuable web-based business should remember that whenever the money “spigot” for pay-per-click stops, so do the clicks. In contrast, clicks resulting from an investment in search engine optimization will continue for months and possibly years to come.

Monitoring ROI

Return on investment (ROI) is another key factor to monitor during the implementation of any pay-per-click marketing strategy. ROI can drop dramatically as market forces change. An increase in competition, when combined with rising costs-per-click and plummeting product prices, can quickly spell doom for a previously profitable ad campaign.

Computing ROI for pay-per-click can be a bit tricky. Since most sites receive “free” traffic resulting from SEO efforts, it’s important to try and ferret out what percentage of sales are resulting from pay-per-click and what percentage are resulting from your other SEO efforts.

Choosing which sites and search terms to allocate advertising dollars to can also be somewhat daunting. Rapid changes in per-click charges can also be challenging to manage well. If your bid is #1 and our competitors lower their bids, you may be left paying a higher price than necessary to maintain top positioning. This is the webmaster’s equivalent of throwing money down the drain. Unless you plan to sit by your computer watching per-click charges on an hourly basis, some type of pay-per-click management is, in my opinion, an absolute necessity.

In running a successful pay-per-click campaign, there are also questions to be answered about whether to try for top positioning or settle for some lesser spot, and which pay-per-click ads pull the best.

While I have learned “never to say never”, I am not presently using pay-per-click for any of my websites. Though I have used it in the past and may resort to it again, my website is doing better than ever without it. Pay-per-click is just one more thing to manage, and, if not managed well, can become a financial drain in a hurry. I’m a pretty busy person, and probably a tightwad as well. As a result, pay-per-click isn’t part of my current marketing arsenal.

That doesn’t mean, however, that it might not be right for your site. Do some testing, study it out, and consider the “cons” described in this article. In the words of an old adage, “if something is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well.” This is especially true for things that cost money. My advice is to keep that thought firmly in mind whenever you open your webmaster wallet.

Cari Haus has been successfully selling rustic log furniture and beds on the Internet since the late 1990’s. Copyright 2005 by Cari Haus, website http://www.logcabinrustics.com/. Permission is granted to reprint this article, either online or in written publications, as long as the copyright information, this paragraph, and a link address or a link to the Log Cabin Rustics website is attached at the end of the article.

Search engine optimization is one of most popular online marketing tool for any website. With most websites looking forward to increasing the online sales of their products/services, search engine optimization can be a very cost-effective tool to target and procure your customers online. In this paper, we will discuss about search engine optimization, its benefits and how you can optimize your website for top search engine rankings.

1. What is search engine optimization?

Search engine optimization (also known by various other names like search engine ranking, search engine promotion, website promotion, SEO etc.) is a method through which a website is given top rankings in various search engines. According to a recent industry study, 1 in every 20 people go to the second page of search results pages, but only 1 in every 100 people go beyond that. So, by top search engine rankings, we mean that your website should be within the first two pages of the search results, preferably in the first page (i.e. within top 10 rankings).

2. What are the prime benefits of search engine optimization?

§ Top search engine rankings result in more pre-qualified business leads coming to your website which in turn can convert to greater sales for your organization.

§ Search engine promotion is one of the cheapest methods of advertizing for your organization. Compared to advertizements in the newspapers/magazines or in the television, search engine promotion costs many times less and can bring more traffic to your websites, thereby providing greater ROI.

§ Search engine optimization enhances online brand identity of your organization.

3. What are the key factors for your website to have top search engine rankings?

Search engines change their algorithms frequently, thereby forcing the search engine optimization companies to re-strategize their search engine optimization techniques. However, the following attributes are basic and play a major role in procuring top search engine rankings.

a. Keyword Research – Keywords play the most vital role in your search engine optimization campaign. Keywords (can be 1, 2, 3 or more words) are the search terms which a surfer types in the search box of a search engine to reach your website. Let us consider that you are an “India-based Outsourcing consultant” interested in optimizing your website for top search engine rankings. The following are some of the keywords which surfers will type to reach your website -

Keywords

bpo bpo india bpo outsourcing services business outsourcing services business process outsourcing offshore companies offshore outsourcing offshore outsourcing services offshore services outsource india outsourcing companies outsourcing consultants outsourcing india outsourcing services outsourcing services company

Keyword research tips –

· Always target keywords that best describe your products/service. · Try to find multiword potential keywords compared to single keywords. · Try formulating keywords which give answers to as “why/how/what …….?” · Utilize your server log files to know what your customers searched most while visiting your site. · Use keyword generator softwares like Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) or Overture (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/) · Include popular common misspellings (e.g. viagra typed as viagara etc.) in your keyword list.

b. Title of the webpage - - Title has a deep impact on your website’s search engine rankings. Experience shows that most companies use the following as title of their index page which can prevent them from getting top search engine rankings.

For example, let’s continue with the above example of “India-based Outsourcing consultant”.

An ideally optimized title should contain the top 3-5 keywords of your business, e.g. outsourcing consultants, outsourcing india, outsource india

Optimized Title -

c. Description Meta tag of the webpage – Description of a webpage also plays important role in getting top search engine rankings.

Optimized Description - Develop a suitable description based on your top 3 keywords

d. Keywords Meta Tag of the webpage - This meta tag was of great importance at one time. But rampant manipulations (i.e. multiple, often non-relevant keyword stuffing in the “keywords” tag), leading to abuse has resulted in search engines giving lesser importance to “keywords” tag while ranking sites. Nevertheless, you can always place top 3 – 5 keywords of your site in the “keywords” tag.

Optimized Keywords -

e. Importance of Content/Keyword-enriched optimized pages for top search engine rankings –

Well, if there is one aspect which holds supreme importance in search engine, specially in Google ranking, then it is this. Yes, content! The popular industry say – “Content is King” was perhaps devised by watching Google’s love for content. Develop content based on the top keywords related to your business. While developing content for your web pages, keep in mind the keyword density (KD).

Mathematically speaking, Keyword Density is the ratio of the total number of time a keyword is repeated divided by the total content words. Since KD is normally represented in percentage, the above figure is to be multiplied by 100

For example, if you have developed a web page of around 250 words on the keyword “search engine optimization”, and that particular keyword (search engine optimization) is repeated 10 times, then

Keyword Density (KD) = 10/250 * 100

= 4%

As a thumb rule, Keyword Density of an optimized page for top search engine rankings should vary between 2 – 7 % (this figure varies among different search engines)

4. Submission of Keyword-enriched optimized pages – After you have finished content development for the optimized pages based on the keywords targeted for top search engine rankings, submit those pages to various search engines.

a. Google - http://www.google.com/addurl.html b. AlltheWeb - http://addurl.alltheweb.com/add_url c. AltaVista - http://addurl.altavista.com/addurl/new d. MSN - http://submitit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm

5. Role of Link Popularity in top search engine rankings –

Link popularity has assumed tremendous importance for getting good ranks in Google now a days. In fact, what started as a friendly reciprocal link exchange program among various webmasters has now become a sub-industry within the SEO industry itself, with thousands of link farms popping up every day! Yes, if you are interested in getting top ranks in search engines, especially Google, then you must pay effort in building up links for your site.

1. Create a html page, preferably named as “Resources/Links/Partners” and place a link of this page from Index Page of your site. This page should never be more than 1 click away from the index page of your site, else webmasters won’t be interested in participating in the reciprocal link exchange program.

2. Target both “industry-related” and “non-industry-related” websites as your link exchange partners. For example, if you are providing outsourcing services, then try getting links from “industry-related websites (i.e. websites dealing with outsourcing services, maybe your business rivals!). This is important, because if 10 of your rival sites give links to your site, then Google will surely pay importance to your site, because getting links from rival companies are difficult. Your site MUST be of some high caliber, else the other 10 sites won’t have linked! Also, try procuring links from top ranked general informative websites as well.

3. Always exchange links with websites which have high Google PageRank (PR) of at least 4, the more the better! (both Index Page as well as Resources/Links Page of the Link Partner’s site should have PRs of >=4) [PageRank is a proprietary tool that Google uses to determine the importance of a page and varies in a scale of 0 (least important) to 10 (maximum importance)].

4. Have a link code ready for participating in link exchange program. Here is a sample link code for an India-based Outsourcing consultant.

- Indian outsourcing consultant providing guidance to companies willing to set up outsourcing centers in India.

Sitemaps and hypertext links are “food” for search engine robots. We will look at the value of text links for optimal spidering, and the importance of using a sitemap in order to help search engine robots reach your website’s deeper pages.

Hypertext Links

Search engine robots are not terribly sophisticated. They cannot click a button, submit a form, pull down a menu, or perform any other type of online “user interaction” that might be used by a human visitor. Robots are able to index the text on a page and click through hypertext links. For this reason, adding navigational text links to your web pages (often located at the bottom of the page) provides the search engine robots with another means to click through the links of your web pages when it cannot access these other types of navigation.

No matter how great your JavaScript menu system is, the search engine robots cannot use it. They can follow “plain old” hyperlinks, and that’s about it. Since the ability to move around on your site is vital to the robots’ successful indexing of your content, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to visit all of your pages. Use of text links at the bottom of your pages, while hardly cutting-edge, is one of the best ways to make sure that the search engine robots can move around on your site. Be sure to include links to your site’s principal pages on all the pages in your site. Always remember to put a link to your sitemap page here too.

Sitemaps

A sitemap page is a supercharged version of the bottom-of-the-page hypertext links. The sitemap provides “food” for a hungry search engine robot. A sitemap page will at very least have links to all of the major pages on your site. Depending on the size of your site, it may actually link to all of your pages. This means that once the robot gets to the sitemap page, it can visit every page on your entire site. Having all of the content of your site included in the search engine database is a good thing: you are much more likely to come-up in the search engine results when somebody is performing a search related to your topic.

A good sitemap will:

* Provide text links to at least the most important pages on your site; depending on the size of the site, it may have links to every page * Give a short explanation of each page on your site, to inform your visitors about your website * Give your visitors the information they need when lost in your website, and show them how to reach the page they are looking for * Provide a pathway for the search engine robots to follow in order to reach your most important pages * Provide important keyword phrases in the sitemap text and hypertext links that help the automated search engine robot “understand” what the page is about * Help search engine robots find static landing pages that then link to dynamically generated pages they may not otherwise find

Even if your website is small, add a sitemap for your visitors and for the search engine robots.

To make your sitemap most attractive to the search engine robots and your human visitors, be sure to include descriptive text along with the page URLs and links. Use your keywords in that text, including appropriate content for each of the pages to which you link. Be careful not to overuse your keyword phrases, though, or you may be penalized in the rankings. Remember that this is a map that will be used by both search engine robots and your human visitors. If the content of the page makes sense to the people who visit your site, chances are it will make sense to the visiting robots as well.

When you make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site, they will find what they are looking for. When you make it easy to search engine robots to move around on your site, you increase your chances of being favorably listed in their search results.

# # #

Daria Goetsch is the founder and Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Search Innovation Marketing http://www.searchinnovation.com, a Search Engine Promotion company serving small businesses. She has specialized in search engine optimization since 1998, including three years as the Search Engine Specialist for O’Reilly & Associates, a technical book publishing company.

What’s the best way to make your visitors return to your site? I will mention at least seven things for you to do.

1. Introduce yourself to them.

This is the very first step you have to do. One salesman quoted that you have to first sell yourself to your customers and then when he’s comfortable with you, he will then be interested in what you can offer him.

2. Make them your friends.

It is a proven fact, that a friend will most likely buy from his friends or people he trust. You also invite friends to come in and feel at home and might even give them a tour in your house. It’s the same way with your website.

3. Give them what they need.

People browse the web when they need something. Construct your website in such a way that it will cater to those needs.

4. Entertain, Inform and Teach Them.

The whole purpose of the World Wide Web is Information Technology. People don’t want to be taught, they need to learn. By presenting information to them in an entertaining way, you have removed the boredom of traditional teaching.

5. Give Them Free Stuff.

Most people buy but if they see something that’s not for sale but is equally good compared with the paid one, they might as well get it. Let them always look for your site when they need these freebies on the web.

6. Give Them Better Deals.

You might as well place a link to your paid products/services near your free stuff. You want people to know that you’re not only giving free stuff but you’re also selling other products as well. And the difference in your products is that either it is delivered earlier than the competition, it is priced right or it is a high-quality one.

7. Show tons of categorized links.

Let people always look for you when they need something that you don’t offer. One error on placing links on a website is you only offer links ot the same category. So that same website is your possible competitor and you are helping them get a sale. The solution I can give there is why not offer other categories beyond the scope of your website. This is just to make people return to your site whenever or not they need your service. Thus, eradicating the competition.