Seo Strategies for success guide to search engine marketing and optimization

What is Search Engine Optimization?

· Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is marketing on the web using the search engines to get top placement for your website.

· Just think of your domain and website as a piece of online real estate where you jockey for the top positions to be seen by millions of internet users. You are competing against thousands of other websites for that position. The higher your website position; the more traffic to your website.

· Simply, your goal for Search Engine Optimization is to increase web visitor traffic to your website by placing high in the results of searches using the optimized keywords describing the content of your website.

Why Optimize for the Search Engines?

· In today’s competitive online global market, search engine optimization is critical to companies who want to expand their reach to targeted customers and increase their overall sales.

· A growing number of prospective customers search for specific products online through the major search engines. Online sales dramatically increased by 26% just last year and are predicted to continue climbing.

· Market Rite Websites offers this free SEO info as an in depth strategy for your online marketing approach through your website. By applying these proven methods, and using the accompanying SEO Web Worksheet, you will increase your site’s visibility while also sending you highly targeted traffic.

· Increasing your online visibility and bringing more qualified prospects to your company’s website will lay the groundwork for better visitor sales conversion and ensure the long-term success of all online marketing efforts.

How do I Successfully Optimize for the Search Engines?

· First and last, top placement is achieved by studying your competition and out ranking them. By searching on your target keywords, you will see the leading websites in the rankings. By using the following methods, you can out rank the competition!

· This workshop gives you access to our online list of free SEO tools and resources used to optimize and improve search engine results with effective methods used by top SEO experts. This workshop was compiled using free online resources and created for the small internet business owners who want to market their own websites. Feel free to link back to our workshop for future reference. Although new SEO methods and techniques are already online, this workshop provides a solid, basic SEO resource for marketing your website right.

· Once you know what keywords and search engine marketing services worked for the competition, you can utilize this information to do even better! Search Engine Optimization requires a lot of time and effort in research to be effective. Knowing and implementing the keywords and services used by your competition can greatly improve your results.

· Then you can begin building website popularity and online business relationships through successful linking strategies.

· Additonal paid advertising and affiliate programs can be utilized to further advertise your website.

· By using a combination of several on-page and off-page optimization strategies you can excel and outrank your online competition to gain valuable market exposure.

Facts on search engines and how they work

Background on the top three search engines: Google, MSN, and Yahoo

Google is the King of search engines with 48% of the internet’s search traffic. Yahoo comes in second with 28% and MSN is third with 11%. These are the search engines we will target in our SEO Marketing Strategy Workshop.

According to an article in Search Engine Watch, “U.S. Internet users conducted 6.9 billion searches in February 2007. The 6.9 billion searches conducted in February account for a 1 percent increase over January 2007 and a 19 percent increase over February 2006. Web surfers used Google for 3.3 billion search queries. Yahoo served 2 billion, MSN garnered 730 million, Ask.com served 348 million, and Time Warner sites, including AOL, served 338 million searches in February.

U.S. Online Searches by Engine, January 2007 and February 2007 (%)
	January 2007 (B)	February 2007 (B)	Change
Total Internet population	100	100	N/A
Google	47.5	48.1	0.6
Yahoo	28.1	28.1	0.0
Microsoft	10.6	10.5	-0.1
Ask.com	5.2	5.0	-0.2
Time Warner	5.0	4.9	-0.1
Source: comScore Networks, 2007

Facts on the King of Search: Google

· Google provides search engine content to: AOL Search, Netscape, Iwon

· Provides paid advertising to: AOL Search, Netscape, Teoma, Ask Jeeves ,Iwon

· Receives content from: Directory: dmoz (Open Directory Project). In our step-by-step guide, we will discuss the quickest way to get into the Google Empire.

· Google uses SPIDER BOTS on the web to maintain its index.

· These are computer robot programs that find the pages for inclusion into their directory by following the links in the pages they already have in their database and have indexed. If the webpage has no links to other websites, Google will not find it. Quick link building strategies will be discussed in the step-by-step SEO Strategies. Most large search engines operate several robots all the time. Even so, the Web is so enormous that it can take six months for spiders to cover it, creating a time lag of dead links and out of date websites in the search engines.

General Info for Google SEO

Pagerank Factors

· Page Rank is Google's way of giving specific value to your website popularity. The ranking system considers the number of links other websites have to your website. Popularity occurs when other websites place links on their website that are pointing to your website. Generally, the more links you have pointing to your website, the higher your Page Rank (PR) will be. Page Rank is one of the many factors that Google takes into account when ranking websites.

· They evaluate the quality of inbound links (people who link to you) and quality of outbound links (people who you link to) by assigning a value to the number of quality (popularity) of your links.

· Also, Google analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the location of each word. In order to determine the relevance of search user results Google also analyzes the content of neighboring web pages.

The Must Do List For Google

· Optimize for webpage content by including relevant and useful content and information that an internet surfer would want to read and explore! There’s plenty of spam out there and Google doesn’t like it. Duplicate content is frowned on. Make sure each page has unique content.

· Optimize for link relevance, quality and popularity: Several factors that determines your rank on Google are the number of links that point to your site, the quality (popularity) of the sites that link to your site, the text in and around the links that link to your website.

· Optimize with clean code structure and no cheating. Do not use webpage building programs like Frontpage, which is not compatible with Netscape browsers. Make sure your website code can be displayed properly by all the web browsers like Firefox, Netscape, and Internet Explorer.

· Tips from Google: "Basically, Google's position is that we prefer no hidden links, no hidden text, no automatic tools used for positioning, and no cloaking. We prefer that Googlebot get the exact same page that users see. In general, you can assume that we're as conservative as possible. We don't like hidden links/text in divs/layers/iframes/css, or links that are inconspicuous or punctuation, for example. Similarly, we don't like cloaking or sneaky redirects in any form, whether it be user agent/ip-based, or redirects through javascript, meta refreshes, 301/302's, or 100% frames." Google will blacklist websites who use underhanded techniques to get more traffic.

· Optimize with on-page techniques: Google looks for the keywords in the title, metatags, content, and the text links within your site.

· Optimize the right type of website: There are some technical website design elements that make it hard for the search engines to index the content in the webpage, no matter how well you optimize and submit them, because they can’t follow the code. Fortunately, these technical design elements can be combined with SEO friendly HTML to work together before you submit your website. The most common coding that spider bots don’t see or spider: Sites that use Frames. Sites that use Dynamic URLs./ Sites that use Flash/ Sites that use Image Maps for navigation/ Sites that use Javascript for navigation.

General Info for Yahoo SEO

· Yahoo receives search engine content primarily from itself. Yahoo is the leader in amount of traffic, overall advertising, and household and business user reach on a global scale. Over 237 million unique users in 25 countries and 13 languages.

· Yahoo owns the paid advertising program in the Overture Network. This is the second best online advertising program after Google Adwords.

· The main Yahoo Index results are compiled spidering the web or participating in the Yahoo Paid Inclusion Program.

· Directory: Yahoo’s main business directory employs human editors.

· Yahoo has both a human-edited directory and a spider based index.

· The Paid Yahoo! Directory is organized by placing related websites into subject categories. Sites are evaluated by Yahoo! editors, who visit and evaluate user suggestions and decide where the sites belong. To get express inclusion, you should use their Business Express plan. It costs $299 every year, but your site will get reviewed within 7 days. This does not guarantee that your site will get into the Yahoo Directory.

General Info for MSN SEO

· MSN staffs a team of editors that monitors the most current popular searches being performed and they hand-pick sites that are most relevant.

· Some listings compiled by human editors, while most results in index are provided by their own index. They have discontinued the index relationship with Yahoo, but continue their Overture paid listing program.

· Microsoft is the best in local computer search: They control desktop search with their MS operating systems that find documents on a local computer or across a network. This local searching capability is an advantage and may later lead to a larger control of the search market if they continue to add new indexing and search engine capabilities.

The Must Do’s For Yahoo and MSN

· Optimize with clean code: Yahoo and MSN place a strong emphasis on clean code. According to many SEO experts, the MSN Search spider downgrades the ranking of sites that have badly written code. Make sure you have a “clean” web design, or employ a good web developer who knows how to create SEO friendly websites.

· Optimize keyword placement on the webpage: Yahoo and MSN rank websites with on-page optimization higher and consider these factors more than Google does. Although they also consider off-page factors such as link popularity, they give far greater weight to certain on-page factors, such as keyword placement, than does Google. Now that we know what the search engines are looking for, we can start the process of on-page optimization….

Step by Step Proven Methods for Long Term SEO Success

Identify Your Market and Initial Keywords

After understanding how search engines work, and the various factors that influence website ranking in search results, we want to apply this knowledge while researching the competition and keywords for our website. Before you start, it is important to identify your target product and target audience in order to sell your product and convey your message with the right keywords.

Identify your product

· What is your product or service?

· What are your primary selling points? (Built-in characteristics of product itself)

· Primary Benefits? (What buyer gets from using the product or service)

Identify your target market and audience

· Demographics: (Age, sex, education, income, occupation)

· Psychographics: (Lifestyle, attitude, personality traits)

· Specific regional or local market area

· Specific target groups or business organizations

· Specific industry related markets

Create your first list of relevant keywords and phrases

Consider the following when choosing keywords:

· How will your target audience most likely type in a search for your product or service? Quickly list the phrases you would use to search for your product or service.

General & specific terms related to your website: General keywords will drive volume to your site as well as customers that don't have a specific product in mind or that are open to various product offerings. Specific keywords drive highly qualified customers that have a specific product, service or offering in mind.
General & specific terms used by competitor websites.
General & specific terms related to your market and target area: For product keywords, be sure to also include model numbers. For local and regional websites, use the city, county, zip code, and region names, etc.
Specify technical terms and descriptions related to your product and market.
Specify brand names for products and services sold.

Steps For On-Page Optimization Continued

6. Purchase a domain name with the top keywords in the URL. Use the Domain Lookup Tools to check out domain suggestions. Also name the web pages of your website with the products and service keywords. Example: http://computerguyslive.com/wireless/cannot-connect.html.

7. Make sure to also include these top keywords in the beginning of your page content and at the end. Sprinkle the top keywords and secondary keywords throughout your page content. Google’s spider bots read pages from top left to bottom right and will pick up the first and last words on the website. (3-7 % keyword density for major keywords is best, 1-2% for minor keywords. Use the keyword density checker to analyze competitor keyword placement and density.)

8. Place top keywords in the headings for each paragraph. Many websites do not use the <H1> header tags </H1>, but you can underline <u>Online Computer Repair</u>) and bold <b>PC Tech Support</b> the important keywords to emphasize their importance to the search engines. Using larger font sizes also increases the importance to SE’s.

9. Place your keywords in anchor text links. Use inbound anchor links and deep links to your other web pages. Google follows deep text links to inner web pages on your site and inbound text links coming from websites with similar themes and content. Consider the keywords around these links also. For example: Check out our affordable online computer repair prices and see why we beat our competition. The goal is to use the top keywords in these text links and use relevant content around these links because Google looks for quality inbound links and the content surrounding the links.

10. Place your keywords in the image tags. Name your pictures using the keywords and also include the keywords in your ALT image tags. Example:<img src="http://www.savetheinternet.com/images/savethenet_image.jpg" WIDTH="150" HEIGHT="200" ALT="Save the Internet: Click here"/>

11. Don’t forget the content when adding your keywords.

· NOTE: Google places websites with quality content on the top of the rankings:

Give your visitors relevant and readable information pertaining to your products and services. Make the content useful and change the information to keep it fresh. Visitors will bookmark your site and come back again. Your website then becomes a favorite part of the visitor’s internet resources and “part of their internet neighborhood.” Thus, your website real estate starts gaining in value and equity with a rise in the search engine rankings.

“Black Hat” don’ts of On-Page Optimization

Here’s the DONTS, or BLACKHAT techniques that will get you banned from Google. Also make sure to check out Don’t Get Banned from Google. The following on-page techniques may get your website banned from Google. (ie. Taken out of their index, or blacklisted)

· Don’t place hidden text in your website using your background. Google bots can see hidden text and Google will ban websites for this technique.

· Don’t stuff your title, alt tags, or metatags with keywords. Google does not like spam. Google ranks content as far more important Google than metatags and does not like the keyword repeated too many times.

· Don’t link to bad neighborhoods or use spam links, redirects, or doorway pages that have duplicate content.

1. Bad Neighborhoods: Certain websites are blacklisted, or rated low and contain improper or unrelated content. Steer away from linking to websites of poor quality and use the quality link checker to see how the linking website ranks with Google.

2. Anchor Text Links: Don’t sell text links that link to poor quality websites, and don’t create other websites that have duplicate content linking to your website.

3. Doorway Pages: Your other websites can have their own original content and link to your website. That builds a network of websites and works great to create traffic to all your websites. Just don’t use duplicates content on your pages.

4. Don’t use a redirect on the index or home page. Google will eventually downgrade that website. Make sure visitors arrive on your homepage and stay on your homepage.

Off-page optimization and importance

Off-page optimization is the most effective and important strategy for increasing your website traffic. This includes link and relationship building through competitor research and niche marketing research. Google considers your link quality by using the following criteria:

1. The quality of websites linking to you and how they link to you.

2. What type of websites linking to you, the relevance to your content.

3. How many websites link to your website.

4. Google page rank of the website linking to you.

5. The page title of the website linking to you

6. The anchor text used in the links that link to your site.

7. The number and type of links linking to the website that's linking to you.

8. The number of outbound links on the website that is linking to you

9. The total number of links on the website that is linking to you

10. Whether or not the websites linking to you are ranked high in Google and are an authority website in your field.

How To Get Indexed In Google, Yahoo, and MSN Fast!

Quality links are important, so how do we build quality links while getting indexed quickly in the major search engines? It normally takes several weeks to several months for new websites to get indexed in the major search engines with traditional submission methods. Remember that the search engine spiders follow links on websites to index new websites. So we will first explain the techniques to getting quick, quality inbound links to your website by submitting a press release or submitting your written articles.

· Fast Search Engine Inclusion: Submit your press release and articles to the top websites where you can submit them for free or pay for the services. After submission, many websites will publish your press release or article, with the link to your site, within days. This publicity technique gets you quick quality inbound links that the search engines will follow to your website. They will then add your new website to their index quicker than the normal submission process.

· Sample Press Release Info: Check out sample press release formats and the press release generator on this website to write your own press release for submission. Consider the following techniques when writing press releases:

Geer the writing style as a news story for media distribution. Don’t write for entertainment or as an article.
Make it short and sweet with a maximum 350 words and two paragraphs in the body.
Keep the language concise and to the point without trying to sell your product blatantly.
Do not quote html or email in your release. DO NOT WRITE PRESS RELEASE IN UPPER CASE (title especially)
Do not use hype, exclamation mark (!) or short forms in your release.
Make it interesting with a unique angle and good information to entice visitors to your website.

· Free Press Release Submission: This same website has a very good list of the top free websites to submit your Press Release.

· NOTE: For additional content on your website, permanently include the press releases on added web pages. Link to those web pages from your index page.

· Press releases are a good way of announcing your new website. Take time to research a few specific niche press release sites that can distribute your PR to websites in your field. This will help you get links from complementary websites. Google likes links that pertain to your website content.

Article Writing Tips:

There are many advantages to submitting articles online that include increasing your inbound links. Writing articles also can establish you as an expert on your topic and give your website an added credibility in your field while bringing targeted traffic.

Just one article can give your website hundreds of inbound links and a lot of online exposure in the your field. Before you start marketing your articles online, read the article marketing tips on the SEO Web Worksheet and remember to follow these general guidelines:

· Keep the article informative and entertaining. Give the reader valuable information relevant to your subject. Try not to blatantly advertise your product or website. Many article directories won’t accept advertising.

· Place links to inner web pages on your website in anchor text links within the article. This will create deep links to other parts of your website and increase traffic to your inner pages.

· Note: Article Directories love lists so write the article as a step by step guide in your subject. Keep the size between 400-700 words.

· Make sure to include several links within the author resource box to get the links back to your website. This is the key to free advertising and getting indexed quickly in the search engines. Here is an example from Ezine Articles:

About The Author:

Christopher M. Knight invites you to submit your best articles for massive exposure to the high-traffic http://EzineArticles.com/ directory. When you submit your articles to EzineArticles.com, your articles will be picked up by ezine publishers who will reprint your articles with your content and links intact giving you traffic surges to help you increase your sales. To submit your article, setup a membership account today: http://EzineArticles.com/submit/

Copyright 2005 - Christopher M. Knight. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Reprint Rights: You may reprint this article as long as you leave all of the links active, do not edit the article in any way, give author name credit and follow all of the EzineArticles terms of service for Publishers.

· Avoid Duplicate Content: Google will not count all the inbound links from your article if each article has the same content. The other search engines like Yahoo and MSN will count all the links. To avoid duplicate content, you can rewrite several versions of the article and submit them to the top 5-10 Article submission sites. You can also publish the article on your website or a blog first, then submit a different version to article directories.

· Make sure to spell check your article and have another person look it over before you publish.

Article Publishing Tips

· Target top article directories when publishing your articles in order to get quality links. Submit versions of your edited article to top 15 article submission sites.

· Use the Isnare submission service to quickly submit to several directories at once.

· Research and submit to themed article directories that are related to the niche that your article addresses. For example, if you write about computer repair, you would be looking for directories and websites that accept content on computers.

· Use articles as a link building incentive: Offer your article to related websites as content for their site. If your article is entertaining, informative, and interesting, most websites will publish it on their websites. Or they may just give you a reference link, which points to your site. Those links build up fast when submitting articles and press releases. These two marketing methods will also guarantee fast indexing in the search engines for your new startup website.

Search for the competition and Email them

When you build links you are building your own business relationships and business reputation online for the long term SEO. Your online virtual real estate equity will rise as your links multiply and you build quality online link relationships. Your page ranking with Google will also rise, giving your website possible exposure to millions of internet surfers and website visitors.

Finding out who links to you competitors and e-mailing them for link exchanges, can help you quickly build your link popularity. Websites which link to your competitors are far more likely to be relevant to your field, interested in your site and willing to link to your site. By taking the time to visit and contact these sites, you will gain links and relationships that can be very lucrative for your business.

The Search for Top Competitor’s Link Partners

Successful link building requires consistency of effort and a lot of time! There are many link building services and software to use that cut down on the time it takes to find potential link partners and send emails to automate the process of link exchange. The tools, services, and software listed in the SEO Web Worksheet are very successful with certain link building steps that we will explore.

1. Automate link building: Web CEO, Linkmachine, or SEO Elite Software can automate finding and e-mailing potential link partners and building link pages.

· Web CEO is free software with great tools for analyzing the links and researching your competition. The paid version allows you to send out reports via email and track traffic stats on your website.

· SEO Elite has a trial version and the paid version is great at analyzing the competition’s inbound links using certain keywords.

2. Keyword Top 10 Site Info: Use your top 5 keywords and phrases to research the links of your competition. This tool shows the top websites for each keyword and gives the inbound links for Google, Yahoo, and the link quality of the top websites. Follow these links to review the websites and compile a list of URL’s, or web addresses for each website you want to send e-mails for link exchange. Keep this URL list on a notepad document for later use.

3. Link Popularity Check: Paste the domains of your top competition into this tool and find the inbound links to each website on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines. This tool shows the inbound links for each top website researched in Step 2. Check these links to review the websites and compile a list of URL’s, or web addresses, and the contact e-mail address for each website. Now we are ready to send emails for link exchange to the chosen high quality websites that we researched.

4. E-mail potential link partners: Use the Email sample to create a link exchange template email to start writing your emails. Here’s some tips to remember when writing to websites:

· Be confident in your writing style. Sell your website and approach each potential link exchange partner with respect and a complement for a certain aspect of their website. Try different approaches and go with the most successful. Remember that large established websites may not have link exchanges but many will include one-way paid links in their resource directories to your website. Research is important so you don’t waste time emailing the websites that are way above link exchanges.

· Include a good sales pitch that offers the address to the reciprocal link and the value of linking to your website. Place their link on your site first before emailing them and make sure you include the link in a relevant category on your links page.

· Roboform: This software tool can be used to quickly fill out link exchange forms on websites. Many websites will use an automatic link exchange service and they want you to use their online forms for quick link exchanges. Setup this free program to quickly fill in your website information with a click of the mouse.

· Avoid linking to low quality websites by visiting each one and checking them out manually. This can save you a lot of headaches later, especially if they have malware and virus downloaders on them. Remember that your links are a vote for that website, so your business reputation is at stake. You most certainly don’t want to give your visitors spam or a virus infection on their computer.

· Consider giving your visitors a “mini” links resource directory that’s relevant to your niche market. Link Machine and other software can be used to create your mini directory. A good collection of great resource links in your field will bring the visitors back in the future. Note: These links should open in a new window so your website is always open and inviting!!!

Submission to the “Top Dog” Search Engines

While your link building campaign is a constant effort, building your website presence with the top search engines requires a few specific steps that will ensure your website is indexed properly and that all your web pages are included in each search engine. Follow these steps to list your site both locally and regionally.

1. For top exposure, make sure to submit to each major search engine by hand and use the local search engines too.

2. Setup the Roboform software to quickly fill in the website information for Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

3. Create a Google account and sign in to list your website on Google Local Maps. You will need to list a physical address to use the local directory but it is well worth it as far as getting exposure for your business and website.

4. Create a Google sitemap by using the Google Sitemap Generator. Copy and paste the code into a notepad document and save it as googlesitemap.xml. Note: the code must be pasted all the way at the top of the document without any spaces on the left.

5. Sign in to the Google Webmaster Center using your Google account.

6. Claim ownership of your website by adding a Google webpage to your root directory on your website. Note: This requires you to upload a verification page via ftp-file transfer protocol- to your website. Your SEO specialist, website developer or website designer can do this for you.

7. Submit your Google sitemap after claiming ownership of website. This will ensure that Google indexes all of your web pages. Make sure to have different page titles and content for each webpage you submit in the sitemap.

8. Submit your site to the Open Directory Project: Athough Google also uses this directory, don’t expect to get into it easily.

9. Create a Yahoo account: Then create a ROR sitemap to submit both your website and your ror.xml sitemap to Yahoo Site Explorer. Sitemaps require a reference in the metatags to be found so follow the instructions of the sitemap generator tool.

10. List your website with Yahoo Local: A physical address is again required. Yahoo gives your business a great local listing page that allows you to upload photos of your products and services.

11. List your site with MSN and the MSN Submit business listings. Now you are ready to submit your site to niche directories and the SEO Friendly Search Engine Lists

12. Remember that it might take 2-8 weeks to have your website indexed in the major search engines. Although if you use the Google’s webmaster section and Yahoo’s Site explorer, indexing may occur within a couple of weeks!

Submission to the “Top Dog” Web Directories

Submission to web directories requires a lot of time and research to target niche specific markets that will get your website high visibility in your field and get you targeted prospects. To help you get started, here is information about listing in free and paid directories:

Web directories are simply collections of links categorized into relevant fields. Top directories include the Yahoo! directory, the Open Directory Project, and the Google Directory. These top directories are the primary gateway and holding place of public resource links for research information, virtual entertainment, online media, online communication, and online ecommerce, etc.
More importantly, these directories have bypassed the Yellow Pages as a tool for consumers to search for local, regional, and online businesses, products and services!! Stats show that consumers are increasingly searching online for local businesses. Keeping this in mind, your goal for successful SEO is to get quickly listed in the three top search engine directories to maximize your online and local market exposure.

· Top paid directories: To further increase your internet exposure, you want to look at this top paid directory list. Choose the paid directories that fit into your budget. Many charge a one-time fee for inclusion. The exception is Yahoo who charges a $299 annual fee for its commercial listings in the Yahoo Business Directory. This expense is well worth the cost considering the national and global reach of Yahoo!.

· Paid directory listings are affordable compared to authority and niche websites that provide valuable content to the visitors. While many directories charge one time fees for inclusion, authority or “Big Daddy” sites get very expensive by charging monthly for text links. These niche websites with a page rank greater than 5 or 6, use text links as a source of income. So for less money, paid directories are the way to get link popularity.

If you still want to get high ranking links on the authority sites in the beginning, you will have to pay for them. Many charge a monthly fee or charge for a certain amount of impressions. It is advisable to go for the smaller niche websites and try to work out a deal by approaching them directly with a link trade or article inclusion. After your website starts rising in the rankings, you can approach the “Big Daddy” websites that have PR 7 and PR 8 rankings.
Remember the “Big Daddy” sites do have the high volume of traffic. If you do have the money to spend, then you can increase your own traffic substantially by advertising at a site that is in your niche market. According to web marketing stats, the minimum click thru rate is 1%, which can add up to 1,000 extra hits per day with a website that has 100,000 hits per day!
Every bit counts online so listing in several secondary directories can help. The traffic will add up once you get your website in 20-30 smaller directories.
The traffic also adds up with link exchanges or reciprocal linking. Just be careful not to fully automate the link exchange process if you have one on your website. You should always check the sites requesting links before putting them on your website. There are far too many “junky” and “spamy” websites online so be careful who you link to.

Online Publicity and Marketing Approaches

Blogging For Links and Popularity

Blogs are definitely in business nowadays. The business of blogging has exploded within the last 5 years and most internet business websites have a blog. One of the most, versatile, interactive, and easy tools to incorporate into your marketing plan online, blogs can help establish your business credentials in your field, and give you a platform to generate sales links and fresh content. Here are some examples and ways you can use blogs to build a reputation and market your product or service.

· Blogs can be quickly created using a free Blogger account, a Blogger template, and relevantarticles pertaining to your field.

· The purpose is to provide a publishing platform for fresh quality and relevant content that can be further circulated freely online by Feedburner’s excellent syndication services. Blogs help establish your online reputation in your field, while providing an initial publishing platform for articles that can be later submitted to top article directories.

· As a direct result of blog and article distribution, your company can quickly received hundreds of new links and greater internet exposure.

· Note: To setup a commercial blog at your website URL that sells products and advertising directly on the weblog, there are several good blog publishing programs and resources listed on the Web Worksheet.

· There are so many uses and positive aspects to using a business blog that it is hard not to get into the craze. The following lists more ideas and important tips for blogging:

· Blogs allow communication on a personal level which makes the people in the business “human” to the public and allows the visitor to understand the views and goals of the company.

· Blogs can be educational and a valuable resource for your clients. Make sure to add links in your blog to other pages on your main website and give the visitor’s resource links to other websites. USE LINKS because good content blogs that are syndicated can spread like wildfire online. They become their own entity and continue to grow without a lot of intervention.

· Blogs can be interactive by allowing you to post comments and get feedback from your visitors and customers. You can receive comments on a new product or service, share ideas, announce industry news, conduct a survey, showcase the newest products or service, test the product or service, etc.

· Blogs allow for quick changes by anyone, without having to know html coding. Blogs are LIVE (RSS) Really Simple Syndication Feeds. The new blog posts are automatically picked up by Feed Burner and syndicated to various RSS feed readers online.

· The blogger can quickly and easily post new photos, links, articles, product specials, and relevant content which can immediately be seen by that blog’s subscribers through feed readers, emails, and on the blog itself. Your blog can become a very important and powerful marketing tool that grows quickly with the right exposure.

Get that Blog Out and Seen Quickly

· For maximum Blog exposure: Once you have created your new blog, submit it to the websites on the Submit to RSS Directory list in the Web Worksheet.

· For Fast Top SE Inclusion, make sure to create a Yahoo account and add the address of your blog to My Yahoo! Page.

· Turn on the pinging option that checks your blog for the latest posts. This will get your blog indexed quickly. Also create a Google and MSN account to setup Google’s Homepage, and My MSN. Your blog’s web address can then be added by clicking on “Add Content”, then clicking on “Create Section”.

· Use the Social Bookmark Generator and create links to copy and paste into your blog template so visitors can easily bookmark your blog using their favorite book mark service.

· Use the RSS button Maker to add buttons to your weblog that allow the visitor to easily include your RSS Feed in their favorite RSS Reader. All the 3 top SE’s use their own RSS readers on the personalized MY Yahoo, MY MSN, and Google Homepages to view and your own RSS feeds.

Affiliate Programs can Generate Sales

When selling a product or products, using affiliate programs can help create links back to your site and get others to sell for you. The affiliate program will need to be promoted beyond your own site. You can advertise your products as well as the website and affiliate program.
If you are selling an e-book or software, you can sell it through an affiliate website and everything is managed directly through their website. The stats show that through affiliate partners, around 3% to 5% of visitors who visit your merchant link will buy something. (Many sites use specific links on specific pages which generate 20% or 30% conversion rates, but they have less traffic.)
With an affiliate program, the marketing of both your product and program can work for visitors and for other websites that complement your products. Many websites will exchange links and sell your products that complement their products as an added service for their customers. Links are the goal in all website promotion so affiliates can help build those links. Many affiliate management networks handle the setup, and tracking of your affiliates so check out the different programs offered online.

The Best Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Pay Per Click advertisements appear at the very top of the search engine’s results page and on the far right side of the page. They are called Sponsored Links. When a PPC ad appears it is called an ad impression.

Advertisers pay only when a visitor clicks on the PPC ad, the number of impressions depends on the popularity of the keywords used to promote the advertising. The PPC keywords work just like the keywords in the metatags, except that you can put in as many words as you want to pay for.

Marketing with PPC advertising can be used to economically test a new website, ad campaigns, products, index pages etc. Many companies use PPC because of the lower costs and greater exposure. Compared to banner advertising and other online ads, the costs are cheaper. PPC is a great advertising tool for instant traffic and top SE rankings for that keyword.

To get top placement as a new website, these are the best advertising options for fast promotion. Additionally, both top two PPC engines have easy setup and services to help track the conversion rates of your ads.

Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing are the two top PPC advertisers for the exposure they can generate quickly. Other pay-per-click advertisers have a much smaller reach. Google’s network delivers approximately 80% of the traffic, and Yahoo comes in second for the number of ad impressions delivered to its network. These two PPC cover most search engines and PPC networks available.

· The only draw backs of AdWords and Yahoo are the costs, and the need to get 3^rd party software to track click fraud.

· COSTS: CPC or cost-per-click can start at $3-$4 for competitive keywords, and go to $10 per click for the most competitive keywords.

· Third party software can be used to track visitor clicks on these PPC engines, but Yahoo and Google won’t track click through fraud themselves. If you have a very competitive market, you may want to consider paying for tracking programs that count the number of clicks from the same computer and report those to the PPC engines, who then give advertising credits. Click fraud is estimated be as high as 15% for certain competitive keywords.

Info on the top PPC engines Yahoo and Google

· A big advantage with Google Adwords is automated so your ads go live right after you publish them. No waiting for approvals like Yahoo PPC.

· AdWords other advantage is that it uses a formula to calculate your PPC ad position which is calculated by multiplying your bid amount by your ad's click-through rate (CTR). Thus the better performing ads are rewarded and spam ads are not.

· Both Google AdWords and Overture do not charge your maximum bid amount, they charge one penny over the competitor’s bid so

· AdWords competitior bids are not visible-Yahoo shows the competition’s bids and places the top bidder’s ads higher on the page–Google reduces the threat of bidding wars because bidders can’t see the competition’s bids.

· Yahoo! Search Marketing acquired the Overture network, which is the second largest PPC engine. It has human editors so approval of ads may take a couple of days. Although human editing does help ensure good quality ads you may wait a couple of days for approval.

· All Yahoo bids are open to the public so all advertisers see what a particular keyword costs. This can lead to bidding wars and the competition outbidding by one penny to gain a higher ranking. It does allow the advertisers to see the cost of their ads for a certain position.

Software that incorporates PPC web tracking into their programs

Google Analytics to track Adwords and website performance- Google has created their analytics tracking to include comprehensive stats on specific website pages and conversion stats on PPC campaigns and tracking of specified visitor paths. The new Google website optimizer helps you optimize specific pages for certain keywords. Yahoo Search Marketing also offers conversion tracking that measures which keywords are sending leads and sales to the site. These programs are highly recommended and give you valuable return on investment-ROI-stats, and specified traffic stats and analyses. These stats are private, unless you allow public access.

· Software to track PPC campaigns-The web worksheet lists paid software that can track several PPC campaigns at once. Web CEO’s paid version also tracks PPC ads and other website stats. Many PPC services that setup and track PPC campaigns for clients will offer click through fraud protection.

STATS TO KNOW: CTR is how many visitors clicked through to your website divided by the number of times the ad appeared.

1. Click-Through-Rate(CTR) =Total number of PPC Click-Throughs/Total number of ad impressions

2. Conversion Rate=(Total number of sales from PPC Clicks/Total Number of PPC Clicks)x100=Conversion Rate %

3. Adwords analytics will track these stats and the Yahoo PPC ads performance.

Steps for Google PPC ad creation: Read the Google Adwords blog info for instructions on how to setup the PPC campaigns. Research the top performing keywords within your target market. Make the ad enticing and filled with top keywords. Launch ad variations to see which ads and keywords perform better over time. Add as many variations of the top keywords and think in terms of your customer searching for your product or service when creating and targeting your ads. Both Google and Yahoo offer local and regional ad targeting for specific geographical areas.

.ADSENSE Passive Income Possibilities

For those who want to make money by putting Google ads on their own websites, Adsense may be for you. Google created an advertising platform for websites to display the Google ads and receive money for the click-throughs from their sites to the advertisers.

The AdSense advertising is like Adwords in that the advertiser bids on certain keyword ad positions. The ads are displayed on Adsense websites that are optimized for that search term. Google pays the website for each click-through originating from that site. So what makes a successful adsense website?

Adsense success depends on having alot of pages with unique content that are optimized for the targeted keywords. The website also needs to have high page ranking for the targeted keywords. Use the tools on the web worksheet to find the top paying keywords and phrases to target. Then build as many pages with unique content as you can to rank higher in the search engines. Note: Google has been stopping adsense displays on websites that they consider spammers-sites without quality content that are built just to make money on adsense campaigns.

Building Positive Relationships with Newsletters

Another way to keep building your online marketing reach is to send email newsletters. Invite the visitor to subscribe to the latest edition of the newsletter with helpful articles and information pertaining your field. These newsletters can help your website build credentials and quality relationships to showcase your newest product or service. They also build a valuable contact list for future promotion of special offers or services.

Tracking your website visitors with stat counters

Because of stiff competition these days, keeping track of your website stats has never been more important. There are many free tracking programs online that allow you to place code on each page and see the daily visitor counts and pages that each visitor viewed. Make sure to keep your stats private so the competition can’t see your visitors also. Listed here are several of the important stats each website should keep track of and why:

Most stat counters list the number of unique visitors-this tells you how many visitors came from different computers by tracking their IP addresses. Knowing this will give you an accurate account of the total visitors without counting repeat visits. You can also set exclusions for counting your own website visits.
Number of Pages per visit and hits per visit- shows you how the visitor is interacting with your site and whether they are exploring further. Good content, information and navigation on your website will encourage the visitor to explore further and keep them interested. Make sure you have a clear call to action on each page to get the visitor to buy your product or service.
Top pages visited and how long they stayed – in order to discover the effectiveness of your particular SEO campaign, you will want to track the most popular pages on your website and how long the average customer visited.
Top keywords and referring SE’s – this shows you which search engines are referring your website and what keywords the visitor used to find your site. This can help you fine tune your on-page keyword placement and choices for further changes and optimization of other niche keywords in Google, MSN, and Yahoo. Remember that quality SEO/web marketing can have quick results online. It requires different strategies for each individual target market.
Add to favorites, error messages – this can show how many visitors added your website to their favorites and if any technical errors exist on your website. Two good stats to keep you aware of the website popularity and if the search bots can find certain pages on your site.
Many good SEO software programs also can track the website and PPC stats for a monthly fee.
Keeping up with these visitor stats can give you a benchmark to determine landing page effectiveness in sales conversion, and your website’s growing reach in your target market. With a continual SEO campaign, your visitor stats will start multiplying expotentially- according to how much time and money you are willing to invest into your web marketing program.

Market Rite’s Unique SEO/Web Marketing Approach

When followed, these SEO and marketing methods will increase your page ranking and overall visitor traffic to your website. Remember that a good SEO/web marketing campaign takes continual effort and money to stay on top of your competitors. Unfortunately, many companies cannot afford both the time it takes to market their websites, and the many SEO companies who charge exorbitant rates for limited services. That’s where we come in…

At Market Rite Websites, SEO/SEM is what we do. We tailor our SEO packages and web services to the individual website for maximum success. Our comprehensive services can include both on-page SEO optimization and web marketing management of PPC campaigns. We can also build the marketing campaign from the ground up and SEO optimize your pages for top ranking against the competition. Contact Market Rite Websites for your online SEO consultation today!

This free online SEO workshop was researched, compiled and written by our experienced SEO consultant, Cara Wadsworth as a guide to help small online internet businesses market their own websites. Feel free to bookmark Market Rite Websites for future SEO reference and we hope your website gets marketed right!!