Archive for the ‘Keywords’ Category

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True Paid Inclusion Programs are a “Thing of the Past”… Or Are They?

Sep
08
2005

Written by Robin Nobles for www.sitepronews.com

Most search engine optimizers get rather nostalgic when they remember the “good old days” of paid inclusion programs. Do you remember when we could submit a Web page for a one-time fee and get it spidered and indexed within 24 to 48 hours? The page would then be respidered every 48 hours for an entire year.

We could work on building our on-page and off-page factors while confidently knowing that the paid inclusion spider would be back to recrawl our page within that time frame. We didn’t have to pay any pay-per-click fees. For new pages or Web sites, or for pages that we had problems getting in the indexes, paid inclusion programs were ideal. We nevër minded spending the monëy at all.

These days, however, with the exception of a few directory submissions, true paid inclusion programs are a thing of the past. . . or are they?

Some Paid Inclusion Programs have Per-Click Fees Attached as Well

The paid inclusion programs of the past certainly didn’t come with pay-per-click fees attached, but some of them do today. Yes, the visibility can be impressive, but the programs come with definite disadvantages:

-You not only pay to submit the URL, you also pay a per-click fee, depending on what industry you’re in. So before you rush into these programs, it would be to your advantage to see how much you would pay to bid on your keywords through straight pay-per-click programs.

-It’s important to remember that with these paid inclusion/PPC programs, you’re simply “paying” to be “included.” You’re not “paying” for your “rankings.” Therefore, you’re in the rankings along with all of the frëe search engine listings, yet you’ve paid to be there and you’re paying per click-through.

-Though I have known a few people who have stopped the paid inclusion listing (and the per-click fee) and have remained in the listings, most people totally drop out of the rankings. So if you get where you want to be, be prepared to pay to stay there.

A True Paid Inclusion Program – With Listings Seen Over 120 Million Times a Month!

The Big Three aren’t the only engines on the block. At 120 million searches a month being conducted across 50+ search engines and directories and through ABCSearch.com, ExactSeek.com’s Featured Listings are certainly an excellent deal.

The cost? $36 per URL for the first 5 URLs for a year, or $12 per URL for the first 5 URLs for 3 months. More good news: no pay-per-click fees and no bidding for keywords.

What search engines are covered?

ExactSeek.com, Aesop.com, TowerSearch.com, TSection.com, Search66.com, SearchWarp.com. and WebWorldIndex.com. View the entire listing at: http://www.exactseek.com/featured_listings.html.

These search engines and directories have formed the Independent Search Engine & Directory Network (ISEDN.org) for the purpose of providing Web site owners with affordable and effective search engine advertising.

In fact, the Featured Listings program not only gives you “paid inclusion,” but it also gives you “guaranteed top 10 exposure.” I asked Mel Strocen, CEO of Jayde Online to explain.

“The sale of any keyword term (word or phrase) is restricted to 30 buyers. So, for example, a phrase like ‘online games’ can only be purchased 30 times. This is to prevent over sale of a term. Since the maximum number of paid listing ad boxes that can appear on a SERP is 10 and 30 is the maximum that can be sold for any keyword term, we rotate ad boxes within the SERP and between SERPs for every search on a given term.

“If an advertiser buys a keyword term that has been previously purchased 10 or fewer times, then that advertiser’s paid listing ad box will appear on the first page of search results every time the purchased keyword term is searched. If the keyword term has been purchased between 11 and 20 times, then the advertiser’s PI ad box will appear on the first page of search results one of every 2 searches performed for that keyword term. And, if the keyword term has been purchased between 21 and 30 times, then the advertiser’s PI ad box will appear on the first page of search results one of every 3 searches performed.

“This rotational system gives everyone who has purchased a keyword term equal exposure.”

According to Strocen, a number of engines and directories are poised to join the ISEDN, and they’re targeting for a membership of 100 engines and directories by year-end. This is serious visibility. Your listings will be added within 6-8 hours to all of the above search engines. Just like the good old days!

It’s important to note that paid listing results are served from a separate database. Having a paid listing does not mean you also have a regular, frëe listing. To get in their regular, frëe results, Webmasters still need to submit their URLs at http://www.exactseek.com/add.html.

For more information about their paid inclusion program, visit http://www.exactseek.com/featured_listings.html.

Paid Inclusion as an Alternative to PPC

With the rising costs of pay-per-clicks, when you can find a paid inclusion model as attractive as ExactSeek.com’s, it’s time to give it a try.

For example, at the time of writing this article, the top three bids for “life insuränce quotes” at Yahoo!’s Sponsored Search were going for close to $6 a click-through. If you have one of the top three pay-per-click ads, and if six people clïck on your ad, you’ll spend $36 a day.

You could spend the same amount of monëy one time at ExactSeek.com and get your URL seen over 120 million times a month for a solid year.

Isn’t it worth a try?

In Conclusion

Thank goodness, the days of true paid inclusion programs aren’t over. ExactSeek has a very attractive program with excellent visibility . . . just waiting to be tested. Remember: in the search engine game, testing is the best way to see if something works. Now, get busy!

About The Author
Robin Nobles teaches 2-, 3-, and 5-day hands-on search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe as well as online SEO training courses. They have recently launched localized SEO training centers through Search Engine Academy.

Posted in General SEO, Keywords, Pay Per Click, SEO | 1 Comment »

Time to Check Your Google Ranking

Sep
07
2005

Written by Chris Richardson for WebProNews

One of the more important tasks in relation to search engine indices involves the keeping this content fresh and up to date. To accomplish this, search engines have developed a number of procedures designed to refresh and update their respective databases. In all likelihood, the most popular of these events has to be when Google performs a backlink and PageRank update, which happens throughout the year at determined intervals.

Because the different types of backlinks pointing at a site directly affect PageRank, these updates tend to go hand-in-hand; and while these events may not generate the excitement they once did, the search engine optimization community does take notice when Google carries out these updates. For those who may not be aware, Google uses PageRank to provide a type of “quality score” for web pages in their index.

In order to view the PageRank of web page, you have to have the Google Toolbar installed. The toolbar contains a PageRank score, provided in the form of a green bar, for each page being visited. PageRank measures on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 (a full green bar) being the highest.

As mentioned, because backlinks play such an important part with PR scores, these types of updates usually take place at the same time. A backlink update is where Google actively revises the amount of links pointing to a site, while discounting links they consider to be old and/or aged. Because backlinks are considered such a valuable commodity, whenever an update is being conducted, those who depend on search as a key component of their ecommerce lives watch the results with loads of interest.

One of the standard practices when a backlink update is being conducted is to visit the various Google datacenters and perform backlink checks on their site in order to see if there have been any drastic changes. According to SearchEngineRoundtable, currently, the following Google datacenters have been affected by these updates:

72.14.207.99
72.14.207.104
72.14.207.106

In order to see if the backlink update has affected your site, visit any of the datacenters (as well as the standard Google.com page) and perform a backlink check using the following command:

link:www.nameofsite.com

However, it is important to remember Google only provides a cross-section of the backlinks pointing to the site; they do not show a comprehensive list. Be that as it may, whenever Google issues updates affecting their search index, people who follow-up do indeed notice changes, especially if they are considered negative.

A good place to follow when Google updates occur is WebmasterWorld. Here readers can get a good idea how other people may have been affected by the particular update being monitored. This is also a great place to get tips and tricks on how to conduct further research to see if you gained more backlinks pointing at your site. Fortunately, PageRank increases (or decreases) are easier to observe thanks to the Google Toolbar and the imbedded green PageRank score bar.

Another interesting thing to do is to navigate around and find out if any of the major sites experienced PageRank reductions or increases, especially with sites having a PageRank of 10. Because of the way Google scores using PageRank, only a certain number of sites have acquired this score, with one of the most famous being Apple’s main site.

However, when I checked Apple.com this morning, I noticed the PageRank box was grayed-out; an indication the site has no PageRank information. However, if you navigate to the iTunes/iPod portion of the Apple’s site, the PR score is a full 10, as are most of the sections. On the other hand, the .Mac portion of the Apple.com has a 0 for its PageRank score (a white PR box); although, a quick look at the link structure of this page may shed some light as to why:

http://www.mac.com/

Because the link structure has changed from when the .Mac portion had a 10 ranking, it appears as if these changes has affected the way the PR score is being passed on to this particular section.

All in all, this appears to be one of the milder updates, at least reaction-wise. WebmasterWorld has its normal commentary, but a lot of other forums seem to be paying only passing lip service to the events that began over the Labor Day weekend.

Discuss this at WebProWorld.

About the Author:
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.

Posted in Google, Keywords, Organic Optimisation, SEO | Comments Off

Build SEO Links & Web Traffïc With Content Distribution

Sep
06
2005

By Joel Walsh for SiteProNews

Many website owners and SEOs (search engine optimizers) believe that trading links is the most effective way to build the hundreds of links necessary for good search-engine ranking. But there’s another way to build links that deserves your attention: content distribution.
A time-honored way of getting one-way inbound links to your website is to distribute content, usually articles, for other websites to publish in exchange for a backlink. Most often, the backlink is included in an “author’s resource box,” which is a brief “about the author” paragraph promoting the author’s site.

Content distribution has usually been thought of as a website promotion strategy rather than an SEO or link-building strategy. But there are good reasons for adding content distribution to your SEO toolkit.

SEO Benefits of Distributing Content vs. Reciprocal Linking Alone

Links come faster. You send an email with your article to a relevant website owner. That’s it. No adding links to your site and then checking and re-checking for compliance. That means you can get more links from the time and resources you spend on link-building.

Links are not always available through reciprocal linking. Many website owners simply refuse to do reciprocal linking. Content distribution is one way to reach this large segment of website owners.

Links are one-way. Many SEO experts believe that reciprocal links may be “dampened” by the search engines; i.e., they will not help you rank as high as one-way links. Of course, reciprocal links are still valuable, there’s a just a question of how valuable they really are.

Links per page are fewer. Many SEO experts believe that the higher the number of links per page, the less SEO value each link has. When a website publishes an article, the author’s backlink is often the only live link to another website on that page.

Distinct Non-SEO Benefits of Distributing Content

What makes content distribution a truly special method of link building is that it’s the only method where the non-SEO benefits may even outweigh the SEO benefits:

Website building. If you create special content for your link-building campaign, you can publish it on your site. As a general rule, the more content your site has, the more search engine traffïc it will receive. Just publish the article and get it indexed in search engines before distributing it, which should help you to outrank your republishers in search engines for that same content.

Traffïc generation. The links in distributed content generate traffïc in the förm of highly qualified leads: people who liked what you had to say. Distributing content gets you traffïc even when it doesn’t get you a link. If your article gets picked up by a large-circulation email newsletter, you will get a flood of highly qualified traffïc.

Authority. Distributing content is the only linking campaign method that can make the recipient website and its owners appear authoritative. There are thousands of internet gurus who owe their lucrative reputations entirely to the articles they’ve distributed.

Mindshare. Distributing articles is the only linking campaign method that can help you spread an idea. This makes article distribution invaluable for launching new products or services.

Drawbacks of Content Distribution

Of course, nothing good ever came easy. Any website owners who are looking for SEO magic beans will be disappointed by content distribution:

Desired anchor text is not always available. Unfortunately, the content management systems most widely in place today make it easier for website owners to accept content as text rather than HTML. This means that many website owners simply have their content management system convert a URL into a live link, rather than taking the time to code in the anchor text. Still, an experienced content distributor can usually find ways around this problem to make sure that many if not most of the links use anchor text.

Results are variable. Content distribution is not quite as sure a thing as reciprocal linking. The site that publishes your article has to like not only your site, but also your article. This is especially true for the passively-generated links that come from content clearinghouse websites. But results can vary the other way, too: an article that catches on will yield more links than you ever could have gotten through the same investmënt in reciprocal linking. In order to minimize the risk of content not catching on with website owners, you should make sure your content is high-quality, and also plan for a large content distribution campaign: the more content you try, the more likely you are to find a wïnner.

Requires significant investmënt. You need high-quality content, expertise in content distribution, and quite a few work-hours to distribute the content and track the results. Of course, the cost has to be weighed against the cost of reciprocal linking, which is also significant. These costs can be mitigated by outsourcing the entire process from soup to nuts to a content distribution specialist. Costs of outsourcing content distribution compare favorably with costs of outsourcing reciprocal link building.

Requires special expertise. There are numerous newbie pitfalls to distributing content, from improperly formatting articles to writing a bad introductory email to accompany content submissions. You generally have to have done numerous campaigns to truly get the feel for it. Again, this requirement has to be weighed against the real-world requirement of special expertise in other link campaign methods. Again, this drawback can be mitigated by outsourcing your project to a specialist.
In short, there are benefits to both reciprocal linking and content distribution. All things being equal, you should use both. Still, content distribution is the only one method that carries substantial non-SEO benefits as well. Plus, a professionally managed content distribution campaign may even yield greater SEO results than reciprocal linking would for the same investmënt.

You owe it to yourself or your clients to add content distribution to your SEO-toolkit–before the owner of the next highest-ranking site finds out about it.

About The Author
Joel Walsh is the owner of UpMarket Content, offering a fully managed content distribution campaign guaranteed to get you at least one hundred one-way inbound links for every three pages of content: website content distribution

Posted in Google, Keywords, Linking, Organic Optimisation, SEO | 1 Comment »

Guide To Getting Linked

Aug
31
2005

by Erich Winnecke Jr for EntireWeb

Getting links from other websites pointing to your site can sometimes seem very hard and time consuming. There are several ways to get people interested in your site, you’ve just got to be creative with it and think more in terms of putting yourself in the other webmaster’s shoes- figure out what the advantages are for them to be linked to you!

One thing that you often hear is that to attain a high Page Rank thru Google, (which, let’s face it, is the Big Daddy of Search Engines) that you have to link to other high PR sites. This is not necessarily true. No one is 100% on the relevance of PR rank affecting a link exchange.

Link to as many non-link farm sites that are similar to your site as you possibly can, because the more inbound links pointing to your site that you have, the more search engines will look at your site as an important site in the business or opportunity that you are promoting or selling.

So don’t look down on sites that have low a low PR, everyone at one point or another has a zero PR, doesn’t mean that they don’t get traffic, you just never know. Just because someone has a low PR doesn’t mean that they don’t get monster traffic to their site, whether it’s through pay-per-click advertising, or other means, so no one should turn their nose up at anyone who doesn’t have a great PR.

If you are a new webmaster and have just started a new website, sell the fact that you’re new, and that you’re going to be focusing on putting quality CONTENT on your site.
Because, A Number 1 as far as Google is concerned is to have relevant content on your site relating to your business or opportunities. Making a business grow and succeed is based solely on the ability of a webmaster to make his/or her site relevant to search engine spiders, whom look every day for great content.

Another idea is to promote what you are advertising to a webmaster, showing that the product/or opportunity is viable and is something that makes your website worth linking to. Either by having testimonials, or by having them sign up as an affiliate to see results for themselves, showing how much you believe in your opportunity might show a webmaster that you are committed to making your site everything it can possibly be, and thus, possibly giving their website more exposure.

Even with the hassles that go along with linking to other sites it really is a great way to show that your site does have importance. Being partners through links with others in your online business makes for long lasting business relationships, and support for others that are getting started.

There’s room for everyone to succeed online, and helping others along the way is as important to the growth of online business as anything else. Here’s to your success!

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About the Author: Erich Winnecke, Jr. is a webmaster who authors articles and his website is geared for people who are interested in finding an online work at home opportunity or starting Home Based Business http://www.business4me.net.

Posted in Blogging, General SEO, Google, Internet Marketing, Keywords, Linking, Organic Optimisation, SEO, WNW Staff Blogs | Comments Off

Is Something Missing From Your Keywords Research?

Aug
09
2005

Is Something Missing From Your Keywords Research? by Serge M Botans

As you may already know, keywords are an essential part of search engine optimization (SEO). And the usual approach recommended to finding the right keywords to target with one’s site involves the ideas of demand, supply and KEI (and/or CID). I would like to propose that one thing is missing in this research approach.

What is missing is a consequence of one of the major advantages of the Internet. Let me explain… When I use the Internet to look for information, or software,… I don’t care about what country is hosting the site, nor do I care about the nationality of the owner of the site. I am only concerned about finding what I am after. So, for me, when I use the Internet, the fact that the world is made up of countries is not something I think about, nor is it an issue because the Internet has in some ways effectively removed the existence of country borders.

Yet, it is this very positive aspect of the Internet that, I believe, leads us to perform incomplete keywords research when we look for keywords to target with our site.

You see, while the Internet has helped us forget about the existence of countries, when it comes to keywords, we must not forget that the world is made up of countries. The reason for this is that the demand for keywords can be country specific. This means that a keyword in high demand in one country, may not be in the same demand in another country. And in some cases, a keyword in demand in one country will not be in demand anywhere else.

To illustrate this idea, consider the following demand numbers for the stated keywords, as reported by Overture (the research being done in June 2005).

Using the keyword “keyword”,

- Australia: 669
- Canada: 17
- United Kingdom: 10,770
- USA: 125,177

Another example, looking at the keyword “meta tag”,

- Australia: 127
- Canada: 15
- United Kingdom: 2,653
- USA: 10,851

And still another example, looking at the keyword “meta keyword”,

- Australia: 10
- Canada: 0
- United Kingdom: 57
- USA: 552

If you had a web site that dealt with SEO and you were looking for keywords to target, then surely the above results would prove interesting. For example, you could see which of the 4 countries above had an interest in what your web site is about. This in turn would tell you which countries you should target, and which you could safely ignore.

In case you are wondering how we obtained the above results… We did some basic research at the Overture site and found that it wasn’t all that difficult to do. We also found that Overture provides the demand data in 19 countries around the world, covering Europe, Asia, North America, South America and Australasia. We need to point out that some areas were better represented than others. South America, for example, is represented by 1 country only, while Europe is covered by 11.

By going to the Overture site, anyone can likewise discover how to use Overture to research the demand for keywords in any of the 19 countries it supports.

To go back to the title of this article… I feel, and I hope that you will now agree with me, that any research on keywords that does not take into account countries is not complete. For one thing, don’t you want to know where your visitors are most likely to come from?

In case you are not convinced about the point I am trying to make, I will try to explain in my next article other reasons why I think that proper keyword research should take into account countries.

About the Author:
Serge M Botans is the CEO of www.meta-keyword-advice.com, a web site that provides advice on keywords. Free evaluation available. He is also the inventor of CID, which is an altenative to KEI.

Posted in Keywords | Comments Off

Determining Keywords

Mar
31
2005

Determining Keywords
By Sharon Housley

Determining keywords is a critical step in web design. If your website and meta tags do not contain related keywords, web surfers will be unable to find your website when they conduct searches.

The formula is a little tricky – you will need to locate terms that are popular and relevant to your site. These terms may or may not be terms that *you* feel are relevant terms. The optimal terms in a site should be terms that a potential customer would use when searching for a website with your content. In order to achieve success your website should be optimized with terms and phrases that are descriptive, related to your content, and which receive a significant amount of searches. The caveat, of course, is that you want to find terms and phrases where there is little competition, so you quickly achieve high ranking in the important search engines.

relevant + popular with searchers but not with competitors = success

Markets saturated with other sites competing for search terms make it difficult to find quality keywords. Sometimes it is better to optimize for a less popular term, one that is more targeted at your visitor, as it will likely have a higher conversion rate than a less specific popular term. The first step to determining keywords is brainstorming a list of logical terms and phrases that relate to your product or offerings. This should be done by a number of individuals; sometimes people have very different ideas for search terms and by identifying a variety of people and their search terms you may tap words that hadn’t occurred to you. There are a number of free and low-cost tools available online and for download that will allow you to expand and research terms that have been brainstormed.

The results typically vary with the tools but overall the tools will assist you in determining where to focus your keyword efforts. The tools will often assist with pay-per-click engines, creating expanded, related keywords or phrases that can be bid on.

In addition to examining log files to see what terms customers are using to find a website, visit competitors’ web sites and examine their meta tags for additional terms, use a thesaurus to find related terms, include misspellings of keywords in your meta tag keywords, and optimize for various forms of nouns and verbs, including tenses and plurals.

Keyword Tools –

KeywordTumbler – KeywordTumbler takes existing keyword phrases and generates multiple variations, reordering the words. This allows you to build a large keyword list in seconds http://www.keywordtumbler.com

TheDowser – Overture Keyword Tool, Google Keyword Sandbox, Keyword Harvester, Google AdWords report analyzer, Google AdWords optimization tool, log file analyzer, conversion tracking and optimization tool. http://www.thedowser.com

WordTracker – Wordtracker helps you choose the right internet marketing keywords that will help your search engine placement and ranking. Use Wordtracker for keyword research. Web marketing is all about search engine ranking, and that starts with the proper internet marketing keywords. Get a free keyword report and web site promotion information! http://www.wordtracker.com

Keyword Suggestion Tools – A handy little tool will show you the results of your query from both Wordtracker and Overture for determining which phrases are searched most often. Enter a search phrase below to see how often it’s searched for, as well as get suggestions for alternate (but similar) keywords. http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Keyword Ranking Tool – This utility can be used to check search engines for keyword ranking and track search engine ranking for your various keywords over time, which, as you probably know, is critical when doing search engine optimization. http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/

Overture Keyword Tool – After entering a keyword or phrase, Overture provides a list of related phrases that have been searched on. The tool provides a count that indicates the number of times the phrase has been searched on. http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Topword Tool – Topword Tool is a free online tool that analyzes a complete web page and counts keyword occurrences, as well as keyword phrases (number in brackets), equal to or above that set in the Minimum Occurrences setting. It supplies a list of keywords and keyword phrases which are most likely to achieve the highest rankings on a major search engine. The tool will also analyze your meta description/keyword and title tags and then, through color coding, inform you of words/phrases which should be included. The main use for this tool is checking your optimization and tweaking existing web sites to rank well. http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/tools/topword.html

Google Suggestion – The Google Suggestion is a new online tool for webmasters. As you type into the search box, Google Suggest guesses what you’re typing and offers suggestions in real time. This is similar to Google’s “Did you mean?” feature that offers alternative spellings for your query after you search, except that it works in real time. For example, if you type “bass”, Google Suggest might offer a list of refinements that include “bass fishing” or “bass guitar”. Similarly, if you type in only part of a word, like “progr,” Google Suggest might offer you refinements like “programming”, “programming languages”, “progesterone”, or “progressive”. You can choose one by scrolling up or down the list with the arrow keys or mouse. The tool provides a number that indicates the number of searches a specific word or phrase has had. http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

Keyword statistics give webmasters a way to tap into what is on the minds of Internet consumers. When you can match your marketing efforts to the various ways people locate their items of interest on the net, potential customers will be streamed to your site like ants to a picnic.

About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc. http://www.notepage.net and FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com.

Posted in Keywords | Comments Off

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