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Is Your Website Being Read? Why People Don�t Read Your Web Page

As the world virtually shrinks into the window on your computer screen, the web site is the best and a must-have tool for any business. Not only can it reach a global audience, it will boost your local exposure exponentially�at a minimal cost.

However, your business web site isn�t, and shouldn�t be, just an electronic version of your product/service brochure. It could also be another potential revenue-generating source.

Just like a printed brochure, your web site doesn�t get read by your visitors from top to bottom. At least not initially�and not until you get them interested in what you have to offer.

First Impression

As the saying goes,

�You never get a second chance to make a first impression.�

And nowhere is this truer than on the Web. Your prospects form an instant impression of you and your company the moment your home page displays onto their computer screens.�

In a mouse click, your prospects determine who you are, how they feel about you, and decide if they want to do business with you. Is your web site creating the impression you want? Your business web site acts as a silent salesman for your business. Knowing this, wouldn�t you want to �dress� it to WOW your customers?

Web Design vs Web Creation

Being able to draw doesn�t make one an artist. Just as having written an essay doesn�t make one a novelist. At least not without years of practice and training. Similarly, and with the widespread availability of professional software, you as a small business owner may choose to design-it-yourself (DIY). You may think you could create your own artwork, �design� a promotion flyer, build a web site.

However, to design something to visually communicate effectively and compellingly, you have to consider its clarity, font usage, readability.

Other things to consider are:

* Your business communications
* Branding and marketing mix

These are business communication problems to be addressed. You also need to consider its consistency, identity, colour, professionalism, integration, innovation and emotional impression.

Usability

Have you ever gone for a drive with a map someone else made and it is poorly drawn or just wrong? We all hate the frustration of getting lost. A difficult or inefficient navigation would break your web site as quickly and easily as it was created (by yourself). We evaluate the consistency, innovation, linkage, usability and presentation of the design.

We also evaluate the resolution requirements, complexity, consistency, usability to test the effectiveness of the web site layout.

How We Really Use the Web

In his book, Don�t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, web usability guru, Steve Krug, writes:

�When we�re creating sites, we act as though people are going to pore over each page, reading our finely crafted text, figuring out how we�ve organized things, and weighing their options before deciding which link to click.

What they actually do most of the time (if we�re lucky) is glance at each new page, scan some of the text, and click on the first link that catches their interest or vaguely resembles the thing they�re looking for. There are usually large parts of the page that they don�t even look at.�

How we really use the web site

Krug adds that if one wants to design effective Web pages, there are three facts about real-world Web use to consider:

1) We don�t read pages. We scan them.

Why? Because:

* We�re usually in a hurry.
* We know we don�t need to read everything.
* We�re good at it.

2) We don�t make optimal choices. We satisfice.

Why? Because:

* We�re usually in a hurry.
* There�s not much of a penalty for guessing wrong.
* Weighing options may not improve our chances.
* Guessing is more fun.

3) We don�t figure out how things work. We muddle through.

Why? Because:

* It�s not important to us.
* If we find something that works, we stick to it.

How to Create Search Engine Friendly Title and META Tags (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this article, I defined Title Elements and META Tags and took you step-by-step through how to create an optimized Title Element. Now it's time to create your optimized META Description and META Keywords Tags.

Create Your META Description Tag

Now it's time to create your optimized META Description Tag.

Take your list of target keywords and phrases and open another text file. Again, you can use an existing sample META Description Tag as your template. Let's say our existing description is:

[META name="description" content="Miami Florists create beautiful floral bouquets, arrangements, tributes and displays for all occasions, including weddings, Valentines Day, parties and corporate events. Deliveries throughout Florida."]

You can make your META Description Tag as long as you like, but only a certain portion of it will get indexed and displayed by search engines. According to Danny Sullivan in his article How to Use HTML Meta Tags, 200 to 250 characters of the META Description gets indexed but less than that gets displayed, depending on the search engine. So you want to make sure all your important keywords are listed towards the start of the tag.

Now take your list of keywords for the home page in order of importance. For our fictional florist these were:

- florists Miami
- florists Florida
- wedding bouquets

Now you need to create a readable sentence or two describing your web site and incorporating these keywords so they make the best use of the keyword real estate available.

Because search engines often display the contents of the META Description Tag in the search results, it is very important that your sentences make grammatical sense and are enticing enough to encourage readers to click on your link. Let's start with:

If you're seeking a florist in Miami Florida, Funky Florists create unforgettable wedding bouquets, floral arrangements, tributes and displays for all occasions.

Ok, so that's around 150 characters long and gets our three important keyword phrases included. But itâ€™s a bit bland. We need to add something to entice the searcher to click on it. How about:

Order online for a 10 percent discount!

So now we have the following completed META Description Tag:

[META name="description" content="If you're seeking a florist in Miami Florida, Funky Florists create unforgettable wedding bouquets, floral arrangements, tributes and displays for all occasions. Order online for a 10 percent discount!"]

Our new tag is optimized for our keyword phrases, it's around 200 characters in length, it describes our site accurately, it speaks to the reader and it (hopefully) entices them to click on the link and view the site.

Create Your META Keywords Tag

We're almost there. Now it's time to create your optimized META Keywords Tag. Let me stress here that this Tag is quite unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Not many of the search crawlers even support it any more. You can see which ones do on this page. If you have the time and you really want to create META Keywords tags for your pages, then go ahead, but if not, then leave them out of your code altogether. This tag will have very little impact on your overall SEO campaign.

Assuming you do want to create a Keywords tag, take your list of target keywords and phrases and open another text file. Again, you can use an existing sample META Keywords Tag as your template. Let's say our existing Keywords Tag is:

[META name="keywords" content="flowers, roses, weddings bouquets, florists, floral arrangements, flower deliveries, Valentines Day gifts, Christmas decorations, Mother's Day, tributes, wreaths, clutches, sprays, in sympathy, funerals, corporate functions, parties, floral displays, Miami, Florida"]

You are just including a list of related keywords to include in this tag. Now take your list of keywords for the home page in order of importance. For our fictional florist these were:

- florists Miami
- florists Florida
- wedding bouquets

Because you have a lot more room in this tag, a good rule of thumb for creating a META Keywords Tag is to include the keywords and phrases your are targeting with your site content, as well as some terms that you don't necessarily want to use in your site copy but are still relevant to the site content. For example, the site copy, TITLE and META description tags would include the most important search keywords, but the META Keywords Tag could be used for keyword variations and combinations that don't appear in the visible site text, but that people may also search for. Examples include plurals, contractions, slang, variations, misspellings, cultural nuances and industry jargon.

For our fictional florist, these may include things like:

- wedding flowers
- roses
- wedding roses
- Valentine's Day roses
- sympathy gifts
- Mother's Day gifts
- funeral wreaths
- flower deliveries
- floral arrangements
- birthday gifts
- flowers
- flowers for wedding
- wedding decorations

So now we have the following draft META Keywords Tag:

[META name="keywords" content="florists Miami, florists Florida, wedding bouquets, wedding flowers, roses, wedding roses, Valentine's Day roses, sympathy gifts, Mother's Day gifts, funeral wreaths, flower deliveries, floral arrangements, birthday gifts, flowers, flowers for wedding, wedding decorations"]

However, when creating your Keywords Tag, you should not repeat any particular keywords within your META Keywords Tag more than five times and exclude commas so that all your keywords can be indexed in combination with each other.

So we need to fix the draft tag to remove the excess repetition of the words "flowers" and "weddings". This is easy to do because some of the keyword phrases already incorporate these single generic keywords.

For starters, we can lose the single "flowers" as it is already covered by some of the other phrases like "wedding flowers". Next, we can drop "roses" for the same reason. Then we can combine some keyword phrases together to save space, e.g. "flowers for wedding" and "wedding decorations" can be integrated to become "flowers for wedding decorations" so we can lose the extra instance of "wedding".

So now we have the following completed META Keywords Tag:

[META name="keywords" content="florists Miami florists Florida wedding bouquets wedding flowers wedding roses Valentine's Day roses sympathy gifts Mother's Day gifts funeral wreaths flower deliveries floral arrangements birthday gifts flowers for wedding decorations"]

Tailored TITLE and META Tags

While some webmasters remember to include a META Description and a META Keywords Tag in their home page HTML code, many forget to include them on every page of the site that they want indexed. Or worse, they duplicate the homepage TITLE and META Tags on all other pages. To give a web site the best ranking ability possible, it is highly recommended that each page of the site include a unique TITLE tag and unique META tags, individually tailored to the content of that specific page.

For example, our fictional Miami florist may have a page devoted to wedding bouquets and another devoted to funeral wreaths. The TITLE and META tags for the first page should include keywords relating to weddings and the page about wreaths should utilize keywords relating to funerals and sympathy.

The use of tailored TITLE and META Tags on each page creates multiple entry points to a web site and enables relevant content to be found in search engines no matter where it resides on a site. For example, instead of relying on visitors to arrive via the Home Page, the optimization of individual site pages makes each page more visible in the search engines, providing additional gateways to the site's content. The more pages optimized, the wider the range of keywords and phrases that can be targeted and the more entry points are created to a site.

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About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

How to Create Search Engine Friendly Title and META Tags

In this article, I'm going to show you step-by-step how to create search engine optimized Titles and META Tags. This is a two part article. This part discusses the Title Element, also known as the Title Element.

The TITLE Element

TITLE elements, (commonly called TITLE Tags), are one of the most important factors that search engines "look" at when it comes to determining the relevancy of a web page against a search query. In their ranking algorithms, nearly all the major search engines attribute a high relevancy weight to the content of the TITLE tag.

In the HTML code of a web site, TITLE tags look like this one for a fictional florist:

[TITLE]Miami Florists - beautiful floral creations made to order.[/TITLE]

(Please note that square brackets [ ] have been used in place of open and closing tags < > to prevent this page code from breaking. You'll need to replace all square brackets with open and closing tags.)

To view the HTML code of any site, choose "View, Source" from your browser toolbar or right click anywhere on the page and choose "view source code".

The META Description Tag

META Description Tags are designed to describe the content of web pages. Search engine robots will gather up this information when indexing web sites and often use it when referencing web pages in the search listings.

While not all search engines continue to utilize the META Description Tag, a majority of search engines rely on the content of this tag (together with a site's visible content) to provide information about a site that they can match with search queries. It is therefore important for webmasters to include keywords and phrases in the META description that they would expect searchers to use to find their site content.

In the HTML code of a web site, a sample META Description Tag looks like this:

[META name="description" content="Miami Florists create beautiful floral bouquets, arrangements, tributes and displays for all occasions, including weddings, Valentines Day, parties and corporate events. Deliveries throughout Florida."]

You can view the META Description Tag of a site by viewing the source code.

The META Keywords Tag

While only indexed by a small handful of search engines these days, the META Keywords Tag is still worth including within a site's HTML code, if only to provide those search engines with as much information as possible about site content.

In the HTML code of a web site, a sample META Keywords Tag looks like this:

[META name="keywords" content="flowers, roses, weddings bouquets, florists, floral arrangements, flower deliveries, Valentines Day gifts, Christmas decorations, Mother's Day, tributes, wreaths, clutches, sprays, in sympathy, funerals, corporate functions, parties, floral displays, Miami, Florida"]

The current lack of support for the META Keywords Tag by so many search engines can be attributed to increasing spam abuse by ignorant webmasters. These webmasters thought the keyword tag was a good place to stuff hundreds of keywords in the hope of achieving a higher search ranking, thereby "spamming" the search engines with useless, non-relevant data. This prompted many search engines to filter out the META Keywords Tag or lower its importance within the ranking algorithm.

You can view the META Keywords Tag of a site by viewing the source code.

Create Your Own Optimized Tags

Now, it's time to create optimized TITLE and META Tags for your own site. Let's start with the TITLE Tag for your Home Page.

Create Your TITLE Tag

Take the list of target keywords and phrases that you want your web site to be found for in search engines. You should have already allocated them to the appropriate pages of your site to be optimized. I use a spreadsheet for this purpose but you should use whatever works for you.

Now, open a text file in Notepad or something similar. If you like, you can use an existing sample TITLE Tag as your template. Let's say our existing Title is:

[TITLE]Miami Florists - beautiful floral creations made to order.[/TITLE]

Now take your list of keywords for the home page and put them in order of importance, with the ones you want to rank highest for at the top. For our fictional florist these are:

- florists Miami
- florists Florida
- wedding bouquets

Now you are simply going to combine these keywords into a sentence or short blurb so they make the best use of the keyword real estate available. Always try to use as few words as possible in your Title Tags, because each additional keyword dilutes the ranking relevancy of all the others.

In this case, I would initially combine the keywords as follows:

Florists in Miami Florida specializing in wedding bouquets.

Notice how I've got the keywords in the correct order for the search queries? I've tried to include the most important keywords towards the start of the tag. There was no need for me to repeat the keyword "Florists" more than once because the sentence I've used covers both "Florists Miami" and "Florists Florida". Most search engines will ignore "in" as a stop word, so it shouldn't matter that we've included it.

Although it's tempting to put a comma between Miami and Florida, on some search engines commas act as a keyword separator, so we donâ€™t want to use one here because we don't want "Florists" and "Florida" to be separated.

Now, there is just one problem with this draft Title. Our 3rd keyword phrase "wedding bouquets" is right at the end of the sentence, meaning it may lose some relevancy weight (search engines consider keywords closer to the start of the tag as the most important). How do we fix this? Let's try this:

Florists in Miami Florida - wedding bouquets a specialty.

We don't want to use a period after "Florida" for the same reason that we don't use a comma. But a hyphen should not make a difference to search engines yet still allow the sentence to read logically to a searcher. So now we have our three target keyword phrases covered in a very short space.

In fact, the above sentence now covers the following keyword combinations:

- florists Miami
- florists Florida
- florists in Miami
- florists in Florida
- florists in Miami Florida
- wedding bouquets
- Miami wedding bouquets
- Florida wedding bouquets

When integrating your keywords, remember that their order is important. If you want your site to have the best possible chance of being found for the search query "Miami florists", you need to put the keywords in that exact order and not "florists Miami", because the spider searches the keywords in exact order. Unless they are stop words, also try to avoid using extra words between your keywords.

If you wanted to, you could integrate your company name into the Title tag, but (unless your company name is super short or includes a keyword), donâ€™t sacrifice a keyword to do so. Instead, try placing the company name at the end of the tag so you can be sure that all your important keywords will be indexed first.

In the case of our florist, letâ€™s imagine their name was Funky Florists. We could easily accommodate the name into the beginning of our optimized Title as follows:

[TITLE]Funky Florists in Miami Florida - wedding bouquets a specialty.[/TITLE]

It may reduce the keyword relevancy impact very slightly, but including your company name enables you to brand your page, which may be more important to you.

The content of the Title Tag is also what gets saved in a person's Favoriteâ€™s list when they bookmark your site, so having your company name included is worth considering from a branding perspective.

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About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Top 8 Most Important Things I?ve Learned About Interactive Marketing

Take the Wheel - Drive Customers to your Website

So you own a small business and you have made the decision to build a simple website to gain internet exposure. Or maybe you already have a website that no one visits? You can be the proud owner of the slickest website you have ever seen, but if you aren�t getting any traffic because it�s not properly optimized you have wasted a good chunk of change and a lot of your valuable time. Weather you are building a site from scratch or tweaking one that already exists, consider these web hosting and marketing tips to help drive traffic to your website:

For Web Hosting:

1) Start with keywords - Think about terms potential customers would use to find you in a search engine. What would you type in if you were looking for your business?

2) Use a keyword selector tool - Type your keywords into a keyword selector tool to see how many people have searched on the term in the last 30 days. Look for terms in the 2k-10k range that are relevant to your site.

3) Use domain names which match your keywords � My client advertises products that are geared toward leadership skills development. In addition to leadingonedge.com he also has leadership-skills.info and a handful of others.

4) Use keywords throughout your web pages - Put your keywords in the title, description, keywords, graphics, and written text.

5) Use a keyword density analyzer - Check your website against a keyword density analyzer to see how frequently a specific keyword is used. Shoot for 3-15% density.

6) Slick and sexy doesn't get you traffic - Don't waste your money on slick graphics or things that fly across your screen. Most visitors find them annoying and search engines don't care for them.

7) Use Google AdSense on your website - Whenever someone clicks on a Google ad in your website, you get revenue. And the ads are relevant to your content. My websites now pay for themselves with ad revenue alone.

8) Advertise Amazon books and products on your website - Set up an Amazon Associates account and put relevant books and products on your website. When someone buys a product you get referral revenue.

9) Consider using a website starter package - If going it on your own, think about using a website starter package which can have you up and running quickly.

10) Decide where you want to spend your time - In any business, time is money! Small business web hosting is very doable, but it does take time. Decide if you want to do it yourself or have a professional help you.

For Marketing:

1) Get an automated eCommerce system - These can be really good, very comprehensive and very inexpensive. The good ones can do everything from customer base management to product management to shopping cart to newsletter broadcasts.

2) Get a cheap and reliable merchant account provider - You can get merchant account providers that do both the merchant account and internet gateway for you.

3) Put a link back to your website in your email autosignature - This doesn't need to be obnoxious, just a simple link that email recipients can click on to reference your website.

4) Do selective link trading - Link trade, but make sure the content on the other websites is similar to your own. Don't touch "link farms" with a ten-foot pole; search engines hate them.

5) Write articles and include your website address � Every business owner has something to say that someone would love to read about! There are a number of article databases out there that are researched for website content. Find some article databases which house content similar to yours and write a few articles. You'd be amazed at where your articles show up!

6) Write newsletters - Allow for customers and visitors to subscribe to a newsletter to get regular visibility to you and your company. This is also a great way to compile a customer email data base for your business.

7) Consider using a search engine submission services - These services submit your site to multiple search engines & directories. This can be helpful particularly if your website is new.

8) Set up an affiliates program - Allow for others to promote your products on a commission basis. Again a good eCommerce system should already have this built in.

9) Download the Google Toolbar � I am a Google toolbar fanatic! The Google Toolbar has a nifty feature which shows you the page rank (0-10 scale) of every site you visit; the higher your page ranking the higher your placement in search engines.

10) Set up multiple websites - Got three services you perform? Set up three different websites with domain names that match your keywords. Super cheap to do and can be very effective.

Have We Really Seen The Death Of Article Marketing?

Article marketing has been an effective method of website promotion that has literally been used since the inception of the public Internet. I have been online since November of 1995, and even in those early days, I would read people's articles and click the link in their resource box to learn more about their website.

The Early Days of Article Marketing

In those early days, there were a few players who recognized the value of article marketing. The two writers who were most influential to my use of article marketing, as a promotion method, were:

* Dr. Nunley (http://www.DrNunley.com) has been online since 1996, and this website was registered in Oct. of 1997. Dr. Nunley was influential in that he taught me the power of syndicated article content. * Wild Bill Montgomery (http://www.MakingProfit.com) started his website in Nov. of 1998. Wild Bill offered one of the very first article distribution websites. I received his daily mailings for nearly a year, until he shut his article system down. I subscribed to Wild Bill's mailings, so that I could locate articles for my own publication and website, and later to distribute my own articles.

It was in the aftermath of the demise of Montgomery's article distribution system that I wrote my first script to enable me to make better use of this promotional method for my own articles. That original script was adapted later to became the foundation for my article distribution service a couple years later.

How Article Marketing Came To Be Regarded As A Powerful Tool

For several years, article marketing remained a promotion technique utilized only by a few hundred people who fancied themselves as decent to good writers. These individuals were able to generate quite a buzz for their own websites. The buzz in turn created streams of traffic to their websites, and more importantly, sales.

Their articles were picked up regularly by ezines, which need good content to retain the attention of their readers. Publication of the articles in ezines resulted in thousands of website visitors in just a few days. My biggest ezine publication event resulted in 16,000 visitors in the first 96 hours after publication. I regularly see thousands of visitors in three-to-four days, due to publication in individual ezines.

Articles that I had written in 1999 still reside on websites where they were originally published those many years ago. And, I still see regular traffic from the placement of those articles. Yes, and I still retain link popularity and good search engine rankings, as the result of the placement of those articles on third-party websites.

Many writers were seeing the same results as I had seen, and they told others about their great success. People began to pay attention and take advantage of the technique for their own promotion.

A New Breed Of Article Marketers

In late 2004, the market changed when people decided that the only goal of article marketing was for the purpose of link building for link popularity purposes.

A few new distribution systems popped up only targeting placement of articles on third-party websites. With these new systems, the article writers had to put their own articles into the distribution services database, and they had to select a general category for the placement of their articles.

Suddenly, with these new fully automated systems, computers were left to answer the most important question of category placement. These new systems left this important question to the computers to solve.

People were being removed from the article placement process, because people cost more money to employ, leaving a lot of results to chance. But, the new breed of article marketers did not care. They liked the lower cost of human-free article placement.

The Four Primary Players in of a Successful Article Marketing Campaign

There are four primary players in the article marketing game. First of course is the writer. Then there is the distribution person or service. Third is the website owner or ezine publisher. And the final element is the person who will read the article and act upon what they read in the article.

Sometimes the writer is the same person as the distribution person. That is fine. The website owner or ezine publisher is actually the most important person in the link building process, because he or she wants to be sure that the fourth person, the reader, will be happy with what they are publishing.

Believe it or not, the website owners and the ezine publishers are frequently very selective about what articles they are willing to accept from a writer or distribution service. After all, if the readers are not happy with what is published on the website or ezine, then the reader will not feel a need to return to either one. Webmasters and ezine publishers, who are committed to success, will be even more selective in their article choices.

To see what website owners really think of many of the automated article distribution systems, read this: http://www.articledashboard.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4679

Any writer or article marketer, who does not pay attention or consider the needs or desires of webmasters or publishers in the process, is condemning their article marketing campaigns to failure.

Twisted Logic

When this new breed of article marketer began showing up at my article distribution service, I found myself in many strangely na�ve conversations.

People would enquire about the value of our service. Naturally, I would mention publication in ezines as a method of driving thousands of targeted visitors to their website. Then I would mention the value of links on third-party websites, which results in the double benefit of targeted traffic from the third-party website and link popularity for search engine rankings.

Frequently, people would tell me that they literally "do not care about placement of their articles in ezines." They continued to explain that they were only interested in placement on third-party websites for the purpose of influencing their search engine rankings.

Wow! Every time I heard someone make this claim, I would think to myself about the shortsightedness of this approach. In my experience, link popularity and search rankings were a long-term benefit, and the publication of an article in an ezine is what was generating the most immediate and largest amount of click-through traffic to my websites.

But, who am I? I am just some guy who had been using this marketing technique for five years at that time, and I was a person who had been providing distribution services to other writers for several years. Why would anyone want to hear my thoughts on the subject?

The Proclaimed Death of Article Marketing as an Effective Promotion Tool

I have been hearing rumors for years of the death of article marketing as an effective marketing tool. Here are a couple samples:

* Dmitri Davydov proclaimed in June of 2007 that "'article marketing' has been long dead." (http://www.nichegeek.com/article_marketing_is_it_dead_yet) * In May of 2007, a few people in this forum thread declared that article marketing does not work, one of them just a little more vehemently than the rest (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=338394).

What I find somewhat funny and disconcerting at the same time is that most of the people making this proclamation actually admit that they have only tried article marketing with "one or two articles". In their wisdom, you should ignore people like me who have seen success with this promotion method, and you should follow their advice to abandon all hope for article marketing as a method for website promotion.

I have asked a few people to better define the status of article marketing:

1. Does article marketing not work? Or, 2. Did article marketing just not work for them?

The Nail in the Paid Links Coffin

On April 14th, 2007, the Google Guy (Matt Cutts) spoke out against paid links. A firestorm of complaints from webmasters followed Cutts' initial comments.

On June 12th, 2007, Cutts' original comments became official Google policy as shown here (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/06/more-ways-for-you-to-give-us-input.html)

Vanessa Fox of Google summed up the issue very succinctly, "Links that are purchased are great for advertising and traffic purposes, but aren't useful for PageRank calculations. Buying or selling links to manipulate results and deceive search engines violates (Google's) guidelines."

Confusion Ensues Over Paid Links

With Google officially stomping on "paid links," a lot of confusion entered into the marketplace. The confusion really hinges on one simple question: What kinds of links does Google consider to be paid links?

Many people have extrapolated Google's campaign against "paid links" to suggest that anytime someone pays money for a link building activity, then the links created during that activity will be construed by Google as a paid link, and that link will be discounted or ignored by Google. But, that simply is not the case.

Some have even chosen to lump "article marketing" as a "paid link", thereby decreeing that article marketing is truly and finally dead.

But all one has to do to gain a different point of view is to listen to Matt Cutts' comments from the SMX Search Marketing Expo in Seattle on June 4th, 2007 (http://videos.webpronews.com/2007/06/04/smx-seattle-matt-cutts-on-duplicate-and-paid-search/).

Within this video, Matt Cutts said, "If you are going to syndicate your content, try to make sure people know that you are the master or source of it. You can do it with a link from the article or link from the video, or stuff like that..."

The End of Article Marketing As We Knew It...

I don't know about you, but I read Cutts' last comment above as an indication that Google still considers article marketing to be a valid and Google-approved method of building links to one's website.

But, no matter how we cut it, we have in fact passed "the end of article marketing as we once knew it." Here is why:

* Some people will never have the chance to read this article and make their own mind about whether what I say has merit, or not. * Some people will simply trust the fear mongers who have been trying to declare article marketing dead for years. * And, some people will decide that they are not willing to take the chance that I might be right.

Going forward, we will see a fewer people using article marketing as a promotion technique.

The fact is that many people have quit using article marketing as a promotion technique. This outcome will only strengthen the hand of those of us who continue to utilize article marketing to promote our websites. After all, with fewer people using articles to market their websites, we will have fewer writers to compete with, in order to get attention for our own articles.

SEO Tips - How To Reach And Stay At The Top Of The Search Engines

Everybody is familiar with search engines such as Google & Yahoo. Search Engines have radically changed the Internet. Radically! Over 50% of all consumer purchases of all business purchases are now pursued by searches. That�s what was said months ago and it is obviously going higher. So the majority of people Worldwide who now are on computers, the first place they go to is a Search Engine to find information, for what they are looking for.

The Search Engine technology is now based and what Search Engine is trying to do as they are trying to put out in front of their searchers, the most current relative information possible. Google knows that what it can give you is exactly what you want to see and it�s relative to the current & it�s timely. And you are going to come back to Google over, over and over again.

Why all those Bloggers out there for years have been making a lot of money and how they are promoting for free, and how they getting free publicity and generating MASS traffic to their sites? Because Bloggers took advantage of what Google had determined was the secret to the Internet right now. A WEB SITE THAT CHANGES A LOT GETS MORE RATING WITH A SEARCH ENGINE. So if your website is changing a lot and adjusting a lot and is current, Google will push you up on the rating. That means you are getting closer, closer and closer to the first page. And this is extremely important, particularly if you know how to what is called �games the system.

What those Bloggers do � they �game the system�. And here is how they game the system: They went out and found the websites that have the absolute most change going on in a web site every single day, every single hour, every single minute, and every single second. They are powerful websites that have constant change, constant upgrading going on every minute of every day. Theses website are called �Article Hubs�. These web sites grow out of the whole change in how Search Engines work because people realized that the more websites change, the more powerful website are in searches, they realized there better be constant change. This is particularly true in Media sites & this is particularly true with Bloggers, because they began to figure out that if they have more constant change on their sites every day their Bloggs will lift on the searches. And I am going to show you one of those hugs sites. It is an extremely powerful site, 5000-7000 writers, authors, reporters & Bloggers place their articles in this site every day.

Do you understand that that site is not just visited by tens of thousands of writers and author�s who have submitted articles everyday? Do you realize this site is visited by over a million unique visitors every single day? So these sites, these Article Hubs are incredibly potent. And when you put one article in one of these sites, guess what you start to do? You start to dominate keywords. And if you can get on the first page of any major keyword you have hit a Gold Mine! One article! One keyword! Traffic, traffic, traffic! There is one example �Religion and online marketing�, this article was written two years ago and guess where they are.

Do you know when you put a keyword in worldwide there are over 35 millions places on the web that have this constant in here with Religion and Online Marketing? And this article is still having a first result, first page. That was written TWO YEARS AGO! He has been getting traffic every single day for almost 800 days for this article. One Article! One keyword! Traffic, Traffic, Traffic! And if you go page after page, after page you are going to see that article over and over and over � That Company continues to get traffic to this very day. That�s the power of Article Hubs.

If you are looking for a home business opportunity please check this site! With this new marketing system, even beginners are successful.

Improving the CTR Of Your Google Adwords

As you are aware, Google Adwords is one of the most popular PPC avenues because of several features.

* Low signup cost (only $5)
* Instant activation of your account
* Instant activation of your ad campaign
* Provision to set daily spending limits

As the Click-Through-Rate (CTR) goes up, your ad position improves and Cost-Per-Click (CPC) goes down. This really puts Google Adwords in a different league.

Here are some simple tips to improve your CTR --
1) Specific matching along with broad matching

Generally when you want to advertise for, say, online dating, you put online dating in the keywords list. I suggest that you all of these in the keywords list -

* [online dating]
* "online dating"
* online dating

This way, when a searcher types just online dating, the click is credited to the 1st keyword. If the searcher types a keyphrase including online dating in that order but as part of a bigger term like free online dating, it is credited to the 2nd keyword. And if both online and dating are present but not together and in that order, like online singles dating, it is credited to the 3rd keyword.

This improves the CTR for certain specific keywords and helps to lower your CPC and also improves your ad position.
2) Use a variable title

Did you know that your clickthrough rate (CTR) goes up when the searcher sees his keywords (that he searched for) in your ad? This is because Google shows these words in bold.

But you don't know what term this searcher has used. So how can you put the term in the title? Try this.

Put this string in the title field on the Adwords screen -

{KeyWord: Default Title} where you replace "Default Title" with a suitable text. Now Google will show the search term as the ad title if the searched term fits within the 25 character limit and your default title if the search term won't fit.

Example - say you use {KeyWord: Online Dating} as the title and dating as the keyword.

If someone searches for dating help, the shown title will be Dating Help. However if one searches for free online dating resources, Google will show Online Dating because the search term won't fit in the title space (25 characters).

Did you notice the capitalization? If you use Keyword, then only the first word would be capitalized. If you use keyword, all the letters will be in small case.

This tip alone can boost your CTR by 157% or more.
3) Variable destination URL

Did you know that Google now allows variable destination URLs? Why do you need that? Variable destination URL can help you identify the terms that the searchers are using and you can alter your page content to suit those terms for a much better conversion.

Let's see the syntax to get the search term in the destination URL --

http://www.articlestop10.com/pam.php?kw={keyword}

Here we are sending the searcher to a PHP program (you can use a Perl program also), which then stores the terms in a database for easy analysis. You can plan for yourself how you want to put this information to your advantage.

Frankly this tip does not increase your clickthrough rate directly but once you know what the searches were searching for, when they arrived at your site, you can change your message for a much better response.

When the Great Goes Mediocre

Yahoo`s Latest Reorganization

When Jerry Yang and Susan Decker took over the chief executive officer and president positions at Yahoo ousting Terry Semel everyone knew that it was just the beginning. Big changes for management and organization lay in the very near future for the venerable search engine. In this article we ll take a look at those changes and consider Yahoo s future....
Search Engine Strategies London 2008 Conf & Expo Learn how search engine friendly design can tap into free traffic from search engines �SESLondon.com

How To Avoid Getting Your Adsense Account Terminated September 1

Link farms. Be wary of who and what are you linking your Adsense to. The search engines know that you cannot control your links in. But you can certainly control what you link to. Link farming has always been a rotten apple in the eyes of search engines, especially Google. That is reason enough to try and avoid them. Having a link higher than 100 on a single page will classify you as a link farm so try and not to make them higher than that.

Page rank for sale. If you have been online for quite some time, you will notice that there are some sites selling their PR links or trading them with other sites. If you are doing this, expect a ban anytime in the future. It is okay to sell ads or gain the link. But doing it on direct advertisement of your page rank is a way to get on search engines bad side.

Doorways. This is similar to cloaking pages. The common practice of a page loaded with choice keyword ads aimed at redirecting visitors to another �user-friendly� page is a big issue among search engines. There are many seo firms offering this kind of services. Now that you know what they actually are, try to avoid them at all costs.

Multiple domains having the same content. In case you are not aware of it, search engines look at domains IP�s, registry dates and many others. Having multiple domains having the same exact content is not something you can hide from them. The same goes with content multiplied many times on separate pages, sub domains and forwarding multiple domains to the same content.

Many of the above techniques apply to most search engines and is not entirely for Google only. By having a mind set that you are building your Adsense together with your pages for the human users and not for bots, you can be assured of the great things for your ads and sites.

Not to mention avoiding the wrath of the search engines and getting your Adsense and site account terminated altogether.

Author Resource:- Gaetane has thoroughly researched the internet to locate the best High Income Business Opportunities that will enable you to start making money from your own home.

All about Pay per Click Promotions

Marketing,Web Traffic,Writing
Pay Per Click advertising is one of the most important advertising instruments on the net today. Pay Per Click is, without a doubt, the best way to drive targeted traffic to your website.

Pay Per Click is different from the usual advertising methods in that it is a specialized field having its own technical process. It is, currently, the fastest-growing method of Internet advertising in existence today. It is undoubtedly changing the face of online marketing.

Pay Per Click advertising has in the tremendous advantage of getting targeted visitors to your website quickly. It can quickly provide visibility of your website on multiple search engines. it's the fastest way to drive targeted visitors to your website.

Pay Per Click is an Internet marketing strategy where advertisers pay a set amount every time their ad is clicked by a potential client or customer. It is a revolutionary advertising breakthrough which can be used to reliably rank your website high in the major search engines.

With Pay Per Click advertising one can earn money through the search engines' sponsored links, each time the user clicks on the targeted advertisement list.

Pay Per Click is a form of Internet advertising that allows you to decide how much you are willing to pay each time a person clicks on your sponsored listing and is sent to your website.

Pay Per Click's great value is due to the immediate impact it can have, especially for a short-term strategy. Pay Per Click Is the hottest way of online marketing today and is likely to be strengthened in the future.

Let's boil down the advantages of Pay per Click Advertising.

Pay per click advertising ;

*

The best way to drive targeted traffic to your website or business profile.
*

A specialized field with its own unique technical process.
*

Pay Per Click is a revolutionary breakthrough in advertising used to rank high in the search engine's results thereby targeting and attracting the attention of potential clients.
*

Using Pay per click advertising you can earn money through the sponsored links, each time the user clicks on the advertisement list.
*

Also, Pay per click is a paid form of advertising that lets you decide how much you are willing to pay each time a person clicks on your sponsored listing and enters your website.
*

Pay per click is the ideal way to target prospects in specific countries or regions.
*

Pay per click is a useful tool in any online businesses advertising campaign due to the immediate effect it can have.
*

For a short term strategy where time is limited pay per click is ideal due to the instant impact it can producing instant clients.
*

The immense value of Pay Per Click is that you are getting visitors to your site who are sincerely interested in your services.
*

If you have a brand new site and want to tell visitors about it, pay per click is the best way for you to do it.
*

Pay Per Click is a Laser fast method to start Internet advertising. Within hours after your Pay per Click account has been set up, you may start seeing results.
*

While a top ranking in the natural search engine listings can take some time to achieve, pay per click is a most effective way of bringing immediate traffic at a surprisingly affordable price.
*

While organic search engine optimization I will can be a crap-shoot, pay per click is a sure bet.

A very important point to keep in mind with pay per click is that you must test, test, and test some more. The market of pay per click is very competitive and we constantly need to work on this to keep up the visibility of your site. If you are looking for the most common form of Internet Marketing, then pay per click is definitely it.
The cost structure of pay per click is action-driven and each time a user clicks your ad, the pay per click engine deducts the amount of your current bid from your account.

While pay for placement works very well, remember that you may still want to optimize your site for traditional search engines and get listed with major directories even if Pay Per Click is a major part of your marketing strategy.

any Payperclick account to set up the first thing that must be done is to choose which of the Payperclick search engines, like Google ( Adwords), Yahoo or MSN (Adcenter), you would like to place your ads

Don't forget, beginning your campaign with pay per click is definitely the single fastest way to start getting quality traffic but without professional help the costs can be exorbitant.

Pay per click is a HUGE market and a HUGE opportunity but if you don�t know what you are doing, then don�t believe anyone that will tell you that you can succeed very quickly.

Making money with pay per click is all about figuring out a winning process that will help you to identify winning keywords and grouping those into winning ad groups.

Finally, a tremenous advantage of Pay Per Click Internet Advertising is that you only pay when a searcher clicks on your listings and connects to your web site.

If your ad doesn't appear on the first page of some of the major search engines, you're going nowhere on the Internet.

The bulk of the sales on the Internet emanates through the use of search words or phrases targeted to your product or service.

E-mail solicitation simply brings irritation to the recipient. It's a method of spreading a bad reputation for your website.

Simply stated; if someone wants to buy a product or service through the Internet, they go to a search engine such as Yahoo, Google or MSN. They insert a description of the product or service that they want, into a box provided for that purpose, and they're brought to a list of websites which are advertising products or services described in that typed description. These customers are buying customers. People who want to buy something on the Internet don't wait to receive an e-mail soliciting that sale. In addition the good advice around is that you don't click on any link that comes through the mail for fear of contaminating your computer with a virus.

A successful website should produce an adequate number of interested visitors, it should be ranked on the first page of many of the major search engines and if there is a salable product, it should be bringing in the kind of money that the owner deserves.

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Related Articles - Sales strategies, entrepreneur, web site technical services, Internet home-office, brick & mortar shop, Internet business advantages, Internet service busin,

Dispelling Fears About The GoogleBomb Algorithm Update

Google algorithm updates always bring the fears of webmasters to a boiling point. In the aftermath of an algorithm update, some people come out swinging, making claims that Google is trying to put them out of business. Others look at their Google rankings and pat themselves on the back for having survived another "algo" update.

It has been known in search engine optimization (SEO) circles for quite some time that one could successfully implement what is referred to as a GoogleBomb. The best example was a search on the phrase "miserable failure". A search on those words within Google would show George W. Bush's biography at the White House website, in the top three or four results of the search results. This would occur, despite the fact that neither word in the search criteria resides on the White House website. At one time, Bush's biography had been in the #1 spot, but counter-bombing campaigns moved Bush's listing down the page a bit.

Many people have written about this phenomenon in time's past. I have even written about it myself. When I wrote about it, my point was to show the importance of anchor text in a link to build the value of a web page in the Google search engine result pages (SERPS).

The "miserable failure" GoogleBomb came to exist within a loophole within the Google algorithms. Google puts a lot of value on the anchor text that point to a particular web page. It is part of their "one link � one vote" philosophy as to the value of a web page.

Bloggers joined forces to create thousands of links pointing to the White House website with the words "miserable failure" in the anchor text. The shenanigans of the George W. Bush bashers were eventually countered by their fellow bloggers on the other side of the political aisle. Eventually, the search phrase "miserable failure" would also bring up the Michael Moore and Jimmy Carter websites in the top few results for that search phrase.

The average person who did not understand the nature of the SEO game would occasionally stumble across these esoteric search phrases and get him or herself into a huff, because they thought that Google was stating their own political views. Of course, Google really does not have an opinion, at least not one that would ever appear in their search results.

The GB Update...

In this case, the GB Update is not so-named because "George Bush" disappeared from the "miserable failure" search results. Instead, it is so-named because it is the "GoogleBomb" update, which Google implemented in January of 2007.

Once the update was implemented, the "miserable failure" search began to only return pages that talked about GoogleBombs from a technical standpoint.

With the GB update officially rolled out (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/01/quick-word- about-googlebombs.html), people began the standard Google-update panic process.

Hundreds of posts began appearing on forums concerning the GB updates and the fear that link-building efforts undertaken by search engine marketing (SEM) companies and webmasters would be hurt as well.

So, I did a bit of research. I have run several linking campaigns on my own behalf, and on the behalf of clients. Those campaigns were put together with a mix of keyword phrases nestled in the anchor text of links to our websites. I checked the status of all of the websites I represent, and without fail, our linking campaigns had not been hurt by the GB update.

Interesting Changes From The GoogleBomb Update

According to Matt Cutts of Google, the changes in the GB update were all completed within the Google algorithm. Cutts has always said that Google does not like to manually rearrange the search engine results, so an algorithmic solution to the GoogleBomb was in order. A few of the Google engineers worked together to find a solution to the GoogleBomb issue.

In an attempt to understand what had changed, I looked at a few of the more notorious GoogleBombs of past and discovered some interesting facts.

Broken Google Bombs:

* "Miserable failure" no longer returns George W. Bush, Michael Moore, or Jimmy Carter websites. * "Worst president ever" now only returns pages that make the claim the GW Bush has earned that title. * "Waffles" no longer returns results that point to the John Kerry website. * Tony Blair's homepage no longer comes up under the search term "liar".

Unchanged Google Bombs:

* A search for "Scientology" still has the "Operation Clambake" listing in the #2 spot (2007-01-31). Operation Clambake is a website that is critical of Scientology. * "Click here" still points to the Adobe website (although this was not actually a GoogleBomb). * "French military victories" still goes to the same page on Albino Black Sheep when you hit "I feel lucky" on Google's search page. (I still get a kick out of this one.) * The "great president" GoogleBomb survived. It still points to Bush's bio on the White House website.

The Question On Everyone's Mind

Everyone seems to be asking the same question. How does Google defuse Google Bombs?

Well, Google isn't saying, so we are left to figure it out on our own. Based on what I was able to uncover in my study of Google Bombs, I came up with a theory.

What I have been able to take from the results shown above is that Google may have targeted only "negative links". If you want to review what is shown above, all of the Google Bombs that are now gone had negative connotations to them. All of the Google Bombs that survived can be construed as having positive, or at least non-negative, connotations to them.

If my assertion is correct, then average, ordinary webmasters will have nothing to fear from the Google Bomb update. My sites and my client's websites also reflect that the Google Bomb update did not have any affect on us.

Maybe I am just grasping at straws, but I don't think so. You be the judge... "Worst president" is gone, and "great president" survived. To me, that says a lot.

The Google Bombing Legacy Continues...

Following my logic, Google Bombing is still a possibility for those who Google Bomb with a positive set of anchor text keywords. So, some Google Bombs will continue to live well into the future.

In 2004, Search Engine Watch suggested that Google Bombs are better defined as Link Bombs, since they can affect all of the major search engines, including Yahoo and MSN.

Google has finally addressed link bombing in a positive way, but Yahoo and MSN are still prone to link bombing attacks. For example, as of this writing, MSN still has George in the top spot for "miserable failure" in the MSN Live results.

Search Engine Optimization And The Magic Fairy Dust

There is only one thing that all webmasters agree upon... They all want to be at the top of the search engine results for search terms that will drive traffic and consumers to their website.

The truth is that the search engines are like our childhood game of King Of The Hill. Only one person can be at the top of the hill and the top of the search results. Only ten websites can be on page one of the search results. When a new website moves into the top ten, another must be removed.

For any given search term at any given time, there are only ten web pages on page one of the search results, and there are millions of web pages that did not make page one, who may or may not catch a few stragglers from the search engines.

How Can A Website Break Into The Top Ten?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an industry that has sprung up around the concept of helping their clients improve their rankings in the search engine results.

When you talk to SEO professionals, they generally point to a two-pronged approach to search ranking optimization. A website owner needs to optimize their on-site real estate for the search engines, and they need to build inbound links to their website.

On-Site Search Optimization Challenges

The trick with on-site search optimization is that you must cater to multiple audiences on your website.

* You must provide simple navigation and an attractive interface to the human visitor;

* You must provide good sales copy to your human visitors, for the purpose of converting them from shoppers to buyers;

* You must provide text copy for the search engines to read; and

* You must optimize your content to help the search engines know what topics and keywords they should pay attention, so that they can give their users the right web page for the right search terms.

A web page that draws good search rankings is useless if the web page cannot convert the human visitor to a buyer. Many website owners get caught up in the process of optimizing a web page to get it to the top of the search results, and they forget that the human visitor knows where the Back Button is in his or her browser. Once your visitor has hit the Back Button, they will go to someone else's website and buy from them, instead of you.

Most website owners have the alternate problem. They consistently convert a significant number of visitors to buyers, but they have to rely on various forms of paid advertising to get visitors to their websites, since they do not rank in the search engines.

I recently spoke with an individual who spends ,000 per month on pay-per-click advertising to get targeted traffic to his website. He said he consistently earns back his money, but he was still looking for a better way to get ranked in the search engines, so he joined my client list.

On-Site Search Engine Optimization Basics

According to the search engine companies, there are more than one thousand calculations that determine how well a website will rank in their search engine result pages (SERPs).

The Google engineers are fond of saying that if you build your website for human beings instead of search engines, then your website should rank well in their algorithms. To a certain degree, this is a good strategy.

Think about how magazines are constructed:

The Table Of Contents shows story titles, brief descriptions, and page numbers telling you where you can find a story.

On the story page, the title will be in big, bold font. Sometimes, the magazine will include a brief blurb about the story, in italics or font that is a bit bigger than the story font.

Pictures support the story with captions that further develop the story, by describing the picture.

Major subsections of the story have their own subheadings. And, the primary body of the story is in regular plain text, with only an occasional bolded or italicized word or phrase.

By analyzing the title and other large text on the page, a person who is flipping through the pages of a magazine can quickly assess the story content and make the decision as to whether they want to read the full story.

In the most simplistic way, this is how the search engines analyze a websites' content to decide which web page will best serve their users' needs.

Off-Site Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Basics

Since the inception of Google, and with Yahoo and MSN recently, the number and quality of links pointing to a website play a significant role in determining how well a web page will rank in the search results.

I have heard people suggest that as much as 75% of the value given to a web page in the search results is based solely on the number and quality of links pointing to a web page. I tend to believe a more conservative number (50.1%) will apply.

Inbound Links Are More Important Than Page Content

To prove this point, type "click here" without the quotes into Google, Yahoo and MSN and check the Adobe pages that come up in the search results: #1 in Google, #2 in Yahoo, and #1 in MSN. When you pull up those pages, search the page to find the individual words "click" or "here" in the text of those pages. They are not there. This has happened because millions of people have linked to these Adobe pages with the embedded anchor text, "click here".

Next, let's analyze those specific web pages from the perspective of each of the search engines:

* Google's #1 result - Google PageRank 8. (www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html) Links to this web page: according to Google (31); according to Yahoo (nearly 12 million); according to MSN (6,400).

* Yahoo's #2 result - Google PageRank 10. (www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer) Links to this web page: Google (15,200); Yahoo (700 thousand); MSN (32).

* MSN's #1 result - Google PageRank 8. (www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash) Links to this web page: Google (0); Yahoo (2.9 million); MSN (778).

On Google's top result, they show 31 inbound links total for that web page. But, Yahoo claims that there are more than 12 million links to this page. That is a huge difference.

On Yahoo's #2 result, MSN gives 32 links, Google gives 15,000 links, and Yahoo claims it has 700 thousand links! That is another huge difference between the link counts from the search engines.

On MSN's #1 result, MSN shows a strong link count, but still nowhere near Yahoo's 2.9 million links. But, how does a web page with zero links in Google get a PageRank 8?

What Do These Numbers Mean?

Google has always said that they will never show us all of the links that we have pointing to our websites, because anything we can see in the public search results, our competitors can see also. So, for me it really is no surprise that we cannot see all of the links that point to Adobe pages, or to the links we have created that point to our clients and ourselves, by querying the search engines.

Also, the sheer numbers of inbound links do not rule the roost. Google's #1 result (PR8) is actually shown in Google, before Yahoo's #2 (PR10) result.

The Proof For Link Building Is In The Search Engine Rankings

Recently, a fellow who works as a SEO "professional" told me that be believed my link building system was a sham.

I showed him that on the top 51 keyword phrases we use to market our original commercial website, we had 11 number one results, 31 top five results, 34 top ten results, 47 top thirty results, and 51 top 100 results within the Google search results. Additionally, it was shown that only three of those results competed with fewer than one million search results according to Google, with the remaining 48 pages competing with one million to 533 million pages.

Ole boy tore up Google trying to track how it was possible for me to have accomplished what I claimed. He finally concluded that since Google would not show HIM how I was able to rank so well in their search engine results, then I must have been lying.

According to Yahoo, we have over 12,000 links from third-party websites. According to our site statistics, we received traffic from more than 16,000 unique web pages during 2006. And Google still swears that we only have 42 inbound links to our website!

Magic Fairy Dust

My nemesis concluded that since HE could not prove through Google how I was successful in getting good search rankings, then I could not have accomplished such results by the methods I claimed.

Okay, I admit it.

I used the exact same method that Adobe used to get to the top of Google's search engine rankings. I have a pocket full of magic fairy dust. Whenever, I do not like how my websites rank in the search engines, I sprinkle my magic fairy dust on my modem.

If you don't like where you are ranked in the search engines, then I suggest you forego the search engine optimization companies altogether and instead run over to the corner store to get your own magic fairy dust. You might have to shop around a bit, but it is out there.

Freelancing as A Career Option

Home bound workers can either consider telecommuting or freelancing. While telecommuting may keep you out of your home for some hours a week, online freelancing is a good way to make money if you are forced to stay at home. For example, homemakers, part-time students, retired folk, or others who wish to supplement their income from jobs or businesses can all consider freelancing.

Freelance Skill Sets

You can start earning as a freelancer as long as you have skills that someone is willing to pay for. For example, writers, web designers, photographers, and programmers can earn a substantial income by creating articles, websites, portfolios and software from home. The Internet is a hot and viable source of income for freelancers from around the world. Your target customers can be webmasters, online business owners, blog owners etc. For example, blogs and wikis are hot sources of income for freelance writers nowadays, and there's no reason why you can't tap into this market if you possess good writing skills.

Freelance Income

On the flip, your income may fluctuate from one month to another. As with all businesses, freelancing does not guarantee a stable paycheck at the end of the month. So keep a small kitty reserve for dry days or have another source of income for which you can work part-time. Be prepared to accept boring, low-level work initially just to keep the cash flow strong. Once you get a good reputation for providing original, high-quality work at reasonable price, then clients will flock to you.

Freelance Advantages

Probably the best thing about freelancing is that you get to work at your pace, in your own hours, from home, and be your own boss. That means, your shop is open 24x7. And as long as you provide good quality work and meet deadlines, your clients will remain happy with you.

In order to be visible, you also need to be seen and heard in the right places, like forums, blogs, online groups, etc. Spend time everyday to visit such sites because they are invaluable repository of freelance gigs and email addresses of prospects. Alternatively you can sign up with freelance sites like Elance.com, GetAFreelancer.com and Scriptlance.com where you can start bidding on projects and snag a few as early as today!

To conclude, a freelance business is one of the best ways to earn money from home and to work for your own self. If you've got a fair amount of time on your hands, maybe you too should consider freelancing as your full-time career alternative or supplementary income source.

(Hint: While you can find plenty of lucrative freelance assignments on Elance, the other sites mentioned above generally tend to feature lesser-paid projects. However, if you're just starting out as a freelancer, the competition on Elance can prove to be really tough. So you might want to first try GAF and Scriptlance to build up your portfolio, and then go for Elance.)

Internet Marketing In South Africa

Part 1

This article is written from my own experiences, on the many problems facing South African based internet marketers. As a South African, myself, I have been trying to establish myself in internet marketing, for the last three years, but have come across a number of obstacles, which have proved seriously detrimental to my efforts. If you are South African, you can probably relate to this. If you have been battling what seem insurmountable odds, or if you are new to this concept, the message is the same. Stop wasting your time and your money on what is bound to be nothing less than - wasting your time and your money and I will explain why I said that. If you are an internet marketer, who is not South African, you should also read this article, because you are, unwittingly, leaving a lot of money on the table.

As we all know, South Africa is a part of Africa and is unfairly considered as a third world country, with the incorrect perception that this second largest continent, is nothing more than a waste of time, in the field of internet marketing. Well, I beg to differ. I will attempt to outline some of the misconceptions, obstacles, causes and remedies that I have encountered.

Yes, it is true that Africa has not progressed as much as the so called first world countries, but it is taking giant strides towards that. The advent of the internet, is only just beginning to catch on and the vast majority of the population, still have no access at all, but it is coming and it is coming fast. The internet is now available in all countries around the world and Africa is no different. We all know about the Nigerian internet scams. It is just that the vast majority of the population are poverty stricken and cannot afford the service, many are illiterate and the majority of the continent consists of large open spaces and small villages, making the physical provision of any basic services such as electricity, clean water, telephones and other communication devices extremely difficult. It is also an ongoing problem, where these desperate people steal cables and anything that can be traded for a meal. So, at this stage the internet is only available in the bigger metropolitan areas. It makes sense, doesn't it? Imagine how easy it is to supply services to a very densely populated area like England and where everyone is literate, in a fixed abode and living above the poverty line.

South Africa is the most technically advanced country in Africa and not far behind the standards of the other technology rich countries, but we are seriously lacking in internet technology. The internet is still very new to South Africa and has only just begun to catch on. It is experiencing a phenomenal growth rate and more and more businesses and individuals are "hooking up". All of the major cities are able to offer various means of connection such as ADSL, bluetooth, wireless and people are getting connected on their pcs, laptops and cellphones. The rural areas are battling to get connected and the only option available to them at this stage is the old antiquated dial up system using a telephone line, or via satellite. Promises have been made by government, that in a few years, everyone will be able to get a telephone and therefore, will have internet access available to them. This represents an enormous potential for wary marketers.

This is the overview of the situation with internet access in Africa and more particularly, South Africa. In the next article, we will look at some of the problems faced by South African users and the effects they have on internet marketing.

Part 2

Recent political changes, have reversed the fortunes of the South African population, in that the previously disadvantaged black community, now have money and the fine things in life, including access to the internet. Whereas before they wouldn't have been considered a viable market, they are now able to access the internet and dabble in small business. They want more. The whites, on the other hand, now find themselves out of work, unsure of the future and desperately seeking an alternative means of income. Both groups make good target markets, and both are particularly keen on using the internet to improve their lot in life. Remember, the internet is the biggest employer in the world and does not recognise age, colour, education, physical disabilities, wealth etc. People hear of the successes achieved on the internet and are fooled into looking for a quick fix. The internet and marketing via this medium, gives everyone an equal opportunity, well, almost everyone. Not South Africans, unfortunately.

Something like 70% of the S.A internet community, access the internet on the computers at their places of employment and as much as two hours each workday, is lost to private usage of the internet. Obviously these people are not all looking for ways to make money, but a large percentage are. These people who are newly exposed to all the hype on the internet are easily sucked in to believing the sales pitch. A lot of money is being spent on all sorts of junk and causing many heartbroken families. I was like that too. I firmly believed I could make a lot of money on the internet and set about joining all sorts of schemes. They do not work, but these desperate and na�ve people don't know that. Imagine if it was possible to guide them, to channel all that energy and curiosity and of course all that money into your bank account? If those people all trusted you and listened to your advice, if you were able to develop well thought out plans and business opportunities? If those people all joined your membership site?

One of the biggest drawbacks in S.A is that the internet and allied services are still very expensive and difficulty in finding a good service provider. Other first world countries have direct, fast, unlimited service at very reasonable prices and if they do experience problems with the service provider, there are plenty of others to try. According to a recent survey, something like 70% of all internet users, regularly access the 'net from their places of employment. The employer provides pcs and internet for business purposes and these curious people cheat their employers, by using his service for private usage. People send emails to friends, go shopping, download files, look at pornography, play games, gamble and read classifieds and other adverts for a better job, or an easy method of earning more money. From this survey it was estimated that as much as 85% of this target group were looking for self employment opportunities. Now, that's a lot of people! If the price of internet access was cheaper, all these people would use it at home. In fact, most do have internet access at home, but due to small caps on their usage and exorbitant prices, they rather use the employer's service. My point is that millions are searching for opportunities on the internet and the fact that crime is rampant only makes them more determined, to start a business from home. This is a huge potential for marketers. So what is the problem? Why are more South Africans actively getting involved? In the next article, we will start looking at these problem areas.

Part 3

As the internet is still relatively new to South Africa, we don't have many experts, or experience in the field. Those calling themselves experts, have only a limited knowledge and are far too expensive, when compared to overseas competitors. Simple things like service provision, web hosting, design and site building, software, tools, optimisation and advertising, are grossly overpriced. In most cases, they are bought overseas and resold here. I was given a quote, last month, of R120 ($17) per month, for basic, small webhosting service, excluding the domain registration and excluding the internet service provision. That was only the hosting! I was quoted R6000 ($857) for a designer, to look at one of my websites and to make a couple of small changes. It is crazy. We pay between R8 and R12 for an mp3 song, which costs from 10c to 90c in the U.S.A.

The state owned telecommunications company, Telkom, have the monopoly and squash all opposition. This has led to very highly priced access and an indifferent service. Nearly all packages offered by them, or sub contactor service providers, are restricted and capped. The actual service, the technical help and the customer relations are dreadful. The dial up service is very unreliable, the speeds are far lower than advertised, due to the poor state of the physical 'phone lines and the modems cost the earth. Take the U.S.A for example, where there are something like 800 million people with regular access and hundreds of competitors all offering better prices. The internet is a way of life and the huge speeds and download capabilities are taken for granted. In South Africa only something like 27 million have any form of access, largely due to the high costs. I got a quote from Telkom last week for satellite service. The basic installation cost is R3100 ($443), paid upfront. The monthly rental for the satellite service, capped at 3 Gigs, is R1263 ($180) and I still need a service provider who comes in at a basic charge of R284 ($40) plus consumption and of course I still need to keep my basic phone service for R110 ($16) plus call usage. Once the cap is reached, the service is suspended and additional packages can be purchased for R120 ($17) per 250 Megs. So in all it will cost me, monthly, around R2317 ($331) for a basic internet service of 4Gigs and a phone at home. Obviously there are cheaper options available in the cities, but living out of town, there is no choice. By the way, a friend living in the U.S.A got a similar quote for only $40 (R280) per month and his service boasted more facilities and no capping whatsoever.

For some reason, probably the old apartheid days, South Africa was boycotted by the wealthy first world countries and nobody has told them yet, that times have changed. South Africans suffer many discriminatory obstacles in the use of the internet and over the last few years, I have repeatedly been stumped by these. I have two messages of advice here. To the frustrated, aspirant South African marketers and those who will follow shortly, stop and listen. Do not waste more time and money trying all sorts of offers, you will not succeed. Rather use the time to brush up on your skills. Select a market niche and learn to use control panel, FTP, html, php, hyperlinks and all the other things, that will help you to run your business. Wait for the solution. I have enlisted the help of two of the world's top marketers to find a way around the problems, for you. To the marketers who are knowingly, or unknowingly discriminating against certain countries, you are leaving money on the table and missing out on a huge potential market. But, that's okay, I'll take it. These are some of the more general problems experienced by South Africans. In the next article, we will look at some of the specific problems affecting our marketing abilities.

Part 4

By now, you are probably wondering what other problems I'm talking about and how they are affecting our chances of success. If you have been involved for a while, you have probably encountered a few of these yourself and if you are a newbie, you are likely to still come across these problems soon.

There are obvious generalities that exclude South Africans from participating. We joined about 163 survey companies, when we first started out on the internet. We soon found out that most were American companies and only for Americans. That makes sense, when the product, or service being rated is only available there, but why do they mislead us and take our money. You must have seen the misleading ads about how quick and easy it is to earn money by doing simple surveys. A lot of them claim to be international, for anybody who understands English. The same thing happens. You are invited to do the survey, but as soon as you type in your address, you are told it is not available in your area. We wasted a lot of money on these. The foolproof unconditional money back guarantees are a lot of hogwash. Just ignore them.

The same thing happened with the typing services. My wife joined a few of them, with the promise, that as long as she had a basic working knowledge of English, no experience was necessary. Money as easy and fast to earn, on simple assignments. Well, she wasn't given any assignments and on enquiring as to the reason, she was told that we spell differently. That was not ever mentioned at the time of joining and was also money wasted. For Pete's sake, we speak and spell correctly. It is the Americans who changed the language.

We also joined a lot of companies who promised to pay us for surfing and reading emails. We worked our butts off and eventually, after almost a year, had earned a whopping $247000! We tried to cash in, but were then told that no cheques could be issued. Monies were only paid into American bank accounts. They said they were an international company and anyone in the world could join. But, not get paid.

We often see special promos on free hosting, free domain registration and other all too important services. All looks great from the outside, but as soon as we apply we find out that we are unfortunately not eligible. I don't know how many times I have won prizes. Cash, free products, a trip, ocean cruises, but on trying to claim them, I'm told they don't apply to South Africans.

Very often, freebies are included to sweeten a deal. I joined a music site for mp3 downloads. The price was inclusive of a whole bunch of bonuses. I was to get meal tickets, petrol (gas) coupons, membership of some or other club, discounts on shopping, blah, blah, blah. Needles to say, I joined and paid full price, but never got any of the goodies that all my American counterparts received. I am very into music and 2 years ago I purchased Music Match Jukebox, with free updates for life, access to the online music shop and full usage of something I think was called Radio Gold. It was full access to 150 live radio stations. After I received my purchase, all I had was the jukebox and the promise of updates. On enquiry, I was told "Sorry, but this offer doesn't apply to you", but I paid the full price. Why don't they tell us before we pay? Why don't we get a discount? This seems to be common practice and apart from the obvious discrimination and disappointment is false advertising.

Anyway, these are some problems I have experienced, but not really connected in any way to our functionality at internet marketing. What are the problems facing South African marketers? More in the next article.

Part 5

We have covered quite a few problems facing South Africans already and here are some more.

Overseas companies, particularly those in the U.S.A, offering opportunities, services and resources, usually require a fixed email address, at the time of joining. This is to prevent temporary accounts and others such as Hotmail, from being used, as it is very easy to cancel, or change, after joining and the marketer is left with a useless address, in his contact list. South Africans have another problem, in that most of our suffixes, such as .co.za, telkomsa, za, are not allowed. Usually your country is required and many of the drop down menus have small, insignificant countries such as Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mauritius, Ivory Coast listed, but not South Africa. So we have to get ourselves an email address with an overseas company, just to comply. Why?

We, as South Africans, have no shopping carts, or payment processors, suitable for international use, or integration, into overseas websites and the biggest culprit is PayPay. They are the first choice, worldwide and any marketer not offering PayPal, as a means of payment, is seriously disadvantaged. Why then, do they not deal with South Africa? Sure, you can make a purchase through them, but they will not collect monies for you, or allow you to make a withdrawal, if you are South African. Other smaller countries are catered for, but not S.A. There are other options, but none as popular. Most payments, affiliate plans and opportunities, pay through PayPal. I joined dozens of respected affiliate plans and spent a great deal of effort, on advertising, before I found out the truth.

A few months ago, I was experiencing the common problems all new marketers face. I knew what I wanted to do, but not how to actually get it done. I'm talking about the setting up, in order to start business. I needed a domain name, a website, content and products, a hosting service, a shopping cart, a mailing list facility, a form for grabbing visitor's details, a payment processor, or two, etc etc. You know what I'm talking about. There are so many options available. The web is full of them. Some are free, some cheap, some having special offers, but which was the best for my needs? Nobody tells you that sort of information. How much space do you need for a bookstore, how much bandwidth do you need for customer downloads? How does the speed affect you? I had played around a bit with wysiwyg editors and done a little html coding. I had used a couple of free websites and hey, the last one I built without their website templated builder. I thought I was getting good, but still a little out of my depth. That scared me a bit, so I decided to look for a ready made, turnkey business. They all say the only thing you need to do is to enter your password and account details, then sit back and watch the money roll in. Well I eventually found something that sounded ideal. It was expensive, but I thought I would be saving in the long run. I wanted to sell ebooks, articles, plr, courses and so on. I paid for this business, as I had seen the example and even test drove the shopping cart prior to purchase. Just when I thought I had found a shortcut to starting my business, the problems began. What problems? Read the next article to find out and to see the solution.

Part 6

We were talking about the problems I encountered after I had bought the bookstore. Well firstly, the whole bookstore was inphp with cpanel control panel, my sql and a whole lot of Greek terms. You remember I had worked with online and offline editors in wysiwyg and a little html. Well now I was lost. I was warned not to try to edit in an html editor, or I would corrupt the php. I had never used these before and couldn't understand why I couldn't find the pages, to edit them. Then I found that the currencies shown on the products were not compatible with the Rand, but I thought so what, I'll just sell in dollars. Then I found that PayPal was not an option. Damn, but hey, I could still use NoChex, or the other one, I forget the name. No way, Jose, those weren't allowed either. I had to have a banking account in USA or UK. I eventually got EGold to work, but how many people pay with gold? That bookstore is still sitting, gathering dust.

There are no local, South African internet companies, for memberships, product sourcing, resources, search engine optimisation etc, so we have to look abroad. Although these are offered reasonably, overseas, we are still subjected to the exchange rate. At present the rate is 7 to the $, 14 to the Pound and around 9 to the Euro, but even so, it is usually cheaper, than our own prices and of course you are spoilt for choice.

Training is another area seriously lacking. With all the conferences, seminars, teleseminars, video training and group discussions unavailable to us in S.A, how are we expected to learn and to keep abreast of developments? Dial up is not powerful enough and anyway it is limited to times between 7pm and 7am, which is a bad time, as even if you stay up all night, it is roughly midnight to midmorning in the States. So how do we learn?

So, with a very limited number of companies prepared to do business with us, with our lack of choice, with our very expensive internet service, with very little access to all the great offers, with our SA email addresses, with our antiquated dial ups, without access to genuine training videos, with the exorbitant exchange rate, with our different spelling, without any reciprocal banks or payment processors, without a compatible shopping cart, with the scams and rip offs and all the rest we have discussed, can South Africans ever hope to get involved in internet marketing?

The truth is rather bleak. Nobody is worried about us, or the problems we have and nobody seems to care. The big "guru" marketers don't seem to be able to think outside their statelines and regard us as a waste of time. They are happy to take our money, though. But wait, there does seem to be a solution for you. As I said earlier, I have teamed up with two of the world's top marketers and together, we are trying to resolve these issues. We will put together a complete, turnkey package deal, a ready to run business, with domain, hosting, website, content, decent affiliate plans, a stream of products, an exclusive membership, a working shopping cart and payment processor, training and ongoing support, a proven plan, optimisation, adsense and other monetised methods for those poor South Africans, who want to be marketers. The hardest part of having your own business, is setting it up and getting it working. You will be able to enter the market place and do very well for yourselves, with our help, so in the meantime, there are a few things you must do.

Familiarise yourself with market trends and choose a niche market, in which you want to trade. Start practicing the basics and learn how things work. Get your mind sorted out. Tell yourself you can do it and will change your life. Sign up to our newsletter and mailings. If you really want to finally realise your dreams, give up the job, work from home, earn a good income, have flexibility and satisfaction, and be competitive in the international arena, then there is only one way you are going to acquire this - through us.

To remain informed of our progress, by newsletter and mail, to get recommended tools and lessons and to start your journey to wealth, sign up here. It's free.

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