The Google PageRank Explained Simply

A common question amongst website owners is, “How is the Google PageRank assigned to my website?” The answer is not as maddening or mysterious as most people imagine. This short article offers you a simple and easy to understand introduction to the most essential factors you need to know about your site’s Google PageRank.

The Aim of the Google PageRank

Google’s intention with its PageRank (PR) system is to objectively and accurately assess the importance of each of the billions of webpages in cyberspace that are all fiercely fighting with each other for top placement in Google’s search engine results.

Explained simply, Google’s strategy is that, any website that has many other websites linking to it (i.e. Inbound Links or External Links) must be popular. Why else would so many other sites have hyperlinks pointing to it? Google counts the number of websites that have a hyperlink leading to your site and uses this to calculate your site’s PageRank.

The PageRank is a Popularity Contest

Google’s strategy is based upon the uniquely democratic nature of millions of autonomous websites that have the free choice to post a hyperlink to a third-party website or not. Accordingly, each Inbound Link a website has is regarded as a VOTE in an intercontinental internet Election. Websites with more votes will have a higher PageRank.

Amongst SEO professionals, this is referred to as “Link Popularity,” and this whole system can be thought of as the world’s biggest popularity contest. Google’s PageRank can, first and foremost, be viewed as a “PopularityRank.” For example:

As of January 7th, 2009, www.coca-cola.com has 2,570 External Links and a highly impressive PR8, while www.7up.com has 447 External Links and a PR5. At the extreme, www.wikipedia.org has a PR9 with over 77,000 External Links.

All External Links are NOT Created Equal

This hypothetical “trans-national cyberspace voting” is not entirely democratic, however, because each individual vote is not valued equally. Google does not weigh all Inbound Links to your site evenly. Instead, it determines each link’s value through a brain-boggling, complex algorithm that only a genius has any chance of understanding.

That being stated, the two most important factors which determine an External Link’s Search Engine Optimization value are as follows:

The key factor is the Google PageRank of the webpage that contains the link to your site. For example, a link to your site from Wikipedia with a PR9 is vastly more valuable than a link from someone’s private Blog with a PR1.

The second most significant factor is the link’s pertinence to your site. Google compares the keywords on your site and the keywords at the site linking to you, and it calculates the External Link’s “Relevance.” For example, if you sell computers, then an article about “computers” with a link to your website is vastly more valuable than an article about “baby clothing” with a link to your website.

Initiate a Link-Building Campaign Today

A pivotal SEO strategy is to implement a link-building campaign for your site. The best options you have to acquire External Links to your site are business directories, classified ads, magazines and article databases, business and personal profiles, and collaboratively exchanging links with other websites.

For instance, if you set the reasonable weekly goal to get two new Inbound Links, then, within two years, you should earn a very respectable Google PR5.

For information and assistance with your link-building campaign or other Search Engine Optimization services, feel free to visit our website or email us at Marketing Marksman (http://www.marketingmarksman.com) in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Copyright Notice

This article may be reposted, in whole or in part, freely at any website without limitation as long as Marketing Marksman is identified as the author with at least one functional hyperlink to the http://www.marketingmarksman.com webpage.  This article cannot be republished outside of the World Wide Web without prior written permission from the author.  See our site for more legal information and contact information.

Andrew Antaro

http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/a-beginners-introduction-to-the-google-pagerank-720742.html

There are two general types of secrets that Internet millionaires know which include external and internal secrets. We will discuss these secrets in detail in hopes that you will use them to your advantage and become an Internet millionaire yourself.

First, let’s look at the external secrets that Internet millionaires have in their tool kit.

Internet Millionaire Secret #1: Internet millionaires recognize that strategy should be the foundation of any marketing plan. It is critical to have a marketing strategy and not just jump into marketing techniques. For example, we don’t have to use mass advertising anymore because mass advertising doesn’t have strength because consumers have choices. You would have wasted valuable time and money if you used mass marketing techniques without first strategizing about the state of the market.

Internet Millionaire Secret #2: Internet millionaires are not generalists. They focus on selling their products and services to specific niche markets. The business market in general is going in the direction of niche markets because customers have more choices regarding places to buy their products.

Internet Millionaire Secret #3: Search for and grab untapped markets. Seek out people that have not been able to have access to your product in the past. In untapped markets, you don’t have to deal with competitors which helps keep the marketing costs down. In addition, you will be able to establish a rapport and trust with your customers.

Internet Millionaire Secret #4: Your backend strategy is crucial to success.
You want several profit centers that allow you to sell your products and services to more customers. The backend part of your company supports these profit centers. It diversifies your business so you are bringing in money through many different areas. You can’t rely on retiring early if you only have one profit center.

Internet Millionaire Secret #5: Try to automate as many services as possible. This will allow you to sell services 24 hours a day 7 days a week online. Automate your service centers to cut down on costs and help your customers at all hours of the day.

Internet Millionaire Secret #6: Set up your business so that you are replaceable. You can make yourself replaceable by branding. Branding encompasses yourself or the value that you provide. Branding yourself is lucrative, but it doesn’t allow you to take a break because you have to make every decision. Branding your value, on the other hand, sells your expertise and not your time.

Internet Millionaire Secret #7: Don’t work alone; build a team to support your business venture. Create a team of marketing, business, a mentor and accountability individuals. Remember, two heads are better than one so you can discuss ideas and strategies you have for your business.

Internet millionaires also have internal secrets. An Internet millionaire has self confidence and believes in their product. They are able to make decisions quickly. They have learned the correct information and modeled others that have proven success. They are not afraid to make a mistake and realize that their job doesn’t define who they are. One of the most vital secrets is that Internet millionaires persevere and never give up no matter what obstacles cross their path.

Amid all the noise and hype on the Internet today, not many people realize that all the ideas and techniques you can find are petty much useless if you don’t first understand your business model. In other words, even the most amazing Internet marketing technique will not work if you don’t understand how to apply it to YOUR business.

The 3 most popular business models are:

1) Affiliate Marketing

This is perhaps the most popular one out there, since there are absolutely no barriers to entry. Almost anyone can sign-up for an affiliate program for free and start promoting the product or service on the Internet with hopes that someone will buy, giving them instant commissions. Affiliate marketers don’t carry any risk, since they do not pay for the creation of the product, they do not handle customer service and they do not need any up-front investments.

When you consider that those are the top three things people want to avoid, it’s no surprise that almost everyone and their neighbor promotes an affiliate program or another. In fact, if there is a single reason why the Internet today is so proliferated with ads and banners, it’s because of affiliate programs.

Even though there are so many affiliate marketers out there, only 5% ever make any money and only 1% makes big money. The “Super Affiliates” do it very differently from all the other millions; therefore they earn the big checks.

2) E-book and Information Publishing

Sitting at the other end of the spectrum, e-book authors need to be more disciplined in their approach to Internet marketing. Of course, they also need to invest more than affiliates do. While affiliates can get away trying to “get something for nothing” the same is not true for the e-book type of business.

If you’re thinking about publishing and selling your own e-book online, and you think it’s going to be easy, think again. You’ll need to learn a lot more than affiliates are required to. You’ll need to spend some amount of money getting your business up and running. However, when you do it right, the payoff in this online business model is much more rewarding.

The reason why e-book marketers and “Infopreneurs” make more money is simple; they have very, very low production and maintenance costs. Anything digital doesn’t cost a single cent to be produced in millions if necessary. Whatever initial start-up costs spent can be covered by selling just a few copies of high-margin e-books, and you can even recruit an army of affiliates who are more than willing to do all the selling for you.

Of course, it’s not as easy as it sounds, but the point is, when done properly, the “E-book Publishing” model is a truly profitable business.

3) Internet Based Network Marketing

I’ve heard many people say that the Internet and network marketing are a match made in heaven. In my opinion, though, almost 90% of people get it wrong when it comes to Internet based network marketing. People in this business usually think they’re talking about network marketing, but in reality they are talking about affiliate marketing.

They try to make the Internet do all the work. They hide behind their computers and pretend everything’s going great. They focus on selling more and more every month. They have systems that are so complicated only they can understand it. Well, that doesn’t sound like network marketing to me!

Internet based network marketing is simple if you understand it, and are willing to put in the effort. The role of the Internet here is only to get you the names and contact details of people you can talk to, after which YOU, not a computer, has to build a relationship with these people and help them to start their own business.

For this simple purpose, it is not necessary for you to have a high-tech system and pretend that your auto responder is building relationships for you. It’s not going to work. The key is to have simple systems that are duplicable, something you can teach to all those people you have built a relationship with.

E-book authors, no matter what they say, have no obligation to teach you their “Secret Strategies to Become a Millionaire” of any variations to that. The reason is simple; why tell you the absolute truth when you’ll end up as their competitor? No one wants more competitors, right?

Internet based network marketing is very much the opposite of that. You HAVE to tell people EVERYTHING you know or your business will never take off. For this reason alone, I always recommend that if you’re new to the online world, you need to first join an Internet based network marketing business at least to learn. Rest assured, no one will be selling you half-baked truths when their success ultimately depends on yours.

No matter which model you choose, make sure you understand the basics, and stop listening to and buying things that are not applicable to your business. Information overload can stop you before you even get started.

————————

Title : How to Promote your small business web site without costing you a nickel.

Desc : Organizing a Cost Effective Small Business Web Site Promotion And how to promote your website!

How to: Promote your small business web site without costing you a nickel.

Small Business Web Site Promotion

The most important thing to remember when you want to encourage visitors to visit your web site is to make sure they will want to return again. ‘Visitors’ means not just human web surfers, but also the search engines and directories. Small business website promotion, no matter how much you promote your site, will be the look of the site that will keep visitors there and hopefully buy your products or services.

Optimize your Site for Search Engines; Check your links

Small business website promotion starts with a search engine spider indexing or cataloging your site by following the links from one page to another. Just as human visitors dislike a broken link, so do the spiders. If a link doesn’t work they’ll simply move onto the next page. No matter how sophisticated the search engine software is, it can’t index what it can’t find. Also remember that a spider will not be able to follow a link that requires a form submission or Java Script so small business website promotion is very important.

While considering the subject of links, if you are using HTML and CSS on your site, make sure that both work properly. A certain minimum level of requirements must be met so that your pages will display correctly. It is only if these are met that a spider can do its work. There are free facilities online that can check both of these for you.

* Make sure your links work.

* Do not use forms or Javascript if you want a search engine spider to find your pages

* Check that HTML and CSS work properly.

Do not make your Pages too big!

Most of us have heard the expression ‘size isn’t everything’. While this may not be true of many things, it does matter when it comes to web pages. People do not like having to wait an eternity for a web page to load. Search engine spiders may not fully index a page bigger than 150k in size. Remember that the size of a page does not simply depend on the actual HTML file itself, but includes everything on the page such as images, banners etc.

If you have a lot of images on your pages, then either reduce the number of them, or use a program such as Macromedia Fireworks to optimize them for the web. If the page has a big file size because there is a massive amount of text in it, then you should consider splitting the text into smaller, more manageable pieces and putting them on several pages and linking one to another. SEO Chat has a tool called “Page Size Lookup” which can tell you the size of your web page; you can check it out at

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/page-size/

* Keep the file size to below 150k

* Optimize images for the web

* Use a free page size checker to find out the actual size of the page.

Search Engines and Directories; What is the difference between a search engine and a directory?

People frequently use the term ‘search engine’ as a catch-all expression for anything they use to search the Web. They are different things though, and an understanding of the differences will enable you get use both effectively to promote your site more successfully.

How does a search engine work?

Search engines use highly sophisticated software to search the web for new pages. It then automatically creates and updates their indexes. Whenever they find an active hyperlink, they will follow it and add that to the index and so on. These ‘crawling’ programs are generally referred to as ‘spiders’.

Normally, all this is totally automatic, but sometimes human intervention is involved. The spider will return periodically to the pages and check for updated content. Often there will be a delay between you uploading your page, and the spider finding it, unless you submit your URL directly to the search engine itself. You can submit a web URL to Google ™ free of charge.

* Search engines are usually automatic

* They will revisit your pages.

* Spiders will find all the pages on your site as long as there are active hyperlinks for them to follow.

* You can submit a site to most search engines free of charge.

How Directories Work.

The primary difference between a search engine and a search directory is that a directory is compiled by a real person. Frequently the site owner will submit a short description of the site together with its URL to the directory compiler to be considered for inclusion. Directories are arranged into categories to make it easier to find what you are looking for.

When you submit your site to a directory, you choose the category you want your site to be featured in. A reviewer then checks to ensure that your site is in the most suitable category.

Another difference between a search engine and a directory is that whereas a search engine could list every individual page in your web site, a directory will generally only contain a single entry covering your entire site.

* Directories are compiled by real people.

* They are categorized.

* A reviewer checks to ensure your site is in the best category.

* A directory will usually only contain one entry for your entire site.

Shared Indexes and Hybrids

Things are never so straightforward though. Some search portals are a hybrid, combing a search engine and a directory. The search engine part returns automated results, while the directory gives human found results.

Normally, a hybrid will supply hits from the directory as the primary source, with the search engine results of individual pages as the secondary source.

Getting your Site Ready

It cannot be stressed too strongly that search engines and/or directories are by far the most important way of getting your site noticed. To do this, you have to properly prepare the site and submit your URL to them.

Keywords are important: Choose the right keywords

Think what your web site is all about. If you had to describe your site in one word, then that word is your first keyword. Then think about other words to describe your site. Make a list of them, with the most important at the top of the list and so on. You want a list of between ten and fifteen words. Since these keywords will be used in a variety of ways, it is important that you take some time selecting them.

Keywords are important because they are possibly the most important thing that a search engine uses to determine whether a page is included in the search results. Even although different search engines use keywords in different ways, most experts agree that the frequency and position of your keywords is an important factor.

* Select keywords to describe your site.

* Choose 10 – 15 keywords.

* Take your time picking keywords – they are extremely important.

Pick a Good Title for your Web Page

When you write a web page, there is always a tag. This goes into the section of your web page. The tag is what is shown at the top of your web page when it is displayed in a web browser. Search engines, however, often use the tag as the title of the listing in the results.

The tag looks like this

The name of my Web Page

Not only is it good practice to make your tag have a good description of the content of the page, but if you can manage to work into it some of your keywords, so much the better.

Why you should use Meta Tags?

What are meta tags?

Meta tags are a special type of HTML code that goes into the section of a web page. Site visitors do not normally see them, but search engine spiders do. Just as some HTML tags have an attribute with a value, so too do meta tags.

As far as optimizing your web page for search engines is concerned, the most important meta tags are keywords and description. The syntax for the keyword tag is as follows:

The description tag is as follows:

Unlike some HTML tags, it is not strictly necessary to have the meta tag closed, but if you want to have valid XHTML, then you do need to close all your tags.

Consider your URL

Since we are discussing matters that will influence how a page appears, it is worth considering the actual URL of the page itself. Since the URL that appears in your browser reflects the file path for the page, it makes good sense to have the file name reflect the navigation of the site.

You can see at a glance that this page refers to the Lower Square, which is part of the Castle, which in turn is part of Stirling. Not only does this meaningful URL impart information to the visitor, but for the web designer it makes sense to have the separate files arranged in a logical manner. This will only apply to pages that have not been dynamically created by a database program, of course.

* Choose a meaningful title for your page.

* Put your keywords into the /www.dmoz.org/). This is the largest human-maintained directory of the Web. Because it allows virtually anyone to access its resources, many search portals such as AOL, Netscape and HotBot take advantage of this and include their data into their own systems. This means that once you are included on the ODP database, you are also included in many others.

* There are places you can submit your site free of charge

* Google is probably the most important place to submit to.

* Yahoo is a good second choice if you don’t mind registering with them.

* Do not forget the Open Directory Project.

Paid Listings

Although Google and Yahoo do not charge you anything for submitting your site to them, they do not guarantee where or when your site will appear in their listings. However, they do have sponsored links that appear either above or beside the listing of search engine hits. These are useful for promoting your small business web site since they are targeted links. If, for instance, someone searches for “bagpipes”, then not only will they get a list of bagpipe related sites returned, but they will also see the ‘sponsored links”.

Free Promotional Techniques

Ad Swapping

This is one of the easier ways of getting your web site promoted. What it involves basically is that you display an advertising banner, button or text link on your web site, and other sites do the same for your ads.

The simplest way of swapping banner ads is to join an existing banner swapping network:

Banner Advertising

Banner networks work because you are provided with a few lines of HTML code to include on your web pages, usually near the top. The HTML creates banners from other sites on your pages. When a visitor clicks on them, they are re-directed to their web site. At the same time, you provide the network organizer with your own banner to display elsewhere.

There are many banner ad networks available, so choose with caution. Try to find one that will direct traffic to your site, by displaying your ad on related sites. In order for the network to make money, they will perhaps ask you to display 2 banners in return for displaying yours once.

No network will promise a 1:1 ratio, so avoid those that do. Do not consider paying for extra banners until you have proved to yourself that the free ad is generating enough visitors to your site. Although most networks will promise not to display ads for pornographic or other unsuitable sites, in reality you have no control over them.

* Banner ads are free

* Try to choose a network that is related in some way to your business.

* Avoid those that make extravagant claims about the ratio of ads.

* Be aware that you have virtually no control over what ads appear on your site.

* You might get buttons or text links instead of banners.

Peer to Peer Swaps

Although banner swapping can yield increased exposure of your site, sometimes a more targeted approach is required. The object of the exercise is to get your ad seen by as many possible visitors as possible, therefore if you can arrange a deal with the webmaster of a busier site than yours it could be advantageous.

You may have to compromise. In return for prominently displaying an advertisement for a busier or better known web site than yours, you might have to agree to less prominence on the other site.

Web Rings

These are networks of similarly themed sites which creates links from one to another to form a chain. You will display a web link icon and a list of at least some of the other sites in the ring. If you are just launching your web site it is probably best to try to join an established ring.

There are possible flaws in joining a web ring. You will need to allow space on your pages to display the ring logo. Visitors might think that you are part of an organization, and if some of the sites are badly built, you might be associated with the rest of them. You will have no control over which sites join the ring, and link to you and vice versa.

* Web rings are free.

* They are normally similar web sites to your own.

* You have no control over the quality of the other sites in the ring.

Article Submission Sites : What is an Article Submission site?

An article submission site, and there are roughly 250 of them, are an effective way of promoting your own goods and services as well as generating traffic to your web site. Their purpose is to provide webmasters, e-book editors and e-zine publishers with free content for their own publications. The articles are usually arranged into different categories, and the site is normally searchable.

How they work

You write an article or series of articles about what you have to offer on your web site. The purpose of the article is not to directly sell your goods. Let us suppose that your web site sells a wide range of possible gifts for all members of the family. Your article might be about, for example, birthday gift ideas for teenage boys.

The purpose is to make your article interesting enough and informative enough for it to be used somewhere else. Since you have included some biographical details about yourself, including your own URL, and your article is published exactly as it appears on the article site, your URL appears in the end-user’s web site. Thus you are getting free publicity, and the publisher is getting free content.

* Article submission sites get you free publicity.

* Publishers get free page content.

* Your URL appears wherever your article is used, and so generates traffic to your site.

Paid or free submissions

All article submission sites will allow you to submit your article for nothing. You register with the site, and you can select what category you want your article to appear in. When you write your article you will include the same keywords as you did when you wrote the HTML for your web site. Thus a search engine will find your site, as well as the article you wrote about it.

Some article sites will allow you to bid for better placement within their pages. Basically, the more you bid, the higher prominence you will get on the article site’s home page. Thus you are the first thing a publisher notices. Even if you are outbid for top spot, chances are you will still be on the home page. Since a lot of the sites also have separate front pages for each of the categories, even if you don’t achieve prime position on the site’s home page, you likely will in the category pages.

* Use the same keywords you used on your web pages.

* You can bid for increased placement on the article site’s pages.

Summary

As you can see, there are many ways that you can promote your small business web site. By far the simplest way is to ensure that your web site has carefully chosen key words for search engines to find. You can also submit your web site to search engines, ad exchange networks, web rings and article submission sites free.

About the Author:

Rajesh V. Tavakari, Senior SEO of http://www.website-promotion-ranking-services.com/. Offering affordable website promotion and natural optimization services since 1998. Website : http://www.website-promotion-ranking-services.com/ . You may freely reprint this article on your website or in your newsletter provided this courtesy notice, author name and URL remain intact.

Rajesh Tavakari

http://www.articlesbase.com/small-business-articles/how-to-promote-your-small-business-web-site-without-costing-you-a-nickel-129732.html

Organizing a Cost Effective Small Business WebSite Promotion And how to promote your website without costing you a nickel.!

Small Business Web Site Promotion

The most important thing to remember when you want to encourage visitors to visit your web site is to make sure they will want to return again. ‘Visitors’ means not just human web surfers, but also the search engines and directories. Small business website promotion, no matter how much you promote your site, will be the look of the site that will keep visitors there and hopefully buy your products or services.

Optimize your Site for Search Engines; Check your links

Small business website promotion starts with a search engine spider indexing or cataloging your site by following the links from one page to another. Just as human visitors dislike a broken link, so do the spiders. If a link doesn’t
work they’ll simply move onto the next page. No matter how sophisticated the search engine software is, it can’t index what it can’t find. Also remember that a spider will not be able to follow a link that requires a form submission or Java Script so small business website promotion is very important.

While considering the subject of links, if you are using HTML and CSS on your site, make sure that both work properly. A certain minimum level of requirements must be met so that your pages will display correctly. It is only if these are met that a spider can do its work. There are free facilities online that can check both of these for you.

* Make sure your links work.
* Do not use forms or Javascript if you want a search engine spider to find your pages
* Check that HTML and CSS work properly.

Do not make your Pages too big!

Most of us have heard the expression ‘size isn’t everything’. While this may not be true of many things, it does matter when it comes to web pages. People do not like having to wait an eternity for a web page to load. Search engine spiders may not fully index a page bigger than 150k in size. Remember that the size of a page does not simply depend on the actual HTML file itself, but includes everything on the page such as images, banners etc.

If you have a lot of images on your pages, then either reduce the number of them, or use a program such as Macromedia Fireworks to optimize them for the web. If the page has a big file size because there is a massive amount of text in it, then you should consider splitting the text into smaller, more manageable pieces and putting them on several pages and linking one to another. SEO Chat has a tool called “Page Size Lookup” which can tell you the size of your web page; you can check it out at:

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/page-size/

* Keep the file size to below 150k
* Optimize images for the web
* Use a free page size checker to find out the actual size of the page.

Search Engines and Directories; What is the difference between a search engine and a directory?People frequently use the term ‘search engine’ as a catch-all expression for anything they use to search the Web. They are different things though, and an understanding of the differences will enable you get use both effectively to promote your site more successfully.

How does a search engine work?

Search engines use highly sophisticated software to search the web for new pages. It then automatically creates and updates their indexes. Whenever they find an active hyperlink, they will follow it and add that to the index and so on. These ‘crawling’ programs are generally referred to as ‘spiders’.

Normally, all this is totally automatic, but sometimes human intervention is involved. The spider will return periodically to the pages and check for updated content. Often there will be a delay between you uploading your page, and the spider finding it, unless you submit your URL directly to the search engine itself. You can submit a
web URL to Google ™ free of charge.

* Search engines are usually automatic
* They will revisit your pages.
* Spiders will find all the pages on your site as long as there are active hyperlinks for them to follow.
* You can submit a site to most search engines free of charge.

How Directories Work.

The primary difference between a search engine and a search directory is that a directory is compiled by a real person. Frequently the site owner will submit a short description of the site together with its URL to the directory compiler to be considered for inclusion. Directories are arranged into categories to make it easier to find what you are looking for.

When you submit your site to a directory, you choose the category you want your site to be featured in. A reviewer then checks to ensure that your site is in the most suitable category.Another difference between a search engine and a directory is that whereas a search engine could list every individual page in your web site, a directory will generally only contain a single entry covering your entire site.

* Directories are compiled by real people.
* They are categorized.
* A reviewer checks to ensure your site is in the best category.
* A directory will usually only contain one entry for your entire site.

Shared Indexes and Hybrids

Things are never so straightforward though. Some search portals are a hybrid, combing a search engine and a directory. The search engine part returns automated results, while the directory gives human found results.Normally, a hybrid will supply hits from the directory as the primary source, with the search engine results of
individual pages as the secondary source.

Getting your Site Ready

It cannot be stressed too strongly that search engines and/or directories are by far the most important way of getting your site noticed. To do this, you have to properly prepare the site and submit your URL to them. Keywords are important: Choose the right keywords

Think what your web site is all about. If you had to describe your site in one word, then that word is your first keyword. Then think about other words to describe your site. Make a list of them, with the most important at the top of the list and so on. You want a list of between ten and fifteen words. Since these keywords will be used in a variety of ways, it is important that you take some time selecting them.

Keywords are important because they are possibly the most important thing that a search engine uses to determine whether a page is included in the search results. Even although different search engines use keywords in different ways, most experts agree that the frequency and position of your keywords is an important factor.

* Select keywords to describe your site.
* Choose 10 – 15 keywords.
* Take your time picking keywords – they are extremely important.

Pick a Good Title for your Web Page

When you write a web page, there is always a tag. This goes into the section of your web page.
The tag is what is shown at the top of your web page when it is displayed in a web browser. Search
engines, however, often use the tag as the title of the listing in the results.
The tag looks like this
The name of my Web Page

Not only is it good practice to make your tag have a good description of the content of the page, but if you can manage to work into it some of your keywords, so much the better.

Why you should use Meta Tags? What are meta tags?

Meta tags are a special type of HTML code that goes into the section of a web page. Site visitors do not normally see them, but search engine spiders do. Just as some HTML tags have an attribute with a value, so too do meta tags.

As far as optimizing your web page for search engines is concerned, the most important meta tags are keywords and description. The syntax for the keyword tag is as follows:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”">

The description tag is as follows:

<meta name=”description” content=”">

Unlike some HTML tags, it is not strictly necessary to have the meta tag closed, but if you want to have valid

XHTML, then you do need to close all your tags.
Consider your URL

Since we are discussing matters that will influence how a page appears, it is worth considering the actual URL of the page itself. Since the URL that appears in your browser reflects the file path for the page, it makes good sense to have the file name reflect the navigation of the site.

You can see at a glance that this page refers to the Lower Square, which is part of the Castle, which in turn is part of Stirling. Not only does this meaningful URL impart information to the visitor, but for the web designer it makes sense to have the separate files arranged in a logical manner. This will only apply to pages that have not been dynamically created by a database program, of course.

* Choose a meaningful title for your page.
* Put your keywords into the /www.dmoz.org/). This is the largest human-maintained directory of the Web. Because it allows virtually anyone to access its resources, many search portals such as AOL, Netscape and HotBot take advantage of this and include their data into their own systems. This means that once you are included on the ODP database, you are also included in many others.

* There are places you can submit your site free of charge
* Google is probably the most important place to submit to.
* Yahoo is a good second choice if you don’t mind registering with them.
* Do not forget the Open Directory Project.

Paid Listings

Although Google and Yahoo do not charge you anything for submitting your site to them, they do not guarantee where or when your site will appear in their listings. However, they do have sponsored links that appear either above or beside the listing of search engine hits. These are useful for promoting your small business web site since they are targeted links. If, for instance, someone searches for “bagpipes”, then not only will they get a list of bagpipe related sites returned, but they will also see the ‘sponsored links”.

Free Promotional Techniques: Ad Swapping

This is one of the easier ways of getting your web site promoted. What it involves basically is that you display an advertising banner, button or text link on your web site, and other sites do the same for your ads.The simplest way of swapping banner ads is to join an existing banner swapping network Banner Advertising

Banner networks work because you are provided with a few lines of HTML code to include on your web pages, usually near the top. The HTML creates banners from other sites on your pages. When a visitor clicks on them, they are re-directed to their web site. At the same time, you provide the network organizer with your own banner to display elsewhere.

There are many banner ad networks available, so choose with caution. Try to find one that will direct traffic to your site, by displaying your ad on related sites. In order for the network to make money, they will perhaps ask you to display 2 banners in return for displaying yours once.

No network will promise a 1:1 ratio, so avoid those that do. Do not consider paying for extra banners until you have proved to yourself that the free ad is generating enough visitors to your site. Although most networks will promise not to display ads for pornographic or other unsuitable sites, in reality you have no control over them.

* Banner ads are free
* Try to choose a network that is related in some way to your business.
* Avoid those that make extravagant claims about the ratio of ads.
* Be aware that you have virtually no control over what ads appear on your site.
* You might get buttons or text links instead of banners.

Peer to Peer Swaps

Although banner swapping can yield increased exposure of your site, sometimes a more targeted approach is required. The object of the exercise is to get your ad seen by as many possible visitors as possible, therefore if you can arrange a deal with the webmaster of a busier site than yours it could be advantageous.

You may have to compromise. In return for prominently displaying an advertisement for a busier or better known web site than yours, you might have to agree to less prominence on the other site.Web RingsThese are networks of similarly themed sites which creates links from one to another to form a chain. You will display a web link icon and a list of at least some of the other sites in the ring. If you are just launching your web site it is probably best to try to join an established ring.

There are possible flaws in joining a web ring. You will need to allow space on your pages to display the ring logo. Visitors might think that you are part of an organization, and if some of the sites are badly built, you might be associated with the rest of them. You will have no control over which sites join the ring, and link to you and vice
versa.

* Web rings are free.
* They are normally similar web sites to your own.
* You have no control over the quality of the other sites in the ring.

Article Submission Sites : What is an Article Submission site?

An article submission site, and there are roughly 250 of them, are an effective way of promoting your own goods and services as well as generating traffic to your web site. Their purpose is to provide webmasters, e-book editors and e-zine publishers with free content for their own publications. The articles are usually arranged into different categories, and the site is normally searchable.

How they workYou write an article or series of articles about what you have to offer on your web site. The purpose of the article is not to directly sell your goods. Let us suppose that your web site sells a wide range of possible gifts for all members of the family. Your article might be about, for example, birthday gift ideas for teenage boys.

The purpose is to make your article interesting enough and informative enough for it to be used somewhere else. Since you have included some biographical details about yourself, including your own URL, and your article is published exactly as it appears on the article site, your URL appears in the end-user’s web site. Thus you are getting free publicity, and the publisher is getting free content.

* Article submission sites get you free publicity.
* Publishers get free page content.
* Your URL appears wherever your article is used, and so generates traffic to your site.

Paid or free submissions

All article submission sites will allow you to submit your article for nothing. You register with the site, and you can select what category you want your article to appear in. When you write your article you will include the same keywords as you did when you wrote the HTML for your web site. Thus a search engine will find your site, as well as the article you wrote about it.

Some article sites will allow you to bid for better placement within their pages. Basically, the more you bid, the higher prominence you will get on the article site’s home page. Thus you are the first thing a publisher notices. Even if you are outbid for top spot, chances are you will still be on the home page. Since a lot of the sites also have separate front pages for each of the categories, even if you don’t achieve prime position on the site’s home page, you likely will in the category pages.

* Use the same keywords you used on your web pages.
* You can bid for increased placement on the article site’s pages.

Summary

As you can see, there are many ways that you can promote your small business web site. By far the simplest way is to ensure that your web site has carefully chosen key words for search engines to find. You can also submit your web site to search engines, ad exchange networks, web rings and article submission sites free.

Rajesh

http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/organizing-a-cost-effective-small-business-website-promotion-and-how-to-promote-your-website-without-costing-you-a-nickel-101704.html

To get a bucket load of internet traffic is the goal of every internet marketer but unfortunately it’s easier said than achieved. The question at hand then (especially if you are new to internet marketing) is how do you increase internet traffic to your site?

There are three fundamental ways to get internet traffic to your site. Some of these methods have fairly rapid results, some are more long term and some are free while others will require you dipping into your pocket. Okay here goes…the following are the three main methods to increase internet traffic to your site:

1. Paying For Internet Traffic: In an ideal world it would simply be a case of build it and then they’ll come. But as you are well aware this world of ours is far from ideal…so unfortunately you are going to have to sweat a little to get that online traffic! I’m sure like most of us you really don’t want to pay for internet traffic (who does?) but the plain fact is, if your site is new, while you are busy struggling to claw your way up the search engine rank pages (SERPs) paid advertising is your quickest route to get internet traffic.

Another reason why (if you’re new to online marketing) you should seriously consider using this method is the fact that your site is going to be just another splash in a tidal wave of millions of internet marketing sites. And know what that means? It means the search engines are going to be ever so reluctant to facilitate your climb to the top! Why? Because you aren’t offering any new, unique or useful information to the web (well probably not in the beginning at least)—and that by the way is the core of the search engine business—offering useful information to searchers. Further more this is also the reason why people who target niche markets get higher SERP listings and higher page rank so much faster than somebody who targets an already saturated, highly competitive market.

Paying to get internet traffic is what is commonly referred to as Pay-Per-Click or PPC. At its most basic, pay-per-click marketing involves you composing an advert and bidding for a relevant searched-for keyword. Your ad will then be listed on the relevant search engine index pages for that same keyword you bid. The more competitive a keyword is, the higher your bid price will have to be for your ad to appear on either Page 1 or Page 2 of the search engines (the reason why you want to be on the first two search engine pages is that most people rarely go deeper than two pages to view the results of their search query). The advantages of PPC advertising is that it can increase internet traffic to your site within a few minutes to hours. The disadvantage is that it is very competitive and if you aren’t careful, it can cost you a mini-fortune with little to show for it. So you’d be well advised to take the time to learn the ropes for PPC marketing before diving headlong. If you are new to the whole PPC concept, go to Google and read up about their PPC model commonly known as Google Adwords.

The following is a list of PPC models you can use to increase internet traffic to your site:

The Big Guns: Google Adwords; Yahoo! Search Marketing.

The Lesser Guns: Kanoodle; Ask Jeeves; Enhance Interactive; 7Search.

2. Free Internet Traffic: Yes there is such a thing as free on-target internet traffic, and the advantages are self-evident…FREE! The flip side however, is that you are going to have to put in a little bit more effort into harnessing this particular brand of internet traffic. So how do you go about getting this free online traffic—simply…by promoting yourself to the online community as an expert in your field. And the way to do this is by writing interesting, informative and useful articles relevant to your target audience. Next thing, submit your article to as many Article Directories as you can. Then Kazaam! Before you know it, people will be snapping up your articles as content for their sites! There are hundreds of article directories out there and almost as many software programs to automate your article submission so finding places to submit your articles to shouldn’t be a problem. If your articles are well written and informative a lot of the better directories will even include them on their high-stream RSS (real simple syndication) traffic list.

Not only will writing good articles develop new internet traffic flow to your site, it will also boost your conversion ratio (visitors-to-buyer) because your well written articles (or so we hope) will foster a degree of trust and respect in your visitors…which ultimately translates into a visitor who is more receptive to buy from you. However, equally important is the fact that writing articles is the best way to get highly relevant one-way back-links pointing to your site without spending a dime!

Talking about links, if there is only one thing you should know about links, it is that keyword relevant one-way links are the best links to have. Furthermore, since they are coming from topically related sites those links are really going to be highly rated by the search engines. Well written articles will have an enormous impact on increasing internet traffic to your website through the viral nature of their dissemination…the only drawback is it may take some time. So with this in mind it’s best to start your article writing as soon as possible. That way your back-links will be picked up sooner by the search engines!

A final note about article submission…it’s better to submit to article directories with high page rank, at least to begin with. How come? Because it’s a well known fact that search engine spiders tend to crawl websites with higher page rank much more frequently than sites with low or zero page rank. In essence this means that those back-links pointing to your site will be picked up that much quicker by the search engine crawlers. Also people are much more likely to get content from well respected directories, and such directories naturally tend to have a page rank of 5 and above. However also bear in mind that an article directory that has a low page rank today may well boast a high page rank sometime in the tomorrows to come. So go ahead (if you have the time or software), be a daredevil and submit to them all!

3. Getting Website Traffic Using Good SEO Techniques: Lastly but certainly not least you should apply time proven and tested SEO (search engine optimization) techniques to increase your website traffic. But first things first…are you familiar with the term SEO? If not, here’s a very brief explanation (this article is not about search engine optimization and will barely scratch the surface on all there is to talk about SEO. However as things stand, the internet is liberally sprinkled with thousands of excellent articles on SEO so you shouldn’t have any difficulty getting up to speed).

At its most basic SEO is the process whereby you structure or design your site in a manner that search engine crawlers (also known as spiders) find highly attractive. The aim of search engine optimization is to get your website ranked as high as possible on the search engine index (results) pages (the pages that show up in your browser, following a search query on any search engine). All things being equal (i.e., you’ve got original useful content on your site) a well optimized site will rank better on the search engine index pages than one that is not optimized yet (more or less) has the same attributes.

SEO techniques are laborious and time consuming, and furthermore the results from your SEO efforts may take a while to manifest—but what you should understand, is that when applied optimally, in time this method will be your biggest draw of internet traffic!

Mugambo
http://www.articlesbase.com/online-promotion-articles/internet-traffichow-to-drive-it-to-your-website-51817.html

Many surfers use the Google or Alexa bar that integrates into their web browsers which consequently makes it easier for them to search and navigate through Internet. However, how many have the “overall page rank” indicator on these bars which shows either a ranking or the importance of the page?

The overall page rank in directories like Google, Yahoo or Alexa is the key factor while doing a search. It decides which website or page deserves the top places in the results of the search of a keyword. The search engine basically calculates the importance of the webpage.

For example, let’s say that you prepared a webpage supplying the users with focused, detailed and understandable info. You think your page deserves a high importance, therefore when you search for the theme of your website, you believe it should be shown in the top 20. Well, sometimes life is cruel. If you don’t optimize your webpage for a specific keyword, if you don’t get enough inbound links directing the user to your site, you would be disappointed by the 1/10 importance rating in Google. Don’t give up! It’s still worth fighting for. There are several factors which decide the page rank of a website.

First of all, Internet is not like the streets of a city: if you put your “shop” in a busy street, people will drop by your place. No visit on Internet is a coincidence. You have to create your links from other sites (inbound links). You also have to increase the internal linking of your website so that visitors can just “hang around” in your site. So your first factor for the page rank is the linking of your page.

Secondly, pages which attract more users (i.e. number of unique daily users) are obviously more important in the “eyes” of the search engines. This, being the dependent variable in our equation, grows directly proportional to the inbound links. So, page rank also increases with the number of unique users.

At last, relative, focused content increases the importance of your page (page rank). Initially, every page you add to your site increases the overall page rank of the whole before you start adding in-context hyperlinks; “in-context” hyperlinks because according to Google authorities, the hyperlinks that you place inside the content of the page are accepted more valuable.

One of the best things you can do is add a Site Map. Google and other search engines love them! It their robots/spiders find your pages and properly index them. I have found an easy and free way to do this. Download Google’s Free Site Map Generator here.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/sitemap-ge nerator.html#download

Briefly, on the web, there are no lucky days, no coincidences or no serendipities. If you want traffic on your page, you have to create it yourself. You have to put quality, focused and original content, you have to increase the number of the inbound links. The traffic on your site will increase automatically depending on the other variables. Finally, one day you will look at your site and see that the page rank has jumped from 1 to 4 or even higher. Then you will understand that “La vita e bella.”

Dan Farrell
http://www.articlesbase.com/viral-marketing-articles/free-web-traffic-through-page-rank-4010.html

Once you have become a network marketing business owner, you will find yourself in the same position as others on the internet – getting the word out. It will not matter how great your website looks, or how fantastic your product or service is if no one knows your site exists. One of the main ways to get a high volume of traffic to your site is by taking advantage of search engine advertising, both through pay-per-click search results, and natural search results.

One of the ways many network marketing professionals have found success in advertising on search engines is through the use of pay-per-click advertising. Pay-per-click advertising involves a third party showing your ad on their site in return for you paying them a pre-determined amount every time a visitor from their site clicks on your ad. The most widely used programs for this type of targeted advertising are Google Adwords, and Yahoo Overture.

The main benefit of pay-per-click advertising is the very targeted traffic you can generate. When you setup an ad campaign, you specify the exact keywords you want to use for any given ad, thereby ensuring the traffic or clicks are really looking for what you have to offer. The process also requires you to specify how much you are willing to bid for each keyword that you choose to apply to your ad campaign. Of course the better you are at creating your ad campaign and using appropriate keywords, the better the results.

On the downside, pay-per-click advertising is a widely used advertising method, thus increasing the bidding competitiveness for quality keyword search terms. The end result is higher and higher per click prices. You must have a good idea of the conversion percentages your site provides in order to be able to determine how much you can afford to pay while still leaving you with a profit.

Another method of advertising your network marketing business using the power and reach of search engines is through natural search results. A natural search result is when information about your website comes up in the search engine results in the unpaid or natural section of the search results.

The only way to get listed in the natural search engine results is if your site is found by the search engine to be highly relevant to the keywords used in the search. There is an entire technical science behind optimizing your website to achieve high ranking natural search engine results. The technical term for this is called search engine optimization or SEO for short. There are people and business that specialize just in SEO as it is a very technical and specialized practice.

One way to create a high ranking natural search result website is to design your site around the information sought after by the search engine spiders. There once was a time when having sufficient keywords listed in meta tags would draw their attention, but the number of hits to websites with erroneous information led search engine developers to train their spiders to look for only good information. Many times in the past, a search would turn up websites with totally unrelated information based on keywords alone.

Todays spiders also search for titles of web pages that relate to the search terms as well as quality information about the search terms. Your web pages should have quality text that provides information for which the person is looking, and not only on the index page. The meta tags, as well as quality textual information should appear on every page of your site where you want search spiders to look.

Getting your site noticed by potential customers when they perform an internet search for keywords that apply to your website is the key to generating a high volume of consistent traffic. Once you can figure out a way to accomplish this, you will be well on your way to success.

Tom Childs

http://www.articlesbase.com/sem-articles/search-engine-advertising-101-82681.html

A discussion of the benefits of buying SEO placement and how it can be part of a successful search engine optimization strategy for a website.

Search engine optimization consists of about a 100 techniques of which buying your way to the top of a local search engine is just one. This is sometimes simply referred to as buying SEO placement. As only about 30% of people actually click on these (studies have shown) it is probably a good idea not to rely on buying SEO placement solely to bring business to your website.

However used in tandem with other strategies, buying your way to the top of the search engine page by buying SEO placement actually has quite a few benefits. First of all simply optimizing your copy can take awhile especially if you are doing it all yourself. Getting a service to do it for you could save you some time. On average it takes most people about two months to SEO a website on their own and sometimes as long as a year before they see this have any effect on their search engine page rankings.

The best and cheapest way to buy SEO placement is to do it through a pay per click program. The risk to your pocket book is minimal especially if you go to the time and trouble to test your keywords first. Most of the big pay-per-click systems on the most well known search engines have set up test programs so that you can see whether or not your choice of keywords actually drives customers to your site. This is important, as you don’t want to spend money on keywords that don’t work for you.

Keep in mind too that you should always be monitoring your pay per click campaigns to see how much of the business sent to you actually produces buying customer. The last thing you want is a busy website that is full of non-purchasing or non-converting visitors – unfortunately sometimes that is a by-product of buying SEO placement no matter how good your selection of keywords initially seemed to be.

Chris Angus
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/the-benefits-of-buying-seo-placement-121538.html

Search engines come, and search engines go. That’s the nature of the beasts. Some get swallowed up by their competitors; others simply disappear from the Internet. Once in a great while, however, a new search engine comes along and beats all the odds by becoming successful.

One of those that seems to be beating the odds is the relatively new search engine, Search Big Daddy. On the day this article was written, they had an Alexa ranking of 1,380. That means that on that day they had the 1,380th most visited Website, out of the millions of Websites on the Internet, by surfers that had the Alexa toolbar installed on their computer.

The lower a Website’s Alexa ranking is, the more visitors they are receiving. For example, among the top search engines Yahoo has an Alexa ranking of 1, MSN has an Alexa ranking of 2, and the Alexa ranking for Google is 3.

The popularity that Search Big Daddy is enjoying at this point in time is due in some part to the business model they are using for their search engine. It is quite unusual when compared to the business models of the three major search engines mentioned above.

Just like those search engines, Search Big Daddy offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, but with a twist. The twist is that Search Big Daddy provides their own advertisers with the “dollars” they use to purchase PPC advertising from them.

Here’s how their business model works:

In order to bid on a keyword placement at Search Big Daddy, visitors must first sign up as a member. When they sign up, they are provided with their own search engine portal and $50 (as of the date of this article) in advertising dollars. They can use any portion of that $50 to bid on keyword placements, just like they would at any of the major search portals.

New members also receive an opportunity to create one top keyword position for the keyword or keyword phrase of their choice, providing that keyword or keyword phrase has not already been taken by another member.

Once they select a top keyword position, the Webpage they have chosen to link to from that keyword or keyword phrase shows up at the top of the search results when someone searches on that keyword or keyword phrase.

That Webpage is shown in a small IFrame (inline frame) with a scrollbar on the right. Below the IFrame, searchers will find the regular search results, both paid listings and free listings, for that keyword or keyword phrase.

Members can earn more advertising dollars by referring other people to Search Big Daddy. Each time a new person they referred signs up, they earn advertising dollars.

Members also earn advertising dollars each time they perform a search on their personal search engine portal or when someone they referred performs a search on their own personal search engine portal.

Once they have accumulated a certain amount of advertising dollars through all those methods, a member can use those dollars to purchase additional top keyword positions or to bid on regular PPC keyword placements.

You may be wondering how a search engine could survive on the Internet using a business model that provides their advertisers with the money to use for purchasing PPC advertising from them. That’s where the rest of their business model comes into play.

Search Big Daddy earns income in several different ways. They offer a paid upgrade to free members that wish to become a “Keyword Sponsor”. They sell “Keyword Manager” positions. They also sell keyword links on “Niche Keyword Cloud Pages”.

Soon (possibly by the time you are reading this article) all members will have, in addition to their own search engine portal, their own Blog pages at Search Big Daddy. I’m sure they have plans to monetize those Blog pages in some way as well.

If I had to guess, I would say that 95% or more of the traffic that Search Big Daddy is getting on a daily basis is from Internet marketers that are trying to stake their claims for top keyword positions.

It remains to be seen whether or not ordinary Web surfers will eventually start using Search Big Daddy as their search engine of choice. Judging by the large amount of traffic this search engine is currently receiving, there are a lot of Internet marketers out there that are betting that those ordinary surfers will, over time, migrate to Search Big Daddy.

Bob Hampton
http://www.articlesbase.com/communication-articles/the-search-big-daddy-business-model-52229.html