Independent Digital

How To Optimize Your Blog For The Best Search Engine Results by Gregg Hall

If you are interested in trying to make money from your blog, you probably want to know how you can best optimize your blog for great search engine results. After all, most people stumble upon blogs when doing a search for something. If you use these optimization tips effectively, it may be your blog more people are drawn to. So, check these tips out and experiment with your own blog. Note what has the best results and stay with it. Change the other things around a bit until you get the results out of them that you want.

Simple Content

Many experts say that the best way to optimize your blog is to keep everything very simple. You can choose one quality content topic and make it your base. Then from there you can use variations of the topic in order to keep everything going. This may seem like a broad and useless tip, but once you get into blogging more and more, you understand how important it is.

Put More Out There

If you are trying to get more of a presence on search engines, be sure that you have something to show. The more content you have, the more likely you are to show up on a search engine. Bigger sites always do better than smaller sites. It is simply a numbers game. Search engines will see your site in a different manner, depending on how much content you have. The more content you have, the more there is a chance there will be that someone will stumble onto your site.

Ask Search Engines for Help

Few people know that you can actually submit your site to search engines. Submit your site's URL and ask to be put into the index. This can take a while, but if they do list you in the index, you will see a larger increase in traffic. Beware however of a service that asks for money in exchange for getting your sites into search engines. These can be a little misleading at times. There are ways to do this without needing to pay anyone at all.

Keyword Pay

A great idea for optimization is to identify the most popular keywords. By doing this, you are essentially targeting the keywords that people most often search for. When you do this, you have an edge over the competition. When you know exactly what the people are looking for, you can give them just that. Once you have a list of keywords, simply create articles that use these keywords. By creating these articles, you are putting yourself out there to be found. When someone does a search for those keywords, your blog just might pop up on their screen. Be careful not to use the keyword so much that your article does not make sense however.

Daily Updates

If you really want the best optimization, you should update it daily at the least. The more you update it, the more often search engines will index your blog. Therefore, you will want to be sure your blog is always fresh. Adding new information is the best way to update your blog. The more new information you have, the better off you will be! Just be sure that when you do update, it is for a good reason. You should always remember that content can have a purpose, but it should always be quality content. If you compromise content, you are only allowing yourself to strip the creativity from your project. If you are happy with doing that, by all means go ahead. However, as a writer, you will have a certain responsibility to web surfers. Unless you want everything on the web to be useless, do your part!

Use these tips to help optimize your blog and get the most from search engines. The more you post and use these tips, the more results you will see. If you earn your living from the number of clicks your blog or your ads get, this will essentially mean more money for you. You can use all of them or some of them. Experiment with them to see what works best for you and your blog. Put these tips to use and watch your results rise today!

Gregg Hall is a business consultant and author for many online and offline businesses and lives in Navarre Florida. See more articles on blogging and internet marketing at http://www.theinternetmarketingsecrets.com

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By Anthony Gregory

One of the newest places to submit articles that you have written is Digg. This is a huge social network whose readers actually despise anything that looks like marketing. You probably won?t last two minutes on this site, which has a ?burial? feature that kicks overt displays of advertising right off the sight. However if you are very clever about the way you position yourself on Digg you can use it as a marketing tool to bring more visitors to your site and that may mean potential link partners and advertisers. If you are successful at posting writing on Digg then you will likely experience a ton of traffic being brought to your site.

Digg is all about user powered content. Everything is submitted and voted on by the digg community. After you submit content, other people read your submission and Digg what they like best. If your story is popular and receives enough Digg vote, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of visitors to see. So how can you turn this into an SEO tool?

The first challenge is to get people to give a Digg vote to your posting. This means having an article on the top page or linking to someone who has a story on the top page. However even after you manage that you need to have a fantastic title and summary or the savvy, marketing hating readers on Digg may not even glance at any URL that is attached.

The main way that Digg can be part of a good SEO strategy is in driving a lot of traffic to your site quickly by getting in the top ten read articles on the first page of the site. This creates the kind of buzz and credibility for your site that just cannot be bought using keyword articles only.

Anthony Gregory is a SEO and Website Marketer. He can be contacted at: Sales (at) Brilliantseo.com

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3 Basic Steps to Search Engine Optimization by Pj Germain

Search engine optimization or SEO, is the art and science of making your websites pages appear attractive to the search engines. The better optimized your webpages are, the higher the ranking it will receive from a search engines web crawlers and spiders. The higher it ranks, the more traffic your website will receive. The more traffic your website receives, of course, the more profit you will be able to generate. The key to all of this is good Internet search engine optimization.

Why is having a high ranking website so important to the future success of your online business? Studies have shown that consumers seldom view websites that don't rank a spot on of the first two pages the search engines displays. Websites that receive a ranking that places them on the third page (or any other page subsequent to that) see a significantly lower amount of traffic at their websites then one that is ranked on the second page. There is even a staggering difference between the first and second page. In the world of e-commerce ranking and strong search engine optimization is paramount.

At first, search engine optimization may feel like trying to rappel down the Grand Canyon. There is a huge scary world full of big words like web crawlers, PageRank, Meta tags, and algorithms. You may have never heard of any of these things. A quick internet search of the world algorithm doesn't help; all you may get is a printout of strange symbols and numbers arranged in complex algebraic equations.

Sit back, take a deep breath, and try to relax. Search engine optimization is much more simple then you may think.

Algorithms really are every bit as complex as they look. Simply defined they are a finite set of carefully defined instructions. Most, if not all, computer programs are designed with strict algorithms.

PageRank is simply the program Google designed to search, index, and rank it registered webpage's. PageRank operates on a link analysis algorithm. PageRank is credited for Google incredible success.

Web crawlers are tools search engines use to browse the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. When web crawlers are browsing websites they are looking for algorithms.

Meta tags are special HTML tags that provide information to about a web page. Meta tags are written directly into the title tag and are only visible to the search engine.

The reality of search engine optimization is that you can start to optimize your website without any knowledge at all of the technical stuff involved in search engine optimization. Simply stated the very first step in designing a website that is going to be well ranked by the search engines is to create a content rich site. What this means is that you must cram as much information about your product into your website as you possibly can.

The third step to search engine optimization is to fill your site with keywords that will attract the web crawler's attention. The final step in a wonderfully optimized website is to submit it to the search engine that will compliment it.

Lastly, there is Link Popularity. What is this link popularity anyway, and why do you need it? Link popularity is a score that is accessed to a web site based on how many external and internal links are pointing or linking to any particular page. External links would include those that come from any other web site other than your own whereas internal links would be those that come from within the same domain name. Link popularity is also based not only on the quantity of links but the quality of those links as well. Therefore, to have a good link popularity score, it is not necessarily required to have a large number of links pointing to your site but rather a good number of quality links.

Pj Germain
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10 Costly Search Engine Mistakes to Avoid by Jeff Casmer

If you have a website then you already know the importance of traffic. Traffic is to Internet marketing as location is to real estate. It's the only thing that really matters. If you cannot generate targeted visitors to your site, you will not make any sales.

Usually the owner or designer of the website is the person designated to drive traffic to the site. The chief ingredient in generating traffic is the search engine. Of coarse, you can use advertising, but it's going to cost you. Using the search engines to generate targeted (interested in your product) traffic is the least expensive method known.

Unfortunately, many website owners do not understand the importance of search engine visibility, which leads to traffic. They place more importance on producing a "pretty" website. Not that this is bad, but it is really secondary to search engine placement. Hopefully, the following list of common mistakes, made by many website owners, will help you generate more targeted traffic to your site...after all, isn't that what you want.

1. Not using keywords effectively.

This is probably one of the most critical area of site design. Choose the right keywords and potential customers will find your site. Use the wrong ones and your site will see little, if any, traffic.

2. Repeating the same keywords.

When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking) the search engines may downgrade (or skip) the page or site.

3. Robbing pages from other websites.

How many times have you heard or read that "this is the Internet and it's ok" to steal icons and text from websites to use on your site. Don't do it. Its one thing to learn from others who have been there and another to outright copy their work. The search engines are very smart and usually detect page duplication. They may even prevent you from ever being listed by them.

4. Using keywords that are not related to your website.

Many unethical website owners try to gain search engine visibility by using keywords that have nothing at all to do with their website. They place unrelated keywords in a page (such as "sex", the name of a known celebrity, the hot search topic of the day, etc.) inside a meta tag for a page. The keyword doesn't have anything to do with the page topic. However, since the keyword is popular, they think this will boost their visibility. This technique is considered spam by the search engines and may cause the page (or sometimes the whole site) to be removed from the search engine listing.

5. Keyword stuffing.

Somewhat like keyword stacking listed above, this means to assign multiple keywords to the description of a graphic or layer that appears on your website by using the "alt=" HTML parameter. If the search engines find that this text does not really describe the graphic or layer it will be considered spam.

6. Relying on hidden text.

You might be inclined to think that if you cannot see it, it doesn't hurt. Wrong.... Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them invisible. For example, some unethical designers my set the keywords to the same color as the background of the web page; thereby, making it invisible.

7. Relying on tiny text.

This is another version of the item above (relying on hidden text). Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them tiny. Setting the text size of the keywords so small that it can barely be seen does this.

8. Assuming all search engines are the same.

Many people assume that each search engine plays by the same rules. This is not so. Each has their own rule base and is subject to change anytime they so desire. Make it a point to learn what each major search engine requires for high visibility.

9. Using free web hosting.

Do not use free web hosting if you are really serious about increasing site traffic via search engine visibility. Many times the search engines will eliminate content from these free hosts.

10. Forgetting to check for missing web page elements.

Make sure to check every page in your website for completeness, like missing links, graphics, etc. There are sites on the web that will do this for free.

This is just a few of the methods and techniques that you should avoid. Do not give in to the temptation that these methods will work for you. They will do more harm than good for your website.

Not only will you spend weeks of wasted effort, you may have your site banned from the search engines forever. Invest a little time to learn the proper techniques for increasing search engine visibility and your net traffic will increase.

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Has Your Website Been G-Slapped? by Ba Kiwanuka

Getting to the top of the search engines has never been easy and the bad news is that it has gotten even harder, especially if you are trying to peak Mt. Google

Recently, with respect to information quality, Google raised the bar even higher with another algorithm tweak that effectively reshuffled (and in some cases evaporated) page rank across thousands of web pages.

Thus if your website's PR (or that of its inner pages) recently stole quietly away in the middle of the night with nary a goodbye take consolation in the knowledge that you are not alone; this calamity has befallen countless others.

The latest Google algorithm tweak/update has been pretty widespread and non-discriminatory in nature, targeting both new sites and well established veteran sites too.

In the good ole days it used to be that a gray page-rank bar was indicative of a website/web page that had been banned from the Google index but that seems to no longer be the case. Lately it would appear that being grayed-out merely reflects a webpage/website that is under probation (of course in certain cases a gray PR band could actually reflect a banned website/web page).

So what does this all really mean?

Google Web Paradise

Understanding Google's goals and objectives is fundamental to search-engine optimizing your website effectively and correctly within their guidelines. The first thing you need to appreciate is that online search is a business. Google is Top Dog in the search engine business for two very simple reasons:

1. Google returns the most accurate results for any given search query.

2. Of all the search engines, Google has the fastest retrieval rate for almost all queries.

Being number one for both the above listed parameters obviously has major advantages; it ensures that more people flock to use your search engine and, as has been proven time and time again, where the crowds gather the advertisers hover not far behind.

Advertisers want to get the best bang for their buck so they will naturally tend to spend their dollars where they can get the greatest percentage of targeted and relevant eyeballs; which means advertising on the major search engines (of which surprise, surprise) Google is the leader!

Google's domination of online search is a tangential derivation of the saying "The Richer Get Richer," because as Google gets better and leaves the other search engines floundering in their dust, more and more people (and advertisers) will naturally tend to gravitate to them!

The New SEO Horizon

The first thing that should be understood is that the debate about the existence of the Google Sandbox has been laid to rest once and for all. It exists and has become even more expansive as well as having gotten more rigid!

As of January 2005, Google had over 100,000 servers with which to store data in its cache index. The cache index is where Google stores a copy of every page that the googlebot crawls on the internet.

Those web pages that eventually make it into the Google Primary Index (the index that displays the resulting listings in response to a query) are the pages that have been evaluated as most relevant and qualified for that particular query.

Web pages or websites that Google evaluates to be comprised of largely duplicate material that is already in its index are relegated to the supplemental index (the backburner). The supplemental index contains web pages and/or websites that Google considers, for all intents and purposes, to be irrelevant.

In other words you do not want your website to end up in the supplemental index because nobody will ever get to see it!

In 2006 Google suffered a very major server-overload crisis. Since then they have acquired several more servers, but this new algorithm tweak/update tends to suggest that they are leaning much more towards the principle of efficiency-and-quality versus volume-and-quantity.

In essence it appears that Google is adopting an approach geared towards maximizing efficiency of storage and organization of data. This by its very nature means restricting the amount of content that gets crawled, cached and eventually indexed (i.e., saves server space) as opposed to trying to accommodate every single piece of data that is drifting across the internet.

This certainly may go some distance explaining the zeal and passion with which they executed operation "gray band" that affected thousands of websites and web pages.

Recovering From Being G-Slapped

If your website/web pages have recently been demoted (loss of page rank) or now shamefully display a grayed-out PR bar where once a shimmering green existed, then your website has indeed been Google slapped!

So where do you go from there?

There's a saying that states "understanding the nature of the beast is the first step in divining its true intent" (which is just a fancy way of saying: if you know what makes something tick then you'll be better able to predict its future actions."

Keeping that in mind, it is possible to deduce the following aspects from the May 2007 Google update:

1. A gray PR band will be the norm for all new websites and web pages; in other words think "probation period." The length of time the PR bar remains grayed-out for any particular website/web page is dependent upon a number of factors which include:

a) How unique the content on a web page is. Pages that boast highly original and unique content will tend to be released from the gray zone quicker.

b) A web page that has a lot of unique traffic will have a shorter probation period (note that the origin of that traffic is something the search engines factor in to rule out sneaky play by individuals attempting to game the search engines).

c) Links! Links! Links! Yes, when it comes to SEO it is impossible to ignore the link factor. A page that "naturally" acquires a good number of topically related links will experience a shorter probation period.

d) Greater link activity will increase the importance of the destination page whereby such a web page will tend to attain higher PR quicker. This makes sense because a hyperactive links denotes popularity (websites that are popular are so because people find them useful).

e) The amount of time people spend on your site is also an important parameter that the search engines take into account. People tend to spend more time on websites that they find useful and the search engines can determine that fact through the use of sophisticated tracking scripts.

Bottom line: It is becoming increasingly difficult to game the search engines (the use of blackhat techniques) as their algorithms get smarter and more sophisticated.

The May 2007 Google update amply illustrates that Google is aggressively gunning for its vision of Web Paradise which by necessity means smacking down hard on websites that offer little useful function to that vision!

Simply put, if you wish your website to advance up the SERPs you need to make it user oriented. Visitor use and appreciation of a website appears to be the single strongest factor in determining that website's eventual position on the SERPs in Google's brave new Web Paradise!

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Use Web Stats To Dramatically Boost Your Profits

by Ba Kiwanuka

If you are not currently using web stats to monitor activity on your website or blog, then you are hurting your online business. In case you are not sure what web stats are here's a brief explanation:

Web stats are statistics that show you the behavioral patterns and activities of visitors to your site. The following is a list of some of the more common web stat parameters:

1. How the visitors get to your site (i.e., referral URL) 2. Which pages they visit on your site 3. How long they stay on your site 4. How many unique visits to your website 5. How many times a person visits (revisits) your site 6. How many people bookmark your website 7. Which countries your website visitors hail from 8. The keywords or phrases used to locate your site 9. How many visitors your site gets per day or per month 10. Traffic volume to your site broken down per hour/per day 11. How much traffic each search engine refers.

As you can imagine having access to the above parameters is a very powerful marketing tool indeed. That said, understanding the theory is all good and well, but knowing the real life application as concerns your online business is the end goal, right?

INTERPRETING WEB STATS

If you know how your visitors get to your site then you are in a good position to fine tune your promotional campaigns. Think about it a moment, let's say you are spending $$$ amount on various advertising campaigns, unless you know precisely which campaign is producing what results you cannot possibly know which campaigns are effective and which ones are duds!

In other words by being able to track where your internet traffic comes from, you can focus on those areas that are working and stop wasting time and resources on those that aren't.

Consider the issue of keywords; let's assume that you are optimizing your web site for a number of targeted keywords wouldn't it be much better if you knew which keywords words were effective and which ones weren't?

For example you might be under the misimpression that a very popular, much searched for keyword you'd spent a lot of time and effort optimizing for, is responsible for sending most of the traffic to your site.

But what if your site actually ranks poorly for that keyword, and that really you are getting next to no traffic from it at all and that in fact your traffic was coming from a far less popular keyword. You'd never be aware of this unless you had web stats at your disposal!

Good web stat scripts also inform you which search engine is sending you what amount of traffic. Imagine a scenario where you spend a significant amount of time optimizing your website for a particular search engine because you are under the impression that so-and-so search engine is responsible for sending you the greater portion of your traffic.

But what if you're wrong!

What if in fact it is another search engine altogether that is sending all that traffic to your site, you'd be none the wiser unless you had web stats to apprise you of the situation.

HOW WEB STATS CAN IMPROVE YOUR SEO

The most profitable websites on the internet are the ones that have the most traffic. The reason why they have the most traffic is because they are extremely popular. And guess what? Those sites are popular because they are evidently giving their visitors something they find useful. Useful enough that they keep returning, even bookmark the site, and spend a significant length of time perusing it.

The more time people spend on your web site the stickier your site or blog is said to be. The stickier a site is the better because not only does that register well with the search engines it means that you are offering something valuable to your visitors (e.g., useful info.). As far as seo strategies go, a stickier site is more likely to advance up the SERPs (search engine results pages) as well as more likely to get promoted page-rank wise.

Most web stat scripts can notify you of the sticky status of your site by supplying you with data showing how much time people spend on your site as well as how many of them bookmark your site (add to favorites).

Another added incentive to having a sticky site is that all that useful information translates into increased credibility, expertise and trust for you from your visitors, which ultimately makes it easier for you to get them to execute your most desired action on your site, be it to purchase something, sign up or fill out a form.

MONETIZING MISDIRECTED HITS

Sometimes when someone clicks on a link within your website or an external link pointing to your site they do not land on the requested web page but instead are directed to an error page or what is commonly referred to as a 404 page. Web stats are able to tell you how many times this happens. If it happens often enough why not customize your error pages with a message, one-time-offers or at least something that enables you to profit from those otherwise lost hits.

In summation, this article has barely scratched the surface of how useful web stats are. If however you're currently operating your internet business without them and you wish to remedy the situation, you can get premium quality free web stat scripts from:

1. http://awstats.sourceforge.net

2. www.statcounter.com

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