Getting a high ranking in the search engines is something
with many variables.
It can rely on what industry you’re in, the products or
services you supply, and the competition you have.
There is however a few basic things you can do to help
this process.
1. Choose The Right Domain Name!
A good example of this is my domain name. At first glance it seems long and drawn out but I chose it to include the keywords I wanted in it. Its getting harder to find available domain names with good keywords.
If you want to look for good available domain names
you can go to www.deleteddomains.com
2. Selecting a Keyword or Phrase!
There are so many keywords or phrases you could use
for your website so its important to find one you believe
will help your cause and focus on it.
Use this chosen keyword in all of your web text copy,
your description and your meta tags in the script.
This techy stuff can be done by your web designer.
3. Website Title and Description!
This is where you submit your info to the search
engines and they can put your website into the
appropriate category. This is important as it helps to
make sure your site is recognized for the right area
by both the potential customers and the search engines.
If you’re not sure what keywords are right for you then
go to www.goodkeywords.com and download a fr~e
keyword tool to help you identify and find a good one.
This is the basics but often success comes from many
small gems that help you overall. Getting to the top of
the search engines is always an ongoing battle but
don’t forget you can fast track it by using pay per click
advertising and get as high as your budget will allow.
Have Fun & Take Care
Scott Wilsn - Business Opportunity Creator and Coach
Start you journey with a free ebook at http://www.thegoldsinhere.com and http://www.internetsalesmentors.com
The name of the game is search engine optimization and there are 20 winners and a million losers. It is a massive game that is conducted each and every minute by the top search engines. The fun is the referee of the game tries to modify the format each minute, to make the game useful for the spectators, in this case the folks who search. This is a high stakes game with billions of dollars at stake and the rules change daily. The playing field changes daily and the folks who compete constantly change. Wow what a fun filled game this is. This game has consistently shown that the folks with the right tools win consistently and the ones’ who don’t but with good ideas win at random and like shooting stars fade out real quick.
Search engine optimization is a tough game to play and there are penalties for foul play and this could mean thousands of missed opportunities for your business. The folks out there keep the secret strategies to themselves as they can profit a lot out of it. But a few folks who intend to make money or simply for the fun of helping others achieve the glory of being in the top 20, have developed very good nifty tools. This article is about these tools and the techniques behind them. Google ToolBar is the first and foremost tool that every website owner should have. This tool has much functionality like popup blocker etc. The feature that helps SEO is the page rank bar and the add-on features it provide. The Back links checker is capable of displaying all known back links for your webpage that is known to Google. The similar page feature is very helpful to know your competitors.
Lets look at the top 4 categories of tools needed for SEO:
1. Keyword Tools: the keyword density is the number of keywords present as a percentage of the total words in that page. The keyword density could really depend on what you are targeting and usually a trial and error. This tool provides the details about the density without counting them yourself each time. The other keyword tools are keyword suggestion and research tools that give the right keywords to employ for your optimization, keyword optimizers, keyword typo’s tool.
2. Page Rank tools: This is a broad category with many tools under this umbrella. The page rank checker is a simple tool to check your rank and also some versions provide the rank of the competition as well. There are some additional nifty tools like the Google dance tool and the future page rank checker.
3. Meta Tag related tools: Meta tags are needed to describe the webpage for the search engines and other bots. The tools under this umbrella are Meta Tag generators, Meta Tag analyzers, Meta Tag replicator.
4. Link Analyzers: This contains the back links checker, the broken link finders, sitemap generators, Link popularity checkers, Link suggestion tools, Internal link density checkers, I also found a good one - link relevancy checker. These tools are very very important for your page rank if not for your search results.
Most of these tools with basic features can be found for free and there are some good tools that need special licensing and most of them provide a good way to reach the top 20 and be part of the winners and not be in the millions of folks who loose for each and every keyword. There are many keywords you can target and be part of the top 20. The first step is choosing a less competitive keyword and get to the top 20. Well before you put that SEO cap to get down and dirty, please go through the suggested tools in this article. There are a few good tools that have a demo period for you test out whether it is suitable for you. One such product is the SEO Elite.
For more resources on SEO and to try out some good tools you can visit http://www.seo-software-tool-experts.com You can download a free trial version of a good search engine optimization and web site ranking tool from the website as well - the SEO Elite v3.
So you have a beautiful website that you paid a pretty penny for and you are completely happy with it … except no one can find it. Many web designers do not understand search engine positioning, so when they design your website little or no thought is given to the elements of design that may affect your rankings on search engines. On the other hand some search engine positioning companies offer services that will boost your rankings but at the expense of your design. A good search engine positioning company can get your website ranking for key phrases without affecting the overall design and navigation of your site. You can make small changes to your website on your own as well utilizing the tips noted in this article. There is a happy medium, you can “have your cake and eat it too.”
The first step in designing a website that will rank well on search engines is to build the proper table structure. This framework for your website will easily guide the search engine spiders through your site taking the route you want them to. A good table structure is essentially a map to the spiders, it guides the way as they travel through your website.
This table structure is very beneficial to your website ranking as it guides the spiders to the text rich, most important content of your site as quickly as possible. The spiders will enter your site at the first table, the header, and then travel through to the empty cell in row 1 of the second table, the next stop is your content area, the “meat” of your website. After going through your content the spiders will then continue onto row 2 where you have inserted a table holding your navigation, if your navigation is image based, as most is, it holds very little content that matters from the spider’s perspective. The spiders will then follow through to row 3 where you have your footer, a place to add in valuable text links rich in targeted keywords.
If this table structure does not fit your design at all there can be work arounds. A good example of this is shown on http://www.far-sited.ca. Notice that the index page upon load has a very simple look, no text, clean, crisp image. This is a good way to present your business with a simple entry page. If you scroll down the page you will see that there is in fact a lot of text below this main image. With a simple 100% x 100% table you can achieve this affect on your website. This table will open the same way in all resolutions giving your index page the look of a text free page when in fact it is not.
100% x 100% table used as mentioned above:
If you choose to use the 100% x 100% table noted above you should still try to stick to the general table structure shown first for your internal pages. There can always be room for adjustments based on the size of your site however most websites use left hand navigation and this table structure is based on left hand navigation. If your navigation is across the top of your page, maybe reconsider it. It can remain at the top, I have designed a few websites that are ranking well with this top navigation, but for the best result, the left hand navigation using the table structure first mentioned in this article is best.
All in all I cannot stress enough that a well designed site will rank higher. Even if you do not have a complete SEO overhaul of your site this table structure will increase your rankings over those that do not have a clean, properly structured website. Though the table structure is not noticed so much by the visitors to your website aside from the look of it, it is very noticed by the spiders and they will go through your website based on it. For an added edge, have your site designed with this table structure, or do it yourself. Make a point of not only giving the visitors to your website the information you want them to have but also the spiders and as quickly and easily as possible.
About The Author
Mary Davies is the search engine friendly design expert for Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/). She works and writes with years of experience in web design and search engine optimization; info@beanstalk-inc.com
Every webmaster knows that the free search engines are a major source of traffic.
They also know that applying all the SEO techniques in the world will not in itself get their web pages spidered, indexed and listed. Yes, sure, a “perfect” page, once indexed and listed will surely rank high for its keywords but unless it is found by the spiders, it is pretty useless.
It is no secret that the process of a web page being found by the spiders can be helped by placing links to that web site on other web sites (e.g. by doing a links exchange with other web sites, by putting one’s URL in one’s signature file when posting on a forum, by writing and submitting articles for free distribution and placing one’s URL in the author’s resource block etc.) All of this will surely work but it can take months before anything happens. The webmaster has no option but to be patient and wait…and wait…and wait.
Now there is something very easy and very effective one can do to speed up this process. Actually, using this method, will get a web page indexed and listed in less than 48 hours. And the whole process is controlled by the webmaster. It is easy, fast in terms of setting it all up and what’s more it is free!
Here is what one does:
- Go to http://www.blogger.com and sign up for a new account (free - they even host the blog on their server at no cost)
- Give your blog a name.
- Navigate to ‘Settings’ and then choose ‘Site Feed’
- Check that the ‘Publish Site Feed’ option is set to ‘Yes’
- Copy the ‘Site Feed URL’ to the clip board (you can paste is some where .. you’re going to use it when you’ve set up your my.yahoo account)
- Save your changes
- Navigate to ‘Posting’ and create your first entry.
- What should you write? Anything, actually - your words do not make that much of a difference. What is important is that you add the URL of each page you want listed to the blog. Remember to add them as live links (to enable all the spiders to follow them!)
Mmm, you don’t know how to do a live link? Here is an example. Just copy the HTML code
link to Perfect Party Ideas
Replace the URL with your URL and the description (”link to Perfect Party Ideas” with your own.
As a suggestion, why not make your blog a log of this experiment?
- Publish your blog by hitting the ‘Publish’ button.
Sorry, we’re not done yet…
- Now you have to go to http://www.yahoo.com and open a My Yahoo! account. Just follow Yahoo’s very clear instructions.
- Click on the ‘Add Content’ button.
- Click the ‘ Add RSS by URL’ link.
- Paste the ‘Site Feed URL’ you’ve copied earlier in the ‘URL’ field and
- hit ‘Add’
You have just added your site’s news feed to your My Yahoo! account.
Mmm, you don’t know what a news feed is? I’ve written a document explaining it all. You can read it here.
- Last step: go to http://www.pingomatic.com
- Enter your blog’s name and URL (similar to mine: http://www.perfect-party-ideas.blogspot.com)
- Select all the services to ping (of which My Yahoo! is one) and click the ‘Submit Pings’ button.
- Navigate back to your My Yahoo! account and refresh your browser.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page where you’ll see your blog’s feed appearing.
Your job is done - the spider bait is ready!
Now for a bit of excitement. Start watching your web site’s stat’s to see how quickly the spiders find their way to your web site. You could even throw a free stats counter on your blog and watch the spiders visiting your blog.
Next step: Play “blog-and-ping” every day or so. More often if you have the time! Whenever you feel like it, add another posting to your blog. Remember to throw in some links to specific pages on your web site.
Let me know how successful you were - leave a comment in my blog or use my Contact Us page on my web site.
Here’s to your success!
Kind Regards
Anne-Marie
P.S. If this article had any value to you (and I’m sure it did 
), why not read more hot tips in my blog?
Anne-Marie Killer is a mother of two teenagers and a toddler. She is the webmaster and owner of Perfect Party Ideas, Read her blog where she documents the process of setting up Perfect Party Ideas.
In part I of our series of how to make your website more successful we already showed you some important tricks to build a more successful website. This time we are going to expand the scope a little to further improve your website and to make it work harder for you on the Internet.
A) Outbound links: Search engines love to see outbound links every once in a while. It proves to a search engine that your website is related to a certain topic and industry. Make sure you use a keyword for the link and not just the plain URL. Linking to http://www.webhostingresourcekit.com is less valuable than linking to the same site as “Web Hosting Help” (with the same link underneath of course). The keywords here are “Web Hosting Help”.
B) Insite Cross Links: We’re not done with linking to other places yet. Insite Cross inks (links from one page of your website to another web page of your website) will be an important part of the future of your website. Imagine article “A” getting high feedback and many external people linking to it. This article page will receive a higher page rank than other pages of your website. This cross link will now share the page rank out to other web pages of your website and therefore eventually boosting the page rank of the page linked to.
C) Submit to Search Engines: You’ve built your website and are ready to go live. How will search engines find your new website? Unless you link to the new website from an existing website you will have to let search engines know about it. Submit the homepage to: Google, Altavista, WiseNut, DirectHit, and Hotbot (and all the others you know). Also submit the website to DMOZ. I’d personally stay away from paid listings unless you think it is needed. Anyway - now comes the tough part - forget about the submissions. It might take a few weeks or months for a site to be spidered.
D) Web Server Logging / Website Tracking: To be able to work properly with your website you will need good logging tools. You want to know how many website visitors you get, where they come from, what pages they look at and how long they stay. A counter on your website does not do it. You need tools like Webalizer, AWStats, Urchin or Webtrends. If your web host does not provide any of the first 3 options (Webtrends is fee-based) you should move to a new web host. Proper log file analysis is important to your success.
This article can be published by anyone as long as a live back link to http://www.smallbusinessland.com is provided. (this note can then be removed)
About the Author
Christoph Puetz is a successful small business owner (Net Services USA LLC) and international author.
Guides, Tutorials, and Articles for small businesses - http://www.smallbusinessland.com
If I ask you how many web sites do you have? You may say “One, yes it is www.mycompany.com “ or “two” in case you have a second organization or company. When I first began promoting my web sites I was, like most people, only thinking in terms of one web address, the url of my main page. And I thought that this main page was a difficult one to promote because it was the index page of a magazine that covered a wide variety of fields (environment, arts, science, politics, spirituality, etc). How could I optimize a page for so many keywords, which market could I focus on?
It was only after discussing the subject with another web master, who had a similar site, that I learned that the diversity of all the inner pages of my site was a huge asset. Each of these pages was like a mini-website, and capable of attracting a multitude of visitors using a variety of keywords. Part of my ignorance at that point was due to a lack of accurate tracking data. I had a simple tracker on the main page that told how many visits that page was getting, but I had no idea of what was happening deeper inside the site. Then I was able to get access to the raw access logs of the site and using a log analysis tool I began to see the real picture of what was happening.
I saw that the main page was getting one third of the total traffic of the site. I found out that one article, “The Causes of Tropical Deforestation” was a big hit and consistently getting a lot of traffic. Other articles were also quite popular, but covering completely different subjects. It was then that I realized that I had not one web site, but more than 100 web sites.
What does all this mean in terms of design, optimization and submission? It means that one has to realize that people may well enter your site through the “side door” or the “back door” and you have to prepare accordingly.
For design, it means that the structure of your pages and navigation system should invite the people who enter from the inner pages, to make it to your important pages (about us, main page, or your order page!). For optimization it means that you should take more care about the placing of keywords, description and title tags on all the pages. Have you ever seen websites where the blue line at the top of the browser is showing the title of the page to be “New Page”? Even very good designers become a little bit sloppy on the inner pages, and though they do usually manage to put a proper page title on those pages, they seldom take the trouble to write separate meta tags for the keywords and descriptions. But as I learned, these pages are an asset and can be optimized and promoted to gain more traffic.
The first thing that I did was to redesign my navigation system to take advantage of this traffic and make sure that those who entered through the back door would visit the important departments of the magazine. I also put a newsletter sign-up form on all the inner pages, and to this day these pages are bringing in a steady stream of subscribers to the magazine’s e-mail bulletin. The next thing I did was to make sure that the inner pages had proper meta tags, and finally I did a deep submission of the whole site.
What is a deep submission and why is it necessary? When you submit the main page of your site to a search engine, the search engine sends a “spider” to look at your page and put the data on that page in the search engines index. Sometimes the spider will follow the links on your main page and also pick up some of the inner pages (Google, for example is very good at this) but sometimes they don’t go deep enough into the site and only one or two of your pages are indexed. To get the other pages indexed you have to submit them all separately, just as if they were other web sites. However, if you have 100 pages you can’t submit them on the same day to one search engine. That would be regarded as spamming. If you submit one url per day per search engine you will not get into any problems.
So, think about your site more deeply. Your inner pages are mini-websites and if prepared and promoted properly they could increase your traffic and your sales dramatically.
About The Author
Donald Nelson is a web developer, editor and social worker. Hehas been working on the Internet since 1995, and is currently the director of A1-Optimization (http://www.a1-optimization.com), a firm providing low cost search engine optimization, submission and web promotion services.
support@a1-optimization.com
In the world of website promotion directory submission is very
very important due to following reasons. [1] they will provide
you strong back links [2] improve your popularity [3] generally
they are permanent linking.so you will not see your URL dancing
in SERPs There are some common rules for directory
submission.follow these rules before you submit your site.other
wise your site may be rejected by editors.the rules for submit
your site in directories are.. [1] They never accept mirror
sites. [2] Sites with overlapping and repetitive content will
not accepted. [3] They generally don’t accept sites that
redirects on other link. [4] Sites with ‘Under construction’
status will not accepted [5] Affiliate/referral links generally
not accepted. [6] Don’t use promotional language. [7] Don’t
write your title with all words in CAPITAL [8] submit your site
in appropriate categories Some of Top Directories [1]
http://www.dmoz.org We can say dmoz is father of all other
directories.your site will include in about 1200 other web
directories including google.you will see in boost in your PR
once your site accepted in dmoz.These ODP links are treated like
gold by Pagerank™. It doesn’t even matter what the individual PR
of the category page is. I have seen sites gain a large PR boost
on the toolbar as soon as Google updates it’s directory with the
latest one from dmoz.org [2] http://zeal.com/ If you site is non
commercial type than you can submit your site to Zeal.com. which
is actually a Looksmart directory.just like Google obtains
results from ODP, Looksmart obtains it’s non-commercial listings
from the Zeal web directory other wise you have to submit your
site in looksmart directory which is paid option [3]
http://dir.yahoo.com/ like zeal if your site is non commercial
type than only you can submit your site here other wise there is
paid option available. [4] http://joeant.com Become an editor to
add your site.paid inclusion option also available click here to
know more>>http://www.joeant.com/suggest.html [5]
http://www.gimpsy.com/gimpsy/searcher/suggest.php Only paid
option is available to submit your site [6]
http://www.goguides.org/info/addurl.htm Only paid option is
available to submit your site
[7]http://www.skaffe.com/info/addurl.htm Become an editor to
submit your site in Skaffe or paid inclusion option is
available. [8] http://www.wowdirectory.com/ You can submit your
site here both free as well as paid inclusion(for fast and
guarenteed review) are available. I have created a Large list of
web directories you can visit it
here>>http://imall.weblodge.net/pages.php/page/list I also offer
directory submission
service>>http://imall.weblodge.net/product_info.php/cPath/13/prod
ucts_id/57
It is almost sure. Google is the hardest of all the search engines to get top rankings nowadays.
Another sure thing is that Google is the search engine that drives the highest number of visitors to the websites that are at the top of the SERP for important keywords.
Don’t you know what SERP means? It is one of those nice acronyms that are used by computer geeks that are lazy at typing (LOL) and stands for “Search Engine Results Page”, as SEO is the popular acronym of “Search Engine Optimisation”, and SEM stands for “Search Engine Marketing”.
So you want to get those top rankings in Google SERP right?
Sure you want. I want it, and I am ready to work for it.
And so should you be too.
Of course you need to know what to do to have your site top ranked by Google. You must know what this search engine likes and what it dislikes, in order to know what to add or remove from the web pages of your site.
Years ago it was simpler to be liked by search engines, more or less you had to understand how a web page had to be built, and how to optimize it for your keywords, placing the keywords in the title of the page, in the meta tags and in the body of the page, paying attention to the density of the keywords in the whole document.
Then you put some links with nice words to Yahoo and some of the other big sites and you were done. A link exchange page was an optional.
I made tens of top rankings in all the worldwide main search engines including Google of course working like this back in 1999, 2000, 2001 for many different keywords and keyphrases of different topics.
That was the time that the following things did not exist yet: page rank, AdWords and AdSense.
I was a great SEO guy even if my focus was on the domain names goldrush mainly.
This was the old way to make search engine optimization, when it wasn’t yet popular as SEO and the search engines had not yet moved most of the importance to the offpage factors.
This last sentence is an important one. And the end of it is extremely important. It was about 2000 or 2001 I think when the search engines tried to give an end to search engine spam introducing strict offpage factors. A site wouldn’t have been indexed IF it had not already links pointing to it from at least 3 or 4 websites that were already indexed.
That was the start of the OFFPAGE optimization revolution.
Offpage factors rule in the Google algorithm today, and you simply cannot achieve top rankings in Google for competitive keywords if you don’t work a lot on the offpage optimization of your site.
Offpage optimization means you have to work on building links pointing to your website.
Google now takes in consideration factors like these ones:
- how many web sites are linking to you
- which sites are doing so
- which is their page title
- which anchor text is used to link to your site
- the Google page rank of these sites
- and more.
And these factors are extremely relevant in determining the ranking of your website.
So to keep it as simple as possible you need to get many links to your site trying to have them from sites with a high page rank. The more you get the better will be.
You must pay a lot of attention on using the right anchor text, with the most important keywords for your site there.
You mainly have to find sites that are related to the topic of your own websites, and that are considered authority web sites by Google.
This is just an introduction to SEO offpage factors, but can already put you on the right path.
The search engine optimization for Google really requires a lot of efforts and is extremely time consuming.
You have to make a lot of researches to find the right sites that can provide good and useful links, you have to contact them and convince them to link to your site (usually offering a link back), you have to monitor that these sites continue to link to your site.
Yes, it definitely is harder than it can seem from these short description, and you already know it if you already tried to get links to your website.
Luckily I found a great software that can make a lot of work for me, and could do the same for you.
I call it my SEO Secret Weapon and can be yours too.
Please see my signature to find a link to the SEO section of my site with a link to it, it is the sofware named SEO Elite.
I strongly recommend you this software if you are serious about search engine optimization for your online business.
This software can automate or semi automate very important and time consuming tasks.
It can even find and email high page rank link partners for you with a touch of a button.
Think about it.
You can try to learn for free all the stuff you need to become enough experienced in SEO for Google and spend countless hours reading articles like this one and forum posts and working on building links back to your sites or you can follow my advice and have a professional SEO secret weapon that makes most of the hard work for you and brings better results in less time.
It is your choice.
Gian L. Ruggeri teamed up with Michael Crownley to run a site
dedicated to Earn With Google. You will find useful info and
resources related to AdSense, AdWords and SEO.
http://EarnWithGoogle.com
To find the SEO Secret Weapon presented in this article go to
http://EarnWithGoogle.com/seo
I don’t mind admitting that every time some new fangled idea or piece of technology arrives online, I have a small fit and wonder how long it’s going to take me to understand what it is, what it’s for and whether I need to use it to stay ‘up there’. It’s even more frightening when the experts start explaining it and really only serve to confuse the matter when they use their ‘techno-speak’.
Here I am still wrestling with RSS and along comes Google with their Sitemap program. I must admit, it sounds simple enough until you read a couple of articles about how to generate your sitemap or go to Google’s instructions and manage to get completely confused. I don’t know what it is, although I know it’s not just me. I know too many people who work online and have the same problem. Maybe we just went to school in the wrong decade (seventies or maybe earlier). But then, we can spell and write, can’t we…
For those who need to know what the Google Sitemap program is about, here it is in the nutshell and in MY language - English. At least, what I think it is, anyway:
Google, I imagine have become tired of crawling billions of websites, most of which are largely inactive or abandoned or both. So they are giving webmasters (website owners) the opportunity to play a part in the frequency and importance placed on the crawling of our websites. Even to the point of giving us the ability to prioritize these aspects of the individual pages. In doing so, they are also having us do some of their work for them, which is OK, seeing as they are our websites. I think it’s grand.
In their instructions, Google give a few different methods by which you can generate a suitable Sitemap and how to get it onto your server etc. To be honest, I found it totally confusing. They do suggest that we use their Sitemap generator, but it is only compatible if your server uses a thing called ‘Python 2.2’ and you need to know the command that launches it… WHAT??? There’s that ‘nerd stuff’ again. Every time I send a simple question to my webhost, like, “what’s your name”, I get three paragraphs of unintelligible ‘techno-speak’, so how do I find out if I have some ‘Snake-thingy’ on my server? So, Google’s instructions are no good to me, or anyone like me. Even their alternatives, although slightly simpler, don’t answer ALL the questions I need answered in order to get through it in one piece.
Fortunately, through trial and error (or maybe because I may actually be turning into a ‘nerd’), I can tell you how to generate a Sitemap, upload it to you server (and more importantly, WHERE to put it) and how to submit it to Google.
First, you go to this website - http://www.blocklayer.com/googlesitemap/ and you will find that all you need to do is put the URL of you website (the main domain name) into the appropriate field and click “Create map”. It will create a list of the pages in your website and will, helpfully, also list any broken or inactive links (which you can go about fixing). You can change the frequency with which each page is crawled and rate it’s importance. Obviously, pages which change often, need to be crawled more often etc. When you’re happy with your list of pages, you click on “XML Sitemap” and it creates a coded XML Sitemap. XML is the code that’s used in RSS, which looks much like HTML.
Now, and this is the magic bit, you need to do one more thing before you can upload to your server. You need to copy and paste the XML code to a ‘Notepad’ document. You call the file ‘sitemap.xml’. Now the WHOLE of that file name goes in the ‘Filename’ box,. The ‘.xml’ doesn’t go into the ‘file type’ box, like it would in a Word, Excel or any other program. Low and behold, the little ‘Notepad’ program magically recognizes the fact that it is XML format (I don’t know how, probably mirrors…) and the file you end up with has the ‘.xml’ file extension. That is what you upload to your server.
It’s very easy. You just place it under what they call the ‘Root Directory’. I’ve learned that this is the ‘Main Folder’ (I don’t know why they just don’t say ‘Main Folder’, but…). So, it goes into the very first folder of your website. If using cPanelX® it’s called ‘html public’. If using Frontpage®, it’s simply the folder with the main URL as it’s name.
My first question was, “What about Sub-Domains?” Do I have to submit separate Sitemaps or will they be included in the one I generate for the Main Domain? The answer is that Sub Domains won’t be included in the Main Sitemap, you need to generate a separate one by simply using the Sub-Domain URL in the generator. This is handy because each Sub-Domain will usually have unique needs and it would be more than awkward if they were all included in the main Sitemap.
Obviously, in the case of a Sub Domain, the ‘Root Directory’ or ‘Main Folder’ you put this Sitemap into is the Main Sub-Domain folder, that is, the first one under the Main Domain folder.
Submitting to Google is a really easy process. You just log into your Google account (you have to have one) and go to the ‘Add a Sitemap’ section and enter the COMPLETE filename of the sitemap, which will be: http://www.mydomain.com/sitemap.xml and click on ‘Submit URL’.
Although I have had a little fun with the fact that I still, after several years earning a living online, don’t understand a lot of the ‘lingo’. To those of you who are in the same position or those who are new to this Internet business thing, I can honestly say, you will get a handle on it and find that all these things, which may seem completely overwhelming at first, will make sense and come more easily if you take the time to read a little and find out. I’ve obviously surrendered to this concept and it has made things much easier.
Oh God! I think I’m a Nerd!
Stephen Brennan is the author of the popular ebook title ‘The Affiliate Guide Book’ - The Definitive guide to Affiliate SUCCESS. He also runs The Home Based Business and Affiliate Center.
TIP ONE: THE IMPORTANCE OF KEYWORDS
This is the good news. The bad news is that the process is slow, and it can take months (and months and months) of dedicated effort to achieve decent rankings (one reason you don’t want to abandon those paid campaigns while optimizing your site). But it is well worth the time and effort in the long run, since it addresses the one issue that is foremost when marketing your product and services online: people use search engines such as Google and MSN to do their looking. And search engine listings that are highly ranked consistently outperform ‘paid listings’.
So how do you get your site listed and ranked highly? Does it take dedicating your life fulltime to this effort, or specialized knowledge? The answer is “yes” and “no”. It can help tremendously to hire the assistance of a firm that specializes in SEO (and, in fact, this is highly recommended). They can give you professional guidance in this arena, and steer you away from common mistakes.
But for those with a limited budget (which is most of us, nowadays, it seems) it’s also possible to do your own site optimization, and work on a long-term campaign to help your site rise. It isn’t easy (unlike those ads and books online that promise overnight success with no effort), but by rolling up your shirtsleeves and diving in, you can learn a tremendous amount, and help your site get found when people type in your products into a search engine.
TIP TWO: SELECT YOUR KEYWORDS CAREFULLY
Search engine keywords are what lead people (as in potential customers) who type in phrases in their favorite search engine to your site. When they go onto Google, Excite, or other search engines and directories, and are looking for a specific item, keywords are the ones that they type in during their search.
To market effectively to them, you will need to think like them (this is the basis of all excellent marketing). You will want to determine:
What phrases people type in when looking for your product, service, or content during their online searches (including the most common
misspellings, by the way). Not sure? Try looking at your web stats for your site. You should see an extremely valuable area called “search strings”, with a list of words underneath it.
These search strings are the phrases that actually brought people to your web site. Which ones were the most popular? You’ll want to note these. But you’ll want to add more.
Sit down for a minute, and think of every possible phrase people might use for searching for your product. At this point, don’t edit yourself, just let the words flow and write them down. If you sell used Chevrolets in Alexandria, VA, you might come up with “used cars, used Chevrolets, vintage cars, reconditioned cars, Chevrolet dealers, Alexandria VA car dealers, Alexandria VA used cars”, as just a start.
By now, you should have a list. Go through it again, and decide which ones seem the most focused for your product or service. You want search engine keywords that will bring targeted customers to your site, who are interested in doing business with you, and the right keywords can help accomplish this. Be specific and relevant in your choices. Then, alphabetize your list, since some search engines and directories list pages alphabetically; so use your best phrases in alphabetical order whenever possible for better optimization.
Next, analyze which keyword phrases are realistic for obtaining high rankings. While you may sell used autos, and want to get top rankings for that term, ‘used autos’ is an extremely popular and general phrase, and odds are, difficult to get good rankings for. But if you sell used Chevrolets in Alexandria, Virginia, then it’s realistic to hope for high rankings for search engine phrases for ‘Alexandria used Chevrolets’. You’ll also get a more targeted audience (think ‘more likely to buy from me’), since most of your customers will probably come from your locale).
At this point, you should have a list of keywords. If you have a very short one, or are having trouble thinking of some, you can gain access to professional software at minimal cost. Just start a Google adwords campaign, or a CPC campaign on Overture. Each of these sites have “keyword suggestion” tools that will give you several keywords based on your product or service, and will include the relative popularity of each one.
TIP THREE: PLACE KEYWORDS CAREFULLY
Once you have your keywords, you’ll want to use them in the right places. The goal is to help search engines find your site for those phrases, so you will want to place them in spots the engines look closely at. These include the page Title, inside the meta tags, inside the heading tag, in the domain name (more about this in a later lesson), and the keyword tags.
You will also want to sprinkle them liberally throughout the content (text) of your site, with special consideration for the top of your page and its first paragraphs. This is especially important on your home (index page), which is the one that most search engines will cache when spidering through. And please, have some real content on your page, and not just a list of keywords, or your site could go down in its rankings. Search engines do rank according to content relevancy, and the site that says “Our dealership provides quality used Chevrolet cars, reconditioned to meet our customer’s needs,” (with at least 100 words of good, relevant content) will always rank higher than the site that says, “cars, cars, cars, buy quality used Chevrolet cars, quality used cars are here”. In addition, you won’t drive away customers offended by poor quality writing and obvious over-usage of marketing phrases.
But you do want to maintain a certain ratio of keyword density in your text; a keyword density of 5 to 7% is usually recommended. If you don’t feel comfortable writing copy using keywords, a professional copywriter who specializes in online writing can help you.
THREE COMMON MISTAKES TO AVOID
Mistake 1: One common error that many people make is to forget to place ALT tags for their graphics. You may have a beautiful logo or graphic on your web site, but if you don’t have an alt tag, the search engines can’t “read it”. Be sure to place keywords there, and to label graphics with names that reflect keywords.
Mistake 2: Always have text on your site. When creating your site, search engines depend upon text to decide what your site is about. The more relevant the text, the better. The spiders and bots can’t “read” graphics as mentioned above. Don’t just make the text for the site one big graphic, as some firms do. The search engines will skip over the graphic, and assume you have no content at all.
Mistake 3: Finally, please don’t spam (by trying to ‘hide’ your keywords by using a font the same color as the background, or repeating keyword phrases over and over in the title and meta tags). Search engines are now excellent at finding those who try to break the rules (and their technology for doing so is getting more sophisticated all the time), and will drop spammers from their indexes like a hot potato. So play by the rules, and when in doubt, ask an ethical SEO firm for advice, or visit one of the many excellent forums online (such as Jill Whalen’s High Rankings Search Engine Forums).
Your site will rise more quickly, and enjoy higher rankings, if you follow these tips and their advice. And your traffic will increase, at no cost to you!
P Lim is the editor of http://www.Catasult.com which provides valuable tips and advice on web promotion and internet marketing from linking strategies to search engine industry news, internet marketing articles and more.
