Long Term SEO Maintenance Tips.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 28-09-2009

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Long-term SEO maintenance requires dedication to your website. There are people who think that they can throw up a web page and that people will find them, and good luck too them but it wont happen. Any website that wants to make money needs to get optimized, and stay that way. Running and SEO campaign once or twice isnt enough in this market: you need to consider long-term maintenance of your SEO.

For long term SEO maintenance to be effective, you need to constantly monitor the search engines algorithms, which can change very frequently. You also need to keep track of your competitors optimizations and adapt your strategy accordingly.

Always consider your website as an investment youve put time, money and effort into it. Your investment needs to be protected, and the way to do that is SEO maintenance. This makes sure that your website is ranked high enough to bring you the traffic you need, and keeps the sales coming.

Weve compiled a list of tips to help you with your SEO maintenance. To keep good rankings, you need to pay attention to how your site is doing. A few things to remember are:

1. Check on your pages regularly and make sure theyre still listed. Your listings are the most important part of your SEO work. Whether the page is listed or not is vastly more important than what key words you have etc. After all, if you arent listed at all what good is it to optimize?

2. Monitor the listings every week or two to make sure your pages are displaying correctly and that there are no problems with your site. While your at it see whether youve risen, dropped, or remained constant as far as listings go. Odds are that you will not remain constant, if you do remain constant you should consider this a small success as you have probably risen above other pages that were formerly above you while others from below you have surpassed you.

3. Watch for trouble, and fix it quickly. Dont think it will correct itself it won’t. Any missing pages should be checked out thoroughly. Chances are that the system has run into a problem, but if you dont check it out you may very easily be wrong. Always correct any of your mistakes as your mistakes can be very costly if they are not dealt with in a timely fashion.

4. Resubmit your site if you make major changes, but not for anything smaller. The most important time to resubmit your site is if you have recently changed your titles. Titles are very important in SEO and can deliver you with a completely new set of quality key words.

5. Create monthly ranking reports on your site, to see if any changes need to be made.

6. Keep building your link popularity.

7. Keep submitting your site to the big directories, as spiders use these as a starting point.

8. Watch your competitors and the methods they use. If they start trying to cheat, report them straightaway it gets them out of your way.

9. Set goals for yourself. Write out an SEO maintenance plan, and if things change then make sure to set new goals and stick with them.

10. Stay up to date on the latest SEO information.

11. Check your sites performance if youre not monitoring your traffic, find a tool to do it now.

12. Maintain a solid plan for dealing with your sites growth. Dont panic if you see a blip.

This might seem like a lot of work for a small website or company, but you need to do it to help your website grow. If you dont have growth, you have nothing. No business wants to stay where it is forever, and SEO is a good way to get more business and stay in the race.

Do you remember why you started a website to begin with? The chances are you wanted to make money. Your website is a business, and you need to run it like one. Dont stress too much over the work involved: its only a few hours each week in total, and you can do it whenever you want.

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SEO Linking: 200 New, Good Directories

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 27-09-2009

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Summary: Are article directories the new SEO link directories? As 1990s-era link directories fade into relative irrelevance, article directories offer new opportunities for one-way inbound links. There are currently about 200 of these directories, none of which charges a fee.

Article Directories: The New Web Link Directories?

We are witnessing a new explosion in web directories that are actually worth the investment in time to submit to them. No, not link directories–their time has passed for good. The new directories are article directories.

What Are Article Directories?

Article directories are sites such as http://isnare.com and http://goarticles.com, which aggregate large numbers of articles into massive, categorized databases. Most of them act as clearinghouses for reprint content, encouraging visitors to add the content to their own sites. The articles are screened for basic indicators of quality and relevance before being posted.

The articles each have an author’s resource box, an “about the author” paragraph at the end of the article. The directories allow authors to include a link, and often, multiple links, in the resource box.

I personally know of about 200 such directories that will accept articles on any topic–with a live link and without charging a fee. There are at least as many specialized directories that limit themselves to business-only articles, women’s issues, technology, etc. All you need is a single good page of well-written content–and if your site doesn’t have that already, you probably should give up your web ambitions right now.

Article Directories’ Linking Advantages

* Anchor text. About two-thirds of the article directories allow for the author to select the anchor text of the link in the author’s resource box. This is the primary value of the links from the article directories. The article directory pages usually have PR 0; some have PR 1-3. Fortunately, anchor text is often a deciding factor in ranking for non-competitive search strings that make up as much as half or more of all web searches. These links may also help a site that already has competitive PageRank but is getting beaten in the SERPs for want of anchor text relevance.

* Relevant links. The links are at least as relevant as links from link directories. The page on which the link is located is categorized within the site according to topics such as automotive, technology, decorating, or sports. Since most of the directories use the article title as the webpage title, you can even assure that the title of the webpage with your link has your target keyword.

* Traffic. Click-throughs on the links in the author’s resource boxes bring traffic, particularly in the early days after the article is submitted.

* Reprints. Clearinghouse websites that offer articles for reprint pack the double advantage of a link on their site and a link on any site whose webmaster chooses to reprint the article. In reality, few articles get reprinted since the competition for reprints is fierce. Moreover, fewer than a dozen of the 200-odd article directories actually get many reprints. The market is dominated, as most web markets are, by the best established sites.

* Mindshare. A click-through from a traditional link is just another visitor. But someone who has read a page of content from your site and clicked through the author’s resource box link is generally a highly qualified visitor who has been partly sold on the value of your offering. Meanwhile, even readers who do not click-through have been exposed to your message. You can help shape the market, building awareness of your product or service.

In short, article directories offer just about everything the web link directories used to, and more.

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SEO Link Building with Web Content Secrets

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 26-09-2009

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It’s the timeless question: how do you get other sites to link to you? The most commonly discussed ways are reciprocal linking (swapping links) and buying links. Yet there’s another important tool for building links that should be a part of your toolbox: distributing content in exchange for one-way inbound links.

Comparison with Other Linking Methods
Reciprocal Linking: The big advantage of content distribution over swapping links is that the links built are one-way, and therefore presumably more valuable. Of course, reciprocal links still have value, but relying primarily on them might hamper your SEO efforts.
Indirect Reciprocal Links: I link my site A to your site, so you link your site to my site B. The problems are that this can be a lot of work, and also, Google can detect indirect links if you do it more than once with the same group of sites, which might make your linking arrangements look like a link farm.
Paid Links: The problem with paid links is 1) the costs add up; 2) search engines are getting better and better at discounting paid links. According to Matt Cutts’ blog, “I wouldn’t be surprised if search engines begin to take stronger action against link buying in the near future…link-selling sites can lose their ability to give reputation (e.g. PageRank and anchortext).”

Kinds of Content to Distribute
Articles. This is the essential kind of content distribution, to the point that many people consider content distribution simple as “article marketing.” However, you’re missing out on a few other sources of links if you only do articles.
News blurbs. A lot of news-style sites will only reprint pieces of a couple of paragraphs. The good news is that often enough the whole point of these news blurbs is to include links to other sites, in a sort of “look what we’ve found” kind of way, a la Slashdot.org
Press Releases. There are some sites that aggressively reprint press releases. A press release is like an article, only in a very specific press release format, and frankly that’s not that enjoyable to read. I don’t know why some sites are so head-over-heels over press releases, but, hey, that’s their business. The good news is that even if you can’t write and don’t want to hire a writer, press releases (at least basic ones) are pretty easy to do.
Tools, games and other webware. Sites with popular tools, software, Flash games and other webware often let other sites use it in exchange for a link. The big potential downside is technical support.
Images. Images, especially charts and photographs, are important forms of content on the web. If you have great images on your site and people ask you to use them on their sites, require a backlink in exchange. The problem with images is that they are so easily stolen. Stolen words can be uncovered with a web search. You could try to watermark images with a copyright symbol, URL, and the link requirement. But in the process you’d make the image much less desirable.
Web design templates. These have been freely distributed for a long time. Yet they are even more easily stolen than images. Also, if you embed a link in the footer of a web template, what you’ll get back are sitewide links, which are often thought to be filtered out in search engines.

Maximizing Content Distribution Links’ Effectiveness: Anchor Text
Anchor text. You need optimized anchor text to rank high for any competitive keyword. That means you need your target keyword in the anchor text, and very importantly, variants of the target keyword (too many links with the exact same anchor text may be filtered). The problem is that some sites by default don’t let you choose the anchor text of the link to your site. So you need to: 1) look for sites that do reprint content with optimized anchor text; 2) specifically ask for your target anchor text to be used. Also, do keep in mind that a true natural linking structure will require you to have a number of links that are not anchor-text-optimized, typically with the URL as the anchor text.

How to Find Sites
Finding sites to submit content is the biggest challenge. You can start by asking around to any other webmasters you already have a relationship with. Next, web-search. The classic method is “submit article” + [keyword]. Most of the sites you find this way won’t be good candidates, which is why this can be a bit labor-intensive. I use offshore labor for this step, as well as a program that will sort and store all the search results into a spreadsheet; otherwise it might not be worth it. Then again, the same would be true for finding reciprocal linking partners.

Ethical Issues & Best Practices

Golden rule: remember that there’s a human being who has to approve your article for submission.
Read and adhere to all submission guidelines.
Avoid automation. There’s almost always some detail of submission that requires a human eye: a multitude of html formatting requirements, changing site themes, etc.
Don’t submit by email unless specifically instructed. Using a contact form prevents possible sp@m accusations.
Only approach websites that request content submissions.
Don’t misrepresent reprint content as original.
Don’t submit the same content too often. After about two hundred reprints, a lot of people will be seeing the same thing over and over again and possibly complaining.

In short, as SEO gets more competitive, having more and more linking methods at your disposal gets more and more important. Don’t overlook this important tool.

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SEO in 10 easy steps

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 25-09-2009

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SEO in 10 easy Tips
Having your site top-ranked for a hot keyword can effectively improve your traffic and therefore your profits as well. All you need to do is to optimise your content and create many links of different quality. But if you don’t have any money to start off, its hard but it can be done.
You may also have the money it takes for reaching a top position, but are unsure if your money will be well spent or not. It may cost you a whole lot more than you thought in the beginning.
Wether you have the money or not, considering a self made budget SEO is a wise thing to do, because it’s both free and educating. After a while, you will gradually improve your technique and you will become an SEO expert. Once you’re there, you will be able to perform as good as a paid SEO but saving the money it takes to hire one.
Here’s 10 free ways to improve your rankings
1. Directory submissions - The most effective way in getting lots of back links fast. Grab a good directory list and submit your link in every single directory. Make sure that you get a few new back links everyday to ensure long term success. The best way to do that is by viewing all new directory announcements in Digital Points forum Solicitations & Announcements section.
2. Article Submissions - Almost every single article directory on the web is free. Article directories are a good compliment to ordinary directories because it will bring you more diversity in your back link structure. Write a good article with more than 500 words and include a back link to your site and submit it to all major article directories. Hope fully, if your article is good, some webmaster will pick it and put it on their own sites, so you’re not only getting back links from the article directories themselves, you are also getting free back links from real sites, which is very valuable in search engines like Google.
3. Wikipedia.org - A good source to collect incoming links. Do you have any content that is related to any wikipedia article? In that case, you can edit the wikipedia article and input your link on the link page. Make sure that the content you are linking meets up with the standard, otherwise, your link will be removed as fast as it came up.
4. Onpage SEO - Onpage optimisation was the most important SEO technique available before 2001. Today, it does not have the same decisive factor that it once had. It is however still very useful to do some basic onpage SEO. Make sure that your targeted keywords are included in the title, the headline and the footer. Make sure that you always provide some fresh content on the pages that you specifically want to optimise. Provide it at least with an RSS feed. But most important, make sure that the onpage SEO does not overshadow the content and make your site look less useful.
5. PRWeb.com - Post a press release once you release your site. It will help you a little bit in the rankings, but most importantly, if your Press release is good, you will get some natural links generated by PRWebs users.
6. Myspace.com - Myspace has recently become one of the hottest sites on the internet. It has also became one of the most effective places to market your site. Just make a profile for your site there, then try to get as many friends as possible. Post links to your sites on other profiles, post bulletins of your site and if it’s cool enough, you will get some natural back links in return.
7. Ask for back links - Send out nice original emails to other webmasters that have similar sites. Write some sentences about what you think of their site or anything related to the subject of their site. When you get the reply, answer them, tell them something more and then ask for a reciprocal or a one-way link.
8. Forums - Forums are not only a great place to discuss things but also a good resource for generating back links, feedback and traffic. Put a link in your signature. Make a post about your site or even better, make a post about something and then make a related link to your site. Note, go for inactive forums, they tend to give more weight than the active ones and your link will be displayed over a longer time.
9. Make sattelite sites - Put up a site with some content on e.g. geocities.com and include a back link to your site somewhere, then submit the sattelite site to somewhere around 100 directories so it will be indexed in Google, and you got a high quality back link.
10. Also, SEO is an area where there are lots of paid alternatives that may help you in getting a good ranking. Some of these are paid article submission, paid onpage optimisation, paid directory submission paid link exchanges and paid links. If you are good on doing directory submissions but bad on onpage SEO, you can charge for making directory submissions for others and then hire someone to do onpage SEO for you.
More Tips and other interesting articles with great onlinetips can be found here.visit our other resources and Get free gospel song lyrics!!
Todd Gamble is a staff writer for onlinetips.

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How to Recover from a Ranking Tumble.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 24-09-2009

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As the search engines continue to improve, your SEO needs to as well. A ranking tumble for your website can be devastating. You need to recover as soon as possible its not the easiest task in the world, but its not as hard as youd think. The most important thing to keep in mind is that you cannot panic. You have to keep working on your SEO projects and you need to remember that listings and rankings come and go spiratically at times but that search engines won’t let you down if your site is useful.

The experts advice to websites that have lost their ranking is usually to start over, following current and good SEO information. Look over your entire site and insure that you haven’t done something that would have caused this sudden change in listings and rankings. Normally if you haven’t done anything wrong, your links will slowly begin to reappear again especially if you have a nice sized linking network that is listed well.

One step that you can take is to narrow your sites focus and work hard on one or two keywords. It doesnt seem like a lot, but its sufficient. Make sure each page of your site includes good enough navigation that someone can get anywhere from anywhere else, and make sure you do this with plain a href links, not fancy JavaScript.

If you are using frames, now is a good time to dump them. You can replace them with scrollable

tags and have similar looking pages that search engines can index more easily. The most important concept in recovering from a ranking tumble is to perform damage control. Any SEO operation that you have performed that could be deemed as controversial you should immediately disband. If you are lucky, your web site hasn’t been permanently deleted from any important search engines.

Once you have performed all of the local damage control that you can it is a good idea to insure that your file sizes are relatively small. Make sure that you don’t have any excessive images or large external files that will cause a search engine to give up on its attempt to index you. Make sure that you haven’t created a linking loop that Google’s bots can’t find a way out of.

Links are very important to your websites rankings, and you need to consider finding good link partners to improve your targeted traffic and keyword relevancy. If you have a decent corp of link partners already you can request that they move their links to your site to a higher traffic page for a short period of time so that you can get re-indexed. They may be willing to do this if you remind them that the links from your site to theirs are more valuable once you’ve been indexed than they are when you are unindexed.

If you submit to the search engines properly the first time and you have a good SEO maintenance plan, youll only need to submit your site once. You might consider hiring someone to keep your site regularly updated, as regularly-updated sites rank higher. If you have recently suffered a ranking tumble, use Google Sitemaps to get your page back into Google. This is the fastest method available and is the strongest damage control that you will be able to perform.

Build great content around your keywords or phrases. Remember that content is King for both visitors and search engines. Your content must be extremely relevant to your key words at this point. You dont want to try to pull a fast one because this was probably the reason that your ranking tumbled in the first place. Remember: When you are recovering from a rank tumble, you are at the search engines mercy. You cannot possibly recover if you try to do anything that doesnt seem right to the search engines.

Submit your website properly to each search engine and directory by hand, making sure you understand each sites rules. Using automatic submissions is just not a good idea. There are so many things that can go wrong and you just dont know what goes on behind the scenes. Work by hand and if possible, contact the search engine or directory and ask them if there is a specific reason that your site was suddenly removed. Ask them if there is any action that you can take to make up for any mistakes that you may have made.

Get as many one-way links as you can from directories or pay to have good websites link to yours. One-way links are better than two-way ones.

Monitor your results regularly to find out whats working and whats not. Dont be afraid to make changes.

Keep all these things in mind and you can recover from a rankings tumble easily.

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How to Choose an SEO Provider.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 22-09-2009

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As the demand for search engine marketing continues to grow, so does the demand for experts in the area. In recent months, mass emails seem to be the new promise of top search engine rankings. How do you choose an SEO provider that will understand the needs of your website and provide quality service?

Lets breakdown the elements of SEO, to make it easier for you to recognize a good product. To find a good SEO provider, look for these things:

They need to be able to check your current site, evaluate it and set goals for it. They should develop a list of target keywords relevant to the site, write and insert good meta tags for you, and check all other tags to make sure that theyre alright. They should also check all your content and make recommendations on how to improve it to get better search engine rankings.

They should provide link-building programs, including writing and submitting listings to directories and giving you ideas on who to ask for links from. Reports tracking search engine referrals to your site are always good, especially if they explain what they mean and how they can be improved.

Website maintenance is a very important aspect of any SEO program. Once their site has been optimized, many people dont realize that they need to keep up these methods over time. If you let your site lapse back to the way it was as you add new content, then youll need to start all over again.

What kind of price can you put on all this? Well, pricing structures for SEO vary a lot between companies. Some companies will charge more because they include a monthly maintenance fee, while other companies offer customized proposals based on a websites specific need. In general, good SEO can cost as much as $150 an hour, so be prepared for that. Keep in mind that the larger your site is, the more work will be involved. It will naturally take less time to optimize a smaller, simpler site, so keep this in mind when you consider the pricing.

After youre more comfortable with what the services offered are and how theyre priced, youll want to make sure that the company youre choosing as your SEO provider has the knowledge and skill to complete the work for you. You should talk to three or four companies before you choose one. Be sure to ask them these questions, and back off if you dont feel like youre getting an honest answer:

1. How long has your company been in business? Can you explain what your previous experience is and what principles your SEO works under?

2. What other services do you provide besides SEO? Do you provide Internet marketing services?

3. What kinds of industries have you serviced previously? Can you provide me with checkable references?

4. How will you break down the cost of your services?

5. How much will I need to do myself for this SEO project to run smoothly?

6. How much time do I need to set aside to communicate with you during the process?

7. How long does it usually take to achieve results? (SEO is a gradual process, so a reply of anything under 6 months should be a red flag for you).

8. Is it possible to have someone from your firm teach us how to maintain your SEO once its done? (If they tell you that you wouldnt be able to do it yourself, then thats another red flag).

When they do send you a proposal on the project, you will want to make sure that it contains everything you spoke about, and everything else that should be there. If the answers to any of these questions are missing, you should walk away:

1. What specific services are included in the contract? Are any omitted? Make sure that what you discussed and wanted is included.

2. What is the name or position of the person you will be working with? Are you dealing with a salesperson, a designer, or someone else?

3. Are allowances made for communication with you? Are there any additional fees for contact?

4. How will the company be providing support? By email? On the phone? Do they stop supporting you after a month or so?

5. Are there extra fees for re-optimization or additional consulting? Is it really necessary? What maintenance is provided? If not, what is the additional cost of it? When maintenance is not included with the plan you need to be careful, as there are people who will charge you exorbitant amounts of money to maintain their optimization.

6. What reports are provided and how often will they provide them?

7. What are the total charges? Are there any additional charges?

By taking steps like this you will guard yourself against bad practices, you will also have a better understanding of the service you are getting, and you can easily compare offers to find the best one. But how can you tell if your provider is operating ethically? Well, thats is pretty easy. Heres a list of the sales pitches that bad SEO providers will use on you. If you hear any of these from a company, use someone else instead.

1. Guaranteeing top-ranking placements. This is impossible to do since the algorithms of the search engines change often, and any good SEO provider will tell you that.

2. Offering a service that includes the development of doorway pages. These designs often dont take your visitors ease of use into consideration, and search engines will ban your site if they catch you using them.

3. Telling you that you need more than one domain name pointing to your website. You can get banned for domain spamming, so dont take the risk.

4. Any company that says it will get thousands of inbound links to your website they will be using free-for-alls, which are very bad for your rankings.

5. Companies that offer you search engine submission software. Good positions always come from hand submission. If they tell you that submission by hand is not the best way to go, dont stick around.

Many SEO providers use unethical spam practices because they are cheap, easy to implement, and do provide very short-term results. Beware of any provider that uses them.

The best way to tell if the providers SEO practices are ethical is to ask: “Do these changes benefit visitors to my site as well making it more search engine friendly?” A good SEO provider will always say yes, as SEO is as much about the users as it is about the engines. After all, whats the point of a high ranking page if its nothing but unusable rubbish that will have people rushing for the Back button?

Dont be overwhelmed by these things, but always be on the look out to make sure that youre getting the best service possible. Good SEO companies can boost your sites traffic without resorting to unethical practices, and keep up with changes in the industry.

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How to Build a Google Sitemap.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 21-09-2009

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Google has implemented a cutting edge method of crawling web site for its search engine index. This unprecedented method of indexing web pages is known as Google Sitemaps, and it is quickly growing in popularity among webmasters and SEO agents and managers due to its ability to get entire web site indexed quickly and to pick up errors in the links coming into and out of these web site.

Google Sitemaps consists of placing the URLs of your pages along with important information regarding how Google should index them into an XML document. This information is then read by the Google Spider and the pages are normally indexed quite quickly assuming that they are coherent to Google’s standards for indexing pages (and also assuming that the sitemaps conform to Googles Sitemap Criteria which will be explained a little later).

There are two primary types of Google Sitemaps. The first is a list of pages in a website and the second is a list of sitemaps in the website. Google has limited the number of URLs in its sitemaps to fifty thousand URLs. This may sound like a lot, but for some of the more intricate web site, fifty thousand URLs may not even make a dent in what they want indexed.

This led to the advent of the Google Sitemap index file which can index up to one thousand sitemaps. If you do the math, this means that you could have one thousand sitemaps with up to fifty thousand URLs in each sitemap which allows for fifty million URLs to be placed in your Google Sitemap scheme. But wait, there’s more. Who ever said that you can’t have an index of indexes? You could actually make an index of a thousand index files which are all indexes of a thousand index files. Basically, there is no limit to the number of URLs that you can hold in your Google sitemaps.

Now that you understand the power of the Google Sitemap you’re probably asking yourself how to create and implement a Google Sitemap. The first step is to simply create your sitemaps. Here are the templates which are also available at http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/

For a sitemap file use the following format:

http://www.example.com/

2005-01-01

monthly

0.8

http://www.example.com/catalog?item=12&desc=vacation_hawaii

weekly

http://www.example.com/catalog?item=73&desc=vacation_new_zealand

2004-12-23

weekly

http://www.example.com/catalog?item=74&desc=vacation_newfoundland

2004-12-23T18:00:15+00:00

0.3

http://www.example.com/catalog?item=83&desc=vacation_usa

2004-11-23

Everything here is pretty self-explanatory with the exception of the changefreq and the priority aspects. The changefreq asks how often you think the page will change on average. The possible values for the changefreq option are: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and never. The priority aspect basically just asks how important the particular page is in your website. The value can be anywhere between 0.0 and 1.0. If you decide not to specify a priority it will default to 0.5.

To create a sitemap index file follow the following format:

http://www.example.com/sitemap1.xml.gz

2004-10-01T18:23:17+00:00

http://www.example.com/sitemap2.xml.gz

2005-01-01

This is all pretty straight forward but it leads me to my next point. You notice that the file names all end in .gz. Google allows you to compress your sitemaps so that they take up less of your disk space when you place them on your site and less of your band width when Google downloads them (which it seems to do approximately once every 9 hours or so). You may only use .gz compression. If you try .zip, it won’t work.

Now all that you really have to do is submit your sitemap to google. In order to do this you must go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login and log into your Google account. If you don’t have a Google account, you can create one. Once you log in you will be allowed to submit your sitemap into the google index. At some point within about 24 hours of your submission, Google will give you the option to place a small HTML file onto your website so that it can confirm that you do, indeed, have access to editing the site. Once you have done this it will begin to provide you with statistics regarding your google sitemap. (Note that even without this feature you can see when google downloaded the sitemap last and what the status of the sitemap was at that time.)

How Google Sitemaps Fits Into Search Engine Optimization.

According to Google, the Sitemaps utility is free and will continue to be yet its almost as good as the paid inclusion service offered by rival search engines. So how can you take advantage of this great service?

First of all, you should create a Google Account. Although you can still use Google Sitemaps without an account, you need one before you can use Googles tools to check your site submissions. Once you do that and go to sitemaps.google.com, youll be guided through the process.

Google Sitemaps has a very helpful question and answer page that will give you the help you need the answers to most questions people have can be found right there. Good luck!

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SEO Best Practice: Befriend The Directories

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 19-09-2009

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Why Directories Are Important

Directories should play a major role in your SEO efforts, well, at least the big and important ones, for the following reasons:

- Listings within major directories provide “context” to search engines. For example, if your web site is listed in the Open Directory Project under the category Pets -> Weird Pets -> Blue Cats, search engines will assume your web site has something to do with blue cats. Your web site and pages will be indexed faster and might have a better ranking in search results for specific terms (in this case, blue cats).

- Major directories (such as Yahoo! Directory, ODP, Jayde etc.) have high page ranks and as long as you obtain a non-reciprocal listing from them, paid or unpaid, your page rank will benefit greatly.

- Major directories are often replicated by other web sites (think of ODP, with hundreds of copies) which means that a listing somewhere in such a major directory will cause listings in all replica sites, contributing towards your link popularity efforts and boosting page ranks.

- The ODP (Open Directory Project) feeds results to Google, AOL, AltaVista, Lycos, Netscape - once again, a presence in ODP can get you quite far.

Submitting to Directories

As with most good things in life, you need to make efforts to get into quality directories. Although detailed instructions on how to submit your web sites are always provided by the directories, there are certain aspects to consider before you start hunting for directories and submit your web sites:

- Start with Yahoo! Directory and the Open Directory Project: being listed in the two of them is worth more than being listed in all other directories together! You will find soon enough that, unfortunately, being listed in these two is the hardest thing to do: Yahoo requires a $299 annual fee for regular web sites (only non-commercial sites qualify for a free listing) and $600 for adult sites, while ODP is free but you need A LOT of luck to make your way into it. ODP is so large yet is strictly human edited, which means the waiting time for a listing can extend to even years! Make your duty as a SEO worker and submit your web site, but don’t get your hopes too high, unfortunately.

- Religiously follow the submission guidelines provided by directories: read them as many times as you need to make sure you will not upset its editors by submitting your site the wrong way, with inaccuracies, the wrong description style, or to the wrong category.

- Try to find niche directories if your web site’s content is suitable for that. For example, if your web site covers Marketing topics, focus your efforts into finding a Marketing-only directory (such as MarketingWHO.com) and submit your site there: search engines love links from sites relevant to yours!

- You will probably come across many directories with paid inclusions: use your common sense to appreciate if its worth it or not. A good criteria is to check their Google Page Rank: if its at least 3 levels higher than your site’s Page Rank, it’s probably worth spending the money for the inclusion fee. However, do look for directories with a flat, one-time fee rather than recurring monthly or annual fees: you’ll end up spending less money!

In the end, remember a simple rule: if it’s too easy to get into a directory, it’s probably not worth the effort to get into it in the first case.

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SEO and Your Targeted Market

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 19-09-2009

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SEO is a continuing process and one that should not be ignored. As you know, or will soon realize, is that the search engines are the main entry point at which your customers will find your website. But there are other issues you must be aware of to get the targeted customers that you want.

Keywords
You may have optimized your webpages and people are coming — but not many. Why? It could be the keywords you are choosing.

Choosing the right keywords take time and effort, and it is an important factor to consider. When choosing keywords you should be asking yourself -

1.) What are the exact words people are using to find the product or service that you are offering. For example: Is it refurbished tools, cheap tools, free tools, red, ugly tools — you get my meaning.

2.) Are my keywords too general, or overused. If the keywords are too general, you may receive visitors that are not buyers, just browsers. If the keywords are overused, you may be so far down in the search engine rankings that your site will never be seen.

3.) Do you have your keywords or keyword phases in your “Title Tag”. Your keywords in the Title Page should be relevant to what your web copy relates too. If it doesn’t, you’ve just wasted an important keyword tool that the Search Engines utilize.

4. Meta Keywords Tag — Some people use the meta keywords Tag and others say that the search engines no longer use them. And still others, claim that it gives their competition an unfair advantage. I personally will continue to use them, because I don’t believe all the search engines ignore this tag.

Finding the correct keywords is no easy task. However, did you think of asking the people around you what keywords or phases they would use to get to one of your web pages. You might be surprised — it may not have been a keyword or phase that you even considered.

Popularity
Even though a keyword may be popular to the masses, you also must consider if it is targeting your specific market. Why? You may begin to get the traffic, but not the specific target market that will buy your products. And that is the bottom line, not so much the popularity of the word, as the quality of the traffic that the keyword brings.

And if the keyword is popular, you may find your web page competing with established websites — which translates into poor positioning. Thus, you could consider other smaller niche words, and still get the ranking you seek.

Experiment
You will have to experiment with the keywords that you use on your webpage/website, to determine if the keywords you are using is giving you the sales you want.

I have found testing, evaluating and re-evaluating is the name of the game of SEO. If you keep that in mind, you will begin to see the results you want.

However, once you are in the top ten of the search engines, do not think your job is done. You must continue to monitor — because the Internet is not a static environment — and people can come online that can slide your web page or website down the line in the search engines.

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SEO and its current use

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 18-09-2009

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It is indispensable therefore to get the attention of major search engines as well such Google, Yahoo, Alltheweb.com and others. In order to get high rankings you should have well-optimized content. SEO copywriting is a special technique that allows search engines to get more high rankings for your web site. This method by which your web site is found by major search engines is one of the most effective as it is most frequently used by the visitors of your web site. Moreover, it is one of the most cost-effective methods as well. Online advertisement might cost a lot, besides your potential client might not even pay attention to it. Certainly you should bear in mind what type of business you provide as well as what type of clients you intend to target. That is why it is very important to develop effective marketing strategy with the search engine optimization process. You should know the keywords by which your web site is found by your visitors. Needles to say, that the web site of dental company is found by other keywords than the site of law firm.

This technique allows your site to be ranked higher and increase free traffic on your web site. In writing of SEO content copy it important to remember that one should not attempt to write a completely new web copy rather one should concentrate on the revising and reediting content written by copywriters. Remember that final product should be suitable for reading both by search engines and people. The survival of many web sites depends on the traffic got by major search engines. Once your text ha been written and has been submitted, the search engines starts looking for relevant words in it. The pages of your web site will be ranked higher if more relevant keywords appear in the content of your web site. Finally, try either to read about this process or even hire some professional who can handle this task for you. Remember that if SEO process is performed incorrectly it might ruin rather than help your business.

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