My Buy Essay

Posts Tagged ‘links’

Search engine optimization (SEO) should be considered as a critical element of any Internet marketing strategy. This is important because there is so much which can be gained from SEO in terms of Internet marketing and advertising. Failure to optimize your website for search engines can result in a considerable loss in terms of free advertising and traffic which is essentially gained from ranking well with search engines. This article will provide insight into what SEO is and will explain why Internet marketing requires at least some degree of SEO.

SEO optimization is a strategy in which a website is designed to obtain favorable search engine rankings from popular search engines. This may be achieved in a variety of different ways and optimal SEO strategies combine a variety of different strategies to complete one well orchestrated SEO campaign. There are several elements to consider when attempting to optimize your website for search engines. This may include keyword density, prominence, META tags, titles and inbound links. Keyword density is one of the most common SEO strategies and essentially involves using relevant keywords often in the content of a website to demonstrate the relevance of these keywords to the website. This is important because search engines are likely to reward websites with optimal keyword densities with favorable search engine rankings in an effort to provide Internet users with the most relevant websites for particular search terms.

The prominence of keywords should also be considered. This includes how close the keywords are placed to the beginning of the website. The common mistake with this strategy is to believe the first opportunity to incorporate keywords is in the first line of visible text on the webpage. This is not true because search engines crawl the code of a website as opposed to the visible content on the website. This means there are multiple opportunities to incorporate relevant keywords long before the actual visible content on the website. This might include the code for the title as well as the META tags. Business owners who realize the potential for incorporating keyword into the code gain an advantage over competitors who only incorporate keywords into the content on their website.

Another area of concern which is very important for those who are interested in SEO is inbound links. Inbound links are essentially links which reside on other websites and direct traffic to your website. These links are considered important because many search engines place a value on inbound links because they are essentially an example of one website recommending another website. However, when obtaining inbound links it is important to do so from other websites which rank well with search engines because many search engines consider the rank of the original website when determining the value of the inbound link.

Now that we have briefly explained some of the main concept of SEO, we will illustrate why it is important to optimize your website in the first place. SEO is so important because most Internet users highly value the results of search engines and are likely to only visit to ranking websites when they search for a particular keyword. Internet users trust search engines to serve the most relevant content first and are therefore not likely to visit websites which do not fall on the first or second page of search results. This means websites which rank well essentially are receiving a great deal of free advertising from search engines that place their website in a key position. Website owners who do not invest time into optimizing their websites miss out on a great deal of potential web traffic.

So you have a nice looking website, which has good content and is well optimised, however you are looking to earn some additional income from the site. What are the next steps you can take to make this happen? This article gives useful tips and advice, which I hope will answer this question for you.

I have a large number of websites and am eager to learn about the latest website promotion methods, and about ways to increase your websites page rank in google.

One way of earning money from your site is by joining one or more affiliate schemes. Commissions vary, however if you have a high traffic site then you can do very well from these schemes.

Joining a program like google adsense is something which I prefer. This is where google place targeted adverts on your website and basically you earn money when people click on one of the ads. Depending on the website subject matter, these clicks can earn quite a high rate of commission. I had one click, on one of my hair loss websites which earned over ten dollars. This is quite rare and on average you will probably earn about forty cents per click. If you have a large number of content based, useful and interesting websites this can soon add up.

How much you earn will depend on how much time and work you put into each website. In my opinion hard work pays off and even though you may hear about certain ways to cheat the search engines, such as by using hidden pages or by joining a link building scheme, this will in the long term do you more harm than good. The search engines employ some of the top people and they are likely to find you out, ban your website from their engine and you also risk being kicked off the google adsense program altogether.

The hard work I wrote about earlier, is by promoting your website the natural way. I believe the key is to build up the number of backward links your website has, that is basically the number of other websites that link to you. These links should be built gradually and I would certainly not ever purchase a hundred backward links, from for example ebay. Where possible you should try and obtain these links from sites from your own sector or industry.

The best way to increase this number of backward links is by writing articles. You are able to include a link to your website in the article and when other webmasters include your article on their website or blog, this then gives you a one-way link. One-way links are the most powerful form of backward link in the eyes of the search engine.

I have been writing articles for quite a while now and it has proven to easily be, the most useful form of website promotion I have found so far.

Yahoo have now introduced a similar scheme to adsense, which I believe is only currently available in America. I have not yet added these adverts to my websites as I am based in the UK, therefore am unable to comment anymore about them.

In conclusion you are able to earn easy cash from your website/s. The more work you put in, the more you are likely to earn. I always see things in the long term, if I work very hard for a number of years, I will eventually have a few websites with good page rank and that is when I will be able to enjoy the fruits of my labour. In the mean time I will treat any income as a form of pocket money.

I wish you all the success in earning money from your websites and hope this article has helped you on your way.

Many webmasters who have been following the discussions about Google’s dislike of paid links have been confused about what constitutes bad links and good links, in the eyes of the search engine companies. In this article, I will seek to answer many of the questions people have on this topic.

There are two kinds of links that you can pay to have made for you: rented or paid links, and permanent links.

Introduction To Paid Links, Or More Accurately Rented Links

With Rented links, you can generally make your purchase decision based on the PageRank of a page.

The downside with rented links is that Google has stated that they do not like links that are sold on the basis of PageRank, and they are trying to create systems to identify links rented for PageRank, for the purpose of discounting those links. While they may eventually be able to target and negate links developed by systems like Text-Link-Ads or TextLinkBrokers, they will never be able to completely identify and discount all links that are sold for the purposes of PageRank .

In the end, I suppose Google is not going to penalize the Source or Target websites for those links, but they will nullify the value of the individual links in the Google algorithms. Cutts suggested and implemented the “rel=nofollow” a while back as a tool webmasters could use for the purpose of identifying links for which the webmaster did not want to pass PageRank. The only thing that Google’s algorithm will actually do to links identified as rented or paid links is that it will treat those links as “rel=nofollow’s”. If Google succeeds in their quest, the webmaster buying the links will be throwing away his or her money, if they are buying placement on a webpage solely for the purpose of influencing PageRank.

The Story Of Permanent Links

The second kind of link is the permanent link. Permanent links come in many formats, and in most cases should generally be viewed as non-rental links. With rental links, you pay a fee for placement once a month, quarter or year.

Of course, the Yahoo directory is not viewed as a paid link by the Google engineers, because although you “pay” to get the link, Yahoo does not guarantee placement of your link in their directory. Instead, Yahoo says that we are paying them to “review our link.” This is why Google is not discounting links from the Yahoo directory. Those Yahoo links are nice to have, but they still do require a yearly review for commercial websites, which must be paid for on a yearly basis.

Permanent in all cases is in the eye of the beholder. Permanent as a rule in the Internet world means that you will not have to pay another fee later to keep that link on the page, where it will reside. In the context of links on the Internet, permanent actually means that the link will live at that location, until the webmaster who owns the website changes his or her website’s direction OR goes out of business.

In my experience, perhaps 10% of the website’s where we get links placed will go under within one year. Towards the end of the second year, webmasters will look at their Profit/Loss and make a determination whether their income level will justify shooting for a third year of operation. Another 20% will close their website at the end of the second year run. So, 30% will drop out of business, within their first two years. Of the remaining 70%, many of those websites will survive to the fifth year and beyond. I don’t know how long one will be able to count on a permanent link just yet, but links that I built for myself in 1999 continue to produce traffic for my websites today, and those links have sent me continuous traffic for years.

Permanent, One-Way Links

Many permanent one-way links can be acquired on pages that currently have PageRank on them. In those cases, it may simply be a matter of your link being added to a list of links already on someone’s web page.

However, any link created through a content development method, such as pay-per-post or article marketing, will be posted on a new page on the Internet. All new pages on the Internet begin life at PageRank Zero. It is like the birth of a baby. The baby begins small, but grows into a child, then a teen, and finally an adult. All article pages begin their lives at PageRank Zero, and most of those new pages will increase in PageRank as they age. Some web pages will never mature beyond PR1, but others can grow into pages that are as high as PR6 (at least that is the highest I have seen an article page to date).

If you trust Matt Cutts of Google, he has indicated that all new pages begin life at PageRank Zero and in the Supplemental Results. He also said that Supplementals are not the end of the road. Cutts stated that the only thing required to bring a web page out of the Supplemental Results is to have that web page gain PageRank. (For those curious why a page went from the Primary Results to Supplemental Results, the answer is that either Google began counting links differently OR the links that gave a web page PageRank no longer exist.)

Three Reasons Why Article Marketing Helps Link Building

My conclusion from this information, and I might be biased, is that the use of article marketing for link building is a positive in the Google algorithms.

* I conclude this because links developed through article marketing begin on pages that have a PR Zero. So, we are obviously not getting links placed on websites for the sole purpose of acquiring PageRank, not directly anyway. We are placing links for the sake of having links, but with good luck, many of those links will gain PageRank over the long haul.

* By the very nature of article marketing, we can ensure that the links we develop for our websites reside on web pages that are tightly focused and targeted to the content of our websites.

* Most websites that post articles do so through a process of moderation, meaning that all article placements have been human reviewed. That human review process at the other end of the transaction puts most article websites on par with Yahoo’s human-reviewed directory.

When we can get our keywords embedded into the link pointing to our websites, then that is always a much better deal. But, that outcome will be affected by the webmaster at the other end of the process. Each webmaster has his or her own rules for article placement, and some of those folks simply do not permit embedded keywords in our links, either in the body of the article or in the about the author information. A plain text link is better than no link at all, although we always strive to get embedded keywords in our links.

Final Thoughts

When you write a great article people will link to it, no matter where it may reside. So in time, the pages that house your article will gain PageRank.

As the article’s author, you will are in total control of the relevance of the web page linking to your website.

Just as you are in control of relevance, you are also in control of whether people will choose to reprint your article. Write a good article, and people will use it.

Promoting your internet business can be done in hundreds of ways, some of which are more effective, some less so. Others can be total flops. But what matters at the end of the day is simply this: RESULTS…RESULTS…RESULTS. All your efforts should be geared to this one goal alone: Results that put money in your wallet.

So what really works?

1. People just cannot resist…FREE! Yes, FREE!

Imagine: You are out shopping for perfume. You pass the cheese counter. A gorgeous lady offers sample tastings of smelly, bluey Gorgonzola. You hate cheese, it gives you eczema. But you take some all the same &ndash maybe not to eat, but take it anyway as it is free. Lesson: People just love… FREE! If it is free, people will take it. Send out free newsletters; offer a free trial period/services/information. Tease your potential customers, for example, with FREE PC reports or PC scans. After running these free services, alert the customer of problems (potential and existing) on their credit record or PC. Then show them what it is, or repair the problem for a fee. This can be an effective way to get information to your potential customers, create sales or to generate traffic to your site.

2. Turn KNOWLEDGE into traffic to your site.

You will probably be an expert on your product/ business. Leverage this expertise by writing articles and publishing them in an ezine or an article information site. The most effective way is to give away your articles for &ndash FREE! In return, ask the publisher for authorization to include a byline. A byline is a very short summary of the author, his credentials and website. Your byline is a way to claim a ‘visible’ place, a niche on the world wide web for you/your business. With time, readers will come to regard you as an expert in your area of specialization. The logical progress and outcome will be trust in your site as a source of credible information.

3. Click-Click-Click to riches

Some search engines allow the purchase of website rankings.This is an excellent, inexpensive and effective online marketing technique. With Pay-Per-Click programs, you choose keywords that are relevant to your site, and determine yourself the bid prices for each keyword/s. When surfers enter these words, your site will appear with other sites bidding the same words. Higher price bid words rank the site higher in the list. You are only billed for that click if the surfer chooses to view your site. Many Pay-Per-Click programs offer other benefits such as updated lists of commonly used keywords.

4. In the Real World, we live…OffLine

You business may be online, but…remember that in the real world, everything else is offline. Utilise the myriad media advertising available: Newspapers, magazines, the radio, the television. Send out press releases to distribute your information to thousands of people across the country you live in.

5. Net-keting

We are not islands unto ourselves. Many online entrepreneurs share similar marketing ideas as you. Networking with these people via link-exchanges and customer referrals could bring exponential growth to your online business. However, caution must be exercised in the choice of a networking partner: everything that you recommend is a reflection of yourself/your business, hence you owe it to yourself to do due diligence and ascertain that your networking partner is reputable.

Did you know that there is a way that you can actually create content that will help generate plenty of relevant and valuable one way links pointed at your site? In the same way that articles can be written with the objective of getting as many readers as possible to click through the links in the resource box at the bottom of an article, you can also specifically write content with links in mind.

The accumulation of links has been made a lot easier by the rise of blogs in recent times which tends to make linking and creation of links very easy.

How Useful Is Your Article To Other Sites?

When one is looking for links, the focus changes from your prospective clients out there to fellow bloggers in more or less the same line of business. This means that you have to be familiar with blogs that are closely related to the topic or subject area of your own blog.

What kind of content would they be interested in referring their visitors to at the moment? These are the sort questions you will need to ask yourself and answer accurately before you can even begin working on a strategy to get related high-traffic sites to link to your content.

Select A Hot Topical Issue

Yet another direction to take is to select hot topical issues to write about. Especially where it is directly related to or deeply affecting the industry or topic you usually cover.

Actually the idea here is that the more passionate people are about the issue, the better.

Then you have to be careful to write about it in a different and refreshing way. If for example you can look at the whole raging debate in new light, the better. Whatever you do, just remember that you cannot afford to bore you potential audience. This brings us to the next point.

Controversy Sells, Controversy Will Get You Links

For centuries offline newspapers have known this great secret to high sales. Controversy never fails to sell newspapers. In the same way that it sells really big on the newsstands, controversy can also get you plenty of links. There are numerous examples on the net to prove this. For instance controversial pictures have had the effect of getting thousands of links pointing at them literally overnight.

Admittedly, getting a controversial photo to post at your site or a controversial topic to write about is far from being an easy task. However the huge advantage you will have from this day on is that you will know exactly what you are looking for and therefore it will be a lot easier to find it when you always keep in mind what you are looking for. Whatever you are doing, which ever site you are visiting always keep the thought at the back of your mind that you are looking for something controversial to help you win links. If you do this for any length of time, then chances are pretty high that sooner or later you will get an idea.

Get Into The Conversation

It is really all about creativity and the powerful ideas that you can generate with the sole objective of coming up with the sort of content that can help you accumulate many precious links to your site within a relatively short period of time.

However your idea creation needs to be controlled so that you concentrate on your particular niche and other closely related niches that compliment yours. To be able to so this successfully, you will need to get into the conversation going on in your niche. At any given time they will be a certain discussion through comments left in blogs and discussion groups about some issue related to the industry in general. By monitoring the comments on the major blogs and also discussion groups and forums, you will be able to even participate in this conversation. This is important since it will give you the added confidence of writing your content.

Participating in these conversations also plays another very important role. And that is, it will enable you to test your ideas before you turn them into content.

Conclusion

When you create content with links in mind, it dramatically increases your chances of accumulating them. More so when you use the tips supplied in this article.

It never ceases to amaze me how often new webmasters set about their online business at the start without actually having clearly defined strategies on how to market and promote the website and the product.

Now this article is for internet marketing newbies, so the strategies for website promotion are fairly basic therefore experienced internet marketers are under no compulsion to proceed.

If you are a newbie, however, please pay attention as these website promotional strategies are what you will need to employ over and over again every time you have a new product to promote. Apply these basic techniques and the bedrock of success is laid for you.

Remember, no traffic, no sales.

Free listings in Search Engines: Everyone loves to get something for free. The same applies to free traffic.

Consider building a keyword list related to your product before you build your website. This way, you write your website content crafting in those keywords for which the site needs to be optimised. Don’t overdo it though as the search engines are becoming too smart and may think you are attempting to trick them. The more pages you have, the easier it is to have your site optimised for your chosen keywords.

Pay Per Click Advertising: Here the search engines list your site based on your bid for a particular keyword(s). Your position in the search listing strongly depends on how much you are prepared to pay for those keywords and the bidding price is also dependent on the popularity and competitiveness of your niche. This Pay Per Click (PPC) listings are the ones you see on the right side of your screen in the search results in, for instance, Google and Yahoo who now own Overture.

It’s always a good idea to know your website statistics especially conversion rates to determine how much you will be prepared to pay for those keywords &ndash what I call your bid price affordability. This way you don’t operate your PPC Campaign at a loss.

Know Your Numbers!

Ezine Advertising: You search for popular ezines (these are electronic magazines or newsletters) in Google or Yahoo by entering Keywords ‘ezines directory’.

Visit these directories and look out for ezines that fit your products and also the subscription base of those ezines. You then choose to place Solo ads, Sponsor ads or Classified ads on ezines of your choice at an agreed price. The choice of which type of Ad and what ezine(s) to place your Ad would depend on your personal preference and your budget as well.

Linking Your Website: You need to set out linking strategies that can boost your business in two ways. First is that the more links you have, the more the search engines will rank your site and consequently your position in the organic search engines. Secondly, you get traffic deservedly from your link partners website. I’m sure you will welcome targeted free traffic from any source.

Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate program are a great source of free traffic and income at no cost to your good self. Affiliates are business partners who sign up to sell your product for an agreed commission. You can make a fortune on the internet from a great product if you have tons of affiliates working for themselves and you. An affiliate software is necessary to track your affiliate sales, visitors. Don’t forget to provide your affiliate with marketing tools and training materials to assist them.

Offline Advertising: This is quite often ignored. Just because your business is online does not mean you cannot generate traffic offline. You will be surprised at how potent this weapon can be. Write Press Releases about your product, Product review etc and send it to editors of newspapers and magazine. The one I love most is what we refer to as web ad. Here you use classified ads in newspapers and magazines to drive traffic to your site.

These are basic strategies you must have mapped out before commencing work on your website. This way you can start marketing the very day your website goes live.

Always think marketing first.