If you wish to be a successful Internet marketer you will want to avoid these 8 mistakes:

1. Failure to prepare properly. Many Internet marketers are simply lazy and will not make the effort to prepare properly. Refrain from being overly anxious as if you’ll miss the boat if you do not market your website immediately. Use however many days it takes to setup all the appropriate advertising accounts and advertisements properly. This will make your administration more efficient and enable you to fly through your schedule tasks effortlessly each day. The net result is that your marketing efforts will be far more productive than if you were to take a haphazard approach.

2. Failure to implement an advertising strategy. You must have a plan with well defined goals if you wish to have positive marketing results. Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Do not try to recreate the wheel. Find out what successful people are doing and do the same. Regarding goals, write them down. When you achieve a goal mark it as “completed” and replace it with another. By doing this very simple step you can monitor your effectiveness and progress.

3. Failure to be professional. Some of the ads on the Internet are of embarrassingly poor quality. Be professional in your business approach and in the design of your ads. If you lack the ability to produce professional ads then find a resource that can. The quality of your website and advertisements is a reflection on you. Also, when dealing with customers always be courteous and professional even when they are not. If you are professional you will shine above the rest and earn customer confidence.

4. Failure to implement and adhere to a disciplined schedule. If you don’t have a realistic schedule in place then you will not be disciplined in marketing your ads properly. Consistency not volume is the key to success in marketing on the Internet. A schedule allows you to be consistent and also forces you to be disciplined. The Internet is not a “get rich quick” environment. It takes hours of dedicated and consistent work. You must be committed to putting in the time if you wish to have good marketing results.

5. Failure to utilize the right tools. There are some very innovative tools on the Internet to make the operation of your business more efficient. Many of them are very affordable and they will save you from having great frustration. Some marketers take the approach of being a “penny wise and a pound foolish.” In saving their pennies they are losing out on making the bigger dollars. Don’t ignore the many tools which are available.

6. Failure to build a downline. Your downline is the cornerstone of your business. A downline is your customer list or they can be referrals that join certain advetising programs through you serving as an affiliate. Verious advertising sites offer you some type of compensation for bringing them referrals. Don’t ignore the value of these referrals. Some Internet marketers are so anxious to advertise their product they fail to have an understanding of the bigger picture. A big downline can save you money in your advertising and enbable you to advertise more effectively. When soliciting always get the email address of your customer for future solicitations and sales.

7. Failure to track ads. Much time is wasted on unproductive sites and ads. If you’re not tracking them you will continually work in ignorance. You must have a measure of what is working and what is not. Is the program that you are participating in yielding the desired results? Are your ads well written and effective in drawing customers? You will never have the answers to these important questions unless you track your ads. You can waste a great deal of time on poor advertising programs and bad ads if you never track the results.

8. Failure to understand the advertising medium. You must understand how each type of advertising program works if you’re going to be an effective marketer. Whether you use pay-per-click advertising or membership driven sites like safelists, traffic exchanges and text ad exchanges all have their own personality. Not only do you need to understand the mechanics of each but also the general personality of their membership.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Copyright (c) 2008 Titus Hoskins

Forget the Computer Age or the Internet Age, centuries from now our current time will probably be referred to as the Google Age. This assumption is not exactly a great leap of faith; Google has quickly permeated into mainstream culture to become an underlying factor of everyday life, a tightly woven backdrop to our lives.

But never make the mistake of trying to define Google as just a search engine or you will miss the true calling of this little “Backrub”, which was the original name used by its founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1996.

Google as we now know it debuted in 1998. The name Google is a twist on the word Googol, a number represented as 1 followed by 100 zeros. After everything is said and done, it will more than likely refer to Google’s net worth – monetary or otherwise.

But forget search engine, for regardless of the founders’ intentions or company’s objectives, Google is and has always been the ultimate marketing machine. A massive marketing machine that is just now gearing up and aiming for more and more lofty heights. These heights seem to increase each day as Google quietly rolls out program after program.

All noble ambitions aside, Google is the perfect marketing machine. Google has no equals, and it is very close to getting a stranglehold on the real power behind all marketing, which is information.

Marketing is information. Information is marketing.

Great marketing is supplying the right information at the right time. Google more than any other entity on the web or in the world, for that matter, fulfills this criterion at its very core. Google is re-writing the book on how products are marketed.

Google now has over 60% of the search traffic in the U.S., with a staggering 7.3 billion monthly searches. In some countries Google’s search share is 80% or more. (Source: comScore) Those webmasters who have number one keyword listings in all three of the major search engines will know Google is the only game worth playing because it delivers by far the most traffic.

While MSN and Yahoo! are still major players and are listed in the top 5 traffic sites on the web, what most people don’t realize is that (unlike the other two) almost all of Google’s traffic is search traffic. From a marketing perspective this is extremely important since search traffic can deliver the highest conversions (sales) mainly because it lets you capture the potential customer or client when they are in the right mindset to buy or to perform an action.

Obviously the key to successful marketing is finding the buyers and clients for your products and services. Google has forged itself as the ultimate “middleman” as more and more of the world’s business is performed in cyberspace. And as everyone knows the “middleman” can reap huge profits and hold enormous power.

Google, within its Adsense program, now offers CPA or Cost Per Action where marketers can now receive larger returns for displaying Google’s links on their webpages. As any professional marketer will tell you, you can get 10 times the revenue by promoting affiliate products rather than the Adsense code on your sites. But by adding CPA and other affiliate products within the Adsense program, Google has made it more attractive to serious online marketers.

Another step in that same direction is Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick, which includes the massive online affiliate marketing network Performics. This means Google can now bring any customer full-circle from initial search to checkout.

This may have dire consequences for large, lucrative third-party affiliate networks like Commission Junction and LinkShare. Online marketing and ecommerce is growing at a blistering rate, and the company that controls the majority of these transactions will wield enormous power. Will make the Medici look like paupers.

Those marketers who have managed to acquire number one listings for their targeted keywords in Google’s organic search are smiling all the way to the bank. Mainly because Google commands enormous trust with the surfing/buying public and this is demonstrated through higher conversion rates. Likewise, those who have mastered the Adsense and Adwords programs will know Google is an excellent source of online income.

Most of the complaints against Google stems from its PageRank system, which is supposed to be Google’s version of online democracy in action, a link is a vote for your page or content. The higher the number of links, the higher your page will be ranked in Google’s index or SERPs – Search Engine Results Pages.

So far Google has played fair, giving even the smallest webmaster the opportunity to capture top Google listings if they produce superior or popular content to the surfer. Some would even argue Google’s recent crackdown on sites offering paid-links can be seen as evening the playing field for the small webmaster or marketer who obviously doesn’t have the economic clout or resources to buy their way to the top of Google’s listings.

Keyword rankings may be the ultimate equalizer and determiner of online wealth. Those who can reach the top positions for their chosen profitable niche keywords will have companies and service providers lining up to do business with them. The fallout can prove extremely lucrative for both parties.

However, few marketers or webmasters forget who is really holding the cards; Google controls all steps along this marketing tunnel with its search listings, Adwords and Adsense programs. The only dark spot on the horizon could be monopoly issues, but Google probably has enough reservoirs of public goodwill and deep enough corporate pockets to squash any claims.

As Google’s dominance in the search market becomes greater, Google will have control of all segments of the online marketplace. Why should Google stop there, why not go into Radio, TV… as the Internet gradually mutates into a billion+ interactive TV channel universe (as many believe it will) who do you think will be at control central offering you a nice free remote?

Then there is also Google’s planned broadband 700 MHz bid; one can only speculate on Google’s intentions. But Google must find a way to transmit its information at no cost to its users. Could it mean free wireless Internet for everyone on free Google boxes or gadgets of some form, usable and accessible anywhere in the world? Anything is possible because the stakes are so astronomical and the marketing revenue so vast, Google must get its information seamlessly and instantly to the end user at all costs.

One can only guess at the enormity of the marketing power Google will yield in coming years as the Internet slips out of its teen years. But it won’t be just marketing, the influence of Google on all aspects of our lives will probably grow exponentially and that influence will be huge.

For the true power of Google is only just now beginning to be glimpsed; only as more and more of the Google pieces fall into place will we truly fathom what life will be like in the Google Age. Google’s power, reverence and respect will no doubt be so enormous it may lead some to make comparisons to a higher power that has guided most of the life on this planet so far. Which could also lead one to muse, at least they got the first two letters correct.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Internet technologies had fundamentally changed the structure of the traditional brick-and-mortar retailers and several other industries. In what BusinessWeek calls “first wave of Internet disruption,” firms such as Amazon, Expedia, E*TRADE, and the former CDNow (purchased by Amazon) transformed the way books, travel, investments and music were sold by means of affiliated marketing programs (“E-Biz Strikes Again! 2004). Disrupted industries in the first wave generated effective marketing tools offering tangible products that were easily compared and purchased for the lowest price.

In this environment, marketers want to know which internet marketing tools will result in top-line sales and bottom-line profitability. Plenty of exciting new opportunities lie ahead for making money incorporated with the best affiliated programs, for which it can be viewed as Internet: the Ultimate Gold Rush.
The first generation of e-business was like a gold rush. New start-ups and well-established businesses alike created a Web presence & experimented plenty. Many companies utilized internet gearing up effective money making programs but only a handful brought anything to the bottom line. In early 2000 one estimate listed 21 firms with 12 month sales growth between 100% and 500%-but all had negative profits. Between early 2000 and 2002, however, more than 500 Internet firms shut down in the United Sates alone- the so called dot-com bust. It is interesting to note that, later, almost 60 percent of the public dot-com companies making it through the bust were profitable in the fourth quarter of 2003.

Internet technologies had fundamentally changed the structure of the traditional brick-and-mortar retailers and several other industries. In what BusinessWeek calls “first wave of Internet disruption,” firms such as Amazon, Expedia, E*TRADE, and the former CDNow (purchased by Amazon) transformed the way books, travel, investments and music were sold by means of affiliated marketing programs (“E-Biz Strikes Again! 2004). Disrupted industries in the first wave generated effective marketing tools offering tangible products that were easily compared and purchased for the lowest price.

Having gone through the boom and bust in developed nations (the Internet is still the best money making tool in many emerging economies), we are now entering the Plateau of profitability. Now marketers are returning to their traditional roots, relying on well-grounded strategy, effective marketing practice & tools along with the best affiliated programs using information technology in ways that ultimately leads to the best money making program-no more throwing money at ideas that don’t return a desired amount on investment. During the dot-com shakeout from 2000-2002, the industry experienced much consolidation. Some firms, such as Levi Strauss, stopped selling online both because it was not efficient and because it created channel conflict. Now is the time that businesses demand and make money from the best affiliated marketing programs and Internet strategies. Today, the Internet is mainstream in industrialized nations. High adoption rates are occurring in the 20 nations entertaining 90% of all Internet users and most of these populations can’t do without the Web or e-mail. As well, most organizations know that they must include information technology in their marketing strategies and apply marketing tools effectively to meet the needs of their markets efficiently and competitively. Marketers who grasp what internet technologies can do are best poised to integrate Internet technology to marketing practice applying effective Internet marketing tools; mediating technology, increasing global reach, equalizing information, sensing affiliated programs, scaling capacity, ensuring open standard, deconstructing market, & initiating task automation. Compare these properties to those of the telephone. Telephone is a mediating technology, has global reach, and has network externality. In contrast, the internet has properties that create opportunities beyond those possible with the telephone, television, postal mail, or other communication media. It is these differences excite marketers and have them wondering how to convert them to the best internet money making program.

In this environment, marketers want to know which internet marketing tools will result in top-line sales and bottom-line profitability. Plenty of exciting new opportunities lie ahead for making money incorporated with the best affiliated programs, for which it can be viewed as Internet: the Ultimate Gold Rush.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

There is a lot of talk nowadays about Search Engine Optimization, but not so much about Organic Search Engine Optimization itself. So what exactly is Organic Search Engine Optimization?

Organic Search Engine Optimization is just like ordinary Search Engine Optimization in that it is the process of optimizing the design of your website so that search results using keywords in search engines will rank your website higher in the non-paid listings. Organic Search Engine Optimization (also called Natural Search Engine Optimization) however, also has a slight difference from ordinary Search Engine Optimization in certain aspects but the main focus is to work towards getting the best ranking in Natural or Organic search results (SERPs).

For instance, Organic Search Engine Optimization requires your SEO team to evaluate your website thoroughly to see how best to optimize your website’s potential. The SEO team will then try to identify any technical issues which can bar your site from being indexed properly during the Organic Search Engine Optimization process.

Organic Search Engine Optimization also requires detailed keyword analysis to be done so your Organic Search Engine Optimization team can produce a list of appropriate keywords and phrases that can be used for your website. Keyword analysis should require real information about the function, products and services offered at your website, stay aligned with your goals for marketing your website, and try to get the best Organic Search Engine Optimization impact on the search engines and end users. Some Organic Search Engine Optimization specialists will give you a list of target keywords and phrases that have been ranked as to how popularly use each is by Internet searchers.

It has been found that to get the best search engine rankings, Organic Search Engine Optimization should rely on effective and efficient organization of the website, with content selected by your Organic Search Engine Optimization team so that keywords and phrases will not look ridiculous when used in the website content. Organic SEO starts with selecting the right Title and Meta tags, creation of on-page text with emphasis on content and layout, and then followed by insertion of internal links of the various web pages of your website. If these are followed by your Organic Search Engine Optimization team, keyword relevance and correct page formatting will increase.

Organic Search Engine Optimization also requires manual submissions of your website to directories and search engines. This helps assure you – the client – that Organic Search Engine Optimization will meet the special demands, regulations, and legal requirements of every search engine that is contacted by your Organic Search Engine Optimization

team.

Your Organic Search Engine Optimization team must rely on ethical link building techniques, not only to safeguard the security of your search engine rankings but also to allow your website descriptions to be placed under the right directory categories. Ethical Organic Search Engine Optimization link building will also help your website use only the correct resource web sites.

Does Organic Search Engine Optimization end here? Actually, no, your Organic Search Engine Optimization team must constantly track search engine submissions so that they can tweak and amend your website if needed to provide the best results for you. Organic Search Engine Optimization also requires that the team document their monitoring activities so you yourself know what is happening all the time.

It would be helpful if your Organic SEO team can track the numbers of visitors your site generates, to make it more convenient for you. After all, you need to concentrate on running your organization and/or business so Organic Search Engine Optimization should be a separate endeavor that others should do for you.

Otherwise, why outsource this function?

Organic Search Engine Optimization aims to help you bring in more visitors than you were getting before, so that your potential sales will be maximized in the process. But you need to avoid illicit practices and favor Organic Search Engine Optimization more because:

1) illicit marketing practices do not reflect well on you or the SEO team you hired.

2) Organic Search Engine Optimization does work when used the right way.

3) Organic Search Engine Optimization does not harm the search engine you will submit your website to, so you have a favorable image with search engines in general, and

4) Organic Search Engine Optimization is part of the use of best practices that have

been accepted by most of the Internet world nowadays.

How then do you find an Organic Search Engine Optimization team that you can work with? One way is to look for SEO industry data about who are the best Organic SEO players currently operating online. Examine the background of the company, and pay close attention to who they cite as their satisfied clients. You might want to contact these clients yourself discreetly so you can inquire into their Organic Search Engine Optimization experience with that SEO player. Another way is to ask people you know who have used Organic Search Engine Optimization themselves. Sometimes, the best way to get proper service is through ordinary word-of-mouth advertising from people you trust.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Getting a Search Engine Optimization Specialist depends on what stage of development your website already is in. Many website owners err by creating the website first then hiring a Search Engine Optimization Specialist to implements his expertise so that the website ranked higher in search engines like Google and Yahoo! A much better way of using the services of a Search Engine Optimization Specialist is to hire him even as far back as the website design planning stage to get much better results.

How do you know if the Search Engine Optimization Specialist you hired is competent in this field? Your Search Engine Optimization Specialist might simply do the usual integration of multiple keywords and phrases with those keywords into the content of the website (and into the HTML coding as well). Since this Search Engine Optimization Specialist practice is already being done by many, the effectiveness of this tactic is watered down significantly.

Choose a Search Engine Optimization Specialist team that can write content for you, assess the statistics of the website, are well-versed in HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), know how Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be applied to websites for different industries and occupations, and can monitor the latest on search engine developments for you. This may entail several skills so you know you’re getting more bang for your buck when you hire a Search Engine Optimization Specialist team.

It is important that your Search Engine Optimization Specialist team be aware of the difference between directory enhancement and a search engine optimization effort. Directory enhancement means your Search Engine Optimization Specialist team will select the categories under which your website seems to be most related to. The Search Engine Optimization Specialist team will then create concise descriptions about the content of your website (excluding the keyword stacking tactic which we mentioned earlier.) Search Engine Optimization, on the other hand, requires skills in the design, writing and then encoding into HTML of pages from your website so that your preferred search engines will rank your website highly enough so when Internet users search for certain keywords, your website will appear in the top search results.

The Search Engine Optimization Specialist should be able to tag for you the specific keywords and phrases which seem to be used most commonly in most Internet searches. A little known fact is that search engines do not use the same algorithms for very long – these search

engines actually switch to new algorithms frequently. This practice helps keep spamming Search Engine Optimization Specialist from mastering the search engines and allows them to produce better search results for Internet users over time. So, apparently your search engine ranking is not cast in stone and may need to be pursued constantly by your Search Engine Optimization Specialist to insure that people will find your website among the millions out there on the Net.

If the web page uncovered by the search engine spider seems to differ from the web page viewed by the end user, that web page will be deemed spam and your website will be eliminated from the search engine database. This is tantamount, actually, to copyright infringement

whose Search Engine Optimization Specialist rely on the cloaking practice to get away with their stratagem. Unfortunately for these people, search engines are trying to get the practice of cloaking by any Search Engine Optimization Specialist to be banned altogether because cloaking does not benefit the search engine and may even have detrimental side effects on search engines.

Some software programmers will even resort to taking content owned by another site and putting it on their client’s website so that the Search Engine Optimization Specialist team can create “gateway pages”. Never resort to this because it does not produce the optimal long-term results you are looking for. Rather, your website should be dependent on original and excellent content produced specifically for it, as well as a spider-friendly navigation system applicable for search engine usage.

The best way for your Search Engine Optimization Specialist to work for you is still dependent on the basics:

1) Create a well-planned and well-designed website

2) Create web pages that your audience can follow, and

3) Rely on a navigation system that both end users and search engines can follow and use.

4) Have a good strategy increase you link popularity.

If you follow these basics, you not only assist in your users’ search activities but you also make life easier for the search engines themselves. In short, choose a Search Engine Optimization Specialist that really knows how to optimize search results for you the right way, rather than resorting to illicit tactics. Illicit tactics may work for a short time, but in the long term will only give you a bad rep among search engines and the wide, wide world of website owners.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Introduction

Search Engines have developed into the Internet’s most popular and powerful source of information, accounting for an estimated 80% of the Internet’s traffic (Heche, 2007, p. 1). As a result, website owners are realizing the power in such devises and are shifting marketing budgets into the optimization of their sites specifically for search engines. During the toddler years of search engine optimization (SEO), crafty developers took advantage of weak search engine algorithms to display their websites in top results, regardless of their site’s relevance. However, as more advanced Internet search engine technologies emerged to solve such exploits, new SEO methods were pursued (Boykin, 2007, p. 1). With the growth in search engine popularity and accuracy, and with newly emerging techniques used to target such engines, SEO has become a cut-throat competitive industry that is quickly being dominated in its utilization by big-business corporations (Murray, 2007, p. 1). Regardless of a company size and status, however, company webmasters with basic knowledge of HTML and blogging can establish top search engine rankings for websites that target niche markets with great efficiency by employing specific on-page and off-page SEO techniques.

A Search Engine Primer

Search engines did not become popular overnight. In fact, it took half a decade for the general public to catch on to the power of them. Search engines have become a woven part of society only because of their brilliant architecture; systems with frameworks so complex, yet so simple in user utilization that a novice can operate it. Concisely, the modern search engine is an intricate tool formulated to minimize the discovery time of information by minimizing result digression and maximizing result accuracy based on hundreds of relative factors. The basic functionality of a search engine includes content discovery, indexing, querying, and ranking (Fishkin, 2007, p. 4).

Content discovery is often referred to as “Web crawling”. The analogy of the “Web” is an important concept to grasp, since its analogy will act as a backbone to understanding the search engine discovery process and the terminology involved. The internet can be generally referred to as the World Wide Web, or just Web for short, because the structure of the internet most resembles the structure of a spider web (Davis, 2005, p. 1). Each of the billions of pages of content are linked together in some way or another to create an incomprehensibly large network of connections. Consequently, search engines have called their automated programs that crawl this web “bots” or “spiders”. Modern crawlers revisit indexed sites on a regular basis to look for changes or revisions. Sites are normally updated by the crawler between a one or two months time. In estimation, search engines have only crawled about half of the Web’s content pages, accounting for between eight to ten billion pages (Fishkin, 2007, p. 4).

Every page that is crawled on the Web by a search engine is placed into a gigantic database called an index or sometimes a catalogue. Massive organization is applied to the index in a way that requests can sort through billions of pages and find relevant matches within just fractions of a second. Sometimes it can take a considerable amount of time for a search engine to actually index a site after crawling it. During this time, the site will not be available on index to those searching (Fishkin, 2007, p. 4).

Content querying is the provision of an interface or gateway connecting the human user and the results waiting inside the search engine database. The results vary in type from web pages to online published word processor documents, and are returned to the user based on the criteria they indicate. The method a user might use to indicate criterion varies based on the search engine. Search engines normally provide a blank text input field in which the user can type terms or phrases into then press a button to send the query to the search engine for processing. Many modern search engines incorporate exclusive input syntaxes that a user might learn to take full advantage of the search engine’s power. Natural language searches, however, allow a user to input full sentence-structured questions instead of requiring the user to learn query syntaxes (Sullivan, 2007, p. 1). An example of syntax is placing terms in quotations. Google, the most commonly used search engine of today, uses quotations to specify results that return exact matches to all the terms in the order they are listed in quotations. Google includes ten other operators used to better define a query and home in on the target results (Google Cheat Sheet, 2007, p. 1).

Ranking becomes a search engine’s most distinguishing process, as this will determine what and how information is displayed to the user. A commonality all search engines share by nature is the organization of pages by relevancy starting first with most relevant and ending with least. The higher a page’s rank is, the higher the site’s probable relevance will be as perceived by the engine. Every search engine uses its own unique method of determining how pages rank in relation to one another, and these are called algorithms. An algorithm is a mathematical formula that will take into consideration dozens of factors that have positive and negative effects on page rank. Think of it as a set of rules that a judge uses to determine which girl wins in a beauty pageant. The winner will always showcase more than just beauty alone, but instead, indicate a deeper purpose like the reputation, talents, and even life intentions. The many factors involved in judging contestants in a beauty pageant are very much like the factors used to rank a webpage (Sisson, 2006, p. 12).

Brief History of the Search Engine

The earliest breeds of search engines were not actually search engines at all, but rather massive directories of content pages manually submitted by their authors. It was not until spiders and bots came to the scene that people began to see the power behind such tools (Wall, n.d., p. 8). Archie appeared in 1990 as the very first tool used to search pages of the Internet. It was named Archie to resemble the word “archive” without the “v”. Built by Alan Emtage, the program indexed directory listings from public FTP sites. An alternative tool emerged a year later called Gopher, which indexed solely text files instead of all computer files. Two other index systems called Veronica and Jughead searched the Gopher index servers and provided more targeted keyword search (Wall, n.d., p. 2). By 1993, a new generation of search engine emerged from a student at MIT: automated web crawling. Initially used for counting and measuring the size of the Web, the first web crawling bot on the Internet was named the World Wide Web Wanderer by its creator Matthew Gray. ALIWEB (Archie-Like Indexing of the Web) was introduced in the same year with the capability to collect page meta-data and allow page authors to submit their own content. Search engines and crawling technology wasn’t yet seen as having any true significance for society until further university experiments were done (Wall, n.d., p. 1).

As the Internet gained popularity and started appearing as a business opportunity to investors, college students began getting large funding opportunities. This boom in funding caused break-through developments such as relevancy-based indexing to occur. Corporations like Altavista, Ask Jeeves, Lycos, Yahoo, and Google in turn met at the search engine scene, each bringing their own new innovations to the table. Altavista offered a brand new method of searching for the end-user known as natural language inquiry (Wall, n.d., p. 1). Ask Jeeves was quick to mimic this technique, but also focused on building its index from web communities. A few years later, Altervista was bought by Yahoo! for 235 million dollars, which was just one of that many small steps taken toward the multi-billion dollar establishment Yahoo! is today (Olsen, 2003, p. 1). Lycos contained the largest index of any search engine of its time with more than 60 million documents in 1996, but eventually evolved into the fifth most popular web portal in the world (Sherman, 2002, p. 1). Lycos abandoned its own search engine algorithm, and began powering its search feature by Ask in 2006, which is former Ask Jeeves (O’Reilly, 2006, p. 1).

Although Google entered the scene relatively late in 1998, it still managed to ultimately come out on top from its tough search engine competitors (Google Milestones, 2007, p. 1) Through collaboration, Larry Page and Sergey Brin babied their creation until receiving more than 25 million dollars in funding in just a year’s time from its initial launch (Google Milestones, 2007, p. 3). Google partnered with AOL and Yahoo! by early 2000, which also marked the release year of the renowned Google toolbar (Google Milestones, 2007, p. 4). In 2007, Colvin of CNN reported that “Google’s figure is $149 billion and rising fast, pushing the company past most of America’s biggest, most successful, most respected corporations” (Colvin, 2007, p. 1). It is clear that Google has conquered the search engine war, rendering it as the most valuable search engine webmasters can optimize for their websites. Google has practically set the standard for other search engines that have followed the leader’s footsteps. Because of this, Google-specific page ranking factors are currently the most significant for any SEO venture because of competing search engines’ inherent similarities (Ryan, 2006, p. 1).

On-Page Search Engine Optimization

Jumping straight into SEO, it is imperative to understand that success relies heavily on the keywords that are chosen for the optimization venture. Because keyword terms can be found inside content, titles, headers, and images of a webpage, these are all considered on-page objects and therefore contribute to the optimization of the page itself. Keywords can be thought of as the foundation upon which SEO is built on, when if removed from the equation it leaves a broken structure. In relation to SEO, keywords are terms used to define the purpose of a webpage in its entirety (Fishkin, 2007, p. 9).

Commonly, there is confusion between metadata keywords and content keywords. metadata entries, which are code strings placed in the code heading of pages, are no longer used for relevancy because they were taken advantage of by having irrelevant keywords that attracted undeserved attention. For this metadata keywords are no longer used, while metadata descriptions are only used as snapshots for a few rare search engine directory page entries. Because of all this, metadata entries are very insignificant to SEO. In the world of keywords, content is king. When a search query is sent, the search engine will try to return with pages that match best to the inquiry keywords found within a page’s content (Sisson, 2006, p. 8). Since so much relies on keywords, it is common practice to conduct research to seek the right related keywords or keyword combinations that are optimizable for a given scenario. There are several free online tools available for keyword research, such as the tool suite found at http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools (Callen, 2005, p. 32)

Keywords that are too popular will actually have a negative impact on search rankings because of the overcoming competition. Instead of seeking popular solo keywords like “insurance” or “games”, it is much more effective to find a niche (Callen, 2005, p. 12). A niche homes in on the specific product, idea, or service that is attempting to be displayed in search results. When optimizing for a focused target audience, the competition is easier to outsource, and in turn will always promise high rankings when page optimization is established. Instead of seeking a single magic keyword, it is best to seek a keyword combination or a phrase that will best describe a niche specifically. Most people enter 2-5 word phrases into search queries, which ensures security with multi-keyword niches (Sisson, 2006, p. 13).

Some webmasters have tried repeating their keywords excessively on their pages to boost frequency. What these webmasters might not understand is that excessive keywording is like playing with fire, where if they get too close they will get burned. If a search engine notices an unusually excessive repetition of keywords, the engine will demote the site and may even ban it from its index completely. In contrast to this, search engines are now intelligently seeking common relationships between terms on the Web, so when keywords are used throughout a document with fluency and in good context, this can quickly benefit a site’s ranking (Fishkin, 2007, p. 9).

Keywords should be strategically placed on a webpage to maximize keyword frequency without running the risk of being seen as a keyword spammer by the search engine. If more than one keyword combination is being targeted by your site, it is important not to strand keywords together in an attempt to increase keyword relevance. In page content, header code tags will emphasize keywords for users as well as search engine spiders. Placing keywords naturally in the alt tags of content relating images will also boost page relevance, and return your site in image search results. Most importantly, naturally mentioning keywords in body paragraph text will increase keyword frequency. To reiterate however, it is important not to overuse keywords in body paragraphs, since some search engines might suspect a site with that sort of ‘keyword juicing’ as spam (Sisson, 2006, p. 13).

Linking is another imperative factor of page rankings which will be covered in greater detail in off-page techniques, but is also a part of on-page optimization. Internal linking generates a hierarchy of synonymous page rank based upon which pages are linked most. Many webmasters often do not realize they are making a mistake when chain-linking content more than two levels away from the homepage, or mesh linking. Mesh linking occurs when every page contains a link to every other page in the site, giving every page with equal importance. This means a contact or form page will rank just as high as the actual meat of the site. To solve this issue and direct the search engines’ focus towards pages of importance, a hierarchical linking system should be established. To create linking hierarchy, not all pages are cross linked, and important pages are linked to by the largest number of pages on the site (Sisson, 2006, p. 37).

Off Page Search Engine Optimization

While on-page optimization provides a solid basis for a website being recognized by spiders, it is the links from other websites that determine the rank of the recognized page. Off-page search engine optimization is mostly concerned with this establishment of inbound links to the focus website. The process is known as link building, and is by far the most strenuous aspect of SEO. A site’s page rank is determined by both the quantity and quality of its incoming links. The quality of a link is the most weighted factor, which is based upon the page rank of the site making the link. If the linked site has relevance to the site being optimized, then this is a positive detail (Fishkin, 2007, p. 26). Relevancy is determined by comparing keywords in website titles, the anchor text of the link, and even its IP address. The IP address or number value that the domain name refers to may have less weighted effect on page ranking if it shares a common third octet (Sisson, 2006, p. 43). Sites that have very high page ranks are referred to as ‘authoritative’ and will almost automatically boost the page rank of a site it links to. Two forms of linking exist: two-way and one-way.

Two-way linking is also known as reciprocal linking because it is a mutual establishment between site owners. This method is essentially a link swap. Some webmasters carry the misconception that paying for well known link exchange services will guarantee site visits, but this is only true on a temporary degree (Sisson, 2006, p. 54). Also, link exchanges are considered manipulative and have a record of incurring removal of sites from search engine indexes.

One-way link building can sometimes be considered a science and art, since many techniques are nothing short of brilliant. One scheme often used to build massive amounts of inbound links is to produce a gadget or banner that appeals to other site owners, and encourages them to take a code snippet for the gadget or personalized banner and place it on their own site. An example of this method is evident at www.nerdtests.com. This site offers a free and fun online quiz that ranks the user’s nerdiness in percent relation to everyone else who took the quiz and awards an ‘official title’ banner code based on the outcome. These banners can be found floating all around the net in user signatures of online community forum boards or even on personal blogs and provides www.nerdtests.com with an endless link base (Spencer, 2007, p. 1).

The most common and reliable method of getting back-links is submitting articles to informative websites, which usually give authors an opportunity to link to their personal site. Social bookmarking sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and Propeller all have recently become a hit sensation among frequent internet users. These bookmarking sites provide a portal to sites recommended by other users. If the content on a site is valuable or entertaining enough to people, social bookmarking sites may be the most effective approach to off-page optimization since they are based on popularity and massive viral tendencies (Hagen, 2007, p. 5).

Method

As my primary research, I conducted an interview on October 25, 2007, consisting of ten focused questions about SEO with Bill Slawski. Bill is the President of SEO by the Sea and the Director of Internet Marketing for KeyRelevance Inc., and was directly referred to me by Rand Fishkin, one of the world’s most renowned and authoritative SEO experts. Bill is one of the founders and administrators of Cre8asite Forums, is an active correspondent for Search Engine Land, and writes a weekly column for their small business section. Mr. Slawski’s professional credentials substantiate the validity of his interview responses and provide access to exclusive insider industry knowledge. The interview was completed via electronic mail, in which Bill took full advantage of to respond with in-depth and intuitive answers complete with real-world examples.

Results

As the first question of my interview, I asked Bill how he would define SEO to the average Internet user. Bill responded, “In simplest terms, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is applying knowledge of how search engines work to make sites easier to find on the web for the audiences that those pages were intended to attract. In more complicated terms, SEO is a matter of combining an application of marketing ideas and a knowledge of search engines to help bring the right people to a site so that they will change from visitor to consumer.” This description spells out the fundamental concepts of SEO. It is important to understand SEO, in essence, is limitless in ways of targeting consumer markets. While advertising schemes might be limited to the specific targets the advertising company provides based upon the small amount of information shared with them about your product, SEO delves into your niche and allows for much more targeting flexibility.

My second question for Bill was, “In what ways is SEO more effective or efficient than other online marketing methods?” He responded saying, “Search engine optimization means being aware of how search engines might collect information from the pages of a website, and making it easy for the search engines to index the content of those pages. In effect, it means enabling a search engine to become an index for the pages of a site. It can be less expensive than using the paid contextual ads that you see displayed with search results at a search engine, or the banner ads that show up on other websites that may point to the site advertised.” This cost efficiency is an important component of why business professionals are making the leap away from conventional pay per click advertising as their primary marketing strategy and making the switch to search engine optimization.

The third question pointed towards the public view on this experts own industry. My question was, “Do you think the power of SEO is relatively undermined, or in contrast, do you think it is overplayed as an online marketing method in the industry?” He responded with, “Search is one of the commonest activities that people get involved in when the go online, so making a website easy to be found in a search engine for people who might be looking for what that site has to offer is a good idea. It can make sense to include SEO as one part of a multiple part marketing effort, and to build a strong marketing plan that includes both online and offline parts. Unfortunately, there are differing skill sets amongst people who offer SEO services – some are just better than others.” While my question was meant to explore SEO’s public relation solely, Bill brought up an extremely important reiteration of SEO’s unknown power when combined with an ultimate market plan encompassing offline target markets as well as the ones who exist online. This also adds to the concept of ‘limitless’ SEO possibilities.

I asked for my next question, “Can any website benefit from SEO?” Bill explained, “SEO is only really important to sites that want to increase their visibility on the Web. A game clan site, where everyone who needs to know the address of the site already does has no need for SEO. But, if you hope to attract visitors to your pages, it doesn’t hurt to make them as search friendly as possible. And if you want to attract people to those pages who might be interested in the content of the pages, it doesn’t hurt to try to use words on the pages that those people might try to search with on a search engine, and to do it in a manner that makes it more likely that those words will be found earlier on in search results.” Drawn from his answer is a suggestion of widely conventional use for SEO. Unless meant specifically to be concealed from Internet users, any website seeking visitors can benefit largely from any amount of SEO. Since amateur implementation of SEO is key part of this paper, the next question was very distinctive in terms.

I asked, “Is it possible for webmasters to (with fundamental knowledge of HTML and blogging) implement SEO for themselves with relatively successful results for their small websites?” Unsurprisingly, my prediction was reinforced with his answer. Bill said, “Webmasters with a fundamental knowledge of HTML and blogging can achieve some success with being found on the web, but having a good knowledge of how search engines work can help a webmaster make better choices about how their site is set up for success with search engines.” I asked, “In general, what is the timeline of results returned by SEO?” Bill responded saying, “The amount of time that it may take to achieve results may vary by the site involved and how much work it might need, the competitiveness of the market it is within, and the demand for what the site offers. It’s almost impossible to guarantee success generally, and perhaps even harder to do it within a specified timeline.” While other sources have noted results can be seen in a matter of days in some cases, it seems there is no definitive amount of time that promises results to become evident. In that, the SEO marketing solution may not always suite for website owners seeking instant Web traffic.

This question focused on SEO as a long-term asset. I asked Bill, “Do you believe SEO may become obsolete in the future?” He explained, “I don’t see it becoming obsolete as much as I see it evolving. What we considered SEO in 1998 is different than what we consider it to be now. If you look at a set of search results in Google today, you may see videos, images, news, web pages, product searches, and other results that you wouldn’t have seen even a couple of years ago. The web is changing and search engines are changing, and helping people so that they understand some of these changes and how they might impact their web sites will probably continue to be a need to be filled in the future.” This provides a fairly straight answer indicating that SEO will only continue to progress with changes over time, rendering SEO as a very reasonable long-term asset for any website.

My final and most important question asked, “In what ways might SEO be viable for businesses with niches?” Bill responded saying, “Finding a niche where you can be competitive, and where there’s a demand from consumers can increase your likelihood of success. A small business can often take advantage of working within a niche that a larger business might find to be too much work for too little return. If the smaller business has considerably less overhead in terms of cost and time, they may be able to thrive in one of those niches. By focusing upon a specific market or audience that others aren’t, it may be possible to be found easier if people want to find the service or goods or information that you provide within that niche.” This is a fabulous reverberation of how specific keyword combinations and niches interact. Focusing on smaller markets can provide a better means of success on a smaller, yet more attainable scale.

Discussion

Throughout the extent of my research, SEO had been discovered to be one of, if not the, most effective Internet marketing strategies available today. Statistics have shown that the largest magnitude of online users discover information and merchandise through the use of search engines. SEO channels that majority of Internet traffic directly into a marketable solution, idea, or product with the best cost and time efficiency. By employing on-page and off-page techniques, a webmaster with basic knowledge of HTML and blogging can supply a particular niche website with a top search engine result ranking respective to its niche search keywords. Keywords play an imperative role in the SEO venture by providing the base of the optimized structure. The keyword focus of a pre-optimized website is determined through intense research by identifying competition and analyzing keyword query frequencies using particular keyword research tools. After keywords are determined, on-page content structure and coding is the next priority, seeing as off-page link building logically requires a quality page to link to beforehand. Off-page techniques will utilize link building strategies to launch the rankings already established by on-page SEO past competition.

The product produced as a result from my intense research will enable any adventurous amateur with fundamental HTML and blogging familiarity to pursue SEO with relatively guaranteed success. My product, in the form of a website, guides the pursuer with simple and concise instructions. The website splits the SEO mission between on-page and off-page techniques which have been explained in earlier sections of this paper. Instead of discussing these techniques in non-applicable generality however, the website will demonstrate specific examples of each optimization practice with its own optimized features.

To view my final product website, click here.

For references used in this paper, click here.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

New advances in internet technology are constantly providing new opportunities for businesses to add to their marketing approach and content. Likewise, advances in technology are making more affordable options available to the consumer, for more details visit to nners.com”>www.outsource-beginners.com and so many more people are logging onto the internet every day. As they do, the demographic is changing, and no longer is the wealthy individual the only target of internet marketing. Today virtually all income levels must be considered in the internet marketing approaches of business.

In the 1990s, internet marketing went berserk. It was a brand new concept, and caution had been thrown to the wind in all the hype. Companies did not take into consideration that the same variables of marketing in other forms of media should logically be applied to internet marketing as well. Their failure to study markets and create sound strategies led to the fall of many so-called dots-comes in the end of 2000. The survivors, and successors, for more details visit to www.tube-traffic.com began to look toward time-tested logic in marketing for direction, and the result was massive growth.

Through the now-careful approach of businesses and marketers alike, targeted advertising on the internet has brought forth great success. Virtually any market you may wish to break into can be tapped on the internet. Many marketing firms offer the solutions a business needs to get their products out to consumers, while a small firm may wish to handle their marketing on their own and can find lower-cost solutions for their goals as well.

Search engines are a major resource for marketing, but typically are only able to provide ideas for what the consumer is already searching for. To accomplish the spontaneous suggestions offered by television or radio, pop-up ads and ads placed directly on a web-site are used. E-mail is an excellent form of marketing, but typically only has success once a business has built a good relationship with the consumer.

More and more people are spending more and more time on the internet daily. The reason is simple: the convenience offered by the internet, coupled with the increasing abilities of the internet to help you get your tasks completed, has allowed for all types of business to be conducted with point and click ease. Many tasks no longer require a trip in the car to be completed. Thus, relationships are growing on the web, and as they do, the pace of internet commerce has rocketed into the trillions of dollars. Advances in technology, and increased traffic, are leading to a future for internet marketing that can only point skyward.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.