Building links doesn’t always have to be so stressful. Many
sites tell you that they’ll increase your links by 1000
overnight if you spend $39.99! I’m here to tell you, it’s not
the quantity, it’s the quality.

Although quality does help, it’s hard to judge what is quality
and what isn’t. The first comes first, reciprocal links aren’t
all that great, so don’t spend hours upon hours of sending
hopeless spam mails to sites who, if you had good content, would
link to you for free.

The best way to gain links quickly is article submission. One
article, if well written and of high quality, can generate 10-15
links. Think of the possibilities! Write one article a day for a
week and you may end up with 100 links. And that is, 100
non-reciprocal links.

Why are non-reciprocal links so important? Well, I will
tell you. Search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, are now
counting reciprocal links for less. There is even speculation of
the recent update that Yahoo! is penalizing sites which have
links pages.

Even if this were not the case, non-reciprocal links are more
important for one reason, visitors. Visitors don’t like to see
sites with worthless links to websites they don’t want. Why have
a link to a travel website if you are in entertainment (besides
the obvious, but you get the point)? Even if you do have a
reciprocal link to a site which is your competitor you may lose
visitors by giving them a higher link popularity.

Should I not link to anyone then? No. In fact, you should
link to as many authoritative sites as possible
(authoritative sites are sites which are ranked 1 or 2
throughout your genre).

Links are very important on every site. Don’t just give
them away, choose carefully. Link to authoritative sites with
great content you know your visitors will appreciate. Just ask
yourself, “If the links are not for the visitors use, what use
are they then?”

So, I’ve done the whole article submission thing, what other
ways can I gain link popularity? Directories and great
content. Content is king and is becoming more-so with the
evolution of Search Engines. When a site owner finds an article
useful he or she generally places a link to it, even if it is
just a blog, it’s still a link. But whatever you do, don’t do
the silly thing and spam blogs, that will only get you banned.

Directories are also a major part. If you can write a great
description and have an editor in your field at DMOZ.org, submit
it and forget it. Either you will get in or you won’t. If there
isn’t an editor, try becoming one. It will only take a few hours
of your time, just don’t get too hopeful.

If you can’t get in DMOZ, don’t worry, there are tons of other
useful directories out there. Tons of FREE directories. Don’t
spend $10-$20 on a directory submission unless you know they are
worth it and can generate quality traffic. Google and others are
starting to crack down on directories who require a fee in order
to get listed.

SEO is not the be all and end all - it is just one part of your
Internet Marketing strategy. According to Brand Week Online
Magazine: “Search engine positioning may be just one part of an
online marketing strategy,but it is the fundamental part. It’s
the baseline.”

It is found that Search Engine Effectiveness report on the brand
lift from textual paid search results, found that high search
engine listings drive the highest awareness or branding for a
website. Consumers recall websites 60% of the time from search
engine listings numbers 1-3, and only 20% for banner ads and
tiles.

For years companies have identified audiences and target
markets, crafted messages and used mass media to deliver those
messages in the hope that the right person will read them and
respond. Now we have people searching on the Internet for
products, services and information. They are actively online
looking for what they need and want.

When the keywords are tapped relevant to our industry and find
the viable pockets of search that will lead qualified,
interested people to your website, then also it is necessary to
optimize the site because if you are not in those search
results, your competitors will be.

Content will always be king - people go to a website for the
content. A site has to be usable and interesting and it has to
meet the expectations of the searcher. But it has to be found
first. There has to be a balance between visibility and
usability.

It’s a two edged sword if your site is never found. You could
have the most perfect website, but no one will ever see it. And
if you are ranked number one on all search engines on all your
major keywords and phrases, but when the visitor gets to your
site there is no relevant and useful content that will deliver
what they were online searching for in the first place, what’s
the point? They will be gone in two seconds.

Being visible and being usable are not mutually exclusive they
are joined at the hip. Using SEO as part of overall brand and Internet
marketing strategy positions the industry at the higher
rankings.

The late Conrad Hilton who built a chain of hotels across the
world, was firmly of the belief that if he built a hotel in the
right location it would make money. “Location, Location,
Location” was his motto. Never build a hotel where there ain’t
no traffic.

The same rule applies on the Internet. Build your site in the
right location and it will succeed.

So the question is: “how do I find the right plot of Internet
real estate on which to build my site?”

For the purposes of this exercise I would like you to imagine a
smart seaside town called Google.

Along the sea front and around the marina, where the luxury
yachts are parked, are smart hotels, casinos and apartment
blocks. At street level in each of these buildings there are
international shops like Tiffany, Gucci and Prada selling luxury
goods.

In the next block back from the front are really nice houses
owned by wealthy citizens. And behind them are not-quite-so-nice
houses and apartments. So it goes, as you walk away from the sea
front the houses and shops become less and less expensive.
Until, just on the outskirts of the town of Google, there is a
trailer park where the least wealthy citizens stay.

In the town of Google it costs a lot of money to rent one of the
shops on the seafront because they are seen by large numbers of
passers-by. These will be both the wealthy people staying in the
town and day-trippers who are just sight-seeing. However, you
can rent a shop in the trailer park for much less money. Here
you will still get valuable passing traffic but the competition
will not be nearly so great.

The mistake that most people make when they build their web
sites is to build around keywords which all the powerful
multi-nationals are using for their seafront stores. These
organizations are spending mega bucks to get their web sites to
the top positions on the search engines. Your chances of
competing with them and achieving a top search engine ranking
are very slim.

Much better to build your web site around the ‘trailer park’
keywords. Where you can still get masses of valuable traffic,
but you’re not competing with the mega-buck budgets of the
multi-national corporations.

When Paypal’s official Web site no longer ranked #1 in Google on a
search for “paypal,” it was obvious that Google had become more aggressive
in penalizing sites with “unnatural” backlink anchor text. Although the
high-profile Paypal example has since been rectified, thousands of
webmasters are suffering the consequences of not ranking for even their
official company name, let alone their top keywords. It is important for
search engine optimizers to understand both how anchor text penalties
are being applied and how LSI ensures that anchor text variance will not
dilute a link popularity building campaign.

Anchor Text Penalties

In the past year, webmasters have found that the aggressive link
popularity building tactics that work well in search engines such as Yahoo!
do not fare well in Google. Google has implemented several features to
filter out sites that appear to have an unnatural backlink structure;
one of these features seems to be specifically penalizing sites with
unnatural backlink anchor text.

It has always been an SEO best practice to use descriptive anchor text
in both external and internal links. But search engine optimizers have
often focused on a single keyword phrase when choosing anchor text,
especially if their topic has one keyword that receives vastly more
traffic than any secondary keywords. Since good links are hard to come by,
they do not want to “waste” any of those backlinks with anchor text that
does not contain their main keyword.

The drawback to this approach is that it can be interpreted as
unnatural by a search engine. A site with organic, passively-obtained backlinks
will have a wide variety of backlink anchor text variations such as:
“official site title,” “keyword,” “keyword synonym,” “www.thesite.com”
and even “click here.” If the vast majority of a site’s backlink anchor
text is simply “keyword,” it is obvious to an algorithm that the link
popularity was not obtained organically.

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Basics

Let’s now touch upon the myth I mentioned before, that if a backlink’s
anchor text does not contain your Web site’s main keyword, its power is
wasted. The concept of latent semantic indexing, which may be more
fully implemented by major search engines in the near future, will prove
this myth to be false.

Latent semantic indexing can help overcome the “vocabulary mismatch”
problem when a human uses a search engine. Individual words do not always
provide reliable evidence about the conceptual meaning of a document.
For instance, a Web page that is highly relevant to the term “laptop”
may never use the term “notebook,” however it is clear to a human being
that “notebook” is often used as a synonym for “laptop.”

While it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the mathematics
behind LSI, its implications for search algorithms are simple. LSI can
use statistical techniques to create a semantic analysis for any given
query topic. In practice, this means that a page can be considered
relevant for a particular keyword, even if it does not contain that
keyword. For instance, a page that is considered relevant for “laptop” can
also be considered relevant for “notebook” even if it does not contain the
word “notebook,” if LSI determines that “notebook” is semantically
related to “laptop.”

The principle can be applied to backlinks as well. Backlinks with
anchor text that do not contain your Web site’s main keyword, but instead
contain a synonym or related word, may still be giving your site a bonus
for the main keyword.

Link Popularity Building Best Practice: Vary Your Anchor Text

The recent increase in penalties given to sites with unnatural backlink
anchor text, along with the possible implementation of LSI, should give
webmasters motivation to vary their backlink anchor text heavily.
Rather than seeking to only obtain links using their main keyword,
webmasters should include synonyms, variations and related words. Certainly no
single keyword variation should be used the majority of the time;
rather, the text of all links should vary widely, just as they would if the
links were obtained passively. This will ensure a site’s improvement in
the SERPs, without drawing a penalty flag.

Andy Hagans is a search engine optimization consultant who specializes
in link popularity building and risk management. Visit
http://www.andyhagans.com for more information. See
http://www.andyhagans.com/link-building.php for more information on Mr.
Hagans’ link building services.

Chances are you have been on the Internet and have been surfing in and out of websites looking for valuable information pertaining to a favorite topic or researching a subject for school or work. As you type in keyword(s) you match the information you are searching for on Google, you come up with 10,000 pages of information. It’s virtually impossible to go through every one, so you refine your search by adding more exclusive keywords. Voila the number of pages reduces to around 1,000. Still this is a lot of pages, but you start looking through the information to find what you want. 

As you go through the first 10 links on the page, WHAM! The information you needed to find was in the first or second in order of PageRank. You wonder how did they get such a high rank on Google?  You may think it was very expensive to get that site at the top of the heap. The funny thing is, with a little know how and about $75 you too can go for the top.

Search Engine Optimization or “SEO”, has become a standard in the web design industry, every customer of a good web designer wants to be number one in their keyword and may be willing to pay the extra money to get there. A good web designer will dress up a web sites home page to match the requirements of their client on specific keywords. The client will also pay more for the exclusivity to remain there untouched. SEO has become a niche for a lot of web companies. They know if they can get the company to the top fast, the word of mouth will be helpful toward their business.

Through specialized META tags (hidden group of keywords) the web designer will strategically place keywords multiple times in the title bar, keywords, and even as hidden text. Some search engines have figured these tricks of the trade out and have banned certain websites from their indexes. Google has become the engine of choice for a lot of people today. There is a different logic Google uses to calculate page rank and keywords is only a portion of it.

Google actually uses a specialized mathematical equation to place your site in a predetermined order. First things first, if your website is a keyword, that does not automatically give you a top spot. It will take time to move up the ranks and you should register with Google as soon as possible to drive your rank upwards. But just having the right URL (Universal Resource Locator) doesn’t guarantee the top spot either. You must also be swapping or reciprocating links with other Google users. The more you use Google websites that are indexed the faster and higher your site will go in the ranks. 

A Google robot will visit your site frequently so continue to modify your code and keep checking its rank and status. Eventually, your site will drive up the ranks and land on top. It may take time and work, but you will get the hang of keeping it there once you employ the right mix of keywords with links. Some companies can charge up to $1,000 for the top spot, they employ the same techniques, even though they don’t want you to know this. Keep your META tags, title, keywords and content in line with your keywords and continuously look to optimize them. Under no circumstances take another persons keywords off of their code; this is potentially dangerous as you could be violating copyright laws.

Good Luck!!!

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

Web content accessibility is defined by the W3C as

“making web content accessible for people with disabilities”

( Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 - ).

The philosophy of a growing initiative to make all web content accessible to all people.

Accessibility is still largely obscure in regards to common knowledge and application, however I believe that it is an issue that SEO’s and web designers alike will soon find to be a primary consideration in their work.

Of interest to the SEO industry is the empirical evidence that suggests positive effects on rankings for websites that conform to official accessibility guidelines. Conformance to accessibility standards does not of course improve the relevance of a hyper-document for any given search phrase, it may however improve the general “opinion” which a search engine holds for a given web document (much the same way that the use of valid HTML does.). Astute SEO firms can take advantage of these trends much to the benefit of their clients.

And while accessibility (and valid HTML for that matter) may seem insignificant issues at present, the tide is turning to favor all things which are standards compliant. This is the natural back-lash of the current WWW, participants of which have taken advantage of the inherent freedom (and forgiveness) of the Internet to the point where usability and quality are being compromised.

J. Green is a search technology researcher with expertise in scientific search engine optimization. http://www.GreenBUILT-Research.com

Keyword optimisation is probably the most important thing that you want to concentrate on with regards to search engine optimisation (SEO). Unfortunately, not many people know this, or do enough to optimise their sites’ keywords. Before I knew the importance of keyword optimisation, I used to pluck any keywords that seemed relevant to my site, insert them into my title tag and meta tags, then submitted my site to the search engines. And then wondered why I didn’t really get much traffic.

Well, now I’ve learnt something: make sure you don’t rush, and you have to do your due research to find out what exactly are the keywords that are best for your site.

To do this, take a good look at the first page of your website, and really try to get a feel of what that page is about. Is the theme clear and defined? Or are there too many conflicting topics on that single page?

Your readers and the search engines prefer a single themed page that focuses on one particular topic, so try to keep to a subject. Split your page up into multiple pages if you find it to be too long or too complex.

Once you’ve done that, try to find the keywords of your page. These are the words or phrases that can best describe your content. Put yourself in your readers’ shoes: what kind of words or phrases would they use if they wanted to find a page like yours through a search engine? Make a list of these keywords and keyphrases, and don’t worry about making it as long as you want, you can scratch off all the excess keywords later.

Your goal is to try to find the one or two keywords that are best for your site, and optimise your site for them. Also try to remove those highly competitive, single-word keywords such as “books”, “dvds”, “mp3″, “toys”, “computers”. You don’t want these keywords, because it is so hard to get a good ranking with them. Hundreds of thousands of other websites are targeting these highly popular keywords, and it is simply not worth your effort.

Remember, it is always better to rank 5th for a less popular search term than to be ranked 500th for a highly popular search term! Choose keywords or keyphrases that still have searches done for them, but are not that competitive.

To have an estimate on the popularity of a search term, use a free service such as Overture’s keyword suggestion tool to get a rough guide on the number of searches done. Run your list through the free keyword suggestion tool and Overture will be able to tell you how many times a particular term was searched for during the last month. This keyword suggestion tool is great to get a general idea of where your keywords stand.

You may also want to consider WordTracker, which is a paid service, but gives you a much clearer picture on which keywords are better to optimise for. WordTrack does offer a trial option, so you can make use of that to try out their service, or search for good keywords if you just have a small, one-time website project.

Once you have an idea of the popularity of the keywords and keyphrases in your list, consider scratching off the less commonly used terms. You might also discover some new terms with those tools as well, and you can add them to your list.

And that’s it! You should now have a list of good, medium-popularity keywords and keyphrases. Make sure you repeat this process for each of your pages, and have a slighlty different list for every page that you have.

Alvin Poh has been specialising in web development, content distribution, advertising and marketing strategies since 1995. His goal is to provide practical information based upon his years of experience to help webmasters, website designers, and self-employed people achieve their goals in today’s competitive Internet. At his site, you can learn how to make money online.

Here are a few tips for making the most out of your URL Data
Submissions:

META TAGS: Edit your DESCRIPTION Meta Tag to include your
location. Adding “City, St” to your tag makes your information
searchable by City and State.

Include your “City, State” information in the “Description” of
our submission form.

URL Variation: Use variations of your URL. Many people do not
realize that submission of your site as http://www.mysite.com
and http://mysite.com is two different URL Addresses. Both point
to the same place, but are different addresses on most search
engines and directories.

Extend your URL: If you have a section of your site that is
“Shopping” specific, extend your URL address to point to it.
http://www.mysite.com/shopping/ will direct the visitor to your
shopping area and provides an additional URL Address variation.

Use Sub-Domains: If your Hosting Provider offers Sub-Domains
(many do for free) take advantage of the additional URL
Addressing. http://shopping.mysite.com/ will direct the visitor
to your shopping area using Sub-Domains. Sub-Domains are often
acceptable where other URL Address Extension is declined.

Make META TAGS relevant to CONTENT: No two pages of your web
site should have the same KEYWORD and DESCRIPTION Meta Data,
unless they have exactly the same information presented on them.
It does no good for a Search Engine to spider your pages if the
data revealed doesn’t reflect the data within.

Do Not hesitate to add your URL Data to Directories. Many
Directories are Search Engine friendly and provide excellent
linkage resource for your web site. Contrary to the speculation
regarding the value of linkage, if the linkage points to your
web site, it’s valuable.

Do Not build your SEO with a single Search Engine in mind. Even
Google collects data from their competition. Make sure you are
also listed on the other Search Engines and Directories.

The submission of URL Data is an important part of Web Site
Promotion. When someone searches for you or your product, URL
Data is important to being found. Make sure any other SEO
tactics such as article, forum, e-book, or downloads also
contain your URL Data. datajam’s Internet has added a “brand
new” Directory for you to submit your URL Data to.
http://Srchn4it.com or http://www.srchn4it.com/ or
http://srchn4it.no-ip.info will take you to the “Srchn4it
(Searchin-4-it) Directory.” Srchn4it will provide their users
additional web site promotion by selecting web sites at random
for review to be included in articles made available for reprint
Internet wide.

Your website is ready. Your content is in place, you have optimized your pages. What is the last thing you should do before uploading your hard work? Validate. It is surprising how many people do not validate the source code of their web pages before putting them online.

Search engine robots are automated programs that traverse the web, indexing page content and following links. Robots are basic, and robots are definitely not smart. Robots have the functionality of early generation browsers: they don’t understand frames; they can’t do client-side image maps; many types of dynamic pages are beyond them; they know nothing of JavaScript. Robots can’t really interact with your pages: they can’t click on buttons, and they can’t enter passwords. In fact, they can only do the simplest of things on your website: look at text and follow links. Your human visitors need clear, easy-to-understand content and navigation on your pages; search engine robots need that same kind of clarity.

Looking at what your visitors and the robots need, you can easily see how making your website “search engine friendly”, also makes the website visitor friendly.

For example, one project I worked on had many validation problems. Because of the huge number of errors generated by problems in the source code, the search engine robots were unable to index the web page, and in particular, a section of text with keyword phrases identified specifically for this page. Ironically, human users had problems with the page as well. Since humans are smart, they could work around the problem, but the robots could not. Fixing the source code corrected the situation for human and automated visitors.

There are several tools available to check your HTML code. One of the easiest to use is published by the W3C (http://validator.w3.org/). While you’re there, you can also validate your CSS code at W3C’s page for CSS (http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/). The reports will tell you what source code needs to be fixed on your web page. One extra or unclosed tag can cause problems. With valid code, you make it easier for your human visitors and search engine robots can travel through your website and index your pages without source code errors stopping them in their tracks. How many times have you visited a website, only to find something broken when going through the web pages? Too many too count, I’m sure. Validating your pages makes everything easier for your website to get noticed.

As I said before, what works for your website visitors works for the search engine robots. Usability is the key for both your human visitors and automated robots. Why not provide the best chance for optimum viewing by both?

Daria Goetsch is the founder and Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Search Innovation Marketing, a Search Engine Marketing company serving small businesses. She has specialized in Search Engine Optimization since 1998, including three years as the Search Engine Specialist for O’Reilly Media, Inc., a technical book publishing company.

Copyright © 2002-2005 Search Innovation Marketing (http://www.searchinnovation.com) - All Rights Reserved.

Permission to reprint this article is granted if the article is reproduced in its entirety, without modification, including the bio information. Please include a hyperlink to http://www.searchinnovation.com when using this article in newsletters or online.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something you should be aware of before creating a site. Make sure you’ve done careful researches on the best keywords to use. Using the wrong keywords would eliminate your site from search engines forever!

Besides Onpage Optimization, to rank well in search engines you must optimize your OffPage factors too. What you have to do is basically creating many links pointing to your site and getting links from different IP Addresses.

When you have many links pointing to your site, that means you have many votes. The more votes you get, the more popular you are to the search engines.

To create many links pointing to your site, the first thing you can do is exchanging links with other sites. But, make sure you are linking to good websites! There is a free service in the net that will make this task easier. Simply go to: http://www.LinkMetro.com

Here, you can exchange links with related-content sites and you will be notified when a certain website is no longer exist.

Another way to get those links is by buying text links. Or, if you want the free technique, you can always post some articles and comments in online forums containing your site’s URL in the signature.

Improve your OffPage and the search engines will love you!

Copyright 2005 Farid Aziz.

Farid Aziz is the author of “How to Make Money Onine with Your Hobby”. Visit http://Internet-Marketer.blogspot.com to grab your FREE copy of “Internet-Business-In-A-Box”, a kit worth US$ 497.00.