Search engine industry information links for a work at home internet business.

Archived Articles

This page contains a collection of topic specific articles written by professionals in the Internet industry, designed to inform our readers about individual subjects of interest. With the quickly changing search engine industry as it is today, search engine information must be constantly reviewed in order for your home internet business to be successful.

The following articles cover website design techniques, search engine optimization, page relevancy, relevant links, search engine marketing, link popularity, newsletters, e-zines, copywriting articles, building traffic, autoresponder, affiliate information, PPC info, Google's Adwords and much more are constantly being added.

We hope this information will give you the advantage to make your website a great success.

Ad Words and PPC Info | Affiliate information | Autoresponder | Building Traffic

Copywriting Articles | E-zine - Newsletters | Link Popularity | Marketing | Relevant Links - Page Relevancy

Search Engine Marketing | Search Engine Optimizing | Website Design Techniques

Ad Words and PPC Info

SUBJECTS

Is Google Getting evil with Gmail? - Yahoo's First Quarter

The Missing Link (about linking)

Pay-Per-Click Tip: What is a strong click through rate?

Pay-Per-Click Tip: Is Google AdWords Right for a New Online Business?

Pay-Per-Click Tip: Norton Renders AdWords Advertising Useless

Online Marketing: Pay-Per-Click Search Engines

Pay-Per-Click Tip: First Place is Not Always the Most Cost Effective Placement

Pay-Per-Clicks . . . One Way to Boost Traffic to Your Web Site

Is Google Getting "evil" with Gmail? - Yahoo's First Quarter

Is Google Getting "evil" with Gmail?

On April 1st Google announced their new and free web based email system amongst rumors of an April fools joke. The program, Gmail, the account size limit, 1 Gigabyte! It wasn't too hard to believe that Gmail was a joke, in fact it seemed downright certain. It didn't help when we heard that Google was planning on scanning every email in the system and adding keyword matched Adsense advertising to each mailout... that just seemed way too 'overtly evil' for Google to be seriously considering it. After all, Google's motto (as I just love to remind everyone) is "Don't Be Evil!" But alas, the StepForth staff were in complete awe to discover that every feature of Gmail announced was in fact true! What are they thinking?!

What is the Issue?
Gmail's automated system will scan a user's email to find content that it can match to applicable AdSense advertisements. Once it finds an ad that matches the content of the email it will place the advertisement on the side of the user's email. The issue is the scanning... Google claims that since the scanning is entirely automated they are respecting the privacy of their users. Since this is an unprecedented move into the limited grey area of privacy rights, the issue has prompted some fairly raw emotions.

Hitting the Fan
It didn't take long for privacy advocates to smell blood at Google. The World Privacy Forum, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse are among the most prominent privacy organizations raising serious flags over the email match advertising policy at Gmail. On April 6th an open letter was sent to Google from 28 privacy organizations requesting that Gmail be put on hold while significant privacy concerns are considered. Countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands also voiced concern within the open letter.

Will Google stick to their guns? Do they realize the evil precedent that will be made if Gmail's Adsense advertising goes ahead? Google may not be consciously choosing an evil objective (that is for the world to decide), however, you just know that others will take advantage of this marketing tactic if it is approved. I shudder to think what ethically challenged spammers will be able to do with this technique!

Yahoo! Posts First Quarter Results (2pm PST today!)
This is hardly a surprise; Yahoo is doing well!
See below for their first quarter results and links to financial statements:

2003

2004

Total Revenues:

$282,948,000

$757,786,000

Cost of Revenues:

$43,132,000

$281,705,000

Gross Profit:

$239,816,000

$476,081,000

Net Income:

$46,703,000

$101,212,000

Here is a link to Yahoo!'s first quarter press release in HTML
Here is a link to Yahoo!'s first quarter press release in PDF

Article by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com   -    Published Apr. 2004

Weekly Quick Tip: The Missing Link

While many aspects of search engine placement are a mystery to most site owners and even webmasters - that a site needs incoming links seems to be one of the only commonly accepted truths of the industry. Entire industries and software packages have been developed to promote just this area of SEO.

The concept of exchanging links (otherwise known as reciprocal linking) is commonly understood and practiced. I won't get into reciprocal linking too much here as Scott Van Achte has covered that above, but it is important to note it's importance.

That said I am going to mention something now that might shock you. It might even scare you a bit. If you want quick and easy links, with high relevancy and good PageRanks you will want to take a peek at (hold onto your hats) paid links (commonly referred to as advertising). There are many sites out there that will be happy to post a link to your website, often right on the home page, for a monthly fee. Sometimes you can even find a site that will post your link on every page of their site, often in the nav bar.

How much you should pay depends on a number of factors. How many pages will your link be on? What is the PageRank of the site linking to you? Is the site directly related to your industry? What industry is your site focused on? And a number of other factors.

I can't stress enough that you are going to have to look around for the best values in paid link advertising. If a site has a PageRank of 5 and wants to charge you $300/month for a single link off their home page you can probably find a better deal. If you find someone willing to post a link on every page of his or her PageRank 7 site for $200 you're onto something good. Keep looking; there are some great deals out there. We have found a number of great paid-links out there for a number of our clients. It just takes time. Something to keep in mind is this; you will be paying for this link monthly (perhaps annually but this is rare). Spending some extra time today to find the best value you can, will save you money for months/years to come.

There are a couple things you will want to look for very specifically in your hunt for links. You will want to make sure that the link is a direct link to your website and not through some tracking URL. A link through a tracking URL will not count as a link to your site. Also, you will want to know where the link will go on the page and what text is used to specify that these are paid links.

The higher up and further left on the page your link appears the better. This will make it one of the first things the search engine sees and thus the weight it is given will be higher. Additionally, if the link is placed in a table with a heading Sponsored Links or Advertising this tells the search engines that these are paid links and they will be give far less weight if any. That said; if this heading is in the form of an image (that isn't named sponsors.gif or advertising.jpg or the such) then it's perfectly fine.

If you would like further information on purchasing links or would like assistance in finding quality places to buy them from please don't hesitate to contact us.

Article by Dave Davies, Marketing Manager, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com   -    Published Mar. 2004

Pay-Per-Click Tip: What is a strong click through rate?

I recently read in Search Engine Forums a question about Click Through Rates (CTR). The question was regarding whether or not a CTR of 8.1% is good or bad. In another thread someone was asking about average CTR's.

Here's my take on it. Lets use the all so popular widget example, lets say widgets are the Furby of 2004 and everyone wants one. Naturally, among others, you may want to target widget for your PPC Campaign (along with every other retailer). Chances are your ad will be diluted among many others, which will result in a lower CTR. (lets say 1.5%). If the competition is fierce, 1.5% could be a very acceptable rate, especially if there are tens of thousands of searches a day.

But lets say you decide to target blue widget with red stripe, and your ad has absolutely no competition for this term. If this is the case, chances are there will be very few searches, maybe only one or two a day. If your ad is all by itself, chances are you will draw much more attention, it will stand out, and you will get a much higher CTR. I have seen examples of this where highly targeted terms generate as high as 88%. Keep in mind this does not mean they are getting hundreds of clicks a day, most likely only 16 impressions a month with a total of 12 clicks.

So when it comes down to it, there really is no good, bad, or average, it's all relative. The successful measure of a good CTR, is totally dependant on how competitive, and how targeted the keyword. The important thing is to keep above that 1.0% mark.

Article by Scott Van Achte, PPC Manager, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com   -    Published Mar. 2004

Is Google AdWords Right for a New Online Business?

So you have just opened the doors to your new online business. Your website is still too new to generate any traffic from the search engines. So while you are waiting for your site to be spidered and indexed, what can you do to start driving customers through the doors?

The first thing I would suggest is start with an aggressive link building campaign. Whenever you have any spare time, try to seek out some extra incoming links. This will ensure that not only are you spidered sooner and more frequently, but also once you are indexed that you will rank higher in the se's.

But this article isn't about link building, so I will stop there. The real question is, should you, or should you not dive into AdWords, or any PPC Campaign for that matter? Weather or not to advertise with a PPC Engine really depends on a lot of things, your advertising budget, market competitiveness, and even overall site design.

Before starting any paid advertising campaign, double check to ensure that your site is ready for traffic. Check for the obvious things like dead links, but more importantly how is the navigation on your site? Assume that when a user comes to your site they know nothing about you or your products. How easy is it to find answers to any questions they may have? If they have to hunt around chances are they will go elsewhere and you will be out your 25 cents for the click. Make sure your site is user friendly before investing too much into PPC.

How competitive are your main keywords? If your website is small, chances are you wont be willing to pay two dollars a click. I would suggest coming up with a list of as many relevant keywords as possible. Check on Overture to see how much these keywords are going for, and keep all the inexpensive ones. These cheaper keywords will probably draw much less traffic, however this traffic is likely to be more qualified and less expensive! And for a new business starting out, less expensive is definitely a good thing.

If your new company targets a specific market niche that few online retailers cater to, I say go with PPC until your natural listings appear. These keywords are likely to be very inexpensive, and the traffic will be highly qualified.

What it truly all comes down to though, is your advertising budget. PPC advertising for a new business is sort of a chicken and egg thing. You don't have the revenue to pay for advertising, but with out advertising you wont make any sales. If you are able to target some low cost 5-10 cent words, even a budget of five dollars a day may bring in some sales and help to get the ball rolling.

Article by Scott Van Achte, PPC Manager, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com -    Published Mar. 2004

Norton Renders AdWords Advertising Useless

For those that dislike advertising and pop-ups Norton Internet Security 2004 is a dream come true, but for advertisers it could be your worst nightmare...

The newest version of Norton Personal Firewall includes a new web assistant that allows users to block ads and pop-ups, this setting is turned on by default and is stirring up some controversy, but how does this affect the PPC world?

For an advertiser running a Google AdWords campaign, you may be losing out on potential traffic when a user performs a search on Google, AdWords and sponsored listings become un-clickable! If the Searcher has Norton Personal Firewall 2004 installed, and the ad blocker option is selected, (turned on by default), the searcher will see a mutated version of your ad. All titles are removed and the remainder of the add is left un-clickable. Probably the biggest problem with this is that ad impressions will still be recorded by Google. Since payment isn't by the impression, this doesn't cost the advertiser anything directly, but indirectly not only do you lose the chance at a potential sale, it reduces your Click Through Rate, effectively reducing your ranked position.

Google AdWords are probably the best known target, but by no means does this stop there. Featured sites on MSN, Sponsored sites on Yahoo (supplied by Overture), paid advertising on many other sites, as well as banner advertising are all affected, as are many affiliate links.

I suspect that Google is working on a fix for this problem, as it only seems fitting to do so. Unfortunately I was unable to reach David Krane, public relations manager at Google by press time to get verification.

Until a fix is announced at Google to prevent Norton from disabling AdWords links, there is little that can be done from an advertiser standpoint. My best advice at this time is to continue to focus on well-targeted ad copy. Well-written ad copy is essential to draw the attention of the user, if you write an ad that is focused enough you may get the odd searcher that is determined to type your URL into the address bar, however, this is unlikely to draw much traffic.

If you run an affiliate website and are concerned that your links are being blocked by Norton, I suggest contacting your affiliate manager to see if they have developed any solutions.

The most notable problem with Norton's new ad blocking techniques is that at times it will inadvertently block non-ad related material. If your Site Logos or header images fall within a set of specific dimensions it will be flagged as a banner and removed from your site. In order to be effective at ad blocking, something will have to be done to solve this.

Article by Scott Van Achte, PPC Manager, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com -    Published Mar. 2004

PAY-PER-CLICK SEARCH ENGINES

A Pay-Per-Click search engine (also called Pay-Per-Ranking engines) allows you to place your site at the top of their results almost immediately. This comes at a price, though.

The idea is pretty simple. You put in a "bid" for how much you're willing to pay per click-through on certain keywords - the higher your bid, the higher you appear in the results for that keyword. A click-through is when a searcher clicks on your link in the engine and comes to your site. Regardless of whether this searcher purchases anything or not, you pay for them to come to your site.

The advantages of this type of system are obvious: they drive users to your site starting almost immediately and the amount of traffic can be fairly high with those visiting being likely to be looking for what you offer (these are targeted users). Some PPCs even send results to Yahoo! and other big directories (GoTo/Overture is an example of this).

In the short run this is a good marketing tool and useful to those impatient to get their site noticed quickly. Usually, you log into a PPC engine, open an account and deposit money into it. Then you put in your site information along with your bid for certain keywords, which will drive people to your site. This bid is what you are willing to pay for EVERY click-through you receive. So even $100 can go fairly quickly if you're in a high-traffic area of the 'Net.

Try to stick with the better-known names in PPCs and be wary of those that offer their surfers incentives to click on links - this is not conducive to "targeted" traffic. Also watch the engine's use-ability and function. If it isn't easy to use, nobody is using it and you're wasting your time signing up there. You can rarely get your deposit back from the search engine once it's been made.

Below is a list of popular pay-per-click search engines in alphabetical order. Many are not listed here, obviously, but I thought I would list a few and touch on some of their finer points to show you how a PPC can be used effectively.

Brainfox (www.brainfox.com): This is a decent, though relatively new PPC that offers itself as a budget alternative. Minimum bids are .001 cents! Not sure of the results of advertising here, but it may be worth a try since you only need to invest $5 to get started.

CleanSearch (www.cleansearch.com): Although not widely known, this is one of the few PPCs that focus on "family" results (no porn). You even have the option of "reporting" on results that appear to have them reviewed for content.

eFind (www.efind.com): This is a good example of a PPC you should NOT advertise with. Built like a slot machine, this one is set up to send users to paid listings in order to be entered to win prizes. Avoid these guys.

FindWhat (www.findwhat.com): I originally was not going to include this engine as they used to pay their searchers to go to advertiser's sites, but that seems to have changed. This may become a good engine in the future!

GoClick (www.goclick.com): This is a good engine and has a great explanation "help" FAQ to get new users going. It's reasonably priced and has some nice tools integrated to keep your bidding competitive.

GoTo/Overture (www.overture.com): This is the premier PPC engine. They offer shopping and auction sites (as per Yahoo!), but you'll need money to be competitive here. If you can afford it, this one is well worth the money.

Metamission (www.metamission.com): This allows you to advertise on their "metasearch" engine. I'm dubious about their results, especially when seeing the "too good to be true" 1000% bonus to your first credit deposit with them.

NetFlip (www.netflip.com): This is another bad example of a search engine gone awry. They pay users to click through and have become quite popular despite the lack of focused users they send to their advertisers.

Onesearch (www.onesearch.com): This is a good engine, though fairly boring to look at. They have a low minimum account requirement ($25 as of this writing) and offer pretty good results.

Searchhound (www.searchhound.com): This is one of the premier PPCs and their price and minimum account sizes reflect this. If you have the money to spend, though, you will probably get more traffic here than on any of the other engines.

Sprinks (www.sprinks.com): This is an easy-to-use engine that offers to get you listed in About.com as well. You may have good results here.

Turbo10 (www.turbo10.com): This is a great search engine with lots of neat bonuses for the users. Searching for exactly what you want is easy and you can jump around the search results as you wish-giving the user total power. I suspect that this will get more and more popular as time goes on and this use-ability will only enhance your listing here.

Overall, especially in the short run, Pay-Per-Click engines are a useful tool for marketing online. They require a little money to be used effectively and many require daily or weekly policing to ensure that you are not outbid and therefore ranked too low. The trouble can be worth it, though, as you drive more and more visitors (usually targeted!) to your site. As an alternative to getting listed in regular engines and directories, PPCs are very viable.

Aaron Turpen is the proprieter of Aaronz WebWorkz, a full-service provider of Web needs to small businesses. www.AaronzWebWorkz.com

By Aaron Turpen of Aaronz WebWorkz -    Published Mar. 2004

First Place is Not Always the Most Cost Effective Placement

In the battle for search engine placement across all organic listings, that golden spot of number one is top priority, and for good reason. That may not hold true in the realm of pay per click advertising. What many people may not know, is that the number one spot, although it typically grabs the highest click through's, may not always be the most cost effective. Here's why.

If you are running an ad campaign with limited funds, chances are you will max out your daily budget regardless of where you sit in the top 3, or even top 5 for that matter. It really makes little sense to pay a dollar a click for top spot if you are able to pay 50 cents for number 3.

Lets say you have a 10-dollar a day budget, currently sit in number one spot, and max your budget every day. You're paying a dollar a click and getting 10 clicks a day. Wouldn't it make sense to drop your max cost per click to 50 cents, drop to position 3, and generate 20 clicks per day instead? In my opinion it's a no brainer. If you can increase your traffic while decreasing your spending, that seems to me to be the way to go.

One thing to remember though, regardless of the PPC engine you are using, in most cases the top few positions are distributed across a variety of network sites. Make sure you know which positions will be distributed and stay within them.

Please keep in mind that this example is for illustrative purposes only and will not apply to all ad campaigns or keywords, and typically will work best for those on limited budgets, but this is definitely something to think about when selecting your max CPC.

Article by Scott Van Achte, PPC Manager, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com -    Published Feb. 2004

Pay-Per-Clicks . . . One Way to Boost Traffic to Your Web Site

One of the ways to boost traffic to your Web site is by purchasing keywords from one of the pay-per-click search engines or directories.

But with literally hundreds of choices, how do you pick the pay-per-click engine with the best visibility that has the potential of giving you a higher return on your investment?

And, just as important, what are some strategies for working with the pay-per-click engines, and how do they operate?

How do Pay-Per-Click Engines Operate?

With pay-per-click engines, you bid on keywords that describe your business, your products, or your target audience. Then, you’re charged your bid price every time someone clicks on your ad, which is displayed when a searcher types in the keyword you’ve chosen into the search box at an engine. Whoever is willing to pay the most for the keyword or keyword phrase will be at the top of the rankings.

There are many benefits to working with pay engines, which we’ll cover in this article.

Important Pay-Per-Click Engines and Directories

Overture:
http://www.overture.com

Overture is certainly the pay-per-click engine that most people recognize. It’s also one of the most expensive and competitive.

However, the visibility of Overture is impressive, to say the least. It provides the top two or three results to “big boy” search engines and directories like Yahoo!, Lycos, HotBot, and MSN Search. In fact, Overture claims to reach 80% of all Internet users.

Overture listings are generally found at the top of the regular search results in an area called “Sponsored” results or sites.

Overture’s pay-per-clicks operate under one premise: whoever has the deepest pockets and is willing to pay the most gets on top.

The minimum bid is $.10, and there’s a minimum charge of $20 per month. A $50 initial deposit is non-refundable and will be applied to click throughs or to the minimum monthly spend. When your account is depleted, they’ll contact you to see if you want to add additional funds to your budget.

Google AdWords
http://www.google.com/ads/

Google AdWords have fast become extremely important in the pay-per-click arena, with results being shown at search engines like Google, AOL Search, Ask Jeeves, and Teoma.

Google AdWords operates differently than Overture in a number of ways. Your click-through rate and cost per click together determine where your ads are shown, so better ads rise to the top. That means no one can lock you out of the top position.

Google AdWords are shown on the right-hand side of regular search results in a pink shaded area called “Sponsored Links.”

Because your click through rate has an influence on the placement of your AdWords ad, your ad’s title and description must be captivating and designed to pull in traffic.

With Google AdWords, there’s a $5 activation fee, and the minimum bid amount is $.05. You decide on the maximum cost per click that you’re willing to pay and set your daily budget. You don’t have to spend a certain amount per month, and you only pay for clicks you actually receive.

FindWhat
http://www.findwhat.com

Another popular pay-per-click engine that is generally much less expensive than Overture is FindWhat.

With FindWhat, whoever bids the most gets on top. The minimum bid is $.05, and they require a $25 minimum amount to open an account.

FindWhat provides results to 200 different partners, including many of the big meta engines like Dogpile.

Lycos InSite AdBuyer
http://insite.lycos.com/adbuyer/overview.asp

A fairly new pay-per-click program that’s displayed on both Lycos and HotBot is Lycos InSite AdBuyer.

Again, it operates similarly to the way that Overture and FindWhat operate, with the top results being those who bid the most for their target keywords.

The minimum bid is $.05 with a $50 minimum to open an account.

LookSmart
http://www.looksmart.com

LookSmart is a pay-per-click directory where you pay a flat $.l5 per click through. It claims to reach 77% of the Internet users through the partners that display LookSmart results.

Some of those partners include MSN Search, About.com, Netscape, and AltaVista.

With LookSmart, you don’t bid for listings. Everyone pays a flat $.15 per click through, and your ranking is determined by how relevant your site is to the search term, according to LookSmart’s ranking criteria. To get started with a LookSmart listing, the initial investment is $29.

Other Pay-Per-Click Engines
http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com/

This comprehensive site lists over 500 different pay-per-click search engines and offers individual reviews on many of them.

Advantages to Working with the Pay Engines

The pay engines offer many advantages to Web site owners, including:

1. If you have a brand new site with little or no visibility and no link popularity, the pay engines are certainly a way to get started fast while you wait for your standard search engine marketing efforts to kick in and take effect.

2. Pay-per-click engines are ideal for holiday promotions, special sales, or to jump start slow engine traffic.

3. With the pay engines, you have instant visibility in whichever search engines display those results.

4. You choose your rankings, depending on how deep your pocket book is.

5. If some of your keywords aren't performing, you can choose other ones.

6. You only pay for clicks to your site, so you can target your traffic by the keywords you choose.

7. With regular optimization efforts, it's sometimes difficult to achieve top rankings if you're in a highly competitive field. With the pay engines, you pay for your rankings, and VOILA! You're there!

8. Purchasing keywords is certainly easier and less time consuming than optimizing your pages.

9. With regular engines, when algorithms (or ranking criteria) change, you can find yourself booted out of your top spot. With the pay engines, as long as you're willing to hand out the cash, you'll be on top.

10.You can target your audience based on the keywords you choose. Most Web sites have multiple target audiences, so pay-per-click keywords are a way to reach each of those target audiences.

11.Pay-per-click is generally less expensive than traditional advertising media.

12.With pay-per-click engines, you don't have to worry about design strategies that could mean death to a Web site otherwise. Is your entire site one huge Flash movie? No problem, if you go through the pay engines.

Tips for Boosting Your Chances for Success with the Pay Engines

When working with the pay engines, it takes practice to achieve a level of success. So, start out slowly, and keep a tight rein on your budget. As you become better at crafting titles and descriptions and choosing highly targeted keywords, you’ll gradually be able to increase your budget, if you choose.

Here are some additional tips:

1. It's not always best to be #1. Many compulsive "clickers" automatically click on the #1 result when they have no real interest in buying your products or services.

2. Be sure to include your keyword phrase in the title and description you create at the pay engines. Take special care in creating a description for your site, since within the top three slots, the best description gets the most traffic, as a general rule.

3.Your keywords must be relevant to the content of your pages. Overture is particularly careful about this.

4. Choose very targeted keywords so that you don't pay for needless click throughs. Don’t ever choose a general keyword, because your costs will skyrocket but the traffic won’t convert to sales.

5. Spend time researching your keyword choices at Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

or my favorite, WordTracker:
http://www.wordtracker.com

6. Generally, you'll have more success if you purchase 10- 20 keywords as opposed to just a few.

7. Choose a broad range of keywords and bid prices and test the waters. Watch your keywords carefully. Non-productive keywords should be eliminated and new, more productive keywords should be purchased instead.

8. For Overture, consider purchasing a "Premium Listing," which means that you hold the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd ranking for your keyword phrase. Why? Because engines like AltaVista and Lycos show the first listings only.

9. Set up a separate "tracking" page to send your pay engine traffic. In order to show whether or not the cost is worth it, you need to be able to track your click throughs and sales. Don't send pay engine traffic to your home page.

10.Write your title and description using “objective” language rather than “subjective.” In other words, don’t say that your product or service is the best or #1 (subjective). Rather, list some of the benefits of your service that make it unique (objective).

In Conclusion

You’ll find many benefits to purchasing keywords through pay-per-click engines, but you need to learn some basic guidelines before you get started. By doing so, you’ll hopefully find more successful when working with the pay engines.

Robin Nobles is Director of Training for the Academy of Web Specialists. Robin has taught several thousand students in her online and onsite search engine marketing courses during the past several years. Visit the On-lineWebTraining to learn more about their online search engine marketing courses and software solution. For onsite training by Robin Nobles and John Alexander, visit Search Engine Workshops

By Robin Nobles - Search Engine Workshops - Copyright © 2004 -   Published May 2004

Return to Top

Affiliate information

SUBJECTS

Return to Top

Autoresponder

SUBJECTS

Return to Top

Building Traffic

SUBJECTS

How I reached #1 in Yahoo! ®

Frequent Spidering Doesn't Help Rankings

Maximize your rankings by leveraging the five areas of the WebPosition Page Critic

The Keyword Tools Trap

Top 5 Tips for Choosing the Best Keywords

Put Sound and Video On Your Web Site

How to Publish a "Blog"... and Why You Should!

Boost Your Search Engine Rankings with Email Newsletters

Case In Point: Designing A Site That Demand

How to design a search engine and user friendly website

How Can You Learn How to Achieve Top Search Engine Rankings?

How I reached #1 in Yahoo! ®

By accident, no all that reading and studying statistics finally paid off. I started out by reading articles from people with opposing views and trying to figure out who was wrong and who was right. To find the right person to listen to I didn’t only look at his educational background, but was more interested in his results. Good thing too, because results I found. And I hope people look at my results to help them reach #1.

In the past I had a great working simple traffic tracker on my site that stated someone visited my site by typing in ‘online editor flash sites’ into Yahoo!. I went to Yahoo! And typed in the keyword phrase and found out I hit #1 out of 1,040,000 hits! Two weeks later I dropped to #2 and found out that my other site took #1. Now I had the #1 and #2 position in Yahoo!. My world changed forever and at that moment and never will go back. Today I have more sophisticated software, charts, data, articles, and trends referenced for my webs posted on the wall. I maintain contact with forum discussions and receive up-to-date news in my email telling me of changes taking place. I have achieved the top 10 list in the top 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and MSN) and wish to educate you on how to do the same.

Keywords and Keyword Phrases

SEO- search engine optimization; the process of designing your site to achieve high rankings in the search engine

Picking the right keywords is essential. Step into your customer’s shoes and think of what keywords they would use to find the information on your site and write them down in a list. Get your friends and others with different opinions and ask them what they would type to find the information that is located on your site. Add these keywords and phrases to your list. Now check your competitors’ sites that have reached #1 status in the search engines. (Careful don’t pick sponsored sites located at the top or side, they got there by using a PPC (pay per click) ad campaign. You want the non-sponsored sites. Right click anywhere on the page and select view source to see the site in html format. Under the header tag called META name="keywords" content="keywords are here” you will find the keywords that the site used to get to the top. Add these keywords to your list.

Now you should have about 40 to 50 keywords and keyword phrases in your list to research. (By the way, 2 or 3 word keyword phrases are used the most today, when only a few months ago 1 word keywords were used.) Just following one of these three avenues (your list, your friends list, and view source) will not get you to the top, you must use all three and research the 40-50 words to get to the top.

Now take these 40-50 keywords to the search engines and type them in. Do the results pertain to the information on your site? If not, cross them off. You should have about 40 keywords left.

Here is a good SEO (search engine optimization) secret! Visit these sites: (http://excite.com, http://teoma.com/index.asp, http://www.lycos.com/, http://www.webcrawler.com/info.wbcrwl/, and http://www.bos2.alltheweb.com/ and reenter your 40 keywords and you’ll find a list of keywords under the heading, “Did you mean . . ., Other users typed in . . ., and Related links . . .” Using these search engines is an untapped resource that should not be overlooked. The list of keywords listed here are the ones that Joe Q. Public used to find the information you’re looking for. The average of all opinions of all the people browsing the internet looking for the information you want them to find on your site. Adding the relevant keywords from these lists will improve your chances of getting to the top immensely.

There are free keyword generators located on the internet to help you add to your list. The top two are Google Keywords (https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox ) and Overture Tools (http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/ac/index.jhtml Click 'keyword selector tool.' Overture will tell you how many times that keyword was type in during the last month. Find these tools on the internet and type in your keywords to see how they rank, and cross off the ones that don’t generate much traffic. And guess what? You get a list of more keywords that will help your goal to get to #1! They show up in the order from most used to least used. Add the relevant keywords to your list.

You should now have a list of about 75 or more keywords. Remember: The more research you do, the better your chances will be to getting to #1. What do you do with this large list of keywords now? Determine how often they are used by Joe Q. Public and relate it to how many of your competitors use this keyword in optimizing their site. This will give you something called a KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index; compares the Daily World Searches with the number of competing Web pages to pinpoint exactly which keywords are good enough so you can use them while optimizing your site) rating.

Part two of this article will show you how to narrow your list to 10 of the most powerful keywords in the market to raise your ranking in the search engines. (Go to part 2)

By Michael Rock © 2005 - http://www.TheInternetPresence.com - Published Feb. 2005

The owner of this registered company has over twenty years experience with DOS, windows business applications, numerous programming languages, artistic development, and web design. Other areas of interest include web marketing, web promoting, and business marketing and development. After the persuasion of those praising his work, he decided to go into business himself and highly suggests everyone else to do the same.

Frequent Spidering Doesn't Help Rankings

Hi Jill,

I've been following your newsletter for ages now (since before you went solo with High Rankings) and would appreciate your help with this question. I've been speaking with a client about changes to their web site. They have been told previously that using otating images on a web page helps to keep a site "fresh" for search engines. That sounds odd to me.

Plus, based on comments you have made in previous newsletters, I get the impression that good content does not need to be updated to remain high on search engines' results. So please help me...how important is updating content? Do search engines reward sites with recent changes?

Thanks heaps -- and I hope you enjoyed the SES conference and your time in Florida at Christmas. It's pretty warm here at the moment.

Stuart

Jill's Response

Hi Stuart,

Thanks, I did enjoy the SES conference and also our short vacation last week in Florida. It could definitely have been warmer though!

You are correct that changing images to keep your site fresh seems odd. It is! There are a few basic flaws with the whole concept, which stem from people only half-understanding what they hear or read online. There are people who think that a site that is visited often by the search engine spiders will rank higher for its optimized keyword phrases. But that's simply not true.

What IS true is that a site that is considered "popular" by the search engines may rank higher for its optimized keyword phrases. And sites that are deemed popular will also tend to be visited more often by the spiders. What has happened is that people have mixed this up and think that a site visited more often will rank higher. With that erroneous thinking in mind, they go to great lengths to entice the spiders to visit more often. The truth of the matter is that there's no evidence to suggest that rankings are affected by how often your pages are visited by the spiders.

The *only* reason why you might care if the spiders visit your pages often is if you are actually adding new content on a regular basis. That's exactly what the spiders are looking for when they try to decide how often to visit your site. They will find the new content, determine how often you add stuff, and try to schedule their visits accordingly. It's got nothing to do with rankings, however.

Hope this helps end your confusion about this.

Jill

Jill Whalen of High Rankings is an internationally recognized search engine optimization consultant and editor of the free weekly High Rankings Advisor search engine marketing newsletter.

Article by Jill Whalen, www.searchengineguide.com -    Published Jan. 2005

Maximize your rankings by leveraging the five areas of the WebPosition Page Critic

If you've had a chance to try WebPosition Gold 3 released in August, you may have noticed that the Page Critic report is now divided into six tabs. As this report is so crucial to improving your rankings on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other engines, I believe the new format merits some explanation.

The first tab of the Page Critic report is simply a consolidation of the other report areas found on the remaining five tabs. This first tab is useful for those that wish to print the entire report, or for those that prefer to see everything all on one page. It provides an impressive volume of SEO advice and can be rather overwhelming at first glance.

The remaining five tabs serve to divide the content into smaller, more digestible pieces. These areas guide you through the process of tuning your Web page to the preferences of your selected search engine. The tabs are entitled Page Averages, Page Advice, Engine Advice, Page Analysis, Page Properties.

Everyone's Web site and target market is different. While there are some commonalities, most search engines rank pages based on differing criteria. Therefore, it's important to realize that the Page Critic custom tailors its advice for the specific Web page, keyword, and search engine that you select.

Page Averages:
The simplest way to improve your page rankings is to mimic the major attributes that cause other pages to rank at the top of the list. In September, I discussed the various comparison tools that WebPosition makes available to you. One of these methods is to compare your page's key attributes to the averages of other pages that already rank in the top 5 positions. For example, if the average top-ranking page on Google includes 5 words in the title tag area, then you should logically do the same in your title. In reality, you will not find every top-ranking page having precisely 5 words in the title. There's often a range of "acceptable" values that Google will give preference to. Therefore, you will notice that the Page Averages report will advise you to conform to a particular range of acceptable values. For example:

A word count from 4 to 6 is suggested for the Title area. Your word count is 12 right now so you might consider decreasing your word count in the Title.

A keyword frequency from 1 to 7 is suggested for the Link Text area. Your frequency is 0.0 right now so you might consider increasing your Keyword count in the Link Text.

A word count from 1 to 270 is suggested for the Link Text area. Your word count is 0 right now so you might consider increasing your word count in the Link Text.

You'll notice that in some cases, the range is fairly narrow like 4 to 6 words in the title area. In other cases, the range is broad, such as 1 to 270 words in the link text area. These values are based upon how widely top ranking pages deviate from the average.

If your page has 7 words in the title, rather than 4 to 6 words, does that mean your page can't rank at the top of the list? No, of course not. There's more than one way to rank at the top. WebPosition's report is only meant to be a useful guide to what the typical top-ranking page should look like.

In addition, some factors will be less influential than others. For example, your title tag will almost always have more influence on your ranking than your meta keyword tag. However, your best strategy is to tune your page to mimic as many of the averages as possible.

To save you time, only the "problem" areas will be mentioned on the Page Averages tab. If your title already has the optimal number of words, then WebPosition will not make any suggestions for that area.

Tip: If any of this search engine marketing terminology is confusing, you'll find many of the terms hyperlinked in the Page Critic report. Simply click on the underlined words to learn more

Page Advice:
Like the Page Averages tab, the Page Advice tab contains WebPosition's suggestions based on your selected Web page, engine, and keyword. In contrast to the previous tab, Page Advice includes all the page-specific tips that are unrelated to average word counts or average prominence. Instead, you'll find that WebPosition scans for missing tags and other elements that should be either present or excluded from a top-ranking page. For many well-built pages, this list will be relatively short as only the "problem" areas will be flagged.

Engine Advice:
Here you will find a wealth of engine specific advice. There's so many advice items to help you improve your rankings, that this section has been organized into eight categories:

What's New - Tips added within the last few months.

Keyword Selection - Advice for choosing the best keywords.

Relevancy Tips - Techniques for improving your page's relevancy to the search engines. The more relevant an engine finds your page, the higher you will rank.

Link Popularity - Strategies for building your link popularity to increase your traffic and your rankings.

Submission and Getting Indexed - Guidelines for proper submission.

Spam Warnings - Educate yourself on best practices and how to avoid spamming a search engine.

Marketing Strategies - Online marketing techniques that will work hand in hand with your search engine marketing strategy.

Other Information - Search engine news and miscellaneous SEO tips.

Page Analysis:
This tab gives you a table showing the keyword frequency, word count, keyword weight, and prominence of your page compared to your competitors. If you're serious about optimizing your page, this is the place to go. While the Page Averages tab gives you much of this data in easy to understand sentence form, here you'll see all the statistical data at glance. The exact averages are given here rather than "ranges."

The Page Analysis table divides your page into "areas" such as title, meta tags, link text, body, and so forth. You can then compare each area of your page to one or more top ranking pages. Some areas that are known to be ignored by the selected search engine will be omitted by default from this report. That way you don't waste time optimizing page areas that an engine does not even index.

Page Properties:
The final tab on the Page Critic report contains a list of useful traits relating to the page being analyzed such as whether it uses frames, contains java script, or repeats the same keyword more than once in a row.

Conclusion:
While the scope and breadth of the Page Critic module may look a little intimidating at first, you'll quickly learn your way around it. Although WebPosition is well known for it's impressive rank reporting features, you'll find the Page Critic module to be the key to improving those rankings. After all, it does you no good to submit your pages and to track your positions if you don't work to improve those rankings.

This article is copyrighted and has been reprinted with permission from FirstPlace Software, the makers of WebPosition Gold. FirstPlace Software helped define the SEO industry with the introduction of the first product to track your rankings on the major search engines and to help you improve those rankings. A free trial of WebPosition Gold is available from their Web site.

By Brent Winters   - WebPosition Gold - Published Dec. 2004

The Keyword Tools Trap

When it comes to keyword selection, clients always want to optimize for the most searched terms (according to keyword research tools) and those alone. It takes some convincing to get them to go after lower search volume, but more relevant phrases. It's become a regular part of the cycle with my clients, especially those who are learning about SEO and the process of optimizing a site.

Real Searches vs. the Numbers Game

Last week, a client wanted to know why I had suggested several phrases to them that showed 0 searches in Wordtracker. The reason? Those phrases were showing REAL referrals in their logs for several variations. People were actually using those phrases to search, and although they found my client's site, it wasn't doing a good job of focusing on these relevant searched-for terms.

The Keyword Research Process

I usually have the client provide me with the typical words they think someone might be using to find the product, service or information that they offer. We look at what competitors are optimizing for and then I look at their log files. When possible, I talk to the client's salespeople and a few customers about the words that describe the products or services.

Then I may play with AltaVista <http://www.altavista.com> to see what phrases it thinks are related (you see a list of related searches to the right of the search results in AV). Then I'll hit Wordtracker <http://www.highrankings.com/wordtracker> and the Overture suggestion tool <http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/> to get an idea of how people are searching in that industry.

Other keyword research tools that may be helpful are:

* Search Term Research by PrioritySubmit
<http://www.prioritysubmit.com/research.html>
* Keyword Research Tool by Webmaster Toolkit
<http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-research-tool.shtml>
* Keyword Suggestion Tool by Digital Point Solutions
<http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/>
* Google AdWords Keyword Tool by Google
<http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox>
* Keyword Suggestions for Google by SEO Chat
<http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-suggestions-google>
* Keyword Generator by Espotting Media
<http://www.espotting.com/popups/keywordgenbox.asp>

(Thanks to "BobMutch" for the list of keyword research tools -- see
more great info on his Free Seo Tools page
<http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/free-seo-tools.html>.

These tools are a great help in suggesting possible phrases that you may want to optimize for, but they are limited. They aren't inclusive of all searches, and they can't foretell the future. Just because people searched on a term last week doesn't mean they'll search for it next week.

Many people today simply run through Wordtracker, grab the results that have a high KEI, and set about optimizing for those phrases. Some of the problems with this tactic are:

* They believe that general phrases are relevant because they show a high number of searches. However, general phrases often bring traffic -- but no sales. Specific phrases bring traffic that converts.

* Wordtracker's KEI function doesn't tell you much. It doesn't really show how many other pages are competing for your phrases, and it doesn't matter anyway.   You are only concerned with the top 10 results!

* Many keyword phrases are seasonal -- seeing what people searched for last month doesn't always tell you what they will search for next month.

Common-sense Keyword Selection

What many people miss is the common-sense aspect of search: what words will people who want to find your goods or services use to search for it? Besides consulting keyword research tools, your client, their salespeople, and their customers, here are 3 additional ways of finding out what people are typing in at the search engines to find what you offer:

1) trade organizations or industry news sites
2) usability testing/surveys
3) log files

A note about log files -- they can be deceiving. If you have a high-traffic phrase that is garnering lots of referrals, and you have a high exit rate from the page that is receiving those referrals, it's likely people aren't finding what they wanted. On the other hand, log files are a treasure trove of information. You can find some great search terms that are not very competitive and maximize them on your site.

Competitive phrases may not be as competitive as you think (check the top 10 search results to see) and the highly searched- pon phrases may not be as lucrative as you would hope. People often refine their search 2-3 times before getting the results they expect.

When it comes to keyword research, the bottom line is that it pays to know the industry. Use all the great tools available to help you come up with variations and alternate terms to target, but use common sense when targeting terms. Go for the ones that are going to convert!

Scottie Claiborne - The Karcher Group: http://www.TheKarcherGroup.com - Successful-Sites: http://www.Successful-Sites.com - Published Oct. 2004

Top 5 Tips for Choosing the Best Keywords

You've probably heard of people claiming significant traffic to their site after achieving a top ranking on Google or Yahoo. But sometimes you hear from someone else who also achieved a similar top ranking but they were disappointed when no one arrived at their site. How can two people achieve a top ranking and have such markedly different outcomes? Simple. The person in the first example selected a keyword or phrase that many people are searching on, and the second did not.

Unfortunately, it's all too easy to brainstorm your own list of keywords, only to find out later that they are not as popular as you first thought. Keyword popularity is essential to success in search engine marketing.

The question to ask yourself is how do you really know if you're optimizing your pages for keywords that Web surfers are looking for? There are several good techniques you can apply:

Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience.

For example, you may have a "clothing business" where you "sell clothing." While those phrases describe what you do, they are not necessarily the words that your audience would enter into a search engine to find you. How many times have you went to Google and typed in "sell clothing" in order to find a particular shirt or hat?

Therefore, you must change your point of view from the person selling the product to the person that wants to buy your product. For example, popular phrases to target in the clothing category would be "plus size clothing," "mens clothing," or "womens clothing." How do I know this? I used the new WordTracker Keywords module found in WebPosition Gold 3. When I typed in the word "clothing," it instantly pulled up a wide range of related keywords from which to choose, all ranked by popularity.

I must admit, I was rather surprised to see such unusual terms like "medieval clothing" and "gothic clothing" was ranked high. However, that's the thing with keywords. It's next to impossible to simply guess what the most popular phrases will be today.

Target Niches.

While "mens clothing" in the previous example may be one of the most popular clothing related searches, it unfortunately has a lot of competition. If you do a search on Google, you'll find it returns over 1 million results for that phrase. While this type of phrase may gain you a lot of traffic, achieving a top ranking may prove difficult and time-consuming.

In addition, you will normally find visitors who search on very broad keyword categories purchasing less often than someone who knows exactly what they want. A good example of such a niche phrase would be "custom baseball hats." The benefit of "custom baseball hats" is that it's both a popular search phrase and it only has about 2000 pages on Google competing against it. That's much less competitive than the 1 million results returned for "mens clothing."

WordTracker calls the popularity and competition ratio the "KEI" or Keyword Effectiveness Index. The higher the KEI, the more effective the keyword will be for you.

Therefore, targeting relatively popular niche keywords has the following four advantages:

Niche keywords still produce a nice flow of traffic if you're careful to pick ones that still have good popularity.

Niche keywords will significantly increase your chance of success. Achieving a top ranking will be much easier with a niche keyword phrase versus a very broad, highly popular phrase. No top ranking can be guaranteed in an organic search engine like Google. There are simply too many variables. Therefore, you'll greatly increase your chances of success by choosing less competitive keyword phrases. Work smarter, not harder as I like to say.

Niche keywords will save you time. While you could use various tools and research to achieve a top ranking for "mens clothing," the time required to do so may not be worthwhile. Let your competitor waste their efforts on the ultra-competitive phrases. In the same amount of time they spend trying to achieve a single top ranking for your industry's most popular phrase, you could achieve top rankings on twenty other phrases.

Niche keywords yield more sales per visitor. That's because these keywords are more targeted. Therefore, these prospects have a better idea of what they want. If they find it on your site at the right price, then your chances for a sale are much greater.

Brainstorm for keywords in your category

There are many ways to brainstorm new keyword phrases. You can examine the content and the meta tags on your competition's Web site to see what phrases they consider important. While this is a good place to start looking for ideas, there's no guarantee they are targeting the best keywords. You must check these keywords against the corresponding popularity and competition factors. You could also consult with your thesaurus for synonyms and related phrases and correlate these to popularity and competition. Fortunately, WordTracker will do this for you within seconds. Simply type in the word "clothing" and it will return dozens of the most popular keywords, with the ability to drill down to hundreds more. In fact, the phrases you find here may trigger many new ideas to expand or grow your company's business into areas you had not previously considered.

Choose only relevant keywords

Just because a keyword is popular with a low competition factor, doesn't mean you should target that keyword or phrase. You may be tempted to optimize for phrases that are only loosely related to your site's content -- but DON'T.

The phrases you target must be relevant to what you have to sell. It must also be applicable to what you have to offer on the specific Web page you are optimizing. How many times have you searched Google, landed on a page, and then backed out within 5 seconds of arriving? That page had a top ranking, but it did not have what you were looking for.

Perhaps the Web site did have what you wanted, but the product resided elsewhere on the site. Unfortunately, your visitor may never know this. If you target a keyword or phrase, then the page they land on must offer the products, services or content that they expect, or you'll be wasting your time and your visitor's time. At the very least, the page should offer direct links to the potential products and services they may expect to find there.

How do you know what people are looking for on your pages? Simply check your Top Search Phrases report in WebTrends for a list of the keywords people searched on to find each page of your site. You may be surprised to learn that pages are ranking well on phrases that you had never considered. You can also see which keywords and phrases are driving the highest conversion and revenue, to ensure you maximize the return from your SEO effort. Once you identify these pages and search phrases, make sure you are giving the visitor exactly what they expect to find based on the phrases used to find the page.

Understand that keywords can have multiple meanings

If you have a travel business, then your first thought might be to target the word travel. However, if someone is searching on just plain old "travel" are they:

Helping their child with a paper on some aspect of "travel?"

Looking for the "travel channel?"

Looking to plan a vacation cruise?

Preparing to take a business trip?

Day dreaming about time travel?

Looking for driving directions for their travel across the country?

Looking for a travel club such as AAA?

Looking for the perfect backpack or hiking supplies for a travel expedition?

If you own a travel agency that specializes in vacation cruises and optimized your site for the single keyword "travel," only a limited number of the people identified in the example above would be qualified prospects. This of course assumes that travel was not too competitive to begin with.

While a top ranking on travel would yield a great deal of visitors to your site, many of them would select the "Back" button in their browsers, turn around and effectively walk out of your store! That's not the outcome you're looking for. When you select more targeted keyword phrases such as "Alaskan Cruise," there is a much higher likelihood that you have focused in on exactly the right audience. It's the difference between attracting actual buyers versus tire kickers.

Doing a quick search in WordTracker is a great way to get a feel for all the keyword variations that your audience may be searching on. You'll also discover which are the most popular, and least competitive. This is not only invaluable in regard to search engine marketing, but for your marketing efforts in general. If you haven't tried WordTracker yet, simply download the free trial of WebPosition Gold 3 and click on the WordTracker Keywords icon.

This article is copyrighted and has been reprinted with permission from FirstPlace Software, the makers of WebPosition Gold. FirstPlace Software helped define the SEO industry with the introduction of the first product to track your rankings on the major search engines and to help you improve those rankings. A free trial of WebPosition Gold is available from their Web site.

By Brent Winters   - WebPosition Gold - Published Jul. 2004

Put Sound and Video On Your Web Site

Sound and video are coming to the Internet in a big way. Now, with cheap new technology, anyone can turn their website into a TV or radio station without spending a dime.

Given the huge audiences that radio and TV have (99 percent of American homes have a TV and most own five radios), putting audio and video on your site could be the most important thing you do. Some studies show audio and video can increase website sales by as much as 50 percent.

Streaming media, as it is called, excites customers and keeps you ahead of your competition. The static printed web page will be around for a long time, but watch for most leading sites to start offering audio and video.

Streaming media requires a lot more data than a simple printed page. Having DSL or a T line helps. Since most consumers still use dial-up modems on lines that support less than 40k, Internet audio and video rely on clever methods for compressing and reducing big files of data.

The result is sometimes fuzzy audio and pictures that look faded and blurry. The level of quality might be annoying on regular TV, but it's nothing short of exhilarating coming from the Internet. One client who is using web video says he is getting a phenomenal rate of sales from it.

Your web site visitors won't mind a bit if your presentation isn't network professional. They will appreciate the big jump from reading text to seeing a media presentation.

Start with Audio.

There is a huge difference between the amount of work it takes to produce video and what is needed to build an audio-only presentation. A single individual can produce an outstanding radio show while even a simple TV program requires a full staff.

An audio presentation doesn't require location, lighting, or the inconspicuous microphone placement video demands.

You can record your voice, add some music, drop in a sound effect and your audio program is ready to hit the Internet.

There are a number of cheap or free programs that let you record your audio as a simple WAV file, a Real Audio file, or a an MP3. After trying several of them, I settled on a $20 program called Internet Audio Mix available from http://www.acoustica.com.

It works with your PC's sound card to record up to four digital tracks. Operation and editing is completely intuitive.

Most recent PCs have Real Audio bundled with windows. That means a large and growing number of your customers can click on your audio link, download your Real Audio file, and listen to it within a matter of seconds.

Speak with energy when you record audio tracks. Because people can't see your face, your voice has to pack extra punch.

Try to cut down on "uhs" and "uhms." Don't feel like you have to talk like an announcer. Customers respond better to a voice that sounds like a regular person.

Several companies have created easy systems for producing and hosting your audio for free. GiveMeTalk.com (http://www.givemetalk.com) provides a simple free program for recording your talk show, then lets you host it on their site where customers can hear you.

I recorded my articles as MP3 files (the format Internet music uses) and loaded them up on Live365.com (http://www.live365.com). The site rotates my talks, making them available non-stop 24 hours a day at no charge. I call it the DrNunley Radio Network and link to it from my site.

Moving Up to Web Video.

Video experts tell me we're years away from having quality streaming video on the Internet. Still, there are some easy ways to offer fairly good video from your site.

Because the Real Video format is becoming so widely accepted, you can download and use several of RealNetwork.com's (http://www.realnetwork.com) free video production applications.

Real Slideshow (free) lets you combine images with talk, music, and sound effects. Real Presenter (also free) turns your PowerPoint presentations into Internet video.

Several of the free web hosting sites now host your streaming media presentations at no charge. Tripod.com (http://www.tripod.com), one of the pioneers in free web sites, offers a program called ShowMotion. You can combine still photos with clips of video, scanned images, and backed with your narration. Tripod hosts it for free.

If all this sounds a bit too technical, Tripod features several fine presentations produced by high school students. The format is drag and drop and impressed me as being vastly easier than designing a web site.

Even though Internet audio and video is cutting-edge and exciting, it doesn't come near the quality we are used to with regular radio and television. That is good news for small web sites. You can turn out a homespun effort and still be right on the heels of professionals.

For true professional level video, check wbcimaging.com (http://www.wbcimaging.com). They are television engineers who have long taken an interest in the best ways to put video on the Internet.

Radio is a billion dollar industry. Television is arguably the most influential media ever invented. Now that it has become so easy to produce your own Internet audio and video, it makes sense to add those powerful dimensions to your web site.

Kevin Nunley provides marketing advice and copy writing for businesses and organizations. Read all his money-saving marketing tips at http://DrNunley.com/ or reach him at kevin@drnunley.com.

By By Dr. Kevin Nunley Copyright © 2004 -   Published Jun. 2004

How to Publish a "Blog"... and Why You Should!

First, a quick definition for those who do not know what a Blog is. Quite simply, it's a Web Log. In other words, a regularly updated page of your thoughts, ideas, links - whatever.

It's very easy to publish a Blog these days and today I'm going to show you how in a few easy steps. Don't worry - all the sites, services and tools involved are fr'ee.

Before we go ahead I should first explain why a Blog is so useful. A Blog provides a number of benefits to you and your site and all for very little effort.

1. A Blog will add valuable content to your site. This in turn increases repeat visitors and increases the frequency the Google Page Bot (and therefore how often your site listings are updated) will visit.

2. A Blog can be updated very quickly (especially using the technique I show you below). It's much faster to update than editing your Web Page or sending out an e-mail.

3. Blogs can be delivered as RSS Feeds and this means a user can download software to have your Blog delivered direct to their desktop as and when it's updated. You DO NOT have to pay for sites such as Quikonnex or the new Cory Rudl software. RSS Feeds are NOT new and you shouldn't have to pay for what is essentially a fr'ee technology!

Do you now believe you should publish a Blog? If you do, just read on, and see how easy it is!

First join http://www.Blogger.Com - this is a popular Blog service (there are others) that makes the whole process as simple as possible. You just register your details and a title for your Blog.

Why choose Blogger? First, the Google Toolbar has a "Blog This" button that makes updating your Blog childs play. Click the button, and you can publish direct into your Blog immediately - including a link to the web-site you're currently on!

Second, Blogger will add you to it's directory and to a notification service AND they will let you publish to their site, though you can set FTP settings to publish to a page at your own domain. For now we'll publish to Bloggers host service "BlogSpot" since they are fast and the only thing they add is one banner at the top. You may also get featured as one of Bloggers daily blogs and gain massive traffic.

Blogger also has a range of templates and you can even edit these directly to personalize your Blog, right down to adding ads or links to your own site (Tip: include a navigation bar). Blogger will also archive your Blog and insert links to your archived months.

Blogger will create a Blog for you in a few steps. At the Blogger.Com main page click on "Start Now" at the top. Enter your Username, Password and Name and away you go.

Once you have your account validated, log in and create a new Blog. This is just as simple as creating a user account. Enter a Title and Description, and leave it as a "Public" Blog. Then select host at BlogSpot. Create a subdomain for your BlogSpot then select a template. You can create your own templates but that requires extensive HTML knowledge.

That's it! You have an account and a Blog setup. There are other settings to explore. You can set "Ping Weblogs" to YES in the Settings/Publishing option to notify Weblogs whenever you publish. You can also set "Show Title Field" and "Email" options to provide Titles to your Blog Entries and email a copy of your entries to you. Everything else is OK as it is.

With your Blog at BlogSpot and your Google Toolbar http://toolbar.google.com installed, set the Blogger function in the Toolbar Options and then click the `B` button in the toolbar. There you have it - one instant Blog entry.

How To Use Your RSS Feed

If you left the Blog settings as standard, your RSS feed is at your BlogSpot Address as atom.xml - the number of entries depends on your settings in Blogger, but it's usually a weeks worth. Although the Atom feed doesn't hold *every* entry, the end user's client software stores all entries as they come in. Your website Blog has complete on-line archives.

Instruct your readers to download an RSS Reader and to use that address to receive your Blog updates. Below I've included a quick tutorial that you can cut-out and send to your own Blog readers, just change the Blog Address.

How To Get Updates From This Blog... To Your Desktop!

First you need to download a "Feed Reader." This Blog uses an Atom Feed. Atom Readers can be downloaded from the following webpage: http://atomenabled.org/everyone/atomenabled/index.php?c=5

The above link contains a "big list" of resources, so you may want to use the program below if you want to get started with a quick and easy client right away:

Tristana Reader http://www.charlwood.com/tristana

The Tristana Reader is a small and quick reader. This "big list" contains this reader and others, including those for Mac OS and web-based services. There's also certain readers that integrate into your browser. Use the link to the "big list" to find one you like. Don't worry, they're nearly all fr'ee!

In Tristana, you simply click the large "+" sign and enter the address of the Blog Atom feed. The feed to this Blog is: http://netpreneurnow.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Once the feed is added, just double click it to get a list of headlines and click each headline to get the entry. You can add as many blogs as you want and Tristana will happily keep them all for you.

Blogger itself has a lot of help if you need it, so it's
time for me to sign off.

Happy Blogging!

Stuart Reid publishes Netpreneur News and it's Blog. Visit the main site to join the Email Ezine or to view the Blog at: http://www.netpreneurnow.com

By Stuart Reid Copyright © 2004 - Published May 2004

Boost Your Search Engine Rankings with Email Newsletters

SEO: search engine optimization. It can make the difference between a website that's rarely visited, and one that bustles with traffic. Email newsletters are an excellent and easy way to boost SEO.

Of course, email newsletters offer many obvious benefits to firms that want to nurture relationships with their clients. They are an inexpensive, effective way to keep in touch with your customer base while promoting your company, your products and services, and your brand.

Every time you send out a newsletter, you encourage people to visit your website. But that's not the only way it can increase your website traffic. If you choose to archive past issues on your site, you'll find that they can also attract targeted search engine traffic. Each issue you post helps your SEO results. With SEO, email newsletters do double duty - continually benefiting your web marketing efforts long after distribution.

Think about it. Each issue focuses on something that has to do with your business, right? So it's probably full of relevant key phrases that people use in search engines. A newsletter article allows you to write about a specific topic in great detail - perhaps more detail than you would include on a regular page on your website.

Also, articles give you an opportunity to link to specific pages deep in your website, using whatever anchor text you want. ("Anchor text" refers to the text of the actual link. For instance, if you want people to find your web page about email newsletters, the link "email newsletters" is much better for SEO than "click here.")

Articles let you optimize for different spellings or abbreviations of business terms that you might not be using frequently on your regular pages. The regular web pages for my client's Athena IT Solutions website are optimized for phrases such as "business intelligence assessment." But one of the firm's email newsletter articles ranks well for a phrase that uses the abbreviation for business intelligence, BI. In April 2004, searches for "BI architecture" bring up one of their articles in the #1 spot in Yahoo and on the second page of Google.

If your website isn't very large to begin with, adding your archived newsletters will help bulk it up with high-quality content. Before you know it, you may find that you're attracting visitors in ways you never expected. For example, Eye of the Storm Equine Rescue published an email newsletter detailing their innovative treatment for a horse disease. Their web stats show that the article page is now one of the most frequent "entry" pages to their site. Grateful horse owners who found the article when searching for treatments have even sent tax-deductible donations to the rescue center.

You can leave it to chance, like the equine rescue center, or you can take a proactive approach and actually optimize your articles for SEO. In addition to using SEO copywriting practices in the article itself, there are things you can do to enhance your article page's SEO. Just make sure that whatever you do for SEO is also good for your readers.

Use your key phrase in the title tag.

Include links to several past issues.

Link to regular pages within your site, where appropriate.

Link to specific articles from your regular web pages, where appropriate.

Make a link to your home page part of every article's boilerplate text.

List all issues on a Back Issues web page.

Link to issues on your site map.

Optimized and posted on your website, email newsletter articles help turn a lazy website into a hard-working web-marketing machine.

Andrea Harris - Minerva Solutions, Inc. - Published May 2004

Case In Point: Designing A Site That Demands High Traffic

Marnie Pehrson may not be well known for driving traffic to Web sites, but she should be! Her ability to get literally hundreds of thousands of page views a month is simply astounding! (NOTE: I said "page views," not "hits." BIG difference!) I had to ask her to reveal her secrets so that we all could learn how to create a Web site that simply demands high traffic.

KARON: Hi Marnie. I really appreciate you taking the time to give us your insights on traffic building. You seem to have the Midas touch in this area : )

MARNIE: Oh sure, Karon. Anything for a friend.

KARON: I know from our email conversations that most of your Web sites get anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000 page views a month. How do you do it? Search engines? Ezine ads? What?

MARNIE: Well, those things do help, but normally the site itself drives the visitors to return over and over. It also encourages viral marketing with lots of referrals.

KARON: So tell me about your two biggest sites (in terms of traffic). Those would be http://www.ideamarketers.com and http://www.shelovesgod.com, right?

MARNIE: Right. Both of these sites give the visitor a chance to shine - to contribute and be in the spotlight. They both accept article contributions; they both allow profiles of visitors; and they both have a place for me to give extra attention to visitors (the masthead).

KARON: So, because visitors are in the spotlight on these two sights, they recommend them to others, return repeatedly, and link back to you. Excellent!

MARNIE: Yes, I've built in automatic ways for visitors to forward pages to friends, which brings even more traffic. Basically, rather than having the focus on selling, I put it on the visitor. They are the primary focus with the products/services I sell taking a back seat (so to speak).

KARON: But you still make sales, right?

MARNIE: Oh yes! The sites wouldn't have been able to stay online since 1998 and 2000 if they weren't making money : )

KARON: Good point! What else can you tell us about your "magic formula?"

MARNIE: Well, both sites have *LOTS* of pages people can visit. As you know, more pages = more doors for visitors to enter = more listings in search engines = more traffic!

KARON: Keep going... I'm all ears.

MARNIE: The masthead I told you about earlier helps drive traffic from my heavy-hitter sites to my newer sites. Among other things, it features articles and tips from site contributors. Then, in my newsletters, I encourage people to go to the site to read further. In other words, everything's not there in the email, they have to go to the site to get some of the content.

KARON: Well, you just have all kinds of tricks up your sleeve, don't you? Anything else?

MARNIE: Yes, actually : ) IdeaMarketers is also a "newsworthy" site that is used as a resource for many people. It tends to get a lot of mentions in articles simply because of its nature. And because of the quality of the site, IdeaMarketers has been recommended in a lot of high-traffic ezines.

KARON: So the combination of all these elements creates a Web site that people WANT to visit time and again, right? Marketing sites such as these is left more to the visitors than to your efforts, huh?

MARNIE: In a way. The visitors most certainly are the reason for my success. As I said before, search engines are not to be ignored, and I'm a firm believer in ezine advertising, but when you build a site designed around visitor interaction, traffic usually comes without a struggle.

KARON: Thanks so much, Marnie. This gives us some serious issues to think about.

MARNIE: My pleasure!

The two sites of Marnie's we mentioned in this interview are her article promotion site http://www.ideamarketers.com, and her women's spiritual growth site http://www.shelovesgod.com. Visit them today to see Marnie's traffic pulling designs in action.

Most buying decisions are emotional. Your ad copy should be, too! Karon is President & CEO of Marketing Words, Inc. who offers targeted copywriting, search engine copywriting, and ezine article writing. Subscribe to Karon's free ezine at http://www.marketingwords.com/ezine.html or visit her site at http://www.marketingwords.com. You can also learn to write you own powerful copy at http://marketingwords.com.

By Karon Thackston Copyright © 2004 Published Apr. 2004

How to design a search engine and user friendly website

How often have you compromised website design for higher search engine results? I’m sure we all have at some time or other. But really, there’s no need to. By following these guidelines you can have the best of both worlds.

Before we get going, the most important thing to remember when designing a search engine and user friendly website is to design the site for the user. Forget the search engine. Why? Because (rather ironically), both the user and search engines like the same thing. Then both appreciate clear, rich and relevant content and they both like clean standard HTML code. Now, let’s get on with it.

Step 1. Requirements Gathering

The first step is to determine the objectives of the website. These include issues such as the websites purpose and the target audience. Once this is done, you can determine the content of the website. In some instances this will be provided to you and in others you’ll need to work with the client to come up with ideas. Content can include product and service information, product database, online ordering system, articles, press releases, news, company information, testimonials and so forth.

Step 2. Keyword Research

If you don’t already have your keyword phrases, you’ll need to research and select them now. They’ll be used in the building of the site, so it’s important you know what they are early on in the process.

Step 3. Site Structure and Navigation

Now that you’ve got your content and keyword phrases, consider the site structure. How should the content be grouped? You’ll most likely need to break it into top level and secondary level. In some cases even a third level. When labeling the navigation, consider using easily recognizable descriptions such as “Products” or “Services”. Don’t ever make your user have to guess what’s in a section by using cryptic descriptions.

Also, start to work out which pages your keyword phrases should be incorporated into. You’ll find in most cases they’ll naturally fit within the subject matter of certain sections/pages.

Step 4. Site Design

The first port of call in any design is the look and feel of the site. Considerations here include ensuring consistency with any branding the client may have. Also be aware of color choices. Colors that work in print may not necessarily work well on screen, so some adjustments may be necessary.

Next is page layout. How many columns will you have? Where will your navigation be positioned? If you have more than one navigation level how will you present this? Keep in mind that these days users expect to see information in standard places. You don’t want users to hunt for what they’re looking for.

This stage is also where you first incorporate your keyword phrases. As you’ve already allocated phrases to relevant pages you can start to incorporate them into your file names (where appropriate), headings, sub headings, navigation links and anywhere else you see fit.

With the navigation, you’ll need to decide whether links should be text or graphic. Keep in mind that search engine spiders crawl text links so if you go with graphics you’ll need to incorporate text links somewhere into your site design. It is worth including your keyword phrases into your text links where possible. Just make sure they read well and don’t look awkward or out of place.

Step 4. Keyword-rich Content

Once you’ve got your site together it’s time to add your content, ensuring you incorporate your keyword phrases wherever possible.

When using headings and sub headings, be sure you use the HTML header codes <H1>, <H2> etc rather than graphics as they’re given more weight by most search engines. They also load faster which is a benefit to the user.

Bolding your keyword phrases, incorporating them into lists and having them as bullet points are other formatting tips I find work well. It also helps break up your page and makes it more inviting for users to read.

Step 5. HTML Tweaking

Once your site is done and your copy is in place, it’s time to make the final tweaks to your HTML code. This is when you add descriptive Title tags (incorporating your relevant keyword phrases of course), Meta Descriptions and Keywords Tags. It’s also a good time to make sure your Alt tags are relevant and contain your keyword phrases wherever appropriate.

Be sure to have any non HTML code such as Style Sheets and JavaScript as external files rather than embedded in your HTML pages.

As a final step, make sure you remove any superfluous code, blank lines and so forth. The less code in your file the smaller the page which means a faster download and a happy user.

Step 6. Site Map

The sixth and final step is to add a Site Map to your website. A Site Map is an index of your whole site. It contains text links to every page on your site and is a fantastic way to ensure search engine spiders can crawl each and every page of your website. A Site Map is also a great way for a user to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. Place a link to your Site Map at the bottom of each page of your website.

Tip: Including a couple of lines of text about each page can be a boost to your search engine rankings,

Conclusion

And there you have it. Follow these 6 simple steps and you’ll not only have a website that works well for your prospects but one that is loved by the search engines as well.

Sophie Wegat is a web design and search engine optimization consultant based in Melbourne, Australia.

By Sophie Wegat, Nitrogen Interactive - Published Apr. 2004

How Can You Learn How to Achieve Top Search Engine Rankings?

If you're serious about having a successful online business, you need to spend some time studying the search engines and how they operate.

Why? Because comparatively speaking, search engine marketing is generally much less expensive than traditional forms of advertising, which certainly appeals to those of us with low (or no!) advertising budgets. Also, the reach you can gain through a successful search engine marketing campaign can be extraordinary.

But, how can you learn search engine marketing strategies? People learn in many different ways.

Some folks prefer to dig for the information themselves, hunting all over the Web hoping to find reliable and trustworthy information. Search Engine Guide is an excellent place to start, because the site posts articles written by experts in the industry.

Other people like online classes, such as those offered through a reputable company like the Academy of Web Specialists, where they can learn in the comfort of their own homes with a trusted instructor. As you probably know, I've taught online classes through the Academy for years.

Still others like to attend large conferences where they can sit and listen to experts in the industry offer their advice on particular topics. In my opinion, Search Engine Strategies conferences are second to none, and I've served on panels at almost all of them.

However, still others want to learn on location with more of a hands-on approach. Until now, there has never been an actual "hands on" workshop designed to build your expertise in person. These people want to meet the instructors in person and have the opportunity for personal, one-on-one interaction about their particular Web sites and their unique challenges.

So, this is why Search Engine Workshops was formed, a joint venture by John Alexander and Robin Nobles. Other team members are well-known search engine optimizer and affiliate marketer Michael Campbell, and top technical expert Dave Barry.

When you attend one of our workshops, you'll bring your laptop and your "Web site" with you. You'll actually be doing exercises that will help you become a more effective search engine marketer. And, the workshops come as a package deal with a 6-month mentoring program, which means you'll be able to get advice and questions answered for a full six months later the workshop!

What will you learn?

Do you have a difficult time choosing keywords that really work for your business or your clients? John Alexander, one of the leading authorities in the use of WordTracker, will demonstrate ways to use WordTracker that you've never considered.

Do you have a difficult time writing Web site content? I'm a professional writer and author, and I'll be working with you on how to create Web site content that will appeal to your human audience.

Are you having problems taking your Web site content and making it search engine friendly? Because this is a "workshop," a hands-on method of learning, you'll create a page of content and optimize it yourself, with your instructors standing by to offer suggestions and guide you.

Are you a professional search engine optimizer who plans to work with clients? At the workshop, you'll discuss guarantees, contracts, how to get new clients, how to service your clients so that you'll continually exceed their expectations, and more.

Does your Web site have challenges that are keeping you from achieving top rankings? Learn work arounds for those challenges, from the very simple to the powerful and complex, depending on your unique situation.

Are confused about how to use Search Engine Optimizer (GRSeo) Do you need a Web-based alternative to reporting? At the workshop, we'll actually demonstrate the various tools of the trade and offer tips for using those tools as well as showing new tools you may not have considered.

Are you interested in having a personal appointment to talk about your Web site and any challenges or concerns you are having? Besides the training and personal help that comes through the workshop itself, each participant will meet with an instructor for a 30-minute private consultation.

Who can benefit from this workshop?

If you have an online business, or if you're considering starting one, this workshop is ideal for you.

You may have taken a search engine marketing course in the past but haven't kept up with the current strategies.

Maybe you're a Web designer who needs to learn how to design search engine friendly sites.

Maybe you have a large company who needs a stronger online presence.

Or, maybe you're ready for the "next step" to a successful Web site - what to do "after" you achieve top rankings? If so, this workshop is exactly what you need.

In order to offer personal attention to each attendee, enrollment is limited to between 20-30. Because the group is small, it quickly becomes very friendly and open. We share experiences and expertise, so that no matter what your level of experience is, you'll leave with an abundance of new information and things to try on your own Web site.

So, give this new way of learning search engine strategies a try. Visit Search Engine Workshops and look over the agenda. Read some of the testimonies from a past workshop. Learn more about the workshop leaders by visiting the About Us page.

Then, make arrangements to attend our next workshop. It will be a learning experience you'll never forget!

Robin Nobles is Director of Training for the Academy of Web Specialists. Robin has taught several thousand students in her online and onsite search engine marketing courses during the past several years. Visit the On-lineWebTraining to learn more about their online search engine marketing courses and software solution. For onsite training by Robin Nobles and John Alexander, visit Search Engine Workshops

By Robin Nobles - Search Engine Workshops - Copyright © 2004 Published Apr. 2004

Return top Top

Copywriting Articles

SUBJECTS

How To Write Little Tiny AdWords Ads That Bring Giant-Sized Profits

Progressive Headlines Guide Customers To Buy

"Super Adjectives" Boost the Power of Your Copy

Progressive Headlines Guide Customers To Buy

Ten Killer Copywriting Mistakes That Suck Money Out Of Your Sites

Segmenting Your Target Audience Through Your Copywriting

Copywriting Makeover: Know Where Your Customers Are In The Buying Process

Headlines - The Life or Death of Your Advertising

How To Write Motivational Copy That Sells

To Increase Your Advertising Effectiveness - Stop Selling!

Creating Sales Letter Lists That Make Your Customers Drool

Solving the "I Get Tons of Traffic But No Sales" Mystery

Short Copy: Understanding Its Purpose Can Increase Sales

Copywriting Makeover: It’s Not About YOU, It’s About THEM

How To Write Little Tiny AdWords Ads That Bring Giant-Sized Profits

It seems to be a phenomenon. You try Google AdWords Select, your ad gets “disapproved” by the powers that be at Google, you count your losses and give up. It doesn’t have to be that way. There are two primary factors to succeeding at Google AdWords. The first is getting the right keywords. The second is writing little tiny ads. Neither is all that easy, but they can both be done.

Mark Twain said it best. “If I would have had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter.” The point… it takes much more skill, and much more time to write short copy than long copy.

Let’s go through the process together and I’ll show you a few tricks of the trade that have brought me AdWords click through rates of 7.1%, 8.0%… even 25%.

Step One – You would be very wise to either use a benefit or an end result in your headline. In order to do this, you’ll have to be aware of the difference between features and benefits. Start by making a list. I’ll use the example of an online shoe store.

Here are a few features:

huge inventory
wide selection of sizes
discounted prices
ree shipping

And here are the benefits associated with those features:

hundreds of styles to choose from
hard-to-find sizes in stock
save money
free shipping (costs nothing extra)

Step Two – Know what your customers are looking for. YOU may feel that one benefit outweighs another. However, your customer might feel differently. Be sure you understand what is important to your customer before writing your headline and your ad. You have no room to waste so it is vital that you find a so-called nail and hit it right on the head.

Step Three – Work in your keywords. There tends to be a greater click through rate on search results that use the exact keyphrase the surfer types in. The same holds true for Google’s AdWords program.

While the following have by no means been researched, we’ll assume that some optimum keywords for our shoe store are: women's shoes and sandals. We’ll want to include these in our ads.

Step Four – Start big and narrow it down. Begin by writing a few sentences or a paragraph about what you’d like your customer to know. Perhaps:

You’ll find everything you’re looking for in one place! Hundreds of styles to choose from including hard-to-find sizes in stock. You’ll save lots of money because our regular prices are far below that of other stores. Plus shipping is always free – regardless of the amount of your purchase. Check out our excellent selection of women's shoes and sandals.

Now, go back and take out every word that does not absolutely need to be there. You probably came up with something like this:

Everything in one place! Hundreds of styles, hard-to-find sizes. Prices far below other stores. Shipping free. Women's shoes and sandals.

That’s a LOT smaller and still gets the point across. However, it is still too long for AdWords. Your headline must be less than 25 characters (including spaces). Your copy can only be 35 characters per line. (You get two lines.) Now is the time to begin rearranging words to create an ad that will match Google’s guidelines, include your keywords, and draw a crowd to your site.

Here are a couple I came up with:

100s of Styles-Low Prices Big savings on women's shoes. Plus free shipping! All sizes in stock.

Discount Women's Sandals Latest styles at deep discounts. All sizes in stock. Free Shipping!

Step Five – Test, test, test! Put them up and give them a go. See what happens. Believe me, Google will notify you quickly if your ads aren’t performing. Those that get lower than a .05% click through rate are immediately “disapproved.” You are notified that your ad has been pulled and that you need to make changes.

Use the information in the AdWords campaign section to track the results. I’ve heard countless tales of those who have changed one little word and gone from a .07% CTR to a 5.0% CTR. If your ad is pulled, make simple changes to start with. Swapping out the word “savings” for “discount” or “big” for “huge” can be all it takes to catapult you to the top of the list.

When you write extremely short copy, remember to stay focused. There is not enough room to sell the customer within your copy, but there IS enough room to pique their interests. Use the limited space you have to punch up the biggest benefits or end results your customers are looking for and you’ll see bigger returns on your AdWords investment.

Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO copy that impresses the engines and your visitors with The Step-by-Step Copywriting Course. Be sure to check out Karon’s latest e-report “How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)."

By Karon Thackston Copyright © 2004 -   Published Nov. 2004

Progressive Headlines Guide Customers To Buy

Headlines are, without a doubt, one of the most important elements in copywriting. As has been said countless times before, if you don't get your readers' attention with the headline, the chance of them reading your copy is virtually none. But headlines (and sub-headlines) play a vital part in the copywriting process for other reasons, too.

Whether we, as copywriters, like it or not, the fact is most people will not read all the copy word for word. Headlines can help fill in the blanks in several ways so "skimmers" still get the gist of the information included in the copy.

Headlines Outline the Benefits

Using headlines and sub-heads that state benefits about your product/service can be a powerful strategy. Using wireless home networking for example, you might create headlines and sub-heads that read:

--Work From Anywhere In Your Home
--No More Jumbled Cables Strung Everywhere
--Have Multiple Computers Online At The Same Time
--Make All The Computer Users In Your Home Happy

Even if the customer didn't read the copy included in between these heads and sub-heads, they would still be made aware of all the benefits of having a wireless home network.

Headlines Give An Overview

Depending on the type of copy you're writing, headlines can help to urge your customers to read further. In fact, in long-form copy, headlines should create their own sub-set of copy. If you read just the headlines, they should make sense all by themselves. For example, copy about a new book on how to start your own business might use the following headlines.

New Book Takes You Step-by-Step Through Starting Your Own Business

An introduction would go here as well as copy designed to gain the attention of the reader.

Starting A Business Is Easier Than Ever

Continue with the copy here.

The Little Known Secrets In This Book Will Show You How

More copy here.

See? As you read through the headlines and sub-headlines they make sense even without any copy. This serves to give an overview of the information to those customers who may not read every word of the copy you've written. If they read just the headlines and sub-heads, they'll still understand what you're offering.

Headlines Can Raise Curiosity

Make a statement that's so unusual it doesn't make sense. Create "cliff-hangers" with your headlines and only give so much information before stopping. When you use these and other interest builders, you can encourage customers to read further into your copy just to satisfy their curiosity. Using natural gardening products as our example, the headlines and sub-heads often look like this:

--My Roses Are Bursting With Blossoms Since I Stopped Watering Them
--My Prize-Winning Tulips Would Wither Up and Die If It Weren't for.
--Which Annual Blooms Twice As Big When You Give It A Beer/Shampoo Cocktail?

These statements make you think. They start the reader wondering so that he/she continues to read on to get the rest of the story.

When creating headlines in your copy, think about how they all work together. Instead of just plopping bolded words in between paragraphs, create a plan revolving around progressive headlines that can lead your readers to buy.

Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO copy that impresses the engines and your visitors with The Step-by-Step Copywriting Course. Be sure to check out Karon’s latest e-report “How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)."

By Karon Thackston Copyright © 2004 -   Published Nov. 2004

"Super Adjectives" Boost the Power of Your Copy

Pretty or elegant? Good or scrumptious? Nice or delightful? There is power in the adjectives you choose. Just like Clark Kent and Superman or Bruce Wayne and Batman, some adjectives are plain, ordinary, everyday words. Others are alter-ego Super Adjectives that leap into your customers' minds in a single bound. Adjectives are boring, but Super Adjectives impress, inspire, and convince your customers more effectively.

Look at these examples to see what I mean:

Before

Great Top for Hot Summer Days

When it's hot outside, this top will help keep you cool. Made of cool nylon, you'll love how it sheds moisture. Available in four pastel colors.

After

Perfect Tank Top for Hot Summer Days

When the temperatures are steamy outside, this tank will help keep you remarkably cool. Made of breathable 100% nylon, you'll love how it sheds moisture. Available in four spring-fresh colors.

See the difference? The latter paints a more vivid picture of the tank top than the former.

Try this.

Before

The Prestige Collection is a unique selection of ceiling fans available at Hastings Home Center. The Prestige Collection offers all the quality craftsmanship, and dependable performance, you expect from Hastings along with styles so pretty they take ceiling fans to the next level - and dress your home for any occasion.

After

The Prestige Collection is a distinctive selection of elegantly designed ceiling fans available exclusively at Hastings Home Center. The Prestige Collection offers all the expert craftsmanship, and whisper-quiet performance, you expect from Hastings. In addition, you get styles so stunning they take ceiling fans to the next level - and exceptionally dress your home for any occasion.

What's the difference? Why are the "afters" so much more powerful than the "befores"? Because compelling adjectives were used. Adjectives let the reader know more about the product and develop a connection with it. But boring ordinary adjectives aren't the answer. You need Super Adjectives to entice your readers. For example, instead of just "cool nylon," we say "breathable nylon." The colors aren't just "pastel colors," they are "spring-fresh" colors. When you read that, you begin to envision what the colors look like. They aren't deep, dark colors. They are delicate shades found during the springtime.

Instead of saying "a unique selection," we said "a distinctive selection." Rather than "quality craftsmanship," it's "expert craftsmanship." Not just "dependable performance," but "whisper-quiet performance."

Where do you find these Super Adjectives? They are all over the place! Here's a short list. You can also visit free sites like http://www.thesaurus.com for more.

Adjectives vs. Super Adjectives

Appealing - attractive, alluring, fascinating

Best - excellent, unsurpassed, paramount

Cool - trendy, fashionable, hip

Different - unusual, exclusive, special

Easy - effortless, trouble-free, user-friendly

Fabulous - tremendous, magnificent, remarkable

Handy - functional, ideal, well-suited

Improved - enhanced, superior, refined

Leading - first-rate, top-notch, supreme

Mouthwatering - tasty, savory, succulent

New - innovative, fresh, inventive

Powerful - forceful, persuasive, compelling

Reliable - dependable, steadfast, trustworthy

Safe - secure, fully guarded, guaranteed

Unique - distinctive, rare, matchless

Vivid - vibrant, brilliant, stunning

Wonderful - magnificent, amazing, astonishing

Take some time to go beyond the ordinary. Find a few Super Adjectives to use in your copy in order to boost excitement and interest in the products/services you write about. That added attention Super Adjectives bring can easily correlate to additional sales.

Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO copy that impresses the engines and your visitors with The Step-by-Step Copywriting Course. Be sure to check out Karon’s latest e-report “How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)."

By Karon Thackston Copyright © 2004 -   Published Oct. 2004

Progressive Headlines Guide Customers To Buy

Headlines are, without a doubt, one of the most important elements in copywriting. As has been said countless times before, if you don't get your readers’ attention with the headline, the chance of them reading your copy is virtually none. But headlines (and sub-headlines) play a vital part in the copywriting process for other reasons, too.

Whether we, as copywriters, like it or not, the fact is most people will not read all the copy word for word. Headlines can help fill in the blanks in several ways so "skimmers" still get the gist of the information included in the copy.

Headlines Outline the Benefits

Using headlines and sub-heads that state benefits about your product/service can be a powerful strategy. Using wireless home networking for example, you might create headlines and sub-heads that read:

--Work From Anywhere In Your Home
--No More Jumbled Cables Strung Everywhere
--Have Multiple Computers Online At The Same Time
--Make All The Computer Users In Your Home Happy

Even if the customer didn't read the copy included in between these heads and sub-heads, they would still be made aware of all the benefits of having a wireless home network.

Headlines Give An Overview

Depending on the type of copy you're writing, headlines can help to urge your customers to read further. In fact, in long-form copy, headlines should create their own sub-set of copy. If you read just the headlines, they should make sense all by themselves. For example, copy about a new book on how to start your own business might use the following headlines.

New Book Takes You Step-by-Step Through Starting Your Own Business

An introduction would go here as well as copy designed to gain the attention of the reader.

Starting A Business Is Easier Than Ever

Continue with the copy here.

The Little Known Secrets In This Book Will Show You How

More copy here.

See? As you read through the headlines and sub-headlines they make sense even without any copy. This serves to give an overview of the information to those customers who may not read every word of the copy you've written. If they read just the headlines and sub-heads, they'll still understand what you're offering.

Headlines Can Raise Curiosity

Make a statement that's so unusual it doesn't make sense. Create "cliff-hangers" with your headlines and only give so much information before stopping. When you use these and other interest builders, you can encourage customers to read further into your copy just to satisfy their curiosity. Using natural gardening products as our example, the headlines and sub-heads often look like this:

--My Roses Are Bursting With Blossoms Since I Stopped Watering Them
--My Prize-Winning Tulips Would Wither Up and Die If It Weren't for…
--Which Annual Blooms Twice As Big When You Give It A Beer/Shampoo Cocktail?

These statements make you think. They start the reader wondering so that he/she continues to read on to get the rest of the story.

When creating headlines in your copy, think about how they all work together. Instead of just plopping bolded words in between paragraphs, create a plan revolving around progressive headlines that can lead your readers to buy.

Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO copy that impresses the engines and your visitors with The Step-by-Step Copywriting Course. Be sure to check out Karon’s latest e-report “How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)."

By Karon Thackston Copyright © 2004 -   Published Sep. 2004

Ten Killer Copywriting Mistakes That Suck Money Out Of Your Sites

By Ewen Chia Copyright © 2004

Are you sick, tired and downright angry at the lousy profits you're making online from your websites?

Listen, if you're in need of quick and easy ways to blast your sales sky high, then this may be the most important article you'll ever read.

Fact is, the absence of powerful cash-churning copy is the single most critical attribute to poor sales. It is the master culprit that is leaking profits from your sites faster than an uncontrollable dam bursting at the seams -- meaning, you need to fix these leaks immediately!

I've narrowed down 10 common copywriting mistakes to avoid like the plague, mistakes sucking money out of your websites right now. So my advise is to fix them before they fix you.

-> Mistake #1: Not Talking To Your Market

Customers want to know one thing - what they can get from buying and using your products. The "what's in it for me?" mentality rules.

In all seriousness, they don't give a hoot about you nor your products, only the benefits they will receive.

So use more 'you' to address your prospects directly in your copy while reducing 'I' words -- you're selling to your market, not to yourself here.

Similarly, research your target market to understand it's buying psychology, what you want to find are the hot buttons that make them pull out their credit cards fast.

-> Mistake #2: Not Grabbing Immediate Attention

I still see direct response websites without an obvious opening headline that hits home fast. Big big mistake.

You've just a few crucial seconds to grab attention and interest in what you offer, so make use of this opportunity to qualify and capture your prospects immediately.

State your ultimate benefits in the headline upfront, and make it short, sweet and direct. Ted Nicholas once said that a headline should contain only 17 words or less before it becomes ineffective.

-> Mistake #3: Missing Sub-Headlines

Use sub-headlines liberally, it's a very powerful method for adding more fire into your sales copy. At the same time, it breaks down long sales letters for easier reading and strengthens benefits.

Sub-headlines can be applied after every 3-4 paragraphs as a tool to reinforce major points and to summarize your ideas.

-> Mistake #4: Draggy Sentence And Paragraph Formats

It's advisable to write in shorter sentences and to divide copy into many different paragraphs. As a guideline a paragraph should have only 4-5 sentences focusing on one central point.

This enhances absorption rate and similarly enables easier reading and understanding.

-> Mistake #5: Not Having Enough Testimonials

Testimonials are proven selling tools so have more of them in support of your products. Psychologically people will be influenced positively if others, especially recognized experts in your market, endorse your products openly. This is known commonly as the "Law Of Association."

The trick is to use testimonials as another vehicle to support your major benefits. To do that testimonials should be descriptive, detailed and facts-oriented.

-> Mistake #6: Not Firing Your Bullets

Do use lots of bullets in your copy, and then use some more.

Bullets are excellent sales converters which can often decide if you make or break the sale. People read bullets like crazy, so list down your most powerful and detailed benefit statements in them for maximum impact to your bottomline.

-> Mistake #7: Using Negative Words

Reduce usage of words with negative emotions as much as possible.

Turn negative adjectives into positive experiences. For example don't say 'complicated' and 'wrong,' say 'easy' and 'sure-fire.'

While Gary Halbert mentioned how certain negative adjectives in your headline can produce great results, the focus should be only in using them to create outrageous or shocking statements to incite interest, curiosity, anger or fear. An example would be something like: "Do You Make These *Fatal Mistakes* In Your Marketing?"

-> Mistake #8: Lack Of Irresistible Offers

An irresistible offer can contribute at least 25% to the success of your sales copy, and it's the one thing you may be presently ignoring.

For example, create killer offers by piling up the bonuses. Increase the total perceived value of your package by adding audio recordings, video trainings or transcripts. Another technique to try is to position bonuses so that they appear more valuable than the actual product. This is because many times customers will end up buying for the bonuses alone!

-> Mistake #9: Not Asking For The Order!

This is so serious it's not even funny anymore. I've seen sites with confusing order instructions after getting everything else right -- this is outright criminal and certainly profits down the drain.

You don't want to anger or frustrate your customers into leaving your site just when the money's on the table.

State the price clearly and INSTRUCT customers to 'click here to order now.' Have plenty of order instructions throughout your copy, and make them obvious for goodness sake. You need to tell your customers what to do next, you need to state definite and clear calls to the action you want.

-> Mistake #10: Forgetting To P.S.

Have at least two P.S. (post scripts) as they're often the next most read part of your sales copy after the headline. You wouldn't want to lose any chance of capturing potential sales here.

As a guide, you can use P.S. (1) as a repetition and reinforcement of your headline, and P.S. (2) as a total summary of the package and time-sensitive extra bonuses if any. Just remember to use them.

That's it, what you do now is scan through your web copy and check if you're making any of these 10 profit-losing mistakes right now.

Make changes where you can and I guarantee your response rates will shoot through the roof.

Ewen Chia is co-creator of "Underground Sales Letters" which contains rare and hidden million dollar sales copy you can swipe without lifting a finger!

Article by Ewen Chia, - www.UndergroundSalesLetters.com -    Published Jun. 2004

Segmenting Your Target Audience Through Your Copywriting

Ask any copywriter what the first commandment of copywriting is and they’ll quickly tell you “Know Thy Target Audience.” In order to write effectively you have to know this one group of people and know them well. I guess that’s why many people get so frustrated when it seems they have more than one preferred customer base. One of the most frequent questions I get asked is, “What if I have more than one target audience?” In all actuality, you probably don’t. You just have different segments of the same audience.

Segmenting your target audience is a very common practice… almost expected even. Let me explain. Perhaps you sell a nutritional supplement. Think of all the people who might use your nutritional supplement. There are adults, pregnant women, growing teenagers, children, senior citizens, athletes, and many others. While all of these may seem to be entirely different target markets, they are actually just segments of the same nutritional supplement market. These people all have a need and an interest in nutritional supplements, but for very different reasons.

While some of the information you provide to each segment will be general and apply to everyone, other information will be specific to that particular segment.

Information Specific To Each Segment

For instance, everyone will want to know the overall benefits of taking the nutritional supplement you offer. Perhaps they can expect to have more energy, lose a little weight, or prevent or cure certain diseases. Everyone cares about these benefits. But your nutritional supplement may offer other benefits that only certain customers would have a need/want for.

Pregnant women want a nutritional supplement that has high levels of folic acid and other nutrients that will aid their developing babies. Senior citizens may have a need for supplements that contain higher levels of calcium (and in a more readily absorbable form). Athletes burn a lot of nutrients and have a higher chance of getting injured so those things are important to them.

Make the information about your product or service specific to whatever the needs of each segment are. You can do this in specific ways through a variety of different advertising mediums.

Segmenting In Brochures

Create one brochure with the general information laid out within its panels. Then create a separate, single panel addressing the needs/wants of one specific segment of your market (seniors, athletes, etc.). When you mail or give out your brochures, simply slip the correct insert into the regular brochure, and you have a custom-designed marketing piece.

Segmenting On The Web

Web sites are also an excellent place to make use of segmenting. Starting with your home page, give general information that is applicable to all your site visitors. Then break out the information specific to each segment of your market. Give a brief description of the details that this segment can expect to find and a link to the page where they’ll find them.

When your customers click to the various pages, they’ll find specifics on how your product will benefit them and their special needs.

NOTE: When you segment on the Web, you also have a great opportunity for search engine optimization. Many excellent keyphrases come from highly specific phrases. So, instead of “nutritional supplements,” you might find that “nutritional supplements for seniors” or “nutritional supplements for athletes” will give you the high rankings you want.

Segmenting In Print

Are you running newspaper ads? If so, ask about multiple placement discounts. Many papers will give you discounts for running ads in various sections of the paper at the same time. This gives you greater exposure and also allows you to segment your market through the use of the different sections.

Before you lump all your customers into one category, take a good hard look. Do they have different needs? Do you see various groups immerging from the crowd? Is there a way to segment your market? If your market is already broken into various segments, what is the best way to reach each group?

Once you determine the needs and wants of each segment of your target audience, you’ll be better equipped to write copy that appeals to them. When you accomplish this through your copywriting, you’ll find yourself with higher conversion ratios and more sales.

Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO copy that impresses the engines and your visitors with The Step-by-Step Copywriting Course. Be sure to check out Karon’s latest e-report “How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)."

By Karon Thackston Copyright © 2004 -   Published Apr. 2004

Copywriting Makeover: Know Where Your Customers Are In The Buying Process

When you begin to write copy for any product or service, there are a few things you have to take into consideration. The first is always your target audience: who you'll be writing to. Finding out about the needs and wants of the audience members, their communication styles, their lifestyles, and a multitude of other elements are "musts" before writing one word of copy.

But something most people neglect is giving due attention to the buying process as a whole and where your target audience is within their own process. Understanding this can, oftentimes, make or break the success of your copy.

When AEwebworks (an online, dating-site software developer) approached me about rewriting their website copy, it became immediately apparent that their copy could benefit from paying some due diligence to the buying processes of their customers.

The Problems

My primary concerns with the copywriting on this site included the lack of synergy within the copy, the use of testimonials, the lack of focus on the target customer's buying process, and the inability for the copy to support the search engine goals of AEwebworks. In its present state, the copy contained few mentions of keyphrases.

You can view the old copy in PDF form at this link: http://www.copywritingcourse.com/AEWebWorks-Original.pdf.

When I first read the copy, it felt as though I was being pitched to from all sides. The headline spoke to someone thinking of entering the online dating site industry. The body copy did not support that headline; rather it spoke to someone who had already made the decision to launch or improve a dating site.

The use of testimonials at the bottom of the home page posed a challenge for two reasons. The first was the sheer location. The design of the site was such that it appeared nothing fell "below the fold" (what was first seen when the home page loaded onto a browser). The second challenge was that many of the testimonials were from people asking questions or stating they were considering trying the dating software. Not actual customers attesting to the benefits they'd personally experienced.

In addition, while the information included in the body copy was good, the information given on the home page needed to outline why AEwebworks was better than the competition. In its present state, it did not. That meant finding those aspects of buying dating software that were most important to the customer and highlighting them within the copy.

Lastly, I needed to focus the home page copy on only two or three keyphrases and increase keyword saturation for those phrases. This also meant creating a copy strategy that would allow me to use the keyphrases effectively without making the text sound stiff.

The Solution

As always, I started the project by gaining a good understanding of who the target customers were, what they wanted, their fears, their likes, their dislikes, and anything else I could discover. After a good bit of research, and after reading the completed target audience analysis from AEwebworks, I felt I had a good understanding of those I would be writing to.

In order to combat the lack of synergy within the copy and the lack of focus on the target customer's buying process, I created a copywriting plan. From my research I found that installation, upgrade policies, and support were the three most common gripes buyers had about dating software. I decided to make overcoming those obstacles the focal point of the copy instead of the actual features and benefits.

That may sound like an odd choice, but that's where recognition of the buying process comes in. Considering that the majority of visitors to the site had already made the decision to launch a new site or had chosen to upgrade an existing site, they were already well versed in the features of dating-site software and their associated benefits. Yes. the benefits did need to be mentioned; however, other issues proved to be more pressing to this particular group of customers.

The use of testimonials on the home page was easily corrected by simply deleting the ones that did not directly apply to actual users of the software. I chose two for use within the copy and suggested that, as AEwebworks gets more testimonials, they create an entire page that visitors can read.

That left me with overcoming the inability of the current copy to support the search engine goals of the site. I suggested AEwebworks review their keyword choices to be sure they were targeting the ones most likely to bring in qualified customers. After a review, they provided me with a revised list to choose from.

I selected three keyphrases for each page in order to allow an adequate level of both keyword saturation and natural language. For the home page, the terms "dating software," "online dating software," and "dating script" were used.

After all the hoopla with Google, AEwebworks was in foul shape as far as search engine rankings were concerned. I had to pay particular attention to creating copy that impressed the search engines AND their site visitors in order to help them regain ground with their positioning and sales efforts.

After doing some research, I created a plan of action for writing SEO copy that would impress the engines AND AEwebworks' visitors. You can view the original copy in PDF format here.

The Rewrite

After finding the revelation that most of those who were shopping for online dating software were already familiar with the features (and the associated benefits) of the software, I decided that focusing on those elements would simply make AEwebworks sound like every other developer of dating scripts. That would definitely not get the results I was looking for.

My probing uncovered that almost all dating software customers have three primary concerns: installation, upgrade policies, and support. It just so happened that AEwebworks had phenomenal offers for each of these.

The headline was changed from:

"Get into Internet dating business with reliable, effective and profitable online dating software"

to

"Customizable, Full Featured Dating Software Complete With Free Installation, Lifetime Upgrades & Outstanding Support"

The new headline highlighted three extremely valuable benefits to the visitor and also included one of the chosen keyphrases.

The body copy began by making an emotional connection with the customer. It recognized the frustration the customer faced when trying to choose between the different dating software programs and dating scripts.

The copy then continued to connect by stating the fact that AEwebworks developed their software with the help of their clients by listening to their complaints, needs, and wants. It also merged quickly into a section that offered firm, proven solutions to the dating site owners' most pressing problems.

As the customers continued to read, they found out about specific benefits of buying software from AEwebworks as opposed to other developers. And - of course - scattered throughout the page were links to the ordering section of the site.

In addition to the emotional connection and the problem solving aspects of the copy, it was also search engine optimized (SEO). You'll notice the subtle use of keyphrases throughout the copy. Enough to promote good search engine rankings, but not so much that the copy is "stiff" or "forced."

Every other word is *not* a keyword. The copy has a natural flow to it, but yet it is fully optimized to do its job where rankings are concerned.

You can view the current copy here: http://www.aewebworks.com.

The Results

I always find it best to let the client handle this part of the article. To quote, "I wanted to tell you the good news! It looks like our rankings are improving. We are back in Google and traffic has doubled. We have record high sales for the last two weeks... about 70% higher than our next best-selling two-week period ever!

"Overall, running our site got much easier after adding your copy because people ask fewer questions about where to find information... they are able to sort it out for themselves from the site copy. We previously had about 5-10 e-mails a day on average from prospective customers; now we get AT LEAST 15 A DAY! WOW!! So, in short, THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR GREAT WORK!"

They are now back in play on Google and also have exceptional rankings with other important engines like Yahoo, MSN, and AltaVista.

Another happy ending!

Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO copy that impresses the engines and your visitors with The Step-by-Step Copywriting Course. Be sure to check out Karon’s latest e-report “How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)."

By Karon Thackston Copyright © 2004 -   Published Apr. 2004

Headlines - The Life or Death of Your Advertising

I'll bet that headline got your attention! That's the whole point of headlines… to get the attention of your reader and cause them to want to read what's below the headline.

Headlines should make such an impact that the reader will be intrigued enough to read the article, advertisement or story that follows. This is the most vital part of your advertisement. If the headline isn't interesting, you have a poor chance to get your point across in the copy because the copy will most likely not be read.

So what goes into a power-packed headline? Well, here are a few suggestions:

1. Solve a problem - I read a great headline on a web site for custom written poetry (www.peoplepoems.com). It said, "We can solve your gift problem in 1 day for just $15.00." Wow! If I were in the market for a gift, and didn't know what to buy, I would definitely read the copy that followed that headline. It offered to solve my problem and that caught my attention.

2. Use a statistic - One customer service page I saw stated, "It costs 30 to 40 times more to gain a new customer than keep an existing one." I know as a small business owner that statistic really hits home. Every small business owner is looking to save money in every area possible. Most are very interested to read what needs to be done to keep their existing customers.

3. State a quote - Did someone famous say something that applies to your advertising? Can you put a new twist on an old saying? Use it! A weight loss center might try something like, "If it's not over 'til the fat lady sings then this is going to take awhile!"

4. Ask a question - Perhaps our same weight loss center might ask, "What does it take to lose 20 pounds by summer?" One word of caution with asking questions… never ask a question that can be answered with, "No." For example, our weight loss center would not want to ask, "Do you know how to lose 20 pounds by summer?" The reader might very well answer no and skip the ad. If they knew how, they wouldn't be reading your ad!

5. Create a mystery - A consumer watchdog group once began an ad with "Who's responsible for this!?" That would definitely make me want to find out what the heck was going on.

Above all, make your headline applicable to your target audience. Just as the question, "Do you know how to lose 20 pounds by summer"' doesn't apply because it can be answered with no, it also alienates the target group.

Headlines should be thought out carefully and given a great deal of attention. They are, after all, the life or death of your ad. Creating effective headlines will go a long way toward building more powerful advertising. And powerful advertising makes more sales.

Most buying decisions are emotional. Your ad copy should be, too! Karon is President & CEO of Marketing Words, Inc. who offers targeted copywriting, search engine copywriting, and ezine article writing. Subscribe to Karon's free ezine at http://www.marketingwords.com/ezine.html or visit her site at http://www.marketingwords.com. You can also learn to write you own powerful copy at http://marketingwords.com.

By Karon Thackston Copyright © 2004 -   Published Apr. 2004

How To Write Motivational Copy That Sells

Who of us hasn't written advertising copy that we thought was great only to find out it flopped big time? Why? When you wrote it, it seemed very persuasive. You included lots of benefits and even gave a money back guarantee. It got YOU up and moving so why did your customers turn their heads?

The reason is usually quite simple. They are not you. While one thing might motivate you and excite you enough to open your wallet and buy, there are other personality types who respond to different motivational factors. If you know the factors, you hold the key to copywriting success!

There are several names for the different personality or behavioral types. Myers-Briggs labels them with letters (E = extrovert, I = introvert, etc.). Some psychologists label them with types ("A-type" personality, "B-type" personality, etc.). The DISC model (which I find the easiest to follow) labels the different personalities with descriptors (Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, etc.) Regardless of what they're called, I encourage you to get to know them. Once you decipher the inner workings of your customers, you can write copy that will motivate each and every time.

Let's look at a few of the descriptors used within the DISC model and I'm sure you'll see what I mean.

Dominance

The Dominance behavioral style is usually described with the following attributes:

high egos

problem-solver

likes challenges

drives hard for results

positive

loves power and authority

motivated by direct answers

Influence

The Influence behavioral style can be described like this:

socially and verbally aggressive

optimistic

can see the big picture

people-oriented

fast movers

motivated by praise and strokes

Steadiness

Those who fall into the Steadiness behavioral style usually are described as:

loyal to those they identify with good listener

patient

loves security

wants to see benefits

oriented towards family activities

motivated towards traditional procedures

Compliance

The last of the four styles is Compliance. These people usually have the following attributes:

critical thinkers

high standards

well disciplined

accurate

motivated by the right way to proceed

As you can see, these simple hints already open new doors for copywriting effectiveness. From what's written above, you are probably getting some good ideas about how to adjust your copy to fit your target audience.

For example, when writing to people with a Dominant behavioral style you'll want to be direct and to the point, focus on the business at hand, show them how this will help them get results and offer a win/win situation.

Influential people will want to allow time for socialization (so include some "chit chat" when possible), to have fun, offer new and innovative ideas, give a way for them to respond quickly and offer praise and strokes for them making a good decision. Steadiness types make up the majority of the population. Over 40% of Americans fall into the Steadiness category. These people need to see a logical approach to your product or service, they need time for thinking before buying, they want to see how your solution will benefit them and they need a sense of security about buying.

This explains why most copywriters will tell you to write long copy that is full of benefits and offers a money back guarantee. However, while this does work for 40% of the population, the other 60% has an issue with it. This is why I continually preach that you should know your target audience! If you are marketing to a group of CEOs (which most definitely fall into the dominance category) you can't provide long copy... they simply won't read it. They are looking for the bottom line and may ask for more details later if they feel they are necessary. If you have lots of information to provide, you'll have to break it up into sections to suit a "dominance" type.

It all boils down to giving the customer what they want. Even in your copywriting techniques. If you don't, you'll lose the sale - plain and simple. As an example, I'll tell you about a real estate agent I once worked with. I was looking for a house and had specific criteria for the exterior and interior. Rather than scheduling an appointment with the realtor every other day to view houses, I wanted to be given the addresses and view the outside at my own pace. If the outside didn't have specific features, there was no need for me to see the inside.

One realtor emphatically told me, "Mrs. Thackston, that's just not the way I sell." To which I responded, "That's a shame... that's the way I buy!" He wouldn't give me what I wanted and therefore lost the sale.

I encourage you to learn as much as you can about your target audience. Their likes, dislikes, personality traits and behavioral traits. When you do, you'll be able to write motivational copy that creates a desire to buy.

Most buying decisions are emotional. Your ad copy should be, too! Karon is President & CEO of Marketing Words, Inc. who offers targeted copywriting, search engine copywriting, and ezine article writing. Subscribe to Karon's free ezine at http://www.marketingwords.com/ezine.html or visit her site at http://www.marketingwords.com. You can also learn to write you own powerful copy at http://marketingwords.com.

By Karon Thackston Copyright © 2004 -   Published Apr. 2004

To Increase Your Advertising Effectiveness - Stop Selling!

How many times have you heard the old adage, "The customer doesn't want a drill, he wants a hole in his wall"? While I may disagree with parts of that phrase, one thing is for sure... if you want to increase your advertising effectiveness, you have to stop selling what YOU want the customer to buy and start solving his problems.

What exactly does that mean? For starters, it means finding out who your customers are and what challenges they face. It also means that your ad copy, your tag line, your Web site design, your brochure, your customer service plan and your support need to all work in concert to provide the solutions to those challenges.

The most effective advertising pieces don't sell... they fulfill. They don't talk about the company... they talk about the customer. They don't push price... they provide solutions.

When you focus on the customer in your advertising copy, when you get inside the mind of your customer and speak to their emotional needs, you will see greater results.

Here are 7 tips for creating copy that does not sell... but provides a solution.

1. Talk TO the customer, not ABOUT the company. Yes, you have to mention your company name so they'll know who you are. But the majority of your copy should speak to the customer and his/her needs. Not: "ABC Web Site Designers has been in business for 13 years. We do great work. Our clients think this or that. We provide design, java and cgi. Our customer service can't be beat. ABC is the best and you should use us."

2. Use "you" and "your" and write as if only one person were reading your ad or site. Make your copy personal.

3. Get Real! Use real-life examples in your copy. Reach your customers on their level by identifying with them. Instead of something like, "You can get more organized and stay that way" say "You'll be able to find your keys in 5 minutes or less and never again wonder if you or your spouse is supposed to pick up the kids today."

4. Get emotional! Most buying decisions are emotional. Your ad copy should be, too! Bring out their frustration, their anger, their greed. Whatever the situation calls for, use those emotions in your copy. Example: "After you throw the plunger across the room and SCREAM... call ABC Plumbing."

5. Benefits, benefits, benefits. I know you've heard it 1,000 times, but you simply must fill your copy with benefits. Always answer the question, "What's in it for me?"

6. Show them they'll get results. Tell your customers what life will be like AFTER your product or service solves all their problems. By showing them that they will get their desired end result, you make a very persuasive argument for your product.

7. Be their friend. Let your copy portray you as "easy-to-like". Show your customer that you're their friend who is willing and able to help instead of just another business who wants them to buy.

When you put the focus on the people with the money... the people who keep your business up and going, you can work wonders with your copy. You'll see your sales improve if you just quit selling!

Most buying decisions are emotional. Your ad copy should be, too! Karon is President & CEO of Marketing Words, Inc. who offers targeted copywriting, search engine copywriting, and ezine article writing. Subscribe to Karon's free ezine at http://www.marketingwords.com/ezine.html or visit her site at http://www.marketingwords.com. You can also learn to write you own powerful copy at http://marketingwords.com.

By Karon Thackston Copyright © 2004 -   Published Apr. 2004

Creating Sales Letter Lists That Make Your Customers Drool

You've seen them a hundred times. Those lists that copywriters use within their sales letters that tell you what the product or service offers. They might say something like:

THE most important (and most overlooked) aspect of copywriting

The 4 personalities of your customer and how to get each to respond to your copy

21 words that make your headline POP!

The 7 steps for turning features into sales generating benefits

How to add emotional triggers that increase the desire to buy

Why some testimonials can actually HURT your sales (I hope you aren't doing this!)

The 9 secrets to turning ordinary "sales copy" into a powerful "solution" your customer has to have

Why your USP could actually be killing your brand

But how do you create an effective list that draws customers in? What are the keys to turning a list of nuts and bolts into a menu of enticing delights your customer has to have? Hold on tight, I'm about to tell you!

Take a look at the list above. What do you notice? What things do the listed items have in common?

1. An effective list must provide a benefit - not a feature, but a benefit. It answers the question "What's in it for me?"

2. An effective list must "tease" the reader. Notice that one item above says "The 4 personalities of your customer and how to get each to respond to your copy." That teases the reader. It doesn't tell them what the 4 types are, but lets them know that the product or service will tell them.

3. An effective list uses "power words." Power words are those words and phrases that people are prone to respond to. These include things like specific numbers ("21 words that make your headline POP"), "how to" statements ("How to add emotional triggers that increase the desire to buy") and "secrets" ("The 9 secrets to turning ordinary "sales copy" into a powerful "solution" your customer has to have").

4. An effective list uses lots of adjectives. Don't just state "The secrets of 12 mentors," instead say "The inside, life-changing secrets of 12 mentors."

Let's do one together. We'll use the example of a widely-known book. See if you can guess what book it is.

You'll get:

10 time-tested, proven guidelines for personal and business success.

The one investment that can multiply your wealth by 100 fold almost immediately.

Little known advice that guarantees your future - eternally.

The inside, life-changing secrets of 12 mentors - learn from their victories and failures!

Can you guess what book it is? It's The Bible! Using the list method, we've been able to pull out some of the benefits of The Bible, and format them in such a way that they get their point across in words most average people relate to.

As you can see, including lists within your sales letters can boost your profits tremendously! Just remember to think like your customer, and use the 4-step process outlined above. You'll be knockin' 'em dead in no time!

Most buying decisions are emotional. Your ad copy should be, too! Karon is President & CEO of Marketing Words, Inc. who offers targeted copywriting, search engine copywriting, and ezine article writing. Subscribe to Karon's free ezine at http://www.marketingwords.com/ezine.html or visit her site at http://www.marketingwords.com. You can also learn to write you own powerful copy at http://marketingwords.com.

By Karon Thackston Copyright © 2004 -   Published Apr. 2004

Solving the "I Get Tons of Traffic But No Sales" Mystery

I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard the statement, “I get tons of traffic, but no sales.” It’s normally followed by comments like: “My site is highly optimized for the engines and my rankings are great. I don’t understand why no one is buying.” Let me shed some light on this mystery.

Most often, when site owners (or professional copywriters for that matter) write “search engine optimized” copy, they develop tunnel vision. They are so focused on the placement of keyphrases throughout the copy that they neglect something very important… the customer!

Because the immediate task at hand “seems” to be getting the site ranked high, the writer neglects to take out his or her crystal ball and gaze into the future. What should you be asking the crystal ball? “What happens when the customer gets to my site?”

Oops! Didn’t think of that? Don’t feel embarrassed. Many people don’t. Developing SEO (search engine optimized) copy is like creating a complete circle. You have to have good keyword saturation in order to get ranked in those prime spots. You have to have keyword-rich title and description tags (mostly the title tag) to land in the top 10. Once you achieve that your site starts drawing in surfers. Now that they’ve clicked to your site, what happens? The copy has to give them what they want/need. That’s the missing piece to the puzzle and the factor that causes so many people to scratch their heads in disbelief.

When writing SEO copy, you have to think of the beginning AND the end of the process. You have to create copy that satisfies both the engine and the customer. Once you do, you’ll not only have boatloads of traffic, but you’ll have the sales that go along with it. So, there… mystery solved! Or at least part of it.

We’ve covered the “why,” now let’s look at the “how.”

1. Know Your Target Audience

In order to give someone what he/she wants, you have to know what that want is. Take the time to research your target audience (also called target customer, perfect customer, or ideal customer). Find out as much as you can about them including who they are, what they do, how they use your product/service, how old they are, what problems they have, and how they prefer to receive information.

2. Stop Selling and Start Solving

So many people are pushing to get that almighty dollar (or euro or pound) that they forget something. Customers don’t like to be sold to. What they really want is someone to solve their problems. Once you show that your product/service can, in fact, solve the problems your customers face, sales will come on their own.

3. Appeal To Emotions

Most buying decisions are emotional so it makes sense that your copy should be, too. While your customer’s need may be logical, the actual buying decision is anything but. Think about it. When you bought your last car, did you go for the “logical” choice? Did you pick the ugly, shapeless, “no personality” car that had the best gas mileage and the highest safety rating? I doubt you did.

You most likely took a look at all the options and – taking some logic into account – bought the car that suited you best within your price range. Emotion sells!

No, I’m not talking about getting mushy. What I AM talking about is touching the emotional chord that draws customers to your product or service. Those problems you found out about when doing steps #1 and #2 above… use them to add emotion to your copy.

With these three vital elements in your forethoughts, you can sit down and write your copy – with your keyphrases in mind – for tremendous results. When you understand the entire process and take the time to learn to write emotional, sales-oriented, SEO copy, you will keep your traffic count high and your checkbook balance higher.

Most buying decisions are emotional. Your ad copy should be, too! Karon is President & CEO of Marketing Words, Inc. who offers targeted copywriting, search engine copywriting, and ezine article writing. Subscribe to Karon's free ezine at http://www.marketingwords.com/ezine.html or visit her site at http://www.marketingwords.com. You can also learn to write you own powerful copy at http://marketingwords.com.

By Karon Thackston Copyright © 2004 -   Published Apr. 2004

Short Copy: Understanding Its Purpose Can Increase Sales

I believe it was Mark Twain that once said, "If I would have had time, I would have written a shorter letter." His point being… it takes much more thought and time to write a short, concise piece than a long one. It's true, too!

Think about it. How hard is it to get your point across in a very limited amount of time or space? Ever tried to write copy for a postcard mailing? How about a 30-second radio commercial? How do you tell customers everything you want them to know in just a few words? Truth is… you don't.

Short copy has some special considerations. The first (and most important) is that it isn't meant to make the sale. Then why do you write it? To spark interest!

Short copy plays an important role in the advertising process. It can be used as a lead generation tool, an announcement, a teaser to build interest, and in lots of other ways. Extremely short copy is simply meant to lead to other means of closing a sale.

Postcard mailers might instruct the reader to send for an information package. Pay-per-click search engine listings will guide the reader to a Web site just full of copy. Ezine ads do the same thing. Small display ads in newspapers or in-store signage may encourage the reader to get more details. You get the point.

Short copy needs to be extremely targeted. For example, if you're running a small display ad in a magazine you'll want to take into consideration "why" the readers bought that magazine. Then create your headline and copy to speak to their special interests.

If the magazine is devoted to Web site development, address that interest in your ad. Consider what will grab your customer's attention and make him/her curious. The "call-to-action" for short ads is always aimed at getting more information... not necessarily at making the sale.

Many times, short copy will pull a better response if a limited-time offer is made. "Zero percent interest until January 30th" or "Order before February 1st and get FREE shipping."

WARNING: Be very, VERY sure that your support copy is ready to go when you run short ads. For instance, I once had a client approach me about writing copy for a postcard campaign he wanted to do. As we went through the process of his customers' most desired behavior, I discovered that he wanted readers to visit his Web site to get the additional information they needed in order to purchase. However, his Web site was hardly set up to sell anything to anybody.

While the postcard was fully capable of generating leads for the client, the support information he had prepared was in desperate shape! He would have seen little return on his investment - not because the postcard didn't do its job - but because the "landing page" of his site was simply awful.

Whether you're asking readers of short copy to call, click, or come by, be sure your support staff or information is ready, willing, and able to handle the job.

Lastly, when you write extremely short copy, remember to stay focused. As I've said, there is not enough room to sell the customers within your copy, but there IS enough room to pique their interest. Use the limited space you have to punch up the biggest benefits or end results your customers are looking for, and you'll see bigger returns on your investment.

Most buying decisions are emotional. Your ad copy should be, too! Karon is President & CEO of Marketing Words, Inc. who offers targeted copywriting, search engine copywriting, and ezine article writing. Subscribe to Karon's free ezine at http://www.marketingwords.com/ezine.html or visit her site at http://www.marketingwords.com. You can also learn to write you own powerful copy at http://marketingwords.com.

By Karon Thackston Copyright © 2004 -   1 Published Apr. 2004

Copywriting Makeover: It’s Not About YOU, It’s About THEM

I’ve always loved scented candles. They help create a cozy atmosphere. They give you a relaxed feeling. And - most importantly - they make your home smell wonderful! So, naturally, I was excited when I was approached to rewrite the index (front) page for an online retailer who made specialty, soy-scented candles.

The goals of the copywriting rewrite were to increase sales and improve search engine positioning for the terms the client selected. The copy definitely needed some work. It wasn’t “bad,” but it had one major thing holding it back. The copy violated one of the primary rules of copywriting. “It’s not about you… it’s about them.”

An additional problem was that the information - while definitely necessary - was presented as more of a list of nuts and bolts. It needed a boost to create a “feeling” about the candles for sale.

The Problem

As you can see from the original version, http://www.copywritingcourse.com/IlluminousTimes-BEFORE.doc, the copy either focused on the company or the candles. Very little of the copy focused on the customer.

Another element that was “off” in the copy was the lack of experience. Site owner Dan Fehn had some fabulous research data about scented-candle buyers; however, he did not know to include that information when writing.

Lastly, while Illuminous Times had fairly good search engine rankings, there was room for improvement.

The Solution

The data I received included the following information from the National Candle Association.

1. Candle industry research indicates that the most important factors affecting candle sales are scent, color, cost, and shape. Fragrance is by far the most important characteristic, with three-fourths of candle purchasers saying it is "extremely important" or "very important" in their selection of a candle for the home.

2. Candle manufacturers' surveys show that 96% of all candles purchased are bought by women.

3. Nine out of ten candle users say they use candles to make a room feel comfortable or cozy.

This was the basis for the copywriting makeover. As a scented-candle lover myself, I knew for a fact what women wanted from candles. I understood the candle buying experience and played on that knowledge to create copy that “romanced” the site visitor and increased the desire to buy.

The search engine optimization (SEO) aspect of the copy came easily. The keyphrases flowed naturally as I created the copy so my primary goal was to use these phrases in power positions (like the headline and sub-heads). I’d also place them as often as I could without making the copy sound stiff or forced.

The Rewrite

You can view the new copy here (www.illuminous-times.com). As you can see, the new version immediately begins to entice the site visitor. Everything she wants from a scented candle is laid out before her… and some things she might not have known she wanted.

I began to pique interest in soy candles (as opposed to traditional wax candles found in stores) by immediately outlining the advantages soy candles offer. From there I played on the fragrance (the most important characteristic according to the National Candle Association).

I led the customers through a mental tour of their homes - lighting candles for a special dinner, enjoying the glow as they snuggled with a good book, and having the unmistakable fragrances only soy candles offer wafting through their homes.

A final keyphrase-rich benefits list of why soy candles are superior to traditional wax candles and an emotional call-to-action wrapped up the copy.

The Results

I think the results of the copywriting makeover are best stated by Dan himself.

"Thank you! Sales have increased even before the holiday season, and my rankings have improved, too. Right now I am #1 for one term (previously ranked at #4), and I'm at #7 for the other... a huge jump up from #17!"

So, as you can see, taking the focus off the product or company and putting it where it should be (on the customer) makes a tremendous difference. Sales naturally increase when the customer feels he/she is the reason for your existence. Take some time now to look back over your copy. Is it company focused? If so, learning to write specifically for your customers can turn your sales around almost immediately.

Most buying decisions are emotional. Your ad copy should be, too! Karon is President & CEO of Marketing Words, Inc. who offers targeted copywriting, search engine copywriting, and ezine article writing. Subscribe to Karon's free ezine at http://www.marketingwords.com/ezine.html or visit her site at http://www.marketingwords.com. You can also learn to write you own powerful copy at http://marketingwords.com.

By Karon Thackston Copyright © 2004 -   Published Apr. 2004

Return to Top

E-zine - Newsletters

SUBJECTS

Return to Top

Link Popularity

SUBJECTS

Return to Top

Marketing

SUBJECTS

Getting Free Publicity - How To Write A Press Release

Pop-Up Windows: A Nuisance or a Gold Mine?

There's Free Advertising Money Out There. Do You Know Where To Find It?

How To Ruin Your Press Release in 3 Easy Steps

Getting Free Publicity - How To Write A Press Release

There is a nasty rumor that press releases don't work. Not true! Press releases can be a fabulous tool for business promotion ... IF they are properly written and presented. A problem occurs because most people are not aware of the special requirements of press releases.

A press release is not a page-long advertisement. A press release is not a novel. A press release is not a tell-all promotional piece that is full of detail. So what IS a press release and how do you write one that will actually get placed? Let's go over a few basics that will help you in your press campaign.

A CHANGE IN TARGET AUDIENCE

The first mistake commonly made is writing a press release with your business target audience in mind. Unlike advertising copy, which is written to appeal to your customer, a press release is written to appeal to a journalist.

The journalist is not someone who is seeking to buy your product or service. A journalist is looking to fill a news need. When writing a press release, you must meet that need by filling the reporter's requirements.

Rather than answering the question, "What's in it for me," answer the question, "Why would ABC magazine's readers care?"

The headline also takes on a new focus. Rather than using a headline proclaiming the benefits of your product, use a headline that proclaims its newsworthiness.

DO YOUR HOMEWORK

One common error is submitting a press release without first reading the publication. It is virtually impossible to provide timely, news-oriented information to a site or magazine if you have no idea what interests their readers have.

Do a little homework before submitting. Visit the Web and look at the stories the site offers. Buy a copy of the magazine or newspaper and review the common interests of its readers. By understanding what the publication is looking for, you will be able to fulfill the need and thus get a much better response from your press release.

DON'T CALL US, WE'LL CALL YOU

The biggest irritant reporters have is receiving calls from writers asking if the press release was received. Worse yet, asking if it was read. Journalists are very busy people. They get hundreds of press releases a day. I have actually heard reporters say that they throw away the releases of those people who call them.

Resist the urge to phone. Once you submit your press release, rest assured you will be contacted if there is an interest.

PUT IT IN THE RIGHT HANDS

Just like advertisements, press releases must be placed in strategic areas. Search the Web for outlets to run your release. A few I have gotten good response from are:

http://www.businesswire.com
http://www.internet.com
http://www.prnewswire.com

Also, email your release to the appropriate person at individual magazines, newspapers and Web sites. Target those that would be read by your customers. Be sure to find the correct name and email address for the reporter who handles stories related to your business. Releases that are sent to incorrect contacts are most likely thrown away... not forwarded on to someone else.

KISS

Keep it short silly! Press releases are not meant to tell the whole story. They are meant to give the reporter an idea of what's happening in your business that their readers need to know about. If the journalist would like additional information or would like to arrange for an interview, he/she will call.

Press releases should be approximately 400 words - 500 maximum.

I know, all this sounds like a list of nit-picky rules. Not really. Just like with advertising copy, you must give your reader what he needs. Write a newsworthy release that meets the criteria of the reporter and his/her subscribers. The time you take to do so will pay off. As you know - when you fill a need, you get results.

Most buying decisions are emotional. Your ad copy should be, too! Karon is President & CEO of Marketing Words, Inc. who offers targeted copywriting, search engine copywriting, and ezine article writing. Subscribe to Karon's free ezine at http://www.marketingwords.com/ezine.html or visit her site at http://www.marketingwords.com. You can also learn to write you own powerful copy at http://marketingwords.com.

By Karon Thackston Copyright © 2004 -   Published Apr. 2004

Pop-Up Windows: A Nuisance or a Gold Mine?

How many times a day do you see them as you surf the Web? Pop-up and pop-under windows have become a widely used marketing tool. But do they work? Are they just a nuisance, or are they really the gold mine that all the "gurus" claim?

After doing a good deal of research, I've discovered some pretty interesting facts. After implementing my own pop-up campaign, I've had some enlightening moments. Allow me to tell you what I've discovered, and you can make up your own mind.

I started by looking to one of my favorite marketing research resources, http://www.marketingexperiments.com. They actually spent over $4,000 testing pop-up windows and compiling the results. Their experiment included using pop-ups for a biweekly ezine publisher and a computer products retailer.

The results were astounding! The ezine publisher got 100 more subscribers during a one-week period WITH the pop-up window than WITHOUT. The computer retailer received over 3,700 new subscribers by using a pop-up window. That was enough to convince me to look further into using pop-ups on my own sites.

(NOTE: One thing the experiment was careful to point out is that copy plays an enormous role in the success or failure of the pop-up. I wholeheartedly agree!)

Using my Marketing Words, Inc. site (http://www.marketingwords.com) as the guinea pig, I added a pop-up window (to show on exit) giving information about my copywriting course. Then I waited and watched. Success didn't take long!

While I do not conduct the "controlled" experiments that MarketingExperiments.com does, I do have some basic data to offer you. After an 11-day period, I checked my site statistics and was very pleased! I had gotten a number of page views (not "hits" - "page views") using the pop-up window. I had also seen a 50% conversion rate. (Meaning that 50% of those who clicked to my copywriting course site purchased the product.) The pop-up was working great!

What were the factors that made a successful pop-up window? For the folks at MarketingExperiments.com, it was an offer of some sort. The computer retailer offered the opportunity to win a prize. The ezine publisher offered the chance to enter a sweepstake. However, that leads to another issue (that I won't get into at the moment) of attrition. After the contest is over, and the prize is awarded, will the subscribers unsubscribe?

For me, I offered something of interest to my visitors. They came to my site seeking marketing and copywriting information. It made sense that they would be interested in the course. Viewers never read every single word of your Web site, so the pop-up window gave me the opportunity to tack a "PS" onto their visits. Sort of stating, "Oops! You might have missed this. Don't you want to take a look before you go?"

There are several things to keep in mind when creating pop-up windows (based on my opinion).

1. Do make your pop-up window visible on exit, not entry, of your site. The reason being that when people enter your site and a window flashes up immediately, it blocks their view of your index page. It also can be annoying. Allow them to browse around a bit and then, when leaving, have your window pop up.

2. Do make your message short and sweet. Giant, flashing signs and windows tend to give an overwhelming impression and cause your visitor to back away. Keeping your message short and your pop-up window small are less obtrusive and, therefore, more widely accepted.

3. Don't use multiple pop-ups on your site at the same time. That is one surefire way to send your visitors packing.

4. Don't put pop-up windows on every page of your site. Regardless of what the so-called marketing gurus tell you, it will backfire due to the annoyance factor.

While I can't tell you what would work for your site or your particular target market, I do recommend that you experiment a little with pop-up windows. You might just find another inexpensive marketing method that will increase your cash flow!

Most buying decisions are emotional. Your ad copy should be, too! Karon is President & CEO of Marketing Words, Inc. who offers targeted copywriting, search engine copywriting, and ezine article writing. Subscribe to Karon's free ezine at http://www.marketingwords.com/ezine.html or visit her site at http://www.marketingwords.com. You can also learn to write you own powerful copy at http://marketingwords.com.

By Karon Thackston Copyright © 2004 -   Published Apr. 2004

There's Free Advertising Money Out There. Do You Know Where To Find It?

Even those with very little experience in advertising know running ads can get quite expensive. There's the cost of designing, copywriting, placing ads and tracking ads. The bill runs very high sometimes. However, there might be money available to help you with your advertising expense. It's called Co-Op (cooperative) Advertising.

Co-Op ads are those that highlight a specific manufacturer (usually) in addition to your business. I'm sure you've seen them before. For example, McDonald's® will run a flyer in the Sunday newspaper featuring Coke® as a part of a combo meal. When McDonald's® does this, Coke® picks up part of the expense for those ads. McDonald's® and Coke® work in cooperation to promote both products.

How does it work? Many manufacturers set aside a certain amount of co-op funds each year in order to give some help to those who sell their products at the retail level. By helping you promote your business, the manufacturer is also helping to promote his product. It's a cheap way for the manufacturer to pick up some additional exposure.

This type of program also applies to specials and sales. I'm sure you've noticed that most computer manufacturers offer discount or free printers in their packages. The maker of the printer and the PC company are producing co-op advertising in order to promote both products. In return, they share the ad expense.

Each co-op plan is a little different. Normally the manufacturer will set forth stipulations as to how many times their name or logo should appear in the advertisement, what frequency the ads should run, and perhaps one or two other guidelines. You may be required to get approval prior to submitting ads to the media. Once the ad has run, simply send a copy of the ad, along with your invoice, and you'll receive a portion of what you spent back in return.

Co-op ads can apply to any business. Perhaps you offer an on-site car detailing service. You might check with the manufacturers of the soap and wax you use. These companies could very well offer you co-op funds for including their name and/or logo in your advertising pieces.

If you own a restaurant, definitely check with the beverage distributor you use. Most soft drink companies offer co-op funds.

How much will you save by working in cooperation with other companies? I have seen some outfits that pay as much as 75% of the ad cost. Most pay between 35% - 50%. That's quite a bit of savings.

If your company sells products made by other manufacturers, you may very well have co-op money available to you. The best way to find out is to ask. Usually your manufacturer's representative will know who you should call to find out the details about any co-op programs they offer.

Sound too simple? Well, you do have to play by the rules - and co-op advertising will not be available to everyone. If you find a program you are eligible for it would certainly benefit you to participate.

So what if you don't work in conjunction with any manufacturers? You might try creating your own co-op advertising program. For example: if you are a landscaper, try approaching some lawn care maintenance companies in your area. Because you both are aiming for the same target audience (but for different reasons) this would be a perfect match.

Your ads could list the benefits of having the lawn professionally designed, and then maintained by the lawn care firm. The two companies would split the cost of the ad, saving both a good deal of money.

Whichever direction you choose to take, co-operation in advertising always benefits those involved by creating greater exposure and drastically reducing ad costs. Be a savvy advertiser…create or participate in a co-op program before your next ad goes out.

Most buying decisions are emotional. Your ad copy should be, too! Karon is President & CEO of Marketing Words, Inc. who offers targeted copywriting, search engine copywriting, and ezine article writing. Subscribe to Karon's free ezine at http://www.marketingwords.com/ezine.html or visit her site at http://www.marketingwords.com. You can also learn to write you own powerful copy at http://marketingwords.com.

By Karon Thackston Copyright © 2004 -   Published Apr. 2004

How To Ruin Your Press Release in 3 Easy Steps

I see it almost every day. People who want to generate a press frenzy, but go about it in just the opposite way that they should.

There are some definite strategies you need to use when writing a press release that gets results. There are also some long-standing, proven ways to completely and totally ruin your release. In an effort to help you get what you want out of your next press campaign, I’d like to share the top three “bombs” with you.

Step One - Ignore Your Target Audience

Just as with advertising copywriting, you have to understand who you’re writing to and what those people want. When you write a press release, you’re not targeting the end user… you’re targeting journalists.

While your potential customers may respond to claims that you’re the best, that your product or service is going to make them happier, healthier, richer or more beautiful… reporters will definitely not!

Journalists are fact-oriented people. Their job is to give a well-rounded view of anything they write about… new scientific developments, the latest upheaval in the Middle East, or your product or service. In order to appeal to journalists, you’ll have to give them the facts and allow them to make up their own minds. Anything less will be a huge turn-off that will cost you any type of publicity from the reporter’s publication.

Step Two - Write Your Press Release Like an Advertisement

This step - if done properly - can ruin your press release all by itself. There is nothing more annoying to journalists than receiving a hype-filled sheet labeled “Press Release.”

I’ve actually read about cases where reporters turn over such “releases” to their advertising department as leads! Remember what we just discussed in Step One? Now that you have a good vision of your target audience in mind, don’t blow it when you begin to write.

Keep a picture of Tom Brokaw or some other stiff-necked news anchor taped to your computer monitor while you write. If you wouldn’t hear Tom using the verbiage you’re typing into your release on the nightly news, don’t include it in your copy.

Step Three - Send Your Press Release Out to Everybody on the Face of the Earth Whether It Is Applicable to Them or Not

Here’s yet another “tactic” that so many well-meaning people misunderstand. Again… just like advertising, you have to keep your target audience in mind.

If you manufacture automobile parts and sell them to repair shops, would you advertise in a golf magazine? Certainly not! Why? Because it’s very unlikely that you’ll get any response. Wholesale auto parts are not what most golfers are looking for.

The same holds true when distributing your press release.

Take the time to develop, rent, buy or broker a list that will get your release in front of people who will actually care. Will it be free? No. Will it work? Unless you use one or all of these three ways to ruin your release, it should.

Are there more ways to ruin your press release? Oh sure! Lots of them. But these “Top 3 Killers” require the most attention. Before you write your next press release, take time to stop and think. Are you using any of these three steps? If so, make changes now so your release will accomplish everything you’ve hoped for.

Most buying decisions are emotional. Your ad copy should be, too! Karon is President & CEO of Marketing Words, Inc. who offers targeted copywriting, search engine copywriting, and ezine article writing. Subscribe to Karon's free ezine at http://www.marketingwords.com/ezine.html or visit her site at http://www.marketingwords.com. You can also learn to write you own powerful copy at http://marketingwords.com.

By Karon Thackston Copyright © 2004 -   Published Apr. 2004

Return to Top

Relevant Links - Page Relevancy

SUBJECTS

Return to Top

Search Engine Marketing

SUBJECTS

Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL all Moving Towards Convergence

SE changes blur lines between myth and reality

There's more than Google in the search engine world

MSN(beta) Is Now Live

MSNBot - Searching for ways to make Redmond rise again

How to write for Slurp the spider

Search Engine Marketing Issues - Clarification on Keywords
Top 5 Tips for Successful Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing Issues

Insight into Microsoft's Battle Plans

Five Reasons To Submit to Shopping Search Engines

Search Engine Marketing Issues - Overture vs. Google AdWords

Sp^m -- How Much Will it Cost Your Business?

Search Engine Marketing Issues

S.E.M. 101: What Search Engines See When They Visit Your Web Site

What's happening with AltaVista, AlltheWeb, Yahoo and others right now?

WebPosition's March Newsletter discusses Google and Yahoo

Highlights of the Week: End of 1st Quarter Report: Big 3 Draw from Same Playbook

Highlights of the Week: STABILITY! For Now at Least...

Weekly Quick Tip: The Google Basket

Major Player Updates: Google looks local :: MSN inks new LookSmart

Highlights of the Week: Google and Yahoo :: What works well and what won't

Highlights of the Week: Search Engine Marketing Campaign Planning

Major Player Updates: Ask Jeeves

Highlights of the Week: New Trends in Search Engines and SEO

Major Player Updates

Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL all Moving Towards Convergence

February has come in like a lion with a multitude of major announcements from several major players in the past 48-hours.

Three extraordinary things happened earlier this week. First, Google released a Forth Quarter Report that significantly exceeded investor expectations. The $1billion in revenues reported by Google over the last three months has reignited Wall St. speculation built on an already strong confidence in the search-sector. Second, MSN officially released its own search engine. Microsoft is so large and influential, the introduction of their search tool and the advertising campaign that is currently rolling across the web will push the sector forward. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, AOL and the rest of the Time Warner empire are finally finding substantial ways to work together, five years after the merger of the two giants. At the same time, Yahoo has been quickly solidifying relationships in the NY-Hollywood entertainment sector and is in the process of producing a mainstream entertainment division.

Convergence is a buzzword to describe a digital unification of various media types. An easy example is news-gathering organizations that produce daily content which can be delivered across multiple platforms (e.g.: print, TV, radio, film, and the web) and will partner with an Internet Service Provider or a search-engine. One produces content, the others distribute it. Every firm involved finds a way to profit from sharing the products of their skills while focusing on their specialization. The idea motivated the stock craze that created the dot.com bubble and was the driving force behind mega-mergers such as AOL-Time Warner, CanWest-Global and Microsoft-NBC. It was also the reason companies such as Nortel and WorldCom grew so big building the infrastructure and fell so fast when there wasn't enough money in circulation to pay for it. The steam was taken out of the sector and anticipated benefits from convergence were going to have to wait a few years to be realized. Flash ahead a few years to today, or more appropriately, the past 48-hours.

What's good for Google...

Google's fourth quarter report is massive. Showing 26% revenue growth in the 3-months following their successful IPO, (a 101% increase over the last quarter of 2003), Google's business model makes them the biggest distributor of online advertising. The results announced in yesterday's investor conference bolstered generally strong confidence in the contextual ad-delivery model which can only bode well for rivals like Overture, Kanoodle, Ask, Findwhat, and Lycos. There is obviously a fortune to be made in ad-delivery efficiencies and there is obviously a lot of money about to be invested in the paid-search sector. Paid-ads delivered to directly but unobtrusively to those who express interest in the ad's topic is the goose that continues to lay golden eggs for those who can deliver those ads. Google's Achilles heal is the amount it is dependent on paid advertising with an estimated 95% of revenues generated through the AdWords/AdSense programs.

The sustainability of Google's business depends on either finding or creating more spaces to display paid-ads. With the world's most used organic search tool already providing tens of millions of ad-impressions per day, Google spent the last twelve months developing new neighborhoods in cyberspace or redeveloping old ones. In the past year they introduced Gmail, Google-Groups, Google-Library, Google-Local and Google-Desktop, all of which come with contextually driven commercial advertising. Google also helped popularize the emergence of Blogs with their purchase and free-distribution of Blogger in September of 2003.

The other way Google finds spaces to display contextually generated advertising is by allowing private webmasters to display AdWords on their sites. They have had no problem finding interested webmasters willing to make a few bucks by displaying the generally unobtrusive ads.

Google also depends on continuing to find advertisers willing to pay slightly higher rates every time their ads are clicked. This may become a significant issue later this year if others find ways to effectively compete. The specter of click-fraud is also a real fear among smaller advertisers in competitive industries. Google is working to manage these potential problems.

In yesterday's investor phone conference, Larry Page outlined internal changes designed to assist corporate advertisers. There is a focus on Fortune 1000 companies with training and support offered for the development of in-house SEM teams. Google's sales staff is becoming increasingly familiar with specific business sectors as the department reorganizes itself to create a vertical sales team structure with sales reps specializing in unique business sectors. He also mentioned the Google Advertising Professional program, a free online course designed to teach SEMs the ins and outs of the AdWords system.

He failed to mention the two other initiatives Google recently introduced. A new Application Process Interface (API) gives SEMs much greater control over their AdWords accounts. This can provide more concrete ways to tailor a campaign for maximum ROI and also provides basic tools to spot and dealing with incidents of click fraud. The second initiative ironically steals a page from the affiliate marketer's handbook. Today Google announced a $20 finder's fee for successful referrals to AdWords. I desperately wish we could get a referral tracking code for this link: Google Referral Program

Google's growth in the last sector is certain to spur growth for almost everyone involved in the search industry as it pushes everyone to innovate just a little bit harder. Big to medium players will be joined by hundreds of smaller PPC engines (many of which will be based on specific business sectors).

Is Tempting for Bill Gates but...

Ummm, where exactly did you want to go today anyway?

Yesterday MSN officially launched its long-awaited proprietary search engine with much less fan-fare and hoopla than they expected. That is likely to change over the next few weeks as a massive advertising campaign is now underway with the intention of placing MSN SEARCH on top of just about everything imaginable. MSN is expected to be such a heavy sponsor of Super Bowl Sunday that the Patriot defense will be using it to find Terrell Owens while Tom Brady uses it to find open receivers. For those who don't watch football this weekend, MSN ads and search boxes will appear all over the web, complimenting the TV commercials, billboards, print-ads and radio spots that are also starting to blanket America.

The full introduction of MSN to the search scene is likely to spur competition in unexpected ways. First of all it is important to note that all the major players are taking long-term views on competition and being the oldest kid and largest kid on the block, Microsoft already has a long-term history. It is not trying to change a world it naturally dominates; it just wants to continue to control it.

While Google is focused on search as a means of ad-delivery, Microsoft is focused on search as an extension of function. Gates has had one consistent focus over the years and that is the integration of computers and the Internet into daily life. Successive versions of Windows have moved towards this integration. His previous attempt to control the mechanisms of convergence was the half-hearted .Net strategy that failed to gain mass acceptance.

While Microsoft could have taken a fuller media convergence route years ago with the moderately successful MSNBC, Gates correctly predicted the market wasn't ready to exploit until computers were integrated into home and appliance design. Convergence for Microsoft is more about the invisible web of personal information and life services than provision of infotainment. Grocery deliveries, personal health care information storage, and the provision of tools to digitally network living / working spaces is the direction Microsoft is thinking. To make money from search, they need consumers to use them to find goods, services and information. To prevent others from taking the market Gates wants, they have to come up with proprietary tools that consumers want to use, hence the introduction of their new search engine.

Microsoft has a strategy based on providing the backbone of the total-information society. Everything you might need at home and away can be stored, anticipated, bought, shipped, cooled, washed or otherwise provided, at the touch of a button. Think online banking only way bigger. Aside from the obvious personal privacy issues this seems a natural step, as the Internet becomes a greater part of our lives. The MSN search tool plays a pivotal role in the development of this strategy and the hype generated by Microsoft around it will hype the entire industry.

Content Needs the Freedom to Flow

Lastly, two huge search firms, AOL and Yahoo both announced different multi-media ventures that could fundamentally change the nature of the Internet as we use it.

On the east coast, AOL and Time Warner have agreed to offer Time Warner's RoadRunner broadband service to AOL subscribers. This deal provides a crucial infrastructure bridge between the content generated within the Time Warner empire and subscribers of America's largest ISP. In months and years to come, this agreement will have an effect on multiple sectors such as the music industry, movie theaters, book publishing, sports, etc. It will also affect online advertising as huge blocks of broadband are opened to marketers from various wings of the mega-corporation.

Meanwhile, over on the west coast, the new head of the Yahoo Media Group, Lloyd Braun is getting used to working in new-media having been hired away from network TV last summer. Yahoo has opened new offices in Santa Monica, just up the road from Hollywood. Braun has been tasked with the creation of a successful entertainment delivery model for Yahoo. As one of the driving creators of shows such as The Sopranos and Desperate Housewives, Braun has a successful reputation to draw on. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter last week, Braun hinted that Yahoo will be in a position to seriously speak with content creators in two or three months but that the Yahoo Media Group is looking at a five to ten year evolution of their medium. Yahoo is already providing subscribers with special extra episodes of The Apprentice. The addition of video clips to the Yahoo-Video search tool indicates Yahoo is preparing its systems to deliver video content as well as search content.

The announcements made over the past few days provide a foundation for the next steps in the evolution of search and the Internet. In the past twelve months, search has become the most important application for web users. With a solid financial model in paid contextual advertising, the incredible hype Microsoft is about to provide, and the moves to integrate video content into search by both AOL and Yahoo, the world of search is about to enter a new and highly improved phase. Search will expand to encompass anything digital and the search engine-marketing sector will adapt and rapidly expand. Small business will not be left out of the picture as start-ups like Sister.TV work to provide tools to create ads in the emerging mega-media environment.

Article by Jim Hedger,News Editor, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com -    Published Feb. 2005

SE changes blur lines between myth and reality

Much has changed since last year in the world of search engine marketing. These changes have widened the knowledge gaps between the SEM sector, our clients and the general public. A knowledge gap separating professional experience and general interest is natural in any industry as a quick peak under any newer model car hood will demonstrate.

In a field as user-dependent and re-evolutionary as the search industry, knowledge gaps can lead to expensive chaos for consumers, advertisers and web-masters. Many common assumptions about search engine marketing have been made obsolete or require a different way of thinking. Many erroneous assumptions continue to be proliferated in hundreds of forum posts, emails and marketing articles.

Search is the most important facet of the Web and the fastest growing part of the tech world. In an almost fully globalized world, search provides the unifying medium. In other words, search is the starting point of everything in accessible mass-communication. There are a number of myths surrounding the search marketing industry. On one hand, recent changes at the major search engines have made a number of long-held truths into newly minted myths. On the other hand, some long-held but mistaken beliefs simply refuse to go away.

Due to the rapidity of change and the proliferation of information, the knowledge gaps inherent to the search sector are exceptionally fluid. For example, last week the Big3 agreed on a new link-attribute called the NOFOLLOW tag. Answers I would give to questions about this tag if asked today are very different than the ones I would have volunteered last week. Over the past five days, a number of unique exploits have been devised, shared and posted to SEO themed forums and for good or for ill, some SEOs have a new tool at their fingertips.

Most online business owners think about search engines frequently. Similarly, many web site designers and hosting firms have studied SEO techniques in order to incorporate them into site design and hosting packages. Judging by the emails I receive, many tech-firms offering SEM as a side-service simply don't have the time to absorb the volumes of information necessary to fully understand the environment as it evolves.

These gaps exist within the full-time SEM industry as well. Aside from the fly-by-night operations that have refined every type of spam describable, there are some shops that are practicing SEO like it was still 1999. It's not that they all intend to be malicious. Few humans have the ability to run a business, read everything ever written, experiment with different techniques and service client concerns, all at the same time. The necessity to share a growing number of tasks is the biggest reason most older SEO firms are hiring more staff each year.

Here are some of the recent myths I'd like to see slain:

Myth #1

Some SEOs and SEMs can make special agreements with Google, Yahoo, or MSN.

This is a marketing myth that simply is not true.

One can gain accreditation from Google. One can manage massive accounts and receive a personal live-support agent who can answer questions. One can even take full advantage of every offer a search firm makes but one can not make a sweet-heart deal with the paid-advertising arms of the search engines. The SEM sector brings advertisers to the table but there are no special deals offered to individual SEMs aside from the occasional round of free drinks at conventions.

As for SEO firms who claim a special relationship, no one who manipulates search engine rankings for a living is going to be offered a welcome mat by the search engines. The SEO sector is tolerated as long as it doesn't egregiously make a mess. The closest it gets to "special" is personal relationships that develop between people who work together.

The only folks who can make special agreements with a reputable search engine are those offering the search engine something they don't already have, like new technologies or expertise. If an SEO or SEM firm tells you they have a special arrangement with search engines, ask for proof and follow up on it before spending.

Myth #2

Organic Optimization is always cheap.

I guess this myth is subject to what any individual feels is expensive. Organic placements must rank among the least costly ways to advertise however costs in the sector are rising fairly rapidly, especially among established SEO firms. The amount of work necessary to optimize a site has increased as has the time commitment in fostering and monitoring placements. Search engines are one of the primary information sources for consumers both at work and at home. As search becomes more important to society, search engine optimization services become more important for advertisers thus driving up demand and in turn, costs. The growth in demand continues to outstrip the number of SEO practitioners thus driving costs even further. Even with increased costs, for the size of the audience available, SEO is still cheaper than a printed directory listing and much cheaper than any other form of electronic media.

Myth #3

Submission services are a necessary part of search engine marketing.

I hate to blow anyone's business bubble but, submission services gasped their last useful breaths last year when every major search engine moved away from paid-submission indexing and moved to automated spidering. The one sure way to get into the databases of the major search engines is to get a link from an established site or a search directory like DMOZ, Joe Ant or Web Atlas. Once these links are established, the spiders will come. There are still a lot of businesses drawing supplemental income from search engine submissions and unfortunately, those businesses are not doing their clients a great service. A wise solution for businesses who can't give up the income from submission services is to market SEO services to their clients by learning the techniques or by reselling the services of an established firm.

Myth #4

My rankings dropped. Google must be penalizing me.

Search engine rankings will fluctuate. It is very rare an unmonitored placement will remain in the Top10 forever. Even sites with Top10 placements that are monitored and maintained by SEO firms will lose ranking from time to time. More often than not, the problem can be quickly traced back to one of three areas; on-site issues, hosting issues or link-issues. The search engines are in the promotion business, not in the penalization business. You really have to work hard at being bad (or pay someone to be bad for you) to get an actual penalty applied against your site. Historically, when Google decides enough is enough, the punishment is harsh, wide-spread and very apparent. 800 lb gorillas are not known for subtly.

Myth #5

Doorway pages are necessary to get placements on all search engines under multiple keyword phrases.

Speaking of stuff that will get Google to penalize placements, doorway pages appear to be making a comeback. A doorway page is a replica of an existing page designed to rank under a unique phrase at a specific search engine. By creating doorway pages, what started as a 10-page site turns into a 100 page site bulked up by 90 pages of relatively duplicate content. Titles, meta tags, word densities and keyword targets may vary from doorway page to doorway page but the content is basically the same.

Back in the 90's, doorway pages were very common as there was a much wider variety of search options using wildly different ranking algorithms. When Google became the only major dominant search engine in early 2001, the days of doorway pages were numbered. When Google stated that duplicate content would get penalized, the technique should have died. Google however, neglected to dole out effective sanctions and the practice persisted.

Today, two factors are driving the return of the doorway page. The first is that ecommerce sites have grown much larger and with the development of shared product databases, much more competitive. The second factor is the return of a multi-engine search universe with both Yahoo and MSN maintaining their own databases. This is a long-term favorite trick of the affiliate marketing sector and is making a comeback under the new marketing tool name, Landing Pages.

In reality, the Big 3 search engines all work pretty much the same way. It is possible to optimize for all three at the same time without risking placements. You can also optimize a full site for multiple keyword phrases however, expectations of 2500+ unique product placements are somewhat unrealistic. A wise guideline is, if you think you need to make a series of doorway pages, chances are your website is trying to represent too many different topics and should be redesigned into several different websites each focused on a unique topic or similar topics.

If these five myths die this year, the sector will be a cleaner place to work in. Advertisers will be less likely to be scammed into believing their SEO has a special relationship with the search firms. They will also have a more realistic view of the long-term commitment it takes to run a successful organic placement campaign and will be able to better budget for services. People would stop obsessing over submissions, penalizations, and other irrelevancies and get on with the business of producing great websites. Lastly, if the final myth about the value of doorway pages is undone, consumers would see stronger SERPs and some advertisers would save a lot money and the eventual heartache of displaced rankings.

Article by Jim Hedger,News Editor, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com -    Published Feb. 2005

There's more than Google in the search engine world

Keynote Systems released the results of a new survey this January. The California based company surveyed 2000 Internet users to find out which search engines they prefer.
Yahoo, MSN and AskJeeves gain against Google

According to the study, Google is still number one in the search industry, followed by Yahoo, MSN, AskJeeves and Lycos.

Yahoo and MSN have made significant gains against Google since their last survey. Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves also saw a notable increase in their standing in the Keynote Future Usage Index, which measures the likelihood of consumers to use a search site as their primary search tool and to return to the site in the future.

The index also measures a user's likelihood to recommend a search site to others or to use a search toolbar offered by the site.

Since the last study, Yahoo has boosted the number of users who said they would consider the site as their primary search engine by more than 20% and MSN by almost 30%. More than 81% of Yahoo users and 61% of MSN users said they would return to those sites in the future.

These numbers support recent comScore findings that indicate that Google's lead in the search engine market is diminishing.

What does this mean to your search engine optimization activities?

AltaVista, Excite and Webcrawler all have been the hottest search engine until a new player took the lead. Although it doesn't seem that this will happen to Google soon, you shouldn't concentrate your search engine optimization activities on Google alone.

Yahoo, MSN and AskJeeves can send a considerable amount of targeted visitors to your web site. If you only worry about gaining strong rankings in Google you alienate a large portion of your potential customers.

Optimize your web pages for all four big players: Google, Yahoo, MSN and AskJeeves. That way, you're not dependent on a single search engine and you'll get targeted visitors from different locations.

How can you optimize your web pages for these search engines?

Search engines prefer web sites with a lot of content. If your web pages have at least 14 to 20 pages, chances are that your web site will get much better rankings than a web site that consists of only one to three pages.

Another advantage of having many pages is that you can optimize different pages for different search engines and search terms. Optimizing a single web page for one or two search terms and a special search engine leads to better results than trying to optimize the same page for a variety of search terms and engines.

If you haven't done it yet, try IBP's Top 10 Optimizer to optimize your web pages for specific search engines and search terms. IBP helps you to optimize your web pages for any given search term and for all major search engines.

IBP's advice is based on the in-depth analysis of the current, up-to-the-minute top 10 results in the selected search engine and it is specifically for your search term and your web site.

Further information about writing successful link exchange messages, contact us below..

Copyright Axandra.com - Web site promotion software tools -  Published Jan. 2005

MSN (beta) Is Now Live

MSN has removed the beta-wrap from its proprietary search engine and is now showing self-generated results at MSN.Com. Beta results had started bleeding into MSN listings over the past three weeks but since Sunday (Jan 16), the .COM (US / Global) version of MSN has consistently mirrored those found at MSN(beta). Regional versions of MSN continue to display Inktomi (Yahoo owned) / Regional partner generated results (Jan19, 05).

At this time two years ago, Google was the only major search database, feeding search results to Yahoo and eventually by extension to MSN. Around this time last year, Yahoo began to break away from Google by amalgamating data from its acquisitions of Overture, AlltheWeb, AltaVista and Inktomi into a monster database built on the dbase they bought from FAST. This was a huge project that resulted in a database almost as large as Google's. When Yahoo stopped using Google generated results, MSN stopped showing them as well. At the same time, a new spider named MSNbot was making its presence known, appearing in our clients' server-logs with amazing frequency.

The introduction of an MSN search engine makes the business world of search a lot more interesting and might help open the door for other smaller firms such as Lycos and Ask Jeeves to gain a toehold against Google. However MSN changes the business of search, it will help improve on the science of it by innovation rather than invention.

The engineers at MSN have had the luxury of watching everyone else invent dozens of wheels. They have had the time to see what works well and what makes money. They have watched great ideas that should have succeeded fall to failure and not so great ideas flourish until the market determined their death. Having created much of the environment themselves, they also know the histories of the web and appear to have learned when to act and when to lay-low.

The search engine that they have produced takes factors that worked well for others and combined them to make what could become a very popular search tool.

Like Google, MSN's spider finds new sites by following links directed to those sites. MSNbot is active all the time. So active in fact that about five weeks ago a few webmasters reported so many visits their servers crashed. MSN revisits sites very frequently as well. Over the past year, MSN has compiled a 5-Billion site database.

Once a site is in the database, MSN looks at the number of links directed to that site. There is no hard data on the role topical relevancy plays in how MSN determines links however it is assumed by most that anchor text plays a major role. (Anchor text did factor in our initial tests however with the beta version of the engine)

Next, MSN looks at the content of the site. This is where much of the ranking determination is made. Sites with great text and clear internal link-paths are ranking very well with MSN. Of our entire client base, only one site with excellent text and internal linking lost a top placement at MSN when the new version was introduced. Strong, keyword enriched titles and body text continue to provide strong placements. We are fairly certain that the anchor text of internal links can influence placements as well.

Size matters with MSN as larger sites with long-term content appear to be doing very well under more generic keyword searches. Content rich news and information sites and large corporate sites should be able to leverage their size and content-scope into high placements. The size and content-scope factor should also work well with large e-commerce sites, provided a very clear mapping technique makes the site as easy to access as possible for MSNbot.

There is a simple experiment that folks should run every time a new search engine is introduced or a new algorithm is applied. Open three browser windows (or click on the following links) and cue up MSN.Com, Google.Com, and Yahoo.Com. Enter a keyword phrase important to your business or interests. For this example, I will use one I am familiar with, "Artificial Turf".

Look for similarities between what you know works at Google and Yahoo and you can learn what works well at MSN. The Field Turf website ranks #1 at each of the Big3 under the phrase "artificial turf". The index page itself is dynamically generated and does not always present the same text information limiting the effectiveness of seo-copyrighting and keyword densities. There are several remaining areas on the site SEO work could be applied and a number of off-site factors that collectively contribute to the site's top placements. Based on this simple test, we can determine the following.

A website that has a large number of incoming links will get noticed and spidered a number of times. Google recognizes 131 unique domains linking to the Field Turf website. Yahoo notes over 1000. MSN sees far more, weighing in above 1500. Next, note the "quality" of incoming links. Google is taking a very refined approach to contextual-quality while Yahoo and MSN seem more interested in the number of links.

Titles make a big difference at all three and are an important area to work on when doing basic SEO for MSN. MSN also seems to be able to read text found in drop-down menus such as the ones on the right hand side of the Field Turf index page.

Another important factor in improving and retaining rankings is updating the site. MSN states on its "How MSN Search Works" page that pages that are active will be spidered more frequently and achieve stronger rankings.

The business of search has changed radically over the past four months, working through a scenario that has been building for about two years. MSN going live with their own search engine is huge news with as many unknown implications as known ones. Its presence will challenge many basic assumptions about SEO and will play a large hand in determining the future of the search industry itself. The greatest general change is the burst of corporate diversity and identity in the search marketplace. A range of new products and services has been introduced by every search tool from the Big3 to the dozen or so smaller but notable search firms. Google is buying ad-space and fiber optics. Yahoo is reporting massive earnings as it pushes into the Chinese market, and MSN is suddenly in the house, so to speak. The precursors of change are written on the wall and MSN is betting much of that change will be found between the walls of your home.

More on MSN very soon.

Article by Jim Hedger, SEO Manager, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com -    Published Jan. 2005

MSNBot - Searching for ways to make Redmond rise again

What would you do if you were tasked with designing a
new search engine?

You have all the resources the world can offer and the certain knowledge that your project is so important to your employer that mountains, molehills, companies, code and really comfy office chairs will be moved, built or acquired to meet your needs, no questions asked. Your boss demands a product that is better than best and, having failed to notice how overwhelmingly essential search would become back when he came to dominate everything else, appears ready to back your project with missionary zeal and Machiavellian maneuvering. The cold hard truth is, the future of one of the largest corporations in the world, owned incidentally by the world's wealthiest man, may well rest on your shoulders. In this scenario, there are no obstacles, only the challenge of beating Google at Google's best game. Whoa....

MSN released the beta version of their long awaited proprietary search engine earlier this quarter. Beta releases are the software world's version of a dress rehearsal. Mistakes will happen, even in the best productions, and the beta stage is the place to field-test a product, finding and fixing inevitable problems before the real, commercial version of the product is introduced. MSN(beta) search has seen its share of bumps over the past few weeks including a short period when it appeared the search tool had crashed. Regardless of any minor mishaps in its first weeks, MSN(beta) Search shows very good results generated from a database of approximately 5 billion spidered websites it began compiling over a year ago. While MSN(beta) and the search tool found at MSN.Com are different search tools delivering very different sets of results, the results generated by MSN(beta) will eventually replace the Inktomi based listings shown on MSN.Com. That's when the real fun will begin. Please note, as other commentators have pointed out, this is a BETA version and likely to change in coming weeks before the undisclosed live release date.

When told to build a better mousetrap, MSN engineers set their goals fairly high and approached the problem from the most logical point possible. They seem to have looked at the best ideas everyone else has come up with and tried to incorporate them into their search tool. The results are better then expected with highly relevant site listings that have been compared to earlier versions of Google's index. That makes sense given that MSNBot the beta-search spider works very much like GoogleBot, looking for many of the same site elements including incoming links, contextual relationships between linked documents, and overall site context. MSNBot also seems to be interested in keyword-enriched titles and seems especially interested in anchor text.

MSNBot, like GoogleBot and Slurp finds sites for its index by following links from one page to another within or between sites. The majority of sites in MSN(beta)'s index were found by MSNBot as it followed links from sites it had already visited. A check of backlinks, or links recognized by MSNBot as being relevant to a specific site almost always shows much higher numbers than a similar check on Google or Yahoo leading us to conclude that, for the time being at least, MSNBot does not filter links to the same degree as its rivals. In other words, relevancy does not appear to be as strong a factor with this version of MSN(beta) than it is with Google, at first glance anyway. One of the biggest improvements MSN(beta) brags about is its ability to figure out the context of individual paragraphs found on a page and apply that context as a "relevancy" factor against pages that might be linked to from that paragraph. Subsequent paragraphs on the same page might be about totally different topics without undermining the contextual relevancy of the links found in the previous paragraph. Google tends to compare relevancy on a page to page basis, making it more difficult to address a wide ranging topic on one page.

As with Google and Yahoo's spiders, MSNBot likes well defined and functioning link paths within your website. Providing a clear and well explained path for MSNBot to follow is critical to good rankings. The easiest way to accomplish this is to establish a text-based sitemap page appended to your website and be certain there is a link to that sitemap page on each of the other pages in your site. For database driven sites, this can be accomplished by changing the "footer" attribute on the template that creates the base-pages. There is an important thing to note here, especially for webmasters of highly dynamic or commerce driven sites, use static URLs to link to products in your database and do whatever is necessary to avoid tracking systems that append unique user IDs to URLs.

This article is not going to provide a lot of details around these elements as some or even much of what is written is subject to sudden change (this is a beta version after all), and the beta version simply hasn't been around long enough to express reliable ideas in writing yet. Once you have ensured that MSN(beta)'s spider can travel from one end of your site to another, and has a way into your site from an outside reference, take a look at the following elements of your site.

MSNBot seems to really like the techniques used by SEOs at StepForth. StepForth pays a lot of attention to keyword enrichment of the basic but critical elements of a site. Assuming navigation issues have been taken care of, websites that use keyword phrases in titles, anchor text, and early in the page content are doing very well in MSN(beta)'s index. We do not know for sure what MSNBot thinks of meta tags however we recommend using the basic description and keywords meta tags along with robot exclude text when necessary. MSNBot, basically likes clean code with good, common sense SEO. In a previous article, we republished the guidelines MSN posted to the MSN(beta) search site.

MSNBot Guidelines, at a glance:

Incoming links from other websites with keyword-enriched anchor text used to phrase the links

Easily read code that has been W3C validated

As with all search engines, best results are found when you only address one topic per page

Keep your page site reasonable, 150kb is the maximum size recommended in the MSN guidelines

Apply keyword phrases to well written sentences early in the code. Don't use techniques such as keyword stuffing or invisible text.

Use a sitemap to ensure that every page in your site is open to MSNBot.

There is a keyword density rule for MSNBot however we do not think that keyword density is the same for every business sector. For instance, the optimal keyword density for Maryland real estate will be different than the optimal keyword density California real estate, even though sites found under those keywords will represent the same business sector.

Any common sense rule that applies to SPAM on other search engines applies at MSN(beta) as well.

The MSN(beta) search engine is slated for full release any time now but, as with other Microsoft products, that doesn't necessarily mean we're going to see it anytime soon. The engine has been very stable over the past two weeks and is providing very strong and consistent results. Any bugs that remain to be worked out are well hidden and do not seem to be effecting the search function in any discernible way. When MSN does release their search engine as a full-version at MSN.Com, they will have a good tool that presents a credible alternative and serious challenge to Google and Yahoo. The long days of mono-culture search are over.

Article by Jim Hedger, SEO Manager, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com -    Published Jan. 2005

How to write for Slurp the spider

As the world's second most popular search tool, Yahoo moves a tremendous amount of traffic and is a very credible alternative to Google. Yahoo receives over 2.76 billion page views per day from hundreds of millions of unique users. It boasts over 157 million registered users enjoying mail, shopping and discussion groups and an increasingly personalized search and news services. For the past two years, Yahoo, Google and MSN have been embroiled in a hard-fought battle for the loyalty of search engine users forcing all three firms into the hyper-evolution we are witnessing today. Over the next three Wednesdays we are going to examine how the Big-3 spiders work, what they look for and how to best prepare your sites for multiple visits from the bots that rank them. Today, we are starting with Yahoo's bot, SLURP.

Getting found by Slurp
The first thing to know about Slurp is that like its better known cousin, Google-bot, Slurp "discovers" sites by following links from one site to another, reading and recording nearly everything it finds in its path. The majority of websites referenced by Yahoo were originally included in its database because they were accessed by Slurp following links from another site.

Yahoo suggests adding an inbound link to all pages in your site to guarantee those pages will be discovered by Slurp. They also recommend an internal sitemap linked to from the Index (or home) page of the site. To encourage Slurp to spend more time deep-crawling your content, Yahoo recommends the addition of "good authoritative links pointing into your site", from highly reputable sources such as news sites, established business partners and other sites relevant to your business or service.

Manual submission of the site is only recommended if for some reason or another Slurp does not find the site on its own. This is increasingly rare however as server-logs show Slurp is one of the most active spiders out there. In other words, if a site Slurp has already indexed links to your site, Slurp will almost certainly be visiting very soon. Webmasters should never have to pay submission fees to get into Yahoo's index as according to Yahoo's Tim Mayer, 99% of Yahoo's index is crawled by Slurp for free.

It is still important to make sure your site is ready to receive a visit from Slurp. To ensure Slurp is able to travel across your entire site, provide standard HREF text links as opposed to forms, Flash or java script navigation tools. Webmasters are encouraged to avoid tracking and communication methods that rely on using cookies across every page of the site. If you have a database driven site or a site that creates unique sessions for each user, avoid embedding session IDs in URL's. Lastly, use 404 pages to redirect users (and spiders) to the root (index) page if a page or site URL becomes invalid. Yahoo also asks webmasters of sites with shopping carts to use robot.txt exclusions in the source of the shopping carts.

Where your site has been included. Results May Vary...
Yahoo has seen enormous change over the past seven years. What started as a paid-inclusion, human edited search directory, has grown into the second largest database of indexed content. Yahoo is on the cutting edge of integrating several forms of media into their search offerings and will likely soon produce its own entertainment content like an online HBO. Yahoo is flirting with the concept of becoming an infotainment portal again but the core of its offerings remains firmly rooted in search.

Yahoo search results come in multiple formats including: Yahoo-Local, Yahoo-products, MY-Yahoo (personalized results), specific nation-based Yahoo's, and the standard Yahoo.com One of Yahoo's goals appears to be presenting individual search-users with results that best match their personal needs. For instance, Yahoo would like to present constantly updated geographic-specific references when a user searches for daily-use items such as groceries, repair-workers, real estate and other services one would normally use a telephone directory to find. Similarly, Yahoo wants to present the entire global database of references when a user searches for international news, trans-national products or vacation plans. Being certain your website gets served up for all levels of search, local, regional and global, will be important if you wish to serve a market larger than your general region or community.

Getting Rankings
Yahoo's search engine ranks sites based on a formula that is very similar to the algorithms used by rivals Google and MSN. Yahoo values many of the same elements other search engines do including keyword enriched domain names, titles, meta tags, and content. Yahoo also values keywords found in the anchor text of internal links, though the effect at Yahoo is not as powerful as it is on Google.

According to Yahoo, well optimized pages and sites will continue to get good results across all versions of their search engine. By opening your site to Yahoo Slurp and performing well-planned optimization services across every page, a good SEO can nearly always achieve Top placements on Yahoo. The trick is in offering Slurp the information it needs to read, record and rank your site. If that information is included on each page, a set of text-based links is woven through the site to provide easy passage for Slurp, and Yahoo is told what your business is, where your business is located, and who your business serves, your site should achieve strong rankings.

Due to the advent of personal, local, regional and global search results, it is highly recommended to add full contact and address information on every page of a site. This information should be as precise as possible and should include street address, unit or suite number, zip or postal code, state or province, county and country, full telephone information (including area codes), and if possible, the approximate longitude and latitude of your business location. (look up your longitude and latitude here: http://www.astro.com/atlas)

When writing for Slurp here are a few basic fundamentals:

Have a descriptive URL

Use keyword enriched titles on each page of the site

Place keyword enriched description and keywords meta tags on each page of the site

Use robot.txt files to keep Slurp out of your shopping cart or log in pages

Place keyword enriched text in the first paragraphs of your site-copy

Use HREF links to direct Slurp through each page of the site

Add a sitemap page and be certain there is a link from the INDEX page to the sitemap

Be certain that geographic specific information is mentioned on each page of the site. Always have a contact page that also lists geographic specific information.

Write a press release and send it to as many blogs, news-wires and press release sites as possible.

Acquire strong, relevant incoming links from sites with topics similar to yours.

Update your site frequently.

Enjoy and value your placements.

Article by Jim Hedger, Contributing Writer, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com -    Published Dec. 2004

Search Engine Marketing Issues - Clarification on Keywords

Hi Jill,

I am a big fan of yours and I think that you do a fantastic job.

I need some clarification on how often to use keywords. I am working on a website that has a motivational theme. The website sells multiple motivational books but is focused around only one author. One of my keywords is "motivational book." Is it OK to use this keyword on multiple pages?

I don't just sell 1 motivational book, I sell many, but all by the same motivational author. I'm wondering if I could get penalized in the search engines for using this same keyword on multiple pages. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Cindy

Jill's Response

Hi Cindy,

The search engines don't penalize sites for writing about what they sell on their pages! You should use the phrase "motivational book(s)" wherever it makes sense to do so on your site. If it makes sense to your human visitors, you can bet it makes sense to the search engines also.

You don't need to worry about your site getting penalized unless you're doing stuff purposely to deceive them. Obviously, you wouldn't do anything like that, so penalizations are not a concern.

That said, I'd bet that some in-depth keyword research would probably uncover many, many additional keyword phrases that you could be focusing on within the existing pages of your site. That doesn't mean you shouldn't use that main keyword phrase, but why put all your eggs in one basket? When you focus on only one keyword phrase, you are truly at the mercy of the search engines. Rankings will go up and down for any given phrase in any given engine at any given time. Plus, the engines will at most show only 2 pages of your site for any given search query, so it's not like optimizing every page for the same phrase will give you a chance at dominating all top-10 slots.

This type of strategy will cover you for the inevitable roller-coaster ride that is SEO by the very fact that you have optimized for lots of phrases. Make sure not to simply guess at the phrases that you *think* people might use. Before Wordtracker <http://www.highrankings.com/wordtracker> and similar tools were developed, we did have to guess, but not anymore! In fact, as far as I'm concerned, the difference between a good SEO campaign and a great one is how extensively keyword research is done.

Here's a *trick* that I use for existing sites to make sure I've covered all my optimization and keyword bases. Visit every page of your site and extract phrases that you're naturally using in the existing copy, and then run them through Wordtracker. You may find that you're already using good phrases that people search for at the engines. If so, you may simply need to use them a bit more in your copy, etc. On the other hand, you may find that the phrases you are naturally using aren't actually what "real" people use. In these cases, sometimes it's as simple as switching out the "jargon" phrases for the more common ones. Once the engines reindex these pages, you may notice a nice spike in targeted traffic in your log files.

Now, if you have a huge site with hundreds of pages, this may seem like a daunting task -- that's because it is! This is also why a comprehensive SEO campaign is not going to be cheap if you outsource it; however, the payoff can be huge once it's all done. You don't have to do it all at once, of course. I'd recommend starting at the top-level category pages, and then just taking things a section at a time. Just make sure to spend a little time on it every day, and before you know it, you'll have every page of your site optimized for phrases that people are actually searching for!

Jill Whalen of High Rankings is an internationally recognized search engine optimization consultant and editor of the free weekly High Rankings Advisor search engine marketing newsletter.

Article by Jill Whalen, www.searchengineguide.com -    Published Dec. 2004

Top 5 Tips for Successful Search Engine Marketing

If you are new to the Search category, you're probably familiar with the term "Search Engine Optimization" (SEO) and have seen or heard the term "Search Engine Marketing" (SEM), but are not exactly sure what Search Engine Marketing really means. More than likely, you've heard the two terms used interchangeably and may think that they mean the same thing. Though they are similar, there is a dramatic difference between the two practices. Knowing and understanding the difference between these two terms, and more importantly, knowing how to take advantage of the differences is the key to overall success in marketing via search engines.

There has been a dramatic but subtle change over the past few years with regards to promoting websites via search engines. Rather than being two interchangeable terms, Search Engine Optimization is actually an element of Search Engine Marketing, with the other element being "Paid Search Media." It is those site owners and managers that truly understand this, and utilize it on their site along with all of the elements involved in each, that are achieving success on the search engines at a reasonable cost.

Let's define the terms before continuing.

Search Engine Marketing: The act of marketing a web site via search engines, whether this is improving rank in organic listings, purchasing paid listings or a combination thereof, along with other search engine related activities. (Source: SEMPO.org)

Search Engine Optimization: The act of altering a web site so that is does well in the organic, crawler- based listings of search engines. Also called "SEO." (Source: SEMPO.org)

Paid Search Media: Advertising programs where listings are guaranteed to appear in response to particular search terms, with higher ranking typically obtained by paying more than other advertisers. Also called "Paid Placement," "Pay Per Click" and "Cost per Click." (Source: SEMPO.org)

It is important to understand that there is no less value in performing Search Engine Optimization because of the rise in popularity of Paid Search Media and Pay Per Click (PPC) programs offered by companies such as Overture and Google (Adwords.) If anything, it has increased the importance of optimizing your web site, namely due to the fluctuating costs of PPC programs.

The following tips will enable you to take full advantage of Search Engine Marketing. They will also assist you in achieving your online goals as rapidly as possible, and at a very reasonable cost.

1. Understand your online business

There are a lot of business owners that believe their offline business is the same as their online business; that the two mimic each other. Usually, this is only partially correct. This is especially true when it comes to competitor analysis. Many times the companies you compete with offline are markedly different from the ones you compete with online and visa versa.

To begin understanding your online business, simply write a description of your company. Have your colleagues, family and friends do the same. If you own a brick and mortar business, ask your customers to describe your business for you. Most will be happy to provide feedback. You may find that many of the descriptions are similar, yet different.

Next, go online. Search for your competitors' sites and pay careful attention to how they are promoting and positioning themselves in the marketplace. Use the information you've already gathered about YOUR company and refine it to ensure you are properly differentiating yourself. Take the time to integrate your own identity, as you now understand it, and based upon feedback from others.

2. Understanding your online customer

Frequently, your online customer's profile WILL be similar to your offline customer. You should use this information when performing optimization to your website and when buying pay-per-click keywords.

It is important to understand that much like traditional, brick and mortar customers, there are different types of online customers. These customers will search very differently and can sometimes be segmented by gender, race, and income level. It has been proven that men search differently than women and further, older men and women search differently than younger men and women do.

Two excellent studies have been produced recently that discuss the different types of searchers. Those studies are:

Enquiro's Inside the Mind of the Searcher (free download registration required) is a first of its kind study covering the types of searchers using search engines, what search results caught their attention and what enticed them to click on results.

iProspect's Search Engine User's Attitudes (free download) is an in depth study that reveals the relationship between profession, age, education, race and sex and how that influence a persons' searches.

These studies will provide you with valuable insight to help you understand your customer base better. Once you have a thorough understanding of how your customers search, you will be better positioned to apply that knowledge to choosing the right keywords.

3. Determining a successful conversion

If you were to ask most web site owners what they want from their web site they'd say "to make money". That generally rings true even if they don't sell anything on or through the web site. Understanding what the true purpose of your web site is the first step to determining what to deem a successful conversion. After all, conversions will determine the success or failure of your website as a business tool.

If your web site is just brochure-ware, or used primarily as a promotion tool, a successful conversion may simply be traffic. Conversion may be measured as getting a user to browse through your web site, then filling out a contact form, placing a phone call or downloading a PDF.

If you sell something through your web site then a successful conversion will more than likely be defined as a completed transaction, or "selling something." Remember, your web site may even have multiple types of conversions.

It is impossible to determine the true success or failure of your search engine marketing efforts without first knowing what success is, as defined by setting standards of conversion for your site. Once you know what a success is, you can begin to track that success. Tracking is covered more thoroughly in Tip 5.

4. Researching, Choosing and Implementing Keywords

Researching, choosing, and implementing keywords can be one of the most daunting aspects of Search Engine Marketing. It is also one of the most important.

Researching Keywords
Now that you have a better understanding of your customer, your online business, and what constitutes a successful conversion, you can begin to develop the best keywords to meet your goals.

Fortunately, there are many well written tutorials and tools to help you succeed in researching, and choosing the right keywords. The August edition of Market Position has an excellent article on Choosing the Best Keywords.

This article provides you with the following keyword techniques:

1. Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience.
2. Target Niches.
3. Brainstorm for keywords in your category.
4. Choose only relevant keywords.
5. Understand that keywords can have multiple meanings

WordTracker is an excellent tool to conduct keyword research. It provides you with the ability to determine exactly what words are being used in search engines to find the products and services that you may offer. If you haven't tried WordTracker yet simply download the free trial of WebPosition Gold 3 and click on the WordTracker icon.

Choosing Keywords
Once you've compiled a thorough list of keywords using WordTracker you must decide the ways in which you are going to use those keywords.

Unfortunately most web sites do not have enough content, or aren't large enough to support all of the good, quality keywords you have found using these tools. Therefore, you should narrow your list. How?

You need to consider the following for each keyword on your list:

Does this keyword support my online goals?

Do I have the content to support this keyword? If yes, then is my page optimized for it?

Do I have to create content to support this keyword? If yes, then is it worth the creation effort or should I buy it through PPC?

Is it a seasonal word? If yes, then should I buy it through PPC or Optimize for it?

Pay Per Click keywords should be words that are seasonal, marginally related to your web site, or cannot be ranked for in a reasonable amount of time. PPC words will cost you more over a long period of time, so great caution needs to be exercised when participating in PPC programs. For an excellent PPC tutorial, see the WebPosition Gold 3 Page Critic.

Once you have created your final keyword list and have determined how those words are to be used through either PPC or SEO, then you can begin implementation.

If you have to build optimized web pages to take advantage of some of your selected keywords simply download the free trial of WebPosition Gold 3 and click on the Page Builder icon. With WebPosition Gold 3, you can build and upload your optimized content all with one easy to use tool.

5. Tracking your rankings, website traffic and conversions

Now that you've completed the process of creating and launching your Search Engine Marketing program, you need to be able to determine if your efforts are succeeding. Of course, more online sales are an easy way to determine if your efforts are succeeding; however, there are many more metrics to analyze in order to get the most out of your efforts and money.

It is imperative that you be able to assess how your web site is ranking for the words you've targeted. You need to know, for sure, if those words are successful and are converting. You also need to know whether your SEO or PPC efforts are bringing you the most traffic and conversions.

Fortunately, WebPosition Gold 3 and WebTrends Analytics work together to provide you all the reports and answers. You can check your rankings across search engines and keywords, compare rankings to your actual traffic from those search engines and track conversions from your SEO and PPC efforts.

This article is copyrighted and has been reprinted with permission from FirstPlace Software, the makers of WebPosition Gold. FirstPlace Software helped define the SEO industry with the introduction of the first product to track your rankings on the major search engines and to help you improve those rankings. A free trial of WebPosition Gold is available from their Web site.

By Brent Winters   - WebPosition Gold - Published Nov. 2004

Search Engine Marketing Issues

It's been a few years since I revisited my Meta description tag article, but it's a good thing I did. Things have changed so much with how the search engines treat this tag that I pretty much had to rewrite this one from scratch!

++The Meta Description Tag++

The keywords and phrases you use in your Meta description tag don't affect your page's ranking in the search engines (for the most part), but this tag can still come in handy in your overall SEO campaigns.

What Is the Meta Description Tag?

The Meta description tag is a snippet of HTML code that belongs inside the <Head> </Head> section of a Web page. It usually is placed after the Title tag and before the Meta keywords tag, although the order is not important.

The proper syntax for this HTML tag is: <META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Your descriptive sentence or two goes here.">

I used to believe that the purpose of the Meta description tag was twofold: to help the page rank highly for the words that were contained within it, as well as to provide a nice description in the search engine results pages (SERPs). However, today it appears that, similar to the Meta keywords tag, the information you place in this tag is *not* given any weight in the ranking algorithms of Google, and only a tiny amount of weight in Yahoo's.

In other words, whether you use your important keyword phrases in your Meta description tag or not, it won't affect the position of your page in the SERPs for the words that are important to you. In fact, you could easily leave it out altogether. But should you?

Well, if you're already happy with the "snippets" of text that the search engines post from your page in any given search query, then there's no reason to have a Meta description tag on your pages. However, it's important to note that the snippet the engines use will vary, depending on what the searcher typed into the engine.

Let's take a step back and look at what the search engines show in the SERPs. It can get a little bit confusing, but if you try out your own searches in the various engines, you'll have a better idea of what I'm talking about. The search engines are constantly changing this sort of thing, plus they all behave in slightly different ways, as you'll see in my examples.

At Google, if you search for a site by URL like this: www.highrankings.com, the snippet you see is the first instance of text on the page. Interestingly enough, on my home page, an image alt attribute tag is the first instance of words "on the page," and that's what shows up as part of my "snippet" for this particular search. (The image is a clickable image, so this jibes with my other theory of Google indexing the words in the alt attributes of clickable images. See this forum thread from Dec. 2003: <http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=2495>.)

For this type of search, Yahoo displays the Meta description info. It's important to note that generally the only people searching using URLs are site owners trying to see if their pages are indexed. Therefore, you shouldn't worry too much about what you see under those circumstances.

So let's try something that a real person might search for when looking for what I have to offer -- how about "SEO copy"?

In Google, my Nitty-gritty handbook page shows up second in the results with the following snippet:

"... techniques: Search engine optimization (SEO) consultants who need to edit the existing copy of their clients' sites as a matter of course. ..."

Not the best of snippets, to say the least.

In this case, I don't have the phrase "SEO copy" in my Meta description tag, nor is it anywhere on the page as a complete phrase. Because of this, Google has simply found instances where the word SEO and the word copy were near each other, and used the surrounding text as the snippet.

Now, if I felt that "SEO copy" was a viable keyword phrase that people might be searching on, I may want to adjust my page accordingly so that the phrase appeared in my Meta description tag as well as somewhere in the body text. Again, this is not because it would help it to rank highly, but because I would receive a more suitable description that was more in tune with what the searcher was looking for. One can surmise that they might be more inclined to click on my listing in that case.

Let's look at Yahoo for the same phrase. They've ranked the page at #3, and used the following snippet:

"Learn SEO copywriting with Jill Whalen's special report -- The Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines."

Now that's a good snippet! Well, guess what? That's my Meta description tag for that page. Even though the exact phrase wasn't in the tag, and neither was the word "copy," Yahoo still chose to display it for this search query. I'm guessing this is because that phrase is actually nowhere on the page, other than in the Title tag. So with Yahoo, having a decent Meta description tag was very worthwhile in this instance.

More Tests

I also recently discovered that when I tested a nonsense word in the Meta description tag of a page (with the word not appearing elsewhere on the page), Google did not find it. But when I added the word to the visible text copy on the page, Google would bring up the test page when the nonsense word was searched for. Not only that, but it displayed that part of the Meta description tag where the nonsense word appeared.

In Yahoo, my nonsense-word test page was found, even if the word appeared only in the Meta description tag and nowhere else on the page. Interestingly enough, however, Yahoo didn't display the part of the tag where the word was placed. They displayed only the beginning of the description, and cut it off after about 45 words. I purposely placed my nonsense word deep into my description tag to see if it would get picked up. In this case, the word appeared as the last of 138 words in the tag. I'll probably add even more words at some point to see if there's any cutoff point where Yahoo will stop indexing.

Other Engines

I also tested a few searches at Teoma and MSN. Each engine is slightly different in how they display the Meta description tag. Teoma seems to find the words in the tag, but doesn't necessarily display them. When I searched for a unique sampling of text from one of my tags, Teoma found the page, but chose to display the first sentence on the page instead. Not surprisingly, the current MSN search worked the same as Yahoo. However, MSN's search technology preview http://beta.search.msn.com/?FORM=HPFFguidea> (which is the new engine they're working on) behaved similarly to Google on all tests regarding Meta descriptions.

My new recommendation for this tag is not to worry too much about it. If you have some great call-to-action statements utilizing your keyword phrases on your Web pages, they will probably show up in your snippets at the engines. But since it's easy enough to create a compelling sentence or 2 that incorporates your main keyword phrases, you might as well do this for your Meta descriptions.

Certainly, the more control you have over your listing in the SERPs, the more clickthroughs you should see. If your Meta description tags can help with that, then it's certainly worth the time to create compelling, keyword-rich ones.

Jill Whalen of High Rankings is an internationally recognized search engine optimization consultant and editor of the free weekly High Rankings Advisor search engine marketing newsletter.

Article by Jill Whalen, www.searchengineguide.com - Published Oct. 2004

Insight into Microsoft's Battle Plans

Microsoft is preparing to launch one heck of a search engine within the year (I gave up on speculating the month); of course the details of their new product is extremely vague. That said, after reading up on the all of the latest speculation out there I decided to inform you of what I believe is the most valid:

The Microsoft Advantage

Microsoft has a massive advantage over every other search engine company because it can leverage its worldwide Windows OS dominance to create a stronger product. How? It is not a simple thing to explain but essentially each Windows computer has countless morsels of valuable data that represent each users' Internet behavior. If this data were interpreted correctly, it could be harnessed to create a highly personalized search experience... here enters Microsoft.

Last year when the new Microsoft Longhorn operating system was due sooner than the new 2006 deadline, it was noted that Longhorn would include new advances in search personalization by melding search engine technology for the web and your computer into one tool built into the desktop. Now Microsoft has announced that some Longhorn advances will be modular and offered via Windows Update before the 2006 deadline. As a result, Microsoft has positioned itself to launch personalization advances sooner which happens to coincide with the search engine launch. In addition, the search engine launch was postponed at nearly the same time as the Longhorn delay announcement; a great indicator that elements of Longhorn are being integrated to provide more ammo for the new search engine.

How Microsoft will offer their new system is likely rooted in the Internet Explorer Browser which is used by 80+ percent of the Internet population. Will it be another toolbar? I hope not, and probably not if they have done their homework; there are too many toolbars out there! I expect it will be a complete update to the Internet Explorer browser which will provide far more advantages than a mere toolbar can offer. This update coupled with any ground breaking technology incorporated into the actual search engine should provide Microsoft with enough momentum to steal significant market share.

Article by Ross Dunn, CEO,StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com -  Published Oct. 2004

Five Reasons To Submit to Shopping Search Engines

The shopping season starts soon. Christmas is only three months away. Can you believe it?

Are you ready? Do you (or does someone you know) sell products on the Internet? If so, part of being ready should include shopping search engines. What are they? The most popular ones are BizRate, Shopping.com, Froogle, and Yahoo Shopping. You have probably seen or used them already to research a product you were interested in, to find the best price, or to read opinions.

But are you using them effectively for your products? If not, why should you now?

Here are five top reasons:

1. Their Popularity Is Growing Fast

Ask anyone you know about Yahoo Shopping, BizRate, Shopping.com, NexTag or other similar sites. They will probably say the same thing... "Oh yeah! I just recently used a site like that to buy my ___." I have heard that from almost everyone I know.

To support this, Hitwise (a leading online measurement company) recently reported that these sites are seeing an increasing number of visits. Interestingly, they are also seeing a corresponding decrease in clickthroughs from search engines. Why? It seems as if once people use these sites, they come directly to them the next time.

If people are using these sites more and more, shouldn't you want your products there?

2. They Advertise For You

Let me put this another way. Are you tired of handing your wallet to Overture and Google AdWords? Let the shopping search engines do it for you.

Try this. Go to Google or Yahoo today and type in camera, digital camera, fabrics, or any other product name. Many times, BizRate, Shopping.com, or some other shopping search site will show up in the top paid-listing spots. And you know those terms aren't cheap!

3. Lower PPC Costs

This is basically a continuation of the previous point. PPC costs on Overture and Google AdWords are increasing constantly. How much does a click cost from Froogle? Nothing! What about Shopping.com, BizRate, NexTag, and others? Although it varies, it is frequently less than 15 cents and seldom over 50 cents.

4. More Qualified Leads

When someone is looking at Google and they click your ad, do they really want to buy what you are offering? Perhaps.

On the other hand, if someone is on Shopping.com and they click on your ad, what do you think they are doing? Shopping maybe? The same holds true for Yahoo Shopping, and the many other similarly named shopping sites.

5. Start Now To Beat the Competition

Remember the "good ole days" when you could list on Overture for 5 cents for most of your terms? You probably didn't even check your Return On Investment. You got plenty of clicks for a great price.

What happened? Your competition, that's what.

Now you have to pay more and work harder. Shopping Search Engines is this year what Pay Per Click was a few years ago. The opportunity is ripe to get started now and the price is right.

So now you want to list your products. Where do you start?

Begin by doing some searches in the major shopping search engines. Is anyone else listing the products you offer? If so, how does your pricing compare? After all, these sites are not called comparison-shopping sites for nothing. Many people are looking for the best price.

But price is not everything. In fact, shoppers are more frequently looking for reputable sites. So, does your site look reputable? Does it have good navigation? Also, be sure to sign up for BizRate's Customer Certified Ratings Program. If you start now, you can get some positive comments on your site within the next couple of months. Many will choose to pay a little more if the merchant is more reputable.

To get listed, you will need to sign up with each site. Then follow the instructions. The process usually includes creating a spreadsheet in a certain format and then submitting it via FTP to the appropriate server.

Corey Creed - Shopping Search Info - http://www.ShoppingSearchInfo.com - Published Sep. 2004

Search Engine Marketing Issues - Overture vs. Google AdWords

Dear Jill,

I manage Overture and Google AdWords campaigns for a college. I spend $6,000/mo in Google AdWords and $4,000/mo in Overture, and I am perplexed as to why the Overture campaign is working better. We track the campaigns on the basis of online forms from their respective landing pages, and Overture brings in twice as many form inquiries.

I've managed Google AdWords campaigns successfully before for other companies and I thought that since Google has a larger share of the search engine market, they should be bringing in better response. Is Google slipping in their performance and ability to deliver? (Both campaigns are extremely similar as to keywords and match choices.)

Thanks, Karen

Jill's Response

Since I'm not really a PPC kinda person, I decided to enlist the help of my friend and High Rankings PPC forum moderator, Ed Kohler (Haystack), to answer Karen's question. Ed is the president of Haystack In A Needle <http://www.haystackinaneedle.com>, a Web marketing company based in Minneapolis, MN offering pay-per- click campaign management and search engine optimization services.

Take it away, Ed! - Jill

Ed Kohler's Response

Interesting issue, Karen. Since your Overture campaign is generating twice as many leads as your AdWords campaign, and is doing so at only 2/3 of the cost, it sounds like your Overture campaign is actually working three times better than AdWords. In my experience, the results from Overture campaigns vs. AdWords will vary from one campaign to the next, but not enough to justify the disparity you're experiencing. This leads me to believe that your situation is more likely due to the campaign settings within your AdWords account. I'll break down some of the major differences below, and hope this helps identify the lurking variable(s).

I'll work from the assumption that you're pleased with the results generated by your Overture campaign and would like to figure out how to configure your AdWords campaign to match Overture's. I'm also going to assume that a visitor to your site from an AdWords-powered pay-per-click result is likely just as qualified as one from an Overture result. This may not be entirely the case, but I don't think it accounts for the variance in ad performance you are experiencing.

Differences Between Google Adwords and Overture

1. Geotargeting: If your AdWords campaign's location targeting is set wide open, you may be paying for traffic with a very low chance of converting to leads. Double-check this in your campaign settings. Overture's ads will appear almost entirely to a US and Canadian audience. If your AdWords account is set to a wider audience than that, consider tightening it up. You may also want to consider creating an additional campaign targeting just your home state. While the traffic will be significantly lower for this campaign, the conversions should be considerably higher.

2. Language Targeting: Your Overture campaign will display ads almost entirely to an English-speaking audience. If your AdWords account is set to display ads to a broader audience, consider tightening the focus in your campaign settings.

3. Ad Syndication: What percentage of your traffic is coming through content targeting compared to search engines on AdWords? While clicks from content-targeted ads can and do convert to leads or sales for businesses, a person clicking through from an ad on a web site is not as qualified as a person who is actively searching for the services or products your business offers. I've found that this varies considerably from one industry to another. For example, if ads for an online hardware store are syndicated onto a do-it-yourself web site, the ads are likely targeting motivated customers. However, since you represent a college, your ads may be running alongside newspaper articles regarding education funding or other educational topics that are only loosely related to your marketing goals. Consider turning off content targeting for a test period or comparing your conversions rates from search- vs. content-targeted ads. You may not miss that traffic.

4. Matching Variance: It sounds like you have a feel for the various matching options used by Google and Overture. While they are quite similar in name, they will provide somewhat different results. This is most prominent with exact and broad matching, where AdWords' broad matching is a bit broader and exact matching is more exact.

- Exact Matching: Google's and Overture's matching options vary considerably, especially when it comes to term-stemming. For example, if you exact-match a phrase on Google (put the phrases in [brackets]), your ad will only show to searchers typing that exact phrase into a search engine. However, Overture's version of exact matching (their default style of matching) will also match your term to phrases beyond the exact match using their Match Driver feature. This includes matching your ad to common misspellings, plural and singular versions of the term, and the use of the term in conjunction with common words like "the" and "of." Also, Overture's "enhanced matching" feature will match your ads to terms where the searcher's words appear in your title and description but weren't necessarily bid on by you.

If you take a closer look at your converting search phrases, it's possible that you'll find your best converting terms to be the plural version of your terms. Assuming you did your keyword research using Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool (which rolls up the plural and singular terms into the singular version), then used that set of phrases to set up your Google Adwords account, you may have inadvertently skipped some of the better converting versions of your important search phrases.1

- Broad Match Variance: Overture's definition of broad matching is matching the individual words in a search phrase to searches containing all of the words in any order and anywhere within the searcher's given search phrase. For example, a broad-matched ad on the term "LED lighting" could appear when someone searches for "lighting for my home LED lights." (For more info: <http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/ac/fa/faq_mt.jhtml>.)-

AdWords will provide the same match as Overture does in the above example, but will go a step further with their expanded matching feature. Expanded matching will cause your ad to also display on terms Google considers to be synonyms, related phrases, and plurals. (For more info: <https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6136>.)

It's certainly possible that Google doesn't know your business and your prospective customers as well as you do, so consider tightening up your campaign by using phrase and exact matches. If you'd like to keep some terms wide open, consider only doing so with search phrases containing at least three words to prevent your ads from being overly matched.

Additionally, with Overture and Google, if you're using anything other than exact matching, it's important to include negative keywords (Google's term; Overture calls them Excluded Words) to prevent your ads from matching on irrelevant or poorly converting terms.

5. Competitive Bid Influence: Google's choice to use broad matching as the default matching option (listing your search phrases without "quotes" or [brackets]) has caused frustration for newbies, but has also had a painful effect on experienced pay-per-click advertisers. While you may have worked hard to research hundreds or even thousands of redundant search phrases relevant to your web site, newbies may be setting up new campaigns where they've inadvertently broad-matched themselves into competition with your ads. This can drive up your per-click cost on some terms where you may have little to no competition on Overture. Not much can be done about this, but it's something worth noting.

6. Landing Page Choices. Overture's system forces you to create a specific ad for each search phrase you place in their system. By default, this often leads to higher ad quality because advertisers are more likely to write unique ads for each search term. It also increases the odds of advertisers to send visitors to the most ppropriate landing page on their site for specific keywords. For example, your college offers a variety of different programs for students. When someone searches for a specific program you offer, you'll generally see higher conversions if you send that visitor to the appropriate program page rather than the homepage, forcing them to ig for the same content. There are two ways to address this in AdWords. Create additional Ad Groups with a tighter grouping of search phrases, or assign unique URLs at the search-phrase level. (For more info: <https://adwords.google.com/select/powerpost.html>.) A combination of both strategies will provide the highest performance along with the most detailed tracking data for stats analysis.

Working through each of the above variables should help uncover opportunities for improving the conversion rates of your AdWords campaign.

Good luck!

Ed Kohler - Haystack In A Needle - http://www.HaystackInANeedle.com/

Jill Whalen of High Rankings is an internationally recognized search engine optimization consultant and editor of the free weekly High Rankings Advisor search engine marketing newsletter.

Article by Jill Whalen, www.searchengineguide.com -    Published JuL. 2004

Sp^m -- How Much Will it Cost Your Business?   (SEM)

According to a recent study conducted by Ferris Research, a market and technology research firm specializing in messaging and collaboration, Sp^m will cost U.S. businesses over $10 billion in 2003.

Sp^m not only clogs our servers and in-boxes, but it also costs us hours and hours of lost time in productivity.

Although the estimated cost of Sp^m focuses mainly on lost productivity, this picture may be much broader than you realize.

Some of the more popular email providers, such as AOL (America Online), Yahoo! and Hotmail, are now utilizing filters to cut down on Sp^m. These filters are dumping Sp^m and/or bulk mailings into a separate location. Although this may cut down on Sp^m in your in-box, these filters are also dumping some legitimate email messages.

What's more, some hosting services not only filter the email messages, but they're also blocking entire hosting companies. For example, the blocking host may have gotten some Sp^m complaints about a few marketers that host with ABC hosting company. (Keep in mind, ABC hosting company may host thousands of sites.) Rather than block the offending marketers, the blocking host decides to blacklist the entire ABC host.

What this means is if you try to contact someone and their hosting company has blacklisted your host, your email will not go through -- it will bounce right back to you.

If you suspect you may not be receiving all of your email, contact your host and ask them if they're using Sp^m filters or have blocked entire hosting companies.

How Much Will Sp^m Cost Your Business?

How much time do you spend sorting through the Sp^m in your email each day? Add it up sometime -- I'll bet you'll find you spend a lot more time than you even realized -- time that could have been spent on your business.

If you're publishing an ezine or sending out any form of opt-in mailings, how many subscribers are actually receiving your mailings? Most-likely, not nearly as many subscribers as you may think. How many lost sales has this cost you?

How many messages, such as information requests, customer support requests, etc., have you not received due to filtering?

How many messages have you replied to that your customers or potential customers have never received due to filtering?

As customer service says a lot about your business practices, how many customers will you lose?

The list goes on and on. But the point is this, Sp^m is costing you dearly.

Protecting Your Email Address

So how can you defend yourself? Well, it depends on which side you're on -- how to protect yourself, and/or how to make sure your messages are getting through.

In order to protect yourself against Sp^m, you first need to understand how your email address is obtained.

There are many unethical businesses online that collect and sell email addresses. They use robots that travel from link to link in search of email addresses. Their customers are led to believe that these email addresses belong to individuals who want to receive mailings. However, much of the time, this isn't the case.

Never purchase a list of email addresses from anyone other than a reputable company. The only company I can recommend is Post Master Direct. http://www.postmasterdirect.com

To protect your email address from these robots, instead of displaying your address on your site, use a feedback form. Not just any type of form, but a form that doesn't display your email address within the hidden form fields. The only form I can recommend is Master Feedback. You can pick up a free copy here:
http://willmaster.com/master/feedback/index.shtml

Anytime you're filling out a form online and you're asked to provide your email address, make sure you review the site's "Privacy Policy" to ensure that your email address will not be sold or shared with a third party.

Protecting Your In-box

To protect your in-box, you can use a Sp^m filtering software program. Although there are several available online, the best one I've found is Mail Washer. This program will enable you to view all the email on your server without actually downloading it into your email program. Once you've reviewed your messages, you can create filters and bounce the Sp^m messages back to the sender. Although you can pick up the program free, consider supporting the developer and register the software for a small fee. http://www.mailwasher.net

Avoiding the Sp^m Filters

If you're sending out a mailing to an opt-in list, there are a few steps you can take to make sure your message won't trip the Sp^m filters:

1) Avoid using trigger words, such as Sp^m, fr*e, r*move, etc. Although the list is far too broad to list here, you can learn more by reading the following articles:

Sp^m Filters Run-Amuck by Timothy A. Gross
http://www.iprofitsystems.com/articles/spamfilters.html

CLIP & SAVE guide to avoiding sp^m filters by Debbie Weil
http:// www. imakenews.com/wordbiz/e_article000094161.cfm (delete spaces)

2) Avoid using JavaScript within your messages.

3) Avoid using "bad" words.

If you'd like to ensure your messages are getting through, consider opening email accounts with the popular providers. You can send your mailings to these accounts and monitor their reception. If your mailings land in the dump, you can make some adjustments or even contact the company.

If you would like to test your outgoing email messages to ensure they won't trigger a Sp^m filter, Ken Evoy offers a great service called Sp^mCheck. This free service will enable you to send a copy of your publication, or any email message, to a specific address and it will return a report of possible words that will trigger the Sp^m filters.

Send your publication including the subject and body to:
mailto:spamcheck-websource@sitesell.net

Conclusion

The Sp^m problem continues to get progressively worse. Although there isn't a simple solution to the problem, the information provided in this article should assist you in not only avoiding Sp^m, but also avoiding the filters for your legitimate mailings.

It's really a shame we're even in this position. However, we cannot allow Sp^m to continue to infiltrate our businesses. We must take the necessary steps to ensure our success.

Article by Shelley Lowery, http://www.web-source.net -    Published Jul. 2004

Search Engine Marketing Issues

Can You Increase My Traffic?

I had an interesting email exchange with someone last week that brought forth some very important issues I thought I'd share with you.

The original email went something like this:

"Can you increase the traffic to my site? Here's the URL. If you think you can, I might be interested in retaining you for your services."

My reply was very simple:

"I don't know what the current traffic to your site is, so there's no way for me to know if I think I can increase it."

So he sent me a ranking report. Not a traffic report, just a WPG ranking report. So I replied:

"You sent me a ranking report, but that still doesn't tell me how much traffic you receive, so I still can't say whether I think I can increase your traffic."

I found this little exchange interesting because the guy obviously understood that it was targeted traffic he was interested in, but because he was contacting an SEO, he assumed that rankings were the important measurement. (Either that or he just mixed up the word "ranking" with "traffic" in the first email.) At any rate, I decided to take a look at the ranking report, just for the heck of it.

The site had obviously been "optimized" for many seemingly related phrases, and according to the reports, it was ranking very well for many of them.

I imagine what had happened with this guy is that his SEO company had done what they said they would do -- get him ranked highly for some specific keyword phrases -- but he was finding out that it wasn't bringing much traffic to his site. Unfortunately, this is a very common occurrence. I've previously dubbed this "guinea pig SEO" because I like to say that my daughter's guinea pig could also get rankings for keyword phrases that nobody is searching for.

However, beyond the "guinea pig SEO" issues, there were other, more important things going on. The first was that the WPG report was run with Google as one of the engines automatically queried. This is specifically against Google's terms of service, and if they have any inkling that the owner or Webmaster of any particular site is running these reports (either WPG or any other software that doesn't go through the Google API) they can and do penalize or outright ban the site. I decided to mention this to Mr. Increase My Traffic, just in case he wasn't aware of this issue.

After spotting that, I decided to visit the site in question to see what else might be up. There was a large Flash animation and pretty much no other text on the home page. I was surprised that this page was ranking so well for the phrases I saw on the WPG report, and decided to check out the source code. Just as I suspected, there was some shady stuff going on there.

The SEO had placed hidden links in the code to a number of his other clients' sites, as well as to his own "guinea pig SEO" firm, which most likely meant that the other clients' sites all had links back to this site. It also had overstuffed Title and Meta tags, as well as a hidden H1 tag with the main keyword phrase contained within it. Since the phrase in question actually had zero searches in the last 332 million search queries (according to Wordtracker), it obviously didn't take much to get this page to rank highly for it.

Of course, the same rankings could have been easily achieved without having to use deceptive SEO practices. It turns out there were only 24 pages in Google that even used that phrase in the Title tag (2 of those were from this particular site).

Anyway, after seeing all that, I felt it was my duty to inform the site owner of what was happening on his site. Because this site discussed things of a legal nature, it seemed even more important to let him know what was happening. He emailed me back right away and asked what he should do about the search engine spam. I wrote him the following:

"If you leave it, you run the risk of being banned. I doubt in your line of work that you want to project yourself as someone who attempts to deceive the search engines. It's true that it's not illegal, but many would argue that it is unethical. And if you were aware of what your SEO was doing, then of course that makes it even worse.

But even if you didn't know, it's your site and your responsibility as far as the engines are concerned. If you get banned, going to them later and saying you didn't know isn't really going to help you.

"I would think that being associated with that SEO firm and the code they have on your page is not in your best interests. It appears that the spam is only on the front page of the site and could be easily removed. But they're going to need to remove your link that they're hiding on their other clients' sites also. Those might not get you in trouble, as anyone could hide links to other sites, but it's doubtful that the SEO will want to keep them up, and really, if I were you, I'd want them gone.

"Your next step would be to do some homework to find yourself a real SEO consultant who understands best practices and whose rates are within your budget. I assume you didn't pay much for the garbage you currently have (at least I hope you didn't), but a real SEO who doesn't use deceptive practices will probably cost you a lot more. That's how those companies stay in business; they're generally cheap because they don't have to do any real work. Just hide some links, hide some keyword stuffing and they're done. Works great until the stuff hits the fan and you're banned.

"You may want to spend some time at my forum <http://www.highrankings.com/forum>, as there are many great SEO types who know what they're doing who hang out there to help. You might find someone good there who can clean up your current mess."

He wrote back to thank me for my "sage advice" but that's the last I heard of him. The spam is still on his site as of this moment. Hopefully, he's just taking his time seeking out a professional company to work with and it will all get cleaned up soon.

Jill Whalen of High Rankings is an internationally recognized search engine optimization consultant and editor of the free weekly High Rankings Advisor search engine marketing newsletter.

Article byJill Whalen, www.searchengineguide.com -    Published Jun. 2004

Search Engine Marketing 101: What Search Engines See When They Visit Your Web Site

If you have a Web site, have you ever wondered what a search engines sees when it visits your site to add the site to its index? Do you know that it doesn't see the beautiful graphics or the fancy Web design? Do you know that it only sees the source code, or the "skeleton" of your Web site?

Do you realize that knowing this little tidbit of information and doing something about it can make a huge difference in your search engine rankings and, ultimately, the success of your online business?

One very important thing that you need to remember is: the search engines like simplicity. The simpler your Web site is, the easier it is for the engine to determine what your Web site is about. And, if the search engine can determine exactly what your Web site is about, you have a better chance at top rankings under the keyword phrases that are important for your online business.

Let's look at this concept in action with a page I recently created for one of my online businesses: Search Engine Workshops.

http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/articles/search-engine- seminars.html

As you can see, it's a very plain, simple page that was not created to be the "main" or "home" page of a Web site. Rather, it was created to pull in traffic through the keyword phrase, "search engine seminars."

What I really want you to see is the source code of the page. So, when viewing the page, click on View on the top menu bar, then Source or Source Code.

The most important part of a Web page is what appears at the very top of the page. Why? Because a search engine starts at the top of the page and begins moving down as it indexes.

So, what appears in the <head> section of your Web page is very important, because the <head> section is at the top of the page.

Let's look at the <head> section of the source code:

<HEAD>
<TITLE>Search Engine Seminars--your path to success on the
Web!</TITLE>
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="search engine seminars,
conferences, workshops, CONFERENCES, WORKSHOPS, Conferences, Workshops">
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Have you considered attending a search engine seminar to learn how to take a struggling Web site and bring it to the top of the rankings?">
</HEAD>

There are only three tags in the <head> section of this Web page: the title tag, the keyword META tag, and the description META tag. Because the title tag is in the <head> section, and because of the importance that most engines place on the tag, it is considered one of the most important tags on your page, so it should always be the first tag in the <head> section.

Look again at the <head> section of the source code (Click View, then Source).

Notice that in the title and keyword META tag, the important keyword phrase (search engine seminars) appears as the first words in the tag. In the description META tag, the keyword phrase is still toward the beginning of the tag, as opposed to the end.

In other words, where you place your keyword phrase in the tags and content of your page is important. If you place your keyword phrase toward the beginning of all of your important tags and toward the beginning of the contents, you're "proving" to the engines that the page is really about that particular topic.

I've mentioned one reason why the title tag is important, but there's another reason too. The title tag is important because it almost always appears as the title of the site in the search engine results. Your description META tag may appear in the search engine results as well and is considered important by the some of the engines. So, when you create your title and description tags, remember two things: put your keyword phrase toward the beginning of the tags, and make the tags captivating and designed to pull in traffic.

Think of it this way. If your site is #10 in the search engine rankings, but if the sites above yours haven't gone to the trouble to create appealing titles and descriptions, a search engine user may skip over those sites to visit yours.

Now, let's go back to the source code. Look for this tag, which isn't far from the <body> tag:

<IMG SRC="images/banner3.jpg" ALT="search engine seminars, search engine conferences, search engine workshops" WIDTH="220" HEIGHT="100">

This is the image, or graphics, tag for the Search Engine Workshops banner that appears at the very top of the page. Notice that the engine doesn't "see" the graphic itself. It sees the name of the graphic (banner3.jpg), and it sees the ALT text that describes the image. It sees the width and height of the graphic. But, it doesn't see the graphic itself. So, the engine doesn't know that the graphic says, "Search Engine Workshops."

Now, let's go back to the source code and look for this tag, which directly follows the image tag:

<H1 ALIGN="center"><FONT FACE="Arial">Search Engine Seminars</FONT></H1>

An <H1> tag is a heading tag, and heading tags are very important to a Web page. Try to put a heading tag at the very top of your page, if at all possible, and use your important keyword phrase in that heading tag. When you look back at my actual Web page, do you see the words "Search Engine Seminars" right under the graphic? That's the heading tag.

Now, let's go back to the source code and look for this tag:

<P><FONT FACE="Arial">Is your Web site achieving the success that . . .

This is where the contents of the Web page begin. Look on the actual Web page and find the text: "Is your Web site achieving the success that . . ." Notice that the keyword phrase (search engine seminars) appears in the first paragraph.

In other words, with all of these tags and the placement of our keyword phrase in the page's contents, we're proving to the engines that the page is really about "search engine seminars."

So, let's visit your site on the Web. View the source code. What's in the <head> section? Are your title and description tags using the keyword phrase that's important for that particular page? Are your title and description tags captivating and designed to pull in traffic? Each page of your site should have different title and description tags, and those tags should be based on the focus of that page - what that page is really about: in other words, its keyword phrase.

How many graphics do you have before the actual contents of your site? If you have a lot of graphics, navigation bars, or buttons before the contents of your page, the engine has to sort through all of that source code before it gets to the actual keyword- containing content.

Does your page contain lengthy _JavaScript or other code that pushes the important contents toward the bottom of the page? If so, it could be hindering your chances at top rankings.

Are you using a heading tag that contains your important keyword phrase toward the very top of your page? Is your keyword phrase used in the first paragraph of the page? Is it used in several places throughout the page?

Look back at my page. Notice that the keyword phrase, search engine seminars, is used as link text to describe several links. Are you using your keyword phrase to describe links that are leaving the page? If not, try to do so.

t Study your own site carefully, and apply these guidelines to your pages.

Doing whatever you can to push your important keyword phrase toward the top of the page and toward the beginning of your tags is the first step toward having a successful Web site that's ranked in the top of the search engine rankings.

Robin Nobles is Director of Training for the Academy of Web Specialists. Robin has taught several thousand students in her online and onsite search engine marketing courses during the past several years. Visit the On-lineWebTrainingto learn more about their online search engine marketing courses and software solution. For onsite training by Robin Nobles and John Alexander, visit Search Engine Workshops

By Robin Nobles - Search Engine Workshops - Copyright © 2004 -   Published May 2004

What's happening with AltaVista, AlltheWeb, Yahoo and others right now?

A number of the major engines are going through a turbulent transition period right now. If you've traveled to AltaVista, AllTheWeb, or Yahoo recently, you may be a bit confused. Merging of the three engines is well underway. Therefore, the search results of each engine are much more similar than they were in the past, but they are not always identical.

The submission options for these engines have changed as described in last month's newsletter. In case you were wondering, support for this new submission method is being added to WebPosition Gold.

As regular readers of MarketPosition know, Overture acquired AltaVista and AlltheWeb early last year. Not long after that, Yahoo acquired Overture, giving it control of all three engines. Yahoo then dropped support for Google last month and brought its new engine online based largely on Inktomi technology. The engine may have also been influenced by technology from AltaVista and AlltheWeb.

Lycos and MSN are still serving Inktomi results. Lycos still claims to be influenced by AlltheWeb, but since AllTheWeb's engine no longer exists at AllTheWeb.com, I doubt such claims will persist much longer. At least at the time of this article, MSN and Lycos appear to be returning results similar to the original Inktomi engine rather than Yahoo's newer version of that database.

You'll also notice that the three Yahoo based engines: AltaVista, AllTheWeb, and Yahoo.com are returning similar, although not always identical results. Some variation is common when engines share the same database, but where some partners are using older versions of that database, or are applying a slightly different ranking formula than the others. Don't be surprised if Yahoo decides to use its AltaVista and AlltheWeb brands at least in the short-term to test new ranking technologies. Eventually, I'd expect AltaVista and AllTheWeb to cease independent operations and simply redirect to Yahoo.com to cut operating costs and to consolidate Yahoo's long-term branding strategy.

Keep in mind MSN, while currently an Inktomi partner, continues to trudge forward in the creation of its own search engine. Ultimately, I predict we'll be left with three major "organic" (i.e., crawler or spider-based) search engines: Google, Yahoo, and MSN. These engines will supply results to their various partner sites. Those results will be passed to the visitor either unchanged or with the partner site's own twist to the source engine's standard ranking algorithm.

Not unlike today, each major engine will also cater to various regions or countries such as France, Germany, United Kingdom, Japan, China, Spain, and so forth. We will also see separate niche engines, or additional search features on existing engines to make localized search down to the city, state, and province level easier. Ultimately, consumers will expect, for example, to be able to search Google or their favorite engine and find all furniture stores within a five-mile radius.

On a parallel track to the organic search engines are the major paid or sponsored search sites. These include players like Overture, now owned by Yahoo, Adwords operated by Google, and various independent players such as LookSmart, FindWhat, and others. It would not surprise me if Microsoft acquires its own paid search technology in order to remain competitive with Google and Yahoo.

The long-term fate of dozens of auxiliary industry players is yet to be seen such as AskJeeves, which commands about an 8% market share by some accounts. Certainly, AskJeeves and others like them will be in for an uphill battle considering the size and growing popularity of Google, MSN, and Yahoo.

Another influential "auxiliary" player is the Open Directory Project operated by a vast network of volunteers. Open Directory still supplies directory-based results to many major portals including AOL, Google, Lycos, HotBot, and hundreds of others. These are the category links you see next to many of the search results at various engines. These catalogs of similar sites can be handy, for example, in quickly seeing an accurate and reasonably comprehensive list of "Web designer" sites.

The granddaddy of all directory-based catalogs, Yahoo Directory, remains Open Directory's chief rival. While Yahoo takes a strongly commercial approach to cataloging the Web, Open Directory on the other hand goes in the opposite direction. It offers its catalog 100% for free, taking its lead from the Web's popular Open Source movement. For many companies, free is hard to pass up, so Open Directory may persist, assuming they don't run out of money or allow quality to languish.

If all these changes and engine names tend to make your head spin, don't worry. We will do our best with each subsequent newsletter to keep you up to date regarding the ever-changing search engine landscape. Furthermore, WebPosition's Page Critic and its continually updated knowledge base will boil these changes and many others not mentioned here, into specific, actionable items your business needs to take to remain visible and competitive on today's search engines.

This article is copyrighted and has been reprinted with permission from FirstPlace Software, the makers of WebPosition Gold. FirstPlace Software helped define the SEO industry with the introduction of the first product to track your rankings on the major search engines and to help you improve those rankings. A free trial of WebPosition Gold is available from their Web site.

(c) Copyright 2004 NetIQ Corporation - FirstPlace Software, the makers of WebPosition Gold -  Published Apr. 2004

USA Today: Business Nets Millions with Top Google Ranking

USA Today reported that Corrugated Metals in Chicago netted "millions and millions of dollars in sales" after investing just $200/month for a top ranking in Google. This intriguing quote appeared in the February 4th article entitled: "For Google, many retailers eagerly jump through hoops"

The article went on to interview a number of businesses, most reporting great successes in both paid Google advertising as well as free top rankings acquired through the process of search engine optimization. Another interesting quote from the article:

"We get 3,000 hits monthly from Google without spending a dime," said ExperiencePlus Tours founder Rick Price. Price goes on to explain how he once spent $100,000 a year on catalogs, postage, and classifieds. According to USA Today, he now spends much of his marketing time updating his site to achieve a top ranking in Google. "We bust our butts to make Google like us," Price says.

How do these people do it? They fine-tune their Web pages to be Google-friendly. However, you must know what the search engine is looking for before you can give it what it wants. Once you do that, your page should jump to the top of the search results, and depending upon the keyword, it can attract thousands of visitors a month.

Of course, the search engines can change the way they rank pages. That means you can sometimes drop in rank as the article warns. Consequently, this requires you to monitor your rankings and to adjust your page when needed.

As many MarketPosition readers know, WebPosition was the first software product in 1997 to assist businesses in tracking their search engine rankings and to help improve those rankings. There's no more proven and more established technology for creating search engine friendly pages.

Search engine marketing is a process and it does take some work. However, as the USA Today article notes, it can be an investment with a significant pay-off and a relatively low cost to entry. That's why this category has been growing in both acceptance and popularity.

Yahoo Finally Makes the Big Change and Drops Google

Industry analysts and search engine marketers have seen it coming since last year. Ever since Yahoo acquired Overture, who had previously acquired Inktomi, FAST, and AltaVista, it was obvious that Yahoo would be dropping its long-time partner Google. After all, why buy all that search technology if you aren't going to use it?

So on February 18th, Yahoo finally brought their new database online based largely on Inktomi technology. However, the rankings are different than previous Inktomi results. Yahoo has made its own tweaks to Inktomi in a first step to call the engine its own. If you're wondering what makes this new engine tick, be sure to check out WebPosition's Page Critic, which has been updated to reflect Yahoo's latest ranking algorithm. More information will be added in the months ahead.

How will this change affect Google? According to Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder and president of technology: "Losing Yahoo as a customer won't have a significant effect on Google's finances."

More importantly, how will this change affect you? Well, you will definitely want to optimize your site for Yahoo as it now has its own crawler-based search engine technology for the first time. This new engine, like Inktomi, ranks pages based on relevance. The content of your Web site and its relevance to a particular search plays a key role in your page's ranking. Yahoo's importance cannot be understated as it counts itself among the three most popular engines on the Web: Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

MSN currently pulls its results from Inktomi, now dubbed the Yahoo Search Engine. Both Yahoo and Google license their search technology to a number of other major players that have their own levels of popularity. Therefore, Yahoo cannot simply claim two thirds of the market share because they serve results on MSN and Yahoo.com. It's a little more complicated than that. However, at a minimum, they do promise to stiffen the competition against Google.

Yahoo's New Submission Options

If you travel to Yahoo's new submission page, you'll notice some changes. The Inktomi paid inclusion options are gone, replaced with several submission related options from Yahoo. Here's a summary of what they are now offering:

Pay-for-Performance

This simply links to pay-per-click advertising options at Overture. Yahoo owns Overture, so this makes sense. For those unfamiliar with Overture.com, you bid for top rankings and the highest bidder receives the highest ranking. The advantage to this model is that you only spend as much as you feel the listing is worth and it's fairly quick and easy to do. There's no need to optimize your page's content so long as the page is relevant to the keywords you are bidding on.

The disadvantage to Overture is that you pay for every visitor you receive which may not be cost effective for all businesses and keyword categories. In addition, these listings only appear on Overture.com, and the Sponsored Results section of Yahoo and its partner sites. Most consumers view these listings as advertisements, which is after all what they are. Therefore, consumers will often skip over these listings in favor of the "real" search results displayed just below them. If they do click on a sponsored listing, they may proceed with a little more skepticism or caution compared to results that were ranked based on merit.

Site Match

Inktomi's paid inclusion program has been replaced by Site Match and for larger customers, Site Match Xchange. These services guarantee your inclusion and a refresh of your page every 48 hours. This means that Yahoo's search engine "spider" will revisit your page every 48 hours and add your latest content to its index. This can be useful if you have content that changes often, or you want to quickly test various page designs to see what will rank best.

I noticed that when I visited their submission page, they advertised a 24-hour refresh. On all other pages I saw, they still say 48 hours. Therefore, they may be planning to move soon to a refresh every 24 hours. For now, I'd assume it could take up to 48 hours until Yahoo corrects the inconsistent wording.

With Site Match, you'll pay a $49 review fee where they will check your page for spam before guaranteeing its inclusion. The review fee decreases per URL based on the number of pages you submit.

Unlike Inktomi, Yahoo now charges new paid inclusion customers 15 cents a click, and for some keywords, you may pay 30 cents or more for the traffic that you actually receive from the listing. If you are an existing Inktomi paid inclusion customer, you will not be required to pay by the click until you renew your listing.

Similar to LookSmart's policy, Site Match is not guaranteeing you a top ranking, nor are they promising you'll receive a single visitor after paying the review fee. It's still up to you to create a search engine friendly page that will be relevant and rise to the top.

Word of caution: Be careful not to submit any pages that could be viewed as spam to Site Match. They claim to have a human-being review every one of these pages for content quality and for spam. They'll also crosscheck that review with various automated checks.

Therefore, Site Match pages will fall under greater scrutiny than free submission pages. Arguably, they probably cannot afford a human appraisal of every change you might make after a live person initially reviews the page. Therefore, the greatest scrutiny will likely occur within the first few weeks of submission.

Your best strategy is to know the rules for what may be classified as spam, and play within those rules both in the short and long run. WebPosition Gold's Page Critic will keep you updated about what each engine views as spam, and for what they are looking for in a top ranking page.

Free Submission

For value-conscious marketers, there may be a silver lining relating to Yahoo's assimilation of Inktomi. Free submission may be playing a more prominent role. Over the past year or more, Inktomi has been phasing out free submissions starting with its own site and followed by its many partner sites. Only one obscure submission page on MSN remained after it was finished. During this time, Inktomi pushed their paid inclusion program almost exclusively.

With the recent changes, Yahoo has restored free submission to their main submission page. You must register your name and some other basic contact data before using it, but it is free.

Is submission even necessary with Yahoo? For most people, the answer is probably no. Do a very specific search on a unique phrase on your page to see if you appear in the index. If you were in the Inktomi index before, you will likely be in the Yahoo database today. In addition, we're seeing evidence that Yahoo is spidering the Web fairly aggressively, including billions of pages for free. They claim to index "several billion pages" now. In fact, Yahoo claims that 99% of its database is comprised of free listings. Therefore, you do not have to pay to be listed in Yahoo.

Like Google, your best strategy should be to establish third party links to your site so the search engine will find you on its own. You'll then not need to worry much about submitting except when you start a new Web site, or where Yahoo appears to be having trouble finding you. It's also a good idea to run a check periodically to make sure one or more of your pages were not lost from the index. WebPosition Gold's Reporter feature can help you with this

Yahoo Directory

Yahoo's directory listings are where it all started. At one time, these listings appeared prominently in all Yahoo search results. Therefore, when they began charging $299 per year for a site review and possible inclusion in the directory, it was worth it. Today, Yahoo visitors must opt-out of the default search and perform a directory search to find sites listed here. There's no question that people do this, but it's certainly a much smaller percentage of Yahoo's total traffic.

Therefore, inclusion in the Yahoo Directory is not as critical as it once was. However, it can still provide a link to your Web site from a reputable source. Since third-party links play a significant role on other engines, if you can spare the $299, it may still be worth the fee, particularly for less established sites. If your budget is tight, you can still submit to other directories such as Open Directory for free

Google Adds 1 Billion Pages

Google announced a new index boasting 1 billion additional Web pages on February 17th. This occurred just one day prior to Yahoo's announcement that they'd removed Google, their long-time search partner from the Yahoo search results. With the new pages, the size of Google's searchable database has increased by about one-third, or from 3.3 billion pages to 4.28 billion.

No other major engine rivals the breadth and size of Google's latest index. The good news is that there may be a better chance than ever for more of your pages to find their way into Google. Unfortunately, the age-old problem still exists for businesses appearing in this latest index. If none of your pages manage to float to the top, then who is going to know you're even in there?

This article is copyrighted and has been reprinted with permission from FirstPlace Software, the makers of Web Position Gold. FirstPlace Software helped define the SEO industry with the introduction of the first product to track your rankings on the major search engines and to help you improve those rankings. A free trail of Web Position Gold is available from their Web site.

(c) Copyright 2004 NetIQ Corporation - FirstPlace Software, the makers of WebPosition Gold -   Published Mar. 2004

Highlights of the Week: End of 1st Quarter Report: Big 3 Draw from Same Playbook

The more things change, the more they seem the same. The battle-dance for dominance between Google, Yahoo and MSN continued through the first quarter of 2004 with all three making fairly significant changes in their operations. Webmasters and search engine optimization professionals have seen a Google algo update named Austin, struggled to understand the new Byzantine submission policies introduced by Yahoo, and have read about the once-navel gazing - now chest thumping 900lb gorilla, Microsoft's inability to deal with being skunked at search several years ago. Search engine users have seen new looks at all three search tools and are (hopefully) enjoying a bevy of new features and services each player has introduced. A closer look at Google, MSN and Yahoo shows that each is offering extremely similar services to consumers as the next big-guy, only they are each doing it in slightly different ways. It also appears the Big3 are each trying to take a bit of the wind out of the sales at other commercial sites such as EBay, Priceline and ABE Books. The prize is the lion's share of a pot-o-gold representing over $10Billion in revenues and control over the flow of commercial information on the Internet.

If 2003 is considered the year SEARCH matured as an advertising medium , 2004 will be the year search engines grow into their roles as an advertising medium. Hence the most recent change in the world of search, Google's new interface.

Google 2004
Google has changed a lot over the past year. The former Rebel leader appears to have joined the Empire, or at least is toying with the dark side of The Force in a bid to make a great deal of money. Rumored to be issuing an initial public stock offering, Google's new look seems to be designed to promote services such as AdWords and Froogle, two of Google's major revenue generators while demoting the Google Directory run by the beleaguered volunteer-driving Open Directory Project. Google's new front-page has dropped the tabs that used to run across the top of the search-text window and replaced these tabs with straight text-links. The new links lead to (web) (images) (groups) (news) (Froogle) and (more>>), with the Froogle link accentuated by a "new" image. Froogle is Google's catalogue shopping index, listing product catalogues from companies around the world. While it is still currently free to submit a data-feed of your product catalog to Google, AdWords advertisements are posted to the right of the page on Froogle, making paying for an advert the best way to differentiate a business or product from the others. Another change Google has made is in the number of AdWords listings that are displayed when a keyword phrase is searched. Most searches for commercially popular keywords will produce a page with about twice as many AdWords adverts. The color and tone of how AdWords advertisements are shown has also changed with the removal of the colored boxes that graphically separated the various ads. This move makes the ads seem less distinct from the traditional listings and may serve to increase click-through rates. Perhaps the biggest change behind the scenes is that Google is obviously backing away from the Open Directory Project as listings at the volunteer run directory are not being updated as frequently as they had in the past. Google used to give a slight ranking bonus to sites that were listed in the Open Directory Project as the ODP is a live-human edited directory and the site in question had to be reviewed by a trained ODP editor. The Google directory was extremely useful to SEOs as a means of seeing if a site was banned by Google or had simply been demoted in the rankings. The Directory displayed an indication of the PageRank Google had assigned a site. If that PageRank (as shown in the Directory) was zero, it was often assumed the site had been de-indexed on the main search engine. If the PageRank displayed at the Directory was visible, it was often safe to assume the site remained in the index and would eventually move up again.

The bottom line with Google is that it is becoming more visibly commercial then any other time in its history. In order to draw extra attention to a listing and to compete against the big players who tend to have large enough link-densities to drive smaller players out of the Top20, many small businesses will feel the need to turn to AdWords. Google is hoping to take a portion of the online-shopping market with Froogle and is poised to threaten sites such as EBay and Priceline.

If 2003 is considered the year SEARCH matured as an advertising medium , 2004 will be the year search engines grow into their roles as an advertising medium. Hence the most recent change in the world of search, Google's new interface.

Yahoo 2004
Two items dominated news from Yahoo this quarter. The first was Yahoo's introduction of its own in-house search engine in mid-January. For the past two years, Yahoo has primarily pulled its results from the Google database. As Overture and AdWords are direct competitors, and the Inktomi database is as strong as Google's, Yahoo switched from outsourcing results to self-generating results. This move has been a long-time coming. Yahoo spent all of 2003 preparing for 2004. Through a series of acquisitions of several smaller search tools such as Overture, Inktomi, AlltheWeb and AltaVista, Yahoo now controls the largest set of search related technologies in the field. While still a portal-type site, Yahoo is busy paring down its interface in order to present a less cluttered window for search users. Yahoo has the most "extra" incentive services for its users such as Yahoo Shops, Yahoo email and the delivery of Personalized items such as business, sports and general news. Yahoo leads the way when it comes to service-extras but recently followed the path of LookSmart as it introduced a new paid-submission service that blends a Yahoo review fee with an assigned cost-per-click for each site a small business webmaster submits to the new Site Match program. Larger sites are assigned a site-specific fee based on the number of pages indexed by the search engine through a live XML data-feed through the Site Match Xchange program. While Yahoo continues to offer a free-submission option, the benefits of paying for submission often outweigh the savings of free submission in many ways, the most important of which is the frequency of spider visits afforded to sites submitted via SiteMatch or Site Match Xchange. Yahoo introduced this new system in the hopes of consolidating what was six unique submission policies (one for each search-property owned by Yahoo) into one over-arching policy. The SEO jury is still out on whether this new system will produce greater benefits for client sites but thus far, the reaction in SEO forums has been one of concern boarding on outrage. Yahoo also recently introduced a new Yahoo News feature that is very similar to Google's award winning GoogleNews. Yahoo is also trying to mount competition to Google's Froogle with the purchase of European comparison shopping tool, Kelkoo. Yahoo and Google are in a race to produce the most relevant LOCAL SEARCH results. Lastly, Yahoo is about to introduce a Blogging service currently being tested in Korea, much like Google's current Blogger feature.

The bottom line with Yahoo this quarter is simple. Inclusion will become more expensive for everyone and may present severe competitive disadvantages for small business owners. Yahoo is trying to grow and appears to be using Google as its main benchmark of growth. While still the clear leader in technologies, Yahoo is playing a catch-up game against Google.

MSN 2004
"Frankly, Google kicked our butts..." Bill Gates - Davos Switzerland, January 2004. Bill Gates has never been called a sore loser, not for long anyway. This is likely because his company, Microsoft tends to avoid leaving any other winners standing after it takes an interest in a technology or sector. According to most reports, Gates is furiously pushing for a bigger, better and unmatchable search tool... NOW! While he may have to wait until 2005 for MSN's new technologies to be ready (far later than reported here last week), his message has been heard loud and clear in Redmond Washington and around the search world. MSN is developing a search tool rumored to be modeled on the best successes of others in the field. When introduced, the new search engine will have the natural language intelligence of AskJeeves, a feature promoting Blogging, a product and service search, differing levels of localization and personalization, and of course, a News aggregator, much like Yahoo and Google.

The bottom line with MSN remains to be seen but we know its owner(s) have the largest corporate resources in the world to draw from and have no moral issues or domestic legal fears about using this strength to subvert (and often subtract) the competition.

Others 2004
What about the rest of the major search tools out there? As far as independence goes, the pack has been thinned with considerable gusto by the Big3. Two years ago there were several independent algorithmic search tools. Today we can only think of Lycos and Ask Jeeves, both of which are struggling to define themselves with new technologies and tools. Another interesting search tool that should get more attention is Vivisimo however they seem to be focusing on producing industry or sector specific search tools more than they seem to be focusing on producing a search tool that could challenge the Big3.

Overall Bottom Line
Search as an application has become the second most used tool on the web, after Email. Search has been discovered by advertisers as the least expensive means of reaching a pre-targeted consumer audience. Put these two factors together and a new reality emerges. As an advertising medium, search is about to become a lot more expensive. There are a wide array of new services, features, listing opportunities and, of course fees. Plotting a search engine advertising campaign has become far more intricate as there are now enough unique options to distribute a client's message through. Search Engine Optimization has become far more technical and difficult and costs associated with new challenges are likely to be passed to new clients as SEOs move into their new roles as advertising executives. There are several new tasks per client-file for SEOs to work through as a strong campaign must combine great text with strong link-building services.

The world of search will become much more animated over the next three months and it will be interesting to compare this quarterly report with the next one in early July.

Article by Jim Hedger, SEO Manager, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com -    Published Mar. 2004

Highlights of the Week: STABILITY! For Now at Least...

From Florida to Austin, Redmond Wa to Sunnyvale Ca :: What a long, strange trip it's been...
Ask any expectant parent how long they feel nine months is. Nine months is approximately 270 days which makes 3/4 of a year. That's a fairly long time in our lives. Fortunes have been made in shorter times. As survivors of the tech-meltdown of 2000 remember, fortunes have also been lost in less time. The past nine months have been extremely frustrating for many webmasters and businesses dependent on search engine advertising. Since the beginning of 2003 the search engine world has been redrawn with mergers, new technologies, new fee structures and, the most impact, new ranking algorithms. Many of the changes in the industry have come without any warning, the most relevant example being Google's November Florida Update. The impact on the sector and those relying on the sector has been enormous but, aside from news we know is coming, it looks like we've seen the bulk of changes for the next few months! Before a collective sigh of relief can be heard from professionals in the SEO industry, we need to remember, this time is more like the eye of a hurricane than a beautiful sunny day. In other words, we may be on the plateau but there's still an ever changing mountain to climb. A topic we've been tackling over the past week involves how to plan for future changes today in order to best position our clients. While we maintain a fairly well polished crystal ball, there's no way to really know how change will effect the business of SEO. The best way to insulate clients from a tidal wave of change is to provide a buffer of information. Here's what we know is coming in the future...

MSN to introduce its own search engine in July 2004!
It's big. It's powerful. It has been one of the prime focuses of the world's most powerful corporation. As of July, it will be in your office, school and living room. Microsoft has announced that as of July 2004, it will be using its own search engine to power results found at MSN.Com/. Claiming to be "much further along in relevancy", MSN product manager, Karen Redetzki told Forbes magazine last week, "MSN was making steady progress and that July's launch will reflect results driven by a revamped search engine with better algorithms." We know that Bill Gates dislikes anything that presents a challenge to Microsoft supremacy in any field, especially those fields covering gold mines. He was quoted at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland saying "Google kicked our butts". We know that MSN has a highly active spider known as MSN-bot that has been visibly compiling information by visiting websites multiple times per month. We also know that the new search tool was supposed to be introduced in conjunction with the new operating system code-named "Longhorn". Longhorn's release date was originally scheduled for late 2004 but was pushed to June of 2005. Most recent rumors say Longhorn will not be ready until mid-2006! Clearly a decision was made in Redmond to push the development of MSN-Search forward over the development of the new O/S. In their competition with Google and Yahoo, MSN is about to show us what an 800lb gorilla looks like.

Google improves search relevancy and starts to challenge Yahoo on Local Search
Google has appeared stable for over four weeks now! Since July 2003, Google had been presenting somewhat questionable results, a problem that seemed to cascade on them until November's Florida Update when the entire index turned itself upside down. Google has greatly improved the relevancy of its results over the past two months. While there are still thousands of webmasters who might disagree with me, based on the continued poor performance of their sites in Google, for the most part, Google's results are almost as good as they were before the infamous Florida update of November. Google is still making minor tweaks to its ranking algorithm, at least one of which is obviously designed to limit the power of Bloggers to "Google-Bomb", or game Google's results by getting 20,000 of your closest friends to put a common link with common anchor text on their sites. Google also appears to be experimenting with the value of other incoming links but it is still too soon to tell exactly what they are doing here as we have only seen one major update of Google's database this month.

Yahoo shows Yahoo! WebRank
Yahoo has named its algorithm and introduced a toolbar to go with it. Yahoo is calling its algorithm "WebRank", (not to be confused with Google's "PageRank"). WebRank seems similar to PageRank in more ways than the name. Yahoo is said to be measuring the value of incoming links, the time spent on a site by visitors, visitor traffic through a site, and the arrangement and ratio of keywords appearing on a page or site. Exactly how Yahoo measures the value of an incoming link is still an unknown quantity but it is likely safe to assume Yahoo will value site elements in a similar fashion to Google. We know that Yahoo-Slurp will operate much like Google-Bot by following links and recording information found on pages it comes across. It is not known if paid-inclusion through Yahoo Site-Match will have an overt effect on WebRank but the increased frequency of spidering given to a URL that has paid for inclusion should, logically, make a huge difference.

Search Engine Advertising in General
We know that revenue generation is the leading driver of search engine development among the biggest players in the sector. MSN, Yahoo and Google are all trying to position themselves to capture as much of this rapidly growing revenue as they possible can. Google and Yahoo accomplish this primarily through the sale of contextual advertising opportunities such as AdWords and Overture. MSN will continue to display contextual advertising on its search tool as well but it is not known if or when they will develop an in-house contextual advertising program. Currently, MSN is pulling its contextual ads from Overture. Many of the smaller players in the search engine world are also introducing contextual advertising programs including Lycos, Looksmart and Kanoodle. Unless something major happens in the next seven days, we'll look at contextual advertising and the impact on search engine marketing in next week's edition.

The Eye is Quite
As an industry, search is growing up and, like most adolescents, is defining itself through decisions and actions taken during its adolescent phase. Search is the second most used application on the Internet, (after Email), and the only way to make any sort of sense of an environment that now has more unique URLs than the planet has people. The industry will continue to change as time goes on but for now, it looks like we might have a short break in the rapidity of change. Somewhat like the eye of a hurricane.

Article by Jim Hedger, SEO Manager, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com -    Published Mar. 2004

Weekly Quick Tip: The Google Basket

At some point or another we have all heard the old adage, Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Until very recently site owners, webmasters, SEO's, and pretty much anyone who had anything to do with the Internet was concerned with marketing on one property: Google.

This made a lot of sense. Google sold it's results to many engines including Yahoo which meant that it provided the results for about 80% of all worldwide searches. While putting all one's eggs in one basket may not be exceptionally wise, this basket was so large, and so rich, that there didn't seem to be much choice. Constantly we at StepForth would get calls from people wanting to know how to get their rankings higher on Google, with little or no concern for the other engines.

But today things are different. Yahoo now shows it's own results as opposed to Google's. MSN now gets its results from Inktomi (ironically, Inktomi is owned by Yahoo). Google's popularity, as far as % of searches performed on its database, has significantly declined.

The latest Nielson NetRatings (January 2004) show that while Google is still in the lead, it is no longer the dominating power that it once was. Google is currently the search engine destination for 39.4% of all searchers with Yahoo coming in second with 30.4% and MSN at 29.6%. In fact, if we consider that Yahoo owns Inktomi and that MSN draws its results from Inktomi, Yahoo is now the strongest force in the search world.

What is important to conclude from this is that, while Google is still a highly relevant and important factor in optimizing your website, it is no longer the end-all-be-all. There are now 3 major players. Of these three the trends seem to show that Google will further decline, Yahoo will continue to grow it's properties and influence, and MSN will be launching its own search engine in the next year-or-so, which will further shake things up as Microsoft makes a major play on the search engine market.

For those of you who have until recently, been concerned only with Google, it's time to move some of your eggs before the basket shrinks too much and your eggs hit the floor.

Article by Dave Davies, Marketing Manager, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com -    Published Mar. 2004

Major Player Updates: Google looks local :: MSN inks new LookSmart

Google Looks Local.

Google is beta testing an extraordinary new tool, Google Local Search. The test is limited to sites from the United States but, if and when Google introduces this feature internationally, it could pose a serious challenge to the publishers of local Yellow Pages directories.

Results from Google Local Search are divided into three column. The first shows the name and phone number of listings. The second column shows the street address. The third column is the most interesting as it displays the website the listing was culled from along with a link to related sites. As a Canadian and a child of the 1980's, one of the only US zip codes I know by heart is "90210". As a 14 hour a day IT worker, one of the most important uses of the Yellow Pages is finding a good pizza delivery. Combining the two produced this list.

MSN Inks New LookSmart Deal.

MSN has inked a deal with LookSmart to display LookSmart results in place of Inktomi results from time to time. The deal, which was finalized early this week, allows MSN to transfer from results drawn from the Inktomi database to results fed by LookSmart whenever MSN feels it is necessary, for whatever reason.

One of the easiest ways of telling if the results you see on MSN are from LookSmart is to look in the top right hand corner of the results page and see the number of sites associated with the keyword phrase. If the number is smaller, the results are most likely drawn from LookSmart. At this time, it is not known why MSN would want to draw results from LookSmart, however the deal does add much needed revenue to LookSmart's beleaguered bottom line.

Article by Jim Hedger, SEO Manager, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com -    Published Mar. 2004

Google and Yahoo :: What works well and what won't

Last week I wrote about how we plan out our search engine placement campaigns. The past few months have been an interesting time in the world of search engine marketing but now the dust seems to be settling. Google has appeared relativity stable for the past month and the SEM world now has a better handle on the submission fees introduced by Yahoo two weeks ago. Now that we have survived the changes and absorbed an extraordinary amount of information we need to adapt to the new basic steps required to achieve the Top Placements on Google and Yahoo, the two most important places to place. There are a few new basic rules webmasters and search engine optimizers need to know and a number of old-rules that remain important. There are a few new techniques that may cost client's money if you choose to pursue them. There are also a number of new loopholes worth looking at, some of which might save you or your clients a great deal of money.

Google's Newest Needs
Google remains the only major search engine that does not mix paid-submission/inclusion results with its traditional (or organic) listings. Submission to Google is easily accomplished by either simply providing a link to the website from another site already in Google's database, or by directing Google to the INDEX page of the site by entering the URL here. Before submitting the site to Google, there are several elements you will want to pay attention to.

Make certain the titles and description tags match the content. The best titles include an incident of the targeted keyword phrase for search engine spiders to consume and also include the specific topic of the page in question. The description should contain several phrases culled from the body text of the page. The keyword meta tag should include popular misspellings of specific keywords.

Google-Bot follows text links. Be certain the website is open to full spidering by including text links to every major page in the site either through a sitemap appended to the end of the website, or through a text-based navigation map generally found at the bottom of each page in the site. For larger sites, it is a best practice to include both mapping techniques.

Obtain as many relevant incoming links as possible. This step is critically important as the "new" Google places very high weight on the number and quality of incoming links. Recently, several sites with high page-ranks have taken to selling links, thus making links a commodity. While Google officially frowns on the purchasing of links, sometimes spending money on a large set of links is what it takes to get the strong placements at Google. Costs can range from $250/month to over $5000/month. These costs must be weighed against the benefits of a Top10 listing at Google but, if sufficient ROI is there, spending the money may be the best option.

Update important pages in the website frequently. Google continues to reward sites with fresh content that is updated on a fairly regular basis. At StepForth, we use our news and blog sections to accomplish this.

Yahoo's New Needs
Yahoo has changed significantly in the past few months, most notably in that Yahoo is now its own search engine and does not display data culled from outside sources. That said, Yahoo has a large number of internal resources to call upon. Last year, Yahoo purchased many of the most well known search tools including Overture, Alta Vista, AlltheWeb, and the Inktomi database. Yahoo has consolidated the various submission programs offered across the network of search-sites it now owns. This consolidation was the topic of last week's feature article in this space. Before submitting to Yahoo and its family of sites, webmasters and SEOs should be certain the following elements have been optimized efficiently. Webmasters should keep in mind that in some cases, a live-human will review the site so before submitting to Yahoo, double check the content and optimization work.

Much like any other search engine, Yahoo pays close attention to the title and description meta tags, looking for topical relevancy in both elements. As with Google, the best titles include at least one target keyword phrase and a mention of the specific topic addressed by the page the title is applied to. Similarly, a well written description tag is important to Yahoo. Lastly, while we would not spend too much energy on the keyword meta tag as it does not carry much power, we believe Yahoo gives the keyword meta tag a bit of relevance.

According to Overture (owned by Yahoo) spokesperson Jennifer Stephens, Yahoo's spider, SLURP, will act much like Google-bot in that it will follow each text-link it sees on a site and record the information on the pages it finds. It is therefore extremely important that webmasters and SEOs leave clear paths through the website for Yahoo's spider to follow.

Keyword densities had a fairly significant effect at Inktomi and that seems to have carried through to Yahoo. Keyword densities refers to the ratio between the number of keywords as measured against non-keywords used in the body text, title, link-anchor text, and meta tags. This ratio can vary from sector to sector but is often a key in getting better placements than your competitors.

Submissions to Yahoo are radically different today than they were in years past. Last week's article discussed paid submissions to Yahoo via Overture's Site Match and Site Match XChange programs. Yahoo also allows for unpaid submissions but does not respider sites that have not paid submission fees nearly as often as it respiders sites that do pay the fees. Since it costs so much to submit to Site Match, have your site reviewed, and you still have to pay a per-click fee for each click-through, webmasters of sites that will not change frequently might want to take advantage of the free-submit option. Here's the big tip on Free-Submit at Yahoo, submit each page in the site, one by one. You should probably space this process out over a few days just to keep the folks at Yahoo from thinking you are taking advantage of them. ;)

These are just a few of the rules as we read them this week. Please remember that this is a time of flux and these rules may change in the coming weeks as both Google and Yahoo tighten their algorithms. There is always the chance that Yahoo will make changes to its submission and click-through fee structure as well.

Article by Jim Hedger, SEO Manager, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com -    Published Mar. 2004

Highlights of the Week: Search Engine Marketing Campaign Planning

The search engine marketing environment is undergoing enormous changes as the industry and the Internet mature. The changes we've seen over the past six months are only the tip of a much larger iceberg as new technologies and innovations on established ideas radically alter how we look for information and how that information is delivered to us by search engines. For marketers and advertisers in the traditional world of print and broadcast media, change happens slowly, generally with enough warning to allow for long-term decisions and campaign planning. On the Internet however, change happens at light-speed and alterations to search engine algorithms, fees, services and listing distribution can literally happen overnight. These rapid changes present several planning issues for search engine advertisers and the marketers who represent them, especially for those running active campaigns.

"It is a bad plan that admits of no modification."- Publilius Syrus (~100 BC)

Most readers will remember November 16th, the day the Florida Update was implemented at Google. In less than 48-hours, Google's results were radically altered and literally millions of websites which enjoyed prominent placements appeared to vanish from Google's listings. Two months later, Google made another obvious tweak to their algo, resulting in more changes and dislocation of many websites. Last week, Yahoo announced a conglomeration of its paid-inclusion and cost-per-click programs that continues to create buzz in the SEM world. Six days ago, Ask.Com announced the acquisition of the once popular search engine Excite. Today, Yahoo unveiled a local-search feature that combines maps with search results. Sometime in the coming months, MSN is going to unveil its own, proprietary search engine. In short, there is so much going on it is difficult for anyone, even the professional search engine marketers to keep up. Imagine trying to outline a six-month campaign or trying to explain the impact of these changes to a client. While the best laid plans of mice and men often produce unexpected outcomes, it is still very important to map out your plans and intentions for a search engine placement campaign. Here's a glimpse into our planning process as it works today (March 10, 2004).

"If anything is certain, it is that change is certain. The world we are planning for today will not exist in this form tomorrow." - Philip Crosby, Reflections on Quality

Step 1 :: Keyword and Competition Research (2 - 6 hours)
These may seem like separate steps but in our methodology, they must be conducted in conjunction with each other. As search engine marketers, our perceptions of what constitutes a competitive businesses is often slightly different from those of our clients. While ABC Widgets and XYZ Widgets may have a fierce rivalry for clients in the mainstream world one or the other might not have a website or they might not be competing for search engine placements under the exact same keyword phrases. Our idea of competition is found on Google, MSN and Yahoo under the Top10 placements for a specific keyword phrase or a set of phrases. On one hand, we don't really know who the competition is until we research the keywords we are targeting while on the other hand, the companies indicated by our client as important competitors often help us find keyword phrases to research, recommend and target.

Step 2 :: Cost Benefit Analysis (2 - 4 hours)
Every day for the past seven days I have fielded phone calls from concerned clients. This week they are thinking about the new fee structure introduced by Yahoo and the impending costs associated with these new fees. With Yahoo stating they will charge $0.15 to $0.30 per click for sites participating in the Site Match program, and costs between $0.15 to $1.00 per click for much larger sites feeding data to Yahoo through the Site XChange program, businesses need to know the least expensive methods of getting prominent placements. In order to provide the best possible advise, StepForth is now conducting a cost-benefit analysis for all new campaigns and will be applying this analysis to currently existing ones.

The major factors in relation to Yahoo/Overture placements involve the actual costs associated with the new fee structure. Even after signing up for Site Match, paying the review fee and agreeing to the cost-per-click fees that will be charged against the listing, Top20 placements will still depend on good site optimization. As any honest SEO will tell you, search engine optimization is a kin to loading dice. Getting the placement is still a roll of the dice but at least we can help weigh those dice on your behalf. So, SEO is a good bet for front page placement at Yahoo but we know of a 100% sure bet, Overture. There are several examples where the cost-per-click charges that will be imposed by Yahoo will be higher than the third place bid-per-click at Overture. With the top 3 bid listings at Overture displayed on the front page of Yahoo and other Yahoo owned search engines, the best option for our client (in this scenario) would obviously be to pursue Overture advertising and avoid rolling the dice on SEO/Yahoo cost-per-click. Not only will the costs be lower, front page placement is guaranteed as long as Overture and Yahoo retain the distribution agreement that displays Overture ads at Yahoo. We have a general idea of costs existing clients will face by taking their average number of visits per day, dividing it against the approximate 41% market share Yahoo currently enjoys, and multiplying the dividend by $0.15 or $0.30, depending on the client's business sector. Please note, we realize how unscientific this method may be but it does offer our clients at least some approximation of the long-term costs of their campaigns. This is an oversimplified view of our analysis but it does express our basic premise, there is almost always a less expensive option to find for the clients.

Step 3 :: Optimize for Inktomi/Yahoo and Link Build for Google (8 - 24 hours)
Our current SEO methods have us optimizing for Inktomi / Yahoo and link-building for Google. The thinking behind this method is based on the behaviors of Yahoo, MSN and Google. Both Yahoo and MSN are currently drawing from the Inktomi database though we know this will change in April as Yahoo will be drawing from its own database, (which will likely be drawn from sites already included at Inktomi). According to Yahoo spokesperson Jennifer Stephens, Yahoo-Slurp (Yahoo's spider) will act much like its famous cousin Google-bot by crawling sites, following every link found, and incorporating the information found on these pages into its database of spidered sites. Google-bot continues to work the way it always has but the information it gathers is being measured in different ways than it was before. Links are the most important factor (of nearly 100 unique factors) to Google rankings. Assuming the site is well optimized for Yahoo and Inktomi, good, strong links will produce good, strong placements at Google. It is therefore summarized simplest in the phrase "optimize for Yahoo, link-build for Google"

Step 4 :: Submit and Monitor (72 hours - 6 weeks)
After all is said and done, the site needs to be submitted to the search engines and monitored for several months to see what happens. During the second phase we conducted a cost-benefit analysis so we have a plan for how we want to submit the site and can offer reasonable expectations to our clients for the amount of time it will take to be spidered and hopefully appear in the Top20 or Top10. At this point, we begin monitoring the site on a daily basis starting 72-hours after first submission. By that time, we expect to see evidence of search-engine spiders appearing in server logs and may even see a debut placement for the site. One of the greatest benefits of a paid-inclusion program is the increased frequency of spider-visits to a website. Most paid-inclusion programs promise repeat spider visits every 48 - 72 hours, making the SEO job a bit easier as we can see the effects of tweaks in fairly short order.

An important submission note: Most search engines continue to support free-submissions however preference is shown to sites which have paid their inclusion fees with a far greater frequency of visitors. Jennifer Stephenson from Overture said that sites participating in Site Match will be revisited every 48 hours while sites that are found by the Yahoo-Slurp spider and are added to the database will be revisited approximately once each month.

Step 5 :: Client/Sector Communication
In times of great change, the one constant will be people wanting to know what the heck is going on. Businesses of every size need to know how their money is being spent and what factors might effect how that money is spent. All humans react better to known quantities than they do to unknown quantities. Clients who feel broad-sided by changes are generally less than happy clients as many of us in the SEO sector found in November. Even though we were broad-sided by Google's Florida Update many clients expected us to KNOW what was going on. One of our saving-graces at StepForth was our level of communication with clients and the fact that we honestly stated that we did now know but would work to find out. Always tell the truth to your clients. They will never accept it if you try to bluff your way through but will almost always accept honest answers, even if they don't particularly like the facts (or lack thereof) presented to them. When major change happens, we write about it here and issue a client-wide bulletin.

Change Happens
The information age has brought about the greatest changes to human interaction since the end of the Dark Ages. The information age, as an era is less than fifty years old. Change happens very quickly these days and that pace of change is quadrupled on the Internet. Even in the midst of rapid change, planning is the best part of execution. Aside from providing a loose road-map, the very act of planning helps perfect your plans.

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." - Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)

Article by Jim Hedger, SEO Manager, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com -    Published Mar. 2004

Major Player Updates: Ask Jeeves

AskJeeves Gets Some Muscle
Further to my AskJeeves Exclusive posted last week there have been some significant changes in the AskJeeves empire. For one thing it doubled in size on March 5th as it bought Interactive Search Holdings, a privately held company in Irvington N.Y. with over $100 million in annual revenues and 200 employees for between $362 million US. Interactive currently owns a family of popular web sites including Excite.com and iWon.com. As of this purchase, Ask owns the "12th-busiest group of Web sites in January, attracting a total of 23.8 million unique visitors, according to comScore Media Metrix, a research firm. AskJeeves ranked as the 26th popular destination with 15.6 million visitors." (from CNews) With this purchase, AskJeeves has just increased its market share to approximately 7% of the search engine industry, a significant leap from the 3.1% that it had as of November 2003.

In my March 3rd interview with Jim Lanzone, VP of product management at AskJeeves, Jim mentioned that AskJeeves "strategy is to grow" and that Ask plans on "going it alone" by focusing on "our technology, partnerships and user base." I now have no doubt that he was inwardly chuckling as he told me that considering the momentous changes only days away. In any case, Ask is now in a better position to make some ripples in the Google/Yahoo ocean, it should be very interesting to see what happens next.

Article by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com -    Published Mar. 2004

Highlights of the Week: New Trends in Search Engines and SEO

The past year has been one of major transition in the search engine industry. Changes to the landscape have been enormous with mergers, acquisitions, and the easing of several formerly big-players out of the sector or, in the case of AltaVista, Lycos and LookSmart, into the minor leagues. We've seen new technologies and revenue models being tested by search firms, along with fresh promises of personalized ad-delivery through contextual placement. While there is no end in sight for changes in this evolving medium, this is a good time to examine the impact of such upheaval on the state of website marketing and search engine placement.

The biggest recent shift in the industry is the steady erosion of Google's dominance over the past eight months. In mid-July, the SEO community started to notice subtle changes in Google's ranking algorithm. At that time, Google had an absolute lock on the search engine world with some form of involvement in over 76% of all searches conducted globally. By the time Google released its infamous Florida Update in mid-November, Google's lock-hold was slipping. At that time, Google was the main listings provider for a host of Internet properties including the gigantic search-portal Yahoo!. That changed recently when Yahoo discontinued their relationship with Google in place of their in-house database, Inktomi. With the loss of distribution through Yahoo!, Google now fuels approximately 48% of all search traffic, with the bulk of the remainder split between Yahoo and MSN, both of which are currently fed by Inktomi. (Please note: Yahoo will be moving away from Inktomi in mid-April in favor of their own paid-inclusion database.) While Google continues to enjoy a higher viewership than any other search tool, it has lost a great deal of distribution power since being dumped by Yahoo!. The bottom line here is that there are now three major search engines as opposed to just one and SEO strategies need to change to meet the new environment. Last year, clients were strictly concerned with Google rankings, knowing full well that good Google rankings were a sure-fire ticket into Yahoo. SEO-Reaction: This year, SEOs will need to concentrate on a mixture of strong-keyword enriched copy in order to please Inktomi, along with a well thought-out link-building campaign to please Google. The re-emergence of Yahoo and MSN as serious players in the search industry is beneficial to advertisers and webmasters as competition and the corresponding increase in consumer choices tend to produce better products and services in the long run.

Bigger, Better, Undercut and
The validity of the truism about competition driving innovation and producing better products and innovations is demonstrated by the number of new services and innovations introduced over the past twelve months. Search is becoming far more technical and, in many ways, far more specific. Localization and personalization are two of the new common buzzwords in Internet marketing. Localized search results promise increased relevance to the searcher by delivering search results from sources within a reasonable traveling distance such as a postal/zip-code or telephone area-code. Personalized search results promise listings based on specific interests or behaviors of the individual searcher, or the computer used to conduct the search. An early example of a search tool designed to deliver personalized search results is Eurekster. Eurekster bases it's results on two major factors. The first is the user's personal behavior. The second is the behavior of friends and others belonging to a social or work grouping. The basic idea is that groups share common interests. Weighing a search-query by those interests may produce better, more personalized search results. SEO-Reaction: In order to adapt to these two innovations, website marketers and SEOs will need to add highly specific elements to a client's website such as geo-specific metatags and text, and corporate identifying information such as full street addresses and telephone numbers. Website marketers will also need to add features to websites making them more useful to individual searchers such as newsletters, local-promotions and blogs to make their site relevant to specific users in order to present a level of personalized attention that will keep viewers coming back, or at least keep the client's website in the minds of search engine users.

The big three are using these and other features to try to undercut each other's level of service offerings, including blogging, news aggregators, email and instant-messaging, and a whole host of tool-bars. It is only a matter of time until someone introduces a new technology or search tool that re-invents the way we relate to information retrieval. Both IBM and MSN are developing deep-crawling spiders that will certainly expand the scope of search. IBM is developing the Webfountain tool and MSN is slated to release its new search tool based on the coming Longhorn operating system. These tools will include Excel sheets, Word docs, emails, and other documents found on a hard drive that a user has viewed, in search results for that specific user.

Evolution or Bust
Over the past three years, search engine marketing has become the fastest growing advertising medium in the world. New SEO firms are emerging and established SEO firms, like StepForth are growing rapidly. Website owners and webmasters are advised to shop around before choosing an Internet marketing provider. Check out several SEO websites and compare service offerings. Ask serious questions and don't be afraid to challenge an SEO's knowledge of the environment. With change comes confusion and we are noting a number of new firms playing on that confusion in order to see short-term gains. A new company in our area will take $200 from clients in order to add their URL to an automated submitter. As difficult as it may be to believe, there are still millions who fall for that old, better living through automation argument. Another pitfall to watch out for is hiring a company that is not prepared to evolve their services to meet new technical innovations. As the search world changes, good, honest SEO's are prepared to adapt and tell their clients exactly how that evolution will take place and why.

Article by Jim Hedger, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com-    Published Feb. 2004

Major Player Updates

Latest Statistics Shows that Search Engines Are More Popular than Ever
Just when you thought that search engines couldn't get any more popular! January's Nielsen/NetRatings Internet report showed that search engines reached an unprecedented 114.5 million unique visitors or 39 percent of the U.S.A. population.

The report also outlined January's top five search properties which highlights just how quickly the gap between Google and Yahoo! could diminish in months to come: Google (59 million visitors), Yahoo! Search (46 million), MSN Search (45 million), AOL Search (23 million), and Ask Jeeves (13 million).

According to the report, online shopping this 2003 holiday season presented a wider gap of use among the top search properties: 36% used Google to shop, 25% used Yahoo! Search, 14% used MSN, and only 5% shopped on AOL and Ask Jeeves.

The summary? As of this report Google was still fiery hot for both online shoppers and the casual searcher but the report shows that Yahoo! has a fighting chance to take a major bite out of Google's market share over the next year. Unless something absolutely mind blowing occurs at Google over the next year, I expect Yahoo! will be neck and neck with Google by the next shopping season.

Ask Jeeves is Getting More Relevant as it Slowly Releases New Advances
It seems that the Ask empire has been quietly innovating while the search engine world focused on the ever public battle between the top 3 search properties. Recently Ask launched "Smart Search" which VP Jim Lanzone noted as "more of an ideology than a brand name". Smart Search has been implemented to improve the natural-language processing that Ask Jeeves made its name on since its inception. In fact, our informal research at StepForth points to a very admirable job on their part. Type in just about any question into the Ask search field and you will more often than not (finally) get a highly relevant answer. There was a time where the results were simply bunk for any reasonably technical question, however, it appears that Smart Search was an incredibly worthwhile endeavor. Does this mean that Ask will become a going concern again? In a world where high relevancy rules they certainly would but it is anyone's guess if they are up to the task of siphoning Google's or Yahoo's market share that is so heavily based on user habit.

Article by Ross Dunn, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com -    Published Feb. 2004

Return to Top

Search Engine Optimizing

SUBJECTS

How I reached #1 in Yahoo! ® Part Two

There's more than Google in the search engine world

Dispelling Some SEO Myths

Good Google - Writing for the most powerful robot in the world

Microsoft gets out of Vapourwear business and shows up in search

Black Hat/White Hat

Algorithm Update? Don't Panic

Targeting Generic Search Words

"Even if you are on the right track, you will still get run over if you just sit there."

(Will Rogers)

Title Tags, Meta Descriptions and Keywords

Starting Point for SEO

Common-sense Search Engine Optimization

5 Difficult Technologies or Techniques for SEOs

Get a sneak preview of Microsoft's highly anticipated MSNBot!

The Top 10 Worst SEO Tactics

Anatomy of a Search Engine Placement Campaign

An SEO Copywriting Makeover Making An Emotional Connection

The Art of SEO

The Mystery of the Magical Keyword Density Formula

Traffic Power Class Action - Spammed I am man...

Getting Banned Due to Spam

SEO Technique Update - Google/Yahoo/Ask (June 2004

Nip and Tuck - Three Quick Tricks for Writing SEO Copy

An SEO Copywriting Makeover – Turning “Not” Into “Hot”

7 Search Engine Tips for Non Webmasters

How I reached #1 in Yahoo! ® Part Two

KEI - Keyword Effectiveness Index. The value of a keyword or keyword phrase that helps a web site reach the #1 position in search engines by comparing how often the keyword or keyword phrase is used and comparing it to how many web sites are using that keyword or keyword phrase to market their site.

In part one of this article I discussed how you can thoroughly research and pick the right keywords for your web site. You can read part one of this web design SEO advice here: http://www.web-source.net/etips/issue_224.htm.

Part two of this article will show you how to take your list of keywords created from part one and narrow it down to the most effective keywords to use. Let's start with the KEI rating of the keywords.

You can find many free KEI tools on the internet. I personally use one that was part of a $500 software package, but you can find many tools on the internet for free. My advice for this is to try a few of them out and stick with the tools that show generally the same results and toss the ones that don't. Even with the software package I bought I still use wordtracker and overture to compare my results.

List your keywords in the first column of a table. (I use Microsoft Excel, but you can use anything that works.) In the second, third or more columns list the number of times that keyword was used per day or month. (I use one column for wordtracker, one column for overture, and one column for my software package.) Be suspicious of the keywords that don't show the same results on all three and consider tossing them out. For example if one column says it searched 300 times per day, but the other two do not even show it being searched at all I would toss that keyword out. In the next column type in the KEI rating of that keyword. And in the next column, if you have a tool that allows it, enter how often the competition uses that keyword in a 'competition' column. Enter in the numbers for this data for all of the keywords listed in your table. Now we can start to narrow down the list.

Look at your keyword KEI ratings and compare them to each other. Toss out the keywords that have a low KEI rating. Next, look over the list of keywords again and think to yourself, "Will someone who types that in want to visit my site?" If not, toss out the keywords. Ask yourself, "Will someone who types in that keyword be likely to be profitable for me?" If not, toss out those keywords as well. Look at how often your competition uses a keyword in your 'competition' column. If it has a good KEI rating and over 17,000,000 web sites are using it then it will be hard to get to #1. Consider tossing these keywords out also.

For example, I concentrated on the search term, (web development contractor) which had a great KEI rating and was hardly used by competition. I tweaked my site for this keyword and now if you type in web development contractor into MSN you'll find out that I hold the number one position. And have held it for over a month now. In addition, if you type in (business presence on the web), or (Internet Presence) you'll see me floating around the top 5 along with some other search terms. (Perhaps I should rename this article How I reached #1 in MSN) The search term (web design) had a good KEI rating, but the competition was over 17,000,000 web sites using that search term. Perhaps I'll feel lucky and try for that one next.

I keep narrowing down my list until I have five of the best keywords to use for my web site. I take those 5 keywords and type them into the top 3 search engines and list the top 10 sites that show up with each keyword. So you will have a list of 50 sites per each search engine you used. To get a good general ranking in all of the search engines, I combine the 3 lists of 50 sites into one big list of 150 web sites for comparison. Alphabetize the list. Did you notice something? Some sites are listed three or more times! Toss out the sites that only show up once and this will narrow down your list of 150 considerably. Take the top five web sites that show up with the keyword you want and list them in another page. It is now time to pick apart their sites and discover why they are there!

Research the five sites using your keyword and compare them to each other. You have to research the site's page that landed on the search engine for these factors:

Is the keyword in the TITLE tag? If so, where is it placed, and how often.
Is the keyword in the META description tag? If so, where is it placed, and how often.
Is the keyword in the META keywords tag? If so, where is it placed, and how often.
Is the keyword in the content of the site? If so, where is it placed, and how often.
Is the keyword in the headings (H1-H6) of the page? If so, where is it placed, and how often.
Is the keyword in the links of the page? If so, where is it placed, and how often.
Is the keyword in the alt image attributes? If so, where is it placed, and how often.
(alt image attributes are the words that pop up when you move a cursor over a picture)

If you want I can do this analysis for you. Just send me up to 3 keyword phrases and 2 web sites for comparison and for $25 you'll get a much more detailed report on both sites. This will save you a lot of time! Keyword research usually runs about $240 to $360 if you have me do it.

Examine the five sites next to each other and concentrate on building your site on things that they have in common and do one number better than them. Ignore building your site in the areas that are not consistent between the five. You then should be getting good results when your site is indexed next. There are other ways to help increase the ranking of your web site like linking. Linking plays a very important role with Google, but there are a number of rules for linking to make it effective. That is a whole new article in itself.

This may seem to be a lot of work, but is well worth it. Some companies charge $1000 to $1500 per month for doing this service and what I typed into these two articles is 75% of what they do. I have my system tweaked now so that it takes me roughly 8 hours to do the keyword research and 2 or 3 days to optimize my site for it. You can do this too!

The owner of this registered company has over twenty years experience with DOS, windows business applications, numerous programming languages, artistic development, and web design. Other areas of interest include web marketing, web promoting, and business marketing and development. After the persuasion of those praising his work, he decided to go into business himself and highly suggests everyone else to do the same.

Copyright © Michael Rock, http://www.TheInternetPresence.com   Published Mar. 2005

There's more than Google in the search engine world

Keynote Systems released the results of a new survey this January. The California based company surveyed 2000 Internet users to find out which search engines they prefer.

Yahoo, MSN and AskJeeves gain against Google

According to the study, Google is still number one in the search industry, followed by Yahoo, MSN, AskJeeves and Lycos.

Yahoo and MSN have made significant gains against Google since their last survey. Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves also saw a notable increase in their standing in the Keynote Future Usage Index, which measures the likelihood of consumers to use a search site as their primary search tool and to return to the site in the future.

The index also measures a user's likelihood to recommend a search site to others or to use a search toolbar offered by the site.

Since the last study, Yahoo has boosted the number of users who said they would consider the site as their primary search engine by more than 20% and MSN by almost 30%. More than 81% of Yahoo users and 61% of MSN users said they would return to those sites in the future.

These numbers support recent comScore findings that indicate that Google's lead in the search engine market is diminishing.

What does this mean to your search engine optimization activities?

AltaVista, Excite and Webcrawler all have been the hottest search engine until a new player took the lead. Although it doesn't seem that this will happen to Google soon, you shouldn't concentrate your search engine optimization activities on Google alone.

Yahoo, MSN and AskJeeves can send a considerable amount of targeted visitors to your web site. If you only worry about gaining strong rankings in Google you alienate a large portion of your potential customers.

Optimize your web pages for all four big players: Google, Yahoo, MSN and AskJeeves. That way, you're not dependent on a single search engine and you'll get targeted visitors from different locations.

How can you optimize your web pages for these search engines?

Search engines prefer web sites with a lot of content. If your web pages have at least 14 to 20 pages, chances are that your web site will get much better rankings than a web site that consists of only one to three pages.

Another advantage of having many pages is that you can optimize different pages for different search engines and search terms. Optimizing a single web page for one or two search terms and a special search engine leads to better results than trying to optimize the same page for a variety of search terms and engines.

Further information about writing successful link exchange messages, contact us below..

Copyright Axandra.com - Web site promotion software tools -  Published Feb. 2005

Dispelling Some SEO Myths

Jill, I have been doing website development for a number of years, mostly for a big organization where optimizing for an intranet didn't mean as much as it would for the Internet. So I've read books and bought SE CD's to bring higher rankings, and it has helped!

I have not completely read all your information, but I was wondering if you have things in your literature where you have certain guidelines, like using so many characters/words in the title, or so many characters/words in your description, or repeating keywords so many times in your main content? Everyone seems to have different ideas, but I'd like to see where someone has these kind of guidelines and results to back them up.

I also have the following questions:

Is manually submitting each site better?

Once submitted ...do you keep submitting ...if so how often? (So you don't get kicked out.)

The Microsoft submit supposedly submits to hundreds of search engines and directories. Is this good or bad (the number of SE's submitted to)? I heard the more the better ...but there are some pretty cheesy search engines out there!

What about stop words ...do you cover this?

I heard you should leave out commas between keywords ...any truth to this?

If you are indexed in the Open Directory (DMOZ) do you re-submit to directories?

Are there truly reputable submission companies...and might I add ...that get results ...proven results?

What about the Google AdWords program?

One more thing...SEO stands for search engine optimization, correct?

I also have a few sites that I'm just starting to build, and they are one-page sites...a separate domain for each site. These sites are linked to a main site, as a 2nd way to find the main site. No trying to mislead anyone, just trying to work off separate keywords and types of products. Are these okay?

Regards,

Pat

Jill's Response

When I first read Pat's email and questions, I almost thought it was a joke email, because it was as if Pat had found every SEO myth ever discussed, and then asked me about them! So I wrote Pat back and basically said that he/she had obviously gotten ahold of some really old info and that he/she should erase it all from his/her memory bank and start fresh by reading my articles here: <http://www.highrankings.com/articles.htm>.

Pat wrote back very quickly and again asked if I would at least answer some of the questions posed. I realized that Pat really was not joking, and that if he/she had these questions from reading some bad info that is still out there somewhere, many of you may have similar ones.

So here's what I wrote back to Pat:

Dear Pat,

There are no specific guidelines for number of anything in SEO (which, yes, stands for search engine optimization). There's no number of words that is optimal in the tags, or in the copy, or in anything. Every page is unique and the right number for one page won't be the same as for another page. SEO is really more art than science, when done correctly. (See "The Art of SEO" <http://www.highrankings.com/issue105.htm#seo>.) Many people are looking for a magic bullet or formula that will propel their sites to the top, but there just isn't one. And even if you found one that worked today, chances are it wouldn't tomorrow.

Let me answer some of your questions and you'll see what I mean:

>>Is manually submitting each site better?<<

You don't actually need to submit your site at all to search engines -- neither manually nor in an automated fashion. They all have spiders that "crawl" the Web and find all pages that exist, as long as there is a link to them from a page they already know about.

>>Once submitted ...do you keep submitting ...if so how often? (So you don't get kicked out.)<<

Never.

>>The Microsoft submit supposedly submits to hundreds of search engines and directories.<<

It's a waste of time and bandwidth.

>>Is this good or bad (the number of SE's submitted to)?<<

It's neither, just useless.

>>I heard the more the better ...but there are some pretty cheesy search engines out there!<<

"The more the better" is incorrect. There are only 4 major search databases that matter: Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask Jeeves. Their databases power all of the other engines that make a difference.

>>What about stop words ...do you cover this?<<

There's no such thing as stop words. You need to use all the words it makes sense for you to use regardless of whether someone somewhere has classified it as a "stop word."

>>I heard you should leave out commas between keywords ...any truth to this?<<

It makes no difference. The Meta keyword tag won't actually help your site rank highly for the keywords that are important to it, and commas don't matter as they're treated as a space anyway. Yahoo does know about the words and phrases you put in this tag, and they recommend using commas to separate your phrases. I've always used commas as well, but again, it's not going to matter for the keyword phrases that matter the most anyway, so don't worry about it.

>>If you are indexed in the Open Directory (DMOZ) do you re-submit to directories?<<

You can submit to directories one time (not search engines, but directories). If you're already listed in DMOZ, there's no need to resubmit to them, but there's nothing wrong with submitting to other directories that are unrelated to DMOZ.

>>Are there truly reputable submission companies ...and might I add ...that get results ...proven results?<<

No there are not, because submitting is unnecessary and useless, so submission companies are useless as well. Please note that I'm not talking about paid-inclusion companies here. They are a different breed than submission companies. For some sites, paid-inclusion companies may be useful. Submission companies -- no. Paid-inclusion companies -- maybe, depending on your needs.

>>What about the Google AdWords program?<<

Google Adwords is a great program if you know how to use it correctly so that every dollar you put in pays off. (See today's interview with Kevin Lee for more info on PPC landing pages.)

>>I also have a few sites that I'm just starting to build, and they are one-page sites.<<

One-page sites will have a very hard time doing well in the search engines because it's doubtful they will provide enough useful information to users, and thus search engines will be unlikely to take much notice. That said, they could do okay if enough other sites find them worthwhile and link to them, but that will rarely happen.

It sounds like your one-page sites are simply "doorway domains," which are definitely not a good idea.

Hope this helps clear up a few things for you. Now seriously, please go read my articles and clear your mind of all the SEO myths that you've picked up!

Jill Whalen of High Rankings is an internationally recognized search engine optimization consultant and editor of the free weekly High Rankings Advisor search engine marketing newsletter.

Article by Jill Whalen, www.searchengineguide.com -    Published Jan. 2005

Good Google - Writing for the most powerful robot in the world

Google "...is big. Really Big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is." (excerpt from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Google is the most powerful information resource humans have ever constructed. The power of any major search tool boggles the mind but considering the vastness of Google's complex simplicity can truly hurt one's brain. With over 8-billion references in its rapidly growing, organically generated index, Google sets the standards other search engines follow. Benefiting from a three year reign as the undisputed leader of search, Google has had a very good year and looks poised to make 2005 an even better year.

In 2004, Google introduced more new and improved applications for its users than any other tech company, posted one of the most successful IPO's in business history in a most unorthodox Dutch-Auction format, and met or exceeded any challenges its rivals threw at.

Google is no longer just a search engine, it is an advertising machine. Drawing about 90% of its revenues from paid advertising and contextual ad-delivery, Google has had two major focuses this quarter. The first is increasing the number of places paid-advertising might show up. The second is to develop new products and features that will retain current user loyalty and win new users from the other search firms. Both initiatives rely heavily on Google's reputation for delivering fast, free and relevant search results. Google has the world's largest database of indexed websites and it acquires site information through its spider GoogleBot.

GoogleBot is probably the most well-known spider working the web today. It is also likely among the most analyzed applications ever written. On one level, GoogleBot is quite simple and can be depended on to act in a very specific manner. GoogleBot lives to follow links. GoogleBot will often chase down a link-path until it can no longer work its way deeper into a site. It will also work its way through any site linked to from any other site. Google finds the majority of new sites in its index by following links from established sites. If a link exists, Google will (A) find it, (B) follow it, (C ), record every bit of information it can possibly record, and (D) weigh that information against a fairly rigid algorithm to determine the perceived topic or theme of a site for future reference. If a site in Google's index is modified or changes, Google will re-spider the site as quickly as it possibly can.

GoogleBot's mission is to create a snap-shot of the World Wide Web and store it across Google's network of data centers around the world. When you reference information from Google, the results you see reflect Google's most recent snap-shot of the web. Parts of that snap-shot might be hours or even weeks old but overall the index is updating itself every minute of every day, 24/7. The fastest way to see exactly what Google views as the most recent version of your site is to click on the “Cached” link generally below the main link-reference Google displays for your site.

How GoogleBot behaves as it acquires sites is one thing. What Google does with the information its bot gathers is another thing. Google's method of ranking websites is extremely (and increasingly) complex. To understand how Google works today, a brief (and over simplified) explanation of the principle of PageRank is in order.

Google was originally developed as a means of finding information in research documents at Stanford University where its inventors Larry Page and Sergey Brin met as grad students. PageRank was developed as the basic sorting algorithm for their search tool (then known as Backrub) and was based on a very simple concept, trust.

Page and Brin understood that documents on the Internet could be linked together. They speculated that if someone took the time to code a link (by hand in those days) to another document there was likely a relevance between the two documents. Why else would one researcher link to another researcher's work? Simply put, the more incoming links a particular document has, the better it would rank when sorted by PageRank. Given the environment in which it was developed, Google's genesis proved to be the perfect tool for intelligent users. Transferring that simplicity from a dorm room at Stanford to practically every living room and office space on Earth has been a great challenge for Google's engineers. While it is still somewhat based on the original, “democratic” nature of PageRank, Google's sorting algorithm has become infinitely more complicated.

Google continues to weigh the number of links directed towards a site as positive indicators that there is relevant information to be found there. Since links are the veins and arteries of the web, links continue to be the most important factor influencing Google's perception of the relevance of a website. As the Google index has grown so rapidly over the past six years, and search engine marketers have learned how to use Google's behaviors to influence rankings, Google weighs several other factors when considering the relevance of a site but the core of the algorithm remains rooted in PageRank.

Not all Links are Created Equal

Back in the good old days, seven or eight years ago at Stanford, one link could represent one positive vote. As marketers learned to manipulate links, Google learned to apply different standards and measures when looking at those links and the content of sites in its index. Today, Google considers different links in different ways. As a matter of interest, our recent studies show that Google displays less back-links for sites than any other search engine, leading us to conclude that Google has become much stricter about how it views and values incoming links.

Google looks at a number of factors when determining the value of a link. Where the link originates from is as important as where the link is directed in Google's eyes. Google, like its rivals, is trying to find relationships between documents aside from obvious keywords. Google has the ability to fundamentally understand documents in its index and determine the topic, theme or context of those documents. This is an important measure as Google is becoming incr