Links – the official currency of SEO-land In this article I often use the words credibility, authority, confidence, reputation, etc. I may be inconsistent with my use of words, but they all refer to the same thing – this abstract currency that flows among sites that link to each other. When page A links to page B, page A gives page B a fraction of its authority. If page A has too many outgoing links, it will end up with little authority. Similarly, if page B has few links but receives many links, it will end up with a great deal of authority. Keep this concept in mind when you read the new few sections of this article.Incoming Links The value of an incoming link depends on: The content of the linking page The link text The content immediately around the link The number of links on the page The position of the link within the content (header, footer, main body?) How well the content of the linking page compares to that of the target website If you’re considering purchasing incoming links, I strongly recommend you consider all the points above before reaching for your wallet. Incoming links cannot damage your rankings. SEs understand you can’t control who links to your website so you will not be penalized if you receive links from bad neighbourhoods. They will simply be of no benefit to you. The only problem is when you link to a bad neighbourhood (see external links below). External Links External links are an important aspect of quality content. It’s always good to offer a few links to related quality content. But beware of whom you link to. Incoming links cannot damage your reputation, but an outgoing link to a bad neighbourhood can very much do so. A link is a ‘vote of confidence’ to the page you’re linking to and you definitely do not want to give your precious votes to poor quality websites – quite simply – it makes you look bad. Reciprocal Links I’m well known to be sceptical when it comes to reciprocal links (probably because of this article ). One true, sincere incoming link is much more valuable than a thousand reciprocal links. If you read the ‘Incoming Links’ section above you’ll understand, but here’s why: Reciprocal links Link is usually on a page with poor or no content Links are normally considered poor quality because the content surrounding the link is unrelated Content of linking page is almost always unrelated Linking pages normally have dozens if not hundreds of external links Link pages normally have low PR because of the number of outgoing links So basically, reciprocal links give you a tiny share of something that isn’t worth much in the first place.One-Way links on the other hand… Link is on a page of quality content Content is related to the link Content of linking page is related to your website Linking page with have a minimal amount of outgoing links, usually just yours. Article pages can only improve their PRs because they get traffic, they get bookmarked and linked to by people (used as reference). So basically, you get a big share of something that’s very valuable will only get better! I’m no genius but I know what I’d go for… So one-way links are a win-win situation. “Oh yeah? How the hell am I going to get incoming links genius-boy?”, you say. Fear not my friend, read on and you shall find the way…

Stephen Creed is the author of this article and he proudly own a website called: one week marketing. His website blogs contains advanced strategies on internet marketing are available for all to learn here: one week marketing. Visit his website, one week marketing review, so that you don’t missed out great learning in the internet marketing world.

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Why Directories Are Important

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

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

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

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

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

Submitting to Directories

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stephen Creed is the author of this article and he proudly own a website called: one week marketing. His website blogs contains advanced strategies on internet marketing are available for all to learn here: one week marketing review. Visit his website, one week marketing, so that you don’t missed out great learning in the internet marketing world.

Before you start optimizing your site for search engines, there are some tools that you should arm yourself with. These tools can become your best friends when it comes to SEO, especially when you’re just starting out. The first and most important step in any search engine position campaign is recognizing which keywords you should optimize your site for, and there are several pieces of software that are useful for this, including Wordtracker, Optilink, Zeus, and Agent Web Ranking.

WordTracker’s keyword research service is the only one on the Internet that provides a comprehensive database of the most popular keywords in a particular industry. It can help you recognize associated keywords that you may have never thought of. One of the differences between WordTracker and other tools is that it can spot subtle differences, for example singular and plural keywords, or often-misspelled ones, and tell you which versions are more popular.

Optilink has become very popular in a short period of time because of the power it gives you over search engines. Every site that links to you boosts your ranking, especially if its content is relevant to yours. Optilink helps you to come up with strategies to improve your link structure and get a better ranking. Here are some of the things it does:

1. Analyzes the link structures of your top-ranking competitors.

2. Tells you why your competitors rank well, so you can try to copy what they’re doing.

3. Tells you what kind of rankings you can expect if you adopt similar linking strategies.

4. Helps to monitor sites you’ve exchanged links with, to ensure that they’re still linking to you.

Zeus has an excellent way of increasing the link popularity of your site — by exchanging with other sites that are related to yours, giving you a head start on your SEO. Zeus does the work for you, identifying sites that it thinks you should try to exchange links with. If you look for the sites yourself you’ll often find it’s not worth the time, but an SEO tool like Zeus lets you do it instantly. Once you’ve got links, you can manage and maintain them automatically.

Agent Web Ranking helps you to check your sites rankings – this is good to see how your SEO efforts are working. Many people just optimize and submit, thinking the work is done, but they’re wrong. You need to continuously check your site’s rankings, and Agent Web Ranking is a reliable and quick tool for doing this.

The only real problem you might have with any of this software is that search engines can change the way they display their results, breaking the tools until their authors update them. This means that most position reporting software gets outdated very quickly. It’s not that much of an issue, though, as most software is provided on a subscription basis with updates included, rather than bought only once.

If you really want to stay ahead in the SEO industry, you should try as many different tools as you can. By paying attention to what tools others are using and learning how they work, you will have the edge in the SEO market. So get out there, and download these SEO tools of the trade!

Stephen Creed is the author of this article and he proudly own a website called: one week marketing. His website blogs contains advanced strategies on internet marketing are available for all to learn here: one week marketing. Visit his website, one week marketing review, so that you don’t missed out great learning in the internet marketing world.

With over a billion people online across the planet using the web to publicize and market your business isn’t just an option, it is a necessity. If you are looking for a way to grow your business and attract new customers, you need to consider using an internet business directory to advertise your business and increase your visibility. The internet is the speediest way to spread information to a huge number of folks simultaneously. Why not use it to your advantage to market your business to many millions of people in a cost reasonable and efficient manner?

An internet business directory can open up a whole new network of critical contact information that’s useful to any business. There are several web business directories that offer assorted levels of service. Take the time to analyze the business catalog and select the one that offers the standard of service precise to your personal business and / or industry. Many business directories now offer fast, user friendly systems and even offer the facility to have e-mail notifications sent without delay to you informing you of changes in traffic patterns and more.

Winner on Google Pg 1

Be sure to do your homework before signing up with just any online business directory. While there are lots of credible companies which will provide stellar service, as with any online business one must be conscious of potential tricks. Be sure to seek customer reviews of the business catalog and look for possible free trails before giving out any Mastercard info. Some online business directories offer free services, but they generally get less traffic. Most importantly, make sure that the business catalog that you select has achieved a good ranking on the major search engines ( Google, Yahoo, etc ).

There are many reasons that you must look into using an internet catalog. They will help you find info relating to your business, but at the same time they can also help to pump your site. A Net business directory is one good method to get the best of two worlds. It connects buyers and sellers with the same advantages as advertising in the standard yellowpages, but at a much more reasonable cost. Mixed with the power to hook up with growing number of folks using the internet on a once a day basis for business makes using an online business catalog a no brainer. By doing so, you can get more traffic to your website, give more information about your business to possible clients, and most significantly increasing your sales by gaining new customers.

To fully understand SEO one has to answer the following questions:

What is SEO?

SEO is the techniques that ensure enhanced website rankings in organic search engines search results

Why must I do SEO?

Having a website alone is not enough. If you are not on the first page results of search engines you know now why you need SEO for your website!

Can anyone do SEO?

Yes, anyone can do it. All it requires are knowledge, time and an understanding of how search engine works. With that being said bear in mind that this is not a one time job. You have to work continuously on it to better your site.

SEO is basically about two things: links and content. If you can get a lot of both, then you’re all set.

Unique, quality content combined with relevant quality links will definitely have a positive impact on your ranking. I’m currently busy building links. As in all things one can try to do all things simultaneously but I prefer to focus on one thing, get it right, then go to the next and at the end you have a workable strategy unique to yourself.

So I’m concentrating here on anchor text. Where ever I turn, the term, “anchor text” is popping up. Anchor text is the visible text in a hyperlink. It is the text that people uses to link to you, and usually gives the user relevant information about the content of the link’s destination.

Why is it called anchor text?
It anchors your site’s meaning and search query relevance by securing links in quality locations. If you want to achieve top positions for a specific keyword, your anchor text, next to the Title Tag, is one of the most important factors of Search Engine Optimization.

Anchor text is one of the most important factors that Search Engines evaluate when ranking Websites for specific keywords. The reason behind this is that a link to your site is considered as “a vote of trust” from that other site linking to your site, and so the better reputation the site linking to your site has, the more valuable is the back link.

How do I use Anchor Text to benefit my SEO?
It is important to make the most out of your link by choosing the right anchor text. If you are requesting links from others, have the code for your link all ready to go, easy for them to insert into their webpage. Anchor text gives Google additional information about your site, so one must keep it descriptive and useful.

Make sure the links to your website is with the keyword (key phrase) that you are trying to optimize for, and that the back linking website has the same theme than yours.

The reason we are on the web is to conduct a business. As in all businesses, there are rules and guidelines to follow to be successful. If you want to be on the first page of the search engines, you have to read and do that it is going to take me to get there.

Why? To be on the first page means lots of organic visitors, and visitors are what all websites are craving for!

At Business Gateway you may find a business package that is taylor made for you!

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HelenaZ
skype: hzwarts
Twitter: helenazwarts
Seo Strategies
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SEO is basically about two things: links and content.

If you can get a lot of both, then you’re all set. Again, it will be a huge help if you have original content.

How do you get good quality inbound links? The best linking strategy is this:  find some sort of portal where you can put up content, and link back to your site after writing an article.

Use your best keyword when linking back to your site. Don’t just say, “For more info, click here.” Use a keyword phrase, for example, if your site was on red racing cars… “A good site for information on red racing cars.”

Here are some examples of sites you could use to post content with backlinks.

A Squidoo lens;  A blogger;  A hub on Hubpages.com;  An article on ezinearticles.com,  goarticles.com,  Gather.com;  MySpace blog

Don’t just post links to your homepage;  if you have a blog,  link to specific posts as well as your main bog URL.  If you own a multi-page website,  link to relevant subpages off the homepage.

Now posting content with back links on those sites alone could get you through a whole SEO career, so don’t take this part lightly. Putting up content on these sites also serves a double purpose, you can get a lot of direct incoming traffic form these links.

If people like your article or portal, then they’ll click through your links, and it won’t be just search engine spiders coming through.

Look at blogs related to the topic your site is on. This way, you can stay up to date on your topic, you can see what other people think, and best of all, you can comment on their blogs with a link to your site.  It’s a bad idea to just put up a comment with a link to your site;  that’s spam.  But if you take the time to just skim a post and write a comment addressing the post with a link at the end, people appreciate that, and sometimes they’ll even check out your blog (always a bonus).

If you want to rank for a certain term, make sure you mention that keyword at least a few pages on the page you’re trying to rank in the search engines.  Also, try to use that keyword, or a variant, when linking back to the page.

And that is basically a very broad overview about seo, but in essence it all stays the same. Unique, quality content and good relevant links to your site.

HelenaZ
skype: hzwarts
Twitter: helenazwarts
Seo Strategies
Business Gateway
Blogging Resources
Biz Community (forum)

I assuming you know nothing about internet marketing, traffic building, SEO, and social marketing. This should provide you with ample material and information to begin and boost traffic to your site.

Why Do People Even Come to Your Site?
The internet is a truly amazing technology. It allows us to share information with others, and, more importantly, to make money from the comfort of home.  But before you can make any money, you’re going to need people to come to your site; traffic.

If you’re new to building traffic, it may seem like a really big & confusing world.  It’s hard to know where to start, and even if you have been trying to build traffic for a long time, you will probably always looking for more ways to increase the numbers.

Generating masses of traffic really isn’t a magical thing that only a few people know how to do. The formula for traffic Generation is: Unique, Quality content + Lots of Hard Work = Lots of Quality Traffic

One thing that can’t be stress enough is the need for quality content.  This is the most important point to traffic generation.  If something is interesting, unique, and informative, people will want to read it..

People are looking for information, and you give them what they’re looking for, then all you have to do is get the word out about your content, and people will come.  If you have a unique and quality product, all you have to do is tell people about that and they’ll be happy to buy.

The Two Basic Traffic Sources of the Internet. These are the search engines, and the social sites. These two methods of traffic generation are becoming more and more integrated.

Search engines rank sites according to content and links.  Social sites give out TONS of links.  It’s a pretty simple conclusion that social sites are a major benefit to SEO.

Now, on to some specific strategies for building traffic via SEO, and more importantly, Social Sites.

Social Sites Strategies

If you really know nothing about social sites, it can be very hard to know where to even begin, let alone WHAT to begin. The world of social sites is exploding at an exponential rate.

(1)     Invest in the future. Here is my long term investment strategy: become an authority on small, relatively new sites. Why? Because the internet and the number of people who use social sites is expanding so quickly, in a year or two,  small sites have the potential to be as big as stumble upon, digg, del.icio.us, and reddit are now.
(2)     Build a large network of friends. The best strategy in social sites is to build a large network of friends. Once you build a network of friends, you have your authority spread out through a site; you essentially have roots that help you to grow the tree of traffic to your site.  Generally, the more friends you have, the more internal links you have planted somewhere in the site,  giving you more authority in the eyes of the site.
(3)     How do you get your stuff shared or bookmarked? You give people good content.
Here are 5 things that people tend to bookmark or share: -

Funny or disgusting. Your average internet surfer is probably looking for a way to pass the time. People like to laugh, and they like to be grossed out.  If you give him entertainment, he’ll support you. Truly useful information. If you offer useful, fresh information to someone, he will appreciate that and support you.                         Bashing people, brand-names, and companies. People can get very emotional about companies or websites or people they dislike. Get people to identify with your article.
Controversial topics. People can get very emotional, and will many times support something just because they feel strongly about it.
Breaking news. News stories that are the first to tell about a major event that people care about also go up very fast in bookmarking and sharing sites.
(4)     If you have good content, how can you get people to find it? The nice thing about the social sharing sites is that they are viral. If one person likes it, they’ll tell his two friends, who will then tell their two friends… etc. etc.

First of all, utilize the friends that you have on that given website (this is where having a large network of friends comes in handy).  Send a shout out, or leave a comment somewhere so that your content gets exposed directly on that website.

Next, you’ll want to utilize any social networking sites your a part of (i.e. facebook, MySpace, bebo, etc).  Send a message to your friends and tell them briefly about the site.  It will give you more traffic exposure.

Another thing you should do is make it very easy to bookmark or share your page; put up buttons directly on your page if possible.

And that is a mouthful. Never try to do everything instantly. Build daily and patiently. You will eventually reap the results. Never give up.

HelenaZ
skype: hzwarts
Twitter: helenazwarts
Seo Strategies
Business Gateway
Blogging Resources
Biz Community (forum)