Myths in SEO

here is nothing fancy or magical about optimizing your website for the search engines. The myths about it are greater than the facts. For as long as SEO
has been in existence, there have been all sorts of myths about it.

The situation isn't helped by the number of so-called "SEO Experts" spreading them.

Here's a list of the biggest SEO myths you need to be aware of so you can avoid being drawn into buying useless services that tout help with them:

-You can't optimize perfectly for every site
With the right keywords, title, description and tags that accurately reflect your content, you can optimize every site of your for the search engines.

-There are 10,000 search engines out there
The onlye search engine you need to target to get listed in is Google. Once Google picks you up all the others will, too. Google leads the pack and what Google does the other major search engines will follow: MSN, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves. Forget the other ones, the traffic is small and inconsequential.

-PageRank is dead
Today Pagerank is as importatn as ever with Google.

-You should repeat your keywords 100 times on each page.
A keyword density of optimum around 5-8% on each page. The keywords should also be wound into good copy and make sense where they are placed. Stuffing pages with keywords is a good way to get you ignored or even banned by the search engines.

-Search engines don't have time to ban you for bad SEO.
One of the biggest ways to get banned from the major search engines is bad SEO.

-You should submit your site to every search engine going
Again, submit to just Google and you'll be picked up by all the other search engines eventually.

-You don't need content to get ranked high
Content, fresh and relevant, will always be king for good SEO. The web was founded on information and content is information.

-Meta tags are very important
Most search engines ignore meta tags today however, you can still place them.

-All you need is more links
Links into your site need to be related to your content. So called "link farms" which are lists of hundreds of unrelated sites will lower your pagerank.

-SEO doesn't require patience
Good SEo requires, not only patience but research, thought and time invested into it.

-New sites can't get listed in search engines.
Good, well SEO optimized websites can get indexed in a s little as 48 hours.

-You should have multiple domain names
One well chosen domain names for your sites theme is all you need.

-It's good to resubmit every week or every month
Once a month is the rule for submission but only if you update your site monthly. If you do not then submit every 2 or 3 months.

Avoid companies that advertise any of these items. The only techniques you should be using are ones that are proven to increase your website's ranking.

There are a lot of unethical, unprofessional business practices in the optimization industry. Get the facts on your side and compare the services you're being offered. Use your money wisely and invest it properly in good marketing, advertising, and content.

When inexperienced and unprofessional optimizers scam uneducated SEO customers, it gives everyone who works in the field a bad name. If anyone tells you that it's OK to keyword stuff, or that you don't need PageRank - well, they're just completely wrong.

If you're trying to make money with your website, you need visitors, and that's where SEO is iimportant. SEO is important to get on top of your competition and the search engines. Good SEO means sales.

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META TAGS----Key elements of SEO

Every search engine uses it's own, very specific algorithm to index the websites. All major search engines  keep updating their search algorithms quite frequently to give their searchers the best searching experience. Your website's place in the search result pages depends on it's calculation from the algorithm it follows. These algorithms are not changing everyday but are evolving into more intelligent and accurate. Yet, the major focus is on the Meta tags of the site.

These Meta tags are not visible when someone browses your web page but the search engines read these Meta tags alone and decide the place of a web page on its search result pages. It does so by finding the relevance of the Meta tags within them and with its contents. The most important Meta tags are the title, description and keywords. The first thing a search engine looks for is to find a relevance in these meta tags by looking at the keywords used in them and secondly it looks the relevance of the keywords used in these meta tags with the contents of the page.

The Title Tag

The title is the most important Meta tag of your website. This is the first thing shown on a web page and this is visible to both your visitor and most importantly to the search engine. That's why it has to be given the utmost importance while search engine optimization is the consideration.

It is always depicted on the left top bar of in the browser window. This tag should include the most relevant keyword about your business. If the most relevant keywords are used in here, your web site will sure get a boost in a search.

Most websites use their company name in the title which in fact, is not something desirable. Because, nobody usually searches for a company name unless it is very well known or some giant multinational.

The perfect title tags should be something between 10-70 characters. It is not so that one can not put a longer title but the search engine would ignore the longer part of the title.

The Title tag should be written for the visitors (people searching for your business or services) first and the search engines second. This should be such as to motivate a click and obviously to favor the search engine indexing too.

Different title tags should be assigned to each page of your website containing its own keywords that relate to that specific page.

Description tag

The description tag should be written in such way that it speaks about the website contents in just one or two sentences.
It should be short and clear that your visitors get a close idea about your site by reading this in a short time.

The description tag should be 100 to 200 characters long. The Meta description tag also has a great role in the SEO of your page. This tag displays the information at a search engine result page (SERP) after a search is performed by a user. So, this should be such as this puts the concise summary of your page. Most search engines truncate longer Description. Remember this while writing this tag.

Same as above every page should have a different description tag in accordance with the contents it holds. This tag has quite some effect on the ranking of your site in Search Engine results. The Search Engine will read your description tag and will check if the keywords or search terms match your title tag and content of your web site. My suggestion is to take the first sentence or two of the contents from your web page and use that for the Meta description content.

Include the most relevant sentences matching with the page contents in description tag instead of stuffing the tag with more keywords. Remember that the Meta Description Tag of a web page must not look just a bunch of keywords, but should contain an informative and concise summary of your web page.

Keywords Tag

The most heavily sought technique in Search Engine Optimization process is Keyword optimization. But at the same time if keywords are too often repeated, chances are that the site gets marked out as ""spam"". However, if your target keyword are not included enough, its ranking will not be optimized. So, with present algorithms which are really smart and intelligent include only those relevant keywords you want to target and make sure that these are included in the contents too.

Use variations of a keyword like watch, watches, wrist watch etc. They are slightly changed keywords and yet don't render any feeling to the search engine for their being repeated in the tag.

Geographical information (name of the country, city or place) may be used in the keywords. Sometimes it plays a great role when a search is made for a location based business. Or, even brand names, model name of a product can be used in this tag. That also helps when a search is made for a specific product model or brand.

Search engines give different weights to the keywords according to their positions in HTML tags used in the content. For example if a keyword is used in this tag which is present in Heading Tag also has more weight particularly when the same is in H1 tag.

Write your Alt tags of the images and the text links being used in the page such that it includes at least one keyword from the keyword tag. But, remember the same should look just relevant with the image or the hyper link for which it has been written.

The content should have included all of your keywords. The aggregate keyword density (all the keywords used in keyword tag) should be between 20% to 30% but not less than 5% to the best optimized results. However, Density for a single keyword should not be less than 2% and higher than 6%. The best is about 5% with the major keywords and 2% with subsequent keywords.

The Meta tags should be fine tuned with the contents and a good relevance is brought about between themselves with a perfect balance between the target audience and the search engines.

These Meta tags have been used really very un-carefully by the spammers, if we commit to use them methodically with the due respect, I hope, we should be able to create ever increasing web traffic on our sites.

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Using PPC to promote your site

PPC stands for Pay Per Click - a popular advertising  technique on the Internet. Found on websites, advertising networks, and especially on search engines, PPC advertising involves sponsored links that are typically in the form of text ads. These are usually placed close to search results, where an advertiser pays a particular amount to visitors  who click on these links or banners and land on the advertiser's web page.

In essence, PPC advertising is all about bidding for the top or leading position on search engine results and listings. Advertisers do this by buying or bidding on keyword phrases that are relevant to their products or services - the higher the bid, the higher the spot on the search results, the more the people will find the ad (and click on it) to go to their websites (this is why some people call it "keyword auctioning"). Advertisers would then pay the bidding price every time a visitor clicks through the website.

PPC advertising is usually done with the following standard procedures:

1. Setting up an account and/or deposit funds.

2. Creating a keyword list.

3. Choosing (and setting up) an account with a PPC search engine.

4. Bidding on the ad placement, including the search result words or phrases.

5. Writing out an ad copy.

6. Setting up the 'landing pages' for your ads.

7. Placing the advertisement in the search engine.

There are many benefits to Pay Per Click advertising, making it an effective way of promoting a business 'online'. Some of them are listed below:

? Get launched immediately. PPC advertisements are implemented very quickly - they can go 'online' within an hour after winning the bid and paying for it.

? Obtain specific, pre-qualified, and quality traffic. PPC provides you with a quality or a well-targeted traffic. Visitors are narrowed down into 'qualified' people who are actually looking for specific products and/or services that you offer - those who are more likely to become a 'lead' (a convert) and complete a transaction (either by buying your product or subscribing to the service that you are offering.

? Widen your reach. PPC advertising provides additional traffic to your site, aside from the natural or "organic" search engines.

? Track your investment. PPC advertising makes use of a tracking system that will determine exactly who comes to the website and what they do once they arrive - the length of their stay on the site and the number of pages (including the actual pages) that they view. These are valuable tools in determining statistics such as return on investment (ROI), acquisition cost-per-visitor, and conversion rates (the percentage of visitors who are converted into customers or leads).

Below are some important things to consider when planning on a pay per click campaign:

1. Know your product. Take an inventory of the product and/or services that you have to offer (before anything else).

2. Stay within the budget. Determine your daily or monthly budget; and stay with it. This means keeping your budget in mind, avoiding bidding wars if possible.

3. Bid just right. Know how to bid right - a bid that is too high can exhaust all of your money, while a bid that is too low can make you lose that spot.

4. Watch the bottom line. Measure your profit margin against your spending or expenses. Know when to stop and terminate your PPC program - if you spend more on advertising but have little or no sales at all.

5. Find the right keywords. Decide which keyword phrases to opt and bid for. Do some keyword research, either by actually looking at existing search terms or with the use of online keyword suggestion tools, to know which terms are mostly used when searching for items that are related to your business. Focus on specific keywords, not on general ones.

6. Write effective ads. A good PPC ad is that which can persuade and move a searcher. There are several approaches to this:

? Discount offers
? Testimonials
? Celebrity/famous endorsers
? Money-back guarantees
? Free trials or sample offers
? Freebies
? Reverse psychology
? Major benefits ("Lose weight")
? Direct instructions ("Click here")

7. Maintain a professional-looking site. Your web content should be regularly updated and checked for spelling and grammatical errors. There should be no broken links or images. The website should be simple - designed in such a way that it will be easy for visitors to navigate and load. Include contact details to create a good impression among potential customers.

Done properly, PPC advertising can be an effective marketing tool that will maximize the return on your investment.

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Using a good template

Website templates are the best way to keep a consistent standard website that makes things uniform and visually appealing to website visitors. Website templates make the starting of a new website easy and they freshen up an old website not so mind numbing.

The first step getting one of these off and running is to look at your template options. There are many online companies that offer templates that can be downloaded and used for just about any website. The choices that are out there are endless. However, you must choose the template that will be right for you and your website.

There is the standard option: The basic website template that offers no bells and whistles for the viewer. These website templates are mainly just text and pictures. This type of website template is good for websites that are designed to be informative and down to business.

Another common type of website template is that of the flash template. These come in many shapes and forms with many different varieties. Many typically have some sort of movement or visual effect that catches the observer's eye some with sound effects. Don't forget whenever you buy a template to ask for the source files, so in case you want to make any changes on your template in future, it is will be easier for you.

However these standard website templates may not be enough for the casual website designer. If a top of the line no holds bar check me out website is what is desired than the desired website template is going to be something along the lines of a flash with animation or 3D effects.

If there is a specific style desired then there is a website template that has it. From flowers and bunnies to military themed ones you are sure to find the template that will best suit your websites needs. The cost to download one of these templates varies based on style and source of the download. The average cost for a website template being upwards of fifty U.S. dollars.

The cost of a website template is well worth the look that can be achieved when it is used. Website templates help create an image of professionalism that will make website viewers take that website seriously. The organization that is gained from the use of these consistent website templates will keep viewers coming back for more and will allow a business to grow.

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PPC

What is "Pay-Per Click"? "Pay-Per Click", is an easy to understand advertising strategy. There are around 300 million searches at major search engines everyday. This causes 80% of internet  traffic. Placing your websites on these search engines is very important in reaching as many potential customers as possible. But in order to be seen and clicked most frequently, your website should be viewed at the top most of the search list. Most people only reach up to the third page of a search engine so the lower your rank, the lesser the chance you will be clicked. In "Pay-Per Click" advertising, you pay to be always visible on the internet. You select keywords or key phrases about your website, and the highest bidder ranks the best. There is no upfront cost. You only pay after a visitor clicks your link. This is why it is called "Pay-Per Click".

Everyday millions of people around the world click on Pay-Per Click Advertising Campaign. With the booming internet industry and the ever growing online business, an ad of virtually anybody on the planet can be seen on the internet anywhere in the world.

The "Pay-Per Click" advertising campaign is the premier growth area in online marketing. Last year, an estimated $741.2 million was spent on "Pay-Per Click" advertising. The usual search engine optimization can take weeks or even months to produce results. "Pay-Per Click" advertising can attract customers at an instant. Why? Because, this cutting edge ad campaign can be placed on any website and can be viewed by potential online customers, anywhere, anytime and all the time. The only challenge is placing the ads on proper websites that will attract possible customers for a specific product or services.

"Pay-Per Click" advertising campaign attracts the right consumers at the shortest possible time. This is the most cost effective way of marketing products or services. You can also monitor the customers who visit your site, what they are looking for and what they are buying. With the right creativity on using the right search-phrases, we can direct the right people who are willing to do business with us.

"Pay-Per Click" advertising can easily be managed 24 hours per day and 7 days a week through the internet. This allows you improve the campaign strategy by effectively responding to the activities of both customers and competitors.

So what are you waiting for? "Pay-Per Click" now and let your business take the fast route to success.

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SEO-------- The key to success

Search engine optimization for your website is pretty straight forward, but it can seem complicated. Basically, the point of SEO is to make everything simpler and cleaner. This is the way search engines like it. And, if you use the "KISS" principle, "keep it simple, stupid", even a beginner can optimize a website well.

Everything a search engine does has a pattern and a reason. Even if the algorithms are too complex for you to understand, there are patterns that can be found. There are many sites online that offer tips and help with finding and explaining these patterns.

Good SEO requires work and effort. It is, for the most part, very basic. To have a successful website campaign, follow these simple rules:

1. Bad Sites Get Pushed To The Bottom
Search engines always try to give users whatever they can find that is relevant to their search. You have to realize that most search engines don't work by moving the good stuff towards the top: instead, they try to push the bad stuff towards the bottom, and hope that what's good will "float to the top."

2. Content Is King
Content is king and it can get you good search engine rankings easily if it's written properly and sprinkled with the appropriate keywords. This not only brings visitors to your site but also feeds search engine spiders and crawlers.

A fast way to develop good content is to generate a series of articles or an ebook regarding your topic. These items are very powerful in the world of SEO because they provide your visitors with something to read and they allow you to conquer some keywords that you normally wouldn't be able to touch. If you are managing a website for pets, an article about dog food is more likely to generate a high position in the search results for "dog food" than your home page. Therefore, if you write articles pertaining to your subject but slightly more in depth than you can put on your home page, you will benefit drastically.

3. Check Your Position
To try to get to number one in an index, you must first find out where your site is now. That means checking each search engine to see your position, and coming up with a strategy for each one - who knows, maybe you're already number one on one of the smaller search engines! You can't just assume, however, that because your site is listed in one search engine that it will be listed in all of them. That's not how search engines work.

4. Simplicity Is Best
Look at the sites that currently rank high on the search engines and you will see that have simple designs with graphics that use minimal bandwidth, and they're easy to navigate. Simple, clean designs are what both search engine crawlers and search engine users like, as it lets them get the content they want without any fuss. This is what you should be aiming for.

5. Optimiaze Tags And Keywords
Let's take a look at meta tags, keywords, descriptions, and titles. They're all important
elements, even if they're not what will make or break your site - they're just one part of your strategy. These elements need to be compelling and sprinkled with your keywords, as this will entice users to click through from the search results page to your website. It's best to start off slowly, gradually adding things in as you learn.

If you have any questions and you don't know where to go, then check out some of the forums on the subject. A simple search for "seo forum" will give great results. Remember, be patient. Learning SEO or search engine optimization takes time and effort but pays off in the end.

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How to make a popular website

The more you understand about any subject, the more interesting it becomes. As you read this article you will find that building a popular web site is certainly no exception.

Make your content useful. Think about your target audience and what they may be coming to your site to see, learn or buy. Then deliver that! Search engines and keywords can bring people to your site, but if your content is not useful or doesn't live up to your sales pitch, your prospective customer may leave and never come back.

Joining a network or web ring will give your website visibility, recognition and traffic. Look at some of the web rings you can join for free that relate to your business, your industry, your interests and more importantly, the interests of your customers. You can also establish your own web ring for a fee.

If your website is an entertainment site or another site that must present some glitz or flashy animation to grab visitor attention, use the glitz and animation only as the lead-in and allow your visitors to skip the animation and flash presentation by selecting a "skip this" link in the top right hand corner of the page. If possible, name the graphics or product pictures on your site with keyword titles and captions so you can make them search engine friendly.

When developing or revamping your website, make sure your website title and description quickly and effectively communicate what your company does, how you can solve a problem or desire your customers may have and make them want to know more. Your website title and approach must be compelling, or someone else will grab your customer's attention. Longer titles are more effective because you can provide more information, but use the right words and keywords that mean something to your customer.

Don't place your business name in every title of every page of your website. You may want your business name in the title of the home page, but it is probably a waste of valuable keywords and space to put it in the title line of every page on your site. Put keywords in the title lines instead so your page displays closer to the top of the search engine listing. Most of your prospective customers don't know or care about your business name until after they have looked at your site and decided it is worth bookmarking.

Think of your website as a series of websites, not just a home page. Then you realize that each page of your website must be search engine optimized. You can help accomplish this by using keywords in page titles. The title of each page, the keywords you use on that page and the phrases you use in the content will draw traffic to your site using different search engine terms and techniques, so be sure you capture all the keywords and phrases you need for each product, service or information page.

To get repeat web traffic, update the pages on your website frequently. Some search engines and directories will drop sites that are stagnant. You can even put a date on the page to show when it was last updated. Add a link to your primary pages with a script to book mark or add this site to your favorites.

If you've picked some pointers about building a popular web site that you can put into action, then by all means, do so. You won't really be able to gain any benefits from your new knowledge if you don't use it.

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