Internet Marketing: Tips, Tricks, and Guides for Success

SEO (Seeing Entrepreneurial Opportunities) + Search Engines Help Out: Part 2 of 3

2010-01-15T03:32:00Z

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Although search engines can seem strict when it comes to their algorithms, they are all happy to offer you resources to learn about their search engine algorithms, and how to improve your ranking.

This post goes into some steps on how to use these tools to increase website traffic, and improve your search engine ranking in the long run.

Submit your Website

Many people don't realize that occasionally re-submitting your website can improve your ranking. In a sense, this keeps search engines from "forgetting" your website in the millions of websites it indexes. It can put your website at a higher priority than others, and get more of your website indexed.

Do note however, that you shouldn't resubmit your website more than once a month so that search engines doesn't perceive you as a spammer. This can result in your IP address being banned, and even that website eventually being banned.

http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx

http://www.dmoz.org/add.html (AOL)

Yahoo and Ask do not allow submissions.

About the Search Engines

Almost every search engine offers guides and walkthroughs regarding their methodology, and how to effectively implement SEO for that search engine. In addition to standard SEO guides, these can be helpful resources in understanding how search engines work and what they're looking for in a website. These should be read carefully to ensure you meet the major search engine's guidelines.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=15260

http://help.live.com/help.aspx?project=wl_webmasters&market=en-us&querytype=topic&query=wl_webmasters_ref_guidelinesforsuccessfulindexing.htm

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/basics/basics-18.html

http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/webmasters.shtml

http://www.dmoz.org/add.html (AOL)

Submit your Sitemap

Although you can also use an HTML sitemap and allow the search engines to find it, some people prefer an XML sitemap that they can simply submit directly to search engines. The advantage to an XML sitemap is that you can submit it directly to search engines, ensuring it doesn't get buried in your range of pages.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?sitemap=www.YourWebAddress.com/sitemap.xml (Change yourwebsite.com to your website)

http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/webmasters.shtml#22

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/store/promote/sitemap/sitemap-06.html

Webmaster Tools

This is perhaps the most helpful tool search engines can provide.

By simply adding a code to your website, search engines can give you a variety of information about your website. Such information includes things like when they last crawled your website, what pages are indexed, and which keywords are most popular. In Google's webmaster tools, you can also see the speed of your website.

However, not all search engines offer this. Neither AOL nor Ask provides such a service.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools

http://www.bing.com/webmaster

https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com

I hope the information, and links I provided you can help you improve, and manage your SEO. I look forward to seeing your comments!

SEO: (Seeing Entrepreneurial Opportunities) + some SEO tips: Part 1 of 3

2010-01-13T03:25:00Z

The concept of SEO can really teach us the basic principles of marketing better than almost any other concept.

Marketing is all about finding strategic opportunities that will fit your budget, and increase your profit in the long run. The results are not always going to be in black and white, but the risk of it all is what truly makes marketing, marketing.

The people who have taken the time to optimize their website for search engines really understand this concept. Although it is possible to tell when a Google spider crawls your website (see tomorrow's post) there really is no true way of measuring how much of an increase in sales you have due to SEO. Unlike a magazine or website ad, SEO is one part of your internet marketing strategy you can't accurately measure.

Technically speaking, SEO is the concept of improving your Google ranking. This is accomplished by getting link juice (being linked to by other websites that already have a high ranking), improving your keywords, and making your content robot friendly.

SEO is free and involves simple steps to implement. Although the idea of certified professionals working in the SEO field may be intimidating, it's all a matter of do's and dont's that you can implement to create a strategic SEO model. If you can afford it, a professional can certainly be a helpful asset, but certainly not a necessity if you have a limited budget.

If you're reading this blog, you most likely know about the benefits of SEO and internet marketing. By understanding the benefits of SEO, you don't just understand the benefits of search engine optimization, but understand how to identify and capitalize on effective entrepreneurial opportunities.

In closing this post, why not end with some SEO tips?

In SEO, keywords are half the battle. Do your meta keywords match up with your content, title and meta description? Do your images have alternate descriptions that often have a keyword within them? Do you link to relevant websites with similar content and keywords? Is your H1 a good heading containing keywords you want people to be searching in Google? (Your H1 is your primary heading found in the HTML of your website. Search engines put more weight on it than other headings.)

Of course, there are also some basic do's and don'ts.

Don't make your website too flash oriented, as search engines can't read flash. Use regular text and images to incorporate your primary content. Don't include too many links on one page, since Google won't know what to index. Don't include more than approximately nine or ten keywords in your meta tags so you don't overwhelm search engines. If you present too many, it will put less weight on each one.

Do include a sitemap, so search engines can better find all of your content. Do add nofollow tags to links that are unrelated, or that search engines cannot access (e.g. flash). Do make your website streamlined and easy to load.

And perhaps most importantly, do see the entrepreneurial opportunities you have at your disposal.