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For a marketer on the Internet, search engine optimization is one of the most important things that should be learned. The first thing that you will need to do is to select a keyword that you are going to use and then include it inside your title tags. It is very important that you use some other words with your keyword in your title tag. Including your keyword or keywords in your content is also very important but you have to always bear in mind that your content has to read well at the same time.

Having content that is loaded with keywords that doesn’t read well can work against you because you must remember that after you have someone visit your website, it has to be fun and interesting for them also. Submitting articles to article directories is also an effective tool for SEO but there are few things that you should know about it also. You should never submit more then five articles per day, as submitting more can get you stuck in Google’s sandbox for a period of time.

Having fresh and interesting content in your website can not be overstated, because the idea is to have visitors become paying customers and there is nothing like boring and stale content to drive people away. It is also important to remember to have tasteful content that is palatable for the general public. It is important to always bear this in mind if your goal is to generate income. Only submit your site once to each directory and then check to see when you can expect to receive a denial or confirmation. There are many directories that will consider it spamming if you submit your website even as few as two times. You should be reasonable in your expectations with regards to time and remember that you are not alone on the Internet and other people are competing with you.

By: Alesandra Gibson

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SEO tips can help you to get higher Yahoo or Google listings, but only if you use them. Most people think that they know better, even so called SEO professionals who have to use PPC advertising to get their websites listed highly enough to be seen. Who are they to tell us what to do, when they cannot it themselves?

I have had some of them write to me criticizing my ‘crap’ HTML and also my ‘useless’ linking strategies. My site has ‘only a Page Rank of 3′. So what? It is sitting at between #1 on #5 on Google from day to day, at # 1 to #4 on Yahoo from day to day and at #1 on MSN. I will gladly accept their criticism of my HTML and linking when they achieve the same. Till then, perhaps they would be better buying my book that complaining about my websites!

I would feel more predisposed to them if they stopped criticizing me – I only started to do the same to them when I got sick of their comments when they could not emulate my results. Who am I, a rank amateur, to beat them in the SEO stakes!! In fact, I have been at this for many years.

So, SEO tip #1 – don’t believe anything you are told unless those telling you it have at least one of their websites in the top 5 on all the major search engines for a competitive keyword. Mine has >800 million other results on Google.

Tip 2 – use classical search engine optimization. Use Meta tags because some search engines still use them. The main one is the Description Meta tag – Keywords is not so important but use it anyway. It does not hurt you, so use them.

The third tip relates to the title of your website. There are two points that relate to this. The first is that it should be the best keyword that you can find that relates to your niche or website. That means a good demand and low supply, though too much is sometimes written about this since such keywords are not easy to find. If you can’t something with low supply, just use what you want and decide to compete against them. Somebody has to be top, and why can’t it be you? Too many people give up in SEO too quickly. Probably because we are told not to compete against the big boys – by these big boys!!

The second point is that the title of your site need not be stated on every web page. My web page titles are those of the page, not the site. The graphics are the same, but the title is the keyword that they page is optimized for. Why do otherwise? Yet 99.99% do (just a guess!). Then fourth of my SEO tips is related to the headings on each page. The main title of the page should be in H1 tags, and the heading in H2 tags. You don’t need any more, but any subheadings can go into H3 tags, but should contain text that could be construed as minor keywords.

I might be wrong, but who says? I have found that if you ignore the big guys, and compete against them, they can be beat. Check out what they are trying to sell you and you will notice that much of it is obsolete. Such as site generation and article generation software. That’s not an SEO tip, just a word to the wise, from the not so wise. I have no pretensions, but I know where my home page is on Google – and Yahoo – and MSN. Just search for ‘article services’.

The fifth SEO tip is to use your keywords sparingly. Most people still think that 1% – 3% keyword density is ideal, yet it is actually too much. There is an optimum keyword density that has little to do with the keyword itself, but more to do with contextual relevance of the page content to the topic in hand. Which leads to the sixth of the SEO tips: write naturally and honestly. If you know about your subject, write about it in your own language and don’t try to meet any perceived need for a specific number of so-called keywords within your page content.

Seventh, don’t forget about your links. You can get a higher search engine listing if you have lots of links back to your website from other sites. In fact, the links are from page to page, and you get a proportion of the Google PageRank of the page linking to you, relative to the number of other links leaving that page, and also give the page that you link to a proportion of your PageRank, calculated in the same way. The problem with reciprocal links is that most pages are linked to and from pages with a PageRank of zero, even though the website home page can have a PR of 6 or 7.

SEO tip eight. Use your internal linking to maximise the PageRank of a selected page on your website. You don’t need every page on your site listed in the top 10 of Google or Yahoo: you only need one. So maximise your efforts on that one page. Visitors that page will then visit the rest of the pages on your website, and so will search engine spiders, so you know that every page on your site will be listed and with a chance of being found in a search.

The important point of that tip is to concentrate on getting one page in the top 10. That’s all you need. You will have links to all your other pages once somebody reaches that page in the top 10. Tip nine: Once you get visitors keep them there. Give them useful content and something to do, even if just to click from page to page. Offer them a free gift for completing a quiz on your topic, or free vacation certificates for certain actions: these are easily found on the internet in a form that you can either post or email for them to print their own. Offer them an opt-in form so that you can keep in touch.

That is the most important tip of all – if you can keep in touch with your visitors after they have left your site, then you can offer them new products as they come along without having to seduce them to visit your website again.

Finally, the SEO tip number 10. Enjoy what you are doing, and don’t look upon it so much as a job as something to enjoy, and to do as best as you can. I wish you the best of success since it is very sweet when it comes – as it will come with you.

By: Peter Nisbet

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When someone uses a search engine they type in a keyword or key phrase and the search engine returns relevant results. The traffic you receive from this is referred to as organic search engine traffic. Search engine optimization increases traffic to your website and you will not have to pay one penny for it. Does that sound like something you might be interested in?

SEO can get pretty tedious and complicated but do not let that stop or scare you from optimizing your website. The effort will be extremely worthwhile when the free organic traffic starts rolling in!

Here are some basic SEO tips that you can use on your website right now.

1. Picking keywords of two or more words can increase your success rate. Choosing single word keywords usually have a higher amount of competition associated with them.

2. Insert keywords into the title tag of your web page so search engines know what your page is about. Failing to perform this simple step can result in your web page being ranked in a lower position when it does not deserve to be. Try to create titles containing the two or three choice key phrases that you are targeting. Make your titles relatively short and interesting. Your title will serve as a method of getting the visitor interested in reading your page further and increase the chance of the visitor clicking the link.

3. Another major SEO activity involves evaluating the link popularity of your website. Creating good quality links also improves your ranking with the search engines. The goal is not to link with any website, but link to websites that complement your content. Your website will get penalized by the search engines for linking to low quality websites such as free for all link farms. Link farms are websites that were created for the sole purpose of increasing the link popularity of a website.

4. Use the html bold tags or highlighting around your most important keywords appearing near the top of each page. You only need to do this once or twice. Do not use them everywhere the keyword appears because that does not help. Your most important keywords and key phrases should appear in the first few paragraphs of the text on the web page.

5. Submit articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. This creates high quality long-term links that stay active in the archives for years to come. You can also exchange articles with other website owners. The content of the articles should complement the content contained on both websites. This is much better than doing a simple link exchange because of shared content and search engines love to deliver high quality content in search results.

By: Nina Greene

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Many webmasters release a PDF version of their content in PDF format; some also provide PDF e-books. Your website could reap the benefit in terms of SEO if your PDF files are indexed by SERPS.

The following are some tips will help you to get your PDF files indexed by various search engines:

PDF’s format can be either a text or graphic. Its better to publish your PDF in text format as most Search engines are unable to read the content of a graphic file. You can submit your pdf documents to certain bookmarking websites which will help you gain higher search engine rankings.

In PDF’s one can include title, author, subject and keyword. You can make fill this with relevant data. As with a normal webpage, the title should be keyword optimized. This will help search engines to locate your document for your specific keywords and to grant SEO rankings.

As far as Description part is concerned, there is no such option available within a PDF document. Here the search engines will find the first text of first paragraph and use that. So place suitable text at the start of document so that it is read first.

You can also include tags like alt tags for images using Acrobat PDF creator. This also can be done in Acrobat using the TouchUp Reader Order panel.

PDF files should also have links. Links should be added and suitable anchor text be used as well with the link. Since PDF’s over time would change hands, a link back within a PDF to your own website can really help bring extra traffic and it will also help your website to score higher rankings on Search Engines.

Version of PDF is also a thing to keep in mind. Make PDF document using fairly old Acrobat as it will ensure that search engines are able to read your PDF.

Using Fast View which is an Acrobat option allows PDF file to be loaded page by page rather than requiring to wait for the entire document to be downloaded before opening. Fast View allows speedy delivery of the page. As people in general don’t like to wait to long for a document to open, thus using this option you will be able to serve user with a page while other pages are being downloaded.

Size is one thing that does matter here .You should keep your PDF file to a reasonable size. Search engines don’t like to index files that take to long to download, thus it is most likely that SERPS will abandon indexing that file. To gain high rankings you need to keep your document size optimum.

Content is also one major factor. Content should be treated just as you would for any other webpage. It should be keyword optimized for keywords.

If you follow the above guidelines then PDF document can help your with your website to score higher rankings on search engines. It will also help you generate more traffic/clicks directly from links embedded within PDF document.

By: Bhupinder Singh

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Let’s face it, SEO is a complicated mess. Anybody who says otherwise is seriously kidding themselves. With all the variables involved, can you believe that title and description probably cause more arguments than just about anything else? It’s true. Everybody has their two cents on which is more important. Well, this marketer is going to give you his two cents on the subject. Take it for what it’s worth to you.

There is no question that the title of your site is important. After all, if you’re fortunate enough to get listed (not always a given) that is going to be the first thing that people see. So granted, you need a title that clearly defines what people are going to see there. So for example, let’s say you have a site that is on Internet Marketing Tips. You’re going to want THAT to be your title. That way, if people see it in the SERPs, they’ll know that going there HOPEFULLY will give them tips on THAT subject.

However, because there are so many sites with the same darn titles (go do a search if you think I’m kidding) what happens is that searchers develop a blindness to them. Think about it. If you did a search for Internet Marketing Tips and the first 20 results in the SERPs all had the same title, what do you think would happen? You’d probably just glaze over all of them OR…and this is where the description comes in…you’d look to see who had the BEST description.

Okay, but what IS the best description? That is something that is impossible to qualify for any site no matter what the niche is. The reason is because now we’re really getting into the area of copywriting. Simply changing your description and waiting for the SERPs to index your page with the new one can literally mean the difference between 1,000 visitors a month and 10,000 visitors a month.

But now I’m going to throw another monkey wrench into the fire, which is why you can’t say for certain that description is more important than title. See, Google, in all their infinite wisdom, does not always print your description tag as is. They will sometimes print a description based on certain content from your page that they feel is most relevant to the prospect. If you think I’m kidding, go check out a few web pages and see how they’re listed. It’s almost laughable.

Therefore, since there is no fool proof way to insure that your description is going to appear the way YOU want it, I can’t give that meta tag a clear win over title.

So for those of you who pick one over the other, the truth is, it’s a crap shoot between the two. But at least the title, you have complete control over. So while it may not help much, should there be 20 pages with the same title, it is at least one variable that you don’t have to worry about being messed with by the SERPs.

Yeah, and you thought SEO was simple.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

By: Steven Wagenheim

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