Search engines use robotic programs to gather information about websites. These programs are text oriented and previously could gather very little information from a web page that was based entirely or mainly on flash. According to the announcement of Adobe, which you can read about in Business Week, this is going to change now.

So, if you are designing a new website, then don’t discard flash because of search engine optimization concerns. For certain websites, such as artists or musician’s websites, flash is a great asset and now it seems that it can be used without fear of the site being “unfindable” in searches on Google and Yahoo.

A domain name is a valuable property of any business or any individual who would like to establish a presence online. It is extremely important to register your domain name carefully and with the right registrar. I would like to share my experience with you and hopefully you can use it to pick a domain registrar that will treat you fairly.

When you set up a website there are two important institutions that you must deal with, first the registrar and secondly the hosting firm. If your hosting firm treats you badly all you have to do is to change the “DNS” settings and move to a new hosting firm where you can upload your files. The process takes only 24-48 hours and involves little disruption.

However, if your domain name registrar mistreats you, you can end up losing your domain name entirely. A registrar is simply a company that has been entrusted to sell domain names to companies and individuals for a certain fee. The fees that are charged vary considerably and the service that the registrars provide also varies quite a bit.

A good price for a dot com name nowadays is about $10 per year. Beware of someone selling them very cheaply. For example, Yahoo was advertising domains at $1.98 and $9.98 per year and now is going to raise the price (July 2008) to $34.95. Anyone who stocked up on a lot of domain names will be in difficulty.

Yahoo is a big company and they are a problem. Even worse are small companies who actually resell domain names as agents for larger companies. Some of these firms have no contact details (telephone, physical address) and if they go out of business it can be a problem for you.

There are other firms that never notify you when your domain is about to expire. I have had particularly bad experience with Enom and with resellers of Enom domains. The minute your domain name payment is overdue, they shut down your domain (putting up ads instead) and if you wait for more than a month you may lose the domain entirely or have to pay a huge fee to get it back.

So choose a domain name registrar that has proper contact details and that has a good record in notifying its clients about pending expiration and renewal dates. A very solid company that I have used is www.directnic.com . They notify you 90 days, 30 days and one week in advance of renewal dates and do not shut down the domain if you are late. They currently charge $15 per year.

Another popular domain registrar with a good record is godaddy.com (Although I don’t like their website interface which always tries to convince you to buy various services that you may not particularly need).

I would avoid Enom.com and any reseller of Enom and, I am sad to say, Yahoo should also be avoided like the plague! Visit the prospective registrars and see if it is easy to understand their websites. Look at their contact and support information, and if necessary take the help of friends and colleagues who already have websites.

I am usually a positive person, and like to give constructive suggestions, but it has been said that “bad news” travels faster than good news. So, I will test this theory out, with my top ten list of common, but costly, search engine optimization mistakes that people make when they build their websites. This list is not in any order of importance as all the points should be taken seriously if you want your site to do well in the search engine queries for your main keywords.

1. Using a “splash page”

I think you have seen sites where you go to the main page and all you see is a beautiful picture with the two words of text saying “enter here.” The picture is beautiful, no doubt, but this is a disaster when it comes to search engine optimization. Search engine robots are looking for text, but there is no text on a “splash page.” The main page of any website is the most important page, and it has the best chance of being optimized. If you use it to place a pretty picture, you are throwing away this chance. Search engines don’t appreciate splash pages, and many human users too are annoyed by having to click to finally view the content. Avoid splash pages whenever you.

2. Putting important text, or even all the text as an image

I have seen clever web designers produce a beautiful web page that has images and text combined to look like a normal web page. However if you try to put your cursor over the text and select it, you can’t do it because there is no text. The whole page has been rendered as a jpg or gif image. It looks good to the viewer, but the search engine robot doesn’t find any searchable text. Be careful if you are using some automatic web design programs which turn text into images. Also while it is quite extreme to turn an entire page into an image, you should also avoid changing your important headlines into gif images.

3. Not putting title and description tags on pages

http://a1-optimization.com/webpromotion/2007/10/08/october-issue-five-tips-for-article-marketingseo-and-roi/ http://a1-optimization.com/webpromotion/2007/10/08/october-issue-five-tips-for-article-marketingseo-and-roi/#comments Mon, 08 Oct 2007 21:37:58 +0000 <ADMINNICENAME> http://a1-optimization.com/webpromotion/2007/10/08/october-issue-five-tips-for-article-marketingseo-and-roi/ A1- Web Promotion Tips

A newsletter from A1-Optimization
(www.a1-optimization.com)
October 2007, consecutive issue no 39

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Contents

1. Five Important Article Marketing Tips
2. Our Services
5. SEO Brings Good ROI

Welcome to the October 2007 issue.

Once again, it’s been a while since the last newsletter. The main article in this issue is about article marketing. I have been promoting my own business and the businesses of numerous clients over the years through the distribution of articles, and I believe it is one of the best ways to get noticed on the net. The article in this issue gives some tips that will help you to write articles that will get published and bring the results that you want.
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Five important article marketing tips
By Donald Nelson, Copyright, 2007

One of the most cost-effective means of Internet promotion is article marketing. Article marketing is the writing and distribution of short articles that are related to the subject matter of your website.

These articles are typically picked up by hundreds of article directories, blogs and other websites and when they are published they contain a link back to your website. If you do it correctly you can reap a huge amount of back links, additional traffic and credibility, but often times these articles are plagued with mistakes that defeat the whole purpose of this kind of promotion. If you follow the tips below you will be able to avoid the most common mistakes made by inexperienced article marketers.

1. Provide solid “how to” information in your article

The main idea of article marketing is to give useful information to your reader. The article should not be something which directly promotes your business. If you are in the landscaping business, don’t write an article saying that your company, XYZ landscaping, is the best landscaping company in the entire USA. Rather write an article with tips on how a homeowner can care for her lawn or plants or how she can save money by following certain guidelines, etc.

If you provide good information, then your reader will understand that you are an expert in this field and when they see your link at the bottom of the article they will click through and see what more you have to offer. The object of the article is to “pre-sell” rather than to try to get a quick sale. So, information comes first, your direct selling can come later.

2. Format your article properly

Your articles should be written with short paragraphs, so that they can easily be read on- line. If you are submitting your article to article directories or distribution lists, make sure that you actually have paragraph returns, and use the preview functions that these publishing sites usually offer. If your formatting is wrong, then editors usually do not have time to correct it for you and your article will be rejected outright.

3. Check your spelling and grammar before distributing your article

Use your built-in spelling and grammar checking tools, and if you have colleagues working with you, then get one of them to go over your article. If you make spelling or grammatical mistakes, especially in the titles and opening paragraphs, your article will probably be rejected. Even if a badly written article is published, it will not impress the readers and they will not click through to your site, so take care about the fine points of language.

4. Don’t try to stuff your article with clickable links

Of course one of the objects of article marketing is to get links to your website. And, it is well known that the most valuable links are those which have “anchor text” (clickable portion of the link) with keywords related to your site. Based on this it would seem like a good idea to pepper your article with choice keyword-links that go back to your main page and some of your inner pages. However, many article directories and distribution services frown on this kind of link-keyword stuffing and your article will again be rejected for violating the publishing guidelines of these sites.

If you are doing careful site-by-site distribution then you can study each site and see what is acceptable and put links within the body text of your article, however even where it is permitted, if you overdo it your reader may see it as excessive self-promotion and you will not achieve your purposes.

5. Write an effective resource box

I have counseled you against self-promotion within the main part of the article and against stuffing the article with links to your site, so how can you get any value out of this activity? The answer is in the “resource box” which is the two or three lines of text that you are allowed to include following the article.

Write two or three sentences telling who you are and what you have to offer. You can have a normal link back to your site, and in most directories you are also allowed to use a keyword link back to your site.

If you have written an informative article and it is well formatted then it will get published. And if your resource box is enticing, then you will get targeted traffic back to your site.

So follow these five tips and you will reap the considerable rewards that article marketing has to offer.

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Our Services:

If you need help with your website promotion we offer the following:

• Three search engine optimization packages: http://www.a1-optimization.com
• Article Writing and Distribution: http://www.a1-optimization.com/article-writing-service.htm (We now have three seasoned copywriters each with 20 years or more experience in journalism, editing, and writing)
• Website Copywriting: http://www.a1-optimization.com/copywriting/website-copywriting.htm

I am not sure if you are aware that the dollar is continuously falling in value against the other currencies of the world. Every time this happens my income falls because I earn dollars but live in Europe! This is one of the reasons I am going to raise the prices of the optimization packages soon. However, you, the readers of the newsletter have prior knowledge of this and can take advantage of the old prices in the next ten days. So if you have been thinking of ordering an optimization package, now is the time to do it!

Ebook of the Month!

For some time I have been thinking about writing an ebook that could help people get into article writing and distribution. While I have been thinking about it, someone else has done it! Andrew Hansen’s “Article Speed Writing “ebook offers a very simple, but systematic method showing how to write informative articles in as little as 30 minutes. The good news is that you don’t have to be Shakespeare to do it; if you can write a business letter or an email to a client, you can also write an article. If you are interested in learning more about this method, then visit this link: http://tinyurl.com/28wr8k

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SEO Brings Good ROI!

by Donald Nelson, Copyright, 2007

Whenever I buy any Internet tool or service that is connected with my online businesses I always ask myself, will this particular good or service bring me enough additional revenue to pay for itself? In the language of marketing this is known as “return on investment” or ROI.

So what about search engine optimization (SEO)? Will I get a good return on my investment in these services? Before you can answer this question you have to look at your business model. How much do you earn if you get one or two extra sales that you would have not otherwise gotten?

The answer varies from business to business. If you are selling low priced items then it might take a lot of extra business to pay for the fees of search engine optimization. But in some industries, one or two extra orders will more than pay for the fees (at least the fees on our site, I can’t talk about other sites).

If your site is properly optimized you have a fighting chance of being found in the organic, free search engine rankings. A well optimized site will pick up hundreds of extra visitors or if multiplied by several months and even years it can run into the thousands. Suppose just a fraction, say one per cent of these people, buy something from you then, depending on your business, you should easily be able to afford the cost of having the site optimized by a specialist.

The good part of SEO is that it lasts for quite a while. If you are advertising in a pay per click program like Adwords, then as soon as you stop paying, your traffic stops. Optimized sites, that have achieved high rankings, usually stay in prominent positions for many months, and in some cases many years.

It is true that algorithm changes of search engines sometimes result in a website losing its position in the search engine rankings, but this can usually be corrected with tweaking of of the site. Just as you have to service your car or other equipment, from time to time your web pages have to be serviced and tweaked.

If your website is an important part of your business plan, then you should take a look at your website’s visitor statistics, take a look at your competition and do whatever you can to improve your website so that it achieves higher rankings in search engine queries for your most important keywords and keyword phrases. If this is going to cost you some money to do, then don’t worry about it, you will get that money back from the new customers who will find you when your site is more visible in the search engines.

That is all for now. If you have any questions or comments about the contents of this newsletter, send me an email. I will be happy to hear from you.

Sincerely,
Donald Nelson
www.a1-optimization.com
support@a1-optimization.com
tel: +355 4226825, +355 692443368,

Please forward this to friends who may be interested. If you wish to publish material from this newsletter please send us an email first.

You have received this newsletter because you have either: 1. signed up for it 2. purchased a product from A1-Optimization or 3.have made an inquiry to us. If you do not wish to receive further issues, reply to this email with a message asking to be dropped from the mailing list.

Donald Nelson
PO Box 1706
Tirana, Albania

Unless you are already at the top of all the major search engines for all your major keywords and keyword phrases, you should see what you can do to boost your website’s ranking. The best way to boost your website ranking is to use website promotion techniques which improve the on-page and off-page factors that search engines use when prioritizing websites.

The first step in any program designed to boost your website ranking is to look at your actual web pages and see what you can do to make them truly search engine friendly. This effort to make a  web page search engine friendly is commonly known as search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is basically the process of organizing your web page in such a way that the main points of the page are crystal clear to both the search engine robots and to the human beings who will eventually read the pages.

If you have a web page that explains or offers “blue electronic widgets” then these words should be put in the title tag, and again in the description tag, and in the main headline of the page. Certainly if the page is really about blue electronic widgets then you will discuss the subject and mention these words a few more times in the text. You might also link to other pages on your site that have similar content, and you could even name the file for that page as blueelectronicwidgets.html .

If you do all of these things then it is clear that this page is truly about blue electronic widgets. This will be plain to any person who looks at the page and to the search engines when they gather the data for your page. By reorganizing your web pages so that they reflect and emphasize the actual message of each page, you will have taken the first step to boost your website’s ranking in the search engines.

Web Promotion Technique for Off-page Optimization

In the highly competitive world of the Internet, you can’t stop with on-page optimization. If 100 sites all have the same content and similar optimization, then the only way to reach the top and stand out as the most relevant page in that category is to build up the amount of incoming links pointing to your website. Your link popularity is an off-page factor that has a big role in determining your website’s ranking.  There are several ways to build incoming links,  and you should use the web promotion technique that is most appropriate for you.

For example, if you have time search around for directories dealing with your subject. In many cases you only have to fill out a form and add your site to the directory. Often you have to exchange links. One of the most widely used web promotion techniques nowadays is reciprocal linking. When engaging in reciprocal linking, remember that the quality of your links is just as important as the quantity. Try to get links from high traffic and highly regarded sites in your field.

Another way to build incoming links is to place your content on other websites with a link back to your site. Write articles about your field and submit it to the many content hungry webmasters searching for such material. Always remember to  put a link back to you site at the end of your articles.

If you take the time to optimize your pages and then engage in a link building campaign, you will see an improvement in your website’s ranking in the search engines. It won’ t happen over night, but eventually the best websites rise to the top of the rankings.

There is no silver bullet or magic formula to increase traffic to your website! Rather, the best way to increase traffic is to start from the beginning with well-designed, search engine friendly web pages. Here are some search engine ranking tips that will help you to increase traffic by building clear, easy to read web pages.

1. Keep it simple: Your web page should be clear and easy to read. It should be easily read by the people who will be viewing it, and if you are interested in search engine rankings, it should be simple from the stand point of search engines.  This tip is particularly important, and often overlooked by many web designers.

A page may look simple if you just view it in your browser, but you have to look at the html code to see if it is really simple. Look at your page in a text program like notepad or the html view of popular editors such as Front Page or Dreamweaver. On what line does your first line of actual text begin?  If you have a complicated table structure or long strings of java script, then your first line of actual text may be pushed far down the page. It might even be on line 100 of your html code.  Clean up the code by putting java script in external files, take out spaces, and see if you can take out tables that are not necessary. If you can’t do this by yourself, get professional help. It is very important.

2. Don’t try any “smart” tricks:  It is counterproductive to attempt to trick or fool the search engines. Don’t put your keywords in invisible text (the same color as the background) or otherwise stuff your pages with keywords in hopes of getting a higher ranking. If you get a queasy feeling, a feeling that what you are doing is not right, stop right away. Once again, if you are not sure, then take the advice of someone who has experience in this field

3. Each web page should be clearly focused and reflect only a few main points: If you want to optimize your pages for a particular keyword then this particular search engine ranking tip is most important. A well focused page will help you with the search engines, by clearly showing the main keywords, and it will also help you communicate your message to the humans who are actually viewing your web pages.

4. Once you have established the focus of each page, take steps to place your keywords in the strategic places of all of your pages. The keywords should appear in the title tag, in the headlines (using header tags such as h1, h2, h3, h4 etc.), in the first paragraph or two of text and in text links on the page. Rather than try to do this after the page has been

Keyword density is the ratio of your keywords to the other text on your webpage. Keyword density is one of the things that search engines look for when evaluating a website. If you get your keyword density just right, then it is a big help in your search engine optimization.

Suppose you have 400 words in the text portion of your website, and one of your keywords is repeated 12 times. Then that particular keyword has a density of 3%. Keyword density is important because it shows that a particular document is really concerned with that word.

Keyword density can also be broken down for the sections of your website. You should check  the keyword density of your title tag, description tag, body text, headers and link text

There are various tools to help you to find out the keyword density of the important sections of your web page. A free keyword density tool can be found at  http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/ . There are also keyword density tools packaged in search engine optimization software such as Web Position gold and SEO Studio

If you want to get your keyword density just right, the first thing to do is to write your page naturally, for human beings and not with the search engine in mind.  Good search engine optimization starts with such natural copy. If you are well focused you will probably mention your keyword in the beginning and probably repeat it a few times in the body and will probably use it when you rap up. Your keyword density should be fine. Also if you put your keyword in your main title, and in a subheading, then that will help your readers  while also pleasing the search engines.

The most important tip I can give you for getting the right keyword density is to keep it natural. You can use the keyword density tools to check your site but if you get in the habit of  well-focused pages you will not have to add any keywords or “stuff” your text with additional keywords.

In any case, by all means go ahead and check to see how you are doing. After you have written you page, check the densities in the total document and in the various parts. A density of 5% in your text is considered good however when you also take into account your meta tags, then the density may rise to as much as 15%. Take a look at the competitors and see what they are doing. Also read your pages aloud, if your keywords sound like you have stuck them in unnecessarily then you have probably gone over the acceptable keyword density for the text portion of your document.

It will take some trial and error, but once you get it right,  proper keyword density can be an important contributor to enhanced search engine rankings for your website.

]]> http://a1-optimization.com/webpromotion/2007/04/18/keyword-density-not-too-much-not-too-little-get-it-just-right/feed/ http://a1-optimization.com/webpromotion/2007/02/11/dmoz-is-back/ http://a1-optimization.com/webpromotion/2007/02/11/dmoz-is-back/#comments Sun, 11 Feb 2007 22:36:12 +0000 <ADMINNICENAME> http://a1-optimization.com/webpromotion/2007/02/11/dmoz-is-back/ The Open Directory Project, www.dmoz.org, or DMOZ is back in business. DMOZ has been one of the most important directories on the Internet during the past 8 years. A listing in DMOZ is very important in search engine ranking, as Google places great value on the judgement of DMOZ editors. The problem is that the editors of late, did not add sites to the directory in a timely manner, and recently the whole editing program stopped completely. It was even rumored that DMOZ was near  death, especially when the server hosting the directory crashed at the end of 2006.

There are signs that DMOZ has been revived: it is now possible to submit a site for consideration. Maybe the editors will be working faster in an attempt to really convince everyone that DMOZ is back in action. So, submit your sites but take care to do it properly. I wrote an article about the submission process some time ago, much of it is still valid so check it out.

Myspace Just For Fun

By David Riewe

There are many who take advantage of the MySpace community for business purposes such as advertising, self promotion or networking. While MySpace is certainly useful for all of these purposes, there are others who belong to MySpace simply for fun. They are not seeking to gain anything from their involvement with MySpace other than an opportunity to meet friends and have a good time. For these individuals the joy of using MySpace includes the opportunity to make friends around the world, the ability to listen to new types of music and the chance to participate in the age old practice of flirting.

Making Friends around the World

There are MySpace members who are members for the sole purpose of making friends online. This may include friends from nearby geographic regions who might become friends offline as well or friends from faraway countries who can offer insight into other cultures in addition to friendship. Typically this type of member is one who enjoys conversation and meeting new people. To these individuals friendships are usually more important than other types of relationships such as business relationships.

The use of MySpace to make friends is ideal because it is relatively safe, as long as certain precautions are taken. Most importantly members should avoid providing information such as their full name or address to others. This is important because although two individuals may have a seemingly wonderful friendship online there is always the opportunity to mask ones identity online so one of the friends may be a deceptive individual with malicious intent. This individual may use information such as a home address to stalk, harass or otherwise harass those they meet on MySpace.

While there is the potential for dangerous situations online, those who follow safety precautions can enjoy their online interactions without fear of being hurt by others. In these cases, it may not really matter if their online friend is actually not telling the truth about his identity because the other MySpace is still enjoying the conversations and is not putting herself at risk because.

Listening to Music on MySpace

Another fun activity MySpace members can enjoy is listening to music. MySpace members can place audio files in the background of their website so visitors hear this music when they enter the website. Alternatively members can place links to other musical tracks on their website for visitors to enjoy. One use of music on MySpace websites is for new bands that are looking to promote their music to place numerous tracks on their website in an effort to build up a following.

Members of MySpace who want to find some new or different music to listen to can spend some time searching other members’ website in search of music they may find interesting. Once they find websites with music they enjoy, they might want to add these members to their friends list and check back frequently to see if any new music has been posted.

Flirting on MySpace

Finally, members of MySpace may join for the sole purpose of finding others to engage in flirtatious relationships. For many the act of flirting is an enjoyable activity and flirting online is especially appealing to some because they do not have to worry about being nervous. Many individuals find they have a great deal more of confidence flirting with those they are attracted to in an online community than they do flirting with those they know in reality. Flirting can certainly be a harmless activity but when it is done online precautions should be taken to avoid potentially dangerous situations. The most basic precaution which should be taken is to keep the flirtations online and do not let them morph into meetings offline. Take care to avoid divulging any information which can allow others to determine where you live is very important. While flirting online may be a fun activity there is no way to be sure of the intentions of the person with which you are flirting.

About the Author: David Riewe is the webmaster of Daves-InfoRama. Read more articles about MySpace by visiting MySpace Advice

Source: www.isnare.com