Internet Marketing Indonesia Journal

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.

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.

As a website owner it is perfectly natural to expect your website to rank near the top of the search results. After all, with all that fantastic content that you’ve just spent days and weeks fine-tuning, how could it not be immensely popular? And as sure as night follows day, when your site fails to make the first page it’s tempting to blame Google, because, how could your beautiful new website be the problem? So, take a deep breath and read the next line.It’s not Google’s fault, it’s not your website’s fault: it’s your fault.Sorry, but you haven’t finished the job. Your next task is going to be challenging, but in this new world, competition is fierce, and to finish the job you’ll need to pay careful attention to the various ways you can claw your site up the rankings.But don’t despair. You can get help, it even has a name Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and there are plenty of consultants and companies offering SEO services, the only problem is sorting the wheat from the chaff. Luckily for you, you are just about to read The Six Golden Rules for Choosing an SEO consultant.Golden Rule Number 1: Contacted by an SEO firm? Keep your wits about you!Although it does not automatically follow that all SEO firms that contact you are just out for a quick buck you should keep your wits about you and be wary of any that do. The majority of good SEO consultants will rather react to an inquiry than spend time trawling the Internet looking for poorly optimized websites.Golden Rule Number 2: Guarantees are lies – spurn them and the companies that offer themOkay, as Golden Rules go it is not fair to say that all guarantees are lies, there are a few genuine guarantees that are offered in good faith and as a sign of confidence, nevertheless err on the side of caution and treat them all as you would a suspect standing over a dead body with a smoking gun.SEO consultants have no control over how the search engines search; they have no influence over the competition and so no matter how much you want it they are not in any position to offer you meaningful guarantees with regards to the results that can be achieved.There are no “special relationships” or “tricks”, if you are offered a guarantee, or think yourself covered for insisting on one, it is quite possible that the guarantee offered will be worthless.Guarantees that are freely offered are generally not what they seem. Anyone with a basic knowledge of SEO will be able to rank you high for an uncompetitive search phrase; being ranked number one for a search phrase that no one is using is as useful and expensive as erecting a billboard in the middle of the Sahara Dessert.Golden Rule Number 3: Secretive SEO’s should be shown the door Your relationship with an SEO consultant should be similar to that you would expect from your accountant as you are ultimately responsible for your website and the actions of the people that you employ to build and maintain your website.There is no reason for an SEO consultant not to explain why and what they are doing and they should be prepared to document all that they have done. They should not insert undocumented code and you should be careful of those that want to install their own software; give consideration as to what will happen if you decide at a later date to end you relationship with them.Golden Rule Number 4: Treat references with a pinch of saltReferences are useful but will not always tell the whole story. Ten years is a lifetime in SEO, and it is a subject that is more to do with understanding the “now” than the “then”.Search engines in their current form first started to appear in the mid 90’s and a lot has changed in search engine technology which gave birth to the SEO consultant. As the search engines have become more adept at spotting and penalizing websites that achieve prominence by stealth rather than merit, so SEO techniques have had to evolve. Despite the SEO basics being the same for any website how they are applied and to what degree is very dependent on each specific website; its design, maturity, market, purpose, objectives, the type and size of the organization as well as how competitive the market. Some SEO techniques that are relevant and effective for some websites will be irrelevant and ineffective for others.Golden Rule Number 5: Prepared to be disappointedLimit your expectations. No matter how good the SEO consultant they will not be able to take you from ‘nowhere’ to a number one listing overnight. There is no magic bullet that will allow a one page website to permanently out rank a large multi-national, if you believe those that say there are, expect to be disappointed.SEO takes hard work, time and patience. Golden Rule Number 6: Are they worthy of your trustThe most important quality to look for in an SEO consultant is trust, as more often than not you will be entrusting your SEO consultant with your business and reputation. If you are not familiar with SEO speak you need someone who is not going exploit your ignorance, isn’t going to shift blame on to others and is going to do things right, with long term objectives, and not implement solutions that offer immediate rewards followed swiftly by long term and serious pain.A good and trustworthy SEO consultant is worth their weight in gold, like good neighbors; when you have found one, think twice before moving.Have you got a Champ or a Chimp?The following is a questionnaire that can be used as an aid to ask potential SEO consultants a number of questions. Based on how they respond to the questions it will help you root out those that lacks the basic knowledge, expose those that are willing to tell you what you want to hear and identify those that are prepared to tell you what you should hear.It is not recommended that the information you gleam from the questionnaire is used as the sole criteria for evaluating an SEO consultant but it will help identify the SEO cowboy, saving you time, money and heartache.

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.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is something that many webmasters are now obsessing over. Many web site owners are spending countless hours tweaking and modifying their web sites, adding keyword rich content, and spending hours obtaining back links, so that their site will rank higher in search engines. It is true that over 90% of all web surfers use search engines to visit sites on a regular basis, but should web masters and web site designers build and tweak sites for search engines, or for their visitors?

The answer to this question is that when you build a web site, you are not targeting web search engine crawlers, you are targeting people and human visitors. Hence, you should build a web site for humans, not search engines. The whole purpose to create a web site is so that you can get traffic. Without traffic, a web site is worthless. No matter how many features and how functional your site is, without traffic, your design and functionality do not matter. Although search engines can help bring in traffic, web sites that are designed for search engines, are often not designed for human visitors and all the traffic that your web site gets will be worthless. Visitors will visit and then soon leave your web site and not return again. Return visitors are critical for the success of any web site.

One good example of optimizing for search engines purely is some webmasters tend to stuff tons of keywords into the Meta-Tags; this is a very bad practice and will get the site blacklisted. Moreover, this black hat technique does not benefit the users.

Hence, when building a web site, one should build it for human visitors. If you have articles that are too keyword dense, the quality of the writing will not be as high as it should, and quite frankly, many of your visitors will be annoyed if you keep using words such as “mesothelioma” or “home insurance loan” to get your web site high in the search rankings for these terms. They will leave your web site and most likely not return. If you create a web site where content is created for people to read and is well written, chances are you will get many return visitors who like the quality of the content you provide and come back frequently to read any new content you may have added. The more people that visit and link to your web site, the more popular it well become and naturally, it will be ranked higher in search engines.

Also, rather than spending hours building links for SEO purposes, that time could be better spent on adding features to your web site which would prompt more people to return to your site and stay at your web site for a longer period of time.

In conclusion, although spending lot of time on SEO and increasing your search engine rankings in the short run, the visitors you get from your SEO efforts will not be valuable as chances are they will not visit again. If you build your web sites for people, your traffic will grow and search engine rankings will rise naturally. Hence, the best way to build a successful web site is to build for people and allow your web site to naturally move up search engine rankings.

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.