The Truth About SEO And Meta Tags

In earlier days, when the Internet was still pretty new meta tags were everything. They were vital in helping search engines determine what the site was all about and how to rank the site in their search results. When the databases were smaller and more manageable, this meta tag provided a quick and easy way to figure out which keywords were important on a site. At that time, meta tags were king. Many SEO services could get web sites placed high because of the presence of meta tags.

As the Internet grew larger beyond all expectations, there was fierce competition in trying to get into the search engine’s top ranking. SEO services who could not get their sites ranked through fair means resorted to unfair means. In an effort to bring traffic to their site they abused the system by incorporating useless and completely irrelevant keywords into their meta tags.
With the result that today, Google and most other major search engines pay little or no attention to meta tags. What is given more importance is the content within the pages of the site. A few engines still take notice the words within the meta tags, but they are used more as minor supplements to the actual content and title tag of the web page.

So, should you or shouldn’t you use meta keyword tags anymore? It certainly couldn’t hurt to use it. Search engines use many different factors to determine site rankings, so it makes good sense to use meta tags along with any other acceptable and legitimate technique that is available. At best, it increases your chances of getting a higher ranking and there’s no downside to it unless you rampantly stuff your page with irrelevant keywords.
If you still intend using meta tags, first write your content based on relevant keywords and then create a title tag and meta description tag using the same keywords.

PICKING A NICHE

One of the things that it seems like people struggle with the most is
picking a niche to jump into. One of the main reasons is, many
systems and guides tell you to pick something that you are
passionate about or something you love....
There is a problem though!
If you are anything like me, you can't go to a website like Clickbank
and find something that you love or even anything that you are
passionate about.

So, what I want you to do is to pick a product that is going to make
you money. The question is, how do you know what product that is?
Well, there is no silver bullet, no real way to look at a product and
know whether or not it is going to make you money. There are
however, ways of telling whether or not it is more likely or not that
the product could be a winner.
When deciding which product is right for you, there are a couple
things that you can look at.
Gravity – This can be found in the product description at ClickBank.
This number basically tells you how many affiliates have sold at
least one unit. The higher the number, you can assume that the
product is selling well and that the sales page is proving to convert.
Sales Page – Take a look at the sales page for the product. Does it
interest you? Does it look professional? If you were in the market,
would it compel you to rip your credit card out of your wallet and
make a purchase?
Information – How much information is readily available online?
For instance, if you are in the dog training niche and type “dog
training tips” into Google and the first thing you see is an extensive
step by step system to train a dog, that is free. There is a good
chance that people will not buy what they can get for nothing. This
might be a sign that you should look at another niche. If however,
there isn't a whole lot of free information, but enough for you to
research and get information for articles and other advertising, you
probably found a good product to market.
Affiliate Resources – Most of the time, for every product there are 3
or 4 vendors on ClickBank trying to sell the same thing.
Some of them give you things like articles, graphics, free reports,
and other information that will help you in marketing their product.
The bigger head start you can get, the better. This is a resource that I
think many people overlook. Some of the affiliate resources even go
as far as to give you a list of profitable keywords that you can start
your campaign with.
All of the things above combined can guide you to making the right
decision when you're trying to come up with the right product for
you to promote.
The most important things out of what was covered above are the
sales pages and the information sections.
You want to pay close attention to the sales page. If it makes you
think that it was just quickly thrown together or if you look at the
sales copy and think to yourself “ who in the world came up with
this”? You might want to look at other similar products and skip over
that particular vendor. Make sure that the process from beginning to
end of the site is smooth. You want the headline to grab your
attention and for there to be plenty of opportunities for the visitor to
buy. Another thing to look for is to see if there are bonuses being
given. Many times, the bonus that a product comes with make it a no
brainer in and of itself.
Another very important thing to look for is “leaks”. This refers to the
ability of the buyer to purchase the product through another payment
processor. What you want to do is follow all of the links and make
sure that your affiliate ID is still showing up at the bottom of the
page. From what I understand, this is not as big of an issue anymore,
but definitely something to watch out for.
One other important thing to keep an eye on is whether or not the
vendor is collecting email addresses on a squeeze page. If they are,
do yourself a favor and sign up. As you start to get emails from
them, follow the links inside the emails and make sure that your
affiliate ID is still intact and that they are not replacing yours with
theirs. There has been some talk recently about vendors possibly
stealing commission from affiliates in this manner.
Keep in mind that there is more than likely more than one person
selling the same kind of product, so you do have options. Once you
find a niche that you would like to get into take a look at all of the
different vendors and see which one you think gives you the best
opportunity to make a sale by sending visitors to the sales page.
The information portion is also going to play a huge part in your
decision. As I said earlier, if someone is giving away for free what
you are trying to sell, how many do you think you will sell?
Chances are, you might still get a couple sales, but not enough to
make any type of long term passive income.
Our main goal is to find a niche that we can settle into, do the initial
work, and then collect money from it for years to come. This is
exactly the reason that it is so important to do thorough research. By
doing so, we are making sure that we have set ourselves up for
success.

5 Simple Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques

Effective SEO may seem difficult at first, but using little tricks that require little or no programming knowledge, could make a huge impact on your website's keyword ranking.
The lifeblood of any website/ecommerce business is traffic, and every webmaster knows the best type of traffic is natural, organic search engine traffic. There are two very important reasons for this: (1) it is extremely targeted, and (2) It is FREE! The hard part is getting top ranking for your sites keywords... or is it? The purpose of this article is to provide a few simple, effective, and most important, search engine friendly strategies to help boost your websites' ranking and ultimately your traffic.

1. We will start with the Meta Tags. I know you have already heard of, and are probably currently using meta tags on your site. This is great. I just want to make sure you are using them effectively. We will only go over 2 tags: the "title" tag, and the "description" tag. We will not go over the "keywords" tag, as the major search engines have placed less and less weight on this one, and some would argue this tag has no weight at all. I still use this tag however, as I feel there is some merit and no drawbacks to using this tag.
I have found it effective to use similar text in the "title" and "description" tags, and to place your keywords prominently in these tags (near the beginning and more than once). I have seen sites with "sitename.com", "New Page 1", or "Welcome to my site" in the "title" tag, which really does not help in their quest for higher rankings for their particular keyword. Also, try not to use words such as "and", "or", or "the" in these tags.
**Important note about your keywords. Search engines evaluate keyword prominence, keyword weight, and keyword density when determining a site's ranking. All three are calculated individually for the page, the title tag, the description tag, as well as other areas on a page. Keyword prominence means how close the keyword is to the beginning of your page. Keyword weight refers to how many times a particular keyword or phrase can be found on the page. Keyword density is the ratio of the keyword to the other words on the page. You do not want the keyword weight or density to be too high, as this can appear to the search engine as "keyword stuffing" and most search engines penalize sites that stuff their keywords.
2. Place your navigational links (and JavaScript) at the right or at the bottom, but not on the left, of the page. When the search engines "read" your site, they read from the top left to the bottom right. Search engines place an emphasis on the first 100 words or text on the site. You do not want these words to be navigational links or Javascript. Ideally, you want to have your heading tags with your keywords in the beginning of your page. This being said, placing your links/JavaScript on the right or bottom of your page ensures the search engine spiders get to the text first, giving more weight to what's important on your page.
3. Place alt tags on all of your images. Search engine spiders cannot "read" pictures or images. The only way a spider knows what an image is about is by reading the alt tag. This is also another chance to place more of your keywords in your HTML, improving your page's keyword weight/density. Alt tags are easy to make and they can make a big difference in your sites keyword ranking. A simple alt tag looks like this: alt="put your keyword phrase here." Search engines separately calculate keyword prominence, density, and weight in alt tags as well, so optimize your tags.
4. Place your keywords at the bottom of your page. Just as search engines place more weight on the first words of your page, they also do the same to the last words. The general thinking is this, if your site is about a certain subject, then the main points, or keywords, should, appear at the beginning, be spread throughout the page, and be prominent at the conclusion. But if you have all of your navigational links and JavaScript at the bottom, your relevant page text could end well before the HTML does. An easy way to have your keywords at the bottom of your page is to include them in the copyright information. For example, if you have a dog food website, you could have something like this at the very bottom of the page:
copyright 2005 yoursite.com
World's best dog food
Search engines are not (as of this writing), penalizing sites using this technique, and it wouldn't really make much sense for them to do so.
5. The Anchor Text of your links. Anchor text is the actual linking text on a site. It is what the user clicks on to navigate to that particular site or page. If a search engine finds many links to your site using the term "dog food", then the search engine concludes your site is about "dog food". This is overlooked quite often, but it seems to have a very large impact on your search engine rankings for a particular keyword. Your anchor text needs to be the keyword or phrase you are trying to target. Try to avoid anchor text such as "Click Here" or "yoursite.com"
Also, if you're running a reciprocal link campaign, be sure to use variations of your text. If an engine notices every link to your site is identical, it could place less weight on these links or potentially penalize your site. This is because search engines generally give more weight to "naturally occurring" links, and less to "reciprocal link exchange campaigns". Using different, but relevant anchor text can dramatically affect your targeted keyword rankings, by making your links appear more natural.
Effective SEO may seem difficult at first, but as you have read above, little tricks that require little or no programming knowledge, can make a huge impact on your website's keyword ranking.

5 Tips For Improving Your Site’s Search Engine Positioning

Almost all webmasters or website owners are looking for ways to get better results from their websites. They wish to improve their site’s standing and get better rankings in search engines. This quest for improved results, known as search engine positioning, can be satisfied by following a few basic procedures.
Before you even begin, you have to realize that you are competing against hundreds, and in some categories, thousands of websites offering similar products and services. In the case of affiliate marketing, many of the competing websites may even be identical! If you want to get the edge over these competitors and improve your search engine positioning you have to fine-tune your website and actively work to make it better.

1. Make Sure that your design is search engine friendly:
Your design may look good to your eyes, but it may also be the cause of you present difficulties and poor search engine positioning. How is that possible? Look at your web page using a text editor or the html view of popular editors such as Dreamweaver and Frontpage. On what line does your first line of copy begin? If your actual copy is pushed far down the page, it is more difficult for search engines to pick up the crucial information that would have helped you to improve your web page ranking.
If you have this difficulty, first take out all unnecessary spaces in the html code. If there are long strings of java script, put these in external files. Similarly, put style information in external Cascading Style Sheet files. Simplifying your table structure may also help. If this starts getting too complicated for you, then consult with a professional search engine positioning specialist or your web designer.
2. Make sure your keywords are strategically placed in your copy:
It is not possible to improve web page ranking if the readable copy on your web page does not contain the words you wish to be found by. Many people erroneously think that just putting your important keywords in meta tags is enough. This is not true, some search engines hardly use the meta tags and look more to the copy on the page. Make sure that your important copy is in the first paragraph of text, in headlines (using headers such as H1, H2, H3) and in the active or clickable portions of link text on your page.
3. Use a site map and text link navigation on your pages:
If you want to improve your search engine positioning for all the pages of your website then you have to be sure that these pages actually get indexed or included in the search engines. You can help this process along by making a site map, a web page that has text links to all the sub pages of your site. Another good practice is to include a text link navigation system on your web pages, even if you already have a graphics based navigation bar elsewhere on these same pages. Remember, search engines follow text links more easily. A robot that lands on your main page or site map page will follow the text links and then visit and index your lower level pages.
4. Increase the quantity and quality of inbound links:
In fiercely competitive categories it will be difficult to improve web page ranking without obtaining a good number of links to your page from other websites. If you have very good and valuable copy, other sites may link to you because you are a valuable resource. However, if you want to speed this process along you will have to actively request links from other websites, either by trading links or by getting your content (with a link back to your site) placed on other websites.
When it comes to links you should keep in mind one important principle: it is not the quantity of links that is important, but the quality. One good link from an authority site such as CNN or Wikipedia is worth more than dozens of links from other sites. To get these quality links, there is no short cut. You will have to earn it by having a site that provides a lot of useful information.
5. Keep up with Search Engine Developments:
The challenge of improving your web page ranking and search engine positioning is dynamic. Search engines are not static. Most of the big search engines of yesterday have disappeared or are only minor players today. You should keep up with changes in the world of search engines by taking part in online forums or subscribing to newsletters which deal with topics such as search engine optimization, web ranking, and general webmaster related issues.
For years I have been getting great information from the Led Digest, a subscription list which is sent out several times a week. You can see samples online at www.led-digest.com
If you do not have the expertise or the time to tackle these matters by yourself then you should take advantage of skilled professionals who can help you to improve your site's performance in search engines. Whether you rely on professionals or are able to do it yourself, these five tips can provide a good point of reference for starting the work.

Doing Keword Research

Keyword research is one of the most important things that we do
online. It can be very time consuming depending on how deep you
need to go in order to get keywords that you are happy with, but it is
well worth the effort and will pay a great return if done correctly.
The most important thing that we need in order to do effective
keyword research is a keyword tool. For the purpose of this guide I
am going to be using WordTracker's free tool, due to the fact that
everyone has access to it.

Before we start though, it is important to understand that for the
most part these tools make guesses at the results that they give. For
example, in one niche that I am in, all of the keyword tools that I
have used said that a particular keyword was only getting 1 search a
day. This is funny to me, because I currently get 30 visitors a day to
one of my sites based on that keyword. The point I am trying to
make is there is a little bit of wiggle room in the results that you get.
WordTracker reports results based on a daily search volume. This
means that if it shows the number 5 after a keyword that it is
searched for approximately 150 times a month.
Normally, a guide like this would go into a long drawn out ramble
about how you should do keyword research and it would be really
boring and you would lose interest.
I'm not going to do that. I'm going to show you how to cheat your
way through keyword research.
This is by far the easiest way that I have found to research keywords
and has helped me to expand out into different niches and even given
me some great product ideas.
I'm going to give some examples here and try to make it as easy as
possible for you to follow along. I want you to understand exactly
what I am doing and how I come up with the numbers that I come up
with. Make sure that you have a web browser open and ready to go.
For example purposes we are going to be researching keywords that
relate to the relationship niche. It will work for just about any niche
though. As a matter of a fact, I have not found a single niche that I
have not been able to do my keyword research in this manner with.
Open up www.ezinearticles.com in your browser. Now because we
are using the relationship niche as an example I am just going to type
in a random keyword in the search box. I am going to use
“relationship problem advice”.
When I do that, the first article that shows up for me is this one:
http://ezinearticles.com/index.php?Some-Relationship-Problem-
Advice-That-Can-Save-Your-Relationship&id=1252566
When that article opens, I really don't care what it says. Basically, I
just want to take advantage of the fact that this person has probably
spent hours researching the niche and keywords. So, what I am
interested in is the keywords that they are going after.
To get that information you want to look at the source code. To do
that, simply right click somewhere in the article and choose the
option to “view source code”. When you do that, this is the part that
we are concerned with:
<meta name="keywords" content="ways to end
relationships, questions to ask before ending
a relationship, get your ex back"
NOTE: YOU CAN ALSO GET THIS INFORMATION BY
SIMPLY CLICKING THE EZINE PUBLISHER BUTTON
ONCE INSIDE THE ARTICLE. HOWEVER, BY DOING
THIS YOU ARE GIVING YOUR COMPETITION ANOTHER
VOTE TO BE LISTED IN THE “MOST PUBLISHED”
SECTION OF THAT category.
This tells us that the keywords that he is going after are “ways to end
relationships, questions to ask before ending a relationship, and get
your ex back”.
Lets take the first one of his keywords which is “ways to end
relationships” and put it in keyword tracker. When we do that, we
see that it is searched for 520 times a day.
Next, go to Google and enter the keyword with quotation marks.
Surprise, only about 8,000 competing sites!
Now save that keyword and move onto the next one. When we put
“questions to ask before ending a relationship” into WordTracker we
are told that this term is searched for 324 times a day. When I check
Google there are only 416 competing sites!
At this point we have 2 keywords with high daily searches and low
competition. Now, you may have to go through a couple articles in
order to find good keywords, but it still only takes a couple of
minutes and it is much easier than the way that the “gurus” tell you
to do your keyword research.
You will want to continue looking at articles and checking the source
code until you have somewhere between 10 -15 keywords that you
are comfortable with. It should not take you long.
One thing that I will say is, I'm not sure if this niche is profitable or
not. I have never marketed to it so I have no idea how the niche
converts or how much money you could make which these types of
products. One thing that you can do to see what people are
marketing when using these keywords is to simply follow the links
in their resource boxes.
This will allow you to find out what kind of affiliate products are out
there and give you some ideas about how you can monetize the
keywords that you find.
Some people might find this method of keyword research unethical,
I don't though. As a matter of fact, I think it is a very smart way to
find keywords that we can use quickly without a ton of effort on our
part.
The great thing about this method is, it will allow you to get
involved with just about any niche that you want to enter.
If you put any base keywords in the search box at Ezinearticles you
are going to come up with a ton of articles and can easily see what
keywords people are trying to rank for. How much more of a sure
thing can you ask for?

6 More Tips For Raising Your Search Engine Rankings

Whether your site is profitable or not with PPC advertising, search engine rankings are an important factor to consider in improving profitability. The higher you are on a variety of search engines, the better off your profitability.

1. Site Navigation
The navigation menu that appears on your website should include your page’s titles if possible. Also, your sites navigation should be consistent and on every page so that not only people may easily navigate your site, but search engine spiders as well.
2. Choose Less Popular Keywords
Don’t just use the most popular keyword phrases – the market is so competitive that you should be sure to include some special keywords relative to your website. This is especially true if you are just starting to market your site on the web.
3. Choose Related Links
Make sure that you don’t have a lot of irrelevant links on your site. The more closely the links on your site are related to your site, the better the chances of being ranked well in search engines.
4. Update Your Content
You need to periodically update the content of your website, even if it’s only a slight change. Search engine spiders give better rankings to sites that update content often.
5. Don't Oversubmit
You need to consider the fact that many search engines don’t like automatic submissions or multiple submissions. Therefore, submit only once and don't use a whole slew of submitting software.
6. Subscribe To and Read Search Engine Relevant News.
Always be on a look out for SEO news – staying up to date and using the latest techniques will help you stay one step ahead of your competitors.
When it comes to massive profitability, high search engine rankings can’t be beat. Keep on top of the game and you will be happy you did.

7 Free Search Engine Optimization and Writing Tools

Search engine optimization will help you get more traffic and sales to your site. Use these tools to help you optimize your site for free.
Traffic. Everyone wants free traffic, and what better way to get it than optimizing your site?
There are some very simple things that you can do to optimize your site. If you want to get more from your website, then implement these strategies, use these tools, and make your website spider food for the search engines.

Below are some of the best sites I have found for optimizing my sites.
1. Check your site.
Before you start tweaking your site, you need to make sure that it's either in Google or not banned by Google.
The truth is, you want to optimize your site for Google, which is now the number one search engine in the world.
It won't do you any good to optimize your site if Google won't accept it.
Use this tool to check your site.
Google Banned - http://www.googlebanned.com
2. Toolkits
If you can find the tools you need in a collection, this will save you a lot of time, as well as frustration because you will know exactly what you need to do to properly optimize your site.
You'll want to check different aspects of your site like page rank, metatag information, and links. Nothing will drive your potential customers away faster than broken links.
This site, in addition to offering a forum on search engine optimization, also offers a nice collection of tools for helping you optimize your site.
SEO Chat - http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools
These two sites also offer search engine optimization tools. It's really a matter of preference, as well as what tools you need to optimize your site.
Add Me - http://www.addme.com
Evrsoft - http://www.evrsoft.com
3. SEO Software
You can also use software to help you optimize your site. Where software will help you the most is to actually help you optimize your site for the keywords you are trying to target. It's a waste of time to optimize your site if you haven't optimized for the right keywords.
This is the software I use, and it's free. It works for both MAC and PC, and it has some of the best documentation I've ever seen on search engine optimization because it's written for the average person. It also includes a basic search engine optimization training course, a 50 page manual, and excellent, step by step directions for preparing your website for the search engines.
Web CEO - http://www.webceo.com
4. ROR Generator/Robots Text Generator
A what?
ROR is similar to a robots.txt file in that it gives information about your site. The difference is that an ROR file is in XML format.
You can use this generator to create an ROR file for your site, and then paste a button to the main page of your website. When the search engines spider your site, they'll spider this file and have a better description of what your site is about.
I would also recommend that you create a robots.txt file because this will tell the search engines what not to spider on your site. If you own a members' area, or you sell anything, you don't want the search engines spidering your download pages.
ROR Generator - http://www.rorweb.com/rorgenerator.php
Robots Text Generator - http://www.searchenginepromotionhelp.com/m/robots-text-creator/simple-robots-creator.php
5. Site Map
A site map is not only a great tool for letting your customers know where everything is located on your site, it can also help you with the search engines.
By creating a site map, you will have an index of all the pages on your website. When the search engines spider your site, they'll find all of the pages. This will help you with your rankings.
Creating a site map, especially if you have hundreds, or even thousands of pages on your site, can be very time consuming. This generator will speed up the process.
Spider Map Creator - http://www.searchenginepromotionhelp.com/m/spider-map/creator.php
6. XML Site Generator
Google is now offering webmasters a chance to submit an XML site map.
An XML sitemap is a search engine friendly sitemap of your site. This isn't written for your visitors though. It's written for the search engines so that they can find all of the pages on your website.
Even if you include a sitemap on your site for your visitors, I would still recommend that you use an XML sitemap. This can speed the process of getting your site indexed by Google. This is an easy way to make sure that all of your pages get indexed.
Creating a sitemap is easy. You can use the generator listed below. Once you've created your sitemap, submit it to Google.
XML Site Maps - http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/index.php
Submit your sitemap to Google - https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login
7. Linking
There's been a lot of talk about linking because linking is one of the most important strategies for getting high ranking in the search engines.
The more links you have pointing back to your site, the higher the page rank you will get, as well as creating a way for others to find you. You can use this strategy to get referrals from other sites, which is free traffic. It's targeted, and you are being recommended by another site.
Before building your linking strategy though, you should check your popularity. See who you are linked to first.
Link Popularity Checker - http://www.marketleap.com/siteindex/default.htm
Once you have checked your link popularity, begin by building links back to your site. Below are two sites that offer directories you can submit your site to.
Directory Manager - http://www.123promotion.co.uk/directorymanager/
Free directories that don't require a link back - http://www.directoriezsubmission.com/free-web-directories.htm
Linking can drive a lot of traffic to your site. The more backlinks you have pointing back to your site, the more popular it will be. You'll also get a lot more traffic.
Before you start to market, complete your site. Optimize it for the search engines, and use these tools to help you get higher rankings.

Affiliate Programs And SEO

While good SEO skills will get your page noticed by search engines by themselves there other tricks to help increase their effectiveness. Affiliate programs can be a good way to increase your website’s own SEO attributes. There are different types of affiliate programs. An older one would be the old banner concept which predates pay-per-click. Google’s Adwords is a modern incarnation of this where by people can profit from Google’s pay-per-click business. Let’s look at some of these.

Not all affiliate programs have to be for profit. There are many people who are just looking to get traffic to their sites by cooperating with other sites. Just as a strong page on your website can help increase the rankings of your other pages rankings on affiliates’ sites can do the same. Don’t confuse affiliates with guest books or link pages. An affiliate is working with some kind of service or business to make a profit so it is a function of commerce. This will help with the search engines’ rankings. Search engines look for link pages and don’t give them a very high ranking so they wouldn’t help you very much. However since affiliate pages are used for commerce they are going to have a much stronger ranking. Affiliates can act as a team just like the pages on your site.
Another point to consider is that pages that are involved with affiliate programs are going to be set up well in order to profit from them. So this is analogous to strong members of a team making a colossal team effort. Enough strong pages driving traffic to your site is lie diverting a river to a drought stricken town.
Fortunately affiliate programs are easy to find so just keep in mind what kind you would be willing to do for your site. Don’t give yourself more work than you need to.