Carve a Niche among Ecommerce Stores?

Optimizing your Ecommerce Store for Search Engines

When you have an ecommerce store, you know the most important aim is making sure that people visit your store and purchase your items. Isn’t it? However, when you are struggling with getting people to your site, there are several things that you can do to overcome this situation. The best way to ensure that you get the traffic you need is to optimize your ecommerce store for search engines. This means that people will lurch upon your store when they are searching for products that relate to the products you sell.

Google News is now creeping with Googlebot

Google News recently upgraded their infrastructure to crawl with Googlebot which is main user agent. What does this mean? Not for most publishers. Any new organizations that wish to retire from Google News can continue to do so: Google News will always respect the robots.txt entry Googlebot-News, Google old user agent, if it is more restrictive than the robots.txt entry for Googlebot.

Google Help Center provides detailed guidance on using the robots exclusion protocol for Google News, and publishers can contact the Google News Support Team if they have any questions, but we wanted to first clarify the following: 

10 Steps To Increase Your Google Pr

There is no secret behind the success you can have by increasing your Google pr, but the true secret is how you can do so. There is an array of different ways you can increase your Google pr, but persistence and using a combination of several methods will help you climb up the search engine and increase your pr faster. So, here’s how to increase your Google pr.

1. Link exchange
If you link to other sites that are similar to yours, your Google pr will rise because of the multiple links you have pointing back at your site. If you link to sites unrelated to yours, Google will penalize you.

2. Content
The kind of content you produce goes a long way. If you can offer fresh and enticing content to your readers, more than likely you will get a frequent return base to see what else you have to offer, which Google loves.

3. Forums
Posting in forums is a great way to spread your knowledge across the Web and advertise your products and business at the same time. A lot of forums allow signatures where you can link your site and refer people to it, which in turn will generate more traffic and increase your Google pr.

4. Blogs
Having a blog associated with your website is almost essential today. How to increase your Google pr from blogs is by consistently posting new ideas and thoughts every day, offering advice and answering questions, and obviously promoting your business.

5. Article writing
Article writing is one of the best ways out there to increase your Google pr. You have the ability to spread your knowledge, use keyword optimization, submit the article to thousands of article directories, and spread your website link through the resource box.

6. Write reviews
As crazy as it may sound, your Google pr can and will go up if you write reviews on anything. Whether it is on movies, books or sports games, the key is subtly placing the link to your website in it.

7. Affiliate programs
Affiliate programs can increase your Google pr, but it can also hurt it as well. It is vital that you join a successful affiliate program that correlates with your website; otherwise you will see your Google pr drop.

8. Free
All you have to do is put up the word free and people are immediately interested. By sending a free e-book out through an auto-responder or free articles for a week, you will generate a high volume of traffic just to receive the FREE item.

9. Newsletter
A newsletter is a great way to increase your Google pr because it keeps visitors involved and continuously keeps them up to date with what is going on in your business.

10. Keyword optimization
Keyword optimization is about the most difficult way to increase your Google pr, but it can potentially raise it the most. By targeting specific keywords throughout your entire website and in all of your content and articles, you will slowly rise to the top of the search engines.

Seven Things to Avoid When Looking For Link Partners

Designing a Reciprocal Link Campaign can be a tricky endeavor. As a webmaster, you must choose your linking partners wisely. Generally, a good rule of thumb is to ask yourself one question: "Will this be a valuable resource to my readers?" If you view it as a legitimate, valuable website, chances are Google will too.

Below you will find 7 tips for avoiding the major pitfalls new web developers often encounter.

1.) Do not link to sites that are irrelevant to yours. Search engines only view relevant reciprocal links as a means of improving your Page Ranking.

2.) Avoid sites that have a "Links Page" that is hard to find. Some sites don't even connect their home page to the links page. If this is the case, you probably will not benefit from the exchange.

3.) Avoid sites that contain more than 25 to 50 links per page. Your link will be hard to find, plus the site has the potential to be viewed as an FFA site. Better safe than sorry.

4.) Do not link to sites with directories that are haphazardly arranged with no categorization. Again, it could be a "Link Farm;" plus your site's address will be hard to find.

5.) Make sure you only link to sites that you deem worthy of your readers' time. Avoid sites that don't contain valuable information. The best way to gain readership is by offering a valuable resource!

6.) Avoid sites that have poor linking strategies and/or are connected to "Link Farms." You don't want to be lumped into a category with sites like these.

7.) Avoid linking to a lot of sites with a low PR. A few are ok, but generally aim for sites with a higher PR than yours.

Once you have found websites that you want to exchange links with, start networking! Email other webmasters and tell them all of the reasons their readers will benefit from reading your site. Show them that their site will be prominently displayed in a small organized directory on your page as well.

Send a pre-made html link to your site so that it's a simple cut-and-paste job for them. If the exchange appears to be too time consuming, most webmasters will overlook your request. Most importantly, show politeness and courtesy in your emails. You will be surprised at how many people respond to your inquiry when asked appropriately.

If you still have trouble finding reciprocal links, try creating contests on your own site. Offer a small prize, or simply a prominently displayed link on your homepage. If your site distributes a newsletter, offer free advertising for participating link partners.

If you find a site you really like, write a short review about it and display the site's link. It will be hard for a webmaster to pass up the opportunity to brag about a good review. Get creative! The more web developers you talk to, the more possibilities there are for increasing your link popularity. The key is, be patient, and be persistent. Even if you only acquire one third of the links you pursue, your efforts will be well-rewarded.

Doodle 4 Google - tell us what you’d like to do someday

Today, I’m pleased to announce the launch of the fourth annual Doodle 4 Google contest. Open to K-12 students in the U.S., Doodle 4 Google is an opportunity of a lifetime: design the Google.com homepage doodle for millions to see, and while you’re at it, take home a $15,000 scholarship and a $25,000 technology grant for your school.

In the spirit of thinking big, our theme this year is “What I’d like to do someday...”—giving all of the talented young dreamers an opportunity to flex their creative muscles. We know this crop of students will be the generation of tomorrow’s leaders and inventors, and we can’t wait to see what they come up with.

While most of this year's contest remains the same, we’ve made some exciting changes based on your feedback. Now, parents or guardians can register their students directly, and if a school registers, there’s no limit on the number of doodles they can submit. But remember, we only allow one entry per student. We’re also pleased to partner with Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Girl Scouts of the USA, two organizations that truly bring this year’s theme to life.

Once you’ve registered your students and they submit their artwork, Google employees and our panel of guest judges, including Whoopi Goldberg, gold medal ice skater Evan Lysacekand “Garfield” creator Jim Davis, will narrow down the submissions. The top 40 regional finalists will not only receive a trip to New York City and a visit from Google in their hometown, but their artwork will be featured in a special exhibition in partnership with the Whitney Museum of American Art.

For more details, check out google.com/doodle4google, including full contest rules. To get started, whether you’re a teacher or a parent, register your student(s) by March 2, 2011. Then get out the crayons, paints and markers—you can even throw your own doodle party. Please note that all entries must be postmarked by March 16, 2011.


Source: Google blog

2011 SEO Tips To Rank Better in Search Engines

1. Canonical Issues - check canonical issues to make sure there is a preferred default page or domain preference (http:// or www).

* No reason to have 3 variations of a home page .html, .php and default.htm, depending on your programming platform, server settings (Unix or Windows) as well as if you are using static pages or a content management system you will need to consolidate your website to either http:// or http://www to avoid splitting your site into less potent slivers.

2. Indexation and Crawl Frequency – See how many pages are crawled in a site to determine crawl frequency.

* If you have a home page that is crawled regularly and your internal pages are ignored, then this is often a result of lack of internal or external links.

* You can implement sitemaps on a folder by folder basis, then link from the footer in a site template to a maser sitemap page (where all the mini sitemaps are linked to) to increase indexation. This way the link from the footer consolidates the ranking factor to one page and THAT page feeds the various site maps equivocally (through a tiered drip-down site architecture effect).

3. Orphaned Pages and Dead Ends – check for orphaned pages to determine if pages are linked sufficiently to ensure crawling.

* If you have a page or sub folder in a website that is only linked to from a few pages, then you cannot possibly expect that page to rank well in search engines. If you yourself will not “endorse” a page by linking to it properly (contextually from keywords in the body copy) or from the primary or secondary navigation, then you cannot possibly expect search engines to pay that page with any more credence than yourself.

* Also be weary of PDF files (which can rank on their own and sponge link flow from your website). Make sure PDF files have absolute links (use the complete URL) back to your site, so they do not pool ranking factor and trap it where the rest of your site cannot benefit.

4. Dynamic URL’s – If pages are dynamically created, try to remove or rewrite as many parameters in the URL as possible or use URL / Mod rewrite.

* Any time you have session data or query string parameters in a URL, you are decreasing the possibility of indexation. Particularly if there are conventions such as ?PID=23D-55.aspx trailing along, when a SEO friendly naming convention could have taken its place with a bit of programming. You can rewrite entire segments, sub folders, categories, etc. without losing functionality or compromising SEO value.

5. Naming Conventions – Use proper naming conventions (subject or keyword first, then plural variation, modifier, then tag line).

* Here is a more useful post about how to use meta titles, descriptions and naming conventions, but the gist is simple. Create a hierarchy based on a relevant platform of topically reinforcing semantics using keyword clusters and related synonyms to toggle relevance from what search engines deem as the co-occurrence matrix.

6. Manage Outbound Links – Try to cap outbound links per page to fewer than 50 links for larger pages (10 for top level pages that need more ranking factor).

* The more links that leave a page, the less ranking factor the elements on that page have as equity. The only instance when this is not a concern is if the page itself is augmented from other strong internal pages or have strong inbound links from other sites to offset the hemorrhaging effects of excessive links leaving a page.

7. Footer / Site wide Links – Use footer links sparingly by tactfully to tie site segments together.

* Footer links still work (using 5-10 keyword-rich text links at the bottom of a page), but that can also diffuse the intent of pages that do not have enough content to distinguish themselves from other pages. If a page in a site does not have more than 300 unique words on that page, it can lose relevance as the navigation and other code structures collapse and all interject their shingles to offset or diffuse the pages unique purpose and optimal continuity.

* For example if you have a page that is only a paragraph or two and you expect that page to rank for specific keywords, your navigation alone may trump the relevance for that page. Check your cached pages in text view to see how search engines view your code and your content without style sheets or java script.

* Footer links can help bring balance to pages with less content, but use them on pages with enough content to weather their contribution.

8. Broken Links – Check for broken links which could be hemorrhaging link flow and weakening a site from within.

* Broken links irritate search engine spiders, and when they cannot connect the dots, your sites rankings suffer. If you are using WordPress our plugin SEO Ultimate features a 404 monitor that sweeps the site for broken links which you can find and eliminate.

9. Alt Attributes in Images – Use alt attributes on images to preserve content integrity while providing internal links for ranking factor.

* Using the alt attribute in images allows you to reinforce topical relevance with the on page text based content to improve a pages relevance score.

10. Anchor Text Optimization – Use pertinent anchor text and do not waste link equity from excessively linking to non reciprocating pages within a site.

* Employing anchor text optimization means using relevant keywords to link to relevant pages within a site. Do this enough and before you know it you are virtual theming (which means creating a secondary navigation contextually through keyword co-occurrence).

* This alone can distinguish your site from competitors as each granular layer consolidates ranking factor for a website. This alone is one reason why Wikipedia dominates search results, due to virtual theming.

Using a robots.txt File

What is a robots.txt file?

A robots.txt file provides restrictions to search engine robots (known as "bots") that crawl the web. These bots are automated, and before they access pages of a site, they check to see if a robots.txt file exists that prevents them from accessing certain pages.

Does my site need a robots.txt file?

Only if your site includes content that you don't want search engines to index. If you want search engines to index everything in your site, you don't need a robots.txt file (not even an empty one).

Where should the robots.txt file be located?

The robots.txt file must reside in the root of the domain. A robots.txt file located in a subdirectory isn't valid, as bots only check for this file in the root of the domain. For instance, http://www.example.com/robots.txt is a valid location. But, http://www.example.com/mysite/robots.txt is not. If you
don't have access to the root of a domain, you can restrict access using the Robots META tag.

Getting Out of Google Supplemental Results

Getting out of the Google Supplemental Results may be possible by improving your website navigation system. To get more pages fully Google indexed, the prominence of important website pages can often be boosted by linking to them from pages within your domain having the highest Page Rank, such as your homepage. The reason for this being that Page Rank is passed from one page to another by links and the most common cause of Supplemental results is lack of Page Rank.

Start by determining your most important web pages which have been made supplemental - for example those promoting lucrative products and services, and then improve your website internal linking by adding links to these pages from more prominent fully Google indexed pages of your site including your homepage. At the same time, ensure that your website navigation system is search engine friendly using a website link analyser.

Important Information about Google Buzz Class Action Settlement

Google rarely contacts Gmail users via email, but we are making an exception to let you know that we've reached a settlement in a lawsuit regarding Google Buzz (http://buzz.google.com), a service we launched within Gmail in February of this year.

Shortly after its launch, we heard from a number of people who were concerned about privacy. In addition, we were sued by a group of Buzz users and recently reached a settlement in this case.

The settlement acknowledges that we quickly changed the service to address users' concerns. In addition, Google has committed $8.5 million to an independent fund, most of which will support organizations promoting privacy education and policy on the web. We will also do more to educate people about privacy controls specific to Buzz. The more people know about privacy online, the better their online experience will be.

Just to be clear, this is not a settlement in which people who use Gmail can file to receive compensation. Everyone in the U.S. who uses Gmail is included in the settlement, unless you personally decide to opt out before December 6, 2010. The Court will consider final approval of the agreement on January 31, 2011. This email is a summary of the settlement, and more detailed information and instructions approved by the court, including instructions about how to opt out, object, or comment, are available at http://www.BuzzClassAction.com.

Google Algorithm Updated

Everyone wants top rankings for their website and most people use search engines to find what they are looking for. We all know that if your website is not in the top of a search engine that you will miss out on prospective clients, however as you also know getting these top ranks are not easy. We almost all know in some form what SEO (search Engine Optimisation) is, even if we have not got a clue how to do it. But whether we have done it ourselves or got someone to do it for us you will know that a one of hit will not fit the bill especially when search engines make changes make changes to their algorithms (this is the special formula that SE’s used to rank your site in the search engine results pages [SERPs]). Sometimes these tweaks are minor while other times they are huge and the impact is far reaching for all online users.

Google has made an algorithmic change, which, looks for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. Apparently this is not a flyby night minor change either as Google have stated it is a rankings change, not a crawling or indexing change, which suggests that sites getting less traffic will still be indexed, but some of those pages are no longer ranking as highly this change impacts “long tail” traffic, which generally is from longer queries that few people search for individually, but in aggregate can provide a large percentage of traffic. Google have said they will not be rolling it back.

So where does this leave your average small to medium sized business owner? Well if you have an ecommerce site using a structure that has longtail keywords for pages less viewed, you need to check your stats and see if you were in fact impacted by the update (did you lose traffic from some long tail phrases), also check out your linking practices ensure all links have been obtained using whitehat techniques. Another very important thing to do to help yourself now is check your link strategy out and ensure you are passing link juice to your internal pages.

Make sure all pages have unique good quality information (if you do ecommerce, this is definitely for you do not just use the manufacturers materials) and if you do not use them currently or have not used your social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for a while now is the time as this will help you to build links to internal pages and get traffic throughput to them. Most savvy Business owners realise they can not rely purely on Google or any search engine for that matter for traffic and that social media sites can help boost their business’ exposure. Finally do not go mad do not change everything in the hopes of fixing something that may not even affect you, use your stats and above all common sense.

This is not the end of Long Tail Keywords however good optimisation is really important to your continued online success now, forget how to change, manipulate or find a way around the algorithm changes instead work with it and fix your SEO efforts accordingly by making consistent updates to your content, posting high quality articles that have been optimised on to a well designed site that has also be optimised is the winning game plan here. This does not mean that your rank will be the same indefinitely it does mean that you do work a bit harder and a bit differently to consistently keep you business in front of potential customers.

Google Latest Update Provides Best Results

At the end of May, Google released an update to their search algorithm-dubbed “Mayday” by most-that affects natural search engine rankings, especially for what are known as “long-tail keywords”. In looking at this Mayday update, we will ask the question: Are these Google updates “fair and balanced”?

The “Mayday” moniker for this Google algorithm seems altogether appropriate. We picture people on a sinking ship yelling “Mayday”. And there are many people on this proverbial sinking ship. People from around the Internet are saying that they lost about 80% of their traffic since this update and many of these people are referring to pages that focused on long-tail keywords.

As you know, Google frequently updates their algorithm to improve search results. The Mayday update carries with a significant change for how Google returns search results for “long tail keywords”.

An example of a long-tail keyword would be something like this: “Apple iPod Touch 32gb 3rd generation review.”

Deal between Facebook and Microsoft

Today's deal between Facebook and Microsoft, which allows Microsoft's Bing search engine to incorporate your Facebook "like" data into its relevance rankings, illustrates how the balance of power on the Internet is shifting from search to social networking.

Microsoft got interested in search in 2003 for a lot of reasons, not least because it saw how Google was shaping the behavior of Internet users.

In user testing and from various data collection systems like the MSN toolbar, Microsoft noticed that a lot of users started each Web surfing session by entering a search term into Google, and returned to the site throughout the day. Google's blank white page was becoming the de facto start page for the Internet.

For a lot of people, that's changed.

For instance, a reporter at a major daily paper recently told me that her company no longer spends a lot of time on search engine optimization – that is, trying to get stories to show up high in Google's search results. Instead, they've found that a ton of traffic is now coming from Facebook (and to a lesser degree, Twitter).

So now they're focused on trying to write the kinds of stories that will get lots of people to post them on their Facebook pages. (Which is what they should have been doing anyway – writing interesting stories that appeal to lots of people. Imagine that.)

Today's deal brings the power of that anecdote home. Google's algorithm will continue to be great when searching for pure information with no particular agenda. But what about figuring out what movie to see this weekend? Or finding out when Neil Young has a cool new video and accompanying album? Or getting instant recommendations on a plumber to fix your suddenly broken water heater? In each of those cases, I got the answer from my Facebook friends.

These are the kinds of commerce-related questions that power Google's revenue today, as they're most likely to get users to click on related advertisements. But as more users turn to Facebook to answer these kinds of questions, advertisers will follow. Microsoft gets this transition, and is more than happy to speed it along.

Google Analytics via New Status Dashboard

"Google Analytics processes huge volumes of data for websites around the world everyday, thanks to Google’s globally renowned infrastructure," Yi Wang from the Google Analytics Product Team, wrote.

"While we never stop focusing on system reliability and scalability, we also want to make sure our users have an easy way to get the latest updates from us should there be a problem," he added.

"Today, we’re pleased to announce that we have launched the Google Analytics Status Dashboard. Now anyone can visit this Status Dashboard to check on the current status of components of the Google Analytics system," he announced.

The new Dashboard should give an overview of the main components of Google Analytics, Data Collection, Web Report and the GData API.

Data Collection indicates whether the analytics data is being gathered correctly from the websites. The Web Report indicator shows if the users can log into their Analytics account and view the data being gathered. Finally, the GData API indicator shows whether the Analytics APIs are working.

Like with the similar Google Dashboards, there are some caveats. The data is not real-time, and is likely updated just a few times a day. What's more, it only shows global availability so it's only of use in the event of a major failure.

"The Status Dashboard is the best place to check for service availability of Google Analytics anywhere in the world," Google says, indicating that the data may be localized in some way, though.

Still, while the global Dashboard may show that everything is working properly, there may be issues locally preventing Analytics from either gathering or displaying the data at any one given time.

source: softpedia

About Google Instant Search

Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.

The most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search.” Another shift is that seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. In time, we may wonder how search ever worked in any other way.

Benefits

Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.
Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.
Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.        

Top 25 Free High Rank Backlinks and Profile Sites

Here is a list of 25 high page rank web sites where you can post your content, create profiles, and link-up your site’s URL without any reciprocal link from your site. Once you create these high page rank backlinks, profiles, and accounts, they will be a source of web traffic for you. These sites are also great for reputation management campaigns. The sites will normally create a good ranking profile for your company name that in most cases willl appear witin Google’s search results pretty fast.

1. eHOW.com Write how to articles or videos. Post your link in your profile. Also a good source of information if you want to know how to do something.

2. WikiHow.com Same as eHow but you can edit existing wiki pages or create your own. Cleverly put your link in “Sources and Citations” section

3. 43Things.com You have to sign up for participation. Post your own goals or reply to posted “to do” list. Occasionally, insert your own link as a resource.

4. Squidoo.com This is one of my favorite. Build your lenses and you can add links to your site, embed your YouTube videos and flickr photos.

5. AssociatedContent.com You can add your link in your profile. Not a favorite of mine.

6. HubPages.com Another site like Squidoo and AssociatedContent. You can put links to your sites in the content you create here.

7. Digg.com The most popular news ranking site. If you have good blog posts you can post them here. If your article goes to the home page, you will attract thousands of high page rank backlinks and tens of thousands of visitors for a short period. Be prepared for handle the load otherwise you will bring down your server.

8. Reddit.com Another news popularity site. Same as Digg. Post your blog articles here but don’t submit your entire site.

9. Answers.yahoo.com Ask questions and post answers to others questions. You can post links to your site in your answers.

10. Xanga.com A community blog. Crete keyword rich contents and links to your sites in the posts.

11. Kiva.org A microfinance site. You lend to and borrow from individual entrepreneurs. Create a profile page and link to your site from your profile page.

12. Geocities.com One of the oldest site. Create a few mini websites and links to your web sites from the geocities pages.

13. Twitter.com Create an account using a keyword and post your link in your profile.

14. Propeller.com Another news popularity site. Put you site’s link in your profile page.

15. Tradebit.com A site where you can buy and sell digital contents. If you ebooks, your own recorded music, etc., put your keywords in listing pointing to your site’s URL.

16. Angelfire.com Another old site like Geocities. Create your mini sites and put links to your site on the mini site pages.

17. Weebly.com A web 2.0 site where you can create your own mini sites like Geocites. Use the same technique you use for Geocites and Angelfire for back links to your sites.

18. Blogowogo.com A blog aggregation site. If you are running a blog, add your RSS feed to their site and any time you post new articles in your blog, your page at Blogowogo will be updated.

19. Tumblr.com Post and share your photos, articles, links, music, and videos. Use you site’s link in the profile page.

20. StumbleUpon.com Discover great web pages and share with your friends. You can submit your site and individual pages to StumbleUpon.

21. eZineArticles.com The most popular article directory. Submit your articles with author’s box under each article. You can use up to two links to your site in each article.

22. Flickr.com The most popular photo sharing site. You can drop your site’s link on the profile page.

23. MyBlogLog.com Share your online activity on a single page. Link to your sites from the profile page.

24. FastCompany.com If you are passionate about business idea, you should sign up with this very respected site. You can use anchor text in your profile page to link to your web site.

25. YouTube.com The most popular video sharing site. If you don’t have an account with YouTube, you should sign up immediately. Upload interesting and funny videos. Create your profile and link to your site

Link Building SEO: Correct way to use links to your site

Link building is the gasoline that powers Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Its job is to build a site's value in the eyes of a search engine.

There is a lot of misunderstanding around the subject of link building. As a result, most people build links that don't help improve their search engine ranking.

SEO Link Basics

A link is a connection between one web page and another. A person who clicks a link on one web page will be taken to the page being linked to.

Search engines regard a link from one web page to another as a vote in favour of that page. As a general rule of thumb, the more links a web page gets the higher it will rank in search engines.

In a search engine's 'mind' links are not created equal. The value of a web page that links to your site is taken into account. If your site has nothing but low value links, it won't necessarily help you rank higher in search engines. Of course, it won't hurt either.

Link Tips

A link will normally only convey SEO value to your site if it's a one-way link (from them to you). If you're merely swapping links with friends, the two links will essentially cancel each other out.

To gain SEO value, you'll need to find ways to generate one-way links to your site. Click on my author profile below for 66 different link building ideas.

It's also worth noting that links between different pages on your site also count. In fact, I recommend you examine your site structure and look for ways to increase the links you send to key pages.

2 Ways to Convey SEO Value through Links

There are 2 ways to convey SEO value through links. They are...

1. Link juice
2. Contextual links

Link juice is a term that imagines SEO value to be a liquid, and describes its flow from one web site to another. For example, imagine that the BBC linked to you from its homepage (we all live in hope).

Link juice is said to flow through the link and land on your site. The more valuable a site is in the eyes of a search engine, the more link juice it has to send to your site. This directly impacts on your own search engine ranking.

A contextual link is one that contains a keyword phrase. That is, the clickable text in the link is a search term. For example, the following is a contextual link: Dental Root Canal Treatment.

A search engine creates an association between the keyword phrase in the link and the web page its linking to. This association helps the web page being linked to by improving its ranking for that particular keyword phrase.

The best kind of link is a contextual link from a high value site because it sends plenty of link juice (i.e. SEO value), and it creates a keyword association for the page being linked to.

Think Deep

Most non-professionals think about link building in terms of a site's homepage. But search engines are interested in the entire site, and assess its overall value. If you only get links to your site's homepage you'll struggle to fully realize the potential of SEO to send visitors to your site.

Each key pages on your site should have its own keyword focus. This then provides the keyword phrases required to create contextual links.

When generating links to sub-pages on your site helps improve the SEO value of the entire site. This is partly due to the principle that 'all ships rise on a rising tide', and is also the result of the way link juice flows throughout your site.

If you do happen to secure a link from a high value site such as the BBC, the resulting SEO value arrives at the page on your site being linked to. If that page links to other pages on your site (as it should do), link juice will spread to those pages and benefit your entire site as a result.

Where to click next on Google Wonder Wheel

I have found the new Google wonder wheel as a useful tool to use. The application which shows you the related searches to your term and navigates you all the way to the right term is easy to use and different. Sometimes small change to display the same things on another way is everything that is needed.

This is why when I’m using the Google wonder wheel I’m facing some problems, to understand where to click next. As a new user to this Google option and from Emails I’m getting from other users, the main issue to face is “where to click next”?

When you are using this application and searching via the terms Google offers, you don’t really know where to click next on Google Wonder Wheel or on the side results.  Maybe you need to click back to the origin Google page? How to go on and navigate via the other Google options? All these questions came to the table when people tried the Google Wonder Wheel for the first times.

After a while, anyone can learn Where to click next on Google Wonder Wheel since the real results are on the right hand side of the page. Navigating on the Wonder wheel is addictive, but it will not take you to where you want to go. After every new wheel you open, search for the right result for you on the right hand side.

This example shows that even after few clicks on the Google wonder wheel, its still hard to know Where to click next on Google Wonder Wheel next, because the true results are on the right hand side.

Optimization for Google

Search engine optimization is not just to rank in search engines but mainly to achieve a good click through rate from the targeted visitors. This means that your web site should come up in the search results of the search-engines with targeted keywords that are related to your content or theme of your site.

Not surprisingly, Google optimization is becoming increasingly competitive as more and more companies realize the importance of getting a high ranking here, but it is also one of the most ‘user-friendly’ search engines to work with! Google updates frequently, deep indexes many pages from a website, and is also good at ignoring sites that try to ’spam’ the listings through the use of unscrupulous techniques.

Points to achieve Higher Google Rank:

Place keywords in URL:

The most important elements to insert keywords into are the URL (domain name + path + filename) and title of your web page. Also, a low-level URL is considered more important than a higher level URL.

Page Titles:

Pay a lot of attention to the titles of the pages you are trying to get ranked. Don’t target more than two or three keyword phrases. Worry about the proximity and prominence of the main keywords. By that, I mean put your more important words closer to the beginning of the title, in the right order, next to each other and make sure the target keywords are a high percentage (but not 100%) of all the words in the title.

Google Site Submission:

Great, you’re all set. Now you should submit your site to Google, right? Not necessarily. Let Google find you. HOW Google finds you can affect your page rank. I don’t mean that there is a standard penalty for submitting to Google. There’s been speculation on that for a while but I have yet to prove it matters.

Increase Quality Back Links:

Back link helps our site to be indexed by Search engine faster. That is the first thing for you to know. No matter how good your site is, without any back link from other site, it’s like your site is a great mall in the deep jungle. So hard for people to find and visit your site.

Google Analytics:

Using Google Analytics as the only information of the campaigns effect can create a distorted and incorrect picture of what really is taking place. The Urchin software, that is used by Google for their Analytics program, is stripped of many features, the output is delayed and as in forums of webmasters widely discussed full of flaws. Most well known draw-back is the slowing down of the web site, because the JavaScript offered by Google is connecting each time to the Google Server. Well, it is for free, so no claims can be made. So when you have performance problems check also this fact.

Beating the Recession With Affiliate Marketing

A recession is now inevitable. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently predicted that the current recession in the United States will last for at least the whole of 2009. It is of global proportions and it will not discriminate and thus will affect each and every single market. Moody's stated that China is in for its most serious economic downturn in two decades and trade figures have been described as just awfully dreadful. All is far from well in the Euro region, already said to be plunging headlong into recession, with the UK economy being the fastest to contract. Developing countries will also feel the crunch with growth predicted to slow to an abysmal 4.5% for the pre-developed. Shades of the Great Depression seem to be colouring the present global economic crisis so the big question of how to safeguard our financial well-being is springing into everyone's mind.

For this I offer a simple straight-forward answer. Start one or many low investment, high return businesses! Cynical readers will be tossing around expletives at this statement as it is common knowledge to everybody that doing this will ensure profitability, even in the worst of downturns. It is the method of what businesses we should be starting that is this article's concern. My advice is, start an affiliate business! It possesses low initial investment and at the same time maintains high yield characteristics that I believe we should all take note of.

The cost inherent in setting up an affiliate program is fairly paltry. Simple things like hosting, domain name registration, and pay-per-click advertising, are all fairly inexpensive. Compared to traditional physical commerce, affiliate marketing offers a host of benefits with the most useful characteristic being never having to ever stock up on the wares that you are marketing! It also does not require having any physical office, storage or operations space. This translates into never having to pay rent or a mortgage installment! Estimates put US spending on affiliate marketing channels at $2.1 billion dollars for 2008. In terms of your audience however, you are not just marketing to the US. You are marketing to the entire world!

If you have diligently marketed your affiliate products, you stand to make ludicrous sums of money. Since low operating costs are coupled with opportunities to generate extremely high returns, affiliate marketing is the ideal way to generate more income during economic slumps!

Google AdSense by Considering Content as King

Google AdSense provides you the possibility to produce earnings with no making whatever thing different than maintaining a fine site. The major essential aspect in determining the victory with Google AdSense is the quality and amount. Note that web sites that are content-affluent have been quite victorious with the Google AdSense marketing program. The advertisements should not be random; it should be directed in the direction of the content of the web site. That typically enhances the click via ratio and additionally the earnings of the web site.

Some may feel that fine content has not anything to do with, in developing their site. However, what we consider cannot be right every time. Google this moment utilize students as human being reviewers, and in case they come crosswise sites with poor contents, they will simply ban that from the programmed and one time banned it will not be that quite simple to get that account back.

Boring, old, musty and fusty contents will produce fewer guests just. Interesting and enlightening content attracts more guests to the site and thereby it enhances the earnings to your site.

Therefore, the content in AdSense plays an extremely essential function in the quality of your web site. Major care should be given at the same time as preparing the content for your AdSense. It is not needed that your content should be massive, usually little and trouble-free content is found to magnetize many viewers. Your content should be enlightening, factual, appropriate, and genuine and focused. You have to make your advertisements look as if you have placed them there deliberately as though they were something essential relating to your production, matter in addition to your service. There are sites accessible on the net to aid you produce more traffic by improving the nature of your content in the AdSense. They just supply you the vital hints in developing a content affluent AdSense. Another perfect way to advance a fine content is to put you in the guest’s shoes. That might aid you to realize the weaker side of your content and assists you to enhance much.

The keys utilized in the content of an AdSense additionally boost the quality of the content. These keys put the advertisements in the peak place and that in turn will produce more clicks for you. This way having content with the right keys will make your AdSense site a gainful one.

From all that, it is quite clear that the content has a remarkable function in making of a fine Advertisement site. In addition, it could be rightly stated that the Content is the King in Google AdSense.