Get Others to Link to Your Site - SEO TIP #3

Here goes the 3rd tip:

In theory there are countless ways, some traditional and some quite innovative, to get other web sites to link to yours. In practice, it can be easier said than done. Google defines a link as it pertains to rankings and SEO as a "vote" from one site to another. The more quality votes your site receives, the greater chance you have of ranking well. If a well established site links to yours, that link carries more weight than one would from a mom & pop shop or less reputable page.


If your site has useful content and is doing something unique, you're already ahead of much of the competition. People need a reason to link to your site, as very few will do it out of the goodness of their heart. Trading links can work, but link exchange networks have decreased in value and won't be of much use in competitive fields. Buying links, if you haven't heard, is a big Google no-no. While entire articles could be written on this topic, here are a few popular methods of acquiring incoming links:

• issuing company press releases with a link back to your site
• submittíng to reputable business directories such as Yahoo! and Business.com
• be active on related blogs by commenting and exchanging ideas
• if you have clients with web sites, ask if they would mind adding your link in a "partners" section
• participate in relevant forums and discussion boards with a link in your signature
• write and submit original articles to web publications in your field with a link in your bio
• get involved in social media and bookmarking

About The Author

John Metzler has held executive positions in the search engine marketing industry since 2001. He is the Founder of FreshPromo, a Canadian-based search marketing firm and updates his blog regularly

Choose Your Keywords Wisely - SEO Beginners Tip #2

Here goes the second tip from John Metzler article

One of the first steps of SEO, this one needs to be done properly the first time or all your future efforts and promotion could end up being wasted. Start by writing down general terms that describe your products, services or web content. Use keyword research services to investigate word and phrase variations. Wordtracker, KeywordDiscovery, and the Google AdWords suggestion tool are good starting points. The goal is to find those niche phrases that your target market uses to find sites just like yours and optimize your site for them. If the phrases do not get enough use by searchers, your profíts from ranking for them will be low. At the same time, stay away from general terms that are tougher to rank for (ie. like "art", "computers", "business", etc.) as a great portion of the traffic will be irrelevant and you'll break the bank attaining such competitive phrases.

About The Author

John Metzler has held executive positions in the search engine marketing industry since 2001. He is the Founder of FreshPromo, a Canadian-based search marketing firm and updates his blog regularly

Tips for SEO Beginners - #1

I recieved a newsletter from SitePro News in July 2008. The newsletter had an article on checklist for SEO Beginner's written by John Metzler. The article had good tips for SEO Beginners. Good Luck Beginners.!

Here goes the tip on creating Search Engine Friendly Content and tomorrow's tip will be on "Choosing Right Keywords"

1. Create Search Engine-Friendly Content

Unique web content is your most valuable asset, and ensuring search engines can read it is crucial. Text embedded in images or Flash cannot be read, so make sure you use important keywords, headings, and hyperlinks in plain text form. Instead of using images as navigation links, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) makes it easy to format those links to look more like 'buttons', thus creating powerful anchor text as well as making it visually appealing. Use heading tags properly and don't try to hide keywords or text by making it the same color as the page background or shrinking it so it can't be seen. Make sure the keywords you wish to rank high for are used frequently in the page copy but within reason.

Now that you've created good content, is it actually being crawled? Copy and paste a page's URL into a search engine to see if it has been indexed. If you've just created the page, it may take a few days to show up. Aside from age, many factors can lead to web pages not being indexed by search engines, such as duplicate content (ie. a printer-friendly version of a page might be indexed and the normal version not, or vice versa); links generated by JavaScript instead of HTML; poor site architecture (ie. using too many sub-directories); lengthy, dynamically generated URLs using special characters; and orphaned pages.

About The Author
John Metzler has held executive positions in the search engine marketing industry since 2001. He is the Founder of FreshPromo, a Canadian-based search marketing firm and updates his blog regularly

Why Realtors need a website?

I published a couple of posts explaining the significance of having a website for your online business.

Many realtors run their business offline. However the research and facts show that 85% - 90% of home buyers starts their search online.

Realtors need to have online presence to take advantage of these numbers during economic recession. The key is to create a website with valuable information and content. Optimize your website for search engines to increase your visibility.

Let's take a quick on the topics that will be blogged this week.

1. Why Search Engine Optimization is important?
2. Should small businesses invest in SEO? - Article
3. SEO tips and tricks
4. SEO resources
   

Email-Lead Grabber - A Perfect Tool To Increase Your Conversion Rate Of Online Leads

A recent survey concluded that 90% of all real estate agents don't respond to their online inquiries.

Prospective online clients generally collect information for a potential purchase. They are accustomed to collect information freely but reluctant to provide valid contact information. Because of this many real estate agents get frustrated and they consider online leads as a waste of time.

This is a huge mistake as a Forrester Research shows that “The Realtors who respond promptly to an online inquiry, have 10 times greater chance of signing the prospect as a client.” The startling truth is unless you are constantly following-up on prospects, you are literally throwing away your rolls of money!

Now the problem is how to follow continually-up with interested prospects?

It is not practically possible to call or email every single lead.

Imagine, a simple yet powerful, automated tool that would work for 24 x 7 turning your online prospects into lifelong, loyal customers. Fortunately eGrabber has developed email-Lead Grabber to make your dreams come true.

email-Lead Grabber process the email leads. It automatically downloads email leads submitted through online forms and various 3rd party websites, extracts specified information and transfers it instantly to your contact manager. It also schedules activities and sends auto response emails.

To know more about the product, Click here

For a free trial, Click here

To purchase it online, Click here

Drive Sales With Effective Online Forms

I came across this article in ezinearticles.com "Drive Sales with Effective Online Forms By Using Just-In-Time Design" written by Jamila Vaughan. I'm just listing down the three tips from the article

Just-In-Time Website Design in Online Forms:

1. Handling Form Errors. Many forms on the web are extremely long with many required fields and special formatting requested. When these demands are not met, users get errors and become frustrated. If a field is required, let the user know at that point in the form, on the same line as the form field (not at the beginning or the end of the form). Don't use color coding or asterisks. Who has time to read the fine print to figure it all out? It's better to permit the user to enter less information (only what is actually necessary to process their request) and to allow for spaces, no spaces, and parentheses in account or phone numbers. But if that's not possible, tell the person right where it's relevant. For example: Enter your social security number (Like this: XXX-XX-XXX). Ask your web designer to do dynamic error checking. That way, if the person makes a simple error, the user will be alerted to their immediately at the appropriate location in the form before they go through the trouble of submitting it.

2. Offer your privacy policy when they need it. Do you read privacy policies for pleasure? No. It's usually when you need to establish trust and figure out what on earth a company wants your home phone number and middle name for. When you ask a person for any personal information, you need to prominently link to your privacy policy right there. Let the user know up front that you won't be selling their email address or sending them spam. Even if no one reads it, the link lets them know you care about their privacy and helps ease their mind during the form submission process.

3. Offer registration after you get users' info. You've visited a beautiful website, found an amazing product, and want to quickly buy it before you have to run off to an appointment. Time is tight, and BAM! You are asked to register. You may not plan on revisiting this site, so you don't actually want to register. This is another place where the Just-in-Time design principle comes into play. When a person wants to purchase a product, they should be able to enter their payment information and make the purchase seamlessly. After that is finished, then ask if they would like to register on your website. At that point, you already have their information, and it can automatically be applied to their registration. This is a much simpler, more natural and polite way to solicit registered users and your customers will appreciate you for it. They may even come back to visit your website.

These were just three common places where your online forms can be improved. There are dozens of places where this principle could be applied in online forms in order to improve the user experience and to drive sales.

To read the full article, Visit ezinearticles.com

Hope this article will be useful!!

Do-It-YourSelf Website CheckList

1. Show the products/services you have to sell

A recent statistic has shown that around 20 million people worldwide use the internet for shopping of various items like airline tickets, vacation homes, groceries, etc. Create pages for the product/service you sell. If you sell multiple products clearly categorize the products. Visitors should easily find your online store.

2. Create a professional website

Create a professional website to make your visitors feel your business look reliable. Dont create a graphic heavy website. Graphics take much time to load causing visitors to leave your site.

3. Easy navigation

Navigation is very important. Visitors must be able to find what they search for quickly and easily.

4. Contact Page/Form

Customers should easily know your contact information before making any decision. Include "Contact Us" button in the footer of every page. Create a "Contact Us" page that clearly lists your contact details such as business name, email address, phone, fax etc.,

5. Inquiry/Feedback form

Create a inquiry/feedback form and link it from home page. This will allow customers to write and ask what they think about your products/services.

Why businesses need Online Presence?

A recent statistic has shown that around 20 million people worldwide use the internet for shopping of various items like airline tickets, vacation homes, groceries, etc. Business marketers need to harness the Internet to create faster, cheaper and contact with their customers and prospects.

For savvy business marketers, internet marketing makes a lot of sense. By creating a website, you can show the products and services you offer. Having your own website helps you to reach your customers fast. You can set up your own affiliate programs with multiple businesses.

Marketers can sell products and services directly by creating a page about their product/service and setting up payment processors like Pay Pal and Google Checkout. Regardless of what type of product/service you market, if you want to expand your customer base, online presence is the way to go.

Key Features of the Best Website Building Programs

The article titled " Key Features of the Best Website Building Programs" written by James Schramko will help beginners to evaluate the free website building programs. The article explains how to choose the right program based on the key features.

Here goes the article Key Features of the Best Website Building Programs

WebClickGo - free website creation software

WebClickGo allows you to create personal or business websites in minutes. WebClickGo includes hosting service. However they have closed the free membership. Paid Subscription membership - only £2.00 / €3.00 per month paid yearly (only £24 / €36 PA)

To know more about WebClickGo, click here

e(Internet) Marketing - Definition & Strategies

Wikipedia definition: Internet marketing, also referred to as web marketing, online marketing, or eMarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet.

Internet marketing helps you to reach your target market quickly and it save cost and increases productivity. Internet marketing generates traffic to the website and increases your visibility which is important for any business to improve the sales.

Internet marketing strategy involves

• Creating a web site to market your product/service
• Optimizing the website to get ranked in major search engines
• Publishing articles about your product/service
• Publishing online press releases
• Blogging about your product/service
• Starting affiliate, reseller and associate programs

Top 50 Article Directories By Page Rank

S.No	URL	PR
1	ezinearticles.com	6
2	ArticlesBase.com	5
3	buzzle.com	6
4	pubs.acs.org/hotartcl	7
5	searchwarp.com	4
6	articlealley.com	5
7	articleset.com	3
8	goarticles.com	6
9	articlesnatch.com	2
10	web-source.net	5
11	articledashboard.com	6
12	articlegarden.com	4
13	articlesfactory.com	5
14	amazines.com	3
15	upublish.info	4
16	webpronews.com	6
17	articlecodex.com	3
18	isnare.com	4
19	ideamarketers.com	3
20	article-buzz.com	3
21	articleblotter.com	0
22	article99.com	4
23	365articles.com	0
24	free-articles-zone.com	4
25	a1articles.com	4
26	acmearticles.com	0
27	excellentguide.com/article/	0
28	articlecity.com	6
29	affsphere.com	3
30	articleworld.net	3
31	ezine-writer.com.au	3
32	submityourarticle.com	2
33	articlemaniac.com	4
34	articlebliss.com	0
35	thecontentcorner.com	2
36	site-reference.com	5
37	ultimatearticledirectory.com	3
38	rightarticle.com	3
39	articlehub.com	0
40	dime-co.com	4
41	articlepool.com	6
42	articlecube.com	5
43	linksnoop.com	3
44	internethomebusinessarticles.com	3
45	therealarticles.com	0
46	magportal.com	7
47	valuablecontent.com	4
48	articlewisdom.com	3
49	freesticky.com	5
50	articletogo.com	2

Source: vretoolbar.com