GuidetoTech

Do you want to improve your web site’s search engine rankings? Don’t know where to start?
Can’t afford to hire a professional search engine optimizer?
Then you need to read our search engine optimization tutorial!
Search engines are the starting point for most people when they’re looking for something on the Internet. This is why the most popular web sites are search engines and web portals with search functions.
Over 86% of all the Internet users reach web sites through search engines.
If your Website isn’t ranked at the top of the major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, HotBot, and Lycos, you’re losing out on a lot of free traffic.
This tutorial is designed for complete novices. It’s suitable for all ages and no experience is required whatsoever.

Things I am about to explain:

01.What Is Search Engine Optimization?

02.Meta Tags

03.HTML Tags

04.Keywords

05.Link Popularity

06.Search Engine Submissions

07.Directory Submissions

08.Search Engine Submission

09.Pay Per Click Search Engine Advertising

10.FAQ

01. What Is Search Engine Optimization? (SEO)

What is search engine optimization?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves making Web pages more search engine friendly to promote them as the most relevant solutions for the search engine’s users.

The improvements can mean the difference between achieving top rankings, which can result in thousands of free monthly visitors, and being lost in space.

Why is search engine optimization important?

Search engine optimization is basically about following search engine rules. If your Web page fits the criteria that a search engine considers the most important factors in terms of relevance, then it will reward you with a top ranking.
Search engine optimizers simply modify Web pages to fit these criteria. This gives the Web pages a better chance of being selected by the search engines as the most relevant page for the search query.

The importance of keyword research.
The Internet is basically a massive disorganized library. Search engines are like librarians. They both try to organize the content, so that people can find what they’re looking for without too much effort.
With books, librarians have the benefit of bibliographic databases and the information on the book covers to help them organize their library.
Search engines don’t have that luxury. There aren’t databases of every single Web page ever created. The Internet is just too big. There’s too much information to index.
The only way a search engine can try to organize the mass of information available on the Internet is by the use of keywords and links.
It makes sense to think that if a Web page contains enough keywords related to a certain topic, it should be relevant to a search for information on that particular topic.
So part of the search engine optimization specialist’s job is to make sure the Web pages target the keywords that people search for when looking for products, services or information related to what the Web page offers.
The variety of keywords used to search for the same product, service or information is quite staggering.
For example, here are the most popular keyword phrases used by people searching for information on search engine optimization:
search engine optimization

search engine ranking

search engine optimization

search engine placement

website optimization

search engine positioning

web site optimization

high search engine ranking

web page optimization

search engine promotion

top search engine ranking

high search engine rankings

search engine rankings

better search engine placement

high search engine placement

search engine optimizations

high search engine positioning

engine optimization resources

high seo

high page rank

You notice how many different variations people use to search for information on the same topic?

The fact is, unless a page contains all of the keywords in a search query, then it will have very little of appearing at the top of the rankings.

Before Web pages can be optimized, you must conduct research to determine which keywords to target. This involves finding targeted keywords, determining their popularity, assessing the amount of competition, and then deciding which keywords to use in your Web pages.

Fortunately, there are tools to help you find out what people are really searching for. Look at the keywords chapter for more information.

02. Meta Tags.

Meta tags are hidden HTML tags used to describe various aspects about a Web page. The two most important meta tags are the meta description and meta keywords tags. Let’s take a closer look at each meta tag.

Sample meta tags:

Meta description tags.

The contents of meta description tags are indexed by some search engines as the page description in its search engine results.

However, meta description tags is often misused, with misleading or even false descriptions about a page. As a result, the relevancy of search results are often compromised, so search engines have begun to de-emphasize the importance and even totally ignore the contents of the tag.

Some search engines, such as AltaVista and Inktomi, do still index the contents of a meta description tag for its search results. But if the meta description tag is missing, the search engine will usually extract a description from the body text.

In general, search engines will index the first 135-249 characters of the meta description tag contents. Write a description that sells the page.

Include the most important keywords at the beginning of the tag. But, don’t just fill the description tag with keywords.

Meta keywords tags.

The contents of a meta keyword tag is used to help define the important keywords of a page. It sounds good in theory. However, in practice, the meta keywords tag is often misused, including the addition of excessive or irrelevant keywords. So much so, that most, but not all, search engines totally ignore the contents of the meta keywords tag.

03. HTML Tags.

Find out how to optimize the essential HTML tags.

The 3 most important HTML tags in search engine optimization are title tags, header tags, and ALT text. Let’s take a closer look at each HTML tag.

Title tags.

Most of the major search engines give the most relevance to keywords in the title tags within the Web page. As such, every page should have a title tag. In general, I have found that short keyword rich descriptions in title tags work best.

Good title tag:

Bad title tag:

Header tags.

Many of the major search engines place a lot of relevance on keywords in header tags (H1, H2 and H3). As such I recommend that you sprinkle keyword rich header tags on your Web pages.

Sample header tags:

ALT text.

Always include ALT text to describe the contents of an image. Use keyword rich descriptions in the ALT text, as some search engines index the keywords.

You will also provide a text description to visitors with slow download connections or have their images turned off. But to ensure that the text is visible, you must set the image’s width and height dimensions.

The use of ALT text also enable visually disabled visitors using screen readers, or reviewers. Images can be translated, only if there is alternative text describing the image.

04. Keywords.

Keywords contained within a Web page are the most important element to achieving high search engine rankings.

Keywords are by no means the only relevant factor in how search engines rank a Web page. Other factors also count. But the majority of search engine optimization strategies involve a Web page’s keywords in one form or another.

Therefore, it’s fair to say that keywords are the most important element to achieving top search engine rankings. After all, if a page had no text at all, there is nothing for a search engine to index!

Perfect keywords.

You should create each Web page by concentrating on the following (in order of importance):

* one keyword or keyword phrase matching the page content,

* and most frequently used by the target audience,

* and has the least number of competing pages in the search engines.

Admittedly this is not easy and is not always possible. And how do you go about finding the one perfect keyword phrase that matches the page content, that is most frequently used by the target audience, and has the least number of competing pages in the search engines?

Keyword frequency.

Keyword frequency refers to the number of times a keyword phrase appears within a page. The theory is that the more times a keyword appears within a web page, the more relevant the page is likely to be for someone searching those keywords. But do not abuse the system by repeating the same keywords over and over again.

Keyword density.

Keyword density is the ratio (percentage) of keywords contained within the total number of indexable words within a web page. In general, I suggest using a keyword density ratio in the range of 2-8%.

Keyword prominence.

Keyword prominence is about improving the prominence of keywords by placing important keywords at the top of a Web page. Basically, the closer your important keywords are to the start of a page, a sentence, title or meta tag, the better.

I generally recommend registering keyword rich domain names for search engine optimization campaigns.

By the way, if you’re looking to register a domain name for your search engine optimization campaign, or for any other reason, please try http://www.prosoftstudio.com

Keywords separated by hyphens.

Did you also notice that the domain name used a hyphen to separate the keywords?

I have yet to find conclusive proof that separating keywords in a domain name improves rankings. But I do suggest that you do use this format, just to be on the safe side. After all, you wouldn’t want a search engine to index the wrong keywords.

For example, what are the keywords in this domain name, “newshut.com?” Are they “news” and “hut,” or “new” and “shut?”

You can see how a search engine can easily index different keywords from those you had in mind. If the domain name is, “news-hut.com,” it would be clear to a search engine exactly what the keywords are.

05. Link Popularity.

Guide to link popularity and how it affects your search engine rankings.

Link popularity refers to the number of links pointing to and from related sites and is an extremely important method of improving your site’s relevancy in search engines.

There are three types of links that will increase the link popularity of your site; internal, incoming and, to a lesser extent, outgoing links.

Let’s take a look at each one in more detail.

There are free Open Source Link Popularity checkers to download or use all over the internet, just use your favorite search engine to look for them.

Internal links.

Internal link popularity refers to the number of links to and from pages within a site. I recommend cross linking your important related pages. This helps search engine spiders find and index your most important pages quicker, especially if some pages are buried deep within your site.

Site maps.

Site maps are visual models of a site’s content that allows users to find specific content or page.

Site maps are like interactive table of contents, with links leading to most, if not all, pages of a web site. Site maps are organized hierarchically, breaking down the site’s information into increasingly specific subje

ct areas.

If you have more than a dozen pages, I recommend you include a site map in your site. The add a link to the site map page from the home page, and on other pages. This way search engine spiders will find the site map, crawl the links and index your entire web site.

Incoming links.

Incoming link popularity refers to links pointing to a site from other related sites. In addition, there are two types of incoming links:

1. Links from sites you control.

I recommend cross linking all of your web sites. Select keywords that describe the site you’re linking to. The reason for doing this is because some of the major search engines, such as Google, place a great importance on the text used within, and close to, links.

2. Links from sites you don’t control.

There are two ways of finding sites to link to yours. The best way to get other sites to link to yours is to ask them politely.

06. Search Engine Submissions.

Guide to what search engines and web directories are and how to submit your web site to them.

The term “search engine submissions” is as the name suggests about submitting to the search engines, in order to get your site indexed by the search engines and web directories, so that people can find your site. Search engine submission is also known as search engine registration.

Search engine optimization on the other hand refers to search engine positioning and placement, a concept whereby you improve your site’s design and content to achieve higher rankings in search engines. Do not confuse search engine submission with search engine optimization.

Free submissions doesn’t guarantee inclusion.

You’re going to learn how to submit your Web pages to the search engines. Where possible, I will discuss free search engine submissions. Most search engines offer a “paid inclusion” service which guarantees inclusion of your Web pages, for a fee.

However, I haven’t covered the paid services in this course, so as not to confuse those of you completely new to search engine optimization.

Please note that submitting your web site via free submission forms in search engines and web directories doesn’t guarantee inclusion into an index. You may have to resubmit again and again get all of your Web pages indexed.

What are web directories?

Web directories are human edited lists of web sites organized into categories of topics and subtopics. Web directory submissions are an essential part of the search engine marketing and optimization process.

I highly recommend that you spend a bit of time selecting appropriate categories and composing your web directory titles and descriptions, as they will ultimately determine the success of your listings in the directories, and can also contribute a major part to the success of your listings in the search engines as well.

Each web directory have its own set of editorial and submission policies. So study the policies carefully before making any submissions. I recommend you submit your web sites to the top web directories, before submitting them to the search engines.

As search engines often crawl these directories.

07. Directory Submissions.

I will ad this later on, as my research is outdated on this topic, if someone else would want to write a piece about this, be my guest.

08. Search Engine Submission

How to submit your web site to the top search engines.

Here are the 2 major search engines that you should submit to.

Google

Google is the most popular search engine, powering Google, AOL and Netscape search.

Google searches over 4 billion Web pages, supports 82 languages and processes more than 200 million searches a day.

Submit your site to Google for free.

http://www.google.com/addurl/?hl=nl&continue=/addurl

Yahoo!

Yahoo! Is called, “Yahoo! Search Technology.” It powers Yahoo!, AllTheWeb, AltaVista, and MSN. Yahoo! offer a free site submission program. Expect a delay of several weeks before your URL is crawled.

http://www.help.yahoo.com/help/us/dir/su…st-01.html

You can find a list of 49 search engines you can submit to elsewhere on these forums. This article is also writen by me and should be easy to find.

09. Pay Per Click Search Engine Advertising.

How to get top rankings in major search engines in no time at all.

Pay Per Click (PPC) search engines are also known as Bid For Location, Bid For Position, Cost Per Click (CPC), Pay For Performance, Pay Per Performance, Pay For Placement, Pay Per Placement, Pay For Position, Pay Per Position, Pay For Ranking, Pay Per Ranking and Pay For Result search engines.

Pay per click search engines refer most of their traffic via partner sites. The main advantage of advertising in pay per click search engines is that they can guarantee top listings in the search results of top search engines, web directories, Web portals and meta crawlers. You only pay for click through to your web site.

10. FAQ.

May I link to your web site?

Of course! Please help us spread the word by adding a link.

You should ad the link to: http://9beta.blogspot.com

Source: profitstudio.com

The good news is that search engines have figured this out, and are now on guard for “spam” pages and sites that have increased their rankings by artificial methods. When a search engines tracks down such a site, that site is demoted in ranking or completely removed from the search engine’s index.

The bad news is that some high quality, completely above-board sites are being mistaken for these web page criminals. Your page may be in danger of being caught up in the “spam” net and tossed from a search engine’s index, even though you have done nothing to deserve such harsh treatment. But there are things you can do – and things you should be sure NOT to do – which will prevent this kind of misperception.

Link popularity is mostly based on the quality of sites you are linked to. Google pioneered this criteria for assigning website ranking, and virtually all search engines on the Internet now use it. There are legitimate ways to go about increasing your link popularity, but at the same time, you must be scrupulously careful about which sites you choose to link to. Google frequently imposes penalties on sites that have linked to other sites solely for the purpose of artificially boosting their link popularity. They have actually labelled these links “bad neighbourhoods.”

You can raise a toast to the fact that you cannot be penalized when a bad neighbourhood links to your site; penalty happens only when you are the one sending out the link to a bad neighbourhood. But you must check, and double-check, all the links that are active on your links page to make sure you haven’t linked to a bad neighbourhood.

The first thing to check out is whether or not the pages you have linked to have been penalized. The most direct way to do this is to download the Google toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com. You will then see that most pages are given a “Pagerank” which is represented by a sliding green scale on the Google toolbar.

Do not link to any site that shows no green at all on the scale. This is especially important when the scale is completely grey. It is more than likely that these pages have been penalized. If you are linked to these pages, you may catch their penalty, and like the flu, it may be difficult to recover from the infection.

There is no need to be afraid of linking to sites whose scale shows only a tiny sliver of green on their scale. These sites have not been penalized, and their links may grow in value and popularity. However, do make sure that you closely monitor these kind of links to ascertain that at some point they do not sustain a penalty once you have linked up to them from your links page.

Another evil trick that illicit webmasters use to artificially boost their link popularity is the use of hidden text. Search engines usually use the words on web pages as a factor in forming their rankings, which means that if the text on your page contains your keywords, you have more of an opportunity to increase your search engine ranking than a page that does not contain text inclusive of keywords.

Some webmasters have gotten around this formula by hiding their keywords in such a way so that they are invisible to any visitors to their site. For example, they have used the keywords but made them the same colour as the background colour of the page, such as a plethora of white keywords on a white background. You cannot see these words with the human eye – but the eye of search engine spider can spot them easily! A spider is the program search engines use to index web pages, and when it sees these invisible words, it goes back and boosts that page’s link ranking.

Webmasters may be brilliant and sometimes devious, but search engines have figured these tricks out. As soon as a search engine perceive the use of hidden text – splat! the page is penalized.

The downside of this is that sometimes the spider is a bit overzealous and will penalize a page by mistake. For example, if the background colour of your page is grey, and you have placed grey text inside a black box, the spider will only take note of the grey text and assume you are employing hidden text. To avoid any risk of false penalty, simply direct your webmaster not to assign the same colour to text as the background colour of the page – ever!

Another potential problem that can result in a penalty is called “keyword stuffing.” It is important to have your keywords appear in the text on your page, but sometimes you can go a little overboard in your enthusiasm to please those spiders. A search engine uses what is called “Keyphrase Density” to determine if a site is trying to artificially boost their ranking. This is the ratio of keywords to the rest of the words on the page. Search engines assign a limit to the number of times you can use a
keyword before it decides you have overdone it and penalizes your site.

This ratio is quite high, so it is difficult to surpass without sounding as if you are stuttering – unless your keyword is part of your company name. If this is the case,it is easy for keyword density to soar. So, if your keyword is “renters insurance,” be sure you don’t use this phrase in every sentence. Carefully edit the text on your site so that the copy flows naturally and the keyword is not repeated incessantly. A good rule of thumb is your keyword should never appear in more than half the sentences on the page.

The final potential risk factor is known as “cloaking.” To those of you who are diligent Trekkies, this concept should be easy to understand. For the rest of you? Cloaking is when the server directs a visitor to one page and a search engine spider to a different page. The page the spider sees is “cloaked” because it is invisible to regular traffic, and deliberately set-up to raise the site’s search engine ranking. A cloaked page tries to feed the spider everything it needs to rocket that page’s ranking to the top of the list.

It is natural that search engines have responded to this act of deception with extreme enmity, imposing steep penalties on these sites. The problem on your end is that sometimes pages are cloaked for legitimate reasons, such as prevention against the theft of code, often referred to as “pagejacking.” This kind of shielding is unnecessary these days due to the use of “off page” elements, such as link popularity, that cannot be stolen.

To be on the safe side, be sure that your webmaster is aware that absolutely no cloaking is acceptable. Make sure the webmaster understands that cloaking of any kind will put your website at great risk.

Just as you must be diligent in increasing your link popularity and your ranking, you must be equally diligent to avoid being unfairly penalized. So be sure to monitor your site closely and avoid any appearance of artificially boosting your rankings.

The Internet becomes even more pervasive, the importance of search engine optimization continues to grow.You can make the most of your Internet marketing efforts by following the same steps that top ranking sites do for improvinge their rankings.You may think that top ranking sites have to spend lots of money to get there.The truth is that sites who come out on top, follow some basic search engine optimization guidelines.These guidelines are easy to follow and often cost little or nothing to put into practice.

1. Manually register your site with DMOZ, also known as the Open Directory Project.The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors and feeds other leading web directories.

2. Manually submit your site to Google.If you’d like to wait, Google will eventually spider your site and return it in search result listings related to your site name and keywords.However, this may take some time.For faster inclusion, visit Google and submit your site manually.

3. Purchase a listing with Yahoo! Directory Submit.Yahoo! like Google provides many search products.However, Directory Submit is essential for any business on the web. For a fee of $299 Yahoo! will include your web site in their directory that fuels websites like Yahoo!, MSN and AltaVista.

4. Make sure you are using keywords with a high KEI.This measure takes into consideration both the popularity and competitiveness of your keywords.By focusing on keywords with a higher KEI, you can optimize your chance for search engines to select your site for keywords at little or no expense.

5. Engage in a link building campaign.The more links you have to your site, especially if they have a high Google Page Rank, will signal Google and other search engines that your site is important.A great way to do this is through article submission or affiliate programs.

6. Make your site easily to crawl.Search engine do not like dynamic pages.Although this is changing with the advent of Google Site Maps, it is still important to ensure that all search engines can easily traverse your website.Make sure to use HTML coding and avoid dynamically created pages.

7. Be patient.Once you follow these suggestions, allow search engines time to re-index your site.In the Internet age, we’re looking for instant results.However, it does take some time for all of your search engine optimization techniques to take hold.

By implementing the suggestions we’ve discussed in this article, your search engine optimization efforts can generate positive returns.As the world of search engines continue to evolve, it’s important to learn about the latest techniques and requirements for improving search engine results.Continue to focus on SEO.If you do, you’ll find yourself at the top of the rankings!

SEO Tips
Step 1: Keyword Research
What keywords do you think your customers would type in to search for your products or services? A keyword can be one word (e.g. “optimisation”), but multiple keywords or keyword phrases are usually preferred, because they are more specific and more likely to be what your customers are looking for (eg. “ Search Engine Optimisation Australia”).

Write down as many as you can think of. Brainstorm with your team. Think of alternative words. Consider geographical phrases if they are important to your customer (e.g. “house cleaning Hornsby”). Also, get some ideas from your competitors’ websites. Try to make a list of 20-30 keyword phrases.

Choose the two keyword phrases you think would be searched for the most. But also remember, the more competition there is for a keyword, the harder it is to achieve top rankings. If you want to rank high in Google for the keyword “insurance”, you have a very long journey ahead. So try your best to select two keyword phrases that are the most relevant to you business but that are not vague nor competitive. It’s a good idea to have 2 or 3 words in each phrase (e.g. “wedding catering services”)

Once you’ve selected your two best keyword phrases the next step shows you how to make some improvements to your home page.

Step 2: Web Copy
Web copy refers to all the words or text on your website. Because content is king in the world of search engines, your keyword phrases need to be placed strategically on your webpage to convince Google that your content is highly relevant to those keywords. The more prominent they are, the better. (Keep in mind that as important as search engines are, customers come first, so make sure your copy also reads well.)

Here’s how you can increase each keyword’s prominence:

• Place your keywords in headings, preferably at the beginning of the heading;

• Include keywords towards the top of the page;

• Bold or italicise keywords where appropriate;

• Instead of having a link to another page that says “Click here to read more “, reword it to include your keywords, e.g. “Read more about our seo copywriting Services“.

An important tip is to also include these keywords in your HTML “title tag”. Use your content management system to make these changes yourself, or perhaps ask your web developer to do it if you’re unsure how.

Once you have fine-tuned your home page, consider adding new content, such as detailed descriptions of what you offer, FAQs and informative articles about your products and services. (If you don’t want to write these yourself, they can be located for free on the internet – do a search for “articles directory”).

It’s also good to bear in mind that search engines can only read text, not pictures. Often web developers embed words in images to look better for website visitors or use Flash for animation, but this is a major impediment to search engines.

Step 3: Linking
Each link from another website to your website (not from your website) is considered by search engines as a vote of popularity for your business and will improve your rankings.

But it is the quality, not quantity, of the links that is crucial. The other websites should be relevant to your industry, and preferably highly regarded themselves. Ten quality links count far more than 500 links from arbitrary websites. In the same way your personal business network can have a significant impact on the success of your business, so too the online network you build on the internet.

Brainstorm all the relevant websites that could link to you, such as non-competing companies, and industry bodies and organisations. Write a friendly email to each describing the benefit their visitors would get in knowing about your business, and request them to create a link to your website. Most people will not respond first time round, so a follow-up phone call is usually required.

How do I monitor my results?
Monitor your rankings in Google over the next few months by typing your chosen keywords into the search box, and recording your ranking. Also look at your hosting reports to understand what search terms your visitors are using to find your website.

The above process can be also be repeated for each page of your website. Remember to keep updating your content, and continually increase the number of links to your website.

As you see your rankings climb you should see a corresponding increase in web traffic and a substantial increase in sales enquiries. Be sure to record the source of your customer enquiries, so you can measure the success of your marketing efforts.

Remember, if you measure it, you can improve it.

In a rush to get started blogging on your first blog, you might have settled for a second-rate domain, one that doesn’t exactly relate tot he niche that you are in. Many problems can arise form not planning properly or evaluating all your options.

The video embedded below is inspiring to say the least, presenting a different view of what blogs can do. More than one half of all people in Iran are under the age of twenty-five, with more than 700,000 blogs in 2005 (100,000 actively maintained), making it the third largest country of bloggers.

Despite the fact that many face imprisonment if they use their real name, they continue to voice their opposition against the government and try to speak out about the rights that many other countries.

In many parts of the world, including the United States, much of Europe, and elsewhere, it is “legal” to blog and no government official can condone you for your activities unless you are a threat to the security of the country or express severe hatred against certain groups of people.

The video was created by a group at the Vancouver Film School, found here.

While I haven’t been a huge proponent of Twitter, I believe that its emergence from a bloggers-only to mass media will help it become more useful in the long-term as a method of quickly communicating to people, versus other methods such as email and chat, which have some drawbacks.

Some people use Twitter in conjunction with their main blog, or use it separately in order to gain more followers, i.e. people who associate your name with your account. However, there is a large percentage of people who don’t effectively use the service for what it was intended, so here are a few tips on how to effectively manage using Twitter.

Will You Be Using it To Promote Your Blog?

If so, you will want to follow the tasks listed below.

First of all, to better associate your blog with your Twitter account/name, you’ll want to create an account with the address: http://twitter.com/blogname in order to associate your entire brand together. Much like a regular domain, a Twitter account’s address is also important – you don’t want one that’s too long for others to remember.

Already have a Twitter account for your private/personal life? Then, it may be necessary to create a separate account just for your blog or business. Otherwise, it’ll be difficult to separate the messages from one another.

Make the link prominent on your blog. Once you have developed a small following of RSS readers and daily visitors to your site, you can promote it by placing the link in the sidebar beneath the subscription area or in place of an RSS feed (Twitter can be used to promote your posts, also).

When people “follow” you, they will be given the opportunity to read what you have posted, linked to, or otherwise shared on your page/profile.

Issue updates and link to new posts through Twitter. This will allow your blog to have “return” visitors who would normally not visit your blog, even if they have subscribed – Twitter can do amazing things in terms of blog promotion.

Branding – Use a logo or image that represents your domain, closely associated in order for readers to have the greatest brand recognition, even after leaving your site.

Will You Be Using it To Promote Your Name/Larger Brand?

Depending on the approach that you want to take, you’ll have to make a different decision at this point.

If you use it in conjunction with your name or larger brand, you’ll want to use one name to associate all your accounts. This is, of course, similar to how you would create an account using a main domain, but slightly different, as you won’t directly be marketing your blog through Twitter.

Again, associate your one account on all your projects/domains/sites in order to have the most reach. You want to build a following in order to communicate with the greatest number of people at any one time.

Branding – Use a personal photograph or logo that you associate with your entire brand/company, rather than a single blog.

Additional “General” Tips

• Don’t ‘follow’ too many people. Selectively choose those in your niche that you want to follow. It is similar to choosing blogs that you want to subscribe to, as you won’t be able to “subscribe” to everyone, and not everyone will post as frequently or too frequently that you won’t be able to keep up-to-date.
• Use other methods of subscribing. You can use the RSS subscription link in the address bar to subscribe to any RSS feed without actually “following” the person, although this deters from the main purpose of Twitter.
• Don’t spend too much time on Twitter. Although Twitter can help you promote your content and brand, it is still necessary to spend a good amount of time creating new content for your blogs. The main point of Twitter is to spread quick thoughts and notes, in-between chat and email, although not quite so private.
• Use it for other purposes. There have been numerous cases of people using Twitter for non-conventional purposes, such as starting a new promotion, running campaigns, and pitching ideas to others. What other purpose will you use for the service?
• Discover better writing through less content. A good writer will be able to vary the length and style of posting. Practice this through Twitter, which has a 140 character limit.

Conclusion

I realize that there are dozens of other tools available for using the micro-blogging service, but I wanted to introduce you to the service and several of the ways to use the tool more effectively and efficiently when associating it with your brand/domain.

How do you use Twitter/what are your thoughts on the service?

Following the previous post, Writing Timeless Content, this post will cover some basics on how to gain more traffic from search engines doing little more than you are doing now. For this post, I won’t go in-depth on how to “game” the search engines, but rather some basics on how to gain (over time) traffic from search engines without having to pay someone to market your blog, do search engine optimization, or other techniques, which could negatively affect your rankings in the long-term.

People who visit your blog on a regular basis more than likely discovered it through a search engine. Otherwise, they found your blog through another site that linked to an article that you published. You need to know how to target the search engines directly in order to reap the most rewards out of the content you publish.

I’ll first discuss the characteristics and best ways of increasing (or evaluating the traffic you receive from search engines).

Characteristics of Visitors from Search Engines

• Most people are looking for a specific item, or don’t have any concern on related content unless they are “wowed” by what you have to offer upon visiting your site (following the “under 10 second” principle).
• The traffic is often targeted in the sense that visitors are searching for a specific item on your blog rather than a general item (again, if your blog ranks highly for specific keywords, your entire blog (http://site.com) will be listed, rather than a specific article.
• Bounce rate is generally equal to or greater than return visitors or ‘addicts.’ People want to quickly find information, therefore any additional clicks through your blog are because they find your site interesting.
• Search results pages can be used to promote products or directly market products, even if they aren’t sponsored (as in products you’ve created). In addition, your Subscribe and other pages will possibly appear beneath your site once it has become recognized by search engines for being an important page.

Key Points

1. Don’t write as though you are actually writing for a search engine, leaving out any personal thoughts. You want to write naturally, much like a conversation.
2. Use terms and keywords that are relevant to the product or post itself. Don’t “overstuff” or your post will surely look like it wasn’t written to prove a point, but to generate an income through more traffic/placement on results pages.
3. Your content should be split between rather lengthy guides and news-related posts. Depending on the overall focus and goals of your site, you will have to create content that will help build both methods of traffic – direct through return visitors and those referred through other sites (and search engines).

The Content

Whenever I mention content from this point forward, it refers to the entire post (the title, tags, categories, permalink, and keywords used – everything before the post is published on the blog for readers).

First of all, in order to gain more traffic from search engines, you need content, and I don’t mean five posts. People that have thousands of indexed pages typically receive just that – thousands of visitors per day. Simplified, if you don’t have something to invest, you won’t be rewarded with interest. The more comments, trackbacks, categories, and tags that reference your site will add up to more traffic in the long-term (anywhere from 10-90% of total traffic comes from search engines and referring sites).

Secondly, keywords are a must. This doesn’t mean stuffing your posts with the words you used for categories, but keep in mind that people won’t be able to find your content unless it includes the words that they are searching for.

Example: Let’s say you write a post about “how to start a blog.” Someone searching for the phrase “starting a Blogger blog” will never find your post, because you haven’t included the term “Blogger,” referring to the system, resulting in your post not being displayed on the first page (in this case, it would mean the difference between a few hundred and just a few dozen visitors).

Post Titles: Add relevant keywords – a big ‘no no’ is using a title that steers people to content simply due to the title. It may work to increase new visitors but it becomes annoying after a few times.

Blog Titles and Keywords: Within your meta information (or using plugins/blog settings), it is a good idea to add a few (10 or so) keywords that truly define what your blog is about. For instance, I might choose words like: “blogging tips, blog tips, blog advice, etc.” for this blog.

In-Post: Within each post, use heading tags and font styles to help promote your blog. Stick with a similar format across your entire blog for best use of the tag. Personally, I tend to use the H3 (Heading 3) tag for main headings and either the bold or H4 tags for sub-headings and other areas.

In addition, use relevant phrases that people may be searching for.

The key to marketing and targeting search engines for more traffic:

• Test what works – phrases and keywords, as well as when and what type of content you publish.
• Target different social media sites and connect through other people who will help distribute your content.
• Continue producing content as often as possible – the more, the better.

Why You Need It

Without search engines, your site would have very little chance of ever being discovered. Unlike many other promotion techniques that you can use to effectively increase traffic to your blog, search engine (referred) traffic is usually free (unless you hire someone for search engine optimization or purchase space on the results pages for keywords). In itself, it doesn’t take much effort – you simply submit it to the search engine and then traffic start pouring in based on what you publish.

Over time, your blog’s traffic and income will steadily increase – resulting in more benefits than one.

Note: This was an introduction for people who have never focused on optimizing your site to gain more search engine visitors. It is never too early to start focusing on this aspect of your blog

Each day, millions of people access blogs around the world, looking for information.  Search engines take out a lot of the work out of finding and separating what is relevant and what isn’t.  However, you also need to focus on content that will stand the test of time, otherwise known as timeless content.

When you take a look at the definition of timeless, it is defined as: eternal; not affected by time; ageless, then add in the content portion and you’re set to create content that builds up your brand.

 photo credit: Lin Pernille ? Photography

Timeless content can provide useful in more ways than one for your site.  Unlike news posts, people will continue searching for your content through search engines like Google and others for much longer, providing additional revenue and traffic no matter how long the post has been on your blog.

Main Benefits

• A view as an authority source.  When people visit or find a website that they find valuable, it is likely that they will bookmark or subscribe to it, referencing it in the future for more news and content.  Becoming an authority will lead to even more benefits, which are referenced below.
• Timeless content is more valuable as time progresses.  Unlike news stories (primarily celebrity and local news), people won’t be searching for those stories nearly as often as tips, tutorials, and guides that they will be able to useright now and in the future.  
• You are in more control.  Many news stories are published within a day of the story being published by another site, as you are trying to inform your readers about it as close to the release date as possible.  With timeless content, you don’t have to worry about errors or inaccuracies in your posts – they are typically correct when you publish them as you have more time to publish them and further revise them as your blog becomes older.
• Timeless content is pillar content.  Pillar content, or content that draws in a rather high amount of traffic to your blog as it is linked to and provides value for your readers, can also be timeless, as it helps grow your site while being of value to your readers.
• Others link to your content more often.  Once you have published a piece of timeless content and people recognize it as timeless, they have a much higher chance of linking to it.  In addition, your entire site, if not just the timeless posts, will be increased in search engines and on more popular sites alike.

How to Create Timeless Content

While timeless content has different formats, below is a listing of a few different ways to help achieve the sense of timeless content on your blog, even if the post did originally reference a date and product.

1. Don’t add date words to your posts, such as yesterday, tomorrow, or any other specific dates, which draw the reader away from your post.  If you are referencing a specific date, you might want to add value, rather than simply stating that something will happen/has happened.  For example, add your thoughts and what happened of importance.
2. Remove dates from your posts or locate them in less prominent positions.  Often, I look at content that has been published more than two years ago as not up-to-date, although this may be the most accurate, as the author should have updated or replied to comments on the post.  You also have to check the date of the most recent post to be sure that the blog hasn’t been abandoned.
3. Avoid writing about fads or using slang words.  By next year, the terms you usetoday will be long gone, replaced by a new term, which will be replaced just a quickly.  In a sense, you also want to use timeless words, or words that nearly everyone recognizes and have been in the dictionary since they were first published.
4. Avoid writing about people.  Unless the person has been president, you don’t want to reference people who may not be as popular years from now.  Putting this in reference to blogging, if you write an article about a specific blogger, you should provide reference to the author’s blog and the significance of him or her – as the blog could be offline within the next year.
5. Continue updating a post as time goes on.  The way we publish and write changes over time, so you will want to be sure that your older posts, which may contain references to the date are updated with additional thoughts, information related to the post, and any further developments on the topic/product.
6. Don’t make older content appear as neglected.  Reply to the most recent comments, at the very least, of your oldest posts to ensure that they are given the same treatment as new content..

Conclusion

Although timeless content should be put foremost in your list of building up your blog, it is just as important to provide relevant, yet timely content for your readers, which isn’t timeless.  Both forms of content will help spread your blogs audience, but the most important idea to remember is the fact that your readership will change and evolve over time too, so your timeless content won’t be weighed as heavily against new content.

One.com Web Hosting: Redefining The Philosophy Of Web Hosting
With the arrival of One.com Web Hosting, the philosophy of web hosting has changed a lot. One.com is a name that is associated with quality and quantity both. It gives plenty of space, which was earlier unimaginable with the same price tag. No web hosting company will give you such huge web space by paying so little! The company was earlier known as B-one and presently they are the symbol of innovative existence under the name of One.com Web Hosting. Because of their dedication and spirited approach towards web hosting operations, they have become one of the fastest growing hosting companies in Europe. After its establishment in 2002 in Denmark, the company has gone through various ups-and-downs in between; and, eventually they have conquered the world by attaining unique world reputation through its quality works.

Details Of The Packages Supported By The Company
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Common features of all the three packages supported by the One.com Web Hosting company include unlimited monthly data transfer, unlimited e-mail accounts, virus and spam filter, WebEditor, FTP accession, provision of daily secured backups, etc. Software programs that you may enjoy using under the packages of One.com Web Hosting are ASP, PHP5, and MySQL, etc. The company does not allow free set up unlike others. A one-time payment is required to be paid at the time of initial hosting, excluding the charges for domain names. They charge separately for each domain name you ask for. Rates of such charges will vary according to your status – whether transferring or obtaining newly.

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Special Features Of One.com Web Hosting Company
With the exceptional service in record, the company has flourished into an international entity within few years of its existence. It’s satisfied customers are available in more than 149 countries of the world. Company’s such expansion has become possible only due to their supporting of extra-ordinary features without increasing package charges. One.com Web Hosting believes in committing promises, and in the process, they deliver incomparable services. With the 24×7 active and most efficient customer service, the company actually remains with customers all the time. Specialty of the one.com is that, they ensure providing simple but robust and flexible products to all. Other attractive features of the company include Hewlett-Packard servers, emergency power backups, SCSI disks, daily backups of data, etc. Server room of the company is highly secured ensuring highest standards of data protection. Provisioning of Very Early Smoke Detection Alarm in the server room has added extra dimensions to the features of the One.com Web Hosting company.