How To Use Web 2.0 Social Networking Sites To Maximize Your Marketing Efforts

Social networking sites offer you a great way to get yourself known. Social networking sites allow you to create a profile and then connect with other users on the site. Most social networking sites also allow you to join group where you can meet other individuals who have the same interests as you do.

The thing, though, is that you need to watch how you use a social networking site to promote your business, since you do not want to be seen as pushy. No one likes a pushy salesperson. There's a hard sale and a soft sale. When using sites such as MySpace and Facebook, you may want to do so in a soft sale way. This means that you want them to know what you are offering without giving them a feeling like it is being shoved in their face. I will break down a few sections of the social networking site and show you how do a soft sale marketing style.

Creating Your Profile

This is your main area that you will want to do your product or service promotion. Remember that your website should have your business profile on it. With that in mind, you are going to make your profile on the social networking site a little more personal.

Take advantage of the fact that this is an informal place so you are free to design it in any way you like. Fill in areas of personal information. MySpace allows you to put information about your favorite movies, music and interests. Those areas should be filled in to give people background about you. After all, we all feel more comfortable purchasing products and services from those we know.

In a brick and mortar business, your customer comes in and you deal with them face to face. During the transaction, you and your customer talk and some personal information is shared. Take going to the furniture store as an example, you can relate to how the salesman will walk around with you, and during the process of showing you the furniture, some off-topic discussions may arise. Sharing personal information allows the salesman to create rapport with the customer, which builds a good consumer-salesman relationship.

On the internet, we do not have the chance for some face-to-face sales and relationship building that we do in the brick and mortar business. Therefore, you need to take advantage of the chance you are given to let the potential customer see you not only as a businessman, but also as someone who is just like them.

I use my profile on MySpace to promote my business. My main profile features a slide show of various pictures of my family and myself. These are just some random home shots with captions. I have some graphics on my profile that are fun and entertaining. I have even placed a radio feature on my profile that has about four songs loaded on it. This is my personal area on the internet and I use it in conjunction to promote my business. The informal layout and personal feel of my profile has driven a large amount of traffic to my website.

As you can see, you are getting interactive with those who are visiting your profile while promoting your website where your potential customers can go to. You just have to put a link that they can click to direct them to your main website. This way, you will not look like you're pushing them to take advantage of your service or product; instead you're giving them an option to visit your website for more information about your business which is your way to "soft sell".

Joining Groups

Most social networking sites have a group section where you can find groups with the same interests as you. The groups usually have the members' main profile picture and name displayed for all group members to see, as well as a forum area for all group members to discuss things relevant to the group. This is a great way to make your profile work and start sending traffic to your website.

The part that most people fail to realize when using groups to market their websites is to not spam the group forums. Many people join a group and then start putting links of their websites up in the group forum, hoping to drive more traffic to their websites. This is a bad marketing etiquette and this usually results to being banned from the group and your account with the social networking site also being shut down. This does not benefit you in any way and is the quickest way to lose credibility as a professional.

So how do you use the group to drive traffic to your website? Well, that is simple, so let me explain how it works. You have already created a nice personal profile that does point toward your website. The purpose of the group is to network with other like-minded people and in return you can count on the fact that they will check your profile out. Once they have checked your profile out, the possibility that they would check your website is high, provided that you have placed a link they can click to direct them to your main website.

Just take part in the discussions and leave the rest to your profile. You do not want to push your business too hard to the people in the group forums. Just socialize and the rest will fall into place.

Check to see if the social network site you are using has a signature area for group forum postings. You can use the signature areas to place a piece of text linked to your business there, so that all of your postings are at least advertised in an appropriate way for your business. For the text, just put your business name and then link it to your website and you are done.

Onsite Blogs

Social networking sites such as MySpace have blogs that you can add to your profile. When you create your blog entries, the first few entries' titles and a brief overview of your blog will be displayed on your profile page. This allows other users to find your blog entries easier. Depending on your business, there are several ways that you can utilize the blog that these social networking sites offer.

For example, you are offering a service for custodial parents to collect on past due child support. You can use the blog to write your own mini articles that deal with child support and the effects of estranged parents from their children's lives. This gives you the chance to offer useful and valuable information separate from your website so that your website is not overly cluttered up with tons of information. Show those in need of this service how you can help them after showing them why they need the help. Be factual and creative and always remember to direct them back to your website.

For those that have products to sell, this is also a great place to showcase some of your products. Take the time to create some catchy entries about your products. Most social networking sites do not seem to have the ability to put pictures into your blog entry, so make sure that you entice the

readers with the way you describe your product without using any pictures.

Tell the people how that product in that entry post will benefit them. If you only have one product, do not worry, you can still pull this off without sounding repetitive.

Let us look at green tea as the product you are selling. Now, you only have this one product but you are still going to utilize the blog to catch the interest of potential customers. Your first post should describe your product and indicate some of its benefits. After that, you can already post an entry containing more information about the product such as the price, sales rate and what the consumers say about the item. These would help your potential customer get well-informed about the product and would make them interested.

Remember to point back to your website so that you can close the sale. Use words such as "Click Here to Get Yours Now", "Click Here to Learn More" "Click Here to Find Out if This is Right for you" and so on and so forth. Just let them know where to click. If you are offering a service, you can post your business phone number at the bottom of each blog entry.

Do not be afraid to get creative and get their attention. My blog is bright yellow in color with purple text. I had originally started out with a simple black with white text and then I moved to white with black text. I figured it looked more professional. Well, traffic coming from the on-site blog to my website was very minimal. When I punched it up a notch and went with bright yellow and purple, my traffic from there had increased. I got their attention and they clicked my link at the bottom of each entry.

Remember to keep your blog updated to drive more readers to read your blogs and visit your site. Since most blogs have an entry date on them, even a new reader will go elsewhere if your entry dates are old. This is an important part of marketing with a blog, and if you cannot keep it fresh, then it won't work for you. Your posts should not always be lengthy; in fact, it is better if you keep them short but precise.

Before we move on to the next chapter and more information on maximizing your marketing with the Web 2.0 market, let us recap how to use social networking sites. First create a personal informal profile that shows a more personal side of you. Next, find groups that fit with your interests and join them. Do not spam, these are just ways to get yourself known without pushing your product or service. Lastly, utilize the on-site blogs to show case your products and service. Remember that social networking sites are just one form of the Web 2.0 market that you can use for marketing. There are many more Web 2.0 website types and I am going to show you throughout this eBook how to use them to your benefit.

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101 Ways to Promote Your Web Site - Book

With hundreds of proven tips, tools, and techniques, this freshly updated edition explains how to make the most of the latest Web 2.0 trends and techniques such as RSS, blogs, podcasting, and mobile marketing for online success. Entrepreneurs, corporate marketing managers, small business owners, consultants, webmasters, individuals, new media professionals, and website designers will find this guidebook invaluable for developing online strategies. A companion website provides up-to-the-minute internet marketing news and expanded information. From optimizing websites for search engines and incorporating dynamic public relations strategies to offline promotion and ensuring customer satisfaction, this handbook is unbeatable for helpful online promotional resources.

Download 101 Ways to Promote Your Web Site - Book - Filesonic

Download 101 Ways to Promote Your Web Site - Book - Sharecash

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Quick Look At Using Web 2.0 Sites For Marketing

Once you have your website created, you are ready to launch it onto the World Wide Web. Now, you have a great website that is just sitting there in cyberspace with no one looking at it. This is probably not the plan you had envisioned when you created your website. If you are like any other webmaster, you are going to want to see a huge amount of traffic to your website. If you have a product or service to offer, then you are going to want to see a ratio of traffic that converts to sales. This is just not going to happen until you do something to drive that traffic to your waiting website.

In the first chapter, I explained to you what the concept of Web 2.0 is. Now, I am going to discuss about site traffic and how to convert it into sales. So you are probably wondering what the correlation between the two is. One of the best ways to market your website is to utilize Web 2.0 websites.

There are various types of Web 2.0 websites on the World Wide Web. Each different type of site has its own marketing potential for your website. The following will give a brief overview of the different types of Web 2.0 sites and how you can use them for some marketing potential. We will get into a more in-depth understanding on how to use them further in this eBook, but for right now it is important to give you an outline that you can see. This way you can start to visualize a little more on what you will be doing when using Web 2.0 sites to market your very own website.

Blogs offer you a way to create teasers that make people interested in your website. Web 2.0 blogs are different from the traditional blogs. I will get into the details on that later. Right now, I want to give you an overview of what the blogs can do for you. Blogs allow you to add separate entries like an online diary for everyone to see. All you have to do is to create your entries to showcase your product or your service, and point them all back to your website. Your entries can showcase a product by talking about its features, how it is useful and why your readers would want it. If you are offering services, then talk about your service. Write about your experience in that field. Just make sure that no matter what your blog is about, you need to get their interest and you point them back to your website. Later on, I will show you how I have personally made blogs work for myself.

Social networking sites such as MySpace allow you to create a company profile or, if you are an individual, a personal profile about yourself. It is so much easier to land that sale or gain a new client for your services if people can see you more than just a company. While your website may tell about you in a business sense, social networking sites can let potential customers and clients see a personal side of you. Networking can drive traffic to your website which will result to more sales.

Social videos sites allow you to create and upload creative videos about your website or product to get more traffic to your website. These videos can be done in a variety of ways. The main point is to gain name recognition and product or service interest. With the ability for other users to leave comments, you will see how your video is being perceived by the public, which will help you in your marketing. Further on in this eBook, I will explain how to make this work for you as there are several ways that you can use social video submission sites. There are also different ways that you can create the videos.

When it comes to trying to dominate the Web 2.0 market, social bookmarking sites is my personal favorite. It requires so little marketing effort on your part and yet yield a nice return. We all want something out of a little effort, which is just human nature.

When you create an account on social bookmarking sites such Digg or StumbleUpon, you then have the freedom of bookmarking your website on their website. Once your website has been bookmarked, it is already there for everyone to see. It usually takes me about two minutes to sign in and bookmark a site on any of the social bookmarking sites. I put in very little effort, and yet the traffic I get from them has been fairly high. I will explain these as well later.

As you can see with the above outline, the purpose is that it allows other users on the website to get to know you, your product or service with teasers or a personal bio. You do not want to give it all away on one of these sites, because if you do, that they will not have any reason to visit your main website. Build up some hype and such and get them drooling so that they move from the Web 2.0 site that you are using and on to your website. Your website is going to be where you close the deal, so make sure your website is designed that way.

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Understand Web 2.0

For many people, the term Web 2.0 is complicated. They fail to understand what this is and how it works. Many so-called experts have tried to give their long drawn out technical explanation of this type of web site. The problem, though, is that they use so much jargons and hard-to-understand technical mumbo jumbo that an average person won't be able to comprehend and he/she will probably need a Rosetta stone to decipher what these experts are saying.

One of the definitions that I came across when I first started looking into Web 2.0 was a term to characterize design patterns in which they called a constellation of a new generation of web applications. They went on to speak of infrastructures, and new and improved collaborations. The further I read on, more confused I became. The only thing that I was able to gather from the writer was "Web 2.0 was a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004". Understanding who coined the phrase was not going to help me understand how this new generation of web applications was going to benefit me.

The only way I figured I was going to learn what this was all about was to jump in headfirst and start using these sites to my advantage. With no real understanding of these sites' true purpose and function, I was leery for some time. After utilizing different variations of Web 2.0 sites, I have now figured out what this is all about, once you remove the confusing tech talk. Is it not about time for the average person to understand what this concept is? Well, hold on because I am getting ready to explain this concept to you without using hard-to-understand technical terms.

Web 2.0 websites are user-generated content sites. Visitors to the sites sign up and then start contributing their own content to the site. MySpace is a user-generated Web 2.0 social networking site. Users create their own profiles, add pictures, and upload videos and even music to the site. Social bookmarking sites such as Digg allow users to submit links to stories, videos and website that they like along with their own review of the pictures, videos and websites in general. Thus, the majority or whole content of these sites is that of contributions from users just like you.

The way this concept differs from what we know about traditional sites or Web 1.0 sites is that the traditional sites are sites that are more static. In this, the webmaster generates all the content for the site and shares this content with you. You have no say in the content that is on this site, nor do you usually have a chance to leave your own opinion of what you have seen on the site. Now some traditional sites do have areas for comments but this should not be confused with the broad user-generated content sharing of a Web 2.0 website.

Take the blog site Tblog.com for example; this site is a Web 2.0 blog that is comprised of thousands of users creating individual blogs on a variety of subjects. All the information you find on this site is user-contributed. The same concept applies with YouTube, which has tons of videos that you can watch. All of these videos are all user-contributed to add a lot of diverse content to the website.

Now you can see in plain English a simpler explanation of what a Web 2.0 site is. Once you take all the technical talk and industry jargon out of the equation, everything starts to make sense. User-generated content sites means marketing potential for you. One of the rewards of Web 2.0 marketing is that it is virtually free to use.

You will know how to successfully utilize these sites from this blog. After all, I have already been down that road and went through my trials and errors on what marketing with Web 2.0 sites can and cannot do for you and your business. So read on and let me take some of the guesswork out of this for you.

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Maintain Consistency

It's best to keep elements on your site fairly consistent from page-to-page. Elements include colors, sizes, layout and placement of those elements. Your site needs to have a good flow from page to page. This means colors are primarily the same as well as fonts and layout structure. Navigation should remain in the same location of your layout throughout your website.

For layout structure, typically three page layouts exist for most websites: one for the homepage, one for content pages and one for form pages. For example, your homepage will have a different layout than a landing page for a PPC campaign, the elements in these layouts constant. This will keep your visitors from feeling lost.

More Resources

What REALLY Matters in a Website Redesign

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Outsource Link Building - A Sure Shot Winner

Outsourcing the professional services has come a long way and today we see more and more business houses outsource crucial tasks in order to get the desired results. The SEO tools such as link building, optimizing websites to the popular search engines etc are the need of the hour for every internet business and this task is too risky to try internally.

Why outsource link building?

Outsourcing not only helps a company in accomplishing a particular task but also helps it in completing the job with finesse. The process of outsourcing the professional projects grew very rapidly since the evolution of internet and surely it has produced amazing results for the benefit of everyone.

A professional e-marketing link building India Company can take up this activity and provide the best results in a short period of time. These services would require greater level of skills and understanding of various search engine algorithms and therefore there are very few companies in the open market that can deliver such quality services.

Only a set of highly qualified and professional resources at these companies are able to build the links effectively in order to achieve higher rankings in the search engines for their clients. It is always safe to outsource link building projects in order to ensure that the positive results are delivered consistently. There should be no compromise as far as quality is concerned.

What difference does it make?

It is often seen that many entrepreneurs do fail in this particular step and often end up hiring a professional who is just a specialist in one or the other SEO tool and not all of them. If you hire a resource who is good in optimizing the website to the search engines and doesnt have much knowledge about article submission, link building etc then it is quite obvious there are lesser chances of your website getting popular it is always limited.

A professional company that provides internet marketing tools knows how to divert more traffic towards your website with effective and sensible linking to your business. This activity is very crucial and carried cautiously by the service provider to ensure positive results. Any lapse in this activity could prove disaster for your business.

These companies have experience in various other SEO tools such as guaranteed directory submissions which has proved to be a major traffic puller for many internet businesses. They have tie up with the popular directories around and guarantee the submissions as compared to their counterparts. You can be sure about getting loads of consistent internet traffic to your website within a short period of time with these guaranteed submissions.

By outsourcing this crucial task to a reliable company youll ensure that there are no hiccups in the revenue generation and this decision could well prove to be a sure shot winner.

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Maintain Link Building Focus by Staying Organized

Link building is not something you should do on a whim just whenever it strikes you. You need to have a plan of execution and to set aside specific times of the week to take care of all of your link building tasks. Organization is the key to effective, and efficient, link building.

I was not always so organized, and it hampered my efforts. I used to just work on link building here there as time allowed and I kept no records of what I did. Some directory submissions here, some blog comments there. Since I no record of previous work, I was constantly attempting to get backlinks in places where I had already gotten backlinks before…which is a huge waste of time! Also, I was never really sure whether my backlinking efforts were producing anything.

Just because I submitted a directory listing or blog comment didn’t mean it would ever actually go live on the site and get indexed.

Now I keep track of everything with an Excel workbook and routinely audit my work to make sure that links I’ve submitted have been published. The spreadsheet I use is very simple and takes no time to fill out while doing backlink building. In the end, the extra few seconds of work per backlink is worth it ensure that I know exactly how my link profile is shaping up and if my work is actually working.

The workbook has these fields to track work. The fields may vary depending on type of keyword:

• Keyword – The target keyword of the backlink. Typically this is anchor text.
• URL of backlink – This is the URL of the site where the backlink has been place.
• Target URL – This is the URL that the backlink points to.
• Submitted – I put an “x” here once I have submitted the backlink.
• Published – I put an “x” here once I’ve confirmed that a backlink is live. In many cases – like social bookmarking sites and auto-approve blog comment systems – this happens instantly, but in the case of web directories and other moderated websites, publishing can take time. Once a week I check to see which of these links have been published.
• Direct – If the backlink points directly to the page I’m trying to rank.
• Indirect – If the backlink points to some other website that, in turn, points to my target page.

For example, I might point some social bookmarking links at a Tumblr post which links to my target page. This builds up “link momentum” and is key in things like link wheels and such. I usually only do this with social bookmarks.

• Notes – Any additional information.

The spreadsheet covers several different backlink types with individual spreadsheets, which can be found in the tabs along the bottom. These cover:

• Directory Submissions
• Article Submissions
• Social Bookmarking
• Blog Commenting
• Website Outreach – This is when I’ve reached out directly to a webmaster to work some sort of custom link deal. Such a case might be a small niche or local site with a “Links” page I’d like to be added to, but does not offer a way to submit a link like a web directory would. Other cases might involve providing the webmaster with content, as with a guest blog post.

If you’d like to download a blank version of the workbook I use, you can right click and SAVE AS right here.

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Seo for Blogspot‏

A webmaster commonly does everything that their are able of to make their blog search engine friendly and thus have a lot more probabilities of getting higher page rank. You've to be aware that larger ranked Blogspots can drive a good quantity of traffic and get the needed back hyperlinks in your web-site.

To obtain your blogs the required visitors, you've got to complete Seo methods and one very good Search engine optimization way would be to obtain the needed hyperlinks or have your blogs seemed at. You have to observe that hyperlinks are well cherished from the search engines and getting a whole lot of those can have your blogs or web page attain the substantial rank which you intention for.

You are able to compose far more posts in your blogs and with posts which are hyperlink worthy you can have additional alternatives of acquiring more back-links. Writing blogs that provide details or opinions which are worthy and deserve conversations are those th at have these possibilities of obtaining plenty of back links.

With these posts that are credible and with authority these can make you an professional to the area that you are in and produce your image nicely around the net. Getting you acknowledged as an authority in your niche and with credibility that is topnotch, you are able to have higher prospects of acquiring these backlinks which is really a very good Search engine optimization effort for your blogs.

Enrich your blog titles with keywords because the additional which you consist of search-able keywords in your blog titles, the more are the opportunities that these will probably be observed by readers. Inclusion of key phrases inside the blog titles also tends to make your blogs far more search engine friendly and simply get noticed by search engine's spiders.

Including pictures for your blogs may also make these appealing to readers and could be a good Search engine optimization effort for your blogs. You can find strategies on tips on how to optimize images and you are able to use software program instruments to aid you on these optimization efforts.

Another good Search engine optimization device for your blog would be to submit these to weblog directories. It is possible to search the net and discover these blog directories to submit to, and once these are published you have the choices of obtaining the needed back links.

Writing the most distinctive and interesting content material for your blogs are these that may appeal to the curiosity of readers. This tends to make blogs a truly good technique to create back links which is also that which you need for the objective of significant search engine rankings.

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SEO – A Link Is A Link?

A few years ago to combat blog comment spam, the search engines implemented no follow backlinks. These changes wreaked havoc for big business and small business SEO.

These no follow backlinks were suspected of having no SEO value because they don’t pass PageRank from the linking site. It now appears that although they may no pass PR, they do have value.

In the recent SEOMoz Search Engine Ranking Factors report, a correlation exists between ranking and the presence of no follow links.The ratio of no follow to do follow links appears to be a search engine ranking factor. If do follow links greatly outnumber no follow links, the site or page link profile may seem unnatural. The search engines expect that in the normal course of link getting, links from both do follow and no follow sites are normal.

If your site link profile has a very high ratio of do follow links, you may need to get more no follow links from social media sites, no follow blogs and other sources to balance your profile.

What About Authority?

It’s probably true that PR is not passed with a no follow link. That statement may not be completely true, but let’s assume it is. My question has been for some time now, even if no PageRank is passed, is a link from an authority site related to the linked-to site valuable?

Some SEO teachers and specialist have been saying for awhile to ignore no follow and just get the link. They say that in their testing it didn’t seem to matter. I’m wondering out loud, if link juice is not passed through PR, are other signals being used to determine authority and relevance.

The Search Algorithm

For a lot of reasons, search engines are designed and tweaked to provide the best result for search queries. The algorithms look at off page and on page factors. Let’s look at factors from off page. A link from a site provides a vote to the destination site. If the link is no follow, the PageRank (PR) is gone, but I’m thinking other signals in the algorithm are present that make the link from an authority site valuable.

Google says there are over 200 factors in the algorithm, others say it’s more, why wouldn’t they be including the relevance of the link in relevance factors.

Let’s look at an example. Two sites have on page content and factors that are exactly the same. There’s nothing to choose between them. Based on on page factors, it’s a dead heat. Still, one ranks higher than the other. Why?

On site factors are the same, so the ranking must be based on off site factors. Let’s say now that both of these sites have the same PR profiles. Each has 1,000 links with the same distribution of PR, the same anchor text distribution and the same distribution of no follow and do follow links.

I am submitting that where the links come from is an overlooked factor. If the first site’s links are mostly from sites related to the content, while the second site get its links from general or non-related sites, the first site will rank higher. Few would argue this point, but it appears that no follow links may be passing relevance and authority signals even if there’s no PR value.

A New Life for No Follow Links?

So, just maybe, no follow links have value after all. I don’t know how valuable these links are, but if search engines are not ignoring these links completely (there not), no follow links must be passing signals for some reason. There appears to be link profile signals. Are there one or more relevance signals for no follow links as well? While I won’t advise ignoring the follow tag, in an SEO or local SEO program it now appears that those no follow links are more valuable than we thought.

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Why Canonicalization Matters From A Linking Perspective

Search engine optimization (SEO) can be like any other technical field of study. It is filled with specialized jargon that, to a newbie, can be more than intimidating. I recall that feeling was especially strong when I first encountered the term canonicalization.

It is a 14-letter, seven-syllable monster of a term. I first heard it spoken, and had to ask the person who said it to repeat it. It didn’t help. (It had been a long day!)

The truth of the matter is that canonicalization is not all that complicated to understand if the explanation is lucid. So let’s try to explain what it means, why it’s important, and what it has to do with linking.

What Is Canonicalization?

In mathematics, when the same data can be represented in multiple ways, it is best to standardize that representation by establishing the data’s canonical form, the one primary form in which it will be used. In the computer science field, the act of defining the canonical form of data is called canonicalization.

Simply put, canonicalization defines the one primary way you’ll use to write data, such as a URL string. As webmaster, you can choose which canonical form to use for a given URL on your site, but once selected, the chosen form should always be the way that URL is written.

Why Canonicalization Is Important

Fundamentally, you need to know that search engines do not index pages by their content. They index URLs. The content associated with the indexed URLs is brought in to the search engine database, but URLs are what possess ranking.

What complicates matters in search (and why canonicalization is important) is that the same content page can have multiple URLs associated with it.

I’m not talking about when Web spammers scrape your content and publish it on their own website. I’m talking about variations of URLs on your website all pointing to the same page.

For example, the following hypothetical URLs would likely all point to the same page (in this case, the home page of a site):

example.com

www.example.com

www.example.com/

www.example.com/index.html

www.example.com/index.html?var1=105

www.example.com/index.html?var1=105&var2=abc

As you can see, a valid URL may either include or omit the subdomain prefix “www.”, a trailing slash after the top-level domain, the default webpage name for a folder, and/or one or more URL parameter suffixes (there are even more, but these are the most common). They can also be used in various combinations. The possible permutations of the above examples can quickly add up to a large number of URLs all pointing to the same content page.

And this is not only a problem for home pages. Deep link pages can have the similar problems, such as the following hypothetical examples:

www.example.com/folder1/

www.example.com/folder1/index.html

www.example.com/folder1/index.html?product=49

www.example.com/folder1/?userID=tinytim

When search engine crawlers encounter multiple URLs successfully pointing to the same content page, the overall potential PageRank for that content page is split among the URLs crawled. After all, even though the content is exactly the same, each crawled URL will have its own number of backlinks, so the PageRank for a given piece of content will differ among the URLs crawled.

Metaphorically speaking, imagine a full pitcher of water (the total potential page rank) and several empty cups of various sizes (your non-canonicalized URLs).

When you split up the water from the pitcher among the cups, you are technically still working with the same amount of water, but each cup only has a percentage of the total. None of the cups contains as much water as the pitcher could.

When that comes to PageRank, if your site’s pages are not canonicalized, you’re not using your full potential for page ranking. Not only are your URLs competing against those of your rivals from other websites, you are also competing against URL variations within your own website!

Wouldn’t it be better if you could consolidate your page rank in one URL as you might pour all of those cups of water back into one pitcher? That’s why we need to canonicalize our sites.

Canonicalization’s Connection To Linking

“Yeah, yeah, this is all well and good. But where’s the connection to linking,” you ask? Well, as you are a webmaster, you do have a degree of control over how at least some pages link to you.

After all, your intrasite links, not to mention your site navigation scheme links (and for that matter, the links in your XML-based Sitemap file) are all controlled by you.

This means you need to comb through your site (or your content management system, aka CMS) and see how the link to each page is referenced. You need ensure each link to a given page always uses the exact same URL form.

I personally advocate using absolute (aka full) URLs in links, if only because of the plague of content scrapers. As those people are too lazy to create their own content, they are also usually too lazy to examine and change stolen content source code.

If your content is scraped, readers of that content will be brought back to your site when they click the inline links you created (you do create inline links when relevant opportunities appear, right?).

Admittedly, there are times when your site architecture requires that you use URL parameters. In that case, you can also create rel=canonical tags in the section of your pages. The href attribute of this tag will define the canonical URL for the page, so if the URL normally requires URL parameters, the canonical URL is still defined.

Note that search engines have stated they will look at rel=canonical as a hint, not as a mandate. As such, this is not the magic canonicalization bullet for your site. You still need to be consistent with your canonical intrasite linking.

Also, for URL parameter users, be sure to check out both the Google and Bing Webmaster Tools. Both have added options enabling webmasters to define specific URL parameters to be ignored during crawls.

Google also allows you to select whether or not you want to use the subdomain prefix “www.” in your preferred URL. I’d guess that option will eventually come to Bing as well.

Lastly, for links you don’t control, such as inbound links from other sites, you can set up 301 permanent redirects for all non-canonical URL forms to the canonical URL for each page.

Just be sure you use a 301 permanent redirect. As the 301 is a permanent redirect, search engines interpret this to mean they can safely transfer all of the page rank value from the original (non-canonical) URL to the new (canonical) one.

Note that while 302 temporary redirects will redirect users to a canonical URL, search engines will not transfer any acquired page rank! (I have written in more detail about using 301 redirects here.)

If you’re really detail-oriented, you could even look at backlink tools, such as the aforementioned search engines’ webmaster tools or a third-party tool such as Open Site Explorer, to see who is linking to you and work with the errant webmasters who are not using your canonical URL in their outbound links.

After all, as good as a 301 redirect is for canonicalization, a redirect also introduces a potential page load speed delay, although that’s not likely as detrimental to your page rank as non-canonicalized URLs)

The bottom line is this: you have the ability to consolidate the PageRank for your content pages into canonical URLs.

Depending upon how badly your multiple URLs are dividing up your PageRank today, given how competitive (not to mention how valuable) top ranking can be for a given query, why wouldn’t you take the steps needed to consolidate the page rank of your content pages into one canonical URL?

Canonicalization may be a seven-syllable monster, but it’s not that complicated, and doing something about it could improve your position in the SERPs.

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Get Your Valuable SEO Report with Linkwheels‏

Traffic is the ultimate key when it comes to online profits. How can we execute this? Many platforms can be found in Google page which promises this form of service, unfortunately, virtually all of them do not yield you what they promise. Most of all, SEO Reportvisible in the pages is not actually that understandable. Furthermore, the results are really dissimilar.

Birth of Linkwheels in the Internet world is a rescue to this form of problem. Through enhancing, harnessing and utilizing the power of Web 2.0 properties such as the Hubpages, Wordpress, Blogspot, and many other of the outstanding sites, they are able to rank themselves in the first page or in the second page of Google. It is with the help of the Linkwheel model, which literally link your pages through and through targeted users. Using this method can stimulate more traffic to your site. As a result, more money is generated and can likewise provide a valuable SEO Report.

The problem lies on the high volume of technicality and the promotion of website. We wish an easy - create, post an article, and retire from your day job - business concept, but tend to be frustrated at the end, not to acknowledgment unrealized promises of other service providers. We should accept that there are things which are beyond our expertise. Hence, Linkwheel has a solution. They provide packages that suit your needs. The standard bundle consists:

1. A 300-350 word article will be written and will be used as a subject on your web 20 platforms so that an over content creation labor will not be done.

2. The articles written will be spun with the uniqueness of 30% which are keyword rich while passing all Google replicate content filters.

3. In accordance with the Link Wheel strategy, your Web 2.0 properties will be joined in a "Wheel" while having each property, or "Spoke" linking up to your Central Hub using anchor text you specify to funnel Google link juice and traffic. But we will leave the last spoke unfold to prevent Google from putting the pieces unitedly.

4. The FEEDS of your properties and content will be submitted to RSS Feeds Submission Sites so that your content will be set up for syndication across the net.

5. PING your FEEDS to 18-96 PING SERVICES which will immediately notify search engines that your content is hot for indexing.

With the assistance of the solutions above, Linkwheel will provide you, the subscriber, SEO Report, whereby it is easily understandable than other service providers. This report will help you conceptualize how Linkwheel do the workings for you, so you do not have to worry on the major promotion view of your site. However, promoting your website according to your design is still recommended. They have different packages to choose from:

1. The Platinum package ($97) containing 66 spokes and 324 number of other links

2. The Gold package ($47) containing 22 spokes and 108 number of other links

3. Silver Bundle ($37) with 15 spokes and 42 number other links

Order at once and have SEO Report you ever wanted and a service that guarantees feasible results and customer satisfaction. http://linkwheels.com/

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Mr SEO and Mr Keyword Spy - Knocking on Your Site's Door‏

Lots of marketers and ad agencies offer keyword research services. Keyword research and analysis are not as simple as using the free tools at AdWords and Overture. Advertisers must see beyond these tools and grasp the real time competition they are in.

Of course, design and interface are important, customer support and relations are equally important, but they're all focused on what happens once a potential client gets to your site. And there enters the need for SEO.

And when you seek SEO to knock on your site, there comes with it, the inseparable "keyword research."

Keep in mind that keyword marketing research would determine the success or failure of a site, no matter how user-friendly or well-designed the pages in it. While doing optimization, it is always recommended to do a competitive analysis to discover the top keywords used by online searchers to find services and products and what search terms are utilized by your competitors who are doing pretty well in marketing themselves.

To get straight to the point, keyword research is the giant step for any search engine "findability" effort whether it is off page or on page optimization. A well-optimized domain relies on good organic keyword density and using the right keyword tool for its PPC bidding strategy.

But the real fun begins in the use of KeywordSpy. I discovered this web-based tool a month ago, and it researches on competition as probably I'd never expect from any keyword software. When it comes to SEO, the keyword competition becomes a complex measure of your competitors' strength that consists of their paid keywords, organic keywords an ad copy plus the corresponding analytics to measure keyword profitability. KeywordSpy quickly returns all this data in a well-designed interface, allowing you to even download the keywords and statistics to an excel or text file and sort those golden "money terms."

Not only this tool provide data on keyword search volume and price, u nlike other tools, the level of accuracy of KeywordSpy in data presentation is way high.

So next time you allow SEO specialists to enter on your site's door, be sure that they tagged along the greatest competitor spy in town - KeywordSpy.

But then, I understand that KeywordSpy is still stranger to you at this point in time. Rest assured that I'll expand on this tool on my proceeding posts at http://spot-sem-and-seo.blogspot.com/. I'm still in the process of learning and playing with its features and since I found it very impressive, I won't miss sharing this to you.

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Automatic Meta Tags Generator WordPress Plugin- Multi Keyword Statistics

Meta Tags are one of the most important part of On Page Optimization in SEO. A well optimized posts will get high ranking on search engine and bring you traffic. Spending time on just writing article is not engough, you will have to optimize it for search engines, so that it can bring you traffic. As you all know Thesis Theme is consider as one of the most Search Engine friendly and Optimized theme. Meta tags are one of the key feature of Thesis theme. That is why it is consider a SEO friendly theme. If your theme has no option for adding Meta Tags, you can use All In One SEO plugin, but for that you will have to manually generate Meta Tags for all posts.

Multi Keyword Statistics is a plugin that will automatically generate meta description and keywords for every post. However you will have to write the title manually. The plugin analyze your post and then generate meta keywords and description. Let me show you a screen shot of the plugin that how it analyzes your posts.

After analyzing the post it will automatically generate Meta Keywords and Meta Description, based on the statistics collected by the plugin.

The only disadvantage of the plugin is that the plugin will only generate meta tags for new articles. You will have to manually edit all the previous articles to generate meta tags for it.

How to Use Multi Keyword Statistics Plugin?

1. Download Multi Keyword Plugin, Install and activate.

2. A new panel will be added to your blog Dashboard on the name of “Multi Keyword Statistics”. From where you can configure the plugin.

Configure the plugin according to your requirement and start a new post. You will see two extra boxes added in Post Editor as shown in the above screen shots. The plugin works great for Multi Author Blogs. Let me know if you have any problem or want to share your thoughts about the plugin.

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How To Improve Your On Page SEO‏

Internet searches utilize keyword search terms which surfers enter in Google, Yahoo and Bing (the three major search engines) to find a service, product or solution to a problem.

The first step begins with keyword research. It sounds complicated, takes time, and frightens the technically challenged. Relax, it's really not that bad when you know how.

Find and Optimize Your Keywords

First, learn what resources are needed and how to use them. Keyword tools come in two sizes and shapes, paid and free. If you're wondering whether you should use one or the other, we suggest you start with free.

Google's keyword tool allows you to find keywords ranked by the number of searches and the competition. Go here to find it: https:adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. Find your keywords; write your blog post.

Scatter your keywords, about one per 100 words throughout your blog post. A good density is about 2 percent and should not exceed 4 percent. Do not stuff keywords. Overdoing it doesn't help you.

Adding Keyword Tags

Add title tags, header tags and regular keyword tags. Don't forget to choose an approprioate category.

Include a few links, one of your internal pages, i.e. a related blog post on you r site. Include your keyword as an anchor text.

Next choose an external page for your next link (outbound link).Perhaps you have an affliate product you want to promote. This is a good place to do that. Add the rel ="no follow" tag to any outbound links.

Italicize your keyword once, underline it once and bold it once. Use it in the first sentence and again the last sentence. Double check to make sure you've covered all the above steps.

Check Your Work

If you have a spell check function in your word editor or correct any missspelled words. Make your writing aesthetically appealing. This requires adding some bold, italics and spacking to set your text apart.

• Ask, where does the post draw you in? Maybe change the photo or picture for a more magnetic effect.
• Does it look inviting to read or is it filled with text running all together.?
• Add a story or anecdotes. Make it interesting. Are you comfortable with it? If so, publish it.
• Perhaps you'dl like an automated alternative to all the manual labor before listed.

SEOPressor plugin automates this entire process. You don't have to memorize it or try to recall what you forgot. Just upload the simple plugin to your WordPress blog. Install it and tweak the settings. You are now ready to rock with optimizing your page for the search engines.

Download SEOPressor plugin Multi

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3 Ways to Proactively Monitor Your Online Reputation

There is not much in contemporary business that trades on more equity than your business reputation. Stock prices fluctuate because of it, and the media boiling point is reached at disconcerting speed for either good and bad praise or hostility about businesses globally. The first step to managing your online business reputation is to be able to monitor what is being said about you, by whom, and how often. If it's all great, it's all good friends. Business worldwide both large and small duel daily using the double-edged, sword of Internet power. You need to know about the poison comments too, and of course, if nothing is being said about your business onlíne, well, that is a problem all in itself.

Good or Evil?

From a marketing viewpoint, we have the capacity to reach more people in remote corners of the world than ever before, leveraging the incredible reach of the Internet to connect with our blogs, videos, and shopping carts that have no geographical limitations. The other side of that coin is that we now inhabit a world where anonymous people can go for their 15 minutes of fame as ad hoc writers, video producers and critics, which can spell trouble for your company.

Google, Yahoo and other search engines give huge validity to sites like Wikipedia and RipOffReport.com in the spirit of full disclosure, especially on big business. Trouble is, fact checking ain't what it used to be if indeed it happens at all. Loud online voices providing great buzz on your goods and services can provide a fantastic bump albeit unjustified by reality. Bully for you! The sting of acrimonious haters can cost you prospects, customers and dollars to an incredible extent also.

The Most Common Keyword in Modern Business

What do you think is the most often used keyword today in business? This isn't a trick question or a gag. It is in fact the word, "keyword." Think about it. There is so much guidance about SEO and onlíne marketing that revolves around how people browse the web, specifically, Google. That means controlling what keywords you use to advertise your website and be found, trying to mirror what people are browsing for and in a unique enough way to reduce competition. As a result we have long tail keywords which are phrases like "How to winterize your boat" so that when someone does eventually look for that, our page or Adwords ad is right there to be discovered.

To keep track of your online reputation, keywords are also what you use to ascertain who and what is being said about you. The easy way to do this to begin with is of course to Google your company name. You're going to find your web sites surely, but if there is bad stuff available you're going to see that also. If it falls on page 1 of Google returns, you have a developing situation.

Remembering to do that weekly or every few days is something that just isn't top of mind. Here are three devices you can use to effortlessly investigate the real-time chatter.

Google Alerts

Google alerts enable you to choose keywords relative to, in this case, your business name and Google will email you instances when they come up online as indexed by the Google search engine. Go to www.google.com/alerts to set this up. Depending on the size and online reputation of your organization, you can adjust the frequency of these email alerts from daily to weekly. There are a couple of refining options. Picking type = 'Everything' will keep track of all of the buzz about whatever keywords you type in, comma delimited. For most small businesses, a weekly notification should be adequate.

Here are some tips for what you might want to monitor to see what your customers might find:

• Your business name, including any partitions or alternative names as applicable
• Your competition
• Various misspellings of your organization name
• Your flagship product names, part numbers and trade names
• Your key executive names-- bad juju on your top people will reflect poorly on your company

Social Oomph

Google Alerts monitors the Google database. Social Oomph allows you to track tweets. You need to create a free account and then go to Monitors/Keyword Alert Emails on the left hand menu. You are allowed to set up to 50 keywords or phrases to rake the tweet-o-sphere for and email you recaps either daily or every twelve hours.

The keyword tips are the same as for Google Alerts. The cool thing about monitoring Twitter chatter is that it has a very real-time element to it. If ill will is being spread, you may have the capability to join the ongoing conversation and correct the record or counter the conversation when it is at its most toxic and influential to your business reputation.

LinkedIn Signal

Signal is a tool presently under development by LinkedIn in conjunction with Twitter, using a similar search on discussions groups, shares and posted answers. Access it by logging into LinkedIn and going to www.linkedin.com/signal. This is a bit clunky with the filters and for most results, look up your name and company without the filters box selected. This is especially useful for product launches or branding efforts you might have to see if there is a buzz on LinkedIn among professionals. Unfortunately, the search box appears to have no Boolean capability to add multiple search words separated by commas or expressions like ‘+’ or ‘OR’.

If you’re in the consulting or professional services field this may be one where you save your searches and check regularly back, as these are folks who traffic LinkedIn. This is still in beta and isn’t particularly advertised by LinkedIn, and has a limited universe of professionals (those in LinkedIn who allow public view of their discussions) and will tell you more about trending topics than give you an overall overview about what is being said regarding your business. I’d recommend playing with it to see if it is useful to you, but use the alerts in Google and Social Oomph to monitor the majority of chatter.

Now that you’ve set up ways to more simply monitor the online discussion about your company, you need to develop a strategy to displace and counter incorrect dialogue and tell your company story. More on that next time. Meanwhile, post the tools you use to take the online pulse about your business.

A hate page, Ripoffreport or Wikipedia lie can sink your business reputation. If your company needs strategies to fix yours, check out business reputation management services. Karl Walinskas owns Smart Company Growth, a firm that helps businesses grow through sparking sales and controlling expenses and cash flow. He’s been published for years on better leadership, communication, and marketing practices for small business and authored the book, “Getting Connected Through Exceptional Leadership”.

You can read the Smart Blog for small business growth to learn more tips you can use today.

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SEO Mistakes that Work Against You‏

At All Costs Stay Away From These 3 SEO Mistakes

Search engine optimization can be very beneficial to your website, but not if you make the kind of mistakes that can harm your site. Keep the following SEO mistakes in mind to ensure you don't make them.

An easy SEO mistake you can easily avoid is putting flash on your site. So what purpose does flash really serve? It makes your site seem as if it is cool and exciting, doesn't it? However if you really look at whats happening, you'll see that flash can really do more harm than good to your site. First of all, it takes a long time for the flash to load, and your prospects are going to despise waiting. In the second place search engines do not read flash, so there is no use for it and you can not get that page ranked. And still, a lot of webmasters attempt to beautify their website by putting flash on the homepage, this actually prevents all of the possibiliities of the site getting ranked in the search engi nes. If you really do want to use flash that badly, then you should have an alternative plain HTML page with good, high quality written content. Doing this is somewhat effortless, and in reality it will reduce your burden. Besides flash, search engines are unable to read frames either. So all of the content and navigation that you put into frames are basically ignored by search engines. You should learn to keep in step with time and be updated about the search engines. There is a lot that you can experiment with SEO, if you go beyond the traditional methods. Lastly, remember that with flash you maybe you will impress your visitors for a moment, but over the long term everything will suffer because your traffic will suffer, this is important. So don't be foolish, get rid of flash and use high grade content that is better for your purposes.

Internet marketers also frequently make the mistake of failing to optimize their pages' titles and descriptions. When search engines list your site in their results, what you basically see is the title of that page along with the short description.

This listing is all the information your potential visitor has about your site to begin with. You want to get as much accurate and compelling information as possible into the title and description. This is an important area, for if you want anyone to come to your site, you have to make it sound interesting to them. The way to get your site ranked has changed as the search engines have updated their methods in recent years. Meta tags used to be essential for ranking your site, but now the search engines look primarily at your page's title and content.

If you are looking for long term success, don't hire anyone to do SEO work for you who uses shortcut methods that may get you temporary results but will har m you later on. These companies usually depend on blackhat or unethical ways to get your site ranked. However, it's only a matter of time before the search engines catch on, and then you'll be worse off than before you started. Make sure you research any SEO service ahead of time and find out what kind of methods they use and try to get testimonials about them. Once you are convinced that they are right, go for it.

All in all, search engine optimization is not rocket science, but only if you know the basics.

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10 Stats to Justify SEO

Have you seen the potential of SEO but are struggling to convince your boss or colleagues?

You are not alone. SEO can often be viewed as a difficult, techy oddity, and not something that every company needs. Small-scale businesses often think they won’t benefit from spending money on online marketing.

To help you explain the potential of SEO and justify your request for increased spending, I’ve compiled this list of 10 statistics that I find particularly compelling:

1 – There are over two billion people online

A study by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) discovered that the number of internet users across the globe has now exceeded two billion.

In 2010 alone, more than 226 million people came online for the first time. Market researcher IDC predicts that by 2015, an astounding 2.7 billion people worldwide will be online.

That’s about 40% of the world’s population, which is a lot of potential customers.

2 – 38 million of them are in the UK

If your business doesn’t want to target international business, then your boss may not care about the rapidly growing number of internet users in the developing world. But even so, the numbers for the UK market are compelling.

Research from the Office for National Statistics shows that 38 million UK adults used the web last year. Of those, more than 30 million accessed the internet at least once a day.

You’d pay a lot of money to have a shop on a street that had that kind of footfall!

3 – 31 million are actively shopping online

The ONS study found that 31 million people purchased goods or services online in the 12 months to August 2010.

What’s more, the higher their income, the more likely they are to use the web. The research body found that 98% of people with an income exceeding £41,600 used the internet. That compares to just 69% of adults with an income of less than £10,399.

So, many of your potential customers are using the internet to shop – and the wealthier they are, the more likely they are to do so.

4 – These customers spend hours online

On average, an online adult in the UK spends 22 hours and 15 minutes on the internet each month, according to the UK Online Measurement Company (UKOM).

That’s an increase of 65% compared to just three years ago. Interestingly, 22.7% of that time is spent accessing social networks and blogs, showing just how important a social marketing campaign is alongside your SEO efforts.

5 – People spend billions online

Despite the economic woes, spending online continues to grow. In August 2011 alone, UK shoppers spent £5.2 billion on the web, according to the IMRG/Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index.

That’s 14% more than in the same month, the previous year.

6 – 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine

So, people are spending a lot of time and money online. But does that necessarily mean that you need SEO?

The answer is a resounding ‘yes’. A study by Forrester from 2006 found that 93% of all internet traffic comes from a search engine. You cannot afford to be missing out on that many potential visitors.

7 – Google dominates all

Although you should rank for all search engines, it makes sense to prioritise Google.

Google received more than 92% of search engine traffic in 2010, according to Statcounter.com. The runner up, Bing, gained just 3.17% of search engine traffic.

Such a compelling statistic also shows that it’s a good idea to funnel paid search spending towards Google.

8 – Customers click on top-ranking links

If you operate in a niche market then you are potentially already appearing on the first page of the search results for the major keywords.

This might make you think that it’s not worth investing in SEO to drive you to the very top of the results pages.

But you’d be wrong. A study by Optify showed that the top ranking website has an average click-through rate of 37%, while 60% of the clicks go to the top three results.

9 – Britons are online on the go

If you want to target customers on the move, you might be advertising on buses and in free papers. But market research agency IDC has predicted that soon more users will access the web through their mobile phones than through computers.

And according to the Office for National Statistics, 71% of 16 to 24-year-olds are accessing the internet using their handsets, so clearly you should be advertising to them online.

Who needs a poster on the bus?

10 – 41% of businesses are winning customers using social media

A successful SEO campaign works hand in hand with a social media strategy – and it’s never been more important to be targeting customers socially.

Research by workplace provider Regus shows that 41% of UK firms are successfully winning customers through their social networking efforts. Not only that, but 48% use social platforms to engage with their existing customers.

Your SEO spending will boost your social marketing – winning you business through two different channels.

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What to avoid in SEO

In recent years a number of illicit techniques have grown up to artificially manipulate a website's ranking. These techniques are referred to as spamming or sometimes "Black hat" techniques. The "black hat" description refers to the fact that in the old western movies the bad guys always wore black hats. The core of any spamming technique is the attempt to deceive the search engine, and ultimately the site visitor, about the true nature of a web site's content.

The question is whether spamming techniques actually deliver any long term benefit. In addition, it is known that using proscribed spamming techniques can get the spammer, their client sites and organizations delisted by the major search engines. It has happened publicly in the past and the search engines particularly Google place great emphasis on their warnings. Google even has a page for reporting spamming offenders. I have identified a list of nine types of illicit SEO or spamming techniqu es.

1. Keyword Stuffing
2. Cloaking
3. Doorway Sites
4. Throwaway sites
5. Mirror Sites
6. Hidden Text
7. Tiny Text
8. Link Spamming
9. Comment Spam

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is the technique of excessively using lots of keywords with express intention of influencing the search engines. Quite often this use appears in an incomprehensible or ungrammatical manner. Keyword stuffing is often used in conjunction with other spamming techniques such as cloaking, doorway sites, hidden text and tiny text.

Cloaking

Cloaking is the technique whereby the web site visible to a site visitor is entirely different from that seen by a search engine spider. The ordinary user may see one set of text and images but underneath that image, or "cloak", the site is "stuffed" with keywords. By examining the cache of a cloaked site on the Google search results, we can see that the site shows entirely different information to the spider, from that shown to the human eye.

Doorway Sites

A doorway site is a site that acts as a referring page for another site. The doorway page is highly optimized containing hidden links and keywords that the ordinary web user never sees. The doorway site then climbs the search engine rankings but re-directs all of its traffic to the target and perhaps poorly optimized site

Throwaway Sites

Throwaway sites are almost always doorway sites. They are web sites built by spammers to provide a short-term and artificial boost to traffic. Once their traffic objectives are achieved they are often switched off or left to decay hence throwaway. Throwaway sites are stuffed with links and keywords to attract and then re-direct traffic to a target web site. Typically, the spammers retain ownership of the throwaway domain. The spammers' clients initially receive large amounts of traffic. But once the throwaway site is switched off or thrown away the traffic comes to an abrupt halt and the clients business suffers. The clients are then effectively blackmailed into spending vast sums to retain traffic. The target web site receives no long term ranking benefits.

Mirror Sites

Mirror sites use an alternative URL to the target site but contain identical content. With automated page production, there may be hundreds of different URLs all with the same content. This technique is sometimes referred to as domain duplication.

Hidden Text

The technique here is to fill or "stuff" a page with keywords invisible to the naked eye. This is done by using the same colour for text as for the background page. This technique is sometimes referred to as WOW, short for white on white.

Tiny Text

Tiny text is a technique of using very small text that is barely visible to the human eye. This text can be read by the engines. However, the engines will also attr ibute this text as spam.

Link Spamming

In many respects, due to the increasing influence of links, it was inevitable that link spamming would become an issue. Spamming of links has been a growing problem as many people have realized the importance that Google, in particular, places on links. As a significant issue it raised its head in April 2005 when Google's new release appeared to ban one of the leading SEO firms from its rankings. Few people outside of Google and the SEO firm concerned are entirely sure why this is the case. But the industry consensus is that Google are cracking down on web sites and organizations that accumulate vast numbers of irrelevant links with the sole intention of climbing the rankings.

Comment Spam

Related to link spamming is comment spam. Comment spam is where a spammer visits a publicly accessible site and deposits a comment with an anchor text link back to a designated site. Forums and blogs are typical target. This activity became identified as a major problem in January 2005 when Google took steps to prevent it from the blogs of Blogger.com. The reason was that spammers working for so called PPC (Pills, Porn and Casino) web sites were trawling legitimate blogs and posting uninvited comment advertisements with their web site's anchor text. Blogs were vulnerable because they typically possess a comment section that can be accessed without the need for passwords or even registration.

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Stay Away From These SEO Traps‏

Stay Away From These SEO Traps‏

If you backlink spam you are making a huge mistake. Blog comment spamming and link farms are not the most legal way to build links. The legalities of backlink spamming can be difficult to navigate away from but you should try. If you want to avoid having your site banned you should avoid this mistake. Following internet guidelines is one way to avoid violating the rules when using SEO marketing.

Don't stalk blogs that aren't relevant to your topic. Some think building links is too difficult, this is a lie. Don't make it harder than it has to be but do stay on top of it and don't give up it does take time and patience. It's easy to fall prey to unethical techniques that may look highly appealing but on the long run these are bad for your site. The worst thing that can happen is to be entered into the bad books with search engines. You can increase your one way backlinks legally with alot of effort. Your focused link building ability will be bene ficial to your site in the long run.

Another frequently made SEO mistake often made by internet marketers is that they don't use a title tag that is right for their site. Remember, the search engines look at the title when they display your website in their results, so it's a mistake to assume that your title tag is irrelevant. The fact is, some websites that don't appear to be very well optimized have a high ranking, and this is often for the very reason that their primary keyword appears in their title tag. It also does not give your site the appearance you want if it doesn't have a title. It is not a hard task to create a title tag that includes your keyword in it. Don't make your title tag too long, keep it short and effective. You don't have to limit yourself to one keyword in the title, as you can use up to two.

The third mistake you want to avoid is choosing the wrong SEO Company when you're outsourcing the promotion work. Choosing the wrong o ne can cost you alot of money. You don't want to partner with a company that indulges in blackhat SEO practices, because directly or indirectly that's going to affect your site, and the last thing you want is getting banned. Don't let these companies enticements leave you with a bad website. One way to check the validity of your outsource company is to follow up on references.

Becoming the authority in your industry is not achieved by making the above mistakes so avoid them. The more focused you become the more obvious the other errors will be.

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