SEO - Why Traffic Exchanges Are Out of Style

Traffic exchanges used to be a hot buzz word when it came to search engine optimization but not the entire concept is out of style. These were sites that used guarantee a certain number of visitors to your blog or web page. Usually they will guarantee a number in the hundreds or the thousands. There are both free traffic exchanges and one that you pay for on a sliding scale. The idea is that you buy this lump of visitors to your site in a package that is priced accordingly ($10,000 visitors for $40 for example). Most of these companies also guarantee a viewing of your site for free.

These sounds like a deal but of course there is a hitch. For each visitor that views your blog you have to view someone else’s blog in the same way.

Here is how the free version of this works -- When you register your blog on a traffic exchange, you will be asked to create an account and be given a code. Each time you visit someone else’s blog, you earn credits to your account. A timer measures the twenty or thirty seconds that you must remain looking at the other blog. After times up you enter a code that moves you to the next site. The more blogs you visit the more visitors your blog receives.

Another drawback to using traffic exchanges is many of them do not give you a one to one credit for viewing other blogs. Usually you would have to visit 20 sites to get 10 visits to your own site. Obviously this can be time consuming because you only get as much traffic as you care to visit. One way to optimize this type of time is to consider it research and see if there is anyway of linking to the blogs that you must visit. Many of these traffic exchanges also have surplus traffic that they will sell you for as little as a cent per visitor. This is how you can end up spending ten dollars to earn a thousand visitors. The problem is that these visitors are in no way targeted to your blog.

Anthony Gregory is a SEO and Website Marketer. He can be contacted at: Sales (at) Brilliantseo.com

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Anthony_Gregory

Google SEO On Page Ranking Factor Myths

by Leroy Chan

It's easy to become a Google SEO expert. Just read a few search engine optimization books and visit a few Internet Marketing forums then pass on what you learned.

You know better than that, right?

Experts like to talk about on page ranking factors and how having them will help you rank better in the search engines.

Some of these on page ranking factors are true and some of them are myths.

Some of the on page ranking factors many believe will help you rank better in Google include:

1. Your main Keyword should be between H1 tags, or

2. Keywords in the content should be made bold, underlined or italicized.

Experts also believe you should avoid having certain things on your page that would decrease your ranking such as:

3. Javascript

4. Frames

5. Outbound links

6. Pop ups

However, a statistical analysis on over 45,000 websites reverses what experts normally think would help or hurt search engine rankings in Google.

Without getting into a confrontation with these SEO experts, you should question to yourself the truth of their advice. How did they figure out that these on page factors either help or hurt ranking performance? Can they show examples of sites that rank well which follows the advice they give?

From there, you should come up with your own conclusions and believe only what you can verify with hard data. Become your own SEO expert based on the facts and not the myths and you'll improve your search engine ranking in Google.

Copyright (c) 2007 by Leroy Chan

Discover the Google on page factors that either help or hurt your rankings in the search results. Visit http://www.internetmarketingview.com/seo/ranking-factors/ for details.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Leroy_Chan

SEO - General Guidelines

by Andreas Obermueller

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimizing and refers to a set of good practices that teach you how to improve your website so that it would be easily tracked, indexed and ranked by search engines. Getting your site indexed by Google and other major search engines will help you attract visitors and increase traffic.

SEO is an exciting and ongoing process that involves not only an initial optimized website, but also permanent maintenance and evaluating search results on a regular basis. With the ever-changing Internet technology, SEO experts sometimes have contrasting opinions on what makes a good website. However, there are some general guidelines most of them agree on.

Design & Content

• You should build your web pages for human beings and not for search engines. A clean design and a strong content will ultimately drive search engine spiders to your site.
• Make a clear hierarchy and provide text links to each page.
• Don't put to many links on a single page (maximum 100).
• You should include a site map to help users navigate easily through your website.
• Make sure you have clear TITLE tags, no HTML errors and all the links work.
• You should use text instead of images to display important elements, as search engine crawlers may not recognize a text inside an image.
• While keeping your content useful and clear, do use keywords that you know users would type to get to your page.
Technical Issues
• Most search engine crawlers see your website similar to the way a text browser sees it. Consequently, you should use a text browser, such as Lynx, to check your website. If you can't see the whole page because of JavaScript, session IDs, DHTML or Flash features, search engine spiders will probably have trouble with crawling your website.
• Check with your web host to see if the server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This header tells Google whether the website content has changed since its last visit.
• While it is advised session IDs to track visitors' path through the website, you shouldn't do this for search bots.
• The robots.txt file on your web server tells spiders which directories can be crawled and which cannot. Make sure it's updated and it doesn't somehow block search engine crawlers.

Website Promotion

• After you've built your website and put it online, try to get high PageRank sites link to it.
• Submit your website to major search engines (Google, Yahoo/Altavista, MSN) to get it indexed, along with a site map that will tell them the site structure.
• Submit your website to relevant directories, such as Yahoo and Open Directory Project.
• Get involved in community based websites, blogs and forums and build a strong reputation.

Whether you choose to implement these techniques yourself or go to a SEO expert, no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google and other search engines. Search engines change their crawling algorithms often and competitor websites appear all the time. However, following these basic SEO guidelines will improve your chances of increasing your website traffic and is a better practice than looking for a way to cheat on search engines in order to get your pages indexed.

Copyright © 2006 Andreas Obermueller

“Read more about which general guidelines you can follow to get your site indexed by Google and other major search engines resulting in a higher exposure of your site and an increased stream of traffic and visitors. “

About the Author:

Andreas Obermueller is webmaster of
Hit4Biz.com - Marketing Related Information
and recommends Marble Host as reliable Web Host

10 Effective Strategies To get To The Top Of Search Engines indirectly

There are millions of web sites trying to get listed in the top 20 spots of the major search engines. That amounts to a lot of competition! I say if you can't get listed at the top, indirectly get to the top.

How do you do this? Look up the top 20 web sites on the major search engines under the keywords and phrases people would find your web site. The key would be to then advertise on those web sites.

The most expensive way would be to buy ad space on those web sites. If you don't want to spend any money, you could use the ten strategies below. These strategies may not apply to every web site.

1. Participate on their discussion boards. You could post questions, answer other peoples questions, and join in on conversations. Just include your signature file and link at the end of your messages.

2. Ask the web site owner if they would like a free ebook to giveaway to their visitors. You could have them link to your web site or include your ad in the free ebook.

3. Submit content to their web site. You could write articles for their web site and include your resource box and link at the end of the article. If they publish it, you'll indirectly be at the top of the search engines.

4. Write an excellent article review of their web site, products or services. Then publish the review on your web site. E-mail the web site owner and tell him or her about it. They may link to your web site so their visitors read it.

5. Ask the owner of the web site if they would want to trade advertising. If you don't get as much traffic as they do, you could throw in some extra incentives.

6. Propose a cross promotion deal with the web site. You both could promote each others products or services together in one package deal. This means a mention and link back to your web site.

7. Give the web site a testimonial for their product or service. Include a little text link for your web site with the testimonial. You never know; it could end up on their ad copy.

8. Post your advertisement on their free classified ad section on their web site. You want to be sure you have an attractive headline so they will read your ad.

9. Post your text link on their free-for-all links page. You want to go back and post your link regularly so it stays towards the top.

10. Sign their guest books. You could leave a short compliment about their web site on their guest book.Just include your signature file and link at the end of your message.

Article Source: http://www.articleonlinedirectory.com

If you've picked some pointers about marketing and internet marketing, specially search engine marketing that you can put into action, then by all means, do so. You won't really be able to gain any benefits from your new knowledge if you don't use it.

There are many ways to to get listed in the top 20 spots of the major search engines indeirectory. Try our 10 top secret strategies and see how they work. I will post more articles about marketing and internet marketing.

Brian Sakamoto, webmaster of http://www.marketingonlinepro.com
and http://www.asianbusiness.bz
Also,http://www.articleonlinedirectory.com/marketing

The 52 Top SEO Tips - Here Are 10 of Them

By David Leonhardt

From the obvious to the "Hey-I-never-thought-of-that-great-idea-before", here are 10 of the top 52 tips on how to optimize your website for its turbo-charge rocket ride up the search engine rankings.

1. Be bold. Use the tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.
2. Deep linking. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site. Here is an example of deep linking, in this case to my personal happiness workbook.
3. Become a foreigner. Canada and the UK have many directories for websites of companies based in those countries. Can you get a business address in one of those countries?
4. Newsletters. Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.
5. First come, first served. If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won't follow additional links to the same page. You can see this in action at the link to the home page on this web site monitoring page
6. Multiple domains. If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Why not a site dedicated to gumbo pudding pops?
7. Article exchanges. You've heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else's article on the history of pudding pops with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in Viet Nam, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links. (More on high quality links in other tips.)
8. Titles for links. Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.
9. Not anchor text. Don't overdo the anchor text. You don't want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation - something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, "Gumbo Pudding Pop" occasionally, "Get gumbo pudding pops" as well, "Gumbo-flavored pudding pops" some other times, etc.
10. Site map. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It's called the navigation bar. See how the second navigation bar at the bottom of Last Minute Florida Villas is like a mini-site map?

There you have it: 10 of the 52 Top SEO Tips, a free tip sheet that comes with Don't Get Banned By the Search Engines:

There is a lot more to search engine optimization, and there are always more details when looking at an individual site. But these tips should help any website significantly improve its rankings.

David Leonhardt is an effective, professional seo consultant and a website marketing consultant. For a free quote, call 613-448-3931, or send us an email.