Welcome to Michael's Article Collection

Search Engine Optimization --- An Overview

Search engine optimization is one of most popular online marketing tool for any website. With most websites looking forward to increasing the online sales of their products/services, search engine optimization can be a very cost-effective tool to target and procure your customers online. In this paper, we will discuss about search engine optimization, its benefits and how you can optimize your . . .

Six Reasons Why Your Alexa Rating Is Still Important

1. Additional Exposure For Your Site. At the end of 2003, Alexa.com's results were being closely linked into the listings of its' parent company, Amazon.com. This currently means that when someone reviews your site, it is linked to their amazon profile, which can be accessed when people browsing for books look to see what reviewers like them suggest. In the future, it could mean that amazon.com. . .

Need Article Ideas?

Writer's block...need I say more? Every writer experiences writer's block at one time or another. For a writer using the marketing with articles technique the block often starts with trying to generate a new article idea. There are many creative ways to discover article ideas no matter what your topic and we'll cover several of them below.Your first step in finding article ideas should be to. . .

Build Your Site’s Link Value

Link Value is the perceived value another site will derive from linking to you. The more value they see, the more likely they will be to link.At its basic level, the most immediate value most sites see is a reciprocal link. “You link to me and I’ll link to you.” But such exchanges rarely bring significant business benefit to either party.Much more productive are one-way links, “I’ll link to you. . .

How Can Search Engines Help You with Your Business?

What Are Search Engines?Most of us often face the problem of searching the web. Nowadays, the global network is one of the most important sources of information there is, its main goal being to make information easily accessible. That's where the main problem arises: how to find what you need among all those innumerable terabytes of data. The World Wide Web is overloaded with various stuff rel. . .

The Google Toolbar & Search Engine Optimization

Like many other useful toolbars out there so is the Google Toolbar. I consider this toolbar a must have for any serious search engine optimizer and anyone who searches the internet on a regular basis. Here’s why… The Google Toolbar has grown significantly in features since inception. It now features several new useful features but the main focus of this article is on those that aid in search en. . .

Site Maps: A Force to be Reckoned With

Another important component of search engine optimization is the use of site maps. If you want visitors -- and search engine spiders -- to find every page on your Web site, a site map can be your biggest ally especially if you have a lot of content on your site (and if you’ve been reading all the advice on our site, you should know by now that the more content you have the better your chances a. . .

5 Simple Ways To Promote

Learning to promote your business online is one of the most important steps in being successful. Otherwise your site may as well be in some dark closet, because no one is going to stumble over it. Here are 5 simple ways to promote your site and gain some needed traffic for your business. -- AUTOMATE IT As much as possible you should automate your promotion efforts. One of the easiest and quicke. . .

Yahoo Drops Google...How To Flood Your Site With Traffic ...

It official Yahoo has dropped Google and will be using Inktomi's results to power their directory. Previously when you did a search at Yahoo the top sponsor ads are from Overture and the bulk "free listing" ads were supplied by Google. A few months back Yahoo purchased Inktomi as well as Overture and the online community was just waiting for the day that Yahoo would power all it's results in ho. . .

21 Free or Low-cost ways to Promote your On-line business

After developing my product, having not much in my cookie jar to spend on promotion, I researched and found a lot of very effective promotional ideas that brought me success with my personalized cartoon business.1) In the beginning...Create your website. If you don’t know how, there are many free templates offered on the Internet. Search on "free website templates" to find one that appeals to y. . .

A Winning Domain Name

The domain name is one of the most important decisions you will make when trying to win over the search engine dilemma. Try using at least one of your best keywords within your domain name.The search engine and the directories give higher preference when your domain name is relevant to your site content or theme. Let me give you an example of three different ways you could look at your domain . . .

Top 5 Search Engine Optimization Mistakes

There are a lot of ways to promote your website and, unfortunately, a lot of these methods are mistakes. Here is a list of some of the more common mistakes (often referred to as Black Hat SEO) that you should steer well clear of.1. Bad NeighbourhoodsThese sites are also known as free for all (FFA) pages and link farms. They serve no other purpose other than to list tens of thousands of unrelate. . .

How to SEO your site right.

Search engine optimization is one of most popular online marketing tool for any website. With more websites coming online every day the competition gets larger, so you have to make sure you can out SEO them before they out do you. In this article I will tell how to increase your ranking and how to out do your competition.Search engines change their algorithms often and it's hard to keep up for . . .

Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website - Step 6: Human Tes...

Welcome to part six in this search engine positioning series. Last week we discussed the importance of internal linking. In part six we will cover the obvious and yet often overlooked importance of its appeal to a real-live human being.While not directly related to SEO it is so often overlooked in the quest for higher search engine positioning that it has become a fundamental step in our ten st. . .

A Tip for Finding Willing, Quality Links

Google might not dominate the search engine world like it did last year, but it's still a big player and can account for a lot of your traffic. It's no secret that acquiring PageRank is a big part of doing well with Google. I've personally seen my own pages receive huge jumps in traffic after PageRank updates. By now, you probably know PageRank comes from the number of incoming links to your. . .

7.5 Ways To Get More Sales Through Your Web Site

Yes, apparently - websites are supposed to make money! Somebody came up with the strange idea that it's really not enough to spend thousands on your site, hundreds of hours creating the content and then sitting back to admire you, and your developer's work. No - apparently it is now 'cool' to have a web site that actually makes it onto a sales column in your chart of accounts.. 'Return on in in. . .

"Internet Marketing Simplified! 2 Pillars For Achieving M...

Are you confused by the flood of information on how to improve your internet marketing results? Mastering the search engines, pay-per-click advertising, affiliate marketing, website design, writing articles, and on it goes. Doesn't it seem more and more complicated to focus in on what really works and what doesn't? After working to build many businesses from the ground up over the last 10 y. . .

How To Conceal Your Website's "Fingerprint" From The Sear...

The internet marketing industry is now flooded with various page and portal generators.In the good old days the gateway page generators did very well, earning a lot of money for many people.Then the search engines began to crack down on robot-generated pages, a trend which has led to the demise of such tools.But how is it that the search engines are able to track down these sites so fast?Well, . . .

Boost Traffic to Your Web Site with Fresh Content

On the web, most SEO experts will tell you that content is king. However, the real key is FRESH content. Article directories are a great source of content, but over time popular articles will be posted on hundreds or even thousands of websites. How are you going to make your page stand out from the rest?One way to distinguish repeated content is to wrap it with your own custom content (preferab. . .

How to use Content to Improve Search Engine Placemtent

Just how important is content to the search engines? We all know that well written content is paramount to maintaining repeat traffic to a web site but just what qualities pique the 'interest' of the major search engines? This can be a convoluted topic where the unique characteristics of each search engine are considered to create highly appealing content. In most cases, however, the general co. . .

Web Directory Submission Analysis and Guide

Why Submit To Web DirectoriesMany people are paying alot of money to submit their urls to web directories mainly because of 3 reasons: a) To get permanent 1 way link. b) To get a good Google PR page linking to your site. c) To get traffic / leads from directories.Coincidently, the first 2 factors are part of the mathematics that determine how well your site will rank in Google Search Engine. Be. . .

Top Traffic Generation Techniques

If you generate more traffic to your website, you will get more customers as a result you will have more sales. There fore, you have to work regularly to generate highly targeted visitors that would bring high sales of your products.There are different techniques to advertise your product or your website and drive tons of qualified traffic.Here are top Free or low cost traffic-generation techni. . .

Free Gifts

Gift-giving is a year-around enterprise these days, so allow me to do a favor to your wallet whilst assisting you with the spirit of giving ...Cyberspace is loaded with free items that can even make opening Christmas cards a pleasant surprise. It won't cost you anything, for example, to postscript your greeting with a URL that leads to something enjoyably free.If you know someone who likes game. . .

Web Site Promotion - Are You Requesting Free Backlinks?

Everyone who is trying to improve their web site's ranking wants backlinks. This is an essential ingredient to your web site promotion strategy. Some happen because the right person (a webmaster) stumbled across your web site and likes your content. But you can get many more links on other web sites pointing to yours - if only you ask them. One-way links (where they link to your page but you do. . .

Search Engine Flashback

,pHappy New Year! We are moving into 2006 and I expect we shall be seeing some major events this year on the internet. I think the search engine wars will be fought long and hard. Let’s hope when they start this years updates they do them with the people in mind and not themselves. Let’s review a few major events and what they mean for us. Although nothing here can be totally proven or unproven. . .

Blogging = The Latest Phenomena in Traffic Generation

In what was originally a form of online journal keeping by stay-at-home moms and college students, it has now become a national phenomenon with its presence felt as a legitimate business booster. For the novices, blogs are online journals that are periodically updated with articles in the form of posts. It can serve as an informative vehicle between business and consumer. The possibilities are . . .

Surviving In The Web Without Google

Google is the king of search engines today and it is almost certain that your website will not get decent traffic if it does not appear in the first few pages of Google search results. The converse is also true. If your site is ranked well in google, you will enjoy tremendous amount of free traffic.The ProblemOther than banning sites that uses illegal Search Engine Optimization Techniques, Goog. . .

Measuring and improving the performance of a website

The return on investment (ROI) for the implementation of a website is directly related to the level by which the website is able to achieve its objectives. Even though this concept may sound trivial to the majority of business owners, establishing a series of objectives for a website and putting in place a methodology for measuring how well these goals are being met typically become more challe. . .

Measuring the difficulty and merit of SE positioning results

The SEO (search engine optimizing) business has emerged as a major player in the Internet business marketplace. Webmasters and website owners always arrive to a stage where they wonder why their business fail in making money, despite catchy domain name, excellent design and amazing Flash animation in the home page. The first one to blame is the webmaster, which is always at hand because he only. . .

Search Engine Optimization Starts With The Competition

Analyzing your competition is a good place to start when optimizing your web site for search engine placement. SEO or search engine optimization is about topping your competition. By looking first at web sites that rank high for your key word phrases you will have an understanding of the time and cost involved to have high rankings in the search engines. If you are going after a competitive . . .

SEO Stoopid!

Why am I SEO Stoopid?I'm SEO Stoopid because I didn't properly take notice of what my stats could have told me.If I would have done, I would have noticed something sooner and factoring that something into my response would very probably have saved me a goodly number of lost posters and art print sales.My site, www.kruse.co.uk, is about SEO. I've been doing it since 1996 or thereabouts and have . . .

The Pen Is Mightier Than Website Traffic

Although significant website traffic to your site can seem to be an uphill battle, once again the pen is the clear winner. Other than free search engine traffic, publishing articles remains as one of the few truly effective ways to get targeted traffic to your site.If you haven't already tried your hand at writing an article, it may seem like a pretty daunting task, especially if you don't thin. . .

Top Tips And Techniques To Improve Search Engine Rank Of ...

Various techniques are used by Specialists and Webmasters to Improve Search Engine Rank. This is because more than 80% of the people who want to know something go to the Search Engines to get what they want. Hence a Good Search Engine Rank is extremely important for the success of your Internet Marketing Business. Given below are some very Special Tips and Techniques that will help you in your . . .

What Is Better Than Writing Articles For Website Promotion

Answer : Reading the web articles for web promotion !Yes ! This is one of the best techniques available that will help you in promotion of your websites and blogs. Gone are the days when you had to pay big bucks to seo freelancers for your internet promotion & guidance or surf through forum to forum to learn the best techniques or latest trends for online marketing. The best thing about re. . .

Google and Jagger's Aftermath

Starting somewhere between September 22 and November 17, 2005, Google launched a major update to their search algorithm which shook up the search engine optimization (SEO) community and millions of website rankings. The update has been named Jagger and is apparently finished. The keywords that people used to find your site with in Google may not be producing as many visits any more because the . . .

Search Engines & Web Directories

The so called search box should be given a correct name “search engine” which can be further divided into keyword search engines and web directories. Web surfers can make use these two types of searching methods alternatively for better search results. Search engines accumulated their data volume through spiders or robots that work among billions of websites and collect them back to the databa. . .

A Merry Search Engine Holiday

Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah and happy Kwanzaa to all of you. The holiday season is getting very close, it is now only a few days away. The perfect time for, you guessed it, a new search engine update. This is a new one for me as I generally follow Google and the agony they create with each new update. This month however my target is Yahoo.com and it’s latest changes. The last major update (. . .

Website Traffic Needs A Driver

First of all, let me dispel the myth that a website can gain huge success and continue to remain productive simply by using an 'auto-pilot' program.You know what an 'auto-pilot' program is, right? You see them splashed all over the web. Basically, they're website marketing schemes designed to provide a constant flow of targeted traffic to your website simply by picking a general category, payin. . .

10 Tips for Raising Your Search Engine Rankings

Search engine rankings are an important factor to consider when you have a website that needs more traffic. If your website doesn’t have a good position in the rankings then no-one will find it, so you need to make sure that your website is ranked highly enough to be seen. The other important quality to getting high traffic to your site is having a nice arsenal of links. The more links that you. . .

Searching: Past To Present

I’m 30 years old and have been online ever sense the old commodore 64. When I first started surfing the net on my brand new Compaq, I used yahoo to get me where I was going. Then, I found Google. Google has been there for me ever since. I loved the way it’s clean interface would load up minutes quicker then yahoo on my 56k dial up line. I loved the way it seemed to pick out the sites I was look. . .

At last! A Fast & Easy Way to Increase Traffic!

In the mid 1990’s –the ‘early days’ of the internet so to speak - adding content to your site was about the best way market your site. But in 2000, this ‘content bubble’ burst. Other exciting profit models like e.g. banner ads came into fashion and were the way to go. Now, five years later, this has all changed back into the advantage of content marketing. Especially since the arrival of Googl. . .

SEO Tools Poem

I am in my cave, and looking out kind of furtive,The reason being, psychologically, I am low assertive,It seems to me with dinosaurs just outside the cave,Its entirely reasonable now, to be anything but brave,But the tribal psychiatrist insists that I must face my fears,And he issued me with stones, and little wooden spears,And so I went out bravely, into the land of fools,And got quickly eaten. . .

The Importance of Getting Your Website Listed on DMOZ

DMOZ is used by Google for ALL of the contents of the Web Directory portion of their site. Many small search engines and directories also use DMOZ results for their directories. Since DMOZ has been around a long time and uses human editors, Google also gives your site quite a lot of link popularity credit, if your site is listed. Needless to say, DMOZ is an important link, if you can get it. Wh. . .

The Steps Before Website Traffic

By now, you probably already have the theme of your website established, your keywords picked and your website ready to go live. You're thinking that you'll submit your site to the search engines, sit back and see how much traffic the search engines will send you, right?STOP! There are many different avenues you can take to drive traffic to your site but they should only be taken after you make. . .

What Is Link Popularity And How Can I Increase This On My...

Gauging link popularity is a practice that most search engines use when they rank sites for specific keywords and phrases. In order to keep their clients happy, search engines are always developing ways to make their results more relevant. In the last couple of years, Search engines start giving more weight to Links between sites with similar themes because they see links as a vote of confidenc. . .

I Just Can't Wait For Valentine!

I Just Can't Wait for Valentine! My boyfriend Stephen and I have been together for a year now and we are separated by 2 hours drive. Last February, I kept complaining how both my sisters had plans for Valentine’s Day and how much I miss him. And all he did was try to comfort me. On February the 14th, I was awakened by our love song "I Can't Live Without You" and then found a stem of red rose on. . .

The Google Jagger Update Part 1

Google has recently gone through an update which has seen many websites that had previously held strong rankings vanish from view. There are a few aspects this latest update has focused on. Part 1 focuses on "Reciprocal Linking" and the impact this has had from a search engine positioning perspective.With many of the updates in the past, site rankings have somewhat fluctuated, but with the most. . .

Lead Generation Marketing

Lead Generation Marketing Makes More SenseMost people starting out in any business don't have a lotof money in their advertising budgets. Traditionalmarketing strategies emphasize using mediums that canreach as many people as possible with the hopes ofconverting a miniscule percentage of readers or viewersto buy the product or service being advertised. But youare not some fast food chain or c. . .

Link Exchange: A Better Way for 2006

While traditional link exchanges still hold some value, it may be time to add a different tactic to your link-building arsenal. Why? Because it appears that swapping links doesn’t provide quite as much ‘oomph!’ for moving up in the search engine rankings as it used to, at least not for sites in highly competitive niches. Many sites that were on the first page of results and relied heavily on ex. . .

Make Your Presnece Felt in Google, Yahoo & MSN Simple SEO...

Seo Services & SEO FirmsWebsites that gets found in Google, Yahoo, and MSN, etc. is not hard to do, But most people are confused where to begin.I can offer some search engine optimization tips as per my knowledge.Try not to purchase a new domain unless you have to. Google's aging delay is trouble for all new domains, it is better to use your existing domain/website if at all possible. If you're. . .