by Joe Balestrino - Mr SEO

Traditional methods of link exchange and buying links is not the answer. The answer is knowing how to get people to link to you voluntarily. You need to view your site as another site owner would and ask yourself if you would want to link to your site? Is your site stuffed with poorly written content simply for the purpose of placing adsense ads on it? Before SEO became a must, people relied heavily on the originality and uniqueness of their sites to draw traffic. Today, that seems to be a lost artform for most. Google is starting to tell web site owners that they need to do more than exchange and buy links and that fancy methods of linking won\’t hold much weight. In actuality, continuing to adhere to outdated link methods may result in your site not being fully indexed.

Matt Cutts recently stated on his blog that “if you were getting crawled more before and you’re trading a bunch of reciprocal links, don’t be surprised if the new crawler has different crawl priorities and doesn’t crawl as much”. Back in 2004, link exchanges were the “in” thing to do. Now, however, Google is aware of the possible arrangements (including the “triangle” exchange) and as a result, they hold little merit. Linking to bad neighbors or unrelated sites can have a negative effect on your site. Matt stated that owners should be careful regarding link exchange policies as it can be a risky practice that could affect your sites value in the long term. The same goes for buying links on related sites. When buying links, you should be using the no follow tag. This will help ensure the link will not be counted in a negative way. especially if buying from sites that are not related to yours. Fact: The Bigdaddy crawl looks more at inbound than outbound links. The quality of the links will determine how deep to crawl a site or if a site should be crawled at all!

What Makes Your Site Hard to Crawl?

* Using Cookies
* Using Session Id’s
* Frameset can be indexed but there is room for improvement so becareful, not the best solution.
* Flash still should be accompanied with HTML text

How to Make Sure Your Site is Indexed Correctly?

* Use Google sitemaps
* Stay away from free hosting
* Using too much Java
* Mouseovers
* Over-designing your site

To see how your site looks to spiders, use a text based browser. If you can’t make out what is on the page, neither will the spiders. Making sites clean and useful is the goal. Too many effects, Java, flash and other fancy features can hinder your sites indexing.

Google has also stated they want to align themselves with sites that offer useful content to get links, so content is still king. Quality is more important than quantity.

Google is doing its best to make it so that webmasters cannot control the linking process. They want people to naturally want to link to you, whether it’s because you have a great message board, informative articles or quality related content. Google is trying to push sites that are relevant as it will positively affect the public’s view of their engine. So, before you buy a link, sell a link or try to find a sneaky way to build backlinks, try good old fashion web site marketing 101. When creating a site, give people a reason to want to come back! Too many marketers worry about bringing in visitors for that one time sale or visit. If they took the time to separate their site from the competition with helpful content, a great layout and easy navigation, they would have little trouble establishing links. If your site is informative and resourceful, people will find you and so will the search engines.

by Matthew Coers

What is a Google Sitemap?

A Google Sitemap is a very simple XML document that lists all the pages in your website, but the Google Sitemaps program is actually much more important than that. In fact, the Sitemaps program provides a little peek inside Google’s mind – and it can tell you a lot about what Google thinks of your website!

Why Should You Use Google Sitemaps?

Until Google Sitemaps was released in the summer of 2005, optimizing a site for Google was a guessing game at best. A website’s page might be deleted from the index, and the Webmaster had no idea why. Alternatively, a site’s content could be scanned, but because of the peculiarities of the algorithm, the only pages that would rank well might be the “About Us” page, or the company’s press releases.

As webmasters we were at the whim of Googlebot, the seemingly arbitrary algorithmic kingmaker that could make or break a website overnight through shifts in search engine positioning. There was no way to communicate with Google about a website – either to understand what was wrong with it, or to tell Google when something had been updated.

That all changed about a year ago when Google released Sitemaps, but the program really became useful in February of 2006 when Google updated it with a couple new tools.

So, what exactly is the Google Sitemaps program, and how can you use it to improve the position of your website? Well, there are essentially two reasons to use Google Sitemaps:

1. Sitemaps provide you with a way to tell Google valuable information about your website

2. You can use Sitemaps to learn what Google thinks about your website

What You Can Tell Google About Your Site

Believe it or not, Google is concerned about making sure webmasters have a way of communicating information that is important about their sites. Although Googlebot does a pretty decent job of finding and cataloging web pages, it has very little ability to rate the relative importance of one page versus another. After all, many important pages on the Internet are not properly “optimized”, and many of the people who couldn’t care less about spending their time on linking campaigns create some of the best content.

Therefore, Google gives you the ability to tell them on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0 how important a given page is relative to all the others. Using this system, you might tell Google that your home page is a 1.0, each of your product sections is a 0.8, and each of your individual product pages is a 0.5. Pages like your company’s address and contact information might only rate a 0.2.

You can also tell Google how often your pages are updated and the date that each page was last modified. For example your home page might be updated every day, while a particular product page might only be updated on an annual basis.

What Google Can Tell You About Your Site

Having the ability to tell Google all this information is important, but you don’t even need to create a sitemap file in order to enjoy some of the perks of having a Google Sitemaps account.

That’s because even without a Sitemap file, you can still learn about any errors that Googlebot has found on your website. As you probably know, your site doesn’t have to be “broken” for a robot to have trouble crawling it’s pages. Google Sitemaps will tell you about pages it was unable to crawl and links it was unable to follow. Therefore, you can see where these problems are and fix them before your pages get deleted from the index.

You can also get information on the types of searches people are using to find your website. Of course, most website analytics tools will give this information to you anyway, but if the tool you use doesn’t have this feature, then it’s always nice to get it for free from Google.

But the best part of the Sitemaps program is the Page analysis section that was added in February of 2006. This page gives you two lists of words. The first list contains the words that Googlebot associates with your website based on content on your site. The second list contains words that Googlebot has found linking to your site!

Unfortunately, Google limits the number of words in each list to 20. As a consequence, the inbound links column is partly wasted by words such as “http”, “www”, and “com” – terms that apply equally to all websites (hey Google, how about suppressing those terms from the report?). That said, this list does provide you with a way to judge the effectiveness of your offsite optimization efforts.

When you compare these two lists, you can get an understanding of what Google thinks your website is about. If the words on your Site Content column are not really what you want Googlebot to think about your site, then you know you need to tweak your website’s copy to make it more focused on your core competency.

If, on the other hand your inbound links don’t contain any keywords that you want to rank well for, then perhaps you should focus your efforts in that direction.

Above all else, you really want these two lists to agree. You want your inbound linked words to match up to the site content words. This means that Google has a clear understanding of the focus of your website.

Additional Benefits of the Sitemaps Program

Google has even started notifying Sitemaps-participating Webmasters if they are breaking any of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This can be very valuable information if your site suddenly becomes de-listed on Google and you don’t know why.

Only Sitemaps participants can get this information, and it is only provided at Google’s discretion. In fact, Google will NOT notify you if you are creating worthless websites that offer no original content, or if you are creating thousands of doorway pages that are redirecting to other web sites. Google doesn’t want to give the sp@ammers any clues as to how to improve their techniques.

How Do You Get Started with Google Site Maps?

The first thing you must do is obtain a Google Account. If you already have a Gmail, Adsense, or Adwords account, then you are all set. If not, you can register an account by visiting the Google Accounts page (https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount).

Building your sitemap file is pretty easy to do if you are familiar with XML, and if you aren’t you can always use a third-party tool such as the ones that are listed on Google’s website (http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html). Google also has a “Sitemap Generator” that you can download and install on your server, but unless you are fairly adept at managing Python scripts, you should probably stick to the third-party tools.

At any rate, once you have your Google Account and your Sitemap file built, the rest is very easy. All you have to do is:

1. Log into your account (http://google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/siteoverview)

2. Type your website’s URL into the “Add Site” box and click on “OK”

3. Click on the Manage Sites link for the website you are adding, and add your sitemap file to your account.

Google Sitemaps – An Excellent SEO Tool

Google Sitemaps help Googlebot quickly find new content on your website. They allow you to tell Google what’s important, what’s new, and what changes often. The tools provided to webmasters through the program can play a vital role in helping you understand how the search engines (especially Google) view your website.

Using this information you can dramatically improve the position of your website and quickly clear up any issues Google finds. You can also use the tools provided by Google to gauge the effectiveness of your off-site optimization efforts so you can better focus your time and energy on activities that bring you the most success.

by Shawn Campbell

In September of 1999, Brett Tabke wrote “26 Steps to 15k a Day” in the Webmaster World forum. A lot has changed since then, and now is the time to consider a new 26-step plan that meets the current needs of webmasters in 2006. Some of the old ones still apply (writing new content everyday, for example), and some don’t (submitting to the search engines is no longer necessary), and we’re here to tell you which is which! As you probably already know, bringing in traffic is not easy - it takes hard work, determination and lots of elbow grease. So if you’re ready, roll up your sleeves and follow these 26 simple steps, and within just one year you will generate enough traffic to keep you busy for a long, long time!

A) Keyword research

Before you do anything else, use a keyword research tool and do an extensive job researching the right keyphrases to use for your site. What keyphrases are your direct competitors using? Are there any keyphrases that create a potential for market entry? Are there any that you can put a spin on and create a whole new niche with?

B) Domain name

If you want to brand your company name, then choose a domain name that reflects it. If your company is Kawunga, then get http://www.kawunga.com/. If it’s taken, then get http://www.kawungawidgets.com/. No dashes, and no more than two words in the domain if appropriate.

C) Avoid the sandbox

Buy your domain name early, as soon as you have chosen your keyphrases and your company name. Get it hosted right away and put up a quick one page site saying a little about who you are, what you sell, and that there will be more to come soon. Make sure it gets crawled by Google and Yahoo (either submit it or link to it from another site).

D) Create content

Create over 30 pages of real, original content on your site. This will give the spiders something to chew on. It will also give you more opportunities to been seen in the search engine results for a wide variety of keyphrases.

E) Site design

Use the “Keep It Simple” principle. Employ an external CSS file, clean up any Java Scripts by referring to them off the page in an external file, don’t use frames, use flash the way you would an image, and no matter what, do not create a flash site. Do not offer a busy site with lots of bells and whistles to your visitors. Keep things nice and simple. Make it easy for them to find what they are looking for and they’ll have no reason to look anywhere else.

F) Page size

The less kilobytes your page uses, the better - especially for the home page. Optimize your images and make sure the page loads quickly. Most people and businesses in the Western world may have high speed, but cell phones and other countries might not. If your site loads slowly, you may have already lost your visitor before they’ve even had a chance to browse around.

G) Usability

Make sure that your site follows good usability rules. Remember that people spend more time on other sites, so don’t violate design conventions. Don’t use PDF files for online reading. Change the colours for visited links, and use good headers. Look up usability for more tips and tricks, it will be worth your while.

H) On site optimization

Use the keyphrase you have chosen in your title (most important), your headers (when appropriate), and within the text. Make sure that your page/content is ABOUT your keyphrase. If you are selling widgets, than write about widgets. Don’t just stick the word widgets into the text.

I) Globals

Globals are the links that remain the same on every page. They are the reference for new visitors to keep them from getting lost. Sometimes they are on the left of the page, sometimes they consist of tabs at the top. Often they are in the footer of the page as well. Make sure that you have an old style text version of your globals on every page. I usually create tabs at the top, and put the text versions in the footer at the bottom of the page. Find out what works best for you.

J) Headers

Use bold headers. On the Internet, people scan they don’t read. So initially, all they will see are the headers. If your headers don’t address their concerns, they won’t stick around long enough to read your content. Use appropriate keyphrases when you can.

K) Site map

Build a site map with a link to each of your pages. Keep it up to date. This will allow the spiders to get to every page. Put a text link to the site map on the main pages.

L) Content

Add a page every 2-3 days: 200-500 words. Create original content, don’t copy others. The more original and useful it is, the more people will read it, link to it, and most importantly of all - like it enough to keep coming back for more.

M) White hat only

Stay away from black hat optimizing techniques. Black hat optimization consists of using any method to get higher rankings that the search engines would disapprove of, such as keyword stuffing, doorway pages, invisible text, cloaking and more. Stick to white hat methods for long-term success. People who use black hat optimization are usually there for the short-term, such as in porn, gambling, and Viagra markets (just look at your email spam for more black hat markets). These black hat industry sites are usually around just long enough to make a quick buck.

N) Competition analysis

Who is linking to your competition? Use Yahoo’s “link:” service to see the back links of your competition. For example, type in “link:http://www.yourdomain.com” into Yahoo search without the quotes). Try to get links from the same sites as your direct competitors. Better yet, see if you can replace them!

O) Submit

Submit to five groups of directories:
1. Dmoz.org and Yahoo (local, such as Yahoo.co.uk, or Yahoo.ca, etc… if you can).

2. Find directories in your field and get into them. Pay if you must, but only if the price is reasonable.

3. Local directories that relate to your country or region.

4. Any other directories that would be appropriate.

5. If you are targeting the local market, make sure that you are in the Yellow Pages and Superpages (because search engines use these listings to power local searches)

P) Blog

Start a blog about your industry and write a new entry at least once a week. Allow your visitors to comment or, better yet, write their own entries. This will create even more content on your site and will keep people coming back regularly to see what is new.

Q) Links from other sites

Simply submit your website to appropriate sites, asking that they link to your site as a reference because it will benefit their visitors. Don’t spend too much time on this, if your content is good and original, they will find you and link to you naturally. Remember that Linking is Queen.
Stay away from reciprocal linking, links farms, link scams, and any other unnatural links. They may not necessarily hurt you, but Google tracks when you get a link, how long you have had a link, who links to the site that links to you, where you live, what you had for breakfast, and more (not really… but kind of).

R) Statistics

Make sure your server has a good statistics program. Use it! If you don’t have access to a good program, then pay for one. Without the knowledge of who is coming to your site, from where, and how often, you will be missing out on some essential tools to improve your site.

S) Pay-per-click (PPC)

Sign up for Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing. Spend money getting people to your site. Use it for branding too. This will create a steady flow of visitors to your site, and will make your site more accessible to your potential clients. You don’t have to be #1, you don’t even have to be #5… just make sure you are on the first page of search results for most of your keyphrases, when the cost is right.

T) Look ahead

Stay informed of what is coming up in your market. If a new product will be out next season, write about it now. Take advantage of being a first mover. The search engines, and linkers, will reward you.

U) Articles

Write an article once every week and get it published in as many online publications as you can (with a link back to your site). Include the article on your site. Not only will this create many links to your site, but it will also get people to click to your site, and most importantly you will become an expert in the eyes of your visitors. They may even begin looking for your site by querying your name!

V) Study your traffic

After 30 to 90 days you will have enough results to analyze in your statistics program. Go over them with a fine toothed comb. Get the answers to these questions:
- Where are your visitors coming from?
- Which search engines do they use?
- What queries do they type in?
- What pages on your site do they visit the most?
- What are the entry pages on your site?
- What are the exit pages?
- What path do they follow when they browse your site?

Use this information to tweak your site.
- Use the most popular page to encourage the visitors to make you money.
- Adjust the paths they use to send them where you want them.
- Figure out why they leave from the exit pages.

Also, see what search terms people use to find you, and fine tune your keyphrases. If you targeted “green widgets”, but your visitors are finding you with the query “green leather widgets”, then start creating content about “leather widgets”!

W) Verify your submissions

After 3-4 months, check that you got into Dmoz.org and all of the other directories that you submitted to. If you have not been included, then submit again, or better yet, write a polite email to the editor and ask why. Also, find any new directories that would be worthy of your submittal time and submit to them.

X) RSS feeds

RSS (Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) is becoming a powerful tool for Internet marketers. You can quickly and easily add fresh content to your website. Article feeds are updated frequently, so you can give your visitors (and the search engines) what they want - fresh content! You can use RSS to promote any new content, such as new pages, articles, blogs, press releases, and more!

Y) Press releases

A press release is a written communication that you submit to journalists in the media (newspapers, radio, television, magazines) which are used to make announcements that are newsworthy. Create press releases announcing publication of any new articles or new company information or products. If it is interesting/original enough, a journalist may pick it up and write an article about it. Before you know it, your website address may get published in the NY Times.

Z) Keep your content fresh

Remember to write a new page every 2-3 days. I only mentioned it briefly, but it is probably the most important point in this article. Keep writing! Without fresh content, your site will gradually drop in the search engine results. To stay on top, your content has to be the most up-to-date, freshest, and most interesting and original content in your field.

Follow these 26 simple steps and I assure you that within one year you will call your site a success. You will bring in a massive amount of traffic from within your industry and watch as your business grows!

So start writing, and write yourself to the top!