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Introduction to SEO

Over the last few years, search engine optimization (SEO) has been needed and used more and more, although it has been around for much longer than most people think. With new development tools being used to create websites that are heavy on Java, Flash and images, it's important to have something that the search engines can read. If the content can't be read by search engines then they can't index it, and if your site doesn't get indexed then it won't be found when people search for it on Google, Yahoo, MSN, or anywhere else. This article will outline what SEO is, how it works, and some unethical SEO methods that you should avoid.

What is SEO?

SEO is a way of analyzing your site and modifying it to allow search engines to read and index it more easily. SEO is all about maintaining and building websites that get ranked highly on the major search engines.

You see, when people use a search engine, they generally don't look beyond the top 20 or so results. If you want to make any money from your website, you need to get ranked in the top 20 out of potentially hundreds of websites.

How Does SEO Work?

Search engines maintain a huge database containing information from individual websites. Most of the information search engines collect isn't listed on their results pages, but it is taken into consideration when it comes to deciding those results' rankings.

It is very important that you encourage the search engines to rank your website in a high position, and you can do this through the keywords that you use on your website, as well as when you submit it. If the keywords you use in your submission tool don't match the ones on your site then you could harm your rankings , be sure to have all the keywords you want to use on the website itself before you submit it.

Most websites don't focus on their topic well, and so keyword lists containing 50 or more phrases per page are recommended. By focusing some of the pages of your site on keywords, you will score higher with the search engines.

Free Search Engines.

The major search engines on the Internet are still free, and it's not hard to take advantage of this free advertising , you can do it in as little as an hour.

There are several companies that provide free SEO tools, or you can pay a professional to take care of it for you. Looking around on the web will turn up all sorts of useful resources.

Here are a list of articles for you to read through :

Search Engine Optimization Glossary
Algorithm. A set of rules that a search engine uses to rank the pages contained within its index in response to a particular query. No search engine reveals exactly how its algorithm works, to protect itself both from competitors and from those who wish to spam the search engine.

SEO Tips for Google
Google is still the most popular search engine out there, and they're not showing any signs of slowing down. It's important to know how to get on the right track with your SEO for Google. It is also important, however, to remember that Google is not the only search engine out there and that Yahoo! is also a highly rated search engine which actually has more pop culture usage.

The Dangers of Link Farms
So you want to get ahead of the competition on the search engines, and you decide to use a link farm. Stop! There's danger in link farms as with all SEO methods that seem to good to be true.

SEO Tips for MSN
MSN may be the most complete search engine out there. It seems to me that every web site that I look at in order to find the number of pages that it has listed has the following fallout: MSN has the most results, Google comes in second, Yahoo! comes last. Other search engines will generally fall somewhere between Google and Yahoo! This is a result of some very extensive work by the team and MSN. The beautiful thing about MSN is that you can find results for just about everything. If you can't find it at Google, can't find it at Yahoo! head on over to MSN and you'll find something even if it is nothing more than a forum posting.

SEO Tips for Overture
Although Overture (now owned by Yahoo) can be used by itself, it's often better to use it together with another PPC engine, to get the best chance of being seen. Overture is the largest of the PPC engines so it is a great place to start if you're going to try making money by spending money, but make sure that you don't try to provide your visitor with too much too quickly. It is very easy to over diversify your online advertisement portfolio and, in effect, pull yourself out of the game with a strained wallet.

A Guide to SEO Resources and Discussion Groups
Finding the right SEO tools and resources can be challenging but we're here to make it a little easier on you. SEO forums and newsgroups can be very confusing to a person with no SEO experience. These forums and newsgroups are just so heavily populated that they can intimidate many new users.

Advanced Link Checks
View the source of each and every page: is there JavaScript and CSS on the page? Remember that spiders may not index pages that have more than 10k or so of JavaScript or CSS embedded in them. Spiders don't enjoy getting tangled up in JavaScript. So as a general rule you should avoid putting out prompts and alerts using JavaScript every time that a page loads. Because of this rule, it is also wise to avoid link partners who do so on the pages that they link to you from. If anything looks fishy, it probably is.

Do-It-Yourself SEO
Does the whole idea of Internet marketing intimidate you? Are you thinking of hiring a professional? Well, we've got great news for you. It's really not difficult to do search engine optimization (SEO) yourself , you can save hundreds of dollars, and get the same results as the professionals do. You will probably get better results from highly qualified professionals, but you should definitely perform these do-it-yourself actions first. Once you've done some of this kind of work it will be easier to determine if a professional is worth his/her salt.

Domain and Page Naming Tricks for Better SEO Results
The importance of domain and page naming is obvious, but you might not have realized the connection to SEO. We all know that unless our domain name is highly recognizable and memorable then we won't get many customers, but good domain names also matter when it comes to search engine rankings , the more relevant your domain is to your keywords, the higher it will be ranked.

Help! My Keywords are Too Common
What can you do if your keywords are too common? Is there anything that can help?

How Alexa Rankings Affect Your Traffic
Alexa is a very powerful tool, used to rank website traffic. The relationship between how Alexa rates your website and how popular your website is, however, isn't as obvious as it might seem. You need to consider your website's ranking, links, traffic, and many other factors. Many of these factors are hidden and known only to the most experienced Alexa users.

How Google Page Rank Works
A Page Rank' is a number Google gives to a web page that represents how important Google thinks the page is on the web. When one page links to another, Google considers it to be effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes' there are for a page across the whole web, the more important that page must be. But that's quite an assumption, isn't it?

How Keywords Affect Your Rankings.
We all want to know how keywords affect our rankings, but to find out we'll need to do a little work. Many say keywords are the key to good search engine rankings, although they aren't at all the only factor.

How Search Engine Spiders Work
There are hundreds of search engines available today, but some are far more complex than others. This article will give you an overview of how some of the most popular ones work.

How Search Engines Work
Many people wonder how search engines really work. Although the details are complex, this article aims to give you some insight into the process without getting too technical. Read on...

How to Analyze a Competitor's Website
When you analyze a competitors website, you need to make sure you're prepared to do the job correctly. Competitors' websites, if analyzed properly, can give you all sorts of information that you can use to increase the traffic and the popularity of your site. You can use these sites to analyze your own market. If a site gets a lot of hits it has to be doing something right. Check out where it is ranked, what key words it uses, how it is formatted, and what you can do to exemplify the good and filter out the bad. Also be sure to keep copyright laws in mind as a copyright infringement suit is never good for you, your site, or your blood pressure.

How to Become an SEO Ninja
Every website listed in the search engines has a position, or ranking', and each one of these rankings can change very quickly, in some cases as often as weekly or even daily. One day your website's in a good position, then the next you're wondering what happened to it. Staying on top of this situation is a must for any SEO professional , you need to become a search engine ninja. If that's what you want to do, then you need to keep these things in mind at all times:

How to Build a Google Sitemap
Google has implemented a cutting edge method of crawling web site for its search engine index. This unprecedented method of indexing web pages is known as Google Sitemaps, and it is quickly growing in popularity among webmasters and SEO agents and managers due to its ability to get entire web site indexed quickly and to pick up errors in the links coming into and out of these web site.

How to Check Your Site's Ranking
First, go to the search engine where you want to check your site's ranking, and enter the keywords you want to check. Your result pages will come up, and you will need to look through them until you find your website. SEO experts recommend that if you aren't listed in at least the top 20 then you should continue to optimize, as most people won't look any further than that. This is simply common sense. When you are determining if your rank is high enough simply think to yourself, Would I look for this long for this page?

How to Choose an SEO Provider
As the demand for search engine marketing continues to grow, so does the demand for experts in the area. In recent months, mass emails seem to be the new promise' of top search engine rankings. How do you choose an SEO provider that will understand the needs of your website and provide quality service?

How to Choose the Right Keywords
Many SEO experts will tell you that they have specific ways of choosing the right keywords for a website. Some do it using SEO tools , software that compares possible keywords to see which are used the most. Some will give you DIY methods with spreadsheets. We say, however, that you should try every method you can in the search for keywords. Here are some steps that might help:

How to Evaluate Your Own Site's SEO Profile
Before you can evaluate your site's SEO profile, you need to understand what an SEO profile is and how it works. An SEO profile for a website is just like a marketing plan or a business plan , basically, it's a strategy document, putting your decisions into words. This is best performed on a computer program such as Microsoft Word as these programs do provide the best bang for your buck. All else aside, Microsoft does put out some excellent business oriented software so take advantage of it!

How to Recover from a Ranking Tumble
As the search engines continue to improve, your SEO needs to as well. A ranking tumble for your website can be devastating. You need to recover as soon as possible , it's not the easiest task in the world, but it's not as hard as you'd think. The most important thing to keep in mind is that you cannot panic. You have to keep working on your SEO projects and you need to remember that listings and rankings come and go spiratically at times but that search engines won't let you down if your site is useful.

How to Tap Into the Power of HTML Elements
In order to tap into the power of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) elements, you first need to know what they are. In HTML, elements are bits of markup that tell a web browser to display or format parts of web pages.

How to Track Keyword Response Rates
In today's market, it's crucial for every marketer to track keyword response rates. It's simply the only way of tracking advertising results and knowing which of your keywords are working for you.

Increase Traffic with AdWords
Adwords is the component of Googles advertising programs that allows web masters or SEO professionals to advertise web sites via links from other web sites. Adwords is used in conjunction with adsense in such a way that your links are placed only on the most relevant web pages. You are given a good deal of traffic at a very reasonable price and the conversion rate from adwords is higher than that of any other pay per click advertising system on the web.

Long Term SEO Maintenance Tips
Long-term SEO maintenance requires dedication to your website. There are people who think that they can throw up a web page and that people will find them, and good luck too them , but it won't happen. Any website that wants to make money needs to get optimized, and stay that way. Running and SEO campaign once or twice isn't enough in this market: you need to consider long-term maintenance of your SEO.

Major SEO Success Stories.
There are many ways to get great rankings in the search engines, and many people think they're a secret , but that's just not true. Once, top 10 spots were very easy to obtain, but getting multiple top spots is now a thing of the past. Some people say that top 10 spots are very hard to get these days, but we have managed it on many occasions recently. Here are some of our success stories.

Optimizing for AdSense Performance
Adsense and Adwords are two terms that are often used interchangeable. Unfortunately, they are not the same and should be kept separate at all times. Adsense and Adwords are actually the two separate components that Google uses to place relevant ads on web sites across the internet.

Search Engine Optimization Myths
For as long as SEO has been in existence, there have been all sorts of myths about it, and the situation isn't helped by the number of so-called experts' spreading them. Here's a list of the biggest SEO myths:

SEO or PPC: Which One is Right for You?
There are two major search engine marketing strategies in use today: SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay-per-click). These two methods are very different, and deciding which one is right for you can be hard. Which one do you think will do more for your website? Well, that all depends on what your website's like.

SEO Scams and How to Avoid Them
Uneducated customers usually expect unrealistic results when it comes to SEO. This is mostly caused by some so-called optimizers who promise things that just aren't possible. When it comes to SEO, you should always do your research before you hand over any money. This applies to every aspect of your business as do most SEO related techniques. It is always important to keep in mind that your SEO work is no more or less than another business expense. You should never fork over money until you have done your research and ensured that you will be provided with a quality product.

5 SEO Tasks You Should Do Every Day
There are five simple tasks that you need to do daily to keep your site on top. Here they are:

SEO Tips for DMOZ ( Open Directory )
DMOZ is the directory where Google starts when it crawls the web, so getting listed in DMOZ is good for you. SEO with DMOZ starts with selecting the search terms you're targeting, and then finding a directory category that includes them. This can be a time-consuming and difficult task. You'll often find lots of matching categories. The trick is to find the most precise category and, if possible, a directory that does not have too many other competitors in it. You can hit a niche market simply by being placed in a category that has few competitors. DMOZ, of course, makes the final decision as to where your website will be located.

SEO Tips for Dynamic Websites
Is your website is dynamic? You need to be careful, or you might not do well in the search engines. Some spider handle dynamic URLs quite well, but others have trouble , and even those that do spider them might not look very deep within your site. The problem lies in the fact that you cannot really predict what will be delivered in these URLs at all times. If you have an inkling of what is going to happen to URLs most often plan ahead; try to insure that you do not run into problems regarding these URLs.

SEO Tips for Google.
Google is still the most popular search engine out there, and they're not showing any signs of slowing down. It's important to know how to get on the right track with your SEO for Google. It is also important, however, to remember that Google is not the only search engine out there and that Yahoo! is also a highly rated search engine which actually has more pop culture usage.

SEO Tips for MSN.
MSN may be the most complete search engine out there. It seems to me that every web site that I look at in order to find the number of pages that it has listed has the following fallout: MSN has the most results, Google comes in second, Yahoo! comes last. Other search engines will generally fall somewhere between Google and Yahoo! This is a result of some very extensive work by the team and MSN. The beautiful thing about MSN is that you can find results for just about everything. If you can't find it at Google, can't find it at Yahoo! head on over to MSN and you'll find something even if it is nothing more than a forum posting.

SEO Tips for Overture.
Although Overture (now owned by Yahoo) can be used by itself, it's often better to use it together with another PPC engine, to get the best chance of being seen. Overture is the largest of the PPC engines so it is a great place to start if you're going to try making money by spending money, but make sure that you don't try to provide your visitor with too much too quickly. It is very easy to over diversify your online advertisement portfolio and, in effect, pull yourself out of the game with a strained wallet.

SEO Tips for Yahoo
With the improvements that have taken place at Yahoo over the last few months, the site is starting to become important again. Many say that their new search tool provides more relevant search results than Google does now , great for Yahoo, since they were the top dog before Google came along.

SEO Tools of the Trade
Before you start optimizing your site for search engines, there are some tools that you should arm yourself with. These tools can become your best friends when it comes to SEO, especially when you're just starting out. The first and most important step in any search engine position campaign is recognizing which keywords you should optimize your site for, and there are several pieces of software that are useful for this, including Wordtracker, Optilink, Zeus, and Agent Web Ranking.

The Basic SEO Rules for All Websites
Search engine optimization isn't rocket science, but it can feel complicated at times. There's no need to worry about the jargon when you're just starting out, though, and part of the point of SEO is to make everything simpler and cleaner, the way search engines like it.

The Dangers of Link Farms.
So you want to get ahead of the competition on the search engines, and you decide to use a link farm. Stop! There's danger in link farms as with all SEO methods that seem to good to be true.

The Good and Bad News About Reciprocal link Exchanges
Reciprocal linking is a topic that generates a lot of discussion: everyone wants to know how to get it to work for them. Much of this discussion involves link trading, or linking together their own websites, and whether it's going to get you in trouble or not. They invariably fear that they will run into problems with search engines who may consider it cheating. Many of them have heard horror stories about Linking Farms which often get banned from Google along with every page associated with them. This fear is justified by the obvious disasters that link farms can ensue upon a web site. There are very few webmasters who are willing to take the risk and rightfully so.

The Meta Tag Myths
#1. Add every meta tag that you can. #2 Have lots of keywords.

The Right Way to Submit Your Site
Are you going to submit your site to the search engines the right way or the wrong way? To do it right, you need to know what you're doing, and your site needs to be optimized before you take it anywhere near a search engine.

The Value of Good Link Partners
As you already know, good link partners are vital to the growth of your website. Without good link partners you won't be ranked highly in the search engines, and you won't receive the traffic you need to gain new customers and make new sales. Building high-quality links to your website helps it to succeed.

The Value of Niche Markets
If you are attempting to start a business online or if you are simply trying to increase your traffic and revenue, focusing on a niche market can give you the edge that you need in order to reach the high goals that you have most assuredly set for yourself. There are so many different niches in the overall market that any web site on any topic can find a niche and fill it. When you specialize, you are more likely to succeed.

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 have to your site the more traffic you will get, but also, the more links to your site the more search engines like your site. Keeping a nice supply of links pointing at your site requires similar precautions and practices as getting high search engine listings.

Understanding Stop Words, and How to Avoid Them
To understand how to avoid stop words, you first have to understand what stop words are. Search engines have words or phrases that are considered stop words'. When a spider or crawler encounters one of these stop words, they will immediately leave your website and any information they gathered from it will not be saved in their database. This means that your website will not be indexed. If your website is already indexed in a searched engine, the crawler will come back to see if there are updates -- and if it finds stop words when it does this, then your site could get banned from the search engine. You will not be allowed to remove the words and re-submit: it's too late.

Understanding the Google Dance
What's the Google dance? Well, it's really just a fun phrase for when Google updates its index. This occurs regularly, once a month, and can cause a lot of movement in rankings, meaning that it's come to be feared by many in the SEO industry and anticipated by others. The update isn't just one sudden switch, though, as each index update takes several days to complete. During this update the searches seem to dance' between the old index and new index , that's the Google dance.

Using RSS to Increase Your PageRank
There are millions of dollars and multiple hours spent every day trying to increase website traffic, by both ethical and unethical means. There is so much demand for traffic solutions that people will go to any lengths to get ranked higher in the search engines. But did you know that you could increase your traffic by about 20% right now, with virtually no effort?

Warning! You Can't Fool Google
Almost daily, I see a report about a company or individuals who is trying to fool Google through SEO. When are they going to learn that you just can't fool Google? Why would you even want to try it, with when you risk being banned from the biggest search engine in the world? Many people seem to try just because they wonder if it could ever be done. As a general rule of thumb: it can't!

Why Content is King
You have heard it time and time again: Content is King'. Yet still people ignore the truth of this common-sense phrase. People use the web to find information , it's the content of a page that is important to them, because that's why they're there.