However, this understanding is rarely transferred when a business decides to ‘go online’. Perhaps the initial setup is so daunting that little thought is spared for anything beyond the layout and content of a website. The internet, however is still a marketplace, and one that is growing exponentially. Those same business skills need to be put to use here too.

If you want to learn from the success of your competitors you first need to think like a search engine. By mimicking popular keywords and phrases you can benefit from traffic that would otherwise be directed to your competitors sites.

Keywords are contained in what are called ‘Meta Tags’. These are tags that are found in the source code at the top of a webpage and include descriptions, titles and key words. Search engines use this information (in addition to content) to rank your page for different search strings. You can access this information by viewing the source of any website, just simply select ‘View’, and ‘Source’ from the toolbar.

If after looking at this code you fear it resembles some alien language, do not despair! There are many programs available that will search competitors’ sites for this information and provide a full report: in plain English. Just look for anything about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it is one of the new hot topics; and you will be swamped with products. The danger is to believe too much of the hype, don’t pay for promises; search engines are not as easily tricked as we are!

Another key ingredient is links. Your page will be ranked favorably if it is viewed by the search engines as being an authority on a given subject. Links work a bit like votes, if someone links to your site they are effectively ‘casting a vote’ of approval. However the weight of this vote is affected by how many other sites they link to, so beware of ‘link farms’ (pages contained entirely of links) because they will not help improve your site’s positioning. The easiest way to obtain links is through online directories – although people may not visit your site directly through these links, it will help with overall search engine positioning.

Returning to the competition; you can discover who is linking to other sites by using an online link popularity checker. This way you can try and get these sites to link to you also. Remember, directed traffic is the best, so aim for links from sites which contain similar content to yours. If you are a business selling stamps, your best links would be from stamp appreciation pages – obvious really.

The internet has been established for a while now. It is no longer an unknown jungle. As a new business entering this arena you can learn from other people’s successes as well as their mistakes!

Your website is now ready. It’s now the time to promote your website and spread awareness about your website and get visitors to come and view your web pages. Tips to get your website get going.

1. Page Title

Write a descriptive title for each page of 5 to 8 words. Remove as many “filler” words from the title, such as “the,” “and,” etc. Mention appropriate keywords relevant to your website content. Remember search engines give this a lot of emphasis.

2. Meta Tags

Meta tags always go in the section of the document. META NAME tags include descriptions and keywords. This HTML code helps some search engines classify and rank a web page. META HTTP-EQUIV tags can indicate to the web browser how to display the page.

Write a descriptive META Tags. Many search engines include this description below your hyperlinked title. This sentence should describe the contents of the body text of the webpage, using the main keywords and key phrases used on this page. If you include keywords that aren’t used on the webpage content you could hurt the prospect of being listed in the search engine.

3. Linking Strategy

Link popularity is basically the number of links that point to your web site. Besides the optimization of your web pages for meta tags and search engine marketing and readiness, link popularity is considered as being a major factor for your ranking in the search engines. A large number of links that point to your web site will therefore improve your ranking significantly. Besides that, well placed links are an excellent source of consistent traffic to your web site.

Some of the important search Engines that consider link popularity as a factor for relevancy are Google, Excite, Lycos, Webcrawler & Altavista.

Linking strategies are an essential type of site promotion. The more links pointing to your site, the more traffic you’ll experience (and the greater perceived “popularity” will rank you higher in the search engines). To get someone to link to your site, you need to ask. The simplest way is to find complementary sites, link to them on a linking page, and ask them to link to you. The key, of course, is for your site to have content that so good that it’s worth linking to. Ask for links on sites that cover your industry, as well as from associations your business belongs to.

What is to be avoided here is link harvesting or just creating link database on your website of sites that have no relevance to your topic. Search engines have a negative rating for this.

4. Search Engine Submission

Now it’s time to submit your website to search engines. It is recommended never use automated tools, your website might end up never being spidered by the search engine. The best way is to manually goto the major search engines listed below and manually submit.

Google.com and Yahoo.com – A definite must. Over 90% of smaller search engines take their fodder from here.

Others to submit are Lycos.com, Altavista.com, Excite.com, Askjeeves.com, Wisenut.com, Toema.com & Overture.com

5. Viral Marketing

Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

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Amongst the best forms of viral marketing are

Affiliate Programs

You signup and earn a commission per sale or referral. So you refer your friends and peers. When your peers signup their friends and peers you get an incentive for them too. What an excellent and automated way of publicity at extremely low costs.

Refer your friends

You just finished reading an article and suddenly remembered your friend for whom the article might be a valuable resource, so you simply email the article to them by using the “Refer-a-friend” link. An excellent and automated way of free publicity.

E-mail signature

Don’t underestimate the power of a innocuous email signature. You never know who and where it reaches. It doesn’t cost you a dime and gives your website free publicity.

6. Ezines

Write articles for others to use in their Newsletters. You can dramatically increase your visibility when you write articles in your area of expertise and distribute them to editors as free content for their e-mail newsletters. Just ask that a link to your website and a one-line description of what you offer be included with the article. This is an effective “viral” approach that can produce hundreds of links to your site over time.

7. URL on Stationery

This is a no-brainer that’s sometimes overlooked. Make sure that all reprints of cards, stationery, brochures, and literature contain your company’s URL.

Beware of these promotion blunders

1. Spam

Spam or unsolicited e-mails don’t generate customers. They generate bad publicity and legal tangles. No website has ever made it big with Spam. Spam is like the scum in the gutter blocking precious Internet bandwidth, which brings absolutely nothing but abuses for their senders.

2. Abuse e-communities

While the former one is mass abuse, this one is direct abuse. Ecommunities are available on the Internet on probably every topic under the sun and e-marketers feel it’s a good place to deliver the promotional message. Right no doubt, but there is a Net etiquette for delivering such a message. Maybe in the form of a signature or participating in that community not sending stupid promotional messages which get nothing but bad publicity for the website.

3. Automated submission

Unless you want your Website to be blacklisted or removed from the database of the search engines don’t ever attempt it. Incidentally, the best and the biggest directory is human edited. Dmoz.org is the name; the same directory used by google.com, aol.com and other search engines. Manual submission to major search engines takes not more than a few hours and is fairly sufficient for meeting your e-business goals.

Unfortunately, hiring an SEO expert can be quite expensive. For those who want to do it themselves, here are the steps.

Bookmark these tools! you WILL need them!

The first step in website optimization is to make sure you have well-formatted HTML. I would encourage you to use the following tool to check this: http://validator.w3.org/ Do your best to get your website as close to conformance as possible.

If you use CSS, then use a CSS validator at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator-uri.html There is rarely an excuse for not having it validate here.

If you follow most of the suggestions for having valid HTML code your web pages will be more digestible for the search engines, as well as being much more cross-browser compliant. You should also do this after any significant edit of the web page – to ensure that it is still compliant.

The second step in website optimization is to work on the Meta tags and the title tag for each page in your site. These are in the header of your web page document and need to be tailored to attract users who type in one of a select group of keywords. If you need a tool to help generate these, use this meta tag generator tool here (http://www.spiderweblogic.com/HTML-Meta-Tag-Generator.aspx) that I built.

The title tag:

The title tag is, of the three, the most important for the major search engines. Don’t make this too long – normally no more than 6 words. But have your most important keywords here. Some SEO specialists advise that even the order of the text here is significant. They suggest that if you place your company name in the title, that it should be placed last so the other keywords are being considered with greater weight.

The meta-keywords tag:

This is now of lesser importance than before, due to abuse by webmasters to achieve high rankings. However, it is still important and is required by many of the smaller search engines. Make sure that you don’t repeat any keyword or keyword phrase more than three times. That would be considered Spam (bad SEO tactics) by the search engines. Remember, your visitors will see the title of the web page. Make it useful to them as well.

The meta-description tag:

This is of higher importance than the keywords tag. Several search engines use it when they show your listing. It needs to encourage your potential visitors to visit your website. Of course, having keywords in here is important. But keep the primary purpose in mind as you write it. Here too, you should make sure that you don’t repeat any keyword or keyword phrase more than three times.

Each page in your website needs its own tailored title, meta-description, and meta-keywords tag. These need to be focused on the keywords you are trying for. (These are the words or phrases you want to be found at when people are doing searches.) These shouldn’t normally be the same on every page. They should be customized to the content that is on that page. You should also keep your visitors in mind as you write them.

The third step is to work on your content – especially on your home page. Ideally you would have between 800 – 1200 words of text. It should have your most important keywords at the top, middle and the bottom of the text. If possible, use an “h1″ tag at the top for your title – and have your most important keyword embedded in it. Also, have some of your keywords in a sentence or phrase that is bolded. Keep it natural for your visitors to read. If it doesn’t look natural, you will loose any visitors you have attracted.

The fourth step in website optimization is to edit your links and your images to make full use of the “title” and “alt” attributes.

Text links can have a “title” attribute. The content is to more fully describe your link. When you put your mouse over the link, the content of the “title” attribute is displayed. I would encourage you to tailor the description so that it contains at least one of your keywords – but keep it accurate – that it really does describe the link. It must make sense to the common user.

Images HTML tags can have an “alt” attribute. It is used to describe an image when you put a mouse over it. It is also used for different devices for seeing impaired. Also, it is used when the user decides not to show images with the web site. They will see this text instead. (It is the “Alternate Text” for the image.) Try to incorporate some keywords here too – but keep with the spirit of being the “alternate text” for the image.

If you are using tables, you may even include a table “summary” attribute. The purpose of this attribute is to assist for those with disabilities to understand the contents and structure of a table. Keep all summary comments within that purpose – and add keywords only where appropriate. Note that these summary attributes may cause your web page validator to spit up an error – but this is newer item that is encouraged.

The fifth step is to have a good menu system or a site map. Search engines follow links to find the different pages in your site. If your navigation is one of those JavaScript drop-down menus or Flash menus, the search engines may not find all of your pages unless you have an alternative non-JavaScript link path that they can follow. If you use the fancy JavaScript links, you should have a hard link to a site map on every page. The site map should have a real non-JavaScript list of links that the search engines can follow to map out your whole site. As a standard policy I tend to avoid the JavaScript links in the menus.

Optional:
If you haven’t chosen a domain name yet, you may strongly consider having your top keyword phrase in the domain name, with the words separated by dashes. This is an excellent idea, but not always feasible. Many companies already have a domain name selected, or prefer to use their company name as the domain name. This is a business decision left up to the customer.

Things not to do:
Don’t create and market mirror sites though to accomplish this trick either. Sites that are identical in content, but have a different domain name are considered SPAM (bad/taboo) by the search engines. They don’t appreciate such tricks, and the ranking of both websites will suffer for it.

Also, don’t get too crazy with stuffing keywords where they don’t belong or by repeating keywords or by having keywords in hidden layers. Search engines don’t like that and will ban your site.

SEO Software to buy:
I have used SEO Studio to do website analysis during my optimization. This has been an invaluable tool for analyzing how saturated my keywords are in a particular web page. It is reasonably priced and I have been very satisfied with the performance. It is easy to see such things as keyword density relevance for the whole web page. It also is helpful in showing where the keywords are not (and can be). Y ou will learn a lot about website optimization just by using this tool!

NOW WHAT?
After all this “Search Engine Optimization” you need to do a human review your website – is it natural/useful/helpful for the human visitor? Remember, getting website traffic is only half the game. This site needs to quickly convert them into paying customers.

Once it is “Optimized”, then you need to let the search engines know that you exist. Only after it is ready should you tell them about it. But this is a subject for another article. Do a search of different article warehouse or SEO news sources. You will find a lot of information on this.

Website optimization news sources:
Since there are new quirks in the website optimization and website promotion that come out all the time – some that apply to all search engines, and some that apply to a particular one, it is wise to keep up to date. I strongly encourage you to join a couple of relevant mailing lists!

I really like the news sources from Entireweb.com. If you submit a site through them, I would encourage you to accept their free newsletters. They have great content. http://www.entireweb.com/submit_site/

Another place to get really great articles on website optimization or promotion is http://www.SiteProNews.com They also allow you to subscribe to their articles. Do this!

If you are serious about keeping up with your website positioning, keep up with the news. You will find these resources invaluable!

Robert Fuess is a veteran website designer who specializes in making dynamic search engine optimized websites.
http://www.SpiderwebLogic.com | http://www.SchoolAndTeacher.com

To gain a better understanding of link popularity it is useful to know why it became so crucial for search engine rankings. In the past a web page’s ranking was determined, amongst other factors, by the number of keyword occurrences within ‘on-page’ elements i.e. in page text, META tags, title tag. When web developers learned that they could trick a search engine to return their web pages by cramming keywords into their pages the search engines had to get a bit smarter. They were using ‘on-page’ elements to determine relevance so it was only natural that they would look to elements out of direct control of the web page creator i.e. ‘off-page’ elements. Search engines made the assumption that the greater the number of links from other sites pointing to a web site, the more popular the web site is and therefore a more quality resource. This worked nicely in theory but in practice it was also to be abused.

Web site owners figured out many ways to get links pointing to their web sites one example of which was through the use of link farms, pages the contained nothing more than a collection of links, Quantity of links was being abused so the search engines made use of the old saying “quality not quantity” and began to assign a quality factor to each of the links pointing to a web site. Now web sites that had a higher number of high quality links were looked upon favourably by the search engines. Building link popularity became a science in itself and today is still the most time-consuming and frustrating activity for a search engine optimizer.

Note: In the following examples SiteA is our web site and SiteB is an outside site (i.e. a web site under a different domain name than SiteA).

Inbound links:

Inbound links to a web site are links that originate from an outside web site . An example would be a link on SiteB pointing into a page on SiteA.

SiteA <---- SiteB

There are two further classifications of links:

Reciprocal links:

An example of a reciprocal link is when SiteA links to SiteB AND SiteB links to SiteA, the link is reciprocated by both parties.

SiteA -----> SiteB

AND

SiteA < ---- SiteB

To achieve a high link popularity the type of links to build are inbound one-way links. This simulates how natural links are created i.e. links that people create to point to your site because they found it worth linking to.

For outbound links it is natural to assume that they might decrease link popularity of a web site but this is not true. You do not give away your link popularity when you link to another site. They do not add to your link popularity though.

Reciprocal links can add to your link popularity if the web site that you exchange links with has a higher link popularity than your site. However they are not as powerful as inbound, one-way links as they are quite artificial in nature i.e. most probably created by communication between the owners of both sites.

How to build link popularity

So it is quite obvious that to help build up a nice link popularity many inbound, one-way links need to be created. This can be achieved in a number of different (and most importantly, legal) ways:

Directories:

Directories are categorized listings of links from around the web. Many, many directories exist and vary in their methods of getting your link posted on them. They provide a great source of quality inbound, one-way links. Getting listed in quality directories such as DMOZ or Yahoo can be more beneficial for your link popularity than a lot of links from smaller, newer directories.

Great site content:

The most powerful way to get inbound, one-way links is to have great site content that other web sites will want to link to. This allows you to get links from sites other than directories, which can definitely be better. The best thing about this is that it requires no communication on your part, it just happens naturally. If your site has poor content then others sites may not link, including the directories. Most of the top ranking web sites today got to the top because of great content. Writing interesting and informative articles for your web site is a good way of getting these kind of links.

Emailing web site owners:

If you come across a listing of links on a web site other than a directory e.g. a links page on a somebody's personal web site, it can do no harm to write the web site owner a polite email requesting a link to your site from their page. They may request a reciprocal link in return but sometimes they do not and you can get a quality inbound, one-way link for your efforts. I have got many links in the past using this method. In my email I always ask them to visit my site first before making a decision to link and I personalise each email with a comment or two about their site.

The best and most effective way of increasing your search engine rankings is working to improve your web site's link popularity. This can be achieved by getting as many inbound, one-way links as you can from quality sites such as directories. Other ways to get these links are having great content on your site and requesting a link to your site from other web sites.

Increasing link popularity is a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating process but is definitely worth the time and effort when you see a dramatic increase in traffic.

About The Author

Frank Kilkelly is a Search Engine Optimization expert based in Ireland.

For a complete list of articles visit http://www.geocities.com/frakilk/seo-articles.html

Alternatively visit the Search Engine Optimization Glossary at http://www.geocities.com/frakilk/search-engine-optimization-glossary.html

Source: http://www.365articles.com

Sure, the content has to be worthwhile; it has to be helpful, informative, and not just a sales spiel. And there’s no denying that a well written article can be very compelling. But if your headline doesn’t cut it, the article won’t stand a chance. The best article in the world will never see the light of day without an effective headline.

Now, more than ever, article submissions need a good headline. But it’s not just the reader you have to worry about. In fact, the reader is secondary! When it comes to reprint article headlines, your main focus should be the publisher.

You may think the requirements of a good headline haven’t changed over the years, but they have. Unlike headlines for traditional newspapers, magazines, etc., which target only the reader, online article submission headlines target first the publisher, then the reader.

So how do you write a headline for an online publisher?

Here’s a few tips…

1) State your domain

No matter what your business, you can be sure that potential publishers of your article are inundated with information every day. Imagine hypothetical ‘Publisher Pete’. He’s the webmaster of a high PR site. He receives hundreds of article submissions every day. Additionally, he farms article submission sites (aka ‘article banks’, ‘article submit sites’, ‘free-reprint sites’) for articles on a regular basis. Because so many of the article submissions he sees are spam or unrelated, Publisher Pete is quick to dismiss anything that isn’t obviously – and immediately – relevant to his website. So make sure your headline signals the general subject area of the article submission, not just the exact topic.

2) State your argument

Every website has an agenda. Whether it’s to sell, persuade, or inform, there’s always an angle. When our friend Publisher Pete looks for free reprint content for his website, he wants something that complements his agenda. If he’s selling chemical garden fertilizers, he doesn’t want an article about the evils of chemical fertilizer. Nor does he want an article espousing the virtues of organic fertilizer. He wants an article promoting the value of chemical garden fertilizer. If that’s what your article is about, make sure the headline lets him know.

3) Don’t make empty promises

Sensationalized headlines may work in traditional media, but they’re not so effective in online article submissions. Few things frustrate an online publisher more than being lured in by a promising headline which turns out to be nothing more than hot air. For publishers who take the time to carefully filter content before publishing, empty headlines are nothing more than time-wasters. For publishers who are a little less meticulous, empty headlines result in a site which is characterized by disjointed, contradictory, low-quality content. Either way, the publisher isn’t impressed, so make sure the headline of your article is relevant to (and validated by) the body of your article.

4) Put yourself in the publisher’s shoes

Always think about ways to make the publisher’s job easier. It’s as simple as that. Brainstorm 5, 10, 20 headlines, then put yourself in the publisher’s position and ask which one you’d choose. That’s the best headline for your article submission.

5) Think about your publisher’s readers

Publishers want articles that readers will open. But remember, your publisher’s website may cater to an entirely different type of reader to your website. Whenever you find yourself thinking about your secondary audience (the reader), make sure you’re thinking about the publisher’s readers – not your own. That settled, you can go on to focus on regular audience-headline considerations such as making the headline attention-getting, targeted, and benefit driven.

Conclusion

With the emergence of article submission as a great way to generate a high search engine ranking, and the associated proliferation of article submission spam, the right headline is more important than ever. The important thing to remember is that you’re faced with a gatekeeper, and you need to address their needs first.

By following all the publisher-focused tips above, you’ll not only see your article published many more times, you’ll also see it published on more relevant websites. This will help both your ranking (because links from relevant sites are always the best) and your click-thru traffic (because the audience will be more relevant).

Happy headlining!
* Glenn Murray is an SEO copywriter, advertising copywriter, and Article Submission Specialist. He is a director of article submission alternative, PublishHub, and also of copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit http://www.divinewrite.com or http://www.publishhub.com for further details, more FREE articles, or to purchase his e-book, SEO Secrets.

Source: http://www.365articles.com