There are a number of steps I always follow when optimizing a site for SEO (note these are just the high points, there are others that I don’t mention here, but these WILL take you a long way):

1) On a new site, I will include the keywords in a non hyphenated domain name (if you can get a .edu or .gov TLD do so, otherwise a cheap .info will work just fine)

2) If possible, I will rename the URL to each important page to include the main keyword for that page.

3) Set up Google Analytics for the site and ensure the tracking script is added to every page.

4) Go through the “money” pages and make sure that the title, descriptions and keywords meta tags are unique and optimized for the keywords on the page. In a competitive niche (over 1 million result pages in Google), I would limit the keywords to one main phrase, a couple of local modifiers and one or two more closely related terms per page.

5) Re-visit the non-money pages (i.e. pages that are irrelevant from an SEO perspective) and ensure the title and meta description tags are not duplicates of any of the money page tags. Google Webmaster tools will identify this for you once your site has been registered and crawled.

6) I nofollow any links to overhead pages from all of the pages on the site with the exception of the home page. I leave the home page links as follow links, since I want the SEs to index all pages on the site and having privacy, contact, disclaimer, etc overhead pages add to Google’s view of the “trust” for the site. On all other pages I want only the link to the home page to be a follow link, so I can build up the page rank of the home page. I handle this in Dreamweaver by using two different site templates, one for the home page and one for the rest of the pages on the site. If your main keyword page is something other than the home page, modify your approach accordingly.

7) I then optimize each page’s content for it’s main keywords, modifiers and related terms. It’s important that each word or phrase used in the keyword META is found on the page to avoid keyword spam penalties.

At this point the on page optimization is complete enough to start with link building. As you may already know, building links is tough. I use articles, blog posts, submit forms on relevant sites, reciprocal links, etc. There are ways to make this process less time consuming, without going black or even grey hat. Contact me at Mississauga Search Engine Marketing if interested.

Reciprocal linking has been so abused by webmasters and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts (term used loosely when it comes to reciprocal linking) that the larger search engines have begun the process of disregarding reciprocal links as irrelevant.
Does that mean you will be penalized for having some? No, you won't be penalized (unless they lead to 'bad neighborhoods') but you will also not gain anything from having them either.
What has brought this downfall of reciprocal linking? Automation and spam sites but mostly automation. Automation allowed for membership sites to be created where trading can happen at the click of a button and your site is updated automatically with the new link page including the new link. Automation also allowed for finding link partners to send generic emails to in the hopes that they would take the bait and link back to you in return for your link to them.
Now, I like automation when done in a responsible and sensible way. But much of the reciprocal linking automation was about getting as many links as possible as fast as possible. Obviously, unless you are YouTube or MySpace, this is very unnatural and has been easy for the search engines to include in their algorithms.
Many webmasters threw all senses out the window in their quest for reciprocal links. They would go after anyone and everyone rather than finding related and quality partners to share links. Some even would say that they did it for the traffic, except that most of the sites that they traded links with didn’t have any traffic and they were trading links to get higher search engine placement to get more traffic.
Another fatal flaw of reciprocal linking is the unscrupulous webmaster who buries your link on a page that will never be visited by a human visitor and probably not a search engine bot either. Most webmasters were not taking the time to actually see if the page their link was placed on could be found by the visitors to the parent site and therefore didn’t get any search engine benefit or any natural traffic benefit. However, because you were a honest webmaster the link from your site did pass page rank and visitors to the other site and therefore the unscrupulous benefited greatly from laziness.
Now, most recently, there have been the 3-way reciprocal linking requests. This is still a reciprocal request and is still very easy for a search engine to identify. In fact, you would need to have hundreds if not thousands of web sites that you were rotating your 3rd site links through for 3-way linking to be difficult to detect. When webmasters explain it they make it sound like it is better than regular reciprocal linking but the reality is that it is more spammy than reciprocal linking because you are intentionally doing it to achieve better search engine placements.
So, my recommendation is to stay away from all reciprocal linking (at least in the traditional sense).
Well, what’s left you may ask? The answer really goes back to more traditional marketing methods for creating traffic to a campaign. In the web world, our campaign is usually to gain more traffic and if we get higher search engine placement to get that traffic then it is a bonus.
All of the following, create long lasting 1-way backlinks that may come from highly respected authority sites and therefore carry more value in the search engine algorithms.
To start with, there is the tried and true method of submitting your site to ‘hand-edited’ web directories. Although not all of them are hand-edited a vast majority are. Which also means that the free web directories have a back log that may be a couple of days to a couple of months. Even still, it is worth submitting to as many directories as you can. Don’t expect much traffic from this method but that’s ok because we are really looking for the 1-way backlink.
Next, would be article submissions/marketing. Write individual articles or create a series of articles and submit them to the major article repositories. Article marketing doesn't usually have an immediate effect on traffic but will build links over time as a well written article will be republished on many sites, blogs, and newsletters.
I usually recommend directory submissions and article marketing take place first because they take the longest to actually gain momentum. But once they do it can be an incredible experience.
Next come the more time consuming but more immediate techniques. They are signature usage, site development, social bookmarking and context linking.
Signature usage is really simple. It is the task of commenting on blogs or forums that are related to your sites general topic. The benefit is a self-placed backlink to your own site. These links can usually even be to pages on the interior of your web site not just the home page. One of the best techniques to generate traffic from your signature is to offer link followers a discount or unique benefit just for following that link.
Site development is simply the process of making your site attractive and friendly to visitors. Sometimes this is called Visitor Experience Optimization (VEO). VEO becomes more and more important as your site gains more and more visitors. Your goal is to have a site that keeps a visitor there as long as possible. It will also increase the likely hood that anonymous webmasters will place links on their site to your site without a request from you - a 1-way link.
Social bookmarking is one of those things that webmasters may do that will make them feel funny and seem like they aren’t doing the right thing. It’s really OK as long as it is done without complete automation and without the intent to spam the bookmarking sites. What you are really trying to do is submit a vote for your own sites’ pages (don’t submit every single page of your site) into the bookmarking sites. Hopefully someone else will see your submission and agree with your vote and so on and so on. This technique will not work with every web site but it is worth at least submitting your pages to a group of bookmarking sites with some hope…
Finally, for those reciprocal request that you will undoubtedly continue to receive, contextual linking is what you want. Even if it is a reciprocal link between sites, if it is embedded within the normal context of the other webmasters web site it will be more trusted than a standard reciprocal link. Basically it will appear more natural to the user and to the search engine bots. Obviously for it to make sense, any reciprocal linking should only be done between sites that are related in some way and please don’t make every incoming link appear the same. Change the text of the link and the context of the paragraph or page the link comes from so that it once again appears natural.
Of course, even if you do all of these things perfectly, there is no guarantee that you will be on the first page of any search engine result pages. But you will at least have a chance and will outrank a vast majority of the competition sites in the coming years. For professional link building visit our favourite link building company!

When you hear the term “internet marketing“, what do you think of?

For many, that term conjures thoughts of websites or spamming or search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. For others, it’s all about graphical design, writing fancy code or even affiliate programs. All of those answers correct, but the essence of internet marketing is much simpler.

At its core, internet marketing is about these things:

* Understanding the target market to which the product/service/cause you’re marketing will appeal
* Determining exactly how your target market interacts with the internet
* Positioning your content on the internet to attract the attention of your target market
* Collecting information about your target market (also known as “leads”) for follow-up and conversion into sales
* Design of offers or incentives to induce the desired actions from your leads

Since there is insufficient space in this article to give all of these topics adequate attention, let’s focus on just one specific topic with the realm of internet marketing: Email Marketing.

My best payoff has always come by focusing on permission-based email marketing. Permission-based email marketing refers to the practice of collecting information (including email addresses) from website visitors and communicating with them via e-mail with their direct consent. The “permission” aspect of permission-based email marketing is what separates legitimate email marketers from the spammers that everyone despises.

My love of email marketing is strong for one reason: It works very well. Email marketing has been much like a never-ending goldmine: It enables us to produce income on demand simply by sending a good offer to our list. When you have thousands of loyal subscribers - as we do - and you put a strong and compatible offer in front of them, income becomes nearly automatic.

However, the key to successful email marketing is the development of a legitimate trust relationship with your subscribers. If you opt to send your subscribers a request for purchases every single day, they will likely tire of your badgering and cease reading your emails altogether.

Alternatively, if you take the time to provide good content to your readers on a regular and frequent basis, you’ll discover that your readers take all of your emails far more seriously, and as a result your emails will be opened, read and acted upon with greater frequency. Essentially, email marketing is really an exercise in trust.

Even though there are more sides to internet marketing than just email marketing (permission based), email has been the foundation that our business sits on.

When you hear the term “internet marketing“, what do you think of?

For many, that term conjures thoughts of websites or spamming or search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. For others, it’s all about graphical design, writing fancy code or even affiliate programs. All of those answers correct, but the essence of internet marketing is much simpler.

At its core, internet marketing is about these things:

* Understanding the target market to which the product/service/cause you’re marketing will appeal
* Determining exactly how your target market interacts with the internet
* Positioning your content on the internet to attract the attention of your target market
* Collecting information about your target market (also known as “leads”) for follow-up and conversion into sales
* Design of offers or incentives to induce the desired actions from your leads

Since there is insufficient space in this article to give all of these topics adequate attention, let’s focus on just one specific topic with the realm of internet marketing: Email Marketing.

My best payoff has always come by focusing on permission-based email marketing. Permission-based email marketing refers to the practice of collecting information (including email addresses) from website visitors and communicating with them via e-mail with their direct consent. The “permission” aspect of permission-based email marketing is what separates legitimate email marketers from the spammers that everyone despises.

My love of email marketing is strong for one reason: It works very well. Email marketing has been much like a never-ending goldmine: It enables us to produce income on demand simply by sending a good offer to our list. When you have thousands of loyal subscribers - as we do - and you put a strong and compatible offer in front of them, income becomes nearly automatic.

However, the key to successful email marketing is the development of a legitimate trust relationship with your subscribers. If you opt to send your subscribers a request for purchases every single day, they will likely tire of your badgering and cease reading your emails altogether.

Alternatively, if you take the time to provide good content to your readers on a regular and frequent basis, you’ll discover that your readers take all of your emails far more seriously, and as a result your emails will be opened, read and acted upon with greater frequency. Essentially, email marketing is really an exercise in trust.

Even though there are more sides to internet marketing than just email marketing (permission based), email has been the foundation that our business sits on.

SEO is one of the commonest forms of web design that’s used today. Businesses use SEO’s to draw in visitors to their sites. All SEO’s are certain keywords that you use when creating your internet site that web crawlers fasten to. These web crawlers in turn bring your website up in search engines. Creating SEO success takes some steps, which are described in Commission Blueprint 2.0.  

1: Key Word Rich 
-Ensure your article is related keyphrase rich. Confirm this carries thru your whole site. The more keyword heavy your internet site is the more places the web crawlers can stick to. These web crawlers ( bots ) determine where in the ranks of the search engines your internet site will be found. You must be certain that you don’t go too far though.  

Two: The title 
-Ensure your title is clear to realise also keyword heavy. The title is one of the most important facets of creating your SEO site. Your title is the very first thing any visitor to your site will see. Without a proper title the rest you do from this point on is pointless. When you’re creating your title, consider adding your top keywords. The ones that stand out the most to you’ll stand out to the visitor.  

3: The content 
-Ensure the content of your website is important to your business. If you’re creating a domain we could say about cutting hair at home, you have to be sure that you add haircutting tips in your internet site. If you fail to do this you may turn away your customer. The more applicable content you have on your internet site the bigger chance your customer won’t reject your website. Use web templates from Commission Blueprint 2.0.  

Four: Long Tail keywords 
-Long Tail keywords are usually 3-4 words in length. Also they are the most searched words by most web searchers. The more creative your long tail keywords the more chance of your website being ranked higher in the search engine.  

5: Links 
-Make sure your links are of high quality. This will help produce the most visitors to your internet site.  

Six: Straightforward to navigate 
-If your website is tough to navigate the visitor will not stay. The more user friendly you make your internet site the better off you’ll be. Create sections in your internet site these sections can then be implemented into new pages which makes it easier the visitor to browse your internet site.  

7: Education 
-SEO’s are changing each day. Things are being added and others are being removed. Continuing your education in SEO will give you the updated info you will need to make the required changes to your website. The importance of continued education on SEO can’t be stressed enough. The more that you learn and implement the more visitors you’ll have.

Further reading: Review of Commission Blueprint

Google is by far the most important search engine on the net. To rise to the top of their search engine, you need to improve your link popularity and you need to understand how they measure your link popularity (over 50% of all search engine traffíc comes from Google, and if you can rise to the top, you will likely rise to the top of all the other search engines as well). Link popularity is defined as the number of sites that are linking to your site. Some websites have thousands or even millíons of sites linking to them, while others might have only a few. The search engines use the number of inbound links your site has as a measure of how important your site is, which translates into your search engine ranking.

The actual number of links to your site is not the only variable used to calculate your link popularity. The search engines optimization also examine the relevance of the links to the subject matter of your site. For example, if a website that sells vitamins has 4,000 inbound links, but the source of most of the links are websites that have nothing to do with vitamins, then the algorithm that search engines use to determine link popularity will take that into account, and the link popularity score will not be very good.

It is possible for a website with a relatively small number of quality inbound links to be ranked higher than a site with a bunch of irrelevant or insignificant links. If I have a website that offers quotes for auto insurance, and I have 800 quality inbound links, then I might receive a much higher search engine ranking than another mortgage site that has 3,000 links that stem from link farms or Frëe For All (FFA) pages.

If you try to acquire inbound links by using link farms or FFA pages, not only will it hurt your search engine ranking, but you might get permanently removed from the search engine listings. Link farms are sites where you can instantly exchange links with all the sites listed in that directory. Some of the most pointless link directories are FFA pages. The search engines usually discount any links that come from either of these sources. Now that we understand what link popularity is and how it works, we need to look specifically at how Google measures it. They use a number of variables in their algorithm to calculate your overall link score. The higher your score, the higher you will be ranked in the search listings.

One factor that Google uses in their algorithm, obviously, is the total number of sites linking to you. The more links you have, the higher your score will be. However, their algorithm is a little more complicated than that, and it is possible for a website with fewer links to be ranked higher than a website that has more links.

The reason for this is because Google also measures the quality of your links. If your website is about vitamins, and the site linking to you is a video game site, then that is not considered a quality link. Links from a website with the same subject matter as yours help your score the most.

Also, Google gives a higher score to a link if it comes from a page that has actual content that relates to your keywords. For example, if your site is about jewelry, and another jewelry website has posted a link to your site on their links page, that link is not as valuable as a link to your site coming from a blog or a message board where a lot of information about jewelry is being written or discussed.

Also, they give an even higher score to a link if it contains anchor text that matches one of the keywords that describes your site. When my site sells lawnmowers, a link to my site from a blog about lawnmowers helps me most if it is connected to the word LAWNMOWERS. To learn more about anchor text, go to a search engine and look up ANCHOR TEXT and you will be able to learn about it.

Google uses a variety of factors to score your link popularity. One of those is the diversity of keywords contained on sites linking to you. For example, if you have a site that sells handbags, and all the links to your site are from other sites that contain nothing but the keyword HANDBAGS, Google considers that to be abnormal. To get a higher score, you need to have links coming from sites that contain a variety of keywords related to handbags, such as BUY HANDBAGS, LEATHER HANDBAGS, etc.

It is difficult to íncrease your link popularity, but now that you understand how your score is calculated, you can devise a plan to improve your score. You might want to consider posting to forums and blogs that contain information that is related to your site, and when you post, include a link to your site.

SEO software does what exactly? SEO software frequently starts from the following assumption: - look at the page that ranks number 1 in Google, - do exactly the same + a bit better, - and you will be number 1 SEO software will then examine “all” the SEO parameters that it finds out about the number 1 site in Google. Then this SE software will automate the process in mimicking this for your site. SEO is more than a software-approach! SEO is the art of ranking number 1 in any search engine for any keyword. Spiders rank a web site number one because spiders “think” that this site deserves to be number one. Of course the spider cannot think: there needs to be a programmer who programs the spider to find out which site is best. Now if you are smart enough to feed the spider exactly what the programmer thinks is important, you will have the knowledge to rank number 1. This is exactly what SEO software does: it claims to know and tackle “all” the parameters that make a web site ranking number 1. Pitfalls of a software-approach to SEO Suppose you find all the parameters needed to rank a web site number 1. You manage to get all this parameters onto your site and you even manage to be rank number 1. Now if your site is really deserving to be ranked number 1, all is fine. But if surfers start complaining that you are not, the search engine will be blamed! It won’t take long until Google finds out that “somebody broke the code” of the spiders. The spiders will be updated to give quality results to the visitors! This means you need to get an upgrade of your SEO software approach… : you are running after the facts in stead of above the facts. How to be ranked number 1? You rank number 1 because you deserve it. In spider logic this still means: - your page talks about the keyword you are optimizing for - you page has lots of incoming links about the keyword you are optimizing for. This is what ranking number 1 should be about. But my SEO software is really up to date, or is it not? Your software can only be up to date AFTER the spiders’ software is updated. Unless you write the spiders yourself, you will always be a bit later. You cannot be acquainted with all the parameters the spider takes into account, unless again you are writing the spider software yourself. A number of the parameters you cannot influence: age of the web site is one of them. Suppose the spider needs to choose between 2 websites: the oldest one and the SEO mimic: which one to choose? The oldest one would be the easiest bet, and you cannot change the age of your web site can you? If you are looking for seo testimonials or professional link building or even seo target marketing - you have come to the right place.

SEO is a thought process of using specific search marketing tools and principles for creating a successful business. Of all the Internet marketing techniques around, Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the most important to the success of your online business. In the search engine marketing world, there has been considerable debate recently on how critical on-going SEO is. Improved search engine rank is highly unlikely to occur without a comprehensive SEO optimization strategy. My belief is that SEO optimization is the most important component to promoting your web site. SEO Optimization is the art and science of tweaking your web presence to maximize your Search Engine Rankings to drive customers to your website. To achieve a higher position websites use the strategy of SEO optimization and content is written such that it is key word dense. As those in the business of SEO optimization have discovered, keywords and keyword phrases that seemed to work yesterday may not work today. There are common sense SEO optimization techniques you can do for both on-page and off-page search engine optimization that can help you get a good start. By reading case studies on SEO optimization, you’ll learn how link popularity and optimized content like press releases can affect your positioning. Many webmasters know that the wording within a website address is important when it comes to getting your Web Site SEO Keywords right. For maximum impact, integrate your primary SEO keywords into all marketing and promotions activities. Include your SEO keywords in the headline and sub-headline. An alternate angle to look at the price of SEO is to look at it from an investment standpoint. Free services do not do as well with SEO Optimization as your own domain name. Remember the SEO keywords rule: SEO is possible if your keyword phrase has less than 5 million results in Google. Selection of the proper SEO keywords is critical to the success of the entire SEO process. Once the level of competition is understood, appropriate strategies are decided upon to reach first page ranking for up to 8 major SEO keywords. SEO keywords are the most difficult to achieve high ranking on because you are competing against all the top experts. Unfortunately the more SEO keywords you have on your page the more traffic you are likely to draw but it is likely to be just surfers not real buyers. Analyse and select the SEO keywords that will bring more visitors and increase the popularity of your website. Before the introduction of SEO tools, SEO process was rather difficult. For anyone wanting to do a bit of their own Search Engine Optimisation, there is an abundance of free online SEO tools available on the internet. When you are working hard to climb the search engine ranking ladder, what could be better than a collection of quick and easy online SEO tools. Many websites offer many types of SEO tools. But just take heed: Many SEO tool vendors sell software which has been outdated and rendered useless by improving search technology. If you are looking for SEO Testimonials or SEO Testimonials of Success or even SEO Testimonials articles - you have come to the right place.

The Internet is a multimedia experience.Users are no longer happy with just text, or just video or just pictures.  They want a combination of all three that is well put together and provides a unique content experience.But how do you plan to advise your prospective readers know about this?  Will you just try to add some keywords to the text portion of your content?That is neither good for your readers, nor for search engine rankings. 

True professional Internet marketers know that text is just one piece of the puzzle, and that done properly, you can use images and videos to boost your search engine rankings.

The main reason for doing this is because as users want more multimedia content, search engines are offering more multimedia solutions in their search results, and these “sub-searches” use different rankings than the traditional results. 

For example, if you did a Google search for some popular keywords (this works particularly well with a famous person’s name), you will likely see some Google Image results and some YouTube videos on the front page of results.  Because these image and video sub-searches aren’t tied to the main results, you can dominate target Image and Video keywords even if your website is on page 50.

Here’s how to do it.The process is really simple for images.  First, make sure that your image files have descriptive titles, with words separated by a hyphen.  For example:  new-york-city.jpg.  Now, when you add that image to your website, make sure that you include ALT text descriptions that utilize the title keyword and other pertinent phrases (check documentation on your web design software or browse for HTML tutorials to get precise instructions on adding ALT text).

For video, the process is pretty simple.  Because videos, like images, don’t have any “text” for search engines to read, they count on descriptive text and keywords.  So, make a video, go to YouTube (or another video site affiliated with your search engine of choice), and upload it. 

Make sure that all of the categorization and keyword information that you enter is in-line with what you want to rank for. 

If your keywords for your images and videos are targeted enough, you have a very good chance of ending up on the front page of Google, mainly because there are so few people competing for this sort of search engine traffic.

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When you hear the term “internet marketing“, what do you think of?

For many, that term conjures thoughts of websites or spamming or search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. For others, it’s all about graphical design, writing fancy code or even affiliate programs. All of those answers correct, but the essence of internet marketing is much simpler.

At its core, internet marketing is about these things:

* Understanding the target market to which the product/service/cause you’re marketing will appeal
* Determining exactly how your target market interacts with the internet
* Positioning your content on the internet to attract the attention of your target market
* Collecting information about your target market (also known as “leads”) for follow-up and conversion into sales
* Design of offers or incentives to induce the desired actions from your leads

Since there is insufficient space in this article to give all of these topics adequate attention, let’s focus on just one specific topic with the realm of internet marketing: Email Marketing.

My best payoff has always come by focusing on permission-based email marketing. Permission-based email marketing refers to the practice of collecting information (including email addresses) from website visitors and communicating with them via e-mail with their direct consent. The “permission” aspect of permission-based email marketing is what separates legitimate email marketers from the spammers that everyone despises.

My love of email marketing is strong for one reason: It works very well. Email marketing has been much like a never-ending goldmine: It enables us to produce income on demand simply by sending a good offer to our list. When you have thousands of loyal subscribers - as we do - and you put a strong and compatible offer in front of them, income becomes nearly automatic.

However, the key to successful email marketing is the development of a legitimate trust relationship with your subscribers. If you opt to send your subscribers a request for purchases every single day, they will likely tire of your badgering and cease reading your emails altogether.

Alternatively, if you take the time to provide good content to your readers on a regular and frequent basis, you’ll discover that your readers take all of your emails far more seriously, and as a result your emails will be opened, read and acted upon with greater frequency. Essentially, email marketing is really an exercise in trust.

While there are many more aspects to internet marketing than just permission-based email marketing, email has definitely been the cornerstone on which our business is built.