Google Webmaster Tools

Google's suite of webmaster tools provides you with a free and easy way to make your site more Google-friendly. They can show you Google's view of your site, help you diagnose problems, and let you share info with us to help improve your site's visibility.

Improve the functionality of your site, and your knowledge as a webmaster with these must have Google Tools!

Getting Google's view of your site, and diagnosing potential problems

The first step to increasing your site's visibility on Google is learning how our robots crawl and index your site.

• Crawl info: You can make sure we have access to your site, and see when Googlebot last visited. You can also view URLs that we've had trouble crawling and why we couldn't crawl them. This way, you can fix any problems preventing us from indexing all of your pages.


• Robots.txt file validation: See if we're having trouble with your file, and test out changes to that file before you change it on your server.


• Website content: View top content from your site and see the words that other sites use to link to it.

Seeing how your site performs

A second step is learning what drives traffic to your site.

• Top queries: Find the top queries that drive traffic to your site and where your site is included in the top search results. This will let you learn how users are finding your site.


• Indexing information: See how your site is indexed and which of your pages are included in the index. If we find violations in your site, we'll give you the opportunity to fix the problems and request reinclusion of your site.

Sharing info with Google about your site

Since no one knows more about your site than you do, you can also share this info with Google and improve your crawlability.

• Submit a Sitemap file: Tell us all about your pages by submitting a Sitemap file; help us learn which pages are most important to you and how often those pages change.


• Specify your preferred domain: Tell us which URL to use when indexing your site; we’ll do our best to index the version you prefer.

7 Secrets Used by Top Bloggers

By Michael Fleischner of the Marketing Blog Directory

Blogs are becoming more and more popular. If you don't already have a weblog of your own, you've at least posted a comment to one, read one, or heard the term used in everyday conversation.

You may also have noticed that only a small number of blogs are truly known in each industry. As is true with most major media, "the cream rises to the top". The best weblogs have a large following and are valuable sources of information for thousands of readers. There are five primary reasons why some blogs become popular and others don't:

1. Focusing on a Popular Content Area. One of the most important characteristics of a successful blog is appropriate content. In order to gain a large following your blog must cover a topical area that is broad enough to be of interest to a large number of individuals but specific enough to have meaning.

Weblogs that provide information on obscure topics can never have a sizeable audience because the topic is of limited interest. So, if you're going to start a blog of your own, make sure that your content area is broad enough to appeal to a large audience.

2. Content that's timely. The best way to keep your blog readers interested is with timely content. Your blog should cover current events, opinions, and topics. Popular weblogs often comment on current events tied to their particular subject area or industry. Not only is the content meaningful to blog readers, but it encourages them to interact with your blog posts by placing comments.

Timely content is anything that is of current interest. Your best sources for timely content include daily newspapers, magazines, Internet news sites, and industry journals. Be sure to choose timely content that can be discussed and debated. This improves the overall effectiveness of your blog posts.

3. Updated Daily. The blogs that attract the most readers are those addressing popular content areas, covering timely topics, and refreshed on a daily basis. If your weblog adds a new post everyday, then readers have a reason to return. Providing daily updates on a consistent basis helps users to develop the habit of visiting daily. Updated content builds a loyal following while encouraging word-of-mouth referrals about your posts.

4. Make your blog easy to find. Submit your blog to free and paid blog directories - especially in your market. Doing so can increase the number of individuals who find your blog and increase search engine position. I recommend The Marketing Blog Directory and other sources like Yahoo!

5. Comments from Industry Experts. Nothing speaks with more authority than an interview with an expert. The most popular blogs integrate interviews, commentary, podcasts, and other posts that include an expert who offers their thoughts and opinions on a given topic or current event. This is an essential reason why so many people return to the most popular blogs over and over again.

If you're wondering how to recruit experts for your blog, than look to current best practices for blogging and Internet marketing… simply ask. Industry experts are always looking to share their ideas. If you can't arrange for an in-person or phone interview, email the expert a list of questions and ask for their responses.

6. Use Interactive Media and Visuals. It's difficult for blog readers to read flat, boring text day in and day out – regardless of how stimulating a topic may be. The most popular bloggers know this and have enhanced their blogs with audio, video, external links, screenshots, and more.

The best way to improve the overall popularity of your blog is to present blog content in a variety of formats. Visit other blogs and determine what type of interactivity would work best for your blog. You don't need to go overboard, just add interactive content where it makes sense to do so.

7. Make your site available via RSS feed.. Check out a "How to Create an RSS Feed for Your Website". The article will give you step by step instructions on pushing your content out to those who request it. This allows your blog to proactively reach those who are interested in your subject matter. It also increase the viral component of your blog when your articles are forwarded to friends, familiy, and colleagues.

By following the lead of today's most popular blogs, your blog can thrive. Follow the blog secrets listed above for enhancing your blog and improving readership. The key is to plan your blogging activities carefully and encourage interaction with your readers. This enhances the overall effectiveness of your blog and makes for a truly great blogging experience for everyone. Happy Blogging!

Create an RSS Feed for Your Website Step-by-Step

Syndicating your own website content is a great way to provide informationto your readers with little or no effort. Using RSS, your updated content is delivered to individuals who have subscribed to your feed automatically. In this article, I'll briefly explain RSS and show you how to syndicate your own website content - even if you know very little about RSS feeds.

RSS Defined

According to Wikipedia, RSS is a simple XML-based system that allows users to subscribe to their favorite websites. Using RSS, webmasters can put their content into a standardized format, which can be viewed and organized through RSS-aware software or automatically conveyed as new content on another website.

A program known as a feed reader or aggregator can check a list of feeds on behalf of a user and display any updated articles that it finds. It is common to find web feeds on major websites and many smaller ones. Some websites let people choose between RSS or Atom formatted web feeds.

Feeds are typically linked with the word "Subscribe", an orange rectangle, or with the letters or . Many news aggregators publish subscription buttons for use on Web pages
to simplify the process of adding news feeds.

Choosing the Content you want to Syndicate

Okay, so you're interested in syndication but aren't exactly sure what you should be syndicating. There's really no hard and fast rule here. Howerver, keep in mind that anything you plan to syndicate via RSS should be unique, of value to a given audience, and something that gets updated on a regular basis.

Some individuals syndicate their content by placing an RSS feed on their home page. As the website is updated, and a new feed is produced, content is sent directly to subscribers. Others choose to provide a feed of specific content pages on their site. The choice is yours.

So How do you Create an RSS Feed?

All RSS feeds are written using a code type called XML. If you're not familiar with XML, don't let that scare you off. I'll provide the specific code you need and instructions on what to do with it. To begin, you'll need to create an RSS file that contains a Title, Description, and Link URL. This information will be used by the RSS reader when individuals subscribe to your RSS feed.

Follow these simple steps.

1. Go to your "Start Menu" in the lower left-hand corner or your computer screen. Click on "All Programs" and navigate to Accessories. There you'll find an option called "Notepad". Notepad
is a simple text editor that you will use to develop your RSS script.

2. Write the RSS script which contains information about your website or content page and information about the content you'll be syndicating. To do so, copy the following into Notepad. Replace the bold content with your own site's information. Replace "[" and "]" with "<" and ">" which have been used to display the coding properly via the blogger interface.

[?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?]

[rss version="0.91"]

This RSS feed should be viewed using an RSS Reader or RSS Aggregator.
Firefox users click the Subscribe to feed icon.

Feed URL: http://www.marketingscoop.com/

[channel]
[title]Marketing Articles[/title]
[link]http://www.marketingscoop.com/articles.htm[/link]
[description]Marketing articles covering a variety of marketing topics[/description]
[language]en-us[/language]
[copyright]MarketingScoop.com[/copyright]

[item]
[title]How to market your small business[/title]
[link]http://www.marketingscoop.com/market-small-business.htm[/link]
[description]If you own a small business, you probably don't have a lot to spend on marketing. These simple techniques will help you generate more referrals than you can handle. [/description]
[/item]
[/channel]
[/rss]

That's it. As noted above, be sure to replace the Title of your website and article, links, and descriptions. When your done, save your file by selecting File, Save as, from the top bar in the Notepad window. Warning: name your file with a .xml extension but save as text. (example: http://www.marketingscoop.com/rssfeed.xml).

Be sure not to use any ampersands or quotes in your code as this may cause an error. XML requires ampersands to be replaced in the code with "&" and quotes with "&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot; whatever is included in your quotes&quot; The best advice I can give is just don't include quotes or ampersands and you won't have any coding issues.

3. Save, Upload, and Validate your .xml code. After saving your RSS file via notepad, the next step is to upload your .xml file to your web server. This file should be placed on the same directory as your homepage or the directory of the page you've selected to syndicate.

Now that we've created and uploaded your RSS feed, we must validate it. By doing so, we know that the feed is active and will work when individuals subscribe. To validate your feed, visit http://validator.w3.org/feed/ and enter your feed URL. The URL of your feed is simply the URL of the .xml file you just uploaded to your server. So, if your fille was saved to your website's main directory and was called "rssfeed", then simply enter your website's URL, followed by /rssfeeds.xml. Once validated, your RSS feed is ready to be syndicated.

4. Place your RSS code on your website. The best way to do this is to copy the RSS button and have it link to the RSS feed you just created. You can grab the RSS or XML image by simply visiting a website like MarketingScoop.com and right mouse clicking the image. Save the image (give it a name like RSS.gif) and copy it onto your server. The code should look like this (again, replace "[" with "<") [a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/rssfeed.xml"] [img border="0" src="images/rss.gif" alt="rss feed for my website" width="36" height="14"][/a] Be sure to replace the information above with your own feed link and image link.

5. Subscribe to your own feed. After you've uploaded all of your pages to your live site or testing server, open Internet Explorer and click on your own RSS button. You should be taken to a dialogue box that asks if you'd like to subscribe to your feed. Subscribe and confirm that the
feed has been added to your list of RSS feeds (it should appear in a dialogue box on the left hand side of the page).

Note: If you're using Firefox, you will only receive a text page when clicking on your RSS button. Those using the firefox browsers can click on a small icon that resides on their browser nav bar to add your feed. Additionally the text file contains your feed URL which can also be used.

6. Ping aggregators to let them know that you've created an RSS feed. In order to let the world wide web know that your feed is up and running, you must give them a Ping. This is very easy to do - just go to http://pingomatic.com/ and choose the appropriate sites to inform. Select blog related sites if you're a blog and non-blog related sites for other content. Complete the information and Ping.

Another site you should Ping is Yahoo! Simply visit the Yahoo! RSS submit page at http://publisher.yahoo.com/rss_guide/submit.php and add your feed URL. This will let the big boys know that your syndicating.

A final note. Whenever you want to syndicate new content, you will need to update your .xml file with a link to the content and a revised description. Once you've done so, upload to the file to your server, replacing the existing .xml file and the code will do the rest.

*Michael Fleischner is a marketing expert and the president of MarketingScoop.com. He has more than 12 years of marketing experience and had appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. Visit MarketingScoop.com for further details and be sure to subscribe to his RSS feed at http://www.marketingscoop.com/rss-feed.xml.

Increase Your Alexa Ranking with These Proven Methods!

By Michael Fleischner

After spending two years building my own website (MarketingScoop), I was very disappointed that my Alexa ranking was still higher than one million. Alexa ranks each website based on the number of visitors it receives. The top ranked website, Yahoo! has an Alexa rating of 1 or 2. Less popular sites could be ranked up to 5,000,000.

In order to improve my Alexa rating, I spent about three weeks combing the web to find tips, secrets, and proven strategies for increasing my Alexa ranking. Unfortunately, many of the sites offering advice didn't even have a high ranking themselves. Finally I discovered a number of sites ranked within the top 100,000 that were all applying the same "Alexa techniques" to improve their ranking. I've begun implementing a number of these techniques and have improved my Alexa ranking by 250,000 spots in just one week.

Here's what you need to know. The basis for many of these techniques is the fact that your Alexa ranking is based reach and page views. However it only counts those who visit your site and have already downloaded the Alexa toolbar. Anyone can download the toolbar for free which is automatically added to your browser and tracks the sites you’re visiting. Increasing
visits from those who do not have the Alexa toolbar installed will not help your Alexa ranking.

I've summarized the 7 strategies that I've discovered and applied to my own website to increase my Alexa ranking. Apply these strategies to your own website and see your ranking climb towards the top.

1. Download the Alexa toolbar and use it every day to visit your own website. Alexa even gives you the ability to co-brand the toolbar with your own logo and give it away. You can download the toolbar here: http://pages.alexa.com/prod_serv/associatetoolbar.html

2. Use Alexa redirection whenever you can. No matter when or where you provide a link to your website, be sure to use the equivalent Alexa redirect URL. For example, when providing a link to my website, I use http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?marketingscoop.com. If you copy this URL into your browser, it will take you to MarketingScoop.com. To use this technique, simply replace the name of my website (marketingscoop) with yours.

3. Encourage your website visitors to add their positive testimonials on Alexa's detailed listings page for your website. This can be done by placing a link to the appropriate Alexa page on your website and asking visitors to "Click here to rate this website". You can find your detailed Alexa page here: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=marketingscoop.com.

Again, just replace the name of my website (marketingscoop) with yours. By clicking on the URL, visitors will be able to reach your detailed rating page and write a review using the review link located on the left hand side of the page.

4. Write your own site reviews on the top 100 rated Alexa sites and include your redirect URL. The top 500 domains, according to Alexa can be found at the followig URL... http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500. When you write a review, be sure to use the redirection URL we discussed in number 2 above specifically for your website (http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?marketingscoop.com).

5. Download the Alexa ranking button, traffic history graph, info links, and other traffic counters onto the page of your website that receives the most traffic. For example, at the bottom of my home page (http://www.marketingscoop.com), I've added the Alexa ranking box. You can do the same for your own site by visiting http://www.alexa.com/site/site_stats/signup. You'll notice that I haven't added the traffic history graph. This is because it wouldn't look appropriate on my home page and because Alexa is only providing detailed history on the top 100,000 sites. So if you’re not in the top 100,000, site stats would not be available.

6. Take an inexpensive advertisement out on the ExactSeek search directory for only a few dollars per month at ExactSeek.com Search engine results are directly correlated with Alexa rankings. You'll notice that if a website is highly ranked on ExactSeek, chances are that it will be highly ranked on Alexa.

7. Get listed on as many search engines as possible by placing a free listing in DMOZ. This is the largest human edited directory on the web and is co-branded among hundreds of thousands of sites. Be patient though, it often takes up to 5 months before you see your website listed after submission. Even though it takes longer than it should, you have little say in the matter because it's so widely used across the Internet.

These simple Alexa strategies are easy to implement and will make a huge difference in your Alexa ranking. Ultimately you want visitors to do more than visit your home page, you want them to interact with your site. Be sure to optimize your home page for SEO purposes, ease of use, and interaction. Creating a positive user experience will get visitors to return again and again.

*Michael Fleischner is a marketing expert and the president of MarketingScoop.com. Visit today for free marketing information and marketing blog directory. Michael has more than 12 years of marketing experience and had appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. Visit his marketing blog for further details.

How To Skyrocket Your Website To The Top Of Google With Properly Planned Offpage Optimization!

From Brad Callen

I don't know about you, but I get extremely excited when I see my new websites at the top of Google for the very first time. Making big changes in ranking is primarily done by what is called offpage optimization.

Earlier I mentioned there were two types of search engine optimization.

Onpage Optimization Offpage Optimization

We've gone over the onpage optimization, so let's move on to the offpage optimization which is what really makes a difference in your site's ranking.

Important: Properly planned offpage optimization will make the difference between your website ranking #900 on Google, to ranking #1.

So, what is offpage optimization anyway? Offpage optimization basically consists of all of the offpage ranking factors like:

• Which websites link to you
• The number of websites linking to you
• The Google page rank of the website linking to you
• The page title of the website linking to you
• The anchor text used in the link linking to you
• The number and type of links linking to the website that's linking to you.
• The number of outbound links on the website that is linking to you
• The total number of links on the website that is linking to you
• Whether or not the websites linking to you are deemed by Google as an authority website.
• Plus some other things that we'll get to later...

In order to optimize our original website for the keyword "weight loss stories", we need to analyze the linking strategy of the top 10 ranked websites for our keyword.

Copy The Top Ranked Websites To Get A #1 Position

The goal here will be to copy exactly what they're doing, and then do things slightly better. We want to give Google exactly what they want, by making our linking strategy as close to the top ranked websites as possible, but as I said, slightly better to edge them out. The keyword we'll use in this example will be a highly popular term. We'll use "diet pills" so I can show you just how powerful offpage optimization is, and what kind of rankings it can get you, if you do it correctly.

First, we need to open up a spreadsheet using Microsoft Excel. You should create the following columns

• Linking Website
• Anchor Text used
• Page Rank
• Link Popularity
• Page Title
• Number of Outbound Links

Next, we need to visit Google and enter the keyword "diet pills". We'll then visit the top 10 websites for this keyword and collect the information above. You should create 1 spreadsheet for each of the top 10 websites.

Note:

Linking Website is the specific website linking to www.weight-loss-institute.com/diet_pills.htm, which is the #1 ranked website in Google for the term "diet pills". In order to find all of the websites that link to www.weight-loss-institute.com/diet_pills.htm you can do a couple of things. The most common way is to go to Google and enter this search command: link:www.weight-loss-institute.com/diet_pills.htm.

Once you do this Google will return a large list of websites that link to www.weight-loss-institute.com/diet_pills.htm.

Over the past several months, Google has cut down on the number of backlinks that it will show you, so you may be better off going to Yahoo and entering link:http://www.weight-loss-institute.com/diet_pills.htm to get a larger list of websites that link to them. Note that for Yahoo you must include "http://".

Anchor Text is the actual text used within the link linking to the specified website. For example, the anchor text in the following link would be "diet pills".

diet pills website

Page Rank is the actual Google Page Rank of the webpage linking to www.weight-loss-institute.com/diet_pills.htm. In order to see the Google Page Rank, you'll need to download and install the Google Toolbar for free from:
http://toolbar.google.com/

Link Popularity is just the number of links that are pointing to each of the webpages pointing to practicalweightloss.com. You can find their Google link popularity by entering this search command into Google: link:www.thewebsite.com then counting the total number of results that are shown OR you could go to a website like http://www.linkpopularity.com/ to find each link partners link popularity much quicker.

Page Title is the title of the page that is linking to www.weight-loss-institute.com/diet_pills.htm. Does it contain the keyword "weight loss stories", "weight loss" or "weight"? If so, you should note which links pages those are. You'll want to approach those websites and try to get them to link to your website.

Note: Getting links from webpages that contain your main keyword in the page title is extremely powerful and is something many people overlook.

Number of Outbound Links is the number of links located on the webpage linking to www.weight-loss-institute.com/diet_pills.htm. The less links located on the page, the more a link from them would increase your ranking.

Once we've collected all of the information, we now can see www.weight-loss-institute.com/diet_pills.htm's linking strategy.

We'll need to calculate the percentage of websites that contain the keywords "diet pills", "diet", or "pills" in the page title.

We'll need to calculate the percentage of websites that contain the keywords "diet pills", "diet", or "pills" in the actual anchor text linking to www.weight-loss-institute.com/diet_pills.htm.

We'll then need to mirror these numbers, as close as we can, for our linking strategy. This may take awhile to do, but once you've done this...

You'll Have The Exact Blueprint You Can Give Google
For A #1 Ranking!

Once the blueprint for our linking strategy is complete, we need to contact each of these websites individually and ask them if they will add our link to their website in exchange for us adding their link to ours.

Adapted from Brad Callen's "How to Skyrocket Your Website To the Top of Google.."

How Changing One Single Onpage Optimization Factor Can Boost Your Rankings By Over 350 Positions!

Adapted from Brad Callen

Based on our last post (dated October 15, 2006), we've selected our main 3 keywords we'd like to target. In this example, they are:

* weight loss story
* weight loss picture
* safe weight loss

Notice that all of the keywords contain the word "weight loss". This will make things easier for us when we begin to optimize our offpage ranking factors which you'll learn about later.

Let's Optimize Our Webpage ...

The first thing we need to do is select a page Title for our website.

Add a Title

The page title should:

Include ONLY our main keywords. The least amount of words you can place in the title, the more weight Google will give to each of the keywords and the higher you will rank.

Note: When I say "Google", I'm really referring to all the major engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN). But I am saying Google because this is the search engine you should really focus on optimizing for because Google gets roughly 50% of all the searches on the web. Yahoo receives about 30% and MSN about 20%.

When creating your page title, it should not look like this:

* Welcome to our website!
* This is the html code used to create this title: Welcome to our website!

It should not even look like this, which does contain our main keywords, but contains an unnecessary number of words:

* weight loss story and weight loss picture and safe weight loss
* This is the html code used to create this title: weight loss story and weight loss picture and safe weight loss

Although that title isn't horrible and does contain all of your main keywords, you should do a couple of things to cut down on words used.

This would be a perfect title for your webpage:

* Weight Loss Story Safe Weight Loss Picture
* This is the html code used to create this title: Weight Loss Story Safe Weight Loss Picture

Notice that I've:

* Taken out all of the "ands"
* Replaced one of the "ands" with a "" character (Note: You can add this character by holding the shift key on your keyboard and pressing the backslash key above the enter key.)
* Combined the keywords "Safe Weight Loss" with "Weight Loss Picture"

Always Combine Your Keyword When Possible to cut down on the total number
of words that are in your title!

Always Combine Your Keywords In The Page Title!

When Google looks at our title, it will see all 3 of our keywords only. Combining keywords to cut down on the total number of keywords displayed in the title is a great way to boost the strength of each individual keyword, which will have an immediate impact on your ranking.

Add h1 header tags

Next we'll need to add one h1 header tag and place our most important keyword there.

The h1 header tag should be as far towards the top of the page as possible. When Google reads a webpage, it views the text from the top left hand side of the page to the bottom right hand side of the page.

Note: Here's a neat free tool which allows you to visually see how the search engines view your webpage: http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/search-engine-simulator.shtml

So, it's best to place your h1 header tag on the top left hand or top/middle portion of your page. You can think of an h1 header tag as a title for whatever content you have on your page.

For example, the h1 header tag of this lesson would be:

"How changing 1 onpage optimization factor can boost your rankings by
over 350 positions!"

... and the html code would look like this:
h1 How changing 1 onpage optimization factor can boost your rankings by over 350 positions! /h1

Of course, I would have changed my lesson title to contain my main keyword if I was actually trying to optimize this page for Google. Also, if possible, it's ideal if you can include ONLY your main keyword within the h1 header tags. Weight Loss Story would be perfect.

Add h2 header tags

Next, we'll need to create an h2 header tag. This can be thought of as a sub heading for our webpage. You should place your 2nd most important keyword in the h2 header tag. The h2 tag should be placed somewhere towards the top half of your webpage.

A good h2 header tag for our example would be:

* safe weight loss (Usually it's best to place your primary keyword in your h1 tags and your secondary keyword into the h2 tags.

After we've done this, we need to actually create the content for our webpage. When writing the content, try to evenly sprinkle your main keywords throughout the copy. Don't overdo it though.

Try to mention each keyword in a natural way as you are writing, but be sure to include at least one of the keywords per 1-2 paragraphs, depending on how large your page is.

Tip: Make sure to mention your main keyword at the very top left and the very bottom right hand side of the webpage. A trick I like to use is to include this in the copyright information line at the bottom of the website. For our example, this would be a good example:

© 2005 copyright www.domain.com a weight loss story

Notice that it flows and doesn't really look too strange.

Bolding, italicizing and underlining ...
Once we've finished writing the copy, we should go through and bold, underline, or italicize some of the keywords only 1 time each, maximum. Only do 1 per keyword or it will hurt you more than it helps. This isn't crucial to do, but it's good to maybe do this to a couple keywords...

Properly include "alt" image tags ...
Next, click on the very top image of your webpage (This is usually your website's header graphic) and include an "alt" image tag using the text "weight loss story header" if you're adding this alt text to your website header graphic. Click on 2 more graphics throughout your webpage and enter your other 2 keywords, plus an extra word like "graphic" or "image"... For example, we would use "weight loss picture graphic" and "safe weight loss image". This ensures that Google won't view this as spam.

For example, if we have an image on our webpage called: picture1.jpg
The code that would be used to insert the image would look something like this:
img height="1" src="picture1.jpg" width="1" border="0"

Now, if we were to add an alt image tag called "Weight Loss Story Graphic", we'd simply do this:

img height="80" alt="Weight Loss Story Graphic" src="picture1.jpg" width="250" border="0"

Force Google To Read Your Keywords First!
Now, remember I stated above that Google views your webpage from top left, to bottom right? Well, in general they do. But because most websites contain a left hand column which contains all of their navigation links...

Google WILL View all of the text in the left hand column Before The Body of the webpage

To show you what I mean, look at the image below to see the order of information that Google will view this webpage. because of the way the person has created the tables containing their content. I've added red lines so you can visually see the way the site was designed, has they not made the table borders invisible.



How can you get around this? I've come up with a neat little trick that will ensure that Google reads the actual body of your webpage before the left hand column containing your navigational links.

Here is what you need to do:
Rather than creating a table that looks like this:




See how I've changed the website above, so that Google now sees our content BEFORE our navigation menu:



By doing this, Google will read the top left hand row/column first... BUT will see that it is empty or only contains a couple words in this case, so it will then read the body of your webpage and then read the 2nd left hand row/column which contains your navigational links! :-)

That's all there is to it!

In summary, I really want to point out the fact that, although good onpage optimization is something you'll really want to do, it is NOT how you make dramatic changes in your search engine ranking!

Important! Let me repeat that again, onpage optimization... which is what I've taught you thus far, will make small changes in your ranking, but WILL NOT help your site make dramatic jumps in ranking.

This is one of the biggest misconceptions in the search engine world. Many believe that by getting your keyword density just right, or by moving your keywords around on the page in just the right places, you'll really move up in the search engines.

That is not the case at all. It is the offpage optimization factors that will get you high rankings. I will teach you exactly what offpage optimization factors are, AND how to make sure you optimize these factors perfectly for Google!
All the best,

Brad Callen
Professional SEO
SEO Elite: SEO Software

"Optimize The Wrong Keywords And You'll Likely Never See Results ..."

SEO advice by Brad Callen

For those of you who don't know Brad, this guy is the "marketing expert". I'll feature a number of his columns of the week. Read, Learn, Enjoy! - Michael Fleischner

If you're anything like I was when I first began online, you've probably created a brand new website. Then submitted it to a few search engines and hoped that people would mysteriously show up at your site and buy whatever it is you were selling.

After a couple of weeks go by and only a few stray people show up at your website, you decide to try and "optimize" your website around your main keyword in hopes that you just might rank well in 1 of the millions of search engines. Another couple of weeks go by and still no luck.

At this point you probably give up and decide to either build another website around a different target market or just lose all hope and quit. Well, news flash, as you've probably figured out by now, this is not the way to go about doing things.

Let me give you a specific example of what your very first steps MUST be when creating any website... no matter what the subject matter.

In our example, let's create a weight loss related website. Before we start creating and collecting content for the website, we need to do a little keyword research. This is VERY important and should not be skipped. To do our keyword research we need to visit a few websites.

The first of which should be http://www.goodkeywords.com/.

They have a very good keyword tool, and best of all it's free! Once we've downloaded this software, we can enter the most generic keyword for our website into the software. In our example, our keyword would be "weight loss".

You'll notice that in the screenshot below, Good Keywords will return a list of related terms. The "count" column will then show us how many times the specific keyword has been searched for the previous month within the Overture.com search engine. Generally, you can multiply that number by 8, in order to estimate the number of times that keyword has been searched within Google for the previous month.

You'll notice that weight loss was searched 817,038 times during the previous month.

Do NOT start off by optimizing for the keyword "weight loss"

Why, you ask? If a keyword is searched that many times in Overture, then 100 times out of 100, the competition you will have to outrank will be extremely fierce. This is not something you should try to take on right away. For a brand new website, or one you're just beginning to optimize, it's better to select more specific keyword phrases. I'll talk about this a bit later.

Let's take a quick peek at Google so I can show you exactly how many websites are competeting for this keyword.

If you were to optimize your website for this keyword, you'd be competing against over 66 million other websites(web pages)! I don't know about you, but that's an aweful lofty goal to start with.

By the end of this course, you will be able to eventually target HUGE keywords such as "weight loss", but it's always best to start off on the keywords with less competition. Get some traffic with those keywords, and THEN you can focus on the larger keywords.

Ok, so back to finding which keywords we want to target.

If we scroll down, we can find some more specific keyword phrases like "weight loss story", "weight loss picture", "free weight loss plan", and "safe weight loss".

These could be possible keywords we should target to begin with. Once we have our list of 3 to 4 keywords, we need to go to Google and check out the competition to see exactly how hard it will be to optimize for the specified keyword.

We'll begin with the keyword "weight loss story"

You'll notice that the #1 ranked website for "weight loss story" is: (Side note: rankings can change in the search engines, so if this site is no longer ranked #1 when you view this yourself, chances are their competition simply has optimized their site better, and passed them up.)
http://www.runwalkjog.com/weight_loss_success_story.htm which is not a top level webpage, meaning it's not simply http://www.runwalkjog.com/

This is good news for us because, typically, if a website's subpage is ranking well in Google, we have an immediate advantage if we choose to target the same keyword with our homepage (i.e. www.domain.com). For now, just take my word on this, as I will go into more detail why it's usually easier to rank well for your homepage than any other webpage on your website.

You'll also notice that the website has a Google Page Rank of 5.

Note: Here's a quick definition of Page Rank. Page Rank is Google's way of giving a specific value to how popular your website is. It is based on the number of "votes" other websites cast for your website. A "vote" is simply when another website places a link on their website that is pointing to your website. Generally, the more "votes" or links you have pointing to your website, the higher your Page Rank (PR) will be. Page Rank is 1 of the many factors that Google takes into account when ranking websites.

In order to see your own Google Page Rank, as well as others, you must have the Google Toolbar installed on your computer. You can get that for free here: http://toolbar.google.com/

Seeing that the #1 ranked website for this keyword only has a Page Rank of 5 is also good news for us, because a Page Rank of 5 should be reasonable to obtain. Remember, the ONLY way to increase our website's Page Rank is by getting other websites to link to us. Later, I'll teach you the right way to get thousands of links pointing to your website in a matter of a few days... and I'll go into more detail about Page Rank.

View The Source Code

Next we need to view the source code of this website by clicking "view", then "source" within our web browser as shown below:

Note: Source code is simply the code that was used to create the webpage. You don't need to know html, which is the prgamming language used to create most websites, so don't worry. You just need to know a few things to look for when viewing the source code.

This will open up a text file for us to have a look at and see if this website is actually optimizing their "Onpage Optimization factors".

Note: There are 2 types of optimization, onpage and offpage optimization. We'll cover offpage optimization in the following lessons.

As we view the source file from this website, we need to look for a few things.

* Whether or not they are using header tags and are placing the keyword "weight loss story" within those tags. In this case, they are not... AND they aren't even using header tags at all! Another great thing for us!

* Whether or not they are using their main keyword in the

* Whether or not they've bolded, underlined, or italicized the words "weight loss story" anywhere in the body of the webpage. In this case, yes... they have. They've actually bolded the keyword "weight loss stories" 4 different times throughout the webpage. At first glance, it looks as though this is another one of the major reasons they've managed to grab the top spot for this keyword. Bolding is something we can do right away, so now we know that we should also bold some of the keywords throughout our copy. Notice I said they've bolded "weight loss stories" 4 times, rather than "weight loss story" (singular). You should always look for both the plural and singular form of the keyword, as the search engines view them as "almost" the same word.

* Whether or not they are using image tags and placing the keyword "weight loss stories" within that tag. In this case, that answer is easy because they're not even using any images at all! This is definitely something we can do when optimizing our website. And another thing we can do to "one-up" this #1 ranked website. It is best to add images that are actually named after our main keyword. For example, we could insert an image and call it weight-loss-stories-graphic1.jpg and so on.

* The final thing we want to note is whether or not they've placed the keyword once at the very beginning of the copy, and once at the very end of the copy. In this case they have placed it near the beginning and also at the end. Not to worry, we can do this as well.

We should now know how to out optimize this #1 ranked website

... Atleast for all the onpage optimization factors that Google deems as important. The reason we know we can out optimize them is because of the following things we've found out by analyzing their website:

* The website is not using the keyword "weight loss stories" in an header tag.
* The website did not use image tags containing the keyword "weight loss stories".
* The website has a Page Rank of 5, which can be beaten. We can easily achieve a Page Rank of 5 or better. I'll show you the exact steps for this in the coming lessons.
* The website is ranked with their subpage (weight_loss_success_story.htm). By optimizing our index page for this keyword, we can one up them.

* Remember, the main idea behind ranking well on Google is to analyze the top ranked websites and then do those things that they're doing, BUT just a little better to one up them, which will lead to a better ranking.

We'll continue to go through the same process for the other 2 keywords we've found. It is best to analyze the top 5 ranking websites for each keyword. If the top 5 websites for a specific keyword have a Google Page Rank of 6 or higher, it's probably not best to shoot for that keyword until we build some momentum and get some initial traffic from the easier ranking keywords with less competition.

Earlier I mentioned that keyword research was very important in building traffic. Some other very good resources for building keywords and finding niche phrases include the following:

* http://www.keywordelite.com (This is being developed as we speak)
* http://www.wordtracker.com
* http://inventory.overture.com (This is the same as goodkeywords.com but is web-based)
* http://www.adwordanalyzer.com/

Posted with Permission from Brad Callen

Climbing the Search Engine Ladder

How to reach the top of the search engines!

I never considered myself a Marketing Expert until I started this awkward climb. About 2 years ago a launched a website and later found that my expectations were way off. The site I launched was ambitious - costing me about $10,000 to develop - but everything I imagined the ultimate marketing website to be... RSS feeds, online surveys, dynamic content, automated back end and more.

After a number of months of not showing up in the first 100 Google results related to marketing and other keywords, I decided to get an education related to SEO and website management. Unfortunately, this changed my expectations of what I could build and how to build it. Before getting started with the exact formula I used to reach the top of the search engines, let me say that it took another $10,000 to start from scratch and build the website known as MarketingScoop.com today. The site is still a work in progress and much less dynamic than the previous site. However, it ranks towards the top of major search engines for keywords such as "Marketing Expert" and "Internet Marketing Secrets".

Increasing Google Results

Okay, so you've obviously know about the importance of GOOGLE and want to increase your ranking. We'll, I've got to tell you that I've been at it for about 5 months and I'm ready to start documenting my story. I feel like it should be call MarketingScoop versus Goliath.

The most difficult part has been discerning fact from fiction. So many marketing sites tout the "Get a top 10 listing on Google in just 24 hours". Yeah, like I was born yesterday. Here's an idea.. pay me the fee and I'll call Google and sell them on showing me their secret sauce.

The good news is that I've given myself quite an education as it relates to improving Google Rank and I intend to share what I've learned with the loyal readers of my Blog. If you don't believe me, just go to Google and type in Marketing Expert. You'll find the listing for my main website (MarketingScoop.com) listed 3rd.

My keyword phrase 'marketing expert' is pretty competitive. According to Google, there are about 78,800,000 sites that contain the phrase. I'm also on the first page if you're searching for Internet Marketing Secrets. However, this phrase is less competitive with about 17 million web pages competing.

So how did I get my rank to be on the first page in such a short period of time? We'll it wasn't easy but I'll tell you EVERYTHING. Bookmark this blog and visit tomorrow for part 2.

What is Technorati?

Technorati Profile

If you're a blogger or marketing expert you've probably heard of Technorati. So what is it and why should you care? Technorati is a tool that allows you to gain visibility for your blog and monitor millions of blogs by topic. In this post, you'll learn all you need to know.

Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs, competing with Google, Yahoo, PubSub and IceRocket. As of August 2006, Technorati indexes over 55 million weblogs. The name Technorati is a portmanteau, pointing to the technological version of literati or intellectuals.

Technorati was founded by Dave Sifry and its headquarters are in San Francisco, California, USA. Tantek Çelik is the site's Chief Technologist.

Technorati uses and contributes to open source software. Technorati has an active software developer community, many of them from open-source culture. Sifry is a major open-source advocate, and was a founder of LinuxCare and later of Wi-Fi access point software developer Sputnik. Technorati includes a public developer's wiki, where developers and contributors collaborate, as well as various open APIs.

The site won the SXSW 2006 awards for Best Technical Achievement and also Best of Show. It has also been nominated for a 2006 Webby award for Best Practices.

Technorati is blocked in China.

Start Blogging in 3 Easy Steps

By now you've probably heard of blogs or even considered starting one of your own. Weblogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily textual although many focus on photograph (photoblog), videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting). Blogs are a popular communication vehicle that are simple to create and maintain.

You can start your very own blog in as little as 3 easy steps. After hearing about the popularity of blogs and learning about the multiple benefits of creating a blog, I set out to start my own. After doing some additional research, I found a number of popular sites that actually let you create and host your own blog at no charge. What's even better is that the process of creating your blog is incredibly fast and simple. I suppose this is why blogging has become some popular.

Step 1: Choose a Purpose or Topic

One of the most important things you can do to ensure a quality blog is to determine the purpose of your blog and the topic you will be writing about. For example, a number of individuals who host blogs do so for the purpose of sharing their ideas on a particular topic. Others are simply looking for an outlet to make posts on just about anything- without a real agenda. Often times, these individuals are simply looking to drive Adsense revenue.

Regardless of the purpose you choose, select a topic that provides you the flexibility to contribute on a regular basis. Often times you will develop ideas for your next post based on the comments of others. This is one of the best ways to develop new content that is relevant to your readers.

Step 2: Select a Blog Provider

There are a number of websites that offer free blogs. However, the two largest and easiest to use are Blogger.com and WordPress.com. These sites have millions of users and have been offering free blogs for some time. The benefit of using established blogging hosts is the reliability and ease of use you can expect. I personally use Blogger for my marketing blog. The service is very easy to use - even for a web novice like me.

Step 3: Launch Your Blog

If you're selecting Blogger to launch your blog, all you do is simply create an account, name your blog, and choose a template. From there, you can begin posting to your blog immediately. Many of the blog providers, like Blogger give you the ability to choose from a number of blog templates. Advanced users can design their own blog template.

Wordpress, another blogging tool is also very simple to use. After creating a username and entering your email address, you create a blog name and title. You'll receive a confirmation email that provides instructions on how to begin.

Once you've launched your blog and made a number of posts, you should really focus on generating traffic. Not only will the traffic support any online business you may be supporting, but it can also improve the overall quality of your weblog.

Some simple techniques for generating traffic to your blog include:

• Registering your Blog with DMOZ and other Blog Directories
• Designing your blog for search engine optimization
• Generating Links to your blog via link exchange and article marketing
• Updating content on a daily basis
• Establishing a pay-per-click budget

One thing you'll find about starting you own blog is that blogging is both simple and fun. As you develop a loyal readership, you'll find blogging to be a great learning experience as well. Simply put, there no reason why you shouldn't start blogging today. Visit my website Marketing Expert Internet Marketing Secrets to learn more.

5 Secrets of the Top Bloggers

By Michael Fleischner Marketing Expert Internet Marketing Secrets*

Blogs are becoming more and more popular. If you don't already have a weblog of your own, you've at least posted a comment to one, read one, or heard the term used in everyday conversation.

You may also have noticed that only a small number of blogs are truly known in each industry. As is true with most major media, "the cream rises to the top". The best weblogs have a large following and are valuable sources of information for thousands of readers. There are five primary reasons why some blogs become popular and others don't.

1. Focusing on a Popular Content Area. One of the most important characteristics of a successful blog is appropriate content. In order to gain a large following your blog must cover a topical area that is broad enough to be of interest to a large number of individuals but specific enough to have meaning.

Weblogs that provide information on obscure topics can never have a sizeable audience because the topic is of limited interest. So, if you're going to start a blog of your own, make sure that your content area is broad enough to appeal to a large audience.

2. Content that's timely. The best way to keep your blog readers interested is with timely content. Your blog should cover current events, opinions, and topics. Popular weblogs often comment on current events tied to their particular subject area or industry. Not only is the content meaningful to blog readers, but it encourages them to interact with your blog posts by placing comments.

Timely content is anything that is of current interest. Your best sources for timely content include daily newspapers, magazines, Internet news sites, and industry journals. Be sure to choose timely content that can be discussed and debated. This improves the overall effectiveness of your blog posts.

3. Updated Daily. The blogs that attract the most readers are those addressing popular content areas, covering timely topics, and refreshed on a daily basis. If your weblog adds a new post everyday, then readers have a reason to return. Providing daily updates on a consistent basis helps users to develop the habit of visiting daily. Updated content builds a loyal following while encouraging word-of-mouth referrals about your posts.

4. Comments from Industry Experts. Nothing speaks with more authority than an interview with an expert. The most popular blogs integrate interviews, commentary, podcasts, and other posts that include an expert who offers their thoughts and opinions on a given topic or current event. This is an essential reason why so many people return to the most popular blogs over and over again.

If you're wondering how to recruit experts for your blog, than look to current best practices for blogging and Internet marketing, simply ask. Industry experts are always looking to share their ideas. If you can't arrange for an in-person or phone interview, email the expert a list of questions and ask for their responses.

5. Use Interactive Media and Visuals. It's difficult for blog readers to read flat, boring text day in and day out, regardless of how stimulating a topic may be. The most popular bloggers know this and have enhanced their blogs with audio, video, external links, screenshots, and more.

The best way to improve the overall popularity of your blog is to present blog content in a variety of formats. Visit other blogs and determine what type of interactivity would work best for your blog. You don't need to go overboard, just add interactive content where it makes sense to do so.

By following the lead of today's most popular blogs, your blog can thrive. Follow the blog secrets listed above for enhancing your blog and improving readership. The key is to plan your blogging activities carefully and encourage interaction with your readers. This enhances the overall effectiveness of your blog and makes for a truly great blogging experience for everyone. Happy Blogging!

*Michael Fleischner is a marketing expert and the president of MarketingScoop.com. Visit today for free marketing information and marketing blog directory. Michael has more than 12 years of marketing experience and had appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media.