3 Steps to Create SEO Content

Relevant Content: This is the most important thing to consider, when creating content for your site. For instance if your site is about pets and pet supplements, there is no point to provide content that is about fast cars and sexy ladies.

Original Content: You have to have unique contend in your site. Don’t just copy from other sites. Of course you don’t need to discover the fire again, but you need to write contents that reflects your own thoughts. If you have to write about a topic, you need to write it with your own words.

Keyword Use: Always remember to include your keywords and key phrases in your content. This will help you better ranking in the search engines. Make few of your keywords bold. This will not only help with search engine ranking, but it will also help your visitors to have an idea about the topic.

Another Free Web Directory

I launched a new web directory that accepts free submission. You can submit your site to appropriate category. Pleas don't submit to root of the directory as they will be deleted instantly. Also, no deep links are allowed.

My Blog Worth $8468.10

I was playing around with this technorati tool and found that my blog worth 1000s, lol :) I wish. I don't think it shows a real value or anything, but it would definitely keep up your spirit. So if you are feeling down and want to know how much your blog worth here is the link: http://www.business-opportunities.biz/projects/how-much-is-your-blog-worth/

How to lose a visitor in 8 ways

1. Animation Overload: Using animations excessively on web sites would put your visitors off. Beware of blinking text and images. Only use animations where it would add a value to your content.
2. Color combinations: Don't just use the colors because they are your favourites. Choose right color combinations for your text and background. For instance blue over red background makes it difficult to read. Go for the colors that are easy on the eyes. Choose web safe colors.
3. Lack of Maintenance: Make sure all your links are working properly. Also, make sure your site loads correctly. Here is a free tool to check dead links on your site.
4. Built for one Browser: You have to keep this in mind that there are other browsers as well as Internet Explorer and they are also used wisely. Your site may not render as the same way it appears in your own browser. So make sure to test your site on different browsers and different machines.
5. Using Tables Excessively: Tables may not render same way in the old browsers. And some browser may not support tables. So try using table wisely.
6. Using Images as Bacground: When you using images as your background, make sure it doesn't distarct your visitors to read your content.
7. Pop-up, Pop-unders: Don't give your visitors something they don't expect. In most cases, users will press the back button or close button of the browser as the pop-up and pop-unders appear. Try to avoid using them.
8. Excessive Advertisement: Always label your advertisements as sponsored links, advertisement, or anything similar. Don't expect your visitors to find your main content between advertisement. Because they won't. Dedicate a space in your site for advertisement and label it clearly.

Online communities for free web site traffic

Here are the few online communities that helps me get some traffic to this blog. Although i don't use Myspace, it is known as one of the biggest social network to built communities. But here are couple that use regularly, also helps:

MyLot: As well as building communities, it also pays you to post questions and to answer others' questions. You won't get rich, but you can make enough to pay your Internet connection or any other small house hold bills.

MyBlogLog: Share views with other blog owners. You can join to many blog communities and built network of friends. It also has some cool widgets such as Recent Reader (shows, who is reading your blog), Top Links (shows top referrer to your site), and Stats Tracking (shows stats and links clicked on your site).

Widgets for Your Blog

Widgets helps you to add various functionalities to your web site and blogs. These functionalities include subscription via RSS or subscription via email. Here are some useful ones:

Feed Burner: It allows you place widgets on your blog, which helps your users to subscribe your posts. Visitor can choose various RSS readers to subscribe.

TypePad Widgets: You can find many useful widgets to add on your blog. They even provide widgets directories. Basicly, it provides almost everything that is available.

Our Directory Accepts Free Submissions for Limited Time

You can submit your website or blogs for free to our Web Directory. The submission is for limited time. So during that time you can submit as much sites or blogs as possible. We accept blogger, word-press or any other blog hosting sites as well.

Also if you like your site to be submitted to another 200 PR4 web directories for $5.99, you can try our directory submission service.

PR for SERP

The use of keywords and key phrases effect your positioning in the search engines. So what you need to do to get better position for a keyword. First thing is, you need to study your competitors. Your competitors are the ones that comes in the first few pages, when you conduct a search in Google or others.

If your site competes with highly used keywords, then the PR is the most important factor that helps your position. If your PR is low, then it is very likely that your page will not appear in top positions even though it is well optimised.

Here is a rule that you should follow.

• Well optimised sites with higher PR will have better SERP.
• Well optimised sites with lower PR can only compete with less used keywords or key phrases. Will have lower positions in competitive keywords.
• Bad optimized sites with high PR will have poor SERP. Even sites with lower PR can get better position.
• Bad optimized sites with lower PR are doomed.

Related Post: Use of Keywords

Sudden link building

Many of us aim to have lots of back link to our site to gain better positions in the search engine results. Therefore we submit to directories, buy link on other sites, or exchange links. However, there are things you need to be aware of. Sudden link building can get your site penalised by search engines. In other words, your site can get sandboxed.

For instance, many of us submit to directories. Although this is a good practice, directory submissions may increase your back links in just few days. So imagine; one day you have 10 back links and few days after you have 100s. Also remember this; Sandboxed sites do not appear in the search results and they stay that way for a period of time.

Search engines like links that are built naturally. In other words links that are built slowly. So I would suggest you to slow down with your link building efforts. Slower is always better.

When you want to exchange links ...

Exchanging links with other site owners is good strategy to promote your site. However, exchanged links don't have the same value as one way back links. But they would help your site to receive quality traffic.

When you want to exchange links with different web sites there are few things you need to keep in mind. First, the site has to be related to your topic so you would get kind of visitors, who are interested with your site's content. The second thing you need to keep in mind is the way you ask for link exchange. Don't just send emails and leave comments to ask link exchange. Explain the person why they should exchange link with you. Show them some facts. These facts could be your site's statistics, content, or PR. Also be ready to prove those facts.

Here you can read more about link exchage strategies.

How to get noticed?

Here are few tips on how to get noticed by many visitors:

1. Using the right keywords for your website. Target each of your page with 2 or 3 keywords. Over doing this would not help.
2. Don't forget about your sub-pages. Many surfers would like to go right in the topic instead of going through many pages. So promote internal pages as well as your home page.
3. Make your content stand out above other page elements. Let the visitor to get the information they need, before showing the ads. Sites with pop-up would only annoy your visitors.
4. Always supply your site with fresh content. This way, search engine robots will visit your site regularly.
5. Buy links or exchange links with other similar sites. Choose the sites that has content relevant to your site.
6. Use anchor text that is consistent. Define 3 or 4 anchor text for your site. And always use those when you submit to directories or buying links from other sites.

Truth About Traffic Exchange Sites

Traffic exchange sites are used by many website owners. They can provide few hundreds of page views a day. But quality of these page views is very questionable.

For my old website, I used various traffic exchange websites to drew visitors. The amount of time I spent to get those visitors could have been used something more productive such as search engine optimisation. Although I used to get around 200 to 300 page views a day, I made no sales at all. Then I decided that traffic exchange is nothing but a tool to inflate your page views. Of course some would say otherwise. But, as I experienced first hand, I care less to hear good things about traffic exchange.

Probably, most of you know how these sites operate, but let me briefly explain their features. Basically, each traffic exchange site has members. Those members earn credit while viewing other members’ web sites. Then they use those credits to send traffic to their own site. So, all they really care about is to gain enough credit to convert to page views for their sites.

It is also possible by opening few browser windows; you can use more than one traffic exchange site at the same time. So while one site counts down you can go to next window and start the timer for other traffic exchange site and so on. This way, you don’t even have to see the pages that are shown to you. So I don’t see how you can be able to provide services or sell products to people who don’t even see your website.

Moral of this story is; don’t waste your time with traffic exchange sites. Instead, you can use that time to optimise your web site.

Tags: seo traffic+exchange

InternetHow.com is launched

InternetHow.com is an online directory that is newly created. At the moment we accept free submission. So feel free to submit your site.

List of Social Bookmarking Site

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Don't try these on your web site

If your site relies on search engine traffic, then you should avoid certain design methods fro your web site. These methods are listed below:

Avoid using Dynamic URLs

URL that uses following symbols is considered as dynamic URL.

?, &, %, +,=, $, cgi-bin, .cgi

If a site uses dynamic URL, it is very hard (almost impossible) for that site to get listed in the search engines.

Avoid Using Frames

Basically, framed pages are multiple HTML pages. That is why, it is not possible to submit that page to search engine. Therefore, indexing is major problem.

Just like me search engines don’t like frames. Because, when it comes to indexing framed pages, they have great difficulties. In most cases, they don’t index the page. If your site relies on search engine traffic, then you must redesign your page without frames.

Use Flash Wisely

If your page is designed completely with Flash, then it will have very less chance to get indexed. Because search engines can’t read Flash content, therefore can’t index flash pages. Of course that doesn’t mean completely abandon Flash. You can integrate Flash to your content. But if you are using Flash element such as navigation buttons, then you must include html links (sitemap) in your pages for search engines to follow. Also, if you are not relying on search engine traffic, then you can carry on using it whichever way you like.

Thing twice about Image Maps

Same as Flash, image maps are also trouble for search engine spiders. Image maps are mostly used for navigation. If they are used within a page an HTML alternative should also be included in the page.

JavaScript Navigation is also bad

Same as image maps, site that uses JavaScript navigation must also include an HTML alternative within the page. Search engines also can’t read JavaScript and therefore the page that relies on it won’t get indexed.

Get accepted by the directories

Directories are useful source for one way back links and also for free traffic. There are a lot of free directories available over the web for you to submit your web site. However, by submitting your site to these free directories does not guarantee your web site to get listed. Most of the good directories follow certain guidelines for accepting new sites.

So what could you do to get your site accepted by these free directories. Here are the few ground rules to follow:

1) Use top level domains. E.g. (www.yoursite.com NOT www.yoursite.sales.com OR www.yoursite.com/sales.html)

2) Short and brief title. Choose a title that describes your site in brief. Don't use words like best, cool, hottest, top, largest, your only source and other such terms. Also don't start your title with, The, A, An, or similar.

3) Use capitals in correct places. In your title only capitalize, first letter of the first word and all main words. Don't use capital letters for words and, the, or, for, etc.

4) Write brief and clear description. Usually descriptions that are too short and too long means rejection from directories. Use around 150 to 250 characters to write your description. The rules apply to your title also apply to your description.

5) Don't start your description with phrases like "this web site" or "this blog". The readers already know it is a web site or blog. Also, don't include the site title in your description.

6) Don't include price, special offers or any similar sort of information in your title or description. Also don't use marketing slogans.

7) Avoid using free email accounts such as AOL, yahoo, hotmail, and msn. People usually use these free emails for spam listings. So, many major directories will not accept you if you use free email accounts.

8) Finally, have content in your site. Just don't submit a site, where it has only affiliate links.

After following those rules, here are free directories for you to submit your site.

Techonorati Tags: free+directories directory+guidelines

Things to avoid, when exchanging links

In my pervious post, I share my strategy for exchanging links. Also, mentioned that links that point to your site would help you gain better rankings in the search engines. With this in mind some may choose some alternative ways to exchange links with others. However, instead of gaining high positions in the search engines, these alternatives will only damage your current position within the search engines.

Here are few of things you should avoid:

Don’t exchange links with anyone

When you exchange links with others, only choose the ones that are related to topics and content within your site. Try to evaluate the site that you want to exchange link with. Be picky, and don’t rush. Analyse the site; try to understand, how serious is the other site owner with his/her site. Follow the steps that I mentioned in my previous post.

Avoid Link Farms and Link Exchange Sites

Link farms and link exchange networks allow you to exchange links constantly, for the purpose of getting high rankings in the search engines. However, these kinds of services will only damage your position, as most of the major search engines perceive this as Spam.

Don’t post just links to forums and groups

Having your site, as your signature in forums would help you to gain back links and traffic. But, some take this method to extreme and just post their links as a tread. However, you should know that, as well as loosing your membership with that forum, your site would also be reported for spamming.

Tags: link+exchange cons

Link Exchange Strategies

Link exchange is another source for free traffic. Also it helps a lot for Google Page Rank. There are a lot of site owners requesting to exchange links with one another. However, it is almost impossible to get a free link from a site that has high traffic and page rank. So I decided to follow different strategy to exchange links with others. In this post I will explain my strategy on exchanging links.

Identify Similar Sites

One of the first things I do is to identify similar sites to exchange links. You all probably know that exchanging links with similar sites or with site that has additional content to your web site help you more. Also I make sure, the site is not ranked by Google.

Study the Site

After identifying the sites, I start investigating (do some detective work). I read the content, and decide that if it worth exchanging links with.

Check the potentials of the site

After, reading the content and liked what I read, I start checking the potentials of that site. I try to find, if the site owner works as hard as me on his/her site. For this purpose, I use various tools to help me. First tool I use is Alexa for checking traffic rankings. This tool also helps me to find, which web sites link to the one that I want to exchange links with.

The second tool I use is a link popularity tool. With this tool I can find out, number of sites that links to the one that I want to exchange links.

The third thing I do is to check if the major search engines index the site. For this, all I need to do is type site:yoursite.com in the search engine, and this would give me the pages that are indexed.

Write a polite letter

After, I finish my homework and find that the site worth to exchange links, I write a polite letter to the site owner. You can find lots of templates to write link exchange request letters in google.

So that is it. Basically, instead of asking to sites that are already ranked high and also receive lots of traffic, ask the ones that are in the same position as your site is. If they accept, and all their hard work pays off, you will have a link in a site that has good page rank and good traffic. In my next post, I will explain, things to avoid when it comes to link exchange.

Good Luck.

Things to avoid, when using keywords

Keywords are really important, when it comes to getting high positions in the search engines. In my previous post, I explained the effective use of keywords in your site. Also, I mentioned that the misuse of keywords could also get you banned from major search engines. This means search engines wouldn’t send their robots to index your pages, and also they drop your existing indexed pages from their list.

However, some may thing that by using keywords a lot in a website would help you to gain higher positions in the listings. With this in mind, they excessively use keywords or choose other techniques to trick search engine robots. Here are the few of these techniques that you should avoid:

Hiding keywords:

You can hide keywords in your content by changing the color of the keyword text to same color as the background. However, as robots can read the color codes they can understand that you are trying to hide keyword. By doing so, search engine will stop indexing your pages and drop your existing indexed pages from their list.

Using the keywords excessively in the content and the Meta tags:

In my previous post, I mention that the relevance of keyword Meta tag is not as important as before. By dumping too many keywords in the Meta tag, and by repeating the keywords every one or two sentences of your content, will only get you banned. Only include your few (2 or 3) main keywords.


Putting keywords in Meta tags that has no relation with the content:

This technique is used for a website to appear in a search result that has no information associated with the search term. Usually this technique is used together with hiding keywords. The owner of the site places keywords, which are usually popular search terms, in Meta tags. Then, uses these keyword in the content by hiding it.

You should always avoid above actions to gain higher positions. These actions will only get you banned and it will cost dearly. Only include them, where it adds a meaning to your content. In other words use your keywords wisely. Also, you should read this post on effective use of keywords in your website.

Wrapping Text Around Adsense

I know this is off topic and nothing to do with seo or website traffic. But lately I keep getting lots of emails asking me about how did I place adsense code in my posts. So I decided to write a quick post expleining wrapping the text around adsense. Before I start you need to know that I use original Blogger. So the settings might be different with Beta version.

First thing you need to change Enable float alignment to No from dropdown box. You can locate it at Blogger control panel, Settings > Formatting. The Enable float alignment is second from the bottom.

After that is done, go to your Template section. In the Template locate the code saying Begin .post. This is where your post starts. Just find the code that looks like this div class="post-body". It is the 8th line after begin post section.

Right after div tag, insert table and the adsense code inside that table. This is how the code should look like (I can't add full html code here, because Blogger doesn't allow me. Assume these signs <> around table, div, etc.):

/BlogItemTitle
div class="post-body" div
table align="right"
tr
td align="left" Your AdSense Code/td
/tr

/table
$BlogItemBody$
/div
/div