SEO Services-The Complete Reference for search engine optimization

The relative unknown business of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is growing now that so many people are trying to create new income sources online. Home based businesses, generally selling through a web site, find that it is not at all as easy as it may seem and many fail to ever make any money. Those who find a good SEO company see their chances of success increase.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO as it is generally named, helps web masters to increase the number of visitors to their web site. They optimize a web site in order to have it positioned in the top 10 of a search engine result page.

“The logic is simple,” says Peter Faber of seo-works: “A web site that ranks in the top 10 for its important keyword phrases, receives many visitors per day, a web site that doesn't rank high, struggles to make money.”

According to Mike Pass , SEO is an essential part of any home business: “With the search engines being one of primary sources of targeted traffic on the internet, search engine optimization should be an essential part of any home based internet marketing strategy. A knowledgeable search engine optimizer can be your best source of a positive ROI.” (Return On Investment)

Good SEO firms and consultants know that just high rankings isn't enough to be successful on the internet and will often advise web masters to improve their web sites as a total, and to go for more than just for the good positions in the search engines. Leann Pass explains: “Targeted traffic that doesn't convert to sales is worthless. Website design can literally make or break a sale. Visual appeal and ease of navigation are necessities. Present a poorly designed site and your targeted traffic will become your competitor's customer.”

Major Search Engine Tips

Do not use the same word in your meta tags more than three times. Remember most engines are case sensitive, so you can use that to your advantage. Webmaster and webmaster are not the same thing.

Try to put keywords in your body tag as close to the top of the page as possible, you also want to place them as close to each other as possible too.

Try to use as many keyword s in your links as possible.

Backup your keywords that are in your meta tags, by placing the same words in your body tag. Never place a keyword just in the meta tag. In fact, some engines will not even consider a word keyword if it is not in both your meta tags and your body tags.

Try to come up with some unusual keyword, that not too many other webmasters have thought of. But make sure it is still specific and still relates to the topic of your site.

Put keywords in your 'Alt' tags.

Having links to other sites on your page can boost your ranking.

Do not submit the same page more than once in a day to each major engine, you could get kicked out for good.

A doorway page is a good idea to rank higher in the search engines. You can make it "search engine friendly".

Never have text the same color as the page background or table background. That's a really big no,no and it could get you kicked out of the engine for good and is considered spamming. I used to think this was a good idea until I actually did get kicked out of a search engine.

Update some of your pages at least every 30 days because some search engines will rank you higher for doing that.

Some search engines base your ranking on how many clicks your site gets from their engine or how many times you come up in their search results, so the more clicks or exposures your site gets the higher you can rank.

A lot of Search Engines don't like it when pages 'meta refresh' really fast and might rank you lower for that.

Use keywords in your title, meta description, meta keywords, and body tags.

I suggest only using 5 of the same keyword in the body tag, if you use more than that you are risking getting kicked out of the engine for spamming.

How To Put A Site Online And Make Money From It

Once you have done all of your planning your will then need to design your site. There are many good tutorials around on the web that will help you in designing your website. Once you have designed your website you will then need to consider, which web hosting provider you are going to use for your website. There is a large amount of different type of web hosting providers across the web. Some are very good and reliable and some are not so good or reliable.

So one of the best places to start when looking for a web hosting provider is to us a web hosting directory like some sites just so that you can search for the best web hosting plan for your sites needs. Once you have narrowed down your search and have found a handful of web hosting providers that will be right for you, the best thing to do then is to go to an online forum associated with web hosting. You can then ask others what they think of your chosen web hosting providers so that you have other peoples opinions, which will then give you a better idea of whether they are reliable web hosting providers or not.

So now that you have chosen your web hosting provider you will then need to add something to your site, which will make you some money. One good thing to do is to sell your own products, but if you can't do this then you can always join affiliate programs and use them on some pages of your site, if not all. To easily find some affiliate programs for your sites topic it is best to use an affiliate programs directory like some sites. When adding the affiliate programs to your site you must incorporate them so that they look like your own content and are not just a list of affiliate programs links. Doing it this way will more likely result in clickthru's to the affiliate programs site and also result in more sales.

Now once you have done all of the above, you now need to think about your advertising. One of the best ways of getting visitors to your site is through using the major search engines. To do this you will need to work on your websites seo (search engine optimization). Once you can do seo well enough, then your site will rank a lot better in the major search engines, which will then result in you getting a lot more unique visitors to your site. If you can't do seo that entire well, then you can also get traffic to your site using other techniques. Some of these include:

1. Adding your site to free web directories and specialty directories

2. Adding your websites link to your signature in the forums that you use

3. Exchanging links with other websites that are on a similar topic to yours

4. Pay other sites so that they can include your link on theirs

5. Use Pay Per Click Search Engines include Adwords

Once you have done all of the above you will then need to keep working on improving parts of your site that is under performing and also finding out ways of doing things better to increase your sites visitors and earnings even further.

SEO Services-The Complete Reference for search engine optimization

The relative unknown business of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is growing now that so many people are trying to create new income sources online. Home based businesses, generally selling through a web site, find that it is not at all as easy as it may seem and many fail to ever make any money. Those who find a good SEO company see their chances of success increase.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO as it is generally named, helps web masters to increase the number of visitors to their web site. They optimize a web site in order to have it positioned in the top 10 of a search engine result page.

“The logic is simple,” says Peter Faber of seo-works: “A web site that ranks in the top 10 for its important keyword phrases, receives many visitors per day, a web site that doesn't rank high, struggles to make money.”

According to Mike Pass , SEO is an essential part of any home business: “With the search engines being one of primary sources of targeted traffic on the internet, search engine optimization should be an essential part of any home based internet marketing strategy. A knowledgeable search engine optimizer can be your best source of a positive ROI.” (Return On Investment)

Good SEO firms and consultants know that just high rankings isn't enough to be successful on the internet and will often advise web masters to improve their web sites as a total, and to go for more than just for the good positions in the search engines. Leann Pass explains: “Targeted traffic that doesn't convert to sales is worthless. Website design can literally make or break a sale. Visual appeal and ease of navigation are necessities. Present a poorly designed site and your targeted traffic will become your competitor's customer.”

Major Search Engine Tips

Do not use the same word in your meta tags more than three times. Remember most engines are case sensitive, so you can use that to your advantage. Webmaster and webmaster are not the same thing.

Try to put keywords in your body tag as close to the top of the page as possible, you also want to place them as close to each other as possible too.

Try to use as many keyword s in your links as possible.

Backup your keywords that are in your meta tags, by placing the same words in your body tag. Never place a keyword just in the meta tag. In fact, some engines will not even consider a word keyword if it is not in both your meta tags and your body tags.

Try to come up with some unusual keyword, that not too many other webmasters have thought of. But make sure it is still specific and still relates to the topic of your site.

Put keywords in your 'Alt' tags.

Having links to other sites on your page can boost your ranking.

Do not submit the same page more than once in a day to each major engine, you could get kicked out for good.

A doorway page is a good idea to rank higher in the search engines. You can make it "search engine friendly".

Never have text the same color as the page background or table background. That's a really big no,no and it could get you kicked out of the engine for good and is considered spamming. I used to think this was a good idea until I actually did get kicked out of a search engine.

Update some of your pages at least every 30 days because some search engines will rank you higher for doing that.

Some search engines base your ranking on how many clicks your site gets from their engine or how many times you come up in their search results, so the more clicks or exposures your site gets the higher you can rank.

A lot of Search Engines don't like it when pages 'meta refresh' really fast and might rank you lower for that.

Use keywords in your title, meta description, meta keywords, and body tags.

I suggest only using 5 of the same keyword in the body tag, if you use more than that you are risking getting kicked out of the engine for spamming.

How To Put A Site Online And Make Money From It

Once you have done all of your planning your will then need to design your site. There are many good tutorials around on the web that will help you in designing your website. Once you have designed your website you will then need to consider, which web hosting provider you are going to use for your website. There is a large amount of different type of web hosting providers across the web. Some are very good and reliable and some are not so good or reliable.

So one of the best places to start when looking for a web hosting provider is to us a web hosting directory like some sites just so that you can search for the best web hosting plan for your sites needs. Once you have narrowed down your search and have found a handful of web hosting providers that will be right for you, the best thing to do then is to go to an online forum associated with web hosting. You can then ask others what they think of your chosen web hosting providers so that you have other peoples opinions, which will then give you a better idea of whether they are reliable web hosting providers or not.

So now that you have chosen your web hosting provider you will then need to add something to your site, which will make you some money. One good thing to do is to sell your own products, but if you can't do this then you can always join affiliate programs and use them on some pages of your site, if not all. To easily find some affiliate programs for your sites topic it is best to use an affiliate programs directory like some sites. When adding the affiliate programs to your site you must incorporate them so that they look like your own content and are not just a list of affiliate programs links. Doing it this way will more likely result in clickthru's to the affiliate programs site and also result in more sales.

Now once you have done all of the above, you now need to think about your advertising. One of the best ways of getting visitors to your site is through using the major search engines. To do this you will need to work on your websites seo (search engine optimization). Once you can do seo well enough, then your site will rank a lot better in the major search engines, which will then result in you getting a lot more unique visitors to your site. If you can't do seo that entire well, then you can also get traffic to your site using other techniques. Some of these include:

1. Adding your site to free web directories and specialty directories

2. Adding your websites link to your signature in the forums that you use

3. Exchanging links with other websites that are on a similar topic to yours

4. Pay other sites so that they can include your link on theirs

5. Use Pay Per Click Search Engines include Adwords

Once you have done all of the above you will then need to keep working on improving parts of your site that is under performing and also finding out ways of doing things better to increase your sites visitors and earnings even further.

The 7 Steps Of Mega Adsense Earners

Google AdSense plan is like finding money in the street.

Kids in High School are making thousands of dollars a month with Adsense. Housewives, Retiree's, Mom and Pop's who've never made a dime on the Internet have created complete moment incomes by merely placing AdSense Ads on their network place or blog.

Then you have the "Super AdSense" earners. We have all heard of them. the Elite few who are on course to have half a million dollars a year or much promoting AdSense sites.

Do not be mistaken though. these folk are not building like your Mom and Pop's do. They have systems in spot that produce sites for them. folk who construct sites for them. they have outsourced and automated many of the boring tasks such as posting to blogs and searching for keywords.

While most folk cannot emulate everything these Super AdSense earners do. many of them you can.

Here are 7 Required Steps you can enforce today to duplicate their success.

1) Starting today... treat your AdSense business like it is a REAL business and track what you do.

Begin tracking what you are doing that works... as well as what you are doing that does not work. This will keep you from making the same mistakes over and over, and you can repeat the steps that have worked in the past. As simple as this step seems... most people do not know the reason(s) to their success or failure.

2) Utilize the latest tools and software available.
The Super AdSense earners are not any smarter than your average person. I know many people think they are... but for the most part, they are regular non techie people.
They are smarter in one respect though... they use the latest tools available to them to automate most of the tasks involved with researching and creating sites. They use the latest keyword, site creation and search engine optimization tools available. The tools they use are their secret weapons.

3) Quit chasing the Mega Dollar keywords.

You cannot compete with the search engine experts who create sites for the $80 payout keywords. You may get lucky every now and then... but in the long run, you are better off building sites for the low to mid range payout keywords. The competition is less, and your chance of success is much higher over the long term.

4) Choose broad niches and break it down.

Choose a broad subject as your main theme (lets use computers for an example). From there... break it down into as many sub niches as possible.
Using Computers as the example... you could build sub niches/sites like laptop computers, computer hard drives, computer keyboards, etc, etc. You could literally build hundreds of sites around one major theme and stay totally focused. Once you have exhausted every possible sub niche of that major theme... choose another main theme and repeat the process.

5) KISS

Keep your sites easy to navigate and forget the fancy graphics that distract your visitors attention. Unless you are just building AdSense sites for the fun of it and to impress your friends... the purpose of having the site is to have people click on one of the ads, right? Then keep the site layout simple... dump the scrolling banners, dancing chickens and colored scroll bars... they are distractions.

6) What is the purpose of your web site?

Your web site cannot be everything to everybody. If you have a full fledged ecommerce site, with products for sale... links to other products, it is not a good site for AdSense. If the primary focus of the site is to sell products... let it do that.

Do not distract or confuse your visitor with to many options or choices. The best AdSense sites are AdSense only content sites that sell nothing. They are sites that "Tell"... not "Sell."

7) Be consistent.

This is not one of those deals where you build one site and you are done. Refer back to Step #4. You must continuously build in order to be successful.

Think of it as planting a crop that you will harvest in a month or two, and the sites you build are seeds. Once the seeds have grown and matured... you will reap the harvest. The more seeds you plant... the larger the harvest.

To sum it up... utilize the tools available to automate as much of the process of building sites - doing research and building keyword lists as you can. This alone will help keep you organized and on track. Be consistent in building... treat it like the business it is and you will reap the rewards of your harvest.

Tips for Link Building

The search engines (SEs) have evolved over the time and will carry on growing in the years to arrive. Google is by far the utmost along the evolutionary path. If your site is in a competitive search field then you in reality have no choice. Without a large amount of links to your site, you have very little option of achieving high search engine rankings. The following are a few suggestions on how to make efficient SEO links while minimizing the danger of having your hand slapped by the search engines.

The search engines look for proof of unnatural behavior, coz if you Contrast your link title text. In a perfect world, the SEs would like to observe all links gained naturally. Since it would be highly unlikely for a large number of individuals to link to your site using the same link text you should vary your own link text. Google is likely receiving better at analyzing the text surrounding a link, when you Contrast your link descriptions. Again it would be abnormal to always have the exact similar text. The similar descriptions could also trip duplicate content filters. It is broadly believed that a link from a website in the same field is much more valuable than a dissimilar link (most applicable for Google and Yahoo). Perhaps too many dissimilar links can even get you a penalty. So you should seek links from correlated sites.

You should have a few of your links pointing to interior pages of your websites, rather than have all you links pointing to your home page. Again, naturally attained links will seldom all point to your homepage. Having links pointing to your interior pages will also help your SE results. Links from authority sites will provide much more weight than non-authority sites. We can only guess at what sites might be considered authorities. Google seems to favor .gov and .edu sites.
Links from older; more established sites will provide more weight (applicable to Google) It is believed that the higher a link is on the upper half of the page the more weight it will provide. Links located within content will give more weight than links in the margins or footers of a site. It is feasible that sites with numerous reciprocal links incur a penalty.

The need of SEO

The following article shows the need of seo, especially for internet business. For example Running a small business or launching a start-up company is very time overwhelming. In Most of the time it feels as if there aren't sufficient hours in the day to acquire the job done. Because of this, lots of small businesses omit some of the majority vital details in securing their achievement.

Market research is one of these crucial steps that many businesses omit. How can you go ahead with a plan to sell a product when you Don't know what keywords to use in your marketing campaigns? Download the keywords your competitors use. How can you set a price when you don't even know your customer's price sensitivity or your competitors' prices? Market research, although time consuming and often not there by small companies, is principally essential to guarantee a business's achievement.

Market research is the procedure of collecting data on customers, competitors, advertising and sales channels, and the forces distressing your business. End user research typically contains data on fundamental consumer characteristics and their buying activities. Opponent research includes gathering data on product lines and pricing, competitors' current advertisements, and some perceptual mapping. Channel research just means that you have to view the overall picture. How do you in shape into the industry value chain? Who are the finest suppliers, distributors, and retailers? How will your product reach the end consumer? Finally, gathering industry research involves analyzing Porter's Five Forces along with market history and probable forecasts. Legalities and any political issues that may concern your business fit in here as well. To do all these things successively, SEO is the ultimate solution.

Have you still surprise what the principal SEO myths are? I have taken the majority widespread mythology that appear to be continuously resurfacing and examined them for you. This is being required to read for anybody looking to employ an SEO firm or someone looking to do SEO for themselves.

The difficulty with hiring someone in home is that they are salaried hourly or by pay. Most SEO firms charge per item or assignment. It doesn't issue how long it takes us; you pay a one time charge. When you appoint a firm, it's like having a set of SEO experts on your payroll. Paying a flat fee saves you money and speeds up the time it takes to complete a job. Moreover, the majority SEO firms have specialists who write down, submit, decorate sites, post pages, etc... Hiring one person who can accomplish all these things expertly is highly unlikely. SEO, in the majority cases, it should be performed on a month to month basis with a mutual understanding of the objectives and relative timetable.

In today's business world, you must have a web site. After all, your competition does. Your site must be marketed ethically and monitored each day. Changes must be made ASAP when environment change. Hire a professional to handle SEO like me. They will need total access to your web site and server to make the needed changes. When your business is booming, it's too easy to put SEO on the back burner. Before you know it, your rankings will have dropped from top to bottom, as well as your bottom line.

When you look for seo sites that may be offer Top Ranking at Search Engines. Don't be fooled by such hype. These are short term solutions that can lead to a permanent ban in the top engines. I am not like that. I will provide a steady improvement at constant phase. It will take some time.

Google Alerts

Google releases more new products and services like Google Calendar and Google Video, to Google Base, Google Finance etc. One of the oft unnoticed hidden gems in Google's massive offering is Google Alerts. It has lot of useful alerts about relevant Google results. They are

• monitoring a developing news story

• keeping current on a competitor or industry

• getting the latest on a celebrity or event

• keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams

To use the google alerts, we have to signup in google alert service. Google Alerts can be used to secret agent on competitors, keep track of what people are saying about your business, or follow an important news story. Google Alerts sends you an email each moment a new page for your chosen term makes it in the peak twenty results on Google's web search. To sign up for a Google Alert, all that you require to do is visit the Google Alerts homepage, enter the search term, type of alert (search Google News, Google Groups, or the web), occurrence of emails (daily, as it happens, or weekly), and your email address. You can put up alerts for as many terms as you like using a Google Account.

Every business has a competitor. Further possible, you have several direct competitors and several more indirect competitors. While regularly checking out their websites is an important part of the process, it doesn't provide a whole picture. A competitor's website is immensely crafted to the image that they want to depict to their customers. This is good if you seek to recognize what their latest sale is or how much their new product costs, but it isn't likely to feature a negative review in last Sunday's newspaper. By merely setting upward News, Groups, and hunt alarm for each of your competitors, you will recognize what new folk are saying about your contest – both the media and consumers, both better and terrible.

Equally as significant as what people are saying about your contest is what people are saying about your industry in general. By receiving alerts on vital key words associated to your industry, you can be on top of any unexpected changes and react accordingly. By the moment your contest realizes what's happening they will be scrambling to arrest upward to you. By receiving alerts, you can be on side of anything unfavorable relating to you or your job, and hopefully nip any trouble in the bud before it grows overly big. On the flip side, there's nothing better than receiving an alert alarm where somebody praises your business. Those are the types of things that you seek to have certain are on the PR page of your business website.In this progressively more competitive business world, you need each and every leg up on your competition that you can get. Google Alerts can be a tremendously competent way to track what's going on across the web. The alternative would be to search each term every day for new updates

How To Avoid Getting Your Adsense Account Terminated

Google, being the undisputable leader in search engines from then until now, is placing a high importance on the quality and relevancy of its search engines। Most especially now that the company is public property। In order to keep the shareholders and users of its engines happy, the quality of the returned results are given extreme importance.

For this same reason, doing the wrong things in the Adsense and other forms of advertisements, whether intentionally or unintentionally, will result in a severe penalty, may get you banned and even have your account terminated. Nothing like a good action taken to keep wrongdoers from doing the same things over again.

So for those who are thinking of getting a career in Adsense, do not just think of the strategies you will be using to generate more earnings. Consider some things first before you actually get involved.

Hidden texts. Filling your advertisement page with texts to small to read, has the same color as the background and using css for the sole purpose of loading them with rich keywords content and copy will earn you a penalty award that is given to those who are hiding links.
Page cloaking. There is a common practice of using browser or bot sniffers to serve the bots of a different page other than the page your visitors will see. Loading a page with a bot that a human user will never see is a definite no-no. This is tricking them to click on something that you want but they may not want to go to.

Multiple submissions. Submitting multiple copies of your domain and pages is another thing to stay away from. For example, trying to submit a URL of an Adsense as two separate URL’s is the same as inviting trouble and even termination. Likewise, this is a reason to avoid auto submitters for those who are receiving submissions. Better check first if your domain is submitted already an a certain search engine before you try to submit to it again. If you see it there, then move on. No point contemplating whether to try and submit there again.

Link farms. Be wary of who and what are you linking your Adsense to. The search engines know that you cannot control your links in. But you can certainly control what you link to. Link farming has always been a rotten apple in the eyes of search engines, especially Google. That is reason enough to try and avoid them. Having a link higher than 100 on a single page will classify you as a link farm so try and not to make them higher than that.

Page rank for sale. If you have been online for quite some time, you will notice that there are some sites selling their PR links or trading them with other sites. If you are doing this, expect a ban anytime in the future. It is okay to sell ads or gain the link. But doing it on direct advertisement of your page rank is a way to get on search engines bad side.

Doorways. This is similar to cloaking pages. The common practice of a page loaded with choice keyword ads aimed at redirecting visitors to another “user-friendly” page is a big issue among search engines. There are many seo firms offering this kind of services. Now that you know what they actually are, try to avoid them at all costs.

Multiple domains having the same content. In case you are not aware of it, search engines look at domains IP’s, registry dates and many others. Having multiple domains having the same exact content is not something you can hide from them. The same goes with content multiplied many times on separate pages, sub domains and forwarding multiple domains to the same content.

Many of the above techniques apply to most search engines and is not entirely for Google only. By having a mind set that you are building your Adsense together with your pages for the human users and not for bots, you can be assured of the great things for your ads and sites.

Grand Slam SEO! Can My Site Rank Well on all Four Major Engines?

One of the most frequently asked questiôns readers and clients ask, revolves around how websites can be best optimized to meet the algorithmic needs of each of the major 4 search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Though there have been wide sweeping changes in the organic search engine landscape over the past six months, the fundamental ways search engines operate remains the same.

This question, or variants on it, reflects a shared notion among some webmasters that SEO driven placements at one search engine might come at the expense of high rankings across the other search engines. As the thinking goes, the techniques used to make a well optimized website rank well at Google might somehow prevent that same site from achieving high rankings at Yahoo, MSN and/or Ask. Alternately, webmasters and advertisers who already have great placements at Google but not at the others appear wary of sacrificing their Google rankings in pursuit of higher placements on Yahoo, MSN or Ask.

The differences between how each engine works appears to be causing a bit of confusion among webmasters and search marketers, especially regarding how to optimize well for all four at the same time.

Techniques that work on one engine might not work as well on another. In some extreme cases, techniques that work brilliantly with old school engines like MSN and Ask, and even with the invigorated Yahoo, are a kin to a kiss of death on Google.

There is one search engine friendly site design and optimization philosophy that works, almost every time, without fail. Good content, smart networking, and persistence over time. A well constructed website, or one that has been treated by a good search engine optimizer, should be able to rank well on all major search engines, provided that site has useful, relevant information to express.

Questiôns about ranking well on all four engines brings up some of the basic differences between the major search engines and, in light of so much change in the sector over the past few months, a look at what search engines look at, and how they do it seems in order.

There are a lot of differences between the major search engines but, by and large, they all gather information the same way. Each major search engine uses unique spider agents known as Googlebot, Slurp (Yahoo/Inktomi), Ask.com/Teoma, and MSNbot, (updated l¡st @ Wikipedia ), that find information by following links from document to document across the web. Spiders are designed to revisit sites on a semi-regular basis as well, though they often hit the index (or home) page more often than other pages. Spiders do tend to dig deeper looking for changes to internal documents based on changes to the index (or home) page. This allows the engines to maintain rapidly updating versions of the web, or parts of the web, in separate proprietary databases.

Each search database has its own characteristics and most importantly, each engine has its own algorithms for sorting and ranking web documents.

Getting information into those databases is the first stage of SEO. The site needs to be constructed (or reconstructed) in such a way as to allow search spiders to easily read and absorb the information and content contained on them.

Assuming realistic expectations and goal setting are already part of the equation, the success or failure of any multi-engine optimization campaign is dependent on the type of site being marketed, as much as it depends on methods and techniques used to market it. If the ultimate goal is strong search engine placements across all major search engines, a few compromises in style might be a temporary necessity in order to expose the great content and reap the rewards of multiple rankings.

Before beginning the building or construction of a site, having a working knowledge of the major on and off-site elements each search engine looks at when examining and evaluating a site and its contents is a key starting point.

There are two overarching areas all search engines examines when ranking a web document or site known as "on-page? and "off-page". As their names indicate, search engines examine factors and elements that occur on the document or site in question as well as factors and elements occurring on other documents and sites related by links or by topical theme.

While the search algorithms of each engine might differ in the number of factors found on or off page and the overall importance of those factors, they all examine generally similar sets of data when deciding which should rank where in relation to whatever search-queries are entered.

For example, Google loves links, as does Yahoo, MSN and to a lesser degree, Ask. MSN and Ask are considered to be old school search engines, allowing simpler SEO techniques to work quite well, as they still do with Yahoo.

On-page factors are generally found in one of four areas, Titles, Tags, Text and Structure, while off-page elements tend to involve links, locality, search-user behaviours and the performänce of competing sites.

Here is a thumbnail breakdown the most important factors each search engine considers, roughly laid-out in order of importance

Google: Incoming Links, On-page SEO, Site Design Spiderability, User analytics, Outgoing links, Inclusion in other Google indexes, Document Histories

Yahoo: On-page SEO, Links and Link Patterns, Site Design, User analytics, Inclusion in other Yahoo indexes, Document Footprints

MSN: On-page SEO, Site Design and Structure and Sipderability

Ask: On-page SEO, Site Design, Site Structure and Spiderability

Because Google drives approximately 50% of all organic search träffic, SEOs, webmasters, and search advertisers tend to be most concerned with Google placements. When planning a search optimization campaign, whether for a new site or in the redevelopment of an existing site, building around Google's needs is obviously the most logical path. It is also a smart way to find your way into the other search engines. Though each of the rival engines want to present the best possible results, Google's algorithms account for quality scoring to a deeper degree than the others do. In other words, if your site meets Google's various tests, it will likely meet those of the other engines.

Google puts an enormous weight on its evaluation of the network of links leading to and out from every web document in its index. Most, if not all, documents found in Google's index got there because Google's spider Googlebot found it by following an inbound link. Because its ranking algorithm is so heavily link dependent, Google is frequently forced to tinker with how it evaluates links, a process that generates a score known as PageRank. The basic wisdom on links says that incoming links from topically relevant sites are beneficial while those placed in order to get a better ranking at Google are not. Google also examines links on a document or site that are directed towards other sites in order to gauge if a webmaster is trying to game it or not by participating in link-networking schemes. To one degree or another, the three other major search engines do this as well, though MSN and Ask are not known for using link analysis as a wëighty measure of site or document relevancy. Yahoo most certainly does. Link analysis is used to determine the seriousness and credibility of a web document by comparing it with other documents it is associated with.

Once a document exists in a search engine database, several on-page factors are examined. The engines tend to examine several elements of any particular document and the sites they are associated with including title, meta tags (in some cases), body text and other content, and internal site structure.

The key to providing search spiders with a strong on-page experience lies in presenting search spiders with a well designed, topically focused site. Again, remember the four basic on-page areas; titles, tags, text and site structure, creating documents that are friendly to all four search engines is not terribly difficult.

There are a few easy tips that should be kept in mind though. New websites should always introduce themselves to the search engines with very focused content expressed on a very basic site structure. Adding content as time goes forward is a much better way to feed search spiders than giving them a site that is already full of information. Search engines, especially Yahoo and Google, appreciate fresh content and can be "invited" back to a site again and again when new material is added.

Webmasters with pre-existing websites enjoying great rankings in one place but seeing sub-standard rankings in others should take a step back and re-evaluate the overall theme presented by the documents that make up their sites. In a technically perfect world, the most relevant and topical documents would reach the top of the rankings. As the search engines really are striving for a measure of technical perfection, ensuring your documents are tightly and topically focused is essential.

For those who have lost position at Google but not at the other search engines recently, chêck your link networks for undesirable connections. Good placement at MSN, Ask and Yahoo but sub-standard placement at Google is almost always a signal that some links going to or coming from your site have raised questiôns at Google. You should also chêck the content your site carries to be sure it is (as much as possible), original and not simply a copy of content found on other sites.

In the end, the best practices tend to wìn with the major search engines. A good website or document should be able to place well across all four engines at the same time, provided the webmaster or SEO specialist takes time to follow SEO best practices.

Google adding adsense for audio

It's funny how a whisper can sometimes push a hurricane; expect one to swirl up by Monday. The rumor, as was whispered into the ear of a DM News reporter, is that Google is about to undergo a major corporate restructuring just as they prepare to release AdSense for Audio.

Giselle Abramovich floated out a rumor post on Tuesday, the steady crescendo of which has expanded to discussion on at least five other well-known blogs.

According to Abramovich, Google "is a bout to set up an IBM-like structure. What this means is that there would be one global account director per account, that pulls in resources to sell as needed - PPC, Print, Radio, Video, Display, etc."

And the blogosphere went flashback-squiggly, hearkening back to Google's acquisitions of dMarc and YouTube. That was a dawning for some, but for the others, it became a cat's-out-of-the bag situation. Abramovich's little leak became a spilling of guts, moving bloggers to tell what they know.

ThoughtShapers.com's Jeff Molander was quick to quote three credible sources as the benefactor of what appear to be planned Google leaks. As David Utter reported, these leaks have been more prevalent in the past week, an apparent new Google strategy to gauge reaction before official release. Molander then expounds on the audio component of Google's master plan.

AdSense for Audio would place contextual ads alongside podcasts, and perhaps other streaming media (like that found on YouTube), all the way…perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…to radio and television. MTV is already on board.

Just to add to the speculation, I'm submitting Google has a killer audio-recognition technology that won't rely on spidered transcripts. Remember the application that can listen to your television and serve up advertising?

As Google turns you can feel the fabric of the media tear beneath your feet.

eWeek's Steve Bryant says he's been holding out for months, but in light of Molander's post, felt he needed to come clean.

Earlier this year, Google contracted with several podcast engineers to help them develop Google AdSense for Audio. According to one source the product was originally slated for a 3Q release, but apparently it slipped behind a month or so.

There may also be an mp3 player in the works, but that could be the most speculative of all. But Bryant's thoughts that this podcast search and ad technology could be integrated into mobile services, Gmail, Google Talk, and Google Desktop is probably right on the money.

topix worries about google trafic

After paying $1 million to purchase the rights to the Topix.com domain, Topix.net CEO Rich Skrenta now has to deal with a couple of daily realities in the search world: changing domains could cause a dropoff in search engine-driven traffic, and Google isn't exactly Nordstrom or L.L. Bean when it comes to customer service. Several top level domains have come along in recent years to complement the .com, .net, and .org that have been available to the public.

Dot com started life as the domain for commercial organizations, and over the years has become the must-have domain for one's business name. Topix has been Topix.net for quite some time. Skrenta wants the dot com credibility, not to mention making it easier for people to find the news aggregator site. When it comes to the Web, people tend to think in terms of dot com.

Skrenta told the Wall Street Journal about the concerns he has with the change. Sites that make name changes without accounting for the ways search engines look for them could make a website invisible to searchers. Redirection, particularly the issues with using 302 redirects, has been an issue of contention between webmasters and Google in particular. As the dominant search engine, Google can determine a website's success.

Skrenta fears what a mishap with redirecting people from Topix.net to Topix.com could do for the site: Even if traffic to Topix, which gets about 10 million visitors a month, dropped just 10%, that would essentially be a 10% loss in ad revenue, Mr. Skrenta says. "Because of this little mechanical issue, it could be a catastrophe for us," he says. Skrenta also experienced the palpable frustration shared by many site publishers when dealing with Google: Further frustrating him is that Google's response to Topix's plea for help was an email recommending that, if the switchover were to go badly, the company should post a message on an online user-support forum; a Google engineer might come along to help out. "This can't be the process," Mr. Skrenta says. "You're cast into this amusing, Kafkaesque world to run your business." Amusing, maybe, but no one at Topix will be laughing if Topix vanishes from the Google realm. In the same article, Google's Matt Cutts said the post-and-wait support strategy 'is more reliable than it sounds.' Fortunately, the issue of pleasing the search engines with a redirect can be addressed.

Search engines like 301 redirects, which unlike the 302 redirect tells the search engine crawler that the redirect is permanent. WebProNews Blog Talk contributor Eric Enge discussed 301 redirects in a recent article. In Google, a site Enge moved managed to be recognized properly within two to three weeks. Skrenta probably will choke on a Pop Tart at the prospect of two to three weeks of uneven traffic. But we see no reason to think Matt isn't giving Topix good advice, so perhaps Skrenta should just drop in on the relevant Google Group and send out the SOS.