You need to be clear about what you want in your life. Make sure you know what your goals, dreams and aspirations are - all the Universe needs is clarity, and it will help you achieve success.
When starting a journey, you need to know where you are going. If not, you'll just end up wandering around aimlessly, getting lost. You'll never get anywhere if you don't know where it is you are going.
Creating clear objectives is like identifying your destination and is a key element in achieving your goals. But your motivations have to be right too.
Common things we might want in life include more money, a better job, and even to be a nicer person. But these are not places that we can travel to on our journey. They are just general areas, like counties or states - not towns and villages. We need to be more precise about what we are asking for.
These are common wishes and dreams:
More Money
Even apparently wealthy people wish for this. The amount of money you need is always equal to or less than the amount of money you spend. It's possible to get all the money you need -- but you have to be very precise about how much and what for.
More Love
Most of us crave a warm and loving relationship and many of us have someone in mind. However, that "someone" might not have the same feelings for us as we do for them. It might be a wish of ours that they develop these feelings for us.
With desires of this kind it is always better to concentrate on yourself, rather than the other person. For example, if you wanted a spell cast, it might be better to cast a spell on yourself to be more loved, rather than cast a spell on them to love you more.
A Better Job
Your job might be dirty, tiring, physically demanding, dangerous or not challenging. It might be the commuting, or the fact that you are away from your family more than you would like. It might also be the people you work with.
If you are clear about your motivations then you can be clear about what you want. Start at your ideal job situation -- then stop. That is what you want. It might not mean changing jobs at all.
Remember that you might never be an astronaut, or a Supermodel.
More Friends
Being well liked popular is a need within us all. The motivation is clear.
Again, you will need to concentrate on yourself rather than others. The source of popularity is within you, and you have the power to achieve this more easily than you think.
Being a Nicer Person
This is not the commonest desire that people have, but it is the easiest to achieve, and better than that - having achieved it, all your other wishes and dreams will rush to you like a flood!
Being clear, honest and true about what you want in life is difficult. We make assumptions about what will make us happy. We take these lessons from the media mostly, but also from those around us. We assume that things that make others happy will make us happy too.
People rarely sit back and consider what they themselves really want in their life. Part of the reason for this is because they are afraid. They fear many things. They are afraid that they won't ever get what they want, they fear that if they get it, it won't make them happy.
Don't be afraid, but be careful what you wish for!
Monday, December 8, 2008
Marketing Methods You Need To Know
Allow me to briefly outline a marketing method that will get people to your blog or website guaranteed. If you have tried pay-per click, search engine optimization, and some of the other more costly ways of generating traffic to your website you are going to like what I am about to share with you no matter what result you've received with those other methods that I just described.
Imagine if you could drive quality, targeted website traffic to your blog or website when ever you wanted. No, not bulk traffic or pop-up page views, none of that stuff. There is no trickery involved in Click Thru Marketing.
There are hungry communities of like minded bloggers, marketers, customers, clients and just flat out curious people in the many traffic exchange communities that exist on the world wide web today.
Here are four quick ways to market your blog or website that will multiply what ever method of advertising that you are currently using.
Manual Traffic Exchanges are free to join and allow you to get set up and Display your blog or website in just minutes.
Blog specific Exchanges allow you to drive traffic to your blog in a similar manner however these exchanges only allow you to exchange blog related websites.
Paid or Pro Traffic Exchanges have a low-cost fee to join usually $5 to $10 dollars for Lifetime membership and these exchanges are normally more exclusive and targeted.
Finally, Auto-Exchanges exist and allow you to display your website automatically however the drawback to this method is you do not know if some one else is really viewing your webpage.
No matter what methods you are currently using give exchange marketing a try you might be surprised with your results and you may find that is is time well spent.
Imagine if you could drive quality, targeted website traffic to your blog or website when ever you wanted. No, not bulk traffic or pop-up page views, none of that stuff. There is no trickery involved in Click Thru Marketing.
There are hungry communities of like minded bloggers, marketers, customers, clients and just flat out curious people in the many traffic exchange communities that exist on the world wide web today.
Here are four quick ways to market your blog or website that will multiply what ever method of advertising that you are currently using.
Manual Traffic Exchanges are free to join and allow you to get set up and Display your blog or website in just minutes.
Blog specific Exchanges allow you to drive traffic to your blog in a similar manner however these exchanges only allow you to exchange blog related websites.
Paid or Pro Traffic Exchanges have a low-cost fee to join usually $5 to $10 dollars for Lifetime membership and these exchanges are normally more exclusive and targeted.
Finally, Auto-Exchanges exist and allow you to display your website automatically however the drawback to this method is you do not know if some one else is really viewing your webpage.
No matter what methods you are currently using give exchange marketing a try you might be surprised with your results and you may find that is is time well spent.
Does Spam Works?
Receiving spam mails everyday is very irritating. All of us had experienced receiving a lot of unsolicited emails from mostly anonymous sources, those that are not requested by you. The topics of the emails vary, mostly ranges from a product promotions, profile updates from people you don't know and even pornographic articles. Sending spam mails is actually illegal in most countries, and it hogs bandwidth across the Net and it clogs up inboxes. It is very annoying that a lot of internet services received a lot of complaints about these mails.
Spam mails come unsolicited, mostly untargeted, as they always nearly come from anonymous sources directed towards a recipient that doesn't have any relationship with the sender. As a result, most recipients are more likely being offended by them. For this reason, sending spam mails doesn't aim at building a relationship that can eventually lead to sale.
The key to success in email marketing is not to send spam mails for people to know about your product. The foundation of a successful email marketing is to create a list after building a business relationship with all possible contacts. Everyone on the list has chosen to be there because they've interested in your market, which means they're interested in receiving your emails and so much closer to becoming a customer as a result. They also choose to receive an email every time you have an offer. If you built a list from trust, most likely your email marketing will be successful
Spam mails come unsolicited, mostly untargeted, as they always nearly come from anonymous sources directed towards a recipient that doesn't have any relationship with the sender. As a result, most recipients are more likely being offended by them. For this reason, sending spam mails doesn't aim at building a relationship that can eventually lead to sale.
The key to success in email marketing is not to send spam mails for people to know about your product. The foundation of a successful email marketing is to create a list after building a business relationship with all possible contacts. Everyone on the list has chosen to be there because they've interested in your market, which means they're interested in receiving your emails and so much closer to becoming a customer as a result. They also choose to receive an email every time you have an offer. If you built a list from trust, most likely your email marketing will be successful
GAINGING TIPS TO TRAFFIC
Creating traffic is not necessarily a matter of buying ads or taking a traditional approach. You can follow all these suggestions for creating traffic, but if there is no reason for people to be there when they get there, they will leave in a hurry. Inbound links are an important part of creating traffic for a web site and search engines such as Alta Vista like sites with lots of inbound links. Keeping information fresh on a website is essential in order to build revenue creating traffic. Expert website design is an essential element for effective online marketing and creating traffic for your internet marketing operation. Online games have proven to be a popular and effective way of creating traffic to a website, especially if offered with a monthly prize for the highest score.
Content
And you must remain interactive, constantly updated with fresh content, and on the cutting edge of what you do, or your competitors will eat you up. Search engines hate any attempt made by Webmasters to manipulate pages optimized with content unrelated to the actual Web site. Some Webmasters were guilty of all types of trickery to try and attract clicks regardless of the site content. What pages the Search Engines LOVE: Search engines love pages that far "information rich" and contain useful, original content that will actually make valued reading to the online visitors. Instead of lightweight pages with no content, today's pages need to contains high quality information, which is relevant to the online audience.
Audience
People need to understand that this is wide open to all the discoveries you make while researching your target audiences behavior. The focus is on creating genuinely "useful content" for your ideal target audience of "potential customers" who happen to be already out there searching for you. Your audience is probably looking for interesting news if you take time to study what they are searching for. Your information rich pages might want to contain detailed historical information that your audience is seeking. One of the best ways to come come up with original ideas is to think laterally about "your audiences needs" in comparison to how they are searching on the major search engines. In brief, key to success for attracting your target audience, is doing quality research on your target audiences searching. Let your audience see the real you. I think allowing people to know the real me makes it possible to build a relationship with my audience that's based on intimacy and friendship. And thanks to the Internet, it's possible to reach a large audience at extremely low cost.
Link
Write something great about your niche and email other bloggers to let them know there's a good chance they'll link to you to. Have a link to your site on community sites like My Space and FaceBook. Leave comments on other people's blogs and link back to your site (tip: look in the digg upcoming section for blog posts about to get a lot of traffic). Inbound links are an important part of creating traffic for a web site and search engines such as Alta Vista like sites with lots of inbound links. The appropriate exchange of links can build online relationships that will serve future ventures.
Content
And you must remain interactive, constantly updated with fresh content, and on the cutting edge of what you do, or your competitors will eat you up. Search engines hate any attempt made by Webmasters to manipulate pages optimized with content unrelated to the actual Web site. Some Webmasters were guilty of all types of trickery to try and attract clicks regardless of the site content. What pages the Search Engines LOVE: Search engines love pages that far "information rich" and contain useful, original content that will actually make valued reading to the online visitors. Instead of lightweight pages with no content, today's pages need to contains high quality information, which is relevant to the online audience.
Audience
People need to understand that this is wide open to all the discoveries you make while researching your target audiences behavior. The focus is on creating genuinely "useful content" for your ideal target audience of "potential customers" who happen to be already out there searching for you. Your audience is probably looking for interesting news if you take time to study what they are searching for. Your information rich pages might want to contain detailed historical information that your audience is seeking. One of the best ways to come come up with original ideas is to think laterally about "your audiences needs" in comparison to how they are searching on the major search engines. In brief, key to success for attracting your target audience, is doing quality research on your target audiences searching. Let your audience see the real you. I think allowing people to know the real me makes it possible to build a relationship with my audience that's based on intimacy and friendship. And thanks to the Internet, it's possible to reach a large audience at extremely low cost.
Link
Write something great about your niche and email other bloggers to let them know there's a good chance they'll link to you to. Have a link to your site on community sites like My Space and FaceBook. Leave comments on other people's blogs and link back to your site (tip: look in the digg upcoming section for blog posts about to get a lot of traffic). Inbound links are an important part of creating traffic for a web site and search engines such as Alta Vista like sites with lots of inbound links. The appropriate exchange of links can build online relationships that will serve future ventures.
Getting More Hit To Your Site.
Getting hits to your website for free takes significant work. Basically, you need to get your website link on as many relevant websites as you can. So how do you go about doing this? One link at a time. Yes, that is correct - posting one link at a time in blogs, forums or any other type of website where you can add relevant content and post your link.
OK, this is not for everyone, as it takes a lot of work. But, if you are the type of person who is serious about your website and you really want to be a success online, then you need to take note of this and apply yourself everyday.
If you are the lazy type, then this is not going to work for you as it take significant commitment and dedication everyday to apply yourself and post as many backlinks as you possible can on several thousand websites.
The good news is, if you find a relatively unsaturated market, it can be quite easy to get to the number one position on Google for certain keywords. All you really need to do is find the niche you are interested in that is not saturated. This would mean that there are limited results in Google when you search on the term.
Then all you need to do is buy a domain with your keywords in it and then create a website. Add a lot of content to it, generate some backlinks and drive some traffic to it using the best free methods online and before you know it you will be receiving significant traffic.
There are numerous ways to get free traffic, but some of these work much better than others. Really, if you are serious about your online website and need traffic consistently everyday for the long term then you must check out this method. This will get more hits to your website free, guaranteed.
If you are looking to Increase Website Traffic I can show you the only method that actually gets results. This method is very effective in getting a boost of traffic to your website and if you implement it you will see dramatic results.
If you are serious about getting free traffic to your website you need to consider this technique. If you continue doing what you are doing, your results will be the same which are no doubt, terrible. If you want to change your business online and actually start making money you need traffic. No traffic means no profits.
OK, this is not for everyone, as it takes a lot of work. But, if you are the type of person who is serious about your website and you really want to be a success online, then you need to take note of this and apply yourself everyday.
If you are the lazy type, then this is not going to work for you as it take significant commitment and dedication everyday to apply yourself and post as many backlinks as you possible can on several thousand websites.
The good news is, if you find a relatively unsaturated market, it can be quite easy to get to the number one position on Google for certain keywords. All you really need to do is find the niche you are interested in that is not saturated. This would mean that there are limited results in Google when you search on the term.
Then all you need to do is buy a domain with your keywords in it and then create a website. Add a lot of content to it, generate some backlinks and drive some traffic to it using the best free methods online and before you know it you will be receiving significant traffic.
There are numerous ways to get free traffic, but some of these work much better than others. Really, if you are serious about your online website and need traffic consistently everyday for the long term then you must check out this method. This will get more hits to your website free, guaranteed.
If you are looking to Increase Website Traffic I can show you the only method that actually gets results. This method is very effective in getting a boost of traffic to your website and if you implement it you will see dramatic results.
If you are serious about getting free traffic to your website you need to consider this technique. If you continue doing what you are doing, your results will be the same which are no doubt, terrible. If you want to change your business online and actually start making money you need traffic. No traffic means no profits.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
How to make cash with bookmarking your site
Bookmarking your sites, articles and everything else you do online is a great way to get backlinks and drive traffic to your site.
Bookmarking sites are where people go to have a list of their favorite sites online and to share these sites or other related sites with others. These sites can generate traffic to your web site(s) because the bookmarking sites have a very large community. But the most important aspect of this bookmarking sites is that you are getting quality one way backlinks. Backlinks are very important to have if you want to rank high in the search engines for your keywords.
Bookmarking sites can generate traffic more quickly than search engines because they index and categorize content faster than the search engines. So be sure to have a well planned and targeted bookmarking campaign and you will drive free targeted traffic to your web site.
When you start to bookmark everything you do online, here is a few of the main sites that you should be using:
1. Digg - this site is for people to submit stories that they find on the internet. When other people like your story, they digg it. The more diggs a story gets, the higher it is ranked. If you can get enough diggs your story can appear on the front page with the potential of getting thousands of views.
2. Technorati - is one of the main authority sites when it comes to blogs. They monitor the content, comments and links between.
3. Stumble upon - Bookmarking or telling people which web sites that you stumble upon and think are interesting.
4. Del.icio.us - high authority bookmarking site with a large community.
when you are bookmarking be sure to add the correct tags to your bookmarks. This will guarantee that they are seen and will increase links to your site. When adding tags, be sure to pay attention to the format that the site uses.
The two most common formats are comma separated and space separated. Make sure you follow the correct format so you get the full benefit of each bookmark.
Bookmarking your sites manually can be very time consuming. Here are two tools that will help you make the process go a little faster.
1. onlywire.com
2. socialmarker.com
So get started and sign up for accounts at these bookmarking sites and remember to bookmark everything you do online.
Bookmarking sites are where people go to have a list of their favorite sites online and to share these sites or other related sites with others. These sites can generate traffic to your web site(s) because the bookmarking sites have a very large community. But the most important aspect of this bookmarking sites is that you are getting quality one way backlinks. Backlinks are very important to have if you want to rank high in the search engines for your keywords.
Bookmarking sites can generate traffic more quickly than search engines because they index and categorize content faster than the search engines. So be sure to have a well planned and targeted bookmarking campaign and you will drive free targeted traffic to your web site.
When you start to bookmark everything you do online, here is a few of the main sites that you should be using:
1. Digg - this site is for people to submit stories that they find on the internet. When other people like your story, they digg it. The more diggs a story gets, the higher it is ranked. If you can get enough diggs your story can appear on the front page with the potential of getting thousands of views.
2. Technorati - is one of the main authority sites when it comes to blogs. They monitor the content, comments and links between.
3. Stumble upon - Bookmarking or telling people which web sites that you stumble upon and think are interesting.
4. Del.icio.us - high authority bookmarking site with a large community.
when you are bookmarking be sure to add the correct tags to your bookmarks. This will guarantee that they are seen and will increase links to your site. When adding tags, be sure to pay attention to the format that the site uses.
The two most common formats are comma separated and space separated. Make sure you follow the correct format so you get the full benefit of each bookmark.
Bookmarking your sites manually can be very time consuming. Here are two tools that will help you make the process go a little faster.
1. onlywire.com
2. socialmarker.com
So get started and sign up for accounts at these bookmarking sites and remember to bookmark everything you do online.
TIPS TO SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
If social bookmarking is your passion or a job, then there are some tips which can enhance your efforts. Social bookmarking is a well known way of tagging, bookmarking and categorizing links on websites and other repositories online. However, in social bookmarking, it requires contribution of all the users in order to benefit every user. No wonder it is known as social bookmarking. This book marking is nothing similar to the private bookmarking that we all do on our computers and browsers. This is much more intense and effective.
However, what's the best way of doing this? How do you increase the efficiency? Most people do not understand the real importance of social bookmarking. Most layman users wonder about why people go crazy trying to excel at social bookmarking. Entrepreneurs and web experts are constantly trying to improve their skills in social bookmarking while the average Internet user wonders.
The idea is simple. If a website owner's links are constantly bringing traffic or getting popular, then these links will be passed on to millions of other users on the Internet. The more the links become popular, the more the chances of them getting voted in sites like Digg and others. Hence, you will get more traffic and subsequently more business.
So what are the tips to increase your social bookmarking efforts?
Let's say you work on a site called Digg. The first tip is to call up everyone you know including your friends, family and even acquaintances to get Digg accounts. Once you get them signed up, then you can add them as friends on Digg by using the friend function. In this way, when you have a link to submit to the link voting forum, then your friends will be the first to see it. The more friends you have, the more votes you will get.
You can also advertise in webmaster forums marketplace to generate votes for your links. You can take advantage of these services as well.
Your content needs to be interesting and unique. The Internet is all based on content and the more intriguing your content is, better are your chances in the social bookmarking world. You can spice up your content with videos, links and new photographs.
Make sure that you submit your link in the correct category. Sometimes people do everything right but they goof up in the end and submit the link to the incorrect category or section which causes a problem.
In social bookmarking, the more social you are, the better your chances. Work on your profile and have a great avatar. Make friends who share the same ideas and hobbies as you. You can also vote on their sites and stories if you like them. This will increase the possibility of them voting for your links. If they are fake, they may not vote for anyone or vote on every story and link. However, if they do not use discrimination while voting, then the value of their votes will decline.
So use these tips and zip your way to success in the social bookmarking world!
However, what's the best way of doing this? How do you increase the efficiency? Most people do not understand the real importance of social bookmarking. Most layman users wonder about why people go crazy trying to excel at social bookmarking. Entrepreneurs and web experts are constantly trying to improve their skills in social bookmarking while the average Internet user wonders.
The idea is simple. If a website owner's links are constantly bringing traffic or getting popular, then these links will be passed on to millions of other users on the Internet. The more the links become popular, the more the chances of them getting voted in sites like Digg and others. Hence, you will get more traffic and subsequently more business.
So what are the tips to increase your social bookmarking efforts?
Let's say you work on a site called Digg. The first tip is to call up everyone you know including your friends, family and even acquaintances to get Digg accounts. Once you get them signed up, then you can add them as friends on Digg by using the friend function. In this way, when you have a link to submit to the link voting forum, then your friends will be the first to see it. The more friends you have, the more votes you will get.
You can also advertise in webmaster forums marketplace to generate votes for your links. You can take advantage of these services as well.
Your content needs to be interesting and unique. The Internet is all based on content and the more intriguing your content is, better are your chances in the social bookmarking world. You can spice up your content with videos, links and new photographs.
Make sure that you submit your link in the correct category. Sometimes people do everything right but they goof up in the end and submit the link to the incorrect category or section which causes a problem.
In social bookmarking, the more social you are, the better your chances. Work on your profile and have a great avatar. Make friends who share the same ideas and hobbies as you. You can also vote on their sites and stories if you like them. This will increase the possibility of them voting for your links. If they are fake, they may not vote for anyone or vote on every story and link. However, if they do not use discrimination while voting, then the value of their votes will decline.
So use these tips and zip your way to success in the social bookmarking world!
SEO,explained
Well it seems we are getting some fresh blood here lately in the WPW which is a great sign of the forum growth. I think some of the recent posts on WPW are pointing to the need for Newbie thread. I have usually pointed people to the HR newbie thread but I think we could create a useful one here.
I was thinking this thread could serve as great starting point for a recommendations on newbie thread. So if you have a few things that you would tell newbie to do to get kick started in SEO what would it be?
Here are mine:
1. Internal Navigation
Sure the search engines are getting better at learning to crawl complex websites, but you need to make as easy as possible. Avoiding JavaScript, Image Maps, Image Based navigation and session IDs are just a few of the pitfalls many newbie's miss. Create your navigation in CSS or standard text. One way to see if your navigation is easily crawlable is to check the Google cache and click on the link "Click here for the cached text only." If you can see your links in hyperlinked form you are probably ok. This is probably the most universal issue I see as a problem on SEO newbie's and even some of the largest online companies have in common. Get this fixed and do nothing else and you could see large improvements.
2. Why Are you The Best?
Maybe the 2nd most important item in marketing your website online is setting yourself apart. If your just another website that offers DVDs (or whatever) online for the same price as BMG, Best Buy, etc what makes your website better? The internet is network of interesting content, products and services. You must make you content, products and services stand out above the rest. How you do that is another story all together.
3. Links
OK in a perfect world you could make a great website with awesome content and it would rank fine. Our world is hardly perfect and the search engines not even close. The search engine will more than likely use some sort of linking weight in their algorithm, so after you build this great website, let the world know. Contribute in blogs, forums, messages boards relating to your website. Write articles. Contribute to the internet. Become an authority on what your website deals in and before you know it you will be getting those one-way links without even asking for them. This is truly the link you want. Remember their are no short term link building strategies, that work long term.
4. Content
a) OK obviously you cant just have a website made up of images and one sentences on each page. Text is the meat that those search engines love to cook and grub on. The more relevant text you can write on each page the better it is for the search engines and the better it is for your end users. One thing to remember here is not to squeeze to many subjects onto one page. Break pages out as much as possible.
What a great page full of great content, but much different content. The search engines rarely associate many keyword combinations to one page. So break it down for them. Each of the caring tips for the orchids should be broken down into its own page and expanded on even more.
b) I think a second point to consider when writing content is natural langue queries, personalization and local search. these will be the future of the search engine algorithm, so consider them when writing.
c) I will tell you right now. If you don't have a blog create one now. Blogs mean easy in-bound links to you, fresh content, and are easy to crawl, nuff said.
5. Title Tags
Another no-brainer. Looking at the example above, the website owner is not using unique title tags one each page. You must have this throughout your website.
6. Duplication
Sure we have heard all kinds of confusing horror stories on content duplication. Sure you want to avoid doing it, but I have yet to see Google or other search engines actual penalize for it. What the search engines do is rank one page over another and yes sometimes if they find a duplicate they will toss it in the supplemental index. If you call that a penalty fine, but I call it Google choosing one version to rank over another. Make sure you provide them with only one to rank! Also if you write an article just make sure to publish it on your website and WAIT a couple of weeks and then syndicate it. it will give the search engines time to associate you as the author/owner of it.
7. Competition
Please recognize who your competitors are. If you are going head to head with websites that have been online for years and maybe even decades then you should realize your SEO battle will be uphill and difficult.
8. Finance
If you are on a shoe-string budget or just have been burned by SEO's in the past and don't want to invest more money into now, this is OK. But please understand the leg work is now on you. Only expect "high-level" ideas and recommendations from forums. The best thing to do is to dive in and do the work yourself with the support of the forum. Don't rely on the forum as cure for your website marketing sickness, but rather a antibiotic that works within your body to heal.
9. Tracking
You better do it! If you don't know if your website is making you money, then who cares if it is optimized. Who cares if it is ranking? Who cares what Google PR it is? Two hundred #1 rankings mean nothing if you not making money off of them. That mind set is important. If you not tracking leads/sales then start now.
10. History
How long have you been online? Less than a year? More then 5 years? This makes an ENORMOUS difference. I don't care what anyone says. The longer you have been online the more likely you are to have good results. If you still don't have good results and you have been online for a while, don't fret. Your fixes should be take hold quicker in the search engines once you make them.
11. Code Bloat/Download Time
OK I understand you might be a SEO newbie, what do you know about coding websites, let alone inline CSS or JavaScript? Bottom line, your either going to need to learn or get someone who does know. No excuses here. It is becoming more important to have valid and easy to crawl code. I am not saying it is absolutely necessary. I see websites that rank all the time that are ridiculous when it comes to valid code, but if you can fix this, then do it. If should hire someone that will. The second part is to make sure you pages download in a reasonable time. Once again you will find slow websites ranking all the time, but get it fixed not only for the search engines, but for your end users.
12. One Change At Time
Sometimes even minor fixes of one of the concepts above is enough to make the jumps you target in the search engines. Take your time and evaluate changes one at time. Changing to many things at once can cause "Chasing Your Tail Syndrome"
These are just a few off the top of my head.
I was thinking this thread could serve as great starting point for a recommendations on newbie thread. So if you have a few things that you would tell newbie to do to get kick started in SEO what would it be?
Here are mine:
1. Internal Navigation
Sure the search engines are getting better at learning to crawl complex websites, but you need to make as easy as possible. Avoiding JavaScript, Image Maps, Image Based navigation and session IDs are just a few of the pitfalls many newbie's miss. Create your navigation in CSS or standard text. One way to see if your navigation is easily crawlable is to check the Google cache and click on the link "Click here for the cached text only." If you can see your links in hyperlinked form you are probably ok. This is probably the most universal issue I see as a problem on SEO newbie's and even some of the largest online companies have in common. Get this fixed and do nothing else and you could see large improvements.
2. Why Are you The Best?
Maybe the 2nd most important item in marketing your website online is setting yourself apart. If your just another website that offers DVDs (or whatever) online for the same price as BMG, Best Buy, etc what makes your website better? The internet is network of interesting content, products and services. You must make you content, products and services stand out above the rest. How you do that is another story all together.
3. Links
OK in a perfect world you could make a great website with awesome content and it would rank fine. Our world is hardly perfect and the search engines not even close. The search engine will more than likely use some sort of linking weight in their algorithm, so after you build this great website, let the world know. Contribute in blogs, forums, messages boards relating to your website. Write articles. Contribute to the internet. Become an authority on what your website deals in and before you know it you will be getting those one-way links without even asking for them. This is truly the link you want. Remember their are no short term link building strategies, that work long term.
4. Content
a) OK obviously you cant just have a website made up of images and one sentences on each page. Text is the meat that those search engines love to cook and grub on. The more relevant text you can write on each page the better it is for the search engines and the better it is for your end users. One thing to remember here is not to squeeze to many subjects onto one page. Break pages out as much as possible.
What a great page full of great content, but much different content. The search engines rarely associate many keyword combinations to one page. So break it down for them. Each of the caring tips for the orchids should be broken down into its own page and expanded on even more.
b) I think a second point to consider when writing content is natural langue queries, personalization and local search. these will be the future of the search engine algorithm, so consider them when writing.
c) I will tell you right now. If you don't have a blog create one now. Blogs mean easy in-bound links to you, fresh content, and are easy to crawl, nuff said.
5. Title Tags
Another no-brainer. Looking at the example above, the website owner is not using unique title tags one each page. You must have this throughout your website.
6. Duplication
Sure we have heard all kinds of confusing horror stories on content duplication. Sure you want to avoid doing it, but I have yet to see Google or other search engines actual penalize for it. What the search engines do is rank one page over another and yes sometimes if they find a duplicate they will toss it in the supplemental index. If you call that a penalty fine, but I call it Google choosing one version to rank over another. Make sure you provide them with only one to rank! Also if you write an article just make sure to publish it on your website and WAIT a couple of weeks and then syndicate it. it will give the search engines time to associate you as the author/owner of it.
7. Competition
Please recognize who your competitors are. If you are going head to head with websites that have been online for years and maybe even decades then you should realize your SEO battle will be uphill and difficult.
8. Finance
If you are on a shoe-string budget or just have been burned by SEO's in the past and don't want to invest more money into now, this is OK. But please understand the leg work is now on you. Only expect "high-level" ideas and recommendations from forums. The best thing to do is to dive in and do the work yourself with the support of the forum. Don't rely on the forum as cure for your website marketing sickness, but rather a antibiotic that works within your body to heal.
9. Tracking
You better do it! If you don't know if your website is making you money, then who cares if it is optimized. Who cares if it is ranking? Who cares what Google PR it is? Two hundred #1 rankings mean nothing if you not making money off of them. That mind set is important. If you not tracking leads/sales then start now.
10. History
How long have you been online? Less than a year? More then 5 years? This makes an ENORMOUS difference. I don't care what anyone says. The longer you have been online the more likely you are to have good results. If you still don't have good results and you have been online for a while, don't fret. Your fixes should be take hold quicker in the search engines once you make them.
11. Code Bloat/Download Time
OK I understand you might be a SEO newbie, what do you know about coding websites, let alone inline CSS or JavaScript? Bottom line, your either going to need to learn or get someone who does know. No excuses here. It is becoming more important to have valid and easy to crawl code. I am not saying it is absolutely necessary. I see websites that rank all the time that are ridiculous when it comes to valid code, but if you can fix this, then do it. If should hire someone that will. The second part is to make sure you pages download in a reasonable time. Once again you will find slow websites ranking all the time, but get it fixed not only for the search engines, but for your end users.
12. One Change At Time
Sometimes even minor fixes of one of the concepts above is enough to make the jumps you target in the search engines. Take your time and evaluate changes one at time. Changing to many things at once can cause "Chasing Your Tail Syndrome"
These are just a few off the top of my head.
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