8 simple ways to lower your Bounce Rate

1. Use a nice Web Design / Layout
The design of your website is one of the most important factors. Try using eye friendly colors, avoid animations that popup in the middle of the page and anything that could distract or make the visitor feel uncomfortable. Organized content without information overflow in one page can deliver your message to the visitors effectively. Avoid using template sites and have the layout designed by a professional. Make sure that the HTML of your website is valid in order to have the same result in all the browsers. Use our HTML Validator to check your site.

2. Keep the size of your pages low
Make sure you have optimized the size of your images, keep the text/html code ratio low and try your best to keep the loading time as low as possible as it affects the user’s experience.

3. Build a user friendly Navigation (Menu)
The hyperlinks are the power of the web. Your site needs to have a user friendly menu that will allow the visitor to find what he wants easily. Avoid placing the menu on the bottom, try to organize the pages into categories and do not bury the important pages more than 3 clicks away from the homepage. Suggesting relevant products or services and placing links in strategic place in the text is something worth doing. Try using text links that contain keywords and avoid flash menus.

4. Create well written texts
Check that the title, the headers and the metatags of each page are relevant with the context. Have an abstract in the first paragraph or try to answer all the visitor’s questions in the first lines of your page. Use our Keyword Analyzer to test their relevance. You can find more in the article “5 basic rules of SEO copywriting“.

5. Optimize for the correct keywords
When it comes to SEO, always optimize the pages for relevant keywords. Each page should target to 1 or 2 terms. Make sure they have a good keyword density and that they appear in the important parts of the document such as the titles and headers. Do not try to trick the users and Google by including unrelated or too generic keywords. Even if you manage to rank first, the users will leave right away and you will increase the Bounce Rate. Use our Keyword Analyzer to check the keywords of your site.

6. Get Quality Links
Try to get some good links pointing to your page. Make sure they contain the correct anchor text. You can lure other webmasters to link to your pages by placing good content in your pages (interesting texts, a free service, start a clever marketing campaign etc). Try to avoid link exchange as in most of the cases one of the 2 linkers loses more PageRank. Use our Site Submitter to bring more links to your site.

7. Start a PPC Campaign on the most important keywords
Consider starting a Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaign on the important keywords of your site. Make sure you will pay a reasonable price per click and select the ones that are relevant to you content. Pay attention to the bidding management of your PPC campaign. Bid for the right keywords in order to avoid wrong traffic.

8. Study the reports
As a webmaster, when you evaluate how successful the online marketing campaign was, you should not only take into account the amount of traffic, the PageRank or the page views of your site but also focus on the Bounce Rate, the Average Time on Site, the Pages/Visit and the Conversion Rates. Use a web analytics tool like Google Analytics, define your goals, study the reports, categorize your visitors based on their behavior and redesign your SEO plan when needed.
Here are some simple thinks to have in mind:
• The user must find what he searches for. Averagely you have about 8 seconds before he leaves the page.
• The content (titles, headers, texts) of your page should be clear and easy to read.
• Get to the point and do not distract the user with popups, huge ad banners, tones of links etc.
• Give him the option to search or suggest him something relative pages.

Business benefits of SEO

Search Engine Marketing helps site owners meet their various online marketing objectives such as generating leads, sales or simply building awareness.

There is more to search engine optimisation than just marketing, as companies can derive many business benefits from using SEO. Let’s take a look at a few...

• Cost-effective Customer Acquisition
  There is no payment to the search engines for being indexed. This is important for high volume, low intent phrases which can be expensive in paid-search (eg ‘car insurance’).
  It can also be useful for generating visitors on the long tail of search. Many companies bid on these phrases through paid-search, so giving opportunities for those who use an SEO strategy for the tail.
  
• Fixed Costs
  The cost of SEO is relatively fixed, independent of click volume. Effectively, the cost per click from SEO declines through time after initial optimisation costs and lower ongoing optimisation costs. Conversely, paid-search is essentially a variable cost.
  
• Brand Visibility
  Think about that search on ‘car insurance’. The big insurance companies are all desperate to make it onto the first page of Google. The ones that didn’t make it either need to buy PPC ads to be seen, which is expensive for such a competitive search query.
  
• Focus on Web Standards / Accessibility
  Designing a website for search is an exercise in designing a best practice website. Search engine crawlers notice errors in your code, so valid code is a must for SEO. And that makes for a healthier, more accessible website. Accessible for Google’s crawlers, and for people.
  
• Repeat Business
  Customers referred from search engines tend to stick around for longer. Increase customer lifetime revenues via SEO!
  
• Customer Acquisition - Targeted Prospects
  Search is demand-driven, so anybody referred from a search engine is hoping that your web page matches their search query. If it does, and you show them all the information they need to see, they may well become your next customer.

Focus on Unique Content

• We are big believers in quality content. Original content. Google loves it too. And so do many SEO experts – the general advice these days is to create subject-specific content on your website, and to categorise and label that content in a way that will deliver a boost to your keyword strategy. Blogs are good for this. Remember that quality content attracts quality links. And that links are still very important for SEO. So if you invest in unique content you are building a valuable intellectual property asset that will benefit other areas of the business as well as improve your search rankings.
  
• Credibility / Brand Perception
  “Why aren’t you in Google for ‘car insurance’”? Consumers expect big brand businesses to be prominently placed in Google, so what is the effect if you aren’t on the first page or two?
  
• Findability
  Search engines allow you to find relevant web pages even if you only remember snippets of information. A song lyric, a company name, a product review, a person…

Article directory

Article directories are websites where users submit unique articles to be categorized and included to a specific niche. Well-written content articles released for free distribution have the potential of increasing the authoring business' credibility within its market as well as attracting new clients.

Submitting Articles for SEO

Article directories allow users to submit unique articles to the directory. These directories allow articles to have to embed links to other websites with relevant Anchor text. Popular article directories are considered authority sites and are constantly crawled by Search Engine Bots. As a result, webmasters submit articles with relevant anchor text linking back to their site and obtain powerful backlinks.

Article Structure and Format

For Search engine optimization purposes, the ideal article length is 400-500 words with a keyword density of approximately 2%-3%. Most article submission sites allow links, but they usually limit the amount to 2-3. The backlinks should have anchor text created using HREF tags. Most article directories prohibit keyword stuffing, so it is good practice to use multiple anchor text and links in the article.

Places to get Articles for SEO purposes

There are many places on the internet that offers article writing services, often times the SEO consulting companies will get the articles written for you and submit them for you as well. However, some consultants will actually charge you less if you have already written your articles and is just in need of consultation and submission. Freelancers are the best source for article writers and they are also widely available, but you have to be prepared to do your research to get a capable freelancer who can actually write well. There are websites that are dedicated to providing you with such writers, one of which is the ever famous Getafreelancer website, that allows you to post a project stating exactly what you want and then have person bid on it. you can then make a choice.

Another website is Shannarticles, this website does not have bidding; you will simply send a request through the website and it will be picked up by the staff who will advise you of its acceptance and provide you with exactly what you asked for in the manner that you wanted it. There are a few others, but these are two reliable sources that i know of so far. The fact is that good SEO articles that are written with strategically placed keywords and anchor text can really boost the popularity of a website, because these articles are submitted to directories that serves as back links to the promoted website.

Digital marketing

Digital Marketing is the promoting of brands using all forms of digital advertising. This now includes Television, Radio, Internet, mobile and any other form of digital media.

Digital Marketing is the practice of promoting products and services using digital distribution channels to reach consumers in a timely, relevant, personal and cost-effective manner.

Whilst digital marketing does include many of the techniques and practices contained within the category of Internet Marketing, it extends beyond this by including other channels with which to reach people that do not require the use of The Internet. As a result of this non-reliance on the Internet, the field of digital marketing includes a whole host of elements such as mobile phones, sms/mms, display / banner ads and digital outdoor.

Previously seen as a stand-alone service in its own right, it is frequently being seen as a domain that can and does cover most, if not all, of the more traditional marketing areas such as Direct Marketing by providing the same method of communicating with an audience but in a digital fashion. Digital is now being broadened to support the "servicing" and "engagement" of customers.

Article marketing

Article marketing is a type of advertising in which businesses write short articles related to their respective industry. These articles are made available for distribution and publication in the marketplace. Each article contains a bio box and byline (collectively known as the resource box) that include references and contact information for the author's business. Well-written content articles released for free distribution have the potential of increasing the authoring business' credibility within its market as well as attracting new clients.

Internet Article Marketing
Internet article marketing, is an Internet marketing technique to subtly advertise products and services via online article directories. Most directories receive a high volume of traffic and are considered authority sites by search engines, which often results in submitted articles receiving substantial free traffic.

Internet marketers will often try to maximize the results of an article marketing campaign by submitting their promotion to multiple article directories. However, most search engines filter duplicate content to prevent the same content from appearing multiple times in searches. Some marketers try to circumvent this filter by creating multiple variations of an article. By doing this, one article an theoretically gain traffic from multiple article directories.

Most forms of search engine optimization and Internet marketing require a domain, hosting plan, and advertising budget. However, article marketing uses article directories as a free host and receives traffic via organic searches due to the directory's search engine authority.

Google Page Rank (PR)

PageRankTM (PR)

is a numeric value that represents how important a website is online. Google becomes the idea that when a web site places a link (link) to another, is in fact a vote for the latter.

The more votes has a page will be considered more important by Google. Moreover, the importance of the page that casts the vote also determines the weight of this vote. In this way, Google calculates the importance of a page thanks to the votes received, taking into account the importance of each page that casts the vote.

PageRankTM (developed by the founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin)is the way Google decides the importance of a page. It is a valuable data because it is one of the factors that determine the position will have a page within the search results. It is not the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is one of the most important.Sites containing more PR also generate more money.

Keep in mind that not all the links are taken into account by Google. For example, Google filters out and discards the links of pages devoted exclusively to put links (called 'link farms').

In addition, Google admits that a page can not control the links that point to it, but you can check the links page to other pages in place. Therefore, links to a page can not harm it, but it links a page to place penalized sites may be harmful to your PageRankTM.

If a site has PR0, it is usually a site penalized, and may not be intelligent to put a link to her.

One way to know a page is PageRankTM download it the Google search bar (only available for MS IExplorer). Bar appears in the one shown in green PageRankTM value on a scale of 0 to 10. PR10 websites are Yahoo, Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia, and Google. You have a full list of PR10 sites.

The algorithm 'PageRankTM' was patented in the United States on 8 January 1998 by Larry Page. The original title is "Method for node ranking in a linked database ', and was assigned patent number 6,285,999.

How does affiliate marketing generate money?

The work of affiliate marketing as are so simple would have difficulty believing how such a scheme can generate cash. In affiliate marketing, one is introduced to a system where an affiliate, who owns the Web site should display and announces other websites which are owned, in turn, to a merchant.

The merchant is the one who expects to generate sales with affiliate promoting your website. Once these links are clicked on by the people and makes a purchase, the merchant pays the affiliate a commission. It is simply promoting other websites through its own that an affiliate can earn the money to be as easy as possible.

The principle involved in affiliate marketing can be compared to the type of interaction of species in the ecology called mutualism where interaction between two species allows both of them derive advantage of the situation without injury. The result is a bond that allows co-exist in harmony in the community where they both move. Affiliate marketing allows affiliates get paid in recognition of what he could contribute. The traders, in turn, can advertise their products and ultimately be sold with the efforts provided by the member.

The reason why products advertised by affiliates through their websites generate many sales is because the number of people using the Internet is growing every minute. Each commodity announced this means you get all the attention you could possibly need to convince someone that is worth trying. This is the ultimate reason why there is money in affiliate marketing. More links a website promotes, the more chance sales will be generated. More sales generated, the happier the merchant, and the happier the merchant, the better for the affiliate professionally and financially.

Those who have pleasure in affiliate marketing have achieved the goals and dreams they could not do under ordinary circumstances. There are even those who have skyrocketed to the top simply because they have devoted their time and effort to perfect their knowledge of this business without even a little hesitation. You can be sure of the fact that there is money in affiliate marketing. He has only faced the fact that it is impossible to generate riches in this business overnight.

Well, not really. All he has to do is learn everything he possibly could about the industry in which he is. If he can master all the tricks relating to trade, then nothing will play

What is Google Index and Cache?

What are Google's bots?

Google constantly seek out new pages and / or updated to add to your index and there is a charge of this program that is called Googlebot, the famous robots or spiders (spiders). So how Googlebots are calling the search bots whose sole mission in life is to collect web documents in order to build a database that is used by the search engine of its master.

The Googlebots employ a process based on algorithms that determine which sites to crawl, the frequency and number of pages to fetch from each site. These lists are comprehensive websites to identify links to other pages.

What is indexing?

Indexing is the processing of the pages scanned and is what creates the index that uses Google to give results when you search.

In fact, the robots do not keep our pages but the analysis and make an index of all the words they see and their location. In addition, process information in the TITLE tag and the ALT attribute content of the images, nor do they do with all that he has a page, for example, do not process the content of most Flash files or dynamic pages .On the basis of indexing Google decide Page Rank of Site.

Just read HTML documents?

No, also extract index information or other files: PDF, PS (Adobe PostScript), leaves of Lotus (wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, WK5, WKI, wks, wku, lwp) and Excel (xls), documents MW text, DOC, WRI, RTF, ANS, TXT, PowerPoint presentations (ppt) files, Microsoft Works (wks, wps, wdb) and swf.

This is done to give more results, in fact, can do a search indicating that we display only certain types of files, for example:

filetype: doc "search text"

In most cases, even when we do not have the software necessary to interpret, we show the option of seeing them as HTML or plain text.

Conversely, we can eliminate certain types of search results using a filter, for example:

-filetype: pdf "search text"

How often do we visit?

They say "regularly" but give no details, speak of many factors that can influence but, the truth is that often you access a site depends almost exclusively on PageRank you have. The higher, more will be visited regularly (wealth generates wealth). Then, they can do every day or take weeks.

Google PageRank and is proud of us know that is the heart of his whole system:

"The heart of our software is PageRank ™, a system for ranking web pages developed by our founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. And while we have dozens of engineers working to Improve every aspect of Google on a daily basis, PageRank continues to play a central role in many of our web search tools.

SEO check list

Following are the tips to get Top Rank in all search engines. It is advised to act upon one step daily and achieve your goal.

1st Tip:

Decide the keywords you are going to include in your website and use some keyword suggestion tool and also check some other sites related to your site theme. It will help you determine the keywords. Write the keywords for each page. Use these keywords according to the nature of the content and use not more than 15 keywords in a page. Check the keywords density, with keyword density analyzer. Your first day should be to work only for keywords.

2nd Tip:

Set your goal and determine a keyword phrase, you want to promote for top engine ranking. Now write this phrase at least three times exactly and at least two times closely to that phrase e.g. search engine ranking tips 3 times and search engine ranking 2 times. If you are a new SEO, you should choose some keyword phrase with medium or low search volume because the high volume phrases have a lot of competition and it will take you time to get ranking.

Now use your phrase “search engine ranking tips” at least for 30% as your backlink names and three to five other supporting phrase for your chosen phrase for 70 percent of your title. When you will get 17 to 20 top ranking at any search engine, select some additional keyword title. You should keep record of your backlink titles in Google Webmaster Tools. According to google

• First Tip: To keep your keyword phrase at the top of an engine(s), get one backlinks with your title after every 17 days.
• Second Tip: Calculate your backlinks without a title as equivalent, in Search Engine Optimization effectiveness, to one with a title.

3rd Tip:

You should get 6 to 17 to quality, your site relevant backlinks placed on dissimilar website. Every week, place 5 new backlinks.

4rth Tip:

Make some free hosting pages and blogs on other website URLs. I recommend you should own at least 17 sites on different servers. Keep it mind that your sites must be updated to get top search engine raking. Web sites get search engine quality as they become older. So, it is best to own many websites and put your attention to get 5 back links per high engine hitter first. You should study the Google Analytics stats to analyze your work. If you can, then try to maintain at least 50 websites by hiring an extra web masters. You can make many of them free including blogs, spaces, forum, subdomains and groups.

Google Image Optimization

There are ways to optimize your image to come out in the first results for a given search. Optimizing these images is not as complicated as many think, the factors that influence the positioning of images are:

Filename: You have to put a name according to how you find your image. A name containing the keywords. For example, if you have a picture of a 1970 Pontiac GTO, Pudes not upload the photo with the name you put the camera default img1968.jpg have to raise it with the name Pontiac GTO-1970.jpg

The ALT attribute: Make sure you provide an adequate description of the photo with the ALT attribute. This attribute was intended for display in text browsers that do not bear the images (many years ago). Try not to use too much text. Focus on a text containing keywords that accurately describe the picture.

Title and text: The title gives you a better idea of what Google imagen.Al treated like the text surrounding the image.

Anchor Text (Text Link): When you link an image using the appropriate link text. It's like the anchor text you use for enlzar pages.

Google Image Labeler: Use Google Image Labeler http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/ this will help your images in scrambled the top of the search engines allowing others to categorize your pictures. It's a pretty fun tool. Simply enable the Google Image Labeler from Google Webmaster console.

These tips will get you a better position your pictures and therefore have more traffic to your web site.

simple seo process

The Google optimization process is not fully structured, but could result in the following steps:

1) Analysis of competition.

A competitive analysis will help us to know what strategies they are using those "fight" with our company to win the segment. Through this research we know your keywords, its strengths and weaknesses. This does not mean it will copy all of its attributes, but watching you learn. Learn about our competitors will be very useful to know where we can fight and how we improve.

2) Survey of Keywords.

Through a detailed study we know the keywords in place and largely used by the public they will target your company. Match in the keywords is an essential step for the success of their "virtual branch", since they will transport visitors from search engines or search engines to your website.

3) Development of a database for the site.

We must improve the site's pages, and if we start from scratch, create them. This step will optimize both the HTML coding (headings, metatags, etc..) And "site architecture" (internal structure of links to Web pages that compose your site) as the graphical interface of the website (content and design). Recall that a website that has a great design but not provide content that visitors need, is a sterile site.

4) Incorporation of keywords.

Once you choose the most effective keywords, we put on our website. These should appear on the most important pages (Home Page and Services page) and the right balance. An excessive repetition of the same would result in some Search Engines erase the site from their lists.

5) Review and building links.

Acquiring and quality related links pointing to your website generates 95% of success in trying to get high rankings in Search Engines. While increasing the Network Status for search engines is also important to have lots of links pointing to your pages, we see that the really important matter is the quality and degree of relationship of the same with your site.

Affiliate Marketing

Perhaps the simplest way to explain affiliate marketing is that it is a way of making money online whereby you as a publisher are rewarded for helping a business by promoting their product, service or site.

There are a number of forms of these types of promotions but in most cases they involve you as a publisher earning a commission when someone follows a link on your blog to another site where they then buy something.

Other variations on this are where you earn an amount for referring a visitor who takes some kind of action - for example when they sign up for something and give an email address, where they complete a survey, where they leave a name and address etc.

Commissions are often a percentage of a sale but can also be a fixed amount per conversion. Conversions are generally tracked when the publisher (you) uses a link with a code only being used by you embedded into it that enables the advertiser to track where conversions come from (usually by cookies). Other times an advertiser might give a publisher a 'coupon code' for their readers to use that helps to track conversions.

Black Hat SEO

In the realm of SEO, black hat is the unethical approach to SEO and should always be avoided at all costs. Webmasters think the black hat SEO will bump their rankings quickly and sit on top of Google. That's not the case. At some point will be caught and bumped right out of the search engines and permanently banned.

Avoid shortcuts and clearly address of any company that promises you grim search engine ranking # 1 at night for a ridiculously low price (the fair TIMO cries!) Any practice that deliberately deceive the search engines should be avoided . The black hat only hurts the long term.

The black hat SEO includes the following unethical practices:

• Filling the keyword - putting too many keywords in your content / website (it has no such sense)
• Hidden text - that is putting white text against a white background
  The mask - one thing visitors see on websites but the content is presented in a different way to search engine spiders.
• Doorway pages - these pages for a way to hide (these "fake" pages do not have any?? No real content and are created to trick spiders and to align for keywords only).
• Filling the cookie - cookies are strings of text saved in the Web browsers on computers (as a result of third-party sites). The catch: Consumers visit that Web site within 60 days (a cookie is saved for 60 days) and make a purchase - as a result, the affiliate receives a commission from the sale fraudulent.
• Redirects - creating a full page of unique content and once you have aligned high, you redirect to another page on your site (ie your shopping cart page)

Aligning # 1 on Google

You can get to the top when it comes to Google rankings. First, you need to figure out how much you know about SEO and investigates the competition in its market. When you do so at the top of Google, the great things happening for you and your company! You start to get busy and you have MORE than enough business / customers.

Check out these white tips of the hat following:

• Spend at least 30 minutes a day working on your SEO - it pays to do this everyday worthwhile investment for your site / company!
• You do not have to know everything about SEO - there is much conflicting information out there. Investigate the various sites, resources, etc.. and choose what works best for your site / company!
• Outsource SEO work to a professional if you feel like you do not know enough about SEO - however, it helps to know the basics of SEO. A good SEO expert will always guide you in the right direction and investigate the companies / agencies reputable and make sure you hire an SEO pro!

White Hat SEO

A White hat SEO (white hat) is called an "ethical stance" that opposes the abuse of electronic media. Make the right thing: Optimize the texts (Locate the title and description where it should, just hover over the search that has real substance and consistently). Implements accessibility standards (an example to understand what a search engine that contains an image parameter should add alt = "text" and a short description). Creates a link structure: The sites need to redo the form of a link between itself.

A Black hat is the opposite of White Hat, this attempt to run an intrusion on these, is considered an ethical SEO strapped. You can use low quality links or unwanted as pornographic sites, pharmacists, etc. Those who practice Black Hat SEO, "inflate" PR placing a link on a page with high page rank, but if this is removed the PR of the page fall into the next Google update.

A Blackhat SEO (spam) does the following: Cloacking: (a sewer hidden behind an apparently normal web, search engines or traveling without javascript dirty look at the content which is usually plain text, with h1, bold and lots of links that would never on the cover. This is the most widely used technique among spammers and is considered counterproductive because it is hidden text that should reasaltar web for users). Buy links (backlinks Google shows that it is illegal).

Establishment of farms (It is automatically generated content or copying garbage, try putting your pages in search engine indices, scattering in different servers, domains, different content structures). Abuses of keywords (A spam puts a title search words all types of one-to corner the greater number of web searches without coherence). Duplicate content (takes a text and places it on multiple pages to get more pages indexed). Hidden text (hidden links and keywords on a website, use hidden divs, fonts invaluable trick or white text on white background).

The biggest problem with Black Hat SEO are the consequences which may arise for the owner of the page. The most ominous is the complete elimination of Google results. This is usually due to SEO that Google detects and penalizes malicious page in this way.

Another important term to know is Gray hat, which refers to those practices that are between one place and another. Using both methods, as seen as more beneficial for the page.

Electronic Document Management Content Central ™ the All-In-One Document Management Solution makes document capture, retrieval, and management simple. It gives organizations quick and easy access to information. This all-in-one, browser-based document management system provides Access, Speed, and Security, what matters most to the organizations.

White hat SEO tips

When it comes to ethical SEO technique, the white hat is how aggressive you need to approach SEO. Just think about the "value" when it comes to white hat SEO. The white hat is ethical search engine techniques adopted by major players such as Google.

With aggressive tactic white hat SEO, "not until you reach it sooner" - every time! The white hat SEO is each element you add to your sites, blogs, etc.. that add value and credibility.

• Write content GRANDE, single
• Set the video / audio sites innovative
• Create a "constant community of merit"
• You want your site visitors see while a source of value-packed information (keep them coming back for more!)

Seo Tips

Website Optimization is a complex issue, but should be known by every entrepreneur who wants to succeed on the Internet. According to the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy, optimize is finding the best way to perform an activity. Therefore, optimization of your website would make it comply with the best possible with each of its functions.

Recall that if a site is designed only to achieve success in the Search Engines, better known as search engines will not be successful with users as the machines do not buy, not sell it. If, however, is intended only for individuals, difficult to achieve a good positioning in search engines and users will not find, therefore, not sell. In conclusion, a successful web site must comply with both their functions inevitably related to Search Engines such as those associated with the usability by site visitors.

We have said that anyone wishing to succeed in the Internet market should make a website that is a true "virtual branch." That is, this should be an extension of your company and operate as a local online.

For this, the site must achieve the objectives for which it was created, must be compatible with the principles and policies of the Company, be functional and actually transmit useful information to its users.

In order to reach a site that complies with the characteristics listed above, you must have the help of a Web Optimizer you know how that site should work and how to achieve it.

Link Building: The Anchor Text

In this article we will discuss link building practices. Instead of focusing on methods, however, we focus on what you need to do when you put the methods into action. Specifically, we're going to pay special attention to anchor text: what it is, why it's important, and how to use it correctly so that the search engines will notice you and not penalize you.

Search Engines and Links

In the early days search engines relied on meta-data and on-page analysis to analyze and rank websites. Search engine optimizers decoded ranking algorithms and started stuffing keywords in meta tags, titles, H tags and paragraphs, producing low value, spammy, but high-ranking pages.

Search engines were flooded with spam, because it was too easy to manipulate results. There was a need for better algorithms. That’s when Google arrived with Page Rank and changed the game. Instead of looking at on-page factors, page rank analyzed links throughout the World Wide Web. The formula was clearly a winner, as Google gave credit to super-hub sites in most industries and left the spam out. A new era of SEO arrived – the era of links.

Search engines, especially Google, look at hundreds of link factors. Some of those factors include:

• The anchor text of the link

• The site from which the link comes

• The age of the link

• The page on which the link is located

• The text surrounding the link

• The real page rank of the page (not the one shown in the toolbar)

Submitting to Directories

Submission to online directories still works. Contrary to the widespread rant that directories are dead, they are not. Good directories can still help you rank in Google; you just have to watch for signs of quality. You can still make a website rank for relatively competitive three-keyword-long terms with directory submissions.

One of the best signs of quality is whether a directory is found in search results. If it is, especially on Google, take it as a good sign. It's usually worth the money to buy a link from that directory.

• Don't submit to too many directories too fast. Space it out over several months.

• Avoid free directories.

Directory Description and Anchor Text

Search engines are well aware that SEOs use directories to promote websites, so they've developed technology to spot directory submissions designed to manipulate search results. One of the biggest clues is the use of similar anchor text and descriptions on many directory listings. Some SEOs simply copy and paste a paragraph from the website, which is never good. Try varying your anchors and descriptions.

Directories also watch for SEO submissions, so if your URL is whitehorse.com and your anchor is "real estate agent," then there's a problem. Try varying that anchor to something like "white horse real estate agent" or "white horse real estate," something that still has targeted keywords but is not as obvious.

Watch competing websites in a directory and see what behavior is accepted. If competing sites are pretty aggressive, it's a sign that you can be aggressive as well.

Number of Links in a Category

The more links are on a page, the less PR is passed, so look for the number of links in each category. If the "real estate" section has 150 links and "real estate agents" has 25 links, then the second section can pass more page rank. Watch for the inbounds to each section to judge whether or not the link is valuable. If "real estate agents" has 25 outbounds and 5 internal links, but the "real estate" section has 150 outbounds, but 50 internal links and 20 inbounds, then the latter link is better.

Using Search Tools for SEO

You’re not supposed to use a screwdriver like a hammer or a chisel. I’ve done both. It may not work as well as using the right tool, but it got the job done. In a similar way, you can use certain tools to help you with some SEO tasks, despite the fact that they weren’t designed for these tasks in the first place.

Before I continue along these lines, I want to emphasize, especially to those of you who are new to SEO, that there are many, many SEO tools you can use for free. You’ll find links to plenty of them to the left of this article, under “SEO Tools.” If you read various threads in our SEO Chat forums, you’ll probably find links to even more; some will be free, while others will charge a flat fee or a subscription for their use. They can help you accomplish an amazing number of tasks, such as researching keywords, calculating the cost of your AdSense campaign, checking the age of your domain and the size of your pages, and many more. None of the tools or techniques that I’m going to suggest is intended to replace these sorts of purpose-built tools; at best, they’re meant to supplement them.

If that’s the case, then why should you use these tools at all? They can give you a different perspective. The search engines created some of these tools specifically to improve the search experience of the user. So using these tools can help you get into the mindset of someone who is looking for your site, or at least what you offer. If you’re thinking like a searcher, you’re in a better position to set yourself up to be found.

Some of these tools might even lead you in directions you didn’t originally anticipate. Here’s an analogy by way of example: a doll maker’s needle is relatively thick, about five or six inches long, and used for such tasks as sewing the eyes on dolls. However, it can also be used for making certain forms of lace. In fact, it’s actually easier to use for that task than the tool it replaces.

Using this analogy, imagine that your site is a little like the doll maker’s needle. In that case, you’ll want it to be found in the places that cater to doll makers, and in the places that cater to lace makers. And reaching those different places will require optimization for somewhat different sets of keywords. Do you follow me so far? Good, because we’re about to take a look at a “tool” that can help you with keywords.

Verifying Google Search Engine Ranking Factors

Google search engine ranking factors are among the most important items to check in any SEO work. This will ensure that the strategies formulated are effective, current and optimal for the best search engine ranking results. Every search engine optimization analysis examines the website's performance against these important ranking factors. This article series will take a closer look at these factors and find evidence for their existence, so you will know that you are on the right track when performing SEO on your website.

If deficiencies are found in a site's Google search engine ranking factors, the SEO in charge will attempt to make some changes to the website in such a way that it will now become search engine friendly and compliant with SEO ranking factors. Taken from a broader perspective, these improvements cover three important aspects:

* Content (using optimal titles, checking content quality, focusing relevance to targeted keywords, etc).

* Links (how other sites reference the website in terms of quality and quantity).

* Technical aspects (i.e. crawlability of the website).

This three part article series will attempt to find objective evidence of the most common and current search engine ranking factors. Finding such evidence validates expert opinions on which most SEO professionals currently rely. You can read the complete list of search engine ranking factors in Google. We will use the SEOMOZ search engine ranking factors list with emphasis on the top five ranking factors and statistically validate it versus actual data found in search engine results.

With this method, we can be sure that these SEO ranking factors listed by SEO experts are actually providing value to your SEO efforts. If you are ready, let's get started.

How to Increase Google AdSense Revenue

It is not a good blogging objective to earn a massive amount of Google AdSense income. In that situation, your blog is NOT a content-based blog; rather, it's more of an affiliate blog which can be classified as "spam" in an extreme case. You may have seen such blogs, which have only a few words per blog post, but are cluttered with ads, or have content that is copied from other sources and then have Google ads placed throughout.

Of course, since you are also aiming for blog authority, search engine rankings and online popularity, you as a blogger should continually be writing great content and posting it on a periodic basis as a means of providing information to help visitors looking for content.

Google AdSense should NOT be the only reason you blog. If it is, you lack the motivation to continue blogging if your AdSense income falls below your expectations. Sadly, most of the time, you have no control over this.

In fact, it can be true that if your website is VERY good, you will have a low click through rate (CTR) for your Google AdSense banners, which can result in low AdSense income. Why? When visitors come to your website, they are looking for information. When they find your content sufficient, good and satisfactory, they will not need to look around your website and click Google ads.

What should you do for income in a case like this? Consider offering some services for a fee, or enable visitors to make a Pay Pal Donation (add a "thank you" button). Lots of visitors may be willing to donate some money for your good content.