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Mistake # 1 - using keywords no one is searching for on the Internet. You make rank on the top of Google for your company name, but unless your company is a brand name, who will search for you by name. That simply doesn't count for much in terms of driving traffic to your site.

Mistake # 2 - using keywords that have too many competitors. These high traffic and highly competitive keywords are so difficult that it would take a whole team of search engine optimization experts to rank for the keyword phrase.

Mistake # 3 - only trying to rank for a single keyword phrase on the search engines. Do you think there is only one keyword that describes your business? A keyword ranking analysis will tell you the top keywords to use for your business. You need to have a list of the very best keyword phrases for you business. You will then know which keyword phrases will be the most effective for you.

If you hire a Search Engine Optimization specialist, that offers a keyword analysis service, you can save many hours, and dedicate your efforts only to promote keywords that will be effective.

What should you do if your SEO does not offer a keyword analysis service? Frankly, I would walk away. No one can claim to be a SEO professional without a good understanding of keywords.

If you would like a free web site analysis, click on the link below.

Take a moment to complete the SEO Preparedness Quiz

If you would like to learn how to find effective niches for your promotions, sign up for a free Veretekk silver system here. I offer a free class every day on keyword research.

2. US Web Site Promotion | Web Search NYC | Search Engine Report, 2009

Which search engine has the greatest share of the worldwide market at the end of 2009?

As you might expect, it is Google.

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According to sources at Marketshare, as of December 31st, 2009, Google had a 84.9 percent share of the worldwide search market.

Worldwide Search Engine Market

Although this is a remarkable result, there are markets in some individual countries that Google does not dominate.

Somewhat surprisingly, there are four countries where Google does not have a majority of the market share for search. There are also two countries in which Google takes a back seat and is eclipsed by Yahoo.

These countries market share percentages are:

1. China - Baidu 77.0 - Google 17.0 (Google was six years behind Baidu to launch in China)
2. Japan - Yahoo Japan 51.0 - Google 38.0 (mid-2009 results)
3. Korea - NAVER - 66.0 - DAUM 21.0 - NATE 6.0 - Yahoo Korea 3.0 - Google 2.0
4. Russia - Yandex 56.0 - Google 23.0 (Google lacks the special endings to Russion words that native Yandex has mastered)

At a glance the chart seems to be overwhelmingly dominated by Google. On closer examination of specific country results, Korea has the most diversified market with four strong players, and it quite odd to see Google, and Yahoo at the bottom of the list.

Japan search also, seems to oddly favor Yahoo over Google. Japan has the third largest Internet usage in the world, after China, and the US. It must please Yahoo executives very much to be in such a strong position relative to Google, even if it is only in Japan.

What will we see in the coming year, in terms of search? Will Google continue to increase market share, or will it lose points to more native search applications such as Naver (in Korea), or Yandex (in Russia), or even Baudu in China?

I suspect that the battle of search engines for market share is far from over, and Google may yet have some very heady competition in countries such as China, Korea, and Russia, and may stabilize it's market position, or see it slide somewhat.

If you have any predictions or analyses, I would be glad to hear from you. I don't think my crystal ball has any special magic. Yours may have some very interesting insights. Please tell everyone about them.

Good Luck in your web site promotion for 2010 and beyond!

What are the 10 best tools for US web site promotion?

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This is not a best of new products for 2009 list. It is a list ofthe top 10 indespensible tools that are needed for web site promotion on a daily basis.If you have other tools than the ones on this list that you can't live without, I'd love to hear about them.

A free keyword and web site analysis is the prize for the best suggestion for a web site promotion tool. Just leave a comment below with your web site address or email, and your favorite tool.

1. WordPress - this is the CMS that is hands down the best tool for web site promotion. WordPress can stand on it's own as a web site, or as a blogging tool it is second to none. There are so many advantages to WordPress, it really deserves to be at the top of the list.

2. Wordtracker - this is the best source to find keywords that are the backbone of any web promotion. There is a free tool which will get you in the ball park, but the paid tool can analyze competitiveness as well.

Would you rather compete for a traffic of 500 searches per day among 1000 competing web sites or 50 searches per day among 10 competing sites? Do the math, and experiment. You will find it much easier to rank on page one for less competitive keywords. No keyword research tool can discover profitable long tail keyword niches like Wordtracker.

3. Google Webmaster Tools - This is another indispensible tool for SEO. There are so many critical pieces of information available here. Are their any broken links on your site? Can your site map be read correctly? What is the speed of your website? The list goes on and on.

4. Google Analytics - again, there is a wealth of information here. How many unique visitors come to your web site, and where are they coming from? Analytics gives you a broad view of traffic patterns to your web site.

5. Edit Plus - If you use your CMS like a word processor, there is a better way. find a good HTML editor and make your life easier. This is not a free tool, but for less than $ 40.00, it is well worth it. Edit Plus creates good clean HTML code that the search engines like to read.

6. Zemanta - Are you searching all over the place for images to add interest to your blog posts? Have you found interesting related posts for your blog?If you use Firefox, Zemanta integrates into your blogging software like a WordPress plugin, and gives you both. You can even spruce up your email. (Don't forget to add rel="nofollow" before all of the http:// links so that you are not leaking page rank through the outbound links.)

7. SEO Quake plugin for Firefox. - Have you missed a few no follow links on one of your pages? Need a quick check of the keyword density on one of your posts? SEO Quake Toolbar will alert you in seconds.

8. Yahoo Site Explorer - Google Webmaster Tools will give you the best analysis of links on your own site. I use Site Explorer to analyze links on competitors web sites. I need a tool that gives consistent results and site explorer seems to do the trick, although it does report no follow links as well as do follow links.

With a few clicks of the mouse, I can get the total number of inbound links, (including internal links), the total of inbound links to all web pages of a domain, as well as the total number of inbound links to a specific URL, such as the home page. If someone has a better tool that does the same thing, I would really like to know about it.

9. Firebug plugin for Firefox. -I can do most of what I need to do on blogs from within WordPress without editing code. Sometimes however, I do need to, (carefully), tweak a bit of PHP code. Firebug is a companion CSS, HTML, and JavaScript editor that works on a live web page to show the exact location of displayed information within the file structure. This is a great assist for non-programmers like me.

10. Memento - this is an extremely simple program that works like an open notepad file. I use it to make sure I keep on top of my daily activities and it serves as a To Do List as well. Super simple, and super useful. Free, of course.

That is it.

Send me email at jl@websitepromotionblog.net if you have other must have tools for US web site promotion.

For additional search engine optimization advice, and a free web site analysis, take a moment to complete the SEO Preparedness Quiz

US Web Site Promotion | Real-Time Search | Web Site Promotion Blog

Where is Google going with real-time search, and how will it affect US web site promotion?

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Google's real-time search efforts have profound implications for search and promotion across the spectrum of computing devices.

Google is as ambitious as ever as seen by the release of 38 search products over the last 70 days. This information comes from Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president in charge of search and user experience. Products such as near me now, Google Goggles, are either in full release, or in Google Labs for further development.

Google's future is a four-fold effort focused in the following areas.

1) Mode - not only are users typing queries from the Google search box, they will be using internet appliances of all kinds, most importantly cell phones. The Android operating system has become a popular operating system for cell phones with advanced real-time voice-recognition technology now available in Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese. Only Android phones currently have this capability.

2) Media - all forms of media are now incorporated into Google's search results. Recent agreements with Twitter and Facebook allow for real-time results from both of these new sources.

3) Language - One of the main objectives for 2010 is to allow searches from any language, that will look across all languages in Google's database and return results in the users native language. As good as Google's machine language translation is, this is a huge technical challenge.

4) Personalization - Google intends to make search as relevant as the user wants. Everything from GPS-aware mobile applications, to prevoius user inquiries are under consideration.

Google has observed three emerging trends that will affect the future of search and US web site promotion.

1) Moore's Law of every increasing computing power and decreasing cost is still operational.

2) Connectivity - the reach of the Internet will grow dramatically as technology expands more and more to mobile devices.

3) Cloud Computing - the resources devoted to language and other developing technologies are increasing at a dramatic rate. Google is now indexing one billion web pages per day.

US web site promotion and international business promotion will never be quite the same.

For additional search engine optimization advice, please take a moment to complete the SEO Preparedness Quiz

What is the best way to give training on Web Site Promotion?

I have been given a great opportunity just recently to become a Veretekk trainer. I am very grateful to Jim Gras for the suggestion, and of course to Tom Prendergast for his approval. I feel like I have a lot to learn, but I believe that I do have something to teach as well, that can benefit the Veretekk community.

I feel very grateful to the two of them, and I am humbled by their optimism and enthusiasm. Both Tom Prendergast and Jim Gras are champions in this battle to become victors in the world ofWeb Site Promotion and Internet Marketing. Just as I am a student of Jim Gras, Jim has been a student of Tom Prendergast over the years.

If I can become half the student that Jim Gras has become, I will consider myself very fortunate. The Veretekk system is easily 10-20 times the system it was 10 years ago, which gives us a huge benefit to help to become successful.

There could be no more important time to become involved with Veretekk. Whether you try the free silver system, the low cost gold system, or the full-blown Platinum Control Panel System, you can gain tremendous benefit from the use of Veretekk for your web site promotion.

Veretekk is a complete system for Internet marketing, from lead generation, completely legitimate and unlimited e-mail marketing, to high-performance SEO using the Platinum Control Panel. There is no compare in the industry. Where else can you get complete training from A to Z for free on the Internet ?

There really is no comparison, and nothing that even comes close, for 10 times the price.

Veretekk is on the verge of a major milestone release, and I can think of no better time to become a trainer in Veretekk than the present. I am very happy and very grateful to accept this challenge

I wanted to offer some kind of unique training that no one else was covering, and pending approval, I will reveal the topic in a new post on this blog very soon.

I can only say at this point, it is something very unique that will benefit the majority of Veretekk subscribers.

I look forward to work with Tom P., and Jim Gras on this training progam, and helping the loyal and dedicated Veretekk members to achieve greater and greater success in their web site promotion and Internet marketing.

Thank you very much to the entire Veretekk community, especially it's leaders and trainers.

I look forward to work more closely with each one of you, as much as is possible.

Again, many, many thanks.

John Lombaerde

Web Site Promotion Blog

6. Web site Promotion Tip | Try pearltress for visual snapshot - your personal blogroll

How can you easily show other people what web sites you are most interested in for your web site promotion?

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I ran across a very interesting site called pearltrees the other day. The best way I can describe it is a visual snapshot of your personal blogroll.

I've sometimes wanted to communicate what I am interested in on the web to other people. It is not very easy to do. You can provide a list of links, but that only tells part of the story. Are there any relationships between the sites, or a priority, other than the order you have created.

Let's say you have a few dozen sites or so, that you follow with an RSS reader, or that you visit on a regular basis. This is not unlike a personal blogroll on a WordPress blog, except that most blogrolls do not have more than 10 or so sites listed on them. Pearltrees lets you organize these site in a visual map showing hierarchy, and relationships between the sites, (if any).

This kind of organizational method is very good for personal productivity, but pearltrees doesn't end with that. You can network with others, and view their pearltrees. Is this social networking using personally mapped visual blogrolls? That is about the best description I can think of to describe pearltrees.

You can allow subscribers to view your own visual map, or blogroll of sites that you feel are important to you if you own a blog. You can organize relationships between related sites. It is easy to see at a glance what you think is important on the web, for web site promotion, for example, and easily communicate that to others.

It is exciting to see technology on the Internet that is really something new and different. or that combines existing technologies in a new way. Pearltress fits both of these descriptions. The software is brand new, so you will not a find a large following yet, but I think this is something that may be attractive to a large number of people.

It is developed by a French company, but everything is in English for English-speaking folks. You might want to give it a try.

For additional search engine optimization advice, please take a moment to complete the SEO Preparedness Quiz

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These dual tools of Veretekk and Momento can allow your web site promotion productivity to soar.

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Veretekk is a complete swiss-army type of internet marketing system. You can use any one of the pieces, or a combination to make great impact on your web site promotion efforts. Everything from mass email to traffic building, and search engine optimization, as well as free training is included.

Momento is the simplest application you will ever see for a personal computer, but it is incredibly useful. It is a sticky note for any information that you need during your day. It stays on your desktop, you can resize it as you like. I use it as a to do list each day.

It is such a simple program, but incredibly useful, don't know how I every lived without it.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

How do you get good value in a web site promotion and avoid the stench of the SEO Supermarket Ripoff?

What are Google search options that can assist web site promotion?

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There are options on every search results page that can help in web site promotion.

Sometimes it happens that what we are looking for is right in front of our noses, but we just failed to notice.

On every results page, there is a small line above the sponsored links box, (in the upper left hand corner), that says,

There is an All results list that is similar to the More with the arrow feature with options to search for Videos, News, Blogs, Books, and Forums.

You can do a time sensitive search for a date range or specific recent results. The section that follows called standar d view is the main focus of this post.

There are three options under standard view. Related searches, Wonder Wheel, and Timeline. Let's look at each option in detail.

The related searches shows a list of other types of keyword similar to your search keywords.

These is what comes up for web site promotion.

Related searches for web site promotion:

1. website optimization
2. open directory project
3. free website submission
4. free search engine submission
5. free website advertising

1. web site promotion software
2. web site promotion services
3. web site promotion tools
4. journal of web site promotion
5. web site promotion mumbai

1. free website promotion
2. web hosting
3. seo
4. google analytics
5. all web promotion

1. web site marketing
2. web design
3. ecommerce
4. odp

These are all related search terms that may not be similar words to your search keywords, yet Google knows that they are search related to your keywords.

Wonder wheel, the second option under standard view is perhaps the most interesting of the three. For web site promotion, the following interrelated search keywords are on the wheel. search engine optimization service, free search engine submission, search engine optimization, free website advertising, web page promotion, web site development, internet site promotions, and web site home page design.

Curiously, there is someoverlap between the Wonder wheel keywords and the related searches list. but no exact duplication. The Wonder wheel allows you to drill down, and get a new wheel of related terms, so it kind of likea spider weaving multiple interrelated webs.

The third and last option under Strandard view is the Timeline. This is a quick view of the long term trend for a specific keyword phrase. If you plan on promoting specific keywords for a long period of time, you might be interested to kinow the long term trend associated with your keywords. Is popularity fading or increasing over the last few years?

These are tools that are not just interesting in and of themselves, but can be used to find topics for blog posts, and to enhance search keywords and keyword research for web site promotion.

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For additional search engine optimization advice, please take a moment to complete the SEO Preparedness Quiz

How can you find an affordable SEO package for your web site promotion on the East Coast ?

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First of all, please understand that not all SEO consultants are really going to be successful for you, and meet your expectations. This is unfortunate, but true.

Some SEO consultants have marketing degrees, and experience in print advertising, or direct mail, but experience in the traditional markets does not always translate into online success. The Internet really does work differently that traditional media markets.

The Internet works on the principle of attraction or pull marketing, where you entice prospects to become customers based on the quality of the information provided. You gain trust first, and then propose a buying decision to the prospect, on a foundation of good quality free information.

This is the opposite from traditional radio, newspaper, and TV advertising that rely on push methods, under which you try to attract at much attention to your product, brand, company, etc., so that reputation and repetition are used to help the prospect to remember a particular brand, when is comes time to make a buying decision.

On the Internet, people are looking for free information related to a buying decision. With traditional media methods, you put your name and products out there enough, (at a significantly higher cost), and hope that a certain percentage will end up as customers.

Red Flag Number 1 - There is no reason to spend time with a consultant who qutes prices right off the bat, as though SEO was like shopping in the supermarket. If you find someone like that, you would be better off to run the other way.

Any responsible SEO consultant should take a look at your web site, and talk aboutkeyword research from the beginning. Regardless of whether your site has been up for 10 years, anddrawsa good amount of traffic already, orwhether it is abrand new site,keywordresearch should be the starting point of discussion.

Keywords are the cornerstone of SEO. The proper selection and use of keywords in the difference between mediocre results and outstanding performance of a web site.

Red Flag Number 2 - If you are quoted prices for links by your SEO consultant, you should definitely look elsewhere. Google is by far the largest search engine in the world with approximately a 70 percent market share.

Google regards the buying and selling of links as something unscrupulous. Anygood SEO should know this, and never propose the sale of links to any other web site. It is possible for your web site to be completelytaken out of the Google search results if your site has purchased links to drive traffic to your site.

This would mean that your web site could become invisible to the search engines. Only a very poor SEO consultant would ever consider this practice. If any one proposes this to you, say no, and turn around and walk the other way.

Red Flag Number 3 - If anyone promises that they can gain get you a number one position on page one, you should end the conversation. Search Engine Positions are determined by Google, not by any individual or company.

I hope that you can benefit from this discussion and ask questions that will help you to find a good SEO package for your East Coast Web Site Promotion.

For additional search engine optimization advice, please take a moment to complete the SEO Preparedness Quiz

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How can bloggers write better SEO blog posts for their web site promotion?

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If you are the only editor for your blog posts, what advice could you give yourself to write better blog posts?

1) The single most important thing to master in blog posts is how to write a good title tag. This is the primary phrase that is indexed by the search engines. It is also the bold title that appears in search results that searchers see on search engines.

It is worthwhile to carefully craft your title tag if you want to gain search engine position and attract visitors. Your blog may have thousands of pages already, or it may be brand new, but it is worth the effort to master the skill of title tag creation. Any SEO effort should seriously consider the value of title tags in Search Engine Results.

It must contain your keywords, and not exceed 70 characters, which is the Google limit. The only way to know what Google values in a title tag, is to test many variations of your title tags, and monitor your SERPS to see how they respond.

2) Make sure your content is consistent between your blog title, post title, and the content of your post. This is important for relevancy ratings. Also, do not stuff your site with your keywords. Mention them once in the first line, or paragraph, and sprinkle them throughout the body of the post.

If you want to check keyword density, my personal view is that one percent is just fine. Any density approaching two percent, or more, can sound stiff or forced. Ezine Articles (at www.ezinearticles.com) will not accept any articles with a keyword density over two percent.

The best posts work like this. Alert your audience of what you plan to say, then inform them of what you want to say, and then briefly review, or summarize what you have said. Your web site promotion will benefit from clearly written consistent content.

The challenge is to be as concise at possible, and still communicate well. This is part of good writing, and good SEO practice. Use the minimum number of words to communicate your message effectively.

3) Use outbound links sparingly, but link to authority sites in your niche. A good internal linking strategy will link to other related posts on your blog. You need to decide whether to allow outbound links in your blogroll or comments sections, depending on your SEO strategy. It does not affect the usability of your site to no follow outbound links.

The best SEO advice an editor can give a blogger is to create good quality informative content. If you spend the time and effort to write quality content on a regular basis, you find success in your web site promotion efforts at the level you desire.

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I often listen to music while I am writing information on web site promotion.

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For me, anyway, this post is relevant, even if Google may not think so. Music is certainly an important part of online search these days for many people.

You can now find music new and old using Google search. Here is a page that offers a brief video on how it's done.

Google Music Search

After watching this video you can simply try a Google search for a song lyric, song name, album name, or simply the name of the artist. Any of these will bring up some results.

When songs are available for a free listen, you will get results like those shown in the video. In the first position, there is a nice little box witharrows to click for a free ilsten. The source of the song will be one of 5 differentpartners in this endeavor. It will be either imeem, lala, myspace, Pandora, or Rhapsody, or it will list thepossible sorces below thename of the song.

I tried it with a variety of pieces of information for song old and new. "Live at Leeds" brought up lots of information and free listens to most of the songs on the Who's album, including the song I was looking for young man blues. The free listen was by lala.

I typed in "if there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now, from led Zepelin's Stairway to Heaven. Too famous, I guess, there was no free listen, but lots ofinformaiton on intrepretations of the lyric.

In trying something more contemporary, I discovered the listen box, and somenice options for John Mayer's song Georgia, a live Youtube video, and videos on how to play the song, which was pretty good.

I even tried a nice ballad by Pink, that I heard the other day called "I don't beleive you". There were YouTube videos, but no free box.

Like any Google search for web site promotion information, the precision of your results depends on the precision of your query. The more precisely you define your request, the better the results.

Usually this just means an approximate title of an album or a song and the artists name. In most cases, this will be enough.

Don't forget to complete your personalized Web Site Promotion Survey

I wish you great sucess in your web site promotion

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Superior Web Site Promotion using SEO East Coast services.

Ok, you are looking for SEO East Coast web site promotion, so how do you decide where to look ? This is a dilemma, since there are so many companies from which to choose.

When should you run away? If the first thing you hear from your SEO East Coast company is price, you should definitely run the other way. Especially if you hear that for this price we can do this, and for this much we can do that, you definitely want to look elsewhere.

Why is this true? Simply put, SEO is a custom service. If anyone tells you there are one size fits all solutions, they are really doing your company a disservice. Without spending time to research your company and it's unique needs, there is no way to quote SEO services.

There are so many companies that dabble in SEO, but far fewer that do SEO full-time. Maybe I am biased, but if you need a surgeon, you would probably not go to your family doctor. SEO is that specialized.

If you want to know the quickest way to weed out the pretenders from the serious SEO East Coast companies, ask this one questiton. "Do you think we need to do keyword research?" If the answer is, no you already have keywords on your web site, than quickly run the other way.

Any serious SEO company should start with keyword research. Whithout this critical step, all subsequent efforts may be misdirected or vain attempts to achieve unrealistic web site promotion goals.

To recap, what is the critical question to ask your SEO East Coast company? Ask about keyword research. You will easily separate the wheat from the shaft.

Good Luck in all you efforts to find an SEO company on the East Coast to meet your web site promotion needs.

Please complete the SEO Survey Quiz. This is the fastest way to evaluate your web site promotion requirements.

What is the best way to determine if your SEO consultant is a good one?

Why don't you type their name into Google? You can find out a great deal about someone by searching for them in this way.

Anyone who has been doing SEO or web site promotion of any kind, should be easily found on Google. If you type an SEO's name into Google and find no responses, or you find that there are a large number of posts that question or complain about the services of your SEO, perhaps it is time to look elsewhere.

If your web designer is not doing SEO for your site, he, or she, may actually be doing you a disservice. The most beautiful web site design will rarely be seen, if no SEO is done to promote the site on Google and the other search engines.

Don't get me wrong, I have great respect for most web designers. They have a flair for design that frankly, I lack. Unfortunately though, designers may tend to overlook, or downplay the effects or benefits of SEO. Some web design firms that also offer SEO services and SEO consulting are great at designing web sites, but only mediocre at SEO.

If you use a mediocre SEO consultant, where will that leave your web site 6 months from now? Effective SEO takes careful planning, patience, and an understanding of how Google works that comes from years of experience. It is unfair to expect that all web site designers, even expert ones, will also be experts at SEO.

For additional information on SEO consulting please visit: SEO East Coast .

Also don't forget to take the SEO Preparedness Quiz

You can discover top search keywords using the Wordtracker Tool. Just type wordtracker free in Google, and click on the first listing. You will go to the Wordtracker Free Keyword Suggestion Tool. Type your keywords in the keyword box, and then click the Hit Me button, to get the results.

The number given as a result is the number of daily searches for those keywords on the Internet, and is somewhat weighted. If you find that there is a daily search of 50-100 searches, or more, then you may have found yourself a niche for of top search keywordsto use in your web site promotion blog.

The first step described above is very easy, but the second step, takes a bit more thought. Now that you have searched top keywords that have a reasonable amount of traffic, how difficult to achieve a top position on Google will it be for these keywords ? This may be something that you did not previously consider, but it needs to be done.

How are you going to determine how hard you will have to work to make your web site promotion successful? It is critical to your web site marketing campaign that you begin with this knowledge, or you may never achieve a desirable result.

If I finish this post now, and tell you that you need to hire a search engine optimization consultant at this point, I know I will have a number of me people. I would not leave you hanging like that,. Do not worry, I am just joking.

Seriously though, this is the kind of thing that some SEO specialists do very well. The search for top keywords is something they do all the time. A very few of them have so much experience doing it, they do really great keyword research, that is invaluable for their customers.

You may not have access to all of the paid versions of the tools, or the techniques that an SEO Expert has, but let's use the free information available from Google, to get an idea how competitive our chosen search keywords will be.

Type in your keywords into the Google search box. You will see a large number in the upper right-hand corner of the page. Do not become alarmed that it is a very big number. This is only an index of the total number of sites that mention your keywords on their web site. You are not really competing with all of these sites. Only the top 50 or 100 sites ar actually competing for these keywords.

According to SEO research, between 50-70 percent of search engine results is based on the type and quality of one way links to your web site. It will vary depending on a number of factors. One of them is the competitiveness of the keywords you have chosen.

One or two word, search keywords with high traffic have a slightly different formula than longer three, four, or five keyword phrases. Links from other web sites to your own using these links are called anchor text links, and they can be very valuable. A link from another web site to your own, are called incoming or back links, which also carry weight in Google search rankings.

It is not so easy to check all of the links to a competitor's web site, but at least, we can count the total number of back links using a Google search command. This will give us a rough indication of how much effort we will have to make to create back links to compete with that particular site.

The command works like this: Type links:http://www.competitors-web-site.com Use the word links, followed by a colon, followed by the complete Internet address or URL of the web site. The number of results that come up, will be a good indication of the competitiveness level of your search keywords.

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A new version of WordPress, version 2.8.5 is now available for your web site marketing.

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Here is the WordPress information on the new release. http://wordpress.org/development/2009/10/wordpress-2-8-5-hardening-release/

It is always important to keep your WordPress updated for security reasons. This update seems to address these concerns specifically.

How many plugins did you have to update when you upgraded? I only had to update one of my plugins, and it worked just fine after the upgrade.

That is always a concern with WordPress upgrades, that you will have a problem with one or more of your plugins after and update. Usually an upgrade like the 2.9 upcoming release will create more problems than this kind of update.

You can preserve your web site promotion efforts and have a smooth upgrade experience, if you make sure to choose both popular and highly rated plugins. Some obscure plugins are not updated in a timely manner, and can leave you stranded.

Always remember to keep a record of your Akismet key from WordPress. Your protection for your web site marketing campaign will be lexposed to spam, if you forget and just go ahead and install the update. Remember, Akismet overwrites your configuration file, as well as your key.

To update your Akismet key, go to your plugin page. Under the Akismet plugin go to edit and open the akismet/akismet.php file.

Just a short way down, in the file, not too far from the top, look for the word "else" along the left hand margin, like you see below. Type in your key in between the single quote marks as shown, Then click on update at the bottom of the screen.

else
$wpcom_api_key = ' type in your Akismet code here, in between the single quote marks ';

Good Luck in all your web site promotion efforts !

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What will be the effects of new Google caffeine on web site marketing?

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How will web site marketing change with the new and improved Google caffeine search engine ? Apparently, from all of the advance publicity, the rumors about Google caffeine are true. It is a fundamental change or revision of the essential architecture that Google uses for it's search engine.

The new Google is set to be revealed incrementally next month in November, (2009). Will users see a dramatic change ? Probably not, but SEO consultants will notice, because it will affect search engine placement quite a bit.

1) As reported by Mashable, it seems as though caffeine charged Google will live up to it's name. I could be up to twice as fast for basic Internet searches ! That is a remarkable increase in performance. Google was no slouch before in terms of speed, as I'm sure you have noticed.

2) In addition, it appears that real-time search will be an important part of caffeine, so we may see a flashier, up to the minute caffeinated Google. If you want to see the caffeinated and the decaffeinated versions of Google side by side, you can visit: http://www.comparecaffeine.com/search-com.php

3) It seems as though search keywords and title tags are going to be even more important than before. No surprise there, as search engines improve, these key indicators should become more and more significant.

4) Social Media results may become more visible. This is a potentially huge difference, and a real challenge not only for Google to make the results relevant, but also for webmasters and SEO consultants to incorporate into their strategies.

5) No one is quite sure how much search engine placement will be affected by Google caffeine. It has been quite a while since a major modification in Google search has been made. SEO consultants and webmasters can try to predict what will happen, because it is always better to be proactive, rather than reactive when it comes to web site promotion.

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Web Site Marketing needs good SEO links

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How to acquire great links and avoid bad ones in your web site promotion.

Everyone wants to find link gold to assist their web site promotion. If you can find a high page ranked site that is willing to give you a link back to your site using one of your main keywords, than you have hit pay dirt my friend ! These kind of high value links do not come along often, but they are literally worth their weight in gold. !

In the meantime, we need to be careful of bad links while we search for the high quality back links I just mentioned. Bad Links are low value links, or links for which you can be penalized.

Never link to sites that offer paid links, and never link to sites that have no content and are stuffed with advertising. Not only should you be careful about links from the main part of your blog or web site, be careful about comments as well.

Monitor your comments not only for spam, but for the random post that slips through the spam filters you have set up. Don't hesitate to remove any comment that links to a site that had little or no content.

These are just a few of the things you can do to for your web site promotion.

Good Luck in all your promotion efforts for your web site.

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Web Site Marketing in 345 languages using Google Translator

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According to Google, the number of total languages in Google Translator has recently increased by 285 to a spectacular number of 345 !

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/google-translator-toolkit-and-minority.html

I had no idea there were even that many languages in existence. Apparently, the additional language surge is mostly due to regional, indigenous, or threatened languages, which are only spoken in a very localized area.

Ironically, I wonder how many of those languages have computer users that could take advantage of the new translators ?

Of course this is not the point. Google says it is trying to help preserve these small language groups. By saving recollections from elders in these groups, they are helping to preserve local culture that can be taught to children who will certainly have access to computers in their lifetime.

It is also claimed that an automatic translation helps translators to work more quickly. I can attest to this, since when I send e-mail in French, I find it faster to type in English, let the Google translator do it's thing, and then fix whatever needs adjustment. I wish they would add an option to change the polite form to the familiar, so that I wouldn't have to change all of the vous to tu, as well as the verbs.

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Make an Emergency Plan for your Blog - Start with a backup on your site

What would happen if your blog suddenly crashed and the information on your blog was no longer accessible ? Suppose you lost all the information on your blog, what would you do?

This is certainly an unpleasant scenario to imagine, but seriously, what would you do? Do you have a backup of your entire blog ? Do you know where that backup is? Do you know how to restore the backup if it became necessary ? If the backup failed to install, what would you do? Do you have a plan B, or worst case scenario plan in place?

If you can answer yes to each of the above questions, congratulations, you are in a very small but proud minority of bloggers, that take their administrative job very seriously.

If you cannot answer yes to each of the above questions, read this short post, and learn of a few simple steps you can take so you never have to feel sick to your stomach if a catastrophic loss ever should happen in your web site promotion efforts.

After your blog has been around for a while, there is probably quite a bit of content on your site that you value, and that you invested your valuable time to create. In order to protect your investment of time and energy, it is necessary to make a plan for every possible outcome, including catastrophic loss.

During the time your blog is down, you will of course lose visitors, possibly RSS subscribers, and search engine position as well. If the blog is down for a period of time, the business that depends on the blog, suddenly comes to a screeching halt.

Undoubtedly, if your blog ever crashes, it would likely be your worst day of blogging ever. As the administrator of your blog, or the blog administrator for for one of your customer's blogs, you are ultimately responsible to make sure that access to the blog is available on a 24 hour basis.

I don't like to put things in such graphic terms, but that is the unvarnished truth. I don't want anyone to shy away from blogging, but it is a fact that when you set up a blog and sign in as an administrator of a blog, the buck stops here, as they say.

Hopefully you have chosen a reliable hosting company that makes sure that your network never goes down for any reason. If something totally unexpected happens, however, and your blog does go down, regardless of the cause, (even if it is your own fault), it will save a great deal of grief on your part, to have a backup plan in place.

If you have a customer's blog go down, with a contingency plan in place, you will be able to avoid long embarasing explanations to your customer. If you are very lucky, and take care of the problem right away, perhaps no one will even notice there was problem in the first place.

Ok, first on the list of things to do is to make sure there is a back up of your blog made on a regular basis. If you have a WordPress blog, you have two choices, a manual backup and an automatic one. It is up to you, but I much prefer the automatic back up.

One plugin for manual backup that I've used is: WordPress EZ Backup This is essentially a manual backup. You will have to remember to use it on a regular basis.

Another automatic backup plugin, which I now use is: Wordpress Backup (by BTE) It has nice options, and can be set to back up once a day automatically. What could be easier than that ?

Second on the list of things to do, is to check the directory on your hosting site to make sure the backup was actually completed.

Third, if the backup software allows you to do so, install a copy of the backup software in a back-up WordPress subdirectory on your hosting site. I keep a separate WordPress installation for this purpose.

Network Administrators are always trained to test the backup of their network installation, and their data. Some do not, but the best ones always do that. It is much easier to test a backup installation of WordPress, than an entire network installation. It is highly recommended that you test your backup !

Fourth, keep a backup copy of your WordPress blog on a physical disk somewhere safe in your pocession. A memory stick, or a backup drive with enough capacity for the data would work just fine. Alternatively, you can use an online backup service for the same purpose.

Note: If you are missing posts from your latest backup, you can probably find them using Google cache, or if you subscribe to your own RSS feed, all of your blog posts should be there. - This may not be a push button restore, but at least you can find all of your posts there.

If you make a plan for disaster, the odds are in your favor, that you will never panic, even though others around you might suffer a serious freak.

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Find High Traffic Search Keywords for Effective Web Site Promotion

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Are you currently using the very best search keywords you can find for your products or services ? If you are not certain, study this post and do a little bit of keyword research to boost your web site promotion.

Do search keywords have an important impact on your web site promotion results ? The answer is an emphatic yes ! The search keywords you choose, and how they are used in your promotional efforts, have a critical impact on the results you achieve. When push comes to shove, Search Engine Optimization begins and ends with search keywords.

The choices you make in search keywords will direct and shape your web site promotion campaign and will be the focal point of your web site marketing efforts. Given the major importance of search keywords, it is worthwhile to spend extra time and effort on keyword research at the beginning of a web site marketing campaign.

Which search keyword research tool is the best for your needs ? It depends on you advertising strategy. If you plan on using Google Adwords, then your best tool is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. If you are planning a web site promotion campaign based solely on organic search engine results, then Wordtracker is your best research tool.

The Google Adwords Keyword Tool can be used in a variety of ways to analyze search patterns and trends over the last year. It offers a long list of suggested or alternative keywords based on the short tail keywords you type into the search box. You can also use it to search your own web site or the web site's of competitors to determine the types of keywords used.

Wordtracker is a more broad-based tool that can be used to discover competitive trends in long tail search keywords. This information can determine the most effective direction of your efforts.

Long tail search keywords should always be the initial focus of any web site promotion. They are easier to gain search engine position for two reasons. Long tail search keywords are less cometitive than short tail keywords. In addition, the algorithm for long tail keywords seems to be weighted in favor of on-site optimization factors as opposed to off-site optimization factors that are easier to control.

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Long Tail Keyword research is an effective Web Site Promotion Strategy

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Did you know that long tail keywords have a different ranking method by Google than the more competitive short tail keywords ?

In general, the shorter the keyword, the more highly competitive the category. High traffic keywords are desirable, but they are also very competitive, and hard to rank for top Search Engine Results Position. When you begin a campaign, it is better to use long tail keywords, since they less competitive, and they are also more targeted. The downside is that there is less traffic, but it is a great place to start.

Based on good keyword research using tools such as the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, good keywords with desirable traffic levels, need to be discovered.

It may seem as though you are working in reverse, through targeting long tail keywords first, but that is actually a wise web site marketing strategy. By using long tail keywords, a site can move quickly to the top of search engine results. If the short tail results are targeted first, it can take a long time to rank for them compared to well established sites already in those top positions.

It is better to get a smaller amount of traffic, more quickly, and build results step, by step. A wise long term strategy is to combine both long and short tail keywords in a simultaneous campaign, but start with the long tail first for better results in a shorter period of time.

In the case of a Joomla web site, the choice of sections, and categories is an important one, and it should be consistent with the keywords on the site.

Of course it is also important to have the body of the text match to the section, or category, (or post) if the text is on a Joomla site or a WordPress blog.

Their must be a close correlation between your title, your WordPress blog categories, or Joomla sections and categories. Google is always trying to improve search quality. If something is off, not only your readers may sense it, but Google may pick it up as well. If you have a title on one topic, and structures or content on a unrelated subject, that will not gain any points from Google.

It is also a good idea to limit the ads you place on a site in the very beginning. A site without the distraction of ads, shows visitors that you are serious about the content of the site.

If you follow the recomendations on this site in your pursuit of search engine position, you will enjoy good web site promotion results over time.

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For effective Web Site Promotion use Google Search - Google is people too !

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Sometimes it seems we can't see the forest for the trees in search engine optimization. In the search engine community there is such an intense focus on keywords, sometimes we forget that we can get answers to our questions from the search engines, in addition to our usual keyword searches.

It seems that everyone these days knows how easy it is to get low airline fares to any particular destination. You just go to Google and type in cheap, or inexpensive airline fares, or tickets and you will have a wide range of choices of web sites to compare to get the lowest airfare.

If you want tickets to sporting or entertainment events, just type the city and the team or event and you will find it immediately. We are very good at using search engines for specifics. We know that Google always seems to find something for us.

Somehow when it comes to looking for information of a general nature, we seem to rely only on our friends and family "experts" and forget to use Google to find the answer.

When it is not specific information we are after, but instead an answer to a general knowledge type questiona, we think that we cannot get answers from Google.

Google, it turns out, is very good at answering general knowledge types of questions. Maybe Google is not yet ready to be a Jeopardy, or cash cab contestant, but there is no shortage of general knowledge on Google. It turns out that Google is very good at answering simple questions.

You can literally ask Google in the search box like you would ask a friend. You will find that Google is people too !

Regular folks seem to know that you can type. "How do I submit my site to Google", (without the quotation marks), and it will give you the correct Google URL - www.google.com/addurl/ first page, first position. Search engine guys would type in "Google site submission", or "site submission Google", and get the same result.

We can use this method to find answers to many of our practical questions. You can type "How can I promote my web site on Google ?" and get a host of web sites to assist in whatever you want to promote. Far too many options here, in fact. Of course, read each of the posts at my blog, since it is about web site promotion in its many varied forms.

You can ask Google serious stuff also. How do I avoid heart disease ? You can get some great information this way. Search Engine people forget sometimes that this is done more often than we realize. I think probably this was done quite a bit and promoted with the AskJeeves search engine. You were encouraged to ask for information as a question. Askjeeves is now ask.com. There is not reason why you cannot ask Google or any major search engine a question.

Let's try a more challenging question. What is the truth of the universe? Just kidding here, but I tried it, and a YouTube video actually came up in the search results. It was for a virtual world game called Entropia, the name of the first colonized world outside of earth. Google knows sci fi, cool! Not the best answer, though is it ? I was looking for something a little more profound, and I did find links to information on Einstein, etc. and some relgious information. Not bad, a little closer.

Let's search for something a little more practical. Let's try for try out "How do I make money online" ? There are 190 million pages on the Internet that mention these words. You will probably find everything from financial planning to affiliate marketing in this catagory.

You should have a rather strong suspicion, that the previous category is going to be filled plenty of affiliate programs that will just take your money and never teach you anything about how to make money online. They may give you one small piece of the marketing puzzle, but never a complete picture of what it takes to market online. There might be some gems in there, but chances are you will spend a great deal of money and still not learn how to make money online.

It is important to remember in web site promotion that sometimes people are just asking questions in their Google search. If the title of your blog post is the specific answer they are looking for,, then your information will be found by searchers. Not everything is sophisticated keyword searches. Web site promotion is all about answering questions. Remember Google is people too !

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24. Use Open Source Software for Good Web Site Promotion

Open Source software is ideal for web site marketing

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Open Source Software is important to web site promotion. Two of the best programs for web site promotion are Joomla, and WordPress. The Firefox browser is another fine example of high quality Open Source software.

Open source is a phenomenon in the development of software over the last decade. For computer users open source means access to free or low-cost software that is developed, modified, and reviewed by a peer process that is free from overt commercial interest or restricted by hardware platform. In other words, open software attempts to be the best it can be for the user, regardless of who or where it was developed, independant of any particular type of computer hardware.

Over the history of the personal computer, one company that has dedicated itself to a particular hardware platform and a particular type of operating system is Microsoft. The x86, or Intel processor based hardware platform based on Windows is where Microsoft primarily does business. It is undeniable that Microsoft can claim many firsts in the development of personal computer software, just as it is clear that Microsoft creates software that most often does deliver on its promises.

It also equally clear that before a single piece of programming code is written, a business plan with it's own return on investment has already been written. What I mean to say is that Microsoft does deliver quality software, (let's leave Vista out of the discussion here for the moment), and it's intention from the very beginning of software development is to make a profit on it. Microsoft will never take a single step without consideration of where their profit lies. The benefit to the computer user is an important but secondary, not primary consideration. Of course, any modern corporation operates on the very same premise.

In contrast, there is Google. Of course Google makes tons of money and is profit-driven like Microsoft, but they are hardware neutral at Google. They really do not care if you run Linux, Unix, Windows, Safari, (or some future operating system for that matter.) However you access the Internet, you will be able to access Google's search and software capabilities. In addition, they allow their employees up to 20 percent of their time to develop "outside of the box" projects, that do not necessarily relate to their primary job responsibility. This is a considerable amount of freedom to develop independant thinking, and creativity.

At the other end of the spectrum from Microsoft is the Open Source community. Isn't it great to know that there are Open Source software programmers out there who care more for the quality of their software then how much money they will make from it ? This is quite an amazing and wonderful thing for computer users ! Open Source is the archetypical non-profit model, if such a thing exists in this world. You can base your web site promotion on software that will be free, or low cost, and it will likely be of high quality as well. Web site marketing has never seen it so good.

Popular examples of open source software are Mozilla; an alternative to Internet Explorer; Thunderbird, an Outlook alternative; Open Office, an alternative to Microsoft Office; Joomla, a web site development system; and GIMP, an alternative to Photoshop. A web site promotion based on these open software programs alone can save you hundreds of dollars. They are the finest programs available for web site marketing.

You can find numerous sites with Open Software, free for the download on Google.

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Boost your search engine placement efforts with Blogging.

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Why are blogs so good for web site promotion and search engine placement ? What is it about blogs that make them so important to the search engines ? Blogs have many of the characteristics of web sites, but they also have something unique that makes them especially attractive in terms of search. I believe that blogs rule on the Search Engines due to one main reason, fresh content. There are endless debates among SEO professionals over whether quality content or back links are the most important to Google. There is something about fresh content that tends to rank very highly on Google.

Quality fresh content will win every time over and above any other consideration in Search Engine Optimization. The freshness of content is something that Google can judge quite easily whenever a web page is re-indexed. It merely compares the current content with the index of the content from the last visit. I would submit, that the Google Spiders will require a much more sophisticated algorithm to judge quality content than freshness, and this is the main reason why freshness is all important.

After all, human editors frequently disagree concerning content quality. How could software robots be any different ? Any robust SEO Strategy should be based on not only quality content but fresh content as well. I believe that that fresh good quality content will win out over stale excellent quality content. It seems that the Google Spiders like fresh food even more than Subway Sandwiches does !

If you do a search for news on Google, who is it that comes up on top ? CNN takes the first position over all competitors. NY Times is in the 9th position on page one, and The Wall Street Journal is nowhere to be found in the first ten pages of results.

Well, what about Financial News ? Surely the Wall Street Journal should be near the top of that category, right ? Sorry Wall Street Journal, CNN money is top position on page one. The first Wall Street Journal result is on the top of page 2 ! The New York Times has it's first listing on the bottom of page 5. Amazingly, CNN has a link not only in the top of the first page, it has a link on every one of the first four pages. No other company has more than one listing, on the first 4 pages and CNN has 4 total links on the top 4 pages !

Here is a simple demonstration that will show how valuable fresh content is over numbers of links. Check the page rank of each of the following sites using the Google Toolbar.

CNN - Page Rank 10

The New York Times - Page Rank 9

The Wall Street Journal - Page Rank 8

Not to dish CNN at all, but if Google Page Rank were only concerned with content quality, don't you think that the prestigious New York Times and Wall Street Journal should have at least as high a page rank as CNN ?

What about incoming links? Another SEO philosophy says that back links are the most important factor to achieve Page Rank and search engine position. Let's look at incoming or back links using Google's Advanced Search.

CNN - 205,000

The New York Times - 702,000

The Wall Street Journal - 66,000

If back links were the main criteria, then certainly The New York Times would be have the highest page rank, and not CNN. Note: one reason that that Google may be reporting such a small number of back links for the Wall Street Journal, is because some of the Wall Street Journal's content is subscription-based. This are of their web site would require a user name and password, that could stop the Google spiders.

The approximate size of each of the sites is reported by Google Advanced Search, as CNN - 1.3 million pages, The New York Times - 930,000 pages, and The Wall Street Journal - 859,000 pages. Sites of this magnitude will most likely garner a high page rank on Google, due not only to content, but shear size.

If you do a Google search for news, and variations such as financial news, business news, current news, CNN comes up number one every time. Why does this happen? It is safe to say that it is due to fresh content.

CNN's site is updated on a minute by minute, hour by hour basis with content, unlike either the New York Times site or the Wall Street Journal's site which are probably updated on a much less frequent schedule. Google simply loves fresh content. Search results would seem to contend that CNN is one of the absolute masters of fresh content on the Internet.

From this simple comparison, we can see how dramatically fresh content affects page rank and search engine position.

I ran across a rather fascinating SEO strategy article recently, called "Where the bots stop". This article focuses on the question of how deep spiders dig when they index a web page.

It was found through what looks like some pretty good testing, that it varies quite a bit between the different search engines. Yahoo seems to see only the first 210k of text on a page. Google sees approximately 520k, and MSN, (now Bing) sees a whopping 1030k of text.

Admittedly that is a very large amount of text, probably more than most web sites would ever put on a single page. Let's consider what the spider sees, when it looks at a typical blog. The titles for all of the blog archives are usually listed somewhere on the blog. Even if the blog starts out small, eventually, there could be thousands of posts and their corresponding titles.

A brief test of several popular blogs indicated that most had text from 10k to around 30k. This leaves plenty of room for additional links, and content before the spider limit would be reached.

Each post on a blog is like an article, with it's own title and content. This is the very epitome of what search engine spiders are looking for. On a typical blog you find organic links galore, fresh content updated on a continuous basis, and an easy to access format that search engines love. An RSS feed from a blog is a Google robot's dream come true. Everything is served up to the robot on a platter, all time and date stamped and everything ! There are fewer problems to crawl blogs than web sites. Perhaps that's why Matt Cutts from Google said recently that a Blog like a Wordpress Blog take care of 80-90 percent of SEO already.

Fresh content is clearly the most significant factor in search engine positioning, and an essential element of any SEO Strategy. Happy Blogging !

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SEO - Basics start with simple 3 step plan

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Step 1) Start by doing some keyword research. If you were a purchasing agent, looking for your company on the Internet, but you did not know it's name, what would you type into Google ? Think of it like an electronic yellow pages. What 2 of 3 word phrases would you look for ? If you type these keywords into Google, do you find companies similar to your own ?

Do you see any of your direct competitors listed in the search results ? These keywords are criitical to the success of your web site promotion. They allow prospects and customers to find your company using search engines such as Google and Yahoo. What would you type into Google to find your company’s products or services ? When you do this, can you find some of your competitors listed in the search results ?

Try to be specific in your keywords. See if you can come up with 5 or 6 keyword phrases of 2 to 3 words each. You can also try to recombine the words to make new keyword phrases. You can get some assistance from a free tool you can find on Google called Google Adwords Keyword Tool. After one set of keywords is entered into the search box, there is a long list of keywords and suggested ones as alternatives.

This tool is based on Google Adwords. There are additional tools for a more in depth analysis, but this is not a bad place to start your keyword research. At the very least it will give you some idea of the amount of traffic on a monthly basis for several different phrases of keywords.

It is important to always maximize the benefit of your keywords, by selecting ones that have the greatest amount of traffic. There are more detailed analyses that can be done, that look at issues of value, in comparison to competitiveness of particular keywords. This kind of detailed, in depth research, is one area in which SEO consultants specialize.

Google Adwords results should get you started to think about keywords, because they are critical to success in drawing search engine traffic.

Step 2 – Create press releases. Here’s where you get to play “journalist”. Imagine yourself a mini-CNN correspondent. Even on a small scale, what is there that is notable about your company? Is there a recent acquisition of new technology, a new business strategy, a new partner, a major new customer, or a recent change of direction? It does not have to be anything significant enough for the local news, just something interesting.

Maybe your type of business is not commonly known, and there is a general interest angle to explain what the business is and what you do. You could explain the business to a lay person that has no knowledge of it, to clear up possible misconceptions. Any of these approaches will work to promote your company and will help your online promotion strategy. It will just take a little creativity.

Now you can write a press release in the third person. Be careful not to make a sales pitch, just tell, and don’t sell. Of course, you should use your keywords in a natural way, as if you were in a discussion with the reader. Use your most important keyword in your title. Use your all of your keywords in the body of the press release. The press release should read naturally without sounding stiff or forced.

Find "free press release" companies on Google, read the rules for each one, and submit to several of them. Each press release site will have a slightly different submission standard. Be especially careful about direct links to your web site in the press release. Some sites do not allow them at all, only in a secondary section from the body of the press release. Some sites allow only a limited number of outbound links, and most do not allow them in the first few paragraphs of the release.

Rewrite each time you submit to a different site, with a slightly different title, and different contents, maintaining your keyword frequency. After a few days, or a week or so, check Google News, and Google, to see if your press release comes up. You may be surprised to find your press release there, under your search keywords ! This is significant, because you now have numerous back links to your web site. This is something that Google values, fresh original content, and an incoming link.

Step 3 – Find free article submission sites listed on Google. Article writing is only slightly more challenging than writing for press releases. Press releases may allow a little self promotion, under the banner of “news”, but article sites usually do not allow it at all. An article reads more like the encyclopedia, but it doesn’t have to be scholarly or pedantic. It can read like a general interest story. The submission rules must be respected here, which vary from one article site to another.

There is usually an approval process which can take from a few days, to a week or more. Don’t worry, if you make a mistake, the worst that can happen is that your article will be delayed from publication on the Internet. You will have an opportunity to correct it, and learn from whatever went wrong.

Each of the three steps described above can be the foundation of a web site promotion effort over a period of weeks and months. If this interests you, there is a great deal more information waiting
to be found on my blog, listed below.

If you think this is too much work, you can always hire a Search Engine Optimization Consultant to do the work for you.

Good Luck with your Internet marketing efforts!

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The Story of the Woodcutters helps to understand Web Site Marketing

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Here is a story that I've used to guide my life for quite some time. I heard the story of the woodcutters a long time ago, but it stuck with me over the years.

There were two woodcutters who challenged each other to a chopping contest. Whoever could chop the most wood from sunrise to sunset would be the winner.

One of the wood cutters was built like a NFL tackle, and looked like he could do some damage to the logs just with his bare hands. The other woodcutter was tall, but lanky and lacked the muscle of the larger man.

The big wood cutter thought that he had this contest in the bag, because his opponent was so scrawny. The men began at sunrise and both chopped wood with great fury. Every so often, the big wood cutter saw his opponent sit down.

Since this happened every couple hours, whenever the the skinny man sat down, the large man smiled, and said to himself, "yeah, I've got him". This went on for the entire day.

The large man didn't even stop chopping wood to wipe the sweat from his forehead. He never remembered working so hard in his entire life, and was certain that he had won the contest by a wide margin. He could hardly wait to claim victory at the end of the day.

At sunset, a crowd of people gathered to see the results of the contest. They looked at the pile the big woodcutter had chopped and the crowd cheered, because it was indeed an impressive pile of wood.

Then everyone went to check the pile of wood the skinny woodcutter had chopped. To everyone's surprise, especially the big woodcutter, the skinny man's pile was clearly larger than the pile the big man had chopped.

The big man couldn't believe his eyes, and said foul play must have been involved because he had not stopped working for a moment, and had clearly worked harder, since the skinny man had frequently taken time to rest.

The skinny man raised his hand to explain to the big man, and this is what he said.

"You thought that I was sitting down to take a rest, but because my back was to you, you couldn't see what I was doing. I only sat down to sharpen my axe."

What is the point of this story ? I think it is that we must learn to always keep our tools sharp. Whether it is our technical skills, our people skills, our skills as a parent, a mentor, or as a friend.

Sometimes we forget that in life, our full value as a human being can be revealed through something as simple as being a good and true friend.

The burly woodcutter in the story is like the myriad of entrepreneurs who have have their noses to the grindstone, trying to do a hundred different things they believe it takes to market on the Internet every day. In the end, sometimes they are so busy with their daily activity, they can hardly see the forest for the trees.

I value hard work, but what I truly marvel at is hard work with the assistance of automation. I love tools in whatever form that liberate us from tedious and repetitive work.

It is not that I disdain manual work. A number of years ago, I held jobs which required great physical effort every day, and I enjoyed the challenge of those jobs. What I disliked was boring, mundane, mind-numbing, repetitive work.

I love the freedom that results from time saved in not engaging in tedious work. I feel sorry that there are so many people in the world who toil everyday doing exhausting manual labor, not by choice, but out of necessity.

Life has been, and continues to be, for far too many people on the earth, a day to day struggle for survival. The time it takes each day to insure survival leaves no time for other pursuits, whether they might be intellectual, artistic, spiritual or otherwise.

When I first saw a computerized machine tool, a number of years ago, I thought to myself. This is something incredible that can free men from manual labor, and I thought about something the German mathematican and philosopher, Leibnitz said. (1646 - 1716)

"One might object that artisans today work out of necessity, if all their needs were satisfied,then they would do not work at all. I, however, maintain the contrary, that they would be glad to do more than they now do out of necessity.

For, first of all, if a man is unsure of his sustenance, he has neither the heart nor the spirit for anything." and "It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation."

This was the start of my lifelong fascination with computerized machine tools, other types of automation machinery, and computers in general.

I like the skinny fellow in the story above. It is such a simple story. The skinny man didn't care what anyone said, he just had a quiet confidence in what he was doing, and knew clearly that he was using a sharper tool than his competitor.

At the end of the day it is the quality of what we can accomplish that will set us apart from other entrepreneurs on the Internet.

I feel very fortunate to have found some of the very best tools on the Internet for web site promotion. My goal through this blog, is to provide access to these tools, as well as the training needed to use them effectively. I hope this blog will assist internet marketers who are searching for the very best tools for their web site promotion.

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How to find good web site marketing and SEO information

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In this blog you will find a wealth of information on web site promotion.  There is a growing need for good quality, practical information on how to market on the Internet. Unfortunately, the little guy, or the small business will have a very hard time starting out, because there is a great deal of information for sale on the subject, and much of it is of questionable value.

There are plenty of affiliate marketers on the Internet that will tell you that they have found a push-button solution. They are happy to tell you all about, it if you just purchase their report for a mere $ 47.00. You will be buying their reports for the next 10 years, and still not achieve the kind of success you seek.

Unfortunately, there are far too many uninitiated marketers who believe this "gold rush" mentality, so it is easy for savvy marketers to take advantage of them. I have bought some of it myself, I confess. I'm sure many of you have done the same. The internet now, however, is changing from a place where any marketer call sell his "secret to success" that he says is worth $ 995.00 for $ 95.00, and make some money at it.

Things are changing, as more and more people realize that there is very little substance behind the claims of the "overnight millionaires". More and more aspiring Internet marketers are learning that there is a great deal of good information available from responsible internet marketers. They are learning to sift through the hype and search out valuable content, without spending hundreds or thousands of dollars to get it.

You will find that the "good guys" always provide lots and lots of free information up front. They will never use the "shotgun" approach and try to sell you something on your first contact with them. Search out and get to know the "good guys".  Take advantage of all of the free information they offer, and please don't fall for the false promises of the mass e-mail marketers, who try to lure you into the latest and greatest strategy that made them tons of money overnight.

You will not find any magic bullet reports sold on this site.  I am doing my absolute best to be one of the "good guys" of web site promotion. Why shouldn't internet marketing be a skill like any other that takes time and effort to develop ?

My hope is that through this blog, I can shorten the time it takes internet marketers to become proficient and successful at Internet marketing. I would also like to help avoid the enormous waste of time and money that can happen when good people fall into the trap of the unscrupulous affiliate marketers who abound on the Internet.

For those who still believe that there is a magic solution to web site promotion, I encourage you to look elsewhere, and come back and visit this blog in six months, if you haven't yet found what you are looking for.

There are step by step, proven methods of web site promotion that yield excellent results on Google.  These methods has been proven over the last 5-10 years by a number of highly successful Internet marketers.

I am only listening to the "good guys" in my web site promotion efforts.  Through this blog, I will pass on to you these proven methods, only after having tested them, and used them for successful web site promotion.

You will not become successful in one day, or one week using these methods.  Over time, day by day, and week by week, through consistent effort your results will grow, and you will reap outstanding rewards. 

You must be patient and consistent.  If you can work in this way, you will see results that far exceed your expectations. These are two of the most important things I have learned about web site promotion, patience, and consistency.  They have nothing to do with some "inside secret" or "magic formula".

Again, all of the information is free on this site.  Any advertising you see here, is for tried and true products I have used myself, and to partially offset the costs of producing this blog. I hope you find this information useful. Any feedback you would like to offer, is gratefully appreciated.

Please visit as often as you like.  You can also subscribe by e-mail, or by RSS feed using the links on this page.

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Keywords are the bait to good web site promotion fishing

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Web Site Promotion begins and ends with keywords. The Internet is like a huge river of information and business activity, and web site promotion is like fishing. If you want to fish successfully in the huge river called the Internet and catch lots of fish, you want to maximize your chances by having a good fishing pole, good bait, as well as good fishing knowledge, and technique.

Most people on the Internet know they are at a huge river where there are plenty of fish, but they are not using a good fishing pole, their bait is stale, and they lack the proper knowledge and experience of fishing to succeed.

Some of them take years to finely tune their skill and knowledge, and to develop the right tools and techniques to become successful. Others give up along the way, and some, who are part of the vast majority, just continue on the path of little success year after year.

To which group do you belong ? There is another group I failed to mention. There are those who are fortunate enough to have found mentors that have been successful themselves, and are willing to teach others how to succeed.

I am not talking about the affiliate marketers who promise you an instant life of luxury. If you just buy their $ 47.00 report, they will reveal all to you, and you can spend everyday at the beach and make millions. This is patently false, and it is a total misrepresenation of Internet business. Why are these marketers still hanging around ?

It is because there are still too many people wwho buy into the myth that there is a magic push button solution to wealth on the Internet. If you see a big mansion, a luxury car, or a yacht on a web site, quickly look the other way. You would have a better chance of winning the lottery than making money with them.

There is another group I forgot to mention. These people are wise enough and fortunate enough to have found someone who can teach them. The kind of person who can teach others how to do Web Site Promotion, is indeed rare. If you are lucky to be in this type of group, you are amoung the most fortunate of Internet marketers.

You can literally save years of effort with the assistance of an good trainer. You will learn what type of fishing pole to use, the correct bait, and how to use all of the tools, and the proper technique to land lots and lots of fish. Doesn't that make sense ? Anyone who tells you that all you need to be successful is buy their report, or purchase their piece of software, is no different than the traveling snake oil salesman of the old Wild West.

Keywords in web site promoiton are like the bait in fishing. Without the right bait, or the right lure, you are simply not going to catch fish right ? You may have a beautifully designed web site, a carefully thought out sales process, and great products or services, but without fishing using the right keywords, your success will always be limited.

This is because, if you are able to harness some of the traffic from the huge river of the Internet, you will always find lots of fish. This is not something you can buy with a big billboard, or a catchy prime time TV ad, even if you had the desire and the resouces to use in that way. The Internet is a much more level playing field than traditional advertising.

The way you catch fish on the Internet is through search engine optimization. It is no more difficult to learn the techniques of search engine optimization, than it is to build a beautiful web site, design a great sales process, or build great products and services. It is teachable, and it can be done by anyone who is willing to take the time to study, practice, and learn.

The first step to good web site promotion is to understand keywords. I'm sure you know what your product or service is, but are you using keywords in any of your promotional efforts to attract search engine traffic ?

Even more importantly, do you know how much traffic is currently generated for your keywords on the Interent on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis ? Are you sure you have found the best combination of keywords that can generate the highest levels of traffic for your web site, and that you are using them in the most effective manner ?

This is what Search Engine Optimization can do for your Web Site Promotion, and why most people starting out on the Internet have such a hard time to find success. It can be the difference between mediocre results and outstanding ones.

Please use all of the resources you find on this site to boost your web site promotion, and learn about the fascinating world of search engine optimization.

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Will Google Wave be the favorite platform for Web Site Marketing?

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What is this Google Wave that caused 100,000 users and developers to be invited to it's release yesterday - Sept, 30th, 2009? Apparently, there were several million additional surfers who tried to download it, but they will just have to wait to catch the wave. Surfs up, however, for those lucky 100,000 who were given Google surf boards.

So what is all the excitement about ? Is it a bird, a plane ? Is it e-mail ? Is it chat ? Is it a blog ? Is it multi-media ? Is it a real-time language translator ? Yes, in answer to all of the above questions. It seems that Google Wave has gadgets, robots, tigers, oh my !

Google Wave apparently, is a hosted, collaborative, real-time, multi-media, conversation between users that belong to the same wave group. This is e-mail and chat, and more, like you have never seen before.

This was the biggest product launch by Google in the last 10 years, or more, so it's no surprise it made the front page of cnn.com. Not too shabby for a software release, even if it is Google. It set off a flurry of texts, tweets, news articles, blogs, and general buzz across the Internet yesterday.

For those techies out there. Google Wave uses the instant messaging XMPP protocol. Check out the official Google blog for the news of the release.

Best article of the day goes to Mashable for their Google Wave Guide

We will probably see the noise quiet down over the next weeks and months, as Google and the developers work out the bugs.

One thing you can be sure of is that this is just the beginning for Google Wave. Expect to see some really cool applications come up on Wave in the next few years.

What about a wave that becomes a viral blog that breaks the Guiness Book of World Records for the most simultaneous users on a shared document ?

What about a new product idea that goes from concept, (based on user feedback through real-time, online surveys), to prototype, to manufacturing, and delivery within days ?

What about a natural disaster that requires massive emergency aid. It overwhelms the government's ability to respond. A massive Google Wave spawns one hundred thousand sponsors all over the world that donate money to rescue victims, and save lives ?

What about an interactive collaborative poem generated by people to highlight the problem of worldwide hunger that generates

money from corporate sponsors based on the number of users who participate ?

It simply boggles the Google mind to think of the possibilities. Are the social networking executives losing sleep tonight over what Google has done with Wave ? Only time will tell.

The $ 64,000.00 question is how will all these waves be incorporated into Google search results ?

At the very least I'm sure we will see a new tab on Google search called "Wave Search".

I don't think we will be waving goodbye to Google Wave anytime soon.

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