From the category archives:

Search Engine Optimization

Romancing Google and Demystifying PageRank

by Hightide

by Gerrick W

What is PageRank?

PageRank is one of the important factors that determine Search Engine Results Page (SERP). It is a numerical value assigned by Google that shows the importance of a web page. When one page links to another, it is actually casting a vote for the other page. It goes to say that a page with more inbound links enjoys a higher page rank. For simplicity sake, PageRank is referred to PR in this article.

Applying the Mathematical Concept of PageRank

Google calculates the PR of a web page using this equation:

PR(A)=(1-d) + d[PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn)]

‘t1 – tn’ are pages linking to Page A

‘C’ is the number of outbound links of the linking page

‘d’ is a damping factor set at 0.85

This is the original equation Google published when it developed PR. Whether Google uses a variation of it, only God knows. This equation, though, is essential to an understanding of PR.

Don’t be scared by the above equation. For a fuller explanation of this equation with working examples read The Google Page Rank Algorithm and How it Works by Ian Rogers.

The purpose of this present article is to apply the Mathematical concept of PR to your web page ranking strategy. Yes, you can organize your linking strategy to achieve high PR for your important web pages.

Inbound Linking Strategy

Many people assume that the Toolbar PR values of PR1 to PR10 are set on a logarithmic scale. Nobody outside Google knows for sure, but there is a very good reason for this assumption. That being the case, moving from a lower page rank to the next higher one gets increasingly difficult. So, moving from PR3 to PR4 is more difficult compared to moving from PR1 to PR2. For illustration refer to the table below…

Tool PageRank(log base 10)……Real PageRank

0……………………………………………………..0 -10

1…………………………………………………100 – 1,000

2………………………………………………1,000 – 10,000

3…………………………………………….10,000 – 100,000

4……………………………………………….and so on…

*This illustration assumes a log base of 10.

In a nutshell, an inbound page link with a PR8 is worth more than one with PR4. The number of outbound links of the incoming page link becomes immaterial. Inbound links with high PRs that are relevant to your website will boost your web page ranking significantly.

The practice in the past was to buy inbound links with high PR to boost your web page PR. However, Google in recent times has clamped down this practice. A new web page with lots of high PR inbound links will be viewed with suspicion. Buying incoming links has become a thing of the past. The rock solid ways to gather inbound links are through…

a. Directories – Getting listed in quality directories like DMOZ or Yahoo can help boost your page rank.

b. Building a great content site that others want to link with.

Internal Linking Strategy

Based on the equation that Google uses to calculate PR, adding new pages has the effect of improving the overall PR of a website. If your organize your internal links carefully, you can channel the PR of your new pages to the important pages of your website.

The strategy is to grow your website steadily by adding new pages, and link them to your important pages. Avoid pages that are identical eg. affiliate programs web pages. You will be accused of spamming by Google, and run the risk of having your web pages and possibly your entire website penalized. Add new pages that are rich in content, and relevant to your website. Content is king.

However, new pages have to be indexed by Google before they can channel their PR to other pages. Google only indexes pages that have one or more pages on the web linked to them. Organize your internal linking carefully.

Outbound Linking Strategy

You will lose page rank with outbound links. So it is good practice to ask for reciprocal links, and to have outbound links from a page with the lowest PR. Have the anchor text of the incoming links centered on your keywords or similar keywords. You also need to vary the text of your inbound links to make them look natural to Google.

Choose your link exchange partners carefully. Avoid link farms. Period.

Google enjoys about 36 percent of web traffic on the World Wide Web. In absolute terms, this represents a significant figure. As long as PR is one of the important factors Google uses to determine Search Engine Result Pages, it is prudence to understand how PR works and strategize your linking accordingly.

You don’t need to crack your head to fully understand PR. All you need is to simply apply the practical concepts delineated in this article to your linking strategy, and a good dose of patience. For Google places emphasis on the age of your links, your domain, and your web pages.

It’s a fool’s game to try to beat Google. Stick to rock solid principles when building your link structure, and you won’t have to worry when the next Google ‘dance’ comes along. Your web pages will still be standing after the dust has settled.

About the Author:
Gerrick W – mailto:gw@1stinternetmarketingsolution.com Information and Software Tools You Need to Effectively Promote Your Online Business. Visit: http://www.1stinternetmarketingsolution.com

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7 Steps to Set Your Website on the Fast Track to Success

by Hightide

by Paul Wilson

To get on the fast track to success one needs to:

* Create a website that is dynamic and distinctive. The website name should match the domain name. Bad or broken links must not exist. JavaScript errors must be eliminated. The company’s profile should be clear, concise, and complete. Secure ordering must be in place if required. And, visible links to the company’s business plan, privacy policy, return policy, and guarantee should be present.

* Employ a design with user in mind. Never use heavy images, 10-12Kb per image will ensure that pages are not slow. Use graphics that enhance content. Avoid images that change color or blink. Use standard layouts that are reader friendly, the page should breathe and font size must be comfortable. Use a few fonts: serif for headlines and sans serif for text. Limit the number of advertisements, banners, and links on a page. Be sure to test your website using multiple browsers.

* Select a directory with vision. Read all the submission requirements and guidelines more than once. Choose a category with thought and planning (browse the directory, look for listings of competitors, and related sites). Review your website from an editor’s point of view. Ensure that the title and summary are appropriate and relevant to the content of the web site. List the strengths of your site realistically; be sure to add value to your site,

*Increase traffic by submitting the site to web directories. Choose to submit to major ones as well as minor ones, even a few relevant niche sites will boost your popularity and traffic.

* Link your site to others. Search engines give higher positions to sites linked from others. Link the website to major sites as well as minor ones. Contact high traffic sites and request a mention or link. This will boost your engine placement and direct traffic from the pages that are linked.

* Optimize the PageRank of your website by choosing inbound external links with care. Link up to relevant sites and not at random, quality is the criteria to consider not PageRank. List the website in an open directory and Yahoo as this will provide an artificial enhancement of PageRank. Never place external links on pages that are in turn linked to other sites. External links should be offered on pages with low PageRank containing many links to pages on your site. Construct your navigational structure such that important pages are linked to many other internal pages that do not require a high rank. These extra links will add rank to the major pages.

* Create a site map and link every page to it. These invite spiders sent out by search engines which then index every page on the site. Adopt an easy-to-use navigational structure. Check for errors regularly. Include a site search tool. Be search engine friendly and avoid frames, flash, or code that will trip up a spider or engine. It is not submitting to a directory that ensures success but taking care of the nitty gritty.

About the Author:
Paul Wilson is a freelance writer for www.1888Directory.com < http://www.1888Directory.com/>, the premier website directory provides human edited categorized website listings including business websites, news websites, gaming websites, shopping websites, travel websites and more. He also freelances for www.1888PressRelease.com < http://www.1888PressRelease.com/>.

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Evaulating Web Site Performance

by Hightide

by Charles Preston

Setting up a website is the very first step of an Internet marketing campaign, and the success or failure of your site depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your website goals. If you don’t know what you want your site to accomplish, it will most likely fail to accomplish anything. Without goals to guide you in developing and monitoring your website, all your site will be is an online announcement that you are in business.

If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, whether it is visitors filling out a form so a representative can contact them, or purchasing a product, there are steps you can take to insure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good baseline measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any unusual offline promotional activities.

However, just because hoards of people have passed through your gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually, you want those visitors to actually do something there. It is equally important to monitor the number of visitors to your site who made a purchase. This figure is called the site conversion rate, and it is an essential element of the efficacy of your website.

To find the site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them
that actually performed the action your site is set up for. For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only 25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of visitors and divide that figure by the number of visitors who made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100 (25 ?00 X 100).

If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a form, make sure to then figure out what the difference is between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form will actually become your customer. However, whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you make changes to the site.

You may find that you need to implement some additional marketing strategies if you find that traffic to your site is extremely low. There are several effective methods to improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly launching a search engine optimization campaign. This campaign is targeted at increasing your position in search engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster and easier. You can either research the steps you need to take to improve your search engine rankings, or employ a search engine optimization company to do the work for you.

In either case, after your have improved your search engine positions, make sure you keep on top of them by regular monitoring and adjusting of your efforts to maintain high positions.

Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor to your website to accomplish the action the site is set-up for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, the customer may just throw in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or ordering page quickly accessible.

Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and loss in your online campaign.

About the Author:
Charles Preston is President of Click Response a website marketing firm that focuses on better ROI for small businesses and affordable search engine optimization solutions. Search engine optimization and compelling marketing copy is the key to small business success online.

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How Sneaky Links Increase Your Click-Throughs

by Hightide

Copyright 2005 Ron Hutton

If you find that your site visitors have developed a high level of resistance to clicking through your affiliate links, you’re not alone. What is it that makes affiliate links suspicious to people? They’re certainly not meant to be offensive.

I believe that it’s the same kind of thing that automatically activates your defenses when you walk onto a used car lot and are promptly accosted by a guy wearing a green and orange plaid sports coat, pink neck tie and white patent leather lowtops that zip up the side.

Do you hate the feeling that someone is “selling you”? I really think that it’s the same thing when visitors see what’s obviously an affiliate link (or a poorly disguised affiliate link) and start looking for a way to buy “straight from the source” thinking that they’re going to get a better deal!

If your website sells affiliate products, here’s a simple “Sneaky Link” tactic that will help you with affiliatephobes.

Note: This article has a free corresponding step-by-step video tutorial that demonstrates the exact steps to creating your own “Sneaky Links”…

http://www.gothrive.com/sneaky-link-video.htm

Street-smart webmasters and marketers understand the importance of taking every possible step to get visitors to let down their guard. We seek information but we resist being sold.

So, the following sample source code can be used on any web page to create “sneaky links” that don’t have the appearance of affiliate links. You’re not running a non-profit organization are you? No? Well, let’s just let someone else believe that you are.

Here’s an example of source code that will bare your soul to the world. Note: the tags are altered with a period that needs to be removed if you intend to edit and use this source code in your web pages.

No mysteries here:

< .a href="http://www.pluginprofittoolbox.com/idevaffiliate/idevaffiliate.php?id=100">Plug-In-Profit-Toolbox.com< ./a>

Now, let’s get sneaky. ;~)

< .a href="http://www.pluginprofittoolbox.com/idevaffiliate/idevaffiliate.php?id=100" onMouseOver="window.status='http://www.pluginprofittoolbox.com/'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;">http://www.pluginprofittoolbox.com/< ./a>

To assist in understanding how the “sneaky link” works, let’s do a little link anatomy study. Here are the pieces and parts of our link:

Part 1, Beginning anchor tag: < .a

Part 2, Target URL (affiliate link): href="http://www.pluginprofittoolbox.com/idevaffiliate/idevaffiliate.php?id=100"

Part 3, "MouseOver" attribute: onMouseOver="window.status='http://www.pluginprofittoolbox.com/'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;"

Part 4, Link Text: http://www.pluginprofittoolbox.com/

Part 5, Ending anchor tag: < ./a>

So, what’s the trick? It’s in part 3, the mouseover attribute. This nifty little piece of source code tells the web browser what to display in the status bar (very bottom of the browser window), and if the “window.status” is the same as the link text, it appears as though there’s no trickery going on. But, we know better.

Is it possible that this link could be found out, discovered and revealed for what it really is? Sure. If someone were to apply a single right-click to the link, the web browser will reveal the actual target URL. However, the average user won’t know this so the “sneaky link” tactic can be very effective in getting people to let their guard down.

End result… your click-through rate goes up, you make more sales and we all live happily ever after. Go forth and create some “sneaky links” now.

To view this article’s free corresponding step-by-step video tutorial that demonstrates the exact steps to creating your own “Sneaky Links”…

http://www.gothrive.com/sneaky-link-video.htm

There’s a zip file available for you to download (no cost, of course) with the exact source code that’s shown in the video.

About the Author:
Ron Hutton is a 20 year sales and marketing veteran with a passion for coaching and training. Subscribe to “GoThrive Online”, for Free Video Tutorials for Internet Marketing and big juicy marketing tips in small, easy-to-chew, bite size servings. Free Video Tutorial Archives Here: http://www.gothrive.com/free-video-tutorials.htm

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Search Engine Optimization

by Hightide

Search Engine Optimization for Everyone

by Sherry Holub

There are many facets to SEO and the search engines continually change their methods of indexing sites to help prevent the same sites from staying up in the ranks all the time.

Here are some strategies we have personally used with our web design firm:

1) Google AdWords. This is an excellent and cost effective method of getting good search results. You set the maximum daily amount you would like to spend on your key words and phrases. Within the first month we were getting more client contacts through using AdWords.

2) Overture Keywords. A lot like AdWords, but we found that their system did not really allow you to set a daily limit to how much you wanted to spend and it quickly got out of hand with some of the phrases we had chosen! Still, pretty cost effective in the grand scheme of things.

(Continue article…)

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The “Google Dance”

by Hightide

Read what happens when Google parties: Keeping enemies close at the Google Dance

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Google Sitemaps..

by Hightide

Google Sitemaps is a simple and fast way for your site to be constantly indexed and updated by Google.

This article will discuss the benefits of implementing this new technology, who should use it, how it works and how to create a Google Sitemap for your web site. More…

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