Keywords for successful SEO

The Internet is crowded with many different companies offering a wide variety of goods and services. What differentiates each business is the how they use keywords for SEO, or search engine optimization. If you’re not familiar with the term, not to worry, we’ll take a look at what keywords mean, as well as how you can increase their value in relation to your business success.

What exactly are keywords?

A keyword is a word or phrase that you enter into a search engine in order to find pages, or websites that contain relevant content. When you enter these keywords into a search you are typing a Search Query which tells the search engine what you are looking for.

The engine then searches websites, pages, and even video titles that contain these keywords, and displays what it finds in search results. In order to be found by search engines, businesses often incorporate keywords into their content that they think users will search for. The question is, how do you know which keywords to include in your content? The best way to figure this out is through keyword research.

By conducting keyword research, you can predict shifts in demand as well as attract the best visitors to your website. Below are four tips you can use to not only find the best keywords, but also judge their effectiveness and overall value.

4 steps for increasing keyword value:

1. Think and ask

Take a look at your existing content and ask yourself whether or not your keywords are relevant to your website and what you essentially do as a business. Can your customers easily find what they’re looking for? If you’re not sure then the best way to find out is to ask your customers and potential customers. One way is to take a look at common customer requests and questions.

Be sure to also ask yourself whether or not customers would be happy with what they find once they search too; because if not a bumpy road lies ahead. From there, develop a list of what you believe to be the best, or most useful keywords. Be sure to look at this from the customers’ viewpoints, not from your own perspective.

2. Make use of major search engines

Knowing search engines that have already ranked your chosen keywords, like Google and Bing, can give you insight into your competitors and what keywords they use, as well as some idea of how challenging it’s going to be for these keywords to be ranked highly.

Simply visit the major search engines and search for the keywords you identified above. Take a look at the results, specifically the top results. In Google, for example, you may see that the first 3-4 results are actually ads. As a rule of thumb, the more ads you see the more difficult it is to rank in results for those keywords. Experts call this a high value keyword, which usually indicates that conversions are high. This means you will likely need to invest more into your content and overall marketing if you want to rank higher in search results.

3. Invest in Google Adwords

It’s not the end of the world if your website doesn’t rank for specific keywords. It may help to invest in Google Adwords. For example, you can purchase test traffic in Google Adwords to see how well specific keywords convert. Select “exact match” and point the traffic to the relevant page on your website. This add-on tracks impressions and conversion rates over the course of at least 2-300 clicks. The perk: you only pay if people click on your ad.

4. Calculate the exact value of a keyword

Let’s say you ran a search ad for 24 hours on google which generated 6,000 impressions – out of the number of people who saw the add 100 visitors came to your website and four converted, creating a total profit of USD $400. This means that a single visitor is worth USD $4 to your website. In other words, if searches hold steady, you could see a profit boost of up to USD $146,000!

Of course, keyword research takes time, and effort. You will likely not see mbuttive gains by simply researching, but by knowing what works and what doesn’t, and by working to find the best keywords for your business. Looking to learn more about the importance of keywords for SEO? Contact us today.

Internet marketing guru
Spencer Beazer
239-258-6127

Place Free Online Listings to Get Your Business Noticed

When establishing your business an online presence is a must, but there are so many places to list your company that it can be confusing to know where to start, not to mention which online listings are worth the time and effort to set up. I have put together a selection of some of the best free listings that can help small business owners get their companies noticed online. The focus here is on quick set up and getting your business to effectively show up in search results. Here is a brief overview of some of the sites I have found to work the best along with links to each:

Google Places for Business

Creating an account here will provide local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your company that will be focused on results across the Google network, including Google Search, Google Maps, and Google Plus. Your listing allows for descriptions of services/products, videos, images, as well as links to your website and social profiles. You can also include regular updates about your business and analyze customer reviews and feedback. With a premium account, you have additional options, including creating promotions and coupons and setting up pay-per-click advertising with Google’s AdWords Express. Link to Google Places for Business 

Bing Places for Business

This is Bing’s answer to Google Places and is focused on search results across the Bing/Yahoo network. It is locally focused with most, if not all, of the options detailed for Google Places. It may seem redundant, but having a listing with both will cover the search engines most people use. Link to Bing Places for Business

Yellowpages

Here is another local search platform that works much like a phonebook. This can be searched by business category and location (City and State), which works well for keyword optimization. Your free listing includes business information, such as phone number, website, hours of operation, and address, and features a map of your company’s location. You also have the option of allowing customers to leave reviews and rate your company’s services/products. Link to Yellopwages 

Yelp

Create a free local business account with extensive details about your company. This listing can be used by any type of business, but works especially well for restaurants or bars. In addition to the standard contact information (phone, website, address), you can answer more specific questions regarding parking, payment options, and specialties. Reviews are encouraged and individual star ratings are averaged into an overall rating and used for ranking purposes.Link to Yelp

Manta

Here you take ownership of an existing profile or create a new listing for your business. In addition to general contact information, you can provide very detailed descriptions of your products/services in showcases, sync and/or update social media accounts, post updates across the Manta network, or join in discussions with other small business owners. If you have ever searched for a business online, you have probably come across a Manta listing for that company towards the top of the search results page. As explained to me by a Manta customer service representative, Manta has an extremely large network listing of domestic businesses and, as a result, is regarded by the top search engines as a reliable source for business information. Whether that is true or not, Manta remains a good source for listing your company details.Link to Manta

LinkedIn Business Page

In addition to creating your professional profile on LinkedIn, you can also create a company page for your business. LinkedIn allows you to customize a company profile page with your logo, detailed service/product descriptions, relevant keywords, and contact information. Similar to your professional profile, you can also provide updates to those following your company page. Having a LinkedIn company page will help make your business more visible to search engines, as well as LinkedIn’s internal search platform. You will be required to create an individual professional profile before establishing a company page in LinkedIn. Link to LinkedIn

In addition to the free online listings, most of these sites have premium subscriptions and/or paid advertising options available. To be clear, the listings discussed here will not take the place of a good website with engaging content, or even be a good substitute for quality SEO, but they will increase your chances of being noticed online.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that the language you use in your online listings is important. Search engines may overlook your profiles and negatively impact your search result rankings if your profile descriptions are identical. Try to switch up the language for each listing, even if the content is only slightly different. I would also recommend keeping track of where you have listings, as well as the language used, to make creating new profiles or updating current ones easier.

Finally, to fully establish your online presence you should consider setting up social media profiles (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) for your company. These will, however, require a bit more work on your part to get the most effectiveness from them. While also free, you will need to regularly update these accounts with relevant content to maximize their effectiveness. If done properly, social media can be extremely useful in engaging with current and potential customers, as well as help establish your company brand online. For some basic information on setting up social media accounts for your business,

Monetize Your Website

Gone are the days when websites and blogs were predominantly treated as a means to share 
knowledge and information. With the boom that online businesses have witnessed in recent years, the primary objective behind the creation of websites has deviated more toward making money online. The temptation of being your own boss and doing what you are passionate about is pretty difficult to resist. And when there’s the prospect of making a living out of your passion, only a handful could refrain from exploring the opportunity.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to state that every three out of four websites that are unveiled in the public domain today, are created with one exclusive objective — which is to make money online. Tech-savvy youngsters and aspiring webpreneurs are increasingly exploring the unchartered territory of online monetization instead of looking for a much safer career option.

There are several ways of making money in the realm of World Wide Web. While a few prefer to sell advertising slots on their websites and blogs, there are individuals who are more comfortable with affiliate marketing. Paid podcasts and webinars can also be excellent choices and eCommerce business is in the mix as well.

If you are interested in maximizing the earning potential of your website, then the widely used website monetization methods may not prove to be sufficient. You need to think out of the box and come up with innovative ideas. To help you in your bid to generate a steady flow of income from online sources, we are going to introduce you to five innovative monetization concepts which can effectively increase your online income.

1. Search Monetization
The concept of ‘search monetization’ may not have caught the imagination of webmasters yet, but it can be a very effective technique when it comes to monetizing a website. You do not have to do anything more than add a ‘On-Site Search Box’ to your website and, whenever a visitor uses this feature, your revenue will increase.

What Do You Need to Do?
First, you need to register with a monetization partner that offers this feature. You will be provided with a line of JavaScript-based code to integrate the search box on your website. You need to copy the code and place it at the desired position on your website.

How Does It Work?
It’s pretty similar to PPC advertisements. When a visitor enters a search term and clicks on the search button, relevant results would be displayed from existing entries available on your website. Besides the search results, the page will also have a few sponsored contextual advertisements, which is the source of income for the search service provider. You get rewarded every time a visitor makes a search request, irrespective of whether it generates any click on the sponsored advertisements.

2. Co-registration
Another relatively new monetization concept is co-registration — more popularly known as co-reg, which is nothing but offering a free value-add to your visitors. It is basically a lead generation technique with a slight twist. While traditionally webmasters generate leads for their own purpose, here you will be doing it on behalf of a third-party business.

What Do You Need to Do?
To make use of this monetization technique, all you need to do is to register with a trustworthy Co-Reg network and promote its ‘opt-in’ offers on your website. You may also get in touch with relevant companies in your niche for co-registration collaboration.

For example, if you have a travel related website, you can approach travel agents and tour operators with a co-registration proposal and convince them to join as a promotional partner. It’s a win-win situation for both. The travel company would get contact details of your visitors who are interested in tourism, while you get rewarded for introducing them to your partner company.

How Does It Work?
Visitors are presented with an option to register for a freebie. It can be a free newsletter or a discount deal or an app download request. For those visitors who would decide to opt-in (subscribe, register or download), you will receive a certain sum of money as reward.

3. On-Video and In-Image Ads
In-case you own a website with lots of images and videos, then this type of ad can add a new dimension to your earning potential, without disrupting the existing banner ads set-up. For showing an overlay of display advertisement on your images and video files for a specific duration, (usually five to 15 seconds), you get to earn a pretty high eCPM rate (Cost Per Impression) in the range of $3 – $5 for 1,000 raw impressions.

What Do You Need to Do?
Register with a reputed publisher network that offers In-Image and Pre-roll Video ads. Once your website is approved for ad serving, generate the required ad tags and paste the HTML/JS code on your website’s stylesheet.

How Does It Work?
You must have come across Pre-roll-Video ads on YouTube. It’s the same concept here as well. Your visitors would need to watch an advertisement for a few seconds before the actual video is displayed. As far as In-Image ads are concerned, an interstitial layer ad is shown to the visitors over the image.

4. Sponsored CAPTCHA
We all are aware of the effectiveness of CAPTCHA for preventing bots and other automated spamming tools from cluttering our websites. But wouldn’t it be great if the same concept was used for the dual purpose of preventing spam and earning money at the same time? That’s where Sponsored CAPTCHA comes in to the picture. Being a relatively new concept, there aren’t too many options at the moment, but the concept is slowly gaining momentum.

What Do You Need to Do?
Sign-up with a company that specializes in this type of advertisement. You will be provided with a link to download a plugin and install it on your website.

How Does It Work?
After installing the plugin, you can configure CAPTCHA on all the user input gateways such as the login, registration or comments form. Besides offering the CAPTCHA functionality, it will also incorporate ads on the applicable interface. You will be earning a revenue share on the displayed advertisements.

5. Sell Your Own services
Do you possess any exceptional professional skill that is always in demand? If yes, then why don’t you extend a helping hand to those who are in need of that specific skill? Businesses of all sizes are always on the lookout for exceptional talents and they wouldn’t hesitate to offer a deserved compensation if someone can help them to attract new customers.

It’s a fundamentally different concept when compared to the other four techniques discussed in this article. This idea is all about utilizing your website as a medium for earning money instead of monetizing your traffic.

What Do You Need to Do?
If you have a knack for writing quality content, then put up a banner on your website which says, “Wish your website could have such amazing content? Don’t just wish, make it happen. Hire me and impress your readers.”

Similarly, if you are good with designing, then you can promote digital design services via your website. You may offer a host of services including consultation, programming, photo editing, event organization, and whatever else you can possibly think of.

How Does It Work?
Readers, who are in need of a service that you are offering, can contact you directly with their proposals. If an offer sounds interesting, you can take up the work and earn a fair compensation for your efforts.

So are you up for the challenge? For maximizing your revenue, you need not have to re-invent the wheel — just start a blog, add quality content, build a loyal base of visitors and showcase your talent. Then put your thinking hat on and devise innovative ideas to make the most out of your website and traffic.

How to increase social media engagement with branded with images

How to Increase Social Media Engagement with Branded Images

Word on the street is that people are more drawn to visual content. Sooooo, of course it’s a great idea to share a slew of awesome images and funny videos to all your social platforms. People will be sure to notice you then! Right…right?

Not so fast, my friends. I mean, you would sure get noticed, but most likely as the obnoxious person who gets hidden from people’s news feeds.

While several studies prove that visual content is more engaging, you still need to create and share the right  visual content.

If you haven’t heard this one enough, here it is again…share content relevant to your audience.

Here are four ways to use custom, branded images to engage your audience and grow your brand awareness.

1. Use Quotes that Trigger an Emotional Response

When we see a video, image, or saying that makes us laugh, smile or even cry, we are driven to share. We enjoy the warm feeling in our chest created by such content and want to give others the opportunity to experience the same feeling.

If we are successful in passing happiness on, our own will continue to grow. And hey, who doesn’t want to feel happy?

The findings of astudy conducted by the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicineprove even more interesting. Not only do emotions have the ability to spread across social media, but also positivity permeates better than negativity.

We saw this in the social media campaign that Lab3 managed for Give Day Tampa Bay, a 24-hour day of giving to various charities in Tampa Bay. The enthusiasm leading up to the event was overwhelming and contagious.

I was tasked with creating branded images for the Facebook page that encouraged people to participate in this giving extravaganza. And boy did they get a lot of attention.

Below is an example of one of the images I created for the campaign. The quote is short and sweet but carries so much meaning.

The image got 57 Likes, which is great, but what was amazing was it got almost as many (56) Shares! That’s huge.

People are telling us that they like what Give Day Tampa Bay is sharing so much that they want to share it with their friends, spread the word.

The image carries even more weight for the campaign by including visual branding and a unique hash tag. This way, no matter where people find this post, they can connect it back to Give Day Tampa Bay.

2. Use Images of People (Shiny Happy People)

People love to see images of other people. Why? Being part of the same species and all, we can easily relate to what others are doing or how they are feeling.

The first characteristic we typically notice about another person is their face. Therefore, this is how we best identify each other.

As an extension of my previous topic, the face is also connected with emotion. In 1964, following the hypotheses of Charles Darwin, Silvan“Tompkins conducted the first study demonstrating that facial expressions were reliably associated with certain emotional states.”

The emotions translated through the face are just as contagious, if not more, than feel good sayings. When I see a picture of someone smiling, I find myself smiling right back. Don’t you?

Another reason pictures of people perform well on social media is the human desire to be part of a community. We feel a stronger connection with a business or personality when we can see the person behind it.

For Lab3 Marketing’s client Bay Stage Live, a family owned and operated entertainment technologies business, I create custom birthday and work anniversary images.

Their audience often feels naturally compelled to engage with these posts when they see a familiar face, especially when it’s cause for celebration.

Similar to how I smile when I see a picture of a smiling person, I want to have fun when I see others having fun. I want to get in on the action! And so does Bay Stage Live’s audience.

3. Create Announcements of Local Events

If you own a company that relies on local business, then you want to attract the local audience. A great way of doing this is to share news and events happening in your area.

Creating a unique, branded image to announce an event helps contribute new content for the event as well as promote your business.

This works especially well for Lab3’s client Hilton Tampa Downtown. It’s an ideal location for people to stay during big events happening in Tampa.

One of the many events that we have promoted using branded images is Gasparilla. The organic reach proved successful because the image is relevant to our client’s audience. 

Even though the paid reach was a whopping 32x  more than organic, more than 40% of the engagement was from the organic reach!

Sharing information about local events also adds value to your business by saying, “I know and care about what’s going on in my community.”

4. Create Images That Ask Questions

Something else people love is to share their opinion.

Social media marketers often talk about prompting people to do just that by asking questions in a post or comment. But, what about posing your question right in the image?

For Lab3’s client Agape Diamonds, I created images that show three different styles of rings with the simple question, “which one do you like best?” The comments came rolling in. The post below got incredible engagement before the client even added paid reach!

Don’t be discouraged if your post doesn’t get great engagement the first time. If it does, that’s fantastic. It probably means that your audience is already paying attention.

Sometimes, however, it takes a little more time for people to catch on to these new opinion polls you are creating. Keep at it and the number of comments will increase with each effort.

Wrapping Up

Basic marketing techniques involve people seeing and interacting with your logo, content and product. The more exposure people have with your brand, the more it will be at the front of their minds when they are in need of your product or service.

Also, by sharing images of happy employees, motivating quotes and local events, you are building a positive reputation with your audience. You are sending messages about your work environment and values.

If this sounds like a lot of work, don’t get overwhelmed. Start by choosing one technique that fits your brand and give it a shot. Play around with different image styles and calls to action to find out what resonates with your audience

Blogging and guest blogging

Blogging and guest blogging for SEO

In this part of our SEO marketing course I talk about blogging and guest blogging for SEO. Blogging on your own blog, and guest blogging on another blog are two quite different strategies. Blogging on your own blog is almost always a good idea because it helps you get more traffic and boosts your site's overall SEO. Guest blogging strategy, on the other hand, is something that is now rarely a good idea. Guest blogging used to be popular a few years ago, but Google has clamped down on it in recent years because people were abusing it, and only guest blogging to get links for SEO (sometimes called backlinks).

Setting the title and description meta tags

setting the title and description meta tags

The title and description meta tags are very important for Google SEO (search engine optimization), and in this part of the course I explain how to write your title and description meta tags in order to help you get the most search traffic or at least position you as well as possible to get the traffic.

Some people ask about the keywords meta tag. As far as Google search is concerned, the keywords meta tag isn't relevant anymore, but the title and description meta tags are still very relevant, and you should pay very close attention to them, and how well you write them, and how well you use the keywords that are relevant for your website in the title and description meta tags.

SEO BASICS AND FUNDAMENTALS

SEO basics and fundamentals

SEO (search engine optimization) is a topic to which it is hard to give an introduction because SEO has grown to be many different things to many different people. And really, where do you start to explain SEO? At the heart of it, of course, the practice of SEO is your practice as a marketer to position your website or product pages to get as much search traffic as possible. Many people associate SEO with Google search because Google is the biggest player in search. But the truth is that people search for things everywhere on the web. For example, people search mobile app stores for apps, they search Amazon, eBay or Etsy for products, they search Yelp for local businesses, and they search iTunes for music and podcasts. All that is SEO, and in this course you will learn how to capture all of that traffic.

SEO TIPS to get your page noticed on the web

Everyone loves a good tip, right? Here are 55 quick tips for search engine optimization that even your mother could use to get cooking. Well, not my mother, but you get my point. Most folks with some web design and beginner SEO knowledge should be able to take these to the bank without any problem.
1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.
2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.
3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don’t want the link.
4. Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.
5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.

6. Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.
7. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.
8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.
9. Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.
10. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.
11. Check for canonicalization issues – www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if http://www.domain.com is your preference, then http://domain.com should redirect to it.
12. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html.
Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.
13. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.
14. Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.
15. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.
16. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.
17. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.
18. Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.
19. Not only should your links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text.
20. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.
21. Be aware that by using services that block domain ownership information when you register a domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer.
22. When optimizing your blog posts, optimize your post title tag independently from your blog title.
23. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.
24. Make sure your site is easy to use. This can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking.
25. Give link love, Get link love. Don’t be stingy with linking out. That will encourage others to link to you.
26. Search engines like unique content that is also quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content is both.
27. If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold.
28. Some of your most valuable links might not appear in web sites at all but be in the form of e-mail communications such as newletters and zines.
29. You get NOTHING from paid links except a few clicks unless the links are embedded in body text and NOT obvious sponsored links.
30. Links from .edu domains are given nice weight by the search engines. Run a search for possible non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors.
31. Give them something to talk about. Linkbaiting is simply good content.
32. Give each page a focus on a single keyword phrase. Don’t try to optimize the page for several keywords at once.
33. SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and present.
34. SEO is not a one-shot process. The search landscape changes daily, so expect to work on your optimization daily.
35. Cater to influential bloggers and authority sites who might link to you, your images, videos, podcasts, etc. or ask to reprint your content.
36. Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. Response from the owner to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket!
37. Optimize the text in your RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages. Use descriptive, keyword rich text in your title and description.
38. Use captions with your images. As with newspaper photos, place keyword rich captions with your images.
39. Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc.
40. You’re better off letting your site pages be found naturally by the crawler. Good global navigation and linking will serve you much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap.
41. There are two ways to NOT see Google’s Personalized Search results:
(1) Log out of Google
(2) Append &pws=0 to the end of your search URL in the search bar
42. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust, so the back links will carry more weight.
43. Use absolute links. Not only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems (like links to and from https pages), but if someone scrapes your content, you’ll get backlink juice out of it.
44. See if your hosting company offers “Sticky” forwarding when moving to a new domain. This allows temporary forwarding to the new domain from the old, retaining the new URL in the address bar so that users can gradually get used to the new URL.
45. Understand social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search.
46. To get the best chance for your videos to be found by the crawlers, create a video sitemap and list it in your Google Webmaster Central account.
47. Videos that show up in Google blended search results don’t just come from YouTube. Be sure to submit your videos to other quality video sites like Metacafe, AOL, MSN and Yahoo to name a few.
48. Surround video content on your pages with keyword rich text. The search engines look at surrounding content to define the usefulness of the video for the query.
49. Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.
50. Enable “Enhanced image search” in your Google Webmaster Central account. Images are a big part of the new blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will help your SEO efforts.
51. Add viral components to your web site or blog – reviews, sharing functions, ratings, visitor comments, etc.
52. Broaden your range of services to include video, podcasts, news, social content and so forth. SEO is not about 10 blue links anymore.
53. When considering a link purchase or exchange, check the cache date of the page where your link will be located in Google. Search for “cache:URL” where you substitute “URL” for the actual page. The newer the cache date the better. If the page isn’t there or the cache date is more than an month old, the page isn’t worth much.
54. If you have pages on your site that are very similar (you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps.
55. Check your server headers. Search for “check server header” to find free online tools for this. You want to be sure your URLs report a “200 OK” status or “301 Moved Permanently ” for redirects. If the status shows anything else, check to be sure your URLs are set up properly and used consistently throughout your site.

5 Steps To Start an Internet Business

Starting an Internet business is not rocket science, but you do need to know what you're doing in order to succeed. Specifically, you have to identify a need and fill it; secure a location to house your business; open your business; advertise and drive customers to it; and then start counting your money. Let's take a look at each one of these aspects of starting an internet business a little closer.
Identifying a Need and Filling It. The only reliable way to establish the viability of an online business is to do research...and lots of it. And one way to do that is to use Google's keyword search tool, which will show you what internet users are searching for when they use the internet.
Once you have that information you can determine if it's a product or service that you want to provide, which you can do any number of ways. You can create the product or service from scratch, join affiliate programs that offer the products and services and offer them as an affiliate marketer, or buy master resell rights of existing products and sell them as if they're your own.
Securing a Location. In "how start internet business" this means that you'll be building a website and establishing a hosting account, thus paving the way for internet surfers to find you. And the way they'll find you is through the abundance of search engine optimized web site content pages on your web site. When you provide lots of good, quality, useful information (content) the search engines will reward you by sending lots of "free" traffic to it, which can result in you making a lot of sales.
Opening Your Store. After building a great web site with lots of excellent content you'll then be ready to open up for business. Another way to say it is you'll be ready it to the internet. While many web site designers complicate this aspect of "how start internet business" to stay in business it often times comes down to a simple act of clicking a link that says "publish."
Advertising. When it comes to the advertising part of "how to start internet business" you'll have many options. You've probably heard about running ads on Google, but there are many other search engines where you can advertise for as little as 1 cent per ad, and you only pay that penny when someone clicks on them.
Additionally, there are other effective forms of advertising, including blogging, article marketing, direct mail marketing, email marketing, using sequential autoresponders, pod casting, viral marketing and on and on. However, you'll find that the most cost effective form of advertising is your web site. If you build a good one that is search engine optimized you can generate lots of free traffic. Again, why pay for something when you can get it for free.
Counting Your Money. After you do all of the grunt work you can then look forward to the ultimate reward of getting your first sale, then many thereafter.
As I started out saying, "how start internet business" is not rocket science, but knowing a little about the tools and resources you need to be successful goes a long way towards determining whether you'll be still reading articles like this one a year from now, or counting money from one or more of web sites that you create between now and then.

7 Simple Ways That You Can Promote Your Website

At times, website promotion can seem confusingly complicated. There seem to be so many, sure-fire new ways to get thousands of hits to your site. Whilst some of these methods work, most just waste your time.
So welcome back to the basics of website promotion - seven simple, effective, ways to promote your site. Learn about a new promotion strategy, or just remind yourself of an 'old favourite'.
1. Submit Your Site to Search Engines and Directories
Submit your site to all the major search engines and directories. Right now, that means getting a link from sites already listed at search engines Yahoo!, Google, and MSN. If you're going to submit to these search engines, then submit your site map. The search engines explain how.
As for submitting to directories, Yahoo! and the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) are important. You can also find other directories at Strongestlinks.com
2. Use a Signature File
A signature file (sigfile) is a block of text that can be added to the end of each e-mail message you send (or forum post you make). Write compelling copy and offer benefits for visiting your website in your sigfile. And set up your email client or forum profile such that each time you post (or email) a message the sigfile gets added automatically.
3. Post to a Newsgroup (or Forum) Discussion
Somewhere online there's a newsgroup or forum involved in discussions relevant to your site. You can find a great variety of newsgroups at Google Groups, which allows you to search all of the Usenet newsgroups for a particular term or phrase.
Post a message to a suitable newsgroup using Outlook Express (or other newsreader software), or via Google's newsgroup site, or via the forum itself. Do follow the newsgroup/forum guidelines - but it is usually okay to use a signature file with each of your posts.
4. Run an Affiliate Program
Affiliate programs are a win-win opportunity for you and your potential partners (affiliates or associates). Apart from the instant sales force you develop, which tries to generate leads or sales for your business, you can often create lots of links back to your site. And your affiliates gain from adding products or services to sell on their site.
5. Publish an E-Zine or Newsletter
An e-zine (or newsletter) allows you to stay in touch with your visitors. You can educate your visitors with how-to articles (and so build trust in your website and your business); you can let them know about new offers; or you can just inform them about site-improvements.
Readers of your newsletter can become regular visitors to your site, and good customers too. And running a newsletter can cost little or nothing.
6. Run a Competition
Competitions are a great way of promoting your website, and finding out more about your site's visitors in the process. Offer a prize related to your website, and get people to fill out an entry form (or even subscribe to your newsletter).
When it comes time to announce the winners, send an e-mail to everyone with the winners name, and add items of interest about your services and opportunities too.
Even better, there are sites that will actually promote your online competition, giving your site even more exposure.
7. Write a Press Release
Press releases (news releases) are one of the most effective ways of generating interest in your site. If written well, they can produce startling amounts of attention, which can usually be converted into visitors to your website.
There are sites that give advice on how to write a press release, and sites that will compose and distribute your press release for you too.