Google Local Listings with Zagat Rating in Google Plus

Zagat Survey is now the world's leading provider of consumer survey-based information for restaurants and other leisure activities. Based on a worldwide network of surveyors, Zagat has become the world's most trusted source to help consumers make informed decisions about restaurants, nightspots, hotels, attractions and other leisure activities.

What do Zagat ratings mean?

Regular people like you rate restaurants online. All that raw data is compiled using a special formula to create Zagat ratings, which are on a scale of 0 to 30.
26 - 30 Extraordinary to perfection
20 - 25 Very good to excellent
16 - 19 Good to very good
10 - 15 Fair to good
0 - 9 Poor to fair

Algorithm Change Survival Guide

Search Engine Optimization is a complicated business, thanks to the regular updates done on Google’s search algorithm. With the widespread rollover of the Google Panda 3.4  war against link farms, blog networks that use spam, and links originating from unrelated sites continues. The casualties of this latest SEO battle were immeasurable; a lot of sites that depended on the “SEO” tactics of blog spamming, link building through unrelated sties, and link farming have suffered lowered page ranks or de-indexing.

Search Engine Marketing Is Forever Evolving

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) needs to evolve along with the newest trends and technological advancements, or else it’ll be an obsolete discipline that no self-respecting business would patronize. Meta tags and page names used to be new things that SEM companies could use to their advantage to gain a more significant presence in the worldwide web, but now that’s all in the past. With that said, here are the things you can do in order to survive these sweeping algorithm changes made by Google.

         Social Networking is the Brave New SEO Frontier:

                                              The line between search engine relevance and social network popularity has become even more blurred. Therefore, in order to survive the latest Google algorithm updates and instead take advantage of them, you should add badges to your site that allows visitors to become followers, connections, and friends in Facebook or Twitter. Yes, Google is now all about social networking.

Adapting to It and Recovery from De-Indexing

In order to survive the ever-changing landscape of the information superhighway, you need to first specifically adapt to the newest Google Panda 3.4 update (over 50 changes) then acquire habits that will “future-proof” your website from becoming de-indexed by any future Google algorithm changes.

The questions on everyone’s minds are “How can I survive the latest Google Panda 3.4 update?” and “How can I survive future Google algorithm changes?” Thankfully, the following items hold the answer on how you’ll be able to adapt and flourish after Google again changed the way Search Engine Optimization (SEO) companies will go about optimizing websites for the search engine giant.

Latent Semantic Indexing:

It is a type of text link that’s made up of words that are connected to the targeted keyword. To illustrate, let’s say you have a knitting site. Typical target word phrases for this page are “free knitting patterns” or “knitting instruction”. These serve as its LSI. It’s important to depend on LSI because it’s more natural for people using the Google search engine to look for keywords like them.

Making Images SEO-Friendly:


Because one of the algorithmic updates for Google includes better image search results, it’s in the best interest of websites, especially blog networks that have been hit the most by the updates, to create SEO-friendlier images. Image results are present are made to be as relevant as possible to the keyword regardless of the image quality or size, which ensures better visibility for websites taking the image search SEO route.

If your website has been penalized or altogether de-indexed by the latest Google algorithmic alterations (because you used the services of companies that provide links from unrelated sites, blog networks that use spam to boost up their page ranks, and link farms), then here are the steps you can follow in order to get back in Google’s good graces, so to speak.

• Remove Exact Match Anchor Text:


The new Google Panda algorithm changes apparently “frowns” upon the use of exact match anchor text. You can instead replace these with the aforementioned LSI and naked URLs, or you can even use Brand Anchors (anchor text that uses the name of your business) or Junk Anchors (usually seen in the form of “contact us” or “join us today” links). You should also change your outdated link building campaign by adopting a better-rounded, anchor-text-centric one.

• Social Networking SEO:


Invest more on optimizing your website’s visibility over the Internet by making Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ accounts for your website or company. Social networking SEO is all the rage nowadays, such that even Digg and Reddit social sharing websites have become a viable source of improved rankings on Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

• Future-Proof Your Website By Being Constantly Updated:


Updates on the latest trends is your best bet in avoiding any de-indexing threats for the coming years. For example, Google has long been suggesting to sites to stop linking to unrelated sites because they value relevancy above all else, so the writing was already on the wall before the update that punishes those with irrelevant links came to effect.

Starting Point for PPC

Small business owners are breathing a little easier thanks to Google’s new AdWords Starter Edition. If you’ve been questioning whether you should try advertising with AdWords, but have been intimidated by its complexity and big words, now’s your chance. AdWords’ new streamlined Starter Edition is designed to make it easier for new pay-per-click advertisers to get a small campaign created in no time.

When new advertisers go to create an account they are greeted with two options: the Standard Edition or the Starter Edition. Upon selecting the Starter Edition, users are able to create a single ad campaign using a one page sign-up form. Set-up can be done in five easy steps.

1. Select an ad location and language – select the country where you would like your ad to run and set the preferred language.
2. Write your ad – Provide the URL that your ad will link to and create a headline and two lines of text (can’t be more than 35 characters each).
3. Choose keywords – Choose keywords and identify related terms.
4. Choose a Currency – Choose your currency – dollars, pounds, etc.
5. Set a Monthly Budget – You will need to select the maximum amount you are willing to spend each month. The good thing about AdWords is that you can set a budget and start off with a pretty inexpensive campaign to test it as you go.

The form has a listed Step 6 comprised of a check box. It is meant for those needing ‘extra help’ with their campaign set-up. Users who select the box will receive the AdWords newsletter, tips for improved ad performance and user surveys.

AdWords Starter Edition looks like a great tool for those unsure about creating PPC campaigns. But it’s called a Starter Edition for a reason. Those looking to perform any type of analytics or campaign management on their listings won’t find this Started Edition much use. Users (so far) are unable to create individual landing pages, individual keyword bids and multiple combinations of ad text. Reports are limited to clicks-per-day, cost-per-day and impressions-per-day, and geographic targeting options appear to be limited to country, state and driving distance of zip code. Such restrictions would make it very difficult to set-up anything but the narrowest of campaigns.

Meta Data Checklist: The Head Section

A lot of people may not realize that the Head section not only presents an opportunity to tell the search engine what the page is about, but also an opportunity for conversions. The content you write in the Head section renders as your title and description in the SERPs.

So there’s not only some science to it, but it’s also a marketing tool. Make sure you’re making the best use of that real estate on the results page to pull your potential visitors into the page. I wrote an article on the ins and outs of Meta data once, check it out for more detail on how to tackle the Head section.
Meta data – Title tag: Length six to 12 words, not including stop words such as “a,” “and,” “but,” “for” and so on. Remember, Google cuts off the title in the SERP at approximately 70 characters including spaces. If a company has a strong brand, consider putting the brand name at the front of the Title tag. This could increase click-throughs by associating trust with the brand over other results in the SERP. If the brand is not yet built up, consider putting the brand name (or brand name domain) at the end of the Title tag.
Meta data – Description tag: Best practices is to ensure the important keywords show up in the first 156 characters of the description tag so when the description renders in Google SERPs, those important keywords are showing. Google cuts off the description in the SERP at about 160 characters including spaces.
Meta data – Keywords tag: Even though Google has said it does not consider the Keywords tag in its Web search, we include it as a “nice to have.” This is because signals have pointed to it as serving a purpose in optimization with regards to relevance. The methodology at BCI is to put the keyword phrases in the tag in order of word length and to use title case on each word. Include the brand’s name in the Keywords tag as well in the appropriate place within the tag based on how many words it contains.
Meta data tips: Symbols like the ampersand (&) actually add more characters than using an “and” instead. Usually, the goal is to minimize the character count in order to fit important keywords in before the character cutoff in the SERP.
During Optimization: The Body Section

First things first, the body content must fulfill the promise of what you have told both users and the search engines what the page is about in the Head section. Aside from providing solid, quality content on the topic, adding keywords throughout further clarifies the topic of the page. Here’s some tips for optimizing the body content:
Primary keywords placement: Place the primary keyword or phrase in the header (the H1 Heading tag) and first sentence of body copy. This is among the first content on the page the search engine and the user encounters (aside from the information in the Head section) and further gives clarity as to what the page is about.
First 200 words: Place all the keyword phrases for the page and all the tilde words for that page in the first 200 words of body copy (and then linearly distributed throughout). This is assuming you have a fairly targeted list of keywords for that page. You wouldn’t want to try and stuff a ton of keyword phrases upfront if it’s going to feel spammy. Remember, there is a fine balance between providing information and being natural.
Tilde words distribution: As with keywords, tilde words should be linearly distributed in proximity to the keyword phrase throughout the page.
Keyword phrase composition: Unless otherwise noted, try not to break up keyword phrases with excessive amounts of words in between (stop words don’t count, for example, “but,” “and,” “to” and so on, as those are automatically stripped by the search engine when it reads the page.). No words in between is preferable unless it’s an awkward string of words; in that case, it would be unnatural sounding to not use it in conversation style.
Links: Typically, we wouldn’t link to other pages until after the first 200 words. Since we think of the first 200 words as being the most important to conveying to the search engine what the page is about, linking out to another site is something you can do a little later in the copy. When the time is right to link out to other pages in your site, a good SEO practice is to make sure the anchor text of the link contains the primary keyword phrase of the page it’s linking to.
Images: Make sure any images on the page have descriptive ALT attributes that explain what the image is and contain keywords appropriate to the image. If the keywords are both appropriate to the image and the content on the page, that’s a bonus.

SEO Copywriting

Optimizing Your Content



Find out which keywords are primary and secondary: If you’re not the SEM analyst on the project, that person should arrange those keywords for you according to importance/weight. You’ll give more priority to the primary keywords when optimizing.
Identify keyword distribution: Keywords should be distributed throughout the content evenly – showing up at top, in middle and towards the end of copy. Map out visually on the page where they should go (ensuring they fit naturally into the content). We just added a new layer  that can help you see where your keywords on the page might be lacking.

Identify the keyword density:

Each keyword should have a minimum/maximum usage for the content as identified by the SEM analyst. If you’re not the person deciding this, work with the appropriate teams to get this data.

Identify the word count of the page:

Each page should have a minimum and/or target word count. You should always say as much as you need to on the topic to be thorough and provide something of quality, but there is typically a minimum word count. I always like to think of 450 words as the least amount of copy you want to write on a topic. The SEM analyst can tell you what their recommendations are on the minimum word count for that keyword set.
Identify the tilde (clarification) words. Tilde words are those words most commonly used surrounding certain topics. These words can help clarify to the search engine if you are talking about a fruit or a computer when your content is about “apples,” for example. Tilde words will then be in proximity in the body copy to your keyword phrases

OFF PAGE OPTIMIZATION

Site Map
Your site should have an HTML site map, and every page should link to that site map, probably in the footer. You should also have an XML Sitemap you submit to search engines.

Text Navigation
Verify there is text navigation, not JavaScript or Flash navigation that spider’s can’t see. Make sure you at least have text navigation on the bottom of the page if there aren’t any spiderable navigation links in the top nav.

Make Robots.txt File
It’s important this file exists, even if it’s empty. The Robots.txt file tells the search engine spiders what not to index. Also make sure the file doesn’t accidentally exclude important files, directories or the entire site (this has been known to happen!).

Keyword Strategy
The keyword strategy is an ongoing process that essentially never ends. It starts with extensive research and iterates with extensive research. One could write novels about this topic; just know it’s part of any solid SEO checklist.

Web Analytics
There’s much you could say about Web analytics in your SEO strategy. The important thing is to make sure you have it. Ensure your analytics are properly set up and monitor them regularly to find out of if the keywords that are generating traffic are in your keyword list, and that your site is optimized for them.

Linking Strategy
This section warrants way more than just a few sentences, but it should be noted as part of the SEO checklist. Your internal linking structure typically stems from your siloing strategy. Your inbound/outbound links should be part of an organic, natural strategy in compliance with search engine guidelines, and be monitored regularly.

Server Configuration
Regularly check your server, looking for 404 errors, 301 redirects and other errors.

Privacy Statement
Some reports say a “privacy statement” on your site is an important element in bing. It’s best practices to include one anyway; this is so you can let site visitors know what you’re doing with any data you collect about them.

Static Pages
Complex, dynamic URLs could be a problem. If your URLs have more than two query string parameters and/or dynamic pages aren’t getting indexed and/or you have a lot of duplicate content, consider converting them to static pages. You can also use mod_rewrite or ISAPI_rewrite, as appropriate, to simplify URLs. Rewritten URLs will appear to be static pages. This tends to be a lot of work, but is a surefire way to address this issue; you can also use the Canonical tag.

Static Index Pages
If you have a home page with content that constantly changes, it can result in diluting the theme of your site and cause poor rankings for key terms. Try to maintain chunks of constant text on the home page.

Use Text over Images
Any time you can use text for something instead of image files, this helps the spiders understand what the page is about. This is because search engine spiders can’t “see” all the text on an image file.

Ensure No SPAM Tactics
Make sure your SEO strategy is following Google Webmaster Guidelines. If ever in doubt about any of your tactics, refer to what Google accepts for SEO.

Check for Duplicate Content
Do a search to see if your content exists elsewhere on the Web. You may want to check out CopyScape.com and use it regularly.

SEO Strategy

On-Page Optimization


1. Head Section Order
BCI’s best practices is to ensure your Web pages’ Meta tags are in the right order: Title > Description > Keywords. Remember, the information you put in these tags is used to render the title and description in the search engine results pages, and is what searchers see.

2. Title Tag
BCI methodology states Title tags should be approx. nine words, plus or minus three. You want to make sure the most important information, including top keywords, show up before the cutoff in the SERP in Google at approximately 70 characters including spaces.

3. Description Tag
The description tag should also be mindful to include the most important info and keywords before the SERP cutoff at approximately 160 characters in Google.

Side note: Don’t forget to make the title and description compelling – this assists in conversions. You don’t want to waste your prime real estate in the SERP with boring copy. For more on your Head section, check out this SEO Newsletter article that discusses the ins and outs of Meta data.

4. Keywords Tag
Even though Google has stated the Keywords tag is not a consideration in ranking, we always include it as a best practice. We list keywords in order from longest in length to shortest in length, separated by commas.

5. Heading Tags
In the body of your content, make sure your first Heading tag always begins as an <h1>. Subsequent heading tags should be <h2>, <h3>, <h4> etc., and be used as the page’s table of contents. For example, <h2> is a subhead of <h1>.

6. Overall Word Count
The amount of words you have on a Web page will vary by topic, keyword and intent. But, in general, less than 250 words is rarely recommended – especially if you’re trying to optimize for keywords. Informational Web pages will almost always warrant at least 450 words. And quality content is key.

7. Alt Attributes with Keywords
The American with Disabilities Act says you should always describe the image on the page for the vision impaired. Ensure your images have proper descriptions associated with them, and if appropriate, keywords for the page. Alt attributes are also required to validate your HTML code.

8. Dashes vs. Underscores in URLs
Underscores are alpha characters and do not separate words. Dashes are word separators, but should not appear too many times or it could look spammy. For more on this topic, check out this post by Google’s Matt Cutts.

9. Fully Qualified Links
If you make your links fully qualified, there’s no question by search engine spiders, browsers, etc. as to where the file is located and what it’s about. If your link looks something like “../../pagename” (a relative link), then it may result in crawl issues for some search engines. Rather than complex URLs, use fully qualified links (http://www.URL). And the site map should always have fully qualified URLs.

10. Make JavaScript/CSS External
You want to be sure the most important code is the first thing the search engine bots crawl. You can externalize the code that gets in the way of this to ensure there aren’t unnecessary lines above the body text.

Search Day, June 22, 2012

Alan Turing’s 100th birthday is today and to honor his life, Google has one of the geekiest and mathematical logos, aka Doodles, I’ve ever seen. The logo is a representation of the look and functionality of the Turing machine, a machine that was the stepping stone for modern computing. This Doodle asks you to solve [...]
Advanced Excel For PPC: Using Regular Expressions To Add Dimensions To Data

Regular expressions are a powerful computing tool, with near-mythical status in some programming circles (here is one of my favorite online comic series’ take on the topic: http://xkcd.com/208/). This article demonstrates some useful ways to use regular expressions with PPC, by adding new dimensions to our typical Account/Campaign/AdGroup hierarchy of data. Another use for regular [...]
Google Drastically Cuts Prices On Maps API Usage

Google is dramatically cutting prices for the heaviest developer-users of of its Maps API to keep them from defecting to other platforms. The company has slashed prices “from US $4 per 1,000 map loads to 50¢ per 1,000 map loads.” Since the new fees policy was instituted last Fall, there have been several high profile [...]
Google Maps’ Mobile Ads Format Gets A Refresh

Google has revamped its format for AdWords that display within Maps for Mobile, in an effort to make them work more efficiently for smartphone users and advertisers. As a part of the new format, which will be made available to newer versions of Android phones today, calls to action like “get directions” and “click to call” [...]
Search In Pics: Chrome & Android Toys, Street Views Hawaii & Twitter #Comfort

In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. Android On Phone: Source: Google+ Android Neon Sign: Source: Google+ Chrome Pillows: Source: Google+ Hawaii Google [...]

Three Reasons People DON'T Go Social

1) They Think It's Too Complicated...

2) They Think It's Too Difficult...

3) They Think It's Too Time Consuming...


And that's great news for you...

Because while others are making excuses, YOU have the opportunity to jump in and profit while the market's still wide open!

People are only just catching on to the idea of how important social presence REALLY is to overall online success... But it won't be like that forever so NOW is the time for you to take action and capitalize on your Advantage.

I'll admit, I was a little late to the party, because I ignored Social Authority for far too long... but now I’m building mine fast... Because the benefits are enormous.

"Four Reasons You Need To Go Social”

1) Social Authority Has Overtaken Keyword Optimization And Backlinking As Google's Leading Ranking Factors...

Backlinks and keyword optimization are less important than they used to be because SEOs have become TOO GOOD at manipulating them in order to rank higher.

Google wants its Front Page to be filled with sites people Like, Share and Follow... Because it's their aim to become 'The Perfect Search Engine'...

And in the words of Google Co-Founder and CEO Larry Page...

“The Perfect Search Engine... Understands Exactly What You Mean And Gives You Back Exactly What You Want”

Sites with a strong social following have PROVEN themselves to be what people want, like and share... Help Google, and Google helps you, with higher rankings and more traffic!

2) Social Proof Is A Major Part Of Modern Day Purchase Decisions...

In an age where information, opinions, judgments and reviews are only a mouse-click (or touchscreen tap) away... Social Proof is paramount to all our buying decisions today.

Above all, people want to know what the 'Authorities' think on a subject because they feel like they're getting THE BEST information...

After that they'll want to know what their friends think, because they trust and value their opinions... and also so they won't get ridiculed for purchasing 'the wrong thing'...

Once they've gathered those opinions... people take a look at what the masses think... Common consensus and popular opinion are powerful influencers.

 And once that's all taken care of... They can finally figure out what they really want to buy.

Remember this:
 

With a strong social following... YOU can become the prime influencer in your niche, with authority, and YOUR opinions and recommendations will be followed first...

Even better, you'll be able to sway the opinions of those 'friends' and 'strangers' further down the chart too... Because they form their opinions from Authorities too!


3) You Can Profit From Your Social Following Even Without Search Engine Traffic...

By capitalizing on Reason #2 above, you can start earning from Facebook and Twitter alone, even without increasing your Google ranks.

Your fans and followers will be a constant stream of traffic for you, and if you engage with them the right way, you'll generate a torrent of traffic to any link you post (your blog, your squeeze page, a product, an affiliate offer... you get the idea!)


4) If You Don't - Your Competitors Will Soon Catch On And Leave You In Their Dust...

If you don't start rolling out your High-Impact Facebook and Twitter Campaigns now... Others Will... And you’ll be left in a much tougher position when you do come around and start building your own campaigns.

You'll lose out on traffic, and gaining Authority will be that much more difficult for you once your competitors start growing theirs at full steam ahead... Which they will once the news above becomes widespread.

Also, if you’ve got no social presence where your competitor's do, you’ll soon find it tough to earn any profit at all, you'll be completely out of the loop and it'll become virtually impossible to compete in Google.

That's what happens to any business that doesn't adapt and evolve with the times.

Tips for Increasing Your Site’s Google Rank

Instead of letting your Google rank get you down, apply these tips and techniques from a group of successful, young entrepreneurs in order to boost your company’s SEO results.

1. Create Evergreen Content
2. Audit Your Online Profiles
3. Think Like Your Customer Types
4. Hire an Expert
5. Guest Post
6. Content is King and Links are Queen
7. Bust Out the Camera
8. Colleges and Universities
9. Update Your Site Frequently
10. Use the Right Keywords
11. Move Away From Flash
12. Have You Taken Advantage of Local Search?
13. Know Exactly What Words People Use to Search

GoogleBot Back In Business, Crawling & Crawling

About ten days ago, I reported that GoogleBot stopped crawling many web sites, or at least slowed the crawl.I am glad to report that many webmasters are reporting at a WebmasterWorld thread that GoogleBot is back in business. GoogleBot found its legs and is crawling and crawling through sites, like it once did.
Gabs from SEO Home sent me a graph after posting this from Webmaster Tools showing the crawl activity spiking back:

Webmaster Tools Launches: Fetch as Googlebot & Malware

The Google Webmaster Central Blog announced the launch of a new "Labs" section in Google Webmaster Tools. Labs is for Google to launch features that might not be fully tested and have bugs, but at the same time give webmasters these features sooner to test and play with. The first two labs releases were "Fetch as Googlebot" and "Malware Details." I'll show you both below:
Fetch as Googlebot allows you to see what Googlebot, Google's spider, sees for a specific page on your domain. Here is a picture of the tool:

You type in the page name or leave it blank for the home page and hit "Fetch." After a few seconds, you can refresh the page and see the word "success" (hopefully). Click on "Success" to see the output of what Googlebot sees

Tracking Search Bot Activity

Tracking how bots accessed your site was a bit of a crave. Now, you don't hear about it much. The old Google Analytics, aka Urchin, had a section for displaying bot activity on your site. It did this because Urchin also analyzed your log files, in addition to the method Google Analytics uses to track based on JavaScript. Since most spiders don't load JavaScript, popular analytical software, such as Google Analytics, won't track the bot activity.
To track bot activity, you need to use analytic software that analysis your log files. There are other methods, including writing your own database script to track all bot activity.Created a script that looked for bot activity and stored the data in a MySQL database. I forgot the name of the software, but I bet it is still out there now or there are plenty of alternatives.
If you don't want to instal anything but you still want to track bot activity, there are ways.
In Google Webmaster Tools, you can go to the "Crawl Stats" section under "Statistics" and get data from Google on how active GoogleBot is on your site. Google will show you data and time based graphs for:

• Number of pages crawled per day
• Number of kilobytes downloaded per day
• Time spent downloading a page (in milliseconds)

Google To Target Overly SEO'ed Sites Within Weeks

Level the playing field" between webmasters that build quality content versus webmasters who are just really aggressive SEOs.

What about the people optimizing really hard and doing a lot of SEO. We don't normally pre-announce changes but there is something we are working in the last few months and hope to release it in the next months or few weeks. We are trying to level the playing field a bit. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO - versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now.

Analytics SEO Updates

Version 4.7 Launched

We are pleased to announce that version 4.7 just went live! As always, the new features that we have included in this update have been driven by our customers and their experience with the software, and we're always keen to hear any other suggestions for features that we could include in a future update.

Version 4.6 launched!

We're excited to announce that we launched version 4.6 of the platform this week and it incorporates several new features to further enhance the reporting capabilities of the platform.

Version 4.5 Launched!

We are delighted to announce that Version 4.5 of our software went live this morning. Our engineering team has been working towards this release for a couple of weeks now, and we're really excited about the new features that they've been able to get into this deployment.

Versions 4.4.7 & 4.4.8 Launched!

At Analytics SEO we are committed to updating the software and adding value for all of our users free of charge whenever we can and this month is no different! On average our development cycles lead to releases every two weeks so you can always be assured the software will be extremely stable with new features being added all the time

Versions 4.4.5 & 4.4.6 Launched

Our engineering team have been extremely busy these last two weeks with another burst of minor updates that focus on four main areas:

Generate Traffic from Search Engines

Traffic -- And lots of it! It is the dream of every netrepreneur. After all, without steady stream of visitors -- or should I say "potential customers" to your web site, how will you earn your e-fortune?

The first place most e-business start-ups go when they need a quick traffic fix is the search engines. And rightfully so! After all, a top ranking position in one of the major search engines is an effective way to increase the traffic to your web site without spending your hard-earned advertising dollars!

Statistics have repeatedly shown that anywhere from 20% to 80% of your visitors will find your web site via a search engine. However, you should also know that statistics show that most web surfers never search beyond the top 30 results they receive. With that in mind, it is clear that a top position a top position should be the goal of any savvy site owner.


But top spots are no longer achieved by crossing your fingers and blindly submitting your web site to 900+ search engines and directories using a free submission service. Competition for top spots is getting fierce, so it is important that you learn the "right" techniques if you want to ensure that your web site is well ranked... and it is very important that you do so while this great advertising medium is still FREE.....................


High traffic generation to your website, it is very important that your web site ranks in top spots in search engines. You may ask "What are the search engine looking for when they rank my web site?" Well, although each search engine uses different set of algorithms to rank web sites, but generally speaking, however, here are some of the main factors currently being considered by the search engines.

1. Link Popularity
Alta Vista, Excite, Lycos, and the web pages search promotion of Yahoo! use a ranking system that involves measuring and ranking the number of links that are directed towards a particular web site. This is an extremely powerful traffic generation tools because: 

Reason # 1
Building a well thought-out linking strategy is a powerful way to attract large volumes of high targeted traffic! By putting your web site on every major web "intersection" where your target market meets, you will ensure that your web site receives a steady flow of qualified potential customers.

Reason # 2
Links are equivalent to recommendations! They established credibility even before the visitor reaches your web site, dramatically increasing the likelihood that they will buy.

Think about it... David arrives at his favorite web site and notices that they have posted a link to your web site. He knows and trusts his favorite web site and therefore assumes that, because they have a linked to you, your business must be credible too. He clicks through the link to your web site and is immediately open to offers you present him with. Why? Because your credibility was established before he even arrived at your homepage!

Reason # 3
Since many search engines now factor link popularity into their ranking decisions, your linking strategies are all that much more important! If you want to be ranked as high as possible in search engines, you now need a factor in your link popularity - and, as you already know, earnings a top spot in the major search engines is key to increasing your web site traffic.

Obviously, developing a linking strategy that generates a high volume of targeted traffic to your web site is not an overnight process. It will take you anywhere from two weeks to six months to secure quality links you need. However, I promise you that it is worth the effort! Once you have done the initial footwork, the links that are established will remain on these web sites for years to come. Your perseverance will pay big dividends in the form of a continuous flow of targeted traffic generation.

2. Your Domain Name
A domain name plays a vital role in traffic generation to any web site. Domain names rich in keywords will rank higher in search engines because search engines love URL's that are saturated with keywords! Brainstorm keywords and key phrases for your web site and then use them to create a catchy URL... or load the domain name with your best keywords to get ranked higher in the search engines. 

3. Key Word Density
Keywords definitely refer to the number of times your keyword appears throughout your site. Your keyword density is a factor that is heavily weighted by search engines, so it's very important to make strategic use of your keywords. 

So, these are the golden facts and tactics through which you can drive high traffic to your web site. I should also mention that you do not expect to enter a couple of your top keywords into the search engines and instantly start making money through your web site, that is very rare. But yes, you can really make high traffic through search engines without crossing the line into "keyword stuffing" and with a little time.