Managing Your Reciprocal Links Directory

Reciprocal linking is an inevitable part of the life of any webmaster. Incoming links are valuable because the rankings in Google depend in large part on the amount and quality of these links, and because incoming links provide a steady stream of traffic.

While most discussions on reciprocal linking deal with the problems of getting links and finding partners, an equally big problem is how to manage a link directory and handle the numerous requests for reciprocal links sent to you even after you have ceased trying to get new links.
There are many webmasters who just delete these requests, in the same way that they delete other unsolicited e-mail. Handling link requests manually takes a lot of time. You must first go online, look at the site that has sent you a request.

Then, if you want to link to them you have to edit the html page where you keep your links, upload it and finally write an email to the person who has requested the link and inform her that the link is now active. If you get three or four link requests in one day (as I got today), processing them could take up a good part of your morning.

I hardly ever deleted these requests but put them in a pending folder which I never got around to dealing with, until I finally decided to find an automated way to handle this work.
I shopped around and found a site that provides a link management service for the price of $20 per month. They set up your links directory, and once it is in place, all link requests must come through a form placed on your site. When someone fills out the form you get notification.
You go online and look at the request, and if you like it you “press a button” and approve the link. The link is automatically placed on the proper page of your directory and an email gets sent to the person who requested the link. It would take just a few minutes to handle a link request in this way.

However, I wasn’t ready to pay $20 a month for this service and looked around for another solution. There are software programs which, when installed on your own server, do the same kind of directory management but at a far lower price. I found one such software, a PHP script that uses a MySQL data base. The price was great, free of charge. However I had trouble installing it, and wanted to try one of the low cost link management programs that I also came upon during my search for a solution to this problem.

Finally I settled on Reciprocal Link Manager (http://tinyurl.com/5yjkw). What tipped me in favor of the program is that the owner himself uses it on his own sites. I paid $67, and got a PHP script. The directions for uploading the files, changing the file permissions on the server and setting up a MySQL data base were very easy to follow and I set up the directory on a few of my websites without any problem.

The Reciprocal Link Manager produces static pages that are search engine friendly. It is also easy to customize the directory to look like the rest of your site. In addition you can import your old links into your new directory.

The program provides all the functionality of the more expensive online services and gives you a system which enables you to handle several link requests in a very short time. In addition, one component of the program helps you to find new link partners, add their site details to your directory and send reciprocal link requests to them.

Now whenever links are sent to me, if they fit with the theme of my site I add them immediately, instead of deleting them or stuffing them in a folder that I will never get a chance to deal with. If you would like to save time, but also continue to build your site’s link directory, I recommend that you go for an automated solution to the task of link management.
http://www.a1-optimization.com

Improving your site's link popularity, and search engine ranking

Have you ever wondered why one web site (maybe yours) is buried deep in the search rankings for a particular keyword, while another site (your competitor's) is at the top? Both sites may have similar content and even similar metatags, but one is number one and the other is number 131.

The answer to this disparity may lie in a factor known as link popularity. When search engines determine rankings, many things are taken into consideration and one of them is how many sites are linked to your site. Search engines such as Google give much importance to both the quantity and the quality of these incoming links. If many sites are linked to yours, your site is considered to be an important resource in that particular field and that is why the search engines would like to give such a site a high ranking. Also if the links to your site are coming from "important" or high ranked sites, then your web site is considered still more important.
In this factor of link popularity, new sites are somewhat at a disadvantage as older sites have been around a while and have acquired more links over the years. However, with a bit of "elbow grease" (sustained effort) it is possible to boost your site's link popularity and position in search engine results.

One of the first things that should be done is to submit your site to the Open Web Directory (www.dmoz.org). By doing this you will get one link! But a listing in the Open Web Directory is considered to be an important link, because it comes from a very high-ranking source. It takes a while to be listed in this directory because the directory gets thousands of inclusion requests, and it uses volunteer editors to process them, but sites with good content and design generally get included. Similarly, a single listing in the Yahoo directory will also boosts your site's ranking, but this will cost you $299. So if you have a big advertising budget, a paid listing in Yahoo is an option worth considering.

How can you determine what is a high-ranking site-one which will help your own search engine rank if it links to you? Go to the main page of Google and download the Google Toolbar. It will install itself on your web browser. Every time you visit a web site, look at the Google Toolbar and it will show a section called, Page Ranking. If you see a gray bar, it means the site is not included in Google's index. If the bar is all white or has green, then put your mouse over the bar and you will see a page ranking number on a scale from 0-10. Yahoo has a 10 ranking, while a new site with no links to it may be 0. Average sites are usually 5-6, while very good sites haverankings of 7-9. If any of these high-ranking sites link to you then your own ranking will improve.

If you are wondering where to start or how to find sites that might make good link partners, why not go back to the search engines and look at the competing sites that are in the position where you want to be. Visit one of those sites, and if you have a Google tool bar installed, press the “page info” section of the bar, and then hit the “backward links” button, you will then get all the sites in Google that link to that particular site. If you do not have the tool bar installed you can get the same result by going to Google and making a search for link:http://www.thesiteyouwant.com/ . Now you have the sites that are linking to your competitor.Many of these sites could also be your link partners.

Another way of getting suitable link partners is to think of your field, for example widget manufacturers, and then make a search “directory, directories, widget manufacturers” You may get sites that list all the widget manufacturers, and this is a perfect place to add your link. You can also go in the Open Web Directory (www.dmoz.org) and search for your category and see what sites are listed there. Finally, as you go into the sites linking to your competitors you may find some sites with excellent lists of links, and you can pursue those possibilities to. If you work at it you will find no shortage of possible link partners.

As you develop a list of sites to contact the next step is to choose which sites you want to link with. First visit the site, and see if they have a links page. Also see if the links page is visible, that is, linked to their main site. If it is not very visible then the site will not generate any traffic for you. Also, if you have the Google Toolbar installed see what the page ranking of that site is and the page ranking of its links page. If it is zero then it will not help you very much. And finally consider, how will this site fit on your site. Though you are not responsible for what happens to your visitors after they leave you, if you give them a list of bad resources it does not create a good impression. So, skip the sites that are questionable.

Once you have a good site write them a short letter and explain that you would like to exchange links. If you have seen something on their site that strikes you it is good to mention it so they can see that you are real human and not a robot, as there are some annoying robotic programs trying to do this kind of work. Mention your site’s name, its URL and a description so that they can easily make a link for you. If they have categories on their links page, then mention the category where you want your link to be placed.

Also, if you really want to get your link placed quickly, you can publish a link to that site before you write to them, explaining that you have made a link, telling them the URL where the link can be found, and that you would like a reciprocal link. If eventually they do not link to you, then you can either take down the link, or if it is a particularly good resource, leave it up (a bit of magnanimity never hurts!)

Another important element of your link building process is your own links page and how you maintain it. It is best if you will make some categories, as people do not like to go through a long list of random links. Make sure that there is a short description for each link, and also if necessary edit the descriptions so that they do not take up too much space, and also edit with an eye to quality. A well-maintained links page can become a resource in itself and a valuable contribution to your own content.

You may be thinking that this sounds like a lot of work. Yes it takes some time, but if you devote an hour per day, or per week, or whatever the time you can allot and keep at it on a regular basis you can improve your link popularity, generate new traffic to your site, and in the process learn a lot about how the Internet works.
http://www.a1-optimization.com

What Should I Be Doing While I am in Google’s Sandbox?

It is now well known that Google has an ageing delay in its algorithm. What this means is that a new site will not, during an initial period, show up in queries made for that site’s main keywords or key phrases, even if the site is well-optimized. Some people have referred to this as the “Google Sandbox.” If you have a new site the big questions are: 1. How long does this period last? and 2. What should I do during the time when I will not get good results from Google searches?

Search engines do not the publish the details of their ranking systems, so the answer to the question “How long?” can only be a guess. Based on my experience I believe that the period is around one year. One year! That is a long time to wait for traffic from the Internet’s most important search engine. But who says that you have to sit around, wait and do nothing. Here is what you should be doing.

1. Optimize, Tweak and Test Your Website.
The other major search engines such as Yahoo and MSN do not have such a long ageing delay, and if you optimize your site properly it should appear in the listings of these search engines within a few weeks. Now, if you can’t get a good ranking in Yahoo you will probably not get a good ranking in Google even after your site gets out of the Sandbox. So, while you are waiting to show up in Google, fine tune your site and aim for good positioning in Yahoo. This will bring you some traffic from Yahoo and MSN, and eventually, when the time is right, from Google itself.

2. Conduct a Campaign to Secure Links to Your Site
In addition to actual on-page optimization, ranking in Google is highly dependent on how many sites link to yours. Each link is counted as a “vote” for your site, and the quality and quantity of these links weighs heavily in Google’s ranking system. While you are waiting to see your site in Google, it would be a good idea to get links from complementary sites, either by a reciprocal linking campaign or by getting your content placed on other sites, with a link back to yours.

3. Buy Traffic with a Reputable Pay-Per-Click System
While it is nice to get “free” traffic by being well placed in natural searches for your keywords, you can get traffic immediately if you are willing to pay for it. If your site has convincing copy and a strong call to action, then the ratio of paid customers to total visitors (known as the conversion ratio) should be high enough to pay for the costs of an Adwords campaign with Google or a search marketing campaign with Yahoo. One word of caution, if you opt for paid traffic, stick with the well known pay-per-click systems and do not try out unknown companies who sometimes provides tons of useless traffic at a high price.

So, don’t despair if you don’t see your site at the top of Google’s rankings during the first few months. Take some constructive steps now and the day will come when your site’s natural search engine positioning starts bringing you a steady stream of traffic.
http://www.a1-optimization.com

You Have More Web Sites Than You Think You Have: The Importance of Deep Submission

If I ask you how many web sites do you have? You may say “One, yes it is www.mycompany.com “ or “two” in case you have a second organization or company. When I first began promoting my web sites I was, like most people, only thinking in terms of one web address, the url of my main page. And I thought that this main page was a difficult one to promote because it was the index page of a magazine that covered a wide variety of fields (environment, arts, science, politics, spirituality, etc). How could I optimize a page for so many keywords, which market could I focus on?

It was only after discussing the subject with another web master, who had a similar site, that I learned that the diversity of all the inner pages of my site was a huge asset. Each of these pages was like a mini-website, and capable of attracting a multitude of visitors using a variety of keywords. Part of my ignorance at that point was due to a lack of accurate tracking data. I had a simple tracker on the main page that told how many visits that page was getting, but I had no idea of what was happening deeper inside the site. Then I was able to get access to the raw access logs of the site and using a log analysis tool I began to see the real picture of what was happening.

I saw that the main page was getting one third of the total traffic of the site. I found out that one article, “The Causes of Tropical Deforestation” was a big hit and consistently getting a lot of traffic. Other articles were also quite popular, but covering completely different subjects. It was then that I realized that I had not one web site, but more than 100 web sites.
What does all this mean in terms of design, optimization and submission? It means that one has to realize that people may well enter your site through the “side door” or the “back door” and you have to prepare accordingly.

For design, it means that the structure of your pages and navigation system should invite the people who enter from the inner pages, to make it to your important pages (about us, main page, or your order page!). For optimization it means that you should take more care about the placing of keywords, description and title tags on all the pages. Have you ever seen websites where the blue line at the top of the browser is showing the title of the page to be “New Page”? Even very good designers become a little bit sloppy on the inner pages, and though they do usually manage to put a proper page title on those pages, they seldom take the trouble to write separate meta tags for the keywords and descriptions. But as I learned, these pages are an asset and can be optimized and promoted to gain more traffic.

The first thing that I did was to redesign my navigation system to take advantage of this traffic and make sure that those who entered through the back door would visit the important departments of the magazine. I also put a newsletter sign-up form on all the inner pages, and to this day these pages are bringing in a steady stream of subscribers to the magazine’s e-mail bulletin. The next thing I did was to make sure that the inner pages had proper meta tags, and finally I did a deep submission of the whole site.

What is a deep submission and why is it necessary? When you submit the main page of your site to a search engine, the search engine sends a “spider” to look at your page and put the data on that page in the search engines index. Sometimes the spider will follow the links on your main page and also pick up some of the inner pages (Google, for example is very good at this) but sometimes they don’t go deep enough into the site and only one or two of your pages are indexed. To get the other pages indexed you have to submit them all separately, just as if they were other web sites. However, if you have 100 pages you can’t submit them on the same day to one search engine. That would be regarded as spamming. If you submit one url per day per search engine you will not get into any problems.

So, think about your site more deeply. Your inner pages are mini-websites and if prepared and promoted properly they could increase your traffic and your sales dramatically.
http://www.a1-optimization.com

How to Write a Title Tag for Your Web Pages

When it comes to search engine optimization, the single most important sentence that you will write for your website is the title tag of your main page. If you write it properly then you will have taken a big step towards getting your site well placed in search engine queries for your important keywords.

Before I give you a step-by-step guide to writing title tags, let’s define what they actually are and see why they are important. When you look at a web page in your browser, the writing in the blue strip above browser’s commands (file, edit, view, etc.) is the title tag. On your actual html document the title tag is in the head portion between the notation /title/ and //title/ .

The title tag is important because it “tells” the search engine what the page is about, and in the case of your main page,what your website is all about. I remember back in my school days that we used to take standardized examinations in which we had to read a story and then answer the question: “What would be the best title for this essay?” Choosing a title tag is something like answering this kind of question. You’ve got to pick out the gist of your enterprise and highlight it in a sentence. So, take a look at your web page and get ready to begin, following these steps:

1. Make sure your three or four most important keywords or keyword phrases appear in the title tag. The most important words should appear near the beginning of the sentence, and they can be repeated within the sentence for added emphasis. For example if I am offering low-cost web design, then my title tag might look like this:/title/ Web Design: Affordable, Low Cost Web Design from the Acme Web Design Company //title/

2. Leave your branding and sales pitch for another part of the web page.Although it is a natural tendency to want to put your company name at the beginning of the title tag, you should remember that unless you are very famous like Coca Cola, people are not searching for you. So, put your most important keywords at the front of the title tag, and establish your brand name with your logo and other elements of the web page. If your company name includes your keywords, like our hypothetical Acme Web Design Company, then put it in the title tag, but not necessarily at the beginning
Similarly, the title tag is no place for your sales pitch, so keep out flowery or extraneous adjectives, unless they are actual terms used in searches for your product or service.

3. Place your geographical or niche-defining term in your title tag.If you are trying for a top ten or top twenty position for a term such as “web design,” then you are really in for a difficult struggle. However, suppose the Acme Web Design Company is located in Columbus, Ohio. Then instead of attempting the almost impossible task of getting the top rankings for the term “web design,” it would be far better to get a high ranking in the geographical niche using a title tag such “Web Design, Columbus, Ohio: Low Cost Web Design in Columbus, Ohio by The Acme Web Design Company”

4. The title tag can be longer than you think.Some guidelines say that the title tag should be no longer than 70 characters. It is true that only the first 70 characters will show in the top bar of the browser, but search engine robots will read the rest of the tag and the search engines will not penalize you for going over the 70 character mark. Take a look at highly ranked sites in heavily competitive categories and you will see examples of long title tags. Write the tag according to your need to get your important words and phrases included in a sentence that best describes what your product or service is about.

5. Vary the title tags on the inner pages of your website.Even with a long title tag, it is not possible to highlight all the possible terms which someone might use to find your website. This is not a problem if you make use of the other pages of your website. Instead of simply having a title tag that says “services” our web design firm could highlight “low cost, web design services…” on that page. The “contact” page could be used to emphasize the geographical location once again, and so on. Many websites make the mistake of repeating the same title tag on each of the inner pages of the site. Avoid this and use each of your page’s titles to target important keywords and keyword phrases.

So, take a look at your website’s title tags, and see if you can improve them. The effort that you make will be well rewarded.

The Money's in the List!

“The money is in the list.” This is one of the slogans of internet marketing experts who say that it is very important to build up an opt-in list and then make regular mailings which will enable you to sell your goods and services.

If you doubt this slogan, then you should consult with one of my close friends and colleagues who has been quietly building his mailing list over the best three years. Recently he sent out a mailing to all his subscribers, asking them to help out with Hurricane Katrina relief work. He was astonished to see that immediately following the mailing the traffic to his website jumped ten-fold over a period of three days and counting. Not only did his traffic increase, his e-book sales and subscriptions to his new course went through the roof. And, there was not one word of a commercial pitch in his message to the list.

What is the secret of his success? Even he is scratching his head. But, really it is not a mystery. He runs several free auto-responder courses from his website, delivering high quality information on health and well-being, topics that are important to all of us. Because the content of his mailings is of a high standard, he has won the trust and confidence of thousands of people. This is what electronic marketers call “pre-selling”. Now, whenever he has something to say, his readers are eager to listen.
If you run a website and do not already have a mechanism for building up a list of interested readers, then you should consider doing it now. Here are a few ways to build your list.

1. Start a periodic newsletter with a subscription form on all the pages of your website.
However, if you want the kind of success that my friend had, you should write good articles, or get quality material from other writers and send it to your list on a regular basis. If you don’t know or don’t already have a mechanism for collecting addresses and mailing a newsletter, you can get a free service from http://www.bravenet.com/ or a professional service from Adweber

2. Offer an auto-responder tutorial course on your website.
People come to the web to find solutions to their problems or answers to their questions. Write a series of how-to articles or information articles and offer them as a series that is sent automatically on a periodic basis whenever people subscribe. You can use an auto-responder service hosted by commercial companies or use an auto responder script installed on your own server. A versatile auto responder is available from Adweber (it is hosted on their servers and you don't have to install any software) or you can buy an auto responder script and install it on your server.

3. Write a small e-book in PDF format and offer it as a free download in exchange for an email address
PDF documents are the industry-standard these days, and if you supply good information that is related to your field of activity, your web visitors will be more than happy to trade their email address for a free download. PDF downloads are also viral; people pass them along to their friends and if your information and links are in the e-book, you are likely to get a wide readership.

4. Publish your articles on other websites and newsletters, mentioning your mailing list in your “resource box.”
One of the best ways to build your list is to get your articles published on other websites and in the electronic newsletters published by web masters in fields related to yours. At the end of these published articles you should put your author information (this is also known as a resource box) and include a hyperlink to your website and a mention that more of your articles are available in your newsletter and give a url where people can sign up for it.

One important thing to consider about list building is that whenever you are offering something, even if it is for free, you must sell it to your readers by describing what it is and how it will benefit them. You can’t succeed with a one-line sentence saying, “Sign up for our free newsletter.” If you have a newsletter, you should give a list of past articles. If you have satisfied subscribers, publish some testimonials.

Every day many people are visiting your website and some of them would like to know more about what you have to say and would like to hear from you on a periodic basis. Give them a chance, by using some of the list-building methods that I have described.
http://www.a1-optimization.com/

Six Reasons Why You Should Jump Into Article Marketing

If you are trying to be a successful online entrepreneur then you have probably already tried to increase traffic and generate sales through search engine positioning and pay per click advertising. Have you also tried article marketing? Article marketing is the strategy of writing articles related to your business and publishing them on other websites and in ezines of complementary companies with a link back to your site. This form of online promotion is a very effective way to build traffic and boost sales. Below you will find the main ways that article marketing can benefit you.

1. It is your best way to get known as an “expert” in your field.
Why should someone buy from you and not from one of the thousands of your competitors that are also online? The few lines that you write in your “about us” section of your website may not be enough to set you apart from the others. However, if your potential customer sees your name on well-written and informative articles appearing on several websites around the Internet, then she will regard you as an expert in your field. The more you publish, the greater your recognition will be and the more your reputation will be enhanced.

2. Informative articles build trust in your ability to provide a good product or service.
If you are selling online your most important asset is to be seen as knowledgeable and trustworthy. When one of your articles is selected by another publisher and placed on a website or included in an ezine, that publisher is in effect endorsing you. This kind of endorsement will impress the readers of those articles and they will feel more confident in doing business with you, especially if your article is published in an ezine or on a website which they already respect.

3. Your articles help to “pre-sell” your products and services
It is the quality of website traffic that counts, not necessarily the quantity. The best kind of traffic you can get is from people who have read one of your articles, and have liked what they read. These web visitors come into your website with an eagerness to know more and are much more likely to buy something from you then someone who comes onto your site “cold” or without a full introduction to your ideas.

4. Article writing is a great way to generate content for your ezines and your own website
Although you can look at article marketing as an outreach activity designed primarily for publication elsewhere, you can also use these articles in your own newsletters and on your own website. Keeping touch with your customers and clients through a regular newsletter is an important part of doing business online. However, you need a steady flow of good material to really be successful. If your articles are good enough to be published on someone else’s website, then by all means publish them first in your own newsletters and on your website.

5. Articles published on other sites help to build one-way links to your website
Link building is one of the keys to making a website successful, but, as with traffic, it is the quality of the links that matter, rather than the shear number. Each time one of your articles is placed on another website, you will get a link back to your site. These are one-way links because you did not have to trade links to get them. Usually these links come from pages with fewer outbound links than the standard link pages where your link is usually placed when making a reciprocal arrangement. One-way links coming from pages with few outbound links help to build Page Rank more effectively than reciprocal links.

6. You can generate a lot of money from articles that are published elsewhere
I am conducting an online business from one of the most unlikely locations on the Earth, Albania. Despite this handicap, I have had people call me up on the phone and go on to order thousands of dollars worth of services. All of this has been the result of articles about website promotion and search engine optimization which I have written and published over the past few years. If I can do it from Albania, think of what you can do from your place.
http://www.a1-optimization.com/

Linking Strategy in the Post-Jagger Period

“Please take down my link.” I never thought I would live to see the day that I would get an email like this, but the latest Google update has caused some people to panic. This particular person thought that his site would be penalized if he had a link coming from a site in an unrelated field. Well, following the Jagger update how should we approach linking? Should we “nuke” our reciprocal links directories altogether? Or is there a sensible way to continue linking?
Google doesn’t explain the details of their updates and algorithm changes. It is widely thought they made moves to crack down on spamming and techniques designed to fool their indexing efforts. And possibly sites that added lots of irrelevant links in a short period were penalized. Google representatives have also stated publicly, in forums, that if you link to a “bad neighborhood” you could be penalized.

I can’t get inside the Google algorithm anymore than anyone else, but I strongly believe that linking should go on in a “natural” way, in a way that predates the linking craze which Google itself helped to create. Here are some elements of a natural linking strategy.

1. Link to kinds of sites that will provide good resources for your web visitors.
This is actually the very idea behind Google’s system of Page Rank. Sites that are “cool”, that are informative and interesting will get “votes” or links from other sites on the basis of their value as a web resource. So, link to those sites that are worthy of being in your link directory.

2. Don’t link blindly just because someone is willing to give you a link in return.
Check out any site that is proposing a link exchange with you. Are they a possible spam site? A site that has no content and only ads, or a site in fields such as online gambling, pornography, or similar areas would be suspect. If the site has a page rank of 0 and also has none of its interior pages indexed by Google, then it may have been penalized. You can tell how many of its pages are indexed by making this search: site:www.suspectsite.com .

3. Link to those sites that cater to your target audience.
In the early days of the Internet, the main incentive to link was that it would provide you with some targeted traffic. This concept is still valid. If you have a site about yoga, then find sites whose visitors would likely be interested in yoga and propose a link exchange with them. You may or may not raise your page rank with this exchange, but you will get the kind of visitors that you are looking for.

4. Get One-Way Non Reciprocal Links
There are two primary ways to get these valuable one-way links. The first way is to make your site so informative, so useful, so authoritative, that people will mention it or list it without you having to do anything at all. This is of course not an easy task, but it should be a target. You should strive to be the best in your field and if you can approach this goal then you will be noticed and you will get links without even asking for them.

Another way to get one-way links is to write articles and get them published on other websites. You are probably an “expert” in the field covered by your website. Share your expertise with others in the form of 600-800 word articles. You can distribute your articles in the article distribution groups of Yahoo! Go to http://groups.yahoo.com and make a search for article publishing or free reprint articles and you will find a number of places where you can place your article. Remember to include a link back to your site in the resource box at the end of the article.

So, don’t press the panic button. Keep your link and resource directories but build them up in a way that adds value to your site and helps you to get an extra flow of targeted traffic. If you have the skill to get non-reciprocal links, then by all means get them.
http://www.a1-optimization.com/

How to Track Your Website’s Statistics

Your website's vital statistics do not have to remain a mystery to you if you install a good web page counter or Internet tracking system. While web page counters offer on-page display showing you the approximate number of visitors to your page, more advanced Internet tracking systems provide detailed website traffic statistics online as well as off-line. Which counter or tracking system is the best? It all depends on your needs. Below you will find a description of the different types of counters and trackers that are currently available.

The earliest web page counters were numerical display counters powered by cgi scripts. These counters are still available. Some web hosting companies have pre-installed counter scripts which enable any of their clients to install a counter by just adding a piece of code to their html pages. It is also possible to search online and find a cgi script that will generate a counter, however, successful installation of cgi scripts can be a headache if you are not a “nerd” so if your hosting company does not offer easily installed counters, it might be wiser to look at other options.

If your web hosting company does not offer easy to install counters, check to see if they have any other statistical support. Many hosting companies have system-wide statistical programs such as Webalizer or Awstats. These programs provide detailed traffic statistics for any of the domains that are hosted with that company. If your hosting company offers this service, then you will not have to do any kind of installation. All you will have to do is log into the area where your statistics are displayed.

The statistics measured by these programs include: total visits, unique visits, IP numbers of visitors, referring websites, referring search engines, keyword searches used in search engine referred visits and many other statistics that can be used by you to improve the performance of your website.

Log Analysis and Internet Tracking Systems
If your hosting company does not offer any statistical support or counters, then find out where your site's access logs are stored. Download these logs and run them through a log analysis program such as Open Webscope or Sawmill. Log analysis programs give easy to read statistics not only for your home page but for all the pages of your site. You will be able to find out which of your pages were visited the most, which were visited the least, and where visitors entered your site and left it. Most importantly you will find out which search engines sent you traffic, and which keywords and keyword phrases were used in the queries that took people to your site.
In the event that your host does not offer you easy access to your website logs, then another way to view your website statistics is to install a java script tracker on your home page and other pages of your site.

These Internet trackers are offered by several companies. You will have to sign up for the service, and then paste a piece of java script on your web page or web pages. Upload the modified pages to your server and you will be ready to start reading your stats. You will have to go online and log in to your account to view these statistics.
Perhaps the last word in tracking systems is Google Analytics. Google recently purchased the highly regarding Urchin web statistics software and has installed it on their servers for use by their customers. They are presently offering a free, beta service. While some commentators have expressed concern that Google will gain too much information from its users, it looks like Google Analytics will become a leading website statistic service, especially if it can provide detailed information that will enable users to optimize their pay per click advertising campaigns.

Currently Google Analytics is over-subscribed and Google is placing applicants on a waiting list
Some of the Internet trackers are free, some are supported by advertising and some of them are paid services. If you have a personal site and want a general idea of how many visitors you are getting, then a simple web page counter may be enough for you. If you need more detailed information, then log analysis or a sophisticated tracking solution would be best for you. Choose the one that is best suited to your needs.
http://www.a1-optimization.com/

How to Make Your Articles Stand Out From the Crowd

The secret is out! A lot of people have suddenly realized that the best way to get one-way, inbound links to their websites and build their credibility is to write and publish articles. This is the reason behind the current surge of interest in article writing. The downside of the rush is that it is now harder to get articles published in high traffic locations. However, if you follow some simple rules, and also practice a lot, it is possible to produce articles that will stand out from the crowd. Here are some guidelines that I try to follow as much as possible.

1. Write about something that is “hot” or topical.
Right now in the field of online marketing, for example, there is a lot of interest in Google’s latest update, Blogs, RSS, Adsense and yes, article writing. If possible select one of these current topics and give your insight and experience on subject. Topical articles stand a much better chance of being published than do articles which deal with subjects that have already been written to death.

2. Keep your eyes open for news articles and information related to your field of activity.
For example, within the last two weeks a major news story announced the results of a study showing that people who owned and walked their dogs lost 14 pounds in a year, the same amount as is lost in a typical weight loss program. If you are in the fitness or exercise field, this is a nice piece of news to build an article around.

3. Format your articles properly and remember that you are not writing a literary essay.
Internet and ezine articles typically have short paragraphs. This makes them easier to read. Also, stick to an article size of 500-800 words. If the article is either too long or too short then it may not be published. If your article is composed of dense and long paragraphs this could also be a cause for rejection.

4. Give concrete examples and make your article a short “tutorial.”
How-to articles are always popular. People go online to find solutions to their problems and to find out how to do things. If you are writing about web design, then show how to accomplish a particular task with some html code within the very article itself.

5. Give urls of helpful sources where people can get more information on the subject.The more information you give the more useful your article will be and the more likely that it will be published, read and published again in other places

6. Write with the spirit of giving, not getting.
If you try to sell yourself or your product in the main body of the article itself then you will not succeed. On the other hand, if you go out of your way to provide solid information and advice to your readers, then you will gain respect and people will be curious to read the lines about you in the resource box at the end of the article. It is best to keep your selling out of the article. The few dollars that you can get from an affiliate sale is nothing compared to value of becoming recognized as a reliable authority in your area of business.

7. Make the title of the article attractive and compelling.
People are being bombarded with information. They scan quickly over websites and newsletters. If the title of your article grabs their attention, then you will give you a chance. For example the working title of this article was “How to Get Your Articles Published.” With a bit more thought on the matter, I change it to “How to Make Your Articles Stand Out From the Crowd.” Start with a working title, and then work on it until you get a title that will really command attention.

So don’t be deterred by the competition. Keep on writing and you and your readers will be well rewarded for your efforts.
http://www.a1-optimization.com/

How to Install Streaming Audio on Your Site

One of the most important tasks in online selling, and indeed in all selling, is to convince the prospective buyer that you are someone who can be trusted. A nice picture of yourself in your “about” section is helpful, but even more convincing would be a heartfelt audio message in which you explain yourself and introduce your product or service.

If you are thinking that installing a sound capability on your website would be beyond your technical or financial means then I think you will change your mind after you finish reading this article.
There are some online services that provide full audio support but they charge monthly fees and this may be more than you want to invest. However, if you want to add sound with flash buttons to your site on a limited budget then there are several moderately priced downloadable software packages that allow you to do everything, without any technical know-how.

They range in price from $40 to $100. Visit the websites of audiomakerpro.com, flashaudiowizard.com or soundstreamer.com, and you will see how these programs work.
Now, if you are like me, a real cheapskate, and you don’t want to spend any money at all but would like your website to talk, then you can use the following method to install a streaming audio file on your website.

First you have to record your message. I was able to use an old software package (CoolEditPro) to record an mp3 message directly on my computer. If you have an mp3 player with a recording capacity you can just record your message and then transfer it to your computer.
Suppose the message is saved as myintroduction.mp3. If you just upload the file to your server and make a link to that file, it will not stream but will download when someone clicks on the link. In order to make it stream you have to do the following.

Open a text file and type one small piece of text: http://www.yourwebsite.com/myintroduction.mp3 (this is the location where the file will be placed) and then save this text file with a name such as audiointro.m3u . It is only a text file but it has an extension that makes it look like a sound file. Now, upload the actual audio file myintroduction.mp3 and the text file audiointro.m3u to your server.
In the place on your web page where you want someone to listen, put a text link or a graphic button linked to the file audiointo.m3u . When someone clicks on this link they will hear the file myintroduction.mp3 streaming from their speakers. It will be played on the default mp3 player of that particular computer, such as Windows Media Player, Winamp, etc.

This is poor-person’s streaming audio, but it works. The advantage of the moderately priced packages or the higher priced audio services is that the buttons are nicer and have pause, stop and start functions.

Some audio services claim that adding audio to a website increases conversion rates by 300%. Audio is a tool. If you use it correctly it may indeed be just the thing you need to improve the performance of your website. So choose the method that is convenient for you and try it out.
http://www.a1-optimization.com/

Search Engine Optimization: Four Vital Steps for Optimizing Your Website

There is a bit of confusion about search engine optimization. Some people think that SEO (the abbreviated form) is nothing more than tricking search engines into giving a high ranking for a particular site. Others think that search engine optimization is so complex that they could not possibly understand it. The truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. Search engine optimization is best defined as the art and science of building web pages that are both search engine friendly and user friendly. Below are four basic steps that you should take when optimizing your web pages.

1. Your web design should emphasize text and not graphics.
“Search engine friendly” means that search engines should be able to find data on your site. While a picture may be worth a thousand words, a search engine is trying to classify pages by text and not by images. If you have an opening page with a beautiful picture of the sea and only two words of text saying “enter here” then this page will not rank high in searches for Florida Vacations. Similarly if you have a headline with important text containing your site’s keywords it should not be displayed as a gif or jpeg image. Pages that are all flash or all images are not search engine friendly, and often are not user friendly as well.

2. Links to your interior pages should be easily found by search engines
An important thing to remember is that you want not only your main page, but all of your interior pages to be included in the search engine index. While most people will probably enter your site through the main page, many will enter after doing searches which lead them to your inner pages. The best way to make sure that search engines will find your inner pages is to make sure you have text links to these pages. Even if you have a main navigation system based on Java script or on images, an additional text link navigation bar at the bottom of the site will be helpful to users and search engines alike.
To be absolutely certain that all your pages get indexed, build a sitemap page. This is simply a web page with a one sentence text description of each of your interior pages. These sentences should be linked to the pages which they describe. Put a text link pointing to your site-map on your main page and all the other pages of your site

3. Your pages should be built around specific keywords or keyword phrases
Robotic search engines and human users have one thing in common: they are trying to figure out what your site or your particular web page is all about. It is not possible to get high rankings for thirty different search terms with only one web page. However it is possible to build separate web pages which explain and give importance to various aspects of your organization’s activity. These sub pages can be optimized so that they perform well in searches for your various keywords.

4. Once you have organized your material, place your keywords in the strategic portions of your web pages
If your site is about Florida Vacations, then these words should appear in the following places on your html pages:

a. In the file name or the url.
If your site is called http://www.floridavacations.com/ then this will give you a head start in any searches for this term. Similarly if your company is called XYZ Travels you may have a web page with this url: www.xyztravels.com/floridavacations.html
The url or file name is an important indicator to a search engine, so don’t miss the opportunity to put your important term either in your main domain name or in your file names.

b. In the title tag
This is the blue line showing at the top of your browser and located in the section of the document. If your main phrase is “Florida Vacations” then the title tag in your html document should look something like this:

c. In the description tag
The description tag is not seen on the web page but search engines often display it as the text which gives the searcher an idea of what your page is about. The description tag should be compelling, and make someone want to click and see your page, while containing the keywords that are in your url and your title tag.

If you follow these search engine optimization steps when building your website you will end up with web pages that are easily understood by your visitors, and easily classified and indexed by search engines.
http://www.a1-optimization.com/

Five Common Myths About Search Engine Submission

Search engine submission is a matter that often mystifies those who are new to the Internet. It is natural to scratch your head and wonder how you will get your website listed on the major search engines. If you ask someone how to go about getting your site listed you are likely to hear many misconceptions about search engine submission. You may even be taken for a ride and end up needlessly parting with some hard earned cash. So, before this happens to you let’s examine some of the most common myths surrounding search engine submission.

1. Search Engine Submission is a Very Important Matter
It would indeed seem that you submitting your site to the search engines is of utmost importance. After all, if your site is not in the search engines then how will anybody find you? Sure, you have to be included in the search engines but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you will have to actively “submit” your site. This is because search engines use their “spiders”, or robotic search programs to scour the Internet looking for new pages. If another site, that is already included in the search engines, links to yours, then when a search engine spider visits that site, it will follow the link to your site and gather your information.
So, if you are building a new site make sure that you get some links to your sites from already established sites. Ask your webmaster, your friends, other organizations and complementary sites for links. This will be enough to get you listed in the major search engines. You may still want to submit your site to make sure, but consider the other points before you go ahead

2. There are thousands of search engines that you should be listed in
“Get listed in 300,000 search engines” read the headlines for some submission advertisements. If you look at the traffic logs of most websites you will see that the lion’s share of traffic comes from a handful of search locations, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves. There just aren’t thousands of search sites on the Internet. So, don’t pay money to be listed on these sites. Oftentimes, the sites referred to in these advertisements are seldom-visited free-for-all links pages. If you get listed on such a page you will not get much traffic, but you will get a lot of spam.
Concentrate on the major search engines and don’t worry about the non-existent phantoms referred to in the advertisements.

3. Monthly submission to search engines is a must
In the early days of the Internet, the companies that handled search engine submission warned the public that sites can be easily lost from search engine indexes and that to prevent this from happening it is important to resubmit your site every months. They also said that this was a good way to let search engines know about new additions to your pages.
It is not very likely that your site will disappear from a search engine for no reason at all. If your site is “down” for a considerable amount of time then it might be possible for your site to be dropped from the listings, but otherwise this rarely happens.
Also, you don’t have to resubmit your site to notify search engines about changes to your page or pages. The spiders of search engines regularly revisit pages that are already in the index. You can in fact create a “robots” meta tag and give instructions such as “revisit every 15 days” and this will accomplish the job better than a resubmission.

4. Automatic submissions are useless and you must submit manually
There is often a hot debate about whether manual submissions are better than automatic submissions. For Yahoo, MSN and Google it is now better to do it with a manual submission because all of these engines require you to fill in a code word that is displayed on the screen. These search engines instituted this procedure to block out automated spam submissions. So, for the giants of search, manual submission is the way to go.
What about the secondary sites? There are smaller search engines and directories. Some of them can be useful to you, especially if they represent a particular geographic area or business niche that you are aiming for. If the list of these secondary engines and directories becomes too large, then you may want to consider automated submission. There are some programs that do this or you can find submission services that are free or inexpensive, which brings us to the last myth.

5. You should be prepared to spend a lot of money to get proper submission
If you look at the first point you will see that you probably don’t have to do any submission at all to get your site listed in Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves. These are the search engines that will provide you with 90% of your visitors. So, do you really want to spend a good amount of money to reach the last 5 or 10 per cent of your possible visitors? Look around for a free or inexpensive service to take care of the secondary search engines, and if there are smaller search engines that are very important to your business, then visit them yourself and submit your listing. Save your money for other important tasks.
http://www.a1-optimization.com

Five Common Myths About Search Engine Optimization

Picture this scene, an adolescent boy walks into a barber shop and says to the barber, “Don’t touch me, I’m only here because my mom forced me.”
Search engine optimizers are sometimes put into the position of the barber. They are knowledgeable and willing to work on their client’s site, but the client doesn’t want any modifications done to the text that is visible on her web pages. This kind of dilemma occurs due to general misconceptions about search engine optimization. Let’s look at these misconceptions.

1. SEO only involves writing meta tags and working on “invisible” code
Many people want to get a high ranking for various keywords or keyword phrases, but if you look at the text on their web pages you can hardly find these vital words. They come to a search engine optimizer and think that he or she will sprinkle these words into the meta tags and it will work like magic. This is a major misunderstanding.
It is true that your main keywords and key phrases should be in your title tag and your description meta tag, and even in the keywords meta tag, but they must also appear on the page itself and they must appear in some strategic places on that page. Some clients say, “But I like the way it looks now.” You may like the way it looks, but the search engines will not recognize that your page is truly about Electronic Widgets unless these words appear in headlines on the page, in the opening paragraph, in the file or domain name in link text and in the body text of your page.
So, by all means if you already have copy that works, that can convert visitors into buyers or otherwise accomplish the purposes of your site, keep it. But you should also be ready to listen to what the optimizer has to say about modifications that will enable search engines to select your site when a potential buyer makes a query for your key words or phrases.

2. Search Engine Optimization is Tricking the Search Engines
Some clients say, “Don’t touch the visible copy but put in the modifications invisibly.” Using invisible text is something that can get you banned from a search engine. The main purpose of search engine optimization is to give your website the best possible chance to come up in good positions when someone makes a query for your keywords or key phrases. The key to doing this is to design web pages and write copy that is intelligible to search engines, without sacrificing the experience and understanding of your end-users, the people who visit your site. So, don’t ask your SEO professional to try to trick the search engines, but work with him or her to present your website in the best possible way.

3. Search Engine Optimization deals mainly with onsite modifications
Even if your website is well designed, has proper meta tags and has keyword-rich text, this alone does not guarantee that your site will rank high in competitive queries. All of these factors, design, meta tags, and copy, are on-site factors. Search engines certainly take them into consideration, but they also value off-site factors such as how many high quality or authoritative websites link to you. This means that hand-in-hand with your on-site optimization you and your promotion team will have to embark on a campaign to get links to your websites coming from websites that are already highly regarded by the search engines and by the public in general.

4. Search Engine Optimization works instantly
Don’t expect to get a flood of traffic right after your site has been optimized. Some search engines work in a fairly rapid manner, but the main search engine at the present moment, Google, is believed to have deliberately put an aging delay into its algorithm. This means that it may take several months before your site makes it into the top results for your particular category, especially if it is a newly created site. During this initial period you will also have to consider using other promotional methods such as pay per click advertising, article marketing, joint ventures, paid advertising in ezines and offline advertising.

5. Search Engine Optimization is Prohibitively Expensive
While it is true that very large organizations, ordering services from the top SEO companies, can end up spending thousands of dollars on their optimization campaigns, search engine optimization can be the most inexpensive and cost-effective option for web site promotion.
If you launch a modest pay per click campaign and pay five cents per click and get 100 clicks per day, then your cost is $5.00 per day or $1825 per year. If you learn how to optimize your pages by yourself you may be able to get natural search engine traffic without paying the pay per click fees. This is in fact what many webmasters do. Or, if you opt for a modest search engine optimization package from a professional you can end up spending less than the pay per click fees.

So the next time you hear one of the myths about search engine optimization don’t accept it blindly.
http://www.a1-optimization.com

How to get more clicks from search engine visitors?

Some search engines adjust your site's ranking upward if it has a good click-display ratio. Conversely, if it's displayed many times and no one clicks through to your site, it can drop in the rankings. The search engine programmers rightly figure there's no reason to display it high in the rankings if no one is going to click the link to your site. So, how do you get visitors to click your site when it's displayed at search engines?

Many search engines use the text in your description meta tag as the text they use to describe your site in their search results. That's why it's so important that you do what most people are too lazy to do, and take the time to write a keyword laden description that screams to the searcher, "click me, click me now!"

But, it shouldn't read like a lot of hype either - the search engine programmers are not interested in having site descriptions that look like spam in the top of their search results. A good description will include keywords, be informative, entice without hype and be written in properly constructed sentences.
Don't use a lot of exclamation marks or use words with all capital letters for emphasis. If you have to do that, you haven't worked on your description enough.

Think of a good description like an ad that doesn't look like an ad, because that's just what it should be. An effective description will: Arouse curiosity and attract attention. Spell out a strong benefit to visit your site. Answer every web surfer's question (What's in it for me?). Target the right audience. There are several powerful words and phrases that are used time and time again in advertising. They keep popping up because they act like human magnets that instantly attract consumers with an interest in your topic. The four most important magnetic words and phrases are:Free How to You Easy Using one or more of these magnetic words or phrases, along with the main benefit of visiting your site, can create a compelling reason to click your link. Here are seven key points to consider that will make your link more likely to be clicked:
Use words that create mental images, "trophy buck" is more appealing to a hunter than plain old "deer" would be. Deer hunters dream of bagging a trophy buck, but seldom do. The description should appeal to a feeling or sensation; love, hate, fear, desire, curiosity, etc. Use present tense, not past or future tense. It adds impact and immediacy and makes it more believable. Use verbs that are powerful and exciting. If you were selling stereos, "Amazing clarity and deep, resonant bass" is more exciting than "high quality sound." Amazing clarity and deep, resonant bass is descriptive and evokes the best sound the person can imagine; while high quality sound is a comparative term and sparks little in the imagination.

Eliminate all unnecessary words. It's a description, not the whole web page. Capture the essence of what you want to say in one to three sentences.
Don't try to be too clever. Make the benefit of visiting your page the focus, not your imagination. Simplicity entices, complexity overwhelms.

Remember to sell the sizzle. Benefits are the sizzle. They are the elements that provide the answers and solve the problems. Why? People predominately act on their emotions. Benefits help bring out emotions. Other search engines, rather than using the description meta tag text to describe your site, will use the first few sentences of visible text on your page. Obviously then, the first words you show your visitors should be treated with one eye toward making sense for your visitors and one eye toward winning search engine clicks.

How google works?

The Google data center is not filled with super expensive high tech brand name gear such as Sun, Dell, or Microsoft Exchange. Instead, Google has a large farm of sleek and stripped PCs with the motherboards circuit screwed onto a plain metal slab, with each hard drive attached to the contraptions by a plain old Velcro strap. There are 15000 Google computers, as described above, in the Google farm. The Google farm of computers is growing at the rate of 1500 new machines a month. These super fast machines have RAM in the gigabytes, spanking fast hard drives, and they are running Linux -- one of the best and fastest free operating systems.

Some of the computers in the farm run programs, called Googlebots, which crawl the web constantly and harvest web pages for the eventual input into the main Google database. Googlebots visited my site (wolfram.org) about every three to six five during 2001/2002. They arrive slowly, one or two at first. Then they return the next day, eight or nine of them, and each Googlebot visits four to eight pages each. They keep returning for a week or so, and then they vanish.

After the Googlebots come and go, I search for my new pages on Google, but the new pages don't appear in the search results. This is because the Googlebots do not index my pages into the main database right away. My new pages are finally indexed into the Google database every months or so.

In any case, after Google starts indexing new information from your site into the main database, it takes about a week for Google to copy this information across all their thousands of machines. That's how many machines they have -- that's how much data they work with.
For instance, when I start seeing search results landing on my new pages, I go to Google to search those same word phrases. At first, I may or may not see my page in the results (depending on whether the machine that my browser gets connected to has been updated with the new data yet.) That is, there are so many computers in the Google data center, that it takes a week for all of them to get into sync. After about a week, all (or most)of the Google machines tend to show the new search results.That said, Google is working on a solution to decreasing the time it takes to index the database and to keep it fresh. So this lag time (the time between when the Googlebots visit and when you see your new pages in Google search results) will diminish in the future.

The overall process varies from site to site. Some sites get indexed faster then that, some sites get indexed slower then that. I believe it depends on how often the site is updated or changed, and it depends on the overall ranking of the site. Google is much more complicated than that. The Googlebots only sometimes index pages that change frequently faster. This has been demonstrated to me, so I'm not sure how it works. However, evidently, sites with pages that change frequently -- like news sites or a forums -- tend to get indexed into the main Google database faster.
http://wolfram.org/

Welcome

Dear visitors, welcome to my new and I hope so usefult site! On this site you'll find a lot of free and easy webmaster articles, most of them will be about SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, WEBSITE PROMOTION and stuff like that. Please check back again cuz you'll find a lot of new and interesting stuff. Thank you.