Why Search Advertising Works

September 27th, 2007 | Posted by Ben Keogh

It is no accident that Search engine advertising is now the world’s fastest-growing ad market. It works! It generates new business, and it increases brand awareness. For people serious about increasing website traffic, online advertising is a natural choice, it specifically targets to your potential customers that helps them find your business and website.

What is Search Engine Advertising?

Do you sometimes think and ask, “Is there any other easier way to top the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)?” Sometimes it is difficult to achieve a top position for certain keywords, but there is an easier way to do it, and it is not free. If you do not want to hire a Search Engine Optimiser (SEO), you can have the option to choose the search advertising method.

Search Engine Advertising is known by different names. It is also called Sponsored Search. Advertising with search engines is part of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) method to increase the visibility of a website in SERPs. This advertising campaign can be a great help to your site’s success and will bring you lots of benefits, but only with close supervision and proper management. It is relatively simple. You will just select a keyword and decide how much you are willing to pay for each visitor that visits your site through the search results. The more money you can give in, the higher you will rank on the result list. Your site must be relevant to the keyword you want to bid on. (more…)

Press Releases Can Go the Distance!

September 13th, 2007 | Posted by Ben Keogh

A well-written optimised release can dramatically increase your sales, expose your company to the masses, greatly enhance the image of your business or products, increased link popularity and traffic to your web site and a lot more. It is one of the Web marketing strategies that can really make you go the distance! News Websites like Yahoo News, Google News and MSNBC Searchbot get millions of visitors everyday. So don’t you think it is a good way to hit all these huge traffic sources through getting your way to Google and Yahoo News inclusion? Yeah, this article helps you how.

Almost a lot of people now gets news online compared to watching network TV news, because accessing information through the net is very easy, you can get the latest and hottest news anytime you want. The Internet is quickly becoming the preferred news source over television, magazines, and trade publications.

What is a press release?

For you not to be confused, a press release is also called news release or press statement. But remember, it is different from a news article. A news article is a compilation of facts developed by journalists published in the news media, whereas a news release is designed to be sent to journalists in order to encourage them to develop articles on the subject.

In terms of marketing, it is a tool used by many large companies to communicate with the general public and news media. Announcements for new products, services, corporate partnerships, marketing strategies and other newsworthy events are suitable for press releases. It is a combination of both an article and advertisement and tends to be more objective and is often in an interview format. A mistake that is often made in the development of a press release is the misunderstanding that a press release is an advertisement. It must be understood that, even though a press release can assist your company in acquiring customers, it should not be your focus.

It is submitted to media distribution outlets in the hope that they will run with the story or request an interview. The use of news releases is common in the field of public relations, the aim of which is to attract favorable media attention to the PR firm’s client, and publicity, the aim of which is to attract favorable media attention for products marketed by the client

How to create an optimised press release for your own website

You must take your time to optimise your press release wisely. Why? Because of the many benefits it will do to you and your company, and you do not want it to be mistakably wrong which will only make your reputation go down. Press releases should be optimised the same way as much as SEO specialists optimise web pages. For instance, one press release can result to a thousand visitors and a couple or more interview requests by journalists. Now you can see the power of a highly optimised press release. While there are many factors that help it become successful, here’s the list:

1. Do something newsworthy

The primary purpose of your press release is to deliver a newsworthy story about your company to the reader, and you should only ever send out a press release to the media if you have actually done something worth mentioning. Some examples of things worth writing a press release about are: setting up a new company website, launching a new product or service, merging or partnering with another well known business, awards and industry/community recognition, making a charitable contribution and hosting an event.

2. Keyword selection is indispensable.

With a bull’s eye on your successful targeted keywords and phrases, your press release will make a compelling read that are likely to deliver qualified leads to your website. Keyword selection is the first step in search engine optimization. It is also where most people go wrong. If you pick a keyword that is not used by the people hunting for your product, you won’t get traffic. You must pick popular keywords to be found. By doing this, you can start brainstorming your team on what people would search when looking for your products; you can generate lucrative keyword phrases. It is better to target up to 3 keyword phrases.

Once you have done some research and brainstorming, you can use tools to gives you quantitative feedback and suggestions so you can select keywords that bring relevant qualified traffic to your site. One tool you can use is the DigitalPoint.com. Simply type in your list of potential keyword phrases and this tool will give you a list of related keywords and how many times they are searched for per day. This information can aid you in choosing which keyword phrases will bring your press release the highest amount of exposure.

Now that you have selected your best potential keywords, it is now the point to incorporate these targeted keyword phrases into your press release. You should include your keywords in the headline, the title, sub-headings and the first two paragraphs. Search engines place much of their emphasis on the title and the beginning paragraphs.

3. Release date

Press releases that include a date in the first paragraph earlier than the actual release date, typically do not get included into Google News. Some press release distribution services like the PR Leap, their system automatically stamps the release date for you, so it is not necessary to include it again. But if you prefer to include a date, make sure that it syncs with the actual release date.

4. Headlines and titles

You should write a catchy, yet informative headline for your press releases. In about ten words or less, you need to grab the attention of the editor. The headline should summarize the information in the press release, but in a way that is exciting and dynamic; think of it as a billboard along a highway. You just have a few words to make your release stand out among the many others editors receive on any given day. The headline can be placed in all bold type, while some people like to use all CAPS when typing a headline, you should avoid that. Many press release distribution sites won’t accept a title in all caps.

To optimise, your title should also reflect your strongest keywords, not the name of the company. Include local modifiers if possible. Although it is often good to see your company’s name in print, it is unlikely to bring you the exposure you deserve. Instead, use targeted search keyword phrases that are likely to be used by your potential customers.

5. Creative writing

Be creative but avoid excessive use of adjectives and fancy language. Write for the audience that you are trying to reach with your release. Do not use technical jargon or buzzwords that might throw off the person receiving your press release. Deal with the facts and pick an angle. Try to make your press release timely. Tie your news to current events or social issues if possible. Make sure that your story has a good hook. Avoid using too much exclamation point, if you need so, just use one.

You should also optimise your press release by integrating targeted links within the content. Many press release distribution services and news wires now offer the option of purchasing a hyperlink. You simply convert a keyword phrase within the release into an active hyperlink. This will increase search engine visibility for that keyword phrase and also drive additional traffic back to your website.

6. Cover the basics

In the very first paragraph of the body of your press release, always cover the “Who, What, When, Where, and Why” questions about whatever you are trying to gain publicity for. You can expand into more details further down in the body. Keep the first paragraph short and to the point. Using a strategy called the “inverted pyramid”, the body of the press release should be written with the most important information and quotes first. This inverted pyramid technique is used so that if editors need to cut the story to fit space constraints, they can cut from the end without losing critical information. Make it easy as possible for media representatives to do their jobs.

7. Length matters

If your press release is too short (less than 150 words or so), or too long (more than two pages or 500 words), it will be less likely to get included into Google News. News releases that are too short tend to read like an advertisement and are not considered newsworthy.

8. Forget the duplicate

Duplicates are not accepted. To improve the likelihood of Google News and Yahoo News picking you up, be sure that your press release has not previously released on Business Wire, PR Newswire, or PR Web, and was already included into Google News, than it is most likely not going to be included again.

9. Proofread

After you have written your new press release, be sure to proofread it. Aside from not including your contact info, having incorrect spellings and poor grammar are the worst mistakes you can make. Sloppy writing won’t get your press release anywhere but in the trash.

10. Syndication

It is better syndicate and to provide an RSS feed for your press releases and submit the feed URL to sites like feedster.com, feedsfarm.com and try giving moreover.com a shot. Getting into Moreover would also give you extra audience in the MSN Searchbot.

What are the benefits?

Press release creates credibility

Credibility is the one thing that can win the customer’s heart and pocketbook at the same time and nothing builds more credibility than a well-written press release that gets picked up by the media.

Indefinite Exposure

Press releases often linger around the Internet indefinitely, unlike normal advertising that disappears once your campaign ends. It provides extensive inbound links for your website and extensive brand recognition.

Non-disposable

With a press release, your company receives broad exposure, and always owns the rights to a unique article. You can post it on your company website and can even send it to prospective clients.

Pickup of your release in online publications

A well crafted press release captures the attention of journalists and is optimised for distribution over the Internet.

Increased link popularity to your web site

Once you have successfully optimised a well-written press release, your link popularity to your web site will increase. Link popularity is a recognizable way to boost targeted traffic, and is also a good way to gain quality inbound links that will benefit your site from search engines.

Ongoing promotion

Most services archive releases; so it is an ongoing form of promotion. Search engines may pick up on the release when it is published on other sites. This creates another avenue for people to find you and to possibly improve your search engine rankings through link popularity factors.

Professionalism

The degree of professionalism a press release adds to a company is hard to measure. Current and prospective clients will be blown away by your press release, and it will put your company one step above your competition.

How to distribute it for maximum exposure

There are many services that will accept press releases, and some of them will charge a fee to distribute your news item to journalists and news editors. A few of the better known services are:

One good free service is the PRWeb.com. For real impact, you can avail their premium service version, PRWeb Direct . It provides excellent coverage at a low price and some features includes the Google News Inclusion, Yahoo News Inclusion, MSN News Inclusion and other good stuff for your press releases.

Moreover, you can also get your content into Google and Yahoo news directly. If you publish frequent news and articles, your site may very well qualify as a news source. But be sure that your site includes editorial review process and multiple contributors. If you are accepted, Google Newsbot will hit your site very frequently and you will receive an extra stream of quality traffic to your web site.

A well crafted press release may take you time to create; but given the immediate and ongoing benefits, it is definitely a worthwhile investment of your marketing time. So now that you know how to optimise your press releases and articles for maximum exposure, try to begin an assertive press campaign to increase exposure to your brand, gain quality inbound links, and increase your website traffic.

Components of a Well-Rounded SEO Campaign

August 30th, 2007 | Posted by Ben Keogh

It is no secret that SEO is the most powerful, cost-effective, and results-yielding website promotional tool. Our SEO campaign must be well-rounded to win and achieve the sweetest reward; traffic, long-term visibility and ranking that will result to business success.

However, some Website owners put too much attention on a single element of SEO. Instead of focusing on the hottest SEO “trend”, Websites with long-term SEO success, focus on a variety of strategies with equal emphasis. If you are only giving special importance on a single element of SEO, then you are more vulnerable to changes in search engine algorithms.

Search engines algorithms like of Yahoo and Google are evolving. The continuous change is for the benefit of all the internet users. That is why having a well-rounded SEO campaign will win you. You can ensure the capability of your SEO well into the future and you can also reduce the impact of search engine algorithm changes.

Take a look at the changes of the search engine algorithm which affects SEO campaigns:

Now we need to broaden our horizons to suffer less likely when uncontrollable factors happen.

Here are the components to run a well-rounded SEO campaign:

Now does this article help you? I can say that it will. Always remember that your website is the center of your SEO campaign. So try building using a well-rounded SEO habit. Good Luck!

Tips on How NOT to do Search Engine Marketing

August 9th, 2007 | Posted by Ben Keogh

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) can provide an effective method of driving highly targeted visitors to your Website. It is an alternative way to the traditional marketing such as commercials, brochures, and print advertising. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is part of SEM, which includes improving rankings for relevant keywords in Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) all to have a goal of increasing the amount of traffic to get better search engine rankings.

Search engine marketers are experts and firms who explore the weaknesses and strengths in the methods and individual products to find the best way to promote a particular Website in search engines. However, there are still some who still attempts to use methods to manipulate search rankings unfairly using the Black Hat Marketing and other deceiving techniques just to get high ranks easily. Before you continue signing with your SEO experts, take a moment to understand the techniques they may be putting on and how you can identify their deceiving marketing proficiencies which can damage both your Website and reputation permanently. These are the big NO!-NO! that should never be applied on your search engine marketing:

1. Spamdexing

Spamdexing or spam for short refers exclusively to practices that are dishonest and mislead search and indexing programs to give a page ranking it does not deserve. Spamming involves getting Websites more exposure than they deserve for their keywords, leading to unsatisfactory search results. Also, be very wary of any SEO expert that offers Website promotion through blast emails. Ensure that any email going out with your Web URL are being targeted towards users with a general interest in what you have to offer and are not unsolicited emails. If discovered, search engines may take action against those found to be using these unethical methods.

2. Link Farm

When SEM firms promise to help you boost your link popularity by automatically entering you into link exchange programs they operate, check first their Websites that will be linking to yours. If it has nothing to do with your content, you should be aware of the repercussions of this action as major search engines penalize sites that participate in link farming, thereby reversing their intended effect.

A link farm is any group of Web pages that are all hyperlinked to every other page in the group. Although some link farms can be created by hand, most are created through automated programs and services. A link farm is a form of spamming the index of a search engine.

3. Keyword Stuffing

It is important to stuff keyword into the title, headings, image alt statements, hyperlinks on the page, hyperlinks pointing to the page and in your general keyword rich text. But excessive repetition of keywords in an attempt to artificially inflate density and improve a page ranking is bad!

If your Website points a very wide-ranging keyword like “flowers”, then it is quite impossible to be on top ranking for that keyword. But if you keep on fine-tuning your keyword selection like “Miyara’s flowers”, then you will be able to achieve top placement in search engines. Many could not still target, which makes them overload keywords. Wordtracker.com helps in searching for good specific keywords for your Website. They will help you to figure out the various keywords people use to search for goods and services on the net, and behold those visitors will become your paying customers.

4. Hidden Text

Hiding the text keywords and phrases makes it invisible for users to see, but are scanned by the search engine to help increase SERPs. Examples of these are words that are frequently searched like “sex” or “love”, even if these terms gives little connection to the content of a page, they are still using it in order to attract traffic. There are several ways to hide text and these are:

These are only some misleading ways and if your page is found to be doing these, you may get de listed. You should be able to creatively stick your keywords in the content without needing the extra cheese techniques. Search engines have been advancing their algorithms to detect pages that make use of hidden text for the purpose of rankings, but if you see a competitor that uses hidden text feel free to report “spam” to the major search engines. By getting your competitors removed from the search results, you can be sure your rankings will improve.

5. Cloaking Content

Cloaking content involves hiding the substance people will see, and substituting it with content designed to rank higher in the SERPs. It is often used as a spam technique to try to trick search engines into giving the relevant site a higher ranking; it can also be used to trick search engine users into visiting a site based on the search engine description which site turns out to have substantially different or even pornographic content. For this reason some search engines threaten to ban sites using cloaking.

Cloaking can also be a deceptive advertising technique in the search results. It involves using deception to obtain a commercial advantage but they are not clearly labeled in the search results because the search engine did not know they were cloaked. So cloaking amounts to using deception to obtain an unlabelled improved position for commercial advantage.

6. Pop-ups and Pop-unders

Pop-ups and pop-unders (variations on the pop-up windows) are a common internet annoyance. They are usually techniques applied by traffic service Websites intended to increase Web traffic or capture email addresses and things will work fine for some time, but pop-up windows will start to get out of focus, to display contents that will disturb your visitors, and gradually becomes more intrusive. Reaction from your visitors will automatically be complaining and will avoid your site because you have pop-ups, pop-unders, and such sort of things. Your site may get a negative impression by them as they will associate it with the pop-under.

7. Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are simple HTML pages that are customized to particular keywords or phrases, and they are primarily designed and programmed to be visible only by specific search engines and their spiders, not for human beings. The purpose of these doorway pages is to trick the search engines into giving these sites higher rankings.

They are also known as bridge pages, jump pages, gateway pages, entry pages and by other names. For example, users searched for “used vans”, and the doorway page appears. Users do not arrive at the goal page as they click through, or sometimes the page probably lacks detail about “used vans” they sell. The gap between the entry and the goal page is where the names “bridge pages” and “jump pages” come from. These pages either “bridge” or “jump” visitors across the gap.

8. Meta Refresh Tag

The META refresh tag is also called “redirecting” because you are sending the visitor to a page other than the one they requested. It tells the browser to automatically request another page from the server after a certain number of seconds. It works like when visitors click on a Web page that contains a META refresh tag inside the HEAD section, they are sent to a different page without actually clicking on a link. This is called page side redirection. There are practical applications for using them, but using them is a notorious spam technique and may significantly lower your page rank or even get you banned in some search engines.

9. Using Frames

Search engines have trouble with frames since they do not know what composites of frames to include as navigation units in their index. Frames are pieces of a Web page which are added together to make a whole page. If you have an interesting article deep within your site, using frames makes it hard for others to link to it. You can get around frames by having a site map from the home page that links to all the framed pages, but even if these pages list high they will probably lack good navigation since the framework that contained is not located with it in the search results.

10. Splash Pages

Splash pages are negative to search engines and the users. They are introductory pages that are designed to impress the users. While the idea may be good, the aim is bad. Many search engines can not effectively navigate through and index flash. This means that you have little to no content to optimise and more than likely will not be able to achieve top listings, it offers limited content to search engines.

Whether you are an experienced SEO, beginner, or a client, reading this article may save you a lot of grief later on. If you have anything like the above on your Website, it offers no value and scares away potential customers and may be dangerous for you too. Falsely practices might work in the short-term but in the long run they can get your site flagged for review and censure. In addition, using these techniques tends to bring down the general credibility of your site.

10 Ways to Optimise Google AdWords

August 2nd, 2007 | Posted by Ben Keogh

Never before in the history of advertising has been it possible to spend five bucks, write a couple of Ads, and get instant access to over 100 million people in less than 10 minutes. But with Google AdWords, you can possibly do that! Yet, most people find out that it is much harder than it sounds, and yes, Google is not easy and confusing at first but if you know the right thing to do and its techniques, it will reward you a lot.

AdWords is Google’s advertising product and main source of revenue. Its text advertisements are short, consisting of one line and two content text lines, and thus difficult to block for normal Ad-blocking software. Google’s Ads are found and displayed on the right hand side of the natural search results. AdWords also offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner Ads.

This article gives you essential tips and strategies that can help you to get maximum benefit of your AdWords Campaigns. Here they are:

1. Create your own unique “landing page” exclusively for your products

A good landing page is just as important as a good Ad, good keywords and strategic bidding. By creating an effective landing page advertisers can increase conversions, which will make their campaigns more competitive and profitable.

Internet users are looking for information and expect good content from your site. Include your product’s pictures, reviews, lists of benefits, testimonials and other interesting content closely related with the products you are offering keep your prospects interested.

The role of your Ad is to get clicks. The role of your landing page is to convert those clicks into leads or sales. It is in your landing page where you have all the room to explain all the benefits and features of your products or services. It is very important to remember that your landing page is your sales page.

2. Create Ad groups based around families of keywords.

You can use these two tools: CompareYourClicks.com and WordTracker.com to guide you find keyword families. Each Ad group must be committed to one keyword family, like if your keyword is “Flowers” then try an Ad Group with “Philippine Flowers”, “Fresh Flowers”, or “Plastic Flowers”. Go broad and wide to find as many relevant key phrases as you can.

Include in the text of your Ad on the keyword you have selected and that keyword will be printed highlighted and will lead to a higher CTR (Click Thru Rate), lowering your costs. Use isolation techniques to remove higher cost keywords from Ad groups.

3. Create a good number of selected negative keywords for your campaign.

Use high number of negative keywords to screen out customers looking for free items and bargain discounts to click on your Ad, so you can avoid clicks with no sales. For instance, a realtor who sells houses in Manila could specify “commercial” as a negative keyword so that their Ads do show for searches upon “Manila real estate” but not “Manila commercial real estate”.

Negative keywords can have a tremendous impact on ROAS (Return On Advertising Spending) by significantly reducing the number of clicks by poor quality leads.

4. Create an aggressive but permission-based email capture program.

Like including a form allowing your visitor to enter their email addresses. If you can capture the email add of your visitors, you can continue to market them after their initial visit Offer free gifts or freebies to motivate your visitor to enter their email adds. This can dramatically reduce your campaign cost and increase your long-term conversion ratio.

5. Mention openly the price of your product or service.

This will prevent freebies seekers to click on your Ad and will just generate costs and no sales and you can get the right customer by doing this.

6. Create at least twenty different Ad versions per Keyword Group.

Go broad and wide to find as many as you can, but create Ads that are truly relevant to what you are offering. Monitor the CTR of each Ad and finally delete all versions with low CTR, keeping the most successful Ad versions. Experts produce usually hundred of selections, however you can start with less. Experiment, test, evaluate, change and keep only the best results.

7. Include a concise benefit of your product in the text of your Ad.

Example is including discounts, short term opportunities or even a brief explanation why customers should click your Ad.

8. Calculate the value per visitor on a regular basis

The acquisition of a customer can be worth an expensive PPC term, even if you only break-even on the first transaction. Divide the achieved earnings in a given period like weekly thru the clicks in the same period. This is your maximum CPC (Cost per Click). Adjust your maximum bid accordingly. Try to maximize profits, not just to lower the CPC.

You may also exclude the “content search” option to reach highly targeted traffic. Only in the case you have an amazing conversion rate, activate this option to maximize your profits.

9. Avoid bidding wars.

Let your competitors support Google with their unwitting charity while you find your way to get the same results for less money. You could try to find other keywords that no advertiser is using. These keywords have two benefits:

When you find a keyword that has a large amount of impressions and has a good CTR, make sure that you are using all possible combinations of that word. So if the term “used cellphone” is performing well, you may also want to try “used cellphones”, “used cellular phone”, “used mobile phone”, and so on.

10. Track your Ads carefully.

Google provides a tracking facility you can add in your “Thank You” page after each sale. Monitor closely which keywords convert and which not. Delete Keywords which obviously do not convert.

If you monitor your Ads on a regular basis and follow these essential tips, then you may get great benefits. Always observe your expenses versus profit then try to go ahead by having high quality content from your competitors and enjoy good payback!

Website Submission 101

July 19th, 2007 | Posted by Ben Keogh

So you have created your website, made it appealing and user-friendly, and now all you need is to submit it to several search engines. But you have some questions on what to do first when submitting your website. This article will help you understand on proper website submission to several search engines that will help you improve rankings that will help you with your web career.

“Search engine submission” refers to the act of getting your website listed with search engines. Another term for this is “Search engine registration”. Getting listed does not mean that you will necessarily rank well for particular terms, but it simply means that the search engine knows your pages exist. One concrete example of this is the lottery; search engine submission is like buying a lottery ticket, but having it does not mean that you will win right away, but having that ticket gets you the chance to win the lottery prize.

Preparation

Do not be too excited to get on public without double checking and preparing first the important things. It is better that your website will be tested than having errors later. After all, you want your page to look its best before the search engines grab hold of it, right?

This preparation means that you have written a 25 words or less description of your entire website. That description should make use of the two or three key terms that you hope to be found for. Another tip for this is; it is essential that the description you write do not make use of marketing language, which editors dislike.

Then follow by rechecking your code, both HTML and CSS. It includes meta-tags to ensure that the title, meta-description and meta-keywords properly describe your webpages and have some of your desired keywords in it. This process of cleaning involves triple checking that all the codes are accurate and do not report errors. Things may have changed since you started messing with the content from your first tests. Take time to review your site to consolidate, streamlining and optimizing your code so the page will load faster.

When you want to submit your site manually to directories, you should prepare some requested information to speed up the process. You have to write or type out the following information about your site and keep it handy as a reference. You can use a text editor like the MS Notepad to copy and paste the requested information and save the data before going and submitting to the different search engines and directories. Here are the needed website reference information:

Pages to Submit

Search Engines vs. Directories

Perhaps we should differentiate first search engines from directories before we continue our discussion. There is a big confusion between the two. Many users do not know and this is not surprising, as most sites that started as a directory, incorporate search engine results (like Yahoo) and most search engines also use data from directories (like Google). To the amateur, it all looks the same. However, for webmasters and site owners understanding the distinction between the two is vital.

Search engines have databases built up by “robots”, which visit a websites and add information to their database. On the other hand, directories are human edited and build their indexes with editors who visit websites, and add to the directory the sites that they consider to be a valuable resource. In addition, directories use “websites” as their building block compared to search engines, as they use a “webpage” as their building block. Example, if the web was a library, then Directories would be a catalog of books, while the Search Engines would be the index of the books.

Submission

Here are the following helpful tips for your website submission:

  1. Submitting your website to every search engine is an incredible time-consuming process. There are hundreds and hundreds of them out there. However, if you have come across the companies who will submit your website to 1,000 search engines for you, it will be fine. Search engine professionals know that the vast majority of these search engines have a very low usage rate and will drive hardly any traffic your way. In fact, it is only a handful of search engines that drive the majority of traffic from search engines to websites.
  2. It is a good thing if you submit your homepage to the major search engines manually, without any special tool at all for you to ensure that it will be submitted successfully. The absolute best way to get listed with the major search engine listed below is to build links to your website. Indeed, this is the best way to get listed for free with all the major crawlers. Crawlers follow links, so if you have good links pointing at your website, the crawlers are more likely to find and include your pages. Here is the good news: if you submitted your site to the major directories and got listed with one of them, then major search engines and other crawlers will almost certainly pick up the URL that was listed. This means you may not need to do additional work to get listed with crawlers. Here are the major search engines to submit your site:
        • Submit your site to Google
        • Submit your site to Yahoo!
        • Submit your site to MSN
        • Submit your site to Teoma
        • Submit your site to AltaVista
        • Submit your site to Teoma
        • Submit your site to Fast
  3. Despite the rise in paid participation programs offered by search engines, free search engine submission is still possible and good, like the FreeWebSubmission.com. However, using the paid programs that are offered will speed up the listing process and almost positively generate more search engine related traffic for your website.
  4. You can also submit to the Open Directory. It is a web directory of Internet resources managed by humans, something like a huge reference library. The good news is that submission is absolutely free; bad news is that this means there is no guaranteed turnaround time to getting a yes or no answer about whether you’ve been accepted. If you are accepted, you should see your site appear within about a month. If this does not happen, then you should resubmit. Just go to dmoz.org and read all their rules first and follow them closely before you submit, it really helps with your backlinks and overall relevancy as a website.
  5. You could also try to submit to important directories. But if you are not familiar with them you should try browsing before you fill out their forms and submitting your site. Have a paper and pen as you browse, and write down directory paths of where you want to be. Here are the following major directories:

Blogging Tools You Should Be Using

June 28th, 2007 | Posted by Ben Keogh

Blogging is a great technique for your growing business. It gives you the confidence to create a trustful image to your customers and customers-to-be. Your blogs should be frequently updated, well-designed and credible for you to achieve its tangible benefits. Not only should you be planning a blog for your business, but a blog for you, your company or your organisation should be part of your ongoing marketing strategy.
This article highlights some of the most important blogging tools that you need to be using to market your website, your services and your products.

What is a Blog?

Blog is a shortened name for weblog (pronounced as web-log or we-blog) from the words Web and Log. Writing, maintaining or adding an article to an existing blog is called blogging. Individual articles on a blog are called blog posts, posts or entries. A person who posts these entries is called a blogger.

Blogs are frequently updated journals, newsletters or Websites, with commentary and links intended for general public consumption. A blog is far from a static link list or home page, it consists of many relatively short posts, usually time-stamped, and organised in reverse chronology so that readers can check the most recent post first. To blog is an activity similar of a researcher in many ways.

Why is This a Good Thing for Business?

Blogging is a great technique for your growing business. It gives you the confidence to create a trustful image to your customers and customers-to-be. Your blogs should be frequently updated, well-designed and credible for you to achieve its tangible benefits. Blogs should be added in your strategic marketing plans, because now a days competition is wise, blogs could not be ignored anymore and these are the reasons why: