How to get your site listed at Yahoo!

Getting your site an optimum listing in Yahoo! is perhaps the most important step in effective web site promotion. An optimum listing in Yahoo! can bring in more traffic to your site than all the search engines combined.

In addition to this, getting listed in Yahoo! will also help you improve the link popularity of your site which helps in improving the ranking of your site in the search engines. In this article, we focus on how you can get your site an optimum listing in Yahoo!.

First, you should note that Yahoo! is not a search engine - it is a directory. Unlike the search engines, an actual human editor evaluates your site.

Before starting, read Yahoo!'s instructions thoroughly. Read their Help Index  and their How To page .  Familiarize yourself with these instructions because they mean every word of what they say.

Before you submit your listing, go through your entire site and ensure that there are no missing graphics, no links leading to empty or non-existent pages, no "Under construction" symbols and no typos or grammatical errors. Your site should be easy to navigate, should load quickly and should look professional.

Furthermore, your site must provide unique content. Yahoo!'s definition of unique content is very strict - if your site simply consists of a one page sales letter, or, if it only contains links to various affiliate programs, you will find it impossible to get listed.

Also, your site needs to be in its own domain, especially if it is of a commercial nature. Having your own domain adds more credibility to your site and tells Yahoo! that yours is a serious site which won't be taken down very soon. Getting into Yahoo! is hard enough - not having your own domain will make it that much harder.

If your site is of a commercial nature (i.e. it is selling something), you need to mention the physical address of your business either in the home page of your site or in a separate Contact Us page which is linked prominently from the home page. This should be the actual physical address of your business - not a Post Office Box address. Of course, mentioning the physical address of your business is something you should be doing anyway - it boosts the credibility of your business which improves sales. Along with the physical address, you should also mention a phone number and a fax number (if you have one). Of course, you should always mention an email address.

Also, before submitting, select the two most important keywords for your site based on their popularity.  While selecting the keywords for your site, you should look at both the popularity of the keyword as well as its competitiveness. However, for the purpose of this article, don't worry about the competitiveness - select keywords only on the basis of popularity.

Your first task is to find out whether your site is already listed in Yahoo!. Type in the domain name of your site in Yahoo!'s search box, and see whether your site comes up in the Web Sites section. Note that for your site to be listed in Yahoo!, it has to come up in the Web Sites section. If it is listed in the Web Pages section but not in the Web Sites section, it means that your site is listed in Google, not Yahoo!. If your site is already listed but you are not satisfied with the listing, read the last section of this article on changing your site's listing in Yahoo!.

Assuming that your site is not listed, your objective is to get your site a high ranking in the Web Sites section. Here are the factors which influence the ranking of your site in the Web Sites section:

1. Presence of the keyword or a part of the keyword somewhere in the name of the category or in the name of a higher level category.
   
2. Click Popularity: The concept of click popularity means that when a user searches for something in Yahoo!, it tries to find out which sites satisfied the user's needs. It does this by keeping track of two things:
   
   a) which sites the user clicked on among the sites displayed in the results, and
   b) how much time the user spent in those sites.
   
   The logic behind this is that if a user clicked on a particular site and spent a lot of time in that site, that site must have satisfied the user's needs and hence, must be relevant to that particular keyword. In this case, the site's click popularity for that keyword improves and so does its ranking for that keyword. But, if a user did not go to a particular site, or returned to Yahoo! soon after going to that site, that site must not be providing relevant information for that particular keyword.
   
   In this case, the site's click popularity for that keyword declines and so does its ranking for that keyword.
   
   When you first get your site listed in Yahoo!, since Yahoo! does not have any data on the click popularity of your site, it will be listed right at the bottom of the search results. A question that arises here is - how a site which is listed right at the bottom of the search results can have many users clicking on it so that its click popularity improves. The answer to this is that when a user clicks on a site which is listed at the bottom, its click popularity improves by a greater extent than when it is listed at the top. This means that it only requires a few users clicking on your site to improve the click popularity of your site when it is listed at the bottom.
   
   So, how do you ensure that your site's click popularity is high?
   
   There are only two ways of improving the click popularity of your site - the description of your site in Yahoo! needs to be attractive and you need to build an excellent web site with great content which satisfies your visitor's needs so that they stay longer in your site.
   
3. Presence of the keyword or a part of the keyword in the Title and Description - If you want to rank highly for a keyword, the Title and the Description that you use to submit your site to Yahoo! should contain the keyword. Note that this Title is not the title that you have used in the home page of your web site and that this Description is not the description that you have used in the Meta Description tag of your home page. Rather, it is the Title and the Description of your site's listing in Yahoo!.
   
   An important point to note here is that Yahoo! searches for strings rather than words. This means that if one of the individual words of the keyword is embedded inside another word, this will still boost your rankings. For instance, if the keywords applicable for your site contain the word Australia, but the description of your site in Yahoo! contains the word Australian, the fact that the string Australia is present inside the word Australian will be taken into consideration when your site is ranked.
   
4. Prominence of the keyword in the Title and the Description - "Prominence" means how close the keyword is to the beginning of the Title and Description. Other things remaining the same, closer the keyword to the beginning of the Title and the Description, higher your ranking.

Now we come to the Title for your site. The Title is important not only because the presence of a keyword in the Title helps to boost the ranking of your site, but also because sites in the various categories in Yahoo! are listed alphabetically according to the Title. However, Yahoo! insists that the Title should always be the official name of your site. Hence, short of changing the official name of your site, there is not much you can do about the Title.

Now we come to how you should write the description of your site. When you write the description, your aim should be to make the Yahoo! editor's job as easy as possible. You should not give the editor the feeling that he/she needs to edit your description in any way. The moment an editor starts to edit your description, you risk having your keywords removed from your description or worse, having it changed in a way which does not reflect the content of your site.

Your description should be a single sentence which conveys what your site is all about and contains the two keywords you are targeting as close as possible to the beginning of the description. However, your description should not just be a list of keywords - the description that you use should be a proper sentence and should be grammatically correct. It should also be attractive to your visitors so that they actually click on it, which will improve the click popularity of your site, and hence its ranking in Yahoo!.

Broadly, here are the rules that you should remember when forming the description:

• Make sure that the description can tell a visitor what your site is all about. Things like "Have a look at our site" or "Welcome to my site" does not tell a visitor what your site does.
  
• Avoid hype of any sort. Avoid using ALL CAPS or exclamation marks. Phrases like "The best web site dealing with widgets!!" or "Offers the BEST QUALITY, CHEAPEST WIDGETS you can find anywhere" are inappropriate.
  
• Don't capitalize any word in your description - not even the first word. For some reason, Yahoo! prefers that the first word of your description is not capitalized. If you look at the sites in any Yahoo! category, you will find that almost none of them have the first word capitalized. Of course, if some of the words in the description are proper nouns, then you should capitalize them.
  
• Write the description in the third person. Don't say "We offer financial planning and credit counseling services", say "offers financial planning and credit counseling services.".
  
• Don't make your description too long - limit yourself to 10 words at the most. If you are lucky, you may be able to get accepted with a description longer than 10 words. However, longer the description, higher the probability that the editor will want to edit it.
  
• Check your description for typos and grammatical mistakes.
  
• End your description with a period. If the editor has to add the period to the end of your description, she may also end up editing the description, which is not what you want. Your aim is to have the editor accept the exact description that you had written in order to ensure that your keywords are not removed from the description.

Now that you know the description that you should use, it is time to establish the category to which you should submit your site. First of all, you need to determine whether your site is regionally specific. If your site is applicable to a specific geographic region, then you should submit your site to the appropriate Regional Category in Yahoo!. However, if your site is not specific to a particular region, then your site should be listed in one of the main Yahoo! categories.

Now, if your site is commercial in nature (i.e. if it sells a product or service) and is not regionally specific, it belongs somewhere under the Business and Economy > Shopping and Services or Business and Economy > Business to Business categories. If your site is targeted towards individual consumers, then your site needs to be under the Shopping and Services category. If your site is targeted towards other businesses, it needs to be in the Business to Business category.

If your site is both commercial in nature and regionally specific, your site needs to be under the Business and Economy > Shopping and Services or Business and Economy > Business to Business category of the relevant regional category.

With this background, let's see how you can determine the appropriate category for your site. Simply search for the two keywords which you have determined earlier. Go through all the categories which the top ranking sites belong to. Note down the category (or categories) which contain sites which are very similar to yours. In many cases, there will only be one category which contains sites similar to yours. In that case, this is the category to which you should submit your site. If you find that there is more than one category which contains sites similar to yours, and if you are convinced that all these categories are applicable for your site, select the two categories which contain the least number of sites. Your primary category will be the one with the least number of sites. The secondary category will obviously be the other category.

Now, create a text file in which you can record the details of your submission. Note down the date when you are submitting, the URL of your web site, the Title and the Description of your site as well as the URLs of the category (or the 2 categories) which are applicable for your site. Now go to the URL of the Primary category for your site, click on the Suggest a Site link at the bottom of the page and follow the instructions there. (If that category does not have a Suggest a Site link, then it means that it is a very general category to which new sites cannot be added.)

Instead of submitting your site right away, I recommend that you first use a dummy, non-existent site to know the questions that Yahoo! is going to ask you. Note down the answers to these questions in the text file so that you can paste them later when you are actually submitting your site. Of course, don't actually submit the dummy site by clicking on the final submission button - just use it to get an idea of the questions that Yahoo! will ask you.

Of particular importance are two questions. Yahoo! asks you whether there is any other category in which your site should be listed apart from the category to which you are submitting. If you have been able to locate more than one category which is applicable for your site, mention the URL of the secondary category in this field.

Yahoo! also asks you for some comments regarding your submission. If you have a unique product or service that not many other web sites listed in Yahoo! are offering, mention this here. Or, if you provide lots of articles and tips related to your business, mention this here. You can also use this to point Yahoo! to the testimonials that you have received. The comments should be made using less than 200 characters.

Also note that Yahoo! asks for your physical address, phone number, fax number, email address etc. These should be the same as the particulars listed in your site.

Once you have noted down the answers to all the questions that Yahoo! is going to ask you, double check everything present in the text file to ensure that there are no mistakes and that all the URLs (i.e. the URLs of the categories as well as the URL of your site) are working correctly. It is very difficult to change your site's listing in Yahoo! once you get listed, and hence, you need to ensure that you do everything correctly the first time. Then, offer a prayer to Goddess Yahoo! :-), go to the URL of the primary category for your site, click on the Suggest a Site link listed at the bottom and submit your site. Make sure that you follow all the instructions that are mentioned here to the absolute letter.

Now, remember that if yours is a commercial site and is not regionally specific, it must be under the Business and Economy > Shopping and Services or Business and Economy > Business to Business categories of the main Yahoo! directory.

Yahoo! no longer offers a free submission option for sites under these two categories - you have no choice but to pay them $299 for the Business Express submission option. For more information on this, go to their How to Suggest a Business Express Site page. Read the instructions and terms and conditions of the Business Express submission in order to ensure that your site is eligible.

Paying them $299 does not guarantee you a listing and your site is not given any preference in its rankings. Using the Business Express option merely guarantees that your site will be reviewed within 7 days and that, in case it is not accepted, you will be told why your site was not accepted. You shall also have a chance of appealing a rejection within 30 days. Of course, all the instructions regarding choosing a proper description and choosing a correct category are still applicable.

Once you have finished submitting, don't delete the text file - you will need it later when you want to again submit to Yahoo! (in case you are not accepted the first time).

What to do if your site is not accepted

A common reason for Yahoo! rejecting a site when it has used the Business Express submission option is lack of original content. If you get a message from Yahoo! that your site was rejected because of a lack of unique content, then your site may either be full of affiliate links and nothing else, or it may be a one page direct response sales site. In the former case, as I mentioned, your site cannot hope to get listed. In the latter case, you need to divide up your sales message into multiple pages.

Consider adding a few articles and tips related to your site. Then, send a polite reply to Yahoo! thanking them for their constructive feedback. Point out the fact that after receiving the feedback, you have added the articles and tips. Be specific here - tell them the exact URLs which contains these articles. Then request them to review your site again and add it, if they find it appropriate.

Another reason that they may say that your site lacks original content is that you already have another site listed in Yahoo! and are trying to get a new site listed. If the two sites have essentially the same content, then you will definitely be rejected. However, even if the two sites have substantially different content, you may still be rejected. In this case, there is no point in appealing the rejection - Yahoo! will definitely reject your site again when you appeal.

Instead, what you can try doing is to remove all links from the new site to the old site (and vice-versa) and ensuring that the design of the new site is also completely different from the old site and that no part of the content of the old site is present in the new site (and vice-versa). Then, wait 2-3 months, and again submit the new site to Yahoo! using its Business Express submission.

Another common reason for the rejection of sites is that in Yahoo!'s opinion, the site is still under construction. If you are convinced that your site does not contain missing graphics, links leading to empty or non-existent pages, "Under construction" symbols etc., then a common reason for Yahoo! saying that the site is under construction is that the site cannot be properly viewed under Netscape.
 
Yahoo! editors generally use Netscape and hence, it is vitally important that your site be accessible using Netscape. You need to ensure that your site can be viewed properly in Netscape v3.0 and above. In order to see how your site looks under different browsers, go to http://www.anybrowser.com/siteviewer.html

Once you have ensured that your site is accessible under Netscape, send a polite reply to their rejection note thanking them for their constructive feedback and then stating that the site no longer contains any elements under construction. Then request them to review your site again and add it, if they find it appropriate.

How to change your site's listing in Yahoo!

If getting your site listed in Yahoo! is tough, changing your site's listing is a Herculean task. Firstly, note that Yahoo! does not care about the ranking of your site. Hence, if you are trying to submit some minor changes to the description with a view of getting a higher ranking, you are unlikely to be successful. You should only think about trying to change your listing if

a) the URL of your site has changed, or
b) the official name of your site has changed (and hence the Title of your listing should change), or
c) Yahoo! has accidentally listed your site without a Description, or
d) the Description contains a typo, or
e) Yahoo! has placed you in a totally inappropriate category, or
f) the nature of your site has changed and the current description does not reflect the new nature of your site.

The URL for changing your site's listing is http://add.yahoo.com/fast/change Read the instructions thoroughly before submitting your change request. In the last text box, provide solid reasons as to why your site's listing should be changed.

If you can't get your site's listing changed within 1 month from the time that you have submitted your request, try submitting your request again. If you still can't get your listing changed within 1 month from the second request, follow the procedures outlined in the section on what to do if your site can't get into Yahoo! using the free submission. However, don't submit a change request using the Business Express submission - Yahoo! specifically forbids that.

Wrapping things up:

Once you have got your site into Yahoo! (they will send you an email if you are accepted), your site will be added to Yahoo!'s What's New section. Furthermore, your site will be marked as new and will be placed at the top of the category (or categories) for 1 week from the time that your site is first listed. This placement at the top of the category can bring in quite a few visitors to your site every day. After the first week, the position of your site in the categories will be according to the alphabetical ranking of your Title. This will generally be accompanied by a decrease in the number of visitors to your site from Yahoo!.

Initially, because Yahoo! lacks any click popularity data on your site, it will be placed at the bottom of the results when someone searches for the keywords applicable for your site. However, with time, your site should start moving up leading to an increase in traffic to your site.

Improving the link popularity of your web site

Link popularity, i.e. the number of sites which are linking to your site, is an  important factor as far as search engine placement is concerned. Other things remaining the same, more the number of links to your site, higher will be its ranking.

What is important is not only the number of links to your site, but also the types of sites which are linking to you. A link from a site which is related to yours is more valuable than a link from an unrelated site.

In this article, I explore different methods by which you can improve the link popularity of your site. I start with the methods that you shouldn't bother using, then go on to the moderately effective methods, and then end with the most effective methods you can use to boost the link popularity of your site.


1) Submitting your site to Free For All (FFA) pages

A common misconception among many Internet marketers is that while FFA pages may not directly bring in traffic to your site, it will help to improve the link popularity of your site, and hence, will indirectly bring in traffic through the search engines.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Most FFA pages contain only a certain number of links at a time. This means that when you submit your site to a FFA page, your site will be placed at the top of the page. However, as more and more people submit their sites to the FFA page, your site will be pushed down, and finally, when it reaches the bottom of the page, it will be removed.

Hence, in order to ensure that the search engines see your site if and when they come to spider the FFA page, you will need to ensure that you submit your site to these FFA pages on a regular basis - at least once a week.

Even if you used an automatic submission program to do it, can you imagine a worse way to spend your time and/or money? Furthermore, many search engines recognize these pages which only contains links to other sites as FFA pages and may completely ignore them. And while I haven't yet seen any evidence that submitting to the FFA pages will actually penalize your site, there is every possibility that this might happen in the future.

Hence, when it comes to FFA pages, my advice is simple: don't even think about them.

2) Joining Reciprocal Link Services

Some people have recommended that in order to increase the link popularity of your site, you can join some reciprocal link services. The basic idea behind these services is that you add some pages to your site which contain links to other sites which are members of that service, and in exchange, these members will also add pages to their sites which will contain a link to your site. Theoretically, more the members of that service, more your link popularity.

However, I have plenty of reservations about using this method to boost the link popularity of your site:

1. Most of these services require that you add a visible graphical or text link from your home page to the pages containing the links. If they require a graphical link, it can completely destroy the general look and feel of your site. Even if they require a text link, how would you feel if a visitor to your site clicked on such a link and found one of your competitors (who is also a member of this service) right at the top of a page?
   
   Also, while most of these services disallow adult oriented sites, I have seen situations in which some adult sites have been able to become members. How would you feel if an adult site found its way to the top of one of these pages?
   
   
2. Most of these services give the same pages containing the links to each of its members, i.e. the pages that you are required to upload to your site are exactly the same as the pages which all the other members of that service are required to upload to their servers. Even the file names of the pages tend to be the same for all the members. Most search engines are now able to detect such duplicate pages in different domains and may either ignore the pages or may even penalize all these domains for spamming.
   
   
3. Instead of linking only related sites with each other, most of these services link all the members with each other. This means that lots of unrelated sites will be linking to your site. As I mentioned before, links from unrelated sites are simply not as valuable as links from related sites.

Hence, I don't recommend that you join any reciprocal link programs.

3) Exchanging links with other webmasters

Another way of improving the link popularity of your site is to exchange links with other webmasters who have sites which are related to yours, but are not direct competitors. Here's how you can do it:

First, open a database program like Microsoft Access and create a new table containing fields like FirstName, LastName, Email Address, URL etc. Then, make a list of the sites belonging to your competitors. Then, go to Google, and type in the following in the search box:

link:somesite.com -url:somesite.com

where somesite.com is the domain name of one of your competitors. This will give you a list of all the sites which are linking to that competitor. Then, find out in what context a particular site has linked to your competitor. If this site is an affiliate of your competitor, then your chance of getting a link from this site is limited, unless you offer an even better affiliate program.

However, if you find that this site has a Links page which contains links to other sites, one of which is a link to your competitor, then it is an excellent prospect for exchanging links. Find out the name and email address of the webmaster of the site and add them to your database. In this way, go through all the sites which are linking to your competitors, locate those sites which you think may want to exchange links with you, and build up your database.

Once you have done that, create a Links page in your site, and add the URLs of these sites to the Links page. Then, send an email to these webmasters, introduce yourself and your site, congratulate them on building an excellent web site, tell them that you have already added a link to their sites from yours, and then ask them whether they would be kind enough to add a link to your site. In your email, emphasize the fact that exchanging links in this way will be mutually beneficial for both of you because it will help both of you drive traffic to your sites.

Wait for a month or so to see the response. Some webmasters will agree to link to you. Others will simply not respond. After a month, remove the links to those sites who are not interested in exchanging links and using the methods outlined above, try to locate more sites with which to exchange links.

When you send the email to the webmasters, make sure that you personalize each email. Don't begin every email with "Hello Webmaster", begin with "Hello Mike". If you want, you can use email merge programs to automatically personalize each email. You can check out some email merge programs by going to http://download.cnet.com and searching for "email merge" (without the quotes).

The main problem with this method of improving the link popularity of your site is that it takes a lot of time. You may find that the number of links you manage to get just does not justify the time that you spend over it.

Another thing that you can do is to mention in your Links page that you are willing to exchange links with other web sites. This allows other webmasters who come to your web site to propose a link exchange.


4) Starting an Awards Program

A moderately effective method of improving the link popularity of your site is to start an awards program. You can have web sites which are related to yours apply for an award from your site. The sites which win the award get the chance to display the logo for your award. This logo is linked to your site, preferably to a page which contains more information on the award.

If you publish a newsletter, consider declaring the winners in your newsletter. You can also perform a review of the winners' sites in your newsletter. This adds useful content to your newsletter and also gives more webmasters the incentive to apply for your award, since you may review their sites in your newsletter. This also gives them the incentive to subscribe to your newsletter to see if they win the award.

Make sure that you give awards to only those sites which deserve to win. If you give your award to sites which don't deserve it, your award will have little credibility, which will, in turn, hurt the credibility of your company. Furthermore, make sure that the logo you design for the award looks professional. If it doesn't, not many webmasters will want to display it in their sites.

5) Giving testimonials

This may sound a bit unusual, but giving testimonials for products or services which you find useful can be another moderately effective way of improving the link popularity of your site. If you really like a product, simply write to the company and tell them why you liked the product so much and how it has helped you.

Chances are, the company will write back to you to thank you for your comments and will ask you for permission to display your comments in their web site. Tell the company that you have no problems if they publish your comments, but request them to add a link to your site along with the testimonial. There is every possibility that the company will agree since publishing the URL of your web site gives more credibility to the testimonial.

Of course, please don't go about giving testimonials to every company you can locate just because it will improve your link popularity :-)

6) Posting to Message Boards and Discussion Lists

Another moderately effective method of increasing the link popularity of your site is to post to online message boards. At the end of every message that you post, you can sign off by mentioning your name and the URL of your web site. If the message board allows it, you can even include a short promotional blurb about your site at the end of your posts. However, make sure that the individual messages that are posted to that message board are archived in static HTML pages ( i.e. the URLs for the individual messages should not contain a "?"). Otherwise, the search engines will consider these pages to be dynamic pages and may not spider these pages and hence, will not be able to find your link.

Email based discussion lists which are archived on the web in static HTML pages can also be used to boost the link popularity of your site in a similar manner. In this case, the signature file that you use with your email program should contain the URL for your web site.

7) Setting up new web sites

Yet another moderately effective method of improving the link popularity of your site is to set up new web sites and have these new sites link to your main site. If you are Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon.com), you can afford to purchase hundreds of new domains and have these new domains link to your main site. If you are not Jeff Bezos, you can simply set up new sites with some of the free web hosts. (Of course, your primary web site should always be hosted in a separate domain of its own). Simply add a few pages of unique content to each of your new sites, and have each of the pages in your new sites link to your main site.

If you use this technique, make sure that you do not duplicate content across multiple sites. If you do, the search engines might penalize your sites for spamming. You need to ensure that all the pages that you create for these new sites contain unique content.

The disadvantage of this method is that some search engines refuse to spider sites which are present in the free web hosts. Still, there are many search engines which will spider these sites, and hence, the link popularity of your main site will improve in these search engines.

8) Starting a Link Contest

A good method of improving the link popularity of your site is to give away prizes to other webmasters if they link to you. The prizes that you give out should ideally be something which other webmasters will find valuable enough to want to link to you, but which do not cost you too much. For instance, if you publish a newsletter, and have unsold ad inventory, you can give away some free advertisements in your newsletter to the winners. If you sell a software (or an ebook), you can give away a free copy of your software or ebook to the winners, since it doesn't cost you anything to produce an additional copy of digital goods like software and ebooks.

Link contests work best if you run the contest on a continuous basis and if you declare new winners frequently. If you run the contest for a few months, and then stop it, the webmasters who had linked to you will all remove their links. However, if you run it on a continuous basis, and declare new winners every month or so, the webmasters will have the incentive to keep their links to your site.

Also, make sure that you require all participants to have a link to your site either in their home page, or in an internal page of their site which is linked to their home page. Also ensure that the page which contains the link is no more than two levels deep from their home page ( i.e. it should not take more than two clicks to go from the home page to the page containing the link). If they don't do this, the search engine spiders may not index the page which contains the link to your site, and hence, may not find your link.

9) Writing articles and allowing them to be re-published

This is by far one of the best ways of improving the link popularity of your site, and one of my favorites. Whenever I write an article on search engine placement, I first publish it in my newsletter and then I publish the article in my site as a separate web page. I also submit it to the following article submission sites:

http://www.ezinearticles.com/add_url.html
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.marketing-seek.com/articles/submit.shtml
http://certificate.net/wwio/ideas.shtml
http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm

Many webmasters and ezine publishers frequent these article directories in search of articles. Submitting my articles to these directories gives them the opportunity of re-publishing my articles. While I have had some success with each of the above directories, by far the best among them is the ezinearticles.com directory.

Now, at the end of each article, I mention that people are free to re-publish the article as long as they include my resource box (i.e. my bio) at the end of the article. I always include the URL of my site in the resource box. This means that whenever someone publishes one of my articles in his/her web site, I have another site linking to my site. Also, many ezine publishers archive their ezines in their web sites. If they have re-published my article in a particular issue, I again get a link.

Writing articles is also an excellent viral marketing tool. As some webmasters and ezine publishers publish my articles, other webmasters and ezine publishers will read my article. Some of them, in turn, will publish my article, which will again be read by other webmasters and ezine publishers, some of whom will publish it... and so on.

Also, since only web sites related to mine would be interested in publishing my articles, all these links tend to come from related sites, which, as I mentioned earlier, are more valuable than links from unrelated sites.

Writing articles, of course, has another very important benefit - if you write good articles, it makes you known as an expert in your field. This helps to improve your credibility, which makes people more comfortable about buying your products or services.

Some notes about writing articles:

• I have learnt through experience that some webmasters will publish other people's articles and will display the complete resource box but will not link to the URL mentioned in the resource box. In order to prevent this, you need to explicitly state that the article can be published only if the URL mentioned in the resource box is linked to your site.
  
• Your resource box should not be too long - it should be no more than 6 lines long, formatted at 65 characters per line. Otherwise, other webmasters and ezine publishers will hesitate to publish your article.
  

10) Starting your own affiliate program

This is another excellent way by which you can improve the link popularity of your site. When you have your own affiliate program, you give other webmasters the incentive to link to you. In this case too, since most of these web sites will be related to the industry in which you are operating, these links will be more valuable than links from unrelated sites.

When you start your affiliate program, you need to decide whether you want to run the program yourself, or whether you want to outsource it from a third party. While outsourcing your affiliate program has a number of benefits, doing so will not help you improve the link popularity of your site, because affiliates are going to link to the third party's site. In order to improve the link popularity of your site, you need to ensure that the affiliate links are pointing to your domain.

The affiliate program software that I highly recommend and have used for the affiliate program of our search engine positioning services is Kowabunga Technologies' My Affiliate Program.Although this software is hosted in a domain owned by Kowabunga Technologies, they give you the option of having the affiliate links pointing to your own domain.

11) Submitting to the directories

This is by far the most important step as far as improving the link popularity of your site is concerned. As I mentioned before, what is important is not only the number of links to your site, but also the quality of the links to your site. No links are as important as links from some of the major directories like Yahoo!, the Open Directory etc. Hence, it is vitally important that you get your site registered by these directories.

Also, you should submit your site to as many of the smaller directories as possible. You can get a list of such directories at Yahoo!

How to choose the right domain name

The importance of having your own domain name cannot be over-emphasized. If you are running an online business, and don't yet have a domain name, you are probably losing thousands of dollars worth of business because of this. Why? Simply because, unless you have a domain name, your customers will simply not feel comfortable buying from you.

In order to sell on the web, you need to build up your credibility. Having your own domain name is the first step in that process.

So, now that you are convinced that you need your own domain, how should you name your domain?

Here are a few do's and dont's regarding this. While the availability of domains which follow all of these rules may have become limited, try to follow as many of these rules as possible.

1. Consider naming your company and registering a domain name starting with the digit 1. Better still, choose a name starting with "1st". Why? When people create directories of web sites, they have to decide how they are going to classify those web sites. One way to classify web sites is to list them on the basis of how "good" they are. Another way is to simply list them in chronological order (and sometimes in reverse chronological order) based on the dates the sites were submitted.
   
   The other, and far more popular classification system is alphabetic. Now, the first character in the ASCII chart which can be used as the first character in a domain name is the digit 0. The next character is the digit 1.
   
   Normally, you wouldn't want to start a domain name with the digit 0 since it might send all the wrong signals to your customers. For instance, if we had named our domain 0SearchRanking.com, it would be telling our customers that we cannot get them any search engine rankings at all! Hence, unless you really have a good reason for doing so, you should avoid using domain names starting with the digit 0.
   
   Instead name your domains starting with the digit 1. More specifically, name your domains starting with "1st". This will ensure that you get a high alphabetical placement in those directories which classify sites alphabetically. Furthermore, depending on the industry in which your company operates, it may also send the right message across to your customers - it indicates that you are the first company to consider in your industry.
   
   And guess what - the mother of all directories - Yahoo! - lists web sites alphabetically based on the Title that had been submitted. Yahoo! wants the Title to be the official name of the site. This implies that sites which start with the digit 1 will be placed at or near the top of a category. Assuming that you can get your site listed in Yahoo!, just look at what a top ranking in one of the categories in Yahoo!'s directory can do for the popularity of your site!
   
   Furthermore, a small caveat here. If you are going to name a domain starting with "1st", also register the domain which starts with "ist". Then, have the domain containing the vowel "i" redirect visitors to the domain containing the digit 1. This is because people will often type in 'ist' when they mean '1st' and vice-versa. Also, for every email alias that you create for the domain containing "1st " (like sales@1stcompany.com), you should create the corresponding email alias for the domain containing "ist" (like sales@istcompany.com).
   
   Also, this strategy of registering domains starting with '1st' is mainly applicable if yours is a somewhat new company. If you own a well established concern with a well known domain, you simply cannot change your company name and your domain in a hurry because you will confuse your existing customers.
   
2. Don't want to start your domain name with "1st"? Consider starting it with "A", "B" or "C". Although domains starting with A, B or C will be listed after those starting with the 10 digits, you can still get a pretty high alphabetical placement with A, B or C.
   
3. Try to register a domain which contains a popular keyword applicable for your industry. This will help your customers remember your domain name better. Furthermore, for searches conducted in Yahoo!, a higher ranking will be given to those web sites which contain the keywords in the title.
   
   And according to Yahoo!'s instructions, the Title should always be the official name of the site. Thus, if the domain name contains a keyword, you will be able to include the keyword in the Title which will improve your ranking in Yahoo!. As a minor side-benefit, this can also help to increase the ranking of your web site in some search engines. Hence, in an ideal case, you should register a domain of the form 1st[keyword].com (without the brackets of course).
   
4. Don't register a domain containing the digit 0 in it, unless it is going to be part of a recognizable word (like 1000 or 2000). This is because the digit 0 is often confused with the vowel O. If you feel that you must register a domain with the digit 0, make sure that you also register the corresponding domain containing the vowel O.
5. Try to avoid using domains that contain '2' for "To', '4' for 'For', 'u' for 'You' and so on even if they seem to make your domain sound 'cool'. Your customers will easily get confused if you do so. However, if you must register such a domain, register the expanded form of the domain as well, i.e. if you are registering greatthings2do.com, also register greatthingstodo.com.
6. Should you or should you not use hyphens in your domain? Well, the jury is out on the question. While some Internet marketers will tell you that domains containing hyphens are difficult to remember, spell and pronounce, others will state that domains containing hyphens are, in fact, easy to remember, spell and pronounce. Go figure.
   
   Personally, I would feel that whether or not hyphens are helpful has to be determined on a case by case basis. However, if you register a domain containing hyphens, make sure that you also register the corresponding domain without the hyphens. Once you do that, you can simply redirect visitors from the domain without the hyphens to the domain with the hyphens.
7. Don't make your primary domain too long. Even though 67 character domains are a reality, exactly how many of your users will want to type a domain name like thisisanexampleofaverylargedomainname.com?
8. Always use ".com". If yours is a serious business site, avoid using domains ending in "nu" or "to". Your business will have little credibility if you do so. You can consider registering a ".net" domain, but since most people are familiar with ".com", it is better to stick to convention.

   While it is unlikely that you will be able to register a domain which satisfies all the rules that I outlined above, try to follow as many of the above rules as you can.

Keyword rich pages

How to create keyword rich pages

 

Once you have established the keywords for which you should optimize your site for the search engines, it is time to figure out how you can get a high ranking in the search engines for those keywords.

The solution is to create Keyword Rich Pages (KRPs) - pages which provide good content and in which a particular keyword is repeated a number of times so that the page gets a top ranking for that keyword.

This article is focused on how you should create these KRPs. I am assuming you have a working knowledge of the different HTML tags like the Title tag, the Meta Description tag, the Meta Keywords tag, the Heading tags, the Alt Tag etc. If you don't, just go to http://www.utoronto.ca/webdocs/HTMLdocs/NewHTML/htmlindex.html for a good introduction to such HTML tags.

Now, let us assume that your company sells packaged tours to Australia, and that you are targeting the keyword "travel to australia". Here's how you create the KRPs:


The Title Tag:

The first and most important tag to consider is the Title tag. You should always begin the Title tag with the keyword that you are targeting. Also remember that the search engines are going to display the Title tag while they are displaying the results of a search. Hence, you need to make the Title tag attractive to humans as well.

Here is one Title tag that I may have used: "Travel to Australia and discover its scenic beauty". Have a look at the Title tag - it uses the keyword right at the beginning and also tells people how beautiful a place Australia is.

Of course, all Titles need not be like the one I used. The Title that you use depends on the subject matter of your site. However, you should follow all the general rules that I have outlined here.

Meta Description Tag:

The Meta Description tag is used by many search engines to provide a short description of the page that is listed in the search results. Hence, like the Title tag, it is important that the Meta Description tag be keyword rich as well as attractive to humans.

The rules for the Meta Description are more or less the same as those for the Title tag. However, the content of this tag will generally be longer than that of the Title. Here's what I may have used in the Meta Description tag:

"Travel to Australia - We take care of all the details of your trip so that you can travel with complete peace of mind."

Note how this description repeats the keyword and also the benefit that it stresses - it says that the customer will be able to travel without having to worry about the intricate details of the trip - you will take care of them.

Meta Keywords Tag:

The Meta Keywords tag has become less and less important as far as search engine optimization is concerned. In fact, you can get top rankings without having anything in the Meta Keywords tag at all. However, just to be on the safe side, you would want to include some keywords in the Meta Keywords tag. You should also include some of the common upper/lower case variations of the keyword.

The rules for the Meta Keywords tag are pretty simple - don't repeat any keyword in the Meta Keywords tag more than three times and don't repeat any keyword one after the other. Here's what I may have used in the Meta Keywords tag:

"Travel to Australia, tourism, travel to Australia, Down Under, TRAVEL TO AUSTRALIA"

Note how I have introduced "tourism" and "Down Under" just to separate the different instances of the keyword.

Body of the page:

Now we come to the actual body of the page. Begin by getting hold of a nice (but not too large) picture which is applicable for the page that you are creating. In the present case, I might include a picture of the lotus shaped Sydney Opera House. Place this picture at the top of the page.

In the Alt tag for the picture, just mention your target keyword once, i.e. the Alt tag would be "Travel to Australia". You can include other words in the Alt tag, but it should start with the keyword you are targeting.

Once you've put up the picture, it is time to create a Heading for your page. Use the H1 tag to do so. Again, in the H1 tag, mention your target keyword once, i.e. like the Alt tag for the picture, the H1 tag could be "Travel to Australia". Again, like the Alt tag, you can include other words in the heading, but the heading should start with the keyword you are targeting.

Now it's time to create the actual text of the page. The way you create the text of your page would depend largely on what you want the visitor to do after reading this page. In some cases, you may simply want the visitor to go to the home page or another specific page in your site after reading this page. In this case, you should write the text in such a way that the visitor is attracted to the page that you are targeting.

You would also want to provide links to the home page or the specific page that you are targeting at strategic places in the KRP. Or, you may want the visitor to click on the link to an affiliate program that you are a member of. In this case, you would stress the benefits that the visitor gets by purchasing the product or service that the affiliate program is selling.

You would also want to provide links to the affiliate program at strategic places in the page and/or at the end of the page. Whatever it is that you want your page to do, there are some general rules to follow:

1) The first thing to remember is that some search engines don't recognize the Meta Description tag. These search engines will often simply take the first few lines of text in the body of your page and display that as the description. Hence, you must ensure that the first few lines of text in your page are attractive to human beings.

2) Ensure that as many sentences as possible in the page contain your target keyword once. The keyword shouldn't just be placed on an ad hoc basis - the way the keyword is placed in every sentence should actually make grammatical sense and the repetition should be such that your human visitors do not feel that you have deliberately repeated a particular phrase throughout the page.

This is not only important from the point of view of ensuring that your readers don't get a bad impression of your site, but also from the point of view of search engine optimization - the search engines may penalize your page for spamming if they find that you have randomly repeated the keyword throughout the page. Also, while repeating the keyword in the page, try to repeat the keyword once near the top of the page and once near the bottom.

3) Make sure that your paragraphs are not too long - each paragraph should be no more than 3 or 4 sentences long. This is because people on the web simply don't have the time or the inclination to read long paragraphs.

4) Try to ensure that the page contains links to other pages with the keyword being present in the text under the link. This can often lead to a higher ranking for your page.

5) If possible, link to other pages which have the keyword in the file names. This can again lead to a higher ranking for your page.

6) There is no hard and fast rule regarding the total number of words that should be present in the KRPs. As a rule of thumb, try to ensure that there are between 500-600 words. However, if the number of words falls a bit short of or exceeds this limit, don't worry too much.

Once you have created the page, ensure that the name of the file in which it is saved contains the keyword and that the individual words of the keyword are separated by hyphens. In this case, the name of the file would be travel-to-australia.html. This will get you a higher ranking in the few search engines which give a lot of emphasis on the keyword being present in the file name.

Now that you have created the KRP, you cannot simply upload it to your site and submit it to the search engines. This is because the search engines take a rather dim view of pages which only contain outgoing links to other pages but do not contain any incoming links from other pages. The search engines may penalize sites which have such pages.

What you should do is to provide a link to these KRPs from the home page of your site. Now, you don't want people who are seeing the home page to actually follow these links to the KRPs - you only want the search engines to follow these links. However, you can't create links with hidden text ( i.e. text with the same color as the background color) in your page since the search engines will almost certainly penalize or even ban you for doing this.

What you should do is to create a small transparent gif image. Then, name this image with the same file name as the name of the KRP you have created. Hence, in this case, you should name the image travel-to-australia.gif . Then, add this image to the end of the home page and have it link to the KRP. Also, you should explicitly set the border of the image to 0 (add border = "0" to the img tag of the image). Otherwise, when you get the image to link to the KRP, a border may be visible.

That's it! When you want to target another keyword, create another KRP for it, make a copy of the image that you created for the first keyword, rename it to the file name of the new KRP, add the image to the home page and then link it to the new KRP.

Repeat this process for every keyword that you are targeting. Once you have created all the KRPs and once you have got the home page to link to each of them, upload all the KRPs and the gif images to your site, and submit your home page and each of the KRPs to the search engines. When you are submitting these pages, to be on the safe side, make sure that you submit no more than 1 page per day to any search engine - otherwise, you run the risk of some search engines ignoring some of the pages you have submitted.

Follow all the rules that I have outlined in this article and you can soon see your search engine blues disappear for ever!

10 SEO mistakes

Top 10 search engine positioning mistakes

 

 

When it comes to search engine optimization, there are certain common mistakes that I see people making over and over again. Here's a list of the 10 most common mistakes. By avoiding these mistakes, you can avoid a lot of anguish and frustration in the long run.

1. Optimizing your site for the wrong keywords
   
   The first step in any search engine optimization campaign is to choose the keywords for which you should optimize your site. If you initially choose the wrong keywords, all the time and effort that you devote in trying to get your site a high ranking will go down the drain. If you choose keywords which no one search for, or if you choose keywords which won't bring in targeted traffic to your site, what good will the top rankings do?
   
   
2. Putting too many keywords in the Meta Keywords tag
   
   I often see sites which have hundreds of keywords listed in the Meta Keywords tag, in the hope that by listing the keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, they will be able to get a high ranking for those keywords.
   
   Nothing could be further from the truth. Contrary to popular opinion, the Meta Keywords tag has almost completely lost its importance as far as search engine positioning is concerned. Hence, just by listing keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, you will never be able to get a high ranking. To get a high ranking for those keywords, you need to put the keywords in the actual body content of your site.
   
   
3. Repeating the same keyword too many times
   
   Another common mistake that people make is to endlessly repeat their target keywords in the body of their pages and in their Meta Keywords tags.
   
   Because so many people have used this tactic in the past (and continue to use it), the search engines keep a sharp lookout for this, and may penalize a site which repeats keywords in this fashion.
   
   Sure, you do need to repeat the keywords a number of times. But, the way you place the keywords in your pages needs to make grammatical sense. Simply repeating the keywords endlessly no longer works. Furthermore, a particular keyword should ideally not be present more than thrice in your Meta Keywords tag.
   
   
4.  Creating lots of similar doorway pages
   
   Another myth prevalent among people is that since the algorithm of each search engine is different, they need to create different pages for different search engines. While this is great in theory, it is counter-productive in practice.
   
   If you use this tactic, you will soon end up with hundreds of pages, which can quickly become an administrative nightmare. Also, just imagine the amount of time you will need to spend constantly updating the pages in response to the changes that the search engines make to their algorithms.
   
   Furthermore, although the pages are meant for different engines, they will actually end up being pretty similar to each other. The search engines are often able to detect when a site has created such similar pages, and may penalize or even ban this site from their index. Hence, instead of creating different pages for different search engines, create one page which is optimized for one keyword for all the search engines.
   
   
5. Using Hidden Text
   
   Hidden text is text with the same color as the background color of your page. For example, if the background color of your page is white and you have added some white text to that page, that is considered as hidden text.
   
   Many webmasters, in order to get high rankings in the search engines, try to make their pages as keyword rich as possible. However, there is a limit to the number of keywords you can repeat in a page without making it sound odd to your human visitors. Thus, in order to ensure that the human visitors to a page don't perceive the text to be odd, but that the page is still keyword rich, many webmasters add text (containing the keywords) with the same color as the background color. This ensures that while the search engines can see the keywords, the human visitors cannot.
   
   The search engines have long since caught up with this technique, and ignore or penalize the pages which contain such text. They may also penalize the entire site if even one of the pages in that site contain such hidden text.
   
   However, the problem with this is that the search engines may often end up penalizing sites which did not intend to use hidden text. For instance, suppose you have a page with a white background and a table in that page with a black background. Further suppose that you have added some white text in that table. This text will, in fact, be visible to your human visitors, i.e. this shouldn't be called hidden text. However, the search engines can interpret this to be hidden text because they may often ignore the fact that the background of the table is black. Hence, in order to ensure that your site is not penalized because of this, you should go through all the pages in your site and see whether you have inadvertently made any such mistake.
   
   
6. Creating Pages Containing Only Graphics
   
   The search engines only understand text - they don't understand graphics. Hence, if your site contains lots of graphics but little text, it is unlikely to get a high ranking in the search engines. For improving your rankings, you need to replace the graphics by keyword rich text for the search engine spiders to feed on.
   
   
7. Not using the NOFRAMES tag in case your site uses frames
   
   Many search engines don't understand frames. For sites which have used frames, these search engines only consider what is present in the NOFRAMES tag. Yet, many webmasters make the mistake of adding something like this to the NOFRAMES tag: "This site uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them".
   
   For the search engines which don't understand frames, this is all the text that they ever get to see in this site, which means that the chances of this site getting a good ranking in these search engines are non-existent. Hence, if your site uses frames, you need to add a lot of keyword rich text to the NOFRAMES tag.
   
   
8. Using Page Cloaking
   
   Page cloaking is a technique used to deliver different web pages under different circumstances. People generally use page cloaking for two reasons:
   
   i) in order to hide the source code of their search engine optimized pages from their competitors, and
   ii) in order to prevent human visitors from having to see a page which looks good to the search engines but does not necessarily look good to humans.
    
   The problem with this is that when a site uses cloaking, it prevents the search engines from being able to spider the same page that their users are going to see. And if the search engines can't do this, they can no longer be confident of providing relevant results to their users. Thus, if a search engine discovers that a site has used cloaking, it will probably ban the site forever from their index.
   
   Hence, my advice is that you should not even think about using cloaking in your site.
   
   
9. Using Automatic Submission Tools
   
   In order to save time, many people use an automatic submission software or service to submit their sites to the major search engines. It is true that submitting your site manually to the search engines takes a lot of time and that an automatic submission tool can help you save a lot of time.
   
   However, the search engines don't like automatic submission tools and may ignore your pages if you use them. In my opinion, the major search engines are simply too important for you not to spend the time to submit your site manually to them.
   
   
10. Submitting too many pages per day
    
    People often make the mistake of submitting too many pages per day to the search engines. This often results in the search engines simply ignoring many of the pages which have been submitted from that site. Ideally, you should submit no more than 1 page per day to the search engines. While many search engines accept more than 1 page per day from a particular domain, there are some which only accept 1 page per day. Hence, by limiting yourself to a maximum of one page per day, you ensure that you stay within the limits of all the search engines.
    
    
11.  Devoting too much time to search engine positioning
    
    Yes - I lied. There's another common mistake that people make when it comes to search engine optimization - they spend too much time over it.
    
    Sure, search engine placement is the most cost effective way of driving traffic to your site and you do need to spend some time every day learning how the search engines work and in optimizing your site for the search engines.
    
    However, you must remember that search engine optimization is a means to an end for you - it's not the end in itself. The end is to increase the sales of your products and services. Hence, apart from trying to improve your site's position in the search engines, you also need to spend time on all the other factors which determine the success or the failure of your web site - the quality of the products and services that you are selling, the quality of your customer service, and so on.
    
    You may have excellent rankings in the search engines, but if the quality of your products and services are poor, or if your customer service leaves a lot to be desired, those high rankings aren't going to do much good.

Pay Per Click Competition Analysis

The Crowded Pay Per Click Market - A New Approach

 

I have been involved directly with pay per click advertising for a little over three years now, developing programs like Keywords Analyzer and AdWords Dominator so that users could take full advantage of keyword research and other techniques that would help them succeed in positioning their businesses at the top of the search engines.

Over the years though, it has been quite astounding how fast pay per click advertising has developed. Three years ago, when I first wrote the Keyword Master's Course, I considered that 15 AdWords ads (or two pages of results) was bordering on overtraded and indicated a market that was too competitive.

But fast-forward just a few years and we commonly see keywords with 40 or 50 ads and some even more than that. Anyone out there reading this article who advertises on AdWords will know what I mean.

So, clearly, the success of pay per click advertising has brought its own problems.

Three years ago, it was almost as simple as paying more money and getting a good position - but not any more. Now you have serious competition in the same spaces and so some new techniques are required.

Now - keyword research will always be the critical first step to successful pay per click marketing, but it's rapidly getting to the point where it is not enough. The new threat to your success comes from the other competitors who are trying to outgun you.

A new approach: Market Mapping

So a new approach is required which involves looking at what your competitors are up to and finding ways to beat them.

Those of you who have studied marketing will know what market mapping is.

Essentially, there is no magic in it; it is simply a method of graphically depicting your market and who the competitors in that market are.

Now, in the context of pay per click advertisers, the way to do it is to create market mapping groups around tightly targeted keyword lists. You then look at the advertisers who keep appearing in that group and look a little more closely at their ads and positioning.

Here's an example of a market map for AdWords.

What you are looking at here are all the AdWords advertisers for a keyword list ranked as to how much traffic they are each getting across that market group.

The power of an approach like this is that you can get an instant "feel" for a market and who the competitors are that you need to compete against.

So that is step 1 - analyse the market and identify the competition.

Once you have built up a profile of your market and individual competitors, then you turn your attention to the individual marketers competing with you.

In the market map above, you would start by identifying the top 10 or so competitors by traffic. You then examine each one closely to see what it is that makes them superior to the rest.

As far as pay per click analysis is concerned, take a close look at their ads. What are their average positions?  Take a look at the headlines and copy.  See if you can learn anything from them then write your own copy to attack their headlines and copy directly.

You also need to have a close look at their individual landing pages. Writing good ads is only half the battle. Converting the visitors who follow the ads to your site is the other half.

Follow your competitors' ads and see where you end up. Advanced pay per click operators know that one of the best ways to maximize conversions is to craft a landing page that answers the problem in the ad.

Conclusion

These are just a couple of areas that you need to think about in order to compete in today's pay per click environment.  Clearly all markets are getting more competitive. You need to think now in terms of not only keyword research and campaigns, but also how you are going to deal with the competitors who are fighting for the best position.

You can simplify this task by using Competition Dominator to map your market and help you identify your competitors quickly and easily.

Keyword selection

Choosing the correct keywords for your site

 

In this article, we focus on the correct way of finding out the keywords for which you should optimize your site for the search engines. This article will give you the formula for the Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) - a mathematical formula which I have developed to help you determine which keywords you should be optimizing your site for.

Step 1: Open your text editor or word processor and write down all the words and phrases that you might have searched for if you were looking for a company which offers products and services similar to yours.

For example, suppose your company organizes packaged tours to Australia. Here's a list of phrases that I might have searched for if I were planning to make a trip to Australia:

tourism in Australia
travel to Australia
travelling in Australia
travel agencies in Australia
travelling agencies in Australia
Australian travel agencies

Of course, the keywords that came to your mind may have been different. But that's not important - the important thing is to get an initial list of keywords.

You may be wondering why I have not used single word keywords. Here's why:

• Firstly, single word keywords tend to be hyper-competitive. A search for "tourism" or "travelling" in any search engine will probably generate hundreds of thousands of pages. While it is possible that you may get your page in the top 10 for such a single word keyword, it is quite unlikely.
  
• Secondly, because of the sheer number of pages that single word searches can throw up, most search engine users have realized that they can get more relevant pages if they search for phrases rather than individual words. Statistical research has shown that most people are now searching for 2 or 3 word phrases rather than for single words.
  
• Thirdly, single word keywords won't get you targeted traffic. When people search for "tourism", they are not necessarily looking for tourist destinations in Australia - they may be interested in any other country of the world. Even if you got your site into the top 10 for tourism, you gain nothing from such visitors. However, when someone searches for "tourism in Australia", he/she is your potential customer, and hence, it makes sense for you to try and get a top ranking for your site for that keyword.
  
  Hence, whenever you are trying to generate keywords, try to be location specific. Try to think of keywords which apply to the geographic area that your product or service is designed to serve.

Step 2: Open any spreadsheet program that is installed in your hard drive. I assume you are using Microsoft Excel. If you are using some other spreadsheet program, just change the spreadsheet related procedures outlined here to fit your program.

Create 4 columns - one for the keyword, one for the popularity of the keyword, one for the number of sites that appear in Google for that keyword and the last for something I call the Keyword Effectiveness Index (don't worry - I'll explain what KEI means later on). In order to ensure that you can follow what I am saying, I recommend that you add the following column headers to the first four columns of the first row of your spreadsheet:

Keyword
Popularity
No. of Competitors
KEI

Step 3: A great way to obtain a list of keywords related to the ones you have developed in the first step is to use WordTracker's keyword generation service.  Wordtracker is a paid service but you can use their free trial tool.

Click on the "Trial" option at the top of the site. In the page that appears, type in your name and email address and click on the "Start the trial >>" button. In the next page, click on "Click here to start the trial". In the next page, type in the first keyword that you developed in Step 1, i.e. "tourism in Australia", in the text box. Click on the "Proceed >>" button.

Step 4: In the next page, WordTracker will display a list of keywords related to the keyword that you had typed in. (Just scroll down the left pane to see the keywords).

Now, click on the first keyword in the left pane which is applicable for your site. In the right pane, WordTracker will show a list of keywords which contain the keyword you had clicked on in the left pane.

Then in the table that you have created in your spreadsheet, copy each of the keywords in the right pane and paste them in the first column of the table. Also, copy the number of times those keywords have been used ( i.e. the figure present in the Count column in WordTracker) and paste them in the second column.

In order to ensure that you can follow me, make sure that you type the first keyword in the second row of your spreadsheet. Of course, you should only bother adding a keyword to your spreadsheet if it is applicable for your site.

Once you have added all the keywords in the right pane which are applicable for your site, click on the next keyword in the left pane which is applicable for your site.

Once again, WordTracker will display a list of keywords in the right pane which contain the keyword you had clicked on in the left pane. Again, copy the keywords in the right pane which are applicable for your site and paste them in the first column of your spreadsheet. Also, copy the figures present in the Count column and paste them in the second column beside the corresponding keywords. Repeat this process for each of the keywords in the left pane.

Step 5: Once you have finished with all the keywords in the left pane, press your browser's Back button a number of times until WordTracker again displays the text box which asks you to type in a keyword. Type in the second keyword in your original list ( i.e. "travel to Australia"), click on the "Proceed >>" button and repeat Step 4. Do this for each of the keywords that you developed in Step 1.

Step 6: Go to Google. Search for the first keyword that is present in your spreadsheet using exact match search (i.e. you should wrap the keyword in quotes, i.e. you should type a quotation mark before typing the keyword and a quotation mark after typing it). Google will return the number of sites which are relevant to that keyword.

Add this number to the third column of the spreadsheet in the same row in which the keyword is present. Repeat this process for each of the keywords present in your spreadsheet.

Once you have done that, your first column will contain the keywords, your second column will show the popularity of the keywords and your third column will contain the number of sites you are competing against to get a high ranking for those keywords.

Now it's time to calculate the KEI!

Step 7: The Keyword Effectiveness Index is the square of the popularity of a keyword multiplied by 1000 and divided by the number of sites which appear in Google for that keyword. It is designed to measure which keywords are worth optimizing your site for. Higher the KEI, better the keyword. How the formula for the KEI is arrived at is beyond the scope of this article.

Here's how you can calculate the KEI.

I am assuming that you have created the spreadsheet columns in the way I recommended in Step 3 and that you are using Microsoft Excel. If you using some other spreadsheet program, you will need to adjust the formula to the requirements of your spreadsheet program. Click on cell D2. Type in the following exactly as it is shown:

=IF(C2<>0,B2^2/C2*1000,0)

Then click on the Copy button to copy the formula, select all the cells in column 4 which have keywords associated with them and press the Paste button to paste the formula. The KEI for each keyword will be displayed.

Step 8: Use your spreadsheet program's Sort feature to sort the rows in descending order of the KEI. In Excel, you would click on the Data menu, click on the Sort menu item, choose KEI from the drop-down combo box named "Sort by", click on the "Descending" option next to it, and then click on OK.

And guess what - that's it! You now know the keywords which you should optimize your site for.

You can now start optimizing your site one by one for each keyword, starting with the keyword with the highest KEI. Exactly how many of the keywords you choose to optimize your site for largely depends on the amount of time that you can spare from your normal business activities. But whatever the number of keywords that you target, it obviously makes sense to go for the most effective keywords first.

Tying up the loose ends:

The number of related keywords that WordTracker displays in the trial version is limited. In order to get all the keywords which are related to the keywords you had developed in Step 1, you would need to subscribe to WordTracker's paid service.

12 mistakes affiliates make---part3

10. Are you learning from mediocre sources?

 

Because conditions are changing so fast on the Net, you need to learn fast and grab the opportunities which exist now.

One way to save time is to learn from Internet experts. You won't make so many mistakes that way.

Learn from people who are earning a very good living from Internet marketing.

Neil Shearing persuaded 10 Internet experts - some of whom are earning millions of dollars - to reveal what it takes to make huge profits on the Internet. These aren't "magic bullets". They're valuable insights for serious business-building. They could change the way you do business and change your life.

http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/diamonds

Learn from experts.

11. Have you forgotten to add a dash of personality?

When Chris Pirillo published his Libera Manifesto on his site he received a huge flood of responses.

Chris received that outpouring of support because he injects his personality into his writing and because he's acknowledged as a hard-working expert in his field.

Too much of the Internet is cold and anonymous. Your visitors appreciate knowing that there's a real person running the site they're visiting.

Inject your personality into your site.

12. Are you failing to PLAN?

 received an email from someone who had bought a domain name and was trying to decide what to do with it.

Whoops! That's getting things backwards.

First you have to decide what you want to do. Here are three main options for affiliates. They all work.

Option 1: "Go where the money is," says the highly successful Marlon Sanders.

Do research on what is popular and sell that. Do a survey, find out what people want and sell it to them.

Want to know what's hot? Here's a really fast way. Keep an eye on Yahoo! Shopping - http://shopping.yahoo.com/ . Yahoo! has done lots of research and endless experimenting. It knows what sells.

Look at the "What's hot" list, where you'll find such things as digital cameras, MP3 players and Razor scooters.

Option 2: "Follow your passion," says Ken Evoy. Choose a topic in which you are passionately interested and build a site around that theme. That way, you'll enjoy what you're doing and derive a great deal of satisfaction from it. It won't seem like work.

"Everyone, absolutely EVERYONE, has a special interest... a passion," he says.

Having trouble choosing a topic? See Ken's free "Affiliate Masters" course. It shows you how to brainstorm your concept.

Option 3. Become passionately interested in something. Immerse yourself in all the little details about a topic and suddenly you'll become so absorbed that it's like a hobby, not a business.

That's what affiliate programs have become like for me. Perhaps for you it could be digital cameras.

If you become passionately interested in products which are hot sellers with little competition, that's even better!

12 mistakes affiliates make---part2

4. Are you failing to capture email addresses?

 

If you don't collect addresses, your marketing effort is a one-shot wonder. You're making only one attempt per visitor to achieve a sale and then giving up.

As branding expert Rob Frankel says, people like buying from people they know, like and trust.

If you're not giving people a chance to get to know and trust you, don't be surprised if they don't buy.

If you're not collecting email addresses, you're seriously crippling your marketing. Remember how the big dot-coms poured buckets of money into banner advertising and TV advertising? Now they've finally realized that collecting email addresses is much better value.

It's getting harder and harder to do, because we're all deluged with spam and newsletters which don't provide the information we need. So get started now, before the competition becomes even stronger.

You may not want the commitment of publishing a weekly newsletter. Perhaps you don't believe you have the necessary skills. One option is to simply offer a monthly Update newsletter, telling people what's new on your site.

Perhaps you don't like the thought of being tied to a weekly or monthly publishing schedule. You don't have to be. You can publish irregularly, only when you feel you have something worth saying - or selling.

If you want a no-nonsense, no-hype guide to newsletter publishing, I highly recommend Ezine Adrenaline: How to Create, Publish and Market A Profitable E-zine on the Internet by Kate Schultz. It tells you all the stuff you need to know.

Build an opt-in email list.

5. Do you have visitors but no sales?

Some affiliates complain that they receive thousands of visitors but can't turn those visitors into buyers. To them, I usually recommend re-reading Ken Evoy's article on pre-selling. Studying that article and implementing Ken's suggestions could have a huge impact on your sales.

Donald Skarzenski reported on a company which bought a MILLION visitors but - whoops! - hadn't first taken the time to figure out what to do with them. It's a tale of stupidity on a grand scale.

6. Are you doing the same tired old things over and over?

 

It's time to try something new.

If you keep repeating actions which fail, you'll continue failing. If what you're doing isn't working well, it's time to change it, to move out of your comfort zone and try something new.

Here's something you can do. You can syndicate your columns or tips all over the Net to other web sites. Imagine how that would boost your image, your traffic and your sales.

Each web site publishing your column simply puts two lines of JavaScript code on its page at the location where your column is to appear.

All you do is paste your column into a Syndicator form and click a button. That one button click automatically updates all syndicated web site pages.

You don't even have to create the script. Acclaimed CGI expert William Bontrager has done that for you.

You can learn how to syndicate your content.

Try new techniques.

7. Are you building a business on a foundation of sand?

 

Are you promoting questionable products and services in the hope of earning high commissions?

Or are you building something of VALUE? Are you creating a business you're proud of?

Even if it's a small site, build a USEFUL, strong web site, one which provides valuable information and helps people. Not only will this give you a great sense of achievement, it will do wonders for your marketing.

If you build a site or write a newsletter which helps people, your readers will do a lot of your marketing for you.

They really will.

I love it when I see my sites mentioned on other web sites, in newsletters, in mailing lists and in books. I love it when web sites link to mine.

For example, my assistant Glennys is building a useful resource with PayPerClickSearchEngines.com , the first directory of pay-per-click search engines. Most of the links to it were created simply because website owners like it and want to recommend it.

Ralph Wilson, publisher of the hugely popular Web Marketing Today newsletter, has created a massive, valuable Internet marketing resource which earns links the same way.

Such voluntary links are pure gold. People see the site recommended, visit it, and add a link on their site, and so on...

Such a site takes time to build but after a while momentum builds. If you're the expert in your niche, you'll be interviewed for articles in newsletters and books - and those articles will attract more interviews for more articles...

All those links and favorable mentions don't just boost your reputation and sales, they help boost your ranking in search engines such as Google.

Build something useful.

8. Are you selling ONLY other people's products?

 

It is possible to earn a living that way, but such successes are rare.

Create your OWN product. Then you can use affiliate programs for back-end sales. That works well because someone who has just bought a product is often in the mood for buying a second, complementary product.

When you create your own product, you control your destiny. You control how it is marketed. You control how much profit you make. Neil Shearing's newly revamped Internet Success Blueprint tells you how to do it, how to create an ebook, illustrate it, and sell it, with or without a merchant account. Neil describes, step-by-step, how he earns his living online.

Create your own product.

9. Are you just SELLING instead of HELPING?

 

One of my favorite email discussion used to be John Audette's I-Sales Digest. There were many reasons for its success. One was that members of that community helped each other in their posts to the mailing list.

John says that I-Sales Digest was the major force behind his success in building a multi-million-dollar business. The digest gave him an opportunity to build credibility, respect and trust while encouraging people to help others.

John sold I-Sales Digest to someone who didn't have John's flair and didn't seem to care enough about his readers. It quickly folded.

Is your website or newsletter just selling, or is it helping people learn?

Help people learn.

12 mistakes affiliates make---part1

12 mistakes affiliates make - and how to fix them

 

Affiliates struggling to earn $100 a month often find it hard to believe that other people could possibly earn as much as $10,000 or even $100,000 a month in commissions.

Believe it. Big commissions do happen. And you can expect to hear about even bigger commissions.

Forrester Research predicts that affiliate programs and affiliate networks will produce $280 billion annually in e-commerce sales by 2008.

In most programs, 5% of the affiliates generate the vast majority of the sales. If you're not in that 5% and want to be, you'll have to change what you're doing.

Here are 12 mistakes you could be making, and how to fix them.

1. Are you telling people how to make money on the Internet when you don't know how yourself?

Perhaps - just perhaps - you can succeed at this, but it's the most obvious trap into which new affiliates fall. You join a few affiliate programs and set up a site offering Internet marketing tips, work-from-home tips, instant-business tips, or be-your-own-boss tips.

The advantages of doing this include having great products to promote, high commissions and lots of help from Internet marketers.

However, if you do this, you face two massive challenges.

   1. You'll have hundreds of thousands of web pages out there competing with yours.

   2. You're competing with the planet's best marketing EXPERTS. Some of the brightest brains in Internet marketing are working full-time to grab the attention of your target audience.

I'm not saying you can't succeed in this field, but if you're new to affiliate programs, this is definitely NOT the best place to begin. If you're struggling, find a less well traveled path.

You don't have to abandon your existing website. Just launch a new one based on a new theme. Later, when you've learned more and really have something to offer, it will be time to revamp your marketing tips site.

Choose a new theme. Try a new niche.

2. Are you promoting the PROGRAM instead of the PRODUCT?

Over and over again, affiliates join a two-tier affiliate program and then create a page telling other people to join it. I've done this myself with LifetimeCustomers.com. However, that site is not my core business. It's just one page, which I created fairly quickly.

Feel free to try that technique, but don't pin all your hopes on it.

Unless you're really skilled at signing up key people in key places, or know how to sign up many thousands of affiliates, you're not likely to get rich on second-tier commissions.

The people you sign up will tend to copy you and try to sign up more people... Whoops! That sounds like the worst aspects of multi-level marketing. Who's going to actually SELL something and earn commissions?

I once read a report which claimed that my success with the SiteSell affiliate program is due to the fact that I've signed up thousands of sub-affiliates.

That suggestion was just a silly guess - and it's utter rubbish.

Only a tiny percentage of the thousands of dollars I earn each month from SiteSell is from second-tier commissions. I succeed because I promote the PRODUCTS. They're incredibly good value, I believe in them, and I succeed by telling people so.

Here's proof that "affiliate programs" is a tough, competitive field.

Try typing "affiliate programs" into Google. You're competing with 33,000,000 other pages. Try the phrase without the quotation marks and you're competing with 118,000,000 other pages. That's a mammoth increase on the pages found a couple of years ago. [UPDATE: Those are August 2006 figures.]

Promote the PRODUCTS.

3. Are you using banners instead of endorsements?

 know. It takes time, effort and money to buy and study the product you're trying to sell. It's much easier just to cut and paste a bit of HTML code. However, personal, enthusiastic endorsements out-sell everything else by miles.

If you put in the effort, you'll get the sales. You can probably quadruple your sales by endorsing the products you sell.

You can also combine graphics, text, short descriptions and relevant articles. However, best of all are your own, original personal endorsements.

Write honest, enthusiastic endorsements.