E-commerce is a cut throat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest. Each day, more and more sites are clambering to optimize their rankings in websites and if you lose your guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in the abyss filled with so many failed e-commerce sites.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, search engines would be the most widely used internet tool to find the sites that they need to go to or the product or information they need.

Most people that use search engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a barometer of a sites success in search engine optimization. You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in.

But, it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even better. As I aforementioned, each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to make them selves rank higher using search engine optimization. It is imperative to make your site better and better everyday.

So just what is search engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need search engine optimization to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income generating.

With search engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume. Let’s just say you get only a turn out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turn out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.

So once again, what is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site top ranking in the results of search engines. Getting yourself in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate public awareness of your site’s existence and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could lead to potential income and business.

Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change in your site or add as well to get search engine optimization. These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your sites niche or theme.

You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and informative. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your site’s content applicable and conducive to search engine optimization.

You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges and page transfers. The more inbound and outbound traffics generated by sites among others are one of the components search engines uses to rank sites.

Try to search the internet for many useful help. Tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization are plenty to be found. Read many articles that can help you optimize your site in search engine results. The more knowledge and information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort in your part but the benefits will be astounding.

If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the internet that can help you in search engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your site. There are also some content writers that have lots of experience in making good keyword laden content for your sites that have good quality.

Act now and see the benefits garner with search engine optimization. All of these will result to better traffic and more business for your site and company.

Subscribe to Gerardas Norkus’ free Internet marketing newsletter at http://www.netmarketingstrategies.com and discover heaps of tips, tricks and secrets that will quickly boost your online sales and profits.

The late Conrad Hilton who built a chain of hotels across the world, was firmly of the belief that if he built a hotel in the right location it would make money. “Location, Location, Location� was his motto. Never build a hotel where there ain’t no traffic.

The same rule applies on the Internet. Build your site in the right location and it will succeed.

So the question is: “how do I find the right plot of Internet real estate on which to build my site?�

For the purposes of this exercise I would like you to imagine a smart seaside town called Google.

Along the sea front and around the marina, where the luxury yachts are parked, are smart hotels, casinos and apartment blocks. At street level in each of these buildings there are international shops like Tiffany, Gucci and Prada selling luxury goods.

In the next block back from the front are really nice houses owned by wealthy citizens. And behind them are not-quite-so-nice houses and apartments. So it goes, as you walk away from the sea front the houses and shops become less and less expensive. Until, just on the outskirts of the town of Google, there is a trailer park where the least wealthy citizens stay.

In the town of Google it costs a lot of money to rent one of the shops on the seafront because they are seen by large numbers of passers-by. These will be both the wealthy people staying in the town and day-trippers who are just sight-seeing. However, you can rent a shop in the trailer park for much less money. Here you will still get valuable passing traffic but the competition will not be nearly so great.

The mistake that most people make when they build their web sites is to build around keywords which all the powerful multi-nationals are using for their seafront stores. These organizations are spending mega bucks to get their web sites to the top positions on the search engines. Your chances of competing with them and achieving a top search engine ranking are very slim.

Much better to build your web site around the ‘trailer park’ keywords. Where you can still get masses of valuable traffic, but you’re not competing with the mega-buck budgets of the multi-national corporations.

This article is taken from the second lesson in the free Diploma Course at The Online Business Academy. It goes on to tell you how to develop your web site to achieve the best possible search engine page ranking. You can join the free Diploma Course at http://www.TheOnlineBusinessAcademy.com

“Please take down my link.� I never thought I would live to see the day that I would get an email like this, but the latest Google update has caused some people to panic. This particular person thought that his site would be penalized if he had a link coming from a site in an unrelated field. Well, following the Jagger update how should we approach linking? Should we “nuke� our reciprocal links directories altogether? Or is there a sensible way to continue linking?

Google doesn’t explain the details of their updates and algorithm changes. It is widely thought they made moves to crack down on spamming and techniques designed to fool their indexing efforts. And possibly sites that added lots of irrelevant links in a short period were penalized. Google representatives have also stated publicly, in forums, that if you link to a “bad neighborhood� you could be penalized.

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

1. Link to the kinds of sites that will provide good resources for your web visitors.

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

2. Don’t link blindly just because someone is willing to give you a link in return.

Check out any site that is proposing a link exchange with you. Are they a possible spam site? A site that has no content and only ads, or a site in fields such as online gambling, pornography, or similar areas would be suspect. If the site has a page rank of 0 and also has none of its interior pages indexed by Google, then it may have been penalized. You can tell how many of its pages are indexed by making this search: site:www.suspectsite.com .

3. Link to those sites that cater to your target audience.

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

4. Get One-Way Non Reciprocal Links

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

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

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

Donald Nelson is a web-developer, social worker and editor. He is the proprietor of A1-Optimization, http://www.a1-optimization.com and provides search engine optimization, copywriting, reciprocal linking and other web promotion services.

If you don’t believe Google’s Duplicate Content Filter exists, I have Dramatic Proof their Internet content filter exists and it’s very effective.

On July 5, 2005 I published an article entitled “7 Top Ways to Avoid Link Theft” which was picked up and included as content on other websites.

Before the article was released I checked on Google whether any results already existed for the exact phrase “7 Top Ways to Avoid Link Theft” and there were no listings for that term.

Over the next few weeks I monitored through a search query on Google how many results appeared in Google for the title of my article. One week after publication there were 6,760 results listed in Google, a week later it was 14,100 and it reached a peak of 17,000 results by July 26, 2005.

4 weeks after publication the results in Google had fallen slightly to 16,600.

Almost 6 weeks after publication the results listed in Google had fallen to 44.

In a matter of less than two weeks the number of search results on Google.com for the title of my article had gone from 16,600 to just 44.

In case you’re thinking this is because all these other websites dropped by article and replaced it with other content I should add that a search on Yahoo.com on the same day still showed 14,300 results for my article.

What’s more of these 44 results on Google, more than half consist of listings from the same websites. In other words some sites have the same article duplicated on different pages on their website.

So Google’s Internet Content Filter is not used to remove duplicate listings from the preferred websites it chooses to keep in the search results.

On August 28th, 2005 8 weeks after first publication I distributed the article again to a new list of article sites to repeat the process. After 6 weeks the same article had reached a peak of 5,620 results on Google. Less than 2 weeks later the results had fallen to 217.

For me this was dramatic proof that Google’s Duplicate Internet Content Filter is active and very effective. If you’re wondering if other major search engines have a duplicate content filter I can confirm that Yahoo certainly does. The same article which was once listed on 14,300 sites on Yahoo, has fallen to 344 over the same time period.

From these results it would seem Google takes about 6 to 8 weeks to remove duplicate content using its Duplicate Internet Content Filter.

But the question remaining is just how does Google decide which out of over 16,000 results does it keep and which does it reject?

I have witnessed situations where my own articles appear in results on other websites, but are not listed in the results for my own website.

So clearly Google does not take into account who the originator and author of the original article was when deciding which sites will remain in its search results.

It also seems to have nothing to do with where Google first finds the article.

Some articles I have published to my website for several weeks before releasing them for distribution to other websites.

In that time the Google spiders have visited my site several times and Google has had enough time to work out that the article was first found on my site.

It would be interesting to see if it’s possible to work out what factors Google is using in its Internet Content Filter to decide which results to keep in its listing and which ones to remove. But that’s for another article.

Tony Simpson is a Web Designer and Search Engine Optimizer who brings a touch of reality to building a Web Business. A related report on article distribution is at: http://www.webpageaddons.com/stp/announcerclaim Article Announcer Review – Testing Product Claims

While the most important thing in creating a webpage is the designer a consultant knowledgeable in SEO is even more important if you want to have it show up well in search engine rankings. An SEO consultant can mean the difference between a cool page that nobody sees and a cool page that everyone not only visits but talk about.

A good SEO consultant will not only know the tricks of the trade but also how to use them best. An SEO consultant is as much an artist as the web designer. Whereas the web designer knows all of the tricks of the trade in creating a masterpiece of the internet the SEO consultant is the promoter that makes sure people travel to see it.

When choosing an SEO consultant make sure to find one that is willing to not only work with your website designer, or you if you are doing your own website, but also understands your needs. Am SEO consultant is not there to diminish your website or interfere with its look. They are there to be sure that it is designed from the ground up to utilize as efficiently as possible all of their SEO tricks. An SEO consultant will blend their techniques invisibly with your website. In fact that is how they have to work. The best SEO consultant will not even leave a visible footprint. They must be like the wind. A divine wind to protect your website and breathe inspiration into it.

The most important factor is to make sure that your SEO consultant can work together with your website designer as to not impede their efforts. Do what you did when you chose your web designer. Tell the SEO consultant what you need. Give them a time frame on when you need their services to work. Let them know what your future goals are and find out what they can do for you.

AllianceLeads SEO is a Search Engine Optimization solutions provider. With over 10 years experience dealing with high end clients, Allianceleads SEO has a thorough understanding of helping businesses compete successfully in the online world. Visit http://www.AllianceLeads.com for more information.

There is a lot of talk on the web regarding Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how, if you just do this one thing, you will be at the top of Google. If only it were that easy! In fact, I believe there are seven distinct skills that a search engine optimiser needs to possess. Most people possess one or maybe two of these skills, very rarely do people posses all seven. In truth, to get to all seven, people who are good at two of these need to actively develop the other skills. This takes time and effort and, if you are running your own business, do you really have the time to do this?

The seven skills that I believe are necessary for SEO work are:

Web Design – producing a visually attractive page

HTML coding – developing Search Engine friendly coding that sits behind the web design

Copy writing – producing the actual readable text on the page

Marketing – what are the actual searches that are being used, what key words actually get more business for your company?

An eye for detail – even the smallest errors can stop spiderbots visiting your site.

Patience – there is a time lag on any change you make, waiting is a virtue.

IT skills – an appreciation of how search engine programs and the algorithms they use actually work

Many website designers produce more and more eye-catching designs with animations and clever features hoping to entice the people onto their sites. This is the first big mistake; using designs like these may actually decrease your chances of a high Google rating. Yes, that’s right; all that money you have paid for the website design could be wasted because no-one will ever find your site.

The reason for this is that before you get people to your site you need to get the spiderbots to like your site. Spiderbots are pieces of software used by the search engine companies to crawl the Internet looking at all the websites, and then having reviewed the sites, they use complex algorithms to rank the sites. Some of the complex techniques used by web designers cannot be trawled by spiderbots. They come to your site, look at the HTML code and exit stage right, without even bothering to rank your site. So, you will not be found on any meaningful search.

I am amazed how many times I look at websites and I immediately know they are a waste of money. The trouble is that both the web designers and the company that paid the money really do not want to know this. In fact, I have stopped playing the messenger of bad news (too many shootings!); I now work round the problem.

So, optimising a website to be Google friendly is often a compromise between a visually attractive site and an easy to find site. The second skill is that of optimising the actual HTML code to be spiderbot friendly. I put this as different to the web design because you really do need to be “down and dirty� in the code rather than using an editor like FrontPage, which is OK for website design. This skill takes lots of time and experience to develop, and just when you think you have cracked it, the search engine companies change the algorithms used to calculate how high your site will appear in the search results.

This is no place for even the most enthusiastic amateur. Results need to be constantly monitored, pieces of code added or removed, and a check kept on what the competition are doing. Many people who design their own website feel they will get searched because it looks good, and totally miss out this step. Without a strong technical understanding of how spiderbots work, you will always struggle to get your company on the first results page in Google. We actually run seven test domains which are testing different theories with different search engines. Remember that different search engines use different criteria and algorithms to rank your site – one size does not fit all.

Thirdly, I suggested that copy writing is a skill in its own right. This is the writing of the actual text that people coming to your site will read. The Googlebot and other spiderbots like Inktomi, love text – but only when written well in properly constructed English. Some people try to stuff their site with keywords, while others put white writing on white space (so spiderbots can see it but humans cannot).

Spiderbots are very sophisticated and not only will not fall for these tricks, they may actively penalise your site – in Google terms, this is sandboxing. Google takes new sites and “naughty� sites and effectively sin-bins them for 3-6 months, you can still be found but n t until results page 14 – really useful! As well as good English, the spiderbots are also reading the HTML code, so the copy writer also needs an appreciation of the interplay between the two. My recommendation for anyone copy writing their own site is to write normal, well-constructed English sentences that can be read by machine and human alike.

The fourth skill is marketing, after all this is what we are doing – marketing you site and hence company and products/services on the Web. The key here is to set the site up to be accessible to the searches that will provide most business to you. I have seen many sites that can be found as you key in the company name. Others that can be found by keying in “Accountant Manchester North-West England�, which is great, except no-one ever actually does that search. So the marketing

skill requires knowledge of a company’s business, what they are really trying to sell and an understanding of what actual searches may provide dividends.

The next skill is an eye for detail. Even a simple change to a web page can create an error that means the spiderbots will not crawl your site. Recently, I put a link to a page that didn’t have www. at the front of the address. The link still worked but the spiders stopped crawling, and it took my partner to find the error. We have recently invested in a very sophisticated html validator that picks up errors that other validators just fail to see. These errors do not stop the pages displaying correctly to the human eye, but cause massive problems with spiderbots. Almost all the code that I look at on the web using this validator flags major errors, even from SEO companies.

The sixth skill is patience, or is it a virtue! Some people seem to want to make daily changes and then think they can track the web page ranking results the next day. Unfortunately, it can take a week for absolutely correct changes to take effect, in which time you have made six other changes. Add to this Google’s

reticence to allow new sites straight on to its listings by adding a waiting factor of, maybe, three months for new sites, and you have a totally uncontrollable situation. We say to all our clients that a piece of SEO work should be looked at like a marketing campaign that runs for six months, since it is only after that time that a true judgement of the effectiveness of the work can be made.

The final and seventh skill is an appreciation of how search engines and algorithms work, for this where both IT and maths experience is useful. People who have programmed at a detailed systems level have a natural feeling for how spiderbots will read a page, what they will search for, what tables they will set up, what weightings they may give to different elements. All of this builds a picture of the database that will be created and how it will be accessed when a search is undertaken. Unfortunately, this skill is the most difficult one to learn as it relies on many years experience of systems programming.

So, in summary, I would say “If it was easy everyone would be doing it!”. I hope you will see that professional Search Engine Optimisation companies need more than a bit of web design to improve your business. Make sure anyone you choose for SEO work can cover all the bases.

John Fowler trained as a Mathematician and has worked in the IT industry for over 30 years, much of the time in sales related functions. He now spends his time between being a partner in SEO Gurus and as a sales and management trainer for ICT companies. John can be contacted via http://www.seo-gurus.co.uk