How to run a successful link exchange program.

How to run a successful link exchange program. by: Joe Balestrino Link Exchanges are a very time consuming project. The time it takes to find the sites to exchange with, contact them and place a link on your page can seem like an eternity. The hardest part about link exchanges isn’t the research, it's the waiting. This article will give you some tips to help speed response time to your requests.  "How long does it normally take?" you ask. The average wait can be 2 to 3 weeks, sometimes even longer. The reason for this is that many people operate their web site as a hobby or side business and may not be on top of their email. Keep these timeframes in mind before you judge the successfulness of a link campaign.  The first step is to find sites related to your web site that DO NOT have a large directory of links posted. You want to link to sites that have less than 100 links on their link page. Their Page Rank (PR) should be at least equal to yours. Higher is better, so always aim for the heavy hitters. Now, on to the business of saving you time.  Once you have located a site to contact, send a short but poignant email. If your email is too long, it may not be read. What should be in your email? First of all, your email should be personalized. Don't send the same email to dozens of people, send one at a time. This will help avoid being thought of as a spammer. The personalized touch shows you are serious and that the email was sent by a real person. Nothing says "this is of little importance to me" like a form letter, so avoid using them. The letter should also include: The HTML code to your text ad. This will make it easier for people to add your link to their site. A link to your link page. This will make easier for whom ever you are requesting a link from to find your page.  Also, if they ask for you to link first, do so. If you have already been to their site (and certainly you should have if you are requesting a link), you will more than likely know if they want a good faith link up. The email you send them should have a confirmation that their link is up and that you are requesting a reciprocal link.  Once you make contact with the web site owner, how long will you wait? A week? Two weeks? Honestly, it may be a month before you see your link unless you show some persistence. It doesn't always depend on how often they do updates. I would contact them once a week after your initial inquiry after checking their site first. They may have placed a link up without notifying you.  So, in summary: Spend time finding sites that will be an asset to your enterprise to save time by not corresponding with those that won't. Succinct, personalized E-mails Include all coding and links necessary to make it easy on the site you want to exchange with Research their link policy ahead of time Be persistent Link exchanges are very time consuming. It takes patients and great recorded keeping to keep track of who has and has not added you. I do this with an excel spread sheet. It makes keeping track a lot easier to do. Especially, if you are doing large link campaigns.  Good luck.

How Search Engines Work or How to Get to the Top Search Engine Ranking?

How Search Engines Work or How to Get to the Top Search Engine Ranking?
By Paton Jackson

These two questions are actually the same, because if one understands how search engines work, he will probably be able to get a site to the top search engines ranking. Think about it.
Unfortunately, the answer is a complicated, dynamic and a secret one. The answer has to do with SEO – Search engines optimization. In fact, very few SEO experts, SEO consultants, SEO software and SEO companies can actually give you a perfect SEO solution.
In the next few lines I will simplify how search engines work. To understand more you must contact and pay to a SEO consultant working with a popular SEO service:
1. The search engines visit your site occasionally and index new topics on your site.
2. The search engines measure the quality and popularity of your site by the number and types of links to your site by other website.
3. According to the site topics, quality and popularity and many other parameters the search engine rank the site for each keyword searched.
Now, I guess you have a website or developing one and you want to get it to the top search engine rankings. Well, If you have money I suggest you pay to an experienced SEO consultant working for one of the top SEO companies. Yet, if you do not have money, you can try doing it alone. But, be warned – a good SEO solution is time consuming. No matter which SEO software or SEO service you will be using, it will take you at least a couple of months to get your website to top search engines ranking.
Your first step would have to be reading more about the subject – reading about meta tags optimization services, keyword services, back links methods and organic SEO and using free SEO services like SEO toolbars and online SEO software. Good luck.
Find the best SEO tutorial only on SEO consulting from SEO experts. http://www.tigilet.com – Web Content Experts.

SEO – Introduction to Search Engine Optimization Ideas

SEO – Introduction to Search Engine Optimization Ideas
By Sean Mize


SEO is of course search engine optimization and search engine optimization is the process of optimizing, or making your site good for, natural search engine rankings. I use the term natural search engine rankings to simply differentiate SEO from the purchased, or sponsored search engine rankings.
So what is important in search engine optimization?
There are two primary ideas of search engine optimization – that of on-page seo and that of off-page seo.
On-page seo is primarily that portion of seo that is performed on the web page itself – hence on-page seo. On-page seo is the least important form of seo, although without it one would wonder if a web site should really be ranked at all. On-page seo is simply very elementary, and foundational.
Off-page seo is primarily that portion of seo that is performed outside the realm of the web page itself – primarily on other people’s web sites – hence the term off-page seo.
On page seo generally deal with such areas as optimizing the title, the keywords, the description, and the contents in such a way that when the search engines read the source code of the page, the automatic assumption is that the web page has as its main premise, the idea that the keyword emphasized, connotes.
Off-page seo is generally the creation or proliferation of inbound links that are themselves optimized for the web pages’ keyword or keyword phrase. When the search engines see that there are many inbound links to your web page that have similar topics to your web pages’ theme – namely keywords (although a word of warning here: all the text anchors should not have exactly the same text) – they will assume that your web page is viewed by other web pages as being respected as a web page specializing in your chosen keyword.
Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘
Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion
Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building
Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 800 articles in print and 9 published ebooks.

SEO Technique: Improve the search engine visibility of your website

SEO Technique: Improve the search engine visibility of your website
by AuroIN

Good search engine ranking is very essential to increase the search engine visibility of a website. It ultimately helps to increase the sales of your products and services. Hence, webmasters always compete with each other to get a good rank in major search engines Google, Yahoo & MSN. But acquiring a good position among the competitors is not so easy. The webmasters, who are newly launching their websites, follow different advanced SEO techniques to achieve higher ranking in search engines. Among all SEO techniques followed by webmaster, link building is considered as one of the exclusive techniques to get a good rank.
External inbound links are most useful resource for a website and it helps to increase the search engine rankings. The rank of a website varies in search engines according to the number of incoming links pointing towards it. Google Page Rank is considered as a standard measure for incoming links. Different SEO Techniques are followed to know the number of backlinks to one particular website. External inbound links shows the link popularity of your website.
But all the external incoming links are not valuable. Only those links which are relevant to the theme of your website can be considered as having some worth. Before adopting any SEO technique, you need to be fully aware of the methods that can give you better results. If you have been planning for optimizing your website for a higher search engine results position, choose a service provider that provides all the effective SEO techniques.
Some of the important SEO techniques are described below which can give you to achieve a better search engine ranking.
* Article Submission: Presently, article submission is believed as one of the best SEO Techniques to get more number of quality inbound links. Write a large number of quality articles optimizing on your targeted keywords and submit them to different article sites or directories.
* Blog Posting: Blog posting is one of the most effective techniques to increase the link popularity of your website. In blog posting you can submit your blog to different blog directories and can get backlinks from different websites. Here you can give link back to your website. Always give link to those pages of your website which are very much relevant to the theme of your website.
* Online Forums: Online forum is one of the exclusive technique to get maximum number of quality inbound links. You can also provide a link back to any page of your website in your comment though it is not allowed by some forum sites. If required, you can put the URL of your website in your signature to make it more trust worthy.
* Press Release: Press release is one of the advanced techniques to get more number of inbound links. For better advertisement of your website, you need to submit your press release to free PRweb and other PR sites.
The advanced SEO Techniques discussed above are very useful to get maximum number of inbound links. Follow these techniques and increase the search engine visibility of your website.

About the Author
AuroIN, a leading Online SEO Marketing Company is well-known for its quality services. For more detail, Check out our Professional SEO Services.

How To Use Articles To Improve Your Search Engine Optimization Campaign

How To Use Articles To Improve Your Search Engine Optimization Campaign
by Fabian Tan

There are many ways to improve one's search engine optimization campaign. Out of the myriad of the ways, article marketing is perhaps one of the best ways. It has a compounding factor that works even when you are not at the computer. And one article can bring in many backlinks for your website.
What is article marketing? Article marketing is simply writing articles about information related to your website and submitting them to various article directories around the web. By adding links back to your website in the resource box, you can add valuable backlinks to your website. You'd also want to make your articles 'keyword-rich', so readers can more easily find them and search engines can pick them up more easily.
Articles also make good 'pre-sell' tools for your website. Readers reading your article are looking for specific information, and you provide them with more information by asking them to click through to your link to find out more. Articles generally act as good 'teasers' for more deeper information that you can provide to your readers. Be sure to provide good information in your article, and your readers will feel compelled to visit your site.
However, that's not where the good stuff ends! Ezine owners will also grab your articles and publish them to their newsletter. This gives you even more backlinks without any additional work.
As you can see, submitting articles is a great no-cost way to get free, quality backlinks and generate lots of traffic to your website. If you haven't started article marketing, start doing so today!

About the Author
Fabian Tan is the author of the free 51-Page Report:
"Murder Your Job: How To Build Cash Sucking Autopilot Businesses In 30 Days Or Less!"
Head over to MurderYourJob.com to get your free copy now before it's gone!

The Secret Benefit Of Search Engine Optimisation: Increased Usability

The Secret Benefit Of Search Engine Optimisation: Increased Usability
by Trenton Moss

A higher search ranking is what many website owners dream of. What they don't realise is that by optimising their site for the search engines, if done correctly, they can also optimise it for their site visitors.
Ultimately this means more people finding your website and increased sales and lead generation. But are search engine optimisation and usability compatible? Aren't there trade-offs that need to be made between giving search engines what they want and giving people what they want? Read on and find out (although I'm sure you can guess the answer!)...
1. Keyword research carried out
Before you even begin building your website, you should carry out keyword research to identify which keyword phrases your site should target. Using publicly available tools such as Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com/), you can discover which keywords are searched for the most frequently and then specifically target those phrases.
Doing keyword research is also crucial for your site's usability. By using the same keywords in your website that web users are searching for in search engines, you'll literally be speaking the same language as your site visitors.
For example, you might decide to target the phrase, "sell toys", as your website does in fact sell toys. Keyword research would undoubtedly show you that web users are actually searching for, “buy toys” (think about it - have you ever searched using the word, “sell”, when you want to buy something?). By placing the phrase, “buy toys” on to the pages on your website, you'll be using the same words as your site visitors and they'll be able to find what they're looking for more easily.
2. 200 word minimum per page
Quite simply, search engines love content - the more content there is on a page the easier it is for search engines to work out what the page is actually about. Search engines may struggle to work out the point of a web page with less than 200 words, ultimately penalising that page in the search rankings.
In terms of usability, it's also good to avoid pages with very little content. A page with less than 200 words is unlikely to contain a large amount of information, so site visitors will undoubtedly need to click elsewhere to find more detailed information. Don't be afraid to put a reasonably large amount of information on to a page. Web users generally don't mind scrolling down anymore, and provided the page provides mechanisms to aid scanning (such as employing sub-headings - see point 6 below) it shouldn't be too difficult for site visitors to locate the information that they're after.
3. 100kb maximum HMTL size
If 200 words is the minimum page content size, then 100kb is the maximum, at least in terms of HMTL file size. Anything more than this and search engines may give up on the page as it's simply too big for them.
A 100kb HMTL file will take 20 seconds to download on a 56k dial up modem, used by three in four UK web users as of March 2004 (source: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/intc0504.pdf). Add on the time it takes for all the other parts of the page to download, such as images and JavaScript files, and you're looking at a highly un-user-friendly download time!
4. CSS used for layout
The website of Juicy Studios (http://www.juicystudio.com/) saw a six-fold increase in site visitors after switching from a table-based layout to a CSS layout. Search prefer CSS-based sites and are likely to score them higher in the search rankings because:
The code is cleaner and therefore more accessible to search engines
Important content can be placed at the top of the HTML document
There is a greater density of content compared to coding
Using CSS for layout is also highly advantageous for usability, as it leads to significantly faster download times.
5. Meaningful page title
If you know anything about search engine optimisation you'll know that search engines place more importance on the page title than any other attribute on the page. If the title adequately describes the content of that page then search engines will be able to more accurately guess what that page is about.
A meaningful page title also helps site visitors work out where they are, both within the site and the web as a whole. The page title is the first thing that loads up, often quite a few seconds before the content, so a descriptive, keyword-rich page title can be a real aid to help users orientate themselves.
6. Headings and sub-headings used
Search engines assume that the text contained in heading tags is more important than the rest of the document text, as headings (in theory at least) summarise the content immediately below them.
Headings are also incredibly useful for your human site visitors, as they greatly aid scanning. Generally speaking, we don't read on the web, we scan, looking for the information that we're after. By breaking up page sections with sub-headings that effectively describe the content beneath them, scanning becomes significantly easier.
Do be sure not to abuse heading tags though. The more text you have contained in heading tags within the page, the less importance search engines assign to them.
7. Opening paragraph describes page content
We've already established that search engines love content, but they especially love the first 25 words or so on each page. By providing an opening paragraph that adequately describes the content of the rest of the page (or the site if it's the homepage), you should be able to include your important keyword phrases in this crucial area.
As web users, whenever we arrive at a web page the first thing we need to know is whether this page has the information that we're after. A great way to find this out is to scan through the first paragraph, which, if it sufficiently describes the page content, should help us out.
8. Descriptive link text
Search engines place a lot of importance on link text. They assume that link text will be descriptive of its destination and as such examine link text for all links pointing to any page. If all the links pointing to a page about widgets say 'click here', search engines can't gain any information about that page without visiting it. If on the other hand, all the links say, 'widgets' then search engines can easily guess what that page is about.
One of the best examples of this in action is for the search term, 'miserable failure'. So many people have linked to George Bush's bio using this phrase as the link text, that now when miserable failure is searched for in Google, George Bush's bio appears top of the search rankings!
As web users, we don't generally read web pages word-for-word - we scan them looking for the information that we're after. When you scan through text you can't take any meaning from the word 'click here'. Link text that effectively describes its destination is far easier to scan and you can understand the destination of the link without having to read its surrounding words.
9. Frames avoided
Frames are quite an old-school technique, and although aren't as commonplace as they once were, do still rear up their ugly head from time to time. Using frames is one of the worst possible things you could do for your search engine ranking, as most search engines can't follow links between frames.
Even if a search engine does index your pages and web users find you through a search engine, they'll be taken to one of the pages within the frame. This page will probably be a content page with no navigation (navigation is normally contained in a separate frame) and therefore no way to navigate to any other page on the site!
Frames are also disadvantageous for usability as they can cause problems with the back button, printing, history and bookmarking. Put simply, say no to frames!
10. Quality content provided
This may seem like a strange characteristic of a search engine optimised website, but it's actually crucial. Search engines, in addition to looking at page content, look at the number of links pointing in to web pages. The more inbound links a website has, all other things being equal, the higher in the search rankings it will appear.
By providing creative, unique and regularly updated content on your website, webmasters will want to link to you as doing so will add value to their site visitors. You will also be adding value to your site visitors.
Conclusion
Optimising your website for both search engines and people needn't be a trade-off. With this much overlap between the two areas, you should easily be able to have a website that web users can find in the search engines, and when they do find it, they can find what they're looking for quickly and efficiently.

This article was written by Trenton Moss. He's crazy about web usability and accessibility - so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy ( Webcredible - http://www.webcredible.co.uk/ ) to help make the Internet a better place for everyone.

Driving your website through Google Sandbox

Driving your website through Google Sandbox
by: Monia Hassan

What is Google Sandbox?Google Sandbox is applied on new websites, it determines the timing of site inclusion as well as ranking in Google search engine results (SERPS).This process could take up to 6-8 months, which could be against your plans causing frustration to webmasters.The question is what is to be done during the time in which websites are in Google Sandbox?Do not waste time on checking your website listings in results page instead emphasize on SEO methods to accelerate your listings & improve status of ranking results. Also make efforts to appear on other major search engines such as MSN & Yahoo since they do not have sandbox like Google, this will help drive traffic to your website while waiting for Googlebot to index your pages.Link building strategy is another important issue not only will it improve ranking but also it will help Googlebot spider to find your pages easier while it’s in the sandbox instead of repeatedly submitting your website every time.Content is kingMain part for ongoing development of your website is to add new content on continuous basis since the most thing search engines are after is good quality websites with relevant content.Conclusion at the end is that waiting for Google Sandbox is nothing but a waste of your precious time; instead do some useful efforts on developing your website with relevant content & adding inbound links as a part of your linking strategy to make Google happy with what it sees as well as your target visitor.About the author:Monia Hassan is specialized in providing SEO services. Working for Moon Search Engine Optimization Company(www.moonsearchengineoptimization.com) specialized in SEO services. Writing SEO articles is part of her task, to help increase people knowledge of what trends are used by search engines on an updated basis.