Search Engine Optimization the beginning to Internet Marketing

So you are interested in getting to the top of Google By Internet Marketing! If you are interested in search engine optimization then there are about a 98% chance that it is the reason you are reading this article. In SEO you have two choices you can hire a company to handle your search engine optimization, or you can read about a thousand articles like this one and learn how to do it your self in doing this I would also learn a little about html, and find a way to do some sort of keyword analysis because if you can not change your text on your website, and you choose worthless key words then your site will not be associated in the right category therefore you will not make any sales.

If you are still reading this then you are looking for the great hidden secret to getting to the top of Google by Internet Marketing. In order to rank high in Google you have to do two things have a better word score then anyone else for your keywords, and have more links coming to your site from sites with high page ranks. In getting a high word score you need to have some text on your home page and in this text you need to mention your keywords as many times as possible. When you optimize your web site for keywords you are basically getting your site ready for search engine optimization, which in all reality is just getting incoming links to your site by Internet Marketing.

Before you submit your site to the search engines you should have a good amount of keyword rich text, Meta tags (Which are not obsolete by the way), a robots Meta tag, and a Google sitemap. Once you have done all these things you are ready to get some links to your site (this is how you get to the top). When you have incoming links to your site it matters a lot that those sites have high page ranks for example if you have a site with a page rank of 7 linking to you then Google boots will crawl your site every 24 hours which is very good By Internet Marketing.

There are some things that could have a negative effect on your ranking with the search engines these things are called black hat SEO tactics. You do not want to do anything to get your site black listed in the search engines Internet Marketing. Before Google and all the other search engines changed there algorithms SEO Company and webmasters would use some techniques to get to there links to the top like hiding text, hiding links, link malls, and link farms. You should avoid anything that might have a negative effect on your page rank.

There is a lot more to Internet Marketing then just search engine optimization however search engine optimization is where it all starts. Internet Marketing Search engine optimization improves the volume and quality of traffic to your web site. Before optimizing your site you should have knowledge of how search algorithms work, and research on what people looking for your site search for to get to it. This is one of the key factors in having a productive website, and achieving a good page rank.

SEO - Sitemap For Search Engine Optimization

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization is the process of enhancing the visibility of a website on search engine listings. It refers to a list of marketing tools required to arrange a website in order to increase its rankings in the context of the result of pages of search engines and directories.

There are two main types of factors in search engine optimization:

1. On page Optimization 2. Off Page Optimization

I was working in the field of search engine optimization from last three years, when I started optimizing sites there was not so many terms related with it. In my very first day at office my seniors taught me that doing optimization is getting back links for website. Back links with proper anchor text. At the end of the day I was satisfied that generating back links are only some thing which can optimize a website.

After completing three years in this field now I am well aware that only back links are not at all optimization of the websites. Now there are so many people who use to learn the techniques of search engine optimization from me. I guide them about both the ON page and OFF page factors of search engine optimization.

In ON page factor, there are something’s which is related to your own website and in OFF page factor, there are something’s which is related to the websites which are not yours. In ON page we use to do Meta Tag Optimization, proper content for the website, Alt tag optimization for the website, proper navigation for the website and much more activities through which we do changes in the websites. In OFF page factor we create back links for our website.

Sitemap is something which came in existence a few year’s back. People thought it’s a tool through which they can optimize their websites. In fact sitemap is an easy tool through which a site owner can inform search engines about the pages of their websites. Through sitemap people can create an index of the pages of their websites which are required for crawling by search engines. A sitemap can be created in XML format. This page will list the pages of the websites along with some Meta data for each of the URL’s which is listed in sitemap. These data can contain Change frequency, Last modification Time, and the priority of the page. Due to all these data, search engines can crawl more intelligently.

Sitemap is useful just because it contains all the information regarding all the pages of the websites at a single page. Hence, search engines can gather all the information regarding the website from a single page and due to this they crawl each page of the websites regularly.

Benefits of On Page Search Engine Optimization:

When creating or updating a commercial website it should be taken into consideration that the products are made more attractive for the viewers. At the same time it must be taken into account that the ability o gain more exposure with a broader target audience has its own benefits. Most websites need to reach out to a larger target audience in order to enhance their business. On Page Optimization allows a higher page ranking and based on a specific keyword or phrases they enter. This process identifies those keywords that will benefit a particular website and uses them in such a way that it gets a higher page ranking when those keywords are searched.

Most searchers only use first page displayed websites on their searches because this is where the pages with higher page rankings are displayed, which translates into these pages find the highest relevance to their keyword searches. This makes it even more vital that each website comprehends the significance and the knowledge necessary to adapt their websites to benefit from Search Engine Optimization.

Google advises against using more than 100 links on a page, many SEO advise no more than 50, and against having pages of more than 100 Kbytes in length. It seems that Google will index more than 100 links but it may take repeated visits to the page. Some search engines may not spider to the end of a long page. This poses a problem for large sites. First of all the site map should be more than just a series of links. Use headings (H1, H2, H3 etc.) to divide the links into themed areas and use your topic keywords in those headings. If your site is well structured this will probably follow the existing themes. If the map grows too large place topic areas into separate sub-site maps. This increases the depth of the site map so more important links should be on the main map but it is better to add depth to the sitemap than risk search engines giving up due to the quantity of links.

Optimize Your Website For Better Visitor Experience

This article describes in simple terms, practical and effective tactics used to optimize your website. Following these suggestions, will result in a more enjoyable visitors experience and traffic. At the end of this article there is a Reference and Resources section where you can find supportive information and services related to each topic.

Compatibility With Web Browsers

It isn't a surprised for website owners, webmasters and others who are involved in their websites optimization, to see how different the web pages are displayed in various web browsers or between different web browsers version.

Displaying differences it's the result of how the various available web browsers (Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.), or their versions, handle HTML code, HTML errors or computer screen resolution used.

Title and Meta Tags

Meta tags are information inserted into the [HEAD][/HEAD] section of the HTML code of any web page. There are many type of meta tags. We will be considering only two of them and the [TITLE] tag.

From the visitor's point of view, the only tag visible within the head section is the title tag, which is not a meta tag itself, but a stand alone tag found in the head section of the web page. Think of the title tag as the subject of an email message.

Two of the most important meta tags are the keyword and description tags which are invisible to the visitor's eyes but should be also included if you want your page information (title and description) to be properly displayed on the search engine result page (SERP) listing.

In the early days of the Internet, one could influence the search result by including keywords within the meta keyword and meta description tags you wanted the search engine (SE) to classify your page for, today you cannot influence the result of the SE by just adding desirable keywords anymore.

Keyword tag should contain between 5 and 10 keywords that appear on the body of your page. You should never include keywords in the tag that do not appear on that page.

The Importance of ALT Tags

Many web surfer and visually challenged people browse the Internet with the image viewing option of their web browser turn off or using text readers respectively. When one of these surfer visits your site containing lot of images, they won't be able to read the content of your pages if the images do not contain the ALT="your image description" tags.

Browser Safe Color Palettes

Computer platforms handle color differently, and the web browser limits colors significantly. In order to move through the digital world with consistency, the web page designer must be well aware of this fact.

While in the real world all colors are the result of some subtractive combination of three primaries colors: red, yellow, and blue. In the digital world all colors are the result of additive color synthesis or combination of three primary colors: red, green, and blue, referred to as RGB for short.

RGB values are derived from a method that numerically determines how much red, green, and blue make up the color in question. Each color contains a percentage of red, green, and blue.

If colors outside the safe palette are used, many web site visitors will see the color the computer has available instead of the color you have called for.

Check For Broken Links

Broken links are links that lead to nowhere, and clicking on the link will show you a 404 error code page. It is said that about 5% to 7% of all links on the Internet are broken.

A site that contains broken links, including missing links to images, gives a very bad impression to potential visitors and it is a frequent cause of lost visitors.

Check Web Pages Load Time

Many Web surfers today browse the Internet through a high speed broadband connection, but a significant percentage of those Web surfers still use slow speed dial up connection to access the Web.

Surfers are known for having a very short attention span and will leave your site before the page finishes loading. Generally speaking, the maximum accepted time for a page to load is about 10 seconds, and it is recommended that your page to be around 25Kb in size.

Decreasing the loading time of a web page can be easily achieved by both, compressing or shrinking the size of your images, and reducing the size of your HTML code.

HTML Code Optimizer

An HTML Optimizer removes all blank spaces in your HTML code, and this is another way to make your page load faster. The result is shorter downloading time. Pages will be shown in a client's browser in exactly the same way, but the file size will be smaller.

Make sure that the HTML optimizer you use does not compress embedded script codes within your page, which might be rendered unusable if they get optimized this way.

BORDER, HEIGHT and WIDTH Attributes

The attributes used with the [IMG] tag to specify an image width and height are the WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes indicating the exact size of your image in pixels. The other attribute that influences the way an image is rendered on the user's screen is the BORDER attribute, which should be set to zero if you don't want your hyperlinked image to show a blue border around it.

One interesting advantage to adding the height and width attributes to an image tag is that when you do specify the image size for all of your images, browsers take a lot less time to render your page. To find out the width and height of an image, just open it with any image editor and look for its property.

Validate Your HTML Code

Just as texts in a natural language can include spelling or grammar errors, documents using markup languages like HTML may, for numerous reasons, not be following these rules. The process of verifying whether a Web document actually follows the rules for the language it uses is called validation.

Different browsers, or versions of the same browser, will make different guesses about the same illegal code; even worse, if your HTML code is really bad, the browser could get confused and produce a mangled display mess, or even crash. Validating your HTML will help ensure that it displays properly on most browsers.

References and Resources

References and Resources

About the Author

Javier A Garcia is a successful Internet marketing expert and editor in chief of more than half a dozen websites targeted to people interested to start a work at home business or to work from home. With many years of experience in online marketing, website optimization and promotion.

Online Marketing: Choosing Landing Pages Effectively

The key to choose your landing pages effectively is to understand the ‘consumer buying cycle’ on the Web, and then make intelligent decisions about how to interact with your Web site visitors - " that is, decide which pages on your Web site you choose to send your prospects to after their click on your online ads in order to convert them into buyers or make them perform a specific action. Note that it doesn't have to be your home page actually often it shouldn't be your home page.

Way too often, I have seen online businesses spending significant time and money driving people to their sites, but spending next to no time thinking about which pages are most effective to send their customers to. Also, many e-marketers do not take the time to modify and test their landing pages in order to make sure that they are using the right words, offers, images, and page structures that most effectively turn visitors into cash.

This is one of the most important aspects of effective Online Marketing - "and sadly, it is most often overlooked. If you don't seriously look into your landing page optimization before you start spending online marketing dollars, you are missing out on huge opportunities. Slight modifications in your pages might prove to increase your conversion rate by huge amounts.

Keep in mind that it is not often effective to send a person to your sites homepage unless that is where you initiate the action that you want them to perform in Online Marketing. The most desired action might be for them to make a purchase, sign up for an email newsletter or any other actionable and measurable objective of your Internet marketing campaign (Online Marketing). Therefore, make sure you are not sending them to your homepage when another page in your site is more appropriate to be the landing page.

When choosing your landing pages effectively you ought to classify your prospects based on different stages of the consumer buying cycle they are in. There are essentially six stages: awareness, interest, consideration, purchase, retention, and advocacy. As a web marketer, you need to group all the pages on your website that add value and classify them based on how they correspond to each stage in the buying cycle; then, sort them by conversion ability and assign them to targeted keywords.

To illustrate, if a prospect is building her/his awareness about a product, she/he is not ready to buy from you. So you as a marketer should send this prospect to a Web page on your site where you provide information that she/he is looking for. Conversely, if your prospect is at the purchase stage, you need to send her/him right to the shopping cart page.

For example, if you sell digital cameras on the Web and you buy search media traffic, such as keywords on search engines, and a searcher typed digital camera into a search box you want this prospect to land on the area of your site where you provide digital camera reviews and related articles on Online Marketing. Simply, this searcher is not ready to buy from you at this time. You need to build a relationship first, position yourself as an expert, offer free advice and links to e-commerce areas on your Web site related to the cameras you are recommending. Only then you have a shot at converting this prospect into a buyer. Likewise, if a searcher typed “sony camera model 123, you should use an e commerce area on your site as a landing page where you sell that particular model. The latter has already made up her/his mind about what type of digital camera to buy and is looking for a good price and quick / easy check-out.

It might be helpful to think of your online marketing campaigns in two parts. First, you are pitching to your prospects with the actual marketing activities, reaching out to people in order to pull them into your site for Online Marketing. But once you get them there, you need to capture and captivate them to do business with you or else they ll slip through your fingers and end up on somebody else site, doing business with them.

So, landing page optimization is the practice of preparing your site to receive and convert your prospects most effectively Online Marketing. If you have a large online marketing budget you may invest in landing page optimization software. Such tools perform a variety of essential activities ranging from helping you design an effective landing page; writing powerful copy; creating effective thank-you pages; testing appropriately; and modifying your landing pages based on the feedback from your testing. But for starters common sense and understanding of consumer buying cycle should make a huge difference and boost your conversion rates incrementally.

For more information about landing page optimization visit my Web site www.EMarketingInaBox.com, where I offer free e book, articles and tips on how to attract, monetize and retain your Web site visitors.

Matthew Capala

Web Design Tips to Help your Search Engine Ranking

When considering a new website design it is quite common to focus on how to impress the sites prospective visitors with a whole lot of razamatazz, otherwise known as flash. While it is important to make an impression with your sites design it will all be for nothing if no one actually visits it. By observing a number of simple rules it is possible to give your site a head start.

Search engines loves content, they lap it up. If your site has a lot of textual content this will improve your ranking chances. A common seo mantra, to the point of derision is "content is king". The right content matters however. I mentioned Flash, it's a great tool for creating animated graphics and embedding video but unfortunately search engines can't read flash files. To them flash is a ghost mixed up with all that living content. By all means include flash but don't rely on an all flash site to catch Googles eye. To Google it will appear as an empty url. Including text in your site is a given but make sure your text contains the keywords that you want to rank for. Don't just throw your keywords onto the page however. Weave them into your paragraphs so that they read naturally.

When designing the navigation it comes natural to designers to want to create something with the wow factor. As this is the interface between the user and the website it needs to be intuitive, clear and also emphasise the sites design and branding. Heres the problem though, search engines like to put emphasis on links coming in and out of sites and while they can read alt tags on images, they find it much easier to just read text. So while attempting to create a navigation menu that will impress try to use textual links and css and avoid the old javascript image swap.

One more thing. If you conform to the w3c standards when writing your xhtml and css you will make it that much easier for search engine crawlers to understand your code when they're scrolling through it. You also get the added bonus of offering a user friendly site.

Evolution offers professional website design.

by Calum Macleod

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Facts and Tips

You have many consultants online telling you that they will manage your SEO for best results. You might have heard people talking about how Search Engine optimization can improve website traffic, how it can attract attention, how it can enhance visibility and how it can make your website show up on top of any list on search engines. But you would first want to know what SEO is all about and why there is so much hype regarding it all over the internet. If you have observed this first paragraph about SEO, then you can see how we are maximizing the visibility of this page by using SEO! Want to know more about?

Some quick facts about SEO

* What is SEO: It is about enhancing the number of hits and target traffic to a web site, through the search results for specific keywords on any search engine.

* What SEO involves: It involves making a list of the hottest keywords related to your site and filling your site with content rich in those keywords. Now this page is about SEO, so you will find the page rich in the word SEO. But it's not just filling spam words. Search Engine Optimization enhances site visibility but unless you provide quality information that people need, they will not stay.

* How SEO works: search engine algorithms come up with web sites that have the searched keywords in maximum number, but neglect the sites that might have spam content. With good link structure, attractive web design and useful information accompanying the keywords, your web site will be picked up by any search engine and put in the top visible cream of websites for a specific search. Crawlers naturally include your website if the distance from the root to the actual page containing the keywords is less. SEO covers all that.

* SEO techniques: white hat is honest in conforming to search engine rules and gives long lasting results while 'spamdexing' or black hat techniques draw attention to your site as long as the web site is not discovered as spam-filled. If discovered, your website maybe blacklisted, so people prefer white hat that gives the best results for a long time.

* Limitations of SEO: while SEO is useful, it is not the only thing to depend on. It is just the first step in your online brand making campaign. It concentrates more on getting higher number of visitors than actual target traffic. It does not guarantee conversions. Depending upon your needs, you can focus on SEO.

* Choose wisely: not every scheme is reliable. Service providers may resort to deceptive techniques that endanger your web site listing on search engine indexes. Beware of shadow and doorway tactics. Monitor progress and study a bit about Search Engine Optimizing before you hire Search Engine Optimization services online. Stick to honest methods for effective SEO!

SEO is not the perfect remedy for website popularity. But it can definitely publicize and maximize your website visibility and lead the way to your marketing goal. Weigh the pros and cons and make SEO work for you!

Internet Marketing is changing rapidly

The Internet marketing of today is much different from the past. Today, Internet marketing is evolving into a larger puzzle with many different pieces that are being used as a way to drive Internet sales.

Regardless of whether your business is completely, partially, or not at all online, you should be looking into the many methods of online marketing. Traffic to your website is absolutely essential to the success of your business, both short- and long-term. Coming up with an effective way to drive that traffic to your site at the least possible cost can be tricky, but it is well worth figuring it out.

In case you are coming up short for ideas, we're here to offer a few suggestions on Internet marketing. Email campaigns are one of the cheapest ways to advertise, and you don't have to worry about spamming everyone's inboxes. Simply find an online newsletter, or ezine, that is relative to the market you are trying to break into. Buy an ad or two from them and they will do the rest. You may have to play with the ad copy a bit, but this is one Internet marketing tactic to try; it's inexpensive and your ad is coming from someone else in the business that is in your industry. Pay-per-click advertising is another option that has a good track record. This can be a more economical way to utilize your marketing budget because you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

Your ad only comes up when someone searches for keywords that match up with your company's specified keywords. When they click on your ad, they end up at your website. The easiest and most efficient way for a company to convey their message is through their website. This website can include text, images, audio and video components and can quickly inform the customer about the company's offerings.

You may also choose to set up your website to capture leads regarding those that did and did not purchase from you. If you're a writer, get to it and write some great articles about what you know best, your business. Sit down and formulate a list of keywords that are relative to your business.

Write informative articles about those and submit them to as many article directories as possible. Use the 'author box' to link to your website; these articles have a funny way of spreading over the Internet very quickly, making them a very effective Internet marketing tool. Start a blog about your business and what you do. You can post your own articles there or whatever tickles your fancy.

If you post regularly, you will quickly gain a loyal following. Put a tagline for your blog at the bottom of your email signature so that all outgoing email has a link to it; you will see a tremendous amount of traffic from that alone. Do your research on your clients; follow up on a lead as soon as possible. Research shows that an individual must be exposed to a product up to 7 times before they will make a purchase. If you don't have a way to capture leads, you may be losing out on big dollars!

Optimize Your Website with Free Directory Submission

Search engine optimization is getting more and more difficult by the day. The search engines are evolving at an incredible speed, making it harder for us SEOs to rank our websites highly.

There are a few tried and true principles that we need to do when optimizing our website. The first of which, and the one that I always tell people to concentrate on is getting quality, 1 way links pointing to your website.

The more quality links you can get pointing to your website, the higher you will rank, period.

While there are many black hat tricks and tactics that you can do for short term gain, I would suggest NOT spending your time on those things. I would focus my entire effort on figuring out how to get other websites to link to yours without you linking back to them. That is the biggest key to ranking well in Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Doing this is easier said that done. One of the easiest known ways to get quality, one way links is by finding website directories and then submitting your website to them. This can be a very tedious process, but always a very rewarding process at the same time.

You can either submit your website to these directories manually, pay someone to do it for you, OR you can use one of the website directory submission programs out there. The best program for the money that we have found is a program called "Directory Submitter" created by internet marketing expert, Brad Callen.

This program allows you to submit your website to over 1600 website directories and can save you an incredible amount of time in doing so. You simply enter your website details into the software once, and then select the directory you would like to submit to. The software will then, automatically fill in all of the submission criteria for each directory and allow you to quickly submit your site.

Not only does this save you time in submitting your site, but it saves you an incredible amount of time in just finding the free directories online. I highly suggest grabbing a directory submission program if you decide to take advantage of one of the easiest ways to get quality, 1 way links to your website.

Affordable SEO Marketing Services

A leading Search Engine Optimization company which provides higher quality of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services such that Internet Marketing Services, Search Engine Consulting (SEC) Services, Quality Link Exchange Services, Web Site Development and Search Engine Submission.

We have a lot of experience in Search Engine Optimization Services, We know very well, how to make a good strategy about search engine optimization for a Website to a good ranking on major search engines such as Google , Yahoo!, MSN, ..etc, so that we can provide you fast and affordable SEO services with our expert seo team. Our good experience and well planed Strategy make us one of the best leading SEO company in the World. Our Professional SEO services has focused packages on link popularity building, Pay per click PPC campaign management, content management , article submission and ongoing SEO Maintenance Packages.

At Internet Design we utilize our collective experience and expertise to bring the desired results for our customers. Our Internet Marketing specialist are not only thorough in field of search engine optimization and website marketing, but also they are talented enough input their valuable contributions to make each and every campaign successful. Our search engine optimization specialist display brilliant coordination among themselves which is a critical factor while handling an SEO project.

Internet Design's SEO and search engine marketing services are professional, comprehensive, and effective. With our help, your web site will far outshine the competition. At Internet Design , we're dedicated to helping you succeed and want to turn your vision into reality. Our experts are highly skilled and experienced in all areas of SEO,Internet marketing,website designing, professional website design and web development, so you can be confident that you're receiving complete and high-quality service.

Internet Design provides affordable search engine optimization services, submissions and Internet marketing strategies with competitive packages to go well with your kitty. We have services ranging from designing small and precise websites to huge projects both resulting fruitful for any precious business that you own. We as a search engine optimization company have what it takes to promote your website and utilize our resources fully while targeting to bring better ranking for your website.

Basics of Search Engine Optimization

If you want business from online market, then you should consult the professional SEO Company or hire a SEO expert to work for your site. It is very time taking process to promote any website and to get higher search ranking.

Here is some basic information about search engine optimization. SEO is the abbreviation of search engine optimization. It is the process of optimizing a website in such a way that search engine can easily access the pages of website and user or surfer can easily find it. SEO includes different types of steps to make your site search engine friendly.

The first part of SEO services is on page optimization. Basic steps included in onsite optimization are:

1. Find best targeted keywords relevant to your business 2. Make title and meta tags relevant to your web page theme 3. Content optimization and internal linking. 4. Use of h1,...,h6 tags for heading 5. Create a site map 6. Use title and alt attributes that include targeted keywords. 7. Make robots.txt file.

Once onsite optimization is completed, offsite optimization is started. Here are some basic steps for offsite optimization:

1. Directory submission 2. Article submission 3. Link exchange 4. Press release 5. Social bookmarking 6. Blogging 7. Forum posting

For online business, content is the most important factor. Having informative and interesting content in the website will entail frequent visits by visitors. This also helps you to get quality back links easily, as quality back links are most important factor in search engine optimization. Once your site gets higher ranking, it will start getting more targeted visitors and your ROI will increase gradually.

Search Engine Marketing and Blogging Techniques

Search engines are the web's most used means of driving traffic to websites, and knowledge of search engine marketing is essential to anybody wanting to succeed online. However knowledge of blogging techniques is also instrumental in gaining you a high position in the search engine listings fore your chosen keyword.

Sure, you can promote your site in many ways and there are more ways than a top listing on a search engine to drive traffic to your website, but there is nothing to beat a top ten listing on Google or one of the other major search engines such as Ask, Yahoo or MSN to provide you with consistent sustained traffic day after day after day.

It is not difficult to get listed in a search engine, but it not so easy to be listed in that all-important top 20 position. The top 10 is the ideal, but if you are listed on one of the first two pages of a major search engine, then the traffic will come to you. That is guaranteed. Naturally, the higher you are listed the better, and you will do an awful lot better on the first page than on the second, but if the best you can do is page three then you are going to need a lot more than search engines to help you attract business.

So what are the main essentials of search engine marketing? You have two objectives, the first being to get listed and the second to reach the top 20. It is easy, as I stated earlier, to get listed on a search engine. Many design their site, submit it to Google and then wait for the Google Dance, when Google carries out its World Wide Web search for websites.

Forget that: do not submit your site to Google or any of the other search engines because that can delay your listing. Instead do one of two things. The best is to write a few articles on the topic of your website and submit them to the top article directories. If you can't write, or if English is not your main language, then use an article ghostwriter. There are plenty people online offering article services at good rates.

Google and the rest frequently visit the higher ranked article directories and will pick up on the link to your website in your 'author's resource', or bio. When they find your site, you get listed, and that can happen in less than 24 hours. That is the main way, but the other is blogs. Add a blog to your site, and it will soon be listed. Google, especially, likes blogs, particularly if it is a Blogger blog, since Blogger is owned by Google. You are virtually guaranteed a listing. If you are not too keen on Blogger, you can switch once your site has been listed. Wordpress is arguably the most versatile blogging software available at the moment, especially if you are running it from your own web space.

Once you are listed, you can improve your position by optimizing each website page for the topic of that page. Don't forget that search engines list each page separately, and so each page should be optimized separately. However, you should initially focus on your index page, since it is that page which almost invariable gets listed highest. Once your site does have a reasonable high listing, it is possible that another page could get listed higher than your index page, although this is not generally the case.

You can then post a blog on the topic of the page, and add new postings on a regular basis. You should also include a link to your blog from your web pages and a link on your blog sidebar to your website. This will enhance the probability of your home web page being listed, as it also will your blog, since your blog can also be listed on Google and other search engines.

There are some simple things that you can do to make your index page more attractive to the search engines. Bear in mind that your listing is for one search term only, as used by someone seeking information related to the topic of your page. You can receive another listing for another search term (or keyword) on a different index. So, what you must do is to determine the best keyword for which to optimize your index page.

Once you have decided that, include it in the title of your page and place the title in 'title' tags. Try to make the title a bit longer than your keyword, so if your keyword is, say, 'lock design', make the title 'The History of Lock Design', for example. The main heading for the page need not be the same, but should also contain your keyword. A good heading, for example, would be 'Lock Design from the 18th Century'. Place that in H1 tags to tell the search engine algorithm that the heading contains important text relating to your web page.

In order to accentuate the fact the 'lock design' is an important term in your web page, use it in the first 100 characters and again in the last paragraph of the page. You can also use it once for every 300 words if you want, but don't overuse it. Use plenty of words that relate to the term, in order that the algorithm used to determine the relevance of your page can decide what the actual subject is. Hence, in the example used, it is still not clear if the locks referred to are canal locks or security locks. You should make that clear in the syntax of the page.

For example, your title could be changed to 'Canal Lock Design from the 18th Century', and you could make lots of reference to canals, barges, longboats, plan, construction, locks and design. These words will make it clear to the statistical mathematical formula that makes up the LSI (latent semantic indexing) algorithm that determines the meaning of the words used on your page, and determines that the page is about canal locks and not locks and keys.

There are many other ways in which you can optimize your web page to make it more relevant to the search term, and the more relevant the search engine deems it, then the higher the listing in the index for that specific keyword. Blogging can enhance the effect of your SEO, and not only improve your listing position, but also be listed itself, thus providing even more traffic to your website.

Search engine marketing involves a good knowledge of search engines and how they work, but if you get it right then the rewards can be very high in terms of traffic highly targeted to your product. The problem is, unless you know how, or have the right advice from people who know what they are talking about rather than trying to sell you a service, then it takes a long time to learn.

If you want to learn the essentials of search engine marketing quickly, then check out Pete's site on SEOcious where you will find out how you can get rapid listings on Google and optimize each of your web pages to improve your search engine rank, and listing position for your keyword. Also check out his blog on Blog on Blog on how to use blogs to promote your website.

Top SEO Tips

It is a fact that search engine optimization is very important. We all know that the internet is a changing arena, since it can get more and more competitive everyday.

Each day, more and more websites are coming online, so the competition is increasing every now and then. Definitely, you all know that search engines are smart, so their criteria for judging are tough and strict.

Of course, to gain and keep the traffic coming to you, you need to optimize your website. In optimizing your website, there are important factors that you need to do and look up to in order to gain your goals. You have to read on in order to be familiar with the important factors needed in optimizing your website.

In optimizing your website, you need to take note that contents are important. Search engines want good and unique contents, so they are demanding for unique and good contents from websites. So if you want to stay in business for long period of time, you need to make and provide contents with high quality. But make sure to do contents that are related to your topic or subject.

Of course, one of your goals is to please your market, so you need to know what they are looking for and provide it for them. Make sure to lay out your site properly, it is a good idea to lay it out on paper before you begin to assure that you are making it clearly. If you have a huge or large website, it is advisable that you arrange it by sections in order to avoid too much links from a given page, in doing so, you can maintain page rank once you get it.

You have to pick keywords carefully. You have to make thorough research on keywords that are related to your topic. You have to use keywords that visitors will use and not only what you think they will use.

You need to optimize your page titles and headings with the keywords that you have found that internet users are using in order for them to find you. Take note: do not only use highest ranking keywords, it is better to mix them all up. If you are a beginner, it is advisable to mix them with those keywords that with have less searches, since high ranking keywords are very challenging on your part.

Once you are done optimizing your pages, the next thing you should do is find links. Links are important, so you need to exchange links with other websites that are related to your website. But make sure that n finding link partners, you have to search for websites that are valuable to your visitors; you need to have websites that can provide high quality contents.

You need to submit your contents to directories; there are a lot of directories that are free. In doing so, it can help you gain lots of visitors, but make sure that they will provide links back to your site.

Optimizing your website is important. If you really ant to gain power to strengthen your website in being on the top rank, then you really have to be familiar with search engine optimization and start optimizing your website now.

2007 Year that watch SEO grow

Year 2007 was a great year for SEO. We saw lots of updates in the world of SEO. Search engine optimization industry grew by 200% and same is expected for year 2008. Main highlights from the world of SO and search engines in 2007 are listed below:

Year of personalized and universal search: It was a mix of both personalized and universal search. with search engine releasing beta versions of localized search for there users.

Search engine updates on quality search results: Search engine were more focussed to improve quality of search results and lessening the amount of spam websites appearing in SERPs. Yahoo launched its ad ranking system in February as part of its Panama project. Soon after, Google updated its 18-month-old ad quality scoring algorithm. Microsoft followed in April, adding a quality score element to ad center.

Year of Social Media Marketing: Rise of lots of social media websites and social media marketing was on full swing throughout the year. Social network saw the rise of various social networks like :

FaceBook Twitter Flickr Youtube Digg Netscape Mahalo Wikipedia Search wikia

More tools from search engines for webmasters

SEO industry grew up

That was a sum up of what happened in SEO industry in 2007. With search industry expecting same in 2008. I expect more frequent updates in search engine algorithms and of course Google Page rank update (Google dance)

Use Web Directories to Bolster SEO Success

Web directories are banks of information, just like search engines. They hold data related to myriad topics and are highly useful when it comes to scouting for information on the World Wide Web. However, the biggest difference between the directories and search engines is the fact that the former usually caters to editorial guidelines before picking any website to be a part of its network, whereas, the latter can crawl and index any site, without looking at its credentials.

Directory submission is one of the most effective off-page search engine optimization techniques. Most of the directories have 'human' reviewers who scan all sites submitted therein, and don't entertain the ones that are found wanting in terms of quality. And, unlike search engines, directories list websites, and not individual web pages. Therefore, to be listed with them, you have to ensure that your site is a complete package, adorned with the requisites that such directories demand.

The process of directory submission is simple. First and foremost, you need to decide on the directories you wish to cater to. For optimization purposes, make sure you submit your site in Yahoo and DMOZ. Both these directories can bring you increased traffic as they are used by maximum number of web users.

Secondly, find out the categories and sub-categories that best suit the topics covered in your website. You can either surf the directory to know about categories or search categories according to keywords that have been used on your website as well. This decision is important for SEO success because reviewers can actually reject your submission if your site is listed in an irrelevant category.

When it comes down to actually submitting the site, you should go through guidelines set by the directory in question. And, it is extremely important that you do not take any chances in this regard �" follow their instructions to the T. You will also have to mention title and description for your site.

Incorporate your primary keywords in the description, and use language that can attract visitors. However, do not write irrelevant stuff that harps about your business, because it can be rejected by the editors. The title should be the main title of your site and it must be mentioned in your web pages. To be successful with search engine optimization services, the title should also be crisp and not marketing-oriented. The URL should be spelt correctly, or else you lose out on all traffic.

After you have entered all important information, recheck the same for possible errors because it is very difficult to change info already entered in a directory. If your site is accepted by the directory, you will be communicated about it.

Using SMO For SEO

No, it's not a secret language. Neither is it classified information. SMO or Social Media Optimization is a very trendy acronym that's been playing around online marketing communities since the power of social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook, Digg, MySpace, Yahoo! 360, etc. were realized by the same. With the goal being to move beyond common e-marketing methods like SEO [Search Engine Optimization], SMO is a very useful tactic that can be applied to reach a far wider audience and tap into a larger network of bloggers, vloggers, businesses and even casual surfers.

RSS feeds, with their immediate update alert options, have empowered businesses utilizing SMO tactics even more. The target audience can have access to your content as soon as it is updated or modified. They can tag, book mark, vote for, recommend or even promote your website with the various options available on most social networking sites.

Through an interesting and relevant profile, you can have easy access to similar communities, like-minded individuals, associate businesses and the like. Once your website and business' credibility is established, all the above parties participate in carrying your message across by providing links and track backs to your page or profile. Brand awareness is thus created at no cost whatsoever with such simple and easy e-marketing. At Clear Media Online, our Search engine optimizers recognize the power SMO holds in today's socially compact world. We are proficient in creating interesting and appealing profiles for our clients allowing them to take their businesses to the next level. Our e-marketing strategies not only optimize our client's brand awareness, but also ensure that they attain optimum visibility in social media searches besides regular search engine searches.

HTML And Effective SEO

Two acronyms that play such an important role in the world of internet marketing- HTML and SEO. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is used as a tool for designing websites. It can be referred to as the skeletal system of a website, in context to the role it plays in holding a website together. The HTML code of a website contains directions on how the text, images, and other components are going to be linked with one another. It brings the written word to life.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization refers to the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. When a surfer types in his query in a search engine, he is presented with a list of results, any of which he can select. The web site that has come up first in the list of results that the search has generated has been able to do so because it is more popular than the other sites. This is where SEO comes into play. It is a very effective marketing tool that is employed by site owners in order to increase a site's relevancy.

Combined with HTML, SEO is a powerful tool. The simple interface HTML applies in generating a website enables the basic information featured on a website to be made available to a search engine, which skips past the flash of the site. The originality of the content featured in a site thus, has a lot of bearing in how soon the site is picked up b the search engine and made available to the surfer.

Understanding The Meta Factor

Some of the best web developer communities hold meta elements in good regard. They insert meta elements into the HTML document, which then provides information about the webpage, allowing search engines to categorize the page correctly. Content, http-equiv, name and scheme are the important characteristics of a meta element. Content, as the old internet adage goes, is the ruling factor.

In the 1990s, search engines relied on meta elements to correctly classify a web page. If a webpage had the right meta elements, a high ranking in searches was possible, thus increasing the site's visibility. SEOs made use of this rich feature in order to get a better ranking for their client pages. Today, meta elements have a lesser role to play due the increase in sophistication of search engine robots. However, they still rank as one of the best methods to get effective search engine rankings.

An important meta element which developers cash in on are meta tags. They help identify the page owner, what pattern of HTML the webpage follows, the keyword and page description, etc. The title tags and meta description tags are the key meta elements that most SEOs concern with. The former is a very essential factor in terms of search engine relevancy. The text used in the title tag is what helps a search engine in ranking your webpage in their search listings. The meta description tag on the other hand, talks about your webpage. In a way it is a dekko to your page. Search engines like Google sometimes generate their own description of a page. However, using a meta tag description for your webpage allows you to influence various web crawlers.

At Clear Media Online, our SEO experts apply meta elements among other tools in order to garner your site optimum rankings. Visit our website to know more about how we do it.

Search Engine Optimizers And Their Clients

When a client entrusts its online portal to the web developers of a search engine optimization agency, there is some kind of unspoken but heavily emphasized expectation that is placed on the services of the latter; mainly, the quality of work that is desired by the client. While this is understandable behavior on part of the client [it's their money on the line], SEOs cannot always be expected to provide the exact same results. Slight variation between any two individual's thoughts is de rigueur in any field.

An SEO firm has to be capable of identifying those sections of the client's business that bring in higher profits besides identifying the client base. Market needs are dynamic and an SEO firm has to be flexible enough to accommodate such fluctuations.

The client in turn, has to have a concrete business plan. If the business model is not suitable for achieving long-term results, than all the exposure and the customers that the employed e-marketing tactics bring the client are of little value.

There is not much that can be gained from copying a successful business competitor's business model either. What a client needs to understand is that while some strategies work for one business, the same cannot be expected to work for another. One benefit of this is the customized service a client can benefit of from the e-marketer.

While the job of the SEO is to plan and implement strategies for better search engine results, it is the job of the client to approve keywords, text and occasionally involve himself in the promotion process by providing a personal touch.

It may seem from above that the clients play a role as important as the SEO, but it is important to emphasize the client's role in the marketing campaign. Without active participation on part of the client, the entire e-marketing plan will crumble.

Clear Media Online, realizes the importance of each of our clients. Our teams of professionals ensure client involvement in every stage of the SEO process and together help their respective web domains to achieve satisfying results.

Search Differently With An SEO Expert

There is an insane amount of information on the Internet, and the best way to find exactly what you are looking for is by using search engines like Google, Yahoo! Search, Live Search, and Ask.com. Enter in the word or phrase related to your query and-voilà! instant access to a thousand links that will take you to pages having the answer to your questions. But how effective is your search and how different is it from searches made by professional search engine optimizers?

Cre8asite, an online forum, had a discussion on this issue and the results were enlightening and in favor of professionals- which was quite expected to say the least.

A professional of any kind is an asset in any field and business; and search engine optimizers are experts in the field of online marketing. It is their job to make sure that their marketing strategies help a business to draw the most visitors to its online address.

One important responsibility of an SEO is to optimize a website's content and build up its link popularity. This allows search engines to allow the website more visibility and ultimately achieve better ranking in search results.

Intuition and extensive knowledge goes a long way in getting better search results. Tapping into tools like AdWords for relevant keyword selection, using Google BlogSearch to avoid repetition of data, using special characters and terms are just a few of the tricks up the sleeves of talented SEOs.

At Clear Media Online, our team of SEOs uses the best resources and knowledge at our disposal. Our innovative e-marketing strategies are the best in the field.

Outsourcing of SEO Services Should Cover All Web Promotion Tasks

SEO Services become effective when these consider all the tasks of search engine promotion which is a way to put your website in the top position. On the broad context this includes the search engine optimization offered by many online advertising companies in market. There are various tasks covered in Outsourcing of SEO Services that helps in providing the successful Search Engine Promotion Campaign.

Internet Marketing as a part of outsourcing is one of the most targeted subjects. The search engine promotion and web promotion services in outsourcing include certain tasks to make it as more effective. Outsourcing of SEO covers some of these web promotion tasks listed as under-

1) The website must contain essential information about your business. It becomes essential for website to answer all the needs of viewers to increase the amount of traffic.

2.) Define proper keywords and Meta tags to increase the traffic of website. Define those keywords that are more searched. This creates more demand for the website crawlers. Put Relevant content and information in the website about defined keywords. Proper content allows the user to stay for a longer period of time in the website.

3.) Regularly update the website content by adding little information on daily basis. This can be in the form of articles, reviews etc. Post high quality of content that attract lot of readers and helps to gain popularity through word of mouth and repeated business.

4.) Increase link popularity of the website. Increase the number of inbound quality links pointing towards the website. This help to increase the promotional value of website and increase its goodwill.

5.) Make Sitemap when there are many pages in the website. Create interlinking within these pages and each link point back to the home page. Search engine spiders crawl the content easily when you define the proper site map. Also make an xml Sitemap to be submitted to Google. This becomes a part of Google Optimization.

6.) Popularize your website through social network marketing. This is a great way to increase visitors on your website and serve as a good platform to make many online friends from different backgrounds and surroundings of different countries. This helps to share the technologies of different locations under a common platform.

7.) Use anchor text for hyper link information. Also use Alt tags in image attributes. This serves as an alternate text to be recognized by the crawlers. Without Alt tags crawlers can not recognize the images.

Thus when these popular and reputed web promotion techniques are used in Outsourcing of SEO Services, there are more chances of getting good contracts as well as repeated business from the existing clients. When the web promotion techniques are of high quality and optimum standards, more and more people choose for such type of Web Promotion related Outsourcing.

Can we please stop asking Matt his opinion on paid links?

I have recently been watching a few SEO videos and reading more blogs, and are surprised to see people are still asking Matt Cutts what he thinks about paid links.

Matt Cutts has been pretty consistent on this one - I think we all know his viewpoint on the matter.

There are lot's of questions I'd love to ask Matt, and I'd usually start by asking a question that I don't already know the answer to.
Such as...

* How come low-PR scraper sites are still knocking established sites out of the SERPs with dupe content?
* What is Matt's viewpoint on source-ordered CSS layouts?
* How can I get German content on a de.domain.co.nz subdomain ranking in google.de (for example a New Zealand targeting the German market).


After that, I'd move on to ...

* how are your cats?
* tell us about the latest book you have been reading? and,
* You should check out some of my recipes.


And once the conversation dries up...
Then, only after the conversation had totally dried up and we were sitting there waiting for the interview time to elapse while both prending not to be bored stiff with the interview that is clearly going nowhere - then I'd ask...

* Matt, what is your opinion of paid links?
* Is text-link-ads considered a paid link?
* How can I show to Google that a link is paid without being penalised?



I'm pretty sure Matt Cutts values his time, so it makes sense that the webmaster community as a whole respects this and asks questions that we don't already know the answer to, can't easily be found elsewhere on the internet, and aren't totally obvious.

Sound good?

Search Year 2007: Search News, In Review

Each month, I compile Search Month -- a recap of all the stories that have happened relating to search, categorized by topic. I thought it would be fun to take all the Search Months over the past year and produce this edition of Search Year 2007. It was far more work than I imagined, but I hope you'll find this at-a-glance guide to what happened in search during 2007 to be helpful.

At-a-glance might be a stretch. This is a massive post, and I'm sure some people might feel a bit of overload. So here's some guidance as to how things are organized.

In many categories, I tried to pick the biggest news story for that topic. This isn't always the case. With some categories such as SEO, there where many good, compelling stories. In some of those cases, I went with a catchy headline or a recent, broadly applicable article. I wish I'd had the time to more closely go through and pick out the very best in each section, but it was too much effort.

Below each main story are other stories on the topic. These are generally listed in descending chronological order, newest coming first. I find it a handy way to see how things unfolded in a particular category. However, in some case I have grouped stories by company or subtopic.

Also keep in mind that Search Engine Land has extensive categorized archives -- our various "Lands" where you can find stories categorized over time and more deeply than these. I've called these out for each category. You can also find a full list here. Our extensive online archives are nice, because the same story can be cross-categorized as appropriate. Unfortunately, there's minimal cross-categorization in this end-of-the-year recap.

Also remember that if you like Search Year, Search Month does the same thing on a monthly basis. So check it out. It's available by feed or email, as is our daily search news recap, SearchCap.

Search Engine Land's Most Popular Stories Of 2007

1) Google Kills Bush's Miserable Failure Search & Other Google Bombs - After just over two years, Google has finally defused the "Google Bomb" that has returned US President George W. Bush at the top of its results in a search on miserable failure. The move wasn't a post-State Of The Union Address gift for Bush. Instead, it's part of an overall algorithm change designed to stop such mass link pranks from working.

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2) Google 2.0: Google Universal Search - Google is undertaking the most radical change to its search results ever, introducing a "Universal Search" system that will blend listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines among those it gathers from crawling web pages.

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3) Mapping The Southern California Fires - I'm back home (my original home) in Southern California for vacation, and to welcome me back, the Southland is on fire. Ah, just like old times. As I was keeping up with the news, I came across some maps online from Google Earth, Google Maps, Virtual Earth, and elsewhere that I thought I'd share with others.

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4) Google Universal Search Means Looking For Raccoons Is No Longer Family Friendly - A reader tipped me off to this. Search for raccoon, and Google Universal Search puts some pictures up at the top of the page: See it? Third one over? I didn't know a dog and a raccoon could, well...

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5) Billboard Showdown: Google 411 Takes On Ask's Algorithm - I'm in the Bay Area this week, and driving down Lombard Street, I brought the car to a halt when I saw the two billboards above. Yes, that's one of the Goog411 billboards for Google Voice Search sitting on top of an Ask.com "The Algorithm" one. Sadly, there's doesn't seem to be room to squeeze in ones from Yahoo and Microsoft. Want to see them for yourself? Go down Lombard, just up from Gough. I've got another shot here, as well.

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6) Google Declares Stephen Colbert As Greatest Living American - It's official. Stephen Colbert is the Greatest Living American, or at least now ranks tops for that phrase at Google. It's all come from the latest Google bombing campaign sparked off in part by Stephen himself. The backstory on this, plus the "I thought Google bombing didn't work anymore" angle, in this story.

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7) George W. Bush: A Failure Once Again, According To Google - Remember how Google introduced a link bomb fix in January that, among other things, finally got US President George W. Bush out of first page of results for searches on miserable failure and failure at Google? Bush is back, at least for failure, and the White House has only itself to blame.

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8) Google Maps Causes US Navy To Change Its Swastika Building - You have to feel a bit sorry for the US Navy. They have a building in California that looks like a swastika from the air. But who looks at buildings from the air? Until Google Maps popularized easy access to aerial views, only the occasional bored air traveler. But thanks to Google Maps, the swastika building got known, discussed, and now is being camouflaged.

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9) Goodbye Froogle, Hello Google Product Search! - Back in December 2002, Google launched its long expected product and shopping search engine. It was called Froogle, a combination of "frugal" and "Google." Just over four years later, Froogle is finally loses its cutesy name for something more descriptive -- to become Google Product Search. It also gains a cleaner interface, as well.

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10) Google Birthday Logo: Nine Years Old - The Google home page is sporting the special logo celebrating the company's ninth birthday. But wait? Didn't Google just turn 10? Google's domain name turned 10 years old on September 15, but the company itself celebrates its incorporation date in September 1998. But when is that incorporation date: Sept. 7 or Sept. 27?

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11) Google Maps Adds Terrain View, Replaces Hybrid View - If you load up Google Maps, you may notice that they have removed the "Hybrid" button and replaced it with "Terrain" and a simulated view of cities or terrain. Here is a live frame of the Google Terrain view of New York City 10010.

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12) Ask Relaunches: Now "Ask 3D" - Ask.com is touting the release of "Ask3D" as a "major leap forward" for search. A bold three-panel interface (taken from the experimental Ask X) integrates more multimedia content, including images, videos, music files, as well as more structured text-based content. It also offers a battery of impressive features – new and existing – to bring more context and help to search results.

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13) Larryos, Raisin Brin, Porn Flakes & Other Google Cereals - I was at Google last month and did a double-take at the wall art up near one of the mini-kitchens. It featured familiar cereal brands morphed with Google personalities like Larry Page (Larryos) and Sergey Brin (Raisin Brin). I shot a few pictures, below, plus here's some of the backstory.

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14) Google Search History Expands, Becomes Web History - Google's Search History feature, which was switched on as a default option for many Google searchers in February, has now been renamed Web History to reflect how it has expanded to track what Google users do as they surf the web. It's a huge move for Google and raises anew privacy issues. A detailed look at how the system works, how to pause or delete logging if you want, the impact on search results and more.
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15) Gphone? The Google Phone Timeline - Rumor after rumor after rumor keeps appearing that Google is to release its own mobile phone, the Gphone. In April 2007, we originally compiled all these Google Phone rumors into a timeline view. Since then, we've continued to update the list, so that the confused, perplexed or just plain curious can keep track of what's come out when. Enjoy! NOTE (Nov. 5, 2007): Google's Android Arrives: Not Gphone But An Open Source Mobile Platform covers the actually announcement that all these rumors have led up to.

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16) The Right Way To Fix Inaccurate Wikipedia Articles - Suppose your company, boss or political candidate discovers that their Wikipedia article is wrong, or has subtle inaccuracies that nonetheless paint them in an unfavorable light? Most people unfamiliar with how Wikipedia works consider only two solutions: edit the article or sit on their hands. Unfortunately, neither approach typically results in the optimal outcome: a factually accurate profile containing trustworthy information. Search marketers and reputation management professionals should know that there are legitimate ways to correct errors in Wikipedia. Knowing the right way to fix things is even more important now that Wikipedia results frequently appear in the top listings of Google search results. The good news is that Wikipedia actually offers a broad range of options for correcting inaccurate or negative entries, and even better, all are easy to use and take little time to implement.

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17) Google's New Navigational Links: An Illustrated Guide - After months of testing, Google is rolling out new ways to navigate within its search results and between different Google properties. Here's an illustrated guide to the old and new.

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18) Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google - More and more, I've been seeing people wondering if they've lost traffic on Google because they were detected to be selling paid links. However, Google's generally never penalized sites for link selling. If spotted, in most cases all Google would do is prevent links from a site or pages in a site from passing PageRank. Now that's changing. If you sell links, Google might indeed penalize your site plus drop the PageRank score that shows for it.

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19) iGoogle, Personalized Search And You - Yesterday was "Google Personalization Day." We spent roughly two hours touring the history of personalized search at Google, the genesis of these products and getting a glimpse of where it all might be going.
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20) Google Releases New Link Reporting Tools - For years, Google's link: command has deliberately failed to show all the links to a website. This came out of Google's fear that site owners simply wanted the data to try and manipulate rankings -- which was pretty true. Instead, they only provided a sampling of backlinks. Today, that changes. Google Webmaster Central is rolling out new support allowing you to view and even download thousands of links to your site.

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21) Google Says Stephen Colbert Is No Longer The Greatest Living American - Sadness, Colbert fans! Last month, I reported in Google Declares Stephen Colbert As Greatest Living American how Stephen Colbert had defied Google's link bombing defenses and rose to be the greatest living American, according to a search for those words at Google. Today, it is no longer so. Google has dissed Colbert.

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22) Instructions On Tracking Santa With NORAD & Google: The 2007 Edition - I'm a serious Santa Claus tracker. When I was a kid, I used to get Santa updates from NORAD (the US missile tracking people) via the radio. As an adult, I've long used the NORAD Tracks Santa web site to keep up with St. Nick, Father Christmas, or whatever your local name is for the jolly red suited man. This year, Google officially partnered with NORAD, bringing the NORAD Santa tracking site some of its most substantial changes in years. Some of the changes I like, and some make me think I wish Google had stayed out of it. Here's how to use the site, what's different, and what's cool.

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23) What Is Google PageRank? A Guide For Searchers & Webmasters - Several times in the past few months, I've written about new Google features where PageRank was involved. Unfortunately, Google itself has very poor information about PageRank that I could use for those wanting to learn more about it. To solve that, here's a guide to PageRank, designed for searchers and site owners alike.

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24) Wikipedia Enters Top Ten Most Visited Sites - Impressive. Scanning the latest top web sites rankings from comScore for January 2007 , Wikipedia sites are highlighted for just entering the top ten most visited. OK, technically -- they're in the top ten for having the most unique visitors. In December 2006, Wikipedia sites were ranked 13th of all US web properties, with 39 million unique visitors.

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25) How To Win Friends And Influence People In Social News Networks - Still wondering why you submit an article on Digg or Reddit and it goes nowhere? The key, as with most things in life, is who you know. But as with links, clients or affiliates: you want quality over quantity. You want people who are active and have strong profiles. So how do you go about building your network? Here are eleven ways to get started.

December 2007: Search Engine Land's Most Popular Stories

Below are Search Engine Land's 10 most popular stories from December 2007:

1) Instructions On Tracking Santa With NORAD & Google: The 2007 Edition - I'm a serious Santa Claus tracker. When I was a kid, I used to get Santa updates from NORAD (the US missile tracking people) via the radio. As an adult, I've long used the NORAD Tracks Santa web site to keep up with St. Nick, Father Christmas, or whatever your local name is for the jolly red suited man. This year, Google officially partnered with NORAD, bringing the NORAD Santa tracking site some of its most substantial changes in years. Some of the changes I like, and some make me think I wish Google had stayed out of it. Here's how to use the site, what's different, and what's cool.

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2) Google Knol - Google's Play To Aggregate Knowledge Pages - Move over Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, Mahalo, and Squidoo. Maybe. That's because Google's testing its own service to let people build a repository of knowledge. In fact, knowledge forms the core of the service's name: Google Knol. Screenshot of Google Knol page (feel free to use this and those below, just link to this story, please) Google Knol is designed to allow anyone to create a page on any topic, which others can comment on, rate, and contribute to if the primary author allows. The service is in a private test beta.

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3) Tracking Santa: NORAD & Google Team Up For Christmas - Every year, I enjoy helping my kids track the approach of Santa Claus through the NORAD site, as I've written about before. This year, Google's getting in on the action. You'll be able to track Santa in Google Earth on Christmas Eve with the help of a special file. You can also download a countdown for your iGoogle home page that Google offers here.

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4) Keeping It Private On Google Reader - Almost two weeks ago, I wrote my Google Reader Gets Social With Friends Shared Items post detailing how disturbing it was that Google Reader was now sharing items with people it considered my friends, on an opt-out basis. Privacy concerns over this finally exploded this week, with Google Reader itself now reacting mainly to highlight how friend sharing can be enabled or disabled. Lost in the outcry seems to be the point that it's always been the case that sharing any item would share it with the ENTIRE WORLD, and that hasn't changed. But the change was significant in making more public a list of items that generally was hidden. Below, a revisit on sharing for the privacy concerned.

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5) Sub Domains To Be Treated As Folders By Google - Matt Cutts of Google said at PubCon that Google will be treating sub domains similar to how they treat folders on a site.

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6) Ask.com Launches AskEraser, Giving Searches Ability To Search Anonymously - Ask.com has launched AskEraser, giving searchers the ability to search anonymously. Ask.com told us about this tool back in July, and six months later, it's now live for all searchers to use. When a searcher activates AskEraser, Ask will stop recording the searcher's search queries and cookie information. This information includes IP address, User ID, Session ID, and the complete query text. AskEraser is available across many of Ask.com's properties, including Web search, image search, AskCity, news search, blog search, video search, and Maps & Directions.

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7) How Changes To The Way Google Handles Subdomains Impact SEO - At Pubcon last week, Matt Cutts mentioned a change in the way Google handles subdomains. To better understand this change and what this means for search marketers, let’s revisit common site structure choices, how they’re handled by Google, and how that impacts SEO.

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8) Searcharazzi Saturday Spectacular: The Larry Page Wedding Details - Now that the “who attended which conference this week" gossip chatter is over, we have a bigger question: Who is attending Larry Page’s wedding today? As previously reported, Larry is getting married today, and Searcharazzi is reporting to you live from an undisclosed location at the island location, if only in our minds. In any case, Searcharazzi has spent the better half of the month gathering the details of Larry’s and Lucy Southworth's pending nuptials, to be hosted by Richard Branson on Necker Island.

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9) Google Launches New iPhone Interface - I went to Google on my iPhone, and I saw a new interface. I then did some searches and saw that TechCrunch has a piece on it named Google Pre-Launches New iPhone Interface. Here are some pictures of the new interface from my iPhone:

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10) Think Beyond The Click: How To Build Landing Pages That Convert - Landing pages are an important tool in any online marketing campaign. They are one of the best ways to convert web clicks into clients, and can help to maximize your online performance. Here are some tips for getting started and building an effective landing page that meets the needs of your clients.