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Search Engine Placement - Optimization and Marketing
Search Engine Optimization is simply the art of placing your site in the top search engines per keywords or keyword phrases.Marketing research shows Internet usage is still such that 75% of users find the websites they are looking for via the top 12 Search Engines.
Lets start by listing the top Search Engines for Affiliate Marketing
To reach users who are looking for your terms you will need to position yourself on those same search engines that hundreds of millions people are using daily. When queried, a search engine will reveal all of the web sites it has in its database about a particular subject or product. If your web site happens to fall into the requested search category, this is called your web site ranking.
Your web site could be number 1 or number 2001 on a particular search engine. Some search engines will reveal hundreds of thousands of web pages on a search topic! When a web site is developed with search engine ranking in mind, we call this search engine optimization (SEO).
Keyword Tools for Search Engine Optimization research:
The first aspect of SEO is keyword research; there are quite a few tools available for this. Google's Zeitgeist provides you with its usage statistics whilst wordtracker provides marketers with a meta search, across a few search engines, statistics tool.
Once you have which keywords you are looking to target you may now start the process.
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How Search Engines work
Before you can actually begin to start optimizing a web site, you must understand how search engines and their spiders work. This information will give you a head start on the process of building an optimized web site.
Alot of Web designers do not truly understand the function of search engines. This usually results in poorly developed web sites that usually disappear on the Internet, never to be seen again. Sure, anyone can build a web site with a little practice. However, knowing how search engines work and building a web site that meets their criteria and achieves top ranking results is quite different.
There presently exist two types of major Search Engines, spider indexed and human indexed. It is important to understand the differences between the two because the way they index pages will dramatically effect your sites position.
For the most part, search engines were designed to index and display web sites and their pages. When a search engine displays its results, the pages seen are a result of how the site was either submitted or displayed on that page.
Search engines are displaying what was fed to them from an information standpoint. How this information is "fed" to the search engine is where some of the major differences come into play. This is where you come in. You are in total control of what a search engines sees when it comes to your site.
Keep in mind that the main idea of web site optimization is about getting ranked on search engines. It has nothing to do with how fancy your web site looks. About 95% of the search engines on the Internet are self-indexing or spider robot indexed. The other 5% are human indexed.
We will discuss the differences between the two in a moment. At this juncture, the important point to learn is that human indexed search engines cannot be manipulated. You cannot optimize your web site for human indexed search engines. Unless you know someone and can pay him or her off, you are out of luck. The good news is that human indexed search engines represent a very small percentage of search engines. Because of this, we will not spend much time on the subject of human indexed search engines. Lets look at them both at this time to better understand how they work.
Spider based Search Engines
Spider indexed search engines are actually just large databases of web sites. They operate entirely on their own without much human intervention. They exist solely to index web pages.
Their method is completely automated and performed by what is called a "spider". A spider is nothing more then a piece of computer software that moves silently from web site to web site gathering information. When you contact the search engine, the spider robot will visit your site. Once the search engine receives the signal, the spider will arrive, look at your site, read the pages, index your content and follow links to move on. The spider's only reason for existence is to capture and index the pages of your web site.
Every Search Engine basically has its own spider that it deploys to do its indexing. Because of this, you must ask all of the Search Engines individually to deploy its spider to your site. After the spider reads and captures the information on a web site, it will eventually list its findings on the search engine that deployed it.
The way it indexes your web site and where it places it on its Search Engine depends on a number of important factors that we will discuss throughout this site. If you change your web pages, eventually the spider will get back around to your site (or re-index) and place your changes on its Search Engines.
The vast majority of search engines index their pages using spiders. These Search Engines include Altavista.com, Google.com, Msn.com, Aol.com and Lycos.com.
Spider indexed Search Engines are the only ones that you can optimize your site for. Because of this, 99% of this site is dedicated to spider indexed Search Engines and how to gain top positions on them.
If you set your site up properly, your will receive very promising results. Spider driven search engines will rank your web site based on the information they receive from indexing. Giving the spider the right information is critical for success. The better the information, the higher the ranking. Currently, most spiders are indexing web sites in the same manner. This will be the main focus of your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. This is good because it allows you to design your site once, and submit it to all of the Search Engines.
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Human reviewed Directories
Often called directories, these search engines do not use spiders to visit and index your web site. With human indexed web sites, web pages are manually indexed. When you submit your web site to a directory, a living-breathing employee actually examines your site and does the work manually.
Usually, you will be indexed based on where the person doing your indexing feels you belong. Because of this, it is almost impossible to manipulate these search engines when it comes to where you get positioned. Another big difference is directories only index a web site once. Unlike spiders that return and re-index your web site, directories don't have this option. Once again, getting to the top of directories is not something that anyone can provide as a service because it is left to a person to decide where you belong.
It is not easy to predict what a person may do on any given day. The bottom line is that you should submit your site to directory search engines, even though you have no way of knowing where they will place you.
Now that you understand the differences between engines, you must now build naming conventions for all your pages. Name each page with the term that you have selected for that page.
Keyword rich copy for SEO Keyword density
We can now start writing that all important keyword rich copy. You must strategically place your chosen keyword in the heading body and copy of the page that you are designing.
You however cannot spam the word by simply over repeating it. The idea is to be responsible in all your efforts. The search engine spiders are intelligent and will pick up over repetitive content.
There has to be a balance and weight of your keywords to the overall copy. Noise words must be taken into account as well and dropped completely or ignored in the total word count.
When building the pages it is important to put keyword rich copy in but as a rule you need not have too much copy on the page, we should at max have like 500 - 600 total word count on the page.
You should also put copy into the alt tags on the page. Here again like all your search engine optimization efforts the key to success is being responsible. So don't spam your alt tags just place one or two tags in there.
Introduction to Meta Tags
Every web site is built on what is called HTML code. Within a HTML based web page is the ability to use what are called meta tags. How these tags are used has become a major part of most web page optimizing efforts. Whether or not the use of these tags actually has helped these companies or individuals in their efforts is another story all together. In the majority of cases, it probably did not. Actually, the use of meta tags in the area of web site optimization is the most abused, most misunderstood and most talked about. Over the last five years, meta tags have been sold as a magical solution to high rankings by many confused web developers search engine consultants. This not entirely the truth.
The truth is that meta tags do play an important role in the game of web site optimization if used according to guidelines. The effectiveness meta tags is limited to their involvement with the rest of your web sites' elements. To reach high rankings, you need to pull all of the available optimizing resources together. I decided early that it was best to research what everyone else was teaching or preaching about website optimization - including meta tags - before I began writing. I wanted to get an idea of how far behind our current experts were, and who was teaching proper methods. I downloaded over 500 pages on the subject via the Internet and began to read through all of it. I quickly realized that virtually every single published report was similar to all of the rest. Every single company, individual or consultant was copying his report from another and putting a new spin on it to make it appear to be original.
After reading about one third of the documents, I threw them all away. I saw no value in reading on. Every page and report was identical. What we now have is thousands of experts sharing and stealing the same material. One example that really blew me away was a published book on search engine optimization that I recently scanned through. It was nothing more then all of the same reports available online in a printed form. I could immediately tell by the way many topics were labeled. It also read like a series of reports. There was no real beginning and no real end. The whole book was a jumbled mess of repetitive nonsense. The two incompetent authors apparently just downloaded hundreds of reports and decided to compile them into a book.
The finished product covers the same topics over and over again. The worst part is that much of it is inaccurate. It's like a story that is told 100 times by 100 different people. It always changes and evolves into something further away from the truth each time. These so called experts that are writing reports (and books) have no clue as to what they are writing about. With web site optimization, it can't change every other day. It has to stay the way it is until the search engines decide to put a new spin on it. When they change the criteria of a spider, the optimization methods must change with them.
How to view your title tag and meta tags
Your title tag and your meta tags exists in the HTML code of a web site. Their function is to direct your web browser on a number of different topics. The HTML code of a web site is like a cars engine - nothing could even begin to work without it and its all under the hood, out of sight. What we are going to do is walk through each of the tags and explain exactly how each functions, both to search engine and site users.
The first thing we need to do though is learn how to view your source code.
This will allow you to see all your HTML tags, including your title tag and your meta tags. Here is what you do. First, point you mouse at the web page you want to view and click the right button. Earlier, I showed you how to view any image on a web page. In that example, you would point the cursor at an image and right click.
To view your pages' source code, you do not want your mouse cursor on any links or graphics. On some web pages, this can be a challenge. Some pages have so many graphics and links that everywhere you point your mouse; the page contains an image or link. Just try to point it in an area where there is nothing but background color. After you right click, scroll down to "view source" and left click. What you will see next should be a note pad that will display your HTML source code.
You are now examining the HTML code of the web page that you are on. You can do this on any page that you choose on anybody's web site, including your own. You can examine their code and determine how their site is set up. Now that you can view the HTML, we are going to move on and discuss what these tags should say to begin optimizing your web pages.
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Link Equity
Having another site linked to yours is almost vital when it comes to getting your site indexed.
Some Search Engine wont even consider your site if there is not at least one outside link pointing to it. If you have to, have someone that owns an indexed site place a hidden link to your site.
Having a link point to your site also helps in getting spider traffic. If the site that has a link to yours is already indexed, you will also receive a visit from the spiders that visit their site. This is a really fast way to get indexed.
Google Pagerank
Google PageRank is a software based system for ranking the relative "weight" of webpages. This concept is based on the huge number of links between websites. Google considers a link from a website to your own a "vote" in its index of sites, which adds value to your own PageRank. Thus, if your site is relevant, popular, and well constructed, Google believes a large number of sites should be linking to your own.
It is important to understand that PageRank is completely separate from your rankings within different search terms. It is measured on a scale of one to ten, with PageRank ten websites holding the most value. However, high PageRank is not a valid substitute for traditional on-site Optimization. Just because you have a high PageRank does not mean your site can rank for your intended search terms. Instead, PageRank must be coupled with hard work on your site to achieve premier Google rankings.
Although your own site's PageRank no longer plays a direct role in determining your ranking, it is still a good general indicator of the quality of inbound links. However, the PageRank of sites linking to you is a major factor in getting your site ranked. By acquiring a high number of high PageRank links, you can drive up your rankings for a multitude of Search terms. It is important to note that links from sites with PageRank zero have no weight at all in Google. So, instead of securing a hundred links from free Geocities sites, focus your energy on acquiring a smaller number of links from high PageRank websites. Google is the most important of all Search Engines as well as the most stickiness. the are no guarentee on any timeframs for Googlebot to index your site. The exact formula for Google PR is
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Submitting Your Pages
You have a killer domain name, you have all your pages built and tweaked for the Search Engines, your site passes the tests when analyzed, we are all set to submit it to Search Engines and the directories.
Word of caution, submit everything manually, do not use automated submission software, Search Engines pick up on this and can penalize your site.
A new trend is to pay an enhanced fee to get an express listing. This is for you to pay in order to get your site spidered soon. Usually within 72 hours.
Conclusion - Search Engine Optimization and Marketing
This section will be further developed as time goes on, we will however say that Search Engine Optimization and marketing is vital to you efforts to get more users and get noticed. It is not the answer to all preys solution that everybody makes it out to be, but it is vital. Visit back here for further information links and tools posted to help you become that super casino affiliate.
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