The 6 Variables Of Google

When it comes to search engines, Google is KING. Any website designer, writer, or web marketer will tell you that. If you are going to have a high ranking website you are going to need to know what Google wants. You as a website owner have control over 5 basic elements while Google controls the sixth exclusively. Lets take a look at these variables for a brief moment.

1. Keywords – Keywords are very important. Keywords are the cornerstone of your search engine strategy. Keywords are what targets your visitors.  You strategically place keywords in your pages and in links on your pages as bait to attract visitors to your site.

2. Content – Just as Googleis the king of search engines, content is the king of your website. Content, from Googles perspective, actually means text. And you need a lot of text. Google, and the other search engines, will index words and you want them to index the keywords you’re interested in. The more words you have the more times your keyword can appear. Create pages that are optimized for specific keywords and key phrases that you know are used frequently.

3.Page Optimization – Having good keywords and good content is just the start. You have to strategically place your content on your pages to optimize the most from your keywords. If Google finds the keywords on your page, that’s good. If they find keywords in the right places that’s powerful and will set you apart from the rest of your competition.

4.Submissions – Although this is a good way to ask the search engines to look at your site and index it, the importance people have placed on submissions is grossly inflated. There are thousands of search engines on the internet and you probably will not get indexed on 1/3 of them. The so-called site submission sites that are out there are largely scams too.  The main three search engines you MUST submit to are Google, Yahoo, and MSN. A new idea to help search engines find you more easily was introduced by Google in 2005. XML sitemaps are placed in your root directory containing a list of links to all your site pages. I strongly suggest submitting your site to the Big 3 and provide them with your sitemap.

5.Links – Links pointing to your website are extremely important in the competitve keyword market. You flat out will have a difficult time getting high rankings without them. Just to illustrate how important links are, did you realize that links can get you listed at the top of page rankings without having a keyword that was searched for as long as the links had the keywords? Thats how powerful links are! (BTW – I’ll cover link strategy next week)

6.Time – The ONE thing you have absolutly no control over. Time. Some people talk about a Google sandbox. What happens is that your site does get indexed by them but they set you aside in a holding pattern until some time elapses.Once they feel you are credible you get to come out of the sandbox and play with the big boys.  Basically the longer your site has been up the better. As always though there are exceptions.

Hopefully this has helped you understand the search engines a little better. Remember that Google, Yahoo, and MSN can be your best business partners or they can simply ignore you based on the work YOU put into your website optimization.

$5 Articles – Cheap Not Always Better

I see a lot of people wanting to purchase $5 articles on the web. I have come across many more that want articles done for much less. If you are serious about having an article marketing campaign, you need to seriously consider the quality of the article you are using.

I understand that most people that are just starting out in home businesses online do not have a very large advertising budget. With that said, you should be investing your money wisely and not just getting things cheap.

 A poorly written $5 article is not going to do your business any good. It will however make your advertising budget disappear.

I realize my rates are not much more expensive, starting out at $10. However, I too am just starting my online business. I do not charge as much as other seasoned writers do because I feel I need to hone my skills more as well. With that said though, I strive as a business person and a professional to provide quality writing for my clients.

Many people that will write $5 articles, will write crap that doesn’t sell. Period.

They will give you 500 words of nothing. Some of these folks rely on nothing more than rewording someone elses work.

Your customers deserve more.

Your business deserves more.

You deserve more.

Why You Need Good Web Content

You have taken the step to have an online presence for your business. Your research has been done and you have chosen a site host, domain name, and created your website. Now that your “online” door is open for business, how do you get visitors to find you among the thousands of your competitors? The answer is good quality web content on your site. Fresh, engaging content is the announcement that YOU can solve their problem.

Good, well written web content for your website and articles will drive potential customers to your website. Your content on your website describes what you are selling, how you can solve their problem, and why they should purchase from you. It does this through the assistance of your free 24/7 salesperson called the search engines.  Search engines look for keywords and key phrases that match sites with what a person is searching for. When you type in “picture frames” the search engines will provide you with sites that deal directly with picture frames. They do this by crawling the web content of websites and articles bring back the most relevant results.

Quality written web content on your site, or articles that point to your site,that are rich in relative keywords and key phrases will bring people to your “door”. Now that you have attracted them to your website, that very same content needs to encourage visitors to stay and see what you have to offer.

In most brick and mortar businesses a visitor may walk in and browse around a bit. Sometimes they will stay a little longer, even when they have no intention of purchasing anything, just because of the physical effort that was involved. The “I’m here might as well look around” syndrome. On the web it is just too easy for a person to click on your site, not be interested and hit the back button.  Your web content and articles not only need to bring them to your site but also keep them interested in seeing more. Engaging content will keep them interested and the longer a visitor stays the greater the potential is of them becoming a paying customer. Your content needs to flow easily and encourage your visitors to “listen” to what you have to say.

Not all visitors and traffic are created equal. Contrary to popular belief it is not the amount of traffic you get but rather the amount of qualified visitors you get. What good does it do you to have someone looking for dog collars come to your site when you are selling high end audio products? You need a targeted audience that is looking to fill a need that you have the solution for. Again your content delivers this by bringing qualified visitors in, engaging them to learn more about your business, and showing them how you will solve their problem.

Quality web content will drive the qualified people to your business and encourage them to purchase your solutions to their needs. As you can see from this, your content is the most valuable asset your online presence has. Without customers, businesses dissolve. Your website and your articles are your silent “salespeople” and when they are good they will help your business thrive.

Article Marketing Writer – Your Article Campaigner

If you own a web-based business, you know how important it is to get web traffic. Just having a website up and running will not bring you potential customers by itself.  You need to literally point people to your website and turn visitors into customers. Hiring an article marketing writer will help you accomplish this and transform your website into a thriving business.

 

Relying on search engines to find your business can be a daunting task. If you are selling a product or service on the internet, you already have hundreds if not thousands of other competitors already on the web. Search engines are not going to put you in front of potential customers’ eyes because there are more well established websites with good content that they have already been directing people towards. You will be starting at the proverbial bottom of the totem pole. Having an article marketing writer providing you with fresh well written web content and articles is a good start in raising your search engine rankings. You need to start a good, keyword rich article campaign to move your site rankings within the top ten of the major search engine rankings.

 

Search engines like Google and Yahoo love good content and fresh, relevant articles. Their sole job is to provide people with the best, freshest, and pertinent information possible. This is what article marketing is all about.

 

Lets say you run a business that sells utility knives for example. You are marketing your business and yourself as the experts in utility knives. You want to give people fresh and timely information that they may look for when searching for utility knives. You want to give them valuable information and offer them solutions by pointing them directly to your website.

 

An article marketing writer can create an informational article that you will submit to article directories. At the end of each article you have what most directories call a resource box or bio box. This is the area you will place a link that points directly to your website. Now with this article, you have given a visitor some valuable information that he has read through. When they get to the end of the article they discover where they can get more information by clicking on the link to your site.

 

Lets continue with the example of the utility knife website. Your article marketing writer has created an article using the key phrase “Safely Changing Box Knife Blades”. This article spells out in detail, with the preceding key phrase throughout, how to safely replace a dull blade. At the bottom of the article there is a link in the resource box pointing directly to your website. The link may look something like, “At XYZ Knife you can see our full line of knives with lifetime blades. Never change a blade again.”

 

The above example is very broad in scope, however you start to get the idea of what I am saying here. When someone types in “how to change knife blades” in their search box, your article is going to come up within the first few pages of search results. Personally, I have seen many cases where good articles have made the first page of results the next day or even within hours of posting. That article is pointing directly to your website. Readers are finding that article quickly and finding your site quickly. This can mean hundreds of unique visitors’ everyday that can become customers.

 

Having a good article marketing writer on your team is very advantageous to any online business owner. If you want to make money you need to have customers. If nobody knows you’re out there, they won’t visit your site.  Start seriously considering beginning an article campaign and have an article marketing writer create keyword rich, well written articles for you. Your business will flourish by this effort.

 

Getting The Best Results From Submitting Your Articles

There are a lot of questions circulating about how to submit articles to garner the best results. Many people and companies will tell you to submit to as many directories as possible. That’s fine but I have also discovered some things that will help you in this matter. It takes a huge amount of time to submit your article manually to hundreds of directories. To help speed up the process, more and more people are using article submission services and software. Her are some thoughts for getting the best results from submitting your articles.

If you choose to use article submission services or software here is what I recommend. Do your research on any service or software program that promises to submit your article to thousands of directories. You may find that the directories they submit to are not even related to your article. If your not reaching targeted people, what good is that article doing for you?

Be careful and aware of how much time and money you are investing while submitting articles. While article marketing is extremely valuable and effective, wasting time or money is not going to help you succeed. You may have to change the title or a keyword here and there depending upon the directory. Just don’t get yourself tied up and wasting time performing these simple tasks.

When I use an article submitter, I prefer to use one that is semi automatic. I like to review each submission before it actually gets submitted. This way I can make necessary category changes and such depending upon the directory. It also allows me to see if the particular directory is going to be useful for me. I don’t want my business articles going into fashion directories.

A little note about the articles themselves. Don’t just create articles strictly for the sake of it. Create good quality, keyword driven articles that are informational. Use proper grammar and paragraph set ups as well. Keep your articles somewhere between 350 – 700 words. You want to give out good information but you’re not writing a book either.

Lastly, I have found that it is not necessarily the quantity of directories you submit to, but rather the quality of the article that gets the best results. Getting the best results from submitting your article is simply having a good quality article in the first place. I usually submit my article to the top ten directories and find that I get the best results from a well thought out keyword driven article.

Hire A Ghost Writer And Increase Search Rankings

There have been changes going on all over the major search engines. Google and the others have two main goals for users, filter out the junk and get paid through advertisements through sponsor links. The search engines are provided the power to decide which sites to accept or not because of the competition provided by the sponsor links. Many sites disappear from the top page rankings because they are being replaced with more fresh, relevant sites. Question is are you appearing in the top ten? Or are you feeling frustrated because no matter what you do, you just cannot seem to make any progress? Most websites could move up in the page rankings simply by adding good quality content to their pages. Most website owners realize that they need some help in this area. Hiring and working with good, experienced ghost writers is a viable solution to moving your page up through the rankings.

Website owners are becoming increasingly frustrated because they attempt to use ghost writers that don’t know much more than they do when it comes to writing good content. Most people don’t know what their needs are and hire ghost writers that are as clueless as they are, which does nothing but waste more time and lose more sales. Service companies that outsource ghost writers doesn’t mean that they know what they’re doing as far as SEO either. Let me give you some fairly simple guidelines to help you secure a good experienced ghost writer that will help your business grow by moving you up in the keyword search rankings.

First remember that you know your site and business better than anybody else can. You need to direct any writer with a plan to see good results from your efforts. You need to know how many words that each page of your website is going to need. To start getting good SEO you want to have between 300 – 500 words per page.

You content that is going to make your point stand out. Each page that your ghost writer produces should have specific points for your visitors to see. Using sub headings and bullets to breakdown the article makes it easy for the reader to skim through it and get the highlights you want to get across. Content is informational, not necessarily a sales pitch. People want information which you will give them and gently lead them to purchase from you.

Your content need to have proper keyword and key phrase placement. Too few and the search engines won’t find you. Too many and you will actually get penalized by the search engines. When using keywords, let your ghost writer know which ones you want to focus on for each page. Those keywords should be spread throughout the content with a density level of 1% – 2%. I usually use an hourglass plan, heavy use in the top and bottom with a few scattered in the middle.

Instruct plainly to your ghost writer exactly what keyword to use on each page. You want them to be different for each page as well. Don’t forget the contact, service, and about us pages of your website either. Use the keywords in your meta tags, meta description, but only if it will make sense to your reader. The meta description should be to the point as to what that page is about. When using meta keywords, research them before handing them over to your ghost writer. You want good targeted words to drive targeted traffic to your site.

Now that you have a general plan, go out and hire a ghost writer. This planning you have done is not writing the content. You want to find someone that will follow your directions and vision and produce the content you are looking for. Be specific with your instructions as this will give the ghost writer clear direction. The best providers will be easy to access either by email or phone. Hire a writer who will give you a specific pricing plan for your work. Have them do one or two of the pages first before giving them the entire job. This way both you will know if you are connecting thoughts well. Plus it will give you an idea of how quickly they can produce the work for the rest of the project.

If you get back content that is not exactly what you were looking for but very close, that’s fine. Remember what I said before, you know your business better than anybody. You can either take out a word or two or add a sentence where you think it needs to be. Either way accept the work and pay your writer.

Hiring a ghost writer to produce content for your website makes good business sense. Working closely with them will help you not only feel more comfortable throughout the project, but will also make sure you achieve the results you desire.

Why Article Marketing Is The Best Traffic Builder

In order for your business or affiliate program to earn you money, it needs to be getting plenty of targeted traffic. The best traffic builder that will not only bring you traffic now but years to come as well, is article marketing. The most unique thing about it is that its free 24 hour advertising. Articles contain the information people are looking for in relationship to a product or service. If you are supplying the information, people will be looking at the link to your website at the bottom of the article. This drives traffic straight to your website or affiliate program which in turn will put money in your bank account. Let’s look at why advertising this way works so well.

Writing and submitting articles is like duplicating yourself over and over again. You write, or have written, you informational article and then submit it to several article directories. In turn websites and blogs, as well as search engines, find and use those articles. Then thousands of ezine, website, and newsletter owners reprint your article with your information and put it in their sites. This puts your product out to literally tens of thousands of people. If the article is well written, that traffic will be targeted traffic.

Article marketing still remains free and that’s a big plus for people just starting out. Articles are the most effective tool in your advertising arsenal. The trick is too have good keyword rich content relevant to your product or service. You can write these yourself or you can hire a ghostwriter experienced in article marketing to do it for you. If you have the extra funds , you can invest in submitting software that will submit your articles to thousands of directories for you. You can of course submit to them manually for free too.

Marketing with articles will bring you immediate results. Simple math will tell you the more articles you write and the more you submit the more traffic you will generate. Targeted traffic will result in sales. Submitting your article to high traffic directories will gain you immediate results in higher traffic to your site. I tend to think of it this way, if I write and submit 30 articles I expect to get at least 30 sales that month.

The more articles you submit, the more you are recognized as an expert in your niche. This will build confidence in your potential customers that you are the person they should be purchasing from. Regularly writing high quality content gives your customers a sense of trust that you know what you are talking about and believe in your product or service.

Article marketing will increase your rankings in the search engines. The best traffic builder then is good quality information that the search engines will love. Keep your content fresh and have good keywords that your potential customers are typing in their web browsers. A good article with these qualities will move up quickly when your specific term is typed in.

Article marketing is by far the best traffic builder. It’s long term advertising as well. Unlike classified ads which run out after a certain number of weeks, articles are on the web for years. You will earn money from good, quality articles for years to come. Anybody out there can use article marketing as their greatest sales tool. So what are you waiting for, write some articles and get to submitting them. If you want hire somebody who has the knowledge to write the articles for you. Just get your product out there and start earning money

Using A Keyword Research Tool For Better SEO Marketing

You have a fantastic product or service that verybody needs. The website you’ve created looks very good. Problem now is getting visitors who will become customers. Whether it’s website content or article marketing, you need to use good targeted keywords that your potential customers are using. Investing in a quality keyword research tool will help you achieve higher page rankings and more traffic.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the single most powerful tool in online marketing. Good SEO will enable you to rank higher in the search engines and improve your targeted web traffic. When it’s done correctly, SEO will bring in unlimited traffic without spending thousands of dollars in advertising. The key is getting good keyword optimization in your website on your articles.

Conduct research on keywords and keyword phrases related to your market niche. You can do this manually or invest in a keyword research tool that will do the work for you. You want to find the keywords that are in demand but have low competition. Find keywords that can be used in page titles, meta keywords and descriptions, and in the body of your website or articles.

Keyword density should be between 3% to 5% of your website or article. I choose to keep keyword density to between 1% and 2% in articles because too many and search engines will actually penalize you for keyword stuffing. Be sure that when writing your content, or articles, that you maintain an even flow throughout. Remember too that your content needs to be relevant and high in quality. Search engines love sites with great content more than they do images and graphics.

Two businesses are in the same market, selling the same product and at the same price. One is doing great while the other is struggling to make a profit. What’s the difference between the two? The business that is taking off is the one that is taking full advantage of good SEO and having tons of traffic come his way.

You will constantly have to produce updated content and articles to maintain your website and keep it relevant and valuable to your audience. A keyword research tool should be in your business inventory so that you can keep up with your keyword optimization in your website. Remember too, you can also outsource your web content and articles to an experienced writer. Either way, make sure that your website is current and up to date so you can take full advantage of SEO.

 

You can hire me to write articles or web content for you. See my “About” page or email me at richmondbiz@yaoo.com