Search Engine Optimization Placement News

Microsoft will focus on growing its own online advertising and internet search business, including MSN, after it withdrew its takeover offer for Yahoo.

Just two months ago, Google’s stock was down 45% percent, and Yahoo and MSN appeared ready to combine forces, but as it stands today Google’s stock is hot and Microsoft has decided to stop trying to purchase Yahoo.

There have always been do-it-yourselfers succeeding at web promotion and search engine optimization. In fact, many of the established businesses offering web services today came from humble beginnings, perhaps nothing more than a college student with a laptop, an internet connection, and too much free time. The Web evolves as the result of the innovation and experimentation of individuals. The sharing of knowledge. The do-it-yourself attitude.

As text link brokers and mass link networking decrease in value and use in social media increases, it becomes more important for companies to have an internal approach and awareness of search engine marketing. Don’t get me wrong; outsourcing to SEO firms is still a smart option. That said, making the most out of Web 2.0 usually requires some level of cooperation between SEO firm and site owner. You don’t need to be an expert to know the basics of good SEO practices, and that added knowledge will be a great advantage whether you’re working along side an SEO team, or promoting your own site in your spare time.

So if you’re on a “need to know” basis with SEO, the following points should illustrate what an overall plan should include:

1. Create Search Engine-Friendly Content

Unique web content is your most valuable asset, and ensuring search engines can read it is crucial. Text embedded in images or Flash cannot be read, so make sure you use important keywords, headings, and hyperlinks in plain text form. Instead of using images as navigation links, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) makes it easy to format those links to look more like ‘buttons’, thus creating powerful anchor text as well as making it visually appealing. Use heading tags properly and don’t try to hide keywords or text by making it the same color as the page background or shrinking it so it can’t be seen. Make sure the keywords you wish to rank high for are used frequently in the page copy but within reason.

Now that you’ve created good content, is it actually being crawled? Copy and paste a page’s URL into a search engine to see if it has been indexed. If you’ve just created the page, it may take a few days to show up. Aside from age, many factors can lead to web pages not being indexed by search engines, such as duplicate content (ie. a printer-friendly version of a page might be indexed and the normal version not, or vice versa); links generated by JavaScript instead of HTML; poor site architecture (ie. using too many sub-directories); lengthy, dynamically generated URLs using special characters; and orphaned pages.

2. Choose Your Keywords Wisely

One of the first steps of SEO, this one needs to be done properly the first time or all your future efforts and promotion could end up being wasted. Start by writing down general terms that describe your products, services or web content. Use keyword research services to investigate word and phrase variations. Wordtracker, KeywordDiscovery, and the Google AdWords suggestion tool are good starting points. The goal is to find those niche phrases that your target market uses to find sites just like yours and optimize your site for them. If the phrases do not get enough use by searchers, your profits from ranking for them will be low. At the same time, stay away from general terms that are tougher to rank for (ie. like “art”, “computers”, “business”, etc.) as a great portion of the traffic will be irrelevant and you’ll break the bank attaining such competitive phrases.

3. Get Others to Link to Your Site

In theory there are countless ways, some traditional and some quite innovative, to get other web sites to link to yours. In practice, it can be easier said than done. Google defines a link as it pertains to rankings and SEO as a “vote” from one site to another. The more quality votes your site receives, the greater chance you have of rankings well. If a well established site links to yours, that link carries more weight than one would from a mom & pop shop or less reputable page.

If your site has useful content and is doing something unique, you’re already ahead of much of the competition. People need a reason to link to your site, as very few will do it out of the goodness of their heart. Trading links can work, but link exchange networks have decreased in value and won’t be of much use in competitive fields. Buying links, if you haven’t heard, is a big Google no-no. While entire articles could be written on this topic, here are a few popular methods of acquiring incoming links:

- issuing company press releases with a link back to your site
- submitting to reputable business directories such as Yahoo! and Business.com
- be active on related blogs by commenting and exchanging ideas
- if you have clients with web sites, ask if they would mind adding your link in a “partners” section
- participate in relevant forums and discussion boards with a link in your signature
- write and submit original articles to web publications in your field with a link in your bio
- get involved in social media and bookmarking

4. Join the Social Media Revolution

The collaboration between Internet users and the development of online communities is at an all-time high. Social bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Furl, Reddit, and Technorati offer users a way to store their favorite pages and media online, and share it with others. These services also provide a way to promote your own content or create a buzz over a product or service. Creating a Myspace page or Squidoo “lens” is also a way to network and share information.

However, if your goal is to generate sales then you must offer something without the promotional hype. The reality of social media is that popularity is based almost entirely on public interest. If your information or media isn’t unique or of interest to anyone, you cannot force success using social media communities.

The key to using social media and bookmarking sites to your advantage is to not be shy. Network with other users, bookmark and share useful content, create eye-catching titles for your entries, and tell your friends and co-workers to vote on content you have on these sites.

These four points are a general guideline to follow for SEO. Search engine optimization experts and firms are a good outsourcing option in competitive markets, while the DIY attitude can yield great results for web site owners with smaller marketing budgets. If you’re in the latter group, hopefully this helps get you started.

Yahoo Inc., resisting a $44.6 billion takeover by Microsoft Corp., which runs MSN.com, may wring a higher offer out of the software maker after finding an alternate suitor in Time Warner Inc.’s AOL unit.

A new partner may help CEO Jerry Yang turn around investor confidence in Yahoo. Less than a week ago, his options appeared limited after Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer threatened to cut his bid if the board refused to give in. With AOL in the fray, a better price is possible, and The New York Times said Thursday that News Corp. may join Microsoft’s offer.

“Microsoft, if it wants to stay in the game, is going to have to increase its bid,” Larry Haverty, associate portfolio manager at Gamco Investors Inc., said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “Yahoo is a strategic necessity for Microsoft.”

Haverty said $35 a share is a fair value for Yahoo. His firm managed about $31 billion in assets as of Dec. 31, including shares of Microsoft and Yahoo.

If Microsoft teams with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., the transaction would unite Microsoft’s MSN, Yahoo and News Corp.’s MySpace, the Times said. Microsoft’s original bid is $31 a share.

Many brick and mortar companies that are catering to their local clientele find it hard to SEO for local markets despite targeting the best keywords. Quite naturally this is not a surprising matter as many of them, although efficient in running their off line businesses, typically stumble over two critical blocks.

Stumbling Blocks and SEO for Local Markets

When local businesses set to do SEO for local markets, many of them invariably ignore the need to think rationally because they are advised by SEO experts to target the big three search engine users and sometimes get confused and tackle this feat on a global level resulting in global traffic. The direct fall out of this step is exposing your business offers, products or services to the world at large only to dilute all other local online SEO efforts. If your product is not global you are in trouble.

So here is the stumbling block number one.

1. Not using localized target keywords, however good they are, will leave your new websites way down the SERP’s locally. Actual localized keywords you should be targeting in which will bring you a steady stream of natural traffic.

The second block where you might probably stumble, especially if you are new to web and optimization is wrongfully assuming internet marketing techniques as something radically different and for removed from the earthly- worldly affairs that we all do by trial and errors over and again. The crux of the matter here is SEO for local markets is only a small part of larger marketing exercises, with certain twists, to get exposure with local locations.

Here is the second stumbling point in SEO for local markets.

2. SEO for local markets is not a marketing technique but a sophisticated local technique of optimizing websites on a local basis. Obviously, the one who knows the pulse of the market is not the SEO expert but can contribute his knowledge to SEO expert.

So, What Is Actually SEO For Local Markets?

Let me dash you through steps involved in SEO for local markets in short.

1. Localize your target keywords. This includes prefixing or suffixing local terms, names, and names of areas, cities or zip codes with target keywords. Example: “remodeling contractors Orange County”, not “remodeling contractors”.

2. Submit to local search engines (find one, if you don’t know already), directories and web based yellow pages.

3. Display your mailing address with street address, zip code and complete. Once your site is indexed, these words gain prominence as a part of content.

4. Submit to local listing sections of Yahoo and DMOZ which is in addition to generalized listing.

5. Don’t leave out general SEO techniques because you want to SEO for local markets which the power of link building which can be done globally as there might not be enough local sites to beat you competition.

6. Get on the local maps of Google, Yahoo, as this generally puts you on front of the local search engines.

7. Exchange links and banners with local businesses as the local traffic exchange will bring you new business. Avoid changing banners or links with competitors but exchange them with businesses that will complement you. Verify their traffic so it’s an almost even exchange.

Dominating local SEO can be done fairly easily, you just have to either hire a professional with a proven track record or take time to learn local SEO. The main concern is to be patient as it takes at least 3 months to start seeing results.

I think the main difference is in companies that talk to versus companies who are actually walking the walk, is obviously where their website ranks within the search engines, as well as their clients. A company that I’ve done when business with so many different times in the past referred to as http://www.iconwebsitesearchengineoptimization.com/ has showed me time and time again that they actually can and will produce results that thereafter. I know that they also have a guarantee with the work that they do something to the effect of 50% down in the final 50% is based on them actually getting the results they said that they would get. So obviously deaf in one of five comp has integrity, and can give you a list of different customers that they’ve done business with over the years.  As Wells testimonials. I know, they also manage pay per click campaigns for various different clients. To my knowledge, they actually go in and create landing pages to the various different major search engine such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. I didn’t actually know this and the very beginning, but I realize now that they actually have in the pay per click sector provided the company placing your nose with a doing it actually can optimize the Google paper click campaign. This is referred to as Google optimization, MSN optimization, as well as Yahoo optimization. I know that there are some fairly aggressive affiliate marketing programs as well. When it comes down to Internet marketing these guys are the best. They also have a site map generator that will generate an incomplete site map for your interior pages.

Some people come to us as a search engine optimization firm asking us.  Can we take your existing website and get them within the top 10 results of Google, Yahoo and MSN. And the fact is, however on flattering it may be.  If your website is not constructed in the right way. Then your chances ultimately are slim to none. We actually did search engine optimization initially for a large publicly traded company, which name I won’t get into right now.  And although they were publicly traded their website was substandard to say the least. Throughout the entire database when you navigated to various different products.  It was all out, putting from the database source. What I mean by this is, it was reporting directly out of the database looking something like this, for example,  www. stevestv. com content.php?p_catId=3 other thing is that every single page output it exactly like this. From a search engine optimization point of view, a database outputting in this way and not being able to have the are URLs output in a way that it would look like they were coming from an HTML page is not in any way shape or form beneficial to search engine optimization.  The other reason that it becomes a big prom is that it looks like it has duplicate text of going on throughout the own toys site.

Needless to say, we ended up doing search engine optimization on the site as best we could put our results were not anywhere that they would normally are. I think ultimately the decline was satisfied with the work to we had done, but it’s just disappointing working so hard on the project in getting the results that to you or not accept them. It’s sort of like trying to scoop out the water of the Titanic as it was on its way down to the bottom of the ocean. Obviously when you look at it from that standpoint, it’s a near impossible feat per yet as a person hired to produce it, you got no choice but to try.

In a looking back at that particular search engine optimization deal.  I remember us coming to the client and telling them at the time that they really needed to rebuild the whole entire website for us to have an effective search engine optimization campaign. He said they wanted us to just create site maps, and see if we had some type of affiliate marketing program for him. I think in the end.  Personally I think that they should just sprung and created a brand-new website.

A play something that I would love some people do make some comments about is the newest update that Google seems to be making to its search engine. Over the last seven days I’ve been looking at various different websites that were initially ranking Berrier high in their page ranks and now based on Google’s new algorithm a lot of these websites that once had very high page ranks fell off like a ski jump. I remember there was one company that had a page rank of the 10. This the most do you understand is a near impossibility.  Being that I guess at the time that there was only somewhere in the area of 30 in the world. And after this new page rank update through cool that same website has a page rank of a six. That is very disturbing to say the least.

Search Engine Optimization for Small Business Owners

Small business owners are often limited by small marketing budgets and manpower. But that doesn’t mean they can’t compete against larger businesses or websites when focused on search engine optimization. SEO is a basic marketing tool that everyone should use regardless of size.Can the small websites compete with the big guys?

An RSS feed is a wonderful way to keep fresh and new content on your website on a regular basis. Google  happens to love when websites have new fresh new content on a daily basis.  One of the reasons this is so is the corners.  The search engines are very hungry for new content. The next question is, where do you get some very good RSS feeds from. One of the many different places that you can get a good RSS feed is Yhoo, Blogs, and news feds. The one thing that is very important is to make sure your custom website is pulling an RSS feed from the proper places. What I mean by this is you want to make sure that its industry related feed. If you go to www.preferredprint.com you will notice that this particular website is getting its feed through a news feed that actually reports about full color printing. This is obviously very important because it’s an industry related feed.

The other thing that’s very important to do is to make sure that the graphic designer who is designing and layout of your custom website understands the way to set up the layout of this website so the RSS feed doesn’t blow up the page. I’ve seen this happen many times before, when RSS feed expands too much is actually makes the whole website look deformed.

The truth is, if your website, preferably a custom-designed website and not some  website template, and that website has been optimized that is search engine optimized to maximize your exposure on Internet.  It is generally a very wonderful gift. It’s been said many times in the past that the best things in life are free.  Such goes for search engine optimization. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not the end-all be-all and chances are you still do no one to your fair share of paper click advertising.  But what it does do, is it brings down your costs per acquisition. What I mean by this is let’s say you’re spending three dollars per click on paper click advertising with either Google Yahoo or MSN. And then you’re able to do some search engine optimization which it then also gives gives you an additional 250 to 500 hits a day more on your website. Then, what ends up happening is you end up actually reducing the cost per click on all your advertising. There are some websites that I have that all they have is search engine optimization done to them and as a result of that we still get a tremendous amount inbound calls as well our fair share of online purchases.

Another thing that you want to think about doing is probably running some banners on some websites that have a tremendous amount inbound traffic.

This are also some very good free online business directories. I will list a few of them did.  But I know that don’t charge anything whatsoever for you to list yourselves on their business directories.

1.) http://www.freeprintingdirectoryonline.com/   

 2. ) http://www.freebusinessdirectoryonline.com/