Identifying a Marketing Message that Works

In your consulting business, chances are you have spent a lot of time thinking about the specific services you can provide to clients. You've probably spent a great deal of time and effort working on processes, so that when clients come to you you're able to provide them real solutions.

Unfortunately, many solo professionals don't put the same kind of time and thought into their marketing message. They put up a website, perhaps, that goes into great detail about how it is they can solve their clients' problems. Then, they can't understand why no one is buying.

It's because they haven't developed a core marketing message. What, exactly, is your core marketing message? It's the message you want to get across to your potential customers. It's the thing that will convince potential customers that you have the answer to their problem. The success of your business will, ultimately, depend greatly on how clear and effective your core marketing message is.

Introducing Yourself

One of the reasons you're marketing your business is so that people will choose to hire you. That sound's rather basic, but it can be overlooked. Your marketing message needs to say who you are. Making sure your name, or your business name, is included in your marketing efforts will help insure that, even if the potential client doesn't hire you right away, they'll remember you for when they are ready to buy.

In the process of introducing yourself, don't get carried away. Talking about yourself can distract your potential customers and, in many cases, push them away. They're not interested as much in who you are as they are in what you can do for them.

In some niches, it can be useful to provide some biographical information. For example, you might say, "I am Dr. Rogers, and I am a physician at State Hospital" or "I am Jan Smith, a certified clinical psychologist." If your niche has recognized certifications or associations, you can certainly include this information in your marketing. As a general rule, however, brevity is best.

Identifying Problems

The next thing you need to focus on in your core marketing message is a problem that needs to be solved. People buy things, and they pay consultants and coaches, to solve problems. This is true for just about any consulting business. If you're a writing coach, your clients have a problem with their writing ability (or with selling their writing, perhaps.). If you're a weíght loss coach, your clients probably have a weight problem. If you're a back pain coach, your clients have back pain.

It seems basic, but identifying the specific problems that your coaching solves is integral to your core marketing message. You want to reach people that have a need, and then say, "Hey! You there! I can fix that!" That is how you get clients' attention. That's how your potential clients know you're talking to them, and how they know you have something that they just might want to listen to. Think about some of the most effective commercials and marketing campaigns you've seen.

Acne medications don't start out their advertisements by talking about ingredients. Instead, they say, "Are you tired of not looking your best?" 

They identify a problem right away: with acne, you don't look your best. Your core marketing message should address a problem or problems of your target market. Make a list of the top problems in your target market - perhaps three to five problems - and decide which ones you can solve. Focus your marketing efforts on these.

Offering Outcomes

The natural thing to do, once you've identified a problem, is talk about solutions and processes. However, when it comes to your core marketing message, solutions and processes need to take a back seat.

You see, people out there who have a problem aren't looking for methods. They aren't looking for a process. They aren't even looking for solutions.

What they want are outcomes.

The person with back pain doesn't want medicine. They don't want exercise, physical therapy or coaching. They want to be free from back pain. The person with acne doesn't want hydrocortisone creams or UV treatments. They want to get rid of their acne. It's not enough to identify problems; potential customers know they have problems. Identifying problems is just how you get their attention. You need to tell those potential customers exactly why they need you. You have to be able to identify specific outcomes. You need to know what your potential clients want to get out of the situation, decide if you can provide it, and then give it to them.

As the next step in the process of developing your core marketing message, you need to consider each of those problems you identified previously. For each problem, ask yourself, "What is the ideal outcome your potential customers are hoping for?" Once you've identified those outcomes, they become an impressive tool in your marketing efforts. 

A Note About Process

Just because the process of solving problems shouldn't be included in your marketing message doesn't mean you shouldn't consider it. Before you attach a given outcome to a problem, you'd better be sure you have a process in place that will solve the problem and provide the desired outcome. If you can't create the outcome, you have to strike it from your marketing message.

Putting it All Together

So, now that you have identified the various components of your core marketing message, it's time to actually formulate and articulate that message. Your core marketing message says something along these lines: "I am _____. I work with _____ who have this problem_____. I help them to _____." 

So, you might say, "I am John Sebastian. I work with older men and women who have lower back pain. I help them to manage their pain effectively and lead normal, productive lives." 

Establishing a coherent core marketing message that identifies who you are, identifies the problem you can solve and gives the potential customer a look at what life looks like after their problem is solved is key to success in your consulting business.

About The Author
If you need help getting your website to deliver results - generate leads or make more sales - Anton Pearce can help. Visit AntonPearce.com for more free tips for improving the performance of your online strategy

The Tricky Issue of Duplicate Content and Google

Being a full-time online marketer means you have to keep a close watch on how Google is ranking pages on the web... one very serious concern is the whole issue of duplicate content. More importantly, how does having duplicate content on your site and on other people's sites, affect your keyword rankings in Google and the other search engines? 

Now, recently it seems that Google is much more open about just how it ranks content. I say "seems" because with Google there are years and years of mistrust when it comes to how they treat content and webmasters. Google's whole "do as I say" attitude leaves a bitter taste in most webmasters' mouths. So much so, that many have had more than enough of Google's attitude and ignore what Google and their pundits say altogether. 

This is probably very emotionally fulfilling, but is it the right route or attitude to take? Probably not!

Mainly because, regardless of whether you love or hate Google, there's no denying they are King of online search and you must play by their rules or leave a lot of serious online revenue on the table. Now, for my major keyword content/pages even a loss of just a few places in the rankings can mean I lose hundreds of dollars in daily commissions, so anything affecting my rankings obviously gets my immediate attention.

So the whole tricky issue of duplicate content has caused me some concern and I have made an ongoing mental note to myself to find out everything I can about it. I am mainly worried about my content being ranked lower because the search engines think it is duplicate content and penalizes it.

My situation is compounded by the fact that I am heavily into article marketing - the same articles are featured on hundreds, some times thousands of sites across the web. Naturally, I am worried these articles will dilute or lower my rankings rather than accomplish their intended purpose of getting higher rankings.

I try to vary the anchor text/keyword link in the resource boxes of these articles. I don't use the same keyword phrase over and over again, as I am nearly 99% positive Google has a "keyword use" quota - repeat the same keyword phrase too often and your highly linked content will be lowered around 50 or 60 places, basically taking it out of the search results. Been there, done that!

I even like submitting unique articles to certain popular sites so only that site has the article, thus eliminating the whole duplicate content issue. This also makes for a great SEO strategy, especially for beginning online marketers, your site will take some time to get to a PR6 or PR7, but you can place your content and links on high PR7 or PR8 authority sites immediately. This will bring in quality traffic and help your own site get established.

Another way I combat this issue is by using a 301 re-direct so that traffic and pagerank flows to the URL I want ranked. You can also use your Google Webmaster Tool account to show which version of your site you want ranked or featured: with or without the www. 

The whole reason for doing any of this has to do with PageRank juice - you want to pass along this ranking juice to the appropriate page or content. This can raise your rankings, especially in Google. 

Thankfully, there is the relatively new "canonical tag" you can use to tell the search engines this is the page/content you want featured or ranked. Just add this meta link tag to your content which you want ranked or featured, as in the example given below: 

<link rel="canonical" href="place your preferred link here"> 

Anyway, this whole duplicate issue has many faces and sides, so I like going directly to Google for my information. Experience has shown me that Google doesn't always give you the full monty, but for the most part, you can follow what they say. Lately, over the last year or so, Google seems to have made a major policy change and are telling webmasters a lot more information on how they (Google) rank their index.

So if you're concerned or interested in finding out more about duplicate content and what Google says about it try these helpful links. First one is a very informative video on the subject entitled "Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues" which is presented by Greg Grothaus who works for Google.

Another great link is this page from Google Webmasters Support Answers by Matt Cutts. It has a lot of helpful information, including a video on the Canonical Link Element. 

In yet another post, Matt Cutts discusses the related issue of content scraping and advises webmasters not to worry about it. This is a slightly different matter, other webmasters and unmentionables may use software to scrape your site and place your content on their site. This has happened to me, countless times, including when my content has been reduced to scrambled nonsense. Cutts says not to worry about this matter as Google can usually tell the original source of the material. In fact, having links in this duplicate content may just help your rankings in Google. 

"There are some people who really hate scrapers and try to crack down on them and try to get every single one deleted or kicked off their web host," says Cutts. "I tend to be the sort of person who doesn't really worry about it, because the vast, vast, vast majority of the time, it's going to be you that comes up, not the scraper. If the guy is scraping and scrapes the content that has a link to you, he's linking to you, so worst case, it won't hurt, but in some weird cases, it might actually help a little bit." 

As a full time online marketer I am not so easily convinced, I mainly have pressing concerns about my unscrupulous competition using these scrapings and duplicate content to undermine one's rankings in Google by triggering some keyword spam filter. Whether in fact this actually happens, only Google knows for sure, but it is just another indication, despite the very detailed and helpful information given above, duplicate content and the issues surrounding it, will still present serious concerns for online marketers and webmasters in the future.

About The Author
The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools. If you liked the article above, why not try this Free 7 Day Marketing Course here: Marketing Tools Copyright 2009 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

7 Social Media Tactics for Explosive Results

First, let's define the term Explosive Results for our usage.

A standard social media campaign helps spread the word about you and encourages other people to as well.

An explosive social media campaign has inherent viral exposure, inspires community driven communication, helps make the web a better place, and even brings joy to people, however fleeting.

When you share in social media, if your goal is just to get more people to see your links, you're on the right track, but at the same time, you're limiting your potential. You may think that getting explosive results from social media will take more time, energy and money, but this doesn't have to be the case.

If you're a business owner, you know that working harder doesn't necessarily mean better results - what if you're working hard on the wrong thing?

Sometimes the remedy is working smarter. Here are a few small changes you can make to your social media approach that can propel your social media results from lukewarm to smoking hot.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #1 - Hot Content

The cornerstone to any social media campaign is the content. If you get this component wrong, it doesn't matter if all other elements are perfect. Study what's going hot in your targeted topic and find a unique angle to tailor your content into what people already like, without stealing their ideas.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #2 - Niched Network Nuances

The more tightly focused your submissions to social media sites are, the more likely they are to go viral, whether they are links you share by other people or yours. Here's the logic.

People follow other people with similar interests. They're on sites like Google, Yahoo, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Digg actively looking for new content. Put those two things together and you have a whirlwind of clicks happening. The only question is, will it be your link that gets clicked or passed over?

Having 5000 connections on Twitter or Facebook is useless if you are connected to people who don't want your broadcasts, and you're just as useless to them if you don't want theirs. If my interest is in improving my existing business and you're trying to get me to sell your network marketing products, it doesn't matter how many times you ask me. If I'm not interested, your continued broadcasts will be ignored, or worse yet, blocked completely.

It's about the perfect balance of quality AND quantity.

And if I'm not paying attention to you, I can't and won't spread your message. If you are in network marketing, why not go after people who love the network marketing concept but can't seem to find the right company? That's a perfect match, and can dramatically cut down your search for the right partners and prospects.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #3 - Simplify Sharing

It amazes me how many people miss this one.

You've got great content. You've got a massive, niched network.

Why feed them content that's hard to share? Does that report have to be in PDF format? If so, does it have to be behind an opt-ín wall if you're spreading it among people who have Already opted in? Anyone connected to your business through its Facebook page, or your Twitter stream is also part of your opt-ín list. Yes, it would be best if they were on your email newsletter list, but what faster way to get them there than to show them you don't need to hold them prisoner there?

If your whitepaper is of such high value that you don't want it to spread, well, that's something different. But if you're sharing it so other people will spread it, make it easy for others to share.

Send your su.pr link so all they have to do is click the Thumbs-Up button.

Put a few sharing links on your page.

Make it easy for them to Retweet.

The easier it is for them to share, the more likely they are to do it.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #4 - Consistency

And now we come to the area I fail at the most. It's one of the things I know I need to do, but I haven't quite gotten the hang of how to brainstorm, create and distribute quality content consistently, and still give the best possible service and support to my customers and clients. I always err on serving people who have bought from me, figuring that next blog post can wait until tomorrow.

Then at some point, I noticed a decline in return traffic - people weren't coming back because they'd already heard everything I had to say. The solution? I got help for my content creation process. The ideas are still mine, but I was able to barter help for research, transcribing, and editing. I am also able to get audio and video polished much less expensively than I thought, though I don't always use this option due to time constraints.

The other thing that helped a lot was getting over my perfectionism complex. Release your content as soon as you can. I can't tell you how much money I've left on the table from my old fear of the typo and grammar police. Not to mention the fact that I felt like I was leaving my audience hanging.

You subscribe to something because you want to get regular updates. If your favorite daily news show started coming on once a week, you'd probably switch channels. If you're inconsistent without explanation, your audience numbers will drop and your network will fade.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #5 - Think Engagement

Measuring your results by page view alone is a thing of the past. When the web was mostly text and images, it made some sense that how many pages a visitor viewed at your site was a true measure of engagement.

Nowadays this isn't the case. You want to look instead at how long people are at your site. The exception, of course, is when customers are coming to your site to buy, and the order processing system takes them off your page. But if people aren't leaving your site because they're ready to buy or subscribe, you truly must look at why they aren't paying more attention to your content, and what changes you can make to get them to stay.

This is critically important in understanding which content will go viral naturally. What posts are people staying on your site to comment on? When do they take a few extra seconds to retweet? Are they watching your videos all the way through?

---

About The Author
Can you really get up to 27,000 visitors in a week from social media? I did and I can show you how to do the same without cheating the system, or spending 20 hours a week on social media sites. Find out how in this free video at http://www.freetraffictip.com/27kvisitors and see the proof for yourself, today.

Five Ways To Turn Blog Comments Into Conversations

If conversations are to be encouraged, a different mindset is required from that which assumes ‘All comments are likely to be spam’. Here are some ways to show that different mindset.

Delete Some Comments
Active moderation should be applied to all blog comments. The knowledge that this is in place may deter spammers and may also serve to improve the quality of other contributions.

Treat Comments Like Content
A conversation tends to be most valuable when the participants have mutual respect. This should also happen between the blog author and potential commenters. Good comments may be almost as valuable as the content of the blog post. Links in comments should be encouraged and should not receive nofollow tags. A direct link for the commenter is also a small bonus for taking the time and trouble to make the comment.

Allow Readers To Rate Comments
Particularly if there are large number of comments, it can be somewhat daunting to read through all of them. If readers can vote on each comment, this does allow the more popular comments to be viewed. An example of this approach can be seen in the comments on recent UK articles in the Daily Mail Online, and the Guardian Online. Again as with moderation, this rating by readers process is likely to encourage a higher standard of commenting and is clearly a help to readers. It may also encourage a better interaction between commenters, although whether enough to get conversations going is questionable.

Have A Chat Space On Your Blog
One problem with comments on a blog is that they often are displayed in a single narrow column and it is difficult to think of them other than in a one-dimensional flow of single comments. Conversations are not easily promoted in such a format. A better arrangement may be to have a separate ’space’ for comments to better accommodate the to-and-fro of comments. A system like Google Friend Connect can be set up so as to create a type of Chat space for each blog post. Another advantage of having comments (and any links) in a separate Chat space is that this then does not reduce the PageRank contributions for the basic links from the blog post itself. When all comments are added on to the original blog post, this causes a continuing decrease in the PageRank assigned to each link.

Discuss The Blog Post In A Forum
If conversations are the objective and moderation of comments is the rule, there are a number of advantages in arranging that the conversation is housed in an online property that is designed for that purpose. In other words, a forum is ideal for this purpose. Typically the space for comments occupies the full width of the screen and several comments can appear in one screen display.

Again, It's about Zenni!

Feel mislead with tons of eyewear online store? If you are looking for eyewear particularly prescription eyeglasses and you are looking for some specific style such as Holiday Fun Eyeglasses, there is one online store worth to be considered. Please check ZenniOptical.com, yes, again it's about Zenni, our specialist in prescription eyeglasses, online, and it sells prescription eyeglasses at very reasonable prices!

Whether you are looking for some classic look or to the most stylish eyewear, this is the place to get your collections, prescription eyeglasses is not always about classic look, check New Arrivals section, there are lots of collection from classic to colorful eyeglasses.

For those who want to keep their classic look but need some colorful touch, you can also find your collection at this store. Price is very reasonable, $8 Prescription Zenni Glasses is the most reasonable price eyeglasses at this store, and definitely over the internet at this moment! All order is completed with anti scratch and anti UV together with other benefits, simply visit and grab your own pair of Zenni prescription eyeglasses.

How Video SEO Improves Your Search Exposure

Before Google released their Universal Search platform in May 2007, their natural listings were dominated by text-based pages. Videos were rare in the top spots. Universal Search changed the way Google displayed their primary index. Google, Yahoo, and Bing now include entries from their respective video search platforms. What's more, popular video-sharing sites have been given higher ranking authority and increased link weight (we'll describe this latter point in a moment).

Video SEO gives you greater exposure in the search engines through two levers. First, it caters to the algorithm used for Universal Search. By allowing syndication of your videos to authoritative video-sharing sites, you will enjoy more exposure through their increased ranking authority. In effect, those sites will rank higher, drawing more people to your videos.

Second, videos that are placed on your site (as opposed to syndicating them) attract links - both directly and indirectly. As your videos gain popularity, direct links will naturally build, pointing to the pages on your site that host the videos. Indirect links will point from other sites whose owners have embedded your videos. As a result, your inbound link profile will continue to grow and strengthen, lifting your site higher within the search engines' organic listings.

Internet marketing company

These days’ trends are that most companies are starting their businesses and at the same time having their website and go online, to reach more customers or expand their businesses using online marketing, one tool admitted by many marketing experts as one of the most powerful marketing tools that reach potential customers across continents. But many of them never realize that online marketing campaign as marketing tool will only give you almost zero result without proper online marketing strategic.

To make your campaign effective, there are several important factors ones must consider in developing a website that guarantee it become one successful tool to reach visitors as much as possible, attract them to visit your website, as the more visitors means the more customers you will get. Here we are going to focus on Search engine optimization marketing.

Search engine optimization, to describe it in a simple way, is one technique to optimize your website to be shown on the first pages of SERP (Search engine result pages) when internet users doing their search using certain specific key words. The details techniques or tricks to perform Search engine optimization are pretty complicated, to name few of them are: you must able to analyze keywords density of your content, some stuff called Meta tag on your html script, and link building strategy.

Why don’t you let the experts on its field to do all these hard stuff for you, you can hire an experienced internet marketer or SEO specialist who can buzz your site visitors. There are many on these days, you can search over the internet or simply visit directconsultinggroup.com, this internet marketing company offers search engine marketing and web marketing services such as but not limited to, search engine marketing, ppc marketing (pay per click), website design, link building, and SEO copywriting services.

Common SEO Mistakes You Should Avoid

Many webmasters want to get top search engine rankings in search engines such as Google. To attain the objective, some webmasters are willing to spend tredmendous amount of efforts in doing link exchange and refine their meta tags and body content, however, they still overlook some issues. Let me explain why you should address these issues.

1. Select Wrong Content Management Software (CMS)

A rapid prototyping company, star prototype, uses a web-based CMS provided by her web hosting company to construct heir web sites. Yes, it is a easy to use software but it does not allow users to create different Title and Meta tags for different web pages and has limited characters. Obviously, it is no good for optimizing websites. In ideal case, every web page must has specific Title and Meta tags.

2. Use Javascript menu

Another rapid prototyping company - Rapman, uses Javascript to construct their navigation menu. However, many search engines do not "read" hyperlinks in Javascript. Therefore, Yahoo and Google only index their homepage. To solve the problem, you must use HTML hyperlinks so that search engines can follow and index them.

3. Employ Wrong SEO Company

A DC Motor Manufacturer, tecoelectric, employed a black hat SEO company and caused her website banned by Google. The SEO company put 20 hidden links in tecoelectric's website and this 20 hidden links were all clients of the SEO company and had no relationship with tecoelectric. Tecoelectric was told this action could improve search engine rankings. Obviously, it is a cheat.

At last, Tecoelectric required to remove those links and explained the whole story to Google to get their site unbanned.

4. Optimize Homepage Only

Many webmasters spend lots of time to optimize their website, but for their homepage only. You should also spend time to optimize the inner pages as well. It increases the likelihood of getting search engine traffic. In some occassion, it can give you a suprise. In one of our sites, an optimized inner page get more search engine traffic than the homepage.

5. Neglect interlink Structure

Webmasters neglect the fact that a well interlinking strcuture can enhance search engine rankings for all important web pages. First, your homepage must have hyperlink pointing to all important web pages, for example, through a navigation menu. Ideally, this nagivation menu should be added to all inner pages. In this way, link popularity can be distributed more efficiently to your web pages.

6. Create Dynamic Content with ?

For the ease of management, programmers prefer generates web pages dynamically. Dynamically-generated content can create session IDs and URLs that contain a "?" character with different parameters. To make sure search engines can index your web pages, your programmers must make sure that they use only 1-2 parameters and not forcing search engine spiders to begin a new session each time they visit your site.

7. Over Optimize during Aging Delay

Webmasters want traffic from Google and actually they want to get free Google traffic from day 1. But with Google's aging delay in place for new sites, you may only see results after 6-12 months. In this period, new site webmasters tend to think that the result is due to insufficent optimization. They attempt to increase keyword density further, stuff keyword in Title and Meta tags. Unluckily, these kind of techniques are unwelcomed by search engines and could cause your site get banned.

Patience is more important, and during the aging delay period, webmasters should focus on building useful content instead of over optimizing your website.

Where to buy affordable prescription eyeglasses for kids?

This article will not have any direct or indirect relation with search engine optimization but when you have kids or even yourself need a pair of prescription eyeglasses, not an ordinary one, but a high quality one, where you can buy at a very affordable price as affordable as $ 8 Rx eyeglasses, then keep reading. Everyone try to save here and there on this economic condition, even when the experts have already said that the recovery time is near, not in too far future, people are still try to save for their own good.

Particularly when it comes to breakable things, where we need to replace them from time to time, for instance items or goods you buy for your kids and one of them most probably is your kids eyeglasses, not common eyeglasses but the prescription eyeglasses that sometime can cost you hundreds of dollar. Even the most high quality and expensive goods when it comes to our children’s hand they might become a little bit more fragile and breakable than on adults’ hand. So why waste such money, the most important part is affordable and yet still offering good quality and when it comes to prescription eyeglasses parents are huge fans to Zenni Optical, why? Just check Zenni Optical on TV!!!

You will see and hear these parents talk about this online prescription eyeglasses store, this store has many collection from classic frame to the most stylish one, all at affordable prices and full guarantee too. Let’s High Five to Zenni Optical as this store has become one solution to affordable prescription eyeglasses, one thing wearers of prescription eyeglasses are very glad at, for the price and quality. So if you found yourself or your kids need new pair of prescription eyeglasses at this moment, you know to which store you must visit!

It's Called Search Engine "Optimization" for a Reason

I often find it amazing how prevalent the term “SEO” has become, even amongst those who barely know what HTML stands for in the first place. I don’t mean that as an insult to newcomers or non-tech-types who are interested in putting their info on the internet, but it does bring to mind the old saying “first things first.”

Perhaps the problem lies with the multi-million dollar price tags of web properties like MySpace, Skype, and YouTube—they seem to set the example that if your site gets tons of traffic, then the dollars will come rolling in, no matter what you’re selling. However, for the 99.5% of the businesses on the internet that aren’t Twitter or Facebook, getting traffic (and, by extension, being on the top of the search engines) isn’t as important as developing a robust website in the first place.

In fact, it seems that far to many novice (and even not-so-novice) website creators forget that without a solid foundation of content, there’s nothing to “optimize.” After all, successful search engine optimization really isn’t a trick, despite what some might claim. Gone are the days when overloading a page with keywords on a black background would get results (now, these ill-advised tricks are more likely to get you banned from the search engines altogether). Instead, the search engines of today are constantly evolving to eliminate the irrelevant and highlight the valuable. And, that’s bad news for those looking for shortcuts.

On the other hand, it’s nice to know that you’ve got Google (and others) on your side if you’re committed to producing a quality, content-driven website. A case in point is Wikipedia. With thousands of contributors and an unbelievable amount of content on a seemingly endless variety of topics, it’s no wonder that Wikipedia garners so many top ranking results on Google.

Now, don’t let what I’ve written here lead you to believe that I think that SEO is worthless or unnecessary—that couldn’t be further from the truth. That said, if you’re starting a new website or if you’re looking for a way to improve the performance of your current website, start at the most fundamental level, the content. Write articles that are relevant to your site’s focus. If possible, integrate a message board or a blog with a comment section into your site. That way, you’ll have other people generating content for you. What ever you do, make it relevant, make it original (copying from other sites can get you penalized with the search engines as well), and generate as much of it as you can. Because, without content, the search engines don’t have a reason to index your site.

If, once you’ve gotten the content in place, your site still isn’t performing up to your expectations, then you may need to look at optimizing your content or building your site’s link popularity. However, chances are that the time you spend improving your site’s fundamentals will reap the biggest long term benefits. After all, improving your site for your visitors is nearly always one and the same as improving your site for the search engines.

Grand Paragon for Busby SEO Test

Grandparagon.com is a participant of Busby SEO Test still working on it to get the best rank on Google SERP. Busby SEO Test is a SEO Contest presented by Busby Web Solution.

This is the second SEO World Cup series after the first contest several months ago.

To win this contest, the SEO master only need to place his blog to the highest position on Google SERP for Busby SEO Test keyword. The contest is hold for 4 months start on October 1st, 2008 till 31st January 2009.

The top five sites ranked on Google will be awarded prizes as follow :
First Prize : $5000
Second Prize : $2000
Third Prize : $500
Fourth Prize : $250
Fifth Prize : $100

There are already 573 participants registered for this contest till now.



RULES

• Start date is 1st October 2008 (12:00 midday), Perth, Western Australia at which point the phrase will be posted on the Busby website.
• End date of 31st January 2009 (12:00 midday), Perth, Western Australia.
• Only ethical SEO techniques may be engaged and the judges reserve the right to review the techniques engaged by the winner to ensure they comply.
• No pornography, no discrimination and no illegal behaviour is permitted.
• The competition is only open to domain and sub domain names that do not include the key phrase in any form.
• Only registered entrants are eligible to compete and win the prize. Busby will maintain a list of entrants which can be view on the Entrants list page.
• Registration is free, open to anyone of any age, gender, race and domicile and can only be made through Registration Process.
• All entrants pages must have a visible link back to www.busbywebsolutions.com with the following text (including the hyperlink) in black arial 10 font: Participant in the Busby Web Solutions Search Engine Optimisation Challenge
• Only one prize per person.
• Employees, franchisees and licensees of Busby (and each of their family members) are eligible to enter but are not eligible to win any prizes.

The Top 10 Tips on How to Optimize Your Website

From the obvious to the "Hey-I-never-thought-of-that-great-idea-before", here are the top 10 tips on how to optimize your website for its turbo-charge rocket ride up the search engine rankings.

Be bold. Use the bold tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.

Deep linking. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site.

Become a foreigner. Canada and the UK have many directories for websites of companies based in those countries. Can you get a business address in one of those countries?

Newsletters. Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.

First come, first served. If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won't follow additional links to the same page.

Multiple domains. If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Why not a site dedicated to gumbo pudding pops?

Article exchanges. You've heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else's article on the history of pudding pops with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in Viet Nam, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links. (More on high quality links in other tips.)

Titles for links. Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.

Not anchor text. Don't overdo the anchor text. You don't want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation - something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, "Gumbo Pudding Pop" occasionally, "Get gumbo pudding pops" as well, "Gumbo-flavored pudding pops" some other times, etc.

Site map. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too.

Lomba Menulis Review Berhadiah Domain dan Hosting

Dalam rangka memperingati setahun berdirinya Javahostindo.com, maka Javahostindo.com mengadakan lomba review mengenai Javahostindo.com.
Syarat dan ketentuan yang harus dipenuhi untuk memenangkan lomba review ini adalah

1. Memiliki blog hosting sendiri atau dari wordpress minimal telah berumur tiga bulan.
2. Mempunyai page rank minimal PR 0.
3. Membuat review mengenai javahostindo.com minimal 250 karakter.
4. Artikel harus unik.
5. Harus memasukkan anchor teks link “web hosting indonesia” javahostindo.com didalam review.
6. Para peserta lomba diwajibkan melakukan konfirmasi ke email: review@javahostindo.com beserta dengan link reviewnya.

Pemenang dari kontes review javahostindo.com akan mendapatkan hadiah sebagai berikut:

Juara 1 : Domain .com/.net/.org/.info + Hosting 1000 MB selama 2 tahun
Juara 2 : Domain .com/.net/.org/.info + Hosting 500 MB selama 2 tahun
Juara 3 : Domain .com/.net/.org/.info + Hosting 250 MB selama 1 tahun

Kriteria penilaian Lomba review di lihat dari posisi 3 besar SERP google dengan keyword “Review javahostindo.com”.

Lomba review ditutup 20 Desember 2008 dan diumumkan 25 Desember 2008 di website Javahostindo.com

Selamat mencoba dan semoga sukses.

Changing Your Look with Zenni Optical

In a recent survey conducted across the country, 87 per cent of American men indicated that they currently own at least one type of corrective eyewear. These are including reading glasses. Only 27 per cent of these see their glasses as a fashion item. For many men, eyeglasses are merely a means to clear vision.

If you want to look for stylish prescription eyeglasses, just look at Zenni Optical. They provide tremendous online eyeglasses store. Zenni Optical was on FOX news! Watch the movie about this online prescription eyeglasses website. You can claim to have seeing 20-20 for about $20. Zenni Optical offers a wide range of frame styles, using a prescription filled by an optometrist or ophthalmologist. You can hear from consumer reporter, Melissa Painter that looks into whether its products are a Deal or a Dud.

Buying from them means get great eyeglasses for less. No expensive deal including shipping and handling charge that only a flat $4.95 per order, no matter how many glasses in your order. You have many options on variable dimension frames from Zenni.

All men should be aware of the impact a nice pair of frames can have on their overall image. Appearance counts for a lot, and makes a lasting impression on everyone you come into contact with, whether you like it or not. So, see Zenni on FOX today.

Algorithms of SE Ranking

Search engines Ranking is what SEO is all about. You tweak your pages trying to "meet search engine's requirements" and gain high ranking in the search engines' results. However, what are these "requirements"? We all know search engines are nothing but robots, computers that follow a certain program to determine which site is more relevant to a query and which one is less useful. Yes, when chasing search engines ranking, we are just struggling against a machine—a powerful instrument with a sophisticated program though it may be, but a machine nevertheless. However, we are humans with much more flexible minds, and our creative approaches will let us crack search engines’ ranking algorithms if we input time and proficient efforts.

Search engines do not reveal their ranking algorithms, for doing so would be equal to giving each SEO a nuclear weapon and pushing them into a mortal combat against each other. The World Wide Web would turn into a giant heap of over-optimized pages stuffed with ads and nonsensical content. In other words, if search engines kept their ranking algos open, they would confine themselves to showing not RELEVANT, but OPTIMIZED pages on the top, and today, there's indeed a great gap separating these two sets.

It is true that the search engines' ranking algorithms are secret, and we have to submit ( :) ) to the fact that we cannot buy this information from the search engines or find it, say, on Google.

What are the ways of discovering the path to high search engines ranking, then?

The word SEO (search engine optimization) first sounded nearly ten years ago. Since then, many researchers, driven by financial, professional, or scientific interests, tried to crack ranking algos by experimenting. Thus, several years ago, it was discovered that putting many keywords in the META and TITLE tags can improve rankings in the search engines for these keywords, giving an optimized page a competitive edge over those probably more relevant but less optimized. The search engines' ranking algorithms of those days were really simple enough to allow invisible tags (such as META keywords and META description) influence the actual position of that page in search results.

This gap was quickly discovered by spammers of all kinds who didn't leave any chance to their competition to appear on the top of the search results. The importance and benefit of good search engine positioning and organic rankings wasn't as well-recognized then, so it was mostly advanced optimizers themselves, driven by sportive passion, who tried to outrank one another.

But search engines quickly understood their vulnerability and reacted by shifting the importance from the invisible on-page elements (like the META tags) to visible and significant page areas (such as the TITLE tag) and to the off-page factors like inbound links, which made them almost completely bulletproof since these ranking factors are beyond the scope of webmaster's direct influence.

To that moment, the profitability of having organic search engines ranking became clear to a larger amount of website owners ranging from small businesses that did optimization themselves or hired an SEO to big players with the ability to spend thousands on their search presence and strategy. Therefore, search engines still needed to keep their algorithms secret and stick to their main principle: same rules and equal chances for everybody.

Search engines' ranking algorithms became more and more sophisticated, and Google became famous for its art of discouraging search engine optimizers. Search engines say they are "committed to providing relevant results," but they also have another hidden reason to make artificial achieving of high rankings more difficult—a business owner unable to gain rankings for free will agree to pay a reasonable amount for Web visibility, buying a place in the "sponsored results" column.

Nowadays, search engines ranking are done by applying algorithms that take into account elements such as the page contents, the URL of the page, the TITLE tag, and HTML headings (H1-H6). Also included in the ranking are words that are in bold, words that are used in links to other pages, words and phrases that are used in the beginning, and, at the end of the text, the number of links from other pages and sites that point to this page, the text used in these links, the authority of the linking site, and even the number of other links on the linking page. Google is said to apply additional algorithms such as like Hilltop, Sandbox, and PageRank for ranking pages more relevantly, and all of them will be described and discussed in this section.

Hilltop is an algorithm that was created in 1999. Basically, it looks at the relationship between the "Expert" and "Authority" pages. An "Expert" is a page that links to many other relevant documents. An "Authority" is a page that has links pointing to it from the "Expert" pages. Sandbox refers to an algorithm that detects how old a page is and how long ago it has been updated. Page Rank is an absolute value which is regularly calculated by Google for each page it has in its index. The number of links you've gotten from other sites outside your domain matters greatly, as does the link quality. The latter means that in order to give you some weight, the sites linking to yours must themselves have high a Page Rank in addition to being content-rich and regularly updated.