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Monday, April 21, 2008

Increase Web site Traffic:Increase Your Traffic And Page Rank in These Easy Steps

I want to honestly tell you that there are no hidden secrets to internet marketing.Do not listen to the gurus who tell you that there are hidden secrets for you to learn.


However, there are some tools and proven steps that you can use to explode your traffic and make tremendous amount of money.


Now you might have been frustrated simply because you don't have enough traffic to your site. Well, no need to worry.Follow the instructions and see your traffic increase at the speed of light.


Here are some steps to put you through.


Create a Blog


One of the most effective way is to create a blog.You can create one at blogger.com. Then you would have to post some useful content there.Make sure that what you post is relevant to the topic of your blog.


Submit Articles


As soon as you create your blog, you will have to write articles related to the topic of your blog and you have to submit this articles to article directories or article banks.


Write a Keyword Rich Content


When you have finished writing your articles, check through for spelling mistakes and correct them. Next, check your article for available keywords. You might have to re-write some sentences so that they fit to the keyword you want to use.


Submit Articles to high traffic article directories


It is better to submit more articles to a high traffic site than submitting to hundreds of directories.


Do all these and see your traffic explode to the roof.


Get more information now to help you grow your traffic using articles.
See mytips for article writing blog for more information.


Increase Page Rank with Search Engine Optimization

Utilizing effective search engine optimization techniques will improve the page rank of your website.


Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process by which webmasters or online business owners utilize strategic copy to increase their website’s popularity. Given that the internet has grown so rapidly over the past decade, the competition for the best search engine position has created an enormous market focused on how best to position a website for better rankings on Google, Yahoo and other prominent search engines. Therefore, understanding the fundamental elements of SEO is critical to online business’ success.


Search engines are sophisticated pieces of technology that allow users to quickly find relevant websites by searching for a simple word or phrase (e.g. “day spas”). While there are many tricks that can be used to increase page rank, the most effective methods must include providing consistently high quality online articles. This seems like a simple concept, but there are many websites that fail to provide content that visitors find interesting. If you can set your website apart from these boring, lifeless sites, then you’re already a step closer to achieving high page rank via search engine optimization. Sites that provide articles that are informative, well-written, and regularly updated create highly engaged online visitors who are more likely to return to the site I the future.


The second critical component of effective search engine optimization is to include key words and phrases within your articles. These keyword phrases should mirror the phrases that website visitors use when traversing the web. Visit your site’s traffic report to determine what keywords are drawing visitors to your site already, and make an effort to incorporate those words into your articles. Alternatively, study your competitors’ websites to determine what words they use to attract traffic. Be sure to use simple titles that clearly state what the article is about, and try to include a keyword or two in the title if possible. The more key words you use in your articles, the more likely it is that visitors will find your site when they conduct a search with those words. If you are consistent with these methods, your overall search engine optimization will increase, which will in turn boost your page rank.


Next, when writing articles to post on your site, make sure you develop a clear means of organizing their content. This can often be done by simply adding a new page to your site. This will allow room for more articles to be added as you write them, and allow you to develop an archive of articles that will continue to draw unique visitors. Be sure to include your archived articles in a directory that is near the root web of your site, to ensure that search engines effectively index your online articles. Don’t forget to add the pages to your site navigation, and include links to and from the main page and the articles page. Creating an articles page that is easy to find not only makes your content more readily accessible, but also allows spiders searching the web to tag a larger percentage of your sites’ information.


Finally, consider allowing others to link to your website. Not only does this provide free advertising for your site, but it creates the impression that your site is important because of its affiliated links. Just be sure that you avoid linking to pages that have a lower page rank than your own; it actually could reduce your site’s popularity within the rankings.


Search engine optimization strategies are important in developing your site’s popularity. Therefore, write high quality, keyword rich content and link your site to and from a strategic family of other sites. In so doing, you will help improve your site’s popularity and, hopefully, drive increased business through your online business.


Online reprint rights granted as long as the article is published in its entirety, including links and resource box. © John Doetsch 2005.


John Doetsch is SEO specialist at Websition.com where you will find additional articles and free web site content written by the Internet's most gifted authors.


Visit his site http://www.websition.com .

Google Page Rank Explained

Page Rank (PR) is an algorithm used by Google to compute the relative importance of a particular webpage on the internet and assign it a numeric value from 0 (least important) to 10 (most important). This value is calculated through an iterative analysis of the backlinks to the webpage. If webpage A links to webpage B then webpage B would receive 1 "vote" towards their page rank.


Fact: Page Rank is calculated on a webpage by webpage basis not on a website by website basis


The importance of the webpage casting a vote and the total number of outgoing links on the webpage casting a vote are the primary factors which determine how much "voting share " this webpage will transfer to each of the outgoing links on them. Google calculates a webpage's page rank by adding up all of the "voting shares " for that webpage through an iterative calculation.


Page Rank is one of the factors Google utilizes to help determine their Search Engine Ranking Positions (SERP's). It should be noted that this algorithm is only one part of their overall ranking scheme and not necessarily the most important one as many website's would have you believe. The general internet user has no idea about the concept of page rank and are unable to tell what a particular page's PR is unless they have the Google Toolbar installed (or use an online page rank checker). Since page rank is part of Google's search ranking algorithm an understanding of the concept is still important for any webmaster concerned with getting traffic to their site.


Fact: Not all links pointing to a webpage are counted as votes for that webpage


As soon as Google introduced the concept of page rank unsavory webmasters developed ways to manipulate the rankings. These webmasters began creating web pages with the sole purpose of increasing the amount of incoming links pointing to their website.


Common Black Hat SEO Techniques:

  • Link Farms - pages containing long lists of unrelated links set up for the sole purpose of manipulating search engine rankings and page rank
  • Doorway Pages - orphaned webpages either on the same website or distributed throughout the internet stuffed with keywords containing links to the offender's site. Used to artificially inflate the back link count for a website.
  • Free For All Links Pages - a type of link farm where, as the name implies, anyone is free to post their link. Once a valuable way to spread the word about your website, abuse through auto submissions has rendered these sites worthless and are now viewed as search engine SPAM.
  • Automated or Hosted Link Exchanges - sites that offer to provide "hundreds" of back links to your site instantly. Generally you will have to install some html code on your website to display their directory and in return anyone else who has this code installed on their website will be displaying your link. This is a case where "if it sounds too good to be true it is". The search engine's are wise to this technique and watch for unnatural "spikes" in the number of backlinks pointing to a website. In actuality it is possible to inflate your page rank with this technique but if the search engine's wise up to your practices (and they always do eventually) you risk being dropped from their index or black holed in their rankings.


How is Page Rank Calculated?


When Google introduced the concept of page rank they published the algorithm they were going to use to calculate it. The formula in it's current form is known only to the engineers at Google but it is fair to say it closely resembles the following formula.


PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))


While at first glance this equation can seem daunting, in actuality the concept is not that hard to understand. Let's take a minute to break down the formula and see what conclusions can be drawn.


PR(t1)...PR(tn) - the page rank (PR) of each page from page t1 to tn. (each value of t represents 1 link to webpage A)


C(t1)...C(tn) - the number of outgoing links (C) on each page from page t1 to tn


d - damping factor


Quoting from the original Google Page Rank white paper:


The parameter d is a damping factor which can be set between 0 and 1. We usually set d to 0.85.


Knowing what these parameters mean and knowing the value of the damping factor we can simplify the formula from above:


PR(A) = 0.15 + 0.85*(A "share" of the PR of every webpage linking to page A)


The "share" each webpage passes to webpage A can be computed by dividing the Page Rank of the webpage linking to page A by the number of outgoing links on that page. Each outgoing link on that page would receive an equal voting share from the total available page rank of the page containing the outgoing link. The total available page rank each webpage has available to transfer to outgoing links is a little less than the total page rank of that page (PR of page * 0.85) which can be easily derived when the damping factor is known.


Implications


Having a basic understanding of the algorithm we can now draw a few conclusions about page rank and it's implications to your website. For instance, it is very possible to have a link on web page X that has a high page rank transferring less page rank voting shares to your website than a link on web page Y with a lower page rank.


How is this possible? Let's analyze an example:


Page X - page rank 4, outgoing links 10


Page Y - page rank 8, outgoing links 100


Page X would transfer 0.85(4/10) = 0.34 page rank voting shares to each outgoing link


Page Y would transfer 0.85(8/100) = 0.068 page rank voting shares to each outgoing link


Even though Page X has a much lower page rank value, due to the fact that the number of outgoing links on Page X is so much smaller than on Page Y it actually transfers more page rank voting shares to each outgoing link than Page Y .


Pages with no links back to them would still have a modest page rank value of 0.15 derived from the (1-d) portion of the equation. It is important to note that while this value holds true according to the equation, only Google engineers are privy to the knowledge of whether actual page rank voting share is transferred in this scenario. Google could easily say that pages with no incoming links transfer a page rank voting share of 0 with a click of a mouse and no one would know for sure except them.


Fact: The Google Toolbar displays Page Rank as a base 10 log scale that is not the "actual" result of the Page Rank calculation


The average page rank of all pages in the index is 1. It is possible to have an "actual" page rank value in the millions or much smaller than 1 using the page rank formula but the Google toolbar only displays integers from 0 - 10 on it's pr meter. Only Google knows how the scale is split up and where the basepoints for each level are. For example, it may take an actual page rank of 10,000 using the formula above to achieve a page rank of 4/10 on the toolbar scale.


Page Rank Voting Share - A simple example


Pages that have only a few inbound links to them have little or no page rank voting share to transfer to outgoing links. To calculate the page rank voting share of a webpage with no incoming links to it we need to focus on the second part of the page rank forumula. Assuming a damping factor of 0.85 from Google's whitepaper our calculation would have the form 0.85(0.15/# outgoing links) which will always equal something close to zero. The 0.15 in the equation was found using this calculation 0.15 = (1-0.85) + 0.85(0). As the number of outgoing links on this page increases the webpage will transfer even less page rank voting shares to each outgoing link.


Understanding this makes it clear why links from link farms and free for all links pages don't help your page rank. Since no one is linking to these FFA pages they will have a "low" page rank value with a small page rank voting share to distribute. Busy free for all links pages have several hundred or thousand outgoing links on them. If we perform some quick math (being generous and giving the ffa page a pr value of 0.25)


Calculation of Page Rank Voting Share Transferred to each outgoing link on an FFA Page


Number of Outgoing Links On FFA Page: 50

  • PR Voting Share Calculation: 0.85(PR FFA/Outgoing Links FFA) = 0.85(0.25/50) = 0.00425 PR Voting Shares Transferred to each outgoing link


Number of Outgoing Links On FFA Page: 100

  • PR Voting Share Calculation: 0.85(PR FFA/Outgoing Links FFA) = 0.85(0.25/100) = 0.002125 PR Voting Shares Transferred to each outgoing link


Number of Outgoing Links On FFA Page: 500 (common for FFA pages)

  • PR Voting Share Calculation: 0.85(PR FFA/Outgoing Links FFA) = 0.85(0.25/500) = 0.000425 PR Voting Shares Transferred to each outgoing link


Number of Outgoing Links On FFA Page: 1000

  • PR Voting Share Calculation: 0.85(PR FFA/Outgoing Links FFA) = 0.85(0.25/1000) = 0.0002125 PR Voting Shares Transferred to each outgoing link


From the calculations it is easy to see that there is negligible page rank voting share being transferred from FFA links pages to their outgoing links and you would need several thousand links from pages of this type to see any actual page rank value! That is assuming that Google does not blackhole these pages in their index and actually allows page rank voting shares to pass from these pages in the first place, which is by no means a gaurantee and solely at the discretion of Google.


Page Rank in Complex Networks


The example above does not actually duplicate a real world example since it is only computing the page rank "voting share" of the ffa page in an idealized situation where the page rank of the page is already known. In complex networks with links in and links out of webpages the actual page rank for a webpage cannot be known due to the interdependencies each web page has on one another to calculate their page rank.


Think of it as a "chicken and the egg" situation. The problem can be solved by taking a best initial guess for the page rank value of each webpage in the network and plugging it into the page rank formula. The results of these calculations are then used to calculate the next incremental page rank values for the webpages in the network. This calculation is repeated over and over again until the page rank value approaches a limit. This limit is then the actual page rank for that page. In a complex network like the internet finding the page rank for all webpages can take millions of iterations.


Click here for more detailed examples and an online page rank calculator


It is also worth noting that when a webpage transfers page rank voting shares to another webpage the page rank of the contributing page is not reduced in any way. There is no actual page rank transfer, only a weighted "vote" is passed to the outgoing links.


Links on webpages with a high page rank and little or no other outgoing links on them but yours will provide the best opportunities to improve your page rank (if that is your goal and it shouldn't be, link for traffic not pr). Make sure to work on your site content and design before approaching other webmasters for links. The bottom line is you need to have a site worth linking to in order to get people to link to it.


Resources


Google Page Rank Whitepaper


Complex Page Rank Examples including Calculations

Sunday, April 20, 2008

SEO Versus PPC: What is More Useful?

There has been a continuing debate on the efficacy of Search Engine Optimization(SEO) versus that of PPC Advertising Management.


My two cents on the topic...


SEO Positives:


More visitors to search page are likely to click on these links than sponsored or paid links (we have observed that the ratio is 2:1) Since, this involves a lot of website tuning and making the website search friendly, the website that ranks high on organic listings(through SEO) normally has (arguably) a higher relevance and greater chances of conversion.


The long term costs are lower. The only cost involved is the (other than the obvious time cost) SEO consultation fee (typically, $50,000 to $200,000 for a 25 page SEO work). If averaged out over 24 months, this would mean $3000-$4000/month(average).


SEO Negatives(cons):


SEO takes time. Even the best SEO in business would take a minimum of 4-6 months to get your site up on the search listings for an averagely competitive category.


Unpredictability: This is the BIGGEST NEGATIVE. There is no guarantee that a top position site would retain it’s top position for a sizable time span. Google changes the logic for compiling and displaying the search results once a year (approximately) and keeps updating its index(regular since mid-2003). (Useful articles: http://dance.efactory.de/; http://www.webworkshop.net/florida-update.html)


Ethical Search Engine Optimization firms: This again poses a big challenge to the industry. The ratio of ethical SEO’s who know their trade to the unethical ones who indulge in unethical practices to get the site up in the organic listings, is 1: 1000!


Good SEO is NOT CHEAP - it CAN NOT be CHEAP: Typically, SEO means a lot of hard - continuous - effective work to get the site up on the listings. NO ONE can guarantee a position within a definite time period. Typical engagement fee ( annual) starts from $50k and depends on the number of web pages being optimized and the number of keywords these are being optimized for. Also, this is continuous work... it has to be, because of the regular changes that Google does in the way that it compiles and displays sites for keywords.


Pay-Per-Click(PPC) Search Advertising -Positives:


PPC is IMMEDIATE: The website ad can be up in Google sponsored links (https://adwords.google.com/select/) within minutes. In Yahoo Search(Overture) the ad is live within 4 days(max).


PPC is MEASURABLE: The click and the resultant action can be tracked back to cost,


PPC ad is more useful to an online buyer: The websites that advertise here pay to get listed. Normally, any website would do this only if they can SELL SOMETHING to the visitors. ROI matters.


PPC results CAN BE CONTROLLED: It’s hard work - it’s 24*7 work - however, it is far more controllable and predictable than organic listings. PPC impacts the "brand profile". This is a statement that is being tested for veracity. I believe in this because: If I am searching for widgets using certain keywords and one particular website’s ads pop up for each keyword and when I click on the ad it takes me to the relevant location on the website... I tend to form a connect between visibility - relevance - usefulness - all these impact the website/brand profile.


PPC Negatives(Cons):


PPC Can be EXPENSIVE if not managed well


PPC is threatened by CLICK FRAUD (something that can burn budgets very quickly if the campaign is not managed rigorously)


PPC space is very competitive and the bid prices are rising, literally every month


Only 1 out of 3 "search page visitors" are likely to click a sponsored link/paid ad


Like in SEO space, there are many firms that promise more than they deliver. Fortunately, the results are easily measurable and thus the ineffective firms can be sorted out.


I would not like to bias the reader with "what I think is better". Every business owner has a need - or at least should have a need - to get her site listed on the search engines.


Based on the pros and cons of SEO and PPC, it’s up to them to make the decision.


Tulika Bose is a Director in NetElixir Inc. NetElixir specializes in Real Time Paid Search Campaign optimization. The firm is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan. NetElixir manages campaigns for search advertisers in travel, telecom, retail, and financial services sector. The firm has consistently lived up to its claim of delivering a 20% higher performance rate than any comparable service or tool available today.


Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Where to Find Affiliates For Your Niche Website

To make money with articles that you place on websites, you will also need a variety of good affiliate links that will help to generate revenue. It is important that you know where to find affiliates and that you choose the best affiliates for you and your niche site.


When you pick an affiliate, it is important that you determine which companies you will profit best from based on the frequency that the product is likely to sell. There are several types of affiliates and some will offer you more money from a sale than others will. Before you get hazy-eyed by dollar signs, however, remember some products are bound to sell more than others. If you sell on product four times a year from a little known company that gives you $100 per sale or sell a well known product 3 times a week at the rate of $10 per sale, then you will make much more money with the $10 per sale product. Often times large well known companies will offer a very small profit per sale because they are established and know that their product is likely to sell well. Small, unknown companies, on the other hand, need all of the promotion they can get. Also, because they are unknown, their products are likely to sell less frequently.


The most important rule when picking affiliates to promote on your site is to pick products that would be of interest to those who would likely visit your niche site. Otherwise you will be promoting a product to a group of people who do not even want nor need it. If your niche site targets parents of young children, then promote baby products. If you niche site targets gardeners, then promote gardening products. If you promote baby products to gardeners, you are almost guaranteed to not make a profit no matter how much money the affiliate company offers for a sale.


Lastly, there are two main ways to find an affiliate company for your niche website. You can sign up with a company that manages the accounts of hundreds of companies, big and small, and apply for the products within these accounts or you can do a web search for companies that would match well with your niche, visit their websites, and see if they advertise an affiliate program.


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