I have recently returned from another SEO seminar and have yet again heard many horror stories from people who have had their sites banned by Google. It is quite clear when talking to these people why their sites have become banned and to be fair they are also aware of the reasons why!!!

In this article I will write about what I believe are SEO techniques that work.

For me there are a number of important factors to successful SEO. The most important factor is hard work. Most of these people who have had their sites banned were not willing to put all of the necessary hours of hard labour in that is required. They were looking for a quick fix and would use things such as pay per post.

I have had a look on the mattcutts blog last night and yet again there is a mention about this pay per plan site and other similar sites. Basically my advice would be to not use these types of sites as it very obvious that these posts have been paid for.

Patience is also very important as per the saying that Rome was not built in a day. I have had a lot of success with my own main website but it took quite a long time for me to achieve high ranking search engine positions.

The age of the domain is also very important and therefore this is another reason why patience is required.

Playing by the rules is also essential. I have many people asking me how I managed to achieve such high rankings. I explain about the hard work, patience and playing by the rules strategy and they seem to understand.

These people normally start well but normally after a few months start on that rocky path to buying links on blogs, links that are clearly paid for. This again is frowned upon by search engines such as Google, so come on people play by the rules and you will succeed.

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In Internet marketing, search engine marketing, or SEM, is a set of marketing methods to increase the visibility of a website in search engine results pages (SERPs). The three main methods of SEM are:

Search engine optimization attempts to improve rankings for relevant keywords in search results by improving a web site’s structure, content, and relevant backlink count. Pay per click advertising uses sponsored search engine listings to drive traffic to a web site. The advertiser bids for search terms, and the search engine ranks ads based on a competitive auction as well as other factors.

Paid inclusion can provide a guarantee that the website is included in the search engine’s natural listings. However, as of 2006 the leading search engine, Google, does not offer this service. this three method is useful to marketing SEO target .There is a possibility to get targeted visitors to the website.

Beside that, we have to know how to optimized our website to get #1 in search engine, especially in google.com Here some basic tips from me :-

1) on site optimization : make sure you using the right keywords in your website. Use image tags containing your selected keywords. Place your keywords at the end of your page.

2) Off site optimization : Get as much as backlinks to your site. Make sure all the backlinks have a good PR and its a quality links. Try to get as much as traffic to your website.

Be-Genius Articles on how to do make your website Friendly to Search Engines 

1. Headlines are rated more important than the rest of the web page by search engines. To take advantage of this, you should have your keywords in the page headline. Since the header tag (h1) is quite large, you should format it to make it smaller.  

2. Avoid creating menu on the left-hand side of a website. If unavoidable, an alternative way is to put some text with rich keywords at the top or above the left-hand menu so that this text will be the first thing to read by search engines.

3. Every page should contain the “title” and “description” tags with good keywords to describe the page content. The number of words for the title should not exceed 9 and that for the description should not be more than 20 words in order to keep within the limits of most search engines.

4. Try not to use Flash when possible. Flash cannot be read by the search engines to date and will cause slow page loading time and makes people run away

5. Think twice on how to use graphics. Make them relevant to your content and use an Alt tag containing the relevant keyword(s).

6. Do not only use images to link out. You should always use text links to link out to important content on your web site. Spiders can follow image links, but like text links more though.

7. Avoid using frames. Some search engines cannot spider web pages with frames at all. For the other search engines that can, they can have problems spidering it and sometimes they too cannot index the web page.

8. Avoid using too complex tables when laying out your page but to keep them simple for the spiders. There are some engines which find it difficult to navigate through to the other pages on your website if the navigation bar is too complicated.

9. Use external Cascading Style Sheets and Java Script files to reduce page size and make the download time much faster. It will allow the spider to index your web page faster and can help your ranking.

10. Use standard HTML. Software such as FrontPage, Dreamweaver or a WYSIWYG editor will often add unnecessary scripting codes that will make the page larger than it needed and make it harder to crawl. It will sometimes add codes that can’t be read by search engines, causing the spider not to index the page or not index the whole web page. If to use, you should use those web page creator software wisely with a good understanding of html.

Link Popularity refers to the number of links pointing to your site, from other sites on the web. The Search Engines consider your site important and rank it higher if several other sites link to your site. Type in your domain name in the box below and hit the ’search’ button, to find out the link popularity of your site.

You can also search for this on Google by typing in the following command -

Link: www.be-genius.com

The above command gives you a selective list of links, usually from PR4+ link pages. For a more extensive list, you may search the following syntax -

“be-genius.com” -site:www.be-genius.com

For a detailed Link Popularity report, you can use our Link Popularity Analyzer Tool, which checks the link popularity of your site across various search engines like Google, MSN, AltaVista, HotBot, Yahoo and AlltheWeb.

The History of LInk Popularity and PageRank

History behind Link Popularity and Google PageRank
Web, by its very nature is based on hyperlinks, where sites link to other prominent sites. If you take the logic that you would tend to link to sites that you consider important, in essence, you are casting a vote in favor of the sites that you link to. When hundreds or thousands of sites link to a site, it is logical to assume that such a site would be good and important.

Taking this logic further the Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page formulated a Search Engine algorithm that shifted the ranking weight to off-page factors. They evolved a formula called PageRank (named after its founder Larry Page ) where the algorithm would count the number of sites that link to a page and assign it an importance score on a scale of 1-10. More the number of sites that link to a page, higher its PageRank.

Google’s PageRank is important because it is one of the primary off-page factors that influences your page’s ranking in the search engine result pages.

PageRank in Google’s own Words
Google explains PageRank as follows ( http://www.google.com/technology/):

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query.

So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.

For more information on Google PageRank, go to

http://www.google.com/technology/

http://www.google.com/webmasters/4.html

Benefits of Building Link Popularity

Building Link Popularity is one of the most important and critical aspects of any effective Search Engine Optimization campaign today. The ‘off-page’ factors such as link popularity, PageRank and Anchor Text in incoming links play a major role in your site’s ranking in the search engine results pages (SERP).

Search Engines consider your site more important if more links point to your site. Building link popularity improves the PageRank of your web pages (Read more about PageRank). The higher the PageRank of your website, the higher its importance for search engines and higher it gets ranked in the search engine result pages. Search engines also take into account the PageRank of the pages that link to your site and its industry relevance to your own industry. Links from higher PageRank pages and industry relevant sites give your site a higher value. 

There is a big difference between advertising and spam and it is unfortunate that a high percentage of new internet business owners do not realize the distinction between the two.

This is critical because while an interesting, adequately written Internet marketing campaign can help to entice new clients and have existing clients stay with you, spam is liable to distance both new clients and existing clients.

This can be exceedingly harmful to profit margins for a business owner. Email campaigns can be remarkably effective tools in the business of Internet marketing. Email campaigns may incorporate mailing regular e-newsletters containing useful information as well as advertisements, short instructive email courses or emails giving discounts on goods and services.

Trusted clients who opt into your email list may probably not label these emails as spam and may buy other goods and services from your business as an upshot of this marketing procedure. In addition other internet users who have specifically requested more details about your products and services normally also find this kind of advertising to be useful.

On the other side of the coin, email recipients who did not ask for information are liable to see your emails as spam. Making use of email addresses is a deceiving approach and using such addresses to send out a hoard of emails will nearly always be considered to be spam.

Take heed that if you are reported for spam on a regular basis, you are likely to endanger your business. Having said that, most companies will allow you to explain your actions and let you off with a warning, however there are some who are much stricter and will just close your account.

So it is in your best interest that you learn as much as possible about the laws of Spam. Most mail providers have built-in spam filters and will automatically block certain words thus stopping your marketing email getting through in the first place.

It is worth while purchasing a software programme that can check your emails before you send them so that your efforts do not get wasted.

Lastly, Focus Groups provide a marvellous possibility for business owners to promote their business. By taking part in a discussion you will unearth a big number of Internet users who probably have an interest in your market. You could consider including a link back to your website in your signature or posting the link when it is fitting to the dialogue.

In all events, care should be taken to carefully study the Focus Group guidelines to certify you are not carrying out anything improper. Replying to every Focus Group you stumble on and posting a message containing a link to your website at a time when it is not relevant to the discussion is liable to be construed as spam by other members. If they start to look at your posts as spam, they are not likely to look in on your website via the links you post and more likely the administrators will exclude you from their Focus Group.

Banner ads are one of the utmost favourite marketing strategies which go along with an Internet Marketing programme. These ads emerge at the top of websites and are displayed across the width of the website It is vital to recognize how they can be overused and be labelled to be spam.

Randomly placing your banner ad on a few websites which are expected to captivate visitors similar to your target market is streetwise marketing, placement of your banner ad on any website which will advertise the ad heedless of the target audience can be construed as spam.

“Genius Landing Pages are an Artform, so Don’t Leave This In The Hands of Your Buddy, or You’ll Still Be Wondering What the Big Deal is About Them, While the Rest of us Rake in the Money!”

So, if you only spend money on one marketing action this year, I would recommend that it be a “Power/Squeeze/Landing Page.”

Overall, it would be my advice to get someone in the marketplace that has experience with these types of pages, but if you really want to take a stab at it yourself, here are some tips that will help you navigate this new territory.

10 Tips to Improve Your Landing Page:

1. Follow the layout that works

Have you ever noticed when something works, people just can’t help but wonder if they did this, would it be better. That’s great in some cases, but when something works, be careful what you mess with. If it doesn’t call for fancy, don’t get fancy. Find the template that works for your industry, and duplicate it.

2. Research

Take a look at your industry, and then Google search to find landing page sites in it. And then use Alexa to check out the pages ranking. The combination of this will allow you to see what works for your industry content wise. Keep the profile of your visitor in mind, when adding content, and target that specifically. And remember to add a dash of key search terms while you’re at it.

3. Don’t add what isn’t needed

Remember, the purpose of the landing page is to do one thing – and that is get the email address and name of the visitor so that you can build a relationship with them. Distractions can destroy your conversions. Don’t add any other links, and give them a clear message as to what you are offering, and why they should subscribe. That is your only purpose. The only way out, should be to leave, or subscribe.

4. Personalize it

2 ways you can dramatically increase your opt-in ratio is to add your picture, and if it is applicable, your signature. Let them know you are a real person, and this is a real offer. Anything that isn’t essential to the conversion process, get rid of it.

5. Solve a Problem or Add the Benefits

A great way to get good conversion is to use your text wisely. Make sure you let them know how you can solve a problem, or the amazing benefits they are about to receive can change their lives. You need to give them a huge reason to opt-in.

6. Follow the Page Eye-line strategy

There is a specific traffic pattern that they eye follows, so make sure the content you need them to see, follows that. In addition, you want all critical information to be above the screen line or virtual fold (the bottom of the screen before scrolling). Watch the number of pictures you have that may distract, and pull from your opt-in, and keep this to a minimum. You want their eye, to go to the Opt-In. This is not a place for ads, sidebars, navigation bars or much of anything, except getting to the point.

7. Display your Anti-Spam message

Make sure you make them immediately aware that you will not use their list for any other purpose than what they are opting in for. You won’t rent, sell, or do anything that would compromise your relationship with the person who now gave you their trust.

8. Opt-in Basics

Optimize your opt-in by making sure you don’t ask for too much. If you are using autoresponders as your campaign to keep in touch, just get email and first name. If you have a high-end product that may require some personal communication, then also ask for a phone number. But in general, less is more.

9. Make it urgent

You want the visitor to think if they don’t opt-in, and listen to your offer, than they are missing out on some very important information. You must make the need for them to opt-in urgent. Limited time offer. Today only. And if you can, add an opt-in bonus. Not only will this increase your conversion rate, but it will also add to the relationship building, as you give them something for free.

10. Test and Tweak

Always watch the statistics of your landing page with respect to the number of visitors, and the number that opted-in. If this isn’t an acceptable rate for your industry, change something, and repost. Then watch again. Constantly do this until you get a rate that really helps your business grow, and gives you someone to talk to and build a relationship with. Things to look at are:

Is the whole page focused on one objective?
Is there an urgent need or incentive to opt-in?
Do you have all of the critical elements?
Is critical information above the fold?
Is there any information that you don’t need and is distracting?
Does the page add to your overall strategy and brand?
Is the whole page cohesive?

With a Landing Page in place, your business can be on an entirely new level of money generation

Be-Genius now propose to go right out on a limb and say that design has very little to do with search engine optimization. This is a sweeping generalization, I admit, and one to which my designer friends will take instant umbrage. But it is true to all intents and purposes.

Design can certainly assist in achieving good optimization. By that I mean it will assist if it doesn’t hinder the process with acres of code that the robots need to wade through in order to find the potatoes and gravy. Or if the navigation throughout the site is logical and easy to achieve. Or if the pages are designed to load quickly.

Other than that, optimization is all in the writing.

Now, I am a copywriter with years’ experience in the SEO also; and there can be few people in the world who know less about design than I do. But my entire working life seems to have been spent arguing with designers about the length of copy in relation to the size of the pic in any given piece of work. And I confess that I mostly lost, thereafter seeing my words relegated to four lines of 8-point Myopic beneath an illustration the size of a house.
In website terms, however, the tables have been nicely turned. Here’s why.

To optimize a website, you first need to take a good, long look at the HTML meta tags of Title, Description and Keywords. Do you see what I see? Yes, they are words. And all of these words require researching and embellishing. Likewise, take a peek under that all-singing, all-dancing Home page banner – and what do you see? More words. These words, unlike those used in the meta tags above, are written for both search engine and potential human customer alike.

Search engines love words. Great, isn’t it?

Given all of this, it is pretty clear that all you need in order to properly optimize a website is a lexicon of well thought out words – keywords and keyphrases – sprinkled like generous confetti throughout the meta tags and the body copy. Well, almost.

In the first place, those words must be relevant. They must state clearly what it is you are selling and where you are selling it. The general marketing principle is:
(a) product description,
(b) product benefits,
(c) region of operation.

What you don’t need are turgid explanations about the size of your company and who the product is designed for. Your potential customers will mostly be bright enough to know whether or not they are in the market for what you are offering. So to say, for instance, that your ‘range of gardening gloves is ideal for gardeners’ is a touch obvious, not to mention redundant and a waste of valuable space. In all promotional writing, brevity and clarity are the two most important attributes. But I digress.

So how do you go about collating these key words and phrases? First, you could invest in software that generates your meta tags and keywords for you. Fair enough; there are some good programmes around, and I would be the first to applaud any device that makes life a touch easier. On the other hand, you could take the more intellectually satisfying route and do it yourself.

Further, in my not so humble opinion, every Home page should carry a stick of keyphrase-rich body copy. And this stick of copy should be placed where it can be seen, read and acted upon by the search engines. As close to the top of the page as possible.

Sadly, so many Home pages don’t have this attribute. The page designs leap from whiz-bang banner to product list or string of pics with no intervening tit-bits of information – in the shape of copy – designed to feed the search engine robots. There is little for the robots to get their shiny little teeth into.

Let me prove the point. On several occasions recently, I have been asked to optimize websites on which the Home pages were bereft of any meaningful copy. Within an hour or two, the copy was written and the sites posted to the engines. Within a couple of days, the sites in question were featuring nicely on the first couple of pages of the major engines. Previously, they were barely indexed.

There’s nothing magical about any of this. Because, guess what, search engine optimization is all in the writing.

If this has been helpful, maybe you’ll let me know.

 have taken my time to collate a simple tutorial for beginners in Search Engine optimization. It will help you get on your feet in SEO, and help your site be search engine, and at very least, user friendly. I will use several authorities to back-up my point, so you can see for yourself.To start Search Engine Optimization, I recommend we first learn a bit of history about it, and then we will move on to how to actually do it.

You may or may not know that SEO Is short for Search Engine optimization, but it can also be represented SEM (search engine marketing) or SEP (Search Engine Promotion). There are generally 2 ways to attack SEO, either using white hat, or black hat techniques. White hat techniques are good ways, think of it as the goody in that western film who always wore a white hat. Black hat techniques are likened to that Evil Gold Digger, who always carried a black hat, and was wanted over the whole of the U.S.

I suggest you use the White hat methods I outline in this article, as Black hat techniques can get you banned by Google, or even shot (no sorry, just banned.) For the Inquisitive who want to know more about Black Hat techniques (you’re evil) you can read up on them at en.wikipedia.org.

Ok now we have rid of the evil people, lets continue. What actually is SEO? Well it’s a process of making your website more appealing to a search engine (such as Google or Ask) and to move it up higher for your specified keywords, and hopefully give you more customers or traffic.

You can see then for Business websites, SEO is very important, as it can mean more profits. For personal websites it can mean growth and traffic, which is always good (and wanted). So how does Google actually rank your site? Well, good question let me explain. To rank a site, you need to be in Google’s web database, or in other words, in their results for your specified keyword/s.

A new site is typically indexed (where the Google crawler, a program, visits the site and retrieves all readable content and follows most links) in around 1-6 months, depending on your website and factors surrounding it. Typical factors that affect the rate of index are:

• How often you update the site. Google crawls sites that are updated more often, so keep your site as up-to-date as possible.
• The content. It is vital you have content or features that people will/do find interesting and useful.
• Valuable links. Links are very important, as long as they are HIGH page rank. 1 link from a page rank 7 site will speed up the indexing of your site a lot. Reason been, higher PR websites are crawled more often, as they influence other websites PR. So Google will actually find your site quicker if you can get a link from a high PR websites, preferably one relevant to your site.

One final thing we need to know about is PageRank (PR, developed by Google founder’s Larry Page and Sergy Brin) is Google’s main (but not only) way of determining ranking and relevance of websites. Basically most new sites will start as a PR 0. This means there PageRank is nil, zero, nothing e.t.c, and their position in Google’s Search Results page will show this. Normally even searching for the site by its name will still only show it somewhere in the top 20. PR goes from 0-10, with only a few sites achieving PR 10 such as google.com and Adobe. To get a PR you need links. Lots of them. And only quality ones. When looking for people to link to/ and from, don’t waist your time with PR 0 sites. Let me explain.

You’re website is likened to a would be president. They are running a campaign to get to be president (high up in Google, and lots of traffic) to get there they need the lots of votes from the country (Web). How do you get votes? Links. The more you have, the better your chances are of getting a good PageRank, and becoming president of your industry.

PageRank 0 sites are people who are either unable to vote or don’t vote, so what’s the point in making them link to you? Well if you like to waste time go ahead. If you get votes from rich people, it’s much better for your campaign. Rich people have High PageRanks, and that rubs off onto your site. So aim for High PR websites in your campaign and succeed. Don’t worry if you have bazillion’s of links to your site, and your PR is still 0. Google, are incredibly busy people, so it takes around 3 months for PageRank’s to update.

Likewise, when these people vote for you, try to get them to vote with good Keywords. For example, Black Sea Properties will benefit more from a link, again from Bulgaria.com, but with the ‘ALT’ tag for images or actual words used in linking saying something like “Black Sea Properties” or “Bulgarian Properties for sale”. That way Google can determine its relevance to your site, and can see why the site linked to you.

To continue I suggest you have a website indexed in Google. It helps anyway. So now what? Do you sit back, put your feet back, and rest on your laurels? Well, not really. Grab a Coffee, and keep reading……

You have a website built. Even if you don’t you can still use this info. So now we need to physically optimize your page, making sure that once the users, and Google’s Crawler, reach your site, they don’t get barraged by unreadable text, bad code, or the dreaded broken link.

Think of the Google Spider (the name for Google’s Crawler, because Spiders crawl and make webs……) as an award winning Food Critique. You’re a world-class chef. You’re website is food. And the Spider loves to rip apart your site, and analyze everything. As critiques don’t like food that is burnt, Google doesn’t like sites that are badly cooked, so make sure whatever code you use it is valid and well structured. Like every critique loves Pizza, you need to feed Google good pizza. Only it’s not Pepperoni or Marguerite, its CSS and XHTML.

Google laps it up, as when coded well it offers excellent cross browser compatibility. That also works for your visitors, who all end up looking at the same page, regardless if they are using Mozilla Firefox or IE5-6-7. To validate your XHTML and CSS use jigsaw.w3.org and validator.w3.org.

Hopefully now you have a good base for us to start optimizing. What’s next? Well, pretend you’re an average Joe visitor to your site. Forgot you designed or updated that site. Look at it realistically. What does it look like? Is it jam-full of nasty pop-ups, ads or spam? Or like-wise is it packed with Flash, JavaScript and a boat load of images? If so, I suggest you reconsider.

If you are reading this with a PR 0 site, Ads and pop-ups are useless as chances are there is only you looking at them. Even if you’re not, irreverent ads are annoying pop-ups drive the few visitors you are getting. Instead, streamline adds to a mere few, and use PHP or similar to rotate them. For the ones you simply must keep, put them into a ‘links’ page.

Are you using a splash or entry page? If so, make sure it has text on it, and is relevant, if you don’t really need to use one, get rid of it.

Using Flash? That’s fine in small amounts, but if you’re site is wholly Flash, I suggest you re-think it, or offer a HTML version as an alternate.

Using JavaScript? As with flash, avoid large usage of it.

So now you hopefully have a nice user-optimized site. Let me tell you, the more user-friendly, the better, Google loves it. Now though, we need to add some real flavor to your site, so Google will crawl it regularly. What do you need? Well, you guessed it, I’ll tell you.

1 st things first, let’s make content. If you’re site is a 1 page site, then I suggest you expand it to included new features and content. Content is always good. A great way of adding content is to write Articles that you allow users to use on their own site, providing they link back. Check all wording for spelling and grammar. Make sure you use a fair amount of Keywords in it. Each page should have at least 200 words. For example if I were to write content for Black Sea Properties, I may make an article on how to renovate your Bulgarian home cheaply. In that Article I would put my Keywords in bold, not too much though, just to make it natural, and to show Google we are putting emphasis on those words. Offer your article in html, Word and PDF formats to better suite your users. You can also put your Keywords in the Title tags of you’re article, and in Alt tags for images. You will need to write useful content. Don’t write about using socks to make a prototype mould, its something so obscure, I bet it gets one search a year, if any at all. Useful articles will work their way around the net. It’s like word-of-mouth advertising, but on the internet. Not only will your users benefit from great and professional articles, you will get more traffic, more reciprocal links, and more PageRank.

Now you have Developed your Content through the highly original named- Content Development. Yes, we have fancy names for everything on the web: D. what’s left to do? Well, not much really, great SEO isn’t any big secret. It’s not worth the £1000’s you could spend on it. It’s probably nothing more than you do to your site already. Remember, you want:

• Links
• Content
• Up-to date information
• User-friendly
• Articles
• Valid Code
• And more links

So why spend money on something you already do? Personally, I prefer to let Google work at its own pace. There’s no point feeding it genetically modified doorway pages, or Evil SEO methods. Just give it some natural and well made web pages, and Google will be happy as Larry (and Sergy).

So how do you get quality links?

It’s through our friend, MR content. In other words you need something worth linking to. Of course, you can always pay sites to link to you. I would only do this if the site is very relevant to your own, and has high numbers of both visitors and traffic. Make sure it has a good PageRank. (Above 5 preferably).

There are however many, many websites who will link to you for free. To find them, you have to be sneaky (nothing illegal, or anti-Google involved) but you will need to make a list of a few competitors who are aiming to beat. Pick competitors who…. Appear highly for your wanted search term. Make sure they have a high PageRank. If your site is in too small a niche, then you need a general term to compete with.