Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for
a number of different reasons. But before you can make full use of
this tool, you need to understand how to interpret the data.

Most web hosting companies will provide you with basic web traffic
information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use
of. However, the data you receive from your host company can be
overwhelming if you don’t understand how to apply it to your
particular business and website. Let’s start by examining the most
basic data – the average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly,
and monthly basis.

These figures are the most accurate measure of your website’s
activity. It would appear on the surface that the more traffic you
see recorded, the better you can assume your website is doing, but
this is an inaccurate perception. You must also look at the behavior
of your visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge
the effectiveness of your site.

There is often a great misconception about what is commonly known as
"hits" and what is really effective, quality traffic to your site.
Hits simply means the number of information requests received by the
server. If you think about the fact that a hit can simply equate to
the number of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how
overblown the concept of hits can be. For example, if your homepage
has 15 graphics on it, the server records this as 15 hits, when in
reality we are talking about a single visitor checking out a single
page on your site. As you can see, hits are not useful in analyzing
your website traffic.

The more visitors that come to your website, the more accurate your
interpretation will become. The greater the traffic is to your
website, the more precise your analysis will be of overall trends in
visitor behavior. The smaller the number of visitors, the more a few
anomalous visitors can distort the analysis.

The aim is to use the web traffic statistics to figure out how well
or how poorly your site is working for your visitors. One way to
determine this is to find out how long on average your visitors
spend on your site. If the time spent is relatively brief, it
usually indicates an underlying problem. Then the challenge is to
figure out what that problem is.

It could be that your keywords are directing the wrong type of
visitors to your website, or that your graphics are confusing or
intimidating, causing the visitor to exit rapidly. Use the knowledge
of how much time visitors are spending on your site to pinpoint
specific problems, and after you fix those problems, continue to use
time spent as a gauge of how effective your fix has been.

Additionally, web traffic stats can help you determine effective and
ineffective areas of your website. If you have a page that you
believe is important, but visitors are exiting it rapidly, that page
needs attention. You could, for example, consider improving the link
to this page by making the link more noticeable and enticing, or you
could improve the look of the page or the ease that your visitors
can access the necessary information on that page.

If, on the other hand, you notice that visitors are spending a lot
of time on pages that you think are less important, you might
consider moving some of your sales copy and marketing focus to that
particular page.

As you can see, these statistics will reveal vital information about
the effectiveness of individual pages, and visitor habits and
motivation. This is essential information to any successful Internet
marketing campaign.

Your website undoubtedly has exit pages, such as a final order or
contact form. This is a page you can expect your visitor to exit
rapidly. However, not every visitor to your site is going to find
exactly what he or she is looking for, so statistics may show you a
number of different exit pages. This is normal unless you notice a
exit trend on a particular page that is not intended as an exit
page. In the case that a significant percentage of visitors are
exiting your website on a page not designed for that purpose, you
must closely examine that particular page to discern what the
problem is. Once you pinpoint potential weaknesses on that page,
minor modifications in content or graphic may have a significant
impact on the keeping visitors moving through your site instead of
exiting at the wrong page.

After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, it’s time to turn
to your keywords and phrases. Notice if particular keywords are
directing a specific type of visitor to your site. The more targeted
the visitor – meaning that they find what they are looking for on
your site, and even better, fill out your contact form or make a
purchase – the more valuable that keyword is.

However, if you find a large number of visitors are being directed -
or should I say misdirected – to your site by a particular keyword
or phrase, that keyword demands adjustment. Keywords are vital to
bringing quality visitors to your site who are ready to do business
with you. Close analysis of the keywords your visitors are using to
find your site will give you a vital understanding of your visitor’s
needs and motivations.

Finally, if you notice that users are finding your website by typing
in your company name, break open the champagne! It means you have
achieved a significant level of brand recognition, and this is a
sure sign of burgeoning success.

Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and
author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online
since the early days and he knows what it takes to make money and
succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Free
monthly newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful web
site promotions that can help YOU!

Setting up a website is the very first step of an Internet marketing
campaign, and the success or failure of your site depends greatly on
how specifically you have defined your website goals. If you don’t
know what you want your site to accomplish, it will most likely fail
to accomplish anything. Without goals to guide you in developing and
monitoring your website, all your site will be is an online
announcement that you are in business.

If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, whether it
is visitors filling out a form so a representative can contact them,
or purchasing a product, there are steps you can take to insure that
your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first
indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out
the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good baseline
measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any unusual
offline promotional activities.

However, just because hoards of people have passed through your
gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually, you want those
visitors to actually do something there. It is equally important to
monitor the number of visitors to your site who made a purchase.
This figure is called the site conversion rate, and it is an
essential element of the efficacy of your website. To find the site
conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure
out the percentage of them that actually performed the action your
site is set up for. For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site,
but only 25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion
rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of visitors
and divide that figure by the number of visitors who made a
purchase. Then divide that result by 100 (25 ÷ 2000 X 100).

If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a form, make
sure to then figure out what the difference is between your site
conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not
everyone who fills out your form will actually become your customer.
However, whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product,
or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate
will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you
make changes to the site.

You may find that you need to implement some additional marketing
strategies if you find that traffic to your site is extremely low.
There are several effective methods to improve the flow of traffic
to your website, particularly launching a search engine optimization
campaign. This campaign is targeted at increasing your position in
search engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster
and easier. You can either research the steps you need to take to
improve your search engine rankings, or employ a search engine
optimization company to do the work for you. In either case, after
your have improved your search engine positions, make sure you keep
on top of them by regular monitoring and adjusting of your efforts
to maintain high positions.

Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor to your
website to accomplish the action the site is set-up for. For
example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this
form easily accessible, or does the visitor have to go through four
levels to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, the customer
may just throw in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure
your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or
ordering page quickly accessible.

Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The
goal is, of course, to get your visitor to make a purchase or fill
out your form. Website copy must be specifically geared to your
online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company
brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and
loss in your online campaign.

Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and
author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online
since the early days and he knows what it takes to make money and
succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Free
monthly newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful web
site promotions that can help YOU!

Search engines are the gateway to the Internet; they are the first
tool that potential customers use to find the products and services
they need. This is why link popularity is so imperative. If the
customers do not find your website, you have no possibilities of
making any sales.

You’re probably wondering what the blazes is popular about a link!
Well, in a word – plenty! Link popularity refers to the ranking
assigned to your website by the search engines, and it determines
the ranking your page gets when keywords are entered into a search
engine. So, you’re probably wondering, how do I make my link
popular?

Search engines are discretionary, giving status and ranking to sites
that have links to their pages from related, quality sites. It’s a
simple formula, but a very important one. Google created the system,
and now virtually all the most popular search engines employ it to
rank your web pages in their indexes.

The more commonly used your keyword is, the harder it will be to
achieve link popularity, but without achieving this step, it is
almost certain your site will never rank highly on any search
engine. But don’t be discouraged; there are tried and true ways of
achieving link popularity using the most competitive keywords.

There are a few things you should be aware of. The first is that
just linking up with a large number of other websites will not
achieve link popularity. In fact, it may have quite the opposite
effect. This is particularly true when pertaining to websites that
are nothing more than "link farms" – pages containing line after
line of indiscriminate links. Search engines may aggressively
discriminate against your website if you are associated with a link
farm, so steer clear of them!

The next thing to bear in mind is the quality of the site you are
linking to. Never link to a page you have reservations about your
visitors seeing. The last thing you want your website to appear as
is indiscriminate and cheap. Linking to sites of poor quality will
only lessen your link popularity, if not completely destroy it.

So let’s get to what you need to do to achieve supreme link
popularity and improve your rankings to stellar status on all the
popular search engines.

The first step, and the fastest way to get your foot in the door, is
to get a listing in a popular directory, such as Open Directory
Project and Yahoo. If your site is business-related, you will want
to be listed on Yahoo, and despite the fact that it will cost you
around $300 a year, it will be money well spent. If your site is
non-commercial, the listing will be free, but it will take time and
follow-up to actually get it listed. Open Directory is gives you a
free listing whether you are business-related or non-commercial, but
be prepared to make a lot of follow-up inquiries before you see your
site listed.

You are aiming to get listed in the highest level of appropriate
category, and this just takes some common sense. For example, if
your company ships Alpaca wool from an Alpaca farm located in the
middle of Nowhere, Tiny State, do NOT submit your listing to
"Retailers from Nowhere, Tiny State." BIG MISTAKE! All you have to
do is look a little deeper – and submit your listing to the "Fine
Alpaca Wool" category. You will not only associate yourself with
culture and quality, but you will be listed in a national category.

The next step after you have attained directory listings is to
locate other quality sites that will increase your link popularity.
Try to find sites that are in some way related to yours, so not only
will your link popularity increase, but your customer base may also
be expanded. You want to avoid your competitors and look for sites
that are useful to your site’s visitors. Let’s look at the Alpaca
Wool site example. Linking up to a site that sells knitting supplies
would be helpful to your visitors, and the chances of the knitting
supply site wanting to link up to your site are also greater. By
linking to a related site that will be relevant to your website’s
traffic, you are increasing both of your site’s business prospects -
and both of your sites’ link popularity.

Not all sites want to link to other sites, so you will have to do
some research when you are looking for possible linking partners.
Google is an excellent starting place for your search. Make sure you
enter keywords that you think quality customers will also enter to
find your own site. Remember, your criteria are quality, highly
ranked, non-competing websites that have a links or resources page.
Go to these sites and objectively assess them. Look at the quality
of the product, the graphics, and the ease of use. Then check out
the other sites they are linked to, and determine if your own site
would fit in with the crowd.

When you decide you have found a good prospect, you must set out to
woo them. The first thing to do is to add a link on your own links
page to their site. This is an essential first step; it shows good
faith, and ups your chances significantly of their reciprocity.
After you have added their link, you must contact the webmaster of
their site. Since this is almost always done by email, you want to
make sure it is immediately clear that your message is not junk
mail. This requires that you tell them right off the bat that you
have added a link to their page on your site. A hook like this
almost always insures the reader will read on.

Next, be sure to be flattering and let them know how much you
appreciate their website. Make sure you emphasize that you have
actually visited their site, and that their site is not just a
random pick. Give them the address of your links page, and ask them
to check out the link for themselves. It’s a good idea to mention
that they will not only benefit from the increased traffic your
website will direct their way, but you will also increase their link
popularity. Briefly, explain why link popularity is so essential,
but do this in a sentence or two so you don’t sound like a
professor! Finally, tell them you would greatly appreciate if they
would reciprocally add a link on their own links page to your
website.

Go through this process with as many appropriate sites as you can
find, bearing in mind the criteria of quality and
non-competitiveness. After you have emailed all relevant sites, be
sure to check these website frequently to see if they have added a
link to your page. Give it about a month, and if no link appears,
try another charming email. Then give it another month, and if your
site is still absent from their links page, it’s time to remove
their link from your own links page. The only time you want to
pursue a link further than this is if you believe a site is crucial
to your link popularity and your business needs. Just remember to
keep all your communications complimentary and cordial.

Then set up a schedule to check your ranking in search engines
frequently to see if your link popularity has improved. This is not
achievable in the blink of an eye. It will take some time and a good
deal of work. There is no way around the labor-intensive quality of
improving your link popularity, which is why search engines regard
it with such importance.

By the way – make sure you have a beautiful, streamlined site or you
will never persuade anyone to link up to you. Be prepared to keep
plugging away at this process, as long as it takes, until you
achieve link popularity stardom!

Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and
author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online
since the early days and he knows what it takes to make money and
succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Free
monthly newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful web
site promotions that can help YOU!

The methods employed to increase your search engine rankings may
seem like rocket science to you, so you have probably avoided
dealing with this issue. I am here to tell you – the time has come
to face your website! A high search engine ranking for your website
is so essential that if you have the slightest desire to actually
succeed in your business, there is no way you can continue to avoid
this issue.

At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the
Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo,
and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages for high search engine
rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be
more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up
in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed
to your website. That’s what search engine optimization is about.

You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available
online to figure out how to optimize your web pages to achieve
higher rankings. Or you can look at a few simple items on your
pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved
rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the
title bar on your homepage.

The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the
words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase
search engine rankings, the words on your homepage’s title bar
should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which
would include your company name.

Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages
you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should
contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page
itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them
to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the
title bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each
other.

The next item to put under your microscope is your website content.
Search engines generally list sites that contain quality content
rather than scintillating graphics. The text on your site must
contain the most important keywords – the words that potential
customers will be typing into search engines to find your site.

Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not
desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen
words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this
text is essential. However, the search engines must be able to read
the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic
format.

To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try
to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is
HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic
form. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML
format in order to increase your search engine rankings.

Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this sounds like
something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code.
Many people believe that meta tags are the key to high search engine
rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still,
it’s worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use
meta tags in their ranking formula.

To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must access
the code. To do this, click the "view" button on the browser menu
bar, and select "source." This will pull up a window revealing the
underlying code that created the page. If there are meta tags, they
usually appear near the top of the window. For example, a meta tag
would read: meta name="keywords" content=. If you do not find code
that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This may
not do much for your search engine rankings, but any little boost
helps.

Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a factor
that is extremely important in terms of search engine rankings.
Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website.
Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked
to from your links page.

If you type in "free link popularity check" in a popular search
engine, the search engine will then show you what sites are linked
to your site. In the case that there aren’t many sites linked up to
yours, or that the sites that are linked up have low search engine
rankings, consider launching a link popularity campaign.
Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and requesting
that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires
checking out the rankings of the websites you want to link up with.
Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine
ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.

Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful
Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search
engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps
listed above, and see if you can’t boost your rankings yourself.
Don’t ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing.
Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality
customers will be directed your way.

Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and
author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online
since the early days and he knows what it takes to make money and
succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Free
monthly newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful web
site promotions that can help YOU!

Since search engines are the first stop for people on the Internet
looking for goods or services, the position your website appears in
search results is an important factor. If your URL shows up far down
the results list, the chances of the consumer never finding you
increase incrementally. Once you achieve a high search engine
position, it is essential that you make sure you maintain the high
ranking you have worked so hard to achieve.

This means you must come up with a strategy to monitor your search
engines positions. This strategy is crucial to the success of any
marketing campaign. Think of your search engine positions as your
online portfolio. Would you let your stock portfolio be ruled by
chance and market fluctuations, or would you keep close tabs on your
stocks so you could buy and sell when the time is right? This is the
way you must consider your search engines positions.

Be aware that at first, after you have launched your search engine
campaign and done all the right things to increase your rankings,
you will most likely see a continual upward climb. What you need to
be on the lookout for is the moment that upward climb reaches a
plateau. When this happens, your search engine position campaign
moves into stage two, the monitoring and protecting stage.

In stage two, do not be concerned about the short-term fluctuations
in your positions. These are similar to the subtle rising and
falling of stocks in a portfolio. Short-term movement is an integral
part of the whole process. It’s the long-term changes that you must
watch for and prepare to act on immediately.

Analyzing the long-term trends of search engines positions is
imperative. The way in which search engines rank websites may change
at the drop of hat. If you are unaware of these changes – many of
which are subtle yet can be deadly to your ranking – your position
may drop to the bottom of the list before you can get your bearings.
To prevent this kind of precipitous drop, you must create a system
to monitor your positions on a monthly basis. Devise a chart to keep
tabs on your top ranking positions or your top pages, and make sure
to watch "the market" closely.

Each search engine uses a formula to compute website rankings. When
a search engine changes this formula in any way, it may raise or
lower your ranking. Some search engines use a number of different
formulas, rotating them so that a formula doesn’t become overused or
outdated. Depending on which formula is being applied, your search
engine position may suddenly drop or rise in rank significantly.
Therefore, you must check your positions frequently in order to
catch when a search engine changes formulas and what effect it has
on your positions.

You must also deal with your competition – a crucial factor you must
always be vigilant about. Your competitor’s position may suddenly
rise, automatically lowering your position. Or their position may
drop, pushing your position higher. Each month, expect position
changes due to the continual changes that are occurring in your
competitor’s position, and be prepared to adjust your marketing
strategy to compensate for decreased rankings. Monitoring these
fluctuations will also give you vital information about how to
improve your website to increase your position in search results.

Of course, you must discern what the most popular search engines are
in order for your monitoring efforts to be effective. Right now,
there are ten popular search engines that direct most of Internet
traffic to your sites. The challenge you face is that these top ten
may change from month to month.

This means that your must not only monitor your search engine
positions, but you must also keep track of the ranking popularity of
the search engines you are monitoring. Find out which search engines
people use most frequently every month and be sure to live in the
present! People are fickle about their favorite search engines, and
it takes constant vigilance to follow their dalliances. The search
engines they loved when you first launched your campaign may be old
news in the next few months. You must adjust your list of engines
according to the whims of the Internet users. Check out http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html
for a current list of website favorites.

Another factor to monitor carefully is a sudden drop of your
positions in all search engines. This is not the same as monthly
fluctuations – this is a neon red warning sign! It could mean a
number of different things.

It all your search engine positions have plummeted, it may indicate
that search engines spiders – those sneaky programs that seek out
your site and rank their positions – have found some type of problem
with your website. If you have recently changed the code, for
instance, the spider may become utterly confused and consequently
drop your positions disastrously. If a spider creeps up on your
website when it is down for adjustments or changes, you may actually
disappear from a search engine index entirely. Or a search engine
may drastically change its formula, and suddenly all of your website
come up as irrelevant. If that search engine is a current favorite,
it may create a domino effect, causing all of your position to drop
in all search engines.

Some search engines rely on the results from other search engines,
and it is vital that you know which engines these are and keep track
of all the engines they influence. The biggest problem here is that
search engines will sometimes change affiliations, and this can
create a major shift in the geography of the Internet. For example,
recently Yahoo decided to display only results gleaned from Google.
So you must not only monitor your own positions, but you must keep
abreast of seismic shifts in the landscape of the Internet as a
whole.

Finally, pay attention to your keywords. Keywords are the foundation
bricks of the entire search engine system, and they demand
individual scrutiny in your monitoring efforts. If you have found
that a number of your positions have plummeted, it may mean that a
page of your website has become invisible or inaccessible to search
engine spiders. Or the competition for that particular keyword or
phrase has recently rocketed into outer space. In either case, you
must act quickly and efficiently to regain lost ground.

Your search engine marketing campaign is an investment. If costs you
time and money on a continual basis. Protect this investment as
diligently as you would your financial portfolio. In the same way,
track your positions from an objective perspective, and monitor your
positions on a regular basis. Make sure your time and effort reap
rewards by keeping your eye on the big picture – your long-term
marketing campaign.

Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and
author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online
since the early days and he knows what it takes to make money and
succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Free
monthly newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful web
site promotions that can help YOU!

There are many ways to promote your website and one of the most
efficient ways is to use search engines. Search engines are the
first stop for most people trying to find information, services, and
products online. Because of this, it is essential that your website
appears quickly in search results.

The Internet contains numerous search engines, some of which offer
what is known as "paid inclusion." This means that you pay the
specific search engine an annual fee for your web page to be
included in their index.

Of course, every search engine already has an automated program
commonly called a "spider" that indexes all the web pages it locates
online, and it does this for free. So whether you pay or not, your
web page will eventually be indexed by all Internet search engines,
as long as the spider can follow a link to your page. The major
issue is, then, how quickly your page is indexed.

A search engine that offers a paid URL inclusion uses an extra
spider that is programmed to index the particular pages that have
been paid for. The difference between the spider that indexes pages
for free and the spider that indexes only pages for a fee is speed.
If you have paid for inclusion, the additional search engine spider
will index your page immediately.

The debate over paid URL inclusion centers around the annual fee.
Since the regular spider of these search engines would eventually
get around to indexing your web page anyway, why is a renewal fee
necessary? The fee is necessary to keep your pages in the search
engine’s index. If you go the route of paid inclusion, you should be
aware that at the end of the pay period, on some search engines,
your page will be removed from their index for a certain amount of
time.

It’s easy to get confused about whether you would benefit from paid
inclusion since the spider of any search engine will eventually
index your page without the additional cost. There are both
advantages and disadvantages to paid URL inclusion, and it is only
by weighing your pros and cons that you will be able to decide
whether to spring for the extra cash or not.

The advantages are obvious: rapid inclusion and rapid re-indexing.
Paid inclusion means that your pages will be indexed quickly and
added to search results in a very short time after you have paid the
fee. The time difference between when the regular spider will index
your pages and when the paid spider will is a matter of months. The
spider for paid inclusion usually indexes your pages in a day or
two. Be aware that if you have no incoming links to your pages, the
regular spider will never locate them at all.

Additionally, paid inclusion spiders will go back to your pages
often, sometimes even daily. The advantage of this is that you can
update your pages constantly to improve the ranking in which they
appear in search engines, and the paid URL inclusion spider will
show that result in a matter of days.

First and foremost, the disadvantage is the cost. For a ten page
website, the costs of paid URL inclusion range from $170 for
Fast/Lycos to $600 for Altavista, and you have to pay each engine
their annual fee. How relevant the cost factor is will depend on
your company.

Another, and perhaps more important, disadvantage is the limited
reach of paid URL inclusions. The largest search engines, Google,
Yahoo, and AOL, do not offer paid URL inclusion. That means that the
search engines you choose to pay an inclusion fee will amount to a
small fraction of the traffic to your site on a daily basis.

Google usually updates its index every month, and there is no way
you can speed up this process. You will have to wait for the Google
spider to index your new pages no matter how many other search
engines you have paid to update their index daily. Be aware that it
is only after Google updates their index that your pages will show
up in Google, Yahoo, or AOL results.

One way to figure out whether paid URL inclusion is a good deal for
your company is to consider some common factors. First, find out if
search engines have already indexed your pages. To do this, you may
have to enter a number of different keywords, but the quickest way
to find out is to enter your URL address in quotes. If your pages
appear when you enter the URL address but do not appear when you
enter keywords, using paid inclusion will not be beneficial. This is
because your pages have already been indexed and ranked by the
regular spider. If this is the case, your money would be better
spent by updating your pages to improve your ranking in search
results. Once you accomplish this, you can then consider using paid
inclusion if you want to speed up the time it will take for the
regular spider to revisit your pages.

The most important factor in deciding whether to use paid URL
inclusion is to decide if it’s a good investment. To figure this
out, you have to look at the overall picture: what kind of product
or service are you selling and how much traffic are you dependent on
to see a profit?

If your company sells an inexpensive product that requires a large
volume of traffic to your site, paid inclusion may not be the best
investment for you; the biggest search engines do not offer it, and
they are the engines that will bring you the majority of hits. On
the other hand, if you have a business that offers an expensive
service or product and requires a certain quality of traffic to your
site, a paid URL inclusion is most likely an excellent investment.

Another factor is whether or not your pages are updated frequently.
If the content changes on a daily or weekly basis, paid inclusion
will insure that your new pages are indexed often and quickly. The
new content is indexed by the paid spider and then appears when new
relevant keywords are entered in the search engines. Using paid
inclusion in this case will guarantee that your pages are being
indexed in a timely manner.

You should also base your decision on whether or not your pages are
dynamically generated. These types of pages are often difficult for
regular spiders to locate and index. Paying to include the most
important pages of a dynamically generated website will insure that
the paid spider will index them.

Sometimes a regular spider will drop pages from its search engine,
although these pages usually reappear in a few months. There are a
number of reasons why this can happen, but by using paid URL
inclusion, you will avoid the possibility. Paid URL inclusion
guarantees that your pages are indexed, and if they are
inadvertently dropped, the search engine will be on the lookout to
locate them immediately.

As you can see, there are numerous factors to consider when it comes
to paid URL inclusion. It can be a valuable investment depending on
your situation. Evaluate your business needs and your website to
determine if paid URL inclusion is a wise investment for your
business goals.

Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and
author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online
since the early days and he knows what it takes to make money and
succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Free
monthly newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful web
site promotions that can help YOU!

Advertising your services or products on the Internet is both
extremely effective and extremely competitive. There are several
ways to go about attracting traffic to your website; Pay-Per-Click
is one of the options you can choose from, along with developing an
SEO, or search engine optimization campaign. Both pay-per-click and
SEO are targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of
search engine results as possible. One of the differences is that it
takes minutes to set up a pay-per-click campaign versus months for a
good SEO campaign.

Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of paid advertising that most search
engines, including some of the largest ones, now offer. It requires
a bid for a "per-click" basis, which translates to your company
paying the bid amount every time the search engine directs a visitor
to your site. There is the added bonus that when a per-click site
sends your website traffic, your site often appears in the results
of other prevalent search engines.

As with all marketing campaigns, there are advantages and
disadvantages. If you understand the process and monitor your
pay-per-click campaign frequently, it can be very effective. One of
the greatest advantages is that you never have to tweak your web
pages to change your position in search engine results, as you must
do in a typical SEO campaign. What you do have to do in a
pay-per-click campaign is pay a fee.

Another advantage is the simplicity of the pay-per-click process.
You just bid and you’re up and running. It doesn’t demand any
specific technical knowledge, though the more you know about search
engines and keywords, the easier – and more effective – the process
will be.

The downside is that pay-per-click is essentially a bidding war. A
higher bid than yours will lower your position on search engine
results. This means that you will have to raise your bid to regain
your position – which can obviously become quite expensive,
especially if you are bidding on a popular keyword.

In order to determine if pay-per-click is a cost effective form of
marketing for your business, you must do some computing to figure
out how much each visitor to your site is worth. You can compute
this value by dividing the profit you make on your website over a
given period of time by the total number of visitors for that same
time period. For example, if your site made $5,000 in profits and
there were 2,5000 hits, each visitor would be theoretically worth 50
cents. The basic formula is profits divided by visitors.

The figure of 50 cents per visitor is the point at which your
business breaks even. The idea, of course, is to show a profit, not
to merely cover your costs. Therefore, you are aiming at a figure
less than 50 cents per click.

Be aware that the most popular keywords often cost considerably more
than 50 cents a click. The only way around this is to bid less for
these phrases or you will be paying too much for each individual
hit.

The key (pun intended) to success is to learn everything you can
about search engine keyword research. The good news is there isn’t a
limit to the amount of keywords you can add to your bid because
additional keywords do not add additional cost. This translates into
a lot less hassle for you because there is no need to optimize your
site to index a particular set of keywords.

Obviously, some keywords are much more effective than others are,
but they will not cost you anything except time to set-up your
account in your pay-per-click bid. Of the popular search engines
that offer pay-per-click, one called Overture provides an online
tool that will give you the data on how often particular keywords
are entered into their search engine. They also offer suggestions
for keywords after you enter a description of your site.

In pay-per-click, this written description is crucial. You must
understand that the object of your description is not to generally
attract visitors, but to be as specific as possible so that only
those visitors who are likely to buy your service or product go to
your site. You must use expert marketing copy to guarantee that your
description is both precise and enticing to attract the most ideal
candidates to your site. This description is your most powerful tool
to insure that your bid is profitable.

Another essential element of pay-per-click advertising is that you
constantly monitor your bid. It is very important that you bear in
mind that the results of the top search engines providing
pay-per-click advertising, which are Overture and Adwords Select,
usually appear on other popular search engines. Because of this, the
competition for top ranking is intense, and very often you will find
that the bidding price balloons too high for pay-per-click to yield
a profit.

If this happens, it is advisable to withdraw your bid on that
particular keyword and try another one. Remember: when you pay too
much per click to make a profit, you are in essence losing the
bidding war.

Since losing is not acceptable, you must have a plan in place to
closely track the effectiveness of your keyword. It is advisable to
monitor your keywords on at least a monthly basis.

Not only is careful monitoring important, but the analysis of
visitor behavior can produce invaluable knowledge about consumer
motivation, habits, and trends. Expert monitoring and consumer
analysis is essential to your overall business needs, and will also
insure that your pay-per-click campaign is a success.

Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and
author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online
since the early days and he knows what it takes to make money and
succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Free
monthly newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful web
site promotions that can help YOU!

Your website’s ranking on search engines is a vital element of your
overall marketing campaign, and there are ways to improve your link
popularity through legitimate methods. Unfortunately, the Internet
is populated by bands of dishonest webmasters seeking to improve
their link popularity by faking out search engines.

The good news is that search engines have figured this out, and are
now on guard for "spam" pages and sites that have increased their
rankings by artificial methods. When a search engines tracks down
such a site, that site is demoted in ranking or completely removed
from the search engine’s index.

The bad news is that some high quality, completely above-board sites
are being mistaken for these web page criminals. Your page may be in
danger of being caught up in the "spam" net and tossed from a search
engine’s index, even though you have done nothing to deserve such
harsh treatment. But there are things you can do – and things you
should be sure NOT to do – which will prevent this kind of
misperception.

Link popularity is mostly based on the quality of sites you are
linked to. Google pioneered this criteria for assigning website
ranking, and virtually all search engines on the Internet now use
it. There are legitimate ways to go about increasing your link
popularity, but at the same time, you must be scrupulously careful
about which sites you choose to link to. Google frequently imposes
penalties on sites that have linked to other sites solely for the
purpose of artificially boosting their link popularity. They have
actually labeled these links "bad neighborhoods."

You can raise a toast to the fact that you cannot be penalized when
a bad neighborhood links to your site; penalty happens only when you
are the one sending out the link to a bad neighborhood. But you must
check, and double-check, all the links that are active on your links
page to make sure you haven’t linked to a bad neighborhood.

The first thing to check out is whether or not the pages you have
linked to have been penalized. The most direct way to do this is to
download the Google toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com. You will
then see that most pages are given a "Pagerank" which is represented
by a sliding green scale on the Google toolbar.

Do not link to any site that shows no green at all on the scale.
This is especially important when the scale is completely gray. It
is more than likely that these pages have been penalized. If you are
linked to these pages, you may catch their penalty, and like the
flu, it may be difficult to recover from the infection.

There is no need to be afraid of linking to sites whose scale shows
only a tiny sliver of green on their scale. These sites have not
been penalized, and their links may grow in value and popularity.
However, do make sure that you closely monitor these kind of links
to ascertain that at some point they do not sustain a penalty once
you have linked up to them from your links page.

Another evil trick that illicit webmasters use to artificially boost
their link popularity is the use of hidden text. Search engines
usually use the words on web pages as a factor in forming their
rankings, which means that if the text on your page contains your
keywords, you have more of an opportunity to increase your search
engine ranking than a page that does not contain text inclusive of
keywords.

Some webmasters have gotten around this formula by hiding their
keywords in such a way so that they are invisible to any visitors to
their site. For example, they have used the keywords but made them
the same color as the background color of the page, such as a
plethora of white keywords on a white background. You cannot see
these words with the human eye – but the eye of search engine spider
can spot them easily! A spider is the program search engines use to
index web pages, and when it sees these invisible words, it goes
back and boosts that page’s link ranking.

Webmasters may be brilliant and sometimes devious, but search
engines have figured these tricks out. As soon as a search engine
perceive the use of hidden text – splat! the page is penalized.

The downside of this is that sometimes the spider is a bit
overzealous and will penalize a page by mistake. For example, if the
background color of your page is gray, and you have placed gray text
inside a black box, the spider will only take note of the gray text
and assume you are employing hidden text. To avoid any risk of false
penalty, simply direct your webmaster not to assign the same color
to text as the background color of the page – ever!

Another potential problem that can result in a penalty is called
"keyword stuffing." It is important to have your keywords appear in
the text on your page, but sometimes you can go a little overboard
in your enthusiasm to please those spiders. A search engine uses
what is called "Keyphrase Density" to determine if a site is trying
to artificially boost their ranking. This is the ratio of keywords
to the rest of the words on the page. Search engines assign a limit
to the number of times you can use a keyword before it decides you
have overdone it and penalizes your site.

This ratio is quite high, so it is difficult to surpass without
sounding as if you are stuttering – unless your keyword is part of
your company name. If this is the case, it is easy for keyword
density to soar. So, if your keyword is "renters insurance," be sure
you don’t use this phrase in every sentence. Carefully edit the text
on your site so that the copy flows naturally and the keyword is not
repeated incessantly. A good rule of thumb is your keyword should
never appear in more than half the sentences on the page.

The final potential risk factor is known as "cloaking." To those of
you who are diligent Trekkies, this concept should be easy to
understand. For the rest of you cloaking is when the server directs
a visitor to one page and a search engine spider to a different
page. The page the spider sees is "cloaked" because it is invisible
to regular traffic, and deliberately set-up to raise the site’s
search engine ranking. A cloaked page tries to feed the spider
everything it needs to rocket that page’s ranking to the top of the
list.

It is natural that search engines have responded to this act of
deception with extreme enmity, imposing steep penalties on these
sites. The problem on your end is that sometimes pages are cloaked
for legitimate reasons, such as prevention against the theft of
code, often referred to as "pagejacking." This kind of shielding is
unnecessary these days due to the use of "off page" elements, such
as link popularity, that cannot be stolen.

To be on the safe side, be sure that your webmaster is aware that
absolutely no cloaking is acceptable. Make sure the webmaster
understands that cloaking of any kind will put your website at great
risk.

Just as you must be diligent in increasing your link popularity and
your ranking, you must be equally diligent to avoid being unfairly
penalized. So be sure to monitor your site closely and avoid any
appearance of artificially boosting your rankings.

Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and
author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online
since the early days and he knows what it takes to make money and
succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Free
monthly newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful web
site promotions that can help YOU!

Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to
your websites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination
– your website – you need to provide them with specific and
effective signs that will direct them right to your site. You do
this by creating carefully chosen keywords.

Think of the right keywords as the Open Sesame! of the Internet.
Find the exactly right words or phrases, and presto! hoards of
traffic will be pulling up to your front door. But if your keywords
are too general or too over-used, the possibility of visitors
actually making it all the way to your site – or of seeing any real
profits from the visitors that do arrive – decreases dramatically.

Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If
they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive
your marketing campaign may be, the right people may never get the
chance to find out about it. So your first step in plotting your
strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases.

You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words for your
search phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven’t followed certain
specific steps, you are probably WRONG. It’s hard to be objective
when you are right in the center of your business network, which is
the reason that you may not be able to choose the most efficient
keywords from the inside. You need to be able to think like your
customers. And since you are a business owner and not the consumer,
your best bet is to go directly to the source.

Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of potential
search words and phrases yourself, ask for words from as many
potential customers as you can. You will most likely find out that
your understanding of your business and your customers’
understanding is significantly different.

The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find the words you
accumulate from them are words and phrases you probably never would
have considered from deep inside the trenches of your business.

Only after you have gathered as many words and phrases from outside
resources should you add your own keyword to the list. Once you have
this list in hand, you are ready for the next step: evaluation.

The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a small number
of words and phrases that will direct the highest number of quality
visitors to your website. By "quality visitors" I mean those
consumers who are most likely to make a purchase rather than just
cruise around your site and take off for greener pastures. In
evaluating the effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three
elements: popularity, specificity, and motivation.

Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is an objective
quality. The more popular your keyword is, the more likely the
chances are that it will be typed into a search engine which will
then bring up your URL.

You can now purchase software that will rate the popularity of
keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating based on real
search engine activity. Software such as WordTracker will even
suggest variations of your words and phrases. The higher the number
this software assigns to a given keyword, the more traffic you can
logically expect to be directed to your site. The only fallacy with
this concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the
search engine position you will need to obtain. If you are down at
the bottom of the search results, the consumer will probably never
scroll down to find you.

Popularity isn’t enough to declare a keyword a good choice. You must
move on to the next criteria, which is specificity. The more
specific your keyword is, the greater the likelihood that the
consumer who is ready to purchase your goods or services will find
you.

Let’s look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have obtained
popularity rankings for the keyword "automobile companies." However,
you company specializes in bodywork only. The keyword "automobile
body shops" would rank lower on the popularity scale than
"automobile companies," but it would nevertheless serve you much
better. Instead of getting a slew of people interested in everything
from buying a car to changing their oil filters, you will get only
those consumers with trashed front ends or crumpled fenders being
directed to your site. In other words, consumers ready to buy your
services are the ones who will immediately find you. Not only that,
but the greater the specificity of your keyword is, the less
competition you will face.

The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, this requires
putting yourself inside the mind of the customer rather than the
seller to figure out what motivation prompts a person looking for a
service or product to type in a particular word or phrase. Let’s
look at another example, such as a consumer who is searching for a
job as an IT manager in a new city. If you have to choose between
"Seattle job listings" and "Seattle IT recruiters" which do you
think will benefit the consumer more? If you were looking for this
type of specific job, which keyword would you type in? The second
one, of course! Using the second keyword targets people who have
decided on their career, have the necessary experience, and are
ready to enlist you as their recruiter, rather than someone just out
of school who is casually trying to figure out what to do with his
or her life in between beer parties. You want to find people who are
ready to act or make a purchase, and this requires subtle tinkering
of your keywords until your find the most specific and directly
targeted phrases to bring the most motivated traffic to you site.

Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done. You must
continually evaluate performance across a variety of search engines,
bearing in mind that times and trends change, as does popular lingo.
You cannot rely on your log traffic analysis alone because it will
not tell you how many of your visitors actually made a purchase.

Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help you judge the
effectiveness of your keywords in individual search engines. There
is now software available that analyzes consumer behavior in
relation to consumer traffic. This allows you to discern which
keywords are bringing you the most valuable customers.

This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a good
keyword; profits per visitor do. You need to find keywords that
direct consumers to your site who actually buy your product, fill
out your forms, or download your product. This is the most important
factor in evaluating the efficacy of a keyword or phrase, and should
be the sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective or
inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better profits.

Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula for search engine
success. This may sound like a lot of work – and it is! But the
amount of informed effort you put into your keyword campaign is what
will ultimately generate your business’ rewards.

Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and
author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online
since the early days and he knows what it takes to make money and
succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Free
monthly newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful web
site promotions that can help YOU!

A Search Engine Optimization Company can be an invaluable asset in
your Internet marketing campaign. They specialize in knowing how to
raise your search engine positions, monitoring those positions on
the regular basis, and adjusting their strategies to account for
undesirable results in any given month. Since this takes a lot of
time, effort, and specialized knowledge, it can be in your best
interest to go to an outside source rather than try to maintain high
search engine positions on your own.

However, like every business, there are good companies and there are
lemons. Knowing the right questions to ask and the criteria to look
for will help you in choosing an affordable, effective search engine
optimization company.

When looking at different companies, begin by considering the
approach they employ to raise your search engine positions. Steer
clear of companies that use cloaked, doorway, or bridge pages to
raise your positions. These techniques violate most search engine
policy, and in the worst case scenario, will only get your website
severely penalized, if not removed entirely from a search engine’s
index.

A cloaked page is a page that is created which is invisible to the
regular visitor to your website. The cloaked page is coded to detect
a search engine spider and divert them to this special page, which
is set-up to artificially boost your search engine position. Doorway
or bridge pages utilize the same concept, but often reside on an
entirely different server. Google, one of the largest and most
important search engine on the Internet, will remove your website
from their index if they detect you have cloaked pages. Never, never
employ any company that uses this technique!

Another important element is to get a guarantee that the company you
hire will not work with your competitors while they are working for
you. Obviously, this would seriously compromise the effectiveness of
the search engine optimization campaign. Be aware that some
companies will use the success they achieve for your website to sell
their services to your competitors. So get your guarantee in
writing, and make sure it is legally binding.

Of course, one of the most important factors you want to check out
is the company’s track record of results. However, don’t take the
company’s word for it. They will undoubtedly be slanting their
results in order to sell their services to you. To go beyond their
simple statement of success, ask them a few pertinent questions, and
verify their answers.

Ask them which engines they have achieved the best results on. The
ones that are important are the most popular engines, and these are
the ones you want to see good results on. Since the popularity of
search engines can change with the landscape of the overall
Internet, check out the Nielsen Netratings page at Search Engine
Watch. You can access this at http://www.searchenginewatch.com/article.php/2156451.

Next, find out what keywords and phrases they are claiming great
results with. It’s easy to get high rankings with unpopular words.
For instance, the keyword "cat leashes" will get high popularity
ranking because no one else would think of using it. What you are
looking for is good results using popular keywords. Check out the
software Wordtracker, available at www.wordtracker.com. You can
order a free trial, or a subscription ranging from 1 day to 1 year.
This software rates the popularity of keywords and phrases based on
actual search engine use.

Next, look for good results over an entire site that the company
claims to have successfully worked for. You want to see a wide range
of positions over a number of different search engines using
different keywords or phrases for the entire site. Request a report
for any client the company claims to have done well for. This report
should show good positions on a number of the most popular search
engines for a variety of different, popular keywords and phrases.

When you are checking out search engine optimization companies, make
sure they have actually done the work they are claiming to have
done. Some companies will use other company’s results in order to
get you to sign on with them. If you are in doubt, call the company
they are showing you results for, and ask for the name of their
search engine optimization company.

It’s important to keep in mind that a successful search engine
optimization campaign will result in maximum exposure across a wide
range of popular search engines using a variety of keywords and
phrases. This is the formula for a successful campaign, and you
should keep it always in the forefront of your marketing strategy.

Ask the search engine optimization company you are considering for a
report that shows you rankings across a number of popular search
engines for a period of at least six months. Remember: search engine
marketing is a process that is continual, and you need a company
that not only understands this, but keeps constant tabs on your
search engine positions. That company must also be able to adjust
its strategy in the event that search engine rankings drop.

Since search engine marketing is an on-going process, your positions
must be constantly monitored. If you want your search engine
optimization company to do this for you, request a sample of a
monthly report. It is essential that this report should show
rankings for the most popular search engines. Don’t be impressed by
a report that only shows great results for a limited number of small
search engines. These are fairly easy results to acquire. Also
confirm that the popular search engine results they are showing you
are indeed the popular search engines currently.

Be sure the sample report the company shows you is in a format that
you can easily understand. For example, it could be in the form of a
chart that covers a period of at least six months and presents data
such as the top 50 positions broken down on a monthly basis or the
top 5 pages each month. Then, ascertain that the company you are
considering actually monitors these positions or pages every month,
and that the sample report they show you includes findings and
recommendations for the specific site. This insures that the company
will actively monitor and make adjustments to their strategy on a
continual basis rather than simply gather statistics on your
positions. You need a company that is actively participant in your
search engine marketing campaign, not just an information gatherer.

Obviously, your finances have to figure into your choice of company,
but bear in mind that a search engine optimization company is
crucial the success of your marketing campaign. It is not just a
casual accessory. If you cannot afford a company that will do a
thorough and reliable job for your website, you might consider
waiting until you do have the finances in place.

If you have to find a company and can’t wait for your finances to
catch up, you may be able to find an affordable company that will
also be able to supply quality, reliable work, such as a fairly new
company. Just remember that there are risks involved with using a
company without a proven track record – and that risk is your money!
Don’t take that leap unless the company can supply you with a least
a few references.

References are the most reliable indicator of a good company. Don’t
use a company that won’t show your references because of any reason,
confidentiality included. Remember – even doctors will provide
references! The firm you choose should provide you with a minimum of
two references, one that is from the past, and one that is current.

When you contact these references, be prepared to ask precise,
specific questions so that neither of your time is wasted. Ask them
what their experience was like with the company, such as their
availability to answer questions and deal with problems and their
ability to meet deadlines. Ask the reference to rate the overall
performance of the company.

Find out if the company requested that the reference make
significant changes to their web pages that affected the visitors
coming to their site. You are looking for a search engine
optimization company that can balance the needs of both search
engines and site visitors without compromising either.

The most essential question to ask is whether the work of the search
engine optimization company resulted in higher profits for the
reference. Without profits, it doesn’t matter whether your positions
are at the top of the list or not.

Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and
author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online
since the early days and he knows what it takes to make money and
succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Free
monthly newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful web
site promotions that can help YOU!