Why hire SEO professionals

What you must know about SEO

If well understood, you can perform SEO for your own website. Every piece of information required to carry out SEO is present online. What needs done is research on what works and what doesn»t, what’s ok with search engines and what isn’t.

You also need to keep yourself up to date with search engine news, regular algorithm updates, user search pattern, competition check and also monitor the link building partners in order to ensure that your links have not been dropped, update your on-page optimization regularly to ensure your pages are informative and in tune with the search pattern. These are just few of the things that you need to keep an eye on.

What SEO professionals bring

The problem is that even if you have the time, you probably don’t have the resources to research the algorithm to know if it’s changed, which parameters are still important and which have become redundant, what you need to do to stay in the top ten.

In all probability, you would know about the algorithm change only after it has affected your rankings. You would then either research on your own to find what happened, or visit forums where the SEO professionals are discussing what probably went wrong (which again are individual views of SEO experts) and get confused by the different answers. Since you don’t have the resources to validate all the theories, you’ll pick the one that seems logical to you (or the one which is given by one of the more known professionals), implement it and wait to see if the rankings reappear. This would take 5–8 weeks anyways. Then, if the results don’t show up, you’ll try another thing, probably losing another 5–8 weeks of business.

Its been about 16–20 weeks already, another search engine changes the algorithm and search pattern changes – you’ve probably missed the boom sale period and since you were so involved in getting your rankings back, you didn’t even utilize the PPC program affectively.

That’s why you need professionals

SEO companies have the resources and are doing this day in day out. Since they are working with more than one industry, they know the search pattern, are pre–warned in case of algorithm changes because of the research and can affectively implement the changes – and test it in quarter of the time you’ll take while consulting you on the alternatives so that you don’t stop making money!.

How to choose the right SEO firm:

Here is list of questions you must get a YES for from the SEO firm before you consider it to be your Internet Marketing service provider.
1. Do you have a website?
2. Do you have a phone line where I can contact you?
3. Do you have case studies that I can review?
4. Do you have a list of clients I can call for reference if required?
5. Can you send me a copy of your SEO/PPC/LB process?
6. Can you send me a copy of the contract?
7. Can you send me a document listing the SEO practices you consider unethical and would not be carried out on my website?
8. Can the above list of "Unethical SEO Practices – not followed" be made a part of the contract?
9. Can you send me a copy of the SEO Guarantees that you give and don’t give?
10. Can the SEO Guarantees document be made part of the contract?
11. Would I have a Project Responsible assigned from your end?

Once you have the documents, review them and compare the SEO firms for the process details, contract details, unethical practices document and their Guarantees document.

NOTE: Any firm giving you a guarantee of getting rankings needs to be approached very cautiously. No one can guarantee organic rankings. Please read more about SEO Guarantees – what’s true and what’s not.

Once you have reviewed all this, compare the costs. Don’t compromise on the service and the quality – it can cost you your online business.

Introduction to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO Definition

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the process of making the website search engine friendly and capable of ranking for specific, industry-related keywords in the organic search results of a search engine.

SEO is also used as an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimizers. But generally, the optimization process is referred to as SEO.Examples using SEO:

Ex: Would you SEO my site? (Here, SEO refers to ‘Search Engine Optimize’).Ex 2: Do I need SEO for my site? (Here, SEO refers to Search Engine Optimization)

SEO: The Need

Once a website is created, Internet Marketing is the obvious next step. Because:

No marketing -> No visitors -> No customers -> No profit

Today, at the core of Internet Marketing lie Search Engines. Search Engines provide searchers a list of websites related to their search term query. For each searched term, there are two types of results displayed – Paid advertisements or Sponsored links/Ads (usually at the top & bottom highlighted in a different color or right side of the webpage) and natural/organic results (left side of the webpage).

Difference between Sponsored Listing or PPC Ads and SEO

Space in the ‘Sponsored Links’ section, as the name suggests, is bought through a system of bidding. Higher the bid amount, higher is the ranking. The organic results, however, are not in the hands of the webmaster. Search Engines have their own algorithm which they use to rank sites. Search Engines evaluate the websites in their database for their relevancy to the search term in question and rank them accordingly.

Note: Search Engine Results Page listings are not calculated real time.

Why you need SEO

Stats show that 80-85% of the users visiting search engines click on the organic search results (also called organic listings). Another research shows that 70% of the search engine users never go to the second page of the search engine results page. These studies make two things very clear:

• Ranking in the organic search engine results gets you more traffic than ranking in Sponsored links
• Ranking within the top ten organic search engine results is important in order to capitalize on the search engine traffic.

So how do you achieve the above?

SEO is your answer. SEO is a technique that makes the website search engine crawler friendly (ensuring that a search engine crawler would be able to index your site) and increases the relevancy of the website for specific search terms (hence increases its ability to rank for those specific keywords).

SEO is not a black art. In order to capitalize on SE traffic, SEO is important.

The SEO Implementation Process

Marketing your website on search engines is known is Search Engine Marketing or SEM.

SEM includes Pay per Click or PPC & Search Engine Optimization or SEO. SEO is a combination of on-page and off-page optimization. Off-page optimization focuses on increasing the importance of a webpage and is popularly known as Link Building. On-page optimization focuses more on increasing the page relevancy and is commonly known as SEO.

Different SEO processes

The SEO process starts with website analysis, understanding of the business and the target audience. Keeping the target audience in mind, the search terms or keywords are evaluated and the industry relevant terms are selected for which the site would be optimized (keywords for which you would like to rank for in search engines).
Once keywords are identified, they should be divided into groups of similar keywords. Each group of keywords is then used in order to ‘optimize’ a related webpage. This includes creating Meta tags, content creation or rewriting of content such that the keywords are included within the text and paragraph headings. The discussion of actual parameters of the webpage which are addressed for optimization is beyond the scope of this article.
The on-page optimization process takes 2-3 weeks depending upon whether you need to create additional content or not. The results take another 3-4 weeks to show up depending on when the website is next indexed by respective search engines.

Brief on Link Building or off-page optimization process

The off-page optimization process differs from the above post keyword research. As the same suggests, it involves targeting the off-page parameters that affect rankings on search engines. This includes promoting your website through the Internet and getting incoming links from qualified* webpages. The process is time consuming and is an ongoing process. Depending on the keywords and competition, it may take 4-12 weeks before you can see the positive affect on rankings.

Knowing SEO and doing SEO

With the information available about SEO on the Web, it is possible for website owners to undertake implementing SEO themselves. If you have the time and the resources, this may well be a good idea. But we would strongly recommend you to read another article, Why hire SEO professionals, before you decide. Its good to know what you're getting into beforehand.

Everything You Need to Know About Linking

Websites that are able to amass a large number of links from related websites that contain relevant content, tend to have an advantage when attempting to rank well in the large search engines. The tricky part is understanding how to build a large quantity of quality links. With the growth of the web and increased competition, search engines are weighing link relevance, and link authority as part of their ranking algorithm.
Earning Links Link popularity is a form of "social bookmarking". Think about it, a link is akin to a "vote" from the source. Just like in the real world, a vote from a source that is known to be trusted and respected in a specific industry carries more weight and contains more social clout, so does a link from a credible online source. Web links are seen as a recommendation or a website endorsement. If the endorsements are from established respected sources in a specific sector, the link is weighed heavier than an unrelated link or links from a source that is not yet established.
The easiest way to earn a link is to provide quality unique content.
How do you know who is respected? One way to determine the value of a website is by accessing its PageRank. PageRank is visible in the Google Toolbar and is calculated based on the number of quality incoming links that a website has. Alexa Rank and TrustRank are also indicators of a websites popularity. Alexa tracks the websites that people who use the Alexa toolbar visit. Based on these visits, they determine the popularity of a website and rank it accordingly. TrustRank is a little more difficult to pin down. TrustRank is based on the assumption that good websites rarely link to bad neighborhoods.
PageRank and Alexa Rank can be used to help webmasters assess what webpages and websites are valued by search engines. Keep in mind, this is not an end-all/be-all. The rankings should only be used only as guides. Relevance matters, a link from a respected tree website will not help a software website unless they are selling software related to trees or landscaping.
Authoritative Links Some websites wield great power. They are not topic specific and are considered quality credible sources or "authorities". Examples of authoritative sources would be other search engines or directories like Yahoo, DMoz and Wikipedia. They are respected resources on almost any industry topics. Authoritative links are desirable and can help increase a websites popularity.
Deep Linking Regardless of a websites topic material, if the website is well designed and informative, its generally not too difficult to attract links to a websites' main page. But what many webmasters do not realize, it is equally important to attract incoming links to a variety of pages on the website. The more varied the links to various webpages within a single domain, shows search engines that a website contains an abundance of quality material.
Anchor Text When a publisher links to a website, the search engines consider the link text used in the link. Varied but related text in the link shows what the material is about. All links that contain the same text look "unnatural" and may be considered as "purchased" or unreliable. Search engines are partial to natural incoming links. Ideally attempt to establish varied linking text that unite in a common theme.
An example: Software Marketing Resource http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com has a number of links with text containing things like: software marketing; shareware marketing; software promotion; online software marketing; promoting software; promoting shareware. All are synonymous with software marketing and are natural phrases that would be used to describe the same website.
Directory Linking Directories should not be overlooked in linking strategies and while webmasters should not rely on directories solely when developing strong links, they can be advantageous. Particular attention should be paid to topic specific directories. A topical directories are often consider authorities and a related link can boost exposure.
Competitive Intelligence Webmasters looking for links and don't know where to look, should have a peak at who is linking to their competitors. Use competitive intelligence to track down quality link sources.
Give it Away An easy way to earn links is to give something away. Whether you are providing quality content free of charge or a free software application, webmasters appreciate quality content and products that are available free of charge. Use the free item or content to draw attention to your website, if you are truly providing something of value, it will generate unsolicited links that are invaluable. Develop a linking strategy as part of your website marketing plan.

10 Ways To Extend The Reach Of Your Site

Successful websites extend their reach far and wide! They build links, connections, partnerships, or use whatever means they can to extend the reach of their sites. By extending their reach, these websites create greater exposure, bringing in more targeted traffic, leads and sales.
You should do the same with your site. It will greatly increase the importance of your site - boosting name recognition and increasing your site's visibility.

Let's look at a real life comparison - ever build a large patio or outdoor deck onto your house and suddenly realize you have not only doubled the floor plan but you have also changed the very nature of the house itself. Or you build a gazebo or a guest house on your property... and suddenly you and your visitors have a different view or opinion of your property. In fact, you have expanded the reach of your property by building these extensions.
Think of your website in the same light - by building simple extensions you can change how your site is viewed and judged by others; resulting in many positive benefits. Little things that are so simple to do, yet can have far reaching implications for your site. You can, in fact, extend the reach of your site to all corners of the globe.
Here are some of the best techniques for extending the reach of your site. Some of these are very simple, some a little more complex:

Article Writing

Get one way targeted links placed all over the web by writing simple 'how to' articles on the topic or theme of your site. Extend the reach of your site by simply including your live links in the author's resource box at the end of your articles. Simple and very easy to do - just try

Viral Desktop Applications

You can extend the reach of your site by placing links directly onto the desktops of your visitors by offering them simple desktop applications like wallpaper, software programs, or ecalendars, like the DATEwise desktop eCalendar (see below). These are great for building brand recognition

Old Fashion Link Building

Finding related websites and asking for reciprocal links is still one of the best ways to extend your site. Takes a bit of hard work but it pays off big time. And don't forget about testimonials, simple little recommendations about a site or product. These can be great link building opportunities.


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10 Ways To ExtendThe Reach Of Your SiteBy Titus Hoskins (c) 2006 Successful websites extend their reach far and wide! They build links, connections, partnerships, or use whatever means they can to extend the reach of their sites. By extending their reach, these websites create greater exposure, bringing in more targeted traffic, leads and sales.
You should do the same with your site. It will greatly increase the importance of your site - boosting name recognition and increasing your site's visibility.

Let's look at a real life comparison - ever build a large patio or outdoor deck onto your house and suddenly realize you have not only doubled the floor plan but you have also changed the very nature of the house itself. Or you build a gazebo or a guest house on your property... and suddenly you and your visitors have a different view or opinion of your property. In fact, you have expanded the reach of your property by building these extensions.
Think of your website in the same light - by building simple extensions you can change how your site is viewed and judged by others; resulting in many positive benefits. Little things that are so simple to do, yet can have far reaching implications for your site. You can, in fact, extend the reach of your site to all corners of the globe.
Here are some of the best techniques for extending the reach of your site. Some of these are very simple, some a little more complex:
Article Writing
Get one way targeted links placed all over the web by writing simple 'how to' articles on the topic or theme of your site. Extend the reach of your site by simply including your live links in the author's resource box at the end of your articles. Simple and very easy to do - just try it!
Viral Desktop Applications
You can extend the reach of your site by placing links directly onto the desktops of your visitors by offering them simple desktop applications like wallpaper, software programs, or ecalendars, like the DATEwise desktop eCalendar (see below). These are great for building brand recognition.

Old Fashion Link Building
Finding related websites and asking for reciprocal links is still one of the best ways to extend your site. Takes a bit of hard work but it pays off big time. And don't forget about testimonials, simple little recommendations about a site or product. These can be great link building opportunities.

Bookmarks

Make sure you have a bookmark link on all your pages. You might also want to make a favicon - a small logo that goes with your bookmarks. And subtly ask those who bookmark your site to place a shortcut on their desktops

Ezine or Newsletter

You can reach and keep reaching your site's visitors by building your own opt-in list newsletter or ezine. Broaden the scope of your site by offering diverse information in these publications.

Viral eBooks and Reports

These can be simple 'how-to' ebooks on topics related to your site. Include links to your website and build name recognition as well as targeted traffic

Forum Posting

Becoming a regular poster on all the online forums will give your site greater exposure and build site or brand recognition. More importantly, if you offer helpful and well informed information your site will acquire a resident expert - you!

Off-line Advertising

Placing your site's logo or URL in off-line places - billboards, t-shirts, caps, but try to resist the latest trend - putting URLs on body parts! Off-line exposure will greatly extend the reach of your site.

Burning CDs

Burning your best programs or information on CDs, DVDs or disks and distributing these around to all interested parties will create more recognition. Great for reaching non-online computer users.

RSS Feeds and Blogs

This may prove to be the granddaddy of ways to extend your site. The original name for RSS stood for 'Rich Site Summary' - you make a summary of your website and syndicate it to all interested parties. Other webmasters will take your syndicated RSS feeds and place them on their sites. You create mini satellite sites of your content all over the web!
In addition, as your site expands and grows, other opportunities will present themselves... in traditional media such as TV, Radio and Print advertising. Starting an affiliate program for your site is another option you may want to consider. An affiliate program can greatly expand the reach of your site. So too, will starting mirror sites in different languages or countries.
As you can plainly see, there are countless ways to extend the reach of your site. However, just trying a few of these will boost your site's credibility and visibility, bringing in more targeted leads and traffic. So it's your move, don't just let your site sit there, start implementing some of what you've just read.

Use Search Engine Modifiers to Boost Your Rankings

Searching is the second most popular online activity, right behind email. Because of this, search engine optimization should be at the top of every web owner's marketing list.
To begin, you must start with the right keywords. Keyphrase selection is the single most important step in a search engine optimization campaign. You should choose your keywords before you write a single word of web copy.

Unfortunately, many people make the mistake of optimizing for very general keywords like "used cars" or "internet marketing". Although these terms get lots of traffic, it is very unlikely that you will be able to rank highly for them. Then, even if you do, this type of traffic produces very low conversion rates because they are not targeted prospects.
It is much more effective to target the low-hanging fruit. Who do you think is more likely to buy; someone who goes to Google and searches for "ipod" or someone who searches for "4gb black ipod nano"? Obviously, the person who searches for a more specific phrase is much closer to making a buying decision. The additional keywords (4gb, black, and nano) are called modifiers.
By adding a few modifiers to competitive keywords, you can uncover a long list of powerful keyword phrases for which high rankings are attainable.
In order to find these types of lucrative keyword phrases, there are 4 search modifiers that you need to know about. They are geographic, descriptive, brands, and misspellings.

Geographic

If your products or services are targeted to a geographic area, you will need to optimize your pages for those specific locations. For example, if you are a real estate agent in Atlanta, you would want to optimize your listings for cities and towns surrounding Atlanta. Serious buyers would not just type "real estate" into the search engines.

However, they may search for "atlanta real estate agents". In fact, according to WordTracker, that phrase is searched for 80 times per day. This phrase is extremely valuable because it attracts a much more targeted visitor.
If you are a consultant, broker, or agent, it is crucial that you optimize your web site for specific geographic areas.

Descriptive

You can also add descriptions to a keyword to attract targeted visitors. Let's say you have a site that sells backpacks. Although the keyword "backpacks" get thousands of searches per day, this is not the type of visitor that you want to attract. It would be much more beneficial for you to optimize for the following keyword phrases:
leather laptop backpacksdigital camera backpackone strap backpacksmall dog backpack
Each of these keyword phrases use adjectives to narrow in on specific searches. You can do the same thing with your own web site in order to bring in quality traffic. As web masters, we want the kind of traffic that converts to buyers, not just visitors looking for information.

Brands

Brand names are another very powerful modifier. Using the previous example of backpacks, lets find some lucrative keyword phrases that target brands. To find some different backpack brands, I went to a popular backpack web site.

Searching is the second most popular online activity, right behind email. Because of this, search engine optimization should be at the top of every web owner's marketing list.
To begin, you must start with the right keywords. Keyphrase selection is the single most important step in a search engine optimization campaign. You should choose your keywords before you write a single word of web copy.

Unfortunately, many people make the mistake of optimizing for very general keywords like "used cars" or "internet marketing". Although these terms get lots of traffic, it is very unlikely that you will be able to rank highly for them. Then, even if you do, this type of traffic produces very low conversion rates because they are not targeted prospects.
It is much more effective to target the low-hanging fruit. Who do you think is more likely to buy; someone who goes to Google and searches for "ipod" or someone who searches for "4gb black ipod nano"? Obviously, the person who searches for a more specific phrase is much closer to making a buying decision. The additional keywords (4gb, black, and nano) are called modifiers.
By adding a few modifiers to competitive keywords, you can uncover a long list of powerful keyword phrases for which high rankings are attainable.
In order to find these types of lucrative keyword phrases, there are 4 search modifiers that you need to know about. They are geographic, descriptive, brands, and misspellings.
Geographic
If your products or services are targeted to a geographic area, you will need to optimize your pages for those specific locations. For example, if you are a real estate agent in Atlanta, you would want to optimize your listings for cities and towns surrounding Atlanta. Serious buyers would not just type "real estate" into the search engines.

However, they may search for "atlanta real estate agents". In fact, according to WordTracker, that phrase is searched for 80 times per day. This phrase is extremely valuable because it attracts a much more targeted visitor.
If you are a consultant, broker, or agent, it is crucial that you optimize your web site for specific geographic areas.
Descriptive
You can also add descriptions to a keyword to attract targeted visitors. Let's say you have a site that sells backpacks. Although the keyword "backpacks" get thousands of searches per day, this is not the type of visitor that you want to attract. It would be much more beneficial for you to optimize for the following keyword phrases:
leather laptop backpacksdigital camera backpackone strap backpacksmall dog backpack
Each of these keyword phrases use adjectives to narrow in on specific searches. You can do the same thing with your own web site in order to bring in quality traffic. As web masters, we want the kind of traffic that converts to buyers, not just visitors looking for information.
Brands
Brand names are another very powerful modifier. Using the previous example of backpacks, lets find some lucrative keyword phrases that target brands. To find some different backpack brands, I went to a popular backpack web site.

They listed the following brands:
camelbakdana designeastpakjansportkelty
I then took these brands and plugged them into my favorite keyword tool to find some quality keyword phrases. Here's what I found:
camelbak commandercamelbak alterracamelbak classicdana design backpacksdana design arcflex alpine packjansport rainierjansport odysseykelty red cloud 5000
By plugging a number of backpack brands into WordTracker, I was able to find very targeted brand models. These keyword phrases are the kind that will produce a higher conversion to buyers.

Whenever you are optimizing for brands, keep in mind that keyword tools don't always give you a full picture. New brands that have just been released will not show up in WordTracker or any other keyword tool. The ipod is a perfect example. When it was first released, the ipod wouldn't even register in the keyword tools. However, it was one of the hottest product releases of the year. Sometimes, you simply have to keep up with the trends. Just take a look at a few industry magazines and you will quickly find some untapped opportunities.

Misspellings

The last modifier that you should consider are misspellings. Well, I guess it's not really a modifier, per se, but they can definitely bring in an extra stream of traffic to your web site. Google has estimated that 10% of all searches made on Google are mistyped or misspelled.
You can take advantage of these common mistakes by making a few simple changes to your web site.
Here is a step-by-step guide that you can use to start gaining extra traffic from misspellings:
1. Put common misspellings into the meta keyword description tag.
2. Place common misspellings at the end of your title tag. This step is extremely important for ranking for misspellings. To see a web page that does this very effectively, go to http://www.lendingleaders.com/mortgage-calculator/mortgage.cfm. This page ranks highly for the very popular misspelling: "morgage".
3. Create a box on the web page for common misspellings. Keep in mind that you can often still rank for misspellings without doing this step, but it may give you some extra push.
To find typos for your keywords, go to www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-typo-generator.
Now that you know about the 4 main types of modifiers, I urge you to start optimizing your pages for high-quality traffic. By targeting long keyword phrases, you can tap into some extremely profitable traffic. Keep in mind that this is not just for organic seo. These methods are also very effective when used for pay-per-click campaigns.
Adding the right search modifiers will significantly increase your chances of success in the search engine wars.

How to Win Linksand Influence People

If the title of this article sounds familiar, don't be surprised. It's been more than 70 years since it was originally published, and in that time Dale Carnegie's mega-best seller "How to Win Friends and Influence People" has earned a spot on the shelf of some 16 million individuals and spent more than a decade on the New York Times best-seller list. While Carnegie's book was written as one of the original "self-help" books, I'd propose that the tenets found within can play a valuable role in building successful strategies when it comes to marketing techniques like link building, viral marketing and even online reputation management.

Link Building

While there's no argument about the value of building quality links to your web site in order to help increase both traffic and search engine rankings, there is often some confusion about the best way to go about doing that link building. Reciprocal or incoming? Buying links or earning them? Using software to manage the process or doing it by hand?
What would happen if small business owners started to think about link building in another way? What if they started to think like Carnegie and to apply his theories to their link building and baiting efforts. With that in mind, let's take a few key points from Carnegie's book and see how they might be applied to a link building campaign.

Tenet #1: Talk in Terms of Other People's Interests

This is a key point that many people miss when it comes to building links. Web site owners aren't going to link to your site just because you want them to, they're going to link to your site because there is something to be gained for them. That may mean that you've made a purchase or a trade in exchange for the link, or it may mean that you've simply offered up content that is of enough interest to make them want to share it with their readers.
Any time that you contact a site owner on your own to ask about a link, you need to figure out what you have to offer that will benefit that site owner. If the most compelling argument you can come up with is "you linking to me will help me out" then you likely need to do a little more thinking before sending off that request.

Tenet #2: Make the Other Person Feel Important

This is basic common sense, but it can be difficult to do without taking too far. No one likes a brown-noser but everyone likes to feel special. Even the briefest of compliments about a specific article or resource available on someone's site can set the stage for a polite link request. If you enjoyed a recent blog post about a topic related to the link that you are requesting, take the time to say so. Doing this also shows that you've spent enough time on the site to actually KNOW that there's a good match. Knowing that someone reads and enjoys their site is a great way for a site owner to "feel important."

Tenet #3: Use Names Whenever Possible

This is one of the most simple, yet crucial steps to link building. Whenever possible, take the time to find out who you are addressing and then make sure that you use their name.
Here at Search Engine Guide we get an enormous amount of press releases, article submissions and requests to talk about or feature a specific product or service. Nearly three-quarters of these requests come in to a generic address like webmaster@ or info@. The reality is that it would take a visitor about two minutes to figure out that the editor of this site is named Jennifer and that her email address is jennifer@searchengineguide.com. The requests that come in from people that can't be bothered to find that information out usually get treated with the same level of "respect" and quickly find their way into the circular file.

Tenet #4: Try Honestly to See Things from the Other Person's Point of View

While this point ties in pretty closely with tenet #1, it's still one that needs to be considered separately. It's very easy to think of link building in terms of what it's going to do for your site, but it's also important to remember that any time you are asking for someone else's time and energy, you need to take the time to see things from their perspective.
Before you send or even begin to craft any type of link request, picture yourself on the receiving end. What are the chances that you're going to jump up and do the dance of joy simply because someone has asked you to take the time to put a link on your site? On the other hand, it's pretty easy to realize that you might feel differently if someone took the time to politely and personally contact you to share something that you would be excited to be able to share with your readers.
Finally, I'll close this section with a reminder of my own personal philosophy of link building. We'll call it...Jen's Tenet.

Jen's Tenet: Link building is really relationship building

Keep in mind that linking is a form of endorsement. One site linking to another is the same as one individual telling a friend about a store, service or book that they recently enjoyed. Just as you wouldn't run into a cocktail party, throw your business cards in the air and scream "tell your friends to buy their next house with XYZ Realtors!" you cannot send out dozens of emails in a single shot asking anyone and everyone to link to your real estate web site.
To build good links, you need to build good will. Take the time to craft relationships via email, blogs and discussion forums. Ask for links when they are relevant and respect their time and opinions when you make your request.
It may take a little longer to build good links this way, but you'll find yourself racking up better quality links with less overall work and frustration than you would if you simply relied on the "email everyone you know" techniques.
In part two, we'll explore some more of Carnegie's principles and the way that they can be applied to a good viral marketing campaign.

Today's Google Bots and What They Do

Google currently indexes over 8 billion web pages. However, before these pages were placed in the index, they were each crawled by a special spider known as the GoogleBot. Unfortunately, many web masters do not know about the internal workings of this virtual robot.
In fact, Google actually uses a number of spiders to crawl the Web. You can catch these spiders by examining your log files.
This article will attempt to reveal some of the most important Google spiders, their function, and how they affect you as a web master. We'll start with the well-known GoogleBot.

GoogleBot

Googlebot, as you probably know, is the search bot used by Google to scour the web for new pages. Googlebot has two versions, deepbot and freshbot. Deepbot is a deep crawler that tries to folow every link on the web and download as many pages as it can for the Google index. It also examines the internal structure of a site, giving a complete picture for the index.
Freshbot, on the other hand, is a newer bot that crawls the web looking for fresh content. The Google freshbot was implemented to take some of the pressure off of the GoogleBot. The freshbot recalls pages already in the index and then crawls them for new, modified, or updated pages. In this way, Google is better equipped to keep up with the ever-changing Web.
This means that the more you update your web site with new, quality content, the more the Googlebot will come by to check you out.
If you'd like to see the Googlebot crawling around your web property more often, you need to obtain quality inbound links. However, there is also one more step that you should take. If you haven't already done so, you should create a Google Sitemap for your site.

Creating a Google sitemap allows you to communicate with Google, telling them about your most important pages, new pages, and updated pages. In return, Google will provide you with some valuable information as well. Google Sitemaps will tell you about pages it was unable to crawl and links it was unable to follow. This allows you to pinpoint problems and fix them so that you can gain increased exposure in the search results.
The next Google bot in our lineup is known as the MediaBot.
MediaBot - used to analyze Adsense pagesuseragent: Mediapartners-Google
MediaBot is the Google crawler for Adsense Publishers. Mediabot is used to determine wich ads Google should display on Adsense pages.
Google recommends that webmasters specifically add a command in their robots.txt file that grants Mediabot access to their entire site. To do this, simply enter the following code into your robots.txt file:
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*Disallow:
This will ensure that the MediaBot is able to place relevant Adsense ads on your site.

Keep in mind that ads can still be shown on a page if the MediaBot has not yet visited. If that is the case, the ads chosen will be based on the overall theme of the other pages on the site. If no ads can be chosen, the dreaded public service announcements are displayed instead.
There is a strong debate over whether or not the MediaBot is giving websites with Adsense an advantage in the search engines.
Even Matt Cutts has confirmed that the Adsense Mediabot has indexed webpages for Google's main index.
He states, "Pages with AdSense will not be indexed more frequently. It's literally just a crawl cache, so if e.g. our news crawl fetched a page and then Googlebot wanted the same page, we'd retrieve the page from the crawl cache. But there's no boost at all in rankings if you're in AdSense or Google News. You don't get any more pages crawled either."
Matt Cutts claims that your website does not get any advantage by using Adsense. However, in my mind, simply getting your site updated in and of itself is an advantage.
This is very similar to Google Analytics, which also promotes a slightly higher degree of spider activity.
Those who run Google Analytics on their site can expect additional spider activity.
However, you certainly shouldn't depend on any of these tools for getting your site indexed. The key to frequent spidering is having quality inbound links, quality content, and frequent updates.
Have images on your site? If so, you have likely been visited by our next Google spider, the ImageBot.
ImageBot - used to crawl for the Image Searchuseragent: GoogleBot-Image
The Imagebot prowls the Web for images to place in Google's image search. Images are ranked based upon their filename, surrounding text, alt text, and page title.
If you have a website that is primarily image based, then you would definitely want to optimize your images to receive some extra Google traffic.
On the other hand, some web sites may not benefit from Google image search. In most cases, the traffic from the Image search engine is very low quality and rarely converts into buyers. Many people are often just looking for images that they can swipe. So, if you want to save some bandwidth, use your robots.txt file to block ImageBot from accessing your image directory.
One of the few exceptions I would make is if you have a site dedicated to downloadable images.
Our final bot is completely dedicated to the Google Adwords program.
AdsBot - Checks Adwords landing pages for qualityuseragent: AdsBot-Google
AdsBot is one of Google's newest spiders. This new crawler is being used to analyze the content of advertising landing pages, which helps determine the Quality score that Google assigns to your ads.
Google uses this Quality score in combination with the amount you are willing to bid to determine the position of your ads. Therefore, ads with a high quality score can rank higher even if other advertisers are paying more than you.
This is one of Google's many efforts to ensure that they are delivering the best results to their users.
Can you still block being spidered? Of course, but it will lower your overall Adwords quality score, which could end up lowering the positioning of your ads. If possible, it is best to give AdsBot complete access to your site.
Today's Google bots are becoming more advanced all the time. However, nothing beats relevant, quality, updated content. Deliver that and the search engines will eat it up.

Machine Translation SEO for Foreign Language Search Engine Success

Are English speaking websites based in the US simply insular and uncaring about foreign web traffic or are we actually Xenophobic?
Xenophobia - a phobic attitude toward strangers - comes from the Greek words xenos, meaning "foreigner", "stranger".

Trolling through the "referrers" section in my web site traffic logs routinely shows hundreds of Google foreign language searches. Those foreign language search referrals usually total just slightly more than the combined total of Yahoo and MSN English language search referrals. So doesn't it make sense to pay more attention to foreign language search in SEO than to fiddle with Yahoo and MSN optimization? My traffic logs routinely show hundreds of translation tool referrals.

Those referrals come from foreign language searchers that REALLY want to read the pages. Foreign language visitors who don't know about online translation tools (like Google's) will leave the search result pages without visiting your site. Why not provide your pages in the most common European and Asian languages with your text in their native language already? Look in your logs for the following referrer URL:
http://64.233.179.104/translate_c
with URL's of your own site appended. This query at "Google English" is a request by a foreign language user for a translation of that page on your site. The most common of them are from Google.es (Spain) and Google.de (Germany) and Google.pt (Portugal). Last month there were nearly 1,000 of these queries from Google translation tools in my logs. Check that tool out here:
http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en
This translation - or "Language Tools" page at Google is helpful in escaping our insular attitudes about English language search by showing us that Google currently supports 34 languages and hosts servers in 141 countries - literally from A to Z. http://www.Google.ae (United Arab Emirates) to http://www.Google.co.zm (Zambia)
Google has 117 languages listed on that page, but they've buried a few ringers in there with "Elmer Fudd", "Klingon", and "Pig Latin" to throw linguists for a loop. While it's interesting to use those funny options, clicking the "I'm Feewing Wucky" on the "Elmer Fudd" language produces the same results as does the English language search, it's just cuter with the letters "L" and "R" replaced with "W's" on the search page.
http://www.google.com/intl/xx-elmer/

But we need to look at the fundamental reason that Google offers this "Language Tools" page and the machine translation there. It is because web site owners in the U.S. don't offer multiple languages on their own sites.
While it is not uncommon to see a row of four to six flags representing the top few languages on many European based sites (especially Italy, Spain and France based companies) - it is actually rare to see multiple language options on U.S. based business sites.
There are manifold reasons for this lack of communication by English speaking countries with the rest of the world. The top reason is that we simply don't need to know other languages to live our daily lives in this country, so we rarely think of using other languages online. While English is a primary language spoken around the world, including Canada, Australia, India, Britain and is a second language spoken by millions of primarily foreign language speakers.
While it is common to visit major cities in Japan, Italy, Mexico and dozens of metropolitan cities around the planet without fear that we'll be unable to find English speaking hoteliers, restaurateurs, and even cabbies - it is an arrogant expectation. I've been to each of those countries and didn't need any Japanese, Italian or Spanish languag skills while on either business or pleasure.
But we've got to be realistic if we are to take part in the global medium of the web. Those web pages are viewable by an estimated 700 million people around the world and millions of those would happily visit and read your web site if it were available in the world's top languages and indexed in foreign search engines. So why not provide that option?

Major corporate web sites in the U.S. will inevitably require polished human translation of their major web pages, with variations for international tastes and preferences - most small and medium business sites cannot afford that option.
This leaves machine translation as the best remaining option. While it is possible for any site visitor to use translation tools online to convert your English language text into foreign tongues, it sends the visitor away from your site to the translation service. Not ideal.
The best option is to use translation software to put those foreign language variations on your own site and host them from your own server in the languages you offer. The reason to host them is, very simply, that if you provide machine translated foreign variants of all your pages, they will be crawled by foreign search engines and indexed and ranked on European and Asian search engines.

The web audience in China was roughly estimated at just over 100 million in 2005 and is expected to balloon in the near future. Simply being indexed for Chinese language searches and reasonably ranked could increase traffic for U.S. sites dramatically. The European audience is fragmented with many more language options - the main representative languages on the web are Spanish, French, Portugese, German & Italian, while Chinese, Korean and Japanese make up the bulk of the remaining web audience. Those eight languages are offered in popular machine translation software packages.
If a site has already been optimized for English language search, the SEO will have included the most important keywords. While machine translation is not entirely reliable for proper sentence structure and grammar once translated, it at least gets most words and many word combinations correct. Content sites, who often rely on advertising for income, would love to see the extra pageviews and ad clicks coming from foreign visitors reading their pages in their native language.
Once a content site owner sees their largest foreign audience trends (through web traffic analytics statistics), they can fine-tune their SEO for individual languages and actually pay for professional translation and foreign language SEO of the most profitable pages. But simply getting a content site indexed by search engines in more than eight new countries will bring waves of new visitors and increase advertising income substantially.