20 Important Tips about SEO

1. Keyword research:

This is vital for setting up content groups on your site. Knowing what actual phrases users are actually searching on allows you to use the most appropriate keyword or phrase within relevant content on your site.

2. Build content:

Might seem obvious, this part, but it’s important you spend the time to build useful, unique, content about your topic. Copying & pasting content from other sites could get your pages flagged as duplicate content and might land yu in legal hot water due to copyright . Try to build about 100 actual, content rich pages to launch your site with. More or less pages is fine. Each page should contain 200 plus words.

3. Mind your metas:

While only the DO NOT stuff keyword in there, be factual and make sure each individual page has a dedicated tag assigned - in short, don’t use one set of tags across your whole site.

4. The actual pages:

Make sure you use proper coding, don’t try to hide text thorugh matching colors of text to background and keep the file sizes down - under 20K is good. Don’t go crazy with javascript navigation, etc. - keep it simple: the spiders will be able to crawl it & index it and your users will love it.

5. Images & Alt Tags:

Cover this base - if you use an image on your site, take the 15 seconds to put in the tag which describes what the image is about - be factual, use a relevant keyword or phrase in there, and keep it short. DO NOT stuff this with keywords.


6. IP Address:

Get yourself a dedicated IP address. You can use shared hosting, but make sure you have a dedicated IP addy.

7. WWW v. Non-WWW:

Get this point sorted. When you type in http://domain.com, it should redirect you to the http://www.domain.com version of the domain. You should use the 301 redirect protocal to accomplish this. Should you be on a server running Windows, the process will vary, but the reuslts should be the same. Many hosted solution providers WILL NOT make this adjustment on the server for you, so be aware of this - it’s important.

8. Keyword density:

Don’t sweat this - just make sure you use the keyword in the title of the page, again in the title of the content (use

9. Keywords in URLs:

Again, don’t sweat this point - if you can, great. So long as using the keyword makes sense and is related to the actual content of the page. This doesn’t really make or break rankings, though, so don’t beat yourself up here.

10. Hyphen, underscore or dot:

When you have a keyword phrase (multiple words) being used in a URL, you’ll have to decide how to introduce a space between the words. Some folks recommend leaving them together, no spaces. I prefer to use the hyphen ( - ) or the dot ( . ) to separate words. Don’t use the underscore ( _ ).

11. Inbound links:

Once and for all - the only links of any real value to your rankings will be one-way inbound links from sites with similar topics. Reciprocal links (and all versions thereof, such as triangular link schemes, etc.) are next to useless. The engines discount any value from these. In fact, your first thought when linking should be to provide useful resources for your users and to obtain inbound links which may provide traffic to you. You’ll want to persue one-way inbound links here, too, but be warned - it’s tough. Quality counts, quantity doesn’t. Watch who is linking to you like a hawk. Bad link neighbors can cause you to get a black eye from the spiders, too. If you are actively policing your link strategy, as you should be, you’ll see problems coming and be able to take action. Did I mention quality counts and quantity doesn’t?

12. Directories:

Pay for Yahoo if you’ve got the $300. Submit to DMOZ and forget about it for at least 6 months. There are lots of other directories, but research them carefully. Lots of junk directories have come around lately - you want a directory which simply allows you to put your data in and provides one link back to you. Watch for directories which promise to put your link “across their network” or for submission tools which promise to submit to hundreds of directories each month. Both should be avoided.

13. Analytics:

Don’t use a hit counter - get actual analytics which will allow you to see where folks are coming from and what search terms they’re using to find you.

14. Sitemaps:

Make sure a simple, html, sitemap is avilable from your main page - spiders love these and it’s an easy way for them to quickly index all the pages of your site - you want this.

15. Spam tricks:

Let’s be honest here - if you have to ask if it’s a spammy tactic, it is. Don’t try to split hairs - spamming is spamming. You will either get caught by the engines themsleves and cease to exist in the index, or someone will report you (I would) and you’ll cease to exist in the index.

16. Chasing Page Rank:

OK, get over this NOW. First off, the PR value you see in the toolbar is roughly 3 - 4 months old - Google’s not using the data you’re seeing to rank your site, so why do YOU care about it? “But you want high PR sites linking to you, right?” - What you really want linking to you are sites which have similar topical content to your own. PR is irrelevant. Topic is relevant.

17. Validate your code:

Spiders like clean and simple. Show them code which is broken, dead links and stray tags and they’ll get the idea you’re not serious about this. Validate your code, page by page, and take the time to correct any errors the reports show you.

18. Keep building more pages:

The old article suggested “build one page of new content per day”. I still like Brett’s idea here, though I prefer to invest a weekend and create a bunch at a time - personal preference - just remember to follow the basics for each page.

19. Optimization/Submission software:

Humans optimize, software either spams, or goes out of data with it’s info. Seriously, software which claims to be able to optimize your website, simply cannot - it cannot make the changes, it does not read up the latest news and it does not go to the conferences and speak with the engineers from the engines. It can give you numbers, and construct tags for you, but after readin this far on this page, you can do this on your own. As for submitting your site, well, here’s the biggest clue to look for: if the software claims to submit to the engines like Google, Yahoo, etc., it’s bogus. You DO NOT submit to engines, you get links form other sites and spiders find you by crawling those links. As for submitting to directories, automated submission software often does not follow the rules as outlined by the engines. In many cases, due to image-based passwords designed to stop automated scripts, software tools are useless. Submit only by hand, and only to useful directories. The bottom line is software doesn’t optimize, humans do.

20. Paying for services:

This is a plug for all of us who do this for a living. It’s not rocket science, I’ll grant you, but if you don’t know what you’re doing and need a helping hand, shop around. Some charge hundreds for advice, some charge tens of thousands. Some use spam tricks, others (like me) don’t. Ask for references and call them.


This Article is written By Brett_Tabke:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2010.htm

How to Say Nothing in 500 Words (A Lesson on Writing)

The ability to write well is very useful for our personal and professional lives. It helps students, business people, politicians, writers, bloggers, marketers and everyone who has ever needed to arrange words together to convey ideas or opinions. The written word has become an essential means of social communication: mastery of it helps you to enthrall and persuade an audience that would look upon you favorably in return.

It goes without saying that learning how to create compelling content is a part of one’s success as an online publisher. Reading widely and deeply while consistently honing your writing skills helps a great deal in bettering your prose. Sometimes, it doesn’t hurt to read a few stylebooks/essays on writing by professional teachers or authors.

One of these essays on writing is Paul McHenry Roberts’s How to Say Nothing in Five Hundred Words, a brilliantly humorous introduction on writing college compositions. I discovered this essay today and read though easily in one sitting, possibly because it was so well-written and entertaining. It’s a perfect example of the writing techniques listed within.

Here’s a quick summary of the 9 main points mentioned. I’ve extracted some of the key paragraphs from the text but be sure to read the full essay because these points are elaborated in much greater detail with some excellent examples.

1. Avoid the obvious content.“Say the assignment is college football. Say that you’ve decided to be against it. Begin by putting down the arguments that come to your mind. Now when you write your paper, make sure that you don’ t use any of the material on this list. If these are the points that leap to your mind, they will leap to everyone else’s too. Be against college football for some reason or reasons of your own. If they are keen and perceptive ones, that’s splendid. But even if they are trivial or foolish or indefensible, you are still ahead so long as they are not everybody else’s reasons too.”
2. Take the less usual side. “One rather simple way of getting into your paper is to take the side of the argument that most of the citizens will want to avoid. They are intellectual exercises, and it is legitimate to argue now one way and now another, as debaters do in similar circumstances. Always take the that looks to you hardest, least defensible. It will almost always turn out to be easier to write interestingly on that side.”
3. Slip out of abstraction. “Look at the work of any professional writer and notice how constantly he is moving from the generality, the abstract statement, to the concrete example, the facts and figures, the illustrations. For most the soundest advice is to be seeking always for the picture, to be always turning general remarks into seeable examples. Don’t say, “Sororities teach girls the social graces.” Say, “Sorority life teaches a girl how to carry on a conversation while pouring tea, without sloshing the tea into the saucer.”
4. Get rid of obvious padding. “Instead of stuffing your sentences with straw, you must try steadily to get rid of the padding, to make your sentences lean and tough… You dig up more real content. Instead of taking a couple of obvious points off the surface of the topic and then circling warily around them for six paragraphs, you work in and explore, figure out the details. You illustrate.”
5. Call a fool a fool. “If he was a fool, call him a fool. Hedging the thing about with “in-my-opinion’s” and “it-seems-to-me’s” and “as-I-see-it’s” and “at-least-from-my-point-of-view’s” gains you nothing. Delete these phrases whenever they creep into your paper. Decide what you want to say and say it as vigorously as possible, without apology and in plain words. Writing in the modern world, you cannot altogether avoid modern jargon. But you can do much if you will mount guard against those roundabout phrases, those echoing polysyllables that tend to slip into your writing to rob it of its crispness and force.”
6. Beware of Pat Expressions. “Other things being equal, avoid phrases like “other things being equal.” Those sentences that come to you whole, or in two or three doughy lumps, are sure to be bad sentences. They are no creation of yours but pieces of common thought floating in the community soup… No writer avoids them altogether, but good writers avoid them more often than poor writers.”
7. Colorful Words. “Some words are what we call “colorful.” By this we mean that they are calculated to produce a picture or induce an emotion. They are dressy instead of plain, specific instead of general, loud instead of soft. Thus, in place of “Her heart beat,” we may write, “her heart pounded, throbbed, fluttered, danced.” Instead of “He sat in his chair,” we may say, “he lounged, sprawled, coiled.”
8. Colored Words.. “When we hear a word, we hear with it an echo of all the situations in which we have heard it before. The word mother, for example, has, for most people, agreeable associations. When you hear mother you probably think of home, safety, love, food, and various other pleasant things..The question of whether to use loaded words or not depends on what is being written.”
9. Colorless Words. “A pet example is nice, a word we would find it hard to dispense with in casual conversation but which is no longer capable of adding much to a description. Colorless words are those of such general meaning that in a particular sentence they mean nothing…Slang adjectives like cool (”That’s real cool”) tend to explode all over the language. They are applied to everything, lose their original force, and quickly die.”

Learning how to create content using concrete, lean, colorful and vivid prose with unique perspectives will help you to get more readers, customers and supporters. But bear in mind that its not just about writing in a fancy way to entertain. It’s also a conscientious way of differentiating yourself from thousands of similar writers/thinkers in the same field.

Tips in Image Search in the SEO Picture

One of the major trends that emerged from SES San Jose is the increasingly important role of image search. This article will talk a bit about how and why it's growing, and strategies for optimizing your web site to receive this type of traffic.

A special report from the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, Calif., August 20-23, 2007.

First let's start with a few data points that illustrate why image search is increasing in importance:

1. In his keynote interview with Chris Sherman on Tuesday morning, Jim Lanzone, CEO of Ask.com, said that 50 percent of the results they provide on Ask3D do not come from traditional web results. Note that my own examination of this shows that there are still 10 blue links, but there are also image results, news results, and other relevant data provided in addition.

2. In the Image Search session, Shari Thurow stated that 15 percent to 16 percent of web searches are for images. This is just a stunning number!

3. Shari Thurow also offered up the data point that usability testing shows that users are more likely to click on an image link than a text link. As experienced SEOs know that means you lost the anchor text opportunity with that link, but you can easily address that by putting the pretty image links up top, and having a general purpose menu in the footer of your page using text links.

4. From an examination of sites I monitor, Google Image Search has become a steadily more important referrer, and often is one of the top 5 referrers. This is true even on sites that are not really that image-centric.

One of the major things that is driving this is the advent of universal/federated/blended search results. The integration of images into the web search results in a more integral way is providing greatly increased access to the available image data. In addition, more and more people are becoming aware of just how rich image search has become. People are getting high quality results, so conducting an image search becomes a natural reaction of more searchers when the need arises.
Image Search Optimization

So now that we know that image search represents a significant opportunity, I will now draw on the rest of my SES San Jose 2007 notes related to image search and lay out the basics of image search optimization.

As an obvious first step, figure out how images can and should fit into the user experience on your site. This is a non-trivial step. Then, determine how and where you can obtain original images for your site. Image search engines don't like duplicate content any more than web search engines, so you need to obtain your own original images. Once you have this in place, here are the major steps you can take to optimize for image search engines:

1. Use keywords in the alt tag attribute. This is a critical step, as it is the one best opportunities you have to unambiguously label the image. Bear in mind that there is a huge amount of search volume that includes words like: photo, picture, image, pics, pix, or locations. Regarding the locations, if your image is a picture of a physical location, include some location information in the alt tag attribute.

2. Note that the title tag attribute is usually ignored. Don't waste your time on it.

3. Pick a logical file name, that reinforces the keywords. Using hyphens in the file name to isolate the words in the keyword is an OK to thing, just try not to exceed two hyphens. Do not use underscores as a word separator.

4. Use a descriptive file name, in a similar fashion to the alt tag attribute.

5. Pay attention to the file extension too. For example, if the image search engine sees a ".jpg" (JPEG) file extension, it's going to assume that the file is a photo.

6. Basic web page optimization applies too. For example:
* The title tag of the web page
* The text nearby the image
* The overall theme of the content of the page
* The overall theme of the site (or section of the site)

7. Also important is to get links to the page with the image on it. This could become an entire link building discussion in itself, but one simple way to do this it to post the pages with images on them to del.icio.us.

8. Avoid duplicate content on your site. If for example, you have a thumbnail, a medium size image, and a full size image, you don't want these to all be indexed. The best way to handle this is to use robots.txt to prevent the crawler from looking at the versions you don't want indexed (most likely this would be the thumbnail or the full size image).

A couple of other interesting points emerges from the discussion. One of these was brought up by Liana Evans, which was that reputation management issues apply to image search as much as it does to web search. You should be aware of what pictures are out there of you, your brand, or your company, and you should actively work on making sure that the most common results that come up are pictures that fit the image you are trying to create.

In addition, image theft is a real issue, and is hard to stop. One thing you can do is to place some text in the image, such as "photo by ..." of "image by ...". While this does not stop photo theft altogether, it does require the person taking the image to do some editing to the image before they can use it.

In summary, image search can bring great results for your business. Of course, you want to make sure that the traffic you get is relevant to your site, and that those visitors might ultimately do what you want them to do on your site. With that in mind, step back and take a look at how optimizing for image search might fit into your overall web strategy.

Eric Enge is the president of Stone Temple Consulting, an SEO consultancy outside of Boston. Eric is also co-founder of Moving Traffic Inc., the publisher of City Town Info and Custom Search Guide.

How to Make More Money with Your Website (without Getting More Traffic)

It’s possible to increase the amount of money you earn from your blog or website without increasing the amount of traffic you currently receive. While the amount of traffic greatly affects how much money you earn, all income sources can be tweaked to generate more revenue without an proportionate increase in traffic.

One simply needs to strategically optimize your website in order to best accommodate whatever traffic you are currently receiving.

This article will provide some useful details on the various methods and principles you can immediately use to improve the overall net revenue from your website or blog.

Main Principles to Follow for Greater Income

There are three main principles you should remember when trying to increase the overall income for your site. These are conversion, leverage and diversification:

* Conversion. If you want to make money from the same ad space on your blog without an increase in traffic, you need to develop greater conversion rates for affiliate programs and contextual ads. This includes restructuring your website to highlight specific webpages, projects or advertisements.

* Leverage. To expand your income beyond on-site advertisements, you need to start using your site as a platform towards something a specific service or product that brings in an external income.

* Diversification. To increase your overall earnings, you also need to gradually develop a diverse income stream by experimenting with multiple ad programs and monetization strategies which fit the overall content and direction of your site. This also involves the development of content that can be easily monetized.


5 Ways to Gradually Make More Money from Your Website

These five methods are practical explanations of how you can apply the three principles outlined above to your own website or blog. Consistent application of these methods will ensure that you increase the income generated from each site.

1. Make an Effort to Use Affiliate Links Regularly

Reviews of products like books and software or other websites will allow you to generate income via affiliate links. Conversions for affiliate links will always work best when combined with personal recommendations within content.

Strive to write objective reviews of these products or websites on a regular basis. Write one review every week and you’ll gradually develop a substantial archive of monetized content accessible by search engine traffic and other visitors.


2. Develop and Display a List of Recommended Websites/Products

This list of websites should be prominently displayed on a sitewide level although you can choose to display it on its own webpage. Each of the recommended websites should preferably be linked to a presell page on your website.

This can come in the form of a review post or a short note detailing your experiences with the website or product. I highly recommend creating your own presell page, instead of sending your visitor directly to the affiliate product or website because presell pages will lead to higher conversion rates.


3. Focus on Conversion: Optimize your Existing Ad Placement

Income generated from on-site advertisements can vary a great detail depending on placement, particularly if they are contextual CPC or CPA ads. Try experimenting with ad formats and placement on your site while monitoring your click-through rates and ad earnings at least once every week.

This should gradually give you a good idea of where to best place your ads for maximum earnings. You can also choose to place ads on specific areas of your website for greater overall performance. For instance, effective monetization of your single post pages will provide an additional source of income.


4. Diversify Your Income: Try New Monetization Tactics

Diversification of your income is one method to make full use of your blog’s earnings potential. Sign up with new ad networks and run ads to test if they produce equal or higher earnings. Some websites work very well with Adsense, others would probably do better with text link sales (aff) or direct ad sales.

A good way to pick up different ad-models is to observe the various sites in and outside of your niche. How are they monetizing their site? Can you apply the same method to your own site?

Another method of monetization would involve offering premium features or content for subscribing members. This requires a substantial amount of work but may work if your site already has an established audience which trusts your product or brand.


5. Leverage Your Blog to Promote Your Services or Business

If you have a particular skill such as web design or writing, I would recommend putting up a page on your site promoting your services. This aim of this page is to let visitors know that you are available for hire and will encourage interested visitors to contact you for assignments on specific projects.

This indirectly increases your monthly income by providing a revenue source on top of your regular monetization methods. David Airey is a good example of a freelance graphic designer who leverages his site to promote his services.

David’s blog clearly shows that he is available for hire and prominently displays his portfolio. A collection of featured articles on topics such as graphic design, advertising and branding demonstrates his knowledge on the topic to prospective clients. It also helps that he has optimized his site to rank well for local search terms like ‘graphic design edinburgh’ and ‘web design edinburgh’.


Building Traffic is Still the No.1 Priority

While the above methods will definitely increase your online income, building regular amounts of traffic to your website is still of primary importance because it exponentially increases the amount of money you can earn from every single ad format or program that you run.

Should you need more information on traffic building, do check out my category of articles specifically on how to get more visitors to your website.

Strategic Collaborations: A Powerful Way to Promote Yourself

Sometimes you can’t do everything yourself. You don’t have the budget to launch a big marketing campaign. Or you don’t even know where to start. One of the best ways to promote your website or business is to work together with others to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.

The legal form of this is known as a joint venture, where two or more parties create a new entity by contributing equity and sharing revenue, expenses and control. Another form of collaboration is known as a strategic alliance, whereby the parties involved pursue common goals while remaining as independent organizations.

No matter what you call it, collaboration with others will benefit you in ways that go beyond what you can do on your own. Think about it. Each involved party comes with their own established audience, reputation, brand, networks and strengths. Some of them may overlap with your own but usually, they’ll reach people or own assets you don’t.

Some people may have more media contacts. Some may have a specific skill (e.g. design, programing) and others have an audience or customer base that you’re trying to reach. Partnering with them for short or long-term initiatives is a smart way to promote your business, on top of all the online marketing that you’re already doing.

How can you collaborate? The possibilities are endless. For example, you can run joint contests/competitions, set up incentivized referral networks, promote a co-op web product, create content together, exchange ad space or trade skills for exposure. There are many ways to collaborate for mutual benefits. It’s just about finding what works for you.

So how do you get started? Four simple steps:

1. Identify your goals. This is what you want to get out of the collaboration. Your goals will determine who you should work with and having a clear idea of what you want from the beginning will give you an immediate idea of what kind of marketing strategy you want to take, and hence who is most suitable for you.

2. Determine what you can offer. Make a list of benefits you can offer to the opposite party. For example you might have specific personal skills or a website with a built-in audience. Perhaps you’re launching a new product and give away free samples of it away. In other words, this list consists of what you can do for the other parties.

3. Create a List of Potential Collaborators. Start writing down a list of people you want to work with based on your goals, what you can offer and who you think will be potentially interested. Make the list broad: there’ll always be people who’ll turn you down so you want as many secondary options as possible.

4. Pitch the people involved. Draft up an email template and send it off to the people on your list. Try to customize your pitch by using each recipient’s name and including unique information/comments. Keep the emails short and frame them in terms of benefits. Alternatively, try pitching over the phone or a face-to-face meeting. Remember to follow up before permanently striking a recipient off from your collaborators list.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. There’s no harm in reaching out to people, all you have to risk is your pride. When it comes to partnerships, you’ll be surprised with the people who will be interested in working together. Don’t automatically write yourself off, especially you have something valuable to offer to another party.

If you’ve never tried any strategic collaborations before, why not start today?

The Power of Understanding and Solving Problems

Many have made money and built reputations by solving problems. Doctors cure the suffering of illness, psychiatrists help heal the troubled mind, lawyers protect names from being tarnished, consultants offer marketing advice and a dazzling array of products help to remove any inconvenience you might possibly encounter in your daily life.

Many people are solving problems. They’re all offering solutions to people who need them. Some are giving them away for free. Others are selling them for a price. When problem and solution is a perfect fit, a relationship of trust is built between two parties. If this helps me now, it might help me again. If this solves my problem, it might solve my friend’s problem too.

There’s a connection. The problem solver becomes more popular as more problems are solved for more people. Every time you solve a problem in a way that’s better than others, you add undeniable value to the person in need. After performing a search engine query on a topic, what pages do you bookmark? The ones that offer you the best possible solution.

As a business or website owner, you have to face the challenge of getting people to consume what you’re offering, be it free content on your blog, a piece of merchandise or premium service. You’ll have compete with other problem solvers in the market. Other blogs, other companies in the same field, other service providers. All offering different solutions.

For instance, there are many different products to solve the problem of dirty dishes. A plethora of different washing fluids, sponges, machines and racks. In most scenarios, there are more solutions than there are problems. Solutions themselves become problems to be solved.

Most of the time problem-solvers are already engaging your target audience but that doesn’t mean you should stay away. There’s always room for another solution, especially when its one that addresses the problem with more elegance, more force, more precision or more style.

First, identify the problems facing your target audience. Go deep into the user-generated recesses of the web: monitor forums, social networking websites, blogs and places where people interact and talk online. Understand the problem more deeply than your competitor. Go after nuance. Absorb feedback on current solutions. Know what they want but isn’t available.

Then, create a solution that builds on the flaws of other solutions. Or one that completely circumvents the existing paradigm by addressing the problem from a different angle, using different methodology or a combination of existing solutions. Be daring and creative.

Try going wider for broader appeal or swim in narrower channels to reach hardcore fans in order to gain a support base. The same applies to online publications like blogs on specific topics. What problems do your readers have? How are you solving them with your content? If solutions already exist elsewhere, how can you do better so you’ll be the go-to site?

Nobody is able to constantly solve problems in the best possible way to please every single person. All solutions have flaws because consumers evolve. People are also going to look elsewhere because of of boredom. But understanding exactly what problems and solutions are out there, allows you to better score points or gain favor with any audience.

6 Simple Steps To Image Optimization

With the advent of Google Universal Search, Ask 3D and other "blended" search services, images will increasingly be appearing in search results.

If you're not optimizing images on your web site, you're missing out on capturing some of this increasingly valuable real-estate. Not sure how to optimize images for search engines? Today's Search Illustrated shows you how to do it simply and quickly:

19 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Site Using Google Images

One way to get more search engine traffic is to optimize your website for Google Image Search, a tool which allows users to easily find images by typing in specific search terms, phrases and keywords.

Many people utilize Google Image search to find images for a wide variety of topics, which can range from pictures of cars to celebrities and furniture.

Images can not only make your website visually attractive: they can help you to gain more daily search engine traffic.

Highly relevant image results show up at the top of Google’s search results page when one searches for specific topics. Getting listed in this prime position can possibly send a great deal of traffic to your website.

Introduction to Google Image Search Optimization

Google Image Search optimization is not a difficult process and only requires that you pay attention to how you label and use your images within the regular framework of your website. A lot of image optimization involves basic search optimization factors such as the inclusion of relevant keywords in the content, title and meta tags.

All of the articles I’ve read on the topic of Google Images optimization seem to be in common agreement and they offer similar suggestions, although a few of them do highlight some different methods of utilizing Google Image Search.

19 Ways to Get More Traffic Using Google Image Search

I’ve made a full list of all the methods I’ve come across so that all of you can have an accessible reference point, should you decide to use Google Images as a method to drive more traffic to your website.

Also added are a few points of my own, specifically dealing with how targeting specific image topics and integrating them within your webpages can help to attract a great deal more traffic through Google images.

Depending on your niche and images used, you’ll be able to attract a great deal of extra visitors easily with very little additional work. I highly recommending putting at least a few of these points into practice on your own website.

Here is the list of Google image optimization tips in full:

1. Insert keywords into your Alt Text.

This is the most important part of image optimization and you should include a keyword or phrase that is relevant to the image and your webpage. The alt text should be inserted in the code for your image file.

Here’s an example: Alt description goes here">

2. Name your Images with Descriptive Titles.

If you have an image of Lindsay Lohan, you could use the term ‘lindsay-lohan.jpg’ to name your image, instead of simply going with the original file name which could be something like ‘b473.jpg’. I usually name my images exactly the same way as my alt text.

3. Use relevant text around your images.

It is recommended that descriptive text with your targeted keywords be placed immediately before or after the image itself. If you do a search for any term on Google Image, you’ll find that a short description of 20+ characters beneath every image. You’ll probably notice that the keyword is listed in bold as well.

4. Use Adsense to assess overall content relevance.

Insert an Adsense unit on the page where your googe images are placed and see what type of Adsense ads show up. This will tell you how Google thinks the overall theme of what your page is about.

Change your content until the Adsense units reflect the keywords you want to target. In my opinion, this is not only applies to Google images but is a generally helpful method as it improves your overall latent semantic indexing score and makes your site appear more relevant to Google for targeted key phrases or words.

5. Optimize Your Title and Meta tags.

This should already be part of your overall optimization strategy and it purportedly helps your site to rank better in image searches as well. Like the use of Adsense for testing, paying attention to this point will help you to have better visibility in Google’s main search engine as well.

6. Use anchor text keywords in links to images.

When you link to a specific image, use keywords instead of a generic phrase. For example, instead of using “See here” or “Click for Full Size“, try something like “Lindsay Lohan Picture” or “Lindsay Lohan in Rehab“.

7. Use Internal and Social Site Tags for your Images

If you are using images with little or no textual content, it might be helpful to tag your images using internal tagging functions or social tags like Technorati. This may add more weight to your image and help it to rank better. If you are uploading your images using Flickr, remember to use the appropriate keyword tags as well.

8. Use Broad Categories of Images to Get a Larger Audience

If you’re running a gadget website, you don’t have to only upload pictures of gadgets. Try upload pictures of web 2.0 sites, web applications and pictures of items related to your gadgets. For example, you can upload pictures of living rooms instead, if the gadget was designed to complement residential space.

9. Make Your Image folder accessible to search engines

Ensure that your robots.txt file does not limit search engines from accessing your image files. This is essential if you want your images to be ranked on Google Image Search. Try not to use javascript links on image files as well as it will limit search engine access as well.

10. Re-upload your pictures to maintain search freshness

If you have a picture that focuses on highly popular keywords, you can try to remove and re-upload another version of your image because freshness might affect relevancy and may rejuvenate your ranking on the Google Image Search engine.

11. Make your Google Images Standards-compliant.

One way of making your images fully standards complaint requires you to include not only the alt tag but also the width, height and title tag for the image as well. Here’s an example of a fully compliant image reference you can follow.

12. Enable Google Image Search in Webmaster Central.

Visit Google Webmaster Tools and click on the Diagnostic tab on the menu bar. After which, select enhanced image search on the left sidebar and click on the checkbox to opt into image search for your website. This can only be done after you verify your website with Google so do that before proceeding further.

13. Try out Google Image Labeler.

Apparently, the Google Image Labeler is some sort of a online game which allows you and others to write tags for images that show up. These tags are then taken into consideration and may influence the Google Image search results.

14. Use Javascript to prevent framing of your webpages

By adding a piece of javascript code, you can prevent your images from being framed when users click on the image within Google Image Search. Visitors will not see the Google image frame but the full site and this may encourage more pageviews for your site as well. This practice may not entirely be endorsed by Google so try at your own risk.

15. HotLink Images from Google Search

This involves going to Google Image Search and to do a search query for the image you want. Visit the original webpage and copy the image location to hotlink it on your own website. This helps your website to show up high among the image search ranks. For an example, check out these search results for Jessica Alba (slightly NSFW).

Most of the images in the top row are hotlinked and actually rank better than the original image source. You should probably note that hotlinking is frowned upon by most webmasters because it leeches their bandwidth, not to mention that you might be violating copyrights as well.

An alternative method of hotlinking is to hotlink Google’s cache itself. This short tutorial gives clear indication of how to do it but this method only allows you to use thumbnails, not to mention that some webmasters have reported seeing no results after trying this method.

16. Use Image Sizing to Target a Search Term.

The size of your image may determine the amount of visits you receive from Google Image Search. Some people use Google Image to search for wallpapers and if you’re targeting a specific keyword, try creating it in the form of a wallpaper or in the form of an icon, depending on how much competition there is for the specific image.

17. Use Images about ‘Hot’ Topics.

One easy way to get more visitors from Google images involves the deliberate use of images to catch visitors who are searching for ‘hot’ topics, some of which can be easily found through the use of Google Trends. For example, screenshots of popular ongoing TV shows could be integrated in some way in some webpages. Note that for maximum effect, your content should be relevant to the image used as well.

18. Create a separate page and link to the page and image

This process involves adding an optimized page webpage on your website along and link the image to that specific page which visitors can access via the ‘back’ anchor on the new page whenever they find your page through Google Image Search.

I have not personally tried this but some have claimed that it helps both the regular search rank as well as the Image Search rank. See this page for the method in full.

19. Monitor the Number of Google Images Indexed

An important part of Google Image Search optimization is to monitor how many images on your website are indexed by Google Image Search to see if you are taking the right steps to optimize your images.

The easiest way to do this is to use a site search operator. For example, here is a list of images indexed on Boing Boing. Simply change boingboing.net to your url: http://images.google.com/images?q=site:boingboing.net

Converting Google Image Search Visitors

Getting traffic from Google Image Search is very nice but you’ll need some way of converting them into a customer or future reader. This can be quite difficult because visitors are likely to click away if after they find the image.

Here are some conversion tactics you can use:

• Place your image on a webpage with highly relevant content
• Link to other relevant webpages and image galleries
• Promote a special offer related to the product image that you’ve used
• Allow users to copy the image and paste it on their website (try this script)
• Include call to actions at the start and end of webpages

Try Experimenting with Google Image Search..

I’ve recently gotten a decent number of hits for a image which was experiencing seasonal surge in search queries for a specific term and I’m sure that the list of tips above will help you to get some extra traffic from Google Images as well.

You can start by first trying out a few images in your webpages or new blog posts to see if you actually get some traffic from it. Remember to monitor traffic through your stats package and tweak for optimum results.

Most Effictive ways to Increase Targeted Traffic to Your Blog

The key to make money from your website/blog is to find out how your can increase unique visitors. The more people that visit your page, more the money you make. So, basically making money online revolves around how to increase unique visitors.

Tip 1 - Writing articles and submits them to article directories

The most successful technique is to write articles and submit them to article directories. One of the best ways to get free targeted traffic around so don't dismiss it. There is no shortage of online directories which accepts quality original articles. This is for free and you don't have to pay them any subscription or membership fee. Don't forget when write an article to focus with the niche that your Blog is related with. And don't forget, more articles you write and submit to article directories, more target traffic you get.

And keep in mind that the volume of blog posts you do can have a large impact on the potential traffic you get not only today but in the future as well.


Tip 2 - Free Ebook Traffic

Create a free ebook or report that's filled with valuable information that people will pass around and share. This is called viral marketing because it spreads all over the Internet quickly like a virus.

Your ebook doesn't have to be long, it can have anywhere between 15 to 50 pages to be considered valuable to people. You can fill your ebook with articles that you've written or pick a topic and create some valuable information relating to your website. If you don't enjoy writing you can always hire someone to ghostwrite the ebook.

Make sure you have links throughout the ebook back to your website and that you encourage people to distribute it freely.


Tip 3 - Use Forums

If you want to increase targeted traffic, you can begin participating in forums on the Internet. Choose forums where people will be talking about something relevant to your industry or product. For example, if you sell wedding invitations, go to a wedding planning forum. Each time you post make sure to include a link back to your site. Or recommend the site to others while you're disguised as an ordinary user.

Another cheap and efficient technique to increase the website traffic is to join forums and communities on the internet. This does not involve any costs at all, but you are expected to spend some time online. Join the forums and communities that are related to your website niche. This creates an opportunity for free advertising. You can give your expert opinion and share knowledge on the topics and about your website/blog to create more awareness.


Tip 4 - Use Social Marketing

Social bookmarking is a great way to create traffic to your blog, as well as to create search engine bait for potential search engine traffic. And the other thing is social bookmarking is extremely easy to do, especially if you have the right plug-ins and are using a Word Press blog.

Join all of the social marketing sites you can get your hands on then talk about the site and provide links back to the site as much as you want. Try to join friends' lists in which you can reach your targeted audience.

If you are using another platform such as Blogger you can bookmark a multiple directories utilizing services such as Onlywire. They make it possible for you to quickly bookmark over 20 directories with one click.


Tip 5 - Use Social Network

Using social network like MySpace.com and Facebook.com to advertise your website/blog has become a new way to increase your traffic. This sites is mainly a "people meeting" site but you can list your website/blog and create friendships with thousands of people in a very short time.

You simply need to mention your website/blog URL when you send a message to the community bulletin board. This can create a tremendous flood of traffic to your website as there are more than 200 millions subscribers to them.

other sites:
Digg
del.icio.us
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Netscape
Magnolia
YouTube


Tip 6 - Free Stuff

If you're interested in finding a way to increase targeted traffic to your site, one way is to make something available for free.


Tip 7 - SEO Optimization

Another good way to increase targeted traffic is through SEO optimization. By focusing on some keywords that would be relevant to your targeted audience, you can land a better spot in the search engine rankings and reach a larger number of these individuals.


Tip 8 - Use Ping-0-Matic to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish: http://www.pingomatic.com

Tip 9 - Always Comment on other blogs.

Tip 10 - Make a video and brand it with your blog’s address

Tip 11 - Answer questions on Yahoo Answers and make sure you write your url blog in your answer.


Just focus on the Tips and you will see fantastic results for your blog, and huge targeted traffic.

12 Reasons Why you Should Switch To Gmail

Google has some really awesome services one of which is Gmail. I had an account with hotmail at first, 10 years back and which i am still using but at the same time switched to Gmail for its great features. Here are the reasons why you should shift from you Yahoo or Hotmail account or quit using Outlook and get a life at Gmail.

1. Simple yet efficient design and the Ajax script is lovely to use.

2. Gmail spam filters block 99% of the spam that usually makes it to your inbox. Although Outlook had a good spam filter, I still usually got around 2 or 3 emails a week sneaking into my inbox… not with Gmail. Yahoo mail on the other hand is really easy to dodge as far as spamming is concerned.

3. You may keep on using the old account and you emails from the Gmail account will be forwarded to your old mailbox. With Gmail you may also get to keep your old email account, and all incoming emails will be forwarded to your new Gmail account.

4. Word docs, PDF’s and spread sheets may also be created with Gmail via the use of GoogleDocs.

5. Gmail allows you to schedule events with the Google Calendar that will notify you by email to remind you of an appointment or meeting. It can also send a reminder to the person or persons that you will be meeting with.

6. Gmail has something called ‘Stars’ and which allows you to tag emails you find important. You can actually do a search for ‘Starred‘ emails and they all pop up, and as quick as a normal google search!

7. Your emails are tabbed into a thread, which means you no longer have to look for old emails… it is more like a conversation window.

8. You can archive old emails or whole conversations so that you can keep your Inbox clear.

9. You can set up filters and labels to keep your Inbox organised and clutter free.

10. It has a fast, easy search function which means you will never lose an email again. The search is as fast a normal google search which is ace.

11. All your emails are online which means that you access your emails from anywhere, not just one computer which is the case with the Outlook.

12. With Gmail… you will never have to delete an email again. Currently its over 7 Gb and it keeps on increasing

How to Write an Interesting & Appealing Articles, Practical Information

Writing an article that arouses the interest of the potential readers is one of the most difficult challenges that article writers are facing at this time. Below are some of the suggested tips and techniques that article writers can use in order to write an interesting and appealing articles:

1. Create a powerful and enticing article title. By creating a powerful and interest title for your article material, you are half-way through catching the attention of the reader to open and read your article material. and that What you basically need at first is to get the attention of the potential reader prior to catching his attention to listen to what you will have to convey.

2. Sustain the interest by giving them a very aggressive and revolutionary content. In order to sustain the interest of your readers that you were able to successfully take on the headline that you have, you need to make sure that you have an equally attention-grabbing content for them to read. This is important because it allows you to entice your potential readers to read the material until the last portion of your work.

3. Give your article content a twist by including some graphical or numerical figures as part of your content. This gives your material an air of certainty and factuality on the perspective of the potential readers.

4. use conversational style, if you write in a formal or academic style, you are going to bore people away faster than if you use conversational style.
People like to read very fast online and if you help them do so by using simple and straightforward language, they are going to appreciate that.

5. Deliver one idea at a time in an article and split longer articles with a few ideas into two or more articles.

6. Your articles should have substances. It doesn't mean that it has to be long and contain a lot of information, but it has to be useful. we talking about practical information instead of just theories.

A "what" article can be very boring but a "how" article without anything else can be very interesting.

In the end, Don’t forget; Content Is Always The KING,
So Make your article always helpful & useful.

Google Chrome, Google's new browser

Release Date: September 2, 2008

Another piece of art from Google empire. The latest and another surprise we used to.
After I try it I found it as usual, simple, fast, and very stable.
To download it Click In Download

For more information and details:
Official Google Blog: A fresh take on the browser
Google Chrome, from wikipedia

In the end I have a query,the new browser not just another Free service from Google, I think it's just the beginning, now it's just matter of time and Google will launch her own system for PC like windows, Mac, and LUnix.

It's just matter of time, so be ready for the next from Google Empire!


Google Chrome for Windows