Each year I spend the first three months looking for the best and most innovative SEO tips of the previous year’s end. This year I have what I believe to be the best 3 SEO tips in a decade!

SEO Tip #1: Make Google Alerts Your Personal Online Spy

Google Alerts is a great way to let the world’s biggest search engine be your personal online spy. This takes search engine optimization insider info to whole new level. Here’s an excerpt straight from Google….

“Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:

* monitoring a developing news story

* keeping current on a competitor or industry

* getting the latest on a celebrity or event

* keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams”

As you probably guessed, it’s the second one we care about most, “keeping current on a competitor or industry.”

Here’s how it works… Each time Google finds a reference to the query or topic you request you will be sent an email with the details. This is like having an online spy to make sure competitors are not using your protected keywords (trademarked names, company names, etc.) It’s also an instant identifier to know when your site or product is mentioned in a news story or even when a topic is hot so you can take advantage of the situation. It’s the easiest way in the world to stop competitors’ dirty tricks and identify trends that you can take instant advantage of.

It’s fast, free and works every minute of every day. Let Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) do your most time consuming legwork while you reap the rewards!

SEO Tip #2: Optimize Your 404 Page and Always Be Found

“Error 404: Page Not Found” is a blessing that most Webmasters curse. Why? Getting a visitor on any page of your site is fantastic! Don’t blow the opportunity. Not only can you make your “404″ page a valuable sales tool, you can use the following search engine optimization techniques to attract customers in droves.

A.) Use your main keyword in your title, add a “pipe” (usually above the Enter key) and then use your secondary keyword. Here’s as example for an SEO site “SEO | Search Engine Optimization Tips”

B.) Add some keyword rich content using one to two keywords for the page. If you have less than 250 words on the page, just use one keyword and use it no more than three times total. Bold the first use and italicize the second or third use. Keep in mind this is an “inactive” page so simply tell the visitor what your site is about and whet their appetite with a good description. Something like this works well… “Thank you for visiting SEO (bold) Group, Inc. We are sorry you landed on a missing page but don’t worry, if you’re looking for the very best search engine optimizations tips (bold), you’re at the right place…” This will go on for a couple paragraphs or as long as you’d like then end it with something to the effect of “Please Click Here (link) to visit our site map or click any link to the left.”

C.) Add your site’s standard navigation system (bar, column, etc.) as mentioned above.

D.) Make the look and feel of the customized 404 page match your main site as closely as possible with a template, matched palette, cascading style sheets, etc.

E.) Create a link to the site map page if available, and make the link easy to find. You want your visitor off the 404 page and into your main content as quickly as possible.

Setting up a custom 404 page link usually takes less than five minutes on most major Web hosting companies like Godaddy.com. But whatever it takes, it’s worth the effort.

SEO Tip #3: Get (Even More) Serious About Linking

I saved the most important for last. If you want to do well on any search engine, especially Google, linking is THE single MOST important thing you can do. It’s that simple.

Here are the five things you MUST do to make your site #1 on Google:

A.) Find the highest page rank sites linking to your site AND your competitors’ sites.

B.) Run monthly link campaigns and snatch up the best of the above identified Web sites.

C.) Run regular checks on what pages are still linking back to your site. Alsomake sure they did not move you from a high page rank page to a lower one (don’t get cheated!)

D.) Eliminate any penalized sites you link to; ASAP!

E.) Check your search engine ranking AND your competitor’s for each of your keywords every week. Do this, at the minimum, for Google, Yahoo, MSN and Alta Vista.

Inside Tip: Keeping up can be a lot of work so a lot of SEO Consultants (myself included) use SEO Elite (http://www.SEOeliteWeb.com) to do all the most difficult and time consuming work.

There’s one more very important thing to know; Google was originally a Ph.D. student’s project and was created for the sole purpose of defining a Web site’s value by the sites that link to it. Twelve years later this is still it’s main job. Linking is EVERYTHING to Google.

These few SEO tips are the very best of the best so use them wisely. Best of luck!

Anyone who has tried to educate themselves about search engine strategies, has already discovered that there are literally millions of pages, with as many differing opinions on the subject of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). This vast amount of information on the subject of SEO, and the strategies used most often, can be found on the internet and in magazines and books. You could spend years sifting through all of the available materials on SEO and SEO strategies, to find the strategies that have emerged as the front-runners in the online marketing arena.

To speed up the learning process, you will find 10 of the top SEO strategies listed below to use as a quick guide to the search engine optimization for your website. It is recommended that you continue educating yourself further about SEO as your schedule permits. New information and strategies on SEO are added to the already “massive mix” on a regular basis.

1. Aquant yourself with KEYWORDS, and KEYWORD PHRASES. These are the words that someone searching for something on the internet uses to narrow searches, for matches closer to what they’re looking for. You can use software to help find and organize these words, or let your SEO consultant deal with this crucial, but time-consuming job.

2. “Woo” search engines and prospective visitors to your website with tantalizing titles for your website and web pages. Remember the axiom of having only one chance to make a great first impression.

3. Create website layouts and designs that pack a powerful visual-punch for visitors to enjoy. Search engines like websites with fresh and appealing designs, but even better, visitors will spread the word about the look of your website which will create a stream of curious visitors and the possibility for more sales.

4. Only use good, informative, interesting content to fill your website. If you can’t write it yourself, hire a competent content provider to create unique content for your website.

5. Add an RSS Newsfeed to your website to provide your website visitors with access to the freshest information related to their interests.

6. Find quality links to place on your website that point to other websites related to yours. Use websites with high rankings to benefit the most from placing them on your website. You can check the rank of a website using the Free Google ToolBar

7. Submit your website to a web directory. There are large directories with generalized themes or you can choose a web directory that is specific to the theme of your website. Search engines give much consideration to websites listed in web directories. Do be careful about submitting to some of the free web directories. Check them out first to ensure that they do not engage in unethical practices such as not monitoring what websites can be accepted into the directory, and having no policy against Spam.

8. Submit your website to search engines yourself or using software that makes reasonable submissions. Mass submitters can be a hindrance to the SEO of your website because they tend to zoom towards those harmful web directories.

9. Keep track of your websites positioning in search engines and make changes in the SEO of your website wherever needed.

10. Consider budgeting for an SEO expert to help you with all of the numerous aspects of SEO for your website. These experts can save you tons of time, spent learning about and performing these SEO strategies, and can also save you from spending money on SEO tools you don’t really need.

Domain Names – How to Secure Cheap Domain Names

A “Cheap Domain” does not necessarily mean a bad domain or something to be avoided.

Therefore you do not necessarily have to pay more to have a good domain name – so it therefore follows that it would be wise to spend as little as possible on your domain names, right?

That’s right but the one big thing to consider when buying “cheap” domains is the domain name registrar.

This is where it can get ugly because if you buy from a cheap and nasty registrar your domains may not be transferable or easy to manage.

Registrars are authorized by the internet governing body so you need to make sure that the company you are registering a domain name with meets this qualification.

How to Choose a Memorable Domain Name

Whilst most of the popular names and phrases have been taken by domain name speculators hoping to sell them at a profit in the future, it is still possible to register domain names that are both memorable and on topic.

Fortunately there are still many domain name options and combinations available with various extensions which provides you more flexibility when it comes to choosing your domain name.

However, it is important to consider the following when choosing your domain name…

Your Domain Name is an Investment for the Future

Domain names, like real estate, appreciate in value as time goes by.

Furthermore, as a domain name ages not only does it become more valuable, it importantly gains more credibility & integrity with the search engines.

Therefore it is extremely important to secure as many appropriate domains as possible as soon as you can.

Not only can they all be directed to one website but it keeps them out of the clutches of your competition as well as adding to your business’ online presence and credibility.

What if your preferred name has already been registered?

There is a good chance that your preferred domain name has already been registered and that you’ll have to settle for a name that is not your first choice.

The most popular top level domain (TLD) is the dotcom extension for businesses, but there are some good alternatives such as .net .org .biz which are good choices for the appropriate type of business, eg. an IT company should have a .net extension & a non-profit ro government organization should have a .org extension.

Furthermore if your business is country specific, you should consider using a country-specific top level domains (TLDs) like .de, .nu, .sg, etc.

However, if your name has been taken you can always consider adding a search engine friendly term to the name.

For instance if your preferred name is photography you could choose photography-tips or photography-usa or photography123 etc..

Your Domain is Registered – What Now?

Ensure that once your domain is registered that your domain record remains locked which ensures that your domain remains secure and untouchable.

Therefore your domain cannot be transferred to a different registrar unless you have unlocked it – this means that it is secure and cannot be stolen by some unscrupulous domain name grabber.

Lastly, remember it’s wise to register as many appropriate domains as you can get – they are not only cheap but an investment in your businesses future.

So start registering & profiting with cheap domain names here…

Let me ask you: If you have a certain idea or topic in mind, and you wish to find out more about this topic, what do you do? Ten years ago you would probably have gone to the library, but today… You GOOGLE IT!

If you take anybody currently living in the modern world, chances are that is what they will tell you. Google is King! Over the course of just a few years, Google has gone from a couple of smart guys at Stanford University with the revolutionary idea of making the entire internet available from their desktop, to being the undisputed gatekeeper to nearly every single portion of humanity’s collective knowledge.

The Google search engine has in fact become so popular and proliferous that the word ‘google’ itself has now become a verb! (As in, if you want to find out more about a certain person, you just google them.)

Every time you do a search, you will see the term or phrase that you searched at the top, followed by about ten webpages that Google thinks are most relevant to your term. Since there are literally tens of millions of Google searches every single day, it is not a great leap to think that the websites that manage to get their ranking very high in Google will get ALOT of free visitors and traffic.

But what is it exactly that determines which websites get listed in the top ten listings? Well, the system that is behind every single search result that you see is called the PageRank system, named after its creator and co-founder of Google, Larry Page.

Before the PageRank system, there did exist some other methodologies for determining web search relevance and delivering accurate results, but none of them were as robust, accurate, democratic, or resistant to human error as PageRank.

-What Puts PageRank in A League of Its Own-

There are basically two major ideas behind the PageRank system that have made it so revolutionary:

First, the PageRank system is rather democratic in nature because every time one website (we will call it site A) links to some different website (we will call it site B), that link is considered to be a ‘vote’ by site A that site B has good information, or for some reason is worthy of being viewed and read. This concept of the democratic nature of the links found all over the internet is a vital main idea behind the PR system.

Second (and this is the part that really put PageRank on the level), NOT ALL LINKS ARE CREATED EQUAL!

That is to say that if you have two links coming to your website, one from Forbes.com and another from some backwater, fly-by-night dot com, these two links will not be treated equally.

So what does this mean for the question of how did the highest ranked sites get where they are? They have been around for long enough to have numerous popular sites link to them, they have valuable, relevant, dynamic content, and chances are that they probably link to other related websites.

Another vital (but not so revolutionary) mechanism behind determining which webpages are displayed for certain keywords is an advanced text-matching system. Google’s text-matching system is able to deliver highly relevant webpages because of the vast computing power behind the Google search engine itself.

-Technical Explanation of a Website’s PageRank-

This following part is a technical explanation for those who want to further understand the nature of the PageRank algorithm. If you are only interested in learning how to improve your own site’s PR, then feel free to skip to the next section.

With the PageRank algorithm, every single website on the internet is given a numerical PR value somewhere between 1 and 10, with 10 being the best. It will help if you can remember from your math class what a logarithm is, because the assignment of a certain PR number is logarithmic in nature, similar to the Richter scale of measuring earthquakes.

This is important to understand, especially if you want to increase your own PageRank. In terms of PageRank, this means that a PR6 site is not twice as valuable as a PR5 site, but actually TEN TIMES as valuble. So this would mean (not exactly but approximately) that an incoming link from a PR6 site would give you as much value as about a few dozen PR4 sites. Notice that a PR6 incoming link will NOT give the value of 100 PR4 links, because PageRank is concerned with the quantity of incoming links as well as how important they are.

-Tips For Improving The PR of Your Site or Blog-

Try to create content that is valuable, funny, or for some reason really makes people want to link to it. This strategy will increase your number of incoming links without any extra work, which will thereby increase the PageRank of your site or blog.

A ‘link farm’ is a website that has hundreds or thousands of incoming and outgoing links. Sites like this can actively inflate PageRank to make a site seem more relevant than it actually is, so Google will ‘punish’ websites associated with link farms by bringing them down in the search rankings.

Do not worry or feel like your site or blog is not good enough if after just a few months or so you do not have a high PageRank and are not listed very high in the search results. It takes time to build PR, so the better your content and the longer you have been online, the better chance you have at naturally gaining a higher PR.

See if you can find a few high-quality websites or blogs out there related to your own site topic, and contact the owner to see is they would be interested in linking to your site if you link to theirs. This is called ‘link exchanging,’ and if you do it to much then Google may ‘punish’ you becase this is another way of inflating PR, but exchanging links with a few quality sites will help you.

One last thing, and this has been stressed throughout the article, there really is a single golden rule that you can apply to boost your PageRank: create MASSIVELY VALUABLE information and content that people will naturally want to link to on their own, and you are set.

Every online business owner should be aware of a few simple seo tips that they themselves can implement to increase their search engine ranking. Often times in haste to improve any off or online business people will rush to hire an (overpriced) consultant.

Without question search engine optimization is important for any person or entity wanting to increase their ranking with the search engines. Of equal importance however is developing a basic understanding of how seo works and why.

By quickly introducing outside consultants to address this need for us we tend to sidestep this learning process ourselves. This ends up costing us both a valuable education and money. Let’s have a look at a few basic seo techniques we ourselves can implement that should improve both our search engine ranking and our budget.

SELECTING A DOMAIN NAME

As trite as this step may seem to many in the process of setting up their online business it is really a critical step. The name selected should, if possible, reflect what the site or business is about. As a rule the more specific you can be the better chances you’ll have to get your site indexed quicker. Also it is wise to keep your domain as short as possible.

The temptation to get too ‘cute’ with a catchy name should be avoided at this stage unless it is directly related to your site, business, or perhaps one of your products.

SELECTING A TITLE TAG

This lets the search engines know what your site is about. This is the first thing a search engine will see and it will be judged upon the relevancy it has to the content of your website. It is highly recommended to insure your most important keywords are located in the title tag to increase the relevancy between the site and title. 

MONITOR YOUR KEYWORD DENSITY

The keywords you select should all be relevant to the content of your site itself. Your choice of keywords is critical so be sure there is a DIRECT relationship between these words and your sites intent.

Close attention should also be paid to the way the words are used within the site content and the frequency of their use. Be sure your selected words are used naturally as would be the case in a casual conversation and take note NOT to use them too frequently.

Overuse could get your penalized by the search engines thereby lowering your search engine rankings. If the need to frequently use some words due to their relevance arises, have a list of synonyms available for substitution.

A keyword density of between 2 and 5 percent is a suggestion margin to target to both accurately reflect your sites content and keep you in ‘good graces’ with search engines.

INCOMING LINKS   

Links that come from external sites reflect to search engines how popular, relevant, or important your site is. The more links you have (within reason – don’t go overboard) the higher regard search engines tend to have for your site. This usually results in a higher ranking for your site.

When leaving a link back to your site at other sites you’re visiting it is recommended to use keywords from your site in the anchor text. 

These simple seo tips we’ve discussed here today should greatly improve the optimization of your site if this techniques haven’t already been implemented. Paying attention to the content of your site and how you use your keywords will definitely enhance your standings in any search engine rankings.

Backlinking is an easy way to increase the number of visitors to your blog or website (and also increase search engine rankings). This is nothing more than having your site address listed on other websites generating traffic back to your site. Backlinking can be done in a number of ways. Following is a short list of ideas to get you started.

Defining technically backlinks are the inbound links on the website. They are the links placed on other webpage?s and are directed towards your website, these are also known as incoming links, inlinks, and inward links. Quality inbound links add weight to the website popularity and search engine ranking. of SEO focus today revolves around quality backlinking.

There are a number of ways to build quality and effective backlinks for your website. Submitting your site to directories, article sites, Online Press Releases, placing signature links in the forums, leaving comments on the blogs etc. You can use reciprocal link exchange program with quality websites to get related with them.

Quality backlinks attracts search engines to find your website. Here, quality of the links dominates over the no. of links directed towards your website. Important thing to be noticed is, a web site linked to you having content relevant to your website will perform better than the website having content unrelated to your website.

Backlinking is a part of the entire ranking algorithm process for all the search engines. If two sites are similar in content and design, search engines have a tendency to prefer site having more inbound links but again quality links dominate. Linking with a bad site will cause a drop off for your websites on the search engines.

You apply for an excellence award, if you get the award you link to the award site, and they link to you. The award site usually isn’t in a competing area so they are not interested in swiping your content–they just want links, like you do. This approach won’t work with everyone, but for certain sites (particularly one-man operations or “hobby” sites), it’s not a bad idea.

Since the wine enthusiast site more than likely has great content on wine, that link has more authority to a search engine therefore putting extra umph behind that link. The more of these you get, the higher you rank for your keywords. This same link on a website or blog that writes about Music or Fashion, may still drive traffic but would not be worth nearly as much in the eyes of the search engines.

If you want to rank well in the SERPs, you need the backlinks. You especially need backlinks with your keywords in the anchor text. Outbound links are not as essential as inbounds.

Search for your keyword on Google and look at the top 100 listings. You’ll want to get as many of these to link to you as possible. Unless of course they’re your competitor.

The truth about backlinks and how they can help build your traffic as well as how they can possibly hurt you. How to Automate your backling in a way that is totally natural and search engine friendly.

Link exchanges and link lists don’t work. In the most recent version of their patent, Google puts more emphasis on links that are surrounded by content, not in a list. The words around the link play an important role in the quality of the link.

And link without expectation of return. Link to help your readers. Link because the link is a better resource that what you have to offer at the moment. Link because a link is a letter of recommendation and your readers respect that.

Commenting on a blog does get you a link back to your blog, but if you really want the benefit of commenting on other blogs, make the comment content. Make the comment add to the conversation. Make it interesting enough that people will want to click through and check out what you have to say. Make it trigger their curiosity enough that the blogger will check out your blog, find that you are brilliant, and want to blog about you and your blog.

How to get a website listing on single keyword

There are basically two aspects to SEO, “on page” & “off page” optimization.

“On Page” SEO is easy because it’s totally under your control. It’s simply a case of making sure you have optimized your web pages correctly.

OK, so there is a bit more to it than that, like keyword research, keyword density & frequency, which html tags to use, making sure your site/pages are W3 Compliant, using relative/absolute internal linking structures to feed the pagerank where it’s most effective, using titles and descriptions that encourage people to clíck through from the SERP’s etc.

But essentially, once you know how to do all that, it’s not difficult to get it right for all your pages/sites.

It’s also less important in the long run than getting sufficient links to your site/pages from other sites.

Getting links to your site is fundamental to getting visitors, and without visitors all the time, effort and money invested in getting your site up and running, and looking “nice”, is irrelevant.

No Visitors = No Point!

So links are essential to the health of your site, and indeed your business, but all links are not equal in value to your site.

Reciprocal links will help, but they are far less effective than one way backlinks, i.e. links from another site where you don’t have to link back to them. These “One Way” backlinks will give your site a far greater boost in the search engine results and bring you more traffíc, providing of course that you have chosen good (relevant) keywords for your links.http://www.FreeViral.com/?r=238620

There are many ways of getting these powerful one way backlinks, but most you will have no control over the anchor text used (i.e. keywords) in the link, which means their “power” is unfocused and therefore of less use to you in achieving the targeted keyword results you are looking for.

For example, submitting your site to website directories can be a very effective way of picking up some high quality one way links from high PR sites, but you will seldom be able to choose the keywords/anchor text used for the link, often ending up with the site name as the link.

This is not a waste of time, as the Pagerank passed to your site will, with the correct internal linking structure, be passed on to your sites internal pages, helping them to rank better for their targeted keywords.

The Backlink Solution

I’ve been testing some of them out over the last few months and have found a couple that have had a significant positive effect on the sites I used them for.

This first solution is a monthly subscription that provides a network of high quality blog sites for you to post comments on, including a link to your site(s) using your chosen anchor text.

Note: As you make the link yourself, you can also link to internal pages on your site to improve their rankings as well, which you can’t do with directory submissions.

It is a manual process, but is easy enough that it can be outsourced fairly cheaply.

The Pagerank of these blogs varies, but the links provided are very “natural” in appearance to the search engines, and as you can post unique relevant content on market related blogs, the links are highly relevant. You are also limited as to how many blogs you can post to each month, to ensure that the links grow naturally over time, rather than all in one go.

Three Way Links

The internet marketing market is highly competitive, so it’s hardly surprising that another service with a different twist has popped up from this market.

This is an automated “three way links” system, where you link to site A, which then links to site B, which then links back to you. Whilst this is arguably not as powerful as true “one way backlinks”, it’s still a significant step above one way “reciprocal” linking that is the more traditional method used by the majority of webmasters.

The process is also automated for you, making it very hands off. You can submit up to 20 sites with just one account and you can specify three different anchor texts to be used as the links for each site’s, making sure you don’t incur any penalties for over use of just one text link keyword or phrase.

It is also set up to gradually build up the links over time to make it all appear very natural to the search engines.

Your Own Authority Blog

There is one final service that I’ve found to be very useful, although it is more ideal for people with multiple sites to promote.

The service gives you your own blog on an existing high PR authority site. The site has 833,039 backlinks listed in Yahoo and gets spidered several times a day by all of the major search engines. For example in June 2007 Googlebot visited it 14,470 times and Yahoo Slurp 52,436 times, so you can see why it’s regarded as an “authority” site

I have used this to link to brand new sites and had them indexed by Google within 24 hours, so it’s a great way of getting a new site in to the SE’s quickly, and the link weíght will obviously also help any site linked to.

As a side note, I’ve also found that my blog on this site can get fairly significant traffíc itself when I take the time to keyword optimize the posts, which is always a nice added benefit. I haven’t traded reciprocal links for any of my sites in almost two years, and you can probably see why I don’t need to. Using powerful new linking tools and services like these means I am able to take total control over the “off page” SEO linking strategies for my sites in the same way as I do for the “on page” SEO factors.

Wouldn’t you like to do have the same level of control over your sites search engine rankings

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Free PHP Websites, Free Webmaster Tools

 

Changes in the economy, has caused more people to begin looking for alternative means of earning an income. As online income seekers migrate to the internet to start business, they find the need for a website to be an important part of starting there online business. These new website owners are in need of Free webmaster tools that will allow them to become more efficient in building there websites, maintaining there websites, and learning the basis money making option they can use to make their new website a success.

 

Free PHP Websites

To get started as a webmaster you need to learn the basics of creating a website, or you can also use any website builder program that will walk you though the creation of building your website. Website wizards can usually be accessed, when you apply for hosting at one of the major host, like godaddy.com. You can also obtain up to 14 free PHP Websites when visiting one of the, install a script websites we found online. You will also need, tool that help you to build, maintain, monetize and track your website.



Free Webmaster Tools

After you have built your first website, the process of monetizing , maintaining and tracking it is the next step involved in building your site. It is important as a webmaster to optimize your site for keywords that are related to your site. This process involves

learning search engine optimization techniques, learning how to optimize your site for high page ranking, using tools to submit your website to search engines, directories, forums and blogs. Also, setting up a daily, or weekly strategy to check your site for page ranking and monitor you site in order to track various aspects of your new website.



Using Free Webmaster Tools

Free Webmaster Tools, like instant site optimizer, site submission tools, and tools that tell you which pages are indexed and which pages need to be indexed, are all tools that a webmaster should use on a regular basis. Another, very important free webmaster tool, is a strategy for link building that will help your website to be listed higher in the search engines.

 

Using original content, article submission to boost your website ranking is another important step in getting high rankings, and more traffic to your website. We have set up a program that will allow you continual Free original content articles to be used on your site, via our article bartering program,

 

Submitting sitemap to major search engines is an important and effective way to get indexed all of web pages quickly. Often webmaster has two types of sitemaps- HTML sitemap and XML sitemap.

HTML Sitemap is for user benefit and not for to submit it to search engines. Having an html sitemap on a site makes it easy to access to its users as if a user looking for any page of your website then he can click on sitemap to get all links for internal web pages.

XML sitemap is for Search engines it helps search engine spider to crawl all the URLs more frequently at the same place because it provides more information to search engine spider. An XML sitemap includes list of all URLs of a site with information like when it was updated, how much time it usually takes to have some change, what is the importance of a particular page in comparison to others.

Creating an XML Sitemap:

Creating an error free sitemap is also so important because if you have even a little error it may cause of indexing problems. So if your hosting providers provide utilities to create your sitemap then its good and if not then also no need to worry as some free or paid tools are also available on the web.

For creating XML sitemap you can use xml-sitemaps.com. It is really a better option to create XML sitemap to a website. It is so easy to just go to site and enter your site URL into the generator box you also have options to change frequency, last modification date and priority and then click on start. In a few minutes, XML sitemap will generate. Just copy-and-paste the resulting sitemap into notepad, save it and upload to your site with the file name: sitemap.xml

If you want to validate the XML prior uploading to the search engines look at the XML validator where you can put in the URL of your sitemap and check it according to the standard.

Submitting sitemap to Google:

Google originally developed the XML schema which defines the structure of an XML document for sitemaps. You can submit your XML sitemap to Google through Google webmaster tools at by creating an account at-

www.google.com/webmasters/tools

To submit a sitemap to Google you also have to prove that you are the owner of the particular website. The verification is achieved by adding a meta tag between the head tags on your site homepage.

Submitting site/sitemap to Yahoo:

Submitting sitemap to Yahoo is not very different from submitting a sitemap to Google. Yahoo! Site Explorer is a dedicated service for webmasters from Yahoo. First you need to create a yahoo account to submit a site/sitemap to yahoo then go to-

siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

and submit your website URL and click to “add my site” button. After that click on verification button then you get an option to download a verification key html file which you will need to upload to root directory of your web server.

You can then download a verification key html file – which you will need to upload to the root directory of your web server. After uploading verification key, come back to Site Explorer and click to start authentication. Verification process may take up to 24 hours. Here you can also add your sitemap by clicking on the manage button and then adding the sitemap as a feed.

Submit site to MSN:

Like yahoo you need not to have an msn account to submit your site you can submit your site URL to MSN just by going to-

http://search.msn.com.my/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSUT

MSN do not support direct submission of sitemap, they do suggest on their blog that you add a reference to your Sitemap into your robots.txt file.

For example:

User-agent: * Sitemap: http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

Disallow: /cgi-bin/

This would tell MSN and also to other search engines to crawl your sitemap file but not to crawl your cgi-bin directory.

Above information will sure help you in creating and submitting your sitemap to major search engines. If you have any comments or queries feel free to send it to me.

Building quality, one way links to your website can be difficult, time consuming and frustrating. It is generally agreed that the best way to build links is to build them gradually over time, relying on natural links to your original, frequently updated content.

There are, however, a few shortcuts to building up links. They are not easy ways to make your site popular, nor are they guaranteed to work for everybody. They are simply some casual tips to help you obtain a few quality inbound links.

Submit Articles to Digg

Google absolutely loves Digg. The site is spidered very frequently and the domain has a lot of authority in terms of link building. Even stories with no diggs will still be spidered, so long as there is a navigational path for the spiders to use to reach it. Google cannot use the number of diggs as any sort of authority when ranking a URL, yet…

For the best long term effects only submit good quality articles to Digg. Or better yet, let your users submit the articles that they think are worthwhile. You will quickly get a reputation as a spammer if you keep posting unpopular content.

Other Social Networking sites

Submitting to social bookmarking and social networking sites can be hot and miss for some people.

Some social bookmarking sites such as Delicious and Twitter use “nofollow” on their links so they cannot influence rankings. Other sites, such as Furl, do not.

Having your links on a few social network profiles may also be useful in building up the number of links. For others it is simply not worth it. While some, such as Facebook, do use “nofollow” on their links, some do not. However, the weight that these links carry is relatively low, despite the authority these domains actually carry.

“Widgetbait”



“Widgetbait” is a term thrown around for an object that is added to a user’s website or blog. This item features a link back to the author’s website. If the object is installed on many thousands of websites, this results in many thousands of backlinks. The classic examples of widgetbait include online quizzes, IQ tests or horoscopes.

While these links are valuable to some, for others the quality of the link and the traffic it brings is just too low. If the text of the link bears no relation to the page in which it is contained, Google becomes suspicious. Additionally, the text that links back to the site must relate to the widget, and, the link must go back to the author’s website, not a third party site.

A classic example of spammy widgetbait would be an IQ test that features a text link to an online dating site. Google would soon hear of this and the sites involved, including the sites distributing the widget and the site being linked to would be penalised.

The Best Kind of WidgetBait: Just Build Something Useful

The best type of widgetbait is to simply create something that people want to use. Classic examples of this are Winamp Skins, modifications for forum software such as Invision Power Board and plugins or themes for Wordpress. Why are these good ideas? They will result in you being listed on the official website of each respective product. These sites are popular and the links they feature carry a lot of influence.

Find high PageRank Sites that allow Backlinks

This excellent tool from Seo Chat allows you to perform a web search and sort the results by PageRank. You can look for websites relevant to your content from which you may be able to get backlinks. Good examples include forums and blogs. Always ensure that these sites do not use “nofollow” on their links.

What About Directories?

Web directories used to be incredibly helpful in building up the number of incoming links to a website. The usefulness of directories is decreasing over time and many people question whether there is any worth in pursuing directory submissions at all. The two notable exceptions to this are the Open Directory Project and Yahoo! Directory. The following list outlines the main problems with using directories. Ultimately, it is up to you to decide if it is a strategy worth pursuing.

Does it Check the Quality and Topic of Submissions?

Any free-for-all web directory that has not been penalised by Google is just one site review away from being so. These are nothing more than spam farms. The directory’s editors should at least check the site to verify the given information and ensure the site is legitimate.

On a similar note, web directories should generally be targeted to a specific audience. Most general web directories that have no specific focus will not be of any use to you.

Can it Still Pass PageRank?

While PageRank is far from being the answer to every SEO question, it is still a useful indication as to how “useful” Google thinks a page is. Bear in mind that the most up to date Page Rank is at least a few months old. Use the following strategy to determine if a site has been penalised in Google:



Search for the website’s title in Google.

Search for a large block of text from the site’s homepage.

Search for the actual domain in Google.



 

 

If the site doesn’t rank for one and two, but it does for number three, it has been penalised in Google and probably won’t be able to pass PageRank. If it does not rank for any of these steps, the site has probably not been indexed by Google.

Any directory that has been penalised by Google has done something against Google’s guidelines. Don’t associate your website with any directory like this. Google is seriously cracking down on paid links. Any spammy web directory, particularly those that charge for links, are in the firing line as far as being penalised by Google.

Does a Link on this Directory Actually Mean Anything?

Don’t submit to a directory just for a link. Make sure the link is worth your time. A link is not worth having if:



The specific category pages are not indexed,

There are too many links on a single page – having too many links on a single page with dilute down the ranking influence that is passed, or



The directory has very little traffic to send to your website



If you decide to use a web directory, this article entitled 50 Page Rank 3 Or Higher Free Website Directories is a good resource. Just remember to assess the quality of the directory first.

Areas to Avoid

Two of the main places that people try to spam for backlinks are Yahoo! Answers and Wikipedia. Both of these sites use “nofollow” in their links. There is often misunderstanding and false information given about this, but it is true for both sites. If the situation ever changes or you need to verify it for yourself, simply look at the source code on each website. The new service from Google, Knol, also uses a nofollow meta tag to prevent any links being followed.

More Information

To read more about boosting your traffic, try New Webmasters, a website dedicated to helping you build a better website.