Bought the very expensive affiliate handbook by James Martell. Beside the 250+ pages handbook, he also included 2 reports. The one on Google Mastery is very valuable to me. Now I know why I was difficult getting into Google top search.

To put my new found knowledge to use, I registered the domain, www.businessleadsguide.com. I started working on it today and wrote a the content for the home page. And I researched on the high value keyword, business leads and generated a list of about 90 related keywords.

For a start, I use Directory Generator to create a directory using this list of 90 keywords. Eventually, I will write content for the higher value ones.

If RSS is the Yahoo backdoor, is a Blog Google’s?
By Tinu Abayomi Paul

Setting up Your Blog for the Best Chances to Be Included in Google - and Your Best Bet For Staying In

Here are the top 8 items you need to be concerned with to get your blog prepared to be recognized and listed well by Google. The 8th item will clarify one of the most important factors if you want to stay in.

1- The Location of Your Blog

Your blog is doing you the least amount of good on someone else’s server. If you have Blogger, you can change from the blogspot version to have Blogger FTP your files to your server for free.

2- The Links on Your Blog Template

By links, I don’t mean what you link to when you post. I am specifically referring to the links in your blog. If you don’t edit your blog template to include links to the main part of your site, you’re making a mistake. How is Google going to find a link that isn’t there?

Edit your chosen template to make sure there is at least one link from your blog directory to the rest of your site.

3 - The Frequency of Your Updates

A wise webmaster recently said that the best thing you can do for your search engine efforts is to add a new page to your site a day, and to make one change to your site a day.

Why is this such great advice?

Because Googlebot does not need to re-spider your site if it never changes. It probably will - but I’ve noticed the more there is a legitimate need for it to return, the more likely it is that you’ll get re-spidered.

Posting to a blog, or an RSS feed, and leaving it to stagnate will bring you zero traffic. Furthermore, when people see an abandoned piece of web real estate, they leave. It’s like tuning into a TV channel and seeing “snow”. Most people can’t stand it for more than a few seconds, and will either turn the channel, or turn the television off.

There are even shorter attention spans online, from both search engine robots and people. If you want either to return, update constantly.

4 - The Right Keywords for Your Blog

When you’re selecting keywords for your blog, your best bet is to pick keywords that have a medium to high yield and low competition. The essential difference is this - would you rather be ranked #107 for “internet marketing” and get no traffic, or be ranked number one for “learn internet marketing” and get a few hundred?

5 - The Placement of the Keywords on Your Blog

Here’s where your primary keywords need to be :

. in the title. in the description. in your post titles where applicable. in the name of the links to individual posts. in the text that links your posts

If you look at the front page of my blog, you’ll see the phrase “Free Traffic Tips” everywhere. And yet, the pages don’t sound ridiculous.

This is because I set up my blog so that every page and every post utilizes these words. If you set up your blog correctly, and get in certain habits when you post, you’ll find that your site will begin to rank for the term that best matches your topic.

6 - The Length of Your Blog Posts

Always remember this. “Posts are paragraphs, sentences are spam.” Your posts should be at least two paragraphs. If there is little to no content on a page, there’s no reason for it to be indexed unless it is the only page available for that term.

The only time your post can be shorter than that, and still be effective, is if you’re linking to something else. It won’t always work out that you’ll have several paragraphs worth of content to discuss. But do your best to stay above 90%.

7- The Frequency of Your Archives

Remember the wise webmaster’s quote earlier? Well, here’s a question - if one new and updated page on your site is good, do you think creating or updating three pages of your site can be better?

It sure can.

Daily archiving makes a huge difference. If you have this option, use it. If you don’t switch. If you need more room on your server, get some. It’s worth it.

When you combine daily archiving and having individual post pages, each time you post, your site generates a new page for your post, updates the day’s archive page (or creates it if it’s the first post of the day), and updates the index page of your site.

Combine these date-stamped pages with real content and you’ve got great spider bait.

8 - When, and Where You Are Linked

If you have Blogger, you’ll want to make sure your blog is listed as “public”, so that it will appear on Blogger’s recently updated blogs pages whenever you make a new post.

There is some speculation that this is what gets your blog spidered so quickly by Google if you use Blogger to post. And the answer is yes, if you are willing to wait about 48 hours, this will get you spidered.

Once.

And IF your site is indexed, it will probably be dropped out the next day, if this is all you do. This has been documented in public on other sites.

What hasn’t been made public yet is that your best bet for staying spidered is frequent and regular updates. Let Google know that you’re not trying to use Blogger to spam its database. Provide useful content that updates at regular intervals.

All these tips help you get ethical attention from Google. You don’t need to do anything dishonest or underhanded to get your site spidered, or listed. So, if your site fills a need that Google has for sites, and you have a quality site, you can get listed.

With just these tips. you have enough to get a good blog into Google.

It’ll be up to you to stay in.

About the Author
Can you really get spidered by the Googlebot in less than 24 hours? Is there more you can do to get your blog into shape for inclusion? What if you’re using another blog system? Find out more at http://www.freetraffictip.com/bizblogs.

c.j. just completed the draft copy for http://www.chinabusinesstips.com. This is a monthly newsletter to provide insider’s information for business people who want to or already started business ventrures in China. c.j. will provide buisness tips to subscribers who want to do business effectively in China.

Since I am at this topic on China business website, I might as well reiterate that the domain, China Insiders, I registered last Friday has already been indexed and ranked second in Yahoo search.

The cat is out of the bag! The shortcut method to get indexed quickly using blog has been published by various popular online ezine. But what the heck! As long as it is effective, we might as well use it. Here’s one URL which I need to get indexed by major search engines real quickly.

• Free Directory Submission

© 2003 Karon Thackston
www.copywritingcourse.com

Copywriting is a primary factor when it comes to achieving good search engine placement. However, many times all that is done is to include keywords in the tags of a page and to include a few keyword mentions. While not extremely difficult, writing for the engines is a little more complicated than that.

Know Your Keyphrases Before You Write

It is much easier to create search engine copywriting if you know which keyphrases you’ll use before you begin to write. Going back and editing existing copy to achieve higher levels of keyword saturation is a challenging task that often ends in broken sentences, confusing statements, and copy that sounds stiff or forced.

If you know which keyphrases you’re optimizing the page for, you can create a more complete plan of action.

Let the Phrases - and Your Audience - Dictate Your Direction

You simply *must* know your target audience before you begin writing. There’s no way around it. It is virtually impossible to write copy that will persuade a site visitor to buy if you have no clue about his/her needs, wants, or problems.

Once you’ve taken time to investigate your preferred customer, stop and do a little brainstorming. What are your customers looking for? Can you offer solutions to their problems? As you ponder, keep your keywords fresh in your mind.

As you come up with solutions for your customers, phrase them around your keywords. It basically works as a puzzle. You know your target audience; you know your keywords; now put the two together to create compelling, search-engine-friendly copy.

Use Keyphrases in Your Headlines

Most search engines deem a headline as an important section of the copy. That means the text included in headlines (and sub-heads) carries extra weight.

When you create headlines for your copy, be sure to make them keyword rich. Also pay attention to the HTML code for your headlines. Making headlines bold and including them within <H1> or <H2> tags will help gain the attention of the engines.

The same holds true for sub-headlines. As you include additional sub-heads throughout your copy, pay attention to the bolding and coding for headline tags.

Include Keyphrases in Your Body Copy

As you begin to write, include keyphrases all the way through your body copy, not just in the first paragraph. For best results, focus your copy on only two or three primary keywords.

Let the keywords flow naturally as you write… don’t try to force it. Describe your products or services using keywords, include keywords in photo or graphic captions, and use keywords in any tables or lists you create.

How often should you use keyphrases? There is a “3% guideline” that states 3% of your words should be keywords. However, this is JUST a guideline. Don’t kill yourself to achieve a 3% ratio. Remember, your copy has to sell as well as attract the engines’ attention. Don’t ruin perfectly good copy by forcing keywords where they just don’t fit.

By keeping these “rules, regs, and recommendations” of the search engine copywriting game in mind, you’re sure to create copy that impresses both your visitors AND the engines.

Which words make *your* customers buy? Let Karon show you. Boost your sales and your search engine positioning by learning to write strategically created copy that hits a nerve and makes the sale. Get the details now at http://www.copywritingcourse.com.

Traffic from search engines is widely considered the best (and cheapest) way to generate traffic to your site. The increasing popularity of search engines has led to the development of a whole industry that revolves around ways to “optimize” websites.

The end result is that many people now think that only “professionals” can help their website rank high within search engines. But, the truth is that anyone can structure their site so they rank high for many keywords.

Below, I have listed 8 simple steps that you can take to optimize your web pages. By following these, you will improve your chances of increasing your rankings:

1) Target one word for each page: A huge mistake that many beginners make is cramming numerous keywords onto every page. Instead of doing this, you should focus on one specific keyword for each page. That way, you can make sure that the page is focusing on that one word without any distractions. If you want to target multiple keywords then it is necessary to create a separate page for each.

2) List your major keywords in the links back to your site: Many search engines, Google being the most famous, have started to take into account the words that are mentioned in the title tag of the links that point to your site. So, a great way to improve your rankings for your keywords is to place it in the title tag.

3) Make your first 100 words on the page keyword rich: Another mistake that most webmasters make is to have a menu on the left-hand side of a website. Since search engines primarily focus on the first 100 words of a website, a left side menu is a misuse of valuable space.

Instead of doing this, you should have your title, description and web copy within the first 100 words of your site. An easy way to do this is to have your menu on the right instead of the standard left-hand side.

But, since the left-handed menu is now commonplace, you can also choose to put your first 100 words above the left-handed menu, so this text will be the first thing read on your website.

4) Insert the keyword into your title tag: In the source code of most pages are “header tags” (also known as Meta tags), which help search engines understand the content of the page.

To fully optimize your website, you can tweak the source code of the page. The first step is to insert the keyword in the title tag. (This is what is shown in the results of a search engine when your site is listed)

5) Insert your keywords in the description tag: The description Meta tag is almost as valuable as the title tag. The information in this tag is listed directly below the title tag in search engine results. As a result, a good description can make your website stand out from other listings. To get the prospect to click on your site, it is important to write a snappy description while using your keyword.

6) Insert them into your keywords tag: Like the title and description tags, keyword tags are used to help search engines understand the content of your web page. Although this Meta tag has become less popular, it doesn’t hurt to put your keywords here.

7) Place your keyword in the header: When writing the actual text of your site, the first part should be the headline. Whenever a search engine scans your site, it rates all words in the headline as being more important then the rest of the web copy. To take advantage of this, you should have your keyword in the page headline. But, since the header tag (h1) is quite large, you should format it so that it is smaller.
Write your keyword enriched web copy: Now that you have set up the structure of your page, you can write your web copy. While creating the text, you want to include the majority of the keywords at the top and the bottom of the page. In addition, the keyword should be included a few times in the middle. Basically, the common saying is that the keyword density should resemble an hour glass shape.

The total web copy of your page should be about 300-500 words. Also, the keyword should be about 5-12% of the total words of the page. The percentage varies according to each search engine, so you might want to play around till you find the best results.

If you follow all these steps, you will definitely see an improvement in the search engine rankings for your keywords. The best part is that you do not have to spend any money on expensive search engine optimizers!

Good luck!

Resources Box:
Scott J. Patterson brought his website to the top of many search engines for important keywords. To find out how he did this AND also how he created his online store with NO computer experience, be sure to check out a free copy of his ebook:
http://www.buildingastore.com/8O.html

Just a quick observation, Yahoo search seems to have change their ranking algorithm. Most of my websites which are previously ranked in the first pages had been replaced and “demoted” to the second and third pages. ArticleInsider.com has the top 2 positions for the keyword “index futures trading”.

I have not figured out a crack to get back to top ranking yet but I am not complaining - Yahoo and Google have given me more than 500 hits so far this month and traffic is increasing from other SE’s too.

Anyway, I have enough SEOing for “futures trading”. I will be switching to other niche markets e.g. e-learning, debt help / mortgage loan / refinancing and business blogging. If you are interested to find out what I’ll be doing, check out this websites:

• http://www.KidsLearningOnline.com

• http://www.1DebtFree.info/ and http://1DebtFree.blogspot.com
• My newest crazy idea for 2005, hatched while replying c.j.’s email - http://www.ChinaInsiders.com

Before I forget, I started playing with Adwords again. This time round it’s more fun. Anyway, the lesson that I learnt was why try to hard to get listed on the Google search page when all you had to do was pay 5 bucks to open an Adwords account!

I have first page listing with about 30 distinct keywords and I spent less than US$3 daily. It’s the easiest and fastest way to get good ranking on Google and related search engines.

Alamak! Why didn’t I do Adwords earlier?

Got a brain wave this morning while reply an email from c.j. on his China business online newsletter. So I got this crazy idea of providing a platform for foreigners living in China to write about their daily lives a.k.a blogging. The domain name which I selected for this project is:

http://www.ChinaInsiders.com

This would be a personal website. I plan to use Movable Type to power this blogging website. However, the installation process seems to be quite complicated!

Stumbled upon this online survey service, http://www.createsurvey.com. There is a lite version that let you try out for free. I will probably need this service in the near future.

I registered www.kidslearningonline.com 2 days to promote my e-learning franchise business. For this website, I will focus on primary school children learning. And I will optimse (SEO) the page for the following topics:

1. math for kids

2. english for kids
3. chinese for kids
4. tuition online for children

I am already promoting this website using Adwords campaign. However, the response and CTR were not encouraging. Apparently, I did not choose the right keywords. Otherwise, these online learning for children programs are not most people look for online. There must be a way to promote this online tuition to anxious parents who want their children to do welll in school.