Internet and Technology

Ask this question of any SEO expert and they will tell you “fresh content” and “backlinks”, other than Google took over Blogger. The last one is the favorite as no one can argue with that.

Search engines like fresh content as it is valuable for their users, and links show that other sites or blogs (and not just your own website) think that the information on your website is useful to their readers.

A blog can be an individual’s viewpoint, a life journal, a school girl’s diary, a poet’s space, an artist’s expression, or just about sharing your moments with family and friends. One can share information, pictures and even videos with no previous knowledge of designing and programming.

Companies use blogs to promote their latest products, introduce new services, announce upcoming events, share event pictures and videos, announce special offers/discounts, run opinion polls, introduce new team members, special announcements, build loyalty, and invite their customers to leave comments and give testimonials.

Bloggers believe that blogs are being taken more seriously as information sources. One in five bloggers don’t think that newspapers will survive the next ten years. Half believe that blogs will be a primary source for news and entertainment in the next five years.

Bloggers are most open to receiving marketing messages from other blogs. Even non-blog web content is more influential among this group than traditional media sources for brand information.

Home businesses and young entrepreneurs use blogs to increase awareness and attract traffic to their online business, new ventures, and daring expeditions into the unknown.

Professionals use blogs to brand themselves, create awareness and credibility, make money (yes that’s possible), and share their knowledge and experiences.

Housewives use blogs to share cooking tips and recipes, their children’s growing moments, travel log of the last trip, and shopping expeditions.

We SEO experts use blogs for achieving higher rankings for specific keywords. Unbelievable, and yet in many instances my blog link appears higher on search engines results page than pages that I optimize personally for the same keyword.

Getting started with blogging is relatively easy. You can sign up with blogger.com or other such blogging platforms.

If you don’t own a domain name for your blog, no worries, you can start with a free subdomain with Blogger.

Lets look into some interesting statistics on blogs.

The numbers vary but agree that blogs are here to stay!

comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008) – Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US – Facebook: 41.0 million | MySpace 75.1 million – Total internet audience 188.9 million

eMarketer (May 2008) – 94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users) – 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12%)

Universal McCann (March 2008) – 184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 US – 346 million WW read blogs | 60.3 US – 77% of active Internet users read blogs

Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 Report is now available. For a detailed report go to technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/

The report states that Brands make up a major part of bloggers’ online conversations. More than four in five bloggers post product or brand reviews, and blog about brands they love or hate. Even day-to-day experiences with customer care or in a retail store are fodder for blog posts. Companies are already reaching out to bloggers: one-third of bloggers have been approached to be brand advocates. (ref Technorati 2008 Report)

But wait, that’s not all. The report also states that Blogs are an increasingly attractive platform for advertisers. The majority of bloggers we surveyed have advertising on their blogs. Marketers realize that bloggers are creating high quality content and attracting growing, loyal audiences. So there is potential for profit from blogging. (ref Technorati 2008 Report)

Well you are convinced, and you start writing periodically, uploading photographs and videos and have shared your blog link with many friends, but a few months down a nagging worry start to hit you (this is for those who don’t track their readers using tracking software’s like Google Analytics) that you are writing for “you” alone and your mum who thinks “my son is the best”.

While there is nothing wrong with writing, just for the pleasure of writing, I am sure you all want to reach out and touch someone else with all your hard work. The real challenge is to get your target audience to read your blog whether its family, friends, colleagues, or readers around the world who would be interested in what you are writing about.

Trust me even friends will betray you if what you write does not make them want to come back, so pay close attention to the questions below and answer them as honestly as you can.

-What would make your blog special to your audience? -Why would they want to bookmark your blog? -Why would they want to link to it and tell others? -What is my ultimate goal for this blog?

While the first 3 questions require you to dig down deep inside your minds and hearts, the last question is most critical. What do you ultimately want out all the hard work, late nights and coffee cups invested into your blog?

Well, whether your blog is for the purpose of sharing knowledge, gaining credibility, increasing visibility and rankings, building customer loyalty, sharing information, making money, or assisting our fellow men in the journey of life, the bottom line remains search engines love blogs, and so should you.

So keep writing!

http://www.seo-optimization-experts.com/seoblog.html

Optimizing your blog for the search engines is crucial and very important! There are so many different blogs out there on the net that you’ll quickly sink to the bottom if you don’t optimize. Follow these seven tips below and you’ll be well on your way to high rankings.

#1 – Create the Right Permalink Structure

The permalinks Wordpress uses by default are not search engine friendly. You can make this simple change by inserting %postname% instead of the default that is already there. This will successfully create URL’s that include your post name which should include your targeted keywords.

#2 – Install All in One SEO Plugin

This is a must-have plugin which allows you to specify a title, description, and the keywords for the search engines. It can really help you boost up and reach the top of the listings, whereas the standard WP installation can fall short.

#3 – Install Related Posts Plugin

Search engines love it when they get content pages that are interlinked. It also works very well for the search engines. It will automatically include links to other posts that are similar. Very convenient!

#4 – Research your Keywords

When people search, they search by keyword. It is vital that you know what these keywords are if you want to rank at the top of the search engines. Your posts should be centered around these keywords.

#5 – Include Your Keywords in the Title

In the title of your blog you need to include your main keyword. Also, include your main keyword and select others in the titles of your posts and sprinkle throughout your pages.

#6 – Make Your Blog Easy to Navigate

Easy navigation is essential for your guests and the search engines as it makes it easier for the guests. That means including your blog’s categories, recent posts (to make sure they get indexed) and pages. Easy navigation is also part of choosing a good design.

#7 – Expand the Ping List

When you make a new blog post Wordpress will “ping” the blog search engines. This alerts them that content on your site has changed and ready for guests to view. This can help you get indexed fast so you can start making money even faster. Do a Google search to find an expanded ping list you can include in your wp-admin so you make sure you get as many of these sites to update you as possible.

Using these seven plugins will make your job of ranking highly in the search engines easier than ever. If you’re new to blogging with Wordpress then these terms may seem incredibly strange to you right now. As you study them and go over them a couple times, put them into action and it will start to feel like second nature!

One of the biggest reasons why many organizations are not doing even simple things to help people find their websites in search engines is they simply don’t understand how search engines work. This article is intended to explain the basics of how search engines work and in the course of doing so shatter some search engine myths and help you understand what you can do to help people find your website in search engines.What is a search engine?The first to step to understanding how search engines work is to understand what a search engine is. The simplest explanation is that search engine is a tool for finding things online. There are many different types of search engines but they can be put into two major categories…Human-Powered DirectoriesThe first “search engines” were not actually search engines as we think of them today, but searchable directories of websites organized by hierarchical categories. A site is added to a directory when the website owner fills out a submission form on the directory’s website requesting their site be included in the directory and include their website’s title, description, URL (web address), and category. A moderator later reviews the site and if it meets the directory’s criteria a listing for that site is added or activated. The original Yahoo was originally a human-powered directory, and directories like Open Directory Project continue on today. The downside of the human-powered search engine is that it only includes websites that have been submitted to it, which means you may not find what you’re looking for especially if it’s a new web page. The other downside from the directories’ point of view is that reviewing every site submitted is very labor-intensive and costly. I know because my company’s “search engine”, OurChurch.Com’s Directory of Christian Websites, like almost all church/Christian “search engines”, is a human-powered directory.Crawler/Spider-Powered Search EnginesThe next generation of search engines has programs which actively seek out new sites and read them into their indexes. These programs are called crawlers, spiders, robots, or bots. All of largest and most popular search engines today are of this type, including Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.The rest of this article is focused on how these crawler/spider-powered search engines work because more than 99% of searches are done on this type of search engine.The CrawlerAs mentioned above, the first part of a search engine is the crawler (AKA spider, robot, and bot). The crawler reads pages into the search engine raw database of every page the search engine crawler has read. Some important things to know about crawlers…1) Search bots periodically reread every web page in their database. Why does this matter?• You don’t have to do anything when you change your site. If your site is already listed in a search engine and you make changes to your website, search engines will eventually update their information. • You do have to be patient. The frequency of re-crawling varies depending on the search engine, the importance of your site (as determined by the search engines), and how often you update it. It could take a day or it could take more than a week. 2) Search bots follow links on the pages that have already been crawled in order to find new pages. Why does this matter?• If you add a new page to your website or create a new website, it’s important to add a link to it on a web page that is already in the search engines. • If a web page that is already in the search engines has a link to your new page or new website, you do not need to submit a request to the search engines to crawl the new page or website, though it may still be worth doing just to be sure your website will be found quickly.3) Some search engines have forms you can submit to request a website be crawled. Why does this matter?• If you have a new website and no sites link to it, search bots will not be able to find it. In this case, submitting a form to the search engine requesting your site be listed or indexed can get it into search engines. • Because human-powered directories do not have search bots/crawlers, to be listed in them you must submit a request form. The Ranking AlgorithmSome time after a web page has been crawled by the search bot or crawler, the search engine then processes or indexes the page to determine what search words and phrases the page is relevant to as well as how relevant that page is compared with other web pages for those phrases. During this processing the search engine looks at many different factors including how many times each word and phrase occurs on the page, which words are in headings or bold, the domain name of the site, filename of the page, the pages that link to the page, and many more.Exactly which factors a search engine looks at and how they’re weighted is called the search engine’s search ranking algorithm. It’s like the search engine’s “secret sauce.” Each search engine’s algorithm is different and each is a heavily guarded secret.Why does this matter?• There is time between when your site is crawled (or recrawled) and when it is processed or indexed. So, it can take as little as a few hours to many days or weeks before changes to your website may produce changes in its search rankings. • Because each search engine’s ranking algorithm is different, a web page can be #1 in Google but #20 in Yahoo for a particular phrase. • Because each search algorithm is a heavily guarded secret nobody outside of a few select engineers at each search engine knows exactly how much each particular factor weighs into the rankings of each search engine. But, people who spend their professional lives helping sites rank better in search engines have gained very good idea as to what factors matter most. • Because the search ranking algorithms look at text, headings, and other elements on a web page, changing things on the web page can change where that web page appears in the search results. • Search ranking algorithms look at factors outside of a web page, such as the age of a website and links to the web page. So, there are other factors which you may have less influence over. The goal of every search engine is to display to the user the information or websites the user is looking for. In other words every search engine wants to provide the best, most relevant results. As a result, search engines are constantly improving their algorithms and including new factors which they think will produce better search results. Why does this matter? As search algorithms change, so will your website’s search engine rankings.The Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)The crawling of websites and indexing of web pages are constantly going on even when no one is searching. The last part in the search process is part that you’re probably most familiar with – the actual search. You type in a word, short phrase, or question, and the search engine displays a list of websites.That list of websites is called the search engine results page and sometimes referred to as the SERPs.If you do a search and look at the SERP, you’ll notice two columns. Above the right column it says “Sponsored Links.” These are paid advertisements. The companies and organizations listed here pay a fee to Google for each person who clicks their ad, so they’re often referred to as Pay-Per-Click or PPC ads.In the left column are the unpaid search results also sometimes called the organic results or natural results. These are the websites the search engine believes are most relevant to the search phrase that was queried. Sometimes search engines also display sponsored links in the left column above the natural results or will even place a block of pay-per-click ads in the middle of the natural results. Sponsored links are always labeled, though not always very clearly.Why does this matter?From the searcher’s perspective, there is nothing wrong with clicking on a paid link. You may find what you’re looking for there. But it’s important to be aware of which websites paid to be in the results and which are there naturally.From the web administrator’s perspective, it’s important to understand there are two opportunities to get to the top of the search engine rankings, through natural results and by purchasing pay-per-click advertising.Help the Search EnginesWith a better understanding how search engines work, you can make better decisions about the marketing of your website though search engines. Search engines need your help to find your website and to know what words and phrases it’s relevant for. Give them the help they need. That’s where search engine optimization comes in, but I’ll get to that on another day.

Search engines acts as a bridge between millions of web pages and web users. Without search engines, millions of web pages which are the unlimited source of information remain hidden for all of us. Can you imagine looking for information or a webpage on the internet without the help of a Search engine? All our attempts will be a failure if we are not using a popular search engine.

Search engines are the only source to find reliable information, which are scattered, in millions of web pages. Search Engines work continuously to produce valuable search results for the internet users. Search engine crawlers work 24X7 to index all the pages available on the World Wide Web. All these pages are linked each other via links. If one page exists independently, without any links pointing towards it, it will remain hidden from the search engines.

Search engines find a web site through the links placed by these web sites on other websites. When the search engines spider or bot visits a particular page it looks for further links after analyzing the web page. If your website links to some very popular pages will be seen by these Search engines as a valuable source of information. The inbound and outbound links given on your website, your site is providing and the keywords mentioned in the WebPages are also an important source of information for search engines. With these keywords and links and other search engines criteria for indexing web pages, they are able to produce relevant results from millions of web pages.

Search engines regularly update their database with the updated information they fetch from millions of web pages around the globe. The information gathered is stored in a database format for future use. These regular updating periodically make search engines most reliable and updated source of information.

Google and Yahoo are the most trusted search engines all over the world as they have the most regular updates and the algorithms are most researched and up to the mark. Searchboth.com is now presenting Google and yahoo together in your search box. Google and Yahoo results can be seen side by side on a single screen without opening multiple browsers again and again.

Search engines are the most important source of new web site visitors. Almost 50 percent of site visits begin at the search engine and a lot of traffic is generated. Search engines are the path makers between the web pages and the web users. Any new visitor to a particular website comes through a search engines whether it is Google, Yahoo, MSN or any other search engine. About 80 percent of people, going online planning to shop for something or subscribe for any of the services start with any of the major search engine. Some of the major search engines serving World Wide Web are as follows:

Google

Google is the most prominent one all across the globe and its empire is still expanding. It is believed to be the most trusted source of information similar to any of the government agency. More than a dozen domains by Google we are able to perform each and every daily task, business related queries or any nook and comer of our life. Google has an omnipresent existence.

Yahoo

The second major search engine to receive search queries. Yahoo is specialized receiving more business related queries as it is specialized providing business oriented results. Yahoo uses a combination of web crawlers compiled and indexed results to rank the websites that are registered on their search engine. Services offered by Yahoo are Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Maps and Driving Directions, and Yahoo! Messenger.

MSN

It is believed to be the third most popular internet biggies on the web. MSN messenger is the most successful web application to hit the internet over the last decade. Optimization for MSN is equally important when it comes to website SEO. IT has major emphasis on using on page optimization techniques.

Dogpile

It compiles all the major search engines result in to one. It gives us a piled web results from all the major search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo. Known as meta search, Dogpile powers all the leading search engines together in one search box to deliver the best combined results.

MetaCrawler

MetaCrawler says, “Search the search engines” it means it provides the best results from the combined pool of the world’s leading search engines. MetaCrawler uses innovative metasearch technology to search major search engines like Google, Yahoo! Search, MSN Search, Ask Jeeves, About, MIVA, LookSmart and more.

AltaVista

AltaVista is committed to provide advance Internet search with new technologies and features designed to improve the search experience for consumers. It is known for delivering Internet’s first Web index, first multilingual search capabilities on the Internet first Internet search engine to launch Image, Audio, and Video search capabilities.

There are other search engines like LookSmart, WebSearch, Ask, LiveSearch and others which are continuously supplying immense information to the internet community.

How about if you are able to get all these major search engines result on a single screen? Searchboth.com is now launching website providing all the major search engine results at the once. One can compare two major search engines displayed results without opening multiple browsers. Yahoo and Google are the default results displayed but one can chose the other search desired search engine.

Because approximately 85% of all internet users looking to buy online will place a keyword in the search box of a search engine, you had better have a good understanding of how to market your website to them.
I wrote this article to help you understand a little bit about how search engines work.
Search engine marketing was once the gold rush for online customer acquisition. When the internet was much smaller and search engine rankings was easier to come by, a business could earn top ten ranking and free traffic quite easily.
Today, through, competition has skyrocketed, and ranking in the top ten for leading search engines within the chosen keywords or phrases can be next to impossible. Additionally, search engine algorithms or the criteria they base relevancy against, change as frequently as once per month.
As a result, developing a website that meets the criteria for superior ranking results is the same as chasing a moving target. In any regard, the basic foundation is important in internet marketing today and why search engines are pay-per-click driven, discussed in detail in my book “The Newbies Guide To Internet Marketing.”
Portal vs. Search-Only Sites
Search engines have two basic styles – portal and search box focused. http://Yahoo.com is a portal site, along with http://Netscape.com and http://MSN.com. These engines, sometimes called directories, offer search, news, mail and other user features to encourage repeat visits and visibility.
Other search engines offer nothing aside from a search box. http://Google.com, http://DMOZ.org and http://AltaVista.com are search box based engines. Each time one searches these engines, he or she receives a listing, often many pages long, of relevant results listed according to their relevancy algorithm.
In either search style, results depend on inclusion within the engine’s extensive database, some using human edition and others fully automated, some requiring paid inclusion and others free. Results listings are called SERP’s or search engine result pages.
Search engines began in the early 1990’s to organize the growing online information sources. Since then, search engines have become one of the leading avenues for online business marketing. According to the Internet ranking source http://Alexa.com, Yahoo is the most visited site on the Internet, reaching an average of nearly 270 billion users, Google reaches an average of almost 150 billion users each day. Lycos averages nearly 5 billion, Netscape averages 4.3 billion and Alta Vista reaches nearly 5.5 billion users per day.
Studies also indicate search engines and links are the most effective method to reach users. According to GVU users survey, 85 percent of all new visitors currently arrive from search engines. Other strong marketing venues include word of mouth and print direct mail advertising.
Not all search engines are created equally. Each database is built on specific classes, such as visitor quantity, professionalism, search quality and target audience. The higher regarded search engines return the most relevant results and compile the most comprehensive resources for any given search. In addition to the all-inclusive search engines like http://Yahoo.com and http://google.com, other location or industry-specific search engines specialize in sites of interest, such as bed & breakfast, restaurants or art galleries. These are smaller, but offer more niche industry or geographic-based results.
Search engine marketing is tiered, each level offering a distinctly different service that the next. At the most basic level is search engine listing. Listing refers to registration in any given database. This does not guarantee ranking in the top search results, but does obtain consideration.
The next level up is search engine optimization or improving a website based upon current search engine algorithms – what they seek, how they label relevance, who they place first.
Search engine placement and positioning refers to particular rankings promise for given search terms or keywords. Because most people who search pay attention to the first three pages, if not the first page only, search engine positioning generally aims for top ten placements in the largest search engines. It’s one thing to be included in a database and another thing completely to actually be found among the millions upon millions of searchers reading only the first few results.
Keywords
To rank relevantly within search engine results, each website must be considered relevant to a particular search algorithm for a given keyword or phrase. Keyword selection can be a challenge to both experts and neophytes. While anyone can come up with various words that may be used when searching for their product or service, these words may not be the ideal mix for search engine ranking. Why? If a marketer chooses a popular keyword phrases, he or she and a million other businesses compete for top placement. Top SERP placement is dense, searchers typically giving up after the first three pages. To succeed, one must use relevant keywords that are not being used by everyone else and that are searched for quite often. This may include misspellings and other alternative data. After finding relevant keywords and phrases, the results must encourage conversion or success based on each business’ criteria. For example, while it may be possible for a DVD rental firm to get top listings under the search criteria “free DVD rentals”, the person who visits is looking for free merchandise and will leave if its not found.
For optimal search engine rankings, a page will be optimized for only one to two popular but non-competitive keywords or keyword phrases.
Needless to say there are far more aspects to marketing to search engines than I can cover in this article but the information provided here should give you a good insight into understanding how important it is to design a website that is search engine friendly.
Article Summary:
Search engines are the #1 tool people use when shopping for products, services or information online. Properly promote your site to search engines and watch your traffic explode. If you gain an understanding of how to properly promote your website your efforts will reach it’s full potential.
Don’t give up! If at first you don’t succeed, TRY, TRY, AGAIN! There is a lot to learn when starting a online business. Give yourself a break and don’t set unrealistic goals. Contrary to popular beliefs, having a successful, profit making, online business doesn’t happen overnight.
So, Good Luck, Make Money and Have Fun Doing It – Shirley Kelly

Here are a few tips to help you tame search engines to get better results.
Ranking Algorithms
You may have heard of ranking algorithms when you were researching search engine trends and optimization techniques. These algorithms are mathematical formulas that search engines use to determine how Web pages are indexed in their databases. These algorithms also help to determine how Web pages are ranked in the results for specific keyword searches. Each of the search engines has its own specific ranking algorithm, but the actual formulas are kept confidential by each individual search engine company.
Because these algorithms have the power to change Web rankings and the way people do business, they are kept from other companies to protect the business interests of each search engine. Even though you don’t know exactly what these formulas are, there are guidelines for each search engine that you can follow to improve your rankings.
Ranking algorithms differ for each search engine, so you can use one search engine and then use a second search engine for the same keyword and get completely different results. This is why you need to have a wide range of search engine optimization techniques in place to optimize your Web site for the best results across all of the search engines.
If you heavily optimize your site for one search engine, you will lose traffic on other search engines. If you optimize your site for the top search engine, you may be able to get away with very little optimization for the other search engines.
All of this will depend on how the search engines are ranking sites when you are optimizing your site. You will also have to keep up with the major search engine trends after you initially optimize your site so you know what changes need to be made.
Off-page optimization has become increasingly more important because of the changes in search engine optimization. Many people involved in the SEO community have learned how to optimize their pages so the search engines started to place increasingly more importance on off-page optimization.
Off-page optimization means that you will have to work on optimizing your site without actually using the pages of your site for optimization purposes. One of the best tools for off-page optimization is link building. Link building means that you are building links from other Web sites to your own site. One-way links are the most valuable since they show that other Web site owners find the information on your site to be relevant or important.
Some of the bigger search engines determine the popularity of the Web sites that are ranked well in the results for specific keywords. If a well-ranked site is not getting much traffic from the search results, the search engines will decrease the rank of this site because Web users have shown it to be an irrelevant or useless site.
If a site that is not ranked as well in the search engines gets a lot of traffic, the search engines may elevate the rank of the site. Users who keep visiting the site despite its low rank are showing the search engines that the site’s information is very important and relevant to the keywords used in Web searches returning that particular site in the rankings.
The Importance of Google
If you have a small search engine optimization budget, you may be wondering if it’s really necessary to optimize your site for all of the search engines. While optimizing your site for all of the search engines will give you the best results, targeting the major search engines can help you to optimize your site for the smaller search engines at the same time.
Google, Yahoo, and MSN are known as the major search engines and they are in constant competition with each other to improve the way information is returned every time someone searches for a particular word or phrase. Google is the most important of these search engines, and the Google organization has changed the way users get information with their innovative search techniques and complementary services.
In addition to the search engine services it provides, Google also offers Google Scholar, Google Earth, Google Checkout, G-mail, and a number of other services for Web users. Google Scholar allows users to search for information in scholarly publications. This is an excellent tool for anyone writing a thesis, dissertation, or article for publication.
Google Earth is Google’s way of getting involved with satellite photographs. Users can search for photographs taken by satellites. Google Checkout is Google’s new payment processing system that is closely linked with major retailers, making it the online shopping experience for convenient. G-mail is Google’s e-mails service that has a very large storage capacity, making it the first choice for users who want to take advantage of the almost 3 GB inbox size.
Google PageRank
Google PageRank (PR) is a statistical tool that can be used by Web marketers to determine how their site is perceived in the online community. Google creates this statistic using a mathematical formula that takes the number of links to and from your Web site into consideration and comes up with the PR number.
When other Web site owners link to your site, Google interprets each link as a “vote” for your site. This allows Web users to contribute to the popularity of a site. The quality of the links to your site is just as important, if not more important, than the number of links to your site. If a Web site linking to you has a PR of 8 and 200 outgoing links, this may slightly help your PR.
If a site linking to you only has a PR of 6 but only has 10 links, this will be more helpful. Because the site has few outgoing links, Google assumes that your site is important because they used one of their few links to drive viewers to your site.
Checking your PageRank is easy using a tool called PR Checker. You simply enter your Web address and your PR will be displayed in a matter of seconds. If you find that your PR is low, you can attempt to increase it by building links and employing other SEO strategies.
The Sandbox Effect
Because Google is so important in the world of search engines, it has had a strong effect on how Web pages are indexed and ranked in the search engine results. This importance has resulted in an effect that is often called the Sandbox Effect. This effect refers to the period of time that Web site owners must wait before being ranked by the search engines. This period can be anywhere from 3 months to 6 months and this time is often used to see if each new Web site can survive without rankings.
If a Web site is not ranked but still has significant traffic, it means that the information and tools on the site must be worthwhile enough to attract visitors without using the search engines to generate traffic. If a Web site is able to stay afloat before it is ranked, Google assumes that the content is important enough to allow the Web site to be ranked for its specific keywords and phrases.
Duplicate Web Content
There is a lot of information about the duplicate content penalty on the Internet, but there are just as many web sites that are devoted to proving the rumor to be false. Duplicate content is when you use content that is already on the Web to populate your web site with information.
Doing this is easy as it saves you time and money on writing your own articles, but if the search engines penalize you for duplicate content, you could be derailing your own SEO efforts. According to those who promote the existence of a duplicate content penalty, search engines have a filter that is used when duplicate content is detected. If your content is ignored by the search engines, you’re not going to improve your rankings and you may not even get anywhere near the top 10 of the results.
Having your own unique content is important for many reasons beyond the threat of a penalty for duplicate content. Writing your own content can position you as an expert in your field. Visitors will be much more impressed with your qualifications if you provide original content than they will be by visiting your web site and finding the same article they just read 10 minutes ago.
Having unique content on your web site can also help you improve your SEO efforts because other sites will want to link to your original information. Would you rather link to someone who has original ideas and a wealth of information on their web site, or to a web site that has the same content as 10 other sites? That’s how other people think and you’ll benefit from this thinking when they see that you have a ton of fresh content just waiting to be read by people all over the Web.
Another reason that adding unique content to your site on a regular basis is important is because it can help you to improve your search engine rankings. Search engines send crawlers out to look for information at designated intervals. If you update your web site, a crawler may visit it and gather the new information for indexing. This can help to improve your search engine ranking.
If you have a web site, newsletter, e-zine, tip sheet, or other information product, you’re going to want to have unique content. This can help to build your subscriber list to your newsletter and make your products more valuable in the online marketplace. Some of the same e-books and articles have spread all over the Internet and have the same tired information that is already out of date.
If you dedicate yourself to creating unique content, you can keep up with the latest trends and give your readers exciting and relevant information that they can use in their businesses. This will solidify your reputation as an expert in your field, and can also create goodwill with your web site visitors. One final reason to avoid using duplicate content is so that you can avoid any legal claims of plagiarism or copyright violation.
Just because something is on the internet doesn’t mean it’s free to reuse or distribute. If you inadvertently distribute or use something that is protected by copyright, you may find yourself in hot water with the copyright owner.
Keeping up with search engine trends and learning how to best optimize your web site for the search engines will not only bring you additional traffic, it will also bring you more chances for sales conversions and satisfied customers. Use these techniques wisely and you’ll be able to manage a steady business for many years to come.

The popularity of different search engines among Polish internauts

The popularity of search engines in Poland is frequently measured. Recent information can be found on different web sites such as ranking.pl or Megapanel PBI/Gemius. The analysis confirms that Polish people use not only global but also local search tools. The very recent research (from May 2007) shows distinctly that the most popular search engine is Google.

The popularity of search engines in Poland according to domain compares (http://www.ranking.pl/index.php?page=Ranks:RanksPage&stat=212|OW) the domains which drive the most visits on Polish websites. The comparison of search engines according to most popular search engines (http://www.ranking.pl/index.php?page=Ranks:RanksPage&stat=213|OW) that are used, show very similar results. In Poland there is a local version of Google which improves in ranking of popularity since it appeared (e.g. in 2004 the popularity was estimated at 42%, a year after more than 69%, while now it is more than 86%).

The second place (receded from the first one) belongs to Onet Szukaj (Onet Search), very similar to WP which occupies the third place (it uses the technology of Netsprint.pl) and gained its popularity through long time of being present at the market. These search engines are parts of important portals (www.onet.pl and www.wp.pl accordingly) from which Polish Internet began, and which offer to their visitors, through many years of their development, several services (email, chat rooms, instant messaging, news etc.). Among the internauts who use these search engines are both very loyal users and those who are just real beginners. The fourth in the ranking is Interia.pl – the search engine which is the part of well a known Polish portal which uses Google technology. These are followed by MSN, Szukacz.pl, Yahoo, Gooru, Altavista and others… but because of a rudimentary market share, are showed here only to present a complete data. Summing this up, when planning SEO / SEM activities in search engines used by Polish internauts, there are three which are worth to pay attention to:

- Google.pl,

- Onet Szukaj,

- WP / Netsprint.pl.The way of using search engines by Polish internauts

The tendencies observed in the way search engines are used in Poland overlap with those of international users. The Polish use search engines much more often, more effectively and frequently. They not only make more accurate and detailed queries but also perceive the listings as a reliable information not just random combination of links. They are able to notice the differences between organic listings and sponsored links, which they are (surprisingly?) willing to click since it is one out of two (beside button) most popular (and well tolerated) ways of online advertising. According to Gemius (2006) 82% of search engines’ users click on paid links. Polish internauts, as well as international ones, concentrate on the first three pages of searching results and usually they click on top three links. The research of Visual attention to Online Search Engine Results (http://www.checkit.nl/pdf/eyetracking_research.pdf) illustrates these observations in details.

How long a statistical Polish internaut spends on searching on Internet? According to the research of Gemius (held in December 2006) the average user uses Google (since it is the most popular search engine) about 5 hours, 5 minutes and 39 seconds monthly. However, this time is not only spent on searching but also on using mailbox on gmail.com, Google Maps, or services such as blogger.com. On average the internauts spend 3 hours 2 minutes and 29 seconds on the search engine’s website. In comparison, Onet search engine is used 32 minutes and 47 seconds monthly, WP search engine 21 minutes and 58 seconds, while Szukacz.pl is used only 5 minutes and 26 seconds a month. Taking into consideration the average duration of page view internauts use Google similarly to other search engines, however the number of page views per user is different. Google search engine has here predominance. On average there are 101.18 page views monthly, while for the second Onet and fourth Interia it is just 18.27 and 17.83 accordingly. The most popular keywords in Poland

It is well known what Polish internauts use to search through the Internet and how they do it, the only question is what they generally look for. The most popular keywords in search engines are regularly updated – e.g. in case of Onet (http://boksy.onet.pl/ranking.html) on a weekly basis. The most popular subjects searched for in polish search engines are erotica, entertainment (for example, surnames of popular stars, music files, funny videos, etc.), season entries – connected with current events in the country, or information such as weather, train timetable, loans, work and… search engines! Car related phrases and tourism are very popular as well. The use of search engine optimization and search engine marketing in Poland

More than 75% of Polish companies (a poll made by Bluerank) use search engine optimization (web positioning and optimization) to improve the visibility of company website at the search engine ranking pages. In addition, half of the examined companies have executed advertising campaigns (PPC) with the use of sponsored links on Polish and international search engines. Polish experts claim that the budget use for this kind of advertising reaches 20% since SEM is the leader of e-marketing. It is because of low costs and efficiency but first of all, perceived by common internauts as practical and useful (according to Gemius actually 29% of all users like paid links and click on them).

The most competitive branches in Poland when talking about SEM activity are finance, tourism, car industry, IT, entertainment, healthcare, real estate and e-commerce. Because of this competitiveness the costs of advertising are much higher than in the less popular areas. The cost of promotion is changing also because of the time period. During festive time, such as the second half of December, the costs increase because of huge popularity of sponsored links, especially in the retail area. Tourism has its ‘raise and fall’ depending on season. The holiday time is very crucial (June-August), New Years Eve, as well as winter holidays (February). Finances are in good condition through the whole year (there is always competition) but taking into consideration IT there is minor stagnation between II and III term, so it means the sponsored links might be cheaper at that time. There is a great dependence not only according to the branch but also country, habits of a certain community and calendar of events. Advertising opportunities in Polish search engines

The most diverted offer of search engine advertising in Polish Internet has Netsprint.pl/WP, which offers to advertisers not only PPC campaigns and banners but also very recent “phone link” (pay-per-call solution) and many others – unusual ways of advertising on the search engine results pages with the content modified according to requirements of the campaign. A very good example is the action called “AIDS search engine protection”. Netsprint is a quite flexible partner in this kind of negotiation, in contrast to Google.pl which is constrained to follow strict rules of the corporation and not to come forth obligatory limitation in the field of SEM.

The great advantage of Polish Google (in comparison with the other already mentioned here search engines) is large simplicity of usage – not only for internauts searching through the Internet but also for advertisers who conduct PPC campaigns. The administration panel is comprehensible, intuitive in use and useful. It gives a wide range of possibilities in setting up the advertising campaign – especially while targeting. Netsprint’s panel is the least useful but there is a possibility to get free pieces of advice from search engine’s consultants.

Google does not offer all of the ways of advertising which is used for example in USA. Polish SEM activity with the use of this search engine is mainly focused on AdWords. AdSense is not so popular – mainly because there is not enough websites and unsatisfactory quality of them in the Google network. In Poland, there are not only popular and worth reading newspapers, magazines or professional bulletins, but also different private, “hobby like” websites with low popularity and high risk of fraud clicks, which expose advertisers on incidental expenses.

The advantage of search engine of Onet (in comparison with WP) is an advanced possibility to target ads and well described user profile. According to the data from a search engine – among the total of 11 million of Polish internauts, 650.000 use exclusively Onet (Megapanel PBI/Gemius research from 2006/2007). A very unique feature of this portal is a section called Onet.eu, which is intended to visit by Polish people who live in the United Kingdom. In case this is an interesting target group, it is worth to take into consideration contextual advertising there through OnetKontekst. Search engines and SEM in Poland – predictions for the future

For a few years now Polish search engines have been trying to follow the example of American companies and developed markets of Western Europe. When improving local search engines and ways of SEM advertising, Polish people follow the best practices of Google in the range of searching and advertising products. This trend should remain and hopefully soon in Poland there will be a lot of high budget campaigns in search engines. However, even today we can observe constant, increasing need for Polish SEM agencies’ services among foreign companies. Those SEM agencies are familiar with the specific character of Polish market, they are relatively cheap and have all the competencies needed to promote foreign brands, products and services in search engines in Poland.

“As far as the international cooperation is concerned, our company takes part in projects which integrate actions of search engine marketing for one brand in different European countries. We are adapting the campaign of sponsored links to Polish reality in the Internet as well as planning the marketing activity of international companies from the scratch on the Polish market” – says Maciej Gałecki, CEO of Bluerank, SEM agency in Poland. “We are open to all different forms of cooperation in the field of promotion by using search engines in Central and Western Europe”.

Here’s a fact for you, 85 to 95% of websites are found through a search engine.  You may have the most incredible website on the Internet, but it will receive little or no traffic without search engine visibility and ranking.  Can you imagine a billboard in the Sahara desert?  Who sees it?   So, how will searchers find your website? What types of search engines could they use? Search engines fall into two categories.  The first is referred to as natural, organic or standard.  The second is called pay-per-click, paid inclusion or paid placement.   Natural, organic and standard are interchangeable terms describing a search engine that bases its search rankings on a ranking algorithm.  The algorithms involve a number of criteria and parameters, all relating to the content of the website, the website’s size, the number of incoming links to the website, and the content’s relevancy.  You will hear terms such as keyword relevancy and keyword density to describe various components of the algorithms.    For the standard search engines, you, your webmaster or hired search engine optimization specialist could spend considerable time optimizing your website to achieve top rankings. The goal is for your website to appear on the first or second page of the search engines’ results when your target user searches keywords or keyword phrases. The good news is rankings on standard search engines are free.  The downside is the tremendous amount of time and effort required to achieve exceptional search engine rankings.   Let’s confess to each other that top rankings on standard search engines can be tough and timely to achieve!   The interchangeable terms pay-per-click, paid inclusion or paid placement describe a search engine that bases its search rankings on a “bid for position” basis.  Simply stated, you “bid” a price to be in a specific position of the search rankings for a particular search keyword or keyword phrase.  For example, the #1 position on the search phrase “pay per click” recently required a bid of $3.55 per click, whereas the 15th position required only a bid of 55 cents.  As a result, your differential website advertising costs between position #1 and #15 can be considerable.   With pay-per-click search engines, your ability to bid high can dramatically impact your website’s search engine ranking when the search results display website domain names or URL’s for the search keyword or keyword phrase.  The benefit is your website gains visibility with the searcher, but you are not charged the pay-per-click “bid” until a searcher actually clicks on your website domain name or URL displayed in the search engine results. The selection of your website in the search engine results is called a click-through.   In general, click-through rates range from 1% to 5% of the number of impressions.  What is all of this?  A click is when a searcher selects or “clicks” your pay-per-click ad.  An impression is one display of your pay-per-click ad on the search engine results.  So, the click-through rate is a measure of the total number of ad clicks versus the total number of impressions in a period of time:       Click-Through Rate % = Total Number of Ad Clicks / Total Number of Ad Impressions * 100   Let’s do the math for our #1 position bid of $3.55 per click.  In September, 2004 there were 21,535 searches for “pay per click.”  First, let’s assume a 1% click-through rate. The top bidder spent $764.49 (21,535 * 1% * $3.55).  Now, at a 5% click-through rate the top bidder spent $3,822.45 (21,535 * 5% * $3.55).  Budgeting and controlling marketing expenses with such a broad range of potential costs could be tough.  Plus, such costs could be the tip of the iceberg. We still must consider derivatives of the keyword or keyword phrase. So, was being #1 worthwhile?  That depends on your website’s cost per visitor, conversion rate and profit margin of your product or service.   From what we’ve covered so far, you should realize you can achieve a top or high ranking through the pay-per-click search engine. But, a high ranking will cost money and these costs can be volatile. Meanwhile, the standard search engine remains free.  However, pay-per-click offers one significant advantage.  It enables you to achieve website visibility with a high ranking instantaneously or overnight.  If you want to draw traffic to your website fast for any reason, pay-per-click can make that happen. Remember, maximizing the standard search engine process takes time!    Let’s summarize the pros and cons of pay-per-click marketing:  Pros * Improves your website’s ranking and traffic quickly. * Tests the marketability of your product or service swiftly. * Determines the ability of your web site to convert visitors to a call to action or make a purchase promptly. * Identifies which keyword phrases will provide the best conversion rate rapidly. * Provides complete control of the search engine campaign, both position and cost. Cons * Cost Many individuals criticize pay-per-click because of the costs involved. But, have you really thought about the cost issue?  Unless you or someone in your organization has expertise in search engine optimization, you’ll probably pay several thousand dollars in fees to a search engine optimization specialist to improve and optimize your website to achieve higher rankings in the standard search engines.  So, my question to you is.  Are the standard search engine rankings really free? At the end of the standard versus pay-per-click search engine debate, it’s like the old saying, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” Or, it’s like the old commercial, “You can pay me now or you can pay me later.” The reality of the debate is you must evaluate your specific website situation and utilize the search engine approach that maximizes your website promotion goals and investment.