Start by doing some research on your keywords. That’s how people find you from the search engines. My favourite tool is located here: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Most articles should have a theme. Wedding, sports, gambling, etc. Key in this theme into the tool and make a search. The tool will suggest numerous keywords based on your input. There are a couple of features that I love about this tool.

Firstly, it shows you how many searches are being made for a particular keyword phrase. The greater the number, the more popular a keyword is. Don’t be afraid of competition. With a site that is search engine optimized (e.g. www.sg-web-design.com), you will still get visitors. I’ll elaborate on that later.

The second thing I love about this tool is that it shows the search counts in the most recent month. It’s a great tool for measuring CURRENT popularity and you want to write articles that are currently popular to have any kind of chance in the face of fierce competition.

Make a list of these keyword phrases. I personally love to have a long list that include any phrases that have more than 2 words in them. Why? Simply because my traffic reports show that most people arrive at my site by searching for long keyword phrases. That’s also how your articles will get traffic and they are very targetted traffic. If you have a product to sell, this kind of traffic would be exactly what you’d be looking for.

Now that you have your list, throw them in the title of your article. Start your article with those keywords as well. There are tons of information out there about keyword density but in my opinion, to follow strictly to keyword density is a little overboard. Time is needed to check your articles on keyword density and as far as I’m concerned, I can make better use of that time. For example, write more articles!

To ensure that your article is optimized, sprinkle your keywords casually in every other paragraph and you should do just fine.

In summary, simple follow the following steps:
1) Research on keywords
2) Make a list of keywords
3) Include these keywords in title
4) Start your article with a popular keyword phrase
5) Sprinkle similar keyword phrases in every other paragraph
6) Submit to www.sg-web-design.com
7) Write more articles!

Enjoy writing!

A feature that many webmasters will be happy to know about is the notification of violations. No longer will they be left in the dark about what is happening. They will know if they have violated the webmaster guidelines and why.

The rules are pretty simple. Create your site that is truly helpful to your users and avoid doing naughty things just to increase your ranking. Linking to bad sites, hidden texts or links, installing viruses, trojans or other badware are just a few of the reasons why your URL will not be included in any Google index.

You dont even need to look far to know if you have a violation. Google notifies you directly on the summary page of your account. They also place a link to webmasters guidelines so you can double check that your site is once again in proper form to be included in Googles index this is the second new feature.

Google does not want to exclude any sites that are good. It is possible that the violations were unintentional. It may even be that the webmasters truly have overlooked some items on their site. Google says clean it up and get the chance to be re-included.

Re-inclusion is absolutely simple and easy. Once you see the violation notification, check what needs to be fixed. Correct the item that Google felt is a violation of their rules. Now all you need to do is click on the request reinclusion link on your summary page, or the link at the Google Sitemap home page, and fill out the form. Just dont forget that you dont need to request reinclusion if you havent received a violation.

If youre a new webmaster and need a helping hand, Google has a help center for webmasters. It has all the information you need to know about Google Sitemaps. If you have questions about Googlebot, crawling, indexing, ranking and the like, this is the place to go. If the answer youre looking for isnt there, no worries; the Google Sitemaps community is there to interact with as well.

By the way, not everybody by the way receives a notification of violation. Google has chosen not to notify certain webmasters of their penalty in certain cases. For example, they will not notify a spammer that hes been caught. Doing so will only alert him that they have caught on to his game and possibly trigger his making even sneakier ways to get in.

On the whole, these improvements are wonderful additions and long overdue. Google really wants to improve their services and the best way is for people to keep using their products and giving feedback. The team behind Google is definitely listening.

Test the keywords out yourself. When youre thinking of keywords that will make your site more searchable, test a few out on popular search engines to see that kind of results a person looking for your site or a site similar to yours will find. Youll be surprised sometimes to find that keywords you think are common or regular may not yield the results you expected. Try to think both as practical and as abstract as possible when it comes to keywords, and select keywords that you think are somewhere in the middle. For instance, if youre opening an online boutique, youll want to input keywords like boutique, accessories, or handbags, because it is safe to assume that the people searching for your boutique will be looking for accessories or handbags. However, you may also want to use words or phrases like online boutique, original designs, and boutique clothing for secondary keywords, so that if people are looking for something a little more specific, they can still be led almost directly to your site.

Find out how different search engines work. Another great way to make sure that keyword optimization is working for your website it to test out different search engines, and learn the rules behind each of them. Use the keywords you have chosen several times with different search engines, so you can see just how effective they are. Some search engines yield better results when the person searching enters a short phrase (i.e. Yahoo), because more words offer more details, and the search engine can give more specific details in terms of findings. And, some search engines work well when using only one or two words (i.e. Google, Microsoft). Making sure that potential customers can find you no matter what search engine theyre using will definitely help to increase business and traffic for your site.

Change your keywords if necessary. Every now and then, you may want to change your keywords or phrases in order to make your site more searchable. This depends largely on the type of content that youre putting on your site, so you may need to add a few keywords to your list to make sure that customers can find you easily. The more updated your site is, the more attractive it will be for new and existing customers, the more traffic your site will be able to take on.

The new Google ad automator feature is initially only being offered to select Froogle merchants who also advertise on the AdWords platform. The tool allows you to manage large, scalable campaigns without investing much time and effort. The ad automator dynamically generates accurate AdWords ads targeted to search queries. The content for these ads comes from the data feeds (that you submit as often as you like) containing your product descriptions, specifications, and information. These data feeds are simply tab delaminated text files. You can in fact use your existing Froogle data feed with some extra columns.

The AdWords system then generates ads from the content in your data feed (or from information you submit through the AdWords interface). This means that you can either let Google create your ad copy for you or you can set it yourself. It then continually analyzes all search queries to see whether they’re relevant to any of your products. When it finds a relevant match, it shows your ads on the search page results.

Once setup, you can set daily campaign budget much like a normal adwords campaign. The CPC is set in one of three places. You can either specify your maximum CPC in the data feed, in the AdWords interface, or you can allow Google to determine it for you. The later method automatically sets your max CPC by using the average CPC of the competing ads. As with normal AdWords campaigns, you can have your ads displayed on both the Search Network or the Content Network, and geo-target them.

Some benefits of Ad Automator are that ads are dynamically targeted to queries. They are also automatically compliant with AdWords policies; once your data feed is approved, ads don’t need to be reviewed again. You don’t need to create new ad text. You can leverage existing product descriptions that are likely already on your website. (However, you may submit customized ad text in your data feed or through the AdWords interface if you like.) You can supplement existing marketing efforts without much additional effort.

All in all I think this is set to be a big improvement when it is fully launched. It will compete with Yahoos Search Submit product whereby advertisers can pay to have their pages included in the search results.

One of the criteria for website popularity and enhanced website search engine ranking is the quantity and quality of incoming links to your website. Links leading to your site from other sites – incoming links – are an important factor affecting how well your site ranks in the search engines. It’s important to know how many incoming links your site has, how they break down by page rank (PR), and what anchor text is used in these links.

Probably the best way to get webmasters to link to your site is by offering to exchange reciprocal links. This is obviously beneficial to both webmasters because both of your web sites benefit from new targeted, relevant links. Search engines see all of the new links pointing from other quality, relevant sites to your site and, over time, increase your rank.

Google has revealed the secrets of its search ranking technology by filing a patent application. It was found that Google values organic link building – building links that progress naturally rather than appearing artificial. An example of non-progressive links is when a whole page of links is posted to your website at once, in an attempt to circumvent the natural progression of search engine ranking. Progressive linking is very different from using indiscriminate “link farms”, which will ultimately result in you being penalised by the search engines.

So how do you achieve progressive link popularity with the minimum of effort and where do you start to look for sites that have a website theme in common with yours? Unless you have the time you really do not want to spend precious hours gathering links, writing e-mails, and checking that sites you link to still link back. A links program should be there to work for you not the other way around – if you can set it and virtually forget it, all the better.

An ideal tool for building link exchanges the way Google likes them, would be to use a program that allows you to grow your link exchanges gradually and gain links from many different sites letting you build as large a reciprocal link program as you want. Automation is the key, unless of course you like tedious work. So you can do all this manually and accept the frustrations that go with it or you could use a program that will carry out the task automatically.

A program that fills the criteria is Link Machine which automates every step of the link management process. Importantly, new links come to you; you do not have to go searching for websites similar to yours. Your sites visitors can submit new links through Link Machines’ submission form and it can inspect each link that’s submitted and only accept those that meet your requirements by filtering out links with inappropriate content, low page rank, and more. Other Link Machine users can be invited to exchange links and with a single click, you can accept an invitation and build a new link exchange instantly, making it simple to exchange quality and relevant links. You can decide whether you’d like to manually approve each link that is submitted, or run your link directory on full automatic.

Because Link Machine is a PHP application that runs from your web site, it can update your link pages the moment you make a change, or the moment another site’s webmaster chooses to exchange links with you. Link Machine is a powerful program that does what it is supposed to do, that is to provide a fully automatic linking process for your website, thereby saving you hours of tedious work.

For more information on Link Machine please visit http://www.1st-4-income.com/linkpopularity.html

The time and effort that is saved by using a fully automated program like Link Machine cannot be over emphasised, particularly when you want to improve the link popularity for your website and the icing on the cake is that the software is free to download.

Google has had a feature out for some time which allows webmasters to create a sitemap file to help Google’s crawlers find and index content.

It sounds like a great idea. After all, it’s much easier to feed the crawler the content then hope it finds it on it’s own.

But is a Google sitemap worthwhile? Is it even necessary?

When the Google Sitemap program first started my thought was That’s kinda cool but what’s the real benefit?

So, I thought I’d try it out and submit sitemaps for a few sites that I own.

When Google Sitemaps first came out it was very difficult to figure out what all the entries meant as well as how to actually create the sitemap.

Sure, it was XML based, and I could plainly see what they expected but when you have a large site, how do you go about creating this?

Then Google came out with http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/sitemap-generator.html, a sitemap generator which is a program intended to help you create a sitemap for your site. This does help speed up the process but unless you are a developer it is a little difficult to implement.

Also, you need access to your server to run the script required to generate the sitemap. If you are unsure you should check with your web host to see if you have terminal access to execute Python scripts.

Personally, I’ve never tried the Google Sitemapper tool but I have used others. For example, on my personal blog which uses Moveable Type, I found a blog post which shows How to build a Movable Type Google sitemap template http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2005/06/google_sitemaps.html. And I’ve used Xenu and an Excel spreadsheet http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=199253 which works great as well.

Now that the sitemap creation is covered, let’s get into the question at hand. Is a Google sitemap really worth the effort?

A few months ago I would have said no, but lately Google has been adding features that make me think otherwise.

For example, if you’ve gone through the verification process (which is really just placing a blank HTML file on the site and having Google find it) and ensured your 404 errors are properly configured you can get access to a wealth of additional intel.

One such feature is the Top Search Queries. This tells you which queries were used when your pages appeared in the search results but may not have been clicked on.

In other words, these are actual searcher queries that were performed on Google where your site may have appeared but not had click-through’s.

From a keyword research point of view, this is a huge advantage to you. By monitoring your sitemap stats you can easily see some of the terms people are using and perhaps determine what you need to do to rank higher for those terms so you too can get the clicks that your competitors are receiving.

If you don’t have ready access to log analysis or other stats, the Google sitemap can also tell you what terms actually drove traffic to your site.

In other words, these were searches performed on Google that actually generated clicks for your site.

There’s also a wealth of other information. For example, “Crawl Stats” shows you how Googlebot sees your site, errors generated by it, and even a PageRank distribution chart detailing how well PageRank is distributed.

So, if you are like me and wondering if a Google sitemap is worth it I’d say yes, it is. The information provided, while mostly technical, can help you troubleshoot problems as well as provide ideas to help you improve your positioning.

What is Google Page Rank?

The co-founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, describe Google Page Rank as a tool designed to rank a website that is listed in the Google search index. A Pagerank of a web page is given on a scale of 0-10. 0 is the lowest possible score for a website and conversely a 10 is the highest score possible. A high Pagerank is defined by the amount, importance(PageRank) and relevance of web pages that link to the web page in question. When a web page links to another web page, Google consider that to be a vote for the page in question and therefore of some importance. There is a formula associated to how PageRank is calculated but for the purposes of this article it is too indepth, but if you are interested in the theory behind PageRank (PR) then a quick search on Google will provide fruitful.

What is Alexa Rank?

The Alexa Rank is different to Google PR; Alexa rank websites based solely on traffic to the website. Alexa rank websites in descending order towards 0, where the most highly visited website on the Internet is given a rank of 0. At this point in time the top three ranked websites (most visitors) on Alexa are, 0 – Yahoo, 1 – Google and 2 – MySpace. According to Alexa these 3 websites get the most traffic on the Internet. Alexa Rankings vary from 1 to a billion. Every web site in the world is included in the Alexa Rank, so the scale on your Alexa ranking is constantly changing in relation to other websites on the Internet.

Today the field of search engine optimization is becoming competitive day by day and backlinking is gaining popularity as a crucial London SEO tool. There are number of factors determining ones position on the website and driving traffic towards your site and backlinking is gaining significance and plays an important role for London SEO. While discussing about the importance of backlinks, they can be termed as backbone of the website giving it the invisible but essential support.

Defining technically backlinks are the inbound links on the website. They are the links placed on other webpages 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. 95% of London 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. are some easiest methods for inbound linking. You can use reciprocal link exchange program with quality websites to get related with them.

Importance of backlinking for the London SEO game can be discussed under following points:

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.
Quality backlinks drive not only search engines but are a crucial factor to attract the web users towards your website.
Backlinks helps to point towards your site. Backlinks found on forums, blogs and other sites across the internet boost up your website popularity.
In todays PR obsessed internet world inbound links are an effective tool to gain better Google PR. Google always consider number of inbound links while raking the websites.
Not only Google but all the biggies like Yahoo and MSN now use link popularity and link anchor text as the most important factors in determining their rankings.
Linking to the relevant and standard websites enhance your credibility in the World Wide Web.

You can increase your website PR and web traffic through the inbound linking with trusted resources. Add some quality links to your website and see your web business rocking.

In fact, there is a general fear of reciprocal linking to websites who inadvertently link to a “bad neighborhood” with penalties or page rank zero, passing on problems to you. Use your common sense. Is this a website you would want to visit or your visitors would want to visit? If the answer is no or you can’t tell what the subject of the site is, make a note of it and keep looking. A website full of links with little content doesn’t “make sense” because what benefit is it to you or your visitors? Of course you are going to link to your partners in business or maybe the small website that is doing a bang up job of selling widgets and providing widget information.
The idea of acquiring link popularity by linking back and forth to other sites to boost your popularity artificially is a popular method. But is it of value to your website? Ask yourself: Would you link to this site if link popularity in the search engines didn’t matter? Would your visitor care about this link or find it helpful? Does the website have good content? Is this an opportunity for you to publicize your website by being listed there? Will this link cause you to spend a great deal of time worrying about it?
Is the link “just a link” or do you want a link from any site whose visitors care about what you have to say

It makes sense to list your website in the search engines and directories. In fact, one-way linking, such as listing your site in directories, is a good way to improve your link popularity naturally. Well, you say to yourself, of course I’ve done that. Besides the major directories, what else is out there? You’d be surprised at the amount of good secondary and specialty directories that drive traffic. Some even specialize in a topic – maybe your topic. If you have a product to sell, look at who your competitor is linking to. Search for directories and business sites on your topic. Look for websites that talk about the widgets you sell and see if they accept submissions to their directory listings in the category for widgets. Do they accept original articles, product reviews, press releases or white papers about widgets? If so, submit your topical articles and watch your link popularity rise naturally. With your good content on other websites as well as archived on your own website, there you have it, links pointing back to your website.

Finally, enhance content stick-ness and optimize your web pages using proper keywords in your site to develop your website so once your visitors arrive, they will want to stay. The World Wide Web uses linking to connect us all. By using hard work to create a quality website and common sense when linking you can stop worrying and start succeeding in internet marketing attempt.