Search engine optimization means improving the chances that your web pages will be found by the search engines. The term “search engine” is often used generically to describe both crawler-based search engines and human-powered directories. These two types of search engines gather their listings in different ways.

Crawler-Based Search Engines Crawler-based search engines, such as Google, create their listings with ”robot” programs that “crawl” or “spider” the web. The pages that are displayed on a search are based on what the “robots” find. If you change your web pages, crawler-based search engines eventually find these changes, and this can effect how your web site is listed. Page titles, meta tags, body copy and other page elements all impact your page ranking.

People-Powered Directories A human-powered directory, such as Yahoo, depends on people for its listings. You submit a short description to the directory for your entire site. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions you submit. Changing your web pages has no effect on your listing.

Hybrid Search Results It is now common for a search engine to present both human-powered listings and crawler-based results. Usually mixed search results favor one type of listings over another. For example, Yahoo first presents its human-powered listings, but it also presents crawler-based results from Google.

Search Relevancy Crawler-based search engines determine page relevancy by following a set of rules, known as an algorithm. Although exactly how a particular search engine’s algorithm works is a closely-kept trade secret all major search engines follow these general criteria.

Keywords – Location and Frequency One of the the main criteria in a page ranking algorithm involves the location and frequency of keywords on a web page. Pages with the search terms appearing in the HTML title tag are considered more relevant to a search than other pages. Search engines also consider web pages with keywords near the top of the page,  such as in the headline or the first few paragraphs of text, to be more relevant to the search topic. In addition to location of keywords, frequency is the other major factor in how search engines determine relevancy. A search engine will analyze how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. Those with a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant than other web pages. HOWEVER, we must point out that having too high a frequency will offend both your reader and the search engines. This is considered “spamming” a search engine and will actually lower your page ranking. Search engines, and people scanning your web page, want to quickly find the specific information they are looking for on that page. The information they are looking for are the “keyword phrases” you compiled when writing your web site description. These key phrases play an important role in obtaining a high search engine ranking, and getting the reader to stay on your web site.

The page title tag is the most important location for your keyword phrases.  Not only does this count for a lot in the search engine rankings, its the first line people see displayed in the listings. This tag has the double duty of catching the attention of the search engines and influencing a person to click on your listing. These 8 to 10 words must include your target keywords, starting with the most important.

Your page headline should include your most important key phrases and encourage your reader to read your web page. Work your list of key phrases into the first few paragraphs in a way that makes the page relevant to the search engines while being easy for your reader to follow.

Meta Tags Meta tags are not as important as they used to be for search engine ranking because many of the search engines don’t use them as part of their ranking criteria. Even so, its good to its still good to have a short list of your important keywords in the keyword tag. The description tag may actually be more important as some of the engines still use this under the title to describe your site in their listings. Since you need a short description when you submit your web site to directories, it only takes a couple minutes to add this tag to your web site. Description tag – provides a description of the search engine to show with your listing. Keywords tag – provides keywords for the search engine to associate with your page.

Popularity and Click-Through Some search engines, Google in particular, consider how “popular” a web page is by analyzing how many pages link to that page to determine how “important” it is. More popular pages will get a ranking boost. Another way some search engines adjust ranking is with click-through measurement. In short, this means that a search engine may watch what results someone selects for a particular search, then eventually drop high-ranking pages that aren’t attracting clicks, while promoting lower-ranking pages that do pull in visitors. Now that you understand a little about how the search engines work, lets check out some tools you can use to make this process easier.

‘Promoting your business is an ongoing process that keeps your business visible to prospects and clients. While you should use promotional products to market your business throughout the year, there will be times when you should use them for a specific marketing campaign.  Either way, successful promotional product campaigns require a plan that includes goals and a way to measure your results. Promotional products are useful articles of merchandise imprinted with a company name or message and usually distributed free to a target audience. Most promotional items are inexpensive and designed to be seen over and over again. Popular items range from caps, coffee mugs, and computer accessories to shirts, sports items, and stress relievers. Imprinted products are most effective when they are actively distributed as marketing tools to meet specific goals.

There are many ways you can use these promotional items to market your business. Let’s take a look at some ways to use them.

1. Determine the purpose of the promotional campaign. Are you interested in getting additional business from your current customers, or are you trying to reach prospect new clients? Develop a theme with a message that helps to solidify your company’s name, service or products in your target customer’s mind.

2. Set Your Goals. Set some goals for the type of response you expect to get from your promotional products, especially if you are using them for a specific campaign, like the introduction of a new product or service.  Make sure you can measure your results by asking new customers where they found out about your company.

3. Selecting the right promotional items. Many businesses hand out promotional pens or refrigerator magnets, but there’s something to be said for not being one of the crowd. Choose a promotional product that ties into your line of business or the theme of your promotional campaign. While computer related businesses might hand out items like a mouse pad, a unique idea used by a marketing company we know is handing out light bulb shaped stress relievers with the tag line ‘Bright Ideas for Marketing Your Business.’ Another way to generate ideas is to think about situations in which you might encounter prospects. For example, if you golf often, consider imprinting your company web site and phone number on some golf tees.

Examples of using promotional products. Promoting your company’s Web Site. Every item you choose to promote your business should include your web site address. This includes everything from pens, to magnets, to those jackets you give to your best customers. Giving something small away is also a good way to persuade visitors to your web site to register with you.  While you can give away a special report in exchange for an email address, if you give them something you have to send out, they will also have to give you their mailing address. You might even consider a monthly drawing for a company cap or T-shirt to the lucky winner who registers with your web site. And don’t forget to post the monthly winners on your web site.

Building Trade Show Traffic Participating at a trade shows is one thing, getting people to your booth is quite another. This is a situation to choose a unique item that your visitors will not only hang onto, but others will see and say “Where did you get that? I want one of those!” You probably still have some items in your office that you chased down at the last trade show you attended.

Premiums We’ve all seen the ads on TV that magazines use to entice new subscribers with the offer of a free gift. You can do the same thing by offering a promotional item to anyone that places an order over a certain amount.  This is certainly worth the dollar or two you have to pay for the item, and it just goes in the box when you ship your product to your customer, so there’s no additional postage.

Increasing Customer Loyalty. Do you want to thank customers who have been with you for many years, given you referrals, or made a substantial purchase at your business? Giving them a more substantial promotional item, like a golf shirt with your company logo, would be a great way to thank them for helping your business to grow! Don’t forget to use some of your advertising budget for promotional products.  They will remind your customers to give you a call the next time that they need your product or service.

After a nice finish to 2009, and a strong opening week to the new decade, stocks headed south to have their worst month since October. A slowing economy in China and financial problems in Spain and Greece hurt stock markets around the world. Just as they did when the financial crisis started in 2008, investors chased US Treasury Bonds in a flight to safety.

Continue reading the Insightful Investing News February 2010 …

Promoting your business is an ongoing process that keeps your business visible to prospects and clients. There are many ways to promote your business. Let’s look at some of the more effective ways to get more potential customers to your business. 1. Promotional Products Promotional Products are an excellent way to promote your business. Promotional items are useful articles of merchandise imprinted with a company name or message and usually distributed free to a target audience. Popular items range from caps, coffee mugs, and computer accessories to shirts, sports items, and stress relievers. Click here to learn more about using promotional products to bring more customers to your business. 2. E-mail Newsletters (E-zines). One of the best ways to promote your business is by writing an email newsletter. This allows you to easily stay in touch with your clients and potential customers. It also helps you to generate trust, develop brand awareness, and build future business. By providing something your clients want with every issue, you also have an opportunity to sell additional products and services. Click here to learn more about using email to promote your business. 3. Link Popularity Another way to increase the traffic to your web site is to have more links to your Web Site. There are two reasons for this. While you probably know that the more links to your Web Site, the more visitors you can expect to have, another benefit to this is a higher listing in some of the search engines, in particular with Google.  Click here to learn more about building your link popularity. 4. Affiliate Programs Affiliate programs can help you make more money online in two ways.  The first is by joining the affiliate programs of companies that offer complementary products or services and earning a commission on sales to people you refer to these businesses. The second is to start your own affiliate program so other people can refer business to you. Click here to learn more about affiliate programs.

Keyword Selection

When it comes to doing research on potential Keyword phrases, we recommend WordTracker. You can research a database of millions of actual queries of terms that people search for. You enter some keywords, and they tell you how often people search for them, and also tell you how many competing sites use those keywords. WordTracker helps you find all keyword combinations that bear any relation to your business or service – many of which you might never have considered. You’ll find out how popular these keywords really are. Then for each major search engine, they will show you the chances of making the top 10. Take the trial to get a feel for the power of this tool.  Once you see how useful this tool is, we think you will find that its well worth the small cost.

High Search Engine Ranking

Ranking near the top on the major search engines is the real key to bringing free, targeted traffic to your Web site. When someone queries a major search engine using a keyword related to your site’s products or services, does your page appear in the top 10 matches or is it your competition? If you’re listed, but not within the first 10 to 30 matches, you lose, no matter how many engines you submitted your site to. WebPosition 4 is the best product we know to help you get a high listing for your key phrases in the major search engines. Take a look at some of the product features:

Reporter – checks your site’s positions in the major search engines. Find out in minutes, rather than hours, how you rank on every keyword or phrase that is important to you, on all the major engines. Nine different management reports provide more valuable information than any other product. Page Generator – creates creates optimized Web pages based on keywords and details you enter about your business. Page Critic – supplies expert, custom-tailored advice on how to optimize each of your new or existing Web pages. Page Critic knows each search engine’s unique personality and how to build TOP ranking pages for each without spamming them. Submitter – will submits your pages to the most important search engines. Advanced “slow submit” technology precisely emulates manual submissions. It even follows-up to verify a site was indexed by the expected date. And much more. Go ahead and download a FREE trial copy.  You have nothing to lose, and a higher ranking in the trial search engines to gain. Internet Business Promoter (IBP) is a top-rated web site promotion software tool that helps you with all important aspects of web site promotion and search engine optimization. You’ll get more visitors, more customers and more sales. IBP helps you with all aspects of web site promotion from web page optimization to search engine submission. Here’s a list of some of its features: 1. The Top 10 Ranking Optimizer Tool 2. The next generation search engine submission tool 3. Submit to Internet directories semi-automatically 4. Submit to special interest sites and improve your link popularity 5. Track your search engine rankings over time 6. Analyze the keyword density of your web pages 7. Professional reports in PDF, HTML, text and MS Word format Download the Trial version today and start generating more income from your web site today.

Link Popularity

Axandra’s IBP is also a top rated software program that helps you to build a powerful business network quickly and easily. You’ll benefit from highly targeted free traffic to your web site, new business contacts, a higher link popularity, higher search engine rankings and more sales. Reciprocal links add value to your web site, let your web site visitors return to your site, and you’ll get targeted traffic from clicks of your links on other web sites. Get more visitors to your web site. Download a FREE Demo version of IBP today!