Does Google use data from social sites in ranking?

Interesting video from Matt  Cutts of Google, explaining how social media interaction impacts search engine ranking.



For more information about search engine marketing, visit: http://www.web4business.com.au/articles.htm

Getting to the Top of Search Engines with Pay Per Click Marketing

Getting to the Top of Search Engines with Pay Per Click Marketing

For most small businesses, getting to the top of the Search Engines, such as Google, and Yahoo is next to impossible without using the services of a Search Engine Optimization company. Although a very worthwhile exercise, Search Engine Optimisation can be quite costly.


The GREAT news is that you can get your website to the top of search engines, using Pay Per Click advertising.



Pay per click (PPC) advertising is when an advertiser (you) pays for each qualified click that sends a search engine user to the advertiser's web page. PPC requires you to bid on keywords or phrases that relate to your business. The best known pay per click service is Google AdWords.



Generally you can bid from as little as a few cents per visitor. However, the more you bid the higher up in the search engine your advertisement will appear. Pay per click is a great way to deliver targeted and qualified visitors to your website at a very reasonable price.


Read more

Ivana Katz
Websites 4 Small Business

Stop Wasting Money Driving Traffic to Your Website!

Many new online entrepreneurs waste thousands of dollars promoting their shiny new websites, only to be disappointed by the results. They are so excited about finally having arrived on the internet, they want to announce it to the world! And who can blame them.

If you are blushing right now because you have thrown away a lot of money promoting your website without getting the results you were hoping, read on ... all is not lost.

Read complete article ...


Ivana Katz
Websites 4 Small Business

How can I optimize my site on a small budget?

Great video if you are looking to optimise your small business website
for search engines on a small budget.

Ivana Katz
Websites 4 Small Business

Getting to the top of search engines through one way linking: GoArticles.com

Getting to the top of search engines through one way linking: GoArticles.com

One way links are links that point to your site from others, but which are not linked to from your website. Google and many other search engines include link popularity as part of the way they evaluate and rank websites. Links are seen as a positive "vote" towards the quality of the website. As such, the more links from other relevant websites to yours, the better.

Here are some of the ways to get one way links pointing to your website.

1. Articles

Writing articles is an excellent way for you to get free publicity. Getting an article published is free. The publicity you receive by having your article published in a newspaper, magazine or website can be worth thousands of dollars in equivalent advertising space. Well written articles yield better results than advertisements and earn you respect from customers, who see you as an expert in your field.

So what exactly is an article???

Read complete article

8 SEO Myths Debunked

8 SEO Myths Debunked

One of my favorite pastimes is debunking SEO myths – and there are many! I could probably come up with 100 SEO-related ideas or actions that people think are helpful, but which in reality won’t provide them with more targeted traffic to their websites.

Here are some of the more prevalent myths I hear and see bandied about in SEO articles, at SEO conferences, in SEO blogs and on SEO forums:

SEO Myth #1: You Need Special Search Engine Pages.

While it’s not as prevalent as it used to be, we still get calls from companies who want us to create some sort of “SEO landing pages.” While landing pages often make sense for paid search campaigns such as Google AdWords, they’re unnecessary for organic SEO campaigns. Well, I shouldn’t say that they’re unnecessary – it’s just that your SEO landing pages shouldn’t be something outside of your site. They should already exist as an integral part of it. If those aren’t currently bringing you search engine traffic, it doesn’t mean you need to add new pages, it means you have to optimize your existing ones better.

Read complete article

Ivana Katz

Websites 4 Small Business

SEO Tips: Get More Traffic with These 10 Important Inbound Links

Don’t overlook your inbound linking strategy as you think about search engine optimization for your site. An inbound link is a hyperlink back to your site from another web site. The one constant and reliable strategy in search engine optimization is that sites with a variety of high quality backlinks rank higher in the search engine results pages.

Why are these links to your site important? They can can…

• bring potential customers to your site when they click on the link
• increase the number of visitors to your web site
• dramatically improve your search engine rankings

Even though there are software packages on the market that help automate the linking process, use them sparingly, if at all. The only way to succeed in linking strategies is (aside from creating useful content that will encourage inbound links) by manually creating the links. That’s a hard fact to swallow, given how I like to automate as much of my marketing as I can.

Here are the 10 most important inbound links you must have to your site:

Read complete article

Ivana Katz
Websites 4 Small Business

SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources » Blog Archive » 18 Effective Search Engine Optimization Techniques

SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources » Blog Archive » 18 Effective Search Engine Optimization Techniques

Proper Search Engine Optimization, otherwise known as SEO, has quickly become a popular topic of conversation among website owners and entrepreneurs. The difference between having a successful website, and hosting a flop, is often the difference between whether or not you’ve incorporated proper keywords and phrases into your webpages....

To read complete article, click here

Ivana Katz
Websites 4 Small Business

30 Ways to promote your business on a shoestring budget - Tip 3

3. Search Engines & Directories

A search engine is a searchable database of websites collected by a computer program (called a crawler, robot or spider). When you enter a keyword, the search engine looks for keywords in its database, and any relevant records are displayed. Currently there are thousands of search engines and directories on the internet. Some of the main ones include:
Google - www.google.com
Altavista - www.altavista.com
Yahoo - www.yahoo.com
Excite - www.excite.com
AllSearchEngines - www.allsearchengines.com
Northern Light - www.northernlight.com
DogPile - www.dogpile.com
AllTheWeb - www.alltheweb.com
Lycos - www.lycos.com

When submitting your website to the search engines, you can either do it manually by going to the search engine website and adding your URL (website address) or you can employ the services of a Search Engine Submission company, who will do it for you.
www.submitexpress.com
www.wpromote.com
www.website-submission.com

Search engines try to list sites that contain good content, so you need keywords and phrases on your pages that best describe your service and products. For example, if you are a florist, use the words such as florist, online florist, virtual florist, wedding florist, florist in Sydney, florist on line, flowers, floral, bouquets, floral arrangements etc as many times as possible to ensure high search engine ranking. To find out what keywords your customers may be searching on ask your family and friends or go to:http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/http://www.wordtracker.com

Once you decide on the keywords, use them in
(a) Your website’s domain name
(b) The title of your page - This is displayed in the top bar of your browser window
(c) The heading of your home page
(d) The first paragraph of your home page
(e) Meta tags - Keywords, page title, description
(f) Titles of your graphics

Whilst it is important to use keywords as much as possible, it is also important you use them only if they are relevant and do not sound awkward. If you spam your keywords you may be penalised or even banned by some search engines.

If this all seems too overwhelming, you can employ the services of a Search engine optimization company, who will make your website’s content more search engine friendly to make it rank higher. www.melbourneit.com.au (for VIP treatment - advise you are our customer - partner ID 5597)www.websight.net.au
www.bmcoptimise.com.au
www.e-channel.com.au

For a comprehensive listing of search engines, go to:
http://www.web4business.com.au/ResourcesListSearchEngines.htm

Ivana Katz
Websites 4 Small Business
www.web4business.com.au

Before submitting your website to Google ...

Inclusion in Google's search results is free and easy; you don't even need to submit your site to Google. Google is a fully automated search engine that uses software known as "spiders" to crawl the web on a regular basis and find sites to add to our index. In fact, the vast majority of sites listed in our results aren't manually submitted for inclusion, but found and added automatically when our spiders crawl the web.Before you submit your website to Google, Google recommends you do the following:

* Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."

* Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

* Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

* Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold(tm) that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

* Avoid hidden text or hidden links

* Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.

* Don't send automated queries to Google.

* Don't load pages with irrelevant words.

* Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

* Don't create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.

* Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

* If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

For more information visit: http://www.google.com/ or for Webmaster Guidelines, go to:

http://www.google.com.au/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

Ivana Katz
Websites 4 Small Busines

http://www.web4business.com.au/