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 Issue #41 - March 1st, 2004 Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Businesses
Brought to you by idesignbusiness.com http://www.idesignbusiness.com Issue # 41 Monday, March 1st, 2004 In this Issue: ARTICLES: ONLINE POLL: FREE RESOURCE: Welcome to issue #41 of the idesignbusiness Internet Marketing Newsletter. There has been a buzz on the Internet over the last few weeks about changes in Search Engines and listings. The big news is that Yahoo! is developing their own Search Engine and won‘t be using results from Google any longer. I think this is good news and hopefully Yahoo! will accept, and provide fair listings, to free submissions. In general, competition is healthy an I think website owners will benefit from this development. On the downside, it means one more set of standards webmasters will have to adhere to when submitting their site to Yahoo!. Every search engine has a different formula for indexing pages and I‘m sure Yahoo! will have its own quirks. The article in this issue is from a guest author and does a good job of explaining how Google ranks pages. Google is the #1 search engines so this is ”must-know“ information for Search Engine Optimization. We would love to hear any questions, comments, or ideas for future articles, just email us at newsletters@idesignbusiness.com Did you miss the last issue? You can always visit our idesignbusiness Internet Newsletter Archive and easily view and search all our past issues. Neal St. Clair idesignbusiness Endorsement MailBlocks - The Email You Want. The Spam You Don‘t. Sick of SPAM email? I was, so I decided to do something about it and see what options I had to combat unwanted emails. What I found was a great service called MailBlocks that lets you create a new email account that will be SPAM free or protect your current email address(es). Whether you want to start fresh with a new email address or stop unwanted messages to your current email address you won‘t be disappointed with MailBlocks. They offer 3 levels of service, including a FREE Account, so try it today and stop receiving unwanted emails for good! www.mailblocks.com Online Poll Do you know what your website‘s Link Popularity is? ARTICLE How Google Ranks Your Web Page Google is currently the Internet‘s most important search engine. In addition to being a top search in itself, it powers the search engine components of AOL and Yahoo to name just a few. So if you haven‘t figured it out already, you‘d better have some understanding how Google indexes and ranks your web page. This article does not strive to provide all the answers to Google rankings. It could take volumes and even then, search engines like to keep some things secret as they are intent on discouraging cheaters. This is not a technical document - it just provides you with tips on improving your Google rankings. What Google looks at: Link Popularity or PageRank: Google‘s version of this is called PageRank. Very simply put, the idea is that site A votes for site B by placing a link to site B on site A. Despite popular belief, simply exchanging links with a whole bunch of sites isn‘t necessarily going to increase your . The Google search engine analyzes the importance of the sites providing the links to your site. Focus on linking with sites with good rankings. Download the Google Toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com to check your PageRank and the PageRank of sites you link with. Be weary of linking with sites a PageRank of 0 ~ perhaps, they are new to the Internet, but they may also be a banned site. You don‘t want to associate yourself with sites that have been banned. You can see that Google does not index all the links to your site. Find out which links Google indexes by searching for your site "http://www.yourdomain.com" on Google. Then below your link, you‘ll see the option “Find web pages that link to http://www.yourdomain.com”. There you“ll find the pages that Google has found that link to your site. You“ll notice that many of these links may be your own pages. Be sure to link all your pages together as this can help increase link popularity. Link popularity is calculated on all the pages in your web site. You should generate links to all your important pages, not just your home page. There is some discussion that link popularity is declining in importance on Google.* The whole premise behind link popularity is that is that a site is placing a vote for your site by placing your link on their site. Well, with reciprocal links, the weight of that vote is lessened. Sites are exchanging links to increase link popularity; they are not necessarily recommending the sites they link with. Incoming Link Text: When building incoming links to your website, always use your keywords. Ensure you tell your link partners and others who want to link to you, to use the keywords you have chosen. For example: Good link: Work at Home Mom - Free Internet Based Business Tips & Ideas InternetBasedMoms.com has tips for choosing an online business, building a web page, search engines and promoting your business online. Not such a good link: http://www.internetbasedmoms.com ~ Work at home mom free Internet based business tips & ideas. Tips for choosing an online business, building a web page, search engines and promoting your business online. Search engine spiders read the text in your link and this may help your rankings for those keywords. The idea is if people are linking to you with those words in their link, then they must be relevant to your site. Meta Tags: Google considers your Title tag when indexing your page. It considers your Description Tags to some extent and sometimes uses them in search results, but does not consider your Keyword Meta Tags. For an introductory article on Keywords & Meta Tags, see: http://www.internetbasedmoms.com/keywords.htm Title Tags: Title tags play heavily in your ranking for a search on Google. Title tags with just your company name on every page are not going to cut it. Or are you a victim of "new page 1" title tags because you forgot to name your pages? If so, go fix your Title tags right now! The Title tag is what appears at the top of a Google search result, so it should describe what your business is all about and should include keywords people would use to find your site. Google will read about 59 characters (including spaces) in a Title. ALT Tags: Google also reads the ALT Tags that are attached to your graphics. They are a good way to include more keywords in your web page. They are also the words that appear when you move your mouse over a graphic (For more information on ALT Tags: http://www.internetbasedmoms.com/alt_tags.htm. Content: Google searches the content on your site to return relevant search results. Be sure to include relevant keywords in the text of all your pages. Also, try to keep them near the top of your pages - Google may not crawl all the way down your page. For example, if someone would search for your site with the keywords "cloth diapers" - be sure to include those words in your Title tag and near the top of your web page. Domain Name: Having your keywords in your domain name may boost your ranking. Google seems to favor sites with keywords in their domain. For example, if you search for "diaper" on Google, the top results have the word "diaper" in the domain name. Those are just a few basics to Google rankings. Incorporate some of these suggestions into your web page, wait for Google to update in a few weeks and see the difference. Determine what works and what doesn“t and continually improve your site based on what you discover. *see PageRank Explained by Chris Ridings of http://www.searchenginesystems.net ____________________ Alice Seba is the editor of http://www.internetbasedmoms.com and author of An Internet Based Mom“s Guide to Marketing Your Website ~ http://www.wahm-internet-marketing-guide.com ~ an essential guide for any mom with a cyber business. Advertisement Don‘t Pay More Than $9.95 mo. For Website Hosting! If you are paying more than $9.95 per month for website and email hosting than you are paying too much! idesignbusiness provides affordable and RELIABLE website hosting with comparable features to much more expensive plans. * Newsletter Subscribers - Enter promotional code HELIUM and you‘re setup fee will be waived...Sign up today! Click here to learn more. FREE RESOURCE: Each issue of the Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Businesses will include helpful free online resources to promote your website. Workz.com is one of the best online portals I have seen for small and home-based businesses. They provide tons of free articles covering Internet Marketing, provide a small business directory organized by topics, and offer many free website tools. This is a very well-organized site and is updated daily. Visit Workz.com ABOUT idesignbusiness idesignbusiness provides complete Internet services for small businesses including Website Design, Website Development, Hosting and Internet Marketing. Increase Website traffic, build your customer base, and drive revenue using our cost-effective and result driven tools and services. Please visit http://www.idesignbusiness.com for more information. SUBSCRIPTION NOTICE This newsletter is only sent to opt-in subscribers. If at anytime you would like to be removed from this list, please send an e-mail to newsletters@idesignbusiness.com with REMOVE in the subject line or click on the remove link below. Spread the word - Please forward to friends and colleagues. Copyright 2002 - 2004 idesignbusiness http://www.idesignbusiness.com |
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