Would you buy a house without checking out the neighborhood and schools first? Or a car without researching its reliability and safety ratings? Of course you wouldn’t, unless you enjoy throwing caution to the wind (and in that case, you can stop reading).

Search Engine Optimization is – or at least should be – all about seeing improved results on your website. That’s why it’s crucial to ask to see an SEO company’s case study information before selecting them for your SEO efforts. While you’re at it, ask to meet the SEO staff who will be optimizing your site.

Sound a little over the top? Maybe, but here’s the thing: it’s really fashionable for businesses to jump on the SEO bandwagon right now, regardless of whether or not they actually know how to do SEO. Many of these companies don’t even have dedicated SEO staff; they simply outsource the work. Ad agencies, for instance, desperate to make themselves more relevant, are some of the worst offenders – they often claim to do SEO despite not actually having a single SEO person on staff.

What can you really learn from a SEO case study?
An SEO case study can provide a treasure trove of information, including answers to the following questions:

How does a firm approach SEO? Case studies provide a perfect opportunity for an SEO firm to show off their strengths, strategies and results, giving you a good idea of what they can do for your business. You can see what they’re most focused on: search engine rankings, link popularity, conversions, or all of the above. It may be possible for you to determine if they use ethical “white hat” strategies, or more risky tactics that could end up hurting your efforts in the long run.

Do they track and compare key statistics? You can see how thoroughly they track and compare data. And you may even be able to get a glimpse through graphs and screenshots of the kinds of tools and analytics programs the firm uses. Accurate tracking is obviously critical to your SEO efforts; if a firm can’t tell you where you are and where you’ve been, how can you trust them with where you’re going?

What industries do they serve? Or are they a generalist? You can find out if a firm specializes in certain industries, which is excellent information to know when determining if they are a good fit for your business. Maybe you have a manufacturing site and are looking for an SEO firm with experience successfully optimizing similar websites. Or perhaps you’re a local business and are looking for a firm who knows your local market inside and out.

What if a company won’t supply SEO case study data?
If an SEO company won’t supply case study data, then generally speaking that should send up a red flag. Here are some likely scenarios as to why an SEO firm might avoid providing case study data, none of which are good:

• not actually having any clients to document
• not actually doing the SEO work themselves thereby not having access to data
• not being able to produce good enough data to document
• not properly tracking data (making before-and-after comparisons a challenge)
• not wanting to divulge their clients
• not using SEO methods on the “up and up” (i.e., unethical or Black Hat strategies)

What should a good SEO case study include?
Let’s break it down a little further: a good SEO case study should give you a well-rounded picture of the challenges facing both the client and the SEO firm, as well as the strategies and results used during the optimization process:

Background/Challenges: This part of the case study may include client history, as well as details regarding the challenges facing both the client and SEO company. These challenges might include being in an ultra-competitive industry, having a totally un-optimized site, having previously been banned by the search engines, etc.

Strategy: Next, a good SEO case study should lay out how the company approached the challenges and what they did to improve the site’s rankings, traffic and conversions.

Results: A good case study will lay out documented results in key areas like search engine saturation, link popularity, search engine rankings, etc. And, of course, since SEO is ultimately results-focused, a case study should include sales and conversion information if available.

Conclusion

SEO case studies should be one of a company’s best marketing tools. That’s because if they are able to produce good, documentable results using proven SEO strategies, they’ll want to show off those results to secure new clients. The proof’s in the pudding, right?

Author: Collyn Floyd
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Credit card currency-exchange fees

Search engines are usually not interested to promote or suggest an SEO service because they lose ad revenue and are held liable when the SEO firm does a bad job. SEO organizations do not work due to the power struggles between various marketers.

Why Search Engines do not like SEO

Search engines straight away cannot agree with SEO services since SEO services providers may or I can say directly affect their revenue search engines are getting through the pay per click programs they are offering. So, there is no official guidelines for How to SEO. Search engines always give a brief guideline but never provide a precise help required. Because if they had direct rules someone can find or crack a similar techniques to manipulate the search results thats were still under their TOC rule book. What matters in the SEO industry is results. How did the top site get there? How can my site rank at the top?

Why You can’t Trust an SEO Based on Their Rankings

A Site owned and run by an SEO which is doing good and for competitive terms will rank well, still there is no guarantee that the search engine will do a good job for them. Because I have come across a lot of website owners who buy SEO services lose money and again bought a different service from a different SEO. Some SEO’s have qualities outside the Box thats makes them popular and help them spread the message. This help does not mean that these guys are good at promoting your websites, only that they are good in promoting their websites.

Quality SEO is always expensive and takes more time. But because of bad SEO’s in the market the entire SEO field gets tarred with the same brush for the action of few bad people. Some companies rum PPC as regular SEO. But one thing always keep in mind that organic SEO if always different from PPC marketing.

The Problem with Labeling SEO’s

A website is important or not but the main task for an SEO is to make a search engine believe that the site is important. No matter how you do it, the job of the SEO is to improve rankings and to drive traffic. It depends upon the website to website that which techniques is to be used for the promotion. Because there are certain categories which are very competitive so an SEO has to work outside the SEO guideline ( think out of the box) set by the major search engine like Google, yahoo or msn. So, Ultimately it is up to the SEO service consumer which path he/she has to follow to achieve their goals to promote their website.

Other Problems with SEO

Some foolish SEO’s do stupid stuff that will get your website banned from search engines. These are not the only problem in SEO industry there are some lazy SEO’s to do a good job. Its for sure that your site won’t get banned if you are not aggressive. For SEO many keywords requires research, loads of efforts, and extensive link building.

For Example link building is the most time consuming and most expensive part of SEO. But often it is skipped of not done properly by many members of SEO community.

So, it’s my advise to please review a company of consult with someone before investing on your website for an SEO.

Author: Vikramjeet Singh Sra
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Canada duty

Although they may sound similar, SEO content providers and SEO writers are actually quite different in practice when it comes to search engine optimization. While it’s true that they both provide valuable services to website owners or similar, there’s actually one main area where the two are completely different – and it’s in the name itself. Whereas SEO writers will generally write articles for a website or blog, SEO content providers will also look at the overall SEO of a website to maximize its SEO visibility.

Writing SEO

To really understand the difference, you need to know what an SEO writer is. Whether it’s for their own website or blog, or creating articles for a client’s website, blog or even article directory like EzineArticles.com, an SEO writer usually only writes keyword rich articles. That’s not to lessen their worth – far from it, since SEO writers need to know how to distribute keywords effectively throughout their articles.

However, SEO writing is completely different from SEO content writing – after all, an article for a website or submission site can be on pretty much any topic that the writer or client wishes. It may be that the writer wishes to be known as an expert on a certain niche, so they write keyword rich articles to place on their blog or similar. Nothing wrong with this at all – but it’s a far cry from being an SEO content provider.

The SEO Content Provider Difference

While a good SEO writer may make for a decent SEO content provider, a decent SEO content provider will always make for a good (if not excellent) SEO writer. This isn’t said from a “mightier than thou” position either – it’s simple writing economics.

This is down to the different and more expansive roles that an SEO content provider has to fill. Not only do they need to provide strong, keyword rich and SEO-friendly articles and content, they also need to:

• Enhance the overall SEO of the website in question
• Work in conjunction with the website’s URL and meta tags for increased SEO performance
• Constantly provide fresh and relevant content to maintain SEO performance and visibility
• Be aware of the competition’s SEO and marketing methods
• Combine the SEO potential of website and complementary blog(s)

When you take into account the various roles that an SEO content provider brings to the online marketing table, you can see why there’s a vast difference between top SEO writers and top SEO content providers. Agreed, they both have their places and will continue to do so. However, to truly maximize your online visibility and presence there’s no competition – while an SEO writer will give you good keyword articles, for maximum results you need to look at using the services of dedicated SEO content providers and consultants.

Author: Dan Edgar
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Import duty tariff

Introduction – If you are still learning about search engine optimization (SEO), you are probably a bit confused about the difference between on-site and off-site SEO strategies. On-site tactics are more straight-forward for the beginner and are probably written about the most. I thought I would write an article and cover what I’ve learned. This pool of SEO knowledge comes from working with about 10 clients and another 10 personal web sites over an 18 month period.

To anyone with an SEO background, there are certain basic on-site SEO tasks that any web master, business owner, or Internet Marketer needs to be aware of. These include the following major components:

1) Title Tags - The title tag in your HTML meta code is the tag that tell the browser what to display in the title of the window at the very top of the screen. Because this text is so visible to the user, Google likes to rely heavily on this text as a clue as to what your page is about. As a result, it is a really important SEO strategy that your title tag be filled with keywords that are appropriate to the content of the web page. Furthermore, you really don’t want the same title tag on every page. This is not good for SEO. Instead, you want to have different keyword phrases in your title tags that properly identify the theme of that particular page. Remember, you are trying to help the search engines easily digest your content. That’s basically what SEO is. You want to aid them in their understanding of what this page is really about.

2) The first H1 tag - Similar to the title tag, Google will look at the first H1 text to appear on your page as a strong signal as to what the page is about. Use it wisely. Again, you want to place keyword phrases here that are thematically related to what the information on the page is conveying to the end-user.

3) The name of the page itself - As you name your pages in your web site, use plain English as much as possible for SEO. You will notice that WordPress uses this extensively in their blog software. This is no accident and WordPress is considered the best blog for SEO. For example, http://example.com/?On-Site-vs-Off-Site-SEO-tactics&AID=22 will perform much better for SEO than http://example.com/?AID=22. Why? Because there is descriptive text in the longer version of the page name that helps the search engine know what the page is about. Many people have written about issues around “dirty links” and SEO (links including system variable data such as AID=22 in the example above). I think it is better if you can design your system without any variable data at all. It just takes this SEO issue away. And it’s just easier for the search engines. It’s also easier for the end-user. However, there is no problem promoting pages via SEO with variable data in the links. I’ve been able to make both fly using the same SEO tactics with no problems. The search engines are smart enough by now to manage through that variable data. Just make sure your plain English is in there.

4) Keyword meta tag - This tag used to get a ton of play for SEO, but is now largely ignored by the search engines. I believe it fell out of favor due to manipulation and misuse. It is a tag that is not seen by the end-user, so unscrupulous web masters abused it and it became less-and-less important for SEO. Real SEO tactics don’t abuse or deceive. I still populate my keyword tags because I believe they are still looked at, but I don’t believe they are very critical. If nothing else, it’s another instance of your keywords. They all help SEO.

5) Description meta tag - This tag is still useful, but probably more for Yahoo and MSN. Since you will be in this part of your web site anyway to get the Title right, you might as well make this variable-driven as well and make the description appropriate to the page. Again, it can’t hurt SEO.

6) Keyword Density - This is very important for SEO. Keep in mind that the search engines are just large computer programs digesting your site and trying to figure out what it is about. One of the simplest things they do is to count up all the words and look for repeats. They then calculate percentages, or densities, of specific 1-word, 2-word and 3-word phrases that are found in your text. By looking at the most popular keyword phrases, their programs understand the important themes of your page. If you observe your own writing on a specific subject, you will see the patterns as well. I don’t recommend that you write solely with keyword density in mind as it will result in lower quality content. However, I also don’t recommend that you completely ignore keyword density in your content creation. My preferred approach is to write content straight-up for the first draft. Then, as you edit for grammar, consistency, and clarity, also edit for density. Run your content through a density checker and see what phrases are used the most. Make adjustments accordingly so that your top themes / keyword phrases are showing up between 2-4% of the time. But don’t do this to the extent that anything reads as unnatural. You need to always keep your audience in mind.

7) Outbound links - What your page links to matters, in terms of both the quality and quantity of links. As you build links out of your page, be specific about where they go. Don’t link to low-quality or bad-neighborhood sites. Also watch your number of links. Generally, the less the better. However, having no outbound links is not always good. I believe Google uses your outbound links as a way to position your site in the vast weave that is the Internet. Often times, Google can get a good feeling about what your site is about just by looking at who you link to. So again, select these links wisely understanding they will actually impact your SEO.

High-quality, original, content - I probably should have put this first because it can’t be stressed enough for SEO. Your site needs to provide high-quality and original content. You will read this maybe a hundred times as you research SEO. Content is king. And I firmly believe this to be true. If you are under the impression that the internet is so big that search engines can’t identify content as really unique, guess again. One afternoon spent playing with CopyScape will convince you that there is technology available today that is able to tell you if any given sentence has been repeated anywhere on the Internet. It’s staggering, actually, when you really think about that. The volumes of data are just outrageous. But if CopyScape can do it, I’m betting that Google can do it also. And I firmly believe that your site receives a positive bump when Google determines that the content is original. Many people have asked me if using content that is repeated on other sites will penalize the site. I believe the answer is no, you will not be penalized by Google (copyright infringement is a completely different and very serious legal topic that I won’t go into today). But I also believe that you won’t get where you want to be by using content that already has high mileage. The other hot debate related to how sites using duplicate content can actually rank higher than the site where the content originated from. Yes – This has been demonstrated empirically a bunch of times. But you don’t need to be too concerned with that for reasons we will get into later. Just keep your eye on the ball. Put in the time, energy and creativity it takes to create unique content and you will be rewarded. Plain and simple.

9) Appropriate amounts of content - Somewhat different from #8 is the issue of how much content to put on your site for good SEO. I don’t believe there is a single magic answer as each site has a different objective. But as far as SEO goes, I generally believe the more the better (assuming you are following #8). Give those hungry spiders as much food for thought as you possibly can. But let me also qualify that statement. You need ensure that your content doesn’t stray too far from the core message of your site. If it does, this can create confusion around what your site is really about. Tightly focused sites perform much better than more generically focused sites. For example, a site selling used Honda Civics that uses appropriate SEO strategies will probably get ranked higher and faster than a more generalized site selling all types of used cars. This is a generic statement, and there are many exceptions, but it’s a reasonable place to start your thinking about niches and themes.

Author: Al Zan
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Creditcard Currency Conversion Fee

Let me ask you three questions to get you thinking. Does your website offer an RSS feed? Are you promoting your feed effectively? Are you seeing an increase in profits as a result of offering a feed to your visitors?

I’m going to outline several actionable steps you can take to promote your RSS feed both internally on your own website and externally on other websites. Then I’m going to show you a couple of effective programs to generate more profits using your RSS feed. Read what I have to say carefully, and then act on the information. I guarantee you can take it to the bank! I’m not just reiterating what others have said before. I actually acted and performed on my own websites everything I’m about to tell you and the results are awesome.

Promoting your RSS feed effectively requires a two prong approach. Start with examining your own website. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using your feed first. Then focus on external promotion second.

The average visitor won’t understand what RSS is about, why it would benefit them to use it or how it even works. So there’s no point in slapping up the little RSS Syndication logo on your website, linking it to your feed file and hoping people will subscribe. The simple fact is that they won’t. You need to spend some time building a page on your website that briefly explains to your visitors what RSS is about and then show them how to use your feed.

Let me show you a solid example. Point your browser to this URL: [http://www.profitgazette.com/syndicate.php] On this page of my website I tell my visitors the various ways they can receive my content. Along with subscribing to the newsletter, a visitor is also able to subscribe to the RSS feed. I don’t want to overwhelm them so I keep it brief and educate them with four points. “What is RSS? How can I use RSS? How do I get a News Reader? Can I use these feeds on my website?” See also in the top of the left column of that page (and every page on my website) how I give the visitor a quick teaser, mention a benefit to them and give them a link to my “RSS education” page? That’s how I get my visitors to discover what RSS is all about. Then if you look in the center near the top of the page you’ll see the little orange RSS image which doesn’t just link only to my RSS feed file, I actually use a small snippet of JavaScript to make it easy for my visitors to automatically subscribe themselves to my feed with whichever news aggregator they happen to be using. Just mouse over the RSS button on that page to see what I’m talking about. You can download a copy of that JavaScript for free at http://www.methodize.org/quicksub/

What’s next? External feed promotion. There are lots of websites that accept RSS feed submissions. I’m not going to drop a large list of sites into this article but I have put together a large list of them here: [http://www.profitgazette.com/rss-submission-list.php] Visit that page when you’re ready to submit your RSS feed. I personally submitted my feed to each of those sites and took a brand new website which I own from zero traffic to consistently maintaining an average of 80 unique visitors per day in two weeks from the date of submissions. So that really is a powerful submission list.

Now that you’ve educated your visitors on how to use your RSS feeds and are well into promoting your feed externally, what about optimizing your feed for the major search engines? Yes I said optimize. Did you know that you can optimize your feed to effectively garner traffic from MSN and Yahoo? Here’s how. Do some proper keyword research using WordTracker just like you would when performing a regular SEO campaign. Identify your top 3 key phrases and use them when you write the title and description of your feed inside your RSS file. The search engines will pick up on this and in conjunction with the items inside your RSS file they will rank you accordingly, providing you with an additional stream of traffic you never had before. To alert MSN and Yahoo to the presence of your RSS feed just visit http://my.msn.com and http://my.yahoo.com and add your feed to each page. That’s all there is too it.

By now you’ll probably be asking yourself “How can I make some bucks with my RSS feed?” There are a number of things you can do and programs you can participate in to generate a constant stream of revenue from your feed. Obviously if your website is product/sales oriented you could drop in an advertisement about your products at the end of each item in your feed. You could also apply for the Beta RSS program which Google Adsense is offering to select partners but there is no guarantee of being accepted. Although I have noticed that Google recently updated their Adsense terms of service agreement to include RSS and feed terminology. Perhaps this may mean that the program will come out of Beta soon. See this URL for more information: https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/topic.py?topic=957 Another search engine which offers publishers the option to earn revenue on ads placed in their RSS feed is Kanoodle. More information about Kanoodle’s venture into RSS is here: http://www.kanoodle.com/about/press_releases/02-28-05.cool

There is so much more to promoting your RSS feed and generating profit from it than what I could possibly hope to cover in an article and it really wouldn’t be fair of me to reveal all of the secrets when somebody has already put a lot of hard work and research toward putting them into a paid publication. If you really want to learn all of the top internet marketing strategies for RSS you should purchase a copy of Rok Hrastnik’s new eBook, “Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS“. I read Rok’s book from cover to cover and implemented almost all of what I discovered through him into my websites. The difference is not just noticeable results but a completely amazing increase in exposure and profit margin.

Author: Brendon Turner
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Benefits of electric pressure cooker

There’s no denying it, the Internet has changed. The change was so
subtle most people missed it. It was no great momentous event, just
a slight sideways flex in how information is exchanged on the web.
However, this slight shift has significant ramifications for anyone
trying to achieve top rankings in the different search engines.
So keep reading to find out how you can use this new SEO wildcard to
‘hotwire’ your site to the major search engines such as Google, Msn
and Yahoo.

Of course, the wildcard we’re talking about is RSS!

RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication.’ Basically, RSS allows you to
directly deliver your content to all interested parties… don’t come
to us; we will deliver the information to you or your website. It
syndicates your content. In a nutshell; it’s simply a more efficient way to
get your content ‘out there’.

It was first used by News sites to send updated headlines and
brief summaries to all interested parties. Many people associate
RSS with Blogs or Blogging because Blogs are usually written in
XML or RSS format (code like HTML) so that these headlines and
postings can be easily read and accessed.

Although the change may have been slight, the ramifications of RSS
may be long lasting and far reaching. As the major search engines
incorporate RSS into their SERPs and Algorithms, RSS may even play
a larger role than many people realized at first glance. However,
RSS emergence as a dominant SEO factor is not really a big surprise;
RSS presents ‘raw-timely-content’ for the search engines to serve up
to their patrons — its just what the ‘info pushers’ ordered.

Therefore, you must optimize or position your site to take full
advantage of the RSS wildcard. RSS Positioning! Simple RSS strategies
that you can use to position your site with the major search engines
including Google.

Actually, Google has just introduced a new XML powered Sitemaps. You are
basically setting up a direct ‘hotwire’ — linking your site to Google.
Any or all changes on your site can now be instantly updated and indexed
by Google.

How It Works

There are several ways to set-up a XML Sitemap, perhaps
the easiest way is to use the open-source Generator which
you can download from Google. This is a Python file that
you can upload to your webserver and this generator
will create a sitemap from your ‘URL lists, webserver
directories, or your access logs’.

Once done, you have to then submit your newly generated XML sitemap
to Google — the search engine will use this XML sitemap to
update and index your site whenever you make changes on your site.
You will need to have a Google account.

You may also submit text files containing URLs from your web site
to be included in Google Sitemaps but these text files will have
or will be given low priority for the time being.

To get started on your own Google Sitemaps Account you can click here:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

But Google’s new Sitemaps is just the latest way to use RSS positioning,
its not the only way! You can further optimize your site by
using the following RSS strategies:

Build RSS Feeds and Blogs for Your Keywords.

One of the best ways to use RSS is to set up a Blog and RSS feed for
each of your major keywords. Any major topic or subject on your site
must or should have a Blog and RSS feed to compliment your site’s content.

To optimize fully, it is best to have a separate IP address for each of
these Blogs, different from your site’s IP address. You can even use Free Blog
sites like Bloglines (owned by Ask Jeeves) or eBlogger (owned by Google).
To take full advantage, it’s best to use ‘unique content’ in these blogs
and make sure you link only to high PR quality sites.

Ping Your Blogs Regularly

Pinging your blog posts regularly will alert the search engines new
content has been added to your site or blog. Most of you have probably
noticed by now that using sites like ‘MyYahoo’ to ping your blogs
and RSS feeds is a great way of getting your sites spidered and
indexed quickly in the major search engines.

Pinging is simply sending out a signal to all the weblog tracking
sites that your site/blog has been updated.

Here’s a site http://pingomatic.com that will ‘ping’ you blogs
automatically.

Add RSS Feeds to Your Site

Another way to attract the search engines is to place high quality RSS
feeds on your site related to your subject area. Use these feeds to provide
valuable content to your visitors.

And it’s quite simple to do; just add “&format=rss” at the end of the
URL in your Msn search engine query. For example, to get an RSS Feed for
‘tsunami relief’ you would use this url:

http://beta.search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=tsunami+relief&format=rss

In Yahoo the URL would be slightly different:

http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=tsunami+relief&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&x=wrt

Of course, you can change ‘tsunami+relief’ with the keyword or phrase of
your choice to suit your website’s content.

Conclusion

Trying these RSS positioning strategies will give your site added
visibility on the web and a greater presence in the major search
engines. It will create dynamic links to and from your site and this will
result in faster spidering/indexing of your sites. You should be using
RSS to basically ‘hotwire’ your site or sites to the major search engines
such as Google, Msn and Yahoo — in fact, it should be your number one priority.

RSS is still relatively new; despite the popularity of blogging,
podcasting, MyYahoo and the RSS featured Firefox Browser, it hasn’t totally gone
mainstream. Many webmasters have not yet optimized their sites for RSS,
so you can give your site a slight competitive edge if you act quickly.
By taking full advantage of this new technology you will see a marked
improvement in your site’s traffic, not to mention a noticeable increase
in your site’s rankings.

So don’t delay, ‘hotwire’ your site by utilizing the RSS factor and you
might be pleasantly surprised where it takes you!

Author: Titus Hoskins
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Programmable Multi-cooker

Marketers are constantly asking if RSS marketing works and if this can be proved.

It’s time to take a look at some real-life RSS metrics from real-life marketers. These will show you what kind of results you can expect to see from RSS.

I first presented this data at the Syndicate Conference in New York City, the first conference entirely devoted to RSS.

To make a point, well take a look at RSS metrics from 4 different viewpoints, each demonstrating one facet of RSS marketing and a different way of capturing RSS metrics. This data combined will give you the answer of whether RSS marketing is for you, as an addition to e-mail marketing, or not.

1. CLICK-THROUGH RATES FROM RSS FEED TO SITE: THE RSS AGGREGATOR SIDE

RSS statistics should be most relevant when coming from actual RSS aggregators and their vendors, since these people can measure precisely how their users are actually using RSS.

Customer Reader [http://www.customreader.com], who just recently launched a desktop RSS aggregator, which marketers can brand for themselves and then distribute to their readers, supplied us with their latest data. This data is based on 3,500 users of their brandable RSS aggregator and on the last [two weeks ago] 48 hours of their reader usage.

The most interesting piece of data is the 23% average CTR (click-through rate) from feed to site within last 48 hours, which proves that RSS works in terms of getting readers from the outbout message to the site. RSS users are actually clicking on RSS content!

Now, what is the feed-to-side CTR? It simply means that 23% of the end-users that subscribe to various feeds, clicked at least once on one of the content items in the feeds they are subscribed to.

2. CLICK-THROUGH RATES FROM CONTENT ITEM TO SITE: THE RSS SOLUTION VENDOR SIDE

Considering the different RSS metrics systems and the fact that no marketing tool whatsoever can be measured 100% precisely from the outside tracking service side, seeing stats from RSS solutions vendors is important as well.

On this end, some basic stats were supplied from SimpleFeed [http://www.simplefeed.com], the providers of one of the more advanced RSS marketing solutions.

The stats are based on an app. 10,000 end-user sample, 30 day average and 4 months of data.

They are seeing a 6.8% average CTR from content item [individual content item in an RSS feed] to site and a 150% [1.5 clicks] average CTR from feed to site within 30 days.

3. SUBSCRIPTIONS AND CLICK-THROUGH RATES: THE MARKETER/PUBLISHER SIDE

And finally, let’s take a look at the stats from the publisher/marketer point of view.

Lockergnome.com is one of the most popular tech sites on the internet.

Although they are serving a more tech savvy audience, Lockergnome is an excellent example of the results you can ultimately hope to achieve using RSS.

First of all, they are seeing a ration of 5:1 in favor of the number of RSS subscribers against e-mail subscribers, and even more interesting, a 500% better clickthrough ratio with RSS than with e-mail.

4. SEARCH ENGINE VISIBILITY

The BTI Group is a smaller VoIP provider and, through their high ranking blogsite [http://blog.btigroup.com/], the proof that RSS works for search engine positioning.

Here are just some of their achievements, as a result of their RSS marketing activities

a] 120 page-one search results on important industry search terms #1 Voip vs traditional phone system  #1 VoIP solution provider #2 VoIP small business #2 VoIP architecture #5 VoIP phone equipment #6 VoIP benefits #7 VoIP Small Business costs

b] A 75% increase in traffic to the corporate website

c] BTIs link popularity jumped from 164 in June 2003 to 1312 in December 2004 to 1405 in February 2005

OVERVIEW

These metrics clearly show that RSS works for marketers and publishers.

This data alone, also considering that RSS clearly gets 100% of your content delivered and actually provides you with an abundance of new marketing opportunities, such as podcasting, should be enough to make you do something about RSS now.

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

Author: Rok Hrastnik
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Electric Pressure Cooker

You hear so much talk about RSS these days on the Internet and in
the media. Everyone is acknowledging it’s importance in boosting
your site’s presence on the web. Not to mention how it can increase
your site’s traffic and ranking. But what exactly is RSS and how can
I actually use it on my site? Try these Five Easy Ways…

First, just what is RSS?

RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. Basically, RSS allows
you to directly deliver your content to all interested parties…
don’t come to us; we will deliver the information to you or your website.

It syndicates your content. It lets you send updated headlines and
brief summaries to your subscribers. In a nutshell; it’s simply
a more efficient way to get your content ‘out there’.

Many people associate RSS with Blogs or Blogging because Blogs
are usually written in XML or RSS format (code like html) so that
these headlines and postings can be easily read and accessed.

RSS has been around for awhile but it really didn’t catch
on when users had to use RSS readers or aggregators but with
the increasing popularity of MyYahoo, the Firefox Browser
and Blogging…RSS is becoming: more popular, more accessible
and more mainstream.

That’s great –you say– but just how do I put the
stuff on my site!

If you’re wondering how to actually use RSS and Benefit from
it — Try these Five Easy Ways…

1. How do I Get My OWN RSS Feed?

First, you need to get an RSS Feed for your site. There are
several ways to do this. Let’s just stick with the easiest.
You can use a site like http://www.blogger.com and start a Blog on
your site’s topic or any topic that interests you.

Creating a blog with sites like Blogger (owned by Google)
or Bloglines (recently acquired by Ask Jeeves) is quick,
fast, and painless. Within minutes you can have your own blog
up and running.

This Blog will also supply you with an RSS Feed that you can
place on your site. Get a XML or RSS orange button and place
it on your site. Link it to your RSS Feed url – this is your
atom.xml link if you’re using Blogger.

You can also use a MyYahoo button so visitors can add your
feed to their MyYahoo. Each time a subscriber opens their
MyYahoo site; your RSS Feed will be updated.

You can also add ‘MyMsn’ and ‘Bloglines’ buttons on your site.
Plus others, give your visitors every opportunity to subscribe
to your RSS Feed or Blog, and you will see a marked increase in
visitors to your site.

Of course, you can also get your own blogging software and install
it on your site. For those who want to choose this route, it might
be helpful to check out this comprehensive comparison of the different
blogging software here:
http://www.asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm

2. How Do I Place Other RSS Feeds On My Site?

Have a cool RSS Feed from your favorite site and you want to
place that Feed’s content on your own site. How is it done?

It’s a lot easier than you think!

There are several ways, but we’ll again stick with the
easiest way. If you just want to place headlines on your
site – try a free service like http://www.feedburner.com and you
will get a headline animator. This will display the RSS feed’s
headlines with links to the content.

If you want to place other content from a feed on your site
- one of the easiest ways I found is to use this free site:
[http://www.bigbold.com/rssdigest/]

This site will generate the source code (html or javascript)
that you need to place into your webpages. It’s good because
it gives your code in several options: Javascript, Php file,
and Iframe.

Keep in mind that Search Engines cannot or don’t read
javascript so if you want this daily updated content to be
indexed please be aware of this.

Just take this code and add it your webpages where you
want this content to go.

3. How do I place MSN Search Results Directly on My Site?

MSN has come out with their Beta Program using RSS in their
search. You can now place RSS search results directly onto
your website. It can enrich your site with daily updated content.

And it’s quite simple to use; just add “&format=rss” at the end of the
URL in your MSN search engine query. For example, to get an RSS Feed for
‘tsunami relief’ you would use this url: http://beta.search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=tsunami+relief&format=rss

4. How do I place Yahoo Results on my site?

In Yahoo the URL would be slightly different:

http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=tsunami+relief&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&x=wrt

Of course, in both cases you can change ‘tsunami+relief’ with the keyword
or phrase of your choice to suit your website’s content.

Yahoo also has an RSS Search Directory here:
http://news.yahoo.com/rss

5. What are Tags? How can I use them on my site?

Tags are more or less keywords for blogs and you should
take advantage of them to bring targeted traffic to your
site or blog.

Tags have hit the radar lately because Technorati, which
indexes 4.5 million blogs, started sorting blog posts by
using tags.

They have created a folksonomy, drawing tags from
different sources, mainly Flickr.com which sorts or
groups pictures and from del.icio.us — where you
create a tag when you bookmark a page.

Or if your blogging software supports categories; this will
be recognized by Technorati as a tag.

If you want to create a ‘tag’ it’s very simple; just place
this code in your blog:

Computers
(remove asterisks in actual code)

and you will have created a tag for computers.

Conclusion

You have just discovered five easy ways to put RSS on your
website, but you have to implement this newly acquired information
in order to see any results. You don’t have to try all five — just
pick a few and put them on your site. Just take action and do it.

It’s fairly easy, and you will see the benefits of RSS
almost immediately. You will also see what all the fuss is
about!

Copyright © 2005 – Bizwaremagic.com

This article may be freely distributed if this resource

box stays attached.

Author: Titus Hoskins
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: How Electric Pressure Cookers Work

Most webmasters today hardly have enough time to manage their web business and like to outsource most things which can be outsourced effectively. Outsourcing a web design or a service like SEO saves precious time and money when done correctly. The challenge most webmasters face today is finding the correct outsourcing partner. One who is well qualified to carry out the job, has the necessary references of past work experience and is also affordable. This article is an attempt to guide webmasters to correctly outsource SEO services.

The SEO Outsourcing checklist:

1. Does the SEO Company/Professional you are hiring have a pre-formed plan for how they plan to execute your project?

2. Are they professionally qualified and do they have any third party certification which can be verified by you?

3. Do they have a website where you can examine their credentials, prices, testimonials, SEO package details?

4. Do they have contact details on their website like a phone number and physical address (not a P.O box)?

5. What are their hourly rates and how many hours are they committing to your project?

6. Have they clearly specified all applicable charges upfront – for example, link subscription charges, post ranking maintenance charges etc.?

7. And most importantly, do they practise ethical white hat SEO? This is very important unless you want your site to get banned.

These are some of the pertinent questions you should ask when it comes to outsourcing you project. Most professional and reputed SEO’s / SEO firms will fulfill all the above requirements.

In addition to the above, you should ask your provider if your SEO service includes the following:

1. Site Visitor Usability and SE Indexability Analysis:

a. How user friendly is your website?

b. How Search Engine friendly is your website?

c. Does it have a clear navigation menu?

d. Does it have a Sitemap?

e. Is Important information easily accessible to the visitor?

f. Is there Javascript on your site? Does it contain Framed pages? etc.

2. Log file Analysis:

a. How much time are your visitors spending on your site?

b. Are they leaving in less than 10 seconds and why?

c. What are the pages they are viewing most?

d. Which keywords are visitors using to find your site?

e. Which Search Engines and other sites are referring the most visitors?

f. What are error pages are your visitors coming across? etc.

3. Keyword Analysis:

a. Are you using the right keywords for your site?

b. What is the search volume of your chosen keywords?

c. What is the KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) of your keywords?

d. How many keywords are you targeting for your entire site and what is your keyword sitemap (which keywords will be used on which page)?

e. Are you using synonyms and other keyword variants?

4. SEO Analysis:

a. Preliminary assessment report and competition analysis which should contain relevant information about who are your competitors, why they are ranking better than you and other details about your site like link popularity, Authority links, Trustrank links etc.

b. On page factors on your site that need to be changed or added, for example – meta tags, robots.txt, link anchor text, alt text etc.

c. Copywriting content for SEO

d. ILQ (incoming link quality) analysis

e. Creating additional content pages and rearranging existing pages if needed

5. Final Analysis and Recommendations Report:

a. To recommend step by step changes and actions needed from above 4 reports

b. Form a clear Action plan for executing recommended changes and a road map and timeline for it.

6. Follow up with Monthly Progress Reports and Ranking change reports:

a. Monthly progress reports should mention the details of the activity the SEO has carried out in the previous month for the client, the number of hours spent, links exchanged, links bought etc.

b. Ranking reports should indicate previous month rankings compared to past months for all keywords and the top pages.

7. Project Completion:

a. Finally, after desired rankings have been achieved, the SEO Company or SEO professional hired should provide a post-SEO recommendation Report for maintaining necessary rankings which should include the details of actions the webmaster needs to take to keep rankings intact, for example – paid link subscriptions that need to be paid monthly, article writing and distribution that needs to be done etc. If you have agreed to sign up for a post-SEO maintenance plan, this would be a good time to sign a fresh contract for a preset period – say 6 months or 1 year.

b. If the project was outsourced through a freelancers site like Elance.com, Guru.com, Scriptlance.com, Getafreelancer.com etc. make sure that you leave a truthful and accurate rating for the SEO company or freelancer you hired. This will help other webmasters evaluate them in the future.

c. All payment related transactions should be sorted out and payments due to the SEO firm, if any, should be made promptly.

Adhering to the above 7 steps and using them at the pre-bidding stage will ensure that you and your SEO company are on the same page, and they can then give you a more accurate quote for your job. This will provide you a complete SEO Solution.

We estimate that carrying out a full SEO job (including reporting) for a website, takes between 50-100 man hours of work for normal small business websites, 100-200 hours of work for a mid sized site and 200-300 hours of work for a large business site (depending on the keywords, quantum of work, type of site, backlinks, current rankings etc). These hours are generally spread over 3 – 6 months as achieving sustainable rankings takes time. If you are unsure about the number of hours that may be needed for your site, it is better to consult with a professional SEO firm beforehand. Most Search Engine Optimization companies will gladly give you a free estimate on the number of hours of work needed for optimizing your site and getting top ten rankings. Once you know that your site, for example, needs between 50-75 hours of SEO work, make sure that you mention this fact in your pre-bid stage as well. This will help avoid any misunderstanding later.

Most amateurs quote ridiculously low prices for SEO jobs on the freelance sites as A) they are not sure of the quantum of work involved, B) they are not qualified to carry it out, C) their definition of SEO is changing a few meta tags and other basic on page SEO factors, and/or D) they may still be in school/college freelancing part time for some extra pocket money. As a result – they muck up their client’s site and also waste their precious time. They can also get your site banned by trying black hat tactics as they do not have a reputation to protect.

The following should raise red flags:

- those who charge less than $20/hour

- promise to complete your job in 15/30 days

- estimate less than 50 hours of work

- have no website/blog

- cannot provide you references of real people (past clients).

- have no qualification/certification

- do not provide their telephone number and address

- cannot show you the top rankings they have achieved

One thing webmasters must remember is “if you pay peanuts, you will only get monkeys”. So, it always pays to hire a professional SEO Company for your important business website.

Author: Ameet Arurkar
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Smart cooker

In that particular SEO industry there are several SEO experts may come in various profiles with different working principles. They may do entire work by themselves and take care for each site uniquely. Because they believe each website require different phenomenal work done to receive successful search ranking.

On the other hand of the coin, you will find giant SEO services providers. Those firms employ several medium levels of SEO peoples to maintain numerous numbers of SEO campaigns. Thus it is quite assumable that they don’t have much time to separate the different technical requirements for several websites individually.

They are following just the simply working format or you can say working templates for all sites to get ranked and they practically doing this in a daily manner. In this way their sharpness level decreases simultaneously. Thus it is imaginable that they have a solid inclination to rotate into SEO factories.

Before you choose your service provider, you should check above tip for several SEO companies. You must check their recommendations for your site what they are going to deliver also check their glorious performances. Feel free to ask more questions regarding your chances about your success. Try to avoid technical terms and suggest them to talk to you in laymans terms.

Unluckily, SEO analysis is neither so easy nor so simply to do as it sounds. Search engine algorithms are getting more complex constantly as the internet world advanced. Thus you need an efficient SEO expert who will understand your business aim first and do the work accordingly. You don’t need any famous SEO firm who has no time to done any research work for your own site and will do the same work as they done for others.

SEO is an ongoing process not a single time matter. You require constant care and the research work also done side by side with other SEO work to keep your keywords on the highest position in all search engines otherwise they will rapidly fall down and disappear form top position which may effect your business growth.

Advantages of getting ethical SEO analysis

Hiring a growing ethical SEO expert or company for your small business is the finest thought to do if your wish to pull ahead yourself or your keywords amongst from your competitors. What accurately the benefits of receiving the services from a growing ethical SEO firm? Here are a few advantages of appointing an expert SEO analyst.

Specialized SEO experts have the depth knowledge on the methods to improve the search engine ranking of your keywords in all search engines, and able to do it speedily. It helps your website to create a superior sum of web traffic at your site.

Increment of the volume of authentic web traffic creation is also means an increment in sales of your business product and services. In ethical SEO you does not required PR on your web pages, it is automatically generated. You mostly concentrate at your keyword ranking which will put superb effect on getting superb web traffic.

SEO specialists will give you superior informative advice on effectual online web promotion and off-page marketing methodologies. You may advice them for searching the finest ways to lift your keywords at all search engines top positions within very wee time period.

Forget the cost estimation

SEO is the best way for those small business owners who have financial limitations for promoting their business into internet, because they don’t afford to spend lots of money for banners or ads. Thus people searching for those SEO firms who asking a least cost for search engine marketing.

But don’t stipulate yourself only at pricing; you should calculate their efficiency because a reputed SEO firm provides you SEO services at low expenditure, do not automatically mean that they will be efficient enough for your site.

Choose those SEO experts who have much time for done several type of research work for your site. Search engine algorithms are developing day by day and the SEO companies needs to know the latest tools, hasty methods and newest searching types which might help to increase keyword ranking at all search engines.

Author: Joanna Gadel
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Programmable pressure cooker