Search engine marketing vs traditional offline marketing. Most often, traditional offline marketing such as TV and radio ads cater to the masses. Out of the tens of thousands of TV viewers or radio listeners, there may only be a handful of prospects who are interested in your services or products. Sometimes, having spent thousands of dollars on these advertising channels doesn’t produce effective targetting at all! It all comes down to ROI and target marketing.

Search engine marketing produces high conversion rates. Research has also shown that search engine campaigns produce more purchases, catalog requests, newsletter subscriptions, and software downloads compared to banner ad and email marketing campaigns.

Should You Hire In-House Search Engine Optimizers?
Although many firms perform SEO in-house, research shows this may not be the best option. Most marketers spend less than 1 percent of their budget on SEO, even though optimisation can increase site traffic 75 percent or more.

Search Engine Marketing Company - Outsource vs In-House
A search engine optimisation expert can get you better rankings quickly. That’s because the experts spend all day submitting and maintaining listings so they can offer a range of choices in methodologies and pricing that result in the right strategy for your business, product/service and industry.

Search engine optimisation is a specialized field. There is a steep learning curve to search engine optimisation because every engine and directory has a different relevancy formula, and these change continuously. Search engine optimizers have to be able to tune your site to these search giants. Outsourcing gives you better time utilization so you can focus on your core business.

Outsourcing SEO is cost-effective compared to an in-house SEO because an search engine expert has the advantage of economies of scale after initial investment (time, knowledge, methodology, development, and technology). The investment required by individual sites is both substantial and lacks cost maximization.

Lester Boey works in an Australian SEO and Web Design company (Australian Search Engine Optimization and Web Designs Company). His life revolves around SEO; providing full-time and freelance seo services to US and Australian businesses. Email: projects@definiteweb.com

There are millions of web sites trying to get listed in the top 20 to 30 spots on the major search engines. That’s a lot of competition! So if you’re having a hard time getting those spots, maybe you should try some little used but effective seo strategies to get those prized listings.

One way to do that would be to do a search on Google, Yahoo or MSN using the keywords that someone would use to find your website. The key then would be to advertise on the top web sites. Now advertising on these top spots would probably be very expensive.

If you don’t want to spend any money, you could use the ten seo strategies listed below. Remember though, some of these strategies may not apply to every web site.

1. Ask the web site owner if they would like a free ebook to give away to their visitors. You could have them link to your web site to download the ebook or include your links in the free ebook.

2. Write an excellent article review of their web site, products or services. Then publish the review on your web site. Email the web site owner and tell him or her about it. They may link to your web site so their visitors can read it.

3. Submit content to their web site. Write articles and include your links in the resource box. If they are published, you’ll get a link back to your website which will help your search engine ranking.

4. If these top sites have discussion boards or forums then participate. Post questions, answer other peoples questions, and join in on conversations. Just make sure that you include your signature file and link at the end of your messages.

5. Ask the owner of the web site about trading advertising. If you don’t get as much traffic as they do, you could throw in some extra incentives or put their ad on more of your web pages.

6. Give the web site a testimonial for their product or service. Include a text link for your web site within the testimonial. They just might include it in their ad copy.

7. Post your text link on their free-for-all links page, if they have one. You may want to go back and post your link regularly so it stays towards the top.

8. If they have a free classified ad section then post your ads there. Make sure that you have a killer headline so their visitors will click on your ad.

9. If they have a guest book, sign it. Leave a short but sincere compliment about their web site. Be sure to include your signature file and link at the end of your message.

10. Propose a cross promotion deal with the web site. You could promote each others products or services in a package deal. You get your site mentioned and links back to your web site.

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Lewis Leake, Jr. is the webmaster of GrowNetProfits.com - subscribe to his GrowNetProfits Newsletter and get Work From Home Tools, Articles, Tips and Resources delivered to you twice a month. http://www.grownetprofits.com — Also get access to his new Subscriber’s Membership Site.
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Having greatly benefited from my relationship with Google in the past several years, I am dedicating this article to the search engine superstar.

I have to be brutally honest and relay that our friendship hasn’t always been rosy. I got to know Google several years back, when it was just a small fish in a big pond. I started to analyze its every move and realized that Google is a fickle, clever and extremely mysterious being. Still, I decided to get more acquainted.
Here are a few things I learned along the way.

When it comes to logic, Google is the queen

In other words, avoid participating in anything that may blacklist you from this search engine, including keyword stuffing, link farms and hosting 50 “sister” sites on the same server. Keyword stuffing doesn’t refer merely to the content of your site, but also the alt tags, headers, URLs and any additional areas of your web site.

Google likes to stay focused

When optimizing the individual pages of your Web site, try to hone in on one or two relevant keywords per Web page. Analyze each page and identify which keyword would be most suitable.

If you decide to optimize for two keywords per page, make sure that they are similar in context. For example, if you are optimizing for the key phrase “insurance leads,” you may also consider optimizing for “insurance sales leads” within the same page.

Google loves to travel

It is commonly known that Google loves links, both inbound and outbound. When it comes to search engine optimization, lots of research has focused on inbound links, but little has focused on the number of links on an actual page. It appears that Google favors sites that have several internal and outbound links over those that don’t have links.

If you have any doubts about this theory, simply do a search on any high-volume keyword or phrase within this search engine and analyze the first few sites that come up. Notice how the majority of them have numerous internal links on the main pages of their Web site.

Google is popular and expects you to be, too

The more popular your site is across the Web, the more Google will favor you. Obviously, having several high-quality inbound links to your site is key in achieving higher rankings. When identifying Web sites for inbound links, target the ones that are highly relevant to your site. For example, if you run a jewelry site, look for sites that are purely informational on the topic of jewelry or gemstones. Also, make sure that the sites you decide to partner with have a good PageRank (at least a 5) and online presence.

To save yourself a lot of hassle, conduct a keyword search relevant to your business and target the Web sites that show up on the first and second pages of Google (weeding out the competition, of course); contact the Web masters of those sites and tell them about your company and find useful ways to compensate them for adding your company’s information on their site.

If you have an affiliate program, don’t be shy to pitch it. If you have an online advertising budget, offer them a pay-per-click deal or monthly advertising fee for promoting your Web site. Note that partnering with these sites or purchasing ads should complement your overall marketing and business development strategy—and not be used merely to get link value.

Google gets bored easily

Regardless of whether your site is informational, e-commerce or just a sophisticated version of a business card, having quality content is crucial for search engine optimization. Adding to that factor is how often you update your site’s content.

If you run a site that has new content added on a monthly basis (do not overdo it), then eventually the Google “freshbot” will start visiting your site more often and index your new content into the database. The more content you update, the more Google visits your site and indexes it quicker. Do not refresh your content simply for search engine optimization purposes, but do take the effort to keep interesting articles, blogs and entries to keep your visitors coming back.

If you haven’t already noticed, keeping pace with Google is not an easy undertaking. It takes a certain level of knowledge, skill and creativity to truly benefit from this relationship. The rest is up to the stars.

Dali Singh is the Managing Director for Blueliner Marketing, a full service marketing and Internet consultancy specializing in Internet Marketing, Public Relations and Corporate Branding. Visit http://www.bluelinermarketing.com or email her directly at dali @ bluelinermarketing.com.

For people that are always probing the secrets to Google Adwords, testing different ads that get a better clickthrough rate, so that you can reduce your costs, is an ongoing game.

Taguchi gives a new level of this testing.

For those not familiar with the Taguchi method, the basic idea is that instead of simple split testing, you can test many variables at once. So instead of testing two web pages, each with a different headline, you can test 40 different versions of the page, like different headlines, different graphics, different forms, including a testimonial or not, shifting the order of copy, whatever you can think of.

What the system does then is uses some complicated math to figure out which factors contribute the most to your desired outcome, and you can then rapidly look at all the factors and make your optimized page.

The way marketers have been testing things for years, simple A/B split testing, is much different. You make two pages, each with a different headline, and do a test to find the winner.

Then you make two different pages where you change something else, and find a winner from that. By the time you have tested all 40 elements, you would have spent a lot of money and time in testing indeed!

One of my first thoughts when I started reading about this method was how it could be applied to Adwords. If you could test for one keyword, all the combinations that could get your ad the best response and optimize it dynamically, that would be pretty hot.

At the bottom of this article I’ll give you a lot of interesting links I found so you can learn more about Taguchi and all the software that is available, and if you find something new I’d appreciate it if you drop me a line and let me know.

Now, for Adwords enthusiasts, the obvious question is, can Taguchi help me optimize automatically to get the best Adwords ads out there and destroy my competition? Well, the answer is a tentative yes

The interview the profit doctors did with the guy who talked about the “Taguchi method” of multi-testing many variables at once, instead of simple a/b split testing, got me interested in looking to see if there were any resources that cost less than $150,000 per test.

Actually at the SES convention there was a company called
http://www.optimost.com/ , which did tests like this for companies like ask.com and ebay, for around $30,000 per test, and I am sure they are using the Taguchi method for this.

They have refined their stuff and have programs for ad agencies, and their system is very sophisticated, and very expensive.

There is another company that does this for fortune 500 companies called http://www.fortpoint.com/ that has clients like colombia house, accenture, wal mart, timberland, monster, Zales, sharper image, you get the idea.

Obviously this is a pretty cool service to use for ourselves, and then possibly to offer to our clients for big bucks.

I did a little searching and there is a guy who has actually
made a software for $247 that uses this method, and he has
a tutorial on how it works here:

http://www.splittestaccelerator.com and the demo at:

http://www.splittestaccelerator.com/STA_Demo/STA_Demo.html

The demo has some html code in it, but you could
get the idea watching it how to set this up.

This one is the most user friendly, and uses my favorite technology, php/mysql. You install it on your website.

The Taguchi method can be used for a lot of other things
besides marketing, like in manufacturing where you want
to test a whole bunch of different factors of design of
a piston or engine, for example, something to get optimum results.

If you are a math wizard, and can handle a program with kind of an arcane interface, for 2000 bucks you can buy this
program that runs on your desktop, or get an academic
version for 99 bucks.

http://nutek-us.com/wp-q4w.html#orderqt4 is where to go
for that. It is a bit of an egghead solution.

Also of interest is this, http://convertmoretraffic.com/split-testing-software/, which requires you to have a membership where you keep paying each month.

So far, the $247 guy is my favorite.

Here’s a bunch of other links to learn more if you are interested:

http://www.qualitytrainingportal.com
http://www.isixsigma.com/library/content/c020311a.asp

http://www.marketing-ideas.org/Taguchi-Method.php?PC=blogger-Taguchi-Method

www.Taguchinow.com

http://www.ee.iitb.ac.in/~apte/CV_PRA_Taguchi_INTRO.htm very eggheaded tutorial

www.design.caltech.edu/Research/Publications/90f.pdf

http://www.vertster.com this guy offers a system for 250 bucks a month

http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/old/14903851.htm

http://www.sitespect.com/?OVRAW=Taguchi%20method&OVKEY=Taguchi&OVMTC=advanced These guys are similar to optimost- no prices
probably means its pretty expensive

http://www.amazon.com/ mostly has books about the Taguchi method. Hopefully this taguchi amazon link willl get you there.

Even more:

http://www.chambal.com/csin/9780872634688
http://www.aicos.com/Courses/TaguE.html
http://www.isixsigma.com/forum/showthread.asp?messageID=31014
http://www.dnh.mv.net/ipusers/rm/loss.htm
http://www.eng.morgan.edu/~amalash/R-DES.html
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/wiley041/2004011335.html
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19940012609_1994012609.pdf

If you find some more interesting links, or better yet, some php/mysql software we can all use, please send them to me and I’ll include them in future versions of this article.

Steve Blom is one of the founders of In Touch Media Group (ITOU), a publicly traded company. For free adwords tips, tutorials and online videos, visit http://www.adwordstraining.org

SEO companies come in all shapes and sizes. You’ve got your solo SEOs that either a) do everything themselves and/or b) sub-contract out many aspects of each campaign while maintaining a tight control on the quality and results of the project. Then you have your big SEO firms that employ 20+ employees that handle various aspects of your account. These firms can often turn into SEO factories and can lack the ability to treat each client individually, because everything is done in bulk.

A third SEO firm is a smaller firm that employs a small handful of employees and may also sub-out a few various aspects of the campaign, but overall each client is treated with a personal hands-on approach with most of the campaign handled in-house with strict quality control measures.

The perfect SEM firm needs at least one (or more) of the following:

• Project Manager
  The project manager is responsible for overseeing every aspect of the SEM campaign. Their job is to ensure that each aspect of the project is given to the appropriate person to complete and double checks all work to ensure that the highest standards are met before it is passed on to the client. The Project Manager is the primary contact with the client and bears the responsibility of ensuring that the client knows that their campaign is a top priority.
• Lead Search Engine Optimizer
  The Lead SEO spends much of their time doing nothing but research. Researching SEO trends, search engine functionality, patents, white papers, etc. Their job is to ensure that they stay on the cutting edge of the technological changes that are coming down the pike. It is also their job to take this knowledge and apply it to each and every optimization campaign. From keyword research and organization to implementation of the on-page optimization factors. The lead SEO also overseas any optimization techniques implemented by sub-seos, link builders, etc. that may be managing the day-to-day tracking and tweaking of any site.
• Search Engine Optimizer
  All other SEOs work directly under the lead SEO and work to implement his “vision” of the perfectly optimized page. Each should do their own research and knowledge building but any implementations should follow the outline presented by the lead SEO. These SEOs should be responsible for the day-to-day optimization changes, as well as continuous research to ensure that any client’s site’s are free from potential currently unknowns search engine roadblocks.
• Coder/Programmer
  While all SEOs must have a significant knowledge of HTML, XHTML and CSS coding, it is helpful to have an additional person who is primarily responsible for the code optimization aspects. Optimizing and streamlining code can be a significantly time-consuming process, especially when ensuring each optimized page has full cross-browser compatibility. When not working on the optimization code, such a person would be working on developing and improving in-house tools, reporting systems, as well as publicly available tools.
• Copywriter
  The importance of a professional copywriter cannot be understated. SEO methods that simply take your keywords and try to place them into text are becoming less and less effective, not only for search engine placement, but for ensuring a quality user experience. Each optimized page should have its content re-written by a professional copywriter following project-specific keyword guidelines established by the lead SEO. SEO copywriter should have a marketing background and experience with ad testing and writing press releases, as well as general article content.
• Link Researchers
  This may be controversial to some, but it is increasingly important to have full-time link researchers continuously working on each campaign. Link researchers are responsible for seeking out other quality and related sites to do one or more of the following: Link to important sites, request links from important and/or related sites and submitting links to quality relevant directories.

As SEO becomes more marketing oriented, many more positions must be added for a firm to properly service their clients needs. Speaking strictly from an SEO aspect, these jobs are each an important aspect of achieving success with you optimization campaign.

Stoney deGeyter is president of Pole Position Marketing, a professional search engine optimization and marketing firm based in Reno, NV, providing quality SEO services since 1997. Stoney has is also a moderator in the Search Engine Forums and Small Business Ideas Forum. You can read his SEM blog at (EMP) E-Marketing Performance. You can email him with any questions at stoney@polepositionmarketing.com

Visitors and search engines love content-rich web sites, but just having a lot of
content on your web site is not enough. It all has to be relevant to a main topic with
each page or section of the web site having a specific theme (And yes, this includes
any resource or links pages the site may have). Each page should have its own topic
and content should not stray to a different topic.

If you are promoting your graphic design business and have a page on business
card design, stay on the topic and refrain from using a page title such as “Graphic
Design company in Vancouver, Canada - business cards, logos, letterheads”. Your
want the business card design to be the most important key phrase.

There are two main reasons for content relevancy. The first is so that visitors have
an easy time understanding the flow of your web site. Visitors who have to search
through multiple pages to find the information they’re looking for won’t be visitors
much longer. The average web site user takes about three seconds to decide
whether or not stay on a site. A clear idea of what your site is about should be
apparent immediately, followed by easy navigation to other pages that display
further topics in more detail.

The second reason for keeping content relevant throughout your web site is for
search engine algorithms. Keyword relevancy is an important part of search engine
optimization. The more relevant your web site’s content is for a specific term, the
more likely the site is to show up near the top of search results for the term.

Keyword density is another big deal with search engines. There is an optimal ratio of
key terms to the overall amount of text that must be used for search engine
optimization purposes. The more unrelated terms that are used consistently
throughout the content will bring down the percentage of more important
keywords. Keyword density matters throughout an entire web site, not just on
certain pages.

Other areas to keep an eye on are the contact page, about us page, and any other
pages that you may not think are important to have optimized for search engines
such as advertising info, privacy policy, etc. For instance, some web sites have
pages devoted to reciprocal links. There’s nothing wrong with them unless you link
out to a lot of unrelated web sites. The keywords that are used in the anchor text
and surrounding description text will detract from your overall site content if they
are not related. Incoming links from unrelated sites are fine, but keep in mind that
the links page counts as part of your web site as a whole.

Consider using a reciprocal links page as more of a resource for visitors instead of a
long list of irrelevant sites. This not only appeases search engines but your visitors
as well. And as mentioned before, both visitors and search engines should be kept
in mind when creating web site content.

John Metzler is the co-creator of Abalone Designs, Inc. - http://www.abalone.ca, a
Search Engine Optimization company in Vancouver, Canada. He has been involved in
web design and web marketing since 1999 and has helped turn Abalone Designs
into one of the top SEO companies in the world.

You finally have a website and you are ready to sit back and let the visitors start rolling in. How does that saying go? “If you build it they will come.” This may be true in Hollywood but certainly not true in the case of your website. You need to constantly work at improving your site to ensure that your website achieves a decent search engine ranking. This is a process that doesn’t happen over night but with some concentrated effort you can get better search engine rankings. Here are some tips on getting to the top of the search engines.

1. Keep your design simple! Avoid gratuitous uses of flash, images/graphics, and special effects. As cool as these effects are, they hinder or sometimes block the search engine from seeing your sites content. Whenever possible use external elements (stylesheets and javascript). Less code cluttering up your page means search engines can find and index your content easier, leading to better search engine rankings.
2. Research your competition and choose your keywords carefully. Keyword phrases tend to be more effective. For example: use “Toronto real estate web design” instead of web design. This could mean the difference between competing with 6 million websites or 100 thousand.
3. Make sure your web pages include good meaty content of at least 250-300 words per page. Search Engines analyze the relevancy of your page/site based on the content. Your keywords should be represented in your content – if your keywords are not represented, either you have chosen the wrong keywords or you haven’t thought out your content properly. Search engines like sites that change their content regularly so find ways to keep your content fresh but the message clear.
4. Use Meta tags (title tag, description tag and keywords tag) properly and use different Meta tags on each page of your site! Make sure your title is relevant and between 50 and 60 characters. Your description should not exceed 150 characters and should summarize the content of your page. Most importantly make sure the words/phrases in your keywords tag are represented in your content.
5. Use alternate image tags. Besides being a good design practice, alternate image tags help the search engines verify the importance of the images on your page. When appropriate use your keyword choices in your alt image tags.
6. Avoid using only image based navigation on your site. If you are using images as links to your other pages, make sure you absolutely use alternate image tags. Ideally you should also include text based links somewhere on your web page as well. You see this quite often in the footer of some web pages although you can always include test links in the content of your pages as well. Text based links help the search engines find ALL your pages not to mention they make your site more assessable. If your site is complex you should include a site map to help your visitors and the search engines find their way around your site. If you are using a sitemap put the link near the top of your page so that the search engine finds it quickly.
7. Use heading tags and bold to emphasize your keywords. Don’t over do this! If you have chosen your keywords properly, your keywords should already be in weighted areas of your carefully written content.
8. Do NOT use auto submit services to submit your site to the major search engines. As long as you have incoming links to your site from a site that has been indexed your web site should automatically be indexed. If you need to submit your website to a search engine do it manually and only once.
9. Research and gather external links from sites that are relevant to your own. If your site is promoting health food a link from a human resources site will not help your website rankings and may actually penalize your site.

To get better search engine rankings you need to keep it simple, natural and use your common sense. Don’t try to trick the search engines as this can often result in getting your site banned or dropped from the index.

Remember, it can takes month for your optimization efforts to pay off, but when they do you will enjoy better search engine rankings!

© 2005 Tanya Beaudoin o/a Office on Demand, All rights reserved. You are free to use this article in its entirety, as long as you include complete attribution, including live web site link. Please also notify Mrs. Beaudoin as to where the material will appear.

The attribution should read:
“Tanya Beaudoin, B.A. owns and operates a Web Design Company – OOD Web & Graphic Design Studio - that specializes in e-solutions and graphic design (including web design, search engine optimization and internet marketing products like e-stationary and newsletters). To learn more about getting better search engine rankings, please visit Tanya’s web site at http://www.officeondemand.ca

If you are a Webmaster looking to break in on the benefits
derived from link building then you are not alone. Thousands of
webmasters just like you, each day, are attempting to establish
a strong link building net for myriad reasons. Why? What is it
about link building that has got webmasters scouring the
Internet looking for a way to establish links with other,
similar websites? The reasons and vast benefits of link building
are described below:

* More Traffic to Your Website:

First, the biggest benefit from link building is, of course, and
increase in your website traffic. When you agree to post a
reciprocal link for another website with a similar theme, you
will find that both you and the other website benefit from the
transaction. For instance, if visitors stop into the website you
link with and are looking for websites with a similar theme, the
reciprocal link provided by the website you are linking with can
bring traffic into your website. Clearly, the more links you
have with various websites the better as it gets your website
out there and noticed. In fact, you will find that as long as
other websites exist you can benefit from reciprocal linking and
traffic will be directed to your site from the links you have
established.

* A Higher Search Engine Ranking for Your Website:

Search engines determine the popularity of your site based on a
number of factors, including how many links are directed to your
website. The more links pointing to your website on the web, the
higher your search engine ranking is. Thus, it really pays to
establish a link building system in which you can create
reciprocal links to other websites that share commonalities with
your website as, not only do you improve your website traffic,
but you also improve your search engine ranking.

* An Increase in the Informative Nature of Your Website

If you are creating a website that you want to be informative
for viewers, then you will definitely want to add links to your
site. Adding links to your site suggests your familiarity with
the other websites on the Internet that address the same topics
as you do. Plus, for those individuals that are interested in
your website and don’t know where to look for similar websites,
you afford them the convenience of easily finding such sites–a
convenience that the visitor is sure to remember.

* Linking Increases the Credibility of Your Website

If you apply and successfully place reciprocal links to other
websites, the credibility of your site immediately increases.
Why? Due to the fact that other, reputable websites are linking
to you, your site’s credibility increases because visitors
realize that other webmasters deem you a credible source on the
Internet. Finally, credibility goes a long way in many Internet
communities–people will begin to revere you as an expert and
you will be able to reap the rewards afforded to you through
your increased popularity and web traffic.

* Establish Connections within the Internet Community

By engaging in Link building, you can increase the number of
people you reach. Link building, in and of itself, is a form of
free advertising–for every link you establish; you establish
the possibility of reaching a new web audience. In essence, the
more people you reach, the more traffic you are able to draw to
your website. Plus, while you are meeting new people with
similar interests, you can become a serious member of the
Internet community. Finally, in becoming a member of the
Internet community, you will also increase your credibility.

* Suggest an Affiliation with other Websites

Even if you are not affiliated with a website, if such websites
decide to link to you, you have created the suggestion that you
are affiliated with such sites. Visitors will find that credible
websites have supplied links to your website and they will
believe that you have some kind of affiliation with the site
linking to you–an illusion yes, but a powerful one indeed–one
that increases your credibility on the Internet, as well as your
ability to be recognized.

Submitting a site to relevant directories can help you get that
link building campaign underway. There is no time like the
present to get your link campaign started–the sooner you start
establishing links from other sites, the sooner you can reap all
the benefits from link building.

The format for the site submission has changed in the free
Yahoo web submissions http://submit.
search.yahoo.com/free/request . At first it allowed you to
submit your site to it using the free submission form. This was
normally the home page, and you would hope that their spider
would crawl the rest of your website from there. Some webmasters
have found this inadequate and have submitted other pages that
Yahoo failed to notice otherwise.

More recently Yahoo allowed you to put in a text document with
a list of URL’s to simplify the submission process.

A few weeks ago I noticed that Yahoo also allows RSS feeds of
your website, Atom feeds, or a text listing of urls in this
submission form. What does this mean? What will Yahoo do with
the links in the RSS feed?

The text list of URL’s was obviously an effort to simplify the
process for Yahoo to find all the pages in a website, as their
documentation describes. But the RSS? Will they just add this to
their database of RSS feeds for RSS searches, or will they
follow the links with their spider to evaluate all the pages
listed?

I have been working with Google Sitemaps since they came out.
(Google uses their XML-formatted Google Sitemaps to help
discover all the pages in a website, as well as to evaluate what
pages have changed recently.) I am wondering if this is Yahoo’s
response to the Google Site Maps. Does anyone know?

If I was them, then I would use RSS feeds to evaluate changes
in the website. This has more information than the list of
URL’s, since it also has descriptions and date changed. They
have all the right information. If this is the case, it would be
advisable for webmasters to have a RSS feed for their whole site
to submit. That way Yahoo could just check the feed and know
what pages to re-crawl, or what pages have been added.

It could be just as possible that this is just a field for us
to submit RSS feeds, in addition to the other pages in your
website. If this is the case, then we may need to submit both
the feed and the home page of the website.

For myself, unless I find out differently, I am going to submit
both. I intend on having a Google Sitemap and a RSS feed on all
my future websites. I think it is safest to help out the search
engines in any way possible. If they want information on what
files have changed, I want to be proactive in giving it to them.

In addition, for those who have the coding experties, it is
advisable to automate pinging Yahoo when your RSS feed changes.
This is a standard blogging technique.

If you use movable type, the following article will help you
configure your Yahoo to be automatically notified of a change in
your RSS feed: http:/
/jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/001490.html . There is an
alternate way, for those who don’t have movable type or standard
blogs. Lets say you want Yahoo to know about the RSS feed you
built for http://www.yourwebsiteurl.co
m and have the RSS file, myRss.xml. You could
automate (or even have a web shortcut for) the following HTTP
request: http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=http://www.you
rwebsiteurl.com/myRss.xml

For more information, see the official Yahoo documention on RSS
here: http://publisher.yahoo
.com/rssguide

I don’t know about you, but I felt a lot of internal resistance when it was first suggested to me that I write ‘for’ the search engines.

Years of training and habit, and a lot of pride, turned me against the idea of adjusting or changing my copy to suit ‘spiders’. It’s about the reader, not some computer. Right?

The whole thing smelled of compromise to me. And as us ego-driven writers all know, compromise is not something we like.

Well, I’m pleased to say that my pride finally shuffled off to one side a bit and allowed me a more objective look at the whole thing.

And now, well, I’m something of a convert. I have been for quite a while now.

Not because I have made that ‘compromise’. But because it became evident to me that both spiders and readers are looking for exactly the same thing…

Relevance.

Spiders are becoming more and more sophisticated in determining the relevance of a page when matched to a keyword or phrase that is typed in by the user. In short, pages that are most likely to satisfy the needs of the reader are being delivered first.

The spider looks for relevance. And the reader hopes for it.

And that’s where the writer comes in. Using Overture’s Search Suggestion tool, or something a little more sophisticated, like Wordtracker, you can research which words and phrases are being used most frequently by people in search for your kind of page. These are great resources for writers, allowing us to drill right down to the words that our prospects and customers use.

And how better to make them feel they have come to the right place than to greet them with the exact words and phrases they are looking for?

And once you start getting really serious about being relevant to the needs of your visitors, the implications begin to snowball. Not only do you start writing in a very relevant way, but it also makes you start thinking about more fundamental issues – like the structure and architecture of the site in general.

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Article Resource: Read my review of WordTracker here

Nick Usborne is a copywriter, author, speaker and advocat of good writing. You can access all his archived newsletter articles on copywriting and writing for the web at his Excess Voice site. You’ll find more articles and resources on how to make money as a freelance writer at his Freelance Writing Success site.