How to get your site a top ranking in GoogleWritten by Paul Bliss
It's new American dream. Your website appears in a top spot on Google for your chosen keyword. Next thing you know, orders start coming in faster than you can handle, and you are rolling in money. If only it were so easy, right?Well, It can be done. I've done it many times in many different industries. There is no secret, but rather, it's just knowing what to do. I've made just about every mistake one can make with a website, but I learned from every setback. If you were only allowed to do one thing to get ranked for your site in Google, without a doubt, all you'd need to do is get links for your site. Yes, there are many other factors involved in getting your site to a top position. But this is most powerful way as of this writing to get a top spot in Google. It's not just enough to have links pointing to your site, but you need to have your keyword "anchor linked" to your site. Anchor linking is when you use your keyword phrase as click-able text for a link. So, instead of saying "Click Here", you would use "Widgets" as link text. Now, another point of consideration is determening what keyword/phrase you want to use to get your site found. Most times, people impulsively choose a one word phrase. While this would be a great way to bring traffic to your site, would it bring targeted traffic, with people looking specifically for your product or service? Most times when people type in a one letter keyphrase, they are in beginning of their search. They may type in "Shoes", but are really looking for "Running Shoes". So, if you have a top ranking for shoes, do you serve that user's needs? Maybe, but they may also be looking for dress, casual, Women's, Men's, Children's, athletic, girl's, boy's, etc. This is why when you begin to optimize your site, you should focus on more targeted keyword phrases. Suppose you sell a certain brand name of dress shoes. For this example, we'll call famous brand XYZ. So, by getting anchor links as "XYZ Dress Shoes", you are already eliminating those users who are looking for another brand or line of shoe. Next, you need to make sure that page that gets linked contains on page content with "XYZ Dress Shoes". If you would link to a page without relevant content, Google would view this link as possible spam, or more appropriately, irrelevant content.
| | The Search Engine ShowdownWritten by Courtney Heard
f you're anything like me, you have a favourite search engine and you're loyal to it. You never use any others (which made this research difficult for yours truly), insist yours is be-all and end-all and you even go so far as to deny any shortcomings it may have. But is your search engine truly best? Inspired by a great article at BBC News (BBC News: Search Wars), we decided to compare major search engines. Here's what we found.We chose search term "real estate fiji" because it's a competitive industry and geographically specific. We also searched with same phrase, misspelled to see if search engine would suggest correct spelling. Google • Initially loading search page for Google is lightning fast. • The look is clean and easy to understand. • Search time was 0.15 seconds. • The search yielded 1,190,000 results. • All results on first page were relevant. • Spellcheck was available. Yahoo! • Initially loading search page for Yahoo! is a little bit slower than Google, but still fast. • Search time was 0.18 seconds. • The search yielded 711,000 results. • It is difficult to tell sponsored links from actual web results. • All results on first page were relevant, however one of them directed you to another set of results for your search at DMOZ.org. • Spellcheck was available. AskJeeves • Initially loading search page for AskJeeves is fast. • Search time was not posted and was much slower than Google & Yahoo!. • The search yielded 63,100 results. • Sponsored links take up whole screen. You have to scroll down to see web results. • All first page results were relevant. • Spellcheck was available. A9.com • Initially loading search page for A9 is fast. • Search time was not posted but was average. • The search yielded 209,000 results. • All results on first page were relevant. • There were image results alongside text results. This could be helpful. • Spellcheck was available. MSN • Initially loading search page for MSN is fast. • Search time was not posted but was average. • The search yielded 112,607 results. • All except one of results were relevant. This result pointed to Philippines real estate. Also, one results directed you to DMOZ, where a second search for your keywords is performed. • Spellcheck was available. Alexa • Initially loading search page for Alexa was fast. • Search time was not posted but was somewhat slow. • The search yielded 208,000 results. • It was difficult to tell sponsored results from web results. • Some results included screen shots. • The look was kind of disorganized. • Spellcheck was available.
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