Going once, going twice…
Pay per click search engines are based on an auction system. Advertisers bid on the position of their sites information in the pay per click search engine’s results for a particular keyword. The position the advertisers site holds is not static and changes real-time based on the bids of competing advertisers. The optimum positions are FIRST, SECOND & THIRD.

The rung way
The following are the basic steps involved in a creating your pay per click advertising campaign.

Step 1. Choose the keywords you feel people will search for to find your site.
Step 2. Complete the pay per click search engine’s registration form.
Step 3. Deposit funds into your account. (This becomes fully available for bidding.)
Step 4. Create your listings title and description so they properly identify what your site is offering.
Step 5. Decide how much you are able to bid per click and bid this amount for your keywords.
Step 6. Wait for your listings to be reviewed by the pay per click search engine’s editorial team.

The motion of the ocean?
It’s not the size of the pay per click search engine that should be your primary concern. Large ppcs get more searches and are able to provide advertisers with more traffic; however, this traffic comes at a premium.

The competition is so fierce for many keywords in the larger ppcs that advertisers sacrifice their ROI just to get their site’s listing into the top 15. On these larger pay per clicks I have seen bids go as high as $25.00. Suddenly smaller businesses are unable to compete for their main keywords. E.g.

Large pay per click search engine (traffic quicker)
1000 clicks @ $2.50/click = $2500.00

Smaller pay per click search engine (more affordable traffic)
1000 clicks @ $0.20/click = $200.00

The ideal scenario would be a combination of both in most cases.

What’s in it for me?
You no longer have to wait months for search engines to include your site in their results. Pay per click search engines get you traffic quickly. Some such as ww.netvisits.com will review your site in as little as 1 hour.

The guessing game is over. You choose the position of your site in the results based on your bid amount without the need to spend months optimizing.

You bid amount is subtracted from your account balance only when someone clicks on your link and visits your site.

Text links + descriptions get a higher response than banners. Assuming your listing title and description paint the right picture of what your site offers, users clicking on your link will have basically been pre-approved by your listing’s information which is also known as targeted traffic.

All Aboard
The pay per click search engine industry is growing rapidly. Companies both large and small are already making the most of this marketing strategy to increase their profits as well as their return on investment. Shouldn’t you be using them too?

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Haste makes waste?
Not in the case of pay per click search engines. PPC search engines provide advertisers with targeted traffic for as low as $0.01 per visitor. Advertisers are only charged for actual visits they receive to their site, not for the number of times their link is viewed (impressions). Editorial reviews of listings prior to approval ensure all search results meet the pay per click search engine’s listing standards.

If the cap fits should you wear it?
With the pay per click model you will be paying for traffic to your website aka paid advertising. Answer yes to any of the following questions and there’s an excellent chance that you could benefit significantly from pay per click ads:

• Are you looking to increase the traffic to your web site while maintaining the quality of your visitors?
• Do you currently do paid promotions for your web site?
• Does your web site sell a product or service?

How much toll to pay?
So you’ve decided that pay per click advertising could be for you but you are new to this strategy and aren’t sure how much to pay per visit to your site. Not to worry we have a quick and simple way to decide how much your visitors are worth.

*Note* - this is simply a guideline to approximating the value of each visitor to your site.

1. Check your web site statistics for the last 3 months and get the total # of visits, not hits, you received. (If your site is new then you may want to approximate these based on your business plan figures.)

2. Divide this figure by 3 to get the average # of visitors you receive per month.

3. Calculate the total profit received from web site sales in the last 3 months.

4. Divide this figure by 3 to get the average revenue your site makes per month.

5. Divide your avg. profit per month by your average # of visitors per month.

This will be the approximate profit you receive from each visitor to your site. You can base your bid amount on this value decreasing it to the point where you’re making a satisfactory amount of profit per visitor.

Results
In the end pay per click search engines will bring you traffic. You will be able to choose the cost of this traffic, you will receive targeted traffic, you will only be charged for actual visits to your site. For all websites small, medium, “extra medium” and large this is a viable advertising methods that many companies are already taking advantage of and benefiting from.

If you have a website that needs traffic or needs additional traffic then pay per click advertising should be high on your list of marketing tools.

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ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange - A universally recognized set of digital codes that represent each of the letters, punctuation marks, and other symbols you can type on your computer. What people usually mean by “plain text.”

ASP
Application Service Provider - Company that offers access to software applications and related services over a network or the Internet.

B2B
Business to Business - Refers to trade between businesses rather than between businesses and consumers.

B2C
Business to Consumer - Refers to businesses selling products or services to end-user consumers.

CGI
Common Gateway Interface - A way web servers pass information to and from application programs (to process forms for example). CGI programs or “scripts” can be written in several programming languages, including C, C++, Java and Perl.

CPA
Cost Per Action - Cost to an advertiser for each visitor that takes a specific action in response to an ad, such as subscribing to an ezine, requesting a free trial, or making a purchase. Also used to describe advertising employing this model.

CPC
Cost Per Click - Cost to an advertiser for each click on a promotional link by a site visitor or newsletter reader. Also used to describe advertising employing this model.

CPL
Cost Per Lead - Advertising expenditure required to obtain each new sales lead.

CPM
Cost Per Thousand - The amount charged per thousand impressions (showings) of an ad (”M” is the Roman numeral for 1000). Whilst websites sell ad impressions in blocks of 1000, with newsletters the number of subscribers determines the final price. Also used to describe advertising employing this model.

CPS
Cost Per Sale - Advertising expenditure divided by sales generated to determine the cost to make each sale; or the commission payable for each sale generated by an affiliate.

CR
Conversion Rate/ Ratio - The percentage of respondents to an ad, or readers of a sales message that complete the action desired (usually making a purchase, but can also be subscribing to a newsletter, for example).

CRM
Customer Relationship Management - Improving interaction with customers through better understanding, with the aim of increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty (thus increasing profits).

CSS
Cascading Style Sheets - Used to globally define how elements in a Web page are displayed instead of relying on HTML code in the page. Makes designs more flexible and reduces HTML file sizes.

CTR
Click-Through Rate/ Ratio - The percentage of website visitors or newsletter readers who click on a particular link. Used to measure response to ads or sales messages.

FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions - Often used as the title of a page on websites that answers commonly asked questions about a product or service.

FFA
Free-For-All Links - Web pages that allow anyone to add a link back to their own website, usually in exchange for accepting promotional messages from the FFA page owner.

PFI
Pay For Inclusion - Paying to have web pages included in a search engine’s database and regularly updated.

PPA
Pay-Per-Action - Affiliate commissions where a set amount is paid for generating a specific action, such as taking a free trial or subscribing to an ezine. PPL, PPC and PPS are usually considered as PPA.

PPI
Pay Per Impression - Where an advertiser pays for each display (impression) of their advertisement (usually a banner).

PPL
Pay-Per-Lead - Where a commission is paid for each sales lead generated by an affiliate. A “lead” is usually defined as somebody who signs up for a free trial, or requests further information, etc.

PPC
Pay Per Click - Ad sales or affiliate commissions where a set amount is paid for each click on a promotional link by a consumer.

PPCSE
Pay Per Click Search Engine - A search engine where the results are composed of advertisers who pay a fee for each click on their listing. Using a bidding system, the advertiser willing to pay the most is ranked highest.

PPS
Pay-Per-Sale - Where a commission is paid for each sale generated by an affiliate. The commission is usually a percentage of the sale, although sometimes it’s a fixed amount.

ROI
Return on investment - How much profit is made after advertising and other costs have been subtracted. A measure of how successful a marketing campaign is in terms of the returns on money spent.

RON
Run Of Network - Where ads (usually CPM banners) are shown (rotated) across the pages of the entire network of sites owned by a company, or controlled by a particular advertising network. Cheaper than only having the ad appear on selected sites.

ROS
Run Of Site - Where ads are rotated across the pages of a single site. Cheaper than only having the ad appear on selected pages.

SE
Search Engine - A searchable database of pages on the Web. Different from an Index (like Yahoo) in that pages are not reviewed by a human editor before inclusion.

SEM
Search Engine Marketing - Similar to SEO (below), and sometimes used to emphasize that generating quality targeted traffic is of greater importance than simply obtaining high rankings. Can also include PPCSEs and other search engine advertising.

SEO
Search Engine Optimization - The process of optimizing web pages to achieve high rankings in the search results of a search engine, in order to attract more visitors.

SEP
Search Engine Positioning - Getting your page listed on the search engine results page. Similar to SEO.

SERP
Search Engine Results Page - The page of listings displayed upon completion of a search at a search engine.

SSI
Server Side Include - A way for a web server to include variable values and information from an external source into a web page as it is requested by the browser. Uses include automatic display of data like the Last Modified date of the page, or storing common page elements in their own files, enabling site-wide updates by modifying a single file.

USP
Unique Selling Proposition - The reason why somebody should buy from you and not your competition. The unique benefits that your products or services offer consumers. What it is that makes you special, different.

I suggest you print this article out and keep it somewhere handy. Refer to it whenever you’re not quite sure what something stands for, and before you know it you’ll be an old hand!

Author Bio:
Online since 1998, Azam Corry helps marketers succeed. Get Free Guides, Tools & Web Marketing Resources at: http://NowSell.com/ Speed profits with resale rights ebooks & packages: http://eBookSaver.com/?a => SPECIAL FROM AZAM: Subscribe Now to Biz Bits eZine & get my Big info-packed eCourse PLUS real-value ebooks 100% FREE! Just BizBits@NowSell.com

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Now a days, many crawler based search engines as well as human edited directories seem to use the concept of click popularity within their ranking algorithm.

Direct Hit considers click popularity to be the dominating factor while determining the ranking of a web site. In Direct Hit, the success of your site depends, on how many clicks your web site attracts and how long they spend on your web site. Apart from DirectHit, Excite, Hotbot and Yahoo! also use click popularity as an important factor in their ranking algorithm. This makes improving your click through an important step of your search engine optimization plan.

The objective behind the concept of click popularity is to determine which web sites are satisfying the need of the users. Two factors that determine the click popularity of a web site are:

The number of clicks it is getting from the search results of a search engine.
How long a user continues to stay in the web page (stickiness of the web page)
How to increase the click popularity of a web site?

The only way to increase the click popularity of a web site is to make the visitors spend more and more time in your web site.

As already mentioned earlier, the number of clicks that your web site gets from the search results is also an important factor. So, we have to do two things, one is to make sure that more and more visitors click on your web site in the search engine results and to make them stay.

How to make the visitors click on your web site?
Writing killer title tags

Title tags of the html page appear in the search results for the crawler based search engines, making it even more important.

If you can make your title more attractive than the web sites, which are above your site in the search results, visitor may click on your site simply due to the effectiveness of title tag.

Using powerful words in your title tag will draw the user into your site. You may sometimes try the power of questions when creating title tags. When you ask a question, you force the reader to stop and mentally answer that question, which boosts the visitor to click on your web site to visit it.

Treat this tag as if it is an advertisement for your online business. Make them short, smart, and easy to read.

Make the title easier to read for the visitor. Begin the title with a capital letter, and then follow with all lower case letters.

Use your most important keywords toward the beginning of your title tag, but use it in a way that will draw traffic. Position the title tag as the first tag on your page. Write it in a way that makes the user believe that the site will solve a problem.

Remember that a well- written and effective title can make up for a lower search engine ranking. Spend a lot of time on your title tag, and it will ultimately pay off for you in traffic to your site.

Writing attractive descriptions
Because this tag serves two purposes - high search engine rankings as well as it serves as marketing tool along. It should definitely utilize the important keywords for the page, yet it should also be written in such a way that it will fascinate people to click on the link and visit your site.

The search engines do not give this tag much importance these days. But some search engines do read the words in this tag, and therefore it is important to get some keywords into it. They give more weight to the first words that appear high in the html page rather than the words, which appear later. So placing the most important keyword within this tag will definitely help.

But, do not forget that apart from search engine ranking it solves some marketing purposes as well, so just do not stuff this tag with series of keywords. The trick is to include some keywords in such a way as well as it should contain attractive marketing content.

How to make the visitors stay
The only ethical way to influence the click popularity of a web site is to design a site, which looks attractive and offers content rich text. If the content of the site offers valuable information related to the search query, visitors will stick around and spend more time in your web site once they have arrived to it. A good content will always help you to retain visitors to your site.

Author: SearchEngineEthics.com

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Log files are text files that are automatically created when someone accesses your web site. They record the requests made to your web server. These files are opened when the web services of your server starts and remain open as your server responds to requests. The request information is added to the log files in “real time”.

Logs tell you if search engine optimization and other marketing operations are successful. These logs will also show you exactly in which zones you have success and where you need to put in more work. A wealth of information about the activities of your visitors is available from your web server log files. These can be used for various marketing plans and troubleshooting.

The log files are the summary of the accesses to your Web site for a particular day. They provide you with detailed information as to how many files were transmitted from your Web site, how many bytes of data were sent, where visitors of your site are coming from etc. Each individual request is listed on a separate line in a log file. A sample request is given below.

Where to find the server logs

The log files are located on your server. Generally, these are located in your www/logs directory. If you cannot find your server logs in the www/logs directory, contact your hosting solution provider. They will be able to provide you the information as to where your logs are located.

What information can the server logs provide?

Which pages of your web site were requested, and how often,
How many visits did your web site receive,
Who are your most frequent visitors (in some cases),
Where your visitors came from (in some cases),
Which search engine spiders have found your site?
Which sections/pages of your site were the most popular during a given period of time (say a week or a month),
Which keyword searches lead people to your site,
What browsers and platforms (operating systems) were they using,
Which are the pages through which people enter your site most frequently,
How long was the average “view time” for a given web page in your site,
During which times of the day and days of the week is your server is the busiest,
What are the errors that people encounter.

What is a log file analyzer?

Log files are not easy to understand in their raw format. For future assessment and marketing plans, you should be able to see totals for the whole site. Log analyzer is a software program that is capable of reading raw log files and turning them into easy-to-understand statistics. These can be used to tweak your promotional and marketing plans.

Sample log file entry

Each individual request is listed on a separate line in a log file, called a log file entry. It is automatically created every time someone makes a request to your web site. We will analyze each part of the log entry in this article.

201.58.170.90 — [18/Aug/2002:01:53:23 -0500] “GET /frames.htm
HTTP/1.1″ 200 11631 “http://www.searchengineethics.com/” “Mozilla/4.0
(compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0)”
This lines gives us the following information about the request:

IP address or hostname of the visitor
Login [ -]
Authuser [ -]
Date and time [18/Aug/2002:01:53:23 -0500]
Request method [GET]
Request path [frames.htm]
Request protocol [HTTP/1.1]
Response status [200]
Response content size [11631]
Referrer path [http://www.searchengineethics.com]
User agent [Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0)]
201.58.170.90 => is the ip address of the visitor. The host is the user’s server that requested the data. In this case it is the visitor’s ip address. If your server is configured to “resolve” (look up) ip addresses, this ip address could have been resolved into the host name. Some web servers are set to automatically resolve ip addresses by conducting a “whois” lookup.

Example of the log file entry where the IP address has been resolved:
ip218.m4.nwlink.com — [18/Aug/2002:01:53:23 -0500] “GET /frames.htm HTTP/1.1″ 200 11631 “http://www.searchengineethics.com/” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0)”

– => These two fields are reserved for the identification of the visitor’s user name. This field is used rarely, and can be faked easily. In this entry, no data has been recorded.

18/Aug/2002 => is the date when the request was made.

01:53:23 => is the time when the request was made.

-0500 => the offset from GMT (Greenwich mean time). -0500 indicates 5 hours behind GMT.

GET => It is the request method. This records the type of request from the client’s browser to the server. The different types of requests are

POST - places a file on the server
HEAD - requests the header information of the file
GET - requests the file in its entirety

frames.htm => is the actual object of the web site that was requested. In this case, it is the htm file called frames.htm.

HTTP/1.1 => is the request protocol.

200 => is the response status. The value 200 stands for successful operation. This code could be anything from 100 to 500, depending on the action resulting from the file request. The actions are:

1xx - continue
2xx - success
3xx - redirect (also a success)
4xx - client error (failure)
5xx - server error (failure)

For more accurate information on response status, visit the following url,
http://www.tvpress.com/promote/server/

11631 => is the amount of bytes of information that were returned in response to the request.

http://www.searchengineethics.com => is the referrer path or url. This indicates who referred the visitor to the web page, thus telling you from where your visitors are coming. In this case, the visitor came from a searchengineethics.com.

If the referring site/url/path were a search engine, it would have looked this way: “http://www.google.com/search?q=search+engine+optimization”

This particular indicates the visitor has come to this site from Google. It also indicates the keywords that the visitor has used to reach your site.

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0) => is the user agent. It indicates which browser and platform the visitor was using. Mozilla is the Netscape browser. When there is extra information such as in “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0)” this usually indicates that it was Microsoft Internet Explorer disguised as Netscape.

Types Of Log Files

Four separate log files are kept on your Server.

• Access log
  It records information about which files are being requested from your server. It is located in the www/logs/ directory and called access_log.

• Agent log
  It records information about the web clients that make requests on your server. It is located in the www/logs/ directory and called agent_log.

• Referer log
  It records information about the url that the web browser had been viewing immediately before making the request on your server. This is particularly useful when you want to determine where requests on your web server come from and what websites are referring web traffic to your server. It is located in the www/logs/ directory and called referer_log.

• Error log
  It records information about failed requests of your server. If someone tries to access a file on your server that doesn’t exist, your server automatically generates an error message. Each of these error messages is recorded in the referrer log. It is located in the www/logs/ directory and called error_log.

Analyze The Log Files

The log files are complex to read in their raw format. It will take quite a few minutes to understand one log entry. While making marketing decisions, you might sometimes have to analyze the data of several months. You might also have to analyze the data related to particular web pages, or requests from a particular search engine.

In order to utilize the information that is collected from the log files onto your server, the statistics are required to be presented in a format that can be easily understood and used. Generally, servers offer two statistical analysis programs. One is getstats. This program allows quick and simple analysis of your access log. To run this program, go to the telnet prompt and type “getstats”. Or type “getstats ?c”, if you want a concise report.

The other one is analog. It creates a webpage with analysis of your access, referrer, agent and error logs. To run analog, type “analog” at the telnet prompt. Wait till the prompt returns. The output web page will be available at http://www.com/vstats/.

Some popular log analyzer programs

• Web trends
  http://www.webtrends.com/
  Offers web analytics software that provides insights into visitors’ behavior and preferences.

• WebSideStory, Inc.
  http://www.websidestory.com/
  Offers statistical analysis software and services.

• FreeStats
  http://www.freestats.com/
  A web site tracking service.

• Coremetrics, Inc.
  http://www.coremetrics.com/
  It provides insight to the browsing and purchasing behavior of internet users.

• eXTReMe Tracking
  http://www.extreme-dm.com
  It provides numbers, percentages, stats, totals and averages; from simple visitor-counting to tracking the keywords they use to find your site.

• NetGenesis
  http://www.netgen.com/
  Analytic consulting and services company that helps businesses develop customer intelligence capabilities.

• DeepMetrix Corporation
  http://www.deepmetrix.com/
  Offers livestats for the tracking and analysis of website visitors and online campaigns.

Glossary

Glossary of the commonly used terms in most log analyzer programs:

Hits

A hit occurs when a web page, image or something else is accessed on your site. If one person views an html file with 5 images on it, that will be counted as 6 hits. This means one for the web page and five for the five image files.

Unique visitors

Unique visitors are usually identified by ip addresses. If a visitor from a specific ip address looks at 10 different pages on your site, yet it will be counted as one visitor only.

Visitors by hour/day

This tells you at which hours of the day the traffic is more and when it is less. It may be useful data in deciding when to implement and upload modifications in the web site.

Authenticated Users

Shows users who have gained access to password protected pages.

Visitors Paths

This shows how the visitors have navigated through the site, and which pages they have visited. This is one of the most important information that you can get from your server logs.

Top entry pages

This shows which are the pages that users access to enter your site. These are usually the pages that rank high in the search engines or the book-marked pages or pages with many external links pointing to them.

Top exit pages

This shows which pages that the user had accessed as their last page when they had visited your site. These are the pages that users use while exiting the web site. As you don’t want your visitors to leave quickly, you must do something about those pages so that your customers stay longer in your site.

Popular pages

These pages are seen most often. Placing important information or links to important pages on these pages might be very useful.

Popular files

These are the files that are downloaded by the users.

Browsers

Shows which browsers the visitors are using. Make sure your site looks well when it’s seen through the kind of browser your visitors are using.

Operating Systems

Shows what operating systems the visitors are using. MS Win 95, NT, Mac, etc.

Countries

Shows from which countries your visitors are coming from.

Referring sites

Shows what URLs are sending visitors to your site. These sites link to your site. Make sure all these pages are indexed in the search engines and would in turn consider linking back if their site is related to yours. Another use for these stats is to measure the effect of ads in these urls.

Unknown referrer usually means that visitors either typed in the link to the site or used bookmarked links.

Search Engines

Shows which search engines send visitors to your site. It shows you the areas your search engine optimization works and where it doesn’t.

Search phrases

These are the actual terms that people type into the search engines to find your site.

Spiders

It shows the names of the search engine crawlers who have visited your site. Here you can see which search engines have found your site and you can check if they have spidered all your pages. If a search engine crawler has spidered your site, it usually means that the site will get into the particular search engine’s index within a few weeks.

Errors

This shows different errors and status messages.

Author: SearchEngineEthics.com

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or

“I made some changes to my site and Google picked them up, but now, it shows the old page again. Why would Google do this?” and a number of other variations on the above two questions.

With the importance of Google these days, it’s no wonder that situations like the above would have webmasters quite worried. After all, with all the reports of sites being penalized or banned, having your site completely disappear could be a bit troublesome.

Luckily, there is a very easy explanation for the above phenomena and it’s been lovingly referred to as “Everflux”. What exactly is Everflux?

Google Everflux Defined

Well, “Everflux” stems from Google’s attempt to create the freshest possible index and by fresh I mean up-to-date. To understand this, let’s look first at Google’s normal update cycle.

Generally, somewhere around the beginning of the month (all though this can vary widely such as in the past couple of months) Google’s primary spider (actually there are many more than one primary spider, but for simplicity I’m going with the singular) heads out and begins to index the sites in it’s database. This process generally takes anywhere from 5 to 10 days. During this time, the spider indexes any new pages and re-indexes pages already in it’s index.

After this spidering process occurs, there is generally about a two to three week delay before the results from this spidering are publicly available. During this period, which has affectionately been termed the “Google Dance” the results returned from Google tend to fluctuate a bit. This “dance” can last anywhere from 2 or 3 days up to about 1 week.

This is the normal cycle for Google and it does quite well except for sites where the content changes frequently such as news sites etc. This is because, with the current system, there can be anywhere from a 2 or 3 week minimum delay for changes to a webpage or site to be reflected in the primary database and up to 6 or even 7 weeks depending on when the changes were made to a site. If changes were made in time for the monthly spidering, those changes would be reflected in a couple of weeks, but if the changes were made after the monthly spidering, then the site would have to wait for the following months spidering to be picked up and it would end up taking much longer.

Even a two or three week delay is too long when dealing with breaking news and other current events. The solution? Google’s “Freshbot”.

Freshbot The Solution

Google’s “Freshbot” as it has been termed is a secondary spider that is constantly crawling the web. It crawls sites Google has found to be either news sites or other important sites that change on a constant basis. It also tends to find sites that have either recently changed or are brand new.

This secondary spider adds it’s findings not to the main database but to a temporary database. This temporary database is incorporated into the results returned from the primary (main) database which allows Google to continue its normal update cycle but also return very fresh and up-to-date content.

The confusion comes from the fact that this temporary database that is used by the Freshbot is, in effect, rewritten on a daily basis with the results from the latest round of spidering. This means that a page that was in the temporary database on one day may be completely missing the next.

This can cause a lot of confusion as a new site could be found one day by the Freshbot and added to the temporary database only to be overwritten and disappear the following. The same goes for changes to a page that is found by the Freshbot and then revert to the old version within a day or two. This is simply the natural “flux” caused by this temporary database.

The good news is that these sites that are found and then disappear will almost always reappear permanently once the primary spider crawls them and they are added to the main index.

So, if this has happened, is happening, or does happen to you at some point, never fear, it is simply the Google “Everflux” phenomena at work.

Author Bio:
John Buchanan is the author of the book “The Insider’s Guide to Dominating The Search Engines”, and a search engine optimization professional. Visit him at http://www.se-secrets.com for more information or with any questions.

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1. AltaVista

In order to find out the number of sites linking to the domain mysite.com in AltaVista, you would type in link:mysite.com in AltaVista’s search box. If you wish to exclude links from pages within the mysite.com domain, you would type in link:mysite.com -url:mysite.com.

If you want to find out how many sites are linking to a particular page (say mypage.html) in the mysite.com domain, you would type in link:mysite.com/mypage.html. Again, in order to exclude links from pages within the mysite.com domain, you would type in link:mysite.com/mypage.html -url:mysite.com.

Note that you should not type in the “www” or the “http://” prefixes.

2. AOL

AOL is a directory based engine. It takes its results from the Open Directory. Hence, the concept of link popularity is not very meaningful in AOL.

3. Direct Hit

There is no way you can find out the link popularity of your site in Direct Hit. This is because Direct Hit does not return the number of sites which match the search criterion.

4. Excite

There is no way you can find out the link popularity of your site in Excite. This is because Excite does not have a special command to measure the link popularity of your site.

5. Fast (http://www.alltheweb.com)

In order to find out the number of web sites linking to the domain mysite.com in Fast, click on the Advanced Search link. In the “Word Filters” section of the Advanced Search page, select “Must Include” from the first combo box. In the text box besides the first combo box, type in mysite.com. In the combo box to the right of the text box, select “in the link name”. If you want to exclude links from pages within the mysite.com domain, type in mysite.com in the “Exclude” text box in the “Domain Filters” section. Then, click on the “FAST Search” button.

In order to find the number of links to mypage.html in the mysite.com domain, you would type in mysite.com/mypage.html in the text box besides the first combo box. Again, in order to exclude links from within the mysite.com domain, type in mysite.com in the “Exclude” text box.

Note that you should not type in the “www” or the “http://” prefixes.

6. Google

In order to find out the number of sites linking to mysite.com in Google, you would type in link:mysite.com.

If you want to find out how many sites are linking to the page mypage.html in the mysite.com domain, you would type in link:mysite.com/mypage.html.

However, there is no way you can exclude links from pages within the mysite.com domain from being counted.

Google considers www.mysite.com to be different from mysite.com. This means that typing in link:mysite.com will not include the links to www.mysite.com. If you want to find out the number of links to www.mysite.com, you have to type in link:www.mysite.com. And typing in link:www.mysite.com will not include the links to mysite.com either.

This is in contrast to AltaVista which includes links to the www.mysite.com domain when you try to find the number of links to mysite.com.

7. HotBot

There are two methods of measuring link popularity in Hotbot.

In the first case, in order to find out the number of sites linking to mysite.com, you can type in linkdomain:mysite.com. In order to exclude links from pages within the mysite.com domain, you can use linkdomain:mysite.com -domain:mysite.com.

Make sure that you do not use the “www” or “http://” prefixes when you use this method.

However, this method cannot be used to find out the number of links to specific pages in your site, i.e. you cannot use this method to find out the links to the page mypage.html in the domain mysite.com.

In order to find out the number of links to specific pages, choose “links to this URL” from the “Look for:” drop-down combo box and then type in the complete URL (i.e. http://www.mysite.com/mypage.html) in the search box. In order to exclude links from within the mysite.com domain, type http://www.mysite.com/mypage.html -domain:mysite.com in the search box after choosing “links to this URL” from the combo box. Note that for the second method, you need to use the “http://” prefix.

Lastly, you should note that in the second method, typing http://www.mysite.com will only find links to the home page of the www.mysite.com domain. If there are some sites which have linked to some of the internal pages in your site rather than your home page, this will not be included in the link popularity count.

8. IWon

The method of measuring link popularity in IWon is the same as the first method in HotBot. However, unlike HotBot, IWon does not have an alternative method which can be used to measure the number of links to specific pages in a domain.

9. Lycos

In order to measure link popularity in Lycos, first click on the Advanced Search link to the right of the search box. To find out the number of sites linking to mysite.com in Lycos, you would type in ml:mysite.com in the search box. If you wish to exclude links from pages within the mysite.com domain, you would type in ml:mysite.com -h:mysite.com.

If you want to find out how many sites are linking to a particular page (say mypage.html) in the mysite.com domain, you would type in ml:mysite.com/mypage.html. Again, in order to exclude links from pages within the mysite.com domain, you would type in ml:mysite.com/mypage.html -h:mysite.com.

Note that you should not type in the “www” or the “http://” prefixes.

10. MSN

The method of measuring link popularity in MSN is almost the same as that in Hotbot. The first method is exactly the same. For the second method, click on the More Options tab, type in the complete URL in the “Search the web for:” text box and choose “links to URL” from the “Find:” drop-down combo box. However, unlike Hotbot, you cannot eliminate links from pages within the same domain using the second method.

Note that the More Options tab is displayed only after you search for something in MSN. It is not displayed in MSN’s home page.

11. Netscape

Netscape is a directory based engine. It takes its results from the Open Directory. If no results are found in the Open Directory, it takes its results from Google. Since it is a directory based engine, the concept of measuring link popularity is not all that meaningful. You can type in link:mysite.com to measure the number of links to the domain mysite.com. In this case, Netscape will simply take its results from Google.

12. Northern Light

There is no special command for measuring link popularity in Northern Light. To get a very approximate idea of the number of sites linking to the domain mysite.com, you can type in mysite.com. In order to eliminate the references to the mysite.com domain from within the domain, you can type in mysite.com -url:mysite.com.

To get an approximate measure of the number of links to the page mypage.html in the domain mysite.com, you can type in mysite.com/mypage.html in the search box. Again, to eliminate the references to the page from within the mysite.com domain, you would type mysite.com/mypage.html -url:mysite.com

Don’t type in the “http://” or “www” prefixes.

13. WebCrawler

There is no way you can find out the link popularity of your site in WebCrawler. This is because, like Excite, WebCrawler has no special command for measuring link popularity.

Author Bio:
Sumantra is one of the most respected and recognized search engine positioning specialists on the Internet. For more articles on search engine placement, subscribe to his 1st Search Ranking Newsletter by sending a blank email to mailto:1stSearchRanking.999.99@optinpro.com or by going to http://www.1stSearchRanking.com

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In this case, the only solution is to become the editor of the category to which you want to submit your site. Here’s how you should go about doing it.

Do This First
First, go to any category of the Open Directory and click on the “become an editor” link at the top of the screen. If that category does not contain such a link, simply go to a lower level category which does contain such a link.

Now, read the third paragraph, which says that the Open Directory does not bar editors who have business affiliations with the category. In practice, however, it will reject just about any new editor who has a business affiliation with the category. If you scroll down the page, you will find that the Open Directory asks you whether you have any business affiliation with the category. If you admit to having an affiliation with the category, you will most certainly be rejected.

Now, you may think that you can solve this problem by not admitting that you have any business affiliation with the category. However, the Open Directory also asks you about your experience or interest in the category. For a category which deals with business related sites, it is very difficult to project your expertise in it without admitting that you are affiliated with it.

Hence, your strategy should be to locate a category in which you can legitimately show some experience and interest without having to admit that you have any business affiliation. By far the easiest way to do this is to become an editor of a regional category which deals with the city in which you live. Once you can become an editor of one category, it is usually much easier to become the editor of the category to which your site belongs. This is because when an existing editor applies for a new category, the Open Directory does not ask for his/her experience or interest in the category.

Here are the steps you should follow in order to become an editor of the category applicable for your web site:

Steps To Follow
1) Start off by going to the Open Directory. Click on the Regional category, then click on the continent in which you live, and then on the country. In this way, drill down to the category for the city or locality in which you live. Now, scroll down to the bottom of the page and see whether that category already has an editor. If it does not, this is the category for which you should try and become an editor. However, if this category already has an editor, don’t apply to this category because the Open Directory does not generally accept a new editor in a category which already contains an editor. In this case, select a category below the current category which does not have an editor.

2) Once you have selected the correct regional category, click on the “become an editor” link at the top of the screen and fill in your first name, last name, email address, username and password. For the “Describe your experience and interest in this subject area:” text box, just say something like “I am a resident of X.”, where X is of course the name of your city or locality. In the “What is your Business Affiliation with this category?” text box, say something like “I have no business affiliation with this category.”

The Open Directory now asks you for 2 or 3 sites which you would have added to the category had you been an editor of the category. The best way to do this is to let Yahoo! do the work for you. Open a new browser window, go to Yahoo! and search for the name of your city. Yahoo! will list several categories and sites for that city. Browse through these sites and categories and select a site which is applicable for the category to which you are applying. Now, open another browser window, go to the Open Directory’s home page and type in the domain name of the site in Open Directory’s search box and note whether that site is already listed in the Open Directory, either in the category to which you are applying or elsewhere. If it is not listed, then this can be one of the sites which you should submit. If it is already listed in the Open Directory, then ignore this site and select a new site and check whether that site is already listed in the Open Directory.

In this way, select three sites which are applicable for the category to which you are applying and which are not already present in the Open Directory. Type in the URL for the first site in the appropriate text box. Now, you need to select a proper title for the site. The title that you choose should always be the official name of the site. If the official name of the site is not apparent from the home page itself, browse around the site and look at the “About Us” or “Contact Us” pages (if the site has those pages). Also, check out the bottom of each page to see if the site has any Copyright notice. Once you know the official name of the site, type it in the correct text box. Now, choose a proper description of the site. Here are the rules for writing a proper description for the Open Directory:

i) Make sure that the description can tell a visitor what the site is all about. Things like “Have a look at the site” does not tell a visitor what the site does.

ii) Avoid using ALL CAPS or exclamation marks. Phrases like “The best web site dealing with widgets!!” or “Offers the BEST QUALITY, CHEAPEST WIDGETS you can find anywhere” are inappropriate.

iii) Don’t capitalize every word in your description - capitalize only the first word. Of course, if some of the words in the description are proper nouns, then you should capitalize them.

iv) Write the description in the third person.

v) Don’t make your description too long - limit yourself to 15 words at the most.

vi) Check your description for typos and grammatical mistakes.

vii) End your description with a period.

Once you have typed in the URL, Title and Description of the first site, do the same for all the three sites and click on the Submit button.

The Open Directory will soon send you an email asking you to send a confirmation. Simply reply to that email to confirm your application.

3) If you have followed the above instructions, within 2 or 3 weeks (if you are lucky, it will be sooner), you should get an email saying that you have been accepted as an editor. Go to the Open Directory and log in as an editor. Read the Directory Guidelines thoroughly and familiarize yourself with them. Your objective from now on is to become an editor of the category which is applicable for your site. When you apply to become an editor of this category, the Open Directory will evaluate the quality of your editing in the category which you already edit, and will see whether your editing meets all the guidelines. Hence, it is very important that you know the guidelines thoroughly.

After this, check out whether there are any unreviewed sites (i.e. sites which have been submitted to the category but which have not yet been reviewed by an editor) in the category of which you are the editor. If so, evaluate all the unreviewed sites, and add the sites which are applicable for the category and delete the remaining sites which are not applicable. When you are adding sites, make sure that these sites are really applicable for the category. Also make sure that the Title and the Description that have been used are appropriate for the Open Directory. If they are not, edit them so that they meet the Open Directory guidelines. Sometimes, you may be at a loss to understand whether or not a particular site should be in the category. If you are not feeling comfortable about adding a site, don’t add it. There is no harm in not adding a site which is applicable. However, if you add a site which is not applicable, you will be at a disadvantage when you apply to become the editor of the category which is applicable for your site.

Also, browse through all the sites which are already present in the category. Edit the Title and Description of any site if it does not meet the Open Directory guidelines. If you feel that a particular site that is listed in the category does not belong to the category, post a message in the Editor Forum and ask the other editors of the Open Directory as to whether the site belongs to the category. If they say that the site does not belong to the category, delete the site.

4) Within 2 or 3 weeks from the time that you are accepted as an editor, you should have cleaned up the category. By this, I mean that your category should not have any unreviewed sites, and should not contain any site which does not belong to the category. Also, the Title and the Description of all the sites present in the category should follow the Open Directory guidelines.

Now, it is time to apply to the category which is applicable for your site. Click on the “Bookmarks” link in the main Editor page, scroll down and click on the “[Add @link]” link. In the “Category to link to:” text box, type in the complete path to the category which is applicable for your site. For instance, for the Computers: Consultants: Business Systems category, I would type in “Computers/Consultants/Business Systems”. In the “Link name:” text box, type in a word or phrase which describes this category.

The Open Directory will now display a link to the category in your Bookmarks section. It will also display the number of sites which are present in the category and the number of new (unreviewed) sites. Note down the figure for the number of unreviewed sites. If the category does not contain any unreviewed sites, the Open Directory will only display the number of sites present in the category.

Now, go to the category which you want to apply to and browse through all the sites. Generally, there will be some sites for which the Title and/or the Description do not meet the Open Directory guidelines. Make a note of these sites. Also note whether that category already has an editor.

Once you have gone through all the sites, scroll down to the bottom of the category and click on the “edit” link. When you are asked to explain why you want to apply to the category, mention the number of unreviewed sites which are present in the category (assuming that the category does have some unreviewed sites). Also, mention the fact that the Title and the Description for some of the sites are inappropriate for the Open Directory. Give examples of a few such sites. If that category does not already have an editor, mention that fact too.

Use the same methods discussed earlier to fill up the remaining fields and click on the Submit button.

5) After applying to the new category, log in as an editor every day or so, until you find that you are listed as an editor of that category. Then, add your site to this category, or, if your site is already listed but does not have an optimum description, change the description.

Wrapping Things Up
Remember that other editors who edit higher level categories will be looking at your category from time to time and may change your site’s description if it is not found to be appropriate. Hence, while you should try to give your site an optimum description, you should not violate any of the Open Directory guidelines.

Also, the Open Directory allows editors to cool certain sites if they feel that these sites are the best in that category. If a site is cooled, it is listed at the top of the category, even though its alphabetical placement may have been a lot lower. Avoid the temptation to cool your own site. Because so many editors try to cool their own sites, the Open Directory keeps a sharp look-out for this practice. Cooling your own site will simply draw attention towards you.

Author Bio:
Sumantra is one of the most respected and recognized search engine positioning specialists on the Internet. For more articles on search engine placement, subscribe to his 1st Search Ranking Newsletter by sending a blank email to mailto:1stSearchRanking.999.99@optinpro.com or by going to http://www.1stSearchRanking.com

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But, if you think about it, ethics is not something that’s quantifiable. What makes any given SEO technique ethical or unethical? Isn’t ethics more of a way of life than a method for doing something? Is trying to trick the search engines really unethical? Sure, it’s stupid, in my opinion, but is it really unethical? I don’t believe that those who practice what I sometimes refer to as “shady SEO techniques” can necessarily be classified as unethical. Just as everyone who follows every search engine rule can’t automatically be assumed to be ethical.

What we should instead be discussing is which companies are *professional* and which are just out for a buck. This is true in every industry, not just SEO. If the people in our industry can remember this when trying to create a professional organization of SEOs (and there are many factions trying to do this), it will go a lot smoother. It’s really quite simple. My friend Alan Perkins, who is a champion of “professional SEO,” pointed out this page to me recently.

What defines a professional?
It says in part: “A professional is a person who, by education, training, and experience, performs work, analyzes and solves problems, makes decisions, and promotes ethics associated with a particular field of study.” - A. Carol Rusaw, Learning by Association, HRD Quarterly, Summer 1995.

They go on to list some criteria for defining a professional. The one that really jumped out at me was this:

“[The] Professional assumed to know what is good for the client better than the client.”

That really hits the nail on the head. It would be easy for any of us to say, “Sure, why not, I’ll take your money and just tweak your Meta tags” when asked to do so by a client. Of course it would be easy money. But would it be right if you knew that doing so probably wouldn’t really help their site be found in the search engines? Not in my opinion; nor would it be professional.

So what about when a potential client comes to you saying “we know exactly what we need” because they read somewhere how SEO should be done. They ask you for a proposal to create 10 zebra (doorway) pages for their site. They don’t want you to touch the actual pages of their site, they just want pages that live on the “fringes” of the site. You know the kind that only the search engines will find (because you added a link way down low on the home page to a sitemap of all the zebra pages). Once the user arrives at one of the pages from the search engines, they’re basically forced to click an extra time to finally arrive at the *real* site that they wanted to begin with.

The Client Is Wrong?
Should you give the client a quote for this even though you know in your heart that it’s not necessarily the best way to optimize their site? Certainly, creating those pages that way couldn’t really be considered unethical or anything. But what if you see that their current site already has tons of great content pages? They really don’t need to add zebra pages, they just need to tweak their current content a bit to make sure they’re using words that real people use when searching.

Or perhaps they just need to make sure the search engines can easily spider through the site and find all that great content, e.g., turn dynamic URLs into static URLs.

What do you do if when you explain this to the client, they’re still set on using those zebra pages? They refuse to make changes to their actual pages (because someone told them they shouldn’t have to!), and even though the site will be much improved by making these changes, no amount of cajoling will convince them of this. So what do you do then? Do you do things the way they want you to? Do they really know better than you, the SEO professional?

If I were in this situation, and I couldn’t persuade them how wrong, unnecessary and shortsighted their preferred technique was, I’d have to turn down the job altogether. Yeah, it’s hard to turn down some decent money that a job like that could bring. I mean, you could probably even create those zebra pages using WPG’s Page Generator, and give them some fancy new name. They’re really not zebra pages…these ones would be giraffe pages! It could be good money for little work. And after all…it IS what the client wants, right?

There are plenty of ways you can justify it to yourself. But the bottom line is that it’s your job as a professional to do what you know in your heart is right. If it means you don’t get that particular job, then so be it. There will be other jobs. And there will be other clients that appreciate your looking out for their site’s long-term well-being. You can bank on that. Seriously. The money you lose from declining that type of work will be made up in so many different ways. Trust me.

Author Bio:
Jill Whalen of High Rankings is an internationally recognized search engine marketing consultant and editor of the free weekly email newsletter, the High Rankings Advisor.

She specializes in search engine optimization, SEO consultations and seminars. Jill’s handbook, “The Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines” teaches business owners how and where to place relevant keyword phrases on their Web sites so that they make sense to users and gain high rankings in the major search engines.

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Pay for placement search engines are quickly taking over as the search engine of choice for both web business people and for the web consumer. This type of search engines eliminates the ambiguity of placement algorithms, allowing advertisers to directly control their placement. The consumer benefits because pay for placement eliminates the motivation of less scrupulous businesses to spam the search engine with bogus terms. Therefore, the results tend to be more targeted and productive.

It has been my experience that Pay For Placement search engine have one of the highest return on investment ratios of any means of advertising I use. So how can the Internet business person use the pay for placement search engines to their advantage?

The Key Words
First of all, I recommend bidding on as many keywords and search terms as possible. You may well ask, “Why not focus on a few highly requested terms?” The reason is simple; the high frequency terms are usually the most expensive, and sometimes several dollars per click. Unless your product has extremely large profit margins or your purchase per click ratio is very high, the high frequency terms are cost prohibitive. Instead of bidding on these few terms, focus on many related terms, some of which will get you a number one listing for pennies per click.

You may be asking yourself, “So how do I go about choosing the right keywords?” The answer to that is simple and one I advocate frequently, Do Your Homework. Get a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle, making two columns. Think about the web site that you wish to list in the search engines. If you were a potential customer, trying to find your product, what term or terms would you search for? Write these terms down in the left column on your piece of paper. Next, get out a thesaurus and look up synonyms to your terms and write them down in the same column. Third, go to the search engines and perform searches on your list of terms. Visit the sites that currently enjoy top listings. View their source and make note of terms in their keywords in the right column of your list. Compare the two columns highlighting the terms in the right column that do not already appear in the left column. When finished, move the highlighted terms to the left column. In the left column you now have a list of candidate terms for your keywords.

Other Matters
Next, you must develop an attention catching title and description. Avoid clich� filler words and phrases. Be as descriptive as possible within the constraints imposed by the search engine. Including the search term in the title and description will increase click through rates. Test different titles and descriptions for effectiveness.

Start out bidding one cent per keyword and see where you fall in the listings. Most of the pay for placement search engines will allow you to adjust the amount of your bid, so now spend some time adjusting your bid to get the placement you want. Remember you don’t have to be number one to get traffic. Usually, somewhere in the top in the top ten will do nicely. Keep track of your terms and bids in a spreadsheet. This will make it faster and easier to track your results.

Remember to monitor your keywords for positioning. Adjust your bids if necessary to maintain your position. Change the title or the description to stimulate a stale keyword.

Final Words
Pay for position search engines are not a substitute for maintaining your web page. The Keywords, Description and Title Meta tags, as well as keyword density, are still critical to your positioning in the regular search engines. Utilizing these tips simply gives you another trick to add to your arsenal in the search engine wars.

Author Bio:
Tony L. Callahan, is a successful Internet Promotions Consultant with more than twenty years of industry experience and is president of his own Internet marketing company, Link-Promote. He also publishes Web-Links Monthly, a newsletter full of tips, tricks, tools and techniques for successful web site promotions. To subscribe, send e-mail to: Web-Links-subscribe@topica.com. For an online archive of Tony’s articles available for reprint, visit: http://www.link-promote.com/articles

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