l activities such as print radio and TV. Just as importantly it must be part of your marketing budget. Dont fall into the trap of thinking that the search engines are free advertising. Theyre not Companies like Google and Yahoo may not accept payment for a high ranking but that doesnt mean it comes for free. Someone has to do the work to get you there. Whether you spend the time to do it yourself or you engage an expert to do it for you SEO requires a serious investment. But the spoils are well worth it. Research suggests that being number 1 in Google means twice as much traffic as being number 2. Imagine how much difference it would make to your web traffic SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 40 Frequently Asked Questions 40 Frequently Asked Questions Search rankmaniac 2012 engine optimization SEO is a foreign field to a lot of people. Rarely does a day go by when I don't get asked a few questions on the subject. So I've decided to post this FAQ article in the hopes that it will help people understand the basics and make them a little more comfortable with the whole domain. Q Why are search engines important to me A 85 of all website traffic is driven by search engines. The only online activity more popular than search is email. 79.2 of US users don't
go to page 2 of search results. 42 of users click on the no.1 result. For the under40 agegroup the Internet will become the most used media in the next 23 years. Q How do search engines decide on their rankings A IMPORTANT You cannot pay a search engine in return for a high ranking in the natural results. You can only get a high ranking if your rankmaniac 2012 content is seen as relevant by the search engines. Search engines identify relevant content for their search results by sending out spiders or robots which crawl analyze your site and index record its details. Complex algorithms are then employed to determine whether your site is rankmaniac 2012 useful and should be included in the search engines search results. Q Can't I just pay for a high ranking A No. The biggest concern for search engine companies like Google and Yahoo is finding content that will bring them more traffic and thus more advertising revenue. In other words rankmaniac 2012 their results must be relevant. Relevant results makes for a good search
engine irrelevant results makes for a shortlived search engine. Most search engines these days return two types of results whenever you click Search NaturalOrganic The real search results. The results that most users are looking for and which take up most of rankmaniac 2012 the window. For most searches the search engine displays a long list of rankmaniac 2012 links to sites with content which is related to the word you searched for. These results are ranked according to how relevant and important they are. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 41 Frequently Asked Questions 41 Paid Pure advertising. This is how the search engines make their money. Advertisers pay the search engines to display their ad whenever someone searches for a word which is related to their product or service. These ads look similar to the natural search results but are normally labeled Sponsored Links and normally take up a smaller portion of the window. Q How do I get a high ranking A There are four main steps Step 1 Use the right words on your website Step 2 Get lots of relevant sites to link to yours Step 3 Use the right words rankmaniac 2012 in those links Step 4 Have lots of content on your site add more regularly Q What is search engine optimization SEO A Search Engine Optimization SEO is the art of creating a website which is search engine friendly. This means using rankmaniac 2012 the right words in your copy using the right rankmaniac 2012 words in your HTML code structuring your site properly designing your site properly For more information on these 4 elements download our free 'SEO Secrets' eBook from httpwww.divinewrite.comseosecrets.htm . Many people use SEO to also describe the other ingredient in a high ranking 'Link Popularity'. Q What is link popularity A Think of the search engines as a big election. All the websites in the world are candidates. The links to your website are votes. The more votes links a candidate website has the more important it is and the
higher its ranking. Link popularity is all about how many links you have and rankmaniac 2012 how you can get more. Links to your site tell the search engines how important your site is. They assume that if its important enough for a lot of other sites rankmaniac 2012 to link to its important enough for them to display at the top of the rankings. Links are the single most important factor in ranking. rankmaniac 2012 Generally speaking the more links you have to your site from other sites the better your ranking. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 42 Frequently Asked Questions 42 Q How many links to my site are there A Search Google for www.yourdomain.com. Don't search for linkwww.yourdomain.com as this only returns a subset of the links to your site. Then on the page that displays next select Find web pages that contain the term www.yourdomain.com . When you do it this way you'll see all the pages rankmaniac 2012 that contain your URL. In most cases the URL will be an active link or at least it should be... if it's rankmaniac 2012 not you should ask the site owner to make it so. There are also some tools you can use rankmaniac 2012 For more information on tools p.43. Q Are some links better than others A Yes The ideal kind of links are those that come from relevant sites sites which use the same keywords come from important sites have a high ranking include your keyword as part of the visible link text include varying link text not the same link text each time and come from a page that links to few other sites. When a search engine sees a link which satisfies most or all of these conditions it says Hey this site must be credible and important because others in the same industry rankmaniac 2012 are pointing to it. Q How do I get lots of links back to my site A There are many possible
ways to generate links. Some are dubious like autogeneration software and sites set up by webmasters simply to host links to their other sites and I wont be discussing them here. Others like those discussed below are legitimate. Add your site to DMOZ Yahoo Directories rankmaniac 2012 and other free directories Check where your competitors links rankmaniac 2012 are coming from Article PR Write and submit articles for Internet publication Swap links Partner websites Pay for links For more information on these methods download our free 'SEO Secrets' eBook from httpwww.divinewrite.comseosecrets.htm . Q What do you think is the best way to get lots of links A Article PR. Write helpful articles and let other webmasters publish them for free in exchange for a link in the byline. With article PR you don't have to pay for the link you determine the content of the page containing the link you determine the link text and the link is more or less permanent. A single article can be reprinted hundreds of times and each time is another link back to your site SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine rankmaniac 2012 Write Copywriting Pty rankmaniac 2012 Ltd 43 Frequently Asked Questions 43 For more information read httpwww.divinewrite.comseoarticles.htm or visit www.ArticlePR.com . Q How do I write a good article PR piece A See httpwww.divinewrite.comseoarticles.htm . Q How do I get a high ranking using free reprint content A See httpwww.divinewrite.comTopRankingFree.htm . Q How long does it take to get a high search engine ranking A A long time Its impossible to say how much time youll need to spend generating links but you can be sure itll be a while no rankmaniac 2012 matter which method of link generation rankmaniac 2012 you use. You just have to keep at it until you have achieved a high ranking. Even then youll still need to dedicate some ongoing time to the task otherwise your rankmaniac 2012 ranking will drop. Q What is the Google Sandbox and is it real A The Google Sandbox rankmaniac 2012 theory suggest that whenever Google detects a new website it withholds its rightful ranking for a period while it determines whether your site is a genuine credible long term site. It does this to discourage the creation of SPAM websites sites which serve no useful purpose other than to boost the ranking of some other site. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting the theory but there is also a lot discounting it. No one has categorically proven its existence. Q What is rankmaniac 2012 the Google Dampening Link Filter and is it real A The Google Dampening Link Filter theory suggests that if Google detects a sudden increase i.e. many hundreds or thousands in the number of links back to your site it rankmaniac 2012 may sandbox them rankmaniac 2012 for a period or in fact penalize you by lowering your ranking or blacklisting your site altogether. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting the theory but there is also a lot discounting it. No one has categorically proven its existence. Q What SEO companies should I be wary of A Be wary rankmaniac 2012 of SEO companies that promise or guarantee results in a given timeframe especially if they won't expand on their methods for generating links back to your site. Q What tools can you recommend rankmaniac 2012 A There rankmaniac 2012 are many very useful tools to help with your SEO. The following are just selection. All tools are free unless otherwise indicated. Backlink checker httpwww.webuildpages.comneato Backlinks by IP address httpwww.webuildpages.comcclassindex.php Link Popularity Tool httpwww.marketleap.compublinkpop SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 44 Frequently Asked Questions 44 Number of links required to rank httpwww.iblcheck.com Google Alert httpwww.google.comalertshlen Google Sitemaps httpwww.google.comweb