part of your marketing plan alongside traditional promotional 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 rankmaniac 2012 you SEO requires a serious investment. But the spoils are well worth it. Research suggests that being number 1 in rankmaniac 2012 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 engine optimization SEO is a foreign field to a lot of people. Rarely does a day go rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 can only get a high ranking if your 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 useful and should be included in the search engines search results. Q Can't I just pay for rankmaniac 2012 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 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 the window. For most searches the search engine displays a long list of 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. rankmaniac 2012 SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting rankmaniac 2012 Pty Ltd 41 Frequently Asked Questions rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 relevant sites to link to yours Step 3 Use the right words 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 the right words in your copy using the right 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 how you can get more. Links to your site tell the search engines rankmaniac 2012 how important your site is. They assume that if its important enough for a lot of other sites 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. 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 that contain your URL. In most cases the URL will be an active link or at least it should be... if it's not you should ask the site owner to make it so. There are also some tools you can use 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 rankmaniac 2012 other sites. When a search engine sees a link which rankmaniac 2012 satisfies most or all of these conditions it says Hey this site must be credible and important because others in the same industry are pointing to it. Q How do I get lots of links back to my site A There are many rankmaniac 2012 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 and other free directories Check where your competitors links 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 rankmaniac 2012 httpwww.divinewrite.comseosecrets.htm . Q rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 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 rankmaniac 2012 See httpwww.divinewrite.comTopRankingFree.htm . Q How long does it take to get a high search engine ranking rankmaniac 2012 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 matter which method rankmaniac 2012 of link generation 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 ranking will drop. Q What is the Google Sandbox and is it real A The Google Sandbox theory suggest that whenever Google rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 discounting it. No rankmaniac 2012 one has categorically proven its existence. Q What is 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 may sandbox them for a period or in rankmaniac 2012 rankmaniac 2012 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 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 A There 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 rankmaniac 2012 44 Frequently Asked Questions 44 Number of links required to rank httpwww.iblcheck.com Google Alert httpwww.