.: Making Friends With Google
By:Dana Davalos
Category:Home / Internet Marketing / Search Engine Marketing
As the Google guys foresaw with such prescience when they created their search engine, the first and foremost reason people want to go online is to gather information. Internet users want answers. They want them quickly, and they want them to be accurate.
It is to this end that Google created its search algorithm, which gives preference to websites with lots of links back to other credible websites. How often do you click through four or five pages of Web results to find what you're looking for? The statistics say not very. In fact, about 90 percent of Web traffic goes to the top 30 search results. That's a pretty slim margin!
None of this is a secret -- you can read about it in The Google Story by David Vise and Mark Malseed. You can also read about it in Google's "About" pages. They explain the way their system works pretty clearly on this site. Just go to the Google Webmaster Help Center and check out all the information they've posted about how to improve your PageRank. They even have a Webmaster Blog that talks about all the developments over the past year.
The key here is to provide your customers accurate, helpful information. Articles crammed full of repeated keywords no longer fool Google, Yahoo! or any other major search engine -- and yet people keep writing them! Do you remember the days when you'd enter a search for "boating" and come up with 500 websites on completely unrelated topics, just because someone had crammed "boat", "boating" and "sailing" into the description? Google pretty much put a stop to that when it came on the scene, but keyword-stuffing persists in clogging up the Web nonetheless.
It is still true that the best way to attract visitors to your site is to link it to as many other sites as possible, but the way to do that is by writing solid content. Here are a few tips:
1) Write about what you know! You own a small business or run a website -- write about what it's like to start your own company, or about a product or service you sell. Do you have a particularly interesting life experience? Write about that. There are no limits here!
2) Write as though you're talking to a friend. Maintaining a conversational tone will make it easier to get the words out, and you can always go back and edit later. The biggest mistake a lot of people make is only writing one paragraph and then agonizing over it until it's perfect. It's much better to write down everything you have to say and then go back and read it in one piece.
3) Write about something others want to read. Do you know how to build a website? Thousands of people search for that topic every day. Goodness knows I have. Writing informative "How To"-type articles is a great way to inform your readers and get those eyeballs on your webpage.
4) Don't make it too long. The ideal article length for publication on a broad scale is between 400-750 words. Less than 400, and content sites aren't interested. More than 750 words and your reader has moved on or fallen asleep.
To that end, I'll wrap this up! Here's the bottom line: It's getting harder and harder everyday to fool Google into thinking that SEO articles are actually good content. Just because people continue to try to buck the system doesn't mean it's necessary -- and in the end it takes just as much if not more hard work.
Honestly, how easy is it to write a 500-word article containing the phrase "Caribbean yachting" 40 times? It would be so much better -- for your readers and for your business -- just to write about that fabulous cruise you took over Christmas.
Article keywords: search engine optimization, seo, search engine rank, article marketing, search engine marketing
Article Source: http://www.articles32.com
Dana Davalos, graphic designer and online biz kid, shares her thoughts on internet marketing, design and life in general at Groovy Graphix. Learn more about her recommended marketing ideas at Article Marketer.
.: New Search Engine Marketing Articles
1). How To Market And Make Money Online
Learn how to market and make money online. See the steps you should take so that you make money with your home business.
2). Making Friends With Google
Overwhelmed by the experts talking about SEO, PPC, Black Hat and all the other terms associated with search engine marketing? This article offers a straightforward approach to boosting your web traffic, without the alphabet soup!
3). Search Engine Marketing Company Can Make Your Company Boom
A search engine marketing company can provide your business with the right tools to increase web traffic and generate income for your site.
4). Website Marketing Strategies, Discover Innovative Ways To Boost Traffic To Your Website
Website Marketing Strategies should be a constantly evolving component of your total marketing campaign. If it is traffic that you want, and lots of it, your site must be search engine optimized. At the very least this is a foundational step. Without this step you would be well behind the starting gates.
5). How Important Is Your Domain Name?
Domain name is definitely very important for website marketing and the promotion of your business.
6). Email Marketing Secrets
Creating a successful email marketing campaign will help increase the profitability and visibility of your website by attracting new customers.
7). Ethical Practice with MySpace Marketing
MySpace has long been hailed as the next big thing in high volume websites, and for good reason. But, given the nature of the site and other Web 2.0 phenomena, is it ethical to treat MySpace as just another prospect to make money? This article examines some of the dilemmas of MySpace marketing that seem to present themselves.
.: Top Search Engine Marketing Articles
1). Learn To Use The Free Major Search Engines to Your Advantage
Even though most Search Engines have adopted Pay-Per-Inclusion programs, it is still entirely possible to receive plenty of free traffic...
2). Data Entry Pro Review
Review of the Popular Data Entry Pro Product
3). The Madonna Approach to SEM
What in the world does Madonna have to do with Search Engine Marketing? Well, at first glance, probably not much. Stay with me for a few moments, and I think the analogy will become clear.
4). (SEO) Will Make The Difference to Your Success!
SEO - is the latest in techniques used by web masters for making the overall layout, structure, and keyword patterning of your website relevant to search engines and web directories where the site has been submitted.
5). It’s Simple Math No Traffic Equals No Income
Do you know what I learned the hard way when I starter a little business in my home town? It takes just as much time to build great business as it does a bad ...
6). Driving Traffic To Website - Free Resources
Some free resources to help webmasters get more traffic to their websites.
7). Search Engine Algorithms: It Has Always Been A Cat And Mouse Game
I remember ten years ago when we were designing websites for our clients that we used to play around with the keywords, descriptions and a variety of content related methods to help our customer get a high ranking on Yahoo. In some cases we were successful enough that not only were all the pages indexed, but they would come up consecutively. Why would we spend so much time trying to beat the search engine algorithms?