Premier Spot Survives Hurricane Wilma

Premier Spot iMarketing is back up and running after surviving Hurricane Wilma. Although its Miami offices are still without power, work is being done out of a Starbucks in Sunny Isle, Fl.

PSi had been based in Two Harbors, MN for over seven year when it moved its main office to Miami as the firms founder and president, Eric "EJ" Fransen relocated with his family to expand operations. PSi still has a strong presence in the Two Harbors/Duluth area and serves many clients in Minnesota.

The Hurricane and after math have been some of the most intense experiences I've been a part of. We experienced 100+ mile per hour winds for about four hours straight. Watching our sliding glass door buckle from our 5th story apartment was a pretty nerve-wracking experience. We basically huddled in our kitchen during the hurricane-force winds. Luckily our windows held and we didn't suffer any damage to the inside of our apartment.

Outside was another story... our parking lot was full of downed trees and many of them had cars underneath. When we ventured out to survey the damaged we were shocked to see all the downed trees, power poles in half, houses without roofs, walls, and missing windows in hundreds of buildings. A good place for pictures is http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/photos/12971969.htm.

The last five days have been difficult as 65% of South Florida is still without power, including most Gas Stations. I waited in line for four hours yesterday to fill up my tank and it looks like lines are worse today. There is even a city-wide curfew from 8 PM - 6 AM. This has truly been an eye-opening experience. I'm not sure what the national news is saying, but the locals that I speak with say this is worse than Hurricane Andrew. It's tough to imagine if you are not here, but I want you to realize that this was and is a very serious situation. But, compared to most we are doing and will continue to do fine.

To my clients:

As hard as it was (and still is) to be living in Miami during this disaster it's been almost as hard not being able to work with you, and your website over the last 4 days.

I just ask for your continued patience as I take care of the more severe website issues/updates first. I will be working out of a Starbucks in Sunny Isle, FL until power is back up in my area. Over the next 4 - 5 days I expect to be caught up with all of your updates, newsletters, and other internet marketing areas.

Again, I appreciate your patience and look forward to being able to work with your internet marketing after a 4-day Hiatus.

Sincerely,

Eric Fransen, President
Premier Spot iMarketing

More Visitors or Higher Conversion

If you had to choose between bringing in more visitors or raising your conversion rate what would you do?

I'm in the process of going through this issue right now and I chose to raise that conversion rate! By tweaking your pages, optimizing your content, eliminate any page errors, and making the buying process easier... you can help your bottom line quicker by raising conversion rates. It's not easy bringing in a visitor. It's even harder to convert a visitor to a buyer. But, once you get your conversion rate up to a good conversion percentage (varies by industry) you'll be set.

Remeber.... your website is like a "testing lab". You can make changes in minutes. Please do... the worst thing you can do is keep your site the same if you aren't making (enough) sales. Add content and make changes until it's where it needs/can be.

One of my bigger retail site has had a conversion percentage of 2.2% for the last few months. That's a little above average. This month we made a lot of format changes and our monthly converstion rate is up to 2.4%. That might not seem like much, but if you add in the increased sales and the average sale price and we've made an extra $3,900 this month just on the .2%. If you look just at this weeks conversion percentage and we are over 3.5%.... so it's working!

Now, after we get our page fixed where we want it we'll go after more visitors.

Website Visitor Conversions

What is a website conversion? It depends on what industry you are in and what your goal is for your website visitor. Most of you are thinking... goal? I'm not sure what I want the website visitor to do.

You want your website visitor to Buy Something, Request Information, Sign-up for a newsletter, Call you, etc. Depending on your business and your type of website will determine your goal.

A conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your website that you "convert" into a sale. The sale could be just that.... a sale. It also could be filling out an email form. By putting a piece of code into your website you can track every how visitor came to your website, what search engine, what keyword/phrase and you can then tell what traffic converts into sales.

For more information on website conversion email eric@premierspot.biz.

Write A Press Release

A quick and easy way to drive instant traffic to your
website is to write a press release. A quick 200 – 300
word press release can generate thousands of reads, hundreds
of new visitors, and many new inbound links to your website.

Just today we sent out a press release out for a client. Six hours after
being sent out the press release had 575 reads of the release
and 18 media outlets picked up the story.

Here’s my offer

Write a press release. We’ll optimize the press release and
send it out for you. We’ll keep you updated as of how
many people view the release, and how many media outlets pick
the press release up.

As a bonus… We’ll also check your inbound
links before we send out the press release. We’ll run
the inbound link report 30 days later to see how many “new”
inbound links you have.

Your cost will only be $24.95.

What we’ll need from you:

• Press Release promoting something for your business or website


• Contact Info (Business Name, Contact Name, Address, Phone Number,
  website address, Email)


• Desired release date (minimum 2 days out)

Our Premier Plan monthly SEO offers 1 press release/month. View our website
at www.premierspot.biz to see what else we offer.

Take Advantage of the Global Economy

From the desk of Steve Phillips
design & development
PremierSpot iMarketing

Two Harbors, Minnesota
05 July 05

Greetings to all: I trust everyone had a safe and enjoyable 4th of July holiday? And that you all had a moment to pause and reflect on what limitless opportunities we all have in our lives, having the good fortune to live in such an incredible country.

I have personally been blessed to experience a number of career “migrations”, having left a commercial aviation career of long-standing, to arrive - through several metamorphoses – at the exciting world of website design, search engine optimization, and internet marketing.

One of the most incredulous concepts I struggled to grasp when first marketing for
the internet was the fact that there are an apparently unlimited number of people out there with equally unlimited resources, able and willing to spend whatever it takes, to get whatever they want, from wherever they want to get it!

The global economy, accessed primarily and most expediently through the internet, offers everyone with a business the opportunity to become an international player. Countries identified as “Western” – where the major impetus for internet development originated, and the majority of on-line development and oversight has occurred – seem to have an inherent advantage: Merited or not, the common perception of oversight and regulation – coupled with a respect for (and belief in) the trustworthiness and reliability of businesses based in politically stable., democratic countries – has enabled countless businesses to flourish and expand, through internet transactions.

For example, let’s assume that you operate a modest sawmill operation in the Midwest, traditionally dependent upon your local trade, walk-in customers for the majority of sales. Now suppose a "tree-hugger" in the Appalachian's has your SEO-enhanced site pop-up in his search engine, and wants you to ship him materials for a pre-packaged wilderness retreat… despite the fact that there may be dozens of closer, comparable operations capable of fulfilling his needs.

Should you simply refer him to a local “competitor”, advising that the extra expenses of shipping and handling would make your quote non-competitive?

Why not quote him the going rate, adding actual expenses for freight, and reasonable charges for the additional shipping and handling labor it requires to assemble and ship the order, and see what his response is?

You never know where it might lead: You could become the next "Eddie Bauer" web
presence, and principal resource for custom, up-country cabins!

We need to think globally, my friends...

Another example: We provide services for a client in fairly close proximity to our Two Harbors, Minnesota office. This business does thousands of dollars a day on-line traffic alone, selling to customers in a couple of dozen states and a handful of other countries on any given day: In a matter of months, their business has expanded so rapidly that they're straining the physical limitations of their present plant capacity, and are looking to find a facility where their operation can relocate to and expand from… all from their internet sales alone!

And to illustrate in the simplest terms possible: There are today quite literally thousands of individuals who make their sole livelihoods from virtual shops on eBay. Some may represent storefront businesses, but many more of them simply resell “collectibles” they’ve acquired at little or no cost through local garage and estate sales, or neighborhood antique shops, which they proceed to market and ship worldwide… for fun and profit! What greater illustration of the ability to “sell (buy) locally, market globally” could you possibly hope for?

Incredible as it may seem, there is no reason to believe that - despite the physical location or logistics involved with your particular product line – your business could not experience similar results. And what could it hurt, to try?

Think what incredible local publicity you could generate, sharing the fact that your sales include customers from other states, other countries: You can‘t buy that kind of advertising!

Perception is the key.

Creating an aura of perceived demand, often drives sales figures: If your product is in such demand by buyers from “exotic”, remote locations – buyers who are willing to incur additional expenses to have your products shipped so far (despite local resources offering equivalents) – your local trade may very well adopt this perception of superior quality, and attribute additional value to your product in their own minds, by equating increased demand with higher quality.

Why do so many Americans covert foreign automobiles, perceiving them to be of higher quality and greater reliability... while the reverse is often the case in so-called “third-world” locales… where ownership of an American automobile is considered (as hard as this may be to believe) more prestigious?

I know this may sound a little "Buckminster Fuller-ish" in theory, but what have you got to lose... except potential sales?!

The point is that you should not be afraid to expand your sales aspirations beyond what you have traditionally perceived to be the limitations of your locally-defined, physical “sales territory”. The internet has eliminated those constraints: It’s time you took hold of this opportunity, and exploited the very reason you even chose to have a web presence… to increase your market share and product sales!

And we’re here at PremierSpot iMarketing to help you achieve just that!

Content Content Content

A combination of good search engine optimization and website content can transform your website into a sales tool. Combining the website content necessary to increase return visits and the SEO to get the initial visitor goes hand-in-hand. Combine that with a visually pleasing and fast loading website, and your website will achieve the results you desire.

“I don’t have the time to up-date my website everyday”, is the comment I hear from customers on a daily basis.

The small business owner has many items on their agenda on a daily basis. Understanding that adding new content or providing the content to their website management firm should be at the top of their list. The potential for new customer acquisitions and repeat customers from an updated website with good content is priceless.

Would you operate your retail location and never have:

· “New” specials in your store?
· Add new products to the shelf?
· Speak to the customers that come into your store?

Of course you would. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have any customers after a few years. The same is true for your website.

Most small business are very comfortable with hiring in-store help, but are reluctant to pay for quality website updates and content. If you truly want to succeed in the online world you’ll need to make the financial effort necessary to do so.

How much should you update your website each day? A minimum of 200 new words a day on your website will do amazing things to your website traffic and content. The viewers will appreciate it, and will come back more often. Search engines will reward you for the updated content, and will move your website higher in the rankings for multiple keyword/phrases.

Some options on how it could be easier for you to add content to your website are:

Take 15 – 20 minutes each day to sit down in a quiet area to write something relevant to go on the website. If you upload it yourself great. If not send it to your website developer or SEO. I’m sure they would be very happy to upload your website each day. They should understand the importance of content and changes to your website on a daily basis.

Find a website that provides free info for your industry. Add that content to the website. Make sure you add the appropriate bylines and links to the articles author.

Have one of your trusted employees (or rotate the writing with your employees) write out the articles. It can be something they do as part of their daily routine. Most employees will enjoy it. It will also allow them to take more ownership into the website and business.

Free newsfeeds are available for most industries. It won’t always provide the most relevant information, but it will allow a viewer to read “new” information if they come back to your website and won’t take much time for you except for the initial set-up.

Top 10 Search Engine Positioning Mistakes

Top 10 Search Engine Positioning Mistakes
By Sumantra Roy

When it comes to web site search engine positioning, there are certain common mistakes that I see people making over and over again. Here's a list of the 10 most common mistakes that I see people making. By avoiding these mistakes, you can avoid a lot of anguish and frustration in the long run.

1) Optimizing your site for the wrong keywords

The first step in any search engine optimization campaign is to choose the keywords for which you should optimize your site. If you initially choose the wrong keywords, all the time and effort that you devote in trying to get your site a high ranking will go down the drain. If you choose keywords which no one search for, or if you choose keywords which won't bring in targeted traffic to your site, what good will the top rankings do?

2) Putting too many keywords in the Meta Keywords tag

I often see sites which have hundreds of keywords listed in the Meta Keywords tag, in the hope that by listing the keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, they will be able to get a high ranking for those keywords. Nothing could be further from the truth. Contrary to popular opinion, the Meta Keywords tag has almost completely lost its importance as far as search engine positioning is concerned. Hence, just by listing keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, you will never be able to get a high ranking. To get a high ranking for those keywords, you need to put the keywords in the actual body content of your site.

3) Repeating the same keyword too many times

Another common mistake that people make is to endlessly repeat their target keywords in the body of their pages and in their Meta Keywords tags. Because so many people have used this tactic in the past (and continue to use it), the search engines keep a sharp lookout for this, and may penalize a site which repeats keywords in this fashion. Sure, you do need to repeat the keywords a number of times. But, the way you place the keywords in your pages needs to make grammatical sense. Simply repeating the keywords endlessly no longer works. Furthermore, a particular keyword should ideally not be present more than thrice in your Meta Keywords tag.

4) Creating lots of similar doorway pages

Another myth prevalent among people is that since the algorithm of each search engine is different, they need to create different pages for different search engines. While this is great in theory, it is counter-productive in practice. If you use this tactic, you will soon end up with hundreds of pages, which can quickly become an administrative nightmare. Also, just imagine the amount of time you will need to spend constantly updating the pages in response to the changes that the search engines make to their algorithms. Furthermore, although the pages are meant for different engines, they will actually end up being pretty similar to each other. The search engines are often able to detect when a site has created such similar pages, and may penalize or even ban this site from their index. Hence, instead of creating different pages for different search engines, create one page which is optimized for one keyword for all the search engines.

5) Using Hidden Text

Hidden text is text with the same color as the background color of your page. For example, if the background color of your page is white and you have added some white text to that page, that is considered as hidden text. Many webmasters, in order to get high rankings in the search engines, try to make their pages as keyword rich as possible. However, there is a limit to the number of keywords you can repeat in a page without making it sound odd to your human visitors. Thus, in order to ensure that the human visitors to a page don't perceive the text to be odd, but that the page is still keyword rich, many webmasters add text (containing the keywords) with the same color as the background color. This ensures that while the search engines can see the keywords, the human visitors cannot. The search engines have long since caught up with this technique, and ignore or penalize the pages which contain such text. They may also penalize the entire site if even one of the pages in that site contain such hidden text.

However, the problem with this is that the search engines may often end up penalizing sites which did not intend to use hidden text. For instance, suppose you have a page with a white background and a table in that page with a black background. Further suppose that you have added some white text in that table. This text will, in fact, be visible to your human visitors, i.e. this shouldn't be called hidden text. However, the search engines can interpret this to be hidden text because they may often ignore the fact that the background of the table is black. Hence, in order to ensure that your site is not penalized because of this, you should go through all the pages in your site and see whether you have inadvertently made any such mistake.

6) Creating Pages Containing Only Graphics

The search engines only understand text - they don't understand graphics. Hence, if your site contains lots of graphics but little text, it is unlikely to get a high ranking in the search engines. For improving your rankings, you need to replace the graphics by keyword rich text for the search engine spiders to feed on.

7) Not using the NOFRAMES tag in case your site uses frames

Many search engines don't understand frames. For sites which have used frames, these search engines only consider what is present in the NOFRAMES tag. Yet, many webmasters make the mistake of adding something like this to the NOFRAMES tag: "This site uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them". For the search engines which don't understand frames, this is all the text that they ever get to see in this site, which means that the chances of this site getting a good ranking in these search engines are non-existent. Hence, if your site uses frames, you need to add a lot of keyword rich text to the NOFRAMES tag.

8) Using Page Cloaking

Page cloaking is a technique used to deliver different web pages under different circumstances. People generally use page cloaking for two reasons: i) in order to hide the source code of their search engine optimized pages from their competitors and ii) in order to prevent human visitors from having to see a page which looks good to the search engines but does not necessarily look good to humans. The problem with this is that when a site uses cloaking, it prevents the search engines from being able to spider the same page that their users are going to see. And if the search engines can't do this, they can no longer be confident of providing relevant results to their users. Thus, if a search engine discovers that a site has used cloaking, it will probably ban the site forever from their index. Hence, my advice is that you should not even think about using cloaking in your site.

9) Using Automatic Submission Tools

In order to save time, many people use an automatic submission software or service to submit their sites to the major search engines. It is true that submitting your site manually to the search engines takes a lot of time and that an automatic submission tool can help you save a lot of time. However, the search engines don't like automatic submission tools and may ignore your pages if you use them. In my opinion, the major search engines are simply too important for you not to spend the time to submit your site manually to them.

10) Submitting too many pages per day

People often make the mistake of submitting too many pages per day to the search engines. This often results in the search engines simply ignoring many of the pages which have been submitted from that site. Ideally, you should submit no more than 1 page per day to the search engines. While many search engines accept more than 1 page per day from a particular domain, there are some which only accept 1 page per day. Hence, by limiting yourself to a maximum of one page per day, you ensure that you stay within the limits of all the search engines.

11) Devoting too much time to search engine positioning

Yes - I lied. There's another common mistake that people make when it comes to search engine optimization - they spend too much time over it. Sure, search engine placement is the most cost effective way of driving traffic to your site and you do need to spend some time every day learning how the search engines work and in optimizing your site for the search engines. However, you must remember that search engine optimization is a means to an end for you - it's not the end in itself. The end is to increase the sales of your products and services. Hence, apart from trying to improve your site's position in the search engines, you also need to spend time on all the other factors which determine the success or the failure of your web site - the quality of the products and services that you are selling, the quality of your customer service, and so on. You may have excellent rankings in the search engines, but if the quality of your products and services are poor, or if your customer service leaves a lot to be desired, those high rankings aren't going to do much good.

Update Your Content Daily

How many websites do you come across that have been developed, look great, have good content and are then left alone? These types of stagnant websites have all the appeal of a 3 month old news paper. This is true for the human visitor and also for the search engine spider. The solution is easy – update you website content daily.

Why daily? Search engine spiders and site visitors alike find new content relevant and compelling. It keeps them coming back for more! Having new content makes your site continually interesting and offers the user a new experience every time they visit.

Your content can include news about your company, your products, and your industry. Focus on keywords within all your written content but make sure it is used sparingly and is well balanced. Your new content should be unique – i.e. not copied from another source on the web. This way you will avoid any possibility of duplicate content penalties.

Aim to write around 200 words of new content on a daily basis. Once you get into the habit of writing every day you will find it gets easier and easier. Search engine forums and information sites continually refer to the fact that ‘content is king.’ This is so true. It is arguably the most effective way to get your site highly ranked. This result for you is a constant stream of repeat visitors who are interested in you information and who constantly return to find out what’s new.

Press Release Power

I'm sure by now you've heard about how Press Releases can help your marketing campaigns on the Internet. But besides from people telling you, do you have any quantitative evidence that it's worth the time to craft a newsworthy release?

From a search marketing perspective, this is one of the best ways of killing two birds with one stone. Besides getting exposure for your site, you are also creating web saturation. By having the possibility of your release getting picked up by multiple media outlets, you quickly and cheaply get eyeballs looking at your product or service, and ultimately, traffic to your site.

Being that the Internet has grown to being a social environment with the ultimate goal of personalization for each user, how can anyone get their message out?

With blogs, RSS readers and news aggregators becoming more popular, the user is becoming more selective to what they want to see. This is something every marketer should embrace.

Now, instead of spending thousands to blast an add that may only be relevant to 10 percent of your audience, you can now selectively target your audience and deliver your message.

Since the majority of us do not have Google's bankroll, we are left to find less expensive ways to drive visitors to your site. This is where one can get onto a level playing field with the big spenders.

To demonstrate the power of the press release, take a moment to review some stats on a campaign that was conducted in early December.

PR Service: PRWeb.com

Price: $80.00 USD
(Note: - you can submit free press releases, but you won't have access to any tracking stats, and you lose some services.)

For the above mentioned fee, the $80.00 includes:

Properly Optimized, RSS/XML Feed, Next Day Distribution, ability to attach files, featured, listing appears on: Google News, Overture, eMediaWire, Yahoo News, Excite News, DogPile, MetaCrawler, Inktomi, MSN News, Lycos News, AskJeeves News, Feedster and Topix News

Quite the bang for your buck, eh?

The Press Release in question was for a free service, and it was geared for Christmas use, so keep that in mind as you review the information.

Reads: 88,380

(This number indicates how many times the press release was accessed from the PRWeb site and other distribution points where they have the ability to measure a click through. This number does not include the number of journalists that have received the release through email.)

Estimated Pickup: 3,908

(This number estimates the number of times the press release was picked up by a media outlet. This does not indicate how many times the story appeared in the media. It simply attempts to estimate media interest in the release.)

Now how many places on the Internet can give you those type of numbers for getting traffic to your site?

To try and get an accurate number for a "typical" Press Release, another release was submitted in March of 2005, for a new paid-for service.

Reads: 80,375

Estimated Pickup: 1,362

Still pretty impressive, even if it's just to get some traffic, or brand name exposure.

If you're serious about your business, $80.00 is easily worth the investment for this type of return.

-To your online success! This article was written by Paul Bliss, owner of www.SEOforGoogle.com

For more articles like this visit Premier Spot iMarketing.

Google Patent Application - Seo Highlights

Seo Highlights by Halstatt Pires

The recent patent application filed by Google details numerous items the search engine uses to rank web pages. The specific application is summarized as:“A method for scoring a document, comprising: identifying a document; obtaining one or more types of history data associated with the document; and generating a score for the document based on the one or more types of history data.”The patent application sheds significant light for those pursuing search engine optimization with Google. Patent applications can be difficult to understand, so following are highlights that you should consider for your SEO efforts.Update Your SiteUpdating your site is important when it comes to maximizing your rankings on Google. In addition to the manipulation of keyword density and meta tags, the patent application reveals that Google places significant value on how often your content is updated. The more often you update, the timely and relevant your site will appear to Google. In turn, this leads to higher rankings.To appease mighty Google, consider the following plan of action:

1. Update pages frequently
2. Add new pages to your site
3. Interlink the new pages with others on your site, and
4. Add new pages on a weekly basis instead of all at once.

When Google returns to the site, you want to make sure that there is new content. The high rankings of blog sites are evidence of this approach. Google’s Looking at Your DomainIn a new twist, Google claims that it analyzes the number of years of domain registration as part of the ranking process. The application suggests that domains that are registered for longer periods of time are given more value because such a commitment shows the site is not a fly-by-night jump page. It is recommended that you extend all domain registrations for as long as possible as part of your search engine optimization efforts. It is difficult to tell how much the registration process impacts the ranking process, but every little bit helps. Google claims that it also digs deeper into domain names to evaluate the legitimacy of the site. Factors in the evaluation include the web host and the “who is” information. According to the patent application, Google maintains a database of hosts that facilitate spamming of the Google search engine. While such hosts are not detailed in the application, pray to God that you are not using one. You should evaluate your host if your optimization efforts are not producing results.If your search engine optimization efforts for Google are failing, the patent application may provide answers. Talk about a perfect E-book!

Inbound links, link exchanges

Link text (the text that is clicked on when clicking on a link) is singly the most important factor when Google determines the rankings for any given searchterm. This article isn't about that aspect of inbound links, although it is briefly touched on. This article discusses inbound links for their link popularity/PageRank value, and provides ideas on how to acquire them.

Why do we need inbound links?

Even before Google came on the scene, link popularity (linkpop) was being used by one or two search engines as part of their algorithm when determining the rankings for any given searchterm. Then when Google arrived with their link-based PageRank, link popularity took off and became an absolute essential ingredient in achieving top rankings.

The idea behind linkpop is that the more pages that link to a page, the more important the page is and it, therefore, deserves a higher ranking than it would otherwise have.

Some engines simply counted the number of links coming into a page (inbound links), but Google took the idea a step further. Each inbound link comes comes from a page which itself has inbound links. The more inbound links on the linking page, the more important that page is and, therefore, the more important the link to our page is. So Google gives more weight to inbound links from important pages that it does to inbound links from lesser pages. They call the idea "PageRank".

Google is the world's number one search engine, and currently provides the results for around 80% of all the searches done in the world. Because of that, it is vitally important for any website that relies on search engine traffic to do well in Google. Doing well in Google means making the site 'important' in Google's eyes and, to do that, the site must have good inbound links - as many of them as possible, and preferably from important pages (pages with medium to high PageRank values).

How do we get inbound links?

There are a number of ways. Some of them are:

Forums
Join forums and place links to your site(s) in your signature line. Use your main search terms as the link text - I'll come to why that is necessary later in this article. But before spending time writing lots of posts with your signature line in each post, make sure that the forum is spiderable by checking the robots.txt file, and make sure that non-members don't have session IDs in the URLs. Also make sure that links in signature lines are not hidden from spiders (view the source code to make sure that signature links are in plain HTML format and not in Javascript).

Link exchange centers
Find a join free link exchange center like LinkPartners.com. There you can find a categorized directory of websites that also want to exchange links. Be careful not to sign up with FFA (Free For All) sites because they are mostly email address gatherers and you can expect a sudden increase in email spam soon after you sign up. Also, only sign up with centers where you can approach other sites personally, and where they can approach you personally.

Do not join any link farms!!! Link farms sound excellent for building up linkpop and PageRank, but search engines (Google in particular) disapprove of them as blatant attempts to manipulate the rankings and they will penalize sites that use them. Once a site has been penalized, it is very difficult to get the penalty lifted, so avoid all link farms.

Email requests
(a) Search on Google for your main searchterms and find the websites that are competing with you. Then find which sites link to them by searching "link:www.cometitor-domain.com". Email them and ask for a link exchange.
(b) Search on Google for websites that are related to your site's topic, but not direct competitors, and ask them for a link exchange.

Buy them
There are websites that want to sell links. They are usually medium to high PageRank sites, and often the link will be placed on multiple pages, or all pages within the site. It's possible to approach individual sites where you would like your links to appear, but it is much quicker, easier and more reliable to use a middle-man service (or broker).

Link brokers offer links for sale on behalf of other websites (you could use the service to sell links on your site!). With these services, it is usual to be able to choose the type (topic) of the website(s) where you want to place your links. I am not aware of any disreputable practises with link brokering.

What type of links?

Inbound links serve three purposes:

(1) they add linkpop and PageRank to the site, (2) they send traffic to the site, and (3) if the link text (the text that is clicked on) is good, then the page's rankings can be improved.

(1) for linkpop, either text or graphic links are fine, (2) for traffic, text links are known to be more effective than graphic links, and (3) to positively affect a page's rankings, text links are the best. So get text links and not graphic links.

(1) for linkpop, get links from anywhere, (2) for traffic, get links from related sites, and (3) to improve the page's rankings, get links from anywhere - the higher the PageRank of the linking page, the better and, whenever possible, make sure that the link text is one of your main searchterms.

Summary

Inbound links are important for websites that want to move up the rankings. Inbound links, with the right link text, are essential for achieving top rankings.

Most websites are not natural link magnets, and link acquisition can be time-consuming and frustrating. Many websites that are approached by email will say no, but some will say yes. For top rankings, it is essential to take the time and get many inbound links.

Coffee Webmaster No More

I'm back! It's been a crazy two months and I landed in.....

Two Harbors, MN - Home of the Agates. I went from being a freelance webmaster out of Starbucks on Omaha to hiring employees, leasing space, and having more bills! It worked out. I hired 3 good people. A SEO, a web designer, and a content person. It's a good group. But... I'm always looking for top-notch people... so don't stop calling.

The "nofollow" Tag

This is big news for the search engine industry, and it's important that search engine optimizers and website owners take notice.

Google has introduced a new link tag, and it's ultimately designed to tell the search engines to ignore the link when it comes to calculating their algorithm. This new link tag is called rel="nofollow" and it can be added to any typical href link. By adding the tag to a link on your site, you're telling the search engines to ignore it. According to Google, "From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks, those links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results."

Yahoo!, MSN Search, and other search engines are taking Google's lead and beginning to recognize this new link tag called the (rel="nofollow") tag.

This new (rel="nofollow") tag, though, may begin to be used on many other sites--you can begin using it immediately, in fact.

Some website directory owners might consider adding links to their directory but only removing the (rel="nofollow") tag if the link submitter pays them to remove the (rel="nofollow") tag.

Google recently commented on the issue, "We think any piece of software that allows others to add links to an author's site (including guestbooks, visitor stats, or referrer lists) can use this attribute. We're working primarily with blog software makers for now because blogs are such a common target."

According to Ken Moss, the General Manger of MSN Search Dev & Test, "Any link with this tag will indicate to a crawler it is not necessarily approved by this page and shouldn’t be followed nor contribute weight for ranking...Over the coming weeks, our MSNBot crawler will start respecting this new tag, and sometime after that MSN Spaces will start to support this as well."

Blogs and SEO

If you are wondering if Blogs help in the search engines type in "Triple Grande Caramel Mocha"

I'm #3 and #4 in google. I was after about 10 days after starting blog. If you want to start a blog email Eric Fransen and I'll teach you how to do it the right way.

Eric

Two Harbors, MN

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the next big thing for small business owners. It doesn't matter if you have a website and nobody can find it. Premier Spot helps small business owners achieve top ranking in the search engines. Some of the things that we do to help two harbors, mn area businesses are:

One of the biggest things that website owners forget is that the SEO process is a marathon... not a sprint. It's takes working on the site every week and you'll slowly get to where you need to be. I currently manage the SEO of over 40 websites and I'm confident I can help your site.
A typical month of SEO would consist of:

1) Add inbound links to website (Average at least 2/week for all my sites, and
one week/month I concentrate on links for all my sites and try to get 10 links
/site.) It might not sound like much, but they really start to add up over
time. The great part about links is that once a bunch of links are out there
other sites pick them up more and more.

2) I read SEO websites and forums on a daily basis. When the search engines
tweak what they are looking for I can respond immediatley and make the
appropriate changes to each of my sites.

3) I usually re-optimize each of my sites at least once per month depending on
how they are ranking in the search engines.

4) Add appropriate doorway pages that are relevent to the websites location,
industry, etc. I don't add any pages that could be harmful to the websites
ranking.

5) Check search engine rankings in Google, MSN, and Yahoo once each week to make
sure the rankings are staying steady or improving.

6) Monitor stats on a weekly basis and run full reports once/month.

7) Provide SEO consultation services and advice to my clients.

If you are interested in speaking with Eric email eric@premierspot.biz