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Navigating the Article The Zen of Traffic Dancing With Search Engines Pay-per-Click Writing for Traffic Classic Advertising Affiliate Programs Joint Ventures Concluding Thoughts The Leading Education on the Web HBB Research searched long and hard for the programs it would recommend to and use with its offline students. Two levels of program have been selected so far. The Core Training will be done using the Internet Marketing Center's... "The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on The Internet -- Version 2006" This course provides a solid background of web marketing expertise, develped by people who have built a $60m business using the same techniques. At under $200, this is simply fantastic value To learn more about it go to Insider Secrets The Advanced Programs will use The Reese Report "Traffic Secrets" as the primary support tool. John Reese is a phenmenon. He is one of a small group of internet pioneers (including Ken Evoy, Perry Marshall, and Cory Trudl) who are rounded business people. John's Traffic Secrets is not low cost - it runs at $95 per month. But the value far outweighs the cost. Find out more about "Traffic Secrets" by getting John's Newsletter at Traffic Secrets Links from Traffic Swarm On each page of HBB Review we have links for business opportunities drawn from Traffic Swarm. They are there to give subscribers a chance to browse (HBB Research gets no gain from any link), and also to build our SEO position. Go to Traffic Swarm and check it out...it's a neat idea!

Page 1 2 Dancing with Search Engines (cont'd) The Top Search Engines There are hundreds if not thousands of search engines. The vast bulk are meaningless. So if you buy a program that will put you on 200 search engines you can be sure 190 of them have little or no meaning! Here are the big ones. They fall into two categories: search engines and directories. A directory is a listing that you often have to pay to be in. it is like the Yellow Pages. Often a Directory will have manual assessors who will determine if you are ‘worthy’ or ‘fit’ with the directory. Google To Google is ‘to search’ for most people. If you are not on Google you are missing around 60% of all searches. Their spider, the "Googlebot", crawls the web and provides updates to Google's index about once a month. You can submit your website to Google at the following URL: www.google.com/addurl.html. But it is largely pointless. Chances are Google has already found you, particularly if you have a link from a ‘serious’ site. If you submit, send the home page with some inside pages in case the home page is too slow to load or crawl. Make sure the pages that are submitted link to the rest of the pages. Google indexes the full text, but meta-tags – keywords or descriptions. Google uses the PageRank algorithm to determine the importance of a page based heavily on links. Keywords have value but the search results list is largely links determined. As Google displays a text extract that surrounds the search term on the web page it pays to write a strong page description built using the most likely search term(s) and put it at the top of the page. Yahoo! Yahoo! is one of the oldest web directories on the Internet, and one of the largest traffic generators as far as web directories and search engines go. It is also one of the most difficult to get listed in, unless of course you pay to submit your site. Even paying does not guarantee a listing.  If you suggest a site, it is reviewed by a Yahoo! editor and, if approved, it will appear in the next index update. The Yahoo directory is important. It is the most heavily used after Google.  As well as being a factor in the algorithms of other search engines. When you apply to Yahoo take great care with the category you select. You can only choose one top category. Select one that your target visitor may select.  The way to do it is: select your target keywords and find the categories that relate to them. 79 - Yahoo results list the "Most Popular Sites" on top, the remainder listed in alphabetical order. Yahoo! doesn’t say how it selects the “Most Popular Sites” though link analysis and click-throughs are likely to be factors. You cannot pay to be in the Most Popular section.  Sites marked with sunglasses or an “@” symbol are reckoned by Yahoo to be excellent. Submission to Yahoo is by form and, because the process is human, it takes some time.  You can pay for express service but it is expensive, currently $299 and $600 for adult sites!), and if they reject you, you don’t get your money back. AltaVista The AltaVista spider is called Scooter. Compared with Google AltaVista is very slow to absorb a new site. This is because its spider only looks one link deep. It takes AltaVista a long time to index an entire site but it will. It also has paid inclusion features, this being the best route if have a new website or you are in a hurry.  When submitting your site, take care with the frequency and positioning of keywords and descriptions, so are title tags or words that appear near the top of the page. AltaVista uses link analysis. It penalizes spamming and doesn’t allow such tricks as invisible or tiny text, identical pages, mirror sites, keyword stuffing, or quick meta refresh tags. Inktomi Inktomi's spider is called "Slurp" and it weights title and description heavily. Inktomi will crawl the web many different times throughout the month.  Inktomi ‘wholesales’ its search results acting as an outsource partner for many others search engines such as (though the list shifts) America Online, MSN, Hotbot, Looksmart, About, Goto, CNet, Geocities, NBCi, ICQ and many more. Inktomi has three different groupings: “Best of the Web” with around 110 million page “Rest of the Web” with around 390 million pages Paid inclusion. Each site can only be in one list Ranking involves links, keywords and description tags near the top of the page or in the title tag. Exact matches with the search string gets you a higher ranking. Lycos Lycos’s spider, named "T-Rex", crawls the web and provides updates to the Lycos index periodically. The Lycos crawler focuses on its own ranking algorithm to rank pages. The URL, text headings, META title and word frequency are some of its methods. Lycos does support pages with Frame content. But, any page that isn't at least 75 words in content is not indexed. Excite Excite search results now seem to be reliant on Yahoo! or Inktomi. Looksmart Looksmart is another outsourcer working with AltaVista, MSN, CNN, and many others. Looksmart has two options: Non-business sites, go to Zeal (Looksmart's sister site) Business sites pay a fee to get listed It takes about 7 days for your site to be listed on Looksmart and its partner sites Non-Search Engine Engines! Go to Amazon.com! if you are anything like me, you find what you want by using their search engine!  You may also read their tips and recommendations. These are filters helping you find stuff in the ‘long tail’ of books. Every long tail site has them. They may not be universal, but they are important. Checking how you are doing You need to keep on top of your SEO strategy. Particularly you need to know where your customers are coming from. Do-it-yourself Log on and look. Enter your URL to check your site has been approved and listed. Once it is you can see how you’re ranked in each keyword. Enter each keyword and scroll the pages until you find your listing. It works, but it’s time consuming. Automated Searches Use software at WebPositionGold.com. Give it all the keywords you want checked and it you get back an automated report. Pay attention to the keywords bringing the most traffic. Generally, more traffic equals more sales. Look for engines and keywords that give high numbers of searches and where you can improve your position by careful optimization. Page 1 2  Go to Next Article Pay-per-Click  Warning! If you arrived at this site through a search engine, you need to know where you are. You have landed on a subscriber page for HBB Research's Insights Letter or of the HBB Review. HBB Research is one of the first research programs into web home business linked to a business school. The Insights Letter and the HBB Review are FREE newsletters that provide ideas and insights to mostly new web entrepreneurs Subscribe to "The Insights Letter" Now!! Sign up for HBB Research's FREE "Insights Letter" and receive a long series of FREE insights into the coming boom on web home-based business plus your FREE subscription to HBB Review.  No obligation Enter Your Name: Enter your Email:

Top Clickbank Sellers on Traffic Type the word Search Engines into the search box below and find the best selling books and tools on SEO sold through Clickbank For those of you who are not aware, Clickbank is the web's leading supplier of digital products and is an enormously powerful affiliate engine. If you join nothing else, seriously consider becoming an affiliate of Clickbank. To find out more CLICK HERE If you have a digital product, CLICKBANK is the place to sell it with over 100,000 affiliates and a strong administrative system to deal with returns. CLICK HERE  The State of SEO "Literature" SEOElite and Axandra are two of the now declining SEO-specific offers out there. Both of them are, in fact, software companies that give away an education in order to encourage sales of their products. Today, the basic principles of SEO are wel-known; the issue is to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!! SEO is like most things in web-business, it require PERSISTENT ATTENTION. Without it your links get dropped, your keywords overloaded as other discover them and your system slowly deteriorates. That's why I selected SEO Elite and Axandra. Both are TOOLS that can help you cope with SEO . I suggest you get the newsletters and read their pitches - these are top tools on the market SEO    Axandra The Search for Keywords Be as specific as possible. General words and phrases have incredible competition. The term is "specific keyword phrases" not "keywords". You want highly targeted traffic.  Come up with as many keyword phrases as possible. Use friends and family to do searches and record the phrases they used See what your competitors are doing. Go to their sites click “View” at the top of your browser then choose “Source”, or “Page Source”. Avoid: dead Links they divert or stop the spiders as well as being irritating. Avoid: repeated resubmission. Submissions should be 6 weeks apart or you could get penalized. Avoid: graphics and maps spiders can’t read them. If you do use them, use Alternative Text tags for the spiders Avoid: spamming. Avoid: frames, many engines aren’t compatible with frames

© Michael Kay HBB Research 2006