Monday 25 February 2008

How do You Overcome the Google Sandbox??


The Google Sandbox Effect was coined by a few Internet marketers to describe a new rule that Google has put in place, with regards to ranking new websites. Google puts you in the sandbox if you have a new site. You stay in this sandbox, until Google decides your site has matured enough; then lets you come out and play with all of the others.

It does not matter how great your new website is, or how optimized it is. In fact, your website might have all the makings to become topped rank in your niche, but this will not happen until Google lets you out of their sandbox.

The general feeling is, new sites do not leave the sandbox for a few months. Some says, up to six months and possibly up to 8 months.

Google has not come out with any officials statements about this imposed delay; they have placed on new sites. Google employee has all but came out and admitted to this practice, but stop short of official statements. SEO experts and long time Internet marketers have more than enough evidence to support the sandbox effect as being real. This is no Internet myth.

At many of the Internet marketing forums that are available online, many marketer's posts express this desperation of feeling lost and at a standstill. Not being able to overcome Google's sandbox effect has crippled the way a lot of people do business, using Google as a means to generate traffic.

Google's reasons for aging a site, before giving it the same fair treatment as it's more established sites, is a measure to stop the blackhat tactics from making their search engine irrelevant.

With so many practices, such as creation of duplicate content, keyword stuffing, and bulk buying of links to reach top Google ranking; these blackhat practices tend to compromise Google's integrity as a search engine, which people can depend on for their relevant searches.

There are some methods that others have resorted to, in order to minimize the sandbox effect.

One sure fire method for bypassing the sandbox entirely, is to pay Google for the service. Use AdWords, their PPC, pay per click advertising program. As a new site owner, you can get instant exposure on Google by using their AdWord program. Using their PPC program will also gain your site exposure on other search engines.

As mentioned, you do have to pay for this PPC service, yet it does take care of sandbox effect. PPC is not an option to just jump head first into, unless you are familiar with AdWords. As with any program, there are strategies to consider when choosing your keywords. Play the AdWord game correctly and you could very well have a nice return on your PPC investment.

Alright, so Google will not allow you to jump high in their search engine ranks for awhile. There are other search engines that people use on the Internet with regularity.

It would be to your advantage to concentrate your efforts over at Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves and many other directories you can take advantage of. Just because Google is the most popular of the engines, does not mean you have to close up shop. These other directories and search engines are invaluable to your new websites campaign, like never before. Both MSN and Yahoo are very fast at updating content and including fresh new sites in their directories.

Another tried in true method is an old practice to gain traffic. Link exchange has never died and never will. Finding other relevant sites to your own, to swap links with, will always help your site get target traffic. Be on the lookout for more established sites to exchange links with. You might end up at the bottom of their referral link page, but if that site is getting heavy traffic, you will see some of it come your way.

In conclusion, there are other methods some are using to get around the sandbox effect, which Google has imposed. They are tactics that fall into the blackhat arena and will not be covered here. There are other online resources that will tell you how they are used.

The best campaign for a new website to gain exposure and traffic is a combination of link exchange methods and submission to several different search engine directories; even Google. By doing this you can help ensure that you Earn Money From Home with your internet business. If nothing else, you can wait until Google lets your site out of jail and work the other search engine directories, while waiting. Actually, the idea is not to wait, but start working your campaign now.

The Best Methods For Link Building


One of the most important aspects to your website ranking in the search engines is link building. This is an ongoing process, which ensures your sites ranking continues to move up in ranking, instead of sliding down the ladder and ending up on the back pages of the search engine.

Generally, link building is not just used to increase link popularity with search engines. This term also refers to link exchanges, newsletter channels, directory submissions and many more avenues that will help your links build traffic.

The best link building practices to use are those methods that not only provide increased exposure to your website, but also go toward turning your site into one that reflects good design, relevancy and builds a solid reputation. This is all goes toward good SEO, search engine optimization. As you will see, most of these link building techniques can all be used together.

One of the most popular methods used for link building is also very cost effective. Exchanging links with other relevant websites and blogs is practiced by many. This method takes some time, yet because of the network you have created by exchanging with other related sites, you are building a very solid network that will generate target traffic for you and your business opportunity. This practice only relies on your ambition and the time it takes, for you to cultivate other related sites for the link exchange.

A few things to keep in mind when using link exchange methods would be:

1. The link partner should have a related theme to your own website for this reciprocal link. It will do you little good, to exchange a link with a dating site, if your site is a bridal theme site.

2. Find sites to exchange with that are popular. Also, find sites that are search engine friendly. If you find a related site, as your own, that comes up in the search engines with a high ranking, go for it! This could be a gold mine for your site.

3. Links coming from sites should have been in place for a long time. This helps to ensure stability and reliability.

One way link building is another avenue to consider, if you have the resource money for this method. One way link building relies on paying for your links to build for traffic. There are many marketing companies that cater to Internet marketers, providing this service to them, for a fee. It should also be noted, none of these services will guarantee their performance for you. When looking at this method, one should also look at the company's background, in question.

Back link methods are also known as inward links, incoming links, inbound links and a few other nick names. These back links are like gold and the search engines love those that used back linking practices in their websites and blogsites. Google considers back links a major factor when it assigns page ranking to a site.

Link building is a combination of different techniques and methods you need to use on a regular basis to build good traffic. Search engines index sites frequently. Keeping your back links verified and fresh is essential to good SEO. Ensuring your site looks professional, with all of your links exchanges in relevant order is expected.

When you use good sound link building practices you are growing your websites popularity. As you do the necessary steps, you may not notice any large returns on your time invested into your website campaign immediately. Rising in the ranks of search engines and receiving traffic from other sources, takes time and patience on the Internet. Quality, verses quantity using your link building practices will always pay off. Your traffic will be better for it.

There is a wealth of informational resource material online that is free for the taking. Take the time to learn more about great link building practices, and then you can have a plan. Some of the best plans are, using a few of these link building methods together, this is a good resource for link building. Pay attention and learn all you can about SEO, too. Give your site that old, "one-two" punch. By paying close attention to the best ways to optimize your website, you will also naturally be using link building methods.

The Do's & Dont's of SEO! White Black or Grey?




SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to a set of techniques that are performed on a website with the intention of increasing its search engine rankings. SEO can be performed during the programming stages, while planning and producing content, and by exchanging links or by building one-way links.

Now, SEO is big business because if performed well it has the potential to catapult a website to the top of the search engine rankings. Getting on top of search engine rankings is like getting free front-page exposure in an oracle that caters to a billion Dollar market. Naturally, websites are keen to make it to the top and this has generated a massive demand for SEO firms.

Well, there are two types of SEO techniques - Ethical, also known as White Hat SEO and Unethical, also called Black Hat SEO. The lure of getting prime exposure has brought to the surface many firms and individuals who try to adopt unscrupulous SEO techniques to fool the search engines into giving a website top exposure. Of course, there are those too who work by the book - this is how both these techniques work:

WHITE HAT SEO TECHNIQUES

White hat SEO techniques are solid, credible, quality techniques that ensure that a website gets to the top and stays there. Here are some of the popular ones:

1. Great Content: For SEO purposes content is not just king - it is the emperor. If you upload quality content that is well written, informative and entertaining, then search engines will fall in love with your website. Of course, you must ensure that keywords relevant to your website's theme are built into your content. Search engine algorithms are always on the lookout for websites that provide quality content that is of use to their surfers - so, well, content rules.

2. Programming techniques: SEO while programming a website involves placing search-engine-friendly text in the meta tags, building a clear and concise website structure that can bring up the searched-for content in a jiffy, using structural mark-ups, and building in tags in the title, subtitles and the footers of every content page.

3. Solid keyword research and use: Before developing content, you must figure out the most popular keywords relevant for your website's theme. To do this you will have to conduct a thorough research using keyword tools provided by major search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Some SEO firms also use third-party software such as WordTracker for keyword analysis. Once SEO firms get their finger on the most expensive and effective keywords, they skillfully build them into the content.

4. Link building: SEO firms trade links with other reputed websites. When a website's links spread, its search engine rankings automatically go up. Nowadays, may website owners get articles written and submit them to reprint directories, where other websites who need content can pick them up. Of course, the trick in article submission lies in including a resource box at the end of the article that points back to your website.

BLACK HAT SEO TECHNIQUES

Unscrupulous SEO firms use black hat SEO techniques to fool the search engines. These techniques are shortcuts that can take you here and there, but ultimately lead to a dead end. Here are some of the common black hat SEO techniques:

1. Veiled content: The website is stuffed with popular keywords that form part of the background color scheme, and hence are not visible to a surfer. The idea is to trick the search engine into picking up the hidden content.

2. Keyword-spammed content: There are SEO firms who do not get quality content written - instead, they plug in all blah-blah content that is spammed with keywords. The idea is the same - to trick the search engines.

3. Redirecting: Many unscrupulous SEO firms own a bunch of websites that have already been indexed by search engines. When you approach them for SEO, they may plant a code on their existing websites redirecting their links back to your website.

4. Cloaking: Using this technique, SEO firms direct specified content towards search engine spiders but do not hoist it on the website, because it is useless.

5. Tag spam: Meta-tags and other tags of a website, which are used by search engine spiders to quick-reference or index a website are spammed with keywords using this technique.

6.ks from link farms: Link farms represent a humungous amount of useless, content-less websites. Unscrupulous SEO firms use these link farms for building backlinks.

Black Hat SEO can finish a website

Remember that if you use black hat SEO tricks on your website, you might as well write it off. That is because search engine algorithms are getting smarter by the day and now can sniff out useless content, hidden text, redirections and other foul SEO methods. Once search engines figure out that a website is up to mischief then they blacklist it - and once blacklisted, a website is suspended from the search engine's index and is not picked up until and unless all the black hat SEO is removed. Plus, when a website's visitors come to know that it is using black hat techniques they will get put off and stay away from it.

To sum up, black hat SEO techniques can destroy a website or business opportunity, while white hat SEO techniques can make it flourish in the long run. Go ahead, make your choice!

How to Make Sure You Generate Targeted Traffic



Would you rather receive 10,000 generic hits on your website each month, or 1,000 targeted hits on your site every month? This is not very difficult to answer if you know what targeted traffic is.

If you are a affiliate marketer, promoting products for individuals that experience excessive sweating, how many of the 10,000 generic visitors that arrive at your site will actually want to know more about these excessive sweating products you are offering to sell them?

Mass traffic can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack, unless you have a product that is appealing and needed by everyone. Generally, your product or services that you market is in a niche category. Your market is not going to be for everyone. The goal is to target the traffic.

When your website visitors have been looking for methods and products to help them stop over sweating, this is considered target traffic. Target traffic is the goal of anyone marketing online. The ability to generate targeted traffic to their place of business is a goal every Internet marketer shoots for in order to earn extra income

To target traffic is to address an individuals needs and desires. If you sell beaded crafts for making costume jewelry, your target traffic will be within the broader topic of crafters and hobbyists. Even more specific, women and teenage girls that enjoy making and wearing jewelry. This is considered a niche market very narrowly defined, a focus group to target for traffic to induce them to visit your site that sells everything about beaded jewelry.

It is not enough to have a blog or website offering your product. The next question is how will people be able to find you? A website by itself stands alone until action is taken to generate the type of traffic to your site that is needed to make it a success. You are not marketing a thing until you can begin to address this issue.

Buying your traffic is an easy way out if you have the budget. You can receive target traffic from joining a program like Google AdWords. This is a PPC, or pay-per-click method to generate target traffic. They are those small ads that Google places alongside their search engine posts when you use Google's search engine. These ads also show up on Google's free site space that people build their sites on. These AdWord ads are all over the Internet. Google has a very long reach out here.

By opening an AdWord account and choosing your keywords carefully, your ads will begin to appear alongside related search results that individuals have looked for in the search engine. This can generate a lot of target traffic for you when people click on your ads. When they do click on your ads, Google charges you per click.

Writing articles for submission to article content sites is another way to generate target traffic to you site. Write compelling articles about your service, or product. At the end of each article is room to include your "bio". In this area, leave a link to your site to let others know they can get more tips or information by visiting your site.

The only people who will read your articles and want more info will be those that are interested in your market. The target traffic that you can receive from article submission sites is phenomenal.

You do not have to have a degree in creative writing to write compelling pieces. Take the time to cultivate your readers. When your articles reflect on you as well informed about the topic, you become that expert. Others will begin going to your site to get more information and learn more about what you have to offer them.

Another way of generating targeted traffic is the link exchange way. This method is becoming even more popular than ever before. Reciprocal linking is swapping links with another site that is related in theme to your own market. On the Internet, one thing always leads to another. When people see referral links on other sites about a related theme they are interested in, they click those referral links.

Link exchanges do generate targeted traffic in a very natural way that is not intrusive. When you create a network of reciprocal links with other sites, the power to generate good traffic to your site can be tremendous.

These are a few methods to generate target traffic. Yes, there are many more ways to accomplish this. Keep in mind that it is the quality of traffic you want to attract. The ability to receive unfocused hits on your website is not necessarily going to generate sales for you unless you have that product that no one can live without.

Wednesday 20 February 2008

The Secret Under Ground SEM Weapon - Dynamic Key Insertion


Pay Per Click Advertising also known as Search Engine Marketing is most definitely the most popular form of advertising. As a result the majority of these PPC platforms have slightly different variations for actually setting up an effective campaign.

If you have you are a PPC Marketer and have researched properly you will already know about Broad match, Exact Match and Phrase Match, and no doubt learned other little tricks such as inserting the "BUY" word and adding your keywords to your ad title and text description to get them bolded! Some of you may also have discovered the success of adding them right at the end of each line of disruption.

There are no two ways about it PPC can very effective. It can also be very, very expensive if you don't adhere to avoiding any of the standard costly mistakes. However there is light at the end of the horizon as most of them let you use a closely guarded secret known as "Dynamic Keyword Insertion".

Unfortunately, as with most techniques on PPC platforms they must be fully understood to be effective. Once mastered, it can be exceptionally profitable and not only sky rocket your CTR but also has a subsequent effect on your Quality Score thus helping to reduce your advertising costs. The end result being you can earn extra income for less effort.

The aim of this article is to help you understand not only the power of how effective a weapon it can be but also the potential downsides as well. Dynamic Keyword Insertion was a closely guarded secret of the Marketing Gurus for quite sometime, and from their point of view with good reason. Now we can all capitalise on it's use and to be quite frank should do so!

Here is how it works and when it's relevant to use. DKI is extremely useful if you have massive lists of keywords that are all relative to the same market or website, for example you may have a video games & consoles website that you're promoting. You're going to have to trust on me on this but the list you could generate for this topic is immense, I know as I have done it for several of my stores.

Let's have a look and see what I mean; I'll keep the list short for obvious reasons:

PlayStation

PlayStation 3

Nintendo Wii

Nintendo DS

Wii Accessories

Xbox 360 Consoles

Super Nintendo Games

It's obvious from looking at this brief list that all of the keywords are related in some shape or form, what the DKI enables us to us simplify our work load a little. Instead of having to group all of the relevant keywords into smaller ad groups, ie PlayStation, Nintendo Wii etc we can do just one ad for whole lot. Now using DKI you can write just 'one killer ad' for the lot! The search engines will then insert your relevant keywords from your list which were searched for and then place them in your ad in the syntax for 'keyword'. Thus enabling you to get the same bang for your buck with just one ad copy. How cool is that? Talk about a time saver!! You can now harness the power of your whole keyword list using just one ad.

In order to create an ad using DKI follow these simple guidelines

{KeyWord:Online Gaming Store}
We Sell Cheap {KeyWord:Games & Consoles}
Free Delivery All Cards Accepted
www.gamestore.com/{KeyWord:Games&Consoles}

Guidelines

There are a few variations for capitalising your keywords hen you are using DKI. These are as follows

-KEYWORD - All letters for the Keyword will be capitalised

-KEYWord - All letters in the first and first letter of the second word

-KEYword - Every letter in the first keyword and none in second

-KeyWord - Each word gets capitalised

-Keyword - Jus the first word

-Keyword - All words are in lower case

A lot of the other search engines have the facility for DKI the main difference being that rather than being a closely guarded secret of the pros it is common practice.

As previously mentioned when used correctly DKI can be extremely effective, however there are certain rules you need to apply whilst using it. These are as follows

-A maximum of 25 characters can be used in the DKI in the title. If the search query is any longer than this your default phrase will be inserted.

-DKI doesn't always work for misspellings. It is at the discretion of the search engine to decide if they are going to show it.

-Obviously you need to ensure you are bidding on the specific keywords for your ads to be displayed

-Ensure that you are careful in selecting your ad text and keywords, as if you have a really funky phrase searched for and it's in your keywords your ad may look unprofessional

-Ensure you ads are abiding by any of the advertising guidelines specified by the search engines or your ad is likely to not be approved.

In order for you to use DKI effectively you need to follow the guidelines above. eBay are commonly known within the PPC world for using DKI to poor effect. They bid on literally thousands of dictionary type keywords and end up with irrelevant, poorly structured ads making them looking extremely unprofessional. Their ads may appear as follows

Athletic Sweat
Whatever you're looking for
You can get it on eBay
www.eBay.com

or even funnier

Broken Leg
Huge Selection! Get Your Great Deal Now
Broken Leg
www.eBay.com/BrokenLeg

To wrap it up

This closely guarded secret of PPC underworld is no longer so and there is now a steady stream of information flowing on it. Understanding and using this info correctly can enable you to improve the CTR by up to 25%! So not only do you get a better conversion rate it's cheaper on the cost of your clicks as well because your quality score goes up. Thus helping you to make more money

Taking advantage of this very powerful weapon can be a minefield if you don't research its implementation properly you could end up with egg on your face!

There is no substitution for using PROPER SEM structured campaigns with sub campaigns that target specific niches. Although the structure of your campaign takes a lot longer you will avoid truncated titles, problems of broad matches and long tail keywords.

So I guess in summary DKI is a great tool, but do not rely solely on this for an effective SEM campaign. The many drawbacks of DKI result in its use being strongly considered as NOT "best practice". So use it and use it wisely but whatever you do, don't make this your main angle of attack in the SEM arena.

Monday 11 February 2008

Anchor Text & It's Inherent Importance


In order for us to properly understand the importance of using anchor text correctly in our search engine optimization, it is first paramount that we understand who it's important to and why!

Anchor text is quite simply the word text you insert into your hyperlinks. A hyperlink is basically a clickable link in a webpage that takes the visitor to either a different page of that site, or a completely different site altogether. Hyperlinks tend to look something like this .

Now there are 2 reasons that these are important! Firstly, links help visitors or customers understand why they are being directed to different pages and what relevance the page should have to their search, and it can also help site navigation. Secondly and more importantly the main objective of search engines is to provide their customers with information that is relevant to the search results.

So how do the search engines do this? Quite simply the major search engines use algorithms to add huge weight to the relevancy of "anchor text" in hyperlinks. They want to make sure that when a customer clicks through a link the end up on a landing page that is completely relevant to their initial enquiry.

In terms of how this is useful to us it's obvious! As long as we use anchor texts correctly for our keywords this enables to gain a lot better rankings with the search engines for the terms we want to get onto the first page for. The key here is relevancy! A very common mistake made by a lot of webmasters is inserting "Click Here", or "Go Here" in their hyperlinks as anchor text.

Evidently this is of no use to the search engines or the potential customers. What use would it be if our keyword was "designer shoes" and you had "Click Here" inserted in your hyperlink. Whoever was searching for "designer shoes" would not find your site in the search engines and neither would the the search engines know your site has any relevancy to the term "designer shoes"! If you searched for click here and sifted through all the results you might get lucky! Do a search on Google for "Click Here" and there are over 2.2 billion results. Good luck getting found in that crowd!

Anchor Text if used correctly can massively enhance your chances of getting ranked highly with the search engines for your chosen keywords. By using relevant anchor text you are making sure that the search engines see how important your site is for that particular search term and therefore increasing your PR

Obviously you can use links within you site to help with this, but the most powerful way of using effective placement of anchor text is to do so whilst creating backlinks in Articles, Directories, Social Bookmarking and Blogging. In a nutshell the more quality backlinks you have containing your anchor text the more important the search engines will see your site for that search phrase and as a result the better PR you will achieve!

In fact the correct placement of anchor text is so powerful, some people took it to the next level and developed what became known as "Google Bombing". This was where some webmasters would create links with humorous anchor text in order to generate funny search results. As a result, in 2007 Google had to change their algorithms slightly to try and reduce the effect of what became known as a "Google Bomb "

This is surely testament to the fact that correctly placed anchor text significantly helps your search engine optimisation. It is for this reason and this reason alone why all webmasters should focus heavily on relevant anchor text and ensure that the text they use has relevancy to the page the link is sending the visitor to!
If done correctly the end result is quite simple, you get great PR and some quality search engine optimization, the visitors get sent to relevant pages for their search requirements and finally the search engines are kept happy as their customers are getting targeted relevant search results. It's a win win situation for all parties concerned!

In order to create a hyperlink you can quite simply use the 'insert hyperlink' button in word, or alternatively do it the old fashioned way which is how I have always generated them and still do, call me old fashioned if you like!

The syntax for creating search relevant hyperlink could be as follows

< a href="http://www.yoursite.com"> Anchor Text < /a >

Obviously once you have created your hyperlink all you need to do is change 'YourSite.com' to your URL swop the Anchor Text to what ever Keyword you are focusing on, and just remove all spaces except the one between a & href.
For example one I might do in an article would be
Earn Money From Home

Once uploaded to a website software package such as Frontpage, Dreamwaver or even a Blog this would be turned into a clickable link that would read a lot nicer and look something like this Internet Business or another one might be something along the lines of Earn Extra Income


It's literally that simple! So make sure you add relevant anchor text links to all of your articles and blogs etc to increase your PR and more importantly your bottom line. As we all know the best type of traffic is FREE.

Monday 4 February 2008

A Little History For You



Hi Guys

I just thought I would share this with you, when we set up this arm of the business we had to try and embrace the "www" but also instill a bit of meaning to it aswell.

In order for you guys to really understand the magnitude of where we are going now in relation to 40 odd years ago I felt it necessary to publish this post. I apologise in advance as it is not exactly gripping reading but it will highlight the massive development in this industry over recent decades, and more importantly highlight the huge potential market.

For me this article really does drive home that the medium we are now making big money from really started as a test. You can bet that nobody back in the day could have really comprehended the extent of their actions on the educated marketer in todays climate.

I bet if you asked anyone of the origianl developers " so what's this going to mean to us in 40 years time" not even one of them would have had the faintest idea that 'some people in the know' would be making six figures a month.

Now, I suppose the point of this extract is to simply highlight the enormousity of the potential we are about to unleash. Who would have thought 40 years ago that you could work from home and earn more than a CEO of a major corporation?

But fortunately folks, they do! The cold hard facts speak for themselves! So get your chin up and knuckle down it's time to make some real money!



"The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was developed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA/DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense during the 1960's for improved communications. The stated goal of the ARPANET project (and the reason it originally recieved military funding) was to create a network with no central broadcasting centre, a network that could survive nuclear attack. In reality, the project was academic and research oriented from the beginning, and was much more about creating a system that could survive the unreliability of the switching nodes and network links at the time. ARPANET was an incredibly important step in the creation of the internet. It ushered in the IP and TCP protocols, which later became standard all over the world. It also departed from the plans of technology companies of the day, which were quite happy to sell proprietary networking hardware and software for exorbident prices to large corperations and the military. It is unknown if the internet would exist today as the worldwide network it currently is without ARPANET.

History

ARPANET was the brainchild of Robert W. Taylor, J. Licklider, and Ivan Sutherland. It is important to note that universities at the time were already networked to some extent, but only directly by specific computers. When asked where he got the idea, Taylor mentioned that "if I was talking online with someone at S.D.C. and I wanted to talk to someone I knew at Berkeley or M.I.T. about this, I had to get up from the S.D.C. terminal, go over and log into the other terminal and get in touch with them. I said, oh, man, it's obvious what to do: If you have these three terminals, there ought to be one terminal that goes anywhere you want to go where you have interactive computing. That idea is the ARPAnet."

Though concieved and pushed heavily by these individuals, the effort required to create such a structure was massive, and required many teams of dedicated workers.

The backbone of the ARPANET originally consisted of packet-switching computers called IMPs (Interface Message Processors). They were connected by 56KB/s lines, an unheard of speed at the time. Conventional computers were then connected to these IMP nodes.

The first ARPANET computer was connected in 1969 to ARPANET's IMP node at UCLA. The next computer went online at the Stanford Research Institute(SRI) followed by UCSB and the University of Utah, all of which were supported by the United States Department of Defense.

Despite the fact that the computers were running different operating systems they were able to talk to each other across the newly formed network with equal status. In the 1970's, ARPANET was expanded to the larger colleges and universities. By March 1977 there were 111 computers on ARPANET. By 1983, the project had really shown it's public face and the military split off all of its networks from the ARPANET computers, creating MILNET. This later became the DoD defence data network.

The split allowed ARPANET to further turn to an unclassified network. By 1990 ARPANET was finally dissolved, it's resources allocated to NSFNET (the National Science Foundation Network), a parallel networking system for universities connected to and originally based on ARPANET protocols. Through this organisation, the internet was commercialised and allowed to expand exponentially.

Important Miletsones and the Eventual Demise of ARAPNET
Milestones. Some of the milestones in the early history of the ARPANET are summarized below:


* East Coast. In March, 1970, the consulting company Bolt, Beranek & Newman joined the ARPANET, becoming the first ARPANET node on the US east coast.

* Remote Access. In September, 1971, the first Terminal Interface Processor (TIP) was deployed, enabling individual computer terminals to dial directly into the ARPANET, thereby greatly increasing the ease of network connections and leading to significant growth.

* 1972. By the end of 1972 there were 24 sites on the ARPANET, including the Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Federal Reserve Board.

* 1973. By the end of 1973 there were 37 sites on the ARPANET, including a satellite link from California to Hawaii. Also in 1973, the University College of London in England and the Royal Radar Establishment in Norway become the first international connections to the ARPANET.

* 1974. In June, 1974, there were 62 computers connected to the ARPANET.

* 1977. In March, 1977, there were 111 computers on the ARPANET.

* 1983. In 1983, an unclassified military only network called MILNET split off from the ARPANET, remaining connected only at a small number of gateways for exchange of electronic mail that could be easily disconnected for security reasons if required. MILNET later become part of the DoD Defense Data Network, or DDN.

* 1985. By the middle of the 80's there were ARPANET gateways to external networks across North America, Europe, and in Australia, and the Internet was global in scope. Marty Lyons has linked a map of the existing network gateways on 18 June 1985 on his Publications page under Primary Ineternet Gateways.

* 1990. The ARPANET was retired in 1990. Most university computers that were connected to it were moved to networks connected to the NSFNET, passing the torch from the old network to the new."

Works Cited

Crocker, Stephan D. "ARAPNET - First Internet." Living Internet. 26 Feb. 2006 .

Thursday 31 January 2008

Pay Per Click Advertising



Internet Marketing is quite easily the fastest growing method of advertising for your business. With the world of the internet changing on a monthly basis it is becoming far more difficult for those in the know to not only keep up but be successful at promoting their products for sale online.

There are several ways you can market your business over the internet, such as Search Engine Optimisation, email marketing and Banner Advertising. Most of these forms of Internet Marketing are affected by the ever changing world of the internet. The only form advertising that is never likely to change is Pay Per Click, which is more commonly referred to as PPC.

In order for people to find your site there are several avenues you could take! Both of which revolve around traffic. Now obviously we mean website visitors not roadside traffic! Of which there are 2 types, paid traffic and free traffic. Initially before your site is optimized, paid is the only way to get buyers to your site.

Paid traffic is any form of paid advertising. The most obvious being ‘Pay Per Click’ also known as PPC. If you search anything on Google there are 2 listings on the page the thin column on the right and the other on the left. In a nutshell the right hand side is all about PPC advertising. This form of advertising is provided by all the major and minor search engines.

As with anything for people to know you exist, you need to get your name out there. PPC does this for you as you bid how much to pay per click for specific keywords related to your site in order to drive traffic there with the view of buying. This is far more effective than free classified advertising.

Although there a lot of seasoned pro’s making very good money from this method alone, it can be a mind field and has bankrupted many uneducated people.

The primary reason being people’s ignorance and lack of proper research, along with ‘Greedy Google’. Although Google are a household name doesn’t necessarily mean they are the best value!

They are widely renowned for having the best volume and quality of traffic but unfortunately for the uneducated marketer at the worst price!

Once you have mastered the art of profitable PPC campaigns it is essential for business survival to find other more cost effective alternatives. Although Google Adwords has a very user friendly interface, who cares if it’s raping your bottom line. If we are going to be honest with ourselves that’s the only reason we are all in this game!

In my search for reducing advertising cost whilst still maintaining effectiveness I have taken it upon myself to devise a list of what I would consider to be the top ten PPC programs. They are all ranked in terms of cost effectiveness, traffic quality and usability.

1) Yahoo Search marketing

The biggest Search Engine! Enough Said. Although ‘search’ has changed hands several times they still provide very high quality volumes with some deals still to be had.
• Cost Effectiveness 8/10
• Traffic Quality 9/10
• Usability 8/10
• Total 25/30
• Overall 8.3/10


2) Google Adwords

Widely referred to as the top dog! However as it stands not with Alexa Yahoo still rank higher! As Alexa monitor and rank sites on traffic volumes this says it all. Sorry ‘Greedy Google’ close but yet so far.
• Cost Effectiveness 5/10
• Traffic Quality 9/10
• Usability 9/10
• Total 23/30
• Overall 7.6/10

3) MSN Adcentre

One of the biggest Search Engines. A rapidly emerging big player with lots of leverage. Arguably the best quality traffic. Be sure to look out for the fantastic keyword research tool as part of the package.
• Cost Effectiveness 7/10
• Traffic Quality 9/10
• Usability 6.5/10
• Total 22.5/30
• Overall 7.5/10

4) Enhance

This one is a little gem! It gets straight into Yahoo Search engine due to it’s partners. Fantastically Cheap Quality Traffic at minimal prices. Enhance is quickly breaking through as one of the up and coming PPC providers. A must have in anyone’s arsenal
• Cost Effectiveness 10/10
• Traffic Quality 9/10
• Usability 3/10
• Total 22/30
• Overall 7.3/10

5) Miva

Probably one of the best but vastly underrated PPC provider
• Cost effectiveness 7/10
• Traffic Quality 7/10
• Usability 7/10
• Total 21/30
• Overall 7/10

6) GoClick

Reasonably cheap traffic with a growing following of users
• Cost Effectiveness 7/10
• Traffic Quality 7/10
• Usability 6/10
• Total 20/30
• Overall 6.6/10

7) Search123

One of the originals! Excellent customer support and ok traffic
• Cost effectiveness 7/10
• Traffic Quality 6/10
• Usability 6/10
• Total 19/30
• Overall 6.3/10

8) 7Search

A very small Search Engine with limited traffic. Although what traffic they do get is ok quality
• Cost Effective 5.5/10
• Traffic Quality 7/10
• Usability 6/10
• Total 18.5/30
• Overall 6.1/10

9) Searchfeed

Good value for money with regards to ROI, some good features such as limited geo-targeting but not masses of volume
• Cost Effective 7/10
• Traffic Quality 6/10
• Usability 5/10
• Total 18/30
• Overall 6/10

10) ABC Search

Decent traffic sources with some good customer service
• Cost Effectiveness 6/10
• Traffic Quality 5/10
• Usability 6/10
• Total 17/30
• Overall 5.6/10

In summary, I guess the point I am trying to make here is that there are other good quality options available to us. So, yes the big guns do send high quality targeted traffic! But at what price? Would you not be better to target some smaller niches with less competition and drastically improve your ROI.

An important factor to try and remember here is that most of our traffic will be coming via our optimisation and the PPC campaigns are purely as a top up and to ad some initial and ongoing credibility.

My preferred alternative to Greedy Google is Enhance. Although the user interface isn’t the best I put up with it for the level of quality, highly targeted traffic it delivers via it’s partners and mainly Yahoo. Enhance effectively acts as a cheeky little back door into Yahoo for under a third of the cost!!

Arpanet Marketing Tools


Arpanet UK Ltd are dedicated to ensure that our customers receive the highest quality training and support in order for you to achieve success. As with any business, especially a new start, the more you put in from the onset the better results you will see. It is solely for this reason that we advocate you allocate specific time regularly on a weekly basis to market your new venture.

As with every successful business there is a proven blueprint for success, within this Blog we enclose all of the necessary tools and strategies required to catapult you to success. You’ll find that during the course of this you’ll become to realize that you are not the only web entrepreneur to use these tools.

The simple reason for this is that they are proven to succeed and help to automate the amount of physical work required. After all the whole point of having a home based business is to minimize costs and capitalize on profits. As a result low overheads and minimal initial outlay is a blueprint for success.

Research is paramount to success! Whether it is on keywords or sourcing the best content for articles. The main problem being that it is very time consuming, so if you are spending your time wrapped up in research when will you find time to market your new website?

“ I’ll only ever ask you this once! What’s the point in having a new site if nobody can find it?”

I can not emphasize enough how important it is to take advantage of technology when it’s productive and available. So for this reason alone we urge to automate as much of the leg work as possible. Essentially there are two ways to get traffic to your site, paid and unpaid traffic. We will cover both during the course of this Blog

Paid Traffic

In order for people to find your site there are several avenues you could take! Both of which revolve around traffic. Now obviously we mean website visitors not roadside traffic! Of which there are 2 types, paid traffic and free traffic. Initially before your site is optimized paid is the only way to get buyers to your site. Paid traffic is any form of paid advertising. The most obvious being ‘Pay Per Click’ also known as PPC. If you search anything on Google there are 2 listings on the page the thin column on the right and the other on the left. In a nutshell the right hand side is all about PPC advertising. This form of advertising is provided by all the major and minor search engines.

As with anything for people to know you exist, you need to get your name out there. PPC does this for you as you bid how much to pay per click for specific keywords related to your site in order to drive traffic there with the view of buying.

Although there a lot of seasoned pro’s making very good money from this method alone, it can be a mind field and has bankrupted many uneducated people. Primarily, the reason being people’s ignorance and lack of proper research along with ‘Greedy Google’. Although Google are a household name doesn’t necessarily mean they are the best value!

The main factor to achieve success once again is ‘RESEARCH’. Finding out which keywords are relevant and successful for your niche market. Now there are several tools available on the market which can do this for you. Although I personally use more than one, we have found that WordTracker to be the most effective.
The main reason being that it takes your keyword and compounds it into many different keywords and phrases that you probably wouldn’t even think of! Not only does it save you a huge amount of time compiling a keyword list it even scores them based on the level of competition and search frequency. The end result being, that you end up with a quality list of keywords perfect niche markets. As with anything in life quality costs! If it falls outside your budget just let us know and we can compile a list for you.

I also use Keyword Elite which again is a keyword software program that generates lists for you. On top of this it also has some rather funky features, my favorite being “spy on adwords competition”. Basically this software enables you to not only analyze PPC listings, it publishes your ads as well as analyzing your competition. You can find your best competitor in adwords watch their campaign, identify their successful keywords and copy them ensuring your success. Not a must! but an extremely useful tool.

The other form of ‘paid traffic’ is buying visitors to your site from any of the traffic providers on the internet. There are hundreds just Google the word ‘traffic’ and you’ll see what I mean. They offer both targeted and non targeted, geographic and non geographic. If you are desperate to loose money then go to a Casino instead at least you stand a chance of winning! Why on earth would a buyer sign up to somebody like this if they could look for themselves???

Of course there other paid forms of advertising for you to explore in order to gain traffic, but some will only be relevant to certain sites. So for this reason alone these will only be covered on a one to one basis with our customers.
There lots of PPC manuals available to help you not only write great ads but more importantly increase the success of your ads. Please feel free ask for a copy.

Un Paid Traffic

Now we are talking, everything you have done up until now has cost money in the hope of making money, and to be fair when done correctly it is extremely lucrative as we have shown you

This is the important section where every single sale means all profit goes straight on the bottom line!! That’s my kind of language. So buckle up and let’s get ready to make some real money!!

Again this involves the search engines, but this time we trying to make them realize why our site is so important to them for our keywords. These keywords may or may not be the same as your PPC campaigns it is essential that you identify what we are going to look to get ranked for before we actually do it. The old cart and horse scenario! So make sure you do your ‘RESEARCH’. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is paramount to the success of your business and should do on a very regular basis, weekly is best.

If you want to be really cheeky and give yourself a boost an easy way to enhance your chances of ranking well is to copy your competitor’s keywords. Just compile your list of keywords and then Google them for the top ranking sites. Visit each site and simply steel your competitor’s keywords from their page source. Make yourself a file and send us the list and we’ll load them in for you.
All search engines, Google especially are only there to serve their customers not the website owners, which in business terms is fine. However, it’s now your business and we need to convince these engines that we are important to their search customers.

As with any new start business the biggest thing is gaining both visibility and credibility in your market place. These are both key to achieving the successful optimization and profitability of your site. We have covered some visibility with the paid methods of advertising, which we do advocate you maintain doing as well.
So the first thing you need to do is submit your site to all the major search engines. Now there is software to automate this for you, but in this case we strongly recommend that you do it manually to the main search engines such as Yahoo, Google, AOL Search, MSN, Lycos, Alta Vista etc. Otherwise how are they going to know that your site exists?

In order to increase credibility with search engines we need to ensure that 3 things are regularly happening to our site. These are incoming links, updated content and backlinks. This next section of the Blog is vital to your sites success and more importantly your wealth, so I urge you to focus and religiously follow the protocol outlined.

Depending on the type of site you have will depend on how you can influence the above. The key factor here is making sure we update content and more importantly gain backlinks.

So I guess your asking “what are backlinks”? Backlinks are simply a link from one website to another. The search engines focus a lot of weight on backlinks when assessing the importance of any particular website. One of key things here is to ensure quality not quantity! Why would a search engine see value in a site for tennis equipment that has backlinks from a kid’s toy shop? They must be relevant and focused.

There are several methods of acquiring backlinks, all of which will be covered in due course. These are directory submissions which are simply an internet resource book of different categories such health & beauty etc. Article Marketing, Blogging, Video Sites, Universal Search, Social Bookmarking, to name a few. We will go through all of the methods needed to ensure you receive quality bakclinks.

Backlink generation can effectively come under two categories, Content Marketing and Non Content Marketing. Please remember that we are only after free links. Initially when linking became important for SEO several companies started to sell links, these businesses are still available now but you do not want any bought links as it can be detrimental to your rankings as Google and alike see that they are from ‘link farms’ and actually add less weight to them as a result. Don’t do it!!!

The only paid inclusion worth considering is Yahoo. It costs $299 and basically if you get listed which they don’t guarantee it will be very beneficial to you as Google are interested in sites that get listed with Yahoo. A popular misconception is that Google are the Number 1 search engine! Wrong! According to Alexa Traffic rankings Yahoo are the number 1 not Greedy Google!(who are number 2) Google may make more money as a business but still don’t receive as much traffic

Non Content Marketing

Non content marketing is exactly what it say’s, you market your site in order to generate backlinks using methods that don’t really involve writing content.

Directory Submissions

After search engines website directories are probably one of the best sources for getting quality backlinks. By far the best and most authoritative is The Open Directory also known as DMOZ

DMOZ is by far the most authoritative directory and as a result also the hardest to get into. That being said it is still definitely worth a go though. You can follow this link to sign up and apply DMOZ

A lot of the directory sites have very good page rank, this page rank can be added to your site by submitting your business to the directories for inclusion. I am not going to lie to you, this is by far the most laborious job anyone could imagine! It’s very time consuming and exceptionally mind numbing.

There are 2 ways you can get around this boring but essential exercise! Firstly you can buy software such as Directory Submitter or SubmitEaze which we find alot more user friendly. Remember whenever you can save time automate do it! The age old adage of “time is money” does come into play and if spending $100 or so means that you aren’t tied to the computer for 5 hours and free to get on with more productive stuff it’s a no brainer!

Secondly you can pay somebody be else to do it for you. There are lots of submission services on the net. Always be sure to choose one that is reputable. Mass submission of several hundred a week will look unnatural to the search engines your ranking will definitely suffer! Time released is the best method. A company who I have personally used, and found to be very good and professional are Submit Elite
Whether doing your submission manually or not, you need to ensure that you write good titles and excellent descriptions targeting your top keywords.

Social Bookmarking

I can hear you thinking “what the hell is social bookmarking?”, “does that mean I have got tell me mates down the pub?”. Well sort of yes! It doesn’t mean that you have got to save your friends to your favorites or bookmarks in your web browser! What social bookmarking actually involves is bookmarking your favorite sites on a public website and attaching keyword tags to them so others can share that valuable information. If you want to have a look at a video on how it’s done Click Here
As with most SEO ‘chores’ the process of social bookmarking can be quite time consuming. Again there are two methods of doing it, either manually or finding some software to do it for you.

If you want to do it manually you register with a social bookmarking site, and began creating your own collection of bookmarks using your keywords as tags. Thus creating a classification structure for things you either like or enjoy searching for. You can make these bookmarks both private and public to share.
As a result providing users with a focal point for organized information and categorized resources of useful websites. When the “bookmarker” created it they ‘tagged’ the resources enabling others to use it to find and share sites and information.

It becomes social purely because people who have similar interests and have searched for similar sites can all meet in one place where there is both useful and relevant info.

How you as an internet marketer can use these sites is simple! People have created these keyword targeted resources are all looking from something specific and what that means for you is keyword targeted traffic specifically interested in what your selling! Great News free targeted traffic but more importantly by bookmarking your sites you are creating multiple backlinks to your site enhancing your SEO.
It’s entirely up to you whether you do it manually or decide to invest in some software. We strongly recommend Book Marking Demon due to its multi faceted arsenal

Video Sites

You can get some additional exposure by publishing videos on all of the major video sharing sites. There are 2 main benefits to doing this, firstly get free traffic from the video sites customer base, most of which are extremely specific and niche targeted and secondly you get your all important backlink to a high ranking site. The use of video sharing sites to increase rankings is now common practice. There have been many good Traffic & SEO books written but one of the best and most informative is Traffic Manifesto

Make sure to use anchor text for labeling any videos etc. as this will also help your organic search ranking for those particular keywords. Probably the most commonly known video site is You Tube, but there are many, many more and these sites are extremely powerful in enhancing your credibility to the search engines. Others include Google Video, Buzznet, Kwego, MySpace and the list goes on.

Content Marketing

There is widely used expression in the world of SEO “content is king”. Those who use it are both referring to content on their website and also content to get people there!

Article Marketing

Article Marketing is the process of writing articles and publishing them on Article Sites. Obviously the content is the actual article itself. The importance of Article Marketing is huge as it is widely regarded as one of the most powerful link buildings exercises there is.

If your article content is good then you stand a fair chance of other sites picking it up and using it on there page. Obviously if you combine this with the power of some of the ‘Authority’ article sites then you can very quickly build up some good quality links. Thus improving your importance to the search engines. Other benefits include that people reading these articles are all potential customers are they are searching for information on something. There isn’t anything better than free traffic, except ‘captive free traffic’ which is exactly what these visitors are!

There are several methods you can use to get content for your articles. You can write them yourself, pay a ghost writer to do this for you or alternatively use some software do it. I have used ghost writers and done some myself, the important thing is that you can’t just copy someone else’s, as all of the article sites don’t except matching content as it’s blatantly plagiarized! Although it would be a lot easier for everyone if they did! Sometimes I use Content Infinity to find useful content from articles that a free to share and make any necessary amendments. It saves time as to write powerful articles you need to research write and then publish the article and with all of the other SEO tasks I find this to be time efficient.

Most article sites allow you to put a few keywords into your article. The key is to not over do it! Many of them refuse to publish the article if they think you “keyword stuffing” as they call it. It is important to use your keywords as anchor text in the content. By anchor text I simply mean using html tags such KEYWORDS to emphasize the relevance of your site for that particular phrase. Most sites allow you to put 2-3 links to your site within the text, but remember that one of them will be in your resource box!
The pros far out way the cons when it comes to article writing! The pros are that article are excellent for backlink and generating some free captive traffic. Where as the cons are how long you have spent registering with all of the article sites, of which there are about 600!! Talk about a headache.

Don’t panic though, as again there is software which helps do this for you. The two we would recommend are Article Submitter which automates a lot of the sign up process for you and Article Post Robot lets you post to specific categories thus increasing the chance of the article being published as well as having a randomized feature.

One of the keys to maximizing your coverage with each article comes back to duplicate the content I mentioned earlier, be sure to re-arrange the article, vary text and headlines so you will get full credit from the search engines for your work.

As with most things on the internet there are authority sites! Definitely the best one for articles is Ezine Articles. Before using any software to post your articles you should submit them here first. As once they are accepted by these guys the rest should be gravy!

Another way to get the most from your article is post it on your website or Blog. This is only suitable for certain types of sites. If yours is one of these then just ask us and we’ll upload it for you giving you fresh content keeping Greedy old Google happy.


Blogging

If you are new to internet marketing the term Blog may well be unfamiliar. It stands for “Web Log” which is basically just a site that has lots of information on them. There hundreds of reasons why people have a Blog. Some people just use them as a personal diary others use them for political promotions etc. Many use them for promotion of affiliate marketing products or simply a journal of their own thoughts, the list is endless!

We are only interested in Blogs because they are good for promoting backlinks to our sites. You can place your sites link in your Blog and you’ve automatically got a backlink to your site! That simple. Google and other engines see Blogs as ‘Authority Sites’ as they contain lots of relevant information for a particular search term, and as a result any link gained from this exercise can be considered of good quality.
Blogs tend of a very similar format as most of the Blogging platforms are based on very similar software. They tend to take the following structure the will be a main content area, categories of articles, archives, a Blogroll of related sites, comments & message boards, and finally RSS feeds.

We recommend using the platform Blogger! Why? Not because it’s pretty or simple to use! (which it is) but because who owns Blogger.com? That’s right Google! So if they are not going hold any value in links gained from one of their own sites, what are they going to put value into?

You can also use other people’s Blogs to cleverly gain more backlinks to your site which are keyword related. This is great news for us as it means we can get some additional free keyword targeted traffic form readers of these Blogs, we gain lots of quality backlinks and last but least Google absolutely loves Blogs. More importantly it’s own Blogs if you use Blogger.com!!

To be able to place your links on other Blogs and gain more backlinks you are going to need to find them. How? We use Instant Blog Links to find a subject or keyword related Blog and then post comments with a link to our site. It couldn’t be simpler! Get targeted traffic, and good quality backlinks.

You’re Guide To Blogging Success

You’re probably thinking right I understand the Blog bit now but how do I create one? It’s that simple with all of the Blog platforms that a 5 year old kid could do it! Luckily for me!

Follow these quick steps and you can’t go wrong!
• Fire up your web browser and load up Blogger.com and open a Blog. Shouldn’t take you more than 10-15 minutes
• Create a sitemap for your Blog. These help the search engines find your site easier. You can do this here
• Then copy and paste this into your Blog
• Now go to www.pingomatic.com and enter the site URL for your Blog, select where you want to send it and press go. This basically informs all of the search engines that you have added new content and them over to take a look. This is known as “Blog & Ping”.
• Every time you have a new article post it on your website or Blog and then ‘ping’ it.

Right we have now established the path to success! All we need to do is follow it and the money will come rolling in. This basically falls into 2 categories Starting Up and Ongoing.

Starting Up

• Search Engine Submission
• Compile your list of high ranking keywords
• Try & Get 100 links from directories – Like Yesterday!
• Register with over 200 Article Directories to market with
• Start Your Social Bookmarking
• Do a Blog
• Create a sitemap
• Blog & Ping Baby!

Ongoing

• Register with 10 Directories
• Register with 10 Article Site
• Do a minimum of 2 articles per site and submit to be published
• Update your Blog with these and Blog & Ping
• Post comments on 30-40 or so Blogs with your URL embedded in

Your Road To Success!

• Put simply! As you have now read this and all of the other info we have sent you, you are now 95% more educated than the average Jo fighting for a living online
• By maintaining your PPC campaigns using your new found knowledge you are well down the road to achieving wealth
• By buying these tools and being committed you will do very well
• Absorb everything we have gone through and seek more info then you are the only one holding back the reigns to fortunes
• As with everything in life, you only get out what you put in!! Be dedicated, Be Strong and be Successful

WordTracker

Keyword Elite

Directory Submitter

SubmitEaze

Book Marking Demon

Content Infinity

Article Submitter


Article Post Robot

Instant Blog Links