AlfaProfitGen Blog

A quick search on Google for advice on creating a site map initially threw up many links to software you could buy or download for free to create a site map.

But why do you need a site map?

Basically as websites get larger and more complex both the human browser and the search engine spiders need an easy to follow map to find all the pages within your site. A site map gives them a simple navigational tool.

Site maps have 3 main benefits:

1) A site map allows visitors to easily find what they are looking for by simply visiting your site map and clicking on the link to go directly to the page they want to visit.

2) Often technologies employed to assist in reading webpages such as web page readers and screen readers can only follow text links. For practical reasons it may not always be possible to show a text link to every other page within your site on your main page and other pages within your website and so use a site map.

3) Search engine spiders like text and text links. If they cannot follow a text link to a page of your site it may not get indexed. Make it easy for the spider to index all your pages through a site map.

A site map consists of the two things search engines love – text and keywords. To build a good site map combine relevant keywords with a hyper text links. For example on your site map you may have a link to your webpage about website promotion so your hyperlink should contains the words ‘website promotion’ and link directly to that page within your site.

A site map does not need and indeed should not be fancy, but should be clear and easy to navigate.

Here are some tips for a good site map:

1. Place a prominent link to your site map on every page and lable it SITE MAP.

2. It should show all your webpages through different levels as basic text links.

3. Use standard colours for links and visited links.

4. It should show a quick, easy to follow over view of the site without the need to scroll around in the web browser.

Google started allowing people to submit site maps to their account as a way of letting google know about all your webpages and updates to your site. It does not increase your page ranking at all but is worth taking the time to set up properly.

You can find free software for creating site maps at:

http://www.likno.com/sitemap.html
http://www.freesitemapgenerator.com
http://www.sitemapspal.com

And when you are done, don’t forget to tell Google about your site map so they can trawl and hopefully index all the pages of your site.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

A well planned site map can ensure your Web site is fully indexed by search engines.

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I have been to many forums and found that people like to do their own SEO initially and then give up later after they do not find reasonable results. I would suggest that they should keep on trying, until they really feel that their sales is directly dependent on their ranking in the search engines.
I have high respect for all the people who have achieved success using in-house/personal SEO and still are able to maintain there top spot for highly competitive keywords like digital camera software or photo software. The world of SEO has changed rapidly and so have the techniques. Now lets start with main subject that is “Making money online with SEO”.
The first well-known fact:

Higher the traffic better the sales
It is a proven fact that among the billions of pages that are searched by search engines only a few make it to the top and these top 30 websites make the most business. Type in digital camera software for instance and you will understand what I mean. Do you remember how many times have you gone beyond the 3-4th page of your search page results? I would expect the same behavior from 99.9% of the Internet surfers as no one has the time to go beyond the top 30 listed pages. I am exaggerating when I say top 30 because mostly the top 10 get 75% of the hits. So if you are not at the top you are losing on a huge chunk of sales, unless you are advertising locally and are limited to a local business.

Google adwords is worth a mention at this point as millions use them and know their importance. The users of google adwords know that they will get listed at the top page (sponsored listing) for the specified keywords. However, they do not estimate the sales that they will make. They can easily do it in a month and then change their bid amount to be paying less in advertising on google. Being listed in the top page does not mean that you will end up with guaranteed sales. You need to have a real good sales page that will make the “buyer” feel the need to buy it. Remember it is all about making him feel that he needs it.

Search engine optimization will propel your page to the top 10 without having to pay for the adwords campaign that is a pay per click campaign and you might end up paying far more than your sales. Having said this if you choose the niche keywords for your campaign and have a good sales copy you are bound to make a lot out of the campaign. Out of thousands who click to your page at least 50 should buy your product.

The million-dollar question
How will you benefit from SEO? How much should you spend?
If you have a good product and at a reasonable price compared to competition and feel that you can garner enough sales once your website receives traffic SEO will benefit you by providing you with exposure for the chosen keywords ( a proper keyword analysis for searches per month for that chosen keyword) will be conducted by the SEO expert. Depending on the competition you have for those keywords the plan will be chalked out by him. Sometimes only on-page SEO may take you to the top however, nowadays SEO has become a popular career with many top websites spending huge amounts on SEO to be listed in the top.

Your expense should depend on how much sale you are bound to make. A proper estimation of this can be drawn after the first month that you are listed in the top 10. Your expense can range from any where between $250-$2500 depending on the competition you face.

Be careful while choosing an SEO firm or person as they can use spammed techniques that can get you banned from search engines.

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Getting Links To Your Site Free and Easy
by Andre Best

If you’re the least bit serious about promoting your website(s) online then you have probably heard the recent cry that one’s website needs links coming into it. Lot’s of links. And without these many, many links one is the proverbial billboard in the desert waiting to be seen by those thirsty for sustenance.

Well after these several years that I’ve been on the internet I too heard the call and have followed the many internet bandwagons that have rolled into e-town touting the next ‘latest and greatest’ snakeoil software to get one traffic that they won’t believe.

You know the cry… ‘The traffic explosion your favorite web guru gets – and it’ll only cost you $795 to attend this three-day conference to learn how to play with the big boys (and girls) online.’

Sound familiar? To most owning one or several websites it will.

But after being dragged around the reciprocal linking millstone over the last several months in a valiant attempt to obtain many reciprocal link exchanges and closely monitoring all completed link requests I can truthfully say that that job in itself is a bugger to track and stay on top of.

Why?

Because for the most part one has to rely on one common denominator in that equation… people.

I finally realized that this tactic of getting traffic ‘for free’ and having it prove itself as viable was indeed true. Link-exchanges do work. But they ARE work too.

But with me being the type of person who writes with my eyes closed (literally), I was told by a couple of e-friends that I should pursue ‘articles’ more vehemently. I didn’t know what they meant so what I did was find out about a couple of the bigger article directories on the Net and I submitted a couple of my writings to them. And then I promptly forgot about this process because it was extremely labor intensive.

And with me being a relatively lazy fellow at times I ‘moved on’ to other tasks that seemed more to my liking. And ease of use.

But after getting relatively burned out with this link-exchange stuff and dogging real live people to honor link exchange requests after I had ‘nicely’ place an unexpected link to their site on my site, I was tired of this whole process.

~~~~COMMENT~~~~
Yes, I know there are automated processes and software out there that will do this linking stuff for one, but again, I’ve also read how the SE’s are ‘onto’ these tactics and reciprocal links aren’t as effective as they used to be.

But they are still effective, that’s why I still honor the odd link exchange request I get. I just don’t spend all my time doing this anymore.

But getting back on track to the actual subject of this article…
~~END COMMENT~~

Back a couple of months ago, I somehow received an email about a new software program that would do ‘article submissions’ almost automatically.

But let me first digress somewhat and tell you what ‘article submitting’ is.

Article submitting may sound kind of formal and only for ‘writers’, but it isn’t.

Essentially, anytime one writes something of extended length, even a longer webpage, they’ve written an ‘article’.

Think about it. If you have a website that you’ve personally written, then you have written articles related to the subject of your website.

So, if your website is all about the best way to burp babies, then you have a whole bunch of ‘articles’ that you’ve written about parenting, specifically, burping babies.

What you can then do is submit these articles throughout the WWW and get yourself known as a baby burping expert.

But even more importantly, you can take each of the webpages you’ve written on your website and turn it into an ‘article’ – add a link BACK to your site in the footer of the article – and voila! you have written an article and ALSO obtained a link back to your site whenever someone else uses that article.

And all this without having to hassle with e-chasing that non-compliant link partner to honor their link exchange with you.

Sound cool? It is.

Now, like everything else, there is a downside to all this article writing.

It takes time to do.

First you have to have written YOUR OWN articles/webpages. And then you have to personally submit them to any of several hundred article directories floating around in cyberspace.

And of course there is the whole idea of you having the motivation to do this submission stuff too, so let me share a little bit of motivating statistics with you.

Remember how I mentioned earlier about having piddled with submitting a couple of stories/webpages I had written to several of the major article directories? Well, that was about 14 months ago. And remember how I told you that I did this and then promptly forgot about all this article submission stuff?

Well, over those 14 months since I did this, which by the way only took about one hour to do, I now have about 300 STATIC, incoming links to my site from those two articles being posted around the Internet. Yes, 300 incoming, NOT reciprocal, links.

And so what I did was after I received that email from someone touting this article submission software was to do some research on this whole article submission automation software process.

What I came out of this research with was that as of now there are two main article submission software programs that allow one to automate most of the process of doing this sometimes laborious task.

And since it is so repetitive and sometimes painstaking to do manual article submissions I thought that this would be one way to get me back into this process that I think is well suited for the way I like to promote my business online. With words, that is.

After much mental deliberation, and financial detailing, I opted to go for an article submission software that was released during the summer of 2005. Besides it being almost one-third the price of the other main player in this article submittal software e-competition going on, it also appeared to have a lot going for it with a money-back guarantee and a manual and good developer-support.

So I bought it several weeks ago and have been using it everyday to promote several of my websites by submitting ‘articles’ I’ve written to the several hundred article directories included in the automatic submissions this software does for the user.

And to say the least, the results, so far, are extremely impressive.

One little statistic. Remember those two articles I submitted 14 months ago and obtained over 300 incoming links from doing so? Well, I’ve used this software to continue submitting them to other article directories included in the software program.

And now that 300 incoming links number now numbers almost 700. Yes, 700 incoming links from just those two articles. An increase of approximately 400 incoming links, in just five weeks.

To me, those are some GOOD results. Especially without having to chase other humans to reciprocal link with me, building link webpages, tracking linking emails, checking links, buying tracking software, and all that stuff that goes along with the reciprocal linking process.

So, if you’re tired of buying links and chasing other website owners for reciprocal link exchanges, do consider using content you’ve written as a way to get links, and eventually traffic, into your site.

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What exactly is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is designing, writing, and coding (in HTML) your entire web site so that there is a good chance that your web pages will appear at the top of search engine queries for your selected keywords and key phrases. The majority of the search engine optimization specialist’s time should be spent targeting the search engines that will give you the most traffic. The following search engines and directories are:

AltaVista
AOL Search
Business.com
FAST Search
Google
HotBot
LookSmart
Lycos
MSN Search
Netscape Search
Open Directory
Overture
Yahoo

The best time to request search engine optimization is before you design your web site. As your web site designer creates page templates for you to approve, you can have a search engine optimization specialist take a look at them and tell you which layout is best for optimum indexing. Once you have selected the best layout for your web site, then the search engine optimization specialist can tell your designer when and where to place your keywords and key phrases within your HTML tags.

How can you tell a quality search engine optimization specialist from a scam artist? A search engine optimization specialist should be able to get your site indexed well for Google, Inktomi, and Yahoo. The 2 search engines and 1 directory differ in the way they index sites. Google does not use meta-tag content for relevancy. Inktomi currently uses meta-tags. And Yahoo is a directory. Ask how your site will be designed and tagged for each of these. If you don’t get 3 different answers, then you should move on to a more experienced search engine optimization professional.

If your web site has already been designed, a professional search engine optimization specialist will often recommend layout and design changes. He/She is not telling you that you have a bad-looking web site. He/She is telling you that the site’s layout will not get indexed well for your targeted keywords and key phrases. For example, a site that has a triple frameset (on the top and on the side) is extremely difficult to get indexed well on search engines, even with a gateway page. However, a simple frameset can get indexed well in search engines, with or without a gateway page. A search engine optimization specialist can design or tell your web site designer how to lay out a simple frameset to get the best results.

Search engine optimization and other marketing strategies (banner advertising, web copywriting, being listed in Yahoo, posting to discussion groups, etc.) are not substitutes for a web site with solid content and great layout. Search engine optimization is not a substitute for customer service, a good sales pitch, or a great product/service. It is not a substitute for a well-planned online and offline marketing plan. Search engine optimization is a means of helping your potential customers find your web site. It is a highly specialized marketing tool.

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Imagine getting free high quality, targeted traffic to your website. How much would that be worth to you? What if you could get it for free?! Sound too good to be true? Its easy, and its free!

Imagine being able to promote your website, establish credibility and build a solid customer base just by pressing submit! You can get free publicity by writing articles that publishers can post in their newsletters or post on their website. By submitting your content to article directories, you can potentially reach tens of thousands of Internet users. If your article is good enough, you may find out that it gets published in an e-zine that is read by millions of subscribers across their network. How much would you pay for that kind of exposure? The good news, is that you don’t have to.

The key to finding success in article submission starts with and ends with your content. Not surprisingly, if your article is well written, and compelling, with an attractive call to action, you will get the results you are looking for.

Here are a couple of tips for you:

a) Keep the articles short. The average attention span of most internet users is short. If you write a long expose on your product, you’re likely to lose their interest. Keep the article to approximately 750 – 1000 words. If they are interested, your resource box will direct them to your site, where they can learn more.

b) Keep the article focused. Focus in on one tip or solution. Sell the reader on the idea that you can provide them with answers they are looking for. This will get them interested in visiting your site to see what other tidbits of information your site provides.

c) Keep It Simple. While you may be well versed in your product and solutions, you want to attract a wider range of potential customers. By keeping the article in simple terms, you can attract both the experienced and the novice to your solutions. Speak from your experience, which builds credibility with your reader.

d) Don’t gain the credibility and integrity you have built with the reader, only to lose it with grammatical and spelling errors. Have someone proof read your article.

e) Avoid selling. You have a website for that. Provide advice that has value based on your experience. This will entice the reader to go to your site to learn more. Avoid using affiliate codes within the body of your site, since this will make your advice look biased. Also, publishers want quality content. Sell them on the fact that you can provide solutions to their problems, not to the product you are pitching. Let your website do that when they visit you.

f) Work just as hard on your resource box as the rest of your article. Your resource box provides your chance to invite them to your site, which is how you will get instant, high quality, targeted traffic. Keep it to a maximum of 6 lines. Remember to link your keyword to your site. This will help improve your search engine rankings for that key phrase.

g) Before you submit: Follow the publishers guidelines. If you don’t follow the guidelines, its likely that you will find that your article will be deleted and an opportunity lost.

h) Use an attention grabbing headline. Like a sign in a store front that catches your eye, if you use an attention grabbing title, the reader will instantly want to know more.

There are several websites that will publish your articles. Go to Google and type in the words ’submit and article + your area of interest’. You may also want to consider purchasing Article Announcer which will help to automate this process. While it may appear expensive, this software package is worth it if you plan on submitting several articles to ezine directories.

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