The Doctor

Make yourself familiar with the backbone of the modern search engine ranking systems — Link Popularity Algorithms. Link building is a dicey strategy, so read about the link analysis working principles to avoid the risks and get the most from your incoming links.

Links rule the Internet. Links bring traffic, links bring popularity, links bring high ranking, and most importantly — links bring money. Everyday webmasters, promoters and marketers send out tons of emails asking for links, hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals make their living by link building. But what is behind all this hype? Why in the last five years links became such important factor for the success of an online business?
Everyone knows or at least has heard of PageRank — the most widely used Link Popularity Algorithm. PageRank has proven itself as a powerful measure to identify important resources in the Web and since 1998 it is the backbone of the most successful search engine — Google.com. Instead of traditional information retrieval technique, page content analysis, which was used by the majority of search engines in the late 1990s, PageRank takes the advantage of the interlinked nature of the Web. It was discovered that hypertext link could serve the same purpose as citations in the academic world. The more people cite your document the more important it becomes. The same is true for web pages. The effectiveness of the new approach turned out to be beyond expectations, and shortly afterwards Google has transformed itself from a modest university research project into the biggest search engine and a multi-billion corporation.
The advent of links as a ranking factor has killed the traditional SEO. Page content optimization importance has sunk tremendously while new strategies of website promotion have been brought into the limelight. Link exchange, reciprocal links, link directories, link farms, three-way linking — all these approaches came into use to answer the search engines shifting to the link ranking algorithms. Sometimes people use these techniques without a clear understanding of what is behind them. Sites get penalized; people waste their time and money — all because of insufficient knowledge. What is a link popularity algorithm? What algorithms are in use? Which factors are important and what are their weights?
It is impossible to create an effective link building strategy without knowing the answers to these questions. To understand the logic of link analysis algorithms, you have to make yourself familiar with the topic. A great number of research papers on information retrieval are available in the Internet but it would take too much of your time to find and identify which of them are important and relevant. At SEOResearcher.com I collect and summarize the most prominent works on Link Popularity Algorithms as well as on other related topics. Among the recent additions, you will find descriptions of the first link ranking algorithm, InDegree, and later developments, PageRank, HITS, topic sensitive PageRank and Authority Threshold algorithms. In articles discussing the shortcomings of link ranking approach you will find an answer to a question — why it takes so much time for a new site to get enough link to make its way into the top-ten of search results? Or what are the perspectives of the semantic markup in HTML links? Or what is the optimal balance between website outlook, content and business goals? Knowledge always pays off, knowledge is always a competitive advantage and especially in the Internet – the medium born in college labs. SEO Researcher - A Comprehensive Web Marketing Study

Highly targeted traffic is one of the most important entities in the internet universe. Any website owner or administrator recognizes the importance of driving traffic to a website.

The success of any website does not rely entirely on the site itself. You may have a terrific idea for a website, offer an excellent product or service, or have an exceptionally designed site with superb content, but if you do not use the right strategies to advertise, your site would not attract the high traffic you need. Attracting targeted traffic is a task that should be taken seriously for any site to succeed or make a profit. Fortunately, there are internet-marketing tools that help the website marketer to drive traffic to his website. One of the most significant, and effective, of these tools is Google’s Adwords. Adwords is one of Google’s advertising services.
How does Google Adwords work? Google is the largest search engine on the web receiving over 200 million queries each day through its various services. As Google is the most popular search engine today, webmasters are keen on having their websites achieve a higher ranking in the search engine results it provides. A high ranking can mean high traffic for that website. The search engine results page is also a great venue for advertisers to promote a product or service through ads and links. Consequently, Google launched its Adwords service, as a way for businesses to advertise products and services to a targeted audience. Google Adwords can guarantee instant traffic. In this service, Google displays relevant text based ads within its search engine results page termed as “Sponsored Links”. Whenever a particular keyword is searched on, these relevant links appear in a separate section giving excellent exposure to the sites listed.
How do you use Google Adwords? First, you have to open an account with the Google Adwords Service. Then, you should indicate your target language and country. This is important because you would not want your products advertised in countries where your product or service cannot be sold. Afterwards, you should now create an ad group. This involves designing the ad, selecting keywords and determining maximum cost per click that you are willing to spend and defining bid amounts. The most important step in creating a successful Adwords campaign is selecting an effective title tag that will catch the attention of your target audience. The title tag, generally a short phrase, is the most important part of your Adwords campaign so make sure that it is attractive and catchy. You should describe the website clearly and accurately. The most effective advertising conveys a clear message to the target audience. With a clear message, you will be attracting qualified leads, which can eventually convert to sale. Thus, the importance of selecting the right keywords cannot be overemphasized.
There are keyword variations you can adapt to reach more prospects. Using these varieties, misspellings and derivatives can help increase the chance of your ads being served. Broad match is targeting keywords in a loosely defined manner. Here, the ads appear based on the keywords that have been queried by other users as opposed to exact match, which calls for the keyword to match the query exactly. Meanwhile, a keyword phrase set to phrase match will only appear when the exact phrase is searched on. A negative keyword is helpful in filtering unrelated pages.
After you have decided on what title tag to use in your ad, you must now define a budget in order to maximize exposure. Google Adwords recommend a daily budget for each campaign. However, you should determine a budget that is suitable and affordable. You should also determine the maximum cost per click. Google will offer a recommended cost per click, but you do not have to stick with this. Usually, a number one position is not ideal as it can also attract unwanted traffic and useless clicks. A number two position is more preferred as it can filter useless clicks and provide traffic with a higher conversion rate.
To conclude, Google Adwords is an excellent strategy and tool in giving your site maximum exposure. Nevertheless, Google Adwords should not be your sole advertising campaign. It will definitely help you find the all-important, highly targeted traffic you need.

Before search engines got smart, a site’s page ranking was based on keyword match-ups. When webmasters stock-piled their sites with keywords, the wrong sites were getting too much attention.

Google decided to focus on a site’s “popularity” instead. The number of incoming links became the focus of PR criteria. The theory behind this system was that if a lot of sites link to another site, that site would contain valuable content.
But again, webmasters got sneaky. With this trend, we began to see the evolution of “Link Farms” and “Free-for-All” (FFA) sites. These pages were essentially a gigantic collection of (often times) useless links. In most cases, the sites were not categorized or descriptive. They became a place for webmasters to dump their links in order to make their site appear more popular.
This strategy worked for some time, but soon search engines caught on. “Link Farms” and FFA sites served no purpose to web users. Since Google prides itself on catering to web users (and NOT developers), a solution had to be formed. “Link Farms” were cluttering up the web and making it more difficult for users to find valuable resources online.
Google soon began to rate the quality of the links that determined a site’s “link pop.” “Link Farms” and FFA sites became categorized as spam, and thus contributed no value to a site’s link popularity.
Today, submitting to a “Link Farm” or FFA site can be harmful to your website’s reputation. Google takes a strong stance against these kinds of link pages. At best, the “Link Farm” will drag down your ranking and make it harder for the valuable sites to work in your favor. At worst, your site will be BANNED altogether for using spam sites to attempt to generate traffic. This is a very real possibility.
“Link Farms” and FFA sites present very little value. Although it may sound tempting, users will not obtain quality or relevant links from the submission. Plus, who wants to see their link among “junk” websites for adult entertainment, dating sites, and casinos? Submitting to “Link Farms” doesn’t contribute to your credibility and is just not worth the risk.
Instead, spend your time submitting to credible directories and exchanging links with other relevant sites. The process can be time-consuming, but it is the only way to generate safe, site-specific traffic.
For an easier method to the tedious directory submission process, and to submit your website to 500+ link directories I strongly recommend Directory Submitter.

Traffic exchanges, for the uninitiated, are programs where you can submit your website(s) to be placed in a rotation for other members to see.

That’s the simple, watered-down explanation.
But there is more. In order for your site to be put in the rotation of the exchange, you need to have accumulated credits in the program. Some programs will offer free credits to new members as enticement to join but you need to view a certain number of websites first before you get the credits assigned to your account. Most programs will not usually show you your own website because of the obvious waste of time and credits that would implicate for you.
I don’t know exactly how many traffic exchanges are out there but there are many and the way they allocate credits vary from program to program. Some, for instance, will give you a straight 1:1 surfing ratio meaning that for every site you view your own site will be shown one time. Other less generous sites offer higher surfing ratios of, say, 2:1 (where you need to see two sites to have your site shown one time) or 3:1 and so on. The websites to be viewed are put on timers and these too run the gamut from 10 seconds to as high up as 30 seconds.
Most exchanges are free to join with a paid (usually a monthly fee) option to upgrade to “pro” level where you are entitled to extra perks that vary with the program. Some of these perks include a better surfing ratio, free monthly credits, unlimited surfing (some programs limit the number of sites you can surf a day), and other privileges. As for anti-cheat prevention, many of these programs have put in place rather sophisticated scripts that makes surfing with automated programs (and therefore cheating) very, very difficult if not impossible.
Even though traffic exchange programs are very popular and are widely used, they have their fair share of detractors. Some people contend that exchanges are only marginally effective because the traffic your website receives can hardly be called “targeted” and furthermore people are not really paying attention to the websites since they are just surfing because they have to not because they want to.
I beg to differ with this view. While it may be true that the traffic may not be as laser targeted as when, for instance, you do a Google keyword search, the rotating websites are seen and those that catch the eye and pique the curiosity of the viewer will get attention. Human beings are curious by nature and we react to words, colors, sound, layout, etc., etc., even if exposed to these things for only a few seconds. Indeed, when we do a Google search most of us will only give a website a few seconds to “state its case” so to speak. If we get turned off by any of the website’s components, i.e., color, layout, etc., we will move on to the next website faster than fast.
As you may have guessed by the slant of this article, I use traffic exchanges to promote my affiliate business. I started a few months ago and I have seen good results so far. First I signed up with a couple and then decided to join a few more so now I regularly surf about 20 traffic exchanges on a regular basis. This number of exchanges may sound daunting but it’s really not if you know how to manage them. I will discuss managing your traffic exchanges and will offer a few helpful tips on the second part of this article.

Have you just built a new site? Is it the jazziest, classiest site on the net? Do all your visitors love it? All five of them?
You are not alone.

I think just about everyone has the same problem starting out on the net whatever their site is about, whether business or otherwise. So you buy traffic. You get huge traffic all right, but no sales. The traffic is not targeted. It is usually generated by a pop-up or pop-under. The people who see your advertisement are not looking for it and many close the pop-up immediately without even seeing your site. And that’s if the pop-up blockers don’t block them.
Banner ads have traditionally been a very good way of getting the message across. But they are losing their effectiveness now. I think the reason this is happening is because people are seeing so many of them that they no longer notice them. It’s a bit like walking through a crowd and not seeing the faces you pass. Have you ever passed a friend in the street?
It can be very discouraging to see the reports from these traffic generators saying that you had 10,000 or 20,000 hits or whatever it is and you sold nothing or very little.
Would it not be a better idea to show your site to people who are looking for a site that has what you are offering?
You can do this by using a pay per click (PPC) directory. The directory will list your site by the keywords that you choose, and only charge you when someone clicks on the link to your site. That means that the person that visits is looking for your site. As you can imagine, the conversion rate in far higher than the examples above.
The PPC traffic will be generated regardless of page rank or how long your site is on the net or whether it is indexed in the ‘Big Three’ search engines.
When looking at traffic generation systems it is sensible to compare prices and shop around. It would be useful to have this information at hand when you do:
1. How many visitors you have to your site, daily, weekly or monthly. And, where they come from, i.e. search engine (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.), paid traffic generation, links on other sites etc.
2. Current traffic campaign costs.
3. Your conversion rate. i.e. what percentage of your visitors buy from you.
4. Your average sale amount.
5. Customer acquisition cost. i.e. how much it costs you to sell each item.
6. How much you are willing to spend to make a sale.
Run some test PPC campaigns before you go into it in a big way. You can compare your figures before and after to see if it has been worthwhile. I am confident that you will see a very significant improvement.
A pay PPC directory is better than the usual PPC systems that you see in that your position in the search results depends only on your bid for the keyword you choose.
Let’s say you are selling beekeeping equipment. You would bid on the word beekeeping. You may even bid on others like beehive and honey etc. If there are no other bidders for that word in that directory then you get the word for the minimum bid, which may be as low as $0.05. This means that you would top the search results for the word beekeeping, almost guaranteeing a visit from that searcher. Even if there is another bidder for that word he will be higher on the page until but unless there are several bidders you will still be on the front page of the results. Now would you get quality targeted visitors anywhere else for such a low cost?
If nobody clicks on your listing then it has cost you nothing but the few minutes it took to sign up. But if you do get clicks then it will be up to you and your site to convert them into buyers. Don?t forget that even at the best of times you will only sell to a small percentage of your visitors, but if you have a quality site they may come back and buy at a later date or tell their friends about it.
Using the smaller, less well known search engines and directories is a good idea when starting out because the clicks are usually cheaper but they usually get less traffic also.
You are unlikely to be in the lucky position of having the marketplace to yourself. So, check out your competitors. See what they are doing. Are they paying for pop-up traffic or PPC?