Domain Names and Anchor Text

Branding vs Naming

Many people say that the name of a website should be original. It should convey some sense of branding unlike any other site. They say your name should not be generic.

The truth of this matter is that branding is more developed by how you interact with people than by what your name is. Your name can be used to help develop brand, but many smart webmasters use their domain name for more than just branding.

Superstar Websites

People take the branding idea one step further and rattle off some of the best technological leaders. Amazon, Google, Yahoo!, Ebay, etc. None of these sites say what they do in their site name.

Google is so powerful because it is the only Google. It was a wide open market. Yahoo! became Yahoo! because there was no great well marketed directory on the web. Ebay became Ebay because nobody else had a PEZ trading marketplace. (Ebay is yet one more great thing we all owe to PEZ).

Business Facts

Most successful businesses or websites will not be like Google. Most will not be a runaway technological success. Most businesses become successful from soft innovations. Small focused consumer centric changes can help you craft a successful business model.

For every Yahoo! or Google on the market there are 1,000 Door Hangers.com or Cheese.com websites which are doing just fine "bringing in the cheese."

Anchor Text

Anchor text is extremely important to search engines. What a link says is as important as who is saying it. When I link to your site with the words "I eat cats" as the link text a search engine will evaluate that link and assume you eat cats.

You can't control all the links you get (meow), but you can help control some of them. People often link to you using the words in your domain name as the link text (also known as anchor text.) If your domain name has your primary keywords in it then you have an extremely powerful business advantage over your competitors.

Using Dashes in Domain Names

Most of the benefit of dashes in the domain name have eroded in the last year or two. Domain names themselves have been greatly devalued in search engine algorithms, and most links use the site name vice the domain name as the anchor text.

I am of the opinion that you usually can pick out a keyword rich domain name without needing dashes. It may take a bit of creativity and a bit of time, but it is possible. If you are aiming to sell products vice become a consultant you may be able to do well making a living from search engine traffic and not need as strong of a branded name behind your domain.

Brandable Generic Domain Names

Sometimes they do still exist!

I wanted to write an ebook about SEO. Less than a year ago the domain name SEObook.com was still available. It will not always be that easy to find a domain name, but if you think hard enough you should be able to find a brandable domain name which is also keyword rich.

High quality directories usually prefer to list sites by their name vice "insert keyword phrase here."

Having a domain name like mine makes it very easy for me to get inbound links with "SEO Book" or "Search Engine Optimization Book" as the link text. This allows me to rank better for those search phrases, and eventually it will allow me to rank good for "SEO" and "search engine optimization."

Creativity in Domain Naming

If the domain name with your keywords is already taken you still have many other options. If my domain name was taken odds are I could have still got a domain name like seo-ebook-book.biz, but that seems a bit too generic and lacks the creativity to keep it somewhat brandable while still making it keyword rich.

Usually you can add other words around the main words in your domain name to keep the keyword rich words in there without making it overly long.

TheSEObook.com is one example of an alternate domain I could have used. I could also try synonyms. I just looked and SEOreport.com was gone. My next guess for a name was SEOsecrets.com, and it was still available. There are a ton of good domain names still on the market .

Domain Name Summary

Search engines such as Google heavily weight link text in their relevancy algorithms. Soft innovations drive most successful businesses. It is highly unlikely that my business or your business is going to be the next Google. Often times keyword rich domain names are available which will give you a considerable competitive advantage over your competition.

About the Author
Aaron Wall is the author of The SEOBook, possibly the best search engine optimization ebook on the planet.

Why Build a Niche Website

Quality vs. Quantity

Larger is not necessarily better. Many people tell you to make tons of content but fail to explain exactly what quality content is. The biggest problem with growing extremely large is a complete loss of focus.

Adding on Cheap Businesses

If a person is a good web designer and understands a decent amount about how search engines work they can easily add SEO to their bucket of services. Hosting is also cheap too. Some people will add on a couple services to website design and call themselves a full service interactive media company.

It may sound impressive, but how often do you use the phrase "full service interactive media" in your daily routine? Next to zero I bet. So the message is harder to spread. It is far easier to be successful if you sharpen and focus your business efforts vice spreading your efforts across many industries.

Focusing in on an Industry

Telephone numbers were given 7 digits because human memory sharply drops off as you add much more data. In any industry people will usually only remember one or two products or companies.

Think of the name of a copy machine company. Think of another... it gets a bit harder as you go down the list.

There are full service internet marketing firms, and within the internet marketing industry there is the SEM community. The SEM community has the pay per click side and the organic search result side.

The organic search results side of SEM consists of keyword research, copywriting, link building services, and link brokers. If you look in DMOZ there are over 800 generic or full service SEO firms.

Each of the generic SEO firms probably has a less than one in one hundred chance of being a well known industry leader within the industry.

The Ranking Problem with Line Extension

If you make a huge website then many pages will be multiple links deep into the site. Many of the links into your site will usually be linked to the home page.

Having only one home page on a huge site vice having five or six really focused sites means you will probably only have one chance to rank well for really competitive phrases. You will need to build extreme link popularity into your site to have your inner pages rank really well for competitive search terms (unless the inner page is an extremely unique well positioned idea).

The Linking Problem with Line Extension

The web is a big social network. Many quality links are based upon business partnerships. If you host, design, and promote sites you make it hard for hosts, designers, or marketers to link to you. People do not generally like to link to their competition, especially their unfocused competition.

If you pick a focus on a single industry it is much easier to make business partnerships with other sites around your business idea that do not directly compete with you.

Inside the Consumers Mind

As you add to your services you lose the positioning you have for your other services. When Google bought Blogger they left the name Blogger alone. When you think Google they want you to think search. When you think search they want you to think Google.

While line extension may at first seem like a good idea it often hurts businesses more than it helps them. When Heinz became ketchup it lost it's position as pickles. Right now I can tell you who I would refer you to for almost anything in SEO because certain people have branded themselves that way. Certain people become synonymous with ideas within their industry.

Breaking Down the SEO Industry

When I think of SEO there are really only a few companies that come to mind (out of many hundreds or thousands of companies). When I think of each of the market segments I usually think of one or two people or websites.

SEO Copywriting: People argue as to whether or not copywriting or links are more important. Obviously both matter at least somewhat. Jill Whalen positioned herself as "The SEO Copywriter."

It does not matter if she is right or wrong in her thinking how important SEO copywriting is. If you think you need an SEO Copywriter then you likely will end up running into Jill Whalen.

Linking is Important: In that whole arguement about whether llinking or copywriting is more important John Scott branded himself as the person who thinks links rule the world. His voice has been rather crass and perhaps too loud for some, but he has established a brand. If you believe in the power of links there is a good chance you will run into John Scott.

Announcing Websites: Sometimes landing a big client can make your name. Eric Ward helped build the Amazon.com linking campaign.

He has since worked for many other large national or international sites with his website announcement service. If you need to announce your website it is likely you will run into Eric Ward.

Link Brokers: There are only a handful of large link brokers on the web. I can think of maybe a half dozen off hand.

By taking Google to court for lowering his PageRank SearchKing made himself the ridicule of many jokes. He now has a gigantic new office. He too was laughing all the way to the bank.

Sometimes adding on extra things to combat problems within your industry boosts your popularity and may define you as a leader within your industry. Recently Google began to stop parsing link popularity on some sites that were selling links and Jarrod Hundt came up with a service called BlockedPR.com that tracks these sites.

Odds are that if you need a link broker you stand a good chance of running into the PRadNetwork or TextLinkBrokers.

Keyword Research: Thought to be too small or too focused of an idea by many SEO firms, keyword research became a lucrative field for Dan Thies.

Dan Thies snatched the opportunity to become synonymous with keyword research. He has just about zero competitors and if you need help with keyword research you will likely stumble into Dan Thies.

Article Summary

The web is a social structure where many links are based on business partnerships.

If you have a huge broad sweeping business it is usually harder to get free links.

People usually only remember a few names in any field.

Most people become successful by focusing their energies vice expanding their offerings.

- by Aaron Wall, author of The SEOBook

Building Value on the Web

Tricks of the Trade

There are many SEO tricks which can help boost your rankings, but for the most part they are continuously changing. If you want to do search engine marketing for a living it might be worth it to learn them, but for the most part its not necessary to learn any tricks.

The General Business Cycle

For a business to create great wealth it first has to create great value. How I look at the internet is that I can read about and test things that interest me for a few thousand hours and then redistribute these ideas quick and free. If it is something I am interested in learning I tend to discount the value of my time since I am just learning what I want.

Many people want instant profits. Generally it is not possible to make long term profits which start today unless you are busy learning and building a reputation. Short term profits are possible, but my goal is long term.

Every week thousands of people glance at my site and hopefully can save a few minutes or hours. Thus the overall return is time saved. If I save someone time hopefully they will consider linking to me or telling their friend about me. My marketing power expands as third part votes add up.

Niche is Better

If you are starting a website as a hobby it is much easier to pick a smaller market to dominate. Some opposite examples:

Marketing is an extremely large category.

Internet marketing in an extremely large category.

Even search engine marketing is a fairly large category.

Some people have wanted to make an online Canadian pharmacy, which can generate tons of revenue. The problems with such an idea are:

It is a super competitive environment.

Many of your competitors will be spamming in various ways making junk link rings and throw away sites. By the time their current site gets penalized their newest site will already be competing with you.

The drug companies and doctors themselves will be directing traffic and sales.

Often times the person with this idea knows nothing about drugs.

Very rarely does this type of idea build any long term value.

A better idea is to pick a drug or disease and become the knowledge source for it. I prefer disease, since drugs have patents on them which eventually run out. Also, by only collecting data about a specific drug it will make your information biased. Information about a disease can be unbiased with the resulting solution for the problem promoted.

The Indirect Route

The road to profits is sometimes an easier path if you use an indirect route. Relative to the size of the web there are not many unbiased topical directories and resources. Those that do exist may sometimes be hard to find. Some even discredit themselves greatly by selling irrelevant ads. Simply put, its not that hard to be the best in a focused topic that interests you.

One of the biggest tips I have for most people is to write out what you know in a non commercial website. If you can place the text into small palatable chunks you can create articles which are not only well appreciated, but also easily syndicated. Using this knowledge base and the popularity it brings you will then allow you to more easily acquire links to your future slick conversion-geared website.

An Example

I actually have had a few of my articles from my site referenced by many other websites. Its usually not a good idea to tell people what your future plans are, but I will:

Another topic I am greatly interested in is mental health and more specifically depression. From what I have learned 5 HTP is an amazing supplement which can help people overcome depression. If you look at the 5HTP.com website you will see that Dr. Murray is a moron. He is advertising the 48 hour Hollywood diet at the bottom of his page. This move is killing his credibility.

Hunting for good 5HTP articles I have found there to only be about a dozen or so good ones which are easy to find in search engines.

Recently I have purchased a half dozen books on 5HTP and serotonin. After I get done reading the next 5 of them I will put my knowledge down in web format and be one of the top sources on the internet for 5HTP.

Becoming an Expert

For you to be able to really extract the desired profits people will need to view you as an expert. Having articles appear around the web will make you seem more like an expert. In addition having articles on other sites which link back to your home page in the tag line will give you topical authoritative inbound links.

It is human nature to be skeptical. If independent people say exceptionally kind comments about you (and publish your work) then it is easier to accept the comments as truth.

The biggest expense we all face in life is time. It is something that you can not recoup. If a person is willing to pay you $5 / hr they will likely be willing to pay $50 or $100 / hr. if you have proven that you can help save time.

The Payout

After you are well developed you can decide to change your focus. While it is a good idea to keep your content up to date you may decide that it would be better to distribute your information in a way that allows you to extract more profits.

You can create niche specific sites which drive people to the desired action. In addition you can reformat the knowledge or try new marketing schemes. After you are beyond self sustaining everything you do will only improve the future payout.

Eventually links just start showing up without you asking for them. When that happens it is a fair assumption that you are doing something really good (or really bad).

- by Aaron Wall, author of The SEOBook

Website promotion software - free trial downloads Webposition Gold

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Without an SEO solution to keep you constantly "updated" on changes that could negatively affect your rankings, you could lose highly targeted web traffic to your competitors.

See for yourself how WebPosition Gold can help you optimize your search results.

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Improve your position for targeted keywords using built-in expertise from Page Critic which recommends ways to optimize your pages.

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Tools for Optimizing your Site for the Search Engines

Before you start optimizing your site for the search engines, you would need to arm yourself with some tools to help you. What follows is a brief review of 4 software programs that we find invaluable when we are optimizing our clients' sites.

Wordtracker:

The first and most important step in any search engine positioning campaign is identifying the keywords for which you should optimize your site. WordTracker's keyword research service is the only one on the Internet that will provide a comprehensive and powerful database of the most popular keywords in your industry. It has features that all other keyword research tools lack - for instance, it will help you identify related keywords that you would otherwise never have thought of, it differentiates between singular and plural keywords and tells you which version is more popular, it helps you identify popular mis-spelled keywords (which generally have very little competition) in your industry etc. It has a free trial version which will help you identify a few keywords. However, we recommend that you subscribe to its paid service as otherwise, you will not be able to discover quite a few keywords that can turn out to be extremely valuable to you. You can find more information on WordTracker at wordtracker

Optilink:

Link popularity has quickly become one of the most important factors that influence your rankings in the search engines. What is important is not only the number of sites linking to you, but the quality and relevancy of the sites that are linking to you. If you are trying to improve the link popularity of your site, until now, there has been no easy way of checking the quality and relevancy of sites that are linking to you or the quality and relevancy of sites that you are thinking of asking for links from. You could have done it manually, but it would take a tremendous amount of time. However, a new software product called Optilink automates this process to a large extent. In addition to doing an excellent job in helping you determine the quality of sites that already link to you or might link to you, it also does the following:

i) analyzes the link structures of your top ranking competitors and tells you why they rank well, so that you can emulate the same tactics that your top ranking competitors are using.

ii) allows you to do "what if" analysis - it tells you what sort of rankings you can expect if you adopt a particular linking strategy.

iii) monitor the sites that you have exchanged links with to ensure that they are still linking to you and are linking to you the way you want them to.

If you are thinking of improving the link popularity of your site, or are already doing so, we highly recommend that you obtain this product before you proceed. You can find more information on Optilink at Optilink

Zeus:

An excellent way of improving the link popularity of your site is to exchange links with other sites that are related to yours. However, the main problem with this method is the sheer amount of time that is involved in identifying sites that you want to exchange links with. You may often find that the number of links that you manage to get is not worth the time that you spent in trying to get those links. Zeus will allow you to locate and exchange links with sites that are related to yours and manage those links on an ongoing basis in a fraction of the time it would take for you to do it manually.

You can download a free trial version of Zeus at Zeus While the program does take a while to get used to, the results that you can obtain with it are simply phenomenal. We highly recommend that you download the free trial version and try it out.

In fact, we recommend that you use both Optilink and Zeus as they are complementary to each other - while Zeus helps you quickly locate hundreds of potential link partners, Optilink tells you which of these sites are worth getting links from and which of these sites you should avoid.

Agent Web Ranking:

Once you have optimized your site for the search engines, you will need to continuously check your site's rankings. We have found Agent Web Ranking to be the most reliable tool for telling us how our clients' sites rank in the search engines. Apart from the major U.S. based search engines, it also supports plenty of European search engines. One problem with most such position reporting software is the fact that the search engines constantly change the way they display their search results. This means that most position reporting software get outdated very quickly and it often takes an unacceptably long time for the company producing the software to prepare an update. However, Agent Web Ranking is the only program which has a guaranteed 72 hour turnaround time - i.e. if any search engine changes the way it is displaying results, it will have an update for that engine within 72 hours or less. You can find more information on Agent Web Ranking at Agent Web Ranking.

About the Author
Article by Sumantra Roy.
Sumantra is one of the most respected search engine positioning specialists on the Internet. To have Sumantra's company place your site at the top of the search engines, go to 1stSearchRanking For more advice on how you can take your web site to the top of the search engines, subscribe to his FREE newsletter by going to newsletter

5 Steps To Increase Your Google Page Rank

Increase Your Website Goole Page Rank With Tips & Tutorials Given Below

Google Page rank is based on back links. Back links are Links pointing to your website from another website. The more back links you have the higher your PR will be.

1. Join forums, forums are a great way to achieve links to your website. In most forums you are allowed to have a signature and in your signature you can put a link to your website. But another important note to look on is making sure the forum is somewhat related to your website.

You will still get credit if it's not, but if it's related to your website than you will be accomplishing two tasks at once. You will be advertising for your website (bringing in targeted traffic) You will also be building your websites presence.

Your websites presence is very important to your survival. The more people see, or hear about your website the more credibility you will have and this increases your chances of having these visitors come back and possibly become leads.

2. Submit to search engine directories. Search engine directories are a good way to get a free link to your website. They also increase your chances at being listed higher on popular search engines like Google, and overture.

Most search engine directories allow you to submit to their website for free. This will allow you to increase your web presence by being listed on another search engine, and it will also be a free link.

Remember the more links you have the higher your PR will be

3. Using ezine ads (or newsletters). Creating an ezine will probably be the most beneficial step you can take to increasing your web presence. When you create an ezine you will be able to keep visitors coming back to your website for more by using signatures and giving special deals.

Ezine's will also allow you to increase your back links. By creating an ezine you can submit your information about your ezine to an ezine directory. This directory will than link to your website(thus giving you a free link).

4. Creating and publishing articles. Articles are an easy source of generating new traffic. You can include your signature in your article. This will bring in more traffic from article submission directories.

Your signature usually consists of 4 to 8 lines. Usually the first line would be the title of the website that you are trying to advertise. The last line would be the link to the website and the lines in between these would be a sales pitch to draw your viewers into your website.

5. Links from related websites. Gaining links from related websites can be one of the most frustrating tasks you can attempt.

They are very easy to find, but can be somewhat difficult to obtain links from.

To find related websites, all you have to do is go to a search engine... say Google... and type in your subject. Maybe your website is based on ford mustangs.

You go to Google and type in ford mustangs, than you look around for pages that are somewhat related to your website. After you have done this (which should be very easy) you have to contact them in some way to get your link posted on their website. This can be the most difficult task because a lot of webmasters ignore e-mail's from people requesting links because they don't see the importance of it at the time. Some other reasons could be that they are rarely online, or they delete spam mail and sometimes delete their important emails in the process.

Important note: When looking for link partners don't just link with websites that have a page rank of 4 or higher. Link with anyone and everyone you get a chance to. If you link to someone that has a page rank of zero, this will not hurt your page rank. It will only increase it because you are getting a link back to your website. Google doesn't look at your back links page ranks to determine what yours is going to be. It simply looks at how many back links you have.

So if Google one day decided to link to a website that was just created and this website has a page rank of 0 and has a domain that goes something like this: mywebsite.geocities.com it's page rank wouldn't increase even though Google's page rank is 10, it's rank would still be zero because it would only have that one back link.

About the Author
Charles Nixon -
Website Designer Driven by Creativity Building websites to increase sales, and build web presence Did you start your business to create a website? or to run your business? With competitive pricing and your project delivered on time and on budget CharlesNixon.com may be the web design firm for you!
http://www.CharlesNixon.com/
Charles@CharlesNixon.com

Learn How To Promote your Website Tips & Tutorials

Effective Web Site Promotion Is An Art - Tips & Tutorials

In order for your web site to be a success you must have visitors. You cannot ignore this fact and there is really no way to get around it. This leaves you three alternatives: you can hire a web site promoter to promote your web site, try to promote your web site yourself, or pay for advertising. Whatever you decide to do, you should learn about web promotion beforehand. If you hire someone to promote your web site, how will you know if they are using effective promotion methods? Not all promotion experts are credible, responsible, or effective and it pays to know what to look out for before you hire someone.

What you will learn here is basic web promotion. There is no trickery or special techniques; just the basic foundations of building a popular web site. Always remember there is more than one method of effective web promotion. Combinations of effective promotion systems will benefit your web site more than just using one method. Have you heard the saying about "putting all your eggs into one basket?" The same works with web site promotion; never depend on a single method for getting traffic to your site.

There are no secrets to web promotion. All the knowledge you need can be found on the Internet. What sidetracks most promotion campaigns is the lack of patience and the forms of web promotion being used. There are many systems for generating traffic but there are only a few that really work. Most web site owners try to target search engines and directories for their traffic. This is a very good choice because search engines/directories generate a lot of traffic to web sites. Just keep in mind there is more to search engine/directory traffic than just building a web site and submitting it.

Many submission companies say that effective web promotion can only be achieved by submitting your web site on a monthly basis. This is total nonsense and can actually hurt your promotion efforts. Every search engine and directory has different periods of time they want you to wait before you resubmit your web site. This can be 30 days or more. If you submit your site to those engines/directories every month and their waiting period is 6 weeks or 90 days, it could be considered as a form of spamming.

Submitting web pages that are not search engine friendly or correctly optimized is a waste of time. Monthly submission is an even bigger waste of time and believing that a submission service will submit your web site to a gazillion search engines is even worse.

There are probably less than 10 thousand credible search engines worldwide. We already know who the big guys are but there are lesser known engines as well. Some are country specific, which means they only accept web sites from their own countries. Others are content specific, which means your web site has to fall within a specific category to be accepted. Some engines are PPC or paid inclusion, which means you have to pay to be added to the engine or pay for each visitor they send to your web site, which leaves out the submission company services since they are not going to pay for your search words or site inclusions out of the goodness of their hearts.

There are also web directories. Only a few are high profile but because of the money that can be made by search engines/directories accepting payment for including your web site in their listings or paying for each visitor, there are a large number of new search engines/directories launched all the time. But there is no where near the amount some submission companies claim.

So where exactly are these people submitting your web site?

That question should be thought out in detail before paying a company that claims to submit your web site to millions of engines and directories.

There is also a myth that creating and using Meta tags is a waste of your time. Many high profile Search Engine Optimization experts continue to use Meta tags in their search engine optimization services and advise that you do so as well, with emphasis on the Meta tags being applied correctly and not abused. Placing Meta tags in your web pages will NOT guarantee more traffic or a higher search engine rank, they are not a magic answer.

If you are in need of web promotion services, resources, or advice, you will find the so-called experts telling the Internet world about special programs, link farms, deep submission, cloaking scripts, gateway pages, traffic exchanges, exit exchanges, secret web promotion techniques, banner exchanges, and more.

Whatever you decide to do, always take your time before you jump into anything that sounds too good to be true, if you are in doubt ask for help or advice from someone more knowledgeable.

Anyone can effectively promote a web siteThat is if they are willing to learn the basics of building a web site designed to generate traffic. You need to learn as much as possible about search engine optimizing, link marketing, and the little things that will effectively get your site generating traffic.

Informative content on your web pages is the root of it all.

When researching the Internet for information related to web site promotion, you will come across a lot of information, some of that information will be bogus. You will have to rely on your instincts to help guide you in what to believe and what not to.

If you want, you can publish these articles on search engine positioning in your newsletter, web site or ebook. You don't need to take my permission for re-publishing these articles, as long as you display the resource box with links active at the end of each article.

About the Author
Ramdayal Yadav, is Chief SEO in
http://www.maharashtradirectory.com/
This is unique Industrial online Business Directoy.
For more articles on search engine positioning
visit my site http://www.3seo.com/