When it comes to internet marketing, being creative is a prerequisite. Sticking to the conventional marketing ideas can be detrimental in the long run as it may limit the potential of your business. One of the techniques that you can use to maximize the potential of your website is to make it a multilingual one, where people from different countries can comfortably search for the information that they want. SEO services are therefore very crucial when it comes to multilingual website optimization. There are over two hundred languages in the world and targeting most of them as a site optimization strategy can really put you ahead of the pack.

Firstly, one of the most trusted strategies for optimizing a multilingual website is through geo targeting. In layman’s language this involves creating micro sites that specifically target particular visitors from another country. To make your sites friendly for your users, the micro sites should offer the prices of the goods or services that you are offering in the currency of that particular region, along with the relevant language. Chances of your main website overshadowing the micro site will therefore be minimized. You would want to do this as the main site is usually the most optimized. However, achieving this is not a mean feat and an experienced SEO services provider is required to make this strategy a success.

Mostly, website optimization, even for a multilingual one, cannot achieve its target if there is no appropriate and adequate use of the relevant keywords. For a multilingual website you need to select and use the keywords of the target language appropriately. Do not make a mistake of merely picking keywords from your main website and translating them in to other languages; this will not work. The meaning of words and phrases change depending on the context and this can mostly happen when translation is being done from one language to another. Context and language-specific use of keywords is very crucial for a multilingual website.

Apart from making micro sites which use the target regions language and currency, along with the relevant keywords searched highly in the regional search engines for that region, you should ensure that your website has attracted inbound links that are local. Regional links are the ones that are usually behind SEO success. The main idea here is to create content that is localized with an aim to attract traffic from your target country or region.

An SEO service provider should use the inbound links of their clients’ sites to create an advantage, even if they have no control over where these may be coming from. Sticking to the basics of inbound marketing can also be very crucial. However, you still need to stick to the rules of thumb in as far as optimizing a multilingual website is concerned.

Some people think that the design of a website has nothing to do with the SEO or Search Engine Optimization of a website. However, this is a completely wrong assumption. Search Engine Optimization is affected by a number of factors, which include both on-page optimization as well as off-site or off-page optimization techniques.

Title Tags, Meta Keywords and Meta Description Tags, along with the website content and keywords used in the body content all contribute towards the on-site or on-page factors. What webmasters sometimes ignore is that the design and development of a website is also another factor which affects Search Engine Rankings.

A website can be designed with a table layout or it can be made div-based. The DIV based design uses CSS styling to control the layout of the entire page. Since most of the design is controlled through the CSS Style Sheets, the HTML code of the web pages itself decreases considerably, hence improving the Text to HTML ratio of every page of the website. This improvement helps in on-page optimization and hence, can lead to improved Search Engine Rankings.

Having a Search Engine Friendly website is important for improved Search Engine Rankings. Some webmasters focus on making their websites W3C compliant. However, it should be taken into consideration that W3C standards are over-hyped and making websites compliant is not extremely necessary.

Other factors which contribute to having a Search Engine Friendly website include the following:

• Text based navigation
• Good Internal Linking of the web pages
• Website Sitemap

Other things to avoid are the following:

• Flash navigation
• JavaScript drop down navigations
• Use of Frames
• Flash based website

So when you design and develop your website, make sure you follow the above listed points to make it as Search Engine Friendly as possible. Stay tuned for more tips on making search engine friendly websites.

I just checked my rankings on Google a few hours back, and I was near the end of page 6 on the SERPs. Luckily, I checked again after a few minutes and my SEOContest2008 page had jumped to position #51 on Google, right at the top of page 6!

Here is a screenshot I saved from Google for my rankings

Sadly, I just checked it a few minutes back and my site is again near the bottom of page 6 on Google. I’m looking forward to a lot of improvement in this week, especially after the new updates get indexed on Google.

There are now 3,480 results on Google SERPs for the search term SEOContest2008. Almost 55 days to go. They are definitely going to increase to a very large amount.

Yahoo Back Links Update for my SEOContest2008 page

I checked my back links on Yahoo yesterday and I had 13 Inlinks to www.seo-reloaded.com/seocontest2008/, but when I checked them in the morning today, Yahoo! wasn’t showing any links at all, which was a bit strange. I rechecked the Inbound links again now, and they are finally back. Yahoo is showing 43 Incoming links to my SEO Contest 2008 page, which is good

Here is the link to check my updated links on Yahoo to the contest page:

Yahoo InLinks for www.seo-reloaded.com/seocontest2008/

Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing the site as per the needs of search engines. Nowadays most of the users using the search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN for search on the internet. Because of that its very important for site to rank high on the search engines. High ranking sites on search engines can generate lots of business and its one of the very powerful tool for brand promotion.

SEO optimization is mainly divided into two parts.

1. Onpage optimization
2. Offpage optimization

Below are the major factors of onpage optimization

• Title / Meta Tags
• Keyword Research & Analysis
• Site Navigation
• HTML Sitemap
• Content Analysis
• URL optimization
• Google Analytics Implementation

Below are the major factors of offpage optimization

Link Building

Backlinks for the site can be generate by directory submissions, article submissions, press releases, social bookmarkings.

Link building is one of those time consuming things that all webmasters need to do. It does take a lot of time and resources however given the results that can be achieved through link building then it will be worth it. Link building is one of the most important elements of SEO

Link building is the best method of obtaining search engine results.

1. Submit to well establish quality directories – Try to go for the best – some don’t offer the ability to use your anchor text, however they do carry great value.
2. Article submission – Don’t just use article directories; get your article published in other sites. Don’t just write one article and promote it everywhere – Googles duplicate content filter will place multiple copies in the supplemental index.
3. Buy links – ‘Yes’ Google say they can detect these links but in reality it is very difficult for them to do this. Google may be able to detect some paid links but most should go undetected. Try to get links placed within the content. These have a better chance of getting through Googles ability to detect paid links.
4. Link baiting – This is the process of creating content so that people will link to your pages naturally. This requires a bit of skill and obviously you need to provide something link worthy. Promote your article through social networking sites like digg.com. Remember that most people who use these social networking sites are web savvy and can spot spam a mile off.
5. Link exchange – many people say it does not work any more – they are wrong! There was a day a few years back when you could run hundreds of link exchanges and get a great ranking however those days are gone. Be more selective and don’t just go for a conventional exchange between two link pages – what about content exchange, article exchange or exchange with links being placed within the content? Remember link pages do not carry the same value as they did a few years back.
6. Write testimonial’s for products/services that you have used – Although you may not get to use your anchor text in these links many of these links carry value in Google.
7. Ask for links! Do not be afraid to contact others and ask for them. This is a tactic better used when/if you become an authority within your genre. Be polite and give them reasons why they should link to you. Even if you get 1 link out of every 50 requests it still will be worth the effort.
8. Offer to write content/blog posts as long as you get to add links within your content. Provide quality examples of the content you have written and maybe suggest some topics you could write on for the site you are contacting.

Having your own affiliate network website can be a very useful thing, as you can sell other peoples products and services on your website and earn commission by selling affiliate stuff.

The key to earning money from any website and to increase sales is traffic. When you have visitors and users coming to your website, it will definitely increase your sales and earnings. However, driving traffic to your site, especially an affiliate site can be a big problem. This can be due to several reasons:

1. You are taking data directly from some affiliate network, in the form of XML Feeds or fetching and displaying it on your site using an API key.
2. Your site has very little content and data of its own, so the website you have mainly has duplicate data from the affiliate network website like Amazon shop.
3. Your Title Tags, Meta Tags and content is not unique, so most of your pages might end up in Google Supplemental Index (Supplemental Pages)

Such a situation can be problematic for your website and for its business. Duplicate sites and sites which mainly use some kind of feed to display and fetch data, like RSS Feeds sites, Affiliate network sites etc. usually suffer from these problems and hence have a hard time in getting traffic from the search engines.

There are various ways by which you can drive traffic to your website.

Paid Advertising

PPC, also known as Pay-Per-Click Advertising by using Google Adwords or similar program. This can be effective and fetch highly targeted traffic if you carry out a proper PPC campaign. However, over time it can get very expensive.

Website Promotion and Marketing

Online and Offline Marketing and website promotion can also drive traffic to a website. These methods include banner advertisement, link purchases, Press Releases and offline promotion like newspaper ads, hoardings etc. Please note that Paid Advertising like PPC is also a kind of online marketing and promotion technique.

However, the results for these are short term, and only last while you spend money on your advertising campaign. As soon as your advertising budget exceeds, and you stop the promotion, you lose all kinds of traffic coming to your website.

Search Engine Optimization

This is the most effective of all these methods and also leaves long lasting results. Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO involves changing your website pages in a way so that they become more Search Engine Friendly and hence achieve high rankings in SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Pages).

Some of the most important factors involved in SEO include:

1. Keyword Research
2. Market and Competitor Analysis
3. Creation of Landing pages for the website, and defining a directory structure for the pages which is search engine friendly
4. Content Writing and Addition to the website, related to the Keywords and website theme
5. Title Tags, Meta Description and Keyword Tags generation for all the website pages
6. Search Engine Friendly URL writing for all the pages
7. Website submission to Search Engines, Web Directories, Article Directories and Social Bookmarking sites
8. Getting Links (One-way links to the website) with appropriate Anchor Texts
9. Monitoring the website progress and ranking on the Search Engines
10. Improving the website and optimizing it, adding more contents and getting more links on a regular basis

SEO is a time taking process, and a new site can take up to 8 – 10 months to start showing in rankings for niche and competitive keywords on Search Engines. However, the results you obtain after all the efforts are fruitful, after which you can enjoy traffic coming to your website directly from the Search Engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN.

I launched a new section for SEO Jokes on my SEO Blog today and to my surprise, I was checking my website stats, when I found someone had visited my site by searching for ‘seo jokes‘ on Google! I quickly checked the SERPs and my blog was on the first page of Google for this not so competitive keyword This happened in less than 6 hours since I added the posts on the blog!

My website is coming on the first page of Google and also on the regional Google Search Engine. See the results yourself in the screenshot below!

Before you start a links campaign for your website, or directory submissions, you need to decide the Keywords you will be targeting and the Anchor Texts which you will use for your links campaign. These anchor texts will use your important keywords in them which will help you in Search Engine Rankings for these Keywords.

Here are a few tips which will help you make your anchor texts.

1. Only use the most important Keywords in your Anchor Text

It is a good idea to do some Keyword Research using a Keyword Tool like Wordtracker to decide the most important Keywords related to the theme of your website. You should be using the popular search terms in your Anchor Texts which show up in the Search when you use the Keyword Tool.

You can find a very good Keyword Suggestion Tool at Digital Point.

2. Do not make the Anchor Texts too long

Long, rambling, keyword stuffed Anchor Texts make no sense and might actually harm you in Search Rankings. Search Engines might penalize your site for using a long keyword stuffed or spammy Anchor Text. Remember, your Anchor Texts should be short and to-the-point and should make sense.

3. Make your Anchor Text Useful

Don’t simply paste Keywords in the Anchor Text, separated by commas, like Keyword 1, Keyword 2, Keyword 3. This looks completely absurd and users won’t be interested to click on it. Your Anchor Text should be a coherent sentence or a short phrase which makes sense. Make your Anchor Texts natural.

4. Use Anchor Text variations

If you are targeting 5 or 6 important keywords, it is always a good idea to make 5 or 6 different Anchor Texts, each focusing on the targeted Keyword. You should use these variations when submitting your site to link directories.

5. Make different Anchor Texts for different Landing Pages

If you have several important landing pages in your site, which you want to promote using link building, make different Anchor Texts for each of these landing pages. Use a Keyword Tool and research for the Keywords for each of these landing pages. Then create 3 or 4 variations of Anchor Texts for each of these landing pages. You can then use these Anchor Texts to submit your site to Directories and Link Forms.

6. Relevance is most important

This might seem obvious, but relevance is the most important thing in Anchor Texts. If you are making Anchor Texts for a page for Blue Widgets, make sure you use Blue Widgets in the Anchor Text, instead of using keywords like Green Widgets, Cheap Widgets etc.

Remember, Search Engines also give importance to Relevance. If your anchor text has Blue Widgets in it, and your page also used the Keyword Blue Widgets in the Title, Content and Body of that page, the anchor text will work perfectly with that page.

These tips are useful for all sort of anchor texts, whether internal or from other websites. When you link to an internal page of your site, always use some meaningful anchor text like ‘Find more details for Blue Widgets‘, where Blue Widgets should be the link, instead of ‘Find more details for Blue Widgets here‘.

You can also find more tips for Anchor Texts by following these links:

Better Anchor Texts by John Chow

Anchor Text Optimization Tips

Heres a short list of free directories to start submitting your site to. I’ve started submitting my sites to directories and I’m looking for free directories only to submit to. So I’ve decided that I’ll be posting the directories I submit my links to here on a regular basis.

http://www.hugedirectory.net/
http://www.web-directory-submit.com/
http://www.directorynew.com/
http://www.lfaj.com/
http://www.pius.us/directory/
http://www.zopso.com/
http://www.d911.net/
http://www.linktomysite.net/
http://www.roqz.com/
http://www.plugxl.com/
http://www.ofcourse.us/

Most of these directories are very new and are offering free submissions for a limited time only, so hurry and add your link today!