Reciprocal links were a great way to promote your web site. Yes that is in the past tence. Reciprocal linking was a great way to get your site linked to by many other web sites, in turn increasing your link popularity.

Link popularity is a great way of promoting your site in the search engines and the more powerful in-bound links you have to your web site the better. Apart from the search engines taking these in-bound links into account, you would also receive traffic directly from thos other web sites.

The problem is that link popularity is supposed to be naturally gained. That is, the in-bound links you receive to your web site are supposed to be created by the owner of these other web sites, not by you. Reciprocal link campaigns are created by you (the web site owner) and the links created are not naturally created. This was picked up by the major search engines and as a result, reciprocal links are no longer a powerful way of producing link popularity.

This is not to say that reciprocal link programs are a waste of time, they're not. A successful link campaign would consist of reciprocal and one way links. That is, you need to encourage people to link to your web site without having to ALWAYS link back to them.

There are many ways that this can be achieved. One very popular way is to put a browser detector script on your web site, then depending on the browser type, present a bookmark link/favourites link to the user.

Another way is to add RSS to your web site. This will allow people to syndicate your web site content, thus producing links back to your web site.

There are many other ways to produce one way in-bound links to your web site, but don't put all your eggs in one basket and produce soley reciprocal links.

Search engine algorithms have hit their peak. It is no surprise that this is the case. With so many web sites using the same technology for a number of years, there is only so far the search engines can take their traditional algorithms before hitting a wall or slowing down their search indexing technology.

So, the next level of algorithm naturally appears to be personalised search. Tracking peoples search patterns has always been considered a past-time of the search engines, so it is only expected that the next level for search algorithms is to hit the personalised search.

Google have registered a large number of patents over the last month or two that appear to relate to this sort of search algorithm. It is easy for the search engines to track your daily search movement. With some nifty search algorithms your searches will become bespoke to you.

One major draw back for this is recommending sites via the search engines. If you find a great site that you want to recommend to a friend or colleague then you may find that your friend or colleague does not get the same search engine results as you. This would be a direct result of the search algorithms targeting personal search.

Do you think this will be a hindrance? Let us know your comments. Feel free to add your comments.

Google are widening their search engine power with the release of CSE (or Custom Search Engine). So, whats all the fuss about? You could always have a custom search facility on your web site that was powered by Google, but now you can list who/whatever you like.

By example, before CSE you could only display pages from your own web site. Now you can display pages from any web sites you want. You can also order these web sites so your web site/partners web site comes top.

The beauty of this is that if a search is not going to give a result from your own web site, then your results will always give some sort of result.

On top of this, you can either have the results displayed by Google, or you can include the results on your web site within an IFrame.

Benefits: -
You can customize the look of the results displayed
You can order the results to force certain URLs to the top of the results
You can filter results out by expression or by url
You dont need a crawler for your own web site

Drawbacks:-
If you are a profit organisation, then you have to display Ads with the results
The results aren't going to help your rankings in Google because Google provided the listings in the first place

So, at first glance the benefits outway the cons. This is a great move by Google and will help them to capture more of the vertical search market.

If you want to read more about CSE then check out Matt Cutt's blog at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/review-custom-search-engine/

If you want to use the product then go to http://www.google.com/coop/cse/ and sign-up. Ok. you'll need to have those all important web skills, but its pretty straight forward.

If any of you out there have used it, please leave your comments so other people can see what its like.

SEO Crusade have officially released their search engine statistics and web site tracking software. The software is located at http://tracker.seocrusade.com and tracks everything from unique visitors to browser plugins.

If you are interested in tracking your web site, then Contact Us and we will provide you with login details and information about how to implement the tracker into your own web site.

It is imperitive that you track your web site visitors successfully. If you track your visitors correctly, then you can find out what keywords the search engines use to access your web site.

Any competent web site marketing campaign requires emphysis on keywords, so it is always just as important to find out which keywords are performing for you.

SEO Crusade's web site statistics and tracking software gives you just that. Information about the keywords used and which search engines referred them.

You can also find out which pages your visitors have viewed and how long they were on your web site for.

Calling all article writers.

Here at SEO Crusade we require fresh talent for writing articles. In return we will give you accreditation and provide links to your own web site. If your articles provide us with great traffic, then we will even look at paying you for your efforts.

If you are interested in writing articles in any of the following subject areas, then please Contact Us, we will then provide you with a login and password and you can start posting your news.

Subject Areas: -

- Internet Marketing
- Web Development
- Web Design
- Web Hosting

Some guidelines if you're interested:
We would like all articles to be a minimum of 500 words in length.
Each article should reference other resources to back-up your statements.
Each article should be unique and not a rip-off of someone elses work.

So, if you've read this far, then you must be interested. In which case Drop us a line and we will come back to you.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,
SEO Crusade

Optimising flash for the search engines can be easier than you think. Firstly, what it is that you are trying to achieve?

Realistically you most probably have text in your flash movie. You most probably have some links too and would like this text and links to be indexed by the search engines?

Well, since Adobe (formally Macromedia) thought about this, they have come up with a solution. The solution is two fold. One solution is for you, the flash movie developer and the other solution is for the search engines.

Solution 1, for you the flash movie developer:

When you are typing text or producing a link in flash, you have the option to make that text/link selectable by the mouse. .

If you do this and make your text and links selectable by the mouse, then it will also become available for the searche engines.

Solution 2, for the search engines:

Very simply put, swf2html is the answer for the search engines. swf2html is a program that reads a flash swf movie and outputs html. All links and text are exported in html format and made ready for the search engines.

So, Flash movies can be search engine friendly.

You can even download the swf2html software from Adobe

Simple Internet Marketing consists of simple PPC campaigns, a search engine friendly web site and a good search engine submission program.

Taking Internet Marketing to the advanced level

There are many Advanced Internet Marketing strategies that can help take your web site to the next level of online success. Your requirements will almost certainly be bespoke. For example, you may have an online shop that requires SEO work, or your web site may need a review of your web site's HTML.

Advanced Internet Marketing is where you pay special attention to specific aspects of your web site, making them search engine friendly.

The first port of call for any advanced Internet marketing strategy is to pay special attention to the keywords you intend to use. Ok, harping on about keywords again..., but they are very important. Just imagine you have targeted your web site towards the keyword 'style', yet people searching the Internet use the keyword 'Stylist'. If this were the case, then you will be chasing rankings that will not drive traffic. So, make sure you research the keywords for your advanced Internet marketing campaign in detail.

Once you have your keywords to market, you can then employ technology to assist in marketing your web site. One way of helping you market your web site is through Blogging (Web Logging). There are many tools available to help with blogging and most are geared towards advanced Internet marketing methodology.

Contact Us about your blogging requirements and we will provide you with some amazing advanced Internet marketing techniques.

Some of the best featured blogging tools you can use on your own web site are: -

Nucleus CMS
Wordpress
and
Moveable Type

All of the above tools require some technical expertise, but all have many plugins and different styles of configuration that can assist in an advanced Internet marketing strategy.

There are many other methods of providing advanced Internet marketing. The following is a list of some of these techniques and a short summary of how they provide the results.

Keyword Discovery (Provides advanced Internet marketing through targeting your market)

Content Copywriting (A well written, keyword rich document will provide results through becoming a relevant result)

Blogging Tools (Automatically pinging the major social blogging network web sites provides the community with fresh information, providing you with advanced Internet marketing in return)

Search Engine Sitemaps (Using crawling technology, you can produce and submit your own sitemaps in XML format to the search engines. This advanced Internet marketing technique gives you control over the submission of your web site).

Web Site Development (By providing unique, specific web site resources to your visitors you will become a special resource and draw your visitors back again and again)

Re-Structuring your web site (By evaluating your web site structure, you may be able to improve the way people use your web site)

Viral Marketing (By adding links to your web site on promotional emails, you are infecting your market with your brand)

Build a customer database (Get people subscribing to your web site. post them regular updates and get them coming back).

There are many other ways of producing an advanced Internet marketing strategy and increase your web site's visibility on the Internet.

If you think you require consultation about your web site and which advanced Internet marketing methods would apply to your situation, then please Contact Us and we will give you web site a quick once over for any areas that could be improved.

Hope this helps.

Can Copywriting Improve Your Natural Search Engine Rankings?

The answer is pretty obvious, YES copywriting can improve your search engine rankings helping your search engine optimisation (optimization) campaign. Once you have a search engine friendly web site up and running, your web site will benefit from well written, search engine friendly content copywriting. This is the heart of search engine optimisation (optimization) and good content copywriting will perform well as it will be a relevant result.

Writing an article (copywriting), or piece of text for a web page is rather simple in construct, but complex under the microscope.

search engine optimisation (optimization) can be very involved depending on what you are trying to achieve. Search Engine Optimisation (optimization) covers everything from producing seo sitemaps, seo design, seo hosting, seo keyword discovery, seo meta data, seo copywriting to seo submissions.

A well written piece of copywriting should consist of 3-4 main elements; the article title, a summary of the article, the main body of the article and any footnotes that are relevant. All elements of a piece of copywriting should be keyword targeted, but not to the point where the readability of the copywriting is degraded. This will boost your search engine optimisation (optimization) campaign.

Content is King as far as the search engines are concerned with copywriting. Check out The Importance of Content for more information on how important content copywriting is.

When constructing an article for the web, one should consider linking the document to resource(s), or relevant article(s) that relate to the same subject, like search engine optimisation (optimization). This gives the article power in conviction, as your work will be backed up by other (hopefully) independant resources and additional copywriting.

Any jargon used within the copywriting should be well explained unless the piece is aimed at a specific, knowledgeable audience. Use the <ABBR> tag you can give a pop-up description of the abbreviation you have used in the copywriting.

Good spelling is imperative when copywriting. Regardless of what you might hear, using miss-spelled keywords is not a good idea for search engine optimisation (optimization). Although you may appear at the top of some search results, when the visitor comes to your web site they will be presented with a rather unprofessional look.

So, you have written your copy. Now you want to make sure you have maximised it's potential for search engine optimisation (optimization). Without going too far into the complex areas of copywriting; e.g. the words, key phrases and documents, you should ensure your target keywords are the most density populated in the copywriting.

To find out the density of words in a document, check out Gorank's online seo tools. If you would like more advice about writing articles, please Contact Us