This week, a story came to my attention that I don’t hear too often. It seems there’s some buzz around the real estate industry that a fairly well-known website is participating in cloaking.

If this news is true, it could mean two things: They did it on purpose, in which case Papa Google will swiftly ban the real estate site from its index. Or they did it unknowingly, meaning they have a very naive SEO specialist working for them and will still have to answer to Papa Google.

So what, exactly, is cloaking – and why does it irritate Google so much?

Cloaking is the practice of serving a different version of your website to the search engines than you do to the end user. When the practice first started, there was a much larger gap between what looked good to the end user and what looked good to the search engines. So cloaking seemed like the perfect solution – not to mention, mighty tempting. But it was quickly, and rightly, deemed a black hat and spammy practice. Google specifies in its webmaster guidelines that if they suspect you of cloaking, they will remove your site from their index.

To hear that a prominent website could be cloaking is surprising. An experienced SEO specialist knows that it is a deceptive, outlawed, and, frankly, lazy technique. There are so many legitimate ways you can optimize your site for both search engine and visitor usability these days. I hope for this real estate site’s sake that the allegations are false. But if they’re true, they should start shopping for a new SEO guy.

[Ed. Note: Staying on Google's good side can mean more traffic, more customers... and more money in your pocket. Of course, building a successful business involves a few other details. Learn how you can get insider advice from expert business builders right here.]

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t used a phonebook in over two years. I feel a slight twinge of guilt when the new one shows up on my doorstep, because I know it’s making a short trip from my front porch to the recycling bin. I started performing my searches for local goods and services online ages ago, and I haven’t looked back since.

It seems I’m not the only one. Recent studies indicate that print Yellow Pages will be all but defunct in the next four years. The myriad of local business information available on the Internet and the bevy of options you can use to find that information have made it easier, faster, and more convenient than flipping through that bulky yellow book.

What does this mean to you as a local business owner? Well, if you haven’t taken the time to list your business online, your competitors may be leaving you in the dust.

Whether you run a restaurant, auto body shop, pet grooming service, or landscaping company, taking the steps below to position your business in front of local customers will make a big difference to your bottom line.

The Anatomy of a Local Business Listing

There are certain elements of your online listing that will be similar across the board – in a local search engine, Internet Yellow Pages site, or customer review site. Not just limited to your company name, address, and phone number, online local business listings allow you to display a ton of information about your business – for free! I’m always amazed when I see bare bones listings that aren’t taking full advantage of this opportunity for free advertising, but it happens fairly often. Below is just a sample of the information you are usually allowed to display:

• Company Name
• Address
• Phone Number
• Fax Number
• URL
• E-Mail Address
• Short Description of Business
• Services, Products, and Brands Offered
• Specialties and Amenities
• Payment Options
• Hours of Operation
• Logo
• Photos
• User Reviews

Wow!

Right about now you might be saying, "But my local business listing only has my name, address, and phone number. What do I do? "The more information you can include with your listing, the more likely it is that you’ll attract a targeted customer. So let me show you the sites you need to visit to include more information.

Internet Yellow Pages

The most logical places for many people to start looking for local goods and services are the Internet Yellow Pages sites. If you are brand-new to updating and optimizing your company’s local listings, begin with these.

Just like the print Yellow Pages, the Internet Yellow Pages will automatically have a basic listing for your company. (It’s up to you to make the listing pop and really work to drive customers from their computer screens to your storefront.) And in addition to your free listing, many Internet Yellow Pages sites offer advertising and fee-based enhanced feature options.

Some of the most popular Internet Yellow Pages sites for you to start with are:

• YellowPages.com
• SuperPages.com
• YellowBook.com
• Local.com

Upon locating your listing, you may be surprised to find that it contains information that you didn’t provide. This is because customers, too, are allowed to update and add to the listings – all the more reason to take action to make sure your information is correct.

Local Search Engines

It didn’t take long for the major search engines to get in on the local scene. Each of them has a local version. Google has Google Maps, Yahoo has Yahoo Local, and Ask has AskCity.

They all have impressive features. But because of my unhealthy obsession with all things Google, and to give you a head start on the most market share, I’ll talk about Google Maps here.

As with the Internet Yellow Pages, your business will likely already have a listing in Google Maps. You can spice up that listing from Google’s Local Business Center. To edit your listing, Google requires you to "claim" your business first. So they send a postcard to the mailing address listed with a special PIN (personal identification number) that you will use. Naturally, this takes a few days. Once claimed, however, you can edit your listing to your heart’s content.

Your local business listing on Google allows for all the information listed above. Google also pulls a lot of user reviews from customer review sites (which I’ll explain in a moment). Additionally, Google offers a couple of really cool features that you simply must take advantage of:

1. Coupons. You can create a special offer coupon right alongside your listing and update it as often as you want. This is a great way to encourage people to visit your store.

2. Video (a feature that has been added fairly recently). That’s right. You can add a video that you’ve posted on YouTube to your Google Maps listing. How cool is that? Think of the possibilities! You could shoot a short commercial, record testimonials from happy customers, or even shoot footage of your clean restaurant teeming with enthusiastic diners.

Once you’ve perfected your listing on Google Maps, you can promote it through Google AdWords and target a particular region, city, or even neighborhood. For more information, and to get started, go to Maps.Google.com or Google.com/local/add.

Customer Review Websites

Customer review sites are arguably the most important of the three local search areas, because the content is user-generated. And, like I mentioned above, Google (and other local search engines) pulls customer reviews from these websites to display on your listing. So it’s important to be aware of what people are saying about your business.

Get a little PR for your business by encouraging your happy customers to post positive reviews of your company and its services. You can also benefit from monitoring any unfavorable reviews about you on these sites to see where you can make improvements.

Popular customer review sites include:

• Yelp.com
• InsiderPages.com
• CitySearch.com
• JudysBook.com

There are even specialized customer review sites like AngiesList.com for home improvement and MenuPages.com for restaurants.

A Quick Word About Mobile Search

Mobile search is usually mentioned in tandem with local search. After all, people are usually on the road when they are looking for things like food, gas, lodging, or the nearest pet store. The good news is that if you do the work to enhance your listings on all the sites mentioned in this article, you will be more than covered in the mobile search arena. Most, if not all, of the local search engines and Internet Yellow Pages have special mobile versions that are readable on mobile phones and other handhelds – including the ever-popular iPhone.

So get to work on your listings on Internet Yellow Pages sites, local search engines, and customer review sites. You’ll soon see a big improvement in your business – whether you run a one-person dog walking service or a local pizza franchise. And when delivery of that big, bulky print phonebook finally comes to a grinding halt, your business won’t miss a beat.

[Ed. Note: No matter what kind of business you have, getting online is critical to your success. ETR's team of business-building and Internet marketing experts can give you a step-by-step rundown of exactly how to make your business grow - from the comfort of your own living room.]

Optimizing your website for the search engines can help you get more traffic and, eventually, more sales. That’s why it’s so important to avoid certain website pitfalls. For instance, it’s a bad idea to use images for your critical site content. The search engines just can’t "see" content that’s in graphic form.

A close cousin to that potential SEO disaster is using Flash to design your website. If your designer or Web development firm suggests a cool Flash design, resist the temptation and say no.

This always makes my designer friends grumble, because they love to have the freedom to make a really cool Flash site. And I don’t blame them. But, alas, just like images, search engines can’t see content that is programmed in Flash.
 
Now, as I write this, news has come out that Google and Yahoo are working closely with the makers of the Flash program to rectify this issue. The two search giants are now able to crawl some Flash content. While this is exciting news, there are still limitations. Not all search engines are involved in this new development, and not all content contained within a Flash application can be crawled. To be on the safe side for now, you should still stay away from Flash.

Recently, I was asked to make a few suggestions on how to improve the SEO of a friend’s website. As soon as I saw that the site was designed exclusively in Flash, I knew the only piece of advice worth giving them: Redesign.

What should you do if you have a Flash site? Well, like I said to my friend, I recommend a redesign. If you are dead set on implementing Flash on your site, use it in non-critical areas only. Use HTML for your navigation and content and reserve the Flash for special areas where you would normally have images.

[Ed. Note: With expert advice from people like Search Engine Marketing Specialist Alexis Siemon, you can cut the time it takes your business to succeed in half. Get the insider secrets into starting and growing your own Internet business right here.]

When developing your website, it’s easy to get swept away by some of the gorgeous creations your Web designer proposes. But while they may look great, it’s important to make sure that none of those images contain critical information or content. The reason is because the search engines cannot "read" any copy that is in an image.

If your site has large banners or graphics that include promotional or product-oriented copy, the search engines won’t be able to crawl and index that content – and you won’t rank for important keywords.

Keep a cool head during the design phase of your website. Make sure important copy is rendered as text and save the image files for pictures.

[Ed. Note: You can get more little-known secrets to staying on the search engines' good side at ETR's 5 Days in July Internet Business Building Conference. You don't need a product, a website, or any technical experience to learn how to build your own business. Learn how to create income for life right here.

And keep reading ETR for more search engine optimization Dos and Don'ts from Alexis Siemon, ETR's Search Engine Marketing Specialist.]

If you’re a regular ETR reader, you probably know that the quickest way to start getting quality search engine traffic to your website is by launching a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. You also probably know that, executed correctly, a PPC campaign can be a great way to rev up sales for your online business.

Whether you’re experienced in PPC advertising or just getting ready to launch your first campaign, there are several performance-boosting strategies I want to let you in on today. Some of these techniques may seem pretty basic to those of you who are not new to PPC. But, trust me, it’s always good to take a second look at certain areas – no matter how much you already know. And don’t worry, I’m throwing in a couple of real juicy tips you may not have tried yet that are sure to quench your thirst for PPC performance.

Everything I cover below can be put to work whether you have a large or a small budget. So don’t be afraid to start testing.

2 Blockbuster Basics of PPC

* Keyword Selection

Several tools are available to help you choose keywords for your campaigns. These include WordTracker and Keyword Discovery, which you pay to use, and a free tool from Google. To use these tools, you simply enter a keyword or phrase that you’d like to target. The tool spits out a list of related terms and the volume of searches that each keyword has received in a 30-90 day timeframe.

Depending on your goals and your budget, you want to choose a combination of high-volume keywords and lower-volume, but more targeted, long-tail keywords. For instance, if you are in the health food industry, your high-volume keyword may be "health food" and a more targeted long-tail keyword could be "natural health food store."

Refine and target even further by including negative keywords. If you run a health food store but you don’t deliver, you could add "delivery" as a negative keyword. That way, your PPC ad won’t show up for searches that include that word. By spending a little more time on research and keyword selection, you can vastly improve the number of sales you make, while controlling your budget.

* Refining Your Ad Copy

Now that you’ve spent that extra time targeting the right customers, be sure to capture their attention with compelling ad copy. Study your competitors’ ads. What do they have in common? What can you do to stand out amongst them?

To increase the clicks on your ad, be sure to include your targeted keywords in the copy. A quick and easy way to do this with Google AdWords is to use their Dynamic Keyword Insertion tool. Another option is to write a custom ad for each keyword. Try using quirky or funny language in your ad, experiment with punctuation, and, most important, include a call to action ("Get all the details here!"). The key to success is always to be testing.

Enough with the basics. Now… on to the cool stuff!

5 Little-Known-but-Powerful PPC Tactics

* Location Targeting

Most PPC campaign platforms offer a variety of location targeting options. Google AdWords is the most robust. Depending on what kind of business you’re running and in what part of the world you’re running it, the ability to laser-focus your campaign can make a big difference in its performance. Consider targeting by Country, Region, State, Zip Code, or even a radius around particular streets (which could be particularly useful if you have a local delivery business – a pizzeria, flower shop, or even a courier service).

Several factors may come into play when deciding where to target your PPC ads. Assuming no problem with your country’s business laws, potential language barriers, and your willingness to ship internationally, you may even choose to target worldwide. The important thing is to make sure you can successfully do business in the location(s) you target.

* Seasonal or Holiday Campaigns

If you have a tight budget, turning your PPC campaigns on and off based on seasons or holidays could be a great strategy for maximizing your ROI (return on investment).

Let’s say you run an online sporting goods store. In that case, you may want a campaign for summer sports and another one for winter sports. You’d turn on your ads for bathing suits and water skis in April and turn them off in August, when you’d turn on your snowboard ads.

Or let’s say you run a tiny print shop and sell custom greeting cards online. In that case, you could create targeted campaigns around Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Christmas, and turn those campaigns on only for those big holidays. Again, the key is testing. Find out which holiday gets you the most bang for your buck.

* Dayparting

A close cousin to the seasonal campaign, dayparting is a fancy term for showing your ads during certain times of the day. Dayparting can play a pivotal role in making sure your ads appear during peak business hours and make the best use of your budget. Again, this could be particularly useful if you are running a local delivery service.

Dayparting can also be helpful when used in conjunction with analytics data. If, for example, you notice that your target customers tend to search for your keywords between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and noon, you may want to schedule your ads to run only during that time. A little tweak to your campaign using dayparting may just make a big difference in sales.

* Placement Targeting

Once called Site Targeting, Placement Targeting is specific to Google AdWords. Creating a Placement Targeted campaign will allow you to run ads on Google’s Content Network, but on a smaller scale. Placement Targeting allows you to choose which websites – or even which sections of a site – you want your ads to show on.

Placement Targeting is particularly useful if you are launching a new product that people aren’t yet searching for, or if you are in an industry that doesn’t receive a lot of search traffic. Perhaps you know what kinds of sites your audience visits. If those sites are in Google’s Content Network, you will be able to target them, without having to waste impressions on other underperforming sites in the network.

Placement Targeting is also a great strategy for testing out advertising on a site that has a rate card beyond your current budget.

* Multi-Channel Marketing

Finally, to really make your PPC campaigns sizzle, make them part of your larger synchronized marketing effort. Wendy Montes de Oca wrote about the importance of multi-channel marketing earlier this year, and her advice is as important now as ever.

By synchronizing the message you push in your PPC ads with the message in your PR, online media buys, and print advertising, you increase your company’s presence and solidify name recognition, branding, and trust. This increases the chance that searchers will recognize your products and company name and, therefore, see your PPC ad as coming from a viable company to do business with.

Whether you are just thinking about starting your first PPC campaign or have been managing one for a while, the above tips can really amp up clicks and sales while maximizing your allotted budget.

Just remember… to determine which PPC strategy is best for your online business, keep testing.

[Ed. Note: Alexis's top-notch search engine marketing tips aren't much use to you if you don't have an Internet business. But you're in luck! You can build your own Internet business from the ground up in 5 days. Learn how here.]

One of the very first steps toward optimizing your website for killer search engine rankings is choosing the right keywords. But it’s easy to get carried away and start "keyword stuffing" – and that’s a big no-no.

Many beginners think that to get a site ranked in the search engines, it’s necessary to include all their target keywords in their home page copy and META tags. This is far from true. By trying to include all your key search phrases on your home page, not only will your copy sound clumsy, your META tags will look spammy as well. This is the opposite of optimization.

Instead, focus your home page on 2-3 slightly broader keywords that describe your website on a higher level. Then optimize your articles and product pages for more-specific terms. For instance, if you run a site about pets, try optimizing your home page for keywords like "pet advice" or "online pet help." Save your "dog," "cat," and "blue-fronted Amazon" keywords for pages about those specific topics.

[Ed. Note: You can get more little-known secrets to staying on the search engines' good side at ETR's 5 Days in July Internet Business Building Conference. Learn more about how you can build an Internet business from the ground up here.

And keep reading ETR for more search engine optimization Dos and Don'ts from Alexis Siemon, ETR's Search Engine Marketing Specialist.]

If you’re just learning about SEO, you’re no doubt doing a lot of reading online. Plenty of SEO publications, blogs, and forums have lots of great tips and advice on best practices. But many sites can steer you in more nefarious directions with "black hat" tactics meant to "trick" the search engines into ranking your site.

So how do you know which advice to follow? That’s where ETR comes in. We’re here to teach you what to do and what NOT to do when it comes to running an Internet business.

One thing you should avoid when optimizing your site for the search engines is hidden text.

Also known as "invisible text," hidden text is extra text that you conceal on your website by putting it in the same color as your page’s background color. This hides the text from users, but it is still visible to the search engines. The idea behind this sneaky tactic? To cram a page full of keywords that the search engines would eat up, and therefore rank your site higher.

It’s a ploy that worked for a while back in the mid to late nineties when search engines were much less sophisticated. But it was still search engine spam even when it did work, and it’s search engine spam now. So don’t do it. Hidden text is a surefire way to get your site penalized by the search engines in general and banned by Google altogether.

Listen, you don’t need to revert to dirty tricks like this. Just write great content that both your visitors and the search engines will love!

[Ed. Note: Alexis Siemon is ETR's resident Search Engine Marketing Specialist. You can get more little-known secrets to staying on the search engines' good side at ETR's 5 Days in July Internet Business Building Conference. Learn more about how you can build an Internet business from the ground up here.]

"Get Top 10 Rankings in Google or Your Money Back" read the subject line in my inbox Monday morning. It was a forward from a colleague, Jim – a marketing piece he’d received.

"Can you give ETR a money-back guarantee on their Google rankings?" he joked in his e-mail.

I thought for a minute before replying. "No," I typed. "And I never will." Then I added, "Besides, rankings aren’t really what matters anyway."

Moments later, my phone rang. "What do you mean rankings don’t matter?" said Jim. "Isn’t that the whole point of SEO?""

"That’s a common misconception," I told him. "Think of it this way… It’s kind of like saying the whole point of e-mail marketing is blasting your message out. Isn’t the response what you’re really after?"

Jim’s not alone in his thinking. When measuring the success of a search engine optimization (SEO) effort or campaign, many people focus solely on rankings.

Your website’s search engine ranking refers to where your site’s listing appears on the search engine results page (SERP) for a particular keyword. For instance, if you performed a search on Google for one of your keywords and saw that your site was in the number four position on Google’s SERP, then your site would "rank" fourth for that keyword.

Yes, rankings are important for getting your website noticed for targeted keywords and search phrases. But that’s only the beginning. Many fly-by-night SEO agencies would have you believe the job is done once your site starts to appear in the search engine rankings. But, like any other direct-response marketing effort, there are many Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you should monitor to determine the success of your SEO campaign.

The first step toward measuring these KPIs is to get a great Web analytics tool to measure the traffic the search engines send to your site. There are several available in a wide range of prices and functionality: WebTrends, ClickTracks, Omniture’s Site Catalyst, Mint. Then, of course, there’s Google Analytics – possibly one of the best free tools available right now.

Once you have your tool of choice installed and collecting data, you can start monitoring those KPIs. The first and most obvious of which is:

Unique Visitors

Different analytics tools refer to unique visitors in different ways: "uniques," "absolute unique visitors," "unique visits," and sometimes just "visitors." But they all mean the same thing – your site’s body count. Literally – the warm bodies who are sitting at computers clicking on your search engine listing and visiting your site.

Why is this important?

Measuring the number of unique visitors the search engines are driving to your site can tell you, among other things, how well your title and META description are converting searchers into clickers. Are you writing compelling copy that accurately represents how relevant your site is to the particular keyword you are targeting?

For example, I recently did a search for "loose leaf tea." Among the top results were the following:

Loose Leaf Tea, Oolong Tea, White Tea, Organic, Green Teas, Tea…
Fine handcrafted full- leaf loose teas and artisan tea ware from Asia. Organic, green, oolong, white, black and herbal teas. Teapots and accessories.

SpecialTeas – Premium Loose Leaf Teas
Premium black, oolong, green, and white teas. Blends, flavoured teas, decaf. Herbals and fruit blends. Asian and English teapots and accessories.

Now even though it wasn’t part of my search phrase, I knew that I was interested in both English and Asian teas. So I clicked on the second result. Because this company’s listing had a compelling and comprehensive description of what I would find at their site, I became one of their unique visitors.

Let’s say your site has pretty decent rankings for your targeted keywords (in the top 20), but you aren’t seeing a high number of unique visitors to your site. You may want to take another look at the description of the page that’s ranking. Is it compelling enough? Did you include a call to action? Remember, you have control over how your site’s listing appears in the search engines with your title and description tags. Not only do they get your site ranked in the first place, they also act as your "ad."

Another important KPI to monitor is:

Visits

The visits count is typically the total number of times anyone visited your site. Not to be confused with unique visitors, the visits count includes multiple visits by the same unique visitor. For instance, if I clicked on the SpecialTeas listing three times in a month, I would count as one unique visitor, but three visits.

Why is this important?

The number of visits is important in the same way the number of unique visitors is important. But a high number of visits for a particular keyword could be an indication of your website’s relevancy as well as its value as a resource for that term.

For example, let’s say that in my search for loose leaf tea, I’m still in the browsing phase. I click on the SpecialTeas listing and scan the site, but I’d like to see what my other options are. So I go on to visit five more sites before I decide that SpecialTeas fits my needs the best. Maybe they have the best selection, or brands I’m familiar with, or a very user-friendly website. They fit my needs, and I return to their site multiple times.

This is just one example of why someone would visit a site more than once during a search. It’s helpful to keep in mind that, on average, a unique visitor will visit your site three times before taking an action (e.g., making a purchase). So make sure you have fresh compelling content, clean, easy-to-use navigation, and great products to keep visitors coming back.

This takes us to our next KPI:

Average Page Views

The average page views statistic, sometimes called pages/visit, is the average number of pages a typical visitor views during a visit to your site.

Going back to my loose leaf tea example, I may have gone through three or four pages of a particular site before determining that it was or wasn’t the one that best fit my needs. Someone else who searched on the same "loose leaf tea" keyword phrase may have viewed five or six pages. The average page views for those two visits would be somewhere around 4.5.

Using average page views as a KPI can sometimes be confusing. After all, does a high average mean that visitors really liked your website? Or that they had trouble finding what they were looking for?

A great way to determine this is by looking at the most important KPI of all:

Conversions

Conversions can mean many different things, depending on the goal of your website. Is it to sell products? Get newsletter subscribers? Generate leads?

Whatever your conversion goal is, number of conversions is the most important thing you can measure. Otherwise, why spend all your time on this SEO stuff anyway?

All of the KPIs mentioned in this article work best when used together. In combination, they give you a big picture of what’s happening with the traffic you’re driving to your site through your SEO efforts. If you rank #1 for a keyword and that traffic doesn’t convert, you’ve got some investigating to do.

Take a look at your average page views. If they are low for that particular keyword, maybe your optimized page doesn’t provide enough valuable information to keep visitors interested. If your average page views are high, maybe your site’s navigation is confusing your visitors. So these are things you would test – trying different content, modifying your navigation tools, etc.

If you manage to rank for a keyword that drives a high number of unique visitors, visits, page views, and conversions, you’ve hit the jackpot! And now you have to work even harder to keep that position and maintain that flow of valuable search traffic and sales.

So the next time an SEO firm tries to sell you their services by guaranteeing top 10 rankings, ask them if they will guarantee unique visitors, or even conversions.

[Ed. Note: Alexis Siemon is ETR's resident Search Engine Marketing Specialist. If you've been wanting to start your own Internet business, but have been too intimidated to try, join the ETR Internet Marketing Team at our 5 Days in July Internet Business Building conference. You'll learn everything about how to build your own online business from the ground up. Registration for the conference opens at noon on Friday. Check this page now for details.]

Get 1,000+ directory submissions for $50! Guaranteed results! Buy links for your website!

To a new website owner, that kind of offer can seem irresistible. The idea of all those submissions, all that potential website traffic, and all that potential new business, for a relatively low price, can sound like a great deal. But what price is your website paying in the long run?

I’ve talked before about the important role link building plays in getting increased Web traffic. Links to your site act like endorsements in the eyes of the search engines. They help validate your website content – leading to high rankings.

Submitting your site to trusted and relevant directories (human-edited catalogs of websites) is one way to build those links. So it would seem that signing up for 1,000+ directory submissions would be a quick and easy way to start building lots of links right away. However, it’s important to be aware that there IS such a thing as a bad link.

My advice? Make this (from an article at SearchEngineLand.com) your mantra: "My link sources must be relevant, consistent, reputable, and from the right link neighborhood."

Right about now, you’re probably thinking, "Relevant, consistent, and reputable. Okay. That makes sense. But… What is a link neighborhood? What’s the difference between a good link and a bad link? What will a bad link do to my website?"

Link Neighborhoods Defined

In the simplest terms, a link neighborhood is a group of related, complementary, or like-minded sites on the Internet, each linked to other relevant sites. They could be niche sites focused on health, finance, sports, pets, movies, etc. Pretty much any niche you can think of has its own neighborhood. For example, Early to Rise, The Warrior Forum, and CopyBlogger would all be part of the same link neighborhood because they are related to Internet marketing and copywriting in some way.

The best link-building practice is to link to and acquire links from your own neighborhood. Niche directories, respected organizations, and well-known bloggers in your field are all examples of good links that will associate your site with good link neighborhoods. For instance, if you ran a women’s health website, a link from the National Breast Cancer Foundation website to your site would be a great one! Acquiring that link would be the first step in building a pattern of good linking behavior. The search engines would then associate your site with an outstanding and relevant link neighborhood.

Similarly, if ETR, The Warrior Forum, and CopyBlogger linked to each other, it would have a positive effect on their search engine rankings.

The Wrong Side of the Tracks

Now that you understand what a good link neighborhood is, you can see that almost anything that doesn’t fit within those guidelines would qualify as a bad link neighborhood – particularly those 1,000+ no-name directories.

Bad link neighborhoods typically include:

• Sites penalized or banned by the search engines (typically any site not following Google’s Webmaster Guidelines)
• Sites hosting spyware
• Sites promoting phishing
• Link farms and free-for-all links pages (large pages full of unrelated links)
• Any site that offers no value or unique content to visitors and that could potentially be viewed as dangerous

Being linked to a website that isn’t related to your website would also put you in a bad neighborhood.

Google is notorious for being the harshest judge of bad links, and will punish your site for linking to, or being linked from, a bad link neighborhood

A number of sites in the real estate industry suffered severe drops in Google rankings in the past year due to bad link practices. It seems that real estate agents in several states were linking to each other – and, by doing so, built a large volume of links very quickly. But because real estate is such a localized industry, Google determined that an Arizona real estate agent linking to an agent in Connecticut didn’t provide any value to the Web user. That, combined with the sheer speed and volume of this reciprocal link tactic, set off a red flag at Google. This prompted them to fire a "shot across the bow" of those real estate sites – dropping their rankings.

If you have friends or colleagues who are linking to bad neighborhoods – or are acquiring links from free-for-all links pages – and they want to link with you as well, think twice. They might be on their way to getting penalized themselves. And you don’t want your site to be part of their bad link neighborhood.

If you’re a beginner, what I’m telling you today may sound alarming – especially if you’ve always heard that linking is good for search engine rankings. Don’t panic. Google and the other search engines aren’t going to penalize you for a couple of bad links you didn’t know about. They are typically looking for patterns of bad linking behavior: acquiring hundreds of links from unrelated spammy sites quickly.

The Takeaways

Let’s go back to our mantra: "My link sources must be relevant, consistent, reputable, and from the right link neighborhood." With that in mind, follow these rules when starting a link-building effort…

• Always be sure you are getting links from legitimate websites in your niche. If you run a website about stock investing, linking to sites about pet care won’t help your Google ranking. Instead, try to exchange links with other financial sites.
• If you are offered a link from a website that requires you to link back to them, first verify that the website is relevant to your niche and is not participating in any bad link practices.
• Resist the temptation to pay for thousands of directory submissions. There are only a handful of directories that are worth the trouble of submitting to, and one of them is Yahoo. Start there.

These link building best practices may seem like a lot of slow, hard work – especially when it looks like there’s an easy way out. But you will be rewarded for your hard work with increased search engine rankings, more targeted traffic, and, eventually, more sales.

[Ed. Note: Alexis Siemon is ETR's resident Search Engine Marketing Specialist. Get step-by-step instructions for starting your own Internet business with ETR's Magic Button program.]

Perform a search on Google these days and you may see something peculiar. Alongside the typical Web page results, Google is starting to include images and video clips. This is part of a new trend: "blended" or "universal" search. And by taking advantage of it, you can raise your website’s search engine rankings.

For example, I did a recent search for "Glen Hansard." The results had several images and videos of the singer/songwriter, including footage of his acceptance speech for his (well-deserved) "best song" Oscar for the movie Once.

What does this mean for you and your business? More chances to have your website content ranking high in Google, of course! And, as you know, the more often your website comes up in an organic search, the better your chances of attracting traffic to it.

Here are two ways to take advantage of universal search:

1. If you have a lot of images on your site, be sure to use keyword-rich file names and appropriate alt tags. (Alt tags are in the source code of your website. They are used specifically for images.)
2. If you are uploading video content to YouTube or Google Video, label them with keyword-rich titles and tags. (The text that appears next to your YouTube video in the search results is the title and description you write when you submit the video to YouTube.)

Optimizing your videos and images this way will have your business ranking with these eye-catching new results in no time!

[Ed Note: Alexis Siemon is ETR’s resident Search Engine Marketing Specialist. For step-by-step instructions on starting your own Internet business, get ETR’s Magic Button program. Click here to learn more.]

In the world of search engine marketing, links are extremely important. Search engines view inbound links to your website as votes – endorsements of your site and its content. The more of these votes your site receives, the more the search engines regard it as a trusted source and the more likely you are to rank high in their search results for your keywords.

There are many different kinds of websites you can get links from. There are links from big trusted sites and directories like Yahoo and DMOZ, links from relevant vertical search engines, links from respected industry organizations, links from forums and blogs, and so on. And there are almost as many techniques for getting the links from these sites that the search engines love.

Today, I’ll talk about one of those techniques: how to use social media for building links.

The term "social media" typically refers to social news sites like Digg, social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and StumbleUpon, and social networking sites like MySpace and FaceBook. Social news and social bookmarking sites are the most common social media sites used in a link-building effort.

These sites were designed specifically for people with shared interests to post and vote for content all over the Internet. Social media is a great way to get your articles and website content in front of a large group of people in a relatively short amount of time. And this can generate lots of traffic to your site.

Now you may be thinking: "Um, didn’t Patrick Coffey just tell me that social media will bring my site useless traffic?" Yes he did. And he’s right… mostly.

Through my own recent experiments with link building through social media (as Patrick mentioned), I attracted over 28,000 visitors to our health-newsletter site, Total Health Breakthroughs. And a measly 0.2 percent of those visitors signed up for the newsletter. If this were the only marketing technique we were using to build the e-mail list for the newsletter, we’d be in some seriously sorry shape.

We’ve made some improvements to ensure that our conversion rate will be higher next time. Still, despite getting a disappointing number of subscribers from all that traffic, my little experiment with social media did have a positive side. It also resulted in about 600 inbound links.

This is how social media can give you a big boost, especially if you are just starting out building links for a new site. If a page of your site makes the first page on Digg or gets a lot of reviews on StumbleUpon, you get that much more exposure to Web users who have their own sites and blogs. If these bloggers and website owners like your content, they’ll link to you. This has the potential to build your links exponentially! And remember, the search engines love it when your site has lots of relevant inbound links.

"All right, you’ve convinced me! So now what do I do?"

1. First, you have to have interesting content.

For some ideas on how to create top-notch content that will help your website’s pages do well on social media sites, take a look at David Cross’s "Bad Writer’s Guide to Creating Website Content" and Patrick Coffey’s "Creating Content for Your Website."

2. Then you have to present that good content in ways that will get the attention of social media junkies.

Here are four types of content that social media users love:

• Lists – Some would say lists are cliched or overused by now, but they still work. Top-10 lists seem to do really well, particularly on Digg. As I write this, there is a story on the first page of Digg with the headline " The Top 10 Places to Take a Techie on a Date." So if you can rework a page of your content or one of your articles into a Top-10 list, give it a shot.
• How-To Articles – Like lists, how-to guides do well. If you’re in the business of teaching people how things are done, you’re one step ahead of the game.
• Controversial Topics – People love controversy, but use this tactic wisely. You don’t want to misrepresent yourself or your site. You just want to create a buzz.
• Catchy Headlines - As with every other form of marketing, your headline is key in social media. Craft it carefully to attract the most attention.

3. In addition to having the right content on your website, you have to comply with social media’s unwritten code of conduct.

There is a reason social media is also known as social networking . When you create an account on a social media/networking website, you are literally signing up to be part of a community. Kind of like a condo association, the early adopters and hardcore users of social media sites take their communities very seriously. And they like it best when you play along.

If there’s anything this society hates, it’s overt marketing. If they suspect you are participating in their network purely to promote your site, they will report your submissions as spam and can even have the site disable your account. So here are some tips to help you appear more like a real person and less like a loathsome marketer.

• Upload an Avatar – An avatar is a little picture that’s associated with your account. It’s a pixilated ambassador that represents you and all the actions you perform on your account. An account profile without an avatar is a pretty good indicator of a marketer.
• Don’t Submit Content Solely From Your Website - This would seem like a no-brainer, but it is often forgotten. If the only pages you submit to a social media site are from your website, chances are you’re a marketer.
• Add Friends - Friends will usually vote for the content you submit. The more friends you have, the more votes for your content. The more votes you have, the better your chances of getting content on the first page of the social media site. But remember to reciprocate. Nobody likes a taker.
• Be a Real Person – A surefire way to look like a real person and not a marketer is to actually be a real person. Social media sites are fun! That’s why they’re so successful.

Let yourself go, and truly participate in the community. Make friends. Comment on posts. Discover new websites. When you do submit something from your own site, it will simply be another genuine contribution of great content. After all, marketers are people too, right?

Using social media to build links to your website can help boost your search engine rankings. It’s a lot of work, but it can also be rewarding… and entertaining. Follow these tips and you’ll be well on your way to driving useful traffic to your website.

[Ed. Note: Alexis Siemon is ETR's resident Search Engine Marketing Specialist. Get step-by-step instructions for starting your own Internet business with ETR's Magic Button program.]

You’d been hearing all about how great Google AdWords is for driving traffic to a business’s website, and you were finally ready to get in on the action. So you set up your first online marketing campaign. But while you’re starting to see results, they just aren’t what you expected… and you’re not sure what to do next.

You did everything right. You created your campaign complete with your first Ad Group, the all-important element that holds your keywords and your text ads. You applied your budget. And you were ready to kick back and let the traffic roll in.

I mean, this is AdWords, right? The king of all pay-per-click (PPC) search programs! So… where’s all the traffic? Where’re all the sales? Is anyone out there? Is this thing on?

Don’t panic. The traffic is out there, and so are the sales. Google isn’t the king for nothing. Appease the king and he’ll share his gold. And I’m here to show you how to appease him. Apply the following techniques, and you’ll see a big boost in your AdWords results.

Let’s start by tweaking the most important element of your AdWords campaign.

Your Keywords

When you think of keywords, you probably think "More, more, more!" But have you ever considered less?

Many marketers just starting out in PPC advertising make the mistake of cramming all the keywords they can think of into one Ad Group. Many times, this results in an Ad Group that isn’t as targeted as it could be.

Let’s say you run a website that’s all about dogs. You may have a keyword list that includes terms like:

• Dog training
• Dog breeds
• Healthy dog food
• Best dog toys

By including all these keywords in one Ad Group, you dilute the focus of that Ad Group.

Sure, the words are all related to dogs. But a person searching for information on dog training is not necessarily the same person who is looking for places to buy healthy dog food.

But what if you created an Ad Group for each of these different keywords? Instead of one diluted Ad Group, you now have four extremely targeted Ad Groups. And now you can expand upon each of these topics and really drill down to the various terms people would use to search for "dog training" (how to train my dog, dog training tips, best dog training information) or "healthy dog food" (healthy dog food recipes, healthy dry dog food, healthy dog food brands).

The next step is to write targeted ad text for each of your new Ad Groups.

Your Ad Text

Now that you’re targeting potential customers interested in your valuable dog training tips, how do you encourage them to click through to your website? Why, with targeted and compelling ad text of course!

Easier said than done, I know. But there are several things you can do to stand out amongst your competitors and boost your click-through rate (CTR).

1. Use your keywords in your ad text – especially your headline. Keywords in your ad text that match what was searched show up as bold in your ad and boost your relevancy.
2. Offer something free or promote a sale. Everyone likes free stuff and bargains.
3. Use symbols or vary your punctuation where applicable. Odd punctuation can catch a searcher’s eye and make them click your ad over your competitors’.

Play with these techniques to find what works best. Test like crazy. And since you can write several versions of your text ads for each Ad Group, let Google rotate them and optimize the best ads for the best results.

Remember, relevancy is the most important factor in search engine marketing. Whatever you do, make sure your ad text speaks to the keywords you’re bidding on.

Once your new ads are pulling the clicks of your dreams, now you’d better convert them with…

Your Landing Pages

So your "dog training" keywords trigger your targeted "dog training" text ads, which drive visitors to your … home page? But your home page talks about dog training and different dog breeds and dog food and dog toys and… your visitors are overwhelmed and they leave.

If you make your visitors work too hard to find what they’re looking for, you’ll lose them.

Create unique landing pages specific to each Ad Group. The more relevant your landing pages are to your ad text, the better your conversions will be – whether they be sign-ups, leads, or sales.

Once visitors click on your "dog training" ad, they should arrive at a page that tells them all about your amazing dog training products and/or services. Want them to sign up for a monthly newsletter about dog training advice? Tell them what they’ll learn by subscribing.

Do the same for dog food. Do you sell an e-book about healthy dog food… or about the products that were involved in the wheat gluten scare? Focus your landing page solely on selling that e-book, and make it as relevant as possible to the keywords you’re bidding on and the ad text you’ve written.

Using these techniques to tweak your AdWords campaign will not only rev up your results, it will also boost your AdWords Quality Score, resulting in a lower cost per click (CPC). Lower CPC means more clicks for your money… which ultimately means more sales.

You can’t lose. So start testing now to make 2008 a great year for your online business!