Upcoming DISC Training Classes from Greg Smith

I hope you had a terrific Thanksgiving last week!
If you're located elsewhere in the world, I just hope you
had a terrific Thursday in general.

Just a quick note to update you on our upcoming
training seminars, workshops and webinars.

DISC CERTIFICATION GROUP COACHING
TRAINING PROGRAM
(Live webseminar)

Our DISC training programs provide you with the skills
and knowledge in using our assessments to empower
individuals, enhance team performance, employee selection
and to improve communication.

Upon successful completion of the training, you may
teach and conduct workshops in your organization or
training practice. Each class is limited to five people.

Upcoming dates:

December Class
Dec 12, 13, 19
2:00-3:30 p.m. ET

January Class
Jan 10, 12, 23
2:00-3:30 ET

February Class
Feb 6, 9, 14
2:00-3:30 ET

Limited seating
Cost: $895

For more information:
http://ow.ly/6Ogw4
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DISC ONE-ON-ONE PERSONALIZED CERTIFICATION
TRAINING CLASS

Greg will arrange a time to meet your personal
time schedule. Includes the facilitator kit and
certification exam.

Cost: $1295
For more information call us at 770-860-9464 or 800-821-2487
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
MASTER CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL BEHAVIORAL
STRATEGIST PROGRAM (Two Days)

Upcoming Sessions:

December 13th & 14th
January 24th & 25th

Held in Atlanta or onsite at your business location

Cost: $1950

For more information, click this link:
http://www.chartcourse.com/disctraining.html
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
OTHER TRAINING PROGRAMS

We have updated our list of Greg's keynotes, workshops
and training programs we provide.

http://www.chartcourse.com/workshops.html

Greg's Videos:
http://www.chartcourse.com/demovideo.html
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
VISIT OUR NEW BLOG!

We are going to the next level or interactivity and have
created a new blog called the High Performance
Organization. I invite you to visit or subscribe to
our blog and receive the latest and the best
updates from Chart Your Course International.

Visit today by going to this site:
http://www.highperformanceorganization.com/
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Greg Smith
President
Chart Your Course International
2814 Hwy 212,SW
Conyers, GA 30094
770-860-9464
800-821-2487
http://www.ChartCourse.com

If you no longer wish to receive communication from us:
http://autocontactor.com/o?r=f3aa2bd7a73c47e59346ff6ebe805ffa

To update your contact information:
http://autocontactor.com/o?c=1&r=f3aa2bd7a73c47e59346ff6ebe805ffa

Important note from the Lead Navigator

zubay

You subscribed to our Navigator Newsletter recently.

If you are like a lot of people, you are looking for up to date information to help you grow your business, build better teams and develop your leadership skills.

If you are that kind of person, I invite you to visit and join our High Performance Organization Blog.

http://www.highperformanceorganization.com/

Helping you Chart Your Course!

Greg

Gregory P. Smith
Chart Your Course International
President and Lead Navigator

Greg Smith
President
Chart Your Course International
2814 Hwy 212,SW
Conyers, GA 30094
770-860-9464
800-821-2487
http://www.ChartCourse.com

If you no longer wish to receive communication from us:
http://autocontactor.com/o?r=da9210a0ccfc4c58aa71070ad55d8071&d=11

To update your contact information:
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Top 10 Costly Link Building Mistakes

Link building is one of the most important SEO activities but this certainly doesn't mean that you should build links at any price ? literally and figuratively. Link building can be very expensive in terms of time and money. There are many costly link building mistakes and here are some of the most common: 

1. Check if backlinks have a“nofollow” attribute

Linkexchanges are still one of the white hat ways to build backlinks but unfortunately, there are many unscrupulous webmasters, who will cheat you. One of the scams is when you pay somebody for a backlink, it suddenly disappears or has the “nofollow” attribute. That is why you should check from time to time if the link is still there and if it doesn't have the “nofollow” attribute. 

2. Getting good quality links butwith useless anchor texts

It is greatwhen PR of the site you are getting links from is high but when the anchor text is “Click here!” or something like that, such a link is barely useful. Keywords in the anchor text are vital, so if the backlink doesn't have them, it isn't a valuable one. Analyzing the anchor texts of links takes time but the Backlink Anchor Text Analyzer tool can do the hard job for you. 

3. Getting an image link (when a textlink with keyword is possible)

Sometimes when web masters hurry to get backlinks, they skip minor details, such as anchor text. Yes, an image link is great and it could even bring you more visitors than a text link (if the image is attractive, of course and users click it) but for SEO purposes nothing beats a keyword in the anchor text. 

4. Not using ALT text if image linkis the only possibility

Image links might be the worse option than text links but if an image link is the only possibility to get a backlink, don't reject it. However, make sure that the ALT text of the image link has your keywords ? this is more than nothing. 

5. Getting backlinks from irrelevantwebsites

Now, this mistake is really a popular one! When hunting for backlinks, you should concentrate on relevant sites only. If you have a dating site, getting links from a finance one is not valuable. It is true that it is not easy to find relevant sites to get links from but unless your site is in a very narrow niche, chances are that there are hundreds or even thousands of relevant sites you can get a backlink from. If you need a list of such sites for your niche, try the Backlink Builder and see what suggestions it can give you.

6. Getting backlinks from sites/pageswith tons of links

A backlinkis more valuable, if it comes from a page, which is not cluttered with tons of other backlinks. Many pages have 200, or more links and if your link is one of them, this isn't a great achievement. On the other hand, many directories put the “nofollow” attribute on nonpaid links, so actually even if there are 200 links on page and most of them are “nofollow” (but yours isn't), this still counts. 

7. Links from pages spiders can'tcrawl

A link mightlook perfectly legitimate (i.e. keywords in the anchor text and no “nofollow” attribute) and still it might not be a link. This is especially an issue with link exchanges because you put a link to the other site but the other site doesn't do the same for you. Links Google can't index can be placed on dynamic pages or simply on pages, which are not indexed by Google because robots.txt bans it. That is why it doesn't hurt to check from time if the pages your links are placed on are accessible to spiders. The Search Engine Spider Simulator tool can help you do this in no time at all. 

8. Explicitly selling links

There ishardly a web master who hasn't heard that paid links can hurt your rankings but still many web masters don't miss the chance to make a few bucks. If you really want to sell links, you'd better use the specialized link selling services, such as Backlinks.com because they are more discreet. However, have in mind that while some of the paid links networks try to hide the fact that the links are paid, the rest are not that discreet. Also, maybe the worst gaffe you can make is to include phrases in website like “Buy 5 PR links for $10”or any other hint that you are selling links. You can include “Advertise here!” or similar messages and still de facto sell paid links but this is not as explicit as listing your prices for links. 

9. Linking to sites with poorreputation

Linking to sites with poor reputation, also known as “bad neighbors” is one of the worst mistakes you can make. When you link to such sites, for Google this means that you endorse them and this results in penalties for you. That is why you must absolutely always check the sites (and their reputation) first before you link to them. Even if you are offered a lot of money to link to a site with poor reputation, you'd better decline the offer because otherwise your rating with search engines will suffer and this will cause you a lot of problems. 

10. Linking to good sites gone bad

Even if you check carefully the sites you link to, sometimes it happens that a site, which used to be more or less decent all of a sudden starts publishing porn ads or other objectionable content. That is why it doesn't hurt if you check not only that the outbound links you have are not broken but also where they lead to.

Links are very important and that is why you should pay attention to what links you are getting. It is not a waste of time to monitor what's going on with your links and in addition to the tools listed in the article, you can also try the Backlink Summary tool.

From: http://www.webconfs.com/seo-articles.php

How to Pick an SEO Friendly Designer

A Web designer is one of the persons without whom it is not possible to create a site. However, when SEO is concerned, Web designers can be really painful to deal with. While there are many Web designers, who are SEO-proficient, it is still not an exception to stumble upon design geniuses, who are focused only on the graphic aspect of the site. For them SEO is none of their business and they couldn't care less for something as unimportant as goodrankings with search engines. Needless to say, if you hire such a designer, don't expect that your site will rank well with search engines.

If you will do SEO on your own, then you might not care a lot about the SEO skills of your Web designer but still there are design issues as we'll see next, which can affect your rankings very badly. When he or she designs the site against SEO rules, then it is not possible to fix this with SEO tricks.

When we say that you need to hire a SEO-friendly designer, we presume that you are a SEO pro and you know SEO but if you aren't, then have a look at the SEO Tutorial and the SEO Checklist. If you have no idea about SEO, then you will hardly be able to select a SEO-friendly designer because you won't know what to look for.

One of the ultimate tests if a designer is SEO-friendly or not is to look at his or her past sites – are they done professionally, especially in the SEO department. If their past sites don't exhibit blatant SEO mistakes, such as the ones we'll list in a second and they rank well, this is a recommendation that this person is worth hiring. Anyway, after you look at past sites, ask the designer if he or she did the SEO for their past sites because in some cases it might be that the client himself or herself has done a lot to optimize the site and this is why the site ranks well.

Here is a checklist of common web design sins that will make your site a SEO disaster. If you notice any or all of the following in the past sites your would-be designer has created, just move to the next designer. These SEO-unfriendly design elements are absolute sins and unless the client made them do it, no designer who would use the below techniques deserves your attention: 

1. Rely heavily on Flash

Many designers still believe that Flash is the next best thing after sliced bread. While Flash can be very artistic and make a site look cool (and load forever in the browser), heavily Flash-ed sites are disaster in terms of SEO. Simple HTML sites rank better with search engines and as we point out in Optimizing Flash Sites, if the use of Flash is a must, then an HTML version of the same page is more than mandatory.

2. No internal links, or very fewlinks

Internal links are backlinks and they are very important. Of course, this doesn't mean that all the text on a page must be hyperlinked to all the other pages on the site but if there are only a couple of internal links a page, this is a missed chance to get backlinks.

3. Images, not text for anchors

This is another frequent mistake many designers make. Anchor text is vital in SEO and when your links lack anchor text, this is bad. It is true that for menu items and other page elements, it is much easier to use an image than text because with text you can never be sure it will display correctly on users' screens, but since this is impacting your site's rankings in a negative way, you should sacrifice beauty for functionality.

4. Messy code and tons of code

If you have no idea about HTML, then it might be impossible for you to judge if a site's code is messy and if the amount of code is excessive but cleanness of code is an important criterion for SEO. When the code is messy, it might not be spiderable at all and this can literally exclude your site from search engines because they won't be able to index it. 

5. Excessive use of (SEOnon-friendly) JavaScript

Similarly to Flash, search engines don't love JavaScript, especially tons of it. Actually, the worst with JavaScript is that if not coded properly, it is quite possible that because of the use of JavaScript your pages (or parts of them) are not spiderable, which automatically means that they won't be indexed.

6. Overoptimized sites

Overoptimized sites aren't better than under-optimized. In fact, they could be much worse because when you keyword stuff and use other techniques (even when they are not Black Hat SEO) to artificially inflate the rankings of the site, this could get you banned from search engines and this is the worst that can happen to a site.

7. Dynamic and other SEO non-friendlyURLs

Well, maybe dynamic URLs is not exactly a design issue but if you are getting a turn-key site - i.e. it is not up to you to upload and configure it and to create the links inside - then dynamic URLs are bad and you have to ask the designer/developer not to use them. You can rewrite dynamic and other SEO non-friendly URLs on your own but actually this means to make dramatic changes to the site and this is hardly the point of hiring a designer.

These points are very important and this is why you need to follow them, when you are choosing a SEO-friendly designer. Some of the items on the list are so bad for SEO (i.e. Flash, JavaScript) that even if the site is a design masterpiece and you promote it heavily, you will still be unable to get decent rankings. SEO-friendliness of design is a necessity, not a whim and you shouldn't settle for a SEO-unfriendly designs – this can be really expensive! 

From: http://www.webconfs.com/seo-articles.php

How to Boost your SEO with Google Adwords

Many advertisers use Google AdWords as their major PPC network. However, in addition to using AdWords for getting paid traffic to your site, it can also be used for SEO. Here are some ideas how you can use AdWordsfor SEO.

1.For Keyword Research

The mostvaluable use of AdWords for SEO is to research keywords. Keywords are the basis of any SEO campaign and even if you are an expert in your niche, you should always research keywords simply because users frequently search for quite unexpected keywords and keyphrases you as an expert will never think of. Needless to say, what matters most for high rankings is which keywords your target audience is searching for, not which keywords you as an expert think are most popular in a particular niche.

In order to find what users are searching for, you need a keyword research tool. It is true that there are many special (free andpaid) keyword research tools but Google AdWords Keyword Tool is light years ahead of them all.

It is simple to use AdWords to research keywords. You can either enter the URL of your site or put in some seed keywords, the tool will then automatically generate a whole bunch of suggested keywords. Look at the results and shortlist all the keywords that seem relevent and have a decent global search volume.

You may want to rank well for ALL the generatedkeywords, but its best to focus all your efforts on a selected few. The idea now is to find keywords that are relatively easy to optimize and yet have a decent search volume. These would be the keywords with the least compitetion in Google. Go to Google.com and enter each of your short listed keywords (one at a time). It is best if you search for the exact phrase, so surround your keyword with double quotes. Note how many web results there are for each of the phrases. Now that you have collected the 'Number of web results' for each keyword, calculate competition ratio by divding it's 'Global search volume' by the 'Number of web results'. The keywords with the higher ratios are the easier ones to optimize.

You can now start a SEO campaign for your keywords however you'll see next, it might be much wiser to start an AdWords campaigninstead. 

2. To Ensure that the Keywords YouHave Picked Convert Well

After you have picked your keywords, you need to verify if these keywords really work for you – i.e. if they convert properly. No matter how precise you've been when picking your keywords, if you don't test them in practice, you can never know for sure if they work well or don't. You can pick lucrative keywords with high global search volume and low levels of competition and still end nowhere.

For instance, for this website - webconfs.com we could try optimizing for the keyword "Search Engine Optimization". It could take a year or so with a LOT of effort to reach the first page on Google for "Search Engine Optimization” and still one can never be sure this will happen.

However, let's pretend that this happens – We manage to top Google for "Search Engine Optimization” after a year of hard SEOwork. To our greatest disappointment, even the first place for "Search Engine Optimization” on Google did'nt bring the expected results because the bounce rate for this particular keyword turned out to be very high. Since we do not provide SEO Services a lot of people reaching us via "Search Engine Optimization" may NOT be getting what they're looking for. Instead, lesser popular keywords, such as "SEO Tips” or "SEO Guide” might have lower bounce rates and may actually perform better than "Search Engine Optimization” did for us.

The result is not surprising but the price paid is. If we had launched an AdWords campaign, it would have saved a lot of trouble. We could have spent $20-50 on AdWords for "Search Engine Optimization” and it would have taken us a week or less to figure that the bounce rate for this keyword is very high and it makes no sense to do organic SEO for it. These $20-50 on AdWords would have spared a year of wasted SEO efforts. 

3. For Getting a Better CTR with YourExisting Rankings
In addition to keyword research, AdWords is a valuable tool for getting a better CTR (Click Thru Rate) with your existing rankings. You might rank well for a given keyword, get a lot of traffic, and still be unable to monetize this traffic because your CTR is low. The reasons for this might be various but inadequate title and description could be a very possible reason.

AdWords can also help you get better CTR with your existing rankings. For instance, if you run ad AdWords campaign and you are satisfied with the conversion/performance, you might want to keep changing your ad title and description until you feel you have reached the maximum CTR foryour keywords.

Sure, it might take you a couple of tries till you find the winning combination of a title and a description and you might even lower your CTR in the process but once you find this magical combination of a title and description, just copy them as the title and description for your page in order to maximize your organic search CTR as well.

4. For Geographic Targeting

One more good use of AdWords for SEO is geotargeting. If you bid on traffic from many geographic locations, you can use Google Analytics to compare how different locations convert. It is quite natural to have significant discrepancies in the conversions for the same keyword among the countries.

When you go to Google Analytics and see which countries are converting best, you can invest more effort in them. For instance, you can create local pages for these countries or target the geo-specific keywords with exceptionally good conversion rates.

AdWords is a really valuable tool not only for advertisers. It started as a tool for advertisers but its use is not restricted to them alone. For many publishers and SEO experts AdWords is the most valuable tool because even a moderate AdWords campaign can give you valuable insights and save you a lot of time and money to optimize for words, which don't work for you. 

From: http://www.webconfs.com/seo-articles.php

Dynamic URLs vs. Static URLs

 The Issue at Hand

Websites that utilize databases which can insert content into a webpage by way of a dynamic script like PHP or JavaScript are increasingly popular. This type of site is considered dynamic. Many websites choose dynamic content over static content. This is because if a website has thousands of products or pages, writing or updating each static by hand is amonumental task.

There are two types of URLs: dynamic and static. A dynamic URL is a page address that results from the search of a database-driven web site or the URL of a web site that runs a script. In contrast to static URLs, in which the contents of the web page stay the same unless the changes are hard-coded into the HTML, dynamic URLs are generated from specific queries to a site's database. The dynamic page is basically only a template in which to display the results of the database query. Instead of changing information in the HTML code, the data is changed in the database.

But there is a risk when using dynamic URLs: search engines don't like them. For those at most risk of losing search engine positioning due to dynamic URLs are e-commerce stores, forums, sites utilizing content management systems and blogs like Mambo or WordPress, or any other database-driven website. Many times the URL that is generated for the content in a dynamic site looks something like this:    http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345&sort=date

A static URL on the other hand, is a URL that doesn't change, and doesn't have variable strings. It looks like this:
   http://www.somesites.com/forums/the-challenges-of-dynamic-urls.htm

Static URLs are typically ranked better in search engine results pages, and they are indexed more quickly than dynamic URLs, if dynamic URLs get indexed at all. Static URLs are also easier for the end-user to view and understand what the page is about. If a user sees a URL in a search engine query that matches the title and description, they are more likely to click on that URL than one that doesn't make sense to them.

A search engine wants to only list pages its index that are unique. Search engines decide to combat this issue by cutting off the URLs after a specific number of variable strings (e.g.: ? & =).

For example, let's look at three URLs:    http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345&sort=date
   http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=67890&sort=date
   http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=13579&sort=date

All three of these URLs point to three different pages. But if the search engine purges the information after the first offending character, the question mark (?), now all three pages look the same:
   http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php
   http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php
   http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php

Now, you don't have unique pages, and consequently, the duplicate URLs won't be indexed.

Another issue is that dynamic pages generally do not have any keywords in the URL. It is very important to have keyword richURLs. Highly relevant keywords should appear in the domain name or the page URL. This became clear in a recent study on how the top three search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, rank websites.

The study involved taking hundreds of highly competitive keyword queries, like travel, cars, and computer software, and comparing factors involving the top ten results. The statistics show that of those top ten, Google has 40-50% of those with the keyword either in the URL or the domain; Yahoo shows 60%; and MSN has an astonishing 85%! What that means is that to these search engines, having your keywords in your URL or domain name could mean the difference between a top ten ranking, and a ranking far down in the results pages. 

The Solution
So what can you do about this difficult problem? You certainly don't want to have to go back and recode every single dynamic URL into a static URL. This would be too much work for any website owner.

If you are hosted on a Linux server, then you will want to make the most of the Apache Mod Rewrite Rule, which is gives you the ability to inconspicuously redirect one URL to another, without the user's (or a search engine's) knowledge. You will need to have this module installed in Apache; for more information, you can view the documentation for this module here. This module saves you from having to rewrite your static URLs manually.

How does this module work? When a request comes in to a server for the new static URL, the Apache module redirects the URL internally to the old, dynamic URL, while still looking like the new staticURL. The web server compares the URL requested by the client with the search pattern in the individual rules.

For example, when someone requests this URL:
   http://www.somesites.com/forums/the-challenges-of-dynamic-urls.html

The server looks for and compares this static-looking URL to what information is listed in the .htaccess file, such as:
   RewriteEngine on
   RewriteRule thread-threadid-(.*)\.htm$ thread.php?threadid=$1

It then converts the static URL to the old dynamic URL that looks like this, with no one the wiser:
   http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345

You now have a URL that only will rank better in the search engines, but your end-users can definitely understand by glancing at the URL what the page will be about, while allowing Apache's Mod Rewrite Rule to handle to conversion for you, and still keeping the dynamic URL.

If you are not particularly technical, you may not wish to attempt to figure out the complex Mod Rewrite code and how to use it, or you simply may not have the time to embark upon a new learning curve. Therefore, it would be extremely beneficial to have something to do it for you. This URL Rewriting Tool can definitely help you. What this tool does is implement the Mod Rewrite Rule in your .htaccess file to secretly convert a URL to another, such as with dynamic and static ones.

With the URL Rewriting Tool, you can opt to rewrite single pages or entire directories. Simply enter the URL into the box, press submit, and copy and paste the generated code into your .htaccess file on the root of your website. You must remember to place any additional rewrite commands in your .htaccess file for each dynamic URL you want Apache to rewrite. Now, you can give out the static URL links on your website without having to alter all of your dynamic URLs manually because you are letting the Mod Rewrite Rule do the conversion for you, without JavaScript, cloaking, or any sneaky tactics.

Another thing you must remember to do is to change all of your links in your website to the static URLs in order to avoid penalties by search engines due to having duplicate URLs. You could even add your dynamic URLs to your Robots Exclusion Standard File (robots.txt) to keep the search engines from spidering the duplicate URLs. Regardless of your methods, after using the URL Rewrite Tool, you should ideally have no links pointing to any of your old dynamic URLs.

You have multiple reasons to utilize static URLs in your website whenever possible. When it's not possible, and you need to keep your database-driven content as those old dynamic URLs, you can still give end-users and search engine a static URL to navigate, and all the while, they are still your dynamic URLs in disguise. When a search engine engineer was asked if this method was considered "cloaking", he responded that it indeed was not, and that in fact, search engines prefer you do it this way. The URL Rewrite Tool not only saves you time and energy by helping you use static URLs by converting them transparently to your dynamic URLs, but it will also save your rankings in the search engines.

From: http://www.webconfs.com/seo-articles.php

10 Ways to Get Traffic for Free

Getting traffic is one of the most important tasks for any web master. What is more, you can't get traffic once and then just reap the benefits. Getting traffic is an ongoing task and you must be constantly doing it, if you want to get traffic and keep it. Here are some of the ways to gettraffic for free: 

1.Optimize your site for searchengines.

Search engines have always been a major way to get traffic for free. That is why you need to do your homework and optimize your site so that it ranks well for the keywords you target. SEO is still the most powerful way to get traffic for free and you really need to invest some time and efforts in the optimization of your site. SEO is not that difficult and if you want to get familiar with it in a nutshell, check our SEO Tutorial. If you are too busy for that, you can start with the 15 Minute SEO article. 

2.Frequently update the contents ofyour site.

If you expected some shocking secrets revealed, you might be a bit disappointed. One of the first steps in getting traffic for free is trivial but vital – get great content and frequently update it. In terms of SEO, content is king. If your content is good and frequently updated you will not only build a loyal audience of recurring visitors, who will often come to see what is new, but search engines will also love your site. 

3.Take advantage of socialbookmarking sites.

Social bookmarking sites (especially the most popular among them) are another powerful way to get traffic for free. If you want to learn how to do it, check the How to get Traffic from Social Bookmarking sites article, where we have explained what to do if you want to get free traffic from sites such as Digg, Delicious, etc. 

4.Use your Twitter and Facebookaccounts.

Social networks are also a way to get traffic for free. If you are popular on networks, such as Twitter or Facebook, the traffic you get from there can easily surpass the traffic from Google and the other search engines. It is true that building a large network of targeted followers on Twitter and supporters on Facebook takes a lot of time and effort but generally the result is worth. 

5.Get links with other sites in yourniche.

Another way to get traffic for free is from other sites in your niche. Getting links with other sites in your niche is also good for SEO, especially if you manage to get links without the famous nofollow attribute. But even if the links are nofollow (i.e. they are useless for SEO), they still help to get traffic to your site. If you manage to put your link in a visible place on a site with high volumes of traffic, you can get thousands of hits from this link alone. If you need list of sites within your niche where you could get backlinks from, check the Backlink Builder tool. However, be careful if you exchange links because linking to bad neighbors can do you a lot of harm. 

6.Use any chance to promote yoursite for free.

Freepromotion is always welcome, so don't neglect it. There are many ways to promote your site for free and some of the most popular ones include free classified ads, submissions to directories, inclusion in various listings, etc. It is true that not all free ways to promote your site work well but if you select the right places to promote your site for free, this can also result in tons of traffic. 

7.Create a free product or service.

Contentdrives most traffic when you offer something useful. There are many types of useful content you can create and they largely depend on the niche of your site. You can have articles with tons of advice, or short tips but one of the most powerful ways to get traffic is to create a free product or service. When this product or service gets popular and people start visiting your site, chances are that they will visit the other sections of the site as well. 

8.Use viral content.

Freeproducts and services are great for getting free traffic to your site and one of the best varieties in this aspect is viral content. Viral content is called so because it distributes like a virus – i.e. when users like your content, they send it to their friends, post it on various sites, and promote it for free in many different ways. Viral content distributes on its own and your only task is to create it and submit it to a couple of popular sites. After that users pick it and distribute it for you. Viral content can be a hot video or a presentation but it can also be a good old article or an image. 

9.Use offline promotion.

Offline promotion is frequently forgotten but it is also a way to get traffic for free. Yes, computers are everywhere and many people spend more time online than offline but still life hasn't moved completely on the Web. Offline promotion is also very powerful and if you know how to use it, this can also bring you many visitors. Some of the traditional offline ways to promote your site include printing its URL on your company's business cards and souvenirs or sticking it on your company vehicles. You can also start selling T-shirts and other merchandise with your logo and this way make your brand more popular. 

10.Include your URL in yoursignature.

URLs in forum signatures are also a way to get traffic for free. There are forums, which get millions of visitors a day and if you are a popular user on such a forum, you can use this to get traffic to your site. When you post on forums and people like your posts, they tend to click the link to your site on your signature to learn more about you. In rare cases you might be able to post a deep link (i.e. a link to an internal page of the site) rather than a link to your homepage and this is also a way to focus attention to a particular page. Unfortunately, deep links are rarely allowed.

Getting traffic for free is a vast topic and it is not possible to list all the ways to do it. However, if you know the most important ways – i.e. the ways we discussed in this article and you apply them properly, it is guaranteed that you will be able to get lots of traffic for free. 

From: http://www.webconfs.com/seo-articles.php

YouTube Traffic

YouTube is one of the most popular sites and inaddition to all the fun there, YouTube offers many opportunities for promotion and getting traffic to your site. Similarly to Facebook and Twitter, in order to use YouTube successfully for promotion and getting traffic, you need to know the rules for this. Here are some tips how to promote yourself, your site, and your products and how to get free traffic from YouTube: 

1. Post viralvideos

There aremillions of videos on YouTube. If you post a video nobody is interested in, this video will go unnoticed, as millions of other videos. The clue to getting traffic from YouTube is to post useful videos, or even better – viral videos. Viral videos are not only useful videos, but they also tend to appeal to large groups of people. If your video manages to get viral, people will promote it for you and the only thing left for you is to reap the benefits.

2. Create aninteresting profile

Similarly to Facebook, Twitter, or any other social networking site, an interesting profile is a must. If people like your videos, they will check your profile to learn more about you. When they see that your profile is boring, they won't bother more with you. You can make your profile a bit informal but don't make it as if it were the profile of a crazy teenager – you are using YouTube for business, right?

3. Includeyour logo and website in the video

Your logoand your website URL are your major branding weapons. This is why you must include them in the video. You can include them in the beginning of the video or at the end. It is best to have your logo and URL throughout the whole video because this way you will be gaining lots of exposure but if you can't do it (for instance because of artistic considerations), the beginning and the end of the video will suffice. 

4. Postquality videos

As alreadymentioned, there is no shortage of videos on YouTube. Unfortunately, this also means there is no shortage of videos with poor quality. These videos are not favored by viewers, so if you want viewers to watch your videos, make sure that your videos don't have crappy sound and/or blurred pictures. YouTube is not a board for professional videographers, so you can post amateur videos, but make sure their quality is decent. 

5. Promoteyour videos

If your videos get viral, you are lucky but you can't count on this. In order to get YouTube traffic, your videos need viewers. You can't rely solely on the fact that viewers will find your videos – you need to promote them. Even viral videos will benefit from a promotion by you. 

6. Make yourvideos search-friendly

One of the ways viewers find your videos is through search – both locally on YouTube and on search engines. This is why you need to make your videos search-friendly. To do this, include your major keywords in the title and in the descriptions. Also, pay special attention to the tags. List as many keywords as relevant in the tags, but beware that you don't get spammy.

7. Post inseries

Standalonevideos can become a hit but it is best if you create series of videos and post them once a day/week. This way viewers will know that there will be more and they will be coming to check. Even if you don't create series, at least try to post videos regularly – this builds audience loyalty.

8. Post videoresponses

Videoresponses are one of the unique things about YouTube and you should take full advantage of it. Search your niche, choose the most popular videos in your niche and post video responses to them. Just be careful that the response you post is related to the video you are responding to and don't make your video response a blatant self-promotion. 

9. Choose theright time to post your videos

On YouTube, timing is very important because there are peaks in traffic and times when there are not so many viewers. Weekdays (especially Wednesdays and above all - Thursdays) morning or early afternoon US time is the best time to post a general interest video. In order to have your video uploaded in the prime time, you need to plan a bit. Have in mind that for large videos and/or slow Internet connections the upload could take you an hour, so start early.

10. Keep yourvideos short

YouTube doesn't impose limits on the length of videos it publishes but generally long videos are boring. 3 to 5 minutes is the best duration for a video but if required you could go from 1 to 6 minutes. When a video is longer than 6 or 7 minutes, this gets boring and not many people will watch it to the end (where your logo and URL are to be found). 3 to 5 minutes is enough to lay your idea, give some details AND tell viewers to visit your site for more. 

11. Commenton other people's videos and include a link to your site in your comment

In additionto video responses, you can also use plain good comments. Again, search for popular videos in your niche and comment on them. If your comments are liked by viewers, they will check your profile and probably watch your videos.

YouTube is a valuable resource to drive traffic to your site and to promote it. The competition there might be fierce, but there is always room for a couple of good videos. Fill this room before your competitors do! 

from: http://www.webconfs.com/seo-articles.php

SEO Musts for Local Business

The Internet might be global in nature, but if your business is local, it makes no sense to concentrate on global reach, when your customers live in your city, or even in your neighborhood. For local businesses getting a global reach is a waste of resources. Instead, you should concentrate on the local community. You might be asking how you can do it, when the Web is global and Google doesn't classify sites according to their location. Here is how you can go local with SEO:

1 Use your location in yourkeywords.

The first trick is to use your location in your keywords. For example, if you are in London and you sell car insurance, your most important keyphrase should be “car insurance London” because this keyphrase contains your business and your location and will drive people who are looking for car insurance in London in particular. 

2 Use your location in metatags

Metatags matter for search engines and you shouldn't miss to include your location, together with your other keywords in the metatags of the pages of your site. Of course, you must have your location in the keywords you use in the body text because otherwise it is a bit suspicious when your body text doesn't have your location as a keyword but your tags are stuffed with it. 

3 Use your location in your bodytext

Keywords in the body text count a lot and you can't afford to skip them. If your web copy is optimized for “car insurance” only, this won't help you rank well with “car insurance London”, so make sure that your location is part of your keywords. 

4 Take advantage of Google Placesand Yahoo Local

Google Places and Yahoo Local are great places to submit to because they will include you in their listings for a particular location. 

5 Create backlinks with your locationas anchor text

It could be a bit tricky to get organic backlinks with your location as anchor text because some keywords with location don't sound very natural – for instance, “car insurance London” isn't grammatically correct and you will hardly get an organic inline link with it but you can use it in the Name field to comment on blogs. If the blog is dofollow, you will still get a backlink with anchor text that helps for SEO.

6 Get included in local searchengine

Global search engines, such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo can bring you lots of traffic but depending on your location, local search engines might be the real golden mine. A local search engine could mean a search engine for the area (though it is not very likely to have regional search engines) or more likely for your country. For instance, Baidu is a great option, if you are selling on the Chinese market. 

7 Get listed in local directories

In addition to local search engines, you need to try your luck with local directories, too. You might think that nobody reads directory listings but this isn't exactly so. For instance, Yellow Pages are one of the first places where people look when searching for a local vendor for a particular product. 

8 Run locally-targeted ad campaigns

One of the most efficient ways to drive targeted, local traffic to your site is with the help of locally-targeted ad campaigns. PPC ads and classifieds are the two options that work best – at least for most webmasters. 

9 Do occasional checks of yourkeywords

Occasionally checking the current search volume of your keywords is a good idea because shifts in search volumes are quite typical. Needless to say, if people don't search for “car insurance London” anymore because they have started using other search phrases and you continue to optimize for “car insurance London”, this is a waste of time and money. Also, keep an eye on the keywords your competitors use – this will give you clue which keywords work and which don't. 

10 Use social media

Social media can drive more traffic to a site than search engines and for local search this is also true. Facebook, Twitter, and the other social networking sites have a great sales potential because you can promote your business for free and reach exactly the people you need. Local groups on social sites are especially valuable because the participants there are mainly from the region you are interested in.

11 Ask for reviews and testimonials

Client reviews and testimonials are a classical business instrument and these are like letters of recommendation for your business. However, as far as SEO is concerned, they could have another role. There are review sites, where you can publish such reviews and testimonials (or ask your clients to do it) and this will drive business to you. Some of these sites are Yelp and Merchant Circle but it is quite probable that there are regional or national review sites you can also post at. 

12 Create separate pages for yourdifferent locations

When you have business in several locations, this makes the task a bit more difficult because you can't possibly optimize for all of them – you can't have a keyphrase such as “car insurance London, Berlin, Paris, New York”. In this case the solution is to create separate pages for your different locations. If your locations span the globe, you can also create different sites on different, country-specific domains (i.e. uk.co for GB, .de for Germany, etc.) but this is only reasonable to do, if your business is truly multinational. Otherwise, just a separate page for each of your locations will do.

These simple tips how to optimize your site for local searches are a must, if you rely on the local market. Maybe you are already doing some of them and you know what works for you and what doesn't. Anyway, if you haven't tried them all, try them now and see if this will have a positive impact on your rankings (and your business) or not. 

from: http://www.webconfs.com/seo-articles.php