SEO Partner is all about helping you get top Website ranking any way we can. And we were recently reminded that many SEO enthusiasts are at a day-job all day just wishing they could be doing something for their sites – whether it’s tracking progress or crafting new META tags – anything! But of course, if you work a full-time job while your trying to get your dream online business up and running, it’s hard to do any of that. After all – the network security people tend to notice when your computer is running Web Position or some other SEO software! So, what to do?

Use our new arsenal of SEO tools! That’s right – SEO partner really wants to partner up with you and provide you with cutting edge SEO tools you can use from anywhere! They’ll be up and running over the coming days and weeks. Until then, keep reading the great SEO tips!

Do you have a great search engine optimization (SEO) tip? If so, you could find yourself and your Website featured in the pages of SEO Notebook for the world to see. SEO Notebook, an original SEO book sponsored by www.SEOpartner.com, offers Webmasters a chance to put their Websites in the limelight. A compilation of SEO tips, SEO Notebook will present insights from Webmasters and SEO specialists around the world. Each tip will be immediately followed by detailed source credit including the contributing author’s:

• Name
• Job title
• Web address
• And a 50 word bio

SEOpartner.com will be accepting SEO tips for possible inclusion in SEO Notebook now through November 30, 2005 at www.SEOpartner.com. There are no application fees and no limit to the number of tips that may be submitted.

To submit your tip, please click the “Comments” link below this message and add your tip along with your bio information. Here’s a sample:

Submitted by:

Scott M. Jason
President – SEO Project Management Group
www.SEOPM.com

The SEO Project Management Group is dedicated to providing top project management services exclusively for the search engine optimization industry. All SEOPM.com team-members are former search engine optimization specialists and trained IT project management professionals. We can also help find the right SEO expert for your project, if desired.

If your SEO tip or tips are selected for inclusion in SEO Notebook, your bio will be included directly beneath it for all to see (tips can be of any length). Please be sure to include your bio with each tip that you submit for inclusion. Your bio should be one paragraph with up to 50 words – not including submitter name, title and URL. Here’s an example of an SEO tip with the submitter’s bio:

How Search Engines Work

Search engines are sometimes referred to as robots, spiders or crawlers. This is because they use a software utility that literally crawls through your Website, catalogs the information and indexes the content for later reference. When a visitor performs a search, the search results are based on keyword matching and site content of cataloged pages.

A search engine has its spider or robot crawl through the World Wide Web (www) and travel from Website to Website. In fact, if your page is linked from anybody else’s site, you technically don’t even need to submit your site to a search engine. The theory is that search engines indexing the Web (spidering and cataloging) will eventually find your site on its own by following the links in a page that links to yours.

Although this might be true, you might need to submit your own site to make sure it gets in. Before doing this however, you should check to make sure that your site is not listed and then submit it only if it is not. This is to avoid being accused of over-submitting.

If your site was cataloged before you were ready, you will want to consider resubmitting it – but only if you can do so without violating any submission rules. This is very important!

Submitted by:

Scott M. Jason
President – SEO Project Management Group
www.SEOPM.com

The SEO Project Management Group is dedicated to providing top project management services exclusively for the search engine optimization industry. All SEOPM.com team-members are former search engine optimization specialists and trained IT project management professionals. We can also help find the right SEO expert for your project, if desired.

Calling all SEO Specialists! SEOpartner.com is sponsoring the production of SEO Notebook, a new SEO book that will be made available to Website business owners, Webmasters and SEO Professionals worldwide.

SEOpartner.com will be collecting SEO tips from experts around the world now through November 30, 2005 at www.SEOpartner.com. A select number of these tips will be published on SEOpartner.com and in the SEO Notebook. Readers will then vote for the best tips. All selected contributors will be credited as such in the book and on the site. Each will also receive a frame-worthy certificate for their contribution.

The winners will have their winning tip featured on the main navigation sidebar at SEOpartner.com, along with a company bio and text link to their site for ninety days. There will be three winners. Each tip is judged independently and there is no limit to the number of tips that may be submitted. All submitted tips must be original.

Industry experts state that the average successful Web site gets 36% of its traffic from search engine placement and 32% from word of mouth, much of which originates from search engine visitors the first time around. It all adds up to plus or minus 50% of all new visitors. That’s a lot of traffic for being in the top 30 matches of a search engine.

Consider what being in the top 10 matches can bring. How about the top 5 matches? Does this sound impossible? It’s more attainable than you might think!

Sometimes taking it back to basics is the best way to move forward. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about the purpose of SEO, so let’s set the record straight.

In short, SEO or search engine optimization is the act of taking steps and/or following precise procedures to make a Web page or series of Web pages more attractive to search engines and directories. The overall goal is to have one or more specific search terms rank high in the results returned when a visitor types a search string into the engine in question.

OK, that’s the really boring technical term. Now let’s look at what it’s really about. SEO is about trying to get your site in front of the eyes of your target audience by way of search engines. It’s not about competing with search engines or trying to fool them. It’s not even about competing against other Web sites. It’s about competing with Web pages. It might not sound like much, but understanding that subtle difference is where your search engine success begins.

We recently got an email from a visitor who wants to know “What’s a good all-around SEO book to start with?”

It doesn’t happen often, but we all agreed on one answer. Search Engine Optimization for Dummies is our favorite pick for a good general overview book that takes the reader beyond the introductory steps without getting bogged down in techno-babble.

We also all agreed that supplemental material would be very helpful for anyone who wants to go beyond the basics and hit some of the more advanced and “insider” areas.

Knowing about such things as the rumored “Google Sandbox” in advance has a potentially huge advantage. It’s like knowing what pieces of cheap real estate will become worth a fortune in a matter of months.

As an optimization professional, you can research additional available domain names and make recommendations to your present customers on which to purchase. But try to avoid having them buy too many names if they don’t need them. In the late 1990’s this is one of the things that lead to accusations of “domain squatting” for some companies. And although though the domain’s they purchased were not a competitor’s branded or trademarked names, some of the rumors did public relations damage.

You also might want to consider personally buying some domain names that fall into any specific niche you find yourself working in regularly. Then you can have a number of domains available to clients when they need them.

Better still, if you can build a well-optimized site – that offers genuine value – it might be worth it to have a ready-made starting point that can be revised or for your clients. But be careful. Be sure not to do anything that might appear to be a “bait-and-switch” trick to search engines

Great news! We’ve added seven more excellent resources for you to check out. We now have over 60 helpful Xtras!

Although Google no longer gives the META keywords tag as much importance as it did a few years ago, it’s still important to optimize your pages for Yahoo and MSN, which now share about 50% of the search market.

While you would usually put commas between keywords, it’s sometimes better not to do so. This way you might match a more specific search query. For instance, use "cheap portable laptop computers" instead of "cheap laptops, portable computers." However, be careful to keep this technique balanced since overdoing it may be considered spam.