One of the most important factors in getting a good position on search engines

It is doubted by no one that knows anything about search engine optimization, one of the most important factors is the actual number of web sites which have a link to yours. Which of the sites (smilies) on the left do you think has the best ranking on a search engine. Yipe, it is the yellow one because of the number of sites linking directly or indirectly to it. Of course it is not as simple as that. If you have a site on travelling in Thailand and you manage to get a link from a site dealing with drug addiction your link will not count for anything - indeed, it could even count against you. Why? It is not the link alone which is important - the site linking to you must be in the same context i.e. a forum on people thinking of going to visit Thailand. That is why webmasters are very interested in getting good "inbound links" to their sites. Alternatively you can exchange links with other websites on a similar topic. Although such an exchange "reciprocal link" does not count as much as an inbound link, it still does count.

A little bit more on search engine optimization - three very important html tags

Continuing with what I said yesterday, it is important to follow certain recognised rules if you want to be found on search engines like google, yahoo, etc. Never forget that for most users that is their door to your site. How else can they know you exist?

Some basics on getting your site indexed by search engines: Pleas edo nto laugh this is really basic and though who know a bit more about optimization should simply skip this.

In your browser, go to a page on your website and then on the top menu click "View" and in the dropdown menu click "Page code". What you see here is what the serach engine is looking at. Here you will find towards the top of your page three very important tags:

TITLE Social Phobia - Light At The End of The Tunnel TITLE

meta content='Help for sufferers of anxiety attacks, panic attacks and social phobia' name='description'

meta content='panic attacks, anxiety attacks, social phobia,' name='keywords'


Let us take these in turn. Title, dexription and keywords are what the search engines will read when visiting your site. If these are empty the search engine cannot recognise your sit'es content and most probably will nto index your site. So who is going to find you. Lesson No 1 for today. And we will take this optimization process one day at a time.
I am sorry that this is a google image but it has the big piece of the pie among search engines. If you are now saying to yourself, geeh, this is tricky stuff, I will get some one to do it for me, my answer is DON'T. The web is full of quacks saying they will have your website ranked on the first page of google for $49. To be honest I have worked on SEO for quite a number of years and if you were to offer me $49K I could give you no promise that your website would be ranked on the first page of google in six months. SEO you will come to see if you follow this blog is an on going activity which is never complete. There is no such things as perfection in this area.

Now in trying to show you this, this blog detected the html tags and would not let me publish so I will explain in a latter posting what you have to add.

Sorry - some comments I just received

Traffic Exchanges, most ineffective advertising on the internet?

"I have tested/used traffic exchanges for over 4 years and have read suggestions, made researches etc. I have made following serious conclusions.

-WHY INEFFECTIVE?-

*Average Sign up ration: 1500 hits for 1 sign up - think about how much time you need to earn these hits. (Sometimes one user visits your site 20 times a day, exchange like Ts25.com)

*Suggested Splash pages aren't better, this isn't a miracle, like they all say.

*People are surfing several exchanges at the same time(8+). Most of these people aren't looking your site at all.

*Targeting options that they use are worthless.

*No unique real visitors. Someone who is surfing very hard can earn these credits from your site without any problems, they are just fanatic surfers(no customers), think about it.

*Traffic exchanges are too many, most of these people who use them don't see the different between "real effective" advertising and traffic exchange hits.

* Autosurf exchanges(clickevolution etc), are more fun than manual traffic exchanges, because you don't need to click(no time needed) and they bring you more visitors(traffic) and sign ups.

*Too much money schemes surfing an exchange, also too much misleading text, like FREE etc but it isn't. This misleads the traffic exchange audience.

-GIVE IT A TRY?-

*if you make a simple traffic exchange, its a way to promote. Traffic exchanges are only for traffic exchanges.

There may be more...

Thank you, and please feel free post your comments etc."