Creative Commons Search by Yahoo: An Amazing form of Online Marketing

If you are into online marketing, and better still, if you are into online articles, you cannot afford to miss Yahoo's Creative Commons Search. Creative Commons Search is a search service that finds content across the web having a Creative Commons Search license. In other words, with this search service, you can find content published by other authors who want you to share or reuse it under certain circumstances. This is definitely good news for those people who are not writers and need content on their sites. They can find content through Creative Commons Search and use it for commercial purposes.

If you ponder over this carefully, you will realize that the links pointing back to your website from your article along with the relevant link text in your bio will play an extremely important role in your life as an article writer. When you permit other websites, e-zines, online publishers,to publish your article, you actually widen the scope of your reach, visibility, and popularity online.

If you are into article writing and want to take advantage of Yahoo's Creative Commons Search, all you have to do is to go to Creative Commons and click on the 'Publish Graphic' at the top of the page on the right. Then you have to answer the questions that pop up after clicking on publish graphic button. Finally you have click on 'Select a Licence' button. Doing this will lead you to a preview of the licence on your page. You can copy and paste the text to your web site. Not only this, the Creative Commons Licence can even be added to your blog.

It should not take more than two weeks for your pages to be found in Yahoo! Creative Commons Search after you put the licence on your web pages. Basically it is a great tool for not only those article writers who do not mind others using their content but also for those webmasters who are looking for content for their websites but cannot write on their own. In both cases, the beneficiary is the writer and the webmaster only.In case of the writers, they get to improve and widen their reach on net and in case of webmasters they get good, relevant content to be used on their sites.

http://www.segnant.com/

The Mechanics Behind Filtering

To understand the concept of filtering, one has to understand the meaning of word "appropriate" because filtering is actually the process of selecting and displaying the webpages that are appropriate to the search criteria of the search engines. Basically search engines are always on the look out for relevant and appropriate content in a website, and in order to get that content, the search engines indulge in filtering while indexing the websites. Just like some movies are banned from viewership due to inappropriate content and images, similarly the search engines too ban and restrict certain sites on the basis of irrelevant and inappropriate content. They reach the decision regarding a site being inappropriate when they filter the site.

Different Ways of Filtering:

1. One possible way of filtering is by an ISP where the users get a message that the site is banned, or network problem, or connection timeout.And in case the search string itself contains forbidden words, the search will not be performed and the reason will be shown to the user.
2.Filtering by using whitelists and blacklists when it is the simple keywords that need to be filtered. Whitelists are those sites matching the particular keywords that users are explicitly permitted to visit and all other traffic is blocked. Blacklists, on the other hand, are those sites that match the criteria for forbidden keywords, and users are not allowed to visit.
3. Another way of filtering is using the meta tags. Meta tags are used by many other search engines, but not by Google. Thus if a forbidden keyword is contained in the meta tag, the page will not be displayed in the search results, or will be shown very much behind in the SERPs(search engine result page).
4. Filtering of forbidden keywords by content analysis is one of the most effective, and powerful way. This filtering is done on the basis of profile describing what content can be included and what content can be skipped in search results. The profile is considered a query and the results that match this query are retrieved from the search engines. In other words, it is dynamic content filtering on the basis of the search query of the users. When search results are retrieved from the search engines and matched against the profile, anything and everything that does not match the profile is deleted from the search results.

http://www.segnant.com/

Creating a Profit Generating Local Website

Even if you have a business that doesn't have a reach beyond the local market, it is no reason for not having a website. Infact,it is all the more reason to have a nice local website that caters to the needs and demands of your local target group and increasing your local clientele. As the incidence of net users has increased manifold, even for local requirements, queries and information; it becomes mandatory to have online presence even for the local market. Just imagine if people around town can find about you, your services and products with the click of a button, how much time, effort and resources it would save you and your customer. The need of the hour is relevant, complete and clear information. If you succeed in providing this to the visitors, you have won their confidence. This will translate into better business prospects in the longer run. So all you local business people out there, polish up your sites (if you already have one) for the local market. And those of you who have not considered having a site till now, gear up to create one. Because a good local web site means good business for you. target the local market for generating revenue.

Important factors to consider: Information and Location

Provide the clients as much relevant and professional information as possible about your company, services, products or any other special features you offer. If the information provided is clear, correct, to the point, and succinct, there is no stopping the clients to come to you or ask for your services and products. Since you are catering to the local community, do not forget to provide easy to trace and clear contact information to them so that they find it comfortable to reach you.

Think of a shop that has amazing things to offer, but it is located in a very far off, cut off area from the main city. Do you think many people would visit such a place? Same is the case of online location and presence. You may be having one of the best sites, but if the visitors cannot locate it, it would serve no purpose for you. Optimize the pages of your site using locality rich keywords throughout your site. Use all online marketing techniques that can enhance your local online visibility to the local visitors and see the local visitors thronging your site and office for more information.

http://www.segnant.com/

Local Online Search Overtaking Telephonic Search Now

Don't Neglect the Local Online Market

All those businesses which think that advertising locally is not such a great shake, need to change their views regarding local searches as the trend to perform a local search for a product or service is on the rise. Yes, it is true. Online local search is outpowering telephonic search for local information. This comes as really good news for those local businesses that invest a lot on their online presence. So, the importance of optimizing your pages for local search becomes paramount here. Whatever be the reason for this increased popularity of online local search-increased internet user population, or high speed of net, or increased time spent by people on net-it definitely means better business prospects for the business community. But the local businesses don't seem to be tapping the potential of this segment of population that is increasing every day. If the local businesses pay a little extra attention on optimizing their web pages and web presence for the local market also and local online population, they can outdo their competitors in lesser time. There are a number of activities and purposes for which the local people use the net, like:

Finding addresses
Getting directions from maps
Fixing appointments
Checking availability of products/services
Getting detailed information about companies, products, and services

All these functions were earlier performed by the telephone. The sad part is that the users either cannot find sites that they are looking for or the sites are designed poorly without concentrating on the needs of the local users. If the businesses learn to take advantage of the needs and growing popularity of local searches,they can earn huge profits from their business by providing relevant information and selling to their local target audiences. Catering to the needs and demands of your local clients is just as important as looking for clients outside nationally or internationally.

http://www.segnant.com/

Places Where You Can Submit Your Articles

Writing articles and then publishing them in different places can really help you increase your website traffic and get more clicks than otherwise.Where as most of you write articles, many of you do not know all the places where you can publish or post your articles. The purpose of this blog is to make you aware of all those places where your articles can be published. Look at the places below and submitting your articles on these places can bring you maximum exposure:

Article Banks
Article Directories
Search Engines
Forums
Bloggers
Announcement lists
Newsletters
Webmasters
AdlandPro
Google Groups
Yahoo Groups
MSN Groups
Your BlogEbay About Me Page

Not only this, you all also have some professional services to choose from for submitting your articles like:

1) http://WWW.Isnare.com
2) http://WWW.Thephantomwriters.com
3) http://WWW.Reprintarticles.com
4) http://WWW.Opportunityupdate.com
5) http://WWW.Submityourarticle.com
6) http://WWW.Ezinetrendz.com

So what are you waiting for now? Go ahead, start punching those keys on the keyboard, write your article and publish it to any or all of the places mentioned above.

http://www.segnant.com/

Google's Florida Update: Applying Ontology to its search algorithms

Google in its pursuit of providing quality and relevant content to its loyal visitors keeps updating its algorithms time and again.The idea behind such changes in the algorithms is to dissuade and discourage manipulative companies that try to use dirty tricks and ways to rank top in the search engines. One such massive change is Google's Florida Update that aims to make the search and indexing process more intelligent and improve efficiency of searches. In other words, quality should reign over quantity.

One change introduced by the Florida Update is the application of applied semantics in the form of 'Ontology' to its search algorithms. Ontology is a term borrowed from philosophy meaning a systematic account of exitence or artificial intelligence, a kind of specification for representing objects, concepts existing in an area of interest. In other words, it means contextual meaning rather than literal translation or mere word combinations as keywords. With ontology, the googlebot will be looking for real context of the page, and not just the word combinations. Ontology works on the premise that meaning of the page is more important than simple combination of words. So, now the target while searching would be, related and within context content, rather than concentrating on density of one keyword phrase. Unrelated links will no longer be considered very important now.

There is more to the Florida update than just Ontology that would need more such articles for discussion. The Florida Udate has many more features besides Ontology like keyword differentiation, stemming, over-optimization, affiliate discouragement, specific search words list, page rank algorithm, etc. But the main reason behind this update is to provide the users with the most relevant and quality results. There is no reason for the honest and true to their word companies to be scared of the Google Update because it is not meant for them but those erring website owners or online business promoters that indulge in all sorts of wrong practices to get higher rankings. Google is making it more and more challenging for the online companies to find easy preys in the form of innocent visitors by tricking them into their sites. So, the update is sending a message to all the web site owners out there to stick to the old, tested and honest ways of SEO rather than dupe people with false and unrelated information.

http://www.segnant.com/

Do You Know These SEO Words?

Like every field, area and sphere of work has its own vocabulary and words that make it stand apart and exclusive from the others, SEO also has a vocabulary of its own that every person interested in SEO should be aware of. This is because Google uses these words in the background.

Thin affiliates and added value affiliates

Thin affiliates basically refers to those sites that act as doorways sending visitors to affiliate programs, earning a commission for doing so. They don’t provide any value-added content or service to the user.

Added Value Affiliates, on the other hand, present a value-added service to visitors along with affiliate links and affiliate content. For examples comparison shopping tools, original informational content, and exclusive downloads, etc. If you have an affiliate site, it is advisable to have Added Value Affiliate one in order to impress Google.

Queries

Navigational Query generally has only one acceptable and suitable result. For example, the user types in the name of a company, such as Segnant and is taken to the homepage of that company.

Informational Query is about a topic where the user is provided with information on the topic, such as "web designing” “e-commerce” , etc.

Transactional query helps the user to conduct a transaction, such as download a free product or purchase a product.

Rating Search Results vocabulary

These categories of ratings evaluate search results, and each result is considered from best match to worst match:

Vital means that the result page or web page uniquely matches the query. Like, for the query " Segnant", a vital result that should show up at the top of the SERPs would be www.segnant.com

Useful means that the result is very good and deserves a high position. Useful results satisfy the user providing all sorts of information depending upon the type of the query made by the user.

Relevant means when the result is related and applicable to the query, but may only cover one important aspect of the query, whereas a Useful result would cover the query more broadly and more thoroughly.

Not Relevant means generally not helpful to the user, but still connected in some way, however remotely, with the query.

Off Topic means completely unrelated, distinct, and isolated from the query

Offensive generally refers to a spam page, and would either have no merits for ANY query, or may have merits for one query, but definitely NOT for this query.

http://www.segnant.com/

The Power of the written word in SEO

As the saying goes, "The pen is mightier than the sword", similarly in SEO, " The text is mightier than anything else". Understand the power of relevant and updated content in SEO. The search engines are always on the look out for fresh and relevant content, just like a producer or director of a movie is looking for a fresh and new face for his/her next movie project everytime. You may be wondering why this need for more and more updated, relevant content when the website is complete and has good content.The reason, dear readers, lies in another question that I ask you. Would you like to see the same, outdated, stale information on the net? I'm sure nobody would like to remain out of touch with the latest that is happening in every sphere of life, at a breakneck speed. So why not in web sites too? Even the search engines have a lot to gain from the new, relevant and updated content as more the users come to them for any information, more popular, and trustworthy name they earn in the market. In order to join the bandwagon of high ranking web sites and more business prospects, you need to keep incorporating relevant, updated and new content in your site time and time again.
Now the question arises how to do that? Not very difficult if you follow the following steps regularly:

1 Keep updating the readers, customers, clients, or visitors regularly about what new is happening in your online business. Anything new or interesting concerning your work added to the site can really help increase traffice to your site.
2 Whatever you are already offering or providing surely keeps changing with changing times. So, update your visitors about all such changes.
3 Post the most relevant and updated information on a bulletin board and try to garner lively discussions through it. The moment you make your bulletin board buzz with activity, more visitors and users will come and participate in it.
4 posting good and relevant articles on your website is not only an important information providing exercise, but also a beneficial one as the more the articles are related to your products and services, better are the chances of your relevant keywords appearing in them.
5 Keep a library of your articles or newsletters (if you publish them) in the archive section of your site.
6 Blogging is the latest and hottest rage in SEO related activities. Blogs act as a source of updating your site and bringing in more targeted traffic to your site.

Anything new allures and attracts. Apply this times tried and tested formula to your online business too and see how it transforms your business prospects and profits.

http://www.segnant.com/

Saving Your Website From Google's Wrath

As being one of the most popular search engines, Google has a reputation to live up to. It also has many other competitors who are trying their best to outrank its popularity. Thus it becomes quite evident that Google has to keep up the faith of the searchers in their pursuit for most relevant, updated, and fresh information. In order to make people continue to consider it to be the king of search engines, Google carries out its cleansing operation every now and then to wipe out any discrepancies, or wrong SEO practices being used by some webmasters. And mind you, Google's wrath and punishment can be very severe and completely finish off your website's life and credibility in minutes, if your site is caught indulging in black hat seo.

One such example of Google's taking a round of the websites is the recent Florida update that shook up and unpleasantly shocked many webmasters for not finding their highly ranked website anywhere in the search results. This update introduced new algorithms to put a full stop some of the search engine optimization techniques that have been overused.

As a result of this update, all those web pages having imbalanced number of in-bound links to them from other web pages also having exactly the same search term in the anchor text that the page was optimized for, were taken out of the listings. Why, you ask? Simply because Google considers the disproportionate use of same anchor text with the same text as being done purely and completely for higher rankings. So, if you too are doing or have done this, the remedy is to modify your anchor text by mixing different texts so that your pages remain in the search results. It is not sure that by doing this your pages will appear back in the results after some time,but at least they will not be pulled out.

As smart webmasters, you should start thinking like Google while employing seo techniques to rank high in the search engines.Basically, Google hates sites that indulge in aggressive link exchange just to get better rankings and not to increase the users' experience value. To combat the popularity increasing techniques employed by webmasters, Google might in the future be:

1. Targeting poor quality directory sites that have extracts from search engines and directories and are created by robots.
2. Targeting the building of link directories attached to websites that are built with link partner extracting software and services.This helps you upload directory structures into your site, thus making it easier for you to build up a great number of link partners.

These are some possibilities of what Google might do next. So instead of wracking your brain thinking of all sorts of black hat seo techniques, it is better that you build websites that give value to the visitors. Give them content rich, relevant, fresh, and updated information on your web pages so that others automatically feel like linking to you.

www.segnant.com