Spiders, Backlinks and Search Engines. How do You Get a higher Google Ranking.

Goggas
Start with "Money's too tight to Mention. Start an Affiliate Business", then "Starting an Affiliate Business. What do I need?" and then "Keywords, Keyphrases and Pictures. Do Search Engines love Pictures and Logo's?" to get the full picture.
Let’s talk about goggas. Goggas is the Afrikaans word for bugs. In this case it is spiders. What does a spider have to do with a website?
Spiders:
Algorithms crawl the web in search of words and phrases. These algorithms are called spiders. During these searches by algorithms, the first 100k of every website that they visit is stored or indexed. For this reason it is important to know that pictures are ignored by spiders. Although spiders are the eyes and ears of the search engines, they are blind to pictures and buttons.
So, if you want to up your google ranking, ditch the fancy logo’s and images for text links. To a search engine, logos and images are useless and are regarded as clutter. It also slows down your site’s loading time. People, me included, are very impatient when it comes to the loading time of a website.
Let me put it this way. If you don’t want to make money with your site and you don’t want your website to be “seen” by search engines and you don’t want lots of visitors to your site – go on; add your logo and images. Less work for the spiders.
Backlinks:
The inbound links to your site are called backlinks. Links from one page to another from within the same site and links from another site are backlinks. The more backlinks to your site the better, because search engines will give you a better ranking if you have 350 backlinks as to having 50. Have as many links as you can pointing to a specific page on your site.
Page rank:
Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines, use a certain criteria to rank your website on a scale of one to ten.
1. Are your keywords relevant? Keywords should be about your product or the service your want to render. If you want to use your site to market apples, your keywords can’t be about lions. Also remember this, search engines do not care about your writing skills. A writer would try to avoid the use of the same word over and over; yet that is exactly what search engines are looking for. Want to be a good writer but not make much money or do you want to be good web publisher with lots of money. Spiders report the words they find as relevant to your site, and the more they find a specific word or phrase, the more they report that word or phrase as relevant.
2. The second thing is backlinks. I don’t need to say more about that.
3. Traffic. The more visits to your site the better your page ranking. Backlinks and keywords will attract more visits to your site.
4. Fair Play. Now I know I said that the more a specific word appears in your copy the more the spiders like it. That is true, but if you think that you can now go and fill your page with just keywords, you will be penalized for spamming. Duplicating sentences and pages or the use of keywords in a way that they don’t make sense is unethical. If your caught out, your ranking will be lowered. Please don’t take that chance.
What about the competition? With almost every niche you have chosen you will have lots of competition. In this business it is a very good thing because it means that your product is in demand by thousands to millions of people around the world. Remember that a website takes you to countries you will never see and maybe have never heard about.
To check out the competition type your keyword or key phrase into google to see what and who you’re up against. Write down the web address of the top 10. Go to the websites. In your google toolbar you will see a green bar. Hold the mouse over it and the page rank will be revealed. Write it next to the web address.
Click on the info button, then on backwards links. The google search results will tell you exactly how many backlinks the site has. Write it down as well.
Repeat this cycle with all your keywords or phrases. This will give you a clear indication of which of your keywords is the most popular.
Now you can narrow your keywords down by checking out which of your keywords or phrases brings out the most of the major companies. Try to use keywords with not to many major players in the top ten. That way you will better you chances of getting a top ten ranking. If you are not sure, look at the total of backlinks of each company. You might be able to get a sixth or seventh position, even a fourth if you can have more backlinks than most of them.
Back to Wordtracker or Overture (Words). Type in your keyword. That word and others related will come up. Clicking on each of them will show a new column. If you click on each of those relevant words in that column with a search of more than 50, it will be put at the bottom of the screen. Try to use all or most of those words in your copy.
This does not sound like much but all of them will soon add up to thousands. This could be a very tiresome and repetitive task but necessary.
Do you think this is enough for one day? I do. You’ve picked an industry, selected 10 affiliates, short listed your niche, checked out your competition and identified your keywords.
I think that by now you want to built a website. Next time we will start that process.
God bless.
Steven D, South Africa

Keywords, Keyphrases and Pictures. Do Search Engines love Pictures and Logo's.

Please start with: "Money's too tight to Mention. Start an Affiliate Business then Starting an Affiliate Business. What do I need?"
When you talk internet marketing you are talking about words. Go to any search engine and try to put in a picture. You were not very successful, were you?
As I am busy typing this, the song: “Words, don’t come easy to me”, comes to mind. Don’t crucify me if it is not the name of the song and just a line in it. I’m human, we all may mistakes.
Search engines need words to track other websites. We call it keywords. This is one of the reasons why a niche is important. The keywords will all direct you to the specific product. If you type the word fruit in the search engine you will get grapes, peaches, oranges, lemons, watermelons, figs, et cetera. Type in summer fruits and you won’t find oranges in your list. Then type in grapes and you will get the different variants of grapes, not watermelons. Can you see how important words are?
While researching your niche, you will have to type in different words or phrases into your search engines to be able to see if there is a demand for your product, like it is or in some other form. Say people need websites; do they go for websites where they just need to put in the finishing touches or do the most of them want to start from scratch. You will need different words and/or phrases for the one or the other.
Before we go any further I will have to choose your niche now. If you have not, stop. This is very important because you need to try out the process practically; why waste time if you can try it out on your actual niche.
Search engines will give you results but if you want to know how many times people used a specific word or phrase for a month you need some other program that would give you a more accurate picture. Two programs come to mind. These services allow us to enter keywords to see the greater picture. You will know exactly how many times the word or phrase has been used in search engines for a specific month. You will also get related words or phrases and its results.
1. Overture: This service is free. If you don’t have many to spend now, go for it. The problem is, with the searches done by humans, it will also give you searches done by computers and algorithms. It can complicate things a bit, because we are interested in searches done by humans only. For a start it should be okay; but when you’ve made some money, use the other service to refine your keywords.
2. Wordtracker: This is a subscription service. You will only get results of searches done by humans. This is what we’re looking for. The more times the people entered the specific word or phrase in a search, the better for you. After you have signed up and logged in:
a. Click keyword universe
b. Enter your keywords in the text area on your left. Think of your niche. In this case it will be websites or whatever you have chosen.
c. Refine your search. A whole list of words related to websites will appear. What is the actual product that you are marketing? Find it and click on it. Keep on refining until you get to your specific niche with the specific keywords fitting.
d. Although I said it is good if people have entered a specific word or phrase more, this is the time to narrow it down. Would you want to compete in a niche with one million clicks a month or one thousand. With a thousand you’ve got a better change of getting your website ranked higher.
e. Built a list with up to ten keywords.
I’ve got to run. Next time we are going to talk about spiders, links and ranks.
See you and God bless.

Steven D, South Africa
PS. There are also some other places where you can get websites. Click here or here to check them out.

Money’s too tight to Mention. Start an Affiliate Business.

During the eighties (or seventies maybe), there was a song that I loved very much. The name of the song is: “Money’s to tight to mention.” There is also a specific verse in that song: “Don’t talk about money, money. Don’t talk about money, money. Don’t talk about money, money, money, money, money.”
I can’t remember the artist but I used to think that she is probably a millionaire and she doesn’t want to talk about money. If she can’t, who can? I was still very young and thought when an artist say or sing about something that they really experienced it. Now I know that although some did, most of them are just singing to bring in the money.
In the light of today’s economic climate, so many people lose their jobs and are frightened to mention money. The word becomes a swear word if you’re without it. Bills to pay, groceries to buy, school fees, petrol (or gasoline for the Americans- why do you always have to be different), clothing, and ….. and ….. The list came be too long when there is no money.
When you do get some; who do I pay and who will have to wait till next time? What can I buy and what is not a priority? Do we eat out or shall we eat at home? Cinema or Television, what shall we watch?
The best bet would be to start some kind of business that is sustainable and not to expensive to get of the ground. Some online businesses are relatively cheap to set up. Try affiliate programs as a starting point.
What is an affiliate program? A lot of companies make use of affiliate programs to sell their products online. Affiliates are you and me that promote somebody else’s product online and receive commissions of up to 60% from some of the companies.
When you type in the term affiliates, you will be bombarded with literally thousands of affiliate programs. Do you think that it is stupid to ask somebody else to promote your product and give him or her such a big cut of the money? No, not at all. By having hundred more sites to promote their product plus there own site, they start to make serious money. They can surely start to talk about money.
Think about it, you decide what you want to promote, don’t have to buy it but can make some good money promoting it. Remember, I said good money, not millions.
What do you want to promote? It is entirely up to you. Start with something that you are familiar about or something you like and can talk about. To stick to a certain product is called a niche. You will see the term niche marketing a lot.
To try and jump into a wider market right away would be foolish. You can always diversify later, when you’ve got the knowledge and you have to spend less time on your first niche. Then you can start another niche.
A very good niche to start with would be websites built by professionals. The websites of this specific company are really the best of the best. Any one that is starting a business and does not have a website should try them. Do you need a site? This company will give you one of the best affiliate programs with life long commissions and ongoing training.
You say that you don’t know much about websites? They will train you and take you step by step with your affiliate program.
Well you can still opt for another product if you don’t want to do websites. As I said, there are thousands out there. If you do choose another product, please check out the following:
a. Can the merchant capable of converting your leads into sales? Look at the site. Is it easy to use? Do they persuade you to buy? The ordering process must be relatively easy.
b. Look at their commission structure and compare it to other companies into the same niche.
c. Are they well known?
d. The affiliate sign up page must easy and without legal terms you don’t understand.
This is just to make you think. Start by getting your website ready
Before your business can get of the ground there are certain prerequisites. What are the things you would need to start your own business?
I will go into it with my next article. Sign up to my RSS feed and you will be notified as soon as it is available. Please leave your comments.
God bless you and your business. Till next time.

Steven D, South Africa