Article submission has long been touted as a valuable way to gain back links to your website, and back links are the central focus of any search engine optimization program. One of the problems with article submission is that a back link is not generated until someone picks up your article and republishes it – and also maintains the source links.

There is a growing interest within the online community, particularly bloggers, for a newish article directory by the name of Qassia. This directory is a little different. To start with, every article you submit has dofollow links from within the directory itself and there is no limit to how many articles you submit, or which page you want to use as your backlink.

Where Qassia is a little different is in the style of article they recommend – or rather, don’t recommend. They understand the power of SEO so their primary interest is to provide a vehicle for article submission that will provide at least one guaranteed link.

They will rarely reject an article except for certain taboo areas. However, articles that are pure promotional material, whilst not rejected, won’t offer of a lot of long term potential. Helpful articles is the recommendation and the writing style, imagine your telling a friend is the advice.

Qassia is not for everyone. Is does offer some valuable benefits in the way of back links and perhaps a trickle of traffic? Back links are back links and everyone helps in the overall strength

This past weekend saw another update of the toolbar Page Rank by Google and for the first time in a long time, there was hardly a blinking of the eyes from either the SEO industry or the broader web community.

While there has been mention around the forums, the conversation has been fairly light. As with all updates there are winners and losers with the losers generally having the most to say. Not this time. Even the losers are shrugging their shoulders and getting on with life. It may be a sign that many website owners have finally woken up to the fact that Page Rank has little to do with their long term search engine optimization strategy – what counts is where you appear in the search results and how much traffic you receive.

In fact, over the last couple of days there has been more talk focused on Yahoo!’s search results update than on Page Rank. It makes sense since results are the primary focus of any optimization campaign.

Hopefully we are starting to see a maturing of the online world and a realization that stats like Page Rank are no longer relevant. SEO will always produce results that fluctuate as websites compete for narrow search results.

These days we store video files, audio files and PDF files. In the early days we also stored documents created by a word processor or a spreadsheet. Come to think of it, we still do, and these documents can be optimized for the search engines just like a PDF (see our post on SEO for PDF’s), video or audio file.

Microsoft Office makes it quite easy to include SEO related meta information such as title, category, keywords and a description of sorts.

To include the right information, access the Document Properties section. There you will find areas where you can include the documents author; document title; subject; keywords; category; and comments.

When filling in these details, think about putting in relevant information. The document title should be keyword related. Be precise with the keywords and don’t stuff. Match the category to either the keywords or a category from your website. You can treat the comments section in a similar way to the meta description tag, sell the document.

Save the document with an appropriate name, remembering to include keywords where appropriate. If you publish documents to the web on a regular basis then it makes sense to optimize those using good SEO principles. This means your documents will be found and indexed by the search engines.

The majority of business owners who have a website prefer to use a more traditional form of advertising. For those with a local brick and mortar presence, it will be the traditional media such as print or radio. For those with only an online presence, it will be advertising in the form of banners or pay-per-click such as Googe Adwords. However, there are many more businesses that fail to use any form of promotion including basic search engine optimization.

The biggest barrier to employing an SEO expert is not cost. It is distrust. Cost then comes a close second. If you stop and think about it for a moment, how much money would you hand over for what is essentially a marketing campaign if your told the results may take a month or three too appear? It would take some convincing for most people, and it is understandable.

You can start to see results a lot earlier if you do incorporate a pay-per-click campaign, but of course that requires a larger budget to begin with.

What is important is that any search engine optimization campaign begins from very early in the businesses development. The older a business is the harder and more expensive it can cost. However, compare traditional offline marketing against search engine optimization and over time, SEO comes out well in front.

A newspaper or magazine ad can cost up to $2000 for a single day. Settle for a much smaller ad at $300/$400 and multiply by that by say 20 days you run the ad each month. That’s a tidy $6000. Believe me, you can run a good SEO campaign, a business blog and a PPC program for that sum, and probably have some lunch money left over as well.

It is all about simple math – the numbers tell the story. If you are current selling an item worth $100 each day, what would it be worth to sell 10, 20 or 50 or more? If you run on a margin of 20%, which is a small margin, being able to sell 50 per day would generate a profit of $1000 per day. Can you now afford to spend $200 per day to achieve that – you would still be left with $800 per day?

Sometimes, whilst the whole prospect looks daunting, and you may have to pay more than you receive initially, a good optimization campaign with some targeted PPC advertising can over time turn your business into a highly profitable enterprise. Unfortunately, whilst we can deliver the customers, it is your service and the product quality that will ensure your ongoing success.

Can you afford search engine optimization for your business? The question should be – Can you afford not to?

There is an old saying, “the world may think you’re a fool, it’s not until you open your mouth that you prove it”. Sometimes I think reporters should note that before they start espousing SEO concepts. Forbes recently published an article titled How To Build A Killer Small Business Web Site. Some of the concepts were fine; some were so terribly off the mark.

Take the following quote for example:

The key to SEO: selecting 50 to 100 key words most relevant to your products, services and target audience. The more those words appear on your Web pages (within reason), the higher up the stack your site will tend to appear

“The more those words appear on your web pages”. Hmm, by that logic, I should be able to fill my page with keywords and I will rise to the top? Oh, of course, I forgot the ‘within reason’. While the intent is not meant to be harmful, statements like those above can lead the unwary into a lot of trouble. The following quote from the end of the article sounds good too.

Simply ask your site host to attach meta tags–hidden programming code easily read by search engines–that include your top 20 keywords in order of importance to your business. The tags will drive traffic to your site when people search those keywords. Create a greeting that says something like “This site is under construction, but we will be up and running shortly.”

Google will ignore the meta keyword list, this statement doesn’t tell the full story, for example, the description tag.

There is no talk of keywords or any of the other areas of search engine optimization that need addressing. The article itself is not too bad when it comes to general advice for setting up a new web business. It just goes too far in the wrong direction and hardly ever goes in the right direction.

SEO is a complex business so if you’re not in it, it is almost impossible to write about it. I refer to my opening paragraph.

SEO is based on keywords contained within well crafted website content. From that basis stems everything else including content and link anchors. With that in mind, the announcement that Google Labs have just released a new toy which, while limited at present, could be a real bonus in the future.

Called “In Quotes”, it will allow users to pull quotes based on keywords entered. At present, it is limited to politics (what isn’t) but if released to the broader content available it will help content creation a lot easier. Imagine being able to enter a keyword and receive a pile of links to individuals who have used that keyword. You should never be stuck for content ideas anymore – or references to support or argue your case.

Not only will you be able to quote the words of others, the quotes themselves should be keyword rich further reinforcing the search engine optimization elements on your pages.

Like all things Google Lab related, it is in its infancy and there is no guarantee it will ever move beyond the Lab. It is also prone to errors at present as with all new experimental technologies. Give it a try, if you are into politics, and see if you can find some reliable quotes related to your keywords.

If there is one major flaw in Google Maps it is the fact that virtually anyone can claim a business and enter in the details. Once they do, they can put what ever details they wish. There are probably more unscrupulous people on the internet than there is in your local neighborhood and some of these have discovered the concept of hijacking unclaimed businesses in Google Maps.

What these individuals do is change the business information so it promotes their own affiliate sites. Finding unclaimed businesses these days is not terribly hard either. Mike Blumenthal on his blog he reported:

The spammers, using the end user edit tools, would change the phone number to another local number, change the location of the business slightly and then proceed to add a category, the URL and ultimately the name of the business. Apparently the small move in location convinced Google’s system that all subsequent changes were legitimate. The listing would retain the ranking and reviews of the actual business but redirect to a Canadian Florist fulfillment house via the affiliate’s website.

If you have a local business then be sure to claim it. The value in terms of traffic varies, however the harm in terms of reputation could be damaging. Trying to undo a hijacked site is not all that easy either so do yourself a favor and claim it quick – before someone else does.