"Search engine optimization" refers to the act of altering your site so that it may rank well for particular terms; especially with crawler-based search engines (what these are will be explained later in this guide).

Returning to the lottery model, let's assume there was a way to increase the odds of winning by picking your lottery numbers carefully. Search engine optimization is akin to this. It's making sure that the numbers you select are more likely to win than purchasing a set of numbers at random.

Terms such as "search engine placement," "search engine positioning" and "search engine ranking" refer to a site actually doing well for particular terms or for a range of terms at search engines. This is the ultimate goal for many people -- to get that "top ten" ranking for a particular keyword or search terms.

One of the main rules in a ranking algorithm involves the location and frequency of keywords on a web page. Call it the location/frequency method, for short.

Remember the librarian mentioned above? They need to find books to match your request of "travel," so it makes sense that they first look at books with travel in the title. Search engines operate the same way. Pages with the search terms appearing in the HTML title tag are often assumed to be more relevant than others to the topic.

Search engines will also check to see if the search keywords appear near the top of a web page, such as in the headline or in the first few paragraphs of text. They assume that any page relevant to the topic will mention those words right from the beginning.

Frequency is the other major factor in how search engines determine relevancy. A search engine will analyze how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. Those with a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant than other web pages.

Now it's time to qualify the location/frequency method described above. All the major search engines follow it to some degree, in the same way cooks may follow a standard chilli recipe. But cooks like to add their own secret ingredients. In the same way, search engines add spice to the location/frequency method. Nobody does it exactly the same, which is one reason why the same search on different search engines produces different results.

To begin with, some search engines index more web pages than others. Some search engines also index web pages more often than others. The result is that no search engine has the exact same collection of web pages to search through. That naturally produces differences, when comparing their results.

Search engines may also penalize pages or exclude them from the index, if they detect search engine "spamming." An example is when a word is repeated hundreds of times on a page, to increase the frequency and propel the page higher in the listings. Search engines watch for common spamming methods in a variety of ways, including following up on complaints from their users.

Crawler-based search engines have plenty of experience now with webmasters who constantly rewrite their web pages in an attempt to gain better rankings. Some sophisticated webmasters may even go to great lengths to "reverse engineer" the location/frequency systems used by a particular search engine. Because of this, all major search engines now also make use of "off the page" ranking criteria.

Off the page factors are those that a webmasters cannot easily influence. Chief among these is link analysis. By analyzing how pages link to each other, a search engine can both determine what a page is about and whether that page is deemed to be "important" and thus deserving of a ranking boost. In addition, sophisticated techniques are used to screen out attempts by webmasters to build "artificial" links designed to boost their rankings.

Another off the page factor is click through measurement. In short, this means that a search engine may watch what results someone selects for a particular search, and then eventually drop high-ranking pages that aren't attracting clicks, while promoting lower-ranking pages that do pull in visitors. As with link analysis, systems are used to compensate for artificial links generated by eager webmasters.

Webmasters are sometimes told to submit "bridge" pages or "doorway" pages to search engines to improve their traffic. Doorway pages are created to do well for particular phrases. They are also known as portal pages, jump pages, gateway pages, entry pages and by other names.

Doorway pages are easy to identify in that they have been designed primarily for search engines, not for human beings. This page explains how these pages are delivered technically, and some of the problems they pose.

There is various ways to deliver doorway pages. The low-tech way is to create and submit a page that is targeted toward a particular phrase. Some people take this a step further and create a page for each phrase and for each search engine.

One problem with this is that these pages tend to be very generic. It's easy for people to copy them, make minor changes, and submit the revised page from their own site in hopes of mimicking any success. Also, the pages may be so similar to each other that they are considered duplicates and automatically excluded by the search engine from its listings.

Another problem is that users don't arrive at the goal page. Say they did a search for "golf clubs," and the doorway page appears. They click through, but that page probably lacks detail about the clubs you sell. To get them to that content, webmasters usually propel visitors forward with a prominent "Click Here" link or with a fast Meta refresh command.

By the way, this gap between the entry and the goal page is where the names "bridge pages" and "jump pages" come from. These pages either "bridge" or "jump" visitors across the gap.

Some search engines no longer accept pages using fast Meta refresh, to curb abuses of doorway pages. To get around that, some webmasters submit a page, and then swap it on the server with the "real" page once a position has been achieved.

This is "code-swapping," which is also sometimes done to keep others from learning exactly how the page ranked well. It's also called "bait-and-switch." The downside is that a search engine may revisit at any time, and if it indexes the "real" page, the position may drop.

Another note here: simply taking Meta tags from a page ("meta jacking," as Infoseek calls it), does not guarantee a page will do well. In fact, sometimes resubmitting the exact page from another location does not gain the same position as the original page.

There are various reasons why this occurs which go beyond this tutorial, but the key thing to understand is that you aren't necessarily finding any "secrets" by viewing source code, nor are you necessarily giving any away.

The next step up is to deliver a doorway page that only the search engine sees. Each search engine reports an "agent" name, just as each browser reports a name.

The advantage to agent name delivery is that you can send the search engine to a tailored page yet direct users to the actual content you want them to see. This eliminates the entire "bridge" problem altogether. It also has the added benefit of "cloaking" your code from prying eyes.

Well, not quite. Someone can telnet to your web server and report their agent name as being from a particular search engine. Then they see exactly what you are delivering. Additionally, some search engines may not always report the exact same agent name, specifically to help keep people honest.

Time for one more step up. Instead of delivering by agent name, you can also deliver pages to the search engines by IP address, assuming you've compiled a list of them and maintain it.

Everyone and everything that accesses a site reports an IP address, which is often resolved into a host name. For example, I might come into a site while connected to AOL, which in turn reports an IP of 199.204.222.123 (FYI, that's not real, just an example). The web server may resolve the IP address into an address: ww-tb03.proxy.aol.com, for example.

Your webpage title (that appears in the browser window) is the most important aspect of your page. Search Engines give words in your title the highest relevancy to any search. Choosing a good title is critical to your search engine rankings.

You will want to work as many keywords as possible into your title. However your title is what is displayed in search results, so it is also important that people are willing to click on it. If you have a string of unrelated keywords and your page comes up first, most people will pass it by in favor of a more descriptive link. Being first on the page isn't going to help, if people won’t click on the link.

After a search engine robot or crawler retrieves your page and passes it to an indexing program, it will start with the words in the title and begin looking for those words in the text on the page. Most search engines will flag any page where words are in the title, but not in the page. This is why front door pages often fail miserably on search engines. If you have a site "Bob TV sales and Service" and your doorway page does not mention Bob, TV's, sales or service, the page is going to be way down in the rankings for TVs.

The length of your title, should not go over 50 characters. Most search engines will ignore anything over 50 characters in the title (except AltaVista and Infoseek). If you are creating custom pages for each search engine, you can use up to 80 chars for Alta and Infoseek.

It used to be that search engines worked solely on keyword density (count of keywords in the document) - this is still true to a degree, but not nearly as much. Formerly, you could have a page with "Bobs Television" and a search on "bobs television" would put you first in the rankings for a perfect match. Now days, document length is starting to get higher relevancy. The search engines have caught onto all of the short doorway pages and have begun giving higher credence to longer documents.

Reverse Searching is one of the old tricks to increase your sites rankings. Reverse searching is searching on your target Meta keywords and checking the sites are returned in the results. By visiting those sites and checking their Meta keywords you can get a general ball park idea of what big Meta keywords are pulling in site traffic.

This used to work fairly well, but as search engine algorithms become better and better at detecting spam, this option holds less and less value. Search engines now check to see if a Meta keyword is present in a Meta tag, and if it *is* also present on the web page. If the Meta keyword is not present on the page, the Meta keyword receives less value or relevancy.

Additionally, many search engines are so slow at actually including pages in their index, the chances that you are looking at the actually source code that generated the high placement, is very slim. However, if you keep those two things in mind, you can sure make some educated guesses about which words are being used in the Meta tags. If you are into it, check the date of the listing on the search engine (many show the date that the page was spidered in the results). That can kind of give you a clue as to how old the page is in the search engine database, and how hold it is on the web.

Here is where I get into specifics for each search engine. While reverse searching can work well to build keywords for one search engine, it will fail miserably on others. While one search engine will give high relevancy to keyword occurrence in one position, another will discount it entirely. It pays to reverse search on as many search engines as possible and compare the same sites generated page.

Additionally, some people are now running stealth keywords and you won’t be able to detect if you are viewing true keywords or bogus keywords. You may also stumble upon a page that was designed for another search engine from the one where you found it listed. You can get around this somewhat if you are using a browser that allows you to set both the USER_AGENT and referring URL. By setting the USER_AGENT to one of the major search spiders, and the referring URL to null, you can sometimes trick web pages into thinking you are from one of the major search engines and see up the real set of keywords. (I'm amazed at how often this works).

You can use reverse searching to see what sites are linked to your top competition. Infoseek and AltaVista, allow you to enter "link:site url" to see what sites are linked to a particular page or even domain. By searching for the links to your competition, you can get a rough estimate of how many sites are linked to them. If you find that one of your competitors has five hundred links to it, while another has just fifty, you can assume who is the most successful.

Visit that top linked site and see just what it is they are doing to get those links. Are they promoting their site by running a newsletter, a mailing list, or other promotional scheme? Try and obtain a link to your website from the resources that you have found linking to your competitors. If you receive a link back to your website you will improve your position within the search engine results.

Reciprocal linkage can be a powerful tool to increase your web sites rankings. Some search engines (Hotbot, Lycos) do include linkage (also called citations) as a criteria - the more links to your site, the better. When you get an off site link, you are accomplishing two things: One you *get* the link and any potential referrals that it may send your way, and two, you increase your search engine rankings.

Here are some tips on increasing the number of reciprocal links to your site.

Surf around and find pages like yours and "give to get" a referring link. The best way I've found to do this, is to put their link up and then inform them that you have linked to their site. As part of the email, just put in a friendly request for them to link to you. Here is an example personal touch email that will work about 80% of the time:

Dear Website Owner;

Thank you for an enjoyable web site, I found some of the content refreshing and unique. As a site owner myself, I can really appreciate the thoughtfulness, ideas, and work you have put into your home page. If you don't mind, I would like to add a link to your site on my home page set of bookmarks?

Thank you again...sincerely...yada yada yada...

Now kick back and watch them reply as fast as they can! When they do reply that it would be fine to link to their site, they will without fail offer to do the same. Simply send a thank you done deal reply and you’re on your way. As part of your email, you should point out something specific about their site you found appealing. Everyone likes a compliment and it never hurts to prime the pump.

By getting a referring link you are also helping your search engine rankings. Take the time to make sure that anyone linking to you, gets entered into a few of the search engines (now you can see why the other page on using a keyword in your url becomes important because the links on the referring sites pages will get indexed and results returned by the search engines too!) - It becomes a win-win situation.

(tip: if you can't get your site listed on Yahoo [which is very common], go to Yahoo and search on the keywords you wish to target – go to those sites and do whatever it takes to get a reciprocal link from the top five sites.)

You can also go to some of the search engines (Alta Vista, Hotbot, Infoseek) and do a search for "links to this site" - by searching for links to your competition, you can determine who has the largest set of referrals (which determines the quality of reciprocal link).

Of course, you will need to be conscious of the fact, that it may be your competition you are going to ask for a referral - be tactful and put on your best charming face. There are now more web pages on the net than humans on the planet and over 100million daily users of the Internet - there is plenty to go around.

If you see a guest book on a like minded site, sign it and leave your URL as a short signature at the bottom. Take note if the guest book page is an HTML file - if it is, submit the page to a search engine for indexing! Also, be crafty and come up with a respectable sentence or two that includes a couple of your keywords in it when you sign the guest book. The whole goal here with this tip and the previous one, is to get your URL and keywords around too as many sites as possible increasing your site profile. You never know who is going to click on that URL. If Joe or Sally User see your site listed on 10 other sites they frequent - they *will* check you out - name and site recognition is 25% of the referral game.

Off Site Links Some folks get upset with the idea of listing a link to an offsite location because it gives the user an easy way to click away from your site. This line of thinking is *not* without merit. Building a links page is a good way to box in all your offsite links. If a user goes clicking to a clearly marked links page, they are already looking for a way out from your site. I feel a good collection of links itself can bring people back to a site. How many times have you found something interesting and thought "I wish I had some other links to reference this information or to see someone else’s work on this topic". I have, and I'm sure you too have bookmarked a good site because it had a nice set of links to investigate.

Working with outbound links is a tricky proposition. You should either go all out, or not at all. If you sprinkle a link here or there, you risk a user clicking away, but if you put together a strategic page of outbound links that are full related to your content, users may book mark your site and come back time and time again just for the quality of the links.

A bookmark page is one page where you can move the URL around and not cause too much trouble. Take your bookmark page of outbound links and rename it every-so-often and put some other content where the URL used to be located. You'll expose repeat link surfers to new content in the process. No one gets to upset if a book mark page is moved.

By getting a bookmark or links page indexed, you are putting out more flypaper. If you do make links pages, make sure they get indexed on search engines and that the pages all have a prominent link back to one of your main web site. If you run a site for any length of time, sooner-or-later you are going to do a search for your URL. When your bookmarks page comes up when other people do the same, your sites gets at least one hit out of it and probably more than that. This can offset any exit clicks away that occur on your site.

This is a very cheap but effective trick. Using a keyword in your URL will help boost your relevancy on most search engines.

URL's Such as a URL of http://www.myhome.com/listings.htm doesn't say too much, but a URL of http://www.bill.com/toasters.htm includes the keyword "toaster" in any searches. (Cool eh? now that is quality web ranking design advice) (It’s also a tricky way of working in ranking, design, and advice to reinforce my keywords).

To get ahead of the race you need to supercharge your Web site. In this section I reveal the ten most effective ways to reach number one on the Google listings. This is so important for a website as Google accounts for more searches on it’s website than every other Meta search engine put together. Therefore achieving a good ranking on Google is the most important action you can ever take.

Many companies spend millions creating a business Web site but don’t understand that if you don’t make it accessible then you might as well not open for business.

One way to drive traffic is to use Search Engine Optimisation, which is a bit like ensuring your shop is in a prime position on the high street. Recent research from Forrester says that 90 per cent of people use one of the top ten search engines. However, this is where the optimisation of search engines becomes important because when a search is conducted many people often don’t go past the first page of results – if your business appears in the top ten you’ll get 85 per cent more traffic that if it appears between results 11 to 30 in the listings.

Currently there are over 300 search engines on the Internet so how do you know which ones to choose? When conducting new customer surveys the first question you should always ask ‘how did you find out about our service?’ A common response for many sites is that they initially searched on Google and they came up at the top of the list. Proving that being on the top of a search engine’s list is a great way of creating traffic. But how do you get the most out of search engines? I have created the following ten tips on how to get to the top of the Google list, moving you from that cul de sac to Oxford Street...

I started my investigation of Google, by reading one of their up front articles on "High-Relevancy Web Searching". From the outset I had a good feeling about Google. A search engine that removed some of the mysteries behind the search engine methodology was a pleasant and welcome surprise.

Google employs a concept of Page Rank derived from academic citation literature. Page Rank equates roughly to a page's importance on the Web: the more inbound links a page has, and the higher the importance of the pages linking to it, the higher its Page Rank.

I commend Google for looking for a solution to the current problem of results relevancy. So much of the time on a search engine is spent wading through the results to find the ones your really want, that the search task-at-hand seems to fade into the background while you are carried off to the ends of the web on dead ends. I think most users agree that indeed there is plenty of room for new systems and logic needed to improve results relevancy.

However, giving too much weight to Page Rank (sometimes referred to as linkage weighting or linkage relevancy) tilts the scale too far in the other direction. It also encourages a whole new type of spam some have called "Linkage Spam". Ranking a page based on how many times they have been able to spam their page around the net is no measure of relevancy in a search result. In fact, a pure Page Ranking system would often return some of the most wildly inappropriate responses available. For example, in a Page Rank search on Nike shoes, sites would show up that have high linkage and content related to Nikes. This often would have nothing to do with what you are searching for, only an example of how well the top listed sites are at getting their link tossed around the net.

Secondly; a Page Rank system favors the bigger websites that have promo cash to burn, and can afford to put their links all over the web. How can the little web site with rich content, get anything but table scraps from the search engines based on Page Rank? Adding in the paid results effects from some search engines, and suddenly the web is no longer level playing field - it is simply for sale to the highest bidder regardless of site content!

Page Rank also can be "tweaked" to give higher relevancy to pages that are linked from a more important site. A link from CNN might get a higher rank than a link from Joe Six Pack's Five and Dime News Outlet. However, this again gives the initial rank a great deal of "fudge factor". Who is to decide what an important site is? Is a link from Yahoo more important than a link from Sally's Free for all Links? I don't think so - often those kinds of decisions will again be based on faulty logic that bigger is better - some ones arbitrary notion of importance will rule the roost. If this is the case, we are no better off than we are now.

How to build good Meta Tags

The format for Meta tags is quite simple. Meta Tags go in the <HEAD> section of the html document.

<HEAD>

<META NAME="description" Content="Your Page description goes here">

<META NAME="keywords" Content="comma delimited string of keywords here">

<title>Document title Here</title>

</HEAD>

Your description should be less than 1000 characters, however Infoseek only goes up to 744 chars of relevance and AltaVista less than 500. Keywords that appear further down the list count less. You can include one two or three word phrases in your Meta keywords. When someone searches and they match your keywords, the nearest exact match will be listed first in the results.

If someone searches on "TV Repair" and your Meta tags include "TV Repair", it will receive a higher ranking than someone else that has "TV,Repair".

Some search engines are case sensitive; however it is a nightmare to sort it all out. First, you have to be careful not to spam the indexer with keywords. Search engines discount your rankings if you repeat a keyword more than 3 times in your Meta tag. So if you are concerned about case of characters, you can easily go over that limit by using variations of case. Be careful.

Meta Tag Generation Programs: They are for the most part, total junk. A fine waste of money. I can't find a single valid reason why anyone would ever use these things. They do absolutely nothing that you can't do 10 times better and more accurate by hand. When it comes to promoting your site, don't rely on any program but the one running between your ears.

Don't repeat a Meta keyword (in the head section) more than three times. Anything after that will be considered spamming by the search engines.

Your Meta description should be less than 150 characters. This is what will be displayed on those search engines that use Meta tags so you should make it a teaser sentence. You should also use at least five of your most important keywords in the sentence. Try to avoid using commas in your description. Some search engine view the commas as a list of keywords and will discount for it.

You can be crafty with your sentence so that it can appear to be the start of a paragraph. Do this by ending your sentence or two in a ...

By way of example consider the following page description:

You can get the highest search engine ranking by simply placing this in you’re....

Remember, the meta description is going to be displayed to your viewers, so it has to be enticing. Take your time and choose it well. Would you click on it? What sentences do you click on when you search?

Keep each META tag on a single line of your HTML code, without line breaks.

Google crawls whenever they are up for it but they are crawling on a more regular schedule.

NorthernLight crawls intermittently.

Inktomi now supports the Robots No Index Meta Tag.

Overture, formerly known as GoTo, allows sites to "bid" on the terms they wish to appear for. You agree to pay a certain amount each time someone clicks on your listing. This is why it is sometimes called a "pay-per-click search engine."

For instance, let's say you wanted to appear in the top listings for "running shoes." You might agree to pay 25 pence per click. If no one agrees to pay more than this, then you would be in the number one spot. If someone else later decides to pay 26 pence, then you slip into the number two position. You could then bid 27 pence and move back on top, if you wanted to.

While some people go directly to the Overture web site to search, most people encounter Overture's paid listings via other search engines. For example, the very top listings for "running shoes" at Overture would also appear in the "Sponsored Links" section at the top of AOL Search's results.

If your goal is to build visibility on search engines quickly, then Overture is an essential option for you to explore. No other route can put you in the top results of many major search engines in such a short period of time.

I think it is well worth it for anyone to open an Overture account and experiment with how paid listings may help them. An account requires a Ј50 minimum deposit, and you must spend at least Ј20 per month. By carefully selecting targeted terms, you can stretch that money out for one or two months and get quality traffic.

When your initial deposit has expired, you may find that the editorial listings generated by your submissions to directories and crawlers have kicked in. This may mean that you can eliminate your ad spend with Overture entirely. On the other hand, you may find that you want to continue spending and perhaps even increase your budget, to target terms where you don't receive good editorial placement.

Other sites such as Espotting.com and Google.com also provide paid placement in the same way as overture.

Imagine paying Ј1,000 for a run of adverts in a local newspaper. Wouldn’t it be great if you knew exactly how many enquiries you would get from the advert. If the newspaper said we guarantee you will receive 10,000 enquiries from the advert.

This will never happen. However with advertising with such sites as Overture you can guarantee to receive as many as 10,000 enquiries from people who actually are looking for your product and service. You can then use analysis (Chapter 15) to calculate how many sales you will receive from your initial Ј1,000 spent. You can also calculate how much profit you could make from those sales.

So imagine being able to know exactly how much money your company will make profit from every pound you spend advertising. Wouldn’t that be great!!

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search engines offer some of the best value advertising online. Where else can you get targeted visitors from just 10p each?

However, because they aren't sure how it all works, or perhaps unconvinced that it does, many have yet to take advantage of the medium. With that in mind, I'm going to explain how you can benefit from PPC search engines, and spend as little as possible in the process.

I use several PPC search engines. Widely acknowledge to be the best performer, Overture brings me more traffic - and sales - than all the rest put together. Being the most important, I will focus on it here, although the same techniques apply to any PPC search engine.

#1 SECRET TO BIG RETURNS ON A SHOESTRING BUDGET

Bid prices for good rankings on very popular, common keywords are often high. However, the vast majority of advertisers *only* bid on these obvious terms. They ignore THOUSANDS of other keywords. Because few people are bidding on those overlooked keywords, the bid prices remain low. You and I can get good listings here for just a cent or two!

Of course, less popular keywords aren't searched for as often. But that *does not* matter. Play smart. Bid on LOTS of keywords. Hundreds, thousands even. Here's an example of how it works:

*Assume all listings have the same ranking, say the #3 spot.

As you can see, listing under 200 keywords, each of which is only searched for 100 times a month, can bring you the SAME amount of traffic as 20 listings for much more expensive, popular keywords that are searched for 1000 times each month.

Once you've opened your account, start researching your keywords. You will probably already have several relevant words and phrases in mind. Write them all down and head over to the GoTo Keyword Suggestion Tool with your list.

The Keyword Suggestion Tool on Overture tells you how many times in the previous month people have searched for the keyword you input, or any phrase containing it. Results are listed in order, with the most popular searches at the top.

Type your first keyword into the tool's search box. When the results come up, select "Save As" on your browser, and choose to save as "Text." This will save your results in a small plain text file that can be opened by any text editor (like NotePad). Use the keyword as the file name.

Do likewise with all of your keywords, phrases, and other potentially important terms within phrases. For example, one of your main keywords may be "marketing" and one of your phrases "marketing courses." In this case, search for "courses" as well. Although the majority of results will be inappropriate, you will usually find a handful of new terms that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise.

When you've finished your list, open the first file saved. Delete all irrelevant terms. From the remainder, identify potentially good words that you haven't yet investigated. Input these into the Suggestion Tool and repeat the process. Do the same for every file and you will soon have hundreds of terms.

GET DATABASED

Create a simple database for your listing details - it will make managing your account much easier. You can use Excel or similar; I personally prefer FileMaker Pro for PPC accounts

Essential headings you will need are:
* Search Term
* URL
* Title
* Description
* Current Bid Amount

Optional headings Include:
* Number of Searches per Month (from GoTo tool)
* Title Length (auto calculated function)
* Description Length (auto calculated function)
* Listing Status (New, On, Off, Pending, Rejected)
* Product (helpful if advertising various products)
* Current Rank
* Top Bid Amount (time consuming to update: select terms only)
* Minimum Bid Amount (as above)
* First Page Minimum bid amount (as above)
* Date Last Modified (suggest auto function)

I also have FileMaker assign a serial number, so that it can mark terms as 'original' or 'duplicate', making the latter easy to delete.

Once you have your database, paste in the search terms from your collection of text files (if you have a good text editor, use 'search and replace' strings to batch process, deleting unwanted information, and tab-delimiting the remainder for direct import, either individually or merged into a single file).

YOUR TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS

Next compose your titles and descriptions. Remember you are writing an ad. Make your title catchy. Incorporating the search term within it usually increases click thoroughs. Beware however that more clicks doesn't always equal more sales (or more targeted visitors).

Some searchers will click on the first title they notice containing the term searched for, thinking it more relevant. What you are offering may be an exact match to the keyword, or it may be related. If the latter, think before you automatically include the term in your title. In addition, writing a different title for every search term is very time consuming.

Make your description as comprehensive and benefit-laden as you can within the space allowed (with Overture, this is 40 characters for the title and 190 for the description. Other PPC engines vary, but most have higher limits).

If your budget is tight and you simply wish to sell something, consider making it obvious from your description. Unless you have a secondary strategy (like collecting email addresses) save money by filtering out those least likely to part with any cash. Concentrate on attracting your perfect prospect: one open to the possibility of making a purchase.

YOUR MAXIMUM BID PRICE

How much should you bid? Ideally, calculate your Maximum bid limit based on the average conversion ratio of the page you are linking to. If you don't know what that is, I suggest you initially base your limit on a 1% conversion ratio (1 in every 100 visitors buys).

Lets say you make Ј20 on every sale. That means - on average - for every 100 visitors, you get Ј20. To be in profit, those 100 visitors must cost you less than the Ј20 you make. It therefore follows that one visitor must cost less than Ј20/100, or Ј0.20. This is your break-even point. Always bid below this figure.

With a bid of Ј0.10, the 100 visitors required for a Ј20 sale ill only cost you Ј10. You make Ј10 profit. If your Conversion ratio is in reality 3%, at Ј0.10 per click you will make Ј30 for every Ј10 you spend. That's a 300% profit!

Use coded (tracked) URL's for your PPC listings, or if feasible link them to specific pages that cannot be accessed by a surfer on your site (can be duplicates with no inbound links). You will soon have a good idea of your real conversion ratio.

BIDDING STRATEGY

The idea is to bid as little as possible for the highest number of targeted visitors. Being first on the results page will bring most visitors. However, as I mentioned earlier, simply getting more click-throughs is not necessarily a good thing.

In the top position, you are more likely to attract 'lazy' searchers that simply click on the first thing they see, and others who automatically assume that since your listing is at the top, it must be the most relevant (like a regular search engine). Although your listing may be highly relevant, it might not be what THEY had in mind.

How important or not this is, depends on the cost of the listings and your budget. If the current top bid is, say 10p and the second 5p. It makes more sense to bid 6p and get the number two position, than pay 11p for the top spot.

The further down the listings your ad appears, the less likely it will be seen. This is not only due to the behaviour of searchers. Web sites that partner with Overture seldom display all of the listings. AOL for example only displays the first three. Others display the first five, ten, or possibly twenty listings.

With this in mind, create various 'cut-off' points in the listings, in relation to your budget. Can you afford to be in the top three listings? If not, look at the top five, then ten.

Don't overly concern yourself with individual positions within these groupings. Your exposure and - all else being equal - the number of click throughs you get will be almost the same whether you are at, say, number 7 or number 10. The difference in bid price however can be substantial. Pay as little as possible to get into the highest group within your budget. That notwithstanding, increasing your bid by 2 pence to jump five positions in the top half of the page would be worthwhile.

On popular terms where bids are high, simply try to get into the first half of the results page (the top 20 on Overture). If that is still beyond my budget, I aim for a cheap position right at the bottom of the page.

My theory is that most searchers who have bothered to scroll more than halfway down the page will continue to the end. In addition, most people tend to scroll in 'chunks'. This makes them likely to miss listings in the middle, as their eyes are naturally drawn to the white space at the bottom of the page.

If you can't afford page one at all, try and get within the first five or ten listings on page two.

GETTING YOUR LISTINGS ONLINE

Overture have a good account manager, and I would suggest using it to submit your first listings. However, like most online tools, it can become extremely tedious when you have a lot of work to get through.

Overture will happily accept bulk submissions in an Excel spreadsheet they have available for download. If you don't have Excel, you can send your listings in tab-delimited text format (other PPC engines operate the same way, but some don't advertise the fact, requiring you ask).

Use the account manager to get your first few listings online. Overture check all submissions for relevancy (good for your conversion ratio) so it will be 3-5 days before they go live. Meanwhile, work up a list of several hundred keywords. Instead of spending hours inputting these yourself, email them to Overture and let them do it for you.

If you're not yet using PPC search engines, now is the time to start. You won't regret it. Follow these guidelines and it's impossible not to profit!

Submitting to Yahoo! and getting listed is very difficult... but not impossible if you know exactly how to submit your website according to the known and unknown rules of Yahoo!

Because Yahoo is a directory, not a robot or spider search engine. Your submissions are reviewed by a real person. These people are very picky and they don't like sneaky tricks or poorly designed websites. They're looking for sites that add value to their directory. Perhaps that is why Yahoo! is the search engine, or directory, of choice.

Yahoo! has some very specific guidelines. I've listed the main do's and don'ts that I found online. If you want to get listed, I recommend you read these tips and follow them as closely as possible.

Yahoo! Do's & Don'ts

First, go to Yahoo's "How To Suggest Your Site page as well as their page for understanding how to properly pick a category.

http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest.
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/appropriate.html

Read these sections over and follow the guidelines to the last little detail or you will "Not" I repeat, "Not" get listed. These people are extremely strict. They're also looking at hundreds of new submissions every day so you can imagine how tired they would get of people ignoring their submission guidelines.

Site Title & Description:

Place your actual business name or site title here. Do not use this field as a keyword placement opportunity.
Your description should be as close to 15 words as possible - 25 words max.
Do not use the description section as a place to impress Yahoo! editors with classified type ad descriptions. They don't appreciate hype or slogan type expressions in the description field.
Content:
Yahoo! loves to see quality content. Who doesn't? Make sure your website has enough content to keep them clicking. Unique content that is not found elsewhere is preferred.
Provide an "About Us" section.
Do not submit your site until it's complete. They do not accept sites under construction.
EDIT your content! Yes, the editors that visit your website consider grammar and spelling important.

Provide full copyrights on the main page.
Make sure your name, address, and phone number are on the main page. No PO Boxes allowed.
No excessive banners, ads, or buttons please. Your webpage should be fast loading. Try keeping your main page down to one or two graphics. Slow or poor quality graphics should be removed.
If you sell products or offer services you should also have the proper order links and shopping carts set up.
Java or frames websites should have non java or no frames access.
Make sure your email contact information is also on the main page and easily found on every other page.
Do not include content that does not fit your theme. If your website is all about pets, don't include information about sailing.
Be Professional:
What does that mean? It's means a clean well formatted webpage is a high priority. Poorly designed websites should be cleaned up and reformatted before submitting. The following are a few tips for a cleaner more professional look:

Background images DO NOT appear under content.
Text links and colours are colour coordinated.
Choose no more than two main colours for your website template if possible.
Professional also means you own your own domain name. http://www.yourdomain.com not http://www.geocities.com/yourdomain.

How Yahoo! Lists Your Domain:

If you haven't visited Yahoo! lately, you may not have noticed that Yahoo! lists the URL's in A.B.C order. I've seen a few places where they haven't done this yet, but mainly they are in alphabetical order. If you don't have a domain name picked yet, take this into consideration. If you can place a key word in your domain name, do it.
This is not an absolute must, but it helps if there are many websites with similar content.

Categories:

This is extremely important!!

Choose your category very carefully. If you sell or recommend any products or services you need to choose business and economy. The best way to select the category is to locate a similar website and click on the suggest a site link on that page.

Submission:

If you have a website that will fit in the regional category, submit through this link:http://www.yahoo.com/regional. Your chances of getting listed are even better if you fit this field.

List your website, wait three weeks, submit again. Make sure you write down the date you submit your site each time. You'll need it later. By the way, if you continue to submit to Yahoo! you can get banned. It's considered spam. The only reason for resubmitting your website is because you may have been overlooked, you're improving your website based on suggestions made by the Yahoo! staff, or you've changed your website and need an update.

After you've submitted a few times and you still are not listed, it's time to break out the support email address. Before I give it to you, you must understand that Yahoo! will NOT appreciate spam or rudeness. Do not abuse this email address. url-support@yahoo-inc.com.

For more help you can write, phone, or fax Yahoo!

Yahoo! Corporation
3420 Central Expressway, 2nd Floor
Santa Clara, CA 95051
USA

Telephone Support for URL Listing: (408) 731-3333
Tel: (408) 731-3300 8:30am-5:00pm PST
Fax: (408) 731-3301

The following will build a successful site in 1 year’s time via Google alone. It can be done faster if you are a real go getter, or everyone’s favorite: a self starter.

Stay away from "affiliate fades" that insert content on to your site.