The Marketers®

Lot of people want to know “What can I do to get higher listings
in the search engines”. Here are 3 tips I use that have never let
me down:


1. Keyword Research – This is big. Too many times people try to
get their sites to rank for one word searches like “cars”. This is
too hard to do and I wouldn’t even recommend trying it. Plus did
you know 2 and 3 keyword search terms almost always convert better
for you? So look for 2 or 3 keyword search terms like “used cars”
or “used car dealerships”. You’ll find it’s much easier to rank
for these. Another trick is to look at the number of pages Google
returns. If it shows over 30,000 pages it’s probably a hard search
term to rank for so I’d keep looking.

2. Keyword Location — Put a paragraph containing your keywords
towards the top of your page (or at least at the beginning of your
content) . Also put the keyword phrase in your title and meta
description. Don’t over stuff your page with the keyword phrase.
Overuse can hurt you here.

3. Number of Words on the Page – Keep this around 350 words. You
can still rank well for pages that don’t have this many words, but
remember the search engines love content and 350 words seems
to be the magic number.

So there it is. 3 quick tips that you can use to get better search
listings. You can also use the free article spinning tool to
re-purpose your content for more than one search phrase. Don’t try
to have one page rank for more than one search term. It’s much
easier to just create a new page specifically tailored to the
search term you researched in tip 1.

Google’s Advanced Search enables you to enter variables which will give to you many great places to drop a link. Make sure that if you are getting backlinks from blogs, forums, or anywhere, not to spam these sites.


Here are some examples of what you can type into Google search to find them:

GETTING LINKS FROM .EDU AND .GOV SITES

MYTH – .gov and .edu backlinks are not 5x more powerful than a .com backlink. A Link Is A Link. It just so happens that many .gov and .edu are high pagerank.

site:.edu inurl:wp-login.php +blog
site:.gov inurl:wp-login.php +blog
site:.edu “your keyword”
site:.gov “your keyword” -”you must be logged in” -”comments are closed”
site:.edu “no comments” +blogroll -”posting closed” -”you must be logged in” -”comments are closed”
site:.gov “no comments” +blogroll -”posting closed” -”you must be logged in” -”comments are closed”
site:.edu “powered by expressionengine” “ADD YOUR KEYWORD”
site:.gov “powered by expressionengine” “ADD YOUR KEYWORD”
site:.com “powered by expressionengine” “ADD YOUR KEYWORD”
site:.org “powered by expressionengine” “ADD YOUR KEYWORD”
site:.edu “Powered by BlogEngine.NET”site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -”comments closed” -”you must be logged in” “ADD YOUR KEYWORD”
site:.gov “Powered by BlogEngine.NET”site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -”comments closed” -”you must be logged in” “ADD YOUR KEYWORD”
site:.com “Powered by BlogEngine.NET”site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -”comments closed” -”you must be logged in” “ADD YOUR KEYWORD”
site:.org “Powered by BlogEngine.NET”site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -”comments closed” -”you must be logged in” “ADD YOUR KEYWORD”

FINDING WORDPRESS BLOGS TO COMMENT

“powered by wordpress” your keyword
“powered by wordpress” “your keyword” (this is looking for an exact keyword match with the quotations around keyword)
“powered by wordpress” intitle:your keyword This targets pages that have your keyword in the url of the page.
“powered by wordpress” inurl:your keyword
FINDING TYPEPAD BLOGS TO COMMENT

“If you have a TypeKey or TypePad account” your keyword

FINDING BLOGSPOT BLOGS TO COMMENT

site:blogspot.com your keyword
If many of the blogs have the comments section closed, you can exclude those from your searches using the following search commands:

“powered by wordpress” your keyword -comments are closed

FINDING DIRECTORIES (in your niche) AND SUBMISSION SITES

intitle:add+url “your keyword”
intitle:submit+site “your keyword”
intitle:submit+url “your keyword”
intitle:add+your+site “your keyword”
intitle:add+site “your keyword”
intitle:directory “your keyword”
intitle:sites “your keyword”
intitle:list “your keyword”

FINDING FORUMS (in your niche) FOR BACKLINKS

“Powered by SMF” your keyword
Phbb your keyword
“powered by IPB” your keyword
MyBB your keyword
“powered by PunBB” your keyword
“Powered by Phbb” your keyword
“Powered by vBulletin” your keyword

GET A TON OF QUALITY BACKLINKS FROM SQUIDOO

site:squidoo.com “new links plexo” “add to this list”
site:squidoo.com “your keyword” “add to this list”
Many don’t know this, but Squidoo has some really high PR lens’ and they allow you to add your own incoming links with anchor text and description. Pretty much all are do-follow and require no moderation. Make sure you are logged in to your squidoo account so you don’t spam, because you will get banned if you do spam. Click on “Add to this list” Module and enter your url, anchor text and description.

Google’s getting into the travel business: it announced plans Thursday to acquire ITA Software, a company that provides travel information to various Web sites, for $700 million.

The deal had been rumored in recent days but was met with skepticism by some who believed it would prompt a swift inquiry from government regulators leery of Google’s control of such information, which is widely used by travel sites and other search engines, such as Microsoft’s Bing. Google said it plans to use ITA’s software in Web search to help users find flight information.

ITA, based in Cambridge, Mass., is the brainchild of MIT graduates who figured out a way to use algorithms and technology to change the way people booked flights online and searched for cheaper fares. It has relationships with major airlines all over the world, and it also provides services to travel agencies and search engines, as described above.
Jeremy Wertheimer, president, CEO, and co-founder of ITA, said his 500-person company basically takes information distributed by airlines regarding flight schedules, prices, and seat availability, and publishes that to its partners. Those partners include major travel search sites such as Hotwire, Kayak, Orbitz, and start-up Rearden Commerce, all of which will face a more difficult competitive position, if this deal goes through: it’s not clear whether Google will continue to provide ITA’s services to those partners.


Google said it plans to use ITA’s technology in its Web search tools and to allow potential passengers to shop for tickets right from Google. Travel search makes up a huge portion of Google searches, but it’s a complicated type of search to express in a query box, Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience, said on a conference call following the announcement of the deal.

“Google has already come up with new ways to organize hard-to-find information like images, newspaper archives, scholarly papers, books, and geographic data. Once we’ve completed our acquisition of ITA, we’ll work on creating new flight search tools that will make it easier for you to search for flights, compare flight options and prices, and get you quickly to a site where you can buy your ticket,” Mayer said in a blog post accompanying the announcement.

As it did subsequent to acquiring AdMob, Google prepared a Web site highlighting the benefits of the deal for users and downplaying any anticompetitive effects. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said he expects “a significant review” from federal regulators, who tend to take a closer look at just about anything Google does these days, and who are unlikely to miss this chance to exert some pressure on Google, following the Federal Trade Commission’s decision to let the $750 million AdMob deal go through.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, is preparing to take on Apple’s iTunes. Schmidt visited with Doug Morris, Universal Music Group CEO (left) and Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, the Sony Music chief, during the Vevo launch party last December.

According to multiple music industry sources, Google could launch a music service that offers song downloads and streaming music as early as this fall.

Google has already signaled that it wishes to give users of phones equipped with Google’s Android operating system a better music offering. At Google’s I/O conference last month, the search engine offered attendees a demonstration of a Web-based iTunes competitor. Also TechCrunch reported two weeks ago that it discovered a “Google Music” logo hosted on Google’s domain.


But Google’s plans go beyond Android, say music sector insiders. CNET has learned that Google first stoked excitement among executives at some of the top four major labels during the Consumer Electronics Show in January. That’s where they revealed some of the features that a Google music store might include, such as tying digital downloads and streaming music to Google’s search results.

Google did not respond to interview requests.

Google knows music

Google first tried wedding songs to search last fall. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company launched Music Onebox and enabled people searching for song titles to stream the tunes via online music stores Lala.com and iLike. The experiment seemed to be derailed after those companies were acquired by competitors; Apple and MySpace respectively.

A Google-backed challenge to Apple’s dominance of legal online music sales would be warmly welcomed by the top labels. They have tried for years to convince heavy hitters such as Google, Facebook, and AOL to take on iTunes.

The other top digital music stores, Amazon and MySpace Music, have yet to cut into Apple’s huge market share. Those two big names, however, don’t possess Google’s reach with Web consumers.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt can already boast some success in music with YouTube. Before three of the four top labels launched Vevo and took control of their videos, YouTube was by far the Web’s most successful streaming music service. Zahavah Levine, YouTube’s general counsel who previously worked with RealNetworks’ Rhapsody music subscription service, has a prominent role in helping to develop Google’s new music store, the sources said.

The other piece of Google’s music puzzle is software company Simplify Media, which Google acquired earlier this year after kicking the tires on several cloud-based media services. Simplify enabled PC and Mac users to stream songs from their computer-based iTunes or WinAmp libraries to other Web-enabled devices. Vic Gundotra, a Google engineering exec, said during I/O that Google would build Simplify Media’s technology into a future version of the Android OS and thereby boost Android’s music features.

Google is racing iTunes to be first with a cloud service. Sources in the music and movie sectors have said Apple is working on a Web-based iTunes service that could enable users to store music and video on digital shelves and then stream the content to Web-enabled devices.

So, while Apple works on a cloud service, CEO Steve Jobs might be surprised to find Google has begun serenading iTunes users.