Via WebProNews I learned that the guys at SEOmoz interviewed 37 leaders in the world of organic search engine optimization (SEO) on the various factors that are estimated to comprise Google’s ranking algorithm, and came up with an awesome summary representing “90-95% of the knowledge required about Google’s algorithm”.

Personally, although I keep up with the search engines’ changing algorithms, I never build sites solely around these factors. I’d rather focus on creating authority sites with unique content, using a mix of both, online and offline marketing and PR tactics. Unique content ensures that your Pagerank doesn’t fall, and is more likely to attract inbound, one-way links. It’s worth spending good money on creating unique content. On the other hand, the PLR content and article mashers that everyone is using, are a huge waste of time and money.

Keep in mind that websites that are user-friendly, easy to navigate, and provide the user with relevant and useful information, are also likely to be bookmarked more often by users. All the experts agree that social bookmarking is going to become even more important to your rankings in 2008.

I also think that repeat traffic will become more important (given that Google most likely has access to your user’s cache), so having a subscriber database, to which you can email updates and newsletters that bring visitors back to your site regularly, should always be part of your marketing mix. Despite the inroads made by RSS, email is still one of the most important ways of sending out updates.

It’s important to keep building links slowly and consistently, using press releases and article marketing, with some blogging and social marketing thrown into the mix. If you’re into video and podcasting, they can be valuable tools to build traffic, too.

I’m currently reviewing Mike Cheney’s Traffic Videos, and they’re an excellent resource that cover a wide range of marketing techniques - which really, is the best way to build consistent and repeat traffic to your website. Though there’s something in there for everyone, white-hat and black-hat, I’d avoid the black-hat if I were you.

But if you’re a serious search marketing expert, the SEO Report on Google’s Search EngineRanking Factors is available here and is essential reading.

As I explained in my article here, one of the most important differences between businesses (or articles) that succeed and those that fail is the ability to understand what their audience wants, and give it to them the way they want it.

Accurate market research is the foundation of a successful business. Any search marketer worth their salt knows that market research is the basis of a good search marketing strategy. The Digital Point keyword suggestion tool is one of my favourite tools for conducting quick market research and creating lists of keywords to target.

It’s also recommended by Wendy Boswell, About.com’s guide on Web Search, who puts the reasons for conducting market research in simple, succinct terms here:

In order to create a searchable site, you must know who you are writing for. Your target audience knows what they want and what they are searching for, and you must know what that is before you can deliver what they want.

For researching and writing articles, simple tools should suffice. But when you’ve put advertising dollars on the line, the quality of your research becomes paramount to your success.

Customer profiles, surveys and focus groups are essential tools in the marketer’s store, but asking the right questions of your audience, and making sense of the data gathered, is an art by itself.

It was only after I listened to some audios by a guy called Glenn Livingston, that I began to gain an understanding of the nuances of conducting good market research. Glenn was recommended to me by Perry Marshall, who states that he’s “reduced marketing to a nearly exact science.”

He’s developed a system that shows you how to use market research to dramatically multiply existing profits, and how to save ridiculous amounts of time and money entering new markets by finding out exactly where the “bulls eye” is before you invest your marketing dollars, and even before you ever develop a product. This is seriously good stuff, and I urge you to check out his ideas here.

But market research is just the start of a good marketing strategy. It takes more than that to attract the kind of audience you need on the internet. Wendy recommends you remember these three things when developing your target audience internet marketing strategy:

Do your research. Don’t automatically assume that what you search for is what your audience searches for.

Get involved. Man is not an island. Network with people in your field or industry to truly understand what might be in demand, and then you can target your audience accordingly.

Write good content. Easier said than done, but I guarantee that the more time you spend researching key phrases and writing thoughtful content, the more people will be able to find your content.

Read more about market research strategies here

How to Research Your Business Idea (Entrepreneur.com)

Market Research for Small Business on a Shoestring: Surveys and Focus Groups (StartUpNation.com)

Market Research Basics and Terminology (Elance.com)

Writing articles for the internet is not the same as writing for print media. There are some common mistakes that writers make online that are likely to lose them potential readers and traffic.

Writers need to understand that people have very short attention spans while reading online. If your article doesn’t address their immediate concerns or is difficult to read, all they have to do is click away - and you end up losing a reader.

If you’re a writer who wants to leverage your articles to get maximum traffic and ensure that your readers enjoy reading it online, here are some guidelines you should follow.

1. Find Out What Your Readers Want

The best way to boost your visibility online is to provide specific information that people are searching for. While researching topics for your article, input your root keyword into the keyword research tool here to find out what keywords people enter into search engines while researching your topic. Keep a list of these keywords handy when writing your article and use them in creative ways.

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Search for information using keywords related to the topic you plan to write about on the sites below, and see what other people are writing about it.

http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.technorati.com

Get familiar with these resources. They will help you focus your writing around the needs and interests of potential readers. Write articles that address those specific needs and your traffic and visibility will skyrocket.

2. Give Your Keywords Prominence

I recommend that you never stuff your article with keywords. It doesn’t work anyway, and it will make your article unreadable and useless. Always write your articles with the reader in mind.

However, do remember that search engines give more weight to keywords that are included in specific locations in your article (a concept known as keyword prominence). So while writing your article, it’s good practice to include your keywords in the following locations in order to leverage them for maximum visibility.

Article Title: Try to include your primary keywords in the first half of your title.

Article Sub-head: Use a catchy subheading for your article and try to include synonyms for your keywords.

Paragraph titles: Include specific keywords related to your topic in your paragraph titles

3. Get More Readers With A Catchy Title

A catchy, topical or provocative title will always attract more attention and get you more click-throughs and readers, but always en sure that it corresponds with the theme of your article. Titles that are catchy but misleading are not appreciated by either publishers or readers.

4. Boost Readability For All Your Readers

There are two kinds of readers online those who read an article in detail, and those who scan through it. For the sake of the latter, break up your articles into paragraphs, each of which makes a point, and use a title for the paragraph that effectively sums up the points you made in the text.

Write a catchy title for each paragraph. Keep your paragraphs short. Long riffs are difficult to read online. I usually prefer a maximum of 2 to 3 sentences per paragraph, but longer is acceptable. The use of bulleted points and numbered lists also boosts readability.

5. Follow Good Language Guidelines

Unless your audience comprises other writers and poets, few readers appreciate long-winded and pretentious prose online. Remember that the average visitor online reads at the level of a sixth-grader. So keep your sentences short. Use words that are simple and easy to comprehend.

Write complete sentences, but keep your tone conversational. Write as though you were talking to a friend. Avoid the use of slang, colloquialisms (unless necessary to make a point) and swear words.

Always check for blatant grammar and spelling errors using a spellchecker. If possible, get a second and third opinion on your article before sending it out to publishers and article directories.

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Copyright © Priya Shah

Priya Shah is a partner in the blog publishing company, Connect10 and writes an internet marketing blog. Visit Article Writing Tips for more article marketing tips and tools.

This article may be reprinted as long as the resource box is left intact and all links are hyperlinked.

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Markets are conversations. Today’s customers are smart and networked. They prefer information gleaned through word-of-mouth marketing, to glib corporate-speak and impersonal business websites.

The networked customer regularly turns to the social media and online communities to learn more about your products. Blogs, social networks and forums are the sandbox for your networked community. (Source: Jupitermedia)

Businesses that learn how to become part of the conversation are the ones that will thrive in today’s market.

Learn more about Web 2.0 and networked communities here.

I’ve been endorsing article marketing as my #1 method of building traffic, links and branding, for a long time. In fact at the time of this writing, this blog is ranked between #6 to #8 out of 118,000,000 sites on Yahoo search for the key phrase article marketing.

Yes, that’s 6 out of 118 million!! Not bad, huh?

So I know what I’m talking about when I endorse this excellent "Article Production Strategies" Training Report and Audio Product by Chris Knight, of EzineArticles.com

Chris invited 400+ authors to participate in his teleseminar on how to get into an "Article Production" mode. He answers the 45 most pressing questions about article writing and marketing including:

• How to crank up the traffic your articles can generate for your website(s)
• The (1) secret that 14% of EzineArticles.com Authors Know that the other 86% don’t
• (7) Article Content Sources you may have overlooked
• An Article Idea Generator that will help you plow through any slow creativity periods
• Article Writing Production Mistakes Newbies Make That You Must Avoid
• How to double your article inventory in 90 days or less
• 3 Simple Article Templates To Help You Begin Your Article Production Mentality
• Strategies To Track Your Article Writing Production
• Where you should be submitting your articles (my 3 tier approach)
• Helping you identify which topics get the most interest so you can focus your time better
• The basics of keyword research and when to and not to use it with your articles
• Mistakes that far too many authors make in the RESOURCE BOX that ruins their results
• How to convert readers of your articles into traffic
• Article title mistakes to avoid and strategies to test
• How to be a white hat article writer and be a good netcitizen to the search engines
• Should you worry about the duplicate content penalty or not?
• How you can double or triple your article production even if you already are an expert
• What the ideal length is for an article and which length gets a higher distribution
• Article format basics, length, font attributes, etc.
• An example of a highly optimized and effective resource box
• Ways to manage multiple brands or topics that you write articles about

Article writing and marketing has worked wonders to help me build my traffic. I recommend it to all our clients as a way to build links, branding and thought-leadership.

And if you need to attract qualified, highly-relevant traffic to your website, get yourself a copy of Chris’s "Article Production Strategies" Training Solution.

Internet marketers, be warned! There’s a rash of new products catering to (lazy!) Adsense publishers who want to beat Google’s duplicate content filters.

They claim to provide unique content for you either with public private label rights content or by generating hybrid articles using article creator software. Here’s why these are a very bad idea.

1. Search Engines Can Detect And Filter Hybrid Content

If you want to believe marketers touting Public Private Label Rights (PLR) and rehashed articles as the way to beat Google’s duplicate content filters, do so at your own risk.

According to Chris Knight, of the EzineArticles.com article directory, even software like the EzineArticles.com CASM (Content Association Sequence Matching) system can detect exact complex sentence matches in PLR articles.

Search engines like Google are even smarter. They use more than one way of identifying duplicate content, including methods of dating to identify the page on which the original content first appeared.

So if you think these “unique” article creation tools can beat search engines like Google in the cut-and-paste content game, think again. The best way to beat the duplicate content filters is to create unique content.

2. Article Creators Violate Fair Use Guidelines

There’s no doubt that it’s unethical to steal sentences from other articles, rewrite them and call them your own. Chris Knight also warns against marketers who claim that you can take and steal any exact match sentence from any author under fair use doctrine.

It’s the equivalent of taking bits and parts of other people’s songs, remixing them and releasing them under your own name. The word for it is plagiarism and it applies as much to written content as it does to music.

If you publish hybrid content created from another author’s articles you could be guilty of plagiarism too.

3. PLR Articles Will Kill Your Brand

Building your brand through article marketing involves creating trust by sharing original ideas and content.

If you’re caught using plagiarised content on your own site or submitting it to article directories, you’ll end up destroying the trust you built between you and your target audience.

If you do use PLR articles for your Adsense site, use common sense and don’t submit them to article directories as your own, even with modifications.

And if you really want to go about it the right way, check out Chris’ Article Production Strategies Seminar and learn how to leverage article syndication to grow your adsense sales and traffic.

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Priya Shah is a partner in the search engine marketing firm, SEO & More and writes an online marketing blog. Visit Article Writing Tips for more article marketing strategies.

This article may be reprinted as long as the resource box is left intact and all links are hyperlinked.

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I’ve just been informed told that Dina’s Web Content Awareness Day is on the 9th of February, not the 6th, as I reported earlier.

Sorry about that, Dina. I guess my eyesight hasn’t returned to normal after my accident…

Go here to Expand Your “Content Consciousness” as Dina so aptly puts it.

Dina Giolitto, one of my favourite writers and the moderator of the ABC Network: Articles, Blogs, Content network on Ryze, is in the process of rounding up gurus and web marketing experts to join her for the First Annual Web Content Awareness Day.

The “virtual holiday” is scheduled to take place on February 6, 2006 - a day to “pay homage to expectional content providers on the World Wide Web” with a plethora of free information, limited time only offers from some of the web’s most prominent gurus and independent consultants, and a healthy dose of lighthearted fun.

The web-wide celebration will be housed on Giolitto’s website, http://WebContentAwarenessDay.com. Topics covered by various contributing marketers will include copywriting, search engine optimization, design, tech tools, article marketing, blogging and networking. Every marketer who contributes to the project has been offered free exposure by way of feature articles and ad exposure on the Content Awareness Day website.

As Dina tells it, “I’ve always felt adamantly about upholding the quality and integrity of content on the web while providing practical solutions and useful information to my readers. I’m hoping the site will help promote this agenda while drumming up business leads for every single marketer who devotes their time and energy to the cause.”

All I have to say to this amazing woman is - You go, girl! I’ll be supporting you all the way.

Remember how I tom-tommed the fact that we got a new domain from PR0 to a very healthy PR5 in under two months? Actually it was less than two months because we didn’t get started on the linking till a month after we bought it. But never mind that.

The fact is that we used very sound techniques to make that happen. And it was no fluke. We can keep doing it again and again and again… for all the clients who entrust their SEO to us.

Among the most effective techniques that helped us build QUALITY links to our website was the use of press releases. In fact, using an optimized press release is such a powerful method of building links that I now recommend it to all our clients.

Just a single press release helped us build links from not only high-PR press release sites, but also from competitor sites where our news was syndicated.

Competitor sites? How did we do that?

Well here’s the secret (if you want to call it that). One of the best sites to submit your press release is on PRweb. Using the $80 option, you can get your release syndicated through Yahoo! News so that it gets picked up and syndicated on a lot of competitor sites.

Imagine having your competitors working to build links to you. What better SEO tactic could there possibly be!!

Of course, once your link on Yahoo! News vanishes, your link popularity (and PageRank) could drop. But that didn’t happen to us, because I always ensure that we build enough redundancy into our link campaigns, which is why we simultaneously carry out article marketing and directory submissions to build links.

I have people working for me who do the actual work of press release submission, but if you’re a solo entrepreneur and want a tool that can automate that task for you, take a look at Jeff Alderson’s Press Equalizer. I just got a copy for myself, because anything that helps me save time is worth the money.

So are press releases really the new “blog and ping” alternative to getting indexed? I wouldn’t call them that. But if you want to build quality links, create publicity, and boost your reach and influence, press releases may be just the tool you need.

More online publicity tips and resources

Dina Giolitto, moderator of the Article Marketing Mania (AMM) network on Ryze created a 139-page free “best hits” version of the community posts, that she describes as, “Over 100 pages of Sheer Article Marketing Genius…contributed by our group of Wacky and Lovable Marketers on Ryze.com.”

I’m really sad about AMM folding up, because it was one of my favourite networks, with Dina playing the VERY active moderator. But don’t fret because she threatens to be back soon with a new network, something along the lines of “[ABC Network] Articles, Blogs, and All Things Content.” After all you can’t keep a good woman down for long, can you?

Dina’s collection of the AMM’s best posts truly has some excellent tips and articles (including some of mine) on article marketing. A great way to end a great network!

Via Chris Knight’s blog