To start with, Google is a totally free search engine and there are no paid submissions or inclusions and they are 100% organic. Secondly, the most widely spoken SEO concept, ‘pagerank’ belongs to Google and no other search engine except Google has this concept.

The next important factor is Meta Tags this was one of the popular concepts sometime ago and it is currently losing its importance as most search engines got more intelligent they can index the pages without the Meta tags. However, it is believed that Yahoo seems to value Meta Tags still. So if you are important in getting listed in Yahoo better pay attention to your meta tags because by adding them you will not do any harm to your Google optimization but by failing to add the meta tags you can lose the advantage that you could get from Yahoo.

Yahoo places great importance in On-page optimization; though on-page optimization is important for Google to achieve good ranking in Google, there are other factors that decide your site’s ranking. But with Yahoo, primary importance is placed on on-page optimization and this leads to unstable results in Yahoo because of the heavy competition. This often leaves webmasters complaining about their success and position in Yahoo. You cannot rely on the results as it fluctuates heavily based on what is happening around in the market.

On the other hand Google places greater importance to off-page optimization and all of know what attracts Google spiders – it is inbound links. If you want to win Google’s favor then you must work on acquiring as many inbound links as possible. All the inbound links that you obtain should be relevant links from quality sites.

You will have greater advantage by paying attention to both on-page and off-page optimization as Google also gives importance to the content in your web sites and on the keyword density. If you have keyword rich content then you can be sure of getting the attention of Google spiders.

When it comes to site submission, Google submissions are totally free as opposed to Yahoo which has both paid and unpaid submission. If you want to get indexed faster in Yahoo then you must go for paid submission. Though it is free, indexing in Google takes place much faster.

These are some of the differences that we can list between Google and Yahoo when it comes to SEO. There might be other finer differences but what we have discussed above are just the basic differences that all of us who should know so that we can employ the right optimization strategy to get listed in both Google and Yahoo.

This can involve a simple click on the link, sending the consumer to the affiliates site; an action such as filling out a questionnaire or profile on the affiliate site, signing the consumer up for marketing offers (this is called a lead); or a purchase by the consumer from the affiliate.

You will generally get more for a sale (pay per sale - commission) than you will for a lead (pay per lead), and more for a lead than a click( pay per click). You can also get payment sometimes for continued purchases from a previously referred consumer (residual) or for recruiting other sites to be affiliates (two-tier programs). Sometimes you see pay per view programs, which basically pay just for visitors coming to your own site and viewing the banner (pay per impression) but these are few and really more like an advertising agreement than being an affiliate.

Affiliates can be huge (like Amazon or eBay) and have their own affiliate program in house so to speak, or they can be part of a larger affiliate network. Networks can be all right if you are running a fairly generic site, but the key to making money with affiliates is to sign up for ones that have a greater relevance to your site. It wouldn’t help me much to sign with AutoZone if my website is PetStyles.

My main goal with affiliates is to encourage customers’ interest in them, so I personally don’t deal with any affiliates I wouldn’t personally use myself. If a customer buys a product from an affiliate after being directed there from my site, and then has a bad experience with the product or company, I don’t want that raining down on my head.

Since I actually believe in all my affiliates, I have no problem promoting their products on my site, so I can add some articles or content that nudges customers in that direction. If one of my affiliates is Cozy Cat Quarters, selling elaborate cat houses and hideaways it would behoove me to post a few cool pics and maybe an article - doesn’t have to be a sales pitch, it could as easily be a comic piece relating to the cats’ antics and mentioning in passing that the house is a Cozy Cat Quarters item.

The ad is displayed right there on your site, so the hope of course is that the laughing customer is intrigued and clicks for some more pics and info from the affiliate site. (You will want to make sure all of these open in a new window, so the consumer doesn’t leave you completely - gotta look out for number one!)

And of course, there is Ad Sense - which we will touch on tomorrow.

Actually, both can be true. It depends on whether or nor your e-book is any good! I like to give away an e-book for a time, then if it enjoys huge success and I receive feedback that is positive and frequent I can write another to sell under the aegis of ‘If you liked xxxx you’ll love xxxxxxx!’

A free e-book is usually best received if it is a short one, with concise easy to follow tips, suggestions and possibly a little humor. These freebies can be easy read and digested, and can pave the way to sell your products, services or even a longer book.

For example, if I am in the gardening gadget business, I can publish an e-book of gardening tips, and sprinkle references to my gadgets throughout to encourage them to return to my site and purchase them.

If I actually market landscaping services, I can still give away a free e-book for ideas on designing different types of gardens, flowerbeds, etc, and still advertise my company’s services as many people will want to hire jobs of magnitude out to a professional.

If I simply have written several more e-books on cultivating particular plants, flowers or shrubs, I can issue a generic informational e-book and let the reader order the paid e-book once they have decided what specialty they are interested in.

E-books can also be utilized in other ways. Say you write a twenty chapter e-book - wow, that could easily be turned into twenty articles. All you have to do is take each chapter, turn it into a stand alone article by rewriting the content, and hey presto you have twenty articles ready for publication as a series on a blog or for distribution to directories or how-to sites.

You can use e-books to generate interest in almost anything (did you know there are even e-book directories?) and people enjoy the easy to read format and brevity of a well done e-book.

Remember, format your e-book so it looks professional. No-one likes to receive something and find it difficult to read and hard to understand! Make each chapter clear and compelling, present it in an easily downloadable or e-mail format, and do check it out in various formats to be sure most people will be able to view it easily.

A good way to keep interest engaged is to provide a helpful tip or an activity suggestion at the end of each chapter of your book. This can be simple - just an idea for a project, a chart or graph to track progress or a planning guide.

Don’t be afraid to include things in your e-book like step by step guides or top ten lists. These can provide whole chapters of helpful information and your readers will appreciate the layout if you use your bullet points appropriately.

A well thought out e-book, whether it is a giveaway or a sales item, will engage and retain the consumer’s attention from cover to cover and leave them wanting more.

One of the problems most of us face is the misconception that when you want to optimize your blog for search engines you cannot write something that is still interesting to human readers. This is not true and this need not be the case. You can come up with interesting blog content which is at the same time search engine friendly. Though there is no marked difference between writing for human readers and for search engines one needs to pay attention to details such as keyword density. While writing for human readers, you must incorporate the required keywords in a balanced way. As we use more of an informal style of writing when we write our posts it is rather easy to incorporate the keywords without making the text look artificial.

Moreover, only when your blog is interesting other bloggers will link to your blog which is one of the important factors that contribute to the success of your blog. When you want to get inbound links for your website make sure you get quality links. One of the ways of getting links is to notify other bloggers who have similar blogs. However make sure that you don’t start spamming them with your link building mails.

Don’t forget the simple and regular ritual of submission to link directories and to start with you can just submit to free directories. If you have more than one blog you can create an effective network by linking your own blogs; you will be able to see greater benefits if you have your blogs hosted in different servers. Many people do buy links but unless you see a great advantage in terms of revenue generation through your blogs it is not required to buy links you can try every thing that comes for free first before you move on to investing money on your blog promotion.

When you are posting on your blogs use titles with keywords. You can try making your keywords in the blog content bold. If you are using images in your blogs make sure that you use alt tags with keywords in them. Make your blog focus on one aspect or a single theme and be faithful to add content to your blog so that search engines will consider you as a rich source of quality content.

Dynamic web pages are those pages that are not permanent but pages that are created on the fly based on user input such as a search page. The search page where the user makes his or her search will be a permanent page but the results page is only a temporary page and they are not stored in the servers. If you have observed the dynamic URLs closely they are very long and they change based on the user request. Search engines cannot spider through these pages and indexing is almost impossible as the session id keeps changing. Google indexes dynamic pages but to save the servers from overloading and strain they limit the number of dynamic pages that they will index per website.

In order to have all your dynamic pages indexed you can use tools that will convert your dynamic pages to static ones by replacing the “?” with a “/”. Some webmasters also use CGI/PERL scripts to generate the URLs. You can also try to reconfigure your server to apache server with the help of your hosting company as this is not something that is pre-installed.

Certain approaches will be suitable for a small websites and if you have thousands of pages or products that you sell through your online store then the following may not be an efficient solution. What needs to be done is to create static pages that correspond to each of your dynamic pages and optimize those static pages as you would normally optimize other pages and submit it to the search engines along with the other pages. As you can see that it may not be an efficient approach for huge websites. So you need to adapt to an approach that is suitable for your website and should not try to implement all that you read online because all SEO strategies do not suit all types of websites.

When it is a complex website it is always wiser to employ a reliable search engine optimization company to get the optimization done so that you will not be overly distracted with the optimization part losing concentration on your core business. This will bring better returns on your investments. What many people do not take into consideration is the amount of time that they spend to resolve an issue that they are not familiar with; so it is always advisable to seek for professional help. Moreover, by trying it implement various strategies ourselves we will lose a lot of Internet time while our competitors march a head.

If you can anticipate some of the questions that might be asked in your own field, you can snag some traffic right off the top with a well worded title and some truly helpful content.

The main words for a real ‘question query’ are ‘how’, ‘how do’, ‘how can’, ‘how to’, etc. ‘Where’ is also popular for product search, as in ‘Where can (do) I find (name of product here)?’ For that matter, ‘find’ alone is a good keyword.

‘Affordable’ is better than ‘free’, unless you can actually offer a freebie product to hook people in and then try for the sale. ‘Buy’ is good, and so are ‘sale’ and ‘discount’.

For info on actually doing stuff, ‘instructions’, ‘directions’, ‘guide’ and ‘tutorial’ should all be frequent flyers. ‘Steps’, ‘keys’ and ‘ways’ rank up there too. Try ‘fun’, ‘creative’ and ‘fast’ too.

Once you have figured out what kind of article you intend to write, you can mix and match for maximum effect. Ten Best Ways or Affordable Family Fun other like titles can be combine with geographically specific areas if that will assist you - Tampa, SF, Chicago, Manhattan, etc.

Top Ten Ways to Prepare Venison would be a good title, as would Discount Taxidermy Services - Trading Meat for Stuffing. (What?? It’s almost hunting season!!)

Don’t be afraid to write several different articles on similar subjects - as long as the content is significantly different between articles, you can try out the different types of titles and see what generates the most traffic, you will have extra content for submission to directories, and you won’t have duplicate content issues.

It’s important to have a friendly, engaging style to your articles. If they aren’t interesting, people won’t read them, but if you have a solid hook at the beginning and a smooth flowing article that leaves them happy at the end than you will have come a long way towards fulfilling the need for information.

The trick is to put your material in an easy to follow format for the thousands of people who want information fast, now and without a lot of fuss.

If you don’t use keywords that people are likely to type into search engines, you aren’t going to rank. It’s as simple as that. By optimizing your articles starting at the title and keeping a steady light influx through out the entire piece, you can ensure that your information will be seen.

After that hurdle is past, hopefully your article will be linked to and eventually climb up toward the number one spot on Google. Your articles can drive traffic to your site, and in turn your sales will increase.

Try it out. If you don’t have the talent for writing, hire out a set of specific articles aimed at increasing attention and see how big of a difference it makes. Then you can tackle your keyword optimization in earnest.

If you don’t like the term linkbait, you can call it content - although I think there is a slight difference between the main entrée and the parsley on top.

Keeping the bait relevant to your site is a huge big plus. My (fictional as of yet) site devoted to pet clothing could run a video of a animal dressed up in my clothes, doing something hilarious.

A human interest type story could generate interest as well - perhaps a look at abandoned dogs and their plight - this isn’t as funny, but people to feel strongly about such things and you could get some attention there. Sponsor a animal charity, and send out a press release about their newest activity.

What if your site is rather dull? A financial site, say…

Lyndon Antcliff made the news earlier this year with a shocking take on linkbait - he posted a story on a site belonging to a large financial UK company warning about credit card fraud, and making his point by using as an example a boy who had used his fathers credit account for a shopping spree, hotel room and hookers.

Later of course, the notation was added to the story that it was a complete fabrication and not to be taken seriously, but not before the story had been picked up by major networks in the US and UK, and links to the site had reached the stratosphere.

This was frowned upon by webmasters everywhere, and was considered rather blck-hat! A better way to retain trust and credibility would have been to try a different approach - and here are a few.

Take a survey. Ask a question to engage attention, then invite their input. “What kind of bank account do you really need? Our survey tells you how!”

Or, simply set up a poll: “Do you worry about identity theft? Check Yes or No!”

Maybe you want to run a contest. “Best 300 word true story about mortgage woes wins free coffee mug or t-shirt!”

See? Even banking can be baitable. (And baitable isn’t a word, I just made it up. Baitworthy is also good.)

Above all, keep it simple. If you are serious about baiting your site for links, set it up so that they are reminded and encouraged to link at every turn. Don’t forget to keep the social network buttons by your bait to promote the buzz - sometimes getting Dugg is enough to catapult you into fame.

Also, let bloggers know they are welcome to carry your bait - in return for a link. Most bloggers are not as worried about PageRank, and will gladly give you a backlink.

Spread the word!

Whether you are optimizing your own websites or your clients’ websites, make sure that you know everything possible about the business or the product which is being promoted by the website that you are optimizing. Only when you know the business inside out you will be able to know the keywords that people will be using to search for that product or service otherwise you will only have a limited collection of keywords. Amateur SEO professionals will often make the mistake of optimizing the websites for highly competitive keywords spending more and more time, energy and money in their effort to be successful. There are lots of keywords who potential often go untapped for the sheer lack of knowledge about the particular business or product. Keywords that people use vary from individual to individual so it should prompt us to think creatively for different choice of keywords for which certain websites are normally optimized.

Secondly, try to avoid single words unless the niche market for which you are optimizing the website really an uncommon niche and does not have competition. Moreover single keyword will bring lot of unfocussed traffic to your website though there is no specific harm in this you should be aware of the nature of the visitors that are drawn to understand the conversion graph properly only then you can devise a business strategy to improve your business. If you are going to get lot of general visitor traffic that is not really interested in your service, then obviously the conversion rates are going to be lesser and when you interpret your data without proper understanding of your website traffic then you are prone to make mistakes in your business strategy too. Everything is linked either directly or indirectly. Moreover, even people who search for a product or service use keyword strings with multiple keywords. If you are capable of think like the Internet users in those lines then you can certainly come up with winning keyword combinations.

Thirdly, when you are selecting your keywords you must think like your websites users and by optimizing your website for some fancy name that you have given your service or product you will not get any traffic even though you may be ranking high for that keyword because people may be using those keywords to search for your product or service. So the idea of optimization is to get traffic and not just good ranking for some strange keywords.

Make sure that you do a thorough research before you finalize your keywords and optimize your website for better visitor traffic.