Top 10 Firefox plugins

1. Adblock Plus. If you have ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on a site that often take longer to download than everything else on the page, install Adblock Plus and get rid of them. Right-click on a banner and choose "Adblock" from the context menu, and the banner won't be downloaded again.

2. Colorful Tabs. This simple add-on makes a strong colorful appeal. It sets each tab to a different color and makes them easy to distinguish while beautifying the overall appearance of the interface. After a long day of research when you have lots of browser windows open, this makes online page viewing easier on the eyes.

3. ColorZilla. ColorZilla puts an eyedropper icon in your status bar. Click it and you'll get a crosshair cursor. As you run this over a Web page, the RGB values of the pixel under the crosshair will display in the status bar, both as three separate values and as a hex value (e.g., R:255, G:255, B:255 | #FFFFFF). I use this all the time if I'm trying to match colors; i.e. a font color to an the primary background on an image, for example.

4. GMail Manager. This Gmail notifier is great if you have multiple Gmail accounts. It allows you to receive new mail notifications along with viewing account details including unread messages, saved drafts, spam messages, labels with new mail, space used, and new mail snippets.

5. MeasureIt. After installing this extension, you'll have a small ruler icon on the left side of your status bar. When you click on it, your browser window will fade out a little, and you'll have a crosshair cursor. Drag the cursor over a section of the screen that you want to measure. Next to the box is its height and width, measured in pixels. I use this all the time when trying to measure the size of images. When you're finished, just hit the Escape key to turn it off and return to normal viewing of the page.

6. Quirk Search Status. Search Status allows you to see how any web site you visit is performing. When you land on a page, SearchStatus lets you view its Google PageRank, Google Category, Alexa popularity ranking, Compete.com ranking, SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank, Alexa incoming links, Alexa related links and backward links from Google, Yahoo! and MSN. This combined search-related information means you can view not only the link importance of a site (according to Google and Linkscape), but also its traffic importance (according to Alexa and Compete), so providing a balanced view of site efficacy. I use this all the time to determine whether a site has enough traffic to warrant accepting a joint venture proposal.

7. Scrapbook. ScrapBook helps you to save Web pages and easily manage your saved collections. Major features are: saving web pages or snippets of a page, saving a web site, organizing the collection in the same way you do bookmarks, full text search and quick filtering search of the collection, and editing of your collected pages.

8. Session Manager. Session Manager helps you manage your Firefox tabs. If you visit the same sites every day, all you need do is open all the sites in separate tabs and/or windows, and then use Session Manager to save the session with a distinct name. Then, you simply go to Tools > Session Manager, pick your session, and all the windows and tabs open up just as you saved them. And, Session Manager tracks your sessions as you surf, and if Firefox (or your system) crashes, you can recover the selection of tabs you had open when it crashed.

9. Tabs Open Relative. Tabs Open Relative makes all new tabs open to the right of the current tab, rather than at the far right of the tab bar. This reduced a huge annoyance I had with how the Firefox browser worked.

10. XMarks (formerly Foxmarks) provides seamless bookmark synchronization between your computers and browsers via their synchronization server. Your bookmark (and optionally password) data is securely stored and backed up on their servers and is available online, as well. After you install the add-on, click on the notification to set up Xmarks and start backing up and synchronizing your bookmarks. Install Xmarks on each computer you use, and it seamlessly integrates with your web browser and keeps your bookmarks safely backed up and in sync across all of your computers. Secure Password Sync is an optional Xmarks feature.

Note: To locate these, search for the plug-in extensions here: addons.mozilla.org 

Link building - 5 simple tips

As the online market place continues to warm up to the idea of SEO, link building has become center stage as it tends to be the most time consuming and crucial part of any internet marketing strategy. Link building services are the most commonly outsourced aspect of SEO. This process involves finding qualified and thematically relevant one-way linking partners who will link back to your website.

At first glance this sounds easy and there are hundreds of automated products out there that claim to add thousands of back links overnight. The truth is there are no short cuts in cultivating authoritative back links for a site. Link building companies spend many hours link building by hand in order to get the best results. Spammy automated products often don't cultivate valuable links and tend to do more harm than good. Here are a couple quick suggestions to help you get started.

1. Know What Keywords You're Targeting

Link building strategies are an extension of your current SEO practice. You'll want to reference the list of keywords you have selected to optimize your site. Make sure that the anchor text of the link has the keyword you are targeting. For example, if you're targeting the keyword "baby names" you'll want to place that keyword in the anchor text of the link. I've seen many companies go after links by using their company name. Although this does boost link popularity it fails to pass popularity for a specific keyword and can be seen as a failed attempt.

2. Develop a Link Building Strategy

There are many strategies link building companies use to source qualified back links to their clients. The most tedious but often most rewarding method is manual linking requests also known as "cherry picking". This method allows you to obtain exceptionally qualified links which can really help boost your position in the search engine results page (SERPS). A good place to start with manual link building is to look at your suppliers, vendors, clients, related organizations associations and more.

Besides manual link requests other well known tactics include:

  1. directory submission (Dmoz, Yahoo Directory, Joe Ant)
  2. article submission (ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com)
  3. optimized press releases (PRWeb.com)
  4. social media outlets (FaceBook, Linked In)
  5. bookmarking sites (Digg, Reddit, Furl)
  6. Blogs (niche blogs)
  7. Forums (niche forums)
  8. Classifieds (niche classifieds)

3. Identify Thematically Relevant and Authoritative Linking Sources

Search engines see links as votes of confidence for your site. The more relevant and authoritative the site, the more consideration is given to the link and the subsequent keyword in the anchor text. It really pays off to focus on the quality of your links rather than the quantity. It is also important for your link building to look natural and not an attempt to deceive search engine spiders in search of links. Try looking for sites within your industry rather than general, unrelated sites to get links from.

A good example of this would be content creation and distribution. Try creating content on a relevant subject of which you can speak authoritatively. An example of this would be a SEO company writing a short article on 5 simple ways companies can start link building and placing it on an authoritative, industry relevant site like this one. Remember, before placing a link on a site (or making a request), ask yourself three questions:

  1. Does a link to my website belong here (does it look natural)?
  2. Is this site relevant and authoritative?
  3. Is there any benefit to my potential customers?
  4. Look for the onsite attributes of the linking site

4. Determine Where Your Link Will Reside

Once you've nailed down a potential linking partner that represents the overall quality and thematic authority that your site deserves you'll need to see where your link will reside.

Here are a couple guidelines that I look for when placing links on a site. I try to get my links no more than a few clicks away from the homepage. The page must be thematically relevant and recently cached by Google's search engine (this lets me know that the page has been indexed by Google). I also take a look at the number of external (outbound) links leaving that page. I try to keep the number of external links below 50 as it will dilute the effect of the page. Lastly, I look at the page the link will be placed on. For some sites this is harder to control, but if you have the option you should know where the most valuable locations are. I always try to get my links in line with thematically relevant content, like an article or blog post. I've found this produces some of the best results. Try to avoid placing your links on a "sponsored" or advertisers section that runs throughout the entire site. Also avoid footer links as rumor has it Google has devalued links buried in the footer of the site. Links placed at the top of the page or inserted into the site's navigation also tend to do quite well. Bottom line is that your links need to look like they belong and provide value to the user and the site it is published on.

5. Be Aware of "No-Follow" Links

Within the last 5 years Google developed the concept of the "no-follow" link. The "no-follow" code is inserted into your link and instructs the Google spider to ignore it. The "no-follow" link can be seen used most commonly in blog comments and forum posts. This initiative was set forth to combat spam and automated linking mechanisms that would throw links automatically on blog comments and forum posts.

There are a lot of SEO professionals that will only place a link if it is a "do-follow" link, meaning it doesn't have the "no-follow" attribute. I tend to disagree with this notion especially when the link in question is on a highly trafficked authority site. If it makes sense for the link to be there, then add your link. Even though Google won't give you any credít for it, it will be seen by thousands of people who may visit your site and link to you themselves because your site is highly relevant. I call this concept indirect link building. You are influencing and promoting your site to potential linking partners.

Link Building is a very time consuming process and link building companies spend a lot of time researching, testing and improving their techniques. Link building services are available for companies that don't have the time to invest in manual link building. The bottom line is that with a little help anyone can link build and move their site up the SERPS.

3 Easy ways to get HQ SEO links!

Follow or No Follow?

Note, I do not concern myself whether a blog or resource is a ‘follow’ or no follow resource. I like links from anywhere as it is always targeted to my market and also looks more natural.

1. Comment Love
Comment luv is a popular wordpress plug-in that displays the last post from your blog when you make a comment. This provides you a nice keyword related deep anchor text link. 
To locate blogs in your niche that use this plug-in use this search in Google:

“title=”CommentLuv Enabled”” KEYPHRASE

(be sure to replace the keyphrase with your target term). Once you get the results make a valuable comment on the top ranking blogs and you will get a nice juicy link back.

2. Squidoo
To locate Squidoo lenses in your niche that allow links use this search in Google:

KEYPHRASE + site:squidoo.com + “0 points”

Next click on the high ranking Squidoo lens. Go down to ‘list” and at the bottom and click on “Add To This List”. Add your website URL to the list. Make sure the description includes your keywords and vary them for each lens you add links to….

3. Youtube
To locate Youtube channels in your niche that allow comments:

“KEYPHRASE” “Channel Comments” site:youtube.com/user

Go down to comments at the bottom and make a useful comment about the channel. People will follow you back to your channel…

Important
Use this information wisely and add real value when you make comments. Spammy comments will get you nowhere fast.

SEO for pay-per-click marketing.

So here is a basic formula of how you want to out line your ppc campaigns.

• Researched Keywords
• Researched Ad Copy
• Researched Website Content
• Web 2.0 Property’s
• Article Link in footer
  

Those three elements paint a basic ppc campaign for your ppc marketing. Here is the break down of your campaign.

Keyword Research  

Now there are a ton of keywords you can fight for. Of course choosing the high traffic ones such as “make money online”, “home business”, work from home” etc. Are very difficult to stay on target for because they cost an arm and a leg to use. So if you want to do some serious keyword research try long tailing those keywords and bringing more value to your keyword and more targeted. So lets say I used make money online and expanded the term to target my specific niche. Which is people search. So you would use “make money online with people search”. Even though this keyword is very broad, it does target exact people who are looking to make money online with people search. Which will do one of many things for you, lower your cost dramatically and bring up your click through so you get a high quality score. Now if you want to find out what keywords to target you can use keyword spy tools, thing such a “hexatrack” or “ppcspy” and other you can google about but I wont post the links because per the rules you are not allowed to post links with optin forms on the websites. As long as your keywords are long tail your costs for keywords wont be high. Its just broadening your keyword marketing and forcing google to lower your costs because there is absolutely no competition in this market.

Researched Ad Copy

This is very crucial to your ppc marketing needs. In order for you to get an high quality index with your ad copy it really needs to be relvant to your website. So you dont want to use “work from home ” keyword and your whole website is about “affiliate programs”. This will raise your costs and get you a real low quality score. This will also force you to pay what ever search engines you are using a high cost per click. So do some research on your website and connect the dots with some of the most important info on your website to your Ad copy. For example if I am targeting “make money online with people search” then in my ad copy I might use.

headline: Make Money With People Search!
body: How i Make $1 With People Search Online
url: www-mmm.com

Now on my website it should have some what the same headline and body in my website content. I mean even if the domain shows up somewhere it wont hurt your score but even maybe bring it up.

Researched Website Content

Keeping it relevant is key to your quality index and cost per click. PPC search engine marketing requires alot of testing and relevance. This is what it is all about, keep everything connecting and staying in the right direction or flow of the content. If you go off course with your content then you are just wasting your money. When your research your website content, you want to see what your niche can offer people. Other than posting I make $2 a day with this, you want to give some benefits of what this will do for your leads. Create a sense of urgency if they dont signup. Your prospect needs to feel compelled by emotional triggers that say “hey I have to signup with this now!”. There are couple things you can do to create website copy so that you can achieve this. If you are serious about making money online,this is something you might want to educate yourself in unless your happy with using affiliate websites already created for you.

How to research for website content?

Well what ever keywords you are gonna target find out if there is anyone else in your niche using the same keywords as you. Now you can scan there website and take splices of their campaign to give you an idea of how to create your website. Please remember, that anything you put on your website needs to relate to your ppc marketing campaign. So this means adding those same keywords in your content, meta tags, meta description. For free meta tags,description tools you can find them by doing a google search.

Web 2.0 property’s

This can be one of the most powerful tools you can use. How ever you dont want to make your web 2.0 property too visible, if you can put them there with some nice faded images with tags in the images to let the search engine know they are there then you can score some serious bonus points with the search engines. Here is why you need to add these things to your website.

• 1. Google loves these things because it reveals this to them. It shows them you are not some scam website, that you dont mind leaving a bread crumb trail back to your business which is a real business opportunity.
• 2. It also provides more information regarding your niche.

So if you create some social network profiles for the four major ones in the world, then you would actually keep the content on those social network profiles targeted to your ppc marketing campaign. So in case that person decides to get curious, they will basically be heading over to another sales page. But do your best to hide those images or links because you dont want those leads leaving your website, you just want to bring up your quality index.

ex: youtube image | facebook image | twitter image | myspace image

Embed your profile links in each of the images and create image tags so the search engines know what they are looking at.

Article footer links

This is a very powerful method that I have learned about and tested. Now if you cannot automate this here is what you do. Lets say you are targeting 5 really high target keywords. ex. make money online, work from home, home business, affiliate marketing, affiliate programs etc. Now what we would do is create 5 articles, 1 per keyword all relating to each keyword. This article needs to be targeted towards the keyword and keeping it relevant towards your website and content. Everything has to connect. Now after we have created an article on a TEXT NOTE PAD first or word doc, and edited it. We now create a new note pad doc called index.html. So what we would do is just save each new article we created on our note pad and save them all as index.html. You can do them all the same so just put the keyword before index so you know which one is which. Next step is to create the links and keywords in the footer of your website. So it would look something like this.

Affiliate Programs | Make money online | Work at Home | Affiliate Marketing | Home business
copyrights @2009 your name All rights reserved

Facebook image link | Youtube image link | Myspace image link | Twitter image link

Now each keyword you see above will lead to a new index page. So if they click on affiliate programs its gonna lead to this page like this. www-yourdomain-ws/affiliateprograms
We dont care so much if they click on it, but we do care that google sees the relevance of our keyword and article content that helps bring up our quality score. To create this new index directory you need to go to your FTP and right click on your domain after you have logged in and just create a new file name in your domain. So you would call it affiliate programs or whatever keyword you are targeting.

Payperclick keyword groups

Now we want to create three ad groups. high converting keywords, test keywords, BAD keywords.

high converting keywords: these are the keywords that are converting for you and giving you the most value for your money.

test keywords: this is where you test out your keywords to see which ones are which and categorize them in there proper level of conversions and cost. If something is working then move it up to the next one and make sure it is not running any more in your test campaign.

bad keywords: this is the group you want to put all your keywords that are not converting and costing you too much to make a conversion. Just because you get 100 click and 5 conversions that is not worth it. If its costing you more than $3 per conversion then you are wasting your money. There is one reason why this is not worth it to you. Because if you are paying more than $3 bucks to get a direct optin then thats a huge waste of money. The most you should be spending to get a optin conversion with just name and email is $3. If you want name email and phone number then it should be no more than $5 per conversion. After you have moved your bad keywords into this group, make sure this group is paused or turned off. You should not be running this group!

Remember to move your keywords accordingly and dont forget to turn them off if you dont want to run them.

Now once you have moved your high converting keywords into the high converting keywords group, you want to create one Ad copy per keyword. This will do a number of things that I am sure you can figure out.

So here is method I use, but might not work for you! so use at your own risk!

When you run your campaign, to get a high CTR and Quality Score, this is what I do to do that. I put my daily cost for my first day at $15. Now I put my cost per click at $5. Now what happens is I might only get 3 clicks, but my CTR is at almost 75%. What happens now is I do the same for the next day. After two days of doing this and $30 of testing, you quality index and cost per click can be moved down to what ever you want. After this I move my cost per click down to wholesale prices. So for instance yesterday I might have paid $5 for make money online. Well today I will be only paying $0.50 cents or less. Maybe even less depending if you followed some of the format I have shown you or some of the tips and tricks you have learned your self.

Why "Amazing Opportunity" is a scam???

The Internet is bursting with excellent opportunities to make money.... Unfortunately, it's also teeming with unscrupulous scammers who seek to get rich by scamming honest people out of their hard-earned money.

I want to help you SAVE 1000s of dollars by making sure you can recognize a scam when you see one!

One of the most popular scams out there is the "business in a box" hoax. If you are currently in the process of looking for a business idea, chances are you will come across this kind of scam.

Think about it... If a company is selling you an opportunity to sell their product, chances are they've sold the exact same opportunity to thousands of other people.

(After all, why would they limit their profits by selling the rights to that product only to you?)

That means you have to compete against thousands of other people who are selling the exact same product, with the same website, using the exact same marketing strategies you are!

Do you want be contending with that many IDENTICAL competitors? (Nope!)

Not only that -- if the product really was that hot, why isn't the company selling it itself, instead of merely selling the opportunity to sell it?

... Because they know they're not going to make much money that way, that's why.

To make sure that YOU don't get sucked in by this kind of scam, we're going to show you how to filter the REAL money-making opportunities from all the B.S. out there, with our handy "Scam Detector Check List."

Whenever you come across a possible business opportunity, simply consult this handy checklist. It'll help you discover if it is a real opportunity -- or a real waste of money.

You know you're dealing with a scam IF:

#1. The company can't prove a successful track record
If you've never heard of the company before -- and they can't offer solid proof they've got a successful track record -- then how can you trust them to help YOU make money?
Be skeptical. Ask questions. If they say they're a successful company, ask for proof!

#2. You can't talk to a company representative in person
Before you make a significant investment in a business opportunity, give the vendors a call. Talk to them in person. Ask them hard questions.
If they don't make it easy for you to talk to them in person, then don't do business with them!

#3. Former customers have lousy things to say about the product
A little bit of research goes a long way. Try typing "the name of the program + scam" or "the name of the program + customer review" into Google and see what results you get.
If the majority of the results are from former customers saying the product is a scam or a waste of money, then whatever you do, don't make the same mistake THEY did!

#4. 1000s of other people are selling the EXACT same thing
If your "business in a box" package includes a product for you to sell, do a search on the name of the product in Google and go through the results. How many people are selling the exact same product? Say hello to your competition!
(And how many of them are using the exact same website the company is trying to get YOU to buy?)
If a lot of people are selling that product -- and you can't see any way to offer a unique selling proposition that makes your offer stand out from the crowd -- then quite frankly, you're going to find it extremely difficult to make any money at all.

#5. They can't show you legitimate testimonials from recent customers
If you are making a significant investment in a business opportunity, the company you are purchasing from should be willing to put you in contact with other successful customers. We get this request all of the time, and have numerous successful customers who are happy to give us a personal reference at a moment's notice.
(If you'd like to take a look at how we use those testimonials on our salesletters, please look at our sales page for our best-selling course,
Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet.
Look for testimonials that names, photographs, and URLs, if possible. The more information that proves the testimonial giver is a real person, the better.
If the testimonial has a URL, go to that person's website and check it out. Does it look like the website of someone who's making good money? Look for the contact info on the site and then email that person to ask him or her directly about the product you're thinking about buying.
If the person says yes, it really is a good deal, and is still experiencing good results with that product, then chances are it's the real deal.
However, be on the watch for DATED testimonials. If people were able to make money using this package four years ago -- but the profits have long since dried up -- then the product's not going to do you much good now, is it?

#6. The company is charging YOU money to sell THEIR products
If a company is making a product that millions of people are going to want to buy, why wouldn't they simply sell it themselves -- instead of making other people pay for the opportunity to sell it for them?
The truth is, companies like this KNOW their "affiliates" aren't going to generate any sales. That's why they need to get your money up front!
Take it from someone who has been running a highly successful affiliate program for years. If someone wants to become an IMC affiliate and sell our products for us, we'd never make them pay. Why should they? They're doing us a favor!

#7. The company makes outrageous income claims without backing them up with proof
If a company says their product will have you earning tens of thousands of dollars within a matter of weeks, BE SKEPTICAL. There is no magic bullet on the Internet that can promise a five-figure income in 30 days or less.
The truth is, building a profitable business takes TIME. Sure, you can have a profitable business in less than a month... but you'll probably have to wait a few more months before the money really starts pouring in.
So whenever you see outrageous income claims, ask yourself -- where's the proof?
Look for testimonials that back up these claims. If someone claims to have made incredible money from using this system, track them down via their URL and ask them if it's really true.
And be sure to listen to your "inner radar" to determine whether the person is genuine or not.
Above all, do your research and ask lots of questions. If you follow these guidelines, chances are you will make the right decisions and pursue the right opportunities.
When it comes to online success, there is no magic pill. If you want to start a real business on the Internet you need to be prepared to put in the time and effort to build it.

... Of course, there IS one complete business-building system that DOES deliver on all its promises....

ACME PEOPLE SEARCH

Fast building lucrative residual income

1. Do not target newbies unless you want to spend a great deal of time working with them.

2. Do not use free or expect the value in your leads to be terrible. Meaning most of them are broke.

3. Do not bribe your leads into joining your business, if you do this, then you can most definitely know they are there for only one reason and one reason only, for the bribe not the long term residual income.

4. "TARGET EXPERIENCED MARKETERS". This is the key to building a massive residual income. By targeting people who already know how to market online you are doing a couple things to your marketing efforts:

• you putting your business into automatic and people or leads start building your network for you
  
• you spending more time marketing and making money and less time trying to teach people the abc's of marketing.

5. Have a training website or training set up for your newbies, so when they come to you for answers you can just say "i have a tutorial made already at my training website".

6. Capture emails and build your data base of hungry internet marketers. These people will benefit you in the long run especially if your providing the value you need to be providing to keep people interested in you, and your business opportunities.

These are the basic elements of building a lucrative residual income. Of course not everyone is gonna get lucky and find that diamond in the rough, but when you do you will be very happy you spent more time on something very profitable and productive and spending less time targeting people still wet behind the ears. Let those newbies come to you and find those experienced marketers.

Use these methods in your PPC campaign and I can bet you your lead quality goes up!

Secret GDI Marketing

TIP #1

After set up all marketing strategies this should become your main job! Make contact with small to medium sized websites. Tell the webmaster about your site. Most sites will have large mailing lists. If you can get the webmaster to sign up and then send a message to a few 1000 people you will have a great second level commission!

or/and

Almost all webmasters have Google Adsense or adverts from other providers on their site. 7 years ago these were great - you can make a lot of money: $1 to $2 per click. Now every site has them, which means the ad revenue is shared between more webmasters, which is turn results in very low payouts as low as $0.01 per click. Webmasters are desperate to find something that pays well for their traffic. So you should contact them and sell the idea about Acme or GDI as a replacement to their adverts. Search for sites, find the contact page and send them first email & after reply follow up message for example. Some will ignore you but don't feel rejected. I know this works, believe me...;) You wiil only need a handful of webmasters to be very successful. Also, there are millions of webmasters out there who are sick of being paid small amounts per click. So as I mentioned this is really the core area you should focus on. In 1h you could make contact with 50 webmasters.

TIP #2

If you can duplicate this week after week and get your team to do the same you will be on your way to $5000 a month easily. This is by far the easiest method I have used!
GDI requires you to buy 10 DVD's ($50) before you are eligible to earn the weekly bonus pool. GDI pays $100 for every five affiliates you bring into GDI that become paid affiliates.

How you cover your cost for the DVD's and also your guaranteed $100 bonus?

Find five people you trust and whom will listen to your scheme. Now you tell all five of them you are gonna pay for there way into GDI for the first month ($50) and you are gonna show them how to duplicate what you are doing. You invest $100 into this but...

• you guarantee your self $100 bonus
• you pay for your initial 10 DVD's that are required.

Now once you have made the money back from GDI's bonus pool, you take that $100 and reinvest it into 10 memberships. By do not do this unless you have ten people in your life that you trust. Or stick with 5 people if it is needed.

SIMPLY SOLUTION - YOU DON'T NEED MLM/GDI FOLLOWERS!!! YOU NEED VERIFIED PAYPAL ACCOUNTS!!!

Now that you invested $100 you make a $200. You just made $100 on your investment. So guess what. You now have $200 to invest into more memberships. Of course its gonna get a little crazy so after a while you might want to send traffic to a website explaining the format of your marketing
method, because even I found out that I didn't have that many people in my life who wanted to listened to my MLM scheme of duplication.

This smart action guarantee you bonuses the hard part is finding those people in your life that are optimistic and looking to make some sweet cash.

Article Marketing

I always try to find free ways for my downlines to build their business as I understand that they are new and may not have enough budget to invest on internet marketing tools for their promotion effort. Here is another free way for you to promote your GDI/Acme business for the long term and receive monthly increasing residual income. There has been many explanations why you should carry out article marketing by submitting articles to directories to build traffic to your websites hence new signups for many years to come.

You should start submitting articles to ArticlesBase.com - article directory!

How to submit articles:
1. Sign up for a free account at ArticlesBase.com
2. Write your own articles on GDI/Acme or re-write the ready articles. Remember, you have to re-write of your articles may not get approved by the editors
3. Include link back to your GDI website (max 3 links) in the article content
4. Include link back to your GDI website again in your author bio box (max 3 links)
5. Submit the article for approval and watch your article spread all over the net for many years to come
The benefits of submitting articles to articles directories:

Article Marketing is one key factor in search engine optimization and traffic generation techniques in internet marketing strategy that can determine the success and failure of a website and online businesses. There are several ways to carry out article marketing including submitting articles to article directories or submitting articles to blog networks.
Here are the 10 benefits of submitting articles to article directories and how it can help improve your business online.

1. Free marketing
Most article directories allow you to include links in the article that you can direct to your website. If you write an article with content related to your product or services, you are able to market them indirectly and include a link back to your products and services. This result in a free marketing media for your offers.

2. Building image and credibility
Most article directories allow you to have an author bio box at the bottom of every articles you submitted. You can use your author bio box to promote your business or personal brand to build a brand image for yourself. In the author box, remember to promote your website by including a link back to your website for more information on the related articles you have submitted. When you have submitted enough “good” articles read by unlimited visitors to the article directories from all over the world, you will soon be seen as an expert in your industry who has a wide knowledge in the field. Being listed as “authors” in article directories helps promote yourself as an expert in your field too!

3. Exposure to article directories visitors and other websites
Article directories enjoyed millions of visitors online and the article you have submitted can be viewed by these visitors who browse article directories. These readers can be direct consumers or researchers reading for knowledge or even website owners who are looking for content for their websites / blog.

4. Increase traffic to your website:
With the links that you are allowed to include in your article content and your author bio box, you have created an opportunity for readers to click on the links to come to your website. When crafted in an interesting manner, these links will increase traffic to your website especially when your articles are being chosen by website owners to post in their own website and distributed all over the internet.

5. Viral marketing in articles
If your articles were written well and being chosen by website owners to post in their website or blog, this automatically create a viral effect for your content. Your article can then be spread virally all over the internet with links to your websites as well as your personal advert in your author bio box.

6. RSS feeds syndication
Most article directories as well as blogs now comes with RSS (Really Simple Syndication) technology which produces RSS feeds for all website / blog contents. These articles can then be distributed easily through RSS feeds and spread even further receiving more views and clicks that can help you can gain traffic to your website.

7. Generate sales and leads without having a website
Even if you do not own a website, you will also benefit from article marketing, since the article directories as well as website owners who posted your article in their websites can act as your website. Since your articles come with an author bio box as discussed above, you can include your contact information such as address, contact number or email address instead of links to your website to allow potential clients to contact you. As a suggestion, it always advisable to create a simple web presence online even if you do not know how to build a website you can create a free blogger or wordpress blogs, or even facebook and twitter page that you can link to from the bio box.

8. Reach new customers
With a wide readership of article directories all over the world and the chances of your articles spreading online, submitting articles to article directories can help you reach new customers that you have not though of before. You article and your business can be exposed to millions of potential customers all over the world.

9. Get continuous traffic to your website
For years articles submitted to article directories usually stay in the directories forever, meaning that your articles can continue to bring traffic to your site for many years to come. Your articles may get picked up anytime and reprinted years later too.

10. Articles spread automatically by scripts recently
There has been many scripts that pulls articles automatically from article directories. These scripts will further help spread your articles to websites all over the internet providing you with backlinks and traffic to your websites but this automatization isn't free of charge.


Blog Carnivals is a kind of blog event. It is similar to compiling a magazine, focusing on a niche subject, and is published on a regular schedule, often weekly or monthly. Each edition of a blog carnival is in the form of a blog article that contains permalinks to other blog articles on the niche topic.

Blog Carnival posts are generally written by the author by soliciting relevant contributions from interested people. The author collects links to these submissions, edits and annotates them and publishes the resulting round-up to his or her blog. Many carnivals have a home page or principal organizer, who lines up guest bloggers to host each edition. This means that the carnival travels, appearing on a different blog each time.

Communities of blog readers, writers, and edition hosts form around specific carnivals. The carnivals provide an aggregation of recent posts by the community on a given topic, and the host provides a level of editing and annotation that helps readers find posts they are interested in. Writers who submit their articles to blog carnivals are rewarded with traffic (if the host decides to give them a backlink and, perhaps, a positive review).

Blog carnivals are being launched all the time from different blog owners for different topics. Some websites such as BlogCarnival.com often host a list of blog carnivals that were and currently active. You may browse through the big list and find suitable carnivals, with related topics to your blog and submit your related blog post to these carnivals.

It is totally free for you to submit your articles with links to blog carnivals. Submitting content or articles to blog carnivals are somewhat different than submitting articles to article directory. With article directories, you do not really need to host your article in your own website or blog and simply include a link to any url you wish. With Blog Carnivals, you will need to actually submit articles that are hosted in your website. In other words, you are not just submitting articles to post but submitting a link to your website where your article.
What you need to do is post the articles with your GDI/Acme links (or any website) to the Blog Carnivals.

If you have submitted a good content, you will be greatly rewarded by blog carnival owners with a reference to your article and get unlimited amount of traffic to your websites for many years to come earning you residual passive income!

Offline Marketing

Offline marketing can be very effective but only after massive action and
remember - be creative!!!

Tell your friends. I'm sure you can think of a few friends who would be prepared to join you on your venture. Send them a link to your OWN sales page and explain in person all about the system.

Business Cards. You can distribute your cards anywhere offline where you see potential prospects. If you talk to someone about Acme/GDI business model and they are interested it looks very unprofessional they have to write your web address on some papers. GDI have their card designs in the back office or you can design your own card that matches your site. Some examples of words you can use: Income Opportunity at... use your website address / Global Online Income at... / Work At Home at… / Earn Residual Income at… / Income for Life at… / My Other Business… / My Retirement Plan… / My Online Business… - use your imaginations, I am sure you can think of better catchy phrase that will attract people to go to your website.

Stickers on the car. If you get a good design and a tag line with your website address that’s really cute I am sure nobody would mind you sticking the stickers on their car - family and friends help you promote:)

Posters and leaflet. ex. use shops you know to promote GDI .

Videos. GDI produced the videos DVD that you can purchase (at a very low price) to send out to your prospects offline and after 10 purchases you will qualify to weekly bonuses!

Personal meetings. If you are already in MLM or network marketing business, then you should already have the network to get prospects. Successful MLM individuals will understand the GDI/Acme business and can always add another monthly residual income to their portfolio. Meet up with them and request them to check out your websites or give them a GDI DVD to educate them.

Downline Builders

GDIIncomeTeam.com - If you have been looking for a quick win-win viral marketing system that will automatically increase your monthly GDI Income, this powerful GIT System will do just that!

FreeMoneyTeam.com - 100% Free Money Programs are programs that do not require any fees to join and earn as a member. You'll simply get paid daily for completing simple and quick online tasks such as visiting websites, reading emails, surfing online, viewing ads, completing free offers and participating in short surveys.

FreeTrafficTeam - Powerful viral marketing system that will automaticaly supply daily targeted traffic to your site.

Private Label Rights (PLR) Full Package

Programs below help you start selling ebooks via internet.

ResellRightsMastery.com - Gain access to top quality resell rights items, private label articles, templates, beginner reseller strategies and much much more for FREE! ($197 VALUE)
Commission plan: 75% commission for your refferals membership upgrades: upgrade to Elite Artist Club - You earn $50.25, upgrade to Platinum Level - You earn $72.75, upgrade to Enterprise Version - You earn $110.25.

PrivateLabelSiteReviews.com - Brand New Report Reveals The Most Profitable PLR(Private Label Rights) Products Online - Yours FREE today! This report is updating every 4-6 weeks! ($97 VALUE)
Commisson plan: Earn $20.96 for each and every sale from one of your refferals (OTO IS CURRENTLY CONVERTING OVER 32%!).

ViralEbookExplosion.com - Imagine pressing a few buttons and instantly creating your very own branded cash producing viral ebooks that You can sell or give away! ($197 VALUE)

Commission plan: 70% commissions via Paypal for your refferals OTO purchase, 50% commission on the monthly membership program.

PayDotCom.com - Affiliate Marketing Network

PayDotCom.com is an affiliate management company which keeps track of affiliate payments which are paid for through Paypal. For those who haven't heard your customers do not need a Paypal account to buy anything through Paypal. Your customers may use their credit cards through Paypal's secure server. Paydotcom has a market place for shoppers and vendors. Vendors products are placed in the market place free of charge after one sale is made.

Why use Paydotcom for affiliate programs?

Free sign up for affiliates - It's to affiliate management companies advantage to have free sign up for affiliates since they receive a small percentage of each sale, which is how they make their money.

Free sign up for vendors - The free vendor sign up is for the first product. After that, there's a ridiculously low lifetime fee to submit an UNLIMITED number of products. Affiliates may sign up to sell as many products as they wish.

Individual sales or landing pages - completely separate sales page WITH the same account. Now my affiliates may select product which only go with the theme if their website if they have one.

Individual commissions per product - Different commissions can be setup per individual product.

Products can be linked - The merchant has the option of linking all or some of his/her products together. Thus ensuring affiliates are paid for upgrades during sales and even after the original product is purchased by the customer. I personally have linked ALL my products. I'd rather err on the side of my affiliate.

Recurring payments -Affiliates are paid for subscription services

Immediate payment through Paypal - For security, Clickbank makes vendors wait until five credit cards have been used before mailing a check. Paydotcom vendors receive immediate payment. Now vendors may withhold payment for affiliates up to 30 days depending on their return policy.

Return policy up to the vendors - One of Clickbank merchants' huge complaints is Clickbank's borderline insane customer blinks wrong return policy. Paypal will negotiate with complaints but they seem to understand both parties have rights. Since Paydotcom only manages the affiliate program, they have nothing to do with any negotiations.

Physical products can be sold through PDC! - That's correct. You're not limited to digital products, though they continue to be the most popular due to ease of delivery and instant gratification of customers. CDs to clothing may be sold through Paydotcom.

Search Engine Optimization for Google

In today's online world search engine rankings can make your business succeed, and while rankings in Yahoo and MSN are very valuable, their combined market value is still less than that of Google. This makes achieving top rankings in Google that much more important.

In this three-part series on How to Optimize for Google we will touch on a number of important aspects for top Google rankings including website optimization, links, Google Webmaster tools, and a number of other considerations.

Part 1 - Page Website Optimization.

THE RIGHT KEYWORDS
This article is not about keyword research so I will not spend too much time on this topic, however, I felt it was important to at least brush on this slightly.
Make sure that your targets are achievable. If you select the wrong keywords it can make your entire optimization experience essentially a waste. Choose keywords that are attainable but yet still provide a reasonable search frequency for your industry. Your phrase selection should also be targeted to bring qualified traffic to your site.
Using the hotel industry as an example, targeting the word "hotel" would make very little sense but by narrowing it down to "Victoria BC hotel" you now have less competition, and a more qualified audience. Keep your targets in perspective and go after the obtainable rankings.

WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION
There are many on-site factors that play a role in your search engine rankings. Here are a number of those factors and what you can do to improve your chances of success.

Title Tag
The title tag plays one of the most important roles in search results at Google, and is almost always the heading Google chooses for each of its listings. Placement of your target phrase is best used near the start of the tag and repeated again in the middle or near the end. Three uses of your target phrase may be helpful in some instances, as long as it is not too overwhelming. For best results each page on your site should have a totally unique title tag.
It is also important to remember that because Google will use this title as the main heading for your listing, you will want to keep it attractive to potential searchers. Try to also add a call to action, or other wording to help make your listing appear attractive to searchers.
To help illustrate the fact Google takes this tag into consideration, simply do a search for your target phrase and take a look at the titles of the top 10. I tried a search for a rather broad term "hotel" and saw that all 10/10 listings had it in the title tag, and 6/10 had it as the very first word. A quick scan showed that the entire top 30 either had the word hotel, or hotels in their title tags.
If you do only one thing to your website, make sure that all your title tags are relevant, unique, and contain your target phrase for each page.


Meta Description Tag
The Meta Description tag is still occasionally used by Google as the description which appears in the search results themselves. While this used to be a more common practice Google tends to use it most often on sites with very limited content, or those which are flash based. I have seen it still used for content rich sites, however this is less common.
The Meta Description tag still has an impact on search rankings. Your best bet when using this tag is to keep it short and sweet with your target phrase close to the start and not repeated more than 3 times. Like the title tag, each page on your site should have its own unique description tag.

Meta Keyword Tag
When it comes to Google this tag is useless, and won't influence your rankings. There is some speculation as to whether a spammy keyword tag can however, have a negative effect on Google rankings. As a result, if you do utilize a keyword Meta tag for the smaller engines, it is best to keep it clean and play it safe.

Density
Keyword density plays a role in overall rankings; however, it is not as cut and dry as it once was. Once upon a time there was a magic number that when used could almost guarantee top rankings.
This is no longer the case. Today the ideal density varies from industry to industry, phrase to phrase. To find out what density you should aim for, take the top 10 or 20 search results and see what percentage those sites are using. In most cases you will find that the majority of these sites have a very similar density to one another, and this average density is a good estimation of what you should aim for. (opitimum density 2-4%)

Body Text and Keyword Placement
The location of relevant text on your site will help establish the overall importance of your target phrase. While you do not want to overwhelm the engines and site visitors with a bombardment of target phrases at the top of the page, try to sprinkle in some instances as close to the top of the page as possible.

Synonyms
Be sure to include various synonyms for your target phrases within your body text on your site. Google will use these synonyms to tie in the overall relevance of the page for your main target phrases, which in turn can improve your odds.
To find possible synonyms you can use a thesaurus, but the best way is to search Google itself and see exactly what they consider to be similar. Simply search in Google for your target phrase preceded with a tilde, such as "~hotels". Next scan through the search results for any text Google has bolded. These are all words that Google considers to be related. Using the "~hotels" example Google brings up phrases such as 'travel', 'tourism', 'accommodation', as well as various hotel chain names such as 'Hilton Hotels'.

Keywords in Domain
There is still some speculation if having a target phrase as part of your top level domain (TLD) is of use to search rankings. From my experience, yes, there is value here, although, nothing like it was several years ago.
If you are starting off in the online world and are contemplating which domain to go for, consider one that uses your target phrase, assuming that it is both relevant to your business name, and uses no more than a single hyphen. While multiple hyphens in a domain can be successful, they are very common with highly spammy websites, so it is best to not take that route if possible.
While having a keyword located within your domain can provide some ranking juice, I would not suggest heading out and doing a domain swap. In most cases you would be better off working on your existing site than starting from scratch with a new domain.

Keywords in page specific URL
Using keywords for specific page URL's can also help add a little bit of value to your site, providing you use them responsibly. Consider using a keyword as a directory name and as part of a file name where it naturally makes sense to do so. If you have a website that focuses on tourism and includes local hotel listings, you may want to consider the following structure for your page on the Hilton:

MyTourismSite.com/Victoria/Accommodations/Hotels/Hilton.html

Heading Tags
Placement of target phrases within heading tags helps to establish the importance of those given phrases. That said do not over do it, or abuse it. Only place target phrases within a heading tag if it makes sense to do so, and don’t flood a page with numerous tags. Heading tags are not as critical as they once were, but still a good contribution to a well optimized page.

Link Anchor text
This is the actual text you click on as part of a link. When full or partial target phrases are used within your text links they help pass on some value to the linked page for those phrases. This is also true when considering surrounding text. When the content around the link is also relevant, the link holds slightly more value.
While a link that simply states “click here” or “www.domainname.com” does have its place, they provide considerably less value than a link that would use “discount hotels” as its anchor.

Image Alt Text
While image alt text still plays a minor role, its biggest part is within the use of image based navigation. If you have an image linked to another page, the alt text will be attributed much the same way as standard link anchor text is.
Image Alt text should always be short and to the point and should accurately describe either the image itself, or the page the image is linking to. Do not use alt tags as a place to stuff keywords.

Inline Links
These are links that are found mid sentence or mid paragraph as opposed to a simple listing of links as found in a menu or possibly on a sitemap. Links found mid paragraph tend to pass on a little more value from the surrounding text and can offer more relevance to the linked page.

Site Navigation
It is absolutely imperative that your website be fully spiderable by the search engines. This may seem obvious, but often webmasters overlook Google’s ability to crawl a website. Google has become very advanced in what links it can follow and how it can spider a website, but there are still some things that can cause significant roadblocks.

- Flash: One of the most commonly made mistakes is the use of flash. If flash is used as a sole means of site navigation then you can count on Google not viewing your internal pages, and having a significant disadvantage in terms of site rankings.

- Java Script / DHTML: These days most Java Script and even DHTML menus can be spidered by Google, however, this is not always the case. If your site utilizes any kind of fancy navigation and you are wondering why Google has not indexed your internal pages, check out Google’s Cached Text version of your page. If you do not see any text links, then your navigation may be invisible to Google.

- Images: Image based navigation has been safe for many years now, but if your site uses this form of navigation it is essential to have brief, relevant alt text on all your buttons. This alt text will act much like standard anchor text for text based links. This is not only for the purpose of search ranking value, but take a look at Google’s cached text version of your page. If you have image based links that do not have alt text, those links do not appear. This doesn’t mean Google won’t follow them, but for anyone viewing your site on a text based browser, your links will be invisible to them.

URL Structure
Avoid long elaborate URL’s with extraneous characters. While Google has reached a point where they can index massive URL strings, it is best to avoid them if at all possible. For dynamic sites consider utilizing mod rewrites to significantly clean up the URL to not only make it more search engine friendly, but more user friendly as well.

MyTourismSite.com/?locid=”victoria”&catid=”accommodations”
&type=”hotel”&comp=”hilton”

stands a better chance if cleaned up to read:

MyTourismSite.com/victoria/accommodations/hotels/hilton.htm

SUMMARY
Basic website optimization is a critical component for successful placement in Google but is only part of the overall picture.

Part 2 - Links & Tools

LINKS
Links are very important in today’s Google rankings, but just how many links you need will depend on both the competitiveness of your target phrases, and the quality of the incoming links themselves.
Essentially the number one rule of links is to keep it relevant! Topical relevance is very important in order for inbound links to give your site the most value. If the page that links to you is relevant that is good, if the entire site linking to you is relevant, that is better.
First to get an idea of how many links you may need, take a look at the top 10 ranking sites in Google and record how many links Yahoo is noting for each site. (This is because Google does not display anywhere near all the links they have noted). The average of this count is often a good indication of how many links your site may need.
There are many different ways to get links to your site including the age old reciprocal link trade, directory links, article based links, and links from press releases.

Reciprocal Links
Reciprocal linking has seen its value drop considerably over the past few years, however, if the site you are trading with is relevant you can still receive value from these links.

Paid Links
Google frowns on paid links, however that is not to say that they don’t work. Often you can find highly reputable and relevant websites which are offering paid advertising spots. If these links are coded to link directly to your website without passing through any tracking redirects, you will in many cases see value in the form of both direct traffic and increased link densities and rankings.

Articles
Writing and distributing industry specific articles is a great way to help increase both your link counts and site traffic. Consider writing articles on a regular basis and submitting them to some of the more popular services such as EzineArticles. Be sure to include a link to your site from somewhere within the article, or at the very lest within your bio. Try to use a target phrase as part of the anchor text for additional value.

Press Releases
If something of importance has happened to your company such as a new product launch, or other notable achievement - essentially anything news worthy, put out a press release. Submit this press release through services such as PRWeb or PRNewsWire. Again, be sure to include a target phrase as part of the anchor text.

There are also a number of places you can get links that have basically turned south, and are not generally recommended. These include signatures in form posts, guest books, and other typically free links.

Forum Posts
Forum posts can help to marginally increase your link counts; however, with this one you must be careful. Only add a link to your site in your signature if both the forum allows it, and you are a respected member of the forum. If you are a solid contributor and your posts have depth and meaning, and the forum is highly relevant to your site, then having a link in your signature may give your site some juice. Posting wildly to random forms will in most cases get yourself banned, and will be both a waste of time and potentially make you and your site look bad.

Guest Books
In nearly all cases, do not post your link to guest books. If you happen to stumble upon a guestbook that is highly relevant to your site, the other comments are relevant to your site, and you have something useful (and again relevant) to say, then perhaps consider it, but typically focusing on links from guest books is considered SPAM and is best avoided all together.

Blog Comments
Having a link from your blog comments is not necessarily a bad thing. If you find a relevant blog post of use, and have something relevant and constructive to say, don’t be afraid to enter your link into the “URL” field of the form, but don’t try stuffing links into the comment itself.

Link Farms & Bad Neighborhoods
These are sites that allow you to simply post your link no strings attached. They are mostly long scrolling pages with countless links. Stay away from them. If you see one, run in the other direction. These links are bad, will not help with your rankings, and in some cases can actually damage your rankings.

Stay away from sites that cross link with obvious spammers. These networks of SPAM sites are not ones you would want your site associated with, and if you achieve links from enough of these sites it can adversely impact your rankings. Even more important, NEVER link to any of these sites - as that will certainly tie in your connection to them and give Google reason to discount your rankings.

DMOZ, Yahoo and Other Directories
Directory based links can be of significant help, especially if they are from highly reputable directories, the two biggest being DMOZ.org and the Yahoo Directory.
Getting a site into DMOZ is like Gold. Google loves links from DMOZ and your site will reap the benefits. The big catch however is actually getting your site into the directory in the first place. Find the perfect category for your site and check to see if it has an editor. If you see a link “Volunteer to edit this category” try and find another relevant location. Pages without active editors take much longer to get listed into. Once you find the perfect directory submit your site every 4-6 months until listed. If you are lucky you will get in eventually.

Yahoo Directory is seen as an authority in the eyes of Google, and getting your site in will help your link reputation. This link does come at a price of $299 per year, but will play a role in helping your website achieve top rankings.

There are a number of other valuable directories out there that can help you with your search rankings. Before submitting to any directory the key is a combination of relevance and authority. If the directory is relevant and active it may be worth considering.

GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS
Google Webmaster Tools can be very useful for your optimization efforts. It may not directly help you obtain higher rankings, but can help you trouble shoot if you are experiencing problems. It will also allow you to remove URL’s that you don’t want indexed and set various preferences such as your domain, crawl rate, and geographic target.

XML Sitemaps
This is the most common reason people use Google Webmaster Tools - the submission of their XML sitemap. While you can use your robots.txt to have Google find your XML sitemap, by submitting it directly to Google you can check up on the spidering status.

Error checking
Webmaster Tools is also quite useful for checking on various error URL’s that Google may know about. Under the Diagnostics > Web Crawl you can view any errors that Google has to report on your site. By cleaning up any errors you can help increase your chances of rankings.

Links
From inside Google Webmaster Tools you can get a much clearer look at what sites Google is noting as having links to you, and give you a better indication of the need, if any, to increase your link counts.

WWW Preference
Be sure to select your domain preference under Tools > Set Preferred Domain. In nearly all cases you will want to select the version including the “www”

SUMMARY
Inbound links play a significant role in successful Google rankings. By focusing on relevant links, as well as by diversifying where you get those links from, you can build a solid foundation for your search rankings today and into the future.

Stay tuned for How to Optimize for Google Part 3 (of 3) where I will discuss other considerations including redirects, HTTP headers, and a number of other factors which play a role in successfully conquering Google.

Part 3 - Other Factors

Redirects
If you need to use redirects on your site it is very important to use the correct one. If a page is moving to a new location, or being removed all together, it is very important to have this page redirected to either the new location or the next closest page using a Permanent 301 Redirect. While rare, if a page is being moved to a new location for a short term, with the intent of it returning to the original location, then and only then, will you want to use a Temporary 302 redirect. For more information please see Redirects: Permanent 301 vs. Temporary 302

Non WWW Redirects
To help eliminate page rank split, and provide your site with a little extra value, implement a non-www redirect. What this redirect will do is change the URL to include the "www" whenever a URL is accessed that does not include it. This can help to consolidate links to the correct page and give your site some additional strength. For more help on Non WWW redirects please see: How to 301 Redirect Non-WWW to WWW URL's

HTTP Headers
Check your page headers! If you have implemented any form of redirect on your site including mod rewrites, check your HTTP headers. You may be surprised at what you find. Some forms of redirects may use a 302 code where you really want a 301. By checking your headers you can ensure all is well, and troubleshoot problems - HTTP Header Checker for your convenience.

Home Page URL
Never have more than one URL for your home page. If your home page is available and displays on more than one URL, then utilize 301 redirects on all but the main URL you want to focus on - in most cases "http://www.xyzname.com/". All your links pointing to the home page should direct to the exact same URL otherwise you will split the value of your home page into multiple duplicate URL's.
Google sees "http://www.xyzname.com" and "http://www.xyzname.com/index.shtml" as different pages, but displaying the same content. This splits the overall value of your home page, and can decrease the chances of rankings. By keeping it consistent with a single URL, you eliminate this split and retain more of the strength.
In theory having your home page split like this could bring with it duplicate content penalties, however, I have yet to see this actually happen - that said, it is best to avoid the risk all together.

XML Sitemap
XML Sitemaps are great for ensuring that Google and the other engines are able to spider your entire site. While an XML sitemap will not directly impact your search rankings it can help as Google is more likely to see any SEO based changes more quickly, which in turn can have an impact.

Robots.txt
This is the first file all search engines look for every time they visit your site. While placing a blank robots.txt file in your root folder will not help with search rankings, it will help reduce 404 errors appearing in your log files.
It is also highly recommended that if your site utilizes an XML sitemap, to include a call to this sitemap within the Robots.txt file. Simply add the following line to ensure that the major engines (including Google) can find your sitemap:

Sitemap: http://www.xyzname.com/sitemap.xml

Potential Blockages
If you are finding that your site is simply not being indexed, it is possible that you are blocking the spiders in one way or another.
Start with checking your main site navigation, if you are using Flash or some other fancy form of navigation that could be your problem right there. Next check your HTTP headers to ensure that your home page is returning a 2xx code which indicates that the clients' request was successfully received. Finally take a look at your Google Webmaster Tools for any noted errors. If you are blocking Google, chances are you will be able to uncover the issue with these steps.

Duplicate Content
Duplicate content can be quite damaging to your rankings. Ensure that all content on your site is unique. Don't steal or "borrow" content from another site, and don't cut and paste large portions of text from one page of your site to the next. By keeping all pages of your site entirely original you stand the best chances of getting a thumbs up from Google.

Fresh Content / Regular Updates
Update your content. In highly competitive markets, sites with old static content can often slip away. Keep your content fresh and updated to keep bringing Google back to your site. If they find new pages and updated pages with every visit, they will come back more often.

Site Age
The age of your site can also have an effect on search engine rankings. While there is little you can do (short of keeping the same domain) to help on this matter, remember that the longer your site is online, the better its chances for success. It pays to select the perfect domain right from the start and not to change domains mid-stream. Older sites that stand the test of time add a level of authority in Google's eyes. New sites seldom see rankings for competitive terms in their first year.
Note: Site Age is determined not by the date the domain was originally registered but rather by the date Google first discovered content on your site.

Load Time
Load time can have an impact in your Google AdWords Quality Score but it is unknown for sure if it can also impact your organic search rankings. It is best to keep your load time to as little as possible. If it is not already a part of the Google Algorithm, it likely will be soon. Besides, it is also best in order to give your site visitors the best experience possible.

Server Up Time
This can be a rather significant issue. If you find that your web hosting company has a history of down time, change hosts. If Google comes to visit your site once and it is down, not to worry, they will come back, but if Google visits your site often only to find that it is unavailable, you can find yourself with drastically depleted rankings.

Google Local
If you have a traditional brick and mortar store, consider submitting to Google Local. While this will not directly impact your regular organic rankings, you may find your site ranking above the organic results with a "local business results" map listing. This tends to be most common when your business is near the geographic center of a city, and when the search phrase uses a geographic modifier.

W3C Compliant Code
There is much speculation as to if W3C compliant code can have a positive impact on search rankings, and the majority believe “maybe” with some saying “yes”. Regardless, it is definitely a good idea to have your site be W3C Compliant if at all possible. Not only may it help you in terms of search rankings, but having compliant code can decrease load times, and help to ensure cross-browser compatibility, all of which are good things. If at all possible, it is recommended that sites be made to be compliant.
Many experts who took part in the SEOMoz “Google Search Engine Ranking Factors” lean towards it not being a big contributor, however, it may be an issue if Google has difficulties indexing a page properly.

A code validation service is available at validator.w3.org.

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME
I want to stress that this section is about things you should NOT do. These issues could be damaging to your rankings. If your site is implementing any of these, it may be best to remove it.

Hidden Text
This includes any text that you can simply not see when viewing the page. It may be text hidden in invisible div layers, text located below the fold with vertical scrolling disabled or even text on the same colored back ground (white text on a white background for instance). Whatever the case, hidden text can get your site into hot water and it is not recommended.

Excessive Keywords
Don’t go over board in placing target phrases within your body text. Stuffing keywords everywhere possible just because you can, is not only unlikely to help you achieve rankings, it could very well have the opposite effect.

Duplicate content
Large amounts of duplicated content or pages, as well as stealing or scraping content from other sites is one good way to get your site banned.

Doorway pages
Creating multiple websites or pages with nearly identical, yet slightly different content for the purposes of trying to grab some Google rankings is a good way to get your site into trouble.
If you have created pages of this nature for PPC campaigns, make sure that they are blocked from the search engines as to not get you into any hot water.

Cloaking
Simple - Don’t Cloak. In a nutshell cloaking is when you display different information to the search engines than you do to your human visitors. Google frowns on this, and if they catch you, watch out!

All Flash
Websites that are entirely flash based will not get you into trouble. The reason I have included it here however, is that they won’t do you many favors either. Sites that are all Flash, have little to no content for Google to digest and thus, drastically reduce your chance of rankings. If you must keep your “All Flash” site, it is recommended that you also create a secondary HTML version for the search engines and for those visitors who simply prefer it.

Frames (including iFrames)
Frames are also one of those things that won’t get you into trouble, but do significantly reduce your chances of rankings. If you want any chance of ranking in Google using a Frames site, be sure to copy your relevant content from each page into your ‘noframes’ tag. While this is far from ideal it may help you salvage some listings.
When it comes to including content through the use of an iFrame, remember, Google can not see any of this content located within the frame. It will be of no use to your rankings. If you rely on this content to help your listings, find another method such as a server side include.

TOOLS
In this article I mention a few items which can be made much easier with the help of available online tools. Here are some to help you on your way.

Google’s Cached Text Version
Click on “cached” next to your listing in Google, then click “Cached Text Version” at the top of the page. This is Google’s Cached Text version of your page. Substituting www.domain.com with your website will also bring up the cached version:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:WWW.DOMAIN.COM/&hl=en&strip=1

SUMMARY
There are a lot of little pieces to getting a site to the top of the rankings in Google that I didn’t have time to mention here. In most cases not all items noted in this 3 part Google optimization series need to be in place to achieve top rankings, however, the more you can implement the better. Links, optimization, and content all play a significant role in Google rankings and the more competitive the term, the bigger the role they play.
If you have a site in a competitive market it is best to ensure that the site is entirely Google friendly and well optimized, while working on increasing links, and expanding on relevant content.
Patience is important and Google rankings are possible, but they do take time and effort. In nearly all cases it can take several months before you start to see significant results, although in cases where a site is just missing one or two pieces of the puzzle and those are put into place, rankings can come much quicker. If you have any questions about optimizing for Google try sending them to us here at StepForth and we will get to them as soon as our workload permits.