Saturday, May 17, 2008

Backlinks - What Are They, How You Get Them, And What They Do For You

If you have just started a blog, or created a wonderful website, you may be skimming through page after page of forums, blogs, and articles, looking for ways to make your creation better. It is good to want to make your website aesthetically pleasing or amazingly easy to navigate, these two aspects of e-business are a must for long term success. However, there is something that may be even more important than what is on your page when you first start out, and that something is backlinks.

Backlinks are links that are found on another website leading to yours; they are the clickable text that allows you to move from one website to another. Search engines consider the number of backlinks a site has to be a very good indicator of its quality and popularity. The number of backlinks, and their quality, are one of the many factors that search engine algorithms use to rank your page in the search engine results pages(SERPS). Many SEO consultants claim that backlinks account for about 80% of a page's placement in the search engines, the other 20% being related to your content and the websites format. So, you see, if you want your page to get traffic when people type one of you keywords into a search engine, you need to acquire backlinks, and usually, tons of them.

How should you start a link building journey?

Step one in any link building campaign should be a competitive analysis. Competition on the Internet is fierce in many niches, and in most larger markets, established websites have thousands of backlinks. Don't be discouraged, the rewards will be well worth the effort if you stay focused and don't quit early. Link building is a longer term process in search engine optimization, it is usually something that takes several months or even years to come to fruition.

To examine your competition you need to first determine which keywords you want to rank for in the search engines. Say, for example, that you have a site about high heels. Well, you would want to rank well for the search term high heels. Ideally, you eventually want to rank in the top 3 of the first page of the search engine result pages. However, to get your foot in the door, pun intended, you may want to also attempt to rank for some less popular keywords , such as red stiletto heels. This is because ranking high in the search engines for your main keyword may take several months, depending on the level of competition. So, if you search red stiletto heels, a website will come up that holds the number one spot for this keyword. This is where the analysis begins. Take whatever website that comes up in your search for the number one spot, and put the site name in the following directive (an instruction to a search engine) at Yahoo!. Type link domain: www.examplesitehere.com - site: www.examplesitehere.com. What this is asking the search engine is the following, give me the links to this domain, that is the (linkdomain:www.examplesitehere.com) part, and then exclude the links that are coming from the site itself, that is the (site:www.examplesitehere.com) part.

What you are going to get is a list (it might be rather large if you are in a major market) that is going to give you websites that have links to this industry leading site. This is very useful information, because it shows what sites are holding the links, and you are going to want to insert your site link on most of these sites to raise your site to page 1 of the search engine rankings.

Now that you have the list, you want to select which sites will give you the most backlink weight. Generally speaking, you want to find a site to link to that is highly related to your website. Once you do that you want to see how this site is viewed by the major search engines. Simply put, you want to check its authority status, and to do that, you need to check its PR(Page Rank). This is what Google uses to convey how they feel about a particular page.

So you can check a sites page rank to see if you would want a link from them. This is a broad way to check the link value a certain site has. It is very important that you make sure the content on the page where the link comes from is related to your site. You don't want to necessarily get links from mini skirt sites if you have the high heel site as mentioned above. You want to get links from sites that rank high for your keyword. If the site is a direct competitor, then it may be very difficult to get a link from them if they don't have a directory. Consequently, you need to concentrate on getting some links from further down the SERPS to get yourself started. When you are navigating other websites, looking for a place to put your link, ideally, you want a one way link. A one way link means that you get a link from the site to your page, but you do not give that site a link on your page. When you are first starting out, you want to attempt to only acquire one way links until you learn a bit more. The reason being that putting other people's links on your page, or reciprocal links as they are called, can drain your page's search engine ranking. To research why this happens I suggest reading about no follow links, page rank, and "link juice".

Other methods for acquiring backlinks are submitting your site to directories and posting to forums. Let's first examine directory submission. A directory is just a website on the Internet that has categories of links leading to particular websites. Some directories are easier to get into than others and there is healthy debate regarding the link weight that a particular directory can give you. When you are just starting out, especially in less competitive niches, backlinks are very important to climb the search engine, so you want to submit to any relevant directories you can find. To be very particular about your directory submissions would perhaps be a better strategy, but time is money, and the faster your site can climb the rankings, the better. So, generally, as long as the directory is just not a massive unrelated mess, you want to submit your site to it. Using our high heel site as an example again, start with the smallest niche your site fits into first, and then move out to larger categories. For example, if the high heel site talks about stilettos, then attempt to find a directory related to just stilettos. More than likely, you may just find a directory related to shoes or women's shoes, and you want to submit to those, but if you can find more specific directories, they will be more powerful for you.

Submitting to directories takes time, especially if you are in a huge general market like fashion. From the time you request a directory inclusion(you sometimes actually write to a contact e-mail or fill in fields on a submission page) to the time a link will appear that leads to your site, could be several weeks or months, depending on your market. Smaller niches are great for fast Serps rises, because as a general rule they will have smaller directories, which results in faster submission review, and ultimately link inclusion. If you go too small, then finding directories will be difficult, and you may just end up submitting to large directories that will take forever to include you, and this may not help your Serps ranking much in the long run. For micro niches there are better methods for acquiring backlinks, and one of these methods is forum posting with links in your signature(links to your site in your forum posts, below the actual text you type).

Signature posting in forums is said by some not be an effective form of backlink acquisition,because the forum may prevent the guests of the forum(who are not registered members), and search engine bots(mathematically driven drones that look for backlinks), from seeing the links, thus negating their weight. This is true to some extent, however, in forums where not many people have links in their signature area, backlinks can hold more weight, because bots are only seeing a few links with all this related content(forum banter) surrounding your link.

In summation, forum signature links can give you some link juice(seo jargon for something that helps you rise in serps), and they are very effective in other ways. When you place links to your site in your signature, people can simply click on them to be directed to your website and become a member of your site if it is membership driven. Additionally, visitors can also arrive on your page and hopefully click on an ad or affiliate link. You build a reputation through your posts, and cultivate a readership and/or membership to your site. It is one of the best ways to grow a new niche site, and all it costs is your time.

There are some other ways, besides using yahoo linkdomain and yahoo site explorer, that can help you find places to submit your site's link. Below are some link commands that you can use in Google. These commands work well to locate pages on websites that let you submit a link to your site. The keywords are just examples, and you would replace them with your keywords.

Intitle:add+your+site+url "keyword"

Intitle:directory "keyword"

Intitle: add+url "keyword"

Intitle:submit+url "keyword"

purses "submit url"

fashion "add link"

fashion "submit your blog"

fashion "submit your site"

There are also some commands to find blogs and forums that would be relevant posting areas. Some of these commands:

"add comment" keyword or "leave a comment" keyword, generally used to find some blogs as blog platforms use add comment or leave comment

"new topic" keyword or "new thread" keyword , "post reply" keyword, this is great for finding forums to talk with people who share similar interests as most forum software uses new topic or one of the other phrases just shown.

Another good idea to get in on conversation immediately is to do searches in Google, such as, posted December 12, 2007 Gucci. This is used by blogs or forums to indicate a message was left on this day. So if you have a relevant site, then writing some relevant comments and submitting your site link will bring you traffic and relevant backlinks.

Successful backlink acquisition is essential to building a site that will rank on the first page of the search engines. If you are serious about making money on the Internet, you must learn as much as you can about backlinks, and the aforementioned information should give you a good start.

Brought to you by http://www.mdswebstudios.com

Article Marketing Tips - How Many Articles Should You Submit?

How many articles, per niche, should be submitted to article directories to start with? And do they all have to be different?

I think that the answer to this lies in, how much traffic do you want? If you write ten articles, you're not going to get much traffic. In fact, I submit to you, that if you're only trying to write ten articles and see what happens--don't even do it. It's not worth it.

I've got fourteen-hundred personally written articles on ezinearticles. Fourteen-hundred articles--that's a lot of articles. So if you are just going to write a few articles, my guess is that it is a waste of your time. Others might disagree with me, thinking that even a few will give you some traffic. Sure, they will but I think you should choose some method of getting traffic that works for you, and go all-out. And article marketing is that method for me.

I hear all of the time, "Hey, I submitted ten articles last week and I only got twenty-five visitors this week. I can't make a living on twenty-five visitors." Well guess what, I can't make a living on ten articles either. That's why I've got fourteen-hundred personally written articles on ezinearticles.

How many articles per niche? It depends on where your focus is: if you're trying to work ten different niches--you've got ten different websites--then you're obviously not going to be able to submit as many articles. If you read my articles on ezinearticles, you'll notice that I write on about fifteen or twenty different topics.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1400 articles in print and 10 published ebooks.

Article Marketing - How Much Is Too Much?

That is an odd question. It is kind of like asking How much money is too much money? In a nutshell the answer is you can never write too many articles.

In the business of Article Marketing every article that you write means money. It would only make sense that the more articles you can create the more money you can make. The key to succeeding in Article Marketing is writing. You must write today, tomorrow and continue to write every day after that.

When you begin your article writing career it can seem a bit daunting, especially if you are someone who is not used to sitting at your computer for hours per day. I had been a jock in high school and never took any real creative writing or journalism related courses so the thought of having to write articles every day seems overwhelming. Once I decided that I was going to write every day I got used to it and it got easier. I am sure it will be the same for you.

To be one hundred percent honest, there is no such thing as too much when it comes to writing articles. The key to Article Marketing is writing. The more articles you write and get out there then the more traffic will be directed to your website. Of course more traffic is directly related to more profit.

How many articles are you writing per day now? If you want to driver traffic to your website and grow your business you need to write more. How many articles you are writing per day really does not matter. My point is, no matter how many you write, when you think you are done for the day, you should write more.

How much is too much? This isnt a question that you should be asking. The question that you should be asking is, How much money do I want to make? Articles equal traffic and we all know that traffic equal profit. If you are not generating the cash flow that you want or need then you are not spending enough time writing articles.

Would you like to know how to use Article Marketing to drive traffic to your website?

Get my complimentary Report HERE and start the stampede today!

SEO 101 - Search Engine Optimization For The Complete Moron

In this article SEO 101 - Search Engine Optimization for the Complete Moron you will learn how to get Top Placement Google, Yahoo, MSN and all other Search Engines in a Matter of days. By following the 4 steps detailed in this article SEO 101 - Search Engine Optimization for the Complete Moron you will be able to generate Laser Targeted traffic to any web page you choose without spending any money or purchasing additional Products. You don't even need to have your own Domain or Web Site to use the Methods detailed in SEO 101 - Search Engine Optimization for the Complete Moron.

Step 1 SEO 101 For Complete Morons Get a Free E-Mail Account.
You will need to have an E-Mail Account. I recommend you get a free account. Two that I use are Yahoo and Gmail.

Step 2 SEO 101 For Complete Morons Get a Free Blog
You will need a Blog. A Blog is a very easy web page to setup and Search engines love Blogs. You can get a free Blog at blogger.com, Wordpress or Myspace.

Step 3 SEO 101 For Complete Morons Find a Key Word Phrase with Moderate Popularity.

First find a List of Keyword Phrases with Overture or Similar Tool. I Like Overture because it is Free

Next Type Each Keyword Phrase into Google and See How Many Pages of Results Google Finds for each Phrase. Pick a Phrase with about 1,000 Pages. You can go as low as 200 or as high as 10,000 but optimally 1,000 pages works best

Step 4 SEO 101 For Complete Morons Find a Product to Promote That Matches Your Keyword
Now that you have keywords you need products to promote. Go to clickbank and type your keywords into the Clickbank Search engine to find products to Promote. Of course if you don't have a Clickbank Account you will need to join. Yes it is free to join

Step 5 SEO 101 For Complete Morons Promote Your Product For Free with USFreeAds
Write a Brief 1 Paragraph Ad about Your Click Bank Product and promote it on USFreeads. You can use USFreeAds for free but for $9.99 a Month you get unlimited ads and fantastic features like HTML in your Ads. Be sure and use your Keyword Phrase from step 3 in your Ad Title and once or twice within the body of your ad. After you create your Ad create a Blog Entry with the contents of your Ad.

Step 6 SEO 101 For Complete Morons Write an Article
Write an Article with between 250 to 500 words and submit it to Multiple Article Directories. For a list of article directories see my resource box at the end of this Article SEO 101 - Search Engine Optimization for the Complete Moron. Be sure and use the Keyword Phrase in the title as well as the body of your Article. After you create your Article create a Blog Entry with the contents of your Article.

Step 7 SEO 101 For Complete Morons Kick it Up a Notch
If you want to kick it up a notch or more for any given Keyword you can do any or all of the Following things

1- Create a Squidoo Lens with Your Keyword Phrase

2- Write an additional Blog Entry with Your Keyword Phrase

3- Create a Hubpage

4-Work the Forums

5-Use additional free Classified ad sites

Step 8 SEO 101 for Complete Morons Ping Your Blog
By Pinging your Blog you are letting the Major Search engines Know that your Blog has changed. Pingoat is great free services that will Ping Most of the Major Search Engines.

Step 9 SEO 101 for the Complete Moran Earn $2,000 Monthly within 100 days
Each Day for 100 days find a Product and Keyword Phrase. Apply Steps 1 to 7 for the Product and Keyword Phrase. If you follow these Guidelines each Key Word Phrase will earn you on Average of $20 a Day. If you do only 1 keyword phrase a Day at the end of 100 Days you could be earning $2,000 a Month.

Remember you can use more then one keyword phrase per product. So if you find Book on Organic Dog food recipes and it has 5 Keyword Phrases that meet the rules you can create 5 Articles and 5 Ads for this Product

While you can easily implement the 9 Steps detailed in this Article SEO 101 - Search Engine Optimization For The Complete Moron without spending any money there are tools both free and paid that will greatly enhance your efforts. These resources and Many others can be found here ========> http://www.ewguru.com/hbiz/recommends/SEO-101-Morans About The
Author:


Mike Makler has been Marketing Online Since 2001 When he Built an Organization of over 100,000 Members Get Mike's Newsletter:


http://ewguru.com/newsletter


Copyright 2007 Mike Makler the Coolest Guy in the Universe

Organic Search - The Core SEO Service

Organic search is a process in which the web surfers find out about websites that use an unpaid search engine listing. Websites use this facility to increase the visibility of their website by optimizing their sites with the most relevant keywords, so that their site can appear in the search listings.

Organic search are an effective technique of getting more traffic into a website which shall help improve your SEO Services too. All that the web masters need to do is optimize their websites with the most relevant keywords that are popularly searched on the search engines. The higher the demand of the keyword, the greater is its search results and it becomes even more difficult for the web masters to optimize their websites for those keywords.

There are a lot of benefits of organic search that over rule the paid search services (PPC). The most important factor is that people are always more loyal towards the organically searched websites, than they are about the paid searches. This therefore indicates a higher targeted influx than what would have come from the paid searches, but only on the condition that your website is ranking high on the search engine pages.

The trend these days indicate that more and more large websites, are concentrating more on the organic searches than on the paid searches, for the simple reason that this has the potential of increasing their popularity and do a bit of branding for them. It creates a great impact on the surfer, if he or she finds his favourite brand of shirts listed in the organic results even if he types in a common keyword like 'shirts'.

Better branding and greater trust amongst visitors results in higher and faster conversions too, thereby enhancing the overall sales of the company. Whether the purpose of a website is to invite more people, or to promote their products or to encourage them to buy from their products, better branding results in greater popularity which, will automatically result in higher conversions of their core purpose.

And finally, the organic search procedure is a zero investment process. All you need to do is sit at one place and optimize your website with effective keywords. In order to obtain best results out of the organic search results, it is very essential that your website be updated always and carries fresh and relevant content that will fulfill the customer's needs. Only then can we rightly state that your efforts in availing the organic search have been successful. SEO services help improve the web presence of your website. Hence, the more you utilize them the better it is for your websites.

About the Author- Naman Jain is an expert in Internet marketing solutions, presently working with Rupiz Media LTD., one of the leading internet marketing company, offering online marketing services, SEO services and search engine marketing over the globe.

SEO Marketing The Right Option For Online Promotion

SEO Services and Marketing

SEO Service is the perfect marketing tool to land your products directly to your target audience which comprises of potential buyers or business partners. SEO places the website with a higher ranking which attracts more visitors and traffic, and ensures better brand visibility.

Why is SEO marketing the best option available?

  • Various Researches show that people are most relying on search engines for finding their choice of products, services or information
  • In Search Engine marketing it is the customers who search for the products and is hence more effective unlike other forms of marketing.
  • Majority of online traffic to web site driven by the search engines: Google, Yahoo , Msn live and Ask
  • According to various studies, most people prefer to click on organic search results rather than sponsored results, by a very wide margin.(this is clearly evident by recent drop in clicks of google adwords program)
  • Most Cost effective way of marketing your products and services online.
  • Makes your web site easily crawled , indexed and ranked high in search engines.

Advantages of using SEO marketing:

  • Better brand visibility
  • Directly reaching your target audience making the products easily accessible to them.
  • Increase in the sales of your products & services
  • Since the results are keyword-based, the customers are genuine making it more profitable for the company.
  • We can target global market and reach customers all over the world.

Studies have shown that most search engine users don't click past the first three pages of search results; many don't even click past the first page if they find what they're looking for. Positioning your website in top 10 listings can be accomplished only by effective Search engine optimization services and strategies.

For more info on Search Engine Marketing visit : SEO Services

The Benefits of Using The Success University

One of the hardest things about starting a small business is figuring out the best ways to make money. Money can easily be made on the Internet, but because there are so many options out there, it's hard to narrow down the best ways to make money and distinguishing between the ones that are fake or real because the fake ones could end up ripping you off. There is a very popular program found on the Internet called the Success University that is a great way to make money on the Internet.

Success University is basically a personal training coach for making money. Success University has basically collected some of the best ways to make money on the Internet and compiled them into one single program so you don't have to go to different places on the Internet to get the information. There is a cost that comes with it and to become a premium member at the Success University, it's about $149 for the first month and then $49 each month after.

I know that might seem a lot, but given the amount of content and information on the website, it is cheaper to use this website then to use multiple programs found on the Internet. It's like buying things in bulk; it's cheaper to go to a WallMart or a Sam's club than a regular grocery store if you want to get a lot of items. With the Success University you are getting the most information for the smallest amount of money.

People might be a little cautious when joining these types of programs. The fact of the matter is that it is well documented that a lot of people are making livable incomes off the information the Success University provides as well and the affiliate programs it includes.

As with everything involving a home business, the amount of money you make completely depends on the amount of effort you put in. If you are working on this part-time, it is obviously going to take you much longer then diving head first into this and spending your full amount of time on it.

There isn't a minimum or maximum amount of money you can make so it all depends on the dedication, imagination and how you use the information and features of the Success University. If you are still cautious about this idea, the Success University Offers trial runs of their site for a small fee or sometimes free, so there shouldn't be anything stopping you from at least trying it.

Louis-Charles Martel is an affiliate marketer who has found success with Success University. To learn more about the potential of a Success University business Louis-Charles recommends you visit:Success University Home Business and :Success University Fast Team Blog

Ethical SEO Wins In The Long Term

White hat SEO (or ethical SEO if you like) is often argued to be not as successful as 'black hat' SEO. Proponents of black hat optimisation have even gone so far as saying that using black hat they can easily out rank any white hat SEO'd site.

Whilst it may be true that Black Hat techniques certainly can have a more rapid and dramatic effect on raising the Google ranking of a site, this has to be weighed against the fact that if discovered the site may well be penalised, or banned altogether.

This is not even considering any moral issues with black hat SEO. Even if the shady SEO techniques used are not detectable by Google at present, some black hatters seem to take that to mean that they can get away with dodgy dealings...

This argument is flawed! Sooner or later the chances are that Google will detect their exploits, and act accordingly. Recently for example, Google decided to try to target people that are selling links for the purpose of manipulating PageRank for their clients. Many people have since lost their own PageRank because of this.

Link selling is often considered grey hat by many, so imagine what would happen to a site that got caught committing what Google would consider real black hat! (Such as cloaked pages etc)

Even if white hat SEO techniques may take longer to have an effect, long term ethical SEO is the best option for most sites. Positions gained through ethical SEO are more likely to be maintained for longer, and bring you better quality traffic. - But that's just my opinion as a white hatter.

Check out www.mxi-group.com

Ethical SEO - Kingpin-seo is a specialist in ethical SEO, they are based in the UK and serve websites across the globe.

Internet Article Marketing - Questions & Answers About Article Marketing Online

Promoting your products and services can be achieved at no cost using articles that contain quality content. Mastering the art of internet article marketing can help you bring tons of traffic to your web site. Below are some questions and answers that will help you understand how powerful it could be to your marketing campaigns.

How does internet article marketing work?

This works by writing articles involving your niche and submitting them to free content sites. This is easy to accomplish with little time needed. More importantly it can boost your web site traffic and income.

How can article writing boost traffic and income?

Traffic and income can increase when you submit articles to these free content sites because they allow you to add a link and sometimes two at the end (in what is termed a "resource box"), which is your opportunity to have those links lead to your web site.

If you submit quality articles, the chances readers will choose to click on the link after they have read your article will increase and they will subsequently pay you a surprise visit especially if the content is interesting enough for them to want to know more about you and your site.

Another amazing reason for having your articles on these free content sites is the availability to other webmasters who may want to publish a specific article you wrote on their web site. If they do, your article will include a link back to your site and anyone who reads the article will have the opportunity to click on the available links you provided.

How many articles should be submitted?

There should never really be a cap on how many articles you submit. As the list of your published articles increase the more of them will appear on different web pages and the total number of links to your web site increases which is money in the bank.

Major search engines are placing a lot of importance on incoming links to web sites so they can establish the importance of a certain site. This will increase your site's placement in the search results which should be your goal at all times.

Search engines not only index web sites, but they also index published articles as well as any article that is written about your own web site's topic. Once someone searches for that same topic, the list of results will have your site or may even display the articles that you have written.

What content should you have in your articles?

With mandatory quality in your content you must also write about subjects that people are searching for. Providing valuable information without a sales pitch will help you gain respect and eventually customers. Do not write expecting a sale. Write to help others.

Provide tips and solutions to the problems your readers are experiencing. If you write a strong headline and ensure that you are giving the reader what they came for based on that headline you will have taken care of 2 key elements in article marketing. The third of course is leading them to click on your links at the bottom of the article.

When should I start writing and submitting articles?

You should begin writing and submitting articles immediately and you will be certain of a sudden surge in web site traffic, link popularity and attention. Before you know it, you will be doubling and even tripling your income.

Mastering the art of internet article marketing can help you get heaps of traffic to your site effortlessly if you follow the information provided above and begin taking action right away!

Download Your Free Article Submitter program now! - http://internetarticlemarketing.googlepages.com

Article Submitter - Free Download

(c) Copyright - Jimmy Adames. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Does Article Marketing Work?

Article marketing is a very popular method of advertising your online business. The idea is you write a bunch of informative articles on some aspect of your business and the distribute these articles on the internet.

A lot of internet marketers and affiliate marketers have dabbled in article marketing at some stage in there careers. A large proportion of these people have given up because they have not seen the results that they expected from article marketing.

So why are all these people failing? And why is there still a lot of enthusiasm for article marketing.

The simple answers is Article marketing works but only if done right.

And what is the right way to approach article marketing.

Article content The articles you write should be original and should contain interesting, useful information that will engage and intrigue your readers. Get into the mind of your prospective readers and hopefully future customers and try and see things from their perspective. Give them information that you know they want, rather than information you feel like giving them.

Make your article so full of great information that it becomes a reference for whatever it is you are writing about.

Rehashed content will only put people off. If your article is saying the same thing that hundreds of other articles have said, you appear stale and your readers may get the impression that your business is a 'me too' business.

No original ideas

Aim to keep your articles fresh and informative.

Article frequency:

Article marketing is only as effective as the reach of your articles.

If you post an article once a week and your article is taken up by 10 websites, at the end of a month you have 40 representations on the internet.

If however you post an article a day on the internet and the take up rate by other webmasters is still 10 per article, you suddenly have a web exposure of 300. The reach of 300 websites displaying an article of yours is by far greater than the reach of 40 websites. If you are considering article marketing, you need to be prepared to post at least one content rich, original article every single day.

Article Format:

Articles written for article marketing purposes must apply search engine optimization methods. This is important so that your articles rank high with the search engines.

Also you need to pay attention to the different parts of your articles. The headline must be a good attention grabbing headline, your body must be well thought out and your bio box must be carefully worded to increase your click through rate

More details will be provided in the next part of this series.

Affiliate Marketing Tips and Affiliate Marketing Guide at http://www.affiliatemarketingintro.com

Article Marketing - How You Can Massively Increase the Effectiveness of Your Articles

Article Marketing is something that thousands of people do to drive traffic to their websites. It's no secret that a well written article can be thought provoking enough for readers to want to know more about either you or your services. So, what do they do? They click on your link in your resource box. But are you making effective use of understanding the conversion rates for the clicks that you get?

From my own perspective, my main interests are in motivation, wealth creation and self defense. These are the subjects that I write about most often. However, I am departing from that here because I have discovered something that I think will be of benefit to all article writers.

I don't write about things like "the best sexual positions" or "cell phone number spying" or "how to increase your penis size" or "how to shave your pubic hair" or "how to tell if your spouse is cheating on you" or any other such subjects that get tens of thousands of hits. Why? Quite simply I don't have a website on any of those things that could take advantage of the traffic it would bring.

Now here is something that you will probably find interesting...

I have over 250 articles all over the web in hundreds of "far-flung" places and in many different languages. This number of articles will show significant trends when viewed in terms of statistical anaysis.

I know which articles are "ball-bursters" and which are complete flops. So, what does that tell me? Write more articles (in my domains of knowledge and interest) that are popular - obviously! What is the point of writing articles that nobody else wants to read? Now here comes the interesting bit...

By analyzing the results of these articles I am able to see which ones are giving me the most click-throughs to my websites. Time for a little mathematics...

If I have 1,395 click-throughs from 170,424 views of my articles then my conversion rate is 0.82%. That tells me that for every thousand people who read my articles only 8 will be interested enough to go to one of my websites. Pretty horrendous huh? Then again, there are millions of articles on the web and people's time is at a premium. A reader has to be REALLY interested to make that click.

So, if I have some articles - which I do - that are returning the following statistics, what does that tell me?

  • 8 from 23 ( conversion rate 34.8%)
  • 400 from 2,667 (15%)
  • 28 from 154 (18%)
  • 191 from 1736 (11%)
  • 23 from 81 (28%)
That tells me that these particular articles SMASH my average. Hmm. So, what else does that tell me? Here is what I think...

  1. - The headline REALLY worked because it attracted attention
  2. - The article summary/teaser REALLY worked because it made people curious
  3. - The copy (article body) REALLY worked because it contained good information
  4. - The resource box REALLY worked because people wanted to know more.

So, now, what do you think I should do?

  1. - Write more headlines like that
  2. - Write more summaries/teasers like that
  3. - Write more articles like that
  4. - Write more resource boxes like that

The other thing - which I have not yet analysed in depth - is that the keywords REALLY worked. I need to look at that more.

So what is my point is this?

Watch what your statistics are telling you. Once you get the "formula" correct then all it requires is for you to stick with it and you will see a LOT more click-throughs to your websites than you thought was possible. I may have more to say on this later. Stay tuned...

This has been a "Public Service Announcement" from me to you purely for your benefit because I don't have an Article Marketing website. But if you want to know how to make a lot more money and increase your personal wealth then click HERE

Article Marketing Bio Box & Google Pay Per Click Ad - Learn From One & Apply To The Other

An article marketing bio box is the space at the end of your article where you promote your product or service, if done correctly your users should want to click on you're the link in this box and visit your website.

The idea here is to give your reader or user a good reason why they should visit your website.

A Google Pay Per Click ad is an ad that comes up when a user does a search for a keyword that you are bidding on. Your ad will show up with all the other ads that are bidding on that same keyword.

The idea is the same with this ad, your ad should be compelling enough so that the searcher ignores all the other ads and clicks on your ad.

Both the article bio box and the Google pay per click ad serve the same purpose; you can use a PPC ad to improve your article marketing bio box. I know your next question is how? What you want to do is type in a keyword into Google that your prospect will type in to find your product or service.

Look at the ads that come, which ones catches your eye first? Do you want to click on it and learn more? That's the answer to your question. If a particular ad attracts you out of the ones that show up, ask your self why that one?

Whats so special about that ad. Once you answer that question, you want to use the attractive elements of that ad to create and ad for your bio box in your article. Remember to test your new ad against the one you already have in your bio box.

I wasted 17months trying to drive profitable traffic to my website, but you should not do the same. Instead click here to get a copy of my "Quality Traffic Report". In it I will show you my results after testing article marketing vs. google pay per click, you can use the results to start driving profitable traffic to your website. You can also visit http://www.qualitytrafficbuilder.com/articlebuilding

Improved Search Engine Ranking With Modernization of Marketing Strategies

Maneuvering the business process and ensuring the right proportions of profit earning are the fundamentals of all types of the business, whether it is small business or the large corporate. Internet marketing is no exception. Online businesses employ a number of techniques and strategies to increase the positioning of the website in the improve Search Engine rank.

Search Engine Optimization is also referred as SEO is the process of achieving the best organic ranking with the help of some specified tools in the Search Engine result pages like Google, Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista and many more search engines and thus to enhance the web traffic for a website. Search Engine is rather a complex and on going process which normally takes bit time to show off its result of driving the traffic for the website.

As there are enormous numbers of techniques to optimizing the website, web masters use only the uphold techniques for the Search Engine Optimization Management. One of the primary things that business profession takes into account to summarize the tools for achieving the great search engine listing is the keyword which the web spiders use for extracting the related information. Many search engines index a page based on key word phrases and oftentimes add value if the key word appears within a certain concentration range. The caveat here is that many search engines will lower the web page ranking if the keyword appears too many times since this is alleged as an attempt to trick the search engine. Keyword search engine optimization uses not only keyword concentration but also keyword placement. Many search engines place higher emphasis on key word phrases that are placed in web page titles and HTML header tags.

Another method of SEO is to increase the number of links to the website being optimized. Most Internet Marketing companies design their algorithms with the supposition that a page that is highly allied to is more likely to offer quality content then one that has no links to it. Many web masters had taken advantage of this assumption by using link exchange programs to increase the number of links to their site. For this reason, many search engines now bring down two way links in favor of one way links.

Meta tags are one answer for the higher Search Engine rankings. The page title and the actual content are more important for the search engine ranking than the Meta tags. Visitors are also driven by the organic Directory submission services. People often mistake with the Directory submission and Search Engine Optimization being the same. Directories have the exaggerated part in increasing the ranking in the search engine rankings by sending a huge number of traffic.

There are more ways about internet marketing promotion and advertising than you know. Discover the secrets to Internet marketing for Online Business today.

Search Engine Optimization Process

Search engine optimization is the best online promotion process. If you have a web site you need to promote your website to appear in top pages of the search engines with your targeted keywords.

1. You can get listed in top results of the search engines by publishing quality content and quality products in your web site.

2. Always search engines updates their algorithms to get the best results for the users. This directly shows that search engine always try to eliminate the unnecessary issues

3. Best way of promoting and writing content on your web site is before publishing or promoting your web site you need to remind these questions in your mind "why/How your best in your industry?" "why visitors should take service with you??" and "how can you give best service out of the existing service providers??"

4. Try to provide maximum useful information on your web site which is essential to know more about your services and differentiate between your services and other comparators service

5. Always give the information about your services by defining properly

6. Always stress on quality of your products or services

Above mentioned issues are very useful is promoting your web site. If your web site has quality stuff there is much more chance of get listed in Search engines. Always try to publish the good content and never write the content by maintaining keyword density. If you copy the content from other source then don't forget publish the source. Try to adopt and implement genuine methods in your website promotion

This is Subhash Chandra Bose is SEO from last 4 years presently working for the Nimble Technologies

For any assistance in Outsourcing and all web related problems contact subhash@nimble-tech.com

Keyword Density And The Role It Plays - SEO

Keyword density is a calculation of the number of times the selected keyword appears on the web page. Keyword density is always expressed as a percentage of the total word content on a given web page. Generally speaking, keyword density is the ratio of the word that is being searched for (the keyword) against the total number of words appearing on your web page.

Suppose you have 100 words on your webpage (not including HMTL code used for writing the web page), and you use a certain keyword five times in the content. The keyword density on that page is got by simply dividing the total number of keywords, by the total number of words that appear on your web page.

If a particular keyword has a higher density on your web page, then the likelihood of your page obtaining better search engine ranking increases. For example, a visitor who is looking for information on "Search Engine Ranking" may search for things like "search engine positioning, search engine ranking", "search engine placement", "keyword density", "top ranking", and the like. After you have collected your list of keywords, do NOT simply dump those keywords into a senseless list on your web page.

Simple steps to check the density:

Copy and paste the content from an individual web page into a word-processing software program like Word or Word Perfect. In addition to keyword density calculations, it verifies that your site is not overloaded and that it has the correct distribution of profitable keywords in the most critical locations. Using the total word count for the page and the total number of keywords you can now calculate the keyword density. Once your page closely matches the keyword density in all categories/tags you have likely designed a page that will most probably score in the top of the search engines.

Some search engine marketers weights deemed as "negative". I found many of these documents belonging to search engine marketing and optimization (SEM, SEO) specialists. There is also a different level of tolerance between the different search engines as to the degree of density permitted before a penalty is imposed.

Keep in mind that the search engines are constantly changing their relevancy criteria when scoring pages for keyword relevancy. This information can sometimes be found

in information bases pertaining to each search engine.

Every Search Engine has its own techniques for scoring pages and you must first learn what analysis options are important for your selected Search Engine before designing your page and get a successful scoring.

The various search engines, including Google, Yahoo, and MSN Search consider keyword density as part of their search algorithm. Search engines today are measuring keyword density as a factor in assigning relevancy ratings to web pages. On the other hand, if your keyword density is too high then the search engine may penalize you for "keyword stuffing".

LSI is changing many of the the search engines ranking factors these days, so in reality

there is not much knowledge on how long a ranking factor like keyword density will be an issue.

Davin Ogden has various websites on the internet. Davinatorbiz.com provides you with all the tools and proper learning information on LSI, serious seo strategies, and improving your search engine ranking to give you the results your after in the search engines.

For information on keyword density and other quick tips please visit Davinatorbiz.com If you would like to download FREE rebrandable ebook from the website to help with your SEO needs please visit Davinatorbiz.com

Are You Checking Keyword Competition Research Properly?

Don't tell me you are one of those people who type in a keyword into software and just targets the keywords that yield the highest search counts? You wouldn't waste your time doing that now would you? If you have, don't worry, this article is written for you.

Why should you listen to me?

I have spent literally hundreds of hours reading e-books and other relevant sources for this information. I work professionally as an SEO and I have had huge success in some of the highest margin markets on the web. Over the length of this article I will be sharing with you a system I use to aid me through my efforts.

Before doing keyword research you need to ask yourself these two very important questions:

1. What is the demand for the keywords I am researching?

2. What is the supply?

Most SEO professionals use their common sense and often try to find the answer; they just do it the wrong way. If you own a site that sells Wireless Vacuum Cleaners it's easy to type your market into Overture's Keyword Selector Tool and get a list of hundreds of relevant keywords and their search counts. What you do with this information is what's important. Some people think an expensive WordTracker subscription using the Keyword Effectiveness Index is the answer: they are crazy.

WordTracker is an amazing tool for building huge keyword lists, but its competition-research data is riddled with holes (KEI should be used only marginally, its data should be used amongst a bevy of tools).

Myth: The number of competing pages that show up in bold when running a search on any search engine is an accurate indicator of the keywords competition.

Fact: This has got to be one of the most common misconceptions in online marketing. Whether a keyword yields 99,000,000 competing pages or 100,000 it doesn't matter.

To find out the true competition of a keyword you should KNOW the following for the keywords you are targeting in Google:

What is the total quantity of back-links pointing to the top 10 ranked sites?

How many times is the 'keyword' used in the anchor text linking back to the top 10 ranked sites?

How many sites use that particular keyword in their title tag? (you can use the allintitle:'keyword' search for this data)

Do the top 10 sites all have the 'keyword' in their Meta description & keyword tags?

Do those top 10 sites all have the 'keyword' in a header tag somewhere on the body of their page?

Do the top 10 sites use the 'keyword' in the first and last 25 words of the page?

Do the top 10 competing sites bold, underline, or italicize the 'keyword' somewhere on the page?

Once you gather all of this data you'll know EXACTLY how much competition is involved for the keyword(s) you plan on targeting.

Why you need to know this information:

Regardless of how much time you put into your efforts, if the top sites all have 10,000+ back-links with properly optimized websites you might find it extremely difficult or impossible to ever sniff the first page of Google. With the popularity of SEO these days, it is a complete liability not to know this information before running a SEO campaign.

As you can imagine doing this manually is a detailed & time consuming process. Researching the sites ranked 1-10 for all of your keywords relevant to your market can be an exhausting task. I use a WordTracker subscription and love its tools for building large lists; KeywordDiscoveries software had some nice features as well. I've used free tools like GoodKeywords and Overture Keyword Selector Tool but none really gave me the raw data I needed to truly gauge my competition.

For a while, I simply had to research each individual keyword using the search engines and click through each individual site. It was a time consuming task but nonetheless it was effective and very profitable. I thankfully now have access to software that automates the whole process for me. It gives me the information I need before I choose what keywords to target. To read a controversial review, about this new industry standard software visit http://www.keywordkingdom.com/keyword_software_scam_revealed.html

When all is said and done, I hope I have instilled in you the importance of going the extra length to research the competition and not just aimlessly target keywords. You cannot overlook this step; it can be the difference between a successful campaign and an utter failure.

David C. Chase is giving away his new, quick and easy mini-course "The 7 Simple, yet Wildly Successful Strategies for SEO" to the first 250 signups absolutely free. Click here to subscribe today while memberships are available.

Article Marketing Strategy - Submit Fresh Articles To Each Directory

There is no disputing that one of the best ways to market your website on the Internet is by writing and submitting articles. Article marketing is every bit as powerful as other forms of Internet marketing such as e-mail marketing, pay per click advertising, forum marketing and so on.

In this article, I want to talk briefly about the many benefits of developing an article marketing strategy to give you website visitors for many years to come.

You are probably familiar with the phrase content is king. This is true because search engines are constantly looking for fresh content to provide for their searchers. One thing you can do is write a keyword specific article.

You can find all kinds of free software to develop the keyword list to write about. Google has an excellent keyword development website for their pay per click advertising program called Google Adwords. You can go to Overture to find one that people have been using for years now to get keywords to write about.

Writing articles will give your website many benefits that your competition will not have. Here are 4 of them!

1. Writing articles does not cost you anything. Writing articles does cost a little bit of your time. But this is one free form of promotion that really does work. It's not as hard as it would sound either. EzineArticles.com offers some excellent training on how to write articles. It in no time at all, if you can talk, you can write.

2. Writing articles is an excellent way to get your website noticed quickly. Major article directories are spidered several times every day by various search engines. By writing and submitting a quality article to these directories you can get your website spidered too. You do this by including your website address in the bio box at the bottom of each of your articles.

3. Submitting a quality article to a well-known directory serves two purposes. Number one, you can get your traffic from the people that are reading your articles. Number two your articles can serve a search engine bait to get the search engines coming to your website.

If a search engine sees something they like on your site and you can begin to rank high for specific keywords that the article is written about. Doing this can bring you traffic to your website for years and years to come.

4. In marketing, we talk about the term branding. You can use article marketing to brand yourself as an expert on the theme of your website. As you begin to develop more and more in the marketplace your reputation will grow. This will give you more visitors, and ultimately create more sales.

In our opinion, the keys to the perfect article marketing strategy, is writing unique articles, and then submitting them to as many quality directories as possible.

If this is something you don't feel you can do you can hirer an article writer to do it for you. The key is that you get started using articles to build your business for long term free traffic as soon as possible.

Jeff Schuman is the creator of "Hands Off Article Marketing" a program designed to help internet busines owners who do not like to write. Now you can take your business to the next level using article marketing without doing the work yourself. To learn more useful make money online ideas and article writing tips please visit his website here: http://www.team-schuman.com

15 Things to Remember When Doing On Page SEO

There are two main areas to consider when undertaking an SEO project - on-page and off-page. On-page optimisation refers to the work done to the coding, content, layout and structure of the site, in order to improve its search engine ranking. Off-page optimisation refers to the work done away from the site in order to increase its search engine ranking by means of increasing the number of good quality backlinks pointing back to the site. Here are 15 things to remember when doing on-page optimisation for your site:

1. Make sure each page of your site has a unique and keyword rich title tag.

2. Make sure you have unique, well written meta description tags for each page.

3. Make sure you link key phrases in your site back to the relevant pages in your site (internal linking).

4. Make sure your ALT tags are descriptive of each image and work in keywords where possible.

5. Check the site navigation is not in Javascript or Flash, which search engines have trouble reading.

6. Make sure text content of all pages contain keywords, and that they are relevant to that page

7. If you are taking the site over from somebody else, check site for any black hat tactics (hidden text, keyword stuffing) and alter where necessary.

8. Make sure that there are no anchor text with "click here" or similar; internal links should have descriptive anchor text.

9. Ensure all text is written in text, and not contained within an image. Google cannot yet read text that is contained within an image.

10. Ensure the robots.txt file is present and configured correctly if needed.

11. Ensure XML sitemap is present, and submit it to Google Webmaster Tools.

12. Check Google Analytics code with conversion tracking is included.

13. Check there are no possibly unspiderably long URL query strings.

14. Check site with W3C validator to ensure compliance with all browsers.

15. Ensure on site sitemap is accurate.

SearchPath Internet Marketing are one of the UK's premier search engine optimisation companies. They offer internet marketing services that include web analytics, SEO and PPC management. Visit http://www.searchpath.co.uk/ to find out more.

Your Road to Easy Search Engine Optimization Techniques

If you have got a new website which is indexed by all the search engines, you must be feeling pretty good about yourself right now. But have you ever thought, despite being regularly indexed why are you still on the last page of a keyword search. This is the worse scenario for your website and your business.

Dont feel dejected as there are numerous chances for you to optimize your website for search engines. On the Internet you can find many articles on, how to increase traffic to your website. Trust me in todays cut throat online competitive world, search engine optimization is well worth your time and won't cost you anything by following a set of basic steps:

A) Select a keyword and key phrase rich domain. This point is pretty self-explanatory as when you register your domain, devote take your time in finding the website name that can be used to your benefit.

B) Proper usage of targeted keywords and key phrases in headings and metatags. After designing your website the next task is content writing or SEO content writing. Make sure you write keyword rich content along with keyword rich headings and metatags. This will help you in getting your website indexed on a regular basis.

C) Get and generate maximum incoming links to your website. This can be easily done by exchanging links with other webmasters, websites, submitting to link directories, writing keyword rich articles, or the somewhat controversial buying links. Select those websites that carry similar or rich content.

You will be bombarded with unlimited theories but no one except Google knows for sure what the actual search engine algorithm is. The steps mentioned above, however, are a sure shot move in the right direction.

The author is dynamic web content writer and budding SEO. He has got the experience in writing quality content for various websites and getting them optimized too. You can view his website for more information.

How to Boost Your Website Traffic, Right Now

Building said successful website is much more difficult than defining it, however. To build a high trafficked website, one must achieve both factors of the following equation:

[Great content] + [Lots of inbound links] = Lots of traffic

Adding great content over time and developing a link building strategy is a sure fire way to a profitable and valuable website. With steady work, on a daily or at least weekly basis, a website owner can start to see results within a year.

However, some of us don't have the patience to wait that long. So, are there ways to build traffic TODAY? Yes. The following methods have all proven to be efficient ways of increasing traffic in the short term. Combine these methods with the above equation and you will create a successful website...right now.

Create viral marketing for your website

When you start out, you don't have so many links pointing into your site. People just don't know you exist. So, a fine way to spread the word is through viral marketing.

Viral marketing is essentially an way of getting people to notice your site in a way that spreads by itself. Hence the word 'viral'. It acts as a virus does. Techniques include; 'Tell a friend' buttons, del.i.cious, ezines, ebooks, etc...

Forum Participation

Join two or three GOOD forums relating to your website. A good forum has continual visits. Joining a slow forum won't benefit you greatly. Assure that the forum allows 'signatures' within which you can put a link to your website. Signatures are a small message that will automatically attach itself to the end of your questions or answers within the forums.

Get into those forums and really participate. Add value to the forum. Don't just post silly answers in order to get your signature up there. For further information on forum participation, please see the following link: Forum Traffic Building

Yahoo Answers

Yahoo Answers is rather similar to forum participation except that the site is not confined to one category. You can answer questions based on anything, though naturally, you will be answering questions mainly based on your topic. With Yahoo Answers, you are not given the use of a signature. So, you will find a way to include a link to your website within your answer.

This is a tricky game, however, because if you include a link to your website within every answer, you may be accused of spamming and get chucked out. My advise is to aim to provide valuable information, including a link to your website within every third or fourth answer. Try also to include links to other useful websites, not just your own.

Using these three strategies on a continual basis will start the traffic ball rolling without having to wait those awful visitor-less months and months.

Ciara Carruthers is a professional website content writer. She specializes in the creation of 'information centers' for all websites, which increase traffic and add value. Her website also offers free, useful articles on website writing and traffic increasing. See the following link for her entire list of articles: Free Reprint Article at "Website Copywriter"

Powerful Article Marketing - Latest 5 Hidden Steps to Impact Your Article Marketing

Article marketing is an inexpensive advertising method for small ebusinesses to potentially establish their website on the World Wide Web. This technique is considered as one of the most profitable business generation methods that offer quick, gratifying results.

1. Some article writers, especially those who are just starting out, do not have much confidence in their writing and they tend to be very self-critical. If you are one of them, I strongly recommend that you ask professional editors to review your content. These people can give your constructive feedback that you can use so you can write better articles the next time you tap on your keyboard.

2. If you are using your content on your article marketing campaign, do not forget to conduct numerous tests to identify which of your articles are receiving impressive click through rates. Sometimes, articles are not performing well online because they have lousy titles or they do not offer much information.

3. If your articles are not performing at all, try to identify the weak points of your article marketing campaign. There might be something wrong with your writing style or you might be missing essential elements to make your articles perform online.

4. Manually submit your articles. While there are a lot of marketers who are using automatic article submission software, nothing beats the effort of personally submitting your articles. Aside from personal touch, you can be assured that your content will not be messed up.

5. If you seriously want to obtain valuable links to your site that will help your SEO efforts, you must make your article marketing more determined. By this, I mean you must have discipline and you must be willing to persevere until you get the results you are hoping for. In line with this, you must be willing to consistently write and submit articles on a regular basis.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.

Tips for Writing and Marketing Your Article

Article marketing and doing business on the internet is one of the most effective ways of spreading the word about your product or company. From selling affiliate products to advertising services as a tax consultant, writing and marketing informative articles is the absolute best way to increase both traffic to your site and, of course, your sales margin.

The following useful tips will help you be on your way to spreading the word about your business or product, and also give yourself a distinct edge over the numerous competition.

Consider Your Audience

Marketing your articles requires a bit of planning first, beginning with taking into consideration who your audience is and what type of voice or tone will appeal to them most. A casual, conversational voice is appropriate for websites targeting parents looking for childcare related products, while a more fact-oriented, business-like tone would be more effective for a site geared toward someone interested in purchasing stocks or investments.

Research and Fact Checking

Regardless of to whom you are trying to appeal, it's imperative to get your facts straight. Take the time to do the research needed to produce an article that keeps people interested, and also assured that what they're getting is information they can fully rely upon. This doesn't mean you have to spend the next week in the library poring through material to create one 500-word piece about your affiliate product, but it does mean you should back up your article with statistics or some type of study that proves what you're saying is truthful.

Stay Focused

Both the casual reader and the average fact seeker are looking for accurate content they can quickly ingest without weeding through useless ramblings having nothing to do with what brought them to the article in the first place. While some background information on the subject at hand is perfectly acceptable, and actually necessary, it's important to be concise with your articles, keeping everything related to what you're marketing.

Shorter paragraphs and subheadings or outlines will also make it easer for the reader to digest the content of your article, scanning it for the information they're looking for and, hopefully, leading them to your website.

Offer Something Useful

When marketing your article, there's a fine line between an informative piece and a sales pitch. Although you are in fact trying to drive traffic to your site and purchase your product or service that you know is the best, you want to do so in such a way that it doesn't actually sound like an infomercial.

If you're merely looking for a simple advertisement instead of providing useful information while increasing sales at the same time, save yourself the trouble and purchase a banner ad, which can be placed on a site with a link back to your own, rather than submitting articles that may end up being rejected by article directories for being too sales-oriented.

Keeping the word "article" in mind, rather than "advertisement," will also offer a bit of reassurance that your own articles will be accepted by whatever type of article marketing directory you choose.

Are you a freelance writer who is tired of others profiting from your hard work and effort? Do you want to maximize your online income and secure financial freedom for you and your family? Now you can! Combine your writing talents with the power of Internet Marketing and watch your income soar! Visit http://www.internetmarketingwriter.com and join the new revolution of financially secure and joyous freelance writers.