Traffic Swarm Pro Membership - Bart The Bear SaysLet Google's Algorithm Show You The Traffic - Bart The Bear SaysHow to Reduce the Pain of Switching Domains - Bart The Bear SaysClíck Fraud: A Guide To Protecting Your Pay-Per-Click Campaign - Bart The Bear SaysSEO Elite 4.0 is out!

Submit Your Articles
To Moxie Drive Expressions

Bart The Bear Says Home Page

Click here to email me

Exchange Links

The official NowSourcing blog

Marketing Blogs - BlogCatalog Blog Directory

Your TrafficSwarm Pro Membership can be valuable by sitting back and collecting your 2,500 Credits each month and taking advantage of the faster review/approval times for new listings as well as the priority customer support that our Pro users receive.

But if you stop there you are leaving a lot of your Pro value "on the table" and not taking advantage of all the benefits and savings that is now available to you. (Like thousands of extra credits and professional web hosting at no extra charge!)

Did you know that as a Pro user you will now earn an additional 2,000+ credits each month over what a Free user earns for the same amount of surfing?

You'll now earn a minimum of 3 Credits (two Bonus Pro Credits) on your first 20 Start Page clicks each day. Plus earn a minumum of 2 credits (1 Bonus credit) for each click after the initial 20 per day. (That's an additional 1,500 credits compared to a Free user with only 30 clicks per day!)

You'll also earn 2 credits for each load of your Start Page (first 30 loads each day) instead of the single credit that Free users earn. That's an extra 900 credits every month as a Pro user.

So with just 30 Start Page loads and 30 clicks a day you will easily earn an extra 2,400 Credits each and every month!

As a Pro user, you will also....

- Earn 100 more credits from each referral to TrafficSwarm

- Earn 1 Pro Bonus credit each time one of your personally referred downline affiliates (those on your 1st level) clicks on any of the links on their Start Page or in the Search Engine. That adds up quickly!

- Earm commissions on your affiliates who upgrade to PRO and

Be sure to check the "Bonus!" section of your Members Page after logging into your account to review the latest bonuses available to you. In fact, you are now eligible for a free year's worth of an elite hosting package from Jumpline.com simply for being a Pro user. Below are just a few of the powerful benefits and features available with this elite Hosting Package...

2 GB Disk Space
Dedicated IP Address
Ability to Host up to 20 Separate Domains/Websites
10 FTP accounts
3 Tiered Daily Back Ups
150 Pop eMail Accounts
24-7-365 Amazing Customer Support
So login to your account and click the link "12 Months Free Hosting" in the "Bonus!"
section to get started today.

Click here to go to Traffic Swarm

Technorati tags:

traffic swarm trafficswarm pro membership benefits web hosting

Labels: benefits, pro membership, swarm, traffic, trafficswarm, web hosting

Google's Algorithm, the complex formula Google uses to rank webpages is often considered the Holy Grail of SEO. Conquer it and you're in Traffic!

Recently Rand Fishkin of Seomoz.org brought together 37 of the world's Top SEO experts to tackle Google's Algorithm, the complex formula and methods Google uses to rank web pages. This ranking formula is extremely important to webmasters because finding which factors Google uses to rank their index is often considered the Holy Grail of site optimization.

Google's ranking factors affect how and where you are listed in their search engine results or SERPs. Since obtaining top positions for your targeted keywords often spells success for your site, knowing Google's ranking factors can be very beneficial. Every experienced webmaster will know Google is the main supplier of search engine traffic on the web, getting listed on the first page or anywhere in the top 10 positions for popular keywords will result in plenty of free quality targeted traffic.

Briefly listed below are some of the main ranking factors you should be optimizing your web pages for in your marketing. The majority of these ranking factors will be very familiar to most webmasters who take full advantage of any and every SEO tactic which will give their site an edge over their competition. Here are some of the main ranking factors to consider:

1. Keywords In Your Title And On Your Page

Place your keyword or keyword phrase in the title of your page and also in your copy. Many webmasters use variations of their keywords on this page and also include it in the H1 headline.

2. Keywords In Your URL

Keep your page on topic and place your keyword in the URL. Use your keyword in the H2, H3... headlines. Place it in the description and meta tags, place it in bold/strong tags, but keep your content readable and useful. Be aware of the text surrounding your keywords, search engines will become more semantic in the coming years so context is important.

3. Create High Quality Relevant Content

Have high quality relevant content on your pages. Your content should be related to the topic of your site and updated regularly depending on the nature of your site.

4. Internal Onsite Linking

Internal linking is important to your overall ranking. Make sure your linking structure is easy for the spiders to crawl. Most suggest a simple hierarchy with links no more than three clicks away from your home/index page. Creating traffic modules or clusters of related links within a section on your site has proven very effective for many webmasters, including this one. For example, creating a simple online guide on a subject related to your site's topic can prove very beneficial. Keep all the links connected and closely related in subject matter and don't forget to have occasional external 'anchor keyworded' links coming to these internal links on your site instead of to your homepage. Deep build your links.

5. Only Linking To High Quality Related Sites

Don't forget to link to high quality PR related sites. Linking to high quality sites shows the search engines your site is very useful to your visitors. Build relationships within communities on the topic of your site. Be extremely careful not to link to bad neighborhoods, link farms and spam sites... when in doubt, don't link out! Unless your site has been around for years and is well established and trusted by Google, this factor will have an adverse effect on your site's overall ranking. Linking only to high quality content sites will give your site an edge over your competition.

6. Global Linking Popularity

One of the major ranking factors is the Global Linking Popularity of your site. You should try to build plenty of inbound links from quality sites. One simple and effective way to do this is through writing articles and submitting them to the online article directories. Only related sites will pick up and display your articles with your anchor text links back to your site. These are often ONE-WAY-LINKS. But don't just write articles to get links, write quality content that will help the reader first and the links will come naturally. Also remember an article is an extremely good way of pre-selling your products and gaining trust with your potential customers.

7. Anchor Text Is Very Important

Anchor text is an important factor your must not forget to use. Perhaps more importantly these inbound links should be related or relevant to your site's topic, which will play an important role in your rankings. Don't ignore the text surrounding your links and use different anchor text links to avoid keyword spamming. Keep in mind, as search engines become more semantic, the whole text of your article will probably be considered your anchor text, thus making articles even more important to your rankings.

8. Number And Quality Of Your Inbound Links

Your inbound links should also come from related high Global Link Popular sites. The more links your have from these popular related sites the higher rankings you will get. Many SEO experts suggest you should have a steady stream of new sites (inbound links) added each month to keep your rankings growing. These links will age and increase your rankings after 4 or 5 months. Both quality and quantity is important.

9. Reliable Server And Service

Like any business, Google is only serving up a product (SERPs) to its customers, this service must be continuous and available at all times. Made sure you have a good reliable server because any extended downtime when your site is inaccessible to the Bots may be detrimental to your rankings. If it is down for over 48 hours, you could be dropped from the index. Ouch!

10. Duplicate Content Is A NO NO!

Make certain you don't place duplicate content on your site. This may affect your rankings and get your pages thrown into the supplemental index. Be careful not to use duplicate title or mega tags on your pages as this will lower and disburse your internal page rankings, resulting in poor optimization. Your overall SEO strategy should be to provide valuable relevant content and links for your visitors and for the search engines. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, be extremely careful who you link out to from your site. Avoid spam sites, link farms or selling links. Although it is a bit outdated, using the Google Toolbar will still give you a general overview of a site's PR or Page Rank.

These are some of the most common and important ranking factors Google uses to rank and display their search engine results. Optimizing your site or keywords for these factors can prove very beneficial and rewarding. There are many more factors so you should use the Seomoz.org link in the resource box below to get all the gory details. For any novice or experienced webmaster it makes for a fascinating read and is extremely helpful in tackling Google's complex ranking system or algorithm. Conquer it and an endless supply of free organic traffic is yours for the taking.

Copyright © 2007 Titus Hoskins.

This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Titus Hoskins is a full-time online marketer. For the most effective web marketing tools try his main PR6 site: Internet Marketing Tools Make sure you check out Seomoz.org for the complete list of Google's Ranking Factors.

Technorati Tags:

google's ranking factors internet marketing tools webpage traffic rank search engine results targeted keywords

Labels: google's ranking factors, internet marketing tools, rank, search engine results, search engine traffic, targeted keywords, traffic, webpage

Transferring traffíc and popularity to a new domain is a painstaking process that no one on the web appears to be immune to, or so Topix.net has realized. Topix.net is a leading news aggregation resource that has been in the news lately because they are planning to move their site from Topix.net to Topix.com after purchasing the .com for a cool million from a Canadian animation company.

The Wall Street Journal wrote this article explaining how damaging a seemingly simple process of switching from .net to .com could be for Topix LLC. The author goes on to explain such a switch is usually fraught with ranking drops while the major search engines notice and respond to the changeover. The fact that switching addresses will cause problems is not news in the SEO world; however, I thought Topix.net's situation was a great opportuníty to review what one might expect when switching domains.

Switching Shingles

Switching a domain is tantamount to changing physical locations and it should be treated just as seriously. The following are the steps to take and consider when switching domains:

1. You must install a site wide 301 (permanent redirect) on your old domain to forward all human traffíc to the new domain and inform search engine spiders that your website has permanently moved to a new location. For information on how to implement a 301 redirect here is a great tutorial.

2. Google is the biggest player and likely the most significant driver of traffíc to your website. Keeping that in mind you will want to notify Google of your switchover as soon as possible by registering the new website within Google Webmaster Central and then submitting a fresh XML sitemap. Google representatives are very clear the only way to minimize the impact of a domain changeover is to give Google's automated system as much warning as possible to limit downtime.

3. Find the most significant inbound links that point to the old domain and selectively contact the site owners requesting a link update to the new domain. TIP: Discovering which sites to contact first can be done using a combination of top referrer statistics, and search engine backlink reports. I don't recommend taking this step unless you find a few sites that stand out as massive traffíc drivers as this process can be frustrating due to lack of response; after all, changing a backlink to your site is likely low on a webmaster's priority list.

4. Send out a press release far and wide explaining the move to the new domain. Feature the domain prominently in the release to begin the task of re-branding.

5. All email addresses will need to be forwarded to their respective addresses on the new domain. Ensure that anyone emailing the old address is forwarded to the new one BUT they should also receive an automated notice to change their contact records to reflect the new email. Leave these email forwards active for a short time to catch the most important emails and then turn them off and delete the old address accounts to avoid encouraging sp@mmers.

6. On the new domain don't forget to implement a 301 redirect for the "non-www" traffíc so they get forwarded to the preferred "www" version of the domain. For more information and background on this topic please visit the following tutorial "301 Redirect of Non-WWW to WWW URLs".

7. If you expect a severe drop in traffíc you can expect a drop in salës. In this regard you may want to ramp up or start pay per clíck marketing to minimize the damage to your bottom line.

How Long Does a Domain Transition Take?

Generally a popular website will experience the least amount of downtime because Google will take notice faster due to the many entry points (inbound links from news articles, etc.) this type of site usually has. It is also more to Google's benefit to ensure that a credible and well-trafficked website is kept high in Google's results to ensure users receive the best results possible. Using a popular website such as Topix.Net as an example, I would expect a 2-week to 1-month turn around at which time traffíc would be back to approximately 85% of what it was.

Sites that are less popular will really need to do their homework and ensure they have informed Google in every way possible of the transition. The transition back to normal traffíc for sites that carefully transition their website should be in the realm of 2 to 6 months.

"What If?" The Worst Case Scenario

What should you do if your traffíc drops dramatically and after a few weeks or months it still has not measurably restored itself? Google actually recommends you post your issue on their online user support forum. Apparently Google engineers occasionally take pity and help out; maybe you will get lucky. I also recommend visiting the more authoritative search engine forums (such as Search Engine Watch, iHelpYou, etc.) and requesting help. There are a lot of incredibly talented SEOs on these forums that are happy to provide assistance.

WARNING!

If you must conduct a domain transition be sure to plan it during a historically slow time of year to minimize damages. For example, it would be a mistake for a B2C to switch domains before the Holiday Season rush.

In Conclusion

Do not switch your domain unless you have no other choice because no matter how popular your website is domain switchovers are far from enjoyable. After all, even losing a single week of significant traffíc for a popular site could cost many thousands or even millíons of dollars. On the flip side of the coin, less trafficked websites (i.e. Mom and Pop sites, small B2C websites, etc.) usually experience a longer wait time so they experience a different type of pain. Fortunately, you now know there are ways to mitigate the potential harm to your bottom line, just don't forget to follow the rules and your switchover will be a lot more effective and ultimately less painful.

About The Author
Ross Dunn is the founder and CEO of StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth has provided professional search engine placement and management services since 1997. Ross is a search engine optimization and placement expert with over 9 years of marketing experience and is a Certified Internet Marketing and Business Strategist (CIMBS). Blending his experience in the art of web design and search engine optimization, Ross offers a unique and informed perspective on obtaining top search engine placements. Ross can be reached at ross@stepforth.com.

Labels: domain, marketing, pay per click, search engines, SEO, traffic, website

Clíck fraud is the latest 'hot topic' circulating the online marketing arena, but what is it? And how does it affect you as a merchant running a pay-per-clíck campaign?

Spending on Internet advertising is growing faster than any other sector of the advertising industry and is expected to surge from $12.5 billion last year to $29 billion by 2010 in the U.S. alone, according to the researcher eMarketer Inc., with around 50% of this spending being spent on pay-per-clíck (PPC) advertising.

Here we offër you a complete guide as to what this phenomenon is, who is likely to commit such an act, how to identify & prevent clíck fraud and how to best report instances of suspected clíck fraud on your PPC campaign.

What is Clíck Fraud?

According to Wikipedia "Clíck fraud is a type of internet crime that occurs in pay per clíck online advertising when a person, automated scrípt, or computer program imitates a legitímate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per clíck without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link"

Clíck Fraud is estimated to range from 5% - 15% of pay-per-clíck traffíc (some estimates are as high as 20% - 35%) although Google estimates clíck fraud at only 2% due to the rigorous detection methods they claim are in place.

In a recent study by Clíck Forensics, clíck fraud reached a new high of 14.2% in the last quarter of 2006 with the average rate of clíck fraud on 'content networks' as high as 19.2% for the same quarter.

So Who is Likely To Commit Clíck Fraud?

The clíck fraud villain is most likely to fall into one of three categories:

Online vandals with nothing better to do than cause a nuisance.

A competitor clicking on your search network PPC ads, with the sole intention of increasing your cost-per-acquisition (CPA). This could be interpreted as clíck fraud, although currently the search engines do not consider this kind of activity as clíck fraud.

Search Engine advertising affiliates who generate self-income from fraudulent clicks on 'content network' adverts displayed on their own websites. This practice, at its extreme, involves the use of unscrupulous 'paid to read' or PTR sites, which are basically clíck-fraud rings, some with hundreds or thousands of participants, paid to clíck on your ads with no regard for your return on ínvestment (ROI) as the advertiser.

What are the Search Engines Doing About It?

Both Google and Yahoo claim that they filter out most fraudulent clicks. The costs involved for these clicks are either not charged or are reimbursed to advertisers who have been wrongly billed.

To combat clíck fraud Google applies four layers of fraud detection:

1. Automatic detection - this filters clicks from both the search and content networks in real-time with the goal of removing them before their existence is ever shown to the advertiser.

2. The "Flagging system" - an automatic process to remove invalid AdSense clicks.

3. The "Manual review" - this process has more than two-dozen Google employees tasked with manually reviewing and removing any suspicious AdSense clicks.

4. If the first three layers of protection fail then the fourth and final layer of clíck fraud detection falls to the advertiser and 3rd party clíck fraud detection companies. Google refers to this layer as "requested investigations".

Google's main aim is that the first three layers of filtering will identify all invalid and fraudulent clicks. These layers currently filter more than 98% of invalid clicks.

And should you be in any doubt, both Google and Yahoo have, in the past, released the following statements:

"We think clíck fraud is a serious but manageable issue" says John Slade, Yahoo's senior director for global product management.

"Google strives to detect every invalid clíck that passes through its system" says Shuman Ghosemajumder, the Google manager for trust and safety. "It's absolutely in our best interest for advertisers to have confidence in this industry."

As a positive for the future, Google is currently testing a cost-per-action (CPA) platform, which should effectively deal with clíck fraud. With CPA ads you don't pay by the clíck but instead pay when the customer reaches a certain goal: buys a product, fills an enquiry, etc.

How to Identify Clíck Fraud on Your Pay-Per-Clíck Campaign

Before you can even contemplate identifying clíck fraud you must have effective tracking tools implemented on your website and, if possible, access to your server logs. With tracking tools in place, the most obvious way of spotting clíck fraud is to simply observe any spikes in traffíc where there is no particular shift in your conversions.

Once identified, these spikes can then be analysed by looking for repeated clicks from sources that look similar. This similarity could be an IP address or an IP range; it could be a combination of IP ranges; browser version; operating system. Basically look for data in groups that looks fraudulent.

If all this is just 'a bit too heavy' for you then there are a number of companies out there that can help.

AdWatcher: claims to be able to spot clíck fraud so that you can report it. Covers other aspects of PPC marketing, by helping you track your ROI, email success, etc.

Clíck Auditor: offers the ability to see whether your competitor's IP is the one performing any abusive clicking, and says it will stealthily gather your competitors IP addresses for this purpose.

ClickSentinel: focuses on helping you get refunds on fraudulent clicks, as requesting a refund from your PPC provider can often be very difficult for the un-initiated.

Clíck Tracks: reportedly has automatic clíck fraud reporting along with other clíck tracking (analytics) tools.

Reporting Suspected Clíck Fraud

When reporting suspected clíck fraud, you must include as much captured data as possible to íncrease your likelihood of obtaining a refund or credít.

The following guidelines are recommended:

Clearly state, at the very beginning of your claim, that you are reporting suspected clíck fraud.

Provide a full explanation to support your claim.

Include your account details (do not include your password or payment information).

State the exact keyword, ad and campaign where you suspect clíck fraud has occurred.

State the exact time, date and IP address of each instance of suspected clíck fraud. This data can be gleaned from your server logs or 3rd party tracking tool.

Finally, state whether you are requesting a refund, credít or investigation.
If you were using any software tools, such as those highlighted earlier, to help you track and report clíck fraud, then include any reports generated by these in your claim.

Lowering the Risk of Clíck Fraud Happening to You!

Always bear in mind that your PPC objective is to get conversions and not just clicks.

The more you have researched the demographics of your intended client base the better your chance of avoiding clíck fraud. Are your clients from a specific country or location? When are they likely to search for your product or service? What are the key search-terms they are using?

With demographic data in-hand you can target your ad campaigns more effectively and lower your risk of clíck fraud.

About The Author
E-Gain New Media are a specialist UK SEO company specialising in UK Search Engine Optimization, Online PR and Pay-Per-Click Management.

Labels: adsense, advertising, adwatcher, campaign, click, click auditor, click tracks, clicksentinel, fraud, internet, pay per click, PPC, traffic

You will have to excuse my ego, but I have something new and exciting to share with you. I have used SEO Elite 3.2 for almost eight months now. If you had not noticed, my main web page, http://www.moxie-drive.com is now #13 in Google for the keyword phrase home based business opportunity. That puts it on page 2 and my traffic is up significantly this week. Let me share one of my secrets with you...

Click on the SEO Elite 4.0 graphic to go straight to Brad Callens SEO Elite 4.0 web page.

Excerpts from the SEO Elite sales page...

4 Good Reasons Why Attracting Organic Search Engine Traffic Makes Increasing Sales As Easy As Shooting Fish In A Barrel!

Organic Search Engine Traffic Is...

100% Free! (You don't have to pay for traffic)

100% targeted! (What could be more targeted than a person who actually SEARCHED for what you're offering?)

100% Auto-pilot! (You don't have to send any emails or place any ads. Your visitors will come round the clock regardless of where you are or what you're doing)

100% Hassle Free! (You don't have deal with SPAM issues like having your website being blacklisted just because of some fruitcake who forgot that he opted in...)

SEO Elite V4.0 Just Released!

The Internet's Most Powerful
SEO Software!

SEO Elite™ 4.0 literally reveals the winning linking structures of any of your competitor's websites. So you can copy how they're doing it and improve on it to grab a coveted top-10 search engine spot.

And keep that spot consistently!

Not only does it analyze your competitor's website's, but it does so much more!

"Immediately See What You Need To Do To Jump To The Top Of The Search Engines!"

Within seconds find out ...

Your competitor's entire linking strategy, which includes:

The page your link is located on
The IP Address of the website linking to you or a competitor
Whether or not they're still linked back to your website
The Google (PageRank) of their links page
The Alexa Rank of your link partner's website
The page title of the webpage your link resides on
The anchor text surrounding your link
The total number of times a specified keyword appears within your anchor text
The percentage of websites that a specified anchor text exists within your anchor text.
The total number of outbound links on the webpage your link resides on
The total number of links on the the webpage your link resides on.
Allows you to do a "whois search" on the website your link resides on so you can easily call them up on the telephone if you wish.
The email address of the website your link resides on
The link popularity of the webpage your link resides on
Calculates the average Page Rank of all the websites pointing to your website
Calculates the number of PR0-10 websites linking to your website
Summarizes the number of links from each IP Address
Summarizes the total number of each type of extention you, or your competitor's link contain. (i.e. .edu .org .com .net and so on..)
Age of all websites
Whether the website is in the Yahoo Directory
Whether the website is in DMOZ.org
Whether the website is in Wikipedia
You'll know exactly how you should create your own web pages for top search engine rankings. By analyzing your competitor's pages you'll find out...

Keyword Density (How many times you should repeat your keywords on your pages)
Keyword Prominence (Where you should place your keywords on your pages)
Link Density
Link Prominence
Whether or not they're using h1 and h2 tags AND what they are
Whether or not they're using meta keywords AND what they are
The number of internal links on their web page
The number of external links on their web page
Whether their website is in the Yahoo directory
The age of their website
And much more!
Don't know what all that 'stuff' means? No worries...

If you don't know what this stuff means, don't worry. We provide you with, what I like to call, a "Fool Proof" Guide to follow. It's written for the absolute beginner, but covers things that only the most advanced search engine optimizers know. These are things that professional SEO's charge thousands of dollars to do for their clients!

This guide will literally take you by the hand and show you EXACTLY how to maximize your use of SEO Elite. It cuts right to the chase, down to the nitty gritty core. It is Not 1000 pages long of blah blah blah of technical jargon or crap and fluff. This guide alone is valued at over $97 and will show you how to take your website from nowhere to be found, to the top of the search engines in as little as a few weeks.

Get this now or forever eat my dust...