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Why do search engines exist? That may seem like a strange question considering the fact that search engines are designed to search for information.

OK so search engines exist to search, but who benefits most from search engines? Well, businesses benefit from search engines, but search engines do not primarily exist for businesses.

Search engines exist for the benefit of the searcher. The consumer is the individual that should gain the most benefit from a search engine. Search engines will always work to protect the trust of the consumer.

Many businesses will use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies that ultimately fail because they were developed to exploit the search engine or explore a flaw in the algorithm of the search function. Once the flaw is discovered there is typically a radical restructuring of results. This can be frustrating to business owners, but it generally causes very little concern for the consumer.

Why? The search engine continues to learn from past success and failure as it improves search results.

With that in mind let me suggest that when you as a business owner begin to explore SEO techniques you should always make sure that the techniques you use are ‘white hat’ or generally accepted by search engines.

You can improve your results by concentrating on a well-defined keyword or phrase. You can also gain points by making sure your have a steady supply of fresh content. This can allow you to discover the greatest overall marketing push from search engines.

I’d like to suggest one of the most positive ways to improve SEO marketing enhancement is to involve yourself in article marketing.

If you’ve never heard of this strategy before it is simply writing articles that have something to do with your product, service or industry. In this case you do not need to write articles that only deal with your site keyword or phrase.

Once you write articles (generally 400 words of more in length) you submit the article to as many free article directories as possible.

How does this help you?

Virtually all free article marketing directories allow you to place a bio with up to three links that must be included by anyone wishing to use your article on their website or blog.

Essentially there are two things that happen when you use this marketing technique. The first thing that will happen is your site will gain more exposure as individuals use your article and readers choose to visit your website(s) as a result of reading your work. The second thing that happens is search engines will recognize these multiple backlinks to your site and tend to rank your site higher. They do this because the more links back to your website from other site sources usually indicates a heightened level of trust and that makes your site a more positive choice for higher rankings.

If you can refuse the idea that you should find a way to trick the search engines and simply work to discover positive ways to direct traffic to your site you may actually find a more positive SEO experience and greater online visibility in the long run.

Don’t get me wrong. I still think that SEO is the best way to get free targeted traffic to your website. The problem is, it is not very reliable. SE algorithms change all the time and it is very difficult for a layman to keep up with their working. In fact, even SEO companies find it difficult to do this. So although you can optimize your website regularly, there are times when a sudden surge in targeted traffic can certainly help give a boost to sales. The best way to do this is – piggybacking on others’ efforts.

The idea is to tie up with people and / or businesses that can refer your products / services to their existing clients. They may be compensated by a one time upfront commission, or a recurring commission, or a reciprocal promotion of their products / services to your customers, or something else.

Now, this strategy is known by various names, like integration marketing, joint venture, fusion marketing, collaborative marketing, strategic alliances, endorsement marketing, reciprocal marketing, hidden asset marketing, and many more. However, the core concept remains the same. And it is one of the most powerful concepts that can lead to a surge in traffic and sales. In fact, it is the cheapest way to double, triple or even quadruple your revenue and customer base, almost overnight. While this sounds very easy (and it is), it requires careful planning, handling, research, and most importantly, thinking out of the box.

First of all, let me explain what a JV (Joint Venture) is: It is a way for a business to cooperate with another non competing (more often than not) business that operates in a similar “universe” for mutual benefit. “Universe” essentially means, has the same group of customers.

How do we find “such businesses”? There are several things that we need to “think about, out of the box” and the most effective one is – What does a normal customer buy just before, during, and after purchasing the products / services that you supply? This one will serve a good starting point. For example, let’s say you’re planning to buy a car. So what else are you planning to buy? Or better still, for the contextual sake of this article, with whom can a car dealer form a joint venture with?

As a car purchaser, you may be interested in auto loans, auto insurance, car accessories, special extended warranties, etc. So the best people / businesses that a car dealer can form a joint venture with are, with insurance folks, banks who offer auto loans and car accessories suppliers.

Similarly, the best way to get huge targeted prospects to buy from you is to tie up with non competing business owners and get them to endorse your products / services to their existing customers. A word of warning – the offer should be really special. The customer should certainly get a better deal than he normally would. This could mean a special discounted price, or a special freebie only available through the endorser. It could also include a free consultation, or free installation, free shipping, extended support, extended warrantee, etc. As I said before, think “out of the box”.

Another important thing to remember is to make very clear “what’s in it for the endorser”. It could mean a higher commission, life time commissions for all future purchases, or an extremely high upfront commission. Put yourself in his place and try to think what offer would be irresistible for him.

How much can you afford to part with? This is a tricky question. You may have to forego a major part of your earnings. You’re getting these customers for free, so you shouldn’t crib with keeping the smallest cut. In fact, if you know that most of these customers will come back to you for more purchases, upgrades, etc, you may even want to consider giving up 100% of your profits, or even make a loss on the first sale. Your interest should be to make the endorser and the client get the maximum advantage.

Another very important thing you need to keep in mind before you jump into this strategy is – you need to know your metrics very well. You must have already measured the conversions that your offer will create before you approach your JV partner. Don’t say that the offer should convert at 1%-10%. Say with confidence that it has converted between 2.3% for normal promotions, 4% for niche targeted promotions, and 6.3% during the season. Don’t make up the figures; give true statistics (I’m only giving examples here). This is because if you say 5% and the endorser only gets 1%, he will never again promote you. And don’t think you will get away with it; he may probably inform your other prospect JV partners about the incidence, reducing your chances with them. Good news spread fast, bad news spread faster.

Another important thing you need to remember is, try to make this as easy as you can for the JV partner. Offer a readymade email that he can send to his list that includes his affiliate link. If he promotes on his website, offer ready banners, HTML code that he can directly embed into his website, etc. You can even offer to do the dirty work for him if he has enough trust on you. Remember, the idea is to create a win-win-win situation. The client gets a better deal, you get more clients and the JV partner gets a good commission (or whatever he stands to gain).

Last but certainly not the least; be very honest, both, in your approach, as well as in crediting with the commission. Pay all the commissions due on time, as committed. Don’t cheat your partner. If he finds out, you’ve dug your own grave.

E-commerce is a cut throat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest. Each day, more and more sites are clambering to optimize their rankings in websites and if you lose your guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in the abyss filled with so many failed e-commerce sites.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, search engines would be the most widely used internet tool to find the sites that they need to go to or the product or information they need.

Most people use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is an indicator of a sites success in search engine optimization. You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in.

But, it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even better. As I abovementioned, each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to make themselves rank higher using search engine optimization. It is imperative to improve your site better and better everyday.

So just what is SEO and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need SEO to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income generating.

With search engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume. Let’s just say you get only a turn out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turn out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.

So once again, what is SEO? It is utilizing tools and methods in making your site top ranking in the results of search engines. Getting yourself in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate public awareness of your site’s existence and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could lead to potential income and business.

Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change in your site or add. These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your sites niche or theme.

You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and informative. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your site’s content applicable and conducive to search engine optimization.

You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges and page transfers besides using SEO. The more inbound and outbound traffics generated by sites among others are one of the components search engines uses to rank sites.

Try to search the internet for many useful help. Tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization are plenty to be found. Read many articles that can help you optimize your site in search results. The more knowledge and information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort in your part but the benefits will be astounding.

If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the internet that can help you in search engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your site. There are also some content writers that have lots of experience in making good keyword laden content for your sites that have good quality.

Act now and see the benefits garner with search engine optimization. All of these will result to better traffic and more business for your site and company.

Outsourcing to an SEO company for online advertising needs does not mean a company and its employees are left sitting all day waiting for results. A client still needs to participate up to a certain extent with an SEOs work so that the latter may produce more effective results. However, some actions on part of the client may do more harm than good to an SEO’s efforts of bringing in more traffic to a website. Understanding how SEOs work and how it yields benefits for a client should give the latter an idea about which practices they should refrain from that can decrease the efficiency of SEO.

An innocent site update may jeopardize an SEO’s efforts. Webmasters may overlook the fact that their website has been recently optimized and in the process of updating they revert to an un-optimized version of the site. Clients should be more conscious and sensitive about the fact that SEO technology is built into their site’s framework and may fall down like a house of cards if they carelessly tinker with their site’s inner workings. By no means is it suggested that clients should let their site’s contents rot.

Instead, clients should consult with their SEO providers how to go about in updating their sites contents. Clients may think that this may make them entirely dependent on their SEO, but this is not necessarily so. Once the client’s webmaster knows how to go about tinkering with the sites without affecting the SEO structure, they may go ahead with their usual business. After all, the strength of an SEO scheme lies in it being a one time thing and requires very little maintenance.

Clients should also understand that SEO providers are neither magicians nor illusionists who can turn around their client’s stats without modifying to a certain extent site content. Website content is part and parcel of an SEO site and clients that demanding in no case shall their content may be changed are not likely to hire a decent SEO provider. Ethical SEO firms need to alter to a certain extent a site’s content so that such can be optimized and anything short of this may call for the violation of a search engine’s TOS. Only mediocre or less than reputable SEO firms would agree to such conditions.

Another caution to clients and SEO companies alike, seeing how an SEO works does not make the observer an expert. Clients embarking on their own SEO tinkering in the given sites may result in the sites going kaput. It may even destroy whatever optimization the SEO has already adopted and integrated into their client’s sites. In this worst case scenario both the client and SEO firm is left with a rather unsightly mess to clean up and loss of whatever search ranking the site has already reached. This is an echo of the elementary principle to let experts do their work, but unfortunately many clients still lose sight of this fact.

Linking to other sites likewise affects site rankings but a client should be careful of the way they conduct their linkages. Search engines have recently been cracking down on sites that engage link trading and if caught such are often penalized. Clients should only link to sites which offer genuine help to their visitors or at least cover relevant content. Moreover, one could not be accused of being overly careful if they ask their SEO to review the link so that the latter may find out if the link does not engage in questionable SEO practices.

Any information regarding change given to a company’s marketing department should be immediately forwarded to the SEO provider. SEO is as concerned with the changes and flux with their client’s marketing situation as the in-house marketing department. This is so that the SEO may immediately adopt and implement the necessary changes in their client’s site so that the latter’s patrons are informed of the latest news and updates.

With all the things mentioned above, it may seem like the SEO scheme is overly delicate and is likely to crash with every little change coming from the client’s side. This is not so. Acting on anything with very little understanding regarding the thing or situation is an invitation to disaster. SEO frameworks are no exception to this. Even a basic understanding of how SEO works for the client can prevent any problems from arising and would allow companies to reap the full benefits of SEO marketing. SEO firms are their client’s partners in making online advertising work and as such, an understanding of how each one works is absolutely necessary to achieving in their joint endeavor.