Search Engine Optimizers often have two different views when it comes to meta tags. One this is unanimous meta tags have definitely been devalued for use in most major search engines but you will find they are still being used as the description often times when your site is listed in the search results.

Meta tags were started back in the early 90's when the Internet was just getting its brand new legs and they were used to help the search engines organize the growing number of web pages. This was an easy way to get your site indexed and listed high.

Soon after unethical webmasters started to abuse the meta tag by either spamming the page full of keywords or sometimes even made different websites appear in the results for a completely different keyword. Gambling sites would stuff their meta tags with more commonly used phrases in order to bring their sites to the first page and trick the search engine and moreover the user.

Now obviously, most search engines have discontinued the use of meta tags for organizing their search results. Algorithms have become much more technologically advanced and they use a number of other methods for indexing and sorting. The big question is if they are no longer viewed as a helpful tag, why do some SEO's still use them?

Meta tags come in a multitude of different names and uses, so which ones do you use? There are four that I often find myself using when I am optimizing a site. They are as follows:

Meta Robots:
This tag is still widely supported and it simply tells the search bots to either follow the URL through or you can ask them not to index certain parts of your site for aspects that may not be relevant to your actual site.

Meta Description:
My favorite tag. This is your first impression, if you don't have this tag search engines will just tag clips of your index page including the keyword that was being searched for by the surfer. First impressions often is the difference between a sale or no sale.

Meta Keywords:
A controversial meta tag, some use it, some don't. I still thinks it holds a bit of value if you keep it simple. Don't add more than 20 or so keywords, as I think it does increase your on-page keyword density.

Meta Content Type:
This is recommended because you may find that if you do not have this tag it could cause display problems.

Now, most search engines don't use the meta tags as they did in the early nineties, but as I explained you can still use them for a variety of other reasons. There is of course a number of opinions on this matter: Some SEO firms are strong believers in the meta tag and other firms are strongly against it.

In conclusion, my opinion is that meta tags can be used for a number of alternative reasons and still offer you a great place to sell your stuff.

I always will recommend the use of at least a small number of Meta Tags, and if used correctly they will greatly improve your chances of more sales and higher rankings.

About the Author: Carrie Haggerty has been working in SEO and Internet marketing for the past 3 years. She has started her own SEO Firm and also her own SEO article website.

The most important thing is writing more you can, every day for example. For the rest, I don't know if this is the better solution to do it but, I can say, it works well. With order, I suggest you to do in this way:

1. Publish your post and add it on digg.com

- Before to add your posts on Digg be sure to have a good number of active friends.
- Then, send a shout to everyone about your post.

2. Promote your contents on other communities with the same topics you publish on your site

- If your blog is about web design/programming I suggest to add your posts on DZone.com, PoshCSS (if your post is about CSS), Design Float (web design, css, graphic). These digg-like site can drive a huge traffic on your site for days if your post becomes famous! Use community message on MyBlogLog to inform your community members about all new updates on your site.

3. Don't underrate del.icio.us power!

- Add your post on del.icio.us and use traffic generated from digg/other communities submission to increase the number of users who share your post.


Plan your time
I spend not more then three hours/day. At the week-end I do a list of four-five topic I want to publish, so during the week I can spend more time to add contents and promote them instead of thinking "how can I write?".

To reach the top of major search engines, like Google, you'll need to focus on both on-page optimization and off-page optimization. These strategies ensure that your web pages are properly coded and that many third party websites are linking in. Make sure to develop your web pages with proper search engine optimization techniques. Once you've done so, focus on building links to your website. Links should be formatted properly and generated from high ranking websites (Google PR).

1. Begin with properly formatted Meta Tags.
The meta tags, including your title tag, description tag, and keywords tag, are important for classifying your web page and communicating to the major search engines the content of your page. Although meta tags are not as important as they once were, they are used for many purposes including how your listing appears in search engine results lists.

2. Focus on keyword density.
Are you trying to optimize for a particular keyword or keyword phrase? Keyword density is the concentration (as a percentage) of your keyword phrase on a particular web page. Keyword density should range between 2 and 8% To determine your keyword density on a given page, divide the number of times your keyword appears by the total word count of the page.

3. Use proper page formatting.
Search engines love to see emphasis. You can identify your keywords with specialized tags such as title tags (h1, h2, etc.) and properly formatted text. Be sure to bold, italicize, and underline your keywords at least once on the page you are trying to optimize.

4. Generate links to your website through article marketing and link building activities.
Submit original content to article directories and authoritative sites in order to generate back links. When a third party website links to your site, search engines take notice - improving your overall search result placements. Build as many back links as you can.

5. Obtain listings in Web directories.
Large directories like the Yahoo! Directory, DMOZ and others are important to improving your overall search results. Many websites use these directories to display websites when users search on a particular term. If you're not included in the directory, your website may never appear as a search result option.

6. Use social bookmarks to generate inbound links.
By bookmarking your website or webpage on popular social bookmarking sites, such as Reddit, Digg, or Del.icio.us, web browsers are pointed to your website and valuable links are created. This strategy is essential for making users aware of your content and generating interest. Many sites will provide links to valuable content.

7. Be persistent.
By applying search engine optimization techniques on a regular basis, you're sure to improve your Google placements. The key however is to remain vigilant and continually apply seo even when you've achieved a number one ranking. Do so ensures that you will remain in the top position.

These strategies are important for anyone interested in improving search results for their website. Begin any search engine optimization effort with a thorough review of your website's strengths and weaknesses. Once you've identified areas for improvement, separated into on-page areas and off-page areas, you're ready to being promoting your website.

About the Author: Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert with more than 12 years of marketing experience. He has appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. Read Michael's latest book on how to improve search engine rankings and visit http://goodmarketingtips.blogspot.com to receive your free daily SEO advice

This articel written by Mr Guy Kawasaki (co-founder of Truemors.com) in one of the net magazine

I know a fair amount evanglish and little bit about blogging, so I've combined the two to provide some insights into the evanglisme of a blog.

1. THINK "BOOK," NOT "DIARY". A diary contains your spontaneous thoughts and feelings; you have no plans for others to read it. By contrast, if you write a book, from Day One you should be thinking about spreading the word about it. If you want to evangelize your blog, think of it as a product you're trying to sell and market the heck out of it.

2. ANSWER THE LITTLE MAN. Imagine there's little man sitting on your shoulder reading what you're writting. Every time you write an entry, he says "So what? Who gives a shii-take?" If you can't answer the little man, then you don't have good blog/product. It's tough to market crap, so make sure you have something worth saying.

3. PROMOTE VIA E-MAIL.When I first started my blog, I sent out 10,000 e-mail announcements to all the people who had contacted my company in the previous nine years. Don't buy address lists or send spam to people, because for e-mail promotion to be effective, you must know the recepient, or the recipient must know you. More e-mail tips : Whenever you answer an e-mail mention your blog, and make sure your e-mail signature contains blog's address.

4. LINK TO OTHERS. If I had to do it over again, I would have looked for interesting blog that cover topics similar to mine. Then, I would have blog-rolled them all to ensure that Technorati pinged my blog so bloggers could find me. I use Blogrolling.com to create my current blog roll. I use NetNewsWire and Endo to look for new links to my blog, and I find sites that I would never have seen were it not for their links to my site.

5. SUPPLEMENT OTHERS BLOGGER. Read the blogs of the top 50 bloggers (use Technorati ranking) and see if you have in-depth knowledge about their topic. Then craft a real essay that complements the bloggers entry. One of the biggest challengers bloggers face is feeding the content beast. If you can help me feed it, I'll gladly link to you.

6. ACKNOWLEDGE AND RESPOND TO COMMENTERS. Only good things can happen when you all the comments on your blog and respond to them. It makes commenters feel like they are part of your community and encourage others to read your blog.

7. BE BOLD. I'm not saying to intentionally piss off other bloggers, but if you can't speak your mind on your own blog, you might as well give up and stay on the porch. This is the fascinating thing about blogging : Even when people torch you, they link to your site.

8. MAKE IT EASY TO JOIN. I had no idea what Feedburner and Feedblitz did until a blogger named Steven Nipper told me about them. Enable your readers to get to your blog in multiple ways. It's no different than distributing your physical products through multiple cahannels.

I love this articel as remaining to myself. The articel written by Thinkblogger (thank you very much)

I hate to say it, but blogger’s sometimes get ahead of themselves. (I am no exception). However, this is a relatively new blog (about a month and a bit) and I think I am doing a fairly good job on promoting it. I am starting to see an increase of traffic and ‘life’ while going through the page hits on my awstats and google analytics.

This Blog’s Experience:
Within the month of this blog being online, I pulled in about 7,000-8,000 unique visitors in my first month. As most blogger’s may point out in their own thirst-quenching way, we all want more traffic. There are a few ways to increase the traffic to your blog which may not be considered by most bloggers:

1.Patience. I know, not exactly something that I should start with, but guess what: its true. Bloggers get ahead of the themselves. Unless your extremely lucky or a genius, it takes time to build up readership (unless you want to put in some money into it, then that opens up a whole new side of “how to’s”).
2.Comment on Related/Popular Blogs. I know, not exactly easy to do but if you are helpful and polite, it can definitely increase your chances. If someone comments something rude on this blog, chances are I wont even look at it and pretty much just delete it whenever I feel convenient. (I am sorry, but I like to have a positive feel on my blog, thanks.)
3.Update Frequently. RSS feeds are a great tool and weapon for your blog. Make sure to use it. I try to update my blog once a day in order to try and keep people interested. Unless your blog is overly popular, I wouldn’t post much more than 3-4 posts a day, as it may eventually overwhelm readers and get them to unsubscribe. Then again, if your posts are genuine and worthwhile, keep them coming ;).
4.Join Forums. This is probably a good way to do it. Find a forum that has a high alexa rank and great traffic flow. If you are a webmaster or in business/marketing, check out DigitalPoint. Though not my best source of traffic, it manages to still net me 50-200 visitors daily with only 300 posts (it also depends on how much I post that day and promote). Forum’s are a good way to also gain visibility by putting your site/blog on your signature. They are a great source of backlinks (but not PR juice).
5.Give Stuff Away for Free. Yep, no brainer here. Contests are great. Free Templates are great too. This has been discussed on this blog multiple times. It’s true though, these can help create a lot of back links, which in turn can give you higher page rank. etc etc.
6.Trackbacks. Though I have not utilized trackbacks on THIS blog, I must say that it is a great way to not only gain visibility, but can build a unique income of traffic if the blog is popular enough. (That is the main reason why I have not done many trackback’s yet, I’d hate to write about a heavy hitter and have him/her take a quick look at my blog and think to themselves, “Who is this guy?”). Trackbacks can wait, though they are great, if you know what you are doing.
7.SEO optimization. I know, I know, this topic has been discussed to death here too. Guess why? SEO optimization actually works! 25% of my traffic is coming from Google Search Engines. Wan’t to know what is funny? Some of my posts are on the first page (position’s 3-7 in some cases), and this blog is a PR0. What does this tell you?
8.Backlinks. Of course, the other greatest weapon of them all. I have not done many directory submissions or anything else as of yet (I will give it another month before I start - I wish to get some more content here first), though back links are crucial to your blog or website.
9.Linkbaiting. Something that is a mystery and yet so simple. There are different ways to linkbait a blog, that of which can help you gain the traffic from other blogs quite easily. This is a great way to get some nice traffic flowing to your blog.
10.List of Tips/Resource List. Genuine tips are really attractive to readers because they explain things in just a few seconds. Wan’t to know why you see them everywhere? because they work. Better yet, include sources to where you’ve seen these tips to the actual post and watch the fun. On my other blog I had a list of 22 tips; out of those 22, 17 trackbacked to my ‘resource’ list of posts
11.Social Bookmarking. You’ve probably heard of it. Heck, you’ve probably joined a few. Technorati, Digg, Stumblupon, Mybloglog, BlogCatalog, Entrecard, Deli.cio.us, Reddit, and many more. These are great for getting traffic if use properly.

Conclusion:
This is only the first splattering of tips. Though common guidelines, many blogger’s forget about the basics and try to work on the advanced ones. You have to walk before you can run. However, being outside of the box can always be beneficial sometimes, too

Maybe you have seen the Entrecard widget on many blogs and you may have wondered what this is? Well, Entrecard is the new method to get free traffic to your blog by advertising your 125×125 ad for free on other blogs.
I have joined Entrecard, and I must give some credits for that to 134u.Com, because I’ve joined after visit his blog.
1. In order to join Entrecard, your blog must be in English and it should be of reasonable quality, i.e. not spam, pornography or highly offensive.
2. When you join Entrecard you can upload your own personalized 125×125 ad, or you can choose from a few Entrecard ads, which are quiet pretty:

3. Once you have create your account you can start to earn credits. What are these credits and how you can earn them?Credits are the currency of the Entrecard network. You pay with Entrecard credits instead of real money to advertise your Entrecard on other people’s widgets. Earning credits is very easy. You will earn 1 credit every time you drop your card for someone else (you can find blogs with Entrecard widget by going to Campaign tab where you can find them ordered by categories, by most popular, most recent, most recommended - see the image below). You will earn 1 credit every time someone else drops their card for you. You will earn credits every time someone advertises on your widget.

4. The image below is how your Entrecard dashboard will looks like. You can see what blog is advertising on your widget, what blog has left it’s entrecard, who wants to advertise on your widget. There are also advanced 3D statistics of traffic from ad campaigns and from Entrecard site, as well as stats for cards given and received.

5. When you choose to advertise on someone’s blog, your ad will be displayed for 24 hours, without any ad in rotation. You are able to see on your Dashboard on what blog is your ad running so if you receive more visits from a blog, you can advertise on that blog again.
For more help on how to use Entrecard you can read the Help section or Entrecard’s forums.

My traffic from Entrecard
My stats on Google Analytics displays to kind of referring site: entrecard.com (displays the visits you receive from entrecard.com - people who drops card on your blog) and entrecard.s3.amazonaws.com (visits from blogs where your ad is displaying). I can see these numbers in my Entrecard Dashboard, too.
In two weeks, I received 417 visits from people who drop their cards to my blog and 400 visits from ads I placed on other blog. That means about 800 visits in two weeks, for about 15 minutes/day of work. Isn’t that something?

2 tips for placing your ad
1. When you choose blogs where you want to advertise on, try to choose those that have the Entrecard widget displayed on the first visible screen, for their visitors to see you better. If the widget is displayed on the bottom of the page, your chance to be seen is lower.
2. Try to place your ad on those blogs who have a good Alexa Rank (a good traffic). I have Alexa Toolbar installed and I follow pretty easy the blog’s Alexa Rank. I choose to advertise on blogs with an Alexa Rank up to 5-600,000.
I have to admit that I have advertised also on blogs with a low Alexa Rank, but with Entrecard widget placed on the first visible screen.

My advice
If your blog is new, just launched or you have low traffic, Entrecard is a good way to drive traffic to your blog and to get known. You don’t have to work too hard for this and you can advertise on high traffic blogs without spending any money. How cool is that?

Entrecard on the blogosphere
You can find out more about Entrecard, by reading some interesting articles on blogosphere:
1. Interview with Entrecard’s Graham Langdon founder by Darren Rowse on Problogger.net.
2. 8 steps to becoming an Entrecard powerhouse on MastersOfSEO.com
3. Entrecard Economy Weaknesses on BruceHopkins.net
4. Entrecard Is Winning Over Blogrush on BloggingMix.com
5. Reasons you Could be Failing in Entrecard on Wiflba.com

Original articel from 134u.com

Article from Web Designer

Here we show you how mastering Google can help get visitors motoring in the direction of your website.

1. Getting Started : One of the most common ways to find links is to simply ask Google. Open up www.google.com. Do a search for your desired keywords, for example ‘web designer’. Navigate to the naturally listed top sites to see whether they allow you to summit a link.
2. An alternative route : You can be a bit specific about links. Open up www.google.com. Type in your niche, for example ‘custom web designers scotland’, and include either ‘+links’ or ‘+links or + sites’ at the end of your keywords. Google will look for sites that contain references to each.
3. Web CEO useful tools : If you are optimizing websites youself, a helpful piece of software is Web CEO. Available to download for free, the search engine optimization (SEO) software offers loads of great features including detailed site-tracking statistic, as well as how to find link partners.
4. Download Web CEO : To get your copy of this software, visit www.webceo.com. The program also offers a free training programme that you can use to advance your optimization skilss further. As the sites states, there is no expiry date and there are no forms to fill out. Once downloaded, set up a new account.
5. Setting up Web CEO : To begin, select File and then New Site. In the New Site Wizard, enter your websites details and description and then click Next. After double-checking your details on the next screen, click Finish. This now gives you access to all of the tools Web CEO has to offer.
6. Find links in Web CEO : Load Web CEO and select Find Link Partners from under the Promote Your Site heading. Select the website from the list provided in the Project Selector, or select New Site. Then click OK followed by Configure. Now you’ll be able to select which engines you wish to check for links.
7. Search engines : Select the Add keywords tab followed by Add. To download keywords used in your site, click ‘Get keywords from site’. Your website will appear in the screen then click OK twice. Click Find New Partners and list of potential linking partners will be produced.
8. Requesting links : A large number of websites offers a standard form to you to request a link, whereas others might ask you email them. When you have found the websites suitable for your site to link to, find the page on which they offer links to other sites.
9. Link Request Form : Under Title, enter a specific title relating to your product/service, remembering to include your relevant keywords. You can go into more detail in the Description box; including more keywords will help increase your relevance for Google’s natural listing.
10. Keep your email safe : Select category from the drop-down list that best describes your product/service, then enter your contact name and email address. Ensure that the company displays a statement which states your email address will not be passed on to any third parties who may distribute it.
11. Directory linking : Directory linking is great way to source links to your website. A directory is a website that houses links to other sites and places them in an organized order. This makes it easier for people to find what they are looking for. Ask Google to find directories to summit to for your industry.
12. Finding directories : Navigate to the Google search box. Following on the keywords example that we have been using, you would type ‘directory + web designer’ into the search box and click Search. This will return a list of directories from which it could be useful to get links.
13. An alternate route : There is also a handy list with many of directories in it and information on each of them. The directory list is also split into sections for different industries to make it easier to search through. Firstly, navigate to http://info.vilesilencer.com and click the Excel Download link.
14. Save for future reference : Click Save to save the list to your PC so you can refer back to it at a later date. The great benefit with directory linking is great way of building quality, inward non-reciprocal links to your websites.

Currently tracking 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.

Blogs are powerful because they allow millions of people to easily publish and share their ideas, and millions more to read and respond. They engage the writer and reader in an open conversation, and are shifting the Internet paradigm as we know it.

On the World Live Web, bloggers frequently link to and comment on other blogs, creating the type of immediate connection one would have in a conversation. Technorati tracks these links, and thus the relative relevance of blogs, photos, videos etc. We rapidly index tens of thousands of updates every hour, and so we monitor these live communities and the conversations they foster.

The World Live Web is incredibly active, and according to Technorati data, there are over 175,000 new blogs (that’s just blogs) every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second.

My target for 2008 : To Be Top 1,000 Blog in Technorati. Thanx for your Assistant.

Sign Up Technorati And Be My Fan

Articel written by 134u.com

You may ask: what in the Earth could I improve more to my RSS feed? Well, there is a way to make some improvements, by adding a footer to your RSS feed. I saw that many bloggers don’t take advantage from this valuable space, though you can use it in so many ways. So, what can you do with this footer?

You can monetize your RSS feed, by adding in footer ads, banners, referral links and other.
You can add copyright information for preventing content stealing.
You can add some information about you and your blog to increase your credibility.
You can add some special bonuses for your subscribers (this way you can boost your subscribers).
You can add a list of related articles from your blog.
Adding a footer to your RSS feed is as easy as pie. You can use one of the following seven plugins listed bellow:

1. Simple Feed Copyright - add a simple copyright notice to full text wordpress feeds.

2. Add Related Posts to Your Feed - adds a list of Related Posts to your full text feed. You’ll need either UTW or w-a-s-a-b-i Related Posts plugin installed and activated.

3. RSS Signature - allow the addition of a custom tagline, signature or © copyright message to the wordpress generated rss feeds. You can add any kind of message, tag, or even images — as long as it can be displayed in an RSS feed.

4. Better Feed - allows you to enhance your feeds with several highly customizable features, like a copyright notice, a list of related posts, “Next page” links, “Read more” links, a “Add to del.icio.us” link and more.

5. ©Feed - adds A report of copyright, a digital fingerprint and the IP of the feed reader. The feed can be also be supplemented with comments and topic-relevant contributions. It is possible to view related post using the plugin “Simple Tagging” or “simple Tags”.

6. Feed Footer WordPress Plugin - adds footers under all your blog posts in your RSS feed. With this nifty plugin, you can copyright your feed, monetize your RSS feed, add banners and images, add any HTML code.

7. Angsuman’s Feed Copyrighter Plugin - adds a copyright message to your feed items.

If you are using FeedBurner, you can also use FeedFlare for adding a footer to your feed. FeedFlares are files in .xml format. You can easy create a FeedFlare following the FeedFlare Developer Guide.

Well, you can subscribe now to my full RSS feed to see the way I’ve chose to take advantage from my RSS feed footer.

How would you use your RSS feed footer?

From ShoeMoney

With blogging, the most obvious things that we should all do are usually the ones we forget to. If you are looking to increase the popularity of your blog in 2008, here are some simple things you need to start doing:

Email Subscriptions – if you are using Feedburner, you are probably already using the email subscription service. What you may have not noticed is that when you use the Feedburner email subscription service, when someone gives their email to Feedburner to subscribe to your blog it doesn’t mean that they are a subscriber. They usually get a follow-up email from Feedburner verifying that they subscribed, but many people end up missing this email and never fully subscribe. So if you log into your Feedburner account and go under email subscriptions you will notice that some email address are not active. For those non-active email addresses, take them and re-subscribe them to your blog. This way they get another verification notice to subscribe to your blog and many of them will end up subscribing.

SEO – a lot of people claim that they are SEO experts or that their blog is already optimized for search engines. Yes, WordPress is not that bad out of the box, but there are still a lot of modifications you need to make to your WordPress blog if you want more search love. If you want to make sure your blog is SEO friendly, check out this video.

Participate on other blogs – if you are trying to make your blog popular, you are probably concentrating fully on your blog instead of other competing blogs. A great way to increase the popularity of your blog is to find all your competitor blogs and start participating on them. By placing valuable comments on them others will find you and most likely subscribe to your RSS feed because they are targeted visitors.

Share some love – don’t expect to be popular if you are not willing to link out. If you want others to link to you or start reading your blog then start linking to them. When you link to others they may end up linking back to you or they may end up finding your blog interesting and start reading it.

What’s your edge – if you want people to read your blog you need something that differentiates yourself from the competition. This could be your attitude, your content, or anything else like that. But if you don’t have something that differentiates yourself from the competition then it is going to be hard to grow your readership.

Although these tips are basic, hopefully they will come in value to you during 2008. Just think about them every once in a while and you will start seeing growth in your blog traffic.

BonoRiau is a member of Digg and would like to send you an invitation. With Digg you can help promote and share news to the millions of Digg viewers with a single click (Digging a story).

Sign up free for Digg.com