The 5 Apple Pickers - A Search Engine Marketing Parable

At a small college a group of incoming freshmen marketing majors gathered for their first class. As the wise, old Professor of Search Engine Marketing made his way to the front of the room, one of the students asked him, "Professor, what is SEO?"

The professor looked over the classroom full of young students and replied, "Let me tell you a story..."

There once were 5 families that lived in a rural valley where the soil was rich, the weather was harsh, and the best apples in the whole world grew wild.

One day at the first home the man of the house said, "My family is hungry. I know there's an apple tree on the ridge. I'll go and see if I can get some apples for my family."

So, the man took a basket, hiked up the ridge until he arrived at the apple tree. He thought, "I'm tired. I will set my basket under the tree and take a nap. Perhaps when I wake up some apples will have fallen into my basket." So, he set his basket under the tree and fell asleep. When he woke up he found one apple in his basket, which he took home to his family.

He did this day after day, but one apple was not nearly enough to feed his family so they grew hungrier and weaker each day.

At the second home the woman of the house said, "My family is hungry. I know there is an apple tree by the river that looks healthy. I'll go and see if I can get some apples for my family."

So, the woman took a basket and a picking stick and walked to the apple tree by the river. She pulled out her picking stick to pluck apples from the tree, but while the tree had seemed health from a distance there were only a few apples on it. (In some versions of the story the tree is full of apples but they are all very high in the tree.) She jumped and reached as high as she could with her stick, but she only got 2 apples, which she took home to her family.

She did this day after day, but 2 apples were not nearly enough to feed her family so they grew hungrier and weaker each day.

At the third house, the man thought, "I know of many apple trees in the valley I will visit each one and see which one has the most apples I can reach with my picking stick." So, he did. And while he saw some trees that were bigger, and other trees that had more apples, he settled on a small tree that had a good number of tasty apples, which he brought home to her family. They had enough to eat each day but no more.

At the fourth house, the woman thought, "I know of many apple trees in the valley. I too will visit each tree and taste an apple from each to see which one has the most edible apples I can reach with my stick." So, she did. And while she saw some trees that were bigger, and other trees that had more apples, she too settled on a small tree that had a good number of tasty apples, which he brought home to her family. They had enough to eat that day.

After dinner she thought, "If I only had something to stand on, I could pick more apples in a taller tree." So, she went to her workshop and made a small step ladder. The next day with the help of her ladder and her picking stick she was able to pick more apples from a slightly bigger tree. Her family had some extra apples they canned for the future.

Each night the woman would go into her workshop and add a little more to her ladder, and each day she was able to pick more and more good apples. After many months she was picking the best apples from one of the biggest tree in the valley and selling the extra apples to the other families in the valley.

At the fifth house the man did all of the things the woman of the fourth house did, but he also picked from many different trees and wrote down in his notebook how many apples he got from each tree each day. If he noticed a tree was bearing less fruit he might stop picking from it. If he noticed another tree had more good fruit at the top he would add to that tree's ladder. After many months of this he was bringing home more apples than all the families in the valley could eat, so he started shipping extra boxes of apples to markets all around the world.

When he finished the story one of the students asked, "Professor, what does it mean?"

The professor replied, "The apple pickers represent website owners, the apple trees are keywords, and the apples - website visitors."

The first apple picker who set his basket under the tree and took a nap is like the person who builds a website, doesn't optimize it for search engines, and hopes people will just drop in.

The second apple picker who chose to pick apples from the tree that looked healthy only to find it had few apples is like the person who builds a website and optimizes the web pages for phrases she thinks will bring visitors. But she neglects to do any keywords research and ends up optimizing her site for phrases that aren't searched much (or phrases which are out of reach for her site to compete for).

The third apple picker who looked at all the trees in the valley and chose the one with the most fruit he could reach is like the website owner who builds a site, does keyword research, and optimizes the site for good, relevant keywords that his site is able to compete for. They are not the most popular phrases in his field but with on-page optimization he is able to get his site into the top 10 search results and generate sales or leads.

The fourth apple picker who looked at all the trees, chose the one with the most fruit she could reach, and built a ladder in her workshop after dinner so she could get the apples from bigger tress is like the site owner who builds a site, does good keyword research, optimizes her site, and begins building links to her site. He not only receives good results early on, but her number of visitors and sales grow as the number of links to her site grows and she is able to compete for more competitive keywords (bigger trees).

Lastly, the fifth apple picker who looked at all the trees, built a ladder, and tallied the number of apples from each tree each day is like the website owner who does keyword research, on-page optimization of his site, link building, and tracks his search rankings with ranking reports and his website traffic with analytics. He is able to build a successful website that competes for the best search phrases and can adjust as his industry and search marketing trends change."

From that day forward every student brought an apple for the wise, old professor each day they attended class.

And that's where we get the tradition of an apple for the teacher. Don't believe me? Google it.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kurt_Steinbruek

Search Engine Paradigm

One cannot begin to talk about an idea, without first presenting its history. The concepts of memory extension and hypertext date back to the mid 1940's, when Vannaver Bush's, "As We May Think" was published in The Atlantic Monthly. He urged scientists to work together to help build a body of knowledge for all mankind:

"The human mind does not work this way. It operates by association... Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it. In minor ways he may even improve, for his records have relative permanency."

Bush's work encouraged scientists to further explore the idea of indexing knowledge and search through the database of knowledge. Their research led us to what we know now about the WWW (world wide web) and search engines. Bush's concept of the mind operating by association, an old idea found in David Hume, leads search engines to implement a measure of association when ranking results. Search engines started out by simply matching the search term with the terms listed in the documents. This random, chaotic display of results presented problems with data organization and search engine accuracy that required a paradigm shift lead by Google.

This paradigm shift toward precision, recall, and ranking enticed users to utilize a search engine when seeking information. 'Recall' is acquiring information available for your search, while 'Precision' is the relevance of the search. For example, you perform a search for gorilla and a dog website is the first result listing. The result was not precise thus the relevance of the search result is extraneous. 'Ranking' is ordering the results in a meaningful way, usually from highest to lowest. Google was one of the first to implement a "Page Rank" indicator to measure a page's importance and consequently its relevance - which led to the first popular subjective search engine algorithm. The details of this subjective algorithm are as follows:

"Academic citation literature has been applied to the web, largely by counting citations or back links to a given page. This gives some approximation of a page's importance or quality. PageRank extends this idea by not counting links from all pages equally, and by normalizing by the number of links on a page. PageRank is defined as follows:

"We assume page A has pages T1...Tn which point to it (i.e., are citations). The parameter d is a damping factor which can be set between 0 and 1. We usually set d to 0.85. Also C(A) is defined as the number of links going out of page A. The PageRank of a page A is given as follows:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

This biased approach to a pages 'importance or quality,' is what makes this algorithm subjective. A search engine is used to acquire information relevant to the search. Relevancy is important when dealing with information. Therefore search engines should produce relevant results, which are the most precise results when searching for a keyword or keyword phrase. My view is that search engines should not take a subjective approach to acquiring results. This subjective relationship approach creates false results. For search engines to be effective, they need to produce the most relevant results.

I will begin by presenting the observation of non relevant results when using a subjective algorithm design under the assumption that the results are non-relevant from the perspective of the user. Next I will show the exclusion of relevant results when using a subjective algorithm design, from the perspective of the user. Lastly, the kind of questions that are supposed to be asked and probed for answers, in relation to search engines and how they are to be structured.

We've just seen how Google claims that their Page Rank subjective algorithm presents the most relevant results to the user. There are two arguments that can demonstrate how a subjective algorithm produces irrelevant results. First, non relevant results can be found throughout search queries. We will perform a keyword search for the terms 'failure' and 'miserable failure' using Google. The first result, supposedly the most relevant, comes up as a bibliography of George Bush. Although one may argue that this is the most relevant result when searching for these terms, the fact is that the page presented does not represent a page about the associated failures. Needless to say, the page result never mentions 'failure.' Google might respond by arguing that its search results are generated by computer programs that rank web pages in large part, by examining the number and relative popularity of the sites that link to them. However, by using a practice called Google bombing, determined pranksters can occasionally produce odd results. The term "Google bomb" is used both as a verb and a noun; it is an attempt to influence the rank of a given page by using consistent anchor text (see the above example) from a large number of sites. The above response fails because it does not address the real issue at hand - the relevance of the term?

Google might also argue by claiming that 'pranks like this may be distracting to some, but they don't effect the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as always, remains the core of our mission." This response also fails because such results do effect the overall quality of the search service. Such results go against the mission of "relevant search" and provide evidence against a subjective algorithm. We have seen that none of Google's potential responses to the argument that subjective algorithms produce irrelevant results succeed. Hence, we should reject Google's claim that a subjective algorithm reliably produces relevant results.

The irrelevance of search results has been presented and I will now observe the exclusion of relevant results due to the presence of non relevant results. My first argument will rely on the search term 'blue.' If one knew nothing about 'blue' and went to a subjective search engine to learn more about the term, they would find nothing related to the color as we know it. What one would find is sites on cars, mountains, phones, and people. Google might respond that there is no site that provides information on 'blue,' thus the results for sites using the term.? However this response fails, because there is a site with an article that provides more information on 'blue.'

Another way that Google might respond to my arguments, is by claiming that the user did not use the correct search terms in order to find the correct website. This response also fails, because the user has never made a claim to follow the rules of the subjective algorithm. Rather the subjective algorithm has attempted to understand the user, through their Page Rank variable. The user is simply relying on the subjective algorithm to provide more information for 'blue.' Google fails to produce this information, thus we should reject the claim that a subjective algorithm provides the most relevant results.

We've just seen how a subjective algorithm approach to search engines, fails to produce relevant results. I will now argue for the view that a new paradigm shift through true mathematical statements can produce relevant search results the first change should be to reduce the current weight placed on inbound links. This dependence on other sites to place a rank on a page creates subjective search results that lead to irrelevancy. Second, the user should have the final say as to what is relevant and not the algorithm. Third, a voting system should be implemented that allows users, those who search, to decide the 'rank' of a site. Finally, the last rank should be determined by users and not by an algorithm that cannot fully understand the entire dynamic of web sites. A rank by users is a more accurate vote, even if they rank differently, than the one given by a web page. The strongest objection to a paradigm shift would come from operators of the current subjective algorithm arguing that it is not possible to have one hundred percent relevant results when dealing with such a large amount of information. This objection does not succeed because the subjective algorithm should not be the only tool used to display search results. It is obvious that the algorithm won't be able to read the mind of the user, but he or she should not be subjected to the output of the algorithm alone.

From the statements above the following questions should be asked and probed for answers in relation to search engines and how they are to be structured, in order to create a rival theory. One might ask themselves if it is possible to have a relevant search engine or if (? Never ask a question) it is even desirable to have a relevant search engine. Or one might ask themselves how much weight, should be placed on the vote from other sites when determining the ranking, in importance, of a site. Finally, one might wonder about how much say so a user should have in determining the ranking and importance of a site. It is obvious that we are not yet at the point where we can give one hundred percent relevant results. (Never ask a question) means that we should give up on the idea? Although all the answers to the above questions are not known, I will leave them open to suggestion and progression. What we do know, is a subjective search engine algorithm is not adequate enough in and of itself to produce 'relevant results.' Rival theories are necessary in order to confidently make the claim that the current search engine theory, based on a subjective algorithm produces accurate, relevant, results.

A search engine is used to acquire information relevant to the search. Relevancy is important when dealing with information and, therefore, search engines should produce relevant results. It has been shown that a subjective algorithm produces irrelevance. {{The exclusion of relevant results due to the presence of non relevant results, and we now know that a paradigm shift is required in the algorithm design to produce relevant search results through true mathematical statements and user selection.}} One might argue that it is unethical to have non-relevant search results, but that this is unavoidable in practice. I will leave this topic for another day and time.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chad_O_Ledford

Local SEO Marketing - Little Known Secrets

Many small business owners and internet marketers fail to realize that search engine marketing doesn't have to be general. Local SEO marketing options are available and preferable in many cases. There are many reasons that you might wish to market your website locally rather than globally.

First, many businesses only operate in a specific area. When you market these websites globally, you run into the problem of wasting time answering phone calls and emails from people that are a far cry from a qualified lead. For these websites, local SEO marketing is the only effective solution that makes sense.

Secondly, it is much easier to get your site seen by those who need to see it when you use local SEO marketing. When you do not gear your marketing toward your local area, you risk your site being lost in a sea of other sites. If you want your customers to find you easily, you have to gear your marketing toward a local standpoint.

With the knowledge the local SEO marketing is available and necessary, you now must determine how to best use this information. The first thing you need to do is make sure that your locale is mentioned in your title and the first paragraph of your site. Add your location in all of your internet marketing activities, including ads and pay-per-click campaigns.

In other words, treat your location as another keyword. Make sure it appears at least three times for every three hundred words on your site. One way to make sure that your locale is included in your site is to add a tagline to your normal logo and slogan. For example, "serving Las Vegas since 1994" can be incorporated into your usual tagline.

Finally, you can gear pay-per-click advertising to those searching in your location. Almost every pay-per-click marketing solution offers this option, and you should use it. It will cut your SEO costs in half, and get your site seen by targeted, qualified leads.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_Adamson

6 SEO Marketing Tips to Send You to the Top

SEO marketing tips can be found everywhere on the web. Unfortunately, many of these are outdated, are understandable only to experts, or are completely useless for your particular situation. These SEO marketing tips are based on current SEO trends and are applicable to every website.

1. Dismiss everything you thought you knew about SEO marketing. Things are changing rapidly, and unless you are in the loop our your information is less than a year old, you are probably behind the times.

2. Get rid of keyword and description metatags. These tags do not hold much sway, if any, with search engines anymore. Additionally, all your competition has to do is "view source" on their web browser and know exactly what keywords you are targeting.

3. Because description tags are not used or ignored, the first paragraph of your web content is crucial. This content is the first thing the search engines index, and it is the part of your site that comes up in the search results. Make sure it is keyword oriented.

4. Keywords and phrases are important for SEO marketing, but don't overdo it. A keyword density of about 3-5% is enough to get the attention of the search engines, and will keep your content human friendly. If you spam your keywords and phrases all over your site, search engines can and will ban you from their listings entirely.

5. Buy a domain that contains your keywords. If you already have a domain that is not SEO oriented, you can buy a better one and point it to your existing site. The first sites to pop up in a search will be those that have the keyword in the URL.

6. Avoid duplicate content. If you place an article on an article directory, don't use it on your website. Never copy content from other sites, either. Not only is it plagiarism, but the search engines tend to ignore duplicate content.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_Adamson

Why This Traffic is the Best Automated Traffic You Can Get

There are lots of ways you can generate traffic to your website and I have used and use most of them. But my favorite way to get website traffic is to buy banner ads on websites in my market. This is by far the best, fastest and most predictable form of traffic you can have...

I want to show you why banner ads are the best traffic you can...

Reason #1 - Banner Ads Still Work & Work Really Well:
Ever heard of Google AdSense? That is those ad's people put on their sites that if clicked on Google gives them a percentage of the click value. Well did you know that people clicking on those ads generates billions of dollars a year for Google and their website partners?

People who say banner ads don't work are just really bad at creating compelling ads! I get thousands of clicks off my banner ads and they generate a lot of money worth of sales... So I can tell you without a doubt that banner ads work and will work for you if you it right.

Reason #2 - Banner Ads Provide Constant Daily Traffic:
The cool thing about banner ad's are that if you have them out on 20 or 30 different sites, your risk is diversified over a lot of different websites. So that means if site #2 goes off-line or changes the position of your banner on you, you still have traffic coming from 29 other high quality sites.

And because the sites you advertise on are usually sites that get lots of traffic from repeat visitors, the quality of people clicking on your ad and coming to your site is very good!

The bottom line is - banner ads are an amazing way to get stable and constant traffic to your website... They are also automated! That is the best part of it all.

To discover proof of how you can make six figures a year online in niche markets with virtually no competition - Click Here Now to get this free insider video.

Jason Nyback is a pastor who has also build a six figure a year Internet business selling ebooks, audio programs and videos in small, passionate & 'odd' niche markets.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jason_Nyback

Easy Ways to Generate Traffic With Banners

Banner ads are a tremendous tool for your online business and will help you make extra money online quickly if you know the basic tenets for how they operate, how people see them, and how you can format them more effectively. But, they can also be a drain on your budget if you are not careful, so let's take a look at what works and what doesn't work when you start creating new banner ads for your site:

What People Want to See

People want to see things that are going to help them, entertain them, or give them something. A banner ad needs to convey at least one of those three things and if you're really good, it will convey two or three of them.

To make extra money online, you need to showcase in your ad something you think your specific audience will need. Some markets use flash type games, others use free offers, and others still just tell the truth and show them what you're selling. Whatever you do though, you need to be sure that what you showcase in your ad is something that your potential customers will be intrigued enough to click on and read more about.

On the flip side, stay away from cheap tricks to get new visitors. When someone is tricked into clicking something, they are much less willing to give you the benefit of the doubt at your site. Instead, you should create leading ads. Promise something free or entertaining and when they arrive, continue to showcase that promise as you lead them toward your product.

This will ensure that you not only generate new traffic to make extra money online, but that you do not waste that new traffic by scaring away or angering all that new traffic you just paid for.

The Goal to Effective Traffic Boosting

If you want to be effective in boosting your traffic, creating a more pleasing banner ad, and ensuring that they not only click on your ads each time through but that they are not disappointed by what they find, you need to integrate both catchy imagery and unifying text. Together, you will find that these two things will create a symbiotic relationship that will entice hundreds of people to check out your site that might otherwise have passed. You'll make extra money, they'll find a good product and everyone will ultimately be very happy.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_Walston