Article Marketing: The best way to get the exposure and promote the internet business or home business or any type of business that is done online can bring good profits through the use of writing articles and marketing them in a effective way. Article or content is very much powerful and we can boost the traffic, improve the sales and online visibility of online business.

There are pretty good number of options that can help you to put your article content Online in different ways.  so here are some tips about writing articles and promoting them:

• Have a short and simple title that captures attention and make your readers click on your article. Make sure that you have a targeted keyword in title or do some research on what people might type into Google looking for your topic.
• Make your article easy to read as most people who are searching for the information Online are not experts so the better plainer and simple English sounds to be the best way. Also make sure that your paragraphs are properly spaced and they are not so long that it becomes difficult to read and understand. Try to keep each paragraph 4-5 sentences.
• Provide information that readers are trying to search online. The up to date and relevant information will help the readers to learn more about you.
• Set your articles in the way, where you should have a beginning, body, and conclusion. The introduction makes the reader ready for what you are going to tell them about, the body is where you tell them what you want to tell them, and the conclusion is review what you just told them. Simple… Isn’t it?

The best way to choose topics for discussion is by browsing online forums related to your industry or niche. You can always see people asking questions and searching for solutions to their problems. You can easily get a lot of ideas and write articles centered around those addressing important problems.

Promoting your websites is the best way for long term traffic and revenue. Also helps to generate free traffic from the search engines. Articles can be used for generating valuable back links for your websites and improve your ranking for your most popular keywords.

Articles can help you get there on first page in Google for the best keywords. Submitting article to article directories, free blog networks can help you to generate ton of free back links. The more back links, the higher rank for your keywords.

Learning more about generating back links for your websites by writing good articles with enough effort will bring good results in the search engines like Google and a good amount of traffic from article directories as well as this will grow your revenue.

Google SEO is optimization of websites which is done by website owners for getting top page ranking in the ruler of search engines that everyone is familiar with, It is Google. This is a fact that everyone knows and everyone will agree with this, that a majority of internet users are using Google for having an answer on their search terms.

It doesn’t matter when it comes to the user, it may be a blog reader or customer, will type a query which is called KEYWORD in the search column and waits for a very short period of time to see the search engine results that appear for the query. This is the reason where you should think about building your website that is Google search Engine Optimization. It is pretty important that you optimize your business website or your blog, so that it helps you in achieving most of the benefits like better page ranks and targeted traffic from search engines. Indeed, this is one remarkable concept that will help you in having a good business.

As like any other business, you will need to do some investment in the beginning of you Online Business too.  The initial investment is going to be spent for hiring a good SEO agency that will work on optimizing your website. There are plenty of things that need to be targeted when you are into this optimization procedure.

You can ask yourself whether if it possible for you to do SEO on your own for yourself. It is definitely not a hard task to do. It is not going to ask for anything else rather than proper dedication towards work and a fair amount of your time. You will also need to learn a lot of things related to Google SEO concept before you start working on this. As stated before, this task is pretty time consuming, so spending some money and getting it done from professionals is a nice solution and side by side you can learn with your own, so once you are familiar with the concept, you will be able to do with your own.

There are a lot of companies that provide SEO services and solutions but it is pretty important that you find a genuine company that counts worth for your investments. Here again, you will need to search for finding a proper company that will help you in better way. Here again, cost is definitely a concern. Going for a cheap solution will be waste of time, money and it will not be good for you and your company. I’ll advise you to go for a company that will charge you a nominal fee and also make sure that you will get satisfactory results for your investments. You can verify their previous experience and most important their license and make sure that they will be able to provide Google friendly solutions for your website. Once you finish up with a company, your Google SEO website is nearly ready to go for Google Search Engine!!

A long tailed keyword is all in all an extension of a generic, core and high volume keyword or phrase. Mostly, it includes the alternative combination of the keywords along with other relevant phrases. However, the sphere of these keywords is that they are not meaningful when used separately. But, when they are taken as a whole, they make significant contribution to drive relevant traffic to the site.

Preferably, a long tail keyword can not surpass the searches if the brand is already well established. Then again it is still a question how these words and phrases can increase the traffic. Technically, the long tail refers to a statistical distribution where the high frequency population is followed by the low frequency population that ultimately tails off.

As a result, the keywords can be classified in two broad categories – short keywords and long tail keywords. They are also called broad and narrow keywords individually. Originally, the named long tail was invented by Chris Anderson and it is targeted at the less competitive niche market. Accordingly the long tail keyword can be expressed as ‘facebook account disbled‘ while the short tail keyword can be ‘facebook disabled‘.

As the examples show, the word facebook disabled is pretty competitive and there will be lots of web sites that deal with this keyword. Then again, the phrase ‘facebook account disabled’ will have less competitors. On the other hand, the last phrase is more specific and therefore, it will have less popularity. However for people looking at specific searches this will be a relevant keyword; hence it will drive quality traffic to the site.

Now, you would be thinking, why you would use long tailed keywords in your website. The reason is obvious here — you do not have a lot of competition when you are dealing with the long tailed keywords and in general, you have the chance of ranking the first position at the search result of  search engines. So, the rules are not much complicated, as much as you use the long tail keywords, the easier it will be for you to get traffic from search engines. After all, it is easier to rank higher with these keywords.

Plus point with the long tail keywords is that the visitors coming through these have pretty high percentage of buyers. In addition, they will click on ads for their search query. This is for the reason that the traffic of the long tail keywords is more specific and they are getting what exactly they were looking at. Statistically, the common keyword bring back $5 for every 1000 impression. At a same time, the long tail keywords can earn $100 in the same number of impressions. Logically, they are effective and worth being used in your site.

Now, if you are thinking to use the long tailed keywords, it is very important that you do proper research in this regard. There are lots of keyword research tools like Google AdWords and WordTracker that can help you in your research. Just remember that both short and long tailed keywords should be used in a balanced proportion, so that you get optimum web traffic.

In Google SEO (search engine optimization), you, the webmaster, fight with Googlebot, Google’s listing spider. Only this battle has no weapons. In its place it is your content verses the army of Googlebot’s other sites to rank.

To be successful in this battle there are things that the webmaster should do, and things that the webmaster should not do, should he set a possibility in winning the battle and claiming a position on the top 20 results of Google.

There are a lot of things a webmaster should do to take the edge of Googlebot. First and most important, create the website. Let it be a bit unique, or better than the rest. Add pages on top of pages of content. You can put articles, information, anything. With one exemption. It should be related to your website. After you have about 10 pages worth of content, get a number of links to your site. Submit to directories, loads of them. Try to submit to directories without a reciprocal link requirement. Besides use word-of-mouth advertising to get a view visitor. Once you have some links, some visitors, and loads of content, hit your view visitors with a boom. Offer rewards for who possibly will refer the most members, or who may possibly submit the most articles, or everything that will help to promote your site. Also keep in mind to squeeze in possible keywords in your content, and DO NOT forget meta tags, they are the key to SEO.

You might have taken a note, I never talked about or suggested when you should submit your site to Google, that’s the thing you should not do. If google picks up your site before you submit it, you get a way better rank.

Now you have come up with a very excellent SEO website. Now you have to take care of not to blow it. Whatever you do, DON’T:

• Do not link exchanges with the sites that are non-relevant to topic, this will hurt you.
• Do not cheat. Cheating is stuffing of “invisible” keywords on your site. (white text on white background) Googlebot picks it up, and boom, an end to the rank on Google.
• If you hit upon the need to submit your site, do it, ONCE. If you submit twice then, say goodbye to your rank.

That’s all and best of luck with the SEO. With this, excellent keywords, and least competition, you will get inside the top 20 of Google.

Is it okay to consider Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as an exact science? Then the answer is NO. Search Engine Optimization cannot be considered an accurate science for the reason that the techniques used in promoting websites or web pages are constantly developing as search engines continue to filter their algorithms to get more perfect and improved results while fighting spam. In an effort to be aware of search engines algorithms secrets, Marketers and Engine Developers engage in a cat and mouse game, equally struggling to get the better of each other by seeking to make use of loopholes in algorithms.

From the time when the actual difficulty stemmed from the proliferation of websites that used unethical ways of boosting their ranks like Keyword stuffing and link building, newer techniques and methodologies are being developed to prevent unethical issues regarding website promotions. The cumulative effect of SEO black hat method made the crawlers more advanced and more alert as technology formulates new standards for ranking. SEO experts who may possibly have once utilized black hat techniques now have to be more careful in their approach or they may fall prey to engine spam filters which can ban their client’s websites from engines, no longer appearing in Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

The expansion of internet is credited to both academics and businesses that have joined forced to produce a place where everything must be fair and apparently clean. If SEO experts continue to make the most and accept the SEO guidelines issued by search engines, then search engines will forever make basic changes that will promote an well-organized, reasonable transmission and reception of information worldwide similar to what happened in November 2003 when Google made fundamental changes to remove untruthful and unethical rankings, leading to the accommodation of new and honest page rankings.

A brighter future awaits SEO if only SEO experts will continue to judge usability and translations when coming up with search engine marketing campaign. In addition, SEO has a probability of surviving if it will continuously adapt and act in response to the hunt of a more trustworthy and relevant search results made possible by a search engine optimization anchored on strategies set by different search engines. If only SEO experts will do this then the internet will be a much superior place to secure pieces of information and trustworthy data.

Presently, Firefox is the highly developed web browser available for download. The user-interface, password management, bookmarking and variety of customization puts it in a league of its own. From the time when I downloaded Firefox, I haven’t used anything else and the Firefox team has not let me look behind.

My most preferred feature of the Firefox browser is the facility to add and have valuable feature tools into my custom-made browser. Lots of the top web 2.0 sites have Firefox add-ons, which allow the user to simply manage all of the web 2.0 tools they may have. If you are similar to most business professionals and entrepreneurs, web 2.0 is being included to a greater extent into your daily schedule. If this is the case, it is important to be as time-effective as possible. Without Firefox and its add-on plugins, I would be unable to stay on top of all my online networks and web tools.

If you are in search of a way to save time, the five Firefox add-ons i am using on a daily basis to manage and improve my web presence are mentioned below.

• TwitterFox

TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ tweets on Twitter. This extension adds a tiny icon on the status bar which notifies you when your friends update their tweets. Also it has a small text input field to update your tweets. You can store multiple twitter accounts in this add-on and access all of them without having to visit the Twitter homepage and login. You simply click on the Twitter icon and a small screen pops up, which allows you to tweet from any website/view recent tweets and direct messages.

• StumbleUpon

With StumbleUpon you will be able to connect with friends and share your discoveries, meet people that have similar interests, and check out what other people are discovering. The toolbar allows you to give a thumbs up or a thumbs down to the site you are currently viewing.

• Facebook Toolbar

Integrate your Facebook life into your browser. Search Facebook from anywhere: The Search Box allows you to easily search Facebook no matter where you are. Select a friend from the dropdown to go directly to their profile, or hit “enter” to see the search results.

Get Notified: Icons on the toolbar tell you how many new pokes, friend requests, and messages you have. A pop-up will notify you when your friends update their statuses, write a new note or interact with you on Facebook.

Connect with Friends: Click the icon to open the Facebook friends sidebar. You can sort your friends by name or status and easily interact with them and their profiles.

Share Content: The share button lets you share the page that you are currently browsing by sending it to friends or posting it to your profile.

• Digg Toolbar

When you’re browsing the web, the toolbar will let you know if a story has already been submitted to Digg and, if it has, how many Diggs and comments it got. If the page you’re viewing isn’t already on Digg, the toolbar will display a submit button, which will help you easily submit the story to Digg and share it with the entire Digg community. It’s even easy to hide the toolbar; if you don’t want to see it, simply click on the Digg guy in the navigation bar, and it will be hidden.

Latest Popular Content: The toolbar will alert you when new stories become popular on Digg by showing the story details in a small notification window at the bottom of the browser. And don’t worry; you can control whether to see all recently popular stories or just those from the topics and media types you care about.

Follow Your Friends: A great way to discover the best content is to see what your friends are doing on Digg. Enter your Digg username in the settings window to receive notifications when you friends Digg, submit, or comment on stories. To go back and look at earlier notifications, click the Digg icon at the status bar at the bottom of the browser. All notifications can also be snoozed if you want to temporarily turn them off.

Customize: In addition to setting topics for notifications of popular stories and your Digg username for notifications of friends’ activity, you can customize the placement of the notification window, how long it displays, and how links should be opened.

• Delicious Bookmarks

This extension integrates your browser with Delicious (http://delicious.com), the leading social bookmarking service on the Web. It does this by augmenting the bookmarking functionality in Firefox with an enhanced experience that offers the following advantages:

• Search and browse your Delicious bookmarks
• Keep up to date on your Network and Links For You
• Access your bookmarks from any computer at any time
• Keep your bookmarks organized using tags
• Share your bookmarks with friends or anyone on the Web
• Import your existing Firefox bookmarks

From the time when Microsoft launched its Bing search engine, it has drawn a great number of attention (and gossip) from the SEO community. On one hand, this is pretty logical for the reason that Bing is planned to be an additional strong player and it is likely to cut some share from Google search engine. On the other hand, this is almost the first time a new strong player comes to the ring, so possibly the expectations that Bing will put an end to Google’s monopoly are baseless. At rest, Bing is quite special (in a optimistic way) from the other search engines and this is its most important strength.

What’s different with bing?

The first feeling you find when you go to Bing.com is that it is special – the background makes it attractive but in no doubt, there have been a lot of other cases of search engines with plenty of graphical add-ons to mask their irrelevant search algorithms. Though, when you type a search query, the results you get are a pleasant surprise because they are relevant.

It is this relevance of search results that fears SEO experts. The results you get when you search with Bing are relevant, yet they are extremely different from Google’s. In fact, no issue if you search with Google or with Bing (or if you go to Bing, you can compare the result sets side by side), you search out relevant results and the two sets are very different from one another.

One of the most essential things SEO experts are interested to know about Bing is its algorithm. Obviously, Bing’s algorithm is dissimilar from Google’s for the reason that when the search term is the same but the set of results is different, a difference in the algorithm is the clear answer. In fact, the question is closely what is different between the two algorithms and if the difference is so drastic that it makes it compulsory to reoptimize a site for Bing.

What to do for now?

Wait. This is the initial thing you have to do. At present it is too early to say what steps (if any) are necessary in turn to optimize your site for Bing.

Moreover, despite of how hopeful Bing looks, it is still untimely to predict if it will turn into a real competitor to Google or if it will become one more unsuccessful attempt to triumph over Google. Let’s see how users respond – will they start Binging more or will they support Google. When it becomes clear that Bing will be able to make it, then it will make sense to optimize for it as well. So for now the best you can do is wait.

What will help you out to be in the best position on bing?

As you probably guess, the proper algorithm of Bing is not openly available and because of that there is a lot of gossip about what weighs more for Bing (in comparison to Google) and what weighs less. A lot of SEO experts test different search queries, analyze the results, and based on that try to understand what of the known SEO strategy works with Bing.

Some SEO experts still believe that Bing is actually Live Search in new clothes (i.e. user interface), although others say that there are visible differences between Live Search and Bing. But there is no doubt that for now Bing is a considerable improvement over Live Search in terms of relevance of search results.

Bing is hardly the first time when there is no agreement in the SEO community about the details of the algorithm but if we can review, here are some factors, which are (or at least are strongly believed to be) of importance when Bing optimization is concerned:

• Value of backlinks doesn’t matter: If you judge against the first 10 results in Bing and Google, it is clear that all equal, the winners in Bing have less backlinks than the winners in Google. It is unclear if nofollow matters with Bing.
• Anchor text matters more: The amount of value inbound links may be of less importance for Bing but the anchor text surely matters more. In fact, since anchor text is one of the measurements of the quality of inbound links, it isn’t greatly different. Get quality anchor text and you will do well in both Bing and Google.
• Could’t helped out with link spaming: Seeing as the quantity of backinks (even if they are of ultimate quality) seems to be of less importance to Bing, link spamming will be even less helpful than with Google.
• Onpage factors are more important: This is one of the most controversial points. Lots of SEO experts disagree but many also think that onpage factors matter more with Bing than with Google:  At rest, it has nothing to do with the 90s, when onpage factors were tentative.
• Right matters: If this is correct, this is bad news for bloggers and small sites for the reason that it means that search results are unclear in favor of older sites and/or sites of trustworthy organizations. Age of domain is also very essential with Bing – even more than with Google.
• Page rank is less important: When you do a search for a competitive keyword and you see a couple of PR2 or even PR1 sites among the top 10 results, this may make you wonder. On Google this is barely possible but on Bing it looks quite normal.
• Content is less important: Bing looks a little conservative – or possibly it just can’t index sites that quickly – but it seems that fresh content is not as vital as with Google. This is associated with the age of domain specifics and accordingly you will see ancient pages rank high (but these olden pages are relevant to the search query).
• Binging is Flash-friendly: Optimizing a Flash site for Google is somewhat a nightmare for SEO experts. It is too soon to say but it looks like Bing is more Flash-friendly, which is excellent news to all sites where Flash is (still) heavily employed. Websites with very high page rank doesn’t matter a lot to the bing what does in reality matters now for bing is quality of the page.

For the time being it is too early to say which factors are of primary importance with Bing. But the truth that their search results are relevant means that their algorithm is really particular. Well, possibly the relevant results in Bing are because of the fact that web masters were taken by surprise and they haven’t had the time to optimize for Bing. Therefore, the content is genuine; there are no SEO gimmicks and artificial pumping. We’ll see if this will continue with the same in future, when web masters learn how to optimize for Bing additionally!!!

Everyone who depends on search engines for traffic – which is all of us – is a common confusion. It is our fear for our rankings. It is simply logical that this is so common. After all, these rankings are often our business. At least up to now as the supply of these perspectives, we so desperately need.

It is safe to say that every one of us have woken up to see our rankings drop from page 1 to a status that can not be compared to be built-in the resettlement program of centralized witnesses. We can not be found. And that’s bad news.

This is what we should do when this happens. It’s possible that you may not be able to resolve the problem quickly, but you’ll at least be in a much recovered position to address and deal with him.

1. Do Not Panic.
This is very important to keep in mind. Take it seriously, but do not lose it. There are lots of reasons why the classification could slide down. He arrived in one of the well-known Google algorithm shake-up. It may be a momentary move that will restore your rank in a short time. The key here is to keep away from the urge to do something that will only harm your site in the long term ranking and your business itself.

Loads of people skip work and make changes to their site. They struggle to bring it into line with what they think search engines want now. This can essentially harm their position in search engines for the reason that they modify the structure and layout of their pages. It confuses the robots of search engines and creates an impression of confusion, a lack of unity within the site. It’s bad for ratings. So keep in mind – do not panic. The temporary drop in May. If it is not, a bulldozer and impulsive Rebuilding employment is not the solution.

2. Think Back: What have you changed recently?
At times your ranking dropped because of somewhat you have done. Such as, I had rankings drop because I screw up the code I made a few redirects in my. Htaccess. Did you add new pages recently? Make sure the links in them and they are done in approved manner. If you enter the destination URL that you’re wrong power of search engines a group of 404 error pages. They are not like that.

There are lots of things that might cause the ratings to slide. Keep in mind that you should look at the changes you’ve made as a 2 weeks ago, just to be sure. Robots of search engines vary in how they come to your site, so in May they be reacting to a change that is old news for you, but new to them.

3. Keep Going
It is tempting to turn to the mysterious side of SEO, Turn into a Black Hat when you notice your rankings drop. Specially when you see something of the site, or a not a outrank yours. We’ve all been there.

But you know what is the exact option, although it’s hard to resist doing a slight camouflage. What you should do is to keep on building a solid site: add relevant, targeted content, work on the structure of your site so that all content can be found and indexed by search engines, from Working on the links to your site. A little boring? Yes, at times. But it is the most brilliant choice, mainly for those of us looking for to be in business for the long-standing.

Remember these 3 steps for the next time if you see the rankings go down. It’s okay to be frustrated. It’s okay to be confused. It is even good to be a bit angry. Let it out, constructive, and after that get back to work. This is the surest technique.

Let’s memorize the introduction of Google in September 1998. All of a sudden, massive chaos erupted in between web designer, developers, programmers, and consultants in all over the planet to make sure that their websites are Google friendly or not. Mostly, the term Google friendly means ‘to optimize every single factor on every single page of the website’ that proved a very daunty job.

Currently, Google has made it simple and providing help throughout its web pages like, ‘webmaster guidelines’. Here in this page, general design, technical and quality guidelines have been mentioned to improve the Google rank of your websites. Strategies have greatly dignified the importance of high quality content particularly on homepages. The content should be molded in such a method that it could visibly and correctly explain the reason of website. The content must include all those key words that can be used in search engine to stumble on your services. One must keep in mind that only HTML code of your web pages are being read by search engine. Graphics, javascript code or other script or features are having very slightest importance from optimization viewpoint.

Procedure of Google friendly website starts from the birth of site at the same time you select a domain name. You should always choose a domain name that tells about the subject of your site. You should concentrate on one theme with one website. Just fill up your website with specific contents. As more, you would be paying attention upon one topic; more your web pages would be Google friendly or in other language, it would be optimized in improved way for search engines. Try to make several content pages and separate them with important keyword and key phrase. Main targeted key phrases must be included into page title, description tag, ALT image tags, comment tags, and in internal and external links. With the description in META tags, you can magnetize unique visitors so just try to offer a advantage or answer a problem through description. Frequency and density of keywords may be different for different search engine but it never exceeds from 5%.

Main navigation links of your website must be focused towards your home page. It makes simple for search engine in indexing the web pages. Indexing is similarly essential for search engines in addition to visitors. You can utilize text browser such as ‘lynx’ to inspect your site. Don’t forget to allow search bots to crawl your sites without session ID. It is very helpful in tracking visitors’ activities.

Eventually, one must not forget that Google keeps itself updated and you can be comfortable with the mind set up that these few points are under control and therefore my web pages will constantly maintain their high rankings.

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 choose 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.