By Armen Vartian From the Professional Numismatists Guild Newsletter Volume 1, Issue 6

Trademarks, and trade-mark infringement, have been part of commercial life for centuries. But to-day, the technology of the Internet, as well as the time-honored tradition of trying to take advantage of a competitors hard work, have tempted businesses to do things with others‘ trademarks which approach the ethical and legal line, if not cross it.

A few years ago, many companies discovered that their competitors were using their trademarked corporate or products as “meta tags” for the competitors‘ web sites. Meta-tags are those invisible pieces of computer programming code which make search engines such as Google or Yahoo! think that a site is relevant to a particular search request. So, for example, a site which carried a meta tag of “Coke” might show up if somebody was searching using that word which, of course, is a world-famous registered trademark of Coca Cola company. Would a competitor take advantage of somebody else’s hard-earned branding?

It turned out that was happening all the time, and litigations arose in federal courts throughout the U.S. The prevailing rule from the early cases was that use of trademarks in meta-tags was not unlawful under the federal Lanham Act, because it was not a use of the competitors‘ trademark “in commerce”, which is a statutory requirement. These rulings were controversial, of course, and upset many large companies.

At least one state passed legislation banning use of meta-tags which include trade-marks. Perhaps for that reason, a recent trend has been in the opposite direction, finding that certain uses of meta tags are unlawful if they include the competitors full web site address or other identifying information. Courts have also ruled against meta tags containing trademarks if they create “initial interest confusion”, namely capturing consumers‘ attention even though the competitor doesn’t rely on actual con-fusion to make a sale. (more…)

This article, as the name implies, deals with search engine optimization in general, and links in particular.  In previous articles, I have dealt with related search engine optimization topics such as choosing the right domain name for your website and creating the title, meta tags, and content for your website.

This article is not intended to be a definitive work on search engine optimization, particularly as many search engines keep changing the rules. It, and previous articles are intended, however to give the internet marketing beginner some insight into the subject.

Search engine optimization is not magic, and it does tend to incorporate a few basic tenets.  When followed, these steps, methods, or actions CAN increase the visibility and ranking of a website in a search engine’s returns.  It is popularly, and fairly accurately, stated that most people will pick a site from those listed on the first page of a search’s results.  However, that is not the final spot that everyone picks from, nor is every site in exact competition with yours nor attractive to search engines for the same reasons, or keywords, or content as yours. (more…)

The fabled tales of successfully tricking search engines into high rankings have given way to a new truth, to achieve decent consistent ranking you cannot engage in tricks but on focused optimization done in a professional ethical manner. According to search sources, with the latest Google update, there is no longer an even playing field when it comes to search placement. The new Google ranking system gives an advantage to large, established businesses that have achieved brand recognition. Does this mean small businesses should give up on the Web as a marketing model? No, of course not, they simply must develop quality content. To increase your natural ranking (search engine rankings that are not paid for) you must:

Write Good Text Copy.

The website copy should contain relevant text. Websites that use text rather than large images will load faster and the search engines can easily spider the text of the website for themes and keywords. Search engines cannot discern the meaning of words and phrases that are presented as an image. If you do use an image, be sure to include a brief phrase or keyword as an ALT tag. The ALT tags help website visitors who are visually impaired. ALT tags also convey the meaning of the image to search engines. (more…)

Did you know that 89% of search engine traffic goes through Google?  Google is number one in search engine traffic.  Therefore, you need to optimize your website on Google.  Other search engines recognize that Google is the leader in search engine traffic.  Therefore, other search engines are modeling their search engines off of Google.  So if you optimize your website for Google then it will work well with the other search engines.

Internet marketing gurus know that you need to take full advantage of Google’s search engine traffic.  Therefore, they have intensely examined Google’s search engine algorithm.  This analysis enabled them to implement the most effective way to optimize their webpages.

The strategy they created works for any website.  Let’s talk about how you can apply this strategy to your squeeze page.  Why your squeeze page?  Your squeeze page is the most important part of your website.  It is where you will earn subscribers to build your customer list. (more…)

The professionals can do a lot with their take on search engine optimization strategy, but I’m not writing to them.  This is for the person with limited website design expertise and who does the website design and internet marketing for their own home based internet business.  There are many other ways to optimize you website for success, but here are some simple, basic things to think about.

1.  Determine your key words and phrases.  This is going to require a little research, and will be driven to some extent by the subject matter of your website and the products and services offered by your home business.  In order to stand out from the crowd, you might want to think more in terms of key phrases rather than key words.  Ask yourself the question: What would I type in if I were searching for a website related to MY website or home business? (more…)

Key words or key phrases are those words that significantly describe the content of a text, article, or database. A single or a group of words is often depicted as keywords. These are reserved words bearing specific meaning in reference to a particular concept. When we search for ?bad credit mortgage loans’ or ?forex system trading’ then these are considered to be a single key phrase for indexing a site that contains similar or almost identical information listed by the popular search engines.

These keywords or phrases are the qualifiers that optimize your search results and decide the ranking of a site or blog in a reputed search engine. To get a higher position/rank in the search engines, a website or blog should contain specific keywords related to a particular domain. Search engine Optimization of a website/blog rests on the keyword selection and density or the occurrence of keywords/phrases in a particular text/article. (more…)