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.

Sneaky meta tag-related infringements are one thing, but Google and Yahoo! reshaped the competitive Internet marketplace by permitting ?sponsored links? generated by what Google calls ?AdWords?. By buying terms through a bidding process, businesses can have their web sites appear above or along-side the results of user searches. Of course, as businesses realized that they could “purchase” terms which were also trademarks of their competitors, things got a little hot in many markets.

In a federal court of appeals case heard just last week in New York, a computer services company called “Rescuecom” argued that Google was not entitled to sell the right to have ones web site appear when a user searched the term “rescuecom”. Again, at first the courts sympathized with Goggle’s argument that its AdWords program did no more than set competing businesses‘ web addresses next to one another, just as a grocery chain isn’t liable for placing its own generic versions of famous break-fast cereals next to the originals on its shelves. But again, recent cases have been based on the “initial interest confusion” doctrine, and have emphasized that where the sponsored link itself contains the competitors trademark, the use is unlawful.

Goggles official policy is to disallow use of trademarks as AdWords if the marks are used in the text of ads, which draws the line in more or less the same place. However, Google will not act without a formal complaint from the trademark owner, and many businesses don’t realize all this is going on.

But aren’t coin dealers beyond these sorts of tactics? No. I searched one prominent East Coast PNG dealers name this morning, and a competitor showed up as a sponsored link with the PNG members name in the title of the link, which should be against Google’s rules and might be unlawful under the “initial interest confusion” doctrine. Searching another (West Coast) member, I found a competitor who refers to the same type of merchandise but doesn’t actually use the members name in the link. In neither case was the competitor a PNG member. Nevertheless, I have heard that PNG members are as savvy as anyone else when it comes to obtaining the benefits of carefully-selected meta tags and AdWords pro-grams. My message to you is be ethical toward your fellow members and be careful with everyone else.

© 2008 Professional Numismatists Guild, Inc. All rights reserved.

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.

In most cases, when someone requests a search on a word or phrase, one of the first acts of many search engines will be to take a look at the titles of the websites it has indexed and see if anything seems to match.  It will then scan the first few lines of text on the page to see if that search term is there, and how often it appears.  It cannot be stated that every search engine follows this exact pattern, and, even if they do, most tend to then refine the initial results by viewing other data.

In fact, one reason that search engine optimization IS more an art than a science is due to the variables looked at by each search engine and how they are weighted by that site.  It is possible to optimize a site for one search engine and injure its ranking in another!

One way that many search engines can be induced to raise the ranking or placement of a site is accomplished thru linking.  When speaking of “linking” most people are going to be speaking of external links leading to the site from other websites.  I am going to include some internal linking discussion, so we will be covering:

1.  External Links

2.  Internal Links

3.  Sitemaps

LINKS FROM OTHER SITES:

As in many other considerations, the quality of the links leading to your site may be of more importance than the quantity of links.  It should also be a consideration that sites that you try to have link to your site be relevant as a willy-nilly bundle of sites can actually lower your ranking in some search engines.

One linking tactic is to find the front runners in searches on keywords and subjects relevant to your site.  Then, you would communicate with the site owners or webmasters in hopes of getting them to link to your site.  In some cases, a reciprocal link may be requested, but, despite some accounts to the negative, having a link from a valuable site will increase the value of your site, even with the reciprocal link.

Why would someone link to YOUR site?  Hopefully, your site is relevant and of a quality that would encourage the attentions of a webmaster hoping to elevate the value of his or her site by providing quality information to their visitors.  If you are a fishing guide, the website of a rod and reel manufacturer may want to include a link to your site, for example.

To take this a step further, if the first sites you see are valuable, take a look at the sites that link to them!  It is a good chance that THEY help contribute to the rank of the first sites you saw, and would therefore possibly be of importance to you.

LINKS WITHIN YOUR SITE:

While not normally included in discussions of search engine optimization, the internal links of your site can be of importance.  Once you have a visitor to your site, providing them with an easy means of navigation can encourage them to stay and wander around.  All the search engine optimization in the world won’t do much good if they leave and go elsewhere after reading one or two sentences.

However, internal linking can be an important part of search engine optimization, particularly when you realize that Google and some other search engines treat each page of your site separately.  There seems to be some indication that links from other pages within your site can be used as part of the evaluation process of the search engine.  Additionally, providing a complete listing of site pages in a logical manner makes it easier for search engine spiders to find, crawl, and index all the pages of your site.  This thought brings us to…

SITEMAPS:

In its simplest form, a sitemap is a logically (thank you Mr. Spock) designed, er well…map…of the pages of the site.  It is usually a page in itself, provides links to, and sometimes descriptions or titles of, the pages within the site.  Once the search engine has found this page, it is a piece of cake for it to crawl and index every page on your site.  If you have been doing SEO to all your pages, you have just raised an eyebrow or two on the search engine spider.

COMMENTS:

In all I have learned or encountered in the areas of search engines and search engine optimization, two points seem to come through:  make sure everything you do adds quality and value to your site, and don’t count on what worked yesterday to work today.  Search engines are continually evolving to meet the needs of THEIR customers while providing quality service and they expect the same from you.

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Donovan Baldwin is a Dallas area writer and network marketing professional. He is a graduate of the University of West Florida, a member of Mensa and is retired from the U. S. Army. Learn how to get your own domain name and create an internet business at http://donsdomains.ws .

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.

Research Keyword Phrases.

Using terms and phrases that relate to your product or service is critical. It is important to use terms that potential customers would use when searching for your product or service. Often products can be described by a number of terms, for example soda, tonic and pop all identify soft drinks. One term might be more prevalent in a specific geographic region, which is fine if you are selling locally, but if you are selling globally, optimizing for a single popular term could be problematic. Consider optimizing different portions of your website for various keywords and phrases that relate to the product or service that you are promoting.

More information on Determining Keywords – http://www.small-business-software.net/determining-keywords.htm

Provide Valuable Content.

Websites linking to a website are seen by many search engines as “votes”. A link typically implies quality content. The easiest and most effective way to achieve a large number of links is to provide unique quality content. This might be a free web based tool, information or other content that is unique and relevant.

Examples of free valuable content: Website RSS Button Creator – http://www.feedforall.com/public/rss-graphic-tool.htm Reprint Articles – http://www.small-business-software.net/free-website-content.htm

Monitor.

Monitor blogs for online chatter about your product or service. If you find a product review or question on a blog consider posting a comment. Ego searches are an excellent way to stay informed and maintain a strategic advantage over competitors. Monitor keywords or phrases that relate to your product or service, and join conversations that are relevant.

More on Ego Searches – http://www.feedforall.com/ego-searches.htm

Measure.

In order to know what strategies are most effective in an industry or sector, it is important to track the results. The easiest way to track web traffic and conversions is web logs. Take a critical look at referrers, trends, and what keywords result in the most traffic. Evaluating web logs will assist a webmaster in determining what optimization techniques are most effective.

Understanding Web Logs – http://www.small-business-software.net/understanding-web-logs.htm

Ultimately its is foolish to attempt to trick search engines into high rankings, efforts are better spent on building quality, consistent, valuable, content.

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About the Author: Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net a wireless text messaging software company.

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.

First, take a look at your website.  You should see your address bar at the top.  Next to it you will see the Google toolbar.  The Google toolbar will give you the Page rank.  Page rank measures the importance of the website as determined by Google.  Page rank is 0 to 10.  0 is the lowest and 10 is the highest.  You should strive to get a higher page rank.  A page rank of 10 is the best.

A common myth is that a high page rank comes from what is written on your website such as content and metatags.  This is a myth.  It doesn’t matter what type of content you have on your websites.  It has to do with what other websites are saying about you.  This comes from website links.  You want to have incoming links pointing at you.  The more websites that point links to you, the higher your search engine rank will be.  Links are like votes.  The more votes you receive from other websites, the higher your page rank will become.  It’s all about links.

The number of incoming links you receive is not as important as the quality of the links.  The websites that link to you need to be of high quality and importance.  You want to focus on websites that have a high page rank.  Those are the websites that you want pointing to your website.  You can find the page rank of these websites by going to them and checking their Google rank from the Google toolbar.

Strive to find other websites that have a high page rank.  See if you can swap links with them.  You want them to “vote” for your website by pointing at your website.

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Matt Bacak, The Powerful Promoter and Entrepreneur Magazine e-Biz radio show host, became a “#1 Best Selling Author” in just a few short hours. He has helped a number of clients target his specialty, opt-in email direct marketing systems. The Powerful Promoter is not only a sought-after internet marketer but has also marketed for some of the world’s top experts whose reputations would shrivel if their followers ever found out someone else coached them on their online marketing strategies. For more information, visit Bacak’s site at
http://www.powerfulpromoter.com or sign up for his Powerful Promoting Tips at http://www.promotingtips.com

Copyright  2007 The Powerful Promoter

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?

You are trying to stand out.  The words are distributed through billions of sites.  The phrases are much less widely distributed, and your chance of success as a big fish in small pond is much better than trying to make it as a small fish in a monstrously large pond.  One free research and search engine optimization tool I have found is called Good Keywords, and may be downloaded from http://www.goodkeywords.com/products/gkw/ for free.

2.  Pick a URL in line with your search engine optimization strategy.  One of the simplest yet most effective techniques is to have your key phrase right in your domain name.  This is especially effective with people if it is short, to the point, and easy to remember.  At the very least, having a domain name that incorporates your key phrase elevates the potential position of your website in search engine results.

3.  Draft a title tag that addresses your topic and includes your main key phrase.  In many instances, the title is the first thing a web surfer will see, and you know the attention span of web surfers!  The title tag should not only address the needs of the person, but needs to include the key phrase to optimize your website’s position in search engine results.

The title is just like the headline of an advertisement or newspaper article.  It has to say enough very quickly to hook the reader and create a desire to read more.  At the same time, it cannot say too much for two reasons.  If “too much” just means the number of words, then the effect will not be noticed as most browsers and many search engines will only show a certain number of characters anyway, and you may wind up with a title like this: “You should pay the exorbitant price I ask for my product because…”!  On the other hand if “too much” means too much information, the person may figure out what you’re going to tell them and move on without taking the time to see what you do have to say.

4.  Construct your Meta tags with your search engine optimization strategy in mind.  Particular attention should be paid to the “description” tag.  A short time ago, only a few search engines paid any real attention to the keywords any more and find their keywords within the body of the website itself.  I have been hearing for some time that NONE of the search engines pay any attention to them, and recently attended a workshop on search engine optimization where this was stated as a fact by the internet marketing professionals who presented the workshop.  But you never know!  As long as they are still part of the Meta tags, make sure you include them.

The description, on the other hand, particularly for some search engines, is the text presented in the search engine results.  For this reason, if you think of the title tag as the headline for your “advertisement”, you should consider the description to be the ad itself while still retaining enough mystery to lure the surfer to the site itself.

5. Within the first few sentences of your web page, reinforce the promise of value hinted at in the title and description, and make sure you use your key phrase.  In fact, the key phrase, or phrases, should show up throughout the page, but the first few lines of text are very important.  Not only will humans key onto the presence of the key phrases, but so will many search engines, and this can raise the search engine ranking of the site.  After all, that’s what search engine optimization is all about.

Be careful not to overdo the use of key phrases, however.  Search engines are continually changing their algorithms, or programs by which they assess and rank web pages, so it is difficult to give an exact percentage of use that is best.  Additionally, one search engine may give your website a good rank for the way you have used keywords, while another may give it “demerits” for the same usage.  This leads us to item #6.

6.  One phrase you hear over and over when search engine optimization comes up is, “content is king!”  In other words, the quality and inherent value of your webpage’s presentation is paramount.  A neat, simple page, or website, with lots of relevant info may trump the most beautifully designed and presented sales pitch.

When I began marketing online in 2000, I knew nothing about search engine optimization strategy (if it even truly existed back then), and probably less about website design.  I started with free websites because I didn’t know how to purchase domain names and hosting, and because many free web hosting sites provided templates where I simply filled in the blanks.

After a period where I tried everything I could think of to get an internet business started, I finally simply tried to make sure that most websites I constructed were small, neat, simple and full of information.  Many of those websites still exist today and many are still driving traffic and helping me make sales.

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Donovan Baldwin is a Dallas area writer and entrepreneur.  A graduate of the University of West Florida, a member of Mensa, and retired from the U. S. Army, he provides articles and other website content for webmasters.  His personal internet business site is at http://www.donovanbaldwin.com/

Copyright 2007 Donovan Baldwin

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.

Keywords are often more than just one word that decides the fate of the blog or website that is indexed or ranked. In addition, more importantly, if a keyword identified in singular state is treated as the relevant keyword for specific domain then its plural it is treated as a different keyword/phrase that might not have the same value or results in search engine optimization.

Keywords are mainly used for cataloguing and searching. Therefore, these need to be significant words or phrases that best depicts the article content. It is elemental to choose keywords strategically significant and specific to the text or articles or content of the web pages. These should best define the content of the pages or sites that are listed in the search engines. When we are talking about ranking and indexing then not only the use but also repetition of the keywords with context relevance is watched by the search engines. Normally search engines will prefer at least 2-3% key word density. Sometimes the density asked for is as high as 5-20%. It is also preferred that keywords appear in the title/header, first and last paragraphs. Over and above, many prefer it – once in description tag, once in the URL, once in bold and once in italics. Choice of words is equally vital, as these should match the queries generated exactly by the relevant searches in the popular search engines on a specific topic.

If you are fresher in internet business then you might also purchase private label articles that are keyword optimized for search engine rankings and indexing. You can also customize these articles according to your specific business needs.

Placing the keywords strategically in your content is also necessary to make your content appear most relevant and prompt the search engines to rank it high. The use and repetition of keywords in a content /article or site actually establishes the significance of the topic. Optimal use of words also ensures the constant flow of quality traffic to a webzine or blog.

Specific sites can help you to assess the effectiveness of certain keywords that you plan to use to reach your niche target. Use of keywords is also vital in getting one way or reciprocal links to and from other sites. Latent Semantic Indexing or multi word phrases usage, Country or Location Specific keywords, analyzing keywords for competition, Effective Keyword Research or following up and monitoring the use of keywords actually form the strong foundation of keyword optimization for successful internet marketing.

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Allen Thomason is an accomplished and established internet marketer. To learn more about keyword and keyword phrases, building an internet business, demonstrated marketing tactics, and a proven system visit http://www.TheProfitCombination.com

Copyright 2007 Allen Thomason