Taking your blog seriously is not just about posting content. It is making sure that it reaches a network of readers in order to gain a regular following. For this reason, more bloggers opt to register in web portals or search engines to boost their hits and gain more exposure.

BlogSearchEngine allows you to reach a wider audience and increase traffic in your site by adding you to their comprehensive and organized listing. They also provide a reviewed informational description of your blog and a promotional link to your site through several PR5 and PR6 directories.

The redesigned BlogSearchEngine site currently offers the following packages:

Standard Package     $14.99

Blog Search Engine Review Listing

Silver Package          $24.99

The Silver Membership Package includes the same offerings as the Standard Package plus a blog review which is written and published with permanent backlinks on Bloggy Award. You also get listed at Xfep.com –‘Uber Blogs’ for 3 months.

Gold Package          $59.99

For the Gold Package you can get everything in the silver package plus a 30 day link on EatonWeb –a portal with the same functions as BlogSearchEngine.

Platinum Package      $99.99

The Platinum Package is the ultimate member package because it is a combination of all three packages mentioned above. The best part is that you get a custom made banner that will be displayed in the top right ‘Featured Blogs’ section of BlogSearchEngine for 15 days.

Get featured now and become a member. For as low as $14.99, get a chance to win a Platinum Package worth $99.99!

Here’s how:

1. Simply send out a tweet about this contest and include a link back to the following URL: http://bit.ly/rqPTDL
2. Copy and paste the full tweet you sent into the comments section on this page.

The contest goes until end of day 11/11/11 and the winner will be announced no later than 11/14/2011.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all the rage with website owners and developers. However, more and more website owners are going overboard and forgetting what SEO is really supposed to be about. In the pre-search engine era people had to remember website URLs or use directories to go to the website containing the information they need. With the advent of search engines finding information became much easier and people found themselves automatically using search engines as the portal to getting whatever it is they need on the internet.

As search engines gained importance website owners and developers found themselves developing techniques, now called SEO techniques, to help get the search engine’s attention and rank higher. The sad thing is that many now employ SEO techniques simply to achieve higher page rankings and forget that search engines existed in the first place to provide substantial and accurate information to web users. Many websites use SEO in hopes of making it to the first page of SERPs but disregard the fact that websites should actually be built for users.

Nowadays many websites are designed not for visitors but for the search engine. This defeats the entire purpose of information sharing. Businesses and individuals get so wrapped up trying to make money in the net by using SEO techniques that they overlook the fact that a real website with substantial content along with good SEO methods will ensure more traffic and more revenue in the long run.

It is a really sad thing that many great websites that don’t employ that much SEO methods are being buried in the back of SERPs while crappy websites designed simply to make a profit sometimes get higher rankings.

Recently, SEO has been getting some bad rap. It may deserved or undeserved, but that really shouldn?t concern you if you stick within what is called ethical SEO. Experts would say that this is the best way to get search engines to notice you and give you lasting results.

So what is ethical SEO? The main point in ethical SEO is not to use any illegal means to advertise on your website. Neither does it cover the use of ?shady? methods to increase traffic. The major drawback to ethical SEO is that it does not give immediate results. It is a strategy that requires A LOT of patience and hard work. You have to develop and form your own strategy to suit specific needs and target your specific market. There is simply no shortcut to ethical SEO. On the other hand, with ethical SEO, you get lasting and real results. With impeccable content and excellent service, your hard work will pay off and you will gain the trust of your customers as you continue to rise in the page rankings. With ethical SEO, you get reliable results and permanent benefits. At the end of the day, that?s what really matters. You may get to your goal slowly but you?ll get there eventually, and when you do, you will be ready for the windfall.

Some of the features of Google Analytics are given below.

Firstly, it is much easier to use. With the special AdWords feature, Google provides more flexibility with the keywords and also provides you immediate ROI results. It also provides good suggestions as to which keywords can make the site or product more attractive. Nextly, it focuses on only those modifications (in your website) which will gain you profits. As the service is available in many languages (English, German, Spanish, Korean, etc.) there is a wider scope for improvement of the site along with the marketing campaign.

As Analytics is powered by the same server which runs Google, it can be reliably used for even top corporate projects. Also, it is very much easy to use. For e.g. instead of purchasing or downloading some software or script, just pasting the tracking code in the web pages directly begins the tracking. Google Analytics also provides Executive summaries of the conversions, traffic directly to you so that you don?t have to hunt for the reports. You can then comfortably compare keywords, revenue & basically, the performance of the website. It also provides you the comparative reports of the performance, for e.g. if you need to compare this weeks performance with last week?s you can very well get the entire tabular data. This service extends so much that you can tally this winter?s reports with last summer?s reports. Google Analytics can also be used for e-commerce websites, as you can compare revenues, arrange & modify campaigns & get a whole view of the metrics.

Another special feature of Google Analytics is the Funnel visualization. Sometimes it so happens that a visitor starts exploring your site but quits in the middle. Mostly, it is due to puzzling or maze-like data or irrelevant information on the site that confuses the visitor. Google tracks the positions of the quitting & hence provides you the opportunity of modifying that particular area of the site. Google also provides you the segmented visitor report, which includes sorting of visitor information by location, by action, by new versus returning visitor, making it easier to compare the keywords and the traffic. Geotargeting helps in tracking the location of the visitor and also gives your information about markets in various areas & their potentials.

Hence, it provides you a better option of the market analysis & gives you more options of setting up or modifying your campaign in order to increase the market value of your website.

The OpenGraph Search Engine is in its infancy as of now, but it’s a very big deal. If Facebook manages to pull this off, we’re going to see a future where the Like has replaced the link as the web’s currency.

One study has revealed that people are spending thrice as much time on Facebook over search engines now, and Facebook is obviously taking advantage of the situation here. This is, at first glance, a good idea. now you don’t have to go to Google to do a web search!

Here’s the thing though – search results ranked by “likes” can’t possible compete with links, at least for now. Just as it’s easy to make a link farm for your search engine optimisation needs, “like farms” are going to be just as ridiculously easy to make. In fact, there are websites right now made to take advantage of the OpenGraph like button, and it’s not a pretty sight to see those links flood the news feed.

If you do want to use Facebook’s OpenGraph search, there’s interestingly, a way to rank in the search results, and you can use this technique in under 60 seconds. Just go to l1k3.com, and create an OpenGraph object there, and you’d instantly see your page as a top result. Basically, you just need to create a Facebook page and fill it up with fans and you’re going to outrank your competition. It’s basically a race to get more fans.

What do you think of the new Facebook Opengraph Search Engine?

We’ve been talking about RSS feeds and what it can do for your website. We know that incorporating RSS feeds into your site results in more frequent visits from search engine spiders and thus leads to faster indexing.

Have you realized however that by syndicating your RSS feeds successfully you can achieve the same results? How so?

If you have subscribers when a search engine spider crawls your subscriber’s site (assuming that your subscriber incorporated YOUR feed into his own website) the feeds will of course contain a link back to your website. Once the spider follows the link it will notice your website and so index your site as well. Now if you have a lot of subscribers the chances of being crawled through back links are much greater. In addition to this the spider will of course notice the plentiful back links, which will result not only in faster indexing but in a higher page rank.

To get noticed fast one thing you can do is to subscribe to your own feed using Google Reader, MyYahoo, and MyMsn accounts. Surely the three search engines will at least pay attention to their own services.

As you see at the top when I searched for the braves it showed the Atlanta Brave’s logo. It then gives links for the team’s page, news, scores and schedules, and photos. Right under that you’ll get a snapshot of how they’re doing because the stats for the last game is highlighted and then the schedule for the next game is also shown. The main body of the results page then shows a few images of the Braves then you get the various links. On the left sidebar you’ll find related sports information like “trending sports topic”, which showed that the last time I searched popular search strings were Cliff Lee, Fantasy Sports, Colorado Rockies, Rafael Nadal, Dwight Howard, and Lorena Ochoa. Directly below that would be the searches related to my search term, which then showed me Thrashers, ESPN, and MLB.

Now I know this isn’t revolutionary but it sure is useful and the layout easy on the eye. As for SEOs working on sports pages and blogs I would say that they should try to get a good ranking on this Yahoo’s Sport search because you can be sure that this will catch on to sports fanatics out there.

Nowadays, with much attention going to social media marketing it is important for SEO companies to offer related services. Google Social Search is one of the ways you can help in your client’s audience analysis and targeting. With social search you can get information on the existing network (customers) of your client. You will be able to find out what really interests these people with their public content (from tweets to blog posts) as well as get leads from the name of the friends in their social circle.

If you haven’t been using social search make sure you update your Google profile (and your clients’ as well) and activate the social search feature. Things you will see as part of search results due to social search would be publicly available web content from your social circle such as blog posts, status updates, tweets, and pictures.

To active Google social search:

1. Make a Google Profile
2. Add links to Twitter, FriendFeed, your blog, etc…
3. Opt-in to the Social Search experiment at google.com/experimental/
4. Search while signed in

Remember you need to be signed in while searching to actually see results from your social circle!

So what exactly is Google caffeine?

Google caffeine is Google’s biggest and baddest change in search algorithm. The key to this change is that it is an actual change in the formula and not just minor tweaks. Parts of the entire search infrastructure was, according to Google, completely rewritten. The results? A search engine that will “push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness, and other dimensions.”

Of course with the Bing hype people immediately asked whether Caffeine was Google’s answer to which Matt Cutts promptly said no. As Matt Cutt’s said, “I love competition in search and want lots of it, but this change has been in the works for month.”

For SEOs the even bigger question is how this will affect our SEO strategies. The best way to figure things out is through the same old fashioned method of experimenting and keeping track of how well the websites we maintain are doing in Google Caffeine’s SERPs. Of course it is also essential to keep tabs on how other’s SEO efforts are paying off so make sure you keep track of discussions going on in different forums and groups about Google Caffeine.

To try out Caffeine just go to this link: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/

Microsoft has unveiled its new “decision engine” Bing. The question now is if it’s any good, and the answer from all over is yes. Compared to LiveSearch, Bing definitely got my attention, and will probably be getting the search industry’s attention for weeks to come. So what does Bing have to offer?

Like any search engine you can look for information you need using Bing but unlike normal search engines it is a specialized engine that automatically collates the data you need and compares them for you to make it easier to come up with a decision. Areas where it really does well includes product reviews, movie listings, weather, travel, stock prices, restaurants, etc. If you look at it Bing is pretty much set to be an online shopper’s heaven. However, since Bing is still pretty much untried for the most part we’ll see in the next months just how good Bing really is at suggesting results that will make online shoppers happy. In the meantime, for SEOs all over, it’s time to start brainstorming on how to rank well with Bing and coming up with strategies to help your clients. This is very important for business websites since Bing’s target users pretty are the ones that might be really interested in buying.

Can’t wait for Bing to actually go live. So irritating to see the coming soon page.