Imagine a boy handing his father a box filled with specialized Lego parts. Each looks similar in many ways, but they also have distinct features and colors that make it necessary to have a plan for ‘project development’. The father sorts through the box or bag looking for that ‘just right’ piece. Without a match between part and plan the Lego creation looks, well, different somehow – and that’s not always a bad thing.

I’ve seen boys take those Lego sets and make some pretty amazing things, but ultimately it did not look anything like the picture on the box. These grade school problem solvers took the pieces and made something altogether new. Sometimes they even borrow from other Lego sets to create something even more fantastic and previously unknown and perhaps unduplicated. The bucket, box or bag of random parts became the catalyst for the imagination needed to make a true original project.

Now I want you to think of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies as something a bit like a Lego kit – lots of parts that can be combined to create something special when multiple parts are used.

Many online businesses pick and choose the marketing components they feel most comfortable with. They will even use those skills to great effect, but like the Lego kits the parts can be assembled in a variety of ways that make for an impressive final outcome.

SEO Starts with web design and then building blocks of SEO are attached to that primary block through the use of a variety of online marketing techniques.

Perhaps you might like to try list building as a block in your ‘yet unknown and unidentified’ masterpiece, but you might also consider traffic building in order build your email list.

Maybe you could develop an ezine and a ‘member’s only’ ebook download. These blocks can contribute to both traffic building and list building objectives.

Video streaming and podcasting are popular components to marketing and SEO and they go hand in hand with social media, blogging and forums so be sure to add those blocks.

Don’t forget autoresponders and customer service. There’s no use selling a product or service and forgetting the customer. After all, the customer is why you’re in business.

When you want to let others know about your business you might consider email marketing (that’s where list building comes in) and Real Simple Syndication (RSS) to get the word out.

Like Lego’s, each of these marketing strategies snap together to represent your business through SEO techniques. However, no matter how you build it you will need keyword rich content that is compelling to site visitors and easily slurped by spiders or perused by bots. When you do not have keyword rich content both site visitor and search engines do not find your site compelling enough to get excited about.

You want people to get excited about your site. The role of quality content should never be minimized.

If SEO is a lot like Lego building blocks, what does your site look like?

SEO professionals and internet marketers are all too aware of the importance of social networking for effective internet marketing, but are you? If you’re not yet convinced that you should be using social networking, here are 5 great benefits to keep in mind.

1. Mindshare. Social networking sites allow you to tailor your message to your target audience depending in which platforms you use and which followers you have. Whereas the old model used to rely on newspaper ads and billboards, the social networking model focuses on profiles and updates. Social networking sites are a great way for a small business owner to announce company news and offers, broadcast timely information of interest to a business owner’s target audience, and engage followers in a relevant and helpful. The number of social networking users is actually quite staggering, so if you aren’t using social networking as an SEO tool, then you’re really missing out.

2. Build Relationships. Gone are the days when customers were willing to simply trust a business owner whom they may never see or to whom they may never talk. Some customers would be interested in reading your blog while others might want to follow you on Twitter. Some will review your products on Amazon. A customer’s experience or perception will always be enhanced by the opportunity to interact with you on some level. Google Alerts is a great way to find out what people are saying about you in forums with which you might not even be familiar.

3. Link Building. Link building is one of the most important SEO tasks you can undertake, and social networking is a great way to get it done! Link to your website from your profile and, if possible, include keywords as anchor text within your profile. Then point those links to optimized pages within your website.

4. Drive Traffic. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the more exposure you have on the internet, the more people will be interested in visiting your website. The key to driving traffic is not only providing a link, however; it also requires providing helpful information and high-quality content that will build your credibility with your target audience. This information should also be so compelling that your target audience just can’t help but click on the link to your site. One of the most important things you can do is to send your social networking traffic directly to a landing page that you’ve created just for them. It should be targeted to the audience with whom you interact in social networking sites and should contain a particular call to action that pertains to them.

5. Rank High. The more high-quality content you place on social networking sites, the more you become visible to your target audience, and the more likely the search engines are to notice you and reward you with high rankings. Remember that search engines don’t just index websites, but also photos, images, videos, blogs, social networking profiles, and podcasts. Good content located in many relevant places helps you get noticed by the search engines and thus ranked higher.

The biggest social networking mistake you can make is not using it as an effective SEO tool. If you’re not using it already, then you can guarantee that you’re losing business to your competitors who are. There are so many social networking site users out there now that you simply can’t afford to ignore these sites. They not only allow you to build valuable inbound links to your site, but they allow you to build relationships with your potential customers. They provide you with widespread exposure and the ability to establish yourself as an expert within your market niche. If you need further guidance in using social networking as an SEO tool, consult with an internet marketing professional who can help you integrate social networking into your overall internet marketing plan.

To find and download a free podcasts is really easy. Podcast directories are probably the best way to find free podcasts.

Podcast directories have thousands of different podcasts listed. The podcast directory will usually organize the podcasts by topic and genre, making it easy to find the type of podcasts that is sought.

Podcast directories often allow the web surfers to comment on the podcasts listed, and provide a list of the favorite podcasts on the website, making it easy for users to find the best podcasts available. These podcast directories can be used to browse through, introducing users to many different podcasts they otherwise would not have found.

When a user finds a podcast of interest, and it is necessary to download the free podcast. The vast majority of podcasts will be free, but there will be a few that may cost a small amount of money. The process to subscribe to and download the podcasts is the same in either case.

One of the first things that has to be done is a podcast client needs to be found and installed. There are many free podast clients available, all providing a slightly different user interface and range of options. They come with many different names, such as Podscape, or Nimiq, and searching for ‘free podcast client’ or something like it will turn up many possibilities.

Once the podcast client is installed inputting the feed address will allow the podcast to be downloaded. The podcast client will

check the address given for a small, machine readable file called an RSS file. This file will contain information about the podcasts, perhaps some text about the individual episodes, as well as the location of the episode file.

Once the podcast client has been located the file referred to in the RSS feed, it will be downloaded and stored on the users computer until the want to view it.

If access to a personal computer is not available, but it is still necessary to check a certain podcast, many podcast directories offer built in podcast readers in the website. Not only do they often show each recent episode that is available, they may also offer a way to view or listen to those podcast episodes from within the website. By using the viewer contained within the website, it is no longer necessary to even download the podcast episodes.

The desire of consumers to have control over technology cannot be over estimated. The ability to share the episodes after downloading the files is one of the great things about podcasting. The files can be placed on almost and media player, ranging from iPods to the new Play Station Portable. This flexibility is one of the reasons podcasts have succeeded, despite other technologies like streaming music and video.

Podcast hosting is the most important part and first for anybody who wants to begin to create a podcast. Before

anyone begins distributing podcasts, they need a location to store the files and keep the feed file that will tell their subscribers about the new episodes available.

One of the first things required is a domain name where the website will be located. Many domain registrars are available

who will help one register a domain name for a small fee. Once the domain is registered, hosting is required, and again there are many different companies willing to do the hosting for a small fee. One of those is bluehost.com, but many others are available. When looking for a host, the most important thing is to make sure that a lot bandwidth and storage space is available and cheap. Since podcasting deals with large media files, a lot of disk space will be taken up storing the files and bandwidth will be eaten quickly when they are downloaded by the subscribers.

Once podcast hosting has been established, it needs to be used and the website needs to be set up. The DNS addresses of the website need to be set to the addresses that the host provides you so that the servers that the internet will know where your website is located. DNS addresses can be set by going to the domain registrar that was used to acquire the domain and inputting the addresses provided by the host. Then, it will take a few days before the master list the domain registar updates will be shared throughout the internet and all name servers know where to find your specific domain. You can then go about setting up your own podcast.

With the podcast hosting in place, you will need to look at the disk space allocated to the website using something called and FTP browser. The host may provide one as part of their hosting plan, but if not there are many available free to choose from. Using the FTP browser, log on to the host and upload a file called dircaster.php after editing it to fit the specifics of the website. Dircaster.php is an easy to find piece of coding that generates a feed file by looking at the contents of its directory or folder. The individual episodes to be podcasted can then be uploaded to the same folder as dircaster.php for cataloging. Make sure that all the meta data, or information about the mp3 file is correct before doing so.

The podcast hosting allows you to distribute all your podcasts. It would be best to upload more to the website, such as an index page that tells visitors about the podcast and provides the address of the file dircaster.php on your website. When they subscribe to that file, the podcast client they use will access it and receive information about the newest and latest podcasts.

O Experts are finding ways of establishing higher ranking in search engine results by serving quality content to users. Over the past 10 years, SEO techniques have evolved with the demand of the search engines to serve quality search results to users requesting information. It all comes down to user experience and what online marketing professionals are doing to contribute to optimal search engine results. This evolution in demand for higher quality search results has forced SEO Consultants to develop new strategies for higher ranking. These online marketing professionals have learned from history and are achieving higher rankings for their clients by avoiding black hat marketing techniques. Whether you enjoyed history class or slept through it, you cannot afford to miss this lesson. Sleep too long and you may miss some important pointers from our marketing predecessors.

About ten years ago, or 1998, traditional marketing professionals begin to establish avenues to bring their products online. Most companies interested in marketing products online were marketing to consumers in ecommerce environments. A large value to any online marketing plan included search engine traffic. In order to increase search engine traffic, black hat marketing techniques were used frequently to market products online. Keyword stuffing was a frequently used technique by SEO Consultants to achieve higher search engine ranking. Attempting to gain high rankings for a specifically targeted keyword or phrase, SEO Consultants would employ a keyword density of up to 50% to secure first page, first position listings in search engines. The content received through search engine results were less than quality and the search engines were not serving optimal content to users on Google, Yahoo, or MSN.

Another tactic used by online marketers of the past was the establishment of link farms. That practice continues today. Over the past 10 years, SEO Consultants have used link farms to establish higher search engine rankings for their clients. Considered by most experts as black hat marketing techniques, link farms are a bank of links on a page which is established without a relevant theme or associated content to the link farm page. Since search engine optimization professionals realized a large factor in ranking depended upon the number of backlinks to their site, SEO Consulting firms of yesterday were allowing clients to establish links to any page online, regardless of the theme of the website. Search engine marketing experts of today are establishing ways to build back links to relevant theme associated content. Establishing links to content of a relevant or associated category, a website will increase its perceived value to the search engines. SEO Consultants of today are finding that a higher perceived value within a category by Google, Yahoo, MSN and others, gives a website the ability to rank higher in search engine results.

Pop-up advertising and Spam are black hat marketing techniques once used by experts in online marketing to achieve higher search engine ranking. Today, search engines still use traffic as a factor in search engine ranking. However submission of identical content within comments on websites, creating identical pages linked to website content, or employing advertising companies to spam online users with pop up or pop under ads just to increase website traffic, will no longer assist websites in higher ranking. Quite the contrary, search engines are penalizing websites which employ black hat marketing. Those who use spam techniques can be penalized with lower value to the search engines and associated search results ranking. The penalty of using black hat marketing techniques can be as severe as delisting with search engines for 6 months or longer.

Studying history gives us the opportunity to learn from our predecessors. The growth of the online marketing industry has established an incentivized environment for increased knowledge in the field of search engine optimization. These new consultants are including optimization of social media content, web 2.0 content and applications, article marketing, RSS feeds, podcasts, and video marketing to communicate directly with consumers at a level expected by the online market. The days of serving irrelevant content to online users and expecting to benefit from the dissemination of that content no longer exist. SEM SEO Experts of today have modified the practices of yesterday to offer techniques to their clients which are ranking higher with the search engines. These new techniques are more effective because they offer users the quality content for which they are requesting information. SEM SEO Experts are learning from sins of the past and are evolving to new practices, which serve a higher quality online experience.

When it comes to doing SEO for your website, one of the major concerns you may have is how much time and money you’ll need to spend on it. If you’re hiring an SEO firm, then time IS money, and you’ll want to know a rough estimate of how much time the SEO firm will put in and, therefore, charge you for.

You can break down the steps necessary for SEO work, making it easier to judge how much time you or your SEO company will need to spend on each. The estimates given here do not take into account any major issues or technical problems that may arise. You may want to add in a few extra hours to each step to account for any problems that you may have to deal with. If your website is exceptionally large (a thousand pages or more), you may also want to add more time into your estimate.

Step 1: Domain/URL Issues – Two hours to a day

The first thing to do is to go through your website manually and make certain that everything is consistent. You also want to look for things that will cause a search engine robot to have difficulty navigating through your site. If you have a large, dynamic site or a site that brings in a lot of content from other sites that may change often, it may take you more than a couple of hours for this step. Once you’ve completed this step, expect it to take two to four more hours to create and test all of your 301-redirect links. It may also take between two and fifteen hours to rename or re-code any filenames depending on how your site is assessed.

Step 2: – Design issues – two to four hours plus 30 minutes per page

It’s easy to see many design issues, but it can be difficult to make certain that your design is consistent from page to page across your entire website. It may take a few hours to note down every design issue, but it shouldn’t take more than four or five hours. You can often note down these issues while you’re doing your domain/URL assessment, saving a bit of time. How long it takes to implement all of the changes you need to make at this step depends on how many pages you have. At most, you may end up spending half an hour on each page. If you’ve got a huge site, this can add days to your SEO.

Step 3: – Architectural Issues – 125 hours

The most important aspect of your webpage to a search engine is its architecture. While building a list of your architectural concerns can be done while making your other lists, the actual implementation of these changes may take days or weeks. Much of this depends on how dynamic your site is and just how much re-coding is necessary.

Step 4: – Content – half an hour / 250 words

Creating content that is search engine optimized can take a good amount of time, especially if you have a lot of content on your site. One way to save time and money on this step is to do the writing yourself; however, before you jump on that idea, make certain you understand how SEO works. Otherwise, you may do more harm that good. You can also purchase licensed content or rewrite your own content to include keywords.

The World Wide Web contains many music podcasts, and they are distributed by podcasters who want to share their work with the world. Some of these are distributed by independent musicians, groups or individuals who enjoy creating and sharing their music but have a small fanbase. For them, a podcast means closer contact with their listeners, and the blog that usually accompanies a podcast often allows for the comments and opinions of the listeners to be shared with the musicians.

The close contact is often appreciated by the listeners, and even some become resentful when their favorite groups gain

widespread popularity and become to big. Musicians may find that the music podcast they share is a way to build a following

and gain an audience that is loyal to them.

Most of the musicians who podcast do so as independent artists who lack the sound the music industry is looking for or simply have not been noticed yet, a music podcast may build a following that attracts attention to them and gives them an entry point into the music industry.

Sometimes, a music podcast may be the chance to become a dj, and the episodes they share will contain mixes of different songs, highlighting obscure yet accomplished artists and taking their listeners on a tour every episode. These amateurs podcast merely because they enjoy the activity, as most independent podcasters do.

The online radio station involves another type of music podcast. While some radio stations have taken the leap to the internet by offering streaming connections to their current playlist, others have accepted the podcast as a way of sharing their music. Such a style is very similar to the amateur dj, but brings a level of professionalism that is not found with the amateur podcasters.

A music podcast may also be a way to sample works by more well known artists before purchasing. In order to peak interest in the songs before release, some musicians and groups will podcast their new music, or portions of the new pieces. Fans get to listen to the music and find out what they might like before purchasing the whole album. A possibility, however, is that music podcasts become subscription based, and musicians begin charging for access to the feed.

With Apple’s iTunes reaching its one billionth paid download recently, the online sale of music has proved its popularity. A

music group could conceivably offer a feed to its fans that they could pay for, and regularly update it with new songs that would be downloaded directly to the fan’s computers Although this distribution model is not yet in place, it seems to fit with the over all trend. Already, some nonmusical groups have agreed to podcast their files, on the condition that a paid subscription is bought.

Today, podcasts are considered as one of the more efficient marketing tools for the promotion of websites and with the help of an established PR expert, you can use a podcast to increase your business profile and attract more visitors to your website. Online browsers are interested in listening to podcasts because they can learn everything there is to know about your website without ever having to lift a finger or read a single word. Podcasts are easy and convenient, two things that internet users look for when surfing the web.

If you are unfamilar with what a podcast is, let me clarify: a podcast is actually the content that is used for podcasting, and podcasting is the modern means of distribution of multimedia files that include audio programs and music videos via the internet using RSS or Atom syndication format. Once the podcast is done, it is possible to listen to these multimedia files on mobile devices and personal computers.

Podcasts are interesting marketing tools that will generate even more traffic to your website with people getting more and more interested in listening to these informative internet messages. You can include all of the information pertaining to your company in a podcast. Just make it as interesting and informative as possible, for this attracts more people eager to listen!

Having an interesting and informative podcast, alone, does not promise an increase in traffic to your website. You will have to first list it with online directories, and with this listing, people who are interested in buying something from your company may be able to find the product details with ease.

Make sure that there are positive press releases and informative articles about your podcast on the internet. Once these press releases and articles are done with, distribute them in the directory for the sake of reference. This is important because through the reading of these press releases potential customers may develop an interest in visiting your website.

When creating a podcast, create one that is relevant to the people who may be interested in visiting your website. Creating ones with irrelevant matter will only irritate the customer and not get him/her interested in visiting your website! Podcasting from your website requires some marketing effort as well in order to gain popularity.

To establish a new podcast on your website, you are going to want to create an email list. An email list allows you to send important information and articles to subscribers. People subscribe to email lists to learn more about new businesses, websites and podcasts. With this email list, customers not only get to listen to the podcast, but also gain some information on the businesses or services that you provide. Always remember to mention directions and details on the subscribing and unsubscribing of an email to potential subscribers.

There are also some people who search for podcasts using search engines. This is why you have to make yours search engine friendly. Try to include relevant keywords so that people will be directed to the podcast upon typing these relevant keywords.

Another means of using the podcast to promote your website would be to get some commercial sponsors. Though people are generally not interested in buying a podcast, there are many people who are interested in maintaining a podcast. Once you have a single major sponsor, or two, the popularity of your website will increase. People will be of the impression that if these sponsors trust you and your website, then it will be alright for them to buy the products and services from your website as well.