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	<title>Construction Marketing &#124; Helping Contractors Succeed Online &#187; Articles</title>
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	<link>http://homebuildr.net</link>
	<description>Demystifying Internet Marketing for Contractors</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Mon, 26 Jul 2010 05:55:22 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en</language>
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		<title>Social Media for Business</title>
		<link>http://homebuildr.net/718/social-media-business/</link>
		<comments>http://homebuildr.net/718/social-media-business/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 23 Jul 2010 19:28:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>HomeBuildR</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Facebook]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Fortune 500 Companies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media Watch]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://homebuildr.net/?p=718</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Social Media for Business has come come to age! If you haven&#8217;t noticed the trends, you must be in a CAVE! Facebook has become in the most visited web site on the internet in less than 4 years!!! Did you know 91% of the Fortune 500 companies have at least one social media channel? Watch [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Social Media for Business has come come to age!</p>
<p>If you haven&#8217;t noticed the trends, you must be in a CAVE! Facebook has become in the most visited web site on the internet in less than 4 years!!! Did you know 91% of the Fortune 500 companies have at least one social media channel?</p>
<p>Watch this video!</p>
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		<title>How To Create Content For Your Website</title>
		<link>http://homebuildr.net/627/create-content-website/</link>
		<comments>http://homebuildr.net/627/create-content-website/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 01 May 2010 18:33:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>HomeBuildR</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Content Creation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FREE Resources]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Balancing Act]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Important Things]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Internet Website]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Legal Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Missing Sync]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[People Search]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Web Content]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Website Traffic]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://homebuildr.net/?p=627</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s not easy putting together content that is targeted, effective but optimized for search. It can be a balancing act between keeping it short and including enough information to cover all the points. Download the Web Content Guide as a PDF The guide includes: What to do before you start writing General tips on the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Create-Good-Content.pdf" ><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-628" title="Download PDF Create Content Website" src="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/DownloadPDF.png" alt="" width="116" height="160" /></a>It&#8217;s not easy putting together content that is targeted, effective but optimized for search.</p>
<p>It can be a balancing act between keeping it short and including enough information to cover all the points.</p>
<h3>Download the Web Content Guide as a PDF</h3>
<p>The guide includes:</p>
<ol>
<li> What to do before you start writing</li>
<li>General tips on the important things to remember about paragraph structure and layout</li>
<li>A five step process for creating content</li>
<li>A template to help you step through the process</li>
</ol>
<p>This is a FREE resource to help you with the content creation process. If you would like to read about the importance of adding fresh content to your website &#8211; <a href="http://homebuildr.net/582/website-gathering-dust-adding/" ><em><strong>No Traffic To Your Website? You Must Add Content!</strong></em></a> This was posted a few days ago to help people understand how search engines determine whether to put you on the first page or bury it.<br />
<h4>Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)</h4>
<ul>
<li style="list-style: none;">Related posts on <b>Balancing Act</b></li>
<li><a href="http://www.cwalk430.com/these-are-a-few-of-my-favourite-things/" >cwalk430 » Blog Archive » These are a few of my favourite things…</a></li>
<li><a rel="nofollow" href="http://newsroomcomputing.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/will-a-third-way-for-broadband-in-the-united-states-work/" >Will A Third Way for Broadband in the United States Work <b>&#8230;</b></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.streetlogik.com/article/kil-ripkin-not-you-video/" >Kil Ripkin – Not You (Video) – Street Logik</a></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="list-style: none;">Related posts on <b>Content Creation</b></li>
<li><a href="http://www.legalpracticepro.com/how-a-real-lawyer-uses-social-media/" >Social Media And Legal Marketing: How A Real Lawyer Uses Social Media</a></li>
<li><a href="http://onlineeducation.journalspace.com/reward-yourself-with-e-learning-content-creation-for-learning-management-systems/" >Online Education Programs » Blog Archive » Reward Yourself With E <b>&#8230;</b></a></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="list-style: none;">Related posts on <b>Download Web</b></li>
<li><a href="http://4usoftware.com/2010/06/web-designer-color-tool-3-0/" >Web Designer Color Tool 3.0 | Software, Games, Internet, Website <b>&#8230;</b></a></li>
<li><a href="http://allarticles.gurucrusher.com/information-you-want-to-discover-dealing-with-removal/" >Information You Want To Discover Dealing With Removal | All <b>&#8230;</b></a></li>
<li><a href="http://4usoftware.com/2010/06/the-missing-sync-for-sony-psp-1-0-3/" >The Missing Sync for Sony PSP 1.0.3 | Software, Games, Internet <b>&#8230;</b></a></li>
</ul>
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		<title>No Traffic To Your Website? You Must Add Content!</title>
		<link>http://homebuildr.net/582/website-gathering-dust-adding/</link>
		<comments>http://homebuildr.net/582/website-gathering-dust-adding/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 24 Apr 2010 20:35:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>HomeBuildR</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Content Creation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Contractor Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Website Traffic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[WordPress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Client Testimonials]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Company Brochures]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Continual Stream]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Contraction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Detailed Explanation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dilution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gathering Dust]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Local Store]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Manufacturer Manufacturer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Multiple Times]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Widgets]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://homebuildr.net/?p=582</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[To be effective a website must remain current. Having fresh content will insure: New &#38; Recurring Customers Search Engine Visibility This is an IMPORTANT CONCEPT! Too often companies spend a significant amount of money on having a website built only to have it gather dust and disappear into the abyss. There are two main reasons [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img style="float: right;" title="website traffic" src="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/website-traffic.png" alt="" width="342" height="250" /><br />
To be effective a website must remain current. Having fresh content will insure:</p>
<ul>
<li>New &amp; Recurring Customers</li>
<li>Search Engine Visibility</li>
</ul>
<p>This is an IMPORTANT CONCEPT! Too often companies spend a significant amount of money on having a website built only to have it gather dust and disappear into the abyss.</p>
<p>There are two main reasons this occurs:</p>
<ol>
<li>New competitors entering the internet. Dilution</li>
<li>The search engine (SE) placement of your website is based on the frequency of visits, among other factors. If your website doesn’t have a continual stream of new content, the search engines have no reason to visit.</li>
</ol>
<blockquote><p>A <strong>blog</strong> (a <a rel="nofollow" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraction_(grammar)" >contraction</a> of the term &#8220;<strong>web log</strong>&#8220;)<a rel="nofollow" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog#cite_note-0" >[1]</a> is a type of <a rel="nofollow" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website" >website</a>, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.</p></blockquote>
<p>A blog is a container for all types of different content separated into categories and tags. It allows a single piece of content to appear to a search engine multiple times. Hence, multiple instances indexed by the search engines.</p>
<p>Simply put, an article about a special for a new product sold in your local store can appear as:</p>
<ul>
<li>product + location (i.e., widgets roseville)</li>
<li>product + special (discount widgets)</li>
<li>product + manufacturer (manufacturer widget)</li>
<li>product (widget)</li>
<li>etc.</li>
</ul>
<p>The point here is, one article (post) turns into 4 different search results.</p>
<p>This concept is the reason websites built like company brochures are DEAD. Blogging is a very powerful method to insure your website remains current and on top of the search engine results.</p>
<h3>Some ideas for content for your website are:</h3>
<ul>
<li>New products</li>
<li>Safety tips</li>
<li>Industry news</li>
<li>Partner news</li>
<li>Community events</li>
<li>Completed projects</li>
<li>Case studies</li>
<li>Before and after’s</li>
<li>Client testimonials</li>
<li>Top 10 Questions (FAQ’s)</li>
<li>A detailed explanation of a question</li>
<li>How To Guides</li>
<li>Helpful advice</li>
<li>Daily Specials</li>
<li>Customer of the Month</li>
<li>Safety recalls</li>
<li>etc.</li>
</ul>
<p>The rest of this article will explain adding content to your WordPress enabled website. If you don’t have a WordPress or similar website, you might want to read my article “<em><strong><a href="http://homebuildr.net/441/wordpress-revolution-small-business/" >The WordPress Revolution for Small Business Owners</a>.</strong></em>” Another great resource &#8211; <em><strong><a href="http://homebuildr.net/627/create-content-website/" >How To Create Content For Your Website</a></strong></em> is FREE to download and provides 4 things you should know.</p>
<h3>Static versus Dynamic Content</h3>
<p>Most websites are a combination of static and dynamic information. Static information rarely changes. Examples of static content are: About Us, Contact Info, Services, and more. Dynamic information is constantly changing: specials, events, testimonials, projects, etc.</p>
<h3><a href="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/wordpress.jpg" ><img class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-442" title="WordPress Small Business Websites &amp; Contractor Websites" src="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/wordpress-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150" /></a>WordPress Pages &amp; Posts</h3>
<p>In WordPress, static content is handled in the Pages component. Pages are typically used in your website’s main navigation or tabs.</p>
<p>Dynamic information in WordPress is administered vial the Post interface. This is the blogging component of WordPress. Unlike pages, posts are displayed in the main navigation as a single tab. To navigate the blog, an additional navigation structure of categories is used.</p>
<p>Depending on your website’s setup, your blog tab can be named as Blog, Articles, News for a few. The navigation of your blog will typically be shown in the sidebar of your website and not in the main navigation.</p>
<p>“To add content to your website via the blog you will use Posts”</p>
<h3>Key Elements of a Post</h3>
<p>To be effective, a post must contain:</p>
<ul>
<li>your primary keywords (search term)</li>
<li>location</li>
<li>2 &#8211; 3 paragraphs</li>
<li>a picture</li>
<li>multiple categories</li>
<li>and, a Call To Action</li>
</ul>
<h3>Steps To Writing a Post</h3>
<ol>
<li>Create the Headline &#8211; The headline must include your keywords! It must be interesting. Must draw attention from your audience.Some examples&#8230;<br />
10 Things You Should Know About _________<br />
New __________ installed in __________ Home<br />
Incredible Savings On _____________<br />
_____________ Supports Our _____________ Community<br />
While Supplies Last __________, On Sale Now</li>
<li>Write a couple of paragraphs about your main topic, headline. Remember, short and sweet, 3-5 sentences per paragraph.</li>
<li>Finish the post with another paragraph summarizing the topic and include a CALL TO ACTION.</li>
</ol>
<p><strong><em>Pretty simple stuff!</em></strong></p>
<p>I can’t emphasize enough, the most important part of anything you put on your website&#8230;</p>
<p><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">A CALL TO ACTION!</span></strong></p>
<p>A call to action is what you would like your visitors to do next. This could be a:</p>
<ul>
<li>Call for an appointment</li>
<li>Schedule an estimate</li>
<li>Sign up for a newsletter</li>
<li>Print a coupon</li>
<li>refer your company, etc.</li>
</ul>
<p>We have discussed the importance of having fresh content for your website, and the differences between static and dynamic content. In WordPress, Pages are static and Posts are the dynamic component to your website. Creating content to post should take no more than 15 minutes of your time. The rewards for your efforts will be increased search engine visibility and new traffic to your website.</p>
<p>How to post to your website is revealed in a quick video <a href="http://homebuildr.net/videos" >HomeBuildR.Net/Videos</a> If you like what you have read, leave a comment below or share with your friends. Please don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter. It’s free and a great resource.</p>
<p>Just added: <strong>Free Downloadable Guide</strong> &#8211; <a href="http://homebuildr.net/627/create-content-website/" ><em><strong>How To Create Content For Your Website</strong></em></a></p>
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		<title>&#8220;Trust Me, I&#8217;m a Contractor&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://homebuildr.net/553/trust-me-im-contractor/</link>
		<comments>http://homebuildr.net/553/trust-me-im-contractor/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 09 Apr 2010 16:11:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TromlerConstruction</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://homebuildr.net/?p=553</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This is a great article from a General Contractor, that get&#8217;s it! Tom has been actively marketing his company, Tromler Construction over the past couple of years online. While most contractors complain about not being busy, Tom has been steadily increasing his business in a down economy. Please comment and let me know your thoughts [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>This is a great article from a General Contractor, that get&#8217;s it! </strong>Tom has been actively marketing his company, Tromler Construction over the past couple of years online. While most contractors complain about not being busy, Tom has been steadily increasing his business in a down economy. Please comment and let me know your thoughts by commenting below. Thanks</p>
<hr />
<h3><span style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px;">One of the biggest hurdles that general contractors have to get past is the trust factor. Are we who we say we are? Will we do what we say we will do? Can we produce what we say we can produce? As a contractor we expect a total stranger to call us, schedule to meet, enter their home or business, tear something apart, then rebuild it to look awesome. That’s asking a lot from someone we just met or talked to on the phone.</span></h3>
<p>That’s what it is all about in the service business – trust.</p>
<p><a href="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/facebook-general-contractor.jpg" ><img style="float: left; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;" title="facebook-general-contractor" src="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/facebook-general-contractor-150x67.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="67" /></a>Today the property owner has ways of getting to know the contractor before ever meeting them face-to-face.</p>
<p>Thanks to social networks like Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter, the general contractor can be “checked out” long before ever meeting him. Before the internet boom, you had a square box in the yellow pages, or a flyer shoved into your door as a first impression to the contractor.</p>
<p><a href="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/tromler-construction-contractor-linkedin.jpg" ><img style="float: right; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;" title="marketing-construction-contractor-linkedin" src="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/tromler-construction-contractor-linkedin.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="64" /></a>Today we can look at companies and people in a different way. We can see the contractors work, comments they have posted, who they associate with – and maybe that trust can be increased a little by getting to know them better.  And there is more that we can do.</p>
<p><a href="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/twitter-general-contractor.jpg" ><img style="float:left; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;" title="twitter-marketing-contractor" src="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/twitter-general-contractor.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="55" /></a>In searching for the right contractor that you can trust you probably want someone near you. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way that we could finding someone that we could trust nearby. There are ways to look up general contractors in your area. Here are a few popular sites.</p>
<p><a href="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/general-contractor-in-placerville-yelp.jpg" ><img style="float:left; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;" title="small-business-owners-yelp" src="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/general-contractor-in-placerville-yelp.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="92" /></a>Google , Yahoo, and Bing all have local search directories. Yelp is another. These local searches may help pinpoint contractors near you to help get started on your quest for the trusted contractor. Are there any other ways to finding a service business? Many more. How about the most trusted source of finding a contractor ever – Word-Of-Mouth.</p>
<p>That’s right, people are most comfortable getting a referral based on what their friends and family have experienced. Someone they know has already tried using the contractor and was happy with the results. Don’t have friends and family that have used a general contractor?</p>
<div id="attachment_559" class='wp-caption alignnone' style='width:294px;'><a href="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/trom.jpg" ><img class="size-medium wp-image-559" title="customer testimonials contractors" src="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/trom-294x300.jpg" alt="" width="294" height="300" /></a><p class='wp-caption-text'>Example: Customer Testimonials</p></div>
<p>Maybe the contractor has a list of past customers for you to contact. Don’t be afraid to make contact with the past customers, it may help you build that trust. And in this business, trust is very important to both you and the general contractor.</p>
<hr />Tom Arstingstall, Owner<br />
Tromler Construction, Placerville, CA<br />
(916) 765-5366<br />
FaceBook: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://facebook.com/tromler.construction" >Facebook.com/Tromler.Construction</a></p>
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		<title>Small Business Owner’s Overview of FaceBook</title>
		<link>http://homebuildr.net/531/small-business-owner%e2%80%99s-overview/</link>
		<comments>http://homebuildr.net/531/small-business-owner%e2%80%99s-overview/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 28 Mar 2010 19:30:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>HomeBuildR</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[FaceBook is a social media site. What is Social Media? Social media essentially is a category of online media where people are talking, participating, sharing, networking, and bookmarking online. Most social media services encourage discussion, feedback, voting, comments, and sharing of information from all interested parties. It&#8217;s more of a two-way conversation, rather than a [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2>FaceBook is a social media site.<a href="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Facebook-Button1.jpg" ><img style="float:right;" title="Facebook-Button" src="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Facebook-Button1-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150" /></a></h2>
<h3>What is Social Media?</h3>
<blockquote><p>Social media essentially is a category of online media where people are talking, participating, sharing, networking, and bookmarking online. Most social media services encourage discussion, feedback, voting, comments, and sharing of information from all interested parties.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s more of a two-way conversation, rather than a one-way broadcast like traditional media. Another unique aspect of social media is the idea of staying connected or linked to other sites, resources, and people. &#8211; <a href="http://searchenginewatch.com/3632809"  target="_blank">Ron Jones, SearchEngineWatch.com</a></p></blockquote>
<h3>Why do you care?</h3>
<p>FaceBook is the internet’s number one most visited website, exceeding Google Search. It’s rapid growth is explosive. Started in 2004 in a dorm room at Harvard, it was a way for a group of college kids to interact. Today, FaceBook is the definition of how customers are interacting with companies. It’s real time, and social. Companies can no longer dismiss it as just another time suck! Yes, I did say that <img src='http://homebuildr.net/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif' alt=';)' class='wp-smiley' />  Let’s face it, we all want results without wasting our time. <strong><em>How would you like to grow your business like this?</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em> </em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em> </em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em><a href="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/FBgrowthChart-e1269802527104.png" ><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-532" title="FaceBook Explosive Growth Since 2004" src="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/FBgrowthChart-e1269802527104.png" alt="" width="450" height="144" /></a><br />
</em></strong><br />
￼￼FaceBook allows people to connect with friends and associates on a professional and personal level.<br />
<strong> On a personal level,</strong> you create a profile for all to see for the purposes of:</p>
<ul>
<li>sharing with family and friends*</li>
<li>with members of special interest groups<br />
(small business owners, religious, hobby, sports, political, etc.)</li>
</ul>
<p>This information can be shared with a select group of friends or everyone who stumbles upon your profile.<br />
<strong> On a professional level,</strong> FaceBook is used to promote your company. Through advertisements, company updates, photos of your work and ongoing conversations to your connected fans.** Most importantly, it’s a tool to drive visitors to your company’s website.</p>
<h3>3 Major Componets of FaceBook</h3>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"> Personal Profile</span> &#8211; Your FaceBook Account<br />
<span style="text-decoration: underline;"> Groups </span>- Network of like minded individuals sharing a common interest<br />
<span style="text-decoration: underline;"> Pages</span> &#8211; Your company’s profile.</p>
<p><a href="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/FaceBook.png" ><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-534" title="3 Major Components of FaceBook" src="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/FaceBook-300x225.png" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<h3>Implementation</h3>
<ol>
<li>Setup a FaceBook account
<ul>
<li>Personal email and password</li>
<li>Add a photo of yourself</li>
<li>A brief bio</li>
<li>Add info about where you went to school, your work, hobbies, etc.</li>
<li>Do you want to share this information publically or privately?</li>
<li>Do you want to be updated via email, text messaging, or when you are online?</li>
<li>Send out invites to people in your address book.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Setup a FaceBook Page
<ul>
<li>Create a business profile complete with logos, photos, contact information, etc.</li>
<li>Invite all who will help you to spread the word about your company.</li>
<li>Invite customers and associates to interact with your company by offering special discounts, event invitations, cross promotions, etc.<br />
<span style="color: #000000;"><span style="background-color: #ffffff;"> Cross promotions &#8211; is a non traditional approach to expanding your company’s reach. As an example, let’s say you have a favorite hair salon or barber you frequent. Tell your friends and colleagues about their wonderful service. In turn, they will do the same.</span></span></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><span style="color: #000000;"><span style="background-color: #ffffff;">C</span></span><span style="background-color: #ffffff;">on</span>nect with Groups
<ul>
<li>Join other groups, this can be both professional and personal. Note: This is not necessary to get started.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
<p>It’s time to embrace social media as a means to gain credibility and authority for you and your business. With active participation, you will be able to promote your company and gain new customers. Additionally, you will be able to increase your sales to existing customers by offering additional products and services that they might be aware you offer. Lastly, you will be able to expand your network to industries and other companies who’s customers would benefit from your products and services.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>WARNING: Don’t let this scare you, by thinking it will take time away from your busy schedule. There are tools available to integrate with your company’s website and cell phone to make this as painless and non-techie as possible.</strong></span></p>
<blockquote><p>FaceBook is a necessary ingredient to business survival. Having a business website will not get you customers without promotion.</p></blockquote>
<hr />This is the second part of an ongoing series <a href="http://homebuildr.net/521/website-traffic-customers-small/" >Website Traffic &#8211; How to Get More Customers for Small Business Owners.</a> We will be discussing some of the key factors in driving traffic to your company&#8217;s website. Included in all of the articles are FREE downloads of tools, checklists and other resources.</p>
<p>If you haven&#8217;t already subscribed, <a href="http://homebuildr.net/free-resources/" >please do so now</a>. We will never sell, share, trade any of the information you share with us. At any time that you wish to unsubscribe, all correspondence includes an unsubscribe link.</p>
<p>Download your FREE copy of <strong><a href="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/FaceBook.pdf"  target="_blank">3 Components of FaceBook</a></strong> mind map (Adobe pdf).</p>
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		<title>Drive Traffic To Your Website &#8211; What Contractors and Small Business Owners Must Know</title>
		<link>http://homebuildr.net/497/drive-traffic-website-contractors/</link>
		<comments>http://homebuildr.net/497/drive-traffic-website-contractors/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:48:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>HomeBuildR</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Advice]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Optimization Seo]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Related Resources]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Resource Identifier]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saturation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://homebuildr.net/?p=497</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Gone are the days where having a website guaranteed new clients. The combination of various factors attribute to your website’s decreased visibility. Fresh content Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Saturation While these terms may seem “Greek” to most small business owners, once explained they are really quite simple to comprehend. To understand, you must first have [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3>Gone are the days where having a website guaranteed new clients.</h3>
<p><a href="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/1221918262.jpg" ><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-498" title="Increase Your Contractor's Website Traffic" src="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/1221918262.jpg" alt="" width="180" height="180" /></a><br />
The combination of various factors attribute to your website’s decreased visibility.</p>
<ul>
<li>Fresh content</li>
<li>Search Engine Optimization (SEO)</li>
<li>Saturation</li>
</ul>
<p>While these terms may seem “Greek” to most small business owners, once explained they are really quite simple to comprehend.<span id="more-497"></span></p>
<p>To understand, you must first have an idea of the basic concept of how customers find your company on the internet. One of these methods is called  <strong>Direct Traffic</strong>. This is where one of your customers enters your website into the address bar of their browser.</p>
<blockquote><p>A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users to easily navigate their browsers to related resources. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser" >Wikipedia</a><br />
<strong> Common Browsers</strong> &#8211; Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, Blackberry</p></blockquote>
<p>A second method of web site traffic is <strong>Referring Sites</strong>. A good example, is any internet Yellow Page site. A customer will search for your company and will be directed back to your website via a link.<br />
And the third most common way is via the search engines, <strong>Organic</strong>. This method by far has the greatest potential for new clients. The 5 biggest search engines are (listed by percentage of users): Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, &amp; AOL.</p>
<p>To rank highly on these sites, a website must be optimized. Optimization in a nutshell, is the process of catering your web pages’s information for it to be found vial the search terms commonly used by your audience (clients).<br />
Books are written on just this topic alone. Let me give you a quick example. If you were selling “spark plugs”, a web page devoted to spark plugs would have to compete with all the major brands &#8211; Bosch, Champion, AC Delco, etc.  That is only the beginning! Add to that, all of the major auto parts stores &#8211; Napa, Kraegen, Pep Boys, etc. The likelihood that your website will be on page one of the search engines is ZERO!<br />
On the other hand, if you had a page that discussed the benefits of “Bosch BMW Spark Plugs” your chances of ranking increase. Taken one step further, what if you had a page listing all of your brands and wrote specifically about “Spark Plugs in Reno Nevada”? A number one page ranking for consumers looking to purchase a spark plug in Reno, NV would now be within reach. (This practice of targeting longer phrases to drive traffic is commonly referred to <a rel="nofollow" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail" >Longtail Marketing</a>)</p>
<h3>Search Engine Optimization allows your potential clients to find you.</h3>
<p>Another factor that has been responsible for decreased traffic to your website is saturation. The percentage of your competitors with websites has been exponentially increasing. Added to this is the number of competitors who were once called associates. Many companies struggling to survive have added services and products that were once outsourced to companies like your own.</p>
<h2>Critical Things You Must Do To Generate Traffic To Your Website</h2>
<ol>
<li><strong>Provide Fresh Content -</strong> Every time you update your website, the search engines have a reason to come back and visit. With increased visits, you will have more pages from your website listed on the search engines. Quick question, how likely will your website be found if you are only listed once for a given search term? Versus, having 10 or more pages  for an equivalent search?<br />
Contractors and other small businesses that work with a consistent flow of new clients have an easy means of adding multiple pages for a given search. This is accomplished by blogging or discussing a completed job in one or two paragraphs. You can read more about this tactic in the article <a href="http://homebuildr.net/441/wordpress-revolution-small-business/" >WordPress Revolution for Small Business Owners</a>.<br />
To emphasize my point, let’s just say you bought a brand new home. You move in and do nothing! The landscape quickly overgrows, the dirt and debris accumulate and very quickly your new home looks like manure.<br />
<strong>Are you expecting different results with your website?</strong></li>
<li><strong>Authority -</strong> To gain the status of an authority in any market, there must be others willing to recommend and promote your products and services. Newspaper articles, television appearances, referrals and the likes, help establish you and/or your company as an authority. In today’s market we can not overlook the authority given by user review (Yelp, Angies List, Google reviews, etc.) and social media site (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) Take a moment to look at any local search business listing on Google. Those companies with the most user reviews, consistently rank the highest (are displayed at the top of the list.)</li>
<li><strong>Get your site listed!</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>When working with clients, I have found many to have a pretty website that is showing up on one of the major search engines, but not the others. What about all of those other potential clients that aren’t using the search engine that your website is listed?</p>
<p>And that is just a start! You need to have your company listed in not just the search engines, but social media sites, internet yellow directories, business directories, and with mobile search GPS and local directories.</p>
<p>Why is this important? Imagine for a moment, you have a stunning billboard offering a $100 dollars to anyone that calls. You’d be overwhelmed with phone calls! But is that really true? What if your billboard was on some dusty one lane road in the middle of the Arizona desert?</p>
<p>Same scenario, you now have 50 of the same billboards in all 50 of the top cities in the US (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, &#8230;) What do you think your phone traffic will be like now?</p>
<p>Listing your company and website in multiple locations in the internet is like having those 50 billboards!<br />
The downside, is this can be time consuming and expensive to accomplish. I know too well the time it takes to just list in one directory. For me, it takes about 5 minutes per site. And I have all the tools to get it done quickly via copy and paste, etc.</p>
<p>Good news, you can accomplish this yourself with patience and time. Or you can have <a href="http://homebuildr.net/sitedesign/local-search-website-submission/" >our construction marketing agency</a> do the work for you for an incredibly low price.<br />
Enough of the self promotion&#8230;</p>
<h3>Let’s recap: Your website’s traffic is constantly being eroded by increased number of competitors (Saturation)<br />
More importantly, smarter competitors who understand the value and necessity of a holistic approach to on and off line marketing.</h3>
<p><strong>3 of the most important things you can do to ensure your website is being found by your potential clients</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Update your site often</li>
<li>Capture reviews from your clients</li>
<li>List your website in as many quality locations as possible<br />
WARNING: If you are selling water heaters, listing your site on a kitchen gadget sales page, won’t get you noticed BUT it will hurt you.</li>
</ul>
<p>Be sure to visit us often for great free tips and advice on marketing your company on and offline. <a href="http://homebuildr.net" >Sign up for FREE for our newsletter </a>with other great tips and advice.<br />
We are always welcome to your comments, questions and feedback. You may comment by clicking the link below.</p>
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		<title>Green Marketing for Contractors</title>
		<link>http://homebuildr.net/487/green-marketing-contractors/</link>
		<comments>http://homebuildr.net/487/green-marketing-contractors/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:59:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>HomeBuildR</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Contractor Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Green Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saving Money]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Adjunct Faculty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Advisory Board Member]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Antioch University Seattle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Recession]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Seattle Chamber]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sustainability]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sustainable Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Uncertain Times]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wilhelm]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://homebuildr.net/?p=487</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In uncertain times, going green may be one solution to saving money and surviving. Here is a great article with a total different approach to helping your business survive. Well worth the read. Sustainability: Your Business&#8217;s Best Defense Against Recession &#8230; &#8211; This is a guest post by Kevin Wilhelm. Kevin is the Chair of [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In uncertain times, going green may be one solution to saving money and surviving. Here is a great article with a total different approach to helping your business survive. Well worth the read.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.groovygreen.com/groove/?p=3439" >Sustainability: Your Business&#8217;s Best Defense Against Recession &#8230;</a> &#8211; This is a guest post by Kevin Wilhelm. Kevin is the Chair of the Seattle Chamber&#8217;s Sustainability Committee, an Advisory Board Member to the Center for Sustainable Business, and is an adjunct faculty at Antioch University-Seattle where &#8230;</li>
</ul>
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		<title>Construction Marketing &#8211; Don’t Stop With The Sign</title>
		<link>http://homebuildr.net/450/construction-marketing-don%e2%80%99t/</link>
		<comments>http://homebuildr.net/450/construction-marketing-don%e2%80%99t/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:43:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>HomeBuildR</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Advice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Contractor Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Best Seller List]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Celebrity Status]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Company Vehicles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Construction Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Front Yard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Good Housekeeping]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Good Housekeeping Seal Of Approval]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Home Owner Associations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Housekeeping Seal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Interested Buyer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Local Markets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marketing 101]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Own Tv Show]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Roi Return On Investment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Seal Of Approval]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stamp Of Approval]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Street Signs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Truck Signs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Website Construction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yellow Page Ads]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://homebuildr.net/?p=450</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It almost goes without saying, when you are working on a job you typically put up a sign in the front yard. Why stop with your website? Construction Marketing 101 tells us that we need to advertise our company. We all rely on a few tools. Business Cards Truck signs Yellow Page Ads Street signs [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="style=" title="Contractor Marketing Yard Sign" src="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Daharsh3-272x300.jpg" alt="" width="163" height="180" /></p>
<blockquote>
<h2>It almost goes without saying, when you are working on a job you typically put up a sign in the front yard. Why stop with your website?</h2>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Construction Marketing 101 tells us that we need to advertise our company. We all rely on a few tools.<span id="more-450"></span><br />
</strong></p>
<ul>
<li> Business Cards</li>
<li>Truck signs</li>
<li>Yellow Page Ads</li>
<li>Street signs</li>
</ul>
<h3>Why? &#8230;</h3>
<p><strong>We do these things to promote our business!</strong> We pass out cards to acquaintances, friends, associates and other businesses.</p>
<p>Our company vehicles pass 100s&#8217; of potential clients every day hoping to catch the attention of an interested buyer.</p>
<p>We spend good money placing our ad in the Yellow Pages. Because we know the phone company will distribute 1000s&#8217; of directories into our local markets.</p>
<p>Lastly, we proudly display a yard sign in front of a home or business where we are working.</p>
<h3>Again I ask, why?</h3>
<p>We do these things because we want to gain exposure to our companies and the services we provide.</p>
<p>I’m sure some of you have heard about the power of Ophrah. A recommendation from Ophrah is a ticket to best seller list for books, your own TV show or celebrity status. Getting Ophrah’s stamp of approval produces far greater results than the time tested <em>Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval</em>.</p>
<h3><strong>We are ALL GUILTY by not promoting our company’s website</strong>.</h3>
<p>It occurs to me, we all recognize the need to have a website. What we don’t realize, having a website doesn’t guarantee results.</p>
<p><strong>The missing element is promotion!</strong></p>
<p>Having a stack of business cards doesn’t gain you new clients if you don’t pass them out.</p>
<p>Driving your company vehicle around with out your company’s name and phone number won’t get you calls.</p>
<p>Then why do some of us not at least use a street sign? Yes, there are some HOA’s (Home Owner Associations) that don’t allow it.  And so too, they can be costly to produce. That shouldn’t stop you. One sign can generate you new calls. One call and you are able to harvest a ROI (Return On Investment) 10 or more times.</p>
<p>Everything we do as business owners has to be evaluated based on our returns. Having a website and not promoting it produces no returns!</p>
<p>In my last article, I discussed the <a href="http://homebuildr.net/441/wordpress-revolution-small-business/" >WordPress Revolution</a>. WordPress is a tool to use for your own website.</p>
<ul>
<li> Automated traffic generation</li>
<li>Ease of Use</li>
<li>Ability to syndicate your content.</li>
<li>and more</li>
</ul>
<h3>We need to promote our websites to get traffic!</h3>
<p><strong>So how do we promote our website?</strong><br />
We enhance what we already do. Our business cards, truck signs, yard signs and yellow pages should list your website.<br />
We make sure our websites can be found by people searching the internet. We do this by ensuring our sites are optimized for the search engines.</p>
<p>We provide fresh content to keep the search engines coming back.</p>
<p>We syndicate our content. Let me briefly explain. we’ve all heard of the AP (Associated Press). This is a news service where all the traditional media use to capture new content. From radio, television, newspapers and the like, all rely on AP for breaking news.  And here is the POWER of SYNDICATION. One person writes an article, one time, one place and literally within seconds, it is distributed to millions of potential publishers.  Your company can leverage the internet to gain similar results.</p>
<p>We develop an ongoing conversation with our clientele. Whether it’s a customer we built a home for twenty years ago to an interested lead. We need to engage.  We engage these people with two main methods:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Email marketing</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Social Media</p>
<p><strong>RECAP:</strong> Evaluate what’s missing with your current efforts to promote your company.</p>
<p><em><strong>Do you even have a website?</strong></em><br />
If not, you need one to survive. ROI 10x or more in 1st year returns.</p>
<p><em><strong>Is your website on your&#8230;</strong></em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Business Cards?<br />
Truck Signs?<br />
Yellow Page Ads?<br />
Street Signs?</p>
<p><em><strong>Are you promoting your website?</strong></em> Or is it gathering dust in the corner?</p>
<p>Feel free to comment on this article. If you would like further information on our service and would like a free consultation by clicking the CALL ME NOW button on the right or by going to our <a href="http://homebuildr.net/contactus/" >contact form</a>. Otherwise, please sign up for our email newsletter. And as a bonus, we will send you a copy of our eBook <em><strong>2 Easy Steps You Can Do NOW To Generate Leads</strong></em></p>
<p><span style="font-size: large;"><strong>Here’s to your success and survival!</strong></span></p>
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		<title>Small Business Owners &#8211; Is Somebody Stealing Your Customers?</title>
		<link>http://homebuildr.net/422/small-business-owners-is-somebody-stealing-your-customers/</link>
		<comments>http://homebuildr.net/422/small-business-owners-is-somebody-stealing-your-customers/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:23:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>HomeBuildR</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[google map search]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bad Guys]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bottom Of The List]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Business Listing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Business Type]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[City Search]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Consumers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dog Grooming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Google]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Google Map]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Google Maps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hijacking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Local Businesses]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Merchants]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Necessary Steps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Page Nbsp]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Photos]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sabotage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Small Business Owners]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Targets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Telephone Book]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yellow Pages]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://homebuildr.net/422/small-business-owners-is-somebody-stealing-your-customers/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Did you know that your business is listed on Google Maps? Did you know that unscrupulous people can hijack you map listing and Steal your customers if you don&#8217;t protect your listing? Practically every small business is listed on Google Maps. This is great. Millions of people use Google everyday and they can now use it to search [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div>
<p>Did you know that your business is listed on Google Maps?</p>
<p>Did you know that unscrupulous people can hijack you map listing and Steal your customers if you don&#8217;t protect your listing? Practically every small business is listed on Google Maps. This is great. Millions of people use Google everyday and they can now use it to search for local businesses. Google has become the digital answer to the printed yellow pages for many consumers. It&#8217;s easier, faster, and can provide more information for the consumer and it also offers the merchant a very inexpensive way to promote their business. Among other things, merchants can add photos and videos. It&#8217;s almost like getting a free full page ad in the telephone book or a free commercial on TV. Sounds great! The only problem is that it is possible for anybody to hijack your Google Map Business listing if you don&#8217;t take the necessary steps to protect it. <strong>Look How Easy it is to steal your Google Map Listing</strong> <span id="more-422"></span>For those not familiar with Google Maps, navigate to Google<em>. (You will need to be logged into a Google account to do this) </em> Then pick a business type and city, for example &#8220;dog grooming + your city&#8221;. Click search and the top ten listings will appear beside a Google Map at the top of the page.  If you are one of these businesses in the top ten search results you are in a very enviable position. These are the businesses that will get the most attention from potential customers. These are the businesses that customers are going to call first or investigate further to learn more about the merchant. And since these businesses are in such an enviable position, these businesses are key targets for sabotage, hijacking, or both. <strong>Here&#8217;s how the bad guys do it</strong></p>
<p>Go back to your results for the above search &#8220;dog grooming + your city&#8221;. Pick a listing toward the bottom of the list that doesn&#8217;t have an associated website and click on it. To make sure you pick an appropriate listing for this demonstration click on listing that has maps.google.com to the right of it instead of a web url. When you click on the business listing, an info page for the business will launch, if not click on <em>more info</em>. On this info page, right beneath the phone numbers are some links. One of the links says Edit. If you click on the Edit link a new page launches and there is a white balloon with another menu for the type of edits. They are:·          Move marker·          Edit Details·          Remove place·          Flag as inappropriate The malicious editing of any one of these details could severely harm your business. If somebody moved your map place marker customers might not be able to find you. If somebody flagged your listing as inappropriate it could turn into a real nuisance. And if somebody edited your details and changed your phone number or completely remove your business listing from the map, that could be catastrophic. <strong>Stealing Your Customers</strong></p>
<p>Let&#8217;s say you have a local flower shop. You have an optimized business listing and you are in the top ten search results. Now let&#8217;s assume that there is an unscrupulous florist on page 2 of the Google Map listings and nobody is calling him. All he would have to do is click on the Edit Details of your Google Map listing and change your telephone number to his. Customers would think they are calling you, but they would be calling your competition and you would be losing business.  Or a malicious competitor could just remove your listing from the map. To do this, all they would have to do is click on Remove Place and have your listing removed from the map. One might think that nobody would do this because it would be so easy to catch the culprit. After all, if they hijack a listing, there information is now on the listing and they would be easy to catch. But this isn&#8217;t the case. Peruse the Google Maps Support Group forum and you will see that this kind of behavior is rampant. <strong>So What Can You Do to Protect Yourself</strong></p>
<p>Before answering that question, another question might be why does Google allows this? I can&#8217;t really speak for Google but it is my guess that Google allows this to help the public at large. Maybe there is a school or store that is closed or has moved or changed phone numbers. A good person could edit the listing and update the information for to make the map more accurate. Google probably hopes there are more good people than bad people. Google might also permit this editing because it is relatively easy to prevent the problem. All you have to do to prevent somebody from tampering with your business listing on Google Maps is claim your business. Follow the same steps described above to edit your business listing, but instead of editing, click on Claim your Business and follow the steps.  When a business map listing has been claimed, if somebody tries to hijack it they will get a message: &#8220;This listing has been claimed in Local Business Center and can only be edited by the owner&#8221;. This should prevent most hijackings and other digital vandalism. So if you haven&#8217;t claimed your business do it now. Don&#8217;t delay. Do it before somebody else claims your business listing and prevents you from claiming it. The consequences of failing to act could be dire. Also, if you claim your business you can take the steps to optimize your Google Map listing so that it appears in the top ten Google Map search results, if it isn&#8217;t already there. More information on do this can be found at my website.</p>
<p>Is your Google Map Listing in the top ten search results?It could be. We can help.</p>
<p>Al Remetch<br />
website: <a href="http://www.MyMapInfo.com"  target="_new">http://www.MyMapInfo.com</a><br />
blog: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.MyMapInfo.wordpress.com"  target="_new">http://www.MyMapInfo.wordpress.com</a></p>
<p>Article Source: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Al_Remetch"  target="_new">http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Al_Remetch</a><br />
<a rel="nofollow" href="http://ezinearticles.com/?Small-Business-Owners---Is-Somebody-Stealing-Your-Customers?&amp;id=2147798"  target="_new">http://EzineArticles.com/?Small-Business-Owners&#8212;Is-Somebody-Stealing-Your-Customers?&amp;id=2147798</a></p>
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		<title>Do&#8217;s &amp; Don&#8217;ts For Designing High Traffic Websites</title>
		<link>http://homebuildr.net/95/dos-donts-for-designing-high-traffic-websites/</link>
		<comments>http://homebuildr.net/95/dos-donts-for-designing-high-traffic-websites/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:27:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>HomeBuildR</dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[Google]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Rankings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Search Engines Google]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Traffic Websites]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Website Designers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Website Ranks]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Some of you many of heard of the term SEO or Search Engine Optimization. In a nutshell, this is a process used by website designers to insure your website ranks highly with the search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing and others).  Most consumers find your company on the internet not by entering your company&#8217;s domain, but [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[
<a href="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/high-traffic-website_0.png" title="" class="shutterset_singlepic29" >
	<img class="ngg-singlepic ngg-right" src="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/gallery/cache/29__320x240_high-traffic-website_0.png" alt="high-traffic-website_seo" title="high-traffic-website_seo" />
</a>

<p>Some of you many of heard of the term SEO or Search Engine Optimization. In a nutshell, this is a process used by website designers to insure your website ranks highly with the search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing and others).  Most consumers find your company on the internet not by entering your company&#8217;s domain, but through the search engines.</p>
<p>With so many of your competitors rapidly adopting the internet as a key marketing strategy for their companies, it is vitally important that you take the steps to optimize your website. Some minor tweaks will provide dramatic results.<span id="more-95"></span></p>
<p>One easy way of checking the quality of your links with Google, for example is to enter the search term &#8220;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.yoursite.com" >site:www.yourdomain.com</a>&#8221; in Google&#8217;s search box. Below is an example for the website <a href="http://candrpoolplastering.com" >CandRPoolPlastering.com</a> (remember to replace &#8220;yourdomain.com&#8221; with the name of your company&#8217;s website.</p>
<p>The results of your search will provide an indication how well your website is currently optimized. This is a good starting point to understanding how websites are indexed by the search engines. <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Note:</strong></span> I am using Google to provide the results for this example. Google is the number one search engine followed by Yahoo and Bing (formerly MSN). These search engines account for 93% of searches &#8211; <a href="http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_releases/2009/8/comScore_Releases_July_2009_U.S._Search_Engine_Rankings" >comScore July 2009 U.S. Search Engine Rankings</a>.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s dig in&#8230;
<a href="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/cr1.jpg" title="" class="shutterset_singlepic9" >
	<img class="ngg-singlepic ngg-right" src="http://homebuildr.net/wp-content/gallery/cache/9__320x240_cr1.jpg" alt="CandRpoolPlastering Case Study" title="CandRpoolPlastering Case Study" />
</a>
</p>
<ol>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Number of pages that are currently indexed by Google.</span> A golden rule when it comes to websites is <em><strong>Content Is King!</strong></em> The fewer number of pages on your website, the fewer the chances are you will be found.</li>
<li>Title of the webpage. Do your titles include keywords? At the very least, you should have your location in the title of your website&#8217;s home page.</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Description of the page.</span> I can&#8217;t tell you how many times contractors fail to have unique descriptions for the pages on their websites. Worse, the descriptions are totally meaningless.</li>
</ol>
<p>With this information, you can quickly tell if your website is marginally optimized for the search engines. If not, here are</p>
<p>3 Easy Steps To Better Search Engine Rankings</p>
<p>These simple steps, will help in getting your website better rankings. This is only a start!</p>
<ul>
<li>Insure all of your web pages have unique titles,</li>
<li>include a primary keyword in your titles (what you do i.e., &#8220;pool plastering&#8221;, etc. or location i.e., &#8220;Roseville, CA)</li>
<li>Add unique descriptions to all of your web pages &#8211; Use your primary keyword or phrase in the beginning of the title.</li>
</ul>
<p>If you have designed your own web site, this will be done in the website building software. Otherwise, contact your website&#8217;s designer.</p>
<p>Here is a checklist for Search Engine Optimization. Thanks to the folks at <a href="slashdot.org" target="_blank">Slashdot.org</a></p>
<h2>Contractor Web Design Tips</h2>
<h3>SEO Checklist</h3>
<table class="datatable" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" width="100%" bordercolor="#000000">
<col width="18*"></col>
<col width="62*"></col>
<col width="160*"></col>
<col width="16*"></col>
<tbody>
<tr class="heading" valign="TOP">
<th width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">
</th>
<th colspan="3" width="93%">
<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong>Keywords</strong></span></p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%" height="63">
<p align="LEFT">1</p>
</td>
<td class="color_plus_3" width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Keywords in &lt;title&gt; tag</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">This is one of the most important places to have a keyword because what is written inside the &lt;title&gt; tag shows in search results as your page title. The title tag must be short (6 or 7 words at most) and the the keyword must be near the beginning.</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_3">+3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">2</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Keywords in URL</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Keywords in URLs help a lot &#8211; e.g. -<a href="http://yoursite.com/seo-success.html" > http://yoursite.com/seo-services.html</a>, where “SEO services” is the keyword phrase you attempt to rank well for. But if you don&#8217;t have the keywords in other parts of the document, don&#8217;t rely on having them in the URL.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_3">+3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">3</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Keyword density in document text</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Another very important factor you need to <a href="http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php" >check</a>. 3-7 % for major keywords is best, 1-2 for minor. Keyword density of over 10% is suspicious and looks more like keyword stuffing, than a naturally written text.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_3">+3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">4</span></span></p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Keywords<br />
in anchor text</span></span></td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Also very important, especially for <a href="http://www.webconfs.com/anchor-text-analysis.php" >the anchor text of inbound links</a>, because if you have the keyword in the anchor text in a link from another site, this is regarded as getting a vote from this site not only about your site in general, but about the keyword in particular.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_3">+3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">5</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Keywords in headings (&lt;H1&gt;, &lt;H2&gt;, etc. tags)</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">One more place where keywords count a lot. But beware that your page has actual text about the particular keyword.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_3">+3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">6</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Keywords in the beginning of a document</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Also counts, though not as much as anchor text, title tag or headings. However, have in mind that the beginning of a document does not necessarily mean the first paragraph – for instance if you use tables, the first paragraph of text might be in the second half of the table.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_2">+2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">7</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Keywords in &lt;alt&gt; tags</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Spiders don&#8217;t read images but they do read their textual descriptions in the &lt;alt&gt; tag, so if you have images on your page, fill in the &lt;alt&gt; tag with some keywords about them.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_2">+2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">8</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Keywords in metatags</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Less and less important, especially for Google. Yahoo! and Bing still rely on them, so if you are optimizing for Yahoo! or Bing, fill these tags properly. In any case, filling these tags properly will not hurt, so do it.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_1">+1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">9</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Keyword proximity</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Keyword proximity measures how close in the text the keywords are. It is best if they are immediately one after the other (e.g. “dog food”), with no other words between them. For instance, if you have “dog” in the first paragraph and “food” in the third paragraph, this also counts but not as much as having the phrase “dog food” without any other words in between. Keyword proximity is applicable for keyword phrases that consist of 2 or more words.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_1">+1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">10</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Keyword phrases</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">In addition to keywords, you can optimize for keyword phrases that consist of several words – e.g. “SEO services”. It is best when the keyword phrases you optimize for are popular ones, so you can get a lot of exact matches of the search string but sometimes it makes sense to optimize for 2 or 3 separate keywords (“SEO” and “services”) than for one phrase that might occasionally get an exact match.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_1">+1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">11</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Secondary keywords</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Optimizing for secondary keywords can be a golden mine because when everybody else is optimizing for the most popular keywords, there will be less competition (and probably more hits) for pages that are optimized for the minor words. For instance, “real estate new jersey” might have thousand times less hits than “real estate” only but if you are operating in New Jersey, you will get less but considerably better targeted traffic.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_1">+1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">12</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Keyword stemming</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">For English this is not so much of a factor because words that stem from the same root (e.g. dog, dogs, doggy, etc.) are considered related and if you have “dog” on your page, you will get hits for “dogs” and “doggy”</p>
<p>as well, but for other languages keywords stemming could be an issue because different words that stem from the same root are considered as not related and you might need to optimize for all of them.</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_1">+1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">13</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Synonyms</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Optimizing for synonyms of the target keywords, in addition to the main keywords. This is good for sites in English, for which search engines are smart enough to use synonyms as well, when ranking sites but for many other languages synonyms are not taken into account, when calculating rankings and relevancy.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_1">+1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">14</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Keyword Mistypes</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Spelling errors are very frequent and if you know that your target keywords have popular misspellings or alternative spellings (i.e. Christmas and Xmas), you might be tempted to optimize for them. Yes, this might get you some more traffic but having spelling mistakes on your site does not make a good impression, so you&#8217;d better don&#8217;t do it, or do it only in the metatags.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_0">0</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">15</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Keyword dilution</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">When you are optimizing for an excessive amount of keywords, especially unrelated ones, this will affect the performance of all your keywords and even the major ones will be lost (diluted) in the text.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_2">-2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">16</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Keyword stuffing</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Any artificially inflated keyword density (10% and over) is keyword stuffing and you risk getting banned from search engines.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_3">-3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="heading" valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">
</td>
<td colspan="3" width="93%">
<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong>Links &#8211; internal, inbound, outbound<br />
</strong></span></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">17</span></span></p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Anchor text of inbound links</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">As discussed in the Keywords section, this is one of the most important factors for good rankings. It is best if you have a keyword in the anchor text but even if you don&#8217;t, it is still OK.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_3">+3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">18</span></span></p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Origin of inbound links</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Besides the anchor text, it is important if the site that links to you is a reputable one or not. Generally sites with greater Google PR are considered reputable.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_3">+3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">19</span></span></p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Links from similar sites</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Having links from similar sites is very, very useful. It indicates that the competition is voting for you and you are popular within your topical community.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_3">+3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">20</span></span></p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Links from .edu and .gov sites</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">These links are precious because .edu and .gov sites are more reputable than .com. .biz, .info, etc. domains. Additionally, such links are hard to obtain.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_3">+3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">21</span></span></p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Number of <a href="http://www.webconfs.com/importance-of-backlinks-article-5.php" >backlinks</a></p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Generally the more, the better. But the reputation of the sites that link to you is more important than their number. Also important is their anchor text, is there a keyword in it, how old are they, etc.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_3">+3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">22</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Anchor text of internal links</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">This also matters, though not as much as the anchor text of inbound links.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_2">+2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">23</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Around-the-anchor text</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">The text that is immediately before and after the anchor text also matters because it further indicates the relevance of the link – i.e. if the link is artificial or it naturally flows in the text.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_2">+2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">24</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Age of inbound links</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">The older, the better. Getting many new links in a short time suggests buying them.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_2">+2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">25</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Links from directories</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Great, though it strongly depends on which directories. Being listed in DMOZ, Yahoo Directory and similar directories is a great boost for your ranking but having tons of links from PR0 directories is useless and it can even be regarded as link spamming, if you have hundreds or thousands of such links.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_2">+2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">26</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Number of outgoing links on the page that links to you</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">The fewer, the better for you because this way your link looks more important.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_1">+1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">27</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Named anchors</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Named anchors (the target place of internal links) are useful for internal navigation but are also useful for SEO because you stress additionally that a particular page, paragraph or text is important. In the code, named anchors look like this: &lt;A href= “#dogs”&gt;Read about dogs&lt;/A&gt; and “#dogs” is the named anchor.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_1">+1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">28</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">IP address of inbound link</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT"><a href="http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/myth-busting-virtual-hosts-vs-dedicated-ip-addresses/" >Google denies</a> that they discriminate against links that come from the same IP address or C class of addresses, so for Google the IP address can be considered neutral to the weight of inbound links. However, Bing and Yahoo! may discard links from the same IPs or IP classes, so it is always better to get links from different IPs.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_1">+1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">29</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Inbound links from link farms and other suspicious sites</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">This does not affect you in any way, provided that the links are not reciprocal. The idea is that it is beyond your control to define what a link farm links to, so you don&#8217;t get penalized when such sites link to you because this is not your fault but in any case you&#8217;d better stay away from link farms and similar suspicious sites.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_0">0</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">30</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Many outgoing links</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Google does not like pages that consists mainly of links, so you&#8217;d better keep them under 100 per page. Having many outgoing links does not get you any benefits in terms of ranking and could even make your situation worse.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_1">-1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">31</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Excessive linking, link spamming</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">It is bad for your rankings, when you have many links to/from the same sites (even if it is not a cross- linking scheme or links to bad neighbors) because it suggests link buying or at least spamming. In the best case only some of the links are taken into account for SEO rankings.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_1">-1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">32</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Outbound links to link farms and other suspicious<br />
sites</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Unlike inbound links from link farms and other suspicious sites, outbound links to bad neighbors can drown you. You need periodically to check the status of the sites you link to because sometimes good sites become bad neighbors and vice versa.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_3">-3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">33</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Cross-linking</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Cross-linking occurs when site A links to site B, site B links to site C and site C links back to site A. This is the simplest example but more complex schemes are possible. Cross-linking looks like disguised reciprocal link trading and is penalized.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_3">-3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">34</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Single pixel links</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">when you have a link that is a pixel or so wide it is invisible for humans, so nobody will click on it and it is obvious that this link is an attempt to manipulate search engines.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_3">-3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="heading" valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">
</td>
<td colspan="3" width="93%">
<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong>Metatags </strong></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">35</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">&lt;Description&gt; metatag</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Metatags are becoming less and less important but if there are metatags that still matter, these are the &lt;description&gt; and &lt;keywords&gt; ones. Use the &lt;Description&gt; metatag to write the description of your site. Besides the fact that metatags still rock on Bing and Yahoo!, the &lt;Description&gt; metatag has one more advantage –</p>
<p>it sometimes pops in the description of your site in search results.</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_1">+1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">36</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">&lt;Keywords&gt; metatag</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">The &lt;Keywords&gt; metatag also matters, though as all metatags it gets almost no attention from Google and some attention from Bing and Yahoo! Keep the metatag reasonably long –</p>
<p>10 to 20 keywords at most. Don&#8217;t stuff the &lt;Keywords&gt; tag with keywords that you don&#8217;t have on the page, this is bad for your rankings.</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_1">+1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">37</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">&lt;Language&gt; metatag</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">If your site is language-specific, don&#8217;t leave this tag empty. Search engines have more sophisticated ways of determining the language of a page than relying on the &lt;language&gt;metatag but they still consider it.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_1">+1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">38</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">&lt;Refresh&gt; metatag</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">The &lt;Refresh&gt; metatag is one way to redirect visitors from your site to another. Only do it if you have recently migrated your site to a new domain and you need to temporarily redirect visitors. When used for a long time, the &lt;refresh&gt; metatag is regarded as unethical practice and this can hurt your ratings. In any case, redirecting through 301 is much better.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_1">-1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="heading" valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">
</td>
<td colspan="3" width="93%">
<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong>Content </strong></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">39</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Unique content</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Having more content (relevant content, which is different from the content on other sites both in wording and topics) is a real boost for your site&#8217;s rankings.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_3">+3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">40</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Frequency of content change</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Frequent changes are favored. It is great when you constantly add new content but it is not so great when you only make small updates to existing content.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_3">+3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">41</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Keywords font size</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">When a keyword in the document text is in a larger font size in comparison to other on-page text, this makes it more noticeable, so therefore it is more important than the rest of the text. The same applies to headings (&lt;h1&gt;, &lt;h2&gt;, etc.), which generally are in larger font size than the rest of the text.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_2">+2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">42</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Keywords formatting</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Bold and italic are another way to emphasize important words and phrases. However, use bold, italic and larger font sizes within reason because otherwise you might achieve just the opposite effect.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_2">+2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">43</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Age of document</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Recent documents (or at least regularly updated ones) are favored.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_2">+2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">44</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">File size</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Generally long pages are not favored, or at least you can achieve better rankings if you have 3 short rather than 1 long page on a given topic, so split long pages into multiple smaller ones.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_1">+1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">45</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Content separation</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">From a marketing point of view content separation (based on IP, browser type, etc.) might be great but for SEO it is bad because when you have one URL and differing content, search engines get confused what the actual content of the page is.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_2">-2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">46</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Poor coding and design</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Search engines say that they do not want poorly designed and coded sites, though there are hardly sites that are banned because of messy code or ugly images but when the design and/or coding of a site is poor, the site might not be indexable at all, so in this sense poor code and design can harm you a lot.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_2">-2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">47</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Illegal Content</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Using other people&#8217;s copyrighted content without their permission or using content that promotes legal violations can get you kicked out of search engines.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_3">-3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">48</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Invisible text</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">This is a black hat SEO practice and when spiders discover that you have text specially for them but not for humans, don&#8217;t be surprised by the penalty.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_3">-3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">49</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Cloaking</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Cloaking is another illegal technique, which partially involves content separation because spiders see one page (highly-optimized, of course), and everybody else is presented with another version of the same page.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_3">-3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">50</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Doorway pages</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Creating pages that aim to trick spiders that your site is a highly-relevant one when it is not, is another way to get the kick from search engines.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_3">-3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">51</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Duplicate content</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">When you have the same content on several pages on the site, this will not make your site look larger because the duplicate content penalty kicks in. To a lesser degree duplicate content applies to pages that reside on other sites but obviously these cases are not always banned – i.e. article directories or mirror sites do exist and prosper.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_3">-3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="heading" valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">
</td>
<td colspan="3" width="93%">
<p align="LEFT"><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">Visual Extras and SEO</span></strong></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">52</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">JavaScript</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">If used wisely, it will not hurt. But if your main content is displayed through JavaScript, this makes it more difficult for spiders to follow and if JavaScript code is a mess and spiders can&#8217;t follow it, this will definitely hurt your ratings.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_0">0</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">53</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Images in text</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Having a text-only site is so boring but having many images and no text is a SEO sin. Always provide in the &lt;alt&gt; tag a meaningful description of an image but don&#8217;t stuff it with keywords or irrelevant information.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_0">0</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">54</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Podcasts and videos</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Podcasts and videos are becoming more and more popular but as with all non-textual goodies, search engines can&#8217;t read them, so if you don&#8217;t have the tapescript of the podcast or the video, it is as if the podcast or movie is not there because it will not be indexed by search engines.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_0">0</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">55</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Images instead of text links</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Using images instead of text links is bad,especially when you don&#8217;t fill in the &lt;alt&gt; tag. But even if you fill in the &lt;alt&gt; tag, it is not the same as having a bold, underlined, 16-pt. link, so use images for navigation only if this is really vital for the graphic layout of your site.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_1">-1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">56</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Frames</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Frames are very, very bad for SEO. Avoid using them unless really necessary.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_2">-2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">57</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Flash</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Spiders don&#8217;t index the content of Flash movies, so if you use Flash on your site, don&#8217;t forget to give it an alternative textual description.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_2">-2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">58</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">A Flash home page</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Fortunately this epidemic disease seems to have come to an end. Having a Flash home page (and sometimes whole sections of your site) and no HTML version, is a SEO suicide.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_3">-3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="heading" valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">
</td>
<td colspan="3" width="93%">
<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong>Domains, URLs, Web Mastery </strong></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">59</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT"><a href="http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-rich-domain-suggestions.php" >Keyword-rich URLs and filenames</a></p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">A very important factor, especially for Yahoo! and Bing.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_3">+3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">60</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Site Accessibility</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Another fundamental issue, which that is often neglected. If the site (or separate pages) is unaccessible because of broken links, 404 errors, password-protected areas and other similar reasons, then the site simply can&#8217;t be indexed.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_3">+3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">61</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Sitemap</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">It is great to have a complete and up-to-date<a href="http://homebuildr.net/62/contractors-increase-traffic-to-your-website/" > sitemap</a>, spiders love it, no matter if it is a plain old HTML sitemap or the special Google sitemap format.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_2">+2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">62</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Site size</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Spiders love large sites, so generally it is the bigger, the better. However, big sites become user-unfriendly and difficult to navigate, so sometimes it makes sense to separate a big site into a couple of smaller ones. On the other hand, there are hardly sites that are penalized because they are 10,000+ pages, so don&#8217;t split your size in pieces only because it is getting larger and larger.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_2">+2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">63</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Site age</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Similarly to wine, older sites are respected more. The idea is that an old, established site is more trustworthy (they have been around and are here to stay) than a new site that has just poped up and might soon disappear.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_2">+2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">64</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Site theme</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">It is not only keywords in URLs and on page that matter. The site theme is even more important for good ranking because when the site fits into one theme, this boosts the rankings of all its pages that are related to this theme.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_2">+2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">65</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">File Location on Site</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">File location is important and files that are located in the root directory or near it tend to rank better than files that are buried 5 or more levels below.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_1">+1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">66</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Domains versus subdomains, separate domains</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Having a separate domain is better – i.e. instead of having blablabla.blogspot.com, register a separate blablabla.com domain.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_1">+1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">67</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Top-level domains (TLDs)</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Not all TLDs are equal. There are TLDs that are better than others. For instance, the most popular TLD – .com – is much better than .ws, .biz, or .info domains but (all equal) nothing beats an old .edu or .org domain.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_1">+1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">68</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Hyphens in URLs</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Hyphens between the words in an URL increase readability and help with SEO rankings. This applies both to hyphens in domain names and in the rest of the URL.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_plus_1">+1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">69</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">URL length</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Generally doesn&#8217;t matter but if it is a very long URL-s, this starts to look spammy, so avoid having more than 10 words in the URL (3 or 4 for the domain name itself and 6 or 7 for the rest of address is acceptable).</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_0">0</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">70</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">IP address</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Could matter only for shared hosting or when a site is hosted with a free hosting provider, when the IP or the whole C-class of IP addresses is blacklisted due to spamming or other illegal practices.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_0">0</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">71</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Adsense will boost your ranking</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Adsense is not related in any way to SEO ranking. Google will definitely not give you a ranking bonus because of hosting Adsense ads. Adsense might boost your income but this has nothing to do with your search rankings.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_0">0</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">72</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Adwords will boost your ranking</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Similarly to Adsense, Adwords has nothing to do with your search rankings. Adwords will bring more traffic to your site but this will not affect your rankings in whatsoever way.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_0">0</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">73</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Hosting downtime</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Hosting downtime is directly related to accessibility because if a site is frequently down, it can&#8217;t be indexed. But in practice this is a factor only if your hosting provider is really unreliable and has less than 97-98% uptime.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_1">-1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">74</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Dynamic URLs</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">Spiders prefer static URLs, though you will see many dynamic pages on top positions. Long dynamic URLs (over 100 characters) are really bad and in any case you&#8217;d better use a tool to <a href="http://www.webconfs.com/url-rewriting-tool.php" >rewrite dynamic URLs</a> in something more human- and SEO-friendly.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_1">-1</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">75</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Session IDs</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">This is even worse than dynamic URLs. Don&#8217;t use session IDs for information that you&#8217;d like to be indexed by spiders.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_2">-2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">76</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Bans in robots.txt</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">If indexing of a considerable portion of the site is banned, this is likely to affect the nonbanned part as well because spiders will come less frequently to a “noindex” site.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_2">-2</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="TOP">
<td width="7%">
<p align="LEFT">77</p>
</td>
<td width="24%">
<p align="LEFT">Redirects (301 and 302)</p>
</td>
<td width="62%">
<p align="LEFT">When not applied properly, <a href="http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php" >redirects</a> can hurt a lot – the target page might not open, or worse – a redirect can be regarded as a black hat technique, when the visitor is immediately taken to a different page.</p>
</td>
<td width="6%">
<p align="CENTER"><span class="color_minus_3">-3</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
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