Web Analytics Wednesday Ahmedabad (WAW)

Hello Friends,

As you all know, I am here to share with you all my research and new facts that I come across related to SEO, Web Analytics, SEO Tips And Techniques, Internet Marketing Industry Updates and such others. So, in this post I would like to draw your attention towards a Grand Event that is going to be organized especially for Web Analytics Lovers. Many of you might be knowing that, there is an International Event called WAW (Web Analytics Wednesday) which has been started by a very well known Web Analytcis Practitioner “Eric T. Peterson”. Normally, these kind of events used to be held at US, UK & Canada, but since last 2 years, We were fortunate enough to get this Event at India. Last year, the same kind of events were organized at Banglore, Chennai & Hyderabad.

And, NOW, With Lot Of Cheers, I am happy to announce that, We got got an opportunity to get this event to our own “Ahmedabad”. This event is hosted and managed by IMJ-Internet Marketing Journal which is usually maintained and handled by the combined efforts of industry experts. Credits goes to my industry friends(Dipali, Kaushal & Jaydip). It will be for the first time in North-West India where such kind of events are going to be held. The agenda of this event is to share and discussion about the Role of Web Analytics Insights in the Business.

Yup, WAW- Ahmedabad sounds so good isn't it...

I would like to invite all of you people to attend this event. We will have a great presentations during this event (Might be few speakers who have presented their knowledge in Google India seminars last year will going to speak in this event)

Please visit the below URL to send your RSVP

http://www.internetmarketingjournal.org/web-analytics-wednesday-ahmedabad/

Finaly Team of Internet Marketing Journal brings Web Analytics Wednesday Day to Ahmedabad. Internet Marketing Journal (IMJ) was founded by Jaydip Parikh, Kaushal Shah and Dipali Thakkar. They really work hard and now we are going to enjoy Web Analytics Wednesday to our own Ahmedabad.

Lead Speaker

Ravi Pathak,

Founder & Business Head, Tatvic (Bangalore)

Tatvic is official Google Analytics Authorized Consultant in India and having clients like Make My Trip, Cardekho and other leading portal and some prestigious International clients too.

Venue - Date & Time
14th. April, 2010, 7.00 PM Onwards
Gloria Banquet Hall
1st. Floor, Regency Tower,
Nr. Rahul Tower,Anand Nagar – Prahlad Nagar 100 ft. Road,
Satellite, Ahmadabad.

Sponsors for this Event

Lead Sponsor :

YASH Infotech (Business Partner TATA Communications Ltd.)

Diamond Partners :

InvestPlus : InvestPlus is Personal Finance Software specially Design for Individuals needs.
Datatech Media : Web Development, Design & Internet Marketing Solutions Provider
Byte Technosys Pvt. Ltd. : RIMS, On Site Support, Microsoft Solutions, Web Solutions Provider

Merchandiser Partner :

Infibeam.com : Infibeam.com is a premier online shopping portal of India portal carrying 50 Lac products including Books, DVDs, Cars, Bikes, Mobiles, Cameras, Gifts and many more

Global Supporter : Eric Peterson Founder of webanalyticsdemystified.com

Feel free to get updates of Web Analytics Wednesday Ahmedabad event on LinkedIn & Facebook.

Hoping to meet you at Web Analytics Wednesday – Ahmedabad...

Search Shifts and Predictions for 2009

Google has seen a significant drop in its stock price; Yahoo continues to tread water and await a buyer to save them; MSN continues to plod along at 5 percent market share with the industry questioning why Microsoft is even playing in the space; and Cuil, well, let's just hope they get to see 2010.

Consolidation:
Speaking of Yahoo, my first prediction isn't much of a stretch. There will be consolidation within the search engine market space in 2009. The jury's still out on who's buying who, but if you've followed the news over the past six months, it's a good bet that someone will buy Yahoo.

Yahoo's not the only acquisition target. Ask.com may not have the market share, but the floundering search engine offers a good product line that could enhance someone's capabilities portfolio. Perhaps there's a buyer out there that's looking to build an application backline to challenge Google. Ask.com could prove a huge asset in that case.

Recession Boost:
"Free" gets the attention of many people, including marketers. With the cost of paid search terms going up, the organic search folks may see a lot more attention in 2009.

Although organic search traffic is often touted as "free traffic," it truly isn't. Developing rankings for key terms in an industry requires an investment in all the elements that go into building a Web site: content, coding, design, and strategy. Though the traffic isn't free, the ROI tends to be better.

Organic search marketing just might become the bread winner as cash-strapped client become wary of increased media costs in traditional space and an up-turn in bid competition in paid search.

ROI on the Prize for SEO:
It's about time! ROI will no longer be a "nice to have" for those who practice SEO in 2009.

Again, the economy will dictate scrutiny of every marketing dollar spent, and clients are going to want to know ahead of time what they can expect from their SEO programs. ROI models, all with their own flaws, will control the landscape of organic search programs as search marketers hope to woo marketing dollars away from less successful or measurable competing tactics.

As part of a global agency, I welcome a shift to focusing on client returns. This may help the SEO profession gain acceptance and operate at a higher standard.

Local All Over Globe:
In the coming year, if you own brick-and-mortar locations you better get familiar with local search and put a program in place. Local search will be the big thing in 2009 for search.

Local search is far more measurable than a traditional organic listing and, therefore, lends itself better to demonstrated ROI benefits. Additionally, the number of mobile searches will only increase as mobile phones become more sophisticated. Marketers must make sure they show up in these results.

A Paid Inclusion Rebound:
If there's one paid search service that can thrive on '09, it's paid inclusion. Yahoo offers a unique PPC program called Search Submit Pro, which provides marketers with the ability to feed results directly into the organic listings. As organic results become more important than ever, marketers will try to get into the listing by any means necessary.

So far Yahoo is the only engine to offer this service, but I predict that we'll see similar offerings as other engines look for new revenue streams in 2009. These may not be straight text search results, but I don't think we've seen the last of paid inclusion.

The Year of Monetization:
This year will be interesting for search engines. As factors from recession to emerging technologies convene, engines will have to create new revenue. Only time will tell whether that revenue comes from acquisition and increased market share or new programs like Yahoo's SSP.

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Seven deadly SEO sins you must avoid

1. Putting search engines before users
Optimisation is the process your website undergoes in order to help it achieve the best possible listings. The reason for hankering after a number one ranking? To attract targeted traffic. It's therefore surprising how many websites forget about their human users in the quest for search engine success.

Cramming as many keywords as possible into each page may yield short-term SEO results but is guaranteed to turn off human eyes. Well-written content is much more likely to result in a sale and win over the search engine web bots.

2. Link spamming
Link spamming sees the website chasing after as many links as possible, often using spurious excuses to answer forum questions or social media discussions in order to build external links. The reality here is that the links gathered are of little relevant use and no commercial value. Search engines rate links based on the authority of the sites they come from, so using link-spamming techniques actually devalues the site's authority.

A much better policy is to use time that would have been spent harvesting poor quality links for a more strategic campaign. By focusing link-building efforts on relevant sites, optimisation activities will also target the desired demographic.

3. Disregarding link text
The anchor text of the link should be written as carefully as possible. Search engines such as Google can use anchor text as an indicator of internal links (links from one page of the site to another). Unimaginative anchor text such as 'click here' also does little to add value to the user experience.

4. Not tracking progress
It's impossible to assess just how effective SEO activity is if there's no record of the starting point. Tracking is an often forgotten stage of SEO, with many people thinking the best measure of progress is simply improved organic listings. Not so. The number of sales and new search inclusions are all-important metrics indicating the success (or otherwise) of the SEO strategy. A reliable and regular report detailing these factors can be used to decide on any necessary changes in direction and assess the impact of such new activity.

5. Choosing the wrong keywords
Some SEO companies propose guaranteed listings for obscure keywords, showing just how easy it is to generate page one rankings for terms with little competition. But keywords involving product names and numbers are of little use in a strategic optimisation programme. Optimisation for 'flatscreen TV' would be a good goal for a company selling flatscreen TVs. Optimisation for 'Sony Flat Screen AB 123356BBBB' would not.

6. Overlooking accessibility
Website accessibility is a critical consideration – making your website navigable to all users regardless of disability or visual impairment. The Disability Discrimination Act 2004 is an essential guideline for any UK-based website. Making link text as descriptive as possible is a part of this, but accessibility goes much further with actions such as introducing relevant Alt and Title tags compliant with WC3 guidelines.

7. Not planning your SEO strategy
Planning a useful campaign is very much like planning a journey. One of the common mistakes made by newcomers is to be overtaken by enthusiasm and neglect to map out points of interest along the way. Rather than focusing on the end goal, set short-term objectives that are signposts towards the elusive page one ranking.

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Nine SEO Tips for 2009

Don't Take Down That Holiday Sale Page
Every year your site probably has a special holiday sale page, gift idea pages, a white sale page, or a year-end clearance page and the like. Don't make the mistake of reinventing these types of promotional pages year after year. Go static with the URLs and keep the pages alive all through the year. That way, when you need it, refresh the content, kick the page out of its suspended site map retirement, and promote the heck out of it from your home page and site navigation.

Go ahead and take down your Christmas tree and holiday trimmings, but don't take down your holiday promotional pages. Start reverse-archiving your holiday sales and promotions in 2009 to annualized, canonicalized URLs and watch the rankings improve for sales related pages year after year.

Make the Most of Your Metrics
Resolve to study and understand your search engine referrals in the new year. When you bind branded and unbranded keywords and phrases to search engine referrals, you can begin to open up new opportunities for higher rankings all through the year. Compare and contrast your site's paid performance with non-paid referrals. You can fine tune your PPC (define) budget with natural search performance to attain highly economical results. And you can also begin to exploit "long tail" opportunities, too.

Wag Your Tail
The theory behind the long tail of search remains unchanged, except it tends to be much longer than first estimated. Branded search referrals generally comprise the head and torso of search engine referrals. And just about everything else usually makes up the tail. Head terms can comprise as little as 5 percent of your total search-referred traffic. Most folks miss out on opportunities to wag their tail on the Web, which can comprise as much as 95 percent of their search engine referrals.

When you understand the relationship between your site's head and tail, you don't need to flip a coin to improve your site's performance. Themes become obvious and opportunities appear to be limitless when you focus on growing your long tail of search results.

Make It a Picture Perfect Year
Image search engines are driving more traffic than ever before. Don't miss out on this growing portion of search engine referrals for your site. Make it a goal in the new year to optimize all of the alternative attributes used in the photos and images that make up your Web site. Adding a little context to imagery can really help drive new-to-file customers and conversations your way.

Play a Game of Tag
Supplemental site navigation doesn't need to be complex. Sometimes, it can be as simple as adding a tagging structure to your site. You'd be amazed at how well tags can help identify key areas of your Web site that are missing out in the SERPs (define), especially if you focus on those parts of your site that are generally found on page two of results. So go ahead and use that flashy introduction to core categories within your Web site. Just supplement the situation with a handful of visible text links in the form of tags to make the most of a navigationally challenged situation.

Feed the Need
XML site maps remain one of the best ways to get every part of your Web site crawled by the search engines. Why wait for the engines to discover your new content? Set your site maps up for auto-discovery and update them frequently with all of the engines. Authenticate your feeds with Google, Yahoo, and MSN for greater insight into crawl rates and indexation levels to unleash all the great content your site contains.

Break out the Blender
While a frosty margarita might make for a great toast to the New Year, focusing on improving your blended search results may actually provides greater satisfaction. Why not make the most of your photos, press releases, videos, blogging, and such? It's one of the easiest ways to get more than two results on page one of the SERPs. There's no need to settle for a spattering of listings in the search engines when you can take your content universal and blend more results into page one.

Think Globally, Link Locally
Some of the best backlinks are sitting in your Web site's backyard. Growing inbound links for all your storefronts or offices is easy if you focus on finding high-quality backlinks on a local basis. Make certain you are getting linkable credit for your charitable contributions and local press coverage. There are a multitude of local and regional backlinks just waiting to be connected to your site if you focus on building a little local buzz.

Get Socially Aware
There have never been so many opportunities to tap into new traffic drivers for your Web site. All you have to do is reach out and embrace a few social media venues. Sure, YouTube's great for videos and Flickr makes a great home for photo ops. Yet Twitter can't be ignored as a way to reach out and micro-blog with loyal customers who are talking about your goods and services right now. Just don't fall into the trappings of blatant self-promotion. Resolve to be more socially aware in the new year by embracing social media venues as part of your overall online marketing plan.

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Tips on Search Engine Optimization

1. Quality Content is and always will be your number one factor for getting high rankings and keeping them. You must understand search engines are simply businesses who supply a product like any other company. That product is information. They must offer quality results to anyone using their service to solve a problem, answer a question or to buy a product. The more relevant, the more targeted the search solution they return, the higher the overall quality of their product and the more popular their search engine will become. Providing quality content is vital for SEO success.

2. Keywords are your number one tools for achieving high rankings. You must understand keywords and how they work on the web. You must know how many searches are made each day for your chosen keywords. Sites like Wordtracker and SEObook will give you a rudimentary number of searches. Design your pages around your targeted keywords and don’t forget to do some deep-linking to these pages on your site. Find and build backlinks to these interior keyword pages and not just to your home page or domain URL. Picking keywords with medium to low competition has worked out well for me. So too has using the more targeted and higher converting “long-tail” keywords been very beneficial for me.

3. Onpage Factors and site design will play a major role in the spidering and indexing of your site/content. Make sure all your pages are SEO friendly, made sure all your pages can be reached from your homepage and no pages should be no more than three levels away from it - keeping a sitemap listing all your major pages makes the search engines happy. Make sure you have all your meta tags such as title, description, keywords… are all optimized. (Title = around 65 characters, Description = around 160 characters) Remember, your title and description should not only be keyword targeted but these are the first contact/impression anyone will see of your site — make sure you use them to draw and entice interested visitors to your site and content. Also make sure your title and URL are keyword matched for maximum effect. Having your major keyword in your Domain Name also helps, using a pike | to separate different elements of your title has helped my rankings, so too does having your keyword in the first and last 25 words on your pages.

4. Google will send you the most qualified traffic so concentrate the majority of your SEO efforts on Google. Don’t ignore Yahoo! or MSN but Google is king of search so give it the respect it deserves. With its new browser, Google’s influence will only grow stronger so you must optimize your pages for Google. Use Google’s Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to fine-tune your pages/content for Google. I also use Google Alerts to keep up on my niche keywords and for comment link-building on the newly created pages Google is indexing.

5. Link Building is still the most effective way to boost your search rankings. Make sure you get backlinks from relevant sites related to your niche market and make sure the ‘anchor text’ is related to your keywords but don’t ignore the text and overall quality of the content linking to you. The anchor text is the underlined/clickable portion of a link. Don’t forget linking is a two-way street, make sure you link out to high quality, high ranked relevant sites in your niche.

6. Article Marketing is a well established method of getting quality backlinks and it still works. Writing short 500 - 700 word informative and helpful articles with your backlinks in the resource box is still very effective for getting targeted traffic and backlinks. Longer articles have also worked for me and I use an extensive network of distribution including SubmitYourArticle, Isnare, Thephantomwriters… plus other major online sites. Don’t forget the whole element of blogging and RSS feeds in your article distribution. And always remember you’re also using these articles to pre-sale your content or products. Don’t forget to leverage sites like Squidoo, Hubpages… to increase your rankings and traffic.

7. Onsite Traffic Hubs have worked extremely well for me. These traffic hubs are whole sections of your site devoted to one sub-division of your major theme. For example, if you have a site on Gifts, then wedding gifts could be a separate section. This would be fully fleshed out with extensive pages covering everything dealing with wedding gifts — a self-contained keyword rich portion of your site on wedding gifts. Works similar as a sub-domain but I prefer using a directory to divide it up, such as yourdomain/wedding_gifts. (Most experts suggest always using a hyphen in your urls but underscores have worked fine for me.) Search engines love these keyword/content rich hubs but keep in mind you’re creating content to first satisfy your visitors.

8. WordPress blog software is extremely effective for SEO purposes. WordPress software is easy to install on your site even if you have no experience with installing server-side scripts. Besides search engines love these highly SEO friendly blogs with their well structured content and keyword tagging. I have at least one of these on all my sites to draw in the search engines and get my content indexed and ranked. I also use Blogger (owned by Google), Bloglines and other free blogs to help distribute my content.

9. Social Bookmark/Media Sites are becoming very important on the web. These include a whole range of social sites like MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter… media news sites like Digg, SlashDot, Technorati… you must get your content into this whole mix if you want to take full SEO advantage of Web 2.0 sites. You should be joining these sites and using them. It’s time consuming but it will keep you in the swing of things. One simple thing you must do is to put social bookmark buttons on all your pages so that your visitors can easily bookmark your content for you. You can use a WordPress plug-in or I like using a simple free site/service from Addthis.com which gives me a simple button to put on all my content.

10. Masterplan! Many webmasters and site owners forget to develop or have an overall masterplan/strategy when it comes to SEO. You must have an understanding of what SEO is and what it can do for you and your site. More importantly, you just don’t want SEO; you want effective SEO.

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SEO tips for Online Video Content

1) All SEO specialists know that the search engines are built to index and rank text. Being that it is more difficult for the search engines to understand the content within a video (though they are working on it), it is a good idea to include as much text surrounding the video itself if possible. One excellent way to do this is to include a text transcript of your video alongside your video with keyword rich title and descriptions.

2) Don't forget to encode the keywords you are targeting into your video. Try to use the word "video" as much as possible, make sure the word "video" is used in your title, description, meta data etc.

3) Search engine crawlers rely a lot on the link texts to figure out what the video is all about as they are not capable to figure out the contents of the video otherwise. Therefore it is advisable to get as many back links as possible for your video.

4) Create a video sitemap exclusively for your online video content so that engines can find all of your videos and understand the structure of your site more easily. This helps the web crawlers to locate your video files speedily and effortlessly.

5) If you are hosting the video on your own site, it is advisable to do your best to utilize a player that is not flash as search engines have difficulty understanding flash content. That being said, it will be difficult to empower video on your site without a simple flash player. If you can not get around it, do your best to take advantage of the other SEO techniques since search engines cant understand the flash technology.

6) Create search engine friendly keyword URLs for your video pages. To do this, you can use mod-rewrite function or htaccess file so that the URLs are freely assessable and readable by the search engines.

7) Various video search engines use to capture thumbnails of your in different manner. Some of them take the first frame of your video, while others try to take from the middle or end. It is better to experiment with each site individually to make sure they are displaying the right thumbnail for your video. A video thumbnail is always crucial when it comes to decide for a viewer which video to watch.

8) When hosting videos on your own site, keep your videos one per page and put all the pages with videos into one directory. This combined with a video sitemap will help search engines find and index all of your important videos.

In addition to the specific optimization techniques listed above, make sure that you also follow some common guidelines for online video content:

9) With any SEO that you do online, choose keywords that you know users are searching for. Use keyword research tools to discover keywords and phrases that are most often searched for when looking for the information that you are creating.

10) Viewers who offer feedback are most likely to take the desired action on your video. This could be a good opportunity for you to submit fresh content, if the most popular videos were included months ago, it really helps.

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Steps to Successful Search Engine Optimization

Submitting your website to search engines does not get your webpage better ranking. That is a misconception about SEO that has been going around for quite sometime. It does no harm by submitting your site to them but it does no good as well. Just submitting your site to the search engines doesn’t give you a good spot on their pages. In order to be eligible and indexed by search engine crawlers you need to optimize your site. Search engine optimization is an on-going process. You need to invest enough time to get the desired success. Compared to other forms online marketing, SEO offers higher return on investment (ROI). With the growing number of users relying on search engines to find their pages, it has become essential to optimize websites and make them search engine friendly. Here are few steps you need to follow for the search engine spiders to crawl and index your site.

Theme:
It is important to choose a theme for the pages of your website. Each page should be able to convey a message or fulfill a purpose.

Keywords Selection:
Choosing the right keywords is an important and crucial step of search engine optimization. You need to list the relevant and searched keywords and key phrases for each of the pages. Choosing the most competitive keywords can get really frustrating hence as a beginner you can focus on less competitive, yet searched words. You can make a list of relevant keywords and use tools like wordtracker and overture keyword analysis tool to know the search frequency.

Know your Competitors:
It is important to keep an eye on your competitors. You can study what keywords they are emphasizing on, know what websites are linking to them and where they rank. The less competition you have the better it is.

Optimize your Page Content with Phrases:
When you select the relevant keywords for your web page, you can rank them according to their importance. You can revise the existing pages and optimize your page content starting with your top key phrases. Optimizing your site includes alteration of the meta tags i.e. title, description, keywords, headings, image alt, link and the content of the site. You can also have robot.txt file to help the spiders to crawl the pages you want them to.

Linking Strategies:
As mentioned earlier link building is one of the important part of SEO. There are

1. two linking strategies:
Internal Linking: In your page content you can refer to other important pages of your website. You can make use of the keywords of the landing page for your hyperlink text. You can even use keywords in navigation structure.

2. External Linking:
You can build external links by various means. You can start your own blog or write articles so that other websites interested will link to you. You can ask other webpages to place your link on their websites for placing their link on your site. This is known as reciprocal linking. You can advertise your sites on directories like dmoz, yahoo directories etc. Getting backlinks from these popular sites will help you get better ranking. There are various other ways to increase your inbound links.

Traffic and Revenue Tracking:
After your website is optimized you need to track the sales and the traffic it is receiving. You need to focus more on traffic and revenue than the page ranking. There are many software which gives you the report on your revenues by keywords, search engine, advertising campaigns etc.

Analysis:
You need to analyze your website and make necessary changes. Search engines keep changing their algorithm, hence it is important you be updated and try the new marketing strategies. You also need to keep track of your rankings and reoptimize the pages if you need to. You can then wait for the results.

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5 tips for internet marketing and SEO

It’s become quite common on the web to talk about SEO; one can corroborate this by having a look at the umpteen websites and posts on SEO. A common mistake or rather miss-out seen in these posts is the shoving away of internet marketing. Yes, indeed SEO is a major part of internet marketing, but SEO alone isn’t internet marketing! Very less is spoken about other ways that take a broader approach into internet marketing and effectively market a website.

1. Affiliation to good products/services : Affiliation to good products or services may not fetch you great returns on the SEO front but it is bound to give you lifelong income from the product or services, given in you crack up a fair deal with the company/website. All you need to do is to select a product or services related to your website and write an article on it. Yes, you are promoting it, and hence, do not bluff about a product/ service you have no idea about. Let authenticity prevail!

2. In-house email newsletter: Marketingsherpa surveys proclaim that house email gives more return-on-investment than SEO! Is anything left to say? But play the game smartly- Give a sign-up option on every webpage. Further, do not forget to declare that ‘this isn’t spam’ and ‘none of your information will be used publicly’, ‘no products or services will be endorsed i.e. no trade’ etc (promotional mails have become synonymous to headache on the internet). You could even try adding incentives for signup.

3. Subscription of RSS via other ways: Don’t constrain your readers to just RSS. Users today love to be given more flexibility to services, so try out other options to subscribe to your feed like email, twitter etc. This can also be seen as a long term strategy as by doing so, you are providing more channels to promote your website and express yourself online. Techcrunch is one of the exemplary to this method; they have around 4 links to subscribe to their RSS feeds. Their twitter account, which they use for sending out updates on their website, has around 33K keen followers and IE and FF plug-in is another option of theirs that gave them a huge increase in the number of readers.

4. A simple ‘share this’ link: This is undoubtedly one of the most underrated of all the tactics. The logic is simple- if someone likes a page they would love it to share it with their friends, peers, colleagues etc. So, just facilitate them with a simple option!! Don’t suffice yourself with a ‘share this’ word widget, use an additional link in each page with a more convincing title like ‘tell a friend’, ‘let your friend love this page too’ etc. Say, 50K people visit your webpage and 2% of them share the link and it still accounts for 1000 more visits!

5. PPC link and brand recall: PPC is used widely for a variety of purposes in relation with SEO. One of them is brand recall i.e. the usage of PPC when your page is ranking in Google for a short-tail keyword rank. You just need to bid for the top sponsored listing for the high volume keywords you are leading in.

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Search Engine Optimization Tips

Search engine optimization (SEO) poses many challenges for solo entrepreneurs. Professional search engine optimization services are often beyond the solo entrepreneur's budget; but learning all the tools and tricks, not to mention the ever-changing "rules", would take time most solo entrepreneurs don't have. The following search engine optimization tips will help you focus your SEO activities effectively.

Search Engine Optimization Tips: Start with the Basics

- Research your keyword phrases. What words would people use to find you? This is the most important SEO activity you'll need to do, particularly for solo entrepreneurs. You'll want to look for keyword phrases that are unique, not just single words. Google offers a great keyword tool that helps you find synonyms and compare which keyword phrases are searched for more often. If keyword research seems daunting, invest in a course that teaches you the basics.

- But, don't let keyword phrases dictate how you write. Write your copy for your audience, not the search engines! Make your copy relevant to your readers and easy to read, then see where you can incorporate keyword optimization. Hire a copywriter if you aren't a naturally good writer; it may be expensive but is a high-return investment for solo entrepreneurs. Ultimately, search engines want to serve high quality content. If your readers love your website, search engines will too.

Search Engine Optimization Tips: Shortcuts to Avoid

Be skeptical of search engine optimization services' promises. Avoid high-priced services that promise to put your website on the top of the rankings for any particular keyword phrase. If it is a highly-sought-after phrase, it's unlikely to be a successful project; and by the time you get the results, it's too late -- you've already paid them. Plus, you’ve put all your SEO eggs in one basket! Look for search engine optimization services that offer more reasonable, well-rounded solutions.

Beware of "secrets" and "tricks" that claim some hidden advantage. Tools or techniques that "game" the system may work for a short time, but they will ultimately become useless...and may earn you a long-term black mark from search engines. Known as "black hat SEO", they often appear in ebooks or are offered through various membership services. If they involve formulas, special linking programs, or automated content-pushing, among other suspect methodologies, don't be fooled.

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SEO For Yahoo Small Business - 3 Tips For Productive SEO Strategy

SEO is one of the biggest phenomena to hit the world of online business in some time. It seems that many people who want to own a small business fail to realize how this single aspect of business can make or break you. If you use SEO for Yahoo small business then you can truly see a turn in profit that will keep you ahead of your competitors. You must implement some form of search engine optimization in order to ensure the profitability of your online business.

There are three things that can help you in your quest to establish a viable search engine presence.

1. Write articles an submit them to EzineArticles. You can also submit these articles to other directories, but this is by far the best in all market research that has been conducted. The great things about writing articles is that it creates high quality backlinks to your website, which will in turn produce better search engine rankings.

2. If you want to use SEO for Yahoo small business effectively, you will want to do some link exchanges with other websites in your niche. This is a vital aspect because the more links you exchange the more people will be visiting your website. If you have a great product or service to offer then this will results in a large amount of money going into your pocket. In addition, submit your website to social bookmarking sites such as Digg. This is in tune with the linking strategies, and will also improve your search engine rankings.

3. Make sure that your website is keyword rich for high traffic keywords in your niche. This means you will want to do some keyword research to make sure you are targeting keywords that have a lot of daily searches. You can do this easily by going to Google and typing in keyword tool. Google offers a free tool, and so does Wordtracker. These are both excellent tools to use and will give you an accurate forecast of the demand for a particular keyword.

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Little Known Secrets of SEO

Most people already understand how important SEO is to any business, but that doesn’t mean that they understand why, or that they understand everything that they need to know to be successful with SEO. There are some little known secrets that people need to pay attention to.

How often you use a keyword on your page is certainly something that you want to focus on. If you don’t know what keywords people are searching for when they find your page, find out. Then, make sure you continue to use those and related keywords.

Also, search engines look at the first paragraph and the last one, so keywords that are vital to your success need to be there. Don’t get spammy with them. They should come naturally in the sentences that you write, and they should be in each paragraph at least once. If you also put them in the meta tag, make sure that they are in the alt tag of an image that you put on the page, and put them in the title of your article as well as the body, you’ll be well on your way to complete SEO optimization.

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SEO Tips - 10 Don'ts Of SEO

Here is a list of 10 of the worst mistakes you could make, that at worst could get your website banned, and if you are lucky, their implementation would just impede your success in achieving higher organic search engine positions.

1. Keyword stuffing. Needlessly stuffing your keywords on your web pages will sound nonsense not only to your human visitors but also the search engines. This tactic could actually harm your rankings.

2. Don't move or remove a popular page. By keeping a regular eye on your website statistics you should be aware of your current popular pages. If you need to reorganise your site structure then remember to 301 redirect via .htaccess from the old location to the new one.

3. Do not use images in navigation. For the moment at least images mean nothing to search engines. It is therefore preferable to use text links in your navigation web designer use CSS for styling. If there is no getting away from from using images then do not forget to use the ALT attribute and put relevant (keywords) text in there.

4. Do not use an incorrect robot.txt file. An incorrect robot.txt file can totally stop search engine traffic. A single incorrect command in this file can block an entire folder. If you need to use a robot.txt file ensure that you do not block the search engines when you do not mean to.

5. Do not procrastinate. SEO begins at the initial website structure planning stage and never ends. There may be lots of work involved but the sooner you start the sooner you will reap the rewards.

6. Do not exchange links with everyone. Outgoing links to bad neighborhood, unrelated or banned sites will certainly not help your SERPs.

7. It can be easy to foret the human visitors, make sure you do not. Do not neglect your human visitors, remember that eventually it's the human web designer who are going to do business with you, so keep them first. Reputed SEO consultants believe that websites that are human-friendly are search-engine-friendly automatically.

8. Using analytical tools will help. Analytics tools like Google Analytics and others help you know how much traffic you are getting from various sources including search engines. They also tell you which are your popular pages and for what keywords you attract maximum number of visitors.

9. Do not focus on too few keywords. My last point discussed longtail keywords. Your main keywords may get you lots of traffic from few sources, but your long tail keywords can get you small chunks of traffic from many sources

10. Do not be impatient. It can take a while to see good results, so be patient. For instance it may take more than 5 months for your website to even start appearing in the search results. That's why it is a good idea to start sooner rather than later.

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SEO Tips For Web Design

Web designers can do so much for themselves, their clients and their businesses by incorporating the following seo tips...

1) Make sure your URL's are as SEO friendly as possible. Avoid all those "=" and "?" marks. Use mod re-write to re-create these URL's to a more seo friendly format. Also, if the URL includes the keyword phrase for that page, that's extra bonuses!

2) Keyword research should be the absolute basis of any website design project. It should be the very first thing that you do with your client. You'll be surprised how many more pages and information you'll be able to get from your client if you can show them what their target audience is looking for.

3) Use semantic tags on every website page. If you're not familiar with these tags, read this list of semantic tags outlining all the semantic tags. These are not tags that are used in the section, instead, these are tags used within the body of text. They're very helpful with search engines and how they understand the content of your website pages.

4) Avoid using flash for your navigation, if possible. I know, I know, you want to show your client your flash design, beautiful menus, etc, but the truth is search engines still have trouble reading flash files and they simply will not follow the links from the navigation menu if it's written in flash.

5) Don't forget the alt tags on your images. They should be not only descriptive of the image but use the keyword phrase for the page as well.

6) If you use an image to replace text - know that the search engines will not count the text in that image towards the text of the page.

7) Optimize your graphics. You want the pages to load as quickly as possible. I can't tell you how many times I leave a website only because it's loading slowly.

8) Use anchor text links within the content of the site. In other words, if you have one page focused on the phrase "divorce attorney" - within the content of a website page (other than the one marketing the phrase "divorce attorney") you want to try and refer to the divorce attorney page by using the phrase "divorce attorney" and hyperlinking it to that page.

9) Make sure the hosting company has a 301 re-direct set up (usually they're 200 redirects). The issue is that with a 200 re-direct, the search engines actually index 2 websites instead of one. One version that's indexed is with the www and the second version that's indexed is without the www. So, www.abc.com and abc.com are indexed as 2 separate websites. The problem with this is that the search engines see duplicate content. Both websites are exactly the same. It's so simple to ensure a 301 re-direct, it just doesn't make sense NOT to use it.

10) Don't use or tags unless they're on the keyword phrases for the website page. These tags give the phrase that they're on some extra points (in the eyes of the search engines) so use the CSS styling instead.

So, for the web designers out there, do yourself a favor and give your business an edge by offering SEO services with your web design skills. Your clients will benefit greatly from it! If you can't find the time to learn or implement these techniques, then contact a reputable SEO firm that can work with you.

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Easy Ways to Excel at Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization refers to a number of ways that a website can get a better rating with search engines. There are many ways to improve a website position, and it is always best to use a combination of all or most of these methods. Each search engine has their own set of criteria for ranking their results. It is important to know what is required by a website to get a high listing.

1. Find your Niche Market

Often the keywords that are most recognizably associated with your business are also relevant to millions of other sites as well. Finding a niche market allows you to specialize or narrow your search field. A search request for “gifts” may return almost three billion website addresses in the results making it difficult to be among the first listed. Yet if you change your keywords to “Christmas Gift Baskets”, it will return a smaller result of less than eighty thousand. After researching what niche keywords are appropriate for your company you can narrow the
search results even further. This makes your odds of being closer to the top, or even allows you to be number one when combined with other SEO tools.

2. Research and Use The Right Keywords
After you determine what your market is and who you are trying to reach on the internet, you will need to research and choose the keywords that are most effective in your field. Check competitor’s webpage designs to see what keywords are working for the top listed companies. One of the first sites you should visit during this step is Google Keywords. This is a tool that will help you determine the right keywords and track how many sites are attached to them. Google Keywords and other free tools are available on line but you may find an investment in a program like WordTracker may be much more effective.

3. Effective Keyword Placement

It is not enough to simply place your keywords randomly throughout your content. Search engines can pick up on this with their ranking tools and sites are often penalized for trying to trick the search engine, even to the point of being banned from the rankings all together. You do not want incoherent page content for your customers either. This will cause them to leave quickly and not find the content you wanted them to read in the first place. Each page on your website should be rich in content and contain your keywords at least once or twice for every few paragraphs. It should appear naturally and fit into the rest of your page without looking forced. Heading tags should also be placed above the rest of your content. Having your main keyword in your Heading tag 1 will greatly increase your search engine ranking.

4. Search Engine Submission

Individually submitting your website address to search engines is not the most effective way to make it into their listings. This can take weeks or even months to achieve any placement in their results let alone making it to the front of them. The pages that consistently make it to the top of searches are using Search Engine Optimization tools on a weekly or sometimes daily basis. You need to get listed in the top ranking pages with relevant content. Every time the site is then indexed your website address with be automatically included in the search results.

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Three Steps for Search Engine Optimization

There are a number of ways to improve your website's popularity, page rank, and listing on major search engines. Here are three tips designed to improve your rankings.

Step #1: On Page Factor

The single most important “on page" factor affecting search engine rankings is the use of a title tag. A title tag is a snippet of code in the header section of a web page that is given great weight by the search engines.

One common mistake made when working with title tag is that a website is created from a template in which all of the title tag information is the same from page to page. This can not only get your pages thrown into supplemental results, but it's an example of extremely poor individual page optimization.

The title tag of each page should be individually optimized for the keyphrases that you are targeting for that page. Repetition should be avoided. For ecommerce websites, each product page should contain a unique title tag reflecting the specific product featured on that page.

Step #2: Publishing Rich Content

If you are not including keyword rich content on each page of your website, you again face a risk of having your pages receive a low quality score, or having your pages rank poorly for your target keywords. Be sure to include at least one instance of the keyword you are targeting for that page in the body text of the page.

A rule of thumb I use is to first go through and select the keyphrases you are targeting for each page. Then, optimize the title tags accordingly to reflect this. After that, write rich, unique content for each page, and be sure to include at least one instance of the title tag content in the body text.

Step #3: Create Link Bait

Generally speaking, the more links you have to rich content on your site, the better off you are going to be in the engines. The creation of a blog is a wonderful way to attract links. Other ideas for link bait include video, images, sound clips, press releases and the like. Contests, quizzes, product reviews, top 10 lists (or in the case of this article, a top 5 list), and how to articles fare very well. Also, the provision of useful tools can be a great way to attract links.

In the example of the real estate agency, a tool likely to attract links would be a free mortgage calculator. Offering such a tool on your website can attract the attention of other sites in the form of links, increasing your reputation and pagerank, which has a direct impact on higher search engine rankings.

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The 6 Big Misconceptions of Search Engine Optimization

Here are a few big misconceptions as I see them:

1. Web Analytics isn’t really needed for small company or non profit websites.
This is false. Any company which deserves a website should have tracking so you know who is visiting, what pages are viewed, what is downloaded, where are customers abandoning the sale, what works and what doesn’t etc.
2. Tracking traffic or optimizing on a few pages in enough.
This is false. Tracking just the traffic on the home page or just a portion of the website is like honking at the person in front of you at an intersection because they stopped. You only see that they stopped, but you did not see the little kid jump in front of that car. You only have part of the picture; not enough to make an informed decision. The entire website should be tracked as well as optimized for search.
3. Search Engine Optimization isn’t needed if we use Search Engine Marketing.
This is also false. SEO works in synergy with SEM. SEO may take as long as six months to see results whereas SEM can see instant results. The two work hand in hand though to drive traffic and conversions.

4. Search Engine Optimization isn’t needed for local or specialized companies.
All companies that have the need for a website need to be optimized for search. That is how many customers will find you. Even specialty stores such as Central Market in Shoreline Washington or Pierce’s West Side Market in Balaboo Wisconsin.

5. Search Engine Position reports alone (which are based on a certain time and date) tell me enough information to make good decisions.
This is false. Position rankings are important of couse because the higher you rank in the search engine results page, the more likely you will be found and visited by customers. However, Knowing where your website ranked on a given day at a given time is not very valuable because of several variables. There are browser choices and preferences, search engine choices and preferences as well as different data centers in different regions that are used dby the search engines to create the search engine results pages; all can effect the search engine results and provide different rankings to the searcher even in the same office, zip code or geographical region. So given when and where a search is performed, the rank could be different from what is reported. The person creating the report in one state and talking with a client in another state can be quite embarrassed when the client checks while on the phone and gets a different result. The next variable is that natural rankings can, and do change often based on when the Search Engine scrapes the web. Do I need to tell you that you aren’t the only person constantly tweaking and optimizing your site? When other sites are altered, tweaked, and optimized, there rankings will change in relation to yours. When the different search engines change their algorithms, your rankings will change as well.

6. Keyword analysis isn’t needed for offline campaigns.

This is false. Companies should optimize there website using keyword terms and phrases which are used in high profile TV spots, characters used in commercials or print ads, because those print, radio and TV ads can be memorable and maybe that is what a customer uses to search for your product or service online. This holds especially true for huge media buys such as for the super bowl. All campaigns should work in synergy to drive awareness, traffic and conversions to your brand and ultimately the bottom line.

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Optimizing Your Web Site with SEO Organic Techniques

SEO organic methods take more work from the individual, but is a safer and, in the end, more effective way to optimize a web site for search engines. In a way, Organic SEO helps to keep Internet sollution to a minimum, so you’re also helping the virtual environment! In the following paragraphs, you’ll find a few easy ways to use this type of search engine optimization.

Youre no doubt familiar with the basic concepts of search engine optimization, but are you familiar with SEO organic methods. While search engine optimization is a very important aspect to any online business?marketing plan, it’s become increasingly standardized and mechanized. Many SEO services and applications simply use the same basic plan to enhance a web site’s search engine rankings.

This has led to a lot of marketers using nasty search engine optimization methods to get results. These types of methods can be great for generating traffic, but in the end they make the Internet an uglier place. These methods, known as Black Hat SEO methods, are just a bad idea. Not only do they frustrate potential users of your web site, they may not even work forever.

You see, Google and other search engines are constantly looking for ways to defeat Black Hat SEO techniques. If their efforts are successful and really it’s just a matter of time before they are ?your time and money may be wasted. Why spend money on search engine optimization that could be useless in just a few months? Worse yet, search engines aren’t just knocking these sorts of sites down in rank; they’re totally removing them from search results.

Some of these Black Hat methods include using cheap labor or robots to perform a number of tasks. For instance, sometimes these services will sign up to tons of forums and or social networking sites and simply spam the link to a site everywhere possible. This is a definite annoyance for many webmasters, who end up with sites cluttered in meaningless links.

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5 Search Engine Optimization Tactics

Search Engine Optimization is not as difficult as you might think although it can be time consuming if you try to do it all yourself.

The Goal of search engine optimization is getting your content listed in all the top positions in Google, Yahoo and MSN for your target keywords. When someone does a search for your particular subject or niche, you want your site or content to be at the top of the pile.

Here are five of my favorite SEO tactics for you:


1. Great Content is the number one factor for getting high rankings and keeping them. Search engines are businesses who supply a product just like any other. The product for a search engine is information and any website that offers quality and new information to the search engines customers usually does well in the rankings. Quality content is vital for SEO success.

2. Keywords are the number one tool for achieving great rankings. Keywords are those words that people search for when looking for products and services. The best keywords are actually phrases that narrow down the search for potential customers.
For example, if you have a site selling toys, you might think ‘toys’ is a great keyword. Wrong! The competition is too great and you would be better looking for something like - ‘toys for girls’ which narrows down the search. So how about ‘toys for girls age seven which narrows it down even more. True, you will have less people searching but those that do will surely be more likely to buy. So do your research into what people are searching for. Amend the text etc on your website to reflect this and watch the sales fly in!’Long tail keywords’ can be enormously profitable if used correctly.

3. On-page Factors and site design will play a big role in the indexing of your site and it’s content. Make sure that all your pages can be reached from your homepage and that no pages are more than three levels away from it.
Ensure that you have all your Meta tags such as title, description, and keywords optimised. Your page title and description should be keyword targeted but remember to make them draw and entice your potential customers to your website. You never get a second chance to make a first impression!

4. Google is the big beast of search engines so concentrate most of your SEO efforts on them. I am not saying that you ignore Yahoo! or MSN, just that you be realistic about which company is the biggest in this market.
Use Google’s Webmaster Tools to fine tune your pages for Google. Google Alerts are also useful to keep up on niche keywords and for comment link-building on any newly created pages that Google has indexed.

5. Link Building is the most effective way to boost search rankings. Make sure you get back-links from other sites related to your market and make sure the ‘anchor text’ is related to your keywords. The anchor text is the underlined/clickable portion of a link.
Don’t forget that linking is a two-way street. Impress the search engines by linking out to high ranked relevant sites in your niche.

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SEO Tip: Redirecting Traffic to Your Site

There are many different reasons why you will need to redirect web site traffic to another location (another URL) on your site or even to another domain name that you own. There are several types of redirects that you can use, and although they all technically will send some from one web page to another web page there is only really one type of redirect that you will want to use: always use the 301 Permanent Redirect.

If you are a regular reader of this search engine optimization blog, you might recall that recently Google themselves did not set up the proper type of redirect when they released their Search Engine Optimization Guide. I am glad to report that apparently Google has taken our SEO advice: the domain name in question, brandonsbaseballcards.com, is now redirecting with a 301 Permanent Redirect to Google.com.

Types of Redirects
There are several types of redirects that you can use to redirect visitors to another web page or another web site. I’ve outlined each below and made some comments as to why or why not you would want to use it.

302 Temporary Redirect - The 302 redirect is essentially a “temporary” redirect. This type of redirect might be okay to set up if you are going to temporarily redirect visitors to another URL. I would say that if you need to redirect visitors for a few minutes or a few hours it might be okay to “temporarily” use it. But, since there are so many issues that can arise when using the 302 I tend to recommend that you never use it at all. In the past, there have been problems with domain name hijacking and even basic search engine ranking problems that occur when using a 302 Redirect. I wouldn’t use it.

JavaScript Redirect
There are ways to redirect human visitors using web browsers to view your site without redirecting the search engines. The search engines currently do not execute JavaScript code, so they won’t be redirected. If you want to hide something on your web page then you might use a JavaScript redirect to give content to the search engine spiders and not to the humans. This is typically a method that search engine spammers use, so if you’re using it then the search engines could potentially look at you in a negative light or even ban your site or penalize your site for using it. I wouldn’t use it.

Meta Refresh Redirect
The meta refresh is really an outdated type of redirect. Although it will still redirect visitors, it does not give the site you’re redirecting to any SEO value: so there’s really no need to use it.

301 Permanent Redirect
The 301 Permanent Redirect tells the search engines that you are permanently redirecting visitors to the new location: so since you’re telling them that this is a permanent change, they can rely on it. You are redirecting visitors, but at the same time passing on “link credit”, PageRank, and other SEO value to the site that you’re redirecting to. The search engines themselves recommend that we all use 301 Permanent Redirects to redirect visitors.

When you set up a 301 Permanent Redirect, the important thing to remember is that you are “transferring” SEO value (link value, PageRank, etc.) to the domain name you’re redirecting to: which is a good thing. If you use another type of redirect then you don’t get the SEO value passed to the new location.

A Simple Link
I have also seen people use a simple web page: they set up a web page and add a message telling visitors to click on a link that they provide to go to the new location (or the new site). While it might be a good idea to tell your visitors that you are now at a new location (a new domain name, a new URL), you’re still not passing any SEO value to the new location. So, while that might be okay I don’t necessarily recommend using it.

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Five Important Tips for SEO

When you are about to launch your website, you feel quite confused which SEO should be chosen for the getting a good ranking, and off course a good traffic to your website. Traffic to your website depends on the Search engine optimization process, which you might be aware of but here are with few tips on how to choose a good SEO for the purpose.

A) Rank of the SEO

First thing first in this process is the ability and the capability of the SEO. The ability of a SEO can be tested by asking for the rating of the company itself. If an SEO cannot rate itself at a good rank, than it is hardly possible that it can do the same task for you. So, in case you are hunting for an SEO, make sure you ask for the company’s own rating first.

B) Set realistic targets

Second most important thing is the target that you suggest and they agree. If an SEO company is making you a commitment of getting a good ranking in just a month or so, forget it as such promises are false because the targets are unrealistic. SEO ranking is an on going process and there are a lot of criteria that a website needs to fulfill for getting a good positing with the SEO. There are a lot of tools and standards that are used as a base for the calculation of the position. Any well experienced SEO will be aware of the process and working of the search engines and would set a realistic target for you.

C) Service base of SEO

While you are all set to choose an SEO to work for you, you must make a quick revision of the SEO services that an SEO is likely to provide to its users/ clients. The service base of an SEO includes other things as well, besides the main function of projecting the website and giving it a ranking. Before signing the deal make sure you have clarified what you will be provided for with the money you spend. In case you are unaware of the SEO functions and services you can clarify your doubts at the SEO forum. Link building and updating of the site are few of the services which are given together in a package.

D) Service backup

Service backup is also one of the major areas of concern while you are looking for an SEO company. Any good SEO company should be able to back up all the services it is committed to give. In the market you are likely to find many that can promise a great deal but only good and reputed ones are able to back up their services. However, they may not guarantee their work. Your search should be for a company that gives a reliable services back even if it does not guarantee. A lot of queries and questions might have bogged down your head as to what is the need of signing a SEO firm that doesn’t give guarantee but is there to give a service back, well all these questions have clear answers to them at SEO blogs and SEO forums that are specially working to solve your problems.

E) clear analysis

Last but not the least look for clear warning signs that can show you the right picture and can even show you the right path. These warning signs can be many and few of them are laid down for you right here:-

1) Often many SEO firms ask their clients to develop multiple sites so that it can help in link building. Also, they find it an easy way to attract different search engines. If you are planning to say yes to such an SEO firm I would recommend you not to do so as you will only end up wasting your resource. For good Search engine optimization rating you need not have many sites but a one good website with essential articles and proper link back-ups. Incase you wish to make use of two or more website make sure you have two different topics that do not somehow relate each other.

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