List of 350+ socil networking sites

List of 350+ socil networking sites

Mashable releases a comprehensive list of social networking sites.

One of the main topics here at Mashable has always been social networking. In the past several years, some networks have thrived, some vanished, while hundreds of new ones appeared. It has become a huge area to follow, and this article illustrates this well: a collection of over 350 social networking sites, all of which were covered in one way or another here at Mashable. We hope to have created an extensive and useful resource for anyone interested in social networking. Enjoy.
Feel free to add more apps in the comments. And don’t forget to subscribe to Mashable for the latest web news and resources.
Books

Americabookshelf.com - One of the largest book exchange clubs across the US.
BooksConnect - A book sharing community site connecting readers, authors, publishers, librarians and booksellers.
BookCrossing.com - A community of users from over 130 countries who exchange books with each other at public places like cafes, parks etc.
Bookhopper.co.uk - Free community for UK residents to share used books with each other.
Bookins.com - Book sharing website that enables members to exchange used books with each other in real time.
BookMooch.com - An interesting concept where users can exchange books with others through points. Users gain points when they give books to others.
Booksalescout.com - Online community of users allowing them to sell books in the US.
Bookswim.com - Book borrowing service with free shipping for registered website.
ConnectViaBooks - A social networking site connecting book lovers and enabling them to discover other similar interests.
GoodReads - GoodReads is a book reader’s community enabling members to review, share books they have been reading.
PaperBackSwap.com - Users can share books amongst each other and only pay for the delivery charges.
Pazap.com - A book trade engine for students to buy and sell old books.
Read It Swap It - A free service that allows users to exchange books with others.
Revish - Revish is another community for book lovers, letting them review their favorite books, group up, or simply tell the world what they’re currently reading.

Shelfari - Shelfari is a popular social networking service for book lovers.
Socialbib - Book swapping network between students.
Business Networking & Professionals

AdvisorGarage - It is an online directory of advisers who are willing to assist budding entrepreneurs.
ArtBreak - ArtBreak is an artist community for sharing and selling artwork.
Blogtronix - Blogtronix promotes corporate social networking, enterprise 2.0 and wikis.
Commutal - Commutal is an online sharing platform for businesses to create media rooms, participate in domestic groups and share event happenings with each other.
CompanyLoop - An online co-working community for global businesses.
ConnectBeam - Connectbeam offers social networking specially designed for corporate users.
Decorati - An interior designer community enabling users to post items for sale and for exchange.
DoMyStuff - A good site for working professionals looking to find online assistants.
Doostang - An invite only career community for professionals.
Fast Pitch - It is a quickly growing business networking community in corporate world. Its online provides users with a one-stop shop network to market their business.
iKarma Inc. - iKarma is a specialist in providing customer feedback for organizations and professionals.
ImageKind - ImageKind is a community and marketplace for professional artists.
Jambo - Jambo lets you connect with your neighborhood friends.
Jigsaw - An online business card networking directory for users to establish contacts with each other. Each business card is listed with an email id and a contact number.
Konnects - Konnects enables members to create their own professional networking communities.
Lawyrs - A professional social networking community for lawyers.
Linkedin - LinkedIn is a professional social networking website for business users, one of the most popular such sites out there. Some aspects of it are free, but many are paid.
mediabistro.com - mediabistro.com is for professionals in content or creative industry.
Pairup.com - Pairup connects business travelers Debunking-Travel-Myths assisting them to travel together.
Ryze.com - A site for establishing new connections and growing networks. Connections for jobs, building career and making sales.
Spoke.com - Spoke offers access to business network of over 40 million people worldwide.
Visible Path - Visible Path helps organizations to integrate social networking into their existing tools.
WebCrossing Neighbors - It provides a private label social network with personal spaces and user groups.
XING - XING is a networking directory of business contacts powering relationships between business professionals allowing users to connect with each other.
Family

Amiglia - A family networking service enabling users to connect to family members by publishing and sharing family trees Family tree , photos etc.
CafeMom - CafeMom is a social networking site for mothers to connect and share thoughts with each other.
Cingo - Cingo users connect with each other to organize their family life.
CommonGate - A social networking platform Most-Networked-Executives that enables users to create their own social network for their friends, family or organization.
Family 2.0 - Family 2.0 helps you create your own family social network, you can add family members, send personalized emails and create event alerts.
Famiva - A premier social network to connect with family members and relatives in a secure environment.
Famster - A private secure social network for family members.
Geni.com - An exciting social networking site enabling members to create their family tree. Although it’s a relatively new site, it has grown tremendously fast, and has hundreds of thousands of users.
Genoom - Genoom creates a meeting place for its site users. They can create a family network by inviting their relatives and discover their past memories.

Kincafe - An ideal social network for families to connect with their beloved ones.
Kinzin - Kinzin is an online meeting place for families to share family events, photos, stories and recipes.
MayasMoM - A family networking site for parents.
Minti - A collaborative parenting site.
MomJunction - MomJunction allows mothers to find reliable answers to questions, create private spaces with friends and build communities.
MothersClick - MothersClick connects mothers in a neighborhood with each and provides parenting advice to them.
myfamily.com - An excellent way to connect with your family members.
OneGreatFamily.com - An online shared database with combined knowledge and data at a single place.
OurStory.com - OurStory enables users to share stories of their families with others.
Parentography - A social network offering advice and advice for families.
The Family Post - A sharing network for communication with family members.
Friends

43 Things - A tagging based social networking site. Users create accounts and list a number of goals or hopes and these are parsed based on similarity to goals of other users.
Amitize.com - Amitize is a worldwide friendship network.
aSmallWorld - aSmallWorld is a private online community designed for individuals who would like to connect, re-connect to share similar thoughts with each other.
Badoo.Com - Badoo is a dynamic multi-lingual social networking site with innovative photo and video features that allows its users worldwide to gain an instant mass audience and interact both locally and globally.
Bebo - Bebo is a hugely popular site (especially in the UK), and similar in philosophy to MySpace. It allows users to communicate with their friends in multiple ways including blogging, sending messages and posting pictures.
Eons - An online gathering place for the elderly; most of the users are over the age of 50 years.
Facebook.com - Facebook is a social networking phenomenon connection people with their friends, family and other users with similar interests.
Faceparty - A UK based community social networking website. It started for youngsters but has now risen to popularity among all age groups.
Flingr - Flingr allows users to connect with all categories of friends – colleagues, college mates and school buddies.
Friendster - It is a popular global social network for finding new friends and developing friendships as well as searching old friends.
hi5 - Hi5 is a prominent social networking service in India with over 40 million users. However, Hi5 has recently experienced an upsurge beyond India and has shown increasing popularity in EU too.
Lovento - Lovento allows you to discover news friends and also find information about latest events.

Multiply.com - Multiply is a social networking website providing easy way to share digital media Writers-Strike-Hurts-LA-Economy which includes photos, videos and music.
Mycool - Mycool enables members to find and share their interests with special groups.
MySpace.com - MySpace is an interactive social networking website consisting of personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos. It’s currently the biggest social networking site out there, and while it might not be the most advanced one, the users seem to love its simplicity.
NetFriendships.com - A comprehensive social networking site enabling users to make new online friends and discover old ones.
Netlog - A social community of more than 20 million young Europeans.
Orkut - Orkut is a social networking service owned by Google. It enables users to meet new friends and create communities.
Passado - Passado is Europe’s no.1 re-union website connecting members with friends from school to workplace.
Piczo - Piczo offers safe social networking environment to youngster around the world. Piczo users can design their personal website with photos, videos etc. and share it with their friends.
Plazes - A social networking website for connecting with local users.
Pownce.com - Pownce is a mix of social networking and microblogging. It enables users to send messages, files, events and links with each other.
ProfileHeaven.com - A UK based social networking site for teenagers.
reunion.com - A leading online service for discovering old friends, classmates and family members.
Vox.com - Vox is a social blogging service where users share their ideas, photos, videos with family and friends.
Xanga - Xanga is one of the biggest social networking platforms with features of sharing photos, photos and videos.
XuQa - An online college social networking site with poker gaming features.
Hobbies & Interests

ActionProfiles.com - It is social networking community for sports and action. The features of the website are profiles of users with photographs and videos, reviews of products and job discussion boards.
Arts community - Arts community provides a dynamic community experience by providing extensive listing of exhibitions, events and openings.
BeGreen - BeGreen is a community that aims to generate environmental awareness for users.
beRecruited - beRecruited is a dedicated online community for sportpersons and coaches.
BottleTalk - BottleTalk is a wine lover’s community making it easy for members to share their drinking experiences.
CarGurus - An automobile community website enabling users to post car reviews, photos and share opinions.
Change - Change is a nonprofit social networking website that connects like minded users and allows them to exchange information.
ChangingThePresent - A nonprofit fund raising community with membership of over 400 nonprofits.
ChickAdvisor - ChickAdvisor is a sharing community for women users.
CircleUp - CircleUp is one of the best community website connecting users to groups, clubs for knowledge sharing, information exchange.
Coastr - Coastr connects beer lovers with each other.

ColShare - ColShare is a community for people who have hobby of collecting items like coins, stamps etc.
coRank - A rating community for users to share interesting information on internet.
DailyStrength - A huge community of over 500 groups dealing with health issues and various medical challenges.
Dundoo - Dundoo enables users to create image collages out of social networking profile. A big amount of ads on the site somewhat diminishes the overall impression.
Flixster - Flixster is a community for movie lovers.
FuelEmpire - FuelEmpire brings automobile enthusiasts together at one place.
GirlSense - A community for girls to promote their fashion designs & creations.
Greenvoice - An online networking platform for people who are conscious about the environment, who want to inform each other on environmental issues and create a difference.
iYomu - iYomu is an adult social networking website and it allows users to search for site members who have similar interests or for business needs.
Motortopia - Motortopia is community for automobile lovers. It consists of passionate lovers of bikes, planes, cars and boats etc.
MyCatSpace - MyCatSpace is a community for lovers of cats passionate to share experiences of their cats with others.
MyDogSpace - MyDogSpace users can share their dog pictures, write blog posts about dogs and communicate with other dog lovers, all in a very lovely community.
Uniteddogs - A social networking website for dog owners. The dog owners can creae profiles of their dogs, create blogs and share their thoughts.
vSocial - vSocial is a video based social networking platform allowing content owners, site operators to deliver the message online with video.
Language
15+ Language Communities
Media (Photo, Video & Audio)
25+ Video Sharing Services
30+ Photo Sharing Services
20+ Music Sharing Services
Buzdeo - Buzdeo provides secure video sharing service with friends and family.
Fotki - A photo sharing service enabling users to connect with friends.
Fotolog - A big online photo sharing community.
Music

Asoboo - Asoboo is a sharing network for cultural artists from around the world.
BandChemistry - A network for musicians uniting music bands all over.
BandWagon - BandWagon is a music community website for music fans to manage their web pages, profiles, videos and music.
CrackSpace - A common place for fans of hip-hop music.
Moob - A dedicated community of hip-hop fans.
MOG - An online community powering site members to discover music and music lovers.
Mobile

CrackBerry - A community dedicated to BlackBerry research-in-motion-4q-profit-soars Apr-3-2008 users.
Dodgeball - A New York based service facilitating social interactions through mobile phones.
Friendstribe.com - A mobile phone based social networking site.
GotZapp - A mobile social network for sharing images, audio and graphics with your friends’ mobile phones.
Groovr - An ultimate mobile social networking site for staying connected with friends. It is compatible with iPhone.
Jaiku - Jaiku is essentially a microblogging service with an SMS gateway, very similar to Twitter. They’ve recently been acquired by Google.
Loopt - Loopt is a cool mobile based friend locator website. It uses GPS to show its users the location of friends by updating maps on mobile handset.
Mixxer - Mixxer enables users to content on their mobile with site members.
Mobango - A mobile community service powering users to search for user generated music content, videos and other data.
Mozes - Mozes enables members to connect & socialize with each other through mobile phones.
Partysync - Partysync helps users to interact with people using mobiles.
Peepsnation - Peepsnation allows users with similar interests to connect with each other on location basis.
Rabble - A location based social networking service for mobile phone users.
Socialight - Socialight is a mobile based social networking site where users share their travel experiences with other mobile users.
Wattpad - A mobile phone social networking platform allowing users to discover, read and share their stories with each others.
Shopping

18 Sites for Social Shopping and Deals
3LUXE - A community generated product research site.
AgentB - A common place to find out the best shopping deals on internet.
bringsome.com - A global goods delivery platform enabling community members to assist each other with access to best items from across the world.
boxedup.com - Boxedup.com users add their favorite products to their list and share it with others.
CoWorkersAds - An online marketplace listing allowing site members to discover and sell items among coworkers community.
iliketotallyloveit.com - A user generated marketplace where users submit cool products.
MyItThings.com - A user generated magazine for shopping.
MyStore.com - A social market place for buyers and sellers.

Productwiki.com - ProductWiki is a common place for users to share information about consumer products.
RedFlagDeals.com - RedFlagDeals.com is Canada’s most popular shopping community which offers huge discounts to site users.
Sale Grab - SaleGrab is a social shopping site for best sales and discount deals.
Shoppero - Shoppero offers profit sharing to site users for writing product reviews.
Smashing Darling - A collaborative market place connecting buyers and sellers at one place.
Social BookMarking
50+ Social Bookmarking Sites
Students

AlumWire - AlumWire has been created to assist college students, alumni with professional opportunities.
B4Class - A social network for high school and college students.
Campusbug - A college student social networking website.
CampusRank - CampusRank members select and rate their old school friends and group them into various categories.
College.com - An online community for college students.
CollegeMedium.com - A student classifieds website for buying and selling items, jobs search etc.
College Tonight - A great place to meet fellow college students and alumni.
DormItem.com - A local classifieds listings for schools in various cities.

Graduates.com - A social networking site assisting graduate school students to stay in touch post completion of course.
Half.com - A leading student market place for buying and selling textbooks at discounted prices.
iHipo - An international community for college students and business professionals looking for networking opportunities.
LocalSchools - A networking site connecting students with local US colleges and universities.
Pazap.com - A student trading site for buying and selling on-campus books with other students.
Quizilla - Quizilla is a social network for young teens.
RateMyProfessor.com - RateMyProfessor connects students aspiring to study similar courses by assisting each other.

Student.com - Student.com is a big online community for college students, high school students and teens with around 1,000,000 members.
Studentbid.com - Studentbid.com is a student market place for sales and purchase of items without any fees.
StudentSN.com - A social network allowing users to create home pages with contact information, personal information and photo albums.
Uloop.com - Uloop allows students to trade textbooks, promote community events and do host of other activities.
Travel & Locals

Amicoz.com - Amicoz is slightly different from conventional social networking sites; it doesn’t have some of the common features found on socnets. It is dedicated to assist users in sharing their travel experiences, nothing more, nothing less.
Citizenbay - Citizenbay is a user community for discovering local information.
CityTherapy - CityTherapy is an easy way to find and share places of interest (restaurant, bars) in Europe.
CouchSurfing - A global travel network connecting travelers with local communities.
fatdoor.com - A fun and an interactive way to connect with the folks from your neighborhood online.
Going.com - A fun way to interact with people locally.
iloho - An online travel community with similarity to social bookmarking services like digg.
MatchActivity - A site connecting people on the basis of their activities. Users can find things to do and join people in their area.
Matador - A travel based social network with an integrated blogging service.
myTripbook.com - myTripbook.com is a place for people who want to share their travel experiences through photos, videos and blogging with others.
OurFaves - OurFaves is a community of urban savvy folks who enjoy the Toronto city and find out cool places to hang out at.
Outside.in - A nice way to explore local communities to keep track with neighborhood news.
Rummble - Rummble enables users to discover as well as share places of interest in your neighborhood.

TravBuddy - TravBuddy is a cool site for sharing travel experiences, finding new travel friends or reading travel reviews of fellow friends.
Travellerspoint - An international meeting point for worldwide travelers.
TravelTogether - A travel based social networking service enabling users to share travel plans, travel deals and experiences.
tribe.net - Tribe.net is one of the easiest ways to connect with people for finding a restaurant, a killer apartment, a gentle dentist or a hiking friend.
TripUp - A travel community site for finding travel information and planning for trips.
Triporama- Triporama provides an easy way to plan and collaborate on group trips.
VibeAgent - VibeAgent is a site about hotel reviews, travel meta-search and social networking.

WAYN - A social networking website uniting world wide travelers.
WeExplore - WeExplore provides an online platform for volunteers and travelers from all over the globe.
Wikitravel - Wikitravel is dedicated project for creating a trusted, up-to-date travel guide. It has over 16,641 travel destination guides maintained and written by Wikitravellers from around the world.
Zoodango - Zoodango is a website enabling users to connect with urban professionals either online or face-to-face at local venues.

Search Engine Optimization Resources for Small Business

Special focus on local SEO tools and resources tools and resources

Submit to Major Search Engines

Google – http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
Yahoo – http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request
MSN - http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?

Search Engine/Directory Submission Guides
Google's Advice - http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html

MSN's Advice - Here
Ask Jeeves Editorial Guide - http://sp.ask.com/docs/about/policy.html
Yahoo Advice - http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/ranking/ranking-02.html
Open Directory Advice - http://dmoz.org/add.html

Key Onpage Web Design Elements

Title Tags -
Meta Tags
Alt Image Desription
Headline (H1, H2)
Content Placement
Internal Links
External Links

Keyword Research Tools

DigitalPoint Keyword Tracker - http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/
Google Keyword Sandbox - https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox
Google Suggest -http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool - Overture
Overture View Bid Tool -http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/

Other Free Tools

Xenu (finds broken links and builds a site map) - http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
Hub Finder - finds topically relevant links by looking through links pointing at competitors websites - http://www.andyhagans.com/tools/hubfinder/

Paid SEO Tools

Keyword Discovery - http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/
Wordtracker - http://www.wordtracker.com
SEO Elite (text link analysis software) - http://www.seoelite.com
Local Keyword Tool - http://www.keywordcombine.com/default.aspx

Local Search Engines

Google Local - http://local.google.com/
Yahoo Local - http://local.yahoo.com
MSN Local - http://local.msn.com/
Ask Jeeves Local - http://local.ask.com
AOL Local - http://localsearch.aol.com/main.adp

Listing Directories

City Search - http://www.citysearch.com
SwithBoard - http://www.switchboard.com
Smart Pages - http://www.smartpages.com/
Super Pages - http://www.superpages.com/
Yellow Pages.com - http://www.yellowpages.com/Index.aspx

Other Notable Directories

Open Directory Project - http://www.dmoz.org
Business.com - http://www.business.com
Uncover the Net - http://www.uncoverthenet.com
GoGuides - http://www.goguides.org
Joe Ant - http://www.joeant.com
Gimpsy - http://www.gimpsy.com
Jayde - http://www.jayde.com
Ruberstamped - http://www.rubberstamped.org

SEO Blogs

TopRank - Lee Odden's Blog
SEO Book - http://www.seobook.com
Thread Watch - http://www.threadwatch.org
Search Engine Blog - http://www.searchengineblog.com
Search Engine Lowdown - http://www.searchenginelowdown.com
SE Roundtable - http://www.seroundtable.com
Traffick - http://www.traffick.com
Battellemedia - http://www.battellemedia.com
Search Engine Watch - http://blog.searchenginewatch.com

SEO Forums

Search Guild - http://www.searchguild.com
Search Engine Watch Forum - http://forums.searchenginewatch.com

SEO Books/Subscrition services

SEO Book - http://www.seobook.com
Planet Ocean - http://www.planetocean.com
High Rankings - http://www.highrankings.com
Search Engine Watch - http://www.searchenginewatch.com

PPC & SEO Enhancing Tools

 Pay-Per-Click Advertising
 

Ad Watchers - Tired of losing money on PPC? Discover the most profitable AdWords, Yahoo, and MSN PPC campaigns! Plus, you can quickly find out what affiliate programs (or products) are hot and which ones to avoid at all costs!

Ad Word Analyzer - Your ultimate keyword tool to find out *exactly* what people are looking for and to provide you with the ultimate database of researched keywords. Use it to uncover niche markets that you can easily dominate!

Ad Word Strategies - Proven AdWords visionary reveals the next wave of secrets that you can exploit to always turn a huge profit from your campaigns, even while others struggle to stay afloat during the escalating small advertiser bloodbath!

Competition Equalizer - Don't advertise on AdWords blinfolded! Uncover who your competitors are and analyze their Google AdWords advertising with a few easy clicks of a button. This will help you cut ad costs and increase sales.

Search Engine Optimization

RSS Equalizer - A powerful tool when optimizing web pages for search engines. This PHP script inserts fresh content into your web pages (search engines absolutely love this) to increase search engine spidering and improve rankings on all search engines.

SEO Equalizer - If you're not taking link popularity or search engine optimization seriously you're sabotaging your OWN websites - and if you're still trying to get the work done manually you'll NEVER be in a position to compete with the big dogs!

SEO Spider - Quickly and easily analyze your rank in Google, Yahoo and MSN. Reveals Link Popularity, PageRank and Alexa Rank. Plus you can also take a peek at your competition without all of the intense labor of manually doing it yourself.

SiloMatic - Now you can build search engine optimized "silo" websites that are better and more powerful than what you can create manually. In fact, these websites have proven time and time again to rank much higher than regular websites!

Social Media Inspector - Get your website link inside top search engine listings with Google PageRank using an easy-to-use and highly-effective social media marketing tool that taps directly into the incredible power of Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com!

Traffic Equalizer - Create thousands of search engine optimized pages nearly instantly to quickly and easily take advantage of this free traffic source. Use it to drive additional traffic to your primary websites or to promote affiliate programs.

More to come in future articles

SEO COURSE IN 15 MINUTES

 SEO COURSE IN 15 MINUTES
Here is a SEO checklist of the factors that affect your page rankings with Google, MSN, Yahoo! and the other major search engines. The list contains positive, negative and neutral factors because all of them exist. Most of the factors in the checklist apply mainly to Google and partially to MSN, Yahoo! and all the other search engines of lesser importance.

SEO COURSE IN 15 MINUTES PART-1

Keywords

1. Keywords in +3

This is one of the most important places to have a keyword because what is written inside the

2. Keywords in URL +3

Keywords in URLs help a lot - e.g. - http://sureshadams.com/seo-services.html, where “SEO services” is the keyword phrase you attempt to rank well for. But if you don't have the keywords in other parts of the document, don't rely on having them in the URL.

3. Keyword density in document text +3

Another very important factor you need to check. 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

4. Keywords in anchor text +3

Also very important, especially for the anchor text of inbound links, 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.

5. Keywords in headings +3

One more place where keywords count a lot. But beware that your page has actual text about the particular keyword.

6. Keywords in the beginning of a document +2

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.

7. Keywords in tags +2

Spiders don't read images but they do read their textual descriptions in the tag, so if you have images on your page, fill in the tag with some keywords about them.

8. Keywords in metatags +1

Less and less important, especially for Google. Yahoo! and MSN still rely on them, so if you are optimizing for Yahoo! or MSN, fill these tags properly. In any case, filling these tags properly will not hurt, so do it.

9. Keyword proximity +1

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.

10. Keyword phrases +1

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.

11. Secondary keywords +1

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.

12. Keyword stemming +1

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” 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.

13. Synonyms +1

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.

14. Keyword Mistypes 0

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'd better don't do it, or do it only in the metatags.

15. Keyword dilution -2

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.

16. Keyword stuffing -3

Any artificially inflated keyword density (10% and over) is keyword stuffing and you risk getting banned from search engines.

Links - internal, inbound, outbound

17. Anchor text of inbound links +3

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't, it is still OK.

18. Origin of inbound links +3

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.

19. Links from similar sites +3

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.

20. Links from .edu and .gov sites +3

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.

21. Number of backlinks +3

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.

22. Anchor text of internal links +2

This also matters, though not as much as the anchor text of inbound links.

23. Around-the-anchor text +2

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.

24. Age of inbound links +2

The older, the better. Getting many new links in a short time suggests buying them.

25. Links from directories +2

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.

26. Number of outgoing links on the page that links to you +1

The fewer, the better for you because this way your link looks more important.

27. Named anchors +1

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: Read about dogs and “#dogs” is the named anchor.

28. IP address of inbound link +1

Google denies 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, MSN and Yahoo! may discard links from the same IPs or IP classes, so it is always better to get links from different IPs.

29. Inbound links from link farms and other suspicious sites 0

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't get penalized when such sites link to you because this is not your fault but in any case you'd better stay away from link farms and similar suspicious sites.

30. Many outgoing links -1

Google does not like pages that consists mainly of links, so you'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.

31. Excessive linking, link spamming -1

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.

32. Outbound links to link farms and other suspicious sites -3

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.

33. Cross-linking -3

Cross-linking occurs when site A links to site B, site B links to site C and site A 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.

34. Single pixel links -3

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.

Metatags

35. metatag +1

Metatags are becoming less and less important but if there are metatags that still matter, these are the and ones. Use the metatag to write the description of your site. Besides the fact that metatags still rock on MSN and Yahoo!, the metatag has one more advantage – it sometimes pops in the description of your site in search results.

36. metatag +1

The metatag also matters, though as all metatags it gets almost no attention from Google and some attention from MSN and Yahoo! Keep the metatag reasonably long – 10 to 20 keywords at most. Don't stuff the tag with keywords that you don't have on the page, this is bad for your rankings.

37. metatag +1

If your site is language-specific, don't leave this tag empty. Search engines have more sophisticated ways of determining the language of a page than relying on the metatag but they still consider it.

38. metatag -1

The 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 metatag is regarded as unethical practice and this can hurt your ratings. In any case, redirecting through 301 is much better.

SEO COURSE PART -2

Convert Customers With a Perfect Landing Page

Convert Customers With a Perfect Landing Page

You put all kinds of work into creating a great pay-per-click ad, filling it with exactly the right keywords to catch the attention of your target market and drive them through to your sales copy. And then what? Well, if they simply go through to your homepage, you risk losing that sale.

Instead, deliver those click-through visitors to a custom-built landing page that focuses on the exact problem your customer is trying to solve when they click through your ad!

If your potential customers arrive at your landing page and see the search phrase they were looking for, they will stay longer on your site, which means a greater chance of becoming a customer, lead or opt-in.

Always remember that your visitors are looking for instant gratification. If they can't answer, "What's in it for me?" within the first eight seconds of their visit, you will likely lose the sale.

And as PPC advertising prices climb higher and higher, you need to make the best use of each click-through to increase your ROI.

So how do you create a landing page that sells?

1. Create keyword groups for each landing page.
The first thing you need to do is some keyword research. You can do this in your PPC search engine of choice, or using a tool like Wordtracker.

Make a list of your best keywords for your subject--the keywords that your target market is searching for.

Then, group your keywords by similarity, making sure that each group solves a particular problem for your audience. You'll want to use each group of keywords to create a separate landing page.

Let's say, for example, that you sell an e-book on dog training. You do your keyword research and come up with a list of dog training keywords.

The next step is to go through this list and organize your keywords into groups that focus on specific dog training problems. For example, you might decide to focus on keyword phrases like this:

How to Train Dog
Leash Training for Show Dogs
Puppy Training
House Train Dog

Then, all you need to do is create one landing page for each keyword phrase. Of course, these keywords should also be the keywords you are bidding on in the PPC search engines.

Always make sure the content of your landing pages reflects exactly what your visitors will be looking for. If they click through an ad about puppy training and arrive at a landing page about training show dogs, they are likely to leave right away.

2. Build your landing page with a specific action in mind.
When you are building your landing page, you want to focus all of your energy on getting your visitor to take one action.

Do you want them to sign up for your newsletter? Or buy your product? Or enter a contest? Or give you feedback?

Whatever you do, don't complicate your page by attempting to do too much at once. Focus on the desired action, and use everything on the page to drive your visitor to take that action.

Make sure your navigation is not distracting or overpowering. Keep the process simple, and remove all clutter that distracts from your focus.

Imagine that your potential customer is standing behind you, reading your landing page copy over your shoulder and saying, "So what? What's in it for me?"

Every step of your landing page should drive this potential customer toward the desired action. That means including plenty of benefits, and always including a call to action that tells your visitor what to do next.

3. Optimize your landing page for the search engines.
The first thing your customers should see when they get to your landing page is your main keyword phrase as part of the headline. Of course, this is beneficial for search engine optimization, but try to make it as compelling as possible, too.

The key is to couple your keyword phrase with the biggest benefit your site has to offer. For example, if your main keyword phrase is "how to train a dog," your headline could be:

How To Train A Dog to Do Anything
You Want
-- In the Next 48 Hours!
You'll want to focus on your main keyword phrase ("how to train a dog") in your copy, too, but try to work in some of the other keyword phrases in your group. That means you'll want to use "why train your dog" and "how to train your dog" throughout your sales copy as well.

Here are some more tips for optimizing your landing page for the search engines:

• Use your main keyword phrase to name the page location. For example, the page could be uploaded to: www.mysite.com/howtotrainadog.
• Include your keyword phrases in your title tag and your meta description. You'll find these at the top of your HTML code, and the search engines generally use these tags to create the listings that show up in the search results
• Include some fun images, but don't distract your visitors from the desired action. And use your keyword phrases to name your images. Use the same phrase in your alt text as well.
• Use formatting to emphasize your keywords. Use bold, italics, and highlighting to feature your keywords. This will help improve your SEO, but don't forget to emphasize the benefits for your readers, too!
• Use your keyword phrase in your call to action. For example, your call to action could say: Click here now to order "How to Train a Dog to Do Anything You Want"!

So now that you know what you should include in your effective landing pages, let's have a look at what you need to avoid.

There are a few simple mistakes that people often make on their landing pages, and they pay for them dearly. If you can avoid these four mistakes, your landing pages will be far more effective at converting your click-throughs into sales.

Mistake 1: Don't make users have to register to see more information. Google AdWords frowns upon this practice and will usually either disallow your keyword or raise your cost per click on that keyword.

Mistake 2: Don't use duplicate content on your landing pages! Make sure all the information on your landing page is unique--not content given to you from affiliate sites or manufacturer descriptions. Duplicate content can severely damage your search engine rankings.

Mistake 3: Don't forget to have an opt-in offer to collect e-mail addresses on your landing page. Offer your visitors an incentive, like a newsletter, e-book, whitepaper or e-mail course so you can collect their e-mail addresses and market to them again and again after they leave your site!

Mistake 4: Don't forget to test your landing page. Testing is the key to the success of any online endeavor, and with PPC advertising and landing pages, it's absolutely crucial. Test different headlines, keyword groups, sales copy and different offers until you get the desired results.

Make landing pages part of your PPC campaign and watch your conversions fly!