Today, I want to let you in on a little secret of mine.

You see, if you’ve ever been told it costs thousands of rands to set up a website… You’ve been lied to.

Right now, I know of a clever (no-cost) way to set up a website. And best of all you can have your site up and running by tonight. All you have to do is visit the website: www.webs.com.

It’s a great, user-friendly site. It literally “holds your hand” and help you to create your website. Plus, I love their bonus reporting tools. You can track how many people visit your site a day, where they’re located and even what they looked at. It’s fantastic!

My colleague in the UK Glenn first told me about it. And I must admit, I was a bit sceptical at first. But I decided to try it out myself. And it worked, just like he said!

If you’d like to take a look at my finished site just visit: http://africanpoem.webs.com/. And in case you’re wondering why I chose to create a website about Africa. Well, it’s because I’m passionate about all things African (and that includes helping you to start a brand new African business!).

So whether you’re looking to create an info-based site for your new business or a website that’ll help you sell products online – www.webs.com - is one of the best website builders I’ve come across to date. (And believe me – I’m not being paid a single cent to say that!).



But showing you how to create your own (no-cost) website isn’t the only secret I want to share with you today. You see, it’s all fine and well to help you create a website – but a website is only useful if people can actually find it. And right now Google is in the process of changing its SEO ranking rules. But today, Internet marketer, Edwin Huertas will show how to still rank high on Google. But before he does – I have a question for you: If you could start any business tomorrow (and cost wasn’t an obstacle) what would you start? Let me know by emailing me: pascale@fsp.co.za.

 

What the latest shift in search engine rankings means for your site
(Edwin Huertas)



The world of search engine optimisation (SEO) is in an uproar these days. If you have an Internet-based business, you need to know what’s going on – and how you can take advantage of SEO

As you know, SEO is all about getting your site listed in the search engines’ top results. The higher up in the results you rank, the better chance you have of capturing your prospective customer’s attention. Get them to click on your link, and you are on your way to making a sale.

So knowing how to get those coveted high rankings is critical to the success of your Internet business.



The way that search engines currently spider, rate, and index a website depend on various factors, including link popularity, content, site structure, and a mixture of other variables. All of these can be manipulated by most webmasters and SEO specialists.

But this could be changing very soon!

The word on the Net is that search engines are changing the way they spider and index websites to help them serve better results to their search audience. They are incorporating new ranking algorithms that will take into consideration input that is submitted by “real people” (as opposed to primarily software calculations).



Google (and others) will give higher priority to sites that Web surfers vote for. The way a Web surfer “votes” for a website will be completely transparent. It will not be something that can be easily manipulated by webmasters and SEO specialists.

If this happens, we will see an entirely different pattern emerge – and it will affect thousands of websites across the Net.

Many that were once showing up in the top 10 results will no longer be there. New sites (rated using the latest algorithms) will take their place.

Google currently asks Web surfers (normally users that are logged into their Google account) to move their search results around, based on the surfer’s own idea of how important each one is. If they like a certain page in the search results, they can move it higher on the list so that anytime they search for the same keyword(s) they will be presented with their own personalised set of results.

Google claims that this data is not currently calculated in their existing algorithms, but I seriously doubt that.

 

Search engines are constantly looking to improve their search results. By using actual feedback provided by their users, they can get a better understanding of what Web surfers consider relevant.

So that’s the main thing that I think will make a difference in the way results are ranked in the future: Web users will have more influence. In addition, I believe the search engines will be spidering online videos, article comments, and social media.

Having videos on your website helps your SEO now. (Webmasters love to link to good videos.) But if a search engine can actually read the contents of a video, you might have to give more serious consideration to the content of the videos on your site than you have in the past.



According to many SEO analysts, search engines will be looking at criteria like these when scoring your Web pages:



• How often have Web surfers moved (voted) your listing to the top of the results?

• What type of searches have those users performed in the past?

• How many times has your page been bookmarked (voted for) on a major social networking site (i.e., Digg.com, LinkedIn.com, and StumbleUpon.com)?

• How many other sites are talking about your site?

• Does your Web page have video? If so, how long do people watch it?

• How often do website visitors return to your page?

• How many comments does your page have on it? (More people posting comments on your page means more popularity, as far as search engines are concerned.)



What you can do about the “new” ranking rules



The new search engine ranking methods are sure to bring a lot of changes to the world of search engine optimisation. But don’t worry. You won’t have to learn a bunch of new SEO tactics. One thing will always hold true: CONTENT IS KING.

Plain and simple, if you have good Web content, surfers will bookmark it, comment on it, and talk about it on other websites. Whether you are offering useful videos or informative articles, people appreciate high-quality content. And search engines will take notice. This will continue to boost your SEO efforts more than anything else.
With that said, keep in mind that no one knows for sure what the search engines are going to do. They guard their secrets like the CIA guards theirs. We can only make an educated guess as to what the future of SEO holds, and try to keep on top of the latest changes.