There are so many people out there that claim to know about Search Engine Optimization and who claim to know what it means to have an SEO-friendly website, it makes one wonder if all of these people really know what the process is all about. Chances are you, the website owner, hired someone with the idea that you were getting great SEO result and found that your results were only mediocre at best.

Oddly enough, it is not just smaller companies that are confused by the entire SEO issue, but larger firms suffer from SEO confusion. Also, higher priced doesn’t always mean better service. Shop around and ask the hard questions before hiring an SEO firm.

The thing to remember is that SEO has changed since the beginning. Search engine algorithms have evolved and are far more sophisticated. This evolution means that the guidelines are continually changing.

A New Idea

SEO is a little more than ten years old. In the beginning, webmasters began optimizing sites by submitting a page or two to search engines that would then send out a searchbot or spider to crawl that page, extract links to the other pages in the site and gather the information found on the pages it finds.

The process involved a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine’s own server when a second application, known as an indexer, extracts the information found on the pages. The information about the pages, such as the words found on the pages, links, where everything is located on the page, is then placed into a scheduler to be crawled again at a later date.

Early versions of search engine algorithms relied solely on the webmaster providing information through the metatags, or index files. Metatags provided a kind of road map to the page’s content. As soon as webmasters realized this was the procedure, it became an unreliable system because webmasters could manipulate keywords and descriptions so that they had nothing at all to do with the actual page content.

Google is Born in 1998

All of this changed when Google arrived on the scene in 1998. Not only was Google’s simple page design appealing to Internet users, users liked the off-page factors such as page ranking and the on-page analysis of a website. This eliminated the keyword manipulation that plagued other search engines.

SEO Today

SEO today is improving the volume of website traffic and the quality of visitors to the site via the use of targeted keywords. An SEO expert has to think like their consumer, and they also have to understand how the algorithms work. SEO should involve the site’s code, overall design, text-rich content, accurate navigation and eliminate anything that would prevent a spider from crawling the entire site.

In addition to organic searches to the site, a good SEO firm will establish a pay-per-click advertising campaign to boost site visibility. Google considers popularity a major factor when ranking a page.

A well-conceived plan will attack the web from several different angles at the same time. Social networking is an important factor as well as inbound links. The inbound links have to be chosen carefully and have a relationship to the website in some way. Otherwise, Google may consider the site simply a link farm.

Ciniva Systems employees the very best SEO techniques to assist the website owner in achieving as high a ranking as possible.

Karen Vertigan Pope writes for Ciniva Systems, an award winning Virginia web design company. Ciniva specializes in web design and SEO. Ms. Vertigan Pope is the Project Support Manager for Ciniva Systems.

Cinnamon for diabetes is one of the hottest topics in natural products today. The problem is, there are a lot of people who are otherwise experts on diabetes but who don’t know much about herbs putting out a lot of misinformation about it.

My own claim to expertise on the subject is, other than having been involved in designing a clinical trial to test the efficacy of cinnamon for diabetes and having written a few books on herbal medicine, I’m also a former formulator of some of the kinds of products you find on store shelves.

The good news about cinnamon for diabetes is, it sometimes actually works. The bad news about cinnamon for diabetes is, it doesn’t always work for diabetes, and there’s more than one kind of cinnamon.

The cinnamon that has been documented in published clinical research is Cinnamomum cassia. Despite what some “experts” say, this isn’t the kind of cinnamon you sprinkle on your oatmeal or you get with cinnamon rolls, at least if you’re getting the good stuff. That other kind of cinnamon is Cinnamomum zeylanicum. <i?Cinnamomum cassia is dark brown, whereas the milder Cinnamomum zeylanicum is more of a tan.

Cinnamomum cassia is a slightly bitter, not quite as aromatic variety of cinnamon used in South Asian cuisine. It’s not the kind used in quality baked goods. It’s the kind used in curry.

Cinnamomum cassia is a centuries-old Ayurvedic and Udani (Pakistani) remedy. And it’s the herb that was used in the now-famous study conducted in Pakistan and monitored in the US.

This study of the use of 1, 3, or 6 grams (1 gram = 1,000 mg) of cinnamon every day for 40 days found that on average in a group of diabetics who did not have any other treatment:

• Fasting glucose was lowered 18 to 29 per cent. For most diabetics, this would be something in the range of 30-50 mg/dl, or 1-2.5 mM.

• LDL, or “bad,” cholesterol was lowered 7 to 27 per cent.

• Total cholesterol was lowered 12 to 26 per cent without any loss of the protective HDL cholesterol.

• Fasting triglycerides were lowerd 23 to 30 per cent.

What’s even better was, the benefits continued even after the clinical trial participants quit taking cinnamon. And more was not necessarily better. The optimum dose was 3,000 mg a day, not 6,000 mg.

So what’s the catch?

The people who benefited most from taking cinnamon in this study (and in several others) were people who had type 2 diabetes and who didn’t have access to any other medication. They weren’t in severe distress from high blood sugars, but they probably did have sugars running 220 mg/dl (10+ mM). Cinnamon got sugars down to 140 mg/dl (7 mM) or so.

Cinnamon–and remember, it has to be the right kind of cinnamon–helps a whole lot of if you’re just diagnosed and struggling to find some way to get your sugars down. No doctor is going to tell you it’s enough, but the fact is, it can help.

If your goal is to get your morning blood sugar from 90 mg/dl to 85, cinnamon won’t help you all that much.

What about the other kind of cinnamon? Well, basically, it’s tasty. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Just be sure the product you take for diabetes is labeled Cinnamomum cassia. It doesn’t have to be an expensive extract. The cheaper capsules of pure cinnamon work just as well.

Robert Rister is the author or co-author of nine books on natural health including the critically acclaimed Complete German Commission E Monographs and Healing without Medication. You can find a growing collection of evidence-based articles on natural self-healing at his website http://www.homeremedycompanion.com

Affiliate marketing is a very successful method of promoting and selling items in the marketplace. This commercial strategy is employed both online and offline. Companies, organizations, and individuals all use this marketing technique to promote products, services, and programs.

What is affiliate marketing? Let’s examine a very basic model. A company has a product that it has developed and realizes that the new product will require special marketing methods to make it successful in the marketplace. The company engages affiliate marketers to promote and sell the new product. The affiliates are paid a commission when they make a sale.

This example outlines the role of the affiliate marketer. However, the experienced affiliate will only promote products that are part of an affiliate program that also involves “residual income”. This method of compensation is of benefit to all parties involved.

Affiliate Marketing utilizing 2 different compensation plans:-

Plan #1 - This plan calls for the affiliate to promote the product in the marketplace. When the sale is made, the affiliate is paid a commission. This means that after each sale, the affiliate has to find a new prospect that then can be turned into a satisfied client. To earn more money, he must start the process all over again.

Plan #2 - Residual income is what creates the difference between these 2 plans. Let me explain. The same new product that is in plan #1 can be marketed using Plan#2 as a compensation plan. The affiliate is paid a commission at the time a sale is made. And he also receives an on-going commission.
As an example, the company sells their new product outright. This product requires future servicing and maintenance. The affiliate sells the service contract to the new client when the new product is sold.The service contract is payable on a monthly basis. Each and every month the affiliate marketer is paid a commission, for as long as the contract remains in effect.

In each of these plans, the affiliate marketer is paid for his efforts. Plan#1 is simply one sale, one commission, and start all over again. Plan#2 is much more interesting, and not just for the affiliate. The
affiliate will receive more and more commissions as every month more clients are sold the new product.
The company also gains by using a commission plan with residual income as a means of compensation.
As the monthly residual commissions increase, the affiliate has more reason to continue promoting the product. This in turn helps the company as they then retain the services of successful and experienced
marketers, to further promote their product.

Affiliate marketing is a tried and proven method for the successful promotion of Internet products and services. When this marketing technique is teamed up with a proven home based business, it is a formula for success. Residual income has a definite role in making the success even better for all partners in the plan.

Bruce Fraser is an affiliate of several internet programs. Although new to the Web, he draws from his previous “careers” in the “real world”. The author spent almost 20 years in Sales/Marketing. More recently he headed up his own residential renovations contracting firm.

An examlpe of affiliate marketing involving 6 compatible streams can be seen at: http://www.brucefraser4444.com