One of the most common or standard home loans is the fixed rate home loan but then it is not for everyone. There are certain fixed rate home loans, which have restrictions on any type of extra repayments or even an early payout. If you take such home loan then it will prevent you from paying your off earlier than the scheduled date. Of course there are some flexible fixed home loans where you can pay it off as quickly as possible without having to wait to go through the entire schedule.

One of the important features of a fixed home loan is the interest rate. All fixed home loans have a fixed interest rate for the entire period of the loan. This can be seen as a drawback especially in the light of the fact that the interest rate might become lower in the variable loans. But variable interest rate loans also have a drawback and are that is if the interest rate starts to go up then you will end up paying more than you would have been paying in a fixed interest rate loan. If it was a gamble, you would be better off with a fixed home loan as opposed to a variable home loan.

One of the good things about the fixed home loans is that you will know in advance what the monthly payments will be for the entire period/schedule because the interest rate has been locked, which is not possible in variable loans. If your financial status doesn’t permit you to make extra payments or beyond a certain point then variable home loans are not for you.

Fact of the matter is that in Australia, there has been another hike in the interest rates, which has caused flutter among homeowners especially borrowers who have taken the variable interest rate home loan. Many potential borrowers are even contemplating switching to fixed rate home loan. The one thing that you need to focus on is the monthly payment. With this rise in the interest rate, you will have to make a higher monthly payment and it seems like there is no slow down in the interest rate in the near future.
In Australia, the interest rate in the month of August 2007 caused most of the rates applicable on a standard variable loan to increase by 7.4% and most of the banks offered around 8.32%. At the same time there are plenty of fixed loans that are offering rates that are below the 7.7% mark and applicable for all home loans in the 1-5 year payout period.

What is the best way to get your site into the search engines? Search engines obtain your URL either by you manually submitting your web pages directly to search engines or by other websites having a link to your website. Once it is recognized, then search engines send out their spider or (bot) to review your website. After landing on your site, the spider begins to read all the content in the body of your web pages, including markup elements, all the links to other web pages and outbound links to other websites, plus elements from the page head including some meta tags depending on the search engine and the title tag.

Once finished browsing and gathering the information in your content then it goes back to it is central database for indexing which can be several months 2 to 3.

Spiders follow links on pages, repeating same procedures over and over again. Spiders are not always to bright, for lack of a better term, dumb. They usually follow basic HTML coding. Encasing a link in a JavaScript that spiders will not comprehend is usually not the best way to go about it, spiders basically will ignore both the JavaScript and the link. Same thing goes for forms, spiders are not able fill forms out and click the submit button.

Understanding what spiders see, try accessing your web pages with a Lynx browser from a Unix server. Lynx is a no graphic website, it does not support JavaScripts, this site displays only text and regular a href tags. This is what the spider can see and indexes. Does your web pages work without graphics or JavaScript? If not, the spidering will not work either, and that calls for an immediate back track to redo your site.

Once the Search Engine has all your content in its database, it runs an algorithm (a mathematical formula) compared with your content. Algorithms are unique to each Search Engines and are constantly reformatted, but, in essence, all search engine look for the important words on your web pages based on word density how often your keywords or phrases are used in respect to the total amount of content and they assign a value to these words based on the code surrounding the words.

They also go back to the links on your web pages, searches and looks for what other websites, or pages on the same site, are linking to that page. More links on a page equals more importance to that website by search engines. Having one way links from other sites linking to your website is VERY IMPORTANT, It has nothing to do with optimizing your website and I will be covering that in a future article. Optimization wise it is recommended, to assure you link to your important web pages from more than just the index page, e.g., create a primary navigation that appears on all pages.

(SEO) Tip 1 Rule #1 of search engine optimization SEO. Prevent your website design to interfere in such a way that the code hinders the spider bot from being able to index it. Which means avoiding pages with graphics and no text pages that contain all images, or flash only. I must say that web design and SEO should go hand in hand. When someone lands on a website and encounters is a log-in page, before being able to see the site information text or content, then that is what spiders will see and it will pause right their, so think a little further and let experts in the field show you step by step what you should do.

Have you thought of building Web Pages entirely in Flash, DO NOT. If you have no choice, then read my previous column, Search Engine Optimization and No HTML Sites.

(SEO) Tip 2 Finding out what spiders see on your web pages is important, run a spider simulator on all of your pages. The simulator exposes what is visible to the spiders in text and in links. There are plenty on the market at various different prices, but if your looking for a free one you can see Search Engine Spider Simulator.

(SEO) Tip 3 Every website should have a file named robots.txt. In this file there are instructions the spiders will follow as to what directories they should not spider READ. Assure to have this file present so it may permit the permission for spiders to view the content on your site. This includes access to content and to CSS. You can also detain it from reading certain pages on your site.

There is a bit of confusion about search engine optimization. Some people think that SEO (the abbreviated form) is nothing more than tricking search engines into giving a high ranking for a particular site. Others think that search engine optimization is so complex that they could not possibly understand it. Neither of these views are correct. Search engine optimization is best defined as the art and science of building web pages that are both search engine friendly and user friendly. Below are four basic steps that you should take when optimizing your web pages.

1. Your web design should emphasize text and not graphics.

“Search engine friendly” means that search engines should be able to find data on your site that they can put in their data bases. While a picture may be worth a thousand words, a search engine is trying to classify pages by text and not by images. If you have an opening page with a beautiful picture of the sea and only two words of text saying “enter here” then this page will not rank high in searches for Florida Vacations. Similarly if you have a headline with important text containing your site’s keywords it should not be displayed as a gif or jpeg image. Pages that are all flash or all images are not search engine friendly, and often are not user friendly as well.

2. Links to your interior pages should be easily found by search engines

An important thing to remember is that you want not only your main page, but all of your interior pages to be included in the search engine index. While most people will probably enter your site through the main page, many will enter after doing searches which lead them to your inner pages. The best way to make sure that search engines will find and index your inner pages is to include text links to these pages. If you have navigation system which uses Java script or images, then it is best to add an additional text link navigation bar at the bottom of the site to ensure that the robot follows the links to your inner pages.

3. Your pages should be built around specific keywords or keyword phrases

Robotic search engines and human users have one thing in common: they are trying to figure out what your site or your particular web page is all about. It is not possible to get high rankings for thirty different search terms with only one web page. However it is possible to build separate web pages which explain and give importance to various aspects of your organization’s activity. These sub pages can be optimized so that they perform well in searches for your various keywords.

4. Once your material is organized, then your keywords should appear in strategic portions of your web pages

If your site is about Florida Vacations, then these words should appear in the following places of your html pages:

a. In the file name or the url.

If your site is called http://www.floridavacations.com then this will give you a head start in any searches for this term. Similarly if your company is called XYZ Travels you may have a web page with this url: [http://www.xyztravels.com/floridavacations.html]

The url or file name is an important indicator to a search engine, so don’t miss the opportunity to put your important term either in your main domain name or in your file names.

b. In the title tag

The text that is displayed in the blue line at the top of your browser is your title tag. The title tag is located in the
section of the document. If your main phrase is “Florida Vacations” then the title tag in your html document should look something like this: Florida Vacations: Florida Vacation Information by XYZ travel

c. In the Description tag

The description tag is not seen on the web page but search engines often display it as the text which gives the searcher an idea of what your page is about. The description tag should be compelling, and make someone want to click and see your page, while also containing the keywords that are in your url and your title tag. A description tag for this site might look as follows:

d. In the headlines

Just as someone reading a newspaper looks at headlines to find out what is important, a search engine robot looks at the headlines of a web page in order to pick up the essential feature of that page. Put your main phrase in a headline and place it near the top of the page. Your headline text should be enclosed with special header tags such as h1, h2, h3. A headline tag for our hypothetical page could be written as follows: h1 Florida Vacations: Plan Your Vacation Now And Save Money or Accommodations, Entertainment and Transport in Florida h1

If you don’t like the look of the h1 tag, then use a smaller tag, h2 or h3, or adjust your site
‘s style sheet so that the h1 tag is displayed in a small font which better matches your body text.

e. In the body text of your page

Your main keywords or key phrase should appear in the first paragraph of text and in a natural way throughout the text and also at the end of the page. In normal writing you would first introduce your subject, then explain what it is about and then summarize at the end. Follow this same procedure when you start writing your web page. Pages written in this style will automatically have correct keyword density and distribution.

f. In anchor text on your page

Anchor text is the clickable portion of links on your web page. Suppose you are describing your Florida Vacations and you want to direct your web visitors to an inside page with more information about this subject. Instead of making a link that says “click here,” it would be better to have a link that says “Click here for more information about Florida Vacations” or even better, the link text will only be “Florida Vacations” and the “click here” will be rendered as normal text.

If you follow these search-engine-optimization steps when building your website you will end up with web pages that are easily understood by your visitors, and easily classified and indexed by search engines.

Search engines acts as a bridge between millions of web pages and humans. Without the help of these friendly search engines, these sites would have remained hidden for many of us. Imagine finding a web page without the help of a Search engine? Your attempt will be a failure if you are not using a popular search engine. As of now, Search engines are the only source to find reliable information, which are scattered, in millions of web pages. It makes sharing of web pages an easy task. Day and night, these Search Engines work very hard without any interruption, to produce valuable search results for us.

All the pages in the world of Internet are linked each other via links. If one page exists independently, without any links pointing towards it, it will be hidden for search engines. Search engines find a web site through the links placed by these web sites in other sites. When the spider sent by a Search Engine visits a particular page it looks for further links after analyzing the web page. The links placed in a very popular page will be seen by these Search engines as a valuable source of information. Through these links it understands about websites. The keywords mentioned in the WebPages are also an important source of information for search engines. With these keywords and links, they are able to produce relevant results from among millions of web pages.

Search engines regularly update their database with the updated information it fetches from millions of web pages around the globe. It is then stored in a database format for future use. These regular updating periodically makes it more reliable in an ever-changing world.

Search engine optimization can make or break your website and therefore your online business will do little to nothing in the earning money aspect of internet marketing. Time spent learning proper SEO strategies will be time well spent and your time is valuable so don’t waste it.

What does an internet marketing need to know for proper search engine optimization? Well to me you need to know more or at least apply more SEO knowledge than those site owners you want to pass in the search engines. It’s that straight forward.

You can pay me or others to have your web pages optimized to give you the best bang for your buck in the search engines and that will get you listed higher which gives you a better chance at making a sale. Of course even if you get visitors it doesn’t mean you sales copy will sell them, but that’s for another day and another article, isn’t it.

I always enjoy being paid but at the same time the teacher in me wants you to learn to do this for yourself so keep your money and read on…

Search Engine Optimization Strategy One:

Learn what others are doing to make their web page land on the first search engine results page. Discover all you can about each site that gets listing on the first two pages of results. At least the first two pages so you get an understanding and you will also find more than one strategy being used, so pay close attention.

How do you find those sites, well you have to use the keywords that represent your product to your target group. You will even learn of new keywords and phrases as you start to dissect your competitors web pages.

Example: If you are promoting ‘car care products’ then you go to Google and do a search for this term. Do two searches on this phrase and any other phrases you are using. One without quotes and one with quotes.

Doing two searches this way will let you know how many sites are out there promoting based on the exact same keyword phrase your are using.

Google: “car care products” = 606,000

Google: car care products = 38,200,000

From this you can see that there are 600 thousand pages out there about car care products and that means you would have a lot of competition.

Once you have your search engine results page for your search term in quotes start looking through the results and take notes.

What are you looking for?

1. You want to learn how they use the search term or keyword phrase on their page.

This means that you need to look at the headings and paragraphs to see how many times that phrase was used and the exact location it was used.

Was the phrase bolded or italized, is it in a header one, is the phrase a hyper link anywhere on the page?

Learn all you can from the browser page.

2. Open the source code for the web page you are researching and see what other keywords and phrases they use.

What are the other keywords? You will later do the same research on the new keywords you find.

If you do this and use the same strategies for keywords and phrase placement you will increase your own page ranking. Do this consistently and you will be able to pass those that are ranked ahead of you.

Look for other strategies from us on search engine optimization strategies that work.