Google has extended its lead in US search share rankings, according to a report undertaken by Nielsen Online.
The October 2008 data - ranked by total searches - found the online resource accounted for 61.2 per cent, an 8.1 per cent year-on-year rise.
Yahoo! received a 16.9 per cent share - a 12 per cent drop since the last survey - with MSN/Windows Live Search at 11.4 per cent.
In news that may be of interest to search engine optimisation businesses, AOL's search received 4.3 per cent of the survey - seeing over 334 million queries.
The study revealed an estimated 4.8 billion searches were conducted using Google Search over the given time period.
In other news, Microsoft has been rumoured to be rebranding its Windows Live Search to Kumo.com, according to various reports.
LiveSide confirmed the company has bought the domain name and is directing internal traffic to the location.
News brought to you by ClickThrough - specialists in Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing.
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Sunday, November 30, 2008
Measuring the Success of an SEO Campaign: Conversions
This is part 3 of my occasional series on “Measuring the Success of an SEO Campaign”. The first part was about the long tail and the second was using search engine traffic levels. This third instalment uses one of the many other metrics available to website owners: conversion.
We post about conversion quite often on this blog, because it is an important element of your website. We’ve given lots of tips on how to improve your site conversions. However, it can have some drawbacks to using it as an SEO metric.
There can be issues with using different measurement of conversion e.g. Adwords and Analytics track conversions differently - this means that in Analytics a sale or lead could be marked as an SEO conversion but in Adwords, the PPC ad would get the credit.
Conversions are much more subject to on-page issues – no two websites ever convert the same. Additionally, making changes on a site can make big differences which are not related to SEO. Changing onsite forms can be a great way of increasing the number of signups. I recently had a customer who implemented a page redesign to make his form more prominent, and literally doubled his number of conversions overnight.
Likewise, there are some on-site issues that are outside the control of the SEO company, which is why you find very few SEO companies that will agree to a profit related payment scheme. Some basic examples of this are sites where the products are too expensive, so although people might find your site in their research process, they will choose to buy elsewhere. Another one is having a ranking for a very broad keyword, and although visitors come to your site, they don’t find the product they are looking for.
There are also the other elements of post-click marketing, which are particularly pertinent to ecommerce websites, such as availability/stock levels, delivery times, return policies and delivery costs, many of which are checked by a potential purchaser in their selection of which vendor to use. Trust elements also come into play, whether it is the use of HackerSafe logos, customer testimonials or previous vendor experience. The customer journey through a purchase decision has a myriad of different on-site elements.
On the other hand, real hard sales or leads is a firm number to attribute to a marketing outlay in order to generate an ROI figure, and can’t be ignored as a success metric.
If you don’t already track conversions, then you should figure out a way to do so. It could be as simple as adding a form to your site, or a custom email address or telephone number to track offline conversions. Trial print out and bring in vouchers if you have bricks and mortar stores. Always ask your customers where they heard about you from – the answers are a vital feedback into all your marketing processes.
Read More..
We post about conversion quite often on this blog, because it is an important element of your website. We’ve given lots of tips on how to improve your site conversions. However, it can have some drawbacks to using it as an SEO metric.
There can be issues with using different measurement of conversion e.g. Adwords and Analytics track conversions differently - this means that in Analytics a sale or lead could be marked as an SEO conversion but in Adwords, the PPC ad would get the credit.
Conversions are much more subject to on-page issues – no two websites ever convert the same. Additionally, making changes on a site can make big differences which are not related to SEO. Changing onsite forms can be a great way of increasing the number of signups. I recently had a customer who implemented a page redesign to make his form more prominent, and literally doubled his number of conversions overnight.
Likewise, there are some on-site issues that are outside the control of the SEO company, which is why you find very few SEO companies that will agree to a profit related payment scheme. Some basic examples of this are sites where the products are too expensive, so although people might find your site in their research process, they will choose to buy elsewhere. Another one is having a ranking for a very broad keyword, and although visitors come to your site, they don’t find the product they are looking for.
There are also the other elements of post-click marketing, which are particularly pertinent to ecommerce websites, such as availability/stock levels, delivery times, return policies and delivery costs, many of which are checked by a potential purchaser in their selection of which vendor to use. Trust elements also come into play, whether it is the use of HackerSafe logos, customer testimonials or previous vendor experience. The customer journey through a purchase decision has a myriad of different on-site elements.
On the other hand, real hard sales or leads is a firm number to attribute to a marketing outlay in order to generate an ROI figure, and can’t be ignored as a success metric.
If you don’t already track conversions, then you should figure out a way to do so. It could be as simple as adding a form to your site, or a custom email address or telephone number to track offline conversions. Trial print out and bring in vouchers if you have bricks and mortar stores. Always ask your customers where they heard about you from – the answers are a vital feedback into all your marketing processes.
Read More..
Aggressive Internet Marketing Made Possible
Aggressive internet marketing means full-blown marketing and promotions that exceed any businessman’s expectations. A business needs fierce internet marketing. No more, no less. But to make it low cost? Is that even possible? How can something so aggressive be affordable?
Luckily, you can avail of inexpensive aggressive internet marketing if you just look hard and good enough. Be keen and alert and know what’s going on in the online industry. The following questions will help you discern if your chosen internet site to do the marketing fits the bill.
1. Does the company offer free website design?
Even if you know your HTML, it is still more advisable if a professional team does it for you. Some internet marketing sites offer free web design to make sure that your site’s needs are met. It’s a must that marketing is integrated to the web design. If the company requires you to pay more than fifty bucks for the web design, then so much for straight-forward internet marketing! Look somewhere else!
2. How many keywords does your web site cater to?
Having too many keywords or key phrases to focus on will make your page ranking drop. Creating smaller web pages with content that emphasizes only a few keywords will serve Internet marketing endeavor better.
3. How search engine-compatible is your website?
Internet marketing is coined “aggressive” only if it is a hundred percent search engine-compatible. There are about 10 major search engines online and your site has to work accordingly with them. Find out if your internet marketing site is expert on search engine optimization.
4. Do you know your competitors?
Affordable aggressive internet marketing pushes your business forward by taking note of your competitors. Analysis and evaluation of the competition is mandatory to figure out your shortcomings and advantages over them. If this feature is excluded from your internet marketing plan, you’re getting a mediocre deal.
5. How efficient is the monthly marketing plan?
Usually, you’re asked to pay a monthly fee for the marketing plan. For a marketing plan to be efficient, it must zero in on the following things: webpage development, link exchanges, web content, updates and technical support. Of course, also included are the standard SEO, competition analysis and keyword density.
Read More..
Luckily, you can avail of inexpensive aggressive internet marketing if you just look hard and good enough. Be keen and alert and know what’s going on in the online industry. The following questions will help you discern if your chosen internet site to do the marketing fits the bill.
1. Does the company offer free website design?
Even if you know your HTML, it is still more advisable if a professional team does it for you. Some internet marketing sites offer free web design to make sure that your site’s needs are met. It’s a must that marketing is integrated to the web design. If the company requires you to pay more than fifty bucks for the web design, then so much for straight-forward internet marketing! Look somewhere else!
2. How many keywords does your web site cater to?
Having too many keywords or key phrases to focus on will make your page ranking drop. Creating smaller web pages with content that emphasizes only a few keywords will serve Internet marketing endeavor better.
3. How search engine-compatible is your website?
Internet marketing is coined “aggressive” only if it is a hundred percent search engine-compatible. There are about 10 major search engines online and your site has to work accordingly with them. Find out if your internet marketing site is expert on search engine optimization.
4. Do you know your competitors?
Affordable aggressive internet marketing pushes your business forward by taking note of your competitors. Analysis and evaluation of the competition is mandatory to figure out your shortcomings and advantages over them. If this feature is excluded from your internet marketing plan, you’re getting a mediocre deal.
5. How efficient is the monthly marketing plan?
Usually, you’re asked to pay a monthly fee for the marketing plan. For a marketing plan to be efficient, it must zero in on the following things: webpage development, link exchanges, web content, updates and technical support. Of course, also included are the standard SEO, competition analysis and keyword density.
Read More..
3 Reasons Why Organic Search Engine Optimization Will Thrive Against Social Media Optimization
Many marketers spot the uproar of social media sites over the past few months and they are considering whether social media optimization is a knowledge that they should focus on instead of the organic search engine optimization that they have been doing all this while.
In this article, we are going to look at why you should hold your focus with organic search engine optimization instead of jumping on the social media cruise. Are social media platforms better for marketing? Should you join everyone else to promote your products and services using sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg and tonnes of others?
Social Media Users Hate Promotions
People go to social media sites to interact with people, to have fun and to keep up with the news that they are interested in, not to be sold. This is why spam busting is a primary task for companies running social media sites. Marketing on these sites, if not properly planned, may cause more harm than good to your business.
Your business will be seen as a spamming company and current customers may even be irritated. As there is a natural barrier in the mind of social media users against marketers, one cannot blatantly sell these people stuffs and the barrier definitely makes marketing way difficult.
Relationship Building Takes Time
One might argue that marketers can sell to social media users if one takes the route of building relationship with them. However, relationship building is not something easy and cannot be mastered by reading ten to twenty books. Thus, the process is very time consuming although once succeeded, the relationships will become the greatest asset for a business.
Also, apart from building it, relationship requires maintenance as well. Having the relationships built doesn't mean that you can now send a stream of marketing messages. The process still requires consistent value adding and interaction.
Traffic Not Targeted Compared to Search Engines
Most marketers know this pretty well. A lot of marketers still "worship" major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN because they bring laser targeted traffic. Social media platforms like StumbleUpon and Digg can bring superior quantity of traffic and even crash your servers but the conversion rate of the traffic is proven to be very, very low.
Organic Search Engine Optimization or Social Media Optimization
Both the optimization methods can build a great long term asset for businesses. If your business is new, I would recommend you to get started with organic search engine optimization because you need to get more market share by having people landing on your site when searching for keywords that are related to what you are doing.
If your business have been up and running for a while, social media optimization will be crucial if you want to generate some buzz about your business. However, you should not lose focus on search engines as they are the ones that will bring in consistent and targeted visitors that already had their credit cards on their hands when visiting your site.
Read More..
In this article, we are going to look at why you should hold your focus with organic search engine optimization instead of jumping on the social media cruise. Are social media platforms better for marketing? Should you join everyone else to promote your products and services using sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg and tonnes of others?
Social Media Users Hate Promotions
People go to social media sites to interact with people, to have fun and to keep up with the news that they are interested in, not to be sold. This is why spam busting is a primary task for companies running social media sites. Marketing on these sites, if not properly planned, may cause more harm than good to your business.
Your business will be seen as a spamming company and current customers may even be irritated. As there is a natural barrier in the mind of social media users against marketers, one cannot blatantly sell these people stuffs and the barrier definitely makes marketing way difficult.
Relationship Building Takes Time
One might argue that marketers can sell to social media users if one takes the route of building relationship with them. However, relationship building is not something easy and cannot be mastered by reading ten to twenty books. Thus, the process is very time consuming although once succeeded, the relationships will become the greatest asset for a business.
Also, apart from building it, relationship requires maintenance as well. Having the relationships built doesn't mean that you can now send a stream of marketing messages. The process still requires consistent value adding and interaction.
Traffic Not Targeted Compared to Search Engines
Most marketers know this pretty well. A lot of marketers still "worship" major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN because they bring laser targeted traffic. Social media platforms like StumbleUpon and Digg can bring superior quantity of traffic and even crash your servers but the conversion rate of the traffic is proven to be very, very low.
Organic Search Engine Optimization or Social Media Optimization
Both the optimization methods can build a great long term asset for businesses. If your business is new, I would recommend you to get started with organic search engine optimization because you need to get more market share by having people landing on your site when searching for keywords that are related to what you are doing.
If your business have been up and running for a while, social media optimization will be crucial if you want to generate some buzz about your business. However, you should not lose focus on search engines as they are the ones that will bring in consistent and targeted visitors that already had their credit cards on their hands when visiting your site.
Read More..
Why SEO Is the Key to Internet Marketing
SEO is the key to an internet companies business, paying for this service can be beneficial. They specialize in knowing how to raise your search engine positions, monitoring those positions on the regular basis, and adjusting their strategies to account for undesirable results in any given month. It can take a long time to do Seo on your own site, paying some one to do it could save time rather than try to maintain high search engine positions on your own.
Your website’s ranking on search engines is a vital element of your overall marketing campaign, and there are ways to improve your link popularity through legitimate methods. There are a lot of webmasters that are trying to use different scams to gain link popularity.
Thankfully search engines are up to date, and are now on guard for “spam” pages and won’t allow those websites that are using spam methods. When a search engines tracks down such a site, that site is demoted in ranking or sometimes that website is disregarded from the search engine. Out of the many search engines some have paid inclusion This means that you pay the specific search engine an annual fee for your web page to be included in their index.
Even so every search engine has a method of finding you website online, and it does this for free. So whether you pay or not, your web page will eventually be indexed by all Internet search engines, as long as the spider can follow a link to your page. The issue for majority people is how fast their site can be indexed.
Setting up a webpage is the beginning part of marketing online, and the success or failure of your site depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your website goals. With out an established reason for you webpage it could mean, it will most likely fail to accomplish anything. Without goals to guide you in developing and monitoring your website, its only benefit would be for looking at.
Read More...
Your website’s ranking on search engines is a vital element of your overall marketing campaign, and there are ways to improve your link popularity through legitimate methods. There are a lot of webmasters that are trying to use different scams to gain link popularity.
Thankfully search engines are up to date, and are now on guard for “spam” pages and won’t allow those websites that are using spam methods. When a search engines tracks down such a site, that site is demoted in ranking or sometimes that website is disregarded from the search engine. Out of the many search engines some have paid inclusion This means that you pay the specific search engine an annual fee for your web page to be included in their index.
Even so every search engine has a method of finding you website online, and it does this for free. So whether you pay or not, your web page will eventually be indexed by all Internet search engines, as long as the spider can follow a link to your page. The issue for majority people is how fast their site can be indexed.
Setting up a webpage is the beginning part of marketing online, and the success or failure of your site depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your website goals. With out an established reason for you webpage it could mean, it will most likely fail to accomplish anything. Without goals to guide you in developing and monitoring your website, its only benefit would be for looking at.
Read More...
Friday, November 28, 2008
Google Search Wiki Move Your Results on Search Results
Google released new feature called Search Wiki, which lets users move search results, delete search results, comment, and rate. The feature is now default for all users with Google account and currently there is no way to opt out.
Where Did Search Wiki Come From?
The original project goes back to Google Labs, where Google experimented with “Digg” style search results.The project was at least 5 months in testing when Wikipedia’s “Wikia search” rolled out, with all the features Google is offering with their upgrade. Wikia Search did not get any real market share, but their idea of editable search results was apparently something that Google saw as a form of threat.
Though there’s no way to prove that Google was motivated by Wikipedia to roll out its own version of Search Wiki, I believe it had some influence, along with social media . The Diggs, Reddits, Sphinns and alike have been quite successful, so it makes sense to try this on the massive scale in search. Plus the benefits of success are worth the try.
SEO Impacts
- As you move pages up and down, Google shows how many people deleted the page, moved it up, moved it down, and commented on results. Over months, assuming percentage of people vote, Google can use this data in relevancy computation and partially rearrange default search results.
- Personalized search + vote = more power? Google knows our interests very well, especially if you use more than Google search (reader, gmail, etc). If it possible for Google to count votes for pages related to their interested more than those of user who does not have any search history on the topic?
- Reviews - according to “local search ranking factors” article, reviews play a big role in local rankings for local queries like hotels, restaurants and travel. Is it possible for a site with more reviews to be valued more than those without?
- If the feature is to stick, and actually find wide spread usage (we can’t guess), user experience will play bigger role in search engine optimization. Sites with killer content (tech crunch, search engine land) high usability and with optimized user flow will win, because they will be able to retain users, solve their problem, inform, teach and help them accomplish their task.
The Negatives
- The big downside is that many people unfamiliar with this feature will simply play around deleting results, moving them up/down, creating some noise. Google most likely considered this and may not count 10 first votes from a new user (wild guess, but makes sense to me)
- SPAM - how long before auto bots start creating Google accounts (capcha can be easily passed), and moving results, commenting, adding pages and just spamming search results? Spammers are very innovative, so expect to see some fun technologies develop in the next few months that take advantage of Search Wiki.
Read More..
Where Did Search Wiki Come From?
The original project goes back to Google Labs, where Google experimented with “Digg” style search results.The project was at least 5 months in testing when Wikipedia’s “Wikia search” rolled out, with all the features Google is offering with their upgrade. Wikia Search did not get any real market share, but their idea of editable search results was apparently something that Google saw as a form of threat.
Though there’s no way to prove that Google was motivated by Wikipedia to roll out its own version of Search Wiki, I believe it had some influence, along with social media . The Diggs, Reddits, Sphinns and alike have been quite successful, so it makes sense to try this on the massive scale in search. Plus the benefits of success are worth the try.
SEO Impacts
- As you move pages up and down, Google shows how many people deleted the page, moved it up, moved it down, and commented on results. Over months, assuming percentage of people vote, Google can use this data in relevancy computation and partially rearrange default search results.
- Personalized search + vote = more power? Google knows our interests very well, especially if you use more than Google search (reader, gmail, etc). If it possible for Google to count votes for pages related to their interested more than those of user who does not have any search history on the topic?
- Reviews - according to “local search ranking factors” article, reviews play a big role in local rankings for local queries like hotels, restaurants and travel. Is it possible for a site with more reviews to be valued more than those without?
- If the feature is to stick, and actually find wide spread usage (we can’t guess), user experience will play bigger role in search engine optimization. Sites with killer content (tech crunch, search engine land) high usability and with optimized user flow will win, because they will be able to retain users, solve their problem, inform, teach and help them accomplish their task.
The Negatives
- The big downside is that many people unfamiliar with this feature will simply play around deleting results, moving them up/down, creating some noise. Google most likely considered this and may not count 10 first votes from a new user (wild guess, but makes sense to me)
- SPAM - how long before auto bots start creating Google accounts (capcha can be easily passed), and moving results, commenting, adding pages and just spamming search results? Spammers are very innovative, so expect to see some fun technologies develop in the next few months that take advantage of Search Wiki.
Read More..
What makes a great search engine optimization firm?
• An seo firm with a record of success
• An seo company that is ethical and that avoids gray hat and black hat seo tactics, which risk being penalized by Google.
• An seo firm that is 100% open and honest about the types of tactics they will use to achieve the desired results.
• An seo company that has affordable solutions
• One that puts your interests first. One that cares how your business does.
• One that tracks results and return on investment.
Read More..
• An seo company that is ethical and that avoids gray hat and black hat seo tactics, which risk being penalized by Google.
• An seo firm that is 100% open and honest about the types of tactics they will use to achieve the desired results.
• An seo company that has affordable solutions
• One that puts your interests first. One that cares how your business does.
• One that tracks results and return on investment.
Read More..
3 Organic Search Engine Optimization Benefits For Your Business and Marketing Efforts
Organic search engine optimization is a form of optimization for search engines which involves optimizing your site to the preference of search engines. This includes adhering to search engines' quality guidelines, providing value to visitors and understanding the few techniques that will push a site up on the results page for certain keywords.
In this article, you are going to learn about 3 benefits that organic search engine optimization will bring to your business and marketing efforts. Trust me, you will want to learn the benefits now and quickly move on to the techniques as the time when your competitors master the knowledge, you will be left out in the cold.
Targeted Visitors for Leads and Sales
Why search engines? When you have a question about a certain topic, which part of the Internet will you go to? When you have doubts whether to make a purchase, what will you use to seek for a product review and experience of others? The likely answer for both the questions will be the search engines, primarily Google, Yahoo and MSN.
If you are able to rank for a set of keywords that your potential customers are searching for daily, you stand out among your competitors to collect their information as leads and to present your product in front of them before your competitors.
Also, this is not rubbish traffic from traffic exchange sites or paid robot traffic. Traffic from search engines comprises of real people in dire needs for solutions and they will pull out their credit cards to make a purchase if your website copy that they landed on is persuasive enough to show them that your business can be their best solution provider.
Prolific Online Presence Building
Let's say that you are in the taxation advice business. If you are able to rank for most taxation keywords on the search engines, you are indirectly branding your company in front of your customers. If most of the major search engines recommend your site for most of the keywords that your business is related to, users will naturally think that you are the expert in your industry.
With thousands of sites popping up on the Internet everyday, you need to brand your business well in order to keep existing customers and attract new customers.
No Perpetual Payments for Enduring Benefits
I know what you are thinking about now. You saw some yellowish sponsored results by the side of the search results and you quickly thought of paying the major search engines for a listing. It's a nice idea but organic search engine optimization has way more to offer than the paid advertising model.
Ranking for keywords organically does not require any recurring payments to the search engines. Even if you plan to outsource the optimization process, the projects often involve one off payments rather than a recurring billing system like the pay per click model. Also, once you rank top for a certain keyword, it will be really hard for someone to beat you so competing for keywords organically definitely brings enduring benefits at a lower price.
Want to master all the techniques for organic search engine optimization (SEO) way before your competitors and bring in more sales to your business from today onwards? Click here to get The SEO Mindset, the one and only organic search engine tutorial that will show your all the nitty gritty bits of SEO.
Read More..
In this article, you are going to learn about 3 benefits that organic search engine optimization will bring to your business and marketing efforts. Trust me, you will want to learn the benefits now and quickly move on to the techniques as the time when your competitors master the knowledge, you will be left out in the cold.
Targeted Visitors for Leads and Sales
Why search engines? When you have a question about a certain topic, which part of the Internet will you go to? When you have doubts whether to make a purchase, what will you use to seek for a product review and experience of others? The likely answer for both the questions will be the search engines, primarily Google, Yahoo and MSN.
If you are able to rank for a set of keywords that your potential customers are searching for daily, you stand out among your competitors to collect their information as leads and to present your product in front of them before your competitors.
Also, this is not rubbish traffic from traffic exchange sites or paid robot traffic. Traffic from search engines comprises of real people in dire needs for solutions and they will pull out their credit cards to make a purchase if your website copy that they landed on is persuasive enough to show them that your business can be their best solution provider.
Prolific Online Presence Building
Let's say that you are in the taxation advice business. If you are able to rank for most taxation keywords on the search engines, you are indirectly branding your company in front of your customers. If most of the major search engines recommend your site for most of the keywords that your business is related to, users will naturally think that you are the expert in your industry.
With thousands of sites popping up on the Internet everyday, you need to brand your business well in order to keep existing customers and attract new customers.
No Perpetual Payments for Enduring Benefits
I know what you are thinking about now. You saw some yellowish sponsored results by the side of the search results and you quickly thought of paying the major search engines for a listing. It's a nice idea but organic search engine optimization has way more to offer than the paid advertising model.
Ranking for keywords organically does not require any recurring payments to the search engines. Even if you plan to outsource the optimization process, the projects often involve one off payments rather than a recurring billing system like the pay per click model. Also, once you rank top for a certain keyword, it will be really hard for someone to beat you so competing for keywords organically definitely brings enduring benefits at a lower price.
Want to master all the techniques for organic search engine optimization (SEO) way before your competitors and bring in more sales to your business from today onwards? Click here to get The SEO Mindset, the one and only organic search engine tutorial that will show your all the nitty gritty bits of SEO.
Read More..
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.
Read More..
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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Wednesday, November 26, 2008
What is Link Bait?
Link Bait is a very clever way of gaining links for you website from seemingly irrelevant subjects and topics. Link baiting is basically writing an article about something that many people may be interested in and will want to share with other internet users, they will share the article by linking to the original website and it is for these links that link bait is written.
Link bait can be written about everything, but truly great link bait is informative, true to facts and also quickly published, before other articles about the subject are written. Below are a few things that link bait articles are commonly about and in what form they come in.
Informative worms
This type of link bait informs people about things that they find useful and informative, for example, a ‘How to’ article, or a top ten article.
News/ current affair worms
By writing an article and publishing is immediately after a news story breaks, you have given an article relating to a topic, for the search engines to present for all queries relating to that story. It must be factual and unique, otherwise all of the hard work that the link bait has done will be taken away by the search engines as better articles get published.
Funny worms
A comical article, image or video is a fantastic way of getting your website known and a great way of gaining links for your website. Viral e-mails containing such link bait can be around the world within days and is a brilliant way of getting your link bait viewed by as many people as possible.
Bad worms
Bad link bait, isn’t necessarily bad for the website, it just refers to controversial content and topics that may spark a bit of anger. However, these types of articles can generate huge amounts of links and traffic, but also generate a reputation and somewhat taint the website (with bad blood/ content), you have to see if it is worth it.
Link bait is a brilliant way of gaining links from subjects that you would not usually be associated with and when link bait is done well, it can gain a website many links that it would otherwise of not had.
Read More..
Link bait can be written about everything, but truly great link bait is informative, true to facts and also quickly published, before other articles about the subject are written. Below are a few things that link bait articles are commonly about and in what form they come in.
Informative worms
This type of link bait informs people about things that they find useful and informative, for example, a ‘How to’ article, or a top ten article.
News/ current affair worms
By writing an article and publishing is immediately after a news story breaks, you have given an article relating to a topic, for the search engines to present for all queries relating to that story. It must be factual and unique, otherwise all of the hard work that the link bait has done will be taken away by the search engines as better articles get published.
Funny worms
A comical article, image or video is a fantastic way of getting your website known and a great way of gaining links for your website. Viral e-mails containing such link bait can be around the world within days and is a brilliant way of getting your link bait viewed by as many people as possible.
Bad worms
Bad link bait, isn’t necessarily bad for the website, it just refers to controversial content and topics that may spark a bit of anger. However, these types of articles can generate huge amounts of links and traffic, but also generate a reputation and somewhat taint the website (with bad blood/ content), you have to see if it is worth it.
Link bait is a brilliant way of gaining links from subjects that you would not usually be associated with and when link bait is done well, it can gain a website many links that it would otherwise of not had.
Read More..
The Importance of SEO in the current economy
As the news is full of stories about the economy it’s more important than ever to make the most of your website and it’s potential.
More and more consumers and businesses are being discerning about the services that they use and who they buy from. This means that making the most of your website is key to being in pole position to get the sale.
1. Make the most of your blog, publicise your special offers and deals. Pay attention to the long tail searches people are performing at the moment and blog about them.
Make sure that your SEO is working for you, optimise the site to perform well for your core business.
2. Be adaptable, ask your customer what aspects of your service they value/why they chose you – doing this will enable you to focus on these areas. If most of your customers value one aspect of your service making sure you promote yourself on this benefit will help get more customers.
3. The key thing to remember is that neglecting your internet marketing now will have an impact on your business. Being at the forefront of people’s mind and searches on the internet will help you make the most of the potential customers while things are quieter but will also give you a head start on your competitors when the economy begins to recover, rather than having to start from scratch at this point.
Read More..
More and more consumers and businesses are being discerning about the services that they use and who they buy from. This means that making the most of your website is key to being in pole position to get the sale.
1. Make the most of your blog, publicise your special offers and deals. Pay attention to the long tail searches people are performing at the moment and blog about them.
Make sure that your SEO is working for you, optimise the site to perform well for your core business.
2. Be adaptable, ask your customer what aspects of your service they value/why they chose you – doing this will enable you to focus on these areas. If most of your customers value one aspect of your service making sure you promote yourself on this benefit will help get more customers.
3. The key thing to remember is that neglecting your internet marketing now will have an impact on your business. Being at the forefront of people’s mind and searches on the internet will help you make the most of the potential customers while things are quieter but will also give you a head start on your competitors when the economy begins to recover, rather than having to start from scratch at this point.
Read More..
5 reasons people don’t read your blog
The first step to increasing your web presence is understanding why no one is currently reading your blog. Here are 5 reasons your blog is dead.
1. It Isn’t Optimized- If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times—the search engines love fresh content. That’s why it’s so important that you optimize your blog posts. By including relevant keywords in your titles and content, you increase your chances of ranking well in the search engines. High organic search rankings will earn you a steady flow of traffic.
2. You Aren’t Marketing It- A blog is like any other property—you have to market it if you want people to see it. Beyond optimizing your posts, you need to push your content on the social media sites. While you might say “But I already submit all my posts to Digg and other sites.” Social media marketing is about more thank clicking submit. It takes time and a commitment to the community to learn how to properly market content through social media.
3. Your Titles are Boring- The internet is overflowing with blogs. Recent estimates put the total number of blogs well in excess of 100 million. With so many posts pulling at online users’ attention, it’s crucial that you give people a reason to click on your blog. How can you do this? The best way is by creating compelling titles that force people to click. Ask yourself, “if I saw this title, would I click on it?” If not, you need to change it.
4. You Don’t Offer Anything New- What do you offer users that they can’t find anywhere else? If you’re just another “me too” blogger, you don’t give readers an incentive to follow your blog. It’s the same old content that’s been done a thousand times before. Offer something new. Just give your true pinion, and that will help separate you from the pack.
5. The Content Isn’t Scannable- There’s nothing wrong with having a lot to say. Just make sure you don’t present your content in a format that scares readers away. Long blocks of text with no whitespace will cause visitors to click “back” immediately. Break it up into short passages with bold headings so that it’s easier to scan.
Read More..
1. It Isn’t Optimized- If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times—the search engines love fresh content. That’s why it’s so important that you optimize your blog posts. By including relevant keywords in your titles and content, you increase your chances of ranking well in the search engines. High organic search rankings will earn you a steady flow of traffic.
2. You Aren’t Marketing It- A blog is like any other property—you have to market it if you want people to see it. Beyond optimizing your posts, you need to push your content on the social media sites. While you might say “But I already submit all my posts to Digg and other sites.” Social media marketing is about more thank clicking submit. It takes time and a commitment to the community to learn how to properly market content through social media.
3. Your Titles are Boring- The internet is overflowing with blogs. Recent estimates put the total number of blogs well in excess of 100 million. With so many posts pulling at online users’ attention, it’s crucial that you give people a reason to click on your blog. How can you do this? The best way is by creating compelling titles that force people to click. Ask yourself, “if I saw this title, would I click on it?” If not, you need to change it.
4. You Don’t Offer Anything New- What do you offer users that they can’t find anywhere else? If you’re just another “me too” blogger, you don’t give readers an incentive to follow your blog. It’s the same old content that’s been done a thousand times before. Offer something new. Just give your true pinion, and that will help separate you from the pack.
5. The Content Isn’t Scannable- There’s nothing wrong with having a lot to say. Just make sure you don’t present your content in a format that scares readers away. Long blocks of text with no whitespace will cause visitors to click “back” immediately. Break it up into short passages with bold headings so that it’s easier to scan.
Read More..
Kumo: The New Name Of Microsoft Live Search?
Microsoft expected to rebrand Live.com to Kumo.com
According to various rumors and reports, Microsoft’s search engine, known as Live Search will be rebranded as Kumo, as early as next year.
Apparently, the new name was already transferred from registrar to Microsoft and now Kumo.com points to a Microsoft’s internal test site.
Earlier this year during the Search Marketing Expo conference, Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft's platforms and services division, hinted about a possible change of the company’s “Live” brand.
In Johnson’s opinion having multiple identities for the same online services such as MSN Hotmail and Windows Live Hotmail or Windows Live Messenger and MSN Messenger is confusing for the users.
In addition, Johnson explained that a brand “fix” is needed as Microsoft decided to drop its bid for Yahoo and improve its Live Search engine.
However, it remains to be seen if Kumo will be the new name of Mcirosoft’s search engine or if the compaby is trying to create just another service.
Kumo means in Japanese “cloud” and some reports are pointing out that maybe it could be related to Microsoft’s cloud computing initiative.
Launched in 2005, Live Search, Microsoft’s effort to catch up with the web giant Google, had replaced MSN Search in 2006. Despite the company’s efforts, Live Search acquired only 11 percent of the search market, far behind its main competitor, Google.
Read More..
According to various rumors and reports, Microsoft’s search engine, known as Live Search will be rebranded as Kumo, as early as next year.
Apparently, the new name was already transferred from registrar to Microsoft and now Kumo.com points to a Microsoft’s internal test site.
Earlier this year during the Search Marketing Expo conference, Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft's platforms and services division, hinted about a possible change of the company’s “Live” brand.
In Johnson’s opinion having multiple identities for the same online services such as MSN Hotmail and Windows Live Hotmail or Windows Live Messenger and MSN Messenger is confusing for the users.
In addition, Johnson explained that a brand “fix” is needed as Microsoft decided to drop its bid for Yahoo and improve its Live Search engine.
However, it remains to be seen if Kumo will be the new name of Mcirosoft’s search engine or if the compaby is trying to create just another service.
Kumo means in Japanese “cloud” and some reports are pointing out that maybe it could be related to Microsoft’s cloud computing initiative.
Launched in 2005, Live Search, Microsoft’s effort to catch up with the web giant Google, had replaced MSN Search in 2006. Despite the company’s efforts, Live Search acquired only 11 percent of the search market, far behind its main competitor, Google.
Read More..
Tips for online marketing
1. A professional looking Web site is a necessity for small businesses. Trying to cut costs on a Web site could mean reduced business. A Web site is a representation of your business.
2. If your Web site doesn’t show up on the first two pages on a Google search of keywords related to your business you’re in a bad position. Better search engine optimization practices will provide a better opportunity for consumers to spot your site over others.
3. E-mail marketing such as e-newsletters, coupons and sales notices are an effective tool if done carefully. Overwhelming the consumer with too many e-mails may cause them to treat such offers as junk mail.
4. Blogging can be good for business. The more opportunities you have to allow people to find you, the better. Sites such as blogger.com offer free blogging services.
5. Be your own publisher. Add more content to your Web site such as articles and newsletters. This is an effective way to engage the consumer.
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2. If your Web site doesn’t show up on the first two pages on a Google search of keywords related to your business you’re in a bad position. Better search engine optimization practices will provide a better opportunity for consumers to spot your site over others.
3. E-mail marketing such as e-newsletters, coupons and sales notices are an effective tool if done carefully. Overwhelming the consumer with too many e-mails may cause them to treat such offers as junk mail.
4. Blogging can be good for business. The more opportunities you have to allow people to find you, the better. Sites such as blogger.com offer free blogging services.
5. Be your own publisher. Add more content to your Web site such as articles and newsletters. This is an effective way to engage the consumer.
Read More..
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
5 SEO Strategies for the Long Term
SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. In order to achieve and keep high search engine rankings over the long haul, you need to stay committed by following a long-term SEO plan. It’s simply not enough to optimize your site once and then forget about it.
1. Constant Keyword Research - A lot of people commit the mistake of assuming SEO keyword research is a one-time task. This is a crucial error in judgment. There are always new key phrases you can try to target. It’s essential that you practice continuing research over the long haul. This will help you go after seasonal phrases, overlooked terms, and new keywords that pop up over time.
2. Update Content Regularly - Of course, you need somewhere to put the new keywords that you’re going to be targeting. That’s why it’s important to update your content regularly. In addition to incorporating new keywords, updating your content regularly builds trust with search engines and humans. Furthermore, since the search engines crave fresh content, it increases your chances of grabbing high search engine placement.
3. Get Links for that Content - Link building is one of the most important long term SEO strategies. You should always be coming up with ways to get more high quality inbound links to your website. Don’t just go after the sudden surge in backlinks; try to create content and tools that steadily generate links over time.
4. Review Website Periodically - Sometimes, certain pages on your website just don’t work for SEO. Whether it’s the keywords you’ve chosen to target, a lack of links, or poor content, some pages just won’t rank well. It’s your job to review your website periodically to determine which tweaks can be done to change that. If you have a page that’s consistently done poorly over time, it’s probably time to change it up a little bit.
5. Focus on Usability - At the end of the day, the best thing you can do for your website is to focus on usability. Because it won’t matter how great your search engine rankings are if humans can’t use your site easily. To me, SEO done properly improves website usability. It’s only when people go overboard with their SEO that it hampers the site’s usability. If you make your site with the user in mind, they’ll make sure that your site stays popular.
Read More..
1. Constant Keyword Research - A lot of people commit the mistake of assuming SEO keyword research is a one-time task. This is a crucial error in judgment. There are always new key phrases you can try to target. It’s essential that you practice continuing research over the long haul. This will help you go after seasonal phrases, overlooked terms, and new keywords that pop up over time.
2. Update Content Regularly - Of course, you need somewhere to put the new keywords that you’re going to be targeting. That’s why it’s important to update your content regularly. In addition to incorporating new keywords, updating your content regularly builds trust with search engines and humans. Furthermore, since the search engines crave fresh content, it increases your chances of grabbing high search engine placement.
3. Get Links for that Content - Link building is one of the most important long term SEO strategies. You should always be coming up with ways to get more high quality inbound links to your website. Don’t just go after the sudden surge in backlinks; try to create content and tools that steadily generate links over time.
4. Review Website Periodically - Sometimes, certain pages on your website just don’t work for SEO. Whether it’s the keywords you’ve chosen to target, a lack of links, or poor content, some pages just won’t rank well. It’s your job to review your website periodically to determine which tweaks can be done to change that. If you have a page that’s consistently done poorly over time, it’s probably time to change it up a little bit.
5. Focus on Usability - At the end of the day, the best thing you can do for your website is to focus on usability. Because it won’t matter how great your search engine rankings are if humans can’t use your site easily. To me, SEO done properly improves website usability. It’s only when people go overboard with their SEO that it hampers the site’s usability. If you make your site with the user in mind, they’ll make sure that your site stays popular.
Read More..
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.
Read More..
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.
Read More..
Technical SEO and Marketing SEO
You can get visits out of search engines two ways.
1. Advertise. You can pay to advertise, and pay for every click you get. Simple, quick and often effective. Paying for clicks is called search engine marketing (SEM) or Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.
2. Optimize. You can optimize your website for certain keywords so that people who click on ‘normal’ search engine results (not the sponsored/paid ads) have a better chance of seeing your website entries. This is search engine optimization (SEO).
Technical SEO
There are a whole bunch of things a website can do to kill its chances in the search engine race. Technical SEO makes sure that a website can at least get to the starting blocks.
You would think every website in the world would do this already, but they don’t. Some websites can’t even be indexed by Google (and if you ain’t indexed, you ain’t getting found anytime soon).
Technical SEO means making sure that all your web pages can be indexed, that each page has a unique title and description, that web pages use headings properly, that special sitemap files are prepared so that search engines can read them … the list goes on.
Marketing SEO
Where to start, all the really, really hard stuff. You see, because there are SO MANY web pages out there (increasingly with very smart SEO folk advising them or working for them), just getting to the starting blocks isn’t enough.
You need to stand out from the crowd. Writing good content isn’t enough, you need to promote it so it is noticed, read and passed on to others.
Websites without other websites linking to them don’t have any authority. And Google likes authority. Google seems to love authority so much it goes all misty eyed with high authority web pages and puts them right at the front of the queue.
SEOs who are good at Marketing SEO know how to get not just any old links, but high authority links, the ones that turn their web pages into high authority web pages as well. All links are not created equal, and Marketing SEO is what you need if you want good links.
Since SEO is so competitive these days, Marketing SEO is also very concerned with competitive research. Where do your web pages rank, what competitive pages rank higher, how many visitors do they get and where from, how many links do they have and where from, how can I get some of those visitors and those links … and so on.
Read More..
1. Advertise. You can pay to advertise, and pay for every click you get. Simple, quick and often effective. Paying for clicks is called search engine marketing (SEM) or Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.
2. Optimize. You can optimize your website for certain keywords so that people who click on ‘normal’ search engine results (not the sponsored/paid ads) have a better chance of seeing your website entries. This is search engine optimization (SEO).
Technical SEO
There are a whole bunch of things a website can do to kill its chances in the search engine race. Technical SEO makes sure that a website can at least get to the starting blocks.
You would think every website in the world would do this already, but they don’t. Some websites can’t even be indexed by Google (and if you ain’t indexed, you ain’t getting found anytime soon).
Technical SEO means making sure that all your web pages can be indexed, that each page has a unique title and description, that web pages use headings properly, that special sitemap files are prepared so that search engines can read them … the list goes on.
Marketing SEO
Where to start, all the really, really hard stuff. You see, because there are SO MANY web pages out there (increasingly with very smart SEO folk advising them or working for them), just getting to the starting blocks isn’t enough.
You need to stand out from the crowd. Writing good content isn’t enough, you need to promote it so it is noticed, read and passed on to others.
Websites without other websites linking to them don’t have any authority. And Google likes authority. Google seems to love authority so much it goes all misty eyed with high authority web pages and puts them right at the front of the queue.
SEOs who are good at Marketing SEO know how to get not just any old links, but high authority links, the ones that turn their web pages into high authority web pages as well. All links are not created equal, and Marketing SEO is what you need if you want good links.
Since SEO is so competitive these days, Marketing SEO is also very concerned with competitive research. Where do your web pages rank, what competitive pages rank higher, how many visitors do they get and where from, how many links do they have and where from, how can I get some of those visitors and those links … and so on.
Read More..
SEO Copywriting Service For Better Search Engine Rankings
Search Engine Optimization is commonly known as SEO. You make your website more popular in the search engine with the help of SEO. To be very precise, for better search engine rankings SEO copywriting services helps a lot.
SEO copywriting is a very tempting offer now a days especially in free lancing work. In this free lancing work charge for the work varies from $3 to $400. Based on the money the quality of the work also varies. If you have a good quality SEO copywriter then you don’t have to worry for SEO copywriting service.
SEO copywriting service is helping the SEO copywriters to earn a huge amount of money not only from the SEO company but also from the free lancing work.
This is basically done by optimizing the content of the website with keywords which are essential for the site. The content should contain the keywords but it should be written n such a fashion that it should not look keyword stuffing.
The SEO strategy says that you should include your site to the top search engine spider when they crawl your site. Once they have found your site they will index the content rich with keywords. Now if the keywords are correctly included in the content then your site will rank high in the search engine result page.
The SERP will show only ten sites per page so it is highly essential that you should rank in the first two pages. For this SEO copywriting services is highly essential.
Read More..
SEO copywriting is a very tempting offer now a days especially in free lancing work. In this free lancing work charge for the work varies from $3 to $400. Based on the money the quality of the work also varies. If you have a good quality SEO copywriter then you don’t have to worry for SEO copywriting service.
SEO copywriting service is helping the SEO copywriters to earn a huge amount of money not only from the SEO company but also from the free lancing work.
This is basically done by optimizing the content of the website with keywords which are essential for the site. The content should contain the keywords but it should be written n such a fashion that it should not look keyword stuffing.
The SEO strategy says that you should include your site to the top search engine spider when they crawl your site. Once they have found your site they will index the content rich with keywords. Now if the keywords are correctly included in the content then your site will rank high in the search engine result page.
The SERP will show only ten sites per page so it is highly essential that you should rank in the first two pages. For this SEO copywriting services is highly essential.
Read More..
Monday, November 24, 2008
Article Marketing: A New Addition to The Search Engine Optimization World
Article marketing is a relatively new addition to the search engine optimization world but the number of people that are taking part is growing every day. Of course, the number triples all the time because there are authors, article directory owners, as well as web publishers all involved in this search engine optimization technique. As time goes on and page ranks rise, article marketing will only become more popular. Everyone involved in this type of marketing sees the ability to profit and thrive just doing what he or she do best, so why wouldn’t it become more popular?
The Bottom Line
More and more people are getting into article marketing for one very simple reason: it works. Web publishes are finally learning that achieving a good page rank is not just based on the number and quality of links instead it is based on quality links and quality content. Authors are finding that they can make a lot of money providing content to the web publishers that are constantly hungry for more content. Additionally, the article directory owners find that they are often a necessary middleman between publisher and author.
Article Directory
Article directories work a lot like phone books, they provide all of the facts in a very up front way. Web publishers can come and browse through the articles and decide which ones they would like to have posted on their website. This works for the article directory because formatted into the article code are links to the article directory. Every time the article is posted on another website it creates another link for the article directory, securing their page rank and even boosting it a bit. The article directory owner can earn a bit of money by charging a small fee for each article or can just enjoy a great page rank!
The Publishers
More and more web publishers are getting into article marketing because they need to increase their page rank and overall visibility. Article marketing is attractive to web publishers because it allows them to put high quality content on their website which is a requirement for a good page rank. Not only does the content provide the website with more credibility, but the links to the article directory do as well since they usually have good page ranks.
The Authors
Authors are attracted to article marketing because it can get them a lot of exposure. Many writers find that they can write on many different subjects and submit all of them to an article directory. Because they write on a variety of subjects they get exposure in a variety of markets. Authors often benefit because the web publishers are given their personal information and website through the resource box. Many web publishers actually contact the author directly to contract them for further work, eliminating the need for the article directory for both the publisher and the author .For more information logon to www.article-submitters.com. With so many web publishers seeking high quality content, authors can stay in business as long as they can continue to provide high quality content.
Read more..
The Bottom Line
More and more people are getting into article marketing for one very simple reason: it works. Web publishes are finally learning that achieving a good page rank is not just based on the number and quality of links instead it is based on quality links and quality content. Authors are finding that they can make a lot of money providing content to the web publishers that are constantly hungry for more content. Additionally, the article directory owners find that they are often a necessary middleman between publisher and author.
Article Directory
Article directories work a lot like phone books, they provide all of the facts in a very up front way. Web publishers can come and browse through the articles and decide which ones they would like to have posted on their website. This works for the article directory because formatted into the article code are links to the article directory. Every time the article is posted on another website it creates another link for the article directory, securing their page rank and even boosting it a bit. The article directory owner can earn a bit of money by charging a small fee for each article or can just enjoy a great page rank!
The Publishers
More and more web publishers are getting into article marketing because they need to increase their page rank and overall visibility. Article marketing is attractive to web publishers because it allows them to put high quality content on their website which is a requirement for a good page rank. Not only does the content provide the website with more credibility, but the links to the article directory do as well since they usually have good page ranks.
The Authors
Authors are attracted to article marketing because it can get them a lot of exposure. Many writers find that they can write on many different subjects and submit all of them to an article directory. Because they write on a variety of subjects they get exposure in a variety of markets. Authors often benefit because the web publishers are given their personal information and website through the resource box. Many web publishers actually contact the author directly to contract them for further work, eliminating the need for the article directory for both the publisher and the author .For more information logon to www.article-submitters.com. With so many web publishers seeking high quality content, authors can stay in business as long as they can continue to provide high quality content.
Read more..
How can CMS help in search engine optimization
If you have a sincere desire of your website showing up prominently in various search engines such as Google, CMS can really help you. However, you need to know that all CMSs are not created equally. It is important to know about the features prior to looking for any help with SEO.
Here are some ways you can achieve better search engine optimization with CMS:
Planning:
The first step is to plan your SEO strategy in an effective way. Remember that no CMS will ever replace the requirement for you to have a well defined SEO.
Web address:
It is extremely important to look to the web address of every page. All should contain URLs that are human reliable. Also include plug-ins or additional modules to help make the URLs user friendly. All your URLs should be permanent, based at your organization and individually customizable.
Templates:
Make sure that all your templates use clan and standard code. Try to verify that the code follows established standards in order to facilitate search engines to read it.
Meta tag customization:
It is important to look for good content management features that will facilitate all your business user to create tags separately for each page.
Site maps:
When it comes to site maps, make sure that you opt for automatically created site maps instead of the traditional ones.
Robot control:
Remember that search engine spiders are in consistent search for any kind of instructions that you might have for them in a text files. This text file is known as ‘robots.txt’. The instructions that you provide can prove to be really helpful in indicating search engines on what not to index.
Read More..
Here are some ways you can achieve better search engine optimization with CMS:
Planning:
The first step is to plan your SEO strategy in an effective way. Remember that no CMS will ever replace the requirement for you to have a well defined SEO.
Web address:
It is extremely important to look to the web address of every page. All should contain URLs that are human reliable. Also include plug-ins or additional modules to help make the URLs user friendly. All your URLs should be permanent, based at your organization and individually customizable.
Templates:
Make sure that all your templates use clan and standard code. Try to verify that the code follows established standards in order to facilitate search engines to read it.
Meta tag customization:
It is important to look for good content management features that will facilitate all your business user to create tags separately for each page.
Site maps:
When it comes to site maps, make sure that you opt for automatically created site maps instead of the traditional ones.
Robot control:
Remember that search engine spiders are in consistent search for any kind of instructions that you might have for them in a text files. This text file is known as ‘robots.txt’. The instructions that you provide can prove to be really helpful in indicating search engines on what not to index.
Read More..
6 Steps to a Profitable Website
1. Find a money maker
You may be surprised by this, but: you need to know what you are going to be selling before you do anything else. The only exception to this rule may be if you are planning to monetize your website using Adsense, in which case you can choose from many niches. But, in the case of an affiliate product, you don’t choose the niche and the product afterward. You choose the product first and the niche implicitly.
2. Decide the type of website you are going to build
Here, you have 2 basic options: you can build a small niche site centered around the particular product, or build a large website that is going to attract a lot of search engine traffic. In order to find about the advantages or disadvantages of each method, read the article “Small Niche Site vs Large Authority Site”
3. Keyword Research
This is where 90% of the people get it all wrong. They don’t realize the importance of keyword research. Keyword research is the foundation of all your future work. If you don’t get this right, you are doomed from the get go. You are not going to get targeted visitors and you are probably not going to get search engine traffic at all. And although there are a lot of people who quickly dismiss search engine traffic under the pretense that they don’t want to depend on Google, it is the best kind of traffic you could ever get. People who dismiss it do so simply because they have no idea how to get it. How to do keyword research can be the subject of a small book, I could write on and on about it. I consider the best tools for this task to be Google’s tool and Keyword Discovery.
4. Content creation
You should now start creating your content around the keywords that you have chosen. If you want to build a small niche site, content creation will not be very difficult. However, if you plan on building a large site, it may take a while. You can outsource it if you like, but make sure that you always have unique content on your website. For a website that’s going to make you money, unique content is always the best bet.
5. On page Search Engine Optimization
Of course, I will not include tasks like uploading the website to your server in this small guide, these are self implied. Proper on page search engine optimization includes the following tasks:
- proper use of title tags;
- proper use of meta description tags;
- use of H1 and H2 headers;
- bold the main keywords on a page, but not more than a few times;
- using alt tags for images;
- designing a proper internal website structure.
6. Link building
Without targeted links, your business will never be productive. Read that again and remember it. Getting the right links to your website and in the right way is almost an art. Some people have more complex classifications, but I only split the links in two categories: crappy links and quality links. I define crappy links as being the links you get from article directories or social bookmarking sites, while quality links for me are in context links, from medium quality sites and up, anchored with my keyword, and with the keyword in the title tag of the page that’s linking to me. Again, I could write a whole book on the subject of link building.
Read More...
You may be surprised by this, but: you need to know what you are going to be selling before you do anything else. The only exception to this rule may be if you are planning to monetize your website using Adsense, in which case you can choose from many niches. But, in the case of an affiliate product, you don’t choose the niche and the product afterward. You choose the product first and the niche implicitly.
2. Decide the type of website you are going to build
Here, you have 2 basic options: you can build a small niche site centered around the particular product, or build a large website that is going to attract a lot of search engine traffic. In order to find about the advantages or disadvantages of each method, read the article “Small Niche Site vs Large Authority Site”
3. Keyword Research
This is where 90% of the people get it all wrong. They don’t realize the importance of keyword research. Keyword research is the foundation of all your future work. If you don’t get this right, you are doomed from the get go. You are not going to get targeted visitors and you are probably not going to get search engine traffic at all. And although there are a lot of people who quickly dismiss search engine traffic under the pretense that they don’t want to depend on Google, it is the best kind of traffic you could ever get. People who dismiss it do so simply because they have no idea how to get it. How to do keyword research can be the subject of a small book, I could write on and on about it. I consider the best tools for this task to be Google’s tool and Keyword Discovery.
4. Content creation
You should now start creating your content around the keywords that you have chosen. If you want to build a small niche site, content creation will not be very difficult. However, if you plan on building a large site, it may take a while. You can outsource it if you like, but make sure that you always have unique content on your website. For a website that’s going to make you money, unique content is always the best bet.
5. On page Search Engine Optimization
Of course, I will not include tasks like uploading the website to your server in this small guide, these are self implied. Proper on page search engine optimization includes the following tasks:
- proper use of title tags;
- proper use of meta description tags;
- use of H1 and H2 headers;
- bold the main keywords on a page, but not more than a few times;
- using alt tags for images;
- designing a proper internal website structure.
6. Link building
Without targeted links, your business will never be productive. Read that again and remember it. Getting the right links to your website and in the right way is almost an art. Some people have more complex classifications, but I only split the links in two categories: crappy links and quality links. I define crappy links as being the links you get from article directories or social bookmarking sites, while quality links for me are in context links, from medium quality sites and up, anchored with my keyword, and with the keyword in the title tag of the page that’s linking to me. Again, I could write a whole book on the subject of link building.
Read More...
Google launches SearchWiki
Google has launched SearchWiki, billed as giving users "more control over their search experience".
Features included in the new addition to the existing service include the ability for users to add, delete, re-sort or common on results - generating a list of finds that are customised to their needs.
Speaking on the company's blog, Cedric Dupont - product manager - and Corin Anderson, software engineer, said: "The changes you make only affect your own searches. But SearchWiki also is a great way to share your insights with other searchers."
They added: "This new feature is an example of how search is becoming increasingly dynamic."
Search engine marketing companies can see what others think of the search, by clicking on a link which will present them with an aggregated view of which pages have been moved up, deleted or added, along with comments that users have added for certain sites.
Read More..
Features included in the new addition to the existing service include the ability for users to add, delete, re-sort or common on results - generating a list of finds that are customised to their needs.
Speaking on the company's blog, Cedric Dupont - product manager - and Corin Anderson, software engineer, said: "The changes you make only affect your own searches. But SearchWiki also is a great way to share your insights with other searchers."
They added: "This new feature is an example of how search is becoming increasingly dynamic."
Search engine marketing companies can see what others think of the search, by clicking on a link which will present them with an aggregated view of which pages have been moved up, deleted or added, along with comments that users have added for certain sites.
Read More..
Sunday, November 23, 2008
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.
Read More..
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.
Read More..
5 Main Types Of Advertising Techniques Online
1) Content Advertising
The first type of advertising technique is content advertising. It basically uses content to draw visitors’ attention. It is the main type of advertising technique because the entire internet is made up of content (or information).
The following traffic strategies all fall under content advertising technique:
- Submitting articles to article directories
- Posting articles to Squidoo, Hubpages or Blogger
- Posting articles to your own blog or content website
- Press release
- Paid reviews at other people’s website
- Yahoo answers
- Social bookmarking at Digg, Propeller etc
- Post videos in video sites
- Posting comments in forums
In content advertising, you draw traffic from 2 sources. You either get the traffic from the website where the content is posted or from the search engine.
Existing traffic from the website is given. There is nothing much you need to do other than making sure that your content is good and your title is interesting.
The real challenge lies in getting traffic from the search engine. Your aim is to get high ranking in the search engine and direct the traffic from the search engine to your content and then to your website. This is done through careful keyword research and search engine optimization.
2) Link Advertising
3) Viral advertising
4) Incentivized advertising
5) Obtrusive advertising
Read More...
The first type of advertising technique is content advertising. It basically uses content to draw visitors’ attention. It is the main type of advertising technique because the entire internet is made up of content (or information).
The following traffic strategies all fall under content advertising technique:
- Submitting articles to article directories
- Posting articles to Squidoo, Hubpages or Blogger
- Posting articles to your own blog or content website
- Press release
- Paid reviews at other people’s website
- Yahoo answers
- Social bookmarking at Digg, Propeller etc
- Post videos in video sites
- Posting comments in forums
In content advertising, you draw traffic from 2 sources. You either get the traffic from the website where the content is posted or from the search engine.
Existing traffic from the website is given. There is nothing much you need to do other than making sure that your content is good and your title is interesting.
The real challenge lies in getting traffic from the search engine. Your aim is to get high ranking in the search engine and direct the traffic from the search engine to your content and then to your website. This is done through careful keyword research and search engine optimization.
2) Link Advertising
3) Viral advertising
4) Incentivized advertising
5) Obtrusive advertising
Read More...
Why Different Types of Search Engine Optimization Do Not Work
There are many effective search engine marketing agencies you can use who will establish search visibility and search referral traffic to your site, so why waste your time with these?
Submit to Search Engines
There is no point in submitting your Web site's URLs to search engines. Search engines will crawl your Web site if there are links pointing to it. If you have no links pointing to your site, then you will have no search visibility no matter how often you submit to search engines.
Rely on Meta-Keywords
For many years now, search engines have ignored meta-keywords. Long ago, a key SEO technique was to stuff keywords into meta-keywords. This worked when Bill Clinton was President. Not today.
Free or Cheap Means No Results
It is true you get what you pay for. Free or cheap submissions to search engines have no impact. Cheap link building will not establish long-term search visibility. Effective search engine marketing is highly valuable to business. It is brutally competitive because many know how to do it well. Someone who understands the complex art and science of Search Engine Optimization usually has a good idea how to price services. Yes, there can be a huge difference between the fees of qualified search engine marketers. Nonetheless, a competent search optimizer will charge more than $500 a year. If that is your budget, don't expect miracles.
Read More..
Submit to Search Engines
There is no point in submitting your Web site's URLs to search engines. Search engines will crawl your Web site if there are links pointing to it. If you have no links pointing to your site, then you will have no search visibility no matter how often you submit to search engines.
Rely on Meta-Keywords
For many years now, search engines have ignored meta-keywords. Long ago, a key SEO technique was to stuff keywords into meta-keywords. This worked when Bill Clinton was President. Not today.
Free or Cheap Means No Results
It is true you get what you pay for. Free or cheap submissions to search engines have no impact. Cheap link building will not establish long-term search visibility. Effective search engine marketing is highly valuable to business. It is brutally competitive because many know how to do it well. Someone who understands the complex art and science of Search Engine Optimization usually has a good idea how to price services. Yes, there can be a huge difference between the fees of qualified search engine marketers. Nonetheless, a competent search optimizer will charge more than $500 a year. If that is your budget, don't expect miracles.
Read More..
Google launches search engine marketing keyword tool
Google has launched a new application that helps paid search advertisers to pinpoint the key terms consumers use to search for their products.
The Search-based Keyword Tool has been released in the UK and US in beta format and looks at the content of the user's website to determine the most common search queries for that site.
These keywords can then be used by businesses in their paid search engine marketing campaigns or to refine their operations based on popular consumer search trends.
Writing on the Inside AdWords blog, Trevor Claiborne of Google said: "This new tool gives you keywords that are highly relevant to your site but are not part of your AdWords campaigns. This helps you take advantage of missed opportunities."
The news comes shortly after Wordtracker released a new tool allowing users to type in a keyword and see all of the related questions that consumers have previously entered into search engines, something that could help businesses to refine their website copy, according to the company.
Read More..
The Search-based Keyword Tool has been released in the UK and US in beta format and looks at the content of the user's website to determine the most common search queries for that site.
These keywords can then be used by businesses in their paid search engine marketing campaigns or to refine their operations based on popular consumer search trends.
Writing on the Inside AdWords blog, Trevor Claiborne of Google said: "This new tool gives you keywords that are highly relevant to your site but are not part of your AdWords campaigns. This helps you take advantage of missed opportunities."
The news comes shortly after Wordtracker released a new tool allowing users to type in a keyword and see all of the related questions that consumers have previously entered into search engines, something that could help businesses to refine their website copy, according to the company.
Read More..
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
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.
Read More..
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.
Read More..
Pros and Cons of SEO Spam
Among all kinds of SEO spam, unlike other types of spam, good link spam carries with it a wealth of benefits for the site being spammed:
1. It brings users. When a new social site debuts, especially when it is a "me-too" site like Quamut, getting users is tough. Unless you offer some special incentive, or your site provides something necessary that other sites don't, you have to fight a tough battle for users. If someone wants to add link spam to your site, they need to sign up. The thousands of SEO Spammers out there can quickly become thousands of new members of your site. And when the spammers sign up under multiple accounts, they can quickly become tens of thousands of new members.
2. It adds content. It might not be the best content ever written, but SEO spammers do know how to write content that, at the very least, is unique, keyword-rich and geared to any user that might stumble upon it. Contrary to popular belief, SEO spammers are not interested just in backlinks, but also in filling up the SERPs. If they can get a page on your site to rank by combining their content with strength of your site, and then convincing the user to shift to their site, the bottom line stays the same.
3. It raises stature. When your brand spanking new social network has 10,000 members and 50,000 UGC articles after only one month, your site starts to get noticed--even if most of those members are spammers and that content is primarily spam. There's a reason companies like MySpace and YouTube didn't crack down on spammers--and even explicitly allowed spam in their original Terms of Service. If you want to grow--and grow fast--no one will help as much as spammers.
Read More..
1. It brings users. When a new social site debuts, especially when it is a "me-too" site like Quamut, getting users is tough. Unless you offer some special incentive, or your site provides something necessary that other sites don't, you have to fight a tough battle for users. If someone wants to add link spam to your site, they need to sign up. The thousands of SEO Spammers out there can quickly become thousands of new members of your site. And when the spammers sign up under multiple accounts, they can quickly become tens of thousands of new members.
2. It adds content. It might not be the best content ever written, but SEO spammers do know how to write content that, at the very least, is unique, keyword-rich and geared to any user that might stumble upon it. Contrary to popular belief, SEO spammers are not interested just in backlinks, but also in filling up the SERPs. If they can get a page on your site to rank by combining their content with strength of your site, and then convincing the user to shift to their site, the bottom line stays the same.
3. It raises stature. When your brand spanking new social network has 10,000 members and 50,000 UGC articles after only one month, your site starts to get noticed--even if most of those members are spammers and that content is primarily spam. There's a reason companies like MySpace and YouTube didn't crack down on spammers--and even explicitly allowed spam in their original Terms of Service. If you want to grow--and grow fast--no one will help as much as spammers.
Read More..
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.
Read More..
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.
Read More..
SEO Advice from Microsoft Office Live
Here’s a slightly "Black Hat" SEO advice from Microsoft that you must avoid else there’s a risk that your site may get penalized in Google search results.
Google clearly states that link exchange schemes ("Link to me and I’ll link to you.") violate their webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results. This includes reciprocal links as well as paid text links.
On the other hand, Microsoft, in their Office Live Small Business blog, openly suggests that website owners may participate in Link Exchange programs in order to "boost [site] rankings in search engines."
The article lists several options for building incoming links to your site including link swaps via email requests or outsourcing the process to an external link building firm.
Is this good SEO advice or bad? In fact, what you read on the the Office Live blog may risk your site’s position even in Microsoft’s own Live Search as their guidelines say – "Using techniques, such as link farms, to artificially increase the number of links to your webpage might affect how your website is ranked within Live Search, and might cause your website to be removed from the index."
Read More..
Google clearly states that link exchange schemes ("Link to me and I’ll link to you.") violate their webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results. This includes reciprocal links as well as paid text links.
On the other hand, Microsoft, in their Office Live Small Business blog, openly suggests that website owners may participate in Link Exchange programs in order to "boost [site] rankings in search engines."
The article lists several options for building incoming links to your site including link swaps via email requests or outsourcing the process to an external link building firm.
Is this good SEO advice or bad? In fact, what you read on the the Office Live blog may risk your site’s position even in Microsoft’s own Live Search as their guidelines say – "Using techniques, such as link farms, to artificially increase the number of links to your webpage might affect how your website is ranked within Live Search, and might cause your website to be removed from the index."
Read More..
Monday, November 17, 2008
Search engine optimization SEO leads to blogging and social media marketing
Search engine optimization, blogging and social media marketing are all connected to each other. Confused? Here is an explanation on this:
Blogging supports SEO efforts:
Blogging is known to be the fastest way to produce a lot of keyword density and optimized pages on your website and that too all around your keywords. Remember that people are more interested in linking to a blog post as compared to your ‘services page’. Links are the most important part of getting a favorable rank on search engine.
Social media marketing or SMM supports all SEO efforts:
This is true in the case of off page SEO or link building. There are several websites on social bookmarking such as Digg, Reddit, Mixx and many more. There are also many blog communities such as MyBlogLog and are often classified as ‘social media’. These are really helpful in building links for you directly.
Social media marketing supports blogging:
This is done via driving traffic to the blog. If you answer questions on social media regularly and leave a link that’s relevant to blog posts, you will generate some leads each month.
Blogging supports social media marketing:
Most blogs have a significant amount of email subscribers and RSS.
Search engine optimization supports social media marketing:
There is a good proportion of traffic created from search engines via HubSpot or other social media marketing websites.
Search engine optimization is the foundation:
The Search engine optimization is the foundation of all marketing sources online such as blogging and social media marketing.
Read More..
Blogging supports SEO efforts:
Blogging is known to be the fastest way to produce a lot of keyword density and optimized pages on your website and that too all around your keywords. Remember that people are more interested in linking to a blog post as compared to your ‘services page’. Links are the most important part of getting a favorable rank on search engine.
Social media marketing or SMM supports all SEO efforts:
This is true in the case of off page SEO or link building. There are several websites on social bookmarking such as Digg, Reddit, Mixx and many more. There are also many blog communities such as MyBlogLog and are often classified as ‘social media’. These are really helpful in building links for you directly.
Social media marketing supports blogging:
This is done via driving traffic to the blog. If you answer questions on social media regularly and leave a link that’s relevant to blog posts, you will generate some leads each month.
Blogging supports social media marketing:
Most blogs have a significant amount of email subscribers and RSS.
Search engine optimization supports social media marketing:
There is a good proportion of traffic created from search engines via HubSpot or other social media marketing websites.
Search engine optimization is the foundation:
The Search engine optimization is the foundation of all marketing sources online such as blogging and social media marketing.
Read More..
Why Google Must Die
It's called SEO—search engine optimization—and it's pretty much all anyone working with Web sites ever talks about nowadays. You may think it consists of ways to trick the search engines, Google in particular, into giving you higher than usual page rankings. But in fact, it centers around the idea that Google sucks so much that companies think they need to use SEO to get the results they deserve.
By reverse-engineering the way Google operates, SEO experts can see how the process works. From a user's perspective, once you learn how Google does what it does, it's a miracle that you ever get the right results. And from my experience, the right results in many circumstances are nearly impossible to obtain—and may never be obtainable in the future.
Let's look at some of the problems that have developed over the years.
Inability to identify a home site. All the search engines have this habit, but often it is laughable. You'd think that if I were looking for Art Jenkins, and Art Jenkins had a Web site named Artjenkins.com, search engines would list that first, right? Most often this page is never listed anywhere.
Read More..
By reverse-engineering the way Google operates, SEO experts can see how the process works. From a user's perspective, once you learn how Google does what it does, it's a miracle that you ever get the right results. And from my experience, the right results in many circumstances are nearly impossible to obtain—and may never be obtainable in the future.
Let's look at some of the problems that have developed over the years.
Inability to identify a home site. All the search engines have this habit, but often it is laughable. You'd think that if I were looking for Art Jenkins, and Art Jenkins had a Web site named Artjenkins.com, search engines would list that first, right? Most often this page is never listed anywhere.
Read More..
Advantages Of Hiring An SEO Expert
Your website deserves only the best. It deserves to be noticed by people, especially the ones who will likely be interested in the products and services you provide. For this reason, you should entrust your search engine optimization needs to no less than a SEO expert. A SEO expert is equipped with all the knowledge, resources and tools to help your website fare highly in search engines. Here are some of the advantages of hiring a SEO expert:
1. A SEO expert will help you avoid the consequences suffered by most companies which have done SEO on their own. These include penalization due to improper SEO implementation, or ineffective SEO leading your site to fall right into oblivion.
2. There are just too many different SEO techniques. What will be good for one company might not be good for yours. There are many different factors to consider when choosing from various tactics, and a SEO expert will know just what you need.
3. A SEO expert will know the different rules and guidelines imposed by search engines. They know the right approaches to legally get you into the first page of search results on your keywords. A SEO expert will have a lot of experience and knows the proven implementation strategies best for your business.
4. A SEO expert will know how to tweak around their approaches depending on various variables and closely monitor whether traffic improves with a specific set of SEO configuration.
5. SEO experts are the first to find out about new and recent developments on search engine guidelines and will have inside information on the workings of the SEO industry. This way, they will know just what to do to keep you at the top of the rankings and maintain that.
Read More..
1. A SEO expert will help you avoid the consequences suffered by most companies which have done SEO on their own. These include penalization due to improper SEO implementation, or ineffective SEO leading your site to fall right into oblivion.
2. There are just too many different SEO techniques. What will be good for one company might not be good for yours. There are many different factors to consider when choosing from various tactics, and a SEO expert will know just what you need.
3. A SEO expert will know the different rules and guidelines imposed by search engines. They know the right approaches to legally get you into the first page of search results on your keywords. A SEO expert will have a lot of experience and knows the proven implementation strategies best for your business.
4. A SEO expert will know how to tweak around their approaches depending on various variables and closely monitor whether traffic improves with a specific set of SEO configuration.
5. SEO experts are the first to find out about new and recent developments on search engine guidelines and will have inside information on the workings of the SEO industry. This way, they will know just what to do to keep you at the top of the rankings and maintain that.
Read More..
6 Reasons Why A Blog Will Help Your SEO
1. Blogs are all about content. Search engines love content. They don't love Flash, and they're still struggling with photos and video, but they absolutely get content.
2. Blogs have text-based navigation. Search engines have an easier time with text based (vs. image based) navigation because it's more transparent. Search engines for a while now have told us that they want sites to serve up the same information/experience to a search engine bot as to a person.
3. Blogs offer lots of links. If search engines feast on words, they travel on links. Blogs are often a good place to find new content on the Web.
4. People are more likely to link to business blogs than business Web sites. At least, this has been my experience, and anecdotally what I've seen out there. I believe this is because of the interactive nature of blogs, and they're traditionally more about communication than selling. And since getting incoming links is half the battle of search engine optimization, this is a key point.
5. Blogs make it easier to create more pages. Search engines don't rank Web sites, they rank Web pages. In other words, every Web page is an opportunity to rank well at the search engines. Every time you put up a new post, you have another opportunity to be found at Google, Yahoo, or any other search engine. You don't need to worry about how this is going to fit in your current Web site navigation, you can just assign it to one or more categories and be done with it.
6. Blogs put you in control. This doesn't directly affect your search engine optimization, but with a blog you can publish when you feel like it. You don't have to worry about how much your Web developer's going to charge you for an update, or when he's going to get to it. That makes it easier for you to target new keywords and go after the long tail of search that can bring ready-to-buy, qualified leads to your site.
If you are interested in better rankings but don't yet have a blog, the good news is there's a great opportunity for you to increase your search engine visibility.
Read More..
2. Blogs have text-based navigation. Search engines have an easier time with text based (vs. image based) navigation because it's more transparent. Search engines for a while now have told us that they want sites to serve up the same information/experience to a search engine bot as to a person.
3. Blogs offer lots of links. If search engines feast on words, they travel on links. Blogs are often a good place to find new content on the Web.
4. People are more likely to link to business blogs than business Web sites. At least, this has been my experience, and anecdotally what I've seen out there. I believe this is because of the interactive nature of blogs, and they're traditionally more about communication than selling. And since getting incoming links is half the battle of search engine optimization, this is a key point.
5. Blogs make it easier to create more pages. Search engines don't rank Web sites, they rank Web pages. In other words, every Web page is an opportunity to rank well at the search engines. Every time you put up a new post, you have another opportunity to be found at Google, Yahoo, or any other search engine. You don't need to worry about how this is going to fit in your current Web site navigation, you can just assign it to one or more categories and be done with it.
6. Blogs put you in control. This doesn't directly affect your search engine optimization, but with a blog you can publish when you feel like it. You don't have to worry about how much your Web developer's going to charge you for an update, or when he's going to get to it. That makes it easier for you to target new keywords and go after the long tail of search that can bring ready-to-buy, qualified leads to your site.
If you are interested in better rankings but don't yet have a blog, the good news is there's a great opportunity for you to increase your search engine visibility.
Read More..
Sunday, November 16, 2008
What is Internet Marketing and how does it work ?
The Internet has brought abounding altered allowances to marketing, one of which getting lower costs for the administration of advice and media to a all-around audience. The alternate attributes of Internet marketing, both in agreement of accouterment burning acknowledgment and eliciting responses, is a altered superior of the medium. Internet business is sometimes advised to accept a broader ambit because it refers to agenda media such as the Internet, e-mail, and wireless media; however, Internet business aswell includes administration of agenda chump abstracts and cyberbanking chump accord administration (ECRM) systems.
Internet business ties calm artistic and abstruse aspects of the Internet, including design, development, advertising, and sales. Internet business does not artlessly entail architecture or announcement a website, nor does it beggarly agreement a banderole ad on accession website. Effective Internet business requires a absolute action that synergizes a accustomed company’s business archetypal and sales goals with its website action and appearance, absorption on its ambition bazaar through able best of commercial type, media, and design.
Internet business aswell refers to the adjustment of media forth altered stages of the chump assurance aeon through seek engine business (SEM), seek engine enhancement (SEO), banderole ads on specific websites, e-mail marketing, and Web 2.0 strategies. In 2008 The New York Times alive with comScore appear an antecedent appraisal to quantify the user abstracts calm by ample Internet-based companies. Counting four types of interactions with aggregation websites in accession to the hits from advertisements served from commercial networks, the authors begin the abeyant for accession advancement of 2,500 pieces of abstracts on boilerplate per user per month.
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Internet business ties calm artistic and abstruse aspects of the Internet, including design, development, advertising, and sales. Internet business does not artlessly entail architecture or announcement a website, nor does it beggarly agreement a banderole ad on accession website. Effective Internet business requires a absolute action that synergizes a accustomed company’s business archetypal and sales goals with its website action and appearance, absorption on its ambition bazaar through able best of commercial type, media, and design.
Internet business aswell refers to the adjustment of media forth altered stages of the chump assurance aeon through seek engine business (SEM), seek engine enhancement (SEO), banderole ads on specific websites, e-mail marketing, and Web 2.0 strategies. In 2008 The New York Times alive with comScore appear an antecedent appraisal to quantify the user abstracts calm by ample Internet-based companies. Counting four types of interactions with aggregation websites in accession to the hits from advertisements served from commercial networks, the authors begin the abeyant for accession advancement of 2,500 pieces of abstracts on boilerplate per user per month.
Read More..
The Skinny On Good SEO
One of the many things that people find out when they begin to explore the Internet with the intention of generating some income is that websites have to be promoted. Simply launching a website and then sitting back waiting for it to become successful is not the way to go, because its like standing on the side of a road with everyone whizzing right by you. The Internet is a highly competitive place to do business and if you don’t have a good grasp of the fundamentals of SEO then everyone who does is going to be whizzing right by you.
SEO stands for “search engine optimization” and what it means is taking the steps necessary to have your website prominently displayed in the search engine results when someone types in a keyword or a key phrase. The best place to be positioned is on the very top of the first page that is displayed, because this is where almost everyone begins to brows websites after they have typed in a keyword or key phrase. One important thing that you can do is to make sure that the text in your website is rich in keywords and 12-15% is optimal.
Read More..
SEO stands for “search engine optimization” and what it means is taking the steps necessary to have your website prominently displayed in the search engine results when someone types in a keyword or a key phrase. The best place to be positioned is on the very top of the first page that is displayed, because this is where almost everyone begins to brows websites after they have typed in a keyword or key phrase. One important thing that you can do is to make sure that the text in your website is rich in keywords and 12-15% is optimal.
Read More..
New Technologies Detect Black Hat SEO Methods
There are two categories of SEO methods. Black hat SEO and white hat SEO. Either one of the methods can help you gain a higher ranking status on some of the most popular search engines. But, one is more likely to get your website banned from search engines entirely, and according to recent information, your website may not be safe for long. If you haven’t guessed it, the potential bad seed in this batch is the black hat SEO.
White hat SEO is not going to trick the search engines. When you use white hat SEO methods, you can ensure that you are in fact playing by the rules and should be safe from trouble with your website. Websites that use white hat SEO tend to be very helpful to users, search engines and webmasters themselves.
Black hat SEO is the method that tries to trick the search engines by means of unsavory ways gain higher search engine rankings. Some of the methods used in black hat SEO methods include cloaking, hidden texts and doorway pages. Search engines such as Google have announced that they will penalize websites who use these methods when detected.
You may be wondering why black hat SEO methods are blocked if they work so well to get higher rankings, right? Well, they may work well initially, but in the long run most of the black hat SEO methods are being detected and punished by search engines. These methods have not been approved by Google and other search engines, and they can be frustrating to those who are relying on Google and search engines to provide them with good, relevant search results.
You may get away with black hat SEO methods for a while, but chances are good that you will get caught and when you do, it will not be pretty. Even if you think you know people who have used these methods, or continue to use them on their websites and have nothing but good results, you should remind them that it is only a matter of time before they are banned from search engines.
What might be effective right away to gain good rankings on search engines, will cost you a lot more in the end if you end up getting your website banned from Google entirely. Black hat SEO methods are similar to those of cheating in school. You may get away with it for a while with good results, but eventually you will get caught and then all of the hard work that went into building your online business
and website will be wasted.
Using white hat SEO methods may be more time consuming and expensive right away, but if you are diligent and determined, your website can be effectively ranked on Google and other search engines. If you are unsure what methods may be considered black hat SEO, you might want to seek out a professional before you attempt to use them.
Read More..
White hat SEO is not going to trick the search engines. When you use white hat SEO methods, you can ensure that you are in fact playing by the rules and should be safe from trouble with your website. Websites that use white hat SEO tend to be very helpful to users, search engines and webmasters themselves.
Black hat SEO is the method that tries to trick the search engines by means of unsavory ways gain higher search engine rankings. Some of the methods used in black hat SEO methods include cloaking, hidden texts and doorway pages. Search engines such as Google have announced that they will penalize websites who use these methods when detected.
You may be wondering why black hat SEO methods are blocked if they work so well to get higher rankings, right? Well, they may work well initially, but in the long run most of the black hat SEO methods are being detected and punished by search engines. These methods have not been approved by Google and other search engines, and they can be frustrating to those who are relying on Google and search engines to provide them with good, relevant search results.
You may get away with black hat SEO methods for a while, but chances are good that you will get caught and when you do, it will not be pretty. Even if you think you know people who have used these methods, or continue to use them on their websites and have nothing but good results, you should remind them that it is only a matter of time before they are banned from search engines.
What might be effective right away to gain good rankings on search engines, will cost you a lot more in the end if you end up getting your website banned from Google entirely. Black hat SEO methods are similar to those of cheating in school. You may get away with it for a while with good results, but eventually you will get caught and then all of the hard work that went into building your online business
and website will be wasted.
Using white hat SEO methods may be more time consuming and expensive right away, but if you are diligent and determined, your website can be effectively ranked on Google and other search engines. If you are unsure what methods may be considered black hat SEO, you might want to seek out a professional before you attempt to use them.
Read More..
SEO Advantages of Blogs
The SEO advantages of doing this are a slightly different matter, a bit more obscure and harder for many people to grasp. When all is said and done, SEO is all about keywords. Search Engine Optimization amounts to the systematic and disciplined use of specific keywords in the most advantageous places within your web content.
In other words, the point of SEO is to give the search engines a clear idea of what each web page, article, video, press release, etc. is about. This will help you move up in the high stakes game of search engine results, make you visible to the right people, and drive traffic to your site.
Creating a blog increases your odds in the search engine traffic game. There are a number of reasons…
1. Because your blog is being updated on a regular basis the search engines will visit more often, and if your content is deemed worthy of attention, your posts will start appearing in search engine results very quickly.
2. If you are using your blog effectively you will be creating posts once a day, or every few days, and you will be be discussing a series of issues or providing information about a fairly narrow subject area -in my case, for example, about “local business marketing”. The cumulative effect of regularly creating content focusing on a narrow, well-defined area is to gradually establish your blog as a worthwhile source of information on your chosen topic - what Google calls an “authority”. The more authoritative your site or blog becomes, the better it will do in search engine results.
3. The fact that you are creating new pages (for the search engines each post is considered a “page”) means that you can cover a wider range of keywords. If you watch the sources of your search traffic you will notice that people find you by searching for a very large number of keyword phrases, variations and combinations. Creating posts on a regular basis lets you “optimize” each of them for different keywords. Hopefully they will all be related to your primary area, but they will also let you expand your focus somewhat.
For example, a website about SEO may contain several pages discussing the merits of search engine optimization, and the specific methods you employ to enhance a client’s search engine rankings. SEO theory suggests each of those pages should focus on a fairly narrow set of keywords.
But if you have a blog about SEO you can create a virtually unlimited range of pages about different aspects of SEO:
Onpage SEO
SEO and traffic
Offpage SEO
SEO and links
SEO and Wordpress
SEO and Blogs
Article marketing SEO
SEO and video
And unlike with normal website pages you can be very specific in your focus:
The best SEO Wordpress plugins
Can Search Engine Optimization Turn Your Business Around
SEO and Corporate Blogging
etc., etc.
Read More..
In other words, the point of SEO is to give the search engines a clear idea of what each web page, article, video, press release, etc. is about. This will help you move up in the high stakes game of search engine results, make you visible to the right people, and drive traffic to your site.
Creating a blog increases your odds in the search engine traffic game. There are a number of reasons…
1. Because your blog is being updated on a regular basis the search engines will visit more often, and if your content is deemed worthy of attention, your posts will start appearing in search engine results very quickly.
2. If you are using your blog effectively you will be creating posts once a day, or every few days, and you will be be discussing a series of issues or providing information about a fairly narrow subject area -in my case, for example, about “local business marketing”. The cumulative effect of regularly creating content focusing on a narrow, well-defined area is to gradually establish your blog as a worthwhile source of information on your chosen topic - what Google calls an “authority”. The more authoritative your site or blog becomes, the better it will do in search engine results.
3. The fact that you are creating new pages (for the search engines each post is considered a “page”) means that you can cover a wider range of keywords. If you watch the sources of your search traffic you will notice that people find you by searching for a very large number of keyword phrases, variations and combinations. Creating posts on a regular basis lets you “optimize” each of them for different keywords. Hopefully they will all be related to your primary area, but they will also let you expand your focus somewhat.
For example, a website about SEO may contain several pages discussing the merits of search engine optimization, and the specific methods you employ to enhance a client’s search engine rankings. SEO theory suggests each of those pages should focus on a fairly narrow set of keywords.
But if you have a blog about SEO you can create a virtually unlimited range of pages about different aspects of SEO:
Onpage SEO
SEO and traffic
Offpage SEO
SEO and links
SEO and Wordpress
SEO and Blogs
Article marketing SEO
SEO and video
And unlike with normal website pages you can be very specific in your focus:
The best SEO Wordpress plugins
Can Search Engine Optimization Turn Your Business Around
SEO and Corporate Blogging
etc., etc.
Read More..
Friday, November 14, 2008
What are The Benefits of Directory Submission?
Before even talking about benefits, do you know what directory submission is? It is a concept similar to the yellow pages, or directory assistance. Essentially, it gets your website listed in different web directories. Now, what are the benefits or directory submission?
Directory submission gets your website known to a wider number of people. Two web directories are Google and Yahoo. It is just like opening a phone directory. All you will see are business or personal listings arranged alphabetically. If you are looking for a certain service, it would be so easy to look it up. But did you notice that some listings are larger than others, bolder or more colorful? The business that did that had to pay more, but it is a justified expense because your eyes tend to zoom in on the large box or the bold print. Isn't it true that you normally would call that highlighted business, simply because it is bigger or bolder?
The same principle works with web directories. Submitting your website into a directory means getting your website indexed. It lets people know you exist and that you are open for business. It gets you noticed.
Another benefit of directory submission are the links. It has one way links or links exchanged with other complimentary sites. For example, if you are a website for men and their hobbies, you could have links with retailers of certain gadgets and toys, and vice versa. This can help drive more people to visit your website. Thus, it can boost your search engine optimization.
Read More..
Directory submission gets your website known to a wider number of people. Two web directories are Google and Yahoo. It is just like opening a phone directory. All you will see are business or personal listings arranged alphabetically. If you are looking for a certain service, it would be so easy to look it up. But did you notice that some listings are larger than others, bolder or more colorful? The business that did that had to pay more, but it is a justified expense because your eyes tend to zoom in on the large box or the bold print. Isn't it true that you normally would call that highlighted business, simply because it is bigger or bolder?
The same principle works with web directories. Submitting your website into a directory means getting your website indexed. It lets people know you exist and that you are open for business. It gets you noticed.
Another benefit of directory submission are the links. It has one way links or links exchanged with other complimentary sites. For example, if you are a website for men and their hobbies, you could have links with retailers of certain gadgets and toys, and vice versa. This can help drive more people to visit your website. Thus, it can boost your search engine optimization.
Read More..
How to build traffic to your blog
With the growing interest in blogging as a means of online promotion and branding, a lot of marketers are starting blogs to promote their opinions, products, books and services.
But a blog is like a website. "Write and they will come" isn't exactly a magic formula to bring in traffic by the boatload.
If you need to promote your website in order to build traffic to it, you need to promote your blog as well.
Here are some ways you can become a well-read and influential blogger.
1. Write Posts That People Will Want To Read
2. Optimize Your Posts for Search Engines
3. Submit Your Blog and RSS Feed To Directories
4. Ping The Blog Services
5. Build Links To Your Blog
6. Edit Your Blog Posts Into Articles
7. Create Buzz About Your Blog
8. Capture Subscribers By Email
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1. Write Posts That People Will Want To Read
This should be common sense, but many marketers tend to forget that their readers are real people and that you need to use the principles of online copywriting to make your headlines and copy interesting to your readers.
If you write posts that people enjoy reading, they will reward you by returning to your blog regularly.
Make your posts conversational, pithy and topical. Keep them short and stick to one topic per post.
Write often and regularly so that both readers and search engines visit your blog more often.
2. Optimize Your Posts for Search Engines
Blog-SEOI cover this topic in detail in my article on "Search Engine Optimization For Blogs" Blog SEO
But here are the most important rules to follow to get your posts listed for keywords of your choice.
* Make sure your blog URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for
* Use your primary keywords in the title of your post
* Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post
* Use your keywords in the anchor text of links in the body of your posts
3. Submit Your Blog and RSS Feed To Directories
If you publish a blog you should submit your blog and RSS feed to big directories like Yahoo and Dmoz, as well as the numerous blog directories and search engines.
Here is the best list I've found of places to submit your feed or blog, compiled by Luigi Canali De Rossi, who writes under the pseudonym Robin Good.
RSS SpecificationsBest Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites Masternewmedia.org Top55
Another list of sites to submit your Blog. Rss-specifications.com - RSS Submission
4. Ping The Blog Services
There are a number of services designed specifically for tracking and connecting blogs. By sending a small ping to each service you let them know you've updated your blog so they can come check you out.
Bookmark the Ping-O-Matic ping results page so you can visit it and quickly ping a number of services with a single click.
Pingomatic.com
5. Build Links To Your Blog
I recommend the methods here as the best ways to get links pointing to your blog
* Link to your blog from each page on your main website
* Trackback to other blogs in your posts
* Post legitimate comments on other blogs with related topics
* Offer to exchange links with other similarly themed blogs and websites
6. Edit Your Blog Posts Into Articles
One of the best methods for promoting your website is to write articles and submit them to article directories.
The suggestion for extending this to edit your blog posts into articles and submit them to directories came from the coach at "Explode Blog Traffic" who also has other noteworthy suggestions at his blog here. How To Explode Blog Traffic.
You'll find an extensive list of article directories here Ebizwhiz-publishing.com - Submit Articles
7. Create Buzz About Your Blog
Creating a buzz about your blog posts and topic in the local and online media will give your marketing a viral component.
* Create a controversy around your blog or it's topic.
* Distribute bumper stickers or other merchandise with your blog's URL and tagline.
* Write a press release about something newsworthy and tie it in with your blog topic.
8. Capture Subscribers By Email
It may seem strange for a blogger to send out updates by email, but email is still the #1 choice of most people who want to receive news and information.
Read More..
But a blog is like a website. "Write and they will come" isn't exactly a magic formula to bring in traffic by the boatload.
If you need to promote your website in order to build traffic to it, you need to promote your blog as well.
Here are some ways you can become a well-read and influential blogger.
1. Write Posts That People Will Want To Read
2. Optimize Your Posts for Search Engines
3. Submit Your Blog and RSS Feed To Directories
4. Ping The Blog Services
5. Build Links To Your Blog
6. Edit Your Blog Posts Into Articles
7. Create Buzz About Your Blog
8. Capture Subscribers By Email
-----
1. Write Posts That People Will Want To Read
This should be common sense, but many marketers tend to forget that their readers are real people and that you need to use the principles of online copywriting to make your headlines and copy interesting to your readers.
If you write posts that people enjoy reading, they will reward you by returning to your blog regularly.
Make your posts conversational, pithy and topical. Keep them short and stick to one topic per post.
Write often and regularly so that both readers and search engines visit your blog more often.
2. Optimize Your Posts for Search Engines
Blog-SEOI cover this topic in detail in my article on "Search Engine Optimization For Blogs" Blog SEO
But here are the most important rules to follow to get your posts listed for keywords of your choice.
* Make sure your blog URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for
* Use your primary keywords in the title of your post
* Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post
* Use your keywords in the anchor text of links in the body of your posts
3. Submit Your Blog and RSS Feed To Directories
If you publish a blog you should submit your blog and RSS feed to big directories like Yahoo and Dmoz, as well as the numerous blog directories and search engines.
Here is the best list I've found of places to submit your feed or blog, compiled by Luigi Canali De Rossi, who writes under the pseudonym Robin Good.
RSS SpecificationsBest Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites Masternewmedia.org Top55
Another list of sites to submit your Blog. Rss-specifications.com - RSS Submission
4. Ping The Blog Services
There are a number of services designed specifically for tracking and connecting blogs. By sending a small ping to each service you let them know you've updated your blog so they can come check you out.
Bookmark the Ping-O-Matic ping results page so you can visit it and quickly ping a number of services with a single click.
Pingomatic.com
5. Build Links To Your Blog
I recommend the methods here as the best ways to get links pointing to your blog
* Link to your blog from each page on your main website
* Trackback to other blogs in your posts
* Post legitimate comments on other blogs with related topics
* Offer to exchange links with other similarly themed blogs and websites
6. Edit Your Blog Posts Into Articles
One of the best methods for promoting your website is to write articles and submit them to article directories.
The suggestion for extending this to edit your blog posts into articles and submit them to directories came from the coach at "Explode Blog Traffic" who also has other noteworthy suggestions at his blog here. How To Explode Blog Traffic.
You'll find an extensive list of article directories here Ebizwhiz-publishing.com - Submit Articles
7. Create Buzz About Your Blog
Creating a buzz about your blog posts and topic in the local and online media will give your marketing a viral component.
* Create a controversy around your blog or it's topic.
* Distribute bumper stickers or other merchandise with your blog's URL and tagline.
* Write a press release about something newsworthy and tie it in with your blog topic.
8. Capture Subscribers By Email
It may seem strange for a blogger to send out updates by email, but email is still the #1 choice of most people who want to receive news and information.
Read More..
Marketing Publicity and Secret of Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is the hot topic of the day. Until recently, however, the focus of any search engine marketing company has been on optimizing the website of its client’s company. But this limited view of search engine optimization rarely gets a company into the coveted top slot of keyword search results by itself. Instead, marketing public relations firms are now at the forefront of search engine optimization. Specifically, a few leading firms are properly optimizing and distributing news and feature articles about products and taking their clients to the top of major news and search engine rankings in a surprisingly short amount of time.
Before people are ready to buy, they research topics, products, and services by keyword. But to capture these leads, you must be on the first half of the first page of search results. That takes specific expertise that only a very few marketing PR firms have. The reported payoff of this new approach typically includes an immediate and significant spike in website traffic, increased call-in leads and overall improvement in news and search engine results under the companys major keywords.
Instant Visibility through the News Search Engines:
According to statistics captured over the course of one month in mid-2004, over 27 million Americans searched Google and Yahoo! News for information. The news search engines are now major players in the dissemination of news. More importantly, these news engines allow for keyword searching and generate results in much the same way as the search engines. Therefore, an article that contains strategically placed keywords, can reach the top of news rankings.
Read More..
Before people are ready to buy, they research topics, products, and services by keyword. But to capture these leads, you must be on the first half of the first page of search results. That takes specific expertise that only a very few marketing PR firms have. The reported payoff of this new approach typically includes an immediate and significant spike in website traffic, increased call-in leads and overall improvement in news and search engine results under the companys major keywords.
Instant Visibility through the News Search Engines:
According to statistics captured over the course of one month in mid-2004, over 27 million Americans searched Google and Yahoo! News for information. The news search engines are now major players in the dissemination of news. More importantly, these news engines allow for keyword searching and generate results in much the same way as the search engines. Therefore, an article that contains strategically placed keywords, can reach the top of news rankings.
Read More..
SEO and Link Building Tips and Tactics
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process by which webmasters and online business owners get their websites to rank highly in SERPs (search engine results pages) for keyword phrases that are both heavily searched for and related to their industry or niche. Two of the biggest types of SEO work are keyword optimization and link-building (increasing the number of incoming links to a website or specific page)
Here are a few SEO tips to keep in mind when thinking about keyword optimization for a new website or online business:
1. Use keyword suggestion tools to research keyword phrases related to the website’s or online business’ industry or niche topic.
2. Don’t focus exclusively on very general (often one-word) keywords or keyword phrases that would be very difficult to earn a high search engine placement for. At the same time, don’t focus on keyword phrases that no one is searching for. It’s sometimes better to be a “big fish in a smaller pond” than a “little fish in big pond” where you can’t likely rise to the top.
3. Include keyword phrases throughout a page, with particular emphasis on titles, highlighted subheadings, and early in any text areas.
Building incoming links to a website or online business is also an important part of SEO and improving search engine rankings. This is because search engines look at incoming links almost like a “vote” where another website is saying the site, or some page within the site, is of high enough quality to recommend to its visitors. Obviously, link-building can be manipulated in many ways that don’t equate to “votes” (such as by purchasing banner ads or text links on another website). For this reason, some incoming links are considered more valuable than others. Here are a few link-building tips to keep in mind, to build higher quality incoming links:
1. Try to achieve incoming links that are one-way, rather than reciprocal (a one-way link looks more like an honest “vote” than a trade does).
2. Build incoming links from relevant websites (of a similar topic or niche), rather than from generic link farms.
3. Get incoming links from “authority websites” (high quality and popular websites) whenever possible.
4. Look for one-page content-based text links if purchasing links, rather than site-wide banner advertisements (makes the link seem more natural).
5. To get a specific article or internal Web page to rank well in SERPs, build links to that page rather than only the site’s homepage.
Read More..
Here are a few SEO tips to keep in mind when thinking about keyword optimization for a new website or online business:
1. Use keyword suggestion tools to research keyword phrases related to the website’s or online business’ industry or niche topic.
2. Don’t focus exclusively on very general (often one-word) keywords or keyword phrases that would be very difficult to earn a high search engine placement for. At the same time, don’t focus on keyword phrases that no one is searching for. It’s sometimes better to be a “big fish in a smaller pond” than a “little fish in big pond” where you can’t likely rise to the top.
3. Include keyword phrases throughout a page, with particular emphasis on titles, highlighted subheadings, and early in any text areas.
Building incoming links to a website or online business is also an important part of SEO and improving search engine rankings. This is because search engines look at incoming links almost like a “vote” where another website is saying the site, or some page within the site, is of high enough quality to recommend to its visitors. Obviously, link-building can be manipulated in many ways that don’t equate to “votes” (such as by purchasing banner ads or text links on another website). For this reason, some incoming links are considered more valuable than others. Here are a few link-building tips to keep in mind, to build higher quality incoming links:
1. Try to achieve incoming links that are one-way, rather than reciprocal (a one-way link looks more like an honest “vote” than a trade does).
2. Build incoming links from relevant websites (of a similar topic or niche), rather than from generic link farms.
3. Get incoming links from “authority websites” (high quality and popular websites) whenever possible.
4. Look for one-page content-based text links if purchasing links, rather than site-wide banner advertisements (makes the link seem more natural).
5. To get a specific article or internal Web page to rank well in SERPs, build links to that page rather than only the site’s homepage.
Read More..
Google’s SEO Starter Guide
Google’s PDF titled “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide” includes basic tips for making sites more accessible to search engines. This 22 page document focuses on a variety of topics ranging from the creation of unique title elements to more advanced issues like navigation and redirects.
While none of Google’s “secret sauce” is revealed within its pages, the Google guide to SEO does provide a number of interesting tips for webmasters who are new to search. Included in the Guide are Google’s best practices for title elements, meta tags, URL structure, navigation, content, anchor text, headers, images and robots.txt. In addition, Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide provides a list of additional resources provided free from Google.
Read More..
While none of Google’s “secret sauce” is revealed within its pages, the Google guide to SEO does provide a number of interesting tips for webmasters who are new to search. Included in the Guide are Google’s best practices for title elements, meta tags, URL structure, navigation, content, anchor text, headers, images and robots.txt. In addition, Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide provides a list of additional resources provided free from Google.
Read More..
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