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.
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Showing posts with label marketing tips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marketing tips. Show all posts
Friday, November 28, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
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..
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Simple SEO Health Check
Simple Five point SEO Health Check
SEO is not easy – however there are some simple checks that you can perform yourself which will give you an indication of some of the areas that can be improved on your site to help increase its ranking in search in engine results.
Check your Metadata
Check your Keywords
Check your URLs
Check your HTML
Check your Spelling
1. Check your Metadata.
Metadata, is data about data. It allows you to describe your website - largely for the benefit of search engines. There are three main metadata tags which you can check for on your site which are considered by search engines when determining your site’s position in search engine rankings. These are ‘Title’, ‘Description’ and ‘Keywords’.
Specifically you should check for:
the existence of these tags in your HTML source code,
that your title tag is descriptive,
the description tag gives a good summary of your page/site and helps draw users into your site (as it is often what is displayed by the search engines); and
that your keywords are relevant and meet your objectives.
Once you’ve found the source code look for:
YOUR PAGE TITLE GOES HERE
If your site doesn’t have this information, or if it doesn’t reflect your site’s content and purpose then search engines may not rank your site as highly.
2. Check your keywords
Keywords are words or phrases that help search engines identify what search queries are relevant to your site. Keywords are contained both within your page/site metadata (see step 1 above) and within the content of your site.
Search engines often look at the frequency (often called density) in which words appear within your site to determine what searches are relevant to your site. It is therefore important that keywords appear more frequently within your sites content.
Have a think about how visitors to your site might describe what they’re looking for and write down the key words. For example if you were running a plumbing business in Melbourne, you might identify ‘plumber’, ‘plumber in Melbourne’, and ‘plumbing service’, but also things like ‘blocked drain’, ‘leaking taps’, ‘greywater system’, ‘water saving’ etc. Now, review your site’s content and count how many times these words/phrases appear. If they don’t appear, or only appear once or twice throughout your site, you should review your content and identify how you might be able to modify or add to your content to include these keywords.
3. Check your URLs
Website URLs (which stands for Uniform Resource Locators – basically this is the website ‘address’ i.e. http://findingsimple.com/blog) should be meaningful and descriptive and where possible use keywords within the URLs themselves.
Keeping with the plumbing example, abbreviations within existing URLs such as “watsav” can be expanded to “water-saving”.
Content management tools like WordPress usually have built in functionality which you can enable to create more meaningful urls (or permalinks) which use the page or post titles within the sites urls.
An example of an optimised url is the url of this post as it contains the title of the post itself – which has also been expanded to include the keywords “search engine optimisation”.
While it is good to include meaningful keywords within URLs, it is important not to go overboard because the longer the URL the more difficult it will be for users to remember the address.
Read More..
SEO is not easy – however there are some simple checks that you can perform yourself which will give you an indication of some of the areas that can be improved on your site to help increase its ranking in search in engine results.
Check your Metadata
Check your Keywords
Check your URLs
Check your HTML
Check your Spelling
1. Check your Metadata.
Metadata, is data about data. It allows you to describe your website - largely for the benefit of search engines. There are three main metadata tags which you can check for on your site which are considered by search engines when determining your site’s position in search engine rankings. These are ‘Title’, ‘Description’ and ‘Keywords’.
Specifically you should check for:
the existence of these tags in your HTML source code,
that your title tag is descriptive,
the description tag gives a good summary of your page/site and helps draw users into your site (as it is often what is displayed by the search engines); and
that your keywords are relevant and meet your objectives.
Once you’ve found the source code look for:
If your site doesn’t have this information, or if it doesn’t reflect your site’s content and purpose then search engines may not rank your site as highly.
2. Check your keywords
Keywords are words or phrases that help search engines identify what search queries are relevant to your site. Keywords are contained both within your page/site metadata (see step 1 above) and within the content of your site.
Search engines often look at the frequency (often called density) in which words appear within your site to determine what searches are relevant to your site. It is therefore important that keywords appear more frequently within your sites content.
Have a think about how visitors to your site might describe what they’re looking for and write down the key words. For example if you were running a plumbing business in Melbourne, you might identify ‘plumber’, ‘plumber in Melbourne’, and ‘plumbing service’, but also things like ‘blocked drain’, ‘leaking taps’, ‘greywater system’, ‘water saving’ etc. Now, review your site’s content and count how many times these words/phrases appear. If they don’t appear, or only appear once or twice throughout your site, you should review your content and identify how you might be able to modify or add to your content to include these keywords.
3. Check your URLs
Website URLs (which stands for Uniform Resource Locators – basically this is the website ‘address’ i.e. http://findingsimple.com/blog) should be meaningful and descriptive and where possible use keywords within the URLs themselves.
Keeping with the plumbing example, abbreviations within existing URLs such as “watsav” can be expanded to “water-saving”.
Content management tools like WordPress usually have built in functionality which you can enable to create more meaningful urls (or permalinks) which use the page or post titles within the sites urls.
An example of an optimised url is the url of this post as it contains the title of the post itself – which has also been expanded to include the keywords “search engine optimisation”.
While it is good to include meaningful keywords within URLs, it is important not to go overboard because the longer the URL the more difficult it will be for users to remember the address.
Read More..
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Ten Tips to the Top of the Search Engines
1. Do not purchase a new domain unless you have to.
The search engines put a lot of stock in how long your website and domain have been around. While you can purchase a new domain and redirect your old one to the new one, your best bet is to use your existing domain/website if at all possible. If you're redesigning or starting from scratch and you have to use a brand-new domain for some reason, you can expect at least somewhat of a loss in search engine traffic. It could be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months or more.
2. Optimize your site for your target audience, not for the search engines.
This may sound counter intuitive, but hear me out. The search engines are looking for pages that best fit the keyword phrase someone types into their little search box. If those "someones" are typing in search words that relate to what your site offers, then they are most likely members of your target audience. You need to optimize your site to meet *their* needs. If you don't know who your target audience is, then you need to find out one way or another. Look for studies online that might provide demographic information, and visit other sites, communities, or forums where your target audience might hang out and listen to what they discuss. This information will be crucial to your resulting website design, keyword research, and copy writing.
3. Research your keyword phrases extensively.
The phrases you think your target market might be searching for may very well be incorrect. To find the optimal phrases to optimize for, use research tools such as Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker or Google's Keyword Tool. Compile lists of the most relevant phrases for your site, and choose a few different ones for every page. Never shoot for general keywords such as "travel" or "vacation," as they are rarely (if ever) indicative of what your site is really about.
4. Design and categorize your site architecture and navigation based on your keyword research.
Your research may uncover undiscovered areas of interest or ways of categorizing your products/services that you may wish to add to your site. For instance, let's say your site sells toys. There are numerous ways you could categorize and lay out your site so that people will find the toys they're looking for. Are people looking for toys to fit their child's stage of development? (Look for keyword phrases such as "preschool toys.") Or are they more likely to be seeking specific brands of toys? Most likely, your keyword research will show you that people are looking for toys in many different ways. Your job is to make sure that your site's navigation showcases the various ways of searching. Make sure you have links to specific-brand pages as well as specific age ranges, specific types of toys, etc.
5. Program your site to be "crawler-friendly."
The search engines can't fill out forms, can't search your site, can't read JavaScript links and menus, and can't interpret graphics and Flash. This doesn't mean that you can't use these things on your site; you most certainly can! However, you do need to provide alternate means of navigating your site as necessary. If you have only a drop-down sequence of menus to choose a category or a brand of something, the search engine crawlers will never find those resulting pages. You'll need to make sure that you always have some form of HTML links in the main navigation on every page which link to the top-level pages of your site. From those pages, you'll need to have further HTML links to the individual product/service pages. (Please note that HTML links do NOT have to be text-only links. There's nothing wrong with graphical image navigation that is wrapped in standard tags, as the search engines can follow image links just fine.)
Read More..
The search engines put a lot of stock in how long your website and domain have been around. While you can purchase a new domain and redirect your old one to the new one, your best bet is to use your existing domain/website if at all possible. If you're redesigning or starting from scratch and you have to use a brand-new domain for some reason, you can expect at least somewhat of a loss in search engine traffic. It could be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months or more.
2. Optimize your site for your target audience, not for the search engines.
This may sound counter intuitive, but hear me out. The search engines are looking for pages that best fit the keyword phrase someone types into their little search box. If those "someones" are typing in search words that relate to what your site offers, then they are most likely members of your target audience. You need to optimize your site to meet *their* needs. If you don't know who your target audience is, then you need to find out one way or another. Look for studies online that might provide demographic information, and visit other sites, communities, or forums where your target audience might hang out and listen to what they discuss. This information will be crucial to your resulting website design, keyword research, and copy writing.
3. Research your keyword phrases extensively.
The phrases you think your target market might be searching for may very well be incorrect. To find the optimal phrases to optimize for, use research tools such as Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker or Google's Keyword Tool. Compile lists of the most relevant phrases for your site, and choose a few different ones for every page. Never shoot for general keywords such as "travel" or "vacation," as they are rarely (if ever) indicative of what your site is really about.
4. Design and categorize your site architecture and navigation based on your keyword research.
Your research may uncover undiscovered areas of interest or ways of categorizing your products/services that you may wish to add to your site. For instance, let's say your site sells toys. There are numerous ways you could categorize and lay out your site so that people will find the toys they're looking for. Are people looking for toys to fit their child's stage of development? (Look for keyword phrases such as "preschool toys.") Or are they more likely to be seeking specific brands of toys? Most likely, your keyword research will show you that people are looking for toys in many different ways. Your job is to make sure that your site's navigation showcases the various ways of searching. Make sure you have links to specific-brand pages as well as specific age ranges, specific types of toys, etc.
5. Program your site to be "crawler-friendly."
The search engines can't fill out forms, can't search your site, can't read JavaScript links and menus, and can't interpret graphics and Flash. This doesn't mean that you can't use these things on your site; you most certainly can! However, you do need to provide alternate means of navigating your site as necessary. If you have only a drop-down sequence of menus to choose a category or a brand of something, the search engine crawlers will never find those resulting pages. You'll need to make sure that you always have some form of HTML links in the main navigation on every page which link to the top-level pages of your site. From those pages, you'll need to have further HTML links to the individual product/service pages. (Please note that HTML links do NOT have to be text-only links. There's nothing wrong with graphical image navigation that is wrapped in standard tags, as the search engines can follow image links just fine.)
Read More..
Monday, November 3, 2008
How to Optimize Video Content for SEO: 7 Tactics to Improve Your Rankings
Web users love online video. A summer report from comScore shows that U.S. residents watched more than 11 billion online videos in May 2008. And 52% of those viewers reported taking some action after watching, such as looking for more information or making a direct purchase, according to our 2009 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide.
Derek Fulford, Manager, Search Marketing, Weather.com, achieved an impressive 275% increase in daily views when his team optimized for search a series of archived online videos for one division of their organization.
If your site employs online video, you can borrow Fulford’s tactics to ensure that your content is indexed by search engines and shows up when users enter relevant keywords.
“For us especially, being a publisher site with revenue dependent on ad sales, video is something advertisers are familiar with,” says Fulford. “Our sales team is effective at selling video ads, so the more video we can generate and the more views we achieve, the more ads we can sell.”
Based on the success of that first campaign, Fulford’s team is now working to create a standard video SEO protocol for all of Weather.com’s video content. Flash-based players can make search-engine indexing more difficult. But Fulford found that many techniques used to optimize text-based content can be adapted to the video environment.
Fulford’s top seven tactics for improving search visibility for video content, include educating video production teams on front-end SEO, employing keyword targeting strategies, surrounding online video with tags, user comments, and other text-based content.
Tactic #1. Educate your video production team on SEO basics
Many critical steps in optimizing videos happen when files are created and placed onto Web pages. So, marketers must work closely with their video production team to ensure they understand the basics of SEO. In larger organizations, video production may be handled by a separate division.
To avoid confusion, Fulford recommends engaging in a formal SEO training process with any video production team. Key elements should include:
- Hosting an “SEO 101” training session with the video team. This session can introduce video producers to key concepts, such as:
o Identifying keywords for video titles and file names
o Tagging options
o Creating keyword-rich text descriptions of video content
- Planning a follow-up “SEO refresher” course or a more advanced training session several months after the team has begun employing SEO basics.
- Meeting with individual team members who’ve shown interest or requested deeper training on SEO topics.
- Writing a one-page, SEO-basics document that the team can take away from sessions to use as a resource during their day-to-day production duties.
Fulford stresses that even after conducting such training marketers should double-check new video files to ensure proper SEO techniques are being used.
“You can’t expect the video team to do everything, so you have to review their work.”
Tactic #2. Conduct research to ID relevant keywords for searches
As with all SEO campaigns, optimizing video content begins with identifying relevant keywords. Here are a few essentials:
- Identify a specific theme for video keywords.
Web pages may contain multiple content sections and navigation links that you can target for search engines. But video content tends to be shorter and more tightly focused.
For example, Weather.com features dozens of videos on hurricanes. Rather than choosing a generic search term such as “Hurricane,” the team identifies storms by a specific name or location, such as “Hurricane Ike” or “Hurricane Ike Houston.”
- Use keyword research tools to supplement your keyword list.
Once you’ve identified a major theme, keyword research tools, such as Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery, can identify popular terms, highly competitive terms, and useful synonyms that Web users are likely to type into a search engine.
Read More..
Derek Fulford, Manager, Search Marketing, Weather.com, achieved an impressive 275% increase in daily views when his team optimized for search a series of archived online videos for one division of their organization.
If your site employs online video, you can borrow Fulford’s tactics to ensure that your content is indexed by search engines and shows up when users enter relevant keywords.
“For us especially, being a publisher site with revenue dependent on ad sales, video is something advertisers are familiar with,” says Fulford. “Our sales team is effective at selling video ads, so the more video we can generate and the more views we achieve, the more ads we can sell.”
Based on the success of that first campaign, Fulford’s team is now working to create a standard video SEO protocol for all of Weather.com’s video content. Flash-based players can make search-engine indexing more difficult. But Fulford found that many techniques used to optimize text-based content can be adapted to the video environment.
Fulford’s top seven tactics for improving search visibility for video content, include educating video production teams on front-end SEO, employing keyword targeting strategies, surrounding online video with tags, user comments, and other text-based content.
Tactic #1. Educate your video production team on SEO basics
Many critical steps in optimizing videos happen when files are created and placed onto Web pages. So, marketers must work closely with their video production team to ensure they understand the basics of SEO. In larger organizations, video production may be handled by a separate division.
To avoid confusion, Fulford recommends engaging in a formal SEO training process with any video production team. Key elements should include:
- Hosting an “SEO 101” training session with the video team. This session can introduce video producers to key concepts, such as:
o Identifying keywords for video titles and file names
o Tagging options
o Creating keyword-rich text descriptions of video content
- Planning a follow-up “SEO refresher” course or a more advanced training session several months after the team has begun employing SEO basics.
- Meeting with individual team members who’ve shown interest or requested deeper training on SEO topics.
- Writing a one-page, SEO-basics document that the team can take away from sessions to use as a resource during their day-to-day production duties.
Fulford stresses that even after conducting such training marketers should double-check new video files to ensure proper SEO techniques are being used.
“You can’t expect the video team to do everything, so you have to review their work.”
Tactic #2. Conduct research to ID relevant keywords for searches
As with all SEO campaigns, optimizing video content begins with identifying relevant keywords. Here are a few essentials:
- Identify a specific theme for video keywords.
Web pages may contain multiple content sections and navigation links that you can target for search engines. But video content tends to be shorter and more tightly focused.
For example, Weather.com features dozens of videos on hurricanes. Rather than choosing a generic search term such as “Hurricane,” the team identifies storms by a specific name or location, such as “Hurricane Ike” or “Hurricane Ike Houston.”
- Use keyword research tools to supplement your keyword list.
Once you’ve identified a major theme, keyword research tools, such as Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery, can identify popular terms, highly competitive terms, and useful synonyms that Web users are likely to type into a search engine.
Read More..
Friday, October 31, 2008
More SEO Tips for Bloggers
Meta tags won’t help your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because they don’t have an impact on your SEO ranking. However, meta descriptions can help because people may want to search/link/read more if the description is interesting.
The “title” portion of the img src tag is only useful to you. It allows you to give your images more description so you know what you’ve shown in your image. It is not at all used in SEO. On the other hand, the “alt” portion of the img src tag offers some help with SEO, but only in Google Images.
It is possible to over-optimize your blog or web site for SEO. If, for instance, you’re writing a post about cell phones, you may choose to use several variations of cell phone: cell phone, cellphone, mobile phone, Verizon, iPhone, etc. This can overwhelm your post because you’re using too many keywords in the hopes of stronger SEO. Your readers are turned off and not reading. Instead, focus on what is irresistable. What is the most interesting part of your post? What will make the readers more interested?
What not to do for SEO: Don’t micro-focus your posts. You’ll most likely end up with short, limited posts that read more like an advertisement. In turn, these types of posts rarely offer value.
Read More..
The “title” portion of the img src tag is only useful to you. It allows you to give your images more description so you know what you’ve shown in your image. It is not at all used in SEO. On the other hand, the “alt” portion of the img src tag offers some help with SEO, but only in Google Images.
It is possible to over-optimize your blog or web site for SEO. If, for instance, you’re writing a post about cell phones, you may choose to use several variations of cell phone: cell phone, cellphone, mobile phone, Verizon, iPhone, etc. This can overwhelm your post because you’re using too many keywords in the hopes of stronger SEO. Your readers are turned off and not reading. Instead, focus on what is irresistable. What is the most interesting part of your post? What will make the readers more interested?
What not to do for SEO: Don’t micro-focus your posts. You’ll most likely end up with short, limited posts that read more like an advertisement. In turn, these types of posts rarely offer value.
Read More..
What is black-hat SEO ? All webmaster must check this.
Most people doesn’t know about black hat SEO techniques. Black hat SEO is also know as Spamdexing.
Following are considering as Black Hat
-Keyword stuffing. (keyword stuffing include excessive use of keywords to increase SEO. )
-Hidden text and invisible text.
-Link farms.
Search engines takes their maximum effect to remove sites from their index, who practice black-hat methods as these methods will ;
- Degrade the relevance of the search
- Degrade user experience.
So webmaster be careful when doing your SEO. Think long run. Do not use Black-hat methods. Do not handover your campaign to SEO firms who practice black-hat methods.
Black-hat methods used by webmasters to hide texts.
Read More..
Following are considering as Black Hat
-Keyword stuffing. (keyword stuffing include excessive use of keywords to increase SEO. )
-Hidden text and invisible text.
-Link farms.
Search engines takes their maximum effect to remove sites from their index, who practice black-hat methods as these methods will ;
- Degrade the relevance of the search
- Degrade user experience.
So webmaster be careful when doing your SEO. Think long run. Do not use Black-hat methods. Do not handover your campaign to SEO firms who practice black-hat methods.
Black-hat methods used by webmasters to hide texts.
Read More..
How to Use the Footer to Improve SEO and Increase Traffic
The Footer is often overlooked by web designers and web developers alike. But it can be the hidden gem of any well thought website; delivering SEO optimization advantage and bringing additional traffic. Lately, it seems, the footer is showing a new trend in web design altogether. Let’s look at how we can combine beauty and brains in the innocent footer.
Read More..
Read More..
Friday, October 24, 2008
Investing In Pay Per Click Marketing
Generating traffic to your site can be a problem but pay per click can provide a very cost effective solution. The reason for this is how superior it is against almost every other type of advertising. Quite often the reason people don’t use pay per click is because they just don’t understand it; this article should provide sufficient information to make things clearer.
Essentially, when you decide that you want to try this kind of advertising, you will create a small ad referring to your site that will be put up on a larger site that many people frequently look at. If someone likes your ad text they will click on your link and be redirected to your site and provide they stay for more than ten seconds, you will pay the hosting site some money as thanks. The sites that provide you with hosting when it comes to this sort of advertisement are usually big with a large amount of traffic and will have some relationship to the product or services that you are trying to put across. For many people the benefit of only paying when the service is used i.
Rather than paying for a month’s worth of advertisements that might bring you no clients, here, you will only pay when people notice the advertisement and then go on to your site. There have been stories about company’s competitors carrying out dirty tricks by continually clicking on their link in an effort increase their advertising costs but thankfully that is not something that occurs very often. When you use pay per click marketing, you will benefit from using directed and targeted marketing. This means that people browsing the site where your advert is placed are already interested in what it is you are offering.
Read More...
Essentially, when you decide that you want to try this kind of advertising, you will create a small ad referring to your site that will be put up on a larger site that many people frequently look at. If someone likes your ad text they will click on your link and be redirected to your site and provide they stay for more than ten seconds, you will pay the hosting site some money as thanks. The sites that provide you with hosting when it comes to this sort of advertisement are usually big with a large amount of traffic and will have some relationship to the product or services that you are trying to put across. For many people the benefit of only paying when the service is used i.
Rather than paying for a month’s worth of advertisements that might bring you no clients, here, you will only pay when people notice the advertisement and then go on to your site. There have been stories about company’s competitors carrying out dirty tricks by continually clicking on their link in an effort increase their advertising costs but thankfully that is not something that occurs very often. When you use pay per click marketing, you will benefit from using directed and targeted marketing. This means that people browsing the site where your advert is placed are already interested in what it is you are offering.
Read More...
6 Powerful Truths About SEO That You Don’t Know
Truth 1: The Page Title of The Website Linking To You Matters
Yep, this one matters a lot. If the title of the links page includes one or more of your keywords, it will give the link to your site more weight. So check into your prospective link partners, and look at the title of the page your link will be on.
You can usually find this pretty easily by using the backlink listing from above, as most page titles will be listed in the search engine results.
Truth 2: The Number of Outbound Links On The Website That Is Linking To You
One page can only have so much “importance” (Page Rank) to give away, so the more links on the page, the less the link to your site counts. Therefore, if your site is the only outbound link on the page, it’s going to carry much more weight than a “links page” with 100 outbound links on it. I suggest a maximum of 25 links per page - many more than that devalues your link too much.
This one will require the quite a bit of work if your link is on a lot of typical links pages. You’ll have to visit the page and manually count how many links on the page are outbound links.
Truth 3: The Content of The Page Linking To You
If you can get a link on a content page (as opposed to a links page) it will definitely be to your benefit. This is because 1) there probably won’t be many other outbound links on that page, and 2) the content on the page will most likely be related to the keywords in your anchor text, so the search engines will give your link more weight. You’ll also enjoy the bonus of the targeted traffic coming directly from that page. It can be tedious to find out which sites have your link on a content page. You may be able to find this out by checking the referrers’ section of your stats package - if you’re getting quite a few clicks from a certain site, your link is probably on a page with some content.
Truth 4: The Number And Type Of Links Linking To The Page That’s Linking To You
Wow, that was a mouthful. In a nutshell, the more the owner(s) of the site linking to you concentrated on offpage optimization while they were considering their linking partners, the more it will increase your link’s weight.
This is pretty much worthless to try to figure out on your own, unless you have dedicated staff people who you can pay, or a program to automate this process and report back to you. You’ll have to find out the offpage optimization for each site linking to you, and that will take time you don’t have.
Truth 5: The IP Addresses Of The Pages Linking To You
Search engines look up the IP address of the pages linking to you, and links from the same IP are devalued accordingly. This is to keep webmasters from pointing all of their sites at each other. It’s not a bad thing to have more than one link per IP, but it’s more valuable to have lots of links from different addresses.
To find the IPs of the pages linking to you, go to http://www.webrankinfo.com/english/tools/class-c-checker.php and enter between 2 and 10 links to check their IP addresses. However, this will become very tedious if you have hundreds or thousands of backlinks to check.
Truth 6: Whether Or Not The Websites Linking To You Are Deemed By Google As An Authority Website
This is something most webmasters don’t even know exists - “authority websites.” Most government (.gov) sites are considered “authority” sites. Or, sites like About.com, Microsoft.com, and others have also reached the “authority” status. This status is usually granted only to “supersites” that include tons of content and information, and if you can get a link from one of these sites to your site, it can be a huge positive effect on your rank. It’s almost impossible to know if a site is considered an authority, but any site with PR 8-10 is probably in this category.
Read More..
Yep, this one matters a lot. If the title of the links page includes one or more of your keywords, it will give the link to your site more weight. So check into your prospective link partners, and look at the title of the page your link will be on.
You can usually find this pretty easily by using the backlink listing from above, as most page titles will be listed in the search engine results.
Truth 2: The Number of Outbound Links On The Website That Is Linking To You
One page can only have so much “importance” (Page Rank) to give away, so the more links on the page, the less the link to your site counts. Therefore, if your site is the only outbound link on the page, it’s going to carry much more weight than a “links page” with 100 outbound links on it. I suggest a maximum of 25 links per page - many more than that devalues your link too much.
This one will require the quite a bit of work if your link is on a lot of typical links pages. You’ll have to visit the page and manually count how many links on the page are outbound links.
Truth 3: The Content of The Page Linking To You
If you can get a link on a content page (as opposed to a links page) it will definitely be to your benefit. This is because 1) there probably won’t be many other outbound links on that page, and 2) the content on the page will most likely be related to the keywords in your anchor text, so the search engines will give your link more weight. You’ll also enjoy the bonus of the targeted traffic coming directly from that page. It can be tedious to find out which sites have your link on a content page. You may be able to find this out by checking the referrers’ section of your stats package - if you’re getting quite a few clicks from a certain site, your link is probably on a page with some content.
Truth 4: The Number And Type Of Links Linking To The Page That’s Linking To You
Wow, that was a mouthful. In a nutshell, the more the owner(s) of the site linking to you concentrated on offpage optimization while they were considering their linking partners, the more it will increase your link’s weight.
This is pretty much worthless to try to figure out on your own, unless you have dedicated staff people who you can pay, or a program to automate this process and report back to you. You’ll have to find out the offpage optimization for each site linking to you, and that will take time you don’t have.
Truth 5: The IP Addresses Of The Pages Linking To You
Search engines look up the IP address of the pages linking to you, and links from the same IP are devalued accordingly. This is to keep webmasters from pointing all of their sites at each other. It’s not a bad thing to have more than one link per IP, but it’s more valuable to have lots of links from different addresses.
To find the IPs of the pages linking to you, go to http://www.webrankinfo.com/english/tools/class-c-checker.php and enter between 2 and 10 links to check their IP addresses. However, this will become very tedious if you have hundreds or thousands of backlinks to check.
Truth 6: Whether Or Not The Websites Linking To You Are Deemed By Google As An Authority Website
This is something most webmasters don’t even know exists - “authority websites.” Most government (.gov) sites are considered “authority” sites. Or, sites like About.com, Microsoft.com, and others have also reached the “authority” status. This status is usually granted only to “supersites” that include tons of content and information, and if you can get a link from one of these sites to your site, it can be a huge positive effect on your rank. It’s almost impossible to know if a site is considered an authority, but any site with PR 8-10 is probably in this category.
Read More..
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Travel SEO – How to Target Searchers at the Right Stage of the Buying Cycle
First of all how we interpret the typical search behaviour of online travel customers when looking to purchase a holiday online:
Get Holiday Ideas – At the initial stage the travel consumer has a reasonable idea about the type of holiday they are looking to go on, but will still be looking for inspiration. They will go straight to a search engine to find further information about the destinations they can visit to meet this requirement. They will try to identify the holiday via a series of searches such as “summer holiday 2009”, “beach holiday”, narrowing down towards the location with searches such as “beach holiday in Europe” etc.
Destination Research – The type of results users will be looking for at these stage are generally travel guides, they have a budget in mind but the most important goal is to identify the location. Users will continue by performing informational searches such as “Climate in Greece”, “hurricane season in the Caribbean”, “best Mediterranean beach holidays in September”.
Confirm Location – In order to find a suitable destination which meets the user’s needs they will perform queries such as “summer holiday in Italy”, “weekend in South of France”, “self-catering holiday in Tenerife” or “all-inclusive honeymoon to the Maldives”. Once comparing multiple destinations a decision is made to confirm the destination. Next they are likely to research deeper into the more specific locations via various research and long-tail queries such as “beach holidays in the South of France”, “best location in the French Riviera”, “hotels in Nice”, “where to stay in Monaco” etc.
Compare Packages & Transport Options –The next stage is to identify the preferred mode of transport, this will include various comparisons for flights, trains or driving. Users will look for a range of travel related queries such as “cheap flights to Nice” and “Eurostar to Nice” as well as considering holiday packages which include transport. These are still mainly research based queries, but the user now has a clear idea about where, when and how they want to go on holiday.
Select Hotel – Ok, they’ve found a cheap flight to Nice, which is the best travel option so far, now time to find a hotel which matches up with this or perhaps a holiday package which combines both at a cheaper rate. Back off to Google searching for “hotels in Nice” this time. They will scan for the best option to find the most suitable hotel features/location and at the most reasonable price. Again more research, checking out the hotel review websites.
Decision Time - Once they’ve read the reviews and found the perfect holiday, will they add this to a shopping basket and order like you would with any other e-commerce website? No, probably not. Some travel websites you may have to enquire to confirm pricing details and then book over the phone, others you can check for availability and book there and then. But instead they’ll probably think it over one last time, just to make sure.
Revisit Website to Book - Ok, they’ve thought it through, decided it’s time to get away from the UK’s glorious grey summer skies, booked the dates off work and got their creditcard ready, great! So back to find the holiday previously selected. If they’re clever this would be saved as a bookmark, the problem is many people won’t have remembered to have done this and even if they did there’s a good chance it’s a dynamic URL which may no longer work. So instead you perform a brand query “Expedia” or “Expedia holidays to Nice”, for example. Eventually browsing to the correct listings and hopefully finding the price hasn’t shot up considerably!
Purchase – They’ve reassured themselves (several times) this is the holiday package they want to purchase and they proceed to complete the transaction either online or over the phone.
After Sales – The buying cycle will continue following the sale with customer service and support involved, hopefully with the opportunity for repeat business in the future. This means it’s important to ensure you dominate all brand queries, both paid and organic. Making sure that when potential customers are searching for your brand they only find you and the glowing reviews and PR you want them to, without a competitor in sight!
Read More...
Get Holiday Ideas – At the initial stage the travel consumer has a reasonable idea about the type of holiday they are looking to go on, but will still be looking for inspiration. They will go straight to a search engine to find further information about the destinations they can visit to meet this requirement. They will try to identify the holiday via a series of searches such as “summer holiday 2009”, “beach holiday”, narrowing down towards the location with searches such as “beach holiday in Europe” etc.
Destination Research – The type of results users will be looking for at these stage are generally travel guides, they have a budget in mind but the most important goal is to identify the location. Users will continue by performing informational searches such as “Climate in Greece”, “hurricane season in the Caribbean”, “best Mediterranean beach holidays in September”.
Confirm Location – In order to find a suitable destination which meets the user’s needs they will perform queries such as “summer holiday in Italy”, “weekend in South of France”, “self-catering holiday in Tenerife” or “all-inclusive honeymoon to the Maldives”. Once comparing multiple destinations a decision is made to confirm the destination. Next they are likely to research deeper into the more specific locations via various research and long-tail queries such as “beach holidays in the South of France”, “best location in the French Riviera”, “hotels in Nice”, “where to stay in Monaco” etc.
Compare Packages & Transport Options –The next stage is to identify the preferred mode of transport, this will include various comparisons for flights, trains or driving. Users will look for a range of travel related queries such as “cheap flights to Nice” and “Eurostar to Nice” as well as considering holiday packages which include transport. These are still mainly research based queries, but the user now has a clear idea about where, when and how they want to go on holiday.
Select Hotel – Ok, they’ve found a cheap flight to Nice, which is the best travel option so far, now time to find a hotel which matches up with this or perhaps a holiday package which combines both at a cheaper rate. Back off to Google searching for “hotels in Nice” this time. They will scan for the best option to find the most suitable hotel features/location and at the most reasonable price. Again more research, checking out the hotel review websites.
Decision Time - Once they’ve read the reviews and found the perfect holiday, will they add this to a shopping basket and order like you would with any other e-commerce website? No, probably not. Some travel websites you may have to enquire to confirm pricing details and then book over the phone, others you can check for availability and book there and then. But instead they’ll probably think it over one last time, just to make sure.
Revisit Website to Book - Ok, they’ve thought it through, decided it’s time to get away from the UK’s glorious grey summer skies, booked the dates off work and got their creditcard ready, great! So back to find the holiday previously selected. If they’re clever this would be saved as a bookmark, the problem is many people won’t have remembered to have done this and even if they did there’s a good chance it’s a dynamic URL which may no longer work. So instead you perform a brand query “Expedia” or “Expedia holidays to Nice”, for example. Eventually browsing to the correct listings and hopefully finding the price hasn’t shot up considerably!
Purchase – They’ve reassured themselves (several times) this is the holiday package they want to purchase and they proceed to complete the transaction either online or over the phone.
After Sales – The buying cycle will continue following the sale with customer service and support involved, hopefully with the opportunity for repeat business in the future. This means it’s important to ensure you dominate all brand queries, both paid and organic. Making sure that when potential customers are searching for your brand they only find you and the glowing reviews and PR you want them to, without a competitor in sight!
Read More...
Video Search Engine Optimization
Most of us know that a site that's well configured for search engine access is a major part of getting high traffic levels. However, you might not have thought about optimizing your video as well as the rest of your site. Since multimedia content is becoming a much more popular way of distributing information, correct video search engine optimization is important.
For instance, on YouTube alone (which accounts for more than ninety-eight percent of the videos viewed via Google), more than eighty-two million people watched over four billion videos last year. That makes YouTube both the top video sharing site and the top video search engine.
YouTube receives as much as thirteen hours of new user-submitted video every minute, and more than fifty percent of the people watching videos online share links with other people. So, getting a good YouTube ranking could be an important way to bring people to your site.
For owners of video content, video search engine optimization is a good way to get exposure, ad income, and free traffic. Being discovered by the viewers has to happen before you can get lots of views. That means making sure that your data is rich in meta information, and that you use quality RSS or MRSS feeds that you update on a regular basis.
Make sure that your meta data is well placed and relevant to the topic. A cleaner can help you remove distracting or irrelevant meta information from the file.
Read More...
For instance, on YouTube alone (which accounts for more than ninety-eight percent of the videos viewed via Google), more than eighty-two million people watched over four billion videos last year. That makes YouTube both the top video sharing site and the top video search engine.
YouTube receives as much as thirteen hours of new user-submitted video every minute, and more than fifty percent of the people watching videos online share links with other people. So, getting a good YouTube ranking could be an important way to bring people to your site.
For owners of video content, video search engine optimization is a good way to get exposure, ad income, and free traffic. Being discovered by the viewers has to happen before you can get lots of views. That means making sure that your data is rich in meta information, and that you use quality RSS or MRSS feeds that you update on a regular basis.
Make sure that your meta data is well placed and relevant to the topic. A cleaner can help you remove distracting or irrelevant meta information from the file.
Read More...
Your Website from the Ground Up in 10 Steps
Step 1 - Keyword Research
Even before you choose your domain name, you should put a little time into some keyword research. Research all the possible keywords that will fit your industry and the website you plan on building. Having a clear idea of what your end targets are will make the rest of your job much easier and help things to just fall into place. Take a look at Keyword Research for SEO , written earlier this summer, for more help on this.
Step 2 - Domain Selection
If you already have an established brick and mortar business and the website will be an extension of that business, using your company name as the domain name is in most cases the best idea. If your company name is either irrelevant, or simply unavailable, you may want to consider a domain that has your target phrase listed as part of the domain.
A great example of this is if your site is focused geographically. Using the location as part of the domain when possible will give you a little extra juice with the search engines and help draw people to your site as they instantly can see the relevance in the domain.
Let's say that you are building a website focused on your home town, "Somewhere USA". A domain you may consider could be "Somewhere.com"; however, this would probably be already taken. Other options such as "SomewhereInfo.com" or "SomewhereGuide.com" may be good alternatives. The same goes for retail stores. "SomewhereCameras".com or "SomewhereBakery".com would also be good choices.
Avoid excessive use of hyphens; sometimes it is appropriate to use one, but if you can help it, avoid more than that as it can appear messy and even spammy in some cases.
Step 3 - System Back End
If you plan on having a large scale website that will grow and change constantly then you may want to consider a content management system (CMS) such as Joomla. If you decide to go this route, you want to ensure that whichever CMS you choose is search engine friendly and offers items such as unique title tags, custom URL's, and full control over content, heading tags, image alt tags, etc.
Starting a website using a non-friendly CMS is like buying a car without an engine. Sure it may look great, but it won't get you anywhere.
Read More...
Even before you choose your domain name, you should put a little time into some keyword research. Research all the possible keywords that will fit your industry and the website you plan on building. Having a clear idea of what your end targets are will make the rest of your job much easier and help things to just fall into place. Take a look at Keyword Research for SEO , written earlier this summer, for more help on this.
Step 2 - Domain Selection
If you already have an established brick and mortar business and the website will be an extension of that business, using your company name as the domain name is in most cases the best idea. If your company name is either irrelevant, or simply unavailable, you may want to consider a domain that has your target phrase listed as part of the domain.
A great example of this is if your site is focused geographically. Using the location as part of the domain when possible will give you a little extra juice with the search engines and help draw people to your site as they instantly can see the relevance in the domain.
Let's say that you are building a website focused on your home town, "Somewhere USA". A domain you may consider could be "Somewhere.com"; however, this would probably be already taken. Other options such as "SomewhereInfo.com" or "SomewhereGuide.com" may be good alternatives. The same goes for retail stores. "SomewhereCameras".com or "SomewhereBakery".com would also be good choices.
Avoid excessive use of hyphens; sometimes it is appropriate to use one, but if you can help it, avoid more than that as it can appear messy and even spammy in some cases.
Step 3 - System Back End
If you plan on having a large scale website that will grow and change constantly then you may want to consider a content management system (CMS) such as Joomla. If you decide to go this route, you want to ensure that whichever CMS you choose is search engine friendly and offers items such as unique title tags, custom URL's, and full control over content, heading tags, image alt tags, etc.
Starting a website using a non-friendly CMS is like buying a car without an engine. Sure it may look great, but it won't get you anywhere.
Read More...
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Two Ways To Justify SEO In Uncertain Times
During uncertain economic times like these, our advice is to always stick with the fundamentals to maintain business efficiency and progress. No matter what your business model, performing the fundamentals will keep you on-track and in-line for leveraging future success.
If the C-level executives in your company are having any doubts about the value of SEO and are hesitating to release more funding, it’s time to perform a cost-benefit exercise. It’s your job as an in-house SEO manager to reestablish their confidence in the value of SEO as well as your value and the value of your team.
When funding gets in the way, having a narrow focus, putting it on the table, and describing company goals you are committed to are all very important.
1) Leverage Your Paid Search Data
To demonstrate implicit value for SEO, start with a baseline. Show where your key terms currently rank in organic and multiply by the cost-per-click value. Run the numbers for the value of direct clicks with high search intent.
One way to go about this is to calculate an Effective Cost-Per-Click (eCPC) for your organic listings:
1.Access the Keyword Tool within your Google AdWords account.
2.Type your best performing (for instance, 20) keywords.
3.Select descriptive words or phrases and synonyms.
4.Click Get Keyword Ideas.
Read More...
If the C-level executives in your company are having any doubts about the value of SEO and are hesitating to release more funding, it’s time to perform a cost-benefit exercise. It’s your job as an in-house SEO manager to reestablish their confidence in the value of SEO as well as your value and the value of your team.
When funding gets in the way, having a narrow focus, putting it on the table, and describing company goals you are committed to are all very important.
1) Leverage Your Paid Search Data
To demonstrate implicit value for SEO, start with a baseline. Show where your key terms currently rank in organic and multiply by the cost-per-click value. Run the numbers for the value of direct clicks with high search intent.
One way to go about this is to calculate an Effective Cost-Per-Click (eCPC) for your organic listings:
1.Access the Keyword Tool within your Google AdWords account.
2.Type your best performing (for instance, 20) keywords.
3.Select descriptive words or phrases and synonyms.
4.Click Get Keyword Ideas.
Read More...
Press Releases and SEO
Search Engines and News Distribution - The Basics
It is the goal of search engines to help people find relevant content online including news content. It is the role of services like PRWeb to help people disseminate relevant news-oriented content online - search engines as a consumption facilitator, news distribution services as a production facilitator.
Now, everything else really stems from this core symbiotic relationship between search engines and news distribution services.
Tactically, search engines use different types of algorithms to determine what is relevant to a query. What distinguished Google in the late 90s was the PageRank algorithm, which placed a lot of value in the importance of back links in determining the relevance of a page.
Now, since then, the algorithm has changed quite a bit. These changes have been spurred for proactive reasons (breakthroughs made by Google’s über-talented engineers) and reactive reasons (to combat black hat SEO tactics). For instance, the practice of selling links or ‘link farming’ has compelled Google to make tweaks to their algorithm so these types of practices result in negative and not positive gains for perpetrators.
Anchor Text
Now let’s take this one level deeper and look at the concept of PRWeb’s usage of anchor text as a tool for search engine optimization. As the Google Webmaster blog states, “Writing descriptive anchor text, the clickable words in a link, is a useful signal to help search engines and users alike to better understand your content.” In other words, the anchor text helps explain to search engines affinities that may exist between keywords and a Web site.
On a simplistic level, PRWeb takes content from an originator and then moves it around the Web and gets it to people who consume that content and then often do something with it (like write about it). When they receive this content it includes the anchor text and when they discuss the content from the news release, more often than not they will include that anchor text in their hyperlink. Over time, the aggregate of all these individual bloggers, Web sites, etc. using anchor text and linking back to a destination site will have benefits for that destination site.
Read More...
It is the goal of search engines to help people find relevant content online including news content. It is the role of services like PRWeb to help people disseminate relevant news-oriented content online - search engines as a consumption facilitator, news distribution services as a production facilitator.
Now, everything else really stems from this core symbiotic relationship between search engines and news distribution services.
Tactically, search engines use different types of algorithms to determine what is relevant to a query. What distinguished Google in the late 90s was the PageRank algorithm, which placed a lot of value in the importance of back links in determining the relevance of a page.
Now, since then, the algorithm has changed quite a bit. These changes have been spurred for proactive reasons (breakthroughs made by Google’s über-talented engineers) and reactive reasons (to combat black hat SEO tactics). For instance, the practice of selling links or ‘link farming’ has compelled Google to make tweaks to their algorithm so these types of practices result in negative and not positive gains for perpetrators.
Anchor Text
Now let’s take this one level deeper and look at the concept of PRWeb’s usage of anchor text as a tool for search engine optimization. As the Google Webmaster blog states, “Writing descriptive anchor text, the clickable words in a link, is a useful signal to help search engines and users alike to better understand your content.” In other words, the anchor text helps explain to search engines affinities that may exist between keywords and a Web site.
On a simplistic level, PRWeb takes content from an originator and then moves it around the Web and gets it to people who consume that content and then often do something with it (like write about it). When they receive this content it includes the anchor text and when they discuss the content from the news release, more often than not they will include that anchor text in their hyperlink. Over time, the aggregate of all these individual bloggers, Web sites, etc. using anchor text and linking back to a destination site will have benefits for that destination site.
Read More...
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Facts about SEO and PPC
Mention the words SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click) to most business owners and you’re sure to either see blank faces, or hear stories of frustration. Either they don’t utilize these marketing techniques at all, or they’ve handed their company’s Web site SEO and PPC activities over to an agency and have little idea what’s going on with either, or they’ve “done it themselves” and had lackluster results at best.
This is unfortunate, because SEO and PPC are the foundation of any good Web site marketing plan. SEO refers to manipulating Web site content in a way that improves your chances of appearing on top of the results page; whereas PPC allows you pay for an advertisement or sponsored link to show up on the top results page, and you are charged for each click. If you want to be successful in business, both of these techniques are imperative. Think of it like building a house. If you build the roof before you build the foundation, you really don’t have a house. Likewise, if you launch a Web site or engage in fad Web marketing techniques (such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.) without solid SEO and PPC in place, you’re wasting both your time and money – two things that are precious in the business world.
Read More ...
This is unfortunate, because SEO and PPC are the foundation of any good Web site marketing plan. SEO refers to manipulating Web site content in a way that improves your chances of appearing on top of the results page; whereas PPC allows you pay for an advertisement or sponsored link to show up on the top results page, and you are charged for each click. If you want to be successful in business, both of these techniques are imperative. Think of it like building a house. If you build the roof before you build the foundation, you really don’t have a house. Likewise, if you launch a Web site or engage in fad Web marketing techniques (such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.) without solid SEO and PPC in place, you’re wasting both your time and money – two things that are precious in the business world.
Read More ...
Want to Increase Website Traffic? Easy SEO Tips!
In fact your SEO journey has just begun! Your site is built and functional, but so are a lot of sites out there. What is going to make your priority according to search engines, better than the other guys?
There are quite a few things we can do for good SEO. The first we are going to look at is the domain name. If you have a domain name such as IWB for selling a butter product, called I Want Butter, you’re not going to get very far. It’s not to say you will fail completely at SEO, but to optimize your chances, you should have a domain name that contains your keywords.
The domain ILoveButter or IWantButter would be optimal. You might have to get a bit creative depending on what domain names are available. These days you can register a domain for as little as seven dollars a year, it is a great investment that will insure great SEO rankings.
Some people will tell you that you’re site will take months to be crawled by the search engines if you register a new domain. Not True! Last week I built a brand new site on Tuesday. It was finished at 3PM. By Wednesday at noon, search engine bots were all over it.
How did I achieve that? Well, I had optimized my keywords, homepage text, and landing pages. But I also did the below steps. If you do these too, you can ensure great SEO rankings. Read More...
There are quite a few things we can do for good SEO. The first we are going to look at is the domain name. If you have a domain name such as IWB for selling a butter product, called I Want Butter, you’re not going to get very far. It’s not to say you will fail completely at SEO, but to optimize your chances, you should have a domain name that contains your keywords.
The domain ILoveButter or IWantButter would be optimal. You might have to get a bit creative depending on what domain names are available. These days you can register a domain for as little as seven dollars a year, it is a great investment that will insure great SEO rankings.
Some people will tell you that you’re site will take months to be crawled by the search engines if you register a new domain. Not True! Last week I built a brand new site on Tuesday. It was finished at 3PM. By Wednesday at noon, search engine bots were all over it.
How did I achieve that? Well, I had optimized my keywords, homepage text, and landing pages. But I also did the below steps. If you do these too, you can ensure great SEO rankings. Read More...
Monday, October 20, 2008
Search Engines And The Effect On SEO
Search Engines look for relevant content when a person makes a search based on a particular keyword. So your website should have relevant content in order to rank high in SERP. It is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to your website by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. Search engine optimization can be worked into a site while designing it you can optimize the site after it is designed. The key for which the optimization of the website is done is known as the “Search phrases” or the “keyword”. Doing search engine optimization is about creating traffic for your site. Search engine optimization can be performed on virtually any websites and is one of the most powerful ways of advertising for any business wanting to secure a stable online presence. Search engine optimization is big business.
The reason for this is people search the search engines for keywords looking for specific information. Place your keywords in the meta tag titles and description to make each page different, by creating this the search engines will rank your page better. Often when you’re searching for keywords, it is easy to forget the real purpose behind the keywords. Many webmasters are using software that analyzes the traffic compared to the consumer behavior on the website. By doing this you now can tell which keywords are working and bringing visitors to your website.
Many webmasters worry about page rank, this is not the only thing you should worry about, you should promote keywords that will bring traffic, by doing this your traffic will increase and so will your page rank. The traffic that you get from good links will make a steady contribution to your websites success. Links from related or relevant sites are more important than generic links from unrelated websites. Incoming, outgoing, and reciprocal links can all help in achieving search engine friendly sites. Read More...
The reason for this is people search the search engines for keywords looking for specific information. Place your keywords in the meta tag titles and description to make each page different, by creating this the search engines will rank your page better. Often when you’re searching for keywords, it is easy to forget the real purpose behind the keywords. Many webmasters are using software that analyzes the traffic compared to the consumer behavior on the website. By doing this you now can tell which keywords are working and bringing visitors to your website.
Many webmasters worry about page rank, this is not the only thing you should worry about, you should promote keywords that will bring traffic, by doing this your traffic will increase and so will your page rank. The traffic that you get from good links will make a steady contribution to your websites success. Links from related or relevant sites are more important than generic links from unrelated websites. Incoming, outgoing, and reciprocal links can all help in achieving search engine friendly sites. Read More...
Friday, October 17, 2008
12 Steps to Successful SEO
In an ideal world, SEO would be taken into consideration from the earliest stages of a new website design process, and "baked in" to the site from the start.
In the real world, however, SEOs are often called in to optimize an existing site, after all of the URLs are created, the navigation is already in place and all of the content is written. While that obviously reduces flexibility and makes certain steps impossible, the site's search performance can still be improved using this 12-step process.
1. Compile an initial keyword list
This involves two independent activities. First, generate a list of keywords based on the content of each page. Second, ask key individuals in the company (sales, top executives, etc.) for their lists of key search phrases. It's not unusual to turn up several important 2-4 word key phrases that don't even appear on the website!
2. Expand, verify and prioritize target keyword list
Use SEO keyword tools to expand your initial list of key words and phrases from step one, then prioritize the list based on search term popularity as well as value to the business. In other words, ask two questions for every key phrase: 1) how popular is this term among searchers? and 2) how likely is it that a searcher using this phrase is looking for what we have to sell?
3. Match keywords to pages
Once the keyword list is established, search terms should be mapped to specific pages. Each page can support, ideally, one "core" key phrase as well as 2-3 long tail variants. So, for example, a page optimized for a high-volume two-word phrase like "blue thingamabobs" could also be the target page for "screaming blue thingamabobs," "blue thingamabobs sales" and "screaming blue thingamabobs sales."
An excellent way to start matching keywords to phrases is to use Google Advanced Search. Enter your key phrase in the box for "this exact wording or phrase:" and your domain (in the form company.com) in the "Search within a site or domain:" box. If no good matches are found, you may need to rewrite an existing page to target the key phrase or even create an entirely new page. Read More..
In the real world, however, SEOs are often called in to optimize an existing site, after all of the URLs are created, the navigation is already in place and all of the content is written. While that obviously reduces flexibility and makes certain steps impossible, the site's search performance can still be improved using this 12-step process.
1. Compile an initial keyword list
This involves two independent activities. First, generate a list of keywords based on the content of each page. Second, ask key individuals in the company (sales, top executives, etc.) for their lists of key search phrases. It's not unusual to turn up several important 2-4 word key phrases that don't even appear on the website!
2. Expand, verify and prioritize target keyword list
Use SEO keyword tools to expand your initial list of key words and phrases from step one, then prioritize the list based on search term popularity as well as value to the business. In other words, ask two questions for every key phrase: 1) how popular is this term among searchers? and 2) how likely is it that a searcher using this phrase is looking for what we have to sell?
3. Match keywords to pages
Once the keyword list is established, search terms should be mapped to specific pages. Each page can support, ideally, one "core" key phrase as well as 2-3 long tail variants. So, for example, a page optimized for a high-volume two-word phrase like "blue thingamabobs" could also be the target page for "screaming blue thingamabobs," "blue thingamabobs sales" and "screaming blue thingamabobs sales."
An excellent way to start matching keywords to phrases is to use Google Advanced Search. Enter your key phrase in the box for "this exact wording or phrase:" and your domain (in the form company.com) in the "Search within a site or domain:" box. If no good matches are found, you may need to rewrite an existing page to target the key phrase or even create an entirely new page. Read More..
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Back-links Strategies
Off-Site optimization playing a major role in any web-site ranking. Off-Site optimization refers to the factors that you can’t control it in your site. One of the most critical parts in Off-Site optimization is back-links. The search engines sees the back-links as it’s voting for your site, and as this voting increases your ranking increases also. There are many ways that enables you to get back-links to your site in order to get high ranking position for your site, however we will mention the most two important ways.
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