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Everflux SEO & Post Penguin Predictions
posted by Peter A. Prestipino @ 10:30 AM
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Google’s latest round of algorithm changes, which affects just 3 percent of queries, is now known as the Penguin update. The latest sweep of the SERPs penalized spinners and spammers, and sends a clear message about what the search engine expects from the SEO community.
So, should your SEO strategy change?
Not Just SEO, Everflux SEO
While Google has been battling the most roguish of SEOs since it came into commercial being (see a brief history of Google updates below), many digital marketers still mistakenly believe that black hat shortcuts are better than having a sustainable white hat strategy.
As someone who likely requires some measurable success with SEO, your best tactic in the now post-penguin era is to invest your energy in Everflux SEO. No, it’s not a software or a service, it’s a mindset – a mindset that demands a greater focus on creating genuine value-added experiences for Google’s users and your prospective visitors. While the search indices are constantly in flux, SEOs need to be “ever” vigilant in adopting the many well-known best practices.
To understand what Google wants, or any search engine for that matter, you must first understand its history with the SEO community and the changes and modifications it has made to provide users the best possible experience over the years and which lead us to today.
A Brief History of Google Updates
The number, scope and depth of algorithm changes made by Google over time is extensive, but even by examining a brief history (we’ve highlighted the “key words”) can we start to see what SEOs should be focusing on. For example, Google has always been concerned with link quality. The Cassandra and Dominic updates put the quality of links at the center of discussion in the search engine optimization community, and that conversation continues today.
When the Florida update rolled out in late 2003, the practice of SEO became much more serious. Shortcut SEO techniques such as keyword stuffing, which once provided the most open point of access into the search results, were finally sealed with Florida.
With several loopholes closed, in early 2004 Google introduced an update known far and wide as Brandy, which dramatically improved Google keyword analysis through Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). This set the stage for the most significant changes to the Google SERPs in the Jagger and Big Daddy update of 2005. Google cracked down on link manipulation with Jagger and introduced the term canonicalization with Big Daddy, which made site quality issues (and some would argue search usability) the focus.
For many, it was the golden age of search engine optimization and out of the blue – it got much better. The Universal Search update in 2007 created a much more immersive experience for search engine users and provided SEOs with many more tools to practice their craft. News content, images and video started Google down a path of introducing new content formats to the user search experience. Google has continued with these integrations and, in some instances, bought companies outright (ITA Software, Zagat) which provide content that users can’t or don’t provide. For those it could not purchase, Google partnered with. The best example of this is seen in what I refer to as the “Fire Hose Wars”, where the interest in real-time search was at fever pitch. Google starting indexing content from a variety of services, including the fire hose (or full feed) of Twitter.
The real-time search update presented some further speed and indexation problems, which were addressed in the Caffeine update of mid-2010. If 2010 was the year of real time and caffeine, then 2011 was the year of the Panda, a broad update which harshly punished “thin content sites.” Then, in mid-2011, Google and other search engines announced support for Schema.org – again providing something of value for SEOs in terms of a means to provide more information to Google and influence their position on the search results.
As the interest in social media rose, so did Google’s reliance on social signals. And of course what still remains as one of the hottest topics in SEO, Search+ Your World further changed the already highly dynamic, personalized search results by incorporating user profiles and more social data. Social media optimization is now an essential technique for success with SEO.
By understanding the update history and with a firm belief in the importance of Everflux SEO, we can finally make some post-Penguin predictions.
Post Penguin Predictions
Greater Reliance on Knowledge-Base Optimization (KBO): The Web doesn’t exist without information, and more often than not, the more you have, the better the opportunity to receive website traffic (visitors). But you can’t get those website visitors if at some point you don’t first create the content. Knowledge-base optimization puts your whole organization/enterprise to work, developing and sharing information that will by its very nature appeal to those looking for your products or services on the Web.
Deeper Exploration of People-Powered Optimization: The practice of search engine optimization has changed and, for many, it has not been an easy transition. Today’s SEO must be skilled not only at content creation, site architecture or keyword analysis. Today, the best in the SEO business are those that have mastered the art of people-powered optimization. To benefit in this new era, you’ll need to understand the practice of social media optimization and the role that individuals play in the success of not just SEO, but of the entire digital enterprise.
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Blame it on Rio – Your New SEO Success, That is
posted by Linc Wonham @ 6:00 PM
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Search marketing agency Covario has released a new business unit aimed at growing the market for its present SEO and social media software tools.
Rio SEO will focus on serving the automation needs of in-house SEO managers extending from large to mid-size companies, as well as search marketing practitioners at digital agencies that provide SEO and social media services to their clients.
A suite of organic search marketing and social media software tools for content marketing, auditing, reporting and competitive analysis highlight the launch. Rio SEO will provide technology applications designed to help marketers and retailers that generate huge amounts of content optimize their Web pages with minimal IT support, as well as build corresponding mobile sites optimized for devices like smartphones and tablets.
At launch, Rio SEO is also offering the first of several application-specific SEO and social media modules to come.
The initial tool is called Rio SEO Change Tracker, an application module that will help SEO managers and digital agencies discover, diagnose and address website changes – often emanating inadvertently from other areas of an organization, such as IT, marketing, e-commerce and website design – which can cause numerous SEO performance problems if not caught quickly and fixed right away.
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How to Optimize PDF Documents for SEO
On page optimization and link building are the most basic techniques of optimizing a website. Apart from web pages, many sites contain assets in the form of documents (.doc, .pdf), spreadsheets (.xls), presentations and videos (.avi etc). Optimizing these assets is beneficial as they get indexed faster and rank well in the top search engine result pages.
1. Use a Text Based PDF Creator:
There are a lot free tools available online with Adobe Acrobat being the best text based PDF creator. If a PDF document is created in an image based program, the search engines will completely ignore it. If the PDF is created using a text based creator like Adobe acrobat, the search engine robots will read and index the text like any other web page.
2. Update the Document Title:
The title of the PDF file is as important as the title tag of a web page. The PDF title property tells the search engine robots about the type of content. The most important aspect of the title is that Google uses the text in the title field as the link in the search engine result pages. Thus, the title field should be keyword rich and should not contain random text.
3. Complete the document properties:
A PDF file contains many document properties apart from the title field. These are keywords, description, author info, copyright info etc. All the fields must be completed with relevant information. The keyword field should not be stuffed with keywords or remain empty. It has not been proven that the search engines give importance to the keyword field in the document properties. If in future they do, your PDF file will have an advantage over other web pages.
4. Link to the PDF File from the Homepage:
The Searchbots will not discover and index the PDF file if it is placed too deep within the website. To ensure that the PDF file gets crawled by the search engines, it should be visibly linked from the home page or any other page which gets crawled regularly. If your aim is to get the PDF in top search engine result pages, then you have to lead the searchbots to it.
5. Optimize the content in the PDF File:
The content in the text based PDF files is similar to the content in a website. This makes content optimization an important aspect in optimization of PDF files. The content should be relevant to the subject matter. Important text should be highlighted by increasing their font size and utilizing the bold and italics features of the PDF files. Keywords should be placed in the first few lines of the content.
6. Place Links in the PDF File:
When a visitor opens a PDF file ranking in the top search engine results page, there should be a provision in the file to link back to its original website. This action reduces the efforts of the visitor to hunt for the main website. Also, a link from the PDF file can be considered as a backlink by the search engine.
A PDF file is similar to a web page in an assortment of aspects. It should be optimized with as much care as a web page to achieve high rankings.
Keywords are Key
If you spend a couple hundred bucks on good keyword research software or pay as much as $1,000 to have someone do it for you, you can save yourself thousands. I have clients who have come to me after spending thousands and did not get the results they expected. One that comes to mind was optimizing for the highest search volume rated words and the other one determine the search terms by simply letting the client guess. Both are recipes for disaster.
Keyword research is market research. I can’t stress this enough. And no matter how much you think you know your business, I can adamently tell you that you can’t sit there and guess the best terms for use with your business website. NOTE: I said the best terms. Not the most popular. Keyword research gives you insight into the customer that you have probably never seen in traditional marketing channels.
There are many keyword research tools on the market and for the most part, they all seem to work. That’s mostly because they’re all getting data from the same place. For example, if you type “allintitle:keyword” (substituting the keyword with the one you’re researching), it is possible to determine the number of web pages that use that keyword in the title. Including keywords in the title at least offers a clue that that page is attempting to rnk for that search term. Therefore, that represents some indication of your competition for that keyword. If I just type the same keyword in quotes, Google will tell you how many pages are indexed for that same keyword. If you calculate allintitle/total indexed, you have some index relative to competition for that keyword. The lower the number the better. This is just one of the many competitive parameters you can use to determine if that keyword is something you should be chasing.
This is not all you have to do. You just need to appreciate that there is a lot of information that the search engines will give you relative to your market. Google will even provide search volumes for related keywords used in your market. To find the Google tool to do this, just Google: “Google free Keyword research”. The first organic result will get you to that tool. It’s a pretty cool tool but it doesn’t help you much in the way of correctly targeting competition. Still it’s a good start.
The biggest mistake I see most businesses make, and many SEO firms for that matter is not targeting keywords for which you KNOW you can rank for. I’m not suggesting you choose some really obscure keywords that never get used…anyone with half a brain can make you rank for those. It’s also a devious trick of some less than credible SEO companies. I’m saying that it’s possible for you to rank for keywords associated with your business ONLY IF your keywords deliver on three principles. They are relevant, they produce traffic and they are relatively non-competitive.
There are three factors you need to consider for every keyword. Relevance, volume and competition. A keyword is relevant if your page represents what the visitor is looking for relative to the search. The volume is indicated by the total searches for a keyword. The competition is indicatd by many parameters including those above plus a consideration of the sites in the first page search engine results to see if there is site parity.
Having website parity means that your site carries as much weight as some of the other site in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages). If you can beat some of the sites in terms of page rank and in-bound links than it is likely that you can optimize to beat at least some of the current sites.
Ultimately, SEO should be a very predictable process. It does not mean you can be guaranteed a first postion but with the right tools you should be able to characterize how difficult a first place position would be to achieve for a particular key word.
10 Profoundly Effective Steps to Internet Marketing Success
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Friday, September 16, 2011
10 Profoundly Effective Steps to Internet Marketing Success
1. Brainstorm Your Domain Name
This is an important process, so don’t rush it. Even if it takes you weeks or even months to come up with a domain name you’re satisfied with. Take as much time as you need. Your domain name is that important.
I’m a firm believer in creating generic domain names that utilize your primary keywords. For example, NewyorkCityHotels.com or NapaValleyWines.com. Having a generic domain name serves two crucial purposes:
First, it will attract a more targeted audience to your website. A targeted audience will give you a much higher conversion ratio – allowing you to make maximum use of the traffic you receive.
Second, generic domain names that utilize your primary keywords will help with your search ranking. While SEO experts have opposing viewpoints whether or not this actually helps, based on my own personal experience, I can tell you that it does.
By the way, because of the astronomical number of domains on the Internet, you may have to get a little creative in order to utilize your primary keywords in your domain name.
For example, if your first choice, NewYorkCityHotels.com is already taken, try playing around with different variations of your keywords.
For instance, try this variation, HotelsinNewYorkCity.com…or this one, CityofNewYorkHotels.com. Also, don’t be afraid to use hyphens in your domain name. Using this technique allows me to utilize my primary keywords 100% of the time.
It also allows me to use the much preferred .com domain. You should try to use .com domains whenever possible, because most people will automatically put a .com on the end of a domain when they type it into a search engine. This puts you in prime position to pick up traffic from domains in your category that utilize extensions other than .com.
2. Register Your Domain Name, and Forget It
After you decide on a domain name, don’t build your website right away. Register your domain name, and forget it.
Why? Because in my opinion, you should never build a website without having a plan to promote, as well as monetize your website. Develop a well-thought-out marketing plan going forward, then when you build your website, you can hit the ground running.
3. Develop Your Marketing Plan
I’m a member of several small business forums, and without fail, the two questions that get asked most often are:
“How do I promote my website?” or, “How do I get free traffic to my website?” Those two basic questions get asked every single day.
That’s why it’s so important to develop a marketing plan in advance. You need to know the answer to those questions, before you build your website. You can’t get to your destination, if you don’t know know where you want to go.
4. Your Budget Determines Your Marketing Plan
If you have thousands of dollars to work with, then you have many more options when it comes to promoting your website. For example, you can buy ads in offline publication, as well as online publications.
A word of advice: Unless you are an experienced marketer with extremely deep pockets, stay away from pay-per-click advertising. PPC advertising will eat up your advertising budget quicker than Usain Bolt breaks world records.
In reality, most people coming online don’t have thousands of dollars to work with. In fact, most people coming online have little or no money at all.
But that’s the beauty of the Internet. Even if you are broke, you can still promote your website effectively, if you know what you’re doing.
For example, you can participate in social media networking, and promote your website via mega-popular sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and a host of other social media websites.
Other free and highly effective promotion methods include article marketing, forum posting, guest blogging, RSS feeds, volunteering your expertise on Question & Answer sites like AllExperts.com and more.
5. Learn How to Implement Your Marketing Plan Effectively
Starting a business – any business without having even basic marketing skills is downright foolish. Competency in marketing is the most important business skill that you can have.
If you become proficient in the art of marketing, it will allow you to become profitable that much quicker. And there won’t be anything that you can’t accomplish.
Some of the greatest sales and marketing books ever written are located right under your nose, at your local library – and they’re free. Do yourself a favor and study the classics. Many of the marketing techniques being used today are based on sound marketing principles established many decades ago.
A few of my favorite marketing books include The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy, Advertising Secrets of the Written Word by Joe Sugarman, Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz, Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples, Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy, Magic Words That Bring You Riches by Ted Nicholas and How to Write a Good Advertisement by Victor O. Schwab.
If you can’t find these books at your local library, you can pick them up for just a few dollars on Amazon.
6. Apply What You Learn
It’s not enough to just read the classics, you have to apply what you learn. Otherwise, what’s the point? That means reading the books more than once – several times if necessary.
Actually, you should read the books as many times as it takes for the information to sink in and become second nature to you.
You should also take copious notes, and practice writing ads over and over and over again. You should give yourself regular written exams on the information in the books, and each time you test yourself, your goal should be to score 100%.
Sounds like hard work, doesn’t it? It is. The question is how hard are you willing to work to get what you want?
7. Monetize Your Website
There are a number of ways that you can monetize your website – from selling advertising on your site to affiliate programs. My preferred method is affiliate programs.
Why? Because affiliate programs are completely hands-off for you. No billing, no inventory, no hassles. You simply choose from among the thousands of affiliate programs available on the Internet, select your program of interest, and promote the living daylights out of it. Then take your checks to the bank…that’s it.
8. Take Your Income to the Next Level
Once you start making $50 per month with affiliate programs, build another website, and start promoting another affiliate program. And when that website starts making $50, build another website and another and another.
Why? Because if you have 10 websites making $50 per month, that’s a monthly income of $500. And therein lies the secret to making money on the Internet.
Why beat yourself up trying to make hundreds – or even thousands of dollars with a single website? Take the path of least resistance. Build a bunch of websites that make just $50 per month. If you can build fifty websites in a year, that’s a monthly income of $2500, or $30,000 a year.
Does your current job pay that much? And the beauty of this method is you can keep giving yourself a raise. If you build another fifty websites the following year, you just doubled your income to $5,000 per month.
And if you can build another fifty websites the following year, you just tripled your income to $7500 per month.
The key to making this method work is building simple, low-maintenance websites. Just add content once or twice a month, and forget about them.
Think it can’t be done? Think again. I’m doing it, and so are thousands of other smart and resourceful entrepreneurs.
9. What About Content?
The key to having a website that other websites want to link to is having quality, content that is relevant to the overall theme of your website. You can either produce the content yourself, import it from somewhere else, or a combination of both.
If you elect to import your content from somewhere else, you can either use free content from article directories like EzineArticles, or you can purchase PLR articles, which I don’t recommmend.
Why? Because hundreds of other people purchased the exact same PLR package as you. So those articles have to be completely rewritten, which is a time-consuming process.
Whichever way you choose to go, just remember, it’s important to have lots and lots of relevant content on your website.
How much content? The more the better. After all, the more content you have on your website, the more often your visitors will return to read that content.
10. Build Your Website
Okay, now that you’ve properly laid the foundation for success, it’s time to build your website. The type of website you build will again depend on the amount of money you have to play around with.
I have a bunch of websites that I paid absolutely nothing for. And I have websites that I paid hundreds of dollars for. My recommendation: If you don’t have to spend money on a website, don’t.
Nowadays, it’s not necessary to spend a lot of money to get a decent looking website.
But whatever you do, be sure to purchase your own domain name. You definitely don’t want the name Blogspot, WordPress or Homestead in your domain name. It just looks amateurish.
I buy most of my domains through NetworkSolutions.com, because I’ve been using them for years, and I’m comfortable with them. Their domains cost a lot more, but they more than make up for it with great customer service.
That’s something you just can’t put a price on. That being said, I’ve also purchased $10 domain names from GoDaddy without any problems.
One last thing, don’t beat your brains out worrying about SEO. Just make sure your primary keywords appear in your title tag, and you’ll be just fine.
Use SEO Strategies to Increase Web Traffic
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Use SEO Strategies to Increase Web Traffic
Every new technology adopted widely by society brings about a number of new opportunities. The movable type printing press created affordable print information, the telephone and radio created the concept of instantaneous communication over great distances. Today, the Internet has unified both of these concepts into the information explosion that is the digital age.
Consider this article alone – a mere forty years ago printing even fifty copies of each page would cost either a chunk of change or at least a suspicious look from the boss as you hovered over the office copier. Now the information can be sent to thousands of people within the time it takes to brew a good cup of tea.
Of course with every technology comes a system to make the best marketing use of that advancement. The radio gave rise to the modern commercial advertisement, which was refined by the television and still persists on the Web. The telephone gave us telemarketers and the first concept of communication networking. For making the most of the Internet, the strategy of the day is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
* What is SEO, again?
In short, SEO is the presentation of a webpage in such a way that it consistently ranks highly in particular search engine results. While fads and sensations can quickly boom online from “word of mouth,” they don’t produce the same reliable success as a balanced, systematic approach.
Very few businesses, after all, want one rush of attention that leads to a website crash, followed by an equally quick slide into the various forgotten graveyards of the web. Therefore, SEO uses a combination of elements to make the site increasingly relevant to the various searches that Internet users perform, to bring it up again and again among the best results.
* Key SEO Strategies
1. Set goals
Identify what you want your SEO campaign to accomplish. While any SEO-conscious writing and page design can contribute to a site’s search engine rankings, an unfocused effort will simply waste time and money. After all, a business promoting athletic clothing and footwear may not benefit too much from showing up in searches for evening wear. Is your goal simply to increase your site’s visitor traffic? Do you want to generate more sales of a product? Is it part of an effort to promote your digital brand? Each of these goals benefits from different aspects of SEO technique.
2. Link up
Link building is one of the cornerstones of any SEO effort. Many search engines are spider-based, meaning they use automated processes to collect and categorize information on various websites. When a large number of websites provide links back to your business, or when a particularly high-traffic site does so, the spiders take notice of it and increase the relevance of that link in searches related to those sites.
3. Get the keys
Keyword writing is consistently stressed as a requirement when websites look for content writers. Keywords are just that, words and phrases chosen for their popularity and relevance to key searches.
There are dozens of theories about keyword writing. In the earlier days of SEO writing, it wasn’t uncommon to see pages that were nothing but long strings of repeated variations on a few keywords. This has evolved into more organic writing that fits in keywords with the article as a whole.
Whichever strategy is chosen, care must be taken to avoid the temptation to abuse keyword searches. Yes, a proper keyword density will bring up your search rankings over time. However, Google can and does ban pages from its index when they determine it to be a keyword-abusing effort. So consider your keyword choices carefully, and seamlessly integrate them into your entire strategy.
4. Be on the right page
One aspect occasionally neglected in SEO is the architecture and design of the webpage itself. Search engines and their ranking systems (be they spider or human based) are growing more sophisticated all the time, and look at many different factors in their decisions. A site that buries its keyword-rich articles on interior pages behind dozens of subsidiary links will not perform as well as one with strategic keyword-oriented material right on the front page. Have an SEO-conscious designer look over your page, as well as your articles.
Remember that every business is a multi-faceted whole. Many failures occur when people attempt to compartmentalize too much. You can’t consider SEO as some sort of ‘event’ that you do every so often, just as a business can’t put off routine maintenance of their equipment and expect it to function properly. Integrate your efforts into the entire process, and give them the same focus as any other effort in the business, and they will return their investment much more reliably, quickly, and ideally.
Do You Want the Top Spot on Google?
Every website is battling for the top spot in Google’s search results page, and to do that you have to optimize your website for Google. Optimization requires continually improving your site’s content. Even though Yahoo and Bing simply search the tag structures in HTML, Google uses a trickier, and somewhat clandestine, method to determine top spot.
Google looks for websites that continually provide fresh and relevant content. Since Google has such strict guidelines for top spot, it requires web page owners to continually work on keeping their page’s content fresh and relevant to hold a top spot in the list.
* Keywords and Phrases
Google looks for phrases and keywords as it is assessing a site. It evaluates a site’s content, and looks for phrases that match a particular search term. If say, a visitor is looking for ‘boat repair’ Google will display pages where that keyword shows up several of times in the body of the page. So when you are optimizing your web page, you should concentrate on phrases rather than single words. Now that you know Google is looking for a particular phrase you do not want to go crazy with that phrase on a page either, because this is know as keyword stuffing. Be careful with keyword phrases–if Google sees too many of them, they will lower your page in the search engine rankings.
* The Title Tag
The title tag is important and is unique to each page in a website. The tag can be found on the browser’s title bar. It is also used by Googlebot to see what the page contents are going to be. Google then looks at the page contents and evaluates if the two match, and this helps determine page relevance. Since Google looks at each page in a domain, many sites dynamically generate page titles with an introduction text appended to the company name.
* Anchor Text
When you add link tags to your page, this is anchor text. Take care to be precise in your anchor test by using relevant phrases for prominent links on your page. Google is looking for specific link information, so the more specific that you can be the better. If you focus on your site’s keyword terms and make sure that these are always in line with your content, you will make Google’s assessment of your site easy. Google is generous with its link limits saying that no more than 100 links should ever appear on a web page.
* Header Tags
Header tags are HTML page elements coded “”, and they provide a bold heading on the page. The headers tell Google what the purpose of the page is, and the title tag tells it the purpose of the website. You should have a header tag on each page.
* Quality Content
The last thing that Google is looking for is unique content. Google’s customers are your website visitors, and when Google returns a search list, they want their customers to be happy. So you are helping Google as it is helping your. New content and keyword phrases help you get to the top of Google’s search list. So if you have bad content – either plagiarized, badly written or irrelevant content – Google is not interested in you. Make sure to follow Google guidelines, or Google will blacklist your domain and not link to it at all.
* Optimize Your Website for Google and Make it Readable
By complying with the guidelines that Google has set out for page ranking, you can set your page up to show up at the top of the search list. By continually adding new content, Google will mark your page as a good one to return to its customer. However, you must always make sure that you site is aesthetically pleasing and readable by a human, because the point of why you optimize your website for Google, is to attract new visitors to your page to increase your company’s market share.
Optimize PDF Files for Maximum SEO Performance
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Optimize PDF Files for Maximum SEO Performance
A PDF file can be in the form of an eBook, technical document or a brochure. Most of the search engines can read the content and index the PDF files. Currently, there are a number of well optimized PDF files which rank well and are a source of traffic for their website. Listed below are some tips for optimizing PDFs:
1. Use a Text Based PDF Creator:
There are a lot free tools available online with Adobe Acrobat being the best text based PDF creator. If a PDF document is created in an image based program, the search engines will completely ignore it. If the PDF is created using a text based creator like Adobe acrobat, the search engine robots will read and index the text like any other web page.
2. Update the Document Title:
The title of the PDF file is as important as the title tag of a web page. The PDF title property tells the search engine robots about the type of content. The most important aspect of the title is that Google uses the text in the title field as the link in the search engine result pages. Thus, the title field should be keyword rich and should not contain random text.
3. Complete the document properties:
A PDF file contains many document properties apart from the title field. These are keywords, description, author info, copyright info etc. All the fields must be completed with relevant information. The keyword field should not be stuffed with keywords or remain empty. It has not been proven that the search engines give importance to the keyword field in the document properties. If in future they do, your PDF file will have an advantage over other web pages.
4. Link to the PDF File from the Homepage:
The Searchbots will not discover and index the PDF file if it is placed too deep within the website. To ensure that the PDF file gets crawled by the search engines, it should be visibly linked from the home page or any other page which gets crawled regularly. If your aim is to get the PDF in top search engine result pages, then you have to lead the searchbots to it.
5. Optimize the content in the PDF File:
The content in the text based PDF files is similar to the content in a website. This makes content optimization an important aspect in optimization of PDF files. The content should be relevant to the subject matter. Important text should be highlighted by increasing their font size and utilizing the bold and italics features of the PDF files. Keywords should be placed in the first few lines of the content.
6. Place Links in the PDF File:
When a visitor opens a PDF file ranking in the top search engine results page, there should be a provision in the file to link back to its original website. This action reduces the efforts of the visitor to hunt for the main website. Also, a link from the PDF file can be considered as a backlink by the search engine.
A PDF file is similar to a web page in an assortment of aspects. It should be optimized with as much care as a web page to achieve high rankings.
Do’s and Don’ts to Avoid SEO Mistakes
With so much misinformation out there, along with a lack of knowledge about how SEO works, you could end up getting your website banned from the search engines. Learn how to avoid common mistakes with these 10 simple do’s and don’ts.
10. Don’t Use Flash for SEO. Flash websites are very eye-catching but search engines cannot read or index this type of content. If it is impossible to avoid a Flash-centric website and you need search engines to index it, you will have to offer an html version too. Search engines don’t like Flash sites for a reason – a spider can’t read Flash content and therefore can’t index it.
9. Don’t Use too Much JavaScript. Searchbots are not designed to read and understand JavaScript code. If a website contains a few lines of text in the JavaScript code, chances are that searchbots will ignore the entire block of code along with the text. This is true in the case of JavaScript menus. Try to keep the use of JavaScript to a minimum. Alternatively, create an external JavaScript file if it is unavoidable.
8. Do Implement a Robots.txt File. The primary purpose for using a robots.txt file is to gain complete control over the data indexed by the searchbots. Implement a Robots.txt file only when you want to prevent unwanted web pages from being indexed. A robots.txt file is always placed in the root folder of the website where the searchbots can access it easily.
7. Do Target the Correct Keywords. Targeting the wrong keywords is a common mistake many optimizers make and even worse – veteran SEO professionals do it. Marketers select keywords that they think are explanatory of their website but the average searcher does not think in those same keyword terms. Picking the right keywords can increase or decrease traffic to your SEO campaign. A first-class keyword suggestion aid, for example the Google search-based keyword tool will help you find keywords that are appropriate for your site.
6. Do Include Long Tail Keywords. With a million websites competing for short tail keywords, it can take more than 6 months to rank in the top 20 for a competitive keyword. In this case, long tail keywords come in handy. Long tail keywords are more specific and can contain the name of a specific product, brand or city. Ranking for long tail keywords is comparatively easier and the rate of conversion is better than that of short tail keywords. Do include keywords in the title tags.
5. Do Maintain a Uniform URL Structure. If your website is dynamic, then you need to modify the URL structure of the web pages. This maintains uniformity and helps searchbots to understand which page it is indexing. It is very easy to maintain the URL structure in dynamic websites. Blogging platforms like WordPress provide an option for permalinks. Customized dynamic websites can use URL rewrite in the .htaccess file for the same.
4. Don’t Link to Low Quality Websites. Link building is a very crucial aspect of search engine optimization. Search engines consider the number of incoming links to a website as an indication of their popularity and give them priority rankings. Many beginners fail to realize that it is links from authoritative and quality websites that are important and they mistakenly link to low quality websites for higher rankings. This tactic can cause the credibility of the website to go down with search engines and in some cases, the website may get banned.
3. Do Perform Competitive Intelligence. Before starting your search engine optimization program, visit the competing websites in the top results. Research these types of questions:
A. How many websites are competing for the same keyword? B. How old are the websites in top search engine results pages? C. How many back links do the top ranking websites list? D. What type of social media is used by the competing sites?
2. Do Take Advantage of Google Analytics. 2009 was the year when web analytics gained momentum. Google Analytics came up with advanced metrics and intelligence report features which revolutionized free analytics tools. Companies realized the benefits of using web analytics tools to extract their relevant data. Implement Google Analytics to analyze data and build a 2010 plan to increase traffic and rates of conversion.
1. Do Create Fresh Content. Search engines are famous for penalizing a website for publishing duplicate content. With plagiarism on the rise and availability of content checking tools such as Copyscape, marketers have become more cautious. Yahoo is considered to be among the harshest of all the search engines with regard to this penalty. Add fresh content to your website to help build visitor interest and credibility with the search engines.
These 10 simple do’s and don’ts can help you to avoid making potentially dangerous seo mistakes and ensure your site is indexed and boost rankings.
Would You Like To Build One-Way Links Fast
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Would You Like To Build One-Way Links Fast
Online businesses require traffic to carry on, and many business people constantly seek out hassle-free and also productive ways to make folks take note of them and also what they have to publicize. Making inlinks would let you multiply the amount of traffic coming to your webpage or weblog and improve your profits. This short article will reveal more regarding how you could build incoming links.
One approach is to market and bookmark your content through the use of services like OnlyWire. You need to position those ‘Share and ‘Bookmark’ buttons in places where your consumers could easily see it. If they love your website content, they will click on these buttons and publish your content on the leading social networking websites on the web. For you to get these buttons, you need to set up individual user accounts with these social networking websites. As for your target market, all they have to do is type in a captcha code to start sharing your content with other interested customers.
One more strategy to obtain inbound links quickly is to utilize content promotion, which means the publicizing of write-ups and also video clips. This particular strategy would allow you to put backlinks to your site or blog at the conclusion of every write-up or video and in each description box. End users can then click on your one-way links to go to your website or weblog for more details. This is a really efficient way of building inward links, and if you make use of the appropriate resources, you could even send several versions of your content pieces to as much as 300 article directory sites in 1 hour or so.
A third strategy to create inward links quickly is to submit comments on other webpages and weblogs, preferably the ones that belong to fellow business people who are in the same niche as you are. Whenever you give feedback, you have to leave your e-mail address, name as well as the link to your website. Whenever you submit your comments, a hyperlink will appear together with the previous blog entry that you published, which gives other folks the opportunity to click on it and look at your content. Be careful not to carry out spamming; this would only irritate your peers and target market and also give you a lousy reputation.
You may also talk to the bloggers in your circle and make arrangements to trade backlinks with them. Do not forget that search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing will learn of your webpage or weblog if you have loads of inward as well as outbound links. When these search engines determine that your webpage or weblog is gaining lots of back-links, you will be in a much better position to obtain more viewers.
Furthermore, if you have a Facebook account, you should look into using it to publicise your webpage or blog. Publish links to your write-ups as well as videos on your profile so your relatives, close friends and viewers would see what you are up to. This would make them click on the hyperlinks that you provide, and they could also distribute your content by posting your inward links on their own profiles. This specific technique would get you even more one-way links and page views, as well as make it possible for those who have no idea of your products and services to take note of you.
The same principle can be utilized for microblogging sites like Twitter and Plurk. Most folks now depend on these types of sites to get the information and facts they need, and you will greatly benefit if you utilise them to put together a wide network. Given that there is a 140-character limit, you’ll need to be imaginative with the way you show your links as well as copy. You need to get their interest with snappy copy as well as relevant links.
By carrying out these tasks regularly, you will not only do well in making incoming links quickly, but you could also expect a lot more traffic and also improved conversations. However, everything boils down to the calibre of your content; you must make sure that your material is useful and also of a great standard. If this is the case, more and more consumers would want to peruse your material and exchange incoming links with you.
Using Keywords in Article Headlines
So, you have your list of keywords and you’re wondering how to incorporate them into your article titles. You’re wondering if it’s possible to do SEO article writing that also makes sense to humans.
If you go overboard with your key phrases, then your article has a good chance of being declined by publishers right off the bat.
How can you effectively use keywords in your article titles?
Is it possible to please search engines, publishers, and human readers?
Yes! This article spotlights a few techniques you can implement to effectively and correctly use your keywords in your article titles.
* First, let’s lay the ground rule:
*Your title must serve your reader, first and foremost. The purpose of your title is to tell the reader what your article is about. A title is a great place to use your keywords, but the title must still make sense, be grammatically correct with proper spelling, and accurately portray the subject matter of the article.
Now, on to the tips:
1. Your title must reflect what your article is about. Most of the time this decline reason comes up when a person writes an article and then tries to include their keywords in the title as an afterthought, when the article is not really about the keywords. For example: If your article title is “10 Heart Healthy Soups”, then your article must talk about 10 heart healthy soups. Whatever is promised in the title must be delivered in the article.
2. Resist the urge to use a minimalist keyword-only title. If you’re extremely focused on your keywords and the impact they can have on your search engine ranking, you might wonder, “Why not just make a title that is totally keyword focused?”
For example: Hiking Boots
* What is wrong with that?
Well first of all, this title is not very specific, nor does it draw a reader in. If you’re using a two word key phrase, most likely your phrase is extremely general and not specific enough to make a good title.
Your title should specifically indicate what your article is about, and if your article is about a specific aspect of “hiking boots”, then the title should reflect that. For example: “Hiking Boots: Top 5 Best Performers”
If you’re using long tail keyword phrases (3-5 words long), then the title almost writes itself sometimes. For example “How To Eat Healthy” may be your long tail key phrase, which also works well as a title.
But many long tail key phrases need extra words added to them in order to make sense. For example, the phrase “Used Car Values” is pretty general, and the article is likely about a more specific topic, such as “Used Car Values: How To Negotiate The Best Price For A Used Car”
* This almost goes without saying, but unfortunately I see this sometimes: Your title should not be a list of keywords.
What would you think if you saw a “title” that looked like this:
Used Car Pricing, Used Car Values, Used Car Deals
This type of title does not make sense, is not helpful to the reader, and was obviously an attempt to get as many keywords in the title as possible. Most publishers would immediately decline an article with a title like that.
The main idea is to write for your human readers first by creating a helpful and specific title that reflects what your article is about. You may use your keywords in the title if they sound natural and make sense.
How to Create a Search Engine Friendly Website?
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Saturday, September 3, 2011
How to Create a Search Engine Friendly Website?
Many webmasters complain about their website not ranking well in the SERPs. What they fail to realize is that their website is not search engine friendly. An SEO friendly website contains more than keyword filled Meta tags and content.
A website must be created and designed keeping the visitors in mind. Search engines can get your website in the top ranking; but a well crafted website ensures that the visitor gets converted into a customer. You need to ensure that your website is both search engine and visitor friendly.
* Tips for Creating a Search Engine Friendly Website:
- Fill the Meta tags
Search engines come across the Meta tags well before the content. A major part of the search result is picked up from the Meta tags. The title tag helps the search engines and visitors in understanding what the webpage is about. The Meta description gets listed as the snippet in the search result. Well formatted Meta tags play a major role in making the website SEO friendly.
- Include Breadcrumbs in the website
Breadcrumbs are navigational links present in the inner pages of the website. They link a web page to its respective category and sub category. Breadcrumbs help in the even distribution of the page rank to the connected web pages. You must include keywords as the anchor text of the breadcrumbs. Remember to place the breadcrumbs before the main heading of the web page.
- Perform the On Page Optimization Activities
SEO of a website mainly consists of on page optimization activities. Implement these tips:
* Add a heading tag to the web page.
* As search engines cannot read images, add an alt tag to the images.
* Name the image according to the selected keywords. Use hyphens to separate long keywords.
* Place a keyword as the anchor text of a link.
* Optimize the content of your web page. Make sure that the keyword density doesn’t exceed 2%.
- Interlink all the important web pages
Interlinking web pages helps the search spiders to navigate the website. Web pages can be linked based on their category. E.g. an online book store can link their web pages based on the authors. It has been observed that a well linked website will always rank better than the non-linked websites. You can link to the important pages of your website from the homepage by using appropriate anchor text.
- Use SEO Friendly URL Structure
Search engines do not understand the URL’s which contain the PHP / ASP code in them. A SEO friendly URL structure contains words separated by hyphens. You can rewrite your URL’s manually via the.htaccess file. WordPress gives you an option to change your URL structure with one click.
- Generate XML Sitemaps
Sitemaps help the engines discover all the pages in your website. There are a lot of free XML sitemap generator tools available online. You can include the “priority” and “change frequency” tags in your sitemap. The priority tag indicates the importance of the web page to the search engines. The Change frequency tag tells the search engines how frequently the page is likely to change.
A fully optimized site increases your chances of ranking well in the SERPs. Once in the top SERPs, your website has a good chance of converting its visitors into customers.
Critical Steps to Great SEO
There are a variety of misconceptions surrounding search engine optimization today. One big misconception that many website owners have is that once they have their site set up and they submit it to search engines, they’ll get traffic right away. The truth is that there is a lot more to bringing traffic to your website. Search engine optimization is a task that is ongoing and it does take quite a bit of work. Instead of submitting your site to the search engines right away, here are a few critical steps to great SEO that you should take first.
* Step #1 – Research Your Keywords
One of the important steps you need to take for great SEO before you submit your site to the search engines is to research your keywords. No doubt, you already know what the topic of your site is all about. It is important that you choose the right keywords now before you submit your site. When you select keywords, keep in mind criteria that the search engines have for keywords. Look for niche keywords instead of keywords that are so broad you’ll never rank well with them.
* Step #2 – Improve Your Title Tags
Another step to take before submitting to the search engines is improving your title tags. One of the biggest things that will determine your score within the search engines is the appearance of keywords in the title tags. Do not go with title tags that don’t use your keywords. Your title tags should be keyword rich, which can help you ensure that you get strong rankings when your site is submitted to the search engines.
* Step #3 – Check Out Your Site Technology
Take some time to check out your site technology before submitting your site to the search engines as well. Some technology built into sites can end up confusing the spiders that crawl through websites. Image maps, CGI scripts, frames, and other types of technology may not be understood by many of the spiders out there. Go through your site carefully and ensure that technology is not holding you back from getting high rankings in the search engines.
* Step #4 – Check for Errors
Checking your website for errors is also going to be a critical step to great SEO. It’s a good idea to use a site maintenance tool to make sure that you catch any errors before you start bringing customers to your website. Any errors in HTML can end up causing problems for search engine spiders. Not only can errors cause problems with spiders, but they can also be frustrating to site a user, which means they may leave your site. Now is the time to ensure that any errors are taken care of.
Each of these steps is essential to the success of your website. Before you submit your website to the search engines, go through these steps and ensure that your site is ready.
SEO Client Relationships: Tips
Communication between client and service provider is a vital part in the success of any campaign, or indeed any business relationship at all. Due to the nature of SEO, many clients will have quite a lot of questions and these should be dealt with right at the early stages, before a campaign has even begun. It is really important that clients are made aware of the fact that it can take a long time to see results, especially for new domains. It is also highly advisable to discuss suitable measurements of a campaigns success, for example traffic numbers, search engine results and so on. These will all have to be tailored to the work in question and every job will have its own individual needs and challenges. This article aims to point out five common questions, and how you can deal with them effectively.
1. Why Don’t I Have More Traffic?
Many clients simply don’t know what they can expect with regards to traffic numbers. This is no fault of their own, but sometimes they can be disappointed by the traffic they receive from seemingly good search engine positions. Traffic estimates should be based on search volume and it’s important to clearly explain the huge difference in click through rate between a number one position and a number four position.
2. Why Don’t I Appear for This Keyword?
When clients first engage in SEO activities, it must be clearly explained that in order to even begin to rank well for certain keywords, each page must effectively target its own keyword. If you try to focus a page on too many different keywords, it will dilute the message and leave the search engines confused as to what the page in question is talking about. Therefore, unless you have a large website, there is a limit to how many keywords you can expect to rank well for.
3. My Local Directory Listing Is Outranking Me, Why Is This?
This is particularly troublesome for new and small websites. Quite often when a search is carried out for a chosen keyword, not only will you see your website come up, you will also see your directory listings appear. Sometimes the directory listings will actually outrank you. This is due to the fact that the directory probably has a lot more authority than you, and work will have to be done to boost the importance of your website above that of your page on the said directory. You could also try changing your directory listing to reduce its competitiveness.
4. How Long Do I Have To Wait?
Probably the biggest question of all, how long will it take and how long will I have to pay you for? It’s vital to make this clear right from the start. You have to explain that it will take time for your work to bear results. Honesty really is the best policy here. I would recommend preparing a client for anywhere between at least six to twelve months with a thorough check of progress being carried out every three months.
5. How Will Doing More Help?
This is a big one, especially if you are not getting the results as quickly as you may have expected. You may be going back to client several months down the line and suggesting yet more site improvements or link building efforts. Marketing a website should be approached with a long term view. If results aren’t going so well it may mean you have to revisit some of the website structure and address any technical issues that may be causing issues. Explain the from the offset and you should avoid digging yourself into any unnecessary holes.
Six Simple SEO Techniques to Improve your Search Engine Ranking
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Six Simple SEO Techniques to Improve your Search Engine Ranking
1. Title Tags
The title tag is contained within the ‘HEAD’ tags of your HTML, before the ‘BODY’ tags. This states the title of the page, and must contain the major keywords of the page. The contents of your title tag do not appear in the text of the page: its purpose is to inform the search engine spiders what the topic of your page is, and what words are important (i.e. your main page keyword). For example, the TITLE tag of a page based on this article would be “SEO Techniques – Improve your Search Engine Ranking”.
2. Description Tags
The description Meta tag is used by Google, and other search engines, in the search engine listings. I have tested this with them all and Google uses it as is, while Yahoo uses part of it. You should provide a description of what the web page is about, and a simple check of the descriptions in other sites using your keyword on Google will show you how many words you can use to have the whole description included. About 20 words are fine.
3. Keyword Tags
Search engines rarely use the keyword Meta tag: Google ignores it completely. However, it doesn’t hurt, and can help in a small way. Include your brand name and your own name. That way some engines might show your pages if somebody is looking for your name. The other Meta tags have no SEO value, and do not help to improve your search engine ranking whatsoever.
4. Heading Tags
Heading tags (H1, H2, . . .) are used by Google to determine the importance of the text contained in your headings. Use H1 tags for the main title of your page (you also use it in the TITLE tag, but that isn’t seen by readers, only by the spiders). Put subtitles in H2 tags. You can change the font size of the text within these tags.
5. Text Formatting
Text in bold, italics and underscored are seen by the search engines as having greater weight, and so will be used in determining the relevance of your site. Always bolden your titles, and it also helps to underline it if it doesn’t make it look out of place.
6. Writing Style and Content
Do not write for algorithms (spiders): write for your readers. Always write for humans and you won’t go wrong. If your page content reads well, and has good vocabulary relating to the topic, then it will have a better chance of a higher listing than if you stuffed it full of keywords. I rarely use more than 1.5% – the keyword densities of the terms ‘SEO’, SEO techniques’ and ’search engine ranking’ (the main keywords) of this article are 1.5, 0.87 and 0.87 respectively. Too many keywords is bad SEO, and could result in a poor listing for your page – if it is listed at all.
So there you are: six simple SEO techniques to improve your search engine ranking. It is surprising how many experienced webmasters fail to apply all of these: there is no excuse, and they are failing to get the nuts and bolts properly fitted and tightened on their web pages.
Apply these to every page and not only will you improve your SEO, but also your chances of a good search engine ranking. It is amazing how many web pages lack these basic SEO techniques.
SEO: How To Research For Free
The first step of any online campaign is deciding what you want to be known for, particularly when aiming for a stronger presence on the search engines. These terms or search phrases that you wish to be seen for are called ‘keywords’. Researching and implementing these keywords into your website is crucial to the success of your website. It is vital that you look into both the search volume of each keyword and also the competition levels. By conducting a bit of research first you will gain a good understanding of how your market looks online, and also what keywords you could realistically achieve good positions for.
There are many ways you can conduct keyword research. The internet offers different tools, both free and paid for, and in addition to that there are some commands on the search engines that will also give you some clues. Free tools such as Google’s Adword’s keyword tool give you a basic look into monthly search volumes and competition levels, however it is sometimes questionable as to how accurate these figures can be. If you want to step it up a notch, you could try paying for software such as Word Tracker. Word Tracker will give you a much more thorough analysis of each word and ultimately give you a better view of the market.
For most people, using the free tools and search commands are enough to give a good idea of what keywords you should target with your website. Listed below are a few useful search commands that you could use to do a little research:
1. “In URL : ‘keyword’”
By typing this into a search engine and replacing the word ‘keyword’ with your keyword, you will get a list, and more importantly a number, of websites that are using your keyword in their URLs. This will give you a solid idea of how many websites are directly targeting your keyword.
2. “In title: ‘keyword’”
2nd most important to the URL, the meta title is vital to targeting a particular keyword. By using this command you will be able to see how many websites are using your keyword in their meta titles.
3. “In text: ‘keyword”
This command will give you a really good rounded view of the market. It will produce a list of websites that are talking about your keyword. The perfect keyword is one that has a substantial amount of traffic, yet a relatively low competition level. Of course, the keyword must be highly relevant to your website and business to ensure that any traffic that comes from the search engines is looking for exactly what you offer.
You will probably find that when you start to look into keywords, by varying the phrase slightly you can find keywords with high traffic levels and low competition…this is exactly what you are looking for. Also, don’t ignore keywords with low search volumes; if these keywords are relevant to your website the traffic they could bring could be a lot higher in quality if you are targeting a niche area.
SEO Secrets: Fighting Against the Domain Age Tide
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Thursday, August 18, 2011
SEO Secrets: Fighting Against the Domain Age Tide
So you’ve bought your Dreamweaver, an eternity later worked out how it works, started to build your site which is targeting your chosen niche or promoting your affiliate product and after what seems like forever you have added quality content. You’ve bust a gut to get this far, but this is where the real work begins. You need to get your site seen by as many people as possible. You need to drive as much traffic as you can whether it be through a pay-per-click campaign or via organic traffic.
Let’s say you decide to target organic traffic. You need to get a high ranking in the search engines. During your website construction you have already been using a keyword research tool and a SEO Tool and spending the midnight hours mulling over the chosen keyword phrases your research has indicated you should be targeting on your pages and using in your URL. Your whole site from headings to meta-tags, to meta-descriptions and anchor text are all optimized taking account of semantically related words, keyword density and the long tail.
Next you begin your back link campaign spending hours trying to get quality back links to your site. Social bookmarking takes over your life for days on end, you post on relevant blogs and all relevant forums, you set up your own blog, submit articles to article directories and then submit your entire site to SEO friendly website directories.
Yet more analysis follows, as you now study your competitors’ websites. You investigate what keywords they are targeting and study the links that they have developed and you develop strategies to be better than they are. Slowly but surely your site climbs the rankings. You constantly update your site adding quality content and before you know it your site is fast approaching the first page. A steady trickle of traffic flows on a daily basis. At this rate you should soon be top of the rankings and then… the sky’s the limit!
Unfortunately it doesn’t usually quite work like this. Yes it is true that if you have picked some long tail keywords to target you may be able to get somewhere near the top of the rankings or indeed even to the number one spot. In most instances however the traffic won’t be great and you would need to get each page of your website targeting a different long tail phrase and getting to the top of the rankings for that phrase each time for the total traffic to be lucrative. It’s certainly possible but does require a lot more graft.
For very popular keyword phrases it proves incredibly difficult to dislodge the top sites from their positions, even though in theory you may know that you have better back links and better content. Without the top positions the mass traffic will never be yours. It is just so frustrating as you probably know. I certainly do. So you go away and you research again and you analyze again and you spend days poring over the detail and you
work and you work and you know what, it makes not one jot of difference. You just cannot crack the top spots. Why not? How many times have I asked this of myself?
Now perhaps your tactics aren’t quite right. Perhaps the phrases you are targeting are the wrong ones or perhaps you’re back links are not quality back links. Do you have the quality of content on your site that you think you do? Yes, yes, yes, I hear you say. So what is going on? Well it could be something as simple as the age of your domain.
Google places a lot of trust in back links, especially quality back links to your site, but it also places significant trust in sites which have been around for a significant period of time. This is especially true if they are frequently updated. In many cases the top ranked sites are trusted sites as far as Google is concerned because they have an authority status due to their back links, but also due to the length of time they have been operating. If your site is an equal to a competitor’s site in terms of content and back links, but it is a far newer domain, there will be little chance of you dislodging your competitor from the top slot. The site that has been there for five years serving the web community carries a lot of trust with Google.
To dislodge these sites requires tremendous effort to create quality back links and sometimes you may never achieve it. It can be done however, you just need to be aware of what is going on and keep persevering. Some internet marketers have resorted to buying old domains in an attempt to overcome this challenge in building the website around the domain. I’m not entirely sure how Google reacts to this, especially if you are adding new content on a continual basis. Does the domain itself carry an inherent trust because of its age or is it the content that carried the trust from the old website?
Either way it’s worth exploring as one of the tactics along with keyword analysis and building back links that you could adopt in an attempt to get higher rankings and hence higher rates of traffic.
How Much is Too Much to Pay for SEO?
How much is too much to pay for SEO? (…or should you try to do it yourself first?)
Yes, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be an excellent way of getting leads.
Yes, good SEO can level the playing field between you and competitors.
Yes, you should do some level of SEO.
…but how much is too much?
Too much? Good question.
You’ll find that everybody that uses the word “Internet” is going to suggest that you engage in SEO and many will make you an offer to do it for you. There’s nothing wrong with that as far it goes. But what you have to decide is how much you should pay for having it done.
* Some Perspectives On Paying For SEO
Here are a few important tips to help you decide the answer to that question:
(1) First, make sure you really do need outside assistance. If you’re looking for better SEO placement for relatively unique or so-called “long tail” key words (e.g. “pine street rental condominiums” ) it might be worth trying it yourself before you involve an SEO consultant or SEO firm.
(2) SEO is not rocket-science. Mostly it’s monotonous drudgery. So what you pay should not be about hiring “expertise”. The SEO effort is more like 90% drudgery, 8% experience, and 2% expertise and you should compensate accordingly.
(3) The value of SEO boils down to “clicks” – preferably clicks that result in a sale conversion. SEO should be measured on the same cost-per-click basis any search-engine-marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC) campaign would be – i.e. the basis of ROI. If you don’t know how many clicks or orders you want, do not engage SEO until you do.
(4) SEO is not static and optimization is competitive. You may be on the first page today but your competitors aren’t necessarily going to sit still forever. You could be bumped at any time. So if you’re not prepared to maintain an ongoing and strategic SEO effort – no matter what the competition does – then save your money.
(5) Search engine “secrets” are just that – secret. The search engines aren’t telling them and anybody that claims to know the secrets is just guessing. It doesn’t mean they can’t help but it’s not as if they have some special advantage. Impossible.
(6) Frankly, from the search engine point-of-view, if your site doesn’t have enough useful and relevant content to be on the first page, ethical SEO notwithstanding, eventually it won’t be. This is the objective of the search engines and there’s little likelihood that the SEO “expert” pitching you is going to out-think Google, Yahoo!, Bing and others in the long run.
* Is Doing SEO Yourself An Option?
It’s almost always worth taking a first crack at SEO yourself. Often only a little effort can make a significant difference. If you do want to make the effort, invest a few dollars in a do-it-yourself SEO guide and try to adhere to the following minimum suggestions:
(1) Focus on keywords that are realistic. You’re not likely to get a good placement with a keyword like “real estate” but you might get first page with a keyword like “Hill street real estate”;
(2) Make sure your keyword is mentioned in the link to your page. Instead of saying “click HERE” make sure the text for the link says something like “for more information about HILL STREET REAL ESTATE”;
(3) Make sure your keyword is mentioned in your page title, your keyword list, your page content, bolded page content;
(4) For every keyword you’re interested in, make sure you have an appropriate page to focus on it (and that it complies with #1, #2, and #3 above)
(5) Register with search engine webmaster accounts so that you can submit your site to them quickly and efficiently (search for “google webmaster”, “bing webmaster”, or “yahoo webmaster” to find the details).
* Don’t Forget Links
Lastly, if you going to make an initial stab yourself, understand that quality links to your site are a vital factor in your ultimate placement. The more the merrier. To get a head-start on building links to your site, do the following:
(1) Enroll in all relevant local or regional directories – (search “free directories” to find lists of these); many will be free, some will want nominal fees or backlinks. You decide.
(2) Ensure that any press releases and announcements you make refer to your site and specific pages within it.
(3) Post pages of your site to delicious.com or to digg.com and to similar bookmarking sites.
(4) Ask local friends and business acquaintances if they will exchange links with you.
(5) On the other hand, DO NOT sign up for paid links without the guidance of someone experienced in Internet marketing.
* Do these things sound particularly difficult? No.
And well worth taking a stab at by yourself. From there you can decide whether its desirable or worth the cost to pay for SEO services from a 3rd-party.
* No Matter What You Do…
You need to think in terms of what kind of return you are going to get on your investment. The calculation is simple: Divide the total SEO cost (yours or a 3rd-party’s) by the number of orders/sales you’ve received as a result of the effort. Then compare that cost-per-sale against your margin-per-sale. If you have margin left over, you’re in the right territory. If you don’t, you’ve got a problem.
The bottom line is that when you talk with any SEO service provider, you must think in terms of ROI. Not in terms of “secrets” or first pages or top spots, but ROI. (Note: it is theoretically possible to be on the 3rd page and still get a positive ROI – not likely, but possible) If the ROI doesn’t work, then search engine optimization may not be for you and other Internet marketing methods might yield better results and a better ROI.
Optimize Your Images On Search Engines
Starting competitive advantages in the business is vital both in online and offline aspects. If you are a business organization, you need to distinguish your organization from the competition, especially if your business is not on commodity products. You can easily distinguish these advantages on the internet because of the already established fundamentals of the business.
For some companies, they get their edge from targeted advertising from high-traffic websites. For others, it is through social media marketing.
But one relatively easy way to drive relevant traffic to your website without too much effort is to optimize your images for search engines. Think of it as a tiny webpage within the website structure. It is recommended for you to include an anchor text, descriptive tagging, and URL structure to maximize results.
* Search for the Right Image
Successful bloggers, writers, and website owners know the value of using the right image for their text content. It adds another dimension to articles and enables readers to appreciate their webpage even more. However, many fail to use images for search engine optimization purposes. It is in fact a good way to drive backlinks and visitors. There’s no need to upload your own pictures. A lot of stock photos are available from free from sites like Flickr and iStockPhoto among others. It is also a good idea to use Google Search to find good photos. Make sure that you are not violating any copyright if you do this (look for Creative Commons licensing).
* Make Proper Use of Keywords
Keywords are an integral part of any search engine optimization effort. It is used to optimize all kinds of digital assets from videos to podcasts. You will really benefit if you use keywords wisely for your images. Rename the image because having “012345RR.jpg” as the file name isn’t going to help. It is a very simple step and can go a long way in helping your website rank better.
* Use Descriptive Text
It is important to use descriptive tags, file names, and alt text for your images. This is because search engines cannot read images and would use its surrounding text as reference. Make use of this feature by adding keywords on the descriptive text, anchor text, and any other tags (related to the image). Bear in mind that anchor text is one of the most important elements to optimize your image effectively so take advantage of it.
As you can see, image SEO is a straight-forward process that provides tenfold benefit from your efforts. Follow the guidelines outlined above and you’ll see your more traffic coming in from image search soon.
Your Website’s Financial Success Will Rely On Search Engine Optimization!
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Your Website’s Financial Success Will Rely On Search Engine Optimization!
One of the difficulties that internet business proprietors encounter is obtaining enough traffic and revenues for their products and services. The financial success of a site is driven by the amount of targeted traffic that it gets, and the chief source of traffic nowadays is top search engines like Bing, Google and Yahoo!. Search engine optimization can either offer you an increased rating if done properly or make your online business fail if done erroneously.
It is estimated that around 85%-90% of web surfers go to websites via search engines. Moreover, most folks would click on the websites which are included in the very first page of search engines’ listings. If you wish to get even more targeted traffic, sales and recognition, your target should be to secure an improved page rating for your site and get it to be included as among the leading results for numerous web queries. Having a website without audience is pointless, so it’s vital that you compel individuals to go to your website and see what you are selling them. A lot of search engine optimization methods will help you realize this goal.
There are a few basic search engine optimization aspects that you ought to keep in mind when you try to make search engines notice your site. Several website owners feel that the only thing they have to undertake is send their URL to many search engines, then sit back and expect their traffic to improve. While search engine submission could help you get an improved ranking and also put you on page 1 of search engines’ results, it must be supported by other SEO tactics.
The search engine optimization process is as follows: after submitting your web address to search engines or allowing them to come across it by themselves, search engines would dispatch crawlers that will index and examine your website. All your web pages are going to be ranked through complex algorithms and a sophisticated combination of factors. These bots’ purpose is to find the most appropriate pages that they can offer their searchers for specific subjects, so they must ensure that every single link they include in search engines’ listings actually possesses the needed information or details that accurately fit the users’ keywords. Search engines will then rate your website based on how valuable they determine it to be.
The highest target for your web-based business and website is to have it on page 1, not page 10 or 20. Thus, generating applicable keyword phrases, accurate labels and also related content is truly important for your success! Your keywords must be painstakingly planned and also researched. It’s incredibly crucial to find out what words or phrases visitors often enter to look for certain products and services. In many instances, it’s best to stick to the basics instead of attempting to be too creative with your keyword phrases. To illustrate, if you sell pet products, refrain from using words like canine because this is not the first word that folks use when looking for a dog collar.
Another good SEO technique would be to utilize a web address that reflects your products and services rather than using a business name, except if your brand is already established. Using the previous example, the phrase ‘dog collars’ ought to be a part of your web address if that is the product that you’re marketing. Aside from that, you should have corresponding or related words in your webpage titles as well as throughout your site. Developing titles and copy that do not correspond with each other will confuse your customers and you wouldn’t secure the positioning that you want.
In addition, your page titles should be thoughtfully made in order to mirror the material that appears on your site, and your material has to be unique, helpful as well as enjoyable. Your website cannot look like a twin of other websites; you want to make your own web presence and be
known as an expert in your selected niche.
It is tough to trick contemporary search engines, so don’t even bother having a go at it! Keyword stuffing, which calls for placing popular search phrases on websites that are totally unconnected to those keyword phrases, is a technique employed by Internet business owners who desire great outcomes without undertaking search engine optimization correctly. This specific strategy will lower your page rank or even get you banned from search engines’ listings permanently! Search engine optimization ought to be done correctly for it to make your internet business and website successful.
Honing The Art Form of SEO
In the world of SEO there seems to be an article on everything from “how to get more backlinks” to “getting that #1 ranking on Google.” The more you read up on SEO tactics, the more you realize many people seem to give the same advice: write great content, submit it to social bookmarking sites, and be consistent.
Although all of these are great points, the one thing missing from many of these articles is that it isn’t that simple. You can write a great article, get it up and have it go viral-but you need to focus on the ART form that is SEO as well. Google is always changing the game for SEO experts, and you have to know how to go with the flow.
The fact is no one knows for sure what Google is looking for. We can guess, run case studies and be pretty sure on many things, but giving the same advice over and over again isn’t going to get any of us anywhere. So what else can we do?
* Build Relationships
We hear this a lot in the social media world. But the more relationships you build with site owners, bloggers and reporters the more likely you can get your articles out to the right audience. Creating a funny infograph or article is great, and you could get a lot of link juice from it, but what about the next week, month, or year? The more relationships you build the more likely you can get your great content out to the right
audience.
* Reach Out To Other Writers
Obviously your company needs to come up with great content-for both your site as well as others. But another way to get back links is to have other people write about your business. One of the reasons you create content is so people will link back to it-so start reaching out to writers and give them information they will want to write about.
Press releases are one great way to do that, but remember reporters get tons of press releases and phone calls from PR pros every day. This is where you need to get creative and figure out a reason why someone would want to write about your company.
* Fresh Ideas
Having a great plan is, well, great, but just as Google is consistently changing, so should your plan. What works great one day could work against you on another day. This is why you need to consistently think of new ideas to get backlinks, viral content etc. This is much easier said than done however. If it was easy we would all have great PageRank, and not need to read up on SEO every day.
Mind mapping tools and weekly meeting to brainstorm are a great idea. One idea could morph into many and the next thing you know, you could have the next few months of content ideas in just a few meetings.
* Trial and Error
SEO is also a game of trial and error. You won’t know what works until you try it. Don’t be afraid to take chances and see if your theory is right. Good or bad, it is a learning experience. The tools are out there, and writing great content and submitting to social bookmarking sties can work-but there are other ways to get exposure. It just takes some creativity and hard work.
Just like with other art forms, sometimes you have to create a mess before you can start creating masterpieces. This isn’t to say you need to bomb your SEO efforts completely and lose revenue, it just means you can stumble a little on new efforts while you’re hitting home runs with your “tried and true” efforts.
Search Engine Optimization: Help Your Business Grow
When someone has a question, many times these days the first thing they turn to for an answer is the Internet. Just about anything and everything can be found online. From the most basic answer to the simplest question to in depth research about complex topics — it’s all available on the Internet.
As a business owner, the Internet can be a valuable tool for you to utilize in your marketing efforts. You need to make sure that when people type in a search phrase related to your business that your website comes up on the results pages. The process of search engine optimization (SEO) enhances your website to make it more appealing to the search engine spiders that crawl your site and when done properly, improves your website as a whole.
* SEO as a Business Strategy
The top three search engines are Google, Bing, and Yahoo so these are the sites that you should target in your SEO efforts. Since Google is undoubtedly the leader in the search engine industry, they set the standards and they are the site to target with your SEO efforts.
If your business is not optimized for the search engines and your competition’s website is then they will rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERP) and thus people will more likely click through to their site and do business with them. The higher you rank on Google and the other search engines, the more traffic your site will receive and if you have a good website, the more conversions you will make and your profits will increase.
* Editing Your Website For SEO Purposes
In order to properly optimize your website for the search engines, you will need to perform some basic tasks.
First, you need to make sure you pick around 10-15 keywords that you should use as the meta tags for your website and focus on 3-5 as your main keywords. Meta tags consist of the title of the page, the description of the page and the keywords of the page.
Search engines use the meta description tag as the description of your website in the SERPs. The keywords are used as search terms or phrases so that when someone searches for those terms, your website appears as a result.
You want your site to be as friendly to the search engines as possible in order to rank higher for your targeted keywords. You want to repeat your keywords but not too much. You need to keep the keyword density to no more than 1 keyword per 100 words of text.
Being at the top of the results pages for targeted keywords is an extremely important part of business in today’s world. Making your website both user-friendly and search engine friendly by performing website editing tasks like regular content updates and the use of meta tags.
SEO Company Stole my traffic!
Believe it or not, the article is true. This is what happened to a friend of mine. I am not at liberty to name the SEO Company, especially since the investigation is still ongoing, but this is what happened.
A couple months ago, my friend hired an expensive SEO company (charged $2500) to reoptimize his website to get maximum exposure for the search engines.
After he paid the fee, he soon learned that they contracted out the job overseas to a bunch of random people who asked for his website hosting username and ftp password and told him that it should be ready in a few days.
They made some changes to his website. He visually saw many of them but not all of them. They said wait 3 months before making any other changes and let our SEO work do the job.
He waited, and his traffic started dropping. He contacted them, and they told him that it was completely normal while his website was being reindexed by Google, and to be patient.
His orders began to suffer, his visits were decreasing, he barely lasted the 3 months. When he tried to contact them again, they had disappeared.
He hired someone else to go in and take a look at his website to figure out what had gone wrong.. This is what they had done..
In his product catalog, some of the product names had a special hidden javascript next to them. When someone would go to the main website and click everything, the website would perform normally…
However, if they came through a google referer in the http request, the javascript would activate and send his visitor to a competitor / spammy website who was selling the same products.
The only way he could have seen this, is if he visited his website like a normal visitor would who showed up from Google. Instead, he manually typed in his website address and therefore the javascript wouldn’t activate.
So here is a guy, who pays $2500 to an SEO company to help increase his traffic, and instead, all they ended up doing was stealing his money, and his traffic.
This is something that everyone needs to be careful about. Don’t Ever trust an SEO company unless you have investigated Them first. Don’t just hand over your FTP username and password to someone, and say “go ahead, and do what needs to be done”
…in this case what needed to be done was to hijack his website, steal a nice sum of cash, and run off in the middle of the night. His payment was cashed overseas, and the free mail accounts they had were no longer operational.
A real nice scam. Plus you have to wonder how much they made off his free traffic they stole over that 3 month period. How much other website hosting traffic did they steal from other websites caught in their SEO scam?
We’re all so desperate to get to the top rankings of the search engines, sometimes, we lose our business sense, and just hand money over to the first person who promises what we want to hear.
How Much is Too Much to Pay for SEO?
How much is too much to pay for SEO? (…or should you try to do it yourself first?)
Yes, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be an excellent way of getting leads.
Yes, good SEO can level the playing field between you and competitors.
Yes, you should do some level of SEO.
…but how much is too much?
Too much? Good question.
You’ll find that everybody that uses the word “Internet” is going to suggest that you engage in SEO and many will make you an offer to do it for you. There’s nothing wrong with that as far it goes. But what you have to decide is how much you should pay for having it done.
Some Perspectives On Paying For SEO
Here are a few important tips to help you decide the answer to that question:
(1) First, make sure you really do need outside assistance. If you’re looking for better SEO placement for relatively unique or so-called “long tail” key words (e.g. “pine street rental condominiums” ) it might be worth trying it yourself before you involve an SEO consultant or SEO firm.
(2) SEO is not rocket-science. Mostly it’s monotonous drudgery. So what you pay should not be about hiring “expertise”. The SEO effort is more like 90% drudgery, 8% experience, and 2% expertise and you should compensate accordingly.
(3) The value of SEO boils down to “clicks” – preferably clicks that result in a sale conversion. SEO should be measured on the same cost-per-click basis any search-engine-marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC) campaign would be – i.e. the basis of ROI. If you don’t know how many clicks or orders you want, do not engage SEO until you do.
(4) SEO is not static and optimization is competitive. You may be on the first page today but your competitors aren’t necessarily going to sit still forever. You could be bumped at any time. So if you’re not prepared to maintain an ongoing and strategic SEO effort – no matter what the competition does – then save your money.
(5) Search engine “secrets” are just that – secret. The search engines aren’t telling them and anybody that claims to know the secrets is just guessing. It doesn’t mean they can’t help but it’s not as if they have some special advantage. Impossible.
(6) Frankly, from the search engine point-of-view, if your site doesn’t have enough useful and relevant content to be on the first page, ethical SEO notwithstanding, eventually it won’t be. This is the objective of the search engines and there’s little likelihood that the SEO “expert” pitching you is going to out-think Google, Yahoo!, Bing and others in the long run.
Is Doing SEO Yourself An Option?
It’s almost always worth taking a first crack at SEO yourself. Often only a little effort can make a significant difference. If you do want to make the effort, invest a few dollars in a do-it-yourself SEO guide and try to adhere to the following minimum suggestions:
(1) Focus on keywords that are realistic. You’re not likely to get a good placement with a keyword like “real estate” but you might get first page with a keyword like “Hill street real estate”;
(2) Make sure your keyword is mentioned in the link to your page. Instead of saying “click HERE” make sure the text for the link says something like “for more information about HILL STREET REAL ESTATE”;
(3) Make sure your keyword is mentioned in your page title, your keyword list, your page content, bolded page content;
(4) For every keyword you’re interested in, make sure you have an appropriate page to focus on it (and that it complies with #1, #2, and #3 above)
(5) Register with search engine webmaster accounts so that you can submit your site to them quickly and efficiently (search for “google webmaster”, “bing webmaster”, or “yahoo webmaster” to find the details).
Don’t Forget Links
Lastly, if you going to make an initial stab yourself, understand that quality links to your site are a vital factor in your ultimate placement. The more the merrier. To get a head-start on building links to your site, do the following:
(1) Enroll in all relevant local or regional directories – (search “free directories” to find lists of these); many will be free, some will want nominal fees or backlinks. You decide.
(2) Ensure that any press releases and announcements you make refer to your site and specific pages within it.
(3) Post pages of your site to delicious.com or to digg.com and to similar bookmarking sites.
(4) Ask local friends and business acquaintances if they will exchange links with you.
(5) On the other hand, DO NOT sign up for paid links without the guidance of someone experienced in Internet marketing.
Do these things sound particularly difficult? No.
And well worth taking a stab at by yourself. From there you can decide whether its desirable or worth the cost to pay for SEO services from a 3rd-party.
No Matter What You Do…
You need to think in terms of what kind of return you are going to get on your investment. The calculation is simple: Divide the total SEO cost (yours or a 3rd-party’s) by the number of orders/sales you’ve received as a result of the effort. Then compare that cost-per-sale against your margin-per-sale. If you have margin left over, you’re in the right territory. If you don’t, you’ve got a problem.
The bottom line is that when you talk with any SEO service provider, you must think in terms of ROI. Not in terms of “secrets” or first pages or top spots, but ROI. (Note: it is theoretically possible to be on the 3rd page and still get a positive ROI – not likely, but possible) If the ROI doesn’t work, then search engine optimization may not be for you and other Internet marketing methods might yield better results and a better ROI.
Search Engine Strategies – How To Increase Your Search Engine Ranking
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Search Engine Strategies – How To Increase Your Search Engine Ranking
The methods employed to increase your search engine rankings may seem like rocket science to you, so you have probably avoided dealing with this issue. I am here to tell you—the time has come to face your website! A high search engine ranking for your website is so essential that if you have the slightest desire to actually succeed in your business, there is no way you can continue to avoid this issue.
At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That’s what search engine optimization is about.
You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your web pages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a few simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title bar on your home page.
The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on your homepage’s title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your company name.
Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the title bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other.
The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search engines generally list sites that contain quality content rather than scintillating graphics. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords—the words that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site.
Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However, the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.
To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format in order to increase your search engine rankings.
Next we come to what is called metatags. I know this sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. Many people believe that metatags are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still, it’s worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use metatags in their ranking formula.
To find out if your page is set up with metatags, you must access the code. To do this, click the “view” button on the browser menu bar, and select “source”. This will pull up a window revealing the underlying code that created the page. If there are metatags, they usually appear near the top of the window. For example, a metatag would read: meta name=”keywords” content=. If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This may not do much for your search engine rankings, but any little boost helps.
Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a factor that is extremely important in terms of search engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.
If you type in “free link popularity check” in a popular search engine, the search engine will then show you what sites are linked to your site. In the case that there aren’t many sites linked up to yours, or that the sites that are linked up have low search engine rankings, consider launching a link popularity campaign. Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.
Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet Marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can’t boost your rankings yourself. Don’t ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed your way.
When is an SEO agency NOT an SEO agency?
Let’s face it, almost all SEO agencies, like most online service providers, will outsource some aspects of their work. This is nothing new. In fact, even before the advent of the internet, businesses would traditionally outsource certain tasks – Hence the plethora of ‘temping’ agencies.
Commonly outsourced tasks were things like telesales, recruitment, even accounting and auditing to some extent. But with the massive growth of online business, outsourcing has grown, and indeed actually changed in its very nature.
In the online business world, the term outsourcing has almost become synonymous with paying for workers that actually live in other countries, whereas previously the outsource workers would be the same country as the employer, if not the same city!
What about the question we started with? When is an SEO agency NOT an SEO agency?
The answer to this is not simple, and the question is really only meant to provoke thought. My own personal feeling is that an SEO agency is not really an SEO agency when it outsources all the work except the customer facing aspect.
What I mean by this is that some SEO ‘agencies’ merely employ UK based office staff to do the selling and silver tongue sales pitches, then farm out the actual work to cheap overseas labour. The better agencies may have their own database of workers they use on a regular basis, and trust – whereas others may simply use freelancer type websites to ‘pick up’ staff.
Whilst this may not at first seem like much of an issue, it is not exactly honest!. The kind of setup mentioned above, to my mind, is NOT an SEO agency, more of a sales agency that then passes the work on to others.
I guess you could argue that they are more than a sales agency; after all, perhaps they plan a campaign prior to the work being handed out to freelancers, and pop a quick report together once it’s been done… Alright, let’s call them an admin agency 
Is it wrong for SEO agencies to outsource at all?
Again, this is down to a matter of opinion. I think its fine for any company, whatever its industry, to outsource some of its workload. At kingpin-seo we sometimes outsource bits and pieces – who doesn’t! But perhaps the problem arises when the bulk of the workload is outsourced, without the knowledge of the SEO agencies clients.
The client is in the belief that their work is being carried out by UK workers, whereas unbeknownst to them, someone half way round the world is carrying out the actual work, and for a tiny fraction of the amount the client is paying the agency.
What is it good to outsource, and what shouldn’t be outsourced
Again, this is my own opinion – but it is founded on background knowledge of what our own clients are happy with.
We feel it is okay to outsource small amounts of manual, repetitive work, things like gathering initial, basic info on competitors (although we prefer to carry out in depth reports in house!) , and some elements of promotion (such as submitting articles, that are of course, written in house)
A basic rule of thumb is that if the client would not be comfortable with something being outsourced, then it shouldn’t be outsourced! – Simply!
Another little rule of thumb is that if something requires or involves decision making that could have some bearing or impact upon the SEO campaign on the whole, it shouldn’t be outsourced.
How do I find a decent SEO Agency, that isn’t simply an ‘Outsource/Admin Agency?
Simple! – Just ask!. Seriously, call or email the agency, and ask them straight if they outsource, and to what extent they outsource.
If they say they don’t outsource anything at all, either they are lying, or they don’t fully understand the question!
If they say they do outsource, but are fully transparent about what processes and work practices they outsource – that’s a good start. We can define in a single sentence our stance on outsourcing, and we suggest you ask any potential SEO agency to do the same…
“We never outsource any decision making, creative production or administrative workload, everything is planned in house, and the vast majority of our work is carried out in house… any outsourcing we do is isolated to repetitive techniques such as submitting a previously written high quality piece of content to directories & websites”
If an agency is not willing to disclose to what extent they outsource, then I would just walk away. At the end of the day, it is YOUR money being used for this service, and just like a service offered offline, you are entitled to know where it is going!
Resource Section – About Kingpin-seo
Kingpin-seo is a client focused, ethical SEO agency that benefits from Google news approval. Kingpin provides cutting edge ethical link building services and transparent SEO techniques for its SEO clients.
Organic SEO or PPC advertising?
Sadly enough, there are still many online business entrepreneurs who take it for granted that they can still use the old marketing techniques in order to overtake their competitors. Little do they realize that those old basic techniques such as including a simple “click here” link, simply doesn’t cut it anymore. If for example you own an online business which is currently in dire need of some changes, then you may need to consider taking advantage of online marketing techniques which include the likes of search engine optimisation and pay-per-click advertising.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve already heard about these techniques from some of the world’s best internet marketers, but the truth is, you might be reluctant to begin integrating them into your existing business. However, there’s nothing to be gained by simply keeping these strategies on hold, so here are a few tips on how to go about using search engine optimisation (SEO) and PPC advertising.
Search Engine Optimisation
Organic search engine optimisation is essentially an online marketing strategy which is dependent on having momentum and some long term commitment. By utilising SEO, you’ll be taking a step in the right direction in terms of accumulating information regarding link building campaigns, relationship building with other webmasters, and even some respectable and desirable publications. Of course, in order to be in full control, you need to set certain milestones so that you’ll be able to monitor your progress as you proceed.
For example, you need to ask yourself what it is exactly that you wish to accomplish. You also need to pay attention to your current image and to the level of optimisation regarding your website.
An experienced SEO specialist will be able to help you determine which the best keywords to use are, and of course they’ll be able to help you integrate those keywords into your meta tags so that you’re able to restructure your marketing strategies in order to overcome any negative fallout resulting from your previous attempts. Over and above SEO, you could of course also take advantage of other techniques, such as paid one way links and link exchanges for example, providing you do so with other reputable websites. But don’t forget – once you start organic SEO, you need to continue with it in order to maintain the momentum or else your diligently attained rankings will go down.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
PPC advertising places much emphasis on keyword usage and the placement of adverts which are relevant to a specific website. In fact, it’s often said that this form of advertising has revolutionised the world of online advertising, in that it can provide small businesses with the same amount of leverage as what the big businesses have. Providing it’s done correctly, PPC advertising can certainly help you stand out from the crowd. If you’re currently considering a PPC campaign then you should also pay attention to the following three questions:
What do I have to offer?
Why will customers want to click on my advert?
How can I hook them with just ten words?
At this point, the most important thing for you to do is to integrate an ideal title and ten words which tell potential customers what your business is all about. The most difficult aspect of PPC advertising is that you will be in close proximity to your competitors, both in search engine results and in sponsored positions. Remember, if someone types in a search relevant to the type of website you own, your advert will appear at the top of the page or on the right hand side, and it’s vital that your advertisement must be powerful enough in order to trigger an immediate response.
Essentially, in order to get the best results you should ideally consider using SEO and PPC advertising simultaneously, rather than just opting for one of them.
10 Profoundly Effective Steps to Internet Marketing Success
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
10 Profoundly Effective Steps to Internet Marketing Success
Over the years, I’ve read thousands and thousands of marketing articles, both online and off. But to this point, I have never read any article that was what I considered to be 100% idiot-proof – meaning even a dunce, moron, or complete idiot couldn’t screw up the process.
So I decided to write such an article. And if you read and judiciously apply the ridiculously simple, but profoundly effective and proven success steps presented in this article, I am 100% convinced beyond any shadow of doubt that anyone can absolutely, positively make money with Internet Marketing.
Why am I so confident in these steps? Because these are the exact same steps I’ve used to build nearly 100 profitable websites of my own, in a very short period of time. Here are the steps:
1. Brainstorm Your Domain Name
This is an important process, so don’t rush it. Even if it takes you weeks or even months to come up with a domain name you’re satisfied with. Take as much time as you need. Your domain name is that important.
I’m a firm believer in creating generic domain names that utilize your primary keywords. For example, NewyorkCityHotels.com or NapaValleyWines.com. Having a generic domain name serves two crucial purposes:
First, it will attract a more targeted audience to your website. A targeted audience will give you a much higher conversion ratio – allowing you to make maximum use of the traffic you receive.
Second, generic domain names that utilize your primary keywords will help with your search ranking. While SEO experts have opposing viewpoints whether or not this actually helps, based on my own personal experience, I can tell you that it does.
By the way, because of the astronomical number of domains on the Internet, you may have to get a little creative in order to utilize your primary keywords in your domain name.
For example, if your first choice, NewYorkCityHotels.com is already taken, try playing around with different variations of your keywords.
For instance, try this variation, HotelsinNewYorkCity.com…or this one, CityofNewYorkHotels.com. Also, don’t be afraid to use hyphens in your domain name. Using this technique allows me to utilize my primary keywords 100% of the time.
It also allows me to use the much preferred .com domain. You should try to use .com domains whenever possible, because most people will automatically put a .com on the end of a domain when they type it into a search engine. This puts you in prime position to pick up traffic from domains in your category that utilize extensions other than .com.
2. Register Your Domain Name, and Forget It
After you decide on a domain name, don’t build your website right away. Register your domain name, and forget it.
Why? Because in my opinion, you should never build a website without having a plan to promote, as well as monetize your website. Develop a well-thought-out marketing plan going forward, then when you build your website, you can hit the ground running.
3. Develop Your Marketing Plan
I’m a member of several small business forums, and without fail, the two questions that get asked most often are:
“How do I promote my website?” or, “How do I get free traffic to my website?” Those two basic questions get asked every single day.
That’s why it’s so important to develop a marketing plan in advance. You need to know the answer to those questions, before you build your website. You can’t get to your destination, if you don’t know know where you want to go.
4. Your Budget Determines Your Marketing Plan
If you have thousands of dollars to work with, then you have many more options when it comes to promoting your website. For example, you can buy ads in offline publication, as well as online publications.
A word of advice: Unless you are an experienced marketer with extremely deep pockets, stay away from pay-per-click advertising. PPC advertising will eat up your advertising budget quicker than Usain Bolt breaks world records.
In reality, most people coming online don’t have thousands of dollars to work with. In fact, most people coming online have little or no money at all.
But that’s the beauty of the Internet. Even if you are broke, you can still promote your website effectively, if you know what you’re doing.
For example, you can participate in social media networking, and promote your website via mega-popular sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and a host of other social media websites.
Other free and highly effective promotion methods include article marketing, forum posting, guest blogging, RSS feeds, volunteering your expertise on Question & Answer sites like AllExperts.com and more.
5. Learn How to Implement Your Marketing Plan Effectively
Starting a business – any business without having even basic marketing skills is downright foolish. Competency in marketing is the most important business skill that you can have.
If you become proficient in the art of marketing, it will allow you to become profitable that much quicker. And there won’t be anything that you can’t accomplish.
Some of the greatest sales and marketing books ever written are located right under your nose, at your local library – and they’re free. Do yourself a favor and study the classics. Many of the marketing techniques being used today are based on sound marketing principles established many decades ago.
A few of my favorite marketing books include The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy, Advertising Secrets of the Written Word by Joe Sugarman, Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz, Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples, Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy, Magic Words That Bring You Riches by Ted Nicholas and How to Write a Good Advertisement by Victor O. Schwab.
If you can’t find these books at your local library, you can pick them up for just a few dollars on Amazon.
6. Apply What You Learn
It’s not enough to just read the classics, you have to apply what you learn. Otherwise, what’s the point? That means reading the books more than once – several times if necessary.
Actually, you should read the books as many times as it takes for the information to sink in and become second nature to you.
You should also take copious notes, and practice writing ads over and over and over again. You should give yourself regular written exams on the information in the books, and each time you test yourself, your goal should be to score 100%.
Sounds like hard work, doesn’t it? It is. The question is how hard are you willing to work to get what you want?
7. Monetize Your Website
There are a number of ways that you can monetize your website – from selling advertising on your site to affiliate programs. My preferred method is affiliate programs.
Why? Because affiliate programs are completely hands-off for you. No billing, no inventory, no hassles. You simply choose from among the thousands of affiliate programs available on the Internet, select your program of interest, and promote the living daylights out of it. Then take your checks to the bank…that’s it.
8. Take Your Income to the Next Level
Once you start making $50 per month with affiliate programs, build another website, and start promoting another affiliate program. And when that website starts making $50, build another website and another and another.
Why? Because if you have 10 websites making $50 per month, that’s a monthly income of $500. And therein lies the secret to making money on the Internet.
Why beat yourself up trying to make hundreds – or even thousands of dollars with a single website? Take the path of least resistance. Build a bunch of websites that make just $50 per month. If you can build fifty websites in a year, that’s a monthly income of $2500, or $30,000 a year.
Does your current job pay that much? And the beauty of this method is you can keep giving yourself a raise. If you build another fifty websites the following year, you just doubled your income to $5,000 per month.
And if you can build another fifty websites the following year, you just tripled your income to $7500 per month.
The key to making this method work is building simple, low-maintenance websites. Just add content once or twice a month, and forget about them.
Think it can’t be done? Think again. I’m doing it, and so are thousands of other smart and resourceful entrepreneurs.
9. What About Content?
The key to having a website that other websites want to link to is having quality, content that is relevant to the overall theme of your website. You can either produce the content yourself, import it from somewhere else, or a combination of both.
If you elect to import your content from somewhere else, you can either use free content from article directories like EzineArticles, or you can purchase PLR articles, which I don’t recommmend.
Why? Because hundreds of other people purchased the exact same PLR package as you. So those articles have to be completely rewritten, which is a time-consuming process.
Whichever way you choose to go, just remember, it’s important to have lots and lots of relevant content on your website.
How much content? The more the better. After all, the more content you have on your website, the more often your visitors will return to read that content.
10. Build Your Website
Okay, now that you’ve properly laid the foundation for success, it’s time to build your website. The type of website you build will again depend on the amount of money you have to play around with.
I have a bunch of websites that I paid absolutely nothing for. And I have websites that I paid hundreds of dollars for. My recommendation: If you don’t have to spend money on a website, don’t.
Nowadays, it’s not necessary to spend a lot of money to get a decent looking website.
But whatever you do, be sure to purchase your own domain name. You definitely don’t want the name Blogspot, WordPress or Homestead in your domain name. It just looks amateurish.
I buy most of my domains through NetworkSolutions.com, because I’ve been using them for years, and I’m comfortable with them. Their domains cost a lot more, but they more than make up for it with great customer service.
That’s something you just can’t put a price on. That being said, I’ve also purchased $10 domain names from GoDaddy without any problems.
One last thing, don’t beat your brains out worrying about SEO. Just make sure your primary keywords appear in your title tag, and you’ll be just fine.
Use SEO Strategies to Increase Web Traffic
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Monday, October 4, 2010
Use SEO Strategies to Increase Web Traffic
Every new technology adopted widely by society brings about a number of new opportunities. The movable type printing press created affordable print information, the telephone and radio created the concept of instantaneous communication over great distances. Today, the Internet has unified both of these concepts into the information explosion that is the digital age.
Consider this article alone – a mere forty years ago printing even fifty copies of each page would cost either a chunk of change or at least a suspicious look from the boss as you hovered over the office copier. Now the information can be sent to thousands of people within the time it takes to brew a good cup of tea.
Of course with every technology comes a system to make the best marketing use of that advancement. The radio gave rise to the modern commercial advertisement, which was refined by the television and still persists on the Web. The telephone gave us telemarketers and the first concept of communication networking. For making the most of the Internet, the strategy of the day is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
What is SEO, again?
In short, SEO is the presentation of a webpage in such a way that it consistently ranks highly in particular search engine results. While fads and sensations can quickly boom online from “word of mouth,” they don’t produce the same reliable success as a balanced, systematic approach.
Very few businesses, after all, want one rush of attention that leads to a website crash, followed by an equally quick slide into the various forgotten graveyards of the web. Therefore, SEO uses a combination of elements to make the site increasingly relevant to the various searches that Internet users perform, to bring it up again and again among the best results.
Key SEO Strategies
1. Set goals.
Identify what you want your SEO campaign to accomplish. While any SEO-conscious writing and page design can contribute to a site’s search engine rankings, an unfocused effort will simply waste time and money. After all, a business promoting athletic clothing and footwear may not benefit too much from showing up in searches for evening wear. Is your goal simply to increase your site’s visitor traffic? Do you want to generate more sales of a product? Is it part of an effort to promote your digital brand? Each of these goals benefits from different aspects of SEO technique.
2. Link up.
Link building is one of the cornerstones of any SEO effort. Many search engines are spider-based, meaning they use automated processes to collect and categorize information on various websites. When a large number of websites provide links back to your business, or when a particularly high-traffic site does so, the spiders take notice of it and increase the relevance of that link in searches related to those sites.
3. Get the keys.
Keyword writing is consistently stressed as a requirement when websites look for content writers. Keywords are just that, words and phrases chosen for their popularity and relevance to key searches.
There are dozens of theories about keyword writing. In the earlier days of SEO writing, it wasn’t uncommon to see pages that were nothing but long strings of repeated variations on a few keywords. This has evolved into more organic writing that fits in keywords with the article as a whole.
Whichever strategy is chosen, care must be taken to avoid the temptation to abuse keyword searches. Yes, a proper keyword density will bring up your search rankings over time. However, Google can and does ban pages from its index when they determine it to be a keyword-abusing effort. So consider your keyword choices carefully, and seamlessly integrate them into your entire strategy.
4. Be on the right page.
One aspect occasionally neglected in SEO is the architecture and design of the webpage itself. Search engines and their ranking systems (be they spider or human based) are growing more sophisticated all the time, and look at many different factors in their decisions. A site that buries its keyword-rich articles on interior pages behind dozens of subsidiary links will not perform as well as one with strategic keyword-oriented material right on the front page. Have an SEO-conscious designer look over your page, as well as your articles.
Remember that every business is a multi-faceted whole. Many failures occur when people attempt to compartmentalize too much. You can’t consider SEO as some sort of ‘event’ that you do every so often, just as a business can’t put off routine maintenance of their equipment and expect it to function properly. Integrate your efforts into the entire process, and give them the same focus as any other effort in the business, and they will return their investment much more reliably, quickly, and ideally.
Do You Want the Top Spot on Google? Find Out How
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Do You Want the Top Spot on Google? Find Out How
Every website is battling for the top spot in Google’s search results page, and to do that you have to optimize your website for Google. Optimization requires continually improving your site’s content. Even though Yahoo and Bing simply search the tag structures in HTML, Google uses a trickier, and somewhat clandestine, method to determine top spot.
Google looks for websites that continually provide fresh and relevant content. Since Google has such strict guidelines for top spot, it requires web page owners to continually work on keeping their page’s content fresh and relevant to hold a top spot in the list.
Keywords and Phrases
Google looks for phrases and keywords as it is assessing a site. It evaluates a site’s content, and looks for phrases that match a particular search term. If say, a visitor is looking for ‘boat repair’ Google will display pages where that keyword shows up several of times in the body of the page. So when you are optimizing your web page, you should concentrate on phrases rather than single words. Now that you know Google is looking for a particular phrase you do not want to go crazy with that phrase on a page either, because this is know as keyword stuffing. Be careful with keyword phrases–if Google sees too many of them, they will lower your page in the search engine rankings.
The Title Tag
The title tag is important and is unique to each page in a website. The tag can be found on the browser’s title bar. It is also used by Googlebot to see what the page contents are going to be. Google then looks at the page contents and evaluates if the two match, and this helps determine page relevance. Since Google looks at each page in a domain, many sites dynamically generate page titles with an introduction text appended to the company name.
Anchor Text
When you add link tags to your page, this is anchor text. Take care to be precise in your anchor test by using relevant phrases for prominent links on your page. Google is looking for specific link information, so the more specific that you can be the better. If you focus on your site’s keyword terms and make sure that these are always in line with your content, you will make Google’s assessment of your site easy. Google is generous with its link limits saying that no more than 100 links should ever appear on a web page.
Header Tags
Header tags are HTML page elements coded “”, and they provide a bold heading on the page. The headers tell Google what the purpose of the page is, and the title tag tells it the purpose of the website. You should have a header tag on each page.
Quality Content
The last thing that Google is looking for is unique content. Google’s customers are your website visitors, and when Google returns a search list, they want their customers to be happy. So you are helping Google as it is helping your. New content and keyword phrases help you get to the top of Google’s search list. So if you have bad content – either plagiarized, badly written or irrelevant content – Google is
not interested in you. Make sure to follow Google guidelines, or Google will blacklist your domain and not link to it at all.
Optimize Your Website for Google and Make it Readable
By complying with the guidelines that Google has set out for page ranking, you can set your page up to show up at the top of the search list. By continually adding new content,
Google will mark your page as a good one to return to its customer. However, you must always make sure that you site is aesthetically pleasing and readable by a human, because the point of why you optimize your website for Google, is to attract new visitors to your page to increase your company’s market share.
Optimize PDF Files for Maximum SEO Performance
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Optimize PDF Files for Maximum SEO Performace
A PDF file can be in the form of an eBook, technical document or a brochure. Most of the search engines can read the content and index the PDF files. Currently, there are a number of well optimized PDF files which rank well and are a source of traffic for their website. Listed below are some tips for optimizing PDFs:
1. Use a Text Based PDF Creator:
There are a lot free tools available online with Adobe Acrobat being the best text based PDF creator. If a PDF document is created in an image based program, the search engines will completely ignore it. If the PDF is created using a text based creator like Adobe acrobat, the search engine robots will read and index the text like any other web page.
2. Update the Document Title:
The title of the PDF file is as important as the title tag of a web page. The PDF title property tells the search engine robots about the type of content. The most important aspect of the title is that Google uses the text in the title field as the link in the search engine result pages. Thus, the title field should be keyword rich and should not contain random text.
3. Complete the document properties:
A PDF file contains many document properties apart from the title field. These are keywords, description, author info, copyright info etc. All the fields must be completed with relevant information. The keyword field should not be stuffed with keywords or remain empty. It has not been proven that the search engines give importance to the keyword field in the document properties. If in future they do, your PDF file will have an advantage over other web pages.
4. Link to the PDF File from the Homepage:
The Searchbots will not discover and index the PDF file if it is placed too deep within the website. To ensure that the PDF file gets crawled by the search engines, it should be visibly linked from the home page or any other page which gets crawled regularly. If your aim is to get the PDF in top search engine result pages, then you have to lead the searchbots to it.
5. Optimize the content in the PDF File:
The content in the text based PDF files is similar to the content in a website. This makes content optimization an important aspect in optimization of PDF files. The content should be relevant to the subject matter. Important text should be highlighted by increasing their font size and utilizing the bold and italics features of the PDF files. Keywords should be placed in the first few lines of the content.
6. Place Links in the PDF File:
When a visitor opens a PDF file ranking in the top search engine results page, there should be a provision in the file to link back to its original website. This action reduces the efforts of the visitor to hunt for the main website. Also, a link from the PDF file can be considered as a backlink by the search engine.
A PDF file is similar to a web page in an assortment of aspects. It should be optimized with as much care as a web page to achieve high rankings.
How Do You Drive Traffic to Your Site?
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Thursday, September 30, 2010
How Do You Drive Traffic to Your Site?
If you are new to internet marketing, you would have discovered that driving traffic to your website is a formidable task. However, if you learn the ropes to drive traffic to your website, you can reap a ton of rewards. Here are some creative ideas that may help you.
Start blogging on several sites and leave comments on other people’s blog posts. Make sure to include your URL and hotlink where possible. Remain focused on your issue as you need to make sure that you write to get approved and captivate your readers. Write to establish trust as an expert on subject. Putting in all the efforts and getting it trashed as spam is such a waste of time.
Add as many suitable themes, extensions and widgets as possible to your blogging site. There are so many free add-ons to make your site attractive. Consistently analyze your site to see how you can make it user friendly, stimulating and attractive rather than a run of the mill boring site. Their visit should fulfill their desire to get information and new experience. Add intriguing and interesting podcasts, videos and audios to your site.
Enlist your friends and ask their help to spread the word about your website. They can use their website, contacts, blogs and contacts to drive traffic to your website.
Sign up with a social bookmarking site and share your bookmarked site with other readers who share the same interests as you. Add reference and links to your websites. Most social sites are used by many people as specific interest search engines. Add the bookmarks to your site and increase your traffic. Analyze as to what products users are searching for and add links to interesting and relevant products. The more such links you have bookmarked, the bigger your following will be. The more appealing information that you impart to the readers, the more they will return to your site for new information.
Use social photo sharing sites like Flickr to drive readers to our website. Attract them by adding smart tags. Write a post in your blogsite and link to your Flickr page. This way both the sites will work together to drive traffic to your site.
Twitter is another useful tool to drive traffic to you site. Make sure to tweet every post or comment you make. Use tools like bit.ly to shorten your links to post pages and link them in your tweets. Make sure not tweet only those links. Intermittently tweet some other useful information, tidbits, quotes, humor etc. to keep your tweets interesting. This will also increase your Twitter following and work in unison with your blog site. One more thing make sure to add a link to your site in your Twitter profile. That will drive more traffic to your site.
Add links to industry specific sites and network with them by contacting them. Most will be pleased to help you build your web traffic and promote the common cause.
Submit your feeds to as many blog site directories as possible. This is a good way to drive up traffic from other sites to yours.
Modify your posts to the article and submit to as many article directories as possible. Use the resource box to drive traffic to your site and create valuable backlinks to your site. When ranking your page, search engines give higher weight to backlinks from articles published in many reputable article directories.
Your strategy to build traffic should be to first and foremost offer what the reader wants. You service a valuable purpose when you provide them with interesting information, products and services
The Painful Truth About Getting Your Website To The Top Of The Search Engines
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
The Painful Truth About Getting Your Website To The Top Of The Search Engines
“How do I get my website to come up on top of the search engines?” – That is one of the most frequently asked questions I get asked by clients.
The truth is, it’s not easy. With millions of websites on the internet right now and thousands being added each month, everyone is striving to do the same – to come up in the first spot (or on the first page).
In reality there are only 2 ways you can come up on top:
Set up a pay per click advertising campaign, such as Google Adwords
Optimise your website for keywords (also know as Search Engine Optimisation)
Keywords
Before you embark on either of these marketing methods, you need to understand about keywords.
Keywords or key phrases are the words that visitors type into a search engine to find a service or product. The best keywords are those that are commonly typed in by your potential customers, but which aren’t used much on your competitor’s websites. In other words, if you optimize your pages for keywords your potential customers use a lot, but your competitors haven’t thought of, you win. But here’s the catch…you’ll never get to know which are the best keywords for your website simply by guessing.
There are many tools you can use to find what keywords people are using, including Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool.
If you are serious about finding the perfect keywords, I would recommend using a tool called Wordtracker – www.wordtracker.com. Through a series of simple steps, Wordtracker identifies the best keywords to use on each page of your website. Wordtracker’s suggestions are based on over 300 million keywords and phrases that people have used over the previous 90 days. (In other words, there is no “guessing” when you use Wordtracker. Everything is based on the keywords millions of people have actually typed into search engines.)
Best of all, their competitive analysis tool enables you to find those “best keywords” – the ones your potential customers use, but which your competitors don’t know about.
Once you have identified the best keywords, you can either run a pay per click marketing campaign or optimize your website for search engines.
Pay per click
Pay per click advertising is when an advertiser (you) pays for each qualified click that sends a search engine user to your web page. PPC requires you to bid on keywords or phrases that relate to your business. The best known pay per click services are Google AdWords and Overture. Generally you can bid from as little as a few cents per visitor. However, the more you bid the higher up in the search engine your advertisement will appear. Pay per click is a great way to deliver targeted and qualified visitors to your website at a very reasonable price.
It is a good idea to experiment with different PPC search engines to find the one that works best for you. In addition, you will need to spend time testing your keywords and ads.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engines prefer to list sites that contain good content. In order to rank high you need to create a website that has maximum content and which uses lots of relevant keywords to your service and products.
Once you decide on the keywords, use them in
Your website’s domain name
The title of your page – This is displayed in the top bar of your browser window
The heading of your home page
The first paragraph of your home page
Meta tags – Keywords, page title, description
Titles of your graphics
Alternative (Alt) tags – These appear in place of images when the browser preferences are set for text only.
Whilst it is important to use keywords as much as possible, it is also important you use them only if they are relevant and do not sound awkward. If you spam your keywords you may be penalized or even banned by some search engines.
Another important thing to consider when trying to optimize your website for search engines is to have as many relevant links pointing back to your website from other complementary sites. This can be done through link exchanges or by writing articles/posts and submitting them to article directories or forums. Ensure you include your domain name at the end of each article/post.
If this all seems too overwhelming, you can employ the services of a Search engine optimization company, who will make your website’s content more search engine friendly.
Please remember, having your website listed at the top of the search engines is not the only way to promote your website. There are lots of other ways you can get visitors to your site for little or no money.
Would You Like To Build One-Way Links Fast? Here’s A Handful Of Ideas!
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Would You Like To Build One-Way Links Fast? Here’s A Handful Of Ideas!
Online businesses require traffic to carry on, and many business people constantly seek out hassle-free and also productive ways to make folks take note of them and also what they have to publicize. Making inlinks would let you multiply the amount of traffic coming to your webpage or weblog and improve your profits. This short article will reveal more regarding how you could build incoming links.
One approach is to market and bookmark your content through the use of services like OnlyWire. You need to position those ‘Share and ‘Bookmark’ buttons in places where your consumers could easily see it. If they love your website content, they will click on these buttons and publish your content on the leading social networking websites on the web. For you to get these buttons, you need to set up individual user accounts with these social networking websites. As for your target market, all they have to do is type in a captcha code to start sharing your content with other interested customers.
One more strategy to obtain inbound links quickly is to utilize content promotion, which means the publicizing of write-ups and also video clips. This particular strategy would allow you to put backlinks to your site or blog at the conclusion of every write-up or video and in each description box. End users can then click on your one-way links to go to your website or weblog for more details. This is a really efficient way of building inward links, and if you make use of the appropriate resources, you could even send several versions of your content pieces to as much as 300 article directory sites in 1 hour or so.
A third strategy to create inward links quickly is to submit comments on other webpages and weblogs, preferably the ones that belong to fellow business people who are in the same niche as you are. Whenever you give feedback, you have to leave your e-mail address, name as well as the link to your website. Whenever you submit your comments, a hyperlink will appear together with the previous blog entry that you published, which gives other folks the opportunity to click on it and look at your content. Be careful not to carry out spamming; this would only irritate your peers and target market and also give you a lousy reputation.
You may also talk to the bloggers in your circle and make arrangements to trade backlinks with them. Do not forget that search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing will learn of your webpage or weblog if you have loads of inward as well as outbound links. When these search engines determine that your webpage or weblog is gaining lots of back-links, you will be in a much better position to obtain more viewers.
Furthermore, if you have a Facebook account, you should look into using it to publicise your webpage or blog. Publish links to your write-ups as well as videos on your profile so your relatives, close friends and viewers would see what you are up to. This would make them click on the hyperlinks that you provide, and they could also distribute your content by posting your inward links on their own profiles. This specific technique would get you even more one-way links and page views, as well as make it possible for those who have no idea of your products and services to take note of you.
The same principle can be utilized for microblogging sites like Twitter and Plurk. Most folks now depend on these types of sites to get the information and facts they need, and you will greatly benefit if you utilise them to put together a wide network. Given that there is a 140-character limit, you’ll need to be imaginative with the way you show your links as well as copy. You need to get their interest with snappy copy as well as relevant links.
By carrying out these tasks regularly, you will not only do well in making incoming links quickly, but you could also expect a lot more traffic and also improved conversations. However, everything boils down to the calibre of your content; you must make sure that your material is useful and also of a great standard. If this is the case, more and more consumers would want to peruse your material and exchange incoming links with you.
SEO Article Writing: Using Keywords in Article Headlines
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Monday, September 27, 2010
SEO Article Writing: Using Keywords in Article Headlines
So, you have your list of keywords and you’re wondering how to incorporate them into your article titles. You’re wondering if it’s possible to do SEO article writing that also makes sense to humans.
If you go overboard with your key phrases, then your article has a good chance of being declined by publishers right off the bat.
How can you effectively use keywords in your article titles?
Is it possible to please search engines, publishers, and human readers?
Yes! This article spotlights a few techniques you can implement to effectively and correctly use your keywords in your article titles.
First, let’s lay the ground rule:
*Your title must serve your reader, first and foremost. The purpose of your title is to tell the reader what your article is about. A title is a great place to use your keywords, but the title must still make sense, be grammatically correct with proper spelling, and accurately portray the subject matter of the article.
Now, on to the tips:
- Your title must reflect what your article is about. Most of the time this decline reason comes up when a person writes an article and then tries to include their keywords in the title as an afterthought, when the article is not really about the keywords. For example: If your article title is “10 Heart Healthy Soups”, then your article must talk about 10 heart healthy soups. Whatever is promised in the title must be delivered in the article.
- Resist the urge to use a minimalist keyword-only title. If you’re extremely focused on your keywords and the impact they can have on your search engine ranking, you might wonder, “Why not just make a title that is totally keyword focused?”
For example: Hiking Boots
What is wrong with that?
Well first of all, this title is not very specific, nor does it draw a reader in. If you’re using a two word key phrase, most likely your phrase is extremely general and not specific enough to make a good title.
Your title should specifically indicate what your article is about, and if your article is about a specific aspect of “hiking boots”, then the title should reflect that. For example: “Hiking Boots: Top 5 Best Performers”
If you’re using long tail keyword phrases (3-5 words long), then the title almost writes itself sometimes. For example “How To Eat Healthy” may be your long tail key phrase, which also works well as a title.
But many long tail key phrases need extra words added to them in order to make sense. For example, the phrase “Used Car Values” is pretty general, and the article is likely about a more specific topic, such as “Used Car Values: How To Negotiate The Best Price For A Used Car”
3 – This almost goes without saying, but unfortunately I see this sometimes: Your title should not be a list of keywords.
What would you think if you saw a “title” that looked like this:
Used Car Pricing, Used Car Values, Used Car Deals
This type of title does not make sense, is not helpful to the reader, and was obviously an attempt to get as many keywords in the title as possible. Most publishers would immediately decline an article with a title like that.
The main idea is to write for your human readers first by creating a helpful and specific title that reflects what your article is about. You may use your keywords in the title if they sound natural and make sense.
Why is SEO So Important for E-Commerce Websites? The Basics
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Why is SEO So Important for E-Commerce Websites? The Basics.
In this modern age, it is increasingly important to make sure your websites are optimized for the major search engines through the use of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices. The current top three search engines are Google, Yahoo and Bing. Let’s face it though; Google is the major player and they set the standards when it comes to the Internet search industry.
There are a few basic practices you can follow to make your site more friendly to the search engines and thus rank higher for certain keyword phrases when users search for them. You just need to make sure you are conducting these practices properly. Being at the top of the search engines for your target keywords is a make or break factor for the success of your business.
There are millions of websites in existence and there could be thousands competing for the keywords you are trying to rank for. The Internet is a very competitive marketplace so it is vital to stay on top of the current SEO trends. Not being recognized by the top search engines can be very frustrating, especially after putting a lot of work and money into creating and designing your website.
Each search engine uses a different algorithm to conduct their searches. These algorithms are kept secret by the companies and are always changing. However, there are numerous people whose jobs consist of attempting to deconstruct these algorithms to figure out how the engines rank pages.
In order to increase your web page’s rank in the search engine results, take the following advice into consideration:
Keywords:
- Remember that content will always be king. Fill your web pages with relevant information that will help visitors – search engines love this.
- Fill your content with your target keywords but don’t overdo it by stuffing keywords into your pages. You need to keep your keyword density to no more than one anchor text keyword hyperlink per 100 words of content. If the pages of your site contain relevant keywords to a searcher’s search phrase then your site has a higher likelihood of appearing on the results pages.
- Be specific with your keywords. If you are selling “Men’s Nike Air Jordans” target that phrase not “Michael Jordan shoes.”
- When choosing keywords, put yourself in the shoes of the searcher. What would you search (WWYS)?
Meta Tags (Title, Description & Keywords):
- The title tag is the description of the current page you are on that appears on the top bar of your web browser. For SEO purposes, you need to use your first targeted keyword at the beginning of your title and try to describe what your website is all about In 10-15 words.
- The keyword tag consists of the list of keywords you have put together in your market research. Search your competitors websites and see what keywords they are using then rank them in order of relevancy from first to last.
- The description tag is a short explanation about the content of your website and its topic. Keep this under 20-25 words and try to use at least three to four target keywords. This is what users will see on the search engine results pages under the link to your site.
- For the best SEO results, edit the meta tags for each page of your website to match the contents of that specific page.
Submit Your Site to the Search Engines:
- It is a quick and painless process to submit to the top search engines. Simply visit the websites of the major search engines and fill out the corresponding submission forms.
- You should also submit your website to the DMOZ.org directory. It can take a few months to get listed but it is a great SEO technique and most sites listed in the directory get higher priority in the search results over sites that are not listed.
- Patience is a virtue when it comes to submission. It can take days or weeks for the search engine spiders to actually crawl your website and get indexed.
Build Links by Submitting Your Site to Directories and Niche Websites:
- The more meaningful links from high ranked websites linking to your site, the higher your search rating. However, this does not mean you should practice “link farming” or paying for links. This is considered a negative practice and can actually have a negative impact on your results rating and can even get you banned from the search engines.
- The best way to be featured in directories is to make a profile with a link to your page.
- Article marketing is another very valuable SEO tactic. Write articles with keyword hyperlinks pointing to your page. Other sites are happy to have quality content and you obtain linkage, so both sides win! You will also see direct traffic from these links which will help your site gain popularity.
- Link building is a time-consuming process that can take long periods of time to see real results, so again – be patient!
By following these simple SEO tactics, you can raise your ranking in the search engines!
How to Create a Search Engine Friendly Website
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Thursday, September 23, 2010
How to Create a Search Engine Friendly Website
Many webmasters complain about their website not ranking well in the SERPs. What they fail to realize is that their website is not search engine friendly. An SEO friendly website contains more than keyword filled Meta tags and content.
A website must be created and designed keeping the visitors in mind. Search engines can get your website in the top ranking; but a well crafted website ensures that the visitor gets converted into a customer. You need to ensure that your website is both search engine and visitor friendly.
Tips for Creating a Search Engine Friendly Website:
Fill the Meta tags: Search engines come across the Meta tags well before the content. A major part of the search result is picked up from the Meta tags. The title tag helps the search engines and visitors in understanding what the webpage is about. The Meta description gets listed as the snippet in the search result. Well formatted Meta tags play a major role in making the website SEO friendly.
Include Breadcrumbs in the website: Breadcrumbs are navigational links present in the inner pages of the website. They link a web page to its respective category and sub category. Breadcrumbs help in the even distribution of the page rank to the connected web pages. You must include keywords as the anchor text of the breadcrumbs. Remember to place the breadcrumbs before the main heading of the web page.
Perform the On Page Optimization Activities: SEO of a website mainly consists of on page optimization activities. Implement these tips:
- Add a heading tag to the web page.
- As search engines cannot read images, add an alt tag to the images.
- Name the image according to the selected keywords. Use hyphens to separate long keywords.
- Place a keyword as the anchor text of a link.
- Optimize the content of your web page. Make sure that the keyword density doesn’t exceed 2%.
Interlink all the important web pages: Interlinking web pages helps the search spiders to navigate the website. Web pages can be linked based on their category. E.g. an online book store can link their web pages based on the authors. It has been observed that a well linked website will always rank better than the non-linked websites. You can link to the important pages of your website from the homepage by using appropriate anchor text.
Use SEO Friendly URL Structure: Search engines do not understand the URL’s which contain the PHP / ASP code in them. A SEO friendly URL structure contains words separated by hyphens. You can rewrite your URL’s manually via the.htaccess file. WordPress gives you an option to change your URL structure with one click.
Generate XML Sitemaps: Sitemaps help the engines discover all the pages in your website. There are a lot of free XML sitemap generator tools available online. You can include the “priority” and “change frequency” tags in your sitemap. The priority tag indicates the importance of the web page to the search engines. The Change frequency tag tells the search engines how frequently the page is likely to change.
A fully optimized site increases your chances of ranking well in the SERPs. Once in the top SERPs, your website has a good chance of converting its visitors into customers.
SEO: How To Research For Free
The first step of any online campaign is deciding what you want to be known for, particularly when aiming for a stronger presence on the search engines. These terms or search phrases that you wish to be seen for are called ‘keywords’. Researching and implementing these keywords into your website is crucial to the success of your website. It is vital that you look into both the search volume of each keyword and also the competition levels. By conducting a bit of research first you will gain a good understanding of how your market looks online, and also what keywords you could realistically achieve good positions for.
There are many ways you can conduct keyword research. The internet offers different tools, both free and paid for, and in addition to that there are some commands on the search engines that will also give you some clues. Free tools such as Google’s Adword’s keyword tool give you a basic look into monthly search volumes and competition levels, however it is sometimes questionable as to how accurate these figures can be. If you want to step it up a notch, you could try paying for software such as Word Tracker. Word Tracker will give you a much more thorough analysis of each word and ultimately give you a better view of the market.
For most people, using the free tools and search commands are enough to give a good idea of what keywords you should target with your website. Listed below are a few useful search commands that you could use to do a little research:
1. “In URL : ‘keyword’”
By typing this into a search engine and replacing the word ‘keyword’ with your keyword, you will get a list, and more importantly a number, of websites that are using your keyword in their URLs. This will give you a solid idea of how many websites are directly targeting your keyword.
2. “In title: ‘keyword’”
2nd most important to the URL, the meta title is vital to targeting a particular keyword. By using this command you will be able to see how many websites are using your keyword in their meta titles.
3. “In text: ‘keyword”
This command will give you a really good rounded view of the market. It will produce a list of websites that are talking about your keyword. The perfect keyword is one that has a substantial amount of traffic, yet a relatively low competition level. Of course, the keyword must be highly relevant to your website and business to ensure that any traffic that comes from the search engines is looking for exactly what you offer.
You will probably find that when you start to look into keywords, by varying the phrase slightly you can find keywords with high traffic levels and low competition…this is exactly what you are looking for. Also, don’t ignore keywords with low search volumes; if these keywords are relevant to your website the traffic they could bring could be a lot higher in quality if you are targeting a niche area.
Optimize Your Images On Search Engines
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Optimize Your Images On Search Engines
Starting competitive advantages in the business is vital both in online and offline aspects. If you are a business organization, you need to distinguish your organization from the competition, especially if your business is not on commodity products. You can easily distinguish these advantages on the internet because of the already established fundamentals of the business.
For some companies, they get their edge from targeted advertising from high-traffic websites. For others, it is through social media marketing.
But one relatively easy way to drive relevant traffic to your website without too much effort is to optimize your images for search engines. Think of it as a tiny webpage within the website structure. It is recommended for you to include an anchor text, descriptive tagging, and URL structure to maximize results.
Search for the Right Image
Successful bloggers, writers, and website owners know the value of using the right image for their text content. It adds another dimension to articles and enables readers to appreciate their webpage even more. However, many fail to use images for search engine optimization purposes. It is in fact a good way to drive backlinks and visitors. There’s no need to upload your own pictures. A lot of stock photos are available from free from sites like Flickr and iStockPhoto among others. It is also a good idea to use Google Search to find good photos. Make sure that you are not violating any copyright if you do this (look for Creative Commons licensing).
Make Proper Use of Keywords
Keywords are an integral part of any search engine optimization effort. It is used to optimize all kinds of digital assets from videos to podcasts. You will really benefit if you use keywords wisely for your images. Rename the image because having “012345RR.jpg” as the file name isn’t going to help. It is a very simple step and can go a long way in helping your website rank better.
Use Descriptive Text
It is important to use descriptive tags, file names, and alt text for your images. This is because search engines cannot read images and would use its surrounding text as reference. Make use of this feature by adding keywords on the descriptive text, anchor text, and any other tags (related to the image). Bear in mind that anchor text is one of the most important elements to optimize your image effectively so take advantage of it.
As you can see, image SEO is a straight-forward process that provides tenfold benefit from your efforts. Follow the guidelines outlined above and you’ll see your more traffic coming in from image search soon.
Eleven Step Guide to Understanding SEO – Part 2
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Eleven Step Guide to Understanding SEO – Part 2
One piece of ‘new media jargon’ that has got the vast
majority of business leaders confused is SEO (search engine
optimization). Too many people have been charged too much
for either inappropriate or ineffective SEO services, often
because the supplier does not really understand it either.
This two part article is for people who are not experienced
or very knowledgeable when it comes to SEO – defining what
it is and what it can do.
The introduction and first five steps to SEO heaven
discussed how to get a website ready for an SEO campaign.
In part two (steps 6 to 11), we’ll explore the continuous
and competitive process of earning a high search engine
ranking for a SEO prepared website.
Step 6 to SEO Heaven – Web Analytics
As with any marketing, but particularly for online
marketing, where the tools and results are so effective, it
is essential to measure and track results. Market behaviour
is very predictable. Accordingly, the effectiveness of each
part of your campaign can be compared and optimized. The
options for web analytics vary from free services to very
expensive and customizable packages.
Whichever you choose, don’t put it off. Measure your results
from day one and use them to improve your site and your
marketing campaigns. That old statement ‘I know half my
advertising does not work, if I only knew which half was not
working I’d stop spending it’ is not true on the internet.
You can and must know.
Step 7 to SEO Heaven – Content Building
Part of being ‘the best and most relevant’ result is having
the freshest content, and the search engines look for that
by regular visits to your site and reviewing your site’s
progress. They use a formula, not usually a human being,
unless they detect potential fraud.
Actually, good SEO means a website is never done, and the
fact that it has to change and grow over time gives your
customers a better experience. Search engines reward a
‘natural process’ that adjusts to changes in the market
and your normal business growth.
Providing good quality content that is related to what you
do, but not necessarily aimed at selling something directly,
is a powerful, perhaps the the best, opportunity to increase
the traffic to your website and the exposure of your
business. Most people do not link to pages that only serve
the purpose of making a sale.
This leads to the next step in this 11 step process of
successful search engine optimization for your website.
Step 8 to SEO Heaven – Link Building
The internet works through links, it would not be a “net”
without links. A collection of independent pages that are
not connected to each other cannot be found and, for the
most part, that defeats their purpose. People seeing and
clicking on links to your site make effective inbound links
that search engines like to reward with a higher ranking for
your website. They are also vital for SEO.
Inbound links play an important role in virtually every
search engine when it comes to ranking pages in their search
results. In the normal course of business links are added,
and sometimes removed, all the time. This never ending
organic process is monitored and measured by the search
engines as an indicator of importance and relevance – so it
is advisable to be pro-active in acquiring good inbound
links. There are plenty of sites out there that should link
to you, but don’t know you and your content. Help them to
find your content and encourage linking to it.
Step 9 to SEO Heaven – Engagement, Trust and
Community Building
Like it or not social media is a reality whole sections of
society participate in for hours daily and is a fundamental
indicator of relevance and popularity. Don’t allow your
website to exist in an isolated bubble. Talk to people and
allow them to respond and to interact with you.
People will talk about you with or without your permission.
Much better to seize the initiative and become part of the
discussion. Use it to build trust and deeper relationships
with your customers or potential customers. Use it like
research. Listen to what they say and learn about their
wants and their needs. Listen and take note of comments,
especially criticisms, and use them to improve. You can save
the money you might have spent on focus groups and get
feedback free of charge on the internet.
In relation to SEO, social media provides a huge opportunity
to expand your link building. For your business it increases
your brand exposure for a fraction of the cost of traditional,
more intrusive advertising campaigns that are usually less
effective.
Step 10 to SEO Heaven – Ranking and Traffic Analysis
When you begin, or if you have already started, check where
you are today to be able to track and compare with data in
the future. Look for trends and evaluate the progress
towards your goals. You know those goals which we set in the
first paragraph before we began the campaign. The ones you
should specify before you engage in any type of marketing
campaign. Those goals were measurable I hope? If you view
improving your SEO ranking as a measure of your business
success rather than an essential step to achieving business
success, you will maintain a high SEO ranking for the long
term. Why, because the high traffic that comes with it will
drive your business.
Does the change in ranking yield the traffic you expected?
Does this traffic actually convert? Which leads us neatly
to step 11 of SEO heaven.
Step 11 to SEO Heaven – Conversion Analysis
All of this effort matters not one jot unless you make your
profit number (or the equivalent in not for profit
organizations). It all comes down to one critical factor -
what is your bottom line? Did you make profit or did you
lose money. Web Analytics is part of the process of making
this determination. Focus on the things that work and help
your bottom line and stop doing the things that don’t.
Work on the details to increase visitor conversion to sales.
This requires testing. Don’t try anything upfront without
testing it first. The things that work for others might not
work for you and the same is true the other way around.
Many with experience in the SEO game will tell you that
there is another, more important step that would make this
article 12 steps to SEO heaven. That step is to be sure
only to work with people who can really explain SEO in plain
English. To be blunt, small, independent and one-man-band
web designers rarely get SEO fully and their usually well
meaning efforts end up costing you more than they deliver.
They do get part of the story, but they fail you by wasting
both your money and your time.
Eleven Steps to SEO Heaven – Part 1
Are you fed up with feeling baffled by search engine
optimization (SEO) because of jargon and poor practitioners? Do
you feel you have been charged too much for less than you were
promised? This two part article sets out to explain the process
and put you back in control.
If you have focused objectives and a clear online strategy then
SEO will almost always be a good cost effective addition to the
marketing tool set. The first thing to understand is that search
engine businesses, like Google, Yahoo and Bing, have customers
to satisfy too. Their customers are searching and they expect to
see the ‘best and most relevant’ search results. I expect like
me, you get frustrated if your searches bring irrelevant results
first. No surprise then, that the methods used by the search
engine operators are designed to deliver customer satisfaction.
They work hard to eliminate bogus SEO services that aim to
cheat.
It is possible for you to make your website ‘the best and most
relevant’ for certain searches and to convince the search
engine operator you are just that too. That is SEO. Each of my
11 steps to SEO heaven is necessary. I assume that you will be
committed to a long term marketing strategy, and to measuring
results with a view to adjusting your activity. The steps
include those of preparation as well of those of continuous
repeated activities. The early preparatory steps are perhaps the
most important as errors here will frustrate the effectiveness
of the later ones.
Armed with our clear objectives and online strategy:
Step 1 to SEO Heaven – Keyword Research
A vital first step that should not be undertaken lightly. While
experienced pay-per-click advertisers will know that you can
easily test and change hundreds of keywords in paid search
campaigns, they should understand this not possible for organic
search optimization. It is normally advisable to concentrate on
one to five key phrases for the whole site around a core theme.
Then, for individual pages only one to three phrases. For large
sites with hundreds of pages it is hard to optimize every single
page. The effort and cost of SEO to the full extent produces
diminishing returns.
Step 2 to SEO Heaven – Competitive Intelligence
SEO is competitive. There is only one front page and only one
top slot so it is important to know your competition and perform
better. What are they doing? Where do they rank and for which
keywords? Who is linking to their website and why? The less
competitive your industry is online the easier it is for you to
outperform your competition. This is an important determining
factor in the cost and resources necessary to achieve your
desired SEO outcome.
Step 3 to SEO Heaven – Web Design and Development
Like trying to cable an old building for modern communications
or boosting performance of an obsolete machine, fixing a bad
website design is much tougher than building properly from
scratch. When you create a new website, make sure to consider
search engine friendly design and architecture before and during
the actual development of the website. Almost all template-based
websites are tough to re-engineer for SEO. A good design from
the start will save you a lot of time and money. In most cases
it will put you ahead of a considerable number of your
competitors. In most cases a high performing design for SEO is
also a user friendly design, but occasionally compromise is
necesary.
Step 4 to SEO Heaven – Get Your First Inbound Links
There is no need to pay to submit your website to any search
engine. Just as soon as you create inbound links from other
websites to yours the search engines will find your website.
There are plenty of scam products and services. Avoid them. They
are a waste of your money. No one can guarantee you a number 1
ranking. It must be earned and maintained by being the best and
most relevant.
There are some web directories that are recognized by search
engines and gaining a trade listing there will be a helpful
kick-start to your SEO campaign. Then ask your customers and
suppliers to place a link to your website from theirs. Most will
be pleased for the favor to be returned.
Step 5 to SEO Heaven – Sitemaps
The larger search engines allow webmasters to submit a sitemap
to them via a webmaster console. The search engines also provide
reports and other useful information, such as technical problems
with your websites you might not be aware of via their console.
Even if you decide against the submission of a site map to the
search engines, it is advisable to create an account and
register your website with them, just for the reports and
statistics they provide free of charge and which are invaluable
for your internet marketing efforts.
After completion of the first 5 steps, schedule them for
occasional review. The remaining tasks require regular and
repetitive effort. In Eleven Steps to SEO Heaven (steps 6 to
eleven) we look at taking a website that is a SEO ready site
with a ready to run campaign and look at the steps and work
needed to claim a high search engine ranking.
SEO Tips: Get More Traffic with These 10 Important Inbound Links
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Friday, August 27, 2010
SEO Tips: Get More Traffic with These 10 Important Inbound Links
Don’t overlook your inbound linking strategy as you think
about search engine optimization for your site. An inbound
link is a hyperlink back to your site from another web site.
The one constant and reliable strategy in search engine
optimization is that sites with a variety of high quality
backlinks rank higher in the search engine results pages.
Why are these links to your site important? They can can…
– bring potential customers to your site when they click
on the link
– increase the number of visitors to your web site
– dramatically improve your search engine rankings
Even though there are software packages on the market that
help automate the linking process, use them sparingly, if at
all. The only way to succeed in linking strategies is (aside
from creating useful content that will encourage inbound
links) by manually creating the links. That’s a hard fact
to swallow, given how I like to automate as much of my
marketing as I can.
Here are the 10 most important inbound links you must have
to your site:
1. Directory Links
Directories are indexes of online sites, typically organized
by category. Links back to your site from directories like
Yahoo Directory and DMOZ.org are very valuable. DMOZ.org is
edited by human editors, and while it’s free, it may take
awhile for your site to be listed. Getting listed in Yahoo’s
Directory costs $299/year.
2. Press Releases
If you’re writing press releases, make sure they are optimized
for keywords that someone would use to find a business like
yours and include links back to your site, as well. Once
written, you can have your press release distributed through
a service like PRWeb.com, which will create links from high
traffic news sites back to your site.
3. Article Directories
Writing and distributing articles through high traffic article
directories, like EzineArticles. com, is a great way to get
valuable inbound links from a high traffic site. By crafting
an effective resource box at the close of your article, you can
drive traffic back to your site!
4. Social Bookmarking
Similar to web browser bookmarks, social bookmarking sites
store individual pages (bookmarks) online and allows users
to tag (with keywords), organize, search, and manage bookmarks
of web resources as well as share them with others. If you
bookmark your own content on these sites (like Digg.com,
Reddit.com, Del.icio.us. com), you get a link from the service.
By producing content that your readers love and then bookmark
to their friends, the link increases in SEO value.
5. Blog Comments
To find blog posts on which to comment, you can use
blog-specific search engines like Google Blog Search. Make sure
these are blogs read by your target market, not your colleagues.
Brand yourself by always using the same name and remember to
link back to your site. Always leave a comment that adds to the
conversation that’s happening within the comments.
6. Social Media
Now, Google also indexes your Twitter updates and your social
networking profiles. Add that to Web 2.0 hubsites like Scribd
or HubPage and you’ve got the option of creating many, many
inbound links in a very short period of time.
7. Blog/Podcast Syndication
Submitting the RSS feed of your blog and podcast to syndication
services will give you a link back to your site. In some cases,
each time you publish a new blog post, the post itself will also
get a link.
8. Video Syndication
YouTube is one of the most visited sites online, and the number
of sites that syndicate videos is growing each day. These sites
often allow you to link to your site either in your video’s
description or on your profile page, or both.
9. .EDU and .GOV Links
Search engines place a great deal of credibility in government
and education web sites, and the links carry a great deal of
weight. Frankly, it isn’t easy to get inbound links from these
sites.
10. Internal Links
Remember, if you have more than one web site, or a web site and
a blog, be sure and link one to the other. You can do this by
linking one article to other related articles, or link to
categories or archives of information.
Creating a sound inbound linking strategy is a key component
of your search engine optimization efforts. Try a few of the
strategies listed above and see how your traffic and rankings
increase.
The Google Duplicate Content Penalty: the Truth
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Friday, August 20, 2010
The Google Duplicate Content Penalty: the Truth
The truth of the Google duplicate content penalty is quite
simply that there is none! If that confuses you, then you
have been reading too many misinformed forums or blogs where
people get stuck on some popular term that they have no idea
what it means, and then profess to be experts.
The only experts on the Google duplicate content penalty,
and the only people who are qualified to define it, are
Google, and in Google’s own words “There is no such thing as
a duplicate content penalty”. This comes directly from
Google’s Webmaster Central Blog.
That should be the end of this article, at precisely 96
words excluding title as I define my word count. But it is
not. Why? Because even though this blog is operated by
Google, and even though much the same has been stated by
Matt Cutts, Google’s main software engineer, and other
Google experts, people still argue and complain about the
Google ‘duplicate content penalty’.
So here is the truth: you might ask who am I to know the
truth, but I read all the Google blogs and their official
statements, and in applying what I learn, I achieve excellent
results for my web pages on Google search engine listings:
and those of Yahoo, MSN and Bing. So I am coming from a
sound base that my results can prove.
As a professional article writer whose customers trust to
get them the best results from the articles I write, I have
to be very aware of the policies and the way the algorithms
work of each of the major search engines, and so I am as
qualified as anybody to comment on myths such as this.
The Truth of the Google Duplicate Content Penalty
There is no duplicate content penalty. Google’s major search
engine function is to offer a customer the best possible
results for a search, based upon the search term (keywords)
that the customer has used in the Google search box.
Google’s customers are not:
1. You, who use it to get your web pages listed.
2. Adwords advertisers that use Adwords to advertise their
products.
3. Corporations or individuals that use it to have their
web pages listed.
4. Internet marketers who recommend others to use Google
for advertising or searching.
Google’s customers are those seeking information,
whether that is to solve a problem, where to purchase a
product at the cheapest price, find a sports result or to
get directions to a specific location. Everybody that uses
Google uses a search term to find some information that they
need. That search term is what you and I refer to as a
keyword.
If Google detects several web pages offering exactly the
same content, its algorithms will select that which best
offers the information required and list that. It might also
list one or two other pages offering exactly the same content
if there are good reasons for it doing so (e.g. more links to
other relevant websites, more other relevant pages on the
domain, and so on).
So, not all duplicate content pages will be refused a
listing. If these duplicates are articles, then the
algorithms that the spiders carry on their backs will take
the links from these articles into consideration, the
authority of the directory on which it is published, and
other factors, before deciding which should be listed. It
is wrong to believe that this decision has a chronological
factor, but, if you include a link in your article Resource
section to your web page that contains the same article,
then your page is liable to be listed above the others,
partially because of a greater number of links back to it
from the other copies, and partially because your entire
site is liable to be more relevant than these others to
information being sought by Google’s customer.
This is not because yours was created first, but because it
better meets Google’s criterion for authoritative
back-links. However, if the rest of your website is not
equally authoritative, your page might be listed behind
another with the same content or even not listed at all.
All of this is designed by Google so that its customer is
offered the most relevant range of results to the keywords
they used. That is what Google is for, and is its ultimate
objective. Google will not penalize any individual or any
website for publishing what you refer to as ‘duplicate
content’, and it will take your version into consideration
for publication just as any other version.
What counts in the long run is which version Google’s
algorithms believe to be most likely to offer the best
possible information to the person seeking it, and if that
means not publishing a whole host of duplicate information,
then that is only fair, isn’t it? If you used Google to find
some information, you wouldn’t want to find page after page
saying exactly the same thing, would you?
No, and neither does Google. A Google listing comes from its
indexing of billions of web pages that contain the keywords
used by the searcher: both in relation to the entire phrase
and to the individual words used in the search term. If you
want your copy to be different, make some minor changes and
perhaps change the form of the keywords, but most
importantly, change the title and the introductory paragraph
to which the crawlers will take special notice.
You then have a better chance of your version being listed
along with some of the others, but remember: the next time
you use the term ‘duplicate content’ you are using a term
that does not exist in Google’s vocabulary for any reason
than to deny its existence. The Google Duplicate Content
Penalty does not exist: the truth!
18 Effective Search Engine Optimization Techniques
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Thursday, August 19, 2010
18 Effective Search Engine Optimization Techniques
Proper Search Engine Optimization, otherwise known as SEO, has
quickly become a popular topic of conversation among website
owners and entrepreneurs. The difference between having a
successful website, and hosting a flop, is often the difference
between whether or not you’ve incorporated proper keywords and
phrases into your webpages.
Learning proper SEO techniques can seem like a daunting task,
especially to those who are not familiar with the concept. The
following list offers 18 simple SEO techniques you should keep
in mind when developing and marketing your website.
1. Make sure your website is initially designed with your search
engine optimization needs in mind. Search engines look for text,
not flashy graphics and cool layouts. The trendiest web designs
will mean nothing if no one is able to find your site.
2. Every page of your website should have a title tag with text
describing either your site or what is on the page. Be sure the
text includes SEO-type keywords instead of the name of your
website. Unless you’re incredibly popular, no one is going to be
looking for you by searching for your name. They’ll most likely
search for a product or service and the keywords you use will
lead them to your site.
3. Consider canonicalization, or whether or not your website
address includes or excludes the www prefix. If you choose to
use the www version of your website, make sure the non-www
version directs users back to the one you use. Make sure you use
your preferred version (http://www.mydomain.com or
http://mydomain.com) every time you place a link to your site on
the web. Never use both!
4. When designing your website, be sure to avoid too many
drop-down menus, confusing image maps, and excessive images. If
you must use any of these methods, be sure to include plenty of
text links for the search engine spiders to find and identify.
Without links, the search engines will not pick up your site
information.
5. It does not matter what type of website extension you use
(ie. .html, .htm. .asp, .php). Search engines do not look at the
web extension and it will not have any impact at all on search
results or ranking.
6. Every page on your website should include a link to your home
page and your sitemap. Make sure every link is the same. Home
page links should go directly to your domain
(http://www.mydomain.com). Make sure your internal links do not
include the additional /index.html or .php text as it is not
needed (ie. http://www.mydomain.com/index.html).
7. Are you sharing a server with other websites? If so, you’ll
want to conduct a black-list check to make sure you are not
sharing a proxy with someone who has been banned by search
engines in the past. Being on the same server as a website with
a poor reputation may damage your own.
8. You’ll hear the same phrase over and over again: “Content is
king”. It is imperative that your website have fresh, unique, and
quality content that is updated on a regular basis. Be sure to
include your favorite keyword phrase within the body of the
content!
9. People are more likely to input a phrase instead of a single
word when conducting internet searches. If your business has a
physical location, incorporate the name of your city into the
text as well. For example, you might use “our Philadelphia
location” instead of “our location”. Including your city name
will increase the chances of your site being seen in location
searches.
10. If the information on your company website doesn’t change
regularly, or remains static, you might want to consider
starting a blog. Search engine spiders are always looking for
fresh content. Use your blog as an advertising tool and link
back to your website within each and every post.
11. Write naturally. The worst thing you can do is try to cram
a zillion keywords into your article or blog entry, making it
messy and difficult to read. Search engines are able to determine
whether or not your text is logical and they will ignore content
with ridiculously high keyword density.
12. Building links to your website is essential to its success.
As a matter of fact, links are like the queen to complement your
king’s fresh content. Choose a keyword phrase and network with
other websites, asking them to place links on their pages. Don’t
hurt your ranking by having non-related websites place haphazard
links. While it may seem great to gather 100s of backlinks,
you’re better off limiting your links to related websites. Ten
relevant links stand a better chance than 100 irrelevant links.
13. Links within your own website should be built with keyword
phrases as well. Try to avoid using generic anchor text such as,
“click here”.
14. Don’t place a list of links on your website. Always place a
link within at least two to three lines of related content. The
better your description, the more likely it is someone will click
on the link.
15. Don’t limit your keyword or phrase to text links. You should
also incorporate your keywords into your image alt tag and domain
name, whether it is part of the name itself or contained within
the description.
16. Try to avoid using frames, Ajax, and Flash as much as
possible. None of these functions are keyword or search engine
friendly and will hurt your SEO results.
17. Before your website can be found by the search engine
spiders, it must be indexed. Search engines such as Google have
regular submission forms, but it can take days or weeks for your
form to be processed. Having a highly ranked website place a
link to your site is a sure-fire way to have your site indexed
quickly.
18. No matter what you hear, don’t be overly concerned with the
Google PageRank of your website. A website that is properly
developed and contains good content can outrank a website with
higher PageRank.
Reverse SEO: Restoring Online Reputations
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Reverse SEO: Restoring Online Reputations
Reverse SEO fits seamlessly within the context of your online
reputation management (ORM) program. It is the quickest, most
effective solution for dealing with bad press that has
surfaced on the search engines about you or your company. By
pushing negative listings from the front page of Google,
Yahoo, and Bing, reverse SEO shields you from the damaging
commentary of others.
Negative publicity online has become one of the most
frustrating challenges for companies. It is typically
anonymous. Names are often unattached to forum threads, blog
posts, and even entire websites. Therefore, it is difficult to
track and address the source of the complaint. Moreover, the
growing popularity of social networking platforms has made
it easier than ever for anyone with a mild grievance to give
weight to their grudge. If you or your company have been the
target of bad press online, it may be time to launch a
reverse SEO campaign.
In this article, we’ll clarify how negative publicity gains
traction within the search engines, and how it can lead to a
public relations nightmare. We’ll also provide a working
blueprint for executing a reverse SEO campaign and
controlling the damage.
Controlling Bad Publicity With Reverse Search Engine
Optimization
To appreciate why reverse SEO is effective, you should
understand how negative press takes root within the top
search listings in the first place. Google, Yahoo, and Bing
rank pages based on a large number of criteria. If a website
and its individual pages satisfy the most important of those
criteria, those pages will rank well.
A lot of the bad press that targets companies (possibly even
your own) is placed on websites that meet key ranking
parameters in the search algorithms. That means the negative
publicity can climb into the top positions and gain exposure.
When people search for you or your company, they’ll see the
bad press. That damages your reputation.
Reverse search engine optimization is an ORM strategy that
pushes negative publicity from the top search positions. By
moving the bad press off the first page of listings, reverse
SEO limits its exposure and stifles its impact.
Ingredients For An Effective Reverse SEO Campaign
Like search engine marketing, reverse SEO uses a methodical,
multi-pronged approach to protect your online reputation. The
first step is to identify the sites and pages that contain
negative publicity about your company and that are ranking for
important keywords. Those keywords might include your name,
that of your company, or key employees.
The second step of reverse SEO is to analyze those sites and
pages for their respective ranking authority. That will help
you determine the effort and tools you’ll need to use in
order to move them from the first page of listings within
Google, Yahoo, and Bing. A negative PR blitz that is
spreading across social networking sites is more difficult
to remove than a single blog post that is on a non-authoritative
domain.
The third step is to gather the necessary tools and execute
your reverse SEO campaign. Such tools might include
optimized press releases, a new network of competing sites
and blogs, social media profiles, and a social bookmarking
program. Reverse SEO may also include heavy content
syndication to build high-quality links. A search engine
marketing specialist will have these tools at their
disposal.
Reverse SEO Begins Before Negative Press Emerges
The best time to launch a reverse SEO campaign is before bad
publicity appears in the search engines. This is due to the
way that the pages link. A page will rank well within the
search engines if there are enough thematic links pointing
toward it. However, once it ranks, it will gain exposure.
That exacerbates the problem.
Negative press can spread rapidly as people attach the press
to their own blogs, sites, forums, and social media accounts.
That creates a growing portfolio of links pointing toward the
damaging press, cementing its position in the top listings.
It becomes more difficult to address. By launching a reverse
SEO campaign upfront, you can prevent the negative publicity
from gaining exposure in the first place.
Protect Your Online Reputation With Reverse SEO
Reverse SEO should play a key role in your online reputation
management program. It is far too easy for unsatisfied
customers, resentful employees, lazy journalists, and
malicious competitors to tarnish your name. And when it
happens, it is usually done under the cover of anonymity.
Anonymity makes the complaint or grievance impossible to
address in private.
Launch your reverse SEO campaign now – before trouble
strikes and the damage begins to gain momentum in the search
engines. In a year’s time, you’ll be glad you did.
8 Things Bing Won’t Tell You
Every major search engine provides hints and tips about how
to optimize your pages for improved rankings on their
sites. But when you read these guidelines you quickly see
that most of it is just their own wish list. Things like
‘Write for humans not search engine bots – or – do not hide
keywords with a font matching the background color.’ It is
all good advice but kind of general and already well known
(for the past decade.)
But there are always things a search engine will not tell
you. And, of course, these are the things that make all the
difference in your SEO efforts and results. That said; here
are eight things that Bing does not want you to know (or
you can skip to the Magic Formula section at the end):
1.) Your Domain Name Matters – A Lot
Search for just about anything on MSN / Bing and at least
three of the top five matches will have some version of
that keyword as the domain name. For example if you wanted
to optimize for the keyword ‘my domain’ you should try to
get the domain name ‘mydomain.com.’ If that is taken, opt
for ‘my-domain.com.’ If that’s taken try for a name
starting with ‘mydomain’ and ending with a word that is
commonly associated. This is called LSI or Latent Semantic
Indexing. A good example would be ‘mydomainname.com’ or
‘my-domain-name.com.’ BTW, Bing treats dashes as a space so
as long as long as the dashes merely separate words, they
are treated much like the non dash version.
2.) There is No Sandbox
Here’s some great news for anyone just getting started.
Bing does not seem to care about the age of your domain
name. There is no ‘sandbox’ like Google has. Many people,
myself included, have registered brand new domains and had
them ranking in a matter of days.
3.) DotCom Trumps DotNet
Today some search engines like Google will often give .net
and .com virtually the same value, and possibly higher
value for a .org that is for a recognized non-profit
organization. Bing however appears to prefer the .com
version. You can even see instances where a ‘.co.uk’ site
gets high rankings simply because it uses the exact keyword
in the domain name and .co is close enough to .com.
4.) We Like Sub Domains
Most web hosts will let you add sub domains to your
website. On Bing, if you have the sub domain
mydomain.mydomain.com you are in for some potentially great
rankings. The same is true if you have my.domain.com, but
to a slightly lesser degree.
5.) Less is More – Part One
We have been trained by Google to try to have hundreds of
pages of quality content on every website. Bing adheres to
the old policy that they are indexing web ‘pages’ not web
‘sites’ (like Google says they do, but Bing apparently
really means it.) This means each page is treated on its
own merit so a site with one page has the same chances of
being ranked as a site with 100 pages, because each page is
genuinely treated individually.
6.) Less is More – Part Two
The same rule as above goes for on-page text. Pages with
800 to 1,200 words seem to do best on Google but on Bing
the reverse is true, with 250 to 500 words being the magic
number. Just do not overuse your keyword.
7.) Links are Nice But Not Required
Forget about spending your life building an ever growing
number of inbound links for Bing. They do not need them.
Your site, for now at least, is judged by its own merits,
page by page.
8.) Be Bold not Strong
The original SEO method dating back to 1996 was using the
H1 or ‘strong’ heading tags in your HTML. Forget them for
now. Bing gives higher priority to how you would express
importance in a word processor document; larger font and
bolded text as the main markers.
Summary: I build hundreds of Bing (formerly MSN) targeted
mini sites every year using the information above (as it
has evolved) and the results have been consistent top ten
rankings. You can do it too!
Here’s my magic formula for a one hour top ranking:
A.) Get the .com version of a three to four word keyword as
the domain name (dashes are fine.)
B.) Use the domain name as the page heading in a bolded
font, slightly larger than the paragraph text.
C.) Write 400 words of natural sounding text using the
keyword up to five times.
D.) Mention the keyword once in the first sentence and once
in the final sentence of the page – then up to three times
scattered throughout the remainder.
E.) Bold one instance of the keyword. Italicize one
instance of the keyword. Use one instance of the keyword as
a link back to the same page.
F.) Always fill in your Title, Description and Keywords
META tags. That’s it.
Good luck and take care!
PS: This works for Yahoo too.
DIY SEO with a Foolproof Twist
As the founder of an independent SEO firm I am asked almost
daily “What is the easiest way to optimize a web site?” It
is harder to answer than you might think. It depends on who
is asking and what their knowledge or experience level is.
But last week I read an article written by the person who
taught me search engine optimization ten years ago, and I
now have an answer… Learn the secret recipe, then use it.
There is no magic bullet that works on every web page like
so many SEO ‘miracle’ books and programs would have us
believe. Each page has its own unique ‘secret recipe’ that
has to be discovered and then applied because every single
page it is trying to outrank, is unique. If this seems
confusing, just remember my new favorite quote that I
borrowed from that author’s website: “Think about it.
Anyone could bake Mrs. Fields famous cookies – possibly
better than Mrs. Fields herself – with the secret recipe.
And that’s all SEO is; knowing the secret recipe for any
given web page.”
And it really is that simple. We will look at how to
discover the secret recipe in a moment, but first there is
one crucial thing to understand about search engine
optimization before you go any further:
SEO means making a web page as highly visible as
possible to search engines… for a given keyword.
Just about everyone knows the first part; but too many
people forget the second.
Remember that your soon to be visitor types in very
specific keywords (search terms) on search engines like
Google, because they are looking for something very
specific.
If you know your most important keyword that is great! If
not, do not waste your money on expensive keyword software
that SEO professionals use. Use a free keyword tool like
Google’s, found at:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Just enter in the keywords that you think people are
searching for to find your product or service and then
check the search numbers for those and related keyword
suggestions.
So what about the secret recipe? Once you know your main
keyword or keywords you need to see how well your site is
optimized for that term already. This is called getting
your SEO Quality Score.
What you do is make a list of the most important
optimization aspects of a webpage, for the search engine of
your choice (because Google looks for different things than
Yahoo or Bing.)
Here are ten critical factors for Google, but there are
nearly 140 to be aware of…
* Keyword use in document title
* Keyword use in body text
* Link texts of inbound links
* Global link popularity of web site
* Keyword density
* Keyword position and proximity
* Number of words
* Readability level of web page
* Keyword use in H1 headline texts
* HTML validation of web page to W3C standards
Once you have all of this information for your webpage, you
need to get it for the pages currently occupying the top
ten positions for that keyword and then see how your page
compares.
You can buy software that does a lot of this for you but it
generally costs $500 to $2,500 for the ones that really
work and even then you might need to buy an hour of an SEO
consultant’s time to help you really understand it.
Doing it yourself is very educational. You will be an SEO
pro after a couple of these. So if you have the time, I
would not hesitate.
In my case I did not have the time – or let’s be honest,
the patience – to invest what would be 20 plus hours doing
this manually and not really understanding what I was
looking for. At the time I was a lawn sprinkler installer
looking to optimize my company webpage and knew nothing
about SEO, except that it was too expensive for me to hire
someone else to do it. So I went the cheap and easy route
paying a company called DotCom Pirates (at
http://www.dotcompirates.com) $50 for something they
called their SEO To Go package that reviewed my site for
all 140 SEO factors and provided plain English instructions
to fix every aspect of it. I did most of them and hit
number two on Google.
Here’s my dirty little secret… Realizing this was much
easier than breaking my back in irrigation, I picked up a
couple local shops as SEO customers, ordered reports for
those sites, followed the directions and my SEO business
was born. I no longer need their help, but it made for some
easy success when I needed it most.
Knowing the secret recipe is the foolproof answer to DIY
SEO. Once you have the secret recipe it’s easier than you
ever thought possible and you’ll be laughing all the way to
the bank with the money you saved.
SEO Tips to Double Rankings, Traffic and Conversion
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
SEO Tips to Double Rankings, Traffic and Conversion
The only thing better than one search result in the top 3
positions in Google is two search results from a double ranking.
This SEO tip works by pushing a competitor off the first page,
broadening your websites keyword funnel and thereby doubling
traffic and conversions.
Two Results are Better than One
I read somewhere that 87% of search engine traffic for a given
keyword is allocated from occupying the Number 1 position in the
search engine results page. If you understand SEO, then this
post will share a quick method to double your SERP positions and
to improve the likelihood of keyword conversions – once you have
reached the Mecca for a specific search term.
SEO is predicated on one simple premise, rankings; in order for
SEO to be effective, it must produce ranking on the first page
in search engines.
Not only is this the crowning achievement of search engine
optimization, but once you achieve a top 10 position, then you
can pull other keywords into the spotlight as a result of
strategic linking. We often refer to this as the buddy system
for lateral linking.
Search engine algorithms pay particular attention to individual
pages capable of offsetting all of the other inconsistencies of
a competitor’s web pages and deem one page worthy above all
others for any given search term.
Obviously the metrics are unique for each market, keyword or
niche, but the reality is the same, once a top 3 or more
importantly Number 1 or Number 1, 2 and 3 positions are present
in Google. I have mentioned before, the fastest way to get a top
10 position in Google is to get a link from a website already
ranking in the top 10 for that keyword.
It does not matter if that link is provided from your own
website or another website, rankings are by the page and there
is a daisy-chain effect of linking pages together that fuses the
pages through a dynamic give and take relationship (based on
citation). This citation can provide the algorithmic equivalents
of trust needed for the newly linked page to jump in line past
others duking it out for that keyword.
Depending on the competitiveness of the keyword or key phrase
and the thresholds inherent to the barrier to entry; the time
required to initiate a campaign, create all of the necessary
content, inbound links and citation from other web 2.0
properties, RSS feeds and social bookmarking sites divided by
the amount of time you invest managing or outsourcing the
various components involved determine your profitability and
return on investment.
With this in mind, from a tactical perspective, it’s better to
leverage the SERP positioning you already have than to look
outside of your own website for off page ranking factors. If
you understand the power of a Number 1 position, then you can
replicate this next simple SEO tip.
Identify all current Number 1 positions in Google for keywords.
Validate they still exist.
Use Keyword Research to find “related keywords” based on the
Number 1 ranking Link from the page that ranks to a new page
(using similar anchor text or overlapping keywords to promote
the new page).
Let the new page get indexed, then check the SERPs.
Identify: My favorite tool for this is SEMRush, but if you
don’t want to use this, there are other programs out there, or
even Google webmaster tools can show you your website’s top
ranking SERP positions when you log in.
Either way, this is your base, so, identify the keywords which
could represent hub status for your SEO campaign and pass along
the power of ranking to other pages in your website.
Validate: Check to see if you still hold the Number 1 position,
even a top 3 will do, but this tactic works better if you are at
the helm of a particular search phrase.
Keyword Research: You should be able to gauge whether or not the
keyword is profitable for you based on the frequency of hits and
the type of traffic you garner as a result. You can always look
through Google Analytics or whichever analytics package you have
to assess the keywords that represent the highest percentage of
traffic to your website.
Once you know what those keywords are, then use keyword research
to find stemmed semantic variations that also fall under the
same category or keyword cluster. Those related keywords will
become the new focal point for step 4 – linking.
Linking: The closer the shingles (groups of keywords) the more
effective this technique is. You can call this padding the
search results (if you use similar exact match titles, tags or
content), or you can pass this ranking factor along to help
synonymous terms.
Simply go back and edit the page ranking in the Number 1
position and add a link to the new target page (with the
keyword you intend the target page to rank for as the anchor
text). Then, the authority from the page in the Number 1
position will group the new page under its umbrella and pull
that page into the spotlight.
When the new page gets crawled and the old page reveals the
connectivity between the two, typically a double SERP position
occurs or a double position accompanied by jump links,
breadcrumbs or the [+] with additional search results for that
keyword appear in Google to showcase the degree of relevance
your website has for the said term.
You can then build additional deep links from other sites or
addition internal links to the newly dubbed page. As a result,
you should see buoyancy for other pages for multiple keyword
variations related to the parent keyword cluster.
With this simple tip you can double your conversions by
increasing your website’s semantic array of keywords. Obviously
you will know which keywords and traffic is most lucrative for
your business model, but this technique is priceless for
creating controlled keyword stemming if you understand the
implications underlying its premise.
Top 10 Google Search Features for Your Business
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 2:26 PM
Monday, July 26, 2010
Top 10 Google Search Features for Your Business
The people at Google are truly amazing! They are evolving
their search engine into something that can be an incredibly
powerful tool for business. There are a zillion things that
Google can do for different parts of your business and in
this post, I will highlight the top 10 Google search tools
that will help your supply chain.
Since Google is just a click away, I think it’s a very
useful for everyone involved in the supply chain to be aware
of how much easier it can make their lives. Everybody from
traffic managers, to purchasing people, to accounting people
and customer service will likely need to reference what
Google can do during the course of the week. There are a
lot of people who don’t even know all of Google’s
capabilities. So without further ado, here is your:
Top 10 Google Search Tools That Will Help Your Supply Chain
1. Package Tracking – You can track packages by typing the
tracking number for your UPS, Fedex or USPS package directly
into the search box. Some of the LTL and motor carriers also
allow for you to plug in their pro numbers as well. Google
will return results that include quick links to easily track
the status of your shipment.
Example of what to search for: “1Z9999W9999999999″
2. Time – This is huge when dealing with vendors or
customers overseas or across the country. To see the time
in many cities around the world, type in “time” and the name
of the city.
Example of what to search for: “time London”
3. Currency Conversion – This is cool! To use Google’s
built-in currency converter, simply enter the conversion
you’d like done into the Google search box and they’ll
provide your answer directly on the results page.
Example of what to search for: “150 GBP in USD”
4. Unit Conversion – Countries use different metrics for
measuring. This tool is extremely useful. You can use
Google to convert between many different units of
measurement of height, weight, and volume among many others.
Just enter your desired conversion into the search box and
Google will do the rest.
Example of what to search for: “10.5 cm in inches”
5. Calculator – Since Google is right on your desk top you
don’t have to go searching for your calculator. Plus it
uses Excel style equations so it’s really easy for business
people who think in Excel. To use Google’s built-in
calculator function; simply enter the calculation you’d
like done into the search box.
Example of what to search for: “5*9+(sqrt 10)3=”
6. Weather – Weather plays a big role in transportation so
this is great for getting a snapshot of the world’s weather.
To see the weather for many U.S. and worldwide cities, type
“weather” followed by the city and state, U.S. zip code, or
city and country.
Example of what to search for: “weather San Francisco, CA”
7. Maps – Want to see the mileage between a shipper and a
consignee or try to figure out where your vendor is located?
This is great! Type in the name or U.S. zip code of a
location and the word “map” and Google will return a map of
that location. Clicking on the map will take you to a larger
version on Google Maps.
Example of what to search for: “Seattle map”
8. Area Code – This can be helpful in situations ranging
from trying to find where a phone call is coming from to
finding out what part of the country you are calling. To
see the geographical location for any U.S. telephone area
code, just type the three-digit area code into the Google
search box and hit the Enter key or click the Google Search
button.
Example of what to search for: “212″
9. Stock Quotes – Wanna see how a freight carrier or a
vendor is doing in the market? Just type the ticker symbol
into the search box. On the results page, you can click the
link to see more data from Google Finance as well.
Example of what to search for: “MSFT”
10. Earthquakes – I have heard carriers make up some crack
pot reasons why they missed the delivery. In case you are
given the old earthquake excuse, you can use Google to see
if the story checks out. To see information about recent
earthquakes in a specific area type “earthquake” followed by
the city and state or U.S. zip code.
Example of what to search for: “earthquake 90210″
*When entering keyword or phrase into Google’s search engine
with these tools, do not use quotation marks.
Cutting Rank: Improper Domain Name Redirects
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 10:53 PM
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Can my site rank better with a keyword-rich domain name? Sure.
Can my site rank better without a keyword in the domain name at all? Absolutely.
I get questions (or assumptions) like this regularly. Actually, there are many other things going on behind the scenes that impact rank, and the domain name is rarely a significant factor.
Let’s say your website has been out there for 6 months or more and you assume, for whatever reason, that you can get a higher search engine ranking if you were using a keyword in your domain name instead of the one you have. In addition to your company web domain, maindomain.com, you rush to purchase keyword1.com, keyword2.com and keyword3.com.
From Google’s perspective, there is both a good way and a detrimental way to assign these additional domain names to your site. This can cause a much greater problem in terms of organic ranking if you get it wrong in terms of duplicate content and trust. Have you ever heard of duplicate content? Which domain name does Google have more history and trust with, your current domain name or one you just bought?
Common methods webmasters use to point multiple domain names to your web server include:
• Domain Mirroring/Masking
• Domain Cloaking
• Domain Alias/URL Alias
• Domain Redirecting
Domain mirroring/masking is sometimes called a pointer domain. It looks like it is the domain name when it is used in a browser, but it is simply a mask overlaying the real domain name and its content. When someone types in www.domain.com, it’s really forwarding to domain.blogspot.com without the address changing in the address bar. The user continues to see www.domain.com in the address bar, although the site and its contents are really from domain.blogspot.com.
Domain cloaking uses an iframe or embedded frameset to display the content of another site.
Domain redirecting (also called URL redirecting) requires all traffic that is sent through the new domain name to be redirected to the main domain name. This can also be a domain redirected to a subdirectory of the main domain, or multiple domains redirected to a complex URL. This is different from domain mirroring/masking and domain cloaking because, when a user types in www.domain.com, they end up on www.maindomain.com and the address changes appropriately in the address bar.
But, let’s back up a second and look at the issues you must consider before making this decision.
1. To limit confusion, it’s better to change the brand (or company) name to better reflect the keyword-rich domain name. This could be as simple as recreating the company logo, but you might consult your customer base first.
SiteProNews Reader Rewards Program
Later this month SPN will be introducing a Reader Rewards program that will provide loyal readers with quality ebooks, whitepapers, service & product discounts and useful software.
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If you would like to participate in the SPN Reader Rewards Program as a contributor of software, ebooks, whitepapers, etc., contact us at info@sitepronews.com to obtain more information on the program and how your company, service or website can benefit.
2. The technical procedure of redirecting domain names must be done so that the search engines do not get confused about what you are trying to do. Otherwise, you risk tripping a duplicate content filter, which would force Google to accept only one domain with that content (explained below). But the biggest risk is setting off an alarm at Google that you are trying to trick them to get a better rank.
Just for fun, let’s say you’ve gone through the trouble of changing the company name to reflect your new keyword-rich domain. Now it’s time to get technical.
If you use any method other than domain redirecting, you are going to be disappointed with your search rank. Domain mirroring, masking, cloaking and aliases confuse search engines because they see the same content under a different domain name. Google then selects one of the domain names to display that content and leaves the others out of the search results. Google chooses for you – since you are not aware of how to manage your duplicate content issues – and no one knows which domain name Google will choose. You could be saying “bye-bye” to all the hard-earned link juice pointed at your main domain name.
The more serious issue with domain mirroring/masking is the probability that Google suspects you are trying to manipulate search rank by suddenly using keywords in additional domain names. The result is either loss of whatever good ranking you did have or your site is banned from Google altogether. Ouch!
This is precisely what happened with a client. Despite my warnings, but thinking they might change the company name eventually, they bought additional keyword-rich domain names and had the webmaster point them at their server (using domain masking). Within a couple weeks Google dropped their domain ranking across the board, but did not ban them.
Of course they came to me with their issue. I gently reminded them about how this should have been done, redirected the domain names properly (using a 301 redirect) and asked them to consult me next time they’re considering a marketing or technical decision regarding the website. It took about 6 weeks – a long and painful 6 weeks – for Google to restore their good rank again.
When a company acquires additional domain names, they should be permanently redirected to the main domain name – the one, central location on the web for all of the company’s or brand’s content.
Redirecting a domain name should be handled differently depending on the type of server hosting your site (Apache or Windows), how much control you have over that server (hosted on a shared or dedicated server) and the purpose of the redirected domain name.
This morning I woke up to someone having submitted a pile of SEO questions using our newsletter question form. At first I thought, “Yikes, that’s kind of pushy to think I have time to answer all those questions!” But then I remembered that this was a newsletter week and I still had no idea what I was going to write about. A second look at the questions made me think that you guys would probably be interested in the answers to many of them, so it worked out perfectly.
Most of these questions have been answered in greater detail in various articles that I’ve written, so if you’d like more info on any of them, I’ve linked to the relevant ones for your convenience.
Thanks to Umair R., who submitted these questions.
1. Is there any fixed rule for Google as far as SEO is concerned? If so, what are the steps?
If only! There are no fixed rules because every website is different and has different needs. There are basic things that all websites need to do in order to improve their chances of showing up in Google search results for relevant phrases, but no magic formula.
See “The Art of SEO” article for more on this.
2. Do the following play important roles in website page ranking and positioning?
• PR
Yes, real PageRank (PR), the kind that only Google knows about plays a very large part in websites showing up (or not) for search queries that are relevant to it. But toolbar PageRank is another matter entirely. What you see there doesn’t correlate very well to where your page will show up in the search results.
See: “Getting Into Google” (Scroll down to the “Google Still Loves Its PageRank” part.)
• The number of incoming links
Not so much in and of itself. Real PR, as mentioned above, is calculated not only on the number of links, but also on the quality of those links. A handful of links from authoritative, trustworthy, relevant pages should far outweigh hundreds of links from so-so sites.
See the High Rankings Link Building Forum.
• Keyword density
Not in that there’s some special percentage that you need to aim for. Certainly it’s helpful to have the keyword phrases that you’d like to show up being used within the content of your page. But that’s just common sense, if you ask me. Surely, if your page is about a certain something (your keyword phrase), how could that phrase NOT be on the page?
See the various threads on keyword density on the High Rankings Forum.
• Page response time
This is important only because if it takes too long to load, it might not be properly (or completely) indexed.
• Bounce rate
It’s doubtful that this matters, because there’s no way for Google to know the bounce rate of every site. And it wouldn’t be fair for them to only count the bounce rates of those sites that have Google Analytics installed, so my guess is that this is not a factor.
See various High Rankings forum threads.
• Time on site
Like the above answer, they don’t know this number unless the site has Google Analytics installed. That said, they may sometimes incorporate the old trick of seeing if a searcher clicks to another site in the search results after clicking one result, and how long it took them to click another. In other words, if they find that lots of people who clicked to one site in the search engine results pages (SERPs) always end up back at Google to try another site, then perhaps that first site wasn’t a great answer to the search query after all.
• Domain page / Page age
From what I can tell, this can often be a factor. But it doesn’t seem to be as prominent a factor as it was a few years ago.
3. Is there any special technique for content writing?
There’s no special technique, but I highly suggest hiring a professional marketing copywriter. You will see a positive return on your investment very quickly if you do. In addition, the tried and true SEO copyediting techniques in my “Nitty-gritty of Writing for Search Engines” may come in handy if you’re not sure how to integrate your keyword phrases into your professionally written content.
4. Should we cater to code-to-text ratio while developing websites?
There’s not one shred of evidence that this would have an effect on where a page would show up in the search results for a relevant search query.
5. If active scripting is a must for webpage development, how harmful can it be for PageRank and positions?
It’s typically not harmful at all because it’s usually done before a browser (or search engine spider) sees a page. To users and search engines, your dynamically generated pages are just static HTML by the time they get to them. Still, not all dynamically generated pages are created equal. There are some ways of developing your site that are less search friendly than others. For example, some JavaScript menus, some AJAX, etc.
See “Diagnosing the SEO Health of Your Website”.
6. If a webpage is ranking top for a specific keyword, if we make textual changes in that webpage, is there any chance that we lose the rankings?
Any changes you make to a page’s content can affect how relevant the search engines believe it to be for any particular search query. That doesn’t mean it definitely will change the search results, but it could. The only way to know is to try it and see. Usually, if you’re rewriting your page to be more useful to your site visitors and you don’t remove all the instances of the keyword phrase, you should be fine. Because nothing is permanent with SEO, if you don’t like what you see you can tweak it until you do.
39 Tools for Marketing Your Small Busíness Online
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Friday, March 5, 2010
Thousands of free online marketíng tools clamor for attention, with new ones popping up every week it seems. You know you should be doing more to reach out to your customers, but just researching which tools to use can be a vast time investment, even if they don’t require a big financial outlay.
Below is a compiled líst of the most popular (or most useful) low-cost or free small business marketing tools. You might be using some of them already, but you’re sure to find a couple that will round out your small business marketing toolkit nicely. And, if you’re just starting out marketing a new busíness online, this líst may help point you in the right direction.
Directories
The Open Directory – A staple of the SEO crowd, this directory can be tricky to get into but well worth it for the link juice it passes along to your site.
Yahoo! Directory – It’s not free – this directory will set you back a couple hundred bucks a year – but it’s well worth it for inclusion.
Best of the Web Directory – This directory has been around a while and can pass along some good PageRank to your site.
Niche Directories
Find the directories in your industry that pass along good link building opportunities. Some examples to get you started: SBDGraphics.com for ad agencies, web developers, printers and other graphics professionals; sbdpro.com for small businesses and businesses that serve them; Cpapro.com for the accounting industry; SEOAlpaca.org for alpaca breeders, and so on.
Press Release Distribution Services
Marketwire – The most bang for your buck from an actual wire service, Marketwire’s prices are lower than PR Newswire and Businesswire. This newer service is built for powerful online exposure, and you’ll enjoy the full online distribution with any geographical AP wire distribution. (Sometimes you can get statewide wire distribution for nearly the same cost as only your local metropolitan area.) It’s great for building inbound links – just choose the SEO Enhanced option.
PRLog – A good-performing free press release distribution outlet, PRLog press releases rank really well and for a really long time if they are written with SEO copywriting best practices. Press releases include three links, though they are URL based (starting with http) rather than text anchor. PRLog also lets you create your newsroom where all your press releases reside, as well as an “about us” page and product showcase area.
PitchEngine – A relatively new PR-for-social-media site that promises to let you create and share press releases easily and for free and syndicate content to Google News. Lets you include HTML in your press release, so you can use keyword text anchor links. The site is marketing itself quite aggressively and will likely build a big presence quickly. The only catch is your release will disappear off the site after 30 days if you aren’t a paid member ($50/month for your press room).
Emaíl Marketing
AWeber – AWeber makes it easy to start building your emaíl marketing líst, if you haven’t already. For less than $20/month, you can build unlímited newsletter lists, send unlímited email blasts, and email unlímited autorespond messages to up to 500 subscribers/líst. (Then it’s $29/month up to 2500 subscribers.) Also offers a recurring 30% commission – a pretty good affiliate program for a service you’ll appreciate enough to recommend to others. (Disclosure note: the link above is our affiliate link. We’ve been using the service for 3 years now, after trying out Constant Contact and researching about 20 other providers! Most either do autoresponders or email blasts/newsletters – not both.)
Content Sharing Websites
Squidoo – Create a lens around your business area. A good one with lots of information will even rank in the search engines and can bring traffic to your web site.
Scribd – Share your expert content like white papers and articles. You can make them available for free or sell them. You can submit documents in PowerPoint, Word, PDF and many other file formats.
SlideShare – Post your presentations and documents online for others to view and share. This is a great way to get exponential exposure for your sales or marketing materials – or share documents privately. See some tips for getting more visibility with SlideShare: http://bit.ly/aNXmS2
Flikr – Does your product or service translate well visually? Use this popular photo sharing site to get more eyeballs.
Blip.tv – A video-sharing alternative to YouTube, blip.tv lets you embed links in your descriptions and create a TV station showing all your videos in one spot.
Social Networks
Facebook – Create a page for your business. Feed your blog in. Start a group. Get fans. Advertise to targeted users if your products appeal to the Facebook crowd (which is basically everybody nowadays). See using the new Facebook business page layout to learn more. Stop by our page and become a fan, too!
MySpace – Take a second look at this medium for social networking. According to MarketingProfs, more than half of MySpace.com users are 35 or older. Explore using MySpace for your business.
LinkedIn – Like a virtual Rolodex. Build your professional profile, link up with other professionals, join groups or even start a group. Participating in Q&A’s related to your profession is a great way to build credibility and visibility.
Ning – Build your social network around your business. You may even get your network into the search engine results pages. Learn more about using Ning for business. (http://bit.ly/amLKcE)
Read “Utlize Social Media to Gain Additional Exposure for Your Site” (http://bit.ly/bcoWEQ) for more information about social networks and how they can drive targeted traffíc to your site.
Social Bookmarking
Digg – Getting your content on the home page of Digg is one way to bump up your web site’s traffic by thousands within minutes. This can result in valuable links to your site. Start with this beginner’s guide to Digg.
StumbleUpon – Build friends and send them your articles to rate. More thumbs up will get your article shown to more people outside your network and can result in thousands of visitors every day. Tips for using StumbleUpon.
Reddit – Even if your content gets buried on Digg, it can flourish on Reddit – which can be a catalyst for jumping to the home page of other social bookmarking sites. Learn more about the types of topics that do well on Reddit.
Google’s SEO Report Card… Information Nuggets or Fool’s Gold?
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Google’s SEO Report Card… Information Nuggets or Fool’s Gold?
While ostensibly aimed at helping Google target potential weaknesses in its own product pages, and of no direct use to SEOs, there is nonetheless more than a little gold to be found here, if one just examines the document in a little more depth. So while the post at Google’s Webmaster Central Blog is already beginning to bristle with comments lamenting the fact that this isn’t a clear treasure map to the search-ranking mother lode, it’s worth sifting through the Report Card to see what informational nuggets are hidden inside.
Subject I: Search Result Presentation
It’s easy to see why some readers simply dismissed this document out of hand, as the first section starts off being little more than a rehash of the standard “Use Page Titles, Use Meta Descriptions” advice found in any SEO-101 manual. Only by persevering to the part talking about Google Sitelink Triggering, does one begin to suspect that there may be a little more to the report card than meets the eye. Here the authors throw out a couple of crumbs about categorizing website and link-structure, and consolidating a site’s URLs to maximize its informational focus with the aim of increasing the chances of Google generating Sitelinks.
Even so, it’s nothing most professionals haven’t heard before, and I suspect that by this time a lot of readers had given up, thinking that nothing interesting was in store.
Subject II: URLs and Redirects
This is where we see a little glitter among the rubble, as the section starts off with the statement that: “Google products’ URLs take many different forms. Most larger products use a subdomain, while smaller ones usually use a directory form…”
In itself this is not an exceptional statement, and the chapter continues to give handy, but hardly unique, information about canonicalization, URL structure, and redirects until Page 10, where we find the following declaration:
“Subdomains require an extra DNS lookup, slightly affecting latency, which is very important at Google.”
Page load-speeds are an important factor to Google. There’s been talk and speculation about this ever since Matt Cutts dropped the first hints last year, and these days most SEOs are busily proclaiming that slow websites are now a handicap.
Haven’t they always been?
Be that as it may, this fact is not common knowledge with the average webmaster, as demonstrated by a question I’m regularly confronted with over at the Google Webmaster Help Forum:
“Which is a better way to categorize my site, subdomains or folders?”
The standard answer to this question used to be “Whichever you prefer” before load-times became an issue. Now, however, we find a clear indicator that a folder-based approach is much-preferable unless a category actually contains enough information to merit its own site, which is effectively what a subdomain turns it into.
Subject III: On-Page Optimizations
While at first glance this chapter is more standard SEO-101 fodder, it’s where we find a sizable nugget, as the report talks about semantic markup, and how Google uses it to gauge a page’s content.
“Nothing new here; we all use H1 tags.” you might say, but you’d only be partially right, because this issue not only runs much deeper than H1 headings, it runs beyond Heading tags altogether, as I’ll explain shortly. For the moment, however, let’s stay with them.
In the past few years, a great many Optimizers have reached the conclusion that only H1, and, to a degree, H2 are of any promotional value, and that lesser headings (H3 – H6) carry practically no weight at all. But let’s take a look at the following statement, taken from Page 38 of the Report:
“Most product main pages have an opportuníty to use one
tag, like the example above, but they’re currently only using other heading tags (
in this case) or larger font styling. While styling your text so it appears larger might achieve the same visual presentation, it does not provide the same semantic meaning to the search engine that an
tag does.”
tag does.”
For starters it’s obvious that the lesser headings are alive and well, and being used by Google. We’re also told that Google does not, or cannot, judge the visual-context meaning of CSS styled text. The conclusion is to use more heading tags instead of CSS styles wherever your content calls for it. However, there’s more to it still. Let’s take another look at part of that statement:
“…but they’re currently only using other heading tags…”
It would appear that Google still places greater value on other semantic markup tags (em, strong, blockquote, etc.) than many professionals give them acknowledgment, for these days. Otherwise why would the author specifically note the fact that Google only uses headings and font styles?
I personally know quite a few professionals who have long-since abandoned most semantic markup tags in favour of CSS style, since the prevailing attitude of designers and SEOs has been that making text bold or italic no longer carries much promotional weight, following widespread abuses in the mid-2000s and Google’s consequent algorithm updates.
And although the above statement may be a tentative one, it might just point the way back to a more HTML-based approach to web design. Indeed, if it can be taken at face-value, it’s entirely possible that those SEOs and designers advocating CSS-based, table-less design as the way forward are barking up the wrong tree. Whatever the case may be, there is undoubtedly more to the SEO Report Card than first meets the eye, and at the very least, there is a little gold to be extracted from the mass of standard information. Only by reading the full document will you be able to make an assessment yourself.
What should also be remembered is that the SEO Report Card is not aimed at high-flying SEOs or E-lebrity industry pundits, but at the intermediate webmaster for whom even the report’s basic information is of immense value, if read alongside Google’s SEO Starter Guide
Discover the Answers to the Top 10 SEO Questions
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Friday, February 26, 2010
Discover the Answers to the Top 10 SEO Questions
Any type of online business will strongly benefit from a few SEO techniques. However, everyone and their brother has advice on how to do it. All this ‘expert’ advice can make the simple task of optimizing your site incredibly confusing. Here are some straightforward answers to the most common SEO questions.
1. What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. A search engine is a tool many internet users use to find sites that are relevant to their needs. The three biggies when it comes to search engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN. There are however, hundreds of search engines available to internet users. Search engines work by sending out spiders to crawl through the World Wide Web and gather information. If you have the information they’re looking for, in the places they are looking, they’ll find you and place you in their results when a person is looking for your information.
The task of understanding what search engines are looking for and putting it in the right places on your website and in your content, is the essence of search engine optimization. So now you might be asking…what do search engines look for and where do they look for it? The answer is keywords and links. Keywords in your html coding, keywords on your webpage content, keywords in your content, and the number of incoming links you have to your website.
2. How Important is SEO?
Let’s just put it this way. What’s better, a few visitors who stumble upon your website or hundreds of visitors that go to your website with the direct intention of learning more or making a purchase?
With more and more people searching and shopping online, getting on the first page or two of the search engine results can mean the difference between keeping your day job and becoming an internet millionaire.
3. What are Text Links?
Links are just one of the tools you can use to improve your search engine optimization. The more quality links you have, the better your search engine ranking will be. Text links are links that contain only text. Wikipedia is a great place to examine internal text links. The links are contained within a sentence and when a reader clicks on them they are taken to a different page on the same website. The kind of text links you’re looking for will be text links that will take readers from your article, ebook, or web copy to your website.
An excellent tool to generate incoming links is to write copy for online audiences like article directories, blogs, and ezines and insert text links in the copy. Webmasters will link to the content and thus to your site. Additionally, when you allow free reprints of your copy and provided the links are maintained, you’re encouraging links to your website.
4. What are Link Farms and Link Exchanges?
Search engines don’t accept just any old link. The link has to be from a relevant and quality company. This means you don’t want to participate in link farming. If a search engine suspects your links to be lacking, they’ll actually penalize you. Link farming or link exchanging is essentially the process of exchanging reciprocal links with Web sites in order to improve your search engine ranking. A link farm is a Web page that is nothing more than a page of links to other sites. Stay away from link farms. When you generate a link from another site, it had better be relevant and coming from a real web site.
5. What is Duplicate Content?
The definition of duplicate content is web pages that contain substantially the same content. Search engines will penalize you for this. How do you avoid duplicate content? Don’t publish the same article in several locations. There are many tools available online to help you re-write your content so that it is 30%, 40%, and even 50% different. However, the best way to avoid duplicate content is to simply write new content.
6. How do I Find the Right Keywords?
There are several steps to finding the most profitable keywords. The first step is to generally do a bit of brainstorming and come up with a list of keywords you think people will use to find your products. The next step is to research supply and demand for those particular keywords. Supply means how many other websites are using those same keywords and demand is how many people are looking for those particular keywords.
The key is to find keywords with high demand and relatively low supply. There are many effective and useful keyword tools to help you find this information and to generate keyword ideas. Once you decide on a few keywords, it may be useful to do a bit of testing before you commit to them.
7. How do I Optimize My Web Pages?
Placing your keywords in the right location is a good start to optimizing your web pages. Search engines look to the headings, subheadings, domain name, and title of your website. They also look in the content on your page and primarily focus on the first paragraph.
Try to get a domain name with your primary keyword included. When you include your keyword in your URL it tells the search engine spiders immediately what your site is about.
Title Tag. Your title tag is the line of text that appears on search engine results pages that acts as a link to your site. This is a crucial element of your webpage as it describes to your visitors what your page is about.
If you view your source code, your title tag will look something like this:
Keeping your title tags brief, descriptive, up to date, and keyword rich will help to improve the relevance of your site in the eyes of the search engines, as well as giving your potential visitors a good idea of what they can expect from your site.
Meta Tags have lost their importance to the search engines, however, it is still helpful to place your keywords in your meta tags. In your source code they look something like this:
8. Do I Need to Submít My Site to The Search Engines?
The simple answer is – no. Search engine spiders are always out there doing their job and collecting information. Every time you update your website, add content, or change your keywords, the search engines capture the information and record it. However, if you want to be listed in a dírectory, like the DMOZ Open Directory Project, then you will need to submit to those.
9. What are Spiders?
Search engine spiders are also called web crawlers or bots. They’re basically automated programs which scan websites to provide information to search engines often for the purpose of indexing or ranking them.
10. How does Content Help My SEO?
Content is one of the best tools to improve your search engine ranking. It is a great place to emphasize keywords, encourage linking to your site, and boost traffic. The key to content is to make sure you’re offering quality content and you’re updating your website and your content frequently. Content can be provided in many forms including:
• Blogs
• Forums and chat rooms
• Articles
• Reviews
• Case studies
• Reports
• How to guides
• Tutorials
• e-books and much more.
Keyword Fundamentals Will Determine Your Website Success
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Keyword Fundamentals Will Determine Your Website Success
Successful sports teams have engrained in their heads the fundamentals of their sports. Business leaders and coaches alike who dwell on the fundamentals usually have the most successful outcomes. Failure is almost always rooted in a deviation from the fundamentals. So if your website is not delivering clients, perhaps you’re missing the fundamentals.
Part of the answer is no one actually taught you the fundamentals of website success. Most businesses understand the need for a website, few understand the fundamentals. Getting your website to deliver clients is an exercise in fundamentals. First and foremost is a back to basics, grass roots understandng of your market, website style.
Keyword research is the first thing every website owner should have done but most didn’t. With respect to your online business, keyword research equals market research. The coolest thing about being online is that you can absolutely KNOW your market, understand their interests and create an online business and marketing plan relative to your market and their needs.
There are probably hundreds of keyword research tools online that can help you do research. Our advice is to seek out an expert. Getting the data is one thing. Knowing what to do with it is quite a different thing.
Relative to keyword research, here’s what we can find via search engine tools: keywords and keyword phrases, search volumes, total web pages using those keywords, web pages optimized for those keywords, keywords in hypertext (called anchor text) linking to other sites and pages. We can even look at any specific website and determine what keywords they are at least trying to rank for. And of course, type the keyword phrase into a search box will list the top ten sites ranking for that term. The result of such a search is referred to as the SERPS or the Search Engine Results Pages.
The best keywords to use are ones that will generate reasonable traffic AND have very little competition. One of the parameters we seek in our keyword research is to determine the competitiveness of the keyword phrases. Google will tell us how many web pages are indexed for the search term. Just run a search and notice in the upper right of the results that Google will tell you how many pages are indexed with your search keywords. Without getting too technical here, Google and the other major search engines will also tell you how many web pages use those keywords in the page title, an indication that those pages specifically cover the topic of your search. Having keywords in the page title is one of the key ways to optimize a webpage for the keyword. Knowing how many pages are doing this gives you a better idea of how many pages are intentionally using the keywords you’re researching.
KEYWORD STRATEGY
The first thing that has to go is the ego of the site and/or business owner. Unless you show up in the first page of the search engine results, you’re NOBODY! Worse, you can’t push your way through the crowd to get to the top of the SERPS. You can get there by Google sponsored ads – Adwords guarantee your visibility on the SERPS. But still the point is, you’ll pay.
Let’s consider three strategies for beating your competition relative to the search engine results.
DIRECT STRATEGY
Choose the same keywords that your competition is ranking for and go head to head. If they are doing pay-per-click, you do it too. In this scenario, you’ll end up spending a lot of money to achieve and maintain top SERPS positions. If your competition is ranking on good, high traffic terms, plan on spending time, money and resources to get to the same position it may have taken them years to achieve. A direct strategy can get bloody. Ultimately, it is the most obvious choice, the least creative and the stupidest!
INDIRECT STRATEGY
Choose keywords that your competitors didn’t even think of! An indirect strategy is often associated with cross marketing and selling through an indirect channel. If you sell a service or product that your competitors don’t have, you channel your efforts through that market knowing there’s some pull-through relative to your other products and services. Very often you could be sucking business right out from under your competition’ s nose and they don’t even see it!
DIVISIONAL STRATEGY
Find out what keywords your competition is NOT ranking for in the same keyword set and go after them. The divisional strategy is the primary marketing method of niche marketers. Most business owners will equate the word “niche” with the word “small”. On the web, niche site owners are millionaires! Get rid of your pre-conceptions. The web is huge.
We use a two step process for choosing keywords. First, you have to take your direct competition into account. The second part is to look specifically at the search engine optimization parameters to determine which keywords make sense for you to specifically go after.
The leverage a website carries is in part determined by its page rank. Page rank is in large part determined by how many other sites on the web link to yours. Your exposure in the SERPS is in turn affected by your page rank. The reason you need to know this is if the top ten websites all out rank you in terms of page rank, you’re better off choosing another keyword.
Fundamental lesson: Small Fish eat smaller fish to grow bigger.
The Three SEO Factors That Really Matter
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
The Three SEO Factors That Really Matter
Search for a list of SEO factors and you’ll find that most feature at least 50.
That’s 50+ elements of your website that influence your ability to rank in search engines. Sounds complicated, doesn’t it?
Some SEO Consultants will tell you that ranking in search engines is about applying a precise formula to these 50+ elements – about using “special proprietary techniques” fine-tuned to search algorithms to boost your website above the competition.
Not exactly.
There are actually more like 200+ signals that search engines use when ranking websites.
Imagine trying to reverse-engineer something like that? Sounds impossible, right?
That’s because it is.
The good news: it doesn’t matter.
You don’t need to be a computer engineer to rank well in search engines. Relieving, isn’t it?
The truth is that everything boils down to three factors:
1. Search-Friendly Pages
2. Relevant Content
3. A Trusted Website
All of those other factors and elements of SEO? They all fit into one of these three basic categories.
You don’t need to be a search scientist to understand the basics of what’s going on with these three factors and improve them for your website.
1) Search-Friendly Pages
Essentially, this first factor has to do with the technical aspects of how your website and pages work.
Search engines use crawlers (or “bots”) to browse the web by following links. As they browse, these crawlers scan the content they see and store it in databases. These databases form the search engine’s web index – and when a user comes along and enters a search phrase the index is scanned for pages that match.
The basic idea: you want to make sure your pages, and the content that fills them, are visible to search engine crawlers.
There are a few things you should know about crawlers:
• They don’t support JavaScript – so that rollover menu, those drop-down links, etc, might not be visible to search engine crawlers.
• They don’t support Flash (mostly) – while there have been a few developments in this regard recently, Flash websites still aren’t too search engine friendly .
• They can’t “see” – sometimes designers use images instead of HTML text (usually because they want to use a certain font that isn’t web-safe), and search engine crawlers can’t read or index this text. Crawlers can only read code – and if your content isn’t found there it’s essentially invisible to search engines.
• They skimp on resources – it takes a lot of energy and time (and money) to crawl the web (there are a lot of pages out there) so crawlers are usually programmed to be conservative with how far they’ll dive into a page. If your web pages take a long time to load or feature a tremendous amount of content crawlers might leave without scanning/indexing everything.
There are some other things crawlers can’t/won’t do. To get a sense of what they can see on your website try SEO-Browser.com . This tool allows you to enter the address of a web page and see it as search crawlers see it.
The bottom line: you might have the best content in the world, but if crawlers can’t see it you won’t rank for relevant keywords.
2) Relevant Content
This factor is all about the words on your pages.
As we discussed above, the visible content on your pages is stored and searched every time someone uses a search engine. If the keyword or phrase entered doesn’t occur on your page you probably won’t show up.
There are a few key places where you’ll want to use the right language on your pages:
• Title tags
• Headlines
• Body copy
• Anchor text (links pointing to internal pages)
As you browse the web you’ll probably notice that lots of webmasters have gotten a bit, shall we say, “overzealous” with optimizing their content. Title tags stuffed to the brim with dozens of keyword variations is common. Sometimes even the body copy itself is stuffed with keywords in an attempt to boost rankings.
You might be tempted to do this yourself to try and enhance your chances of ranking for a given keyword.
Don’t do it. Please.
Why not? Try reading a page that’s been stuffed with keywords this way. It’s an awful experience, right? Certainly enough to stop your reading flow and send you to another website, isn’t it?
Don’t sacrifice your user’s reading experience in the aim of ranking for a given keyword. It’s not worth it. All of the traffic in the world won’t mean a thing if the users who land at your pages are turned off and leave. Your competitors are just a few painless clicks away.
To learn about what keywords people use when they search for your products/services/info try Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool – enter either your website address or a keyword and this tool will return a líst of related keywords including numbers on how many people search for them.
The bottom line: it’s rare to rank for a keyword that doesn’t occur on your pages so use the language your users do when they search. Don’t overdo it and stuff keywords, though, because you’ll annoy your visitors (and search engines don’t like it either – they might flag you as SPAM).
3) A Trusted Website
When you’ve got 1) search-friendly pages and 2) relevant content it’s still not time to sit back and let the search traffic pour in.
The truth is that most of your competitors will have looked into these factors already – they’re kind of the “low hanging fruit” of SEO, because they’re not usually terribly difficult to work out.
Trust is what sets you apart. It is by far the most important of the three factors.
Before Google came onto the scene using PageRank (a measurement of link popularity) to rank websites, search engines generally based their rankings on the first two factors we’ve discussed.
What was the problem with that approach?
Webmasters are greedy. We can’t help ourselves. We love traffic.
Keyword stuffing was rampant, and rarely did webmasters stick to the honest truth about what their website was relevant to. The result: search results littered with SPAM and just about anything with very little relevance.
The reason links were a better signal to Google was simple – it’s harder to game. While you can control the content/keywords on your website, it’s a lot harder to control it on someone else’s. It’s pretty tough to get someone to link to you against their will.
The model simply worked – Google’s results were better. The other search engines quickly caught on and looked to signals of trust for sorting through the SPAM.
Some signals that search engines use to determine whether they can trust your website:
• Inbound links – quality is more important than quantity here – that’s why those “500 directory links for $49.95″ deals are worthless. The easiest links to get are the least valuable/powerful. A single link from Google.com, for example, would outweigh tens of thousands of weaker links – that’s how much quality matters.
• Website age – if your website is new there’s not much you can do about it without a Delorian and a working flux capacitor (“Marty, the website is in place – now we gotta go back to the future!”). A website that’s been around for a while is simply more trusted by search engines.
• Who you link to – it’s not just about inbound links. Search engines also look at what websites you link to from your pages. If you’re linking out to SPAMMY websites, they might consider you part of that “bad neighborhood” and penalize your website. Be careful who you vouch for.
There are other signals involved, but if you’ve got these three trust factors working in your favor you’re very likely to dominate the competition.
The bottom line: search engines don’t like getting burned by ranking SPAMMY websites. They want to know they can trust your website. Once you’ve got your on-page factors right (#1 and #2 above), you’ll need to build trust signals before your website will rank competitively.
Simple And Successful SEO Strategies – On Page Optimization
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Monday, February 22, 2010
Simple And Successful SEO Strategies – On Page Optimization
SEO doesn’t have to be complex and by following these simple on-page optimization techniques you can give your SEO campaign the perfect start.
SEO is often seen as being a difficult and in-depth process, but the reality is that by following some reasonably common sense guidelines it is possible to get good rankings. That’s not to say that optimization is a simple or quick process; there are, unfortunately, no short cuts. Your SEO efforts should be a concerted and long term endeavour, in order for you to enjoy the best possible results, and should incorporate both on-page and off-page optimization techniques. By following the on-page SEO strategies below you can set a strong foundation for all your SEO work.
Keyword Research
Before you begin penning content and writing title and meta tags you first need to research the keywords you will use on each of your pages. Using the wrong keywords can negatively impact your entire campaign, causing you to lose untold hours and days of work and eventually forcing you to concede that you made the wrong decision and start all over again.
The most appropriate and most beneficial keywords are popular enough that they will enjoy regular searches but without being prohibitively competitive or overly generic. A number of keyword research tools exist and your competitors’ websites are a good place to start your early research. Ensure keywords are targeted specifically to the type of content you will provide as well as the service or product you will be selling. More targeted keywords will result in more targeted visitors and targeted visitors mean greater conversion rates and an improved return on your efforts.
Niche And Semantically Related Keywords
A good strategy is to incorporate a reasonable list of competitive keywords with less competitive ones. The more niche keywords will serve you well during the early days of your website and over time you should be able to start competing for the more challenging of the keywords you use. Also incorporate semantically or topically related keywords into your keyword list because the search engines are placing more and more emphasis on those pages that use related keywords as well as primary keywords.
Accessibility And Standards
Site accessibility is an integral part of good website design, but it should also be considered an important factor in any SEO strategy. Using standards based code for your website will help to ensure that anybody that wishes to access and view your website will be able to do so. It will also mean that the spiders used by search engines will be able to access and index your pages effectively ensuring that you get the full credít for your site.
Navigation And Intra-Linking
Your navigation menu and internal links should be prominently placed, easy to see, and easy to follow for the spiders. It is good practice to include a text link from the home page to a compliant sitemap on your site, alleviating any potential problems that might arise from broken links or the use of graphical or flash based navigation menus. You can also consider adding links into the main body of your content, although too many will make the page difficult to read and therefore diminish the overall effectiveness so don’t get too carried away.
Title And Meta Tags
While search engines do not specifically use the meta tags to help assess the value of a page like they once did, meta tags are still critical to good SEO performance. The title and description tags that you add at the top of a page are used in various ways including in the compiling and display of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). This is the first thing a potential site visitor will see from your site so this mini listing needs to be as effective as any paid advert or PPC ad. Poorly written titles and descriptions can put many readers off viewing your pages so a little time and effort here can have a very positive effect.
Using your keywords in the title and the description is good practice because these will be highlighted in the search results if they were used in the search query itself. This will make your result more prominent and instantly identify your page as being relevant to the user. Don’t needlessly use keywords, however, and don’t throw extra keywords into the description at the cost of a well written, short ad.
Other Formatting Tags
On-page content should always be written with the visitor in mind, although obviously it can still be optimized for search engines. As such, proper page structure is important to your reader as well as to the engines. H1 and H2 tags are an effective way of breaking up page content, and give readers the chance to skim through a page and determine its relevance.
A page should only contain a single H1 tag at the top of the content but can include multiple H2 and H3 tags. Alt tags on images should also be included and these as well as the actual file path to the image itself can include important keywords (but do make sure that they actually make sense and are more than just a keyword thrown in for the sake of SEO).
Page Content Optimization
Finally, we get to the heart of the page – the content itself. Use the keywords you researched for a page, including semantically related keywords. Write as naturally and appealingly as possible while keeping those keywords in mind and don’t get carried away stuffing or cramming them into the body of the text. Not only is this unappealing to readers but is seriously frowned upon by the search engines.
The reader really is the most important aspect of your content. If the majority of your visitors are coming from the search engines, remember that they arrived using specific keywords. This means that they are searching for equally specific information relating to those keywords – make sure you deliver on the promise that you made in your title and description tags.
How to Recognize a Bad SEO Company
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about getting potential customers to visit your website. It is also about building a quality website full of great content. It uses keywords appropriately and gets links “naturally” because people love what you have on your site. SEO companies can provide very useful services including keyword research, site review, providing technical advice on your website development and also management of online business marketing campaigns. They can also help with content development, article marketing and article distribution. Although it’s not brain surgery, it is hard to do and usually requires a lot of thought and real work.
Some unethical SEO firms attempt to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways. These practices could get your website ranked lower or even banned. When looking at SEO – either to optimize yourself or if you are looking to hire a company, here are some things to take into account.
Be Cautious Of SEO Firms That Say They Will Get Thousands Of Links To Your Site
It is not the number of sites that make the difference – it’s the quality of the sites. When firms promise huge numbers of links, or say that you will become part of their “network of sites”, it usually means a link farm is involved. A link farm is any group of websites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group. Search engines don’t like this and it can lead to penalties. Instead, practice reciprocal linking with legitimate and related websites for better search engine ranking.
Be Wary Of SEO Firms That Guarantee A High Ranking On Google
No one can guarantee a high ranking on Google. Some SEO companies provide a guarantee on their services. This is fine. What’s not fine is guaranteeing high ranking in an incredibly short period of time. When these unrealistic results fail to happen, the company will balk at giving a refund, suggest other services instead and start to become unreachable or disappear.
Be Cautious Of SEO Firms That Send “Spammy” Emails
These emails are unsolicited and usually begin with “We’ve noticed that you are not lísted in some search engines…” You should be searching for a high-ranking SEO company; they will not be searching for you. Spam means scam. You don’t buy your medications from spammers so why buy SEO services from them?
Be Wary Of SEO Firms That Are Secretive Or Don’t Clearly Explain What They Are Going To Do
Most reputable SEO firms are upfront with their clients and like to share their knowledge. They are confident that even if their clients understand their process, they won’t leave them. If the SEO firm claims it’s too complicated for you to understand, or if they say they have trade secrets and proprietary technology, it’s a sign that they may not be ethical in dealing with your website.
Be Wary Of SEO Firms That Say They Will Submít Your Site To Thousands Of Top Search Engines And Directories
Besides the small fact that there aren’t that many search engines, consider that the guidelines of the search engines themselves tell you that it doesn’t do any good anymore. Search Engines are good at what they do – searching for sites – and you don’t need to pay someone to submít your site to a search engine. If they make this claim, they will probably use Free For All (FFA) junk sites that might damage your site’s standings.
Be Cautious Of SEO Firms That Say They Can Optimize And Promote Your Site For A Low, Low Monthly Fee
Not all monthly SEO or SEM (Search Engine Management) service contracts or monthly fees are a scam. There are real reasons to pay a monthly fee to an SEO expert. These would include conditions when you would require SEO management: when you or someone else is constantly generating new content or new features for your site; implementing link-building campaigns; implementing PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns; or starting a brandcasting campaign. Press release distribution, email campaigns and article marketing campaigns could also require a legitimate monthly fee.
Not-so-legitimate fees could include monthly re-submittíng of your site to search engines, “tweaking” your code to keep up with changes and regularly submitting your site to hundreds of useless free-for-all directories. The worthwhile companies that charge a monthly fee will usually be able to tell you exactly how much it is per month to generate blog entries or generate and distribute articles or press releases. And it won’t be for the low, low price of $79.95.
Choose Your SEO Company And Services Carefully
Do your research and don’t make the decision lightly. If you were hiring a contractor to remodel your kitchen you would want to see other kitchen projects they’ve done and speak with the owners about the company’s business practices. You should do the same thing when hiring an SEO company. Get referrals and really speak with them.
There are many online tips about choosing and hiring SEO firms that you can check out as well. Remember, SEO is a long-term strategy and you should take the time to do your research before buying or you’ll probably be buying again.
Top 10 Don’ts for SEO Copywriting
Following in the footsteps of Rand Fishkin and Guy Kawasaki, I decided to come up with my own list of don’ts.
There is no shortage of don’ts when it comes to SEO copywriting. It seems this niche got off to a rough start many years ago when early comers somehow misconstrued the core principles of the trade. Allow me to elaborate on how not to write SEO copy.
1. Don’t shove as many keyphrases into the copy as humanly possible. It’s not about the sheer volume of search terms you include. Yes, Google and other engines should be able to follow what the page is about. Yes, engines are looking to match a searcher’s query with search engine optimized content on your web pages, but which pages land at the top is decided through a series of calculations far more complex than any simple ratio. When you overload copy with keyphrases you sacrifice quality and user experience.
2. Don’t lose site of balance. If SEO copywriting isn’t about the percentage of keywords within the copy, then what is it about? Balance. You have two audiences with SEO copywriting: the search engines and your site visitors. But surprisingly, the balance doesn’t come with serving both masters well. The balance comes in how much you cater to the engines. You see, your site visitors always come first. However, if you write with too little focus on the engines, you won’t see good rankings. If you put too much focus on the engines, you’ll start to lose your target audience. Balance. Always balance.
3. Don’t let someone else choose the keywords. If keyword research isn’t a service you offer, an SEO firm, keyword specialist or some other professional that your client hires will have to conduct the research. Don’t just accept keyphrases these folks toss your way. Ask to see the entire list with recommendations as to which terms would be best strategically. Then you, as the professional writer, can decide which will also work best within the copy.
4. Don’t sacrifice flow for numbers. This is a follow-up to number three and is a major issue with bad SEO copywriting. SEOs or clients sometimes insist on using hacked-up search phrases that simply don’t work in a normal sentence. An example? “Candies samples free.” Many copywriters will just grin and bear it, sacrificing quality and flow for the sake of competitive values or other numbers. The result is often some obnoxious sentence like, “If you’re looking for candies samples free, you’ve come to the right place!” Forcing a phrase into the copy at all costs never turns out well.
5. Don’t use keyphrases that don’t apply to the page. If you operate a site about wedding receptions, don’t try to force a search term about wedding dresses into the copy just because it pulls a lot of traffic. (A) Unless you sell, alter or design wedding dresses, it won’t be applicable. (B) Even if you manage to get the page ranked well for the phrase [wedding dresses], once the visitor clicks to your site and realizes you have nothing to do with wedding dresses, they will leave. It’s a waste of time and effort and it creates a poor user experience.
6. Don’t use misspellings and correct spellings on the same page. I fully understand that the misspellings of keyphrases can be valuable search terms. However, to mix correct spellings and misspellings within the same page of copy looks like you’ve got a bunch of typos in the content. It’s just not professional. Some writers will go for the old, “We rent limousines (sometimes spelled limosenes) for the most affordable prices in town.” I don’t care for that approach. It’s just not natural. Would you ever see brochure or newspaper copy that reads that way? I think not.
7. Don’t use keyphrases the exact same way every time. This is how we end up with horrible SEO copy that sounds like a 4th grader wrote it. (See #4.) There are lots of ways to use keywords in copy, not just one. In order to sound natural, you have to get creative with your keyphrase use. One way is to break up phrases using punctuation. Since search engines don’t pay attention to basic punctuation marks, you can easily write something using the search term [real estate Hawaii] that reads like this: “Currently there is an impressive selection of available real estate. Hawaii listings can be.” See? “Real estate” is at the end of the first sentence and “Hawaii” is at the beginning of the second sentence. The engines ignore the period so there’s no problem.
8. Don’t use all types of search phrases for every situation. There are many ways in which this “don’t” applies. One quick example is that of an ecommerce site. It wouldn’t be advisable to use specific, long-tail keyphrases on the home page of your site. They are much too specific in most cases and are better suited for individual product pages. Broader terms are typically best for an ecommerce home page. If you don’t understand the best applications for the various types of keywords, you’re likely to have lackluster results.
9. Don’t neglect ALT tags/image attributes. These tags are the ones associated with images on your pages and they carry a good deal of weight especially if the image is used as a link. The ALT text counts the same as anchor text in a text-based link. Depending on a few different factors, ALT text may be a good place for those misspellings mentioned in #6.
10. Don’t forget the chain of protocol. There’s a method to the SEO copywriting madness. The idea is not to get as many different keyphrases onto a page as possible. Just the opposite, in fact. Rather than having 12 different search terms used only one time each, you need to use two to four keyphrases (depending on the length of your copy) per page. The title, META tags, ALT tags, other coding elements and on-page copy need to support each other as far as keyphrase use goes. Your goal is to let the engines know that you have original, relevant content about a narrow topic.
Unless you have an exceptional number of back links built up, just mentioning [dark chocolate], [chocolate strawberries], [chocolate chip cookies], [chocolate cake], [chocolate desserts], [organic chocolate] and [chocolate cheesecake] once each on a web page isn’t likely to do a lot of good. Instead, pick two or three terms which are closely related and use them several times each along with mentioning them in your tags.
When you avoid making common mistakes, you’ll find your SEO copywriting flows much better, is more natural-sounding and ranks higher, too.
Top 5 SEO Copywriting Mistakes That Will Cost You Money
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Friday, February 19, 2010
Top 5 SEO Copywriting Mistakes That Will Cost You Money
Just as there are different ways of writing for novels, for advertising and for films, there is a way to write for the Internet. To find content on the web we use search engines. To make sure the search engines find our content we optimize it. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) copywriting is writing content that the reader wants to read and will be easily found and rank well with search engines.
The object of writing for the Internet is to get the reader to use your content to click through to your website. If they don’t get to your website, they can’t look at your products or services and you will have lost a potential customer. Here are a few mistakes that you’ll want to avoid.
Mistake #1 – Have a Boring Or Vague Title
This is a very important mistake not to make. If they don’t even look at your article, all your time and effort are wasted. If you provide an attention grabbing title, one that makes them curious enough to open your article, you’re halfway there.
Here are just a few ideas to get you thinking: Use titles that describe the content of your article but are short and concise; Use keywords in your title that people might be searching for; People can’t resist articles with lists or tips such as, “Top 10 Copywriting Mistakes” or “Top Tips on Getting Your Articles Read”; and “How to” articles are popular as well.
The bottom line here is to put some thought into your title. Think about how to get a reader’s attention.
Mistake #2 – Create Bland Content
From beginning to end – try to keep it interesting. Make reading your article a pleasurable experience for your reader. Here are a few suggestions.
Make it fun, relevant and grammatically correct. Nothing pulls the reader out of a story more than bad grammar and misspelled words.
Use short sentences and try to limit paragraphs to two or three lines. Concentrate on writing rich and appropriate copy rather than just practical words.
Have a sense of humor. This gives your articles personality. Don’t give a sales pitch – use a call to action. The purpose of your article is to get your reader to get to your website. Your writing could include a reason for them to find more information, either from another article that you’ve written or from your website.
“Content is king”. If you keep this in mind, you’ll be ahead of the game. Search engines love well-written and useful content. So do readers.
Mistake #3 – Make Your Article As Hard To Read As Possible
Every post should be easy to scan. That means your reader should be able to easily scan your article and find headings that will tell them what the section is about. You can use numbered lists and bullets to organize your ideas so they are quickly read. If you italicize, bold or underline a word, the search engine assumes that it’s a keyword. You can use this to your advantage. However, if you use these tags a lot or if you use them on non-keywords, you’ll confuse the search engines and lose any advantage you would have gained.
The other thing that makes a page easy to scan is short paragraphs. When you look at your copy on the page, you should see a lot of white space. Looking at a page that’s completely filled with words is intimidating to a reader. You want to make it as friendly and welcoming and as easy to read as possible.
Mistake #4 – Misuse Keywords
Keywords are at the core of writing for the web. You should research and know your keywords. Here are a few suggestions about keywords:
• Target a set of keywords in every post but don’t use them more than three or four times on a page. If you use the same keywords again and again, search engines can tell that the article isn’t very useful.
• Use a wide variety of words that pertain to your topic.
• Use synonyms of your keywords in addition to the keywords.
• Don’t stick to a standard keyword density for every article or post. You want your words to flow naturally, and overuse of keywords makes your copy sound forced.
• Review your keywords every so often. Sometimes your business changes and you want your articles to change also.
If you provide your reader with content that lets them learn or experience something, you’ll have a happy reader. If you provide the search engines with good keywords and a variety of them, you’ll have a happy search engine.
Mistake #5 – Try To Trick the Search Engines
Practicing questionable tactics like cloaking and using hidden text is a bad idea. The last thing you want is to get your site banned. These kinds of tricks will do it. So can using hidden links, link farms, linking to bad sites, distributing viruses and sending spam. Don’t try to trick the search engines and don’t work with any companies that use these techniques.
Overcoming these common mistakes can give you head start when creating effective content on the Internet. SEO copywriting requires effort. Putting content on your site and distributing it on the web takes time. If you work at it over time and create lots of valuable content, effectively “brandcasting” your site, you’ll be rewarded with more traffíc.
Search Engine Optimization SEO is No Place for Amateurs
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Thursday, February 18, 2010
SEO is No Place for Amateurs
How come everybody nowadays is an SEO Expert?
Let’s face it; not a day goes by where we don’t see someone offering their services as a Search Engine Optimization specialist. The strange thing is however, many of the people offering such services on the various forums tend to have no runs on the board themselves.
Of course, I’m not saying there aren’t a great deal of reputable internet marketing services out there, but they are becoming increasingly outnumbered by those with little or no background at all, and it is these people and their companies which are highly unlikely to ever produce satisfactory results for their clients.
Perhaps one should bear in mind that there is no difference between investing your money in internet marketing, and investing your money in a regular market. In both cases you need to measure your results just as you need to target the correct audience. For example, you wouldn’t even consider wasting your money by advertising your product or your service in a newspaper that is completely irrelevant to your target market. Advertising is done for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to bring in a return on your investment, irrespective of whether the advertising is done online or offline.
Why You Should Avoid the Amateurs
Essentially, you need to bear in mind that while any Tom, Dick, and Harry can learn about search engine optimization, it takes several years of dedication, practice, and careful analysis, in order to fully understand the different techniques, and how to apply different techniques to different types of business.
The bottom line is; a SEO campaign is in fact a highly intensive process that starts out with intense keyword research in order to establish which keywords are the most likely to produce maximum results for a website. Once the ideal keywords have been established, it can be incredibly tempting to simply spread them around on your website and hope for the best. However, in most cases you’ll find that the most popular keywords also have the most competition.
As such, why bother targeting particular key words, irrespective of how popular they are, if there’s virtually no chance they are going to help in terms of ranking? In fact, you could end up waiting for several months before the major search engines start recognizing your website.
On the other hand, a specialist who is highly skilled in internet marketing will be aware of which relevant keywords and keyword phrases will help to improve a website’s ranking. Likewise, a true professional will also know where the keywords and keyword phrases should be placed on a website in order for them to have the maximum amount of impact, without being penalized for keyword stuffing.
Onsite optimization of keywords is notoriously time consuming if it’s being done properly. But if your goal is to give a website a boost in search engine ranking, then this optimization process needs to be continued off-site as well. Here again, a competent SEO professional will know exactly how to go about implementing a successful link building campaign, including article marketing, submittíng articles to directories, taking advantage of several social networking sites, and also social book marking.
Furthermore, because a professional SEO specialist appreciates the importance of being able to get a good return on investment, they will also make use of Analytics tools in order to track conversions and monitor the success of an internet marketing campaign. Bear in mind, that these tools are essential in order to fine tune any good SEO campaign.
Steer Clear of Internet Marketing Fraudsters
Unfortunately, but also to be expected, the internet is full of undesirable people who focus entirely on targeting honorable businesses by means of providing them with false promises regarding guaranteed results. These people will more often than not guarantee that they will get your website to the top of the search rankings by using specific keywords. However, in most cases, they simply use keywords which are so rarely used, they show at the top of search rankings simply because they have no competition – no one uses them.
Obviously, if no one is ever typing that keyword into the search box, then why waste money on it? One of the easiest ways to determine whether or not an internet marketing expert is in fact legitimate, is that the legitimate ones don’t ever provide any guarantees with regards to getting you in the top spot on search results. This is because they know that no one can guarantee such results due to a number of reasons, such as algorithms which change continuously.
How to Avoid the Wrong Internet Marketing Service
First and foremost, you need to ask the right questions:
1. You need to determine how long the company has been involved with Internet marketing.
2. You should ask to see testimonials from past clients.
3. You should search online for their services. In fact, you should attempt to find their website by using keywords and keyword phrases which are relevant to the services they provide. Obviously, if you fail to find them on the first page of Google search results, then your alarm bells should start ringing. For example, if you were considering using the services of Sunshine Coast Internet Marketing Company, you could do a search for Sunshine Coast Internet marketing, internet marketing Sunshine Coast, etc.
The most important thing of all is that you acknowledge the fact that going with the wrong internet marketing company can end up costing you a considerable amount of money for nothing. On the other hand, if you choose to use the services of a reputable company, you can almost be certain that your website will end up ranking much higher than it did before.
Putting SEO Under the Microscope
There is not a day that goes by that people recommending search engine optimization (SEO) don’t come up with yet another interesting idea or opinion on a topic in their field. They are all so focused on structures and procedures that they often forget that not every one agrees with their viewpoints and practices – that is, if their technical mumbo-jumbo can be understood.
The following are 5 SEO topics that are frequently discussed and disagreed upon:
1 – The Importance of Content Structure & Keywords
While keywords may add great value from a technical, algorithmic ranking perspective, their presence may not always entice the audience to explore the site they are visiting. The content may seem boring and unappealing, rather than grabbing and fascinating. In that case, the psychological triggers that will tell the reader to continue browsing will be missing, as will the desire to share the information with their friends and family.
SEO experts won’t ever agree on which is more important when it comes to keywords and compelling content. In the end, it will be up to the website owner or manager to decide what is more important to him: search engine rankings or sales.
2 – Pro or Con Reciprocal Link Exchange
A ‘reciprocal link exchange’ is an effective and efficient way of driving traffic to a website and improving the search engine placement of participating websites. At least, that is what some experts believe, while others are fearful and refuse to swap any kind of link that may refer to their business.
Artificially manipulating links may not be the best SEO idea on the market, but there is definitely nothing wrong with link trading programs that exchange links of companies endorsing a relationship, or business related directories.
If you do decide to participate in a link exchange, check the links regularly and report the dead ones to the webmaster so they can either be fixed or removed.
3 – Should the H1 Headline and Title Tag Match – or Not?
Many SEO consultants are skeptical when they notice sites whose H1 header is different from the title tag. One may wonder what the reasoning may be, because this action may confuse and upset the audience. Users click on a certain headline because they are interested in its content, yet when the search result is complete, and the header and title tag do not match, they may find themselves confronted with a completely different message, which may be something they are not interested in. That is very disappointing for the user, even if it may result in a higher ranking.
4 – The Relevance of a Website’s Age
Although many web designers believe that the age and history of a website are pertinent, it is not quite clear if search engines actually do use an ‘age’ or an ‘age of links’ metric to inflate incumbent rankings. Search engines check keywords, pay-per-click, link building and other SEO features and don’t necessarily verify when a website was built. All they care about is how user friendly and SEO strong the site is, which means that a younger, highly efficient site should absolutely be able to compete with more mature competitors.
5 – Reporting a Competitor’s Spam Activities
Spam is a reality and spammers should be reported. At least, that is what a number of SEO specialists would argue. Others may disagree and point out that those who are extremely vocal about competitors’ manipulative tactics to enhance search engine ranking are usually the ones abusing it the most. All they are trying to do is shift the focus away from them.
Anyone reporting spam should not publicly announce their actions because, even if spammers are breaking guidelines, the SEO community is vehement about socially shunning those violating the “code of silence”. As unethical as this blackmail may seem, it should not stop you from warning the search engines about illegal activities and, at the same time, reap some of the benefits associated with this. In the end, you will have to market and protect your site and business.
Here are several arguments in favor of spam reporting:
• Taking out spammers will improve the value of the Internet and help search engines provide more accurate search results.
• Your ranking may improve by eliminating a competitor.
• Removing manipulators will leave more room for your site to achieve better rankings, to boost visibility and to boost your sales.
• You can learn from researching spam activities and tactics. You will learn what is inappropriate, what the engines do/don’t tolerate and what penalties can be expected for which unlawful actions.
• As long as you are clean yourself, reporting spammers can gain you trust with the search engines.
These are a few reasons against it:
• If you are engaged in certain types of spam, or unknowingly benefit from it, you can accidentally hurt your website’s ranking.
• It is unethical to blow the whistle on and hurt other SEO specialists. People have been arguing about ethics for centuries and in the end it will be up to each individual to decide what is more important to them and to their website.
Video SEO – A Neglected Path To Higher Search Rankings
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Video SEO – A Neglected Path To Higher Search Rankings
Video SEO is an underutilized search engine marketing
strategy. Even as videos continue to gain significant
traction in the search engines’ natural listings, most
companies either ignore them, or remain completely unaware
of their potency. That oversight represents a valuable edge
your company can use to leapfrog your competitors in the
organic rankings.
The strategy blends traditional search optimization tactics
with a relatively new platform. With the rise of YouTube,
Revver, Blip, and similar video sites, consumption patterns
have driven the search engines to provide these sites with
greater ranking authority. As long as your primary
objective is clearly established, a video SEO campaign can
have a dramatic effect on your exposure in Google, Yahoo,
and Bing.
In this article, we’ll explain why you should integrate
video SEO into your current search marketing strategy. We
will also provide a few ingredients that will help you
avoid potential pitfalls along the way. Last, you will
learn what to look out for when choosing a video SEO
company that can drive traffic and conversions.
How Video SEO Improves Your Search Exposure
Before Google released their Universal Search platform in
May 2007, their natural listings were dominated by
text-based pages. Videos were rare in the top spots.
Universal Search changed the way Google displayed their
primary index. Google, Yahoo, and Bing now include entries
from their respective video search platforms. What’s more,
popular video-sharing sites have been given higher ranking
authority and increased link weight (we’ll describe this
latter point in a moment).
Video SEO gives you greater exposure in the search engines
through two levers. First, it caters to the algorithm used
for Universal Search. By allowing syndication of your
videos to authoritative video-sharing sites, you will enjoy
more exposure through their increased ranking authority. In
effect, those sites will rank higher, drawing more people
to your videos.
Second, videos that are placed on your site (as opposed to
syndicating them) attract links – both directly and
indirectly. As your videos gain popularity, direct links
will naturally build, pointing to the pages on your site
that host the videos. Indirect links will point from other
sites whose owners have embedded your videos. As a result,
your inbound link profile will continue to grow and
strengthen, lifting your site higher within the search
engines’ organic listings.
3 SEO Video Tips To Capture Higher Search Positions
Your video SEO campaign can only be effective if you
recognize the limitations of the search engines. First,
their algorithms cannot read lips. In order to rank for
your target keywords, they must be available to the search
engines’ spiders in text form. If you’re placing videos on
your site, optimize your titles and surrounding text, and
include an edited transcript of the video. If you’re
syndicating them, optimize your external titles and tags.
Second, focus on inbound links. An effective video SEO
campaign relies on contextually related links pointing from
a wide breadth of sites. Videos that spark a groundswell of
attention – whether through entertainment, information, or
controversy – can achieve this easily.
Third, integrate a social media sharing component. You want
viewers to share your videos with their friends on
Facebook. You want them to “Tweet” about your videos on
Twitter. You want them to bookmark your videos on
StumbleUpon, Digg and Delicious. These social media sites
can form the backbone of your video SEO campaign, driving
waves of inbound links to your site.
Key Factors In Choosing A Video SEO Company
Traditional search optimization is a mature strategy. SEO
specialists have honed their craft for more than a decade.
By contrast, video SEO is still an evolving science. Even
though it leverages the core tenets of a traditional SEO
campaign, the rise of social media and video-sharing sites
have infused video SEO with enormous complexity. Hiring a
video SEO company removes the need to keep up with the
roiling landscape. The key is using the right criteria to
identify a proficient firm.
A professional video SEO company should have an established
track record that shows a keen grasp of the search engines’
organic algorithms. That track record should also
demonstrate an ability to evolve as the algorithms change.
Many search optimization experts were completely unprepared
for the debut of Universal Search. By extension, so too,
were their clients.
Leveraging Video SEO For More Traffic And Higher Conversions
A carefully executed video SEO campaign can sharply
increase your exposure within the search engine’s natural
listings. When implemented as a component of a
multi-pronged search engine marketing campaign, it can
drive more targeted traffic to your site. Targeted traffic
translates into higher conversions. If you are not yet
utilizing video SEO for your site, your current organic
rankings may be more vulnerable than you realize.
Do You Really Want Your Site on Page One of Google?
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Do You Really Want Your Site on Page One of Google?
Do you really want your website on page one of Google for your
chosen keyword phrase(s)? What do you want your online marketing
campaign to accomplish for you?
I asked a potential new SEO Coaching client last week this first
question. From my end of the phone call, it sounded as if he
almost fell out of his chair!
I followed up by asking him if he could ever think of ANY reason
for his website pages NOT to be found on page 1 in the Google
SERPs (search engine results pages).
How ’bout you? Can you think of any reasons you’d NOT want
your pages to be found for your targeted keyword phrases on page
1?
Keep in mind, I’m talking about your chosen keyword search
phrases.
I can think of at least 3 reasons. Maybe you can come up with
some of your own.
Is there Commercial Intent?
Let’s say you have not just a page 1 Google result, but you’re
actually the first result. Here is an important question for you
to ask yourself.
What is the commercial intent of this keyword phrase? Do the
words contained in the keyword phrase give any indication of
someone getting ready to spend money on a product or service
like you offer?
For instance, compare these keyword phrases: Keyword Research,
Keyword Research Specialist and Keyword Research Consultant. The
latter 2 phrases give an indication of someone who is getting
ready to spend money.
You can also Google the Microsoft Commercial Intent Tool
(http://adlab.microsoft.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/) and
consider its results when evaluating your keyword search
phrase choices.
If you are targeting a keyword phrase that has questionable
commercial intention at best, is there any reason to really
be found on page 1? Wouldn’t it be better to target more
appropriate phrases instead?
If there’s no commercial intent, how does that help your online
marketing?
Can you see where I’m going?
How Much Traffic Really Matters
Now, I’m giving you a choice: you can have a first page result
(with commercial intent) and your position number is 4.
Your other choice is a different keyword search phrase with a
second page result, position number 12, also with commercial
intent.
So, the choice is obvious?
Well, I forgot to give you the rest of the details.
The first page choice has monthly search queries for its
phrase of 3,240.
The second page result choice has monthly search queries for
its phrase of 22,167.
Do you still believe that the best choice in this example is the
first page result?
According to numbers from Aaron Wall’s site, approximately 6%
of search users will click on that number 4 result in Google.
That’s 194 visitors in a month.
This is figuring average title and description tags of typical
online marketing ability to convert to a click. “Your mileage
may vary.”
And for that second choice, the second page result? Over 1%
should click on the search result, but let’s use just 1%.
That’s 222 visitors per month.
Last time I checked, 222 is more than 194, so the second page
result trumps the first page result, because the second page
result has much more traffic than can convert to a transaction.
How Many Google AdWords Ads Show for your Chosen Keyword?
If you don’t see many AdWords ads, this should be a warning!
One of 2 problems exist (or both):
1. There isn’t enough traffic for AdWords advertisers to target
the phrase.
2. There isn’t commercial viability for the phrase.
Either way, is a first page result going to help you? Probably
not.
The Value of a Committed Searcher
Want a recipe to waste your time (or your employees’)?
Get a first page result in Google for your keyword search phrase
and place your toll-free phone number in big numbers on the top
right of each of your Web pages.
People clicking the first result in the SERPs are often less
serious than those who go through the first few results or who
continue searching onto the second page.
There may be something to be said for avoiding people who almost
randomly click the first result and who may have impulse control
“issues”.
Now, if you have a large staff to answer your incoming phone
calls AND if your conversion rate from those calls is strong,
then the potential problem I described probably isn’t a problem
for your business.
On the other hand, if you are a solo professional, this strategy
can be hazardous!
How are you going to perform your paid work when you get
“Internet lookiloos” asking you questions they could get
answered, if they would simply read a few words on your
website?
Are these the best potential clients for your services or
products and the best use of your time?
A second page result could bring you more serious potential
customers, people who might be more likely to actually READ your
website content, understand your products or services better and
who might be more likely to convert to a transaction.
It’s sure something to think about. 
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against first page rankings for
your online marketing. I’m just for thinking a little further
down the road than JUST first page rankings.
The Fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization SEO
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Friday, February 12, 2010
The Fundamentals of SEO
Why SEO?
Search engines provide the majority of traffic to websites
across the Internet, regardless of website focus. Therefore, if
your site cannot be properly located and indexed by the leading
search engines, you are missing out on the best opportunity to
drive targeted visitors and potential revenue.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization or SEO, is the process by which pages
are improved to increase their organic search engine rankings.
This is done by assessing what the individual search engines are
looking for and providing that. The outcome of an SEO Campaign
is to create high organic rankings for the keywords/phrases for
which the client is indeed an authority. This will ultimately
create an increase in targeted traffic. A good SEO campaign
includes the following three aspects:
1. Keyword Analysis
2. Onsite Optimization
3. Offsite Optimization
Keyword analysis is the process by which you analyze and
select keywords based on traffic, competition, and relevance. If
you are not selecting the proper keywords, then the rest of the
optimization is really a lost cause. The text and theme of the
site needs to revolve around these keywords and very much define
how the site appears to both users and search engines.
Onsite optimization deals with changes made to the site
itself. This involves making changes to the text content,
architecture of the site, HTML code, and page layout.
CSS design http://www.webassist.com/dreamweaver-extensions/
css-sculptor/?WAAID=898″) is often recommended when working
to optimize a website as it helps keep important content at the
top of your pages and allows for your pages to be easily and
efficiently crawled by the search engines. This is the most
commonly understood aspect of SEO, but only accounts for about
40% of a site’s rankings. This is where your keywords are placed
throughout the code to show the search engines what your site is
about.
Offsite optimization deals with changes made outside the
scope of the site. This mainly involves increasing the quantity
and quality of inbound links to the site. Approximately 60% of
Google’s current ranking algorithm is based on inbound linking.
Your goal is to maximize the site’s exposure on the Web and get
as many sites as possible to link back to your site.
What is a Good Keyword and What is Not?
This is the ultimate question we have to ask ourselves when
judging keywords. There are many variables you have to take into
account when selecting exactly what keywords your site will be
optimized for. Use the following criteria to determine the
viability of a keyword:
* The estimated amount of searches for the keyword in a 24
hour period
* The number of sites competing for the keyword
* The quality of the sites competing for the keyword
* The ability of the site to support the keyword
* Relevance between keywords
* The target audience of the site
Keep in mind that your number one goal is to accurately depict
what the site is about through the keywords (and the eventual
text content). If your site is not properly described by the
keywords, then either the site is targeted wrong or you’ve
selected the wrong keywords.
Search engines like sites that are targeted to a specific topic.
If a site is spread too thin as far as topic goes, then it will
be much harder to appear as an authority for any one topic.
Search engines do favor large sites, but generally it is better
to have a smaller targeted site than a larger broad site that is
about many topics.
It’s not uncommon to discover site theme issues when doing
keyword selection. Oftentimes, it leads to a reassessment of the
site as a whole (which is a positive). In this way, general
marketing, user experience, and SEO overlap. If you do not feel
your site is targeted towards the correct keywords and themes,
it is important that you re-target the site and its content prior
to optimization. You should understand your audience, the
purpose of your site, and its themes before even starting an SEO
initiative.
It is also common for sites to get caught up in industry jargon.
You have to look at your keywords as your target audience would.
If you’re targeting the general consumer and you use lots of
industry jargon, then you cannot expect much of a return on
investment.
Another thing to watch out for is overly generic keywords. If
you are attempting to optimize your site for keywords that can
mean many other things, you are bringing in a whole lot of new
competition. So, we have a small list now of what to avoid.
* Keywords that are not relevant to each other
* Keywords that do not fit the theme of the site
* Industry jargon, if it is not applicable to the audience
* Keywords that are too generic/overly competitive
META Headers
Optimizing the META header is the first and easiest step in
onsite optimization. There are four main areas that you should
be concerned with:
1. Title
2. Description
3. Keywords
4. Robots
Depending on the keyword selection, the Title should be made up
of the first two keywords. This provides high density and
prominence for both keywords instead of using it all on one. Of
course, the Title should make sense and be descriptive of the
page. The Description borrows the same idea, but expands on it a
little. It is ideal to include both the primary and secondary
keyword in a short sentence describing the page. The Keywords
field is simply a list of the keywords separated by commas with
no spaces in between. The Robots tag tell the search engine
spiders what to do with the page.
Links
“Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by
page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than
the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for
example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes
cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily
and help to make other pages ‘important.’” -Quote from Google’s
website.
Link popularity is one of the most important factors search
engines use in determining where you will rank in the search
engine results (SERPs) for your keywords and phrases, as it
helps them to determine how important or popular your site is
and what its reputation is. Link building, as part of the
offsite optimization process, is the process of finding
related/relevant websites and receiving a link from them to you.
Natural linking occurs when a site has good content that others
will link to without being asked. But to get these links, people
have to know about you. It is a catch 22. Building links has
become pretty sophisticated over the last couple of years. Today
you need a mixture of links from many sources including
articles, press releases, social media, blogs, directories and
others.
10 Things You Need to Know about SEO
I have compiled a list of 10 vital things – from choosing an
expert to instructing your web developer – that every marketer
needs to consider when undertaking search engine optimisation as
part of their marketing mix.
1. Strategy First
Please, don’t ask for a full SEO proposal from an agency until
you have set your strategy. Too often, agencies will respond
with a full proposal, including lots of articles to be created,
sites to be built and links to be implemented without a clear
strategy.
Some sites are more straight forward but others are complex and
would benefit from asking a couple of agencies to get involved
at the research stage – ask them about the strengths and
weaknesses of your site, what they think of your competitors,
and what strategic approach they would take with your site.
To get the best advice from this process, expect to pay the
agencies involved. A small percentage of your online budget
spent on good strategy will save you money in the long term.
Even better, pay two agencies for a strategy recommendation and
then choose the best one for your business!
2. Choosing a Consultant
You need to work with someone who can communicate about SEO in
plain English, someone who can take complicated ideas and
techniques and turn them into something you can understand,
then make a decision on – especially as there are often many
possible solutions to choose from.
Someone with experience in your vertical – such as travel,
finance, retail – as well as several other verticals is
important. An SEO consultant with experience across multiple
types of business, as well as experience that is directly
relevant to you will have better problem solving skills and more
exposure to technologies. Experience in your sector will mean
the consultant will be very helpful in defining your strategy,
understanding terminology, and knowing what your competitors are
doing.
3. Expectations
What are realistic expectations from your investment in SEO?
Too often, we see marketers defining their keyword set or crazy
goals for their site without any basis in how SEO really works.
If you are a law firm, for example, and you want to rank highly
for terms such as “lawyer”, or “barrister”, then you have to
take into account that these are extremely popular and
competitive terms. It might not be achievable, and even if it
is, it’s probably a very hard road to get there.
Be open to advice when setting the goals for your website (which
should be a part of the keyword research period of your SEO
project). If you have a PPC campaign running first, you can use
the keyword data from that campaign to gain an understanding of
what is important for your website.
4. Using the Right Language
Optimising begins with keyword research that helps you
understand the language your customers are using to find your
products and services.
Be realistic. It may sound obvious but, if the words your
customers are using to search are not on your website pages,
then you won’t be found in the search engines for those words.
Similarly, brand words and buzz words are all very nice in
marketing, but if people aren’t using those words to search,
then again you won’t be found.
Be ready to change the language of your site. Be open to the
idea of conforming your website to the language people use.
Optimisation is about including those words in the right areas
of your pages (such as navigation, links, headings, meta tags
and content) so the search engine sees all the right signals to
understand what your site’s pages should be ranked for.
5. Measurement
Rankings are not the only measure of success! For many years,
SEO firms have measured everything on rankings. However, we
recommend using analytics similar to a PPC (paid) search
campaign for a more comprehensive measure of success.
Here is a simple description of how to do that: Take what you
are spending on SEO and put it against traffic and conversions
to work out cost per unique browser, cost per click and cost per
conversion. It’s best to analyse these over a period of six
and/or twelve months to allow for any changes in SEO to come into
effect. This is because the major difference between SEO and PPC
is the implementation time – for SEO, the results will take
months, rather than days.
6. Moving Variables
There are so many moving variables in SEO that it would be
impossible to find one person who knows everything! But a good
SEO consultant is worth their weight in gold. Their value is not
necessarily in the implementation, but in tapping into their
experience to find the right implementation. One tiny piece of
advice from them which may take 10 minutes to explain could be
worth more than a copywriter producing numerous articles for
your site each month.
7. One Agency or Two?
Some agencies have two separate teams working on SEO and PPC.
Some marketers choose two completely different agencies to
handle their SEO and PPC campaigns.
However, the two are very closely related and the results from
one can be useful to the other. For instance, the keyword data
from your PPC campaign can help with your SEO keyword research.
On the flip side, optimising pages for SEO will usually provide
your PPC campaigns with a better quality score. When PPC and SEO
listings are seen together on a search engine, they usually
increase the click-through and conversion rates for both
campaigns.
They go hand in hand, and each can have a positive effect on the
other if done well. And with one agency on both campaigns, they
will have a greater depth of experience with your business,
which can only help you to succeed.
8. Web Developers are not SEO Experts
Finally, a word on expertise. Most web developers say they are
experts in SEO (http://www.dgmmarketing.com.au/
search-engine-optimisation.htm). There is no doubting that many
of them do a reasonable job, but they are not truly specialists
in the area of SEO.
In the same way, I wouldn’t recommend that an SEO specialist
designs your website. They are specialist skills, which both
contribute to the success of your business online.
9. Use of Java Script
Those pesky robots that the major search engines rely on to rank
web pages have until recently imposed some limitations for web
development. While useful code such as Java Script can make your
website really functional – a simple example is a loan
calculator, and many websites’ navigation and links – and thus
attractive to users, the robots often couldn’t follow the code
properly, and thus skipped over it. The major problem was that
commonly, web developers didn’t know that Java Script wasn’t
being read or followed by the robots.
That has changed recently, with Google updating its technology
so that the robots can read and follow Java Script. When the
robots can follow a website’s navigation and links properly, the
SEO rankings are greatly influenced.
10. Flash
Potentially any Flash file can now be indexed, according to
Google, but it still depends on how that Flash site is
constructed. Generally older Flash sites are not seen in the
most effective way by the search engines, though it depends on
the practices of the Flash developer. Many older Flash sites
have overcome this problem by building an underlying version of
the site in html – though this method too has its drawbacks.
Flash sites need to be built like html sites, with multiple
files that optimise each keyword. If you are building a new
Flash site, be sure to consult with an SEO expert before the
developer starts on the build.
Sitemaps and SEO
Creating an HTML sitemap and a XML sitemap for your website
could be the easiest thing you do to improve your exposure on
the web. For those of you who pay close attention to the search
engine optimization (SEO) of your site, this could be the one
thing that gets you onto the first page of Google’s results. For
those who don’t devote too much time on the SEO of their site -
this is a good place to start. By submitting a sitemap to
various search engines, you are telling them that you exist and
what pages your site has to offer the World Wide Web.
There are two types of sitemaps, HTML and XML. An HTML sitemap
provides a useful directory of all the pages that are in your
site. While XML sitemaps play an important role in helping the
search engine “crawl” the various pages of your site. This
Roadmap discusses the benefit of creating both an HTML sitemap
and XML sitemap, and how you can go about creating them using a
sitemap generator.
HTML Sitemaps
An HTML sitemap is a single HTML page that contains links to all
the pages of your website. Normally, this is accessible via a
link in your site footer, where it will be displayed on every
page. With large sites, it is easy to get lost and struggle to
find the page you are looking for. With a well organized HTML
sitemap, your site visitors will be able to use this to easily
find the page they are looking for.
From an SEO perspective, as the search engine’s robot (or
spider) crawls your site indexing pages, it may find some pages
on your site easier using this sitemap, rather than through the
general navigation. Therefore, sitemaps can benefit your site
visitors and even play a role in enhancing your exposure on the
web.
Take a look at WebAssist’s sitemap (http://www.webassist.com/
sitemap.php) to get an idea of what an HTML sitemap looks like.
Notice that each page on the WebAssist website contains a link
to this page in the footer.
XML Sitemaps
HTML sitemaps are designed to benefit your human site visitors,
whereas XML sitemaps are created specifically for the search
engines. All of the most popular search engines including
Google, Yahoo and Ask.com utilize XML sitemaps
(http://www.webassist.com/dreamweaver-extensions/surveyor/?WAAID=898)
as part of their process for indexing the pages of a website. A
good XML sitemap will tell the search engine what pages are in
your site, how often those pages are updated, and when they were
last modified. This way, the search engines know which pages to
revisit more regularly, and are likely to do a better job of
indexing them. Here’s an example of the XML you might include
in your XML sitemap:
Notice that for the index.htm page of this website, we have
provided details regarding the last modified date (
the frequency that this page is updated (
priority of this page in relation to the other pages of our site
(
possible to the search engine, they will be better equipped to
index your site, and give the correct pages the appropriate
attention.
TIP: Be honest about the information you provide in your
sitemap. If a search engine finds that you are not updating your
site as often as your sitemap suggests, they may come back less
often.
Creating both HTML and XML Sitemaps
Creating HTML sitemaps is as easy as creating a basic HTML page
that contains links to all the pages in your site. However, you
need to keep in mind that whenever you create new pages in your
site, you will want to add those links on the sitemap as
well.
Creating XML sitemaps manually can be quite a time consuming
process. However, there are many great sitemap generators out
there to help you automate this. If you Google “sitemap
generator” (http://www.webassist.com/dreamweaver-extensions/
surveyor/?WAAID=898) you will find that there are a number of
free and paid sitemap tools that you can use.
Here at WebAssist, we have developed Surveyor to help you create
both HTML sitemaps and XML sitemaps. Surveyor is a Dreamweaver
extension that you can use as part of your website development.
For Dreamweaver users, this is the easiest and most efficient
way to create sitemaps. Surveyor includes multiple step-by-step
interfaces that guide you through creating your sitemap with all
the necessary details, and then submits your sitemap to the five
most popular search engines on the web. Surveyor even includes a
reminder tool that you can schedule to alert you when it is time
to submit an updated sitemap.
How Often Should I Submit My Sitemap?
You should be in the habit of submitting a sitemap to search
engines a number of times a year. This allows you to update the
search engine on any new pages in your site. If you create new
pages on a regular basis, you may want to submit your sitemap
more frequently.
Conclusion
Both HTML sitemaps and XML sitemaps are a good step in the right
direction to improve your website’s exposure. You will most
likely find your search engine rankings climb after submitting a
sitemap for the first time. However, keep in mind that this is
only one part of search engine optimization, and there is a lot
more you can do to improve how search engines rank the pages on
your site and your website’s discoverability.
Firefox SEO Tools
Every SEO uses different tools and resources. Some tools are
paid, some are free and some are internally developed tools that
we use for ourselves and our clients – but we all use them. Very
often I get asked what tools people should use if they’re looking
to optimize their own sites and what resources they should use
to keep up with the latest going’s on. While telling people how
to optimize their own sites and what the tools we use isn’t
generally the best of business practices – I just can’t help
myself. If your budget doesn’t allow for the hiring of a
professional SEO company – trying it yourself may be the only
option. I also try to remember that once-upon-a-time I was
optimizing my own sites and was new to SEO and without the open
advice of others already involved in the community – I wouldn’t
be running a successful SEO company today. To this end, it only
seems right to provide a list of some of the main tools we use
on virtually every site.
When I initially started writing this article I was going to
cram a slew of various tools and resources into one article,
but the article was going to end up running WAY too long to hold
your attention (or mine) so I’ve cut it into three EZ parts (as
opposed to three EZ payments which you’ll be familiar with if
you too watch late night TV with a laptop in front of you
writing things like SEO articles). But let’s get to the meat of
this article shall we? The series will be divided into three
parts:
* Firefox
* Free & Affordable Tools
* Resources
So let’s begin with Firefox. Let me first say, I don’t know if
Firefox is officially the browser of SEO’s, but if not – it
should be. You can download it here
(http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=affiliates&id=107200&t=1).
And now the extensions that make this browser invaluable to
SEO’s …
SEO Quake (http://www.seoquake.com/)
If I had to lose all but one of my SEO tools – this would be the
one I’d keep which is why it gets listed first. This little tool
allows me to quickly look at the top 10 results in the SERPs and
within seconds see all the PageRank, indexed page numbers,
backlinks to that page, domain backlinks, the age of the site
and much, much more.
This tool doesn’t provide any revolutionary information in that
it’s all data that can be accessed directly. However, it reduces
the time taken for tasks that would take minutes to seconds. It
then provides easy links to more detailed information. A
fantastic tool.
Oh, and it also adds a line through all nofollowed links. Very
handy when link building.
SEO for Firefox (http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html)
Aaron Wall over at SEO Book has added a great tool to the mix
that duplicates a lot of functions of SEO Quake but which has
enough additional features to be very useful. Basically – neither
is a replacement for the other.
Like most tools – it provides information that can be accessed
in other ways, BUT with this Tool Aaron allows users to find
tons of relevant site and keyword information quickly and
painlessly. From keyword traffic to keyword trends, from
backlink counts to social media mentions – this tools gives
quick access to tons of information.
Admittedly, I prefer the layout of SEO Quake and some of the
easier functionality.
SEO Link Analysis (http://yoast.com/tools/seo/link-analysis/)
A HUGE thumbs way up (two of them in fact) to Joost de Valk who
made all our lives simpler when this tool launched. What this
tool does is display the PageRank and anchor text of every link
when you perform a backlink check on one of the major engines.
I suppose you could visit every single site and get this
information yourself and there’s value in that to be sure, but
when you need a quick analysis of a site’s backlinks – this tool
is invaluable.
As a sidenote � it works VERY well with SEO Quake.
Web Developer (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60)
With this tool we’re getting a bit more advanced. For those of
you who understand coding or are learning (and you should be),
this tool is incredible. It allows for quick testing and viewing
of a site’s structure including, image info, table and cell
information, W3C compliance, CSS details and MUCH, MUCH more.
I can’t possibly list off all the functions this tool offers and
admittedly I don’t use them all but I use enough of them
regularly for this tool to make my top 10 list.
IE Tab (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419″)
This is an odd tool to add and it’s purely a convenience tool
but like adding a second monitor to your system – once you have
it and realize that it saves you just a few seconds dozens of
times per day you quickly realize that your productivity relies
on it.
With a simple click of a button, this tool loads Internet
Explorer into your Firefox tab so you don’t have to go
back-and-forth between browsers when testing. I could survive
without it, but since you have Firefox anyways…
Search Status (http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/)
This is another tool with many uses. On the surface it simply
displays PageRank, Alexa and Compete rank and mozRank data but
with a right-click of the icon you get access to a whole slew of
additional information, including fast links to whois, the
robots and sitemap files, keyword density information,
Archive.org info, and it will even highlight nofollow links.
A lot of these features overlap other tools noted above, but I
will say – I have it installed and so should you.
These are the main extensions I have installed for Firefox
(read: the ones I use virtually every day). This isn’t to say
that’s all there are, and I can’t stress enough the benefits of
visiting https://addons.mozilla.org/ and looking for more useful
extensions specific to your needs (RSS, Twitter, coding, etc.)
I have about a dozen more installed than are listed here, but
those above are the main Firefox SEO tools I use daily.
In the next article, we’ll be taking a look at free and
affordable tools that you can use to help improve your website
rankings. Be sure to keep your eyes open as there will be many
invaluable tools listed there too.
Welcome to part two of this three part series on SEO tools and resources. In the last article we discussed the variety of Firefox extensions used for SEO. In this article we’ll discuss some of the free and affordable tools
you can use to better your organic optimization efforts. By affordable I mean for virtually everyone so I’m going to set the bar at $100/yr or ownership. Admittedly, we use tools that cost more than this, but many of those tools will be out of some people’s price range.
Here are some of the key tools you need to use to help insure the successful optimization of your website.
Google Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal)
Many of you are likely familiar with Google’s keyword tool, but it needs to be noted. This is a great resource for
researching keywords. As with all keyword tools, it has its limitations and most would agree that it seems to overestimate search volume but nonetheless it is probably the best of the keyword tools out there, especially at the price.
Keyword Discovery (http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/)
No individual set of data is perfect and no stage of the SEO process is more important than keyword research and selection.
Keyword Discovery is a great tool to compare with the Google keyword data. Where you find commonalities you know that 2 independent sets of data agree. With a free trial that may itself work for many – it’s certainly worth looking into.
Keyword Spy (http://www.keywordspy.com/?af=beanstalkseo)
While the paid version of this tool is more than the $100/yr. max I noted previously – the free version provides some great data. Simply enter a competitor URL and you’ll find out some valuable data about the keywords they rank for both organically and in AdWords. This is great for competitor analysis as well as for finding keywords you might not have thought of.
Xenu Link Sleuth (http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html)
A fantastic free tool that crawls websites, reporting back all the broken links. Over time, almost all sites get broken links. Running this tool periodically will help you find them so you can fix them.
Google Webmaster Tools (http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/)
Arguably one of the most important of the SEO tools. Google Webmaster Tools allows webmasters (and SEO’s of course) to see their website the way Google does. With this tool you’ll get to see what your site is appearing for in the results, what pages on your site are linked to but don’t exist, and a wide array of errors and statistics.
With this information you can repair a number of issues. If your site is appearing for phrases that you’re not getting traffic from, you can review your titles and descriptions to see if you can improve your clickthrough rate. Xenu won’t show you the links from other sites that are pointing to pages that don’t exist – Google Webmaster Tools will. You’ll also find good backlink information for your site as well as a lot more.
Page Prowler (http://www.page-prowler.com/)
Page Prowler is a backlink research tool that allows the user to collect large amounts of potential backlink
information, sort that data by site strength, and then proceed to pursue those backlinks. The value of this tool is primarily in the time it saves. It has no function that could not be done manually, but it can compile data that would otherwise take a person hours or days to collect quickly and easily.
Full disclosure: Shawn (the developer) asked me to advise on the development of this link building tool and I’m
also assisting in it’s marketing. I was extremely impressed with Shawn’s first version of PR Prowler which includes some great functions and information. I felt the need to note this, but I’ll also note that we at Beanstalk use this tool regularly.
I would not include it here if it didn’t deserve to be and I’d include it here if I had nothing to do with it other than my using it.
Advanced Web Ranking (http://www.advancedwebranking.com/)
Advanced Web Ranking is probably the most affordable of the better rank checking software programs. It has a ton of great features including scheduling and auto-report generation. You can set the searches to take place slowly to reduce the impact on the search engines. I still recommend to run it in the evening to further minimize your impact during high-volume search periods.
Multiple Keyword Rack-Checking Tool (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/tools/multikeyword_rank/)
This is probably one of the most popular tools on the Beanstalk site. One of the pet peeves I always had with online rank checking tools was checking rankings one-at-a-time. This tool allows you to check your rankings on Google ten at a time. Apparently others agree as it’s the most used tool of our set.
136 SEO Tools (http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/seo-tools.html)
While we’ve tried to include a solid set of very affordable tools in this article, you might find value in tools we don’t use. The “136 SEO Tools” page is regularly updated and includes some very interesting (though not part of my daily arsenal) tools. Highly recommended to visit at least once. I have it in my bookmarks and check back every couple months to see what new tools have been added.
Next Week
In part three of this article series we’ll be taking a look at a slew of invaluable SEO resources that you need to visit regularly to keep up-to-date on this ever-changing industry. While there are more than can be listed in a single article, I’ll be covering my first points of access when I’m looking for news or others’ opinions on SEO and search engine events.
2009 saw a lot of exciting changes and additions to the world of online marketing and search engine optimization. Some important events that took place were the launch of BING, announcement of Google Caffeine, the merger of Yahoo and Microsoft search. 2010 will see real time web emerging which will become more popular than the traditional methods of optimization.
Following is the list of pointers to get your website on top, reach out to potential customers and ensure brand visibility in 2010.
1. Decrease Webpage Load Time. Google’s Matt Cutts recently hinted that the load time of a website may affect its ranking in the search engines. That is, the faster a website loads, the better its chances to rank well for its niche keywords. Website load time is touted as the next big step towards improved rankings. The pre-requisites to a good webpage load time are; reputable web host and fast internet connection.
2. Get Listed in Google Local Search. Getting listed in Google Local Search ensures brand visibility in front of visitors from the nearby places. It has been proven that the number of visitors to a website increase exponentially when listed in local search results. The reason being, a customer will always prefer to purchase a quality product which is easily available in his or her vicinity rather than order it from another unfamiliar city or state.
3. Get Involved in Social Media. Social Media is the flavor of the season and in 2010 organizations are going to actively engage in conversation and social networking and reach out to their potential customers. Social Media Marketing is a must for every organization as it helps create brand awareness and build relationships with consumers in the highly competitive market. Micro targeting and Personalization will be the keywords in 2010.
4. Optimize Your Website Mobile Users. With and ever increasing number of people tweeting and using Facebook from their mobile devices, a lot of organizations are now finally paying attention to how their websites appear on mobile phones. You can have your website appear on the mobile under the same URL or have a special domain for the same. The most common way is to have the domain name as mobile.websitename.com.
5. Apply Web Analytics to its full potential. There are hundreds of web analytics tools in the market which provide a mountain of data pertaining to the visitor’s usage. Some of the most well known web analytics tools are Omniture, Google Analytics and Yahoo! Web Analytics etc. Web Analytics tools can answer the “how” but not the “why”. That is, you can find out how many visitors checked the product catalogue webpage, but not the answer to, why the visitors didn’t place an order for the product. Organizations need to dissect the data from web analytics tools and successfully apply its learning’s to enhance their visitors experience and in turn increase sales revenues.
In 2010 companies must go beyond organic search engine optimization by integrating social media marketing and optimizing their websites for mobile users.
Google Caffeine And The New Ranking Factors
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 1:55 PM
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Google Caffeine And The New Ranking Factors
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2009
Google Caffeine is the name given to Google’s “Next Generation”
search engine, which it will use to rank and index all the pages
on the wonderful world wide web. According to all indications,
this is not just another one of Google’s infamous Updates, but a
major “Overhaul” of its index and algorithm – the complex formula
and calculations Google uses to rank all web pages, including
yours.
If that doesn’t sound ominous enough, according to Matt Cutts
(Google Spokesperson) one database is already showing Google
Caffeine, and the full blown version will be released after the
holidays. The reasoning behind this – Google doesn’t want to
upset webmasters and site owners during the lucrative holiday
buying season. In the past, other major Google Updates have come
around this time of the year, most notably the “Florida Update”
which severely affected many web sites and webmasters.
Recently, Google has been more aware and much more generous to
webmasters by being more open and forthcoming in regards to how
it indexes its pages. This time around, webmasters were even
given access to a beta version of Caffeine which Google released
last summer (’09) where webmasters could check to see how well
their keywords and site would fare in this new search index.
This beta site (www2.sandbox.google.com) has now been taken down
by Google.
Like any professional search engine marketer who works online, I
was constantly checking my sites and keywords in Google’s new
search engine. I have drawn some conclusions from what I have
observed, but please be aware it is often very foolish to draw
conclusions and make predictions from your own small sampling of
results. You can end up with egg on your face very quickly,
especially when you consider Google is probably still making
adjustments and refinements on Caffeine as it analyzes the
results.
However, there are certain ranking factors that even Google is
telling us about, mainly “Site Speed” or how fast your site
loads will play a part in how its ranked. We have also heard a
lot about “Broken Links” and if your page or site has them, then
it will probably be ranked lower. Of course, linking out to “Bad
Neighborhoods” will probably still not be a good practice, if you
want higher rankings within Google.
It should not come as a shock or a surprise, that “Over-All Page
Quality” will play a greater role in how well your page ranks.
Keep in mind, Google is like any other company putting out a
product, if that product doesn’t have a high standard of
quality, it reflects badly back on everyone concerned. Google’s
SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) are the key to all their
online revenue, they must do everything in their power to keep
that product fast, relevant, current and above all high quality.
Therefore, expect “OnPage Factors” to play a much greater role
in Google Caffeine. Quality unique content, page design, good
navigation, title, meta tags, description, keyword density, alt
tags, page views, bounce rate, traffic numbers, time spent on
page, and the number of social bookmarks may play an increased
role in achieving high rankings. A perfectly optimized keyworded
page, with the keyword in the title, description, meta tags, alt
tags, on the page… will probably get you ranked higher in
Caffeine, as well as most search engines on the web.
This may be pure speculation on my part, but one of the areas
Caffeine will be addressing or incorporating is “Social
BookMarking”, that is the number of social bookmarks a page
receives will determine how high it is ranked. I also believe
one of the major reasons these bookmarks will become much more
important has to do with the whole nasty issue of link buying.
Now, the integrity of Google’s index is not in question, but any
savvy marketer or webmaster knows any individual or company with
deep pockets and huge resources can buy their way into the top
spot. Despite Google’s attempt to stop it, link buying and
keyword positioning, is a thriving industry on the web. Rightly
or wrongly, money and unlimited resources will get you or your
company to the top in organic search, regardless of which search
engine you’re targeting.
All moral and ethnical issues aside, the small webmaster and/or
online marketer is stuck right in the middle, with Google on one
side and these major multinational competitors on the other.
Looming on the horizon is Google Caffeine, a new sheriff in town!
What New Rules Will This Sheriff Bring?
The major question here is this: has the importance of
backlinking been downplayed in this new index in favor of the
keyworded domain and onsite content and optimization? Has there
been a major shift to listing more quality content rather than
relying on the number of backlinks a site is receiving, even
from important related themed sites? The major problem and
question to Google is this: if links can be bought, how do you
keep your organic results democratic and fair, which was the
original intention of Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they
started Google in 1998.
One Possible Solution is Social Bookmarking.
Will we see an ever growing importance of social bookmarks and
links in this new index. It is quite easy to buy 1000 links, but
getting 1000 or 10,000 “re-tweets” is a little more difficult.
Similarly, getting two or three thousand “diggs” may be a little
harder to pull off. Same goes for Del.icio.us bookmarks,
Facebook fans… well you get the picture. Will Google’s use of
these new social sites make Caffeine faster, more relevant, more
current and most importantly of all, can it bring some democracy
back into their index?
Of course, nothing in Google’s new index will be that cut and
dry, that black and white. Other ranking factors such as age of
site, past history and reputation, traffic numbers, authority
branding… will all play a role in whether your site gets
listed on that all important first page. However, on page
factors may play a greater role – title, meta tags, description,
keyword density, alt tags, page views, bounce rate, time spent
on page, and the number of social bookmarks may play an
increased role in achieving high rankings. Website speed or how
fast your site loads may also be a new ranking factor.
Underlying this whole issue is the fact which many experienced
webmasters/marketers already know, Google’s SERPs are not a
one-trick pony anymore. For very lucrative (monetized) keyword
phrases, Google’s results are broken up into Five categories…
Info listings, Video listings, News Listings, Shopping Listings
and Corporate Listings. Forget Caffeine, this is probably the
fairest move Google has made in the last few years to make its
SERPs more democratic.
Another even more puzzling issue for me concerning Google
Caffeine is how much emphasis or ranking power will it place on
“Keyworded Domains”, domain names which have your keyword or
keyword phrase in them. Will these domains be ranked higher?
Webmasters and marketers for years have been telling us we
should always pick domain names which have our major keywords in
them. Just common sense really, someone searching for “brown
widgets” will more likely than not find that item at a domain
called brownwidgets(dot)com or brownwidget(dot)com. The major
SEO reasoning, all your backlinks will inherently have your
searched keyword in the URL, thus bringing it up in the
rankings.
Against this whole backdrop, everyone has to realize the web
itself is evolving, new sites like Twitter, FaceBook… have
changed the whole cyber landscape. Likewise, the web user is
also changing and becoming more web savvy in how they use the
web. Will search engines, not only Google, take a back-seat role
in how we find stuff on the web? As major sites are branded into
the web user’s psyche, will these users go directly to these
sites, by-passing the search engines altogether?
As the web evolves, keyworded domains will become more valuable
and this value will be reflected in the quality of the site. If
you’re making thousands or even millions from your keyworded
domain, you can afford to invest in quality content and design.
Cream rises to the top. Gradually, as these domains become more
valuable, they will probably be snapped up by marketers and
companies who know just how to exploit them. Thousands upon
thousands of keyworded domains will probably be bought up by
multi-billion dollar corporations who finally realize what the
web has to offer. This new evolved web will probably be much
more narrower in scope and very topic specific.
In the “Next Generation” Web the Re-Direct Shall Be King!
Will the role of the search engines, whether it be Google or
Bing/Yahoo, become less and less important, as savvy web
searchers go directly to a site by typing in the keyworded
domain to find what they’re looking for on the web? Cutting out
the middleman may just become a world wide passion as big
multinational and fully funded corporations snap up all these
valuable and lucrative keyworded domains. Will we see these
domains grow in importance and the search engines take more of a
back-up role? Human nature dictates we always take the fastest
route to our destination and the web will be no exception to
this rule.
Have all the smart people at Google figured this out already,
and designed the new Google Caffeine to reflect the growing
importance of the keyworded domain? Of course, we can only
speculate when it comes to just what Google is planning and
doing with its next generation search engine, but will onsite
factors and your domain name play a greater role in their
organic SERPs?
Regardless of what the new sheriff actually does, when the dust
finally settles on all these latest developments, the keyworded
domain will probably be standing tall, watching the sun rise on
a brand new day.
Website Traffic Generation Planning and Methodologies
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 1:51 PM
Friday, January 15, 2010
Website Traffic Generation Planning and Methodologies
By Duncan Wierman (c) 2009
Real Estate internet marketing is like any other kind of
marketing, you’re trying to reach a niche market and must
plan accordingly. You have to start by identifying your
target market in order to develop your message conveying
exactly the kind of high value business proposition which
your niche will respond to.
The first steps are to:
1) Identify your target market; start with geo targeting
and work with the demographics from there.
2) Decide how you want to be perceived by this target
market and decide how you’ll foster this perception.
3) Identify and refine your value proposition.
Once you’ve done this, the next step is to develop and
distribute your value proposition, making sure that your
value proposition is perceived by your target market
exactly as intended. In marketing, shaping consumer
perception isn’t just the most important thing: it’s
everything.
You have to start by positioning yourself to be perceived
in a specific way; from here, you’ll need to maintain,
develop, grow or alter this market position as you deem
necessary.
The real challenge is putting these principles into action:
Driving Traffic
There are some important principles of traffic generation
you need to understand in order to be successful at
bringing visitors into your website.
There are both principles and rules of traffic generation;
principles have to do with your approach to the task and
the rules are the practical nuts and bolts of driving
traffic. You need to have an understanding of the larger
picture before you can successfully put the practical
techniques into action.
What you’ll usually see a lot of is the techniques alone.
While this is still valuable information, you probably
won’t get far with these techniques if you aren’t versed in
the underlying principles of traffic generation.
These are the most important principles of traffic
generation:
* Traffic generation isn’t a black art – it’s something
which largely relies on common sense and methods which
can be replicated with consistent results.
* The reason people usually fail in their traffic
generation efforts is that they don’t truly commit to
making traffic generation techniques a fully integrated
part of their business strategy.
* You need to create a plan for driving traffic. Think of
it as a road map; follow it, but remember that it’s not
carved in stone. Your plan can and should evolve to
reflect your real life experience and results.
* Continually test and track the results of your traffic
generation efforts – and adjust your plan accordingly.
* Set goals for yourself and as you meet them, raise the
bar; traffic generation is a process, not a single
objective.
* Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see results
immediately.
* Remember that driving traffic begins with building your
site – Why is this? Because your site should be built
from the ground up with visitors in mind. Look at other
sites in your industry to gain an understanding of
patterns of visitor behavior.
See what these other sites are doing; don’t hesitate to
take a page from your competition’s playbook if you see
something which is working for them.
This is where things can become challenging; it’s something
like standing in Grand Central Station at rush hour with a
megaphone, trying to be heard above the noise of the crowd.
The goal here is to get the attention of your target
market and get them to come to your site.
All business is arbitrage. You’re taking something which is
cheap (to you, at least) and exchanging it for something of
higher value – buy low, sell high.
For example, SEO and other free traffic generation
strategies essentially trade your time for traffic which is
of higher value to you; this value may be measured directly
in monetary terms or in other means (for instance, as
signups to a list). The same is true of paid methods of
driving traffic like PPC advertising; you’re paying what
you deem to be a small amount for something else which you
see as more valuable.
If you’ve been reading carefully so far, you may have
noticed that I haven’t said a word about being indexed by
the search engines; that’s because this falls under the
heading of techniques, not the principles of traffic
generation. While you do of course want to be indexed, this
isn’t your primary objective – and it’s something which
will happen naturally as you work to drive traffic using
other strategies.
Don’t lose sleep over the search engine crawlers; they will
come sooner or later. Remember that even once your site is
indexed, it’s no guarantee that visitors will follow.
Focusing on being indexed is losing sight of the forest for
the trees. This will happen anyway as a side effect of
using other traffic generation methods. What you should be
focused on is getting targeted traffic to your site. For
instance, if you exchange links with another site (or even
a directory) relevant to your industry, the search engine
crawlers will follow these links when indexing this other
site and voila! Your site will be indexed.
What you need to do is to let the web know that your site
is there while simultaneously driving targeted traffic. The
best way to do so is to create links to your site from
other sites; not only do these result in your site being
indexed, but back links are great SEO and of course, they
can generate traffic directly through visitor clicks.
Here are a few things you can do to start driving traffic
almost immediately:
* Whenever you add new content to your site or blog,
submit this content to the social bookmarking sites
(Digg, Technorati, etc.). Make an effort to give your
posts attention-getting titles so that people will be
interested in reading your content.
* Post comments on blogs which have a similar audience to
the one you’re trying to reach. Don’t post comment spam;
write real, thoughtful comments and include a link back
to your own site.
* Start contributing to forums and message boards relevant
to your industry.
* Create an RSS feed for your site or blog and submit this
feed to directories.
* Write articles on your niche topic and submit them to
article directories.
* Join link exchanges
* Build a linkwheel; create blogs and pages on platforms
like HubPages, Squidoo, Facebook, etc. and link them to
each other in a web ring-style structure. This helps
the search engines identify the topic of your site and
will improve your page rank as well.
These techniques can start driving traffic to your site
very quickly; if you implement all of these methods and
follow the basic principles of traffic generation, you
really can’t fail at bringing in targeted traffic.
So why do so many people fail at traffic generation?
Because they don’t stick with it and follow through; far
too many website owners give up after a few days or a few
weeks, saying that it’s just too much work for too little
result – instead of analyzing their efforts and figuring
out what is and isn’t working for them.
So how about search engine optimization (SEO)? Here’s what
you really need to know about:
1) Focusing on search engines rather than your potential
customers is always a losing bet. If you’re putting all of
your energy towards keeping up with the search engines and
their constantly evolving algorithms, you’re losing sight
of your visitors.
2) Optimizing your site for very competitive (i.e. popular)
keywords means fighting an uphill battle with no guarantee
of success.
3) Generally speaking, you’ll do best with long tail
keywords; these require far less work in terms of
optimizing your content. Long tail keywords are also very
effective at attracting targeted traffic. The effort you
put into optimizing your content for long tail keywords
will bring you much better results than the same amount of
time and effort spent optimizing your site for popular
keywords.
4) Offsite optimization is just as important (if not more
so) than on site SEO. Back links can do wonders for your
traffic; but remember to keep all of your efforts focused
on visitors, not search engines whether you’re working on
on-site or offsite SEO.
5) Base your traffic generation strategy on visitors and
the search engines will follow.
6) As you develop and implement SEO techniques, always keep
in mind how people actually look for information online -
that’s why long tail keywords are so important. It’s a lot
easier to rank high in the search results for long tail
keywords. Being in the top 10 on Google for several long
tail keywords will bring you a lot more traffic than being
on the 10th page of results for a highly competitive
keyword (which is where you’ll start out if you’re very
lucky if you choose to go this route).
Remember that it’s a long way to the top; be patient and
enjoy the view on your way up. Stick with it and you’ll
eventually have more traffic than you know what to do with!
20 Tools for Tracking Social Media Marketing
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 1:29 PM
Thursday, January 14, 2010
20 Tools for Tracking Social Media Marketing
By Merle (c) 2010 MerlesWorld
(http://MerlesWorld.com)
Social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter make it easy
for people to come together and share opinions, experiences and
thoughts on a number of topics. Smart companies understand this
and are using the power of social media to connect and inform
their customers, and potential customers. Referred to as “Social
Media Marketing”, it’s a smart way to open the lines of
communication between you and your prospects.
Social media activities run the gamut from Blogging, micro
blogging sites such as Twitter, social networking communities
such as LinkedIn and Facebook, video and music uploading sites,
discussion forums, photo sharing and more. With so many
different sites and ways to participate, it can be difficult to
keep track of all your efforts.
Participating in social media doesn’t take a lot of money, but
it is very time consuming and businesses want to know that all
of this investment in time is paying off. Before launching a
campaign, you should have a firm grasp on what it is you’re
trying to accomplish. Is it increasing website traffic? Getting
more ezine subscribers? Having more people download your free
ebook or whitepaper? Or maybe you just want to work on your
company’s brand image. Whatever it is, you need to have a plan.
As the old saying goes, “If you don’t know where you’re going,
you’ll never get there”. Have your game plan intact before
getting started in marketing yourself, or your company with
social media.
There are many different forms of social media, so it’s
impossible to use them all. Pick three or four, and funnel the
majority of your efforts there. Even if you won’t be working
them all, at the very least you should claim your name or
company name on as many social services as possible. You don’t
want to find out later that someone has the user name that you
want. If you need to see if your chosen user name is available
try http://Namechk.com which checks dozens of social media
networking and bookmarking sites all at once to see if it’s
available. Claim your name now so you won’t end up being sorry
later.
So how do you monitor all the buzz? How do you monitor your
brand and protect your hard earned reputation? I thought you’d
never ask. There isn’t one fool-proof method but there are many
services and tools out there that will make it easy to see who’s
talking about you online. Some are free and others will make you
pull out your wallet.
These “online reputation management” tools, as they’re often
referred to, will help you to define keywords or phrases you
wish to track and then watch for any mention of your company
name, products, or services. It’s important to defend and monitor
your online reputation. Similar to High School reputations,
protecting your image online is the name of the game, and just
as in real life, everyone has one to maintain.
Let’s take a look at some of the measuring and tracking tools at
your disposal:
1) http://BackTweets.com : A search engine for Twitter. See
who’s tweeting your links and more. Can also sign up for email
alerts of new findings.
2) http://Addictomatic.com : A little different than the others,
you type in a keyword, topic or phrase and out it goes searching
the top blogs, news sites, Google, Technorati, Ask, YouTube,
Flickr, Digg, Topix and more. You’ll be given a personalized
results page to bookmark with everything it finds related to
your topic.
3) http://Buzzoo.net : All about Internet buzz, it tracks
several different websites to bring you what’s “hot” right now.
4) http://Surchur.com : Search for the latest and greatest on
topics that are popular right now. Type in a keyphrase and it
searches blogs, social news sites, photo and video sites for
your chosen topic.
5) http://Commentful.Blogflux.com : This service watches for
comments on blog posts, Digg, Flickr, and others and notifies
you of any findings.
6) http://AlertRank.com : A better way to organize and sort
Google alerts. Get a daily report emailed to you in a
spreadsheet format of what it finds.
7) http://BoardTracker.com : A search engine for forums only.
Monitor discussion boards and be notified by email when a thread
matching your search terms is discovered. Free to use.
http://www.google.com/alerts : I’ve been using this “secret
weapon” for years. Simply type in your name or company name and
receive daily emails of results found. They do the work, you
receive the links. Free and nice.
9) http://BrandsEye.com : An online reputation management tool
with a real-time, concise overview of your online reputation.
Multiple levels of services and pricing available. Starting at
$1.00.
10) http://Twazzup.com : Another Twitter only search engine.
11) http://SiteMention.com : Type in your url and find out
what’s being said about you. The results returned are gathered
from Google Blog Search, Twitter, FriendFeed, YouTube, MySpace,
Digg, Delicious and many more.
12) http://Brandwatch.net: This service tracks your brands,
companies, even the competition. Sign up for free weekly updates
on any brand. Their detailed reports break down what sites like
you, your most talked about features, weekly summary of all
blogs and forum activity. Very similar to the old “press
clipping” service.
13) http://Trackur.com : A tool that scans many websites,
including blogs, news, image and video sites, forums and
notifies you of any mention of your brand, products/services.
Easy to use and affordable. Prices vary depending on need, a
personal account is only $18.00 a month, corporate account
$88.00 a month with other options also available. Try a
“personal” account free for 14 days.
14) http://FiltrBox.com : This one searches online news sources,
Twitter and others to find out what’s being said about you or
your company. Pricing is based on the number of users, but there
is a free version that provides “5 filters” and 15 days of what
they call “article history”.
15) http://SocialMention.com/alerts : Just like Google Alerts
but for social media. Enter your keyword phrase and email address
to be notified of any new findings. Searches blogs, microblogs
like Twitter, bookmarks, comments, events, images, news, videos
and more.
16) http://BlogPulse.com : A search engine that searches only
for data posted to blogs. Enter your keyword, hit submit and
off it goes to gather results.
17) http://BackType.com : Billing itself as a “conversational
search engine” they index millions of conversations from social
networks, blogs and other social media.
18) http://sm2.techrigy.com : Industry insiders claim this to be
the leading social media monitoring solution online. Choice of
free or paid version. Free is limited to five searches and 1,000
results. There are three paid professional levels: Gold, Diamond,
or Platinum.
19) http://ReputationDefender.com : This paid service finds out
everything there is to know about you online, and if negative
information is found they try to have it removed. Different
types of plans are available such as “My Reputation”, “My
Privacy”, starting at only $14.95 a month.
20) http://Topsy.com : Topsy will track your tweets that have
been retweeted so you can find out who’s been sending you all
that “link love”. Type in your Twitter user name and you’ll be
amazed at what you find.
If you’d like to track incoming traffic from your various social
media profiles, an easy way to do it using Google Analytics can
be found here http://Tinyurl.com/kuc9rL
Just as there are many ways to market your company using social
media, as you can see, there’s a multitude of tools and services
at your disposal to track and see if all of that hard work is
paying off. Smart companies realize the importance of social
media in their marketing efforts and are utilizing it on some
level. How smart are you?
10 Tips to Grow Your Business Using Online Video
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 1:23 PM
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
10 Tips to Grow Your Business Using Online Video
By Diana D’Itri (c) 2010
Lacking any information to the contrary, many businesses still
think that all they need to do to get new clients is to put
their name and face in the Yellow Pages or online social
directories, get some professional looking business cards, a
website and Voila! It’s the old adage “build it and they will
come”.
Trouble is, that’s what their competitors are doing also and in
this day and age, it’s just not enough.
Does Your Business Stand Out Online?
Most advertising on the Web follows a time-honored format,
although some might call it a time-worn format as it does little
to differentiate itself. You can bet that a high percentage of
this advertising will be ignored and the money spent on it will
be wasted.
So how does a company stand out from the crowd online?
Thanks to an oversupply of similar text, claims, and
presentation – coupled with a short 21st century attention span
- your website has less than ten seconds to move a visitor to
action. If it doesn’t, that visitor will click away to another
site, and then another. Therefore, it’s critical that you find a
way to break through the noise your competitors are making. But
even that’s not enough.
Statistics show that even the best-looking websites generate
conversion rates of under one percent, so for every 100 visitors
you do manage to get, less than one will call or email you.
Sound bleak? Thinking of redirecting more of your advertising
budget back to the Yellow Pages? Don’t. You’re on the right
track – you just haven’t leveraged all the power available to
you online.
One-to-Many Communication. On-on-One Feel.
Most websites are little more than electronic versions of Yellow
Page advertising. For the most part, they don’t encourage
interaction beyond the obligatory “Contact me for more
information” plea. These sites don’t encourage trust any more
than their print counterparts. They don’t give visitors the
warm-and-fuzzy feeling that a face-to-face meeting would.
But they can.
Searching for a local service provider online can be a daunting
prospect, but even more daunting than the search is deciding
which provider to use once you get to the page, especially since
most websites promise the standard good service, competitive
pricing and high quality.
So how does a business differentiate itself from the sea of
competition? Web video makes this possible on a grand scale.
Thanks to rapidly improving technology, it’s easier than ever to
add that warm-and-fuzzy, face-to-face element to your site,
replicate an in-person interview, and offer your visitors an
opportunity to check you out before picking up the phone. With
Web video, you can present an interview that addresses all the
questions and concerns of potential clients. You can keep them
on your site longer and give them insight into the “business
behind the business.” In a way that wasn’t possible even a few
years ago, business owners can now speak directly to their
audiences and showcase their personalities and areas of
expertise. This is especially helpful if you are a professional
service provider.
Any business that relies on conveying trust-ability will benefit
from this type of web marketing. Really, it’s one-to-many
communication with a one-on-one feel. It’s the perfect ice
breaker and an efficient means of generating the interest and
trust needed to compel potential clients to make an appointment
and do business.
A high-quality Web interview placed strategically on your site
is a huge timesaver for you and prospective clients because you
reach a wide audience in minimal time. Potential clients get the
information they need to pre-qualify – and pre-sell – themselves
before they call.
Online video delivers some of the best ROI of any advertising
medium today and if set up properly, actually ranks higher
than text now by the major search engines like Google. Short of
spending valuable face time with a potential client (often times
a poorly qualified potential client) there is simply no better
way to forge a personal connection with them. With that in mind,
here are 10 tips to help you get the most of your online video
marketing efforts.
10 Tips for Making the Most of Online Video
1. Make Sure Your Video is Professionally Done.
This is an absolute must. The whole point here is to establish
credibility and trust, but you’ll do the opposite with a poorly
executed and produced video. Yes, many of the videos you find on
sharing sites are mediocre at best, but that is changing rapidly
as companies begin to see the value of promoting themselves in
this manner. In fact, a recent Permission TV survey found that
67% of 400 hundred top executives intended to focus their online
marketing efforts on video in 2009. The rush is coming – find a
personable, engaging interviewer and a top notch production crew
to really stand out.
2. Submit Your Video to as Many Outlets as Possible.
While YouTube is the clear leader here, there are many other
video sharing sites worthy of consideration. Here are some
others you won’t want to pass up:
� Google Video: http://video.google.com
� Yahoo! Video: http://video.yahoo.com
� Daily Motion: http://www.dailymotion.com
� MySpaceTV: http://vids.myspace.com
� MetaCafe: http://www.metacafe.com
� Revver: http://www.revver.com
� Veoh: http://www.veoh.com
� Blinkx: http://www.blinkx.com
� Break: http://www.break.com
3. Embed Your Video on the Front Page of Your Site.
Don’t hide what’s going to become one of your most effective
selling tools on a dusty inside page. Get it out front.
Customers and search engines will love you for it.
4. Find Out What Search Terms Your Potential Clients are Using
and Put Them in Your Video’s Title.
If you don’t know what words clients in need of your services
are typing into Google and other search engines, get
professional help or use some of the resources featured on this
page. Once you’ve identified these terms, use the most popular
in your video’s title.
5. Make Your Tags and Descriptions SEO-friendly, too.
Most video sharing sites let you tag videos with keywords and
post a short description, so get the most out of these by
sprinkling in the search terms you’ve identified.
6. Don’t Forget Your Thumbnail.
A thumbnail is a still shot from your video that appears along
with search results. Don’t waste this opportunity to present
yourself in the best light possible – choose a key moment from
your video, preferably one where you’re smiling as you speak
with your interviewer.
7. Link Back to Your Site.
Put your URL near the top of your video’s description. You’ll
get a higher search ranking and potential clients will quickly
learn where to go for more information.
8. Interact With Your Viewers.
Most video sharing sites allow viewer comments. Use this
opportunity to answer questions, respond to comments, and
further promote your business.
9. Consider a Pay-Per-Click Campaign.
Natural search engine optimization, while effective, takes time
to bear fruit. In the meantime, you might want to jump start the
process with a pay-per-click campaign that gives you a sponsored
search listing. You can learn more about PPC advertising at:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/ads,
http://sem.smallbusiness.yahoo.com/searchenginemarketing, and
http://advertising.microsoft.com/search-advertising
10. Add New Content Often.
Search engines look for it and so do potential clients. Keep
your content fresh and up-to-date and keep visitors coming back
for more.
With an ever-increasing stream of competition, it’s more
important than ever to stand out from the crowd. These days
standing out means maximizing your online presence and
leveraging the technology to present the unique advantages of
you and your firm. There’s no better way for a growth-oriented
business to build a solid and secure future than by using
effective and affordable online video.
Use these free resources to get a handle on the terms that
potential clients are using to search for you right now.
Wordtracker: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
Google AdWords: http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Keyword Discovery: http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
KwMap: http://www.kwmap.net
Google Trends: http://www.google.com/trends
Google Matt Cutts on Site Speed and the Caffeine Update
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 10:36 AM
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Google Matt Cutts – Removing Old Content
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 10:13 AM
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
On the Google Search Bar, enter one of the Google Commands below and replace www.LinkWebServices.com with your website information.
· Cache:
o Description: Displays cached version of the site
o Example: cache:www.LinkWebServices.com
· Cache + Keyword:
o Description: Displays cached version of the site and highlight the specified keywords
o Example: site: www.LinkWebServices.com Keyword Here
· Link:
o Description: Displays the number of links back to the specified page (backlinks)
o Example: link:www.LinkWebServices.com
· Related:
o Description: Displays all web pages that are “similar” to the specified web page
o Example: related:www.LinkWebServices.com
· Info:
o Description: Displays all web page information for the specified page
o Example: info:www.LinkWebServices.com
· Site:
o Description: Displays all pages of the specified site that are indexed on Google
o Example: site:www.LinkWebServices.com
· All In Title:
o Description: Displays all pages that contain all the specified keywords in the title
o Example: allintitle:www.LinkWebServices.com
· In Title:
o Description: Displays all pages that contain any of the specified keywords in the title
o Example: intitle:www.LinkWebServices.com
· All In URL:
o Description: Displays all pages with the specified URL
o Example: allinurl:www.LinkWebServices.com
· In URL:
o Description: Displays all pages with the specified URL anywhere in the address
o Example: inurl:www.LinkWebServices.com
Link Web Services: http://www.LinkWebServices.com
Web University: http://WebUniversity.LinkWebServices.com
The Web Store: http://www.LinkWebServices.com/mm5/merchant.mvc
Any type of online business can grow through some basic solid SEO techniques. Here are some straight-forward answers to the most common SEO questions.
1. What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. A search engine is a tool many internet users use to find sites that are relevant to their needs. The three biggies when it comes to search engines are Google, Yahoo! and MSN (Bing). There are however, hundreds of search engines available to internet users. Search engines work by sending out spiders to crawl through the World Wide Web and gather information. If you have the information they’re looking for, in the places they are looking, they’ll find you and place you in their search engine results page.
The task of understanding what search engines are looking for and putting it in the right places on your website and in your content, is the essence of search engine optimization. So now you might be asking…what do search engines look for and where do they look for it? The answer is keywords and links. Keywords in your html coding, keywords on your webpage content, keywords in your content, and the number of incoming links you have to your website.
2. How important is SEO?
Let’s just put it this way. What’s better? a few visitors who stumble upon your website or hundreds of visitors that go to your website with the direct intention of learning more or making a purchase? With more and more people searching and shopping online, getting on the first page or two of the search engine results can mean the difference between keeping your day job and becoming an internet millionaire.
3. What are text links?
Links are just one of the tools you can use to increase your search engine optimization. The more quality links you have, the better your search engine ranking will be. Text links are links that contain only text. Wikipedia is a great place to examine internal text links. The links are contained within a sentence and when a reader clicks on them they are taken to a different page on the same website. The kind of text links you’re looking for will be text links that will take readers from your article, eBook, or web copy to your website.
An excellent tool to generate incoming links is to write copy for online audiences like article directories, blogs, and ezines and insert text links in the copy. Webmasters will link to the content and thus to your site. Additionally, when you allow free reprints of your copy provided the links are maintained, you’re encouraging links to your website.
4. What are link farms and link exchanges?
Search engines don’t accept just any old link. The link has to be from a relevant and quality company. This means you don’t want to participate in link farming. If a search engine suspects your links to be lacking, they’ll actually penalize you. Link farming or link exchanging is essentially the process of exchanging reciprocal links with Web sites in order to increase your search engine ranking. A link farm is a Web page that is nothing more than a page of links to other sites. Stay away from link farms. When you generate a link from another site, it had better be relevant and coming from a real web site.
5. What is duplicate content?
The definition of duplicate content is web pages that contain substantially the same content. Search engines will penalize you for this. How do you avoid duplicate content? Don’t publish the same article in several locations. There are many tools available online to help you re-write your content so that it is 30%, 40%, and even 50% different. However, the best way to avoid duplicate content is to simply write new content.
6. How do I find the right keywords?
There are several steps to finding the most profitable keywords. The first step is to generally do a bit of brainstorming and come up with a list of keywords you think people will use to find your products and services. The next step is to research supply and demand for those particular keywords. Supply means how many other websites are using those same keywords and demand is how many people are looking for those particular keywords. The key is to find keywords with high demand and relatively low supply. There are many effective and useful keyword tools to help you find this information and to generate keyword ideas. Once you decide on a few keywords, it may be useful to do a bit of testing before you commit to them.
7. How do I optimize my web pages?
Placing your keywords in the right location is a good start to optimizing your web pages. Search engines look to the headings, subheadings, domain name, and title of your website. They also look in the content on your page and primarily focus on the first paragraph. Try to get a domain name with your primary keyword included. When you include your keyword in your URL it tells the search engine spiders immediately what your site is about.
Title Tag: Your title tag is the line of text that appears on search engine results pages that acts as a link to your site. This is a crucial element of your webpage as it describes to your visitors what your page is about. If you view your source code, your title tag will look something like this: <TITLE>Search Engine Optimization Tips</TITLE>. Keep your title tags brief, descriptive, up to date, and keyword rich will help to increase the relevance of your site in the eyes of the search engines, as well as giving your potential visitors a good idea of what they can expect from your site.
Meta Tags: it is helpful to place your keywords in your Meta tags. In your source code they look something like this: <META NAME=”description”
8. Do I need to submit my site to the search engines?
Need? No, Should? Yes!. Search engine spiders are always out there doing their job and collecting information. Every time you update your website, add content, or change your keywords, the search engines capture the information and record it. However, if you want to be listed on a directory, like the DMOZ Open directory project, then you will need to submit to those. You can be reactive, but you should certainly be thinking with a more proactive approach; If you tell them (the search engines) what your links are, your links will be submitted a lot faster and no pages will be missed.
9. What are spiders?
Search engine spiders are also called web crawlers or bot. They’re basically automated programs which scan websites to provide information to search engines often for the purpose of indexing or ranking the pages found.
10. How does content help my SEO?
Content is one of the best tools to improve your search engine ranking. It is a great place to emphasize keywords, encourage linking to your site, and increase traffic. The key to content is to make sure you’re offering quality content and you’re updating your website and your content frequently. Content can be provided in many forms including:
· Blogs
· Forums and chat rooms
· Articles
· Reviews
· Case studies
· Reports
· How to guides
· Tutorials
· E-books
· And much more
Link Web Services: http://www.LinkWebServices.com
Web University: http://WebUniversity.LinkWebServices.com
The Web Store: http://www.LinkWebServices.com/mm5/merchant.mvc
Top 50 Video Sharing Sites
Top 50 Video Sharing Sites
Link Web Services: http://www.LinkWebServices.com
Web University: http://WebUniversity.LinkWebServices.com
The Web Store: http://www.LinkWebServices.com/mm5/merchant.mvc
Your Website’s Missing Ingredient
“My mechanic told me, ‘He couldn’t repair my brakes, so he made my horn louder.’” – Comedian, Steven Wright
We all want our websites to be more effective, and if you’re like mo t business people you are constantly searching the Web for anything that will help. What you find is a cabal of experts armed with statistics, analysis, charts and graphs all pointing to how they can get you high-up on the search engines and drive more traffic to your site. The problem is that like Steven Wright’s mechanic these guys are adjusting your horn when it’s your brakes that need fixing.
There is little point in attracting more visitors to your site if your site has little of interest to say. Even if your site is jammed packed with useful products, services and solutions if it doesn’t connect with your audience, they will never invest the time necessary for you to make your case.
When websites fail it’s most often because they do not function effectively as your primary communication tool. The Web is overcrowded with options and unless you’re prepared to deliver a compelling differentiating presentation you will be quickly dismissed as irrelevant. Let’s face it; business is tough, probably tougher than it’s ever been before.
Something is Missing
You’ve done all the technical tweaks and responded to all the research and analytics. You’re blogging, micro-blogging, social networking, and search optimizing, but still something is not quite right, something is missing. What’s the missing ingredient? You know it’s out there, but you can’t for the life of you figure out what it is.
You know the Web offers the potential to access new markets, find new customers, and reach new heights, but with all that opportunity, the results always seem just out of reach. If research and analytics were the answer you’d already be rich. Of course it was an over-reliance on research that brought us the Edsel, New Coke, and that wonderful Wall Street goody called Derivatives, one of the greatest investment boondoggles of our time.
There is something artificially comforting about putting your faith in seemingly logical yet unfathomable solutions based on indecipherable scientific modeling and over-hyped research analysis, all brought to you by computer scientists and mathematicians who never ran a marketing department or launched a new product or business.
Business leaders have adopted the attitude that, “It must be right, because I sure as heck don’t understand it.” And when it all goes wrong, or results are anemic, well, “What are you going to do? It’s not my fault, it all looked good on paper.” Ad agencies and Wall Street have been getting away with this kind of bunkum for decades, and look at the mess they’ve made of things.
What’s It All About, Alfie?
Business success is all about your ability to engage your audience with a message that compels them to action. Simply put, your business relies on your ability to communicate. Eureka!
And your website is the best communication vehicle you have. The question is how do you use your website to communicate your marketing message in the most engaging, compelling, and memorable manner? What is the missing ingredient that will turn your scientifically sterile online cookie-cutter presentation into something that cuts through the massive sameness of Internet clutter, and makes a statement that your audience will respond to?
Finding Your Emotional and Psychological Value Proposition
One of the hardest things for tough-minded business people to accept is that sales and marketing success is based on the subconscious emotional and psychological appeal of a brand. That’s the reason, reliance on feature selling rarely works, and only tends to commoditize a product or service – the guy with the most bells and whistles for the least amount of money wins, and why would you want to play that game?
Even the most casual market observer must recognize that all leading brands have one thing in common, no matter what they sell: the promise of their brand is based on a concept that is established through an emotional or psychological appeal. Apple is about thinking and acting creatively without the worry of technical issues; Starbucks is about reconnecting to the original coffee break ideal of a relaxing oasis away from the hustle bustle of everyday life; and Ikea is about stylish living on a budget. Each concept appeals to the deep-seated desires of the targeted audience. It is this singular concept that makes each of these companies special and different from their competition; it is the message that all their marketing, advertising, and promotion is based upon, and it is the true value they offer their audience that attracts interest, holds attention, and delivers promise.
Implementing Your Emotional and Psychological Value Proposition
In order to implement a company’s emotional and psychological value proposition, we use a process called the ConceptCreator. It starts with various sales’ points that need to be covered. Based on the supplied information, we develop a focused marketing concept using the Law of Dissatisfaction that enables us to discover the experiential human subtext of why people will want what you sell. The presentation concept is boiled-down to a movie-style logline that states the brand story to be presented in the Web Video campaign.
How Much Is A Concept Worth?
“Wait a minute – did he say a movie-style logline? That sure doesn’t sound business-like, and I never heard any corporate CEO or MBA talk about movie loglines.” Maybe so, but think about it. Hollywood studios spend enormous sums of money to produce a movie with the potential of making hundreds of millions of dollars, and each financial investment starts with someone coming up with a clever logline that captures the imagination. Television commercials can cost ten thousand dollars a second to produce and without a guiding conceptual premise they become DOA when implemented. So why wouldn’t you start your Web Video campaign using the same proven formula.
The logline, mission statement, or elevator pitch if you prefer needs to state the characters, goals, obstacles, differentiating factors, and resolution within the context of a story scenario.
For Instance…
If it works for the movie industry will it work for the advertising and marketing industry? Let’s take a look at one of the most successful last number of years, The MAC versus PC campaign.
Example Logline Concept: A stylish, pleasant, mild-mannered young man verbally spars with his geeky competitive opposite (characters) in a series of humorous, relatable incidents (story scenario) that illustrate the people-friendly advantages (resolution) of the brand compared to its rigid, unbending competitor (differentiating factor) whose sheer size dominates the market (obstacle) in an effort to win the hearts and minds of the computer buying audience (goal). – The MAC Versus PC Ad Campaign.
“The Time Has Come The Walrus Said…”
- Lewis Carroll from ‘Through the Looking Glass and What Alice
Found There,’ 1892
The time has come to realize that Web Video is the best communication tactic available to deliver your marketing message to a worldwide audience; an audience that craves answers and resolution to their every need, concern and desire. It is not good enough to list a bunch of features and hackneyed bulleted points or even to dump pages and pages of search engine optimized hard-to-read text, especially when it’s aimed at an audience raised on television, movies, music and video games. We must learn to speak the language of the audience, and use the appropriate communication tools they can understand in a way that connects on a human level.
It all starts with finding the emotional and psychological value proposition your product or service promises. In a world of frustrated, cranky, attention deficit consumers, the onus is on you to present what you offer in a way that relates to the human elements that make your brand relevant.
Keyword Fundamentals Will Determine Your Website Success
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 11:37 AM
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Successful sports teams have engrained in their heads the fundamentals of their sports. Business leaders and coaches alike who dwell on the fundamentals usually have the most successful outcomes. Failure is almost always rooted in a deviation from the fundamentals. So if your website is not delivering clients, perhaps you’re missing the fundamentals.
Part of the answer is nobody actually taught you the fundamentals of website success. Most businesses understand the need for a website, few understand the fundamentals. Getting your website to deliver clients is an exercise in
Fundamentals. First and foremost is a back to basics, grass roots understanding of your market, website style.
Keyword research is the first thing every website owner should have done but most didn’t. With respect to your online business, keyword research equals market research. The coolest thing about being online is that you can absolutely KNOW your market, understand their interests and create an online business and marketing plan relative to your market and their needs.
There are probably hundreds of keyword research tools online that can help you do your own research. Our advice is to seek out an expert. Getting the data is one thing. Knowing what to do with it is quite a different thing.
Relative to keyword research, here’s what we can find via search engine tools: keywords and keyword phrases, search volumes, total web pages using those keywords, web pages optimized for those keywords, keywords in hypertext (called anchor text) linking to other sites and pages. We can even look at any specific website and determine what keywords they are at least trying to rank for. And of course, type the keyword phrase into a search box will list the top ten sites ranking for that term. The result of such a search is referred to as the SERPS or the Search Engine Results Pages.
The best keywords to use are ones that will generate reasonable traffic AND have very little competition. One of the parameters we seek in our keyword research is to determine the competitiveness of the keyword phrases. Google will tell us how many web pages are indexed for the search term. Just run a search and notice in the upper right of the results that Google will tell you how many pages are indexed with your search keywords. Without getting too technical here, Google and the other major search engines will also tell you how many web pages use those keywords in the page title, an indication that those pages specifically cover the topic of your search. Having keywords in the page title is one of the key ways to optimize a webpage for the keyword. Knowing how many pages are doing this gives you a better idea of how many pages are intentionally using the keywords you’re researching.
The first thing that has to go is the ego of the site and/or business owner. Unless you show up in the first page of the search engine results, you’re NOBODY! Worse, you can’t push your way through the crowd to get to the top of the SERPS. You can get there by Google sponsored ads – AdWords guarantee your visibility on the SERPS. But still the point is, you’ll pay.
Let’s consider three strategies for beating your competition relative to the search engine results.
DIRECT STRATEGY
Choose the same keywords that your competition is ranking for and go head to head. If they are doing pay-per-click, you do it too. In this scenario, you’ll end up spending a lot of money to achieve and maintain top SERPS positions. If your competition is ranking on good, high traffic terms, plan on spending time, money and resources to get to the same position it may have taken them years to achieve. A direct strategy can get bloody. Ultimately, it is the most obvious choice, the least creative and the stupidest!
INDIRECT STRATEGY
Choose keywords that your competitors didn’t even think of! An indirect strategy is often associated with cross marketing and selling through an indirect channel. If you sell a service or product that your competitors don’t have, you channel your efforts through that market knowing there’s some pull-through relative to your other products and services. Very often you could be sucking business right out from under your competition’s nose and they don’t even see it!
DIVISIONAL STRATEGY
Find out what keywords your competition is NOT ranking for in the same keyword set and go after them. The divisional strategy is the primary online marketing method of niche marketers. Most business owners will equate the word “niche” with the word “small”. On the web, niche site owners are millionaires! Get rid of your pre-conceptions. The web is huge.
We use a two step process for choosing keywords. First, you have to take your direct competition into account. The second part is to look specifically at the search engine optimization parameters to determine which keywords make sense for you to specifically go after.
The leverage a website carries is in part determined by its page rank. Page rank is in large part determined by how many other sites on the web link to yours. Your exposure in the SERPS is in turn affected by your page rank. The reason you need to know this is if the top ten websites all out rank you in terms of page rank, you’re better off choosing another keyword.
Fundamental lesson: Small Fish eat smaller fish to grow bigger.
Build Backlinks & Rank Higher: The Five Most Effective Strategies
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:28 AM
Friday, September 18, 2009
As the online market place continues to warm up to the idea of SEO, link building has become center stage as it tends to be the most time consuming and crucial part of any internet marketing strategy. Link building services are the most commonly outsourced aspect of SEO. This process involves finding qualified and thematically relevant one-way linking partners who will link back to your website.
At first glance this sounds easy and there are hundreds of automated products out there that claim to add thousands of back links overnight. The truth is there are no short cuts in cultivating authoritative back links for a site. Link building companies spend many hours link building by hand in order to get the best results. Spammy automated products often never cultivate valuable links and tend to do more harm than good. Here are a couple quick suggestions to help you get started.
1. Know What Keywords You’re Targeting
Link building strategies are an extension of your current SEO practice. You’ll want to reference the list of keywords you have selected to optimize your site. Make sure that the anchor text of the link has the keyword you are targeting. For example, if you’re targeting the keyword “baby names” you’ll want to place that keyword in the anchor text of the link. I’ve seen many companies go after links by using their company name. Although this does increase link popularity it fails to pass popularity for a specific keyword and can be seen as a failed attempt.
2. Develop a Link Building Strategy
There are many strategies link building companies use to source qualified back links to their clients. The most tedious but often most rewarding method is manual linking requests also known as “cherry picking”. This method allows you to obtain exceptionally qualified links which can really help boost your position in the search engine results page (SERPS). A good place to start with manual link building is to look at your suppliers, vendors, clients, related organizations associations and more.
Besides manual link requests other well known tactics include:
1. directory submission (Dmoz, Yahoo Directory, Joe Ant)
2. article submission (ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com)
3. optimized press releases (PRWeb.com)
4. social media outlets (FaceBook, Linked In)
5. bookmarking sites (Digg, Reddit, Furl)
6. Blogs (niche blogs)
7. Forums (niche forums)
8. Classifieds (niche classifieds)
3. Identify Thematically Relevant and Authoritative Linking Sources
Search engines see links as votes of confidence for your site. The more relevant and authoritative the site, the more consideration is given to the link and the subsequent keyword in the anchor text. It really pays off to focus on the quality of your links rather than the quantity. It is also important for your link building to look natural and not an attempt to deceive search engine spiders in search of links. Try looking for sites within your industry rather than general, unrelated sites to get links from.
A good example of this would be content creation and distribution. Try creating content on a relevant subject of which you can speak authoritatively. An example of this would be a SEO company writing a short article on 5 simple ways companies can start link building and placing it on an authoritative, industry relevant site like this one. Remember, before placing a link on a site (or making a request), ask yourself three questions:
1. Does a link to my website belong here (does it look natural)?
2. Is this site relevant and authoritative?
3. Is there any benefit to my potential customers?
4. Look for the onsite attributes of the linking site
4. Determine Where Your Link Will Reside
Once you’ve nailed down a potential linking partner that represents the overall quality and thematic authority that your site deserves you’ll need to see where your link will reside. Here are a couple guidelines that I look for when placing links on a site. I try to get my links no more than a few clicks away from the homepage. The page must be thematically relevant and recently cached by Google’s search engine (this lets me know that the page has been indexed by Google). I also take a look at the number of external (outbound) links leaving that page. I try to keep the number of external links below 50 as it will dilute the effect of the page. Lastly, I look at the page the link will be placed on. For some sites this is harder to control, but if you have the option you should know where the most valuable locations are. I always try to get my links in line with thematically relevant content, like an article or blog post. I’ve found this produces some of the best results. Try to avoid placing your links on a “sponsored” or advertisers section that runs throughout the entire site. Also avoid footer links as rumor has it Google has devalued links buried in the footer of the site. Links placed at the top of the page or inserted into the site’s navigation also tend to do quite well. Bottom line is that your links need to look like they belong and provide value to the user and the site it is published on.
5. Be Aware of “No-Follow” Links
Within the last 5 years Google developed the concept of the “no-follow” link. The “no-follow” code is inserted into your link and instructs the Google spider to ignore it. The “no-follow” link can be seen used most commonly in blog comments and forum posts. This initiative was set forth to combat spam and automated linking mechanisms that would throw links automatically on blog comments and forum posts.
There are a lot of SEO professionals that will only place a link if it is a “do-follow” link, meaning it doesn’t have the “no-follow” attribute. I tend to disagree with this notion especially when the link in question is on a highly trafficked authority site. If it makes sense for the link to be there, then add your link. Even though Google won’t give you any credit for it, it will be seen by thousands of people who may visit your site and link to you themselves because your site is highly relevant. I call this concept indirect link building. You are influencing and promoting your site to potential linking partners.
Link Building is a very time consuming process and link building companies spend a lot of time researching, testing and improving their techniques. Link building services are available for companies that don’t have the time to invest in manual link building. The bottom line is that with a little help anyone can link build and move their site up the SERPS.
SEO Google Commands
All Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Google Commands
On the Google Search Bar, enter one of the Google Commands below and replace www.LinkWebServices.com with your website information.
* cache:www.LinkWebServices.com
* link:www.LinkWebServices.com
* related:www.LinkWebServices.com
* info:www.LinkWebServices.com
* site:www.LinkWebServices.com
* allintitle:www.LinkWebServices.com
* intitle:www.LinkWebServices.com
* allinurl:www.LinkWebServices.com
* inurl:www.LinkWebServices.com
Google supports several commands which can help you if you do Search Engine optimization in Google. Typically these commands modify the search in some way or even tell Google to do a totally different type of search, “link:” is a special Google command, and the query
link:www.LinkWebServices.com doesn’t do a normal search but instead finds web pages that have links that point to www.LinkWebServices.com.
A several of other Google commands use punctuation instead of words or phrases. Below is a list of all the special SEO Google commands that Google supports:
cache:www.LinkWebServices.com Search Engine optimization
If you include other words or phrases in the query, Google will highlight those words within the cached document. For instance, cache:www.LinkWebServices.com Search Engine optimization will show the cached content with the word or phrase “Search Engine optimization” highlighted.
This functionality is also available by clicking on the “Cached” link on Google’s main search results pages, some SEO companies protect themselves by placing a Google robot text inside the <head> of the html code to not display the cached web page or content in Google’s search results.
This special html tag look like this: <META NAME=”GOOGLEBOT” CONTENT=”NOARCHIVE”/> try it and put it inside the <head> of your index page and you will notice that Google will not cache your index page anymore.
The command [cache:] will show the version of the web page that Google has in its cache after the crawler visited your site. For instance, cache:www.LinkWebServices.com will show Google’s cache of the LinWebServices.com’s homepage. Remember there can be no space between the “cache:” and the web page or domain url.
The cache command is very handy for people who do SEO, you can compare web sites and after the research you can make adjustments to the content or text. Just try it with your own web site!
link:www.LinkWebServices.com
The Google command [link:] will list web pages that have links to the specified web page. Example, link:www.LinkWebServices.com will list web pages that have links pointing to the SEO watch homepage. Remember there can be no space between the “link:” and the web page url or domain.
This is an very use full Google command for optimization companies that do link building.
site:www.LinkWebServices.com
If you include site: in your search, Google will give the results to those web sites in the given domain. Example,
site:www.LinkWebServices.com will find all pages from www.LinkWebServices.com. Remember there can be no space between the “site:” and the domain.
This google command is very help full if you update your site and would like to know which page Google included in the database of Google’s search results.
related:www.LinkWebServices.com
The google command [related:] will list web pages that are “similar” to a specified web page.
For instance: related:www.LinkWebServices.com will list web pages that are similar to the SEO watch homepage. Remember there can be no space between the “related:” and the web page url or domain.
Google Robots, Spyders and Website Crawling
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 9:28 AM
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Google Robots, Spyders and Website Crawling
Google’s Robots: All You Need to Know
What are Gooble Robots and Spyders?
Robots (a.k.a “spider” or a “bot”) are small programs which come to your site and crawl through your data and your links then send all the information back to the search engine database for indexing your site.
Google has three different known types of robots that crawl through your site:
Google Getting Freer With Sitelinks
Subdirectories appear to be getting some respect. Although there hasn’t been any sort of conclusive announcement, sitelinks – those nice little link collections that appear beneath some search results – are becoming more prevalent.
When Google’s search results provide more than one link to a certain site, the site looks authoritative. The presence of multiple links also makes it more likely that a searcher’s question will be answered, and even the least discerning searcher may just go to the site because all the links are easy to click.
This development could be rather important to some site owners, then. Matt Cutts, for example, tweeted, “Yay, I have sitelinks for the query [matt cutts] after 2+ years!”
Barry Schwartz then asked, “Why did it take Matt over two years to get Sitelinks for his domain when it is such an authoritative source? The answer might be that his content was on a sub-directory. Yes, right now, there is no substantial content on www.mattcutts.com, all or most the content is on www.mattcutts.com/blog/. And it seems like Google is now giving sub directories Sitelink love.”
Given the season we’re approaching, all this inclusiveness is nice. It isn’t bad considering the economic situation, either, if some site owners can now attract more traffic.
Google Analytics Gets A Handle On Flash
Track to your heart’s content
Flash content has long posed a lot of problems for the search and webmaster communities. Now Google – and more specifically, the newly introduced Google Analytics Tracking For Adobe Flash – intends to solve at least a few of them.
Will Personal Search Turn SEO On Its Ear?
Bruce Clay Talks Big Changes in Ranking Due to Personalization
At PubCon, Bruce Clay, Inc. President Bruce Clay presented at a session entitled “Top-Shelf Organic SEO” in which he discussed the approaching future of SEO as search engines evolve into more modern ranking methods through more personalized search results. Bruce was good enough to take the time to speak with our own Michael McDonald in a one-on-one interview about personal search, which can be viewed in the video below.
Matt Cutts on SEO 2009 & Google Talks AdSense
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:59 AM
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Matt Cutts on SEO 2009 & Google Talks AdSense
WebProNews’ Mike McDonald caught up with Matt Cutts of Google at the Hofbrau House in Las Vegas during PubCon to get his views on a number of topics.
Is Ranking Dead?
Cutts said, “I’m not sure I would say ranking is dead but it’s not as important as it used to be. The fact is the smart SEOs are not just necessarily looking at the rankings. They are looking at conversion, they are looking at their server log. It’s great if you’re ranking for a phrase but unless that leads to sales that doesn’t help you very much.”
Is Bounce Rate a Google Ranking Factor?
Bounce rates are a metric that may become more of a factor as SEOs struggle with the ever-changing world of SERPs, which some are predicting to be become much more personalized over the coming year. As discussed in an interview with Mike McDonald (video below), big name SEO Bruce Clay notes that going forward, SEOs are going to have to look at analytics, measure traffic, bounce rates, action, etc., and ask themselves questions like did I get the conversion I was after?
How To Use Web Analytics To Grow Your Business
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 10:03 AM
Sunday, February 15, 2009
How To Use Web Analytics To Grow Your Business
By Mike Tekula (c) 2009
Got a website?
If you own a business, chances are you do. But don’t pat
yourself on the back too quickly.
By now it’s widely-accepted that if you have a business
card you should probably have a website. It doesn’t matter
what your company is selling – a website, however modest,
has become a standard.
Why success comes from goal-setting and persevering to the end.
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 1:16 PM
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
More than 5,000 years ago, in the ancient mystery schools of Egypt, the mental and spiritual laws and principles of success were taught to students who dedicated their entire lives to learning the “Esoteric Arts.”
One of these “secrets” was the Law of Attraction, which said that your mind is a magnet and that you invariably attract into your life people and circumstances in harmony with your dominant thoughts, especially those that are emotionalized.
Avoid Getting Dumped from Directory Submission
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 11:16 PM
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Directories are a great way to get your business publicized. However, simple mistakes can cause you to not be added at all. Here are a few quick reminders that I would like to share with you prior to your submission:
Interesting Links Makes Us Interesting
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 10:44 PM
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Content and inbound links are most important for SEO, according to experts, and in that order. Even though this is old news for experienced SEO experts, it is still good news for new ones joining the online community.
Experts were often left to theorize and test—and worse, try to game, in response to Google’s silence on the subject. However, when Google started hitting the PageRanks of paid directories, they seemed to confirm basic SEO tactics.
Success comes from EDUCATION, REPETITION AND VARIETY
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 11:47 AM
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Just about every business on the planet does this. And it’s not bad… until you realize how much money you’re leaving on the table. The fact is, for every deal you close using this common process, there’s another 2 – 3 deals (or more!) you COULD close. Most small businesses market their products and services like this:
Owning any type of online business will strongly benefit from a few SEO techniques. Everyone has seems to have advice, but all this ‘expert’ advice can make the simple task of optimizing your site incredibly confusing.
Here are some answers to the most common SEO questions.
Since business may soon be tougher, it’s critical for entrepreneurs to take steps to up-end any damage that could happen as a result of a recession.
The secret to weathering a particularly nasty economy is to diversify your customer base, free up cash flow and cut costs where you can. Here are some steps for recession-proofing your business: If three employees are doing the job of one, you may need to make job cuts. Additionally, if you have two product lines and one is successful while the other one isn’t, consider selling off that division. When times are tough, it’s best to focus on core markets and spend money in those areas, not in areas that haven’t been more profitable.
Even though some may consider our current economic situation to be likened to The Great Depression, these online tactic can help. Some internet marketers probably wouldn’t even know there was a recession occurring.
WordPress is the most visible of the CMS’ “Content Management Systems” and performs to a SEO dream. Since WordPress 2.5, things have changed markedly.
Since version 2.5 there’s been a wealth of feature expansion in the core application, the availability of plugins, expanding core functionality, and the advent of professionally designed Themes that have taken WordPress to new heights. All of this has allowed WordPress to blossom into a fully-matured CMS with exceptional Search Engine Optimization features.
Here are 10 of the most prominent among the many opportunities to achieve this individualizing your pages:
The days of creating good, unique and newsworthy content, coupled with intelligent onsite optimization strategies, was at least enough to get your website found are now gone. It doesn’t matter what some nave or misleading SEO experts might still tell you.
Page Rank is determined by the quantity and quality of websites that are linking to yours and has now become the single most important factor in having your site found in the organic search results of the leading search engines. The higher the page rank, and the more relevant the content of the site, the more significant the affect will be.
Organic or Paid, what’s the difference?
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 11:20 PM
Friday, September 5, 2008
When deciding on how to begin your internet marketing campaign it is important to know your options. While an SEO expert may charge you to get optimized, you should know what you are paying for. Paying for your site to be optimized for natural searches is different than paying for “paid search placement”.
Your competitors customers know, like, and trust them. With their prices so much higher than yours, why aren’t they coming to you? Simple, your not doing the things right to get them to know, like and trust you.
In this century, any illusions you still entertain about controlling the customer relationship need to be removed. So here’s how we’re going to improve your company blogging today…
When you are looking to get better traffic from the local community, make sure they can find you easily. What businesses need to do to ensure their customers are finding them easily, is still to make sure they are listed in these local search results. For Google Maps, follow the following steps:
Today, I`m going to give you IRRESISTIBLE EMAIL SUBJECT LINES that have proven their ability to grab attention, and then transform attention into interest, and interest into desire.
You can copy some of them exactly and use others as
templates for your email marketing campaigns. If you`re
feel extra creative, you can use these tested subject lines to light the fire under of your email marketing campaigns.
Still think your money is best invested with Yellow Pages? This couldn’t be further from the truth. When customers are looking for local business they are turning to Search Engines. Recent Data confirms what we at Link Web Services suspected, that this year more people are turning to search engines. This, after last year’s information showed that Yellow Pages were on top.
What the Study Revealed
10 Do’s and Don’ts to Avoid SEO Mistakes
posted by Web_University @ 12:00 AM
Wednesday, November 30, -0001
10 Do’s and Don’ts to Avoid SEO Mistakes
With so much misinformation out there, along with a lack of knowledge about how SEO works, you could end up getting your website banned from the search engines. Learn how to avoid common mistakes with these 10 simple do’s and don’ts.
10. Don’t Use Flash for SEO. Flash websites are very eye-catching but search engines cannot read or index this type of content. If it is impossible to avoid a Flash-centric website and you need search engines to index it, you will have to offer an html version too. Search engines don’t like Flash sites for a reason – a spider can’t read Flash content and therefore can’t index it.
9. Don’t Use too Much JavaScript. Searchbots are not designed to read and understand JavaScript code. If a website contains a few lines of text in the JavaScript code, chances are that searchbots will ignore the entire block of code along with the text. This is true in the case of JavaScript menus. Try to keep the use of JavaScript to a minimum. Alternatively, create an external JavaScript file if it is unavoidable.
8. Do Implement a Robots.txt File. The primary purpose for using a robots.txt file is to gain complete control over the data indexed by the searchbots. Implement a Robots.txt file only when you want to prevent unwanted web pages from being indexed. A robots.txt file is always placed in the root folder of the website where the searchbots can access it easily.
7. Do Target the Correct Keywords. Targeting the wrong keywords is a common mistake many optimizers make and even worse – veteran SEO professionals do it. Marketers select keywords that they think are explanatory of their website but the average searcher does not think in those same keyword terms. Picking the right keywords can increase or decrease traffic to your SEO campaign. A first-class keyword suggestion aid, for example the Google search-based keyword tool will help you find keywords that are appropriate for your site.
6. Do Include Long Tail Keywords. With a million websites competing for short tail keywords, it can take more than 6 months to rank in the top 20 for a competitive keyword. In this case, long tail keywords come in handy. Long tail keywords are more specific and can contain the name of a specific product, brand or city. Ranking for long tail keywords is comparatively easier and the rate of conversion is better than that of short tail keywords. Do include keywords in the title tags.
5. Do Maintain a Uniform URL Structure. If your website is dynamic, then you need to modify the URL structure of the web pages. This maintains uniformity and helps searchbots to understand which page it is indexing. It is very easy to maintain the URL structure in dynamic websites. Blogging platforms like WordPress provide an option for permalinks. Customized dynamic websites can use URL rewrite in the .htaccess file for the same.
4. Don’t Link to Low Quality Websites. Link building is a very crucial aspect of search engine optimization. Search engines consider the number of incoming links to a website as an indication of their popularity and give them priority rankings. Many beginners fail to realize that it is links from authoritative and quality websites that are important and they mistakenly link to low quality websites for higher rankings. This tactic can cause the credibility of the website to go down with search engines and in some cases, the website may get banned.
3. Do Perform Competitive Intelligence. Before starting your search engine optimization program, visit the competing websites in the top results. Research these types of questions:
A. How many websites are competing for the same keyword? B. How old are the websites in top search engine results pages? C. How many back links do the top ranking websites list? D. What type of social media is used by the competing sites?
2. Do Take Advantage of Google Analytics. 2009 was the year when web analytics gained momentum. Google Analytics came up with advanced metrics and intelligence report features which revolutionized free analytics tools. Companies realized the benefits of using web analytics tools to extract their relevant data. Implement Google Analytics to analyze data and build a 2010 plan to increase traffic and rates of conversion.
1. Do Create Fresh Content. Search engines are famous for penalizing a website for publishing duplicate content. With plagiarism on the rise and availability of content checking tools such as Copyscape, marketers have become more cautious. Yahoo is considered to be among the harshest of all the search engines with regard to this penalty. Add fresh content to your website to help build visitor interest and credibility with the search engines.
These 10 simple do’s and don’ts can help you to avoid making potentially dangerous seo mistakes and ensure your site is indexed and boost rankings.
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