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

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

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

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.

De-mystifying Landing Page Optimization

When a website is finally getting respectable traffic, enjoying a decent page rank (PR), and already at the first pages of search engine results, is it time to break out the champagne in celebration?

The shrewd website owner knows this is just halfway through the journey to a successful income-generating website. The end-goal is still how to turn visitors into buying customers. The bottom line is sales conversion, and this is an even harder hurdle to overcome.

It all boils down to what the users do when they get into the site. Do they click on links and advertisements? Do they spend a lot of time reading or browsing products? And most importantly, do they buy?

To convert audience from just-curious exploring visitors into actively purchasing ones, website owners should venture into the realms of landing page optimization.

* Shedding Light on Landing Page Optimization

Experts rely on certain information to optimize the landing page. Some data may come from search criteria used by users to get to the site, or user demographics and buying habits. With this data the page is re-designed to appeal to users.

Another way to optimize is based on the results of an experimentation, wherein users are led to several versions of the landing page to see which version is more appealing to them. The most common experimentation is through A/B split testing involving two versions of the page. Although this method is inexpensive and makes for easier analysis and decision-making, the decision maybe flawed by inadequate data that takes no account of many external elements – banner, layout, color theme, text copy, etc. — not contained in only two versions.

Another landing page optimization that is more complex in execution, tools used, and statistical analysis is multi-variate LPO. Multi-variate LPO incorporates more elements that can be combined to come up with better landing page versions. When testing versions of landing pages that accounts for multiple variables instead of just two, the site gets the most accurate analysis of visitor preferences, the factors that can make them buy, and which page version is the best combination that gets the best reaction from users.

* Tips to Better Landing Page Optimization

When website owners decide to launch their landing page optimization, they should do so with careful consideration. The undertaking involves resources and a certain degree of risk. If not done correctly, LPO can end up costing money but little results. Here are some tips to make the effort effective and easier:

1. The look and feel of the landing page, is critical to encouraging or discouraging visitors to make a purchase in the site. This should be kept in mind as the rationale behind any LPO effort.

2. Be careful in choosing the elements for optimization, such as layout, color theme, promotional campaigns, banners, etc. Make sure they can materialize or can be delivered when they turn out to be critical to optimization.

3. Choose the best element mix from the many permutations, to lessen the complexity of having to test all landing page combinations.

4. To find the optimum mix of elements from gathered data, use the most efficient tool such as Google’s Website Optimizer for analysis.

5. Be careful in directing users to experimental landing page versions in a production website, many users tend to dislike changes and may cause them to leave.


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

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?

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 & Social Media Marketing To The Rescue

Now that the website is live, we just sit back, celebrate at the launch party with a bottle of bubbly and wait for all that traffic and recognition, right? Dream on!

Internet marketing and online promotion require ongoing attention and acute care. The good news is that this part of the “web-dev” process can be the most fun and bring the most joy – both emotionally and financially. Checking your website stats and seeing that you have ten times the traffic increase when compared to last month, and having to hire additional help to respond to all of the contact form submissions can be very exciting times for any online business. (Yay! #success) Where do I start then?

A properly crafted website well on it’s way with this.

During the website development phase great care and attention was taken to lay the ground work for a sound SEO (search engine optimization) foundation. Well thought out page titles, meta tags, keyword sensitive copy-writing and a solid interlinking system should have all been in place. Having these items in place will greatly help in increasing your relevance in the eyes of major search engines. Web directories and Search engine submission

One of the first steps after launching the website should be submitting your site to the top web directories and search engines. Getting listed can sometimes cost a nominal fee and at times can be a long process, so it’s important to get the ball rolling.

Getting your site known and listed on directories can help in numerous ways:

People who use these directories can find your site

Lets the search engines know that your website exists

Provides links back to your site from some top page ranked sources

* Link building

Link building is another important step in promoting your website. Having in-bound links listed on highly reputable and relevant websites is probably at the top of Google’s long list of criteria for determining your pages rank. Make sure that your approach with link building is ethical.
(Not-so-good practices such as using link farming services can quickly make your site disappear in the eyes of the major search engines.) The Best practices of getting your links listed on websites that are relevant to yours can direct visitors to you as well as making search engines say: “Hey if that top ranking website thinks that your site has reputable and relevant information then it must be so.”

Best practices for link building include (but are not limited to) the following:

Writing articles for websites or blogs and including a link back to your site in your authors bio

Writing articles and submitting them to article publication services

Adding a link on your site to a website you hope to get your name on, contacting them and asking for a reciprocal link in return

Having content on your website that is actually inbound link worthy

* Keeping your content fresh

A very large mistake many people make after launching their website is never adding new content or updating existing pages. This hurts your visibility in numerous ways. If there is never anything new to see visitors will never feel the need to return. The same is true for search engine spiders – they want to eat up and index all of your new content.

Top experts also feel that search engines give more importance to sites with frequently updated content as the info must be time relevant. Spiders keep track of how often new content is added to your site and determine the frequency of their trips back to you based on this data.
The more content you produce, the more visits you’ll have from all your friendly neighbors on the net. Harnessing social media.

Using social media channels like Facebook and Twitter can help keep you in touch with your fans, tribe and client base. Social Media is a great avenue for building upon old relations and creating new ones as well. The viral nature of social media marketing also provides huge potential for exposing your website to an exponential number of people, friends of theirs and their friends’ friends, and so on ad infinitum.

There are many ways to market your website and get your name out there so that your people find you.

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

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

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.

Meta Title Tags are Gold

* How to write compelling page titles

From an SEO perspective, the title of the webpage is very important. These are the words that describe what your page is about and are the first words that a search engine sees when it crawls your webpage looking for content to add to its index.

The page title is also what the searcher sees in a search result – so the page title is very important in describing what the page is about and if the title meets the searcher’s criteria, then it is more likely to be clicked on and your page opened.

It is safe to assume that the majority of searchers these days will be tempted to either click or ignore based on the content of the title. This is like your ad in the natural search section of the search engine results page.

Now that the impact of the title of the webpage is obvious, let me explain how to write an effective and powerful title.

First the basics! The webpage title aka the title tag is the synopsis of the content of the web page. So, as no two pages on your website are the same, hence why should their title tags be? Therefore, as a general rule, title tags for each page on your website should be unique. This is an added bonus from an SEO perspective, because now you can target many more keywords and spread your reach across search engine indexes.

The second thing to consider is whether you want to add your company name in the title tag? The answer is that it depends on your branding strategy. If your company name is a known brand, or if you want to promote your firm name as a brand or if your company name consists of keyword(s) that you want to target such as ABC Family Solicitors targeting the keyword “Family Solicitors”, then by all means add your company name in the title tag. If not, then use the limited but valuable space to add your targeted keywords. If you do decide to add your company name, make sure that it is at the end of the title. This is because you want search engines and your visitors to first read
the targeted keyword(s) for that page and then the company name.

It is important to remember that since the title tag is the synopsis of the content of the web page, you need to make sure that the title tag is relevant. For example, the title tag for an about us page is “About Website Design Company – ECommerce Partners”. Hence, the title tag does its job of informing what the page is about. Now, you might have noticed that instead of “About Us – ECommerce Partners”, we added “About Website Design Company – ECommerce Partners”.

The reason is because “Website Design Company” is one of the key phrases we want to target and so, we replaced “About Us” with “About Website Design Company”. This brings out an important point. We need to do a keyword analysis before we write an effective and powerful title tag.

Keyword mining and analysis is a very important part of writing compelling page titles and is a part of the Search Engine Optimization service that First One On provides to their clients.

The next step after keyword analysis will be to write down title tags for each and every web page on your website.

Please be careful when writing title tags and never, never over stuff keywords in the title. Doing so will undermine the power of the title tag and defeat the purpose of better ranking in the search engines. The title tag is the title of your web page and so it must be relevant and meaningful. Remember, this is the title in your AD in the natural search listings of the search engine.

* General Suggestion

You cannot promote all of your keywords in one page. Normally, you should promote 3 to 5 keyword phrases per page. The ‘Title tag’ should contain up to 3 important keywords that match to the body of the page content. If the keyword you are trying to promote is highly competitive, you can consider repeating the important keyword twice in the first 100 words of the page content.

Limit the length of the title keywords to 65 characters or less, including spaces. There’s no reason to have the engines cut off the last word and have it replaced with a “…” Note that some search engines are now accepting longer titles and Google, in particular, is now supporting up to 70 characters.

Use a divider when splitting up the keywords. We generally recommend the use of the “|” symbol aka the pipe bar. Others choose the arrow “>” or hyphen “-” and both work well.

Re-using the title tag of each page as the H1 heading tag can be valuable from both a SEO keyword targeting standpoint and a user experience improvement. Users who go to the page from the search result listing will have the expectation of finding the title they clicked on. Users will be more likely to stay on a page they’re reasonably certain fits their intended search query.

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?

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.

SEO & Social Media Marketing To The Rescue

Now that the website is live, we just sit back, celebrate at the launch party with a bottle of bubbly and wait for all that traffic and recognition, right? Dream on!

Internet marketing and online promotion require ongoing attention and acute care. The good news is that this part of the “web-dev” process can be the most fun and bring the most joy – both emotionally and financially. Checking your website stats and seeing that you have ten times the traffic increase when compared to last month, and having to hire additional help to respond to all of the contact form submissions can be very exciting times for any online business. (Yay! #success) Where do I start then?

A properly crafted website well on it’s way with this.

During the website development phase great care and attention was taken to lay the ground work for a sound SEO (search engine optimization) foundation. Well thought out page titles, meta tags, keyword sensitive copy-writing and a solid interlinking system should have all been in place. Having these items in place will greatly help in increasing your relevance in the eyes of major search engines. Web directories and Search engine submission

One of the first steps after launching the website should be submitting your site to the top web directories and search engines. Getting listed can sometimes cost a nominal fee and at times can be a long process, so it’s important to get the ball rolling.

Getting your site known and listed on directories can help in numerous ways:

People who use these directories can find your site

Lets the search engines know that your website exists

Provides links back to your site from some top page ranked sources

Link building

Link building is another important step in promoting your website. Having in-bound links listed on highly reputable and relevant websites is probably at the top of Google’s long list of criteria for determining your pages rank. Make sure that your approach with link building is ethical.
(Not-so-good practices such as using link farming services can quickly make your site disappear in the eyes of the major search engines.) The Best practices of getting your links listed on websites that are relevant to yours can direct visitors to you as well as making search engines say: “Hey if that top ranking website thinks that your site has reputable and relevant information then it must be so.”

Best practices for link building include (but are not limited to) the following:

Writing articles for websites or blogs and including a link back to your site in your authors bio

Writing articles and submitting them to article publication services

Adding a link on your site to a website you hope to get your name on, contacting them and asking for a reciprocal link in return

Having content on your website that is actually inbound link worthy

Keeping your content fresh

A very large mistake many people make after launching their website is never adding new content or updating existing pages. This hurts your visibility in numerous ways. If there is never anything new to see visitors will never feel the need to return. The same is true for search engine spiders – they want to eat up and index all of your new content.

Top experts also feel that search engines give more importance to sites with frequently updated content as the info must be time relevant. Spiders keep track of how often new content is added to your site and determine the frequency of their trips back to you based on this data.
The more content you produce, the more visits you’ll have from all your friendly neighbors on the net. Harnessing social media.

Using social media channels like Facebook and Twitter can help keep you in touch with your fans, tribe and client base. Social Media is a great avenue for building upon old relations and creating new ones as well. The viral nature of social media marketing also provides huge potential for exposing your website to an exponential number of people, friends of theirs and their friends’ friends, and so on ad infinitum.

There are many ways to market your website and get your name out there so that your people find you.

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.

De-mystifying Landing Page Optimization

When a website is finally getting respectable traffic, enjoying a decent page rank (PR), and already at the first pages of search engine results, is it time to break out the champagne in celebration?

The shrewd website owner knows this is just halfway through the journey to a successful income-generating website. The end-goal is still how to turn visitors into buying customers. The bottom line is sales conversion, and this is an even harder hurdle to overcome.

It all boils down to what the users do when they get into the site. Do they click on links and advertisements? Do they spend a lot of time reading or browsing products? And most importantly, do they buy?

To convert audience from just-curious exploring visitors into actively purchasing ones, website owners should venture into the realms of landing page optimization.

Shedding Light on Landing Page Optimization

Experts rely on certain information to optimize the landing page. Some data may come from search criteria used by users to get to the site, or user demographics and buying habits. With this data the page is re-designed to appeal to users.

Another way to optimize is based on the results of an experimentation, wherein users are led to several versions of the landing page to see which version is more appealing to them. The most common experimentation is through A/B split testing involving two versions of the page. Although this method is inexpensive and makes for easier analysis and decision-making, the decision maybe flawed by inadequate data that takes no account of many external elements – banner, layout, color theme, text copy, etc. — not contained in only two versions.

Another landing page optimization that is more complex in execution, tools used, and statistical analysis is multi-variate LPO. Multi-variate LPO incorporates more elements that can be combined to come up with better landing page versions. When testing versions of landing pages that accounts for multiple variables instead of just two, the site gets the most accurate analysis of visitor preferences, the factors that can make them buy, and which page version is the best combination that gets the best reaction from users.

Tips to Better Landing Page Optimization

When website owners decide to launch their landing page optimization, they should do so with careful consideration. The undertaking involves resources and a certain degree of risk. If not done correctly, LPO can end up costing money but little results. Here are some tips to make the effort effective and easier:

The look and feel of the landing page, is critical to encouraging or discouraging visitors to make a purchase in the site. This should be kept in mind as the rationale behind any LPO effort.

Be careful in choosing the elements for optimization, such as layout, color theme, promotional campaigns, banners, etc. Make sure they can materialize or can be delivered when they turn out to be critical to optimization.

Choose the best element mix from the many permutations, to lessen the complexity of having to test all landing page combinations.

To find the optimum mix of elements from gathered data, use the most efficient tool such as Google’s Website Optimizer for analysis.

Be careful in directing users to experimental landing page versions in a production website, many users tend to dislike changes and may cause them to leave.

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

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

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

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 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?

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