Posts Tagged ‘marketing’

What’s The Big Deal Over SEO

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

Search engine optimization refers to any practice related to the end goal of improving your web site’s position in the search engine ‘free found listing.’ The reason you want all of your web pages, or at least your most important web pages, search engine optimized zeros in on what nearly every website owner wants: More new business contacts generated from Web traffic!

According to current search engine ranking requirements, keywords and content on the same page must match a particular set of criteria. Basically, this means - for example - that for every 500 words on a page, you might only be able to write the same keyword 5 or 6 times to maintain the balance required by search engines. But simply adding the keyword to the body of the page is not the only factor. The page title and description (among others) are also factors. It’s obvious that every keyword you have for your site can’t be positioned accurately in each relevant place on one page. Each keyword, keyword phrase, or keyword set needs its own page to effectively return web traffic to your site.

Keyword stuffing is a big ouch! Repeating your keyword 30 or 40 times in the content is called keyword stuffing, and it gets your web page penalized or banned altogether from search results. It’s just common sense not to engage in keyword stuffing. Limit the number of keywords on each of your web pages, and develop individual web pages for each of your most important keywords.

Requirements and standards change rapidly. At this writing, if the web page is unique and if crawlers determine that the page offers viewers substantive content, it passes the first test for ranking.

It goes something like this. The number of words the public sees on a page is analyzed by search engine robots to determine if there are enough words to be valuable to a web visitor who reads the page. If there are enough words on the visible part of the web page, then the robot evaluates the hidden text (called the source code). It looks for key words, descriptions, web page titles, link content and image descriptions just for starters. If the data qualifies, this invisible web page crawler then compares the overall page content with your entire website to look for a consistent theme. In other words, you can’t publish a page about your cat on a site that sells chess sets without breaking the consistent theme rule. Every website must have a consistent theme weaved in and out every web page.

If the web pages pass this evaluation, the robot zips on to calculate all the data in various formats. For example, are there too many keywords on the page as compared to the total number of words on the web page? A comparison of image descriptions and link content also plays a roll. Once all of the various calculations are complete - and this all happens in seconds - the calculated percent of substance is compared to all the other website pages on the Internet asking for the same keyword status. Then the robot determines web page ranking position to be displayed in the search engine ‘free found listing’ when that one key word is used by a web searcher.

It is easy to see why search engine optimizing web pages is a complex, labor-intensive task that requires up-to-date knowledge of search engine standards and requirements, skill in applying the words to comply as closely as possible with top ranking position, and common sense so as to not go overboard (keyword stuffing a page) getting that web page penalized or banned altogether.

Pages that use acceptable standards applicable for each search engine are rewarded in time with a valuable ranking. A top ranking has many benefits for your business, from visibility, free clicks and web traffic to increased sales revenue.

The bottom line is to publish web pages that meet search requirements so visitors can find your page. If it is too time consuming for you to successfully optimize the content on your web site, or if your search engine ranking appears buried on page 99 of the free found listing, you may want to consider a professional SEO service provider. Start by asking an experienced search optimization writer to review 3 or 4 of your existing web pages. Listen to her suggestions and apply them. If budget is limited, engage her services to only optimize your most important web pages. Track results over the following 90 - 120 days.

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What Is A SEO Expert And What He Does

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

Most of for profit firms based on the internet will need a SEO expert to continually monitor and revise the sites that they currently have. Search engine optimization is one way to marketing the site and expose it Internet users and to help it rank higher in search engine results. So to stay competitive webmasters, businesses and other organizations will need the services of a SEO expert even if they are happy with current rankings.

SEO Expert Methodologies:

Content rich in keywords is the way to go if you want to place high in search engine results. A SEO expert is sure to point this fact out. Most companies focusing on search engine optimization and other web development areas will immediately try to add keyword rich content to an ailing web site in order to help it get back on its feet.

Other methods that a SEO expert might employ to optimize web sites is to tune in to what the other similar sites are using. Knowing what the other websites are doing successfully can help eliminate the process of trial and error. Using a tried and tested working method helps to minimize the work done on thinking of ways to break into the industry. A SEO expert will recommend using what the competition is using and do a better job at it than the competition. Finding out what the keywords are at a high ranking web site will help you determine which ones are working and which ones to place in your site. This may seem like cheating but you are actually researching what work and what does not instead of trying things out by making those mistakes on your own site.

A SEO expert will also make sure that your web designs is appealing to both robots and human visitors. SEO expert and web designers are important resources in getting higher rankings from search engines and being remembered by human visitors. The web design must be search engine friendly in such a way that spiders will not have a hard time indexing or assessing it for better classification.

The relevance of the site must be specific enough to warrant it being classified under what it actually is. SEO expert’s web design strategy is important so that whatever information or data you have judged important for you site, will be readily available for crawlers. You will also need an SEO expert to help you choose and scale down the images and pictures that will appear in the website. Pictures and images which are too large will take a long time loading and this will bore browsers into transferring to another site that is probably more efficient. Other things which you should also stay away from when you design the site is putting hidden texts or tags which you hope the crawlers will find and use to make your site higher ranking. This is a black hat method which most search engines disapprove it. Sites with this kind of web designs will be banned for a period of time until they shape up their site.

One of the crucial tasks a SEO expert will do for you is to increase your link popularity also known as link building. This is the toughest and most time consuming part as acquiring one way links is no easy task. Today reciprocal link building has decreased in importance.

Choosing An SEO Expert:

When hiring an SEO expert to help with search engine optimization, it is best to ask for recommendations from sites he or she has helped or to visit those sites yourself, to see how well they are doing. If you are suspicious of the way the SEO expert does his business, go to another. The investment you will be putting in the hands of an SEO expert is quite large therefore you need to be satisfied and complacent regarding the job he will be doing for you.

Other things that might be considered when choosing an SEO expert for your optimization needs are his maintenance program of the sites he will be optimizing and the services that he will extend to you regarding web site submission, data submission and content submission. Most SEO companies offer submission services but others might charge additional for all the different tools and methods they will do and use for your site. Your chosen SEO expert must be aware of the most updated tools and methodologies available in the Internet today but he should also have reasonable costs for these since the search engine optimization industry is a competitive one.

You might try to do some of your optimization yourself if you want. Some of the things that are usually done to a website are quite easy to manage and can be done by a web savvy individual. The problem is some of the fields of search engine optimization are difficult and you will need some expert in the field to be able to do these and most services are bundled with each other so the optimization that you might do will still be included in the charge of the SEO expert.

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What Is The Definition Of SEO?

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

How to use search engine optimization to be found (rescued) on the Web.

A few years ago, my good friend Bill B. bought his first sailboat.

He called and told me: “Jon, today - I bought a new sailboat, and it’s the happiest day of my life”! I grinned and told him: “I also understand that selling it will be your happiest day of your life”. (Turned out I was right)…

What does sailing have to do with SEO and this article?

The story continues: My buddy Bill did end up selling it a few years later (you’ll see why). I taught him how his boat could be found and sold via web search traffic to his website, which we set up together.

Today – he has a thriving web business, and he has bought and sold many boats and accessories since those early years. He went full-time into the web business, and he understands the power of SEO and ranking high for key search terms.

What is the definition of SEO, and why is it important to your business?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, or as defined by Google: Search Engine Optimizer. SEO is a subset of the umbrella term Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

Properly applied search engine optimization allows your site to be not only seen by the search engines, but when a search term (keywords, phrases) is entered, you can rank very high in the search engine results pages (SERPS). The results pages are typically a combination of natural (sometimes called organic) results, paid inclusions (directories) and pay-per-click (PPC) ads.

The wholly grail for online marketers centers around being found on the first page of Google, currently owning well over half of the market of all searches. If you further optimize in such a way that it brings *quality* traffic, that can be the ultimate return on investment (ROI), assuming you have a solid back office process. If you have optimized well for Google, you will rank good in the other majors (MSN, Yahoo) also.

Interestingly enough, Search Engine Optimization is not optimizing the search engines themselves, (SEO-ers can only make experienced and industry guesses) but rather optimizing the websites, content and related parts (links) so the users can find you easily. It’s all about relevancy. Many folks hire professional consultants to perform SEO, and some attempt to do it themselves, which I will help you with during the months to come.

My sailing buddy was lost at sea.

That third weekend of his boat saga, he told his wife that a trip outside of the safe harbor and into somewhat un-chartered waters would be a fun and challenging experience, and he brought a friend along to assist.

Normally, he would have reviewed the weather forecast, map (lat/long), trip log, flares, emergency contact info and courses outlined, including both physical and radio contact points to coast guards and ports, but he neglected all this by making a stupid mistake: he did not fully prepare and made some bad assumptions.

It was a poor weekend to go out as well. A tranquil beginning, they were relaxing and enjoying the sea. However, the weather turned quickly into one of the fiercest storms and many hours later, they were missing at sea.

The coast guard and others were looking for them (SEO: visitors), his boat and crew had not prepared a strategy (SEO: competitive analysis, know your audience, know where you are (your value proposition), and what keywords to use) and this was a different route than anytime before (SEO: know who your link partners are that can help you get ranking/visibility/popularity via relevant links in your topical, themed community).

The next 24 hours at sea were not good, to say the least. Here they were, way off course, nobody could find them, and they had run out of options. By stroke of luck, one ship happened to cross their path almost 100 nautical miles off course. (SEO: Was this a random ‘visitor’?)

My friend and his associate were rescued, and what a big lesson it was. They learned that careful preparation, planning and execution, as well as adjusting for bad weather (SEO: competitive analysis, thoughtful planning) are cornerstones to a successful trip. This also means never giving up, (SEO: keep content fresh, adust, and monitor changes in the search engine algorithms), you can survive!

Summary:
SEO done right can enable you to be found (in the sea of billions of web pages), and ranked well. You should always provide relevant information that the users are looking for, and you’ll have a steady stream of visitors, 24×7x365.

Make sure to include solid search engine optimization strategy, tactics and operational context for a safer (relevant) trip on the World Wide Web.

SEO is one of the most powerful online marketing mediums there is, and the display of those query results are completely free, and doing it right will elevate your positions.

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Submit Your Site To Search Engines

Saturday, October 31st, 2009

There are many Search Engines and Directories, but only a few major ones will bring you most traffic. In this article I will describe how to submit your site to Yahoo, Google and Open Directory

1.) Directories And Indexes

First, I would like to describe a difference between Directory and Index. Directory is a collection of links divided by subjects just like Yahoo Directory at dir.yahoo.com. Let’s say you are interested in Finance. Go to Business & Economy section and press Finance. You will find variety of topics listed under Finance.

Index is the number of sites available for search. For example, you go to Yahoo.com and enter “Napoleon” in search box. Results will show a number of sites related to Napoleon in Yahoo Index. The same is true for any other search term. There are millions of sites in listed in major Indexes.

2.) How To Submit Your Site To Yahoo Directory

Listing with Yahoo Directory will provide several benefits for your site. First of all, you will get some traffic from Yahoo Directory. However, number of visitors will depend on category where your site is listed. There are some highly competitive categories that may not generate much traffic. Also some search indexes are more likely to include your site if you are listed with Yahoo Directory or Open Directory Project which is discussed later in this article.

You must decide what category your page will be listed under before before submitting it to Yahoo Directory. Usually there is more than one category appropriate for your site. You have to decide which one works best for you based on several factors: relevance, number of competing sites under the category. For example my site www.yourcareerlinks.com is listed under Business & Economy - Employment And Work - Careers And Jobs - Jobs - Directories.

In order to suggest your site to Yahoo Directory, select your category and click Suggest A Site link located below upper right corner. If your category is commercial, you can list your site only through Express submission.

Express submission costs $299. Yahoo editors check your site within 7 days. Please read Yahoo instructions carefully. Your payment of $299 doesn’t guarantee automatic inclusion. If they approve it, your site will be listed in Yahoo Directory and you will pay $299 annually to maintain it in the directory.

Yahoo Standard Submission is free for non-commercial sites. Yahoo doesn’t state when your site will be reviewed with free submission. If you have time to wait, you may try this option.

3.) How To Submit Your Site To Yahoo Index

When you go to http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html, first option is to submit your site for free to Yahoo Search Index. Before you do that, your site must be optimized for Search Engine inclusion with appropriate titles and meta tags. Below you will see what title and meta tags look for this page:

Web Marketing, How To Submit Your Site To Search Engines

Title describes your page in a few words. META name=”DESCRIPTION” is a short outline of what your web page is about. META name=”KEYWORDS” includes keywords relevant to the page. Each page of your site may have different Title and Meta Tags

The purpose of relevant titles and Meta Tags is to help web surfers to identify sites they are looking for through descriptions and keywords. However, it is quiet hard to get top Search Engine placement ( whch is to get listed among first 20- 30 results ) these days. There are many competitors, rules and criterias are constantly changing and it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain high ranking in the Index.

Chances are that your site is not going to be listed high with Indexes. Therefore, my recommendation is to use free submission options to Yahoo Search Index or any other Search Index for that matter unless you are an expert in Search Engine optimization and ranking. You don’t want to pay to get ranked number 256 or whatever.

4.) How To Submit Your Site To Google

Google is another major Search Engine. They offer two opportunities to market your site. You can submit the site to Google Index for free here. As I stated before, you probably are not going to get high ranking, but you might get some clicks from Google if your site will be listed.

Another option to advertise with Google is through Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Program called Google AdWords. You can read in my article about Pay-Per-Click marketing here.

5.) Open Directory Project

Open Directory Project is directory of web sites managed by volunteer editors. Inclusion is free, but it has to be approved by editor. There is no time frame as to when your site will be reviewed. If your site is not listed within a few months after you applied, you can submit it again. Open Directory is located at www.dmoz.org. You should find appropriate category for your site and submit it.

There are other Search Engines out there. Many are based on Yahoo or Google Search. For example, Alta Vista (www.altavista.com ) is now based on Yahoo Search index. Therefore, if your site is listed with Yahoo Search Index, it is probably listed in Alta Vista as well. Some offer paid inclusion in their Index such as Excite while others like Lycos offer Pay Per Click options

In my opinion, the best way to bring traffic to your site is to list it with Yahoo, Google and Open Directory Project. In addition, one should use Pay Per Click marketing which is explained in my PPC Marketing Article at http://www.webhostchecklist.com/payperclick.html .

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Off-Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Primer

Saturday, October 31st, 2009

In the earlier years of search engine optimization, it was all about on-page optimization. Things like the page title, Meta tags, heading tags, comment tags, and anchor text were the only things that mattered. Keyword stuffing could easily get your website to the top of the search engines results page. If I wanted the number one position, all I had to do was copy my competitor’s page, add my keyword one more time, and viola – I’d rank first. These days, things aren’t quite that easy. In order to obtain top positioning in the search results, your website has to gain to credibility or “web cred” in order to be recognized as important.

Optimize Your Domain Name

As of this writing, appears that the search engines do weight the fact that your domain name has your keywords in it. Problem is, many SEO professionals and amateurs are exploiting this by registering domains with the keywords in it, separated by dashes. Nobody knows how long the search engines will continue to weight this factor, but none the less, it’s probably not a bad idea to include a keyword or phrase in your domain name, but don’t get out of hand: www.please-let-google-ban-my-site-because-of-all-these-words.com

The number of years your domain has, and will be, registered for also has an effect on search engine rankings. If you have an older domain name, it is generally concluded that the website is not spam and will probably be around for years to come. This makes sense – Google should give higher priority to a website that’s been around for 5 years, than give the high ranking to a brand new, untested website. It may be a good idea to acquire a domain name that been around for a few years and also contains one of your keywords. The downside is that this option may be expensive. If you don’t have the budget for that, Google also seems to give credit for the number of years that the domain is pre-registered. I’ve looked at some data, and it seems that if you register your domain for a few years out, Google assumes you don’t have a fly-by-night website and you may be entitled to a slightly higher ranking. Given the miniscule cost of registering a domain name these days, it’s probably not a bad idea to register your domain name for 3 years rather than 1.

Page Rank

Google assigns each web page a Page Rank based on the number and quality of inbound links you have pointing to your website. You can view your website’s page rank by downloading the Google Toolbar. Your page rank will be displayed as a green bar measuring from 1 to 10. Don’t worry if you only have a Page Rank of 1 or 2 – most websites do. In order to get your number up (4 or 5 is pretty good), you’ll have to get other websites to link to you.

Quality Counts More Than Quantity

As soon as webmasters realized the importance of back links, numerous schemes were hatched in an attempt to build up thousands back links very quickly. Google has since caught on, and if your website acquires too many low-quality links too fast, you may get penalized. Here are some tips to obtain the best quality back links:

One-way links are better than reciprocal links. Reciprocal links are being de-valued because it is not natural linking – it’s an arrangement between the webmasters. If you can afford it, it may be a good idea to buy some one-way links to your website.

Get links from pages with a high Page Rank because some of that will pass through to your site, increasing your own site’s Page Rank.

Get links from sites in a related industry or geographical location. I do a lot of web design in my home town of Windsor, Ontario. Therefore, I make sure that I buy or trade links from other web design related sites, Canadian, Ontario, and Windsor directories. Google will see that your site is relevant if you do this.

Make sure your keywords are included in the link from other sites. If your keyword is included in the anchor text, Google will assume that your site relates to that particular keyword.

Get a listing in Open Project Directory (DMOZ), if you can. Only the best sites get into DMOZ, and it gives your site a lot of credibility in the eyes of the search engines.

Don’t inter-link your websites! If you think you can just link all of your own websites together and improve your Page Rank, forget it. Google will see that the IP address of all domains is the same, and, either give you little or no credit, or if you have a lot of sites inter-linked, penalize you.

Let last tip I’ll leave you with is: make sure to maintain your links. Google, for one, does not immediately give you credit for your links. The age of the link plays an important role, and as the months go by, those links which were maintained for long periods of time will carry a lot of weight. Good Luck!

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