Looking for a simple way to get an edge on your competition?
Successful businesses who are in it for the long haul continually apply innovative marketing strategies and tactics to differentiate themselves and get that edge. Two such killer marketing strategies are positioning and relationship building. And guess what? Article marketing is a proven tactic that just happens to address both of those marketing strategies. Is it the “be all, end all” of positioning and relationship building? Absolutely not. However, it is an excellent step in the right direction. And on top of that, there’s probably a good chance that your competition is not using this tactic. Face it. It takes some time, skill, and effort to write and effectively use articles, that’s why the masses don’t do it however, those looking for an edge do.
So why choose article marketing as one of you marketing tactics? Here are 7 exceptional reasons:
1. It is quite simple. People love to buy from and deal with the best. Writing and effectively marketing your articles helps you position yourself as the expert in your field.
2. Let's take this first concept a step further for reason #2. Let’s be blunt here, as an expert, you can justifiably increase your rates and charge more for your products.
3. If your articles are good and distributed properly, they can spread like wildfire and literally cause a viral marketing frenzy. Ultimately driving business your way.
4. A big part of Internet marketing has to do with the Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. It’s critical that we play their game. That being said, Search Engines love content such as articles! Many Internet marketers try the latest fad to trick Search Engines into getting a better ranking. If you have a lot of time and/or money on your hands to keep up with the latest trends and the ever changing Search Engine rules, then do what you feel is right. However, one tactic still holds true with improving Search Engine ranking, and that’s article marketing.
5. People love to be and feel well informed – It helps them make better decisions. Your articles can serve as the source for the input they seek. And who better to buy from then the source that provided the information in the first place.
6. Talk about getting major bang for the buck, articles can easily be repurposed in a variety of ways. For example:
==> They can become content for your or someone else's newsletter;
==> Used as free giveaways to prospects/clients, in seminars, at networking events, etc;
==> Used to spark conversation in a blog or an online networking group such as Ryze;
==> Combine multiple articles into an eBook, book or info-product that can be sold or given away in exchange for contact information;
==> Become the basis for a live seminar or teleseminar;
==> And we can go on and on and on.
7. Articles when distributed properly are a great way to stay in touch with clients and prospects. Studies have shown that on average it takes around 7 touches before a prospect buys. Why not use articles as some of those touches? This will help continually boost your prospect’s perception of you as someone who consistently adds value.
We live in an age where information is king. We all know something others would be interested in knowing. Share your knowledge and like a magnet you’ll draw your prospects towards you.
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
6 Costly Mistakes Affiliate Marketers Make In Their Career
It’s always one of those “I can’t believe its true” moments for new affiliates once they discover the world of affiliate marketing. When they realise you don’t have to worry about product development or shipping. They immediately jump on board, forgetting to perform their due diligence on the company they are joining. Then soon afterwards they expect to start making money within weeks of starting, but reality always strikes. They are yet to be millionaires. Here are some mistakes and tips on how to avoid them.
1, Lack Of Patience: Patience is a Virtue like they say. It took years for MacDonald’s to be a successful; it took years for Microsoft and other big companies to take off to success. Infact most business takes up to 5years to start seeing profit. Treating your affiliate business as a real business is important. Super affiliates that earn $20,000 a month took years to get to that point. Research a program before signing up. Commit to stick it out. If they offer guides and training take advantage of it. Update and maintain your site with fresh contents. Don’t jump ship when the going gets tough.
2, To Many Programs: Avoid the temptation to subscribe to too many programs. When the going gets tough, its easy to think the grass is greener the other side. The problem about subscribing to too many programs at the same time is that you’ll fail to give them the attention and focus they deserve to make you money. I recommend two or three programs at the same time to enable you turn your hard work into cash.
3, Wrong Choice Of Program: When it comes to choosing affiliate programs, choose the ones that have a generous commission structure, and that pay their affiliates easily and on time. Have affiliate products that fit in with your target audience. Choosing programs that offers products that might not interest people means no commission or money for you. If you join a program that offers products that are “hot” you will be competing with thousands of others who are promoting the same product. Choose a niche you KNOW information about! Check the profitability of that niche.
4, Generalized Marketing: Focus on Niche Marketing: Focus on a tiny niche, the tinier and narrower that niche is, the better. Try improving on a single key aspect of your business at a time. Putting your efforts in one of two ways will help you achieve your affiliate program goals. Try getting people to join your list. Then keep in touch with them by sending out valuable info.
5, Organic Traffic Only: Another mistake most affiliates makes is the idea of generating only organic traffic. This form of traffic that is naturally generated by a website, is a myth. There is no such thing! Organic traffic is the one that is created by the website naturally. This concept is nothing but a fairy tale story and this is not a reality.
6, Link Exposure: Hiding your affiliate link on your website is crucial nowadays. Most affiliate marketers still make the mistake of making there links visible. The truth is that internet users have become more sophisticated and the honest truth is that most web users won't click on an affiliate link or anything that looks like it. You’ve got to learn how to hide your affiliate links to ensure click through’s. Also, stories of people’s affiliate links being changed to divert traffic has happened and is still happening.
There are many big mistakes made by affiliates that can be easily avoided, but these are just a few of them. However making mistakes in business are inevitable and important. I recommend failing and making mistakes fast and early in your business than learning from them. This would move you forward towards success.
1, Lack Of Patience: Patience is a Virtue like they say. It took years for MacDonald’s to be a successful; it took years for Microsoft and other big companies to take off to success. Infact most business takes up to 5years to start seeing profit. Treating your affiliate business as a real business is important. Super affiliates that earn $20,000 a month took years to get to that point. Research a program before signing up. Commit to stick it out. If they offer guides and training take advantage of it. Update and maintain your site with fresh contents. Don’t jump ship when the going gets tough.
2, To Many Programs: Avoid the temptation to subscribe to too many programs. When the going gets tough, its easy to think the grass is greener the other side. The problem about subscribing to too many programs at the same time is that you’ll fail to give them the attention and focus they deserve to make you money. I recommend two or three programs at the same time to enable you turn your hard work into cash.
3, Wrong Choice Of Program: When it comes to choosing affiliate programs, choose the ones that have a generous commission structure, and that pay their affiliates easily and on time. Have affiliate products that fit in with your target audience. Choosing programs that offers products that might not interest people means no commission or money for you. If you join a program that offers products that are “hot” you will be competing with thousands of others who are promoting the same product. Choose a niche you KNOW information about! Check the profitability of that niche.
4, Generalized Marketing: Focus on Niche Marketing: Focus on a tiny niche, the tinier and narrower that niche is, the better. Try improving on a single key aspect of your business at a time. Putting your efforts in one of two ways will help you achieve your affiliate program goals. Try getting people to join your list. Then keep in touch with them by sending out valuable info.
5, Organic Traffic Only: Another mistake most affiliates makes is the idea of generating only organic traffic. This form of traffic that is naturally generated by a website, is a myth. There is no such thing! Organic traffic is the one that is created by the website naturally. This concept is nothing but a fairy tale story and this is not a reality.
6, Link Exposure: Hiding your affiliate link on your website is crucial nowadays. Most affiliate marketers still make the mistake of making there links visible. The truth is that internet users have become more sophisticated and the honest truth is that most web users won't click on an affiliate link or anything that looks like it. You’ve got to learn how to hide your affiliate links to ensure click through’s. Also, stories of people’s affiliate links being changed to divert traffic has happened and is still happening.
There are many big mistakes made by affiliates that can be easily avoided, but these are just a few of them. However making mistakes in business are inevitable and important. I recommend failing and making mistakes fast and early in your business than learning from them. This would move you forward towards success.
3 Essentials Before You Submit To Article Directories
One of the oldest yet still more effective techniques in driving targeted prospects to sites and converting them into buyers is information-based marketing. This is why article writing, submissions and publications are at an all-time high.
There are many tools that you can use to make the process of distributing your articles easier. However, although this is invaluable in getting your article exposed to more sites, there are common mistakes that some people make before submitting their articles to directories.
Let us take a look at the more common mistakes made in 3 key areas:
1) Confusing the reason to promote articles with the reason to write them.
In article writing, the main benefits of you promoting them is branding, lead generation and promotion, which are all part of your optimization efforts.
However, there is one reason why you write articles, and that is to inform your audience about a subject. It is greatly important that your article is based upon this fact, or else you stand to fail in the promotional benefits as outlined above.
Of course, it is also highly important that you figure out how to get people to read you article, and then to click on your site link in the resource box. I have produced a couple of articles that cover these areas so please check them out :-).
2) Failing to realize and maximize the promotional opportunities of article marketing.
You will more than likely already know that your article can generate links back to your site from the article directories themselves, and also from any sites who publish your article from these directories. However, did you know that you can attract more visitors and better search engine results from the same article?
The first step to achieving this is to provide relevant keywords at strategic places in the article. However, do not overdo this. A good benchmark is to aim for between a ten to fifteen percent keyword density. I won't go further into this here as I've discussed this in other articles but if you would like to find out more, look out for more of my article marketing articles.
You shouldn't just aim for your article to be accepted by article directories, but should ultimately aim for it to be used by publishers who scour the directories for website content. You should not underestimate the potential that this can have on your promotional efforts, as many of these publishers may have hundreds or thousands of regular visitors who could then view your article.
Start out by having a plan of what you want achieved and make sure that you reach your targets. It is important to do this so that you can reap the maximum benefits of every article that you write.
3) Creating articles with content that does not help your readers.
Maybe your only plan is to create an article and get links back from article directories, and that any visitor that you may get from this is fine.
Well you may need to think again. Many article directoriesclamp down on the amount of articles that they accept that are simply not up to standard. And even if a poorly written, uninformative article does make it into the article sites, then the potential of being picked up by webmasters seeking quality content is certainly lost.
The benefits of one publisher with a hundred thousand website visitors picking up your article should be enough incentive for you to write an informative article. This is by no means impossible, and you may find that this value is conservative in what you may achieve from a number of publishers running your article on their site.
Researching into a topic that is sought after is important. There may be many readers of this article who will feel that this information is all well and good but feel that they cannot write an article well, or may not know enough about a certain subject to write an article. This is by no means a dead-end. There are many places where you can research into a topic, or hiring a writer might be an option worth considering.
The choice really is yours on how dedicated you are in increasing the exposure of your article, and consequently your website. On a basic level you can choose to gain a few backlinks from article directories, or with a little more effort you can enjoy massive exposure from providing quality content.
There are many tools that you can use to make the process of distributing your articles easier. However, although this is invaluable in getting your article exposed to more sites, there are common mistakes that some people make before submitting their articles to directories.
Let us take a look at the more common mistakes made in 3 key areas:
1) Confusing the reason to promote articles with the reason to write them.
In article writing, the main benefits of you promoting them is branding, lead generation and promotion, which are all part of your optimization efforts.
However, there is one reason why you write articles, and that is to inform your audience about a subject. It is greatly important that your article is based upon this fact, or else you stand to fail in the promotional benefits as outlined above.
Of course, it is also highly important that you figure out how to get people to read you article, and then to click on your site link in the resource box. I have produced a couple of articles that cover these areas so please check them out :-).
2) Failing to realize and maximize the promotional opportunities of article marketing.
You will more than likely already know that your article can generate links back to your site from the article directories themselves, and also from any sites who publish your article from these directories. However, did you know that you can attract more visitors and better search engine results from the same article?
The first step to achieving this is to provide relevant keywords at strategic places in the article. However, do not overdo this. A good benchmark is to aim for between a ten to fifteen percent keyword density. I won't go further into this here as I've discussed this in other articles but if you would like to find out more, look out for more of my article marketing articles.
You shouldn't just aim for your article to be accepted by article directories, but should ultimately aim for it to be used by publishers who scour the directories for website content. You should not underestimate the potential that this can have on your promotional efforts, as many of these publishers may have hundreds or thousands of regular visitors who could then view your article.
Start out by having a plan of what you want achieved and make sure that you reach your targets. It is important to do this so that you can reap the maximum benefits of every article that you write.
3) Creating articles with content that does not help your readers.
Maybe your only plan is to create an article and get links back from article directories, and that any visitor that you may get from this is fine.
Well you may need to think again. Many article directoriesclamp down on the amount of articles that they accept that are simply not up to standard. And even if a poorly written, uninformative article does make it into the article sites, then the potential of being picked up by webmasters seeking quality content is certainly lost.
The benefits of one publisher with a hundred thousand website visitors picking up your article should be enough incentive for you to write an informative article. This is by no means impossible, and you may find that this value is conservative in what you may achieve from a number of publishers running your article on their site.
Researching into a topic that is sought after is important. There may be many readers of this article who will feel that this information is all well and good but feel that they cannot write an article well, or may not know enough about a certain subject to write an article. This is by no means a dead-end. There are many places where you can research into a topic, or hiring a writer might be an option worth considering.
The choice really is yours on how dedicated you are in increasing the exposure of your article, and consequently your website. On a basic level you can choose to gain a few backlinks from article directories, or with a little more effort you can enjoy massive exposure from providing quality content.
"Maximum Exposure on Low Cost Internet Ad"
Advertising had long since been a major determinant of a business' success. This would include the presentation of the product / service to the consumers. What really matters is how it is presented to the target market to be able to capture it.
Whatever the package, the ad media also plays a great role in determining the success of the product or service awareness.
What may be its advantages over other proven medium like the best-selling TV ads?
Advantages
1. Low Cost
Eventhough the Internet ad might be viewed as "classy" or far-reaching, as compared to other medium, this is far cheaper than most. Internet Ad Packages are offered for as low as $29.99 for a one-month run-time period.
2. Capture market
Should your product / service aim to cater to the younger generation or the corporate-oriented ones, Internet ad would be best since they would always be "hooked-up" into the net surfing sites that might have a link to your very own. Result, a great number of "hits" on your site!
2. Hassle free
All you would ever really need is a PC (and some knowledge and bright ideas in forming your site) wherein you could open your site, search for the best Internet Ad package, and check / update the status of your ad. You may actually never have to leave your home to advertise!
3. Updated ads
Unlike the TV ads that need to be updated on a regular basis, Internet ads may run for quite some time without the need for change. If so, change in the site is very minimal and may be done easily at home.
Disadvantages
1. Scope
Limited market may be captured if one would solely use the Internet Ad for advertising. Although most people now are into the use of technology, i.e. surfing the Internet, still, majority of the average consumers still relies on the old form of advertising as a means of gathering information about certain products / service.
2. Additional cost
If one would enlist the help of another professional or establishment to produce the site for their product or service, this would entail additional costs on the part of the entrepreneur.
Given the stated list of advantages and disadvantages about low-coast Internet Ad, an entrepreneur may now weigh in its applicability to his / her product or service.
The aim of Internet ad is to offer the widest range or "Maximum Exposure" of the brand at the least possible cost. Now, does that not sound good or what?
Whatever the package, the ad media also plays a great role in determining the success of the product or service awareness.
What may be its advantages over other proven medium like the best-selling TV ads?
Advantages
1. Low Cost
Eventhough the Internet ad might be viewed as "classy" or far-reaching, as compared to other medium, this is far cheaper than most. Internet Ad Packages are offered for as low as $29.99 for a one-month run-time period.
2. Capture market
Should your product / service aim to cater to the younger generation or the corporate-oriented ones, Internet ad would be best since they would always be "hooked-up" into the net surfing sites that might have a link to your very own. Result, a great number of "hits" on your site!
2. Hassle free
All you would ever really need is a PC (and some knowledge and bright ideas in forming your site) wherein you could open your site, search for the best Internet Ad package, and check / update the status of your ad. You may actually never have to leave your home to advertise!
3. Updated ads
Unlike the TV ads that need to be updated on a regular basis, Internet ads may run for quite some time without the need for change. If so, change in the site is very minimal and may be done easily at home.
Disadvantages
1. Scope
Limited market may be captured if one would solely use the Internet Ad for advertising. Although most people now are into the use of technology, i.e. surfing the Internet, still, majority of the average consumers still relies on the old form of advertising as a means of gathering information about certain products / service.
2. Additional cost
If one would enlist the help of another professional or establishment to produce the site for their product or service, this would entail additional costs on the part of the entrepreneur.
Given the stated list of advantages and disadvantages about low-coast Internet Ad, an entrepreneur may now weigh in its applicability to his / her product or service.
The aim of Internet ad is to offer the widest range or "Maximum Exposure" of the brand at the least possible cost. Now, does that not sound good or what?
"I am an AUTHOR" - Is this the next big fad?
Write an article, get the traffic. Well sort of! Since the birth of writing articles, our industry has caught on to the phenomena of increasing your website’s traffic by becoming the professional in your field. The only problem with this is that for every serious professional in one field, there are a thousand other writers who are jumping on the "band wagon".
This article phenomenon is hurting every industry!
From bloggers, column writers, and e-books, the writing industry is yearning for more great writers. The internet marketing community is especially hurting for better content.
With the birth of SEO (search engine optimization), people all over the world are searching, browsing, and reading everything they can on how to promote their business on the internet. Because of this demand for different content, the supply of writers are increasing everyday but the quality of articles is decreasing exponentially.
Everyone is writing about the exact same thing! My company receives on average 10-20 articles per hour submitted to us. I would have to say that only 1 in about 100 articles submitted are ever published within our website. Those numbers are extremely low and for good reason.
It's all about "substance" - or lack of it!
Many articles we review are nothing more than simple "babble" and most of them are pointless. You can seriously tell right away whether the article is just a promotional piece or something with actual substance within the content.
Great content is very important. There is a misconception out there that most people won't read your content and you can pretty much post anything you want within your website as long as your website is clean, professional looking, and can be found online.
YOU ARE SOOOOO WRONG!
website content development
If there is one constant online, it's the fact that the general public is getting smarter and more knowledgeable on how to research for honest, reputable companies on the internet.
Unfortunately, authors these days are simply stealing from other great authors!
I am not talking about posting someone else's article on your website! Copying content from other leaders in your industry will only hurt your company. This is why the writing industry is getting worse; many writers out there simply select a topic they want to write about, then they go online and find 5 articles on that topic. Once they have some other great articles, they simply proceed to combine each article for themselves, by personalizing the content a little.
Do you ever wonder why for specific topics within your industry, you can find hundreds of authors that wrote almost the exact same thing? I call these people "Content Copiers".
Even worse are people who buy articles to post online ! ! !
This gets me every time. Did you know that you can now hire a company to write something for you and insert your company information as the source and author of the article? This strategy is seriously sad considering I can almost guarantee you that the article you just bought was also sold to a handful of other companies. All they do is tweak the article a little bit and insert a different title.
No one knows your business more than you do. If you are seriously good at what you do, 9 times out of 10, you probably have enough knowledge to write an article that makes sense, that is unique in content, and that has your personal touch.
We've all come across different situations while operating our businesses. These small but important situations are what gives us confidence in what we do. When you learn from your mistakes, you should also consider educating people on what you've learned in order to help your potential clients or even help better educate your industry.
Think beyond yourself and write down something helpful.
I hope you've enjoyed this article!
This article phenomenon is hurting every industry!
From bloggers, column writers, and e-books, the writing industry is yearning for more great writers. The internet marketing community is especially hurting for better content.
With the birth of SEO (search engine optimization), people all over the world are searching, browsing, and reading everything they can on how to promote their business on the internet. Because of this demand for different content, the supply of writers are increasing everyday but the quality of articles is decreasing exponentially.
Everyone is writing about the exact same thing! My company receives on average 10-20 articles per hour submitted to us. I would have to say that only 1 in about 100 articles submitted are ever published within our website. Those numbers are extremely low and for good reason.
It's all about "substance" - or lack of it!
Many articles we review are nothing more than simple "babble" and most of them are pointless. You can seriously tell right away whether the article is just a promotional piece or something with actual substance within the content.
Great content is very important. There is a misconception out there that most people won't read your content and you can pretty much post anything you want within your website as long as your website is clean, professional looking, and can be found online.
YOU ARE SOOOOO WRONG!
website content development
If there is one constant online, it's the fact that the general public is getting smarter and more knowledgeable on how to research for honest, reputable companies on the internet.
Unfortunately, authors these days are simply stealing from other great authors!
I am not talking about posting someone else's article on your website! Copying content from other leaders in your industry will only hurt your company. This is why the writing industry is getting worse; many writers out there simply select a topic they want to write about, then they go online and find 5 articles on that topic. Once they have some other great articles, they simply proceed to combine each article for themselves, by personalizing the content a little.
Do you ever wonder why for specific topics within your industry, you can find hundreds of authors that wrote almost the exact same thing? I call these people "Content Copiers".
Even worse are people who buy articles to post online ! ! !
This gets me every time. Did you know that you can now hire a company to write something for you and insert your company information as the source and author of the article? This strategy is seriously sad considering I can almost guarantee you that the article you just bought was also sold to a handful of other companies. All they do is tweak the article a little bit and insert a different title.
No one knows your business more than you do. If you are seriously good at what you do, 9 times out of 10, you probably have enough knowledge to write an article that makes sense, that is unique in content, and that has your personal touch.
We've all come across different situations while operating our businesses. These small but important situations are what gives us confidence in what we do. When you learn from your mistakes, you should also consider educating people on what you've learned in order to help your potential clients or even help better educate your industry.
Think beyond yourself and write down something helpful.
I hope you've enjoyed this article!
“Essential” Clickbank Traffic Secrets You Need To Know To Achieve Monster Sales!
Clickbank, clickbank affiliates, money clickbank, make money clickbank, cash clickbank, affiliate money clickbank, clickbank profits, make money from clickbank, make money with clickbank, get rich clickbank, clickbank books, clickbank marketplace
Article Body:
One of the single most powerful and free ways to grab targeted traffic is definitely writing articles. Articles like this that you are currently reading serve many purposes.
Firstly, it establishes your position as an “authority” of the subject and also increases your brand name (or your name for the matter). Secondly, the link that is attached at the author resources box is intimately related to this content you are reading. People are more likely to buy after they are “warmed up” to the idea. This is called “pre-selling”. Thirdly, it builds up many one way links thus pushing up traffic and increasing your status amongst search engines. Now tell me why this isn’t a great tool?
How do you go about it? Well say you are promoting an article submission software. Naturally you should write an article on article submission and offer some useful and insightful tips. Churn out at least 2 articles a day submitting it to at least 5 article directories for a month everyday. This is such a powerful method of getting sales.
Which article directories to submit to?
There are thousands out there! For starters you can take down the address of this article directory. Hey I submitted my article here so it must have worked!
Remember this is a totally free medium to get high quality traffic. There are many software out there that instantly submit your articles to hundreds of directory saving you the hassle of doing it yourself if you find it too tedious.
Another method is to participate actively in forums. Again the benefits are quite obvious. You gain tons of back links and you also gain credibility in your niche within the community. This is again, a great way to brand yourself. Remember to genuinely contribute and make intelligent discussion - people will tend to look at your signature more.
Next is to develop a powerful signature with a link to your website in it. Many people overlook this point; your signature is the ‘link’ between the forums’ traffic and your site. That having said, these are not the only ways which you can get free targeted traffic. There are many more ways! Do your research and start exploding your sales.
Article Body:
One of the single most powerful and free ways to grab targeted traffic is definitely writing articles. Articles like this that you are currently reading serve many purposes.
Firstly, it establishes your position as an “authority” of the subject and also increases your brand name (or your name for the matter). Secondly, the link that is attached at the author resources box is intimately related to this content you are reading. People are more likely to buy after they are “warmed up” to the idea. This is called “pre-selling”. Thirdly, it builds up many one way links thus pushing up traffic and increasing your status amongst search engines. Now tell me why this isn’t a great tool?
How do you go about it? Well say you are promoting an article submission software. Naturally you should write an article on article submission and offer some useful and insightful tips. Churn out at least 2 articles a day submitting it to at least 5 article directories for a month everyday. This is such a powerful method of getting sales.
Which article directories to submit to?
There are thousands out there! For starters you can take down the address of this article directory. Hey I submitted my article here so it must have worked!
Remember this is a totally free medium to get high quality traffic. There are many software out there that instantly submit your articles to hundreds of directory saving you the hassle of doing it yourself if you find it too tedious.
Another method is to participate actively in forums. Again the benefits are quite obvious. You gain tons of back links and you also gain credibility in your niche within the community. This is again, a great way to brand yourself. Remember to genuinely contribute and make intelligent discussion - people will tend to look at your signature more.
Next is to develop a powerful signature with a link to your website in it. Many people overlook this point; your signature is the ‘link’ between the forums’ traffic and your site. That having said, these are not the only ways which you can get free targeted traffic. There are many more ways! Do your research and start exploding your sales.
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
3 Things Search Engines Want To See - Using Links The Engines Will Like
Search engine companies are constantly changing their algorithms to keep their results up-to-date. Optimization used to be the primary factor search engines used to determine a website’s ranking. However, it currently makes up only about 10% of their total algorithms. What carries the most weight with search engines now is linking.
Linking is the process of connecting to other sites that are relevant to your target market and that are highly ranked, and of getting them to connect to you. Google has, by far, the largest percentage of the search engine market, and they’re link-driven. The other search engines tend to follow Google’s lead, so the market is moving faster in that direction.
3 Tips for Building Smart LinksM
When choosing which sites you want to link to, keep in mind what the search engines want to see:
• Search engines are looking for organic results. According to Bruce Chapman of http://Linkateer.com, the number one search engine positioning firm on the web, “One of the things we try to do is make sure every single one of our links is pertinent to that particular type of business.” If your website sells makeup, a natural link would be to a site that gives makeup application techniques. An unnatural link would be to an actor’s fan club site. Says Chapman, “If it’s not natural, it’s going to be a problem.”
• Search engines are looking for consistent results. More links aren’t necessarily better. In fact, getting too many links at once, such as by joining a link farm, can actually hurt your rankings. Gaining 20,000 links this month and 13 links next month is going to trip their filters and, for all your work, you’re going to find yourself dropping in the rankings. With links, the search engines are more concerned with quality than quantity.
• Search engines are looking for one-way links. Reciprocal links are often just people exchanging links to mutually increase their link counts. The search engines have grown wise to this practice and adapted their algorithms. Says Chapman, “When one website wants to link to another website, that’s showing that the second website has got something of value… The one-way link is probably worth 20 times as much as a reciprocal link.”
Achieving Natural Results
It takes time to achieve good positioning in the search engines, especially with the more competitive keywords. Any attempts to trick the engines may work for a while; but they’re getting more and more sophisticated, and they’ll eventually catch up with you. Not only will your trick no longer work, but you may get blackballed or be penalized in your rankings. The best way to achieve high rankings is to give the search engines what they’re looking for—good fresh content and relevant links.
Linking is the process of connecting to other sites that are relevant to your target market and that are highly ranked, and of getting them to connect to you. Google has, by far, the largest percentage of the search engine market, and they’re link-driven. The other search engines tend to follow Google’s lead, so the market is moving faster in that direction.
3 Tips for Building Smart LinksM
When choosing which sites you want to link to, keep in mind what the search engines want to see:
• Search engines are looking for organic results. According to Bruce Chapman of http://Linkateer.com, the number one search engine positioning firm on the web, “One of the things we try to do is make sure every single one of our links is pertinent to that particular type of business.” If your website sells makeup, a natural link would be to a site that gives makeup application techniques. An unnatural link would be to an actor’s fan club site. Says Chapman, “If it’s not natural, it’s going to be a problem.”
• Search engines are looking for consistent results. More links aren’t necessarily better. In fact, getting too many links at once, such as by joining a link farm, can actually hurt your rankings. Gaining 20,000 links this month and 13 links next month is going to trip their filters and, for all your work, you’re going to find yourself dropping in the rankings. With links, the search engines are more concerned with quality than quantity.
• Search engines are looking for one-way links. Reciprocal links are often just people exchanging links to mutually increase their link counts. The search engines have grown wise to this practice and adapted their algorithms. Says Chapman, “When one website wants to link to another website, that’s showing that the second website has got something of value… The one-way link is probably worth 20 times as much as a reciprocal link.”
Achieving Natural Results
It takes time to achieve good positioning in the search engines, especially with the more competitive keywords. Any attempts to trick the engines may work for a while; but they’re getting more and more sophisticated, and they’ll eventually catch up with you. Not only will your trick no longer work, but you may get blackballed or be penalized in your rankings. The best way to achieve high rankings is to give the search engines what they’re looking for—good fresh content and relevant links.
3 Steps To Getting Listed In The Search Engines
You've just finished putting in all kinds of effort towards getting your website online. You're ready to take orders and make sales. The only problem is... No one can find your website! You need to get listed in the major search engines in order to get visitors to visit your website. What can you do? Follow these 3 steps and the search engines will know about your site in no time at all.
1. Write an article related to the main topic of your website.
Not sure if you know enough about writing to write an article? Don't worry about being perfect. Write about what you know. Keep the article short, between 300-600 words long. When you write the article, give out general information that anyone would gladly post on their site as valuable content. Don't try to sell your product or service in this article.
Remember the goal of the article is for you to get a valuable link back to your website, not to make a sale. In fact, if you try to make a sale in the article, most webmasters will not want to publish your article on their site. The whole goal of writing articles is to get your articles on as many websites as possible with a link pointing back to your site.
2. Include a resource box at the end of the article with your website link in it.
If you've created a good general information article that is relevant to the topic of your website, you are ready to create your resource box. Keep in mind here to get to the point quickly. It is usually considered fine to promote your product or service in this resource box but it is necessary to keep it short. You should remember that the main point of including this resource box is to get a link going back to your website. The secondary purpose of the resource box is to get readers of your article to click through and visit your website.
When including a link in your resource box, make sure that one of your links includes the main keywords of your home page. Keywords are a fancy term for the phrase or words a visitor will type in to find your website. Make the keyword the clickable portion of the link instead of your web address. Put this keyword text in between your html anchor link.
3. Submit your article to the major article directories.
Once you've created your article, submit it to the major article directories to get the article distributed on as many websites as possible. Some major article directories include EzineArticles, ArticleCity, ZapContent.com and Isnare. Some services like Isnare will even distribute your article for you for a fee.
Do these three steps and search engines will find, crawl, then list your website in their listings. It's as simple as that!
1. Write an article related to the main topic of your website.
Not sure if you know enough about writing to write an article? Don't worry about being perfect. Write about what you know. Keep the article short, between 300-600 words long. When you write the article, give out general information that anyone would gladly post on their site as valuable content. Don't try to sell your product or service in this article.
Remember the goal of the article is for you to get a valuable link back to your website, not to make a sale. In fact, if you try to make a sale in the article, most webmasters will not want to publish your article on their site. The whole goal of writing articles is to get your articles on as many websites as possible with a link pointing back to your site.
2. Include a resource box at the end of the article with your website link in it.
If you've created a good general information article that is relevant to the topic of your website, you are ready to create your resource box. Keep in mind here to get to the point quickly. It is usually considered fine to promote your product or service in this resource box but it is necessary to keep it short. You should remember that the main point of including this resource box is to get a link going back to your website. The secondary purpose of the resource box is to get readers of your article to click through and visit your website.
When including a link in your resource box, make sure that one of your links includes the main keywords of your home page. Keywords are a fancy term for the phrase or words a visitor will type in to find your website. Make the keyword the clickable portion of the link instead of your web address. Put this keyword text in between your html anchor link.
3. Submit your article to the major article directories.
Once you've created your article, submit it to the major article directories to get the article distributed on as many websites as possible. Some major article directories include EzineArticles, ArticleCity, ZapContent.com and Isnare. Some services like Isnare will even distribute your article for you for a fee.
Do these three steps and search engines will find, crawl, then list your website in their listings. It's as simple as that!
3 Steps To Getting Hundreds Of Backlinks To Your Website Absolutely FREE
Link Popularity as you know plays a BIG part in your websites ranking within the Search Engines.
So, the basic breakdown is, the more links pointing to your website, the higher up the search engines will rank your website.
More importantly though is getting those High PR websites linking back to yours.
The question at hand is... "How can I get those High PR links without having to buy High PR links and/or spend countless hours surfing the web for link partners with the possible potential of being denied?"
And as webmasters, we can not afford to waste time, especially if your starting out on a part time basis.
We must utilize every minute we can to getting the most out of our efforts.
So with that being said, I'm going to reveal to you the 'Back Door' strategy I use for getting those High PR links to your website Absolutely FREE and have them begging you to come back.
And the cool thing is this can be done following these 3 steps I'm about to mention so pay attention because if you do just this, you will not only get hundreds of backlinks to your website, you'll also get hundreds, if not thousands of Targeted visitors to your website at the same time...
...all for FREE!
Are you ready?
Good, because I am.
Step #1. First you must write an Article.
The first step is to write an related article about your Product or Service that draws the reader in and gets them to click through to your website once they finish reading it to find out more about you and your Product or Service.
Now, your probably wondering why you have to write an article.
Well, it's real simple actually because what do you get to put at the end of your article?
Your 'Resource Box' with your website information and most important of all... your URL pointing back to your website.
So when someone chooses to publish your article in their newsletter or on their website, blog or article directory, they MUST add your 'Resource Box' with your website information and URL.
I know some of you are saying... "I don't know how to write an article" ... well, your not alone.
Here are a few resources I've put together for you so you can get the basic idea of How-To structure your articles with ease or get someone else to write them for you.
The first is an article I wrote called... THE 7 Step Formula For Writing POWERFUL Articles In Less Than An Hour.
It will show you How-To structure your articles for easy writing. http://www.internetwondersezine.com/article_11.html
The second resource is Elance.com - http://www.elance.com - which is basically a place where you can go and submit a project by category and freelance writers, etc. will then bid on your project. You pick the winner and you set the budget.
This will get you started in the right direction.
Remember, your article is the Nuts and Bolts of this 'Back Linking' strategy, so make sure you put some effort into it to get it as much exposure as possible.
Step #2. Submit your article to Article Directories.
This is the next step and an important one at that because this is where your article or articles are going to get picked up by website owners and/or ezine publishers who are in constant need of fresh, quality information to feed their audiences hunger for information.
There are literally hundreds of Article Directories out there and thousands of ezine publishers looking for quality content on a daily basis. And if they choose your article for publication, they must include your 'Resource Box' with your websites information and URL.
It's all about the numbers. The more Article Directories and websites you submit your articles to, the more potential Backlinks you'll get to your website.
And since Article Directories have recently adopted RSS(Real Simple Syndication) technology into the mix your articles will even get More mileage without you lifting a finger, creating even more Backlinks to your website.
More on RSS in a minute.
Are you starting to see the Power behind writing your own articles.
I hope so.
Step #3. Create your own RSS Feed for your articles.
This last step is a very Powerful step as well.
What you need to do is set up your own RSS Feed for your articles.
Now, if you don't know what RSS is here's the basic definition...
RSS is by definition - an acronym for 'Real Simple Syndication' or 'Rich Site Summary', and the .XML extension is the format used for distributing your news headlines via the Web, which is known as 'Syndication.
'Syndication' is where the TRUE power of RSS is unleashed, getting your message or information across the web in an INSTANT to websites, subscribers and/or readers who subscribed to your RSS Feed.
The easiest way for you to do this is to set up your own Blog either through...
Wordpress.org - http://www.wordpress.org
Or through...
Blogger.com - http://www.blogger.com
Wordpress is a little more advanced so I recommend if you don't have alot of experience with Blogs or installing scripts that you go set up a Blogger blog which will only take you less than 5 minutes to do.
I'm just giving you some options, that's all.
Once you've set up your Blog the only thing left for you to do is add you articles.
TIP: Make sure you hyperlink your URL and use Anchor Text with your most targeted keywords. By doing this the Search Engine spiders will rank your website higher under that keyword term you specify in your Anchor Text.
After you've added your articles all you have to do now is submit your new RSS Feed to RSS Directories and RSS Search Engines.
Here's a few resources for you to get started with.
Ping-O-Matic - http://pingomatic.com
RSS Top 55 - http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55
That's it.
Now I know I dumped alot of information on you within this article so just take it Step-By-Step because once you implement it properly it will benefit you for years to come with Backlinks to your website and FREE targeted traffic via the Search Engines, Website Owners and eZine Publishers.
So, the basic breakdown is, the more links pointing to your website, the higher up the search engines will rank your website.
More importantly though is getting those High PR websites linking back to yours.
The question at hand is... "How can I get those High PR links without having to buy High PR links and/or spend countless hours surfing the web for link partners with the possible potential of being denied?"
And as webmasters, we can not afford to waste time, especially if your starting out on a part time basis.
We must utilize every minute we can to getting the most out of our efforts.
So with that being said, I'm going to reveal to you the 'Back Door' strategy I use for getting those High PR links to your website Absolutely FREE and have them begging you to come back.
And the cool thing is this can be done following these 3 steps I'm about to mention so pay attention because if you do just this, you will not only get hundreds of backlinks to your website, you'll also get hundreds, if not thousands of Targeted visitors to your website at the same time...
...all for FREE!
Are you ready?
Good, because I am.
Step #1. First you must write an Article.
The first step is to write an related article about your Product or Service that draws the reader in and gets them to click through to your website once they finish reading it to find out more about you and your Product or Service.
Now, your probably wondering why you have to write an article.
Well, it's real simple actually because what do you get to put at the end of your article?
Your 'Resource Box' with your website information and most important of all... your URL pointing back to your website.
So when someone chooses to publish your article in their newsletter or on their website, blog or article directory, they MUST add your 'Resource Box' with your website information and URL.
I know some of you are saying... "I don't know how to write an article" ... well, your not alone.
Here are a few resources I've put together for you so you can get the basic idea of How-To structure your articles with ease or get someone else to write them for you.
The first is an article I wrote called... THE 7 Step Formula For Writing POWERFUL Articles In Less Than An Hour.
It will show you How-To structure your articles for easy writing. http://www.internetwondersezine.com/article_11.html
The second resource is Elance.com - http://www.elance.com - which is basically a place where you can go and submit a project by category and freelance writers, etc. will then bid on your project. You pick the winner and you set the budget.
This will get you started in the right direction.
Remember, your article is the Nuts and Bolts of this 'Back Linking' strategy, so make sure you put some effort into it to get it as much exposure as possible.
Step #2. Submit your article to Article Directories.
This is the next step and an important one at that because this is where your article or articles are going to get picked up by website owners and/or ezine publishers who are in constant need of fresh, quality information to feed their audiences hunger for information.
There are literally hundreds of Article Directories out there and thousands of ezine publishers looking for quality content on a daily basis. And if they choose your article for publication, they must include your 'Resource Box' with your websites information and URL.
It's all about the numbers. The more Article Directories and websites you submit your articles to, the more potential Backlinks you'll get to your website.
And since Article Directories have recently adopted RSS(Real Simple Syndication) technology into the mix your articles will even get More mileage without you lifting a finger, creating even more Backlinks to your website.
More on RSS in a minute.
Are you starting to see the Power behind writing your own articles.
I hope so.
Step #3. Create your own RSS Feed for your articles.
This last step is a very Powerful step as well.
What you need to do is set up your own RSS Feed for your articles.
Now, if you don't know what RSS is here's the basic definition...
RSS is by definition - an acronym for 'Real Simple Syndication' or 'Rich Site Summary', and the .XML extension is the format used for distributing your news headlines via the Web, which is known as 'Syndication.
'Syndication' is where the TRUE power of RSS is unleashed, getting your message or information across the web in an INSTANT to websites, subscribers and/or readers who subscribed to your RSS Feed.
The easiest way for you to do this is to set up your own Blog either through...
Wordpress.org - http://www.wordpress.org
Or through...
Blogger.com - http://www.blogger.com
Wordpress is a little more advanced so I recommend if you don't have alot of experience with Blogs or installing scripts that you go set up a Blogger blog which will only take you less than 5 minutes to do.
I'm just giving you some options, that's all.
Once you've set up your Blog the only thing left for you to do is add you articles.
TIP: Make sure you hyperlink your URL and use Anchor Text with your most targeted keywords. By doing this the Search Engine spiders will rank your website higher under that keyword term you specify in your Anchor Text.
After you've added your articles all you have to do now is submit your new RSS Feed to RSS Directories and RSS Search Engines.
Here's a few resources for you to get started with.
Ping-O-Matic - http://pingomatic.com
RSS Top 55 - http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55
That's it.
Now I know I dumped alot of information on you within this article so just take it Step-By-Step because once you implement it properly it will benefit you for years to come with Backlinks to your website and FREE targeted traffic via the Search Engines, Website Owners and eZine Publishers.
3 Key Off-Page Search Engine Optimization Methods
On-page search engine optimization is definitely one of the key methods if a website owner would like to improve the results for his or her website's searchability. However, on-page SEO often entails technical skills. Why? Not a lot of people are HTML enthusiasts. This is often what needs to be tweaked to do an excellent job in optimizing web pages.
What if a geek friend already did the on-page optimization and now you want to know how you can contribute to the "search engine goodness" of your website? Off-page optimization is the next step. And the results you will have to pine for are one-way backlinks. Why? This is how many of the major search engines such Google, Yahoo! and MSN rank websites. The more backlinks from relevant sites with good page rank, the merrier.
So how exactly do you gather backlinks? It's not an easy task but it's definitely less nerve-wracking than HTML if you are not the techie type. Here are some off-page SEO tips:
1. Article Marketing
Quality content has been discovered to be real king. Everyone is hungry for fresh and quality info and providing it will make backlinks go pouring in. It helps a lot to be a keen writer to be successful on this endeavor. Also, practise the proper way of using a resource box. It should only include a website that contains information relevant to the article you submit to article directories.
2. Forum Participation
Look for forums that are relevant to your website's content and keep on sharing information that will be indispensable for the members of the forums. Your signature or that tag-along message at the last part of each of your posts is what will work for your off-page SEO campaign. Keep it simple and make sure that it conveys something about your website. Learn how to hyperlink to make it easy for the people who want to visit your site.
3. Blogging
Blogs or web logs are now the most popular weapons of SEO experts. Aside from being easy-to-update, they don't require a too formal tone, which is what many readers are into. Informal dialog which can be accomplished through readers leaving comments and the blog author replying to the comments is what also keeps blogs fresh and search engine friendly. Maintaining a blog that's again relevant to your website's content will keep the search engines in touch with your site. Don't forget to have a link on your main website from your blog.
The secret to be successful in carrying out these off-page SEO methods is to be consistent. Submitting quality articles to websites at least two to three times a week and regularly producing content for your personalized blog is a surefire way to make your website stand out. Forum participation should also be something done more frequently since it will not only help you up your website's popularity with the search engines but also make you learn new stuff from other forum members' participation. Also, if you discover that you don't enjoy these stuff, there's always a plan B - hire someone to do them for you!
Note: This article may be freely reproduced as long as the AUTHOR'S resource box at the bottom of this article is included and all links must be Active/Linkable with no syntax changes.
What if a geek friend already did the on-page optimization and now you want to know how you can contribute to the "search engine goodness" of your website? Off-page optimization is the next step. And the results you will have to pine for are one-way backlinks. Why? This is how many of the major search engines such Google, Yahoo! and MSN rank websites. The more backlinks from relevant sites with good page rank, the merrier.
So how exactly do you gather backlinks? It's not an easy task but it's definitely less nerve-wracking than HTML if you are not the techie type. Here are some off-page SEO tips:
1. Article Marketing
Quality content has been discovered to be real king. Everyone is hungry for fresh and quality info and providing it will make backlinks go pouring in. It helps a lot to be a keen writer to be successful on this endeavor. Also, practise the proper way of using a resource box. It should only include a website that contains information relevant to the article you submit to article directories.
2. Forum Participation
Look for forums that are relevant to your website's content and keep on sharing information that will be indispensable for the members of the forums. Your signature or that tag-along message at the last part of each of your posts is what will work for your off-page SEO campaign. Keep it simple and make sure that it conveys something about your website. Learn how to hyperlink to make it easy for the people who want to visit your site.
3. Blogging
Blogs or web logs are now the most popular weapons of SEO experts. Aside from being easy-to-update, they don't require a too formal tone, which is what many readers are into. Informal dialog which can be accomplished through readers leaving comments and the blog author replying to the comments is what also keeps blogs fresh and search engine friendly. Maintaining a blog that's again relevant to your website's content will keep the search engines in touch with your site. Don't forget to have a link on your main website from your blog.
The secret to be successful in carrying out these off-page SEO methods is to be consistent. Submitting quality articles to websites at least two to three times a week and regularly producing content for your personalized blog is a surefire way to make your website stand out. Forum participation should also be something done more frequently since it will not only help you up your website's popularity with the search engines but also make you learn new stuff from other forum members' participation. Also, if you discover that you don't enjoy these stuff, there's always a plan B - hire someone to do them for you!
Note: This article may be freely reproduced as long as the AUTHOR'S resource box at the bottom of this article is included and all links must be Active/Linkable with no syntax changes.
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
“Do-It-Yourself” Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – Three Easy Steps
Ranking high in Google’s search results can have a phenomenal impact on the success of your business.
You can either engage the expertise of a Search Engine Optimisation company, or if you have the time, there are some changes you can make to your website yourself.
Step 1: Keyword Research
What keywords do you think your customers would type in to search for your products or services? A keyword can be one word (e.g. “optimisation”), but multiple keywords or keyword phrases are usually preferred, because they are more specific and more likely to be what your customers are looking for (eg. “ Search Engine Optimisation Australia”).
Write down as many as you can think of. Brainstorm with your team. Think of alternative words. Consider geographical phrases if they are important to your customer (e.g. “house cleaning Hornsby”). Also, get some ideas from your competitors’ websites. Try to make a list of 20-30 keyword phrases.
Choose the two keyword phrases you think would be searched for the most. But also remember, the more competition there is for a keyword, the harder it is to achieve top rankings. If you want to rank high in Google for the keyword “insurance”, you have a very long journey ahead. So try your best to select two keyword phrases that are the most relevant to you business but that are not vague nor competitive. It’s a good idea to have 2 or 3 words in each phrase (e.g. “wedding catering services”)
Once you’ve selected your two best keyword phrases the next step shows you how to make some improvements to your home page.
Step 2: Web Copy
Web copy refers to all the words or text on your website. Because content is king in the world of search engines, your keyword phrases need to be placed strategically on your webpage to convince Google that your content is highly relevant to those keywords. The more prominent they are, the better. (Keep in mind that as important as search engines are, customers come first, so make sure your copy also reads well.)
Here’s how you can increase each keyword’s prominence:
• Place your keywords in headings, preferably at the beginning of the heading;
• Include keywords towards the top of the page;
• Bold or italicise keywords where appropriate;
• Instead of having a link to another page that says "Click here to read more ", reword it to include your keywords, e.g. "Read more about our seo copywriting Services".
An important tip is to also include these keywords in your HTML “title tag”. Use your content management system to make these changes yourself, or perhaps ask your web developer to do it if you’re unsure how.
Once you have fine-tuned your home page, consider adding new content, such as detailed descriptions of what you offer, FAQs and informative articles about your products and services. (If you don’t want to write these yourself, they can be located for free on the internet - do a search for “articles directory”).
It’s also good to bear in mind that search engines can only read text, not pictures. Often web developers embed words in images to look better for website visitors or use Flash for animation, but this is a major impediment to search engines.
Step 3: Linking
Each link from another website to your website (not from your website) is considered by search engines as a vote of popularity for your business and will improve your rankings.
But it is the quality, not quantity, of the links that is crucial. The other websites should be relevant to your industry, and preferably highly regarded themselves. Ten quality links count far more than 500 links from arbitrary websites. In the same way your personal business network can have a significant impact on the success of your business, so too the online network you build on the internet.
Brainstorm all the relevant websites that could link to you, such as non-competing companies, and industry bodies and organisations. Write a friendly email to each describing the benefit their visitors would get in knowing about your business, and request them to create a link to your website. Most people will not respond first time round, so a follow-up phone call is usually required.
How do I monitor my results?
Monitor your rankings in Google over the next few months by typing your chosen keywords into the search box, and recording your ranking. Also look at your hosting reports to understand what search terms your visitors are using to find your website.
The above process can be also be repeated for each page of your website. Remember to keep updating your content, and continually increase the number of links to your website.
As you see your rankings climb you should see a corresponding increase in web traffic and a substantial increase in sales enquiries. Be sure to record the source of your customer enquiries, so you can measure the success of your marketing efforts.
Remember, if you measure it, you can improve it.
You can either engage the expertise of a Search Engine Optimisation company, or if you have the time, there are some changes you can make to your website yourself.
Step 1: Keyword Research
What keywords do you think your customers would type in to search for your products or services? A keyword can be one word (e.g. “optimisation”), but multiple keywords or keyword phrases are usually preferred, because they are more specific and more likely to be what your customers are looking for (eg. “ Search Engine Optimisation Australia”).
Write down as many as you can think of. Brainstorm with your team. Think of alternative words. Consider geographical phrases if they are important to your customer (e.g. “house cleaning Hornsby”). Also, get some ideas from your competitors’ websites. Try to make a list of 20-30 keyword phrases.
Choose the two keyword phrases you think would be searched for the most. But also remember, the more competition there is for a keyword, the harder it is to achieve top rankings. If you want to rank high in Google for the keyword “insurance”, you have a very long journey ahead. So try your best to select two keyword phrases that are the most relevant to you business but that are not vague nor competitive. It’s a good idea to have 2 or 3 words in each phrase (e.g. “wedding catering services”)
Once you’ve selected your two best keyword phrases the next step shows you how to make some improvements to your home page.
Step 2: Web Copy
Web copy refers to all the words or text on your website. Because content is king in the world of search engines, your keyword phrases need to be placed strategically on your webpage to convince Google that your content is highly relevant to those keywords. The more prominent they are, the better. (Keep in mind that as important as search engines are, customers come first, so make sure your copy also reads well.)
Here’s how you can increase each keyword’s prominence:
• Place your keywords in headings, preferably at the beginning of the heading;
• Include keywords towards the top of the page;
• Bold or italicise keywords where appropriate;
• Instead of having a link to another page that says "Click here to read more ", reword it to include your keywords, e.g. "Read more about our seo copywriting Services".
An important tip is to also include these keywords in your HTML “title tag”. Use your content management system to make these changes yourself, or perhaps ask your web developer to do it if you’re unsure how.
Once you have fine-tuned your home page, consider adding new content, such as detailed descriptions of what you offer, FAQs and informative articles about your products and services. (If you don’t want to write these yourself, they can be located for free on the internet - do a search for “articles directory”).
It’s also good to bear in mind that search engines can only read text, not pictures. Often web developers embed words in images to look better for website visitors or use Flash for animation, but this is a major impediment to search engines.
Step 3: Linking
Each link from another website to your website (not from your website) is considered by search engines as a vote of popularity for your business and will improve your rankings.
But it is the quality, not quantity, of the links that is crucial. The other websites should be relevant to your industry, and preferably highly regarded themselves. Ten quality links count far more than 500 links from arbitrary websites. In the same way your personal business network can have a significant impact on the success of your business, so too the online network you build on the internet.
Brainstorm all the relevant websites that could link to you, such as non-competing companies, and industry bodies and organisations. Write a friendly email to each describing the benefit their visitors would get in knowing about your business, and request them to create a link to your website. Most people will not respond first time round, so a follow-up phone call is usually required.
How do I monitor my results?
Monitor your rankings in Google over the next few months by typing your chosen keywords into the search box, and recording your ranking. Also look at your hosting reports to understand what search terms your visitors are using to find your website.
The above process can be also be repeated for each page of your website. Remember to keep updating your content, and continually increase the number of links to your website.
As you see your rankings climb you should see a corresponding increase in web traffic and a substantial increase in sales enquiries. Be sure to record the source of your customer enquiries, so you can measure the success of your marketing efforts.
Remember, if you measure it, you can improve it.
“Do-It-Yourself”
Ranking high in Google’s search results can have a phenomenal impact on the success of your business.
You can either engage the expertise of a Search Engine Optimisation company, or if you have the time, there are some changes you can make to your website yourself.
Step 1: Keyword Research
What keywords do you think your customers would type in to search for your products or services? A keyword can be one word (e.g. “optimisation”), but multiple keywords or keyword phrases are usually preferred, because they are more specific and more likely to be what your customers are looking for (eg. “ Search Engine Optimisation Australia”).
Write down as many as you can think of. Brainstorm with your team. Think of alternative words. Consider geographical phrases if they are important to your customer (e.g. “house cleaning Hornsby”). Also, get some ideas from your competitors’ websites. Try to make a list of 20-30 keyword phrases.
Choose the two keyword phrases you think would be searched for the most. But also remember, the more competition there is for a keyword, the harder it is to achieve top rankings. If you want to rank high in Google for the keyword “insurance”, you have a very long journey ahead. So try your best to select two keyword phrases that are the most relevant to you business but that are not vague nor competitive. It’s a good idea to have 2 or 3 words in each phrase (e.g. “wedding catering services”)
Once you’ve selected your two best keyword phrases the next step shows you how to make some improvements to your home page.
Step 2: Web Copy
Web copy refers to all the words or text on your website. Because content is king in the world of search engines, your keyword phrases need to be placed strategically on your webpage to convince Google that your content is highly relevant to those keywords. The more prominent they are, the better. (Keep in mind that as important as search engines are, customers come first, so make sure your copy also reads well.)
Here’s how you can increase each keyword’s prominence:
• Place your keywords in headings, preferably at the beginning of the heading;
• Include keywords towards the top of the page;
• Bold or italicise keywords where appropriate;
• Instead of having a link to another page that says "Click here to read more ", reword it to include your keywords, e.g. "Read more about our seo copywriting Services".
An important tip is to also include these keywords in your HTML “title tag”. Use your content management system to make these changes yourself, or perhaps ask your web developer to do it if you’re unsure how.
Once you have fine-tuned your home page, consider adding new content, such as detailed descriptions of what you offer, FAQs and informative articles about your products and services. (If you don’t want to write these yourself, they can be located for free on the internet - do a search for “articles directory”).
It’s also good to bear in mind that search engines can only read text, not pictures. Often web developers embed words in images to look better for website visitors or use Flash for animation, but this is a major impediment to search engines.
Step 3: Linking
Each link from another website to your website (not from your website) is considered by search engines as a vote of popularity for your business and will improve your rankings.
But it is the quality, not quantity, of the links that is crucial. The other websites should be relevant to your industry, and preferably highly regarded themselves. Ten quality links count far more than 500 links from arbitrary websites. In the same way your personal business network can have a significant impact on the success of your business, so too the online network you build on the internet.
Brainstorm all the relevant websites that could link to you, such as non-competing companies, and industry bodies and organisations. Write a friendly email to each describing the benefit their visitors would get in knowing about your business, and request them to create a link to your website. Most people will not respond first time round, so a follow-up phone call is usually required.
How do I monitor my results?
Monitor your rankings in Google over the next few months by typing your chosen keywords into the search box, and recording your ranking. Also look at your hosting reports to understand what search terms your visitors are using to find your website.
You can either engage the expertise of a Search Engine Optimisation company, or if you have the time, there are some changes you can make to your website yourself.
Step 1: Keyword Research
What keywords do you think your customers would type in to search for your products or services? A keyword can be one word (e.g. “optimisation”), but multiple keywords or keyword phrases are usually preferred, because they are more specific and more likely to be what your customers are looking for (eg. “ Search Engine Optimisation Australia”).
Write down as many as you can think of. Brainstorm with your team. Think of alternative words. Consider geographical phrases if they are important to your customer (e.g. “house cleaning Hornsby”). Also, get some ideas from your competitors’ websites. Try to make a list of 20-30 keyword phrases.
Choose the two keyword phrases you think would be searched for the most. But also remember, the more competition there is for a keyword, the harder it is to achieve top rankings. If you want to rank high in Google for the keyword “insurance”, you have a very long journey ahead. So try your best to select two keyword phrases that are the most relevant to you business but that are not vague nor competitive. It’s a good idea to have 2 or 3 words in each phrase (e.g. “wedding catering services”)
Once you’ve selected your two best keyword phrases the next step shows you how to make some improvements to your home page.
Step 2: Web Copy
Web copy refers to all the words or text on your website. Because content is king in the world of search engines, your keyword phrases need to be placed strategically on your webpage to convince Google that your content is highly relevant to those keywords. The more prominent they are, the better. (Keep in mind that as important as search engines are, customers come first, so make sure your copy also reads well.)
Here’s how you can increase each keyword’s prominence:
• Place your keywords in headings, preferably at the beginning of the heading;
• Include keywords towards the top of the page;
• Bold or italicise keywords where appropriate;
• Instead of having a link to another page that says "Click here to read more ", reword it to include your keywords, e.g. "Read more about our seo copywriting Services".
An important tip is to also include these keywords in your HTML “title tag”. Use your content management system to make these changes yourself, or perhaps ask your web developer to do it if you’re unsure how.
Once you have fine-tuned your home page, consider adding new content, such as detailed descriptions of what you offer, FAQs and informative articles about your products and services. (If you don’t want to write these yourself, they can be located for free on the internet - do a search for “articles directory”).
It’s also good to bear in mind that search engines can only read text, not pictures. Often web developers embed words in images to look better for website visitors or use Flash for animation, but this is a major impediment to search engines.
Step 3: Linking
Each link from another website to your website (not from your website) is considered by search engines as a vote of popularity for your business and will improve your rankings.
But it is the quality, not quantity, of the links that is crucial. The other websites should be relevant to your industry, and preferably highly regarded themselves. Ten quality links count far more than 500 links from arbitrary websites. In the same way your personal business network can have a significant impact on the success of your business, so too the online network you build on the internet.
Brainstorm all the relevant websites that could link to you, such as non-competing companies, and industry bodies and organisations. Write a friendly email to each describing the benefit their visitors would get in knowing about your business, and request them to create a link to your website. Most people will not respond first time round, so a follow-up phone call is usually required.
How do I monitor my results?
Monitor your rankings in Google over the next few months by typing your chosen keywords into the search box, and recording your ranking. Also look at your hosting reports to understand what search terms your visitors are using to find your website.
3 Main Ways to get Instant Traffic
We have seen in our previous topic, how to increase your traffic.
In some circumstances, you may need to increase your traffic immediately or to boost it in order to spread a new product or an offer or or simply to implement your viral marketing. Well there is 3 easy to do that and we will explain them now. You can: Buy targeted traffic to your site, email to your list, or make a Joint Venture(JV).
To buy fast and immediate traffic, you will need to go to google or one of the other alternatives like overture from yahoo..
You may need to know how to use google adwords first, there is excellent ebooks on this subject, that will save you a lot of money, and avoid your ad to be deactivated.
That type or advertising is called Pay Per Click advertising. You will set a daily budget for your campaign, and you will only pay when some one make a click on your link. You will be able to see your ad on the right table of the page, when you search for specific keywords.
You will need to track your campaign.
For example, you can buy 3 different advertising sources, pay the same price for each, then track with a software which advertising gives you more results.
Then go on, like that you will save your money.
The second way is to email to your list. You must understand the sale process. In a nutshell, visitors are surfing they fall on your site, but they probably won' t come back except if you offer them an incentive, or newsletter, something that will bring them back:
You can send a promotional email, twice a month or once
Send valuable information between the promotional offer.
The last tip for immediate traffic is Joint Venture.
You have to get other websites to send email to their list, place your link on their website, and you will pay them only when they process a sale.
Pay them 50% or more.
And make the sale easy for them, prepare for them the subject and body of the emails, prepare the affiliate link they will put on their websites, and any other material you can use.
And who knows, you will maybe find some good friends out there.
In some circumstances, you may need to increase your traffic immediately or to boost it in order to spread a new product or an offer or or simply to implement your viral marketing. Well there is 3 easy to do that and we will explain them now. You can: Buy targeted traffic to your site, email to your list, or make a Joint Venture(JV).
To buy fast and immediate traffic, you will need to go to google or one of the other alternatives like overture from yahoo..
You may need to know how to use google adwords first, there is excellent ebooks on this subject, that will save you a lot of money, and avoid your ad to be deactivated.
That type or advertising is called Pay Per Click advertising. You will set a daily budget for your campaign, and you will only pay when some one make a click on your link. You will be able to see your ad on the right table of the page, when you search for specific keywords.
You will need to track your campaign.
For example, you can buy 3 different advertising sources, pay the same price for each, then track with a software which advertising gives you more results.
Then go on, like that you will save your money.
The second way is to email to your list. You must understand the sale process. In a nutshell, visitors are surfing they fall on your site, but they probably won' t come back except if you offer them an incentive, or newsletter, something that will bring them back:
You can send a promotional email, twice a month or once
Send valuable information between the promotional offer.
The last tip for immediate traffic is Joint Venture.
You have to get other websites to send email to their list, place your link on their website, and you will pay them only when they process a sale.
Pay them 50% or more.
And make the sale easy for them, prepare for them the subject and body of the emails, prepare the affiliate link they will put on their websites, and any other material you can use.
And who knows, you will maybe find some good friends out there.
Sunday, 7 March 2010
Web Site Ranking-How to be Number 1
The success of a website is largely determined by its ranking in the search engines. But how are these rankings achieved? How are they determined by the search engine? What should be done when ranking falls? Understanding the workings of the search engines is important for any website owner to remain competitive. Finding a search engine optimization company can be a valuable resource to understand and improve search engine ranking.
Search engines have a set of algorithms in place to index or inspect all types of websites. The search engines send bots to sites to index them according to the algorithms and then all the information is stored in a data center. The algorithms consist of a number of specifications including things like keyword density, meta tags, number of pages, content, and much, much more. The bots visit the site frequently to monitor the site for updates and changes.
There are a number of techniques that make up search engine optimization, the method used be website developers to help improve ranking. Depending on the saturation of a particular keyword in a market, a site can rank high or way down the list. Choosing the right keywords to target can make or break your ranking. Keyword placement within the site is also a great contributor to ranking.
Other factors that can affect ranking are updating the site and placing relevant content on the site. The more quality content a site has the better. Relevant content helps the search engines to pick up keywords and keyword phrases. Search engines are also partial to frequently updated content which could range from articles, links, or any other related content.
When ranking falls, it can be contributed to a number of factors. It does not mean that the site is gone forever. Search engines used different data centers to provide results on any given day. Check back in a few hours or a day or so, and the results can be different. Search engines also update their algorithms from time to time. Sometimes these updates can be minor, and in other cases they are major. There may be a new competitor in your market. Visit their site and see why they have the advantage.
Achieving top search engine rankings is competitive. Position in the search engine results can make or break a website. A search engine optimization company is an excellent way to make your site search engine compatible. With exclusive search marketing services you can get your site to number one.
Search engines have a set of algorithms in place to index or inspect all types of websites. The search engines send bots to sites to index them according to the algorithms and then all the information is stored in a data center. The algorithms consist of a number of specifications including things like keyword density, meta tags, number of pages, content, and much, much more. The bots visit the site frequently to monitor the site for updates and changes.
There are a number of techniques that make up search engine optimization, the method used be website developers to help improve ranking. Depending on the saturation of a particular keyword in a market, a site can rank high or way down the list. Choosing the right keywords to target can make or break your ranking. Keyword placement within the site is also a great contributor to ranking.
Other factors that can affect ranking are updating the site and placing relevant content on the site. The more quality content a site has the better. Relevant content helps the search engines to pick up keywords and keyword phrases. Search engines are also partial to frequently updated content which could range from articles, links, or any other related content.
When ranking falls, it can be contributed to a number of factors. It does not mean that the site is gone forever. Search engines used different data centers to provide results on any given day. Check back in a few hours or a day or so, and the results can be different. Search engines also update their algorithms from time to time. Sometimes these updates can be minor, and in other cases they are major. There may be a new competitor in your market. Visit their site and see why they have the advantage.
Achieving top search engine rankings is competitive. Position in the search engine results can make or break a website. A search engine optimization company is an excellent way to make your site search engine compatible. With exclusive search marketing services you can get your site to number one.
Web Site Theme- Is your sites theme search engine friendly?
Your websites theme is very important to its success. When your site is indexed by search engines, they actually review your sites theme as well as other content. The theme must be carefully planned. Here are some tips for developing a proper web site theme that will make search engines happy as well.
Choose a design that revolves around keywords and keyword phrases. For example, if your sites keywords are sporting goods, choose design elements that are associated with sporting goods. Use bright colors such as red and yellow. Use elements that are high impact and exciting, similar to thoughts associated with sporting goods.
Focus on the types of products, services, and information you seek to promote. You are selling sporting goods, not bedding. Focus on sporting goods and stay on that approach. Don’t get side tracked with a certain color theme you favor. Make your keywords the main focus of your theme. Make them bigger, and make them stand out against all the other content.
Search engine spiders review website theme as to how it relates to keywords. It is a complicated algorithm, but it takes into consideration the use of keywords and links. Search engines look for lots of content related to the main theme throughout the site, so it’s a good idea to have lots of information written for your site.
Lots of work should go into choosing the perfect theme for your site. Make sure you are truly representing what you wish to provide. If you get bogged down with too many keywords or keyword phrases, you may need to consider additional websites that focus around this theme, instead of flooding your own site with too many products.
Remember, the theme of the website should be appealing to users as well as the search engines. Once a theme is finalized, there are many more steps to make your site optimized for search engines. A theme is only the beginning. But it should be a strong foundation from which your site will grow and develop.
Choose a design that revolves around keywords and keyword phrases. For example, if your sites keywords are sporting goods, choose design elements that are associated with sporting goods. Use bright colors such as red and yellow. Use elements that are high impact and exciting, similar to thoughts associated with sporting goods.
Focus on the types of products, services, and information you seek to promote. You are selling sporting goods, not bedding. Focus on sporting goods and stay on that approach. Don’t get side tracked with a certain color theme you favor. Make your keywords the main focus of your theme. Make them bigger, and make them stand out against all the other content.
Search engine spiders review website theme as to how it relates to keywords. It is a complicated algorithm, but it takes into consideration the use of keywords and links. Search engines look for lots of content related to the main theme throughout the site, so it’s a good idea to have lots of information written for your site.
Lots of work should go into choosing the perfect theme for your site. Make sure you are truly representing what you wish to provide. If you get bogged down with too many keywords or keyword phrases, you may need to consider additional websites that focus around this theme, instead of flooding your own site with too many products.
Remember, the theme of the website should be appealing to users as well as the search engines. Once a theme is finalized, there are many more steps to make your site optimized for search engines. A theme is only the beginning. But it should be a strong foundation from which your site will grow and develop.
Saturday, 6 March 2010
Website Optimization: Bring More Traffic To Your Site The Right Way
Search engine optimization is not difficult to understand. You don’t have to be a mathematical wizard to get the basic idea. Website optimization is simply the art and science of building web pages that provide the most relevant answers to the various queries that people make when they use a search engine.
The person who is making a query wants an answer to her question, and the search engine is trying to provide the best answer. Your job, as a website manager, is to provide web pages that will satisfy the person making the query and the search engine as well. Search engine optimization is not about tricking the search engines. You can get away with a trick for a short time, but if you are in business for the long run it is better to base your success on solid procedures. Here is what you can do to satisfy the end users and the search engines.
1. Find out how your would-be customers use a search engine.
What terms do they use when they are searching for your products? This is the $64,000 question. If you target the right words you will get the kind of traffic you want, the people who will buy your product or service. If you target the wrong words you may not get any traffic at all. This part of Internet optimization is known as keyword research. Find out all the different combinations that people use when they look for a website such as yours. The overture.com search term suggestion tool will provide some help or you can use the paid service at www.wordtracker.com
2. Build Web pages based on your keywords and Key Phrases.
It is a mistake to think that you can just sprinkle your keywords in the meta tags of any old web page and then get a high position in the search engines. If your page is only tangentially related to the query it will not get a high ranking in the search engines. However if you have written a web page that provides solid information directly related to the search term, then any surfer who ends up there will be satisfied. And, if you present your information properly, this is the kind of page that the search engines want to deliver to their users.
3. The last step in optimization is to present your material properly.
The best website promotion tip that anyone can give you is not to cheat in this process. Don’t stuff your keywords into your copy unnaturally or write them in invisible text on the bottom of your web page. If your copy is really about a particular keyword or key phrase, then simply place it in the title tag, the description tag , the headlines on the page and in text link on the page. You can use a keyword density checker to see if you have used your keyword enough. You can also just read your copy aloud to see how you are doing. If it doesn’t sound right, you may have overdone it.
If you do your web page optimization in this three-step way everyone will end up satisfied: the web visitor, the search engines and you.
The person who is making a query wants an answer to her question, and the search engine is trying to provide the best answer. Your job, as a website manager, is to provide web pages that will satisfy the person making the query and the search engine as well. Search engine optimization is not about tricking the search engines. You can get away with a trick for a short time, but if you are in business for the long run it is better to base your success on solid procedures. Here is what you can do to satisfy the end users and the search engines.
1. Find out how your would-be customers use a search engine.
What terms do they use when they are searching for your products? This is the $64,000 question. If you target the right words you will get the kind of traffic you want, the people who will buy your product or service. If you target the wrong words you may not get any traffic at all. This part of Internet optimization is known as keyword research. Find out all the different combinations that people use when they look for a website such as yours. The overture.com search term suggestion tool will provide some help or you can use the paid service at www.wordtracker.com
2. Build Web pages based on your keywords and Key Phrases.
It is a mistake to think that you can just sprinkle your keywords in the meta tags of any old web page and then get a high position in the search engines. If your page is only tangentially related to the query it will not get a high ranking in the search engines. However if you have written a web page that provides solid information directly related to the search term, then any surfer who ends up there will be satisfied. And, if you present your information properly, this is the kind of page that the search engines want to deliver to their users.
3. The last step in optimization is to present your material properly.
The best website promotion tip that anyone can give you is not to cheat in this process. Don’t stuff your keywords into your copy unnaturally or write them in invisible text on the bottom of your web page. If your copy is really about a particular keyword or key phrase, then simply place it in the title tag, the description tag , the headlines on the page and in text link on the page. You can use a keyword density checker to see if you have used your keyword enough. You can also just read your copy aloud to see how you are doing. If it doesn’t sound right, you may have overdone it.
If you do your web page optimization in this three-step way everyone will end up satisfied: the web visitor, the search engines and you.
Website Promotion - How Effective Is Directory Submission?
Directory Submissions are a good way and one of the simplest ways to receive inbound links to build link popularity for your site which will help your Web site rank higher in the search engines. It is the best and easiest way of creating link popularity and it’s almost free. Search engines value one way links the most and Directory Submission provides you them.
The Main Benefits Of Directory Submission:
- New websites indexed by the search engines - If your site is newly launched and yet to be crawled by the search engine spiders, directory submission is the first and foremost thing that you should do.
- One of the most important benefits of directory submission is the visibility enhancement of websites, which is why website owners employ this technique which has the potential to improve search engine rankings.
- As a result of directory submission, your website will be indexed regularly since your site will be found easily by crawlers. In other words, directory submission is directly linked to SEO.
- Thus, the one way links provided by directory submission, which are considered more valuable than reciprocal links, will enhance your search engine rankings.
- Another benefit of directory submission is that you will be able to target several keywords rather than being limited to your website title. Therefore, you could consider traffic as another benefit of directory submission, though not as important as indexation or one way links.
- Links in a directory submission is deemed reliable by search engines because a person actually reviews the content of your site to determine its quality.
Mode Of Submission
- Manual & Auto Submission - Manual submission method is arguably a better submission mode as compared to the latter.
- However, recent research has shown that more and more cutting-edge auto submission software seems to be ready to challenge the notion that manual submission so-called a better accurate of submission method
Considerations
- Fast Submission - This is recommended for “older” sites or domains, which has been online for more than a year.
- Slow Submission - You can have your website submitted to web directories but, you may delay the submission process by making it to be completed in a course of few weeks, or even few months to make it look more natural in the eyes of Google and other search engines. This kind of submission is usually known as SEO-Friendly submission
Tips For Effective Directory Submission
- Check if the directory has already been index by major search engines.
- You may also like to also note how many pages are already indexed.
- Ensure the page rank and inbound links of the directory you are submitting. Certainly a higher page rank and link popularity directory is the best.
- If you are submitting for link building, do NOT submit to directories that uses the “nofollow” for their site listings.
- Do not just submit your niche keywords, but also include those high volume keywords as it may provide a good source of FREE web traffic.
The Main Benefits Of Directory Submission:
- New websites indexed by the search engines - If your site is newly launched and yet to be crawled by the search engine spiders, directory submission is the first and foremost thing that you should do.
- One of the most important benefits of directory submission is the visibility enhancement of websites, which is why website owners employ this technique which has the potential to improve search engine rankings.
- As a result of directory submission, your website will be indexed regularly since your site will be found easily by crawlers. In other words, directory submission is directly linked to SEO.
- Thus, the one way links provided by directory submission, which are considered more valuable than reciprocal links, will enhance your search engine rankings.
- Another benefit of directory submission is that you will be able to target several keywords rather than being limited to your website title. Therefore, you could consider traffic as another benefit of directory submission, though not as important as indexation or one way links.
- Links in a directory submission is deemed reliable by search engines because a person actually reviews the content of your site to determine its quality.
Mode Of Submission
- Manual & Auto Submission - Manual submission method is arguably a better submission mode as compared to the latter.
- However, recent research has shown that more and more cutting-edge auto submission software seems to be ready to challenge the notion that manual submission so-called a better accurate of submission method
Considerations
- Fast Submission - This is recommended for “older” sites or domains, which has been online for more than a year.
- Slow Submission - You can have your website submitted to web directories but, you may delay the submission process by making it to be completed in a course of few weeks, or even few months to make it look more natural in the eyes of Google and other search engines. This kind of submission is usually known as SEO-Friendly submission
Tips For Effective Directory Submission
- Check if the directory has already been index by major search engines.
- You may also like to also note how many pages are already indexed.
- Ensure the page rank and inbound links of the directory you are submitting. Certainly a higher page rank and link popularity directory is the best.
- If you are submitting for link building, do NOT submit to directories that uses the “nofollow” for their site listings.
- Do not just submit your niche keywords, but also include those high volume keywords as it may provide a good source of FREE web traffic.
What are seo contests and how to rank better in SEO Contests.
Article Body:
The keyword is totally unique in the eyes of the search engines, and there are strong rules in these contests.
Some of the general important rules of seocontests.
1. No black hat search engine optimization allowed
2. No one from the official announcement website can enter this contest.
3. No Spamming of keywords and website
4. No cloaking or keyword stuffing
These contests generally are started with a time frame given to show the results in search engine results pages.
These are some of the general tips to rank better for the contest.
1. Try to get a older domain name rather than a new one, this is because there is a myth that search engines rank old domains better.
2. Never try to add the contest keyword more than 10 times to your contest webpage because this will result in keyword stuffing.
3. Add meta tags to your contest page which may include title, keywords, description and robots tag.
4. Add H1 , H2, and H3 tags correctly with the keyword in the first H1 tag.
5. Try to add unique contest to your webpage, which is totally fresh, as search engines like fresh content.
6. After the onpage seo is completed , start doing link building by exchanging links with relevant websites.
7. Add a sitemap to your website and continue with the link building.
If these steps are done perfectly , you can make sure that your webpage tops the search engine result pages.
The keyword is totally unique in the eyes of the search engines, and there are strong rules in these contests.
Some of the general important rules of seocontests.
1. No black hat search engine optimization allowed
2. No one from the official announcement website can enter this contest.
3. No Spamming of keywords and website
4. No cloaking or keyword stuffing
These contests generally are started with a time frame given to show the results in search engine results pages.
These are some of the general tips to rank better for the contest.
1. Try to get a older domain name rather than a new one, this is because there is a myth that search engines rank old domains better.
2. Never try to add the contest keyword more than 10 times to your contest webpage because this will result in keyword stuffing.
3. Add meta tags to your contest page which may include title, keywords, description and robots tag.
4. Add H1 , H2, and H3 tags correctly with the keyword in the first H1 tag.
5. Try to add unique contest to your webpage, which is totally fresh, as search engines like fresh content.
6. After the onpage seo is completed , start doing link building by exchanging links with relevant websites.
7. Add a sitemap to your website and continue with the link building.
If these steps are done perfectly , you can make sure that your webpage tops the search engine result pages.
What Can A SEO Web Site Promotion Do For You?
SEO stands for search engine optimization and if you have a website that is selling services, then this is what you want for your website. You want your website to appear at the top of engine results pages whenever someone types in a specific keyword, SEO web site promotions can help you get there. Studies prove that being at the top of search engine pages get a much better return on their investment compared to traditional forms of advertising. It is said by others that SEO web site promotion is the only “fool proof method' to guaranteed the top 10 placement on the page. Search engines use two types of listings, those that are paid for, usually by sponsored links, the other is organic. Organic search engines listings are those that appear down the middle of the page. Spider-driven search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN use “robots or crawlers” to score websites across the Internet. Robots will spider or crawl over each site and keep a tally of pages based on how pertinent they are. Your website placement within any spider driven search engine comes from many variables such as link popularity, density and frequency of keywords in page content, HTML code, site themeing along with more things that are too many to count here. You want your website positioned well among the major search engines and a SEO web site promotion can do this for you.
The two most influential SEO web site promotion factors you can use to help your website are Link Popularity and Page Content. Link Popularity: Google's database currently has about 4 million pages making it the most popular spider-driven search engine on the Internet today. When Google spiders the Web, it finds sites by traveling through links and the more sites that link to you, the more important these search engines believe your content to be. So your focus should be on getting as many important sites that you can to link to your site, and the more hits your site get, the more sales you can make, if that is what your website is about. There are many ways to do this: exchange links with business partners and industry related sites, submit to online directories, or participate in Link Building . Page Content: The search engine spiders only spider through text and will use the content on your site to determine what your site is all about and this will help decide how popular your site will be ranked for specific keyword phrases when someone types them into a search engine. This is why keyword research is so important to obtaining top search engine placement. In order to get the top spot in search results, your going to need to know how many people are looking for your keyword phrases and also to see what kind of competition you are facing while trying to get a top spot in the search results. A SEO web site promotion may be the best thing that can happen to your website, so why wouldn't you want it?
The two most influential SEO web site promotion factors you can use to help your website are Link Popularity and Page Content. Link Popularity: Google's database currently has about 4 million pages making it the most popular spider-driven search engine on the Internet today. When Google spiders the Web, it finds sites by traveling through links and the more sites that link to you, the more important these search engines believe your content to be. So your focus should be on getting as many important sites that you can to link to your site, and the more hits your site get, the more sales you can make, if that is what your website is about. There are many ways to do this: exchange links with business partners and industry related sites, submit to online directories, or participate in Link Building . Page Content: The search engine spiders only spider through text and will use the content on your site to determine what your site is all about and this will help decide how popular your site will be ranked for specific keyword phrases when someone types them into a search engine. This is why keyword research is so important to obtaining top search engine placement. In order to get the top spot in search results, your going to need to know how many people are looking for your keyword phrases and also to see what kind of competition you are facing while trying to get a top spot in the search results. A SEO web site promotion may be the best thing that can happen to your website, so why wouldn't you want it?
What Every CMO Should Know About SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is no longer a secret weapon of cutting-edge, web savvy marketers. Even traditional companies have to make sure search engines like Google and Yahoo find them consistently-- because search engines are the primary way prospects and influencers learn about products and services.
Too often, companies ignore search optimization or shelve requests for it simply because senior management does not understand it well enough to provide the necessary leadership and support. And if top management does not view it as priority, marketing and sales people are disinclined to pursue it. They will apply traditional, “accepted” tactics, shying away from one of the most efficient, measurable ways to get in front of prospects.
Too often executives focus on the technical aspects of SEO and lose sight of the more important strategic aspects. Meta tags, spiders, hits and visits don’t mean much to company stakeholders and shareholders. Results—in terms of better leads and more of them—do.
Here are a few questions every CMO should ask (and be able to answer):
What do we want our web visitors to do?
Whether your desired response is a demo request or a completed inquiry form, management should know and agree upon this ‘primary’ action and communicate it to all stakeholders. You may have a few different actions that you wish to track.
How many search visitors per month actually do what we want them to do?
Since we are only talking about SEO in this article, we are only interested in search visitors. Knowing this number now and tracking it each month, will give you quick insight into the quality and quantity of your search traffic. Do not be surprised to learn that as much as 99 percent of this traffic is not taking the desired action. Pulling in the right traffic and converting it into bona fide leads is a never-ending challenge. Knowing how well (or poorly) you’re doing in this area is a big first step.
What percentage of search visitors leave our website within 10 seconds?
This magical statistic, which I like to refer to as ‘short visit syndrome’, obviously relates to all of your web traffic. But focusing on search visitors tells us a couple of things. First, are you pulling in the right search traffic? Second, is your website doing an adequate job of ‘hooking’ them or giving them what they are searching for? It is not at all uncommon for companies to spend lots of money and resources to drive search traffic, only to have the overwhelming majority leave within 10 seconds.
Which search phrases are we focusing on?
You want to come up on the search engines for the phrases that your best prospects and influencers are likely to type. You’d be surprised at how differently people actually search, compared to how your sales and marketing people think they search. This is because most searches occur in the research and investigation phases of the buying cycle. In fact, more than half of all B2B searches for purchases over $50,000 occur between two and six months before a purchase is ever made. And often, the person doing the searching may not have the technical understanding of your product or service. The key is to consider carefully how your audience searches (there are some great research tools out there) and come up with a list of approximately 20 phrases that become your company’s target phrases. These are the phrases that you should measure and focus your resources on.
How often are we appearing for our target phrases?
Too often, a webmaster, marketing manager or even CMO assumes everything is up to par because the company appears at the top of Google for their company name or some extremely specific, non-competitive phrase. It’s important to know how often you are coming up on Google (as well as other major engines like Yahoo and MSN) for your target phrases as a whole. While it may be more rewarding to focus on where you are coming up, it is more productive to see where you are not currently coming up, and thus missing opportunities.
How often are we appearing compared to the competition?
If it’s important for you to know which major tradeshows or events your competition attends and exhibits at, wouldn’t it make sense to know how often your competition is being found on the search engines compared to you? After all, the Internet and search engines have become the largest, most prolific tradeshow on earth.
Tying It All Together With The Big Picture
Obviously, there are other and even more important things that a CMO would want to know about an SEO effort-- number of opportunities generated, cost per opportunity, revenue produced, etc. Many executives assume that someone is tracking this information and reporting on it. But more than likely, no one is. Beginning to capture and act upon some of the basic points in this article could be the catalyst to help measure the true effectiveness and production of your internet efforts.
All of this data should be readily available to you if your company has developed a prudent search optimization strategy and implemented some basic and widely available tools. If you are not getting this information, you are missing an increasingly important business development medium. Compared to the amount of energy and resources you are currently spending to generate new business, SEO may be the most effective and cost-effective way to fill your pipeline.
Too often, companies ignore search optimization or shelve requests for it simply because senior management does not understand it well enough to provide the necessary leadership and support. And if top management does not view it as priority, marketing and sales people are disinclined to pursue it. They will apply traditional, “accepted” tactics, shying away from one of the most efficient, measurable ways to get in front of prospects.
Too often executives focus on the technical aspects of SEO and lose sight of the more important strategic aspects. Meta tags, spiders, hits and visits don’t mean much to company stakeholders and shareholders. Results—in terms of better leads and more of them—do.
Here are a few questions every CMO should ask (and be able to answer):
What do we want our web visitors to do?
Whether your desired response is a demo request or a completed inquiry form, management should know and agree upon this ‘primary’ action and communicate it to all stakeholders. You may have a few different actions that you wish to track.
How many search visitors per month actually do what we want them to do?
Since we are only talking about SEO in this article, we are only interested in search visitors. Knowing this number now and tracking it each month, will give you quick insight into the quality and quantity of your search traffic. Do not be surprised to learn that as much as 99 percent of this traffic is not taking the desired action. Pulling in the right traffic and converting it into bona fide leads is a never-ending challenge. Knowing how well (or poorly) you’re doing in this area is a big first step.
What percentage of search visitors leave our website within 10 seconds?
This magical statistic, which I like to refer to as ‘short visit syndrome’, obviously relates to all of your web traffic. But focusing on search visitors tells us a couple of things. First, are you pulling in the right search traffic? Second, is your website doing an adequate job of ‘hooking’ them or giving them what they are searching for? It is not at all uncommon for companies to spend lots of money and resources to drive search traffic, only to have the overwhelming majority leave within 10 seconds.
Which search phrases are we focusing on?
You want to come up on the search engines for the phrases that your best prospects and influencers are likely to type. You’d be surprised at how differently people actually search, compared to how your sales and marketing people think they search. This is because most searches occur in the research and investigation phases of the buying cycle. In fact, more than half of all B2B searches for purchases over $50,000 occur between two and six months before a purchase is ever made. And often, the person doing the searching may not have the technical understanding of your product or service. The key is to consider carefully how your audience searches (there are some great research tools out there) and come up with a list of approximately 20 phrases that become your company’s target phrases. These are the phrases that you should measure and focus your resources on.
How often are we appearing for our target phrases?
Too often, a webmaster, marketing manager or even CMO assumes everything is up to par because the company appears at the top of Google for their company name or some extremely specific, non-competitive phrase. It’s important to know how often you are coming up on Google (as well as other major engines like Yahoo and MSN) for your target phrases as a whole. While it may be more rewarding to focus on where you are coming up, it is more productive to see where you are not currently coming up, and thus missing opportunities.
How often are we appearing compared to the competition?
If it’s important for you to know which major tradeshows or events your competition attends and exhibits at, wouldn’t it make sense to know how often your competition is being found on the search engines compared to you? After all, the Internet and search engines have become the largest, most prolific tradeshow on earth.
Tying It All Together With The Big Picture
Obviously, there are other and even more important things that a CMO would want to know about an SEO effort-- number of opportunities generated, cost per opportunity, revenue produced, etc. Many executives assume that someone is tracking this information and reporting on it. But more than likely, no one is. Beginning to capture and act upon some of the basic points in this article could be the catalyst to help measure the true effectiveness and production of your internet efforts.
All of this data should be readily available to you if your company has developed a prudent search optimization strategy and implemented some basic and widely available tools. If you are not getting this information, you are missing an increasingly important business development medium. Compared to the amount of energy and resources you are currently spending to generate new business, SEO may be the most effective and cost-effective way to fill your pipeline.
What is a Press Release
A respectable company interested in publicity and active social life is obliged to have public relations department. Every product needs to be advertised and every service needs to be informed about. This is what advertising agencies are for. But publicity is also a way to advertise and PR agents in Hollywood know it perfectly well. Of course, nobody is talking about details of private life or accidental cases that have nothing to do with morality. The public should know latest news from the company whose services they are going to use. If there is information that can draw attention and both promote, why not to give it to the public.
Information about corporate news or event is called a press release, a news release or a press statement. A standard press release is a short sequence written and forwarded to representatives of the news media to announce something that is of a news value. Press releases are sent to editors of magazines, on the radio or television and online. The purpose is to inform about an event or a conference and draw attention of mass media to it. Companies providing seo copywriting services use press releases to increase the ranking of the client in the search engines. It only may seem easy to create press release, but it also has its system, standards, format and principles just like any written kind of creation. Here are some useful tips on how to write a press release.
It is absolutely necessary to be sure that news you want to present is newsworthy. If the reason you sat down to write a release is not very attention drawing, wait until you have more information and details on the topic. Make sure that your release is laconic and brief. There is no need to describe all the details in the release itself, wait till due to the effort of journalists people will be interested in your event and then you’ll have an opportunity to tell about it in person. Make your press release sound simple, no need to use excessive adjectives and fancy language. Think about people’s attitude towards what are you going to inform about and use only strong sides of the event. First 5-10 words of the release are very important and exactly they are responsible for the first impression from the release. They have to get reader interested in what is going to happen further. Structure it right: give a short sequence of the news and only then define who was the initiator or the person of address. Make this press release work for you. Some positive information about a company simply called promotion will be helpful in further job of journalists. As you see a press release is a powerful marketing tool that builds credibility.
Information about corporate news or event is called a press release, a news release or a press statement. A standard press release is a short sequence written and forwarded to representatives of the news media to announce something that is of a news value. Press releases are sent to editors of magazines, on the radio or television and online. The purpose is to inform about an event or a conference and draw attention of mass media to it. Companies providing seo copywriting services use press releases to increase the ranking of the client in the search engines. It only may seem easy to create press release, but it also has its system, standards, format and principles just like any written kind of creation. Here are some useful tips on how to write a press release.
It is absolutely necessary to be sure that news you want to present is newsworthy. If the reason you sat down to write a release is not very attention drawing, wait until you have more information and details on the topic. Make sure that your release is laconic and brief. There is no need to describe all the details in the release itself, wait till due to the effort of journalists people will be interested in your event and then you’ll have an opportunity to tell about it in person. Make your press release sound simple, no need to use excessive adjectives and fancy language. Think about people’s attitude towards what are you going to inform about and use only strong sides of the event. First 5-10 words of the release are very important and exactly they are responsible for the first impression from the release. They have to get reader interested in what is going to happen further. Structure it right: give a short sequence of the news and only then define who was the initiator or the person of address. Make this press release work for you. Some positive information about a company simply called promotion will be helpful in further job of journalists. As you see a press release is a powerful marketing tool that builds credibility.
What is basic SEO and how does one go about it?
SEO is the short way to say Search Engine Optimization. It is the practice of trying to get better rankings in Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Those three are known as the ‘big three’ because nearly all searchers use one of them, so it is the most profitable for you to try to optimize for them.
Americans conducted 7.4 billion searches online in May, up 12 percent from April. Google Sites registered the most search queries performed with 3.3 billion, followed by Yahoo! Sites (2.1 billion), MSN-Microsoft (963 million) - Comscore
Search engines take into account many things in your website, optimizing those is called on-page optimization, everything that isn’t your website is off-page optimization. Now, while the exact ranking formulae are secret, this is what is widely believed as ‘simple SEO’.
First, we want to improve on-page optimization. So we have to pick keywords. There are a variety of tools you can search for which will give you lists of keywords that are usable.
Now you have your keywords. So you now have to see what the top 10 people are doing for them (warning: basic html and math needed ahead). Go to the top person on the most important keyword you have, on google. As an example, we’ll use the keywords ‘free downloads’, and I’ll do the math with you.
The number one website is download.com, so let’s analyze this top website.
Keyword density is the measure of how many times a keyword appears compared to the rest of the text in that area. The areas include: title, meta keywords, meta description, plain content (text), h1, h2, h3, bold, italics, underlined and domain name.
Let’s do some of the math for download.com… Their title is: “Reviews and free downloads at download.com” First we ignore any ‘common’ word, like ‘and, the, at’ etc. So we have: “Reviews free downloads download.com” So, ‘free downloads’ takes up 14 characters out of 35, or 40%. In the meta description tag, it’s 14/272 = 5.14%, so go on and on through the list, keeping it in an excel. After you’ve done the top 10 in google, go to the top 10 in yahoo and msn, ignoring the repeats and do it again. Now, take the average. For the title, let’s say my average was 15%. I wanna try to have a percentage close to that. Too much, and I might get penalized, too little and It wont help.
That’s the basic on-site SEO. Matching keyword density on the site. Off-site seo is everything that is not on your site, mainly getting links for the beginner. The kind of links you want are links from a relevant website that has few other links to other sites. Ways to get these: Submit to directories and reciprocal linking. Submit your site to directories. You can find many lists of them on google. Reciprocal linking is trading links, or in effect, ‘I’ll link to you if you link to me’. The best way to get one is to go to a person who’s site is close in topic with yours, find their email and send a personal one.
_______________
Dear (contact info, or Webmaster)
I was looking at your site and I really liked (thing on their site) about it. (comment about site). I have placed a link to you at (URL of link you place to them) and would appreciate if you’d link back.
Regards,
(name)
(your site url)
_______________
Yes, you have to do this manually, yes, it will help you, and yes, you have to link first. You’re the one asking for a link, so you have to show them you mean it.
Do that for all the top websites in your keywords, and keep doing it. The more you get links, the higher you’ll be in the rankings. You can find the number your competitors have by going to MSN search and typing in ‘Link:download.com’ for my example. It showed that there were 692,811 links to download.com… Better get to work.
Americans conducted 7.4 billion searches online in May, up 12 percent from April. Google Sites registered the most search queries performed with 3.3 billion, followed by Yahoo! Sites (2.1 billion), MSN-Microsoft (963 million) - Comscore
Search engines take into account many things in your website, optimizing those is called on-page optimization, everything that isn’t your website is off-page optimization. Now, while the exact ranking formulae are secret, this is what is widely believed as ‘simple SEO’.
First, we want to improve on-page optimization. So we have to pick keywords. There are a variety of tools you can search for which will give you lists of keywords that are usable.
Now you have your keywords. So you now have to see what the top 10 people are doing for them (warning: basic html and math needed ahead). Go to the top person on the most important keyword you have, on google. As an example, we’ll use the keywords ‘free downloads’, and I’ll do the math with you.
The number one website is download.com, so let’s analyze this top website.
Keyword density is the measure of how many times a keyword appears compared to the rest of the text in that area. The areas include: title, meta keywords, meta description, plain content (text), h1, h2, h3, bold, italics, underlined and domain name.
Let’s do some of the math for download.com… Their title is: “Reviews and free downloads at download.com” First we ignore any ‘common’ word, like ‘and, the, at’ etc. So we have: “Reviews free downloads download.com” So, ‘free downloads’ takes up 14 characters out of 35, or 40%. In the meta description tag, it’s 14/272 = 5.14%, so go on and on through the list, keeping it in an excel. After you’ve done the top 10 in google, go to the top 10 in yahoo and msn, ignoring the repeats and do it again. Now, take the average. For the title, let’s say my average was 15%. I wanna try to have a percentage close to that. Too much, and I might get penalized, too little and It wont help.
That’s the basic on-site SEO. Matching keyword density on the site. Off-site seo is everything that is not on your site, mainly getting links for the beginner. The kind of links you want are links from a relevant website that has few other links to other sites. Ways to get these: Submit to directories and reciprocal linking. Submit your site to directories. You can find many lists of them on google. Reciprocal linking is trading links, or in effect, ‘I’ll link to you if you link to me’. The best way to get one is to go to a person who’s site is close in topic with yours, find their email and send a personal one.
_______________
Dear (contact info, or Webmaster)
I was looking at your site and I really liked (thing on their site) about it. (comment about site). I have placed a link to you at (URL of link you place to them) and would appreciate if you’d link back.
Regards,
(name)
(your site url)
_______________
Yes, you have to do this manually, yes, it will help you, and yes, you have to link first. You’re the one asking for a link, so you have to show them you mean it.
Do that for all the top websites in your keywords, and keep doing it. The more you get links, the higher you’ll be in the rankings. You can find the number your competitors have by going to MSN search and typing in ‘Link:download.com’ for my example. It showed that there were 692,811 links to download.com… Better get to work.
What Is Black Hat Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Seo has been very useful and famous in internet marketing. There are many techniques that make boosting your site a success through different seo strategies. But despite the success of seo, there are some black practitioners who tend to see the field of search engine optimization as war, and the search engines are doing anything to beat the competition whether it is fair or foul. Those white hatters market with the other search engines as associates or partners who can help them drive links and business to their client’s sites.
Cloaking happens when a website or a web page displays different content for a certain search engine spider in opposition to a human user. Cloaking is the one that delivers a version of a page to an Internet user and a different description to a search engine. You will notice a cloaked page is filled with keywords and phrases that the site wants to make them rank high.
This is done by cloaking the programs that weigh the IP address of the other party to a database of the known IP address which comes from a definite search engine spider. If there is a match in the IP address on the list, it serves a page which is particularly written for the search engines.
Cloaking has several good reasons which include increasing advertising and promotion. If you are trying to control your rankings in the different search engines, it might result to penalize your site or it might be banned.
Spamming or the keyword stuffing is a long list of keywords placed in the content and also the code on the page which makes it unreadable. Have you seen a page that repeatedly displays an ad with certain words? It is obvious that the site is trying to rank its page. This is known as keyword spamming but it is just one tip that most SEO companies are trying to do to increase page rank.
You might not notice the page may have invisible text, title tags, meta tags and comment tags. If a page repeats a certain keyword repeatedly, google might place a filter to lessen the ranking or much worse, ban the site. Keyword density can be quite tricky but following the general rule, 3% t0 12 % is the percentage to which a site can use the targeted keywords.
You will notice there are some hidden texts in SEO strategies. This happens when a text or link is invisible to the website visitor but can still be seen by the search engines. If this happens it is considered hidden. Before, people used small fonts to hide the text or they would even use the same color for the background.
This makes them able to put some links which are unseen, but has long been noticed by the search engines that is why they have come up with another strategy this time. Spammers are using the cascading style sheets in order to hide the text. Some are also using tags which are set to hide the text on the page. These strategies are considered hidden if they are left unseen but search engines have their own technique of spotting invisible links so better not do it at all.
The doorway pages are those that exclusively exist to rank well in the different search engines. You may notice some of the pages being ugly and some contain paragraphs which do not have any relation to the topic. Most of the time these doorway pages are not part of the regular navigation of the site which are called orphaned pages.
A black hat SEO can use very good software to filter or generate the doorway pages. This happens when they plug a few keywords and search the page.
You may notice some sites linking to other sites which are have no relation at all. Some sites just link to other sites which is part of their strategy. Now, you will find this truly spamming.
If you are going to put up your own website, make sure that you will avoid these things and keep SEO marketing fair and do not think of competition. Think of how you can increase your site ranking fairly.
Cloaking happens when a website or a web page displays different content for a certain search engine spider in opposition to a human user. Cloaking is the one that delivers a version of a page to an Internet user and a different description to a search engine. You will notice a cloaked page is filled with keywords and phrases that the site wants to make them rank high.
This is done by cloaking the programs that weigh the IP address of the other party to a database of the known IP address which comes from a definite search engine spider. If there is a match in the IP address on the list, it serves a page which is particularly written for the search engines.
Cloaking has several good reasons which include increasing advertising and promotion. If you are trying to control your rankings in the different search engines, it might result to penalize your site or it might be banned.
Spamming or the keyword stuffing is a long list of keywords placed in the content and also the code on the page which makes it unreadable. Have you seen a page that repeatedly displays an ad with certain words? It is obvious that the site is trying to rank its page. This is known as keyword spamming but it is just one tip that most SEO companies are trying to do to increase page rank.
You might not notice the page may have invisible text, title tags, meta tags and comment tags. If a page repeats a certain keyword repeatedly, google might place a filter to lessen the ranking or much worse, ban the site. Keyword density can be quite tricky but following the general rule, 3% t0 12 % is the percentage to which a site can use the targeted keywords.
You will notice there are some hidden texts in SEO strategies. This happens when a text or link is invisible to the website visitor but can still be seen by the search engines. If this happens it is considered hidden. Before, people used small fonts to hide the text or they would even use the same color for the background.
This makes them able to put some links which are unseen, but has long been noticed by the search engines that is why they have come up with another strategy this time. Spammers are using the cascading style sheets in order to hide the text. Some are also using tags which are set to hide the text on the page. These strategies are considered hidden if they are left unseen but search engines have their own technique of spotting invisible links so better not do it at all.
The doorway pages are those that exclusively exist to rank well in the different search engines. You may notice some of the pages being ugly and some contain paragraphs which do not have any relation to the topic. Most of the time these doorway pages are not part of the regular navigation of the site which are called orphaned pages.
A black hat SEO can use very good software to filter or generate the doorway pages. This happens when they plug a few keywords and search the page.
You may notice some sites linking to other sites which are have no relation at all. Some sites just link to other sites which is part of their strategy. Now, you will find this truly spamming.
If you are going to put up your own website, make sure that you will avoid these things and keep SEO marketing fair and do not think of competition. Think of how you can increase your site ranking fairly.
What is Page rank, what are back links and why do they matter ?
First, the jargon.
Back link: this is where a website links to your site; i.e. Site X has a link pointing to your site, so your site has a back link from Site X
One-way link: where only site X links to your site, but your site does NOT link to site X
Reciprocal link: where two sites have swapped links so they both link to each other
Anchor text: the text/description that is associated with your link on the back link site.
Page rank: Google's proprietary system for assigning a value (from 1-10 where 10 is best) to the combined number and the quality of back links pointing to your site. Often abbreviated to "PR"
Search Engine Results Page (SERP): we use the terms "SERPs" to refer to the search engine results page, and the position of a site on it. So if a website has a SERP of 3, it means for a particular keyword search it appears on page 3 of the results. Note that some people use SERP to refer to the position on the page, so that a SERP of 3 may also mean the site appears at #3 on the first page.
Check you page rank and backlinks now! Quick and easy Page rank checking at http://www.quickpagerank.com/
So, what does it all mean?
In the online marketing world, Page Rank means a lot. Increasing a website's PR is one of the major foci of online marketing.
The goal is to get as high a PR as possible for your site. PR is measured by a proprietary algorithm belonging to Google. What Google does is measure the quality of the site linking to your site. How does it do this? By measuring, amongst other things, that site's PR. There is also evidence that the degree of relatedness of content is also important. If you site is an e.g. Real estate website, then a back link from a site dealing in scuba gear may not be worth much to you. But back links from sites that have good PR and are related to you (e.g. by industry or by region/location) are well worth pursuing. By increasing the number and quality of links pointing to your site, over time you will increase your PR.
Note also that many other engines also use back links as part of their SERP algorithm. Some may not be as sophisticated as Google, but many measure the number of back links in their index and use this as part of how they rank your site under a particular search.
You can check your back links and page rank at http://www.quickpagerank.com/
So how do I improve my Page Rank?
Firstly, make sure your site has good quality content. Make other sites and their owners want to link to you. Then get out on the web and start making propositions to other website owners in related fields.
Ideally, you will get links from sites that have a higher Page Rank than yours, but this isn't always possible. What you should look for are sites that:
Have good content
Are relevant or related to your site
Have some Page Rank already (i.e. not brand new)
Also, older domains may do better than newer domains
Some of the do nots.
Be wary of FFA (Free For All) sites; often these do you no good and can actually do you damage as they tend to be viewed as spam sites by some engines.
Don't "spam" your anchor text; make it relevant and don't overload it with keywords or repetitions.
Vary your anchor text. Use different variations or re-writes of anchor text on different sites.
Make sure the page where your link will be placed has been indexed by the search engines. If it has not been indexed (or can't be for whatever reason) then you won't get any benefit from it.
Make sure that the pages you place links on have limits to the number of links listed. Single figures are ideal, but not always possible.
Back link: this is where a website links to your site; i.e. Site X has a link pointing to your site, so your site has a back link from Site X
One-way link: where only site X links to your site, but your site does NOT link to site X
Reciprocal link: where two sites have swapped links so they both link to each other
Anchor text: the text/description that is associated with your link on the back link site.
Page rank: Google's proprietary system for assigning a value (from 1-10 where 10 is best) to the combined number and the quality of back links pointing to your site. Often abbreviated to "PR"
Search Engine Results Page (SERP): we use the terms "SERPs" to refer to the search engine results page, and the position of a site on it. So if a website has a SERP of 3, it means for a particular keyword search it appears on page 3 of the results. Note that some people use SERP to refer to the position on the page, so that a SERP of 3 may also mean the site appears at #3 on the first page.
Check you page rank and backlinks now! Quick and easy Page rank checking at http://www.quickpagerank.com/
So, what does it all mean?
In the online marketing world, Page Rank means a lot. Increasing a website's PR is one of the major foci of online marketing.
The goal is to get as high a PR as possible for your site. PR is measured by a proprietary algorithm belonging to Google. What Google does is measure the quality of the site linking to your site. How does it do this? By measuring, amongst other things, that site's PR. There is also evidence that the degree of relatedness of content is also important. If you site is an e.g. Real estate website, then a back link from a site dealing in scuba gear may not be worth much to you. But back links from sites that have good PR and are related to you (e.g. by industry or by region/location) are well worth pursuing. By increasing the number and quality of links pointing to your site, over time you will increase your PR.
Note also that many other engines also use back links as part of their SERP algorithm. Some may not be as sophisticated as Google, but many measure the number of back links in their index and use this as part of how they rank your site under a particular search.
You can check your back links and page rank at http://www.quickpagerank.com/
So how do I improve my Page Rank?
Firstly, make sure your site has good quality content. Make other sites and their owners want to link to you. Then get out on the web and start making propositions to other website owners in related fields.
Ideally, you will get links from sites that have a higher Page Rank than yours, but this isn't always possible. What you should look for are sites that:
Have good content
Are relevant or related to your site
Have some Page Rank already (i.e. not brand new)
Also, older domains may do better than newer domains
Some of the do nots.
Be wary of FFA (Free For All) sites; often these do you no good and can actually do you damage as they tend to be viewed as spam sites by some engines.
Don't "spam" your anchor text; make it relevant and don't overload it with keywords or repetitions.
Vary your anchor text. Use different variations or re-writes of anchor text on different sites.
Make sure the page where your link will be placed has been indexed by the search engines. If it has not been indexed (or can't be for whatever reason) then you won't get any benefit from it.
Make sure that the pages you place links on have limits to the number of links listed. Single figures are ideal, but not always possible.
Friday, 5 March 2010
What is Search Engine Marketing?
f you are a website owner, you already understand the importance of keywords and advertising in search engines. In order to make sales, websites must use the latest advertising technology geared toward the internet. These methods include search engine optimization and search engine advertising (pay per click) and are necessary for success in any online venture. Together they are known as search engine marketing.
Search engine optimization consists of a variety of techniques to increase the rankings of a website in search engines. Search engines base rankings on a number of factors that determine relevance of a site and where they will go in their search results. The search engines use spider programs which search out websites and, using algorithms designed by the search engines, gather all sorts of information from the website. Some considerations in the algorithms consist of things like age of site, how often the site is updated, content, links, and many other things. Search engine giant Google uses PageRank to measure sites, with 10 being the highest ranking which is given to very few sites. If your site has a 4 or 5, that’s pretty good.
Search Engine advertising or Pay per Click advertising is another tool used in search engine marketing. By advertising directly with the search engines, a site will be given higher ranking in search results. Search engine marketing also gives exposure to a site based on content, so the site appears in search engines when users are looking for a particular product or keyword. This targeted searching and advertising is dominating consumer spending. In 2003, $2.5 billion in sales came from search results, and that number is expected to grow 25 percent this year to $3.2 billion.
Employing these methods of Search engine marketing will increase your sites visibility in the search results. Both parties win using search engines. For advertisers using the best techniques of SEO, they will gain visitors who are looking for their specific products or services. When their business is put into the search engine, visitors are more likely to visit the site specifically for their services. Research also shows that when visitors come to a site through a search engine, they are typically more motivated to buy.
There are much more to these techniques than listed above. Search engine optimization itself is very detailed and complicated. To truly optimize your site, it is important to hire editors who specialize in SEO. And advertising too requires knowledge of the industry. It is very important to follow the search engines guidelines to the letter to avoid being penalized. A company that provides exclusive search marketing services will do everything from keyword selection to monthly maintenance.
Search engine optimization consists of a variety of techniques to increase the rankings of a website in search engines. Search engines base rankings on a number of factors that determine relevance of a site and where they will go in their search results. The search engines use spider programs which search out websites and, using algorithms designed by the search engines, gather all sorts of information from the website. Some considerations in the algorithms consist of things like age of site, how often the site is updated, content, links, and many other things. Search engine giant Google uses PageRank to measure sites, with 10 being the highest ranking which is given to very few sites. If your site has a 4 or 5, that’s pretty good.
Search Engine advertising or Pay per Click advertising is another tool used in search engine marketing. By advertising directly with the search engines, a site will be given higher ranking in search results. Search engine marketing also gives exposure to a site based on content, so the site appears in search engines when users are looking for a particular product or keyword. This targeted searching and advertising is dominating consumer spending. In 2003, $2.5 billion in sales came from search results, and that number is expected to grow 25 percent this year to $3.2 billion.
Employing these methods of Search engine marketing will increase your sites visibility in the search results. Both parties win using search engines. For advertisers using the best techniques of SEO, they will gain visitors who are looking for their specific products or services. When their business is put into the search engine, visitors are more likely to visit the site specifically for their services. Research also shows that when visitors come to a site through a search engine, they are typically more motivated to buy.
There are much more to these techniques than listed above. Search engine optimization itself is very detailed and complicated. To truly optimize your site, it is important to hire editors who specialize in SEO. And advertising too requires knowledge of the industry. It is very important to follow the search engines guidelines to the letter to avoid being penalized. A company that provides exclusive search marketing services will do everything from keyword selection to monthly maintenance.
What is SEO
SEO- Search Engine Optimisation. Over the last ten years SE's (Search Engines) have become an ever increasing important factor in business promotion. The four major SE's generate in excess of 700 million search queries a day, an outstanding fact that really emphasises the importance of utilising the potential reach of the Search Engine.
Over 75% of people now use the internet when looking to buy a product or service. Websites in the top 3 pages of the major search engines gain 90% of search engine traffic. Basically, if you have a website you need to be on the first few pages of the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) to get the traffic.so how do you do this?.......... Its not quite as simple as many people believe. I am constantly being asked " I have just had a website built but do not appear on Google." Well firstly type in the URL (web address) of your website, if you still do not come up then your site has not been indexed. If your website does appear then previously when you said "I do not appear in Google" what you meant is- you typed in a keyword (a word related to your product/service) and your website did not appear in the top few pages. To be honest, this is very unlikely to happen. Unless you are selling a very unique product with very little competition then your website is likely to be on page 23 or worse!
Everybody with a website would love to be #1 on google for their main keyword, but it takes time and effort. You need to optimise your website for the best chances of achieving this.
After crawling the internet using robots called "spiders", the SE's use a complex mathematical formula to "rank" websites on importance and relevance to certain keywords. These formulas are known as "algorithms". SEO describes the techniques that use a knowledge of how SE's rank websites, to make alterations to a site so that it better "adheres" to the "algorithms".
There are to main phases to the optimisation process- "on page" and "off page". On page is the alterations that are made to the physical content of a website and the code that makes up each webpage. This includes intergrating keywords into areas of the site that the SE's deem important. Off page optimisation is the process of building links to a website...... what this means is getting as many websites to have a link somewhere on their site to the site you are optimising. This is very important because a major part of SE's "algorithms" is link popularity- the more websites that link to another, the more important it is considered by the SE's and the higher up it appears in the SERP's.
Of course there are many more technical issues involved with Search Engine Optimisation but i wont discuss these in this article.. One thing that you should remeber though when thinking about SEO is that it certainly is not instant. Due to the way search engines work it may be several months before the friuts of your labour are seen, in the form of higher rankings.Google currently indexes over 8 billion web pages and the ever increasing size of the internet means that the SE's certainly have their work cut out.
Many companies manage their own SEO in house, this can work fine but be willing to put in the time to learn the technicalities. The "nity gritty" of it can be slighly overwhelming as it is quite a specialist, technical field.
Over 75% of people now use the internet when looking to buy a product or service. Websites in the top 3 pages of the major search engines gain 90% of search engine traffic. Basically, if you have a website you need to be on the first few pages of the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) to get the traffic.so how do you do this?.......... Its not quite as simple as many people believe. I am constantly being asked " I have just had a website built but do not appear on Google." Well firstly type in the URL (web address) of your website, if you still do not come up then your site has not been indexed. If your website does appear then previously when you said "I do not appear in Google" what you meant is- you typed in a keyword (a word related to your product/service) and your website did not appear in the top few pages. To be honest, this is very unlikely to happen. Unless you are selling a very unique product with very little competition then your website is likely to be on page 23 or worse!
Everybody with a website would love to be #1 on google for their main keyword, but it takes time and effort. You need to optimise your website for the best chances of achieving this.
After crawling the internet using robots called "spiders", the SE's use a complex mathematical formula to "rank" websites on importance and relevance to certain keywords. These formulas are known as "algorithms". SEO describes the techniques that use a knowledge of how SE's rank websites, to make alterations to a site so that it better "adheres" to the "algorithms".
There are to main phases to the optimisation process- "on page" and "off page". On page is the alterations that are made to the physical content of a website and the code that makes up each webpage. This includes intergrating keywords into areas of the site that the SE's deem important. Off page optimisation is the process of building links to a website...... what this means is getting as many websites to have a link somewhere on their site to the site you are optimising. This is very important because a major part of SE's "algorithms" is link popularity- the more websites that link to another, the more important it is considered by the SE's and the higher up it appears in the SERP's.
Of course there are many more technical issues involved with Search Engine Optimisation but i wont discuss these in this article.. One thing that you should remeber though when thinking about SEO is that it certainly is not instant. Due to the way search engines work it may be several months before the friuts of your labour are seen, in the form of higher rankings.Google currently indexes over 8 billion web pages and the ever increasing size of the internet means that the SE's certainly have their work cut out.
Many companies manage their own SEO in house, this can work fine but be willing to put in the time to learn the technicalities. The "nity gritty" of it can be slighly overwhelming as it is quite a specialist, technical field.
What Is SEO And How Backlinks Help In Better Serp's
SEO is one of the most unnecessarily complicated jobs there is in the internet business world. There are so many “secrets” and “gurus” that offer you the hidden knowledge necessary for top search engine rankings, when in reality, search engine optimization is actually pretty simple.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, can be divided into two parts: on-site SEO, and link building.
On-site SEO is the process of optimizing the content of your pages for a particular keyword or keywords. The easiest way to do this is to use a free tool like WebCEO that will analyze your webpage and make suggestions on how you can better optimize it.
At it's simplest, on-site SEO is making sure that your keywords are found (in the right numbers) in the right places. Specifically, the search engines want to see your keywords in:
- Page titles
- Page body
- Bold text
- Top of page
- Bottom of page
- Alt text
- Text links
Link building, the second half of SEO, is at least as important as on-site SEO, but is often neglected. When search engines look at your site, they also look at all of the sites that link to your site. Each site that links to your site gives your site a certain number of “votes”, based on several factors.
So, the more quality links you can get to your site, the higher you will rank in the major search engines. But before you can start gaining links to your site, you need to know what makes a quality link. There are several factors that determine a link's quality:
1 – Anchor text
A high quality link will have your keyword(s) in the anchor text, or the clickable text part of the link.
2- Site quality
A high quality link is one from a quality, unique, content based site related to your site.
3- Anchor text variation
When building links, you'll want to vary your anchor text. If all of your links have the same text, search engines may discount them as spam.
4- Slowly but surely
Good things come to those who wait. Building links should be done slowly and steadily. If you build a whole bunch of links at once, you risk the links being discounted as spam by the search engines.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, can be divided into two parts: on-site SEO, and link building.
On-site SEO is the process of optimizing the content of your pages for a particular keyword or keywords. The easiest way to do this is to use a free tool like WebCEO that will analyze your webpage and make suggestions on how you can better optimize it.
At it's simplest, on-site SEO is making sure that your keywords are found (in the right numbers) in the right places. Specifically, the search engines want to see your keywords in:
- Page titles
- Page body
- Bold text
- Top of page
- Bottom of page
- Alt text
- Text links
Link building, the second half of SEO, is at least as important as on-site SEO, but is often neglected. When search engines look at your site, they also look at all of the sites that link to your site. Each site that links to your site gives your site a certain number of “votes”, based on several factors.
So, the more quality links you can get to your site, the higher you will rank in the major search engines. But before you can start gaining links to your site, you need to know what makes a quality link. There are several factors that determine a link's quality:
1 – Anchor text
A high quality link will have your keyword(s) in the anchor text, or the clickable text part of the link.
2- Site quality
A high quality link is one from a quality, unique, content based site related to your site.
3- Anchor text variation
When building links, you'll want to vary your anchor text. If all of your links have the same text, search engines may discount them as spam.
4- Slowly but surely
Good things come to those who wait. Building links should be done slowly and steadily. If you build a whole bunch of links at once, you risk the links being discounted as spam by the search engines.
What is SEO and why is it so important?
SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimizing and refers to a set of good practices that teach you how to improve your website so that it would be easily tracked, indexed and ranked by search engines. Getting your site indexed by Google and other major search engines will help you attract visitors and increase traffic.
It is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site.
SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine.
Basic SEO Tips:
1. Insert keywords within the title tag so that search engine robots will know what your page is about. The title tag is located right at the top of your document within the head tags.
2. Use the same keywords as anchor text to link to the page from different pages on your site. This is especially useful if your site contains many pages. The more keywords that link to a specific page the better.
3. Make sure that the text within the title tag is also within the body of the page. It is unwise to have keywords in the title tag which are not contained within the body of the page.
4. Do not use the exact same title tag on every page on your website. Search engine robots might determine that all your pages are the same if all your title tags are the same. If this happens, your pages might not get indexed.
5. Do not spam the description or keyword meta tag by stuffing meaningless keywords or even spend too much time on this tag.
6. Do not link to link-farms or other search engine unfriendly neighborhoods. A good rule of thumb is if your pages do not contain any words that reflect the content of the site you are linking to, do not link to it.
7. Do not use doorway pages. Doorway pages are designed for robots only, not humans.
8. Title tags for text links. Insert the title tag within the HTML of your text link to add weight to the link and the page where the link resides. This is like the alt tag for images.
9. Describe your images with the use of the alt tag. This will help search engines that index images to find your pages and will also help readers who use text only web browsers.
10. Submit to the search engines yourself. Do not use submission service or submission software. Doing so could get your site penalized or even banned.
So in this way Search Engine Optimization, is important, and helps to bring more visitors and Link Exchanging, is important because it can drive more visitors then search engines, once established. Directories ad valuable content for your customers/visitors, and this it improves your SEO.
It is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site.
SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine.
Basic SEO Tips:
1. Insert keywords within the title tag so that search engine robots will know what your page is about. The title tag is located right at the top of your document within the head tags.
2. Use the same keywords as anchor text to link to the page from different pages on your site. This is especially useful if your site contains many pages. The more keywords that link to a specific page the better.
3. Make sure that the text within the title tag is also within the body of the page. It is unwise to have keywords in the title tag which are not contained within the body of the page.
4. Do not use the exact same title tag on every page on your website. Search engine robots might determine that all your pages are the same if all your title tags are the same. If this happens, your pages might not get indexed.
5. Do not spam the description or keyword meta tag by stuffing meaningless keywords or even spend too much time on this tag.
6. Do not link to link-farms or other search engine unfriendly neighborhoods. A good rule of thumb is if your pages do not contain any words that reflect the content of the site you are linking to, do not link to it.
7. Do not use doorway pages. Doorway pages are designed for robots only, not humans.
8. Title tags for text links. Insert the title tag within the HTML of your text link to add weight to the link and the page where the link resides. This is like the alt tag for images.
9. Describe your images with the use of the alt tag. This will help search engines that index images to find your pages and will also help readers who use text only web browsers.
10. Submit to the search engines yourself. Do not use submission service or submission software. Doing so could get your site penalized or even banned.
So in this way Search Engine Optimization, is important, and helps to bring more visitors and Link Exchanging, is important because it can drive more visitors then search engines, once established. Directories ad valuable content for your customers/visitors, and this it improves your SEO.
What is SEO Or Search Engine Optimization
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a very crucial technique or process for people who depend on their websites to bring them business. Or are trying to do so. Merely having an online presence by way of a website doesn't serve any purpose if various pages of the website are not optimized with search engines in mind.
SEO is a technique with the help of which a site attains a position in search engine. Depending on how well the website is optimized and marketed will decide its position in Search Engines. The higher the position, the better. Higher position will ensure higher traffic to the site, more visitors, means more sales.
Optimizing is done with the help of key phrases. Key phrases are what people generally type in Search box while searching for a particular topic.
Freezing upon key phrase requires a major effort on the part of Search Engine Optimizer. He has to decide this on the basis of the briefings from his client for whom he is designing and optimizing the website.
Search engine optimization can be learnt online from various sites dedicated to it. These sites give you free access and lessons about SEO. SEO can be learnt by anybody provided one is willing to have the patience to learn it. SEO doesn't require any formal educational background.
SEO is a very lucrative profession by itself. If you get the hang of nuances related to SEO and develop a genuine intrest while building your own site, you can become a SE Optimizer.
SEO is a time taking and intricate process but it can be learnt. ALso SEO is an ongoing process. You have to apply the SEO techniques on a contineous basis. "Optimize Once And Forget It Forever" is not how its done. There are many sub-topics in SEO all of which one by one have to be mastered and applied in various combinations to achieve the desired result.
Thus we can conclude that SEO is the heart of any business website. A healthy heart will lead to a problem free prosperous life. So will a well optimized website be. A profitable venture.
SEO is a technique with the help of which a site attains a position in search engine. Depending on how well the website is optimized and marketed will decide its position in Search Engines. The higher the position, the better. Higher position will ensure higher traffic to the site, more visitors, means more sales.
Optimizing is done with the help of key phrases. Key phrases are what people generally type in Search box while searching for a particular topic.
Freezing upon key phrase requires a major effort on the part of Search Engine Optimizer. He has to decide this on the basis of the briefings from his client for whom he is designing and optimizing the website.
Search engine optimization can be learnt online from various sites dedicated to it. These sites give you free access and lessons about SEO. SEO can be learnt by anybody provided one is willing to have the patience to learn it. SEO doesn't require any formal educational background.
SEO is a very lucrative profession by itself. If you get the hang of nuances related to SEO and develop a genuine intrest while building your own site, you can become a SE Optimizer.
SEO is a time taking and intricate process but it can be learnt. ALso SEO is an ongoing process. You have to apply the SEO techniques on a contineous basis. "Optimize Once And Forget It Forever" is not how its done. There are many sub-topics in SEO all of which one by one have to be mastered and applied in various combinations to achieve the desired result.
Thus we can conclude that SEO is the heart of any business website. A healthy heart will lead to a problem free prosperous life. So will a well optimized website be. A profitable venture.
What is the “Flow” and how does it apply to SEO?
Internet traffic flow is simply the paths taken by people to navigate between web pages. Some of these paths are eight lane freeways with thousands of people passing through each minute. Others might seem more like a city street with a four way stop every other block. Then there are the back trails in the woods, rarely traveled and known only to a few.
Think back on your daily internet activities and you will realize that you have traveled a few paths, some more traveled than others. When you logged on you probably checked your email. I might be going out on a limb here but this is probably a fairly narrow yet beaten trail. You are probably the only person to travel this path and I would guess you navigate through it often.
Then you may have traveled to your favorite blog to see what PtrWigg thinks about international business today. You read his latest blog and find he has a link to a related business site to illustrate his point. You decide to swing by that site to get more background information. While there you find a link to another interesting site on globalization. The process of traveling though the blog, through the business site and into the globalization site is in itself a path.
Alright, that is all pretty basic. I’m sure you already understood this much even if you have never thought of the internet in this way. While this concept is very simple in nature I don’t think webmasters always take it into consideration when developing a website and SEOs seem to rarely consider it while optimizing for one.
So how does a webmaster develop a site with the “Flow” in mind? I believe the first step is in realizing that each page not only contains a path within itself but more importantly is a step within a path. Lets say you have created a page with an article on how to give a business presentation. You may have superbly supplied a facet of information but all information by itself is useless.
Does it really matter if you know how to give a business presentation if you can’t dress yourself, tie your shoes, comb your hair, eat breakfast, drive to work, operate a projector and speak in public? Obviously we are going to assume that your users are capable of doing everything up until the operate a projector step. Information is only useful when it is collaborated with other bits of information.
So ask yourself what path your average user is most likely on and if possible provide for him or her to continue on that path. All it takes is a little forethought and a few links to appropriate resources.
I think for the most part webmasters are pretty good about developing their sites with traffic flow in mind. While professional SEO experts may take the internet traffic flow model into account when promoting a website through link building this does not appear to be a common practice among webmasters.
Today the primary objective in link building seems simply to get ranked by the top search engines. The two most common link building techniques completely ignore internet traffic flow. Webmasters like to get links from directories and exchanging reciprocal links. The problem is the average user does not spend very much time viewing average directories and even less time viewing link exchange pages.
Doesn’t this seem a little backwards? Webmasters are trying to gain exposure for their sites by spending time listing their sites in places that other people generally don’t visit. If we were to apply this to offline marketing it would be like if I purchased a billboard in the middle of the desert promoting bottled water. People in the middle of nowhere may want bottled water but doesn’t it seem like a better idea promoting where there may actually be people to see it?
I’m not saying webmasters should not submit their sites to directories but I absolutely believe that their marketing mix should not consist of only directory submission and reciprocal link exchanging. I believe it is very important to focus on link building within the flow.
The concept isn’t difficult. Figure out where your site naturally fits within the flow. Then try to contextually exchange links or purchase links on pages within paths your target user is most likely on. This will help you tap into long term sources of targeted traffic regardless of your search engine rankings. This method will require considerably more time to build the same number of backlinks but the search engines will reward you for the superb quality of links.
Think back on your daily internet activities and you will realize that you have traveled a few paths, some more traveled than others. When you logged on you probably checked your email. I might be going out on a limb here but this is probably a fairly narrow yet beaten trail. You are probably the only person to travel this path and I would guess you navigate through it often.
Then you may have traveled to your favorite blog to see what PtrWigg thinks about international business today. You read his latest blog and find he has a link to a related business site to illustrate his point. You decide to swing by that site to get more background information. While there you find a link to another interesting site on globalization. The process of traveling though the blog, through the business site and into the globalization site is in itself a path.
Alright, that is all pretty basic. I’m sure you already understood this much even if you have never thought of the internet in this way. While this concept is very simple in nature I don’t think webmasters always take it into consideration when developing a website and SEOs seem to rarely consider it while optimizing for one.
So how does a webmaster develop a site with the “Flow” in mind? I believe the first step is in realizing that each page not only contains a path within itself but more importantly is a step within a path. Lets say you have created a page with an article on how to give a business presentation. You may have superbly supplied a facet of information but all information by itself is useless.
Does it really matter if you know how to give a business presentation if you can’t dress yourself, tie your shoes, comb your hair, eat breakfast, drive to work, operate a projector and speak in public? Obviously we are going to assume that your users are capable of doing everything up until the operate a projector step. Information is only useful when it is collaborated with other bits of information.
So ask yourself what path your average user is most likely on and if possible provide for him or her to continue on that path. All it takes is a little forethought and a few links to appropriate resources.
I think for the most part webmasters are pretty good about developing their sites with traffic flow in mind. While professional SEO experts may take the internet traffic flow model into account when promoting a website through link building this does not appear to be a common practice among webmasters.
Today the primary objective in link building seems simply to get ranked by the top search engines. The two most common link building techniques completely ignore internet traffic flow. Webmasters like to get links from directories and exchanging reciprocal links. The problem is the average user does not spend very much time viewing average directories and even less time viewing link exchange pages.
Doesn’t this seem a little backwards? Webmasters are trying to gain exposure for their sites by spending time listing their sites in places that other people generally don’t visit. If we were to apply this to offline marketing it would be like if I purchased a billboard in the middle of the desert promoting bottled water. People in the middle of nowhere may want bottled water but doesn’t it seem like a better idea promoting where there may actually be people to see it?
I’m not saying webmasters should not submit their sites to directories but I absolutely believe that their marketing mix should not consist of only directory submission and reciprocal link exchanging. I believe it is very important to focus on link building within the flow.
The concept isn’t difficult. Figure out where your site naturally fits within the flow. Then try to contextually exchange links or purchase links on pages within paths your target user is most likely on. This will help you tap into long term sources of targeted traffic regardless of your search engine rankings. This method will require considerably more time to build the same number of backlinks but the search engines will reward you for the superb quality of links.
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