The Ways To Promo Your Web

The importance of keyword research and how to do it

2009-04-24T21:35:00.000-07:00

Importance of the right keywords

One can never underestimate the power of having the right keywords to drive traffic to ones website. It can often mean the difference between success and failure. The best keywords are usually the right combination of words to create a phrase. And this is usually the term people search most often. Why is having the right set of keywords crucial? Because it is what is going to determine the influx of targeted traffic to your website. Therefore it increases chances of sales and also better search engine ranking.

Identify niche target audience

Today everyone is jumping on the ‘specialization' bandwagon. It is no longer a yardstick of competitive edge if you're targeting a generalized audience. Therefore, once you have identified the niche segment you are catering to, you need to focus on appropriate SEO and keyword research.

Keyword research: Not Much Ado About Nothing

When talking about keyword research, there is much more to it than meets the eye. It is far more complex than knowing which terms are most popularly searched by users. Out of the millions of websites that compete with you, 90% of them are going to have the same set of keywords you will use for your site. Is that a smart idea? Not really. Not when you're a small name in the industry and want to stand out from the crowd. What will help is not to choose keywords that are very competitive. You need to choose keywords that have not been overused – although that signals less traffic, it is far better than no sales at all. That is the primary reason most organizations are investing in advanced keyword research tools like Google AdWords etc.

How to do keyword research: Google Adwords

Google has brought out one of the best keyword research tools available today – the Adwords. This tool helps users to identify exact keywords that will propel targeted traffic to their websites. It is powerful, simple to use and very effective. It is aimed at directing targeted traffic to your website.

Keyword tool

Google AdWords has a keyword tool where one can enter one or more keywords or phrases, and then they can obtain many more such synonymous keywords which are not overused. The keyword tool has several options like the keyword search volume, cost and advertisement position estimates, search volume trends and possible negative keywords, all of which can help to figure out various aspects of a set of keywords.

Keyword suggestion tool

This is a more recent feature introduced by Google Adwords. In this tool one can list keywords or sort them out based on priority, popularity etc. One can also manipulate keywords by adding one or two keywords or even a bunch of them. Linking can be done to the website and it guarantees traffic to your website.

Broad match, exact match and phrase match

Broad match refers to the set of keywords used initially to arrive at a broad based search result. These would not be very specific to the product or service your website might be offering, but they are inclusive of these. Phrase match refers to a group of keywords resulting in a phrase that is commonly searched for. As time progresses, one can refine the keywords more and more by analyzing the search logs of the website. Exact match refers to the exact et of keywords users will search for. These usually result in the highest influx of targeted traffic and are the ones most likely to get sales.

#1 for every one?

While doing keyword research, it is also important to ascertain the ranking and priority for each keyword. While some require to be at the number 1 ranking in a search engine, others could do well with even a 3rd or 4th ranking. However this is more of a strategic business decision and needs careful thought and consideration.

Search volume need not guarantee sales

Most people make the mistake of thinking that the number of searches made on a keyword will result in more targeted traffic which in turn implies more sales. That is quite a misconception. What really determines sales, is actually the conversion rate or ratio. A set of keywords may not be exactly pertaining to what your product offers but if it's conversion rate is more, this is what will fetch you more profit.

Keyword Professional Research Provides Consumer Intelligence & Results

2009-04-24T21:31:00.000-07:00

Keyword professional research has been the topic which most SEO experts rave about. It's because keyword research is the first place you need to go to create prosperous SEO campaign. It's about finding the words that gets the interest of the reader, earning their trust and motivating them as you move through the online sales process and switch these visitors into purchasers, enquiries or sign-up's. You can do your research tasks in just minutes with the help of user-friendly research tools like Wordtracker, Wordze and Keyword Discovery.
Unfortunately, it won't be guaranteed that you won't encounter challenges. Competition and traffic that are always linked, for example, if you post a business blog; you can't expect that your work will be viewed in an instantly on the first page as visitor search "blogging". So, you have to do the first round of research to understand your target market and how they purchase by using a diverse combination of keywords to describe them. Visitor searching for a topic may use diverse keyword or keyword combinations, and the one you find most noticeable, may in fact be the less popular terms. Every single keyword research tools can assist you in approximation of potential market size, and provide insights into how to modify both your tactics and prospect communications to get realistic results. To be successful, you must realize the language used by your clientele, rather than the terms you consider to be most effective. It will help you in deciding a cost-effective content campaign for your blog, website or marketing materials. To get started (this makes no sense).

To help you improve your tactics in competing in the world of keyword research here are some tips which can be considered basics: ? Tip 1: Gather related terms. You can use excel spreadsheet and collect major business terms associated to your site and industry in one column. Also, consider of singular and plural versions of keywords and keyword phrases, abbreviations, misspellings and hyphenations when doing the list of probable keywords. ? Tip 2: Boost the collection of terms. We're now bound to add entire two, three and four term combinations with those definite terms related to your site. We need to utilize web applications to speed up the entire procedure. Start typing your first general term and the tool will list more than a few related terms. Pick each new pertinent term to your sheet. You are supposed to perform this to other general terms. ? Tip 3: Look for principal and minor keywords. Key-in each of your terms when you go to the internet-based keyword creation tools such as Wordtracker etc. Locate terms like count and ratio. You must plug these on a second and third column beside the column of corresponding terms. After this step, go through your list and find the terms with the higher volume count and lower amount of competing page. This ratio is basically termed the KEI ratio. Consider the top 5-10 terms as your principal keywords and the remaining lists as your minor or 'long tail' keywords. ? Tip 4: Decide you topic of your writing. You may do blogs and forum postings, website page content, press releases and articles for your website or place them in the media. Also, develop a routine for posting content and being consistent. Find out where to post content for maximum visibility and what content strategy will link people to your website. ? Tip 5: Develop density of your keyword content. Density of your keyword content and finest formula or layout should be given emphasis to get the highest search ranking. It signifies that you should place as much pertinent keyword content as possible to your site. But do not spam the engines; regular consistent submission is safest approach. ? Tip 6: Adjust the existing content. Evaluate your page titles, content of the website body, Meta tags and descriptions, first sentence, etc. Make adjustments if necessary to improve your content using a specific formula. ? Tip 7: Develop new keyword dense content relevant to your site and post regularly. This is to attract attention of viewers and major search engines. Trends, media, evolution, whatever, if you can point to it, then it causes search terms and volumes to alter online. It's important you keep searching and revaluing your terms frequently.

Once equipped with keywords that are relevant to your market, you have the exclusive skill to generate highly-relevant content that helps your site visitors and develop your reliability because you will be satisfying their search needs. Depending on the size of your operations, keyword professional research should not require hiring additional staff, but regardless of your circumstances, keyword professional research is vital to the success of your online campaign. You will possibly rank well in search engines if you choose great keywords. It may seem bizarre to view search traffic as a minor benefit on the net, but that's precisely how you should see it, it simply makes or breaks your success online.

How to choose seo company which provides best seo services

2009-04-24T21:30:00.000-07:00

How to find the right SEO services company really matters a lot. There are few important things that you need to keep in mind before picking or trusting on any SEO company. The first thing to notice about SEO optimization company is the expedience it has in the past and for how long it has been working in the same field. SEO matters a lot in making or breaking your business. If you do not choose the right SEO services you may end up making a website that will not be visible or visited by many people. Hence you will not be able to earn reasonable profit from your business. SEO is very essential in showing your website on the top then people search for particular keywords. The rank of your website is also affected if you do not choose the right SEO Company. The rank of the webpage is actually its position in terms of appearance on the list that appears when you and are certain keywords. All those that pages that rank with between 1 to 10 have more chances of getting clicked and visited by people as compared to other websites that rank lower. A good SEO company will help you rear height rank so that you can easily become successful in your business. When you choose the products and design your website to start your online marketing business, the very first thing you have to focus upon is the marketing techniques and the SEO optimization. There are many people who help you in affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is the kind of marketing in which people uses the services and experience of exports and professionals who have been in the business much before and act as a mentor for all those people who are novice and have established their online business recently. Choosing an affiliate marketer can be time consuming as there are plenty of them present online today. It is recommended that you check the previous work and satisfaction level of the customers that have use the services of such marketers before you. You should also learn everything about the company and about its history so that you get to know that you are handling your project in the right hands and will be rewarded awesomely. So whenever you are out in the market for choosing the SEO Company then you must definitely follow the points listed above

How To Write For Search Engines

2009-04-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) writing, as a distinct style, was born in the Internet era and has matured before our very eyes in a relatively short span of time. Although it is evolving and maturing still, and will continuously do so, we can define some of the tried and tested steps of content optimization to help unique pages place at or near the top of search engine rankings.
Some experts go on to say that the goal of SEO is two-fold, with the first objective to put out the appropriate "bait" for search engine spiders and the second to serve up useful information to people who want and need it. Debates about priorities continue among SEO professionals, but it is never a good idea to devalue the human factors in any success formula. The singular goal, then, would be to develop, position and refine content in such a way as to satisfy all visitors to the page and/or site, both human and bot alike.

Rethinking search engine content terms

"Content is king," goes the old saying - and not only is good content king, it is becoming more important with every passing day. But the term content is best taken in its broadest sense. Content is not simply the written copy placed in a document, assembled on a page, or aggregated at a site. It includes all this, of course, but content actually comprises titles, headings, tags, intra-site links and external links, as well.

All of these components need to work together and form an interconnected whole so that both search engines and humans find the right things, come to the right conclusions and, most importantly, make the right decisions. Good writing is always targeted to the audience, and you are writing for an audience of two readers, human and software. Remember these two components of the audience and find creative ways to reach both of them at the same time.

First things first

Titles are critically important - they are usually the first thing read by both real and virtual visitors. A title is the "primary topical identifier" and, as such, has an invaluable function - again, a dual-purpose one. It must contain keyword targets at the individual word level while stoking interest in potential readers at the phrase level.

When a person performs a search, the title is both their first indication of your relevance to their needs and your first opportunity to compel them to click through. Search engines, more clinical and objective, give the title importance because they see it as an indicator of the page's main idea.

Yet many pages on the Internet have no title at all, or share "Home" and "Untitled" with several million others. There is no excuse for this oversight. The ignorant cousin of these mistakes, making the company name by itself the title of every page, is just as bad. Keywords relevant to the page should be part of every page's title.

Heading tags carry some importance too. Simply put, heading tags define the headings and subheadings of your article to both readers and spiders. By default they appear larger than normal text and are bolded. While not a magic ranking bullet, they are looked at with more importance than average text and are an opportunity to show spiders the themes of your content and what keywords you wish to rank for.

The H1 tag is the main heading of your article and carries the most importance, like a headline in a newspaper article. It should clearly convey the article's topic to the reader and main keywords to the search engines. H2 tags are one level down in importance and structure. Use them to define subtopics under your main topic, and again use keywords where descriptive and useful. If you needed to break down your article to sub-sub-headings, you would use the H3 tags, and so forth.

For both human and robotic readers, it is vital to keep page content focused. The "one topic per page" rule is an unwritten one, certainly, and it's followed by most professional content developers. This has less to do with the intelligence of the readers (either kind) than it does with several other considerations. For one thing, search engine "crawlers" have algorithms that tend to work best on one concept at a time, and most humans work best this way, too.

In addition, limiting the focus eases the task of placing keywords in the meta descriptions, page title, body copy, tags and links. Finally, dealing with more than one topic necessarily means using more verbiage, which dilutes the potency of a site-wide SEO program and may negatively impact ranking. Better to give these other topics their own content, strengthening your site's overall informational authority.

SEO copywriting balance

Much ink has been spilled and many pixels propagated in discussing SEO techniques, analyzing strategies, teaching "web content" writing, and chasing changing algorithms. Mentioned less but encompassing everything is that SEO copywriting, like all SEO, is about balance.

While articles such as this one can be helpful, it is important to understand that SEO will always evolve, change, adapt and improve. Study and implement tested techniques, but remain flexible and nimble. Writing for search engines and people at the same time is tricky and challenging at best, and can be frustrating and time-consuming, too. Approach the challenges in a businesslike fashion.

SEO content writing at its best balances art with science, blending the craft of engaging the reader with the dispassionate analysis of keywords on a page. Follow best practices, but fill each article to the brim with information useful to your demographic.

In simultaneously targeting a subject, an audience, and an algorithm, a great deal of creativity must take place to get effective SEO results. And, of course, it all has to happen in an environment that encourages short attention spans and constantly tries to lure people elsewhere. It is a major challenge to craft article titles and copy so compelling as to make people stop and read - or, better yet, stop and then click where you want them to.

Basics, opportunities, and consistency

The basic approach to writing for such a dynamic, ever-changing environment is to get to the point quickly. The "USA Today" news style - which relies on short headlines, descriptive sub-headlines and a few concise paragraphs - is perhaps the best analogy for good SEO writing. The important points (keywords) should appear early and often, and within a short period of time the human readers should know what they are supposed to do, while the search engines should be able to tell what the page is about from a consistency between your page structure and your body copy.

In the eyes of the search engines, everything that it can possibly see counts. That is, using image alt-text not only helps blind readers and people using phone- or text-based browsers, it also gives you another opportunity to add more descriptive strength to the overall page for the search engines. Do not miss any opportunity to further empower and refine your content.

And always remember when writing for search engines - keep writing. Write write write. Search engine bots gorge on new information, and if you consistently update your site with fresh content they will come around more often. While this gives you more opportunities to display your value, more importantly it builds the foundation of information that obviates it.

There's a lot to do, and it all needs to be done well. Use your numbers, metrics and analytics to point you in the right direction for creating more content. That's some science. Your creativity and amount of useful information, on the other hand, will point site visitors and search engines in the right direction. That's a touch of art. When both aspects of your SEO program are firing on all cylinders, you should soon be marching up the search engine rankings.

Next Week

Next week we'll be releasing Part Three of the series - Writing For Conversions.

Search Engine Optimization

2009-04-24T21:16:00.000-07:00

voteSearch Engine Optimization, Website Development and Search Engine Spiders
Do you have some experience with HTML and web site development, but haven't really gotten your feet wet with search engine optimization? Keep reading, because you're in luck. In this article we'll cover some of the more important aspects of SEO, focusing on the changes that you should find easiest to make to your web site. After you read this, you should know where to concentrate your efforts now and going forward. HTML Tags and SEO The (Title) tag is the most important part of the page. It is the tag that visitors see in search results, and it should contain your targeted keywords. The title tag can make your page rank or make it disappear from search results. Use this format for web page title tags:

Keywords | Website Name or Brand

It's okay to include only your keywords without the site name, especially if you aren't branding using other Internet marketing methods.

Your (h1) tag is very important. As with the web page title, you should include your targeted keywords in this tag. Your (h2) tag is next in importance. You should put keyword variations in this tag It's okay to be more natural here. Your (h3) is less important, but still very useful. Promote keyword variations or subheadings using the H3 tag. You can relax a bit with this one and mention keywords only once in a while. Now that we've talked about the title tags, let's briefly touch on links so you can see one aspect of why getting the keywords in your title tag is important. An incoming link to your pages is typically formed like so: Link: anchor text keywords It's very important to include targeted keywords in anchor text in inbound links. You should also use targeted keywords in internal links, including navigation. The search engines take strong notice of keywords in these positions. This is true for links that are "followed." But what about links that are designated "nofollow"? Many blogs and other sites make any links in comments automatically nofollow. Link No followed: anchor text keywords Here's how different search engine treat no follow. • Google's spider doesn't index the content. • Yahoo may follow the link to discover content, but gives no credit to the link itself (no pagerank flow, like Google). • MSN may or may not follow; it's unknown at this time. • Ask.com does not officially support nofollow. It follows "nofollow" links and passes pagerank.

Finally, let's take a look at the image tag, and how use keywords with it. Here's an example: Image tag: Include your keywords in the image name and image ALT tag text. The ALT tag is treated like anchor text in image links. Here are a few points to keep in mind as you put your web pages together. • Keep page size at under 200KB before images, CSS and JavaScript. • Keep the title tag under 70 characters. It will not fit in search results if it is longer than this.

• It's OKAY to ignore the meta keywords tag. • Use the meta description tag. Content from that tag shows in search results under your main link, hence it can be very helpful in increasing your click-through rate. Keep your meta description under 150 characters and put enticing calls to action that separate you from other competitors on the page. This tag has been proven to increase click through rate from search engines. • Don't put your content too deep, within many folders. Though Google doesn't have any trouble discovering it, other, smaller search engines may stumble: www.site.com/folder/folder/page.htm is better than www.site.com/folder/folder/folder/folder/folder/page.htm. Folder use is great for organizing content, but if you can cram 50 pages into one folder without having maintenance trouble, do it. Now that we've looked at some general rules, let's examine something that can raise canonical issues. Different Home Pages http://www.site.com/ http://site.com/ http://www.site.com/index.html/ http://site.com/index.html/

The above examples lead to the same page, but may be treated as different addresses by search engines. Google resolved this issue, but other search engines may still have trouble. When you do internal linking, pick the format you prefer and stick to it. For example, if you're linking to the home page, make sure all pages link to http://www.site.com/ instead of random variations like http://site.com/ and http://www.site.com/index.html/. Use a 301 redirect to point all addresses to the same variation. For example, if you selected http://www.site.com/, then 301 redirect http://site.com/, http://www.site.com/index.html/ and http://site.com/index.html/ to it. This way link power passes without losses and you fix some older URLs that might have been overlooked.

The 301 redirect is a friendly way to point search engines and visitors to the pages you want them to see. The 301 redirect passes link power from the old address to the new one. Only for Apache Server: To implement a 301 redirect you need to put an .htaccess file in the root directory where all the pages are stored. If you don't have an .htaccess file yet, you can create one using notepad. Put the following in the .htaccess file:

redirect 301 /old/old.htm http://www.newsite.com/new.html Redirects a single page or a site directory to a new location. redirect 301 / http://www.site.com/ Redirects an old site to a new domain, passing link power from the old domain. RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^site.com [NC] RewriteRule (.*) http://www.site.com/$1 [L,R=301] Redirects site.com to www.site.com

If you're redirecting an old domain to a new one, make sure to keep renewing the old domain. If the domain expires, all links pointing to the old domain will lose their value for your new domain. Renewals are very cheap, but it may cost several grand and a load of time to get back previous link juice. Search Engine Spiders You can see the spiders that have visited your pages by looking at the log file. This list will help you identify who's who in the spider world. Google Spiders

Google Search googlebot

Microsoft Spiders

MSN Search msnbot/x.xx MSNBOT/0.xx MSN Media Search msnbot-media/1.0 Windows Live Product Search msnbot-Products/1.0 Microsoft Mobile Search MSNBOT_Mobile MSMOBOT Mozilla/2.0

Yahoo Spiders

Yahoo Search SLURP Yahoo Blog Search Yahoo-Blogs/v3.9 Yahoo Multimedia Search Yahoo-MMAudVid/1.0 Yahoo Product Search YahooSeeker/1.0 YahooSeeker/1.1

Ask.com Spiders

Ask Search Teoma MP Alexa

Alexa / The Internet Archive ia_archiver ia_archiver-web.archive.org ia_archiver/1.6

Robot.txt is the file that instructs different search engine robots how to crawl your website. You can block search engine spiders from indexing your entire website or exclude specific folders and pages. Even if you want search engines to spider you entire site, including robot.txt will keep your error log clear of unsuccessful robot.txt requests. Example:

User-agent: * Disallow: Everything is allowed for all robots User-agent: [botname] Disallow: / Everything is disallowed to a specific bot User-agent: * Disallow: / Everything is disallowed to all bots User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin/ Disallow: /tmp/ Disallow: /private Following directories are not allowed to all bots User-agent: googlebot Disallow: /cgi-bin/ Disallow: /tmp/ Disallow: /private Following directories are not allowed to Googlebot User-agent: * Disallow: /Folder/some-content.html Page not allowed for all search engines User-agent: SLURP Disallow: /Folder/some-content.html Page not allowed to Yahoo bot only.

SEO Chat has an automatic robot.txt generator. Specify bots you would like to exclude or paste in a specific URL that should be kept private. Use Robot.txt generator. Learn more about Robot.txt rules. Robot Specific Meta Commands Apart from robot.txt, you can specify commands to search engine spiders on each separate page. • Noindex - page not indexed by Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. • Nofollow - all links on the page are nofollowed by Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. • Noarchive - pages is not cached by Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. • Noodp - stop search engines from pulling the description from DMOZ on Google, Yahoo and MSN. • Noydir - stops Yahoo from pulling a page description from Yahoo Directory. • Nosnippet - stops Google from generating a page description based on page snippets.

Enter the above commands to the code of each separate web page in this format:

(meta name="ROBOT NAME" content="Noindex" /)

If you want all robots to abide at once, enter

(meta name="robots" content="nofollow"/)

Search Engine Pitfalls Spiders do not like: • Session IDs • Frames • Logins • Forms

Google can fill out forms, make selections and click on some buttons in order to see results past the form. ....when we encounter a (FORM) element on a high-quality site, we might choose to do a small number of queries using the form. For text boxes, our computers automatically choose words from the site that has the form; for select menus, check boxes, and radio buttons on the form, we choose from among the values of the HTML... - Google Webmaster Central

Google has a free feature in its Webmaster Tools called "SiteMaps." XML sitemaps notify Google whenever you add a new page to your website, and Google in turn schedules Googlebot to crawl new page. Sitemaps are especially useful if: • Your site has dynamic pages. • Your site pages are tricky for Google to crawl (AJAX, Flash). • You have a load of poorly inwardly linked content that you want G-bot to eat. Sitemaps document a lot of cool data, including: • How often you change your pages (daily, hourly, yearly, etc) • The date each page was modified. Google doesn't guarantee inclusion of new pages in the index. This is usually due to low trust from Google, which is normal for new websites. Sometimes pages will only be included in the supplemental index, until a site gains more authority links. The supplemental index is sort of a junkyard of all pages that are okay, but don't have enough trust to be featured in main search results. If there aren't enough results in the main index, pages from the supplemental index come to help. As for you, the webmaster, being in the supplemental index sucks, but there's little you can do if the site is new.

Ten things that you should know about search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is not difficult if you understand the basic concepts. If you know what to do, your website will get the best possible rankings on Google and other important search engines. The following list will help you to better understand SEO or to explain SEO to your clients:

Four things you should know about link building

a. Inbound links are very important

The more websites link to your site, the easier it will be to get high rankings on Google. Google considers links to your site as votes for your site. The more votes your website has, the better your rankings will be.

If more pages link to the website of your competitor, then it is likely that your competitor will get better rankings than you on Google.

b. It is important to get the right links

In addition to the number of links to your website, Google also considers the quality of the links. Links from unrelated websites won't help your search engine rankings as much as links from related websites that deal with a similar topic as your website.

A link from a trusted website that itself has many links pointing to it will help your search engine rankings more than a link from a website with few inbound links.

c. It is important to keep on link building

Many of your competitors will continue to work on their links. If you don't keep on working on your links, your competitors will pass you in the search engine results sooner or later.

d. Google doesn't like paid links

Google considers links to your site as editorial votes for its quality. A paid link is not editorial. Google's anti-spam team has asked webmasters to report paid links. If your competitors report your paid links, Google might penalize your website.

Three things you should know about web page optimization

a. Search engines rank single pages in the search results

You should optimize a single page of your website for a single search term. Do not optimize the same page for more than one search term. It is much better if a web page is highly relevant to one search term than somewhat relevant to many search terms.

b. Google considers all pages of your website

Although only a single page of your website will be listed in Google's search results for a search term, Google will consider all pages of your website. If you optimize different pages of your website for different keywords that are all related to a certain topic, then Google will think that your website is relevant to this topic and it will be easier to get high rankings for your keywords.

c. Optimized web page content and inbound links work hand-in-hand

If your website has both optimized content and good inbound links then it will be much easier to get high rankings on Google.

A web page that has been optimized for the search term "green widgets" and that has many links from other web pages that use the term "green widgets" as the link text is much more likely to get a top ranking on Google than a page that only has the inbound links or the optimized content.

Three things you should know about the technical aspects of your website

a. Redirects can cause problems

Web page redirects have been used by spammers in the past. That is why search engines don't like it much. A 301 redirect is the only server side redirect that search engines interpret as a permanent redirect.

All other redirects (except for a meta refresh redirect in some cases) don't pass the links from the old page to the new page and they might even be interpreted as a spamming attempt.

b. Search engines don't like duplicate content

Google wants to list only one copy of a piece of content in the search results. If your web page contains the same content as another page on the web then Google will pick one version of the content for their search results.

Google considers exact copies and near copies as duplicate content. Website navigation and boilerplate are usually ignored. Google compares your page's unique content with other pages and if it has a certain similarity to another page than it is considered a duplicate.

How Great Content Brings Top Rankings

2009-04-24T21:11:00.000-07:00

High-quality website content helps your search engine optimization (SEO) program in more ways than one. For one thing, having a content-rich website will help you cover your bases in terms of keywords. The more content you have, the more key phrases your site can rank for in Google, Yahoo, etc.
But that's not the only benefit. Great content also helps you acquire inbound links to your website from other sites, and this "link popularity" has a direct and positive influence on your search engine ranking.

Attract Links for Better Rankings

If you are serious about your long-term visibility in Google, Yahoo and MSN, then you need to have a website that is worth linking to in the first place. "Link worthy" websites come in all shapes and sizes, but they share a certain characteristic in common. They all offer great content that people are more than happy to share, recommend and cite.

Aim for Critical Mass

Aside from paid placements (such as web directories), few people will link to a "bare bones" website that offers nothing unique, helpful or interesting. A webmaster's dream, then, is to have the kind of site that is so useful and popular that people link to it and recommend it without being asked to do so. I refer to this as reaching "critical mass."

At first, you have to grow your link popularity through directory submissions, article publishing, press release syndication and the like. But eventually, great websites reach a point of "critical mass" where they begin to attract links and traffic without much effort from the owner.

Website content has a lot to do with this, so follow these tips:

Before you write a new web page, come up with a mission statement. Ask yourself how that particular article will benefit your readers. For example: "I am writing this page on email marketing software to help my readers learn about the top five programs that are available."
Outline before you write. This is always good practice, but especially when it comes to web writing. It will help you stay on track when creating new web pages. In most cases, each page of content should have a title, an introduction, the main body, and a concluding statement (possibly with a call to action).
Use hyperlinks as needed. A site that makes good use of hyperlinks for cross-referencing will usually keep visitors onsite longer. WebMD is a good example of this. Their site has plenty of links to related information embedded within each article.
Rewrite as needed until your content is clear and easy to understand. People read fast online. They skim and scan. If they don't understand what you've written upon first glance, they won't give it the benefit of the doubt.
To help the "scan and skim" readers mentioned above, format your content for the web. Use short paragraphs, headers and sub-headers, and bullet points to make your web pages eye-friendly and easy to read onscreen.
Write for people, not for search engines. If you overstuff your pages with keywords, they will turn people away. Nobody wants to link to this sort of content.
Conclusion

The more "link worthy" your website is, the easier it will be to acquire inbound links. The more of these you acquire, the higher your website will rank in search engines for key phrases. The higher your site ranks, the more people will find you online ... you get the picture. It all adds up to more leads, more customers and more business. But it all begins with quality content. There is no substitute for it.

Tips on Hiring a Freelance Writer for Your Web Content

2009-04-24T21:07:00.000-07:00

If you are building a content site, one of the biggest problems you will have is filling it with good, keyword rich content. Even if you are an expert on a certain subject, it is difficult to write about that every single day, day in and day out. At some point, you will run dry, so to speak. But your need for content does not stop.
One thing you can do to solve this problem is to buy content. There are several ways to do that. You can buy what's called PLR (private label rights) content, or you can just hire someone to write your content for you. Let us talk about both of these.

PLR Content - Private Label Rights content is any content that someone else wrote or otherwise made, which you buy. You also buy the rights to put your name on the content and make it look like it is from you. In a way, this is similar to hiring a ghost writer. The writer writes the content, and you pay them for the right to claim it for your own.

There is nothing unethical about this. About 80% of the non-fiction books in your neighborhood bookstore are ghostwritten. The writer is doing nothing more than selling a service.

The difference between PLR content and something that is ghostwritten is the PLR content is sold to more than one buyer. This is kind of like an artist making copies of a print and selling the copies. PLR articles are generally sold to a limited number of buyers, 25, 50, or 100. Something like that.

Buying PLR content is about the cheapest way for you to get content that you do not have to write. You can buy 10, 500 word articles on most any topic for $4 to $10. Once you purchase the content, you can re-write it, use it as it, cut it up and use it, use it with other content. You can give it away or you can sell it.

Hiring a Freelancer - At the other end of the cost spectrum is hiring a freelance writer to write your blog posts or articles for you. You can do the same things with this content that you can do with PLR content. The only real difference is your content written by a freelancer is unique. It is not sold to other people.

Of course, there is a cost difference. At the low end, freelance content should cost you $4 or $5 for 400 to 500 words. At the high end, this could cost upwards of $25. More experienced writers usually charge more. Also, writers from third world countries can charge less.

Either way you go, at some point you are probably going to have to buy some sort of content in the future. If you're going to hire a freelancer, then make sure you get an article or two from them so you can see if they can write. Then order your content in small amounts until you've established a relationship with the writer.

Outsourcing your content is a great way to save money, and get quality content. Try it! You are probably going to be pleasantly surprised.

White Hat or Black Hat SEO Techniques. What's the difference?

2009-04-24T21:05:00.000-07:00

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to a set of techniques that are performed on a website with the intention of increasing its search engine rankings. SEO can be performed during the programming stages, while planning and producing content, and by exchanging links or by building one-way links.

Now SEO is big business because if performed well it has the potential to catapult a website to the top of the search engine rankings. Getting on top of search engine rankings is like getting free front-page exposure in an oracle that caters to a billion Dollar market. Naturally, websites are keen to make it to the top and this has generated a massive demand for SEO firms.

Well, there are two types of SEO techniques - Ethical, also known as White Hat SEO and Unethical, also called Black Hat SEO. The lure of getting prime exposure has brought to the surface many firms and individuals who try to adopt unscrupulous SEO techniques to fool the search engines into giving a website top exposure. Of course, there are those too who work by the book - this is how both these techniques work:

WHITE HAT SEO TECHNIQUES

White hat SEO techniques are solid, credible, quality techniques that ensure that a website gets to the top and stays there. Here are some of the popular ones:

1. Great Content: For SEO purposes content is not just king - it is the emperor. If you upload quality content that is well written, informative and entertaining, then search engines will fall in love with your website. Of course, you must ensure that keywords relevant to your website's theme are built into your content. Search engine algorithms are always on the lookout for websites that provide quality content that is of use to their surfers - so, well, content rules.

2. Programming techniques: SEO while programming a website involves placing search-engine-friendly text in the meta tags, building a clear and concise website structure that can bring up the searched-for content in a jiffy, using structural mark-ups, and building in tags in the title, subtitles and the footers of every content page.

3. Solid keyword research and use: Before developing content, you must figure out the most popular keywords relevant for your website's theme. To do this you will have to conduct a thorough research using keyword tools provided by major search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Some SEO firms also use third-party software such as WordTracker for keyword analysis. Once SEO firms get their finger on the most expensive and effective keywords, they skillfully build them into the content.

4. Link building: SEO firms trade links with other reputed websites. When a website's links spread, its search engine rankings automatically go up. Nowadays, may website owners get articles written and submit them to reprint directories, where other websites who need content can pick them up. Of course, the trick in article submission lies in including a resource box at the end of the article that points back to your website.

BLACK HAT SEO TECHNIQUES

Unscrupulous SEO firms use black hat SEO techniques to fool the search engines. These techniques are shortcuts that can take you here and there, but ultimately lead to a dead end. Here are some of the common black hat SEO techniques:

1. Veiled content: The website is stuffed with popular keywords that form part of the background color scheme, and hence are not visible to a surfer. The idea is to trick the search engine into picking up the hidden content.

2. Keyword-spammed content: There are SEO firms who do not get quality content written - instead, they plug in all blah-blah content that is spammed with keywords. The idea is the same - to trick the search engines.

3. Redirecting: Many unscrupulous SEO firms own a bunch of websites that have already been indexed by search engines. When you approach them for SEO, they may plant a code on their existing websites redirecting their links back to your website.

4. Cloaking: Using this technique, SEO firms direct specified content towards search engine spiders but do not hoist it on the website, because it is useless.

5. Tag spam: Meta-tags and other tags of a website, which are used by search engine spiders to quick-reference or index a website are spammed with keywords using this technique.

6. Links from link farms: Link farms represent a humungous amount of useless, content-less websites. Unscrupulous SEO firms use these link farms for building backlinks.

Black Hat SEO can finish a website

Remember that if you use black hat SEO tricks on your website, you might as well write it off. That is because search engine algorithms are getting smarter by the day and now can sniff out useless content, hidden text, redirections and other foul SEO methods. Once search engines figure out that a website is up to mischief then they blacklist it - and once blacklisted, a website is suspended from the search engine's index and is not picked up until and unless all the black hat SEO is removed. Plus, when a website's visitors come to know that it is using black hat techniques they will get put off and stay away from it.

To sum up, black hat SEO techniques can destroy a website or business opportunity, while white hat SEO techniques can make it flourish in the long run. Go ahead, make your choice!

8 Useful SEO Techniques

2009-04-24T20:55:00.000-07:00

Every webmaster should have some basic understanding of these simple SEO techniques if they want to achieve Top Rankings for their site. The more you know about these Search Engine Optimization techniques; the better your web pages will fare in the different search engines, especially Google.

Optimizing your pages for the search engines should be your main priority because conquering and dominating your chosen keywords is often cited as one of the major determining factors in the success of your online site or business. You must have a rudimentary grasp of how SEO can work for you and your site.

These simple SEO Tips will help you understand the basics and help you reach your online goals.

1. Title Tag
The Title Tag is located at the top of your html page and it tells the search engines what your page is about. When you open your page in a browser these are the words at the very top of the screen. Despite its simplicity, the title tag is crucial to 'on-page optimization'; it should include your main keywords and it should be 63 characters or less if you want your title to appear in full on Google.
Many SEO experts create web pages in a three-prong approach. They place the title in:
- the title tag - on the webpage itself - and in the URL for that page
Sometimes they will just pick the main keywords from the title and place them in the anchor url instead. For example: www.yourwebsite.com/keywords.html

2. Meta Description Tag
The Meta Tag contains the description for your web page. Your description will show up in all the search engines so you have to be careful to write precisely and objectively. It should be about 140 characters or around 20 words. Make sure to include your keywords but don't spam - don't repeat your keywords more than twice - using variations is helpful.

Keep in mind, successful webmasters make their descriptions stand out from the crowd and entice the surfer to click their link. It is also the first contact with your potential visitor or prospect so make a good first impression.

3. Anchor Tag or URL
The anchor tag is used to form links within websites or from site to site. This tag should have your title or the main keywords from your page title to be the most effective.
Anchor text is also important to know - these are the underlined, clickable text or words in a link.
anchor text
If you want to check Google for all web pages containing your keywords in the anchor tags.
Just type into Google Search: allinanchor:yourkeywords

4. Finding Backlinks
One of the keys to higher rankings is building quality links from relevant, related quality sites. The search engines, especially Google, count each link as a "vote" for your site or content. Many experts suggest you include your main keywords in the anchor text of these inbound links in order to rank high.
If you want to find the number of backlinks your site has.
Just type into Google Search: link:yourURL
and it will give you the number of backlinks you have.
Google doesn't give you all your existing backlinks, so you can try Yahoo! to find a more exact number.
Just open Yahoo! and type in: linkdomain:yourURL

5. Checking Indexed Pages

If is very important for you to know what content the search engines have indexed from your site. You can also check to see how your links are displayed and to see if any titles or descriptions are missing from your pages.

You can see how many of your pages are indexed in Google by using the site command.
Just type into Google Search: site:yourURL
Another way to look at your pages in Google is to type in "http://yoursite" and "www.yoursite" with the quotation marks to see the exact number of listings for each.

6. Checking Google Cache
You can also check to see the Google Cache of your site by using the cache command. You will also discover when it was last retrieved.
Just type into Google Search: cache:yourURL

7. Finding Associated Keywords
Keywords are the heart of the Internet, you must dominate the search engines for your chosen keywords if you are to succeed online. So make sure you have your main keywords in the Meta Keyword Tag on your page. Many experts suggest you place your page's main keywords in the first and last 25 words on that page.
You must also be able to find and use variations of your keywords to completely conquer your targeted niche. To find what other keywords Google has associated with your main keywords, just use the tilde ~ command to find associated phrases in Google.
Just type into Google search: ~keywords
Variations will be highlighted in bold print.

8. Finding Titled Keywords
If you want to find competing sites that have your keywords in the title just use the allintitle command.

Just type into Google search: allintitle:yourkeywords

In summary, if used consistently, these basic SEO techniques should help improve your rankings and keep you in the picture with regards to your standings in the search engines. Your site's stats or raw traffic logs will also confirm the rise or fall of your keyword rankings. You must have complete knowledge of both your site and your keywords in the search engines, especially Google. Since Google will deliver most of your quality traffic, you must optimize for it and be aware of what is happening to your site and keywords within Google. This is yet another example where knowledge equals success.

Starting from Scratch and Competitive Advantage

2008-03-15T21:47:00.000-07:00

Naive Excitement
When you are new to the field of SEO there is a certain excitement in starting a site from scratch and growing it out into a flourishing enterprise. You ask someone to link to you and when they do you get excited. When you get cited without asking for it you get excited. And when the rankings start to show up you get excited. At some point you may even develop an irrational emotional attachment to some of your websites. I know I have.

Fair is Fair
Search engines teach you that there are equitable rules to follow. The rules keep shifting in accordance with the search engine's business models, but somehow they are always fair. You see other people doing things that are "spammy," but refuse to. When you submit your site to 100 directories, donate money for links, attend every conference that will link at you, or when you syndicate your content to dozens of websites it is not spam. Your content is quality, you follow the rules, and one day you will be rewarded for it. One day...

Who Starts From Scratch?
But do you have to start from scratch to be doing SEO?

In Cosmos Carl Sagan said that "to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." I tend to think the same way about SEO.

Some people who jumped on the web and were immediately successful started when the marketplace was much less competitive.

Some companies like Amazon.com lost millions or billions of dollars building their brands.

Others carried offline success and relationships online.

Some people have jobs or schools that offer them the opportunity to publish content on a trusted domain.

Some companies can do whatever they want because they have a big brand and/or a large ad budget.

Some people who are better salesmen than you may borrow your ideas, re-package them, and then talk trash about how ignorant you are.

And yet another group of people have a large following because they are highly biased and/or lie (ie: Fox News).
Are any of these ideas unfair? Or is the concept of fair nothing more than bogus self-posturing by profit hungry corporations?

Leverage Your Assets
Not every strategy works for every person, but if you are starting from scratch thinking that you are following the rules, you are missing out on some fundamental truths of the marketplace. If you are not leveraging and building upon your knowledge, passions, curiosity, and social relationships every day you are losing money (likely to an inferior and/or less honest competitor).

Take the Red Pill
Some of the most effective SEOs buy and sell links, buy and sell websites, buy and sell companies, rent personalities to promote their sites, openly engage is link schemes, use successful positions to promote other similar positions, expand out to other high profit market positions, and do whatever they see fit to profit. It is not our job to create the algorithms, we just satisfy the criteria to rank.

Take the Blue Pill
Others start every project from scratch, hoping that one day the market will be fair and shine a light on them. One day...

Anyone can be an SEO Expert

2008-03-15T21:45:00.000-07:00

There are a few things that you can do that rarely change when it comes to SEO. If you consistently do these things you will notice a good rise in your SE rankings. The two most important things you can do are having a title tag and description tag on each individual page and to make them unique for each page. This means you should not use the same title and description for every page on your site.

The Meta keyword tags used to be important but any SEO expert will now tell you that they do not matter. It is not a bad idea to go ahead and include the keyword Meta tag into your code though. Just do not over do it, include your main keyword and a few other good relevant keywords.

Another thing you can do that will help your site out and aid in avoiding the outsource of an SEO expert is to use bold and underline tags in the main body of each page. The idea behind this is that you are showing the SE spiders that these words are more important and they should hold more weight than other words. Do not overdo it but use a couple bold tags and an underline tag once or twice in each page for your main keywords.

Develop a good linking strategy and go by it. We all know that obtaining quality links to your site is important but many people do not take enough action. Find quality relevant websites and ask for a link exchange. Create a schedule that you can stick with and do not steer away from it. Try to mix your linking techniques with reciprocal, triangular and one way. It is always better to have a mixture of them all than a lot of one in particular.

If you want to invest a lot of hard earned money in a SEO expert go ahead but think about a few things before you do. If this person is such a guru why are they not making millions of dollars with their personal websites? If all of the little things that these experts know is so important then why are there so many successful websites out there built by those of us just doing the basic things stated above?

Stars On Yahoo Matter In Search

2008-03-15T21:44:00.000-07:00

The search results in Yahoo where small businesses may appear in Yahoo Shortcuts will be influenced by star ratings, but not by review text.
A little confusion over the impact of ratings and reviews stirred up SEM professionals and got Yahoo's attention as well. Matt McGee of Small Business SEM talked about the Yahoo Shortcut, where three business listings appear alongside a map and appear in the regular Yahoo search results.

McGee cited a Yahoo spokesperson as saying reviews and ratings have no impact on which businesses appear in the Yahoo Shortcut. When that got picked up by Greg Sterling and generated more discussion, Yahoo contacted Sterling to clarify the situation:

1. Ratings (stars) always matter and factor into the presentation of ranked local results in Shortcuts/Direct Display and Yahoo! Local.

2. Most of the time the local results presented in search results and in Yahoo! Local will be identical (top three) but not 100% of the time.

3. Reviews/review text don’t factor as a weighted variable in the algorithm for the presentation of local results via Shortcuts but may, on occasion, play a part in the ordering of results on Yahoo! Local.

For small businesses, the lesson here is customer satisfaction. One probably won't know if a given person will be someone who actively rates businesses on Yahoo or elsewhere. Give everyone a good customer experience, or at least try as hard as possible, and the ratings they yield should reflect the service they received

Your Business Blogging Could Be Better

2008-03-15T21:42:00.000-07:00

One blogger's suggestions on writing could help

As you reach out to your customers through a blog, that relationship could be much better if you work on some other skills too.
A humble business can look like much more to the Internet visitor. An authoritative voice on even the most mundane of enterprises helps build one's online reputation.

As many people likely discover, writing is harder than it seems. The perception of magically tapping keys and having thoughts and concepts appear fully-formed on a flat-screen monitor shatters when the revelation happens.

New media marketing blogger Chris Garrett has some tips for the bloggingly challenged. Tops on the list of 41 suggestions about blogging - reading:

The more you read the better writer you will be. Being a blog reader helps you understand the mind of the blog reader. What they want, how they like information to be presented, what turns you off. Read good blogs and note your thoughts.

His essential idea calls for communicating clearly, on topic, and providing the visitor some value for the time he or she spent reading the blog post. As you build your reputation for writing well and authoritatively, readers will make positive associations between you, your knowledge, and your business.

Why You Might Need It

2008-03-15T21:41:00.000-07:00

You open your internet browser and enter: SEO into the search box. In a nano-second you are provided with thousands of results for SEO. SEO tools, SEO books, SEO software programs, SEO consulting firms, SEO forums, SEO website developers, and more. Your head begins spinning with so many choices before you. Especially considering that the success of your business is largely dependant upon choosing the correct SEO procedures for your website. It can be hard to make heads or tails from it all.

At first glance SEO and all of its strategies might seem to be nothing more than just common sense, and how hard could that be? But in actuality, many of the strategies involved in search engine optimization can be difficult to implement in order to benefit your website and your bottom line. It is for this reason that you might need help with the SEO of your website.

It is so easy for those who are inexperienced with search engine optimization to make a mistake that costs their website the high-ranking it needs to generate traffic crucial to high sales, or worse, get their website expelled from search engines. There are those out there on the internet all too eager to lead an unwitting newcomer to the world of internet marketing astray. They happily skip off with your money, while you scratch your head in disbelief. Save yourself from having this happen to you by getting the SEO help you need to optimize your website.

Someone with comprehensive knowledge about how search engines work and what exactly a website needs to meet the requirements for listing and positioning among search engines can ensure your website is meeting those requirements. These experts also know what to do to beef up a website with straight-forward SEO, for websites that would otherwise fall short of the requirements of the search engines.

SEO experts are your #1 resource for information about the newest SEO strategies, services, and software programs coming in to use in the marketing industry. The knowledge you can glean from these experts can save you countless hours of searching for the answers you need about search engine optimization and from wasted dollars on materials that are not necessary.

Most webmasters are busy enough making sure the warehouse is properly stocked with product and fulfilling orders, without the added burden of finding the time to properly monitor all of the things that are involved in the SEO of a website. The last thing you want as a webmaster is to get buried under the avalanche of reports that are produced from using various SEO strategies so that you're unable to use that information to better your bottom line (sales.) Having someone help keep you on-track by organizing, and monitoring the results reported, pays a big dividend in the headaches and missed opportunities to increase sales and profit that won't happen because you have competent help on your side.

The question you should be asking yourself at this moment isn't why you might need SEO help, but when are you going to get the SEO help you and your business deserve? You can find reputable SEO consultants and firms to help you with optimizing your web site online. Ask them to give you a complete proposal of how they can help you with the SEO of your website. Make sure they can show you success stories from other clients and go with the ones who have had the best results with search engine optimization.

What is the Budget for a Social Media Campaign?

2008-03-15T21:39:00.000-07:00

Today I will attempt to answer my last and perhaps hardest question of the Marketer’s Foray into Social Media series, which was “What is the budget?”(for a social media campaign).

For this, I will pull in points from Jim’s previous post “How much will a Social Media Campaign Cost“, and aim this direction more on how to develop a social media budget according to your individual company.

To start with, we have found as a social media agency that the amount marketers allocate to social media is very much dictated by a company’s confidence in social media marketing, which likely corresponds to the company’s readiness for change. Companies that aren’t far along this continuum of change aren’t likely to invest much in social media, no matter how much they spend on traditional advertising. In fact a study by Coremetrics on social media budgets revealed the following:

“Seventy-eight percent of marketing professionals polled in Coremetrics’ annual “Face of the New Marketer” survey saw that social media marketing was a way of getting an edge on their competitors. However, just 7.7 percent of their total online marketing spend was allocated to it compared to 33 percent to online advertising and 28 percent on online promotion design and implementation.”

So taking this into account, a social media campaign budget is likely to be formed out of funds that are already allocated to the digital marketing budget, as many people in marketing classify social media synonymous with “interactive marketing”. However, according to Forrester’s US Interactive Marketing Forecast of 2007 to 2012 - this pool of resources is currently only 8% of an advertiser’s current advertising spend (despite the research of the total 29% of media time consumers are spending online).

The other approach is to develop a social media budget from additional funds in the overall marketing budget - usually an amount that is set aside to “test this social media stuff out”. Either way, very rarely does a company rally for additional funds for a social media campaign; so it is likely for a company to pull a chunk of traditional budget out to dabble in the space of social media for a determined period of time.

And so as a social media agency from here we are either a) given a baseline amount and then asked what we can do with it or b) asked our recommendations and then to propose a budget amount from there. Regardless of either, the following are typical questions that we ask to narrow this down a bit (some elaborated from Jim’s previous post).

1) What are your overall objectives and campaign timeframe? If the whole objective is to achieve a drastic spike in sales or promote a limited time offer, we believe more of your budget should be allocated to advertising. Social media is a slower burn, and you will just be disappointed.

2) How much is your overall marketing budget? To put things into perspective. the average cost of TV production for a 30 second spot is around $303,000 just to make it: not to mention media costs to run it. With this in mind, you may want to produce one less spot for a campaign, and re-allocate these funds towards a very decent social media campaign with a longer life-span.

3) What tactics are you using already and how are they working? How your current efforts are working should determine how much you can reallocate to social media. Is your direct mail initiative working? What is your ROI on your current advertising model? What is the result of your interactive budget? Take a hard look at what results you are getting with traditional methods.

4) What are your internal resources? To put it simply- your internal resources will determine your social media budget amount. If you have appropriate staff that can devote time to social media, you may find that you only need the set-up and development of a social media strategy or tools to get the campaign going. If you don’t, a social media budget will likely be higher to include the actual execution.

Again, as we say over and over: a social media budget is developed on a per company basis. Beware of any agency that has set-pricing, as it likely indicates that they will also have canned social media efforts that don’t take into account objectives and target audience.

Feel free to share with us your experiences developing a social media budget, as we can all benefit from this discussion.

What Makes Your Business Worth Buying From?

2008-03-15T21:38:00.000-07:00

There are two important questions that every business needs to be able to answer:

What’s in it for me?

and

Why should I buy from you?

The first questions, when answered correctly, helps sell your product or service, but it doesn’t necessarily close the deal. In order to get the deal sealed and money in hand you have to be able to answer the second question sufficiently.

This is where a lot of businesses go wrong. They focus on one of these two questions but not both. Let’s break these down a bit:

What’s in it for me?

To sell your product or service you have to explain to the user why they need your product or service in the first place. But it isn’t as simple as telling them they need a new car battery to replace the old car battery. They need a battery that is reliable enough or powerful enough that they can be confident that it’ll work whenever and wherever they need it. Your audience might already know that they need a newly landscaped yard, so don’t tell them that. Instead, tell them they want a yard that will provide them a luxurious outdoor getaway that is functional for quiet summer evenings under the stars, as well as a place where the kids can play away in complete safety and security.

But as I already said, this question doesn’t close the deal. It merely provides your audience with the key selling points, convincing them that you have what they want. But they also know that there may be other people out there that also have what they want. This is why the second question is so critical.

Why should I buy from you?

Once your audience is convinced to buy the product or service that you offer, you have to make the case that you’re the one they want to buy it from. The simple fact that you have the product or service to sell is not enough.

Ask yourself, what makes you different from the dozens or possibly even hundreds of others out there doing the same thing? Can you make the case for yourself in a way that is appealing? Do you just sell the same car batteries as everyone else or do you test regularly to make sure you sell only the most reliable batteries? And what makes your testing process better than any one else’s?

I’ve said in a previous article that great businesses are not necessarily those that do something unique, it’s those that do something in a unique way. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling car batteries, landscaping services, or diaper products. Whatever it is you do, find a unique approach. Provide something extra that nobody else is doing. Look for an unmet need in your industry that you can capitalize on.

Selling your products is one thing, but you’ve also got to be able to sell yourself. The products will sell, it’s just a matter of where and by who. You want to be the where and who.

What makes you unique?

So what is it that makes you unique? If you don’t know, think about it, do a little research and find out. If you do know, I’d love to hear about it? Post a comment telling me what you do and why you’re unique.

The Effects of Social Media on Business

2008-03-15T21:36:00.000-07:00

Pierre Far, in a guest post on Techipedia asks the question, Is Social Media the Final Frontier of Marketing? Given the popularity of such activities as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, it’s clearly a question that many marketers must be asking.

As confirmation of the topicality of the question, Business Week had a long nine page article suggesting that Social Media Will Change Your Business. A few quotes will show how Business Week is seeing all this.

Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they are simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they are going to shake up just about every business. … Given the changes barrelling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They are a prerequisite. And yes, that goes for us, too.

Still, blogs could end up providing the perfect response to mass media’s core concern: the splintering of its audience. Advertisers desperate to reach us need to tap niches (because we get together only once a year to watch the Super Bowl). By piggybacking on blogs, they can start working that vast blogocaf?, table by table. Smart ones will get feedback, links to individuals-and their friends. That’s every marketer’s dream.

In a world chock-full of citizen publishers, we mainstream types control an ever-smaller chunk of human knowledge. Some of us will work to draw in more of what the bloggers know, vetting it, editing it, and packaging it into our closed productions. But here’s betting that we also forge ahead in the open world. The measure of success in that world is not a finished product. The winners will be those who host the very best conversations.

Overall Business Week seems to suggest that the big mainstream companies will still be the ones in control. Perhaps they’re missing the real point about social media. Pierre Far sees it in a different light.

The point is that consumers now have a more potent aggregate power: someone with a problem can now reach others with the same problem faster, build a community around this shared problem easily, and mobilize lots of people behind the common cause more efficiently. That’s what’s new: a significant leap in efficiency. This gives consumers a loud voice that companies have to listen to.

This message has been around for some time. It started with the Clue Train Manifesto in 1999. As the authors said then, As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies. If Business Week does not fully understand even now, how long will it take for the mainstream companies to realize that others are now in charge?

Five Tactics for Popular Social Media Content

2008-03-15T21:34:00.000-07:00

here are a lot of ways to get the attention of various social networks, none of which involve gaming the system. You may get a little temporary attention from some of the social networks if you try to game the system. But that is missing the point of social networking which is to spread interesting content and images of cats. Some of the ways you can create compelling content for the digestion of social networks are going to be straight forward. It is important to note these methods so if you can spin an article in a certain direction— you are going to get more attention from social networks which will significantly boost the readership of the article.

#1 Write a list (of lists?)
It is well known that writing a list is going to be easy for people to scan through quickly and get the jest of the article without reading too much. Just about any relevant list is going to get some major attention if written well on any social network. You don’t want to just copy a list, you have to create creative content just the same. Like writing about digg-like social networks for designers.

#2 Write a “How to…” article
I have seen endless amounts of articles teaching someone how to do something become very popular on every social network from delicious to digg to reddit. For the best results you want to include “How to” or “Guide to” in the article. Make sure that you are actually teaching something that would interest someone on a social network. Most people on social networks aren’t going to be interested in “How to use Microsoft Word” or some other trivial and simple task.

#3 Write about a social network
If you want to do really well you can talk about a specific social network and know that you are instantly going to get the attention of that social network. If you write about several social networks you are upping the chances of people being interested in your topic. You can get a lot of traffic by criticizing social networks. A great example is watching digg and the endless amounts of articles that go popular criticizing the comment system, design or any changes made to the system. It is always important that you have something good to say just like with any article; regurgitators need not apply.

#4 Write about something in the news
When you write about something that is popular in the news (see: Google Trends) you are nearly guaranteed to get some attention from the social networks. I monitor Google Trends constantly to see what people are talking about throughout the day. This can help you to create some compelling content that will interest people that may be outside of your niche. You don’t even necessarily have to write about the topic that is popular, even referencing it can interest people to no end.

#5 Take an opposing view
Monitor the popular stories on Digg or your favorite social network and if you oppose the topic in some way, write about it. I’m not saying oppose something just because, but find something that you don’t see the same view as on a social network and write your opinion on the subject. Chances are that both sides of the fence are going to be interested in your article, especially the latter side of the people.

More methods to create quality content for social networks?
There are a lot of other ways to make interesting content for social networks but using one of these methods will almost guarantee you to get good traffic from social networks (as long as you are writing quality stuff). Combining some of these together can increase your chances of generating some serious interest in your article and blog (or website).

What other ways have you seen work in creating quality content for social networks?

8 Useful SEO Techniques Every Webmaster Should Know

2008-03-15T21:27:00.000-07:00

Every webmaster should have some basic understanding of these simple SEO techniques if they want to achieve Top Rankings for their site. The more you know about these Search Engine Optimization techniques; the better your web pages will fare in the different search engines, especially Google.

Optimizing your pages for the search engines should be your main priority because conquering and dominating your chosen keywords is often cited as one of the major determining factors in the success of your online site or business. You must have a rudimentary grasp of how SEO can work for you and your site.

These simple SEO Tips will help you understand the basics and help you reach your online goals.

1. Title Tag

The Title Tag is located at the top of your html page and it tells the search engines what your page is about. When you open your page in a browser these are the words at the very top of the screen. Despite its simplicity, the title tag is crucial to 'on-page optimization'; it should include your main keywords and it should be 63 characters or less if you want your title to appear in full on Google.

Many SEO experts create web pages in a three-prong approach. They place the title in:

- the title tag - on the webpage itself - and in the URL for that page

Sometimes they will just pick the main keywords from the title and place them in the anchor url instead. For example: www.yourwebsite.com/keywords.html

2. Meta Description Tag

The Meta Tag contains the description for your web page. Your description will show up in all the search engines so you have to be careful to write precisely and objectively. It should be about 140 characters or around 20 words. Make sure to include your keywords but don't spam - don't repeat your keywords more than twice - using variations is helpful.

Keep in mind, successful webmasters make their descriptions stand out from the crowd and entice the surfer to click their link. It is also the first contact with your potential visitor or prospect so make a good first impression.

3. Anchor Tag or URL

The anchor tag is used to form links within websites or from site to site. This tag should have your title or the main keywords from your page title to be the most effective.

Anchor text is also important to know - these are the underlined, clickable text or words in a link.
anchor text

If you want to check Google for all web pages containing your keywords in the anchor tags.

Just type into Google Search: allinanchor:yourkeywords

4. Finding Backlinks

One of the keys to higher rankings is building quality links from relevant, related quality sites. The search engines, especially Google, count each link as a "vote" for your site or content. Many experts suggest you include your main keywords in the anchor text of these inbound links in order to rank high.

If you want to find the number of backlinks your site has.

Just type into Google Search: link:yourURL

and it will give you the number of backlinks you have.

Google doesn't give you all your existing backlinks, so you can try Yahoo! to find a more exact number.

Just open Yahoo! and type in: linkdomain:yourURL

5. Checking Indexed Pages

If is very important for you to know what content the search engines have indexed from your site. You can also check to see how your links are displayed and to see if any titles or descriptions are missing from your pages.

You can see how many of your pages are indexed in Google by using the site command.

Just type into Google Search: site:yourURL

Another way to look at your pages in Google is to type in "http://yoursite" and "www.yoursite" with the quotation marks to see the exact number of listings for each.

6. Checking Google Cache

You can also check to see the Google Cache of your site by using the cache command. You will also discover when it was last retrieved.

Just type into Google Search: cache:yourURL

7. Finding Associated Keywords

Keywords are the heart of the Internet, you must dominate the search engines for your chosen keywords if you are to succeed online. So make sure you have your main keywords in the Meta Keyword Tag on your page. Many experts suggest you place your page's main keywords in the first and last 25 words on that page.

You must also be able to find and use variations of your keywords to completely conquer your targeted niche. To find what other keywords Google has associated with your main keywords, just use the tilde ~ command to find associated phrases in Google.

Just type into Google search: ~keywords

Variations will be highlighted in bold print.

8. Finding Titled Keywords

If you want to find competing sites that have your keywords in the title just use the allintitle command.

Just type into Google search: allintitle:yourkeywords

In summary, if used consistently, these basic SEO techniques should help improve your rankings and keep you in the picture with regards to your standings in the search engines. Your site's stats or raw traffic logs will also confirm the rise or fall of your keyword rankings. You must have complete knowledge of both your site and your keywords in the search engines, especially Google. Since Google will deliver most of your quality traffic, you must optimize for it and be aware of what is happening to your site and keywords within Google. This is yet another example where knowledge equals success.

Ways to improve traffic

2008-03-03T06:08:00.000-08:00

Ways to improve traffic

Importance of incorporation of link exchange, link building, pagerank, backlinks, seo are increasing. This is because webmaster who create, develop and maintain websites, want to increase traffic for their sites. To improve website visitors; one has to rely on these variables.

If you want to have huge amounts of traffic to your site, than you need to implement some strategies. If I am not wrong than, some of you sure tried to reach the top in the search engine. But in many cases, you might not get the results as you hope for; the reason being; the existence of powerful competitors in the market.

To accomplish your goal, the first thing that you should know is, only being the top in ranking is not enough. It is also necessary to receive plenty of traffic to your site, thus you definitely need to convert these visitors to satisfied customers. For this you must have a web site with convincing, fresh and useful content, spontaneous navigation, a simple ordering system, and a reason to return. It is not easy to be the best in the competition. If rephrase it, than getting huge amount of traffic is only half the equation to success on the Web, the key is to sell them. This means making sure you have a professional and easy-to-use web site with products, services, or information that visitors need.

To start with, there should be joint linking, also called link exchange, is where you obtain a link from another websites in exchange for you linking to that website. To make your site publicly prominent, it is essential to have as much incoming links as possible. One of the core facts of having this is, if your site has no incoming links from other websites, your site will not be incorporated in the Google index.

If you want to increase traffic, consider the SEO factor as well. SEO factors influences the rank of the particular websites that are associated with elements on your website, such as title tags, content, code and navigation links. Moreover, it also influences the rank that is associated with elements on other websites, primarily links that point to your website.

To operate a popular website, you need to have a simple “Link Directory” page on your site. You should have such a page regardless in order to list any sites that offer a complementary product or service. This will surely improve website visitors. Additionally, use some SEO editing tools to determine how many backlinks the site actually has. This is moreover an important indicator for Google. For your information, Google ranks after considering the number of backlinks the website has.

Creating a site is not kids work. But if effective tactics are implemented in a proper manner; one will sure receive a huge amount of traffic at the website. If you want your site to do well, if you want to improve traffic at your site, you have to act aggressively; you need to act fast. By incorporating pagerank, backlinks, link exchange, SEO; you will become successful.

How To Stay Out Of Google's Supplemental Index

2008-03-03T06:07:00.000-08:00

Google's Supplemental Index - What You Need To Know

If you run an online website or business you have probably already heard about Google's Supplemental Index. You may have even heard it being referred to as Google's Gulag, Google's Digital Dungeon, or the moniker that seems to have stuck: Google Hell.

Hate it or love it, webmasters are passionate about the big G. There's no argument on that point for one good reason: Google simply delivers the most search engine traffic on the web. For any webmaster with at least a few white SEO connected brain cells Google can supply 60% or more of their traffic.

Therefore, suddenly getting the majority of your pages thrown into Google's Supplemental Index can result in a correlating drop in business. A few examples of this were reported in a recent Forbes article by Andy Greenberg entitled "Condemned To Google Hell".

It recounts how two online jewelry businesses lost traffic and sales by having their pages falling into Google's Supplemental Index. They speculated on what had caused this to happen: duplicate content? buying links?

Matt Cutts, Google's main spokesperson (some say pacifier) to worried webmasters everywhere, responded in his own blog:

"Having urls in the supplemental results doesn't mean that you have some sort of penalty at all; the main determinant of whether a url is in our main web index or in the supplemental index is PageRank."

However, regardless of what Google maintains, being in the supplemental results is not a good thing for any webmaster or business. Just the fact it's called a supplemental index means it's not as important as the main index. This index is seen as duplicate pages, less important or less trusted by Google, thus the lower PR.

All semantics aside, webmasters should try to keep their important web pages out of this supplemental index. Why would anyone be satisfied with having their pages or website buried in dusty boxes in the backroom when they want them displayed on the Front Store Window, preferably in the #1 spot?

Lately, despite webmasters' wishes, Google seems to be placing more emphasis on the Supplemental Index and putting more pages there. One can only guess, but it may have to do with improving their SERPs - the more relevant Google's search results become, the higher quality their flagship product will achieve. Or it may just be an easier way of spidering and managing all those countless pages that exist on the web.

Regardless, you do not want your pages in this Supplemental Index unless they are really unimportant pages and these can have the 'no follow' attributes in the robots txt file. However, you still need to check this supplemental index for your own pages.

Simple Way To Check Google's Supplemental Index

You can go to Google search and type in:

site:www.yoursite.com *** -sjpked

replacing 'yoursite' with your domain/site to see what pages are indexed in Google's Supplemental Index.

If you see any important pages there you should check your whole linking structure of your site. Are these pages linked properly? Are they orphaned? Are they well positioned in your internal site architecture? If there are obvious interior linking problems with these pages, fix them.

It is also a good idea to see what percentage of your pages are in this index.

How To Calculate Your Supplemental Index Ratio

You can get your percentage of Supplemental results by dividing the number of pages in the supplemental index by the total number of pages in the main index.

site:www.yoursite.com *** -sjpked

_______________________________

site:www.yoursite.com

This will give you a good indication of the overall health of your site. If you have too high a ratio or too many pages in the supplemental index you should fix your site's linking structure and remove duplicate pages. Make sure robots can crawl all of your pages or at least the ones you want them to crawl.

If you do find your site or too many of your pages in Google's Digital Attic, simply try to increase the PageRank of those pages. This is the main remedy supplied by Matt Cutts:

"The approach I'd recommend in that case is to use solid white-hat SEO to get high-quality links (e.g. editorially given by other sites on the basis of merit)."

In other words, raise your PageRank to get those pages out of the supplemental index. This has always been the basic key to getting traffic from Google. Quality content plus quality links equals quality traffic from Google.

Likewise: QC + QL = No Supplemental Index

It is always a good practice to keep on the good side of Google. No need to be paranoid, but you don't want to do anything to bring unwanted attention to your site, especially the kind of attention that get your pages thrown into Google Supplemental Index in the first place. Besides, you never know how long it will take to get your pages back out and into the main index where they truly belong. Rumor has it, that place takes forever to freeze over!

Google Adwords And Keyword Research - the importance of keyword research and how to do it

2008-03-03T06:05:00.000-08:00

Where is my website on Google? Probably overwhelmed by the waves

2008-03-03T06:03:00.000-08:00

Meanwhile, for completeness of information, here below some links related to previous articles in reverse chronological order:
- July 2007, Google, penalized or floating website?
- March 2007, Google: from dancer to surfer

But when started these fluctuations?

The first events were recorded at the end of February 2007 and completed by the 20th March, 2007. The second wave began in the last days of June 2007 and seems not to have arrested yet.
Let see point by point what connect websites victim of this particular swinging condition in search results of the Californian search engine.

How to understand if a website is in floating step?

1) Unfortunately, the easiest way, is the most "painful", in fact just look at the chart path from the site visits by our software collection of statistics web. In fact, this chart will be easy to focus all sine waves that the site has passed. For example, if we take this example:

In fact, here we can see the behaviour of visitors (then the Google access "unfortunately") over the past 5 months, with a down of the site initially for 1 day, lifts the next day, down to about 3 months, the up for 15 days and the phase fluctuation continues that characterizes daily this site.
From this chart, you can also see and quantify the frequency sine wave, long since up to a week before the PageRank export, but now closer in a few days.
2) the pages of the site is properly indexed in Google, to check do a search on site:nomesito.com

3) the site is not penalized. To check do use some small query listed in that other post (Understand if a site is penalized on Google)

4) the site is no longer present in the top positions of Google (first 2 pages) in the searches for keywords before fluctuation brought traffic to the site. Usually the site for these keywords is about 10-30 results of the first results omitted in the final page (around 950th position)

5) Not all keywords are vanished, but only those secondary and the long-tail (long tail, which means the combination / extension of multiple keywords for example, the long-tail "Rome hotels" can be "hotel in Rome near the station and a vista of the Coliseum").

6) The site for historical keywords or major ones does not seem to suffer "penalties" in SERP (search results) if not by some "natural" lowering of any position (maximum 5 or 6 positions). This allows the site to have a reduction of traffic generated by Google equal to 90% and not 100%.

7) The fluctuation is not made with regard to the site nor to the page, but precisely for each keywords. Indeed it is possible that a different page for keywords present in a natural way or fluctuation..

What is shown in SERP instead of the site?

Through a somewhat comparisons and analysis with colleagues and friends of the web, I can say that usually instead of "downgraded" sites are proposed search results rather unique, in addition to sites that "merit" in the engine ranking:
- List directory containing the backlink to the site in fluctuation (although this appears to be inserted in the directory)
- Sites SPAM (spam engine, sites that use black-hat techniques, etc.)
- Sites with duplicate contents
- Sites without valid content and concerned for the end user (for example, an e-commerce site that has similar materials but does not have those)

What kind of sites have been affected?

Unlike previous fluctuations associated with new sites with little popularity and low TRUST, the fluctuation of the end of June struck several very authoritative sites with hundreds of backlink, contents valid both at SEO level and users.

Moreover, it seems not to be no association between the nature of the affected sites. Indeed were downgraded websites:
- E-commerce
- Showcase / Institutional
- With / without Adsense
- From industrial to adult content
- Etc..

When you have these fluctuations?

The fate has it that the beginning or the end of fluctuations coincide with the PageRank export/update. Much more difficult is to find the link between these two actions carried out "simultaneously" by Google.

Why these sites suffer such penalties?

Hard to say, but what I can say is that the idea of cleaning SERP is no longer reliable, given that times are too long and would not guarantee a good service to the end user.

Probably this is the fluctuations due to inclusion/activation of new algorithms that Google tests and try again and re-evaluate the results obtained from the SERP.

But how can a website resolve this situation?

My suggestion is always the same, continue the promotion of the site as if nothing had (I know it is difficult but now there are not immediate remedies) trying to create original content and collect spontaneous links even from sites with high TRUST (we will see later how to recognize and capture the trust of a site).

The ideal would be to became independent from Google, by creating a community always present on the site through a blog or a forum or other innovative services that provide users’ loyalty.

Scan of Google Analytics Services

2008-03-03T06:01:00.000-08:00

Google as the global web leader in many compute, technology and internet areas doesn’t stop growing with their amazing inventions for many areas in today’s modern world. One of the newest ideas is to help companies and people by the most efficient service of the web marketing ever made, supporting and teaching the right way to work the website optimization.

To can understand this, let’s learn what a SEO or Search Engine Optimization is.

The SEO support is a detailed web work completely dedicated to increase the activities of a website in internet thru the search engines as Google, Yahoo, Live, etc. It gives a chance to the site to catch users or sales, and reach positions or rank in the search engines.

To do that it has to be totally manipulated by a person or team who can understand different statics and right things to do. It can sound really board and easy to do, but it’s a hard thing, because normally takes around 3 or 4 months of hard work using different methods as marketing studies to chose the specific words will be a direct identification to the web site, also many articles to make famous the website in many other sites has to be founded.

As a guide book, Google Analytics is the newest online tool available for the website optimization. An original and totally functional tool any one can use.
It basically work giving exact information in real time of different factors can increase or decrease a website rank in the internet.

Some of those functions or services are:

Executive summary reports: compare revenue, compare conversions, compare campaigns, and compare keywords. Analysis of regional source, analysis of visitor sources, unique v repeats visitors, campaign analysis, personalized alarms to important received data as conversion goals and new records.

This modern service is the only tool totally assisted in 25 languages by the Google's online support help center. It includes private access and direct contact by a Google user account, keeping completely safe all information referent to the users and web pages.

Not all of those are completely free web optimization services in internet, some companies use different Google analytics packages to make more functional this tool or service. Those packages include a defined number of articles submitted to a determinate number of sites can refer the website in action. Also studies to get the keywords will be in the title tags, articles and descriptions.

This is the latest web tool available for amateur and professionals in the web site optimization. I as an active user, recommend use professional services to do this cause any detail can compromise all work maddened and the completely page rank.

How is Directory Submission helpful in Search engine optimization?

2008-03-03T05:59:00.000-08:00

What is directory submission? How does it help in the web site promotion? Many think directory submission is similar to the data entry jobs and they assume it to be very simple and easy. Sites like yahoo, Google etc have huge web directories similar to the phone directory we use. These directories are store houses of relevant information about business concerns and web sites all over the world. Thus for promoting a web site its details are submitted to the directory in exchange for a small fee.

Again this directory submission can either be done manually or implemented through automated services. When someone submits his web site to a directory human editors have to go through them to check quality and other guidelines. With millions of web sites coming in daily it is not easy or it is very stressful to go through them and check for quality. So automated directory submissions was invented to check for the submission guidelines. The advantage of this automated submission is that it is easy and less time consuming. It automatically checks and submits without delay.

But what really matters is whether the web directories can accept automated directory submission as they are very strict about the guidelines. Moreover if the category to which the submission is made is not chosen properly then it loses its purpose. You cannot expect an automotive service to analyze which category your submission is best suited don’t you? Thus though the time factor favors automated directory submission it still has a long way to go to outbid manual services.

Any product or service hitting the public market needs to be advertised. There are various ways and means through which this advertisement can reach the general public. The print media, roadside banners, brochures, graphic boards etc are some of the familiar marketing techniques followed. Created a professional website to promote the business is the new and trendy marketing tool undertaken today to expose a business. Imperative features like the SEO, SEM, directory submission, link building etc help to increase the search result when someone searches in the search engine.

The web site payout along with the catchy content and tags should be competent to bring in customer traffic. And to enable this many factors are concerned imperative like the SEO, SEM, directory submission, link building etc. any business concern which takes off as a fresher must give away a press release and do the Online Directories and Search Engine Submissions. Press Release is nothing but a public relation announcement about the new business prospects. The information provided should be 100% original and no false or exaggerated content should be focused on. This is the main door which opens up to the public who will trust what they see or read from this press release. This can also be done during a course of a business when they roll out a new product or have introduced or opened a new store.

Advanced SEO Optimization Process

2008-03-03T05:58:00.000-08:00

Given the razor-sharp competition in the internet marketing today, it takes the help of an intelligent SEO company India to beat the competition and sustain one’s India website rankings. Search engine optimization specialists can tell you how to improve your ranking in popular search engines which is crucial to boosting the volume of traffic to your website. An SEO marketing company would tell you that it is not enough if you rank higher only in a specific search engine. A comprehensive search engine optimization strategy comprises of techniques that ensure higher ranking in all popular search engines enhancing your chance to augment the volume of your online traffic.

So how to find the right SEO partnership to join the hands with for a holistic search engine optimization? If you are aiming at finding the right SEO services India from an experienced SEO company India to increase website rankings then there are a number of factors which you have to take into consideration.

We have a team of SEO experts India who understand the search engine dynamics inside out. Our SEO India Company consists of talented search engine optimization specialists who are immensely experienced to handle SEO campaigns for the most competitive keywords and key phrases in any specialized business domain. Being a leading SEO company India, we believe that succeeding in any SEO marketing campaign requires impeccable and in-depth keyword analysis which is the cornerstone of the entire SEO process and one of the most crucial factors in boosting your website rankings. Our search engine optimization specialists analyze keywords and keyword phrases using cutting-edge keyword analysis tools to arrive at the keywords and key phrases that are not only less competitive but also highly searchable on the web.

As a top-notch SEO services India provider we are renowned for offering SEO content writing services that will potentially boost your page rank. Our content writers bring their creativity and experience together to write keyword rich content with an amazingly assertive, appealing and marketing punch making the page a must-read for your classified audience. We know that content is the soul of any webpage and play a crucial role in getting you good search engine ranking in all popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Before you go for a full-fledged SEO campaign, don’t underestimate the importance of the right SEO partnership. The right kind of Seo Company India can make or break the very purpose of your SEO campaign. If not handled properly or if you choose the wrong SEO partnership, then you will stand to lose money as well as your precious time. On the top of it, you will end up subjecting your website to mal-optimization which again will add to your injury.

We adopt white-hat SEO techniques for better India website rankings. With us, you stand to gain standardized, customized and cost-effective SEO packages that meet all your needs. Here is a lowdown on what we offer in our SEO services India.
1. We offer a campaign specific module for each of our clients. We allow them the privilege of specifying their own keywords (unless they want us to carryout a comprehensive keyword analysis), their targeted demography and the list of competitors. Our search engine optimization specialists then examine and optimize them which is then sent to our customers for their approval. The final list is drafted after the clients’ approval.
2. Our search engine optimizations specialists do a lot for boosting the website ranking of our clients. They follow a strategic on-page optimization process by enhancing the keyword density, keyword positioning, URL structure guidelines, meta-tags content, relevance of visible text and so forth.
3. Link popularity is the most crucial factor of search engine optimization which boosts the popularity of your website. We have a dedicated team of link builders who do the job for strategic link building to improve the popularity of our clients’ websites.
4. We carry out the optimization services with an LSI based SEO approach. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is the technique that gives you a crucial edge over your competitors for attracting high volume of traffic as well as potential clients. This ensures better results for your clients and higher profits for you.

White Hat or Black Hat SEO Techniques. What's the difference?

2008-03-03T05:57:00.000-08:00

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Basics – Part I

2008-03-03T05:55:00.000-08:00

The first thing you should know about SEO is that Consistency is the “key word”.
Because of that, in this first article I will cover the immediate things that relate to
solid Search Engine Ranks for particular number of key phrases. This will apply to any type of website, on any industry you are targeting. Lets review first 5 areas:

Search Engines Rank web pages, not web sites.
You should have unique Titles, Descriptions and Keywords in your pages. Therefore,
there should be only one page per keyword phrase you are targeting, highly focused
on that phrase. You can also target as many related combinations of your phrase as searches are using to find it, as long as you have individual pages focused for them.

Your web site has to be relevant to searchers, not just the search engine.
One very important area of SEO is to be well-balanced. There many variables that
matter when it comes to optimizing a site, there is not a specific area were all the
effort should be on. Instead focus on achieving a Top 10 Position, and here is why:
It is OK to be number 5 or number 3 in any given rank… If you are in the 1st spot and you are clicked simply because that spot gets more clicks, are you really going to get more of whatever your site’s goal is just because you are the number 1?

Less is more, when it comes to targeted keywords.
If you have like most, an average site, focus on 5-10 keywords. Build your entire site around these keywords. Remember to be relevant to searches using these keywords. You should rather have one keyword for which your site is on the Top 10 (first page), than ten that are on secondary pages. Put those keywords in your Title, Description, and Keyword areas, and remember the uniqueness factor.

Build real content for people, not for machines.
It is said that “content is king”, and for a good reason. When two sites highly optimized in a particular industry for a particular key phrase compete, this is
one of the most important areas Search Engines evaluate for relevancy, and
therefore positioning. Keep your content updated either by adding new, or by
editing existing one. The relation between content and its freshness is a must.

Tell me who links to you, who you link to, and I will tell you who you are.
Yes, linking is that important in SEO. You must have incoming links, but what really matters, is that you must have quality incoming links, and you must build them all naturally. Search Engines reward sites when their links are build steadily over time.

The Truth About Ranking Your Site

2007-04-12T06:28:00.000-07:00

Interesting and informative articles are in big demand, so it would be a benefit to your site if you wrote as many as you can and distribute them among the article sites. Many webmasters jumped on the ban wagon when Really Simple Syndication was first introduced; it was a great way of gathering information and supplying content on your site.

If you rank high in search engines, your website are shown to a huge number of target users. When choosing keywords choose the keywords that have a medium high number of searches, this will give you a nice niche market to attack

On page search engine optimization are things that you can change on your webpage. If you're redesigning or starting from scratch and you have to use a brand-new domain for some reason, search engines do not have a schedule when indexing your site, some time you might need to wait a week and others you need to wait 3 months, it all depends on the number of links pointing to your site. Many search engines change their algoryhms and this can result in your ranking decreasing from the number 1 spot to the another spot which is not very favorable or in extreme cases disappear all together.

The common thing about many of these top sites is that they have plenty of good content and quality one way inbound links. It's a known fact that Google relies solely on your link popularity and content. Good ranking is completely impossible without the effective link optimization plan. Link popularity means getting one way or reciprocal links pointing back to your website which will improve your search engine rankings.

Back a couple of years when search engines were in their infancy it was very easy to rank well, all you needed to do was change the meta tags to the keywords and descriptions you needed and you site was ranked. Meta tags are not as important today, most of the search engines today depend on more sophisticated ways of ranking pages, one of the most important ways is link popularity.

It really comes down to this, get quality content for your website and create a link plan that you will stick with. Here are a couple of great methods you can follow when building links.

1. Write articles and submit too many ezine sites.
2. Post your links to as many directories as possible.
3. Trade links with other webmasters in the same theme
4. If you have time join forums a place your link in your signature.

By using these methods and creating a schedule that you can stick to will build your sites rankings in the search engines. Remember slow and steady wins the race. Try not to rush this process, of course everyone want to reach the top as fast as they can, but you are dealing with natural search engine search, if you want to get to the top quickly pay for advertising. There are many e-books written on this subject so search the internet and buy an e-book that tells you how to do this step by step.

Keywords Are Very Important

2007-04-11T18:05:00.000-07:00

Through good keyword research, you'll be surely able to find the website containing the correct data that you need/want. It is extremely important for those who want to create (and eventually launch) a website to have good keyword research. When developing your website the html coding is not the only important part, you must recognize the keyword development. Writing about your products or services and submitting these articles to free content websites is a great way to market your website, as it provides you with a way of building pages that link back to your site, and as you know, the more links that point to your site the better your website will rank for the engines.

If you want to rely on organic traffic from the search engines you need to develop a strategy that will create an accurate list of keywords, even if you are going to use pay per click you still need to follow this method. Your job in this stage of the site building process is to find out the exact phrases that people type into the search engines, when they are looking for information or products relating to your niche.

Click ads have become very popular with the internet community, because of this there are many tools that help with figuring out different techniques to make money with these click ad systems. Choosing the right words to use as your keywords is key to successful searches. So, how is it possible to find the right words to use? Keywords are terms or words related to particular topic.

Webmasters fail to do anywhere near enough keyword marketing research. Many webmasters just pick any keywords and do not use the tools necessary to research and find the keywords that fit their website and the words that show what people are searching for. Many online marketing include some keyword gurus seem to forget, this helps when targeting a niche market, these words are not hit upon as much as the popular words but are searched enough to drive traffic to your site.

Traffic flow dictates the number of clicks a certain site may incur. The content on your site needs to about subjects that people want to read about, once people are interested in your content relevant traffic will start flowing into your site. A quality information site must cover the information that people want to read, and for that, you need to know what they type in at the search engines. You can always add more articles to cover the less requested information later, and link to these from existing pages and the sitemap.

Researching the proper keywords to use take many hours of research, if you are using the software tools to do this it can limit the time spent doing the research. Many of the software packages out there will uncover words you never even thought of, and they provide all the statistical information you need to make a proper decision. Do not choose words that are very broad, this is much harder to rank in search engines, choose the niche keywords to get your rankings quickly.

25 Simple Blog SEO and Traffic Tips

2007-04-08T01:44:00.000-07:00

25 Simple Blog SEO and Traffic Tips

by: Jeremy Steele

This is a nice concise list of 25 ways to greatly increase your blog's traffic and search rankings.

1) Content is king!

2) Submit your site to as many search engines as possible. After the initial indexing I would recommend resubmitting every 6 months.

3) Comment on as many blogs as possible. Make your comments thoughtful and not spammy.

4) Link up with popular blogs - trackbacks can be good for SEO as well as your traffic.

5) Write a good article and post it on a site like http://www.digg.com, although this won't help as far as traffic goes (you will get a HUGE boost for a few hours, then it will tone back down, you probably won't get any permanent readers from Digg) and it sure doesn't help with your relationship with your web host, it can create some new inbound links.
6) Use http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ . Instead of the GoogleBot searching for your pages you can tell it where your pages are. This is a great way to get your whole site indexed. 7) Content is king!

8) Get listed on web directories like http://www.dmoz.com/. Although many SEO "experts" think it is overrated no one disagrees that it can help boost your site's rankings. 9) Add some links for feed readers and blog aggregators like http://www.bloglines.com/, http://www.google.com/reader/, and http://myweb.yahoo.com/.

10) Add some social bookmarking links at the bottom of each post

11) Make it easy for your users to find your RSS feed

12) Add a "E-mail This!" link either on the header or the footer of each post

13) Content is king! (see a pattern?)

14) If you write a really good post try e-mailing the URL to some big-name bloggers with a short personalized message. You never know, they might like it and link to it.

15) Try asking some big sites who are in your niche if they would like to trade links. More often than not they will say "no", but at least give it a try.

16) Don't obsess over "get rich quick" schemes.

17) Don't obsess over "get lots of traffic really quick" schemes.

18) Submit your RSS feed to a bunch of RSS directories, http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-directory.htm has a large list of popular directories. 19) Use http://pingomatic.com/ to notify a ton of aggregators that your site has been updated.

20) Don't obsess over the numbers - it takes time to build up a good reader base.

21) Make your posts as keyword rich as possible. Whenever you can use a word that has to do with your niche, use it!

22) Use lists, especially if your site is targeted towards more tech-savvy users

23) If you have a MySpace page or a home page on a similar service put up a link to your blog. 24) Tag important keywords, using this site ( http://www.richardrodger.com/tags.htm ) you can tag keywords.

25) Last but not least, offer free stuff. Everyone loves free stuff! The really important thing you have to remember is, just have fun. If your blog is causing you to become stressed out then it probably is not a good idea to continue blogging.

If your readers can tell you are having fun while providing good content they will become permanent readers.

http://www.articlecity.com/articles/site_promotion/article_1533.shtml

4 Ways to Insure Your Home Page Is Doing Its Job

2007-04-06T10:16:00.000-07:00

Websites are the most basic of the current marketing strategies and are the "first face" that people see of your company. What type of impression does yours make?

There are two main types of websites that you could have for your business:

1/ The "Call to Action" Site
2/ The "Brochure" Site

Both types primarily refer to the home page and we're going to focus on the "Call to Action" today.

The home page of your website should give a quick snapshot of what you provide -- in language that tells the reader how HE benefits from that. Think WIIFM (What's In It For Me) from your reader's viewpoint.

In this time of instant gratification and ever-shortening attention spans, you need to grab your visitor's attention immediately.

You want them interested enough in what you say and what you do that they explore the other areas of your website. You want them to desire what you are offering -- whether it be your restaurant menu, your auto repair services, your bookkeeping services, your virtual assistant services or your coaching programs -- and you want them to take action to learn more.

1. Get their attention.

You get their attention with the headline and opening paragraph. You can either focus on a problem or challenge that your target audience has or offer them a great benefit. Studies show that focusing on the problem AND offering readers a solution to that problem gets the best response.

For example: "Small Business Owners Beware! Studies show that 4 out of 5 small businesses fail in the first year!"

The problem is clear. You get it. And, you don't want to fail, so you read on to learn more.

The opening paragraph will go on to paint a picture of what that problem is and what it is costing you.

2. Hold their interest.

Now that you've gotten their attention and they resonate with the problem you've outlined, it's time to keep their interest by talking about the value and benefits that you provide.

Explain in a paragraph or two what you do that will teach them or assist them in eliminating "the problem" that you mentioned in the headline.

3. Inflame their desire.

If you've done a good job explaining the benefits that you offer, your visitor may now be asking himself, "Does this really work?" or "Is this another scam?".

It's your job, or rather your home page's job, to answer the visitors' questions. You can do that here by sharing a success story or a testimonial about your process, services, etc. Let your visitor hear from real people what you've done for them.

A well-written testimonial helps your reader to grasp the benefits you provide your clients.

4. Call to Action

What do you want your first-time visitor to do? Very rarely will he just pick up the phone and say "I want to hire you", so you need to quench his thirst with some free information.

This is where you can point your visitor to a free report, e-course or your email newsletter (ezine). Ideally, you will have a sign-up box for your newsletter on EVERY page of your website. Make it easy. If your visitors need to search, they will go elsewhere.

Capturing first-time visitors' name and primary email address should be the call to action that you seek. It doesn't matter what type of business you are in -- coach (think motivational stories, Feng Shui tips, etc.); restaurant (think special menu items or coupons); auto repair shop (think seasonal check-ups or "How to survive a road trip with your family"-type articles); virtual assistant (think Outlook tips, etc.) -- you should always keep in touch with your clients and prospective clients.

An ezine (email newsletter) gives you permission to contact them every week, two weeks or month (I wouldn't do an ezine less than once a month) and continuously offer them good information.

Take a look at your website today -- is it doing its job?

Make your site visible, some tips to search engine optimization

2007-04-05T05:54:00.000-07:00

Are you annoyed of not seeing your site in search engine result pages? don't worry just follow these simple recommendation to make your site visible in search engines and get traffic. These techniques will definitely help you to generate revenue and increase your Return on Investment (ROI).Here we will be discussing some on page factors for the site:
Keyword Selection
Starting from keyword selection, it's the most important thing to research on. Always research market before targeting keywords for your pages. You should go for those keywords which are searched by users and will generate traffic. Many companies provides you rankings on key phrases but those keywords don't generate any traffic so always go for traffic not for rankings by targeting some generic and your business relevant keywords.
Meta Tags
Meta tags play an important role in the rankings. Target your major keywords in the TITLE tag. Accordingly make a very keyword specific description suiting your business and requirements. Not try to overcrowd keyword meta tags with lot of key phrases.
Content
"Content is the king" as we all know. Write unique and very thematic content according to keyword and theme of the page. Don't over optimise the content with the keyword stuffing. Keep in mind the keyword prominence and keyword proximity for the keyword in the content which plays part in the ranking.
Site structure & usability
When we are talking of structure and usability of site, we are talking about the user friendliness of the site. User should be always aware of where are they on the site and from here where they can navigate to. Navigation should be pretty easy and simple.
User should always get what you have mentioned in your title or description tag. Never try to cheat visitors. Always try to build confidence with your approach and site usability and structure. This will be very beneficial in long term.
New updation
Always update your site with new offering, news or any new services. This will help your site to get indexed regularly and visitors will also get something new every time keeping them prompted to visit the site regularly.
Loading time
Don't use too many graphics and flash as they are not preferred by search engines and increases loading time. Keep your layout simple and streamlined throughout the site. This will help you in getting higher rankings, traffic and revenue for the site.
Alt tags
Always provide alt tags for the images which will help you to use keyword frequency and also make it easy for the search engine to know what the image is all about.
H1-H2 tags
Try to use your main keywords in H1-H2 tags, these matters a lot in rankings.
These are the few on page factors which helps in rankings. For detailed knowledge you can look for search engine Optimization Company who can provide you answer for your queries and requirements. Bu don't be fooled by any unprofessional SEO company. Always look for the best that can provide you traffic apart from rankings.

5 Tips On Chosing the Best Key Words

2007-04-04T22:50:00.000-07:00

The keywords or phrases that you choose and how you use them will determine how your pages rank in the search engines. If you are not in the top 10-20 you might as well not exist at all. It's a hard fact to swallow I know so take your time chosing your keywords it will pay off in the long run.
Here are 5 Tips on selecting your keywords.
1) Think How your Customer might Search for your site
2) Make Keywords into Keyword Phrases
3) Create Different Combinations of your Keyword Phrases
4) Review your competitors Keywords
5) Don't use single key words

How To Increase Your Search Engine Ranking On Google In 5 Simple Steps!

2007-04-04T09:42:00.000-07:00

The rewards for getting that #1 spot on google are enormous, as I am sure you are aware.
Motivated prospects will come to your site from your search engine positioning. Once they arrive on your site, rely on your sales message to convert the prospect into a customer.
It is a good idea to learn basic html so you can edit and create web pages. Learn how to master or at least become competent in search engine optimization.
Follow the simple steps below to increase Your Search Engine Ranking and possibly get that #1 spot on google.
1) Target the right keywords. Target the wrong keyword phrases and your online business is destined to fail.
2) Don't use keywords or phrases that are too broad. The competition is too fierce, and research has shown that though you will get more traffic through general phrases, that traffic doesn't convert to sales. All of the traffic in the world will do you no good if it doesn't convert to sales!
3) Optimize your page content. Target each Web page to a different and highly focused keyword phrase. In other words, your main page should be optimized for one keyword phrase. Are the keywords used relative to the site's overall content? Do you use too many keywords, or too few?
4) Submit your important Web pages manually to the major search engines, rather than using a handy dandy software program that will submit your pages to 1,000,000 engines...
5) Work hard at building your link popularity by asking sites that are related to yours in content to link back to your site. Also, make sure that you get your site listed in all of the major directories, such as Yahoo and ODP. Writing and submitting articles on your related topic is also very effective to increase your link popularity.
Don't forget that the number one method by far for traffic generation is to achieve high rankings with the search engines. Take into consideration this list and apply the best of your abilities where needed on your website. Constant care to your website will increase your traffic and sales in the long run.
To Your Success!