----------Search-----------
Run a search on any of the 200 major search engines, and the results will come up in similar orders on quite a few of them. How a website owner/operator gets their website to the top of a list is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Optimizing a website involves many of the same techniques, whether the aim is to optimize for Google adwords, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves or others. There is a list of what not to do as well, and that list is applicable to all engines, as it mostly refers to tricks and hacks unscrupulous designers use to try to trick the engines. These kind of pages generally get removed by automated tools and don't generally last very long, so they are not recommended to bother with.
Website optimization starts with content. If the content is irrelevant, the website will not last long in the rankings, no matter how many keywords are included. The best way to get relevant content is to get an expert to write the content. General content may be more friendly to beginners, but in the search optimization arena, content is what is going to keep readers coming back and webmasters linking to the page. Many search engines use link counters to rank sites. If enough people like and value the site, they will link to it from their own site as an example of expert help for visitors seeking more detailed information than they can provide, or are willing to provide. Often, general-interest sites will link to expert sites, thereby also driving their own traffic up as the initial portal to those expert sites and improving their own rankings in the optimization listings. The quality of the sites linked is also a major factor in the rankings, as quality sites such as Microsoft and Google are going to be more effective "heavy hitters" than a link to Bob's House of Website Optimizing.
When the content is being created, keywords are the "anchors" that search engines hook onto, but just filling your content with keywords risks being dismissed as a spam site, as many spammers merely fill a page with keywords, hoping to hook anyone searching for anything. These kind of pages are usually removed quickly, but they exist nonetheless. Specific keywords are the key--instead of Search Engine, use Search Engine Optimization for Google, or combinations of the key words or phrases. Optimization for Search Engines in one area, then Optimizing for higher Search Engine rankings in another increases the chances of an engine ranking your website content a little higher than it may have otherwise.
The guidelines for content also go for Meta tags such as the title. Title is very important, as it is one of the bigger spots for an engine to catch, as well as the hook that draws a surfer in once the rankings have been displayed. A recommended length is 50-80 characters (including spaces), with keywords located near the beginning in case the window is resized on the screen. A good example would be "Search Engine Optimization tips and tricks for Google", instead of "How to do important SEO for websites."
Search Engine Optimization--what to avoid: Don't use huge strings of keywords without relevant content--you may be labeled as a spammer and blacklisted off the engine(s) you're trying to climb. Stay away from pop-ups, excessive load times (by keeping the page clean and using fast hosting servers), and lots of flash animation, as this takes time to load and also detracts from the readability of the site.
More specific information can be found by typing "Search Engine Optimization" into any major search engine like Google or Yahoo and following the links. Good luck!
Search Engine & Directory Submission Tips--------
Site submission to search engines and directories is often done incorrectly. In order to get the best results from search engine and directory submissions, Swift Media UK offers the following web site submission tips:
Treat search engine submission and directory submissions separately
Most people incorrectly believe that search engines and directories are the same. A search engine uses a program that searches documents (i.e. web pages, which are mostly HTML documents) for specified keywords and returns the list of documents. A search engine has two parts, a spider and an indexer. The spider is the program that fetches the documents, and the indexer reads the documents and creates an index or database based on the words or ideas contained in each document.
A directory (such as Yahoo, commonly mistaken for a search engine) depends on people for listings. The main difference between a search engine and a directory is that a directory does not make use of a spider or robot. In other words, a directory will not list your web page if you do not register it with them. Directories are usually divided into categories and you must submit your URL under the most appropriate categories.
Search engines vary which HTML tags to emphasize: titles, meta-tags, alternative text, body text, headings, etc. Directories primarily emphasize titles, the description you submit to them and the category or categories you select in the directories.
Because search engines and directories are so different, it is best to develop your submission strategies separately.
Search engine submission strategies
To get optimal listings in search engine and directory queries, keywords and key concepts must be placed strategically throughout your web pages. To summarize, you need these words and phrases in: Titles, Meta Tags, Alt-attribute, headings, main body text.
Other factors that affect search engine rankings are HTML layout, keyword density, keyword prominence, and keyword placement. These topics are covered in detail at Copywriting for web sites, Search Engines, Directories and Web Design, Search Engine, and Marketing Considerations.
Submit individual web pages to search engines. Submit your home page to the major directories
In general, we like to submit 5-7 web pages at a time to the major search engines to avoid a spam penalty. Additionally, we do not recommend that you submit the same web pages to the search engines within a short time period (even if you made changes on them).
We recommend that you first get your main URL (yourcompanyname.com) accepted into a directory before you try to get more targeted pages listed. You will stand a better chance of getting multiple pages listed in a directory if your overall site has been accepted first.
The time between site submission and addition to the search engine or directory database is called the lead time. You will not see results in your traffic logs until the lead time has passed.
Monitor results on site reporting software
We are firm believers in using quality site statistics software. In fact, we do not believe that anyone can have a successful online business without it. Our two favourites are WebTrends and Webalizer.
You will be able to see the results of your search engine optimization and link development strategies in your site statistics. You can measure the keywords used, the URL's giving you the most referrals, the type of browsers used to view your site, the time of day your site is accessed, and so forth. All of this data will give you a clearer profile of your site's visitors.
Then, based on this data, you can tweak the HTML, graphics, and content to best suit your customers.
Submit and resubmit web pages as necessary
An online business that uses search engine optimization as a marketing strategy will use this submission, monitoring, and tweaking practice. Site submission is a never ending, ongoing process because search engines constantly change their relevancy algorithms.
We recommend that you resubmit a web page to a search engine only when there is a significant change to web page or if a page has dropped from the index. (Changing a meta-tag description does not constitute a significant change.)
To see if your web pages have been added or deleted from a search engine, go to each of the search engines listed below and type in the string listed below the search engine name. Replace "companyname.com" with your URL (web site address).
AltaVista
URL: companyname.com Google
Site: companyname.com companyname.com
HotBot (which uses Inktomi)
Domain: companyname.com
Fast Search
url.all:www.companyname.com
If your web site has been accepted into a directory, you can then submit specialized pages within your web site to other directory categories. Once your site has been added to a directory, you should not have to resubmit it unless your business has significantly changed and you belong in a different category.
Search Engine Basics------------
Unfortunately getting your website up in the Search Engines is not as simple as paying someone $45 to submit your site to a gazillion search engines. Those advertisements you see all over the internet, that tell you they can submit your site to a gazillion search engines for the low cost of whatever the price is. They might be able to submit them but will the search engines actually consider them? The answer is, they might but, chances are the search engines they are submitting to might not be of any use to you. It's just a clever ploy to get your hard earned cash. The best way to go about it is do it the hard way. Now everyone has heard about Search Engine Optimization and has or knows someone who has employed a SEO company, and their site either got up on the search engines with good rankings or not. My personal experience is the company I hired was able to get my site on the front page of both MSN and Yahoo but, no Google and all for the price of $1200. If you are a small business owner, as I am , then you know that $1200 for advertising is a lot of money. The truth is the best way to get your site up on the search engines with good rankings is to do it yourself. It might be hard and time-consuming but worth it in the long run. A lot of SEO companies trick the search engines into listing your sites high but in the end your website might be banned for using those tricks, so why take that chance? Through a series of articles I am going to show you how to get search engines to list your sites and how to get good rankings.
Before you can understand Search Engine Optimization you must first learn how the search engines work. First you need to know the definiton of a few terms that are used to describe how we get the search results. You need to know the difference between a search engine, a directory, a search site and search system. There is a lot of confusion among these terms. The good news is I am about to de-mystify it.
Search Engines:
They obtain their information from a database that has been feed to them by a search system. When you enter a search term, for example:" small business in Vancouver" the search engine sends out robots or spiders to scour the database for those words. They use complex algorithms to hopefully give you the most relevant information first. A search engine also provides you with information that was in individual sites as opposed to information about the site. For example I searched in Google for "small business in Vancouver" and the third listing that came up was "Soho.ca - Grow your business- small business medium business…The most popular roundtable event in Vancouver…Last month sold out." Soho.ca - Grow your small business is the title of the website and the rest is actually text from within the site.
Directory:
A directory is usually broken into categories. You can submit your site usually to directories by entering your site's information and choosing an appropriate category. A Directory supplies information about the website as opposed to information that is in the website. An example of a directory would be the BC business directory. I searched it for "website design" and one of the results I received was "Destination University- An educational resource website designed by an Abbotsford student for Canadian high school students looking for higher education in Canada". This result told me who made the site and who its target audience was but, not any information from within the site.
Search Site:
A search site is a website that allows you to search through an index or directory of websites. It could let you search through multiple indexes or directories. The difference between a search site and a search engine is that the search site usually uses the results of a search engine, not its own results.
Search system:
A search system is an organization that uses software and hardware to index or categorize websites on the world wide web. An example of a search system would the Open Directory Project.
Now that you understand the terms used and what exactly they mean, we can move on and show you why this all matters. People on the web use Search Engines, this is fact and why not? This is an extremely easy way to find information you are looking for at your fingertips.
Everyone has heard of Google, MSN, Yahoo and AOL. Let's look at how they get their results when you search from their sites.
Google has its own search system. It is the largest search engine and its results actually feed other search engines such as, AOL, Netscape and Ask Jeeves. Now you know when you search AOL where your results are coming from. They are coming from Google's search system. AOL also gets results from the Open Directory Project. MSN has it's own search system on top of getting results from Yahoo. Yahoo also has its own search system and gets results from the Open Directory Project. The bottom line here is that The Open Directory Project is a very important search system because it feeds a lot of other smaller search engines. Although not that many people have heard of it getting your site listed in it would be a high priority. Google also would be priority to have your site listed in. Yahoo would be one of the top search engines to be listed in as it currently only feeds MSN but, is still very competitive and many people use it.
Now I know you are wondering what about some other the smaller search engines. The truth is don't bother with them as they are feed by the larger search systems and if they get listed then they will be automatically included in the smaller search engines anyways. You may be thinking, why do I need to know all this? Trust me, you do if you would like your site to rank high and if you are doing it yourself. Knowing this information will make it easier for you to understand how to get your site up in the search engines and you'll need visitors for your website, and what a better way to get them but FREE.
Search Engine Directory specializes in Niche Vertical Markets---------
A niche market or a vertical market is a group of similar kinds of businesses that engage in a trade based on specialized needs of customers or buyers. The people who participate in a vertical market are usually a smaller portion of a larger industry or market. This kind of market is designed specially for a similar customer base.
Participants in vertical markets aim at solving the same kinds of problems within that specific portion. These markets can be competitive because of an overlapping focus on the services and products that are being offered to many customers.
In horizontal markets, the participants attempt to meet the needs through gaining a presence in the vertical market. They have similar products and services and they are less of a fit with each other.
When it comes to search engine marketing and search engine promotion, you can’t afford to go at it in the wrong way. You have to make sure that your site is listed with only quality sites and quality search engines like URascal.com
If you are not making sure to do your research and to take care to be listed with quality sites, then the traffic that you get may not be quality either. Ultimately, you want quality traffic that will buy your products and services and you get this by being in niche vertical markets.
When you are doing search engine marketing and search engine promotion, you may have had the problem of exchanging links with other webmasters. There are thousands of links to be exchanged. You don’t have time to check and make sure they put a reciprocal link on their site. URascal.com will solve this problem for you once and for all. They have a staff that verifies the link exchange.
An actual human being reviews each and every single web site. This is to ensure that there are only quality web sites in the URascal.com search engine program. You are free to submit your site for approval. URascal.com has a variety of niche topics that are available to you. This is definitely a valuable tool for your search engine marketing and search engine promotion efforts.
Cost of joining URascal.com is free of charge.
Search Engine Friendly Content Management Systems----------
What is a Content Management System?
A Content Management System (CMS) is a third party software application which allows web site administrators to add, update or delete content, photos, and documents to their web site in “real time”. Many web sites are modified using these web-based tools as they require little to no knowledge of HTML or web scripting languages. CMS programs make it easy for a webmaster or site owner who does not know HTML or have access to a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML Editor, such as Macromedia’s Dreamweaver, to update their site.
In today’s high paced web world, a good CMS is integral to the efficient operation of a web site. Many webmasters and web site developers are building database driven, or dynamic web sites, which require a third party solution, such as a Content Management System, to update the content that lives in the database. In addition, a CMS allows the web site owner to outsource content development remotely to contract copywriters and other willing contributors. With built in access level hierarchies, webmasters can allow various users to register as authors and start submitting articles and news to be published on their site.
How do Content Management Systems Work?
Content Management Systems create a dynamic web site environment, where all the content is stored in a database or XML file. Using a web-based interface, the webmaster can select which page they want to update and then can modify the web content in a text editor, with many of the familiar formatting keys that can be found in a word processing program. Once the content has been updated, with the simple click of a button, the CMS will turn their text into HTML code and publish the content to the web site.
Problems Between Search Engines and Content Management Systems:
Historically, search engines have had difficulty indexing dynamic pages. While their ability to index and rank dynamic pages has improved dramatically, there are some basic things to avoid. One of the greatest enemies of search engines is URL strings that contain many URL parameters. URL parameters are variables that are passed to the CMS through the URL, which tell it what information to retrieve from the database. URLs with too many parameters generally make little logical sense to the average user and may also scare off search spiders. For example see:
http://www.mysite.com/mg/vbclass/search.asp?A9_MAKEVBCookie=Yes&vertical=CLTH&cat=Mens&subcat=ID&displayTarget=Subcategory
It is suggested to limit the number of URL parameters to two or three per URL to ensure that that search spiders will not have difficulty indexing pages deep within the web site.
Certain URL parameter names may automatically flag a filter on the search engine. One example is the URL parameter names that contain ‘ID’, such as ‘sessionid’, ‘sid’ or ‘userid’. Historically, search engines detect the term “ID” and assume it is associated with a session dependant variable. As a result, search engines have learned to flag these parameter names and it can cause problems with page indexing. Passing session dependant variables through the URL is a problem for search engines because the spider essentially sees a unique URL each time they visit the site because the session dependent variables change with each visit. For example, on one visit to the site, a page URL may be http://www.mysite.com/page.asp?sessionid=12345. The next time the spider visits the page, the URL may be http://www.mysite.com/page.asp?sessionid=56789. This creates a situation where a spider may think that there are multiple URLs with duplicate content, resulting in penalties which will negatively impact search rankings.
Based on the above, it is imperative to employ a CMS that does not pass session dependent data, such as session variables, through a URL string. Doing so will not only create potential usability issues for the end user, but will also result in indexing problems for the search engine spiders.
Finally, search engines gather understanding from your web site’s content by filtering through the HTML code. For this reason, it is extremely important that your CMS generate HTML code that adheres to the latest requirements of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Use the W3C Code Validator to determine if your code meets the W3C standards. Be aware that some CMS’s add in many lines of proprietary code or JavaScript at the top of the file, which can choke search spiders. This violates a cardinal rule of SEO; ‘To always have more content then code’.
Finding a Search Engine Friendly CMS that will Work for You:
Now that we have explored many of the potential problems with Content Management Systems, lets look at how to go about finding one that will be both search engine friendly and suit your specific needs. First you will need to determine what server platform you will be using. Many Content Management Systems use scripting languages and databases that are platform dependant. If you are married to a particular platform, it may limit your CMS options. Ideally, you will want to find a CMS that is platform independent, which can run on any server.
There are many search engine friendly CMS’s that will allow the web site owner to generate a URL structure that is both meaningful to their users and digestible by search engine spiders. Instead of having a URL that is packed with parameters, you can create a URL structure that looks like this: http://www.mysite.com/children/hats/prodid/121576. Your next step is to check whether your CMS builds HTML pages to the latest standards established by the W3C. Most CMS providers will be able to tell you if their solution generates valid code. If they can’t, then ask for a sample page and run it through the W3C Code Validator. In order to rank effectively in organic results of the search engines, it is imperative that your CMS allows you to update your title tags, meta data and alt tags on a page-by-page basis.
The most important aspects of a good CMS are the ease of use and richness of content formatting features. This one is a no-brainer because the very reason that you are looking for a CMS is that YOU DON’T WANT TO CODE. Any good CMS should provide an editing stage that is similar in feature and function to a standard word processing program, such as Microsoft Word. The technical term for this is a WYSIWYG Editor or a Rich Text Editor. This important feature will allow you to type and format your content using standard buttons and keyboard shortcuts. When you publish the content to the live web site, the CMS will write the HTML, CSS and scripting to display your content as it was formatted during the editing stage. Many Content Management Systems are offering additional technologies, such as RSS feed, shopping cart solutions, forums and live chat integration, which can really enhance the functionality of your web site. The key is to find a CMS that will suit your core needs and then determine what add-ons would be beneficial. The ends result will be a web site that is easy to manage and usable for both your customers and the search engines.
Search Engine Friendly Sites--------
If you have ever tried to promote your business or product via the Internet, you know the importance of search engines in determining your success. Search engine friendly sites are a must if you wish to make your online presence known. The majority of people searching for products or information online do so via one of the major search engines. In order for someone to locate your business, it has to have a good spot in the rankings. Your website may be professionally designed but if customers cannot locate it, it really does you little good. Past studies have shown that people searching for information online rarely look past the third page of results. This is why search engine optimization is so important.
One important tip to remember when designing search engine friendly sites is that you need to concentrate on each individual page. Companies such as Google will not rate your website as a whole, but instead will rank each individual page. This is valuable information to remember when writing your content. Although there is no set limit for the number of words per page, most SEO experts recommend that you include at least four-hundred words per page in order to receive good search engine recognition. Any amount written beyond this is generally fine but you want to make sure you have at least enough text to fill a good portion of the page. Websites that contain little content and a great deal of advertising are generally frowned upon.
Another relevant factor of search engine friendly sites is the content itself. Although obtaining a good ranking is important, your content should be well written and make sense to the visitors who will read it. Don’t concentrate solely on stuffing the right mix of keywords into your article. It is just as important that your content sounds natural and flows easily. A good trick for writing online content is to break the article up into smaller paragraphs. This is much easier for online readers to absorb. Also, be sure to include proper headings so visitors can easily locate whatever information they are looking for. The use of bullets will make lists stand out and catch the reader’s eye. Writing content for online purposes is much different than writing a novel or newspaper article. Try to break the content down into small bits for easier reading.
Incoming, outgoing, and reciprocal links can all help in achieving search engine friendly sites. Although content is very important, you will also receive credit for the number of links to your site. A high number of incoming links is extremely helpful to your rating. A good way to improve your link numbers is through the use of reciprocal linking. First you will need to include links from your site to other websites that are either related to or in some way compliment your business. Be sure to choose sites that are of high quality and well written. After including a link to your chosen site, you then send an email or letter to the site owner asking them if they would consider including a link in return back to your site. This technique known as reciprocal linking provides advertising for both websites and improves the link rating of each site too. When trying to increase the number of links to your website, you should keep in mind that this will take a great deal of time and effort. You can not expect to get dozens of new links from quality websites within a week’s time. Most business owners are very selective in which sites they choose to link to. Give them plenty of time to consider your website before making a decision.
Lastly, when designing search engine friendly sites there are certain practices you definitely will want to avoid. While keywords are important, you do not want to include them too often. Be sure to check your keyword density to make sure it is within an acceptable range. The search engines will also penalize your site if you include hidden text in an attempt to boost your ratings. When choosing a title and description for each page, make sure it is actually relevant to the content on your site. For example, if you have a website that sells weight loss products, it is considered inappropriate to include meta keywords related to gambling. Make sure you honestly describe your business and the products you offer. By doing so you will not mislead customers looking for information unrelated to what your site offers. Honestly is the best policy when promoting your website. Not only will it make your business look more professional but it can also help to gain a customer’s trust.
Search Engine Importance--------
"Search Engine Importance
Almost all net users search for solutions and information by using search engines. With search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves, and AOL Search, it’s difficult to think of any other way of finding information on the internet.
Before search engines and the internet, it was not so easy to get information. Today, search engines can instantly return uncannily accurate results instantly from a selection of millions of websites.
Search engines are able to catalog these sites using either crawler-based technology or human powered directories. Before October of 2002, Yahoo’s directory was entirely indexed by hand. Now it’s mainly only small portal sites that build their directories by hand based on human judgment.
The large search engines like Google use web crawlers that “crawl” through the internet indexing the content on the pages. Each time they encounter a link, the crawler splits and another crawls through the linked site.
Google is a pioneer in crawler-based technology. Its crawlers, called Googlebots, spider the web constantly and harvest web pages for the input of the main Google database. Once crawlers return the information, Google uses their patented complex algorithms to make judgments about how a site should rank.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of designing web pages that fit the criteria that search engines weigh when deciding whether a page is relevant to a search query. Those that match the search most accurately, rank at the top of search result pages. Building or rebuilding your site with SEO in mind can and will improve your search ranking when handled and maintained by a knowledgeable expert.
Sites that meet critical search engine criteria will rank higher than those who don't. Aside from a very lucky guess, optimizing pages for search engines is the only way to ensure that your pages have top page of visibility. As access to SEO knowledge becomes more accessible, competition for the top rankings will become even fiercer. 411webinteractive, a search engine marketing company, offers personalized SEO solutions for websites. Its SEO application has been developed for maximum effectiveness without sacrificing design the of a website. It also ensures that your website is accessed by all search engines. If you're ready to start gaining more exposure for your website through higher search engine rankings,
Search Engine Keywords Selection---------
Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to your websites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination - your website - you need to
provide them with specific and effective signs that will direct them right to your site. You do this by creating carefully chosen keywords.
Think of the right keywords as the Open Sesame! of the Internet. Find the exactly right words or phrases, and presto! hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your front door. But if your keywords are too general or too over-used, the possibility of visitors actually making it all the way to your site - or of seeing any real profits from the visitors that do arrive - decreases dramatically.
Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the right people may never get the chance to find out about it.
So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases.
You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words for your search phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven't followed certain specific steps, you are probably WRONG. It's hard to be objective when you are right in the center
of your business network, which is the reason that you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords from the inside. You need to be able to think like your customers. And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go directly to the source.
Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of potential search words and phrases yourself, ask for words from as many potential customers as you can. You will most likely find out that your understanding of your business and your customers' understanding is significantly different.
The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find the words you accumulate from them are words and phrases you probably never would have considered from deep inside the trenches of your business.
Only after you have gathered as many words and phrases from outside resources should you add your own keyword to the list. Once you have this list in hand, you are ready for the next step: evaluation.
The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a small number of words and phrases that will direct the highest number of quality visitors to your website. By "quality visitors" I mean those consumers who are most likely to make a purchase rather than just cruise around your site and take off for greener pastures. In evaluating the effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three elements: popularity, specificity, and motivation.
Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is an objective quality. The more popular your keyword is, the more likely the chances are that it will be typed into a search engine which will then bring up your URL.
You can now purchase software that will rate the popularity of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating based on real search engine activity. Software such as WordTracker will even suggest variations of your words and
phrases. The higher the number this software assigns to a given keyword, the more traffic you can logically expect to be directed to your site. The only fallacy with this concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the search engine position you will need to obtain. If you are down at the bottom of the search results, the consumer will probably never scroll down to find you.
Popularity isn't enough to declare a keyword a good choice. You must move on to the next criteria, which is specificity. The more specific your keyword is, the greater the likelihood that the consumer who is ready to purchase your goods or services will find you.
Let's look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have obtained popularity rankings for the keyword "automobile companies." However, you company specializes in bodywork only. The keyword "automobile body shops" would rank lower on the popularity scale than "automobile companies," but it would nevertheless serve you much better. Instead of getting a slew of people interested in everything from buying a car to changing their oil filters, you will get only those consumers with trashed front ends or crumpled fenders being directed to your site. In other words, consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who will immediately find you. Not only that, but the greater the
specificity of your keyword is, the less competition you will face.
The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, this requires putting yourself inside the mind of the customer rather than the seller to figure out what motivation prompts a person looking for a service or product to type in a particular word or phrase. Let's look at another example, such as a consumer who is searching for a job as an IT manager in a new city. If you have to choose between "Seattle job listings" and "Seattle IT recruiters" which do
you think will benefit the consumer more? If you were looking for this type of specific job, which keyword would you type in? The second one, of course! Using the second keyword targets people who have decided on their career,
have the necessary experience, and are ready to enlist you as their recruiter, rather than someone just out of school who is casually trying to figure out what to do with his or her life in between beer parties. You want to find people who are ready to act or make a purchase, and this requires subtle tinkering of your keywords until your find the most specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the most motivated traffic to you site.
Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done. You must continually evaluate performance across a variety of search engines, bearing in mind that times and trends change, as does popular lingo. You cannot rely on your log traffic analysis alone because it will not tell you how many of your visitors actually made a purchase.
Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help you judge the effectiveness of your keywords in individual search engines. There is now software available that analyzes consumer behavior in relation to consumer traffic. This allows you to discern which keywords are bringing you the most valuable customers.
This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a good keyword; profits per visitor do. You need to find keywords that direct consumers to your site who actually buy your product, fill out your forms, or download your product. This is the most important factor in evaluating the efficacy of a keyword or phrase, and should be the sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective or inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better
profits.
Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula for search engine success. This may sound like a lot of work - and it is! But the amount of informed effort you put into your keyword campaign is what will ultimately generate your business' rewards.
Search Engine Marketing--------
As part of your overall Internet marketing strategy, it is important to devote resources to search engine marketing. This component of your marketing mix has become increasingly critical due to the importance that search engines and directories play in how prospects access information. Search engines have the advantage of driving highly qualified traffic due to the self-selection process initiated by the searcher in choosing their search query.
Research shows that there are more than 8 hundred million people in the world have the habit to access Internet. 86% of them tend to locate information via search engines. In addition, research shows that most people will only look at 2 to 3 pages of search results, so your ranking among the results is becoming increasingly important.
When developing your search engine strategy you need to understand how search engines work, how they are different from directories, and how to maximize their effectiveness in making sure that your business gets as much exposure as your budget allows.
Search Engines populate their databases for search results through robotic software programs that crawl the web looking for content to index. This crawling requires that the software find text-based machine-readable content to index and categorize a site. The content accessed is from the meta tags (title, description, keywords, alt image tags), filenames and content on pages throughout your site. Spiders tend to look at the root directory, 1st level files and occasionally will spider your site to 2nd level content. To determine a site’s meta tags, right click your mouse and select View Source.
If your site has not been developed with search engines in mind, you could have difficulty in having your content properly indexed. Search engines also determine relative rankings of results based on certain algorithms that include factors like link popularity, site traffic, site content, etc.
When search engines first evolved, they were based on a “free” business model, where conceptually all sites had an equal chance of being indexed and displayed in search results if their developers optimized with some basic steps. While the basic steps are still an important part of your search engine marketing strategy, they no longer are enough. This is due to the fact that many search engines (and dot bombs) found that it wasn’t just about capturing eyeballs, but was also about making money. This has led search engines to modify their business models to capitalize on all possible sources of revenue generated by their traffic and/or technology. Traffic was seen as a logical source for advertising revenues and technology was felt to be transferable for use at other sites requiring robust search engines. To date, most search engines have not elected to go towards a subscription-based model where searchers get charged for accessing information. These new business models require that site developers work even more closely with marketing strategists to ensure that the most effective business decisions are made.
Search Engine Marketing 101-----
Search Engines are one of the most popular methods of finding information in the 21st century. Gone are the days of opening an encyclopedia to find the answer to a question or skimming the yellow pages to locate a local specialist. Search engines are helping us tackle every conceivable problem that we happen to face in our daily life. Need to do research on the Civil War? Car having problems? Shopping for a new microwave? Curious about evolution? The possibilities are only limited by your imagination. Search Engines provide a means to possibly answer any question that anybody has at any time. So how can this help us in promoting our business?
To start, let’s discuss how search engines work, without boring you with too much computer tech babble. Search engines consist of a number of very sophisticated software programs that gather and organize information from the internet. The first important program is called a “robot spider” that is used to index, or “find” pages posted on the internet. The search engine then uses an algorithm, or mathematical equation, to determine how important a web page is in relation to a particular word or phrase (referred to as keywords or keyword phrases.)
Let’s use an example to better understand this concept. Say you went to Google.com and entered the words “los angeles pizza”. The results shown by Google will be shown on your screen. The results are numbered starting with #1; Google is telling you that, based on its very sophisticated mathematical equation, that the number one listing is the most relevant web page for the words “los angeles”. Hopefully, that # 1 listing will provide you with the information you are looking for.
Now imagine if you were a pizza shop owner in Los Angeles, and your websites home page just so happened to be that # 1 listing on Google. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see how this listing is an important marketing tool for your pizza business.
Now, before you jump out of your seat, hold on, because it gets better. Another software program the search engines use has the ability to keep track of how many times a word or phrase is being searched. This is where the dynamics of search engine marketing really start to shine.
In traditional marketing, like television or radio, demographics are used to determine what audience you should target your business to. A commercial for a kid’s cereal would probably be shown during a children’s television show. TV companies would charge more for an ad spot that ran during a show that attracted more viewers for a specific “target market”. Super Bowl ads are the most expensive because the program attracts the attention a millions of 18-35 year old men who tend to spend quite a bit of money on consumer products, thus the crazy amount of money that is spent of advertising.
With search, however, the information that is collected helps us target our websites (which are a basically commercials that run 24 hours a day) to a more specific audience; we can actually pinpoint roughly how many people searched for the words “ford mustang parts”. Now if you are someone who sells ford mustang parts, this information is very important to you. Ten years ago, the only way of marketing your business would be to purchase advertising that probably targeted a large number of people, usually in a car trade magazine. You would have a good idea about your audience, but you didn’t have any real numbers of how many people were looking for your product. With search engine marketing, it’s possible to focus marketing campaigns on just people that are actually looking for the products or services you sell, saving you precious time and money that would otherwise be wasted on those not interested in you. This is why search engine marketing is especially important to the small business owner, who usually does not have deep pockets to spend on marketing and advertising to begin with.
Search Engine Marketing has taken the business world by storm, and has propelled search engines like Google to become huge, billion dollar corporations through their advertising revenues. Traditional media has begun to transform as the barriers between television, radio, print, and the internet begin to blur. The internet has introduced a new performance-based marketing and advertising platform that will spill over into these other forms of advertising. Understanding the actual process of marketing your website through these search engines is crucial in understanding how the marketing industry is evolving and changing in the new century.
Search Engine Marketing – Exclusive Services---------
Get your site exposed. Are you ruining your own campaign?
Marketing is not something to be forgotten when delving into an online business. Marketing is in fact just as, if not even more important today in promoting a website than any offline business. So what does it take to market on online business? Well, it’s the newest strategy on the market and it’s called Search Engine Marketing.
In the same way a business would choose an advertising company to lead an advertising campaign, an online business should choose an online advertising company to lead their search engine marketing campaign. Effective marketing requires the experience and expertise of professional advertisers. For a website, this means knowledge and understanding of the internet, and more importantly, of search engines. Search Engines dictate the way people shop online.
A search marketing company is the best way to get your site some online exposure. There are a great number of tasks to get a site ready for search marketing. Keyword research, placement, and selection are all an essential part of targeting your market. Search marketing companies have the tools and the technology to select the best keywords and keyword phrases for your audience. Other important considerations for site include overall website design and theme. There are many factors in design that can affect the way search engines rank a website.
Website hosting is another important key to search marketing. Exclusive search marketing services include a complete analysis of your hosting account to ensure good service. If your hosting partner causes your site to be down frequently, it can be detrimental to your search marketing campaign. If your site is down when a search engine comes to visit, this can be bad news. It’s also important that you have all day access to your files to work on the site. Most importantly, there may be banned sites on that hosts IP address, and this can cause the search engines to automatically ban your site also.
Once your site design and hosting are up to par, search engine marketing dictates a vigorous campaign to market the site. Advertising consists of tactics to increase the visibility of a site, to get it noticed in more places by more search engines. A search engine marketing company will submit the site to major search engines, and other sites used by search engines to rank sites. Once a site is submitted, it must be maintained carefully and monitored frequently to assess rankings.
The industry of the internet and the search engines is changing everyday. To make a business successful, it has to keep up with the ever changing trends. A company with exclusive search marketing services can help a business meet its goals and reach success. With marketing a website, the guidelines are specific and the results are real and the success of a business is not worth gambling with.
Search Engine Marketing – The Full Package---------
After conducting extensive research I have come to the conclusion that there is a great deal of misunderstanding surrounding the subject of Search Engine Marketing. The greatest misunderstanding is in confusing the terms Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
One would think that those individuals claiming to be SEO experts should be knowledgeable about the subject and recognize the clear distinction. Apparently this is not the case; the internet is full of misguided information, from so called experts. Proving, I suppose that the industry is liberally spattered with cowboys.
To start, let us first define the term “Search Engine Optimisation” (henceforth referred to as SEO).
SEO
SEO is the process of manipulating the structure and content of a website in such a way that it will perform better in the search engine’s organic listings. The techniques involved can be sub-structured into several areas of activity, as detailed below.
1) Page readiness – Search engines expect to crawl clean HTML code. Every page of a website should be validated to eliminate errors and sloppy coding.
2) Site readiness – Search engine web bots follow the links on your web pages and thereby find new pages to index. If a web bot meets a broken link it cannot continue spidering your site. Make sure you have no broken links. Also, provide a site map. A tool for creating site maps is available at my website, www.pro-seo.co.uk.
3) Keyword selection – It is vitally important to select the right keywords for which a particular page is to be optimized. The most obvious keywords are not always the best choice, and are often mega-competitive. Choose wisely.
4) Site structure – Your website should be structured in such a way that each page can be optimized for a maximum of two keywords. Do not try to optimize for a lot of keywords on one page. Remember, you have to write for your users. Writing copy is a balancing act that keeps both users and search engines happy, and is better achieved on a well structured site.
5) Copy writing – the visible text on your web pages should be structured to include the two most important keywords for that page’s content. Get the keywords into headers. Work the keywords into paragraph text, having your keywords appear near the beginning, near the middle, and near the end. Make some keywords bold, some italic and some underlined.
6) HTML tags – The most important of these is the Title tag. Get both keywords for that page into the Title tag, without repetition. For example, if your main key phrase is “diet plans”, and your second phrase is “diet supplements”, the Title tag should read “diet plans and supplements”. Do not repeat the word diet, to search engines it may look like spamming. If your main concern is to improve your Google ranking, you may have overlooked the Meta keywords and Meta description tags, don’t, there are more search engines than Google and they can all bring traffic. Also, get the keywords into H1 tags, H2 tags, alt attributes, and very important, your link text.
And after doing all that for every page in your website you may be asking: so where does SEM come in?
SEM
SEM includes SEO plus all the other things you can do to boost your visibility in the search engines and increase targeted visitors to your website. A condensed list may be as follows:
1) SEO (see above).
2) A link building strategy
3) Pay per click (PPC) campaigns.
4) Banner exchanges.
5) Press releases.
6) And any other activity that will get your website noticed.
SEM then, is the full package. Whereas SEO techniques are a vital, but not the only, component of that package.
Search Engine Marketing – What It Is and How Your Can Business Benefit From It------
Simply put, Search Engine Marketing or SEM is the fastest, most powerful, highly-targeted, most dynamic, highly-measurable and most cost-effective marketing strategy that can give your business the power to reach potential customers anywhere in the world anytime for a little as USD $0.05 cost per customer acquisition or even for free!
Search Engine Marketing or SEM is about making sure that your Web site appears on the top 20 of search results every time potential customers search for whatever products and/or services that you offer on any of the major Search Engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN which collectively accounts for over 90% of all Search Engine originating traffic.
There are of course other smaller Search Engines that focus on niche industries such as Kayak (www.kayak.com Travel Search Engine) and country-specific Search Engines like Baidu (www.baidu.com) which is very popular in China.
How Popular Are Search Engines?
A study last November 2005 finds that the number of people who use Internet Search Engines to find information has jumped over the last year, claiming a solid No. 2 spot behind e-mail as the most popular activity online. In the year 2003, 250 million searches were made daily on Google alone!
How Does It Work?
On the Internet, whenever somebody wants to find something, they use Search Engines. As spam continues to lessen the effectiveness of email as a marketing tool, Search Engine Marketing is fast becoming the marketing strategy of choice for companies who want to reach a global audience 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, either for free or for as little as USD $0.05 per visitor. As the Internet becomes more and more a part of our everyday lives, the greater their role becomes in helping businesses connect with their customers at that crucial point in their buying decision process (when they are searching for it).
Right now, there are probably people… potential customers who are looking for whatever products or services you are offering on any or all of the major Search Engines. When potential customers type in the keywords that they are searching for and press that “Search” button, do they find you or your competitors instead?
How can you get your business to appear on Search Engines?
Of course, you first must have a Web site. If you don’t have one, get one designed by someone who has a decent understanding of Search Engine Optimization. I’ve come across business Web sites that are so badly designed from an SEM perspective that you can’t even find it even if you search for the company name or business name itself! Even worse, their sites are designed in a way that prevents instead of facilitates their visitors to transact with them.
There are basically 2 ways for you to get your Web site to appear on Search Engines. You either get it listed on the “organic” or natural search results by doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or you launch a Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaign for the keywords you want your Web site to appear for. Ideally, you should be doing both because a PPC campaign can start driving highly-qualified traffic to your Web site almost instantly while you wait for your SEO campaign to gain momentum and get your Web site within the top 20 of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page), otherwise known as “organic” or “natural” search results, which can take months to happen.
What Is Search Engine Optimization?
To get your Web site to appear on the SERPs you need to launch an SEO campaign. The main problem with SEO is that it can be very difficult and take anywhere from several months to over 1 year before you can achieve good rankings and appear within the top 20 rankings or top 2 pages of the organic search results which is all the results that most people are willing to see before they make a decision and choose what Web site to ultimately visit and do business with. Getting your Web site listed in the top 20 results is going to be a constant battle, especially if you are in a highly competitive industry and your competitors are also actively doing the same thing.
How your Web site is designed determines in great part how well its Search Engine rankings will be. Do you adore that lovely Flash animation on your home page? Loose it! Search Engines can’t see that Flash animation and they rely almost exclusively on text to determine the relevance and consequently, the ranking of every Web page.
What Is A Pay Per Click Campaign?
Pay Per Click or PPC campaigns are basically ads (Sponsored Links) that appear alongside the organic search results whenever someone uses a Search Engine to search for anything that he’s interested in. The reason why it’s called Pay Per Click is because you spend only when somebody actually “clicks” on your PPC ad and not every time somebody sees it. These ads are controlled and are made to appear only every time specific “keywords” are searched for. The level of control an advertiser has over his PPC campaign is so high that he can control exactly how and who gets to see his PPC ads and most importantly, how much he spends for it. For as little as USD $0.05 per click on Google and USD $0.10 on Yahoo and MSN, you can start driving highly-qualified visitors to your Web site.
What Are Its Advantages Over Traditional Marketing Mediums?
While you may get an increase in sales when you put out an ad on TV, radio or print, it is almost impossible to track how well your sales were influenced “directly” by your ads. With Search Engine Marketing, you would know exactly how much you are spending and how much actual revenue you are getting for each cent that you spend for it. You can even know where your customers are coming from using Web Analytics such as the popular and free Google Analytics.
The ability to control your marketing expenditure, track your campaign’s performance, identify and target your market, a truly global reach, measurable results and being able to make changes to your campaign on the fly makes Search Engine Marketing far superior to traditional marketing medium.
How Effective Is Search Engine Marketing?
It is not impossible to convert 50% of your Search Engine originating traffic. The real beauty of Search Engine Marketing is that it allows your customers to find you instead of you trying to find them.
How much does it cost?
The cost of any Search Engine Marketing campaign depends greatly on the scope and extent of it. The more keywords and the broader the audience you want to target, the more it’s going to cost but the greater the benefit would be. Maybe the more important question is… “How much is it costing your business by not doing Search Engine Marketing?”
Search Engine Marketing: Top 3 Ways To Improve Your Rank--------
If you wish your online business to succeed then search engine marketing is of the utmost impotence. It all boils down to quality high value, preferably unique content. This is what the search engines crave. Its what they are always looking for! Heres my top 3 methods of search engine marketing.
* Always add fresh & unique content to the site: This is INCREDIBLY impotent. You will not succeed if you ignore this. Its a good idea would be to write a series of short articles, (Unquie of course) for submission to the directories. You must include a message explaining that more quality unique content can be found on your website, then obviously include your link!The point is to impress them with your mini articles, then lure them to your site!
* Press Releases: another excellent way to gain quality links, and one that i myself should brush up on! Again I suggest that you do a search for tips and info on how to write a press release. Then do a search for a press release submission service. PRWeb.com appears to be a good choice.
* Articles: This is 'IT' for 2006! Articles are an incredible way to obtain quality inbound links. Submit them to article directories or, even better submit them to a article submission service. There are some good and pretty cheap ones around!. I like 'iSnare'. Try to include some relevant keywords as the search engines will pick up on these. Search engines LOVE articles! Try to submit to the "heavy weight" directories. A good tip is to check the google rank of each site. If its higher than 6, submit! The two largest are ezinearticles.com & Goarticles.com, just to get you started!
I hope these tips give you something to think about. Search engine marketing can be very tedious, but the rewards are there for the taking!!
Search Engine Marketing comes of age--------
The Search Engine Marketing (SEM) industry is going through phenomenal changes as number of search engines increase alongside rapidly evolving techniques and technologies. Today, your web presence is incomplete without strategic online promotion and one is forced to take a serious look at search engine marketing because that is where your customers are. As a result, search engine marketing specialists, have devised many SEM techniques like pay-per-click management, link popularity and Adwords campaigns in Google are becoming much sought after components of any advertising campaigns and internet marketing strategies.
A professional and specialized search engine optimization company should provide with you with customized and well-targeted internet marketing strategy, services and solutions. The SEM strategy should help you achieve maximum awareness about your website, products and services. It should deliver targeted traffic to your website. It should achieve higher level of sales through your website, help you keep your costs low and create brand loyalty among your target audience.
For instance, web design and search engine marketing specialist, Orient InfoSolutions provides strategic solutions for companies wishing to market their business online. Over the years, they have earned for themselves a high reputation as a search engine marketing specialist, specializing in internet marketing strategy and internet marketing solution.
An effective search engine optimization strategy should help you achieve top 10 ranking for your chosen and targeted key phrases in premier search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo. In a study conducted in July 2005, Nielson/Netratings reported that the search engine market share was highest for Google at 48%. Yahoo and MSN had the market shares of 22% and 12% respectively.
A well-designed SEO process should involve indepth research for high quality search engine optimization keywords research that are relevant to your website; writing and incorporating high quality, timely and targeted, search engine optimization keywords rich articles that are of interest to your target audience; defining and incorporating Directory Structure in the website so that directories and file names hit the top keywords you wish to optimize; programming that ensures that text content out weighs the html content and the web pages are visible in all types of browsers, i.e. IE, Netscape, and Opera; meta tag Optimization and submitting your web site to the major search engines and directories. Also researching search engines and directories catering to your target audience and submitting to them is important.
Besides, your SEO solutions provider should build up your link popularity through link exchanges with complimentary non-competing sites. You can also opt for a well-devised Pay Per Click Campaign in Overture, Google Adwords and other smaller PPC search engines.
Orient InfoSolutions is a leading IT solutions provider that specializes in creating strategically positioned and targeted SEM campaigns for you including SEO, PPC campaigns, Link Popularity and online promotion. You can visit OrientInfoSolutions.com for some indepth information on the various kinds of search engine marketing strategies needed to make your website or internet marketing campaign highly effective.
Search engine marketing company- Take your business to new heights-----
Search engine marketing isn’t a new technique but with the changing trend it has gained a lot of popularity and importance. If we talk about the potential market, the UK is one country which carries true potential of search engine marketing.
You can find the best and competitive search engine marketing company in UK, which not just guarantees high ranking but also more business. If you perform a search using keywords like search engine marketing company UK and internet marketing company UK, you will be bombarded with staggering results.
The core process of search engine marketing or website marketing is to attract new prospective clients and buy new customers. Initially you might have low sales but once you are constantly on, no one can ever beat you. You will be amazed to know that across the Internet, every month millions of people perform search on various keywords and key-phrases. This means if you are offering that service and you are ranking high, more business will be coming your way. Search engine marketing company in UK’s main aim is not just to rank your website higher but to push your sales too.
Generally there are two approaches when it comes to search engine marketing strategy. If you wish to enjoy higher ranking and that too just in a few months, you have to get black hat SEO techniques. These black hat SEO techniques fetch you high ranking along with increased traffic but in long run you will be at loss. This is because contemporary search engines have become very clever to judge whether that person is applying legal techniques or not. You will be getting whooping results but in the long run either there will be a sharp dip in your business or you will get your website blacklisted. And this is certainly not your aim.
Whereas, the other technique is white hat SEO technique. This process and approach might be a little slow but in the long run you will be at a benefiting end. You will get not just high ranking but your website will never ever see a dip, hence, why to go for something which proves to be dangerous for your business in the long run. Moreover, search engine marketing company in UK even guides you in taking steps that prove to be beneficial for you. During your search engine marketing strategy, try to find each keyword that you identify for search engine marketing initiatives. It’s true that there are numerous keywords which mean the same but only a few are able to deliver the desired result. Search engine marketing company provides a wide range of effective as well as targeted services that drive highly targeted visitors and traffic to your website.
It has been now proved that if you wish to stay on the top in this rank world, you have to hire services of the best search engine marketing company in UK. So what are you waiting for, perform a simple search in search engines and locate the bankable search engine marketing company in UK.
Search Engine Optimisation - The significance---
From a small local business in a town to a big industry playing on an international platform, marketing has been a prime tool for any company or business to succeed. People started with using tools like write-ups, references, pamphlets and much more to convey their means or advertise themselves among a group. But now is a time where everything happens just on the click of your finger. And in this time is required marketing at the speed of light, marketing with niche concepts that are applied even before a common man would think.
With the time we are moving from a physical world to a virtual world. Companies started building up their websites to have a presence in the virtual world. But likewise there are billions of websites. What would be your identity then? In this age of Internet and Technology, getting your business visible to your customer segment is more important and this is where the Search Engine Optimization comes into picture.
Building up a website is like making a saw and optimizing your website is like sharpening that saw to use. And it is quite logical that you cannot take optimum use of your saw without sharpening it.
Search Engines are a system through which one gets the information the later wants. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines through search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site. In simple words, Search engine optimization (SEO) just means your site is as accessible as possible to the search engines to improve the chances that they will serve it up when your potential customers type in specific search terms (called keywords). The more easily search engines find your site, the higher up it appears on their results pages.
In this world, SEO is definitely a smart move for any business.
But getting your site ranked for your keywords, there are many aspects that play a key role: a proper site structure, clean coding and necessary keywords, to name a few. This requires the every page of your website to be optimized. Every page should have a proper title, genuine keywords and a perfect description that matches the page. These title, keywords and description have to be relevant for every individual page. Search engines “crawl” the Web looking for the keywords that their users enter, so putting those keywords throughout your site means your pages will be picked up during searches by the search engine. Hence you have to put your foot into your customer’s shoe to understand what keywords your customer would use to search for a particular product or service. You have to learn your customers’ mind and this will give you the best of Title and meta (Keywords and description) to optimize your website. Also, optimizing your content is equally important as that plays an important role. You may optimize your content with putting keywords in your content, giving the Heading tags to titles, giving bold effects wherever necessary, giving links (to phrases in the content) to internal pages wherever appropriate.
Also, other activities to rank up your website in search engines are submitting your website URL into more and more search engines, adding your website URL into online directories, building up links with other relevant business sites, submitting rich articles into article sites, submitting your blog pages into various blog sites, submitting Press Releases into various Press Release sites. This will both increase the traffic overall to your site and enhance your search engine rankings, since the search engines pick up on the number of times people link to and from your site and rank your website higher accordingly.
People try many techniques to boost up their website ranking in these search engines for the specific keywords. People make researches to add-on their skills to make this task easier, faster and more genuine.
There are companies that provide services for SEO to other companies. We at Semaphore Software (www.semaphore-software.com) have a dedicated team that researches on the SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) activities and undertake projects to upgrade the website ranking for our clients from different businesses.
It has become very important to move ahead with the fast pace if you wish to survive your business in this global competition.
Search Engine Optimisation: Black Hat or White Hat SEO?--------
If you are looking around for a search engine optimisation company to carry out some SEO work on your website, then make sure you choose the right colour hat. There are a large number of companies that adopt a fast and unethical approach to SEO, known as black hat SEO, while there are a smaller number or companies that implement ethical SEO work, known as white hat SEO. The key to choosing the right colour, which is obviously the white, is as follows…
Before you even think of taking on a search engine optimisation company, the first thing is to shop around and see what is out on the market. The same principles would apply if you were to buy a new computer. You would look at a few models, prices and what each model has to offer. If an SEO company was to offer a service that would guarantee you top ranks, there is a very good chance they are wearing a black hat. No SEO company can guarantee top ranks since they have no direct control over the search engines and their ranking algorithms. They can however mention that top ranks are highly achievable due to their previous success with other clients.
Be sure to look at a companies’ portfolio page (if they have one on their website or simply ask them) and carry out some research on their clients. This can be done by looking at the client’s website performance within the search engines for the selected keywords they have been optimised for. Another good idea would be to write a courtesy email to the client asking for a reference on the SEO company they have used to optimise their website.
The most important giveaway on a black hat SEO company is the way they would describe their services. If a company cannot go into detail on how they carry out their work (meaning they are very vague), and this involves justifying each step of their work, then it would be best to avoid their services. A proper SEO firm will be more than happy to explain their services in detail and justify their reasons for using such techniques. If you cannot quiet understand the techniques they use then be sure to do some research on the internet and read SEO articles that explain each technique. If you find that their work fits along the lines of your research and that it is all ethical, then they are a company you should put on your list.
A last point to mention, a company should stress the phrase ‘patience is the key to success with SEO’. If a company claims that they can achieve results very fast, then it is time to start running. In theory, SEO that is carried out correctly on a website will take time until the results start to show (most cases 3 to 6 months but could be longer).
Would you like to know what could happen to your website if you hire a black hat SEO company, regardless of how big or small your website is in terms of brand recognition? An example would be the story of the BMW German website. They hired a black hat SEO firm to carry out some work on their website and that resulted in their site being banned from the Google ranks. So it is best to do your research on SEO by reading articles such as this one and question a companies approach on search engine optimisation. This will ensure that you have selected the clean white hat and that your website will not be tarnished from the black.
Search Engine Optimisation, Google Top Ten and Web Traffic----
While high quality content is an important part of search engine
optimisation, SEO, it can and should be used for more. The majority of
internet users actually read the information that they find online;
therefore, there is a good chance for you that your website content will
actually be read. You should try and make your website content more easy to
understand and attractive. It is also important to note that high quality
content is likely to attract better advertisements. So make sure that
your website grabs it all.
Well, the design of your website is also important. In fact, it may be
just as important as your content. You want your website to look
professional, attractive, and appealing. You will want to go with plain,
simple, yet professional. If you need assistance with the design of your
website, you may want to think about hiring the services of a
professional web designer.
A lot of people also try setting up multiple websites that connect to
your main site. And believe me this is actually a very effective way to
build up your hit count, but only if your site's content makes for
excellent reading or viewing. Without quality content, your site will soon
stagnate, and all the other connecting sites and blogs with it. If your
site has quality content, then this should be no problem for you.
And let me tell you that the best way to see an increase of visitors to
your site is to make sure you have a large amount of unique and
relevant content on your site. The search engines like the content that
readers will find useful and informative. Make sure and try to provide as
much value and information in your writing as possible and place
everything you write on a different page of your site. Doing this aids your
site's popularity and results in it becoming an online "authority"
website. This can result in a massive jump in search engine rankings for your
site. The best part is that search engine traffic is completely free.
The visitors in your website themselves is a great source of
advertising, because once they visit your website they usually recommend their
friends to visit your website and spreads from there, resulting in higher
targeted traffic. For this to happen, your website should also be
attention grabbing.
Another effective way to invite targeted traffic to your website is
buying advertising space on websites that discuss topics about your
product. You can be sure that the people visiting your website are interested
and may possibly buy your product. You can do free advertising for
your website as well. And by doing such you can attract a lot of visitors
for your website.
We all know that website promotion is really important so that one can
attract as many visitors as possible.
The aim is to use the web traffic statistics to figure out how well and
how popular your site is working for your visitors. One way to
determine this is to find out how long on average your visitors spend on your
site. If the time spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an
underlying problem.
Finally, if you notice that users have started finding your website by
typing in your company name, all it means is that you have achieved a
significant level of brand recognition, and this is a sure sign of your
success!!!
Search Engine Optimisation: How Accurate are Keyword Tools?-----
In search engine optimisation, it is a crucial element to select the right keywords when optimising a website. The obvious reason being, if you have keywords with no search volume, you will not receive any traffic. Secondly, if you have keywords that are too competitive, you will find it very difficult (almost impossible) to win high ranks. So how do we find the in between balance for both obstacles? This is where keyword tools would come into place, but how accurate are they?
To start, the main keyword research tools that are found on the market today are Wordtracker, Overture Keyword Tool and Trellian Keyword Discovery. Now I bet many of you are pulling your hair out over which keywords are going to be suitable for optimisation. What makes it probably even more stressful is the varying results between the three different keyword tools i.e. one keyword tool may show a particular keyword to be very good, while another tool may suggest a whole different result for the same keyword. Well stop stressing right now! The truth is that we don’t really know how accurate these keyword tools are and we should only use their search volume figures as an indication as to whether a keyword is popular amongst search engine users.
Let’s say a keyword phrase, “dog products”, has a search volume of 5,000 searches per month on the Overture Keyword Tool. To make an assumption that “dog products” is a good keyword for optimisation, based ONLY on the Overture figure, would be a very bad assumption. However, it gives us a rough idea of the search volume for that particular keyword. The next step would be to use Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery to see if a similar amount of search volume is present for “dog products” (remember to convert searches for each tool to a common time frame i.e. monthly or daily). If we have a very low search volume in BOTH Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery, then I would be very skeptical about using “dog products” for optimisation. The whole idea is to get at least two of the three keyword tools to reflect reasonable / high search volumes before considering that keyword to be suitable for optimisation. If you have all three keyword tools returning reasonable / high search volumes for “dog products”, then the chances are that this keyword is reasonable / high in search volume and definitely worth considering for optimisation.
Once a good set of keywords have been agreed upon through the use of the keyword tools, you should then focus on the keywords that have a low / reasonable amount of competing web pages. There is no point trying to compete for a keyword that has 1,000,000 web pages in competition for it. If you are good at SEO then you could achieve high ranks for that keyword, but it would require a lot of time and investment which could be spent on better things. The lower the competition is, then the more chance of achieving higher ranks.
To recap, there is no indication to say that keyword tools are 100% accurate. Whilst the reseller of the tool may suggest otherwise, I highly doubt it. The results should be taken like a “grain of salt” as they are only useful to give you an idea as to what the search volume might be like for a particular keyword (high, moderate or low). With each tool obtaining its results using different algorithms, in some cases their results will not support each other. Provided you use two of the keyword tools to investigate the search volume for keywords, you should be able to make a good decision as to whether a keyword might be worth optimising for. With that in mind, it would also be wise to use your common sense to determine if a keyword is one that YOU would actually use in a search. Otherwise, what would be the point of optimisation in the first place?
Search Engine Optimisation: One Link is Better than Ten-----
That can’t be right! Shouldn’t ten links be better than one? It is usually the case where more is better. However, when it comes to gaining links, having more links isn’t necessarily better than having a few good links. In fact, having too many irrelevant links could possibly harm your website’s visibility within the search engines.
These days, search engines are placing more emphasis on incoming links to a website when evaluating rank. The reason being is because they are difficult to obtain from trusted sources (a "by the book" website such as the Dmoz directory) and it is a good way to partially eliminate the group of people who abuse the "on the page" factors of optimisation (page spamming). How is this so? Well, if you have someone who is abusing the "on the page" factors and they have no trusted links to their page (they will most likely not get any at all due to spam) then there is no chance of them getting a good listing. However, people have worked out ways in getting a large number of links, through link farms and other tactics, regardless of the quality of their website. As the search engines are aware of this, it brings us to the topic of how one link can be better than ten.
Obtaining one link from a trusted source can be very difficult in the sense that they do not issue links to just about anyone. If you have a good website with relevant information, then you will get them. It is for this reason one link from a trusted source can better a multiple of links from other websites. As a trusted source website is "trusted" by search engines, it will also trust the websites it links to. If you have ten links from your best friends, it will help you in some sense, but no where near as much as the one link from a source like Dmoz, unless one of your friends has a very reputable website amongst the search engines.
Having too many irrelevant links could harm your website’s visibility in the search engines. What is meant by this is having links from websites that have no relation to yours. An example of this would be a site about cars linking to another site about medicine (unless the sites are reputable and have a good reason for the link i.e. there is a relationship made between cars and medicine). Search engines will pick up on this sort of link and will give it no weight in boosting your visibility. Obtain many of these irrelevant links, then it could be seen as spam (like a link farm tactic) and that will lower the popularity of your website within search engines.
The key here is to focus on quality and not quantity. Gaining a few good / relevant links will take you much further than a lot of irrelevant links. To get these quality links, start off by placing your website in directories, but be sure to avoid any "on the page" spamming as this will not get you accepted. Once search engines have acknowledged a presence of relevant links, follow up on it and research some ways to obtain more. As time passes, you will notice that your website’s performance will increase, as the links age, provided you have carried out search engine optimisation. Avoid obtaining the irrelevant links even though it may be tempting to see fast results. It will only be a matter of time before a search engine realises the spam tactic, and as the saying goes "fast rise, fast fall".
Search Engine Optimisation for Joomla Websites--------
My name is Chris Diprose and I am the Manager of Web Design Australia firm Kanga Internet. I have been an active member of the Joomla Community for several years and have an established business based upon Joomla Development in Melbourne, Australia. My main focus is Search Engine Optimization for Joomla Content Management System.
This article focuses on the first few steps in the Web Development and Design of a decent search optimized website in Joomla. Okay let’s get into it. Once I have setup the standard Joomla installation there are a few component types that are mandatory to install and I believe these to be:- a sitemap component and a SEF URL changing component. These are by far the most important components to have on any Joomla Installation.
What is a SEF URL changing component and how does it relate to Web Design in Joomla? SEF stands for Search Engine Friendly and a normal installation of Joomla has a URL like this: index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5&Itemid=6
When it comes to search engines they are really smart in many ways but the normal Joomla URL describes nothing about the web page and its contents and so they really do dislike it in many ways. It is what I call, Search Optimization Stunted (SOS). I like this term because it describes exactly what it needs; some help! This is where a SEF URL changing component comes into play. These types of components take the normal Joomla URL and change it into something more meaningful to both us and the search engines. e.g.: buy-blue-widgets-here.html
From my Web Design & Development experience this is the single most important component installation you can make on a Joomla Website. I want to detail my personal best picks. There are a few available to us but I believe the JoomSEF component to be the best of the best when it comes to Search Engine Friendly URL's. There is only one drawback to choosing this component and that is a hidden advert in the code from the original makers. If you search on Google for "Joomsef patch" then you should be able to find a decent article on how to get around this problem. Looking at the "best of the rest" of the SEF components we find a new component (May 2007) called sh404SEF which is ad free, if you search on the Joomla extensions website you will find this one. I believe it to be strongly based on JoomSEF; in look, feel and functionality I have noticed this. Another SEF friendly component for Joomla is OpenSEF. When OpenSEF was released about a year ago it was great but since that time there has been no updates and the project has lagged way behind Joomla development. Having said though, it still does a reasonable job of converting Joomla URL's to search engine friendly but I found in my testing that it proved to be duplicating too many URL's.
Which ever one you choose, download the component and then using the Joomla Administration interface install the component. Then go to Site->Global Configuration->SEO (tab) and ensure “Search Engine Friendly URL's" is set to yes. Ensure your htaccess.txt file in the root directory of the Joomla installation is changed to .htaccess and follow the directives in the file in how to turn on "mod_rewrite" - this is straight forward. Then just go to the JoomSEF component and configuration and turn it on. Once this is done you should be generating friendly URL's on the front end interface so you should go and check. It's as easy as that!!
Okay so lets move on to what I consider the next most important thing to do to your Joomla installation once the SEF component is installed and working a Sitemap.
In my books there is really only one legitimate and decent sitemap component and it is called Joomap. The standard version of this component does not output a decent XML file for Google so I also suggest searching on Google for "joomap patch" and you should be able to find an article to lead you through editing the Joomap component also. The installation of this component is the same as before, we do it through the Joomla Administration interface. With no other configuration after installation we can just go straight to the component and select it. Now we just choose the menu's we want to include in our sitemap. Generally these are main menu and top menu. Now we just create a new menu item and select the component to link to it, being Joomap and the rest takes care of itself. Easy!!
One other advantage of Joomap is that it allows you to hook in to Google Sitemaps. On the admin interface these is a Google Sitemap URL given. All we need to do to generate a dynamic Google sitemap is to copy paste this URL into Google webmaster interface and now whenever Google wants to download your whole website sitemap it gets a dynamic version - which is significantly better than just hoping Google will find all of your pages! With this sitemap it tells Google all of your pages and where they are so it can scan them more affectively.
Okay now I have covered off the first two steps in Search Engine Optimization for the Joomla Content Management System. These are the first two steps every Web Designer and Developer should take when they want to Search Optimize Joomla.
Search Engine Optimisation Pitfalls--------
On page factors - Is your website search engine friendly?
So you have a website but where is it on Google? Have you fallen foul of a penalty or have you overlooked one of the many common search engine optimisation pitfalls when designing your site?
Understanding what works for the search engines and what doesn't when it comes to the content on your website can have a crucial impact on the relevance and/or page rank of your pages from a SEO perspective.
Here we highlight common mistakes that could affect your ranking on Google and other search engines.
Optimising for the correct keywords - Basically 'Get real' about what keywords you feel your website can be ranked for. If you have a ten page website in a highly competitive market then ranking naturally for the major terms will be close to impossible. Use the Overture keyword tool together with the number of results on Google to find out what keywords are searched for and how many other websites are targeting them. If you are lucky then you might even find a popular keyword that not many other websites are optimised for. Alternatively a good tool for this job is Wordtracker from Rivergold Associates Ltd.
Code validation - If your html code is not valid then this could make it very difficult or even impossible for a search engine to separate your page content from your code. If the search engine cannot see your content then your page will obviously have no relevance.
Frames - Even though most, if not all, major search engines now index frames and even with the use of the NOFRAMES tag you run the risk of your pages being displayed in the search engine results out of context. As each individual page is indexed separately, it is likely that your website visitors will not see your pages within your frame and will effectively be stuck on the page they arrive at.
If you must use frames then create a 'Home' link on each of your individual content pages and point the link at your frameset index page.
JavaScript navigation - If you use JavaScript to control your website navigation then search engine spiders may have problems crawling your site. If you must use JavaScript then there are two options available to you:
Use the NOSCRIPT tag to replicate the JavaScript link in standard HTML. Replicate your JavaScript links as standard HTML links in the footer of your page.
Flash content - Currently only Google can index Macromedia Flash files, how much or how little content they see is open to debate. So until search engine technology is able to handle your .swf as standard then it would be advisable to avoid the use of these. Again if you must use Flash then offer a standard HTML alternative within NOEMBED tags.
Dynamic URLs - Although Google and Yahoo are able to crawl complicated URLs it is still advisable to keep your URLs simple and avoid the use of long query strings. Do not including session IDs in the URL as these can either create a 'spider trap' where the spider indexes the page over and over again or, at worst, your pages will not get indexed at all. If you do need to include parameters in the URL then limit them to two and the number of characters per parameter to ten or less.
The best SEO solution for dynamic URLs is to use Mod-rewrite or Multiviews on Apache.
No sitemap - A sitemap is the search engine optimisation tool of choice to ensure every page within your website is indexed by all search engines. You should link to your site map from, at least, your homepage but preferably from every page on your website. If your website contains hundreds of pages then split the sitemap into several categorised maps and link these all together. Try and keep the number of links per page on a sitemap to less than 100.
Excessive links - Excessive links on a given page (Google recommends having no more than 100) can lower its relevance and, although it does not result in a ban, this does nothing for your search engine optimisation strategy.
Be careful who you link to - As you have no control over who links to your website, incoming links will not harm your rank. However outbound links from your website to 'bad neighbourhoods' like link farms will harm your ranking.
As a rule ensure as many of your outbound links as possible link to websites that are topical to your field of business.
Search Engine Optimization- The Significance----
From a small local business in a town to a big industry playing on an international platform, marketing has been a prime tool for any company or business to succeed. People started with using tools like write-ups, references, pamphlets and much more to convey their means or advertise themselves among a group. But now is a time where everything happens just on the click of your finger. And in this time is required marketing at the speed of light, marketing with niche concepts that are applied even before a common man would think.
With the time we are moving from a physical world to a virtual world. Companies started building up their websites to have a presence in the virtual world. But likewise there are billions of websites. What would be your identity then? In this age of Internet and Technology, getting your business visible to your customer segment is more important and this is where the Search Engine Optimization comes into picture.
Building up a website is like making a saw and optimizing your website is like sharpening that saw to use. And it is quite logical that you cannot take optimum use of your saw without sharpening it.
Search Engines are a system through which one gets the information the later wants. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines through search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site. In simple words, Search engine optimization (SEO) just means your site is as accessible as possible to the search engines to improve the chances that they will serve it up when your potential customers type in specific search terms (called keywords). The more easily search engines find your site, the higher up it appears on their results pages.
In this world, SEO is definitely a smart move for any business.
But getting your site ranked for your keywords, there are many aspects that play a key role: a proper site structure, clean coding and necessary keywords, to name a few. This requires the every page of your website to be optimized. Every page should have a proper title, genuine keywords and a perfect description that matches the page. These title, keywords and description have to be relevant for every individual page. Search engines "crawl" the Web looking for the keywords that their users enter, so putting those keywords throughout your site means your pages will be picked up during searches by the search engine. Hence you have to put your foot into your customer’s shoe to understand what keywords your customer would use to search for a particular product or service. You have to learn your customers’ mind and this will give you the best of Title and meta (Keywords and description) to optimize your website. Also, optimizing your content is equally important as that plays an important role. You may optimize your content with putting keywords in your content, giving the Heading tags to titles, giving bold effects wherever necessary, giving links (to phrases in the content) to internal pages wherever appropriate.
Also, other activities to rank up your website in search engines are submitting your website URL into more and more search engines, adding your website URL into online directories, building up links with other relevant business sites, submitting rich articles into article sites, submitting your blog pages into various blog sites, submitting Press Releases into various Press Release sites. This will both increase the traffic overall to your site and enhance your search engine rankings, since the search engines pick up on the number of times people link to and from your site and rank your website higher accordingly.
People try many techniques to boost up their website ranking in these search engines for the specific keywords. People make researches to add-on their skills to make this task easier, faster and more genuine.
There are companies that provide services for SEO to other companies. We at Semaphore Software (www.semaphore-software.com) have a dedicated team that researches on the SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) activities and undertake projects to upgrade the website ranking for our clients from different businesses.
It has become very important to move ahead with the fast pace if you wish to survive your business in this global competition.
Search Engine Optimization – A different perspective----
The best source of qualified, targeted traffic is search engine traffic. But millions are still unaware of this fact. The most baffling part is even people involved in an online business are unknown to this fact. Some would say, there would be no SEO companies if most knew it. That’s a truth too.
Where does a website go wrong in being search engine friendly ? The answer to this is that it goes wrong as soon as it is started by a web designer. The lack of knowledge or complete illiteracy of SEO on the part of most web designers is the key problem. The second step where the website owners go wrong is the choice of an experienced and skillful seo expert. Tracking down someone good is not that difficult. The key to finding someone with reasonable skill is clear communication. When you interact with someone, you will find out the expertise level, the experience, search engine parameters and algorithm knowledge and also some references. These should be enough to verify YOUR seo expert. A couple of minor but sometimes reflective aspects are – mode of payments and his own website rankings. While varied mode of payments reflect an established company or individual, his own website ranking should provide a lot of insight in to his seo skills.
Search engine optimization at the inception of the website or designing of the website is the best way to go about. There are a lot of optimization companies which offer web designing and development. A lot of people actually opt to get a site designed by a seo company in order to make it search engine friendly right from the start. Why not all ?
Search Engine Optimization – another perspective-----
The best source of qualified, targeted traffic is search engine traffic. But millions are still unaware of this fact. The most baffling part is even people involved in an online business are unknown to this fact. Some would say, there would be no SEO companies if most knew it. That’s a truth too.
Where does a website go wrong in being search engine friendly ? The answer to this is that it goes wrong as soon as it is started by a web designer. The lack of knowledge or complete illiteracy of SEO on the part of most web designers is the key problem. The second step where the website owners go wrong is the choice of an experienced and skillful seo expert. Tracking down someone good is not that difficult. The key to finding someone with reasonable skill is clear communication. When you interact with someone, you will find out the expertise level, the experience, search engine parameters and algorithm knowledge and also some references. These should be enough to verify YOUR seo expert. A couple of minor but sometimes reflective aspects are – mode of payments and his own website rankings. While varied mode of payments reflect an established company or individual, his own website ranking should provide a lot of insight in to his seo skills.
Search engine optimization at the inception of the website or designing of the website is the best way to go about. There are a lot of optimization companies which offer web designing and development. A lot of people actually opt to get a site designed by a seo company in order to make it search engine friendly right from the start. Why not all ?
Search Engine Optimization – The Basics Of Boosting Website Traffic-------
Search engine optimization is vital if you want to get your website listed at the top of the search engine rankings. You will have to design and write your pages not only for the customer, but also for the search engine spiders and crawlers. It does not have to be hard and it does not have to make you pull your hair out in frustration. By following a few tips on how to go about writing your pages, you will find success with your website.
One of the first mistakes that most people make when designing a website is that they think about the entire website. Do not concentrate on the entire site. Instead, create your landing page with only that page in mind. The rest of the design will come later. Next, narrow down your list of keywords to keyword phrases. Make sure they are highly targeted keyword phrases. For example, if you sell motor oil your keyword phrase would be motor oil and not just oil. Remember that people, when searching for your website in the search engines, will search for general phrases, and not just keywords. A good place to get keyword phrase ideas is http://www.overture.com. There are many there, so be sure to check it out.
After you have chosen your phrase to use, put it into a search engine and see what comes up. This is an honest way to check out your competition and to get a real look at how your keywords work. You might find that your keywords are highly popular, and you will need to rework your phrases. Targeting a keyword that is not highly sought after could lead you to keyword phrases in niche markets. Fortunes have been built of niche markets in the Internet community.
Next you’ll want to look at your meta tags. The tags are html code that lists the different words in relation to your product on the web page. Search engines look mainly for descriptive tags that tell the engine and visitor what the website is about. If there is no tag, it will use other ways to search for information, like in a cached page of the directories. When setting up your keyword phrase, include it twice, and make it a clickable title tag too. You’ll need to describe your information for your page with the keywords. Be creative in the description. Search engines like versatility up to a point. One important aspect that you will need to use is not only your Meta keyword phrases, but a few sub keywords that are relevant to your site. Do not overuse keyword phrases because will hurt you with certain engines – your site will actually be penalized, and drop in the search engine rankings. Make sure you use a header tag. Certain search engines use these tags heavily for rating the value of your site. When writing your page, use your main keyword phrase or phrases right off the bat. A good inclusion would be twice in the first paragraph. Any other types of information about your site should include your keyword-targeted phrase as well.
Do not think that that is all you will have to do though. You will have to get others to notice your web site. Continue using your keyword phrase or phrases in any text on the page. For instance, if you have a blog set up on your site; use the keyword phrase in your Meta tag about the web blog. You may have to submit your web page to the search engines. Sometimes the engines don’t pick up a site with the spiders and crawlers. In fact, you might have to redesign your site with new Meta tags, and targeted keyword phrases and sub keywords. Don’t rush to do it though. First, find out if the search engines pick up your page. Usually only 2 – 3 weeks will suffice to see if it’s happened. If not re-do your site words so you can climb to at least the first two pages of any search engine.
The key is to remain patient and to follow the ever changing rules of SEO search engine optimization. It will take time and developing your confidence about your skills. In the end, you will be glad that you have learned the valuable technique, and you will go on to build improved sites that are finely tuned.
Search Engine Optimization, A Trail to Online Marketing Success!--------
Do you need to market your services online? Most of the companies nowadays build their own website for the effective way of promoting their services/products. But this kind of promotion can be a difficult task to do. Sales and income generation depends on the quality and uniqueness of your site.
Search Engine Optimization is an essential way for you to achieve and drive targeted traffics from your site. To increase the number of leads and queries from your website, it is necessary to be well advertised and promoted in major search engines on the internet.
Specific tasks like increasing the sales and driving traffic are performed by an Internet Marketing Specialist or Search Engine Optimization specialists. There are no complete explanations on how search engines ranking algorithm works. So you should crack their algorithms and learn optimization techniques so you can make adjustments on the strategies and techniques that you do in order to increase traffics. Brainstorming is also needed to have a well organized plan for website marketing. Marketing research is needed to know the existing drifts in the market. Through this strategy you can base your marketing strategy by looking at any competitor's website by analyzing and planning the necessary keywords that will be targeted in the basis of competition. The cost incurred on website marketing is within the budget of the client. It means providing best services at economical rates.
Keyword research should also be included when planning a marketing strategies. Because the density and prominence affects the ranking of your site when search engine bots performs crawling. So you have to check your keywords always and search for new updates. You can use several tools in checking your keywords density and prominence. This will help you choose your major targeted keywords and find out keyword competition and monthly search volume, with these you can guarantee that your website meet the goals or requirements that we implement. If the marketing strategy is not working accordingly, maybe this is the time that you should change your marketing plan and make some adjustments to improve it further.
You can boost your site and gain interesting prospects for your business by knowing some of the popular Internet marketing Search Engine Optimization tactics. Considering these Internet marketing SEO strategies will be helpful:
1. Link popularity through search engines where you have to submit your site to major search #engines
2.Doing pay-per-click search engines where you can pay for your ranking if you don't want to be bothered with optimization
3.Advantage of link exchanges that can be done by searching high ranking sites that are related within your market.
4.Marketing Referrals to promote your site to other markets available online.
5.Doing Article Submissions, Directory Submissions, Classified Ads Submissions, Press Releases Submissions depending on your field of interest and joining Forums is also an effective for you to promote your site in online market.
Continue with these you will definitely succeed to strengthen and improve your marketing plan. Thus the basic goal of any internet marketing specialist/search engine optimization specialist is to bring key visitors to website as well as increasing traffics and sales, make complete analysis of website ,perform online promotion tasks and create unique brand of identify for your website. Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing Strategies is very important because the ideas of creating a quality website begins here.
Incorporating these basics in the promotion of a website is a great effort for beginning the optimization process for a website.
Search Engine Optimization: Four Vital Steps For Optimizing Your Website-----
There is a bit of confusion about search engine optimization. Some people think that SEO (the abbreviated form) is nothing more than tricking search engines into giving a high ranking for a particular site. Others think that search engine optimization is so complex that they could not possibly understand it. Neither of these views are correct. Search engine optimization is best defined as the art and science of building web pages that are both search engine friendly and user friendly. Below are four basic steps that you should take when optimizing your web pages.
1. Your web design should emphasize text and not graphics.
“Search engine friendly” means that search engines should be able to find data on your site that they can put in their data bases. While a picture may be worth a thousand words, a search engine is trying to classify pages by text and not by images. If you have an opening page with a beautiful picture of the sea and only two words of text saying “enter here” then this page will not rank high in searches for Florida Vacations. Similarly if you have a headline with important text containing your site’s keywords it should not be displayed as a gif or jpeg image. Pages that are all flash or all images are not search engine friendly, and often are not user friendly as well.
2. Links to your interior pages should be easily found by search engines
An important thing to remember is that you want not only your main page, but all of your interior pages to be included in the search engine index. While most people will probably enter your site through the main page, many will enter after doing searches which lead them to your inner pages. The best way to make sure that search engines will find and index your inner pages is to include text links to these pages. If you have navigation system which uses Java script or images, then it is best to add an additional text link navigation bar at the bottom of the site to ensure that the robot follows the links to your inner pages.
3. Your pages should be built around specific keywords or keyword phrases
Robotic search engines and human users have one thing in common: they are trying to figure out what your site or your particular web page is all about. It is not possible to get high rankings for thirty different search terms with only one web page. However it is possible to build separate web pages which explain and give importance to various aspects of your organization’s activity. These sub pages can be optimized so that they perform well in searches for your various keywords.
4. Once your material is organized, then your keywords should appear in strategic portions of your web pages
If your site is about Florida Vacations, then these words should appear in the following places of your html pages:
a. In the file name or the url.
If your site is called www.floridavacations.com then this will give you a head start in any searches for this term. Similarly if your company is called XYZ Travels you may have a web page with this url: www.xyztravels.com/floridavacations.html
The url or file name is an important indicator to a search engine, so don’t miss the opportunity to put your important term either in your main domain name or in your file names.
b. In the title tag
The text that is displayed in the blue line at the top of your browser is your title tag. The title tag is located in the section of the document. If your main phrase is “Florida Vacations” then the title tag in your html document should look something like this: Florida Vacations: Florida Vacation Information by XYZ travel
c. In the Description tag
The description tag is not seen on the web page but search engines often display it as the text which gives the searcher an idea of what your page is about. The description tag should be compelling, and make someone want to click and see your page, while also containing the keywords that are in your url and your title tag. A description tag for this site might look as follows:
d. In the headlines
Just as someone reading a newspaper looks at headlines to find out what is important, a search engine robot looks at the headlines of a web page in order to pick up the essential feature of that page. Put your main phrase in a headline and place it near the top of the page. Your headline text should be enclosed with special header tags such as , , . A headline tag for our hypothetical page could be written as follows: Florida Vacations: Plan Your Vacation Now And Save Money or Accommodations, Entertainment and Transport in Florida
If you don’t like the look of the h1 tag, then use a smaller tag, h2 or h3, or adjust your site
‘s style sheet so that the h1 tag is displayed in a small font which better matches your body text.
e. In the body text of your page
Your main keywords or key phrase should appear in the first paragraph of text and in a natural way throughout the text and also at the end of the page. In normal writing you would first introduce your subject, then explain what it is about and then summarize at the end. Follow this same procedure when you start writing your web page. Pages written in this style will automatically have correct keyword density and distribution.
f. In anchor text on your page
Anchor text is the clickable portion of links on your web page. Suppose you are describing your Florida Vacations and you want to direct your web visitors to an inside page with more information about this subject. Instead of making a link that says “click here,” it would be better to have a link that says “Click here for more information about Florida Vacations” or even better, the link text will only be “Florida Vacations” and the “click here” will be rendered as normal text.
If you follow these search-engine-optimization steps when building your website you will end up with web pages that are easily understood by your visitors, and easily classified and indexed by search engines.
Search Engine Optimization: How Does It Work? What Is It Used For?-----
The basic concept of search engine optimization is to get more targeted traffic to your website. This is the dream of any website owner, however understanding how it all works can be over whelming. So look at the simplified breakdown that makes this work.
Today's search engine utilizes some of the best algorithms to calculate the relevance of a website to what a potential user is trying to find. These algorithms are very complex and not public available to website owners therefore, what works today may not work in six months. Search engine optimization is a continuing process that should always undergo continuous monitoring and adjusted as search engine will keep changing how they index sites and display the most relevant websites.
The algorithms used to display the results of a particular search are very complex, and often times smart. You wonder how a computer can be intelligent, if you use deceiving methods of getting your website listed, you will soon see how smart they are. These algorithms will ban your site from even being indexed in their databases.
Search engines calculate relevance by using a combination of many methods some of these are keywords, relevant content, and links to your site from other relevant sites, mete data using a combination of this information the search engine look for sites that are well designed and offer the most relevant content to the user.
Successful search engine optimization is a successful implementation of all these factors, in a manner that is consistent with what the search engines "look" for in a website. While working on the search engine optimization for your website keep in mind that search engines read text not fancy images or other design factors. Keeping your site clean and full of relevant content will go a long way in providing you with targeted traffic that will keep coming back.
Search Engine Optimization: Natural Linking Strategies-----
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be the difference between a small, barely profitable or visible website and a traffic magnet website. There are a lot of ways, both good and bad, to influence the search engines. Some search engines react to certain strategies better than others. Some even have conflicting strategies that they react to. To document all of these things would require a significant number of pages and research that goes beyond the scope of this article.
However, there are a number of things that can be documented that will work for most if not all search engines. And let's face it; there are really only 3 that make a difference between a successful and an unsuccessful SEO strategy. They are the big three: Google, Yahoo and MSN. These three search engines in any given month are responsible for over 90% of all internet searches.
So, what is this article about? It's about what you can do as a website owner that will influence the search engines using commonly accepted practices of linking to other websites (outbound) and getting website links (inbound) back to you. There are basically 4 strategies that a website owner usually will employ to increase their website value in the eyes of the search engine.
They are reciprocal linking, one-way linking, multi-site linking and directory linking. A website owner should not think that using just a single strategy is the right answer - sure it will help your SEO but it won't be the Best answer. The Best answer is to employ all 4 techniques and to do it naturally.
Each of the four linking strategies has specific descriptions that can be summed up as:
1. Reciprocal Linking: Site A links to Site B, Site B links back to Site A
2. One-Way Linking: Site B links to Site A
3. Multi-Site Linking: Site A links to Site B, Site B links to Site C, Site C links to Site D, and Site D links back to Site A. Could be 3..N number of sites involved.
4. Directory Linking: Site Directory A links to Site A
That seems simple enough but it takes time and effort to perform all 4 strategies and most website owners aren't willing to spend the time or don't have the time to spend on it. As a website owner, SEO needs to be one of the highest priority tasks that you need to address, just after Order Processing and Fulfillment and Customer Service. Without free traffic from the search engines, other traffic generation strategies that usually require payment must be engaged.
Now doing the 4 strategies above is great, but it gets even harder because you have to do it in a way that doesn't trigger the search engines to enforce a penalty upon your website. No one except the search engine engineers know all of the exact penalties but we have some good theories for some of them.
The first is the rate at which links are created. There is a certain threshold for creating links that is too fast. It's possible that the threshold is a sliding scale and is related to the age of the website according to the engine. For example, a young low-traffic website should not normally be getting 1000 links a month whereas an older website that gets a lot of traffic could be OK to get 1000 links a month. As you progress in your linking strategies make sure you keep this in mind, especially if you are thinking about buying links.
The second is that having a link to every site that links to you will likely reduce the value of the links. In other words, if all you ever get is Reciprocal Linking, you will likely move up the SERP's (Search Engine Results Page's) but you won't reach your sites full potential. Having a mixture of all 4 strategies will appear more natural to the engines.
The third is having all inbound links to your site on "linking" pages will make those links less valuable than having a natural link on a contextually relative page for a percentage of the inbound links. The higher you can drive this context percentage, the better your website will rank. These types of links are often some of the most difficult links to generate an exchange for because it requires more time and effort for both website owners.
The fourth is to have links inbound from all different ranking sites. If all you have linking to you is page rank 6 and 7 sites then you are likely to be sending the message that you purchased your links and that is not natural to the engines. Some would argue that purchasing links for driving traffic is just fine and it is. However, you should not expect the search engines to give those inbound links very much weight when calculating your SERP positions. It is significantly more natural for you to have a large number of rank 1 and 2 inbound links and a decreasing number of inbound links as you move up the page rank scale (0 - 10).
The fifth is to have the text of you inbound links varied. It isn't natural to have every website that links to you to have the same text on the link description. The natural tendency would be to have a certain percent be the sites name, but after that it should be a wide variety of description. Your link text description is a key factor for how your site/page will rank, so make sure that you keep that in mind as you specify your preferred link text description on your website.
Finally, it would be best for a good percentage of your inbound links to appear within the text of a page that appears natural for the reader of that site. And for those links to not all point back to the home page of your website. It's most natural for a good high quality link to appear in the text of a page and have it point internally within your site.
So, when you begin or continue your SEO activities keep all of these things in mind and don't be impatient. Impatience could incur penalties or worse. Your website could end up in the "sandbox". It is rumored and becoming more concrete that Google supposedly uses a sandbox that questionable sites are put in until they have aged to a point that Google no longer feels that they are being manipulated. Many of the search engines use similar protection schemes to eliminate spam sites and manipulation sites to keep their SERP's from being cluttered.
Search Engine Optimization (Seo)-----
Search Engine Optimimization (Seo)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO), considered by many to be a subset of Search Engine marketing, is a term used to describe a process of improving the volume of traffic to a web site from Search Engines, usually in "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Those efforts may also be seen in more narrow vertical Search Engines involving areas such as local search. Many site owners and consultants engaging in SEO attempt to pursue qualified visitors to a site, and the quality of visitor traffic can be measured by how often a visitor using a specific keyword phrase leads to a desired conversion action, such as making a purchase, viewing or downloading a certain page, requesting further information, signing up for a newsletter, or taking some other specific action.
In a broad sense, SEO is marketing by understanding how search algorithms work and what human visitors might search for, to help match those visitors with sites offering what they are interested in finding. Creating web pages with SEO in mind does not necessarily mean creating content more favorable to to algorithms than human visitors. Some SEO efforts may involve optimizing a site's coding, presentation, and structure, without making very noticeable changes to human visitors, such as incorporating a clear hierarchical structure to a site, and avoiding or fixing problems that might keep search Engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site. Other, more noticeable efforts, involve including unique content on pages that can be easily indexed and extracted from those pages by Search Engines while also appealing to human visitors.
The term SEO can also refer to "Search Engine Optimization", a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out Optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees of site owners who may perform SEO services in-house.
Search Engine Optimization often offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a larger marketing campaign. Because effective SEO can require making changes to the source code of a site, it is often very helpful when incorporated into the initial development and design of a site, leading to the use of the term "Search Engine" Friendly" to describe designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts that can be optimized easily and effectively.
Imagine an orchestra at a concert with the guitarist strumming a guitar with broken strings and the drummer drumming with broken drumsticks. Imagine the face of the conductor with a broken baton and all the worst fears and dreams in world coming true accompanied with a cacophony in the name of symphony. Music? Precisely the reason why your website on the Internet should be optimized.
Aditya infotech believes the term Search Engine Optimization means a continuous and ongoing process where the architecture of the website and the website itself remains updated with the objective to return a particular search term on a particular search engine with the correct search result. Here the content and structure of the website's copy and page layout, the meta-tags, and the submission process make sure the required takes place. No horror stories of searching a mole and finding a mouse.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Boost Your Website Traffic-----
Search engines bring more than 80 percent of the traffic for small to medium websites. This tells exactly how important it is for small and medium websites to optimize their web structure and pages for search engines. Optimization of your website for search engine includes many aspects: website content, keywords, URL, meta-tag, back links, etc. Let's explain it one by one.
Select the right keywords. You can pay a visit to your competitors' websites (only those with top-ranked search engine placements). Through analyzing their web contents and meta tags, you can easily find out the keywords they are using. Overture keywords selection tool can also provide you valuable information. Open your favorite browser, enter http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/, type in the search box your keywords or phrases and see how many times they were searched last month. Select those with high search frequency. Google also has a similar keyword selection tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox. You can have a try of both of them and balance the search results.
Target your web site content at selected keywords. After finalizing the keywords, you can now build up your web pages with them. But, be careful, don't overuse any keywords on your web pages. Overuse of keywords may make search engine spiders think you are spamming and get your website banned. How can I judge overuse or not? Go to http://www.gorank.com/seotools/ to have a check of your keywords density, make sure it is within a reasonable range.
Make search engine friendly URLs. Although some of the search engines can follow all dynamic URLs, like http://www.scriptmenu.com/detail.php?id=25257, some of them still prefer static URLs ended with html, htm, etc. To make search engine friendly URLs, you can create real static pages, but you don't have to. The web server URL rewrite engine can make this job much easier by reinterpreting the URLs before getting actual pages. If you need more help or tips on how to implement URL rewrite model, follow the link http://www.scriptmenu.com/detail_24379.html and get a tutorial.
Get quality backward links to your page. Although keywords optimization of your web pages can improve significantly your search engine placement, it is still far from sufficient to get your pages top ranked. You have to get some quality backward links to your websites. You need at least 35 quality back links to make google going to your web site and take a look at you. You can get these quality links by submitting your site to high-ranked web site directories or by writing some quality articles and then submitting them to the high-ranked online article archives. Many other ways exist, but remember, only backward links from quality web sites count. Websites poorly indexed or with very low search engine ranking have no value to you.
Keep on improving your website. By keyword optimization, URL optimization and quality backward URLs, your website should have gotten remarkable search engine placement. However, the placement is not static, you competitors are optimizing their websites and trying to kick you out of your current position. To maintain a good search engine ranking, you have to keep on improving your website. Keep on optimizing your website navigation, content and structure. Keep on getting more quality links from top-rated sites.... The battle for top search engine positions will never end. Good luck, :-)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – An Overview------
Run a search on any of the 200 major search engines, and the results will come up in similar orders on quite a few of them. How a website owner/operator gets their website to the top of a list is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Optimizing a website involves many of the same techniques, whether the aim is to optimize for Google adwords, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves or others. There is a list of what not to do as well, and that list is applicable to all engines, as it mostly refers to tricks and hacks unscrupulous designers use to try to trick the engines. These kind of pages generally get removed by automated tools and don't generally last very long, so they are not recommended to bother with.
Website optimization starts with content. If the content is irrelevant, the website will not last long in the rankings, no matter how many keywords are included. The best way to get relevant content is to get an expert to write the content. General content may be more friendly to beginners, but in the search optimization arena, content is what is going to keep readers coming back and webmasters linking to the page. Many search engines use link counters to rank sites. If enough people like and value the site, they will link to it from their own site as an example of expert help for visitors seeking more detailed information than they can provide, or are willing to provide. Often, general-interest sites will link to expert sites, thereby also driving their own traffic up as the initial portal to those expert sites and improving their own rankings in the optimization listings. The quality of the sites linked is also a major factor in the rankings, as quality sites such as Microsoft and Google are going to be more effective "heavy hitters" than a link to Bob's House of Website Optimizing.
When the content is being created, keywords are the "anchors" that search engines hook onto, but just filling your content with keywords risks being dismissed as a spam site, as many spammers merely fill a page with keywords, hoping to hook anyone searching for anything. These kind of pages are usually removed quickly, but they exist nonetheless. Specific keywords are the key--instead of Search Engine, use Search Engine Optimization for Google, or combinations of the key words or phrases. Optimization for Search Engines in one area, then Optimizing for higher Search Engine rankings in another increases the chances of an engine ranking your website content a little higher than it may have otherwise.
The guidelines for content also go for Meta tags such as the title. Title is very important, as it is one of the bigger spots for an engine to catch, as well as the hook that draws a surfer in once the rankings have been displayed. A recommended length is 50-80 characters (including spaces), with keywords located near the beginning in case the window is resized on the screen. A good example would be "Search Engine Optimization tips and tricks for Google", instead of "How to do important SEO for websites."
Search Engine Optimization--what to avoid: Don't use huge strings of keywords without relevant content--you may be labeled as a spammer and blacklisted off the engine(s) you're trying to climb. Stay away from pop-ups, excessive load times (by keeping the page clean and using fast hosting servers), and lots of flash animation, as this takes time to load and also detracts from the readability of the site.
More specific information can be found by typing "Search Engine Optimization" into any major search engine like Google or Yahoo and following the links.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) For Google, Yahoo, and Msn----------
In this article I will review the similarities and differences between the ranking algorithms of Google, Yahoo and Msn. Google and Yahoo are considerably reasonably close in terms of off-page factors weighting compared to Msn, which is more on the on-page side. Like Google, Yahoo and MSN will discount obviously identical and unnatural looking anchor link text. Since these algos are frequently updated, I will only concentrate on those factors that do not. Otherwise, mayor updates should take place for them to be replaced by other/better methods.
The Google Factors.
It is a known fact that Google is focused on links. Therefore, it ranks them by quality and relevancy factors. With that said, on-page factors such as title keywords, content keyword density and relevance also influence the ranking of a given page. Google also looks into the "neighborhood" of your site analyzing outbound links. If you link to related quality sites with relevant content, search engines will associate your site with these “neighbor” sites.
The Yahoo Factors.
Yahoo tends to be the most active of the three when it comes to crawling. Not a general rule though. But in addition to its nature, having RSS on your site will get it more aggressive and frequently crawled. Similar to Google, Yahoo gives a lot of importance to inbound links, looking into factors like relevancy and anchor text, and heavily at volume of links. Their TrustRank is a form of PageRank, but with a special teleportation to a subset of high-quality pages. Yahoo search rankings appear to place extra importance on your site being listed in their directory, especially for highly competitive terms. Keyword density in title and content relevance also count.
The Msn Factors.
Maybe a substantial different from the other two, Msn normally gives more weight to the title text. Also, CSS optimization plays an important role at getting better rankings here. Msn is second to Yahoo on links volume, but the link analysis is reversed, analyzing inbound links for quality, anchor text keywords, and relevancy. Inclusion in the MSN endorsed directories would boost your site high in the SERPs. This fact still holds true, but its advantage has lessened with the new Live version. Content freshness is still very important, boosting rank of frequently updated pages.
Optimizing for all.
Yes, it is possible. Did someone said: wikipedia? Regardless of the algo differences of the mayor search engines, a site with great content that attracts users, and generates lots of natural occurring inbound links having great anchor text, has a great chance of replicating similar success. Of the off-page factors, quality of inbound links is the most important. Of the on-page factors the keyword density in the title. A good balance between conservative keyword density and other elements like RSS and CSS need to exist when used, since they all get particular boots or penalties with the search engines.
Search engine optimization (SEO) has become a necessity for websites-----------
Search engine optimization (SEO) has become a necessity for websites looking to increase their market penetration. What makes search engine optimization such a challenging field is that search engines are making changes to their search algorithms on a regular basis. It takes considerable skill for any SEO firm to stay in tune with the latest SEO developments. If you are looking to increase the popularity of your website and want to hire a SEO firm to take care of the search engine optimization of your site, here are a few tips to help you choose a SEO firm.
One of the most important aspects of SEO is optimizing content, major search engines like Google and Yahoo are basically content centric. This means a website without optimized content stands a very poor chance of performing well with major search engines. The first thing you should look for in a SEO firm is if it is capable of offering content writing services for SEO. Almost all major SEO firms now offer content centric services like web content writing. Apart from optimizing content, it is also important to look for a SEO firm that can utilize other content centric avenues like article writing and press release writing.
Another thing to keep in mind while choosing a SEO firm is the services that are on offer. It pays to work with a SEO firm that can offer a complete portfolio of services from link building to specialized web designing services. SEO firms offer a wide variety of link building packages, depending on the page rank you are targeting you should be able to choose the link building package you want. If you are using a SEO firm for carrying out SEO of your site from the ground up, then the SEO firm will automatically choose the link building package your site needs.
It is also important to look at the credentials of the firm you are dealing with, most SEO firms make tall claims but have very little to back up their claims. Before you choose a SEO firm ask them for a website they have optimized, most SEO firms will show you a website they have optimized and the keywords for which it is ranking. In addition, also look at the ranking of the website of the SEO firm itself. If the SEO firm’s website is ranking well for popular keywords you can rest assured that your website’s optimization is in good hands.
Another important aspect to keep in mind is how up to date the services on offer are, if you have no idea which services to look for then a good indicator are services like XHTML validation and XHTML slice. In essence, what you are looking for is a SEO firm that can offer you as many or as few services as you require. In addition, a SEO firm should provide the latest search engine optimizations services in conjunction with tried and trusted search engine optimization services.
Finally, it is important to understand your own requirements before you hire a SEO firm. Most webmasters know what they are looking for and know which keywords they would like to rank for. It is important to have a list of keywords you want your website to rank for, it is equally important to understand that not all keywords are viable. For example, there is no point in optimizing a website for the keyword ‘water’ as beating wikipedia is not an easy task. It is important to be in constant contact with the SEO firm so you can better understand how the firm is working and what steps are being taken to improve your site’s ranking. Also be wary of SEO firms that offer overnight success.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) The Myth?----------
Search Engine Optimization. Big words. Sounds Important. What is it? If you do a search in google for the web definition of search engine optimization, you get a lot of different results.
Some simply say that search engine optimization is the generic term for making sure your site is optimized to appear as one of the top ranking web sites on a search.
Others get more detailed with their definition and say search engine optimization is the term used to describe the marketing technique of preparing a web site to enhance its chances of being ranked in the top results of a search engine once a relevant search is undertaken.
A number of factors are important when optimizing a web site, including the content and structure of the web site's copy and page layout, the HTML meta-tags and the submission process.
Is it important? That also depends on which definition you believe and who you ask that question to. If you ask someone who runs a business and charges for search engine optimization, they will tell you it is the most important thing you will ever do for your website.
At each SEO website, they will tell you they are the number 1 SEO company on the web, even though each of them has a completely different method of optimizing your website.
If you ask many self-appointed webmaster gurus in some of the webmaster forums, they will tell you the same thing, then each one will tell you a different way to do it and they will all disagree on the most important aspects of search engine optimization.
So the confusion continues for the average user and the SEO companies love it that way. If the consumer doesn’t understand what you are doing, you don’t really have to do very much and just say you are doing a lot. Most of them would never work on your website on a contingency payment plan, one based on actual results and performance. Some say money back guaranteed, but read the fine print.
A lot of these businesses are based on the fact that people who are new to the web and even some of those who have been online for awhile do not know what search engine optimization is. They know that with more and more people coming onto the web for the first time, their business is secure. They can continue to tell people that without their service the website will fail.
I’m not saying all search engine optimization companies are rip-offs. Some of them really do their best to get good rankings for their clients and know what they are doing. A lot of them still really believe that search engine optimization is the key to success on the web.
It isn’t. How’s that for a statement? I know a lot of web designers will disagree. I know a lot of SEO companies will disagree. But simply put, search engine optimization of your WebPages is not the most important thing you need to do to succeed on the web.
Let’s break down some of the things that are included in the phrase search engine optimization.
Metatags are one of the things these gurus tell you is important. Metatags are all but dead. Search engines, especially google, ignore metatags for the most part.
Having them in does not hurt you, but go do a search on any topic besides web design or search engine optimization, etc. and you’ll find that IF the websites at the top of the search results have metatags at all, they usually only have the description and keywords metatags.
Well they also have the title tag, which is sometimes referred to as a metatag, but it is actually the only metatag you need to have.
Keyword Optimization is something the gurus will tell you is very important. Some will tell you they know the exact percentage of text that should be your keywords. Yes, keywords are very important. Do they know what percentage the search engines will want to read for the best results? No.
When writing copy for your website, you must be conscious of the keywords you wish to promote. Don’t pick too many keywords and try to optimize each page of your website for twenty different things. If you do, it will not be relevant for any of them. That isn’t guru talk, that’s just plain old fashioned common sense.
Remember that search engines crawl web pages, not web sites. If you choose just one or two keywords per webpage that you wish that page to be optimized for, then you can optimize the page easily and write text the user will want to actually read.
Write your sales text the way you would with only the user in mind and with making sales in mind. Then go back and reread the page.
Find places where you can add in your keyword without destroying the flow you created when you wrote the text in the first place.
Now, do you need to hire an SEO company to do that? Do you know your product? Do you know how to sell your product? Then you need to write the text. If you do not wish to write the text, then hire a writer. You still don’t need a search engine optimization guru.
Some search engine optimization experts will tell you they can increase your link popularity. They use a variety of methods. They create websites where they put all of their clients website links so you will have links to your website. The search engines call these link farms and discount any value they may have had in the past.
Those methods, along with many others, are simply tricks that temporarily work. Alot of search engine optimization companies all keep up with the latest tricks and shortcuts. They may even get you some good results in the short-term. But what happens when the search engines catch onto the trick?
I’m glad you asked. They stop letting that trick or shortcut work. They may even penalize the websites that used it. They penalize you, the customer, not the search engine optimization guru who used the trick and charged you for it.
Whenever one of these companies tells you it has “inside information”, “ex-search engine company employees”, “guaranteed search engine placement”, guaranteed top 10 placement”, or “secret methods”, a red flag should go up in your mind right away.
If you start a business offline, like a restaurant or a store, you know that besides the money you will have to put up, you will also have to work to make it a success. It is no different when you start a business online. You have to work at it, if you want to be successful.
If search engine optimization is not the most important thing you can do to become successful, what is? Again, I’m glad you asked.
Promotion. Do not depend solely on being found by the search engines. Search engines are fickle creatures and what is today’s #1 can be tomorrow’s #100 just because they decided to change the way they give relevance to websites. Continually chasing this dream is a total waste of time.
There are other sources of traffic out there. Would you rather have 1000 hits from a search engine for one of your minor keywords or have 100 hits from someone who read an article you wrote and came to your website because they liked what you had
to say?
If you chose the thousand hits, you don’t get it yet. Out of that 1000 hits you might convert 2 of them into sales. Out of the 100, you may get as many as 20-25 people who want to buy from you. Conversion rate is more important than how many hits you get to your website.
Write articles about your website, about your products, about relevant topics to your products or services you wish to sell. Distribute or submit those articles to article submission websites that provide free content to webmasters.
You may write one article like the one I am writing now and have 100 webmasters want to use it as content for their website. That would mean there is suddenly 100 other websites on topics related to your product that now contain a link to your website. (see the footer below contains links to my website and is to be included when this article is reprinted.)
That increases your link popularity without the need for a company to optimize you. Just by submitting your article to several article submission websites, you increase your link popularity, but when those webmasters start to republish your articles, you will see a huge increase in your page rank and the quality of your traffic.
Some people write one article per month and others write one or more per day. It depends on you. How fast do you want your website to grow?
How much time do you have to invest? If you are not good at writing articles or do not have the time, hire a writer to ghost-write them for you with your byline and your links in
the footer.
So that we are clear. Search engine optimization is necessary, but by no means the most important thing you can do for your website to make it successful. I would not pay a lot of money for this service. Promoting your website IS the most important thing you can do. Articles are just one of the methods you can use to promote your website.
Advertising, buying links on relevant websites, posting in forums and blogs with related topics, putting your link in your signature line, are some of the other ways you can promote your website.
My Checklist:
1. Be conscious of the keywords you wish to target with each webpage you build. Write your text for the reader, then go back and add your keywords without destroying the flow of your text.
2. Make sure the website is easy to navigate and user-friendly. Don’t assume the customer knows the web site as well as you do. Make it simple. Make it easy to find the buy button!
3. Once the website is built, quit worrying about the newest search engine trick or optimization technique as some like to call it.
4. Search for blogs and forums with related topics and sign up for them and participate in discussions with your link in your signature line.
5. Write articles about related topics and submit them everywhere or buy a service like isnare.com that will do the submissions for you. If you cannot write the articles, hire someone to do it for you.
6. Don’t do link trades with websites that have less traffic than you do. Buy links on websites that have more traffic than you and are on a topic related to your products or services.
This article in no way claims to have listed all the ways you can use to promote your website. What I have done here is tried to explain to you what is or is not important to creating and maintaining a successful website. I hope this helps you.
Search Engine Optimization, SEO London and Search Engine Optimization UK--------
Techno Consultancy provides search engine optimization services in UK which effort jointly to get better a website's organic or natural search result rankings. Improved traffic and visitors which lead to sales, sign-ups, calls or some other call-to-action are the last part goals of achieving top search engine rankings.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search engine optimization is the process of increase the amounts of visitors to a website by ranking high in a search term of search engines. Top search engine rankings normally consequence in more traffic to your site, and as a effect, a higher chance to covert a visitor into a sale, lead, call or any other call to achievement your website has. Particularly, search engine optimization UK or SEO London is a sequence of techniques used to increase or very search engine optimization well tune your website's content to convene the algorithmic criteria of the search engines. The search engines require seeing positive attributes within your web page content so they will enhanced appreciate what your website's intention is along with your favorite keywords. Web pages require to be modified in many dissimilar styles and formats to get this understanding from the search engines. As a consequence of optimization, the search engines will then start ranking your site according to the recently optimized content of your website.
Techno Consultancy’s Search Engine Optimization Process:
We, at Techno Consultancy carry out search engine optimization services on a monthly basis to make sure the continuing development of your web page’s natural search consequence rankings. We first set up what your goals are in this procedure as well as what keywords you would like us to focal point our hard works towards. We will then get a look at your site's the past to see if the site has any accessible keyword rankings or if it is yet submitted and listed in the nearly everyone vital search engines. With this information and thoroughly keyword research performed, a plan will be developed to address the immediate optimization needs of the site as well as the extended term wants of the site such as link building. The original months of the movement will be enthusiastic towards optimizing your site's content to get together the principles that the search engines expect. The following months will be used to determine, preserve or get better the rankings your site has attained.
Our SEO service is "full service" sense that we will capture think about of the whole thing together with the edits to your website. If you or your web designer would prefer to generate the edits to your site content, we will be on hand over to verify that each edit was complete effectively.
Search Engine Optimization: Specialist to Boost your Page Rank and Traffic--------
It’s of no use to have the most informative website & unfortunately no one knows about it. Have you ever thought why your competitors always on the top positions and your website every time getting into the flux.
Search Engine Optimization is a practice in which your Website undergoes development process properly so that its keywords can communicate to search engines. Search engines rank Websites based on two major factors:
· Very exclusive content with related keywords in the body
· Link popularity - number of back links on your Website.
Search Engine Optimization is basically aimed at improving the ranking of a website in the most popular search engines listings like Google, MSN and Yahoo. The higher the pages come up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website.
Search engines generate nearly 90% of Internet traffic and most of the web traffic comes from search engines like Google. But if your site is not ranked high enough on the search engines, none of that traffic will come to you.
Other important factors that determine your ranking are the architecture of the site, relevant keywords, title, underlying code and content of the site for making your site more appealing to the search engines.
Search engines display different kinds of listings in the search engine results pages (SERPs), including:
· Pay-per-click advertisements: This is the fastest way to get traffic on your website.
In this every time a visitor clicks on the ad created by you,you ll pay. The price will be charged per click & can be varied depending on the popularity of the keyword or phrases you’ve chosen.
· Paid inclusion listings: This is another method of getting indexed just like pay-per-click advertisement. It guarantees you that your page will be indexed by the search engine spider but it does not guarantee you about the location of your page.
· Organic Listing: This listing is also known as free listing & good organic search engine rankings take months to achieve, but they are fairly easy to maintain on an ongoing basis.
Search engines bring motivated buyers to you and hence contribute to increased sales conversions. Higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that a user will visit your web site that in turn leads to more business and more money.
Search Engine Optimization: The Advertising Bargain of the Century---------
Yes, in this case the hype is true, search engine optimization (SEO) is the advertising bargain of the century. SEO is the process of tweaking and positioning websites so that they rank well in the search engines. And as most website owners know, if their website does not appear on the first two or three pages of search engine results pages (SERPS), then their website is not being found by prospective clients searching for their products and services. SEO is such a great bargain for a number of reasons.
SEO, the gift that keeps on giving
The benefits of SEO continue long after SEO services have been commissioned. Traditional advertising is like buying a plane ticket: once you’ve gone on your trip, the benefits have been used up. SEO, on the other hand, is like buying a car: it will keep on transporting you long after it has been paid for. That said, for most markets, once the initial SEO campaign has been implemented, good SEO requires a certain amount of upkeep. In this way, of course, SEO also resembles owning a car.
I want it now!
Unlike traditional advertising, which builds brand awareness and may eventually lead to more sales, SEO targets prospective customers who are actively searching for your products and services. They are using the search engines to find you! But is your website ready to be found?
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don't know which half.”
John Wanamaker’s adage is still true, but it’s not true about SEO. Why? Because the results of SEO can be quantified and tracked. This is why in a recent article the Economist notes that “Thanks to the power of the internet, advertising is becoming less wasteful and its value more measurable. In terms of efficiency, if not size, the advertising industry is only now starting to grow out of its century-long infancy, which might be called ‘the Wanamaker era.’” (“The Ultimate Marketing Machine,” The Economist, 6 July 2006).
Search Engine Optimization And The Industry---------
Although the internet may be a wondrous piece of engineering and a work of art in progress is it is also an important and powerful industry. The internet represents an unparalleled opportunity for work. Web designers might as well be the modern equivalent of the gold miners of the Old West. They are searching for riches and traveling until they find their fortune. However web design skills are only part of it. A webmaster may have powerful skills but they are not necessarily SEO masters. Let’s compare and contrast.
A webmaster must master not only the basics such as HTML skills but also web design programs, web programming languages, graphic skills and pretty much must have advanced computer skills. They must understand all of the tricks of the trade as well as be creative enough to use them.
SEO masters on the other hand not only have to master all of the tricks of their trade must they must also learn the black arts of their trade. They have to not only be able to manipulate the search engines ranking algorithms but also do it in such a way as to not get caught. They have not only the fighting skills but also the necessary stealth skills to be invisible.
The internet’s unprecedented growth will only continue but an exponential rate. As the technology for website functionality increases so will the methods for ranking websites in the search engines. These two areas give an unprecedented level of financial opportunity that no one has ever seen before. They are so many chances for people to improve their lives with education and work. The internet has the potential to give everyone their shot and their right at a good life. The opportunity of a lifetime is here and we look at it everyday and everywhere. Seize the day and learn everything you can about this modern wonder of the world.
Search Engine Optimization And The Magic Fairy Dust---------
There is only one thing that all webmasters agree upon... They all want to be at the top of the search engine results for search terms that will drive traffic and consumers to their website.
The truth is that the search engines are like our childhood game of King Of The Hill. Only one person can be at the top of the hill and the top of the search results. Only ten websites can be on page one of the search results. When a new website moves into the top ten, another must be removed.
For any given search term at any given time, there are only ten web pages on page one of the search results, and there are millions of web pages that did not make page one, who may or may not catch a few stragglers from the search engines.
How Can A Website Break Into The Top Ten?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an industry that has sprung up around the concept of helping their clients improve their rankings in the search engine results.
When you talk to SEO professionals, they generally point to a two-pronged approach to search ranking optimization. A website owner needs to optimize their on-site real estate for the search engines, and they need to build inbound links to their website.
On-Site Search Optimization Challenges
The trick with on-site search optimization is that you must cater to multiple audiences on your website.
* You must provide simple navigation and an attractive interface to the human visitor;
* You must provide good sales copy to your human visitors, for the purpose of converting them from shoppers to buyers;
* You must provide text copy for the search engines to read; and
* You must optimize your content to help the search engines know what topics and keywords they should pay attention, so that they can give their users the right web page for the right search terms.
A web page that draws good search rankings is useless if the web page cannot convert the human visitor to a buyer. Many website owners get caught up in the process of optimizing a web page to get it to the top of the search results, and they forget that the human visitor knows where the Back Button is in his or her browser. Once your visitor has hit the Back Button, they will go to someone else's website and buy from them, instead of you.
Most website owners have the alternate problem. They consistently convert a significant number of visitors to buyers, but they have to rely on various forms of paid advertising to get visitors to their websites, since they do not rank in the search engines.
I recently spoke with an individual who spends ,000 per month on pay-per-click advertising to get targeted traffic to his website. He said he consistently earns back his money, but he was still looking for a better way to get ranked in the search engines, so he joined my client list.
On-Site Search Engine Optimization Basics
According to the search engine companies, there are more than one thousand calculations that determine how well a website will rank in their search engine result pages (SERPs).
The Google engineers are fond of saying that if you build your website for human beings instead of search engines, then your website should rank well in their algorithms. To a certain degree, this is a good strategy.
Think about how magazines are constructed:
The Table Of Contents shows story titles, brief descriptions, and page numbers telling you where you can find a story.
On the story page, the title will be in big, bold font. Sometimes, the magazine will include a brief blurb about the story, in italics or font that is a bit bigger than the story font.
Pictures support the story with captions that further develop the story, by describing the picture.
Major subsections of the story have their own subheadings. And, the primary body of the story is in regular plain text, with only an occasional bolded or italicized word or phrase.
By analyzing the title and other large text on the page, a person who is flipping through the pages of a magazine can quickly assess the story content and make the decision as to whether they want to read the full story.
In the most simplistic way, this is how the search engines analyze a websites' content to decide which web page will best serve their users' needs.
Off-Site Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Basics
Since the inception of Google, and with Yahoo and MSN recently, the number and quality of links pointing to a website play a significant role in determining how well a web page will rank in the search results.
I have heard people suggest that as much as 75% of the value given to a web page in the search results is based solely on the number and quality of links pointing to a web page. I tend to believe a more conservative number (50.1%) will apply.
Inbound Links Are More Important Than Page Content
To prove this point, type "click here" without the quotes into Google, Yahoo and MSN and check the Adobe pages that come up in the search results: #1 in Google, #2 in Yahoo, and #1 in MSN. When you pull up those pages, search the page to find the individual words "click" or "here" in the text of those pages. They are not there. This has happened because millions of people have linked to these Adobe pages with the embedded anchor text, "click here".
Next, let's analyze those specific web pages from the perspective of each of the search engines:
* Google's #1 result - (Google PageRank 8). Links to this web page: according to Google (31); according to Yahoo (nearly 12 million); according to MSN (6,400).
* Yahoo's #2 result - (Google PageRank 10). Links to this web page: Google (15,200); Yahoo (700 thousand); MSN (32).
* MSN's #1 result - (Google PageRank 8). Links to this web page: Google (0); Yahoo (2.9 million); MSN (778).
On Google's top result, they show 31 inbound links total for that web page. But, Yahoo claims that there are more than 12 million links to this page. That is a huge difference.
On Yahoo's #2 result, MSN gives 32 links, Google gives 15,000 links, and Yahoo claims it has 700 thousand links! That is another huge difference between the link counts from the search engines.
On MSN's #1 result, MSN shows a strong link count, but still nowhere near Yahoo's 2.9 million links. But, how does a web page with zero links in Google get a PageRank 8?
What Do These Numbers Mean?
Google has always said that they will never show us all of the links that we have pointing to our websites, because anything we can see in the public search results, our competitors can see also. So, for me it really is no surprise that we cannot see all of the links that point to Adobe pages, or to the links we have created that point to our clients and ourselves, by querying the search engines.
Also, the sheer numbers of inbound links do not rule the roost. Google's #1 result (PR8) is actually shown in Google, before Yahoo's #2 (PR10) result.
The Proof For Link Building Is In The Search Engine Rankings
Recently, a fellow who works as a SEO "professional" told me that be believed my link building system was a sham.
I showed him that on the top 51 keyword phrases we use to market our original commercial website, we had 11 number one results, 31 top five results, 34 top ten results, 47 top thirty results, and 51 top 100 results within the Google search results. Additionally, it was shown that only three of those results competed with fewer than one million search results according to Google, with the remaining 48 pages competing with one million to 533 million pages.
Ole boy tore up Google trying to track how it was possible for me to have accomplished what I claimed. He finally concluded that since Google would not show HIM how I was able to rank so well in their search engine results, then I must have been lying.
According to Yahoo, we have over 12,000 links from third-party websites. According to our site statistics, we received traffic from more than 16,000 unique web pages during 2006. And Google still swears that we only have 42 inbound links to our website!
Magic Fairy Dust
My nemesis concluded that since HE could not prove through Google how I was successful in getting good search rankings, then I could not have accomplished such results by the methods I claimed.
Okay, I admit it.
I used the exact same method that Adobe used to get to the top of Google's search engine rankings. I have a pocket full of magic fairy dust. Whenever, I do not like how my websites rank in the search engines, I sprinkle my magic fairy dust on my modem.
If you don't like where you are ranked in the search engines, then I suggest you forego the search engine optimization companies altogether and instead run over to the corner store to get your own magic fairy dust. You might have to shop around a bit, but it is out there.
Search Engine Optimization And Web Design--------
In the early days of the world wide web, having a good web presence meant that you must have a good web site full of rich content, and a good internet address that goes with it. It’s a generally accepted practice to publicize your Internet address to the world – well, at least to as much of it that you could cover. You Internet address, technically referred to as the URL of your website, became your key in making your site successful. The more Internet users that know of your website’s URL, the more people will visit it.
But that was before the Internet boomed, before its user base multiplied by millions, and before almost everyone else built web sites of their own, competing with your own in attracting users and readers. That was before modern search engines came to be, way before Google became a household verb, and changed the Internet in big ways. Now in the modern age of the internet, where search is the second most popular activity in the net, having a bumper sticker of your web site’s URL is no longer as cool or as effective as it used to be. You must now rely on one of the major pillars of a successful web site design – search engine optimization.
Search engine optimization is the method of increasing a web site’s ranking in search engine results listing. Before going further into the details of search engine optimization, it is good to know why it’s important to rank well in these listings and how it came to be.
Let’s see for example how a good web designer that is fully unaware of search engine optimization will lay things for a typical web design project: a very clear purpose for the website, a good aesthetic design, clear and concise words that are aptly toned for the target audience, an intuitive navigation and usable user interface, and for the writers’ part, a content that is rich and relevant and no-nonsense.
All things done right. In the end the client will have in his hand a well-designed web site full of information and content that is ready to take on the world of the Internet. Or is it? Before anything else, the million-dollar questions must be asked: how many users will read that rich and no-nonsense content that you have? How many customers will be able to see the products that you are trying to sell? How many clients will become aware of the services that you will offer? Search engine optimization is mostly about these questions. In fact it is mostly about trying to give the positive answers to these questions - many readers, many customers, and many clients.
Where do website users come from? In the early phases of a simple personal web site they usually come from the owner’s circle of family and acquaintances that are aware of your brand new URL. Although this may be enough for some personal web sites surely it will take a lot more hits than what those acquaintances would provide when a website is aiming for a larger and more geographically-unconstrained audience. After all, that is one thing that the Internet is all about – breaking geographical constraints. And for this kind of web site traffic need, there is but two words that answers that question of where your users will come from: search engines.
While there were search engines that existed before Google came to the scene, Google brought to the table a completely new way of searching information. The algorithm that Google used, relying heavily on links, (among many other important factors) proved to be very effective that it left other search engines in the dust. This revolution in search that gave relevant search results became so successful that it shaped the users’ habits in finding information on the Internet. Users stopped memorizing web site URLs, and started depending on the power of the search engine to give them back the relevant URLs for the information that they need. And though search engines can give you search results that spanned multiple pages, recent studies have shown that a few percentage of the users even bothered to go beyond the first page.
So that answers the why and how questions that we raised earlier about the importance of search engine listings to web site owners. As far as web design is concerned, everything that is mentioned above also points to one thing – that a good web design is just half the battle. Search engine optimization brings a whole new kind of a game to the table.
There is no definitive answer to the question: how will I make my web site rank well in Google (or Yahoo, or Alta Vista)? There are many factors that affect web site rankings, and the exact formula for this ranking algorithm is considered as a search engine company’s secret sauce that sets it apart from its competitors, and more importantly, this secrecy also serves as a protective wall that tries to prevent the contamination of search results with irrelevant contents and spam pages. But this doesn’t mean that they leave web site designers and owners in the dark. Search engine companies do help web designers and search engine optimization professionals in making pages that are more search-engine friendly. Online communities also exist that help others in their search engine optimization problems.
Search engine optimization is an established and growing industry of professionals who offer services for this specific purpose. But though people who specialize on this kind of optimization exist, it is also important that web designers understand the underlying concepts of search engine optimization. Though optimization techniques can be applied to the web site design towards or at the end of the project, having a good knowledge of the factors that improve a web sites’ search engine ranking saves the designer from cumbersome changes that might have to be done later if optimization is set aside. Having search engine optimization considerations as you design your web sites also focuses your design for a more definitive purpose. In the end knowing more about search engine optimization as a web designer is a big advantage for a more efficient web design resulting to a website that will be noticed and read by visitors all over the world.
Search Engine Optimization And Why You Gotta Use It?----------
E-commerce is a cut throat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest. Each day, more and more sites are clambering to optimize their rankings in websites and if you lose your guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in the abyss filled with so many failed e-commerce sites.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, search engines would be the most widely used internet tool to find the sites that they need to go to or the product or information they need.
Most people that use search engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a barometer of a sites success in search engine optimization. You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in.
But, it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even better. As I aforementioned, each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to make them selves rank higher using search engine optimization. It is imperative to make your site better and better everyday.
So just what is search engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need search engine optimization to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income generating.
With search engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume. Let's just say you get only a turn out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turn out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.
So once again, what is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site top ranking in the results of search engines. Getting yourself in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate public awareness of your site's existence and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could lead to potential income and business.
Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change in your site or add as well to get search engine optimization. These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your sites niche or theme.
You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and informative. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your site's content applicable and conducive to search engine optimization.
You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges and page transfers. The more inbound and outbound traffics generated by sites among others are one of the components search engines uses to rank sites.
Try to search the internet for many useful help. Tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization are plenty to be found. Read many articles that can help you optimize your site in search engine results. The more knowledge and information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort in your part but the benefits will be astounding.
If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the internet that can help you in search engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your site. There are also some content writers that have lots of experience in making good keyword laden content for your sites that have good quality.
Act now and see the benefits garner with search engine optimization. All of these will result to better traffic and more business for your site and company.
Search Engine Optimization Companies save Time--------
Managing a website can be a daunting task for a busy business owner. With all the other tasks at hand to properly run a business, managing a website can sometimes fall by the wayside. This is a critical mistake for a successful website. If you are too busy, hire specialists from a search engine optimization company to manage your site. They provide a variety of services, ranging to meet all types of budgets, which will keep your website in the search engine results.
How do they work within your budget? Sometimes a site must start from the ground up. In other cases, the site is already up and running but needs some updating to meet the ever changing guidelines of the search engines. In the first example, you are going to have to make a major investment to create a site that will measure up to the competition. Older sites that rank high have almost a seniority advantage. Your site must be top notch to compete with these..
What are some more advantages of hiring SEO specialists? Some companies will only submit your site to search engines and that is all. A good search engine optimization company will do much more, ensuring that your site is ready for the analytical eyes of the search engines. Some tips when hiring an SEO company is to make sure the company has a detailed and informative website and make sure the site has a PageRank. PageRank is a method Google uses to rank websites. A
Search Engine Optimization company must know the workings of the search engines enough to obtain a good ranking itself. Obtaining SEO services from a company without a good PageRank is a waste of time and money.
Envision internet success for your business and make it happen with SEO techniques as performed by a Search Engine Optimization company. Take the guess work out of design and coding and hand it over to the professionals. Make sure the company you choose is informative and customer focused.
Search Engine Optimization Company-------
In Delhi, Search Engine Optimization Company’s are growing on a huge quantity. These agencies propose a collection of services to sustain your intention with customer. SEO may take time but it is certainly efficient to make you earn a lot, grow popu1arity and be ahead with all of your competitors. Take a look in brief at the services for better understanding. On line SEO Services Delhi, is serving you to enlarge your ranking and traffic on the search engine so that your target Increasing in many project like outsourcing, Search Engine Optimization Company in India are increasing on a large amount. These agencies offer a group of services to maintain your website and to help you get business leads. Reliable and gainful services you only find in Delhi, In SEO services, Companies are self-assured with certain strategic plans. SEO helps you to increase best traffic to the websites. Good SEO Services Delhi can aid to successful online business and help to attain visibility.
In SEO services you find whole lay out of your web page-right from the substance to propose. The content is also written by the SEO Company. A proper key word vocation is maintained in the content of the page so that it is established by the search engine. Use of too many key words may lead your website being rejected by the search engine. The web designer will place the graphics and the content to make good-looking and steering sociable. A SEO Services Delhi helps your visibility to amplify your visibility on website.
Search Engine Optimization for Dynamic Websites--------
What are "Dynamic Websites"?
Dynamic websites are websites whose pages are generated on the fly. Unlike static pages (primarily .htm/.html pages), dynamic pages are generated when an user triggers an action through that particular page.
Here is a sample dynamic URL-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?q=%22dynamic+websites%22&tab=news&go=homepage
As per the above example of www.bbc.co.uk, the dynamic part (i.e. the part) of the URL which changes as per surfer request is the part after the question mark (?)
What are the problems that search engines face in indexing Dynamic URLs?
1. Search engines often consider a dynamic URL as an infinite set of links.
2. Since dynamic URLs find maximum application in online shopping carts, there is a possibility of incorporating a session id to a particular page. As session ids of that particular page change, the search engine spider needs to index an infinite number of copies of the same page, which is a Herculean task for them.
3. Proceeding with the same logic presented in point # 2, indexing the same dynamic page might overload the servers of the search engines and therefore prevent the search engines to present with the most relevant information in the fastest possible time.
Here is what Google says about indexing of dynamic websites -
Reasons your site may not be included: Your pages are dynamically generated. We are able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because our web crawler can easily overwhelm and crash sites serving dynamic content, we limit the amount of dynamic pages we index. (Source - http://www.google.com/webmasters/)
What are the options that you have in order to make a search engine spider index your Dynamic URLs?
1. Use of softwares - Exception Digital Enterprise Solutions (http://www.xde.net) offers a software which can change the dynamic URLs to static ones. Named XQASP, it will remove the "?" in the Query String and replace it with "/", thereby allowing the search engine spiders to index the dynamic content.
Example -
http://www.my-online-store.com/books.asp?id=1190 will change to
http://www.my-online-store.com/books/1190.
The latter being a static URL, it can easily be indexed by the search engine spiders.
2. Use of CGI/Perl scripts - One of the easiest ways to get your dynamic sites indexed by search engines is using CGI/Perl scripts. Path_Info or Script_Name is a variable in a dynamic application that contains the complete URL address (including the query string information). In order to fix this problem, you'll need to write a script that will pull all the information before the query string and set the rest of the information equal to a variable. You can then use this variable in your URL address.
Example - http://www.my-online-store.com/books.asp?id=1190
When you are using CGI/Perl scripts, the query part of the dynamic URL is assigned a variable.
So, in the above example "?id=1190" is assigned a variable, say "A". The dynamuc URL http://www.my-online-store.com/coolpage.asp?id=1190
will change to http://www.my-online-store.com/books/A through CGI/Perl scripts which can easily be indexed by the search engines.
3. Re-configuring your web servers -
(i) Apache Server - Apache has a rewrite module (mod_rewrite) that enables you to turn URLs containing query strings into URLs that search engines can index. This module however, isn't installed with Apache software by default, so you need to check with your web hosting company for installation.
(ii) ColdFusion - You'll need to reconfigure ColdFusion on your server so that the "?" in a query string is replaced with a '/' and pass the value to the URL.
4. Creation of a Static Page linked to an array of dynamic Pages -
This approach is very effective, especially if you are the owner of a small online store selling a few products online. Just create a static page linking to all your dynamic pages. Optimize this static page for search engine rankings. Include a link title for all the product categories, place appropriate "alt" tag for the product images along with product description containing highly popular keywords relevant to your business (You can conduct keyword research for your site through http://www.wordtracker.com). Submit this static page along with all the dynamic pages in various search engines, conforming to the search engine submission guidelines.
How Amazon.com, Earth's Biggest Bookstore, coped with the issue of indexing of dynamic URLs?
A search in Google for internet marketing books, yielded a result that takes you directly to the appropriate dynamic page at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0395683297/103-0475212-8205437.
Since the above URL does not contain any query strings, all search engines can index Amazon.com's products. Amazon.com uses this method to get its product selections indexed by search engines. This is very important for Amazon, because being an online bookstore, it is very natural for them to adopt dynamic URLs yet it was equally important for them to make their dynamic URLs search engine index friendly.
Conclusion
Even a few years back, most of the major search engines did not index dynamic URLs, thereby often preventing top search engine rankings for the online stores. With Google starting to index dynamic URLs a few months ago, the picture is going to change in the coming days. This is more so because Google's numero uno position is currently being threatened by Microsoft's MSN (developing its own search engine) and Yahoo! who recently acquired Overture, the biggest player in the PPC Search Engine industry.
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Search Engine Optimization For Traffic And Profits---------
The point of this article is to help you to the next level and show you what search engine optimization has to offer.
Doing business on the internet is very competitive. You have to arm yourself with the know-how and the marketing tools to make your business a step above the rest. Each day, more and more websites are clambering to optimize their rankings in search engines and if you don't keep up, you may just be left behind in the abyss packed with so many failed websites.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a tool used nowadays by many websites. In the past and years to come, search engines have and will be the most used internet tool for people to find information they want.
Most people that use search engines use only the top ten search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a gauge of a sites victory in search engine optimization. You will get a high ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more potential business which leads to profits.
In the beginning of this article, we went over the basics. Now, we will look at this topic a little more in-depth.
So just what is search engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is a simple one. You need search engine optimization to be number one, or perhaps at best make your site generate profits.
With search engine optimization you have the advantage of generating a high traffic volume. Lets just say you get only a turning out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turning out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.
So once again, what is search engine optimization? search engine optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site the top position in the results of search engines. Acquiring a position in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will guarantee that your business will produce awareness and subsequently stimulate more traffic, that could lead to possible earnings.
Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be a total benefit. There are many aspects of your site you may have to change or add to, to benefit from search engine optimization. This will require researching information about the keyword phrases that are prevalent in regards to your sites theme.
You may also have to revise your sites contents so that you will get the right keyword phrases in place trying not to make it too commercial but light with good information. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your sites content applicable and favorable to search engine optimization.
You will also have to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges . The more inbound and outbound traffic generated by sites among others are one of the algorithms search engines uses to rank sites.
Search the internet for valuable help, tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization. Read many articles that can help you optimize your website in search engine results. The more education and information you gather the better. This will all help you in receiving those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort on your part but the payback will reward you.
If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the internet that can help you in search engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your website. There are also some content writers that have heaps of experience in making good keyword rich content for your sites that have good value.
Act now and see the payback you gain with search engine optimization. Search engine optimization will mean more traffic and business for your website leading to a sale.
The complexities of the subject matter within this article strive to give you a better look at what search engine optimization is all about.
Search Engine Optimization Glossary--------
Algorithm. A set of rules that a search engine uses to rank the pages contained within its index in response to a particular query. No search engine reveals exactly how its algorithm works, to protect itself both from competitors and from those who wish to spam the search engine.
Back links. These are links to a website from external sources, including other web pages, directories, and advertising.
Banned. When pages are removed from a search engine's index because the search engine has deemed them to be spamming, or violating one of the search engine’s other rules.
Click-through rate. How many people clicked on a link, as a percentage of the total number of people that saw the link.
Cloaking. The act of serving content to search engine spiders that is different to what normal visitors would see. Search engines will ban you if they find you doing this.
Contextual links. Contextual links are displayed on web pages when the content on the page indicates to an ad server that the page is a good match for specific keywords or phrases.
Conversion rate. The percentage of visitors to a website who buy something.
Cost per click (CPC). A system where an advertiser pays an agreed amount for each click someone makes on a link leading to their website.
Cost per mille (CPM). A system where an advertiser pays an agreed amount for the number of times an ad is seen, regardless of how many people actually click through. The ‘mille’ refers to one thousand viewings of the ad.
Crawler. A component of a search engine that gathers listings by automatically ‘crawling’ the web, following links to understand how pages are connected.
De-listing. This is when pages are removed from a search engine’s index, usually because they haven’t been updated for a long time.
Directories. A type of search engine where listings are gathered by humans, rather than by automated web crawlers.
Doorway page. A web page created in the hope of improving another page’s ranking in a search engine’s listings. Doorway pages don’t give much information to the people viewing them.
Graphical inventory. Banners and other ads that appear depending on the keywords a page contains. This includes pop-ups, browser toolbars and rich media.
Index. The collection of information a search engine has that searchers can query.
Landing page. The web page that a visitor reaches after clicking your search engine listing.
Link popularity. A count of how ‘popular’ a page is based on the number of other pages that link to it.
Link. A link is text that you can click on to go to another website, or another page on the same website.
Listings. The information that appears on a search engine's results page in response to a search.
Meta-search engine. A search engine that returns listings from two or more other search engines, instead of using its own index.
Meta tags. Tags placed in a web page’s code that pass information to search engine crawlers, browser software and some other applications.
Meta description tag. This meta tag allows pages to provide descriptions to search engines.
Meta keywords tag. Allows authors to add text to a page to help with the search engine ranking process.
Meta robots tag. Allows page authors to keep some web pages from being indexed by search engines. Similar to a robots.txt file.
Natural listings. The listings that search engines do not sell. Instead, sites appear solely because a search engine believes it is important for them to be included, regardless of payment. Note that paid inclusion listings are still treated as natural listings by many search engines.
Outbound links. Links on one website that lead to other websites.
Paid inclusion. An advertising program where pages are guaranteed to be spidered and included in a search engine's index in exchange for payment.
PPC. Pay-per-click – means the same as cost per click (CPC).
Paid listings. Listings that search engines sell to advertisers, usually through paid placement or paid inclusion programs.
Pay-for-performance. A term popularized by some search engines as a synonym for pay-per-click. It stresses to advertisers that they are only paying for ads that "perform" in terms of delivering traffic, as opposed to CPM-based ads, where ads cost money even if no-one clicks on them.
Paid placement. An advertising program where listings appear in response to particular search terms, with higher rankings typically obtained by paying more than other advertisers.
Rank. The order in which web pages are listed in search engine results.
Reciprocal link. A ‘link exchange’ in which two sites link to each other.
Results page. The page that appears after a user enters their search terms.
Robots.txt. A file used to keep web pages from being indexed by search engines.
Search engine. A service designed to allow users to search the web, or another database of information.
Search engine marketing (SEM). Marketing a website using search engines, whether you’re improving your ranking in natural listings, purchasing paid listings or some combination of the two.
Search engine optimization (SEO). Altering a website so that it ranks higher in the search engines.
Search terms. The words a searcher enters into a search engine's search box.
Shopping search. Shopping search engines allow shoppers to search the web for products and their prices.
Spam. Any search engine marketing method that a search engine decides is detrimental to its efforts to deliver relevant search results.
Spider. See crawler.
Submission. The act of sending a URL to a search engine, for inclusion in its index.
XML feeds. A process in which information about a page is fed to the index without using a crawler, for example using RSS.
The best advice is to follow a good search engine promotion system. Keep track of when you submit your sites and how soon they’re indexed -- checking once a week is sufficient.
Ranking systems can be confusing and there are often complex factors involved, but you do not need to be an expert in the field to achieve top results. Take a chance – after all, you have nothing to lose.
Many thanks to Danny Sullivan, Kevin Lee, Ikonya Nginyo, and all the other volunteers who contributed.
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