Thursday, April 16, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Peeling Back the Onion: Metrics that Matter to a Good Search Engine Optimization Company
"I want to be number one on Google for (insert hyper-competitive keyphrase here)."
It's usually the first thing we hear in terms of search engine optimization - a company wants to be in that coveted top spot on Google, Yahoo!, Ask, and MSN. No matter the industry or specialty, when companies approach us with their desired goals for an SEO campaign, it's usually all about improving their rankings and positions...and often nothing else. Yes, achieving first page rankings or top spots on the search engines is an incredibly desirable accomplishment to many companies who want immediate and noticeable results. But with such a considerable investment in an SEO campaign, you'd think companies in need of search engine optimization services would also be concerned with their overall ROI, especially in light of the current economy.
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Vastly improved (or even #1) rankings are rather easy to achieve in an SEO campaign, even by a novice search engine optimization company. I once wrote an article demonstrating that top rankings were simple - and proved it by optimizing the article for the phrase "Leprechaun Repellent ." To this day, that article, on various sites, takes up nine of the top ten spots on Google for the ridiculous phrase. The obvious question, then, is what those rankings ultimately accomplish. And so we peel back the layers of the onion until we get there.
The First Layer - Rankings
Rankings, rankings, rankings. This is by far the most popular metric for any SEO campaign. Occasionally, a search engine optimization company may not be concerned with your bottom line because it can offer guarantees and focus exclusively on achieving this goal (even though, as in the 'Leprechaun' example above, it's really not getting you anywhere significant in the long run).
Rankings by themselves mean little, and the problem with companies obsessed over rankings is that it doesn't demonstrate the usefulness of search engine optimization. For a company website, high rankings are great (and impressive for an SEO campaign), but they are just the first layer of the onion. As any good search engine optimization company will demonstrate, our goal is (and yours should be) to bring and/or improve the levels of high quality traffic to your website, meaning visitors who come to your website via a search are already reasonably interested in your products or services.
The Second Layer - Search-Engine Referred Traffic
Increasing search-referred traffic is not a perfect metric because, if visitors are not converting on your website, there's not a big value proposition to be had. Alone, the metric relies heavily on the right keyphrase selection by your search engine optimization company during the beginning phases of your SEO campaign.
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Say that a farming supply company who wanted to be number one on Google for "affordable farming equipment" decided to try a different tactic while attempting to improve its search-engine referred traffic. If the website had been optimized for 'Britney Spears,' for example, traffic levels would undoubtedly be high (if the site ranked well for the term - admittedly a huge challenge), but few visitors would be converting, and business, in turn, would be far from booming. Visitors will jump ship immediately and serve as an immediate reminder of the negative impact that poor phrase selection by your search engine optimization company can have on your long-term ROI.
The Third Layer - Take Rate
Essentially, the take rate refers to the number or percentage of search-referred visitors showing interest in your products or demos (your POA or Point-of-Action). The take rate merely signifies a visitor who demonstrates an interest in your POA, for example, by clicking on a "Contact Us" link. The data you're gauging here is simply overall interest, since not all of the visitors will follow through and actually convert.
Fortunately, there are ways to improve your take rate during the SEO campaign - making the point-of-action blatant and clear on every page is usually the most effective (but overlooked) method. Collaborating with your search engine optimization company to make certain that the primary POA on your website is indeed the most desirable action that a visitor can take is of paramount importance.
The Fourth Layer - Conversion
Strictly speaking, "Conversion" is the percentage of visitors to your website that actually follow through with your POA. Once your search engine optimization company has helped you improve your take rate, you should work on getting more of those people to actually convert. Is your form too long? Do you show a prominent privacy policy promising not to use or sell personal data? Is it a quick, easy process or do people have to jump through hoops? A good search engine optimization company will be able to help you to identify the elements that are serving as barriers to conversion.
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The Fifth Layer - Offsite Metrics
If a client allows it, we like to get involved in the nitty-gritty of offsite metrics as part of the SEO campaign. Though the usual search engine optimization company doesn't go this far into the process, this area alone proves invaluable to demonstrating your ROI.
By analyzing offline metrics on a granular level, your search engine optimization company can examine and report on your average dollar sale for search-referred traffic, the average dollar value of each search-referred lead, the average lifetime value of each search-referred lead, and much, much more.
A software system is usually required to report the data acquired during your SEO campaign; we use Salesforce, a leading CRM (customer relationship management) solution that can be implemented to track these statistics for you. Though it requires diligence to analyze (as well as follow leads from cradle to grave), your company can analyze which engines attracted the most visitors, which keyphrases were the most profitable, the value of customers, and retention levels.
More than Rankings
All layers of the onion, so to speak, are important to an SEO campaign, but the closer you get to the actual dollar return, the more accurate your assessment of success or failure will be. Rankings alone are no indication of success. For that matter, neither is search-referred traffic if the visitors don't take an action on the site that can lead to a sale. And when the lead finally comes in, there is no way to track the value unless you follow up with offline metrics to determine exactly how much leads from your website are worth.
These are all base metrics - many campaigns are much more involved and use thousands of different data points. But if you are new to the conversion/ROI game and are thinking about hiring a search engine optimization company, make sure that its goal is to be attuned to your bottom line.
About The Author
Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue Search Engine Marketing, which was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world in 2006 and 2007 by PromotionWorld. Scott has contributed content to many publications including The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Atlantic, 2008) and Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.
Ten Ways To Get Web Traffic Fast - And Free
There are several ways to get website traffic fast and free, and I'm going to share ten niche ways with you.
Article Submission
You don't need to be an award winning expert on the topic you are writing about - just pick an area that is related to the theme of your website, do a bit of research using a search engine and before you know it you will have more knowledge on that subject than most. Write in a relaxed, straightforward way. And, of course, when you add your details at the end of your article, make certain that you include your web address as well.
http://www.sitepronews.com/cgi-bin/ct.cgi?id=2664
URL Submission
This sounds so obvious, yet so many people overlook it. Website URL submission is about getting more links to your website to help your website get ranked high on major search engines, thus getting more visitor traffic by, well, submitting your website URL to the major search engines. You can buy or subscribe to software that will do this, but it is quite possible to get a good return by submitting manually.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is a way for internet users to store, classify, share, search and discover Internet resources that they find useful. Since social bookmarks are saved online, users are able to access them from anywhere - at home, at work or while travelling.
These lists can be accessible to the public by users of a specific network or website. What you need to do first is register with a social bookmarking site which allows you to store and tag bookmarks. Most social bookmarking services allow users to search for bookmarks which are associated with given "tags", and rank the resources by the number of users which have bookmarked them. This means that other visitors and members of social bookmarking sites can search for resources by topic, category, keyword, tags, or popularity to see what others have saved. As a user, social bookmarking sites let you find useful, informative resources through pages that have been tagged because others have found them to be valuable sources. Voila - more web traffic. Free.
Forum Posting
Forum posting is a hands down alternative to paid advertising methods. For only a few hours of work every week, you can capture batches of interested leads everyday. The more forums you contribute to, the more you will gain traffic. If you are an active forum poster, you will also get a good feel about the kind of products that are hot on the market.
Please don't overlook the forum signature or commonly called resource box - it's a powerful free advertising tool for you. What you must do is edit your forum signature. Basically, a curiosity inducing one-liner and a link to your website is great. Once you have edited and saved your signature, it will appear at the bottom of all your comments in the forum discussions. That means, the more you participate in the discussions in the forums, the more people see your semi-ad written on your signature. I promise, this will encourage people to visit your website, and hopefully buy from you.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is one of the best ways to get the word out about your website and can be done with very little technical expertise and therefore is easy to start up. If you have a product or service you believe in, visit a site such as Clickbank and open an account. Follow the simple instructions to gain affiliates - and traffic.
Press Releases
It's a fact that a well-written Press Release can dramatically increase your sales, expose your company to the masses, and greatly enhance the image of your business or products. Publicity is the most cost-effective web traffic building marketing tool there is, and, surprisingly, web traffic can be generated by ink and paper.
Classified Ads
Again, it's easy to associate Classified Ads with yesterday's technology, but they are extremely cheap and a one line product or service description, together with your website, will pay dividends.
Blog Comments
If you are an avid blog follower, you have to include Blog Commenting in your web traffic arsenal. You will almost always find a "comments" link at the end of each post. Good blog commenters add to the discussion and are known as knowledgeable, informative, friendly and engaged. Join them!
Don't forget that you can use Facebook to its full potential to attract more visitors to your website. You can get away from just interacting with your school or college friends and start interacting with people within your industry or other industries that you want to get into.
An easy way to do this is to join groups that interest you as well as make friends with people that you want to get to know. Fill out your profile (fully) - the best profile on Facebook is a complete one.
Videos
Finally, why not make a video and post to video sites too! This is not a Warner Bros. effort! Your PC or Mac may well have a webcam, or you can borrow a camcorder or Flip. Write a brief script - lights- camera - action - and upload to YouTube. (Just remember to be sure to link it back to you.)
Well - there you are. Not all of the ten suggestions I've outlined may appeal, but if you select three or four, stick with them, and implement them on a regular basis, you will see your web traffic increase significantly. My best to you.
About The Author
Did you find these suggestions helpful? Is your website making you money? Go to UltraSimpleWebTraffic.com to find out more and claim your free visitor traffic mini course by James Gladwin.
"I want to be number one on Google for (insert hyper-competitive keyphrase here)."
It's usually the first thing we hear in terms of search engine optimization - a company wants to be in that coveted top spot on Google, Yahoo!, Ask, and MSN. No matter the industry or specialty, when companies approach us with their desired goals for an SEO campaign, it's usually all about improving their rankings and positions...and often nothing else. Yes, achieving first page rankings or top spots on the search engines is an incredibly desirable accomplishment to many companies who want immediate and noticeable results. But with such a considerable investment in an SEO campaign, you'd think companies in need of search engine optimization services would also be concerned with their overall ROI, especially in light of the current economy.
Ten Ways To Get Web Traffic Fast - And Free
There are several ways to get website traffic fast and free, and I'm going to share ten niche ways with you.
Article Submission
You don't need to be an award winning expert on the topic you are writing about - just pick an area that is related to the theme of your website, do a bit of research using a search engine and before you know it you will have more knowledge on that subject than most. Write in a relaxed, straightforward way. And, of course, when you add your details at the end of your article, make certain that you include your web address as well.
http://www.sitepronews.com/cgi-bin/ct.cgi?id=2664
URL Submission
This sounds so obvious, yet so many people overlook it. Website URL submission is about getting more links to your website to help your website get ranked high on major search engines, thus getting more visitor traffic by, well, submitting your website URL to the major search engines. You can buy or subscribe to software that will do this, but it is quite possible to get a good return by submitting manually.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is a way for internet users to store, classify, share, search and discover Internet resources that they find useful. Since social bookmarks are saved online, users are able to access them from anywhere - at home, at work or while travelling.
These lists can be accessible to the public by users of a specific network or website. What you need to do first is register with a social bookmarking site which allows you to store and tag bookmarks. Most social bookmarking services allow users to search for bookmarks which are associated with given "tags", and rank the resources by the number of users which have bookmarked them. This means that other visitors and members of social bookmarking sites can search for resources by topic, category, keyword, tags, or popularity to see what others have saved. As a user, social bookmarking sites let you find useful, informative resources through pages that have been tagged because others have found them to be valuable sources. Voila - more web traffic. Free.
Forum Posting
Forum posting is a hands down alternative to paid advertising methods. For only a few hours of work every week, you can capture batches of interested leads everyday. The more forums you contribute to, the more you will gain traffic. If you are an active forum poster, you will also get a good feel about the kind of products that are hot on the market.
Please don't overlook the forum signature or commonly called resource box - it's a powerful free advertising tool for you. What you must do is edit your forum signature. Basically, a curiosity inducing one-liner and a link to your website is great. Once you have edited and saved your signature, it will appear at the bottom of all your comments in the forum discussions. That means, the more you participate in the discussions in the forums, the more people see your semi-ad written on your signature. I promise, this will encourage people to visit your website, and hopefully buy from you.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is one of the best ways to get the word out about your website and can be done with very little technical expertise and therefore is easy to start up. If you have a product or service you believe in, visit a site such as Clickbank and open an account. Follow the simple instructions to gain affiliates - and traffic.
Press Releases
It's a fact that a well-written Press Release can dramatically increase your sales, expose your company to the masses, and greatly enhance the image of your business or products. Publicity is the most cost-effective web traffic building marketing tool there is, and, surprisingly, web traffic can be generated by ink and paper.
Classified Ads
Again, it's easy to associate Classified Ads with yesterday's technology, but they are extremely cheap and a one line product or service description, together with your website, will pay dividends.
Blog Comments
If you are an avid blog follower, you have to include Blog Commenting in your web traffic arsenal. You will almost always find a "comments" link at the end of each post. Good blog commenters add to the discussion and are known as knowledgeable, informative, friendly and engaged. Join them!
Don't forget that you can use Facebook to its full potential to attract more visitors to your website. You can get away from just interacting with your school or college friends and start interacting with people within your industry or other industries that you want to get into.
An easy way to do this is to join groups that interest you as well as make friends with people that you want to get to know. Fill out your profile (fully) - the best profile on Facebook is a complete one.
Videos
Finally, why not make a video and post to video sites too! This is not a Warner Bros. effort! Your PC or Mac may well have a webcam, or you can borrow a camcorder or Flip. Write a brief script - lights- camera - action - and upload to YouTube. (Just remember to be sure to link it back to you.)
Well - there you are. Not all of the ten suggestions I've outlined may appeal, but if you select three or four, stick with them, and implement them on a regular basis, you will see your web traffic increase significantly. My best to you.
About The Author
Did you find these suggestions helpful? Is your website making you money? Go to UltraSimpleWebTraffic.com to find out more and claim your free visitor traffic mini course by James Gladwin.
"I want to be number one on Google for (insert hyper-competitive keyphrase here)."
It's usually the first thing we hear in terms of search engine optimization - a company wants to be in that coveted top spot on Google, Yahoo!, Ask, and MSN. No matter the industry or specialty, when companies approach us with their desired goals for an SEO campaign, it's usually all about improving their rankings and positions...and often nothing else. Yes, achieving first page rankings or top spots on the search engines is an incredibly desirable accomplishment to many companies who want immediate and noticeable results. But with such a considerable investment in an SEO campaign, you'd think companies in need of search engine optimization services would also be concerned with their overall ROI, especially in light of the current economy.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
6 Things You Can Do Today to Drive More Traffic to Your Website for Free
Website (and business) marketing is not a one off exercise. Whether you have a brand new website or one that you've had for a while, you need to continue promoting it in order to bring you more visitors.
You need to constantly work on it, fine-tune it, discard methods that are not working and implement new ones.
The following 6 methods are simple to implement and can be done for free by you today.
1. Email Marketing
Your first step should be to send an email to your existing clients announcing the existence of your website. You should also ask your customers to forward your email onto their friends, family and colleagues.
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Think Web Pages, not Websites
If you are starting a new business and don't have any customers yet, send an email to people you know who may be interested in your offer.
Remember to email your clients every time you make changes, add new offers or features to your website to remind them to come back.
The next step could be to send your announcement to an opt-in email list. Opt-in email lists contain people or businesses who have requested to receive information about certain topic(s). There are many companies who can provide you with these lists.
Under no circumstance should you EVER send unsolicited email (spam) to people you either don't know or who have not requested to receive your information.
2. Search Engines & Directories
Submit your website to as many search engines and directories as you can. (A search engine is a searchable database of websites collected by a computer program (called a crawler, robot or spider). When you enter a keyword, the search engine looks for keywords in its database, and any relevant records are displayed.)
Currently there are thousands of search engines and directories on the internet. Some of the main ones include Google, Yahoo, MSN. When submitting your website to the search engines, you can either do it manually by going to the search engine website and adding your URL (website address) or you can employ the services of a Search Engine Submission company, who will do it for you.
Search engines try to rank sites that contain good content higher, so you need keywords and phrases on your pages that best describe your service and products. For example, if you are a florist, use words such as "florist, online florist, virtual florist, wedding florist, florist in Sydney, florist on line, flowers, floral, bouquets, floral arrangements etc." as many times as possible to ensure high search engine ranking. To find out what keywords your customers may be searching use Google's Keyword Tool or Wordtracker.
http://www.sitepronews.com/cgi-bin/ct.cgi?id=2664
Once you decide on your keywords, use them in:
(a) Your website's domain name
(b) The title of your page - This is displayed in the top bar of your browser window.
(c) The heading of your home page.
(d) The first paragraph of your home page.
(e) Meta tags - Keywords, description.
(f) Titles of your graphics.
While it is important to use keywords as much as possible, it is also important you use them only if they are relevant and do not sound awkward. If you spam your keywords, you may be penalized or even banned by some search engines.
If this all seems too overwhelming, you can employ the services of a Search Engine optimization company, who will make your website's content more search engine friendly to make it rank higher.
3. Link Exchanges
Find websites whose business complements yours and add their website to your links/resource page. Then contact the company and ask for a reciprocal link. For example if you are a wedding dress designer, you could contact businesses that sell wedding cakes, jewellery, flowers and also venues, celebrants etc. By doing this your website will become a valuable resource for your visitors, since it will provide information they need. They may return to your site over and over to find more information.
http://www.sitepronews.com/cgi-bin/ct.cgi?id=1255
On the other hand, you will have visitors coming to your website when they follow a link from your link partners.
Results in search engines are determined by the material you have presented on your site and by other off-page factors such as how many other sites link to your site. The more links you have pointing to your site from relevant websites, the higher your site will rank.
If you need help with this task, you can employ the services of a Link Exchange Company. They are generally inexpensive and can save you hours of time.
4. Email Signature
Every email you send should have an email "signature." This is text that is automatically attached to the bottom of your email message. This text can be used to publicize your business. You can include your name, business name, email address, street or postal address, website details, phone number, fax number, company slogan, description of your company and its products/services. You can set up different signatures for different purposes.
To set up your signature using Outlook Express:
Step 1: Select Tools > Options from the menu bar.
Step 2: Click "Signatures" .
Step 3: Make sure that you select "Add signatures to all outgoing messages" - within the "Signature settings" section. It is up to you whether you would like your signature to appear in "replies" and "forwards"
Step 4: Click "New" (you can change the name from "Signature #1" by clicking "Rename") - within "Signature" section:
Step 5: Type in the text that you would like to appear at the end of your email messages - in "Edit signature" section:
Step 6: If you're happy with this, click "Apply" and "OK".
5. Office Stationery & Merchandising Materials
It is extremely important that your website is included on ALL your office stationery so that customers can see it over and over again. That way they are more likely to remember it. If you've just had your letterheads printed, you can always add your website address on your wordprocessor, when printing your correspondence. For brochures, business cards etc, consider having small labels printed up. Your office stationery should include not only your website address, but also your email. Consider adding your details to:
• Letterheads
• Business Cards
• Flyers
• Brochures
• Labels
• Packaging
• Merchandise bags
• Catalogs
• Invoices
• Fax headers
• Display units
6. Set up a Blog
A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. Blogs are typically updated daily or weekly and can easily be managed by you. They provide a way for you to communicate with your customers directly, give you an increased presence on major search engines, allow you to stay ahead of your competition and so much more.
You can easily publish the following information in your blog: Articles, Media releases, Industry news, Surveys - so you can get feedback from your customers, Testimonials, Product reviews, Interviews, Case studies, Links to complementary businesses, Frequently asked questions and problem resolutions, Inspirational quotes, Research findings, etc.
Blogs give you an increased presence on major search engines, like Yahoo! and Google. If you use Blogger(Google's Blogging Tool), every message you post creates a new page on Google so in a very short time you could have a lot of pages pointing to your website, bringing you lots of new visitors.
Don't be scared to try some of these marketing methods - you have nothing to lose!
About The Author
Ivana Katz of Websites 4 Small Business makes it easy for you to get your business on the internet. If you're looking for a professional and affordable website designer, visit Websites 4 Small Business and download a website plan for free.
SEO Articles - 7 Primer Basics of SEO
By George Peirson (c) 2009
We are going to look at 7 Basics of SEO below. These aren't the only things you want to know about SEO, but are the areas you should learn first. Some topics will only take you a minute, some will take a little longer, and others will become an ongoing process. But after reading through this list you should have a good handle on where to start and where to proceed next.
SEO Basic 1: Let's start off with a definition. SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization" and is the process by which you Optimize your web site so that it is positioned well in the search engines. This is not the same thing as designing a site so that it attracts customers and entices them to buy.
SEO is what you do specifically on your site to improve your Search Engine Position. If you do a search on Google for any search term you will be presented with a list of links. At the top of the page and along the right side will be PPC links where someone pays an amount per click to get positioned. With PPC the more you pay the better your position. Most people only glance at these listings. You don't need SEO to get one of these positions, just lots of money.
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The body of the page contains "organic" listings. These links are listed in the order that Google determined best fit your search, with the best match first. There are only 10 listings per page, most people will only look at the 1st page, maybe the 2nd. So your site needs to be listed within the top 10 and at the worst within the top 20 for any useful exposure. With SEO you will be adjusting your site code so that your site will rank highly. This can be a daunting process as there may be thousands of sites competing for the same top listing. A trick is to aim your pages at less popular search terms to get higher placement. It is better to be on page one for a term that gets 1,000 searches per month than to be on page three for a search term that gets millions of visits.
SEO Basic 2: Your web site must be search engine friendly. The search engines send out "spiders" or "bots" cataloging web pages they come across. If the search engine has trouble getting through to your pages it will either rank your page poorly, or skip your site all together. Making your site Search Engine Friendly means having the code easily accessible, no errors in the code, and guiding the search engine through your site.
Try to steer away from complicated coding when possible. Check your site for coding errors. This is fairly easy to do with web programs like Dreamweaver which do this for you automatically. Plan on having text based navigation on every page. This is usually placed at the bottom of the pages. You may also want to have a "Site Map" page with easy to follow text based links to all of your important pages. Search Engines will look for a Site Map and will use that to navigate a site if available.
SEO Basic 3: The Most Important SEO Aspect is Keywords. Keywords are the terms you type into a search engine to find interesting web sites. You need to know what search terms people are likely to use to find your site, then use those terms as your Keywords. Make a list of the keyword combinations you can think of that you would use to find your site. Try them all on a search engine and see the results.
You need to see how these search terms perform on the web and what other search terms could be used. A great free tool to help with this research is available at Google:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
You type in a search term, then you are given a list of similar search terms, how often they were searched and some advertiser comparison figures. You can quickly find additional keywords and to see how well they perform. A good idea is to optimize your site for a less frequently used keyword combinations so that you can achieve a higher placement. The Google Keyword Tool will help you figure this out.
http://www.sitepronews.com/cgi-bin/ct.cgi?id=1255
Focus on keyword groups with 3 or 4 keywords. Many times keywords will overlap, so you can focus on a longer keyword combination and cover many other combinations at the same time. For instance, if you are designing a page to sell Photoshop Training, you can optimize for this keyword phrase "Adobe Photoshop Training Video". This will not only give you optimized performance for this keyword combination but also for these other keywords and combinations as well:
Adobe
Photoshop
Training
Adobe Photoshop
Photoshop Training
Adobe Photoshop Training
Photoshop Training Video
So try to come up with a multiple keyword combination that will contain several other keyword combinations as well.
Once you know what keywords you want to use you are ready to place those keywords on your page. The main places you want to use the keywords are:
In the meta title of the page
In the meta description of the page
In the first sentence on the page
In all of the image alt tags
In links to and from the page
Well represented in the body text of the page
Make sure you Pick the right keywords, and make sure they cover more than 5% of the word usage on the page. An easy way to get more keywords onto a page is by using lists such as:
We carry:
Adobe Photoshop Training Video Sets for Educators
Adobe Photoshop Training Video Sets for Students
Adobe Photoshop Training Video Sets for Business
Keep in mind that your page text should still be user friendly. If you use your keywords too frequently or in strange ways on your page, it may rank better in the search engines, but it will drive away visitors. Who wants to read a poorly written page?
SEO Basic 4: Don't try anything funny. There are lots of "tricky" things you can do to cram more keywords into a page without annoying your visitors. The problem is that the search engines know about these tricks and will penalize your site if you use them. So don't do any of the following or you may find your web site disappear completely from the search engine listings.
White letters on white background, or any other similar text coloring trick. Even using a very light gray text on a white background, or very dark gray text on a black background can get you bumped from the search engines.
Don't repeat your keyword over and over again. People used to do things like this at the top or bottom of their pages: Photoshop Photoshop Photoshop. This worked in the early days of search engine optimization, but no longer. You should also not try this trick in alt tags, image names, links or other places in your code. The search engines will spot this and you will be penalized.
Don't put keywords into comment tags. Also don't put keywords in hidden form fields. The search engines will spot these and mark you down accordingly.
Even though putting keywords into image names and alt tags is a great idea, don't think that you can just create a bunch of clear gif images sized at 1x1 and fill those with keywords. The search engines are very good at spotting tricks like this as well.
So use your keywords appropriately, don't try to sneak one past the search engines and you should do just fine. Just keep in mind, if you think that you need to hide the keywords to trick the search engine you can rest assured that they have already thought of that and will do their best to devalue your site accordingly if you use these "black hat" tricks.
SEO Basic 5: All pages should have links to other pages. The main search engines like links. They like outside sites linking into yours, but they also like links within your site going to other pages. So in this case having more pages can be useful. Also since you now have all these pages that you are linking to it gives you a great place to use some more keywords. Make sure that your links include your keywords.
But, and this could have been in section 4 above, don't create "doorway pages" that redirect you to another page. It used to be common SEO practice to create lots of doorway pages, each one stuffed with specific keywords, all of which would redirect the visitor to the actual page they were looking for. This would give your site lots of pages, with lots of internal links and would allow you to tightly optimize these doorway pages for specific keywords, but the search engines have gotten wise to this trick and now penalize the use of redirect pages. So don't use redirects unless you absolutely need to and never use doorway pages.
SEO Basic 6: Only optimize a page for one or two keyword groups. More than that just dilutes your keyword ratio. The search engines will analyze your web page to determine which words are used as keywords. They do this by looking at the title, the description, the page heading and the words used on the page. They then determine how relevant your keywords are to your page. So, if you try to use too many different keywords on a page, it will only bring down the percentage of any individual keyword or group for that page. It is better to optimize for a larger keyword group as discussed above than to try to optimize a page for a lot of individual keywords that can't be easily used in one sentence. If you need to have a page optimized for several different, unrelated keywords you are better off creating several different pages and re-writing the body text on each page to match the keywords you are optimizing for. This will make each page relevant for the specific keyword and will get a better placement in the search engines.
SEO Basic 7: Be patient. Even with a perfectly optimized web site it can take several months for it to rise in the search engine standings. I usually recommend waiting at least 90 days and up to 6 months to see how well a web page is doing in the search engines. Also, even though you have gone to great lengths to target a specific keyword or keyword combination keep in mind that the search engines aren't required to agree with you. So when checking your standings look at several different search terms that you discovered in your research and see how well your page is placing. Hopefully you will find that your chosen keywords are getting your page listed the way you want, showing that your SEO has worked properly.
If you find that your page is ranking better for a different keyword, you should examine your page code to see why and make adjustments as needed. Maybe your page is placing higher for a keyword combination you weren't focusing on, but it is still a good combination for your goals. This gives you an ideal opportunity to go with that new combination to achieve even higher placing.
So, get started right now on your SEO. The longer you wait, the longer it will be before your web site is showing well up in the search engines.
In Closing
There is a lot more to SEO than just these 7 quick points, but this will get you started on the right path. Go through these steps and your web pages will be well positioned for any other SEO you may want to perform on your site in the future.
About The Author
George Peirson is a successful Entrepreneur and Internet Trainer. He is the author of over 40 multimedia based tutorial training titles and several design articles. To get his Free e-Book "Web Design Tips" visit www.howtogurus.com .
We are going to look at 7 Basics of SEO below. These aren't the only things you want to know about SEO, but are the areas you should learn first. Some topics will only take you a minute, some will take a little longer, and others will become an ongoing process. But after reading through this list you should have a good handle on where to start and where to proceed next.
SEO Basic 1: Let's start off with a definition. SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization" and is the process by which you Optimize your web site so that it is positioned well in the search engines. This is not the same thing as designing a site so that it attracts customers and entices them to buy.
SEO is what you do specifically on your site to improve your Search Engine Position. If you do a search on Google for any search term you will be presented with a list of links. At the top of the page and along the right side will be PPC links where someone pays an amount per click to get positioned. With PPC the more you pay the better your position. Most people only glance at these listings. You don't need SEO to get one of these positions, just lots of money.
http://www.sitepronews.com/cgi-bin/ct.cgi?id=2664
The body of the page contains "organic" listings. These links are listed in the order that Google determined best fit your search, with the best match first. There are only 10 listings per page, most people will only look at the 1st page, maybe the 2nd. So your site needs to be listed within the top 10 and at the worst within the top 20 for any useful exposure. With SEO you will be adjusting your site code so that your site will rank highly. This can be a daunting process as there may be thousands of sites competing for the same top listing. A trick is to aim your pages at less popular search terms to get higher placement. It is better to be on page one for a term that gets 1,000 searches per month than to be on page three for a search term that gets millions of visits.
SEO Basic 2: Your web site must be search engine friendly. The search engines send out "spiders" or "bots" cataloging web pages they come across. If the search engine has trouble getting through to your pages it will either rank your page poorly, or skip your site all together. Making your site Search Engine Friendly means having the code easily accessible, no errors in the code, and guiding the search engine through your site.
Try to steer away from complicated coding when possible. Check your site for coding errors. This is fairly easy to do with web programs like Dreamweaver which do this for you automatically. Plan on having text based navigation on every page. This is usually placed at the bottom of the pages. You may also want to have a "Site Map" page with easy to follow text based links to all of your important pages. Search Engines will look for a Site Map and will use that to navigate a site if available.
SEO Basic 3: The Most Important SEO Aspect is Keywords. Keywords are the terms you type into a search engine to find interesting web sites. You need to know what search terms people are likely to use to find your site, then use those terms as your Keywords. Make a list of the keyword combinations you can think of that you would use to find your site. Try them all on a search engine and see the results.
You need to see how these search terms perform on the web and what other search terms could be used. A great free tool to help with this research is available at Google:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
You type in a search term, then you are given a list of similar search terms, how often they were searched and some advertiser comparison figures. You can quickly find additional keywords and to see how well they perform. A good idea is to optimize your site for a less frequently used keyword combinations so that you can achieve a higher placement. The Google Keyword Tool will help you figure this out.
http://www.sitepronews.com/cgi-bin/ct.cgi?id=1255
Focus on keyword groups with 3 or 4 keywords. Many times keywords will overlap, so you can focus on a longer keyword combination and cover many other combinations at the same time. For instance, if you are designing a page to sell Photoshop Training, you can optimize for this keyword phrase "Adobe Photoshop Training Video". This will not only give you optimized performance for this keyword combination but also for these other keywords and combinations as well:
Adobe
Photoshop
Training
Adobe Photoshop
Photoshop Training
Adobe Photoshop Training
Photoshop Training Video
So try to come up with a multiple keyword combination that will contain several other keyword combinations as well.
Once you know what keywords you want to use you are ready to place those keywords on your page. The main places you want to use the keywords are:
In the meta title of the page
In the meta description of the page
In the first sentence on the page
In all of the image alt tags
In links to and from the page
Well represented in the body text of the page
Make sure you Pick the right keywords, and make sure they cover more than 5% of the word usage on the page. An easy way to get more keywords onto a page is by using lists such as:
We carry:
Adobe Photoshop Training Video Sets for Educators
Adobe Photoshop Training Video Sets for Students
Adobe Photoshop Training Video Sets for Business
Keep in mind that your page text should still be user friendly. If you use your keywords too frequently or in strange ways on your page, it may rank better in the search engines, but it will drive away visitors. Who wants to read a poorly written page?
SEO Basic 4: Don't try anything funny. There are lots of "tricky" things you can do to cram more keywords into a page without annoying your visitors. The problem is that the search engines know about these tricks and will penalize your site if you use them. So don't do any of the following or you may find your web site disappear completely from the search engine listings.
White letters on white background, or any other similar text coloring trick. Even using a very light gray text on a white background, or very dark gray text on a black background can get you bumped from the search engines.
Don't repeat your keyword over and over again. People used to do things like this at the top or bottom of their pages: Photoshop Photoshop Photoshop. This worked in the early days of search engine optimization, but no longer. You should also not try this trick in alt tags, image names, links or other places in your code. The search engines will spot this and you will be penalized.
Don't put keywords into comment tags. Also don't put keywords in hidden form fields. The search engines will spot these and mark you down accordingly.
Even though putting keywords into image names and alt tags is a great idea, don't think that you can just create a bunch of clear gif images sized at 1x1 and fill those with keywords. The search engines are very good at spotting tricks like this as well.
So use your keywords appropriately, don't try to sneak one past the search engines and you should do just fine. Just keep in mind, if you think that you need to hide the keywords to trick the search engine you can rest assured that they have already thought of that and will do their best to devalue your site accordingly if you use these "black hat" tricks.
SEO Basic 5: All pages should have links to other pages. The main search engines like links. They like outside sites linking into yours, but they also like links within your site going to other pages. So in this case having more pages can be useful. Also since you now have all these pages that you are linking to it gives you a great place to use some more keywords. Make sure that your links include your keywords.
But, and this could have been in section 4 above, don't create "doorway pages" that redirect you to another page. It used to be common SEO practice to create lots of doorway pages, each one stuffed with specific keywords, all of which would redirect the visitor to the actual page they were looking for. This would give your site lots of pages, with lots of internal links and would allow you to tightly optimize these doorway pages for specific keywords, but the search engines have gotten wise to this trick and now penalize the use of redirect pages. So don't use redirects unless you absolutely need to and never use doorway pages.
SEO Basic 6: Only optimize a page for one or two keyword groups. More than that just dilutes your keyword ratio. The search engines will analyze your web page to determine which words are used as keywords. They do this by looking at the title, the description, the page heading and the words used on the page. They then determine how relevant your keywords are to your page. So, if you try to use too many different keywords on a page, it will only bring down the percentage of any individual keyword or group for that page. It is better to optimize for a larger keyword group as discussed above than to try to optimize a page for a lot of individual keywords that can't be easily used in one sentence. If you need to have a page optimized for several different, unrelated keywords you are better off creating several different pages and re-writing the body text on each page to match the keywords you are optimizing for. This will make each page relevant for the specific keyword and will get a better placement in the search engines.
SEO Basic 7: Be patient. Even with a perfectly optimized web site it can take several months for it to rise in the search engine standings. I usually recommend waiting at least 90 days and up to 6 months to see how well a web page is doing in the search engines. Also, even though you have gone to great lengths to target a specific keyword or keyword combination keep in mind that the search engines aren't required to agree with you. So when checking your standings look at several different search terms that you discovered in your research and see how well your page is placing. Hopefully you will find that your chosen keywords are getting your page listed the way you want, showing that your SEO has worked properly.
If you find that your page is ranking better for a different keyword, you should examine your page code to see why and make adjustments as needed. Maybe your page is placing higher for a keyword combination you weren't focusing on, but it is still a good combination for your goals. This gives you an ideal opportunity to go with that new combination to achieve even higher placing.
So, get started right now on your SEO. The longer you wait, the longer it will be before your web site is showing well up in the search engines.
In Closing
There is a lot more to SEO than just these 7 quick points, but this will get you started on the right path. Go through these steps and your web pages will be well positioned for any other SEO you may want to perform on your site in the future.
About The Author
George Peirson is a successful Entrepreneur and Internet Trainer. He is the author of over 40 multimedia based tutorial training titles and several design articles. To get his Free e-Book "Web Design Tips" visit www.howtogurus.com .
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
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