Thursday, July 30, 2009

Internet Marketing Tactics For These Tough Times

As we enter into what many enlightened souls are calling the most dire economic times since the Great Depression, online marketers need all the help they can get regardless of the source. You have probably heard of Google; but chances are almost 100% certain.

As we enter into these uncertain times, online marketers and webmasters need all the help they can get. Recently, Google mailed a small booklet to its Adsense users; in it Google gives "6 Top Tactics For Tough Times." It is obviously referring to its Adwords PPC (Pay Per Click) program and clients but Google's advice can be applied to your general online marketing.

These tactics include: (quoting directly from the Google mail-out)
1. Focus your ads on low prices and savings.
2. Use Value-related keywords.
3. Ensure your ad groups are targeted and relevant.
4. Do not waste money on irrelevant clicks.
5. Make it easy for customers to buy.
6. Focus your money on your high-performers. (End Quote)

Sound advice and I especially like the idea of focusing your marketing on low prices and savings mainly because people want bargains in tight economic times. I also like the fact that you must make it easy for your customers to buy something as simple as putting your "order/buy link" above the fold can improve your conversions.

Also, targeting value-related keywords is a very effective marketing tactic. Relating your keywords to "discounts, bargains, cheap, inexpensive, lowest prices..." will help improve your sales. So too, is catering to phrases that suggest the searcher is in a buying mind-set: gifts, presents, gift ideas, wedding gifts shoppers searching those words are ready to buy.

Plus, focusing your time and money on your high-performers is solid advice. Sometimes succeeding online is simply finding a market niche that works/performs then running with it. Once you have found the keywords and products that perform well with your site or sites focus the majority of your time and energy developing those niche markets.

Now here are some of my most effective marketing tactics that have worked for me and tactics I will be relying on in the coming years - even in these hard times.

Make Keywords Your #1 Goal
This is the single most important factor for my own online success. You have to make keywords and ranking high for them in all the search engines your main objective if you are marketing online. Might sound obvious, but many beginning marketers do not truly understand how important getting top rankings for your chosen keywords will be in your online success.

Target less competitive long tail (multi-worded) keywords to get started and slowly work your way up to more popular keywords. Center your marketing around getting those first page listings (Top Five) for your keywords. Achieve this goal, (especially in Google) and it will be almost impossible for you not to succeed and make a profit with your online marketing even in bad times.

Auto responders, List Building & Online Relationships
Keeping in contact with potential buyers is mission critical. You must use auto responders to send follow-up messages to build trustful relationships with your potential customers.

So building a large contact list is essential. That is why the social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace can be very effective marketing tools for building this online contact and trust. Truth be told, all these social networks are, more or less, just glorified auto responders and list builders.

Your Unique Selling Position
You must give potential customers some very good reasons for them to buy from you or your links. Offering special bonuses and discounts works wonders for your sales. Some of my most successful pages simply consist of coupons and discounts offered by different companies. If buyers can save $100's OFF by buying thought your links, they will.

Always remember, besides looking for the best deal or bargain, consumers are also looking for a quality product. If you are into affiliate marketing, only pick top quality products to promote. Picking top brand names also makes it easier to make sales. So too is only promoting popular online merchants like Amazon which can be an effective marketing strategy. Most importantly, always remember consumers are also looking for Information on the products they are considering buying, give them helpful information and you will succeed.

Go With The Flow
If you are marketing online, you have to follow what is working for you. Most times you will try countless ideas or tactics - once you have found a process or system that works, really work it or scale it up. Making your first dollar is the hardest, but once you do something that earns you that dollar, just repeat that "something" a thousand times.

Tracking what works is very important so keep a close eye on your site is traffic logs to find where your customers are coming from. Something like Google Analytics is simply priceless for "fine-tuning" your site and your Internet marketing. It will tell you what is working and what is not.

Target Recurring or Residual Income
One of my most effective marketing strategies is to promote and sell products and services that give you a recurring or residual income. Make one sale and get paid for years or for the life of that referred client. Concentrate on services like web-hosting, telephone, marketing programs... once customers sign up to these services, they will likely keep them for years. I am still earning income from sales I made five years ago.

Building a large residual income could be the key to surviving in tough economic times. This will be income which will carry you or your business over the rough patches since it is based upon past performance and not on your current selling situation.

Automate Everything
The real beauty of marketing online and using computers... you can automate just about every process in your marketing system. Make it a point of automating everything you do... use auto responders to follow-up with potential buyers, use automatic check-outs, automatic reporting... just set-up your whole Internet marketing system that runs itself with little or no supervision from you. This will free up your time to concentrate all your efforts on marketing/promoting your site or product. Besides, nothing beats coming back from a vacation and finding out you have earned the cost of your vacation and then some - all the while you were lying in the sun and miles away from any computer.

Find The Top Online Marketers
If you are just starting with Internet marketing, you need to find the top successful marketers and "model" what they are doing. This is relatively a new industry and you have to seek out the experts and pioneers who have set the groundwork.

Make Google Your Friend
Whether you love or hate Google does not matter, you just have to make it your number one ally in your online marketing. Google has just about conquered the world-wide search market, Yahoo and MSN are still important, but Google is the deal-breaker when you are selling stuff online. Consumers have enormous respect for Google, a number one listing for a lucrative keyword simply means money in the bank.

Google tools such as Google Analytics, Google Alerts, webmaster Tools, all have been invaluable and an enormous help in achieving my "web-based" lifestyle and livelihood. Of course, Google has also driven me around the bend more times than I can count, but no one is perfect. Besides, when it is all said and done, anyone marketing on the web must truly embrace Google if they want to reach their highest level possible.

Source From SitePro News

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

The Benefits of Good Website Content

The content of a website includes everything from the graphical elements of design and the pictures used to the textual website content. All must play its part and converge to create the greatest possible user experience that converts visitors into buyers and profit. However, the most effective website content can also be used to help drive a mass of search engine traffic to any site. Taking the time to carefully plan and write, or investing the resources to have your web page content professionally written can pay dividends.

SEO
Search engine optimization is the act of optimizing a website so that it ranks well in the search engine results. The outcome of good optimization is a steady stream of targeted and active website visitors. Good SEO content not only needs to appeal to human visitors but to search engines as well, through the inclusion of keywords and semantically or topically related keywords. Happily, the crafting of great quality content can also help to organically build links another major facet of an SEO campaign.

Conversions
Regardless of whether a visitor arrives on your site from the search results, having clicked on a sponsored ad listing, or has typed in your URL from your business card that you diligently hand out when attending business events, it is your content that needs to convert them into customers. Good content can entice people beyond the home page and continue to guide them step by step through the various stages of making a purchase.

Improved Visitor Experience
The more beneficial a visitor finds their time on your site, the more likely they will be to convert to a customer. They will also be more inclined to pass on the details of your business or service and they will be more likely to bookmark or even link to your site. All of these make for effective methods of networking or marketing your online business on the Internet and continuing to add high quality content will not only see your search engine rankings improve but it is likely to improve branding, generate greater sales, and improve customer loyalty.

Greater Chance of Organic Links
An organic link is one that has been given to you freely by another page or another website based on the quality of the content or the value of the service. In terms of SEO, links are highly valued and the more natural they appear to the search engines and to your human visitors, the more likely that your online business will continue to flourish. High quality pages that have been written especially for this purpose are referred to as linkbait because they are posted to bait links from other website owners and bloggers.

Improved Website ROI
Your website should be considered an online business rather than simply a site consisting of a few brochure pages. Many websites stand alone with no bricks and mortar businesses to back them up and are hugely successful, although they can also be combined very effectively with high street organizations and enterprises. Every cent you spend on your site, therefore, should be geared towards generating a good return on investment. If you do not feel that you are able to do your website justice or you do not have the time to write good content regularly then employ the services of professional website content writers. Use a professional service and it will generate a good website ROI.

Convey YOUR Message In YOUR Tone
One aspect of good branding is the use of a uniform tone throughout your communications; especially with potential clients. This continued care can help to win over those that are wavering and will ensure that your business is always well thought of. Business to business and business to consumer narratives may have a different feel to them, but the important thing is that you get the right message across and you do so on a continued basis.

Fewer Bounces
Visitors read website content from the very first word of your page. Even if they skim read, which most readers do when reading from a monitor, care must be taken to ensure that the beginning of the page is as effective at converting as the end of the page is. Hard hitting headlines, informative and entertaining content, and a well written summary should all be crafted with the goal of persuading your visitors to take the next step in your desired chain.

Great Website Content Truly Counts
Powerful website content is sometimes overlooked in favor of web design and online application development. While these are obviously very important factors to the success of your online business, so too is the value and the effectiveness of every inch of your website content. Combining all of the elements of design, development, and content, along with a powerful marketing mix you can create a profitable website that draws in visitors and then converts them to profitable and loyal customers as well as your greatest marketers.

Source From Entireweb Newsletter

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Content Management Systems & SEO Revisited

CMS applications were inherently devoid of basic SEO functionality. Building a new site, or converting an existing site to the existing CMS versions of 2 years ago was a rapid way of consigning those sites to the oblivion of Google's supplementary index. Lacking inbuilt search engine friendly URL's, outputting duplicate titles, descriptions and keywords, no ability to have customized Titles that differed from Headings - all those things were extraordinarily bad elements.

Since then, things have changed markedly. These days, there are still deficiencies in evidence, but for the CMS applications that have survived the intervening 2 years, and those that have evolved since, most have addressed the basic SEO issues.

My personal favorite CMS is WordPress. Especially since version 2.5 there is been a wealth of feature expansion in the core application, the availability of plugins that expand on the core functionality, and the advent of professionally designed Themes that have taken WordPress to new heights. All of this has allowed WordPress to blossom into a fully-matured CMS with exceptional Search Engine Optimization features.

Lets take a closer look at the SEO functionality. As Google et al are attempting to analyze and categorize a web site, there are an estimated 200 individual elements that are calculated in the SE relevancy ranking algorithms. Every one of these you can get right improves your chances of attaining your full ranking potential. Individually, each element offers incremental albeit small gains, but collectively, they can add up to the winning difference in the ranking stakes for competitive search terms. Duplicate content is Google's pet hate, and its vital to every site is standing that every single page be accurately described and categorized. Here are 10 of the most prominent among the many opportunities to achieve this individualization of pages:

1: SEF URLS: Search engine friendly URL's are important, because inclusion of keywords in page URL's are taken into account, and have a bearing on rankings - particularly on Yahoo. Being able to exercise total control over page URL's is important, and WordPress allows this with Permalink mod_rewrite functionality, coupled with manual URL control on every page or post!

Meta-Tags: There are several WordPress plugin tools to provide total control of title, descriptions and keywords, and these are easily installed and configured.

2: Titles: Being able to control the off-page Title separately from the on-page heading is very important. The title is 70 character limitation needs to be exploited to maximum effect. It is the single most important on-site page SEO element! Page Headings are usually space-constrained, and in systems where the Heading automatically becomes the Title, you are deprived of a significant advantage.

3: Description: The off-page Description (meta-tag) is a vital element in accurately describing the page contents. If each page has accurate, custom-written Description content, it is used verbatim in the search engine results pages (SERP's). In contrast, if you are forced to use a generic Description, then Google will helpfully do its level best to generate an 'ad lib' Description of the page based on content. The result of that can either be not so bad, or truly awful. Regardless, its essential that YOU have control of the Description, and that you use it to maximum effect!

4: Keywords: Erroneously dismissed by some people as of no account these days, the Keyword (meta-tag) still has a part to play. Stuff it full of vaguely relevant garbage unrelated to page content and it will be ignored. Use it wisely, with specific / relevant long-tailed keyword search phrases and it can give you a little bit of SE traction - even on Google!

5: Image File Names: Accurately name your image files, and include keywords relevant to the page. WordPress allows you to upload media and retain the original files names even when auto-generating thumbnail images etc.

6: Image ALT Tags: Accurately describe your images using the Image ALT tag, and include keywords/phrases relevant to the page. WordPress Add Media tools allow you to add ALT text and captions, enabling inclusion of additional relevant text content. Used wisely, without spamming, it is another useful element.

7: Anchor Text: The words you use to link to other pages / sections of the site. WordPress Link Editor allows full control of anchor Text links, including the ability to specify "Hyperlink Title" which essentially works like Image ALT text, the title of the link pops up when the mouse pointer hovers over the link need to be used wisely, its another useful SEO element.

8: CSS Dropdown Menus: Many of the new, highly professional WordPress CMS Themes utilize CSS drop down menus, which is extremely important in aiding search engines to locate and index internal pages. This also facilitates Google's ability to pass Page Rank throughout the internal page structure!

9: Google SiteMaps: Another delightful WordPress plugin is the automatic Google Sitemap Generator! Once installed and configured, every new page, post or edit of a page or post automatically updates the sitemap.xml page!

10: RSS Feeds: WordPress RSS feeds are easily extended by installation of an onsite Feedburner email subscription service, where your posts and pages are automatically distributed to subscribers by email. Moreover, your Feedburner account and site feed gives your site a pipeline directly into the Google index! I regularly see WordPress posts that make it into Google Alerts distribution in less than 4 hours!
So, on that basis I am happy to accord WordPress 10 out of 10 for SEO functionality. Couple that with more than 3,000 available plugins to extend the core functionality, the thousands of available design templates or themes, the ease-of-use factor, robust software, ease of installation etc, and I think we have got a winning CMS formula.

Source From SEO News

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

The Benefits of a Solid Content Management System

In the early days of the web most sites consisted of a handful of HTML pages. For smaller sites, it made sense for webmasters to use programs like Microsoft Front Page and Macromedia (now Adobe Dreamweaver) to edit their site templates, which usually contained the navigation, header and footer (the "shell" of the site), and individual pages.
The problems?

Messy code
These so-called What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWIG) editors did not always get the code right. Webmasters almost always had to get into the back-end and tweak the HTML source code. This took time.

Tedious site updates
Edits to a site template meant every page had to be updated and re-uploaded to the web server. This took time and used resources - especially before the days of broadband.

Painstaking SEO
Optimizing for search engines meant going through every page and manually making sure your H1 (header) and Title tags were well optimized.

Risk of data loss
Forgetting to download the most recent version of a site when working with multiple site editors or from multiple locations made it easy for editors to overwrite site updates - sometimes losing hundreds of hours of work with one ill-advised click of the "upload" button.

While Adobe Dreamweaver has certainly come a long way over the years (messy code is no longer a major problem) and uploading an entire site to your web server does not take all day anymore thanks to broadband, the other problems and annoyances still persist when working with a straight HTML site.

Enter the Content Management System (CMS).
Content Management Systems do what they sound like - they help you manage your content. Essentially, a CMS allows you to create/edit/delete your site pages without getting into the coding side of things. For larger sites, they also make organization easier. The content is largely stored in a site database, which lives on a web server, alleviating the need to back up hundreds of HTML files (if your site is that big).

Ecommerce websites, for example, use content management systems 99% of the time. Blogs use them too. While they may sound expensive and complicated, there are several full-featured content management systems available for free. Among the most notable are WordPress and Drupal. Both systems are free to download/install at your web server, and both have been developed by an open source community with ease of installation and use in mind.

If you are considering moving your site to a CMS or building a new site with one but are not yet sure of the benefits, here is a quick list:

No need to be a code junky
While the setup process can get somewhat technical and customizing templates involves coding, in the long term working with a CMS means working with less HTML/CSS and server side scripting code. That means an easier time for content editors and authors. It means you do not need to rip your hair out figuring out which HTML tag was not closed properly. It means you do not need to know what an HTML tag is at all, in most cases. This saves you a ton of time and resources in the long term.

On-page SEO is built right in
SEO is a concern for every webmaster, and most content management systems include beneficial features in this regard. There are many available SEO plugins for WordPress, for example, that make for well-optimized title tags, URLs, links, etc. Once your CMS is producing search engine friendly pages there is little need to go back and "tweak" on-page optimization or play with file names. This allows you to focus on creating great content without worrying about your on-page SEO.

There is little risk of losing/overwriting important files
Since site content lives mostly in the database with a CMS, there is not much risk of someone accidentally overwriting a recently-updated page or losing important files. Most site authors and editors can work from within the CMS and do not bother saving/uploading a file at all. This will save you many headaches. Just be sure to back up your database on a regular basis and before upgrading your CMS.

The site can be accessed/edited from any location
Most content management systems are web-based - meaning they live entirely on your web server. The only thing required to access/edit your site in this case is a username/ password to log in. This means you do not need to worry about being at your computer or carrying your site files with you when traveling. Adding/editing/deleting site pages is a simple as logging in and using the web-based back end to get it done and site updates can be published live instantly with no need for FTP.

Simple site updates do not require you to call/pay your web developer
This alone can save most companies thousands of dollars a year. With a content management system you no longer need to call your web developer every time you need to correct a spelling error or add an event to a calendar. You can handle updates yourself or have someone in your office maybe even an intern make the change directly. The point is, it is easy. You no longer have to pay the developer's rate for simple updates, and you do not need to waste time communicating the changes via phone or email and settling invoices.

Development costs are cheaper for open source content management systems
If you are looking to either migrate an existing site to a content management system or use one for a new site, you are likely to be looking at a cheaper project overall (depending on the level of customization). Most of the bells and whistles are built right into the system, so development becomes more a task of updating the look and feel of the CMS template than building from scratch. Of course, design is crucial, so if you are looking for a polished site design you will still want to hire a solid designer/developer, but a simple and clean site design with moderate customization should not break the bank. There are also some very nice "out of the box" templates and themes available for most open source content management systems, such as the feature-rich and attractive Thesis theme for WordPress.

Essentially, there are few downsides to using content management systems, and the open source options available are very attractive (especially the price tag). If you are considering either of the open source solutions mentioned in this article, WordPress or Drupal, there are a few considerations you will want to have in mind. Namely, keep in mind that WordPress was designed to be a blogging platform and is therefore somewhat limited in flexibility (although for most sites WordPress is a solid solution - even when you do not need a blog). Drupal offers much more flexibility and power, but it tends to require a more extensive and costly set up phase.

Also keep in mind that not all content management systems are created equal. Some lesser-known content management systems have rampant issues in search engine visibility such as including session IDs in all URLs that can render your site entirely invisible to search engines or at least sub-par when it comes to on-page SEO. The more popular and widely-used systems are usually a safe bet since they have been around for years, and any such issues will have been well hashed out at this point.

For companies operating on something of a shoestring budget for web development, an open source content management solution is often not only an attractive solution but perhaps the only viable one to stay within a budget without sacrificing the quality of your site's infrastructure.

And to those for whom the thought of working with HTML code causes instant panic, rest assured with the right CMS setup, you will rarely need to see an HTML tag again.

Source From SitePro News

Monday, July 20, 2009

Does Your SEO Content Sell?

While written with search engines in mind, SEO content should also consider the end users of your website; your potential customers. Attracting masses of traffic, regardless of how targeted that traffic, is only a portion of the battle.

If the content you have used is next to meaningless or smacks of being written solely to rank well in the search engines then your website will under perform and your online business efforts will suffer as a consequence. Finding the perfect blend between search optimized content and offering an enhanced user experience is critical to better website performance.

Treat Your Business Like A Business
Every website, blog, and other online real estate should be viewed as a business if it is being used to generate an income of any sort. This means that the customer experience is equally as important to your website as it is to your business as a whole. A good customer experience means more sales, greater conversion rates, improved customer loyalty, and increased customer retention and return business.
Small businesses and bricks and mortar commercial ventures have been living by the ethos that "the customer is always right" for decades and this should go for your online business as well.

Every Word Counts
From the home page to the deeper, product pages, and from your blog to your support forums, the intention of each visible page is to promote your business. Whether you are trying to ensure that customers continue to return to your service or you intend to attract new customers this means that your website content needs to be set up to sell as well as attract the attention of the search engines.

The CTA (Call To Action)
Decide on your Call To Action (CTA) for each of your pages. Once you have done this, do not simply give visitors the opportunity to follow your CTA but ensure that they are left with little choice but to do so. Entice them, emote them, but above all ensure that you convert them.

Identify Your CTA
The desired action for each page can differ significantly. On the home page of your site, you are most likely to want to divert customers to the product or services pages where they can learn more information. On the deeper pages, such as product description pages, the desired action is adding the item to the shopping basket or proceeding to checkout; alternatively, it could be to request a quote, make a phone call, or register their details. Make sure you know what your CTA is before you write the content because if you do not know then your website visitors certainly will not.

Stand Out And Stand Apart
At the same time as identifying your CTA, you should also consider your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). This is the single thing that makes your business or your website stand out from every other one in the same industry. Virtually every website has one even though many website owners do not know about it. Think about the things that benefit your customers and not those that benefit you. Free shipping, discount on bulk orders, hand made products, a no fuss money back guarantee, or a truly personal service can all be used as effective USPs if they are sold properly.

Website Content That Performs
Website content can do so much more than attract a flurry of visitors to a website, and indeed it should. Yes, traffic is important, because without it, the most effective combination of CTA and USP in the world would bear no relevance but never forget the end user.

Source From Entireweb Newsletter

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Website Bounce Rates Count

There has been a lot of discussion about bounce rates and whether or not the search engines count these in their algorithms. As far back as late 2007, there were reports that webmasters were seeing a difference in their rankings for major keywords within a few weeks of drastically changing their bounce rates. However, none of the tests and reports seem to be complete enough or repeatable enough to constitute proof.

As a result, there are plenty of naysayer who believe that such things as bounce rates are not now and probably will not ever be part of the search engine algorithms. Bounce rates will certainly be part of the search engine algorithms and probably already are.

What I would like to do here is share with you some of the common naysayer objections and refute all but one of them. But first, for those who are scratching their heads about what bounce means, we are referring to people leaving a website. A bouncy website is the opposite of a sticky website, one where people stay a long time.

Objection 1: There is no definition of "bounce rate".
Response: This is the flimsiest of arguments. A bounce is when someone leaves a website, going back where they came from.

Objection 2: I do not like how Google Analytics defines a bounce.
Response: Sadly, Google does not ask me for advice, either. But cheer up, the bounce rate in Google Analytics might not be the same as they use in their algorithm, just as the little green bar is not necessarily the PageRank they use in their algorithm.

Objection 3: Many sites do not have Google Analytics turned on, so Google would have very incomplete data.
Response: (scratching my head in confusion): What does Google Analytics have to do with anything? This is about Google (or Yahoo, or MSN, or Ask, or some other) tracking their own traffic and how their own users move about and - most importantly - how their users return to their website.

Objection 4: What is the threshold for a bounce? After 5 seconds? After 10 seconds? After 15 seconds? This is a mess! (This is often part of the how-do-we-define-a-bounce debate.)
Response: A bounce is a bounce, whether it takes a person one second or one hour to bounce back, it is a bounce. How the search engines choose to treat bounces with varying lag times is another matter. Let us be clear; they will not tell you, just as they will not tell you how many links on a page they index, how many they follow and how many they count in their ranking algorithms. Furthermore, it is a moving target. Just like every other algorithm input, bounce rates and bounce lag times will not be treated in the exact same way one day to the next.

Objection 5: What if people quickly click on an external link and leave my site? They found the site useful because they found a useful link on it, but they bounced.
Response: That is not a bounce that is a referral. A bounce is when someone hits the back button.

Objection 6: What if the user quickly closes the window?
Response: That could be any number of things, but it is not a bounce. Who can guess how the search engines might treat that, or even if they treat it at all. However, it need not be considered a bounce unless the search engines believe it should be.

Objection 7: Does not a bounce mean the person has found what they want? Can not a bounce sometimes be good?
Response: Sometimes, perhaps, but rarely. After 5 seconds, a person has no time to read a page. After 30 seconds, they might have found something useful. So lag times matter. More importantly, the search engines can determine what a person does next. If a person returns to the search results and clicks on another link, that is a sign they did not find what they want. If they return to the search results and conduct a similar search that might also be a sign they did not find what they want. If they return to the search results and conduct an unrelated search that might be a sign that they found what they want. Search engines can weigh various bounces in light of the user's next action.

Objection 8: For some searches, people look for multiple sources, such as comparing prices, comparing products, seeking varying opinions, etc. Too many sites would be penalized if all those bounces were to be counted in the rankings.
Response: This is an example of false logic. If someone clicks on one website, then bounces, clicks on another website, then bounces, clicks on another website then bounces, all the high-ranking websites for that particular search query would be equally affected. Nobody would suffer a ranking disadvantage because rankings are relative.

Objection 9: Can not I just set up a bot to visit all my top competitors and leave their site after varying numbers of seconds to make it appear that their sites are all bouncy.
Response: Yes, you can. And you can get very creative. I have even heard of couriers in China traveling from one Internet café to another to click on a particular site as a means of increasing its rankings. I have no answer for this, other than that the search engines will have to control for this, just as they have found ways to control for automated link-building.

So have no fear. Good websites that provide what their visitors want or who help them find what they want will prosper. Sticky SEO looks at conversions and stickiness as integral elements to SEO.

Cheap sites that do a lot of link-building - bouncy SEO - counting on large volumes of traffic to offset poor conversion rates, will suffer - because the search engines will stop sending them that traffic.

It is just a matter of time. Or perhaps it has already started.

Source From SitePro News

Thursday, July 16, 2009

15 Innovative Uses for Twitter

Those of us who are daily Twitter users already grok the power of the application and it is potential. But there are still a lot of Twitter critics out there, as well as those people who just do not understand how to use it.

I recently saw this comment on a blog: "I have been tweeting but... from what I have seen in the last couple of weeks, it is either a 'look at me' or a 'look at this' arena."

Sure Twitter is a great communication channel and as such, you do find a lot of self-promotion and name dropping. But there is so much more to Twitter. The comment got me thinking, would the critics feel the same if they could see more innovative ways to use it?

So I decided to put together a list of some of the more unique and inventive uses for Twitter. Some already exist while others are my own ideas. Here goes:

1) Community Help Desk – I have already used Twitter several times to investigate an issue I have been having with my computer, or a problem one of my clients has come across. Just yesterday I was able to pinpoint the source of a domain redirect issue because my followers in other countries could reach the site even though I was being redirected.

2) Write a Collaborative Book - you and a bunch of your favorite Tweeps could write a novel, one sentence (tweet) at a time. The results could range from hilarious to Shakespearean. I thought of this while reading about the popularity of Japanese novels composed via mobile text messages, but it turns out that some attempts have been made at this already e.g. 140 Novel and Good Captain. You could do a similar thing with song lyrics.

3) Live Webinars/Tutorials - you could create a new Twitter account with protected updates and ask invitation-only participants to follow you. Then you could hold a *closed* webinar at a pre-arranged time using Twitter for delivery instead of expensive webinar solutions. Twitter allows you to live chat, post links, photos, videos, audio files and text so there is no need for any plug-ins. You could even use a Twitter buffer like Twuffer to space out the content of the webinar via tweets over a specific time frame.

4) Free Market Research - Who needs to pay expensive market research companies to learn stuff about your latest product? Just send a link, a free sample or a short survey to your followers and watch the feedback flow in.

5) Online Reputation Management - Twitter is ideal for tracking what people are saying about you, your company or your product. You can use Twitter Search to enter keywords or hash tags. Or you can use purpose-built widgets such as TweetBeep which work just like Google Alerts and send you regular emails containing any discussions involving your chosen Twitter accounts or hash tags. These work well for competitor tracking too.

6) Laugh a Day / Therapy – I am consistently amazed how many long-term Twitter users fail to use the favorites option to bookmark tweets that they like. Whenever I read a tweet that makes me laugh out loud, I favorite it immediately. Then, whenever I am feeling a bit flat, stressed or sense a bad mood coming on, I turn to my favorites list knowing I will be giggling in no time. You can also rely on your followers to sense when you are down and cheer you up.

7) Competitions - Companies like Zappos and Hand Bag Heaven have been holding competitions on Twitter for a while now. You basically elicit a response from your followers in exchange for the chance to win something. You could ask a question about one of your products or ask followers to find something on your site to win a gift certificate. But with a bit of ingenuity, you can be even more inventive.

8) Virtual Alarm Clock - Did you know you can use Twitter to set appointment reminders for yourself or others? You can use tools such as the Retweet Timer and Twittercal to tweet events from your Google Calendar as @replies to your Twitter profile at pre-set dates and times.

9) Idea Sharing / Community Mind Mapping - So this great business idea comes to you in the shower and you are busting to make it happen. But you want to be sure that your stroke of brilliance is fabulous and not folly. This is where your Twitter followers come in. Whether you tweet publicly or DM only your most trusted followers to keep it under wraps, you will get unbiased and practically instantaneous feedback on your big plans. Would you use it? Could it work? How much would you pay for it? What features should it have? Tapping into the combined brain power of your Twitter community is a great way to flesh out a business plan.

10) Competitor Tracking - You can use Twitter to monitor the activities of your competitors without alerting them. Simply create an anonymous Twitter account and start following them. If they bad-mouth your company, or tweet about a product that may threaten your market share, you will know immediately.

11) Bug Testing - Along the same lines as 4), you can use your Twitter followers as live BETA testers when you roll out a new product or software version. Your followers will often report bugs faster than paid customers because they *know* you and want you to succeed.

12) Become Your Favorite Character - Ever idolize a particular movie star or TV character? Why not create an account for them and tweet in character? A few tweeps have done this already, with hilarious results. Just make sure you do not step on the toes of the official sites representing the character in question.

13) Sport / Treasure Hunt Aid - With it is 140 character limit, Twitter is the perfect medium to deliver clues for online and offline scavenger hunts and popular sports .

14) Live Presentation Aid - Presenting at a conference or other event with Internet access from your laptop? You can tweet on the big screen to a) make a point b) elicit a response from Tweeps in the audience c) conduct live research d) gain instant feedback on a topic or question. I have used Twitter this way in the past and not only is it entertaining for the audience, but it is also a great way to overcome stage fright.

15) Build a Twitter Application - Despite not being monetized yet, Twitter's phenomenal growth has spurred the development of hundreds of applications that make money from Twitter either via advertising or donations. Why not build an application around Twitter and make your fortune?

Source From SitePro News

Monday, July 13, 2009

How To Use Copywriting To Boost Your Online Business

Copywriting, which is the most fundamental skill in any online business, is an important part of Internet advertising. It is the art of writing sales and marketing materials, which can promote your business on the Web. Being able to learn and master this art can help your business stand out from all the other online businesses of the same type.

The Effect Of Copywriting On Your Online Business Copywriting can either boost your business into success, or it can run it into the ground, and it can depend greatly on how good your sales copies are. Learning how to use words to properly promote your product or service can generate a great amount of sales for your online business and bring you thousands of members to your mailing list. It can even boost your web site traffic through word of mouth if you write a copy that is intriguing or buzz-worthy.

Effective Copywriting For Your Web Site
Copywriting is effective in online marketing because the words or phrases that you use to entice your targeted audience can be placed on any web site and can be viewed by potential online customers, anywhere, anytime and all the time, as long as they are placed on proper portals that will attract possible customers for a specific product or service.

Keep in mind that Internet users are constantly looking for information and solutions for their problems, so you should learn how to communicate directly to your target audience and give them the information that they are looking for. Know how to captivate them by knowing your visitors' needs and desires. Talk to your customers, and address their concerns. Remember that you are irrelevant when it comes to enticing people availing of your product or service, so make sure that you focus on them and not on you.

You could have the best product or service in the world, but if you cannot make your audience feel that their life would be better if they owned what you are selling, then, it is of no use. Pull the visitor into the copy, so you can present your product and make your offer. Make sure that you write from the perspective of your target audience, and not on yours. You can only do this if you understand your target customer, so learn what their motivation is, and apply that to your copy. You can also create a sense of urgency in them, to make them feel the need to click on your link as soon as possible. Create an impression of scarcity through your words, and explain why they need to act now.

However you may choose to approach your target audience, remember that what you need to do is get their attention, so you can make your offer, and you can do this with a good and direct headline. You usually have pre-headlines that set-up your main headlines to attract the attention of the category of prospects that you want to rein in. Let them know what you have so they will know exactly, if you carry what they need. Tell them what your product is by giving them details. And if you think they do not need it, make them feel so with powerful copy.

Use paragraphs that are friendly by using short sentences and simple words. It is highly suggestible to itemize the benefits of the product, so you can give your visitors a better view of what they are getting. Have plenty of possibilities to make sure that you have at least one unbeatable and unique benefit that can convince a prospect to buy your product or service. You can also include something extra as a bonus. Make sure that it has value, so people would be more enticed to buy your product or service just to get it.

Aside from the extras, you can also focus on your product or service for enticing your visitors by building-up your product, telling them that the price of the product or service is a good value. Tell them what makes your product unique, and what sets you apart from your competition. You can prove your claims by adding testimonials or sales statistics to your copy. Making your words sell through your sales letters is guaranteed to increase your conversion rate.

Powerful Copywriting And Search Engines
Since there are over billions of individual pages on the Internet, getting your potential customer to find you in cyberspace is not easy; but with the help of search engines, they are provided a means of doing just that. Learn how to manage search engines to boost your web site's traffic, and increase the rate of conversion of your online business.

Effective and concise search engine copywriting can dramatically increase your web site's targeted traffic, and you can do this by optimizing its use. When using search engines, you need to make sure that you are using keyword phrases that will bring specific traffic to your web site. Analyze your competition and check what type of keyword phrases are being used most often, to give yourself a better chance of increasing your web site hits. Make sure that your targeted keywords are found in your filenames, title, headline, and description tags, as well as your web site content.

Copywriting is a fundamental skill in online businesses. Because the Internet is primarily a visual medium, you need to come up with copy that makes your page stand out over the millions of similar pages online. Keep your copy short, concise, and meaningful. Most of all make it hypnotic.

Remember that having the best product in the market is not enough since you also need to learn how to motivate your audience to buy it. Fifty percent of successful sales depend on powerful copywriting. Make yours count.

Source From Entireweb Newsletter

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Link Bait: Attracting Links To Your Website

You know it is funny in a way. Webmasters have learned that the most important thing that they can do to improve the traffic to their website and to attract attention from the search engines is to build links to their website.

But when it comes time to actually start building links to one's website, people typically pick the hardest way to accomplish the task and then they get to work.

Working Hard
People have been told about various ways to build links to one's website, and they go through the process of picking out the method that they would prefer to use. It is kind of ironic that most people pick the method that they believe will be the easiest and least expensive to achieve, and when all is said and done, they will have picked out the hardest, least effective method of building links.

For example, most newcomers to online business choose:
1.Reciprocal links;
2.Directory submissions.

With Reciprocal Links, people buy a software package that helps them to search out websites that are supposedly "related" to theirs and then they send an email to the person who owns that website, proclaiming the benefits of trading links and asking for the link.

With directory submissions, webmasters can get software that is supposed to help with the process, but it takes hours just to submit one's website to a few dozen directories. Fortunately, there are service providers who also provide submissions to web directories. Regardless of how you get links submitted to web directories, you generally have to pray that those web directories are approving submissions, since most owners have abandoned their directories.

Beyond the time required setting up links in this fashion, and the frustration of getting very few links for the amount of time spent, the worst part of the equation is that the search engines tend to ignore links gained through these methods, and few humans find and follow those links.

Internet newcomers using these methods frequently spend a lot of time trying to promote their websites, and in the end, they have accomplished nothing more than wasting a lot of their time and energy.

Working Smart
What if I could show you a better way? Would you be intrigued enough by my methods to try them for yourself? The point in sharing this with you is not to annoy you, but to help you get better results in much less time.

When we launch new websites, we ignore reciprocal links and web directories altogether. We consider both to be a complete waste of time, effort and money.

Let me put this into perspective for you by giving you a real life example.
On November 18th, 2008, we bought and built a new niche domain: http://www.shoppingtraveldeals.com/blog/

We purchased the domain on the 18th, had it set up with content on the 19th, and then on the 20th, we started promoting this website. We released our first and second reprint articles, promoting this site on the 20th of November. We released our third article on the 24th and the fourth on the 25th. Then we released our fifth article promoting the website on December 15th.

We also set up bookmarks for the main page of the website in Stumbleupon, Digg and Propeller.

In the 39 days since we bought this domain, our website has seen 520 unique visitors. The site had 86 visitors in November and 434 so far in December.

Now here is where it gets interesting.

We got traffic from 66 unique web pages, and we drew click-through traffic from Google and Windows Live, with 86% of our search traffic coming from Google.

On our search engine traffic, we have traffic on 171 unique keyword phrases. In order to better understand this search engine traffic, we ran the top 25 search terms through Google to see where our website ranked in the search results, and this is what we came up with:
  • Two #1 listings;
  • Ten listings that were ranked from #2 to #4;
  • Ten listings that were ranked from #5 to #10;
  • Two listings on page two of Google's search results (#11 to #20);
  • One listing on page three of Google's results (#21 to #30).
We built this website with the express intent of earning affiliate commissions in the travel industry. The prognosis is good, as we have already started earning money from this website, and in terms of our current earnings, we expect to be in the black against our initial investment into this website, within about three months.

More About Reprint Articles
The concept of the reprint article is to write an article and give it to other webmasters to use in their websites and newsletters, in exchange for a link back to your website.

Those articles that seek to teach something of value typically get published more frequently than those articles geared to sell a product or service. It is our fervent belief that the Author's resource box - the paragraph that follows the article - is the only place where a writer should try to sell his or her wares. The goal of the resource box is to get a reader to your website, and your website is where the real selling should take place.

Reprint articles provide good value to the people who use them wisely. But the online marketer must first be willing to invest the required time or money to have appropriate articles written and/or distributed.

While it is true that I work for an article distribution company, it is important to note that our guiding principle is that each article distribution company will reach a different and unique audience. As such, we always use our own service to distribute articles and occasionally we use our competitors' article distribution companies as well.

We distribute ALL of our own articles through our own company, because we know that our service does provide real value. But for some articles, we do go to some of our competitors to expand our reach and to reach new audiences.

We actually learned to do this from some of our more successful customers, who suggest that there are certain publishers that only we can reach, while our competitors also have certain publishers that only they are able to reach. As a result, many of our customers use two or three article distribution companies, and we do too.

Working Smarter
While reprint articles is a tool that we consistently utilize to build links and to grow traffic to our websites, there remains a more long-term, yet more valuable approach to building links for our websites.

Link Bait is an idea where you create a resource that people find so useful that they feel compelled to link to it from their own websites.

Look at it this way. With reprint articles, we have to write the article, and then distribute it through the sources we choose to use to get it into circulation. All told, we will invest several hours into writing, and then we will invest another hour to distribute the article.

All told, we will have spent four to five hours to write and distribute this article. In turn, we will receive dozens or hundreds of links from related web pages (the links are from "related web pages", because we designed the article content to look like what we are trying to promote). Writing and distributing articles typically creates a great return of value for our businesses.

But consider this. Last week, we created a resource page on one of our websites. This page is an enumeration of the +1200 article directories we know to exist on the Internet. We were not the first website to provide such a list, but we may be the first to give the Internet community an easy method to add new sites and to flag bad sites, automatically from the page where the sites are displayed.

If you are able to create a page such as this that people find extremely useful, then people are more inclined to link to your page, without you even asking them to do so. The beauty about building pages like this on the Internet is that all you have to do is to let people know it is there, and then the links will roll in steadily.

One Link Bait page we built on May 1st, 2004 has been used by the public more than 38,000 times according to its built-in counter. And according to a Yahoo search, it has more than 10,000 inbound links from third-party websites.

We built this page in a day, wrote one article to let people know it was there, and then we left the page alone for more than four-and-a-half years.

Do you see how it is much easier to build one link bait, notify the world, and then to let people link to your web page for you? The time invested in our Text To Hyperlink Converter was less than 12 hours, yet it has attracted +10,000 links with almost no promotion on our part. And this article will generate +100 links in exchange for five hours of our time.

In Conclusion
We are working smart when we write and distribute articles to promote a website. The Shopping Travel Deals site attests to the value of reprint articles to build links and traffic to a new website quickly.

But we are working smarter, when we invest the additional time to build a link bait web page that people will appreciate and link to for us, without any additional effort on our part.

Source From SitePro News

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Do you need to develop a brand identity?

If you want sustainable growth in your business and if you want to earn more than what you do today, you must develop a brand identity for you or your business. There is no alternative to this proposition.
At this point, many business owners will step back saying that branding means advertising and thus it would require huge investment. This is a very common situation as a beginner: The business owner do not have much idea about the actual rate of advertising in different media.

What is the basic relationship between advertisement and branding?
For effective branding of your product or company, you must hit the target market with your brand identity, repeatedly. You must make sure that they remember your face (business face) at least when they need you the most. Thus, to achieve this, marketers use advertisement in different formats, such as audio, audio visual or only visual.

Does it mean that you need to invest a huge amount of money in advertising?
It is not necessarily so. To put it simply, advertising cost depends on the size of your target market and the best medium to reach them. You do not necessarily need to invest in expensive billboards or in a full-page newspaper advertisement to reach the target market.

You can easily find some alternatives to reach it. For example, think about branded office stationary gifts, email advertising, mobile advertising or even social media networking. If you think, you can also use your existing subscribers or clients to promote your business and your brand. For example, think about shopping bags and packaging. These advertising media will cost much less than traditional advertisement and may prove more effective if you can use them properly.

Branding is all about giving a relevant face to your business. More importantly, if you do not add a face to your business, the target market will soon develop one for you and you will have almost nothing to do about that. Once an impression is created, it is very tough to replace it with a new one. Thus, you need to consider developing a brand image from the very first day of launching your product.

How to do that?
The first thing you need to do is to create a diagram or flow chart of how you want your product to be perceived by the target market. At the same time, you need to find out other elements like your target market, where they live, how they want your product to be, how your product is different from your competitors'.

You will also need to find out the best way to reach the target market - evaluate different options such as radio or TV advertisement, POS advertisement, newspaper or magazine advertisement, email advertisement etc.

Once you have developed a flow chart of what you want or how you want to develop your brand, draft a branding strategy accordingly. For example, develop an appropriate logo, color scheme (maintain the same color scheme across the product), a tag line to attract your target market etc.

Do not forget to evaluate how people perceive your brand.

Source From Entireweb Newsletter

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

A Beginner's Guide to Google Website Optimizer

We all know that the most effective Pay Per Click advertising campaigns use landing pages that are matched perfectly to your target search keywords and designed to follow through with the idea or theme that your PPC ad has hinted at.

But how do you determine the effectiveness of those landing pages? How do you know what design or page features will trigger a better response in your audience and lead to more conversions? The answer is that you do not, unless you test.

Benefits of Landing Page Testing
Whether they are a part of a PPC campaign or not, there are countless benefits to testing your web site pages, including:
1.Improve the effectiveness of landing pages
2.Increase conversions / sales
3.Attract more leads / sign-ups
4.Increase time spent on your site by visitors
5.Reduce the Cost Per Acquisition of new customers
6.Eliminate guesswork. Improve your site design via information from your site is end users
7.Avoid staff disputes – let your customers decide what design elements should be changed

Google Website Optimizer
The Website Optimizer is a tool that allows marketers and webmasters to test variations of pages on site visitors automatically, to see which pages or variations of pages perform the best (i.e. lead to the most conversions).

In April 2007, Google took their Website Optimizer tool out of BETA and made it available to the general public. I had been wanting to use Google Website Optimizer to test our landing pages on Search Engine College for some time and I finally found the time to trial it in October this year. After what we learned from our experiments, I wish we would implemented it months ago!

Website Optimizer helps you study the effects of different content on your users and identify what users respond to best so you can alter your web site accordingly. You can test any kind of site elements from individual copy blocks and images to complete page layouts. Perhaps the best thing about Website Optimizer is that you can test ANY page on your site, including landing pages you have designed for other PPC programs like Yahoo or pages designed for non-PPC purposes.

Google Website Optimizer allows you to perform 2 different types of tests:
1) A/B Split Testing
2) Multivariate Testing


A/B Split Testing:
Through the use of code added to the "A" (original) page, Google is able to serve the A/B variations (there can be many more variations than just the "B" page) to site visitors and then provide results of which page was most "successful", commonly through reporting which of the A/B pages lead traffic to a "results" page.

A/B Testing compares the performance of entirely different versions of a page. Google suggests using it if:
1) your page traffic is fairly low (i.e. less than 1,000 page views per week)

2) you want to move sections around or change the overall look of the page
In Figure 1, you can see an A/B Testing experiment being set up in Website Optimizer.

Setting Up A/B Experiments in Website Optimizer
To set up an A/B testing experiment in Google Website Optimizer, you first need to prepare three things:
1) Your "original" web page
2) Your variation/s of this original
3) Your conversion page (e.g. the "thank you for subscribing/purchasing" page)
In the example you see in Figure 1, we set up an experiment on SearchEngineCollege.com consisting of our original page (/add-me.shtml) and a single variation (/add-me.shtml), with our conversion page being /seo-starter-course-sample-download.shtml.

Next, you need to add some JavaScript to each of these pages to enable Google to track your experiment. Then it is simply a matter of uploading all your test pages and having Google validate your URLs to confirm you have set up your experiment correctly.

Multivariate Testing:
Testing can be made not only with A/B pages, but with different possible versions of a single page.

This allows you to trial different types of layouts and page text to see which combinations lead to the highest conversions on your site.

Multivariate Testing compares the performance of content variations in multiple locations on a page. Google suggests using it if:
1) your page traffic is high (i.e. more than 1,000 page views per week)
2) you want to try multiple content changes in different parts of the page simultaneously.

Setting Up Multivariate Experiments in Website Optimizer
To set up a Multivariate testing experiment in Google Website Optimizer, you need to do the following:
1) Choose the web page you wish to test.
2) Decide with your marketing/technical teams which page sections you wish to test e.g. headline, image, call-to-action, copy etc.
3) Add the JavaScript code to your page's source code. This includes the Control Script, the Tracking Script and the Page Section Script.
4) Identify your conversion page and add the Conversion Script to that page's source code.
5) Upload your revised test and conversion pages.
6) Validate your pages. If you have set up your experiment correctly, you will see a confirmation message.
7) Create the code variations for each page section you are testing (see Figure 3).
8) Review and launch your experiment.

Source From SitePro News

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Discover The Answers To The Top 10 SEO Questions

Owning any type of online business will strongly benefit from a few SEO techniques. However, everyone and their brother has advice on how to do it. All this 'expert' advice can make the simple task of optimizing your site incredibly confusing.
Here are some straightforward answers to the most common SEO questions.

1. What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. A search engine is a tool many Internet users use to find sites that are relevant to their needs. The three biggies when it comes to search engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN. There are however, hundreds of search engines available to Internet users. Search engines work by sending out spiders to crawl through the World Wide Web and gather information. If you have the information they are looking for, in the places they are looking, they will find you and place you in their results when a person is looking for your information.

The task of understanding what search engines are looking for and putting it in the right places on your website and in your content, is the essence of search engine optimization. So now you might be asking…what do search engines look for and where do they look for it? The answer is keywords and links. Keywords in your html coding, keywords on your webpage content, keywords in your content, and the number of incoming links you have to your website.

2. How important is SEO?
Let us just put it this way. What is better a few visitors who stumble upon your website or hundreds of visitors that go to your website with the direct intention of learning more or making a purchase?
With more and more people searching and shopping online, getting on the first page or two of the search engine results can mean the difference between keeping your day job and becoming an Internet millionaire.

3. What are text links?
Links are just one of the tools you can use to increase your search engine optimization. The more quality links you have, the better your search engine ranking will be. Text links are links that contain only text. Wikipedia is a great place to examine internal text links. The links are contained within a sentence and when a reader clicks on them they are taken to a different page on the same website. The kind of text links you are looking for will be text links that will take readers from your article, ebook, or web copy to your website.

An excellent tool to generate incoming links is to write copy for online audiences like article directories, blogs, and ezines and insert text links in the copy. Webmasters will link to the content and thus to your site. Additionally, when you allow free reprints of your copy provided the links are maintained, you are encouraging links to your website.

4. What are link farms and link exchanges?
Search engines do not accept just any old link. The link has to be from a relevant and quality company. This means you do not want to participate in link farming. If a search engine suspects your links to be lacking, they will actually penalize you. Link farming or link exchanging is essentially the process of exchanging reciprocal links with Web sites in order to increase your search engine ranking. A link farm is a Web page that is nothing more than a page of links to other sites. Stay away from link farms. When you generate a link from another site, it had better be relevant and coming from a real web site.

5. What is duplicate content?
The definition of duplicate content is web pages that contain substantially the same content. Search engines will penalize you for this. How do you avoid duplicate content? Do not publish the same article in several locations. There are many tools available online to help you re-write your content so that it is 30%, 40%, and even 50% different. However, the best way to avoid duplicate content is to simply write new content.

6. How do I find the right keywords?
There are several steps to finding the most profitable keywords. The first step is to generally do a bit of brainstorming and come up with a list of keywords you think people will use to find your products. The next step is to research supply and demand for those particular keywords. Supply means how many other websites are using those same keywords and demand is how many people are looking for those particular keywords.

The key is to find keywords with high demand and relatively low supply. There are many effective and useful keyword tools to help you find this information and to generate keyword ideas. Once you decide on a few keywords, it may be useful to do a bit of testing before you commit to them.

7. How do I optimize my web pages?
Placing your keywords in the right location is a good start to optimizing your web pages. Search engines look to the headings, subheadings, domain name, and title of your website. They also look in the content on your page and primarily focus on the first paragraph.
Try to get a domain name with your primary keyword included. When you include your keyword in your URL it tells the search engine spiders immediately what your site is about.

Title Tag. Your title tag is the line of text that appears on search engine results pages that acts as a link to your site. This is a crucial element of your webpage as it describes to your visitors what your page is about. If you view your source code, your title tag will look something like this: <TITLE>Search Engine Optimization Tips</TITLE>
Keep your title tags brief, descriptive, up to date, and keyword rich will help to increase the relevance of your site in the eyes of the search engines, as well as giving your potential visitors a good idea of what they can expect from your site.

Meta Tags have lost their importance to the search engines however it is still helpful to place your keywords in your meta tags. In your source code they look something like this: <META name="description" style="font-weight: bold;">Do I need to submit my site to the search engines?
The simple answer is - no. Search engine spiders are always out there doing their job and collecting information. Every time you update your website, add content, or change your keywords, the search engines capture the information and record it. However, if you want to be listed on a directory, like the DMOZ Open directory project, then you will need to submit to those.

9. What are spiders?
Search engine spiders are also called web crawlers or bot. They are basically automated programs which scan websites to provide information to search engines often for the purpose of indexing or ranking them.

10. How does content help my SEO?
Content is one of the best tools to improve your search engine ranking. It is a great place to emphasize keywords, encourage linking to your site, and increase traffic. The key to content is to make sure you are offering quality content and you are updating your website and your content frequently. Content can be provided in many forms including:
  • Blogs
  • Forums and chat rooms
  • Articles
  • Reviews
  • Case studies
  • Reports
  • How to guides
  • Tutorials
  • e-books and much more.
Source From Entireweb Newsletter

Friday, July 3, 2009

Debunking the Top 10 Search Engine Myths

We have all done it at some point in our professional lives. We search a keyword that describes our business only to scratch our head as to how our competitor's website shows up on the top of the list instead of ours. If you have gone one step further and read about Search Engine Optimization, then surely you have come across the conflicting information online.

One article tells you to do one thing while another tells you to do the opposite. Which one should you believe?

This gray area of what you should or should not do is much like the modern day "Bat Cave." If you are lucky enough to stumble upon it, chances are you do not quite know how you got there and if you had to go back one day you would probably just find yourself lost in the woods.

So what should you believe? The general rule is to combine what you read or heard with what you have experienced and somewhere in there lies the truth. To get you started, let us debunk some of the more commonly used myths floating around.

1) Use a Keyword Rich Domain Name:
It is widely believed that if you include your keywords in your domain name like www.professional-website-design-in-nj.com it will greatly increase your rankings. This is not true. It is best to choose a domain name that is short, easy to remember and if possible includes your company name.

2) Google Partnership:
If you are ever approached by a company claiming to have a partnership with Google, run in the opposite direction. There is no such thing as a "preferred" relationship with Google and in fact on Google's website it even states: Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google.

3) Meta Keyword Tag:
It used to be that the Meta Keyword Tag was given a lot of weight in the early days of Search Engine Optimization, but people abused it and now it does very little. You may still want to include your keywords here, but know that it will not do much and in fact most search engines will not even check it.

4) Bold or Italicized Text:
Adding emphasis to certain keywords like using bold or italics can make your text easier to scan for the reader if done properly, but has little to no affect on your search engine ranking.

5) Content Length:
There is no search engine rule stating that your content needs to be a specific number of words in order to get indexed. Any recommended length is more to assist the reader in understanding what you do than to aid the search engines.

6) Duplicate Content:
Posting specific content like an article or blog entry on your site and then on another site will not get you penalized. In the search results, Google will recognize that the content is the same and only choose one of the pages to display, but it will not hurt your overall search engine ranking.

7) Avoid Flash:
Any text that you place in Flash will not be readable by a search engine, but this does not mean you have to avoid flash altogether. You can still very successfully incorporate Flash into your site through rotating pictures or a header on the page. Just do not have an all Flash site or use a Flash intro if you are interested in increasing your search engine rankings.

8) Pay-Per-Click:
Some say that using Pay-Per-Click will help your organic listing while others say it will hurt. Both are false. The fact is that Google has gone to great lengths to separate the two departments of organic and paid listings to a point where the two departments do not communicate or even sit at the same table for lunch.

9) Update the Site Frequently:
Updating your site often is a good idea if you have something new to say. Just do not change around a few words to accommodate the search engines as that will not help your listing at all. Regularly adding legitimate content like articles, press releases and blog entries will help though.

10) Doorway Pages:
Many companies will sell this idea of increasing your ranking by creating hundreds of one page sites loaded with keywords that link to you from various domains. This is considered spamming the search engine and is not recommended. If you properly optimize your site and focus on the correct way to get listed, you will increase your ranking much quicker than these doorway pages ever could.

Of course there are many other myths out there confusing the general public about what works and what does not work. Some of them are spread by people who do not really know the truth and others are spread by SEO companies in an attempt to make search engine optimization confusing.

Source From Entireweb Newsletter

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

7 Simple Ways To Build Traffic To A New Website

Many business owners I meet are surprised to find, once we look at the numbers, that the shiny new site they had built not too long ago gets little to no traffic on a daily basis.

Many newcomers to the web make the mistake of thinking that just by buying a domain name and putting up your site, visitors are going to happen by - something like when you buy property and build a storefront in a busy part of town.

It just does not work that way. The web is harsh. You can have the best looking site in the world with great resources and content and go entirely ignored or unnoticed. It happens. It is happening right now. Somewhere out there in the ether is a brand new gorgeous website loaded with great content, and nobody cares. But there is hope. Every website had its early days. Even sites that get hundreds of thousands of visitors a day started out with none.

Here are 7 simple things you can start doing right now to help drive traffic to your site.

1. Get Some Quick Links From Trusted Directories
Link building is a long-term process with long-term goals, but for brand new sites with no history you have got to start somewhere. There are a number of directories out there that provide free and paid listings (subject to editorial review, of course).
1.Yahoo!
2.Business.com
3.JoeAnt.com
4.DMOZ.org
5.BOTW.org
6.here is a great list of directories sorted by SEOmoz's Trifecta score.

2. Start Blogging
OK, blogging is not for everybody (especially you boring people), but it is a great way to build relevant content at your site on a consistent basis. It also gives your visitors/ customers a way to engage with you. But please do not make the mistake of being too "corporate" on your blog - do yourself a favor and check your Public Relations cap at the door. Do not be afraid to discuss your mistakes, missteps you have made, and what you have learned from them as well as your triumphs. In short, be a human, not a brand.

3. Consider Paid Search
For new websites, the day when you receive all the traffic you need for free from search engines and other referrals is a long way off - if not just a pipe dream altogether. Often times paid search campaigns are a great way to get your site in front of your target market today. Be sure to keep your budget modest, though, until you are confident in your ROI. Be sure to do your keyword research to find lower-cost "long tail" keywords - going after the big traffic keywords might be tempting, but it gets expensive and the ROI is often not the best.

4. Use Article Marketing To Build Links
As with any tactic, I would recommend using this one in moderation. Article marketing is, essentially, trading words for links. It can help with link building, but the quality of the links it garners is usually less than stellar.
Here is how it works:

4a. Write an informative article on your site topic (or something related)
4b. Include an "about the author" section as well as links in the article that point to your pages using relevant anchor text
4c. Submit the article through one of the many article syndication services (such as EZineArticles.com or GoArticles.com )
4d. The deal is, anybody can come along and publish your article on their website - provided they use the article in its original format including the "about the author" section. So when the article is published, any links you include back to your site are published as well.

5. Guest Post At Relevant Blogs
This certainly requires some up-front investment, mainly in terms of building relationships with bloggers in your topic, but it can help get the flywheel turning for your site like nothing else can. Take the time to make your guest post remarkable and smart - your host blogger will appreciate it, and it will improve the likelihood of attention coming back to your site. Links from blogs are some of the most powerful editorial links you can get – do not underestimate them for a second.

6. Submit Your Site to Design Galleries
Is your website breathtaking to behold, beautiful enough to make angels weep? Yeah, sure it is. But seriously, if it looks pretty sharp there are plenty of web design galleries that accept submissions for new sites and link to the sites they feature. Particularly for CSS-driven design there are a number of galleries that will consider your site for listing (provided your site uses CSS for layout/styling - and God help you if it does not) - including CSSElite.com, CSSHeaven.com, CSSBeauty.com and many others. Just search in Google for "CSS design gallery.".

7. Sponsor a Local Event or Charity
This is kind of a tired tip - but it works! Especially for local small businesses. Is there a local event coming up in your community? A local charity that has a website? Not only will sponsoring such an event give you all of the normal PR benefits that are the byproducts of charity, but any web announcement for the event will potentially include a mention of your website as well as a link to it. And you can feel good about yourself for a change.

Bonus Tip: Be Patient
It is important to remember that you are not going to see your unique visitors count skyrocket immediately for your new website. Most "overnight successes" actually take a few years to get going.

Source From SitePro News