Seo Tips, Seo Tools, SEO, Web Promotion, Search Engine Optimization, Link Building

Google Analytics Telephone Leads

2010-09-16T21:46:00.001-07:00

Integrating Telephone Leads and Live Chat for Increased Results

Get more from your marketing budget and increase ROI by combining the power of Google Analytics with telephone tracking and live chat interactions. Each of these powerful marketing tools, when combined with Google Analytics, can provide you with better results and more information about your customers.

Telephone Leads and Google Analytics

Combining telephone calls and Google Analytics allows you to track each phone call made by your customers to your company resulting in new valuable information about you customers. All of this is easily accomplished when you work with a company like Mongoose Metrics. Purchasing bulk toll free numbers from Mongoose Metrics, allows you to use unique phone numbers for individual marketing campaigns or product lines at a very reasonable price. By assigning each number to a hidden web page on your site including the Google Analytics tracking code, each phone call will trigger a visit to the hidden web page. This will then trigger Google Analytics to register the phone call as an event in its tracking system. By combining the numbers being tracked with your account in Google Analytics, you can see results including the phone number called, duration and date of the call. All of this information can help you to refine your marketing and increase ROI.

Live Chat and Google Analytics

Having the capability to chat with your customers while they are on your website is invaluable. Aside from the personal touch this provide, it allows you to get a better handle on what is working or not working on your site, with your marketing and how your customers are responding to your company. Using the services of a company like LivePerson, allows you this real time interaction. Combining LivePerson’s services with Google Analytics gets you a wealth of knowledge not before available. Some of the information available to you includes:

* volume and quality of live chats by geographic area

* the source and keywords that lead to the chat

* navigation paths that drive chats

The more you know about your clients the more successful you will be. By garnering this type of detailed information from telephone and live chat interactions, you will be able to modify your future messages and increase ROI.

How to Turn a Negative Blog Post into a Positive

2010-09-16T21:44:00.000-07:00

No one wants to see or hear a negative comment about their business. When you first read a negative blog post, you are likely to get a sinking feeling in your stomach. However, a negative blog post doesn’t have to mean impending doom. Instead of dreading seeing your company’s name, take this as an opportunity to spin a negative into a positive.

When a blogger mentions your business consider it an open invitation to respond. If a blogger criticizes a promotion you are running or pans your business based on their experience, it is your opportunity to craft a well thought out response.

You have every right to explain yourself. Address the specific issue raised in the blog; explain what your business is all about or the structure of your promotion in question. Be sure to take the high road and always be professional. Personal attacks are never appropriate; even if you were attacked first.

Opening a dialog with a blogger gives you the opportunity to provide an explanation, to correct misinformation and address misunderstandings. With a well thought out and timely response, showing your thought process and professionalism is likely to enhance your image.

Don’t forget that the blogger’s posting and your response is going to be viewed by all of the blog’s readers. Accuracy is a must. On a side note, a quick “Thank you for the kind words” post to a positive blog comment is always appreciated.

Can You Protect Your Online Reputation?

2010-09-16T21:42:00.002-07:00

We’ve all done things in our lives we regret. Unfortunately, in today’s day and age, those things are often found on the internet, available to potential employers, schools and any other person who enters our life. So can you protect your online reputation by having those pages removed from Google’s index?

Unfortunately, it is not as easy as you would hope for. Google clearly states on their website that they do not own the internet. This means that in order to get the pages off of Google’s search results, the website that houses the undesirable information must be changed. Your only hope of getting a change is to approach the webmaster of the offending site to request removal of the page or at least request they block the page from Google’s indexing. Google’s response if you approach them first is a polite, but firm, “We are sorry, but we can’t do anything without action by the webmaster.”

Your only hope is if the information falls into one of the categories that Google is prepared to deal with. They include:

· Social security or credit information in results

· Adult content in results, when SafeSearch has been turned on

· Inappropriate images in video results

Beyond these points, you are pretty much on your own. Once you understand that Google has no control over what is posted to the internet, it does seem to make a bit more sense. Google’s job is to tell you what is out there, not to police what is already posted to the Web.

So what is the best way to protect yourself? Be on your best behavior to keep your reputation intact, and well, if that doen’t work for you… than you’re in good company. If you do have to approach someone to get a page removed, make nice and hope for the best. If that does not work, just make sure you have lots of good stuff to make up for being less than perfect. After all, nobodys perfect J

SEO Investments on the Rise

2010-09-16T21:42:00.001-07:00

Search engine optimization (SEO) budgets are increasing as marketing executives gain knowledge of how SEO can benefit advertising and marketing campaigns. eMarketer is reporting that SEO budget allocations are expected to rise in the coming years as compared to other search marketing strategies.

With the decline in the economy, customer acquisition is becoming more and more vital. As the focus on customer acquisition increases, SEO becomes a more vital part of the overall marketing strategy. Because SEO provides a long term strategy for increased consumer presence, it has added value as compared to paid search marketing.

“Search Marketing Trends: Back to Basics” reports that SEO growth will grow from 17.7% to 20.3% while paid search will decline from 15.9% in 2009 to 11.3% in 2013. When searching for information, consumers find more value in organic search results than pay per click (PPC) advertising. The value placed by consumers on organic search results garners more clicks on these results thus making SEO a valued part of the marketing plan.

SEO Market Growth

Combining SEO and PPC marketing efforts may result in higher search engine result rankings. Paid search engine advertising offers more immediate results, but in order to see results in the search engine arena advertising must be consistent. SEO marketing results occur over a longer time frame, but result in organic search results more valued by consumers.

In order to gain the most information and knowledge of your results, Web analytics is necessary. Having solid feedback regarding your SEO and PPC marketing efforts will allow you to gage how successful your campaign is. More traffic is only positive if the cost of the search ad relative to the conversion doesn’t reduce your bottom line.

SEO is a bit like a good public relations strategy; it helps to bring top of mind awareness to your site. SEO gets them in the door, so you can complete the deal.

Maximize Your Twitter

2010-09-16T21:40:00.000-07:00

Twitter is expected to be one of the only social networking sites to have long term viability. Twitter usage and name recognition has been growing in leaps and bounds. Many are using Twitter not just to stay connected, but to market as well. So how do you maximize your Twitter?

Get an active Twitter account.

Yes it sounds basic, and you may already have one, but don’t just breeze past this section. We have some interesting tips to help you maximize your usage.

For those of you just getting started, open your account at http://twiter.com/signup. Once you have the registration form complete, connect with as many people as you can. They make it easy by allowing you to search your email lists (see below for more information). Customize your profile to show your main website and your, or your company’s, bio information. Don’t forget to set your location, update preferences and how you want to be notified of friends who have joined the Twitter revolution.

Draw attention with a customized background.

Get creative here. Simply click on “Settings” and then “Design” to choose a premade background or upload your own image. If you have a flair for design and a little Photoshop experience you can create a background that speaks volumes about you and your company. Check out some great custom layouts like:

http://twitter.com/JetBlue

http://twitter.com/BBCClick

http://twitter.com/MarthaStewart

Gather friends and follow interesting people and organizations

Finding friends on Twitter is easy. Three options are available.

1. Search Twitter. Use the “Find People” function to search for anyone from your next door neighbor to celebrities to companies.

2. Search other networks. Connect to anyone in your email contact list. Twitter can search through your hotmail.com, Gmail, Yahoo mail or AOL mail contact lists and if your friends use Twitter they can be added to your list.

3. Manual invites. Have friends, co-workers or clients who are not on Twitter? Manually input their email addresses and invite them to be your friend.

Connect your blog to Twitter

One of the best tools to connect Twitter and your blog was created by Alex King. This plug-in will automatically create micro blogs from your WordPress blog posts. Just follow this link for all the information

http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress

to download this plug-in click here

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/share-this/share-this.2.3.zip

If you blog regularly, be sure to review the instructions and support information.

Monitor your Twitter Rank

Twitter offers the Twitter Grader (http://twitter.grader.com) to show you where you rank against other Twitter members. Once you enter your user name, you will see where you rank among a possible 100 points.

Twitter Grading is based on overall rank, number of followers, your following and updates. The more active you are the higher you will rank.

Link your Twitter account to social bookmarking sites.

If you are in the Twitter game, be in it to win it. Build up your social networking account by bookmarking your Twitter account to sites such as Digg.com, Propeller.com, Dropjack.com and others.

Take advantage of advanced search features on Twitter

To really maximize your connection with people in your target market, go to http://search.twitter.com/advanced to use the Advanced Search features Twitter offers. In Advanced Search you can search by keywords or phrases, location, names and more.

Resist the urge to connect with everyone you see. Be choosy and select only the best people who actually have good information to share and are likely to accept your friend request.

As you take these steps to maximize your Twitter impact, you will see your social status rise. As with any adventure, the more you keep at it the better the result

Optimize Your Long Tail Keywords

2010-09-16T21:39:00.000-07:00

We all prefer our customers to be serious shoppers with money ready to spend. There is nothing worse than wasting valuable time with a customer who isn’t serious about a purchase. Whether at your bricks and mortar location or your website, you want to draw motivated shoppers versus window shoppers. So how do you drive top quality traffic to your website? The kind of traffic that is ready to buy?

SEO (search engine optimization) is an excellent tool to build website traffic and top rankings on Google. But searching on any old keyword isn’t enough. To get the best prospects for your business, you need to focus on “long tail keywords”. Long tail keywords are keywords of three or more words. For example, searching on “cars” isn’t as effective as searching for “used cars for sale under $5,000”.

Long tail keywords work to your advantage because there is less competition for them. With long tail keywords, you get higher search engine rankings more easily. Most importantly, consumers who search for more specific things are more likely to be serious shoppers ready to spend their money.

The reasons to focus on long tail keywords are simple:

Focusing your SEO efforts on long tail keywords will over time, lead to more search engine traffic because you will have more pages indexed.

Long tail keywords will produce higher page rankings because there is less competition for them.

You will find your best prospects through long tail keywords. They’ve already taken the energy to think about what they specifically want or need; now they are on your site. These people are more likely to subscribe to your blog, email blasts and read your advertisements.

Long tail keywords generate higher sales. Shoppers who use long tail keywords are motivated and looking to spend money. Skip past the window shoppers and focus your energy on the serious shopper.

Focusing your SEO energy on long tail keywords will deliver the customer who is most likely to spend money at your site. Isn’t that what we all want?

Internet Marketing System

2010-09-03T23:24:00.000-07:00

Do You Need an Internet Marketing System?

With the rise in online businesses and e-commerce, business owners have started to hear the phrase Internet Marketing and need to consider using an Internet Marketing system as opposed to a project-based system to effectively market their business. Without using a strategy to direct visitor traffic to their website, the site owner will not see any sales. By using strategies, the site's visibility increases, thus driving traffic and conversions.

What is Internet Marketing?

IM is the art of positioning a website to show up near the top of the search engine result pages (SERPs), and preferably in the top 10 positions on the first page. Many companies use professional SEO (professional search engine optimization) and SEM techniques to do this. Using various methods to supply backlinks to the target website, using proper keyword structure, and using fresh content are examples of techniques a professional search engine optimization company uses to increase visibility of a website.

SEM, otherwise known as professional search engine marketing services, includes SEO in addition to other methods such as pay-per-click advertising, sponsored advertising and more. Both methods increase overall visibility of a website and promote high visitor traffic so that the site can convert more sales.

Why Use Internet Marketing Companies?

Using Internet marketing companies as opposed to project based website development and marketing has many advantages. For example, an Internet marketing service provider will continue to update the professional search engine marketing services used, but project based services leave a business owner to tend to the SEO himself, if he has the time. An Internet marketing service provider will also turn the business website into an asset for generating sales leads and continuously use web-tracking services to assess a particular campaign's viability.

An SEO will also use website traffic tracking to monitor and analyze visitor behavior and change content to improve conversions related to the site's performance. This method is easy, but time-consuming and what site owner has the time to continuously monitor their site's statistics?

Opting to use a professional SEM or SEO company will not only have an effect on traffic and sales, but it will also effect the way visitors look at the site. They will see it properly maintained and know it is a site they can trust for fresh and reliable content and products. This is one of the many assets of using a professional Internet marketing service instead of a project based in-house approach for any SEO campaigns and web tracking services.

When it comes to Internet marketing services in San Jose, WSI Omega Solutions is your best choice for a professional Search Engine Optimization Company and web tracking services. They are a company that provides complete professional search engine marketing services and they take the hassle out of website traffic tracking and increase the return on investment overall.

SEO Tips for Your Marketing Campaign

2010-08-19T22:03:00.000-07:00

17 SEO Tips for Your Marketing Campaign

When you begin your SEO campaign, it can be difficult to separate myth from truth. It seems everyone has different ideas of what works and what doesn't, and even someone who's been in the business awhile can get confused as SEO trends, tactics, and techniques change over the years.

While there may be much discrepancy, these 17 tips for SEO are something most experts seem to agree on. Following these rules, you can avoid some common mistakes and launch a successful campaign.

1. Perform keyword research. This is a very important step in your SEO campaign, before you even begin. Thoroughly research all keywords you may want to use - this can make a huge difference in your strategy.

2. Don't use the same Metas for every page. All your Meta and Title Tags should be unique for each page. Also, make sure to use keywords and write an engaging title.

3. Don't try to deceive the search engines. Don't overuse keywords, hide text, or create doorway pages. These are unethical forms of SEO. With the current trend of search engines favoring ethical SEO, your best practice is to create a well-thought out web page, that has unique content, and is easy to navigate.

4. Avoid low quality links. Not all links are created equal. Instead of getting links from link farms, research the popularity of websites before getting links from them. Alexa ranks are a good way to check popularity, as well as page rank. However, if your own page rank is rather low, fret not, for this will be explained below.

5. Avoid using links with the same anchor text. Search engines do not like links that use the same anchor text and description that are repeated in short bursts.

6. Don't overdo reciprocal links. Reciprocal linking can be valuable, but only when done in small doses, and if the links are relevant to your business. Also, make sure to have a diverse set of links, including links to blogs, forums, articles, social media bookmarking, and more.

7. Don't become obsessed with page rank. Page rank is only a small part of your entire SEO campaign. The way pages are ranked is actually rather complicated, and is based on many factors. It is possible for a lower ranked page to actually be quite successful and get lots of visitors. So if your page rank is low, don't freak out.

8. Do network with other Website owners. This is a great way to learn, get advice, and exchange links. These relationships can be mutually beneficial.

9. Make site updates regularly. Sometimes, an out-of-date website can be worse than no website at all. Make sure you update regularly with current information, news and events, and fresh content. If you want to catch the eye of the search engine robots, regular updates are a great way.

10. Don't compete for single keywords. Instead, compete for keyword phrases. This will make it more likely that your site will show up as a relevant search result. For instance, if your company sells jewelry boxes, and you attempt to compete for the term "boxes," many people who find your site will be looking for cardboard boxes, hat boxes, and other types of boxes, and will likely not stay on your page once they realize you don't sell what they're looking for. If you compete for the phrase "jewelry boxes," it's more likely that potential customers who are looking strictly for jewelry boxes will find you.

11. Research your competition. It's always good to know what the competition is up to, including what they are doing on their website, where they are getting links, etc.

12. Design your Website to be SEO friendly. There is definitely an SEO strategy when it comes to website design. Avoid heavy Flash and lots of graphics, since search engine robots crawl the text, not images. Good Meta and Title Tags are a must, as well as fresh and engaging content. If you're hiring someone to design your website, look for someone who is an expert in organic SEO.

13. Use text links instead of images. If using JavaScript, text links are important since spiders won't follow JavaScript.

14. Keep localization in mind. There are several benefits to reaching out to the local audience. Aside from gaining local customers, including location-based keyword phrases, like "detriot auto body shop," will help you because you will have less competition for that keyword.

15. Don't ignore the power of content. Nothing drives a Website like good content. Make sure your content is engaging, original, and well researched. Use keywords strategically (so they fit in with the natural flow of text).

16. Always proofread. This step should be a given, yet it's not uncommon to see typos and content mistakes on web pages. Aside from providing incorrect information, mistakes, as well as typos, make a web page and its company look unprofessional.

And most importantly...

17. Don't Give Up! SEO is not accomplished overnight. It can be a long process and takes lots of work and sometimes trial and error. Keep up your effort and don't give up!

Your Website Promotion

2010-08-09T22:18:00.000-07:00

Website Free Promotion

You are welcome to A Promotion Guide. If this is your first visit, you might want to take the time to read through this page. I hope that the very important thing for those who has already created a web page or blog and have not yet any traffic to the resource is to read carefully this free step-by-step website promotion tutorial.

No doubts that your site is brand new and that you haven't done any website promotion work yet. Believe us that submitting of the url needs appropriate skills and ware. So, if you have submitted your link to a few search engines or registered your site with a couple of directories it will only gain a small practical effect.

You should know that the promoting of your site takes a lot of time and may involve waiting several weeks or even months to get into certain directories and search engines. Though, a great deal of them is commercial, but there are a lot of free ones. So, you must choose the way you want to register a link manually or using some special software. There is also another way to use assistance of the some special webs which guarantee quick and qualified submission of your link. Anyway the registration in search engines should be started at Google, Yahoo and Bing for free of charge.

But remember, that to Yahoo you can submit a link only in case you are registered and already have an account at Yahoo.com. Though, submitting to Yahoo you also automatically submitting your link to Altavista, AllTheWeb and some other engines as well. We recommend you to read an article about Yahoo-specific guidelines and hints on the internet too.

Here you find some links for free submission to search engines. Several other good links of the catalogues, classified directories and search engines are already given on the Artsgeo weblinks web page.

Thus, they say that “submitting to directories is easy and doesn't require much effort. It's ensuring that your submission will be accepted that makes this task a hard one.”

Very important is also to start submission with the Open Directory Project. While your site has to offer good and unique content to be accepted to the ODP. usually, its editors review sites quickly and won't reject them without a good reason. To mention a few, HotBot, Excite, Infoseek and Lycos submission is also very useful to claim their own share of the searching industry.

In the conclusion, we hope that the information you have read on this blog will give you some fresh ideas on how to improve your ranking and get more traffic to your site.

5 Tips for Marketing Through Content

2010-07-08T22:06:00.000-07:00

Gather.com is a site that started as a social networking site, but is now a demand-driven media company, attracting 7 million unique visitors per month (and growing), according to the company. Demand-driven media is certainly a competitive industry these days with companies like Demand Media, AOL, Yahoo and others all playing their roles.

Tell us about your strategy for marketing through content.

Content has always been "where it's at", and that holds true as much as ever these days. Gather CEO Tom Gerace, who is also founder of the Social Media Advertising Consortium (SMAC), a non-profit organization working on the creation of standards for social media engagement campaigns, offered some tips on marketing through content to share with WebProNews readers. These tips are:

1. Start with Search. There are 15.9 billion searches run every month and a small percentage are customers looking for you and your competitors. Figure out your market opportunity by understanding how many searches, keywords and keyword phrases are related to what you do.

2. Think holistically about your budget. What do you spend today per customer? What is your average SEM spend? Content-based programs can help lower cost/customer acquisition because fewer people are doing it and competition, so far, is less intense. Plan to shift some budget dollars from SEM and other acquisition marketing efforts to content marketing - it delivers results with an improved cost structure.

Strategies for Making the Most of Your Data - Click Here Now

3. Target your content creation. Content needs to be targeted to areas that align directly with your brand; where sufficient demand for your content will make content marketing worthwhile.

4. Make lots and lots and lots of content at a low cost. Search engines weigh recency heavily when organizing content. There is always fresh content at the top of search results pages, so 1,000 posts on a topic will capture more customers than a competitor with 5 - 10 posts.

5. Don't go it alone. Managing dozens of writers, achieving top search engine placement, and establishing content creation costs to make content marketing make sense requires specialized knowledge and training. Find a partner and make them put their money where their mouth is on the numbers they promise.

Those are Gerace's tips, but I'll add that quality makes a difference. Not only does Google continually try to put more emphasis on quality with algorithm updates, but it also goes a long way when you're talking about reputation, and obviously you don't want to do something that will hurt your brand.

As far as search, Google's Matt Cutts has said of the recent Mayday update, for example, that content farms are among the kinds of sites that are hit the hardest by the alrogithm change. That's another reason why churning out sub-par content is not going to be in your best interest. If you can walk the line of delivering content that people are searching for, and giving them content that stands out, there are lots of benefits to be had.

9 Steps to Diagnosing Lost Search Engine Traffic

2010-07-08T21:59:00.000-07:00

For the past few weeks I've been tasked with reviewing a few different sites that have seen a loss in traffic - their owners hoped to find out why. I love these kinds of reviews because it's like solving a mystery or figuring out a puzzle. While it's not always possible to determine the exact cause for the traffic loss, I can usually make some educated guesses based on what I dig up in Google Analytics.

Here are 9 steps you can take to diagnose the cause of lost search engine traffic:

1. Determine what type of traffic loss you're dealing with. Many people look at Google's overview page, see a loss of overall traffic to their website, and assume that they must have lost their rankings in Google and the targetéd traffic that comes with it. This may or may not be the case. Be sure to check for search engine traffic, and even more specifically Google non-paid traffic.

2. Look at the extent of the traffic loss. Your research will be very different depending on whether there was a gradual decline in traffic or a sudden, drastic drop. I reviewed a site last week that lost all of their Google unpaid traffic overnight! This sort of loss is typically a technical issue such as a robots.txt file or a nofollow directive that keeps search engine spiders from indexing your pages. Sometimes it's not actually a loss of traffic at all - your analytics code could have been inadvertently removed from all or most of the pages, making it appear like a traffic loss. I have seen all of the above more times than I can count in just the last couple of months!

3. Compare apples to apples. Many businesses are cyclical or seasonal. A gift site may see huge spikes in traffic the months leading up to Christmas or the weeks before other holidays. This means that comparing any month to the previous month may not tell you the whole story. A drop in traffic in January is probably fairly normal for a gift site. If you've got more than a year's worth of data, you'll want to compare this month's traffic to the same month in previous years. Ideally, you'd of course want to see a growth in traffic. And if you don't, then you may very well have a problem on your hands. If you don't have data that goes back that far, you can compare month to month, but be sure to take the data with a grain of salt.

4. Review and filter out "brand" traffic. Most websites get a lot of Google traffic from people who've typed some version of the name of their company as their search query. You'll want to note whether those visitors have significantly increased or decreased. If you receive fewer visitors for your brand, this could be caused by a decrease in marketing and advertising. Once you make note of the brand traffic, you'll want to filter it out so you can study actual keyword traffic, which is what real SEO traffic consists of.

5. Analyze which keyword phrases have had a significant decrease in visitors. Now that you've filtered out the brand traffic, you should be able to see the keyword phrases that are bringing you the most traffic. If you have lots, you may want to view 100 phrases at a time rather than the default of just 10. Are there lots of keyword phrases that seem to bring far fewer visitors over the last few months as compared to last year at the same time? You may also notice some that are bringing significantly more visitors.

6. Do a quick Google search for the phrases. If you're not seeing any pages from your site on the first page in Google, it may or may not be a clue (given the fact that everybody sees different search results) but it is definitely a cause to investigate further. If a page from your site does show up fairly high in the líst, it could just be that fewer people are searching for that phrase now as compared to before. Or it could be that your listing isn't quite what the searcher is looking for based on your title and descriptive snippet. There might also be other results for the keyword phrase that have images or video embedded whereas yours doesn't. Or there might be local map results showing up that make your result less appealing.

7. Review the landing page for the keyword phrase that lost traffic. Is there any obvious reason why it's not bringing in as many visitors as it used to? Does it even exist anymore? Did it change substantially at some point during the year? Did it get buried deeper into the site architecture for some reason? Is the content duplicated from other pages within your site or contained on other websites? Were there links pointing to it at some point that no longer are? Does the copy read naturally, or are there a few extra instances of the keyword phrase than really makes sense to a person?

8. Review your long-tail traffic. Since the end of April and early May 2010 a few large sites lost a substantial amount of traffic for keyword phrases that brought small numbers of visitors individually, but in aggregate they made up a lot of website traffic. You'll want to filter your keywords to those that have only a few visitors (even just 1) and see if there are significantly fewer of those than previously. If this is the case, Google has gone on record stating that they're doing a better job at sending long-tail traffic to more meaningful and relevant pages than they used to. Which means you'll have to go above and beyond what you're currently doing if you want to get that long-tail traffic back.

9. Decide if you're dealing with a search engine penalty. For drastic drops, in the rare cases where it's not a technical issue, you're most likely dealing with a penalty. You can check your Google Webmaster Tools account to see if there is a notification of a penalty, but they don't usually bother to tell you. Still, search engine penalties are much rarer than people think. In fact, most website owners know what they've done wrong when they have a search engine penalty. There are some cases, however, where they may have been duped by a less than scrupulous "SEO" company. The penalties I've seen seem to occur on sites that have no redeeming value because they have the same products and content that can be found on many other sites (often ones owned by the same company), plus they are deeply entrenched in massive link farms. It's likely that they are also hosting part of the link farm on their own site in the form of a link directory. If this is what you find, you may be better off to start from scratch rather than trying to salvage the penalized domain.

I hope these steps help you diagnose your loss of traffic. I imagine they will keep you busy for quite some time!

SEO Tips to Double Rankings

2010-07-08T21:57:00.000-07:00

The only thing better than one search result in the top 3 positions in Google is two search results from a double ranking. This SEO tip works by pushing a competitor off the first page, broadening your websites keyword funnel and thereby doubling traffic and conversions.

Two Results are Better than One

I read somewhere that 87% of search engine traffic for a given keyword is allocated from occupying the Number 1 position in the search engine results page. If you understand SEO, then this post will share a quick method to double your SERP positions and to improve the likelihood of keyword conversions - once you have reached the Mecca for a specific search term.

SEO is predicated on one simple premise, rankings; in order for SEO to be effective, it must produce ranking on the first page in search engines.

Not only is this the crowning achievement of search engine optimization, but once you achieve a top 10 position, then you can pull other keywords into the spotlight as a result of strategic linking. We often refer to this as the buddy system for lateral linking.

Search engine algorithms pay particular attention to individual pages capable of offsetting all of the other inconsistencies of a competitor's web pages and deem one page worthy above all others for any given search term.

Obviously the metrics are unique for each market, keyword or niche, but the reality is the same, once a top 3 or more importantly Number 1 or Number 1, 2 and 3 positions are present in Google. I have mentioned before, the fastest way to get a top 10 position in Google is to get a link from a website already ranking in the top 10 for that keyword.

It does not matter if that link is provided from your website or another website, rankings are by the page and there is a daisy-chain effect of linking pages together that fuses the pages through a dynamic give and take relationship (based on citation). This citation can provide the algorithmic equivalents of trust needed for the newly linked page to jump in line past others duking it out for that keyword.

Depending on the competitiveness of the keyword or key phrase and the thresholds inherent to the barrier to entry; the time required to initiate a campaign, create all of the necessary content, inbound links and citation from other web 2.0 properties, RSS feeds and social bookmarking sites divided by the amount of time you invest managing or outsourcing the various components involved determine your profitability and return on investment.

With this in mind, from a tactical perspective, it's better to leverage the SERP positioning you already have than to look outside of your website for off page ranking factors. If you understand the power of a Number 1 position, then you can replicate this next simple SEO tip.

Identify all current Number 1 positions in Google for keywords.

Validate they still exist.

Use Keyword Research to find "related keywords" based on the Number 1 ranking Link from the page that ranks to a new page (using similar anchor text or overlapping keywords to promote the new page).

Let the new page get indexed, then check the SERPs.

Identify: My favorite tool for this is SEMRush, but if you don't want to use this, there are other programs out there, or even Google webmaster tools can show you your website's top ranking SERP positions when you log in.

Either way, this is your base, so, identify the keywords which could represent hub status for your SEO campaign and pass along the power of ranking to other pages in your website.

Validate: Check to see if you still hold the Number 1 position, even a top 3 will do, but this tactic works better if you are at the helm of a particular search phrase.

Keyword Research: You should be able to gauge whether or not the keyword is profitable for you based on the frequency of hits and the type of traffic you garner as a result. You can always look through Google Analytics or whichever analytics package you have to assess the keywords that represent the highest percentage of traffic to your website.

Once you know what those keywords are, then use keyword research to find stemmed semantic variations that also fall under the same category or keyword cluster. Those related keywords will become the new focal point for step 4 - linking.

Linking: The closer the shingles (groups of keywords) the more effective this technique is. You can call this padding the search results (if you use similar exact match titles, tags or content), or you can pass this ranking factor along to help synonymous terms.

Simply go back and edit the page ranking in the Number 1 position and add a link to the new target page (with the keyword you intend the target page to rank for as the anchor text). Then, the authority from the page in the Number 1 position will gróup the new page under its umbrella and pull that page into the spotlight.

When the new page gets crawled and the old page reveals the connectivity between the two, typically a double SERP position occurs or a double position accompanied by jump links, breadcrumbs or the [+] with additional search results for that keyword appear in Google to showcase the degree of relevance your website has for the said term.

You can then build additional deep links from other sites or addition internal links to the newly dubbed page. As a result, you should see buoyancy for other pages for multiple keyword variations related to the parent keyword cluster.

With this simple tip you can double your conversions by increasing your website's semantic array of keywords. Obviously you will know which keywords and traffic is most lucrative for your business model, but this technique is priceless for creating controlled keyword stemming if you understand the implications underlying its premise.

How Much Do You Know About SEO

2010-07-08T21:50:00.000-07:00

So just what do you know about SEO? When it comes to SEO are you a Novice, Intermediate or Expert? Regardless of your level, this article from a 10 year SEO war veteran may prove helpful.

One of my biggest problems in trying to help other webmasters - I naturally and wrongly assume they know all about SEO. I forget these webmasters have not spent the last 10 years battling it out with other online webmasters and marketers for some very popular and lucrative keywords, in the process, honing their SEO skills with other like-minded individuals.

I forget that many beginning webmasters may not be familiar with all the SEO lingo and SEO techniques which I mention in my articles.

There's nothing wrong with that. If I were to take up a new hobby or explore a new subject, I am sure I would be just as clueless. Mainly because every subject, sport or hobby comes with a lot of terms/phrases which are unique to that subject. SEO is the same way so maybe a little background or warm-up is needed in regards to understanding the basics of SEO.

Tip: If you're a complete novice, a complete list of the SEO terms might prove helpful. You can find a complete SEO Dictionary at: www.submitexpress.com/seodictionary.html

First, you must understand that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization... which means you optimize your website and content so that it ranks high in the major search engines such as Google and Bing/Yahoo. This optimization can take the form of following a strict formula or layout of your website content with the proper meta tags, keyword density, linking structures and so on. It can also mean off-site optimization with link building, right anchor text, keyword positioning and so on.

SEO has become a major industry simply because getting top rankings for lucrative keywords can mean significant revenue for companies or individuals. We are talking about billions, if not trillions of dollars, exchanging hands with the sale of products, services and business transactions. Get a top ranking for your chosen keyword phrase and it means a flood of targeted prospects/buyers coming to your website or company, ready to do business.

Now, because there is so much money involved, a whole SEO industry has sprung up with consultants, experts and companies offering their services to get you or your company into those top rankings in the search engines. These SEO services could include link building, link buying, social media positioning, onpage optimization, pay-per-click management... all with the goal of bringing targeted customers to your site or business.

White Hat vs Black Hat SEO

You may also have heard other webmasters talking about White Hat SEO as opposed to Black Hat SEO. And as the names suggest, White Hat is strictly above board proper site optimization, while Black hat is using underhand devious cloaking methods and systems to raise your rankings. For obvious reasons, always go the White Hat route and you will feel better knowing you're doing the right thing in regards to your site.

Perhaps the next concept or term you should know is Algorithm. Search engines create complicated algorithms or lists of rules which determine not only how web pages are listed but also which web pages are listed first in their index or SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). These rules or ranking factors are used by SEO experts and webmasters to help move their keyword rankings up in the search engines. You open a web browser, go to a search engine such as Google, type in a search query for "top corporate lawyers" and the search engine returns a list of organic results along with a list of paid listings. Now, getting to that top spot means a lot of potential traffic/clients would be coming your way.

This is just one example, but most people quickly realize how lucrative getting to those top spots is for any individual or company. They also realize that understanding how the search engine algorithms work and how to manipulate them is a valuable skill for which many clients will pay big moolah to have on their side. This SEO industry also consists of SEO software which helps webmasters/marketers get their sites into the top positions in the search engines.

Most SEO experts break up your search engine optimization into TWO TYPES:

On-Page and Off-Page Optimization

On-Page Optimization means getting right all the factors which influence your rankings in the search engines. Keep in mind, the whole web is "keyword based and keyword driven" which means you must optimize your domain and site for your chosen keywords. Your main keyword should be in your Domain Name, in the title of the page, in the main heading for that page, in the URL and it should appear (with variations) throughout the page. Try to keep the keyword density to around 2%-5%, although like many things to do with SEO... there are varying opinions on the exact percentage. But what most experts agree on: the layout or structure of your web site or pages must be easily reached not only by your visitors but also by the search engine spiders which crawl your site. Keep it simple - have no links more than three clicks away from your homepage. Many webmasters include a link back to their homepage on EVERY page of their sites.

Off-Page Optimization means building backlinks flowing back to your web site or web pages. Regardless of what anyone will tell you, getting quality keyworded links from other high quality keyword related sites is the most important factor in achieving top rankings in the search engines. So link building should be a major part of your SEO efforts and something which will bring the fastest results. These links must appear natural and organic so varying the anchor text (underlined part) in your links is important. Also, the web is quickly changing, links from social media sites such as FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter are becoming more helpful to getting top rankings. So too, are links from blogs especially those from Blogger and Wordpress because these are optimized for keywords. Don't forget other media forms such as videos since links from sites such as YouTube can also boost your rankings.

Blog Keyword Strategy

2010-05-25T23:08:00.001-07:00

Keywords play a major role in failure or success of any website as well as link building campaign. To run an effective link building campaign, you should research about the best keywords for your website. These keywords will be used in your site content as well as in anchor text of the incoming links for your website. But the question is how to choose the best and effective keywords for your website? Lets start our keyword hunt…

Remember that If you don’t choose the right keyword in the very first step, then it will undermine everything else you do later. Well, you are right! Why is your keyword so important?

Basically targeted visitors use search engines to find information using keywords. Choosing an effective keyword will help ensure that you targeted the right topic that someone actually wants to read. Here targeted visitors are the people that you most want to find and read your website. They are the internet surfers who are most likely to be interested in the service or product of your company and the most likely to respond by clicking through to your site.

Most of your targeted visitors will find your website by performing a search in one of the search engines. They will search for the keyword or words that make the most sense to them when they are looking for information. Your goal is to find the keyword that your targeted readers will most likely search under to find the information or the product that you are offering at your website. Use words that people are searching. Choosing a right keyword will ensure that your targeted visitors will take real interest in your website..

The basic and first step in finding effective keywords is putting yourself in your visitors’ shoes. Think about who they are and in what they’re interested in. If you run a website dedicated to pet food, then you wouldn’t want a visitor coming from the term online dating. Once you make a list of all the term you can think a visitor can use to find a site like yours, move to the second part of keyword research.

You can make your keyword list bigger by exploring your service or product with different angles. Let’s say you are selling Leather jackets. You can explore the need and objective areas of the product. Why anyone wanted a leather jacket? What exactly is its purpose and what purpose its fulfilling. You can also increase your keywords by categorizing your product in terms of color, size, etc.

Once you got a complete list of keywords that you can think of, go to keyword tools like wordtracker and Google Adword Keyword Tool. See the search counts of your keywords and competition against it. Your sheet may look like this after this work.

Keyword WordTracker Counts Google Adword keyword Tool Competition Target Page

Word 1

Word 2

Remove the low count/searches keywords. Target the three worded keywords or phrases first. The two worded keywords in the mean time will get some rank automatically and then it will be easy to rank them on top positions. Consider the competition and competing sites. Once you finalized your keyword list, you can then move on to utilize these keywords as per there respective target page.

In the upcoming article we will discuss on how to utilize these keywords effectively. So stay tuned.

Increase Web Site Traffic

2010-05-25T23:05:00.000-07:00

Have you been searching for the best ways how to Increase Web Traffic and you just end up more and more confused? There are so many online marketing solutions out there making endless claims that they will increase your website traffic with higher search engine rankings and a flood of visitors. The truth about getting web site traffic is that you need a very diverse tactic to outpace your competition. Avoid tuning in to the “experts” who have got some brand new method that they are promoting each and every week. Many of the self proclaimed experts are only experts at promoting a new product launch every week and not so much on true ways to increase web traffic. Don’t focus too much on any one method. Learn a variety of useful methods to assist your search engine rankings as well as your immediate traffic.

Increase Web Site Traffic with Variety

If you are trying to achieve success in the internet marketing industry you will have to outpace your competitors and find every source of traffic that is out there. When you can squeeze more targeted traffic and increase the visitors to your web site with a variety of methods you can end up on the top. One of the better strategies is by using strategies that will improve your serps with SEO and also drive traffic directly to your website. Article marketing is an example where one can not just submit your articles for syndication but you will also gain valuable backlinks that can improve your search engine rank for your keywords.

Increase Traffic with Article Marketing

Using article marketing to increase web site traffic is one of the best ways to start out. Creating original content and then submitting to top 10 article publication sites will get immediate traffic from the articles and will help your long-term strategy to gain better rankings in the search engines. Make sure to submit to the top article publication sites that have a high page ranking domain as these will get the most traffic, they get indexed faster, and these articles will give you a more powerful back-link. By utilizing article marketing to increase your website traffic there is definitely strength in numbers, so use an article submitter to send out to hundreds of directories.

Increase website traffic with Social Bookmarking

Social bookmark submitting to increase web traffic is an absolute must these days. The only issue is most internet marketers don’t know how to apply it correctly. One of the best uses of social bookmarking is not spending all your time bookmarking your main site, but bookmarking your articles and backlinks. Use social bookmarking to build deep links which will increase the PR of your articles and backlinks adding more overall SEO power to increase web site traffic. Social bookmarking is important but don’t get caught up all day bookmarking sites as you will not be making the best usage of your time. Increase website traffic with social bookmarking by putting aside no more than 10% of your total time for this task.

RSS Marketing Website Traffic

RSS is the most powerful and most underutilized method to increase website traffic. When most people think of RSS they think of a directory full of submissions that can be read. The benefits of RSS are a lot more complex if you use it correctly. RSS may be used to create thousands of backlinks, can be used to create fresh content on your websites, and can be used to create affiliate product feeds mixed with content. The power of RSS is amazing but and if you neglect it you will be missing out on absolutely enormous potential to make money and increase web traffic using RSS strategies.

Increase Web Traffic with Blog Comments

The ability to leave comments on blogs has made it easier for the average internet marketer to get some quick backlinks. The only problem is that most people fall into the trap of spending way too much time searching for blogs and doing Google searches looking for blogs that allow comments with dofollow. Using blog comments to increase website traffic is a great strategy but not if it takes up more than 10% of your time. Go for either high traffic relevant blogs that can give you some immediate traffic or find high PR blog comment pages where you can leave an SEO optimized anchor text. This will give you an SEO boost but eventually it will lose its juice from other people posting. Use blog comments to increase website traffic directly and with offsite SEO backlinking.

You can make some great money online with organic search traffic from Google but you might find your greatest challenge is finding which methods to use and how much time to spend on each one. Form a concise plan that you will follow so that you don’t get sidetracked spending an entire day social bookmarking when you really needed to create more content for syndication. Finding a balanced strategy is the best way to increase search traffic and make money with your internet marketing business.

Do-It-Yourself SEO

2010-05-18T21:39:00.001-07:00

Do-It-Yourself SEO with a Foolproof Twist

As the founder of an independent SEO firm I am asked almost daily "What is the easiest way to optimize a web site?" It is harder to answer than you might think. It depends on who is asking and what their knowledge or experience level is. But last week I read an article written by the person who taught me search engine optimization ten years ago, and I now have an answer... Learn the secret recipe, then use it.

There is no magic bullet that works on every web page like so many SEO 'miracle' books and programs would have us believe. Each page has its own unique 'secret recipe' that has to be discovered and then applied because every single page it is trying to outrank, is unique. If this seems confusing, just remember my new favorite quote that I borrowed from that author's website: "Think about it. Anyone could bake Mrs. Fields famous cookies - possibly better than Mrs. Fields herself - with the secret recipe. And that's all SEO is; knowing the secret recipe for any given web page."

And it really is that simple. We will look at how to discover the secret recipe in a moment, but first there is one crucial thing to understand about search engine optimization before you go any further:

SEO means making a web page as highly visible as possible to search engines... for a given keyword.

Just about everybody knows the first part; but too many people forget the second.

Remember that your soon to be visitor types in very specific keywords (search terms) on search engines like Google, because they are looking for something very specific.

If you know your most important keyword that is great! If not, do not waste your money on expensive keyword software that SEO professionals use. Use a free keyword tool like Google's, found at:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Just enter in the keywords that you think people are searching for to find your product or service and then check the search numbers for those and related keyword suggestions.

So what about the secret recipe? Once you know your main keyword or keywords you need to see how well your site is optimized for that term already. This is called getting your SEO Quality Score.

What you do is make a list of the most important optimization aspects of a webpage, for the search engine of your choice (because Google looks for different things than Yahoo or Bing.)

Here are ten critical factors for Google, but there are nearly 140 to be aware of...

• Keyword use in document title

• Keyword use in body text

• Link texts of inbound links

• Global link popularity of web site

• Keyword density

• Keyword position and proximity

• Number of words

• Readability level of web page

• Keyword use in H1 headline texts

• HTML validation of web page to W3C standards

Once you have all of this information for your webpage, you need to get it for the pages currently occupying the top ten positions for that keyword and then see how your page compares.

You can buy software that does a lot of this for you but it generally costs $500 to $2,500 for the ones that really work and even then you might need to buy an hour of an SEO consultant's time to help you really understand it.

Doing it yourself is very educational. You will be an SEO pro after a couple of these. So if you have the time, I would not hesitate.

In my case I did not have the time - or let's be honest, the patience - to invest what would be 20 plus hours doing this manually and not really understanding what I was looking for. At the time I was a lawn sprinkler installer looking to optimize my company webpage and knew nothing about SEO, except that it was too expensive for me to hire someone else to do it. So I went the cheap and easy route paying a company called DotCom Pirates $50 for something they called their SEO To Go package that reviewed my site for all 140 SEO factors and provided plain English instructions to fix every aspect of it. I did most of them and hit number two on Google.

Here's my dirty little secret... Realizing this was much easier than breaking my back in irrigation, I picked up a couple local shops as SEO customers, ordered reports for those sites, followed the directions and my SEO business was born. I no longer need their help, but it made for some easy success when I needed it most.

Knowing the secret recipe is the foolproof answer to DIY SEO. Once you have the secret recipe it's easier than you ever thought possible and you'll be laughing all the way to the bank with the money you saved.

SEO Vs Pay Per Click

2010-05-05T04:35:00.000-07:00

Most business owners today are advertising to the fullest of their capacity. The most successful businesses usually have money in their budget set aside for marketing and advertising. Those with bigger budgets are able to spend money advertising in all kinds of different ways. But many small businesses don't have the money to advertise on a large scale. Some of them can only afford one way and must choose which way this is to be. If you're thinking about advertising on the internet, then this likely comes down to a question of SEO vs. pay per click - a brief discussion should help you to decide which option is right for you.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a way to make your website search-engine-friendly. When finding search results, search engines are looking for pretty specific things. By making sure that your website fits as many of the search engine's criteria as possible, you'll make sure that your site comes up first in searches for keywords pertaining to your business and the products and services that you offer. If it's more important to you that you rank higher in search engine results, then you should definitely invest in SEO. In the battle of SEO vs. pay per click - a brief discussion about your advertising goals are in order.

Pay per click is a type of internet advertising that allows you to pay a search engine for ad space in searches for keywords pertaining to your site. You'll often notice this sort of space at the sides and top of a page of search results. The placement of your ad will depend on your business' relevance to the search term as well as the amount of money you're paying for the service, as premium spots cost more. But when it comes to SEO vs. pay per click - a brief discussion will show you how much you're willing to spend for prime real estate on a page.

But since the placement of your ad also depends on the relevance of your search term, SEO is relevant even when you're using pay per click advertising. Because of this, you may want to use both in your hunt for the perfect internet advertising campaign. So, bottom line: SEO vs. pay per click - a brief discussion may show that both of them are worth the time and money, and that you may want to figure out a way to fit both into your budget.

Link Wheel

2010-05-05T04:34:00.001-07:00

Typing "Link Wheel" as a search query into Google returns 381,000 results. Search in web hosting forums for keywords "Link Wheel" and you'd get lots of varied opinions. So what is a link wheel and how does it relate to SEO? And is it a white hat or black hat SEO tactic? Could it lead to search engine penalties?

White Hat?

To a lot of webmasters and SEO experts, link wheels are a valid SEO strategy (white hat). Link wheels are essentially a wheel of linked websites (all yours), designed to improve the SERPS (search engine results pages) of your main site. In this multiple sites are developed with each linking back (one-way) to the main site, and linking to another related site (within the same niche).

Black Hat?

To take this even further, some SEO experts recommend using IP addresses from different class C IP allocations for each site. My take on the IP's? This seems to be a black hat strategy to avoid Google penalties. Why? Because a lot of link wheels are composed of one-post blogs that offer little or no relevance to a search query. Their intent? To trick Google into seeing multiple links back to their main site. Many say this works, but only until you get caught, and then all that effort goes to waste.

Relevance is the key

I don't think I'm all that different from most folks searching for information on the Internet. When I search for colocation, I expect to find sites with great content related to colocation. It's frustrating to find sites with no real content, or simply links to other websites. The same applies for Google. They have a ton of advertising dollars at risk, and have developed very sophisticated search algorithms to emphasize and reward relevance.

Getting Indexed

2010-05-05T04:28:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Optimization Methods

Normally, search engines, notably Google, Yahoo or Bing employ crawlers, some times also referred as Bots, to find and index Web Pages in order to feed their search results. However, these crawlers do not index all the web pages of a website.

They do not index all the web pages because of various reasons. The reason they are unable to find may vary from simple to complex. For example, simple reasons as a broken link may leave a web page un-indexed. Similarly, a variety of these simple reasons may combine to cause a complex hindrance to these crawlers.

This is where search engine optimization steps in. They identify why a web page is unindexed and incorporate the necessary changes. However, this can attract the crawlers only to a certain extent. In order to ensure indexing, search engine optimization techniques swear by submission to search engines and directories.

Submitting a website to search engine directories creates links and that in turn enable the crawlers find pages through these links. Once these crawlers arrive, they then proceed to crawl and index all the pages by finding them through the internal links. (Now do you understand the value of having a Sitemap?:)).

The above scenario is a simplistic one and given as an illustration. The truth is even if crawlers do index your website (homepage), there is no guarantee that it will crawl all the pages. (There are many reasons why this happens, but then that is beyond the scope of this article).

Google PageRank

2010-05-05T04:21:00.000-07:00

Getting to the top of Google for search terms related to your industry is one of the main goals of many modern businesses. There are many crucial factors which can determine how high you appear in SERP (Search Engine Results Page), one of which is Google PageRank.

Now in order for you to understand and visualise how Google PageRank works as we discuss it, it would be a good idea for you to first install Google Toolbar. Once installed then simply go into 'Options', then 'Tools' and tick the PageRank box.

Google considers links to web pages to be like votes and values some votes as being more important or having more weight than others. PageRank in simple terms is a system Google uses to count these votes and then determine which web pages are most important based on these votes.

The way PageRank works is best explained in the following way. A link from Page A to Page B is classed as a vote and if Page A is classed as a highly reputable source of information and already ranks well in Google PageRank, then it is classed as a good vote and therefore Page B benefits from this. This makes it more likely that Page B will then begin to see an increase in its PageRank.

To see PageRank in action go onto Google's homepage and if you look at your newly installed Google Toolbar you will see a little green bar. If you hover over it you will see that it gives the page a ranking out of ten. A page with a ranking of zero will fair poorly in Google, whereas a page with ranking of ten will be the most prized of web pages. The more 'votes' you receive from others, the more that page is seen as being supported.

Although PageRank does not just rely on how many times a search word is used on a page it does help, as do visits to a page and updating pages frequently. Such analysis and techniques are employed by Google as they strive to be the perfect search engine, one which "understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want."

Successful Vertical Marketing

2010-05-05T04:00:00.001-07:00

While defining their markets, most vendors do the analysis based on what they think. However, the ideal situation should be where they take into consideration how their target customers think. It is here that the concept of vertical marketing comes into existence that champions the cause of doing business based on the specific and specialized requirements of the customers.

Since vertical marketing concentrates on niches or specific vertical markets, you can plan a focused marketing effort to convey the message that's tailor-made to suit what your targeted customers want to hear. So, for successful vertical marketing, your first step will be to find out the customers belonging to a specific industry or discover what your niche markets are. Remember - it always pays to market your products or services to some targeted groups who are likely to buy from you rather than taking it to everyone, most of whom may not have the slightest interest in your offerings.

While doing the research for your verticals, try to learn some basic demographics about them, which in turn will help you to find out the highest concentration of prospects. After you have identified your verticals, develop a common language for your executives in particular and business in general that can address people across the various verticals. Remember - you won't be able to match the vertical market leaders within a few days. So, plan well and start working on your marketing strategies with perseverance while you are positioned lower on the maturity curve.

You next step should be to develop an engagement level between your customers and your offerings. You can do this by achieving a deep understanding of what works the best for your targeted customers and what drives them away. With such a deep understanding of the needs of your verticals, you can design products or services that are bang on target, so much so that even your customers consider your solutions to be the only viable option for their requirements and don't mind paying a premium for procuring the same. So, you not only stand to gain a loyal clientele but can even market your offerings at a higher price tag than your competitors.

If you are wondering how vertical marketing can bring loyal customers your way, here's the catch - unlike traditional marketing where products and services are mixed and matched to serve a wide variety of customer segments, without any of them offering a total solution for the customer, vertical marketing does just the opposite. So, it begins with the process of choosing targeted customer segments, understanding their needs intimately, and delivering a total solution for each of these targeted segments through a vertical marketing system. So, each customer segment gets a total solution and need not shop at multiple places to get all that they need. No wonder that they will find it much easier to stick with a vendor that gives them such an advantage and meets all their needs under one roof.

Art of SEO Writing

2010-05-05T03:55:00.000-07:00

Website owners around the world have one thing they all want when it come to their respective websites: web traffic. And how do these website owners improve this? By using SEO techniques. And to do well in SEO, one must understand how to do quality SEO writing. To learn SEO writing, the best way is to read up on the subject. Learn from the SEO experts that abound, and find out what it takes to start writing for SEO. If you think it's difficult, think again. Because writing for SEO is a relatively easy task, especially if you know what to do.

The basic concept of writing for SEO is optimization. You optimize the content of your website, article by article, to make it searchable by keyword using the search engines. For example, your website is about "electric razors." This is how you should approach writing content for your site: the title should include the keyword, which in this case is "electric razors." Then, you write your article the normal way. A good benchmark for number of words is about 350-500 words. Be sure to write quality articles, and not gibberish just to fill out the word count quota. After you are finished with the article, you then try to edit the article so that it includes the keywords that are peppered throughout the article. A good rule of thumb is to include the keyword in the first paragraph, once or twice in the body (depends on the number of words), and in the last paragraph. this would make it seem natural looking and not forced. Be sure to not overdo it, or else it will look like spam to the search engines. Remember, too much of a good thing can be harmful and the same applies to SEO writing.

Basically, that's it. You optimize your articles in a way that doesn't seem forced. Make it look as natural as possible. This is why it's good practice to write the article normally, then include the keywords after. Because from my experience, if you are conscious about the use of keywords in an article, one tends to overdo it. Be sure to avoid this trap and try to be as natural as possible.

This is of course just the basics of writing for SEO, and there are a lot more to learn about the subject. Try to learn all you can about it and implement it in your website. Combine this with other SEO techniques and pretty soon, you just might see your website on the top of the search engine rankings.

SEO PR

2010-04-29T21:31:00.001-07:00

SEO PR is a buzzword that is both over-hyped and under-hyped at the same time. What do I mean by this? SEO PR is currently in buzz overkill mode in the Search Engine Marketing industry, but is drastically underutilized in the traditional PR world. Many traditional PR agencies are misinformed about Search Engine Marketing in general and are completely taken aback by SEO PR specifically.

So what is it? Search Engine Optimization Public Relations (SEO PR) is a blend of search engine visibility and traditional public relations that disperses a company's message across the Internet by way of online media outlets and search engines. SEO PR not only helps disseminate an organization's messages, but it also incorporates search engine-friendly communication through techniques such as optimizing copy in online content such as press releases, articles, whitepapers, blogs, RSS feeds and websites.

A successful search engine public relations engagement harnesses the power of the search engines by focusing on relevant keywords within the content being created and distributed. Careful attention must be paid to the content to ensure a careful balance between search engine-friendliness and good copywriting. Ultimately readers need to be able to understand the message without being bombarded by keyword spam, or copy overloaded with keywords affecting readability and comprehension.

As with any marketing campaign, integration of other marketing initiatives is crucial. A good SEO PR campaign heavily complements any Public Relations, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns in place while strengthening a firm's brand. Some traditional PR firms are beginning to partner with SEO firms to add this service to their portfolio and vice-versa. This is good news for many firms as the incremental costs of adding SEO PR to existing marketing activities should be relatively low assuming that both SEO and PR services are already in place. Much of the additional work is simply connecting the SEO efforts with the PR efforts.

The logical first step is to integrate press release activity with search engine marketing. By optimizing and distributing press releases online (assuming the right online wire service is used), not only will the release have the opportunity to get picked up by thousands of sites, but it will often be picked up and archived by Google News, Yahoo! News and by a multitude of other sites that pull relevant news feeds.

This means that the press release's message gets instant online visibility and SEO efforts are also strengthened by having strategic keywords included in the release's copy, with the most important ones linked to your website with relevant anchor text. Besides the link-building benefit, the relevant anchor text makes this "off the page" SEO activity very powerful. Moreover, the sites that are likely to pick up your online release are usually relevant to the content being distributed.

However, there is a point of diminishing returns. You cannot keyword spam or add dozens of links to a release. The press release needs to be first and foremost a press release that makes sense to readers. Secondly, if you litter the release with too many links it's likely that the major search engines will actually punish you in terms of rankings. In addition, delivering press releases too frequently just for SEO purposes will not be likely to achieve your desired results either. Press releases should be newsworthy. Otherwise they won't get picked up, even online.

The next steps can be easy depending on whether content generation and distribution are part of your current marketing activities. By taking the same approach as described for online press releases (minus the online wires), content such as whitepapers, articles, "micro-sites" and/or advertising sites, etc. can be optimized, distributed online and used to both enhance brand and bolster SEO results. The same principles apply with online press releases. Keep the content focused on its purpose whether it's educational, technical, marketing-oriented or a combination thereof. Again, avoid keyword and link spam.

A word of caution when looking for ways to distribute your content online for SEO purposes: Avoid companies that offer services where you pay them to host your whitepapers or optimized content. These firms can deliver leads in many cases through various mechanisms which they usually control, but the content usually disappears as soon as you stop using their service. Such firms may be a fit for a demand generation program, but I don't advise using them if your goals include a solid, long-term SEO uplift as you could easily end up in a situation where a significant amount of your content disappears the moment you end the relationship.

Many sites, directories, online media firms and related industry sites are usually open to distributing content via their electronic outlets if it's of a certain quality, adds value to their readers and meets their editorial guidelines. Just like a traditional PR firm identifies a target media list, the same needs to be done for your online media efforts. Like traditional PR, SEO PR can be hard to measure in some ways, but tends to be easier to measure in other ways especially when it comes to search engine rankings, online press release pickup and traffic generated from the release.

SEO PR can be much more involved than the basic ideas discussed above, but most organizations can get immediate benefits just by combining their existing SEO and PR efforts. To learn more about SEO PR I suggest checking out resources such as Search Engine Watch Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seo_pr) or simply searching in your favorite search engine for terms such as "SEO PR," "Search Engine Public Relations," "Online Reputation Management," "Online PR" and related phrases.

Use SEO Strategies to Improve Web Traffic

2010-04-29T21:27:00.000-07:00

Every new technology adopted widely by society brings about a number of new opportunities. The movable type printing press created affordable print information, the telephone and radio created the concept of instantaneous communication over great distances. Today, the Internet has unified both of these concepts into the information explosion that is the digital age.

Consider this article alone - a mere forty years ago printing even fifty copies of each page would cost either a chunk of change or at least a suspicious look from the boss as you hovered over the office copier. Now the information can be sent to thousands of people within the time it takes to brew a good cup of tea.

Of course with every technology comes a system to make the best marketing use of that advancement. The radio gave rise to the modern commercial advertisement, which was refined by the television and still persists on the Web. The telephone gave us telemarketers and the first concept of communication networking. For making the most of the Internet, the strategy of the day is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

What is SEO, again?

In short, SEO is the presentation of a webpage in such a way that it consistently ranks highly in particular search engine results. While fads and sensations can quickly boom online from "word of mouth," they don't produce the same reliable success as a balanced, systematic approach.

Very few businesses, after all, want one rush of attention that leads to a website crash, followed by an equally quick slide into the various forgotten graveyards of the web. Therefore, SEO uses a combination of elements to make the site increasingly relevant to the various searches that Internet users perform, to bring it up again and again among the best results.

Key SEO Strategies

1. Set Goals

Identify what you want your SEO campaign to accomplish. While any SEO-conscious writing and page design can contribute to a site's search engine rankings, an unfocused effort will simply waste time and money. After all, a business promoting athletic clothing and footwear may not benefit too much from showing up in searches for evening wear. Is your goal simply to improve your site's visitor traffic? Do you want to generate more sales of a product? Is it part of an effort to promote your digital brand? Each of these goals benefits from different aspects of SEO technique.

2. Link Up

Link building is one of the cornerstones of any SEO effort. Many search engines are spider-based, meaning they use automated processes to collect and categorize information on various websites. When a large number of websites provide links back to your business, or when a particularly high-traffic site does so, the spiders take notice of it and raise the relevance of that link in searches related to those sites.

3. Get the Keys

Keyword writing is consistently stressed as a requirement when websites look for content writers. Keywords are just that, words and phrases chosen for their popularity and relevance to key searches.

There are dozens of theories about keyword writing. In the earlier days of SEO writing, it wasn't uncommon to see pages that were nothing but long strings of repeated variations on a few keywords. This has evolved into more organic writing that fits in keywords with the article as a whole.

Whichever strategy is chosen, care must be taken to avoid the temptation to abuse keyword searches. Yes, a proper keyword density will bring up your search rankings over time. However, Google can and does ban pages from its index when they determine it to be a keyword-abusing effort. So consider your keyword choices carefully, and seamlessly integrate them into your entire strategy.

4. Be on the Right Page

One aspect occasionally neglected in SEO is the architecture and design of the webpage itself. Search engines and their ranking systems (be they spider or human based) are growing more sophisticated all the time, and look at many different factors in their decisions. A site that buries its keyword-rich articles on interior pages behind dozens of subsidiary links will not perform as well as one with strategic keyword-oriented material right on the front page. Have an SEO-conscious designer look over your page, as well as your articles.

Remember that every business is a multi-faceted whole. Many failures occur when people attempt to compartmentalize too much. You can't consider SEO as some sort of 'event' that you do every so often, just as a business can't put off routine maintenance of their equipment and expect it to function properly. Integrate your efforts into the entire process, and give them the same focus as any other effort in the business, and they will return their investment much more reliably, quickly, and ideally.

SEO strategy

2010-04-29T21:25:00.000-07:00

When you are following SEO, you will need a proper and complete SEO strategy. Search engine optimization is all about getting your site good ranks on search engines. When a specific keyword is typed in, you will get plenty of results on the search engines. This method has to be used when you need to get traffic to your site. There will be two types of listings when it comes to search engines. You may have paid links and you can also have organic links. There will be a difference with the way they are being posted, in terms of money.

There will be crawlers which look at the websites, and they will then look or score at each site depending on the relevance. There will be plenty of factors which will decide the placement of the links online. There will be link popularity, density as well as frequency of keywords. There will be plenty of strategies which you will need to use when it comes to getting the link listed well. You will also have to focus on plenty of criteria when you are building the link popularity. This will decide the placement among all the search engines, and you have to apply the right methods.

All those who are involved in SEO must have the strategies in order before beginning the process. There will be about three, which are considered to be the most important when it comes to strategies for the business. The content has to be keyword rich, and according to the search that the audience looks for on search engines. There will have to be research done to find the right keywords as well, as you will need to know which ones are most frequently looked for online. This will also allow consistency when it comes to traffic.

The information on the page and the layout of the site are very important. This will denote what importance is being given to any information in relation to the business. The content as well as the graphic images will involve a lot of detailing and also placement at the right spot. Through this, the audience will easily be able to recognize what has to be looked at. This will allow them to understand what content they should be looking at. Then there will be the link development, which will look at all the links which are pointing back to this site.

The SEO strategy is most important while you are building plans for search engine optimization. The text will be the core of SEO, which means finding the right keywords, will make a very big difference. Almost all experts agree on this point, that keyword are the main part of getting good ranks on search engines. This can be done with the help of some SEO tools which are available for free download. This will be the easy part of the process. However, there will be plenty of layouts which you need to plan before you begin the SEO process.

18 Effective Seo Techniques

2010-04-29T02:27:00.000-07:00

Proper Search Engine Optimization, otherwise known as SEO, has quickly become a popular topic of conversation among website owners and entrepreneurs. The difference between having a successful website, and hosting a flop, is often the difference between whether or not you've incorporated proper keywords and phrases into your webpages.

Learning proper SEO techniques can seem like a daunting task, especially to those who are not familiar with the concept. The following list offers 18 simple SEO techniques you should keep in mind when developing and marketing your website.

1. Make sure your website is initially designed with your search engine optimization needs in mind. Search engines look for text, not flashy graphics and cool layouts. The trendiest web designs will mean nothing if no one is able to find your site.

2. Every page of your website should have a title tag with text describing either your site or what is on the page. Be sure the text includes SEO-type keywords instead of the name of your website. Unless you're incredibly popular, no one is going to be looking for you by searching for your name. They'll most likely search for a product or service and the keywords you use will lead them to your site.

3. Consider canonicalization, or whether or not your website address includes or excludes the www prefix. If you choose to use the www version of your website, make sure the non-www version directs users back to the one you use. Make sure you use your preferred version (http://www.mydomain.com or http://mydomain.com) every time you place a link to your site on the web. Don't use both!

4. When designing your website, be sure to avoid too many drop-down menus, confusing image maps, and excessive images. If you must use any of these methods, be sure to include plenty of text links for the search engine spiders to find and identify. Without links, the search engines will not pick up your site information.

5. It does not matter what type of website extension you use (ie. .html, .htm. .asp, .php). Search engines do not look at the web extension and it will not have any impact at all on search results or ranking.

6. Every page on your website should include a link to your home page and your sitemap. Make sure every link is the same. Home page links should go directly to your domain (http://www.mydomain.com). Make sure your internal links do not include the additional /index.html or .php text as it is not needed (ie. http://www.mydomain.com/index.html).

7. Are you sharing a server with other websites? If so, you'll want to conduct a black-list check to make sure you are not sharing a proxy with someone who has been banned by search engines in the past. Being on the same server as a website with a poor reputation may damage yours.

8. You'll hear the same phrase over and over again: "Content is king". It is imperative that your website have fresh, unique, and quality content that is updated on a regular basis. Be sure to include your favorite keyword phrase within the body of the content!

9. People are more likely to input a phrase instead of a single word when conducting internet searches. If your business has a physical location, incorporate the name of your city into the text as well. For example, you might use "our Philadelphia location" instead of "our location". Including your city name will improve the chances of your site being seen in location searches.

10. If the information on your company website doesn't change regularly, or remains static, you might want to consider starting a blog. Search engine spiders are always looking for fresh content. Use your blog as an advertising tool and link back to your website within each and every post.

11. Write naturally. The worst thing you can do is try to cram a zillion keywords into your article or blog entry, making it messy and difficult to read. Search engines are able to determine whether or not your text is logical and they will ignore content with ridiculously high keyword density.

12. Building links to your website is essential to its success. As a matter of fact, links are like the queen to complement your king's fresh content. Choose a keyword phrase and network with other websites, asking them to place links on their pages. Don't hurt your ranking by having non-related websites place haphazard links. While it may seem great to gather 100s of backlinks, you're better off limiting your links to related websites. Ten relevant links stand a better chance than 100 irrelevant links.

13. Links within your website should be built with keyword phrases as well. Try to avoid using generic anchor text such as, "click here".

14. Don't place a list of links on your website. Always place a link within at least two to three lines of related content. The better your description, the more likely it is someone will click on the link.

15. Don't limit your keyword or phrase to text links. You should also incorporate your keywords into your image alt tag and domain name, whether it is part of the name itself or contained within the description.

16. Try to avoid using frames, Ajax, and Flash as much as possible. None of these functions are keyword or search engine friendly and will hurt your SEO results.

17. Before your website can be found by the search engine spiders, it must be indexed. Search engines such as Google have regular submission forms, but it can take days or weeks for your form to be processed. Having a highly ranked website place a link to your site is a sure-fire way to have your site indexed quickly.

18. No matter what you hear, don't be overly concerned with the Google PageRank of your website. A website that is properly developed and contains good content can outrank a website with higher PageRank.

Keyword Research Software

2010-04-28T01:34:00.000-07:00

Keywords are simply the words you use in your web page content. However, some words are more crucial than others. Keywords assume great importance because they allow your customers to find your web page easily. They bring the targeted traffic to your web pages. So investing in methods to choose the right ones as efficiently as possible can pay for itself very quickly and really improve your bottom line.

To get better results and choose the best keywords for the job, Keyword Research Software is beneficial in managing your keyword research. In the end, it will overall dramatically increase your chances for success with your website.

You could spend lot of time in setting up your website and adding interesting content to it. However, if the industry is too competitive or only a small group of people searching for your keyword, you cannot make substantial money online because you will have less traffic. The keyword research software looks for ad campaign keywords and phrases and checks whether they are used by your competitors.

The software helps you to know exactly what the good keywords are. Good keywords are nothing but the words the buyers use to search for. You can then use those keywords to boost up your sales.

The best software will give you data to help you run better PPC campaigns (Pay per Click). It will provide you cost and traffic data to help you determine which keywords will be easiest to rank for and will cost you the least amount of money per click.

This type of software can help you uncover thousands of keywords from a variety of search engines. It allows you to add words and modifiers to each keyword. For instance, you can add 'best' or 'top' to become more successful in increasing the number of targeted traffic. Some software programs generate keywords from Meta tags of relevant websites.

Researching profitable keywords is sometimes a difficult task that involves lot of time and effort. Tools to help you research can save a lot of your time and effort. It helps to whip your competition and provides solution to all your keyword problems.

Everyone knows that backdoor keywords is another great way to generate leads for online sales. If you do backdoor keyword research manually, you need to spend several hours to find out what your prospect would search for. The right software will help to get it done within a few seconds. For instance, if your online business is related to BBQ pits, you need to know what else your prospects would search for relevant to your niche. They may be interested in lawn furniture, home gardening and some other related stuff. Keyword Software helps you to get a list of such backdoor keywords within two simple clicks.

It can also lend a hand to provide you a list of keywords that are often misspelled. These keywords do not have much competition, so you can drive a lot of targeted traffic to your site and thereby increase your sales. The software helps you to get keyword permutations, which explode your major keyword phrases with all their permutations.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Keyword-Research-Software---Why-Use-It?&id=4179752

SEO Consultant

2010-04-28T01:27:00.000-07:00

According to comScore, Internet users make approximately 1 billion searches a day on Google, Yahoo and Bing. Hence, it is no wonder that more and more companies are increasingly including Search Engine Marketing in their campaigns. But as competition heats up, the cost-per-clicks (CPCs) for Google's Adwords, the most popular online advertising platform in the world, quickly crept up and to a point where it became difficult to justify, especially for small businesses in competitive sectors. This is evident in Google's 2010 Q1 financial report, where it had stated that the average CPC had risen 7% from a year ago.

This situation is driving the more savvy business people towards Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

However, SEO consultants are a dime a dozen these days. A search on Google reveals hundreds of companies offering such services, and that is excluding web hosting and web design companies that offer SEO as a value-added service. Some of the SEO consultants charge on a per project basis, while others charge annual fees and some even offer money-back ranking guarantees. So how do you know who to hire?

Here are some tips for hiring an SEO Consultant for your business:

Firstly, make an effort to read up a little on SEO. Learn about keyword analysis, factors that affect a website's rankings, on-page optimization techniques, link-building methods, etc. There are many free, self-help SEO resources on the Internet like blogs and forums. At worst, attend one of the many SEO bootcamps available at your area.

Run a search on Google for the keyword "seo" -- the coveted keyword that all SEO consultants aim to rank tops for. Visit the websites of the top 10 SEO consultants. Check out their website design and page content -- a good SEO consultant is able to strike a nice balance between writing for human visitors and search engine spiders.

Next, study the shortlisted companies' background and look out for things like how long have they been providing SEO consultancy, the company staff size, list of past clients, results achieved for client websites, etc.

Pick up the phone and enquire about the SEO packages, specifically the consultancy fees, the extras to third parties for link submissions, payment terms, job details, work process and duration, cost of maintenance post-optimization and what is required from your end. Some SEO consultants, especially freelancers, only provide on-page recommendations and you need to engage your own web designer to implement them.

And if the company provide ranking guarantees, ask in detail for the specifics because some SEO Consultants have been know to provide guarantee to unsuspecting clients for "junk keywords", i.e. keywords that have little to no search volume.

Finally, ask yourself if you are comfortable working with that person and whether you feel assured that the consultant knows his/her stuff and has the resources to do it.

Free SEO Quote

2010-04-23T23:53:00.000-07:00

In the present Internet era where billions of website are being surfed every day it is not enough merely to own a website or creating a website with good look but it is also very important to make it reachable to the targeted visitors and provide them with all the essential elements to convert them into potential customers.

Here get some simple steps to make your site a Search Engine Optimization friendly site:

1. Make it Simple

Try to make your site as simple as you can. Make use of white spaces on your site so that it visually also pleases visitors. Use appropriate font color with contrasting backgrounds. Less is more. It will help to make important elements more eye catching.

2. Avoid JavaScript

Try to avoid excessive use of JavaScript or any other scripting language on your web page. Search Engine robots as per their algorithm do not read JavaScript codes and use of these codes increases the load time of websites which annoys the user. As a result of which you may lose your potential customer.

3. Avoid use of Frames and Flash

Try to avoid excessive use of frames and flash as they increase load time of the websites.

4. Organize site

Organize sites in a manner so that every page is easily navigated from all the pages of the site. Navigation to the pages should be simple and clear. The Anchor text should be relevant to the link contained underneath.

5. Avoid Excessive use of Images

Avoid use of unnecessary images on the website as they increase the load time of the website and make the website bulky. Do not overuse graphics on the web page.

6. Minimize Site loading time

Site should be quick to load so that it can easily and quickly reach your potential visitors. Minimize the loading time on your site as much as you can.

7. Check Availability of Server

The web server on which your website is hosted should be 24 X 7 up as search engine robots can visit your website anytime. And unavailability of your site on being visited can lose you your potential visitor and thus you may lose your business.

8. Keep Navigation at the left

Create a Navigation tap and place the navigation links on that section. Keep the navigation links to the vital pages of your website on the left of the web page as search engine robots generally start reading your website from the top left corner of the website and also it is very much convenient for the web users also.

9. Relevant content

Don't forget that visitors are coming to your website to take some information. And for providing the required information to the visitors, search engines crawls your website. The ultimate main purpose is to provide information to the visitors. So keep your website more informative and post content on the website that is relevant to the site.

10. Manage Site map

Manage a site map containing the links of all the pages of the website on a single page so that a visitor can easily get to the page he wants to with the help of site map.

11. Avoid Scrolling

Horizontal Scrolling!!!! Users use to hate horizontal scrolling on a web page. It must go now. Vertical Scrolling is OK if it is very much necessary to keep it. But try to make your content or the information on your web page very concise and snappy. Users should have good feel when they come to your site.

These are just general aspects that one should consider while designing a website or optimizing a website.

Search Engine Optimizing Companies that provides various web promotion services bring in concern many technical aspects of making a website SEO friendly as they are somewhat aware of what search engines are looking for in a website.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/?11-Ways-to-Make-Website-SEO-Friendly&id=690364

SEO Techniques

2010-04-23T23:50:00.000-07:00

These SEO techniques go through a three-phase process. They are bookmarking, article writing, then targeting higher PR sites.

The first step you want to do is to set up a blog that you can post new content on. Then afterwards you social bookmark the URLs to the different articles you created. Next you'll want to take the RSS feed and submit that to different directories and aggregators.

Once you finish these steps, the main part of you website will have anywhere from 10 to 15 links. Depending on the competition you're dealing with, you should be on page 2 or 1 for the particular keyword you are targeting. When you promote a brand new website you need to think long term and just doing the things in the first phase is not enough to give you a significant ranking over the long haul. It won't sustain your ranking either.

Now you're going to want to move to what I call phase 2 of the link building activities that you will be undertaking. In this stage, you'll be obtaining low to moderate links going back to your website. This is where you'll be focusing on blog networks and article directory networks. There are tools you can use to speed up the automation process.

In this phase you're giving yourself the potential of acquiring a few hundred links that will go back to your website.

Some of the automated services allow you to put links in the article itself. For those that do I'll always put a primary link going back to my main website, but some I'll link to a network of sites that I created using my Web 2.0 properties.

In the long run you want at least 50% of the links to go back to your main website. You'll want to keep up a good routine of writing articles to submit to either the blog or article networks.

There are good tools that will monitor your ranking relative to your keywords. At this point you should have a few hundred links going back to your website which will be anywhere between 0 to 2 PR rankings. I've never gotten anything higher than that.

Now you're ready to go on to phase 3. In this step you want to hand pick authority sites where you can work in a link back to your website. Some of these SEO techniques used in phase 3 you might have to pay for, but the link back to your website will be well worth the money spent.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/?SEO-Techniques---Tips-and-Tricks-For-Higher-Rankings&id=3940084

Web Promotion

2010-04-23T23:47:00.000-07:00

You have placed some ads, submitted to the search engines and joined a forum, is there anything more you can do? Some of you may have gone further than this which is an excellent start, but remember website promotion never stops. One thing that does happen to a lot of Internet Businesses is they promote the same way over and over and honestly it can get boring.

What I would recommend is continue the above but add some variety and additional ways to promote and it will stay exciting and with that so will the material you provide to your viewers. Here are some ideas that you can use in addition to the ads, Search Engines and forums, use them all or some but stay consistent with it and in a short time you will see an increase in traffic as well as conversions.

Address your website. Make sure the content updated and working:

• This should be done once a week, make sure that you links are working on all pages.

• Make sure you change the content on the Home page and change any special offers you have at least once a month.

• The viewer should feel like it can trust where they are: testimonials, policies and guarantees should be made visible and easy to find.

• What's new page that offers any specials, new products, company news or company future plans are a great way to keep interest and invite feedback.

• Offer surveys, quizzes or trivia. Viewers love to participate or read short interesting bits and feel like they have contributed.

• Make sure you are readily available to answer any questions and provide a time of when they can expect their answer.

Ads and search engines and forums are great, but you can expand this in so many ways.

• Join forum groups where the members could have interest in your site. Remember not to go in with your promotional guns firing. Offer advice and opinion and naturally mention your site as a reference, not as a promotion.

• Offer free materials like samples, ezines or e-docs to the viewers; these can be mentioned in your ads and your site. Remember to change these monthly.

• Offer free product in return for a group that tests your site or provides referrals. Paying testers that check your site also provide you with great feed back and promotion. Remember to keep testers limited to a few months and change them up so you get fresh feedback and insight.

• Promote your site URL as part of your signature in emails or through any documents that are printed.

• Offline ads can include business cards or posters with your site information. These are great to leave posted on any bulletin boards or gathering places.

The above will keep things interesting for you and in turn that interest will reflect out to the viewers. Along the way you will come across other ideas that may help in your promotion. The bottom line is the change and the looks will bring you far more visitors.

Article sources: http://ezinearticles.com/?Ideas-to-Promote-Your-Website&id=3814625

Web Marketing

2010-04-23T23:40:00.001-07:00

Our lives have become very complicated. They are so much inter-connected now. The latest media channel - the internet - is playing an important role in this regard. It has taken the central role in bringing many new services to us. This also includes the service of web marketing. Many of the web businesses rely heavily on a SEO company to promote their products.

There are many ways to use SEO Services. They are highly useful in bringing the website in the search rankings of the search engines, like Google or Yahoo search rankings. Good rankings mean that there is a good chance of getting better traffic for the website. This, in turn, results in better sales and revenue generation.

Many companies offer these services. Some of them are highly competitive and they offer great advantages. It is a good idea to utilize the best SEO for a company in order to get good visible results. The best companies for this purpose can be searched on the internet. They can help in increasing the internet traffic and the ranking of a website.

There is a huge demand for the search engine optimization services. They have become the backbone of the entire online business. But, not all the companies can provide these services with satisfaction. Some of them are busy in minting money from the simple and unsuspecting customers who contact them online. Many of these companies don't have trained staff or experts who can help in delivering results.

On the other hand, a trained SEO expert will help in bringing the website among the top results of the search engines. He can utilize many aspects of the SEO to deliver this kind of results. Normally, he utilizes the white hat techniques and avoids the black hat techniques as it is a method unapproved by the search engines.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Use-of-SEO-in-the-Web-Marketing&id=4062349

Web Hosting

2010-04-23T23:38:00.000-07:00

Blogger hosting is completely free and allows anyone to set up a blog without spending money. However, there are pros and cons to this method. Blogger hosting is an easy way to get started with blogging, but there are limited expansion possibilities. The fact of the matter is that a blogger host gives you the chance to explore different niches and keywords before you invest in purchasing a domain name and hosting. Google Blogger works the same way as well for personal diaries. You will be able to keep your journal up for as many years as you want because of the fact that you do not have to worry about paying for hosting.

The biggest attraction to using the blogger host are that it is completely free and that you can have multiple blogs with its easy to use platform. It depends on which template you want to use, but you will be able to easily add pictures to your header along with changing up colors without coding experience. The only problem is that there are a limited quantity of templates. You will be able to use a template from a third party site as long as you display the nav bar in accordance with Google's terms of service.

However, there are several disadvantages to having a blogger blog. You will still own the content on your blog but you will work on a subdomain like your domain.blogspot.com. If you ever got your blog to be really popular and you wanted to start yourdomain.com then you could transfer your posts, but you would not be able to transfer your rankings or traffic. Some of your readers might follow you over, but some will not. If you are going with a blog for personal purposes then a Blogger blog might be great for you. People that are thinking about blog monetization should probably just bite the bullet and go ahead with a domain name purchase to increase the probability of making money.

Blogger has rules like most free web hosts and they can suspend your account without notice. The software also has many limitations. You can make a private blog, but you will only be able to mark certain posts as private. A blog that is entirely private means that only people that you invite will be able to access your blog. The biggest problem associated with the Blogger platform is the report abuse button. The task bar is required to be displayed at the top of all of the Blogger posts that it hosts. You can use Blogger software on your own host if you wish.

Web hosting for free has a price just as it does with anything else. Blogger blogs can do just as well as other types of blogs on search engines really. There are tons of spam blogs on blogger so it may seem unprofessional in some cases.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/?About-Free-Blogger-Hosting&id=3373341

Web Developement

2010-04-23T23:30:00.000-07:00

Whether you're starting a business, have an existing business, or simply are looking to have a piece of the web at your disposal, it's important to find better web design solutions. There is a vast sea of opportunities to take advantage of in regards to getting a website built, but not every programmer and professional offers the best overall quality, and it's important to get the best up front, or else you'll grow tired of updating your website.

Before you ask anyone to build you a website, take a few moments to familiarize yourself with some clear terms. You want to make sure that you are getting a good price, and proper coding. Even if you're not too web savvy, asking the right questions will help you get the most out of your investment.

First and foremost, pick your domain name. Make sure the domain is easy to remember and utilizes a dot com or dot net name. After you've selected a name consider what your site will be about. If you're a business, decide if you want to sell things online, or if you just want an informational site for new and returning customers to gain information. After you've decided on these two key things, proceed with caution.

In terms of better web design solutions, the best bet is to make sure that your designer has a current portfolio that you can look over. Any designer worth their asking price will have a good portfolio to showcase their work.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Solutions-For-Web-Development&id=4160407

Web Designing

2010-04-23T23:27:00.000-07:00

Today, many people that purchase webspace are learning that they can take care of most web design tasks on their own. For example, there are hundreds of templates that you can use, as well as editors that will help you create custom designs. If you are interested in learning more about web design, there are three things that you should have on hand

The Linux Operating System
Chances are, you realize that some of the most popular programs that run under Microsoft Windows are fairly expensive. When it comes to obtaining a decent Flash designer, web editing package, or other software, you will find that the prices are even higher. By contrast, when you purchase the Linux operating system, it usually comes with free Flash, web design, and computer programming compilers. Since a number of Linux variants are available for free, you can install them and start your web design business for a minimal cost. Interestingly enough, if you have Windows programs that you want to go on using, you can simply install them under a Windows emulator, and still enjoy all the benefits associated with Linux.

Tutorials on Web Design Aesthetics

If you are planning to design web pages, it will be of some help to be able to create custom templates from scratch. This will help you provide good quality sites for your customers, as well as help you define yourself as an artist. Even though you may have some ideas about how to build an attractive website, design courses will give you enough information to make the site even better. At the very least, once you know how to think about a website from a purely design point of view, you will have a better chance of optimising each site as well as make it as attractive as possible.

Each day, millions of people face the prospect that they will not be able to get a conventional job. Rather than go on worrying about where your next meal will come from, it may be better to consider pursuing a career in web design. Without a question, combining free programs that run under Linux with a few basic courses on web design will go a long way to helping you achieve your goal.

Article sources: http://ezinearticles.com/?Web-Design-For-Beginners&id=4164054

Social Bookmarking

2010-04-19T00:09:00.000-07:00

Social bookmarking is a simple and fast tool used by SEOs to promote a website and market it in relevant circles. The site is linked to various social networking websites, blogs and forums in order to generate quality and quantity one way inbound permanent links and get high ranking with major search engines. Google and other major search engines have become aware of its popularity for search engine optimisation and gone content centric to weed out spam.

Social Bookmarking actually means:

Social bookmarking is a system of saving links to web pages that you want to share. Descriptions can be added to these bookmarks in the form of metadata or tags. Social tagging allows you to add keywords as metadata to the shared content. This content can be viewed by people through bookmarks arranged by category, tags or via search engines. Delicious coined the term Social Bookmarking. Besides, Digg and reddit are some other social bookmarking sites for organizing social news.

Manual vs Automatic:

In order to increase traffic dramatically, you need large number of premium backlinks from high authority websites. Although automatic bookmarking tools get websites indexed faster, you run the risk of losing out on the quality as the submissions might not be to the correct categories, hence no traffic and no business. They also tend to create unlimited number of accounts on social networks and submit unlimited number of bookmarks automatically, without considering individual submission guidelines of each website. So the chances of being rejected or marked as spam are high. Manual submission although difficult and time consuming ensures that submissions are made only to sites with suitable page rank and correct pedigree. For social bookmarking to be effective, the same domain is submitted to several networks and also many domains to same network slowly. You run a risk of being flagged as spammer if you submit too many domains at the same time through automatic submission.

Process of Social Bookmarking:

The SEO expert compiles a list of all Social Bookmarking websites relevant to your field of business and high PR. Then he registers social accounts on all the bookmarking sites. A detailed registration and submission form takes information related to your company, service, keywords, tags, homepage and deeplink URLs with unique titles and descriptions. The online SEO marketing company takes your approval on the websites selected and then makes manual submissions to all bookmarking websites after reviewing the stringent guidelines of individual sites. Once the submission process is complete, a detailed report is sent to you. You can check all the websites to which submissions have been made along with their PR and categories.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Social-Bookmarking&id=4100831

Search Engine Optimization

2010-04-18T23:56:00.000-07:00

What is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. What does that mean you ask... Search Engines are websites like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and much much more. Optimization is trying to improve something in this case we are trying to get good ranks on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and all those other programs. So how do you do this? There are programs that say they can get your site on Google in 1 day. Sorry but only 1 out of 10 of those programs are not scams. Also the ones that are not scams only last about a few weeks then you get banned from Google,Yahoo,and Bing. Once that happens it will be completely impossible to get even on Google. So, don't dare to do that! There are ways, that you can improve your SEO for free. SEO is divided into two parts On Page SEO and Off Page SEO. On Page SEO is stuff like meta tags. Off Page SEO is like getting backlinks.

I will tell you all about backlinks below! This is the toughest of them all. A backlink is another website linking to your website Ex. Google I just linked to Google.com. In that example you would want to be Google because I would have just linked to you, which would improve your Search Engine Rankings on Google. So now you want to know how to get these links. I will give you a few ways to get these types of links.

• Ask for them

• Ask for link exchanges

• Join link exchange sites

• Provide a link page on your site allowing people to link to your site

Now I will talk about On Page SEO. On Page SEO is all about fixing your website to where it is easy for the search engines to crawl and will rank higher! One way to do this is meta tags. Meta tags are the title, description, and keywords many web host have an easy way to create meta tags for your blog or website. But if you don't know what to do contact your website or blog host. Some info is what ever you put as the description of your site will be exactly the same as Google's description.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/?What-is-Search-Engine-Optimization?&id=4051350

PPC Advertising

2010-04-18T23:49:00.000-07:00

We going to be flat out honest and tell you that the internet is the biggest and newest way of marketing for businesses. There are so many ways to gain massive exposure online for your business. Many businesses have turned to pay per click advertising for their business but unfortunately have no clue what they are doing. Because of this reason, many businesses are throwing money down the drain.

First, lets talk about the most popular places to advertise using pay per click advertising. Google is by far the most popular place to advertise and target your specific market using advertisement. Other notable places to advertise that I believe people are under utilizing is MSN and Yahoo search engines. You can often get targeted prospects at a much cheaper price using these search engines instead of Google.

Web 2.0 communities have become very popular and are a new hot spot for pay per click advertising. The most popular site is Facebook. If targeted and used correctly. You can convert using pay per click advertising on Facebook. Twitter currently does not have a paid advertising method as of yet.

A very important aspect to consider when using pay per click marketing is identifying your target market. Know who your target market is and what keywords they search in order to find you. Keywords are a very important part of marketing on search engines.

You want to have relevant content and match up with the keywords your prospect is searching for. When your keywords match the keywords your prospect is searching for, the search engine automatically highlights your word.

Send your prospects to a capture page or a sales page. I have seen too many ads online that send their prospects to a home page or an informational page with no action step required. Tell your prospects to take action and do something. Whether is is to buy something of input their information into a box to receive something of value.

Your paid advertisement content should be catchy and draw attention to your prospect. It should also be relevant to your actual page as well. Get creative but do not steal someone else's content. That is just tacky and not very creative.

Take time to research keywords and the price of each word. You will want to be on the first page of Google in order to optimize your clicks and success rate. Make a budget and stick to your budget. Marketing is really scientific process. You must know how much your spending and how much your acquisition price is for each new customer.

Pay per click is a very good way to advertise your business if you know how to use it correctly. If not, you could be wasting a lot of money!

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Best-Pay-Per-Click-Advertising---Most-Important-Aspects-to-Consider!&id=4119624

Link Building

2010-04-18T23:35:00.001-07:00

When it comes to the confusing task of Search Engine Optimization, building links is one of the significant techniques. For building links, you must be familiar with many concepts including link popularity, search engine visibility, PageRank etc. you must also have a basic knowledge about the other basic linking tactics and tools.

If you are beginner to the concept of SEO link building, you must start by searching for the various search tools and techniques so that you can understand the backlinks used by your competitors. Explore the host sites that are allowing links pointing back to the competitor sites.

Premium link building is the quickest way to increase the visibility of your website. Launching the premium links in your website is the core idea of this technique. The link building strategy must be properly designed by incorporating basic techniques and including essentials like link popularity, off-site submissions and internal link structure.

Increasing the link popularity is not a simple thing. The ranking algorithms of the popular search engines must be understood so that you can make maximum pout of your efforts. Whatever be the criteria of each search engine, the ranking results are based on the quality of links and the link building strategies. The search engine algorithms are set to believe that a website with more number of sites placing its link is a good site.

The internal link structure is another thing that must be taken care of. Your website will not perform well with just the external links. You must have an internal structure that is tightly knit too. The internal links must be in oblivious places so that they are visible. The hyperlinks must be colored, bolded or in italics.

Google internet search engine makes use of a link analysis algorithm known, as PageRank to determine the relevance or importance of a page. This system is designed in such a way that it will count link votes for determining the relevance of a particular page.

Any good marketing strategy must have ample importance for building as well as maintaining links. Even though understanding the SEO fundamentals is a little tough, the rewards you get will be overwhelming.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Basics-of-Link-Building&id=4097759

Content Writing

2010-04-18T23:33:00.000-07:00

What Is Content Writing?

Content writing is a serviced offered mainly to website owners and businesses, and many countries in the world have seen the benefits of this service, using it positively for their company. Content writing itself can come in many forms and companies that offer it can write about one specific category or a broad range, usually the ones that target a certain niche such as sport will be more focused and knowledgeable on that area than those that try to write about every possible category, so you will be getting your money's worth.

Why Is Content Writing So Popular?

Its main use is to save webmasters a lot of time by writing out content for the websites, so instead they will produce a brief and outsource the job to a professional content writer who will research the given subject and complete the assignment for you. Content writing itself is quite cheap but with so many people offering this a service you do need to make sure the company or person is legitimate and that there prices are reasonable. As a guide, £7 - £10 for 250 words of content for web copy, articles and blog posts/news pieces is an excellent price and if you are going to a company that specialise is one certain area of expertise then you may pay a little more, but then you will know the quality and experience on that subject will be higher than elsewhere.

What Types Of Content Writing Is There?

Content writing isn't just for website copy though, a lot of business and individuals will ask for articles, blog posts, press releases and many more forms of the service.

For example if you wanted daily news pieces on topical subjects consisting of 150 words a day, these will be classed as blog posts and at many content companies they will gladly do this every day of the working week for you and in some instances offer an attractive price if you are passing work their way for a long period of time. Press releases and articles are quite similar, the first holding more editorial quality than the latter but still, you can expect 350 - 600 words for a good article.

A newcomer's perspective on copy caught in the SEO web

If you're new to the industry or idea of SEO, the minefield of terms and techniques can be treacherous to navigate. Content writing in particular can seem like a futile endeavour to those who don't quite understand how it works, so here are a few of my first impressions as a relative newcomer myself.

When I was interviewed for my first content writing job, I was informed of a matter that I soon found to be true; 'Writing creatively, and writing for SEO are completely different things.' As newbies, content writers quickly find themselves walking a tightrope in their work - and if they fall, so do their clients search rankings. Good quality content has to please both eager web searchers looking for the best product, and watchful search engines. My first impression is that it's an art in itself.

Like the vast majority of web users, the first time I came into contact with successful SEO I didn't even realise it. It was only when I began searching for jobs in the industry that I really became aware of writing for SEO - because good content looks like normal, natural copy. Effective SEO (when optimising a well designed website) facilitates every step of the consumer experience without many even knowing what it is - it raises a website's profile rather than being highly visible in itself. This can be a difficult thing to achieve for new writers used to giving space to their own abounding creativity.

But this doesn't mean that subtle content shouldn't have something to say. Excellent content must be engaging rather than simply keyword rich waffle. Nobody trawls through endless product reviews for fun - readers need concise, detailed articles that are stimulating. One useful technique that I've found when writing content is to review it and imagine that it's not written for SEO. What does it have to offer readers? Is it useful to them? Does it gain anything? These questions can help new writers keep their work fresh while still optimising as desired.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/?What-is-Content-Writing-and-Why-Has-it-Become-So-Popular?&id=2811111