Oct
19
2009
SEO vs. PPC? — Wrong Question As pay-per-click (PPC) ad prices continue to rise and margins continue to shrink; larger corporations have already begun to increase their organic SEO spending. But for SMBs exploring the possible advantages of an SEO investment, there is a uniquely frustrating challenge: The inability to estimate the results of SEO– and the time it will take to realize them– makes a sound cost/benefit analysis elusive. The popular misconception that PPC and SEO are the “fast” and “slower” versions of the same thing complicates the evaluation process even more. Without a clear understanding of how SEO is implemented, it’s impossible to identify, much less, quantify, the wide-ranging benefits of the SEO process. Within small to mid size businesses, the impact can be profound. The paid advertising model is exactly what it says– advertising. Search engine optimization is not. While search engine prominence is the most widely recognized goal of SEO, that’s far from being the only business value it delivers. How Quality Web Content Boosts Local Retail Sales Consumers have spoken. They want information– and visit 3-5 websites looking for it before they buy. There’s also ample evidence to show that shoppers who search online before making offline purchases spend more than those who don’t. In a recent study by TMP Directional Marketing, the leading local search and yellow pages marketing agency, 60% of the consumers surveyed said they first go online for conducting a local search. The research showed 82% of local online searchers follow up offline with an in-store visit, or phone call. Of these, 61% made purchases. PPC can effectively deliver the traffic, but optimized website content is what, ultimately, drives the sale. Since content development is at the heart of SEO, it makes good business sense to leverage both. SEO Step 1: Competitive Analysis Even though shoppers have expressed their desire for information, millions of retailers still don’t know what to provide– or where to find it. Here’s where SEO can help. The first step in SEO, competitive research, will expose the minimum level of information required in a given market– and the maximum that’s being offered. Typically (depending on industry) you’ll find: • Product comparisons • User reviews • Upgrades, features, and updates • Manufacturer recalls • Software tools (calculators, etc.) If you want to learn more about Search Engine Optimization or SEO, read through the following articles: SEO For Your Business Success, SEO Elements, Internet SEO For Your Success
no comments | tags: Internet SEO For Your Success, read through the following articles: SEO For Your Business Success, Search Engine Optimization or SEO, SEO Elements, SEO Testimonials | posted in Search Engine Marketing
Sep
13
2009
It crosses every webmaster’s mind anytime they see an ad or an email for search engine marketing. Many small business owners wonder what they’re missing by not doing it. So should you hire a consultant? Search engine traffic make up at least 85% of all traffic to a website. So of course, search engine optimization is very important. But what, if any, will be the consequences of doing it yourself? Would it be beneficial to a website owner to hire a professional SEO consultant, or just plod along and hope that they are doing it right? This is a valid dilemma to face, and I will show you why it should be an easy decision. There are ten reasons why hiring them would be to your benefit. 1. Time Search engine optimization takes great amounts of time. Research, linking strategies, directory submissions, and page analysis alone are hugely and painstakingly time consuming. Do you, the small business owner, have the time required to give search engine optimization your full attention? Or do you need to be spending your time elsewhere; such as running your business? An SEO consultant has the time to dedicate fully to your project. That’s what they do. 2. Writing Copy Many webmasters, when beginning to design a website, concentrate on design, graphics, and a lot of the fancy code to make a website pretty. Many webmasters write their content copy almost as an afterthought. What actually generates listings in the search engines is what your website has to say. When a potential visitor is searching the web, they use words to find what they need. So you need words to get your site in those search engines. And this means writing content-rich copy. Your website text should be the most important aspect of your website, and not last on the list. Yes, people are visually stimulated. Search engine spiders are not. In fact, all spiders only take into account the text on your page. A search engine spider cannot read what useful information you may have put into an image or into a video. And relying upon that ALT tag to get those spiders to understand what is in your image is quite an illusion. Lately, some of the spiders are skipping the ALT tags altogether, as a few unethical webmasters and SEO companies have tried to manipulate this area of a webpage with keyword stuffing. (Keyword stuffing is the needless repetition of a keyword or keyword phrase in order to get higher ranking on search engines.) It only takes a few bad apples to ruin the entire barrel. I’m not telling you to completely disregard the ALT tag, but if you rely solely on this to get a search engine spider to understand what your page is about, you will fail. So if text is so important, why would you place this at the bottom of your priority list? A good SEO consultant has the experience with what content is relevant to your site, and just how to say it. Sometimes, an SEO expert will even outsource this job to a professional writer. This makes complete sense, as this is the most important aspect of any website. If you are looking for SEO Solutions or any kind of diversified SEO Solutions or even SEO Solutions articles for you to read – then you are at the right place.
no comments | tags: SEO Testimonials | posted in Search Engine Marketing
Sep
13
2009
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of designing or altering a website so that it will perform optimally in regard to being ranked in search engine results that are associated with specific keywords or keyword phrases used by individuals who are searching for information on the internet through the use of a search engine. Some website owners strive to do their own search engine optimization while others opt to use an SEO service to optimize their website. There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach. Let’s take a look at the purpose of search engine optimization, the pros and cons of doing your own search engine optimization versus hiring an SEO service, and the questions to ask when considering an SEO service to accomplish your search engine optimization. The purpose of search engine optimization is to obtain a desirable position in organic search engine results (this means getting a good listing in the search engines without paying for search engine advertising). There are a number of techniques that SEO service providers use to optimize a website and to secure desirable search engine ranking. Getting ranked on the first three pages of search engine results is highly desirable because the majority of internet users use the search engines to find what they are looking for and they don’t usually browse through more than three pages of results. Getting an organic search engine ranking is awesome due to the fact that you don’t pay for the listing (just for the SEO services to get the listing), so there are no ongoing fees and in effect, it is free advertising that is really productive. The advantage of doing your own search engine optimization rather than contracting an SEO service is that there is no upfront cost for getting your website ranked in the search engines. The disadvantages, of course, are lack of expertise in the field of search engine optimization and the time that may be spent on the optimization process. On the flip side, the main advantages of using SEO services is that you have access to expertise from individuals who are experienced in search engine optimization and using an SEO service may be more time efficient for you. The disadvantage of using an SEO service is the initial costs involved in search engine optimization and costs associated with ongoing monitoring of the search engine ranking and adjustments to the SEO service’s strategy and to the website. If you are looking for SEO Solutions or any kind of diversified SEO Solutions or even SEO Solutions articles for you to read – then you are at the right place.
no comments | tags: SEO Testimonials | posted in Search Engine Marketing
Sep
13
2009
Chances are, you went out to eat sometime in the last few weeks. Why? Perhaps you don’t like to cook. Perhaps you like having food brought to you while you relax. Perhaps you were in a hurry. Perhaps your cooking skills are limited to heating a frozen dinner in the microwave. Perhaps you’ve found a place where you really like the food. Whatever your reason, you chose to pay for a professional to do something you could probably, with some effort, do yourself–prepare and serve you a meal. In my work with search engine optimization (SEO), I’ve heard several people say, directly and indirectly, that it’s basically a waste of money to hire someone to do SEO for your website, because “anyone can do it.” Let’s look at that idea for a few minutes. Here are some reasons why, just as you would choose to eat at a restaurant, you would choose to turn SEO over to a professional. 1. “Anyone” can’t do it. As I mentioned earlier, many people’s cooking skills are limited. Marcia’s greatest culinary accomplishments may be boiling an egg and making macaroni and cheese out of a box. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. But if she wanted to impress a potential client or business colleague with a nice dinner, she wouldn’t put herself in charge of meal preparation. The same goes for SEO. If you know something about keywords, and what a “title tag” is, and that having links between your website and other sites is useful, that’s great, but that knowledge doesn’t put you on par with a professional, any more than boiling an egg makes Marcia a chef. SEO professionals spend lots of time learning and testing strategies to improve a website’s visibility. Not tricks like invisible keyword stuffing (which will get a site banned from search engines), but real stuff like: • how visitors use a website • what pages are popular and why • what searchers are looking for • what search engines are looking for • whether using new technologies helps or hurts or does nothing • whether version A or version B of a page brings in more visitors • how to allocate money in a pay-per-click campaign (where the numbers and competition are always changing) If you are looking for SEO Solutions or any kind of diversified SEO Solutions or even SEO Solutions articles for you to read – then you are at the right place.
no comments | tags: SEO Testimonials | posted in Search Engine Marketing
Sep
11
2009
A lot of people are still unaware of the central uses of SEO, but with time and more expansion they will learn. Every search engine has it’s own set of rules and regulations regarding what is legal and illegal uses of SEO. SEO SEO involves attaining a higher ranking in search engines via changes to your site content and code to make it more pertinent and therefore more search engine compatible. SEO is still a great way to bring in more profits with your Affiliate Marketing campaigns. It involves selecting the most targeted keywords or keyword phrases that relate to your web site. Since the online business in becoming highly viable, websites who practice Search Engine Optimisation have an edge over their competitors. When properly optimised, an SEO campaign can deliver long-term gains, better accessibility and cross browser compatibility. Keywords Keywords are an essential part of your online marketing campaign. Its not a good practice to add more than 20-30 words in Meta keywords. Both the Meta keywords tag and the Meta description tag contribute to your search engine ranking. A Meta keywords tag is supposed to be a brief and concise list of the most important themes of your page. When the search spiders crawl through your blog, they are looking for references to the keywords you have chosen as well as references to your description of your blog. Link In an ideal world search engines would just find you by following links to your site, but in reality this could also take months. A simple link from an established site will get the search engines to visit the new site and begin to spider its contents. It can take a few days to even weeks from the referring of a link from such an established site for all the main search engine spiders to begin visiting and indexing the new site. Search engines crawl the Internet by following links on web sites, so if no one has linked to your new site, the search engine can’t know you’re there, as it isn’t like walking down the street and suddenly stumbling upon it. If you are looking for SEO Testimonials or SEO Testimonials on success or even SEO Testimonials articles – Then you are at the right place.
no comments | tags: SEO Testimonials | posted in Search Engine Marketing
Sep
11
2009
Search Engine Optimization – Secrets Revealed. Let’s begin: What is ‘competition’? Competition is described as “one that competes”, “a rival”, “selling or buying goods or sevices in the same market as another”, and even down to the biological level – “an organism that lives in competition with another”. SEO & Web – Competitive Landscape. Increasingly, web surfers are using search engines to find companies, services and goods. Big and smaller companies, are using search engine optimization and search engine marketing techniques to beat their competitors. On the Internet, we are dealing with virtual entities – and we all compete in increasinglsy tougher and user-aware market places. Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing focuses on building traffic and allowing you to leverage your websites, services and products. Through competitive research, optimal keyword strategies, quality content, link-back neighborhoods and educating yourself on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM), you should be well positioned to beat the competition — over time. What options exist for creating revenue online? A) Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing are two fantastic ways in which you can get visibility on the Internet. Additionally, you can and should include email marketing strategies, with a complete CRM and backoffice process. You can increase visibility and competitive edge hundred-fold. Great content with an intelligent link strategy is vital. B) Affiliate Marketing Programs. Join and promote these (Mr. Jeff Bezos at Amazon is famous for this). Create one for your company – with potentially exciting and lucrative results. (The merchants, or you – offer affiliates commissions for sales activity generated by the affiliate’s web sites). C) Adsense. A sophisticated affiliate online advertising program from Google. Complimentary Adsense Training Videos are worth a look. However, without search engine marketing and search engine optimization, you are missing out on other huge opportunities for smashing the competition and making large sums online. D) Adwords. A break-through ad (’sponsored advertising’) system from Google that can bring traffic (quality) to your site within 1/2 hour! The complimentary adwords email courses show ways to beat the system, and lessen the frustration on your part. It can get expensive fast. Create edge and stay competitive with SEO and SEM. You must have a service or product niche – to create success on the Internet using these ’silent money making engines’. You need to understand that niche marketplaces is how you get there, along with sound search engine optimization and search engine marketing principles, quality content, backlinks and CRM sales backend processes. Optimization Tip #1: On and off page optimization, what is that, and why is it important? First of all you need to create a web site that is a related to a niche marketplace. (You already know who your customer is, right!?) It is very important that you do your keyword research first. In fact, competitive research as an action step is missed by over 98% of the online marketplace. There are many great keyword tools and many are free. Keep in mind that Google ‘owns’ over 50% of the search marketplace. (Yahoo receives about 30% and MSN about 20%). Google is a very important search engine for you to focus on, and I suggest you start with it (even though MSN and Yahoo are great resources – especially the newly launched MSN Adcenter). Competitive SEO Research: Try the following on yahoo and google (make sure syntax is correct): site: www.competitor.com. (replace ‘competitor’ with real name). It will show you how many pages that each search engine has indexed from the competitor’s site. Depending on the site, many results could be returned. Look to see if each page has a title and description associated with them. You will then be able to determine whether each page within your competitor site has been individually optimized. When you start researching keywords do not start with the most common keyword. For example, if you are selling Canon products, do no start researching or optimizing for the word ‘Canon’. You need to break it down – for example – to ‘Canon power shot’. Even better -’Canon power shot SD400 memory sticks’. This way, you have created a niche keyword structure (many permutations from these keywords) within a larger category, and you will able to better optimize keywords for this area. With this in mind, go to Google and start typing in specific keywords and phrases to see where the competition is. As you are doing this, you should understand the page rank algorithm. It is Google’s way of giving specific value to how popular are popular your web site is. It’s essentially based on the number of votes of other web sites that have cast votes up for your web site. Votes are generated when another web site places a link on their web site that is pointing to your web site. The more votes you get, the better your chances are for good ranking. Try our free SEO tools and give yourself a kick-start. To view the page rank, install the Google toolbar (toolbar.google.com). As you look at the competition, recognize that we talk about on-page and off- page optimization. On-page optimization are things like proper use of H1 header tags, using main keywords in the title tags, keywords and phrases are bolded underlined or italicized, using image tags and placing correct keywords within that tag. Many place keywords at the very beginning of the text, and once at the very end of the copy, with other sprinkled throughout the company. It’s an “hour glass” type of a concept. Keywords at the top, less in the middle and again repeated at the end. Do the things that the competition is doing just do it a little bit better – this is one way to get one step ahead of them. The “least imperfect” site wins. If you are looking for SEO Testimonials or SEO Testimonials on success or even SEO Testimonials articles – Then you are at the right place.
no comments | tags: SEO Testimonials | posted in Search Engine Marketing
Sep
8
2009
The job of a Search Engine Optimizer, popularly referred to as an SEO helps the visitors to acquire the required information from the visited website. So, an SEO plays a major role as far as research and development are concerned. Both, the clients availing of the services of an SEO as well as the visitors to the website, many a times, prove to be too demanding for the Search Engine Optimizer. Well no pains, no gains. An SEO’s job seems to be based on this pattern rather too strictly. The SEO’s Job vs. Sales The SEO’s role is quite important not only for researching a particular subject or idea, but more so when it comes to sales. The Optimizer in the majority of the cases provides his services to help the visitors to the website research about the products of the company. The products may vary from biscuits or other eatables to cosmetics to electronic devices including almost any saleable product, object, idea etc., that exists upon the earth. An SEO understands well that basically his job aims at optimizing the sales for the company. He would not like to displease the company or those who visit the company’s site. So, most of the SEOs prefer a little sentence at the bottom of the page to the effect that the visitor’s search results may vary from site to site. After all, an SEO, like any other professional prefers to play safe! Expectations from an SEO vs. A Few Realities As the company’s demands from an SEO are sometimes even unrealistic, he has to be extra smart (that of course, is different from being over smart). When it comes to selling a new product, the Search Engine Optimizer is not just asked to optimize the sales, in such specific cases, he has to initialize the sales for the new product first, more so if the business house happens to be a small one or a newly opened one. If an SEO’s services are hired by a small or newly opened business, the Optimizer is expected to optimize the sales of the products (if they are new, then even to initialize the sales) so that the business comes closer to the big rivals and then gradually goes ahead of them. Now, anyone can understand the kind of expectations regarding the sales from an SEO. When the expectations are not met with (that may be the case sometimes), the resulting picture may be a sad one. If you are looking for SEO Testimonials or SEO Testimonials on success or even SEO Testimonials articles – Then you are at the right place.
no comments | tags: SEO Testimonials | posted in Search Engine Marketing
Sep
8
2009
Before going into detail about how you can optimize your website for search engines I would like to quickly explain what search engine optimization is and why it is so important. Right now the web is dominated by three major search engines: Google, Yahoo, and MSN (live). What is a Search Engine? A search engine can be thought of as the largest storefront of all time. But, it dispenses EVERYTHING (all information on the web). You walk up to the counter (visit Google.com) and ask the magical clerk anything (type in your search), you hit “go” and off he runs back into the largest warehouse of all time to find you exactly what you need. In a matter of milliseconds he’s back with a list of the things he thinks you need. Essentially this is how a search engine works. Roughly speaking a search engine has two facades – a front and a back. The front is what we interact with all of the time. The front of a search engine is the process by which we perform searches – it is the store clerk in the above example. You’re probably familiar with the big search box and search button all of the major services have on their font pages. You visit “google.com” you type in what you are looking to research or purchase, hit “search” and you are taken to a page with a list of results. Of all of the sites on the Internet these are what the search engine (in this case Google) believe most closely match what you are looking for. That is the “front” of a search engine – pretty simple. The back of the search engine is where all the work is done, it is where everything on the Internet is found and sorted in such a way so that your search can bring up meaningful, relevant results; and a key component to this process are a search engine’s robots. A robot is a program (a part of a search engine) that actually goes out, across different sites on the Internet, and grabs information (text, pictures, audio, video, links, everything). The robot grabs the information and brings it back to the warehouse. If you are looking for SEO Testimonials or SEO Testimonials on success or even SEO Testimonials articles – Then you are at the right place.
no comments | tags: SEO Testimonials | posted in Search Engine Marketing
Sep
8
2009
Do it yourself search engine optimization efforts also have significant impact on website traffic that will long outlive any paid advertising venture. Believe it or not, 100 visitors to a properly optimized keyword can eliminate thousands of dollars in costs from such pay per click service listings on Google Adwords or Overature. Which Search Engine should I concentrate on while performing SEO Activities? There are many hundreds of search engines but only a small number of the search engines cater to the vast majority of searches conducted daily by the various engines. Because of this you must focus efforts on the following search engines because they possess more than it 80 percent of all searches on the Internet. The approximate share of Google, Yahoo and MSN in the total worldwide search is: Google-46.2% of overall search Yahoo-22.4% of overall search MSN-12.6% of overall search By no means has this inferred it is a waste of time to work with other search engines. However, when you toward at the top three search engines you are addressing that vast majority of the worldwide traffic. The remaining percent of the traffic is carried by the smaller search engines. If your do it yourself search engine optimization targets the top search engines you would end up covering the same traffic that would be present in the smaller search engines. So, stick with the larger search engines for the time being. Additionally, it is important to look at the value of web site directories particularly DMOZ. These directories carry considerable weight by the search engines. A DMOZ directory listing should be a priority, as it gets a website automatically indexed by Google. Who can or should perform SEO activities: SEO activities refer to various efforts related to building the website up such as design, traffic building, link building, SEO submissions, strategic partnerships, increasing inbound links, etc. The main person responsible for optimization should have the ability to handle design aspects of the site such as: – Changing HTML pages, titles, headers, meta tags and text.Login Details Incorrect. Please try again. – All layout changes of pages The person should be able to browse the internet and find link partners as well as locate any area where links to the site can be added. Why it is a good idea to undertake SEO activities by yourself? Do it yourself search engine optimization is not as difficult as many assume. A person can learn optimization on their own and become very good at it. There are many who would outsource their search engine optimization activities. Here are a number of reasons why you should not: -Most companies will charge a large and expensive service fee. If you do these activities via do it yourself SEO you’ll save money. Also you’ll develop SEO knowledge in the profession. If you are looking for SEO Testimonials or SEO Testimonials on success or even SEO Testimonials articles – Then you are at the right place.
no comments | tags: SEO Testimonials | posted in Search Engine Marketing
Sep
8
2009
When a company undertakes a search engine optimization program, whether it is performed in-house or outsourced to an SEO service, most of the attention (and rightly so) is focused on the company website. This is the one aspect where there is a feeling of control–once a website is released into the wild, the company will have to see how its site fares against all the other websites out there, whether the other sites are using ethical SEO tactics or not. Apart from changes made to the company website, the assumption is often that the company and, if it is using one, its SEO service, has zero control over what appears in search engine results. However, this is not usually the case. Often, you or your SEO service can have a direct effect on search engine results by monitoring your competitors and reporting them to the major search engines when the SEO techniques used on their site fall outside what is popularly referred to as ethical SEO. (Please note that while I believe that the word “ethical” is tossed around too often, “ethical SEO” has become the standard phrase to describe white hat techniques, and so it is the phrase I use throughout the article.) Primary Competitors To start with, let’s define competitors. Almost every company has at least a handful of other companies that it considers to be primary competitors–the ones that sell the same products and services, that are of similar size, and so on. It is important that the SEO efforts (or lack thereof) of these competitors, whether they are using ethical SEO techniques or not, be monitored on a routine basis. If they have not hired an SEO service of their own, or if they have not started doing SEO in-house at all, you will have peace of mind knowing that the use of this channel, for the moment, is yours. If your competitors begin an SEO campaign, with or without an outside SEO service, you can learn much about their sales and marketing tactics by evaluating the keyphrases that they target. And you can also investigate whether they are using ethical SEO practices in their campaign. If you are looking for SEO Testimonials or SEO Testimonials of Success or even SEO Testimonials articles – you have come to the right place.
no comments | tags: SEO Testimonials | posted in Search Engine Marketing