Internet Marketing, Web Design, SEO, Web 2.0 Optimization
Archive for May, 2011
Is Content Important to Search Engines?
011 months ago
Image by matt.searles via Flickr
If there was one thing we could reiterate to clients over and over again, it would be that content is king. Why? Because content holds the power and can attract and persuade, it’s the most powerful SEO tool. High quality, keyword rich content is also important to your website. There is more and more competition daily for websites and consumers are looking for the most unique, useful and relevant information.
When a search is conducted in a search engine, it most likely started with a few SEO keywords. Search engines then crawl the internet looking for the most relevant content for the user. Search engines are constantly doing updates and indexing, adding new websites and materials. By having your website indexed and showing the search engine your website is content rich and is relevant to specific SEO keywords, the more worthy you look and the better chance you have of them finding you.
Search engines can’t find your webpage if there isn’t any content, or more importantly, SEO keywords. Search engine robots won’t crawl your website if there isn’t any content. Without content, there’s no way of defining your page or figuring out what your website is about, from a search engine’s perspective.
Each webpage within your website should have at least 300 words and should be descriptive, with important SEO keywords creatively within. Your webpage content should describe what your webpage is about (what service you’re offering, what this department is about, etc.) Content helps your website rank in search engines and with keywords throughout, should eventually help your website become top rank.
Copywriting for a Website
211 months ago
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Copywriting is very important for any online marketing and involves strategically implementing words that get readers to follow and perform some type of action (ex: click this link, call to schedule an appointment, etc). As discussed over and over, SEO and web design work well together and there’s no reason why SEO copywriting shouldn’t be part of the web design process.
SEO copywriting is writing web page copy that is not only appealing and interesting for readers, but also ranks well for targeted keywords and terms that people are searching for in the search engines. SEO copywriting isn’t used in traditional marketing (for obvious reasons), but there are still many similarities between copywriting for a website versus copywriting for traditional marketing.
When copywriting for a website, it’s important to incorporate valuable keywords into the copy. Readers are most likely going to find your website (and copy) through search engines by using specific keywords. In traditional marketing, keywords don’t hold much value.
Prior to writing for a website, you need to know and research your client. You need to learn how the client generates revenues and learn the important areas they cover so you can conduct keyword research. During your keyword research, you can find out which ones drive traffic and focus on spreading the words out amongst your webpages. You need to focus on the geographic regions you’re targeting as well. Once this thorough research is complete, you can go back to the client, review the keywords so they have a sense of the project and agree on the most important areas to focus on. If everything is agreed, you can begin the SEO copywriting for your website.
Use Long Tail Keywords to Market Your Website
312 months ago
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Most of the time, you’ll want to look for keywords that are popular enough to make investing in targeted text content, links with tailored anchors, and other keyword specific SEO worthwhile. The general rule is that it’s no good ranking well for search keywords that don’t get a lot of traffic. Why put in all that work if you’re not going to get a strong traffic stream out of it?
A big percentage of all search traffic is made up from a fairly small pool of popular keywords. Let’s say you’re running a website selling surfboards and surf gear, and you take a look at the 100 most common search terms. A strong term like ‘surfboards’ might get half a million Google searches per month, and ‘surfboards for sale’ and ‘used surfboards’ a few tens of thousands each. The vast bulk of the list will be made up of less common keywords that only get a few hundred searches- or even just a couple of dozen- per month. These less frequently used terms are what’s called the ‘long tail’ of the search distribution.
It’s usually fairly easy to pick up a good share of the traffic from a long tail keyword because they aren’t competitive. Most surf gear sites target ‘surfboards’ and ignore less popular keywords like ‘buy surfboards los angeles’ and ‘second hand mini mals’ because they are too specific. Pick up one long-tail keyword you won’t get much from it. However, picking 20 of them might bring in a worthwhile number of visitors, and if you’ve chosen keywords that are relevant to what your site offers they’ll be interested in what they find.
Ranking well for 20 or even 100 low-competition long-tail keywords may be easier than getting the top spot for something really strong. With the right research, a long-tail strategy can actually pay off pretty well.
Some sites specialize in picking up rankings for long-tail keywords but it can be worthwhile for more generalist websites too. If you are struggling to rank well for high-traffic, highly competitive keywords, the long tail might be a useful place to look for new opportunities. Choose a dozen keywords with low competition and a trickle of monthly traffic and experiment. Don’t spend too much time or effort on each keyword. Figure out what it takes to make your site rank well for one and balance that against the expected sales. Each long-tail keyword might not generate much revenue, but if you can rank on the first page for plenty of them, they can make a good stream of income.
This guest post was written and submitted by Jess Spate
Jess Spate is an SEO and green business consultant. She represents a number of clients in the travel and leisure industry including Timeshare Partners, a leading resource for those looking to buy Wyndham timeshare units.
Career in Social Media Marketing
81 year ago
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A career in marketing requires adaptability, good intuition, and the ability to make good use of the many social media sites now available to users. Here are some interesting and unique ways of using social media in your marketing career.
When was the last time you logged on to Facebook, have tweets sent directly to your phone, visited a forum or watched a video online? If you’re like most of the population you’ll have done at least one of these things in the last twenty-four hours. While just a few years ago regarded as a diversion, social media has quickly become an essential way of connecting with other people and doing business.
Because of this new trend, students who pursue a marketing degree will gain a basic understanding of the many ways that social media can be used to gather information on and market a product or service. Many people in marketing careers have expanded on that basic training and come up with other ideas, often unique or thought -provoking, that make use of this social media in the field of marketing.
With simple flash games such as Angry Birds becoming increasingly popular, more companies are developing and releasing games and apps for smart phones and tablets. Whether they are simply fun or if they are useful, these games and apps allow companies to expose potential customers or clients to their product in a casual manner.
Other brands have sought to break the “fourth wall” between companies and consumers by opening up Facebook, twitter, and other social media pages to commentary by customers. A representative speaking on behalf of the company is able to answer customer questions and concerns first hand. This is especially useful for small to medium sized companies, granting them a more “personal” image.
Because a marketing degree program teaches a student to consider all routes when advertising and informing consumers about a product, the emphasis is not always on the creation of products and advertising material. Many marketers are finding that by simply helping support and working with “fan” pages, product image can receive a huge boost from consumers. This was most notably used by Conan O’Brien, whose company eventually bought a Team Coco page generated by a user in support of Mr. O’Brien after his departure from NBC.
Social media is also being used to collect valuable data on trends in the marketplace, as almost all networks now feature applications to track popular subjects. A marketing professional may simply research the number of searches and likes of a particular subject or could undergo a process as complex as creating quizzes and inviting users to surveys in order to gain feedback to be used in marketing research. Many marketing degree programs are now teaching students these new methods of information gathering.
There is no real limit to how much a marketer may use social media throughout their career. As social media continues to grow and evolve new ways will develop to make use of it for future professionals in the field.
Osama Bin Laden and Computer Security
11 year ago
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Newspapers (and their modern online versions – this is the 21st century) are rammed full of information about a certain individual. Yes, you are correct…I, of course, mean the killing of mass-murdering terrorist Osama Bin Laden.
The entire world rejoices in the euphoric “good over evil” victory? Well, kinda. But the world seems more interested in doubting the words of an American president about the killing… but after such classic fibs as “I did not have sex with that woman” and “There will be no whitewash in the White House” by previous leaders, can you blame us for being a wee bit sceptical?
Firstly, I think Osama is dead. But a photograph of the dead body is required by some “conspirators” – as they can sense that some things don’t add up, which has not been aided by the official line being changed and the lack of any evidence being shown to the worldwide audience. However, this is not a post to “pick holes” in the aftermath of how the news was reported, but as a warning that spammers are using this desire for “proof” as a way of causing you guys to download malware onto your computers!
The lack of official photos or videos of Bin Laden’s body has been exploited by hackers – as Facebook and inboxes have become awash with links that claim to show the body of bin Laden, but are in fact carrying malware virus which is activated once the links has been clicked or a form is filled in.
Videos have sprung up all over Facebook, such as ‘SHOCKING NEW video of OSAMA BIN LADENS DEATH!! Exclusive BANNED VDEIO footage of Osama Bin Laden being killed!!!’ and ‘Osama bin Laden Killed (LIVE VIDEO)’ clicking on these will either cause this to be shared on your Facebook account or being asked to fill in a survey to make money for the scammers and…yes…you guessed it…without actually seeing a video.
These claims of photographic evidence are also being sent via email, which supposedly contains bin Laden photos. Opening the attached compressed “images” will result in a virus being unleashed onto your system that monitors your online banking details to be monitored and even result in your bank passwords being compromised.
Facebook scams can be easily spotted if you hover over the image and see if the web address relates to what is being advertised in the actual post. If it is a site that you have never heard of – do not click.
Due to America announcing that the Bin Laden photographs will not be released, they are certainly not going to be available on social media etc! If there did happen to be a Twitpic or YouTube fanatic at the scene and the images manage to surface online, then the media will be VERY fast to show them!
This guest post was written by Andrew Parker
Andrew Parker is a freelance journalist and copywriter for Intaforensics on the topics of online security, social media and computer forensics
Analyzing Good SEO
21 year ago
To me SEO isn’t just about brute force and volume, quite often strategy plays a bigger part in your success than the number of hours you put it in. Thinking smarter about how you tackle the problem should always be your first stop and this is why I put so much time into evaluating the competition for any keyword before I go for it. To me it’s the deciding factor in earning money online with SEO so here are a few tips to help you evaluate the competition.
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• People often freak out when they see a big authority site at the top of the serps but that doesn’t mean they can’t be beaten. You need to work out if the whole site is about this subject or if it’s just this one page because that really makes a difference. For example if I see a yahoo answers page it’s not a big deal because I know I can create 1000s of words on the subject whereas they will only ever have a few hundred, Google loves quality content.
• Pagerank is one of those factors that’s almost too easy to measure so when webmasters see a high PR site at the top again they freak out. Instead try to look at the total number of unique domains pointed at the site, you can do this with a number of tools link open site explorer from seomoz, it’s a much more up to date way to evaluate a sites link power.
• It’s also worth looking at just how aggressive they are being with their SEO efforts in general. Do they have the target keyword in the title tag? How many times do they mention it on the site as a whole (not just on the landing page)? How many links with the phrase in the anchor text do they have? Quite often you’ll find people have ranked at the top almost by accident and it’s in these cases that you can really leverage your knowledge of SEO to full effect.
I suppose the reason I care so much about evaluating my competition and keyword research in general is that so many times I rushed into a market and got no-where for months, just because I didn’t evaluate things at the start. My overall concept has always been that’s its better to be the No1 guy in a smaller market than No101 in a big sector.
This is a guest post by Paul
Paul has a new marketing blog at earn money online which has SEO tips and general marketing advice for anyone starting out on the web.
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