Internet Marketing, Web Design, SEO, Web 2.0 Optimization
Archive for November, 2011
How to find Good Keywords
35 months ago
Using keywords properly is one of the keys to launching a successful SEO campaign. It is through a properly executed keyword search that you can target the right terms and phrases with your SEO marketing campaign. No matter which tools are used for website optimization keyword usage is at the heart of the matter. They are in Meta tags, page titles, content and several other key places throughout the site. By employing keyword research you can better predict what kind of content will be relevant to the site and learn what users will be looking for when they visit. Keywords help SEO strategies be more effective.
Good keywords
Keyword Research
Understanding the importance is only half of the work, performing the keyword research is the other half. The first thing you need to do is to have a brainstorming session in which you write down every term and phrase that is relevant to the site or business. There’s no limit to how many keyword possibilities you can come up with and really, the more the better. Think about your business or industry from the viewpoint of a client and also try to think about every synonym for each of the core words too. You will want to try to think of any and all words or phrases that could possibly be used in a search engine to find your site. You will also want to use an online tool that can create keyword suggestions as well as search estimates.
Once you have generated a list of possible keywords and phrases you will want to search for your relevant ones in all three of the major search engines. You are looking at the results, but you will also want to look at the paid ads that are above and to the right of the organic results. If there are a lot of ads it usually indicates it is a high value keyword, basically the more ads the better the keyword results.
Keyword Tools
There are a lot of different keyword tools available on line. Some of them are costly, and some of them are free. Here are just three examples of keyword tools that can be used for keyword research.
Google Adwords: Keyword tool is relatively easy to use and is reliable. All you have to do is enter a phrase, or a term and it will display all the available data about the average search volume for the present month and one month back.
Wordtracker Tool is a fair one to use. It is not as accurate as some others, but it is still a good one to use for comparing search volume. Just enter a phrase or keyword into the search box. It will display the trendiest terms that have the words you typed in. It will tell you how many searches a day there are for those particular terms as well as a prediction of how many searches are usually performed on it each day.
MSN AdCenter will require you to log in to use the tools but they do display good, solid data.
What is Digital Marketing?
15 months ago
Digital Marketing
Digital marketing uses a wide variety of digital sources to promote products or services. Basically, it efficiently distributes digital advertisements using many different devices. These include mobile devices, websites, instant messages, and SMS just to name a few. It is a very broad concept and the newest, most cost effective method of advertising. Many of the same tools used for SEO practices are also incorporated under the digital marketing umbrella. However, it encompasses quite a wider path in that even direct mail and graphic design can fall under digital marketing strategies.
Types of Digital Marketing
In the most basic concept there are two separate types of DM; push and pull.
Push DM: The strategies in this mode are geared to push advertising data toward intended recipients using various digital means. It could incorporate the use of SMS, email or an RSS feed. The largest benefit from push marketing is that the message being sent to clientele can be targeted and personalized. This technique is also very easy to track and measure each campaign’s effectiveness.
Pull DM: These methods are all geared at getting potential customers and visitors to come to you. Content is presented in a way that they will find you or your business directly. Generally, this is a web page or some other type of web based medium. These are not as personalized as Push DM methods.
SEO vs. Digital Marketing
These two concepts are not entirely different. Each method’s results are measurable; however it is much easier to measure the effectiveness of an SEO marketing campaign. You can measure DM results but there is not the clear cut tools (like Google Analytics) to make it clear how effective the campaign came off.
A good SEO specialist will take into consideration the targeted audience when building a site page or content. But the main thrust of an SEO campaign is to see the site or page ranked high in search engine result pages. This makes the SEO projects seem more machine driven rather than consumer driven. Digital marketing is more concerned with interacting with the intended audience.
DM and SEO are both concerned with making products and services available to potential customers using any available means. SEO used to only be concerned with having the competitive edge which meant that they were very much concerned with where the competition was in SERPs. And while that is still a large part of a successful web marketing campaign, SEO specialists are also focusing on establishing a reputation with the intended audience. The goal of both of these techniques is to make sure that their brands, products or services remain in front of customers.
Blogging for Business
35 months ago
Blogs make up a large portion of content on the internet. Their presence is large enough that it cannot and should not be ignored. A good SEO specialist will know how to incorporate blogs into good web 2.0 optimization strategies.
Blogging
History of Blogs
In December of 1996, Jorn Barger started a daily log of what he thought would be interesting Web links. He called it, “Robot Wisdom Weblog.” It didn’t take long for other online publishers to start creating pages with these types of frequent, but short posts which end up being in reverse chronological order. In 1998 the first online tool which allowed users to keep online journals was developed and made public. That is when the online journaling world pretty much took off. In 1999, one online journaling author, Peter Merholz, took Jorn Barger’s word, “weblog” and split it out to make the phrase, “We Blog.” It did not take too long for users to begin using blog as a shortened form of weblog.
Types of Blogs
There are literally blogs on virtually everything imaginable; and some on things that aren’t! But if you could reduce it all down to two categories you would find that there are basically two types of blogs: personal and business. Many personal blogs are like personal diaries that are used to journal day to day happenings of one sort or another. Some may be simply opinion posts including those of a political nature.
Business Blogs
And then there are business blogs. These can provide a multitude of benefits for the business world. They can actually be an intricate part of the business’ online presence; and can even be incorporated into a business website’s SEO strategies. For the business, they can mean an essential tool in today’s web 2.0 world.
A business blog can be a very efficient way to use this social media platform. Because of new technology, a blog can allow a business to interact with clients in real time. It’s also much faster to enter a blog post on a regular basis than to update the website every few days. They are a very effective way of sharing your expertise with a much larger audience.
A business blog impacts how web users evaluate, recommend, promote and share information about products and services. Blogs also have a large impact on how companies listen to clients and engage with them to help ensure success. Blogs have many benefits such as helping to establish credibility, provide a resource for clientele, develop new business relationships and provide a communication source. But there are also some benefits in terms of SEO.
SEO Benefits of Business Blogs
Blog posts are updated much more frequently than websites as a general rule. This fresh content is one thing that search engines love to look for and blogs provide plenty of it. The blog is viewed as a great resource and many people may link to your blog or website for a reference. By integrating your business blog with your main business website blogs can help build links back to the site. These backlinks are beneficial as search engines use them in determining a site’s value.
Hiring an SEO Company for Blog Optimization
Optimizing a business blog is imperative to its success. The blog can be incorporated into the web design of the main website. While keyword rich content is a large portion of blogging, it is not the only SEO technique available. For the business blogger it is important to consider hiring a New Jersey SEO company to optimize the business blog.
Does SEO Really Work?
15 months ago
How valuable is SEO really? Can I really optimize my site so that it ranks higher in search engine result pages? And does it really matter? Yes it does really matter; and SEO does really work to help sites achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages. This is the main purpose behind SEO strategies. They are not in opposition to web design, but rather are keys to successful to website optimization.
SEO
The Purpose of SEO
The fact that search engine optimization works is a given. SEO specialists have been using good SEO techniques for years and will continue to do so. The question is how it works. Website optimization means that an SEO specialist uses the right white hat techniques to get a site, or a page, to rank high in search engine result pages. The point is to get the search engines to give the site/page relevance or worth. This means using keywords and links properly to get search engines to find the site, crawl the site and rank the site in result pages. There are basically two aspects that SEO specialists will work with to optimize a site: on page and off page.
On page SEO
On page SEO is only half of site optimization. The site must be rich in keywords to first draw the web crawlers’ attention. Then after the search engine finds the site, it must have a site map to make information easy for the crawlers to see where all the relevant information is on the site. Each page should have proper keyword usage to help with its rank in the search engine results. On page optimization means having the keyword(s) strategically placed throughout content, titles and Meta tags. This is important because this is what makes the site visible to search engines.
Off page SEO
Off page SEO is also important. These are techniques that are employed off the site to help improve the site’s ranking in search results. They are not actually performed on the website or page. SEO that works will incorporate backlinks into its Off page optimization strategy. This is accomplished outside of the site itself. There are several ways to get backlinks to a site including using social media platforms, link exchanges or directory listings. They can also be purchased. The main reason getting backlinks is that search engines consider links when valuing a site. A site with relevant outside links is considered more valuable. Additionally, the higher quality of backlinks that your site has the more authority Google and other search engines will give to your site; for example if CNN.com links to your site or blog that link will be far more valuable than a link on some random site with less authority. The best strategy for getting quality backlinks is to create high quality fresh content and to promote that content within communities that may be interested.
Should I Hire an SEO Consultant?
For those who have any type of business website talking to a New Jersey SEO consultant is a must. To have your site rank consistently in the top three spots of search engine results will require their level of expertise.
Developing an SEO strategy
16 months ago
SEO best practice
Evaluate Where You Are
Before you start building or redoing a web site think about where you are right now in the marketing scheme as well as where you want to go. Before you even study your keyword strategy you wan to know where you are going. It starts by setting goals.
Goals
When you set the ultimate goal it can act as a compass to help you navigate through the process of developing your SEO strategies. Ask yourself what you want to achieve with the website and think about the best possible outcomes from your SEO efforts.
Keywords
Your keyword choice can be among the most valuable choices you make. The goal of every page on your site is for it to rank with one of the chosen target keywords. Build a solid keyword list to help you with your web design. These will be foundational for employing your overall SEO strategies.
Progress
If you have done this before, think about some of the things you have used in the past. Consider both what did and did not work. Assess what caused a previous site or page to fall out of the cyber world? It is a good strategy to monitor your rankings. This helps you match up your SEO work with the rankings and find out which website optimization techniques worked and which ones did not.
Developing On-Page SEO
This is where you will really start to roll up your sleeves and get to work. You will use your keyword list to develop your pages. You have the ultimate control of what happens on your site.
URLs and Titles
Talk about the dynamic duo, these two work together and can be crucial to a successful web page or site. Build your title tags and URLs using the keyword(s) that are appropriate for the content you will be placing on each page.
Links
You will first of all want to ensure that you have links between the pages on your site. It is important to use interlinking techniques as well as employing a link building strategy for back links. For example an off -site blog can provide a valuable back link to your site.
Social Media
Social media is a worthwhile part of SEO strategies. Basically, it is not going away and more people are getting involved in various aspects of social media every day. Use them to your advantage. Make sure to include various buttons on your site such as a “like” or “share” button. These are only the beginning of actively using social media in your strategies.
Internet Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing
16 months ago
When is the last time you picked up a newspaper or searched for a phone number using the Yellow Pages? If we think about these pages honestly we have to say that we do not look to these types of resources nearly as much as we used to. When you do a price comparison between e-marketing and traditional approaches to marketing, the numbers are amazing. Traditional marketing will typically cost somewhere between 2 and 3 dollars per lead. Broadcast mediums like television and radio cost somewhere between 10 and 40 dollars for each sale. Internet marketing can be as low as $.60 per lead to about $1.40 per lead. It is the most cost effective of the marketing strategies. There are several aspects to web marketingthat makes it advantageous.
Traditional Marketing
Retrieval Speed
We live in an information age and when we are looking for something, we want it now! This is one advantage internet marketing has over traditional marketing. It is much quicker to type a product name in the search engine than it is to stand perusing through a phone book trying to find the right word with a listing under it. Sure it’s alphabetized to help us find things more quickly; but how many times do you stand there silently saying your ABC’s to figure out what comes next? An internet search yields much quicker results. This is one reason it is important to have a web presence and employ proper SEO marketing strategies. Customers want what they want and they want it now! (Just like you and me) Getting your site to rank high in SERP gets your business in front of potential customers much quicker than an alphabetical listing in the yellow pages or an obscure ad in a newspaper.
Content Accessibility
Consider the last ad you saw in a newspaper or magazine. How much could you learn about the business or product in such a limited space? Maybe a catch phrase, phone number and the name of the business was all it contained. Billboards, although larger, do not contain much more content either. A site that has a good web design will be able to present customers and potential customers with everything they need to know about your business. Website optimization will include the basics of advertising: name, address, phone number. But it will have detailed information about the product or services provided as well as a map so that customers can easily find it using any means. Internet marketing can give customers much more information than traditional marketing can in a small ad.
Audience Base
Using local television, newspapers and maybe even radio ads used to be the way to reach your audience base. While it may not be totally ineffective, it is still attempting to reach a very small audience. Especially considering that the vast majority of the population turns to the internet as their primary resource over these traditional options. The potential audience base for internet marketing is virtually unlimited. There’s a reason it’s called the “World Wide” Web.
Contrast and Comparison Conclusion
Traditional Marketing
- Cannot target audience
- Expensive and requires more investment of time for product promotion
- Limited reach
- Limited exposure (per issue, per newspaper)
- No effective way to track the marketing investment
Internet Marketing
- Ability to reach a targeted audience
- Economical and quick method to promote products
- Cost effective global promotion
- 24/7 advertising of your product of service
- Very effective ways to track investments
How SEO Works
16 months ago
major search engines
The three major search engines have four basic functions: web crawling, indexing, calculating rank and relevance and sharing the results. Basically each of the search engines send out a crawler that searches the whole web and finds data relative to the search query. Most of the time, these are web pages, but they can also be a specific file such as a JPG or a PDF.
Crawling and Indexing
Crawlers access the entire structure of the web by using links. These bots go through literally billions of documents that are interconnected. After the crawler finds a page it will analyze the data and then file away pertinent information which is then recalled when a query is made. When a user types in a word or phrase in the search engine it will go through all the documents and return only the results that are deemed relevant to the search. It will also rank the results by which seem to be more valuable. So what makes a site, page or online document more relevant?
Ranking and Relevance
Presently search engines look at several factors to determine a page’s relevance to the search and where it is ranked. Links play a major role in determining relevance and that is followed closely by keyword usage including in the domain name. Then the smaller parts of the algorithm are made up of things like social metrics and traffic.
SEO and Search Engine Algorithms
The three major search engines which have varying algorithms. Each one has particular factors that weigh a little more than others. Here is a listing of the three major search engines and some hints on how to use the major components of their algorithms for best SEO strategies.
Yahoo
SEO for Yahoo!
- Build a solid link building campaign
- Create quality page content with well placed keyword(s) or phrases
- Update the index and site map on a regular basis
Bing
SEO for Bing
- Include popular search terms in the page text that individuals might use to find the site
- Limit the size of all the pages
- Make sure that every page can be reached by at least one static text link
- If you want text to be indexed do not put it inside images
SEO for Google
- Design pages and content for users not Google
- Include at least one static text link per page and give the site an obvious hierarchy
- Create content that is quality and full of useful (and relevant) information; include title elements that are both accurate and descriptive
- Keep links on each page to under 100
Google Local Listing Optimization
36 months ago
Online marketing is a very important aspect of the small business. Search Engine Optimization is a key component of getting a local business found online. To improve local search results good local SEO strategies are imperative. According to some research information about 87 percent of people who search for and find a product or service on line are likely to purchase off line. This means that you have to be able to get your business information on the web and into the hands of potential clients. The way to do that is through using SEO strategies. To put your business at the top of the search engine results for local listings may utilize many of these strategies. Using title tags is an essential part of these strategies.
Title Tags and Local Search
Improving the title tags within your site can improve your local SEO. When search engines are looking for information about your site they will check out the website code in the title tags first. You do not want to overload a title tag but you want to use it to its maximum potential. A title tag can hold quite a few words but Google’s limit is 70. It’s okay to use your business name in your title tag, just add some more keyword phrases; specifically keywords that people in your local area are looking for.
A title tag will specify the title of your web page in HTML code. This code is inserted in the header of the page and it will look something like this:
<head>
<title>Your Interior Painting Company Title</title>
</head>
There are two ways to optimize the title tag. You may choose to use the format: primary keyword – secondary keyword – brand name (or company). Another format may be: brand name-primary keyword and secondary keyword. An example for a painting contractor might look like this: Picone painting- exterior painting contractor – New Jersey. This way the primary keyword, business name and local tag are all included in the title tag. Remember to use a different title for each page of the site, don’t just use one title for all the pages. Make each one a good, but brief description of the contents of the page.
Using H1 Title Tags
The title tags and H1 (heading) tags should work together on a page. Actually they should be complimentary of each other. By looking at these two tags alone you should have a very clear idea of what the page consists of. These two places are very important in terms of SEO keywords. Take full advantage of the value that search engines place on H1 tags. To you, it may just look like a regular heading, but the search engine crawlers see much more. The page title tag has your focus keyword or keyword phrases in it. Then the Heading 1 tag should simply be reinforcement to the title tag. If the title tag has a general locality, like the state of New Jersey as a local keyword, then use a more specific keyword such as a specific county or town in the title tags.
SEO for Dummies
36 months ago
I know people are just kidding when they say, “dummies,” but I really felt that way at one time. (And still do from time to time depending on the topic!!) There are just so many things to think about when attempting to launch an internet marketing campaign. It used to be enough to just set up a website. But with the new Web 2.0 including the social element it can seem pretty overwhelming just to get started. Sometimes it can be frustrating because you can see all these great platforms to use for internet marketing only to get too hit a snag. What should be part of a marketing campaign and what should wait until later? Here are some ideas that will hopefully get you started optimizing your site.
Search Engine Optimization For Dummies
Goals of Having a Web Site
Let’s start with why you need your website optimized to begin with. Your site is your space in the World Wide Web. It’s your business’ face; people will see only what you show them. You want your site to engage visitors and keep them involved in the site. This of course will ultimately increase your profits. To achieve an increase in valuable traffic your site needs to accomplish four main goals. One, you want it to draw new users to the site; secondly you want to keep them engaged for a length of time (not just a quick click through and go). The third goal is to get them to keep coming back for more visits; and lastly you want them to feel like the site is all for them, not for you. Visitors should feel like they are getting something out of visiting your site, even if that is information.
Where to begin optimizing your site?
While you are getting your site set up you will want to prepare the content that you will want to include. Your content is one of the ways to optimize your site. You always want content to be of good quality and interesting. Users can spot filler and keyword stuffing as fast as the web crawlers can. Don’t waste your time or the visitor’s time putting content up just for the sake of adding words to a page. Your content should also be updated regularly (perhaps one of the easiest parts of hosting a web page) to keep it higher in search engine result pages.
Your content is an important part of engaging your audience, but it will also need to contain keywords or keyword phrases to be fully optimized. These same keywords will be added to the Meta description tag when you are setting up your site. This will have two purposes. It will be what users see when they see your site in search results, and it should contain all important keywords.
Another local search engine optimization technique is to include your address and phone number on every page. This makes it easier for web crawlers to find your location when conducting a search. Also make sure that the website is easy to navigate and use. Nothing drives visitors away like not being able to get to the desired information. And always test your site before you actually publish it to the web!
Recent Comments