Internet Marketing, Web Design, SEO, Web 2.0 Optimization
Posts tagged SEO
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!
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.
Image via Wikipedia
• 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.
Make Your Business Look Good with SEO
61 year ago
Image via Wikipedia
Are you debating as to whether to approach a Search Engine Optimization company for help? There is plenty of literature available on the Web that both celebrates and condemns search engine optimization (SEO) and the companies that provide the service. The truth is, like any other business, there are good, bad, and all businesses in between. Years ago, Vidal Sassoon originated the marketing message, “If you don’t look good, we don’t look good,” in reference to his hair styling products. The message makes sense; to reiterate another marketing quip, ‘the proof is in the pudding.’
Keyword Research
How will your intended customers or target markets find your products and services online? They will conduct an online search. The answer seems simple enough, yet what exact words and phrases will they use? Will they search for general terms, geographically-linked words, phrases, exact names of products, etc? An SEO firm will conduct research and convey insight regarding keyword research. This invaluable service has immediate and ongoing results; once you know what words and phrases inspire your target market’s search, you can concentrate on them in a perennial fashion.
Copywriting and On-page Optimization
“Content is king” is a mantra often related by many online marketing, SEO, and search engine specialists. It echoes a simple sentiment: search engines love sites that host information; that is the sole purpose of the Web in the first place. Copywriting and on-page optimization concentrates on relaying information to both users and the search engines. Search engines crawl your site’s pages in order to assess how well they address a user’s search. An SEO firm’s copywriting and page optimization showcases information using your keywords. This way, search engines know what kind and how much information your site offers in order to make the decision to offer your site in regard to a user’s search query. Those found on the golden ‘first page,’ are sites with a lot of keyword-focused content.
Inbound Links
Another way search engines decide to offer your site’s pages in regard to a user’s query is how others view your site. It works much like a popularity contest with inbound links serving as popularity votes. The more times other sites link to your site and its content, the better. This lets the search engines know that others have viewed your content, value it, and think that it would be helpful to other users on the Web. An SEO firm will leverage blogs, social networks, and other platforms to intrigue others to provide links to your site.
Continual Maintenance and Measurement
An SEO campaign usually takes time. It relies heavily on your industry and competition, but most campaigns last for six to twelve months or longer. You are taking the time to promote your site’s rankings; it is very likely your competition is doing the same. This means that the quest to make the golden ‘first page’ never ends. An SEO firm’s services are usually intense at first and then begin to curtail while continuing to deliver maintenance and ongoing measurement of your rankings.
If you are thinking about searching for an SEO firm, but are hesitant, just remember that your site’s rankings are reflexive of the service’s efficiency. If your rankings don’t look good, then their service doesn’t look good. A reputable SEO firm understands this principle and will provide you with results; getting you results is the ‘bread and butter’ of its existence.
This guest post was written by Todd Bailey
Bio: Todd Bailey is Vice President of Online Marketing for WebiMax, a Search Engine Optimization company located in Mount Laurel NJ with 100+ professional online marketing staff managing over 300 clients worldwide. Todd contributes reguralarly at http://www.blog.webimax.com and other major SEO/SEM outlets.
Related Articles
- The Pros and Cons of Hiring an SEO Firm to Market Your Website (shoutmeloud.com)
- Basic Organic Search Engine Optimization Defined : Make Money Online. (marketersdaily.com)
SEO Tip # 5 Using Local SEO for On Page Optimization
41 year ago
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I would like to welcome you to my fifth SEO tip of the day; here I will discuss the value of on page optimization for local SEO.
.Local SEO consists primarily of positioning a website so that it targets a local market. Given that most websites today are local (specific to a town or region, ex: doctor’s office in Short Hills NJ, or Home remodeling Phoenix) and local traffic is often more valuable it is important for website owners to understand the basics of local SEO.
The basics of local SEO consist of targeting the right keywords that will appeal to your local market and that will get traffic to your website (one of the downsides of using local keywords is that traffic to your website may be very low, since few searches may be done locally for what you are selling, but if you use the right keywords you can be certain that the traffic that does come to your website will be very interested in your service or product). Another important aspect of local SEO is creating landing pages on your site for each town, county and region that you are targeting, each of these pages should contain basic information about the services that you offer in that town…
A Simple Trick to Promoting a Website
151 year ago
My SEO secret
Today there are many techniques that exist to promote a website, each strategy for website marketing has its own benefits and drawbacks, some are too time consuming, while others work great, but are simply too expensive for the average website owner to afford. There are even online marketing techniques that have been developed for specific industries, so no matter what type of site you have, there are ways to promote it!
One of my personal favorite marketing techniques is something that I like to call “The Megaphone Technique”. The Megaphone Technique is a modification of marketing techniques that were developed long before the internet and have proven to work well regardless of your product. The reason that I like this technique is b/c it is simple, cheap, and requires no real marketing talent, all you need to do is to follow the simple steps that I list below and you will drive massive traffic to your website. The first step is simple, and consists of you getting in your car and driving to your closest electronics store, where you will purchase a megaphone, along with batteries to power this device. Following this, you will return home, assemble the megaphone, making sure that it functions properly (its function is to magnify the volume of your voice) and wait until about 10 PM. At this time, you should take your new megaphone and climb to the roof of your building, or onto the roof of the highest building in your neighborhood, and you should start speaking through the megaphone (make sure that it is turned on and that the volume is at its highest) about how wonderful your website is… If you follow these instructions I guarantee that you will get tons of traffic to your website, and if you continue this on a nightly basis I guarantee that the traffic to your site will continue to increase. (I just want to warn you though, the proper use of the Megaphone Technique, may not endear you with your neighbors, and is likely to bring you to the attention of the local authorities.)
In reading the above, I hope that you’ve realized that this is my vain attempt at humor. In addition to finding the above humorous I hope that you will realize that there are no short cuts when it comes to marketing your website. Sure, many services will promise you amazing results if only you pay a low one time fee of $___, but the reality is that these are gimmicks and will not bring quality traffic to your site When it comes to marketing your website there are two routes that you can go, the first is the DIY route, you can learn all you need to know about SEO and online marketing, and do everything yourself, the downside of this is that this is very time consuming and unless you have the proper amount of time to undertake such a project, which can easily be a full time job in itself, you probably should hire an expert. This brings us to the 2nd route you can take, hiring an expert, the trick here is to find the right SEO consulting firm for your specific needs, a firm that you can trust and that will not charge you an arm and a leg for their service.
Website Promotion With SEO
71 year ago
Having a well designed user friendly website is extremely important for almost every type of business, whether you are a Real estate agent in Short Hills NJ, or a professional tutoring company in NYC, it is crucial for you to have a good website that will provide the right content to your target demographic (in the case of the above example, your target demographic might be young couples looking to buy their first home, or high school students who need to get better scores on college entrance exams). Designing and building the website is a huge first step for any company trying to grow its business, although once the site is built, the next and more important step should begin, marketing the site.
Without proper marketing, any website, no matter how awesome, is doomed to fail. (I can give you many examples and statistical data, but please take my word, if no one knows about your site, you will get no traffic and the site will not achieve your goals). This is where SEO comes into the picture… Good SEO is currently one of the best tools that your website has to get traffic and to allow the people you want to be finding your site to find your site. Given that as of today close to 90% of all online traffic originates from a search engine, and that most customers choose to go to Google and type “home remodeling advice” when they are looking for a general contractor, it is vital for your site to rank for your chosen keywords so that when your customer does a Google search, that they will find your company on the first page. If this is what you are looking for, than SEO is the medium that you should be using! There are of course other methods for getting traffic to your site, using PPC (pay per click) or having an email campaign, or even paying for a TV commercial that mentions your website, but these methods are far more costly and are likely to bring far less quality traffic than good ol’ SEO.
Difference Between SEO and SEM
21 year ago
SEO and SEM
In recent years the sheer volume of “stuff” on the internet has exploded exponentially, and continues to grow at a fevered pace. Not only has the amount of content increased, but so has the diversity of content, following the development of web 2.0, and the widespread availability of broadband internet connections (which allow for users to load bigger files faster) many previously unforeseen ways of delivering content have come into existence, today “content” ranges from online videos, to websites, to blogs, Tweets etc… and the sheer volume of content that is added every second (or that has been added while you’ve been reading this post) is unimaginable.
Our content (website, blog, video, Squidoo page…) exists within this ever expanding universe of content and the ability of others (customers, clients…) to find this content will often make the difference between the success and the failure of your website, and often, the success or failure of your website will determine the success of your business, this is where SEO and SEM comes into the picture.
SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) are terms that are often used interchangeably within the online marketing community, although there are a few key differences and understanding these might help you in deciding which SEO consultancy to hire. SEO typically refers to things that are done on your site; this is more technical and consists of things such as proper tagging, and on page optimization of each page of your site, so that each page will be found in top search engines. For more advanced, or dynamic websites on page SEO can get very involved and tricky and if you want your dynamic website to achieve top results hiring a proper expert is essential.
SEM typically refers to things that are done off page to promote your site (although please note that SEO can also be used to talk about off page optimization and SEM can sometimes be used when talking about on page optimization). For many websites, particularly those in competitive industries a proper SEM campaign is essential in order to rank well in search engines. Such a campaign should consist of a number of different components and these should be adjusted and shifted depending on the industry and target audience. Here are some of the components that a SEM campaign might include: Link building (essential for all websites/blogs), social bookmarking (this is important for blogs, or for other types of sites that have regular new content), social networking (depending on your target audience and demographic there are many platforms for you to chose from, Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, Gather etc…) and there are many more things that your off page optimization campaign should have.
Do you have a good definition of SEM? Please share.
What do you use for off page optimization?
SEO for Mom and Pop Stores
01 year ago
Mom and pop stores are still the cornerstone of many towns in the United States. When many of us think of our childhood we still remember that corner store that was a block away where we’d get milk, or that diner where we may have gone on our first date, or perhaps the flower shop or that boutique… most importantly we can remember that nice store keeper who we got to know through the years…
Much has changed for mom and pop shops recently, globalization and the “Wal-Martization” of the marketplace has made things very difficult… but through the internet many mom and pop shops are now able to reach a global audience, and the local boutique, that only recently catered to a few neighborhoods or a small town may now have the entire world as a potential customer!
When it comes to websites and SEO for mom and pop shops there are a few things that ought to be considered; such sites should be targeted to the local community, and off page SEO for these sites should be done primarily through Google local and other local search engines/classifieds. If your shop produces a unique product or service the site should include a page that describes this and the geographic region where this is available (if applicable). In the case of unique products/services it is also important to have proper title tags, b/c since these products are unique (not very competitive) it is likely that these pages will rank well in Google with little effort; additionally, you can target your link building efforts at the titles of your core products, so that your product pages will rank well.
When it comes to local SEO, it is extremely important to properly optimize your local SEO. This means that you set up proper local accounts on all of the top search engines (Google local, Yahoo local, Bing local) and that you provide these accounts with all of the proper information (Your company name, address, phone #, website…) As far as the optimization of the title for your Local listing, if your company name does not mention your product you should try to include it in the title, for example, “Bold Electric – Licensed electrician NJ”.
Optimization of title tags
21 year ago
This is a guest post by Ben Hook
Ben Hook is the head of search at Navaro, a search engine optimization agency in the UK.
The title tag is one of the most important on page factors search engines look at when ranking websites. An incorrectly optimized tag can leave your website in the supplemental results, hidden away, whereas the right keywords can put your website in front of people at the exact time they are looking for your product or service.
The title tag is visible to both the search engines you users. It is one of the factors that will encourage them to click through from the search results onto your website and so it needs to be both optimized and compelling at the same time.
There are a few things to keep in mind when optimizing this tag to help you get maximum benefit:
1. Use the important keywords at the very start of the title tag – the closer to the start the keywords are the more weight the search engines place on them
2. Use only the most important keywords – don’t dilute the weight that each keyword carries by stuffing as many in as possible
3. Don’t duplicate – One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to have the same title tag across the whole website
4. Keep it consistent – although the tags should be different the layout should be consistent across the website.
5. Keep it to 65 characters or less – Although the search engines will index more this is the ideal limit for neat, optimized title tags.
By applying these steps to your title tags you can have a dramatic effect on your websites rankings and make the most of your title tags.
SEO for your grandmother
51 year ago
When most people hear the term “SEO” or “Search Engine Optimization” they instinctively assume that this is something that is very complicated and that they will never understand the basics, for this reason many websites still lack basic optimization, and will likely be doomed to obscurity. This “eyes glazing over” effect is particularly true when SEO experts start using terms like “web 2.0” or “Meta…” or “H1 tags”… but I am here to tell you that SEO is not that complex (at least not the basics), sure, there are “advanced” SEO techniques for optimizing your site, but unless you are in a very competitive industry, basic SEO should help you a great deal (Oh and for those of you who are in a competitive industry, or who do not want to go the DIY route I invite you to contact NetLZ, and let us be your top SEO experts!).
So… let us return to the title of this blog post, how exactly does SEO apply to your grandmother? What I meant by this is that even your grandmother should be able to understand SEO basics. A good way to look at SEO is to think of a website without SEO, or as it was explained to me once, “a website without SEO is like winking to a girl from across the room with the lights off, sure, she might see you but your chances are not good…”
Basically speaking SEO is the art of promoting your website, and much like any type of promotion, the trick is in being seen by someone who is looking for exactly what you are selling at the right moment. In SEO this is accomplished through getting your site, or different pages of your website to rank for targeted keywords (this is done by following certain rules, adding proper tags to pages, titles…). Additionally link building is a dominant component of SEO today, the best way to think of link building is by seeing it as forming partnerships with similar minded business or businesses that are in the same niche (for example, a good link partnership may be between a Family care doctor in New Jersey, and a Anti Wrinkles Treatment). A proper link exchange offers a few benefits, first you are providing a benefit to the visitors of the site with whom you are trading links, and secondly each link helps to increase your popularity in the eyes of Google, and improves your keyword rankings. SEO also consist of the optimization of Pay Per Click campaigns (PPC) directory submission, paid links and many other things that I’ve tried to cover in past blog posts as well as a variety of topics that I will be discussing in future posts.
Have you tried to explain SEO to your grandmother? Any luck? Please share your experience with us.
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