Showing posts with label SEO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SEO. Show all posts

Saturday, February 21, 2009

10 Ways to Build Search Engine Optimization

Organic Search results appear in the non-advertising areas of the search engine results page. This is the equivalent of FREE advertising, so search engine optimization (SEO) is a very important strategy for creating a successful web site. So, it is imperative that you create an effective SEO strategy to help your web site bring you new customers. Here are 10 ways to improve your search engine optimization strategy.

1. Keywords: Develop unique keywords and relevant titles for each of your web site pages and each article or blog you publish.

2. Content: The depth of research and development applied to your content strategy will be directly proportional to the quality and quantity of traffic you receive in organic search. "Content" includes the written word, applications, widgets, tools and other digital assets.

3. Copy writing: Adding one word or phrase in the right place can increase visibility for a particular keyword. Be careful in your approach, and consider the human element, no matter how tempting it is to over-tweak.

4. Permanent Links: Start the process of cataloging multiple redirects and campaign URL's and set up permanent redirects to make it easier for the engines to find the "real" URL.

5. Interlinking: Link to others web sites, have others link to yours. Writing useful articles that link back to your web site and getting others to use the articles on their home pages is one of the best strategies for improving your rankings in the search engines.

6. Feed submission: Determine which feeds are most relevant to your business (products, maps, etc.) and take steps to provide data to the engines. With placements like Google Maps, a feed could be a quick ticket to a No. 1, No. 2, or No. 3 natural ranking.

7. Title and Description: Create a succinct title and description, which along with your Keywords, is an important part of your meta strategy for SEO.

8. Linking Architecture: Search engines need a unique URL for each page to actually index each page separately. Using parameters like /ShowArticle.cfm?article_id=14 doesn't work. You could have a million articles linked like this, but the search engines wouldn't know it. But search engines do like /ShowArticle.cfm/14 - if your information architect designs your system in this way, you can be assured that every article or web page will be reviewed by the search engines - making sure each has a different title, keyword list and description will guarantee that the search engines actually index the articles and pages. This is the best strategy for getting search engines to crawl your site and index content.

9. Clean up broken links: Find and remove permanently broken internal links or set up properly configured 404 error page to improve crawling performance that lets engines know that the old link is history.

10. Make your pages smaller by removing common JavaScript and CSS code to external files. The files are then cached by the browser and your page loads quicker and the search engines can crawl your pages quicker and easier.

These are only a few of the many things you can do to help your SEO. They are free and if you can coordinate all of these things into your web site, they are also very effective.

Bonus Information!

For coders, these are some of the areas that must be taken into consideration:

*Meta Tags - though your title, keywords and description in your site's meta-tags may have been effective when you launched your site, this can change. Your meta-tags must be tested regularly - it is important to test and re-test your meta data.

*Content - like meta tags, your site content must be updated regularly and must reflect the meta data you are using. When it comes to search engine indexing, the continuity of your meta data and content are checked. Event the order in which your keywords are set and HTML like bold text can make your information easier for the search engine spiders to crawl.

*Links - building links on your site allows you to become more friendly on-line. By making friends virtually, you are increasing your popularity and reputation on-line. This interlinking is an effective strategy to promote your site - the more relevant your links are, the more powerful your web site becomes.

For marketers, this is the most powerful way to build traffic.

*In-Bound Links - Article marketing is one of the key ways to build in-bound links. Every site that posts one of your articles becomes a billboard pointing back to your web site. Imagine having an article on 1,000 web sites - that's 1,000 billboards pointing to your web site. Now imaging 100 articles on 1,000 web site pointing back to your web site - that is 100,000 billboards that make your site one of the highest ranked sites on the Internet.

When you implement these Strategies, you'll find two long-term benefits for your website:

1) This will boost your web site search engine rankings.
2) This will attract quality traffic to your site.

Teo Graca works with Social Media, Social Networking, Podcasting, Blogging and other technologies, has an extensive background in video and music production, and has spent the last dozen years designing and implementing information systems.

Insider's Club with Teo Graca

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Teo_Graca

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SEO Fundamentals - Top 20 Factors to Better Google Rankings

Any discussion about SEO Fundamentals needs to start with Google. With over 75% of the world's web searches now being conducted via Google, it's safe to say that your potential customers will be starting their journey there as well.

Google is the gold standard of Search Engines in both overall search volume and search quality. I'll save the rationale behind Google's dominance for another day, but undoubtedly a large portion of their rise to the top of Search Engine excellence can be attributed to their proprietary algorithm, which is the set of calculations performed against the web's content that decides which web sites they think their viewers will find most relevant for the entered keywords.

Google's is the most difficult search engine to optimize against because it does the best job of filtering out all of the short-cuts marketers try to use to cheat the system. Google makes a company work to return high organically. At the most basic of Google's (and hence, SEO's) driving factors to page rank are:

* How much relevant content does your site have, and

* How highly the web community values your content (measured in number of links from other sites to your content).

This means that the early days of tweaking a few meta tag descriptions to fix your web site's SEO are long, long gone. In today's game, SEO cannot be thought of as a one-time expense. It requires a commitment. Based on your competition, your industry and your objectives, it may also require a good deal of time and money before you see results. There is no short-cut around satisfying these two criteria. If an SEO Consultant tells you there is, it's likely either a scam or an activity that could get your site blacklisted.

So, how exactly does a company show Google great, relevant content that's as popular and externally-validated as a southern Homecoming Queen? There's no magic answer, and the rules are always changing, but....

Without further ado, and in no particular order, Google's 20 most important factors to better SEO rankings.

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag - Placing the targeted search term or phrase in the title tag of the web page's HTML header.

2. Keyword Use in Body Text - Using the targeted search term in the visible, HTML text of the page.

3. Relationship of Body Text Content to Keywords - Topical relevance of text on the page compared to targeted keywords.

4. Keyword Use in a web page's Headline (H1 Tag) - Creating an H1 tag with the targeted search term/phrase.

5. Keyword Use in Domain Name & Page URL

6. Link Popularity within the Site's Internal Link Structure - Refers to the number and importance of internal links pointing to the target page.

7. Quality/Relevance of Links to External Sites/Pages - Do links on the page point to high quality, topically-related pages?

8. Age of Document - Older pages may be perceived as more authoritative while newer pages may be more temporarily relevant.

9. Amount of Indexable Text Content - Refers to the literal quantity of visible HTML text on a page.

10. Quality of the Document Content (as measured algorithmically) - Assuming search engines can use text, visual or other analysis methods to determine the validity and value of content, this metric would provide some level of rating.

11. Global Link Popularity of Site - The overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web (both link quality and quantity).

12. Age of Site - Not the date of original registration of the domain, but rather the launch of indexable content seen by the search engines (note that this can change if a domain switches ownership).

13. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site - The subject-specific relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword.

14. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world.

15. Rate of New Inbound Links to Site - The frequency and timing of external sites linking in to the given domain.

16. Anchor Text of Inbound Link.

17. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site.

18. Topical Relationship of Linking Page.

19. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world.

20. Age of Link.

By Bill Casey

Bill Casey is the founder and owner of Bill Casey Consulting in Atlanta, GA and offers small and medium-sized businesses comprehensive online and offline marketing solutions including Search Engine Optimization (SEO), web site design and development, e-commerce applications, site visitor traffic conversion programs and much more. Contact Bill Casey about at Atlanta Web Site Design and SEO services by visiting his website.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bill_Casey

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SEO Traffic Spider - Strategies That Speak Results in SEO

Today almost all the businesses are looking to increase their ROI from their website. With that, they are also looking at ways and methods by which they can increase their website traffic and maximize their online presence.

The 5 strategies listed in this article will help you in not only optimizing your website for increasing your customers but also improving the cash flow from your website. The information that is summarized below will help you in getting immediate results for your business.

Strategy 1: Setting your goals
A website without a goal is like shooting a bullet in the dark. Just as the bullet looks for a target, so do Internet Marketers needs to prioritize their goals as to what they expect from their website. Most of the Internet Marketers have primarily 2 goals in mind:

1. Building quality leads, and
2. Increasing the number of leads.

In order to achieve the above, it is important that your website is crafted in such a way that it can encompass the following:

Attention: Your website should be well designed and contain valuable and informative content that can attract more and more visitors from the search engines.

Interest: Your website should be able to display the advantages of your products and services such that there is an interest in the visitor to know more about your product/service.

Decision: Your website should be able to illustrate to the visitor that by purchasing the respective product/service they would be making a smart decision.

Action: Your website should be able to cut through your competition and ensure that the prospect converts to a customer.

Strategy 2: Conversion Optimization
It's a known fact that nearly 50% of the visitors are lost because they cannot find the product or service they are looking for. If this is true, then where are the visitors going? Are you tracking the conversions that are happening on your website? For example, you had 50 visits today. Out of the 50 that visited, 30 went to the product/service page. Out of that only 10 clicked on the sign up link and finally only 2 paid. This is what needs to be tracked and you should find out where were the points or the pages from where the visitors left and what were the reasons for their exit.

Some points to ponder on:
1. Is my websites' navigation confusing?
2. Does it display a value proposition that would benefit the visitor
3. Are my headlines able to elicit action?
4. Is my content unique and keyword friendly?
5. Does my website offer a risk free guarantee?
6. Do I have testimonials on every page of my website?
7. Does my website look professional?
8. Does my website have VeriSign certificate?

A well designed website can definitely change the perspective of the visitor and that's something that you would like to ensure in your website. Once you have succeeded in building a well developed website, your sales will increase, conversion rates will shoot up, customer retention will increase, and finally you will get rid of all that stress.

Strategy 3: Driving Immediate Traffic to your website
The fastest way by which you can beat the competition with a new website is by first performing AdWords Optimization. With AdWords Optimization, you can immediately beat your competitors and maximize your profits from day one itself. Unfortunately, many internet marketers fail in their initial attempts to either take advantage of this laser targeted traffic generating method or by not monitoring and managing their AdWords campaigns on a regular basis.

The Solution!
Identify the client acquisition cost! Let us consider a hypothetical case where the profit made on the sale of a product is $250. Per the data available, a sale is made from 250 visits. Therefore the visitor value is $1.00 for each visitor to book a profit! The best solution would be to bid low and keep a constant track on the metrics and performance of your campaigns. Then tweak them as and when necessary.

Also, create unique advertisements that are focused around your main keywords. These advertisements can then be split tested based on the CTR - click through rate to see which ad is performing better when compared to others.

Strategy 4: SEO - Search Engine Optimization to improve your ranking
In order to improve the ranking of your website, you need to ensure that your website is submitted to those sites (Directory Submission Sites, Article Submission Sites, Press Release Sites, Reciprocal Linking sites) that have a good page rank.

Points to note:
• Ensure that your website gets a huge number of relevant and quality links than your competitors.
• Ensure that the anchor text that is used in your website has the keywords that are present in the content of your web page.

Strategy 5: Testing & Tracking
The key to the success of your business lies in maintaining, monitoring, and managing your metrics. The metrics will tell you exactly as to what is converting and what is not.

For example:
What amount of sales happened yesterday?
Which page of your website converted the most?
From which location did the maximum number of visitors come?
What is my ROI?

The 5 strategies explained above will surely get you results that you would have never imagined if you implement and execute them correctly.

By Farazdak Nasrulla

Farazdak Nasrulla the Founder & CEO of Bellamonte Nash Outsourcing is a young dynamic entrepreneur who brings over 9 years of varied industry experience blended with corporate leadership. His experience spans SEO, process transition, pre-sales, extensive experience in the end-to-end delivery of outsourced processes having been involved and responsible for transitioning processes.

URL: http://www.seotrafficspider.com
Email: enquiries@seotrafficspider.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Farazdak_Nasrulla

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