Archive for May, 2009

SEO Basics

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

Author: Prashant Shukla

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings, and could be considered a subset of search engine marketing. The term SEO also refers to “search engine optimizers,” an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients’ sites. Some commentators, and even some SEOs, break down methods used by practitioners into categories such as “white hat SEO” (methods generally approved by search engines, such as building content and improving site quality), or “black hat SEO” (tricks such as cloaking and spamdexing). White hatters say that black hat methods are an attempt to manipulate search rankings unfairly. Black hatters counter that all SEO is an attempt to manipulate rankings, and that the particular methods one uses to rank well are irrelevant.

Search engines display different kinds of listings in the search engine results pages (SERPs), including: pay per click advertisements, paid inclusion listings, and organic search results. SEO is primarily concerned with advancing the goals of a website by improving the number and position of its organic search results for a wide variety of relevant keywords.

Early search engines

Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit a site to the various engines which would run spiders, programs to “crawl” the site, and store the collected data. The default search-bracket was to scan an entire webpage for so-called related search words, so a page with many different words matched more searches, and a webpage containing a dictionary-type listing would match almost all searches, limited only by unique names. The search engines then sorted the information by topic, and served results based on pages they had crawled.

Organic search engines

Google was started by two PhD students at Stanford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and brought a new concept to evaluating web pages. This concept, called PageRank, has been important to the Google algorithm from the start. PageRank relies heavily on incoming links and uses the logic that each link to a page is a vote for that page’s value. The more incoming links a page had the more “worthy” it is. The value of each incoming link itself varies directly based on the PageRank of the page it comes from and inversely on the number of outgoing links on that page.

The relationship between SEO and the search engines

The first mentions of Search Engine Optimization don’t appear on Usenet until 1997, a few years after the launch of the first Internet search engines. The operators of search engines recognized quickly that some people from the webmaster community were making efforts to rank well in their search engines, and even manipulating the page rankings in search results. In some early search engines, such as Infoseek, ranking first was as easy as grabbing the source code of the top-ranked page, placing it on your website, and submitting a URL to instantly index and rank that page.
Due to the high value and targeting of search results, there is potential for an adversarial relationship between search engines and SEOs. In 2005, an annual conference named AirWeb was created to discuss bridging the gap and minimizing the sometimes damaging effects of aggressive web content providers.

About the Author:

Prashant K Shukla is a successful webmaster and author. Visit his website http://www.mysmartseo.com to read more articles on SEO. Know about lot of free tools to help link building, get back links, boost traffic and ranking of your website. Permission to reprint this article is granted if the article is reproduced in its entirety, without modification, including the bio information. Please include a hyper link to http://www.mysmartseo.com

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – SEO Basics

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One way Link Building: Securing Lasting Results for Your Website

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

Author: Akhila Choudhary

If you are contemplating link popularity building , the best advice is think long term. Don’t rely on the traditional reciprocal links. They may give you link popularity for a short period of time but are not long lasting. On the contrary, the benefits you get from one way link building last for years and help improve your website’s ranking on search engines results.
Now, let’s see how one-way links are more beneficial than reciprocal links. It is true that both one way links and reciprocal links do a world of good to your website’s ranking on search engines. Link popularity is one of the criteria that Google and Yahoo use while evaluating web pages. Pages acquire link popularity depending on the pages that link to them. But if you use a number of reciprocal links, the popularity of your site may even be decreased. Though these links point back to your site, they may not be links which shares the same area of interest as yours. They may lead to sites which are quite different from yours in term of content.
One way links are difficult to acquire. But once you have them, you are guaranteed of lasting benefits. These are links that points back to site and they also lead to sites that share the same topical focus as yours. As such, they also add value to the users and search engines see this as an authentic and not an artificial way of building link popularity. Consult link building services providers to get one way linking sources.
Building links through this method also secures permanent results as website owners feels that their users can be benefited from your site’s content. Hence they don’t easily drop your link from their sites. So turn to one way links for link building.

About the Author:

I am the webmaster at www.synapseinteractive.com . Synapse Interactive is a one way link building company in India.

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Building your Business Brand on Twitter

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

Building your Business Brand on Twitter

With Twitter becoming one of the fastest growing new web sensations since Myspace or Facebook, every man and his dog are getting on board Twitter and using it as a cost effective (Free!) global marketing tool.

Businesses are Tweeting their way to popularity, creating brand awareness at lightning speed, and driving traffic to their actual website or products, more effectively and quickly than traditional paid advertising.

But like any business, traditional or online, professional branding is essential.
And when I talk about branding I am not just referring to the way your Twitter page looks, but more importantly, the name of your Twitter account that appears.

Twitter accounts are quickly becoming like online real estate.
We have seen the importance and value of having the correct domain name.
I myself have sold domain names that cost me little over $8 for more than a few thousand dollars less than a year later. Domain names are the modern real estate, and Twitter accounts are no different.

So, if you are considering starting up a Twitter account to drive your business through the internet, you need to start at the start, and establish the name that reflects your business, or more importantly, is your business name.

For example, our business Devision made sure we established http://twitter.com/devision and then branded the colours and background of our Twitter account to reflect our website www.Devision.com.au.

By claiming the Twitter handle early we ensured our clients could find us easily.
The other advantage of obtaining the correct Twitter handle is that the search engines pick up on Twitter accounts and will list your Twitter account and your Twitter account”s description on their directories.

For example, type into Google ‘twitter Devision’ and you will see we list up the top, with our description visible.

And as your Twitter account also contains your website address, the cross link will in turn increase your page rank, and therefore your traffic. On average, all my websites I have set up Twitter accounts for have had a 65% increase in traffic to within a week, and the number of visitors grows as the number of Twitter followers link up with me.

the other importance of claiming your Twitter handle is to ensure other people or imposters don’t claim your name first, as anyone has the right to any name currently available on Twitter, whether it relates to them or now.

In fact Twitter handles have become so sought after and valuable that an ‘aftermarket’ website called Tweexchange has been established where user names can be bought and sold, and some of these names are selling at $100,000 or more!

So make sure you get your Twitter handle before moving on to the next step of business branding….

Creating a Twitter brand image for your business

OK, you have established your Twitter Handle and you’re ready to go. Before rushing in you need to first develop a brand strategy, starting with completing your Twitter Profile. Make sure your profile reflects your business in a short paragraph. As mentioned above, your profile appears on Google so ensure it contains the correct keywords that reflect your business. My theory to writing a good profile tag is think of if you had to tell someone you have never met before what your business does, in one sentence. For instance I do website design, so I would say something like ‘Devision offer cost effective professional graphic design, website design, and website hosting solutions throughout Australia’. That would then become my profile on Twitter, and those keywords such as ‘graphic design’, ‘website design’ are found on Google searches, attracting visitors to my Twitter account and my website.

Once you have completed your profile we move on to your image. Now, if you are not a design expert doesn’t mean you can’t have a professional looking Twitter account. Many graphic design and web design companies, (such as Devision!) can quickly design a professional background image for your account, and help set up the correct colours to blend in with your business. Alternatively there are plenty of websites such as Twitterimage and Twitpaper that also provide this service for you.

Your profile/bio image graphic (called an ‘avatar’) should be your logo or closely represent your business. Don’t upload an avatar of a photo you have found online and like…make sure it is a true representation of your business, as this is usually the first think people will see when they are on Twitter, so make they can recognize you!

Promoting your Twitter account

Promoting your business with TWitter doesn’t just have to be online.
Revert back to traditional marketing methods as well and add your Twitter account to your business cards, your email signature, on Powerpoint presentations and of course on your corporate website.

Twitter may or may not be just another online fad, but at the moment it is one of the best free online promotional tools you can use for promoting your business so go out and ride the Twitter wave!

And yes, you will find me at www.twitter.com/devision !

Of course, we keep all our best Twitter secrets for our clients!
So if you want to really know how to promote your business or make easy money with Twitter or social networks, contact me at www.Devision.com.au

© Article by Chris Bourke @ Devision Design Australia

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Twitter – Spreading the Tweet!

Monday, May 11th, 2009

By Chris Bourke of Devision Design Australia

So you’ve set up your Twitter account and followed my notes from ‘Making an Income from Twitter‘ and you are now hopefully building a continuously growing base of followers to your Twitter account.

But how do you catch up to the Twitterers that have thousands, even tens of thousands of followers quickly?

Well, I would like to share a few of my favourite Twitter Tools and online Twitter directories that you can add your Twitter account to, attracting many new followers faster than you can say Tweet!

My first and favourite Twitter directory is Twellow. Twellow is a Twitter Directory which is free to join and grabs your details from your existing TWitter accounts, so getting started on it is easy and set up in a couple of minutes. Twellow is basically a Yellow Pages of TWitter, allowing you to search for users with similar interests or similar products, or may be located around you. Twellow is the perfect companion if you use Twitter for online marketing.

Just Tweet It is another great easy to use Twitter directory service which helps you find other users just like you. This directory is great for business as it has a huge selection of pre-categorized sections to add your business, or to search from.

Another very popular Twitter directory on the rise is We Follow. We follow breaks the categories up into the most popular Tags (eg, Celebrities, TV, SocialMedia, News, Music), and then sub-categorizes into the most popular of each section. Once you add yourself to We Follow you will quickly see arise in followers, plus it is easy to search for other people you would also like to follow. You will have thousands of followers in no time!

GeoFollow is a Twitter directory with a difference. Geofollow is a location-based Twitter directory, allowing you to search by City and State, as well as the usual Tags, Username and Keyword. Another very easy to join and use directory service, and quickly gathering momentum as one of the most popular Twitter Directories

Remember, you don’t have to understand the Twitter phenomenon, but you have to be part of it! Adding your Twitter account to these directories is a great start to really benefit from Twitter.

Next week I will be chatting about Mashable Tweets.
It might sound tasty, but it’s not..but it is very interesting!

Author: Chris Bourke from Devision.
Chris is a graphic design/ web developer specializing in search engine optimization & online affiliate marketing. Chris is also co-mananager of Devision Design based on the Sunshine Coast, Australia

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SEO – Get your Business to the top of Google

Monday, May 4th, 2009

By Scott Van Achte

In today’s online world search engine rankings can make your business succeed, and while rankings in Yahoo and MSN are very valuable, their combined market value is still less than that of Google. This makes achieving top rankings in Google that much more important.
In this three-part series on How to Optimize for Google we will touch on a number of important aspects for top Google rankings including website optimization, links, Google Webmaster tools, and a number of other considerations.
The focus of Part 1 will be with on page website optimization.

THE RIGHT KEYWORDS
This article is not about keyword research so I will not spend too much time on this topic, however, I felt it was important to at least brush on this slightly.

Make sure that your targets are achievable. If you select the wrong keywords it can make your entire optimization experience essentially a waste. Choose keywords that are attainable but yet still provide a reasonable search frequency for your industry. Your phrase selection should also be targeted to bring qualified traffic to your site.
Using the hotel industry as an example, targeting the word “hotel” would make very little sense but by narrowing it down to “Victoria BC hotel” you now have less competition, and a more qualified audience. Keep your targets in perspective and go after the obtainable rankings.

WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION
There are many on-site factors that play a role in your search engine rankings. Here are a number of those factors and what you can do to improve your chances of success.

Title Tag
The title tag plays one of the most important roles in search results at Google, and is almost always the heading Google chooses for each of its listings. Placement of your target phrase is best used near the start of the tag and repeated again in the middle or near the end. Three uses of your target phrase may be helpful in some instances, as long as it is not too overwhelming. For best results each page on your site should have a totally unique title tag.
It is also important to remember that because Google will use this title as the main heading for your listing, you will want to keep it attractive to potential searchers. Try to also add a call to action, or other wording to help make your listing appear attractive to searchers.
To help illustrate the fact Google takes this tag into consideration, simply do a search for your target phrase and take a look at the titles of the top 10. I tried a search for a rather broad term “hotel” and saw that all 10/10 listings had it in the title tag, and 6/10 had it as the very first word. A quick scan showed that the entire top 30 either had the word hotel, or hotels in their title tags.
If you do only one thing to your website, make sure that all your title tags are relevant, unique, and contain your target phrase for each page.

Meta Description Tag
The Meta Description tag is still occasionally used by Google as the description which appears in the search results themselves. While this used to be a more common practice Google tends to use it most often on sites with very limited content, or those which are flash based. I have seen it still used for content rich sites, however this is less common.
The Meta Description tag still has an impact on search rankings. Your best bet when using this tag is to keep it short and sweet with your target phrase close to the start and not repeated more than 3 times. Like the title tag, each page on your site should have its own unique description tag.
Meta Keyword Tag
When it comes to Google this tag is useless, and won’t influence your rankings. There is some speculation as to whether a spammy keyword tag can however, have a negative effect on Google rankings. As a result, if you do utilize a keyword Meta tag for the smaller engines, it is best to keep it clean and play it safe.

Density
Keyword density plays a role in overall rankings; however, it is not as cut and dry as it once was. Once upon a time there was a magic number that when used could almost guarantee top rankings.
This is no longer the case. Today the ideal density varies from industry to industry, phrase to phrase. To find out what density you should aim for, take the top 10 or 20 search results and see what percentage those sites are using. In most cases you will find that the majority of these sites have a very similar density to one another, and this average density is a good estimation of what you should aim for.
Body Text and Keyword Placement
The location of relevant text on your site will help establish the overall importance of your target phrase. While you do not want to overwhelm the engines and site visitors with a bombardment of target phrases at the top of the page, try to sprinkle in some instances as close to the top of the page as possible.

Synonyms
Be sure to include various synonyms for your target phrases within your body text on your site. Google will use these synonyms to tie in the overall relevance of the page for your main target phrases, which in turn can improve your odds.
To find possible synonyms you can use a thesaurus, but the best way is to search Google itself and see exactly what they consider to be similar. Simply search in Google for your target phrase preceded with a tilde, such as “~hotels”. Next scan through the search results for any text Google has bolded. These are all words that Google considers to be related. Using the “~hotels” example Google brings up phrases such as ‘travel’, ‘tourism’, ‘accommodation’, as well as various hotel chain names such as ‘Hilton Hotels’.

Keywords in Domain
There is still some speculation if having a target phrase as part of your top level domain (TLD) is of use to search rankings. From my experience, yes, there is value here, although, nothing like it was several years ago.
If you are starting off in the online world and are contemplating which domain to go for, consider one that uses your target phrase, assuming that it is both relevant to your business name, and uses no more than a single hyphen. While multiple hyphens in a domain can be successful, they are very common with highly spammy websites, so it is best to not take that route if possible.
While having a keyword located within your domain can provide some ranking juice, I would not suggest heading out and doing a domain swap. In most cases you would be better off working on your existing site than starting from scratch with a new domain.

Keywords in page specific URL
Using keywords for specific page URL’s can also help add a little bit of value to your site, providing you use them responsibly. Consider using a keyword as a directory name and as part of a file name where it naturally makes sense to do so. If you have a website that focuses on tourism and includes local hotel listings, you may want to consider the following structure for your page on the Hilton:
MyTourismSite.com/Victoria/Accommodations/Hotels/Hilton.html

Link Anchor text
This is the actual text you click on as part of a link. When full or partial target phrases are used within your text links they help pass on some value to the linked page for those phrases. This is also true when considering surrounding text. When the content around the link is also relevant, the link holds slightly more value.
While a link that simply states “click here” or “www.domainname.com” does have its place, they provide considerably less value than a link that would use “discount hotels” as its anchor.

Image Alt Text
While image alt text still plays a minor role, its biggest part is within the use of image based navigation. If you have an image linked to another page, the alt text will be attributed much the same way as standard link anchor text is.
Image Alt text should always be short and to the point and should accurately describe either the image itself, or the page the image is linking to. Do not use alt tags as a place to stuff keywords.

Inline Links
These are links that are found mid sentence or mid paragraph as opposed to a simple listing of links as found in a menu or possibly on a sitemap. Links found mid paragraph tend to pass on a little more value from the surrounding text and can offer more relevance to the linked page.

Site Navigation
It is absolutely imperative that your website be fully spiderable by the search engines. This may seem obvious, but often webmasters overlook Google’s ability to crawl a website. Google has become very advanced in what links it can follow and how it can spider a website, but there are still some things that can cause significant roadblocks.

- Flash: One of the most commonly made mistakes is the use of flash. If flash is used as a sole means of site navigation then you can count on Google not viewing your internal pages, and having a significant disadvantage in terms of site rankings.

- Java Script / DHTML: These days most Java Script and even DHTML menus can be spidered by Google, however, this is not always the case. If your site utilizes any kind of fancy navigation and you are wondering why Google has not indexed your internal pages, check out Google’s Cached Text version of your page. If you do not see any text links, then your navigation may be invisible to Google.

- Images: Image based navigation has been safe for many years now, but if your site uses this form of navigation it is essential to have brief, relevant alt text on all your buttons. This alt text will act much like standard anchor text for text based links. This is not only for the purpose of search ranking value, but take a look at Google’s cached text version of your page. If you have image based links that do not have alt text, those links do not appear. This doesn’t mean Google won’t follow them, but for anyone viewing your site on a text based browser, your links will be invisible to them.

URL Structure
Avoid long elaborate URL’s with extraneous characters. While Google has reached a point where they can index massive URL strings, it is best to avoid them if at all possible. For dynamic sites consider utilizing mod rewrites to significantly clean up the URL to not only make it more search engine friendly, but more user friendly as well.
MyTourismSite.com/?locid=”victoria”&catid=”accommodations”
&type=”hotel”&comp=”hilton”
stands a better chance if cleaned up to read:
MyTourismSite.com/victoria/accommodations/hotels/hilton.htm

SUMMARY
Basic website optimization is a critical component for successful placement in Google but is only part of the overall picture.

Scott Van Achte is the Senior SEO at StepForth Web Marketing Inc.; based in Victoria, BC, Canada and founded in 1997. You can read more of Scott’s articles and those of the veteran StepForth team at http://news.stepforth.com or contact us at http://www.stepforth.com

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Mistakes To Avoid In Your Pay Per Click Campaign

Friday, May 1st, 2009

Pay per click advertising has the ability to not only increase traffic to your site, but also increase the knowledge you have of your market. It can very quickly put money in your pocket or very quickly take it out.

Opening up a paid search account, adding a method of payment, and letting traffic flow only takes a few minutes. After that, the most common problem is simply not knowing where to go from there.

Here are eight mistakes that most often turn what could be an otherwise successful campaign into a pure nightmare.

1. Using large non-targeted broad keyword lists.

Large lists of non targeted keywords generally attract non targeted visitors. Rather than focusing on these massive lists (sometimes referred to as keyword dumps) you should focus on smaller more targeted lists. In addition, refrain from using “broad match” keyword types without any offsetting negative keywords. The use of alternative match options will likely yield less traffic, but that traffic should be more qualified.

2. Paying too much attention to your CTR and not enough on your Conversion Rate.

CTR (or Click Through Rate) means nothing if that traffic does not produce actions (sales in the case of ecommerce sites). Focusing on CTR only as an indicator of paid search success will only end up costing you money in the end (thus the “pay per click” concept.) Instead pay more attention to your paid search Conversion Rate to get a better idea of whether you are moving in the right direction or not.

3. Not looking at your Value per Visitor in relation to your Avg. CPC.

Your Value per Visitor represents the amount of revenue you earn for each visitor that arrives at your website through a paid search click. Your Avg. CPC (Average Cost per Click) is the amount you spend on average to get one visitor to your site. Comparing the two tells you whether you are making money or not.

If your Avg. CPC is less than your Value per Visitor then you are making money. The further the two numbers are apart, the more money you are making. It goes without saying that if your Avg. CPC is more than your Value per Visitor then you are losing money.

4. Using only one Ad Group for multiple sets of non-related keywords.

Setting up only one Ad Group and loading it with multiple sets of non-related keywords does a number of bad things. It restricts your ability to more accurately target your visitors based on ad copy. It can cause your quality score to suffer. It costs you more money and also can cost you ad position. I’ll sum it up as follows: using one ad group will often result in non-targeted traffic at a higher cost with a lower ad position in the results. This is on way to succeed at paid search.

5. Using only one ad copy variation per ad group.

I see it often. Website owners running paid search and only using one ad to generate traffic. To be successful and find out what really converts, you should use at least two different variations of ad copy per ad group – and that’s only a gauge. Three to four different ad variations is even better.

Article by: Eric Leuenberger is an ecommerce conversion expert and author of a leading Ecommerce Optimization blog

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